"Yes, ma'am," the secretary said from behind the counter of the clinic. "Could you please repeat your name again?"
"My name is Piper. I am here to see my sister, the doctor said for me to come right--"
"Yes, ma'am. The doctor will be right with you. And your last name?"
"I'd rather not give it." The secretary types a note into her computer. "Dr. Kluger knows my sister, she is a patient here. Please, I really need to speak with the doctor immediately. Is he here?"
"I'm sorry. What is your sister registered as here?"
"Ummm, Paige. Her name is Paige."
The secretary types on the computer, staring intently at it before looking back at the disheveled woman standing in front of her. Piper face betrays her anxiety, and her hair has started to come out in wisps from under her ski cap. Her eyes are intent on the secretary, viewing her as a last offensive preventing her from accessing the infirm Paige. "I am sorry. I don't have that name registered as one of the patients of our clinic. Is she a new patient?"
"Look, I know she is here. I just need to speak with Dr. Kluger immediately about her, so if you could please just page Dr. Kluger and tell him that I am here, that would be really great. Ok?" Her request began with only a hint of annoyance, but by the end, the annoyance has been brought out in full force.
"I am sorry, but you will have to sit down and wait. He will be avaiable soon."
"Look, I need to speak with him now," Piper begins, moving around the desk to the open door into the back of the clinic, but the secretary jumps up to block her way. With a cry of frustration, Piper raises her hands and casts a spell on the clinic, freezing time for everyone around her, and she quickly sidesteps the secretary and heads into the back of the clinic.
The clinic is large, so Piper is forced to walk aimlessely down the hallway before she notices a sign written on a blank piece of paper with a felt marker reading Plague Quarantine with an arrow sketched beneath it pointing down the hallway. Piper follows the arrow and dodges around a patient wearing jeans and a plaid shirt walking toward the exit. His lips are frozen in a whistle, and he looks happy to be leaving. Piper moves past him quickly without even noticing and finds another room labeled Quarantine. She cautiously looks through the thick glass window in the door and sees two rows of beds lining the walls on each side of the room. All of the beds are empty, except one, the one closest to the door. The window only allows her to just see the tip of the bed, enough to know that there is a body in the bed, but she cannot see anymore than that. She tries the handle and it turns, allowing her into the room.
The door opens and Piper scurries around it quickly. The bed she now sees was not the last one in the row, but the angle of her view from the door prevented her from seeing the bed on the far corner. The door starts to close, but Paige's body on the bed catches her eye, and she rushes over to Paige's limp form while the door closes with a furious hiss. Silently, she collapses onto her knees besides the bed and gently holds Paige's arm. She buries her face in the bedsheets and heaves dry silent tears into the covers, her fingers absently stroking the numb arm. She can feel the magic surrpunding Paige, the evil Enchantresses magic. Its still searching for others and still consuming, but Piper ignores and just cries.The room is quiet except for a scratching pen on paper. After a brief moment, Piper lifts her head up, her cheeks wet with surpsiing tears and she slowly reaches towards her face to brush the few wisps of hair from her face to thier proper positions. The scratching pen stops.
"What are you doing?" shouts a man's voice from behind her and a strong hand clamps down on her outstretched hand and yanks her away from the bed. The hand pulls her up, and Piper is forced to release Paige's arm and instead grapples with her attacker's hand, clenching tightly onto the man's arm as it pulls her up of the ground. The man's arm is deadly strong and he yanks her up from behind and lifts her up until she is standing and then pushes her away from the bed with a forceful shove. Piper's arm drops free as she stumbles away from the bed toward a desk in the corner of the room which she hadn't been able to see from the window in the door. Piper regains her balance and spins to face her attacker, almost raising her hands before recognizing him as Dr. Kluger. Dr. Kluger though doesn't recognize her.
"Who are you? What were you doing? This is a quarantine area, and you could have already been infected. You need to leave now."
Piper's only reply is take out her pendant and let it hang outside of her shirt on her chest. She looks up, expecting to see Dr. Kluger's shocked expression, but is surprised to see one of disgust instead. "Witches," he snorts. "So, I assume you thought you knew what you were doing too." He advances towards her, and throws his arm back to point at Paige's prone form. "Well so did she, and here she is now." He nearly yells. "And she's dying!"
Piper's eyes start to tear over, and she yells back. "What do you think, I don't care? She my gad damn sister, lying in that bed, dying because of some god damn enchantress who's taken my husband away from me. And now you think I don't care about my sister?!"
Dr. Kluger's eyes register the shot, and his face softens, appearing almost fatherly. He reaches out a hand, gently this time, and pats Piper's shoulder. "Shh, I'm sorry I said that. I know you're her sister, but I feel almost like a father to her now. I do for most of my patients, and even more so for my staff." He smiles a bit, a small sound, a cross between a short laugh and a sigh, moves in his throat. "And she happens to be both in this unique cirumstance." He looks into her eye as she sniffles. "And if I feel like her father, then I guess that makes me feel like your father too. So you can forgive your father, couldn't you?" He smiles fully at her, and she can't help but feel more composed before this older figure. She can almost remember sitting on her grandfather's knee in his presence, and it relaxes her.
He breaks the contact and moves to look through the window of the door. "I am surprised," he says, "that no one else has come, with all the shouting I've been doing."
"Oh, that?" Piper says. "I've stopped time for everyone else. The secretary wouldn't let me come see Paige or you, and--"
"What?" he says, turning to her. Now his eyes are wide with shock, but she doesn't feel triumphant for that. "I thought you sisters were trying to stay hidden. Stopping time in a whole office couldn't be called staying hidden."
"But, I--"
"Come on, we've got to fix this, quick." With alacrity belying his age, he moves around to her side, reaches an arm behind her back and guides her through the door, down the hallway and back to the waiting room.
"Get back into the position you were when you stopped time, and undo it. Give me a second to get back outside through the back entrance. And keep with your story. I'll be out soon. I was 'expecting you'. Now hurry." He ushers her around the frozen secretary, and quickly turns back, taking off down the hallway. Piper moves in front of the secretary, brings her hands up, and pulls the magic back inside of her. Time begins again with a whoosh sound and the secretary continues her movement to bar the door.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. Please take a seat and wait. When the doctor comes, I will tell him you are here."
Finding it hard to muster the original emotion, Piper only whimpers a final "please". The exhaaustion in the word can easily be taken for defeat, and as the secretary doesn't move, Piper turns to the chairs lined across the hall. When she arrives at the red plastic chairs, she sits down in one, and just looks at the floor, watching the secretary out of the corner of her eye. In only another moment, Dr. Kulger walks into the secretary's area, and she can just barely hear the conversation.
"Hello, Trisha. How are things over here?"
"Mostly fine. No more newspapers, that's a good thing. Everyone out of the hospital?"
"Yes, I've signed the release forms on the last of them, and reminded them to be careful of where the step from now on." Dr. Kluger picks up one of the cliboards are starts looking over what must be the records for his next patient. "My next patient isn't scheduled for another 15 minutes. Is she here yet?"
The secretary looks down at her watch. "20, by my clock." She taps the clock with a finger before looking back at the doctor. "Anyway, yes, this woman did arive." She motions towards Piper with her eyes, being careful not to point at her. "She claims to be, umm," she flicks through the notes on the computer, "Paige's sister. She says you were expecting her."
Dr. Kluger looks out into the waiting room. "Yes, that's Joeseline. Josie, as her sister, Maragaret, calls her. Paige is Margaret's middle name. Most of her family prefers that one." The secretary starts to enter the information on the computer before Dr. Kluger stops her. "No, its not neccesary to take that down. Anyway, I need to have a meeting with her about her sister. Please send her into the conference room."
"Yes, Dr." Dr. Kluiger leaves the room before Trisha slides the window back and calls out to Piper. Piper raises her head even before Trisha calls. "Joseline. Dr. Kluger will see you now. Come right back her, and I will take you back to the conference room." Piper gets up, her face controlled. She doesn't know if she is supposed to be displaying nervousness, sadness, or fright, so she chooses to display none, hoping that will elicit the least remark. She follows the secretary through the door and down the hallway into another room. There is a small simple formica table in the middle of the room, with simple plastic chairs laid out around the table. Cabinets line the walls, and a microwave stands out on the neat counters.
"Please, have a seat, Joeseline. Dr. Kluger will be here momentarily." The secretary waits until Piper sits down in one of the seats on the side of the table and then leaves, closing the door quietly behind her. Piper waits for only a minute before the door opens again to admit Dr. Kluger into the room. He moves with his normal speed to the table and settles into a chair across from Piper.
"Would you like a muffin, perhaps, Ms. Halliwell?" He says before getting back up and opening one of the cabinets.
"Please, thats would be nice. And I believe you are thinking about my sister, Pheobe. I am Piper, the married one. Remember?"
He sits back down and slides a package of muffins across the table. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. Its har to remember things that come up in the heat of emotion. Thats why a doctor has to remain composed and focused." He finishes off the muffin quickly before continuing.
"Now then, do you know what happened?"
"Nothing." Piper shakes her head. "I know what happened before we split up, but I was hoping we could just avoid demons and the like while we were looking for a way out of this mess."
"Alright," began D. Kluger. "Let me just see that necklace of your's again before we start." Piper withdraws it again and holds it up in the air. The ruby glistens and Dr. Kluger seems satisifed.
"Out of cuiosity," Piper says while she drops the pendant to hang outside her shirt, "how do you know so much about magic? You don't seem like a wizard. And I doubt by now that you are a warlock?"
Dr. Kluger raises an eyebrow. "I assume those terms means something more to you than they do me, but I only know of two kinds of magic users, good ones and one's I'd prefer not to meet. Oh, and white lighters, those I recognize. Lke I said to Paige, when you've been around as long as I have, you tend to see certain things. If you keep your eyes open."
Dr. Kluger arose from his chair, and spun around behind, resting his arms on the back of it, and leaning forward. "Starting with this rose bush for one. This deadly one. All I know is that it sprouted up in my neighborhood suddenly and consumed its first vitim: the propeiters of a drug store."
Piper stiffled a laugh. "You do sound like my grandfather."
Dr. Kluger snorted through his white mustache. "It's affectionate and endearing I know. But it works to distract the patient when she is most nervous." A pale quickly overtook Piper's face. "I apologize for bringing you back so suddenly like that, but every moment counts right now. I wasn't kidding when I
said that Paige is dying."
"You said that the bush consumed. How does a bush consume?"
"Well, it seems thats its vines move to latch onto its prey. The papers denied it, so I went along with it. 'Poison sap leaking from its thorn inducing a radioactive malady paralyzing the organ's functions and begin an immediate detioriation cycle.' Some such hooey. But really its magic. Thats just the symptom."
"Where is the bush now?"
"Still in the store. I had the place cordoned off and no one is even allowed within 15 feet of the entire building."
Dr. Kluger straightens. "Come on," he says, "its time to tell you what I know about Paige so you can solve this mess."
Piper arose, muttering under her breath. "If I can solve my own."
Dr. Kluger pulled a thick file off of the desk back in the Quarantine area and handed a few leaflets to Piper. While she looked at them, he remarked, glancing around the room, "I can't believe all of these beds, and more at the hospital, were filled until she came along. And now she almost fills all of them."
"Dr.," Paige interrupted. "I can't read them. Just tell me what they mean."
He walked over to her and pointed to an x-ray copy with a pen. "This is what I very much wanted to hide from the government. Everyone else has already gotten up, so they would wonder why she hasn't. For now, they don't know that she exists as a patient. That's why you've changed your names here." He pulled the x-ray out of her hands and laid it against a lit board. "This," he said, circling a dense patch, "is that anomoly. every test I do shows thats its there but can't identify what it is. In fact, every test identifies it as being a positive for that test. So we've got a positive blood anamoly, radiocative anomaly, even a foreign object. It shows up as all of them."
He takes down the first x-ray and places another up. "And this is it ysterday. See, its growing."
"How did she get it?"
"That pendant, that's how." Piper reaches up to clasp the pendant with her hand, shocked by the force of her words. "She, I don't know, traced the magic first in the hospital, where I found her attemtping to heal the other patients. During visiting hours of all times!"
Dr. Kluger moved over to look at Paige's face in the bed. "Have some sense next time," he says, pleadingly, "please."
"Anyway," he continued, his eyes still on Paige's figure. "She couldn't effect it while she had the pendant on. So she took it off and tried again. After explaining a little to me about who she is. Not enough, but enough that I knew she had two other magical sisters. Called in the wizarding world, the Charmed Ones, you are, that is. So she took of the pendant. And then she tried again. It worked this time. I almost saw the haze lift from the patient she healed. And the spell flowed into her. She had said it was meant to be targeting her. She felt faint immediately. I took her around on my rounds quickly and she healed all of them. And then she passed out, right after the last one. It was close. I had to hold her arm for the last few." Tears line his face now, falling past his mustace and glistening his cheeks. "It was the hardest thing I've had to do. Sacrifice one for the many. Not how a doctor normally works."
He turned to face Piper. "But I managed to contact you. I assume through the TV interview. I was praying that they wouldn't cut the crucial line." He walked back over to the desk and collected the papers back into the folder. "So what now?" he asked while he sorted them. "How are we, and by that I mean primarily you, going to heal her?" He stopped suddenly and spuin to her, the force returning to his voice. "And you aren't going to take that blasted pendant off either. You hear me?"
"I'm not," she replied, her eyes lowered, her head shaking. "That's good."
"No, I'm not. Going to heal her."
"What?"
"I can't," she said, her eyes meeting his, reflecting the force burning his father's eyes. "It's not my specialty. It's hers. I couldn't, I don't think."
"What then? Wait for her to wake up and heal herself? Or for more white lighters to come? She told me already. They're all in trouble too."
"No. I do my specialty. Take me to the rose bush. I'm going to destroy the source. We'll see what that does."
The "drug store" actually has a sign up labelling it "Herbal Remedies and General Pharmacy". A Wiccan symbol is clearly found in the store window. A police do-not-cross line is flagged around posts around the site. The site is dark with the setting sun, but no one is around. Fortunately, no one wants to be near to this deadly place.
The store stands in the middle of a city block, and Dr. Kluger's blue sedan screeches around the corner onto the street. He drives by the drug store and stops on the other side of the street, just a little bit further down the street than the store is situated. Piper opens the door as soon as the car stops and says, "Stay here," to Dr. Kluger. She gets out and eyes the store front.
Displayed in one of the windows is a prominent display of various medical rememdies. The other window is open and looks into the store. A pot laid on the windowsill has tipped over and broken the glass of the window. A large vine has grown out of the pot and wrapped itself around the frame of the window and part of the door. Tentacles sprawl out for a few feet across the ground. Yellow blossoms dot the length of vine and hideon thorns loom often across the green fingers.
Piper starts to walk forward across the pavement, advancing toward the storefront when the car door behind her slams. She turns and see Dr. Kluger standing behind the car, a short fat gun in his hand.
"I told you to stay there. This will be a magic that I hope to be finished with quickly. We can't let you get hurt."
"All the same," he shouted back across the meters between them. "I'll cover you." He cocked the gun with a swift motion and moved around to the side of the car closer to the storefront.
"With that? What good is a gun against a plant?"
"Its a flare gun. Its a plant, so it should burn. If not, I've got an axe in the trunk." He smiled, and motioned for her to move on. "Let's get this done with and then we can get back to Paige."
Piper turns and starts advancing toward the storefront. She walks slowly, her hands raised, ready to cast her magic out should anything happen, but plant doesn't move. When she is only a few feet away, Dr. Kluger calls out. "Be careful. It actually grew to attack anyone else who got too close."
"The magic in the pendant protects me," she calls back, and whispers, "I hope," and then continues advancing. Piper moves gingerly throught the open door, being careful not to touch the plant.
The inside of the drug store is small and filled with many types of herbs. Some of them she doesn't recognize but she sees that many of them would be useful for potion making. She assumes that the store was a front for an actual magic gathering, and moves to the other side of the chashiers desk. She quickly searches through the drawers before finding a small notebook with a strange symobl marked on it. She turns it over and sees a name written in white ink on the back of the notebook, "Jesicca Mackie". Piper puts the notebook on the desk and continues searching, but finds nothing else of note. Returning to the notebook, she thumbs through it and finds all the pages to be blank, except for the last. There it is written "Wiccan, cast a spell to see."
Piper closes the book and taps its spine on the desk while looking around the rest of the room. A glass bottle is shattered beneath the plant, and the rest of the room is lined with shelves for herbs, remedies and drugs. Nowhere else to hide much. Piper looks at the book, and absentmindedly says, "Hmm." She opens to a random page, squints at it and says "Blinded by ink's dissapearance, sight endowed by my appearance." The letters on the page fade into view, and Piper quickly flips to the last entry and starts to read, quickly.
"The plant infects me, but in doing, I have found the key. The infection is a separate entity. A baby. Independant. The key is a receptacle. It flows, searching. For what, I know not. Still..." The writing grows weak, and harder to read. Likely, the author had been infected and the disease's symptoms, paralyzation, was starting to take effect. Piper focuses on the words. "Still to draw it out of me and into the receptacle is the key. Glass to bind and blood to trap, let the plauge be--"
The plant moves it's fingers and many things happen at once. A cat meows outside the door and Dr. Kluger yells. "Piper, get out of there!" A flare shot flies toward the pot, its streamer trailing smoke. Glass shatters again, and the cat leap through the window, the vine wrapped around it and being dragged along. The flare lands in the pot and tips it over. The vine falls to the floor and erups into flame. Piper screams, and throws her hand up, dropping the book and freezing time. The flame freezes, but the vine does not, and grows away from the frozen flame.
"Shit," shouts Piper. "I still can't effect it." Piper swings her hand at it again, but it still doesn't freeze, and the vine crushes the cat, its blood draining out. Piper waves her hands again and the world returns to its time flow and cat runs farther back into the store. The fire catches on the floor now that the vine has moved and starts to spread. "Shit," says Piper again, and takes off for the door.
"Piper!" shouts Dr. Kluger once she clears the threshhold.
"Get that axe out," she yells back, and runs five feet away from the plant and rips the necklace off. She holds it in her hand a moment and drops it to the ground. As soon as it leaves her hand, the entire vine rears to life and starts creeping towards her from across the width of the storefront. Piper raises her hand and starts casting explosive magic against all of the vines. They start exploding in bursts of green pieces, one by one. The stubs grow shorter, but shoot out again with renewed strength. The cat screeches from in the storefront and a blaze begins to grow behind the glass. The tendrils creep closer and Piper continues to blow them up. One snakes around from behind and she leaps away from it, blasting it quickly and continuing to blast until the vine retreats to the storefront. Piper turns her efforts to another vine when the cat leaps from the storefront window, still trailing a bloody vine, its fur now on fire. Piper screams and dodges backwards, tripping and falling. A vine makes a renewed thrust at her and she rolls away just in time for Dr. Kluger to throw down his fireman's axe an inch away from her. He scraps the axe along the ground, throwing the vine away from Piper as she rolls over and blows it up in the air.
Piper rolls farther away and Dr. Kluger races to her and helps her up. She destroys a few more vines but the vines continue to grow towards her. She looks at the blaze now burning across the floor of the storefront and shouts, "Blaze brighten and fire burn, for the vine shall your tendrils yearn." A glass in the window cracks loudly and the fire roars to higher life. A shot leaps out the window and takes the vine, traveling along its length in all directions. The vines begin to hiss, turning black, but continue to grow.
Piper moves farth back from the storefront, still destroying vines with every movement of her hands and casts another spell. "Vine's growth now decompose, let the vine melt as a dead rose!" The vine's hiss grows louder and vine's growth staggers and slows. Piper continues to destroy the slowed vines until their stubs poke out of the windows and onto the ground and those stubs start to turn black and fall to thr ground in a puddle of ash.
Piper walks closer to the burning storefront and picks upthe discarded pendant. She takes a moment to peer through the window and the consuming fire. Dr. Kluger walks to her side and whistles. "You were right. I see that this is your specialty."
Piper turns and starts walking back to the car, her face cross. "Come on, lets get back to Paige. Do you have a cellphone?"
"Yes," says Dr. Kluger, opening the car door. "Why?"
"Call the fire department." Piper climbs into the car, and Dr. Kluger follows, starting the ignition.
"Report the blaze. It needs to be put out. The vine shouldn't harm them anymore."
"But they'll trace it to me! I don't want you guys to be found out, and I don't want myself involved in magic anymore than needed."
Piper looks at him. "Trust me, I empathasize. But call anonymously. They won't bother tracking it. And I doubt Rosaline, the enchantress, won't know about this anyway. The pendants should hide us from her atleast."
Dr. Kluger takes the phone out of the pocket in the side of the door and hands it to Piper. "Fine, but you call. I'm taking us home."
Piper dials and the operator files her call away quickly. As soon as she hangs up, Dr. Kluger asks if Piper thinks that it worked.
"What worked?"
"Killing the vine. Did it save Paige?"
"I don't know, but I don't think so. Do you know Jessica Mackie?"
"Yes, she was the first to be injured by the vine." His voice grows solemn for a moment. "She didn't get up. Why?"
"She was a magic user. She left a message back there which could have helped Paige. I didn't get to read it all before the action started."
"What?," Dr. Kluger slams on the gbreaks, nearly skidding the car. "We need to go back and get it!"
"Too late," Piper says, her voice calm, the eye in the storm. "The fire has taken it by now."
"Damn," curses Dr. Kluger, slamming his fists on the wheel. "Oh, excuse me," he says almost immmediately and continues driving. "What now?"
"Well, I think I got enough of the message to help Paige. If she needs it. Let's hope she doesn't."
"Agreed."
The back door to the office opens and Dr. Kluger walks the few feet from it to the quarantine room, escorting Piper in. They quickly move into the room, nearly holding their breath until they see Paige's prone form still lying on the bed. Dr. Kluger breaks the silence first.
"So what did Jessica say about this problem?"
"See, she seemed to have contracted the spell herself, correct? So she attempted to develop a counterspell. She wanted to lure the spell inside of her out using a glass bottle and some blood. Do we have a glass bottle here?"
"I'm sure I can come up with something." Dr. Kluger turns to the desk and starts rummaging through things. Triumphantly, he holds up his find. "How about a large flask?"
Piper takes it out of his hands and holds it under her arm. In her other hand, she is holding a small pocket knife attacked to her keychain. "And now for the blood." She moves the kinfe to her finger, but Dr. Kluger reaches out and stops her.
"I don't think that is right." Piper stops and looks at him. "Jessica was going to use her blood. You need infencted blood. Paige's."
Piper thinks for a moment and then shakes her head, lowering the knife.
"And I think we should do it sterile." He holds up a needle and then moves over to Paige's bedside. He quickly wraps a rubber tie around her arm, pats her arm with some alchohol gauze, and pokes the needle through the skin. His finger's deft, the tube quickly fills with blood. As soon as it has reached it limit, he hands the needle to Piper who takes it gingerly. He wipes her arm and lays a bandage over the small pinprick while Piper pushes the blood back out of the tube and into the flask.
Holding it by the neck, she proclaims, "and now for the spell."
A shimmering noise sounds behind her and a fireball rushes under her hand, decimating the flask in its fury. Piper spins and sees a burly demon shimmering into the room. His forehead protudes over his eye, and his face still radiates fury. His trenchcoat flails behind him and a fireball bounces in his hand. Around each wrist is a bloodly cut, circling around the whole wrist, and blood collects in it. White blood. A drop falls to floor.
His voice is rough. "Hello, witch. I've found you."
Dr. Kluger reacts instantly, much quicker than Piper, and leaps toward the demon, a flying tackle rushing toward him in a blur. The demon brushes him aside easily with a racking action of his arm and he tumbles towards one of the beds with a clatter. Piper starts to raise her arms to freeze the demon, and he kneels quickly. Faster than though, clones of the demon appear to his side, three in each direction, forming right as Piper freezes time with a imploding whoosh.
Each of the six images moves their shoulder up, fighting the spell. Piper keeps her hands up, attempting to maintain the magic but cannot. The six images throw their shoulders up, time returns with an explosion, and they complete their movement to a standing stance, their shoulder leading their movement. The original demon rolls forward and images seems to collapse and flow into his body as he does so. He finishes his roll and leaps up immediately in front of Piper. Piper raises her hands and at the same time the demon grabs them, holding them parellel to the floor.
White sparks flash off of their conjoined hands and a single white spark flashes at the top of each of the demon's wrists, right at the blood line. The spark doesn't fade, but instead, each spark split into two and starts running around the line of blood. As soon as they begin to move, another two sparks, these red as human blood, appear on each of Piper's wrists. The sparks run quickly: Where the white sparks moved, only flesh is left behind but the red sparks leave behind a cut trailing along behind them. In less than a moment, all the pairs of sparks meet and the magic is completed.
The demons releases Piper hands and flings them forcefully down. They swing to her sides and Piper collapses to her knees. The demon turns and starts walking down the length of the room. "Your magic is blocked, witch. Now you will watch your sister die." He starts to shimmer away. "And then I will come for you." His shimmer completes with a coarse, low laugh.
Piper tears flow again. She looks up towards the sky, tears falling from her cheeks and blood from her wrists. Only one word can come to mind, and she screams it with all her might. "Leo!" She cries a moment more before saying more quietly, "Leo! Leo, what can I do now?" She puts her head down, closes her eyes and repeats the word quietly one more time, agonized, almost a whisper. "Leo."
Bells jingle.
Piper's head shoots up, her eyes shoot open. "Leo?" She falls backwards in a slump.