Chapter Nine
"Hey, Prue," Andy greeted her, as she moved forward and pulled him into a hard hug. "How've you been?"
"You've been dead for two years, and that's all you can say?" Prue asked, but she was smiling as she pulled away from him.
"How about, 'it's good to see you,'?" he tried again.
"Better," Prue told him.
"I take it you two know each other?" Gregory asked, curiously. When Prue nodded, he continued, "then I'll leave you two alone. Good luck, Prue; tell Piper I said good-bye, will you?"
"Sure," Prue told him. "And, thanks, again, for all your help."
Gregory orbed out, leaving her alone with Andy in the kitchen. Prue could have spent the rest of the day just staring at him, but she still had things to do.
"So, you're a Whitelighter, now?" she asked, turning her attention back to the potion she'd been working on.
"After I died," Andy told her, "I was given a choice. I could move on, or I could become a Whitelighter and continue helping people. I made my choice, and I never looked back."
"Leo never told us any of this," Prue said, but Andy shook his head, quickly.
"He didn't know," he told her. "He wasn't allowed, since he was so close to you three."
"Well, then how did you convince the Elders to let you be our Whitelighter?" Prue asked. "I mean, if they didn't want us to know that you were still around, why assign you to us?"
"They didn't have a whole lot of choices," Andy replied. "And they needed someone who would not only work well with you three, but with Leo, as well. Apparently my posting is going to be permanent, even after Leo comes back."
"Two Whitelighters?" Prue asked, and Andy nodded.
"The attack by Shax was a wake-up call," he told her. "The Elders realized just how close they came to losing the Charmed Ones, and that's a risk they can't afford to take."
"Well, good for them to realize that," Prue replied, "but without Phoebe, we still don't have the Charmed Ones. Have they thought about that?"
"They're working on it," Andy assured her, quickly. "But, they also want to make sure that nothing happens to you or Piper, in the meantime."
Prue just nodded, working quietly on the potion to vanquish the Furies, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see a worried expression on Andy's face.
"You're okay with this, right?" he asked. "Me being your Whitelighter, I mean? Because if you're not, then I could ask the Elders for reassignment."
"No!" Prue said, quickly, and the worried look disappeared from his face. "No," she repeated. "I just – I hate feeling helpless. I hate knowing that Phoebe and Paige are out there, somewhere, and we can't find them. They're my sisters, and they could in danger, and I can't do anything about it!"
The kitchen was plunged into silence as she finished, and she realized that she'd been shouting. She looked at Andy, who had a sympathetic look on his face.
"You're not helpless," he told her. "Far from it. Prue, you're one of the most capable women I've ever known. If anyone is going to figure this out, it's going to be you. I just know it."
"Thanks," Prue said, smiling at him.
She returned to the potion, turning the stove on and setting the saucepan over the flames. As she stirred the potion, she eyed it critically as she waited for it to boil.
"I heard a rumor Up There," Andy told her, watching her work. "Paige from the future, the one who was killed by Shax? Apparently, she disappeared. Or, rather, her soul did."
"What do you mean, disappeared?" Prue asked. "Do you mean that there are two versions of my younger sister running around? One living and one dead?"
"I don't know," Andy admitted. "But, from what I heard, one of the Angels of Death was escorting her soul to the afterlife when she just stopped and told him that she wasn't going to go."
"That sounds like something that a Halliwell would do," Prue remarked, feeling a spark of pride for the younger sister she had yet to meet.
"Then," Andy went on, "she just disappeared. Death couldn't find her, anywhere."
"Which brings me back to my original question," Prue said. "Are there two versions of Paige running around out there?"
"One of the Elders told me about what they did with the man who came back with her," Andy said, rather than giving her a yes or no answer. "They couldn't have two of the same person running around, so a couple of the more sympathetic Elders merged his future soul with his current one. They essentially updated him with memories of a future that's not going to happen, anymore."
"What, exactly, are you getting at?" Prue asked.
"They think the same thing might have happened to Paige," Andy told her.
"You mean that Paige might have-" Prue trailed off, unsure of what she was trying to say, but Andy got it, anyway."
"She might have intentionally updated herself," he finished for her. "And if she's got even some of her memories of the future, then she's not likely to be as helpless as you might think."
"I'm liking this girl more and more," Prue said, grinning. "It sounds like she's going to fit right in with this family."
The sound of the doorbell had her looking up toward the doorway, and she turned the stove down to a simmer before leaving the kitchen. Andy trailed her out to the foyer, but he paused before she could open the front door.
"I should probably get out of here," he said, quickly. "Seeing as how I'm supposed to be dead, and all."
"It's just Darryl," Prue told him, checking the peephole.
"Then, I should definitely get out of here," Andy decided.
"Darryl knows everything," Prue assured him. "Trust me, he'll be just as happy to see you as I was."
So saying, she threw the front door open and stepped aside before Darryl could even say hello, giving him a clear view of his former partner. In the doorway, Darryl was staring at Andy in shock, his mouth moving, soundlessly as he tried to force words out. He looked quickly from Andy to her, as though trying to figure out if he was hallucinating, and Prue just nodded in confirmation.
"Hey, Darryl," Andy greeted, coming forward. "How've you been?"
"I've been good," Darryl said, faintly, moving into the foyer so that Prue could shut the door behind him. "You?"
"Dead, mostly," Andy said, grinning. "But, that got old, fast, so-"
"He's a Whitelighter," Prue interrupted, taking pity on Darryl. "He was assigned to us while Leo is still missing."
"Just when I thought I'd seen everything," Darryl said, shaking his head in amazement.
Then, laughing, he stepped forward and pulled Andy into a quick hug. Prue hid a grin behind her hand when she saw them thump each other on the back like jocks in a locker room.
"So, what's going on, Darryl?" she asked, as the men separated. "Did you find anything out about Phoebe or Paige?"
"Paige," Darryl told her, as he and Andy followed her back into the kitchen. "Child Protective Services turned up a record of a female infant left at a church twenty-five years ago. August second, to be specific."
"Which church?" Prue asked, her attention on the herbs she was carefully chopping up.
"Saint Anthony's," Darryl answered. "At seventeen-twenty-three Oakland Street."
"And you're sure that this baby was Paige?" Prue asked him.
"According to the CPS report, the nun who called it in told the officers that the baby was given to her by angels," Darryl said. "Angels who appeared in bright white lights. Sound familiar?"
"Oh, yeah?" Prue muttered. "I don't suppose you have a current address for Paige, or even a last name?"
"I'm still trying to convince CPS to release those records," Darryl said. "Problem is, everything was sealed, and they're being very reluctant to unseal the adoption records."
Prue sighed in frustration. "At least this is more than we had, this morning," she said, trying to look for a bright side to the situation.
Adding the herbs to the still-simmering potion, she grabbed a ginger root and placed it on the cutting board.
"Are you making a potion, or baking cookies?" Darryl joked, and Prue shot him a withering look.
"Do you want to vanquish the demons?" she asked, and then she hissed in pain as the knife slipped on the root, slicing into her finger. "Damn it," she muttered, grabbing for a towel to stop the bleeding.
"Let me look at it," Andy said, reaching for her hand.
"Did I bleed in the vanquishing potion?" Prue asked, craning her head over to peer at the saucepan.
"Better hope not," Darryl said, jokingly. "You might vanquish yourself or Piper, by accident."
Prue froze at his words, and then she jerked her hand out of Andy's grip before he could heal her finger.
"Darryl, you're a genius," she crowed, running for the stairs.
"What did I say?" Darryl asked, but she was too busy to answer him.
Entering the attic, she headed for the map and scrying crystal that were still laid out on the floor where they'd been for the last four days. A nudge with her power had the crystal flying through the air towards her and she grabbed it with her good hand.
Unwrapping the towel from around her cut finger, she let a few drops of blood fall onto the crystal, staining the clear surface. The blood was still clinging to the crystal as she dropped to the floor beside the map, dangling the crystal over the surface.
"Come on, come on," she muttered, concentrating as the crystal started moving slowly over the surface of the map. "Please, let this work."
"What are you doing?" Andy asked, as he and Darryl stopped beside her.
"Phoebe and Paige aren't just witches," Prue pointed out, her eyes fixed on the map. "They're my sisters. We share blood."
"And if you scry with that blood," Andy said, catching on, "you might find them. Or, one of them, anyway."
"Exactly," Prue said, satisfied.
The crystal dropped a few seconds later, but she shook her head before either of the men could get excited.
"That's P3," she said, setting the crystal to searching, again. "Piper's still there, and the crystal homed in on her."
The crystal found Piper two more times, and Prue was starting to get frustrated. Then, finally, the crystal dropped onto a new location, and she moved it to see where it had landed.
"Hey, Darryl," she asked, "what did you say that church's address was?"
"Oakland and eighteenth," the man answered.
"Anyone want to guess where this crystal just landed?" Prue asked, rhetorically. Not waiting for an answer, she grabbed the phone and dialed Piper's cell. "Piper, I found her. I found Paige."
