"I have heard about switching powers," Benjamin said, giving Erzsebet an intrigued look. "But never about sharing them."
"I know it can be done," Erzsebet said as she closed her hand, making the energy ball vanish. "I just don't know how," she admitted. "Figuring out this kind of stuff, that's your thing."
"I thought knowing deadly boring facts about physics was my thing," he said good-naturedly.
"Yes, that, too," she said without missing a beat.
"So," Cole said, looking at his father, "you think it can be done?"
As Benjamin turned to Cole, he couldn't help but smile at the eager look in his son's eyes. He didn't miss Cole's reaction to the idea of receiving his mother's powers, as opposed to any generic demonic power.
"If your mother says it can be done, it can be done." he said simply. "And if it can be done, we'll find a way."
"Do you really think this is the right thing to do?" Leo asked cautiously. Erzsebet gave him a dirty look, but he refused to acknowledge it and stood his ground.
"In more ways than one," Benjamin replied. "These aren't just the powers Cole needs; they are the powers he's entitled to."
"Mind you," he added, looking at Erzsebet, "I'm still not sure how we're going to do this."
"Again," she said imperturbably, "not my problem. I'm chipping in with the powers."
Piper frowned in concern as she saw Leo shuffle his feet uncomfortably. She knew that normally Cole would take the Whitelighter's opinion into account, but between watching his parents' interplay and dealing with the perspective of receiving his mother's powers, he wasn't paying as much attention to the reactions of the rest of the family as he normally would.
"Leo, what's wrong?" she asked.
"Not wanting to be a wet blanket," the Whitelighter said when all eyes turned to him, "but what will happen when they both start using the powers they'll be sharing, one for good and the other for evil?"
When Erzsebet promptly turned to him for an answer, Benjamin felt a lump in his throat. Would she switch sides again if he told her that it was the only way to help Cole? But even as he wondered what she'd do Benjamin knew that this was a pointless question: he had never lied to her before, and he wasn't about to start now.
"If we do it the right way," he assured the others, "Cole is going to be just fine."
"And if we don't…?" Phoebe asked warily.
"If we didn't (don't)," Benjamin told her, "it would only make things worse." He hesitated a little before elaborating: "Eventually, the conflict would tear one of them apart… and I believe it would be much likely to be Cole."
"You seem quite confident that we can do it the right way," Leo noted.
"I don't want to start anything before we study this matter carefully," Benjamin said, "but the more I think about it, the more I believe that we can do it right, in a way that's safe for all the parties involved."
Cole straightened on his seat when he heard the last statement, and he wasn't surprised when his mother reacted the same way, shooting his father an intent look: the day his mother failed to read between the lines would be a rather cold day in hell.
When she didn't say anything, though, Cole asked:
"Why would it present a risk to mother?"
"It won't," Benjamin said. "I'm just anticipating her objections."
"To what?" Erzsebet asked, raising her eyebrows.
"You'll have to release your powers before Cole takes them," Benjamin told her gently.
He sighed when she inhaled sharply, stiffening on her seat.
"You'll get them back afterwards, of course," he assured her. "It shouldn't take more than…"
"I will not render myself powerless," Erzsebet said coldly. "And I'll definitely not do it when every witch within the Elders' reach could be orbed here faster than you can say deathtrap."
"You won't be vanquished in my own house," Cole protested. But even as he said it he felt something akin to deja vu, a cold, sickening feeling at the bottom of his stomach. He gave his mother an uncertain look and his eyes widened as he saw her exchange a glance with his father.
"They would never…" -- he turned to Leo for reassurance -- "They wouldn't, right?"
"I'll talk to them," the Whitelighter said, "and explain what we want to do and why we want to do it. They may not agree," he warned him, "but if they do, they'll know that we'll need your mother's help for this, and they'll keep their side of the bargain."
"Leo, this isn't just about not sending someone here with a vanquishing potion," Cole told him gravely. "No one else can know about this: what my mother is doing here would be considered high treason. Even without a Source, she'd be…"
"Are you even listening?" Erzsebet said sharply, cutting him off. "I don't care what the Elders say; I don't care what he" -- she pointed at Leo -- "says. I don't believe them, period."
"Then we won't tell them," Phoebe said decidedly. "No one leaves the room until it's done; this way you'll know that no one's telling."
"That wouldn't be wise," Benjamin said. "I don't believe you'd be able to perform such a powerful ritual without the Elders sensing it, and if they feel something but don't know what we're doing they'll be very likely to send someone here to find out what's happening."
"But this is my house!" Cole exclaimed, shocked. "They can't just…"
"Yes, it is," his father said patiently, holding up his hand to silence him. "But if you fire a gun in the living room the neighbors might call the police to investigate. If we try to hide this from the Elders," he proceeded, "they'll sense something big, but they won't know if you're vanquishing an entire clan of upper level demons or mistakenly opening a portal to the inner circle of Hell."
"If the Elders agree to this," Leo assured him, "it will mean a truce. We won't have to worry about them sending some well-intentioned but biased witch here at a pivotal moment." -- he gave Erzsebet a pointed look -- "They'll be bound to their word."
Dead or not, it took all the Whitelighter had not to cringe under Erzsebet's piercing look, but he managed not to look away until she finally turned to Benjamin again.
"Are you sure there isn't another way?" she asked, watching him intently.
"There isn't a safer way."
"Then start working on a relinquishing spell," she said curtly. "Before I come back to my senses and call this whole thing off," she snapped when no one moved.
"I'll go get the Elders' approval," Leo said, standing up, "and see if they have some suggestions. In the meantime, why don't you check that spell that you used to get your powers back from Cryto?" he reminded Piper.
"On your way back," Benjamin said just before the Whitelighter orbed out, "would you mind bringing the Book of Shadows with you?"
"That's okay, I'll get it," Paige said, standing up, too.
"How did you…" -- Benjamin gave her a surprised look before he understood what she meant -- "Oh! No, I meant my Book of Shadows. Just ask the Elders for it," he explained to Leo.
"Your Book of Shadows?" Piper echoed.
"Cole's Book of Shadows, actually," Benjamin corrected himself with a smile.
"Cole has a Book of Shadows?" -- Paige turned to Cole, but he just shrugged.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Erzsebet exclaimed, exasperated. "You," she commanded, pointing at Leo. "Turners' Book of Shadows. You," -- she pointed at Paige -- "Halliwells' Book of Shadows. The rest of you just sit around and gape to your hearts' content."
She huffed and rolled her eyes while Leo and Paige orbed out; Benjamin eyed her mildly, but before he said anything to her Cole requested his attention:
"I have a Book of Shadows?"
"Sure," Benjamin said with a smile.
"And why is it with the Elders?"
"It was taken from our house on the night I died," Benjamin explained, "and it's been waiting for you since then."
"It's been more than a month since Cole's powers were unbound," Phoebe pointed out. "Why didn't the Elders let him have the Book of Shadows before?"
"They did," Benjamin said. "I was the one who wanted to take it slow."
He looked at Cole, who was just sitting there in silence, scratching his chin.
"I have a Book of Shadows," he muttered, still looking perplexed.
"To think of all the time that you lost trying to steal ours, huh?" Piper said jokingly, causing him to crack a smile.
"So," Benjamin said, turning to Phoebe, "this, uh… Cryto, right?"
"Demon of vanity," Phoebe said, nodding.
"That Cryto?" Erzsebet said, arching her eyebrows. "He was skinned alive back in the sixteenth century."
Phoebe opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly Erzsebet's attention was drawn to Paige, who had just orbed in carrying the Book of Shadows.
"Here it…" -- Paige involuntarily took a step back when Erzsebet gazed at the book in her arms with the cold, intense eyes of a predator.
"Mother," Cole warned her.
"Force of habit," she said sweetly.
"Cryto was brought back to life a few years ago," Piper said, motioning for Paige to sit by her side, on the furthest seat from Erzsebet, "by a group of witches who planned to steal our powers and give them to him in exchange to their youth."
"Which worked all very well for maybe a couple of hours, and then Cryto had to say good-bye to yet another skin," Phoebe added dryly, giving the demoness a pointed look.
"Aw, that's gotta hurt," Erzsebet said flatly. "If I cared, I'm sure I'd be really impressed."
"So, the spell that you used to get your powers back?" Cole said, anxious to divert the conversation to safer waters.
"Here," Piper said, dexterously flipping through the pages of the Book of Shadows until she found the spell that they had added after the vanquishing of Cryto.
"Powers of the witches rise," Paige read out loud. "Well, I'd say it'll need a few adjustments."
"Do you mind if I take a look?" Benjamin asked, interested.
He stood up from his place on the couch and went to read over Piper's shoulder.
"I believe it's a good starting point," he muttered, thoughtfully, looking at the spell, "but we'll need something else to strengthen the spell. You don't easily separate an upper level demon from their powers, even if they are willing to collaborate."
"There was a potion, too," Piper remembered. "They put something in the iced tea they gave us, but we never found out what it was."
"I'm sure we can come up with something," Benjamin said confidently. "Also," he warned them, "we must make sure that the process is slow enough for you to be able to stop before it goes too far. A demon's very existence is only possible due to magic," he explained. "If you deprive Erzsebet of all her powers you will vanquish her."
"Well, there's something I've been working on," Phoebe said, "It's a side spell to add to Power of Three spells and give them an extra boost," she explained, "and ironically the slowness is actually a side effect that I've been trying to resolve, but I think it may be just what we need now."
"The thing with all the triplets?" Cole asked.
"I knew you were paying attention!" she cooed.
"I tried ignoring you at first," he told her, "but it didn't work."
He grinned when Phoebe made a face on him, but before she could retort they heard the chiming sound of Leo's orb, and Cole promptly turned around on the couch, his eyes widening slightly as he saw the ancient looking book the Whitelighter was holding.
"I believe this is yours," Leo said with a smile as he handed the book to him.
Cole hesitated slightly before he received the book from the Whitelighter's hands, looking at it with near reverence as he gingerly placed it on his knees. When the pages suddenly started to flip by themselves, though, he hastily raised his hands, almost dropping the book.
"I hate when they do that," he muttered when the pages settled, glaring at the book and warily lowering his hands.
"This isn't English," Phoebe noted, stretching her neck to read the entry.
"It's Latin," Cole said, giving the book an intrigued look.
"What does it say?" Benjamin asked.
"Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia," Cole read. "Did you write this?" he asked his father.
"No," Benjamin said. "But it does sound familiar."
"It sounds like Stoic School to me," Erzsebet piped in.
"Now that you've mentioned," Benjamin said, looking at her, "I think it's Seneca."
"Yeah," Cole said, looking at the entry again, "me too. But the point is, why is our Book of Shadows quoting Seneca?"
"Probably because he was wise man," Benjamin said with a smile.
Before Cole could reply, Phoebe cleared her throat to get their attention.
"I hate to interrupt when the three of you seem to be on a roll with the quoting and everything, but, uh…" -- she motioned her hand, encompassing herself, her sisters and Leo -- "some of us don't speak Latin."
"Sorry, baby," Cole said with an apologizing smile, placing his hand on hers. "It says," he told her, pointing at the entry that sat alone on the open page, "that while the good that come from prosperity is something to be wished, the good that comes from adversity is..." -- he hesitated and looked at his mother -- "to be wondered at?"
"I was going with 'admired'," she said, shrugging, "but, yes, 'wondered at' sounds more like it."
"And I'm not arguing with this," he said, turning to his father again, "but this isn't a spell, or a potion, or anything that I would expect to find in a Book of Shadows."
"Who is this Seneca, anyway?" Paige asked.
"A Roman philosopher," Benjamin told her, "who lived in the first century."
"Well," Piper reasoned, "strangers things have been added to our Book of Shadows."
She flipped the pages of the book Paige was holding until she found the entry she was looking for.
"Here," she said, placing her finger beneath the entry and motioning for Cole to come closer.
"Sometimes a baby just has to cry," Cole read. He raised his eyes from the book to give Piper a perplexed look.
"Aw!" Phoebe cooed. "Matthew…"
Cole turned to her, puzzled, and she explained:
"He was one of our very first innocents. Six months old and already cursed," she sighed, shaking her head.
"Anyway," Piper said with a smile, getting the conversation back on track, "my point is, you can find all kind of stuff in the Book of Shadows."
"That said," Phoebe said as Cole sat by her side again, "how did the Elders react, Leo?"
"They're not exactly thrilled," the Whitelighter said cautiously, fully aware that this was the understatement of the century, "but they'll trust Benjamin's judgment on this matter."
"And that's all?" Phoebe asked, disbelievingly.
She was clearly upset and Leo gave her a surprised look.
"I'm glad that they're giving us the okay to do this," she explained, "but when did the Elders become all non-interventionist? It just sounds like they're washing their hands," she said, frowning.
"They're not," Leo assured her. "They listened to everything I told them about Cole's heritage, and they agreed that it all makes sense, but…" -- he gave an apologetic shrug -- "Cole is indeed one of a kind. The Elders are pretty much making it up as they go, just like we are."
"Speak for yourself," Erzsebet said coldly. "What?" she asked when Benjamin arched his eyebrows at her. "I know what I'm doing; it's not my fault if they don't."
"You don't know how we're doing this," he reminded her.
"I know what we're doing, and I know why we're doing it," she retorted. And then, surprisingly, she relaxed her antagonizing stance and actually gave him the tiniest smile. "That makes three things out of two, but you just figure out the hows of it and we'll call it even."
Benjamin hesitated for a moment, just staring back at her, and then he cracked a smile.
"You have got yourself a deal, ma'am," he said affably, his smile widening as her own smile vanished just as quick as it had come, but not before it flickered briefly in her eyes.
- x x x x x -
One hour later, Cole felt the beginnings of a headache stirring; he grimaced and rubbed his eyes while his father, Piper and Phoebe discussed spells and potions and rituals with great enthusiasm. The two Books of Shadows lay open on the dinner table, amid several sheets of paper covered with drafts and formulas and magic symbols and, God help him, second grade equations.
He glanced at Paige and sighed: she hadn't said much so far and was mostly listening to the more experienced witches, but she seemed to be following the discussion pretty well, which was more than he could say about himself. In order to strengthen the spell, they were going to use Echinacea roots, but that would unbalance the spell towards earth, and now Phoebe was rewriting the spell while Benjamin and Piper discussed whether they should grind the roots or just burn then while the spell was cast, and what the frigging hell difference would it make, anyway? Cole shuffled his feet uncomfortably: he felt like a bright twelfth grader attending a class intended to college seniors.
He sighed and looked around the room: Leo was back in France, giving Aimee's parents an abridged version of his latest visit, and shouldn't be back for a while. Cole looked at his mother, sitting on a chair next to him, keeping her distance from the Books of Shadows and watching the discussion with a neutral expression.
"Would you like some water?" he asked her in a low voice, leaning back on his chair and towards her.
"What?" -- she gave him a surprised look -- "No."
"Coffee? Anything that'll give me an excuse to leave this room for a while?"
Erzsebet arched her eyebrows, giving him a curious look, and he shrugged.
"Water will be fine," she said, and Cole concealed a sigh of relief as he stood up and headed to the kitchen.
- x x x x x -
"Not so much into the craft?" Erzsebet remarked offhandedly, receiving the glass Cole was handing to her.
"I'm still finding my way around," he admitted, leaning back on the counter. "What they're doing there…" -- he motioned with his hand towards the dining room -- "It's so out of my league that I don't even know what sport they're playing."
"All the talk about a witch's powers being tied to their emotions." -- he sighed, shaking his head -- "You don't know what it is to have your powers coming from your gut unless you've been a demon for a hundred years…" -- his mother raised an eyebrow -- "or a lot more."
"This magic," he proceeded, "witch's magic, it's just so different from what we know. It's not so much something that you train as it is something that you learn by study."
"You've learned Aristotelian logic," Erzsebet pointed out, placing the empty glass on the island between them. "You've learned Latin and Greek and Mandarin, and asymmetric warfare, and tax law. It certainly can't be worse than tax law."
"You know," Cole said, "tax law isn't really all that difficult once you've learned the basis of…" -- he trailed off as he noticed the look on his mother's face -- "Yeah, shutting my mouth now."
They were silent for a while until Erzsebet said:
"There's a part of you that's actually craving for this, for the wicca thing, with the spells and the magic formulas and whatnot. You just can't see it now because you're so damn screwed up."
As she started to walk towards the door, Cole asked her:
"Do you think they can pull it off? This ritual they're working at?"
"Your father can," she said without looking back. "He always can."