Thank you, dtrotaite, for joining this story when you did. I was feeling a little silly for coming back to this so many years after abandoning it and assumed no one would still be reading Charmed stories at all, let alone mine. You came at just the right time to nudge me to keep going.

(Year: 1999)

Ten-year-old Carmen exploded into the kitchen, red-faced and gasping for breath. She slid to a stop on the linoleum floor and doubled over with her hands gripping her bare, knobby kneecaps. She wore a lavender tank top slicked with sweat that ran down the back of her neck and a pair of khaki shorts.

From in front of the stove, where she stood stirring rice in a simmering pot, Carmen's mother scowled over her shoulder. "What have I told you about running in—"

Carmen didn't let her finish the reprimand. Still sucking in huge gulps of air, she cried, "Mother! Mother! Guess what I found!"

Mother narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What did you find?"

Carmen didn't seem to notice that her mother didn't share her enthusiasm. She bounced up and down on the heels of her sandals, squeaking, "A kitty! He doesn't have a mommy, so I'm gonna be his mommy now."

Mother dropped the wooden stirring spoon and spun around to grab her daughter by the shoulders. Carmen winced at the bruising grip. Giving the girl a vigorous shake, the woman demanded, "Where is it? Did you touch that thing?" Without waiting for a response, she dragged Carmen by one elbow toward the sink. She jerked the faucet open and thrust the girl's wrists into the cold stream. Carmen was too stunned to say a word. "Those things carry germs, Carmen! Wash your filthy hands this minute!"

"But, Mother," Carmen protested as her mother scrubbed between her fingers with dish soap, "The kitty needs lunch. He's hungry, too." As she spoke, she tried in vain to tug her arms back out of the water. By now Mother had scrubbed all the way down to her elbows with foamy, lilac suds.

"You are not to go near that foul thing!" Mother shrieked right beside her ear. "I'm calling animal control to get it taken care of this instant." Finally, she released her daughter. As the girl dried her hands and arms on a nearby towel, Mother moved to the cordless landline charging in its station on the counter. She snatched it up and began to dial.

Before she could place it to her ear, Carmen launched herself forward, grabbing frantically at Mother's arm and clinging for dear life. "You can't!" she sobbed in a panic. "Please don't! They'll kill him, they'll kill him, and he's my baby. You wouldn't give away your baby, would you?" She stared up at her mother with glistening eyes and wet cheeks. "You wouldn't give away me, right?"

Had Mother paused, even just for a moment, she might have recognized the plea for what it was, a daughter's desperate vulnerability, might have seen that her child needed a soft reassurance, an embrace from her last remaining parent. But she barely looked in Carmen's eyes. Coldly, she shook the grip off. "That mongrel is not your baby, Carmen," she scoffed. "You can't just bring dirty, smelly animals home to keep." She raised the phone to her ear.

Carmen squeezed her eyes shut and balled her hands into fists. Cheeks turning red, she used her trump card: "Daddy would've let me!" she cried with defiance.

Mother stood frozen for a moment, as if she'd been slapped. Her mouth twisted into something like a sneer. "Well, I'm not Daddy, am I?" she snapped.

Thick tears rolling down her cheeks, Carmen sucked in a breath. At the top of her lungs, she shrieked, "I hate you! I hate you! I wish you'd-a died instead of Daddy! I hate your stinkin' guts!" Without waiting for a response, the ten-year-old fled to her room.

[Wednesday, October 30, 2019]

That morning, Chris got a late start. A part of him considered whining to his mom about a day off, but his other side realized she might actually let him. And much as he relished playing hooky, it lost its appeal when it was born of his mom's overwhelmed worry. He hated to get babied after a demon attack. So though he moved at a lethargic pace, he got ready for school without complaint. He tolerated the anticipated concerns as Piper forced him into a seat for a hot breakfast, dutifully ate under both his parents' watchful gazes, and protested only when his mother broached the subject of staying home herself.

Ultimately, with a bit of cajoling and an extracted promise that he would call if the day were too strenuous, she caved. In the end he and Wyatt made it to the bus, but just barely.

With his cheek flattened against the window glass and his knees squashed up against the seat in front of him, Chris dozed off and on throughout the ride. When the bus rolled to a stop at school, Chris's limbs ached more fiercely than they had before. Healing could bring someone back from the brink of death, but it couldn't counter the full-body residual ache that ghosted through him in the aftermath. And it certainly couldn't prevent the new pains from having folded himself into a space sized for a third grader.

"From now on, I'm orbing," he grumbled, stumbling toward the school building. When he got to his locker, someone was already there waiting for him.

Casually as he could, Chris sidestepped the intruder and spun the combination into the lock. "Hey, Dwight," he said. His mind raced to remember what had occurred only yesterday. "How was the, uh, movie?"

"Didn't see it," Dwight responded shortly. His arms were crossed, fingers of one hand drumming against the arm of the other one. "The person who was gonna help me make fun of it decided he had better things to do."

"I was sick," Chris protested.

Dwight's stare hardened. "Yesterday you said something 'came up,'" he challenged.

"It was. I mean, it did. I just—I was really worn out afterwards, so I fell asleep. Completely forgot about calling you back."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"Look, Dwight—"

The bell interrupted Chris's explanation, which was relief enough to him. He didn't know what to say anyway.

Slamming his locker shut, he said, "I'll explain later, okay? Mr. Garcia will kill me if I'm late again." Chris headed to bio while Dwight left in the other direction. The witch slipped into his seat just as Mr. Garcia closed the door. He heaved a sigh of relief, opened his notebook, and let his mind float to more important subjects—like when the next bell would ring.

Chris made sure to enter his next class with a throng of other students. He stole himself a seat in the last row and busied himself with his knapsack, keeping his eyes firmly on his desk. When he and the rest of the class finally found order, however, he let himself chance a glance up. Ms. Gowell was staring directly at him.

Immediately, he dropped his gaze, but their eyes had already met.

Before she could think, Marcy blurted out, "What are you doing here?"

Growing hot, the boy sank deeper into his chair. He tried to mumble out an adequate response but could think of nothing to say. Instead, he busied himself with flipping pages in his notebook to find a clean page, hoping she would take the hint.

A voice to his left interrupted the standoff. "Uh, Ms. Gowell, is everything okay?"

Marcy shook her head and forced herself to step back. "It's fine," she said. "Where was I?"

"About to start?" offered another student.

Pasting a smile on, Marcy returned to the board. "Right. Thanks. Okay, so…"

The sound of the bell preceded the collective shuffling of papers and chairs scraping back from their desks. Knapsacks zipped shut, and as people walked toward the door they found their friends; voices rose in a hum. From her own desk, Marcy called above the din, "Mr. Halliwell, a word?"

She heard his audible groan, saw him motion Dwight Ryder away (though Dwight seemed to have been leaving anyway), and waited until the rest of the class had cleared the room before addressing him. While she waited, she straightened her own papers, attempting a façade of professionalism that had escaped her during her earlier outburst. Finally, the room was empty, and she looked up. Her first question took him by surprise: "How are you feeling?"

He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Uh… fine?"

"What are you doing here? After what happened yesterday…"

Chris quirked a smile. "I thought I should stay home to recuperate. My mom didn't agree." Partially true. Okay, not really. Piper had been reluctant to let him out of her sight that morning and did so only after careful scrutiny of his cleared breakfast plate. Still, even she had acknowledged, however begrudgingly, that her children couldn't stay home after every attack. "I do see her point," he continued with nonchalance, cutting off Marcy as she opened her mouth to protest. "When you almost die every other week…"

Her mouth snapped shut. It occurred to her suddenly that she had been privy to his deep secret for a grand total of one day. How many times had he experienced similar situations, breezing through another school day as if he hadn't nearly died the afternoon before? "How often?" she asked faintly.

Chris blinked at her in confusion. "Er… How often what?"

"How often have you come to school after an attack like that?"

"Actually, darklighters rarely attack. Which is kind of surprising. You'd think with all the hybrids in our family—"

"Chris."

The nonchalance faded. "I don't know," he admitted. "I never kept track." He offered an apologetic shrug. "A few."

It dizzied her, this lifestyle she couldn't fathom living. She had spent the night before drenched in fear and slept fitfully through nightmares, had contemplated calling in sick herself. That he lived this way at his age, that this was his normal…

Though she felt reluctant to release him, she could think of nothing else to say. Without a word, she scratched out a late pass and sent him on his way.

It seemed Dwight was determined to avoid Chris. When the bell called for an end to lunch, with Dwight nowhere in sight, Chris sidestepped throngs of people and forced his way through the hallway. The boy stood stuffing books back into his locker, so Chris stopped on the other side of the open door and waited to get noticed. It took a couple minutes; several items kept clattering out onto the floor.

When the door finally slammed shut, Dwight, in his rush, nearly marched right into his friend. He stopped short, stepped backward, and stared at Chris in silence. After a moment, he muttered, "I'm late for class," and tried to slip between Chris and the row of lockers.

Chris's arm shot out in front of him. "Wait," he said, a hopeful request.

"The bell rang," Dwight said, but he didn't leave.

"It'll only take a minute. You don't have to say anything if you don't want. I know it seems like I've been kind of MIA lately, and I know I've been a bit of a jerk—"

"Just a bit?" Dwight interjected, unimpressed.

"Hey, I'm apologizing here."

Dwight ducked his head, hiding a smile on the inside of his cheek. He shrugged and waved his hand. "Fine. Continue."

"Thank you. Look, I'm not trying to excuse myself. Everyone has crazy stuff going on in life." My family crazier than most, he thought, but didn't voice it. It probably wouldn't help his cause.

"That's true," Dwight agreed, "everyone does."

"So look…" Chris squirmed. Dwight wasn't going to make this easier for him. "Yeah… So I'm sorry for missing the movie, okay?" When his friend said nothing, Chris hesitated, shifting his wait from one foot to the other. "Well…?"

"You said I didn't have to say anything if I didn't want to," Dwight pointed out impatiently. "And now we're really late to class."

"Oh. Right… Sorry." Chris turned to go.

When he was halfway down the hall, he heard Dwight call, "Halliwell!" He turned to watch his friend jog over. This time, Dwight wore a lopsided grin. When he caught up, he clapped Chris on the back. "You need to get away from your family. They're having a bad influence on you."

Chris frowned. "What do you mean?"

"A whole awkward, heartfelt apology? I mean, that was painful."

"Shut up, man," Chris mumbled, blushing and shrugging the hand off his shoulder. "I acted like an idiot, and I was just smoothing the whole thing over, that's all."

"I already knew you were an idiot. No need to apologize for it." For all his words, though, the boy seemed much more at ease with Chris now that the air had been cleared.

When the last bell rang, Chris and Dwight opted to skip the bus and walk home instead. Dwight dug a miniature football out of his knapsack, and they threw it between each other as they ambled down the sidewalk. They passed Mrs. Bringley, who lived next door to the schoolyard. Wearing ancient gray slippers and a pink terry robe, she watched people pass from the white wicker chair on her front porch. When she saw the kids who started to disperse from the yard, she scowled, muttered something that neither Dwight nor Chris could make out, and tried to storm inside. Her dramatic exit was thwarted by her shuffling gait, but she made up for that with an extra loud slam of her front door.

Walking past her house was an old man neither boy recognized, heavy around the middle. His oddly smallish ears were partially obscured by a floppy, waterproof fisherman's hat. When Chris caught his eyes, the man gave a nod and spread his lips in a grin. He was missing a front tooth, as if, at six years old, no one had reminded him to grow another one.

The football bouncing off Chris's chest helped him refocus on their game of catch. Kneeling to pick it up, he chucked it back to Dwight. As it was lobbed back into his hands, Dwight said to him, "So why didn't you call me back yesterday?"

Chris, who had hoped, perhaps unreasonably, that the problem had been dealt with, sighed. "I told you I didn't m—"

"I know, I know. I'm just curious what it was, you know?" He caught the ball Chris lobbed his way.

"My aunt was tutoring me. She's got a knack for biology," Chris said. Grain of truth, he silently excused. "We were supposed to be done on time, but then my cousin called. Something about a fire in the house. My aunt totally panicked, of course. Turned out to be no big deal, but we had to drive down there, calm Bobby down."

"Isn't Bobby, like, five?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So your aunt left him home alone?" Dwight raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Right. I mean, of course not." At times like this, Chris wished his family wasn't quite so tight-knit. Did other people's friends end up this intimately familiar with their extended family tree? Dwight had met all of Chris's family members at one point or another, even his often-travelling grandfather. He was supposed to be at the neighbor, but he must have forgotten and just went home. My aunt forgets to lock the door, so he probably just slipped right in."

They walked in silence for a few minutes, chucking the ball back and forth. Chris used the time to practice sensing his charge. Jake was walking home, too. He'd taken a shortcut through someone's backyard and was trying to tiptoe around a fenced-off cluster of dead flower stems.

The next throw bounced off Dwight's right shoulder and rolled into the street. Only after Chris knelt to retrieve it did the witch realize his friend had stopped walking altogether. Frowning, he glanced up. Without looking around, Dwight said out of the corner of his mouth, "Didn't we see that guy before?"

Chris's gaze followed the direction of his friend's to a hunched-over form—a fisherman's hat. The old man was looking straight at them. Immediately, Chris looked away, heart pounding against his chest. His mind spun, puzzling together the implications and, even before he had concluded, piecing together a rough plan.

Demon, he thought, mind working furiously as he cast another glance at the man. Then, looking at Dwight, who had shrugged off his unease and passed the guy off as nothing more than a weird old man: Dwight has no way of defending himself. I could split ways with him, go off on my own. The demon can't be after him.

"Chris, you throwing or what?"

Chris opened his mouth to make up a story about a forgotten appointment, but then closed it again. Or, he realized suddenly, the demon could decide to use Dwight as bait to get to me. Chris was unsure but one thing he did know—he could not put his friend in danger.

"Yeah." Chris hurled the football with a little too much force. Dwight had to take several steps back to catch it.

"Uh, Chris? Everything okay?"

"Of course. We'll be fine," Chris mumbled. Dwight frowned, studying Chris's distracted expression. For his part, Chris kept his gaze off the demon. He didn't want to tip him off until Dwight was safe at home. Resuming their trek at a significantly faster pace, Chris called back to his friend, "Come on, we'll be late."

"Wh—?" Dwight ran to catch up. "Late for what? When did we have something to be late for?"

"Yeah," Chris answered uselessly. "I mean, my mom had a—thing—for me. Forgot until now. She'll murder me if I don't do it."

"Wait, do what?"

"You know, all that stuff I promised, like, a year ago. She finally got fed up."

He quickened his pace further, leaving a bewildered Dwight to wonder, "What stuff?" Feeling distinctly out of the loop, he hurried after his friend.

When they reached Dwight's house, he lingered on the porch. "Chris, you sure you don't want to come in? You're acting kind of… strange."

Chris cast a quick glance behind him and determined that the old man was still tailing them. For a demon he sure didn't do "stealthy." Chris hoped his skills proved equally poor in battle. "Yeah," he said, "I mean, no—I'm fine. Just gotta get home. I'll call you?" When Dwight raised an eyebrow, Chris amended, "I'll try to call you. Now that you mention it, though, I am feeling a little off. I might just, you know, go home and go right to sleep. But if I'm awake I'll definitely call you."

"What about that stuff your mom wants you to do?"

"She, uh, won't mind. What's one more day?"

Dwight blinked at the sudden change in tune Piper had apparently had over the course of their walk. "Okay, Chris. Well, feel… better?" He started to close the door.

"Dwight, wait." Dwight opened it again, eyes crinkling with worry.

"What is it?"

"Just… stay inside tonight, okay?" When Dwight opened his mouth to argue, Chris stopped him. "Look, I know I'm acting crazy, and I know it's probably just because I'm feeling a bit off but—I have a bad feeling about something."

"About what?"

"I don't know," Chris sighed, and that was the truth. He knew nothing about this demon's motives, no idea if he would follow or stay to harass his friend instead. "Please stay inside tonight."

Dwight met Chris's eyes, his own equally serious. "Okay," he said, and Chris fell into a relieved smile.

"Thanks."

Dwight gave a nod and then added, "And you'd better get some sleep. Maybe you should stay home tomorrow." He started to close the door.

"Not likely," Chris snorted.

Once the door shut, Chris waited to hear the footsteps behind it fade. Then, sighing, he pressed his forehead to the wood of the door, suddenly exhausted. Demons, warlocks, monsters—those he could handle. But sometimes best friends were too much work.

His voice soft, he began to chant. "Protect him behind this door, / An old friend, his future bright / No demon choose to harm these walls / Stranger, follow me home tonight."

No spell could alter free will, but Chris hoped it would at least remind the demon, a gentle nudge toward the person it really wanted to attack. Holding his breath, the boy backed away from the door, down the path, and took a few steps along the sidewalk. The demon, keeping its distance, followed.

Once he made it a safe distance away from Dwight's house, Chris let caution fade into anger. If this demon wanted a chase, Chris would give it to him. With no one else in the vicinity, Chris ducked behind a tree and orbed.

The chase lasted about half an hour before Chris called it quits. He had lost the demon somewhere in the Himalayas and, shivering, decided to orb home to start himself on a plan more productive than orb-and-seek. When he reappeared in the kitchen at the manor, however, the demon was there waiting for him. The boy stumbled back.

"You!" he cried, incredulous.

"Chris." That was his mom's voice. She stood a few feet away from the demon, calm but for the nervous tension in their shoulders. His father, also present, was scrubbing plates in the sink. When Piper spoke, though, he shut the faucet and turned toward his son, drying his hands on a dish towel.

Chris blinked, unclenched his fists. Something didn't add up. Through narrowed eyes, he scanned the room. Piper had something in the oven. Salmon, from the looks of the sliced lemon wedges and cutting board on the counter. No smell yet meant she couldn't have put it in more than five minutes ago. Judging by the old man's posture, leaning casually against the sink, he'd been there longer than that, which meant Piper had gone about her business in his presence. Which meant… What did that mean?

"What's going on?"

"Chris, why don't you sit?" Leo suggested in a careful tone.

"What is this?" he said again, not budging.

Piper sighed. "This is Benjamin Palmer." The old man dipped his head in a friendly greeting. "He's a…" Here she got stuck, floundering helplessly until the man himself supplied, "I'm a whitelighter." He smiled—a missing tooth.

There was a beat of silence before Chris replied, "Oh," still feeling very much out of the loop. "Does he… does he need help with his charge or something? Is a darklighter after him?"

"No, Chris," Piper sighed, "he's not in trouble." She came around the island to stand in front of her bewildered son. "The Elders sent him."

"For what?" With all his skills at fact-finding, his brain didn't seem to be working right now.

"He was assigned to be your… well, your whitelighter."

For a moment, Chris said nothing. Finally, he choked, "I'm sorry, what?"

Piper shifted around the island counter, sidestepped the whitelighter, and walked up to her son. "Now, Chris, we know that this is—"

"What do you mean they've assigned me a whitelighter?" Chris demanded, taking a step back. His back hit the wall. "We have plenty of whitelighters in this family. Most of us are whitelighters."

Piper reached out to touch him, but he shrank away from her hand. Lowering her arm, she pointed out in a quiet voice, "Most of you can't heal."

"So?" His voice got louder as hers got softer. "So what? Aunt Paige can. Wyatt can. We've always been fine with just them. Since when do we need more whitelighters?"

Leo took over, his voice firm. "Since you almost died, that's when. I know you think you're invincible, that someone will always be around to save you, but you could have died yesterday."

"Could have but didn't," Chris snapped. "Lighten up, Dad, no harm done. Wyatt healed me." This was insane. He didn't need a babysitter.

This time Piper responded. "Yes, Chris, but look how close he came. Look how close you came."

"We're always close to dying, Mom. That's just the way this family is."

He expected her to counter with another argument, but this time she only closed her eyes, sighing into the air between them. "Yeah," she said, with a wealth of sadness so much deeper than their conversation. This had obviously weighed on her for a while.

Chris wanted to argue, but the look on her face—he couldn't muster a single word. Instead, he swung himself around and stormed out of the room before his resolve could further crumble. He heard her footsteps follow him, his named called, and couldn't help but stop, his hand on the banister, to wait for her to catch up, although he refused to turn around.

"Chris," she said, sounding more determined than before, "you don't have a choice in the matter. The Elders have assigned him and that's all there is to it, so you'd better get used to having him around."

He spun, eyes livid. "I'm not a baby, Mom. I don't need some old dead guy hanging around telling me how to live my life."

He saw the man shuffle out of the kitchen and into the dining room with Leo, then pause by the opening to the sunroom. His voice was a gurgle, as if the words were perpetually caught in his throat and he had to shake them out. "Chris," he said, trying to mimic Piper's soothing tone, "I'd never tell you how to live your life. A whitelighter is there to guide, not dictate."

If Chris hadn't been so angry, he might have bothered to roll his eyes. As it was, he only glared. "Look, dude, no offense but I already have a grandpa, and I'm not looking for another one." Before Piper could stop him, he disappeared in a flurry of orbs.

The man looked helplessly between the two disappointed parents. "Should I…?"

"No," Leo said, "He'll need some time to get used to this." He turned to his wife and offered a falsely chipper smile. "Well, that went well, don't you think?"

She gave an unexpected cough of laughter.

The phone rang twice before Dwight picked up. "Chris, hey. How're you feeling?"

"Much better, thanks," Chris said. "Sorry about earlier. I guess I was acting pretty weird."

"More like paranoid," Dwight snorted. "You were about one second away from conspiracies about people trying to kill you in your sleep."

"Yeah." Chris chuckled despite himself. "Like I said, sorry. Took some Ibuprofen. I'm feeling fine now."

"You should still sleep," Dwight said. "You were kind of unhinged."

"Yeah, I will. Just wanted to call you back." Dwight said nothing, but it was a comfortable silence that neither rushed to fill. That chatted a few minutes more before getting off the phone.

As soon as Chris hung up with Dwight, he let out a breath and stood up. Despite all desire to the contrary, he knew he'd have to deal with this whitelighter business eventually. He left his bedroom. (No way this ancient dead guy would be setting foot in there; that much Chris outright refused.) Closing the door behind him, he called, "Hey, old man!" There were a couple of seconds before he noted a response, the tinkling of a form taking shape beside him in the hallway.

"I knew you would come around," Benjamin remarked, and he smiled.

Chris didn't return the warmth. With a stony, businesslike stare, he demanded, "If you were my whitelighter, why didn't you just say so from the beginning? Why follow me around like some low-level demon?"

Benjamin blinked in surprise, smile giving way to confusion. "You thought I was a demon?" he repeated, stepping back as if to physically distance himself from the very notion.

Chris rolled his eyes. No one can deny their goodness, he mused to himself, but sometimes whitelighters can be revoltingly naïve. "What was I supposed to think?" he asked, sarcasm thick in his voice. Arms folded, he scowled at this trespasser. If he couldn't keep up... well, there was no way Chris would slow himself down for this idiot.

Hesitating, the old man admitted, "I... assumed you would have scanned me for evil the moment you noticed me following you."

"You've got the wrong Halliwell," Chris retorted, less impressed by the minute with the man's poor preparation for his newest charge. "I'm not an empath."

"It's not an empath's power," Benjamin replied, but then—off Chris's expression—hurried to amend, "At least, not exclusively. Whitelighters can do it, too. It's an extension of your sensing powers. It's part of how you know where your charge is."

"Well," Chris grumbled, leaning against his door, "no one ever told me that."

Benjamin's smile returned with the wideness of age-old benevolence. Slowly, he edged forward again, testing the waters between himself and his charge. "That's why I'm here," he patiently explained, "To guide you in your craft, to actualize your glowing potential."

Chris snorted, cutting short the soliloquy he could picture bubbling forth. "All right, look," he said, "You do what you want with my potential, I don't care. But if you want to stay on staff as my whitelighter, you'll have to know the rules."

Benjamin frowned. "I was assigned by—"

"One," Chris said loudly, ticking it off on his index finger, "No more of this stalking business. You stay totally invisible, or you're right next to me—if I ask you to come, that is. Which is part of number two: don't interfere with my life. If I need you, I'll call you. If I don't, don't bother me. Three, don't try to tell me what to do. My life is none of your business."

Chris paused to consider. "That's it for now, but I'll let you know as more come up." He waited a beat. "That whole being invisible thing? You can start that now." Before the speechless whitelighter could find his voice, Chris spun on his heel, returned to his room, and shut the door firmly in the man's face.

Chris lasted about a day and a half. A day and a half of noticing twitches out of the corner of his eye, then looking over to see someone just whipping out of sight. A day and a half of the creepy crawly feeling of someone staring at him, of getting jumpy and irate under the silent scrutiny. A couple of times—Benjamin must have thought himself subtle—he even caught the old man from afar, not fast enough to disappear.

On Tuesday, barely a day after the new assignment, he tried orbing to the top of Weisshorn in the Swiss Alps just to shake his shadow or at least to rile him up enough to pick a fight. But Benjamin merely followed at a safe distance, refusing to take the bait. He orbed from there to a still-sealed tomb in Egypt's Valley of Kings, then to a cavern in the depths of the Underworld.

At that point Benjamin had uncloaked himself but remarked only that he thought Chris's parents might disapprove. Chris couldn't do much with that argument, and he wasn't quite as reckless as Wyatt to wait around for demons to show up.

He noticed Benjamin milling around outside of classroom windows, feeding ducks on his way home from school, even making small talk with one of Dwight's neighbors. But the final straw came on Wednesday, when he orbed to Jake's bedroom after school.

To say he was annoyed at the orb trail that followed would have been to call the animosity between whitelighters and darklighters a "mild disagreement."

"What are you doing here?" Chris hissed at the man. "You can't be here. My charge is here!"

"And so is mine," Benjamin pointed out. "My job is to keep you safe."

"Who's going to attack me here?" he demanded, but his argument was cut short when the doorknob turned and Jake walked in. The boy froze when he saw the intruder. His eyes went wide with betrayal, darting from the old man to Chris.

"Listen, Jake," Chris said quickly, "let me explain who this—"

"You promised you wouldn't tell anyone!" Jake cried, a sob of panic lodged behind his words. "You promised!"

"I know, and that's not why he's—"

But Jake had already taken off. His feet pattered across the wood floor. Chris heard the front door slam and felt the panic in the boy's chest as he tore down the sidewalk. There was no way he would listen to reason right now.

"That's it," Chris snarled, vanishing in a flurry of orbs. He rematerialized in the attic first but re-orbed almost immediately. He would lose Benjamin or die trying. He bounced from the San Francisco Zoo to the empty alleyway behind P3 to a janitorial closet at his high school to the power plant they'd visited on a school trip in fifth grade. The last place he stopped was the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Almost before he materialized, he was rattling off an impromptu spell: "Watched from bed to bed again / I never get my space / Let this orb trail followed end / Un-sensed now in this place."

He waited a couple of seconds, but Benjamin never arrived. Finally deeming the threat over, Chris sighed and glanced down. Cars passed below him, their horns and the rev of their engines muffled by the wind. Chris balled his fists at his sides and raised his gaze heavenward. "I want to talk to you!" he screamed over the wind. "I know you can hear me! Don't make me summon one of—"

An Elder appeared behind him in a light sprinkle of orbs. "Christopher," she acknowledged. "Perhaps we should find a calm center before you say something you might—"

He spun to face her. "Here's the deal," he snapped. "Either I'm a whitelighter who has a charge, or I'm a witch who has a whitelighter. You can't have it both ways."

"Getting assigned whitelighter is for your own—"

"Ah ah!" he interrupted. "I'm not open to negotiation. He goes or I go." Chris crossed his arms and waited.

The woman sighed. "Your mother won't like this," she pointed out. Chris said nothing. At last she said, "We will have Benjamin reassigned."

"Excellent." The next person to deal with would be his mother, Chris knew. As a former whitelighter, Leo would be easier to sway; he knew a charge's needs took priority. But for Piper, there was no seeing reason when it came to her children's safety. Without waiting for the Elder to depart, Chris sensed for his mother, then orbed home. He joined her in the kitchen, where she stood before the island, preparing a chicken for the oven. As he suspected, she wasn't happy with his decision.

"Chris, you almost died," she pleaded as she shook rosemary aggressively over the dish. "What if next time it's not almost?" Dusting her hands, she turned to reach for the garlic. She wouldn't look at him as she separated the head into cloves, then crushed each clove beneath the blade of her knife.

"Mom," he said soberly, "I'll be careful."

She took her time pulling away the peel and sliced lengthwise until she had a fine minced pile of garlic. Finally, setting her knife down, she looked up. "I worry about you, sweetheart. Is that such a crime?" Wiping her hands on a nearby dish towel, she closed the distance between them, her hand going to brush his hair out of his eyes. He could smell the garlic on her fingers. He stood firm until she stepped away with a sigh. "I know when I can't convince you. You're too stubborn for your own good."

Later that evening, after giving his charge ample time to cool off, he orbed back to Jake's bedroom. Jake was at his desk, working on math problems. He didn't look up, but Chris saw his shoulders bunch as the tinkling sound of orbs faded away behind him.

"Jake," he murmured, "Please let me explain." Jake said nothing. His pencil stilled. "Earlier… it wasn't about you. At all."

"You promised," the boy said, voice hoarse. "You promised you wouldn't say anything to anyone."

"I didn't," Chris insisted. "That man was… he was like"—Chris scrambled for a reasonable explanation—"my boss, you could say."

Jake turned then, staring at Chris suspiciously through his bangs. "Your boss?" he repeated skeptically.

"Yeah. See, I'm still… in angel training. I'm kind of new at this," he admitted with a sheepish grin. "They sent this guy to check up on me, make sure I'm taking care of you right. Make sense?"

"Not really…"

Chris sighed. He moved to the bed and sat down, hands on his kneecaps as he earnestly leaned forward. Jake swiveled in his seat to keep his eyes trained on Chris as he moved. "He wasn't there for you, I swear. And as soon as you left, I yelled some sense into him. He won't be coming around here anymore, I can promise that."

Jake stared at him, eyebrows raised. He didn't look convinced, but at long last he said, "Okay." He turned back to his desk and continued his homework.

Chris waited for a while, sitting awkwardly on the boy's unmade bed without getting acknowledged. By the time Jake tucked his math homework back into his folder and yanked out a social studies pamphlet, Chris had enough of the silence and decided to broach another topic.

"So… Halloween's coming up." Jake glanced over at him. "I was thinking, maybe you want to go trick-or-treating tomorrow. You know, like, together."

Jake's eyes lit up. "You wanna take me?"

Chris picked at the comforter, trying to look nonchalant. "If you're interested, yeah. I'd like that. If you don't already have plans"

"I don't," Jake said quickly. "Yeah, that'd be cool."

Chris grinned. "Cool, yeah. Okay, I'll pick you up tomorrow afternoon, then."

Chris orbed back home later that evening to find an unwelcome visitor in his bedroom. "Oh, no way." He stormed toward Benjamin. "Out. Seriously, dude. Didn't you hear I fired you?"

Tripping backwards, Benjamin waved his hands in defeat. "I heard, I heard." His back bumped against the door, the doorknob pressing uncomfortably into his spine. "I was just coming to say goodbye."

A few feet from the whitelighter, Chris stopped. After a moment, he folded his arms, unimpressed. "Okay. Bye." He waited.

Benjamin did turn to face the door. But with his hand on the knob, he paused and, turning back, said, "Whatever you thought of me, Chris, I only cared for your best interests."

Chris felt a twinge of sympathy. A very small twinge. "Yeah. I get that. But it just didn't work out."

"Yes, I see that. I'm sorry it didn't." Letting his words hang in the air, Benjamin let himself out of the room, already orbing as the door closed behind him.

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