"I'm worried," Phoebe said anxiously to Paige, setting the phone back in its cradle. "I've left two messages at the penthouse, but he's either not there or not picking up. He doesn't have his pager with him—"

"And if he were in trouble, he would have called Leo," Paige interrupted, cutting her off. "He said he would, remember? Anyway, he didn't say exactly when he'd be back."

"He said he wouldn't be gone long," Phoebe countered, sitting down at the kitchen table beside her sister, "and it's been an hour already. I just—look, I just think something's wrong. I have a really bad feeling…"

He would have answered the phone at the penthouse if he'd been there, or at least used a payphone to call her if he hadn't. 'I won't be gone long' was relative, true; but her instincts—which she'd long since learned to trust—told her that he was in trouble.

"What kind of bad feeling?" Paige asked, paying more attention now. "Like, pending-premonition bad?"

"No," she said. "Or at least not exactly—this is different. I just want to ask—" She broke off with a gasp, feeling a spasm of pain grip her body, and clenched her teeth against crying out.

"Phoebe?" Paige's voice was concerned. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," she said after a moment. The pain she'd felt had been sharp and sudden, but it was gone now—it'd probably just been a cramp or something. Rising, she turned toward the kitchen door. "I'm just going to ask Leo if he knows whether or not Cole's all right. At least then, I'll have some idea of where he is."

She was only a few steps from the stairs when she felt a tearing sort of pull at her heart—and then something inside her seemed to break, some wall that she'd been unaware of crumbling, and a flood of emotions came forth in a rush: resignation, anger, sorrow, fear—and then they blurred together, indistinguishable from one another, and there was pain.

This time, she could not contain the cry, and it burst from her as she fell to her knees, one hand flying reflexively to her chest.

"Phoebe!" Paige came running and knelt down beside her. "Don't move. Leo!" she yelled up the stairs. "Get down here!"

The Whitelighter appeared in a glittering swirl of orb-lights. "What's wrong?" He knelt down, too, scrutinizing her for injuries. "Are you hurt?"

Was she? "I don't know," she said helplessly. "A second ago my heart hurt—really badly, like something was trying to rip it out of me—and then it stopped and I started to feel pain—and other things, too, but it all combines back into pain!"

"What other things?" Leo asked.

"Feelings, I think," she said, looking up to meet his gaze. "But they're not mine, and I'm feeling them in a way I know I shouldn't be. Emotional pain doesn't hurt like this!"

"Your powers are advancing, if this means what I think it does," Leo said after a moment. "I'd have to check with the Elders to be sure, but you may have just become an empath. The question is," he added, pensive now, "whose pain are you feeling?"

"Forget that!" Paige said abruptly, and Leo's attention turned to her. "I'm more worried about her heart than her powers. Could she be having a heart attack?"

Leo's brow furrowed in concern, and he reached toward her, his hand glowing softly with gold light. "There's nothing physically wrong with her," he assured Paige after a moment, letting his hand fall back to his side. "Whatever she felt was probably just an echo of whoever's pain she's feeling." A long pause. "The thing is, empathic powers usually only work within a certain range—the only exception would be if there were some kind of preexisting link…"

"Okay, fine," Paige said impatiently. "That should shorten the list, right? She's got emotional and blood ties to me and Piper, but we're both fine; so are you, so that just leaves—"

"Cole," Phoebe finished for her. Closing her eyes, she tried to sort through the cacophony of emotions she was feeling. The pain lessened when she concentrated, when she didn't let them blur together and overwhelm her, and she took that as assurance that she was doing something right.

There was a sense of focus that hadn't been there before, and the sorrow had been pushed aside, now only a faint undertone. What was there, predominantly, was anger. And fear.

He didn't scare easily, she knew, and that knowledge was more than enough to feed her own fear for him. "Can you sense him?" she demanded of Leo. "Where is he?"

Leo closed his eyes, his brow furrowing in concentration. There was a long silence, and finally, he shook his head, rising as he opened his eyes again, anxiety coming into his face. "I don't know."

"I told him not to leave the house," she said, half to herself. Doing her best not to get lost in the intensity of Cole's emotions (she would not allow herself to fall apart when he needed her), she reached forward, gripped the banister, and pulled herself to her feet. "I told him it was dangerous to go out alone at night! But did he listen? Of course not!"

Getting worked up isn't going to help, she told herself sternly. And you don't need to add any more to what you've got already. She closed her eyes, drew a deep, calming breath, and shoved her anger aside. Save him first; kill him later.

"Phoebe—"

"Don't 'Phoebe' me!" she snapped, wheeling on her sister. "He's in trouble and in pain, and I need to do something!"

"Paige?" Piper was hurrying down the stairs as fast as the added weight of eight months of pregnancy would allow. "Why did you call for Leo? Is something the matter?"

"It's Phoebe," Paige said tersely, getting up from the floor. "She's apparently an empath now, and she's feeling Cole's pain, so we have to go save his ass—which, by the way, he stupidly put in danger in the first place."

Piper raised an eyebrow. "Wait a minute," she said, raising a staying hand. "Back up. Phoebe's an empath?"

"I'd have to check with the Elders to be sure," Leo repeated with a nod, "but that's probably what it is. Besides being hard to mistake for anything else, it'd be a logical extension of the powers she already has—perceptive-type."

"Can we get back to saving Cole, please?" Phoebe cut in, looking to each of her sisters in turn. "You can use the magic-to-magic spell I modified last year and send me to him—"

"And leave you both stranded wherever he is?" Piper demanded, folding her arms over her chest. "Remember, he can't shimmer anymore. Someone who can orb has to go with you so you have a way back." Then, with a significant look at their younger sister, "And depending on the situation, you might need someone with an active power…"

"Looks like I'm up," Paige said with a grin, taking Phoebe's hand and nodding to Piper. "Spell, please?"

"Fine," Piper said, sighing. "And once you get him back here, Phoebe, keep him on a shorter leash! He puts us all in danger when he goes out on his own."

"I'll talk to him," Phoebe promised quickly, trying not to allow her newest power to distract her. Nothing new, she told herself, running through a mental checklist of the foreign-familiar emotions welling within her. The situation hasn't gotten worse. "Just hurry up!"

"Magic forces black and white—" Piper began, then cut herself off, a look of realization coming over her face. "It's not going to work," she said. "We need to tweak it a little more first."

"What's wrong with it?" Phoebe asked, agitated. "I reworded the Belthazor summoning spell so it'd send me to Cole—"

"But that was when he was half-demon," Piper pointed out. "Now that he's human and a witch, a magic-to-magic spell to connect Light magic to Dark wouldn't work anymore."

She felt Paige's gaze on her. "Whatever you do," she heard her sister say, concern coloring her tone, "do it fast. We have to get Cole out of whatever pain he's in before it damages Phoebe."

"Here, let me try this." There was an instant's silence, then Piper chanted:

"Magic forces white to white,
Reaching out through space and light,
Be he far or be he near,
Go to Cole; return him here."

White lights surrounded them both, and she felt a jolt as the spell took effect and pulled them from the manor. An instant later, they reappeared in a gloomy cavern in the Underworld, and Phoebe gasped to see Cole in his massive red-and-black demonic form, the blue starbursts of deflection emanating from his palms. There were manacles on his wrists and ankles, short lengths of broken chain dangling from them. She surmised that he must have been chained down, then broken free after he'd changed.

She would find out just how that had happened later. Right now, her attention was fixed on the demoness standing opposite him, an energy ball glowing in her hand. He tensed as she brought her arm back, preparing to throw it.

"Energy ball!" Paige commanded. Instantly, it dematerialized in a flurry of orb-lights, and Paige hurled it back at its originator, who screamed shrilly and went up in flames.

She could feel him relax as anger and fear abated, replaced with a sense of relief. She released her breath in a deep, long sigh and rushed to Cole's side. Ordinarily, she would be a little more wary of him like this—he'd tended to be somewhat unpredictable in demonic form in the past—but she couldn't sense anything malicious in him. "Thank God you're okay," she said.

He let out a bark of incredulous laughter. "I think your idea of 'okay' needs some adjustment," he said dryly, looking down at her. "This is not okay. This is about as far from okay as it's possible for me to get."

She'd forgotten how different his voice was when he changed—lower, deeper, and slightly hoarse. "What do you mean?" she asked. "You're not hurt, are you?" She drew back a few steps and gave him a quick once-over, relieved not to see any obvious injuries. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that I didn't do this," he said matter-of-factly, pressing one clawed hand to his chest, "and I can't undo it."

The anxiety she felt from him belied his even tone. "We'll fix it at home," she promised him, taking his free hand in both of hers and giving it a comforting squeeze before letting go. "I'm sure there's a spell or a potion in the Book of Shadows." She turned to Paige. "Let's get out of here."

Paige eyed Cole distrustfully, evidently wary of his not-slightly-intimidating demonic shape. "Can't you shimmer?" she asked, moving to stand next to Phoebe.

He shook his head, grinning sardonically and showing wickedly pointed teeth. "If I could, would I still be here?" he asked rhetorically. "I may be stuck in my demonic body, but I don't have the powers that went with it."

"Great," Paige said flatly, taking Phoebe's hand. "At least we don't have to worry about any stray energy balls flying around…" She turned her attention back to Phoebe. "You got him?"

"You can talk to me directly, you know," Cole said peevishly to Paige, closing a hand very gently around Phoebe's free one. She could sense his irritation. "I'm right here, and I'm not deaf."

Paige ignored him, and they orbed back to the manor, reappearing in the kitchen. At once, she let Phoebe's hand go, putting distance between herself and Cole. Phoebe could feel her suspicion.

Not again, she thought, heaving a sigh. The last thing she needed now was for her sisters to jump back on the 'Cole-is-evil' bandwagon. "Paige, this isn't something Cole wanted to happen, okay? He doesn't like it any more than you do, so can you please just leave him alone?"

Paige looked surprised, then vaguely guilty. "I haven't done anything yet," she protested.

"No, but you don't trust him," Phoebe said simply, holding her sister's gaze. "You're radiating suspicion; I can feel it. Empath here, remember?"

Cole turned to her, and though she was less accustomed to reading his emotions on the face he was currently wearing, she could see as well as sense his surprise. "You're an empath? Since when?"

"About five minutes before we orbed in to save you," Phoebe said ruefully, returning her attention to him. "That's how I knew you were in trouble—I felt your pain."

He looked stricken. "I'm sorry," he said, wincing. "I would never have wanted you to—"

"No," she said quickly, cutting him off. "It's okay—I'm glad I did. Otherwise, who knows what she could have done to you?" She moved closer and put her arms around him. She missed the more familiar contours of his human form, but Cole was Cole, whatever body he was in, and she was so glad he was safe. "We'll fix this," she repeated, resting her cheek against his chest. "Promise."

He hugged her back—hesitantly, though, his body rigid in her arms and his hold on her too loose, as if afraid that she'd shatter. "I should go," he said after a moment, releasing her and taking a step back. "The potion that did this—I don't think it's going to stop here, and if I get any worse, you'll all be in danger."

"Do you have a death wish or something? You're not going anywhere," Paige told him, dropping onto one of the kitchen chairs. "You can't leave the house like that, and there's no way in hell I'm orbing you back down to the Underworld."

"Thanks for your concern," he said tightly, "but you don't understand the problem. Klea intended to make me demonic—fully demonic—and that entails more than just a physical change! She meant to strip my soul, so when I turn evil, I do not want it to be in this house!"

No wonder his fear had been—still was—was so intense. He had dreaded the possibility of losing control to his evil side in the past—or worse, that he might hurt her if he did—and now, being trapped in demonic form had to be a nightmare come to life. He was terrified of himself, of what he had the potential to do.

She could relate. She'd been there.

"Oh, come on," Paige said with a snort, waving a dismissive hand. "You can't even throw one lousy energy ball. How much of a threat could you possibly be?" She rose. "I'll be right back. I just need to go tell Piper she shouldn't blow up the demon in the kitchen." Rising, she turned and left the room.

"You're not turning evil, Cole," Phoebe said, reaching forward to lay a hand on his arm. "You're miserable and you're mad and you're afraid, but you're not evil. If you were—even a little—I'd sense it. I'd know."

He shook his head, giving her a sad sort of half-smile. "Love is blind, Phoebe. You might not, because you wouldn't want—"

"Empathy doesn't work like that," she interrupted, hoping to reassure him. "I can't pick and choose what I feel from you—I get the whole picture, no matter what it is." Holding his gaze, she said earnestly, "Your soul is perfectly safe and right where it belongs." Looking down, she noticed the manacles still on his wrists and ankles, trailing broken chains. "Let me get those off?"

"I'd forgotten about them, actually," he said with a half-hearted chuckle. "Sure, go ahead."

"Open locks with magic key; they'll disappear and set you free," she murmured, and the manacles fell open and vanished. "There, that's better," she said, satisfied.

He flexed his wrists experimentally and winced. "Damn manacles," he muttered.

"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned. Her own joints ached in response to his motion, so she guessed that there was some damage. "Here, let me see." Taking the hand nearest her before he could pull it back, she tugged his sleeve up and grimaced, seeing the red skin was mottled with dark bruises. "God, that looks awful!"

"I've had worse, believe me," he said dryly, pulling the fabric back down. "They'll heal."

"I'll just get Leo," she said. "He'll heal them for you…" She trailed off, seeing that he was shaking his head. "What's wrong? You're his charge; he's supposed to heal you when you get hurt fighting evil."

"I know that, but Whitelighters can't heal evil, remember?" he said. "If he couldn't heal me when I was only half-demon, there's no way he's going to be able to do it now."

"You're not a demon!" she insisted, raising her voice a little so he'd know she meant it. "Even if you look like hell, it's still you inside, Cole, and you're good."

He turned away from her, silent for a long moment before speaking. "I can't believe that," he said at last, still not looking at her. "I'm dangerous like this, whether I can throw energy balls or not—I know what this body is capable of. I could hurt someone, or worse, ki—"

"Stop it!" she snapped, and he finally turned back to face her. "That's not who you are anymore," she said, more gently now. "I've told you that, remember? And I have all the faith in the world that you'd never choose to hurt anyone." Reaching up, she brought a hand forward to caress his face, smiling a little as he leaned into the contact. "So don't doubt yourself, okay?" After a moment, she withdrew her hand and rose, wincing a little as she felt the ache of the bruising at his ankles. "Come on. Let's go get those bruises healed."

He heaved a sigh, but nodded and followed her upstairs.

"Leo?" she called, knocking on her older sister's bedroom door. "Can you come out here for a minute? Cole has a couple of bruises that I was hoping you could fix…"

"Sure," she heard him call. "Just a second." Rustling covers, the squeak of bedsprings as weight shifted on the mattress, then footsteps and the turn of the doorknob, and Leo stepped out into the hall, eyes going wide with surprise when he saw Cole. "Phoebe, it looks like there's a little more wrong with him than just bruising," he said in his understated way. "I'm not sure I can—"

"Just try," Phoebe interrupted. "For my peace of mind and his."

"All right," Leo agreed at last, and moved to stand at Cole's side, gently tugging his sleeves up. He held his hands over the bruises, golden light streamed from his palms, and all traces of injury faded away.

"See?" Phoebe said, making no effort to suppress the overtone of "I-told-you-so' in her voice. "You're not evil."

He didn't answer her, but the waves of all-consuming relief she felt from him made a reply clearer than any words. Finally, he turned to Leo and said simply, "Thank you."

"Anytime," Leo replied. There was a short pause, and then he asked, "How did you end up like that?"

Cole shrugged, deliberately casual. Although he was trying not to let them see his distress, she could hear the bitterness in his tone when he spoke, and sense the pain this caused him. "A former associate decided it would be fun to abduct me, strip my soul, and use me like some kind of attack animal."

Do not react, she told herself firmly. Seeing her worry for his sake would only make him feel worse. "We vanquished her," she said, reminding them both. "And I told you, your soul is fine." She turned to Leo and said pointedly, "Isn't it?"

Demand, not question.

"As far as I know, stripping potions work immediately," Leo said. "Granted, I've never heard of stripping someone's soul"—he looked uncomfortable at the thought—"but whatever was going to happen probably already did. Believe me," he added with a significant look, "if his soul were gone, you'd know without any empathic abilities."

It wasn't difficult to work out the implications: it was bad enough that Cole had been forced into demonic shape, but if his soul had been taken from him, he'd have lost his inward humanity, too; the morals that kept him from being—

Well. She wasn't going to think about that; she would just thank the Powers-That-Be that it hadn't, and work out why when the crisis was past. "There should be something in the Book to reverse this," she said, returning her attention to Cole. "Come on."

He turned to follow her down the stairs. "Somehow, I doubt any of your ancestors had this situation to deal with," he said dryly. "Most of the spell reversals in there are in case of normal spell backfire, and then of witch-type magic. It doesn't cover troubleshooting for demonic rituals."

"It can't hurt to check," she said, sitting down at the kitchen table and pulling the Book toward her before beginning to flip through the pages. Absently, she wondered why, in six generations, no one had ever bothered to paginate and cross-index it. Okay…we have reversals in case of becoming banshees, mermaids, Wendigos, even animals…and a vanquish for just about every demon you could think up…but nothing about how to turn a demon back into a human. "I'll go write a spell," she said.

He half-smiled and gave her a look that said, 'Told you so.'

"Okay, so you were right," she conceded. "Still, it's not a big deal. I mean, that priestess may've been good, but no demonic spell can hold up against the Power of Three."

"You're being overconfident, Phoebe," he warned her as she shut the Book and rose to hunt for a pen and paper. "The Power of Three can reverse it, but only if it is reversible." He paused for a moment, releasing a deep, long sigh. "It wouldn't surprise me if it was specifically designed not to be. Considering the exact nature of my betrayal—letting my human side rule—that would be vengeance all by itself…and the psychological torture element would really have appealed to her."

"Where did you know her from?" she asked, finally locating a pen in a drawer and a pad by the phone. Tearing off a sheet, she returned to the table. Basic quatrain should do it… "I think we might have seen her somewhere before."

"She was in the Brotherhood," he said, sinking gingerly onto a chair and looking relieved when it held his increased weight without protest. "You got the others, but she was like a rat—she could survive anywhere."

"Well, I bet she won't find it so easy to survive in the Wasteland," Phoebe said darkly, crossing out a line and hunting for a decent rhyme. "Look, we already know what she tried to do didn't work the way it was supposed to, and that means she messed up."

He shook his head slowly. "I don't think she did," he said. "She didn't get where she was by making mistakes. It would have worked, except…" He trailed off into pensive silence, one hand rising to rest over his heart, and she realized in a horrifying instant what that terrible pull must have been.

"I felt it," she said, her voice very nearly a whisper. Then, more loudly, "It just strained for a second; it never actually tore. Something stopped it."

"But what could've—" A look of realization crossed his face and he broke off, then pulled up his sleeve and extended his left arm, revealing the octagram Light Magic had placed on his wrist.

"It's glowing," she said, tracing the lines with a fingertip. "Why?"

He pushed the fabric back over it. "It burned for a second immediately after she forced that potion down my throat," he said. "I thought it was just damage from the manacles then, but now…"

That would explain it. "You think Light Magic…?"

"She said that once I chose a side, nothing would interfere," he said. "And that this"—he tapped his wrist—"was for my protection. I know I'm not invulnerable to harm, but maybe what she meant…"

Relief flooded them both. "Is that you can't be turned evil against your will," Phoebe finished for him. "So the potion did work—sort of—but Light Magic's spell canceled out the worst of it. You're safe." She tapped her pen idly against the paper. "I'm about halfway through. Should I try something more basic to reverse this before I write a full Power of Three spell, or just start by pulling out the big guns?"

"Go with the Power of Three spell," he said after a moment. "I don't want to bother your sisters too much, but it's the most efficient way to work. If the Power of Three doesn't break this, nothing's going to."

She wasn't worried. After all…the Power of Three had been strong enough to vanquish countless upper-level demons, plus the several incarnations of the Source of All Evil. There was no way it could fail to break a Dark Priestess' enchantment, especially if Light Magic's protection was already working in their favor.

She took a few minutes to perfect the spell, then folded the paper. "Got it," she said. "Do we go up there, or call Paige and Piper down here?"

"Piper is in bed and eight months pregnant," he pointed out. "Do you want to call her down here?"

"Good point," she said, leading the way out of the kitchen and up the stairs. "Especially knowing the kind of trouble Leo and Paige probably went to so she'd stay in the bed. If she doesn't kill me for getting her up, they will." She knocked on Paige's bedroom door. "Paige? Can you come out here for a second?"

Paige opened the door, making a face when she saw Cole. "Haven't you figured out a way to fix him yet?" she asked. "Because, you know, he looks really disturbing like that."

"Thanks," he said dryly.

"I wrote a Power of Three spell," Phoebe answered, holding up the folded paper. "So if you're not busy, can I borrow you for just a minute? This isn't going to take long."

"Sure." Paige took the lead, striding to Piper's bedroom, knocking on the door, and opening it without waiting to be invited in. Piper and Leo, sitting on the bed, both looked up, startled, as they came in.

"Hi," Paige said sweetly. "Sorry if I'm interrupting anything, but we need you for a Power of Three spell really quick, okay?"

"Let me guess," Piper said flatly, tilting her head in Cole's direction. "You need us to help reverse that?" Before Phoebe could answer, she motioned them closer. "Come on. The sooner the better."

Moving to stand next to the bed, Paige beside her, Phoebe unfolded the paper and angled it so her sisters could see the words written there. They chanted together:

"Evil changed your form and face
To those so long ago erased.
We call upon the Power of Three
To annul that magic and set you free."

One minute passed, then two and three, and no one spoke, watching, waiting expectantly for something—anything—to happen.

Nothing did. Cole stood a short distance off, statue-still and unchanged. His face was closed, expressionless, but she could feel his terrible, crushing resignation, his sorrow.

The spell had failed.

A/N: Yes, another evil cliffhanger...sorry again! And before any of you start clamoring about the Power of Three being strong enough to break absolutely any evil spell known to demonkind--trust me, I have a reason and a good explanation for what I just did. Once more, you all know I love reviews, short or long (especially long, but short ones are good, too). Take five minutes to make a specific comment or two...I'll reply if the review's signed, and I might even drop a hint about what's coming if asked.