The television show "Charmed," including the characters of the Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc.
Leo unknowingly interrupted by walking in, still wearing his academic gown over his shirt and slacks. "The boys are asleep in the nursery, and Security has been alerted," he said. "And I think I have an idea of how you can scry for the Seer and get past any magical hiding she might be doing."
The nurse slanted a look up at him. "So organized," she murmured in her husky voice. "I don't know how the school ever got along without you."
Leo gave her an abashed smile. Piper, Leo's wife, and Paige, Leo's predecessor as the head of Magic School, both gave her a dirty look.
Phoebe shook her head, looking as though she might actually have an oncoming headache. "Then after we find her, we have to get a sample of her flesh. With that long robe she wears, that's not going to be easy. And somehow we have to live long enough after that to make the vanquishing potion with the flesh."
"Hope we get a chance to use it this time," Paige said. "She got vanquished before we could even touch her with it last time."
"How?" a voice croaked.
A little surprised, they all looked over at the bed where Cole was sitting upright. His eyes were so intense over his blood-spattered face, throat, and clothes, that he looked frighteningly like a dead man rising from the grave for vengeance, and his sepulchral voice added to the impression. "How did you vanquish her?"
The nurse tried to push him back down. "Really, you shouldn't try – "
He shook her off almost violently. "How?"
He was looking straight at Piper. "Well, actually, your demonic fetus did the trick," she said evenly. "Turns out the thing gave off too much evil energy for any woman to carry it without dying. Even the Seer."
"Hey, we helped," Paige said.
"The Seer and your Cole – were – "
A sharp bark of laughter broke from Phoebe's lips. "Oh, no, you did your wife the honor. Without telling me that the child would be pure evil, of course." She still wasn't looking at him. "The Seer magically transferred the fetus to her womb, figuring it would give her ultimate power. Luckily for me."
Cole looked at her strickenly. "We were going to have a baby?"
The tenderness and sorrow in his face and voice were so grotesquely at odds with what had happened that Phoebe looked breathless. "Yeah. Hey. Hi," Piper said. "You're not by any chance the Source of All Evil in your reality, are you?"
His gaze went to her, then across all of their faces. "Oh. No wonder you all hate me. He never got rid of the Source after the Source possessed him."
"And you did?" Phoebe actually glanced at him in astonishment, and he looked into her eyes as if she were cool water in Hell. Some things, Piper thought, apparently don't change even in alternate realities.
"Well, not me, actually. The Charmed Ones. My Charmed Ones. Weren't you ever able to figure out the spell?"
Three cries of explosive indignation, and Leo quickly muffled his grin.
"You're very good at keeping things hidden," Phoebe said icily. "In case you're not aware that we know that."
"So what happened to – him?"
"Well, we vanquished him," Piper said.
"Twice," Paige added.
"That's right. I keep forgetting that second vanquish, since technically it never happened."
"What?" Cole said, understandably.
"Cole came back from the demonic afterlife more powerful than ever," Paige recounted. "He got so powerful that he could reverse time. He decided that the best way to win Phoebe over was to reverse time and create a new reality. It was absolutely awful. We managed to vanquish him there, in the reality he created, which set time back on its original course, so, technically, the whole thing never happened, including that second vanquish. We know he's gone, though – Piper saw him in limbo. Which is good for me, since in the reality he created I was dead – Hey! Is your Paige alive?"
He looked a little startled. "Yes."
Paige looked like he had just crushed an insight she was about to have. Leo, though, stood slowly, as if he were beginning to understand something.
"Touch and go, though," Cole continued. "When the Source himself decides to go after a mortal woman with no magical power – "
"What?" "The Source himself?" "He didn't send a hit man?"
"Uh – no." Contrary to what might be expected, Cole's voice was getting stronger with use. "I guess he decided he couldn't risk it. He hit her with a high-voltage energy ball when she was on her way to Prue's funeral. If Phoebe hadn't had a premonition, and Leo hadn't been so quick on the uptake – "
"That's it," Leo said.
They all looked at him.
"I was a little worried about this when you told me about the alternate reality Cole had created," Leo said to Paige. "I even asked the Elders about it, but determining the course of possible alternate realities is a little above even them. But, you know, space and time are thought of as flexible stuff. Foam, is the way some of the theoreticians think of it now. When Cole reversed time, he put his fist into that foam. When you vanquished the creator of that reality in that reality, it removed his fist from the foam, but it still, well, churned it."
"Making new foam," said Piper.
Leo nodded. "Another reality bubbled up to fill the gap where Cole's reality had been – one more similar to ours, but with some obvious differences. The Source failed to kill Paige, and later possessed Cole. That's the same as our reality. But in their reality, Cole somehow got free of the Source's possession. So there never was a demonic fetus. So the Seer is still alive."
"And, according to the Seer, I have bad fashion sense," Phoebe said. "Maybe I should've gone to that 'Math, Space, and Time' lecture after all."
"Wait a minute. Are you telling me that my reality is just a – a branch of yours?"
No one knew what to say. Cole smiled a little. "Do you mind if I assume that your reality is just a branch of mine?"
"It doesn't matter," Piper said. "Your Seer is in our reality, and we need her out of it."
"Fine. Let me help you kill the bitch."
His tone was so violent that the women all cast an apprehensive glance at him. Leo stayed calm. "Only God knows, and I mean that literally, what happens to the space-time continuum if we vanquish your Seer in our reality," he said. "Best thing to do is to send you both back."
After a moment, Cole nodded.
Paige had begun, "But will we even – " when an elf in an academic robe materialized in the middle of the room.
"Sorry, sir," his piping voice as he addressed Leo was excited, "but you asked us to scry for a sudden upsurge in demonic activity?"
"I did."
"Intersection of Windmere and Gable. Something happening right now, of course we can't tell what without going there."
"Thanks, but that won't be necessary." The elf looked very disappointed and vanished, as the Charmed Ones sprang to their feet and Cole began more laboriously getting off his bed.
"Uh, I don't think you're going with us," Paige said. Her face was still distrustful.
"Intersection of Windmere and Gable. You gonna stop me from shimmering?"
"It's probably not even the Seer," Piper said. "Probably just some poltergeist getting his kicks."
"I'm great with poltergeists."
They wanted to hurry, so, with a sort of mutual shrug, the sisters clasped hands so that Paige could orb them. As Cole began to shimmer the nurse called, "Come back for your bandaging when you're done!"
Leo headed for the door. "I'll be in the library or the nursery if anyone needs me."
The nurse was left alone, staring down at the red-soaked pillowcase, pillow, sheets, and mattress of the infirmary bed. "Demon blood," she said. "Great. That never comes out."
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They materialized in a back alley, to guard against being seen by passers-by, but this part of town was pretty well abandoned after office hours. At one corner was a self-storage place where someone in an idling truck was punching in his code on a keypad. On the other three corners were two drab office buildings and an empty parking lot.
Phoebe gestured to the storage place with a questioning look. Cole shook his head and decidedly pointed at one of the office buildings.
"Why do you think so?" Piper asked quietly.
Cole indicated a sign out front, which listed, in dull metallic letters, the occupants of the building. "Bottom line. Bay Area Gems and Minerals."
"And you think she's there because – "
"She needs crystals. I'll explain later."
"Seems kind of beneath her," Paige said dubiously, but prepared to orb.
In fact, it was. Three demons were ransacking a large back room, leaving filing cabinets and storage drawers standing open, pawing through a chaos of boxes, cards, and display cases. They were clearly not upper-level demons; although human in form, they were greenish and wizened, with small horns growing out of their bald heads. One of them, however, clearly like to play an upper-level role, wearing a long black coat with a heavy gold-handled athame visible beneath it. He was "supervising" as his two underlings searched.
"This print's way too small," said the skinner of the underlings in a whining tone. "I can't even read what rocks these are."
"That's not the print, that's you not being able to read," said the other underling, and sniggered.
"The light in here's so lousy I can't even tell yellow from clear," said the skinny one. "Can't we just scoop up everything big enough and let her sort it out?"
"Yeah, sure," said the other underling. "Then she doesn't pay us the second installment. Then we don't have enough to buy a really good power from a power broker. Then we spend the rest of our lives doing everyone else's errands for chump change. Yeah, that's a great plan."
"Besides, she's upper-level – way upper-level. I can always tell," the one in the black coat said sagely. "If we do this right, she'll refer her friends to us. We'll be hanging out with dark priests, demonic royalty, seductresses – "
"I don't know," Paige said. "We've dealt with all those, and I've never been specially impressed."
All three demons jumped, then the other two glared unanimously at the skinny one. "You left the door open, flesh-head!"
Skinny, however, seemed to have a clue. He pointed at the three sisters and stammered, "I didn't – I think it's – I think they're – "
"Please forgive him, he's not as smart as us," said the second underling. His face and gestures animated, his hands open in an unthreatening manner, he was strolling away from the other two demons, determinedly making eye contact. "Now you're smart people, I can tell. You're just here to make a buck, like we are. Now we can probably come to some – "
It was such an obvious attempt at a diversion that when the black-coated one suddenly drew his athame and threw it at Cole Paige had snapped "Athame!" before it was halfway to its target. She received it and threw it back at its sender, who yelled as the blade struck his chest and then exploded in a splat of green slime, while they all jumped or recoiled.
In the moments that that took, the second underling transformed amazingly: bony plates jutted from his head, tusks shot from his jaws, his hands became scimitar-like claws. With a bellow he rushed at Paige. Piper blew him up, then they all leaped away again from a shower of green slime.
The skinny one, proving that after all he was the smartest of the group, simply tried to run. Piper froze his legs with a flick of her finger and he toppled to the floor, then rolled over and tried to sit up, staring helplessly at the four people who approached and stood over him.