Author's Note: This chapter is dedicated to Eillibsniknej, Sakurako Nagasaki, Dominus Trinus, and WyaRose for being awesome and reviewing. And, please, please review. I can't know how I'm doing as a writer if you don't tell me what you think of the story. Plus, it just absolutely makes my day, seeing those reviews in my inbox. A happy writer is a prolific writer, right?
I forgot to mention in the last chapter, this fic is set between "Charmed Again" and "Hell Hath No Fury". So, pretty early in season four, if that helps explain some of Piper's behavior.
When she walked through the door of South Bay Social Services, Paige let out a quiet sigh of relief when she didn't see her boss lying in wait for her. Her relief was short-lived, however, when Cowan called out to her from his office, his voice carrying clearly across the clinic.
"That man doesn't miss anything, does he?" Ben Georges, one of the social workers, muttered when she passed him on the way to Cowan's office. "I swear, I had an easier time sneaking out of the house as a kid than getting anything past him."
"Me, too," Paige replied, softly.
Then, she squared her shoulders and knocked on Cowan's open door, entering the office when he grunted in a wordless response. She took the seat he'd indicated on the opposite side of his desk, waiting for the older man to finish what he was doing and look at her. She resisted the urge to squirm, uncomfortably, while she waited, feeling like she was seventeen, again, and that Cowan was her social worker again, rather than her boss.
The office was silent for several long minutes while Cowan flipped through the file on his desk. When he finally looked up, there was an inscrutable expression on his face.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, mildly, "but your lunch is an hour long, isn't it?"
"Yes," Paige said, quietly.
"And it's been an hour and a half since you clocked out," Cowan continued, in that same, overly-calm tone. Paige almost wished that he would start yelling. Yelling was easier to bear than the quiet disappointment she could see in his eyes. "Would you care to explain why?"
"I – I had car trouble," Paige muttered, hoping that Cowan couldn't hear the tension in her voice.
She hated lying to her boss, but it wasn't like she could just come out and tell him that she'd been unavoidably delayed fighting a demon. She couldn't tell anyone, that was the problem. Ever since she'd found out that she was a witch, she'd been lying to everyone she cared about.
Her relationship with Shane had gone straight down the toilet. She'd begged off dinners with her aunt and uncle twice in as many weeks because she couldn't figure out what to tell them. Her previously-perfect record at work was tarnished because she kept getting called away on magical emergencies. And from the look on Cowan's face, today just might be the last straw.
"Car trouble," Cowan repeated, slowly, and Paige's heart sank at the stony look on his face. He didn't look like he believed her.
"I ran out of gas," Paige said, hating how the lies came easier and easier every time she told them. "I had to walk to the nearest station for a fill-up."
"You didn't see your gas gauge?" Cowan asked, and Paige bit back wince. Not only had she not seen her imaginary gas gauge, she also hadn't seen the trap she'd just walked right into.
"It's broken," Paige managed to force out, hoping that the words sounded natural. It wasn't completely a lie; her car was kind of a wreck, and the gas gauge got stuck on occasion. She tended to rely on the odometer when she drove, refilling her tank every two hundred miles to be on the safe side.
"What happened to your hand?" Cowan asked, and Paige blinked in surprise at the sudden, unexpected change of topic.
"I burnt it on the engine," Paige told him, as she moved her hand off the desk to cradle it in her lap. "Because of the gas gauge, I didn't know what was wrong with the car, and I thought it might have been something with the engine, so I popped the hood to take a look. I couldn't find anything, but I burnt my hand." The lies were just flowing like water, weren't they?
"Looks like you already took care of it," Cowan remarked, and Paige nodded.
"I've got a first aid kit in my car," she mumbled.
Cowan fixed her with a long, unblinking stare, and Paige wondered if she was about to be fired. Not that it was completely undeserved; she'd been splitting her focus the last couple of weeks, and her career had gotten the short end of the stick.
'Looks like I'm failing on all fronts,' she thought, morosely, Phoebe's unconscious face flashing briefly through her mind. 'My boss is mad at me, Piper hates me-'
Cowan pulled her out of her thoughts when he cleared his throat, and Paige snapped her attention back to the older man. He was still watching her with that blank expression on his face.
"These need to be run over to the police station," he said, suddenly, closing the folder that was sitting in front of him and adding it to a small stack of similar files. He shoved the pile across his desk until it was sitting in front of her. "Can your car make a trip across town?"
"Yeah," Paige said, nodding rapidly, as she scooped the files up before Cowan could change his mind. "I'll be back before you know it. I swear."
"You'd better," Cowan said, a mild tone in his voice.
Paige only nodded again, darting out the door with the files in her arms. She snagged her coat from where it was hanging on the back of her chair, shoving her arms into it as she practically ran to the door. Opening the door to her car, she dumped the files on the passenger seat and got in, starting the engine. The engine coughed a couple of times before it finally turned over, and as she was driving out of the parking lot, she noticed that the needle of the gas gauge was nearly on empty.
She could have sworn that she'd had at least half a tank that morning, but apparently the universe was going to make her lie to Cowan come true. But, she didn't have time to stop for gas, now; she could only hope that she had enough left in her tank to make it to the end of the day.
She got to the police station in about fifteen minutes. Going into the precinct, she glanced down at the sticky note that Cowan had put on the top of the files, and then she went over to the front desk.
"Hey, I'm looking for a parole officer named Mitchell," she told the desk sergeant. "I'm from Social Services."
"Down the hall," the sergeant told her, with a jerk of his head. "Third door on the left."
As if the man's words had been some kind of a summons, the door he'd indicated flew open with a loud crash as it slammed against the wall. A kid who couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen came sprinting out, heading for the front door. Paige dumped the files on the desk and moved to intercept the kid. Maybe rampaging demons still threw her, but a scared kid? That was something she knew how to deal with.
She grabbed the kid by the arms when he tried to run past her, spinning with his momentum and accidentally-on-purpose knocking him into the front desk. The kid grunted as the breath was driven out of him with the impact, and she pinned him to the desk with her arm when he tried to move back.
"Hey, calm down," she told the kid, who was still struggling against her hold. "Where do you think you're going, anyway?"
"Out of here," the boy growled, and Paige rolled her eyes.
"You're in a station surrounded by cops," she pointed out. "Exactly how far did you think you were going to go?"
The kid didn't answer, and Paige turned her attention to the cop, presumably Mitchell, who was approaching them.
"Nice tackle," he said, sounding impressed.
"I played football with the boys in high school," Paige told him. "Only girl on the team. I had to learn to keep up."
"But, you're tiny," the desk sergeant protested.
"I can take you down," Paige muttered under her breath, getting a smirk from Mitchell.
"I'll take our would-be escapee, now," he told her, and Paige passed the kid over to him. "Thanks, by the way. Henry Mitchell."
"Paige Matthews," she introduced herself, forgoing a handshake because the guy was still busy. "Those are for you," she went on, gesturing to the files on the desk. "From Social Services."
"More case files, probably," Henry sighed, as he picked the files up with his free hand. "Any surprises in here?"
"I don't know," Paige admitted, with a shrug. "I'm just the gopher. My boss didn't mention anything, though."
"Got a number I can call if I have any questions?" Henry asked, and Paige pulled one of her business cards out of her purse. "Oh," Henry went on, with a raised eyebrow, "this is your number. Well, saves me from having to ask."
"Oh, man," the kid groaned, before Paige could say anything. "You are not flirting with this chick right now."
"First of all, Speed," Henry told the kid, "this chick just saved you a lot of trouble, so say thank you. Second, shut up."
"How am I supposed to apologize if I have to shut up?" the kid muttered under his breath.
"You've got a smart mouth on you." Henry started in on the kid as he muscled him back down the hallway, toward his office, and Paige could hear him lecturing the boy until the door shut behind him, cutting his voice off.
Paige grinned to herself, the first time all day, and then she headed back to work.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and by the time her shift was over, Paige wanted to do nothing more than go home, curl up on the couch with an old movie and a big bowl of popcorn, and forget that the morning had ever happened. But, she couldn't do that. Not if she wanted her sisters to ever speak to her, again.
No, what she needed to do was become a better witch. The accident that morning, where she'd nearly killed Phoebe, could never happen again. She wasn't going to let it happen again.