Charmed: Heritage – 117 – Something In the Water

[StoryGirl83]

Charmed: Heritage
Episode 1X17 – Something in the Water

Prologue – What Makes a Warlock

with Samuel, Miriam, Oliver, Jessica, Rachel, Charles, Hannah, and Deb

April 27, 1637

A/N – I apologize for the lack of historically accurate language. If anyone reading this knows how to make the language sound more like the 1630s in colonial New England, please contact me.

The rain dripped down from the sky in a drizzle that barely justified taking cover. Rebecca Warren didn’t bother trying. She cradled her baby son, Samuel, in her arms as she wept over a newly dug grave. A wooden cross with crudely etched letters was the only thing marking the grave of her beloved husband. It held only the barest info, her husband’s name and the years he lived. Thirty two years was all the time Patrick Aaron Warren had been given before he was falsely accused and convicted of theft.

This new land, this America, was supposed to be a land of opportunity, but two weeks off the boat and she had seen nothing but heartache. Their three-year-old daughter, Caroline, had died on the boat and their older son, David, had been blinded in an accident only two days after they had arrived.

Now, it was Patrick who lay dead. Someone had accused him of stealing a bolt of cloth from Goody Westmont, a widow who made a living as a seamstress for the rest of the village. The cloth had been found in their home, but Rebecca could not believe Patrick had been responsible. The townsfolk had been far too eager to lay blame on the new comer though. In time they would learn that Patrick had not been the one responsible for this crime, but it would come far too late for her beloved.

When Samuel began to protest the uncomfortable position that Rebecca had him in, she finally stood and began the walk back to town. She needed to pick up David from one of the few neighbors who hadn’t turned their back on her after Patrick had been accused. David enjoyed playing with their two children, Franklyn and Anne.

Rebecca hadn’t gone very far when she heard voices on the other side of some bushes. She would have continued, but one word caught her attention. Since she had arrived, she had gotten the impression that someone was using magic to alter events, but they hadn’t been directed at any one person.

She cradled Samuel close to her chest as she walked over to where the sound came from. In a clearing Goody Richmond addressed her family. Her three daughters, two sons, and seven grandchildren surrounded a platform of some type on which Goody Richmond stood.

“’Tis time to begin,” Goody Richmond announced to her children. “She has arrived on her own.”

Rebecca gulped. It was time to leave. Her sons needed a mother. She hadn’t gotten more than two steps, when she was knocked to the ground by an invisible force. After taking a second to make sure Samuel was unharmed, she scrambled to her feet. She started running, but was quickly knocked from her feet, again.

“’Tis such a shame,” Louisa Chambers told her brother, William Richmond. “I was hoping for more of a struggle.

Rebecca looked down at Samuel and placed him on the ground. Placing one hand on the ground in front of her she glared up at the siblings.

The ground began to tremble. A wall of dirt built up in front of Louisa and William. As they began trying to get around the dirt wall, Rebecca put her other hand down on the ground between her and Samuel. The ground began to shake and a river of dirt began moving her son toward town and hopefully safety. She continued battling the siblings as she pushed her son farther and farther away. If she got up her power would cease to work, so little bit by little bit she scooted backward. Hopefully by the time she was forced to drop the wall of dirt she would have put enough space between her and Goody Richmond’s offspring.

She was getting close to the edge of town when it was brought home rather forcefully that Louisa and William weren’t the only members of their family. Ice shot out from George Richmond’s hands hitting Rebecca with an ice spray and quickly enveloping her in ice.

Elisa Richmond, the youngest of Goody Richmond’s children, watched her older brother with an amused look. “Well done, George. Now, she dies.”

George put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. “Mother needs her for the spell.”

Elisa looked at the frozen woman in front of her. She scowled. “Louisa, George says we have to bring her to mother. Do the honors, please?”

As soon as Rebecca had been frozen, Louisa and William had followed her trail and now stood a few feet away. Louisa waved her arm and sent the frozen Rebecca sliding back toward the clearing were their family waited. The four siblings walked back to the clearing.

Elisa conjured a knife and ran her finger along the blade as she walked up to the platform her mother was on. She looked down at the small body of a little girl on the platform. “Why could she die, but ‘twas not allowed for her mother to die?”

“The blood of the child needn’t be fresh,” Willamina Richmond told her youngest. “It only needs to be magical and unfortunately the two boys don’t seem to have any magic in them. They are the first witches to cross our paths in over a decade. If we want this, we cannot let this opportunity pass.”

“Still,” Marie Michaels, Willamina’s oldest daughter, complained, “’twas rather bothersome to have to locate the body of the dead child and fish her out of the ocean. Whoever thought to bury the dead at sea should be cursed.”

“They are likely long dead themselves,” Willamina reminded her. “Stay focused, dear.”

“Where’s the baby?” William asked looking at the frozen form of Rebecca.

George shrugged. “We have no need of him. He’s not magical, so he’ll die soon enough.”

Louisa sprinkled a powder around the outline of Caroline Warren’s dead body. Once she was satisfied that there were no escape routes she stepped away from the altar.

Elisa rubbed her finger along her knife as she eyed the child eagerly.

Marie walked over to where her three children and the four belonging to the older three of her siblings stood. She took a basket of dead flowers from her older daughter. As she placed flowers around the child an inch apart, careful to make sure that the petals touched the powder, she spoke to her younger sister. “Elisa, patience. Mother’s spell will give us immortality.”

“’Twill strip us of the petty morality that plagues normal witches,” Louisa added.

“I know,” Elisa scowled. “I just want to use my knife.”

“You will,” William assured her.

“What if mother’s wrong?” Elisa commented, looking her mother in the eye. “I want to be a warlock as much as the next witch, but they’ve been an extinct breed for a thousand years.”

“’Tis very clear,” Willamina assured her youngest. “Clearly the witches in that time have been pathetic excuses of evil.”

“’Tis unlikely that there have been no warlocks in that time,” George commented.

“If there were they made no mark on the world,” William shot back. “We’ve no evidence of them.”

“Likely that is because they have been oppressed and no one has explained to them the true power of being a warlock,” Marie informed her brothers. “We’ll make our mark on the world. We will lead in a new era.”

“And what of my vision?” William asked. “I don’t imagine these things.”

“It does seem rather unlikely,” Marie shook her head. “After all, a woman in breeches. ‘Tis scandalous.”

“I think I’d like that,” Elisa commented. “Men get . . . very distracted . . . when they see too much of a lady.”

“You’re no lady,” George scoffed.

“I wouldn’t expect thee to understand,” Elisa replied.

Marie put down the last flower and stepped away from the altar. “William? George?”

Her brothers took Rebecca’s frozen body and moved it onto the altar next to her daughter’s dead body. George held out his hands and the ice returned to them as William with the help of Marie’s son, Oliver Michaels, held Rebecca in place. They straightened out the struggling woman and George held out his hands again. He froze Rebecca again, but this time he left her head unfrozen.

“Silence her tongue,” Louisa directed her son, Charles Chambers.

Charles waved his hand at Rebecca and her mouth and tongue stopped moving. Sounds emitted from her throat, but no discernible words.

Louisa smiled. “Thank thee, Charles.”

“Begin,” Willamina directed her offspring.

In one voice the thirteen evil witches chanted, “Blood of the offspring flows as a flood.”

Elisa took her knife and ran it down Caroline’s body starting at her throat. The blood had long since ceased to flow, but the spell seemed to call at it and the blood flowed out of her body saturating the powder surrounding her small body.

“Death begins anew, cloaked within a hood.”

The dead flowers touching the powder turned from brown to a brilliant red.

“Water drinkable only by the magical few.”

A thin red liquid spread out from the stems of the flowers and flowed toward the edge of the altar. Much of it ran into Rebecca and flowed around her as the sounds of horrified screams came out of her mouth.

“Death’s cold lips kiss the untrue. Time flows on and the poison spread.”

The red liquid seeped into the ground looking for a water source.

“Until the whole mortal world lies dead.”

A purple smoke emitted from a nearby well bringing a smile to Willamina’s lips.

“This offering I give as my appeal. With a witch’s death seal this deal.”

Elisa took her knife and plunged it through the ice into Rebecca’s heart. A serene look crossed her face as she brought the knife up to her nose and took in a deep breath. “I could get used to this.”

Credits Roll

---

If you haven't read the previous episode, click here and enjoy.

A/N - This series, obviously, ignores the Charmed Comics. Considering this story gives a totally different story for Melinda's father than the comics do, I thought I should comment on that.

[Chrisaholic]

Oho. I might remember it from the other TCS side before but it wasn't finished. New chance for me. This spell is hard, and it'd effect mortals. Big cut for the Halliwell family. Waiting for the next chapter!

[StoryGirl83]

May 21, 2017 6:28:58 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Oho. I might remember it from the other TCS side before but it wasn't finished. New chance for me. This spell is hard, and it'd effect mortals. Big cut for the Halliwell family. Waiting for the next chapter!

It's still not finished. I had some things happen in my life that kind of left me not working on it and then I had some things in the story that made it difficult to work on it once I did start working, again. I'm making slow progress. There are a lot of chapters completed though, so let's see if I can keep ahead of you.

---

Chapter One – Until the Whole World Dies

Tuesday, April 27, 2027

Time has a way of bringing decay. An old shack a mile or so outside of Duxbury, Massachusetts looked like it had seen its fair amount of time. Everything within it was old and broken down.

There was a table that have lost two of it’s legs. Broken pottery and food so molded even the mold had died lay on the floor at the broken end. Most of the items lay broken or decayed. Time had not been good to them.

One a wobbly end table a clock that had long since quit ticking sat perched. It looked as if it would begin a downward decent any second, but it moved not an inch.

Then, a curious think happened. The hands of the clock started to move. Slowly at first and then faster with every second that past, the clock turned in a counter clockwise direction. The backward movement counted back seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years until thirteen decades had been counted. And when it had counted back the last second of those thirteen decades it stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Through the broken glass of the window a well could be seen and from it a purple smoke drifted out. At the window, as if she had always been there, a tiny girl peered out. Through her body objects on her other side could be just made out as if she wasn’t quite there. She turned her little head, sadness in her eyes, and to a woman who had most certainly not been there a minute before she said, “Mama, ‘tis ‘ap’nin’, ‘gain.”

---

Friday, April 30, 2027

The Trudeau residence was rather quiet as Vicki Trudeau made her way into the kitchen. She stretched up and opened the cupboard to grab out a bowl. Over the next couple of minutes she collected a spoon, a box of her favorite cereal, a jug of milk, and a glass. She carried the items into the living room and spread them out on the floor.

“Time?” she absently asked.

A clock in the wall of the apartment flickered on and a voice stated, “The time is now oh five-hundred-fifty-nine.”

“Perfect,” she practically purred as she flopped down onto a bean pillow she had arranged on the floor. “TV on. Volume fifteen. Station four-ninety-seven. Begin.”

She was about five minutes into her favorite television show, a show that had never aired in the other reality, but had been running only reruns for over fifteen years, when it was interrupted. Vicki glared at the screen as a map of eastern Massachusetts filled it.

“The area in and around Duxbury has been put under quarantine,” a disembodied voice announced. “It is unknown what is causing the quick spreading disease, but it has been only two days since the first case was spotted and there are already over six hundred confirmed cases. Be advised to avoid the city until further notice. Doctor’s are doing everything they can to contain and diagnose the disease.”

Vicki stared at the screen startled. Duxbury was less than an hour’s drive from there. The man on the screen described the symptoms and then he listed off disease after disease that had already been eliminated. It seemed that the medical community couldn’t even figure out how the disease was spread.

As soon as the announcement finished Vicki ordered the TV off as she ran out of the room, down the hall, and into her parents’ room. Her parents would keep her safe, wouldn’t they?

---

Tuesday, May 4, 2027

Wyatt had been at the hospital for over ten hours. He slipped into the break room and sank down into a chair.

“Coffee?” Helen Hensley, one of the hospital’s nurses, asked him.

Wyatt took it from her with a smile.

“I heard they roped you in here,” she commented. “Did your boss mind?”

Wyatt shook his head. “Half the museum staff is here in the hospital. Hal closed down until further notice. It’s not like anyone was breaking down the door to get in anyway.” He took a sip of the coffee and put the cup down on the end table next to him.

“How’re you holding up?” she asked. “I heard your uncle’s got a pretty bad case.”

Wyatt hung his head down and sighed. “My aunt Prue’s going pretty crazy. She wanted to bring my cousins out here, but there aren’t any airlines running.” He looked up at her, sadly. “You?”

“My family’s all out here,” she informed him, “but yeah, a few of them have come down with it. People quit saying how lucky we were that they just had mild cases, when people started dying yesterday.”

Wyatt nodded, dejected. “Hard to think anyone’s lucky after that.”

“The death count just keeps getting bigger and nothing we do helps,” she moaned. “They still don’t even know how people are getting it. And it doesn’t match up with anything in their database.”

“Four-hundred-seventeen,” Wyatt mumbled.

“What?”

“That’s the latest death count,” he informed her. “A four-year-old died in Weymouth five minutes ago.” He looked so tired, so weary.

“The last I had heard was three-sixty-four,” she whispered. “That was less than an hour ago.”

He took another sip of the coffee and said nothing.

“I got to get back to work,” Helen announced suddenly. “I hope your uncle gets better.”

Wyatt offered her a weak smile. “Thanks, Helen. Your family, too.”

“Thanks,” she replied before she headed back into the hospital to see to the comfort of the sick. There was nothing they could do to heal them, because they had no idea what was making them sick.

As she closed the door behind her Wyatt sipped the rest of the coffee. This had better be regular, because it was going to be a while before he had time for sleep. He looked down at his hands. He’d been told that sometimes whitelighters could heal disease, but if it weren’t for the broken leg he’d accidentally healed earlier, he would have thought his healing power was broken. It hadn’t affected anyone who was sick.

---

Thursday, May 6, 2027

The attic in the manor was unusually busy or rather unusually full. Half a dozen teenagers lay sound asleep on the couch and the floor. Hank Mitchell stood in front of the podium that held the Book of Shadows. As of five minutes before he had looked at every page in the book twice. That didn’t, of course, mean that he had read them all, but he’d looked at them.

“Want me to take over?” Hank’s cousin, Hope Halliwell offered.

Hank shook his head. “There’s nothing in here, no point in you wasting time looking. We’ll need to find another source.”

“What if there is no other source?” she looked at him concerned. “Not every demon or evil spell out there has shown up before. There’s a first time for everything.”

He closed the Book and looked at her. “It’s not new. This has happened before.”

But where’s your proof,” she asked. “We asked Uncle Leo and he didn’t remember anything like this.”

“He also didn’t remember when James Thomas kidnapped all those kids in 1927,” he pointed out.

“He wasn’t even three yet,” she protested.

“Exactly,” Hank agreed. “If this happened when he was young or before he was born, he wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“Yow asked Ava’s kids,” she added. “They’re pretty old.”

“Yes, but they didn’t spend much time out of the alternate dimension James Thomas created,” Hank pointed out.

Hope frowned as she thought. “Well, what about your grandpa? What did he say?”

“I haven’t been able to reach him,” Hank admitted. “He doesn’t exactly have a phone number.”

Hope sighed. “Do we know anyone older than that?”

“The elders,” was his mumbled reply.

She wrinkled her nose. “That means going Up There. I sure can’t do that.”

“Neither can I,” he informed her.

“But I thought . . .”

He shrugged. “I can orb. I just can’t seem to orb Up There.”

“Have you ever tried before?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never had that need before.”

“Your mom’s downstairs,” Hope pointed out. “We can ask her to go Up There and ask. If you’ll do that, I’m going to wake Cilly so I can ask her to go see the cupids. They’ve been around a very long time. Maybe they know something.”

“According to your dad they don’t pay a whole lot of attention to world events unless they pertain directly to love,” he reminded her.

Hope frowned. “Well, I think nearly two thousand dead in the eastern US and Canada along with over four million sick from an unknown disease would catch their attention.”

Hank moaned. “Every day just gets worse.”

“We can’t let this go on another day,” she moaned. “All these people. A week ago no one was sick. Now there are millions scattered over the entire continent. How soon before South America’s infected, too?”

“I’d say that’s a sure bet,” Hank informed her. “There have been cases reported on the western coast of Europe. There’s little doubt that people in South America are either infected or will be soon.”

Hope’s bottom lip quivered. “I don’t want to lose Uncle Leo or Uncle Andy.”

Hank wrapped her up in his arms. “We know this is magical, that’s a start.”

“Only if we find a cure,” she looked up at him sadly. “Every hour more people die and every minute more people get sick.”

“Then, let’s quit looking through the Book of Shadows for something we know isn’t there,” he decided. “You wake your sisters and have Cilly go ask the cupids. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they know something. Then, go find out where Chris is. He’s going to start calling a lot of whitelighters until we find someone who knows something useful. I’ll go get my mom and ask her to go Up There. Then, I’ll wake my sisters. We don’t just sit idly by and do nothing. We are going to find this cure and we are going to do it today.”

Hope smiled up at him and wiggled out of his arms. He let go of her instantly and she headed over to where Cilly lay asleep on the floor by the couch.

As Hank headed toward the attic door he tried to hide his feelings. Please let me be right. Besides his two uncles, he had classmates who were sick, neighbors, and there was a girl he liked who was sick. He didn’t know what was going on, but he couldn’t let his cousin see just how scared he was.

---

The times are included because time is important in this one. It's very limited.

[Chrisaholic]

Wow, so it has already started. And many family members of the Halliwells are infected and all want help as well as find a cure as fast as possible. Still, it doesn't look good.

[StoryGirl83]

May 29, 2017 9:45:54 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Wow, so it has already started. And many family members of the Halliwells are infected and all want help as well as find a cure as fast as possible. Still, it doesn't look good.

Yep, and it has a name, too. Sorry for missing this.

---

Chapter Two – Witch’s Fever

Chris Halliwell didn’t know what made him the most anxious. It could be the fact that his dad was almost one day into a disease that started killing people as little as five days after they started showing symptoms. Or maybe there was the fact that his uncle, whom admittedly he didn’t know all that well, but was still his uncle and treated like a big brother by his mother, was over halfway through the fifth day with a very bad case of it.

There was of course the most immediate option that he’d been up since four-thirty . . . yesterday . . . and he’d only had three hours of sleep the previous night. That was enough to put strain on someone not only in the middle of a family crisis, but what was quickly fixing up to be a global one. To make matters worse, there was nothing, absolutely nothing giving them an idea as to what was causing it.

All they had managed to deduce was that it was magical in origin, because there was no way every magical person they knew had the same immunity to it otherwise. That eliminated only a very small portion of causes. When it came to the world of magic there was an almost infinite amount of possible causes.

He opened the door into his dad’s hospital room. The San Francisco area wasn’t so badly infected that people were doubling up rooms yet, but it was only a matter of time unless someone figured out how to fix it. Inside he found his mom, Piper Halliwell, asleep in the arm chair next to his dad’s bed. She looked exhausted, so he decided to let her sleep.

He looked down at his dad’s bed. Leo Wyatt had always seemed like he could survive anything. After all, he’d died and was still alive eighty-five years later. Was this the end for him?

Chris couldn’t accept that.

“Your dad?” a voice from the doorway asked.

Chris looked up at the nurse and nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she offered. “We’ve got a lot of cases of the witch’s fever.”

“The what?” Chris looked at her confused.

“Witch’s fever,” she repeated. She shrugged. “It started somewhere around Salem and someone started calling it witch’s fever. It stuck, so that’s what they are calling it. It’s not like anyone’s got a better name for it.”

True, he thought with a scowl, but I don’t like it. Witches don’t need more bad rap.

“I’ve got to do some tests,” the nurse informed him. “I hate to wake your mom, she looks so tired, so would you mind stepping out of the way?”

Chris sighed. “I’ll be back later. Take care of him.”

“We’re doing our best,” she assured him.

Yeah, he thought as he headed out of the room, but so far that hasn’t been enough. He headed down the hall and started looking for an empty room to orb out from.

“Looking for me?” a voice asked from a bed in the sixth room he checked.

Chris looked up surprised. “Emily.”

Emily Colson gave him a sheepish grin from her hospital room. “I’ve got a fever. Apparently that can only mean one thing. No one else in my family is sick, which I guess is good. How’s your uncle doing?”

“Not good,” Chris admitted. “Aunt Prue’s worried sick. With as sick as he is, it’s likely he’ll succumb to this soon.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she looked at him unhappily. “I know a lot of people have died, but so far I haven’t known anyone who’s died and I haven’t known anyone who knew someone that died. I really don’t want you to be the first.”

“I kind of have to go,” he told her. “I just stopped by to see my dad . . .”

“Your dad!” she exclaimed looking at him startled. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Chris.”

He heaved in a sigh. “Thanks. Anyway, I was just here to see him. He’s asleep, but they wanted to do some tests on him, so I figured I’d head on home. My cousins are at the manor trying to find something useful and I thought I’d offer to help.”

“You look about ready to drop,” Emily commented, looking him over.

“Boy, thanks.”

She gave him a shrug and a smile. “Get some sleep, okay. You’re no good to anyone if your brain’s not functioning.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he assured her.

“You do more than that,” she ordered him. “Get some rest.”

“We’ll see.”

She glared at him. After several seconds she sighed. “Fine.” Thinking about what he said, she asked, “So you think this is magical?”

“It has to be,” Chris insisted. “As far as we can tell no one magical has been affected.”

“Maybe you just have really good immune systems,” she suggested.

“Not likely,” he argued. “Jani was forever suffering from hypothermia when she was little and Alanna was always running a fever.”

“Forgive me for stating the obvious,” she chuckled, not sounding at all sorry, “but doesn’t Alanna shoot fire out of her hands? And doesn’t Jani have ice in her veins . . . literally.”

He shrugged. “That’s true, but they weren’t the only ones who got sick.”

“Well, off with you then,” she shooed him away. “Get some sleep.”

Chris smiled. “We’ll see.” And then he orbed out.

Emily smiled as she snuggled into her bed. She was still hoping that she didn’t have whatever this disease was, but if she did, she had confidence in Chris.

---

And no, Jani doesn't have literal ice running through her veins. Emily doesn't quite get how these powers work.

[Chrisaholic]

Oho, that's not good if Leo and Andy are involved in this. Maybe Emily is also infected. We don't know. But I hope that all other Halliwells will finally find some time to sleep.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 15, 2017 9:49:46 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Oho, that's not good if Leo and Andy are involved in this. Maybe Emily is also infected. We don't know. But I hope that all other Halliwells will finally find some time to sleep.

I figured I needed to give people a reason to be concerned. This started on the East Coast, in Massachusetts and since Prue and family are in Boston, Andy made a lot of sense. Most of the East Coast is infected (although I will introduce you to someone later on who isn't infected, doesn't know why he's not infected, and subtly hint at why he's not infected in a later chapter). It has been on the West Coast quite as long, but you need to know people on the West Coast who are infected as well, and there are several. This is just the tip of that iceberg.

Whether or not Emily is infected will be addressed at a later point when an official diagnosis is made.

Sleep will also be addressed. I think it has some of my readers frustrated later in the story, probably more because of how long it took me to write the chapters at that point in time, since this is the story I am currently working on.

This next one was fun for me, because Steve is always in charge. He always knows what's going on, but as you can tell right off from the title, he's lost with this one.

---

Chapter Three – Dev’s Clueless Daddy

Steve Kessler appeared in his bedroom in the blink of an eye. For once he had no idea what was going on. He generally made it his business to know what was going on in the underworld. This time he could learn very little. The younger demons and underworld dwellers didn’t even seem to know anything and those older and presumably wiser, didn’t see the point in dealing with someone who wasn’t even close to hitting the half century mark.

All he knew for sure was that it was more deadly than anything he had ever tried. In fact in his schemes so far, no one had died except those he’d sent to go against the Halliwells. It was almost enough to bring a warlock to tears.

There was also the question of the missing Charmed One. While Steve desperately wished he’d had something to do with it, he was as clueless as everyone else seemed to be. If any demons knew what was going on there, they sure weren’t showing it, and wouldn’t they be bragging about bagging a Charmed One. It was rather a heady accomplishment. Only one demon had successfully done that before and not only was that demon long gone, but the formerly dead Charmed One was now alive and kicking.

He had learned that her husband was pretty much on his death bed and that her brother-in-law, the father of the two witches who’d been outwitting him for months now, was also sick. And that meant they would die. While he relished the thought that two Charmed Ones would lose their husbands, he’d prefer that he did it. It would be infinitely more pleasurable to know he had personally caused them pain.

He headed into the hall and heard the sound of crying. He followed the sound until he reached his daughter’s room. Devia lay on her bed sobbing into her pillow. He pushed the door open and walked over to her bedside. She didn’t seem to notice him, so he sat down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

Her sobbing stopped long enough for it to register that her dad was there and then Devia just cried harder. She buried her head in her pillow and just shook.

Steve stared down at her, completely at a loss as to what to do. How could he help her if she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong? And so for several minutes he just sat there.

It took almost twenty minutes of complete silence other than Devia’s sobs before she lifted her head. She looked at her dad and sniffed. “Can you fix it, Daddy?”

Steve looked at her. He had no idea how to answer.

Apparently it didn’t matter, for Devia made the next move. She flung herself at him and hugged his torso. “Daddy, I don’t want them to die.”

That did not sound at all promising. “They? Who do you mean, Dev?”

“Maya and Sandy,” she sniffed out. “They caught the witch’s fever.”

“The what?” Steve looked at his daughter startled. “What are you talking about?”

“The witch’s fever,” she repeated as if he was an idiot. “You know, the disease that’s been killing everybody around Salem, Massachusetts, the home of the witch trials. Don’t you know anything, Daddy?”

Apparently, he had missed quite a bit while he was checking out the underworld. Witch’s fever? What kind of name was that?

“You’ll make it better, right, Daddy?” she pressed.

Steve sighed. Even if he had the slightest idea how to cure this “witch’s fever”, he wouldn’t. If the price to pay was his daughter’s temporary unhappiness, he’d have to pay it. He’d never wanted her to play with those nonmagical girls anyway.

“Daddy?”

Steve just sighed, again.

Devia looked up at him. “You’ll help them, won’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Dev,” he whispered. “I don’t know what is behind this and I have no idea how to cure anyone who has it.”

“But . . . but . . .” She stared up at him, stammering. “There has to be!”

He shook his head. “No one seemed to think so.”

With a wail she buried her head in his chest. “I don’t want them to die, Daddy!”

---

You may or may not remember Devia's friends, but these are two of the three girls that went with her, Steve, Brianna, and Max to Disneyland for her birthday. Not sure if you will see Brianna or Max in this, probably not Max, because . . . well, we haven't gotten to the point of the story that explains why, but he lives in the Underworld, so when that comes up, you'll know why. Brianna lives in San Francisco.

Back to Halliwells in the next chapter.

[Chrisaholic]

Oh my, Steve was long gone obviously. Maybe he has to work together with the Halliwells to find out more in that case, with that strange fever. Or he can find a clue alone. Maybe.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 15, 2017 10:34:08 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Oh my, Steve was long gone obviously. Maybe he has to work together with the Halliwells to find out more in that case, with that strange fever. Or he can find a clue alone. Maybe.

Na. Steve doesn't care. Despite what Devia is saying, he really doesn't care. If I do have him involved further it won't be with the Halliwells (he doesn't want them to know who he is) and Brianna hasn't been in this story thus far (seeing as she is the only one who knows what he is up to . . . although, Brianna is definitely active. I even wrote a scene involving her but I had to junk it because I never could get it to sound right. Maybe Steve did contact her, but I can't explain that without explaining some other things that I don't want to explain. Maybe when I finish this story I should do a(nother) side story about what was going on behind this scenes (I have two so far. One is about Cassia, who is on trial for being in contact with her brother. One is about Ava, although it technically is aftermath of the story on her side, kind of a sad story since it involves a ghost) with Brianna. I do have that partial chapter in my side story folder and I know a lot of what happens with Brianna and friends. No, I guess Steve being in contact with Brianna being a catalyst wouldn't work, since she's already put her plan into action, which doesn't mean he can't go to her. Oh, I'll see if I can address that later in the story. There are still some details that I haven't quite figured out.

Back to Halliwells at least.

---

Chapter Four – Changing of the Guard

Hank stared at his mother stunned. “That’s impossible! Isn’t it?”

Paige Matthews-Mitchell shrugged. “Apparently not. I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t orb Up There.”

“But how?” Hank looked at her confused. “Haven’t you been Up There before?”

Paige nodded. “Of course I have. I don’t know why I can’[t go up there right now. I only know that I can’t.”

“Then, something’s up there,” Hank decided. “There has to be. If there wasn’t they wouldn’t be keeping you out.”

“We have no reason to believe this isn’t something that just happens every once and a while.”

“In the middle of a crisis?” Hank shook his head. “No. It’s been over a week. Even if they . . . there’s no way this is their doing.”

“We’ll figure out what’s going on,” Paige assured him. “Right now, I think it’s time for you to go to bed. I think you’ve been up too long.”

“I’m okay, Mom,” he argued. “Really I am. We need to figure this out or all those people are going to die.”

“The world does not depend on you, sleepyhead,” she reminded him as she directed him up the stairs to her old bedroom. “And it certainly can’t if you are too tired to think.”

“But I’m not,” he protested.

She shook her head. “Sleep. Let the rest of us who are a bit more rested take over.” She pushed open the door to her old room and led him in. Once they were inside, she peeled back the covers and gently directed her son to sit down.

“I’m not tired,” he protested, again, even as he yawned and lay down against the pillow.

Paige pulled off his shoes and socks before picking up his feet with obvious effort and tucking them under the covers. She smiled as Hank curled up in a ball, already half asleep. She pulled the covers to his chin and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Sleep well, my little one,” she whispered.

She watched him for a few seconds as he quickly settled into sleep before she left the room and headed up the stairs.

In the attic she found her daughters rubbing sleep out of their eyes as Phoebe’s three girls piled pillows and folded blankets into a far corner of the attic. Hope looked up as Paige entered the room. “Did you talk to them? What did they say?”

“So you’re my son’s partner in crime,” Paige commented. “Off to bed with you, young lady.”

“But I . . .”

“Bed,” Paige directed, pointing toward the stairs.

Hope sighed and headed toward the stairs. She stopped and looked at Paige. “Hank looked at every page in the Book twice. It’s not in there, but he mentioned blank pages in odd spots, so maybe that wasn’t always the case.”

Paige nodded. “You’ve said your piece. Now, off to bed.” She looked at the other four girls.”

“You still haven’t heard anything from Mom and Dad, have you?” Ladybug Halliwell asked as she watched her little sister head down the stairs.

Paige shook her head. “Sorry, Sweetheart. I don’t think they are going to just appear. After all this time, it just seems too easy.”

Ladybug sighed. “I know. A girl can dream, can’t she?”

Paige smiled. “Dreaming’s allowed.”

“Is Dad still okay?” Jani, the younger of Paige’s twins asked as Chris orbed in by the podium holding the Book of Shadows.

Paige nodded. “He went to work. His department is amazingly intact, but most aren’t, so he thought he could lend a hand there.” She managed an amused smile as she added, “He also seemed to think we had enough people trying to figure out what magic is behind this without adding his complete lack of magical ability to the mixture.”

“Uncle Andy’s in a coma,” Chris announced as he finished materializing. “I stopped in to visit before heading here. It was pretty much impossible to understand Aunt Prue, but Pat told me it’s been almost two hours.” He heaved in a deep breath and added, “And Vicki says she’s seeing spots. I’m not sure what, if anything that means, but she seemed to think it was relevant. She said there are red spots mixing with white spots and then with more red spots to make purple spots. And she said she sees them only around patients sick with the . . . witch’s fever.” He mumbled the last part.

“The what?” Paige looked at him confused.

“That’s what the world has apparently named this,” he admitted.

“Poor Uncle Andy,” Jani bemoaned.

“Poor Aunt Prue,” Cilly Halliwell corrected. “Uncle Andy’s going to die. Aunt Prue’s the one that’s going to have to live without him, again.”

“There’s still time,” Ladybug argued. “We could still find a way to fix this all.”

Paige looked down at her watch. “He has until about two this afternoon before his temperature spikes and his organs . . .”

“How about we don’t remind the guy whose dad has the same disease, no matter how early a stage,” Chris interrupted to suggest.

Paige sighed. “Sorry, I just got carried away. It’s been a long week and I’m not usually up at four-thirteen in the morning.”

“So we have nothing?” Alanna, Paige’s older twin asked as she picked up the Book of Shadows and walked over to the couch.

“If there was something on those blank pages, then someone put it there, right?” Ladybug spoke up. “Maybe we could try summoning them.” She looked pleadingly at Chris. “You said it was possible. Couldn’t we try summoning Grams? Maybe she knows. I’d love to meet her.”

Chris frowned. “Maybe.”

Cilly shook her head. “That would do no good. Didn’t you hear Hope and Hank talking? Uncle Leo doesn’t know anything. Like or not, they’re contemporaries.” She pointed a finger at Alanna. “Not a word about my dad’s age.”

Alanna shrugged. “He’d be kind of handy right now.”

“Yeah, well, Hope suggested I try talking to some of the cupids, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll leave this up to you guys, but pick someone older than Grams.” That said she vanished in pink hearts.

Alanna began flipping through the Book for a summoning spell.

“How come we’ve never summoned anyone before?” Jani asked her mom. “It would be very amazing to have met Grandma Patty or Grams. Or your parents, Mom,” she added thinking about her mom’s adopted parents who had died long before she’d been born. “We’ve only met one grandparent, which doesn’t seem fair if it’s possible to summon the five we’ve never met.”

“Considering all six of your grandparents are dead,” Paige returned, “consider yourself lucky that you know even one. If it weren’t for magic . . .”

“There’d be no us,” the twins interrupted in unison.

“Mom, we know,” Alanna assured her.

“We’ve thought about it,” Jani added, “quite a bit. Since Grandpa lived in the nineteenth century and you were born late in the twentieth, it’s rather obvious . . .”

“. . . That without magic,” Alanna interrupted, again, “there’d be no us.”

Paige looked at her daughters amused. They did not normally finish, or interrupt as the case might be, each other’s sentences. Clearly Jani was right that they had thought about this a lot. “All right, we’ll try summoning someone.” She looked at the three teenage girls and Chris. “Any suggestions?"

---

Obviously the one grandparent they have met is Sam, especially since Sam has already been in the series. I'll address the other grandparents at some point. Not sure when, but at some point.

Now, on to Wyatt. He's at the hospital, but not with his dad, not at the moment anyway. He is, after all, a hospital volunteer. Besides that, it's a pretty important scene for the other people in it.

[Chrisaholic]

Not good when the Halliwells are tired too. Maybe one of the family ghosts can help here - with some knowledge of the past, like Melinda Warren. Would be good - for Andy, Leo, and practically anyone.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 16, 2017 13:22:29 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Not good when the Halliwells are tired too. Maybe one of the family ghosts can help here - with some knowledge of the past, like Melinda Warren. Would be good - for Andy, Leo, and practically anyone.

There will be ghosts in this one. Melinda Warren has not made an appearance (and the only way she'd have info is if she had a premonition about it . . . which is possible), but you never know.

In the mean time, on to Wyatt, Seth, and some very important decisions for the Silbermans.

---

Chapter Five – The Meaning of Love

Seth Silberman blinked open his eyes and looked across the room at where his dad sat staring at his little brother in the hospital bed. When Peter had come down with the diseases sweeping the continent two days before, Seth had been in a state of disbelief. Surely Peter would be fine. His little brother was hardly ever sick. Now that two days had passed, Seth had to admit, not only was his little brother not getting better, but no one was. So far everyone who had shown signs of being sick a week before was dead and every hour that passed more people got sick.

“Anything happen while I was asleep?” Seth asked with a yawn.

Derek shook his head. "He’s been sleeping restlessly.”

“And Danielle?”

Derek sighed. “She’s in Taiwan. So far there haven’t been any cases over there and she doesn’t want to be anywhere near it for as long as possible.”

“Why are you still with her, Dad?” Seth asked as he looked down at his little brother. “She’s not exactly a people person.”

“She’s still Peter’s mom,” Derek argued.

“Which, considering how she treats Peter, is one of the worst reasons I have ever heard,” Seth returned.

Derek sighed. “We can discuss it after the baby’s born.”

“We can discuss it now,” Seth argued. “She’s invited us to move to New York with her. When that baby is born, she’s moving. Now’s the time to decide if we are going with her.”

“Now, while your brother is sick?” Derek frowned at his son.

Seth nodded. “Now, while Peter is sick and Danielle is nowhere around. But then, she’s never been all that interested in him before. Why would she start now?”

“Seth!”

“Do you think going to New York with her would make her more attentive as a mother?”

Derek sighed.

Seth stood and walked around the hospital bed to where his dad was sitting. “Do you even want to go to New York?”

Derek didn’t answer.

“Dad?”

“I told Danielle we weren’t moving,” Derek informed him in a soft voice.

Seth blinked, surprise written on his face. “You did?”

Derek nodded. “I’ve been kidding myself if I think this is going to make a difference. That woman doesn’t have a mothering bone in her body. I think now that Peter is getting older, she does want to get to know him, but I don’t think she really wants to be his mother.”

“What’s going to happen to the new baby?” Seth asked, wondering how this decision would affect her plan for the baby.

“That remains the same,” Derek assured him. “Assuming there is still a population in New York when the baby is born, I will be joining her there for a few weeks.”

“But I thought . . .”

Derek shook his head. “I need you to watch Peter while I am gone.”

“I don’t understand,” Seth looked at him confused. “Didn’t you just say . . ?”

“That we are not moving to New York,” Derek confirmed.

“Doesn’t that mean that you are also breaking up with her?” Seth asked, hoping for clarification.

“When I told her that we weren’t going to move with her, she was annoyed,” Derek admitted. “I’m sure she thinks this is just temporary, but I mean to stand by it.”

“Then, why are you going to New York, even for a few weeks?” Seth needed to know.

“She’s still having my child,” Derek reminded him. “That baby needs to know, right from the start that he or she is wanted. I wasn’t able to be there when Peter was born. I intended to be there this time and she intends to go to New York as soon as this crisis is over . . . if it ever ends. That’s why I’m going to New York. Can you watch Peter while I’m gone?” The idea that his son wouldn’t make it was not to be considered.

“Of course,” Seth didn’t hesitate to agree. “If you really mean to stay apart from Danielle, be careful. You never know what she might do.”

“I know what she won’t do,” Derek admitted. “For all that she wants to keep me, she has still refused every time I have proposed. If I get so deeply involved in a relationship, I don’t want it to be with someone who refused to marry me.”

Seth sighed. “Relationship sure seem like a lot of hard work.”

Derek nodded. “They are, but when they work out they’re worth it.”

“How would you know?” Seth retorted. “You’ve been with my mother, who only wanted you as a sperm donor, and Danielle, who . . . well, yeah.”

Derek chuckled. “There was Abby Denison in fifth grade. That was . . .”

“Okay, I do not need to know about your elementary school . . .”

“We broke up when we were juniors in high school,” Derek corrected. “It wasn’t a bad break. It just became apparent that we’d become a habit. And I dated a couple of girls in college that were decent if short relationships.”

“Dad,” Seth protested.

Derek managed a brief smile. “Look at my parents. They have a good relationship.”

Seth smiled back. “That’s true.”

“And your friend, Wyatt,” Derek added. “His parents have a good relationship. And my relationship with your mother gave me you. It was worth it.”

Seth’s smile grew. “Thanks. It’s not everyone who can say that about someone who . . .”

“Who what?” Derek asked. “She never physically hurt me. She was a demon, yes, but she was not trying to hurt me. It was a result, because she took you, but I don’t think it was the goal.”

“You never talk much about her,” Seth commented.

His father nodded. “Perhaps later, once your brother is well and the new baby is born. Perhaps then we can talk.”

Seth nodded back. “I’d like that.”

“Do you think you can get us something to eat?” Derek requested, abruptly changing the subject.

Seth straightened up. “Sure, I’ll do that.” He headed out of the room and into the hall. He stopped at the nurse’s station.

The nurse on duty was talking to someone on the phone. While she filled out some papers and looked through cupboards for something a volunteer asked for she said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t tell you information about a specific patient unless you’re family,” the nurse told the person on the phone. “I know we’re in an epidemic, but that doesn’t change the policy. There are,” she glanced down across the room at TV newscast with the latest statistics glaring across the bottom of the screen, “nineteen million people with confirmed cases of the witch’s fever and another fifty-six million with suspected cases. We have over one hundred thousand cases in this city and it’s just growing. Unless the patient you are trying to find out about is in stage five, I don’t even have time to look them up. I’m sorry.” She pulled a water bottle out of a small fridge and unscrewed the lid as she hung up.

Seth started to say something, but she only took a sip and put it back in the fridge. She grabbed something off the counter and ran off down the hall.

He sighed and walked away. Maybe if he wandered around long enough he’d find a vending machine or something like that.

“Seth, is that you?”

Seth turned around and grinned at the sight of his best friend. “Wyatt, you look like a zombie. When was the last time you slept?”

Wyatt yawned. “There’s no time for sleep. The hospital staff is getting sick faster than anyone else. There’s not enough people left to help the sick. They need me here.”

“You’re no good to anyone dead,” Seth informed him.

“How can I sleep?” Wyatt demanded. “How can I abandon the people here?”

“You wouldn’t be abandoning them,” Seth argued. “You would be getting back up to health. You aren’t even a doctor, Wy. You are a volunteer.”

“We have six doctors on staff who are not themselves in hospital beds,” Wyatt informed him. “One of them is an orthopedic surgeon. Another is a gynecologists. Ava’s a surgeon. We actually have one doctor who isn’t sick, but he broke his leg, so he’s kind having a hard time getting around, but he is. With him, that makes seven. They are dealing with this the best they can, but none of them are used to this. It’s not much better with the nurses. They need all the volunteers they can get.”

“Well, be careful,” Seth directed him. “Eventually, you will be too tired to function and I fear that time is coming soon.”

Wyatt exhaled slowly. “I’ll be careful. You be, too.”

“I will,” Seth assured him. “I’m looking for a vending machine. Dad’s holding vigil in Peter’s hospital room and he’s hungry.”

“Follow me,” Wyatt directed. “I could use something to eat myself.”

“I tried to see if I could learn anything in the under . . . um, well, you know where,” Seth commented as he followed Wyatt down the hall.

Wyatt cast a glance over his shoulder. With a yawn, he asked, “Find anything?”

“Not a whole lot,” Seth admitted. “It’s happened before, at least they think so, but nothing on this scale.”

“So there’s a cure?” Wyatt looked interested.

“Or the isolated it faster than we did here,” Seth countered sadly. “Whatever it was, when it happened, it barely registered with them.” He moaned. “I’m going to go back there after I give Dad something to eat. Maybe I’ll find something else.” He shook his head sadly. “What if they die? What if my brother and your dad and everyone else die?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Wyatt ordered him. “Don’t ever talk like that. There’s got to be something.”

“Nineteen million confirmed cases,” Seth mumbled.

“Nineteen!” Wyatt looked at him startled. “Last I heard it was four million.”

“When was that?”

“A couple of hours ago, I guess,” Wyatt admitted. Though to be honest it could have been much more. He couldn’t even remember what day it was any more. He figured he’d probably been up for almost three days straight, but it could be two or four. “What day is it?”

Seth gave him a strange look. “Thursday the sixth.”

Three days then. At least he had kept that . . . “The sixth?!”

Seth nodded.

“May sixth?” Wyatt groaned.

Seth nodded, again.

“I’ve got to go,” Wyatt informed Seth before he ran off down the hall without any explanation.

Seth sighed and glanced down the hall. All that and there still was no vending machine.

---

Out of curiosity, do you know what May 6th is? It's a relatively important day in the Charmed world, although never mentioned as such.

Oh, and the first ghost of the story will be in the next chapter. The ghost is of someone in the family tree whom we never saw, so I pretty much have free reign with info other than names and dates.

[Chrisaholic]

At the moment, I'm pretty clueless here what special day May 6 is. I bet you'll tell me soon, and it seems that any mortal the Halliwells have known is infected. At least, that's my impression.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 17, 2017 10:23:16 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

At the moment, I'm pretty clueless here what special day May 6 is. I bet you'll tell me soon, and it seems that any mortal the Halliwells have known is infected. At least, that's my impression.

Since you don't know what May 6th is, I'll let you wait and find out. It'll show up near the end of the story (maybe the last chapter). It's important, but not useful in solving anything.

As for mortals they know being infected. I can't recall if Victor is, but I don't think so and Derek in the last chapter is not (only Peter . . . also Danielle is not, hence the trip to Taiwan). Henry is not, that's kind of a major plot point later on. But, yeah, a lot of them are. And it's a lot more than they think, too.

---

Chapter Six – 1897

4:30 AM

Jani put down the last crystal on the floor. “We’re really going to see a ghost in here, Mom?”

Paige nodded. “Who wants to say the spell?”

“Not Chris,” Alanna announced with a laughing glance at her cousin sound asleep on the couch.

Paige chuckled as the sight of him. One arm hung off the couch. The other was flung loosely over his eyes. One leg had fallen off the couch and he looked most uncomfortable, but he was definitely sound asleep.

“We don’t have to write a spell, right?” Ladybug asked, remembering a conversation with Hope recently where Hope had corrected a spell she had written. Having her little sister correct a spell she’d written was never high on her list of good moments. It would have been bad enough if it had been Cilly. No, actually that would have been worse. Cilly didn’t bother with witch stuff often. She left that for Ladybug and Hope.

Paige shook her head. “No, this spell is already written.” She took the Book off the podium and brought it over to Ladybug. “See, no spell writing needed.”

Ladybug grinned. “In that case, may I?”

Paige looked at the other girls. “Any objections?”

Alanna shook her head. “Who are we summoning?” she asked, looking down at the crystals on the floor.

“Hopefully someone who can help us,” Paige retorted. “Ladybug?”

Reading aloud from the book, Ladybug chanted, “Hear these words. Hear my cry. Spirit from the other side, come to me. I summon thee. Cross now the great divide.”

Little orbs of light swirled around in the midst of the crystals. Within them a form began to take shape and when they dissipated everyone stared stunned at the man in their center. He was perhaps around seventy years of age, though it was difficult to tell. Whatever color his hair had once been was replaced by white. He had a receding hairline, but there was definitely still a decent amount of hair on his head.

He looked around the attic, his eyes taking in each person in turn. Finally, his eyes turned back to Paige. “You summoned me?”

“Well, um,” Paige looked at him confused. “We weren’t exactly expecting you. Who are you?”

“James,” he informed her. “My name is James Bowen. I believe this is the attic of my daughter’s home, but it looks very strange.”

“Your daughter’s home?” Paige asked surprised.

“Yes, her husband had it built for them to live in,” he told her. “That was in . . . 1913 I think. But . . . we are nowhere near 1913 are we?”

Paige shook her head. “2027 actually. I’m Paige. My sister lives here now with her husband.”

“Of course it is,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on down here, not since I died. Iris does. She wanted to follow the lives of our children. I found it rather depressing. And no one ever summoned me. So why did you?”

“Bowen,” Paige mumbled to herself. “I don’t think I know that name. Girls?”

Alanna nodded. “Aunt Prue’s past life was named Phoebe Bowen.”

“Gregory’s daughter,” James declared. “Gregory was my only son. We had two daughters and Gregory at the end. For a while there were those who thought we might have the Charmed Ones.”

Paige chuckled at that. “You were a few generations too early for that, I’m afraid.”

James looked at her startled. He looked around the room at the three girls. “Them?”

“Nope,” She shook her head with a grin. “My sisters aren’t here right now, but those two girls are mine,” she pointed at her daughters.” Their brother is asleep downstairs. And that girl belongs to my sister, Phoebe,” she pointed to Ladybug. “And sleeping beauty on the couch is my sister, Piper’s, youngest.”

James followed her pointing finger around the room. “The Charmed Ones? You and your sisters?”

She nodded. “That’s us. I’m surprised you didn’t here. Grams is rather proud of the fact that her granddaughters are charmed and I guessed she’d be your great-granddaughter?”

Alanna nodded. “Yeah, ‘cause Phoebe Bowen was from the same generation as Grams’ mom.”

“Enough of that, I supposed,” James declared. “You must have had a reason for summoning me.”

Paige nodded. “People have been dying, thousands of people. We don’t know what’s causing it, but it doesn’t seem to affect those who are magical. Does that ring any bells?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. Do you know anything more?”

“Not much,” she admitted with a sad sigh. “It originated in Duxbury, Massa . . .”

“Duxbury?” he interrupted.

“You know the name?” Paige asked surprised.

“Of course,” he agreed. “I grew up not far from there on the outskirts of Boston. In 1897, that’s the year you want to know about,” he informed them. “It was the year my younger daughter gave birth to her daughter, Philippa.”

“I think that’s Grams’ mom,” Alanna whispered to her sister.

“How can you be sure?” Jani whispered back. “I’ve seen the family tree. There’s no first name listed for her, just an initial.”

“The year,” was Alanna confident reply. She looked up to see James had stopped talking and was looking at her.

“Philippa married a man by the name of Gordon Johnson,” James informed them, “if that helps you figure that out. They had two children, Penny and Donny. Donny was just a baby when I died.”

“That’s her all right,” Alanna confirmed. “Penny’s our Grams. Or rather she’s Mom’s Grams. Everyone just calls her Grams. We haven’t actually met her though; on account of she died almost thirty years ago.”

“Much as I wish we had time to hear you chat about that, Alanna,” Paige commented, not looking like she really did wish they had time for that, “we don’t. Every minute we spend likely looses another life or more than one.”

Alanna grimaced.

James sighed. “Duxbury. In 1897 we didn’t live far from there, but we were planning to move to San Francisco. It was about a week before we planned to move when the reports started coming in from Duxbury. There was a mysterious illness that was infecting the populous. No one was much worried at first, but Gregory said he recognized it.”

“Gregory did?” Jani asked, wondering how his son would recognize something he didn’t.

James nodded. “Since the very beginning of our line the men have rarely had powers despite the fact that one the first known witches in our line was a man. When it has happened it’s usually because of someone in the family married into some other magical line. Gregory’s power of weather manipulation came from Iris’ side of the family as did his daughter, Phoebe’s, power of cryokinesis. Gregory was always conscious of how unusual his having powers was. I have none myself, so he tended to be the most focused of my three. He memorized the Book of Shadows.”

Ladybug gaped at him. “He memorized it!?”

Alanna and Jani looked at each other. “Sounds like our brother,” Alanna retorted.

James just smiled. “Yes, he memorized it and in it, he found an entry from 1767. I don’t remember the particulars, but Gregory would. I do remember that it described the events happening then in Duxbury as having happened before in Duxbury. There was a spell that pushed it back, but could not end it.”

“Pushed it back?” Paige asked, confused.

He nodded. “The woman who wrote the entry said a witch she knew had cast the spell. She had done so knowing that it was going to kill her husband who had been infected.”

“The spell killed him?” Ladybug frowned. “Wasn’t it supposed to save people, not kill them.”

He shook his head. “It was supposed to protect those not infected. We don’t know how to cure it. We only know how stop it from infecting anyone else for 130 years. Once the spell is cast, everyone infected dies, instantly, even if they aren’t showing symptoms.”

Paige sucked in a breath.

“Uncle Leo,” Jani gulped. “We cast this spell, he goes from having four days to live to having none.”

“We couldn’t find any records from 1637 or 1507 or any time earlier, so we don’t know exactly when this started, but the entry stated flat out that it didn’t start in 1767.”

“Do you know the spell?” Ladybug asked, knowing that was the question no one wanted to ask.

He shook his head. “We didn’t cast it. There was another family that knew what was going, the family of the witch. They cast it. Once that happened I didn’t look too closely. I doubt even Gregory could tell you the spell at this point.”

“You said he memorized the Book of Shadows,” Alanna protested. “Surely that included that spell.”

“Isn’t it still in the Book?”

Alanna shook her head. “Our brother looked through it twice. There’s no mention of this anywhere. Somehow, sometime, someone removed it.”

“Then, I don’t know what you can do,” he admitted. “By the time he died, Gregory no longer remembered much of what was in the Book of Shadows. He’d likely remember more details than I do, but the spell? No, I don’t think so.”

“This is bad,” Jani admitted. “I was really hoping you’d have the answer.”

“I really wish I did,” James assured her before white lights swirled around him and he disappeared leaving behind only the crystals they had used to summon him.

---

I have fun making up my own stories about their ancestors, so I hope you enjoyed meeting James and hearing about Iris and Gregory (and a little bit about some others).

In the next chapter another major issue is going to be revealed and a peak into why some people aren't sick.

[Chrisaholic]

Oh my, not good. Maybe they can summon another ghost later or this Gregory can give them hints somehow. As the saying goes: Hope dies at least, or something like this. *sighs*

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 18, 2017 7:35:13 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Oh my, not good. Maybe they can summon another ghost later or this Gregory can give them hints somehow. As the saying goes: Hope dies at least, or something like this. *sighs*

Yeah, not exactly happy info.

---

Chapter Seven – What the Elders Don't Know

4:45AM (7:45AM in NY)

Josias Hinshaw watched as his youngest charge waved her hands at a broken park bench. Pansy Haskell giggled as she watched the bench repair itself.

“You’d better be careful, Pan,” Josias warned her. “Using magic outside is risky.”

“I know,” Pansy assured him. “No one is around though. Everyone is so sick,” she added sadly.

New York was indeed a quiet place since the illness had swept through it. Just about everything was closed down. With only weeks left till school ended every school in New York was closed. The majority of the students and the majority of the teachers were hospitalized with at most two days to live unless something changed. At quarter ‘til five in the morning no self respecting girl of five-years-and-ten-months was even thinking about school.

Pansy wasn’t either. She was thinking about the fact that three-fourths of her kindergarten class was either sick or dead. Someone so young shouldn’t have to be worrying about things like death and illness.

Josias was not, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, an optimist, but seeing Pansy sad made him want to be one so he could see his way into cheering her up. When he’d “signed up” to be a whitelighter, babysitting a child witch had not been what he’d had in mind, but now that Elizabeth had her orbing ability back most of their combined charges were now just hers and Josias found himself babysitting Pansy a lot. Pansy’s mom, Portia, seemed to be the only charge left who needed him at all.

“Carrie’s funeral is later,” Pansy whispered, referring to a friend from school who had died on the fourth, two days before. “Can you take me?”

“Don’t you want your mom to take you?” he asked. Like any normal person, he didn’t like funerals. He’d been to far too many in his time.

“I don’t think she’ll be off in time,” Pansy informed him. “Mom’s not sick. Not sick means if your job’s not closed, you work.”

Isn’t that the truth? “Would you like to go somewhere else?” he suggested as he watched a woman on a phone drop the phone and break down in sobs.

“No,” Pansy decided, not seeing the woman. “I like it here. It’s quiet.”

He sighed. Too quiet.

“If you want to go somewhere else, just call Elizabeth,” she suggested. “She likes me.”

Oh, great, now she thinks this is about my opinion of her, he thought as he used his body as a barrier to keep her from seeing the sobbing woman. He didn’t think he wanted any questions about that.

“Where is she anyway?” Pansy asked, adding, “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Come to think of it, neither had he. Normally, he would have seen her at staff meetings if nothing else, but because of what was going on with Cassia, Kevin had canceled them for the time being. He’d always like Kevin’s staff meetings. They had much more life than some of the others he had been to.

“I wish I knew more spells,” Pansy mumbled in a soft frustrated voice.

“What?” Josias looked at her surprised. “More spells? What for? You’ve got years before you need to worry about spells.”

“I want to stop the dying,” Pansy pouted. “It’s bad magic, isn’t it?”

“Bad magic,” he repeated, thinking about those words. Without warning he heaved her up into his arms. “Okay, kiddo, we are going to drop you off at your grandma’s house for a little while.”

“But Gammy’s busy,” Pansy protested.

“She’s not at work,” Josias informed her as he walked over to a clump of trees. “That’s the main thing. I need to go talk to my boss and it’s forbidden to take living beings Up There.”

She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “Fine. But Gammy’s not going to be happy.”

“She adores you,” he argued. “She won’t care all that much. And I’ll be back as soon as I can talk to my boss.” You guys seem to forget that my job isn’t actually watching Pansy all day every day. He glanced around to double check that no one was watching him and then he orbed out.

They reappeared in an upscale New York City apartment. Josias put Pansy down. “Let’s go tell your grandma that you’re here.”

“I’ll tell her,” Pansy decided running down the hall. “Gammy! I’m here!”

Josias groaned and hurried after her. “Pansy, wait! You can’t just . . .”

“Phil’s not here,” Jason Hudson, Pansy’s grandfather informed them as he scooped his granddaughter up into his arms. “Is everything all right?”

“Other than the obvious?” Josias asked as he slowed to a stop.

“That should go without saying,” Jason commented. “Why were you watching Pansy?”

“Portia was busy,” Josias shrugged.

“I see,” Jason looked at him confused. “Well, I can watch her. Don’t worry about that.”

“You haven’t gotten any symptoms have you?”

Jason shook his head. “No, I don’t know why, but Phil doesn’t think I’m immune, just lucky.”

“Gampy, I’m scared,” Pansy announced as she snuggled up next to him.

“Pansy, honey, go get some water from the fridge,” Jason directed her. “I need to talk to your friend.”

Pansy ran down the hall leaving the two men alone.

Josias looked at Jason expectantly. “What do you need?”

“Scott’s stage five,” Jason informed him deadpan. “That’s why Phil’s not here. She went with Lissi to be at his bedside when he dies. It’s only been six months since they lost their mom. How are they supposed to deal with losing their dad, too?”

Josias didn’t have an answer for that. He stayed silent, sure that Jason had more to say.

“And we can’t reach Rayne, so Lissi and Phelicia have that on their minds, too,” Jason sighed. “This whole family’s falling apart. Do you know anything? Anything?”

“I’m going to go talk to my boss,” Josias told him. “I’m hoping he can talk to the others and between them they’ll know something that can put a stop to this.”

Pansy ran down the hall toward them with three bottled waters. “Got them, Gampy! I even got one for Josias.”

Josias waved her hand away as she held it up to him. “Sorry, Pan. I have to get going. The sooner I talk to my boss, the sooner I can find out what he knows.”

Jason took the bottle of water Pansy offered him. “Pansy, I was just about to head out. Your Gammy . . . well, she’s visiting her dad and she . . .”

Pansy’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. He’s . . .” She wrapped her arms around his legs and sobbed.

Jason picked her up and held her in his arms. He looked over her head as he hugged her tight. “Good luck.”

Josias nodded and orbed out . . . and right back in. He frowned. He orbed out, again, with the same results. His frown grew and he saw a matching one growing on Jason’s face. He forced a quick grin and orbed out.

This time it worked, but that didn’t help much, since the destination had changed. He found himself across the country in Kevin’s apartment. It amused him that Kevin even had one, but Kevin was the only living elder and when he could, he actually had a life. He took his job as an elder fairly seriously . . . most of the time, but he also wasn’t serious just for the sake of being serious as he suspected some of the elders where. He earned respect from those under him and that just made people respect him all the more.

Josias tapped his hand against the wall. “Kevin.” He knew he should have his cell on him, but the things had never sat well with him, so he hadn’t even bothered to report it when he’d lost it. Now, he was beginning to wish he had. Hopefully they would have found it by now. Thankfully, there was a magical switchboard at Kevin’s place that could be used by any of the whitelighters Kevin had issued one to to reach any of the phones. When this was over, he was going to see if Kevin would use it to try and find the missing phone.

“What did I tell you about calling me today?” Kevin’s voice boomed through the intercom wired throughout the apartment. The fact that “today” for Kevin had been going on for almost two weeks didn’t need bringing up. It was rather irrelevant anyway.

“Only call if it’s an emergency,” Josias repeated the order each of them had received when Cassia had been brought Up There to go before the elders.

“And?” Kevin pressed.

“And there are an estimate seventy million people who are in varying degrees of dying on four continents with a death count somewhere near eleven thousand,” Josias informed him. “Over five thousand of those died in the last hour alone. I’d say that constitutes an emergency.”

There was silence on the other end as Kevin absorbed Josias’s words. “Eleven thousand people are dead? From what?”

“We don’t know,” Josias admitted. “They’re calling it the witch’s fever, because it originated about fifty miles from Salem, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury.”

“What can we do, though?” Kevin asked in protest. “It’s a disease. “There’s nothing magical about that.”

“How about the fact that so far as anyone magical can tell, not one magical person has gotten sick?”

There was silence on Kevin’s end, again. “None?”

“Kari’s fine, Kevin,” Josias retorted.

“I wasn’t asking that,” Kevin was quick to protest.

“Then, let me get that over, your family is fine with the exception of your brother-in-law, who as far as I know does not have the witch’s fever,” Josias informed him. “As best I can tell, he has pneumonia and they can cure that.”

“I didn’t ask,” Kevin protested, again.

“I know,” Josias agreed, “but if I was you, I’d think it and I don’t need you focused on them. I need your focus on finding out if there is anything the other elders know about this.”

“Perhaps you should come up here and ask them yourself,” Kevin suggested.

“I tried,” Josias informed him, resigned. “It didn’t work. I can orb, but I can’t orb Up There.”

There was another bout of silence and Josias wished he could see Kevin. The guy made a magical phone system. Why couldn’t he have used phones with video conferencing?

“I can’t orb to you,” Kevin informed him, sounding a little spooked. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“It takes about five days to kill a person,” Josias informed him. “That’s about five hours for you, which means in five of your hours, the death count will be around seventy million. They go into comas about twelve hours before they die. I’ve just been informed that Scott Nielson, the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of pretty much all the charges I have left, is in those twelve hours. I lost a charge, two days ago.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look I don’t know. Everybody’s pretty much freaked out. It’s mostly contained in North America and northern South America, but yesterday is hit Europe and Africa. Nothing yet in Asia or Australia, but at the rate this is going, it’s only a matter of time. We don’t know how it’s spreading. There are people who are completely isolated that come down with it and people who work in hospitals, not many mind you, who are untouched.” He sighed and sank down on to Kevin’s couch.

“Okay, place of origin is Duxbury, Massachusetts,” Kevin repeated, trying to organize the information in his head. “No known magical victims. Five days before death. And you have no idea how it’s been spread.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Josias admitted. “Eight days and we know nothing.”

“Eight days, huh?” Kevin sighed. “Can your charges look into this at all?”

“Scott’s dying,” Josias shook his head, despite the fact that Kevin couldn’t see him. “There’s no way they are going to be able to focus. Lissi and Phil were a mess when Paula died in November. Phelicia and Portia don’t really know enough magic to be of much use. And forget asking Pansy. She’s five. She can fix a lot of things, but she can’t fix this.”

“All right,” Kevin sighed. “Half my whitelighters are up here, more than half actually.” He paused and then amended, “Actually, I think only you, JD, and Tessie are down there. I need you to do something for me while I look into this. Make sure you have your phone on you.”

“Um . . .” Josias began.

“It’s in the drawer in the end table next to the couch in my living room,” Kevin informed him. “Make sure you take the right one. There are six of them right now. JD, Cassia, and Mikelle seem to be the only ones who manage to keep track of them. We’ll discuss that later, when all this is over.”

Josias pulled open the drawer in the end table and blinked. Sure enough, there were six cell phones there.

“Get it after I hang up,” Kevin instructed him. “I have some things for you to do and the sooner I get off the sooner I can start looking into this. Now, sit down.”

Josias sat down. Some days he wondered why he listened to a kid who had never shaved. This was not going to be one of those days.

[Chrisaholic]

Hehe, so many things are in conflict here but at least, Kevin has an overview over all "his" whitelighters. lol Let's hope that all magical and non-magical persons can find a solution.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 27, 2017 15:07:02 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Hehe, so many things are in conflict here but at least, Kevin has an overview over all "his" whitelighters. lol Let's hope that all magical and non-magical persons can find a solution.

I'm curious what's with the quotes around his. They are totally his, as in his employees, his to order around. He is their boss. I have an entire hierarchy up there to ultimately reveal to readers. I don't know all of their names, but here are the ones I can think of off the top of my head: Cassia Reynolds, Mikelle Zealand, Josias Hinshaw, JD Williams, Tessie James, Bernard O'Keefe (who hasn't shown his face yet and won't for a while, but there is a major B-plot that involves him in season two or three), Elizabeth Ellerton, and Sam Wilder. So far the only whitelighter (elders and half whitelighters not included) that has been seen in this series who isn't under Kevin (unless I am forgetting someone) has been Jamie from Anti-Orb Zone. There are more than I have mentioned, but they don't have identities yet. It's around one dozen whitelighters (probably thirteen is normal since that's a big number, but with Kevin's group they are . . . the misfits, the rejects, and anyone connected to the Charmed ones, pretty much. Some of them are this close to loosing their wings. And some of them absolutely can't get along with the elders (Bernard has been bounced around from elder to elder for the last two centuries including some time with Gideon, Odin, and Sandra and yes, he managed to alienate Sandra. Some of those, at least Gideon, were mentorships and not actually being assigned to work under).

I have split the elders into two groups: Mentors and "Team Leaders" (I probably have another word for it, but essentially that's it). Some of these are on the Elders Council, most are not. Kevin has an inherited position that previously belonged to Ramus. It will probably come up at some point . . . yeah, but it will not be a major thing, just something that comes up due to events that are going on . . . in season three.

Which is probably not at all where you were going with those quotes, but I felt like sharing.

It was interesting to write that phone conversation from Kevin's side of it, white I did for a side story that is going on while all of this is going on, which is not completed and will not be posted until this story is completely posted (but is my first attempt (well, second, but the first attempt in connection to this series. If you are interested in the first, let me know. It's not posted here, but it's short and also is my first attempt to write a Charmed story in first person) at writing Odin, so that was interesting).

Okay, so on to the chapter. Let's see what Wyatt is up to.

---

Chapter Eight – Good-Night, Sweetheart, Good-Night

5:30 AM

Wyatt’s eyes drooped down as he walked into the break room. The coffee and the adrenaline were both starting to wear off. The room was empty, so when a hand sat down gently on his shoulder, it caused Wyatt to jump. He whirled around wide eyed. “You startled me, Dr. Nicolae.”

“You’re dead on your feet, Wyatt,” Dr. Ava Nicolae informed him. She didn’t exactly look any better than him. “Go home.”

He shook his head. “You need the help. I’m here to help.” He focused in on her and realized she looked bedraggled rather than tired, so maybe she actually had slept at some point.

“Wyatt, you need sleep,” she countered. “I know you’re a volunteer, so we don’t pay you to be here, but I’m still a doctor here. Go home, Wyatt. I don’t want to see you again until you have slept at least seven hours straight, preferable nine or ten or more. I’ve been trying to calculate it. I don’t think you’ve been home since this hit San Francisco.”

“No,” Wyatt admitted reluctantly. “Not exactly.”

“I didn’t think so,” she pulled something out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Brian made this. His great-niece, MacKenzie, is fairly good with potions and such. It’s not much more than a glorified protein bar, but would I be wrong if I guessed that you hadn’t eaten or drank anything more than cup after cup of coffee?”

Wyatt grimaced.

“I thought not.”

Wyatt took the protein bar from her and unwrapped it. His stomach growled at him as he bit off a big chunk and started chewing.

“Go home, Wyatt,” she repeated. “And don’t bother driving. The streets may be clearer than they have been in your lifetime, but I don’t trust someone who hasn’t slept in three days behind the wheel of a car.”

His eyes began drooping, again. “I feel funny,” he mumbled.

“Orb home, now, or I’m calling your aunt,” she ordered him.

“Did you drug that?”

“No,” she declared. “That would be MacKenzie. It’s how they got me to sleep yesterday.”

Wyatt began to wobble from side to side.

Ava sighed. She should have known the additional time without sleep would make it work faster, she helped him down to the ground and pulled out her cell phone as he slumped over, sound asleep from the sleeping draught in the protein bar. “Paige,” she directed the phone. When Paige answered, she said, “Paige, it’s Ava. I, um, gave your nephew a sleeping potion. I need you to come pick him up, please.”

“You drugged me nephew?” Paige asked, surprised.

“He hasn’t slept in three days,” Ava informed her. “The kids did it to me yesterday when I stopped in to feed them.” She chuckled. “I found Brian’s brothers over and his great-niece, MacKenzie, had cooked dinner. Dinner put me to sleep until about an hour ago. Can you come get him?”

“Yeah, just let me give the phone to someone,” Paige told her.

A moment later Paige orbed in. She looked down at Wyatt. He was curled up in a ball on the ground. The sleeping potion had done its job well. “Thanks, Ava. I had to send Hank and Hope to bed and Chris is passed out on the couch in the manor attic. I love these kids, but they are pushing themselves too hard.”

“We all feel the pressure,” Ava reminded her. “Why do you think my kids felt the need to use this on me?”

Paige chuckled. “So far I’ve managed to be the one giving the orders rather than taking them. Of course I’m the only one whose family is intact. Prue’s on a death watch more or less for her husband. Piper won’t leave Leo’s side and he’s still in relatively good condition, considering. And we still have no idea where Phoebe and Coop are. Since Henry and I are both here and still healthy, that leaves us. Hank spent the last couple of days looking through the Book of Shadows. Leo already told us that this rings no bells for him.”

“I just wish we knew what was causing it,” Ava commented. “If we knew the cause maybe we could cure it.”

“We managed to confirm that it has happened before,” Paige informed her, “but we still don’t know much about it.”

“It’s happened before?” Ava repeated surprised. “Wouldn’t an epidemic as bad as this have been recorded in history?”

Paige shook her head. “From the sound of it, someone appears to have erased info from our Book of Shadows. And if they did that, why not other history books? Also, we were told that it wasn’t anywhere near this bad the last time, probably because they had info from the time before that. Someone’s directing this and when last time didn’t go the way they wanted, they changed the rules. They found a way to erase written records of what happened.” She bent down and put her hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “I better get him out of her, so I can get back to the other kids. I think we might actually be getting somewhere.”

“I hope you find something and soon,” Ava told her. “Too many people have died all ready.”

Paige nodded and orbed both herself and Wyatt out of the hospital break room. When she reappeared in Wyatt’s bedroom, she faced the problem of figuring out how to get him into his bed. He was a bit bigger than she was, so this was going to be tricky.

She looked down at him and considered her options. She considered trying to orb him onto the bed, but the only way she could see that working was to climb on his bed herself and orbing him to her. She’d leave that as a last resort.

The first thing she did was peel back his covers. Next she propped him up so that he was at least sitting. A sound followed by a yawn led her to believe he wasn’t totally asleep yet. “Wyatt, I need you to work with he here.”

There was a mumble sound and his head leaned over. His eyes remained closed.

When Paige moved to try and get under his shoulder he accommodated her. She was able to get him standing with her help and then sitting on the bed. Once he was on the bed it was a simple matter to divest him of his shoes and socks. She pushed him down so that his head lay on the pillow and then she attempted to put his feet on the bed. This proved interesting when one leg sprang out and kicked her.

“Watch it, Mister,” she scolded her sleeping nephew.

When she tried, again, she managed to get his legs up on the bed. She pulled the sheets up and tucked him in.

“Sleep well,” Paige whispered before she orbed out. Wyatt needed his sleep, but she was needed in the attic hopefully finding some way to put a stop to this magical disaster without killing seventy million people to do it.

---

Sorry, that had to be done. Wyatt and Chris have been awake for a long time and everyone needs some rest. Both of them will be awake again later. Wyatt sooner than Chris. In the mean time we're following Paige back to the manor.

[Chrisaholic]

Hehe, yep, that needed to be done. Sleep is always important, even for the body to recuperate. It wouldn't be good for anyone if someone dies while sleeping. Let's hope for the best.

[StoryGirl83]

Jun 30, 2017 12:24:19 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Hehe, yep, that needed to be done. Sleep is always important, even for the body to recuperate. It wouldn't be good for anyone if someone dies while sleeping. Let's hope for the best.

What you said . . . oh, dear. Well, you'll see eventually.

---

Chapter Nine – The Extra Day

5:45 AM

Jani picked up a blanket from the pile they had made earlier and covered Chris to his chin. “Do you think we can do this?” she asked in a soft voice as she walked over to where Ladybug was looking through potions Piper had stockpiled on the shelves.

“We have to,” Ladybug replied. “Or someone does, so why not us?”

“It’s an awful lot of pressure,” Jani admitted. “And what if we have to use this spell that kills everyone who’s sick?”

“We have to find the spell first,” Alanna retorted. “Right now we don’t have the slightest clue where to look.” She rumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it into a trashcan they had brought up. “And I suck at writing a new one.”

Ladybug gave a shallow laugh. “You and me both. Mom despairs of my ever being good at any type of magic. I can’t write spells and I can’t make potions. I can’t control me levitation power. It seems to only work when I’m asleep. And I can’t fight.”

Jani chuckled. “I know that’s not true. I’ve seen you.”

“When?” Ladybug demanded.

“Oh, not against demons,” Jani admitted, “but I know several people in school who are more than a bit scared to mess with anyone named Halliwell because ‘Rudy’ Halliwell will get them.”

“Rudy?” Ladybug asked, genuinely laughing this time. “Sounds like Tanya Randolph. Most people at school call me Prudence or Prue, but she always did want to be unique.”

“There’s a lot of Randolphs in school,” Jani laughed. “I don’t think anyone still in school thinks of you as anything but Rudy. You’ve got a reputation and I believe a bloody nose and a black eye were involved.”

“I forgot about that,” Ladybug admitted. “She was picking on Cilly because Cilly had managed to break up her and her boyfriend. I hadn’t meant for it to get physical, but things got out of hand. I hardly think a street brawl qualifies me to fight demons.”

“No,” Jani conceded, “but it’s a start.”

White orb lights filled the center of the room drawing the attention of the three girls to the center of the room. When they formed into Josias the three girls looked at each other puzzled.

“Who are you?” Alanna was the first to ask.

Jani aimed her palm at him. “We can take you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josias returned. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Then, we’ll hear that name,” Ladybug informed him.

“Josias,” he answered easily. “Ask him if you need confirmation,” Josias suggested pointing to Chris’ slumbering form.

“He’s earned his sleep,” Ladybug argued. “It’s been a long week.”

“I think I know that,” he replied. “I’m based in New York City. I’ve already lost one charge,” he informed them with a catch in his voice. “And pretty soon most of my other charges will be in mourning. A few more hours and . . .” He heaved in a deep breath. “But this isn’t about me. Kevin asked me to come here, because he trusts your family. I’m supposed to talk to the Charmed Ones, though.”

“There are no Charmed Ones,” Ladybug scowled. “Mom’s missing. Don’t you understand that? No Mom, no Charmed Ones.”

“I don’t suppose it really matters,” he sighed. “They believe the spell can be lifted by thirteen witches, but I’ve thought it through and you don’t have that either.”

“Thirteen witches?” Paige asked from the doorway. “Why’s that?”

“Elizabeth believes that thirteen warlocks cast this,” he informed her, “and They believe it would take a like number of witches to reverse it.”

“That’s easy enough,” Paige replied. “Piper, Prue, and I make three. Add Piper’s three kids, Phoebe’s three, Prue’s two, and my three and you’ve got fourteen. And that’s without Phoebe.”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, that’s not correct. They can’t just be witches. They have to be able to cast spells. Three of those cannot which means you only have eleven.”

Paige frowned. She was silent as she tried to figure out who he meant. Two names came to mind. “You mean because Pat hasn’t gotten her powers back? And Hope hasn’t come into them yet?”

He nodded.

“But that’s only two,” Paige protested.

“That still leaves us one short,” Jani admitted.

Josias shook his head. “Three. You’re missing one.”

“But who?” Alanna asked confused. “Vicki got her powers back and Melinda can cast spells.”

He frowned. “Perhaps it isn’t my place to tell you, but rest assured, there is another witch in your family who can’t cast spells.”

“But who?” Alanna demanded.

He sighed. “Can we get back on topic?”

“Hank’s been trying to hide it,” Ladybug commented, “but something’s been bugging him for months now. I think that’s who you mean, isn’t it?”

Hanks’ mom and sisters looked at Ladybug sharply.

“But Hank can cast spells,” Alanna protested. “When we were little, he was always besting both of us in spell casting. He always knew where to find the spell we needed for our lessons. He always was the quickest to cast a spell when Uncle Leo was trying to teach us.”

“I don’t know what happened or why he could cast spells then, but not now,” Josias informed her apologetically. “However, your cousin is right. Your brother cannot cast spells.

“He must absolutely hate that,” Alanna commented, looking upset.

“I should have noticed,” Jani lamented.

Paige didn’t respond, but she looked sad. She hadn’t noticed what was going on with her son either. “Unfortunately we don’t have time for helping Hank right now. You said you thought thirteen witches could reverse this. Why don’t we just make some phone calls? We know a few other witches.”

Josias shook his head. “That won’t work.”

“Why not?” she leveled him with a look.

“Because the thirteen warlocks Elizabeth believes are responsible for this,” Josias replied unaffected by her annoyance, “were, maybe are, a mother, her children, and grandchildren. Familiar bonds, as you must know well, make a spell stronger. It’s part of what allows you harness the power of three, to be Charmed. That’s as strong as an family coven, probably stronger. The bond of family works in your favor, but it also works against you when someone else uses it. They are looking in to it, but so far they haven’t found any families of witches large enough. But you’re the Charmed Ones.”

“No Charmed Ones,” Ladybug repeated. “Remember. No Phoebe; no Charmed Ones.”

He sighed. “There’s still three of you. You are sisters. Have you ever tried to cast a power of three spell?”

Paige nodded. “We did. It didn’t work.”

He sighed. “Then, I don’t know what to say.”

“Perhaps tell us what spell to cast if we actually find something,” she suggested. “Or maybe tell us who we’re looking for.”

“Elizabeth said . . .”

“Who’s Elizabeth?” Paige demanded.

“Someone who was there when Duxbury was first infected,” he informed her.

“You have a date for that?” she asked surprised.

“April 27, 1637,” he confirmed.

“You’re sure?”

He shook his head. “No. But she is. She was just a little girl, but she says they found bodies on what looked like an alter that day.”

“That’s horrible, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with . . .”

“What’s today?”

She frowned. “May 6th.”

“To be more precise, it’s May 6, 2027,” he announced. “Three-hundred-and-ninety years and nine days ago.”

“Nine days?” Paige shook her head. “No one started showing symptoms until . . .”

“The next day,” he interrupted. “Believe me, I know. One of my charges had a friend who lived in Duxbury. That friend is now dead. He first started showing symptoms on April 28th.”

“Which doesn’t prove that he was infected the day before,” Ladybug pointed out.

“I know,” he agreed. “Catherine Jackson didn’t show any symptoms, but in 1897, she died when a spell was cast to end this.”

“Catherine Jackson?” Paige looked at him questioningly.

“A charge of Elizabeth’s,” he informed them. “I guess I don’t really have a lot to tell you, but Kevin wanted you to know what we did know. Someone cut off the way to Up There. They’re working on it, but they don’t know how it happened. We can only assume that Willamina, one of her kids or grandkids was behind it.”

“Willamina?”

Josias looked at Jani. She hadn’t said much. “Willamina Richmond. Elizabeth said she was the matriarch of the family. Elizabeth described her as a rather cold woman who enjoyed pain. She also said that she was good at hiding that. She wasn’t friendly, but she was respected. Her daughter was the scary one. No one would have thought Willamina was evil, but Elisa scared them all.”

“If she knew this, why didn’t she say anything sooner?” Alanna wanted to know.

“I believe the saying is ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty’,” Josias commented. “She always thought Elisa was creepy, but she didn’t connect the dots until 1897 when she was visiting family graves in Duxbury and ran into Marie, one of Willamina’s other daughters. Marie didn’t see her, or so she believes, but the fact that she was there told Elizabeth she was in some way magical. She started putting together the pieces then, but it had been over one hundred years since she’s even thought about this. When she heard this started in Duxbury, she remembered. She doesn’t know how to stop it and since she has known about magic she hasn’t been involved beyond the loss of her charge in 1897, so she doesn’t know what they did to stop it then. She doesn’t even know why they are.” He sighed and looked at them sadly. “I wish I knew more. In a matter of a few hours five of my charges will have lost their dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather. I’ve lost one charge and three more are in different stages of this.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “If you have any questions for me and Chris isn’t awake to call me here, call this number. It belongs to the husband of one of my charges. Despite being a nonmagical human who lives in New York City he has yet to show any symptoms, but his father-in-law is the one that’s on his deathbed.” He handed the paper to Paige. “He’ll know how to reach me. And I can reach the elders. As things stand right now, I’m one of only two people that appear to be able to do that. I’m going back to my charges now.”

They watched him orb out and then looked at each other.

“Did we learn anything?” Jani asked.

“Well, it definitely started in 1637,” Ladybug announced.

“And we’ve got names,” Alanna added. “They may have found a way to erase all data on the witch’s fever, but maybe there’s some data on them somewhere.”

“I think we need everybody helping with this,” Ladybug commented looking over regretfully at Chris.

Jani shook her head. “He’ll be no use to us. Let him sleep longer.”

“We need someone who can write spells,” Ladybug persisted.

Jani looked at her mom. “Well, Mom can. Can’t you?”

Paige nodded. “I can try my hand at it. It’s been a few years, but I’ve managed to write a spell or two in my time.”

Alanna exhaled. “Then, let’s get on it. I’m going to downstairs and check the news. It may not help much, but I want to know.”

Paige shuddered. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

As Alanna headed downstairs the other three got back to work. They needed to make sense of what Josias had said and they needed to find a way to put a stop to this soon.

---

I'm not sure who's creepier in the next scene. Probably Elisa, but Rebecca. I love what Rebecca does.

[Chrisaholic]

At least some information and this time from the Elders. Maybe the family can get it done and all will be saved. Hopefully.