Beware What You Wish

by Diana G. Gallagher

  Piper moved Phoebe’s book to look at the cover. “No more than you’re trying to rot your brain.”

  “My brain needs a break.” Phoebe turned the paperback upside down on the arm of the sofa and lifted her cup. She looked longingly at the hot rolls and decided to pass. Working off the extra calories didn’t fit into her plans to spend the day being lazy.

  “How about we compromise with a little news.” Piper picked up the remote and turned the sound back on. Coffee cup in hand, she sat down beside Phoebe and tucked her long legs underneath her. “No classes today?”

  “Nope. I’ve got five glorious days off.” Phoebe raised her mug and grinned.

  “Super.” Piper gently hit Phoebe’s mug with her own. “Then you can help me do the grocery shopping.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Normally, Phoebe loved to shop — for anything. Today she would much rather stay home, pretending to be a woman of leisure, but she couldn’t refuse to pitch in.

  “Not terribly exciting, I know, but necessary,” Piper said, noting Phoebe’s disappointed frown. “Did I tell you Hard Crackers is going to play live at the Celebrity Charity Bazaar on Saturday?”

  “Really? That’s awesome!” Phoebe brightened. The local band was growing in popularity, in part because of the exposure they had gotten at Piper’s club. Live music was bound to attract a crowd. “How much is that setting you back?”

  “Not a dime.” Piper beamed with satisfaction. “All they can eat and drink and a chance that one of the big time celebs will notice them.”

  “Cool.” Shifting position, Phoebe frowned as Prue zipped down the hall and opened the front door. Phoebe stiffened at the sound of a siren, then realized it was a news clip on TV.

  “ . . . two gang members and a man sitting in his living room were killed when the drive-by shooters opened fire,” an announcer intoned. “The police are following leads supplied by eyewitnesses, but no arrests have been made.”

  Phoebe muted the sound again as the front door slammed closed. “Sorry, Piper, but I can’t do murder and mayhem until after I finish my first cup of coffee.”

  “Ditto that.” Piper sighed.

  The reported incident wasn’t anything to joke about, but sometimes humor was the only thing that kept Phoebe and her sisters sane. They faced more evil in a week than most people even knew existed.

  “Did we make the front page?” Piper asked as Prue wandered in with the morning newspaper and perched on a chair.

  Phoebe sat forward as Prue unfolded the paper, anxious to know if the runaway pony at the park yesterday had made news. She noted that Prue was still in her sleeping togs, too. Apparently, she didn’t have any pressing engagements today, either. Phoebe’s tension grew as her sister’s blue eyes slowly scanned the front page. “Well?”

  “Not a word.” Smiling, Prue turned the paper so Phoebe and Piper could see.

  Phoebe fell back against the cushions, but Piper wasn’t as easily reassured.

  “Flip!” Piper rigorously waved her hand at the paper. “Check every page.”

  “Yeah. Probably a good idea.” Prue folded the front page back and creased it. “Would you mind getting me a cup of coffee?”

  “I’ll make an exception this morning,” Piper teased. “I could use a warm-up anyway. Phoebe?”

  “Sure, thanks.” Phoebe handed Piper her cup, then turned a wary eye on Prue. She sat silently for a few minutes before impatience got the best of her. “Anything?”

  “Just the usual so far, but I’m only on page four.” Prue turned the paper over. “A mugging on Pacific Street, miscellaneous burglaries, some guy shot his girlfriend then killed himself and . . . ”

  “And?” Phoebe winced.

  “A kid drowned in a community center pool.” Prue cleared her throat. “But no mention of a pony suspended in midair.”

  “Good!” Gripping the handles of three full mugs in one hand, a serving trick Phoebe had yet to master, Piper handed one to each of her sisters and flopped back down on the sofa. “Last night I dreamed I was chased by a mob of angry parents and kids for freezing and unfreezing a merry-go-round over and over again.”

  Phoebe’s smile faded as her gaze wandered to the muted TV. Coughing, soot-covered people in robes and pajamas were being rushed out of a burning apartment building. The camera panned across the street where dazed men and women clung to wide-eyed children and watched as their homes and possessions went up in flames.

  “Only the truly good-hearted can have nightmares about carousels,” Prue quipped.

  “I guess the horror does lose something in the telling,” Piper said, joking. “Just remind me not to go near the merry-go-round on Saturday.”

  “They’re bringing in a merry-go-round?” Prue turned over another page and snapped the paper to flatten it.

  “The charity bazaar is be ing held at Boardwalk Beach right next to the Gold Coast Amusement Park.” Piper paused, laughing softly. “Grams never liked taking us there, but I always loved it, especially the carousel.”

  “One of her, three of us.” Prue smiled, remembering. “We were a little hard to keep track of, even for an accomplished witch.”

  Still focused on the TV screen, Phoebe listened to the banter with half an ear. The news team had segued from the apartment fire to a flood in the Midwest. Instead of almost being incinerated, people cast adrift on makeshift rafts and small boats paddled past houses filled with water. When the picture of a small boy, who had been missing in a national park for three days, flashed on the screen, she picked up the remote and turned the set off.

  “Oh, no!” Prue scowled at the paper.

  “What?” Phoebe and Piper asked simultaneously. Phoebe’s coffee sloshed when she jerked to attention, spilling several drops on her long T-shirt.

  “My favorite boutique is having a sale, and my card is maxed,” Prue said. “I could really use a pair of new boots.”

  “Don’t scare me like that.” Phoebe sagged. “I’ve had about all the bad news I can take for one morning.”

  “What bad news?” Prue looked bewildered as she folded the paper and dropped it on the floor.

  “All of it!” Gripping her cup, Phoebe shook her head.

  “I obviously missed something,” Piper said.

  “Fires and floods, muggings and lost kids.” Phoebe shuddered. She had awakened in a great mood, but the news reports in the paper and on TV had demolished it. Natural disaster and human malevolence waged a relentless war against the helpless. At least the Charmed Ones could fight the demonic evil they encountered.

  Phoebe caught her lip in her teeth to keep it from trembling. Sometimes the depressing reality was more than she could stand, made worse because she so often experienced someone else’s pain and terror in her own mind. She was glad she could help the people her power touched, but the ability to see the future was as much a curse as it was a blessing.

  “Are you okay?” Concerned, Piper rested a hand on Phoebe’s knee.

  “Yeah, it’s just that —” Phoebe sighed, thinking about the little girl they had saved from the stampeding pony because her power had given them a warning. Without that lead time, the girl would have been maimed or worse under the pony’s shod hooves. “I wish my visions weren’t so selective because then we could keep more of this awful stuff from happening.”

  Phoebe’s stomach suddenly heaved with nausea, and a rush of dizziness made her head spin. Her coffee mug slipped from her hand as she gasped and doubled over.

  “Phoebe!” Piper threw her arms around her stricken sister and let the mug land, unfrozen, on the carpet.

  “What is it?” Prue jumped from her chair and knelt down by the sofa. “A vision?”

  “Sick,” Phoebe muttered. That was an under-statement, she thought. The wretched feeling had hit her so fast and with such force that she felt as if someone had blindsided her with a triple whammy spell.

  “Maybe we’d better call the doctor.” Prue dashed to the phone.

  “Wait.” Phoebe held up a hand to
stop Prue from dialing when the sickening sensations began to fade. She took a couple of deep breaths and sat up slowly. “It’s going away.”

  “I need specifics, Phoebe,” Piper said, probably a little more sharply than she intended. She did that when she was really worried. “What’s going away?”

  “Super queasy stomach, dizzy.” Phoebe wiped a fine sheen of sweat from her brow and took another deep breath as her head cleared. “Weird.”

  “Too weird.” Prue sat on the coffee table and picked the mug up from the floor. “One minute you’re fine and the next you’re in agony? I don’t like it.”

  “Agony is a little extreme.” Phoebe looked at the damp coffee stain on the carpet. “And maybe it’s not that weird, now that I think about it.”

  “I’m listening.” Piper folded her arms and fixed Phoebe with a skeptical gaze.

  “I’ve been really pushing it lately, studying for my exams and not getting enough sleep, and everything,” Phoebe explained. “The strain must have finally caught up with me.”

  “You’re always pushing it, Phoebe,” Prue pointed out. “Between your school assignments, hanging out at the club —”

  “Which she doesn’t have to do,” Piper interjected.

  “I like going to P3,” Phoebe countered. “A girl’s gotta have some fun.”

  “Yes, but most girls aren’t vanquishing demons on a regular basis, either.” Prue eyed Phoebe with unguarded concern. “You hardly ever get enough sleep.”

  “Okay,” Phoebe admitted, “but I haven’t eaten since our picnic yesterday, either. It’s obviously an open-and-shut case of too much coffee on an empty stomach.” To make her point, she grabbed a cinnamon roll and took a bite.

  Prue frowned at Piper. “Do you buy that?”

  “I don’t know.” Piper raised an eyebrow as Phoebe devoured the roll. “I’d like to believe it. Sick is much easier to deal with than the alternatives, if you get my drift.”

  “I don’t think it was magic. I’ve been nauseous and dizzy from hunger before.” When Prue and Piper frowned, Phoebe quickly clarified. “I wasn’t exactly rolling in money in New York, remember?”

  Piper went rigid. “I didn’t know you were starving!”

  “Not starving,” Phoebe said. She didn’t want to open old wounds, especially since her sisters had bailed her out financially more than once before she had returned to San Francisco. “Just hungry enough to get light-headed with an upset stomach every once in a while.”

  “Are you sure?” Prue asked.

  “Positive.” Phoebe nodded and chewed as her stomach settled. She was still a little shaky, but she was certain the sudden attack was nothing more than her body reacting to the physical and emotional stress of cramming for exams the past two weeks. Compounded by some really nasty demon fighting, she added mentally. “I’m fine. Really.”

  Athulak, as he had been known long ago, resented the loss of his physical being. He had stalked the dank forests near the great river for centuries, a demon in human form, immune to the weapons wielded by his savage subjects, sustained by the fear and terror he created from their passions. He would not have adapted so easily as a man walking among them now. Human weaknesses had not changed, but the world people lived in had been altered beyond recognition.

  Humans, who had once struggled to sustain their fragile existence against the more powerful elements, had taken control. They no longer depended on the hunt or the river or cultivating patches of land for food. They did not cower in mud huts, fearful of storms, nor were they confined by the limits of human speed and endurance. They lived in sturdy structures large and small, and commanded mighty machines that labored and carried them over vast distances, faster than the wind he had become.

  But for all their miraculous achievements, they were still human, and his power to disrupt and affect human destiny had not been diminished.

  The witch, however, was human and more, Athulak realized as he hung near the ceiling of the room she occupied with the others. If he still inhabited the body of a man, the strange objects the three female shamans possessed might have captured his interest, but the box full of shadow forms and the artifacts were of no use to him. The absence of material distraction was an advantage he was just beginning to appreciate as he watched and waited.

  “Maybe you should rest, Phoebe.” The woman who could stop time gathered the drinking bowls and stood up. “I can handle the grocery shopping.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not in the mood for lying around the house anymore.” The seer turned to the third woman. “How about you, Prue? Feel like going out?”

  “I’m not sure the supermarket qualifies as ’going out,’” Piper said.

  The blue-eyed woman picked up a heavy pack lying by the entrance. “Actually, I’d love to, but I’ve still got to develop the Tremaine film. Gil wants the proofs tomorrow.”

  “That’s too bad.” The seer smiled.

  “Isn’t it?” Piper glanced at Prue as she picked up the platter of bread. “Will the pictures of P3 be ready for Saturday?”

  “Absolutely.” Slinging the pack over her shoulder, the woman who moved things with her mind headed toward the door. “And if you don’t like them, we can always take more tonight or tomorrow.”

  “I hate it when you cut things so close,” Piper said as she followed Prue out.

  Athulak drifted closer when the seer known as Phoebe threw her head back and closed her eyes. He shimmered, anxious for a sign that the cascade had begun, but there was none.

  Impatient and annoyed, he whipped past her and through the slits of a metal covering on the wall. As he sped through the dusty metal tunnel that led to another vent and the outside, he reminded himself that she was a witch. She would be consumed and destroyed, but it would take time.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Piper set her bag in the child’s seat of the grocery cart as she and Phoebe walked through the automatic doors into the store. She pulled out her shopping list and gave it a quick once-over to refresh her memory.

  “What’s with all the goodies?” Phoebe glanced at the list, then stepped back to follow as Piper turned right and headed toward the bakery. “Are we having a party?”

  “No, we’re not having a party,” Piper said. “I’m either going to be lonely for Leo with all my favorite things in the world to eat or I’m going to stuff Leo with all my favorite things in the world to eat when he shows up.”

  “Cool! Either way, I win.” Phoebe grinned. “I love all that stuff, too.”

  “Guess we’d better double everything, then.” Piper caught an edge of irritation creeping into her voice and realized she was being unfair. Phoebe wasn’t trying to belittle her longing for Leo. She really did love all of Grams’s recipes.

  “Triple,” Phoebe said. “We can’t binge on ham rolls and black bread with cream cheese without Prue.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.” Piper softened her tone and steered the conversation into less sensitive territory. “Would you remind me to call my wholesaler later? I special ordered some fancy finger foods for the bazaar and I want to make sure there’re no mix-ups.”

  “What kind of finger foods?” Phoebe asked.

  “Canapés, cheeses, summer sausages, breads with some seasoned specialty spreads —”

  “Whoa!” Phoebe held up a hand. “Wouldn’t chips and dips be easier? And cheaper?”

  “Easier, cheaper, and totally tacky,” Piper said, annoyed.

  “Yes, but P3 is a club,” Phoebe pressed. “Cool crowd, great bands, dancing. Nobody goes there to eat.”

  “Most of the people at the charity bazaar won’t know P3 is a great dance club unless we can get them to our booth.” Piper rolled her eyes and handed Phoebe the list over her shoulder without looking back. “So we’ve got to have cool food.”

  “Okay, you’re the boss.” Phoebe didn’t sound convinced as she took the paper and followed Piper toward the bakery counter straight ahead.

  “Let’s get some of those blu
eberry mini-muffins —” Piper stopped in her tracks when Phoebe grabbed the back of her blouse.

  “Hold it!” Phoebe’s fingers tightened when Piper tried to pull away.

  “What are you —” Piper’s question was cut short when a speeding grocery cart cut in front of her from a side aisle. The reckless shopper, an unkempt man wearing torn jeans and a dirty T-shirt, didn’t look her way. He grabbed a bag of rolls without slowing down and just kept going.

  Incensed, Piper checked an impulse to freeze the guy before he plowed into something or someone and did some serious damage. Another realization kicked in that seemed more important.

  If Phoebe hadn’t stopped her, the supermarket maniac would have rammed his cart right into her.

  Piper looked back at her sister. “You knew?”

  “Yeah. I got a flash when you gave me this.” Phoebe held up Piper’s grocery list. “Major impact with that bozo’s cart. Wham! Right into the coffee cakes on that counter. Instant broken wrist.”

  “He hit me that hard?” Piper shivered. The grocery store was one of the few places that had always seemed like a haven from the violence that plagued their lives. She had given up longing for the days when she had been just an ordinary young woman who wanted to fall in love, get married, and have a couple of kids. She tried to live as though nothing had changed as much as being a witch with a mission and a supernatural husband allowed. Still, she resented the intrusion of danger into her safe space.

  “Almost hit you that hard,” Phoebe corrected.

  “Right. Thanks.” Piper decided not to let the incident ruin her day. The man was a jerk, but he wasn’t some despicable evil that required the Charmed Ones’ undivided attention. Between missing Leo and making preparations for the P3 booth at the Celebrity Charity Bazaar, she really wasn’t in the mood to drop everything to battle a demon.