Note #1: Well, I did my best to update quickly, and I'm sorry if I left you guys hanging, but you didn't really think I'd let anyone hurt Ben, did you? As for Shel, Queen of Cliffhangers, consider it a taste of your own medicine. ;-)
Note #2: In case some of you aren't familiar with this expression, a vampire's "game face" is what they look like when they vamp out. Not a pretty sight.
"NO!!!" Leo cried out, horrified, watching helplessly as the creature brought its arm down in an ample arc, its deadly claws missing Ben by a split second and tearing the fabric of the couch where the toddler had been sitting. It all happened so fast that only when he saw Spike grab the straps of the snugli and pull Ben out of the creature's reach just in time did Leo notice that the vampire was in the room.
While Leo quickly scrambled back to his feet, Spike dodged another attack and swiftly slid his arms through the straps of the snugli, at the same time vamping and snarling back at the creature. Ben was facing him and the toddler's eyes grew big as he saw the vampire's transformation. Big teeth! Yellow eyes! Funny face! Ben squealed in delight when the creature jumped over the couch after them and Spike promptly jumped backwards, putting them both out of reach of the large paw that reached out towards them.
Buffy, Cole and Anya came running from the other room just as yet three other creatures appeared between Leo and Spike. One of them hissed and jumped towards Buffy, but the Slayer dodged it easily and threw it over her shoulder and against the wall in a quick counter-attack. The other two tried to corner Cole, ignoring Anya, so Leo shouted in her general direction:
"Salt!"
Anya gave him a puzzled look and he repeated, ducking just in time to avoid the talons that tore the air above him:
"Salt! Lots of it!"
He grabbed the rug under his attacker's feet with both hands and stood up, pulling forcefully on it; the creature lost its balance and stumbled backwards, falling on the coffee table, while Anya turned on her heels and ran out of the room, still ignored by the five invaders.
"Don't you ever die?!?" Buffy exclaimed in frustration to the one she was fighting. She managed to send it to the floor, its neck bent in an impossible angle, for the second time, just to see it jump back to its feet, growling at her.
She glanced quickly at Cole, who wasn't having any more luck than she was, but then her opponent launched itself against her again and she was forced to turn her attention back to it.
Cole managed to hit one of his opponents in the jaw with a right haymaker, sending it sprawling onto the floor, but he was forced to jump backwards when the other's claws missed his chest by a mere inch. He cursed as the first one jumped back to its feet and joined its peer again, forcing him to retreat even further, thus increasing the distance between him and Ben.
Truth be told, Ben was having the time of his life; he squealed in sheer joy as Spike jumped up in the air to kick the creature in the chest, his little hands clasped around the collar of the vampire's jacket.
"Yay!" Ben exclaimed as Spike landed back on the floor, making him bounce in the snugli.
"Here's the salt!" Anya shouted as she, Piper and Willow came from the kitchen, each holding a bag of salt and none knowing what to do with it.
When Cole heard that, he called to Leo across the room:
"Caarths?" he asked.
Leo nodded his head, breathless, and Cole waved his hand in a circle, summoning a whirlwind that lifted the salt from the bags that Anya, Piper and Willow were carrying and sprinkled it all over the room. The minute the salt touched the five creatures, they started to melt with a hissing sound, quickly vanishing into five pools of black goo.
While the others sneezed and huffed, vainly trying to take the salt off their teary eyes with hands that were also covered with salt, Cole jumped over a large pool of Caarth goo and ran towards Spike and Ben. He stopped short before the vampire, who was still wearing his game face, the deadly fangs hovering right above Ben's head.
"You can morph back now, Spike," Buffy said sharply as she noticed Cole's tension.
"Oh, really, pet?" -- a pair of cold yellow eyes stared at her as Spike turned to her with a small sneer.
"Just hand the baby to Cole," she said, her own eyes sparkling with anger as she saw him toy with the others' apprehension.
"Well, maybe I..." -- Spike was interrupted by a little hand that groped his face as Ben stretched himself as far as possible in an attempt to touch the funny bumpy things on the vampire's face.
He looked down at Ben, surprised, and the toddler giggled and once again touched his face.
"Will you excuse me?" Spike snapped, annoyed. "I'm trying to look bad here!"
"Bah?"
"That's right. Bad."
Ben furrowed his brow in confusion. He knew what "bad" meant. It was wrong. Wronger than "no no no", yet not as wrong as "mean". Mean was very wrong: when people were mean, Auntie Piper made them go "boom!". But Spike wasn't being mean, and he wasn't being bad, either. Bad was throwing daddy's cell phone out through the car's window, or pouring the bowl of cereal over your own head. Spike had only jumped and jumped and jumped with him, and that had been fun, and not bad: daddy did that all the time and no one said it was bad.
Then, just as Spike turned his attention back to Buffy and opened his mouth to speak again, Ben's face lit up with sudden comprehension.
"Baa!" he exclaimed happily. Oh, now I know what you mean!
"Yes, I..."
"Baaaaaaaa!"
"I... What?!?" -- Spike's eyes grew wide with shock and he morphed back to his human form.
"Baaaaaaaa!" Ben bleated happily, and the toddler grinned proudly when the room exploded with laughter.
"No!" Spike exclaimed, indignantly. "Not baa! Bad!"
"Baaaaaaaa!"
"Bad! I'm not a bloody lamb! I'm a vampire! Bad!"
"Baaaaaaaa!"
"I don't... Oh, bugger this!" Spike grunted, frustrated, as he handed Ben to Cole. Before he did, though, Ben reached out and stroked his face in one of those priceless child's spontaneous gestures of affection. Spike blinked, disconcerted, and for a second his expression softened as he looked down at Ben's bright smile. He quickly regained his wits, though, and hastily put the toddler in Cole's arms; Spike glanced quickly at Buffy as he walked away from father and son, afraid that she might have witnessed his brief moment of weakness, but the Slayer was looking the other way, too busy hiding the fact that her heart had throbbed in all kind of odd ways when she saw Ben laughing in his arms.
"Baa! Baa! Baa!" Ben said, bouncing in Cole's arms. Awe, daddy, let's forgive him: he's not really mean, and he's so funny!
"Yeah, baa to you, too," Cole said with a smile as he hugged him tight, experiencing a feeling of utter relief now that his son was safe in his arms again.
Ben giggled and nuzzled Cole's cheek.
"Dada," he said, because he was in a good mood, and he knew that daddy always liked to hear that word.
"Da-da-da-da-da-da-dah!" he lilted then, just for the fun of it. He liked to play with the sound of words.
He looked at Spike over Cole's shoulder and waved cheerfully at him:
"Baa!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever..." Spike huffed, rolling his eyes.
Spike clenched his teeth as he gingerly shifted his weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to ease the pain on his left knee: it had been hurt during the fight with Liusaidh and, even though vampires were fast healers, jumping around with Ben as ballast hadn't helped the least.
"So, that's what a Caarth looks like," Anya said, placing her hands on her hips. She glanced at the five black pools of goo and corrected herself: "Looked like."
"I didn't know they melted with salt," she proceeded, turning to Cole. "Are they related to slug demons?"
"Yes, they..." Cole started to say, but then he heard the front door be open and promptly shouted in the door's general direction:
"Nobody's hurt!"
Indeed, when Phoebe came through the foyer and saw the pools of demon goo on the floor, she gasped and promptly ran towards Cole.
"What happened? Is everyone okay? Was Ben scared?" she asked as she took Ben from his arms and kissed him.
"Mama!" Ben exclaimed happily. "Baa!" he added, grinning.
"That's..." Phoebe started to say with a smile, but she stopped when she noticed the others' amusement. "What's so funny?" she asked, intrigued.
"Spike is baaaaaaaaaaad!" Willow explained, in a pretty good lamb impersonation that made Ben laugh heartily.
"Baaaaaaaaa!" he said, joining her.
Phoebe raised her eyebrows, giving Piper an inquisitive look.
"We can tell you while we clean up this mess," Piper said, "and after Cole and Leo tell us about the Caarths."
"Carths?" Phoebe repeated, turning to Cole.
"Caarths," he corrected her while Piper and Leo went to the kitchen to get the cleaning utensils.
"Spike," Piper called, stopping at the doorway and turning around to look at the vampire, "do regular human drugs have any effect on your body?"
"No," Spike said, tilting his head to the side and giving her a curious look.
"You look like you could use a painkiller," she said, eyeing his knee.
"Uh, ice would be good," Spike said, warily.
"Does herbal medicine work?" she asked and he frowned, looking definitely suspicious now.
"One good turn deserves another," Piper said. "And that little lamb over there," she added, motioning her hand towards Ben, "means a lot to us."
When Xander arrived with Dawn, thirty minutes later, he was more than a little surprised to find Spike sitting comfortably on a chair, his left leg stretched before him, resting on a pillow that had been placed on a puffy chair. The vampire was wearing borrowed sweat pants whose left leg had been rolled up to the knee, and had a poultice on his exposed knee.
"What's this smell?" Dawn asked, sniffing the air as she approached Spike.
"Nard roots and datura," Willow said, looking at the sheet of paper on which she had written Piper's recipe.
Before Xander could decide whether he wanted to make a remark about that, his attention was drawn to Ben, who was hopping around the room, playing with some stuffed animals and bellowing "baa! baa!" as the animals were tossed around.
"He's playing 'Witches and Caarths'," Anya told him, in her patented way of providing explanations that explained nothing.
"Actually," Spike piped in, trying to suppress the contentment in his voice and not doing a very good job, "he's playing 'Vampire and Caarth'."
"What are caars?" Xander asked Willow, choosing to ignore Spike.
"Caarths," she corrected him, giving him her best accent as she checked her notes again. "Big baddies that are drawn to magical beings and feed on them. They live in another realm and can only cross to this one when there's a very unusual combination of factors."
"In other words," Paige said, picking the chain from which the pendant hung and pulling it over Leo's head, "it takes a lot of bad luck for one being in this realm to be targeted by them."
"Paige, you don't..." Leo started to say, but she cut him off.
"It's been twenty-four hours," she said as she hung the chain around her neck. "Your shift is over."
Leo smiled as she gently patted his shoulder, but when he turned to Cole his smile faded out.
"I'm sorry," Leo said, giving his brother in law a pained look. "I should've known better."
"Well, when you put it this way," Cole said, "so should I."
Leo opened his mouth to reply, but Cole held up his hand, silencing him:
"I mean it, Leo. Until today, the curse hadn't put anyone's life at risk What's more, it had only worked on ATMs, dogs, upset stomachs, nothing supernatural. It wasn't just you: none of us realized that it was getting stronger."
"I should've known better," Leo insisted, shaking his head.
"Leo, I'm his father!" Cole said. "If anyone should have foreseen that, it would have been me. I didn't, and neither did Phoebe, and neither did anyone else. Why should we blame you?"
Just then, Ben darted past him, holding a blue stuffed pig above his head and hollering "baa" at the top of his lungs. Cole dashed forward and grabbed the toddler, pulling him close and blowing a raspberry on the side of his neck.
"Go tell Uncle Leo," Cole said, smiling as Ben squealed and laughed and he hugged him tight, "tell him that we're not angry at him."
He made Ben look in Leo's direction, and the toddler giggled and waved at him:
"Hi!"
As Cole placed him and Piggy the Pig in the arms of a very grateful Leo, Ben reached out and grabbed Uncle Leo's nose, saying:
"Baa!"
Leo laughed heartily, and Ben wiggled his way out of his embrace and back to the floor, where he proceeded with his game, once again oblivious the grown ups.
"Where's Buffy?" Dawn asked.
"In the kitchen with Phoebe," Piper said as she entered the solarium.
She stopped as she walked past Spike and handed him a glass jar filled with the same mixture he was wearing on his injured knee.
"That should do it until your knee heals," she simply said.
As Piper went sit by Leo's side, Spike looked from her to the jar in his hands with a pensive expression. His knee was indeed feeling better: earlier that evening he had feared he wouldn't be able to ride his motorcycle back to Sunnydale for the next three or four days, which might become a major inconvenience if Buffy decided to travel back home before that. He gingerly placed the jar on the table next to him, beside his empty cup: the chamomile tea had been warm and sweet, and it had helped him relax his sore muscles after the fight.
Spike sighed and leaned back on his chair, oblivious to the talk around him, until the mention of Buffy's name made him turn his attention to Willow.
"I thought you'd arrive with Buffy," Willow was saying to Dawn.
"Yeah, well, I wanted to take a shower and try on some of my new stuff," Dawn said, stretching her leg in front of her so that Willow could see her brand new sneaker, "but Buffy was all hasty and impatient, so I told her to just drop me at the hotel and I would come later with Xander."
As Piper made a remark about Dawn's new sneakers and the subject was changed, Spike lost interest in the conversation again. He had been watching the manor since sundown, waiting for Buffy to show up, and then he had followed her inside, purposefully ignoring her huffing and puffing and bickering about his help not being needed anymore. He could have told Dawn that the reason her sister was in such a hurry was because she had hoped to talk to Phoebe before the other Scoobies arrived. Buffy had looked pretty disappointed when Piper had told her that Phoebe hadn't come home from work yet, and right now Spike would love to be a fly on the kitchen's wall to know what the two girls were talking about.
In the meantime, Ben had finally taken a break and sat down on the floor with his toys.
"Baa," he mildly told a stuffed hippo, patting his head. "Boo-ba-boo-ba-boo," he muttered to no one in particular.
He yawned and looked at his shoes, pondering the idea of taking them off. Nah. Too much work. Then Ben yawned again, curled on the floor next to Piggy the Pig and closed his eyes, unceremoniously falling asleep.
"So, when you throw salt on a Caarth..." Cole was explaining to Willow. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed when he saw Ben close his eyes.
Willow watched, puzzled, as he stood up and ran towards the toddler:
"Oh, no, Ben, don't you do that to daddy," he said while pulling a very displeased Ben back to a sitting position. "Mommy is gonna kill me if I let you fall asleep now," he added, scooping Ben up.
As Ben whined and gave him a sulky look, Cole headed to the kitchen, calling out:
"Phoebe! Sleepy baby alert!"
"What's so terrible about him sleeping?" Dawn asked after they were gone.
"He hasn't eaten yet," Piper explained. "They'd have to wake him up later to feed him, and he'd be cranky."
"And after that he wouldn't wanna go back to sleep, and then he'd be even crankier," Anya added, all too knowingly. "Believe me, you don't wanna be around a Turner's temper tantrum."
"What?" Phoebe asked as she raised her eyes from the ground meat she was cooking.
She and Buffy looked at Cole, who had entered the kitchen with Ben in his arms, and Phoebe grimaced when she saw Ben yawn and try to bury his face on Cole's shoulder.
"You'd better hurry up with his dinner, baby," Cole said as he tried to place Ben on the high chair.
"No!" Ben said mutinously, grabbing the front of Cole's shirt.
"Oh, come on, son, you're such a good boy," Cole pleaded with him. "Just eat some of mommy's yummy food and then you can go back to sleep."
"Back?" Phoebe asked, arching her eyebrows.
"I just took my eyes off him for one second," Cole said, with an apologizing shrug.
Ben tightened his grip on his shirt and repeated, stubbornly:
"No!" No yummy food. Nighty nite. No food.
Cole sighed as he looked at his son's pout: no one messed with the sleep schedule of Benjamin Coleridge Turner II and lived to tell the story.
"How come he never falls asleep that fast when we're trying to get him into bed?" Phoebe sighed, shaking her head as she hastily poured the mashed vegetables on Ben's plate, while keeping her eyes on the pot with the ground meat that was still on the stove.
"It's the Halliwell bad gene," Cole said smugly, as he sat Ben on his knees and gave him a spoon to play with. "Hey, look, buddy, a nice, shiny spoon!"
"What!" Phoebe glared at him, only half joking, while Ben promptly started to bang the spoon on the table.
"I think I'll just wait in the solarium," Buffy said, biting back a smile as she stood up. Phoebe looked at her, but Buffy dismissed her with a wave of her hand: "It can wait: no big deal."
"Buffy, come over tomorrow," Phoebe said, "I'll be home all day. And I'd love to talk."
"That's okay," Buffy said, nodding.
"Honey, I mean it," Phoebe insisted.
"I'll come," Buffy said with a smile before she left the kitchen.
"The Halliwell bad gene?" Phoebe said, turning back to Cole and placing her hands on her hips.
"That's what Grams says," he said with a sly grin.
"Well, don't make me call a certain former vengeance demon to the witness seat, counselor," she said. "And make sure your son remains awake while I finish this," she added, turning off the stove and starting to put the ground meat on Ben's plate.
Noticing that Ben had lost interest in the spoon and was snuggling against him again, Cole quickly turned him around so that the toddler was facing him.
"Come on, you can't go to bed yet," he said as he bounced Ben up and down on his knee. "Your tummy is empty, let's get some food in it first," he added.
"No!" Ben stated, even as he giggled.
"Please," Cole said, smiling.
"No no no no!"
Ben adamantly shook his head and suddenly decided he didn't want to play anymore. No pony ride. Nighty nite.
"No!" he said again as he launched himself forward and buried his face on Cole's shirt.
Phoebe sighed as she sat by Cole's side and placed the plate and a clean spoon on the table before her.
"Awe, mommy's baby wants to go nighty nite, does he?" she asked as she took him from Cole's arms.
"Mama," Ben mumbled as he snuggled in her arms.
"Uh-hum," she said, as she fed him a spoonful of ground meat. "Ben's going to bed, yes, he is. In a minute."
She watched with a smile as Ben hesitated, rolled the food on his tongue, tasting it, then chewed and swallowed it with evident satisfaction.
"Let's make him eat at least some of it, and then I'll take him upstairs and nurse him before I put him in bed," she told Cole.
"So," Cole said, as she gave Ben another spoonful, "have you and Buffy talked about...?" -- he dragged out the word, giving her an interrogative look.
"I think she wanted to," Phoebe said, gingerly wiping Ben's chin with the bib, "but between the Caarths and my motherly chores, I'm afraid she didn't have a chance."
She tried to feed Ben another spoonful, but the toddler closed his mouth shut, so Cole took the spoon from her hands and started the "airplane goes into the hangar" routine.
While he drew loops in the air with the spoon, making swooshing sounds until Ben finally deigned to open his mouth, Phoebe proceeded:
"She asked me about us: how we met, when you crossed, how the rest of the family coped."
"Did you tell her," Cole said, "how loving and supportive you were while I was crossing? How you had faith in me when no one else did?"
"Baby," Phoebe said, softly, "she's just twenty one. I was older, and more experienced, and didn't carry the burden of my calling alone. And even then," she added gently, "it wasn't easy."
"Crossing isn't a picnic, either," he said quietly.
"I know..." she started to say, but Cole cut her off.
"No, you don't, Phoebe," he said, reaching out and touching her face. "And I love you for that, for giving me just what I needed then, even when you didn't know, couldn't know what I was going through."
"But, baby," he proceeded, "when you make the decision to switch sides, it's more than just adjusting to a different set of rules. When you look at evil and see it through the eyes of good, it's yourself you're seeing, it's your own deeds. And as you loath the monster you're fighting, you never forget that you were a monster yourself, for more than a century."
He sighed and added:
"The demons we've vanquished during the past three years, there's nothing they have done that I haven't done myself."
"You're a different man now, Cole," she said, reaching out and placing her hand over his.
"Yes," he said, nodding, "but it still shames me and hurts me to think of all the things I did. I think it always will, and that's the price I have to pay."
Phoebe opened her mouth, but he placed his fingers on her lips, adding:
"Still, it's a small price to pay for the happiness I now have."
Then Cole's eyes fell on Ben, who was sound asleep in her arms, and he said with a smile:
"Uh oh."
Phoebe couldn't help but smile, too, as she looked down at the toddler. At some point during his parents' interplay he had managed to get rid of one of his shoes, but had fallen asleep before he could finish with the other. He was curled in her arms, sucking his thumb in his sleep, his left foot bared and his right one still wearing a small red shoe.
"I'll talk to her," Phoebe whispered, carefully snuggling Ben in her arms while she stood up.
"I'd do everything again, baby," Cole said in the same tome, cupping her face and caressing it gently. "No price would be too high to pay for one minute of the life I have now; but I didn't know that then."
"I'll talk to her," she told him again.
Cole leaned down and kissed her lightly, and Phoebe whispered "I love you" against his lips, and then she quickly left the kitchen before Ben woke up.
"This," Willow said, as the pendant was passed from hand to hand, "is a Celtic Love Knot."
They were all gathered in the solarium, ready to learn what Piper, Leo and Willow had found about the pendant and the curse on it while they waited for dinner to be ready.
Phoebe leaned forward and watched the pendant in Cole's hand.
"It's a triquetra!" she said, surprised.
"Inside a heart," Piper said.
"No beginning, no end," Willow explained, tracing a triquetra in the air with her index finger, finishing with the heart that encased it. "Eternal love."
"That's beautiful," Paige said. "At least, it would be if it wasn't for the curse," she added as Cole handed her the pendant.
"Have you found out who the pendant belonged to?" Buffy asked.
"Well," Willow said, "if you watch it closer, you'll notice that there are some carvings on it; they're almost entirely worn off, and could only be read with the help of high tech equipments and state of the art restoration techniques... Or with a spell cast by a very powerful witch," she added with a smile, motioning her hand towards Piper.
"And what do they read?" Buffy asked, squinting her eyes as she looked at the faint marks carved on the pendant.
"There's a year," Piper said. "1832."
"Two names," Willow added, "which we assume are of the woman who owned the pendant and of the man who gave it to her: Henrietta and Lucas."
"And the sigils of two covens," Piper finished.
"Covens?" Phoebe repeated, raising her eyebrows. "They were witches?"
"Yes," Piper said. "And although Henrietta's coven was destroyed in the 1930s, Leo was able to make contact with a witch from Lucas' coven in Hampshire."
"Hampshire?" Spike asked, perking up. "Like in, Hampshire, England?"
"Oh, great," Xander muttered under his breath. "Another British living dead..."
"So, what's their story?" Paige asked, turning to Leo.
"Well, as you've already guessed, they were witches and they were in love," Leo said. "And yes, they were English," he added to Spike.
"But their love wasn't looked upon kindly by either his coven or hers," he proceeded, addressing everyone again. "From what the Elders told me, Henrietta's coven had a, uh... a bad name."
"Were they evil?" Buffy asked.
"Well, no," Leo said, cautiously. "But they were said to be dangerously close to the brink. Prone to making dubious alliances and resorting to dark magic in order to achieve their goals. In fact, an alarming number of witches of that coven had indeed switched sides in the past."
"So, what did they do?" Phoebe asked. "Henrietta and Lucas, did they stay together?"
"For some time they did," Leo said. "I'm not sure what happened exactly, but something bad happened while Lucas was out of town, and every evidence pointed towards Henrietta. I don't know if he blamed her -- like everyone else did -- or if he just needed some time to think things through but, whatever it was, she didn't take it well."
"Was she guilty or not?" Paige asked.
"It turns out she wasn't," Leo said, shrugging. "But she never got to tell him that. Cholera was raging throughout Europe, and Lucas died before she could reach him."
"No happy ending," Anya sighed, shuddering as she passed her arm through Xander's and leaned towards him.
The gesture didn't go unnoticed by Cole. He gave her a concerned look, but didn't say anything: they'd have time to deal with that tomorrow, after the curse was over. Cole furrowed his brown as he put his arm around Phoebe's shoulders: whatever it was that had struck Anya in the attic, it was related to her upcoming wedding, and if he found out that Xander had anything to do with it, the man would be as good as dead. In a slow, painful way.
Dawn's voice brought him back to the present as the girl asked Leo:
"Was it all because of the curse?"
"No," Leo said. "The curse came afterwards."
"It was Henrietta, wasn't it?" Anya said quietly.
"Yes," Willow said, nodding. "Lucas' death seems to have pushed her over the edge."
"Did she turn evil?" Xander asked.
"Well, no," Willow said. "She was more like... she went into chaotic, raving mode. No alignment: just this blind rage that made her act recklessly and eventually got her killed."
"That's sad," Phoebe sighed. Cole's arm was still around her shoulders, and she rested her head on his shoulder as he pulled her closer.
"It's..." -- Paige shrieked in pain when she leaned on the arm of the love seat and a splinter got stuck in her elbow.
"Stupid curse," she muttered angrily.
"Speaking of which...?" Xander gave Piper and Willow an interrogative look while Leo stood up and went heal Paige.
"Well," Willow said, "we believe that Henrietta's essence is still trapped within the pendant: instead of moving on after her death, she recoiled even further into the object that had once been a token of their love."
"And with the right spell and the Power of Three," Piper said, "I think we can tap into the pendant's magic and summon her."
"And then...?" Buffy asked.
"If we give Henrietta the benefit of the doubt," Piper proceeded, "we must assume that she was a good witch. And since the curse is rooted on her grief and her anger, if we can get through to her and convince her to move on, that should be the end of the curse."
"Okay," Paige said, warily, "but we're gonna keep a vanquishing potion at hand, just in case... right?"
"Definitely," Piper said. None of them had forgotten about Rick and Nathan, the ghosts from Leo's past who had come after him for vengeance and had nearly succeeded in killing her. "Just in case."
"Honey, you don't mind waiting until tomorrow, do you?" Phoebe asked, turning to Paige. The pendant had gone full circle around the room, and she received it from Cole and handed it to her sister. " I wanna take Ben to dad's place before we summon Henrietta. Just in case."
"Sure," Paige said, reaching out to receive the pendant from Phoebe's hands. "If Leo and Spike could suffer the curse for twenty four hours each, I can..."
Before Paige could touch the pendant, though, Phoebe's fingers suddenly clasped around the pendant in a spasmodic movement.
"Phoebe?" she called alarmed, while Phoebe gasped for air.
"Phoebe!" Cole called and, when she didn't answer, he hauled the pendant from her hand and threw pendant and chain away from her and across the room.
When Phoebe relaxed and fell back into his embrace, he protectively wrapped his arms around her, leaning down to kiss her temple.
"Say what you want, I hate what these damned premonitions do to you," he muttered, frowning.
"Not a premonition," Phoebe said, shivering as she snuggled in his arms. "At least..." -- she shook her head -- "I'm not sure. It felt more like an electric shock."
"Didn't you see anything?" Piper asked, concerned.
"No," Phoebe said. She hesitated, frowning slightly, then said, slowly: "One word is too often profaned for me to profane it."
"What?" Cole said, giving her a puzzled look.
"If it was a premonition," Phoebe said, "it was more like a 'verbal' one. That's all I have: a sentence."
"And, mind you, a rather cryptic one," Paige said.
"What about the voice?" Leo asked. "Male or female?"
"Neither," Phoebe said. "No voice. The words just... popped up in my mind."
"One word is too often profaned," Buffy said, pensively.
"For me to profane it," Phoebe finished.
"Which word?" Xander asked.
"I have no idea," she said, shrugging.
"Love, maybe?" Paige offered. "I mean, if it's related to Henrietta..."
That reminded her of the pendant, and she stood up and went pick it up from the place where it had landed, under Piper's chair.
"Or trust?" Willow said. "Maybe she's hurt because Lucas didn't stand up for her when she was accused."
"It could be a lot of things," Phoebe said with a sigh.
She raised her hand and touched her temple, grimacing.
"I think I have a headache," she said. "Ugh! It's been more than a year since I last had a headache because of a premonition!..."
"I'll get you some Tylenol," Paige said, reaching out and stroking her arm.
As she stood up and left the room, Piper said, standing up with Leo's help:
"And I'll get you dinner. Premonitions don't go well with an empty stomach."
Phoebe gave her a weak smile, because the headache was really starting to kick in, and Piper asked, concerned:
"Honey, are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," Phoebe said. "But I think you're right: I'll probably feel better once I eat something."
"Off to the dining room with you, then," Piper said with a smile. She looked at her watch and added: "I'll go check on dinner."
"Do you want me to..." Phoebe started to say, but Cole cut her off.
"Dining room, you," he told her. "I'll help Piper."
"You," Piper said, pointing at him, "stay away from my china."
Cole opened his mouth to protest, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand:
"Walk your wife to the dining room and leave my dishes alone."
Phoebe giggled despite her headache when Cole took her in his arms and carried her to the dining room, while Leo and Willow followed Piper to the kitchen to help her with the dishes.