The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. The character of Dr. Charles Eppes is copyrighted by someone who owns the television show "Numb3rs," which I would know if the networks didn't mutilate the closing credits of television shows.
The handle of the bathroom door exploded, and Piper and Leo rushed in.
Phoebe walked in behind them, holding a key. "OK, I was going to suggest using this, but – "
"Not here," Piper said, as if that weren't obvious. "Damn! What did she do, shimmer in here without his making a sound, grab him and shimmer back out again?"
"Talk about your awkward positions," Cole couldn't resist saying.
Leo shook his head. "The window's open. Either he let her in or he let himself out."
"Why?" Phoebe asked.
Cole looked suddenly at the medicine cabinet door, still slightly ajar, then banged his fist against it. "That's why. She sent him an image in the mirror. And whatever it was, it was enough to make him do everything she wanted."
"And then some," said Paige.
She was pointing into the sink, where Piper's eye makeup lay, a jumble of pick-up sticks and discs. An eye pencil had been uncapped, and there were dusky green letters in the sink:
CHURCH
"Good man!" Cole said.
"She took him to wait for her crystals," Piper said.
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Before they took off, Leo gave his weapons-laden jacket to Phoebe – he'd be staying at the Manor, where there was plenty of weaponry. He also, somewhat reluctantly, gave Cole his only other white shirt. Piper suggested that she and Paige orb, and that Phoebe and Cole shimmer, to opposite sides of the church and observe the back from there, to avoid crystal-cage traps, although they were pretty sure that they'd disrupted the Seer's crystal supply.
There was a flaw in the plan: a walled garden built out from the middle of the church's back kept them from seeing each other. But it didn't prevent either team from seeing the narrow, bright beam of light that speared into the sky over the garden wall.
Both teams got into the garden without delay. The first thing Paige saw was the Seer, standing in a yellow crystal cage, holding a broadsword that was so large she needed both hands and some muscular exertion to wield it. And then Paige saw what she was doing with it: the point was touched to Charlie's forehead. He was bound to the ground with glowing yellow bands of energy, and the laser-like shaft of light they had seen was coming from the point where the sword touched his head.
"Charlie!" Paige cried, unable to stop herself.
The Seer started very slightly, then looked at the four of them. "Don't startle me. And don't call for a crystal, Paige. I can have this sword through his throat before the cage is completely broken."
"But then your ticket out of here would be dead," Phoebe said.
"I can find another genius. But you girls usually place value on each innocent's life, don't you?"
She lifted the sword and Paige's hand shot forward, but the Seer didn't plunge it back down. She was tracing the line of light coming from Charlie's forehead with the point of the sword, then dragging it. The light magically bent as she traced a half arc in the air, from directly over Charlie's head to the ground on her right side, chanting, "Open this portal and give me passage, back to the universe where I belong. Open this portal and give me passage, back to the universe – "
Piper was trying to freeze or blow up the Seer, and Cole shook his head. "As long as someone good is in that cage, you can't affect what happens inside and he can't affect what happens out here."
Phoebe lay down to get more at eye level with Charlie. "Are you OK?"
"OK. Kind of – interesting." His voice was shaking, but by God he wasn't going to whine.
The Seer had completed her sword movement; the light from Charlie's forehead formed a half-arc to the right, and now the Seer began running the sword point back up along the light again. Phoebe, low to the ground behind her, reached for one of the crystals. It flashed and she jerked back her hand in pain.
"If that happens again I'll incinerate your innocent." The Seer was completing the arc of light, moving the sword's point over Charlie and down toward the left. "Open this portal and give me passage, back to the universe where I belong. Open this portal – "
"If she had crystals already, why did she come here?" Paige asked Piper.
"Last place anyone would look, remember?" Piper replied. "What I don't understand is, where did she get these crystals? And that sword?"
Phoebe stood back up beside her. "Stone's workshop. We should have thought of that."
"Well, we've been," said Paige, "a little busy. Wooa!"
That last was jerked out of her as the sword, completing the arc of bent light when it touched the ground, took on a life of its own. It rose out of the Seer's hands, about twenty feet in the air, dragging the arc of light with it. Then, faster than it takes to tell, it flipped in the air over the top of the cage, its point aimed directly at the ground, and the cage flashed with light so bright everyone had to turn their heads or close their eyes. The Seer stepped into the light, and vanished. Piper gasped and shot her hands up as the shuddering thud began.
The broadsword hung in the cage, pointed at Charlie's chest, about 12 feet above him, unmoving.
"How did you freeze it in the cage?" Phoebe asked.
"I don't know," Piper said.
"She didn't," Cole said, squinting. "There's about two inches of the sword's hilt above the top of the cage. That's what she froze. A tenth of a second later – "
"OK," Paige said, "so now can I call for a crystal and break the cage?"
"No, don't!" Piper said. "It'll act like nudging someone when I freeze them. It'll break the freeze, and I'm not sure there'll be time for the cage to dissolve and for me to freeze the sword again before – "
"Probably not," Charlie said from the ground where he was still fettered. "The rate of acceleration – "
"Shut up, Professor, we're saving your life," Cole said.
Phoebe glanced at Cole. "Anyone who could help you get back, she really wants them dead."
"We have to do something fast," Piper said. "The Seer's magic is strong. My freeze is going to wear off pretty quickly, and by the time I see the sword moving, it'll all be inside the cage."
"Phoebe!" Cole said. "Levitate up there, grab that two inches of hilt and hang on for dear – "
She was shaking her head. "I can't levitate anymore."
"What? Why not?"
"Long dumb story. OK. We can't hold it, we can't freeze it, we can't throw a fireball at it, we can't explode it. What can we do?"
"Paige," Piper said. "That sword has to be putting some kind of infinitesimal break in the top surface of the cage. Do you think you could orb in through that, without pushing the sword itself?"
"Maybe. It'll be slower than usual. But then I could grab the blade, and – "
"No," Cole said, "you can't. See what the blade looks like? The Seer's athame looked the same when she put it into the cage where she trapped me. I tried to grab the blade; it hurt too much to hold. It would literally slip through your fingers."
Phoebe was dropping potion bottles out of the pockets of Leo's jacket. "OK. So we let the blade drop."
"EXCUSE ME?" from Charlie.
She tore the jacket off, and, holding one sleeve, extended it to her sisters. "Strength of Earth."
Paige and Piper grabbed the jacket. "Strength of Earth, tempered with Fire," they said in unison, and the jacket glowed. Phoebe tossed the sleeve she was holding to Paige. "Go."
It took almost no time for the tiny blue-white spheres of light that were Paige to reach the point where the sword intersected with the crystal cage. For a moment they hovered there; then the light began seeping into the cage, almost orb by orb, with agonizing slowness.
Piper stood unblinking, her arms in the air, trying to spot any sign of movement by the sword. Phoebe clutched Cole's arm. "Hurry – hurry – "
And now Paige was in the cage and now she fell beside Charlie, throwing the jacket over his chest and face, and now she heard a thump as the sword struck the jacket behind her head, caromed off and cut her arm before landing on the grass.
"Ow," said Charlie's voice under the jacket.
Paige pulled the jacket off his face. "Are you OK?"
Charlie was laughing raggedly. "Oh. Yeah. Yes."
Piper dropped her arms and fell to her knees, breathing heavily.
Paige rolled over, extended her right hand, and said, "Crystal." The nearest crystal leaped to her hand, and when the cage dissolved, so did Charlie's fetters. For a moment he and Paige lay side by side, utterly spent, looking like improbable lovers.
"Just once," Paige said, "I'd like to rescue an innocent with more than one second to spare. You know? Just a little more time?"
Charlie sat up, rubbing his bruised chest. "Question of perspective. In the life of a subatomic particle, a second is an eternity."
"In our lives too," Phoebe said, still holding on to Cole. "Sometimes, in our lives too."
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"No, it's not that I'm especially eager to," Charlie said. "But there's no question that I'd be dead now if it hadn't been for all of you, and I feel like I owe you – "
"I don't think you quite get the gist," Piper said, smiling at him. "We're the protectors of the innocent, not the experimenters on the brains of the innocent. We'll send Cole back in our own way."
"Speaking of brains," Paige said, "does yours – um – seem – "
" – still up to its previous level?" Charlie said with a grin. "As far as I can determine, yes. In fact, that expansion of the portal may have stimulated it. I had an insight back there about a flaw I've been grappling with related to my work in cognitive emergence theory." He shook his head. "I don't even begin to know how I'm going to account for the inclusion of an interdimensional portal in a minute percentage of the population."
"Maybe it would be better if you didn't," Piper said. "Paige did tell you, didn't she, that exposing the existence of magic and who we are could put us in real physical danger?"
"As opposed to the security of the lives you now lead? – Yes, she explained. And I understand. Although I think the first thing endangered would be my reputation for reasonably sound mental health."
Phoebe bounced into the kitchen, followed by Cole. She was determinedly chipper. "Got the crystals arranged, got the silver-bladed athame, got Cole's blood cleaned off the silver-bladed athame, got the spell. All we need is the Power of Three."
"And you'll have that as soon as I orb Charlie to his hotel room," Paige said, taking Eppes' arm.
"Come right back," Piper said meaningfully.
"Yeah, yeah," and Charlie laughed as the two disappeared in a shower of light.
"So!" Piper said to Cole. "Are you sure the attic is the place to do this? We shouldn't send you back to the room you came from?"
"If you had seen the Seer transport me – well, someone – out of the sunroom, what would you be doing?"
"Scrying," said Phoebe.
"Looking through the book," said Piper.
Cole shrugged. "Attic!", and Piper nodded.
"Well, OK then!" Phoebe was still chipper. "Let's get started."
"Cole, you shimmer Phoebe on up," Leo said. "We earthbound folk will take the stairs."
Cole put his hands on Phoebe's shoulders, and the two disappeared.
"That's nice of you," Piper said, "giving them a moment alone. But I'm not sure Phoebe wants it. I think she's trying to pretend she doesn't care."
"But maybe she needs to acknowledge the depth of her emotions. Your powers are tied to your emotions, you know."
"Really?" Piper gasped. "Why didn't you ever mention that before?"
They both laughed, and Piper grabbed his hand, pulling him toward the stairs. "Come on, earthbound folk."
When they got to the attic, though, Phoebe wasn't acknowledging the depth of her emotions. She wasn't even looking at Cole. He was standing in the pentagram of quartz crystals, and she was completing a ritual. Walking around the outside of the pentagram, Phoebe was touching each crystal. "No cage, but transport. No cage, but transport."
The five white streaks of light, normally only activated by evil, leaped up over Cole's head. "Now," Phoebe said, "if anything goes wrong, you should be able to get out, or we should be able to get in. Can you?"
Cole stepped out of the cage, and Leo stepped in. Then they changed places again, and as they did so, Paige orbed in.
"Well!" she said, stealing a glance at Phoebe's face. "Looks like we're ready!"
Expressionless, Phoebe handed the spell and the athame to Piper, standing on Piper's right. Paige came around to her left. "We're going to do this a little differently than the Seer did it," Piper said. "We're going to say the whole spell first, then cut the portal."
"You're sure you've got the Seer's flesh?" Paige asked.
Cole pulled the small plastic bag out of the unburned pocket of his potion-burned coat. "What do you know. Third time you checked, third time I have it." He grinned at her.
"OK," Piper said. She put the point of the athame into the cage's "wall," and a burning light gleamed at its tip. The three witches read together:
"Athame in crystal light
Cut a portal on this night.
Send the one within its frame
Back to that world whence he came,
Leaving our world still the same,
Setting his and our worlds right."
Piper began moving the athame downward, and the line of light grew.
"Thank you. All," Cole said, looking at Phoebe. "For everything."
"Say hi to me for me," said Paige.
"Wait!" Phoebe cried.