Much Ado About Magic

Page 39

“I don’t think so. I don’t know if there is such a thing, but this looks like some kind of magic flu. The only people I know who are sick are magical people, and I don’t know of anyone nonmagical who’s sick. Owen’s sick, too, and I’ll be going over there. I’ll leave a note for Gemma.”
“Keep me posted,” she said. “You have my cell number and Rod’s number, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
If there was a magical flu, I’d need Owen’s help to figure out what we could do, even if he was sick. In case I needed to do like Marcia and play nursemaid, I threw some overnight things into a tote bag. On my way to Owen’s place I bought a container of hot-and-sour soup from the Chinese restaurant next door to my building and a jug of orange juice from the corner grocery.
Normally, Owen’s door just opened for me when I showed up, since his weird brand of ESP told him I was coming, but the plague must have knocked out his magical senses—or else he was mad at me. I had to hit the buzzer, and I hoped I wasn’t waking him from a nap. After a long pause, a scratchy voice said, “Yeah?” over the intercom.
“Owen, it’s Katie. I need to talk to you. I’ve got soup.”
He didn’t respond, and I held my breath. Then the door opened, and I went inside and ran up the stairs. His front door had already opened for me. I found him sprawled on the sofa, his cat staring at him warily from her perch on the sofa arm at his feet.
I couldn’t blame her for her wariness. He looked like hell, worse than I’d ever seen him, and I’d seen him after he’d been practically ripped to shreds by a harpy. The circles under his eyes were nearly as dark as his hair, he had a day’s growth of stubble on his jaw, which made his cheeks look even more hollow, and he was pale enough to almost be gray.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he croaked, squinting at me. His glasses lay on the coffee table, and I doubted he’d bothered with contact lenses in the state he was in. “I don’t want to give this to you.”
“I don’t think you can give it to me. Not that I plan to kiss you right now, regardless.” However, I did have an urge to give him a hug. When he looked like this, he brought out all my latent maternal instincts. I cleared a spot among the books and papers on the coffee table and set down my bags. I opened the soup, stuck a spoon in it and handed it to him. “Here, this should open your head and give you some energy. You can eat while I talk.”
He pulled himself to a sitting position and swung his feet around to the floor. I sat beside him, waited for him to eat a few bites, then asked, “Is there such a thing as an illness that strikes only magical people?”
He swallowed, coughed, and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard of one.”
“I noticed that it’s only the magical people who seem to be sick. The immunes at work are the ones still going, and Marcia said nobody is out at her office. So either there’s an illness that only affects magical people or there’s some massive spell being cast all over Manhattan that makes magical people sick.”
Owen groaned and leaned back against the sofa, like the effort of eating a few spoonfuls of soup and listening to me had utterly exhausted him. I reached over and took the soup from him before he spilled it on himself. “I really don’t need this right now,” he said.
“I suspect that’s the point. We won’t get anything done while all our people are sick.”
“But whatever they’re doing is probably making them sick, too.”
“Unless they have a way to block it from particular people. It might be interesting to see exactly who is still up and around right now.” I started to say that Ramsay hadn’t shown up at the office, but then I wasn’t sure what that proved. It meant either that he was sick or that he wasn’t sick and didn’t want anyone to see that. Either way, this wasn’t the time to stir up that particular argument.
Owen rubbed his temples wearily. “If only I could think,” he muttered.
“I wonder how far-reaching this is—is it only Manhattan, or does it affect all magical people everywhere?”
He fluttered a hand vaguely in the direction of his desk in the front corner of the room. “Could you bring me the phone?”
I got up and brought the cordless to him. “I should make you talk,” he muttered as he dialed. “She’ll know something’s wrong with me, and I’ll never hear the end of it.” Then he cleared his throat and forced himself to sound normal as he said, “Gloria, it’s Owen. I wanted to see how you’re doing.” He winced as he listened, then said, “Yes, I am a little under the weather, but are you and James okay? What about anyone else? Yes, that was what Katie suspected. Okay, thanks, let me know.” He disconnected and handed the phone back to me. “They’re feeling, as Gloria put it, ‘a bit peakish,’ which probably means they’re barely getting out of bed. They have heard from neighbors who work in the city that they feel sick at work, but get a lot better when they get home. Oh, and she said you were very clever. That’s about the highest compliment she can give.”