Chapter One

"But what if what you do to survive kills the things you love? Fear's a power thing; it'll turn your heart black you can trust. It will take your God-filled soul, fill it with devils and dust." Bruce Springsteen, "Devils & Dust"

Magic School, 2029

The room was still and dark, any outside light blocked by the heavy red curtains lining the walls. On the bed, Jordan Berkley Halliwell slept curled on her side, snow white sheet tucked under her arm. She looked comfortable, and she smiled in her sleep. The grand bed seemed to dwarf her small frame, and, despite her comfort, she appeared almost lonely. The other half of the bed had remained untouched throughout the night, the comforter still tucked sharply into the bed frame as the maids had prepared it during the previous day.

The tall French doors to her bedroom gently swung open, a small towhead poking through the crack just below a darker, larger head.

"Le's ge' her," the two year old giggled, nose crinkling under smiling blue eyes.

"Shh, Phee," the older head admonished in a whisper. "We can't let her know we're coming."

"Oh!" the toddler gasped just as loudly as before, smacking a chubby hand to equally plump lips. "Sowwy."

On the bed, a pale green eye slowly opened, eying the door and wedge of light it allowed warily.

"Sneaky, little man, remember that," Wyatt Halliwell reminded his son, opening the door enough for Phoenix to slip in and "tip-toe" toddle towards his "sleeping" mother.

The boy leapt onto the bed, with the help of his father, and hopped onto his mama's tummy.

"Wyatt Halliwell," Jordan groaned after a muffled 'oof'. "You're so going to pay for this."

"I can't wait," Wyatt grinned, watching his son bounce happily on Jordan's stomach. "Now you better wake up and say good morning to your son before he breaks a rib."

When Jordan finally sat up, she snaked her hands around Phoenix's waist and flipping him onto his back. His boisterous laughs filled the tranquil corridors of their wing of Magic School as she began to tickle him without mercy.

"Well, good morning. Aren't we awake today," a new arrival threw his voice into the fray.

"Why hello, Uncle Christopher," Jordan smiled, "Phee, go say good morning to your uncle."

Phoenix crawled out from under his mother obediently, blond curls mussed and dinosaur pjs with bright green footies rumpled. He slid off of the tall four-poster bed, Wyatt delivering a playful pat on his thick, diapered rump as he passed.

"Seilya said breakfast is ready," Chris announced as he stooped to greet his nephew with a bear hug.

"We'll be right there," Jordan assured him.

Chris met her eyes and flashed a bright smile before escorting his young nephew to the breakfast table, making an honest effort to understand the boy's jumbled words.

Jordan rose, lifting one of Wyatt's shirts off of an end post and slipping it over her shoulders left bare by the thin straps of her tank top.

"You didn't come to bed last night," she observed. He was still seated on the bed, and she glanced back at him over her shoulder.

"I just got home a few minutes ago. I was at Mom's, working with Chris and Casey until late. I just got a little sleep over there."

"Have something against orbing under the influence of sleep?" Jordan asked, barely keeping the bite out of her words. "That's pretty hard to believe."

Wyatt sighed, feeling the by now familiar indignation rising in his chest. "Please, Jordan, not now."

"I actually would like to sleep next to my husband at least a couple nights a week. Is that so much to ask?"

"I didn't want to wake you. I'm sorry, okay?"

"No, it isn't okay, Wy. You come home for maybe an hour a day, play with Phoenix, and leave. You can't even give up one day, just to spend with your son and wife." Her voice was still low, so it wouldn't carry out of the open doors and to their son's ears, but her frustration was mounting. She pivoted away from him, ready to leave the argument behind them for the breakfast table.

He came up behind her and kissed the top of her head tenderly, hands reaching about her waist.

"I miss you. I'll try better, I promise."

"I know that you will; it's just…"

"C'mon Mom and Dad!" Uncle Chris cried playfully from the breakfast table, interrupting Jordan mid-thought. Phoenix's giggles followed.

"We're coming!" Jordan returned, slipping out of Wyatt's arms and smiling gently at him. She knew he was holding something back (sometimes he forgot she was his White Lighter). It hurt, but she also believed him when he claimed he would try harder. "Let's go, Daddy."

"Right behind you, Mama," he grinned lightly back, placing a kiss on her forehead and turning her towards the door.

"You just like the view," she accused, their previous argument replaced with teasing banter.

Guilt at hiding the truth pushed to the back of his mind, Wyatt followed her, basking in the comfort of his family.

It's worth it, he thought, Protecting this is worth a couple of incomplete truths.

"What'd you find out?" Wyatt asked later that day, orbing into the attic of his childhood home and immediately directing his attention to his diligently studying cousin.

Casey looked up quickly from the piles of books laid out on the floor around her. With her bangs falling into her dark eyes, Casey was amazingly reminiscent of the earlier pictures of Aunt Phoebe.

"Nothing. Again. Nothing, nothing, nothing," Casey sighed. "And I only have half an hour before I'm due at my dad's. So unless you plan on discreetly orbing me over to his apartment full of my three, younger, completely mortal siblings, I have to go."

"Nothing!" Wyatt cried in frustration, resisting the urge to blow up the useless reading material.

"Sorry, Wy," Casey tried to console, climbing out from under the books and dusting off her black trousers. "Maybe Jordan can help... you know, remember something from her earlier White Lighter days…"

"No! Jordan's not to know anything about this, in any way. Got it?"

"All right, all right," Casey acquiesced, raising her hands in innocence. "Do I look like I've been doing everything my father has asked me not to do since I was a small child?"

Wyatt rolled his eyes.

"No, you look fine," he assured her before teasing, "Everything he's ever asked you not to do? You haven't been experimenting with drugs again, Case, have you?"

"No, Wyatt," Casey groaned, heels clicking on the wooden attic floors as she crossed to collect her purse and phone.

"Crazy sex with a total stranger?" Wyatt ribbed.

"God, I wish," Casey lamented and then smiled, noticing the panicked horror flashing on her eldest cousin's face.

"TMI, Case… Way TMI." He collapsed onto the couch, head in hands as the frustration continued to pile up on him.

Casey smiled gently and placed a kiss on Wyatt's cheek. "Don't worry, Wyatt. We'll figure it out eventually. Mom and Aunt Paige are still out exploring the lead you gave them earlier. It's gonna be okay. How's little Phoenix doing? I'm gonna try to stop by tomorrow, alright?"

"Yeah, Jordan would like that. A lot. I think she's a little lonely, staying there with Phoenix all day. Chris is really her only visitor, and it's hard to get Phoenix out into the mortal world since he doesn't quite understand about keeping his powers secret."

"Then I'll definitely try to get over there. I've got to get on the road, now, so call me if there's a break, alright?"

"Got it, cous'," Wyatt promised, hands gravitating towards his temples to try to massage the omnipresent headache away.

He hated keeping things from Jordan, but he couldn't bring himself to worry her over this, to involve her in something that could steal her from him. The dying seer's last words from a month earlier replayed on a constant loop in his head, gaining in volume every time he touched his wife or heard his son's laughter.

"Your queen… your heir… danger… losing them…"

Wyatt shuddered. He would not let that happen, at any cost. They were his rock, and his life-sustaining grasp on them was slowly slipping away.

"I do not want the world if it will cost me my family," he swore to himself.

Closing his eyes, he searched for the familiar presence of his brother and found it just downstairs in the kitchen. He took the stairs two at a time, as he had in childhood, and was quickly at Chris's side.

"Sorry to interrupt, Mom," Wyatt started, kissing his mother quickly on the cheek before grabbing his brother's upper arm. "I need Chris for a bit… Round Table business and all."

And with that, he orbed them out.

"Mama," Phoenix called from his playroom. "Mama! Unka Kiss-toe-fur."

Jordan set down the novel she was trying to absorb herself in and crossed to the doorway of the library. She poked her head out of the door just in time to see Chris emerge from the playroom with Phoenix on his hip.

"Hello, Christopher. Twice in one day… What a lovely surprise."

Chris smiled affectionately at his sister-in-law, passing off the toddler as he whined for his mother.

"Just thought you could use some company," Chris explained his presence as Jordan blew a raspberry kiss on her beloved baby boy's cheek.

Jordan met his eyes skeptically. Panic passed over Chris's face as she began her admonishment.

"You don't have to put yourself between Wyatt and me, Christopher, but don't you lie to me. From now on, just tell me he sent you and be done with it."

"Alright," Chris acquiesced, "But I did really think you could use some company: you spend your whole day cooped up in here with Phoenix. You should put him in the nursery at Magic School someday and take some time to go out into the real world for a day… But not today…"

"Of course not today," Jordan sighed. Wyatt would never allow for that. He's worried about something, and he won't tell me about it… "Just forget it; Phoenix has tried the nursery many times, but he's too powerful. I leave him there, and he orbs out back to me. If I stay with him there, he turns the other children into the toys they are playing with or something equally mischievous. He's too much like his father."

"You could always bind his powers," Chris offered as Jordan led him into the library and they took a seat on the reading couch.

"No!" she answered forcefully, sending Phoenix to retrieve one of his picture books from his shelves. "His powers are a part of who he is, and I will not deny him a part of himself."

They stayed in silence for awhile as Phoenix rifled through his books in search of a good one.

"I think," Chris finally said, "That he will be more powerful than his father."

Jordan looked up at him sharply as her son climbed into her lap with his chosen story and gentlemanly opened the book for her, blue eyes turning up to beg for a beginning.

"I fear, Christopher, that you might just be right."

To Be Continued