Camilla, or “Cam” as she is called by her familiars, came into our care six weeks ago. Before that, she was a human volunteer working in reception at SingleEarth Haven #2. Camilla has not previously demonstrated any natural psychic ability and had never engaged in any sorcery practice prior to symptoms manifesting.

Camilla is one of several who have reported new and often alarming symptoms since participating in a ritual performed at Haven #2 in an attempt to treat the flu outbreak. I have yet to successfully put together a coherent description of the ritual performed to cure those who had been infected. Given the fevered, delirious, and/or exhausted state of the witnesses, it is not surprising that their stories vary wildly.

Of all those in the circle that day, Camilla has faced the most devastating repercussions.

Camilla, and the rest of us at Rose Ward. I was not there; most of my clients were not there. Yet we have not been spared the aftermath.

Liam stepped quietly through the doorway of room 14, hoping not to wake its occupant if by some miracle she was resting. Camilla rarely slept, no matter what medications or magical interventions the ward tried. At first, she had been desperate, willing to try anything. These days…

She lifted her head, and looked at Liam with eyes so dilated the irises showed only as a fine thread of muddy brown as they met bloodshot whites.

“Here to poke at me some more?” Lethargy and hostility warred in her voice. She did not attempt to stand or even to sit up, but instead remained sprawled where she was on the bed. Only her eyes indicated she was focused on him.

Liam sat in a chair across the room from his patient. He reached out gently with his aura, and the impressions he had received back were chaotic and painful. Reflex would have made him flinch if he hadn’t trained himself out of that reaction years ago.

As he often had lately, he wished a real witch were present. They came by Rose Ward once in a while to try to help, but their numbers were few, and the needs were many.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked.

Camilla stared at him.

When she had first come to Rose Ward, Camilla had been frightened but optimistic. She had worked as a human volunteer with SingleEarth since she was twelve, the earliest SingleEarth would allow even the children of residents to give their time. She had absolute faith in the system, no matter how dire her position seemed.

Now…

“Did you get any sleep?” Liam asked, knowing the answer was probably a resounding “NO.”

She opened her mouth. The sound that emerged was otherworldly, somewhere between a hiss and a death rattle. It wasn’t a noise that should ever come from living human vocal cords.

This time, Liam couldn’t suppress his shudder or the way gooseflesh rose on every inch of his skin as if he had walked into a damp crypt. What was that?

Given the answers to his previous questions were obviously, “I’m feeling hostile” and “No, I didn’t sleep,” Liam moved on. “Have you eaten anything today?”

Her breakfast tray sat, untouched, in his corner of the room.

Camilla panicked if people tried to get closer to her than this. She didn’t want to risk touching anyone or having anyone else accidentally touch her. She was convinced she was dangerous.

She was right. Rose Ward was SingleEarth’s most secure unit, where people came when their psychic abilities were beyond their control and a danger not just to themselves, but to those around them.

Liam had worked in the Ward for three years and had seen the devastating results of power wielded without control. He had developed his own personal magic as well as he could without sacrificing his humanity, because doing so was valuable in his field, but he never intended to try to go further. Too much could go wrong—and did, more often than anyone cared to admit.

“Would something different appeal to you more?” Her breakfast had included an English muffin with a choice of whipped butter or peach jam and a cup of orange juice. It was what she had requested the last time she had expressed any preference about food.

She had said then that the thought of meat turned her stomach. Even eggs made her nauseated. Wistfully, she had asked for something simple, like toast or a muffin.

That had been two days ago, when she had been able to communicate. She had been going in and out of these states over the past weeks, as she fought to control the power within her. Much of the time, the battle left her too exhausted to do more than stare.

And today, it had brought that eerie hiss.

“I’ll come back later,” he said. “If you need me sooner, please use the call button.”

Unfortunately, she was at a point where he could only help her when she was coherent enough to engage in her own treatment. He would receive an alert if she used the call button. Hopefully, she would break out of her fugue so they could practice some of the techniques they had been using to help her control her power.

Who am I kidding? he thought. Hopefully, one of the more powerful witches would show up in response to his seven thousand requests for support. Liam didn’t have the strength to break Camilla out of the magical snare she was trapped in. She was a fox trying to chew her leg off, and all he could do was bring her an English muffin. Fighting to do more would risk exhausting himself, leaving him unable to defend himself psychically or provide any care at all for the clients relying on him.

He closed the door behind himself, and heard the whispered click as the latch slid into place. It would lock automatically. Not all the clients at Rose Ward needed locks on the door, but in cases like Camilla’s, where it was possible their magic could take control and start making decisions without their consent and against their ethics, it was a necessary precaution.

Why was Liam the only parapsychologist currently on the floor?

The wards were swamped. Ever since the flu—or the ritual, or whatever had happened at the end of December—occurrences of strange, uncontrollable magic and spontaneous shapeshifting had spiked all over the world. SingleEarth had many hands, but they were busy, running, trying to stop a panic as far too many humans were exposed to the paranatural for the first time in their lives.

It was chaos out there.

Liam moved on to the next patient room, where an older man named Hank looked up at him with a dazed smile.

“Morning, Hank.”

“Morning, Doc.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Kind of funny,” Hank replied, voice lilting, gaze unfocused. “Like I’ve got fishes inside my spine.”

“Fishes, huh?”

That was one for Liam’s book of client quotes, up there with, I feel orange, and, somebody put a nifty in my marzipan. Often, the strange sayings were the result of people trying very hard to come up with a description for something that didn’t register with any of the accepted five senses. Magic wasn’t something most people could see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, but the mind tried to put the sensory input into those terms, which then needed to be further adapted to a language that lacked the necessary vocabulary.

“Yeah,” Hank said. “They’re kind of squiggling away in there.”

“Let’s see what I can see.” Again, the language wasn’t right. Liam couldn’t see power. But it was the best word he had.

He put his hands above Hank’s shoulders, close enough to touch the power that seeped off the not-quite-human man, but not so close that he couldn’t pull away fast if he needed to.

Fishes was one way to describe it. Liam would have said that the power was writhing up and down Hank’s spine, slithering across his back, as if it were trying to burst free. It was twitchy, aura not quite married to flesh. The power that had somehow tied itself to Hank didn’t like the vessel it was trapped inside, but it couldn’t go anywhere else.

It tried, sometimes. That was why Liam knew better than to touch.

“Have you been doing your focus exercises?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hank answered. “They were helping for a while, but then it got worse again.”

“Can you pinpoint when the exercises stopped helping?”

Hank had been in the Ward for over a year and had made excellent progress. They had talked about moving him to the ground floor to start his transition work. This was a serious relapse.

“I don’t know. Honestly, it started getting harder around Christmas, maybe. I thought at first it was just holiday blues, but the last couple days it’s been especially bad.”

Around Christmas. Around the same time everything else went to hell, then.

“I’ll see if I can schedule you with Missy sometime soon.” Melissa Neprette had a knack for siphoning away extra psychic energy. It wouldn’t help Hank master his power, but it would help get him back to baseline so they could start working on alternative forms of control. “And I’ll sit with you during your next focus session to see if I can identify what has changed. For now, you should eat your breakfast. You know food is important for grounding. Do you want it warmed up?”

Hank gave a long-suffering sigh but reached for his plate and shook his head. “Nah,” he answered. “I can’t taste it today anyway.”

Too many fishes in the way, Liam thought, as Hank pierced a piece of cold maple sausage with the determination of a soldier going into battle.

Liam continued his rounds.

More of the same. Everyone was off, even more than usual. If this had been a regular hospital, Liam would have wondered if someone in the nursing station had mixed up the meds. Instead, he would need to consult star charts and solar flares, tides and seismic rumblings, to see if he could identify a particular source for this campus-wide disturbance.

He rubbed his temples as a sudden, searing pain stole his breath.

Overworked myself, he thought.

He needed to follow his own advice: get something to eat, ground himself, and clear his aura of whatever malignant fishhooks of power had managed to infiltrate his mystical defenses while he did his rounds.

Sequestered in his own dual-purpose office and ritual space, he knelt at the center of a carefully cast circle of protection and closed his eyes.

Something raked across his skin, a sensation that was half touch and half sound, like a clap of thunder so loud it made his bones vibrate. Liam’s eyes shot open, but of course he was alone.

In his mind, he heard Camilla’s growl.

Get rid of it, he told himself. Whether what you’re feeling is anxiety or magical residue, this circle is prepared to help you cast it away.

You are safe here.

I am safe here.

He took a deep breath and shut his eyes again. He wouldn’t have been hired for this job if he hadn’t mastered the ability to regulate and cleanse his own auraest post as I’m trying formatting things.

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