Shape of Things to come

Shape of Things to Come

Part 3:Seeds of Time

Chapter 37

‘All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts'
...William Shakespeare. As You Like It

Paige sat in her office at the employment centre. She had always resisted isolating herself from the other staff in an office but the last takeover group insisted it was their policy managers had offices, and at the time she was fighting so many battles she did not have the energy to waste on that particular one. She felt the isolation made her an outsider to the staff, but recognised it was just another change in so many changes in her life.

Paige had been suffering misgivings about magic, her work and her family, even before the new demon Briareos began causing issues but mostly, she had been able to push them into the recesses of her brain. However, instead of being ecstatically happy when Leo finally arrived home and reported that Mark would recover, eventually, she felt a relief that emptied her soul of the dread of losing him but replaced it with an almost equally debilitating soul-destroying numbness. This numbness led to Paige considering some very unpleasant possibilities about the changes happening around her.

Change was always difficult for Paige, not because she was unfamiliar with it but because from the time her adoptive parents’ deaths when she was fourteen, Paige had been constantly summoning the strength to deal with consequences of it, especially spending much of her life adapting to being an outsider. The present situation reminded her of the time when her adoptive parents had died, and her mother’s parents had taken her to Callistoga. Her last four years at school had been as an adopted outsider in a closed community where everybody knew each other.

More and more Paige was feeling an outsider in her magic life, neither completely mortal nor completely magic. The elder’s lockdown had left her, as one of the few whitelighters in the earthen realms, of necessity responding to her whitelighter heritage, not just guiding young witches but having some very intense conversations with witches feeling deserted by their guides. It had left her very conflicted about her role as a Charmed One and a near angel guide. It left her feeling like an outsider in both roles.

To her regret Paige, sitting in her office with a wall between her and the other workers concluded that she was an outsider at the employment centre as well. For fifteen years she had been proud and determined with the work she was doing at the centre, knowing she was helping people find a step up, a means of finding a better, even dignified life. However, over the last years, after so many changes and takeovers, many of the bureaucratic masters were surreptitiously hinting that she was out of step with current policies and employment strategies. In fact, she knew bureaucratic masters regarded her centre as something of an anachronism, a showpiece that gave them kudos as the way things should be done but hardly practical in the current economic and social climate.

When Paige first went to work at the employment centre, it was strategically located in a not well-off area, but close to relatively local employers and businesses, something highly important for clients who did not have any easy means of travelling distances. However, this was no longer the case. The location was now more affluent, and therefore far more expensive for businesses to operate, so many of those that once provided regular employment for local people were moving much further away. This affluence also led to a more aging population who did not need the resource of the employment centre. Therefore, while it still provided an important function, the centre was no longer as central to the social makeup of the area as it had once been, as people needed to live closer to where there were employment opportunities and living costs were less.

Furthermore, the way people found employment was changing drastically. Apart from the very small businesses that were mostly moving out of the area, most employers were reluctant to use personal contacts to find employees, being concerned about the legal complications. Much of the work of finding people jobs was now about online and social media searching, and the function of employment agencies was becoming more about filtering candidates than helping individuals find jobs.

There had been some talk amongst the bureaucratic masters of relocating the centre’s resources into a more ‘useful’ area, citing its reduction in client numbers and ageing and very shabby offices, which embarrassed the Powers that Be when they visited. Paige seriously wondered if her time of usefulness at the centre was coming to an end. Only a few months ago she had discussed this with her sisters who in their time had both made serious decisions to about professions they loved. More than ten years ago Piper had put the family into considerable debt to create the P3 precinct. That decision was a well thought-out economical one for Leo and her, assessing whether it was feasible and practical to protect their already large investment in the area. Piper insisted it could just as easily have gone the other way, if circumstances had been different. Probably true because now Piper, with some regrets, was moving on from P3 as circumstances changed.

Phoebe when asked about the end of her sob sister career, admitted the last few years at the Bay Mirror had not been pleasant, because the editor had jealously hated her success, but what really ended her career was when the newspaper was targeted by demons and it was only the Power of Three that kept them out.

“Should have realised they were taking over” Phoebe admitted. “Only the editor Elise was such a bitch I was focusing on the wrong thing. Getting mad at her. Not realising it was the … Evil grunts sneaking in. Had to recognise that me working there made the place more attractive to Bloody Elisheeva. Even then it took all the crisis over Mandy being born to make me know the time had come. Always hard… moving on. Always something you don’t finish, you regret.”

Sitting in her office and remembering Phoebe’s words, Paige recognised her sister’s truth telling. The crystal she kept in her pocket was frequently flashing shades of magenta, orange and gray, telling her that Evil was targeting the employment office. Paige’s sense of safety and well-being at work was therefore lost, rapidly diminishing her enthusiasm for her work. Paige also had to accept that because Evil was targeting her, she was putting innocents at risk. Paige caught the lost soul employee pursuing some innocents, guaranteeing them excellent jobs in return for their souls. She protected the innocents but dispiritedly recognised the vulnerability of the agencies clients due to her being a witch.

Later that evening the situation was made worse by the lost soul himself. Paige gathered up her concerns and approached him as they were both working late. It was an unpleasant experience as all pretence of comradery or not knowing what she was, fell away and the sheer Evil the man had embraced burst out of his eyes. His face contorted, his body ballooned, he became a monster before her so Paige backed away. But then he suddenly caught her arm in a claw like hand, trying to squeeze the good from her and for a second Paige saw what she did not want to see. She saw the agony of what the soul had become, she felt its futility and as the lost soul touched her good soul, she felt it pleading for her to help it. She could not, it was too far gone and she pulled away, gathered her belongings, leaving it to lock up.

The next day Paige went to work early. Phoebe insisted on driving her muttering as to why Paige needed to be there two hours before anyone else but after the lost soul attacked Paige, she did not want her sister being alone in the agency. As Phoebe pulled into the agency carpark, both witches were immediately on alert when they saw that the door to the employment agency was open. When they went inside Paige discovered that the alarms were turned off, and the front door security cameras were also ripped out. The place was ransacked, papers were everywhere, and computers were broken and overturned. Desk draws were pulled out, the safe door was ajar, the small amount of money kept there gone.

Paige walked around the whole centre checking the public areas and Phoebe went into the staff area and called out that staff lockers were ransacked. It was then that Phoebe fell over the body of the lost soul. From the way the body lay, it had died very miserably, its face purple and it was curled up into foetal position. Clearly died in terror. Phoebe touched the body. It was getting very cold.

Paige came and stood beside her. She too touched the body. “Probably happened not long after I left last night” she concluded shaking her head.

“I don’t need a premonition to know that this is a set up” Phoebe told her sister.

“I can” Paige gearing into practical whitelighter mode. “Need to get rid of the body” Paige decided stoically. “This is a set up.” She smiled darkly “I saw last night he was regretting it, almost for a second begging for help so they grabbed him into Evil, until he ends up eaten by the beasts in the waste land,” she decided bitterly.

Paige pulled the crystal from her pocket and it flashed the black on black of the darklighters “Yes” she nodded, “but I… have a way of avoiding them. And this helps” she added touching Francesca’s amulet.

Phoebe firmly shook her head. She decided the set up was a trap for Paige and called Cole, who still had not left for work. He came straight away and noted all the smashed cameras in the place.

“No” Paige replied. “One of the advantages of no-one spending money on things. Ones that record anywhere else are only on the front doors. When the place is open.”

“No” he answered. “Not unreasonable you would call a lawyer before the police. I told you to call the police. I’m telling you to call the police. Nothing else on it that could be a problem?”

“You better call the cops” Phoebe decided. “How long has it been since we came in?”

“Ten minutes. Spent the time checking what had happened. In shock” Paige decided, in her efficient whitelighter mode.

“I wonder if Evil has worked out one of the only reason, we aren’t completely screwed by these things is Cole isn’t on anybody’s control lists?” Phoebe asked.

The police arrived within fifteen minutes and for some reason that Phoebe could only think was bad news, a few minutes later Agent Wilbur and his partner also turned up.

Agent Wilbur was not completely surprised to see Phoebe, nor was he completely surprised to see Paige.

Phoebe called Cole but he was clearly not answering phones wherever he was. She finally called Leslie who said she was on her way.

After a truly horrible day of dealing with law types, Powers that Be and the FBI, while both Leslie and Phoebe remained firmly at her side, Paige finally made it home where she collapsed on her bed, remembered she was not only a calm whitelighter, but also mortal and burst into tears. It was, she discovered, one thing to say ‘I cannot speak without a lawyer’ to the law types but considerably harder to avoid saying things to the Powers that Be types, especially as the masters from the latest takeover insisted they too have legal representation. This legal representation had no understanding of Paige’s need for Leslie to represent her, especially when Leslie firmly advised her not to speak to anyone without legal counsel present.

Of course, the bureaucratic masters’ annoyance over Paige being ‘difficult’ over a ‘simple’ robbery, became considerably darker when as the day went on it became apparent that not only had one staff member not turned up at work, the police and Agent Wilbur discovered that he was missing from all known locations. When this news was passed on, the representatives of the bureaucratic masters all turned toward Paige to openly stare at her, while she could actually hear the law types, particularly Agent Wilbur, snigger. Then the agency legal representatives turned to chat cosily with the law types .That was when Leslie advised Paige not to be at work and Paige listened to her.

“Unless you want to arrest my clients?” Leslie asked the law enforcers as they left.

Which was also when Paige realised she no longer had a job at the employment centre, nor did she want one.

As they left Phoebe could not help herself “Why the hell are you and Cole daring them to arrest someone all the time?” she demanded irritably of Leslie.

“Because they only have circumstantial evidence of you being connected to the scene of the crime and it wouldn’t stand up in court. And if they arrested you on that, anything else they do without being fully prepared gets kicked out too” Lelsie explained.

“What happened to innocents don’t get charged. Innocents get protected?” Phoebe asked.

Leslie snorted “You’re confusing magic innocence with mortal innocence” she replied seriously.