by Paul Ruditis
Phoebe shook her head. “That seems like so long ago.”
Prue waved her hand and the floor swallowed up the chair that was beside the statue of Vaughn Ramsey just before Frank was about to sit on it. The move earned her a “Hey! Watch it!”
Prue ignored him. “I’ve got all the room we need to store as many statues as we have to. But how are we going to stop this before I have to add a new wing to my house?”
“One thing at a time,” Piper said. “First we need to figure what Medusa and her sisters are up to.”
“Then we stop them,” Phoebe agreed.
Chapter 15
“This is almost as exciting as watching Prue assemble puzzles,” Cole said. They were into their second hour watching the most boring mortals on the face of the planet go about their humdrum lives.
“Give it time,” Coop replied. “Whatever’s going on, it’s been spreading fast enough that we should get some kind of clue soon. I’m sure something is going to happen to at least one of these couples before the day out.”
“Maybe we could force the issue,” Cole said. “Pick a couple and try to instigate a fight. That might call the attention of whoever is doing this.”
“I’d prefer not to do his work for him,” Coop said politely, but dismissively.
Cole shifted on the wicker couch. This was the most uncomfortable piece of furniture he’d ever spent time on. Coop didn’t look any cozier in his chair. It was no wonder that Leo slipped out to Magic School a few minutes ago. Cole would have to find an excuse to stretch his legs as soon as the former Whitelighter got back.
“We should have moved the sofa in here from the other room,” Coop said as he adjusted his position in the chair.
Cole nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything. They’d already exhausted every topic of conversation he could come up with, from asking about Coop’s kids to the current organizational structure of the Cupid community. The latter was a subject he frankly didn’t care about at all. At least it kept them from discussing the white elephant in the room: the one thing they had in common.
It wasn’t that Cole was avoiding talking about Phoebe. He simply didn’t know a good way to broach the subject. He found his answer while watching the multiple couples onscreen—or on window. “She really seems to care about this job.”
“Phoebe?” Coop asked, as if there were any other option. “She loves it. And she’s good at it, too.”
Cole nodded. “A natural from the start.”
“That’s right,” Coop said. “You were there when she got it.”
“More or less,” Cole said. “I wasn’t always myself in those days.”
Coop shifted in his chair, but didn’t add anything. Probably too polite to bring up the whole sordid time when Cole was infected with the Source. Back then, he’d been trying to trap Phoebe into marriage and giving birth to his demon child. Cole wondered how much about their past Coop knew about. Probably all of it. It didn’t exactly make for casual conversation. They should probably just stick to the weather.
An uncomfortable silence fell on the room as neither man knew what to say. Thankfully, they were saved by Leo’s return.
“The kids are taken care of.” Leo paused to take in the awkward way Cole and Coop were sitting before moving on as if he didn’t notice. “Bailey’s going to stick around to keep an eye on them until we can get them home.”
Coop sat up straight. “That’s one brave librarian.”
Leo smiled. “Henry’s going to join her once he gets off work. The two of them should be able to handle eight kids.”
“I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Cole said.
“It happens more often than you’d think,” Leo said. “The entire staff at Magic School pitches in, watching the kids when we’ve got something going on. Most of them are more than happy to support the Charmed Ones.”
Cole nodded, but that wasn’t really what he’d been talking about. He managed fine when the entire family came for their visits to Prue. Mostly kept to himself. He wasn’t one to let small children climb all over him. He had no intention of offering up babysitting services to any of the sisters like the staff at Magic School seemed to do. But none of those things were foremost on his mind at the moment.
If the past had played out differently, this would have been his life. If the child Phoebe carried while he was the Source of All Evil had survived and been born a witch instead of the heir to the Source, things might have been different. Cole might have found a way to change for that child. To be the man he was trying to be today. But then what? Popping out a brood of little ones while he worked at some legitimate law office? He’d tried working at a normal mortal job. It was boring.
But would Phoebe be the woman she was today if he’d stayed? Cole knew it was over between them, but he couldn’t help wondering about the might-have-beens. It was odd since he wasn’t normally one who dwelled on the past. But with very little to entertain him on the Nexus of the All, it seemed that dwelling was his number one way to pass the time. It wasn’t any different at the Manor watching the most boring type of reality television ever made: actually reality.
Coop sat up suddenly, leaning forward, and pointed to the window second from the end of the row. “Looks like we got something. How do we turn up the volume on this thing?”
Cole motioned to Coop as he got up and moved to the window along with Leo. “Your magic activated it, so you control it. Just concentrate.”
Coop joined them by the glass wall, raising his ring to the image of two women who looked to be in the middle of a raging argument. It caught Cole off guard, because a moment earlier they had been sitting quietly, one quietly reading while the other was working on her tablet. Their legs had been curled together in that casual romantic way that two people who have been in a relationship for a time just seem to fit. If Cole’s thoughts hadn’t been on himself, he might have noticed what had set them off, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t missed anything.
Cole tried reading their lips as Coop’s ring glowed brightly, connecting with the image until they had sound.
“Your mother has never treated me like part of the family!” the taller, light-haired woman screamed, echoing through the Manor loud enough to alert the nosey neighbor next door.
“Turn it down!” Leo yelled with an eye out one of the unobstructed windows.
Coop cringed as he waved his hand over the window, running from top to bottom as the volume decreased to a more manageable level. “Sorry.”
“Don’t even get me started on the way your brother talks to when he’s had a bit too much at every single family gathering!” the other woman replied, her dark hair whipping around as she gestured wildly.
“And your father!” the blonde said. “That time at the restaurant!”
“That one you totally deserved,” her wife shot back.
The blonde breathed deeply, glaring at her wife before turning and storming out of the house. “I want a divorce!”
Cole and the guys watched as the brunette shrugged and walked calmly to the bedroom. Now that her wife was gone, she seemed perfectly fine. She wasn’t huffing or talking to herself, cursing her other half for leaving in the middle of a fight. Not even reacting to what her wife had said.
She calmly grabbed a suitcase from the closet and filled it with clothes. She didn’t seem angry anymore or even sad. If anything, she was simply resigned. It was almost as if she were simply packing for a business trip. Cole would have imagined someone else in her position throwing clothes into the bag while mumbling curses in her wife’s direction. This woman was even taking the time to carefully refold her clothes so they didn’t wrinkle.
“What happened?” Leo asked. “Did you guys see anything?”
“Let me try to rewind this to catch what we might have missed,” Coop said. “Now that I’ve got a handle on this magic, it works pretty much li
ke my own power. Just magnified by the number of windows available.”
Coop focused on the image again, willing it to go back to the beginning. After a moment, the picture froze with the suddenly calm woman about to put a stack of clothes into the suitcase. She took two steps backwards and returned the clothes to the drawer she’d taken them from. The image sped up as she returned the rest of her clothing to the bureau and backed out of the room.
Coop rewound through the fight back to the point the pair was simply sitting in their living room with legs casually intertwined. Cole had been correct in his assessment. They looked perfectly content quietly together until the moment the darker haired woman slammed her book down on the table.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I can’t pretend that we don’t have a problem.”
“A problem?” the other woman said, putting down her tablet and matching her wife in tone and volume. “All we have are problems. Ever since that stupid mass marriage in the park just because you didn’t want our families there.”
“I didn’t want out families there?” the brunette said as she stood. “I’m pretty sure you were the one that made that decision. You were certainly the one that wrote in to that stupid advice columnist!”
The blonde popped up off the couch, gesturing wildly. “Can you blame me? I mean your parents have always hated me! Your mother has never treated me like part of the family!”
“That was sudden,” Leo said as they reached the point they had tuned in to the argument.
“And a weak reason to end a marriage,” Cole added. Few couples experienced the level of intensity he’d had in his own past relationships, so it was hard for him to take the everyday little dramas seriously. When loving too much could literally be the difference between life and death, it was hard to consider something as commonplace as parental disapproval as being insurmountable. His own father had married an upper-level demon that ultimately took his life. That was a problem that couldn’t be handled in a few sessions of marriage counseling.
But if the shadow crossing the window was any indication, this fight wasn’t entirely theirs to begin with. Cole pointed to the spot that caused his concern. “Looks like they had help.”
Leo and Coop leaned in along with Cole, but it was impossible to make out anything from their vantage point. “Looks like a man,” Leo said. “Though I guess it could be a demon or any other humanoid-type being.”
“I can help with that,” Coop said. He placed a hand on Leo and Cole’s shoulders and beamed them out of the Manor. They appeared in the couple’s yard a moment later. A pair of windows looked into the room and they did their best to stay out of sight so the brunette didn’t suddenly catch a trio of trespassers in her yard as she continued to pack.
“This is the right window,” Cole said as he got his bearings. It was always odd when someone else teleported him. He preferred to use his own powers to get from one place to the next. Cole pushed the concern from his mind as he pointed to a flowerbed beneath the window on the right. Someone had trampled the flowers in that spot.
“I’d call that confirmation,” Leo said. “Someone is trying to undo Phoebe’s work. But why? She didn’t use her magic to marry these couples. She was working her day job.”
“Let’s see what the evidence can tell us.” Coop picked up a few smashed petals and held them up to his ring, bathing them in the pink glow of his magic.
“That really is an all-purpose ring,” Cole said with a smirk.
Coop smiled. “It gets the job done.” He closed his eyes and focused his concentration while Cole and Leo watched. “I’m sensing a presence,” Coop said. “It’s a dark presence. Full of hate. Full of anger. It’s someone… it’s someone I recognize.” Coop opened his eyes. “I know who did this. But he’s not going after Phoebe. I’m the one he wants to get back at. This is all because of me.”
Chapter 16
“Where are we? What have you done?” Medusa demanded as she and her sisters materialized in a lavish bedroom with the kind of comforts she’d never imagined in her previous life. They had all resumed using their glamours the moment they left the scene of the attack. A glance out the window confirmed that the orange-red bridge that crossed the great expanse of water was still in view. They remained in the city of San Francisco. That was upsetting. She’d hoped that her sisters would have had the sense to take her far away from what had just happened.
The way they were being so free with their powers was another concern to add to the list. Typically, Medusa and her sisters only teleported over great distances, like taking them back to their homeland. Since they’d been cursed as gorgons, it now took a lot of energy for them to dematerialize in one place and rematerialize in another. The fact that they were beginning to use this ability freely meant that they were growing stronger. If Medusa didn’t find a way to talk them out of their plans soon, she wouldn’t be able to stop them later.
Stheno ignored her sister’s questions as she picked up a small black device on the table and aimed it at the dark screen of what Medusa believed was a television, turning it on. Stheno continued to aim the device at the television and the image changed to a conservatively dressed woman with perfectly sculpted blonde hair staring directly out of the screen at them.
At first Medusa thought it was one of those video conferencing systems that allowed people to communicate face-to-face over a distance, but she quickly realized the explanation was simpler than that. It was a news report on a twenty-four hour network. She didn’t know if the channel belonged to the man they had turned to stone earlier, but she suspected that it was his. Stheno would probably want to keep tabs on what happened with him as well.
Medusa’s eyes went wide behind her sunglasses as the image onscreen switched to a video recording of the offices of the Gorgon Gaze. Someone had filmed their encounter. A flash of their bodies could be seen among the statues and fleeing men. Thankfully, it wasn’t clear that they were in the act of turning people to stone. Even better, unless one knew what they were looking at, it wouldn’t even make any sense to the casual observer.
Eyewitness accounts came next. A reporter on the street was interviewing people who claimed to be inside the building at the time of the incident. The stories these supposed witnesses were sharing hardly matched the reality of what had occurred. Medusa couldn’t be sure if their fears had heightened their reactions or they were just making things up. The news anchor must have assumed the latter as she could barely keep a straight face as the camera came back on her.
“That’s it? That’s all they got? We came out of hiding for that?” Stheno raged as the anchor moved on to a story that Medusa didn’t begin to understand. It seemed to be a report about a baby singing in the backseat of a car. This is what constituted news in this era?
“They didn’t even get my good side,” Euryale said as she draped herself over the overstuffed white couch. “Or maybe they did. It’s so hard to tell on that shaky video.”
“I thought we came out of hiding to fight for the oppressed,” Medusa countered. “Not become celebrities.”
Stheno gave her sister the same glare she’d cultivated as a child when she was annoyed that Medusa was acting her younger age. “That’s the only way to make change in this modern world,” Stheno said. “Through celebrity. It’s all about going viral. Once we get the people talking, we can effect change.”
Stheno pointed to the baby onscreen that was now dancing in her car seat along with the signing. Not for the first time, Medusa was completely clueless as to what was going on.
“That way also brings out the torches and iron scythes as well,” Medusa reminded her sister. “Or have you forgotten what that first week was like after Athena cursed us? Before we went into hiding and perfected our glamours. When the locals came after us? I don’t intend to go through that again. Not in this time. The weapons of humanity are much more dangerous now.”
&nbs
p; Medusa had no desire to go through what she’d experienced back when the curse had taken hold of her. Neighbors and friends had turned on her and her sisters without question. People they had known their entire lives wanted to destroy them. The same innocent beings they had once used their powers to help suddenly feared the magic they possessed.
It wasn’t that Medusa had entirely blamed them. Before she and her sisters had the strength to create their glamour, they had taken on the appearance of terrifying monsters.
“Let me see your eyes,” Stheno said as she moved toward Medusa, reaching for her sunglasses.
Medusa held out a hand to stop her. “I can do it.” She didn’t want Stheno to derail her from the conversation, but her own curiosity had overwhelmed her. Medusa removed her sunglasses and leaned toward her sister. “How does it look?”
“Don’t blink,” Stheno said.
“Don’t blink?” Euryale repeated. “I can see it from here. The eyes are still windows into her monstrous soul.”
Stheno sighed. “She’s not powerful enough yet that we can break the binds of this city and move out into the world at large. We still need to rely on the magic we have been using to fuel us.”
Medusa was torn. She wanted to be free to use the full force of her gorgon powers again, if only so that she could work up her full glamour. Being a gorgon was still nothing compared to the magic she’d had before she was cursed, but the ability to blend in with the rest of humans was priceless.
On the other hand, once her power was at its strongest, her sisters would be affected as well. They wouldn’t need to be tied to the magic of this place or the limited power Medusa possessed. When they turned people to stone it would be permanent, not so easily undone as before. As long as they needed her, she could control them to a degree. Not that she was the one doing the controlling at the moment.
Once Stheno didn’t need her any longer, Medusa worried about what her sister would unleash with her gorgon power to turn people permanently to stone on her own. Where would she stop? Would she stop? Medusa had to find a way to break Stheno’s hold over her before it became too late.
