I have no idea what happened last week (and the week before?). I really thought I had posted this chapter already. Apologies.

[Saturday, January 18, 2020]

The next Saturday, Chris and Dwight finally went to see their long-awaited movie. Wyatt, newly-licensed, agreed to drop them off early outside the theater to get in for previews. While in line for snacks, they ended up queued behind a handful of girls they knew from school. It surprised Chris to see Rina among them.

"What?" she teased when he mentioned it, "You didn't think Roma did things for fun?"

"No, no," he said quickly, waving his hands in front of himself as Dwight snickered at his discomfort. "I just… I thought…" His face warmed as the other girls began to giggle.

While they waited, moving forward a couple feet every so often, Chris, Dwight, and the girls chatted about school and their winter breaks. Finally, the girls, and then Chris and Dwight, reached the front of the line, bought their snacks, and parted ways to find their respective theaters.

By the time Chris and Dwight exited the building a few hours later, night had already begun to descend, and the parking lot was encased in darkness. They saw Rina again on their way out, this time waiting alone on the sidewalk for her ride. Chris and Dwight stopped by her before they crossed the street to ask if she needed a ride, but she merely waved them on with a shake of her head.

They continued toward the entrance to the parking lot so that they'd be able to see Wyatt when he pulled up. When they had first arrived, the lot had been packed with cars, people there for a movie or for shopping in the strip mall across the street. Now, with the shops closed, the place had mostly emptied out with only the occasional car or van remaining.

They were still only halfway across the lot when Chris saw something that made him pause. Through the rear windshield of a dilapidated, rust-red Volvo, something flicked into the darkness. He paused, squinting, to get a better look. Dwight, who had kept walking, stopped and turned when he realized his friend had not followed.

"Everything okay?" he called.

Chris held up a hand to stop him as he started to backtrack. "I thought I saw something," he murmured cautiously.

"Something"—Dwight glanced briefly around their deserted surroundings—"magical?"

"Not sure," Chris said with a frown. "Gimme a sec." He sidestepped the Volvo and inched around to its passenger side. When he came around the hood, he nearly bumped into a little boy wearing a baseball cap and jean jacket. He looked about ten years old with the longish bangs beneath his cap tamped down to his forehead.

"Oh," Chris said in surprise. "Sorry, I thought…" The boy met his eyes. Bright green, familiar. They glistened as if he'd been crying, and he had clearly nibbled through his chapped lips. A tiny droplet of blood had bubbled to the surface.

"S'cuse me, mister," the boy sniffled, "I can't find my mom." He stuffed his fists into the pockets of his corduroy pants and stared down at his bright red sneakers, blinking rapidly to dispel the tears.

Setting his palm against the hood of the Volvo, Chris offered the boy a gentle smile. "Let me guess: is her name Piper?"

The boy glanced back up with a frown. "No," he replied, "It's Esmé."

This made Chris falter. "Wait, what?" He had felt certain this was another version of himself; he recognized the slightly chubby cheeks, the dimple in his chin, even the wobble of his lip as he tried desperately not to cry.

"Chris, who are you talking to?" Dwight asked.

As the child reached up to swipe his nose with his jacket sleeve, his silhouette grew fuzzy. He faded from the bottom up, losing first his feet, legs, and torso before finally only his eyes remained, too bright in the glare of the street lights. Chris was too surprised to move. He stood frozen there even after the eyes, too, had winked out of existence.

How could there be a version of himself with different parents? Wouldn't different DNA make him a completely different person? And if his parents weren't Piper and Leo, who were they? Did he even have magic? Was he still a witch?

Eventually, Dwight's concerned, "Uh, Chris?" shook him from his whirlwind of thoughts. He peered over at his friend, who had followed him around the car at some point and now watched him with raised eyes. "You good? Because you just started talking to yourself."

Chris forced himself to face Dwight, to run a hand through his tussled hair, to smile. "Yeah," he said, "I'm fine. Sorry. My powers. They get weird sometimes."

Dwight didn't seem to know what to say to that, so he merely jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Your brother's here. Should we…?"

"Yeah," Chris said, "Yeah. Thanks." He followed Dwight toward the car idling at the parking lot entrance. When they climbed into the back seat, Wyatt berated them for taking so long. They drove home in relative silence, Chris too preoccupied to make conversation.

After they dropped Dwight at his house, Wyatt twisted in his seat, an arm draped across the headrest beside him, and peered at Chris. "You okay?" he asked. "You've been pretty quiet."

Chris glanced up. Wyatt knew a bit about his new power—namely, that it existed—but few details. Chris had mentioned it in passing a week after his parents had found out, but he hadn't gone into more depth since then. He didn't feel like going through it all now, but from the look in Wyatt's eyes, he knew he couldn't get away with saying nothing. Maybe just the basics were enough. "My powers show me versions of myself from different timelines. When it happens, it's…" He shrugged. "Disorienting."

With a sympathetic wince, Wyatt laughed, "Magic is weird." He shifted the car into gear and tapped the gas. Pulling away from the curb, he started back toward the manor. "Is there any way to control it?" he asked, watching his brother through the rearview mirror.

Chris slid low in his seat. "Not that I can tell," he grumbled.

Ever the optimist, Wyatt offered, "Well, maybe eventually."

Chris didn't feel like explaining that he already had a more experienced version of himself in his head who had confirmed control wasn't really an option. Instead, he sank still lower, until the shoulder strap dug into his chin, and stared at the houses passing outside his window until they got home.

That night, when Chris fell asleep, he found that the abyss had altered itself yet again. Now, he appeared at the center of what seemed to be a life-sized pie chart. To his right, the familiar darkened space with sofa, desk, and bookcase where his older self had lived in his timeline. Its back wall seemed to have taken on an unusual navy glow as well. To Chris's left, the sunny playground where Mutt hid away, the woodchips pulsating with a distinctly emerald hue.

And behind him stood a new structure, a somewhat narrow space with a miniature, built-in, three-tiered bunk bed. Though the sky went on forever in the abyss, Chris somehow got the impression that this space had a low roof just above his head.

Curious, he stepped into the new wedge of the pie chart. Behind the bunk bed, and stretching across the whole of this space, ran a long row of small windows. Shining through the glass was a vibrant cyan. "Are those…" Chris squinted at the glass. "…School bus windows?"

A small face popped out from under the blankets of the middle bunk. The ball cap had been removed, revealing a close crop of brown hair on the sides of the boy's head with slightly longer hair on top. A neat trim. "It's a bus house," the boy explained, wiggling into a sitting position. He had to hunch to avoid hitting his head on the bunk above him. "Mamă and Tată bought an old school bus and tore out all the seats to turn it into our home. We travel all over the country!"

Impressive, Chris thought, taking it all in. Where the bunk bed ended sat a cushioned white bench and a picnic table that looked like it had been bolted to the floor. Beyond that, the image grew hazy before bleeding into the woodchips from Mutt's wedge of space. On the other side were shelves and cubbies that faded into Chris's older self's—Perry, he thought with humor—dimly-lit room.

The cubbies were filled with toys and action figures, the shelves lined with folded clothing and, unexpectedly, mason jars of herbs. A couple of windows beside the bunk bed had been obscured by a cloth rectangle, split in half lengthwise by color. The top half was a bright azure, the bottom deep green. In the middle, superimposed over both background colors, was a vibrant red, sixteen-spoke wheel. The iconography looked familiar to Chris, but it took him a moment to place it. Rina, the Romani, wore a silver necklace just like that. Was that why he had stumbled on this boy—because he had run into Rina that evening?

When he peered closer, he saw several symbols carved faintly into the bus walls. A string of garlic had been hung from one of the windows.

"So your parents made this place," Chris said thoughtfully. "And your parents are…?"

The boy frowned at him. "I told you. Esmé. My dad's Isaac."

"How?" Chris asked, but the boy didn't seem to understand the question. Sighing, Chris slid into the bench beside the picnic table, his back to the shimmering cyan aura. "So what's your name? I assume it isn't Chris."

The boy crawled to the foot of his bed on his hands and knees so he could peer at Chris. "How'd you know?" he exclaimed.

"Wait, really?" Chris frowned, leaning forward. "You have different parents but the same name?"

"I mean, no one calls me that," the boy admitted. "It's Christian. But mostly my family calls me Ian."

Spreading his hands out on the table, Chris shook his head. Every statement from the boy just deepened his confusion. "Christian? But it's supposed to be Christopher."

Hopping down from his bed, Ian came up to the table, running his fingers along the familiar grooves of the surface. "Mamă told me she hadda guess. My blanket just said 'Chris.'"

Chris felt like he understood only every other word. Nothing the boy said clarified anything. "Blanket?" he echoed.

The boy stared at Chris as if he were an idiot. "Yeah, my blanket. The one I had with me when she found me."

"Wait, found you?" Finally, it clicked into place. "So you're adopted?"

"We all are," Ian replied in that same are-you-a-moron tone. "Well, not my sister, Rhoda; Mamă gave birth to her. But me 'n Xander 'n Benji she found."

Chris shook his head, massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Eventually, he sighed and looked back up at the bright-eyed boy. "Well… it's nice to meet you, Ian," he said, holding out a hand.

Ian grabbed his hand, giving it a vigorous shake, and grinned. "You, too, mister!"

Chris stared up at the sky from between two beams that trapped him in place. He lay amidst the remains of a leveled manor, caked in debris. The walls had crumbled around him; nearly the whole block had been razed by a panicked mob of people carrying guns and flamethrowers.

The hysteria had run amok in the United States for weeks before the mobs reached San Francisco. Most people believed it had begun somewhere in Utah, an act of magic caught on camera, posted online, spreading mayhem as people argued over whether or not it had been faked. And then the new technology, probes that were able to identify true witchcraft in real time, had sent everyone into a tailspin. Suddenly, people had confirmation. Suddenly, they had a way to track them. Suddenly, they were burning down houses, the witch trials beginning anew.

And now here Chris lay, a toddler clutching his baby blue blanket to his cheek for comfort, unable to extract himself from beneath the rubble of his home. The roof and walls had crumbled to pieces, leaving only the cement foundation of the house intact, along with half of the chimney. Shards of glass and ceiling boards covered every inch of the foundation.

The sky, what little Chris could see of it from his position, was orange with smoke from the wildfires that had spread as a result of the uncontrolled witch burnings. Closing his eyes, he began to cry.

He wailed on and off for two days before someone came for him. He heard voices somewhere on the street, echoing in the open air—"I'm telling you, I heard it, it was a baby or a toddler, something"—and then footsteps climbing carefully over piles of disintegrated walls and furniture remains. He kept crying when something shifted and a beam was slowly lifted away.

A woman's face came into view, hazy in the smoke-filled air. She had frizzy, black hair bound with a red kerchief and wide, sad brown eyes. Her mouth and nose were obscured by a second kerchief, checkered green, that she had tied around her face to protect her lungs from the smoke.

With one finger, she tugged her face kerchief down to her neck. "Hey there, little one," she cooed, "It's okay, I've got you, I've got you." She reached beneath the second beam to grasp his hand. "How old are you sweetheart?"

"I want my mommy!" he sobbed.

Another face, also covered, loomed into view above him. A man with a brunette horsetail. "Looks about two or three," he assessed.

"Help me get him out," the woman instructed. Together, they heaved the second beam into the air, and she reached out a hand for Chris to crawl to. Once he did, they carefully lowered the beam back to the floor. The woman position Chris in her lap, smoothing the hair out of his eyes and wiping dust off his face with her sleeve as she inspected the rest of him. "Barely a scratch," she told the man, "It's a miracle."

Hiccuping with tears, Chris burrowed his face into his blanket. "May I see that, little one?" the woman asked, reaching for the hem of his blanket. Flipping up the corner, she exposed a design, an embroidered, white triquetra above a name, in script. Chris.

The woman drew back. "Isaac, look," she whispered in horror, pointing at the symbol.

Chris glanced up through his blanket; the man's mouth was set in a grim line. "So our elders were right. The Charmed Ones fell in the Exposure." The woman hugged Chris to her, arms circling around his front and tucking his head beneath her chin. "Esmé," the man said, "We need to leave. If the Charmed Ones are gone, there's no one left to protect the magical community. They're after witches now, but it's never long before they come for Romani."

Esmé squeezed Chris tighter. "We'll take him with us," she decided.

"Esmé," Isaac sighed.

She climbed to her feet, hefting Chris onto her hip as she did so, his blanket dangling from his hands, torn and burned at the edges. "We must," she insisted. "It's not like we can take him to social services. He's a witch. They'll kill him."

Isaac put a gentle hand to her shoulder. "We have Rhoda to worry about."

Shrugging out of his grip, she placed a hand on Chris's cheek, gently guiding his head to relax against her shoulder. He had finally settled down, exhaustion taking over. "It's precisely because of Rhoda that we must take him. If something happened to us, it's what we would hope someone else would do."

Isaac sighed again. He reached out to caress the boy's hair with callused fingers. Tucking an ash-covered thumb into his mouth, Chris closed his eyes. The voices faded away. Hours later, the teen woke up grasping for a baby blanket that wasn't there.

On Sunday, Chris once again met up with Katie and Lea at the Shack. If Phoebe or Coop suspected something suspicious, they didn't let on. Phoebe said only, "It's so nice that you're spending so much time with your cousin," when she dropped the girls off at the park. Lea had half-expected Katie to break and disclose to their parents the purpose behind these rendezvous, but Katie remained determined as ever not to spill the secret.

The trio practiced all afternoon. By the end of the day, Katie succeeded in becoming corporeal many times over for several minutes at a time. During one stretch, Lea taught her to high-five. Another time, Chris managed to carry her around on his shoulders for at least four minutes before her weight suddenly vanished, throwing off Chris's balance and sending him crashing to the ground as she slipped through his body. Instinct had her levitation kick in before she fell completely through the dirt. They all parted in high spirits.

Lea had pointed out that Chris didn't need to continue helping Katie now that she knew how to practice. It would even avoid raising suspicion if he let them work on it alone. But Chris was adamant about sticking this out until the end. He would be there to watch Katie master her powers. He wanted to know she would one day hug her parents. More than that, though the thought was almost subconscious, he wanted to protect her from becoming the touch-averse Kat from Perry's timeline, the lost little girl ready to watch the world burn.

On Tuesday of that week, Chris knew not to expect Dwight at school. Dwight missed every January fourteenth for as long as Chris had known him. Today, eight years ago, his father was carried home from overseas in a body bag. Chris hadn't known the truth for the first few years after they had met. He had assumed Dwight's parents had divorced, that his father lived back in New Jersey, where they'd moved from. When he asked about Dwight's father at eight years old, his friend's face had shuttered. His eyes had darkened. "My parents aren't together," he'd said abruptly.

Piper had explained it all to Chris a few months after that. When Chris asked his mom why Dwight always wore that necklace with his dad's name. And though Chris had wondered why Dwight had lied, he never brought it up. He supposed Dwight knew he knew, that Dwight's mother must have mentioned it to him, because at some point—Chris couldn't remember when—Dwight had begun to refer to his father in the past tense on the rare occasion that he mentioned him at all.

Normally, on the anniversary of Dwight's father's death, Chris left him alone, resumed their regularly scheduled banter on January fifteenth. But this was the first anniversary since Dwight had found out Chris's secret. For once, Chris felt he had something to offer his grieving friend. So after school, before heading home, he trekked the path to Dwight's house.

Sucking in a steady breath, Chris rapped his knuckles against the door. When Dwight's mom answered, she seemed surprised by his presence. "Chris! What are you doing here?"

"Hi, Mrs. Ryder." Chris scratched the back of his neck with a smile. "I, uh, was hoping to talk to Dwight. If that's okay."

A little confused, she backed out of the doorway and gestured him inside. "He's in his room," she explained, motioning him down the hallway. Chris padded up the stairs, down the checkered beige carpet, and at the end of the hall knocked on Dwight's bedroom door. When no one answered, he cautiously let himself in.

Dwight lay on his bed with one knee bent and the other leg crossed over it, foot tapping out a lazy beat in the air. He had earbuds tucked into his ears and a fist-sized rubber ball that he kept tossing against the ceiling and catching again in one hand. An old ipod lay beside him on the mattress.

Chris stepped forward and snatched the ball from midair the next time Dwight threw it up. Dwight jerked in surprise, then frowned. "Why are you here?" he half-shouted. Chris motioned to the earbuds, which Dwight tugged out of one ear, staring at Chris expectantly.

"I had an idea I wanted to ask you about," he said.

He lobbed the ball back to Dwight, who caught it, his frown deepening. "I'm not in the mood right now, dude," he grumbled, reaching for the earbud to press it back into his ear.

Chris held up a hand to stop him. "I just want to tell you. If you're not interested, I'll leave you alone." Impatient, Dwight raised an eyebrow and waved for him to continue. "You remember that thing I did that night I told you about…" He wiggled his fingers meaningfully.

"Chris, today's not the day for your mag—"

"Just listen," Chris pleaded. "It's called orbing. The thing I did. And it can take me farther than just through a door. Anywhere in the world, in fact." Dwight continued to watch him, waiting for the significance. "Well… I know it bothers you that you can't, um, visit your dad. Because he's back in New Jersey." Chris rubbed his shoulder self-consciously. "I thought—I mean, if you're interested, I could—take you. To the cemetery. If you want."

Dwight sat up quickly, his fist squeezing the rubber ball. "I, uh—yeah. I'd like that. Really?" Chris nodded. "What do I have to do?"

Chris shrugged. "Just hold my hand," he said.

Normally, Dwight would have cracked a joke about that, what am I, a toddler crossing the street?, but there was a painful earnestness in his stare right now, a muted desperation hiding just behind his eyes. He swung his feet over the side of his bed. Without even bothering to slip into his sneakers, he reached out to take Chris's extended hand.

Chris closed his eyes. It was a bit tricky to orb somewhere he'd never been before, but he had practiced that often enough. Trickier still was orbing not to a location but to a person, especially one he'd never met before. Dwight's dad, he thought as hard as he could and then carried Dwight away.

They reappeared in the middle of a cemetery with rows of headstones stretching out in all directions. It was almost ten degrees colder here than it had been in San Francisco, maybe mid-forties, with the sun hidden behind pale clouds, making goosebumps break out across Chris's arms.

Dwight's socks sank into the soft grass. Right before them stood a simple gray stone, rounded corners, and the name Jeffrey Ryder carved at the top. Both the dates of his birth and death were etched below it and, beneath that, the words, Beloved father, husband, and son. An American flag had been carved into the bottom of the stone.

Chris watched as Dwight stepped forward, kneeling on the grass in front of the stone. His fingers reached out to touch the smooth surface of the headstone. "Hey, Dad," Dwight murmured. "I came to visit."

Feeling distinctly out of place, Chris slipped away. He wandered down the row of graves until he was out of earshot but still within Dwight's line of sight should he look up. For several minutes Chris occupied himself reading the headstones. There were a couple of other Ryders in the area; obviously the family had purchased a number of plots together. In the distance stood a statue as tall as Chris, an angel with its wings outstretched, holding an ornate heart to its breast.

Once, when he glanced in Dwight's direction, a monochrome scene rose up between them. A little boy, four or five, sitting on his knees with an action figure in either hand. Behind him loomed a man in a uniform, army boots, and a low cap. The man had Dwight's angled nose and sharp brow line. "My Dwight!" the man said, and the boy flung himself around.

"Mommy! Mommy! Daddy's back early!" the boy shouted. The next words he said got swallowed by static, but Chris still watched as the boy leapt at his father. The man caught him in the air and pulled him toward his chest. The boy's legs wound around his waist, arms around his neck. The father said something, then petted his son's hair, then squeezed him tight.

Playing witness to this intimate moment made Chris feel enough like an intruder that he had to close his eyes and turn away. He listened for the static sound to fade before looking up again. He made sure not to face Dwight's direction again. After some time, he sensed a familiar presence behind him. Turning toward Dwight, whose eyes glistened, though his cheeks remained dry, he asked, "Ready to go?"

Dwight offered him a wan smile. "This was—thanks, man. Really."

Chris nodded. "I, uh…" He hesitated a moment. "I saw him. You. When you were a kid. Together. It's this ability I have. I see things, scenes. It was brief, but… he seemed pretty cool."

Dwight fingered the dog tags around his neck. "Thanks. Yeah. He was." Without another word, he accepted Chris's outstretched hand and braced himself for the ride home.

They next met up after school a week later. Saturday afternoon, they got together in Dwight's backyard to study for a history test, their first since returning from vacation. The yard had an old swing set left over from the house's previous owners. Chris sat in one of the swings, swaying back and forth with his textbook nestled in his lap. Dwight sat a few feet away in one of the beach chairs they had dragged outside.

They were on James A. Garfield, twentieth U.S. president, known mostly for getting assassinated two hundred days into his term, when Dwight's mother came out with a pitcher of water, cups, and a plate of sugar cookies. She set it down on a little, round, outdoor table beside Dwight's chair.

"Thanks, Mrs. Ryder," Chris called. Once she went inside, he wiggled his fingers, levitating a cookie into the air. Dwight watched the snack hover between them, slowly making its way to Chris's waiting palm.

When it deposited itself there, Dwight sighed. "Man, you're so lucky you have powers."

Chris shifted uncomfortably. His goal in using magic in front of Dwight had been to acclimate him to it, certainly not to make him jealous. "Being a witch isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know," he said. "I mean, there's demons, for one thing. And all the secrets." He stuffed the cookie into his mouth whole. "Your mom buys the best kind of cookies," he approved once he'd swallowed it down.

Dwight picked one up himself but didn't eat it right away. He picked at it until crumbs tumbled into the grass. "I'm sure there's lots that sucks about it, but still—I wish I had magic."

Chris bit his lip. He flipped to the next page in the textbook. "Should we, uh, continue with Garfield?"

"Right," Dwight said, catching up in the book.

Half an hour later, Dwight paused the study session to run to the bathroom. Chris leaned back in the swing until his head dangled upside down, staring at the bushes that blocked the house behind Dwight's from view. When he heard footsteps on the back porch, he pulled himself back into a sitting position. "Ready to get back to…" Chris trailed off.

It wasn't Dwight. Instead, leaning against the wall of the house with his arms crossed was Chris. Or at least, an almost identical version of him. His hair hung much longer than Chris's, pulled into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck, and he wore dark eyeliner that Chris would not be caught dead in, but the differences were superficial. He wore a gray shirt with a red skull and black denim pants that looked uncomfortably tight. A pair of folded sunglasses dangled from his collar. Dark army boots were laced halfway up his calves.

The biggest difference from what Chris could see was the cold stare, the sneer that scrunched his nose. "Some friend you are," the boy hissed.

"Wha—? Are you serious?" Chris demanded. "What did I do?"

The boy kicked himself off from the brick wall and stormed forward. "It's what you didn't do, Einstein. All this time, you could've been helping. Actually doing useful stuff with all these"—he curled his lip—"powers of yours."

Feeling defensive, Chris jumped up from his seat. The swing tangled itself from the force of getting pushed back. "Hello, have you never heard of personal gain?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "An excuse," he scoffed. "What's personal about helping someone else? I'll tell you what it really is: selfish. Magical people like you—"

"People like me?" Chris guffawed. "Don't you mean like 'us'?"

The boy waved a dismissive, disgusted hand. "I'm not contaminated like you," he sneered.

"What, you don't have powers?" Chris asked, stepping back in surprise. The swing thumped him in the back of the knees, but he barely noticed.

"No way I'd be an abomination."

The screen door behind the boy slammed shut as Dwight returned. The boy stepped to the side just before the unknowing Dwight could walk straight through him. Pacing back to the wall, the boy glared at Dwight as the teen reclaimed his seat in the beach chair.

"Of course you're friends with one of those nutso magic groupies. They're as disgusting as you are," the boy said.

Chris's hands balled into fists. "Leave him alone," he growled.

Dwight glanced up from the textbook he had repositioned in his lap. "Uh, what?" he asked, bewilderment painted on his face.

Chris shook his head as his other self smirked mockingly. "Sorry," Chris grunted to Dwight. "It's nothing. Just—my powers." To Chris's huge relief, the boy began to fade away. Too slowly, in Chris's opinion. First his legs, torso, his folded arms. The sneer lingered. Eventually, it—and the narrowed, outlined eyes—vanished completely. Chris let out a short breath.

From the beach chair, Dwight, noting his friend's newly-relaxed posture, shook his head. "I take it back. Having powers doesn't seem like all it's cracked up to be."

Running a hand through his hair, Chris sank back onto the swing. His textbook had fallen to the ground at his abrupt jump up. He reached down to retrieve it, brushing the dirt off its bent pages. "You have no idea," he muttered.

Chris dreaded going to sleep that night. He had no interest in meeting this new self, certainly not getting stuck with him in his head. He could think of nothing worse than a lifetime of angsty teenage eyeliner.

Ultimately, though, he could not stave off sleep forever. When his eyes finally closed, he found himself inside the newly rearranged abyss. To his right, between Mutt and Ian's wedges, lay a space that looked suspiciously similar to Wyatt's bedroom.

It had been arranged very differently. Where Wyatt had his bed beneath the window, this version of Chris had placed his desk. His bed stood where Wyatt's dresser normally sat, and the dresser had been shoved against the opposite wall beside the door. A tall poster had been hung above his bed. A middle-aged man in a suit and tie, with an American flag pin on his lapel. A cold stare with a smug tilt of his lips and crossed arms. Beneath him, the words Report Your Neighbors. The overhead fan, instead of lighting the room as expected, emitted a throbbing cinnamon orange aura that reached from one end of the wedge to the other.

The boy was not in his room but instead across the abyss, standing off against Perry in his dark space. "You're all freaks, aren't you? Lucky me!"

Perry seemed unaffected. He leaned back against his desk with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. His lips were pursed in—sympathy? Compassion? How could anyone feel bad for this spoiled brat?

Chris stalked forward, rapidly losing his patience. "All right, back off!" he said, grabbing the other boy by his shoulder and spinning him around. "This is my mind, so calm down."

"Chris," Perry said gently. Both teenagers jerked to face him.

"How'd you know my name?" the boy demanded.

Chris rolled his eyes. "Because it's all of ours, doofus. What part of 'in my head' aren't you getting?"

Perry calmly stepped between them, holding a hand outstretched to Chris. "It can be disorienting for some, especially if they're unfamiliar with magic."

"Oh, I'm familiar," the boy snapped, stalking back toward the security of his bedroom. Chris and Perry followed at a safe distance.

"How's that, then?" Perry asked carefully.

The boy gave them his most potent "duh" expression. "Everyone knows about magicals," he scoffed. "I had an aunt who was one. She murdered one of the best football players of our generation. She was put to death ages ago." The boy crossed his arms. "Good riddance," he snorted.

Cold, Chris thought, halfway horrified. His and Perry's eyes met briefly. "Could there really be one of us who's mortal?" he asked his older self.

Perry mulled it over. "It's not… impossible," he admitted, "But the odds are astronomically low that someone in his family has magic while he doesn't. Magic doesn't usually… skip a generation like that."

"Well, it did," the boy snapped. "She was the only freak in our whole family. And Aunt Prue said she and Mom had no idea about it until she up and killed that guy."

Perry's eyebrows rose. "Aunt Prue?" he echoed.

"What about Paige?" Chris asked. The boy gave him a blank stare.

Meanwhile, Perry's mind seemed to be turning over the details. "This sounds… familiar," he said at length. "Did Mom ever tell you about when she travelled through time?"

Chris raised an eyebrow, a smirk quirking his lips. "Which time?"

With a smile of his own, Perry inclined his head. "Fair. When they went to the future. Not my future. It was well before that. Different timeline." Mutely, Chris shook his head. "Well, the Elders sent them to teach them some kind of lesson about personal gain," he explained. His wrinkled nose and furrowed brows showed just what he thought of that idea. It was common knowledge that most Halliwells didn't have much respect for the Elders or their holier-than-thou procedures.

"What makes you think it turned into—this?" Chris waved a hand at his newest self, who bared his teeth at the dismissive gesture.

"Just… some of how he describes it," Perry replied with a shrug. "I don't remember the details, but I remember Mom mentioning something about Aunt Phoebe being burned at the stake for killing a mortal with her powers."

"And it served her right," the boy snapped, tired of being ignored. "Serves all magicals right."

Speaking over the boy, Chris asked Perry, "So how did Mom become a mortal? Why were Wyatt and I born without powers?"

"Who's Wyatt?" the boy asked. Chris's eyes shot to him in surprise, but he didn't answer.

"We weren't. I'm pretty sure Mom bound our powers. She obviously hid it from him—us—to protect us." Perry's eyes remained on the boy as he spoke, anticipating the outburst to come.

He was not disappointed. The boy stalked over to him, stabbing an accusing finger into Perry's chest. "I am not one of you freaks," he shouted. "I would've turned my psycho aunt in myself if I'd been born then. As far as I'm concerned, you should all burn."

Perry seemed very understanding of this angry, aggressive boy, but Chris had had enough. "Hey, Merlin," he snapped, rolling his eyes, "Didn't you hear him? You're one of us. Your mom lied to you your whole life, and there's nothing you can do to change your heritage. Sorry to burst your bubble."

"Shut up! Don't call me that!" the boy hissed, spinning around. His eyes were mere slits.

"Merlin? Why not?" Chris taunted. "Guess it would be pretty awful if you actually were everything you hated, huh?"

"Chris." Perry laid a hand on his shoulder. When Chris looked up at him, Perry gave a single shake of his head. To the other boy, he said, "Look, I know it can be hard to come to terms with feeling like your whole life was a lie. But not all witches are evil." When the boy opened his mouth to argue, Perry rushed to add, "Yes, some are. Your aunt obviously did something horrible. But witches are people, just like anybody else. Some are good, some are evil, most fall somewhere in the middle."

How Perry could find compassion for this kid, Chris had no idea. He had felt an intense dislike for him almost the instant they had met. He certainly felt justified in that judgment when the boy began ranting about all witches burning.

But Perry stepped closer to the boy, reached out to touch his arm, and the boy, while looking distinctly uncomfortable, didn't immediately pull away. "Your parents wanted to protect you as best they could."

At the mention of "parents," the boy stiffened and yanked his arm free. "Yeah, Leo's a real peach," he sneered.

Chris bristled, but Perry just smiled faintly. "You, too, huh?" the man remarked, surprising both teenagers. "Leo wasn't around much for me, either," he admitted.

The steam seemed to fizz out of the boy. Reluctantly, he huffed, "He divorced my mom before I was born. When my sister was, like, three or something. They hooked up again once, though." He made a face. "But he bailed again as soon as he found out about me."

"Typical," Perry agreed.

"Hey!" Chris protested, feeling defensive on his father's behalf.

Perry offered him an understanding smile. "I know your dad is great to you. He was great to me, too. After." He shrugged. "But not all Leos are. Our fathers abandoned us."

The boy peered at Perry with a strange look in his eye, the anger slowly seeping out of him in the face of such total understanding. It confused him, to have something so deeply personal in common with a magical. Even his own mother insisted on believing the lie: Your father cares, Chris. He just works overseas and doesn't get back to the States much. What baloney. What was worse, she truly believed it, he could tell. Pathetic.

Chris forced himself to calm down. "Listen, Merlin, I'm sorry." The boy rolled his eyes, gritting his teeth, but Chris couldn't find it in himself to care enough not to use the nickname. He was apologizing. Wasn't that enough? "You obviously live in an awful world."

He thought about the memory he had experienced from Ian's life. The Exposure had killed his biological family and sent his adoptive family on the run with nothing but a school bus. In this boy's timeline, his family may have survived, but clearly they hadn't fared much better with magic making its public debut. Forced to hide everything, even from their own children.

"And I get why you'd hate witches," he continued. Sort of, he silently added. "I might, too, if my aunt had murdered an innocent in cold blood like that."

He couldn't picture sentimental, tender Aunt Phoebe actually doing that, didn't even know how she'd manage to use her powers to murder someone even if she wanted to. What had she done, thrust her empathy into him until he killed himself in despair? But clearly she had done something, or at least Merlin here believed it to be so. For now, Chris supposed he could take that at face value.

The boy cast his gaze from Chris to Perry. Gruffly, he turned to the man and said, "I see what you mean about some magicals being normal and others being selfish idiots." His eyes darted briefly back to Chris, narrowing with disdain.

Perry winced. "That's, ah, not exactly what I said, but okay."

Chris sat on his bed with his head against the headboard and his muddy sneakers propped up on the mattress. He leaned one forearm on his bent knees while the other hand balanced a thin cigarette loosely between his lips. With the cigarette still in his mouth, he tilted his face toward the ceiling and released a stream of smoke from his nostrils. He watched it rise into the air above him, feeling satisfied at its slow ascent.

There was a sharp knock on his door, and Chris's older sister Melinda stuck her head inside his room. Her long, brown hair, like their mother's, flowed down her back in thick waves. "Mom was looking for you. And Aunt Prue is here. She said she brought gifts."

Probably cash, Chris thought. That was all she ever brought her niece and nephew, in a pathetic attempt to buy their affection because she'd never built a family of her own.

Melinda wrinkled her petite nose. "Mom will kill you if she smells that on you," she said.

Chris bared his teeth at her. "Let her try," he replied smugly.

Melinda shrugged. "Your funeral," she said. Retreating from the room, she shut the door behind her.

Briefly, Chris considered finishing the cigarette before going downstairs, but he wanted to get a rise out of his mother more than he wanted the dose of nicotine just then. Wiggling off his bed, leaving mud streaks on his blanket, he marched out of the room and down the staircase.

As soon as he stepped off the landing in front of the foyer, his mother turned. She had been standing with her back to him as she spoke sharply to her big sister. Prue, looking bored at the dressing-down from her baby sister, merely flung her cascading blond locks over one shoulder. She never cut it; her hair was longer than his mother's and landed somewhere near her waist when she let it dangle free.

Piper was on Chris before his foot met the bottom step. "Christopher Halliwell, what do you think you're doing with that?"

With a roll of his eyes, he replied, "I'm smoking it. It's called a cigarette, Mom."

Propping her hands firmly on her hips, she countered, "In this house we call it cancer. Get rid of it this instant."

With a lazy hand, Chris drew it out from between his lips, holding it pinched in his thumb and forefinger. Delicately, he flicked it onto the rug at his feet, then grinded his toe over it to crush it into the floor. When he stepped away, the red glow of the tip had gone out, and the rug had a tiny, perfectly circular hole where the tip had burned into it. "Better?" Chris asked with a mocking smile.

"Chris!" Piper cried in dismay. She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers into her eyelids to give herself a breath. In a tone only marginally calmer, she stated, "I got a call this afternoon. You haven't been in school all week?" She formulated it as a question, but the coldness in her voice made it sound like a threat.

Chris pushed back anyway. "Yeah, so?" He let out a laugh. "They're all a bunch of loser magic groupies there." He waved a dismissive hand and marched through the dining room. With his back turned, he didn't see the way Piper bit her lip and averted her gaze or the way the usually bickering sisters glanced at each other meaningfully.

"There's nothing worth learning at that school anyway," he called from the kitchen, his head burrowed inside the fridge. "I already told you I'm enlisting with the Witch Hunters Guild. Now, they give a useful education." Chris grabbed a nectarine from the fruit drawer and slammed the fridge shut. "Practical, real-life skills."

Piper stormed after him, blocking his way when he tried to exit the room with his fruit. He stepped back, glowering. "They teach you how to kill," Piper said in disgust, but Chris just rolled his eyes.

"It's not murder, Mom. Geez, they're not even human. I guess you wouldn't know, being related to one of them and all." He sneered. "As soon as I turn fifteen, I'm enlisting." Elbowing his way past her, he sidestepped his aunt as she followed the sound of their argument. He headed to the front door, already feeling suffocated after only a few minutes in his mother's presence. Her whole "they're people, too," attitude made Chris feel vile. Of all people, she should be one of the most vocal in speaking out against magicals. Her own sister had shown them all exactly how conniving this evil could be. It was a legacy Chris would have to live down, never mind that he hadn't even been born when the woman had become infamous.

Piper chased after him. "Not as long as you're living under this roof!" she snapped back.

Chris glanced over his shoulder, smirking. "Well, maybe I'll just move in with Leo. Where's he again, Europe?" He never would, not after every missed birthday and soccer game. Not to mention, Leo would surely have no interest in inviting his son to live with him. The man made Chris sick. But saying it would strike Piper hard, he knew. "Christopher Wyatt," he continued, pretending to mull it over. "Sure. Has a nice ring to it."

Just before he could turn to leave, Piper demanded, "Where do you think you're going?" She raised both arms a shoulder's width apart and jerked her fingers open in front of her. It was a weird habit she'd had as long as Chris could remember, an aggressive gesture followed by the tiniest flash of confusion, as if she expected something else to happen before she remembered it wouldn't. The motion had always appeared to Chris stupid and weird.

"Out," he grunted, throwing open the door.

"Don't you dare walk away when I'm—" Chris slammed the door shut behind him. Geez, he needed another cigarette, pronto.

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