“I don’t know what else to call it.” Paige scowled at Piper, annoyed. “It’s not funny.”
“I know, I just”—Piper was at a loss to explain—“everything just seems funny to me.”
“That’s weird,” Phoebe said.
“Should we be worried?” Paige asked.
“Yes, but I’m not sure about what.” Piper snapped her head around when Leo walked in carrying a large adjustable pipe wrench. He had spent the past several hours plotting how to snare their uninvited gremlin guest. “Did you catch it?”
“Not yet, but I will.” The set of Leo’s jaw, his hardened gaze, and demeanor reflected an intense determination. “I have to shut down the pipe valves to the radiator up here. If I limit where the gremlin can go, I’ll improve my chances and save time.”
“Gremlin?” Phoebe’s eyes widened. “What gremlin?”
Paige looked at Piper askance.
“Show, don’t tell,” Piper suggested.
Nodding, Paige held out her hand. “Wrench!”
Expecting the wrench to turn into sparkling light in his hand, Leo let go.
As the heavy tool dropped, Piper whipped out her hands. She muttered softly, “Come on…”
The wrench froze for a split second, then hit the floor and orbed into Paige’s hand.
“What was that all about?” Leo looked stunned.
“Slow orb, short freeze, and memory loss,” Piper said. “When the gremlin wiggled out of my freeze this afternoon, I thought it was immune to magic, like you said. Apparently that’s not the problem. My power is fizzling out.”
“Apparently mine is too,” Paige said. “I’ve been so tired all day; I thought that’s why my orb was off.”
“Can gremlins drain powers?” Piper asked.
“Not that I’ve heard of.” Leo ran his hand over his hair and rubbed his neck as he paced. He glanced at Phoebe. “Are you having problems with your powers?”
“I’m not sure.” Phoebe cupped her chin in her hand, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t remember having any visions lately, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have one. Maybe I forgot.” She looked up. “Did I fly today?”
“Yes!” Piper grinned. “You levitated so the gremlin wouldn’t run into you, but very slowly.”
“Slowly?” Phoebe rocked forward, planted her feet, and clasped her hands on her knees. “Under those circumstances, shouldn’t I have shot into the air?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.” Leo dropped into a squat between Piper and Paige. “So something has diminished all your powers.”
“But nothing strange happened to me today—or yesterday, or the day before.” Piper paused, thinking back over recent events. The sudden appearance of the gremlin was the only supernatural anomaly in an unbelievably routine week.
“Not unless getting your sense of humor back counts,” Paige observed. She braced her elbow on the old trunk and rested her head in her hand. Her eyes fluttered closed.
“You have been laughing a lot lately, Piper.” Leo straightened suddenly.
“Do you think it’s indicative of a bigger problem?” Phoebe’s face darkened. “My short-term memory isn’t working right, Piper has an acute case of chronic giggles, and Paige can barely stay awake. Maybe our powers aren’t the only thing that’s being affected by…whatever’s going on.”
“But I haven’t run into anything weird either,” Paige said. “No demons or warlocks or anything else that reeks of diabolical intent.”
“That you know of.” Piper fought back the laughter rumbling in her throat. The situation wasn’t funny, and yet…it was.
“Good point.” Phoebe sighed. “Our evil adversaries don’t always advertise their presence or their agenda.”
“Maybe it’s something that doesn’t have an agenda,” Leo said. “There’s been so much active magic practiced in this house over the years, maybe the same residual factors that lured the gremlin attracted some other magical contaminant.”
“What?” Piper started. “Like hocus-pocus pollen?”
“An abracadabra allergy?” Paige grinned.
“It’s possible,” Leo said. “We’ve got a gremlin.”
“Time to hit the book.” Phoebe jumped up and dashed behind the pedestal that held The Book of Shadows. She flipped though the pages, then paused. “What am I looking for?”
“Something to isolate any new magical elements in the house.” Piper scrambled to her feet and nudged Phoebe aside. “It’ll be faster if I look.”
“Wake me when you find something.” Paige set the pin bowl aside and curled up on the carpet.
Leo began moving boxes, clearing a path to the small radiator that kept the chill off the attic during the winter.
Phoebe turned to stare out the front window.
Piper didn’t try to keep the inane smile off her face as she searched through the book. A little levity was a welcome change from the undercurrent of doom and gloom that usually defined their lives. They had dealt with so many lethal, dark forces since becoming the Charmed Ones; an infestation of pixie dust or magical microbes was nothing but an amusing irritation.
“This might work.” Piper looked up from a back page titled “Miscellaneous Entities, Substances, Incantations, and Cures.” Like so many topics contained in the Halliwells’ ever-changing Book of Shadows, the miscellany reference pages appeared to be recent additions.
Paige shifted position but didn’t wake up.
“Pardon me?” Phoebe glanced back, her dark brown eyes wide and questioning.
Leo braced his foot against the pipe attached to the bottom of the radiator and tightened the wrench around a stuck valve on top of the connector. Engrossed in the plumbing problem, he didn’t hear her.
“Never mind.” Exhaling, Piper smoothed the page. “I can do this with the Power of One.”
Taking a deep breath, Piper began to recite a simple spell to unmask minor magical agents.
Unknown magics on mystic tides that
breached the darkened gate;
lost bits and beings, seek and hide,
now reveal and locate.
Phoebe turned expectantly.
Piper tensed, waiting.
“Got it!” Leo raised a triumphant fist. As he leaned over to shut the loosened valve, a high-pitched shriek erupted from inside the radiator.
“I think you found something,” Phoebe said.
Right, Piper thought as she darted across the attic. She didn’t have time to refresh Phoebe’s memory. The gremlin wasn’t reacting to the spell, but to the closing valve that would trap it inside the radiator. “Hurry, Leo! Before it gets away!”
“I’m trying!” The muscles in Leo’s arms bulged as he turned the resisting knob.
That valve probably hasn’t been closed in decades, Piper thought. Since it was only a matter of seconds before the critter realized an escape route was still open, she tried to freeze it inside the radiator. Her ineffectual magic only heightened its rage.
“What’s going on?” Phoebe covered her ears to muffle the gremlin’s piercing screams.
“Gremlin!” Piper’s shouted reply reverberated off the rafters. The creature’s shrill cry faded as it fled downward through the pipes.
“It’s gone.” Muttering under his breath, Leo finished closing the valve.
“Thank goodness.” Rubbing her temples, Phoebe stumbled back to the rocker. She almost tripped over Paige. “How could she sleep through that?”
“I wish I knew.” Blowing a wisp of hair off her forehead, Piper sighed. “Before I get laughing so hard I can’t talk, here’s what I think we should do.”
“Rise and shine, Paige.” Phoebe shook the sleeping witch awake. “One of us has to know what she’s talking about.”
“The I.D. spell didn’t work?” Leo asked.
“That’s one possibility.” Piper was almost certain the spell had worked fine, but she couldn’t be one hundred percent positive. “Or there aren’t any magical contaminants in the house to find, which
is my best guess.”
“Then we still don’t know what’s interfering with our powers.” Paige stretched.
“You got it.” Piper clamped her lips closed to smother another laugh. When it subsided, she continued. “So, since no innocents need us to save them right now, we should stop using our powers until we figure out the problem.”
“Okay,” Phoebe said. “This is probably the first time in my life I won’t mind being grounded.”
“Good one.” Piper chuckled.
“Sounds reasonable,” Paige said, “but for all we know, stress and fatigue are responsible.”
“That’s not likely.” Leo handed Piper the wrench. “Maybe I’d better check with the Elders.”
“I second that idea,” Paige said. “They wouldn’t appreciate being kept out of the loop anyway.”
“Heaven forbid.” Piper kissed Leo on the cheek and waved as he dissolved into swirls of blue light.
“What about my visions?” Phoebe asked anxiously. “I can’t just decide to turn off the psychic antenna.”
“No, but since you won’t remember what you see long enough to tell us about it, that’s almost the same as not having a vision,” Piper said.
Paige frowned. “Which means we won’t know if Phoebe contacts an innocent who’s being threatened by a demon.”
“Then the powers that be will find another way to let us know,” Piper said. “They always do.”
“Let’s hope they don’t have to,” Phoebe said. “Without our powers, we won’t be much help to anyone.”
Piper nodded while she tried not to laugh. As Paige had pointed out, there wasn’t anything funny about the unexplained loss of potency in their powers. If some denizen of the dark threatened them or an innocent, it might be fatal.
Chapter
4
“Paige!” Lila whispered loudly from the copy room doorway.
“Huh?” Paige looked up from the stack of forms lying on the copy machine. Hawthorn Hill Home had promised to speed up processing Stanley Addison’s application if she sent all the additional information they needed immediately. Since the home’s fax machine wasn’t working, she was making copies to messenger over.
“Is something wrong with the copier?” Lila asked. “You’ve been in here for half an hour.”
“No, everything’s fine.”Sort of, Paige thought as she lifted the copier lid, removed one of Stanley’s Social Security forms, and slipped another original onto the plate. She hadn’t fallen asleep on her feet. She had just been staring into space in a daze, which was almost as bad. “Can you wait five more minutes to use the machine? I’m almost done.”
“I don’t need any copies,” Lila said. “You’ve got a visitor.”
“Sister? Client?” Paige craned her neck, but she couldn’t see into her cubicle.
“Cute guy with a cane,” Lila said.
“Kevin Graves?” Paige blinked. What is he doing here? “Tell him I’ll be right there, okay?”
Although she was dying of curiosity, Paige finished copying Stanley’s info and stuffed the pages into an envelope she had already addressed. She left it with the receptionist to be picked up by the messenger, then walked back to her desk and tried not to appear too anxious.
Kevin sat in the client chair, nervously tapping his rubber-tipped cane on the floor. He flashed her a megawatt smile when she entered. “Hi, Paige.”
“This is a surprise.”Did I totally misread Kevin’s lack of interest the past two nights? Paige wondered as she dropped into her chair. It was hard to believe someone with his good looks and muscular physique was shy, but life was full of oddities.
“This isn’t a problem, is it?” Kevin’s smile shifted into a look of worried uncertainty. “Coming to see you at your job, I mean.”
“No, not at all,” Paige said, fudging the truth. If Mr. Cowan asked, she could honestly say she and Kevin both volunteered at the Fifth Street Shelter, which was social services related. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I, uh—” Kevin reached into his front pocket and pulled out a pair of black, wraparound sunglasses. “Are these yours? I found them in my car.”
“Not mine,” Paige said. She didn’t have to examine the expensive, designer lenses to know they weren’t hers.
“Oh.” Kevin hesitated, shrugging. “I thought maybe they fell out of your purse when I drove you home the other night.”
“Sorry, no.” Paige had no idea what Kevin was up to. He had been friendly at the shelter last night, but the mutual tension she had felt Monday night hadn’t been there.
Kevin heaved a long sigh, then looked at her from under thick, dark eyelashes. “Okay, I didn’t find them.”
Paige arched an eyebrow, but didn’t interrupt.
“They’re mine.” Kevin slipped the glasses into his shirt pocket. “I just needed an excuse to see you again. Pretty dumb, huh?”
“Definitely dumb,” Paige agreed. “You didn’t need an excuse to see me.”
“But now I’ve blown it, right?” Using his cane for support, Kevin stood up and perched on the corner of the desk.
“I don’t like being lied to, but—”
“So let me make it up to you.” Kevin cocked his head and leaned toward her, gently touching her leg with the end of his cane. “I’d give anything if I could take you dancing, but since that’s not possible…”
Paige swayed slightly.
“…how about dinner Saturday night instead?” Kevin jerked his cane back, as though he had just noticed he was caressing her calf with the rubber tip. Embarrassed, he slid off the desk. “At least think about it? I’ll, uh…see you later, at the shelter.”
“Uh, sure.” Paige nodded. “Okay.” When her head cleared a moment later, he was gone.
Sighing, Paige dropped her head onto her folded arms. She probably should have just accepted Kevin’s invitation. Being a witch had put a serious damper on the dating part of her life, and there was no telling how long it would be before someone else asked her out.
Yawning, she forced one eye open to look at her watch. It was only 3:10 in the afternoon, but she was exhausted. She felt as though she had been up all night, when she had actually slept a solid nine hours. In fact, she had overslept again and had barely made it to work on time.
Paige snapped her head up when she started to doze off. She’d be in big trouble if Mr. Cowan caught her sleeping on the job. As she set Stanley’s file aside, her gaze fell on her watch.
With almost two hours left until five o’clock and another four hours of shelter duty to go before she could go home to bed, Paige needed a major infusion of wake-up juice. She glanced at the small cactus she had transferred into Grams’s pin bowl on her lunch hour, then grabbed a mug and headed for the coffee station.
Piper sat at the bar making out next week’s beverage order as she did every Wednesday. Today, however, she was not alone. With a Vengeance had arrived at two o’clock sharp to set up for their San Francisco debut the following night. If the rehearsal session was any indication, they would be a smash hit. Every song the group had practiced was on the current charts.
When she finished, Piper set the order aside to call in later. Turning sideways, she propped her feet on another stool and gave the band her full attention. Since Dixie was still using the high school baby-sitter with the strict curfew, the bar needed to be swept out, wiped down, and stocked, but that could wait another ten minutes.
Piper hummed along to a classic rock tune that bemoaned the fleeting euphoria of new love. Ironically, a relaxed attitude and good mood seemed to be side effects of chronic laughing syndrome.
Daniel sang with his eyes closed and his head thrown back, pouring emotion into the plaintive words. “…what we’re feeling now will pass, fading like the day gives way to night; like whispers on the wind, no love can last…”
Piper was struck by the pessimism of the song’s sentiment. Whoever had written it obviously didn’t understand that love faced constant trials. Only true love surv
ived them.
As his husky voice sustained the final note, Daniel looked up from the keyboard, caught Piper’s eye, and winked. As the last chord faded, he pointed at her, and then at himself with a quizzical, come-on expression.
Flattered, Piper raised her left hand. She pointed to her wedding ring and laughed when Daniel adopted an exaggerated look of disappointment. Then he shrugged and ran his fingers over the keys.
Karen glanced at Daniel and rolled her eyes as she jumped off the stage. Her grin widened as she approached the bar. “Daniel doesn’t believe in being subtle.”
“I noticed.” Piper giggled, sharing the boys-can-be-such-a-pain moment with the other woman. Still, the harmless flirtation reminded her of Leo and how much she missed him. Hours had passed for her since he left last night, but only minutes had elapsed for him “up there.”
Karen flipped open the flute case she had left on the bar. “I promise I won’t forget to take this onstage with me this weekend. I’m a little over-protective because it’s so old.”
“I thought it looked like an antique.” Piper noticed that part of the pattern etched into the wood was red. She didn’t remember it being red on Monday. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks.” As Karen leaned over the bar to grab a cocktail napkin, the flute touched the side of Piper’s face.
Piper’s skin tingled as another wave of light-headedness washed over her.
“One more song and we’ll call it quits for today. You’ve probably got a lot to do before opening.” Using the napkin to wipe her brow, Karen headed back to the stage.
“Yeah, sure.” Piper closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The dizziness subsided when the band launched into their last number a moment later.
As Lancer struck a minor chord, Brodie hit the cymbals. The sustained sound of brass and bass faded as the clear, mournful tones of the flute filled the empty room.
Piper sighed, wishing Leo would get back soon so she’d know exactly what she should worry about. There was nothing funny or normal about being amused by everything. Although it seemed likely the unknown force that had weakened her power was to blame, it was possible the crushing burdens of being a Charmed One had finally pushed her over the edge into a merry disconnect.
Dark Vengeance Page 5
