Beware What You Wish

by Diana G. Gallagher

  “Are you okay?” Phoebe asked, frowning. “You look mad. Not that I’d blame you.”

  “No, I’m fine. Just a little anxious because there’s so much to do before Saturday.” Piper smiled. “Let’s get this done and get out of here.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” Phoebe checked both ways to make sure the cross aisle was clear, then motioned Piper to move on.

  As they wove their way up and down the aisles, Piper’s mind kept wandering back to the near collision that hadn’t happened because Phoebe had had a vision. This wasn’t the first time Phoebe’s power of premonition had saved her or Prue and it wouldn’t be the last, but Piper was reminded of just how abnormal their lives really were. When it got right down to it, no matter how much she wanted to be “normal,” it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t even plan a cozy dinner for two with Leo because she never knew when he was going to orb in — or orb out again.

  “Want to pick up some of these for Leo?” Phoebe dropped two boxes of oatmeal raisin granola bars into the cart.

  “Have you expanded into mind reading?” Piper asked, amused. “I was just thinking about Leo.”

  “You’re always thinking about Leo,” Phoebe teased. She dropped a third box of granola bars into the cart. “I hate it when I get a granola craving and we don’t have any.”

  Piper winced. Leo had a habit of helping himself to anything in the Halliwell pantry, which seemed only fair since he was their guardian White Lighter and Piper’s husband. However, she made a mental note to stock up on his favorite snacks in the future. She and her sisters had enough problems without bickering over the availability of granola bars.

  “You really miss him, don’t you?” Phoebe asked.

  The question caught Piper off guard. She and her sisters were close, but she didn’t always tell them what was bothering her until circumstances forced it out of her. Phoebe and Prue had accepted their powers and the enormous responsibility that went with them a lot more readily than she had. She felt a little guilty because she had had more trouble reconciling her personal life with their higher calling. She wasn’t proud of it, but she couldn’t ignore it, either. Even so, the cereal aisle of the grocery store wasn’t the right place for a serious discussion of her personal failings.

  “Yes, but I also know he’ll be back as soon as he can.” Piper pointed down the aisle. “I think the canned black bread is down there.”

  “Let’s stock up,” Phoebe said. “My mouth is already watering.”

  “Not a problem.” Piper, like Phoebe and Prue, loved the moist black bread and cream cheese snack sandwiches Grams had made for them when they were kids. Piper had always appreciated her grand-mother’s domestic, no-magic streak, but the simple recipes satisfied something much deeper than a culinary craving. They helped bridge the gap between this world and the next, now that Grams had passed on.

  Phoebe patted her flat stomach. “I’m going to have to spend all next week working out.”

  “You could skip the snacks,” Piper suggested.

  “Don’t think so,” Phoebe said without hesitation. “Life is way too short not to indulge once in a while.”

  Piper couldn’t argue with that. Her mind wandered right back to Leo as she followed Phoebe up and down the aisles. She did miss him — a lot — and sometimes she wondered if he realized how hard the separations were on her. Until she had orbed out to the White Lighter headquarters “up there,” she hadn’t known that time passed much more slowly there than it did in the mortal world. She hadn’t seen Leo in two weeks, but less than a day had passed for him. Unless he’s on another assignment here, she reminded herself.

  “All we need are some fresh vegetables and we’re done.” Phoebe put pen to paper and scratched two pounds of thinly sliced deli ham off the list.

  “Great!” Piper abandoned her momentary lapse into self-pity. The separations were hard, but she was grateful the powers-that-be had given her and Leo a chance to work things out. She smiled at Phoebe. “Then we can go home and do the fun part.”

  “The eating part.” Phoebe held up a fresh bundle of broccoli for Piper’s approval. “With a little ranch dressing?”

  “Perfect.” Piper gave a thumbs-up on the broccoli, then pointed to a stock boy who was restocking behind Phoebe. “Grab a couple of those scallion bunches, will you?”

  “You got it.” Phoebe handed the broccoli to Piper and sidled up to the teenager. “Can I have two of those before you stuff them behind the old ones?”

  “Sure.” Obviously flustered by Phoebe’s good nature and good looks, the boy fumbled with a plastic bag, counted out two bunches of scallions, and shoved the bag toward Phoebe. “Here you go.”

  Piper looked away. The boy was embarrassed enough without adding to his discomfort by gawking. After a few seconds, when Phoebe didn’t bounce up with the scallions, she looked back as the boy pushed through the stockroom doors with the produce cart.

  The bag of scallions was on the floor.

  Phoebe was clinging to the edge of the counter, her knuckles white with strain. Her eyes were closed, and her breath came in short, ragged gasps.

  Alarmed by the effects of another vision, Piper sprang toward her sister.

  “What is it, Phoebe?”

  Phoebe barely heard Piper through the images that had flooded her mind when she brushed the stock boy’s hand. The vision had hit her like a physical blow and held her mind in a viselike grip that was augmented by the panic inherent in a sense of helplessness.

  No scream escaped the ambushed boy as bone and muscle were pulverized between massive, moving walls.

  Beads of sweat dampened Phoebe’s face as the image blinked out. The onslaught of a second vision following so close to the first left her more shaken than usual. Head throbbing, she tightened her aching fingers on the counter, which kept her upright as her knees began to buckle.

  Piper grabbed Phoebe’s arms to steady her. “What’s happening?”

  As the effects dissipated, Phoebe struggled to collect herself and looked around. “Where’d he go?”

  “The stock boy?” Piper asked. “Back there.” “Come on. He’s going to get squashed if we don’t stop it.” Phoebe staggered for the doors. She didn’t have time to go into detail. If they were too late to avert the whole calamity, Piper’s ability to freeze was the teenager’s only hope.

  “Stop what?” Piper was on Phoebe’s heels as she burst into the large warehouse area of the store.

  “That.” Phoebe stared at the huge black semi backing up to the loading dock. The docking bay was about thirty feet wide, and the driver had positioned the truck in the middle. The day before, dis-aster had ridden on the back of one runaway pony. Today it was packed into hundreds of tons of horsepower under the hood of a sleek rig called Thunder & Stone.

  Phoebe shifted her attention to the stock boy, who was standing on the edge of the raised loading platform with a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a tie. A manager, she surmised as her eye darted to another man sitting in an idling forklift nearby. She hesitated, realizing something about the scene wasn’t right. In her vision, the boy had been on the ground in the bay and the truck had pinned him to the dock.

  As though on cue, the manager glanced down over the edge of the loading platform. “Get that crate out of there, Barry.”

  “Okay.” As Barry jumped into the bay, the manager turned toward the forklift.

  “No!” Phoebe shouted. “Get him out of there!”

  Barry looked up, totally forgetting about the truck that was still backing toward the dock.

  “Sorry, ladies!” the manager called out. “You can’t be back here. Authorized —”

  “Piper!” Phoebe turned frantic eyes on her sister. Freezing a tractor-trailer truck and four people was a little more than Piper was usually called on to handle. Okay, a lot more, Phoebe thought, but they had no choice. If they didn’t act, Barry would be crushed. “Now, please!”

  “Right.” Piper grimaced as she threw up her hands.
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  Phoebe was already running toward Barry when the whole scene came to a stop.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Piper said as they reached the edge of the dock. “This was a pretty big stop order, and I don’t know how long it will hold.”

  “Let’s just hope it’s long enough.” Phoebe knelt down and lowered herself to the drive, wishing Prue had come along. Barry probably would have suffered some painful bumps and bruises after Prue yanked him clear with a power pull, but that was better than being flattened by a truck. And now, Phoebe thought as she clamped onto the boy’s arm, she was in the crash zone, too.

  Piper jumped down and grabbed Barry’s other arm. “Come on, big boy.”

  Piper and Phoebe pulled just as the truck’s engine roared to life.

  “What? Where?” The manager sputtered when Piper and Phoebe seemed to disappear before his eyes. Most of the time they tried to get back into position before anyone unfroze, but it wasn’t always possible.

  Not our biggest problem, Phoebe realized as Barry stumbled backward. She and Piper went down with him as he fell.

  The truck brakes squealed as the driver brought the rig to a halt against the dock.

  Buried under the stunned stock boy, Phoebe whispered to Piper. “Encore.”

  Piper nodded, raised her hands and froze everyone again. She got to her feet and blew a stray strand of hair off her forehead. “Now what?”

  Grunting, Phoebe struggled out from under Barry and stood up. She had an idea with about a million-in-one chance of working, but she couldn’t think of anything else. “Run.”

  Piper didn’t argue as Phoebe urged her up the ladder at the end of the bay. They hit the platform running, barreling past the immobile workers and through the doors back into the produce department. They slowed to a fast walk as the doors swung closed behind them and hurried back to their grocery cart.

  “The sooner we get out of here the better,” Piper said as she grabbed the cart.

  “What about the veggies?” Phoebe glanced back as Piper headed up the dish and laundry detergent aisle.

  “We’ll swing by Sam’s vegetable store on the way home,” Piper called back over her shoulder.

  When the doors into the warehouse started to swing open, Phoebe ducked into the aisle out of sight. With any kind of luck, Barry, the manager, and the forklift driver would assume their strange vanishing act had never actually happened. That particular quirk of human nature often worked to the Halliwells’ benefit when they couldn’t totally cover their magical tracks. However, she didn’t want to tempt fate by sticking around to find out if it was going to work this time. Phoebe dashed after Piper, who was already halfway down the aisle.

  To hurry things along at the checkout counter, Phoebe unloaded the cart while Piper helped an elderly man bag. By the time she put the last few cans of black bread on the conveyor, she relaxed. The warehouse manager’s attention had probably been diverted by Barry’s close call with the back of the truck. On-the-job accidents, workers’ comp, and insurance rates were a higher priority than mysterious, disappearing customers.

  “Good. You’re done. We need that.” Piper pulled the cart forward to be loaded with bagged groceries.

  “Except for this!” Phoebe handed the last can of black bread to the cashier. As their fingertips touched, she was seized with another premonition. She swayed slightly as her head swam with an image that flashed by so fast she wasn’t quite sure what she had seen.

  . . . blood seeping from a wound . . .

  “You okay, miss?” the cashier asked.

  Piper’s head snapped around. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Fine.” Phoebe recovered quickly from the temporary disorientation. All her visions were disturbing, but there was no sense of real urgency associated with the mini version she had just experienced. She smiled at the matronly cashier as Piper paid the bill. “Don’t touch anything sharp, okay?”

  “Okay.” The woman looked at her askance and handed Piper her change.

  Piper frowned. “Ready?”

  “More than.” Rolling her eyes, Phoebe waved Piper to move out. She looked back as the automatic doors opened.

  The cashier started to straighten a stack of sale flyers on the counter. She yelped and shook her finger as blood seeped out of a paper cut.

  Prue loved the tranquility of the darkroom. With the exception of the occasional evil intruder or life-or-death interruption, her professional domain was isolated from whatever was going on outside. Even her sisters, who had no compunction about barging into the bathroom or into her bedroom to borrow her clothes, followed the darkroom do-not-enter rule. It wasn’t just a question of spoiled photos and lost time if light got in at an inopportune moment. They respected her space — unless there was a crisis.

  She was incredibly lucky, Prue thought as her gaze flicked to the proofs of Stephen Tremaine hanging above the solution pans. After years of working for someone else, she had taken the risky plunge to freelance. Photography had always been a passion, and the career move was exhilarating, challenging, and very scary.

  “As though I didn’t have enough scary in my life,” Prue muttered as she began processing the last few shots she had snapped of the congressional candidate. The uncertainty and fear she faced every day because she was a witch probably wouldn’t change, but the uncertainty and fear presented by her new profession lessened with every assignment she completed to the magazine’s satisfaction. The transition from steady paycheck to being paid by the job, when there was a job, hadn’t been easy. Getting into the good graces of the editor at 415 had helped, though, and the Tremaine assignment was crucial to staying in the game.

  Gil and Tremaine will both love these shots, Prue thought as she hung up another picture to dry. The lighting and angles softened Tremaine’s austere bone structure and smoothed the rough texture of his aging skin, which should appeal to his vanity. In the photo she had just processed, she had managed to capture him in a moment of admiration for the primitive stone figure. The expression produced a desirable quality of human awe he didn’t display in person. If she didn’t know anything about the man or his corporate-driven agenda, the photo might have convinced her to vote for him.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Stephen Tremaine, you’re a no-go on every level.” Prue sighed as she addressed the man’s picture. “No vote, no chemistry, too bad.”

  Prue frowned as she stared at the photo. The light gray speck on the crude eye carved into the stone was so minuscule that she hadn’t noticed it at first glance. Now that it was apparent, the tiny flaw leaped off the paper. Concerned, she quickly finished processing the remaining three photos. Her impish mood evaporated as the speck enlarged with each successive shot. In the last one, the flaw looked like a faint plume of smoke.

  Adefect in the film? Prue wondered as she studied the shots that finished up the roll. She had never had a problem with the professional grade film before, but that didn’t mean a problem wasn’t possible.

  Just as something more sinister wasn’t impossible,she thought on closer inspection.

  Tremaine had been talking about his campaign against Noel Jefferson when she had finished the session, and the pictures had caught several emotions during the course of the short conversation. He had segued from pride in the rare stone statue to a variety of expressions regarding his campaign: concern, determination, anger, and pensive thought.

  No, not pensive, Prue realized remembering back. Tremaine had zoned out for a second on her last shot. He had dismissed the fleeting event as nothing, but in the past she had been blindsided by too many nothings that had turned into dangerous somethings to ignore it.

  Troubled, Prue examined each photo again, but this time she concentrated on the flaw. The expanding gray shadow was positioned in the same section of each photo, which did not eliminate faulty film as the cause. On the other hand, that didn’t provethe film was responsible.

  Planting her hands on her hips, Prue exhaled with frustration. A problem with the film was the most lo
gical explanation and the easiest to accept, but she wasn’t quite ready to buy it. Maybe her lens had failed. And of course, the specter of a supernatural source always hovered as a possibility.

  “Supernatural based on what?” Prue asked herself aloud. She felt a little foolish for imagining the worst, but she’d rather know one way or the other. She was more suspicious than her sisters, a trait that had proven to be valuable too often. “And this leopard can’t change its spots now.”

  Intrigued, Prue pulled a magnifying glass out of a drawer and used it to study the defect in each shot. She didn’t identify the one similarity all the photos shared until she was halfway through a second, more intense scrutiny of the series. Tremaine’s head and upper body, his arm, hand, and the primitive statue were positioned about the same in all four pictures with only slight variations. His head was tilted back more in one, and his arm was lower in another. The smoky flaw, however, began and elongated from the same point in the statue’s rounded eye.

  Puzzled, Prue put the magnifying glass away and removed her apron. She didn’t believe in freak coincidence, but she had absolutely no reason to believe it wasn’t the cause of the problems with the photos. Still, for safety’s sake, it couldn’t hurt to try to figure it out.

  Anxious to get busy, Prue stopped in the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea, then headed for the living room to get her camera bag. She had purchased several rolls of film at the same time and quickly loaded her camera. The test wouldn’t be conclusive if the flaw didn’t show up in the new shots, but she could definitely find out if the lens was to blame.

  With her tea made and camera in hand, Prue pulled the shades on the front windows in the living room to re-create the lighting in Tremaine’s library the day before. Then she began snapping shots of the Halliwell furniture.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Piper parked in front of the small produce market, turned off the engine, and clamped down on Phoebe’s arm as she moved to open the door. “Not so fast.”

  “What?” Phoebe blinked, bewildered. “Is something wrong?”