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.

Phoebe sat down on the floor next to the demon; might as well, the sexy dress already had Cole's blood and demon slime on it. "We really didn't come here looking to vanquish anyone," she cooed gently. "We just need to know some information. You can give us that, can't you?"

"I don't think – I mean – "

"He doesn't know anything, Phoebe," Cole said roughly. "Let me burn him up."

It took Phoebe only a half-breath to catch on. "Cole, you've already killed four demons this week. Isn't that enough?"

"What the point in keeping him alive? He won't help us. One quick fireball, the whole thing's over."

The demon gave a whimper, staring at Phoebe.

"Hey, you've had a long day," she said to Cole. "Why don't you go get a drink of water?"

With a snarl, Cole stalked to the sink at one corner of the room and slammed cabinet doors as if looking for a cup. Piper and Paige, knowing their cues, backed off.

"See, I'm kind of in the minority here," Phoebe told Skinny in a half-whisper. "I think you recognized me and my sisters?"

The demon's eyes were huge. "You're the – the Ch – the Char – "

"The Charmed Ones, right. And you know our track record. So if my boyfriend wants to vanquish you, they won't have a problem with it."

"I'm not – I don't – We were just picking up some crystals."

"For whom?"

The demon hesitated.

"I really can't save you if I can't convince them that you're helpful."

"It's just – she's upper-level. Gaxya said, way upper-level."

"OK, well, we're the ones who vanquished the Source. You think we can't take care of some minion of his?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean, oh no. I mean, I'm sure you can."

"All right, what have you got to worry about? You know we'll track her down anyway. This way, you do us a favor."

"And then – " the demon indicated Cole – "and then he won't –- "

"I'll see to it. So?"

The demon looked around at them all. "Well, we were layin' for this warlock, collection work, and she just suddenly appeared. Female upper-level demon, long red robe, one big earring dangling. Didn't tell us her name. Just said she needed these crystals. About so big, five of 'em called streen – "

"Citrine," Cole said, and they all glanced at him.

"Yeah, that's it. She gave Gaxya ten pieces of gold – ten, do you believe that? – and said we'd get another ten on delivery."

"Which was scheduled for – " Phoebe prompted.

"Tonight, midnight. In back of the Methodist Church on Magnolia."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not! I said, 'Hey, kinda creepy, lady!', and she smiled and said, 'It's the last place anyone will look for us.'"

"Good point," Paige said. "She knew we'd be looking."

"Did she tell you where to find the crystals?" Cole asked.

"No. That was why she hired us. She said she had a lot to do and she couldn't waste her time on stuff like finding crystals. And Gaxya said, 'Don't worry, I know exactly where to find them.'" The demon shot a sullen look at the slime marking the last stand of his leader. "Gaxya thought he knew everything."

"And – " Phoebe said.

"And nothing. That's it. I swear."

Dismissing speculation of what exactly a demon would swear on (his honor? the Bible?), Phoebe glanced up at the others. No one else had any questions, so Piper flicked her hand and Skinny jumped to his feet with a nervous look at Cole.

"You won't be telling anyone about our little conversation?" Cole's tone was threatening.

"I'm gonna tell anyone I ratted out an upper-level? No, I don't think so," and the demon began running. After a few steps his speed became supernaturally fast, and he was a blur by the time he was in the building's hallway.

Cole smiled down at Phoebe. "Nice work."

"Same to you." He extended his hands and helped her up off the floor.

"Obviously he never heard of the good-cop bad-cop routine," Piper said with a laugh.

"You have to say this, whatever we were going through personally, we always made a great team," Phoebe said to Cole. She was up off the floor and he held her hand for a moment longer than necessary before dropping it.

Paige, the only one wearing a watch, glanced at it. "OK, it's about 8:30. We've got three and a half hours to come up with a plan."

"How did you know she wanted crystals? And which crystals?" Piper asked.

"I'll tell – " He cleared his throat. "I'll tell you about that."

"But not right now," Phoebe said. "Your throat wound is bleeding again. We've got to get you back to the healer." She touched the wound gently.

"You're going to play hell with her social life," Cole said, and they laughed together, as Piper and Paige exchanged a look.

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They didn't have time or knowledge enough to undo the chaos the demons had made at Bay Area Gems and Minerals, but they did do a fast clean-up of the slime before leaving. While Cole submitted to more treatment and bandaging, the girls plunged gratefully into the shower one after the other, and Leo rooted through his closet to find a white shirt that would be appropriate under Cole's black coat (red flannel, Phoebe insisted, wouldn't look any better than Cole's own blood-soaked shirt). With an additional pause for Phoebe to brew and pour coffee and for Piper and Leo to check on the children, all five reconvened in the Manor's attic.

Phoebe leafed through the Book of Shadows, standing at the lectern. She seemed to have rethought her earlier warming toward Cole, and avoided his eyes, in spite of the fact that he was sitting on a chair directly before her. Piper and Leo sat on the couch; Paige, after an attempt to stay seated, let her restlessness rule and paced.

"She needs the crystals to make a cage," Cole said. His sip of his coffee was tentative, but it seemed to go down fine.

"A crystal cage?" Piper said indignantly. "In our reality, that was Prue's invention!"

"It was in ours too, but the Seer copied it, with her own variation. Instead of trapping evil, she traps good. That's how I got here. She suckered me into the cage, put the point of an athame into the perimeter, and drew it downward while she said a spell. As the spell finished she touched one of the crystals with the athame, and boom! I was here."

"Boom, literally," Paige said.

"Couldn't figure out what was going on, all of a sudden it's quiet and everyone's gone. I thought I must have been knocked unconscious for awhile, and ran upstairs hoping Phoebe was up there and all right."

"And I kicked you in the gut," Phoebe said ruefully.

"From what you've told me, understandably."

"OK," Piper said, "I guess I can see why the Seer would want to put one of our allies into another dimension, but why not one of us? If she throws a Charmed One into another reality, the Power of Three is gone in her reality. And why follow you here?"

"I don't think she did," Paige said. "Remember what she said right after she cut Cole's throat? 'I won't stay trapped in this dimension.' I don't think she wanted to come here. I think something backfired on her."

"Do you remember the spell she used?" Piper asked Cole.

"I think so. 'Purest silver and citrine / Let a portal now be seen / Keep the karmic balance even / Evil taken, good is given / Bring the man my vision traced / Let this other take his place.'"

"There you go." Piper nodded. "The words of her own spell came back and bit her. We've all done it."

"She was trying to make a trade?" Phoebe said.

"I think she had a vision of evil Cole – either the one from her reality, who no longer exists, or the one from our reality, who exists only in limbo. Either way, she figured she'd exchange her reality's Cole, an ally of the Charmed Ones, for 'the man my vision traced.'"

"That's why she asked him, 'Which one are you?'!" Phoebe exclaimed. "And that's why she said, 'You can have this one.'"

"Right. She said, 'Keep the karmic balance even,' I guess figuring that swapping two counterparts of the same man between two different realities is some kind of balance. But since there is no evil Cole, all she wound up doing was putting a new force of good into our reality. The words of her own spell demanded balance, so a new force of evil was also pulled into our reality. Herself."

"That is – " Leo said, looking Cole in the eye – "if we assume that he's telling the truth about the spell. And if we assume that he's a force of good."

"I think we can assume that," Paige said.

Cole stared at her. "I thought you'd be the last one I could convince!"

"Well, you didn't really. Wyatt did."

"Wyatt?" Piper and Leo said in unison.

"Yeah. I was thinking about this in the shower just now. I was getting the boys ready for bed when those two tremors happened. After the first one, Wyatt's main concern was that his toy fort fell down. But after the second one, he orbed into Chris' crib and put his protective shield over both of them. He only felt the threat of evil in the house after the second tremor."

"But you don't know which one got here first," Leo said.

"Well, we know who got upstairs first. We know – " she looked at Cole – "who has flip-flopped around between good and evil, as opposed to always being totally evil. We know who interrogated a demon by doing a good cop-bad cop routine instead of just trying to torture the info out of him." Paige shrugged. "I'm willing to accept that this is a good Cole, and by the time he flip-flops we'll have him back to his own reality."

Cole smiled at Paige with wry admiration. Phoebe looked at the floor.

"Leading to the next issue: How do we get them both back?" Piper said.

"Will we even need to transport the Seer?" Paige asked. "She seems pretty determined to get back there herself."

"We can't count on what she might do," Leo said. "She may try to grab a force of good in order to take them both back to her reality, the way she and Cole both got pulled here. But she wouldn't grab a magical force of good – it's likely to be a nurse or someone like that, a mortal she can kill the moment her goal is reached."

"Besides, we can't take the risk that she might get back before me," Cole said. "I have to be back at the Manor in case she launches another attack."

"Excuse me, we did pretty well against her without you in this reality," Piper said.

Cole hesitated, glanced at Phoebe, looked away. "Yes, well. That was – this reality."

Piper looked as if she would pursue that, then decided that other matters took priority and turned to Phoebe. "Does the book say anything?"

Phoebe looked up, a little startled. "Um. Nothing relevant. It talks about alternate realities in terms of time travel and magic portals, but it's all about how to avoid them. There's nothing in here about shuttling people back and forth between them."

"I suppose we'll just have to do our own spell," Piper said, "but man! this is tricky stuff. It could backfire on us as easily as it did on the Seer, and I don't want to make things even worse."

"Hey!" Paige snapped her fingers and turned to Leo. "Professor, what's-his-name, Stone, at Magic School! He spends all his time trying to figure out how to open a window to alternate realities so you can watch them. It's not exactly the same as moving between them, but he might be some help."

"He might," Leo said. "But it would be complicated. I fired him last month."

Paige obviously wasn't surprised. "Neglecting the classroom in favor of his experiments?"

"Worse than that. He conducted a highly dangerous incantation in the classroom wing. He blew half of a student into Hell. If it had happened anywhere but Magic School – "

Paige shuddered. They all did.

"We put him back together – physically – but of course he was enormously traumatized. I had to talk with his parents for two hours before they agreed not to take him out of the school." Leo shrugged. "If it had been Wyatt or Chris, I'm not sure I'd have let them stay even then."

Piper ran her hands through her hair. "OK, another thing to focus on with the spell. No transferring half of anybody anywhere."

"Stone said he was sorry, of course, but I got the feeling that the failure of the incantation bothered him more than the trauma to the student. I told him that the safety and education of the kids had to be our top priority; he told me that nothing was more important than his dimension work. I said, in that case, he should focus entirely on his dimension work, and that his teaching contract was terminated."

"Leo, you should have told me!" Piper exclaimed. "You have to remember that you're mortal now. If he comes around while you're at the Manor and attacks you – "

But both Leo and Paige were shaking their heads. "Not the type," Leo said. "And remember, I know the type."

"He doesn't think anyone else is important enough to wreak vengeance on," Paige said. "It would take him away from his experiments. Right now he's thinking that he'll open a window to an alternate reality that everyone in the magical realm can see, and then he'll go around telling everyone what an idiot Leo Wyatt was for not understanding his brilliance. He's obsessed, but I don't know if you'd really call him evil."

"But if someone evil came around and paid him for help, would he give it?" Cole asked.

After a pause, Paige nodded and Leo said, "I think so. Some of the crystals he uses are very rare, and he goes through them like water. Yes. If he saw an advancement to his work, he wouldn't care about the moral orientation of the person he was helping."

"Then we'd better find him before the Seer does," Cole said.