Hee! Thanks for all of your reviews! Giddy now.
Chapter Two
Ben rolled his eyes and slumped down in his seat, drumming his fingers on the wheel. He checked his mirrors again. There were two jerks parked behind him in the middle of the car park, one facing one way and one facing the other, leaning out of their open windows and talking to each other.
He leant on the horn for the second time, but this time he was flipped off in stereo and he gritted his teeth, counting slowly to ten. He was sick of all of the morons in this stupid school. And now, when all he wanted to do was go home and get away from the idiots at this dump, two prime examples were blocking him in. There were cars of either side of him as well, so his only hope of escape would be backing the Freelander out of its space. But some losers had decided that the middle of the car park would be a good place to stop and have a chat. Perfect. He could now say his day was officially made.
He looked down and bumped the car out of reverse and into neutral, pressing down on the accelerator. The engine gave a satisfying throaty roar but didn't take him anywhere and he looked in his mirror to check the effect it had had on the two people in their cars. Convertible cars, German imports by the looks of it. He mused momentarily how it was odd how the people with most money often had the least manners and sighed again, revving the engine for longer and longer bursts.
After what seemed like forever, one of them got out of their car and slammed the door, heading purposefully in Ben's direction. The witch realised that it was Josh and growled in the back of his throat, throwing his hands up in the air. Could this day get much worse? He just wanted to go home. He promised he'd meet Chris so his friend could share his ride home. Chris's car had been out of commission since Phoebe had somehow backed down the drive into it.
Josh tapped on the window with his knuckle and Ben gave him a blank look, then smiled and waved before reverting back to ignoring him. Josh tapped harder and Ben hit the button next to him, the motor whining as it wound the window down.
"Yes?" Ben said tiredly as Josh leaned in the window.
"Do you have some kind of problem?" Josh asked, getting close to Ben's face.
"Well, actually, now you mention it, just in case you haven't noticed, you're blocking me in," Ben said. "Although something tells me you already know that."
"It's not like you have anywhere to go, anyway," Josh said, laughing.
"I don't have time to argue with you. I'm sure you have to go home and floss and stuff. You know, do the essential things in life? So if you could move your car, then I'll be gone. And I won't be bugging you anymore."
"We're talking."
"That's very good, Josh. Yes, we are."
"I don't mean to you, dipshit," Josh said, sneering.
"Really? Aw." Ben gave a mock pout. "Well, that is a shame. I'm hurt. Right here." The witch put a fist over his heart to demonstrate.
Josh backed away disgustedly. "I can't talk to you," he said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "You're just…"
"Amazingly good-looking?"
Josh snorted. "No. You're just—"
"Side-splittingly witty?"
"NO! Do you ever shut up?"
Ben pretended to think. "Well, as they say. I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever bounces off of me sticks to you. Maggot. Now move your car, because I'd really, really like to go home."
"What? That didn't answer my question."
"No? Huh, that's a shame. You didn't move your car."
"Seriously, it's no wonder you have like no friends. You're such a snarky reject."
"Thanks, man. Come back when you have news for me, though, Josh. Preferably with a scrolling 'Breaking News' banner," he added as an afterthought. "That'd be good."
Josh threw his hands up in the air and turned away from Ben's car, stalking off to his own car and jamming it into drive. He said a few more words to his friend before driving off, his tyres squealing a little and his engine roaring, just as his friend did the same in his car in the opposite direction.
"Finally!" Ben cheered, moving into reverse and backing out of the space and driving to the front of the school to meet Chris.
Chris was already there, leaning on the flagpole. He was the only one about, and Ben hoped that Chris hadn't thought that he had abandoned his best friend. It was always odd, being in school after practically everyone had gone home and the building had gone silent. It was unnatural.
Chris was staring off into the distance, obviously deep in thought about something and didn't see or hear Ben pull up. Or if he did, he didn't register it and continued to look off into space, frowning a little.
Ben laughed and hit the horn. Chris jumped at the two short bursts of noise and, seeing Ben, bent to collect his schoolbag at his feet and slung it over his shoulder, making his way towards the four-by-four.
"Take your time, why don't you?" Chris groused lightly, getting in and tossing his bag into the backseat before slamming the door.
Ben put his foot on the accelerator and the engine leapt and propelled them forwards and away from the quasi-ghostly building behind them. "Sorry. I got held up by our favourite person in the entire world."
"Principal Minch?"
Ben's eyebrows flicked up and down as he indicated, turning out of the school and onto the road. "Is he our favourite person in the entire world?" he wondered, looking briefly over at Chris.
"I'm guessing not," the witch-whitelighter replied. "Who was it?"
"Dear old Josh," Ben grumbled, reaching down and turning on the radio. It came on lightly in the background.
"Ah, yes. Yes, he is definitely our most favourite person in the whole wide world," Chris muttered, sounding odd enough for Ben to call him on it as they stopped at a set of red traffic lights.
"What's up?"
"Huh?"
"You know you pretty much suck at lying, right?"
Chris sighed and rolled his eyes. "Just thinking about Bridget and Nixa. I mean, have they lost their minds? I don't get it. Why would they want to go to a stupid party thrown by Josh Muse? It doesn't make sense to me."
"They go all weak-kneed where he's concerned, and out come the rose coloured glasses. Or, you know, whatever colour will match Nixa's outfit that day. Anyway, they're too busy looking at him to notice that he's a jerk," Ben consoled, jamming his foot on the accelerator as soon as the light turned green and, rapidly changing up gears, sped away from the junction.
"I still don't get it," Chris said, looking at the gear stick. "How can a guy that can't work a blender manage to work out how to drive a stick?"
"Blenders are complicated," Ben said simply, shrugging and tapping his fingers on the wheel in time with the song.
"Why? There's, like, three buttons."
"Therein lies the complication," Ben said, grinning. "Nice completely unrelated tangent, though. You nearly had me going there."
Chris fell silent again, but was unable to ignore his friend looking at his expectantly. "Fine. Basically, I'm just feeling a little weirded out by how high they're willing to jump to please him when he's around, but then when he goes away…"
"You're reading too much into it, buddy. They've got a crush on him; they go all misty-eyed when he comes near. End of story."
"Bridget's buying a bikini to please him," Chris pressed, leaning his elbow on the door and propping his chin up with his hand.
"From the impression I got, she was being manhandled and forced to buy a bikini to please him," Ben said, smiling. He paused and frowned a little, indicating and turning off. "Come to mention it, Bridget being forced into doing something she doesn't want to do is way out of character for her. But then, on the other hand, you know what Nixa's like."
Chris smiled and gave a short, fond laugh. "Yeah…" He paused, listening to the radio for a while. "Okay, let's never do this again."
"What?" Ben asked, his eyes flicking from the road to Chris and back again several times, blinking in between tarmac and Chris's smirk.
"Have you as the rational one. It's terrifying."
Ben laughed and then gasped, mock hurt. "Ha, ha. And ha. I knew I should have made you walk home. I'm plenty rational. Well, when I want to be at least."
The jeep jolted as it mounted the kerb outside the Manor. Ben put the handbrake on, parking but leaving the engine idling.
"Thank you, Jeeves," Chris said, unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning over into the back of the car to retrieve his bag.
"You're really mean to me, you know," Ben commented. "Remind me why I put up with you again?"
Chris got out and slammed the door, and Ben pushed the switch for the passenger-side window.
"I think it's more that no one else will put up with you," Chris told his friend, smirking again. "Do you wanna come in?"
Ben looked at the clock on the dash and shrugged. "Sure. Why not?" He bumped the car into neutral and turned the engine off, removing the keys and then realising that Chris was leaning in the open window. He cursed lightly and put the keys back in, turning them enough to wind up the window before removing them all over again, getting out and locking the doors behind him with the remote. Chris was already halfway up the Manor's drive and Ben jogged to catch up with him.
"Hey?" Chris called to the empty entryway, tossing his bag through the doorway to his right onto the living room couch. "Anyone home?" He dumped his keys on the table and walked into the seemingly deserted house.
Ben looked around and smiled. He liked the Manor. A lot. Sure, it was a dangerous place to be a lot of the time, but that outweighed the feeling of the place. It was clear beyond any doubt that there was power here. The house almost breathed it. Chris may complain constantly that there wasn't enough room, let alone hot water, but Ben could definitely adjust to living here. It had a calming effect, the house. He liked the way everything seemed to be ordered chaos as well. The Manor seemed lived-in. He was pretty sure that it was a lot more lived-in than Piper would like, but a large family lived here. Tidiness would be impossible. In short, the house was warm and welcoming.
He was standing in the parlour with his hands in his pockets, staring vaguely at the chandelier above him when Chris came back from the kitchen shrugging his shoulders.
"Are they in the attic?" Ben asked.
"Might be. Um… Wyatt has some kind of practice after school today so he'll be home later. Xander's getting the bus home, and I think Patience was orbing Prue and Phoebe off to New York before she came home. Something to do with the divorce papers? I don't know. And… Uncle Alex will be at work and so will Paige. Mom might've gone out to do some grocery shopping or something."
"I'm surprised any of the Elders can keep track of your family, let alone watch over them."
Chris snorted. "Well, it's not like they ever do much else," he said bitterly. "They have plenty of time on their hands, trust me." The statement was so much like his mother that Ben smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Chris put a foot on the staircase. "They're probably in the attic. I've gotta ask Aunt Phoebe when the garage said my car was going to be fixed, anyway. If she's here, that is."
"I still can't believe she did that," Ben said, smiling. "How hard is it to see a car in your mirror?"
"Tell me about it," Chris said dryly as Ben followed him up the stairs. "Luckily, she said she'd pay for it all. Which is good, because I barely have enough money to keep the thing on the road, let alone to have half the bodywork hammered out straight."
Chris looked briefly to the ceiling and swung around the corner to the attic stairs, bounding up them two at a time. Ben followed at a slower pace, running his hand over the banister as he did so.
"Oh, hey, sweetie," Piper greeted, glancing up from the Book of Shadows. "Hey, Ben."
Ben smiled his hello and watched Phoebe and Paige bicker about how best to scry. It still amused him to find that at least two of the Halliwell sisters had never actually grown up, and yet they were supposed to save the world every other week.
"I'm just saying that it might work better if you used a different crystal. Amethyst or rose quartz or, hell, even garnet. But not that crystal," Paige said, gesturing to it.
"What's wrong with this crystal, Paige?" Phoebe asked, slamming it down on the map in annoyance. "It's worked well enough for us in the past."
"Yes, but I'm telling you that you need the extra power boost. Especially seeing as how we don't know what we're looking for."
"Yes, well I'm telling you that that would make the crystal drop down on every evil being running loose in this city. And I for one do not have time to go and vanquish them all," Phoebe sniped back, obstinately picking up the crystal again and letting it circle. "Besides, she's my innocent."
"She's dead Phoebe," Paige returned snappishly, pacing across the attic.
"So? She still feels like my innocent. I had that premonition of her for a reason, you know. It wasn't just so I could work out a date and time to turn up at her funeral."
"What's going on?" Chris asked.
"Demon. Again," Piper informed him, a little wearily. "I'm sorry, Chris, but it looks like I won't have time to cook tonight. Order something quick? Once in a week won't hurt you."
Paige stopped guiltily in her tracks, fumbling accidentally with a potion vial as her widened eyes fixed on Chris pleading with him not to say anything about the disaster that had been dinner last night and the resulting pizza.
She needn't have worried thought, because Chris had covered his aunt's tracks without blinking. "Yeah, sure. It will be good to have some decent food for once."
Piper looked up at him and pursed his lips. "Hm. Make sure you put some veggies on it at least. Vegetable pizza, or bean sprouts, or something. Got it?"
Chris saluted dutifully. "Yes ma'am. So what's going on up here, anyway?"
"Phoebe got a premonition off one of her letters," Piper exposited. "A private school girl having… um… being…"
"Getting laid," Paige said shortly.
"Sure, if you want to make her sound like a tramp," Piper said. "Anyway, yeah. But the guy she was with killed her somehow. So Phoebe called us to scry for her, but she saw the master copy of the evening edition before it went into print, and the girl was on the front page. She was found dead in a hotel room."
"Why would a premonition get sent so late?" Ben asked, frowning. "I mean, after the girl was dead? Really useful."
"This is just the latest in a string of similar murders, though," Phoebe explained. "I guess I saw this one because I had to put a stop to whichever demon is doing it before he strikes again."
"But, she's looking for it with her old faithful," Paige jumped in with, rolling her eyes and pointing at the crystal dangling from Phoebe's hand. "So she's never actually gonna find him," she ended, more to Phoebe than Chris and Ben. Her voice was singsong and warning.
"You, get scrying," Piper ordered, pointing at Phoebe. "You, zip it," she commanded, pointing at Paige. "I'm going to call Darryl and see what he can get us on the murders. Got it?"
Phoebe smirked and stuck her tongue out at Paige as Piper left. "Told you so."
"So immature," Paige sighed tiredly, shaking her head as she pulled more potion bottles from the shelves of the cabinet.
"You're just jealous," Phoebe said, triumph in her voice, "because I was right and you suck."
"Nuh-uh. I could never be jealous of someone who was scrying with their old nose ring."
"Does anyone else find it disturbing that I'm standing in a room with two of the most powerful witches in the world and I'm the most mature one here?" Ben asked. Phoebe and Paige both looked up at Ben, united by their raised eyebrows. The witch held out his hands and shrugged. "What? It's true! I speak as I find. You're both bickering like you're seven years old."
"Sure, like I was seven years old," Paige said slyly. "Phoebe would be more like, oh, I don't know, thirteen at that point, wouldn't you, big sister?"
"Don't try to make out that there's six years between us, Paige," Phoebe said, narrowing her eyes.
"Ah, feeling your age, huh?"
"Definitely worrying, if not disturbing," Chris commented, crossing the room to the potions table, where Paige was setting out ingredients. "So what are we making?"
"Don't you have homework or something?" Paige said, looking over her shoulder. Chris fixed her with a look and she sighed dramatically. "Fine. Just don't tell your mother. We're making your standard demon-B-gone."
Ben smiled as he walked across the room too, leaning on the table. "As long as it doesn't turn into blue soup," he said with a smirk. Paige clipped him upside the head. "Ow!"
"That didn't hurt," Paige said dismissively, her eyes a little narrowed but a wry expression twisting her lips. She looked over to Phoebe. "I think we're going to have to talk long and hard to Chris about who he chooses as friends," she said, her smile the only giveaway that she wasn't being serious. "He can't hang around with this kind of trash all the time, can he, Pheebs?"
"Hm?"
Paige rolled her eyes heavily and began pulling apart a herb. "Going a little deaf in your old age, dear?" she muttered, flicking a small seedpod at her sister.
"Paige!"
The half sister only pointed silently at Ben behind the teenaged witch's back.
"It was her," Ben said immediately, without looking around or stopping his search through the ingredients, earning him another exasperated clip around the head, which he ducked underneath.
"And the burden of most mature falls on me," Chris said, grumbling a little. "Now that's depressing."
Monsters of the Deep End
"No."
"Come on."
"NO!"
"Do you want me to bust the door down? Because I will."
Bridget sat down on the tiny bench inside the cubicle and snorted. "No, you won't. You would never desecrate the mall like that."
There was a pause, on which Bridget shifted around on the small bench and knocked a coat hanger to the floor accidentally. The plastic clattered against the carpet and she winced until the sound died down, risking a look up at herself in the mirror opposite her. Which showed her reflected in the mirror behind her. Bridget shook her head and ignored the seemingly infinite corridor within the mirrors, preferring not to think about what led around the part where the images seemed to bend and shivered a little. Did they have to have the air-conditioning up so high?
"Okay, so you're right. I won't. But I can call for Chris and have him orb in there and get you. Hell, even having Ben astralling himself in there would be better than nothing."
"You wouldn't dare," Bridget said, but she knew Nixa would, indeed, dare.
"Watch me," Nixa replied stonily, and Bridget could see the blonde out there in her mind, tapping her foot with her arms crossed across her chest, huffing impatiently and looking at her watch.
"Only if you promise not to laugh," Bridget said, sneering at herself for sounding so pathetic. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and secured it there, feeling more naked then ever and shivered again, Goosebumps rising on her arms. She took a deep breath in, checked herself out once more and then slid back the lock.
Leaving her hand on the door to hold it closed for another moment she sucked in her non-existent gut and screwed her eyes tightly closed, stepping out into the corridor in between the two row of changing rooms. Nixa gave an appreciative whistle, and Bridget risked opening an eye.
She had, of course, looked herself up and down, left to right, diagonally and any other why which you could think of, but she wanted to look again now that it was something that was approved of.
The bikini was lilac — they hadn't been able to find anything in pink — and had a buckle to fasten it at Bridget's hip, and another one at her back. The halter straps tied up behind her neck. Slowly, she opened her other eye, looking at Nixa.
"Are you just humouring me?" she asked uncertainly, her face troubled and confused. "Because if you are, well, that's really mean…"
"No!" Nixa reassured immediately, shaking her head hard enough for stands of hair to become dislodged from behind her ears. "No, no and no. Seriously, Bridget. That looks amazing on you. You have to buy it. You need it. There is no way you can live without it."
Bridget rolled her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror at the corridor's dead-end, holding her hair up and revolving around slowly, looking over her shoulder when her back was turned to the mirror. Suddenly, she yelped and dropped her hair, scrabbling at the back of it to try and look at the price tag. She must be seeing things. Seeing things in the mirror backwards must have tricked her.
"What?" Nixa asked worriedly. "What is it?"
"The price tag!" Bridget yelled, causing another shopper to stare.
"Did it stab you in the back? I actually have a scar from this really nasty cardboard cut that I got on my—"
"No! How can they push a bikini up into THREE FIGURES?" Bridget wailed, stabbing her finger at her back and the offending piece of cardboard.
"I think it's Armani," Nixa said absently, momentarily distracted by a pair of boots that one of the shop assistants was wearing. "And you're not seeing the good! The red! Look, money off! It's only like seventy-eight bucks now. Which is… thirty-five percent off! That's a forty-two dollar saving!"
Bridget blinked. "That was some seriously fast math. Shopping turns your brain into a supercomputer."
"If they made all the questions on math tests shopping related, I'd ace them all," Nixa said, with a what-can-you-do shrug, reaching down and picking her purse up from the floor.
"You mean even more than you manage to ace them already?" Bridget asked, turning and walking back into the cubicle to change. Ah, sweet clothes. Clothes that actually covered her and wouldn't get her arrested for indecent exposure. She remembered those… "Hey, wait a minute, how can I have saved forty-two dollars if I've spent seventy-eight? Doesn't that offsets the saving by…"
"Thirty-six dollars, and, no, it doesn't. You've saved thirty-five percent; now change out of it so we can pay."
"But… but how can I save if I've spent?" She got a glare from Nixa and huffed. "You know, I already knew math was sick and twisted. I didn't know that there was another branch of it used especially for shopping that was even worse."
Monsters of the Deep End
"I thought the party wasn't until Friday?" a blonde cheerleader purred, tilting her head and twirling a strand of hair around her fingers, giving a fake disapproving look and a small giggle. "What's with the early celebrations?"
"I just thought you'd like to see the place before you came," her companion replied, sprawled on a leather recliner.
"I've been seeing it since we were in kindergarten," the blonde said, smiling almost predatorily and crossing the room, expertly managing her heels.
"What about my parents' room? They have a really big bed…"
"Oh yeah? How big?"
"Do you want to take a look? It's really comfortable."
"Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt, right?" she vamped, tracing her fingers lightly across his chest and licking her lips. "I could get some good… design ideas."
"Yeah, design ideas," he said getting up off the chair and grabbing her arms, kissing her deeply. They broke apart and he smirked. "I hear blue is totally in this year." He led the way through the darkened house, manoeuvring through the furniture with ease, the blonde with slightly less ease. She tripped over twice, once over the coffee table and once over a footstool, not as used to the placement of the furniture as he was. Consequently, he was gone by the time she got into the foyer where the stairs were.
"Josh?" she called. The sun had set now; it was a very dark and eerie twilight now. The last of the sun's orange rays were seeping through the windows, forcing the furniture to cast lengthy shadows that leered at her from across the room. "Josh?" This was stupid. Why was she scared? Josh had probably just gone ahead upstairs. Plus, she'd been here before. There were light switches on the wall by the door. She crossed the room in deliberate strides, not remember to skirt around an end table with a vase on it. She managed to steady it before it fell.
Suddenly someone grabbed her, hard, from behind. She squealed and turned before forcing herself to calm down. "Josh!" she berated, smacking his arm. A rough arm. A scaly arm. She screamed loudly, trying to fight the creature off. Her acrylic nails pinged off around the room as she clawed at its torso, arms, face, neck, anything she could reach, but it had no effect. She screamed again, her flailing knocking into the table behind her and toppling both it and the vase, shattering the china on the floor. Water sloshed everywhere and the flowers scattered across the rug.
"Josh! Help me, Josh!" she screeched as the creature placed a hand on her head and twisted violently.
Until this point, Josh had been peering through the balustrade at the scene below him, trying to discern what was going on through the darkness. He swallowed hard at the scream, licking his lips and drumming his fingers on the stair he was sitting on nervously. When the demon put his hand on her head, he closed his eyes, but nothing could block out the audible snap and the sound of a body falling. He rested his forehead on his knees as the foyer was lit up bright white. The demon, backed into the shadows around the wall and simply faded away.