Bright Lights, Bug City – Part 6

The plan was simple.  That’s good right?  The beauty of a good plan is its simplicity. Once a plan gets too complex, everything can go wrong.  Christie would distract the people at the nurse’s station.  Grace would levitate up to the third-floor window, go in, and grab the doctor.  Simple.   

Unfortunately, this simple plan had several fatal flaws.  Grace was assuming that because he talks for a living and consistently cheats on his wife with moderately attractive women, that Christie would be good at vamping.  He is not.  She was also assuming that besides the doctor, the only other people in the building were the people at the nurse’s station.  They weren’t.  And most critically of all, she was assuming that the light on in the third-floor window meant the doctor was there.  He wasn’t.   

The good news is that the plan never got off the ground because Grace didn’t have enough magic left to levitate more than a fake-o David Blaine level off the ground, let alone reach the third floor of a children’s hospital.  Thinking quickly, Grace started looking for a fuse box of some kind intent on hitting it with her malfunction spell.  She didn’t because she remembered that it was a children’s hospital and shutting off the power was probably not a good idea. 

Her next idea was to use her smoke spell to make it look like the hospital was on fire so they would have to evacuate.  But then she didn’t do that either because she realized that evacuating a children’s hospital was probably even worse for the patients than the power going off.   

She was pacing around uncertainly and whispering “fuck, fuck, fuck” to herself when a dude propped open a door to smoke, looked at her as if to say “You need in?” and then waved her through when she nodded.  Once inside, her finding spell led her to the morgue.   

Grace stopped for a second and thought “Jesus Christ, children’s hospitals have morgues.”  Of course they do, but it’s not something you think about.   

In the morgue, she found him.  He’s one of those old guys that looks old because of his long white hair.  If he colored his hair or just cut it shorter, you wouldn’t think of him as an old guy, you’d think he was in pretty good shape for an old-ER fellow.  He was crouched down in the corner and he was crying.  

That threw Grace off her game.  That’s not what you expect when you corner the evil bug necromancer. 

He looked at her piteously and begged for her help.  He said that he could only fight off the control of the inspect spirit for a few minutes at a time.  He asked her to kill him before it took over again and he hurt anyone else.   

Grace said that she had a better way.  She could help him, or her friend could anyway.  She was flummoxed but she managed to grasp onto that thread.  She could save him with Christie’s help.  She helped him up and texted Christie to meet her outside.   

Grace thinks she’s paranoid.  And she is in some ways.  But she’s a sucker for helping people. 

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