Switched Up Read online

  SWITCHED UP

  BOOK TWO: THE EUPHEMIA SAGE CHRONICLES

  ROSY FENWICKE

  WONDERFUL WORLD

  Copyright © 2022 by R Fenwicke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Prologue: Empty Nest. Book 3, The Euphemia Sage Chronicles.

  Chapter One, Empty Nest:

  Dedication and Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Rosy Fenwicke

  Also by Rosy Fenwicke

  Also by Rosy Fenwicke

  Also by Rosy Fenwicke

  PROLOGUE

  Rick liked his new name. Rick; short and snappy. The sound made him feel young again. If everything worked out as he hoped, he might keep Rick for a while. The surname was less important. No one called him Dr Shaker any more. No one called him doctor and without the honorific, the surname didn’t actually matter. It could be anything as long as it didn’t draw the attention of the authorities.

  It was late summer in Miramar, a suburb of Wellington on the flat land beside the airport. Rick was in his laboratory, putting the final touches to his creation. Any second now, the tablets he had spent the last three months formulating would drop out of the press, ready to give to his first subject. The woman did not appreciate the honor he was giving on her. The first person in the world to trial his brand new super-drug, she was standing outside the warehouse, smoking a cigarette, playing games on her phone, oblivious to the fact she was about to make history. Nancy was only interested in the money. She has made that abundantly clear when she banged on the side door earlier.

  ‘Alison said I had to come here to get my money,’ she said. She looked as uncouth as she sounded. Skinny, wrinkled beyond her fifty-something years and with a mean mouth, Nancy had stood at the door with her hands on her hips, demanding that he pay her straight away. It had surprised her to learn the money was not a gift but a payment for a service rendered.

  ‘What do you mean, service?’ she asked. She squinted warily at him. He suggested she come inside, but when he told her there was no one else in the warehouse, she said she’d stay outside. Thank you very much.

  It was not ideal to be conducting business in full view of the street, but this was an industrial area and the only vehicles were driven by tradesmen keen to get to their next job so they could clock off for the day. He had chosen this building precisely because there were no nosy neighbours taking an interest in what he might be doing.

  ‘I’m testing a new vitamin tablet,’ he replied. ‘All you have to do is swallow two and in a week report back to me on how you’ve been feeling.’

  She had backed away from him. ‘I don’t take no drugs. I just got out and I’m not going back.’

  ‘Don’t worry. This is a vitamin, not a drug. It’s perfectly safe, and it’s not illegal if that’s what’s concerning you.’

  ‘All the same, I’ll pass.’ She stubbed out her cigarette on the side of the building and tucked the butt into the top pocket of her denim jacket. Then she turned and walked down the short path to the pavement. He called to her. ‘I’ll throw in another two fifty.’

  Nancy stopped. ‘Two hundred and fifty on top of the two fifty, Alison promised?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You’ve got a deal,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent. I appreciate your help. Wait here and I’ll be back with the vitamins and the cash.’

  Rick had worked night and day for three months. He had discarded several prototypes to arrive at this recipe. If he was right, if the extracts of the blood Grant had taken from Euphemia Sage were potent, and if the combination with the other ingredients worked, then Nancy would exhibit the effects of the tablets in less than a week. It was going to be exciting to watch what she would do.

  He handed her the glass of water and two tablets.

  She held out her hand for the money. Rick shook his head. ‘Swallow first then open your mouth to show me they’ve gone.’ Nancy grimaced and did as she was told. Her breath stunk, most likely because of the broken teeth and swollen gums he observed when he checked, her mouth was empty. He watched as she swallowed the rest of the water to wash them all the way into her stomach.

  ‘Stay five minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you the money, then.’

  ‘I should have known you’d be like this. Like daughter, like father,’ she snorted. ‘All the same to me, I got nothing else to do.’ She took the extinct butt out of her pocket, coaxed it into shape between her nicotine-stained fingers, lit it, took a deep breath, and exhaled a plume of smoke in Rick’s direction.

  ‘The money’s for my daughter,’ she said by way of conversation.

  Rick nodded.

  ‘She’s pregnant.’

  Rick nodded again and checked his watch. ‘Five minutes.’ He counted five one hundred dollar bills, put them in an envelope and handed it to her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to come back in a week and tell you how I’m feeling?’

  ‘I don’t expect that will be necessary.’

  ‘How will you know if the vitamins have worked?’

  ‘I’m sure to hear one way or another.’

  Rick turned, went back inside and locked the door.

  Nancy stubbed out her cigarette with her foot, pocketed the envelope and went home to tell her daughter the good news.

  CHAPTER 1

  Euphemia Sage walked straight to the changing room in the darkened gym, opened her locker and took out the bag she’d put there the day before. It was early — 4.30 a.m. The staff wouldn’t arrive for another hour and she had the place to herself. Unzipping the bag, she looked at her latest disguise: a bus driver’s uniform — blue shirt, dark navy vest, ill-fitting navy trousers topped off with a wind jacket and peaked cap. The loose clothing slid easily over the leggi
ngs and merino top she wore for running.

  Last week it had been a road worker’s uniform. The month before, she’d been a paramedic. She wondered how long this disguise would last.

  For the past five months since the kidnapping and fire, the press had harassed her. Stop exaggerating, she thought. Jimmy Abrahams is hardly ‘the press’.

  A recent graduate of journalism school, Jimmy had informed her she was to be his fast track to fame and fortune. His plan was to prove to the world that a fifty-three-year-old woman living quietly in suburban Wellington, New Zealand, had actual superpowers. It would make his career, he would have it all — fame, fortune and respect. Working his way up the ranks by reporting community interest stories for the last remaining suburban newspapers was not for him. He had grand plans; he told her. In the meantime, if he had to stalk her every move, and in the process make her life a misery, then so be it.

  Most reporters had lost interest after the official press conference, following the kidnapping and fire. Together, she and Detective Inspector Dave Richards, who had been in charge of the incident when she had been shot and nearly died, had presented an explanation plausible enough to satisfy those members of the fourth estate who attended. Thankfully, the sensible ones discounted the rumours about her exploits as too fantastic for words. It wasn’t credible that a respected business consultant, a middle-aged woman who looked good for her age but who, on the face of it, was no spring chicken, could have done any of the deeds Jimmy insisted she had. There were no superheroes. Not in Wellington, the sedate capital city of New Zealand. ‘Plus, who’s ever heard of a menopausal superhero?’ Euphemia overheard one of the younger female journalists muttering as she left the room.

  The official police version of events worked well enough, and the press, scenting fresh news in the latest photo-op of the young Prime Minister and her new baby, packed up their laptops and moved on. At least, they all agreed, the PM was youthful and good-looking. ‘She’s what I call a real super woman,’ said the young journalist.

  Jimmy Abrahams, however, was convinced he was right and his colleagues were wrong. He waited for Euphemia outside her work. He attended all her public presentations, and when she took Petal, her slowcoach pug, for a walk in the evenings, he lurked half a block behind her, dodging behind trees and lampposts. He spent hours sitting in his beat-up VW outside the house, watching her comings and goings. Spotting him across the fruit and vegetable counter at the supermarket had been a seriously depressing moment. Until she saw him nonchalantly squeeze an overripe avocado and get covered in green mush.

  Concerned neighbours had called the police to report a young man hanging around the street. Informed he was only interested in Euphemia, they nodded and left it there. Mrs Johnson, two doors down, had taken him a thermos of tea and said she was happy for him to use her bathroom. The cat next door loitered around his car in the hope of a pat, or better still, a morsel of food tossed onto the road. Even Petal had been seen sidling over to his car, a greedy and expectant look on her face.

  Euphemia left for the gym earlier and earlier each morning. She was wide awake anyway. Since Rachel’s switch had triggered the changes in her body, she’d needed only two to three hours’ sleep at most to process the events of the day and to repair any physical damage. Not that she’d had to test herself, physically or mentally, since the fire. Life had been disappointingly uneventful and her services as a super woman (two words, lowercase) hadn’t been required. Meteors were not threatening the planet. Bank robbers were enjoying the summer break, and they had defused the potential conflict on the Korean peninsula for now. Sure, the Middle East remained a festering sore, but Euphemia knew enough to understand that an entire army of superwomen could not make the protagonists see sense.

  Initially, when she’d woken, alert and eager in the early hours of the morning, she tried to lie quietly in the darkness so as not to disturb Kenneth, her husband. It didn’t work. The merest hint of a hot flush and energy zinged through every fibre in her body. Some of her best ideas for Sage Consulting, their business, had come to her in the middle of the night. Clients’ problems became suddenly fixable, suddenly opportunities. She resisted the temptation to call them immediately and triumphantly announce her solutions. She fidgeted. She sighed. She rolled this way and that, heat radiating off her, until one night Kenneth sat up, turned on the light and demanded they sort out their sleeping arrangements once and for all.

  ‘This has to stop,’ he said. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  Euphemia had smiled at him. He was so handsome and commanding, even with his grey hair sticking up in all directions and his eyes bloodshot with fatigue and he smelled delicious. Kenneth always smelled good — that musky male night scent made her think of one thing and one thing only. She reached across and touched him under the sheets.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re awake. It means we can…‘

  ‘It means nothing,’ he said. He pushing her hand away. ‘It means I am tired, exhausted, and I need a good night’s sleep. Seven — hey, Euphemia, let’s go wild — eight hours’ sleep. In a row. Without interruption. Every night for a week. Sleep that I haven’t had since your damned switch got turned on.’

  Euphemia saw he was in no mood for what she had in mind. She lifted his arm and snuggled against him instead. When had his chest hair gone grey? She combed it between her fingers. It was so wiry and brittle. Once it had been soft and luxuriant. Looking up, she saw small tufts of hair in his nostrils. She was sure he didn’t have hairy nostrils when they married.

  ‘I can’t help it. I’m sorry, but I can’t,’ she said when he joggled her for an answer. ‘God knows I’ve tried. Two hours’ sleep, that’s all I need. After that I’m raring to go. Brain is on, and I want to get moving. I’m sorry I wake you. I’ve been trying so hard to be quiet.’

  ‘Maybe we should sleep in separate beds,’ Kenneth said. He yawned and rubbed the bristles on his chin. ‘Rooms, even. I can’t keep up with you, Euphemia, and I’ll go mad if this carries on.’

  ‘That’s a terrible idea. I couldn’t do it. I bet you couldn’t either.’

  Kenneth sighed and kissed her hair, hugging her into him. ‘You’re right. We’ve been married too long to change sleeping arrangements now. But you have to do something Euphemia. I’m worn out. Put your super woman thinking cap on and find a way we can live normally with these powers of yours.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she whispered.

  ‘Now, can I go to sleep? Please?’

  CHAPTER 2

  The answer came through the mailbox in the form of a flyer for a 24-hour gym that had opened near the offices of Sage Consulting in the CBD. And it would have been the perfect solution if that pesky reporter hadn’t turned up on the spin bike next to hers two days later.

  ‘Mrs Sage, I need to ask you some questions about the fire. You were observed climbing into a burning building, then emerging five minutes later carrying an unconscious man on your shoulders. How is that possible?’

  His voice had echoed around the empty room long after Euphemia retreated to the female changing room. She half expected him to follow her into the shower. He was so persistent. Luckily, the CCTV surveillance convinced the manager she was being harassed, and he barred Jimmy Abrahams from the premises.

  Theoretically, she should then have been able to exercise in peace, but he stationed himself outside, in his VW, from where he could monitor the entrances front and back. She appealed to the police. They could do nothing. He was in his own car, legally parked on a public street. He hadn’t touched her, and according to the Press Council, to whom she also complained, any right to privacy on her part should not interfere with publication of significant matters of public record or public interest. So that’s what she was now? Public interest?

  Euphemia might be stuck with him, but that didn’t mean she was going to make it easy. Hence her new routine. She started sliding out of bed around 2 a.m. so as not to wake Kenneth. In the bathroom, she put on her running gear then tiptoe downs
tairs in her socks. She left through the front door so as not to wake Petal. Little chance of that, but just in case. Then she ran as fast as she could to the office using the back lanes. The exhilaration of those night time runs was liberating. She could fully connect to the strength the switch had given her, but being only five kilometres to the office, the feeling was over much too soon.

  She would do a few hours’ work, after which she went to the gym where she pushed herself to the max on the machines. A month went by and even this wasn’t enough. When the manager requested, she pop into the office for a chat. It had been tricky explaining why the cameras were always off when she was there. There was no way she wanted him to find out why the cables on the crossover apparatus had snapped at the same time. The wear on the spin bikes was a whole other explanation that sounded unlikely even to Euphemia.

  Knowing she would have to wind back her workouts, she added another run to her routine, which she did after the gym. Jimmy was waiting for her and he was fit for a man with no superpowers, albeit he had youth on his side. And he had his phone, ready and eager to record any excessive activity on her part. Limited to her pre-menopausal pace through the city streets, he kept up with her, without breaking into a sweat, all the while bombarding her with questions. Gradually she would ramp up the pace until she watched him turn red, slow down and eventually when he could take no more, stop.