The Witching Hour
Chapter 2
By JewWitch
Paige awoke when it was still dark, but the annoyingly cheerful twittering of the birds outside told her that the sun would be rising soon. It wasn't the songbirds that had woken Paige, however-- it was the cold, empty space in the bed beside her.
"Phoebe?" She called sleepily. Getting no answer, Paige rose and padded across the room, taking her robe off the hook and slipping it over her bare shoulders before tiptoeing downstairs. A light was visible under the kitchen door, where she found her favorite sight, standing at the marble countertop in her red kimono. Phoebe's dark hair was piled onto her head in a messy twist, held with a banana clip, and Paige's eyes were drawn to the perfect, delicate line of her neck, the hollow of her throat. She leaned against the doorway, a sigh escaping her lips as she let her head fall back lazily, one foot pressed against the wall so her bare leg slipped out of her robe. Phoebe looked up with her fingers still in her mouth, munching on some midnight snack.
"Got a craving for something?" Paige asked coyly, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. Phoebe grinned.
"Since you ask," Phoebe purred, walking slowly across the kitchen until she was standing between Paige's legs, "I could really go for something sweet." The inside of Paige's thigh brushed Phoebe's hip as Phoebe leaned up against her, tugging the lock of hair from Paige's fingers and using it to pull her close. Their breathing quickened, but Phoebe stopped short of actually touching Paige's lips with her own; instead she hovered, no more than an inch away from her goal, teasing.
"Do you want me, Paigey?" She murmured, her fingertips gliding up and down Paige's side, still holding her hair firmly in her other hand.
"Yes...yes," Paige panted, her breath shallow and erratic. "More than anything, baby. More than the sun."
"More than the sun..." Phoebe echoed, a bare leg slipping out of her kimono to press between Paige's. It was so hot there, inner thigh to inner thigh, hotter than the center of a solar system. Paige gasped, eyes falling shut as her back arched involuntarily. Phoebe loved the feeling that she could make Paige's body move like that, so independent of thought or intention, as if Paige were a marionette attached to her strings. Of course, Phoebe was on strings too, and when Paige's back arched, her thigh slammed into Phoebe, hard, making her writhe just as helplessly. Paige opened her eyes and growled, pushing Phoebe to the ground, only to be forced back again to the ceiling by their combined magical charge.
By the time they floated back to earth, it felt as if hours had passed, but the sky outside remained a deep, pre-dawn grey. Too limp to stand right away, they landed gently on the kitchen island and lay there, legs entangled, sighing softly while Phoebe rubbed Paige's stomach lightly, and Paige ran her fingers through Phoebe's silky hair. They teased each other with their toes. Presently, Phoebe lifted her head and reached for the container she'd been nibbling from before Paige had found her, pulling out a large handful of raisins.
"That's what you're eating?" Paige frowned.
"What?" Phoebe shrugged, her voice slightly muffled by chewing.
"I dunno, it's just kind of weird. I've never seen a person just eat, like, a whole handful of raisins. It's kind of like eating ketchup right from the bottle."
"It is not," Phoebe said seriously with a shake of her head. "Ketchup is a condiment."
"So are raisins."
"Nu-uh!" Phoebe shook her head again, emphatically. "Raisins are a topping. Like, nuts or M&M's or banana slices."
"Those are ice cream toppings."
"Exactly!" Phoebe popped another handful of the items in question into her mouth. "Toppings!"
"You are such a freak," Paige laughed.
"Well then you're Mrs. Freak," Phoebe shrugged, quirking an eyebrow.
"I can live with that," Paige grinned, kissing Phoebe slowly and thoroughly, until her toes curled up. Phoebe sighed contentedly, sitting up and stretching with an enormous yawn.
"What time is it?" Paige glanced at the clock and frowned.
"That can't be right. Seven thirty? The sun isn't even up yet!" Almost as if on cue, they heard feet on the stairs. Both jumped guiltily down off the island just as the kitchen door swung open, revealing Prue.
"What the fuck is going on? Is there a fucking eclipse or something?" Prue snapped, rubbing her eyes irritably. Phoebe thought that Faith was beginning to rub off on her sister. Then again, maybe she just needed her coffee. The automatic coffeepot was already brewing, the small timer blinking. It was set for 7:30 am.
"What the fuck is going on?" Phoebe echoed. "Is it going to stay dark forever?" The suggestion was so ridiculous, they all wanted to laugh; yet the fact that it had now been dark for fifteen hours, since the instantaneous sunset at 4:30 the afternoon before, made the idea of eternal night uncomfortably tangible.
"Okay, time for a family conference." The door swung open to reveal a very tense Piper, looking far more alert than she normally did at this hour. Leo came behind her with a gurgling Wyatt in his arms, the only one in the room who didn't seem particularly alarmed by the current situation.
"What did you guys find out from the book?" Phoebe asked her sisters, hastily tying the sash on her kimono and hoping no one would catch it, as they were all so preoccupied.
"A big fat nothing," Prue replied sourly.
"The same with the Elders," Leo said grimly. "They don't know what caused the darkness, and they've never heard of the demon you described."
"So it's something totally new," Piper frowned, her brows knitting together.
"Or something totally old," Paige injected. Everyone looked at her. "Well, remember that whole, goddess of destruction thing that came after me and Pheebs?" She cocked her head at them, hands on her hips. "It wouldn't be the first time something ancient came after us. Something too old to be in the Book."
"Prue, you should call Faith, right now," Piper said as she opened the refrigerator and began pulling out breakfast things. "We need Scooby backup."
"Already did," Prue admitted, pouring the first cup of coffee from the dispenser, and drinking it black. "Actually, I was about to call her, and she called me."
"So it's night everywhere...not just in San Francisco," Paige confirmed quietly.
"Well, no, it's not-- not exactly," Phoebe pointed out, squinting out into the dim gray light. "It's like, almost light. Just like last night it was suddenly almost dark. Like something's keeping it in limbo."
"Something like a big freaky demon with a hundred pointy teeth?" Piper asked sarcastically, slamming a pan down on the stove. She began cracking eggs into a large glass bowl, beating them with unnecessary gusto.
"How can you be thinking about breakfast at a time like this?" Phoebe demanded incredulously.
"Well we still have to eat, don't we?"
"What did Faith say?" Leo asked Prue, ignoring the sisters' bickering. "Do they know anything?"
"No, not yet," Prue shook her head tersely. "But I described the demon that attacked us, and they're going to call us if they turn anything up...I wouldn't count on anything, though. They've got their hands kinda full right now."
"Right." Paige nodded. "Eternal night, not so good for the Hellmouth."
"Oh, God." Phoebe blanched. "I didn't even think about that...we should go down there and help them! If they're busy fighting vampires 24/7, they're never gonna get any research done, and we already know we've got squat here."
"Agreed," Prue said curtly. She was 100 business now that her coffee had kicked in. "I was hoping you'd say that. Right after breakfast we'll get orbing."
"Good, it's settled," Piper nodded, putting a large serving plate of scrambled eggs in the center of the table.
"Ugh," Phoebe groaned, her face going deathly pale. "Those eggs smell--" Suddenly she clamped her hand over her mouth and bolted from the room, knocking over her chair.
"I thought she was feeling better since last night," Prue frowned, an expression of concern on her face.
"She was," Paige shrugged helplessly. "I'm just gonna--" she chucked her thumb over her shoulder, and then turned and ran after Phoebe. She found her in the bathroom, being violently sick, down on her knees in front of the toilet. Paige got down beside her, gathering her hair in one hand and rubbing her quivering back with the other. Gasping, Phoebe leaned her forehead against the back of her hand, and whimpered softly.
"Fuck," she panted. "I fucking hate puking." Paige reached over Phoebe's shoulder and flushed the toilet, then pulled down one of the hand towels and ran it under the cold water tap, holding it against the back of Phoebe's neck. "Oh..." Phoebe sighed. "That feels good." Paige got up to fill a Dixie cup with water.
"Spit," she ordered, and Phoebe did.
"Thanks, angel girl," Phoebe smiled sheepishly. "I don't know what's wrong with me...I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" Paige echoed. "What the hell are you sorry for?"
"Well..." Phoebe shrugged, looking at the bathmat beneath her, "it's not exactly the slickest way to end a night of wild sex on the kitchen table."
"We didn't have sex on the kitchen table," Paige reminded her, with a blushing grin. "We just landed there afterwards."
"A mere technicality." Phoebe looked up form the floor, and Paige held her face firmly with both hands, giving her a classic what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you look.
"Don't be sorry, babe," she said quietly. "I want everything with you-- the hot, sexy parts, the totally insane parts, the witchy parts, the sad and scary parts-- even the holding-your-hair-back-while-you-puke parts. I. Want. All of it."
"Lucky me," Phoebe murmured, smiling shyly. Then she gave a squeal of alarm, leaping back as Paige leaned in to kiss her. "For God's sake, at least let me brush my teeth!"
"If you must," Paige shrugged.
Once Wyatt had been dropped at the nursery in Magic School, the Halliwells orbed into the Magic Shop-- where, apparently, Marshall Law had recently been instituted. Much of the countertop had been sacrificed to barricade the front door, and most of the bookshelves were propped against the windows.
"Nice to know we're not the only ones with demon-related redecorating problems," Piper said glibly to her husband.
"P, you're here!" Faith's arms wound tightly around Prue's neck, hugging her with all her slayer strength. "Jesus, am I glad to see you." Prue smiled sadly at her girlfriend, knowing all too well the impulse to gather all her loved ones close at hand when dangerous magical catastrophes happened.
"I'm glad I'm here too, babe. What can we do to help?"
"Well first off, you can ID this demon for us." She pulled Prue back toward the round research table where Tara, Willow and Anya were gathered. About fifty large and heavy books were strewn across the table, some open to various hideous illustrations. Right in the middle was the largest tome of all, open to a very ancient looking engraving of what was clearly a hippopotamus with the head of a crocodile.
"Oh! That's it!" Piper squealed. "That's the crocopotamus!"
"Actually, she's called Tawaret," Willow offered. "That's, um, ancient Egyptian. Also known as Taurt, Taueret, Tuart, Ta-weret, and Taueret, and in Greek--"
"Cut to the chase, Red," Faith said impatiently.
"Um, right." Willow flipped a few more pages. "Well, Tawaret was originally the demon-wife of Apep, the original god of evil. Since Apep was viewed as residing below the horizon, and only present at night, Tawaret was considered the mistress of the horizon and the twilight-- the witching hour. It's the time when the veil between worlds is thinnest...when demons have the most chance of breaking through."
"Is anyone else getting a migraine?" Piper asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"What do you mean, originally?" Phoebe frowned.
"Well, that's where it gets a little confusing," Willow admitted, pulling another dusty volume toward herself. "There are some, um, conflicting accounts."
"Such as?" Paige prompted.
"Some Egyptian goddess cults didn't view her as a demon at all...they actually saw her as a deity of protection."
"Protection?" Prue exclaimed incredulously.
"Female hippos are among the most vicious protectors of their young anywhere in nature," Willow explained. "Tawaret became seen, very early in some parts of Egyptian history, as a deity of protection in pregnancy and childbirth, and pregnant women wore amulets with her name or likeness to protect their pregnancies. Her image could also be found on knives made from hippopotamus ivory, which would be used as wands in rituals to drive evil spirits away from mothers and children."
"So is she evil, or isn't she?" Prue frowned.
"Of course she's evil!" Piper shrieked. "She tried to eat Phoebe!"
"No she didn't," Phoebe said slowly. "You said she barely touched me. Or Prue. She could have killed us both in a heartbeat, but all she wanted was a taste of my blood." She pressed a hand to her churning stomach, willing it not to rebel again.
"Tawaret drank your blood?" Anya quirked an eyebrow across the table. "Have you got a bun in the oven, or what?"
"Of course not," Phoebe rolled her eyes at Anya's typical crudeness. But her sisters were both looking at her with dawning incredulity. "Oh, knock it off, you two! I can't exactly get pregnant by accident, can I?"
"But Pheebs, it all fits," Prue said quietly, ticking off points on her fingers. "Falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon, that dizzy spell you had the other day-- plus the obvious morning sickness."
"That was not morning sickness," Phoebe exclaimed impatiently. "I was just...sick. In the morning."
"And the weird, 3am food cravings," Paige said slowly, her eyes suddenly very wide. "Pheebs, what if--?"
"No! No what if!" Phoebe said emphatically. "We can't do it by accident! Leo said." The whitelighter and brother-in-law in question coughed uncomfortably. They all looked at him. Leo gave his wife a pleading, deer-in-the-headlights look, but she just crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow expectantly.
"Well, I, um..." Leo cleared his throat again awkwardly. "What I meant was, you know...you both have to, um...really want it. The baby, that is. An you have to be completely in tune with each other, when, um...when it happens."
"And by it, you mean...?" Prue trailed off. "Okay, ew."
"He means they both have to come at the exact same moment," Anya clarified with a typical lack of self-consciousness. "Which almost never happens for Xander and me. He's just so--"
"Aaaigh!" Willow shrieked, covering her ears. "Anya, please, I'm begging you."
"Anyway, we haven't even talked about it yet," Phoebe said reasonably, trying to regain some semblance of rationality amid the insane discussion now being held as to whether her wife had managed to accidentally get her pregnant. "Not since that premonition last year, anyway. We weren't even thinking about it!"
"Are you sure?" Prue challenged, an annoyingly knowing look on her face. At a complete loss, Phoebe looked at Paige.
"Were you thinking about it?"
"I dunno...I didn't think I was thinking about it..."
"It's not about thinking, anyway," Anya shrugged. "Your magic is controlled by your emotions, not your intellect. It doesn't matter if you were thinking it; what matters is that you feel it, deep down inside." Paige and Phoebe were giving each other a disbelieving look.
"Maybe we should go to the drug store and get one of those kits," Paige said hollowly.
"Paige--" Phoebe sighed impatiently, as if the whole thing were patently ridiculous.
"What, Phoebe? You're saying you're absolutely sure there's no chance? We've got a million questions here and no answers...at least we can have one simple yes or no."
"Oh...all right."
"We'll be right back," Paige smiled weakly around the room, grabbed Phoebe's hand and orbed out.
"Hope they make it to the store okay," Piper shook her head disbelievingly. "They both looked like they were about to faint."