* * *
Flugalmorph sent me a bill for Harlan’s medical expenses?
The bright purple envelope came with the weekly junk mail. I almost threw it out with the rest until I noticed the return address. They don’t send me paper bills. They bill my credit card for the shop service and send the receipt via email. So it was weird getting actual real mail from them.
I hadn’t heard much from the Flugalmorph Agency since poor Harlan, our house brownie, had been almost killed by the Itos’ cat. Harlan had apparently stumbled across evidence of Vivika’s plot before we had realized what was going on, and she had tried to dispose of him by having the neighbor’s cat attack the brownie.
Emergency Medical Responders:
Billable rate: $250/hr.
Billable time: .5 hrs. x 3 responders
Item Total: $375.00
Emergency Care Treatment:
Equipment fees: $750/hr.
Billable time: 2 hrs.
Item Total: $1500.00
Primary Care:
Billable rate: $400/hr.
Billable time: 2 hrs.
Item Total: $800.00
Consumable fees:
Blood transfusion: 12 units @ $100/unit
Comfrey Immersion Therapy: 8 units @ $75/unit
Bee pollen Topical Treatment: 19 units @ $50/unit
Item total: $2750.00
Hospital Room Fee:
Billable rate: $600/day
Number of days: 4
Item Total: $2400.00
In-Home Care:
Billable rate: A$50/hr.
Total number of hours: 18
Item Total: $900
Total Medical Charges: $8725.00
Portion of this bill covered by your insurance: 0.00
Balance Due: $8725.00
Wait…WHAT!?
My fees to Flugalmorph include mandatory health and liability insurance. This is precisely the sort of thing insurance is supposed to cover! I call Flugalmorph and, after twenty minutes getting transferred between different departments, finally get a claims officer. She cheerfully explains to me that the insurance denied the coverage because the incident involved a cat, and I had signed a declaration that I did not own any cats.
“I don’t own a cat!” I exclaim.
“The injuries were caused by a cat,” says the claims officer.
“But it wasn’t my cat. It was the neighbor’s cat!”
“The incident occurred on your property and involved a cat. The insurance won’t cover it.”
“But it wasn’t my cat!”
“Section fourteen-point-three of your service contract clearly states that you are responsible for securing the servicing area from all felines. Your yard was left insecure and a cat entered it. So the insurance is declined. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Where am I supposed to come up with over eight-thousand dollars in thirty days?”
“I’d be happy to help you set up a convenient payment plan if you’d like.”
“Let me check with my homeowner’s policy.”
“Of course. Please have them reference your case number and contact us directly if they are going to handle the claim. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Nope. I’m done.”
“Thank you for using the Flugalmorph Agency for all of your cleaning and maintenance needs!”
As I hang up, I hear Mom’s voice behind me. “This is why I just made you kids clean instead of a service.”
“Is this going to turn into one of those ‘Where are my grandchildren?’ conversations?”
“Nancy, realistically I can’t start pestering you for grandchildren until you have a husband.”
I toss the bill on the counter and collapse onto the sofa. “I talked to Scott today.”
“I take it the conversation didn’t go well?”
I tell Mom about what transpired with Darlene and my suspicions that she has been going behind Scott and Laurie’s back.
“Darlene and Fred Ellison are both proud Transmuters and Laurie is an only child, so you have to realize this is an issue for them.”
“Yes, yes. Bloodlines and all. I get it. But that doesn’t excuse them deliberately circumventing Laurie and Scott’s wishes.”
“I’m not excusing it, honey. I just understand it. Parents always want what they think is best for their children, even when their children disagree with what is best.”
“Parents aren’t automatically right, Mom.”
“We aren’t automatically wrong, either.”
“Scott…doesn’t trust you. He thinks if they come here for Thanksgiving you’ll manifest in front of Megan.”
“I wouldn’t do such a thing!”
“You wouldn’t?” Mom doesn’t reply immediately. Her presence just floats around the room as if she is pacing. “Mother?”
“You know, Scott gets it from his father,” Mom finally says. “Mark hated everything about the craft. Said magic made people prideful. He wasn’t entirely wrong about that.”
“Dad always supported my studies.”
“He would have supported anything you two chose to do. He wanted you to feel free to make your own choices. But he would have been thrilled that you left the craft to study psychology. You were too young to remember, but he and your Nanna Morri got into some terrible fights. For the longest time, I was afraid your grandmother was going to send a fiend after him and make me a widow."
“No, I don’t remember any of that. Though now that I think of it, Nanna never did talk directly to Dad.”
Mom laughs. “Oh, it drove him nuts, too. I remember one Solstice dinner. I thought he was going to throw something at her. She kept asking you kids to ask your father if he wanted seconds or if he wanted more to drink instead of asking him herself.”
“But Dad helped with the shop. He helped me with arcane homework. He attended Guild events. What did he do that earned Nanna’s ire?”
“It’s what he didn’t do. He didn’t hold his tongue. He would never challenge anything directly in front of you kids. But after the two of you went to school or would go to bed…he would make his opinions known. He never supported lying to you about magic, but he was very adamant that the Colleges were too quick to teach magic to children before they were emotionally capable of understanding the consequences. He likened it to giving a toddler an assault rifle and then being surprised when someone got shot. He felt the obsession with rank and magical power was just as dangerous as being obsessed with money and mundane power. Hmm, he hated the word ‘mundane,’ too. Said it implied witches were superior.”
“And yet he married a Werlock woman anyway.”
“I never told you how your father and I met, did I?”
“You met in college at a homecoming game.”
“Well, that is when we met. But I never told you the how.”
“So it wasn’t just an ‘I saw this stud across a crowded stadium'?"
“Not exactly. Your father had a roommate in college, Ted Volker. They had been friends since sixth grade. Like brothers. Senior year of high school, Ted’s father had died from a heart attack. He didn’t take it well and fell into a depression. Eventually got hooked on drugs. Mark managed to get him cleaned up before it was too late to save him, or so he thought. But during that time, Ted had started to dabble in magic. Got his hands on an actual grimoire some mundane who didn’t know what they had sold at a flea market.”
“By Hecate, that was never going to end well.”
“No. Ted actually managed to summon an imp, but he lacked the will to control it. The imp, however, strung Ted along and would pretend to follow his commands. Ted got emboldened. Had the imp steal money for him, test answers, all sorts of nonsense. Eventually decided what he really wanted was the quarterback’s girlfriend, who was the head cheerleader. I noticed the thing sneaking around and put a stop to it quick enough, but not before it fled back to Ted’s dorm room. So I tracked it down to exorcise the little pest, but by then it had c
onvinced Ted to let it ‘temporarily’ take control of his body to fight me off.”
I just shake my head. “Stupid and greedy is never a good combination.”
“So I get to the dorm room and instead of confronting an imp, I’ve got a full-blown possession on my hands. And while I’m dealing with that, your father comes walking into the room, me straddled over Ted trying to perform an invocation while keeping him pinned down. You can imagine what it looked like.”
“I’m trying hard not to.”
“Nancy Clarice!”
“What?”
“Can I finish my story?”
“I wasn’t interrupting you!”
“Anyway, so your father pulls me off of Ted, thinking I’m the crazy one. But then he sees Ted’s eyes have gone completely black and he smells of sulfur. The imp starts trying to convince your father to help him dispose of me, promises power, money, blah blah blah.”
“What did Dad do?”
“He punched him square in the jaw and said ‘Get the Hell out of Ted!’ then stepped aside and let me finish my business.”
“Good for him!”
“So, I finally got the imp exorcised and managed to stabilize Ted. But now I’ve got this witness to the entire thing, but instead of freaking out about what just happened, he is yelling at Ted for being an idiot.”
“That definitely sounds like Dad.”
“Now here I am, listening to him go on at Ted and going through my head how to handle this situation when he finally turns to me and asks if the creature is gone for good. I tell him it is and that Ted will be fine. The possession was too short to cause any long-term damage, but he'll need to rest for a while. Then he asks me if I want to go get pizza. Just like that.”
“What did you do?”
“I said yes.” Mom chuckles. “Your father was quite handsome, you know.”
“So you went and got pizza instead of filing a report?”
“Never reported the incident. Ted didn’t actually remember much of what happened, so we convinced him it had been a bad dream. He ended up dropping out of college not long after that and joined the army.”
“Wait, was he the guy at Dad’s funeral in the uniform?”
“I’m surprised you remember him.”
“Is that what made Dad hate magic?”
“No, it was more like the first in a long string of things he saw that didn’t set well with him. Realizing how easy it was for a mundane to get caught up in those kind of dangerous situations. He felt we didn’t do enough to police our own and to keep things out of the hands of mundanes.”
“I guess Dad never met a Justicar.”
“On the contrary. Your father felt Justicars didn’t have enough authority and weren’t proactive enough. He felt the Colleges treated mundanes hurt by magic as collateral damage instead of real people. All the strategic decisions of how far to go to save innocent people versus the risk to the Veil. In his mind, saving people was never a question. If magic was responsible for the harm, it was magic’s job to save them.”
Mom's presence flickers in-and-out for a moment as if she is losing concentration. "You still miss him," I say.
“Before my accident, I used to pity mundanes. The thought of losing who you are and everything you knew once you died; being given a completely new life with no memory of the people you loved and everything you worked for; it always struck me as cruel. I don’t believe that, anymore.” She flickers again. “Tell Scott…tell Scott I swear I won’t go against his wishes. I swear on his father’s grave. I just…I just want to see Megan. I just want to see everyone together and happy.”
“I’ll talk to him again.”
Mom slips back across the Veil.
November 9th,
“Nancy? What a surprise!” says Laurie as she lets me in the house.
“You weren’t in the middle of anything, were you?”
“Good God, no. I’m glad to have company. Being home all day is making me crazy.” Laurie has been having some complications with the pregnancy, and her doctor has recommended she not work until the baby is born. Thankfully, she owns her spa so she can just give her employees more hours to cover her not being there. But it’s obvious the stay-at-home thing is not working for her.
“Anastasia insisted I should bring you a care package from the shop, so…” I place the basket of bath salts, lotion, candles, and assorted comfort items on the table.
“Oh, how sweet. She’s such a doll.” Laurie pokes at the ribbon and clear wrap to see what is inside.
“She also said I should get your unbiased opinion what you think this is worth, as she wants to make a bunch to sell for the Christmas season.”
“I’ve never known anyone to be so happy with a job in retail,” says Laurie as she rips off the wrapping. “It really isn’t healthy, I think.” She pops the lid on one of the lotions and sniffs it. “Mandarin Ginger? Nice.”
“She did a great deal of research to make sure she only selected fragrances that were pregnancy-safe.”
“I’m sure she did.” Laurie laughs. “Let me make a pot of coffee.”
We settle in at her kitchen table with coffee and lemon pound cake. Laurie shows me the latest ultrasound images. She also shows me Megan’s list of suggested baby brother names. “Maybe you can get off cheap for her birthday and let her pick the name as her gift,” I jokingly suggest.
“I will not have my son going through life with the name Clawd or Gillington, thank you very much!”
“Maybe as a middle name?” I take a bite of the pound cake. “Scott tell you we talked yesterday?”
“No, but I guess that is why he was in a sour mood when he got home?”
“He got a little defensive. I offered to host Thanksgiving this year so you didn’t have to do all the work.”
“Oh.” She fills her mouth with a huge piece of cake and looks down at her plate.
“I’m not here trying to go behind his back, Laurie. I just realize there is something wrong and I was hoping you could tell me what it was.”
“There is nothing wrong, Nancy. We decided not to raise the children with magic. I’ve stopped casting around Megan and I don’t even talk about it around her anymore. The only thing wrong is that nobody seems to respect our decision.”
“I respect that decision. I walked away from the craft for a while myself. My offer had nothing to do with pushing magic on Megan.”
“I’m sure Wanda had nothing to do with it.”
“My mother respects your decision, too. She just wants to see everyone together for the holidays.”
“Scott says Wanda is practically living…if that is the word…with you these days.”
“She visits often, but only because she was helping me take over the shop and take care of some loose ends. I was away from the craft for a while so I needed help getting back into the swing of things.”
“You took your Rank Two Trials not four months after your mother died. That is a little more than just getting back into the swing of things.”
“It wasn’t really my idea....it was complicated and a lot of crazy stuff was going on and…it doesn’t matter. The point is I respect that as Megan’s parents it is your right and responsibility to make decisions for her. I understand why you would want to delay exposing her to more magic than necessary. And I have no intention of telling you what to do. And neither does my mother. Believe me, I am the first person to admit that my mother can be as manipulative and conniving as anyone else’s mom. But she isn’t a liar. We can have Thanksgiving at my house. You can take it easy. And Mom can see the family without doing anything that would alert Megan to her presence.”
“Nancy—”
“She swears on my father’s grave, Laurie.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah. Would you at least just let Scott know that? I doubt he’ll take another phone call from me anytime soon.”
“What did my mother do at your shop?”
“What did Megan tell you?”
“Nothing, but I sensed the residual energy on that figurine. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t do it.”
“Megan wanted a fairy with red hair and I didn’t have one in stock. I was going to order one, but—”
“I’m going to kill my mother.” Laurie stands up and walks out of the kitchen. I follow after her. She picks up the phone.
“Don’t call her while you’re angry,” I say as I place a hand over hers. “Nothing good comes of having this conversation when you are angry.”
“Why is she doing this?” Laurie starts to cry. “And for such a petty little thing? Is that the lesson she wants to teach her granddaughter? That we should abuse magic for trite, stupid little things? Does she want her to grow up into one of those damn fairy princesses that is so lazy she leans on magic for everything?”
“I’m sure that isn’t her reasoning, Laurie.”
“Then what is her reasoning, Nancy? That I’m too stupid to know what is best for my own children? That I’m not good enough? That what I want doesn’t matter and she can do whatever the Hell she wants?”
“It’s okay,” I say and hug her. She sobs into my shoulder.
“This is all your fault!” she suddenly pushes me away. “The prodigal daughter returned to the Craft to carry on the family name. Goddamn Rank Two Warlock right out the gate. Do you even know how many times she has thrown that in my face?”
“I’m sorry, Laurie.”
“Every time I tell her I had no interest in returning to the Craft, she makes some snide comment. ‘Oh, I guess I’ll have to die first before you change your mind.’ Or ‘Well, Nancy said that for years too and now look how successful she is.’ I hate it.”
“Laurie, I am sorry. You have every right to be upset…with your mother. She has no right to use my decisions against you. What I have chosen to do has nothing to do with you, and doesn’t devalue you in any way.”
“Tell that to her.”
“No, you’ll tell that to her. But not right now. You need to get your thoughts together and focus on the real issue.”
Laurie sits down on the loveseat. I sit next to her. Laurie leans back and rests both of her hands on her pregnant belly. “And on top of everything else, I feel fat.”
nancy werlocks diary s02e14 Page 2