As it turned out, Paige and Phoebe had precious little opportunity to exchange their 'first day at work' anecdotes with one another that evening. They met at Quake shortly after seven as they'd planned, with the intent that Piper could join them as soon as her shift ended at eight. But as soon as the sisters settled into their favorite table in the far corner of the restaurant, one of the waitresses hurried over, a worried frown on her face.

"Hey, Skye," Paige greeted her warmly. "We're not quite ready to order yet."

"I know." The young woman sighed. "Look - this is probably none of my business - but is Piper okay?"

"Isn't she here?" Phoebe asked with some concern.

"Oh, she's here," Skye nodded. "But she's not here, if you know what I mean."

Paige and Phoebe exchanged a troubled glance. "Uhh, actually, no, we don't know what you mean. Why? What's going on?"

"I don't know," the young woman spread her hands in a helpless gesture. "Piper's just - off. Distracted. Big time. Like, lost in a fog. Not acting like herself at all. I've had to remind her three times tonight about shift changes. She doesn't even seem to be aware she's at work."

Paige swallowed a moue of bemusement. "Does she seem upset about anything?"

"No!" Skye almost wailed. "Piper's always pitching a fit in the kitchen, she wants everything to be just right. But tonight she's just like…" She made a vague gesture, trying to imitate Piper's mood. "Whatever, it's all good. I even caught her humming to herself a couple of times."

Paige and Phoebe exchanged another, more anticipatory, glance with each other.

"You don't think…?" Paige began haltingly.

Phoebe shrugged. "About time if she did."

"Uhh, I really wouldn't worry, Skye, I'm sure she'll be fine," Paige assured the young woman. "But if you wouldn't mind, could you please let Piper know we're here?"

"I'll send her over to you right now," the waitress promised. "Because honestly, she's no use to us tonight."

As soon as Skye left the table, both sisters had to suppress an immediate fit of the giggles.

"Oh, my God," Phoebe exclaimed, trying desperately to keep her voice down. "No way!"

"We'll know soon enough," Paige grinned.

A few moments later, Piper wandered over to the table, and Paige and Phoebe could see that Skye's description was reasonably accurate: Piper seemed barely aware of her surroundings. Her eyes were vacant, lost in some middle-distance stare, and a slight smile played about her lips. She seemed to have found her way to the table entirely by accident.

"Oh!" Piper caught sight of her two sisters and seemed surprised to see them. "What are you guys doing here? I wasn't expecting you until seven."

"It's quarter past," Paige informed her.

"It is?"

"Piper, is there something you'd like to tell us?"

Piper made a slight grimace of embarrassment and promptly seated herself at the table. "Uhh, yeah. I guess there is."

And then she promptly proceeded to stare off into the distance again.

"Piper?" Paige prompted gently.

Piper shuddered slightly, as if her conscious mind was finally returning to her body. She gave them both a rueful smile.

"What would you guys say if I told you…" she couldn't quite finish the thought out loud. But Paige and Phoebe needed no help to connect the dots.

"You and Leo?" Phoebe suggested.

Piper's smile changed from one of slight embarrassment to one of a deep, abiding happiness. "Yeah," she sighed.

Paige's jaw dropped open in delighted surprise. "Oh, my God! Piper!" She exclaimed. Remembering to lower her voice, she leaned forward and admonished, "He's our White Lighter!"

"So? There's no rule against it." Piper frowned suddenly. "Uhh… there IS no rule against it… is there?"

Shaking her head, Phoebe dipped her hand into her purse and handed a twenty dollar bill over to Paige. Piper's frown turned to one of puzzlement.

"What's this?" she demanded.

"Yeah, Paige and I sort of had a little side wager, whether or not you were going to have your way with our handyman."

"What?!"

"I said you would. I won," Paige said brightly, taking the bill from Phoebe's hand.

Piper was instantly indignant. "Oh, that's just -"

Realizing she had no moral high ground to stand on if she raised any sort of argument, Piper sighed and resumed her placidly happy smile. "Okay. Fine. Whatever. Yes. Leo and I are taking our relationship to the next level."

Paige and Phoebe burst out laughing.

"What?" Piper exclaimed.

"You're allowed to say, you're having sex with him," Phoebe chided playfully. "Come on, Piper. I know you know the words. Say them out loud. Just once. For us. S… E… X…"

"I'm having sex with Leo," Piper declared forthrightly. "There. Happy now?"

Phoebe shook her head in amazement. "Wow," she exclaimed. "That's… you're making terrific progress, Piper."

"Oh, stop it," Piper scoffed.

"Seriously, sweetie, we're just so happy for you," Paige assured her.

"Yeah, we actually do think it's great. We think he's great." A wicked smirk snaked across Phoebe's face. "So? Is he?"

"Is he what?"

"Great in the sack."

"Phoebe!"

"Hey, I'm just asking."

"I… like him," Piper allowed shyly.

Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Piper. You can do better than that."

"What do you want me to say? I really like him."

"Piper, we're your sisters," Paige explained patiently. "We expect a little more detail than that."

Piper looked helplessly from Paige to Phoebe and back again, and finally relented.

"Yeah. Okay. I guess I owe you a little more than that, huh?" Piper almost writhed in her chair as she wrestled with her shyness. "He -"

Piper broke off as there was the sound of smashing glass, followed by a loud scream. The sisters exchanged a quick look of alarm.

"What the hell was that?" Phoebe muttered.

Piper got up abruptly from the table. "That was no water glass," she declared, and hurried away to see what was the matter. Paige and Phoebe exchanged a quick look.

"Maybe we should…?"

"Yeah. Let's follow."

As they got up, there were more loud crashes, and sounds of breaking glass, followed by more screams and shouts of alarm.

"What the hell is going on?" Phoebe wondered aloud, as they made their way to the restaurant entrance.

The sisters drew up short as they neared the wait station. The two front doors, made of heavy paned glass, had been smashed to pieces. An injured woman was surrounded by a throng of patrons and wait staff, tending to the cuts on her face and hands.

"What caused this?" Piper asked, but before she could get an answer, she could see for herself. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh, my God," she murmured aloud.

Outside, car alarms were going off as something huge and heavy slammed into them - something apparently falling from the sky. In the dim light it was difficult to see, but the objects appeared to be slightly smaller than basketballs - but obviously with considerably more density and weight. For a moment, Piper wondered if they might be hailstones; except as she watched, the impacting objects writhed feebly, some of them flailing useless and broken limbs. Piper drew in a sharp breath. Whatever the projectiles were, they were living things.

Piper instinctively reached for the switch to hit the outside floodlights, but one of the waiters simply shook his head: every outside lamp had been damaged. The street had an unnatural darkness, and not just because all the lights were off. And the objects were still impacting, smashing violently into the street, into cars, bushes, shrubs, garbage cans, sidewalks, hitting the ground with dull, heavy thuds that grew stronger and louder with each passing moment. Outside and apparently some distance away, more car alarms and human screams could be heard. And one other sound… Piper couldn't quite make out… but it almost sounded like bullfrogs croaking.

And then, one of the objects bounced into the restaurant foyer, apparently ricocheting in from outside off some other surface. It was a toad, slightly larger than an oversized grapefruit, horned and spotted and covered in blood and mucus. It tried to push itself upright on its broken legs, vomiting up at least a quart of blood and bile in the process, and then fell forward on its face, stone dead. A milky white secretion continued to ooze from its now still body.

"Oh, dear lord," Piper breathed in astonishment. "It's raining toads."

She knelt down and reached forward as if to touch the dead animal. Phoebe grabbed her hand.

"Don't," she hissed.

"What is it?"

"Those look like cane toads. That white goo is toxic. Poison."

"Ugh," Piper shuddered, quickly standing up. She glanced over at the injured woman, whose body was now shaking involuntarily.

"She's going into shock," a male voice called out.

"Call 911," Piper ordered the head waiter.

"Already done," he answered tersely. "But I guess these things are falling all over the city. Emergency services are swamped."

"What?!"

Piper looked out through the broken doors; although the restaurant's light barely penetrated into the gloom, she could see that the toads were still falling out of the sky at an astonishing rate; out in the street, the writhing masses of toads were now at least shin-high - and some of the putrescent creatures, their falls broken by the bodies of their fellows, had somehow survived the fall and were beginning to try to leap around. Their attempts to move were mostly abrogated by more toads falling on top of them - but Piper could tell the situation was swiftly getting out of hand.

"Get everyone into the center dining area," she ordered the staff, silently giving thanks that the restaurant had almost no windows. "As far away from the doors and windows as possible. Brian, Todd, get a couple of tables and barricade them here, against the front entrance."

The young man looked at Piper dubiously. "You want to block our way out?"

"No, I want to keep those things from getting in. If my sister's right, they may be poisonous. Nobody touch the toads," she called out aloud to everyone. She turned to Phoebe. "There's a first aid kit in the kitchen. Grab it."

Phoebe pelted away.

"We're losing her," one of the men tending to the injured woman sang out.

Paige pushed her way through the knot of terrified diners and knelt down beside the stricken woman. "Let me. I know CPR," she explained breathlessly.

The woman had in fact stopped breathing, although there were still muscle spasms making the body twitch. As Paige leaned over to begin chest compressions, a soft white glow emanated from the underside of her palms. Paige's eyes went wide.

"What the -?"

Paige could only watch in amazement as the light from her hands grew brighter and brighter, slowly expanding and covering the woman's body almost like a blanket. For a moment, the light became blindly bright; and then just as suddenly, it vanished. The woman drew in a sharp breath, and began to choke and cough violently. Paige quickly rolled the woman over onto her side, carefully supporting her back; the woman began to breathe more easily, still rasping and gasping, but her airways were now clear. Paige sighed with relief.

"She's back."

One of the young men, kneeling across from Paige, looked at her with stupefied admiration. "How did you DO that?"

Paige shrugged helplessly. "I don't even know what I did."

"You saved her," the young man insisted.

Before the conversation could go any further, Phoebe arrived with the first aid kit, and Paige rather forcefully pushed it into the young man's hands.

"Clean her wounds as best you can, use the tape and bandages to cover them," she ordered him, then quickly stood up.

"Are you okay?" Phoebe asked with concern. "You're white as a ghost."

"Not now," Paige said grimly, as she pulled Phoebe back as two of the wait staff hurried by with a large table to use as a makeshift barricade. As the men placed the top of the table up against the open space where the doors had been, Phoebe caught a quick glance outside. The toads were still falling from the sky, and anyone unfortunate enough to be outside would be up to mid-thigh in writhing, poison-secreting toad bodies. The croaking was much louder now, and it could be easily heard well inside the restaurant.

"Damn," Paige murmured in fright. "This is like a biblical plague."

"No," Phoebe said in a small voice. "God has nothing to do with this. It's demonic."

Paige stared at her sister apprehensively. "You're sure?"

Phoebe swallowed hard. "I'm sure."

"Phoebe, if there's something you're not telling me -"

"Not now, Paige, we have to find some way to fix this."

"Fix this? It's raining toads. How are we supposed to fix something like this?!"

"I don't know!" Phoebe shouted angrily, and then forced herself to be calm with a visible effort. "Sorry," she apologized. "I'm a little freaked out."

"Yeah, you, me and everyone else," Paige agreed grimly.

"Look, go get Piper, maybe she can get a message to Leo somehow," Phoebe suggested. "Maybe he knows what's happening, or how to deal with it."

"You're going to stay here?"

"Someone has to watch the front while the boys get the next table."

"Okay. Did you see which way she went?"

"I guess she's busy trying to calm down some very terrified customers."

Paige hurried away, and Phoebe was momentarily left alone by the entrance. She shuddered in fright as she listened to the ever growing chorus of eerie croaking emanating just a few feet from where she stood. She watched as the heavy table creaked and groaned from the relentless press of bodies on the other side. The table would only serve as a barricade for a few short minutes - if that.

Phoebe froze in terror as one of the toads made it to the top of the table, and hoisted itself up on the edge. It regarded her passively with its translucent amphibian eyes.

Phoebe swallowed hard. There was no escape for her now, and she knew it.

"Tell your master that I have heard his summons," she said to the toad, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "I await his coming and will greet him upon his arrival."

If the toad understood anything of what Phoebe said, it gave no sign; it blinked once, then belched audibly, the vile exhalation of gas making its entire heavy body shudder. Then it hopped off the table, disappearing back into the night.

And just like that, the horrific deluge came to an end.

Almost instantly, the thudding and smashing sounds from outside abruptly stopped. There was still the occasional chirrup and belch from the toads that were still alive, but the continual wild thrashing and writhing Phoebe heard before had utterly ceased. All was eerily silent.

Heart pounding in her chest, Phoebe approached the table; and with a shaking hand, drew herself close enough to peer over the top into the darkness outside. The streets were still swarmed with toads, but now, instead of hopping every which way, they seemed to be streaming single file to every nearest gutter or manhole, and slowly the writhing mass began to recede.

Phoebe closed her eyes and huge tears of fright began to spill down her cheeks.

"Oh, God, oh, God," she murmured despairingly. "God help me. God help me. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die."

She collapsed into the nearest chair and began to sob uncontrollably.