The television show "Charmed," including the characters of the Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc.
This story takes place a couple of months after Piper has seen Cole in limbo and after Leo has become a mortal man and the head of Magic School.
A fireball tore across the Manor's front hall, deflected off of the glowing banister of the staircase, and ricocheted upward, shattering part of the chandelier over the hall table.
Even crouched behind the banister, Piper saw that and swore. She stood and opened her hands at the woman in the long red cloak, who exploded into a loose pillar of whirling ashes.
Cole pulled Piper back down beside him. "Go bring Phoebe back, you'll need the Power of Three," he said.
Piper hesitated, looking at Cole. Paige, crouched on the steps beside them, glanced downward and couldn't quite repress her look of shame.
"Go," Cole said urgently. The ashes were already beginning to congeal, assuming again the form of the cloaked woman. "Even magically reinforced, this banister won't last forever. I'll cover you."
Piper ran up the stairs as Cole popped up and threw a fireball. The woman in the robe and the fireball vanished at once, then reappeared in the sunroom door. The woman was holding the fireball in the palm of her hand, and against the night-darkened windows of the sunroom the flickering fireball was the only light, casting weird shadows upward on the woman's face.
"Where did dear Phoebe go in such a hurry?" the Seer asked, in silken tones. "Do bring her down to say hello. I haven't seen her in – "
"Bitch!" Paige yelled, and jumped up. "Fireball!"
The flamed leaped out of the Seer's hand to within a couple of inches of Paige's hand, and was hurled back again. There was a thunderous crack and the Seer flew back into the sunroom.
Paige jumped over the banister and ran for the smoking sunroom door, but Cole shimmered in, which was how he got there first.
He didn't see the Seer. He conjured a fireball as he turned. There she was, in the corner, kneeling, and in her hand was something that looked like a chunk of rock with pale yellow broken glass on top. Paige was almost to the doorway as the Seer put the crystal on the floor and jagged yellow-orange streaks of light curved into the air, defining a cage that almost filled the room and closed over Cole's head.
Paige was going so fast that she slammed into the crystal cage before she could stop. The impact slammed her back against the doorjamb, cracking the wood where her head hit, and she dropped to the floor unconscious.
The Seer stood, smiling, and from an inner pocket of her robe she pulled an athame with a very long blade that glinted gold in the light of the cage. She lifted her arm and pierced the cage with the athame's tip, and at the intersection there was a steady point of light so bright that Cole had to turn away.
"You might want to put out the fireball," the Seer said in practical tones. "It can only bounce off the walls of the cage and kill you, and you're no good to me dead."
She tipped her head back, looking up at her raised hand and the brilliant point of light, and said almost dreamily:
"Purest silver and citrine,
Let a portal now be seen – "
As she spoke she drew the point of the athame downward, and the spot of light grew to a brilliant line of supernatural brightness two feet long, three feet long – Cole grabbed the point of the athame and yelled with pain, recoiling –
"Keep the karmic scales even – "
Phoebe and Piper ran to the sunroom door. Phoebe's hair was cropped very short. She was wearing a red plaid skirt and orange striped blouse and nine protective talismans on nine separate chains around her neck. At the sight of the Seer she fell back in horror, clutching the talismans desperately. Piper tried to blow up the Seer, but the woman was protected on the other side of the cage's force field.
"Evil taken, good is given – "
Piper dropped down beside Paige, who moaned, as the Seer herself knelt, bringing the line of piercing light almost to the floor. Piper grabbed for one of the crystals. It flashed and she pulled back with a cry of pain.
"Bring the man my vision traced – "
Piper shook Paige's arm. "Paige! Call for the athame!"
"Let this other take his place!"
And the Seer touched the crystal before her with the point of the athame.
The blinding light filled the cage and there was a shuddering tremor that knocked Phoebe off her feet. The Seer lost balance too, caught herself, and stood. The cage still filled the room with an evil yellow light, but it was empty.
"Where is he?" Piper spat.
The Seer, far from seeming triumphant, was looking at the empty cage with as much bafflement as Phoebe and Piper. "How could this not – " she began.
Then the light was back, without the Seer's doing anything, a thin crack that grew to a wedge as if someone had opened a door to a day of dazzling sunshine. The light-wedge begin turning. It fell first on Piper and Paige, and even the half-conscious Paige lifted her arm to cover her eyes. It rolled across Phoebe, who laughed hysterically. Then it rolled across the Seer, and stayed.
"No," the Seer said, and the sisters saw that she was being pulled toward the doorway-like wedge of light. "No!"
She raised her arms as if to struggle but the light sucked her in. The doorway slammed with another cosmic shudder, and she was gone.
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"What the hell was that?" asked Piper.
She was sitting cross-legged in Phoebe's room, bracing herself against the wall. Phoebe was looking over the carpet for the gold earring she'd dropped, its shine the perfect offset to the sexy dark burgundy dress she was wearing on her date that night. She, too, had braced herself against the wall when the shuddering thump had shaken the house.
Piper leaped to her feet and went to the door. "Paige?" she called down the hall.
Paige, who had volunteered to get Leo's and Piper's children ready for bed, was in their room. "The boys are fine. The alphabet-block fort is not."
"Earthquake," Phoebe said.
"Of course," Piper said with resignation. "This is what happens when I take the night off. I'm going to call the club." She started for her room.
Phoebe found her earring, and a funny thought struck her. She stood in her own doorway, calling down to Piper's and Leo's room. "You think the club kids'll even notice?"
There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Cole reached the top step, looking directly at Phoebe's face. "Phoebe? Are you all right?"
Piper, in her room, pulling her cell phone out of her bag, looked up at the sound of a male voice, which sounded like – but couldn't be –
A second reverberating thump went through the house just as Paige put Chris in his crib. Wyatt orbed himself into the crib, putting his protective shield up over himself and his brother, and stared up at Paige with his sober, direct eyes.
"Uh-oh. This can't be good," Paige said.
Phoebe screamed. She was embarrassed about it later, but that's what she did.
Piper and Paige ran into the hall.
"It's me!" Cole was saying in earnest desperation to Phoebe. "I know it's strange, you look different, I must have been – unconscious or something, but you know me, Phoebe. I'm the one – "
Phoebe sent him flying with a martial-arts kick. She was wearing three-inch heels. Cole reeled back into the opposite wall and doubled over, but somehow remained standing.
"What do you want?" Paige barked.
"How did you get out of limbo?" Piper demanded.
"Which one are you?" said a third voice.
They all turned to see the Seer on the landing a few steps below them.
"This is a freaking nightmare," Phoebe whispered.
The Seer raised her eyebrows and looked at her. "Phoebe! You look much better in this reality. Your fashion sense has improved – "
Cole shot a fireball at her, she deflected it, and there was only a scorch mark on the wall where a family portrait of the three sisters had been.
"You just answered my question," the Seer said to Cole.
Piper was still focused on Cole. "How did you get out of limbo?"
"Limbo?" the Seer said. "Is that where he is? That explains why I couldn't bring him into my reality. But it's all right. You can have this one. As for me – " and she vanished.
A moment's silence.
"The boys," Piper said, and ran for their room.
"Wyatt has his – " Paige began.
The Seer reappeared behind Cole and there was a slash of reflected light across his throat. He fell, making horrible strangling sounds, and the Seer finished her sentence.
" – I won't stay trapped in this dimension," she said, and vanished.
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The school nurse at Magic School was a witch with huge dark eyes and full lips. Although it hadn't yet been 8:00 at night, she'd left her rooms wearing a scarlet lace negligee and peignoir, and her mane of dark hair was tousled from sleep, or something.
She did know her craft, though. Blue candles burned on either side of Cole's bed in the infirmary. Two poultices, healing crystals, and an amulet – none of which had worked yet – were on the table next to the bed, and the witch was using a mortar and pestle to crush ingredients for yet another potion.
Cole was in desperate straits. For half an hour he'd been choking on blood, unable to speak, unable to sleep, unable to heal, unable to die. He pounded his bloody pillow with his fist and made another horrible gagging sound.
"There, there," the nurse said, and even in her husky voice she somehow managed to sound maternal. "The best thing is to lie still. No one can die in Magic School, and I'm the best there is. We'll get you fixed up."
Paige was standing with her arms folded, staring stonily at Cole's suffering. "Remind me again why we're doing this?"
"Because we need information." Piper was flipping through a book of magical medications. "If that Seer really is from another reality, why did she pop in here just to pop out again? Or is she still in this reality? If this Cole is from the same reality, why is he here? Why did she try to kill him? What did she mean, 'You can have this one'? Is she just going to pop into our dimension whenever she feels like it? Why isn't she dead in their reality? For that matter, why isn't Cole? Wait, how about this?"
That last question was to the healer, showing her a page in the book. The healer shook her head and tapped one of the poultices. "That was this one."
She daubed the contents of the mortar onto the bloody gash in Cole's throat, but the horrible choking sounds continued. The witch shook her head. "I don't understand – It's almost like – "
A door appeared in the middle of the infirmary and Phoebe stepped out of it. "Date canceled," she said. "I got another of my migraines."
"I'm sorry, Phoebe," Piper said.
"Don't be. It didn't sound especially thrilling. Leonard swears that this guy can make us ordinary folk actually care about the space-time continuum, but my feeling is, if I wanted to understand those little squiggles I'd have – "
"That's it!" This was apparently not related to what Phoebe was saying; the nurse had simply snapped out of her reverie, and was heading for a glass-faced wooden cabinet.
"Nothing yet?" Phoebe said. As opposed to Paige, who never took her eyes off Cole, Phoebe kept herself angled so as to have no sight of him.
Piper shook her head. "If we hadn't brought him here, he'd have been dead twenty minutes ago. Taking any information about his own dimension with him."
"Assuming that the Seer was telling the truth about different realities," Phoebe said.
"Assuming that the Seer tells the truth about anything, which is a stretch," Paige said.
Oblivious to this, the nurse dropped down beside Cole again with a blue bottle in her hand. She pulled an eyedropper from it and let three clear drops fall on to the potion she'd already applied to his wound. Cole stiffened and made a bellowing, gurgling sound, which in a matter of seconds had become far more bellow and far less gurgle. He stopped and gasped for air, and while the sound rasped and bubbled, he was obviously breathing.
"There you go," the nurse said. "Quietly now. Keep those breaths even. Don't try to talk yet." She turned to the Charmed Ones with a smile. "She must have used an athame with a silver blade. This stuff is great for magical injuries involving silver. It works wonders on werewolves, even the ones – I mean – you know – if you want to heal a werewolf, which – "
Phoebe had the feeling she was about to hear something about the nurse's personal life. "Uh, is he completely cured?" she interrupted.
The healer was happy to drop the subject. "Well, it's not a whitelighter heal. He'll need heavy bandaging for awhile, which will need to be changed. But he'll live and breathe and talk."
Piper said, "Good," then turned to Cole. "Talk."