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Chapter Text

Inheritance

Episode 1: A Witch Is Born

Henry I

“You really think it was a nightmare?” Grace Mitchell asked her older brother, sounding younger than her twenty years. She settled against the back of her chair, seeking safety in the rigid, blue, plastic backrest, as if in supporting her physical spine, it also supported her figurative spine. Her movement shifted the small stack of old textbooks holding up one of the legs; one of Pru’s old workbooks moved just enough to test the delicate balance of the table, and Grace watched her mug slide, slowly, towards the edge.

A slight sigh escaped Henry, and he reached over with one, long arm and held the tabletop aloft just long enough for Grace to replace the top book. “Portia dying and my two closest friends killing each other? Sounds like a nightmare to me,” he quipped as he held the table in place, doing his best to act as the protective brother only one of his sisters appreciated—though she, at least, was right in front of him. It had been two long weeks since Henry’s dream and he was still rehashing it, this time with his sister, Grace.

“Have you told Pru or Mel yet?”

Henry shook his head. “No, and I’m not going to. They’d both take it…personally, and I don’t want to be in the middle of a feud.”

“That’s the reason you haven’t told them that you saw them killing each other? You don’t want to be in the middle?” Grace pressed, sounding unimpressed.

Henry shrugged. “You know me, Gracie. Always looking to avoid work.” He forced out two short laughs.

When she didn’t respond, he continued awkwardly. “They get along pretty well now—whatever changes that has to mean a hell of a lot of work.”

“Which is why it’s a good thing my crazy subconscious made it all up.” His last sentence began in a forced cheerful tone, but by the end, it was flat and uninspired. His sister was a natural skeptic, and he a terrible liar.

Grace was silent for another moment. “It wasn’t a nightmare, was it?”

Henry thought of the crow’s flight through the warehouse—all the blood and pain, his family desperate and angry, and unimaginable evil more powerful than he could comprehend. “I want it to be, Gracie, I really do.”

Grace fiddled with her coffee mug. Uncertainty weighed down every crevice in her face. For a second, she looked twice her age. And then the questions began.

“So, in your vision, you were the crow?”

 Even speaking much quicker than he normally would, Henry barely kept up to her.

“No. I was seeing what the crow saw, but I wasn’t the crow itself.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to believe me.”

She hummed. “And it was in colour?”

“Yes.”

“And you saw yourself?”

“Correct.”

“Neither of which happens in your typical vision.”

Henry sighed, and wished for the umpteenth time that he could orb his premonitions into peoples’ minds. It would sure beat having to explain the few details he could remember—and quite frankly, he didn’t want to remember them—ad nauseum. “Grace, after twelve years of dealing with them, I think I can recognize a premonition when I get one.”

She moved to speak, and he cut her off.

“Even when it’s from a weird viewpoint and in colour, and all those other things they don’t mention in premonition manual.”

He noted the uneven pace of his sister’s breath, the ever-so-slight shaking in her fingers and the way her shoulders inched forward, as if she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a ball. He regretted his earlier tone. “Look,” he added, leaning forward to catch Grace’s fidgety eye. “Mom and the Aunts know about it. They’re taking care of everything.”

“They can’t look after us forever. And judging by your premonition, that date is a lot closer than we think.”

“Grace…”

She flung her hands out, though in such limited her space, both hands nearly brushed the walls. “Where was mom, Henry? Auntie Phoebe and Aunt Piper? They wouldn’t just leave us to demons—especially demons who were winning. Pru and Mel… and you said Portia looked like she was dead. We’re not ready for this,” Grace blabbered, her voice gradually softening until it was no more than a whisper.

He opened his mouth to respond. And then shut it. Words failed him for a moment and he had to think hard. “I’m not going to say it wasn’t a premonition, because it was, but I will say that there’s no way it will play out like that. Even if she died, and there’s no way that’s happening, you know mom’d come back as a ghost before she let us battle demons alone—let alone Aunt Piper. Pru and Mel have been living together for two years now and they haven’t hurt each other yet, and as for Portia… you and Astrid were healing her--- you were saving her. I don’t know what that battle was about, but it’ll do us no good to panic over it.”

She stared at him. “It seems like the perfect thing to panic over.”

He tried again. “Look, the nine of us don’t really hang out in industrial warehouses all that often. Or ever. The minute we get close to one, I’ll recognize the place and whisk us all away like the superhero I am.”

Some of the fear dissipated from Grace’s movements as his words finally settled on her. She let a tiny smile tilt her lips as she recalled her brother as he was at age twelve. “The Matthews Mathematician, was it?”

He scowled and corrected her quickly. “The Mighty Mitchell.”

Grace sighed softly. “Well, this job might be too big, even for the Mighty Mitchell and Halliwell Hunter. She swallowed a gulp of her coffee with a grimace. “Are you scared?”

“A little,” Henry replied, truthfully, thinking of the sleepless nights since his vision. “But, hey, we have time before all this goes down. Might as well enjoy it. Especially if it’s the last we get.”

Grace chuckled lightly, most of the fear gone from her voice.

She nodded slowly, fingers idly twirling a spoon in her now lukewarm cup of coffee. Henry watched her take in her surroundings, likely commandeering a few moments to calm herself and work through her problems. Her eyes slid first to the remainder of the kitchen, where the floor was cheap, peeling linoleum and extensive UV damage had faded the painted walls from an acceptable venetian red to, in Grace’s frequently voiced opinion, the ugliest colour ever known. Likewise, the cupboards, once a light brown, were chipped and worn, revealing the cheap wood underneath equally cheap varnish.

Breaking the silence, the fridge screeched like a dying cat.

“This place is a dump,” Grace said casually, forgoing the previous conversation for one she was a little more comfortable with.

And it was. The living room consisted of two padded chairs held together with liberal amounts of duct tape, a long, grey, threadbare couch, a single coffee table usually covered in miscellaneous papers, books, and the occasional athame, a desolate lamp in the corner gathering dust, and a television that, even purchased at a garage sale for the meager contents of Melinda’s change pocket, was the most expensive item in the room.

Down the hall sat two tiny bedrooms, a third that was barely larger than a closet, and a small, clean bathroom.

Overall, Grace’s brother and cousins lived in a dump.

Henry sighed. The ‘it’s cheap’, ‘it’s close to work, not that that matters’, ‘the windows don’t leak that much’, and ‘having a klepto neighbour provides a small measure of amusement from time to time’ went unsaid.

Grace laughed. “Don’t give me that face, Hen.”

He softened his face and rolled his eyes instead, but brought his expression back to a serious visage long enough to make a request. “Hey, Grace, can you not mention the pertinent parts to Mel or Pru? I wasn’t kidding when I called it a bad idea.”

He caught her look and hurriedly amended, “I’ll talk to them, later. Much later. Preferably when they’re both happy drunk and won’t remember.”

The last bit he muttered, just low enough that Grace could only catch half the words.

She rolled her eyes. “Do you know how frustrating it is to me that you stare down at imminent disaster and yet refuse to plan ahead or do anything about it at all?”

Henry shrugged, preferring to not answer her question and hopefully let the conversation drop. He leaned back in his chair, letting the backrest support most of his weight. The plastic buckled slightly.

Grace’s eyes fell to her phone, where soft white numbers displayed the time, and she stood up suddenly. “Class starts in forty-five minutes. I better go. Thanks for the talk, Hen.”

“Feel better?”

“A little,” she said with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “There’s not much I can do anyway. I’ll just… trust in mom and our Aunts.”

She made to leave, but stopped suddenly. “Oh! Mom wanted me to remind you to be at Aunt Phoebe’s place by six-thirty. And bring ice.”

“Bring ice?” he asked incredulously. “You’re telling me to bring ice. How about I just bring you?”

Grace laughed outright, and disappeared into a shower of blue and white orbs, lasting just long enough to shout as she left: “Personal gain, Hen!”

And then he was left alone, trying to figure out just how to get home from work, shower and change into clean clothes, pick up ice, and then head to his Aunt’s in a given allotment of twenty-two minutes.

Chapter Text

Charmed Ones I

The stale stench of old air permeated the Attic and forgotten surfaces held a thin layer of dust. Here and there, an errant finger or hand had left a trail in the dust: a doodle on an end table, a handprint on the chest of miscellaneous magical supplies, a vague smudge where an elbow dragged across the top of a bookshelf. The only spot that stood out in the room left forgotten for two decades was the brief path to a large, hand-bound book on a wooden podium.

The door swung open suddenly, letting out a low creak, as if to declare to the occupants just how long it had been since last use. Three women stepped through the threshold, a certain weight in their steps that came with confidence. They took a few steps in and then paused.

“Geez, Piper, have you heard of a vacuum?” Paige asked, waving the small cloud of kicked-up dust from her face.

Piper shot her sister a dark look. “I had three kids to raise and a restaurant to run. Something had to give.”

Paige took a quick look around. “What did you do? Move all the dust in here, mite by mite?”

Deciding to join in, Phoebe added impishly, “I think your kids are all raised up. Time to pick up that feather duster, lady.”

“Ha ha,” Piper intoned. “Excuse me if I was a little grateful to see the dust collect in here.” She stood, hand on hips, silent for half a minute, daring her sisters to comment. When they didn’t, she nodded. “Now, if you two are done, we have a mission to complete.”

With that, she headed for the podium, opened the Book of Shadows, and let her head fall to an decline. Her long, brown hair formed a curtain around her face, blocking all view but to the book, but she spared no time to brush it back.

With deft hands, she skipped the first few, welcoming pages in the Book, and began to flip. She gave each page a cursory glance, determined the magical being described therein wasn’t the ones from the premonition, and moved onto the next. Hundreds of demons flashed by, most of whom she and her sisters had encountered in their decades as the Charmed ones—and most of those she’d helped vanquish. The pages represented years worth of struggle and triumph—their entire history with magic—but Piper gave them little more regard than a yes-or-no identification.

A few steps away from their sister, Phoebe and Paige shot each other a quick glance. Paige raised an eyebrow and Phoebe offered a slight shrug, somehow parsing a conversation in twitches and simple motions. Phoebe sat gracefully upon the old sofa while Paige abandoned the conversation altogether. She meandered over to the potions cupboard and began to pull out bottles, scrubbing their stoppers of dust and checking labels, one by one.

“We are low in most of these,” Paige called out after a few moments.

Phoebe seemed torn between the two conversations. “I have some at my place if we’re in a jam,” she said over her shoulder to Paige. Then, to Piper, she added, “Piper, you’ve been through the Book twice already. Junior’s demons aren’t in there.

“Now they’re my son’s demons,” Paige muttered dryly, staring down at two half-filled bottles in her hand. Her eyes furrowed, and she scrutinized the bottles, one after another.

“I think the rosemary and lavender leaves have switched vials. These are wrong,” the youngest Charmed One commented, holding both bottles, label side out, towards Phoebe.

Piper hummed in inattention. “Are we sure they weren’t Ballast Demons?” One of her hands held the page mid-flip.

Phoebe sighed. “I liked life better as the youngest child,” she said to herself, and pulled herself up from the couch.

“The Ballast Demons’ skin turns golden after the sun goes down, so yes, we’re sure it wasn’t them,” she recited from memory, as she walked over to the potion cabinet, and took a brief look at the vials in Paige’s hand.

Perhaps to a completely unseasoned viewer, the two herbs might seem the same, but to anyone who knew anything about the two, the differences were clear. “Yep, those are wrong. We’re either infested with gremlins or it could be the work of one of the kids. My vote is the kids. Now can we please focus on one thing at a time, preferably the woman currently convinced half the underworld was trying to kill us in a single vision.”

Paige lifted her head, and followed Phoebe’s gaze to where Piper was still flipping through the Book. She gave a slight nod and allowed Phoebe to gently pry the rosemary and lavender bottles from her hands. Phoebe put the bottles back into their rightful places in the cabinet with a firm hand.

“They’re still in the wrong bottles,” Paige pointed out, and smiled when Phoebe glared at her. “Later, got it.”

With a slight tug, Phoebe pulled Paige towards the podium. They stood near the front, allowing them an upside-down view of their ancestral tome. From the couch and cabinet, Piper’s movements had appeared fast certainly, but up close, she seemed even more focused. She reminded them less of the Piper they knew and more of the Matriarch they knew she could be. A frightening intent, superhuman Matriarch, but a Matriarch nevertheless.

“You know how this works, Piper,” Phoebe said, not unkindly, “If we’re not meant to know something—even the identity of a demonic attacker—no amount of scouring the Book will help. These demons might not even exist yet.”

Paige stared at the top of Piper’s head. “Or maybe we’re not the ones meant to find out.”

This was a conversation the three had been having for years, sometimes with their husbands, sometimes without. Really, they’d begun arguing about it before any of them even had children, and two peaceful decades hadn’t allowed them to come to a full agreement.

Piper stopped at the current page detailing the not-so-mythical Hydra and looked both her sisters in the eye, finally settling on Phoebe. “It’s too early for this. For gods’ sake, Wyatt is only 28—Portia just turned 18—it’s too early for them.” Stubbornly, she looked out the window to where the children next door raced across on scooters and across the street, a group of friends Melinda’s age laughed and hassled each other as they walked down the sidewalk.  “They deserve more time. We all do.”

Her fingers splayed over the open pages, and clenched slightly. The pressure wrinkled the pages, but when she released her grip, the puckering gradually smoothed until the pages were unchanged.

Phoebe tried to offer a comeback—something pithy and wise—but the truth was, nothing Piper said was something she hadn’t also thought. But as she waffled over her words, Paige stepped up. “We can’t protect them forever. We’re lucky we had as many years as we did,” Paige replied.

“Well, I can try,” Piper shot back.

Phoebe shook her head. “It won’t work,” she said sombrely. “We already know that.”

“Junior didn’t see us fighting in the battle,” Paige added.

Piper scoffed. “Well, that’s not happening. The only way I wouldn’t be there protecting my kids is if I’m—

“Dead?” Phoebe supplied. “Piper, don’t be so morbid. There’s always a reason with premonitions. Maybe this is our hint to step back and see if the kids can handle it. And if they can’t…”

“Then we will,” Paige finished.

For a long moment, Phoebe and Paige stared at Piper and Piper at them.

“Oh, all right,” Piper concluded, closing the Book with a loud thump. She did not look pleased with what she was saying. “If you two are going to gang up on me, I’ll back off.”

Before her sisters could consider it a total victory, she added, “For now.” Piper pointed one finger at Paige, apparently using her as conduit of everything she felt wrong with the conversation. “But if you two or the Elders or whatever magical deity is dictating our lives like this thinks I’m going to just stand back and watch our kids get hurt because that’s what magic decided, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Hurt flashed across Phoebe’s face momentarily. “Piper, I don’t want anyone to get hurt and I’m certainly not suggesting we just throw the kids to the wolves. But denying the inevitable is only going to hurt them more in the long run. Us, too. Look at what happened to Grams when she tried to strip our powers.”

“Phoebe,” admonished Piper, to which Phoebe only shrugged in return.

Apparently the distance of three decades had allowed Phoebe to find some measure of dark humour in the situation, as she mouthed, “Massive heart attack,” to Paige, who did not need an explanation. It surely helped that Grams was a simple spell and a few candles away.

“Which raises another good point,” Phoebe continued, sounding more sure of herself this time. “The kids aren’t the Charmed Ones. They don’t have a destiny of defeating the greatest evil ahead of them.”

“Except for Wyatt,” Piper interrupted.

“Except Wyatt,” Phoebe amended, “But all we know is that he’s going to be a massive force for good. And I’m not sure of you’ve noticed, he’s a pretty big force for good already—slaying a few minor demons might just push him over the edge into ‘destiny fulfilled’.” The last statement she sounded less sure of.

“Uh huh,” Piper droned.

“Don’t worry, Piper,” Paige said, coming up beside Piper and throwing one arm over her shoulder affectionately. “I have one ear in the heavens and one on the ground. I can hear trouble coming from miles away.”

“Now, come on,” Phoebe insisted. “We have spent enough time in this attic for two lifetimes. I’m buying lattes.”

Chapter Text

Wyatt I

Sometimes Wyatt Halliwell could just sense something amiss. He wasn’t sure if it was his Whitelighter half speaking or just some innate part of him, but from his earliest memories, Wyatt seemed to know when someone was upset. Not to the extent that empathy could be added to his exhausting list of powers, but just enough to know that not all was right.

It was as much exhausting as it was a blessing, because if something wasn’t right, then he wasn’t right.

Something wasn’t right.

Wyatt abandoned his plan to spend the latter half of his lunch break flirting with the barista just as quickly as he had made the plan in the first place as his eyes sought out the source of the jingle in his spine.

The tiny café had an impressive number of patrons, even for the lunch hour. Wyatt spared a moment to suss them all out. Not the woman staring out into the street—the corners of her lips twitched upwards every now and then—and Wyatt guessed the man seated at the table next to hers was grimacing from the unexpected heat to his drink. The couple on a date clearly preferred to be left alone, the barista’s greeting was even and professional, but not overly forced, and the three teenagers at the table across from him were engrossed in whatever the phone in the middle girl’s hands displayed.

His eyes shifted to the storefront windows, where he immediately spotted his target: a man, possibly early thirties, with unkempt hair months due for a cut and clothes, faded and distressed from washing. It hardly took an empath to recognize that the man sitting alone on a bench with his head cradled in his hands was in distress.

Wyatt exited the shop without considering not interfering and did his best not to make a completely obvious beeline to the man. Instead, he crossed the street at a different juncture, and meandered over to the bench, sitting down in a resigned motion, as if he, too, were waiting. The man gave a brief glance but otherwise did not react.

Wyatt’s fingers swiped idly over his phone, running through a few new messages and checking off the middle items in his schedule. Then, he counted to ten, and deemed it safe enough to speak.

“Those wildfires, huh?” he commented idly. Wyatt tried to keep his voice smooth, but the words came out stilted, with too much emphasis placed on irregular syllables and a hesitating end that wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. He even croaked, a tiny bit. Lying was not his strong suit.

The man gave him a look of shock that quickly faded into uncertainty. He twisted his head to look for someone else that Wyatt might have been speaking to, and when it dawned on him that he was the intended recipient, flatly muttered, “Yeah.” The words fell, heavy and low, leeching as much energy from the speaker as an entire speech.

Undeterred, Wyatt pressed on. This time, he spoke from the heart and he sounded natural. “All those people who lost their homes… It makes you want to grab a hose and help fight.”

The Elders, however, had been very strict in their recommendation that the fires, originating from a natural bolt of lightning, should not be put out of even alleviated using magic. The thought kept him up at night, though, and he dreamed of orbing in there and setting the land right with a wave of his hand.

His speaking companion, however, thought his desire an odd one, as he gave Wyatt his full attention for a moment and then dropped his head just as fast. Wyatt didn’t let the attention put him down. The man, after all, wasn’t magical—probably—and had far more concerns about his personal safety.

“That’d be one way to end it,” the man muttered, low enough that Wyatt almost missed the statement altogether.

The words sent a chill down Wyatt’s spine. “What do you mean?” he asked, forcibly.

The man backtracked quickly. “It’s nothing.”

Wyatt frowned and twisted in his seat to fully look at the man. He had his head titled down the opposite end of the street, desperate to avoid eye contact. Even his body angled away from Wyatt, with one elbow leaning on the armrest and one foot barely making contact with the cement underneath.

“That was more than nothing,” Wyatt pressed. “End what?”

Horns blared not far down the street where a teenage boy suddenly darted across, using one hand on the stopped car to vault himself onto the opposite sidewalk. The smiling woman exited the café, still lost in thought and headed south. Somewhere, angry music leaked out of idle speakers, and his phone beeped to indicate a message received. Wyatt let none of it distract him.

“Look,” the man said, slightly irritated now. For the first time, they faced each other. The man’s eyes were blue, nearly the same hue as Wyatt’s. He had a pronounced widow’s peak and it made his face look gaunt. “I don’t know you.” So quit talking, Wyatt assumed that sentence finished.

Wyatt stuck out his hand immediately. “Wyatt Halliwell; nice to meet you. I work at Laughlin Financial and I volunteer once a week at Whispering Pines Senior Lodge. Now you know me.”

The man gave a dark laugh. Wyatt retracted his hand.

“End what?” Wyatt asked again.

“Why do you care?” the man spat out.

“Because I like helping people.”

Unlike his ability to sense distress, Wyatt knew this desire was not some innate part of him. Another Wyatt had not liked helping people; he had liked hurting people. He had been a big enough monster that the idea of wrenching apart time was preferable to his continuation. (“But why did other Chris come back?” asked twelve-year-old Melinda following the truncated story. “Because he wanted to make the future a better place,” his mother had explained, but Piper’s eyes involuntarily flickered to him and he knew.) He had been that Wyatt once, and no matter what his parents claimed, he could be the monster again.

“Look, I’m not interested in whatever scheme you’re pushing, magic pill you’re selling or religion you claim will help.”

Perhaps he had come on too strong. A part of Wyatt realized he was being intrusive and quite frankly, creepy, but he pressed on regardless.

Hands held up, he trusted in the truth. “No ulterior motives here. Just a conversation.”

When the man didn’t reject the notion immediately, he asked, one more time, “End what?”

Wyatt watched what little resistance the man had crumble with a small tinge of guilt. He was after all, putting more pressure on the distressed man. Was he really helping? Or was he being selfish, demanding a random person on the street reveal his private feelings just so Wyatt could feel better about his day? Would his father have done the same? For a moment, Wyatt panicked and considered dropping the matter altogether, but the damage was done. The least he could do was allow the conversation to continue and maybe help a little by the end.

“All my problems,” the man answered, trusting in cryptic replies to leave him a way out of the conversation. But he must have come to the same conclusion as Wyatt—he’d already started, might as well finish, because he then explained, “A fire at this point would probably help more than hurt.”

“How?” Wyatt didn’t add that the statement was slightly callous to the victims of the fire, who had lost everything. Judgement wasn’t needed here.

“My house is run-down: the roof leaks, three windows are broken and the ac hasn’t worked in months. I can’t afford to fix any of it, or the fridge or my car. My wife was laid off and now she’s just angry all the damn time. My son is fighting at school and my daughter needs a special, expensive tutor. And to top it all off, my cousin’s just-until-my-buddy’s-spare-room-is-cleaned stay has been going on for three months now.”

The words tumbled out like sand escaping from an hourglass.

Animated, the man waved his hands. “You know the dumbest thing? The house, my wife, my kids, and the thing that stresses me out the most is my cousin’s inability to ever turn off a damn light.”

Wyatt nodded and leaned forward a fraction. “That must feel overwhelming.”

“I feel like I’m six feet under,” the man acknowledged.

“I can’t help with any of that, unless you also need help with your taxes,” admitted Wyatt with a short, apologetic smile.

Unsurprised, the man shook his head. “Nah, I got a buddy who does mine.”

Wyatt shrugged off the refusal. He thought of his father: displaced through time and still the eternal optimist. He tried to offer the same enthusiasm—the same sense of hope. “Well, I can say I know you’ll get through this.”

He was met with disbelief. The man eyed up Wyatt in a quick motion and summarily decided that being younger, Wyatt couldn’t possibly know anything about the real struggles in life. He was right, partially. Wyatt had a stable job and well-kept apartment. He had no spouse and no kids. In many ways, the struggles he’d faced had been the run-of-the-mill minor quakes of life, not even in the same magnitude of what the man and thousands others faced every day. But then again, none of them faced demons and the burden of a twice-blessed destiny, either. “And how do you know that?”

Wyatt smiled. “Because I can see that you’re fighting, and fighting is the most important thing. The world can throw some awful shit at us sometimes, maybe most of the time, but we’re stronger than we think.”

He was glad his siblings weren’t around. The words were corny and fit right with an after-school special. He might as well have thrown in a “believe in yourself” and “follow your dreams”. The teasing would be unbearable.

The man didn’t laugh. “It exhausting, though. Fighting.” Not exactly an encouraging response, but it was something raw and real. Wyatt could work with raw and real.

“I know,” Wyatt said softly, trusting in the man to put aside his skepticism and just believe. “My dad always says that when it feels like you’re suffocating the first step should be to take a deep breath, and the second is to triage.”

“Triage… that’s when doctors focus on the worst first, right?”

“More or less.” The man wouldn’t care that Leo had learned it during his time with the military; No, that was a can of worms best left closed. Better to let him think Leo a doctor. “I can’t say it always works. Sometimes you’re left with a bigger mess than you started—"

Like his first night babysitting while his parents had a night out. He’d begun with a bleeding sister, a brother with gum in his hair, and his mother’s favourite serving dish in pieces on the floor and ended up with a bleeding sister climbing on top of the roof, a half-shaved, black-eyed brother orbing to Tahiti, his mother’s favourite serving dishes in pieces on the floor and his father’s razor clogged with gum and unusable.

“—But most of the time… most of the time shit’s easier to tackle when you have a plan.”

Like the final month with Leanne and the looming demands of school, work, and his destiny. Fitting his classes, schoolwork, and works shifts into a concrete schedule (destiny being unassailable) had made it very clear that he and Leanne were grasping onto the wisps of their former relationship. Somehow, seeing the results laid out in black ink had made the shame and guilt bearable until relief set in.

The man let a long breath escape from his nose. “My wife. I need to talk to my wife.”

For a brief moment, Wyatt wondered if the man was magical after all, or simply very apt when it came to coincidences. “I’d say that’s a very good start. Unfortunately, I don’t have much qualification in this arena. You’d be better to speak to my Aunt Phoebe. But I’m sure your wife’s firing and her anger aren’t unrelated.”

“There’s not much I can do about that,” the man grunted.

“No, there’s not,” agreed Wyatt, at a momentary loss. He felt awkward now. “But you’re a team. Help support her now and maybe she’ll help support you with the rest?”

He hated how uncertain he felt, but as he’d already established, he wasn’t an empath and he had no idea how the wife felt. It was a wild shot in dark.

A shot that resonated on receptive ears, at least. Gradually, the disheartened sloop in the man’s shoulders evened and Wyatt watched the gears turning in his head.

“Thank you, Wyatt—was it?” he said. “For listening.”

Wyatt smiled. “You’re welcome.”

Others gradually filled in, waiting for the approaching bus. Wyatt took this as his cue to leave—well, that and the actual cue on his phone: the time. His lunch hour was reaching an imminent end.

He stood and offered his hand out to the man once more. This time the offer was accepted and they shook hands once.

“Good luck!” Wyatt offered and let the man resume his day, hopefully with a few fewer metaphorical demons dogging his step.

The man offered a parting wave and just like that, they were out of each other’s lives.

Wyatt picked up a quick pace, letting his long legs take the lengthened steps they were capable of as he hurried down the streets back to his office. Most of the crowd on the sidewalk kept out of his way, either walking in the opposite direction or too slow to keep up with him. All except one. A man, dressed in a pure white shirt that contrasted sharply with this dark skin, fell into step with Wyatt two blocks into his route and when Wyatt stopped at a crosswalk waiting for the indication to cross, so did the man.

He did not make eye contact, merely staring into the crowded street ahead of them, but when he spoke, it was obvious Wyatt was the intended recipient.

“You did a good thing,” he said, clearly impressed although he kept his face impassive so to prevent idle passers-by from the temptation of listening in on the conversation. “That man was not one of your intended innocents.”

Wyatt didn’t ask how, exactly, the man knew this or why it mattered. “I didn’t do much,” he rebutted, “Just talk. I didn’t even say that much to him—nothing he hadn’t already thought himself, I’m sure.”

“What you said isn’t important. Maybe to him, it was, but not to the Elders. Their commendation is that you spoke to him at all.”

Wyatt frowned, unsure if the statement was a knock on his character. Given the preceding compliment, it likely was not, but nevertheless, a confusing jumble of guilt, shame, and inadequacy flashed through him. As a distraction, Wyatt stared at the new arrival. “You’re not an Elder.”

The man shook his head. “No. I am a whitelighter. As you will be.”

Frowning, Wyatt responded quickly. “The Elders were very clear that whitelighters have tremendous responsibilities that are bestowed, not passed through blood. I may have some whitelighter powers, but barely a fraction of their true capabilities, because I am not a whitelighter. Same as Chris, Junior, and the twins.” The end of his sentence he left hanging.

Neither the two men cared much that Wyatt spoke far too loudly about the magical secret. Only one other woman stood behind them now, and her ears were distracted by the music blasting into them. Unperturbed, the whitelighter nodded once. “That is correct. I cannot speak for your brother or cousins or their destinies, but your compassion has earned you the same opportunity I did in the Gulf War: a chance to be a great force of good. Will you accept?”

The whitelighter wasted no moment on ceremony. The offer was laid out amidst the whirring of car engines and the faint wail of an ambulance.

Wyatt inhaled sharply. He took a moment, battling the voice in his head that told him he wasn’t good enough to guide a charge, that he would only lead them into ruin. The voice almost won, but Wyatt’s heart was stronger.

“Yes,” he breathed. “If the Elders think I’m ready, then yes.”

The older whitelighter nodded and smiled. “Welcome to the fold, Wyatt Halliwell. Your charge’s name is Leon Tahle. He’s a university student and he’s grown up around magic, though he has distanced himself from it now. Give him a chance to accept his destiny.”

“I will,” Wyatt promised, slightly eager. “Thank you.”

“Good luck,” the whitelighter echoed, as they moved in opposite directions.

Wyatt tripled his pace, eager to return to work and then meet his first charge.

Chapter Text

Chris I

Biting off a yawn, Christopher Halliwell leaned back into his seat on the high-speed train and blankly stared at the buildings whipping by.

His phone beeped twice and he shifted his attention to Wyatt’s response.

“What do you mean you can’t help? Mom’s freaking out.”

Chris didn’t need to pull up the message his mother had sent him an hour ago (Where are you? We have things to do) to know that. Truthfully, he didn’t even need to see the message to know his mother’s mental state eight hours before the only party in the last year that all of them had been able to attend. Growing up with her had been enough.

“Can’t. Just passing Milpitas now. I’ll be another hour at least.”

He also didn’t need to see Wyatt’s next message to guess what it contained.

“What are you doing at Milpitas??? You were at home this morning when I called mom.”

“I had a craving for ice cream.”

“And you bypassed fifty or so San Francisco shops on your way to Milpitas?”

The monorail ran through a brief tunnel as it weaved between buildings. Chris nearly missed the second message of Wyatt’s.

“Why waste the money on a ticket? You can orb.”

“Tsk tsk, big brother. It’s a little thing called personal gain. Orbing would get me home faster, sure, but what about the cost on my conscience?”

Wyatt didn’t buy it.

“You did this to duck out of party prep???”

“I don’t know what you mean… Oh look, battery is dying. Later!”

Unfortunately for Chris, his phone battery was more than half charged and he had to listen to the barrage of one word messages Wyatt sent him in return until he finally silenced it altogether. Plus, his glibness had led Wyatt to a conclusion that, while slightly accurate, he guiltily conceded, also meant his mother would soon be on his case. Wyatt couldn’t keep a secret any longer than a hot pan could keep an ice cube.

Chris reluctantly straightened up in his seat. The light on the compartment ceiling suddenly came to life and an automated voice vocalized the approaching stop. A half dozen or so phones also dinged or chimed or sang as their owners also received confirmation, and the train car was a busy hive as passengers jostled closer to the exit.

Two men tried to inhabit the same space and both tumbled as the train car shook. The frail old man beside them wobbled and looked to fall before the strong arm of the woman beside him hooked under his elbow and steadied his stance.

The scene held Chris’ attention longer than it did the rest of the compartment’s. The quick thinking woman smiled in response to the man’s thanks, and once he was ushered into a nearby seat, she retook her own. Chris’ green eyes followed her to the bench across from his.

She was an enigma.

He knew her.

Something in her round face jarred his memory. It might have been the soft jaw or dimpled chin. It could have been the slight hump in the bridge of her nose or the way the hairline on the left side of her face came down just a bit further than the right. Or maybe it was the slight edge to her expression: an all-encompassing kindness with the declaration that the receiver better accept it.

“This is all we can give you for now, Chris. He’s got the stores locked down tight.”

Where had he met her before?

She wasn’t one of his sibling’s friends—or his cousins’. She wasn’t a student at Magic School or his old High School. Was it possible she’d worked at Three’s A Charm?

Sensing his gaze, her head darted up suddenly and he flashed her an easy smile. She gave him a confused one in return.

He held the stare a second longer than conventionally appropriate in the hopes that she might ease forward and rescue him from his lack of memory. Her frown deepened.

His brain begged him to break eye contact and allow the both of them to continue on their respective days. She would remain a slight nag in his memory that would fade to a tiny pin-prick over time, small enough that a year from now, the mystery of where he knew her from wouldn’t matter. And she could get away from the odd man ignorant in social graces before her opinion of him shifted into total creep territory. He knew this, and yet his eyes refused to move.

She broke the stare. Tension rippled through her body. Her shoulders drew forward, her hands clenched unconsciously, and the dark skin around her eyes contracted and drew her eyebrows into a deep furrow.

Chris forced himself to look away. Desperate for a distraction, he reactivated his phone with a swipe of his hand and read through Wyatt’s twenty-three messages.

“They got to Matty. Someone must have told him about the safe house. It’s smoke and ash now.”

“Do we know who?”

“… We have an idea. You’re not going to like the answer, Chris.”

The mystery woman was staring at her phone, still frowning. Her mouth deepened into a full-blown scowl as her eyes flicked back to him and caught him looking again.

A sudden lurch allowed Chris to vault out of his seat and cross the short distances between benches before she had a chance to register his approach.

He allowed a person-sized space between them, hoping it might help ease her tension. It didn’t.

“It’s Chris,” he said, awkwardly. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I have a girlfriend,” she stated with force, sliding the half inch allotted away from him.

He cleared his throat. “That’s good,” responded Chris, more uncoordinated than ever. “So, have you ever worked at my mom’s restaurant, Three’s?”

“No.”

“Amelie!” his own voice screamed.

He could hear the words, but not see them in context. It was either his very first, very weird premonition or something… else. Something very else.

“I’m sorry,” Chris apologized. He had a feeling she detected the ever-so-slight falsehood in his statement. It wasn’t that he didn’t realize he was being a complete creep; it wasn’t even that he didn’t care that she was uncomfortable. It was just that there was a very magical reason behind their awkwardness, and it was a reason that he wasn’t entirely responsible for.

His fingers stretched to the juncture at her neck, searching for a pulse. They met with cooling skin that gave under the light pressure of his hands. Her eyes stayed wide open, stuck in the terror and pain she’d felt before death.

“She didn’t need to die,” a deep voice he recognized—one he’d heard nearly every day of his life give taunts and teases and laughs and cheers but never like that—intoned.

“Then why?” he gasped, as if out of breath.

“Because she stood in my way.”

Finally, he understood.

“Really, I am,” he insisted, truthful this time. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.” 

He heard her mutter, sarcastically, under her breath as he moved back to his original seat. A few of Amelie’s neighbours glared at him, having heard most of their conversation, but he paid them no mind. His own mind was long gone, stuck in a future—past, really, now—that wasn’t his.

The spell’s true effects were unintended. All he’d really wanted to find out was what in the world his parents and aunts meant when they mentioned “the other Chris” when they thought the kids weren’t listening. He’d asked one question, and only wanted one answer, but he had been fifteen and an amateur spell caster and the response he’d been given was hidden in chaotic dreams and the occasional wave of déjà vu; Dreams and senses that had never gone away. It was yet another spell he wished he’d never cast.

Light flashed on his phone and he answered it, grateful to be parted from nightmares.

“Mom, hi.”

There was a moment of nothing, as if Piper had been startled into silence. “Chris? Are you alright?”

He shook his head, as if that would rid him of his thoughts. “Yeah, I am. What’d you need?”

“I expected you home over an hour ago,” she replied, hesitating halfway between her sentence.

“My plans changed,” Chris explained vaguely. “I’ll be home in—“ he paused to check the timetable on the opposite end of the train compartment—“forty minutes.”

“Chris…”

He cut her off gently. “Is there is anything you need me to do?”

“What was that? Did a changeling impersonate my son when I wasn’t looking?”

He forced a laugh.

“Well, if you’re offering, I’m not going to turn it down,” Piper drawled. “I need eggs for the cake, and eggplant for Portia’s vegetarian side dish.”

“All manner of eggs, got it,” quipped Chris.

“Chives, as well. I trust you with the produce—you know what to look for.”

“Eggs, eggplant, and chives. Give me an hour and a half?”

“Thank you, Peanut,” Piper said, drawing the call to a close. “An hour and a half. Don’t be late.”

Chris let the phone draw itself to its hibernation mode and he focused himself on remembering the three things on his mom’s list—and those three things only. “Eggs, eggplant, chives” became his mantra as he rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Chapter Text

Pru I

“Portia’s party is today,” Pru explained to the voice on the other side of her phone call. She tried not to let too much of the exasperation she wanted to express filter into her voice. “In less than eight hours, in fact. You certainly left this until last minute, Uncle Henry.”

Her eyes flicked to the time displayed on her computer, so to confirm her previous statement.

“I saw Hardwick last week,” Henry Senior replied, though his voice was muffled. Pru surmised she wasn’t the intended recipient of the statement. His next sentence was clearer, and directed at her, “Well, the weeks flew by,” he said by way of explanation.

Olivia, seated at the desk across from hers, stood up and stretched momentarily. Wordlessly, she nodded towards the exit, inviting Pru to lunch. Pru waved her off with a polite decline.

Once Olivia disappeared from her field of vision she frowned. “I wouldn’t think that that the most responsible behaviour for a parole officer. And if your clients behaved in such a way?” Pru shot back in a voice that, while slightly teasing, came out with a measure of disapproval.

Henry seemed not to mind. “If all I have to worry about is my parolee’s leaving their niece’s birthday gift until last minute, I’m doing a pretty good job. So, on that front… what in the world do I get her?”

Three more coworkers filed past her desk, chatting amicably. Instead of following, Pru settled deeper into her chair and pulled up an appraisal of one of her firm’s latest clients. The owners were insisting on an exorbitantly high asking price for their home and refused to budge for any of the seven more-than-fair offers Pru had passed on in the preceding months. She’d enlisted a senior agent to submit his opinion and had trawled every real estate listing she knew to pull up the prices for homes in nearby neighbourhoods, amounting to a fairly large document she hoped would finally put some sense into the Gundersen’s inflated heads.

Slightly distracted, she didn’t put much thought into her answer. “You know Portia,” Pru supplied. “She’d be happy with anything.”

“Uh huh,” Henry grunted, disbelieving. “And in the real world?”

Pru felt an uncontrollable urge to stick up for her sister, even to her uncle, who she knew loved them all dearly. “She would!” Pru insisted. “If it were Peyton, sure, you’d hear about it for the next three years.”

Henry laughed once.

Pru let her hands go limp over her keypad and gave the conversation serious thought, and then she let them fly, typing and clicking her way to the rose-tinted homepage of the store that had taken most of Portia’s last four paycheques.  “If you’re looking for something more tailored to her interests, she loves that new vintage store in Southgate Mall. I’ll send you the address.”

Her uncle rebuffed the idea quickly, before she could even begin copying the information to a message. “Me picking out clothes for an eighteen-year-old is a disaster I’d rather avoid, and you know your aunt’s opinions on gift cards.”

Resisting the urge to sigh, Pru thought it over for a moment. The background chatter on her uncle’s side of the phone had grown to a clamour. Frantic voices shouted back and forth, with Henry trying his best to answer every question lobbed at him. Suddenly, Pru felt pressure. Her uncle’s job was no doubt a busy one, and this conversation had already lasted ten minutes. It was with her uncle in mind that she suggested, “You could just ask Portia what she wants.”

Henry adopted the same tone as when she’d said Portia would be happy with any gift. “Portia? The little girl I caught burying her Christmas gifts for everyone in my backyard when she was thirteen so no one could accidently come across them before opening?”

It was Pru’s turn to laugh. The slight diversion in conversation had given her enough time to think properly. She’d already directed Chris towards the good luck charm Portia had been eyeing, and she knew her parents had already purchased festival passes for Porsche and her friends, so Pru’s store of Portia-approved gifts had run dry, with the exception of one, final, deposit.

“I know she’s getting low on her paintball supplies,” Pru said finally, ignoring the man screaming profanity on Henry’s side of the phone. He muttered a sorry, and she continued. “The brighter and more colourful the paintballs the better. You may be tempted to buy her a new helmet if you’ve seen the one she wears now—don’t waste your money she’ll just stick with the ratty one she already owns. But, she’ll always take new suits. White is fine. She likes the patterns the stains make.”

Evidently the angry man had been subdued, as for once the parole office was silent. Henry sighed in relief. “Thanks, Pru. We had a gift—a good one, that I picked up, -- but it turns out your mom already got the same thing. You’d think we’d have a good system worked out after dealing with all nine of you every year, but…”

“Here you are,” she guessed.

“Here I am,” he confirmed.

There was a momentary silence. “You’re saved an old man’s pride, Pru. Thanks again. I’ll see you tonight.”

Pru offered her own goodbye and let the call end just in time to see an olive-skinned man with his dark hair sculpted back and dressed in a clean, pressed suit walk through the doors to her office. In one hand, he held a canvas bag.

Pru smiled as he caught her eye and headed for her desk, neatly ignoring a curious Uriah as he walked past.

In one smooth motion, he borrowed Olivia’s chair and rolled it over next to Pru’s. As he slid into place, he pressed a soft kiss to Pru’s cheek, and hefted the bag onto the empty corner of her desk.

“Mike?” she asked, addressing him in slight confusion. “What are you doing here? Your firm is on the other side of the city.”

He shrugged and flashed her a toothy, slightly lopsided smile. “I’ll be back before the partners. Besides, someone has to remind you to actually stop working and eat something.”

She helped him unpack the bag. “Tomato bisque for you,” he said, pulling up the lid of one of the small, circular containers, taking a short glance at its contents and sliding it over to her, with a deep spoon, a small French bun, and a napkin to follow.

“And mushroom ravioli for you,” Pru guessed without looking at his container. Sure enough, when Mike gently pulled the lid off, the creamy ravioli was clearly visible.

Mike’s smile widened and he hummed in pleasure.

“You did not refute my assertion,” he said, picking up a fork.

She carefully set her spoon down on a napkin. “I didn’t forget lunch,” she protested softly.

“Yes, you did,” he countered, “because you got caught up in one file or another, and wouldn’t leave something half finished, even for something as important as sustenance.” With his free hand, he pointed to her screen, though he was careful to keep from seeing any confidential information. His smile softened, and a hint of adoration crept into his warm, brown eyes.

A hint of rouge rose in her cheeks, and with a gentle shove, pushed her shoulder into his. It helped diffuse the intensity of the air—intensity that wasn’t quite appropriate for the workplace. Plus, Uriah was staring over his desk.

She pulled apart her bun softly so that crumbs wouldn’t fall everywhere.

Suddenly, Mike grew very un-Mike-like. Nervous fingers ran through his perfect hair, making it distinctly un-perfect. He took frequent gulps of his coffee, and when he wasn’t hastily drinking something, he was making non-committal noises: hmms and hahs and grunts that he managed to make sound slightly sophisticated.

“So,” the supposed lawyer drawled. “I have a proposal that may help with this little lunch problem of yours.”

Pru quirked an eyebrow. “If you’re referring to the notifications on my computer, those are more of an annoyance than a solution.”

“No, I want you to move in with me.”

Pru set her bun down carefully and stared at Mike, her eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. After a second, she closed her mouth. “How would that help with lunch?”

Mike laughed nervously. “Pru!”

“This is very sudden, Mike.”

“I don’t want to rush you, and I know it doesn’t exactly fit in with your five-year dating plan, by about two and a half years.”

“… But?” Pru asked.

“But I want this, Pru, and I’ve wanted this for months now. I was hoping you felt the same way.”

“I do,” Pru insisted, dimly aware that Uriah was watching.

Mike noticed too. He leaned in and said, softly, “But?”

A small spread across Pru’s face and the blush returned. “No buts.”

Impulsively, Pru leaned in kissed him. “That’s a yes,” she teased.

“Oh good,” he said, his lips brushing hers. “Those eight years of formal education were worth something after all.”

The doors to the office swung open, and all of Pru’s co-workers walked through, or so it seemed. Pru and Mike hastily pulled themselves apart.

He stood up. And pulled their empty containers back into the canvas bag to be dumped later. A wide smile still graced his face.

Three steps away, and just as Olivia retrieved her chair, Pru called out to her departing Mike, “You never answered how moving in would help with lunch.”

He laughed. “How about I tell you when we get home?”

Chapter Text

Melinda I

The room wouldn’t unfreeze.

Melinda flicked her hands again, closing her eyes as she did so in the vain hope that if she didn’t look, maybe her power would actually work. But when she opened them again, Hava Java was just as unbustling as it had been. The men at the table in front of the middle window were still mid-bite, a lady stood still by the door, the line-up was paused in various displays of idle motions, and there at the front of the line was the cause of it all: Ms. I Ordered a Cappuccino Without Foam, with one hand braced on the counter and the other holding a wide ceramic mug under Melinda’s nose.

Melinda made the mistake of looking at Ms. Foam again, and even in stasis, the woman raised Melinda’s temper. There was the crisp, clean cut to her expensive clothes and the gleaming necklace around her collarbone that clashed with her adamant desire for a twelve-cent price deduction in lieu of foam. There was the strong pull of arrogance on her face, lifting her cheekbones and eyebrows up high. There was the lingering presence of her condescending voice, floating between the two of them, repeating her ridiculous order with longer and longer pauses between words, as if that would somehow change the fundamental laws of the universe. There was the coffee cup and foam shoved under Melinda’s nose, as if she couldn’t see perfectly well a few feet back.

The room wouldn’t unfreeze and Melinda had to try very, very hard not to dump the cappuccino on the lady’s expertly-coiffed head.

Exhaling in a breathy sigh, Melinda stepped from the counter quickly, finding solace next to customers who hadn’t irritated her—well, irritated her much. She hopped on the spot, just like at boxing practise, and shook her hands vigorously.

 “Okay, deep breaths,” she muttered to herself. “Control your emotions. Don’t look at Ms. Foam. Find your center and ease the freeze off.”

Nothing moved and she groaned. Short of calling her mother, there was only one option left.

Melinda shot a quick look at her side of counter. Eric, the manager, was positioned directly in the line of sight, having been drawn from his office by the sound of a bickering employee and customer. There was no chance he wouldn’t see, but she doubted she still had a job anyway.

With one hand, she pried the mug out of Ms. Foam’s hand and let it drop near her feet.

The crash broke the freeze.

“—make it correctly this time.”

The end of her demand devolved into a high-pitched shriek as lukewarm coffee splashed onto her boots.

“You did that on purpose!” the woman accused, unknowingly spouting the only truth since she’d walked in.

Eric was at her side so fast Melinda might have thought he orbed—or beamed or shimmered or some other mode of magical transportation she was not privy to—but he was far too boring even to be a whitelighter.

Ms. Foam began a long-winded tirade at Melinda’s expense, Eric butting in occasionally to apologize or placate. Behind them, Melinda fumed.

“She incompetent, rude, and now she’s ruined my boots. I demand recompense,” the woman concluded, and Melinda’s mind was made.

Neither Eric, Ms. Foam, or the gawking customers behind them noticed Melinda whip off her apron and name tag and reach under the counter for her bag. They all turned to look at her when Eric presumably urged his employee to apologize, but Melinda was already around the corner.

“Mel—“ Eric began, but faltered into silence when she didn’t stop.

He tried again, to no avail. He was still shouting when Melinda stalked through the door.

Outside, Melinda took a deep breath, relishing in her newfound freedom.

Her phone beeped.

Carmela’s photo, a portrait of the Puerto Rican woman hanging upside down from a cliff face, filled the screen. “Stephan and I had a fight. Want to go rock climbing?” read the well-timed message to which she typed out a quick and enthusiastic yes.

She was still outside the café and within the eyesight of Eric so Melinda moved across the street and waited for Carmela on an opposing bench, daring someone to confront her. Several patrons left the café and gave her a sympathetic look, but Eric merely glared through the glass windows until Carmela pulled up in open yellow jeep. Laughing, they sped away.

One pit-stop to grab Melinda’s gear later and the duo were speeding outside of the city. Melinda pulled her long brown hair back into a ponytail so the wind wouldn’t catch it. The two friends had to shout over the roar of the wind and engine.

“He just wouldn’t let it go! Why in the world would I want to go to an art show?”

“Cappuccinos have foam. It’s unavoidable!”

Together, they scoffed.

Melinda reached behind her seat and ruffled around in her bag until her fingers grasped two metal clips separated by rope webbing. She pulled out the draw and tested it, pulling the biners in opposite directions and then clicking the clips open and closed.

Carmela looked at her quickly and said “Half an hour and it’ll just be us and the rock.”

“Music to my ears,” Melinda called back.

She blinked and all of the sudden, the trees were no longer vague green blurs, the jeep wasn’t moving, and her Uncle Coop was standing on the road in front of them. Carmela was frozen, two hands on the wheel. Melinda unclipped her seat belt and pulled herself up from her seat and leaned over the windshield in a giant lurch.

“Uncle Coop?”

The Cupid smiled and stepped closer to Melinda’s side of the jeep. Coop seemed different: less like the Uncle she knew from family gatherings and more like the Cupid they rarely had a chance to see in action. His smile was bright and friendly as usual, and his black hair flopped to one side with boyish charm, but his stance was straighter and his voice a bit firmer.

“This isn’t the way I wanted to appear, but it is the right time. Still, I apologize. I hope you weren’t startled.”

Melinda frowned. The ring on Coop’s finger glinted in the sunlight when he waved his hand at her. “I needed to speak to your friend.”

She whipped her head from her uncle to her friend and comprehension dawned. “Is that what it feels like to be frozen? Got to admit, it’s a little jarring.”

“I could have left you in stasis,” he teased.

“Well, thanks.”

“Of course,” he continued, fighting laughter. “Then you might have picked up on Carmela’s sudden change of heart and suspected demonic interference. Or worse, convinced her to continue on your trip.”

Melinda shrugged as she shifted her weight to rest on the open window beside her, letting her left arm rest on the black frame bars. “Those are both things I would do,” she admitted without much care.

“Why would going rock climbing be worse? Have you picked up some of Aunt Phoebe’s powers? Are we going to fall down a mountain?” she drawled.

Her last question was laced with incredulity, but Coop, true to form, answered her just as sincerely as if she’d been polite about it.

“I can’t explain why without telling you the inner workings of Carmela’s heart and that would be a deep violation of my job as a Cupid. But no, I didn’t have a premonition and I certainly hope you’ll follow the proper safety protocols so you don’t fall down a mountain. I suspect that would put quite the damper in the party tonight.”

Melinda smiled and held up the properly functioning draw in her hand. And then, despite Coop telling her that he couldn’t explain much, she pressed for details.

“You’re telling me that Stephan is Carma’s destined partner? Are you sure you haven’t gotten your wires or arrows or whatever crossed somewhere? Because Carma and I go rock climbing whenever she has a fight with her boyfriend, and lately, we’ve been climbing a lot of rock.”

It was Coop’s turn to shrug non-committally. “Not all of my matches are intended to be true love. Sometimes a coupling is just an important part in the journey.”

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the uncle she loved very much despite his rather sappy beliefs, Melinda drummed her fingers against the frame. “Well, which are they?” she asked, jerking her thumb towards Carmela. “Journey or destination?”

“Asking in the capacity of her friend,” she added quickly.

“That’s up to her.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “And if I disagree with you about Stephan? Maybe I think he’s a waste of her time and urge her to continue driving?”

“As her friend, you’d certainly have that right. Your opinion is not unwarranted.”

She grinned widely enough to give the devil a run for his money. “Even if it makes you want to beam me into the old time-out corner until I smarten up?”

“Even then.” Coop nodded, deadpan.

After a moment, Melinda drawled, “So do you want me to go chat with a bear while you work your magic on Carma or…?”

He gave a short, silent laugh.

“Already done. I’ll let you get on with your day.”

Melinda settled back into her seat. She clipped the seatbelt into place and tried to rearrange herself into the position Coop had frozen her in, or at least a close approximation of it. She finally settled in a relaxed recline, with one hand braced on the armrest and the other tapping the draw against her knee.

“Ready?” Coop asked and she nodded. He stepped to the side of the road.

“See you tonight. I’ll let you know how this goes!” Melinda shouted.

He smiled and with a wave of his hand, released the flow of time. At the last possible second—or the last instance of seconds not passing—he suddenly startled. His voice rang out, but before anyone but Melinda could catch it, it was drowned out by the rushing wind. “Don’t approach any bears!”

Melinda tried to ignore the sudden lurch in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if the wrench was a standard response to time resuming or not—it wasn’t often she was at the behest of someone else’s time stopping powers and she didn’t like it.

She wished she could say the same thing about her powers.

Carmela’s face transitioned smoothly between laugh to silence. She didn’t notice the tiny cosmic blip at all, but within half a mile, it was clear she’d been affected by it. Melinda watched Carma presumably weigh Coop’s ethereally-whispered advice in her head.

Watching the odometer waffle back and forth over the sixty mark, Melinda hummed under her breath, drummed her fingers on the window sill, and pretended she was completely ignorant as to Carma’s sudden mood change.

Carma broke the silence. “It’s just an art show—which, yeah, I’d rather eat a plate of day-old seafood and spend the rest of the night in the ER than talking to some dippie about the symbolism of a giant yellow blob next to smaller purple blobs, but it’s just a couple hours. Stefan did get roped into scorekeeping my niece’s basketball tournament last weekend—long story—which much have been torture for him.”

“Eight hours with competitive nine-year-olds with no impulse control and heavy projectiles? Can’t imagine why,” Melinda drawled.

Carmela grimaced. “He didn’t even complain about it.”

After another moment. In a soft enough voice that Melinda could barely hear it over the wind, Carmela added, “Maybe he’s right. I do need to learn how to compromise.”

Watching the sign indicating the turn-off to their preferred hiking trail was three miles away whip by in an increasingly clearer blur, Melinda inwardly sighed and guessed what Carma’s next words would be.

“I’m sorry, Mel, but I feel like I need to go back.”

“Yeah?”, she hummed, hoping to keep the disappointment out of her voice and push Carma into a more definitive statement. If she was going to turn around—or even continue on—she should be sure about it.

It worked. Carmela nodded twice and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I need to go back. Try not to get so defensive and actually talk to him. Compromise and all that.”

Melinda flashed her friend a weak smile. “Well, who I am to stand in the way of Cupid?”

Carmela gave her an odd look as she turned the jeep around and sped off back towards the city.

Chapter Text

Pru II

Pru let her car come to a gentle stop in the parking lot of a mid-sized building that formerly housed a family-run Thai restaurant. She meant to take her time—she was early, after all, but the presence of three vehicles scattered across the parking lot—despite the large “My Thai customers only” sign bolted to the outer wall of the building—made her grab her briefcase and exit her car, ensuring it locked behind her. She smoothed down her skirt and headed to the nearest vehicle, cautiously rising to her tip toes to peer through the passenger window of the jacked-up truck. Fast food wrappers and a pair of sandals littered the floor, but otherwise, the truck was empty.

She quickly checked the remaining vehicles for vagabonds and squatters and was satisfied to find them empty. Her attention then shifted to the real worry, the restaurant itself. A brief tour of the outer perimeter told her that all of the windows were intact and the lock on the back door secure. She did not, however, drop her guard just yet.

The dull clack of her heels hitting the pavement followed her to the front door. Pru unlocked it and then pacified the security system inside with a quick finger scan. The locked doors, intact windows, and active security should have comforted the anxious voice in her head, but instead of calming, Pru felt goose bumps crawl over her arms.

No trespasser could be aware of her telekinetic abilities, so she felt comfortable leaving her briefcase and the potential battering ram it provided by the door, but she pulled out her phone and hovered over the hotkey for her firm’s security team. Then, with a deep breath, she advanced further into the former dining area.

The large, empty area did little to soothe her worries, even though as a realtor agent she was well-acquainted with large, empty rooms in lonely houses and buildings devoid of life. There wasn’t anything immediately suspicious, and if pressed, she wouldn’t be able to name a single specific thing wrong. It was just a feeling.

Pru continued on, passing through a set of swinging doors on the northeast corner. Unlike the dining area, the kitchen had no windows to let in sunlight and was dark even in the middle of the day. Pru took a step to the left and let one hand reach for the light switch. Her fingers grabbed thin wire instead.

She did not scream, though not from lack of pain. The hand grasping the exposed wires clenched involuntarily, the fingers drawing themselves into an increasingly contorted grip. The gold ring on her finger bit into the soft flesh of her palm. She couldn’t breathe—her lungs were like steel, hard and unrelenting, stuck in the uncomfortable position between breaths, but no matter how hard her desperate brain ordered the fingers to uncurl and the lungs to expand, her body refused to move.

Heat flashed through her hand. Her ring had become an invisible inferno and the skin in contact with the gold band was turning an increasingly redder shade of pink.

An involuntary spasm in her chest was enough for Pru to panic and, suddenly, her brain ceded control, reduced to its most basic instinct. The magic within her surged to life, unprompted. She squinted her brown eyes, and an invisible force dragged the wires from her hands.

Finally separated from the electrical current, Pru’s knees buckled and she collapsed. Time passed; she couldn’t tell how long she lay on the ground, but eventually her lungs expanded and after three shaky, weak breaths, were back to relative normal.

As she found her breath, Pru pulled herself up to a seated position. Her chest thumped under the intense pressure from her heart, though she was relieved it was beating at all, and her hands shook. The final dredges of adrenaline took an additional ten minutes to finally dissipate, giving her enough time to mentally recover from the sudden paralysis.

Her legs wobbled as she stood up and she reached for the wall for support, giving her the appearance of a toddler first beginning to stand. But a toddler was fearless whereas she shook and wrenched the ring from her finger, allowing the expensive gift to fall to the floor with an audible clink. Then, nervous laughter forced its way out of her mouth.

The telltale signs of burns appeared on her hand where she’d grabbed the wire and where skin had come into contact with the heated metal of her ring. They stung, but Marcy was expecting her to meet the prospective client, so she ignored the pain. She still needed to check the rest of the premises.

Under the light from her phone, Pru scanned the bare kitchen for any signs of mischief. Nothing appeared, so she checked the bathrooms quickly and then headed for the living quarters upstairs. The accident had eaten all of her extra time, so she kept her ears peeled for the sound of the door opening downstairs as she moved throughout the upper level.

The upstairs kitchen and dining area were a quick search, as was the living room. Three steps into the second bedroom, however caused her to dart backwards and slam the door shut. The bees behind it, already whipped into an angry frenzy, buzzed audibly.

Pru took several steps backwards and stared at the small space between the hardwood floor and the bottom of the door, waiting for the bees to discover the tiny escape route and come at her, but they didn’t. She heard their buzzing even as she walked back downstairs and far, far away from their position.

She kept herself on high alert, straining to hear every sound in the immediate area. The client was now a quarter of an hour late, but although the tardiness would normally irritate her, she was more concerned with what she had found in the building. Pru was now sure that her immediate feeling of disquiet was correct. The light switch in the kitchen—which had been perfectly intact and functioning the week before—the horde of bees in the upstairs bedroom caused a deep frown to spread across her lips.

The work of an angry, disaffected teenager, perhaps? There was intent to harm here, possibly even directed at her, but anything beyond that she couldn’t be sure. The shock could have killed her were it not for her powers, but how could a vandal have known about her allergy to bees? Then again, the doors were locked and all of the windows unbroken. It was entirely possible she was not dealing with an ignorant kid, here.

Pru checked the last bedroom, hesitatingly, but nothing jumped out at her, which was an improvement, at least. With great relief, she descended the stairs with firm steps. It was now half past three, and the client was clearly a no-show. This entire ordeal had been for nothing, and Pru was not amused.

It was easier to walk through the ground floor, now that she had already explored it fully. In her head, the danger had passed.

With a loud crash, one of the ceiling light fixtures fell to the ground, close enough for one corner to clip her right shoulder. This time, she screamed.

Some of the glass shards cut into her ankles, just above the protection of her shoes, but the brunt of the agony came from her shoulder. Pru probed her shoulder gently. The bone felt off, but she wasn’t sure if the pain came from a broken bone or just angry, battered flesh.

“That’s it,” she declared suddenly, uncharacteristically speaking only to herself. “I’m done.” Her voice wavered in pain.

Pru dropped the hand she was using to hold her shoulder and grabbed her phone instead. After the shock and then getting dropped, it was worse for the wear, but the firm press of a button brought it to life.

“Call Mike,” she ordered to the phone, and as it obliged, she strode through the kitchen and back within sight of the glorious front door.

The rings of the phone echoed through the dining room. As she reached for her briefcase, a thin, lanky man appeared out of thin air behind her, silent.

“Pru?” Mike questioned through the phone, drawing Pru’s attention enough that she didn’t notice the demon, let alone the fire ball he promptly summoned. “You don’t normally call me while you’re at work.”

“Well, I do when a no-show client drags me to a building that tries to kill me.” Not normally one for dramatics, Pru quickly added. “I’m not sure if it’s just some angry teenager or upset squatter, but I have been shocked, had bees thrown at me, and a chandelier nearly drop on my head in the past hour.”

Mike’s concern was immediate. “Are you alright?”

Briefcase in hand, Pru reached to reactivate the security system. The demon behind her drew his hand back, as if to throw the fire ball at last, but just before the projectile could leave his hand, a woman shimmered beside him, and with a wave of her own hand, the flame was consumed in thin air. He made to speak—angrily demand what she was doing, perhaps—but one look at her face, unyielding and demanding, and words failed him. The muscles in his legs twitched as he attempted to throw himself at her, but he stayed in place. She stood, meanwhile, like a calm expanse of water, watching and waiting.

Her back still to the spectacle, Pru missed the exchange. “I’m going to go to the hospital after I call our security team.” Hastily, she added, “It’s nothing serious: a minor burn and there’s something wrong with my shoulder.”

She paused in her spot for a moment. The demon and the newest addition eyed each other warily.

There was a hint of a patient smile in her voice. “I’m fine, Mike. I’ll even stop in to show you how fine I am before I head to my parents’ for the party. But the time I spend talking to you is time I should be spending asking security how someone has been getting in undetected.”

Her next words were indecipherable as Pru threw herself out the door and locked it behind her. Finally free from the invisible force keeping him pinned in place, the man inside made to follow, but the woman reacted first. Her hand shot out and gripped his arm like a vice.

“What are you doing?” he hissed, finally understanding where his power had gone. “I almost had her.”

“Your orders were to follow and observe—no more,” she stated simply. The other demon truly looked at her for the first time; his eyes took in the harsh edges of her short, choppy hair, the slight sculpt of the muscles in her arms and then to the dead stare in her black eyes. Fear settled into his face as comprehension dawned.

 This time, she did not have to wave a hand. The man’s body acted as though an invisible force was pulling him apart down the middle. It started with the juncture between his neck and left shoulder, and rapidly spread right down his midsection. He barely had time to scream before what was left of his body was swallowed up in flames, and the woman was left alone.

She watched Pru get into her car from the nearest window, confident that she would not be seen. Pru backed up faster and with less care than normal, and whipped out of the parking lot. Through it all, the woman stared.

Chapter Text

Wyatt II

Students crowded the sidewalks, the stone staircases, and conglomerated in groups on the grassy stretches between buildings. They streamed in and out of lecture halls and navigated around one another, groping through their backpacks and reading long stretches of text on screens held a few inches in front of their face. Very few gave Wyatt a second glace.

Feeling more than a little stupid, Wyatt turned in his place every few minutes, desperately searching a sea of faces in every direction. The conversation with the whitelighter earlier this morning had been a benchmark moment for him, but it hadn’t been terribly informative.

He had a name and a place and a general range of age. He knew a fragment of his charge’s personality. He even knew the general layout of the university. He just didn’t know how to sense for someone he hadn’t grown up with, or even what Leon looked like.

Which made his current job slightly difficult.

Well, incredibly difficult.

Practically impossible.

Wyatt sighed.

Slightly suspicious the Elders had developed a mean sense of humour, Wyatt searched for an empty seat somewhere in the courtyard he still had a decent vantage from. There, he decided to solve one of his problems, at least.

After several minutes of frantically searching all the popular sites he knew, Wyatt assembled his three best candidates: Leon Tajle, a tall, Hispanic freshman who posted pictures of dirt bikes, his cat, and his friends gathered in what looked like the south campus’ housing blocks; Léon Talle, a blond man who wore the same blue cap in every photo, and Leon Tahle, an African-American young man with an extensive knowledge of local punk bands.

Desperately, he trawled their recent posts for any hint of magical heritage, but gave up that idea before reaching even the previous day’s activity. A flippant “I wish I had telekinesis” comment could go either way. What he needed was a firm “parents pushing me to accept magical destiny”, which he dryly suspected wasn’t going to be found.

No, technology wasn’t the answer here. He needed advice. Thankfully, Magic School had decent reception.

Wyatt quickly filled his father in, limiting the congratulations to a single sentence and asking that he not share the news until tomorrow so as to not distract Portia’s party.

“Take a deep breath and listen to your heart,” Leo advised. “Focus on your whitelighter half; that part of you that wants to guide. Now, think back to these three men and let your gut tell you which one is your Leon.”

Wyatt did as he was told, and then he smiled. “Thanks, dad.”

“Any time, son. Good luck.”

With the right target in mind, Wyatt knew what to do next. With his right hand hidden in his jacket pocket, Wyatt orbed a scrying crystal into his possession and pulled up a city map on his phone. Awkwardly moving the map with his fingers while the crystal spun in small, slow circles, he waited patiently for the pendulum to drop. When it finally did, he sighed. At least he knew Leon was on campus.

He sent a short message to Astrid, who he knew was also on campus. “Need to find Leon Tahle. Whitelighter stuff. Help?”

“Yell his name really loud?” came her sarcastic, he hoped, reply.

“Gee, thanks…”

“Kidding. I’m almost done class. You on campus?”

“West Courtyard.”

“Be there in fifteen.”

Wyatt passed the time determinedly not searching for anything new about Leon. Not only had he exceeded his internal intrusion meter, but he wanted to learn from his charge himself.

He completely missed Astrid’s approach until he was suddenly staring at a pair of red boots instead of the well-worn concrete path.

“This him?” his cousin said, thrusting her phone into his face.

“Hello, Astrid,” he replied as he hurriedly blinked the flare of the sun out of his eyes and focused on the screen in front of him. Wyatt instantly recognized the photo of a young man grinning wickedly next to a poster for some band he hadn’t heard of. “Yes. You know him?” He didn’t ask how she found him in only a few short minutes.

Astrid shrugged, causing the end of her ice-blond braid to fall off her shoulder. “He might be in my econ class, but we’ve never spoken, and I don’t imagine you can wait until tomorrow for me to find out.”

He shook his head.

She stared at him. “He might not even be here right now. Have you tried scrying?”

“Yes, but it’s useless when it’s zoomed in—faulty gps or something.”

“If only there was such a thing as location drawings—maps, one might say, that oh, the campus administration releases every year to help first years find their way…”

“Campus maps,” he muttered, feeling more than a little stupid.

Astrid nodded with a smirk. “Campus maps.”

She waited patiently while he repeated his scrying trick with new maps, and gave a polite smile when the crystal dropped. “Looks like he’s just outside the Henderson Building. Come on.”

Astrid led him down a narrow path between the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Library, traversing the campus faster than Wyatt’s decade-old memory could guide him.

She stopped short of a tall sign bearing the words “Henderson Facility for Business” and pointed to a collection of benches and tables to their left. “We have arrived,” she announced with a flair of drama. “Now, if that’s all you need, I need to track down Grace before her study group starts. She owes me coffee.”

She waved off his goodbye as she rounded the corner and left Wyatt alone.

It wasn’t hard to spot Leon in the sparse crowd. He sat alone at a table with his back to the Henderson Building, reading intently and every so often shuffling his hair with his free hand. A thin white cord stretching from his tablet to his ears gave the impression Leon didn’t want company, but Wyatt hadn’t let that stop him with the man at the bus stop and he wasn’t going to stop now.

His stomach squirmed, filled to the brim with a thousand manic depressive butterflies. This was it.

Leon gave him a once over when he sat down in the opposite seat and shifted his tablet slightly, though there was a huff to his breath like he wasn’t fond of the idea of giving up his spot.

Wyatt scrambled for the right introductory words. Truthfully, he didn’t know the first thing about being a whitelighter. His father and Aunt Paige had done all they could, but the gist of their explanations always came down to “trust your instincts”, which, now that he thought about it, was a very Whitelighter thing to say.

Eventually the silence stretched long enough that he scrambled for any words.

“Why don’t you want to be a witch?” was what popped out of his mouth.

Leon’s head shot straight up and pulled the headphones off his ears. Wyatt smiled awkwardly.

“What?” Leon hissed, glancing left and right.

“You don’t need to hide it from me.”

Leon stared at him and for a moment that stretched on longer than cosmically possible, Wyatt considered the possibility of his Whitelighter instincts being horrifically rusty of the junkyard variety.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A blatant lie.

Using his jacket as a blockade from everyone but Leon, Wyatt breathed slowly and orbed the scrying crystal from his pocket back into his hand.

He slid the crystal over to Leon. “My name is Wyatt Halliwell. I’m a witch too—and a whitelighter. In fact, most of my family is magical. Your secret is safe.”

The small metal triquetra medallion on the other end of the crystal glinted in the sunlight.

Leon glared at it. “Did my mom send you?” He asked, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. “She can send all the witches she wants—I’m not reciting the ritual.”

“The ritual?”

Now, Leon rolled his eyes. “The ritual to formally announce me to the magical line. Our family’s been doing it for generations. And I want nothing to do with it.”

Wyatt nodded, in what he hoped was an understanding manner. “My brother is pretty hesitant when it comes to being a witch too.”

“I’m not hesitant,” Leon argued angrily. “I’m denying it completely.”

Now, Wyatt frowned. He had no idea what the Elders expected him to do. Convince Leon to come into the witchy fold, probably, but they were pretty on board the’ free will’ train—or so they said, at least—and haranguing the young man until he finally gave under the pressure didn’t feel very much like “free will”. He’d been given this assignment for a reason. He just had no idea what that reason was.

“Okay,” Wyatt placated. “That’s your prerogative. But I’m still your Whitelighter.”

Leon groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Wyatt watched the anger build in Leon like a monorail train barrelling down its tracks—fast, furious, and completely out of his control.

Standing up suddenly, Leon stuffed his tablet into the blue bag slung over his shoulder. “Apparently ‘I want nothing to do with it’ means something completely different to you and the Elders so I’ll try something simpler: Go away.”

Wyatt let him walk away—stomp, really—without further interference, partly stunned by the veritable wasteland of his first interaction with his first charge.

He had a very detailed—very different plan to make. Something wise and compassionate that would eventually earn Leon’s trust, and one he intended on starting the very the next day.

But maybe after a beer first.

Chapter Text

Chris II

Chris shouldered his bag of groceries as he climbed the stairwell leading to the Manor’s front door, using one hand to fish around in his pocket for the door keys and the other holding Portia’s gift aloft. Leo was dealing with the day’s last bit of paperwork at Magic School and Piper’s last message had been a brief explanation saying she was signing off on the (late) delivery at the restaurant before checking on the party preparations, and he could get started on the eggplant parm.

Wishing his parents would just bite the bullet and get a keyless lock already, Chris fit the outdated key into the lock and struggled with it for a precarious moment. The lock slid open with a faint click and he darted inside before he lost purchase on his parcels.

The eggs in a safe location, Chris straightened and then frowned.

Rustling.

His parents were busy and his siblings were at work—or just wrapping up. It wasn’t entirely unusual for the rest of his family to stop in from time to time—their magical lives being what they were—but anyone not at work or school should have been helping at Aunt Phoebe’s or getting ready for the party itself.

He grabbed one of the fireplace pokers from the dining room as he crept past on route to the source of the rustling, the kitchen. Poker in hand, he whirled around the final corner, prepared to tackle the demons or thieves.

Or Peyton.

“I have been through the cupboards twice. Are you sure Aunt Piper has it?” Peyton muttered from atop the counter, half her body practically stuffed into the baking cupboard as she examined bottles.

“I’m sure it’s there somewhere,” a second voice lazily responded to Chris’ left. He twisted slightly, poker coming up instinctively, to face the other presence, only to find his Aunts.

“Hello, Chris,” Phoebe greeted happily from her seat at the breakfast table. She idly twirled a cup of coffee and reclined easily against her chair.

“What are you doing with that?” Paige asked from the chair closest to him. One leg was crossed over the other and a smug smile settled on her lips.

“I thought you were intruders,” he explained dryly, setting the poker down.

“Chris’ first vanquish,” Phoebe teased.

Peyton spared him from having to formulate a response.

“Chris, do you have rose syrup?”

Sending a small glare to his chuckling Aunts, Chris crossed the kitchen and opened the lower cupboard he knew contained oils. The little used rose syrup was in the back, but his long arms stretched the distance easily and deposited the bottle on the counter above him.

Peyton hopped down gracefully, and took a moment to straighten her long, golden brown hair.

“Thanks,” she said, tucking the bottle carefully into her purse.

“I’m trying something,” she said by way of explanation.

“For her boyfriend,” clarified Paige.

Peyton’s lips pursed together, but she didn’t refute the statement. A tiny hint of red blossomed on her cheeks.

“And what are you two doing here?” Chris asked, turning the conversation back to the tittering women at the table.

“I was kicked out of my kitchen,” Phoebe replied, taking a sip of her coffee and leaving the end of her sentence hanging as if to leave something—likely the why—out.

“I’m avoiding your mother,” responded Paige honestly.

Chris cracked a smile.

“I found the streamers!” Astrid announced loudly as she strode into the room, purple and red strands fluttering behind her, bypassing Chris altogether and coming to a stop beside Peyton. She had a victorious gleam in her eyes, like the party supplies weren’t in the sitting room cabinet like they usually were and she had to launch an intensive search just to find them. Come to think of it, Chris hadn’t passed her on his way to the kitchen, which mean she was probably-

“Nice blankie, Chris,” she teased, a mischievous grin on her face.

-snooping. In his old room, by the sounds of it, and she’d found his blanket. Fighting a blush, he desperately changed the subject. “And what are you doing here?” he asked the newest arrival, putting more of a sigh into his words than necessary. Astrid smiled innocently in response. That was it, Chris decided, his sister and Astrid were never allowed to see each other again.

“Making an amazing b-day banner for Portia, duh,” she stated, waving the streamers in his face.

He swatted them away, and then it was it his turn. He kept his face serious. “And where is the better Mitchell Twin—I mean Grace?”

“Study group.” And then she threw a bottle of silver stars—thankfully closed—at his face.

“Stars!” called Paige, hand outstretched, before the bottle hit the ground. She held them out for her daughter. “You missed.”

Before Chris could feel completely ganged up on, a large white heart flashed in the centre of the kitchen, leaving Portia behind. The newly eighteen-year-old was dressed for the party in a pink, bohemian blouse and a flowing, white skirt.

“Incoming!” Portia warned as she fluttered back into existence.

Unfortunately, the other occupants of the room were far too interested in levity to take her words to heart.

“You look great, honey,” Phoebe said instead.

Portia brushed a soft, near-black curl behind her ear and smiled. “Thanks, mom.” She turned to the rest of the group. Astrid hastily stuffed the streamers out of sight. “But seriously, incoming.”

Peyton’s “what’s incoming?” was cut off by two figures bathed in blue and white lights, one of which formed Wyatt. And the other…

“Piper!” Paige greeted.

Piper titled her head. “Well, now I know where all my workers went,” she commented dryly.

Eyes wide, Phoebe pulled Portia in front of her. “Doesn’t Portia look great, Piper?”

“You look beautiful,” Piper said to Portia with a glare to Phoebe. “Isn’t there something we all could be doing right now?”

Snickering, Astrid grabbed Peyton’s arm with her free hand. “Heading there now!” They too, disappeared into bright lights.

“Sorry, mom, you’re on your own,” Portia added while also beaming out.

Exasperated, Piper let her hands fly up. “For heavens’ sake, Phoebe, it’s your daughter’s party!”

“And you’re doing such a good job,” Phoebe said, causing Wyatt to choke on a sudden bout of laughter.

Sensing it would be his turn next on the frying pan next, Chris silently slid out the kitchen and retrieved his groceries. His mother was ever-so-slightly stressed out, and it wouldn’t do for him to appear empty-handed, especially after missing the morning rush.

When Chris returned, the kitchen was silent under Piper’s intense gaze.

Paige shifted in his seat slightly. “I’ll go make a salad,” she muttered, defeated.

“And I will make…” Phoebe added, “sure we have enough chairs. Paige?”

“On it!” Paige said quickly, and orbed the two of them away.

Piper sighed, some of the stress leaving her shoulders, and leaned against the island.

“It’s going to be great, mom,” Wyatt reassured her.

“At the very least it can’t be worse than the Thanksgiving of ’23,” agreed Chris.

Piper gave them both a thin smile. “I suppose that is true.”

“I need to have a quick chat with dad,” Wyatt said. “He’s still at Magic School, right?”

Piper nodded. “Something wrong?”

Wyatt shook his head once. “Nothing like that. I’ll tell you after the party.”

Piper watched her eldest son leave the room. Then, she clapped her hands together loudly and turned to Chris. “Well, looks like it’s just you and me, Peanut. What do you say?”

Chris smiled, and hefted the bag onto the island counter. He passed the eggs to his mother, and together, they set to work.

Chapter Text

The Party

“I will send the first person to throw food to Timbuktu. I have the exact spell on the tip of my tongue.”

“The first person...?”

“Don’t even think about it!”

Phoebe smiled, despite the faint threat to her furniture, walls, and sanity three months down the line when the eggplant stain still hadn’t come off the ceiling.

The living room, out of necessity, had been swallowed up by the dining room, and made cramped quarters, even with most of the furniture pushed to the side to make room for the extra table and chairs. At one end, where their TV used to be, Junior and Melinda stooped under the hanging leaves of a ficus, and at the other, Piper’s chair crossed the corner threshold into the kitchen. Elbows jostled, knees nudged, and feet twitched, but despite it all food traded hands up and down the rows.

Wyatt accepted a bowl of caprese salad, but in the process, rubbed against Victor’s arm. His coffee toppled over.

“Here, dad,” Piper mollified, wiping up the coffee with a cloth she quickly snatched from the kitchen. “I wish we could have done this at the restaurant, but we’re booked solid.”

“That’s not exactly a problem,” Leo added.

Piper smiled. “No, it’s not.”

“And how’s work going for you, Phoebe?” Victor asked, carrying the conversation down the table.

The woman in question smiled gracefully. “Well, I’m still not prepared for the conference in Miami next month.”

“Big surprise there,” her younger sister commented, albeit nicely.

Phoebe came as close to sticking out her tongue as she could while she was sitting in front of her youngest daughter.

“It’s the keynote speech!” she defended. “Have you looked at the guest list? Julian Liuchard, Keenan O’Daire… Viola Hershcell!”

“Dear Abby?” Henry Senior asked, just enough sincerity in his voice that if she didn’t know him very well, Phoebe might believe him, which earned snickers from his wife and brother-in-law, and blank stares from the younger crowd across the table.

Paige gave him a high five.

“That’s it, mister. You are out of the acknowledgements in my next book,” declared Phoebe, leaning past her sister to point directly at Henry Senior.

Coop gave an odd huff: half laugh and half gargle from his drink. Phoebe rubbed her husband’s back reassuringly as she continued, “’To my supportive family. I can never thank you enough. Except you, Henry’.”

To Henry Senior’s left, Junior sat up suddenly, alerted by the proximal use of his first name. “Wha?”

His parents sighed.

Across the table, engulfed in their own conversation, Chris gave a grunt of disapproval and Melinda rolled her eyes. Between them, Peyton’s face was impassive.

“Personal gain,” hummed Chris, low enough that the adults couldn’t hear.

“Oh please,” Melinda shot back, slightly louder. “It was a brief, fraction of a second. No one was hurt.”

Peyton nodded. “Come on, Chris. Interviews are bogus. Everyone lies; I just lied a little more effectively.”

“Using empathy,” he argued.

“I can’t unhear someone’s thoughts.”

“Did you get it?” Melinda asked, using the pretext of reaching for the water pitcher to lean in closer.

A small, satisfied smile settled on Peyton’s face. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but I answered every trick question in ways she didn’t even know she wanted to hear.”

Chris shook his head. “When this bites you in the ass,” he whispered, “remember I warned you.” Then, he turned towards the middle of the tables and said, louder, “How’s eighteen treating you, Portia?”

The birthday girl—woman, really—shifted slightly in her elaborated decorated throne of a chair. Soft, shimmering fabrics of pink and gold twisted up and around the legs, arms, and backrest, and three silver “18” balloons floated above her head. Behind her, Astrid’s banner hung from two hooks in the ceiling.

“It’s been good,” Portia responded with a large smile. “Mom, Dad, and I had lunch at Cupid’s Temple; I even got to take a bottle of rose water from the fountain.”

“Doing anything special after dinner?”

She shrugged, mindful of her parents across the table and her oldest sister two seats away. “Might go out with some friends.”

Chris nodded and was drawn back into Melinda and Peyton’s conversation.

Grace leaned over slightly. “All-ages night at Loveless?”

Portia nodded. “Braden and Kallie are taking me. It just sucks school starts tomorrow.”

“Final year though,” Astrid commented.

“And then university, if you decide to,” Grace amended.

Portia groaned lowly. “Okay, no more school talk on my birthday.”

The twins laughed. “Agreed.”

“I saw Peter today,” Portia commented as she passed a nearly-empty plate of stuffed mushrooms down the line.

Astrid glowered. “I hope that sentence ends with ‘before he was hit by a bus’.”

“What was that, Astrid?” Paige called out suddenly.

“An exaggeration?” the younger twin sighed, relenting under the unamused gaze of her mother.

When their parents’ attention wandered once more, Portia responded. “No, no bus. But he was… good, I guess? He didn’t say anything. I think he’s still embarrassed.”

“Good,” Grace muttered.

Astrid nodded emphatically. “And if you ever need help planning and executing an elaborate prank to get back at your bastard ex-boyfriend for spreading lies again, Grace and I will be there, ready and willing.”

“For anything short of murder,” finished Grace.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Pru said with a short glance at the three scheming women, though she directed her comment to Wyatt across the table.

“Plausible deniability,” Wyatt noted with a smirk. Then, he grew serious as they resumed their previous conversation—namely Pru’s disastrous trip to the restaurant. “Are you sure you don’t want me to heal your shoulder, at least?”

Unconsciously rubbing the aching muscles, Pru shook her head. “No. Mike was there when I was examined at the hospital. It’s nothing serious. It’ll heal on its own.”

“And the burns?”

“Also minor. The doctor said there shouldn’t be any dangerous side-effects. My ring made it a little worse—it’s gold, and that’s just about the only time I’ll complain about a gift being higher quality.”

Wyatt’s brow furrowed in concern.

She correctly guessed his thoughts. “I’ve already contacted our security firm and I filed a report with the police, just in case. My co-worker, Olivia, has also agreed to accompany me to the restaurant in the future. All avenues are covered.”

“Well, I’m still going to buy you a pair of rubber-soled shoes for your birthday.”

Pru laughed.

“Well,” Phoebe called out suddenly, “If someone will help me clear the table, I think it’s time for cake.”

“Cake!”

“How old are you, again?”

“That depends on what number will get me more cake.”

Wyatt, Pru, Piper, Phoebe, Coop, and Grace made short work taking half-empty platters and bowls to the kitchen. Coop emerged, carefully carrying a large platter holding a two-tier chocolate cake painstakingly decorated with raspberry swirls and tiny truffle squares. The rest followed: Phoebe holding two glass bottles of champagne and sparking water and the others with a mishmash of champagne flutes gathered from all three households.

Half-full glasses wound their way around the table while Coop lit eighteen candles on the cake. The family sang in a variety of baritones and then watched as Portia blew out the candles in two successive puffs.

Phoebe and Coop stood up. Attention shifted to them as they stared down at their daughter.

“My baby girl is eighteen,” Phoebe began. “I am grateful that everyone could clear the schedules tonight to help celebrate this wonderful woman officially reaching adulthood.”

“Portia, I know I’ve told this story before,”

“Every birthday,” Portia clarified.

“And once at the twins’ graduation party,” Coop teased.

“—Once or twice,” Phoebe continued, playfully ignoring her daughter and husband, “But when I was pregnant with you, love advice never came easier to me than it did in those nine months, and the very second you were born—I have sources to back me up on this—everyone in a three block radius of the hospital felt a tremendous burst of love.”

Portia’s cheeks matched the pinks swirls on her chair.

“You’re entering a tumultuous period of your life. I can’t promise you that it’ll be easy, but I can promise that you will always be loved by your father and I…”

“And everyone at this table,” Coop finished for her.

“Cake, please,” Portia squeaked, slightly flustered, but a small smile—the private, slightly biting of the lip tilt in her mouth that came from genuine internal happiness—matched the shining in her misty eyes.

“Here’s to eighteen wonderful years,” Phoebe finished, lifting her flute, “And eighteen more.”

There was a general murmuring of “Here, here”, and a momentary silence as fifteen glasses were raised to fifteen lips. Then, chatter resumed, pieces of cake were divvied out and forks clinked against chinaware.

Peyton kept the smile on her face, joining in chorus of “Happy Birthday”s directed towards her sister. She picked up her glass idly and then dropped it with a scream.

Heads at the table suddenly jerked upwards as the air filled with the distorted figures of demons.

A ball of flame crashed into the table, igniting the tablecloth and sending a cup of steaming coffee into Grace’s lap, who shrieked in pain.

Paige sent the flaming tablecloth into a scatter of blue and white lights and darted to her daughter’s side as the room was engulfed in chaos. More demons shimmered into the area, hands full of flame or lighting. The air crackled as warlocks blinked in to fill what little space remained.

“Stay back!” Piper ordered, but even she wasn’t sure just who, exactly, she was speaking to in that moment. It hardly mattered. No one listened.

The Halliwells and Mitchells stood, flinging napkins down and dropping forks. Victor was the last to stand, eventually coming to an unsteady position, which directed attention to him.

“Dad!” Phoebe exclaimed, alarmed. She turned to Coop, and pleaded with everything but words.

The room was a sudden hive of movement. Melinda vaulted over the table in pursuit of a demon wielding spears of energy. Chris stood at his seat, flinging cutlery at demons with short jerks of his fingers. Pru herded Portia behind her, and slowly backed themselves up against a wall.

Coop glanced at Phoebe, then Victor, and then his daughters. “I’ll be back,” he promised his wife.

Phoebe levitated herself almost to the ceiling and pushed herself over the table to intercept an approaching demon. “Take the girls and Dad to safety! The Charmed Ones have this.”

Not far away, Paige was having a similar conversation, punctuated with occasional orbing interruption, with her own husband, who steadfastly refused to leave.

“Do not orb me away, Paige!” Henry Senior demanded sharply, keeping one eye on his wife and another on the warlock in between his daughters.

“Athame!” Paige called, incapacitating said warlock and then she returned the athame, in a much more violent way. Astrid and Grace fell into each other’s arms, as if an elastic band stretching between them had reached it’s peak and suddenly constricted.

“It’s too much Henry!” argued Paige. “I need you safe!”

“The kids!”

“I’ll protect them, please, Henry!”

He scanned the room quickly. Bodies collided and every once and a while smoke signalled a successful vanquish. He’d never felt more useless.

A great sigh.

“Okay,” Leo relented, echoing his brother-in-law’s statement across the room. Neither sounded enthusiastic about the plan.

Coop whisked them away after extracting a promise to be called back as soon as the battle was done, or earlier if need be. Phoebe tried in the few moments she had to herself to forget the three, identical forlorn expressions on their faces as they left they wives, children and loved ones behind. She did not succeed.

“Aunt Piper!” someone called over the clamour.

Piper whipped left and right, searching for the niece or nephew that needed help, but the number of people in the room, writhing and battling, never staying still, made observation impossible.

A woman appeared in front of Piper, clad in deep brown leather and hair so blonde it almost appeared translucent. She merely grinned as Piper’s power reached her. A thin mist burst from the demon’s body as the blast landed, and when the mist faded a scant second later, two women, nearly identical in appearance, stood where once had. Piper flickered her hands again, resulting in a quartet. The original demon laughed. When her clones joined in, the harsh laughter drowned out the rest of the battle.

Someone screamed.

The demon, the one in the middle, titled her head, looking straight at Piper, daring her to attack again.

“Get out of my way,” Piper demanded.

“No.”

Just beyond the four demons, Melinda suddenly stumbled out of the crowd and fell to the ground. She scrambled for purchase sluggishly; her right arm, perfectly in Piper’s vision between the two of the quartet’s legs, puckered and tore under an intense burn. The demon closest to Melinda brought his foot up and crushed the abused arm beneath his rugged boot.

Piper flicked her fingers, not caring if in turn she was worsening the odds against herself. She did not need to defeat the demon in front of her—at least not right now—she needed to protect her daughter.

Three of the women exploded and Piper darted for the sudden opening before the mist could fill it. Hands grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her backwards. Six demons took the place of three, and only then did Piper realise she was trapped.

“Paige!”

Paige didn’t hear her name called. She didn’t see Peyton dart in between demons to her right. She didn’t feel an energy ball graze her arm. She only saw her daughters and the gargantuan demon in front of them.

Despite what she had told her sisters earlier that day—had it really only been a few hours since she, Phoebe, and Piper had gathered in the Attic, fearing this eventuality—Paige now had no intention of letting the kids fight demons.

Unfortunately, the demons didn’t care about what Paige intended. They attacked her family in swarms and somehow, every time she made to orb at least one of them away, a fork or a fireball or a demon flew her way and she was interrupted. Like it or not, Pru was narrowly deflecting a laughing demon’s fire balls, Chris was rolling out of the way of a darklighter, and Grace and Astrid were staring up at evil twice their size.

“Energy ball!” she called out randomly, and sent it spiralling towards her daughters’ attackers. The behemoth swatted it away like a fly.

In her inattention, a demon slithered up to Paige’s side. Waiting for the opportunity to try her orbing trick again, she missed the way it shifted all of its weight onto one leg and stretched the other around her waist, then down around her knees and ending at her ankles. Its elongated arms strapped her own to her torso, and then it squeezed.

Struggling for air, Paige attempted to orb herself out of its clutches, but when she reformed, it was still wrapped around her. It gave a deeper squeeze, just to remind her of its presence. Paige’s leg spasmed and she lost her balance. She fell, hip first, into the dinner table.

“Wyatt!”

Wyatt had a litany of powers at his disposal. Unfortunately, in such crowded space, he had use for very little of them. His protective bubble only pushed demons into the paths of his family—he’d apologize to his sister later—and he didn’t even have the space to stretch his arms up for a wave of fire.  

So he used his orbing and his elbows, he threw himself into the attackers, and tried to ignore the panic rising in his throat.

He called the athame from a nearby warlock into his hand and stabbed forward. The demon turned, athame stuck in his back and spit in his face.

“You gotta mean it when you go for the killing blow,” the demon growled and laughed all at once. “Weak witches!”

Wyatt called the athame back into his hands. The demon laughed harder. “Like this,” he taunted, and shot an arc of buzzing, blue energy out of his closed fist.

Wyatt watched the bolt fly through the air. The panic in his throat magnified when he realized he wasn’t the intended target. No, the witch on the end of the bolt’s path was Henry.

“Henry!”

Henry reformed at the back of his female attacker. She whirled around instantly, sending the ratty tendrils of her shawl flying out in a wide circle. She growled when she found him. The demon swiped out with one hand and five, long nails like daggers sliced through the air where Henry would have been, had he not begun orbing the instant his feet touched down.

He couldn’t orb far away. Not when he wasn’t sure if that space would be occupied by the time he made it there. He couldn’t blast fire or ice at her, or send her flying with a twitch of his eyes. He couldn’t even destroy her with her own thoughts.

So he orbed. He orbed and orbed, and then orbed once more for good measure.

The demon, hissed, too angry to speak, and threw herself into her attack. She spun out wildly with both hands, cutting clean through a demon who drew too close. Henry barely orbed away fast enough. But the demon was at a disadvantage when her arc ended. Henry hadn’t been injured, but the momentum of the spin had pushed her off balance, and in the split second it took her to right herself, Henry lashed out with a kick that had won exactly one football game in high school. She wobbled on her feet.

A blue light lit the area around them, and a buzzing met his ears. Something hit his stomach and Henry had a moment of painlessness as his body fell to the floor, before the full effect of the energy bolt set in.

“Pru?”

Pru was not a large woman, but she used every inch of her body to hide Portia behind her as a demon advanced on their corner. Arms splayed out behind her, legs wide, and chest wide, Pru’s brain, wild with pure, basic instincts, screamed at her to make herself a smaller target, to protect her vital organs with the hands that barricaded Portia behind her.

Behind the bald demon, Wyatt screamed in panic and threw the athame in his hand at demon wielding blue energy. He looked like he needed help.

“Pru!” Portia repeated, even more urgently, as their demon took another threatening step. Pru didn’t need to glance back to see that her sister was afraid. She could hear it in the girl’s voice.

No. Pru would not leave. Not if it left Portia open to another attack.

Pru twitched her brown eyes and the demon flew back two paces. It summoned an energy ball and let it fly.

The energy ball whizzed towards her—so fast, Pru thought—she retaliated a touch too late. She felt the energy reach her chest and smelled the acrid tang of burnt cloth. The throngs of magic welted her skin before Pru’s power forced the ball back to it’s owner’s unprotected chest. He died with a scream.

“Chris!”

Daring not to move his arms, Chris leaned his torso forward, as if that would put more effort into his power. His hands shook in their positions: both outstretched, fingers wide, and turned inwards.

A few feet away, a grey-skinned demon held much the same pose.

The long, double-bladed bar between them vibrated under the joined power of two telekinetic blasts. Trapped, Chris felt it building in speed and power as he and his opponent battled. The bar was becoming its own entity in their battle and Chris wasn’t sure he had the strength to tackle both it and the demon at once. The only consolation was that he was pretty sure the demon had to be fearing the same.

The deadlock stretched on. The muscles in Chris’ arms burned under the brunt of their own weight. The rest of his muscles tensed. He alternated his gaze between the bar and the demon, wary of trickery. The bar began to oscillate on the demon’s side, like a loose screw under too much pressure. It made it harder for both of them to hold on. Eyes wide, the demon suddenly dropped his hands.

If Chris were a lucky man, the bar would have impaled the demon. Instead, the demon let go at just the right angle that it embedded itself halfway through the floor right at the demon’s feet.

The demon grinned wickedly at Chris, hardly believing his own luck, but Chris had moved first. If he couldn’t bring the blade to the demon, he’d just bring the demon to the blade.

“Grace!”

Astrid tugged on her arm, but Grace’s body had gone rigid. She stared, eyes wide, at the thing that would surely kill them.

“Grace!” Astrid tried again.

Kill them—decimate them—swallow them whole.

Astrid sent a blast of fire from her free hand, a thin band of flame that danced around the demon’s chest and sent into the ceiling, leaving only another scorch mark to join Astrid’s last four attempts.

“Gracie, come on! I need you!” her twin pleaded in an uncharacteristic display of neediness.

“Astrid?”

Astrid clenched their joined hands. “Remember the birthday sculpture for mom? What you said about rapid temperature change? We need to do that again!”

She did remember the sculpture, or rather, the pieces of it at her feet after Astrid decided the painted surface, too fresh from Grace’s own power, was drying too slowly on its own.

“Ready?” her sister whispered.

Grace couldn’t bring herself to speak under the killer gaze of the demon, so she settled for a squeeze of her hand.

Astrid moved at once, bringing one hand up and sending a torrent of fire at the demon. The unending stream slid off the demon’s skin and he laughed.

Astrid dropped the flame and screamed, “Now!”

Something jilted Grace’s hand up. Something caused the blast of ice to build in Grace’s hand, and something sent it towards the demon. It fluttered around him, far less intimidating than Astrid’s fire had been. Grace realized just how weak she was.

“Keep going, Gracie,” Astrid encouraged, somehow know just what those dark recesses of her twin’s head were saying. “Just a little longer.”

The demon launched himself forward and panic seized Grace once more. If someone hadn’t orbed the cake slicing knife into the demon’s cracked chest at just the right moment, she and her sister would be dead.

The demon thumped to the ground, unmoving. Grace vomited on top of him.

“Mel!”

Melinda wasn’t sure she had a right arm anymore. She supposed the blissful emptiness was a shade better than the agonizing pain of burnt—then stomped on—flesh. She could see it dangling at her side—more of it than she wanted too, actually—but when she swung, it flopped uselessly against flesh instead striking with the force of her full body.

The one who’d kicked her shrugged off her pathetic punch with barely a blink and then delivered one of his own. She pushed herself backwards a few steps, just enough to miss the demon’s swing, and then flowed to the right, hoping to hit him with her functioning arm while his balance was off. The sight of the fire-wielding demon three steps away from her stopped her plans. She did not want to get close to him again. She stumbled backwards instead, and jostled against the wooden cabinet that held her Aunt’s awards.

The demon followed her. Melinda kicked once, too low, and earned a backslap for her trouble. She wobbled, and he punched again.

The side of her face met with the glass door to the cabinet, but when the weight of the rest of body joined in, the glass shattered. The edge of a plaque bit into her hairline.

A low breath wheezed out of her lungs. The fingers on her left hand wrapped around something pointy and smooth like crystal.

Melinda saw only vague blurs as she turned around—saw two murky brown shapes speeding towards her face, chose one of the blurs at random, and stepped into the punch. His fist clipped her right shoulder, probably damaging the bone underneath, but she had already swung her left.

Her sight was a little blurry—or everyone in the room had suddenly gained a clone—so she didn’t see exactly what she’d stabbed as she fell forward.

She hoped it was somewhere vital.

“Peyton!”

Her mother, in this exact second, was the most beautiful sight in the world. With a seasoned stab, Peyton’s mother vanquished the demon standing in the hallway, leaving only a stain of red on the knife.

Peyton threw herself into her mother’s arms. Phoebe hugged back with one arm. The other kept the athame safely away from the young witch.  

“Let’s get you safe,” Phoebe urged, gently pulling Peyton forward. She looked right, to where Paige struggled with an elastic demon, and left, where Chris returned a demon’s barbs with a flick of his hand.

Phoebe kept herself between Peyton and the demons as they darted across the floor to a quiet spot in the entryway.

Goosebumps crowded the exposed skin on Peyton’s arms, and her whole body shook violently. Her left hand released, dropping a butter knife she couldn’t remember grabbing in the first place.

Her mother’s hands, even bloodied, were a soothing presence on her face as they ghosted over the skin at her temples and pushed back strands of sweaty hair. A gentle push angled her chin up so that she looked directly into Phoebe’s warm, brown eyes.

Bloodlust and the thrill of a scream. Was there anything better than a fresh kill?

“What?” Peyton squeaked, and the demon knew its game was up.

“So foolish,” it said, as its eyes turned red, the bones in it’s face rearranged and it grew three inches. The hand holding the knife flashed forward.

“Mom!”

Phoebe immediately recognized the scream as one of belonging to her daughter. She just didn’t know which daughter. A quick look at the whole battlefield solved the mystery. Pru had Portia braced against the corner to her right, which left…

“Peyton?” she called out.

No voice called back. The grunts and crashes of the living room meant that she probably wouldn’t have heard one anyway—not unless it was a scream.

A voice in her head, mother’s intuition, told her to look up, and she saw Peyton crumple at the feet of a woman, who, in the next second, took on Peyton’s form with a smirk.

Phoebe barely felt herself fly through the air in her rush to get to her real daughter’s side. Shock filtered across the demon’s face as she looked straight into Phoebe’s eyes. The same voice that had guided Phoebe over had to be ignored now. No matter the circumstances, the mother in her balked at killing something that replicated her middle child’s features.

Phoebe lashed out with a kick, and just as with her husband, she tried not to remember the look of pain that flashed across the demon with Peyton’s face. And just as with her husband, she’d remember it in her sleep.

The demon was not used to physical sparring. Its movements were sloppy, and as the seasoned fighter, Phoebe quickly gained the upper hand. She refused to look as she forced the hand holding the knife into the demon’s own chest.

The demon had barely begun to smoke before Phoebe was at her daughter’s side. Phoebe’s hand pushed firmly on the puddle of blood pooling on Peyton’s stomach.

Wyatt was nearby, kneeling over Henry Junior. His hands glowed.

“Wyatt! Over here!”

He waited until he saw Junior’s chest rise and fall before running to Phoebe’s side. His face paled and he didn’t need to be told what to do.

Phoebe withdrew her bloody hands so Wyatt could access the wound. Across the room, her sisters were in trouble.

“Wyatt?” she whispered.

“I’m healing her,” he promised.

“Please,” she begged.

Please heal my daughter.

Please forgive me, Peyton.

Wyatt grunted, not looking up from his cousin. “Go help mom and Aunt Paige.”

So she did.

The Phoebe that appeared in front of her sisters was not one the family had ever seen before. Phoebe was a creature of many emotions, but anger wasn’t usually one of them.

She was beyond angry now.

Phoebe pulled at the demon encircling Paige with a strength she didn’t know she had. The back of its neck presented itself to her, open and unyielding, and she came down on it hard with her elbow. If the demon had been in the air, he might have been fine, but the force of her elbow met with the force of the table, and his entire body went limp.

Paige scrambled to her feet, panting. Once more, she held out her hand, croaked, “energy ball,” and let it fly.

Phoebe looked at her Paige and saw a matching fury in her eyes. “Piper,” they muttered simultaneously.

There weren’t many intruders left. The room felt strangely empty without the demons that had besieged it over the preceding minutes. If Piper wasn’t in the middle of the fray, in front of her children, then it stood to reason she was tackling one of the only demons left.

Probably the group of identical clones.

The oldest Charmed One was surrounded by at least thirty near-identical copies of the original combatant. Piper was drowned out in a sea of brown leather and ice-blonde hair, each flick of the hand producing more and more demons.

Paige grabbed Phoebe’s hand and orbed themselves to Piper’s side. They all linked hands. In unison, they opened their mouths to recite the Power of Three spell, but before a sound could be made, the demons looked about the room, realized that all their allies had fallen or fled, and disappeared in a burst of smoke. Only the original remained, and then she, too, vanished.

Denied her vanquish, fury and irritation flashed through Piper’s face. Her voice crackled with stress. “I wanted her.”

“We’ll get her,” promised Paige.

But the Charmed Ones were not solo fighters anymore. A groan caught their attention.

“Peyton!”

“Melinda?”

And Paige, whose children were all standing, called out, “Coop!”

Phoebe bolted for the entryway. Piper ran to Melinda’s side, and gingerly helped the figure just barely resembling her daughter into a sitting position.

Coop, Henry, and Leo beamed back into the living room and stared.

Their wives were all right. Phoebe’s hands were bloody and Paige’s voice broke as she softly muttered reassurances to Grace—Piper was pissed off, but that wasn’t so rare—but they were veterans and escaped the battle unscathed.

Their children were a different story.

Part of Portia’s blouse had torn away, revealing torn and bruising tissue underneath. She coughed out soft sobs as she clung to her oldest sister. The twins were unhurt, but they’d never seen Astrid so pale and Grace was kneeling, panting into a paper bag.

Peyton stumbled into the room. Tear tracks stained her face and she clutched her stomach. Something sharp had sliced through the front of Junior’s shirt. They could see the torn scrap dangling as he held his glowing hands out. Melinda’s face was shredded, as if someone had taken a grater over it once, and the skin on her forearm glowed the raw pink of a burn. Junior’s magic worked slowly on her injuries.

The eldest three were relatively unharmed. Something had burned a near-perfect circle in Pru’s dress, leaving the skin underneath an unhealthy pink. Chris’ gaze flickered to a metal bar—that hadn’t been there before the party—stuck halfway in the floor. Wyatt just looked devastated.

With her hand on Peyton’s shoulder, Phoebe caught Coop’s gaze. “Dad?” she asked.

The rest of the room roused at her voice and stared at the new arrivals.

Portia flew into her father’s arms.

Coop gave her a tight hug. “He’s fine,” he explained. “We took him home. He’s worried, and he asks you call him in the morning.”

“The morning?” Piper repeated, lifting one eyebrow.

“He... was just getting into bed when we left. The shock must have tired him out.”

“The whiskey helped,” Henry Senior clarified sarcastically.

Chris passed a short puff of air that vaguely resembled a laugh. “That’s Gramps all right. I’ll make sure he’s fine when I get home.”

Leo sat down on one of the unbroken chairs and voiced the question all were thinking in some for or another. “What happened?”

“Demons.”

“And you fought them off?” Henry asked, looking like he wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear.

For a moment, no one spoke. Glances were traded and no one was eager to begin.

Wyatt took a deep breath. “There were so many. I tried to use a forcefield, but that made things worse.” His eyes shifted to his sister and focused on her arm. “Sorry, Mel. Your arm is my fault.”

“I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared to take on the demon with the spears and fire breath at the same time, but you’re not to blame, Wy.” She flopped her healed arm in his direction. “See? All better.”

Doubt flickered across Wyatt’s face. “Well—then I was fighting a demon and he threw an energy bolt at Henry.”

“That’s one mystery solved,” Junior said dryly, rubbing his chest.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Wyatt,” Phoebe insisted kindly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No—well, I…okay.” He hung his head.

Glancing at Wyatt out of the corner of his eye, Junior gave a truncated synopsis of his own fight. “There wasn’t much I could do except orb. And then I went down. When I woke up again, Wyatt was healing me and the fighting was pretty much over.

“We spent the entire time fighting our demon,” Astrid said, speaking for her sister.

“Pru protected me,” Portia said emphatically.

Pru sent her a small smile. “Of course I did.”

“I had some trouble with a telekinetic demon,” Chris explained briefly, “but I got him eventually. And then I was stuck with some darklighter until Melinda’s fire demon exploded, taking the darklighter with him.”

“That was me, I think,” Pru interjected. “I sent an energy ball flying and it hit someone in the crowd. It must have been the fire demon.

“I got kicked around a bit after my arm did its best impression of a chimney,” Melinda said with a strange shrug. Then she turned to her Aunt. “I got one of your awards bloody.”

“If it’s to vanquish a demon, it’s always okay,” Phoebe said, sounding like she wasn’t quite sure what she was saying. The reason why became clear with her next question. “Peyton, honey?”

“It looked like you,” Peyton whispered. “It said it wanted me safe, so I followed, and then—and then…”

In two quick steps, Phoebe crossed the room and held Peyton tightly. “I’m so sorry, honey. So, so sorry.”

“Okay,” Paige said, breathily. “We are still alive and that’s what matters right now. Does anyone else need healing?”

Wyatt made to stand. Paige cut him off with a short wave of her hand. “It’s okay, Wyatt. I’ve got this. You look exhausted.”

“Portia’s arm is still bleeding,” Pru said.

“Pru got hit too,” Portia added.

They joined Paige near the kitchen.

“Well, it’s been quite the night,” Coop spoke up. “Why don’t you kids go get some rest?”

“No, we’ll help clean up, right Grace?” Astrid argued.

“Think there’s any cake left?” Junior said suddenly, prompting a few chuckles and even more smiles.

“I’m afraid it’s all over my walls. And carpet,” Phoebe declined. She groaned.

“Well, let’s get to work,” Piper said, and they did.

To one Halliwell in particular the next few minutes passed like seconds. Some time later, Peyton stared in horror across the room—to her mom trying to comfort a sobbing Portia, to Astrid and Chris picking up chairs and broken glass, to Grace absentmindedly sweeping the small space beneath her feet, and the stress marring her father’s face. Ten minutes of fighting had reduced her living room—the site of slumber parties and Christmas mornings—to broken furniture and errant smears of congealing food. A few fireballs, a swipe of claws, and her loved ones were screaming, bleeding, and crying, and because of the gift of empathy, she felt it all.

Suddenly, her lungs felt too small. She drew quick, frantic breaths that did little to soothe her body’s desperate need for air.

Magic had been fun when it was playing magical tag and manipulating her classmates. It had been fun to brew potions she never thought she’d need and dream of torrid affairs with hot, bad-boy demons she would win over with her charm alone.

But she was wrong. Magic wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun at all.

Everyone’s attention was focused elsewhere, and no one saw her vanish.

Chapter Text

Charmed Ones II

“I did not miss this,” Piper declared, flipping over the last of the chairs and sliding it under the table. With a deep sigh at the deep crack down the middle of the table, she stood straight and stretched her aching back.

Her sisters joined her. Phoebe threw a long, red table runner haphazardly down the table, evidently adopting a “if you can’t see it…” motto. To that end, she ignored the large pile of debris that used to be cabinets, chairs, and an utterly gorgeous end table she and Coop had owned since shortly after Peyton’s birth.

Paige sat down in one of the recently recovered chairs with a loud humph, and pulled out two more. When their husbands wandered over, one after another, they formed a silent, pensive line.

Henry’s mouth formed silent words. “Eight,” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Eight.”

He pointed to their children. Heads flew up.

Phoebe stood suddenly and called, evenly at first and then loudly, “Peyton? Peyton!”

The kids stopped whatever cleanup activity they were doing and looked up, as if to confirm that they and their neighbours were not Peyton.

“She was…” Grace said, trailing off when the corner she pointed to was empty.

Phoebe and Coop shared a horrified glance, stood up, and disappeared down the hallway. They split the adjoining rooms between them. Phoebe felt the icy grip of fear claw at her throat when she threw open the door to the master bedroom and found it empty.

Pru met them at the corner, coming down the stairs. She shook her head at their wordless question.

Not seeing her sister return with the rest of her family, hysteria engulfed Portia. “They got her?” she asked, not specifying to who ‘they’ referred. It was unnecessary.

Demons.

“I can sense her,” Paige called out suddenly, opening her eyes. “She’s at the Manor.”

“What if that’s what the demons wanted?” Henry Senior said, trying—and failing—to keep his statement from reaching the younger kids’ ears. “To lure us into another ambush?”

“Then Peyton walked right into them!”

“Now hold on, that’s a little convoluted, don’t you think?”

“What’s the first thing we do after every demon attack? Check the Book.”

“Demons don’t know that…”

“Paige, this is my daughter.”

 Piper didn’t wait. “Manor, now,” she ordered to the children. “And if your first and only stop isn’t the conservatory, I will bind your powers.”

The house was suddenly awash in bright blue and pink light as the eight remaining Halliwell children—Melinda accepting Wyatt’s proffered arm—orbed or beamed out. Coop wrapped an arm around Phoebe’s waist, and placed the other on Leo’s shoulder. Paige held her sister’s and husband’s hands.

As they faded away, Phoebe heard Piper say, “We’re going to find her, Pheebs.”

Chapter Text

Peyton

Her first stop was the Book of Shadows. Peyton stumbled out of her beam and lurched for the pedestal in the middle of the attic. Her fingers clawed at the cover and she flipped the pages desperately.

Peyton had seen the Book before; her mother had taught her daughters exhaustedly the knowledge that dwelled within. But at this moment, the young witch could remember one page, and one page only.

It was funny the way the cosmic entities work. When Phoebe showed them the Book and told the tales, Pru had always requested the practical realizations: the ways the spells worked, how this spell worked in conjunction with this potion to create an even bigger effect. If she were feeling particularly fancy, she would ask for the big, soul-searching, life-changing moments where love grappled with duty.

Portia—conversely—loved the hijinks. She cackled and giggled through recitations of the Truth Spell, the genie, and anytime the Charmed Ones channeled their inner child. The tale of monkeys—shortened, obviously—was an annual favourite.

Peyton, meanwhile, endured Pru’s requests with glazed eyes. The hijinks were amusing, at least, but the tales she truly enjoyed were the fun ones. Her mother’s sudden ability to fly, courtesy of a Dragon Warlock and the aforementioned genie, the trips through time, Drake.

Right now, reduced to her most basic instincts, she couldn’t remember one tale of hijinks. She wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about the Dragon Warlock, time travel, or the Shakespeare-loving demon. She couldn’t name one fun spell. She could only think of a single page.

But it wasn’t there.

It wasn’t on that page, or that one, or the one that followed. It wasn’t the Mariners or Tracers or “To Seek What Is Lost”.

In her haste, she ripped a page—some demon of water or time—Peyton didn’t care. It wasn’t the page she wanted. She barely gave it a glance before it was swallowed up but its neighbours.

Where was it?

More magic than she could possibly imagine lay beneath her fingers: spells to speak to spirits, to reveal the truth, to displace the flow of time itself, thousands of rhymes gathered by her ancestors and thousands more waiting for her descendants. There were potions to destroy, to facilitate growth, to imitate death, and promote luck. Someone, with enough time and effort and lack of caring about the consequences and natural balance of the universe could do a lot of good or a lot of evil—maybe both at once—with this Book.

It can’t be gone…

There was power in the Book. There was wisdom. There was responsibility, and promise, and guidance and destiny.

It can’t.

She faltered in her search for a moment and truly looked down at the page that stilled her fingers. Shax. She knew the name.

The demon that murdered her aunt.

She needed it.

Peyton forced her hands to move, but this time she couldn’t ignore the pages as she flipped past them.

Vampires, Zankou, the Hollow, the Source, Grimlocks. Demon, demon, demon, spell, demon, spell, demon. Demon. Killers, sadists, maniacs, and all stronger than her.

The Book of Shadows was supposed to be her guide. How often had her mother referred to it the same way one refers to a trusted friend? Why hadn’t someone mentioned that every other page in this trusted friend was something hell bent on killing her?

Why couldn’t she find the damn spell?

Two flips later (demon, demon) and there it was. The Cloaking Spell lay open, waiting. Peyton barely skimmed the word of warning at the bottom of the page, skipping instead to the words that would keep her safe. The spell called for a sprig of monkshood to be held during recitation. Peyton crossed the room and dumped the Manor’s entire stock of the purple flower into her hand.

“Evil hearts and seeking eyes,

 Beset be by haze and lies.”

A thin, gold light enveloped her like a wetsuit. Tears welled in her eyes and she forced down a sob. She felt the wash of a successful spell, felt the distant stirring of magic rising to meet her request, but it did nothing to still her frantic heartbeats. Her hands shook and she struggled to take full breaths.

Killers, sadists, maniacs, and all stronger than her.

Peyton heard the whoosh of a shimmer behind her and whipped around, but nothing was there. Something long and thin tapped at the windows beside her, then in front of her. The floorboards creaked. Wind moaned through the ancient house. The walls closed in.

The Book flipped pages of its own accord, eventually landing on the Power of Three spell, but Peyton’s attention was on the creaking of the house, the wind outside and the black hole of panic in her chest. She slammed the Book shut without looking at the page it wanted her to read. And then she ran.

Ran out the room, down two full sets of stairs, and out the back door. She ran down the alley and out into the street. She ran as she pulled out her phone, as she sobbed into the speaker, and as her boyfriend pulled over and shouted in concern.

She kept running even when she sat unmoving in the car.

Chapter Text

Charmed Ones III

Reformed in the Manor’s conservatory, the parents split up, heading to the various rooms in the house while Piper watched the grumbling young adults.

“Paige?” Phoebe asked when all had returned empty handed.

“I can’t sense her at all any more,” the youngest Charmed One admitted.

Before anyone could panic, Piper took charge. "Phoebe, if they took her then they want her alive. We’ll find the demons who fled—or, better yet, who leads them—and then we send those kidnapping bastards straight back to Hell.”

Phoebe gave a determined nod.

“Is now a good time to mention that I knew one of the demons?” Melinda asked. “The guy with the spears was one of my customers today.” At their stares, she paused. “Let’s just say I had the time to study their faces.”

Chris frowned. “The darklighter looked exactly like someone on the return train.”

“The demon with the mist,” Wyatt added, “she was there while I had lunch.” Then, he remembered. “She followed me afterwards.”

“What about the rest of you?” Leo asked Pru, Portia, Junior, and the twins.

“Come to think about it,” Junior responded, “one of them did look suspiciously like the labourer we hired last week.”

The twins, thankfully, shook their heads.

“I don’t think so,” Portia replied hesitatingly.

Pru was silent for a moment. “I had an incident at work today. It might have been a vandal—

“—Or it could have been a demon,” Henry finished.

Like an invisible timer went off in her head, Piper started for the stairs. When everyone else made to follow, she stopped suddenly and turned around.

“You stay here,” she commanded forcefully to her children, nieces, and nephew. “Phoebe, Paige, and I will handle this ourselves.”

“Do you want help?” Wyatt asked immediately.

Paige shook her head and held out her hand to stop him from rising. “We’ve got this covered. You guys just stay calm.”

“My sister is missing,” argued Pru, coming to stand next to Wyatt.

“They attacked all of us. Why should we sit this out?” added Melinda. Astrid voiced her agreement.

“Enough!” Piper shouted over the din of the voices. “We are the Charmed Ones and we will deal with this. End of story.”

“But what if the demons come back?”

Evidently expecting further argument, Piper struggled for words.

Phoebe stepped in. “We’ll just be upstairs, Sweetie. But if they do attack again, get yourselves to Magic School. You’ll be safe there.”

“Dad, will you stay, please?” Portia requested quietly.

Coop and Phoebe exchanged a quick glance, wordlessly eking out a conversation. You take care of one daughter and I’ll find the other.

“Of course,” Coop agreed, stepping into the centre of the room to stand next to his youngest.

Paige to her husband, who immediately looked affronted.

“Don’t send me away, again.”

She glared at him, and under her breath, hissed, “Set a good example for the kids.”

He didn’t budge, so Paige tried a different tactic.

She pointed to the youngest trio. “Look at them, Henry, they’re terrified. I’m not sending you away. I’m asking you to protect them.”

If Henry were a different man, he might have bit his lip, shifted his gaze back and forth, or fidgeted. Instead, his shoulders drooped ever-so-slightly. “Okay,” he whispered, half defeated, half accepting.

Leo looked just as lost. He had had a few extra years practise in backseat demon dealings than his brothers-in-law, but the twenty-year interim had let those skills atrophy. But unlike Coop and Henry, his kids were older. They didn’t need their daddy around right now, as hard as it was to admit it.

He followed the Charmed Ones up the stairs. No one stopped him.

“Did any of you recognize one of the demons?”

“No.”

“Which means demons are tailing our kids,” Paige concluded angrily as the four rounded the final corner to the Attic.

This time it was Phoebe in the lead for the Book. “We will figure out why later. Peyton is our priority right now.” She grabbed a pen and notepad. “Okay, who escaped? The mist demon, one of the warlocks, that… thing with the hair…”

“The one with the tusks,” Paige added.

Trying to remember the last few minutes of the battle, the Charmed Ones wasted no energy on extra words.

“Maybe we should have brought the kids up here,” opined Paige after a minute of silence.

“No,” Piper rebutted immediately. “Let them stay downstairs.”

“Here,” Phoebe said, declining to take a position in the minor argument and stuffing a scrying crystal into Paige’s hands. “Piper, will you try the ‘To Call a Lost Witch’ spell?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll, uh, help Phoebe look,” Leo said, uncertain.

They worked without speaking. The only sounds were the harsh fwips as pages turned in the Book of Shadows, the plinking of herbs hitting the bottom of the cauldron, and Paige’s occasional disappointed sigh.

Piper began the spell without preamble, causing Phoebe to temporarily abandon her search. Her face fell when, at the conclusion of the spell, the room remained the same.

“I’ll try again,” promised Piper.

Not able to hide her disappointment, Phoebe turned her attention back to the book, where she had located some useful information. “The mist lady is a Nyli Demon. If injured, ‘the mist at the centre of their being allows them to replicate their outer shells’. And they’ll keep doing that until the source of the mist is contaminated.”

“Great,” Paige muttered.

Phoebe flipped a few more pages. “Tusks is an Inoh Demon.” She frowned. “It says here they’re loners by nature.”

Piper finished her second attempt at the spell, to no effect. She set the tiny, silver knife down beside the cooling cauldron, admitting defeat.

“The Cousin It Lookalike is a— not even going to try pronouncing it—and they typically attack at night. They force wads of their hair down their victims’ throat during sleep.”

Paige gagged.

Phoebe took no notice. “The Inoh and Cousin It wouldn’t be able to organize a kidna—wouldn’t come together to—well, they wouldn’t be first in line to sign up for the Demon Softball Team.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Leo said, slowly.

“They—oh, it’s no use. My daughter is missing, probably kidnapped by demons,” Phoebe shouted. “I can’t concentrate. I just keep seeing Peyton, bleeding to death on my living room floor. What if she’s hurt?”

Leo took three great strides to stand in front of Phoebe. Firmly, but not enough to hurt, he gripped Phoebe’s shoulders to keep her from pacing. “Take deep breaths. We are all here for you and we will not quit until Peyton is safe. Now, what are your instincts telling you?”

“We need to go after the Nyli.”

“Then that’s where we’re headed,” said Piper. “Do we have a location?”

Phoebe shook her head.

“We don’t have anything to lead us to the Nyli, but we do have something that will lead us to Cousin It,” concluded Paige. At the questioning glances she received, she explained, “I saw some of its hair stuck in your vent cover, Phoebes. Unless you have a long-haired cat we didn’t know about.”

A tiny, almost imperceptible smile graced Phoebe’s lips; the first shreds of hope dawned in her eyes. “No… there’s no cat.”

“Are we sure this… Cousin It will tell us where the Nyli roost? Will it even know?” Piper but in.

Phoebe turned to her older sister. “This has to work, Piper.”

Piper nodded, recognizing the desperate need to save her child that she herself had embodied god knows how many times. “Then it will.”

Chapter Text

Their loud clunks down the stairs should have spurred at least five pairs of feet scurrying to the base of the stairwell. And, as they passed portraits of the ancestors, they should have been able to see five sets of anxious and eager eyes.

“What now?” Phoebe muttered.

“They are suspiciously quiet.”

“Henry or Coop would have shouted if something went wrong,” Paige said, stepping down the last few stairs.

Piper turned the corner and stopped short. “What’s going on here?”

Chris looked up from the map he and Pru were scrying with, but Pru kept her eyes on the swaying crystal. Henry, Portia, Astrid, and Grace ceased their half-hearted game of poker, and Wyatt, sitting legs crossed on a pillow on the floor, slowly opened his eyes.

“I can’t sense Peyton,” he confirmed.

“Scrying’s not working either,” Christ explained, pointing to the indecisive crystal.

“We already tried that,” Paige said.

“And the ‘To Call a Lost Witch’ spell,” she added when Pru opened her mouth. “Nothing, but that doesn’t mean anything. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves.”

“We’ll find her, Pru,” Phoebe promised.

Piper did a quick count of the room. She frowned. “Where is Coop? And Melinda and Junior?”

“Coop went to make tea,” the cupid in question explained, coming up behind a her, juggling a teapot and a stack of mugs.

“Junior and Mel orbed out of here about thirty seconds after you left,” Henry explained.

“And you didn’t stop them?” Paige asked, before Piper could in a much nastier tone.

“Ignoring the fact that I couldn’t…” Henry mused. “They wanted to help.”

“Where did they go?”

Wyatt answered for him. “Probably the Underworld,” he opined.

Piper’s eyes grew wide. She slapped Paige’s arm. “Oh, hell no. Paige, go bring them back.”

Pru took a small step forward. “Peyton is the one who’s missing. We should be focusing on her.”

“She’s right,” Chris agreed, nodding to his cousin. “Mel and Junior aren’t in danger. Peyton is, and we’re going to help find her.”

“They’re in the Underworld.”

“Mom—

“No! You don’t know what it’s like down there. It isn’t some playhouse. Why would they think they could just waltz in there their first time, and… and” Piper, catching her sons trading guilty looks, trailed off.

“It’s not their first time,” Chris explained slowly.

Everyone, even the poker players, watched Piper for her reaction. Two, long breaths wheezed out of Piper’s nose.

“I will deal with that later,” Piper said, finally.

It was Phoebe’s turn to interrupt. “Piper, they’ll be fine. Junior can orb, and Melinda’s remarkably efficient at sneaking in and out of places. Now can we please focus on my missing daughter?”

Piper’s lips pursed, but she didn’t argue further.

“Good,” Phoebe declared.

This next bit was tricky. “Wyatt, Chris, grab a globe and start scrying. She might just be out of the city. Portia, honey, will you and Pru cast the lost witch spell? Maybe with your powers—and your father’s—we’ll be able to reach her.” She did not mention that she and her sisters were planning on assaulting the Nyli.

Portia nodded mutely and shuffled to her mothers’ side.

Paige spoke up. “Grace and Astrid, go to magic school with Leo and your father and bring back every resource the library has on identifying demons. The Book didn’t have them all, and any one of them may lead us to Peyton.”

“What are you going to do?” Grace asked, too clever by a half.

“We’re going to follow a lead,” Piper admitted brusquely. “If that doesn’t pan out, hopefully you’ll have something else by the time we come back.”

There was a moment of silence before Wyatt spoke. “Well, let’s get to it.”

Chapter Text

Henry II

“A bar?” whispered Junior, incredulously.

Melinda leaned enough forward to slyly check for nearby presences. Then she stood up and held out her palm. The long, yellow-brown quill balanced itself a few inches about her skin, the blood-stained end pointing straight ahead. “Yep, a bar,” she confirmed.

“This won’t go terribly, at all,” Henry murmured, standing as well.

Melinda snapped her hand shut and stuffed the quill into her pocket. She nudged his arm. “It can’t go worse that the failed Operation Beer Run of 2025—there’s a good chance Mr. Farber won’t be here to catch us.”

“A good chance?”

“Let’s not jinx it. You never know.”

Junior snorted once. “So there’s a fifty-fifty chance Farber won’t blow our disguise. Wonderful.” He pushed open the door and held it just long enough for Melinda to slip in after him.

“Act like you own the place and no one will give us a second glance,“ she muttered into his ear. He puffed out his chest, pulled his shoulders back and did his best to scowl like a demon as the pair pushed their way through the small crowd to the bar itself. Once there, he let Melinda deal with the bartender while he turned around and surreptitiously scanned the room.

Melinda’s spell had worked. The quill demon was seated opposite the door, nudged in between two demons he vaguely recognized from the Book of Shadows. Henry also spotted a Vampire, a few Warlocks, and at least a dozen other unknown demons.

“Look, buddy, I’ve been stuck on the surface for weeks and it’s the only money you’ll get from me,” Melinda said as she slid up to the bar, sliding a twenty dollar bill across the rough, pitted surface.

“Carthak will pay up if he doesn’t want me on his hands,” Quill muttered to his friends.

The woman on his right laughed. “He is high enough to hire you, while you are low enough to be bought for a suicide mission. I don’t think he has anything to worry about.”

Quill growled. “I’m strong enough to survive a suicide mission, aren’t I?”

“And I wonder how that came to be?”

Quill stood up, his chair dragging against the wooden floor. He leaned low and brought his face to the woman’s. “Are you insulting me, Rossa?”

Rossa maintained a bored façade. “If you have to ask…”

Something long and thin flew past Henry’s neck and embedded itself into the back of a silver-haired demon’s skull. The demon died in a puff of smoke.

The bartender was suddenly in front of Quill’s table. His cloak was gone and he lifted his arm, revealing dark runes tattooed onto his muscles. “No fighting in my bar.” His hand clenched and Quill screamed in pain. Quill’s skin bulged at odd junctures and then he, too, disappeared into a cloud of smoke. The barman huffed once, and then shimmered back behind the bar.

Henry booked it for his cousin, not at all concerned he was acting the complete opposite of confident.

“Well, it took a bit, but I got him to make me a Daiquiri. Though now that I can see what he can do, I sort of regret pissing him off,” Melinda told him, swishing her drink around for emphasis.

He had intended to tell her what little information he’d just learned, but her comment threw him briefly off track. “You don’t even like Daiquiris.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to see if I could.” Suddenly, she turned around to the seat next to her. “Can I help you?” she asked angrily to the short, balding demon who seemed to have an unnatural interest in her lap. The demon shrank back, as if struck.

“No, not at all,” he muttered, but his eyes stayed locked onto her seat.

“Resorting to petty thievery now, Benzimar?” a voice Henry immediately recognized as Rossa’s spoke up behind him.

They whirled around on their seats to face her.

“And from a witch, no less.” In one long glance, she eyed Henry up. “Though I can’t imagine the whitelighter has anything worthwhile.”

Henry’s heart stilled as the surrounding demons all swivelled their way.

“Half-whitelighter,” he retorted, somewhat feebly. Beside him, Melinda stood up slowly. Demons began advancing on their position, completely blocking the door.

“Go ahead, orb, whitelighter,” Rossa said in a voice that told Henry he explicitly did not want to.

Melinda threw her drink, glass and all, at the demon and shouted, “Stairs!”

They barrelled over the tiniest two demons, the weakest links in the chain of their death formation, and made for the stairs, hurriedly tramping up steps with no regard to what might come after. Henry threw open the nearest door, and slammed it shut behind Melinda, who immediately began pushing a blood-stained table in front of it. Outside, demons laughed.

“She knew what you are the moment you walked in—as did I.”

Melinda flinched and Henry’s neck suddenly felt very vulnerable. Benzimar stood behind them, not quite as pathetic looking as he had in the bar proper. Melinda flicked her fingers, but the demon fought the freeze with the slightest shrug.

He pointed at the demon. “You can’t fight us. The bartender said so,” But even as he said it, the words felt weak. Even he didn’t believe them.

Benzimar did not laugh, but when he spoke, his voice betrayed a little amusement. “I could handle Kamev, but as it turns out, your death is something I’d like to avoid at the moment.”

Narrowing her eyes, Melinda frowned. “Why?” she asked.

“Because of what’s in your pocket.”

Her hands flew to the waist of her jeans and she pulled out their contents: their apartment key, the quill, and a ball of cloth.

The demon’s hand reached for hers. She pulled her hands back quickly. “The catnip?”

Benzimar didn’t respond, but his ogling eyes told them all they needed to know.

“You always carry around spare herbs?” Henry asked skeptically.

“I always bring some when I go rock climbing,” she explained. “It brings good luck.” She then spoke to Benzimar. “Is that why you want it?”

Instead of answering, Benzimar leapt at her, sending both of them to the ground. Melinda and the demon rolled around for half a minute, grunting whenever the other gained the advantage, until finally Melinda’s elbow found the demon’s stomach and his pain was enough distraction for her to scramble up and away, the catnip clutched tightly in her hands. Henry stepped forward, intending to plant his boot over the demon’s neck, but Melinda stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“No,” she said to both of them. Then, to Benzimar, she added, “You can have the catnip if you tell us how to get out of here.”

Benzimar pulled himself upright. Unlike Melinda, he was not out of breath. Not even a little.

“Alive,” she quickly added. “Not in any way harmed.”

He seemed to weigh the choices in his head. “I don’t need it,” he said, more to himself than anything. It was a lie, and they all knew it. “If you orb, they will prey upon you before you get to your destination. If you fight, Kamev will kill you before you can draw a second breath.”

“Kind of figured,” Henry retorted. “Keep talking.”

“Get out of the door—you are smart enough to figure out how by yourselves, yes? Take the middle passageway, then your third right, then the passage leading into the dark. You will be followed, but if you heed my advice, they will not follow you into the darkness. From there, you may orb home unmolested… provided you do not head too far into the deep.”

He laughed.

Melinda handed the catnip to him, reluctantly, and took two full steps backwards when he ate it whole. Benzimar moaned in pleasure.

Melinda nudged Henry’s shoulder. “Let’s go while he’s distracted.”

He caught her eye and frowned.

“What?”

With as neutral a voice as he could manage, he responded, “I thought you said this wouldn’t turn out like Operation Beer Run 2025?”

She laughed once. “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” she quipped. Then, she nodded at the door. “Alright, here’s the plan: we get downstairs, I’ll freeze the room – minus Kamev, I don’t think he’ll appreciate it—and we’ll book it for the door.

“Can you freeze the entire room? They aren’t unsuspecting mortals.”

Anyone else and she might have lied. Instead, she gave a hesitant smile and admitted, “I guess we’ll find out. Ready to run?”

Despite the tenuous prospect ahead of them, Melinda practically vibrated with energy. Her cheeks flushed red in anticipation of adventure and she couldn’t reign in the wide grin spreading across her face. Her excitement, while completely insane, was infectious, and he felt himself smiling in return.

“Well, I’m certainly not ready to die.”

Without another word, she pushed aside the table, opened the door, and they took off. The second they were gone, Benzimar dropped the giddy smile on his face. A roar burst from the bar floor—evidently the witches had made it at least that far. He waited until the furor died down, and then shimmered downstairs.

A few demons remained, though compared to the numbers a half hour ago, it was practically empty. Such facts did not deter the few who remained, however.

“Helping witches now, Benzimar?” a scavenger demon drawled, earning laughter from his companions—laughter that quickly turned to scowls and growls.

They moved to attack. Benzimar waved a hand and the quartet burst into flame. He gave them no extra attention. Instead, he seated himself on the stool at the end of the bar.

“Another whiskey, Kamev.”

Chapter Text

Charmed Ones V

The Charmed Ones touched down in the centre of a large swamp. Though they could see no sources, light glinted off the staid pools of water, creating an otherworldly glow. The air hung, hot and humid.

Clutching a handful of potions tightly, Phoebe shouted into the void, “If you hand over my daughter—unharmed—right now, I might not vanquish every one of you.”

Her voice reverberated across the cavern. It didn’t speak well of Phoebe’s state of mind that the part of her speech she heard loudest as it bounced back at them was ‘daughter’ and ‘vanquish’.

Slowly, figures appeared though the mist. Unlike the Charmed ones, who sunk into the mud and water up until the tops of their calves, the Nyli were right at home in the swamp. They stepped gainly on top of the water, even the heaviest of them.

The Nyli formed a ring around the Charmed Ones, twelve in all. Each one had a distinguishing feature: near-translucent hair, a hook nose, deep-set eyes, or a unibrow. The man across Phoebe had a large birthmark just under his eye. Strangely, in a group, the rest of the Nylis’ features became lost in a haze. Staring on one was like looking though a pane of frozen glass. Only the one feature set them apart.

“A rather bold request,” Hook Nose said.

“From where should we release her?” glibbed Unibrow.

They laughed.

“That’s it,” Phoebe swore and flung an orange potion at his feet. She shielded her eyes from an explosion that never came.

The vial hit the water with a plunk and sank to the muddy bottom.

“Uh oh,” Paige said.

“The swamp?” theorized Piper.

“Your magic is useless against the waters here,” a woman with bright, purple eyes confirmed.

“Not good,” quipped Paige, lifting one foot slowly out of the muck to show exactly how screwed they were. Thick, gloopy mud dripped like molasses from her shoes.

The Nyli had the advantage and their confident movements—almost to the point of laziness—confirmed it. They took their time, closing in slowly.

Phoebe shifted into a battle stance. Beside her, Piper frowned. She’d never actually seen the Nyli attack. The woman’s role during the party ambush had seemingly been to distract Piper. She didn’t know if they were ranged fighters, physical, or something more ethereal.

Hook Nose went for Phoebe, who tried to pre-emptively dodge the attack by taking two clumsy steps. Hook Nose’s moves were sub-par, but Phoebe, hampered by the mud, struggled to keep up. Her foot moved sluggishly out of the water—then careened too quickly out of it. The one and a half foot elevation difference didn’t help. Her foot hit his hip-bone, hurting herself more than anything. Her next kick was over before it began. The mud had stolen her shoe. Hobbling, she returned to her sisters’ sides.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” she wondered aloud, slightly out of breath.

“I don’t know.” Paige’s eyes squinted as she searched the cavern, trying to see what they were missing.

“She didn’t attack at the party, either,” Piper revealed. Her voice sounded hoarse.

“Maybe they can’t.”

“Maybe they don’t have to,” boasted Unibrow. He crossed his arms like he was waiting for something.

“Throw the potion,” Paige croaked.

Selecting the white vial, Phoebe threw it at Unibrow. It hit his chest and disappeared into a small whispy cloud. Unibrow stared at the spot on his chest, unconcerned.

“Why isn’t it working?” Piper hissed. She didn’t have to try to keep her voice down. It was getting harder and harder just to speak at all.

The potion was supposed to put the Nyli to sleep since they couldn’t be vanquished outright just yet. Instead, it did nothing at all, except for the possibility of a slight bruise on Unibrow’s chest.

“We told you,” Purple Eyes explained, more annoyed than anything else. “The waters here are impervious to your magic.”

“Where’s my daughter?” Phoebe demanded, sensing that further fighting would be useless.

“What makes you think we have her?”

Phoebe’s growl was cut off by a deep, hacking cough.

“Give us Peyton and we’ll let you go,” reasoned Paige. She too, was having difficulty breathing.

A few of the Nyli, the ones furthest away, exchanged glances like the Charmed Ones had inadvertently walked into an inside joke.

“We cannot. Even if we had her, the mist here would have drowned out her lungs even before you arrived—as you surely are already aware.”

Phoebe stuffed down an emerging cough. “The mist?”

“Is far more powerful than you, and your bones will only make it stronger.”

Trying not to think of the log—or what she’d previously thought was a log—brushing up against her left foot, Phoebe glanced around wildly. “We need to find the source of the mist,” she whispered.

The mist played tricks on their eyes, however. With the light glinting off the water at irregular angles, shadows shifted and danced in areas they shouldn’t even exist. Huge structures formed in the distance and in the next second, vanished into nothingness. Even the sound was off. The entire cavern was an echo chamber; a gentle lap of the water yards away sounded like it was rolling against their calves.

“There,” Paige croaked, pointing beyond the haze of a thick patch of mist. Dimly, Piper and Phoebe could see, if they squinted, a small, irregular ring of stone. Paige grabbed each of their hands roughly and orbed.

Paige’s guess had been correct. At the very least, it wasn’t a mirage. The Nyli’s sudden reaction only confirmed it. The demons turned towards the trio and immediately began the short trip over, much faster this time.

“This?” Phoebe asked with great difficulty. They were all panting now. Their lungs seemed to take in less and less air with each breath.

It was an unassuming platform of dull, grey rock, smoothed over a millennium by the relentless pressure of the water. The pool of water in the centre seemed darker here, but that easily could have been a consequence of the lack of light. There was no bubbling, or humming, or anything else a magical water source ought to have. Only the tension in the demons that lived here gave any indication that it wasn’t just a hunk of dumb rock surrounding a tranquil pool of water.

How Paige had managed to suss it out was a mystery to be solved at a later time.

“Your magic will not work here,” called out Hook Nose, for the first time failing to sound nonchalant.

Paige rummaged in the satchel around her shoulder while Piper and Phoebe prepared to fight a short, defensive battle. They made a formidable sight, at least until Phoebe slipped on the stone when she shifted back into a fighting stance, but Piper reached out firmly with one hand and held her sister steady while she regained her footing.

“To be honest, we didn’t have time to make a potion,” Paige called back, wheezing like she was fighting a cold.

There was little chance the demons recognized the bottle in Paige’s hand, but they reacted as if they did, probably understanding that Paige’s sudden confidence wasn’t a bluff. All twelve darted forward. Phoebe met them a few feet away from the pool, not with a kick or a punch that she wouldn’t be able to control with her muddy and uneven footing, but instead with a flying tackle. She and the three Nyli she aimed for splashed into the water.

Piper’s hands were little more than a blur as she flicked them again and again, blasting any who got too close to either of her sisters. Meanwhile, Paige struggled with the child-proof cap for a moment and then dumped the entire bottle of bleach into the middle of the pool. After a short second of consideration, she scooped the empty bottle back up and stuffed it back into her bag.

One of the Nyli cried out—then two. Pretty soon, all twelve were howling in pain. The skin, on those that they could see, turned red and blistered. One by one, they exploded, not into mist but a familiar dense smoke.

Phoebe struggled to stand. Spitting out mud and water, she attempted to straighten herself and then gave up. Taking huge steps, she rejoined her sisters on the platform. At the very least, the sisters could breathe easier.

Piper reached for Phoebe’s hand. “Peyton’s not here.”

“I know.”

“That’s a good thing—well, a better thing.”

“I know.”

Paige put a hand on Piper’s shoulder and Phoebe’s back. “We better head back. We’ll find her, Pheebs.” And with that, they orbed away.

Chapter Text

The Search

The kids stared at their mothers, faces hovering in various states of confusion: Chris’ nose wrinkled, Astrid’s eyes widened, Wyatt absentmindedly pointed at the mud dripping on the floor, Pru drawled an elongated ‘uh’, and Grace gaped. Tension broke in Portia’s face and she burst out desperate laughter. She cackled hard enough to lose her seat. Wyatt gave her a hand up and through some wordless signal, the twins enveloped the young girl in a tight hug. Phoebe moved to comfort her daughter, remembered how filthy she was and thought better of it.

“Did you find anything?”

The question could have been asked by either party, but the Charmed Ones got there first.

The kids shook their heads.

Phoebe sighed. “Okay. Keep looking while we clean up. When we get back, we’ll all put our heads together and solve this.”

“What about Melinda and Junior?” Piper asked.

“They haven’t come back yet.”

Paige’s face and voice grew stern. “Henry James Mitchell Junior! I don’t care what you are doing or where you are, you and your cousin will come back right now.”

She glared at a light fixture above her head, as if it were her wayward son.

“If they’re in the Underworld, he won’t be able to hear-“ The rest of Leo’s sentence was cut off by a sudden flurry of blue lights.

Junior and Melinda appeared in front of Paige.

“- You,” finished Leo weakly.

“For the record, we were already on our way back when you called,” Junior commented. He frowned at his mother. “What’s with the mud?”

Paige bit off a growl. “We’re going to shower, and then you two are going to explain yourselves.” She orbed away, taking Phoebe with her.

Piper headed upstairs to her own shower.

“All of you will be here when I return.”

Not daring to contradict Piper, the newest arrivals joined the six other progeny and three men on the couch, who shuffled around to accommodate them.

“Peyton hasn’t been found?” Melinda assumed.

Chris shook his head grimly.

“Well, wherever she is, it’s by her own volition.”

Pru frowned. “Why do you think that?”

“We followed the Quill Demon. If there was some grand conspiracy to ambush or kidnap us all, his first stop wouldn’t have been a bar,” she explained.

“Unless he wasn’t important enough to hear the full plan,” Chris pointed out.

Pru seemed to come around to Melinda’s way of thinking. “Well, that’s where our moms went, right, the Underworld? If they didn’t find anything there, then maybe Peyton wasn’t taken. Maybe she ran.”

“But the safest place is with your mothers,” Coop rebutted, loyally.

“People don’t always act logically when they’re afraid,” argued Henry.

“Well, where would she go?” asked Leo. “She wasn’t in Magic School.”

“Contact her friends,” Coop suggested. “And Josh. Does anyone know his number off hand?”

Pru spoke up immediately. “I have it.” She ran for her purse and returned shortly, perusing her extensive contact list.

“I can’t believe we didn’t think of this earlier,” Wyatt said.

“Tunnel vision, I suppose.”

“Josh, hi, it’s Pru! Listen, is Peyton with you?” Pru said as Piper returned in a fresh pair of clothes.

“She is? May I speak with her?”

Intently, the room listened in on Pru’s side of the conversation.

“Well, where are you at least?”

“I don’t care if she told you not to tell anyone. I am her sister and I’m worried about her.”

“Yes, it was a fight, but not like you think. Please tell me where you are so I can see that she’s safe.”

“Can you repeat that? I didn’t…”

“Josh? Hello?”

Pru let the hand holding her unresponsive phone drop slightly and frowned at the phone.

“He hung up on you?” accused Astrid angrily, looking ready to take on the world, Josh first.

“No,” Pru replied slowly. “I could hear him fine until he tried to tell me where they were and then it was like he was underwater.”

“Peyton’s with Josh?” Piper asked.

“Yes,” breathed Pru, relieved. “I just don’t know where. I could hear thumping- bass, I think.”

“A club,” realized Piper. She directed her attention towards the ceiling. “Paige, bring Phoebe back asap. We found Peyton.”

Whether or not Paige actually heard the call, she and Phoebe orbed in minutes later. Piper made short work of filling them in.

Relief flooded Phoebe’s face. There was still urgency in her voice, but it was diluted by the knowledge that evil hadn’t kidnapped her daughter. “How do we find her? Scrying and sensing still don’t work.”

Henry worked through the problem under his breath. “Pru could speak to Josh, who was with Peyton, no problem. It was only when she asked their location that things got fuzzy.”

“So?”

“So, whatever happened is only affecting Peyton.”

“She can’t be found magically and no one can give her location. Great,” muttered Paige.

Phoebe’s hum of confirmation because an exaltation of eureka. She bounded up the stairs, telling the rest to remain, and returned a scant minute later with the Book of Shadows.

She plopped the Book down on the coffee table. “A cloaking spell.”

Wyatt leaned over and read aloud. “When in a situation where to be found is undesired, a witch may be best served with a spell of cloaking. Hold a sprig of wolfsbane and recite the words.”

“There’s a warning,” Grace indicated, pointing to the short blurb at the bottom. “Take heed, this spell will shield from all magical eyes, good or evil.”

“A spell gone awry. She’s a Halliwell, all right,” laughed Leo, earning a light slap on the arm from his wife.

Coop suppressed a small smile. “Well, she didn’t cast it on Josh. We find him, we’ll find her.”

“He’s not a witch, so we can’t scry.”

Wyatt found Astrid’s eyes. “It might work,” she admitted.

“What might work?”

“I need a computer,” Astrid announced. “Or a really good phone. Mine was busted in the attack.”

Obediently, Wyatt handed his phone over.

Astrid was silent as she worked, despite being pestered with a barrage of questions.

“Josh’s last name?” she asked, eventually.

“De Luca,” Phoebe, Coop, and Pru answered instantly.

Astrid’s fingers twitched over the keys. Then, she declared, “Got him. Looks like they decided to go to Loveless.”

Phoebe reached for her husband’s hand.

“Want us to come with?” Paige asked.

Coop shook his head. He enclosed Phoebe’s hand in his and they beamed into a semi-lit alley behind a roaring club.

Phoebe forked over the entrance fee for both of them and they waved away the ‘over 21’ bracelets. Together, they descended into the building, where club-goers swayed and jumped to the rhythmic music. The all-ages night event was mostly populated with ‘under 21’s, though dotted here and there were a few patrons with neon green bracelets.

The flashing lights made it difficult to see faces, so the duo searched for arms with bracelets instead.

“There’s Josh,” Coop said into Phoebe’s ear, pointing to the sandy-blond man ordering drinks at the bar.

They crossed the dance floor, earning a few odd looks, probably due to their age.

“Josh!” Phoebe shouted over the music when they reached the bar.

Josh whirled around. “Um, hi, Mrs. Halliwell.”

“Where’s Peyton?”

Josh’s face scrunched in confusion. “She’s right there,” he said, pointing to the empty space beside him.

“This isn’t funny, Josh. I need to see her,” Phoebe shot back, hoping it was a joke yet knowing it wasn’t.

He stared at them blankly, then directed his attention to the empty space for a moment. His eyes widened and begged to be anywhere else.

If Coop hadn’t been watching at the exact right second he might have missed the slight movement of Josh’s jacket. It pulled back slightly as if tugged by a strong, or if someone brushed up against him in a desperate attempt to flee.

“Peyt?” Josh called out. Coop pulled Phoebe behind him as he tried to follow his invisible daughter through the crowd. He only had the occasional glare, alarmed ‘oof’, or abrupt end of a beam of neon light to go on, and at the end of it all, a door at the far corner of the club opening of its own accord.

He and Phoebe darted inside the room, now revealed to be a small office. Unless she beamed, Peyton was stuck.

“Peyton, will you please reverse the cloaking spell? You’re safe with us,” Phoebe requested into the seemingly empty room.

Only silence replied.

Trying not to sound too frustrated, she said, “What are going to do? Never speak to your family again?” In her hand, she held out the reversal spell.

The paper was yanked out of her hand and plopped onto the desk. A pen floated through the air and scrawled a short message on the back: “Prove your identity.”

Coop faded into and out of a beam. Phoebe, whose powers were a little harder to display—save levitation—relied on a vocal confirmation. “Okay, I’ll admit it: Wiggles never went to the farm. She died, honey.”

“The guinea pig?” Coop questioned with a slight, amused smile. “You’re going with the guinea pig?”

Phoebe shrugged.

A golden light unraveled around a figure, from head to toe. Peyton stood in front of them. Tears brimmed in her brown eyes.

“I’m scared,” she admitted.

“You have every right to be,” Coop reasoned. “What happened today was a terrifying experience.”

“There wasn’t a demon battle I didn’t feel afraid of,” added Phoebe.

“This isn’t making me feel better.”

“What we’re saying is that we don’t want you to close yourself off, or hide what you’re feeling from us.”

“We’re your parents,” added Phoebe. “If you’re afraid, we want you to feel like you can come to us—or your aunts or uncles. I can’t promise that demons won’t attack again, but I can promise that your family will always be here for you.”

“You just have to let us,” finished Coop.

A few tears slipped out of Peyton’s eyes. She nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.

They enclosed her in a hug. “We love you so much,” Phoebe whispered and kissed the top of her head. She brushed a clump of brown hair from Peyton’s forehead. “Are you ready to come home?”

Peyton leaned back slightly. “I think I want to spend the night with Josh. It’s been a long night, and I want to feel normal, at least for a little bit.”

She doubled over herself to add, “I’m sorry if I caused a fuss.”

Sharing a glace, Phoebe eventually nodded. “Call us if something happens. I don’t think it will, but just in case?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, go have a nice, normal night with your boyfriend.”

After hugging them both goodbye, Peyton exited the office.

Phoebe sighed and practically collapsed into Coop’s arms. “I never want to do that again.”

As they beamed out of the office, Coop whispered, “Let’s hope we never have to.”

Chapter Text

Aftermath

“Yes, I’m sure he said Carthak,” Henry Junior replied in a monotone while Melinda rolled her eyes.

Pru looked down at the Book. “This says he’s a low level sorcerer.”

“Could be. Never met him.”

“Well, low level sorcerers shouldn’t be in the position to hire goons.”

“Well,” Henry mimicked, “Maybe the Book is wrong.”

Beside him, on the couch, since there hadn’t been room for five around the pedestal, Melinda piped up, “Yeah, why is it assumed that we’re wrong and not the Book or you?”

“The Talman/Tall Man Fiasco,” Chris intoned without looking up from the Book. “I believe that sent us on a wild goose chase for four hours.”

“We were late to our own graduation because you insisted it was at four,” Pru added.

Melinda scowled.

“It was at two,” Pru finished innocently.

Wyatt laughed under his breath.

“I was clearly right in all those instances,” Melinda said, making a joke out of it. “Carthak’s probably just moved up in the world—or down, I guess.”

“Either Carthak made a pretty huge leap in the hierarchy, or this goes further than we thought,” mused Wyatt.

“Or all of this means nothing and we’re just desperate to find some semblance of a pattern,” Chris rebutted.

Melinda groaned. “Oh no, Chris, are you doing the nihilism thing again? You know we all thought you were a tad bit annoying, right?”

“You didn’t exactly keep that a secret.”

“It was more than a tad.”

Heavy footsteps announced the arrival of someone—or multiple someones—to the upper levels of the house.

Piper, Phoebe, and Paige walked through the door.

“Peyton is okay. She’s staying at Josh’s tonight,” Phoebe explained before Pru could ask. Pru nodded.

“Everyone else has gone home,” clarified Piper.

“Is that your nice way of kicking us out?” Melinda asked.

“No,” Wyatt disagreed with a small smile, “When Mom wants us out, she isn’t nice about it.”

Piper’s frown indicated they were walking a thin line. “You are welcome to stay as long as you like, all of you.”

“Thank you, Aunt Piper,” Pru responded, sending an annoyed look at her snickering cousins. “We just wanted to look in the Book.”

“Looking up the demons from the attack?” Paige guessed.

“We haven’t found anything useful,” Pru confirmed.

The Charmed Ones headed to the pedestal, more out of habit than anything.

“I suppose we can keep looking a little while longer.”

The witches basked in the relaxed atmosphere, the first since the sun went down (or even farther back if Piper’s frantic party prep counted). They mystery of the attack loomed in the air, but after four hours on edge, the toll of the day crept up. Wyatt’s shoulders drooped, Pru lost the nervous tick in her eyebrow, Paige suppressed a yawn, and Melinda languished on the couch with her legs over the sides.

“Is that what it used to be like?” wondered Henry, hazily peering at a borrowed text from Magic School.

“Well, there wasn’t usually so many at once, but yes.”

“It seems different when it’s happening to you,” Pru commented from her seat at the potions table.

“Evil’s been at an all-time low for the past twenty years, so this shouldn’t be a regular occurrence in your lives,” consoled Phoebe.

Junior suddenly found the floor beneath his feet interesting.

“Plus, you don’t have the same type of destiny we did,” Paige added, neatly ignoring Wyatt’s status.

“Which we fulfilled,” Piper reminded, slightly aggressively, though the inhabitants of the room understood that the Matriarch’s ire was directed at the forces of the universe (namely the Elders and Angels of Destiny) that constantly butted into her life. “So this was just an unfortunate incident, an infrequent by-product of being Charmed. It shouldn’t happen again and I will be damned if it stops us from having proper family functions.”

“Whose birthday is next?” she asked forcefully.

Melinda pointed at Pru.

Piper faced her eldest niece. “We are going to try again. Does the fifteenth work for you? I’ll whip up two cakes to make up for the one we lost today.”

Unable to say no, Pru smiled weakly. “Sure. Thanks, Aunt Piper.”

“Good. I expect everyone to clear their calendars that evening. I’ll get started on the menu as soon as we deal with the mastermind behind today’s attack.”

“What mastermind?” asked Junior. “A bunch of demons attacked with no real purpose. Some got away. Some didn’t.”

“It’s the ones who got away that bother me,” responded Piper.

“We don’t have anything else to go on,” pointed out Phoebe. “Maybe Junior’s right. At the very least, we’ve done all we can for tonight.”

“I could use a bath. I still smell like swamp,” complained Paige.

“Plus, my house is still a disaster zone. Do you mind if I borrow Leo tomorrow?” Phoebe asked her sister, who shook her head.

“I suspect he will be busy,” called out a deep yet feminine voice. “Planning your funerals.”

The eight original occupants of the room whirled around to face the newest addition and were faced with a stocky woman with choppy blonde hair. Phoebe grabbed an athame and hurled it at the demon, but as the blade come within an inch of piercing the skin on her forehead it suddenly reversed its direction. Only a quick flick of Piper’s fingers saved Phoebe from a blade to her forehead.

Phoebe grabbed the athame from midair and held it firmly in her hand.

Wyatt nudged his sister with his elbow. “Be ready,” he whispered. She didn’t have time to ask what for when Wyatt grabbed a book from behind him and threw it at the demon, carefully observing its path. The strange woman didn’t move. In fact, she hadn’t seemed to notice the book flying at her, but once again, just as it was about to hit her, its motion reversed and careened back to Wyatt. Melinda promptly froze it.

Chris frowned. He’d been watching both attacks and it seemed as though the demon had some sort of barrier protecting her. Most force fields had some weak point or would fail under continued attack. It was just a matter of pressing her until an opportunity presented itself.

Melinda looked ready to launch herself at the demon, regardless of the consequences, but halfway through putting enough strength into her legs to lift her body into the air, her body ceased moving. Frowning, she looked around for the culprit.

Pru was the only one paying attention to her. “Bad idea,” she mouthed. After a long moment, Melinda nodded and Pru released her hold and returned her attention to the demon.

The Charmed Ones had migrated to the Book and were flipping through its pages. Paige seemed to have found something because she and the sisters linked hands and began chanting.

“Seed of darkness, cease your attack,

  This spell you—“

The Charmed Ones’ spell was cut short as an invisible force activated instantly and the three were pulled, as if magnetically, in the direction of the demon. Like a baseball player at bat, the demon had her fist ready. As the unfortunate sister closest to her, Phoebe’s face took the brunt of the blow and she fell to the ground in an ungraceful heap. Paige and Piper were thrown backwards into the wall. They joined their sister in an unconscious state.

“Mom!” five voices cried out as they leapt into action.

Pru rushed to her mother’s side, Junior right behind her. Wyatt orbed to the remaining Charmed Ones. Disregarding her cousin’s earlier advice, Melinda threw herself, fist first, at the demon during what should have been a perfect opening, but she too was sent flying away. Only Chris’ lighting-quick, telekinetic reflexes saved her from a fall out the window.

Pru supported her mother’s unconscious frame while Junior set to work healing the damage done to the middle Charmed One’s face. Past the overturned podium and upside-down Book of Shadows, Wyatt had both hands and was attempting to heal both his mother and aunt at the same time.

The demon turned to the last Halliwell standing. Chris fell into a defensive stance, hands ready, and frowned as a sadistic grin spread across the demon’s face.

“My liege apologizes profusely for not presenting his gift to the young Cupid in person, but he just doesn’t have time to attend birthday parties, what with raising an army of darkness and all.” The demon spoke in a firm and slightly condescending voice.

“Your liege?” Chris asked tentatively, waiting for a renewed attack.

The demon simply smiled in the wicked manner she had before and shimmered out of the attic.

Paige and Piper struggled to their feet and joined Phoebe, Pru, and Wyatt in the centre of the room. Henry, supporting Melinda with one arm, and Chris joined the group seconds later.

Leo burst into the attic, clutching a vial of purple explosive liquid in his hands. He relaxed when he saw all eight standing, at least somewhat of their own volition.

“Who was that?” Wyatt asked in an agitated tone.

Phoebe took several steps backwards and bent down to retrieve the Book. She flipped several pages and then turned it around in her arms so that everyone could see.

“That was Daria,” she said, with a hint of bitterness, probably still reeling from shock of the hit. “Her force field acts in a similar manner as gravity. It can push or pull, depending on the situation.”

Phoebe paused a moment before adding, “More importantly, she only serves the strongest in the Underworld.”

There was little need for elaboration but Phoebe filled in the blanks anyway.

“The Source of All Evil.”