A/N: This is the final story in the "Niche" series. I'll still be producing more FI tales, but it may be a while before the next one appears, as I'm finally beginning serious work on a book I hope will be published, using most of the original characters from these stories and the ones I published on FictionPress. If publication somehow miraculously pans out, I'll post it here first! In the meantime, enjoy this latest adventure.


§ § § - November 17, 2008

Christian and Leslie paused in the foyer of their house to listen; the silence was a surprise, to say the least, but they had finally ascertained the night before that Karina and Tobias did indeed have the stomach bug Leslie and several others had suffered previously. "They must be asleep still," Christian mused when the quiet stretched out, stepping out of his shoes as he spoke. "Although I'm a little surprised Susanna hasn't emerged."

"She could be sleeping too," Leslie suggested. "But then...where are Ingrid and Margareta? I could see Margareta sleeping in, but Ingrid's always up when we come back."

A mew floated across the room from somewhere, and they looked at each other and started to laugh. "Well, Magic's here, at least," Christian observed. "Let's go check on them and find out what's happening around here. If we're going to have houseguests later, I'd rather they didn't catch what Tobias and Karina have." He leaned into the kitchen doorway and tossed a pile of mail onto the table for later examination. "So...I presume you and Mr. Roarke saw Ivar when he left a little while ago."

His offhanded tone didn't fool Leslie. "We did. He looked a bit the worse for wear. You left quite a colorful bruise on his lower left jaw."

Christian's grin looked a little too self-satisfied, and she snickered at sight of it; he winked. "Just a little souvenir, you might say. Well, he kept saying he wanted to get a rise out of me. I hope he's satisfied now. Did he say anything?"

"All he said was, 'Well, the food was good anyhow,' and then he turned around and walked off without so much as a farewell. I was going to comment so that Father wouldn't understand me, but I couldn't remember the jordiska for 'good riddance'."

Christian burst out laughing. "Too bad I wasn't there, I certainly would have had a few things to say. Ah well, perhaps Ivar and I really were never meant to be friends beyond our childhoods...though it occurs to me there must have been something left from his point of view, if in the end he allowed Pelle to talk him into coming. But I'm through trying to psychoanalyze Ivar Claesson. What should we do about breakfast?"

Leslie opened her mouth to reply at the exact moment a shriek reverberated through the first-floor rooms. She and Christian stared at each other; then they half-ran across the living room and down to the guest suite, where Margareta was sitting up in bed, eyes focused entirely elsewhere, frantically swooping both arms around her head and begging, "Go away, get away!" in jordiska.

"She's hallucinating again," Christian said and lunged over to the bed, grabbing both his niece's arms in an attempt to still her. "Magga, du får slutta med det! Det finnes inget alls, forstår du mej? Lugna dej nu."

His efforts to calm her down punched through after a few more firm comments, and Margareta gradually stilled, opening her eyes and peering cautiously around her before blowing out a relieved breath. "They're gone now, thank fate." She closed her eyes briefly, groaned and flopped back onto the pillow. "And this is only Day Two."

"What were you seeing?" Christian asked.

"Huge insects," Margareta said and shuddered. "It was like the locust infestations you sometimes hear about on the news in other countries. But they were attacking me."

Susanna appeared in the doorway then and grabbed Leslie's hand with both of hers. "How come you were screaming, Magga?" she asked her cousin.

Margareta smiled at the little girl. "I just thought I saw something that wasn't really there," she said. "But I'm all right now, Susanna. Did you just get up?"

Susanna nodded. "I've been awake a long time, though. I was just playing with my dolls." She turned her small face up to Leslie. "Mommy, I think Ingrid's sick. I looked in her room and she was still sleeping and she had the covers way up over her head. And her face looked like this." She scrunched up her own features till her parents and cousin laughed.

"Wonderful," Leslie murmured. "I guess the stomach thing got around to Ingrid too. Well, we'll let everybody sleep as long as they can. Do you want some breakfast?"

Susanna agreed eagerly, and Christian and Leslie took her out to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for her, themselves and Margareta. But as they passed by the spiral staircase, the adults heard a suspicious noise from somewhere upstairs, and both stopped short to stare warily at each other. "What did that sound like to you?" Christian asked.

Susanna answered for her mother. "Like somebody throwing up!"

"It's gonna be a long day," Leslie sighed, and Christian conceded with a rueful nod as he led the way up the stairs to see what had happened. Susanna followed, perversely eager to get a look at whatever mess had just been created; when it turned out to be Tobias, she stood in the doorway giggling till Tobias, on his way to the bathroom to be cleaned up, got angry and gave his sister a good kick in the shin. The squabble that followed seemed to belie Tobias' illness, and Christian had to put a stop to it so that he could get Tobias into the bathroom while Leslie set about the nasty business of cleaning Tobias' bed.

By lunchtime Margareta was on her cell phone with the directors of charities she was associated with in Lilla Jordsö; Karina, whose affliction was a good bit worse than that of her brother, was bedded down on the sofa in pajamas under a lightweight, washable cotton blanket, watching Katrina Kattunga DVDs while clutching her plush representation of the title character; and Tobias was unusually docile in that he was sitting on the floor near the French windows into the backyard, building something with Lego bricks. Ingrid seemed to have the bug worse than anyone else; she hadn't been able to get out of bed all day, not even to vomit, so that Christian had been forced to go through the garage till he found a plastic bucket she could use when she got sick. Christian himself was working on more sketches for websites; and Susanna was across the street playing with April Harding.

Christian had given Leslie the traditional jordisk recipe for ginger tea, and she was in the kitchen mixing up a second pitcher of it when the phone rang. She grabbed the 80s-style kitchen phone off the hook where it had been mounted on the wall; they had insisted on one of these old-fashioned phones from the time the house had been built, since Leslie was used to being caught working in the kitchen when someone called, and she wasn't willing to sacrifice counter space to the charger for a portable unit. "Enstads."

"Thought ye'd be there. I'm just checkin' in—how's your niece?" asked Rogan.

"She's doing all right. She did have one hallucination this morning," Leslie said, and told him what had happened.

"Any since?" Rogan asked.

"Not that she's mentioned to anyone. I'm sure she isn't the only one with that problem though. How many others in the group have reported hallucinations?"

There was a moment of silence, then Rogan mumbled, "I believe nine others so far have reported seein' things. Mind ye, I've not been in the greenhouse the entire day—I've had errands to run, so if more than that reported it, they may have gone to uncle. A couple of them've decided to check themselves into the hospital because their visions have been so severe and frightenin' to them. So Princess Margareta's seein' locusts now, is she?"

"I'm sure it'll get worse before it gets better," Leslie said with a little sigh, glancing into the living room via the passthrough. Christian had returned to his sketching, and Karina had fallen asleep on the sofa, her plush cat on the floor beside her. "I just hope that's all she gets. Two of the triplets and our housekeeper have come down with that stomach thing that's been going around."

Rogan's voice took on a measure of alarm. "What? Leslie, I think ye better check with uncle as to whether he can spare a bungalow. Princess Margareta's system'll have enough to deal with, without her bein' exposed to that on top of it. An' ye better do it quicklike. I know how contagious this thin's been gettin'. Ye an' Christian shoulda thought of it when the wee ones first took sick. Get her out o'there now an' hope it's not too late!"

"All right, all right," Leslie exclaimed, trying not to let Rogan's urgent tone spook her. "We will. I'll call Father right now." On his grumbled assent, she hung up, then dialed the main house and spoke with Roarke, who said there were no free bungalows just now, but he could house Margareta in Leslie's old room at the main house.

"She wouldn't disturb you?" Leslie asked, surprised.

"Of course not," Roarke said. "There's always someone in the kitchen at least, and she'll be able to report more quickly to someone who can help in the event her side effects worsen. Also, she'll be closer to the hospital if necessary. Yes, Rogan is right—bring her here at your earliest opportunity."

Leslie agreed, hung up and stashed the pitcher of ginger tea in the refrigerator before going to the living room. "Margareta," she said, "I just got a call from Rogan, and my father agrees with him—with the kids and Ingrid sick, they think you're better off staying at the main house till they get over this."

Margareta had been in the middle of dialing another call, and instead cut it off, looking surprised. "Mr. Roarke and Mr. Callaghan think I need to be away from them? I suppose in that case, it must be serious. Then let me pack, so that I'll have all my reading material with me."

"I'll help," Leslie offered.

"Did he say to take her this instant?" asked Christian in surprise from his chair.

Leslie glanced back at him and nodded. "Rogan seemed particularly insistent on it. I guess they don't want to take any chances. But when you think about it, it makes sense."

Christian glanced at the sofa and noticed for the first time that Karina had dozed off. "Well, then, while you're gone, I might have a little quiet time to get some more of this work done." He set aside the sketches and went to the eight-cube shelving unit just under the wall-mounted flatscreen television, taking out the DVD and shutting down the player. "I'm beginning to find myself singing along with Katrina Kattunga in any case." Leslie and Margareta laughed and headed back to the guest suite to pack.

Leslie duly delivered the princess to the main house and paused at her father's desk on her way out. "Did Rogan update you on the test group? He says nine others besides Margareta have reported hallucinations in varying degrees, and I guess two of them are in the hospital now with severe ones. It occurred to me on the way up here that if thornapple is such a hallucinogen, everybody should be experiencing this stuff."

"As with much else, some are more susceptible than others," Roarke said, "and it's still early in the trial. I don't think you need worry about that at the moment. You have two sick children, and your helper is down with the same illness; you and Christian have enough on your hands with that, so leave Margareta to Rogan and me."

She agreed a little reluctantly and departed, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel for the entire fifteen-minute ride back to the Enclave. She got inside to discover that both Karina and Tobias had thrown up again while she was gone, and Christian had managed to get only one of them to the bathroom in time. "I'm sorry, my Rose," he said, looking abashed and surprisingly out of his element, "but...I wasn't raised for this. There were always servants around to clean up these messes. I gave it my best try, but I'm afraid I didn't do very well." He gestured at the carpet near the sofa where Karina had lately been napping; there was a partially mopped-up mess there. "At least I got Tobias to the bathroom."

Leslie grinned and kissed him. "I'm not sure it would've been any different if I'd been here," she said. "Don't worry, my love. It's all part of dealing with sick little kids."

"What did Mr. Roarke tell you?" Christian asked.

"Not too much. I just told him what Rogan told me about the number of people going through mental hijinks. He said it's just as well Rogan told us to get Margareta out of the house. Not only will she be away from the sickrooms, but she'll be closer to the hospital if her side effects get that serious, and Mariki and her staff are always in the kitchen if Father isn't in. So if something comes up, she'll have help right away."

"Good," Christian said and sighed. "Well, in that case, I guess I'll stop worrying about Magga and see if I can do something constructive around here at least." He rolled his eyes at himself, and Leslie giggled and headed for the kitchen to gather cleaning supplies.