Response to reviews at the bottom.
Extra long chapter this week. It was the most organic place to end it.
[Tuesday, February 25, 2020]
So much had transpired that morning that Chris entirely forgot about the mysterious vanishing demon from Jake's attack. When he appeared in the abyss that night, it took him some time to even notice that the wedges had shifted again to make room for another. In between Mutt's playground and Perry's closet-sized office was now a gaping cavern with a jagged back wall and oil-lit torches embedded within it. The torches flickered with rich, violet light that cast pale periwinkle shadows up and across the sharp edges.
The space reminded Chris very much of where he'd been held hostage a few months ago. In one crevice he even saw a row of rusted shackles, similar to those he had dangled from for hours on end as the demon guards used him for target practice. The wall beneath the shackles was stained with long-dried blood.
But in the middle of the room, instead of a giant vat of viscous gray liquid rising from the earth, sat an austere, king-sized, four-poster bed, looking entirely out of place. The drapes that hung around it were a patterned maroon, the color broken by black runes sewn along the fabric. "Who…?" Chris wondered, but a voice behind him cut the question short.
"How's your little brat doing?"
Spinning around, Chris came face-to-face with the disappearing demon from that morning. A brunette horsetail at the nape of his neck, platform steel-toed boots, a well-worn trench coat with singes at some of the hems. Now that he wasn't preoccupied by the impending threat to his charge, Chris could see that this man, looking only a few years older than Perry, shared his eyes. His short ponytail was the same shade as Chris's hair. Even the little half-smirk dancing across his lips looked eerily familiar, though the lazy cruelty in his eyes was more reminiscent of Merlin than anyone else here. (He doubted Merlin would appreciate the comparison.)
"But… how?" Chris said dumbly.
The humanoid creature widened his smile into something feral. "Does being a demon upset your ickle worldview, Chrissy-boy?"
Chris searched the abyss for someone else to help him out here. Mutt and Ian were out of sight, though he didn't imagine they could offer much support regardless. Merlin, Krissy, and Sir Christopher were alone in their respective spaces. But behind him, to Chris's relief, Perry was strolling over.
"How do I get rid of one?" he asked desperately once the man reached them. "I can't have a demon inside my head."
His demonic self blew a raspberry. "Relax. It's not as if I can possess you." His eyes narrowed gleefully as he drummed his fingers together before his chin. "Or can I?"
Chris turned back to Perry, eyes pleading. With a sympathetic grimace, Perry said, "You can't. There's no way to crumble a link without fracturing your psyche. If one of your selves is ejected or dies... Well…" His eyes darkened. "Don't."
Eyeing the smug demon before him, Chris groaned, "I'll take the fractured psyche, thanks."
Marching up to him, the demon swung an arm around his shoulder. "Aw, I'll grow on you," he promised, playfully grinding his fist into Chris's hair.
Scowling, Chris ducked out of his hold and backed away. "Yeah, no touching." The demon merely batted his lashes, blowing Chris a kiss. Deliberately ignoring him, Chris asked Perry, "How's this even possible? How can I be a demon?"
Perry didn't seem to have an answer, but the demon himself was all too happy to supply one. "A couple centuries ago, my dear auntie went and got herself crowned queen to the source of all evil. Ultimately, her sisters were turned, they force-fed a demonic blood-altering potion to their pesky whitelighter." Here, he wrinkled his nose, as if he found the very memory of his father distasteful. "And—viola." He gave a little flourish with his wrists, striking a pose as he did so. "Here I am. Or do you need me to explain how babies are made, too?"
Chris scoffed in disgust but then narrowed his eyes. "Wait, did you say 'centuries,'? How old are you?"
The demon pouted impishly. "Don't you know you're not supposed to ask a demon his age? We're sensitive." Placing a dainty hand against his heart, he faked a swoon of despair. When he opened his eyes, Chris was scowling, unimpressed. With a lazy shrug, the demon answered, "Two hundred thirteen in a few months." This fact seemed to bring him immense pride because he added, "Not many are smart enough to avoid vanquish for more than a century and a half, you know."
"How nice for you," Chris said dryly.
"Why, thank you," the creature gushed.
Teeth gritted, Chris took a threatening step forward. Perry stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. When Chris glanced around, Perry only shook his head. "Trust me, you'll regret doing anything." Chris opened his mouth to argue—he very much doubted he'd regret loosening a few of the demon's teeth, in spite of whatever retribution might rain upon him—but Perry quickly changed the subject. "What will you call him?"
"You could always just ask," the demon said. When the two turned to him with identical deadpan expressions, he waved a theatrical hand to introduce himself. "I am Lord Christopher."
After a beat, Chris replied, "I'm not calling you 'Lord' anything, pal."
The demon looked affronted. "I'll have you know I worked very hard to earn that title. Do you know how many witches I had to sacrifice?"
Unbidden, the memory of the witch he had killed rose to Chris's mind now. The thought of her still made him queasy with remorse. She still regularly entered his dreams at night. The idea that a version of himself could view this heinous act with such dismissive pride—it made him sick. Somehow, this demon who had only just appeared in the abyss seemed to perfectly encapsulate the personification of his own violent act from months ago.
Despite Perry's warning, before Chris could even think, his arm was sailing forward, knuckles connecting with the creature's jaw. The demon stumbled backward to the floor. While Chris towered over him, breathing hard, Perry sank his face into one palm.
But Chris couldn't bring himself to regret the act. Still gasping with emotion, his hands balled into fists at his sides, he snarled at the fallen figure, "We'll call you exactly what you are: Demon."
For a moment, hands splayed out behind his body to prop himself up, the creature pondered this from his position on the floor, then smiled. "Works for me."
The ease with which he accepted this infuriated Chris. A part of him wanted an excuse to continue the fight. Feeling his frustration build, he stormed across the abyss toward Mutt's playground as the blood pounded in his ears. He thought longingly of the time he had conjured a door to exit this place, but at this point such an act was well out of his grasp. With every new face, each time the abyss grew more crowded, he sensed himself losing yet another sliver of control over this place. The voices clamored more urgently for his attention. Instead, with Demon's pleased-as-punch cackle ringing in the air behind him, he resolved himself to ignore him until the dream world graciously carried his mind away.
The double doors to the bar banged open as Chris sauntered inside, trench coat flowing behind him. This was one of his favorite places to come for a drink. The glowing floor lamps scattered around the room, plus the sticky wood floor and smooth wallpapered walls, made it possible to forget, if you wanted to, that you were even in the Underworld. The beer was always cold. The entertainment was always enjoyable. And best of all, most people here knew Chris. Knew to get out of his way. Now, as he glided past three pool tables ringed with bystanders, the crowds parted to let him through.
At the bar, Chris found his regular stool occupied by a horned creature with a wrinkled snout who nursed a cold glass of some fancy amber liquid. Chris came up beside the demon and tapped him on the shoulder. "You're in my seat," he said when the boar head swung around.
The creature—Chris couldn't tell if it was male, female, or something else—rolled its eyes. It gestured to the row of empty stools beside it. "There's plenty of space," it grunted and turned back to its drink.
"I don't think you understand, Goat Boy," Chris said with a hard smile. Conjuring a fireball in his open palm, he thrust it into his neighbor's spine. The creature shot up in flames that stung Chris's cheeks with the intensity of their heat. When they flickered out, the stool was empty, save a bit of charring and some ash.
The room had gone silent when the demon's screams first erupted, paused pool games and conversations so demons could watch the conflict. As Chris, ignoring the stares, casually dusted the ash off his seat and claimed his stool, noise steadily resumed.
A demon drying glasses behind the bar glowered, swatting her dishrag at the sign posted behind her shoulder. Please don't vanquish the customers. Thank you, Management. Chris waved a dismissive hand in her direction. In his opinion, anyone who didn't order beer at a bar was, frankly, too pretentious to live.
Grumbling to herself, the demon wandered behind a black curtain to a back room. In her place emerged a bitter-looking Grimlock with a bald white head, red-rimmed eyes, and a colorless dishrag draped over his shoulder. "Get me a drink," Chris ordered with a shooing motion.
The Grimlock reached beneath the bar to retrieve a tall, thin bottle, so cold the glass had frosted over. He plunked it down in front of Chris. "Your drink, Lord Christopher," he uttered tonelessly.
See, that was the thing with locally-owned businesses; they always greeted you by name. None of that corporate nonsense, where each customer was just another arrangement of features in a faceless crowd. You so rarely found that personal touch these days.
Chris dropped a handful of gold coins onto the countertop, which the Grimlock scooped up and tucked into the folds of his stained waist apron. Grasping the bottle top between his teeth, he wrenched the cap off and spat it across the counter. It skittered off the end to land on the floor between some warlock's stool. The warlock glanced down briefly before returning to his own beer, unperturbed.
Chris took a long, slow swig, relishing the refreshing liquid as it went down. Sitting back on his stool with one hand around the neck of his bottle, he scanned the busy room. A group of darklighters was playing pool at the first table. From the sounds of it, they were having a disagreement over a bet two of them had placed.
A small round table in the corner was occupied by an aged crone and her client. The conversation seemed to be getting somewhat heated. Generally, crones were slow to anger but slower to forget that anger once they got riled up. Chris filed both this and the pool game away in the back of his mind in case one or the other got ugly later. He had come for a quiet night out, but he wouldn't protest a bit of light entertainment.
A steady ache in his jaw drove Chris to wakefulness extra early the next morning. Groaning, he shifted his face into his pillow to bury the sensation, but pressure only turned the pain into a piercing sting. With a sharp intake of breath, he sat up in bed. As he massaged the tender area, he slipped out of bed and padded down the hall to the bathroom.
After using the facilities, he peered at his reflection in the mirror. A fresh bruise had bloomed across one side of his jaw. Frowning, he prodded it with two fingers. As soon as skin touched skin, a memory unfurled in him—his fist slamming into Demon's face. Perry's vague warning not to lose control. Clearly Perry had known that what happened to one of them would happen to Chris Proper.
He could practically see Perry now with his eyebrows raised and his arms crossed as he sighed, "I tried to warn you."
Chris rolled his eyes at his reflection. "You could have been more specific," he grumbled to the imaginary Perry. Turning on the faucet, he splashed his face with water, then slunk back to his room to get dressed.
He headed down to the deserted kitchen for breakfast before even his parents had risen. After a bowl of cereal and a granola bar, he glanced at his watch and decided to make a quick stop to check up on Jake before he had to make the bus. Scrawling a note for his mother not to worry about his absence, he orbed.
Jake was still on his side in bed, the fingers of one hand curled on top of his pillow, his face calm in sleep. His covers had tangled around his knees; and the house, poorly insulated, was fairly cold. As gently as he could, Chris tried to straighten the blanket and tug it back up to Jake's shoulders. But Jake, with hyper-sensitive reflexes, jolted awake the instant Chris's hand brushed his covered knee.
The sight of his whitelighter made him relax, gave him the chance to blink blearily, rubbing grains of sleep out of his eyes. "Chris?" he asked around a yawn. "What are you doing here?"
Chris stepped back, holding his hands in the air. "I didn't mean to wake you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Sitting up under the covers, Jake tilted his head to one side. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked.
Chris blinked away the sudden vision he had of a fireball flying straight at his charge's head, of the boy curled up on the sidewalk with his head tucked into his chest. Jake recalled none of it, he had to remind himself. "No reason," he answered, forcing a smile. "I'm sorry I woke you."
"S'okay," Jake said, flipping back the top of his blanket and scooting off the mattress. The boy stared at Chris's bruised jaw for a moment but didn't bring it up. In his personal experience, he preferred if bruises went ignored, so he offered his whitelighter the same courtesy.
Instead, he said, "I, uh, have something for you. Since you're here anyway." Chris noticed that he continued to whisper, likely to avoid disturbing his mother in the next bedroom over. The boy tiptoed over to the knapsack wedged between his desk and chair. Unzipping the smallest pocket, he drew out a crumpled blue paper, which he tried to smooth out against his thigh before awkwardly passing it over.
Chris accepted the document, pulling it taut with both hands to read the words Family Night in large, cursive font, bordered by leafy branches in the margins. Chris felt something lodge in his throat, a tightness he couldn't name. "It's only if you wanna come," Jake added quickly. "You don't have to." He linked his hands behind his back, tilted his head, and held his breath.
Chris checked the date and time listed below. "Next Monday afternoon, huh?" He flashed Jake a grin. "Count me in."
Jake brightened. Shuffling closer, he tucked his arms around Chris's torso in a loose hug. Chris rested one hand on the crown of the boy's head while the other went around his shoulders. Into the boy's hair, he murmured, "I can't wait."
When Chris returned home, the kitchen was bustling. Wyatt was scarfing down a bowl of cereal at the table. Prue, leaning over one of the pushed-in chairs across from her oldest brother, frantically rearranged a sheaf of papers spread out on top of an open folder, searching for something. Leo was dashing from the dish cabinet to the coffee maker, having forgotten to slip a mug beneath the machine before starting the brew. Piper glanced up from searching through the pantry to frown at her second son. "Where were—what happened to your face? Was there another attack?"
Chris dropped down into an empty chair beside Wyatt, who turned in his seat without thinking and raised a glowing hand to Chris's jaw. The cooling sensation washed over him, dimming the ache to a dull throb, which, shortly after, receded completely.
"Thanks," he sighed to his brother. To his mother, he said, "No attack. Just a… side effect of my weird power."
Piper tutted in sympathy. She came over and lifted his face with thumb and forefinger pinched on his freshly-healed chin, turning it this way and that. Finally, satisfied, she released him. "Didn't leave yourself much time for breakfast," she chastised.
When he assured her that he had already eaten, she eyed him suspiciously but ultimately let the comment—and her curiosity—fade away as she reclaimed her seat with a bag of extra crunchy granola clumps, which she added to a bowl of fruit and yogurt. "All right, fine," she huffed. "You guys should get going if you want to make your buses." Wyatt grumbled but dutifully dumped his bowl and spoon in the sink as Prue, seemingly having found her missing document, stuffed everything back into her knapsack at the foot of her chair, zipped it up, and slung it over her shoulder. Chris, who had left his in his bedroom, dashed upstairs to get it. He and Wyatt made it to their bus, and to school, without further incident.
The month of March started off innocently enough. That first Monday afternoon found Chris nervously checking himself in his bedroom mirror, trying to tug the collar of his blue-checked button-down shirt straight. Wyatt watched him from the bed, rolling his eyes as Chris swapped out yet another pair of pants, a casual pair of jeans, for sleek, black dress slacks and went digging in the back of his closet for a tie.
"It's Family Night," Wyatt protested from behind him on the bed. "Nobody will care what you're wearing."
"I don't want to reflect badly on Jake," Chris argued, grabbing two and returning to the mirror. He picked the less rumpled one, a solid red, and flipped the front over and around itself on his neck to create a knot. The fabric twisted backward with his final flip. Growling under his breath, he unfurled the tie and started over.
"It is very telling," Wyatt remarked, "that you helped me pick something to wear for a date, and I'm helping you with… a school meeting. Says a lot about your social life."
Chris failed again with the tie. With a scowl, he yanked it off, stuffed it into a ball, and tossed it at Wyatt's head. Wyatt dodged it with a chuckle. "Fine," Chris huffed. "No suit."
"Trust me," Wyatt assured. "Just go as you."
With a capitulating sigh, Chris started down the line of buttons, sliding them open one by one before he retrieved a casual green t-shirt from where he'd cast it aside on the floor. He exchanged it for the button-down, tugging it over his head, then checked his reflection again in the mirror and flattened the hair that had stood up on end.
"It's fine," Wyatt insisted. "Just go already. It'll be worse if you're late."
Chris knew he was right. With one last attempt to pat wrinkles out of his shirt, he orbed to an empty bathroom at Jake's elementary school and slipped out to the hall. Chris had come once to visit Jake during class, so he had a vague notion of where to find the classroom. Or so he thought. By the time he circled back to the same hallway for the third time, he began to reconsider.
Luckily, a faculty member noticed him from the other end of the hallway and jogged over. "You here for Family Night?" the man asked.
"Yeah. I'm with Jake Porter. He's in, uh… fifth grade?"
The man nodded with a warm smile, placing a hand on Chris's arm. "I know him. That's the fourth grade. This way." He steered Chris down one hallway, then another, before depositing him in front of a door decorated with photos of all the kids in the class. Chris found Jake's face toward the bottom and thanked the man, who waved as he walked away. Steeling himself with a sharp inhale, Chris pulled the door open.
Already several parents had arrived and, from the looks of it, at least one grandmother. Chris and Jake spotted each other at the same time, and Jake popped up from the desk he'd been sitting at and raced over to the door. "You're here!" he chirped. In an uncharacteristic display of enthusiasm, he grabbed Chris by the hand and dragged him over to the woman at the front desk.
Jake waved his free hand toward her. "This is my teacher," he said.
The woman smiled, offering a hand. Chris shook it, feeling uncomfortably like a student himself in that moment. He was certainly closer to student than parent. Would she notice that he didn't belong here? Would she call him out on his presence? "Ann Apostle," the teacher said warmly. "You must be Jake's…" Her smile strained as she tried to figure out how to end that sentence.
"Cousin," Chris supplied quickly. "Chris."
Her smile relaxed. "We don't get many cousins on Family Night, but all are welcome. It's so nice that you came!" Releasing his hand, she gestured around the rest of the room. "The children worked very diligently to prepare the classroom for this event. I'm sure Jake would like to show you around."
Jake guided Chris to his desk and cubby, which he had organized in anticipation of this visit. He showed Chris to the snack table underneath the windows, offering him some oreos and a Dixie cup of either water or juice. While Chris nibbled on a cookie, Jake pointed to the row of pea plants growing in tiny pots in the back of the classroom. His was third from the left, labeled with a thin piece of masking tape, and seemed to be sprouting heartily.
Afterwards, parents, grandparents, and Chris were invited to sit with their kids in the folding chairs that the students had set up beside each desk. Mrs. Apostle told them how much she adored working with their children, how proud the parents should be, and how far the kids had come. The students demonstrated what they had learned by standing up to answer difficult multiplication and division problems as well as questions about science and social studies.
Wyatt had been right; those parents who weren't still in work uniforms had chosen to dress casually. In his shirt and tie, Chris would have stood out. Before Chris took Jake home at the end of the afternoon, Mrs. Apostle stopped by for one last chat. "It was so nice to meet your cousin, Jake. I hope I'll get a chance to meet your mother at parent-teacher conferences."
With Jake's hand clasped in his, Chris felt him shift uncomfortably. "She hadda work tonight," he mumbled.
"Oh, that's all right," Mrs. Apostle replied. "Parents can't always make it. But I look forward to meeting her soon." She bid Jake and Chris goodnight and waved them out of the room.
Chris chose not to bring this up as they headed together down the hall. When Jake turned to direct them to the front doors, Chris gently tugged him in the opposite direction. Jake glanced up at him quizzically, and Chris tossed him a grin. "My car is parked in the bathroom," he quipped.
Jake's expression eased into a smile as Chris led him to the bathroom. Once he had checked that all the stalls were empty, Chris orbed Jake back to his room. There, Jake released his hand and started toward his bed to drop his backpack, but Chris stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Jake." The boy looked up. "I'm really, really glad you invited me this afternoon. I really enjoyed you showing me that—part of yourself."
Jake gave a shy smile, glancing away. "Thanks for coming," he mumbled.
Giving the boy's shoulder one last squeeze, Chris orbed home.
The next Sunday, Piper had Wyatt and Chris practicing their active powers on each other in the attic. Chris held his hands palms-up at shoulder height, drawing in a slow breath as he lifted Wyatt, wobbling, into the air. Throwing someone back took a lot less focus because he needed maneuver only the wind around him rather than the person himself. To maintain control while lifting any living creature, never mind the weight of an almost full-grown human, required a lot more effort.
His muscles began to tremble from exertion. Wyatt rose all the way up to the ceiling. "Hey, careful!" he protested when his head bumped one of the crossbeams.
From behind him, Chris heard his mother alert them, "Thirty more seconds." He squeezed his eyes shut, counting to himself as he called on his reserves. Twenty-nine… twenty-eight…
When a sudden jingle in Chris's head interrupted his concentration, Wyatt came crashing to the floor, the air exploding from his lungs with an "oof!"
"Chris, what was that?" Piper demanded, rushing over to grab Wyatt's outstretched hands and haul him to his feet. "I told you to stop before you lost control. That's part of learning your boundaries: sensing when it's becoming too much before you use up the last of your powers."
"I'm sorry," Chris said, wincing as the jingle became more insistent. "I think it's… the Elders? I think they're calling me."
Piper's face folded into the familiar scowl she always lapsed into when the Elders were mentioned. Rubbing circles against Wyatt's back to help him draw a breath, she sighed. With her free hand, she waved Chris away. "Don't take too long," she insisted grumpily.
Feeling just as put-out as his mother, he orbed to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, where a familiar Elder stood waiting for him. She had short-cropped gray-blond hair and pale blue eyes, and she was smiling, a disturbing look for an Elder. This was the woman who had assigned Jake as his charge.
Had he done something wrong? Had he upset the Elders, perhaps by meeting Jake's teacher the week before? Chris stuffed his hands into his pockets to conceal his uncertainty behind bravado. "You guys have seriously bad timing," he said before she could speak, shouting over the roar of wind to be heard. "I could have killed someone. In case you cared or anything."
The woman seemed unperturbed, perhaps because she sensed his exaggeration. When she responded, her soft voice was somehow heard easily above the rushing air around them, as if she spoke directly into his ear. "You have done well, Christopher."
Chris released a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "So you're not here to reassign my charge?" he asked.
"Quite the contrary," she said. "You have been assigned another. He is a witch who has fallen on difficult times. We believe you can help him find his way."
"Another charge?" Chris echoed. This, he had not expected.
She gave him more details, the man's age, his name, his abilities, even a lingering image in his head of the man's face—but at no point did she address Chris's confusion, the unasked question why suspended between them. When she deemed the conversation over, the Elder orbed away without another word, but Chris, somewhat shell-shocked by the load of new duties thrust upon him, didn't feel remotely prepared to return to the manor.
If he'd thought to consider such a scenario, he would have assumed that getting a charge would feel a lot easier the second time around. He already had a sense of the job, of the responsibility and the necessary tasks ahead. He knew now the importance of building trust, of developing a relationship, of letting the charge set the pace.
But somehow, standing atop the Golden Gate Bridge with this new assignment placed at his feet, he felt more at a loss than the first time around. He felt eminently unqualified. With Jake, the Elder had explained the need for a whitelighter so young and inexperienced. The boy harbored an intense distrust of adults, she had said (though even with his youth, Chris had struggled for many months to get the boy to drop his guard).
For this man, there had been no such explanation. It appeared as if, now that he had passed their trial period, an unspoken probation, the Elders were content graduating him to run-of-the-mill charges in need. Chris should have felt proud, but honestly it left him confused, even a bit overwhelmed.
His mother's voice in his head is what drew his mind back to the present, where the wind howled around him and his fingers had turned numb from the cold. His short-sleeve t-shirt and jeans were not the best choices for lazing around atop the Golden Gate Bridge. Rubbing his palms together to warm them, he set aside his emotions to consider for a different time and orbed back to the attic.
When he rematerialized, the first thing he heard was Wyatt's exasperated, "Finally. Took you long enough." Chris appeared with his back facing his brother, his mother in front of him.
"Sorry," he said in response to her impatient look.
He still felt a bit disoriented, and it must have shown because she dropped the irate expression and asked, "What did they want?" as Wyatt marched across the room to join them.
"They… assigned me a charge," he heard himself say.
From beside him, face unreadable, Wyatt said, "Another one?" Chris frowned at the gruffness in his brother's tone, but Wyatt chose to break eye contact rather than address it. He slunk away from Chris and Piper to collapse onto the sofa, hands tucked under either armpit.
Shrugging off Wyatt's unusually snippy response, Chris glanced back at his mother. She seemed no more pleased than Wyatt, brows furrowed in irritation. "I don't like it," she grumbled. "You're already busy enough with your first charge."
Somehow, Chris found himself in the unlikely position of defending the Elders. "They wouldn't have assigned him if they thought I couldn't handle it," he reasoned.
"Hmph," Piper replied. After a moment, she waved a hand in concession. "Fine. But the same rules apply. If you can't keep up with your schoolwork, he goes." She spoke of the charge like a new puppy that required training.
Wyatt groaned with boredom. "Whatever, can we please get back to the telekinesis already?" He threw up his hands, and Piper acknowledged his comment with a sharp, decisive nod, motioning Chris over to the center of the room for Wyatt to begin his turn.
For the rest of that morning, Wyatt refused to meet Chris's gaze, much to Chris's bewilderment. As soon as Piper declared their practice over, the older boy was out of the room like a shot, leaving Chris no opportunity to confront him about his strange behavior. Maybe he was just sore about getting dropped from the ceiling. At least, that was the only explanation Chris could come up with.
For the time being, Chris let him be. Besides, he had to go meet his new charge. The twenty-eight-year-old Devon, who did not currently have a fixed address. In the living room, Chris settled into a comfortable, cross-legged position on the sofa and closed his eyes. Picturing the face that the Elder had fixed in his mind—shoulder-length black hair with a scruffy five o' clock shadow along his high cheekbones—he reached out with his powers to locate the man. He sensed him stumbling into a soup kitchen in downtown Chicago, just now opening their doors for lunch.
Chris orbed to the alley behind the soup kitchen, landing beside an overstuffed dumpster with trash bags piled high beside it. Carefully stepping around the bags, he looked around for a door into the building.
He spotted it just as a woman in her early twenties, white-blond hair tied into a bun beneath a mesh hairnet, marched through it. She lugged yet another trash bag over one shoulder. When she noticed the dumpster lid, slightly ajar from the contents that already sat above the rim, she heaved a sigh, shaking her head.
Then, her eyes landed on Chris. Immediately, she adopted a non-confrontational expression, holding out a hand toward him so he wouldn't run off. "You don't have to dig through the dumpster," she told him with gentle assurance, "All the food here is free."
Chris felt a blush creep over his cheeks. "Oh, uh, thanks," he mumbled.
The woman ushered him inside and led him down a poorly-lit hallway that opened into a large auditorium lined with tables and chairs. She directed him to the line of people waiting to reach the counter before heading back behind it, where trays of hot food ready to be dished out released plumes of steam into the air.
As Chris headed to the end of the line, his eyes trailed through the people queued up. He spotted his new charge three quarters of the way down. Black, shoulder-length hair and angular features. The man wore dark brown cargo pants with every pocket filled to bursting with knickknacks and supplies, along with a dirty, red t-shirt with a jean jacket—and still more pockets—over it. He was in the process of tugging off a pair of knitted gloves and stuffing them into one half-full pocket on the side of his jacket.
The line began to move just as Chris stepped into it. Pretty soon, others had gathered behind him. He watched his charge like a hawk, making sure not to lose him in the crowd. Once the man got his bowl filled with soup and the remainder of his tray occupied by a thick, round bread roll, the man found himself an empty table to eat in peace. Hunching over his tray, he ripped into his roll with gusto, a curtain of black hair falling forward to obscure his face.
When Chris made it to the counter, he picked up a tray and bowl of his own. He felt uncomfortable at the idea of taking this food—clearly, he didn't need it—but he suspected his charge might be more reticent around him if he came over looking like a volunteer. If he appeared like a kid, homeless just like him, he hoped the man would respond more openly.
Chris accepted as little as possible, though he still ended up with a piping hot bowl of lentil soup. The woman who had found him in the alley smiled with encouragement as he passed her bread station, clicking her metal tongs at him in greeting. Chris smiled wanly back, then, picking up his tray, turned to face the auditorium. Steeling himself, he marched toward his charge at the other end of the room.
He tried to get into character: aggressive, so he seemed believable as a teenager alone on the streets, but not too aggressive that Devon would be put off by him. Best case scenario, Chris hoped to engender a protective feeling in the man so that Devon would let him join him.
Chris came to a standstill in front of Devon's table, watched the lanky hair swing back and forth as he chewed, but the man didn't even look up, his attention glued to his food as he tore off a chunk of bread and dunked it into the bowl.
"Hey, mister," Chris called over the din, "Can I sit here?"
Devon looked up. He had thick eyebrows, set low above dark brown eyes. He eyed Chris up and down while Chris tried his hardest not to fidget beneath the scrutiny. Finally, offering a grunt and a jerky nod, the man popped his saturated piece of bread into his mouth.
Releasing a breath, Chris slid into the seat across from him. Now, how to pave the way for conversation? Start small. Simple. "I've never been here before. This place good?"
At first Chris worried Devon would ignore him, but after spooning some soup into his mouth, swallowing, he gave a gruff, "S'fine. Food's better on Evergreen, but that place runs out sooner."
"Huh," Chris said. He dug into his soup, mostly to have something to do with his hands. It was still fairly hot but a bit too salty for him. Of course, that he had the luxury of being picky did not escape him. Nevertheless, he focused on the food as if it were all that concerned him, keeping tabs on Devon just out of the corner of his eye.
After a comfortable silence, Devon leaned in, stabbed out one hand, and introduced himself. Concealing a smile, Chris shook his hand and did the same. "You from around here?" Devon asked.
"Nah," Chris replied with a shrug, offering nothing further. This didn't seem to perturb Devon. Likely Chris wasn't the only one cagey about his past.
"Aren't you a bit young to be here?" Devon wondered. Even as he spoke, his eyes remained on his bowl, already half empty. Chris probably didn't have much more time with the guy. Devon swallowed another big spoonful.
Shrugging, Chris feigned discomfort. "Isn't everybody?" he countered. "Who would ever want to be in a place like this?"
Tilting his head, Devon replied, "I guess, yeah." He finished the rest of the soup without talking, tilting the bowl into his mouth to get the last of it. For now, Chris had no intention of pushing him further. Using his last piece of bread, Devon swiped his bowl clean and stuffed the piece into the side of his cheek, chewing thoughtfully. "I don't usually eat with people," he remarked.
"Me neither," Chris offered.
Devon gave the barest hint of a smile, so fast Chris almost missed it. "Well, good luck." Pushing his chair back, he picked up his tray and turned to leave. Chris saw him reach into his pocket to withdraw his gloves, tugging them over his hands as he walked away.
"Devon!" Chris called. When the man glanced back over his shoulder, Chris said, "Thanks for letting me sit here. It was good talking to you."
The man scratched the side of his cheek, at the stubble growing in. "Yeah, uh, you, too."
Casually, Chris added, "I hope I see you around." Devon gave a gruff nod, then walked into the crowd. Chris waited at the table a few minutes longer, giving his charge plenty of time to leave the premises so his own departure wouldn't appear suspiciously timed. Once he sensed Devon a couple blocks away from the building, he got up, returned his tray to the front, where a pile had accumulated, and slipped into the narrow hallway where he'd entered. For a first encounter, he considered their conversation successful. Feeling pleased with himself, he orbed home.
That night, Chris dreamt he was back at the soup kitchen, waiting in line for his chance to grab a bite. But instead of a counter with hot meals, there sat a panel of three chairs. On one side sat Agramon, the demon who, months ago, had attacked Ms. Gowell, and on the other Bar-shed; both wore flowing, black judges' robes. While Bar-shed's was buttoned up to the collar, Agramon's fell open to expose the rubbery skin of his bare chest, the flesh there a burnt shade of maroon. The middle seat remained empty. People ahead of him in line bowed their heads in reverence as they slid their trays along.
When it was Chris's turn, Agramon smiled benevolently as Chris ducked his head and held his tray out. "I'm just here for some soup," he mumbled.
Bar-shed leaned forward in his seat, hands gripping the counter. "You don't get food until the Source passes judgment."
"Judgment?" Chris protested, "For what?"
Rolling his eyes, Bar-shed sneered, "For your crime."
From behind, someone nudged him in the shoulder. He swiveled around to see a silver-haired witch hugging a tray of her own while she glowered at him. Tapping her sandaled foot against the floor, she said, "Do you mind? We're all waiting here." She gestured to the line behind her that seemed to extend to infinity.
"But—" he spluttered helplessly, waving toward the judges, "The Source of All Evil isn't here yet!"
Agramon interrupted with a single silver claw tapping on the counter to offer, "He should be here soon, don't worry." Just as he finished speaking, a pillar of flames shot up like a wall between him and Bar-shed. When it vanished, there sat an imposing figure wearing a hooded cloak beneath another robe, this one with the judicial frills that the other two demons wore. The hood of the under-robe was pulled up so Chris couldn't see his face.
"Ah!" Agramon clapped, his sharp nails clicking together. "Now we can start. Good luck, Chris."
On the counter before the Source was a wooden gavel and sound block, which he drew toward him. Shaking back his overlong sleeve revealed a skeletal hand, whose fingers twitched meaningfully. The gavel crept into the air before striking the sound block twice with a noise that echoed through the entire auditorium. A whispery voice reverberated inside Chris's skull: How do you plead?
"Wh-I didn't do it!" Chris cried, gesturing frantically with the plastic tray still in his grip.
Bar-shed drummed his fingers against the counter's surface. "Don't be silly. I was there," he cut in.
"So was I," said the silver-haired witch behind Chris. He wished she would keep her thoughts to herself; she wasn't helping his case at all.
Slowly, the Source turned his head first to Agramon, then to Bar-shed. They seemed to confer without words. Finally, the Source flicked his wrist to raise the gavel once more. It hovered there, waiting. The voice boomed now. And the verdict is… Chris held his breath, his heart thrumming in his throat.
Suddenly, the demons, the counter, the whole auditorium, melted away. In its place appeared a black expanse that slowly filled in with colors and shapes until Chris was standing at the center of a hazy version of his subconscious abyss. There was something surreal about his surroundings, though, as if each space were just a painting, as if he stood at the center of a three hundred sixty-degree art gallery.
Before him stood all the selves he had collected these past couple months, each watching him with varying levels of interest. Demon was the first to speak. "As if you could be found guilty of anything, goody-two-shoes," he scoffed, shaking his head so his ponytail flip-flopped from one shoulder to the other.
Chris scowled when Perry chuckled. "What?" the man said defensively, "He's not wrong."
The scenery around them continued to sharpen until finally they began to look real and the dregs of his dream shook loose like fireflies released from a jar, scattering away from his steadily clearing mind. Several of the selves chose to return to their wedges without engaging in the conversation, but Demon, Perry, and Mutt remained. Demon leaned an elbow against Perry's shoulder, propping his cheek on his fist as he cajoled Chris, "Ah, come on. For you that's even a compliment!"
Somehow, though this was in some ways quite true, Demon's tone had made it sound insulting. Raising an eyebrow, Perry shook Demon off him. The creature seemed unperturbed by the snub.
"Can't a guy sleep in peace?" Chris grumbled as a chuckling Demon wandered back to his lair. Shaking his head, Perry tucked away a smile as he, too, walked away. Chris looked down at the last remaining version of himself, the scruffy, little boy who stared at him with open amusement. Feeling irritable, Chris demanded, "What?"
Mutt eyed him sideways for a moment, then said, "You got weird dreams, mister."
Chris only sighed.
When he came downstairs for breakfast the next morning, only Piper, Leo, and Prue were there. "Wyatt headed out to the bus stop early," Piper said when he asked. "There's scrambled eggs in the frying pan."
But after he scarfed down breakfast and raced out to make the bus in time, he found Wyatt nowhere in sight. Frowning, he boarded the bus and tucked himself into an empty seat.
He didn't spot Wyatt when he arrived at school either. Trying to ignore the niggling feeling in the back of his mind—was his brother avoiding him?—he said good morning to Dwight and headed to his first class.
His last period on Monday was his library volunteering gig, so he skipped out a few minutes early to make sure he wouldn't miss Wyatt in their orbing spot between the giant air conditioning units behind the school. It was lucky that he did because Wyatt arrived almost as soon as the bell rang. He missed a step, stumbling, when he saw his brother had beaten him there.
"Oh. Hey," Wyatt said, deliberately avoiding Chris's gaze.
Chris frowned. "You weren't on the bus this morning," he said.
Shifting uncomfortably, his eyes on the ground, Wyatt shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, I, uh, decided to orb."
Wyatt had never been great at deception. Now appeared no different. With narrowed eyes, Chris said, "You must've gotten in pretty early."
His brother shrugged. "I had a project due." Brushing past Chris so he could conceal himself from public view, he mumbled, "See you at home," and orbed before Chris could say anything else. Growling under his breath, Chris followed.
But when he rematerialized in the foyer, Wyatt was nowhere to be found. Closing his eyes, Chris sent out his sensing powers in thin tendrils, spreading through the house until they came back with a location: Wyatt's bedroom. That settled it; Wyatt was definitely avoiding him.
Orbing straight to his room was not, in and of itself, unusual, except that neither ever really did so. Whether because it felt more normal to appear by the front door or whether it landed them closer to the kitchen for a quick snack or whether for any other number of reasons, habit had the boys almost always reappearing in the foyer. That Wyatt had not done so told Chris everything he needed to know. Everything, of course, except the all-important why.
Bypassing the kitchen, Chris marched straight upstairs and rapped hard on Wyatt's door. When his brother didn't answer, Chris called, "I know you're in there!" He waited another second for a response that didn't come, then slammed the door open.
Wyatt was at his desk, but Chris could tell the hard-at-work impression was only a ruse. It looked as if his brother had thrown himself into his chair at the last second; he hadn't even had time to open his notebook. That didn't stop Wyatt from glaring up at Chris as if he'd been interrupted. "What? I'm busy."
Chris crossed his arms. "All right, what gives? Why have you been avoiding me?"
Wyatt shifted his eyes away, hunching his shoulders. "I'm not avoiding you," he muttered to his closed notebook.
"Very believable," Chris shot back. "Seriously, what's going on? Are you still mad that I dropped you yesterday? It was an accident. And I apologized. What more do you want?"
Wyatt looked genuinely baffled. "What are you talking about?" he asked, finally making eye contact.
Chris tried to read deceit in Wyatt's expression and tone but discerned none. Stepping farther into the room, he eased the door shut to give himself a second to collect himself. More calmly, he said, "Yesterday. When I got that call from the Elders and lost my grip on you." As soon as Chris mentioned the summons, Wyatt broke his gaze away, pressing his lips together. But Chris had no idea what to make of that. "Okay, if it's not that, then what? Why are you mad at me?"
"I'm not mad, I'm…" Running a frustrated hand through his curls, Wyatt expelled a breath of air through gritted teeth. "Look, it's got nothing to do with you, okay? It's a me thing."
"What is?" Chris pressed.
Wyatt turned his chair so he could face his brother head-on. "I'm not mad, all right? I'm happy for you. Really. You deserve it."
Deserve what? Chris wanted to ask, but Wyatt seemed ready to come clean and Chris didn't want to interrupt his flow. Instead, he silently nodded for him to continue.
Eyes squinted in discomfort, Wyatt said, "It's not like it's your fault at all, but… Well, I am two years older. I didn't think about it when it was just one, but after the second one it starts to feel kind of… personal?" He leaned forward in the chair, steepling his fingers together between his knees as he watched the floor. He dug one sneaker against it, dragging it back and forth to create a line in the carpet.
Chris stared at him blankly. "One what?" he asked at last.
Wyatt glanced up. "One charge."
Even with this information, it felt like it took ages for the pieces in Chris's mind to fall into place. "You're mad that the Elders gave me two charges before giving you any," he said slowly.
"Not mad," Wyatt insisted, and Chris believed him. His tight expression conveyed hurt, not anger, a sort of frozen wince. "Just…" The older boy shrugged, then flopped back in his chair. "I don't blame you," he said. "Really. It's just… a little hard being around you right now. Like I said…" He opened his hands as a peace offering. "It's a me problem."
Chris ribbed his brother all the time, but the idea of being the unintentional source of Wyatt's pain on such a deep level (and he could tell Wyatt was hurt deeply by this, though Wyatt had attempted to downplay its significance) upset Chris more than he would have anticipated. "I… I'm sorry," he said. "It never even occurred to me."
Wyatt assured him once again that he wasn't to blame, and Chris, with nothing else he could think of to say, shuffled out of the room with much less energy than when he'd barged in. He tried getting some homework done but couldn't put the thought out of his mind.
At some point that afternoon he spent a bit of time with Jake. He came home in time for dinner with the family. Later, he even practiced sensing Devon from afar (squatting in an old, abandoned warehouse that had been condemned). The whole time, the question in his mind continued to gain traction, ballooning inside his chest.
Why had the Elders bypassed his brother? Not once now but twice. Even Jake could have been assigned to Wyatt, who, like Chris, was a less threatening teenager for the adult-shy boy. More than that, Chris, unable to heal, was clearly the inferior option. Chris didn't think this out of self-consciousness or resentment toward his brother's power; it was an objective observation. When Jake had needed healing after the brutes' attack, Chris had taken him straight to Wyatt.
Chris lay in bed staring at the ceiling, hands tucked behind his head as the question kept him contemplative for much of the night. In the morning, he gave Wyatt space, which Wyatt seemed to appreciate. When it came time to leave for school, he let Wyatt leave ahead of him, ostensibly so he could grab an assignment he had left on his desk in his bedroom. But once upstairs, Chris orbed back to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the early morning wind yanked his shirt to and fro. He discarded his knapsack beside the vertical beam, safe from the onslaught of air that would otherwise carry it over the edge.
"Hey!" Chris shouted to the sky. "Hey! I have questions!"
It took several minutes before the Elders deigned answer him, sending down the same woman as before. Chris spun to face her as the orbs coalesced into a body. He tried to reign in his ire; he knew he'd get further with questions than accusations.
"Christopher." The woman nodded in greeting as the wind whipped at the hem of her robes. "Have you yet introduced yourself to your charge?"
She had given him the perfect opening. "Yeah, about that," he jumped in. "I've been wondering. Why hasn't Wyatt gotten any assignments yet?" The Elder's eyes shuttered. Though her expression remained fixed, the smile suddenly seemed to strain, a tic twitching in her jaw. Chris narrowed his eyes. The possibility that this had been some unintentional oversight rapidly shrank away.
After a tense moment, the Elder responded with a vague platitude—something about Chris's destiny as a whitelighter, Chris didn't pay it much mind. What was clear was that she had danced around the topic of Wyatt entirely.
Chris folded his arms. "Why not Wyatt," he repeated flatly.
It was rare to catch an Elder getting flustered. "You are different people with different gifts to offer," she spluttered, spreading her arms wide as if to convey a sense of innocence and wisdom, of nothing to hide. The gesture was lost on Chris; her guilty expression said it all.
Chris took a threatening step forward. "I'm not visiting Devon again until I get a straight answer."
Closing her eyes for a moment, the Elder pressed her palms together in front of her chest as if in contemplative prayer and sighed. "Christopher, your brother does not meet the criteria necessary to become a whitelighter." She looked at him with something akin to an apology crinkling her eyes.
"What are you talking about?" Chris demanded. "We're exactly the same. If I can be one, so can he."
"No, Christopher. He cannot." When Chris waited stubbornly, she filled the silence. "He presents a significant liability. There is the potential for great darkness in him." Her gaze was steady as she assessed him. She seemed to expect Chris to read between the lines, as if this secret information were something he, too, shared.
Did he? What "potential darkness" did Wyatt possess beyond the average dichotomous nature that existed within every human? As far as Chris knew, Wyatt was just as normal as anyone else. Except… except for that tiny blip where he had an alternate self who had taken over the world. But the Elders couldn't hold him accountable for actions he hadn't personally committed. Could they?
"You can't be talking about the future before my other self saved him," he said slowly.
The Elder grimaced but didn't refute the statement. Instead, she said, "A whitelighter is a source of goodness and guidance for his or her charge. We cannot put those charges at risk."
Chris felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. Without much space on the beam, there wasn't room for him to storm away. He had to resign himself to putting distance between them by backing up until he almost tripped over his knapsack. His shoulders bumped into the steel bar behind him. None of this translated into patience for the crescendo of his ire. Through gritted teeth, he snapped, "You can't blame him for any of that. It never happened!"
"In a different timeline, it did," she corrected, then stepped toward him. "Of everyone, Christopher, you should understand most the way that multiple timelines unfold, none farce nor fiction."
If he wanted her to see reason, he had to fight back his fury now. Trying to channel his inner Perry, who could put the mission above any emotional turmoil, he forced his voice to stay even as he bit out, "Unfold, yes. But they don't overlap. Listen, I have this power for a reason." He tried to appeal to her faith in destiny with an, "That timeline was obviously meant to be." She said nothing, but she seemed at least to be hearing him out, which Chris took as an encouraging sign. "How's this for liability? I just found out in another timeline I'm a full-on demon."
If the silently raised eyebrows were anything to go by, this statement caught her off guard but nevertheless did not deter her. "That is different," she replied at last. "Your other timelines do not intersect with ours the way your future self's did."
What Chris wouldn't give for Perry's reassuringly unfailing logic right now. "I have that demon in my subconscious, living inside me right now. He's got more of a chance to influence me than any evil version of Wyatt has to influence him," he pressed on. Without even noticing, he ran his hands through his wildly flying hair. "Look, I have more than half a dozen versions of myself, and the only thing I've learned in all of this is that we are all totally different people. There is no way one of us could ever just become one of the others. There's a whole universe separating our experiences. Did I have the capacity to become all of those versions of me? Sure. But I didn't. And now, it would be impossible."
He gave her a moment to consider this. He didn't feel like an expert. If anything, he felt more lost about time than he ever had before, but his argument relied on his self-assurance in this moment. And logically, he was the best equipped to convince someone about the nuances of time. He just had to feign conviction. Certainly nobody else in this world could know more about timelines than he. "We all have the capacity for evil. Even," he reminded her pointedly, "the Elders. An Elder, after all, is the one who turned Wyatt in the first place."
She took a small step back, as if the statement came with a physical blow. Remorseless, Chris pointed out, "If you guys are qualified to oversee the whole whitelighter-charge system, then Wyatt is definitely qualified to have a charge."
Breathing hard, Chris watched the Elder's guarded face. She was quiet for several long minutes. At some point, Chris started to wonder if he'd end up late to school. But he couldn't be the one to broach the silence now, he knew. The ball was in her court.
At long last, the Elder opened her mouth to say, "We must confer." She turned her back to him, raised her arms, palms up, and closed her eyes, head tilted heavenward. A steady, orange glow encompassed her. Chris observed this, feeling unsure of himself. Was he supposed to wait here? Or would she summon him back once she was finished? She hadn't given him instructions, so he stood there, an awkward outsider, shifting from foot to foot as the seconds dragged on.
At some point, he knelt to retrieve his knapsack in preparation to depart. He could check back between periods.
But just then, the Elder turned, lowering her arms as the glow dimmed and disappeared. Biting his lip, Chris swallowed down an impatient, "Well?" He could not, however, conceal the exacerbated quirk of his eyebrows.
"We will consider assigning Wyatt a charge." Chris frowned. Consider? That was not quite the concession she seemed to believe it was.
"Not good enough," he replied coolly, shouldering his knapsack. "Here's the deal: I'm not accepting this new charge. You have two options. Either, you give him to Wyatt, or you find a different whitelighter for Jake, too, because I'm out."
He took a major risk making such a bold claim, especially because he would be devastated to lose Jake and had no intention of allowing that to happen. But he also knew the Elder had spoken the truth when she had told him Jake didn't trust adults. The Elders would be hard-pressed to find another whitelighter who could engender the boy's trust. Loath as he was to use it, Jake was his best bargaining chip. Hopefully, the Elder would not call his bluff.
The Elder narrowed her eyes at this ultimatum but said nothing. Chris kept his gaze hard. Finally, after glancing briefly skyward once more, she said, "Devon will be assigned to Wyatt."
Chris felt a rush of air leave his lungs. He nodded once, forcing himself to remain calm. "Thank you," he said, then orbed to school.
Chris thought he would have until that night before Wyatt accosted him. (That it would happen at all he took for granted.) It took the Elders so long to deliberate over discussions that he did not realize how quickly they could act once a decision had been reached. But as he headed into the cafeteria after the lunch bell rang, a hand grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into a slowly emptying hallway. Instinct had Chris raising his fists for a fight until he saw his brother's grim face staring back at him.
Once the last student exited the corridor, Wyatt said, his voice barely above a whisper in case of unexpected stragglers, "The Elders summoned me during class this morning." His raised eyebrows let Chris know that Wyatt strongly suspected his involvement. "You never made it to the bus this morning."
Chris propped himself against the row of lockers, ignoring the door handle that dug in between his shoulder blades. Feigning ignorance would not help here, he knew. Instead, he tried for nonchalance. "I didn't want the charge, okay? And you were right. You should have gotten one before me."
He jumped when Wyatt's fist slammed into the locker beside his head. "I wasn't looking for a charity charge, Chris!" he snapped. Nervously, Chris cast his gaze around to make sure no one had overheard and come to determine the source of the shout. He patted the air with his hand to signal for Wyatt to lower his voice. Frustrated, Wyatt paced away from him.
With an annoyed sigh, Chris trailed after him. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" He ran a hand through his hair. "It honestly wasn't really about you." In his head he excused the fib. After all, the Elders had been focused more on an alternate timeline version of him than on Wyatt himself. "I promise I'll explain it all later, all right? It's just… Dwight's kind of waiting for me…" He jerked his thumb toward the hallway that led to the cafeteria.
Wyatt scoffed, "Fine, whatever," and marched past Chris, disappearing around the bend. By the time Chris reached the corner, Wyatt had entirely vanished from view.
That afternoon after school, Chris knocked on Wyatt's bedroom door. He had given this conversation a lot of thought over the course of the rest of the day. Mostly, he had considered lying. Witnessing how hard Wyatt had taken the revelation about his evil self made Chris wonder how he might take the Elders' prejudice based on that self. But to be honest, none of the ideas he came up with fared any better. Besides, Chris knew the Elders were out of line. Hiding their reasoning would tell Wyatt that he gave the belief merit, at least a little.
So when Wyatt reluctantly let him in, Chris told him the truth, all of it. Afterwards, deep in thought, Wyatt stared at his hands, running one thumb over the opposite palm. Gently, Chris prodded, "I hope you know I never would have agreed to a charge if I had known any of that. He rightfully belongs to you."
Without looking up, Wyatt backed away until his thighs hit the mattress. Sitting down on the bed, he sighed, "They're kind of not wrong, though, aren't they?"
Quietly, Chris sat down beside him, hands gripping the mattress on either side of his legs. "When I was kidnapped by those demons," he said softly, "I killed someone." It was the first time he had admitted it aloud to someone other than himself, and the words made his chest tighten.
Wyatt glanced up in surprise, but Chris's eyes, attached to the floor, didn't notice. "A witch. I never learned her name." He blinked moisture away and added, mostly just to have something to say, "Mom and Dad don't know."
A gentle grip landed on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. When he looked up to meet Wyatt's gaze, his brother said, "The demons altered your perception. It wasn't really you."
Shaking his head, Chris said, "I don't know how to explain it, but I was still me. I could feel it. I made all those choices." Casting a sidelong glance at his brother, he quirked his lips and remarked, "Certainly more than you made any of those choices in a timeline that doesn't even exist anymore."
Rolling his eyes, Wyatt shoved him with his shoulder. Chris released a half-hearted chuckle. "What I'm saying is we all have the capacity for evil. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be given the chance to prove otherwise."
He left Wyatt's room some time later after offering the very limited intel he had gathered on Devon. (The Elders had already shared the same basic information they had with Chris, and he didn't have much more to add, but it felt nice to bond with Wyatt over shared whitelighter responsibilities.) Strangely, though Chris had revealed his secret for the purpose of helping Wyatt, he found himself feeling a bit lighter than he had before.
Would he say he had forgiven himself for robbing an innocent of her life? No. But he could accept, at least somewhat, the words he had directed toward his brother: that having the potential within him to commit a heinous act did not make that his identity. Though he could not reverse it and would regret it always, he could try finally to move forward.
Reviews are golden! Please drop a note if you've read this far.
To guest reviewer, glad you enjoy the interactions between Chris and Ms. Gowell. I have a lot of fun with the should-be-in-charge-but-less-knowledgeable-about-magic dynamic. The more responsible character becoming the student, and all the fun that grows out of that.