"Ah... what?!?" Paige stammered as she finally found her voice again, staring at Cole in incredulous shock.
"Cole, you can't be serious!" Piper exclaimed. "Do you really think..."
"How can I not be serious, Piper?" Cole snapped. "Did that demon seem to be kidding?"
Piper's hurt look made Cole wince, but he refused to be mollified and stubbornly stood his ground. One of them had sent a vengeance demon after him, damn it, and even if he truly believed that they had been tricked into doing that, he also knew that vengeance demons couldn't create resentment where there was none: they could only manipulate the bitter feelings that someone already had, and it hurt like hell to know that one of them felt that way about him.
"You really believe one of us sent a demon after you," Leo said quietly as he put his arm around Piper's shoulders.
Cole closed his eyes and ran his free hand across his face, while the other was still clasped in Phoebe's hands; he looked at her and felt a pang of guilt as he saw the hurt and confusion in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," he sighed.
He hesitated slightly, then gently freed his hand from hers to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her to him.
"I'm sorry, I..." -- he looked at the others, somewhat ashamed of his previous outburst -- "I shouldn't have put it this way. I know none of you would knowingly send a vengeance demon after me."
Cole fingered Phoebe's hair, looking down at her with a sad expression.
"Yet, one of you did."
"Yeah, right," Paige said, scowling as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "'Cause that's what we do. We're always sending demons after people, one of us must have sent one after you by mistake, without even noticing."
Cole was about to give Paige's sarcastic remark a sharp reply when Leo broke in:
"Cole, how could we have unknowingly sent a vengeance demon after you?"
Cole opened his mouth to answer, but as the meaning of Leo's words sank in, he took a sharp intake of breath.
"You don't know..." -- he gave the others a hesitant look -- "None of you know what a vengeance demon is, do you?"
"No," Paige said, coldly, "but I'd say the name is self-explaining."
Cole sighed heavily, exasperated. It wasn't fair: so he had handled the situation poorly, but he still was the offended party, for crying out loud!
Leo stood up, once again intervening before things got out of hand.
"Clearly, we don't," he said to Cole, while taking a step forward to stand between him and Paige. "And since we're gonna have to deal with this one, why don't you enlighten us?"
"Please, Cole," Phoebe asked, quietly.
Cole looked at her and leaned down to press a soft kiss to her forehead. It couldn't have been her. Not Phoebe, who had always supported him no matter what, who had been forced to make the hardest choices in those three years they had spent together, and had always stood by his side. Sure, there had been some rough moments, first with Belthazor, later with the Source, and all the time with their hot tempers, but Phoebe never held anything back: if she had something to say, she would say it loud and clear -- very loud, sometimes -- but their fights never lasted long. No matter how angry they were, he and Phoebe never went to sleep without making up; they had spent too many lonely nights apart when he was on the run, and now the moment when they went to bed together and cuddled in each other's arms under the covers, feeling warm, and cozy, and loved, and safe, that had become somewhat of a symbol of the happiness they had so painfully earned.
He looked at the others and felt his heart wrench: how could it have been any of them? Cole lowered his eyes to Piper's hands, crossed over her belly, and thought, not for the first time, of how fragile and at the same time incredibly strong she looked in her last weeks of pregnancy. After that first riotous year that had followed Prue's death, Piper had finally made her peace with the big sister role, and now she ruled the manor with a strong hand, but it was a loving, motherly tyranny that the others gladly suffered.
If Phoebe could bat her eyelashes and have Cole do anything she wanted, Piper bossed him around openly. She was the one who made him eat properly when he was sick and grouchy, and had no appetite. She shooed him out of the manor, sending him to the market or to the post office when she decided that he needed some fresh air after working all day on a difficult case. When the Source was vanquished and Cole and Phoebe came back to the manor, Piper could have either made his life a living hell or taken him under her wings as she did with the rest of the family, and Cole could never be thankful enough that she had chosen the second option.
He saw Leo sit by her side again and wrap his arms protectively around her, and felt abashed to think that his brother in law had been able to keep his composure while he, Cole, lost his own. Leo rarely raised his voice and usually managed to remain calm even when everything seemed to be going to hell, which was quite a big deal in a house full of hot tempered Halliwells and Turners. He was also a great listener, and on those first weeks after the Source's vanquish, when nightmares had haunted Cole's sleep and made him wake up screaming almost every night, he had sat by Leo's side on the back porch and told him about those nightmares, feeling the horrors they brought slowly vanish as they were put in words. It had been a pleasant surprise for Cole to learn that, despite Leo's righteousness, the Whitelighter didn't take himself too seriously and could laugh at himself. The two men had grown closer as time went on, and their somewhat opposite natures seemed to counterpoint each other.
Finally, he turned his eyes to Paige, who was fuming, looking more like Prue than ever as she glared at him for daring to think that she'd do such a thing as send a vengeance demon after him, and in her anger looking very much like a vengeance demon herself. Cole sighed: things had never been easy between him and the youngest Halliwell, and he doubted Paige would easily forgive what she saw as a shameful lack of trust from his part. They had walked a long way since the time when she was always ready to rub his evil past in his face and he saw her as little more than an annoying replacement for her also very annoying older sister, and Cole hated to think that the present incident might take them back to the old days. He and Paige disagreed on almost everything, bickered at each other on a regular bases, fought over the remote, the last piece of pie and the Sunday paper. He forgot to give her phone messages and she borrowed his books while he was still reading them, usually dropping the bookmark. Still, Cole cared for the girl that was the closest thing to a baby sister he'd ever had, and he knew that it went both ways: even now it was clear that most of Paige's anger came from hurt.
Cole sighed and rubbed his temples. His mind told him that one of them had sent a vengeance demon after him, but his heart told him that it just couldn't have been. Or was it just wishful thought?
"Cole?"
When Phoebe's voice brought him back to reality, Cole realized that he must've been lost in his musings longer than he thought, because the others were staring at him with slightly confused looks on their faces.
"Uh... sorry," he said, mildly embarrassed.
He cleared his throat and started to explain:
"Vengeance demons, they are... well, they're called demons for the lack of a better name, but they have some peculiarities that make them very different from the demons you're used to dealing with. For starters, they prefer to call themselves 'justice demons'." -- Cole shrugged at their raised eyebrows -- "Well, they do. They don't see themselves as evil, because they only use their powers to grant a vengeance wish to someone who has been wronged."
"Sort of like the Furies?" Phoebe asked.
"Sort of. But, for the Furies, punishing evil doers is a calling and, for vengeance demons, it's a job."
"A job," Leo repeated, surprised.
"Well, yes. With a salary, and a boss, and a very strict set of rules. And rule number one is, they can only use their powers on behalf of someone else. That demoness couldn't have come after me if someone hadn't sent her; her powers simply wouldn't have worked if she had tried."
"Okay," Leo slowly said, nodding. "So, someone sent her. But why one of us, Cole?" he asked, and Cole could feel the tension in the room start to rise again. "Of all people, why would you think..."
"You don't understand, Leo," Cole said, cutting him off. "Vengeance demons can only grant wishes to humans. No demon, warlock or whatever evil thing you can think of could have sent her."
"What about all the people you hurt as a demon?" Paige said. "There was a whole lot of them," she added, bitterly.
"You don't need to remind me that," Cole said, quietly. "Yet, I know that it wasn't any of them. For one, she addressed me as Cole, not Belthazor."
He hesitated, subconsciously tugging on the fringe of Phoebe's jacket. Being almost dragged back to hell by the vengeance demon had been bad enough: silly as it might be, he just didn't want to say it out loud. Yet he knew that he didn't actually have a choice: if they were to help him, they'd have to know.
"Someone wished Leo hadn't saved me when I was vanquished along with the Source," he blurted out.
Phoebe gasped and clung to him as if fearing that the vengeance demon would come back to finish the job right there and then. Cole, on the other hand, was looking at Paige as he spoke, and his stomach churned as he saw the horrified look she exchanged with Piper.
"Did you...?" he asked, his voice trailing off before he could finish the sentence, looking in dismay from one sister to the other.
"No!" Piper quickly said. But she had guilt written all over her face, and so did Paige.
The sight of them made Phoebe draw a sharp intake of breath.
"Piper!" she exclaimed, shocked.
"It wasn't me!" Piper said, with tears popping to her eyes. "I didn't... I never... Oh, God!" -- she turned to her husband with a helpless look.
Leo put his arms around her again, while saying, in a worried voice:
"Honey, I thought you had taken care of it..."
"I thought I had..." Piper moaned. Then, turning back to Cole: "Oh, Cole, I'm so sorry! I never meant... we never meant..."
Cole felt his head spin. It was a nightmare. It had to be. Not one of them, but all of them. He tried to speak, actually opened his mouth, but couldn't find his voice, and finally closed it again, looking at them in utter shock.
"It wasn't us," Paige whispered sadly, all anger gone now.
"No one else knows what happened that day," Phoebe said, hoarsely.
"Dad does," Piper said in a weak voice.
"What!" Phoebe exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock. "How... You told dad?!? Piper, we talked about that, everyone agreed that we shouldn't tell him. How could you..."
"We didn't tell him, Phoebe," Paige explained. "He overheard Piper and I talking about that."
"Talking about what?"
"The whole possession by the Source thing," Piper said. "It wasn't just about you Cole," she quickly said, giving him a pained look. "If he had arrived a few minutes earlier he would've learnt how I almost slashed the entire family as a Fury, or..."
"What do you mean, the whole possession by the Source thing?" Phoebe said, warily. "What does dad know?"
"Everything," Paige said in a tiny voice.
"Dad knows I was Queen of All Evil???????" Phoebe shouted, loud enough to make Ben raise his head from his blocks and give her a scared look. The tension building among the grown ups hadn't remained unnoticed by him, and he whimpered, disturbed.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry," Phoebe said, promptly scooping him up and cuddling him in her arms. "Mommy didn't mean to upset you."
Ben hid his face against her, expressing his discontentment with mumbled noises, and Phoebe stroked his hair and rocked him gently, while turning her eyes back to Piper.
"I'm sorry," Piper said again. "I didn't tell you anything because I didn't want to upset you, and I honestly believed I had managed to make dad understand."
"I know," Phoebe sighed, offering her sister a weak smile. "How mad was he?" she asked, although dreading the answer.
"Very mad," Paige said, grimacing. "I didn't know humans could get that red."
"Oh, Paige! Why were you talking about it when dad was in the house, for God's sake?" Phoebe said.
"They didn't know he was in the house," Leo said, embarrassed. "I was the one who let him in, but then the Elders called..." -- he sighed -- "I told him that Piper and Paige were in the kitchen and orbed out. I'm sorry," he added, sadly. "If I knew they were talking about that..."
Cole closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch.
"God, I'm so dead..." he moaned.
"I'm sure Victor will..." Leo started.
"Leo, I was the Source of All Evil," Cole said, gloomily. "I married his baby daughter in a dark ceremony and took her to the Underworld to be my queen. Whitelighter or not, you're now his favorite son in law," he quipped with a humorless smile.
"I'm gonna call dad," Phoebe said, standing up.
"What?" -- Cole gave her a surprised look.
"I'm gonna talk to him," she said, already walking towards the phone, with Ben in her arms. "He needs to take back this wish. We'll deal with the rest later, but right now he..."
"Phoebe, wait," Cole said, jumping to his feet and stopping her before she reached the phone. "It doesn't work this way. Once you've made a wish for a vengeance demon, you can't take it back."
"You can't?"
"You can't," he repeated, quietly.
Phoebe sighed and leaned against him as he put his arms around her and brought her closer.
"Fine," she said. "Then we vanquish her first, and talk to dad later."
Right now, talking to his very enraged father in law was the last thing Cole wanted to do, but he elected to save that discussion for later and deal with the more pressing matter of vanquishing his foe first.
"Right," he said. "Vanquish her."
"Vengeance demons can be vanquished, right?" Piper asked, warily.
"I don't know about vanquishing," Cole said, scratching his head. "But every vengeance demon has a power center, usually in the form of a necklace. If we destroy her power center, she'll lose her powers and thus become harmless."
"Harmless works for me," Phoebe said. She let Cole lead her back to the couch and sat there by his side.
She looked at Ben, expecting to see him scramble from her arms to go back to his toys, but the toddler chose to stay on her lap. As he pouted, reaching out for a hair strand and fumbling with it, Phoebe sighed and gently kissed the top of his head: clearly, he was still upset, and she couldn't blame him.
"Well, we can't just sit here and wait for her to come back," Piper said. "Especially now that she knows that we're witches: she'll try to find Cole alone, or she might come in the middle of the night, when we're all sleeping."
"Can she be summoned?" Phoebe asked Cole.
"I think so," he said. "But I don't know how."
"Well, let's see what the Book of Shadows has to say, then," Paige said, standing up.
"Leo?" Piper said.
"I know," he said, standing up, too. "Elders."