Upheaval!

by Deborah Martin

  “If Ev had bothered to think, he would have remembered she said she was staying in. If he’d told me what was happening, I could have confirmed her location before he went haring off. But neither thing happened so here we are with a banged up, angry but thankfully not dead ogre on our hands.”

  “This is all so surreal to me. You say it happens often?” I asked.

  “Oh, all the time. You noticed Martin didn’t even bat an eyelash. It’s just the brutality that was unusual. But now that Ev knows what to expect, I suspect he will be a little more cautious in the future. He’s young, you know, and this was a painful learning experience. He’s going to be upset about the interest on the loan, too.”

  “How long can we keep him out of the office? The longer I can postpone his ranting around here, the better.”

  Gregory grinned. “Marianna’s going to try to keep him out of your hair for another week. That should give you enough time to figure out how to tell him you’re a witch.”

  I grimaced. “You keep coming back to that subject. What’s he got against witches?”

  “I will let you find that one out for yourself. Just let me know when you’re going to tell him. I want to see this one. I saw Merlin downstairs and Fudge’s presence up here tells me that Cassandra has already been at work on you. Pay attention to her, Amy. Your power is serious business.

  “I have to go ready the house for Ev. He doesn’t want to sleep upstairs until he’s fully healed so I have some rearranging to do. If you need me, you know how to get hold of me.”

  Gregory turned and, saying something quietly to Sally, held the door open for Cassandra on his way out. Cassandra dropped a plate of something on Sally’s desk then brought my lunch in to me. She put a plate of cat food on the floor next to where Fudge had curled up.

  “I talked with Gregory before he came up here. Sounds like everything came out fairly well in the end but I don’t want to be here when Ev finally comes back to work. He’s grumpy enough on a normal basis. We’re busy. Gotta run. See you later.”

  I munched on my sandwich while going back through Sally’s notes. At least once a month, guards had to be rearranged to accommodate personalities and requests. This job fell to me in Ev’s absence. After perusing personnel files, I figured out who needed to be with whom and where, and made the appropriate phone calls. Thankfully, I’d been with Ev long enough that I was taken at my word and no one felt a need to consult with him. I didn’t want to have to lie to explain why he wasn’t making the changes.

  Chapter 11

  When we (Fudge and I) got home from work later that afternoon, Elinda was waiting for us. I swore I was going to change the locks and not give out any keys.

  “Hi, Darlin’,” she greeted me. “I hope you don’t mind but I let myself in.” Well, duh. Otherwise, how would she be greeting me at the door? I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get my nap.

  “Did you have a good day? Here, I made some cookies for you to snack on.” She took my coat from me while guiding me to the kitchen where there was a plate of still-warm chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, complete with a glass of milk. Elinda was indeed a grandmother. Fudge eyed the glass of milk and with a sigh, took a drink from his water bowl.

  “I take it your day went well,” she continued.

  I finally had a chance to get a word in edgewise. “I’m fine. Nothing set me off at the office and I have things to do here, nothing of which is going to get me angry. Fudge is here to keep an eye on me. Thanks for the snack but you can go back upstairs.”

  “Sorry, darlin’, but no. Consider me your psychotherapist. You need to work through your feelings about what happened and the earlier we do that, the better off you’re going to be in the long run. Mundane people who have experienced extreme emotional trauma can re-experience the event and lose their cool on a moment’s notice. All they do is get angry and/or cry. You can do a lot more damage.

  “So, we’re going to talk about it and Fudge is going to be here to help. The cookies were on purpose. They’re fuel for what you’re about to do.” The expression on her face brooked no argument.

  A snarky response came out of my mouth. “If it’s fuel, shouldn’t the snack have been something healthier then, like a peanut butter sandwich?”

  She smiled. “Chocolate is good for the soul. Trust me. Finish your milk then sit.”

  My well-meaning aunt had tried to get me to go to therapy after my folks were killed in a car crash and I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I hated talking about my feelings with anyone else. I’d rather just work through them myself. Although I considered Elinda part of my family, I still didn’t want to “talk about it”. But I could tell she wasn’t going to let it go. I sat in the recliner as instructed, Fudge crawling into my lap.

  “Tell me what happened,” she started.

  “I went through all this with Cassandra this morning,” I protested.

  “I have some skills Cassandra doesn’t have,” she answered. “Talk.”

  So, yet again, I related the past several days’ events. I will admit it got easier with every retelling. She would stop me and ask questions at certain points, making me analyze why I felt what I did. Periodically, she’d feed me another cookie or two. They tasted good but also seemed to give me the energy to continue talking in a way I wasn’t accustomed to.

  Three hours later, Marge walked in with a huge tray holding four plates – three human-sized and one obviously meant for Fudge. It was dinner time. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “She’s making excellent progress. Better than I expected, actually,” Elinda replied.

  We ate the most excellent pot roast and while Marge piled the plates back on the tray to take them back upstairs, Elinda continued her interrogation.

  “Let’s examine how you’re currently feeling about Tony’s death.”

  I thought about it. Strangely, although I was still upset, there wasn’t the horrible ache in my heart that I’d felt the previous day. When I told her this, she smiled.

  “This is the point we all wanted you to get to and you’ve gotten there much more quickly than anyone I know who’s lost someone close to them. You don’t lose your control when thinking about a traumatic event.”

  I looked down at Fudge who had been taking his after-dinner bath in my lap. “What? I was not doing anything,” he said in between licks of fur.

  I switched my view to Elinda. “What, exactly, has been happening here the last couple of hours?”

  She smiled once again. “I really was a psychiatrist in my working life. I have a gift for drawing out and then smoothing over emotions. The cookies are spelled to help with that.”

  “But I didn’t see any energy waves coming off you.” I was confused.

  “Unless you’re a very gifted Air witch, this type of energy usually isn’t visible. It’s too delicate. I rarely have to use it but both Gregory and Cassandra told me you’re stronger than a lot of witches. Since your affinity is with Earth, I figured it would be best to get this all over quickly so you didn’t bring our home down around our ears. Your boss pisses you off too often.”

  Well, she was right about Ev irritating me. I just didn’t think I’d ever gotten that mad at him. However, I did feel very calm, except for the fact that there were all these people talking about me behind my back. I said as much.

  “We all care so much for you, darlin’, that we don’t want anything to happen to you.” Her voice soothed me even more. “But there’s more to it. Witches and wizards are bound by law to protect the environment and the greater community. As you’ve discovered, your gifts can be destructive. It’s our duty to do what we can to prevent that destruction. So yes, we’ve talked about you but it was for not only your good but the greater good as well.”

  “Humph. Okay. My turn,” I said. “How did you know Fudge was a familiar? Cassandra tells me you had to know in order to send him to me in Atlanta.”

  She grinned. “That gift I have? It extends to the energy animals give off.
I knew Fudge was a familiar from the day he ran through your window screen. Although he was just a kitten at the time, he felt old.”

  “So why haven’t you said anything all these years?”

  “Because it wasn’t my place to do so. Had your gift not manifested, Fudge would have allowed his body to age naturally and moved on to another body for another witch. The fact that he is a familiar wouldn’t have mattered. But that’s all a moot point, now. You are and he is.”

  She stretched. “My work is done and I’m beat. You won’t need any of us to stay with you and I’ll call Cassandra to tell her she needn’t come over in the morning. Fudge can handle anything you dream about. I’m for bed.”

  Fudge hopped off my lap and twined his way between Elinda’s legs, nearly tripping her as she made her way to the door. “I know,” she laughed and gave him a scratch between the ears.

  I must have had a quizzical look on my face. “He was giving off energy that said he was thankful I’d done what I did. I made his job a lot easier.”

  So she couldn’t actually hear him. For some reason, that pleased me. I wanted to keep my talking cat all to myself. I hugged her at the door and although it was early, felt like I could sleep for days. I, too, headed toward bed.

  The next morning finally saw me back to my normal routine: up with the sun, checking email and social networking while inhaling my half-pot of coffee. I grimaced at the emails. My editor had sent several about missing my deadline, the last being a shout I heard by virtue of “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?” in all caps. I fired off a reply, explaining that a business emergency had come up but everything was okay, now, and I’d be getting everything I owed to her within a couple of days.

  Work was normal, too. Well, as normal as it could be, given the nature of the business, its employees and clientele. I only had one complaint to deal with: a dwarf guard had gotten drunk at a party and passed out in his charge’s lap in the limo. This was the first infraction from the guard so I made the calls, soothed the client’s ruffled feathers, shouted at the guard (making his hangover worse, I’m sure) and made notes in the files for future reference.

  The only thing not-normal was Fudge insisting that as long as he was going to work with me, he needed his things. I refused to haul everything back and forth and ended up calling Sally before she left the house and asking her to stop on her way to buy a litter box, litter, dishes and a small bag of his favorite dry food. She laughed and agreed to do so, ending her call with, “Spoiled, aren’t we?”

  Gregory called with an update on Ev’s condition. He was being discharged from the hospital and was meekly going along with Marianna’s suggestion that he avoid the stress of work for a few more days. Gregory had hidden Ev’s cell phone so he wouldn’t be trying to conduct business behind Marianna’s back, giving me even more respite.

  That night, Fudge and I shared a microwavable shrimp dinner while I did a final read-through on the manuscript I owed my editor. It would take another night to get it to the point I was comfortable sending it off but normalcy. I could get into it.

  Normalcy was blown all to hell on Sunday. At eleven on the dot that morning, I let myself into Cassandra’s house, notebook and Fudge in tow.

  “Hiya,” she greeted me with a fresh cup of coffee. “Ready to get down to work?” Fudge wandered over and touched noses with Merlin.

  I hadn’t even managed to get my coat off. No polite chit-chat, just, “Ready to get down to work”. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this visit very much.

  “This is for you.” She dropped two three-inch black ring-binders on the coffee table with a thunk. “They are your study and reference material. Thankfully, we’re both Earth witches so there’s nothing to adapt to another affinity. These are copies of my books.”

  Lovely. I had another book to write, editing looming on the horizon and Cassandra was talking about school.

  “I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to be a witch,” I groaned. “I like my life just the way it is.”

  “You’ve said that before but you don’t have any choice. Magic isn’t a faucet you can turn on and off. So, whether you use it or not, you have to learn to live with it.

  “First, even though you live in a building with wards and all, these books can’t be out in the open for prying eyes to see. I’d suggest you keep them on the shelf in your closet. Or in a cupboard. Anyways, hidden from view but somewhere you can easily get to them.

  “Second, you need to read the first one cover-to-cover and commit it to memory in a short period of time. It’s the law book – both those that have been laid down by the Council and those that just are … sort of like the laws of physics you studied in school. I want you to start now. I’ll be in the workroom so just ask your questions as you come to them – I’ll be able to hear you.”

  She left me to myself in the living room. Merlin followed her, Fudge curled up next to me on the couch.

  “I know you are not interested in magic but at least read this first book,” he said. “These are things you need to know.” Then, it was apparently bath time.

  So, I picked up the first book. It looked like nothing more than a binder she’d bought at an office supply store but when I opened the cover, I felt a tingle in my fingers. “What’s the tingle?” I hollered.

  “It binds the book to you and your magic. Mundanes will see nothing but a printed manuscript of one of your books. Witches and wizards will be able to read the standard stuff like the laws but nothing you personally write in it. Other magical-types will know it’s magic but will see nothing but blank paper. The second book will feel the same the first time you open it,” came the reply.

  I just had to ask. “So if mundanes see one of my manuscripts, what do they see in yours?”

  “Each book is spelled to match the owner. Mine is supposedly a cookbook. I think Mom’s is the same. I just figured you weren’t much of a recipe collector so I connected it to your writing. Start reading.”

  I opened the book. Rather than the expected white paper and computerized printing, the paper looked like parchment and the writing was all calligraphic. I closed the binder and looked at it on edge. It looked like computer paper. When I re-opened the book, it was all parchment and calligraphy again. Cool!

  I started reading. It may have been pretty but it was boring. The first two pages were a list of the members of the Witches’ Council and where they were located. As I watched, one of the member’s locations blurred and changed from “Davenport, Iowa, United States” to “Moline, Illinois, United States”. Not surprisingly, Cassandra’s mother was on page two.

  The next page was a list of the Midwest United States contacts for the other councils. I only knew one name: the local representative for the Vampire Council. We’d unfortunately met over that brouhaha with the lovesick vampire the prior fall.

  The next nine pages were specific instructions on how to contact a Council member, which member you should contact when, why you would want to do so, penalties for frivolous contact or failure to report something…rules.

  Page thirteen had one sentence on it, “Thou shalt not use thy gifts to kill.”

  Page fourteen was yet another single sentence, “Thou shalt protect the Earth, thy Mother”.

  Page fifteen, too: “Thou shalt cultivate the gift thou hast been Blessed with”.

  Page sixteen was headed “Earth” and a diagram that looked like DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man” but instead of being surrounded by a square and circle, it was superimposed on a drawing of the Earth and had all sorts of lines from the body to the earth.

  The next countless number of pages went on to explain how someone who had an affinity for Earth could affect their surroundings, the potential for good and the potential for bad. The first bad thing mentioned was earthquakes. Oops.

  The second big concern was causing a volcano to erupt. Everything had examples and apparently, the famous eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was caused by a pissed off witch. An “oops” of epic proportions. Since she
died during the eruption and subsequent burying in ash of Herculaneum, they couldn’t kill her for it but death was one of the penalties for not keeping your temper under control.

  All penalties were imposed by the Witches’ Council but it only required a simple majority of the thirteen to punish by death. Not even a super-majority like ten or something. I looked up to see Cassandra sitting in the chair opposite, watching me.

  “So how come no one’s yelled at me?” I asked.

  “Because of a few things.” The corners of her mouth quirked up in a half smile. “First, your gift manifested so powerfully and so quickly that no one had a chance to do anything about it. Second, you only caused minor damage.

  “Third and most important, both Mom and Fudge interceded for you. The Elders were all for at least slapping your hand but Mom convinced them that you were surrounded by people who could train you quickly and Fudge promised to keep a lid on your temper if you couldn’t immediately do it on your own.”

  I looked down at my cat who stopped preening long enough to say, “Because of my age, I have some sway with the Councils. They know I will keep my promises. I did not want you discouraged before you had even begun.”

  I looked back at Cassandra. “So you’re saying I have to do all the mumbo-jumbo you and Tommy do in your workroom? Where am I supposed to put all that crap in my apartment?”

  She laughed. “Absolutely not. I like to cook, whether it’s food or a spell. So does Tommy. You don’t have to use your gift for anything. You do have to be aware of it and how to use it, if it becomes necessary that you do so. That said, I’ll bet you find something you like to do and when that happens, you’ll make room for it, whether it’s in your apartment or in your schedule.

  “It’s lunch time. Let’s take a break and eat. You need to finish reading that first book but do it at home. We’ll do practical stuff after lunch.”

  Lunch wasn’t anything really good like she cooked up in the deli – just grilled cheese sandwiches. Because she usually whipped up something I wouldn’t normally cook at home – and I was a master at grilled cheese – I teased her about it.