“Don’t know,” Piper muttered back. “Just go with it.”
Mitchell, for one, was not laughing. He just curled a lip at Prue and took another plodding step toward Chloe.
“And you know, you’re not really that great a kisser,” Prue continued quickly. “If you hadn’t put a spell on those smooches, I would have been yawning my way through those dates.”
Mitchell spun around, flinging a wad of drool as he did. He glowered at Prue.
“Oh, right,” he grunted, rolling his yellow eyes. “Forget that. You were so whipped.”
“Ha!” Prue barked. “How could I fall for such a rotten journalist? Your prose is awkward, and your reporting skills suck!”
With that, Mitchell forgot Chloe. He threw back his head and roared. Then he spun around and rushed at Prue, digging his claws into her arms and breathing hotly into her face, just as he had at Halliwell Manor.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he huffed.
“Oh, I think I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Prue retorted. “You sold your soul to the prince of Hades. In exchange for being his big dumb lunk of a minion, your mortal self got a slot at National Geographic, the pinnacle of your profession.”
Mitchell screamed, his eyes glowing red. At that moment Prue knew that her hunch was correct. Mitchell may have sold his soul, but clearly he still had his pride. His work was his Achilles’ heel.
“I know why that bothers you so much,” Prue said. “Because you’re a hack. You could never get by on talent. Without Nikos, you’d be nothing.”
Mitchell hauled back and punched Prue across the jaw.
“Prue!” Piper and Phoebe screamed, jumping to assist her. But Prue thrust her hand out, holding them back.
“This is my fight,” she muttered, rubbing her jaw.
“Oh, isn’t that typical,” Mitchell growled sarcastically. “Little Miss Perfect Prue! Always together. Always in control. Everything’s so easy for you.”
“Jealous?” Prue said.
Mitchell socked her again. Prue was so incensed she barely felt the harsh blow.
“Oh, please,” she taunted. “Is that your best shot?”
With that, Mitchell started swinging wildly at Prue. Channeling her rage into expert fighting skills, she ducked his punches and blocked his swings, countering with killer blows of her own. She swung brutal kicks to Mitchell’s side, legs, and gut.
In a few minutes, she had him tired out.
That’s when she pulled out the big guns.
“Freeze him,” she yelled at Piper. Immediately, Piper complied, waving her hands at Mitchell and freezing him in midpunch.
While he hovered, helpless, in midair, Prue used her telekinesis to throw him against the stone wall. The force of the impact unfroze him and he shook his head, looking around woozily.
“How did I get here?” he growled.
“Again!” Prue ordered.
Piper shot another freeze at Mitchell, and Prue crashed him into the wall once more. Two more times she repeated the vicious cycle. Each time, Mitchell staggered to his feet, looking more bleary and weary with the blows.
“Again!” Prue shouted.
Piper began to wave her hands.
“No!” Mitchell cried, holding out one of his enormous claws. “Stop. Please. I can’t take any more.”
“What?”
That was Nikos, who’d been watching the entire scene with amusement. Now, however, he was incensed.
“You are my demon!” Nikos bellowed. “You will do as ordered. Now kill the girl.”
“Piper . . .’’ Prue said.
“No!” Mitchell screamed. “Don’t freeze me again. I can’t . . . I can’t.”
He slumped to the floor in a quivering heap, burying his scaly head in his claws.
“Defeated by women?” Nikos yelled. “Worthless creature!”
“You could have jumped in to help me,” Mitchell accused, rolling his yellow eyes to gaze at Nikos balefully.
“As I said, hand-to-hand combat is beneath me. That’s a demon’s job,” Nikos snapped. “Besides, I wanted to see what you were made of. Now that I know, I have no use for you.”
“What?” Mitchell cried. “But we had a deal!”
Mitchell crawled to Nikos’s feet, clutching his knees, weeping in panic.
“Please, please don’t kill me!” he sobbed. “We had a deeeaaal.”
“Oh, please,” Nikos muttered in disgust. “Your miserable life is safe with me. Our deal, however, is off.”
Mitchell gaped at Nikos as the prince waved one finger at him. With that, the demon was transformed back into his human self. But any cuteness he’d had was destroyed by his quivering expression, his heaving, submissive posture, and the loathsome, selfish stare in his eyes.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Mitchell said.
“I’m releasing you from your service to Hades,” Nikos snapped impatiently. “You will go back to earth as a human. Mortal. Boooring.”
“But,” Mitchell sputtered, “my career!”
“Take it up with human resources!” Nikos bellowed. “I’m so over you.”
With that, he flicked his finger at Mitchell. The quivering young man screamed as he was transformed into a whoosh of shimmering light. The light shot from the room, out of the palace, and back to earth.
Shaking his head in disgust, Nikos pulled his knife back out of its sheath.
“I suppose I’ll have to do this myself,” he complained. “It’s impossible to find good help these days!”
He stomped over to Chloe and grabbed her again. Cruelly, he waved the knife in front of Chloe’s nose, giggling as she shrieked in terror.
“Phoebe,” the beautiful young woman squeaked, “Please . . .”
“Yes, Phoebe,” Nikos said. “It’s come down to the wire. What’ll it be? Your hand . . . or Chloe’s life?”
Tearfully, Phoebe opened her mouth to answer. She couldn’t let an innocent person die for her. She had to submit to Nikos.
Giving her sisters an anguished glance, she trudged toward Nikos. She swallowed hard and began to speak.
“The bond which was not to be done, give us the power to see it undone!”
It was Prue—shouting some lines of verse across the foyer. Phoebe and Nikos both whirled around to stare at her.
“What is that?” Nikos sneered. “A farewell poem?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Prue shot back as she fished a crumpled scrap of paper out of her shorts pocket. “ ‘The bond which was not to be done, give us the power to see it undone. And move time forward, for thee we shun!’ ”
Phoebe shook her head in confusion. That poem, it sounded so familiar. Then she gasped. That’s no poem, she thought, that’s my time-travel spell. But why?
Piper gaped at Prue. Halfway through her sister’s recital, she recognized the verse as a spell. I think that’s Phoebe’s time-travel spell, she thought. But . . . why?
As she recited Phoebe’s words, Prue gazed urgently into her sisters’ eyes. Trust me, she willed them. Trust me. Say it with me.
Prue began to recite the spell a second time. With confusion still in her brown eyes, Phoebe nevertheless joined in, her voice strong and clear. Immediately, Piper began to say the words with them.
“What are you doing?” Nikos screamed, hurling Chloe out of his way and stomping over to Prue. “Whatever it is, I suggest you stop. You’ll be very, very sorry if you cross me.”
Prue heard Nikos’s threats, but she closed her eyes and ignored them. Must finish the incantation, she thought as she and her sisters launched into the spell a third time.
“That’s it,” Nikos screamed. He stalked back over to Chloe.
“ ‘Give us the power to see it undone’,” the sisters recited desperately.
“I’m going to kill her now!” Nikos shouted.
“ ‘And move time forward,’ ” the witches shrieked.
Nikos raised his blade.
“ ‘For th
ee we shun!’ ” They’d finished the incantation.
Instantly, a wind whipped through the foyer, knocking the mortals to the ground and whipping the blade from Nikos’s hand.
“Aiiiigh!” he screamed in rage. He spotted the knife on the floor. He wiggled his finger at it to shimmer the weapon back into his hands.
The blade sat on the floor. It didn’t move an inch.
“What?” Nikos blurted. Then he stood straight and closed his eyes. Phoebe recognized his projection stance. He was trying to shimmer from one place to another.
But nothing happened.
“My . . . my powers,” Nikos cried. “I don’t under—”
“My, my, look at the time,” Prue said smugly, gazing at her watch. “I’ve got August fifteenth.”
“My birthday!” Nikos said, looking stunned.
“Time-travel spell,” Phoebe explained. “An old Halliwell favorite. We’ve just jumped ahead two days.”
“No!” Nikos cried, flailing his arms wildly, trying to work his magic. “It’s not possible.”
“Sorry, it’s already done,” Phoebe said with mock sympathy. “And what was it you told me? I believe your exact words were, ‘My father’s spell has already been cast. If there’s not a ring on my finger the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday, I’ll instantly be sent . . . up there. Doomed to live a humdrum life with no power, no magic, walking among mortals.’ ”
Nikos fell to his knees, utterly stupefied. He trembled with fear and disbelief.
“No,” he rasped. “No, it can’t be.”
“Uh, Nikos,” Prue said, stepping forward. “Take it up with human resources. See you on earth!”
With that, she flicked her finger, Nikos style, at the quivering prince. He began to fly through the air, howling. Halfway across the room, his body shimmered away and he was transformed into a streak of light, just as Mitchell had been. An instant later the light shot from the room. Nikos had been banished.
Phoebe glanced at the dining room door.
“Wow,” she said. “Those people have been partying for four days and they’re still going strong. Let’s get out of here before they notice that Nikos has disappeared.”
Grabbing the hands of the trembling models, the witches led the way out of the palace into the gloom of Hades.
As they began the long hike through the woods, Prue said, “I propose we exit through the ‘front door.’ I’d much rather face Charon again than those dreadful Sirens. Plus, we still have something for our fare.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the beautiful mother-of-pearl inkwell.
“Our only problem is the models,” Piper whispered, glancing at the delicate, wispy beauties, who were already stumbling and stubbing their toes on the rough path. “Think they can hack it?”
“Oh, believe me,” Phoebe said, “They can make it. The real question is, can we survive their complaining.”
“I mean really,” Chloe was saying. “Two days we were stuck there and not one magazine? And the bathrooms were totally primitive!”
“Ugh,” Prue said with a laugh. “Let’s get going. This is going to be the hike from hell.”
“But at least we’re doing it together,” Phoebe said, smiling gratefully at her sisters. “We’ve got our Power of Three back. That’s all the strength I need!”
CHAPTER
14
Anybody home?” Prue called, slamming the front door and racing into the foyer. She crossed the living room, glancing into the empty—blissfully empty— sunroom. Then she stepped around the stone Gorgon and headed into the kitchen. She found Piper and Phoebe sitting at their new kitchen table. Piper was sipping a glass of iced tea, and Phoebe was assembling an enormous sandwich out of a small mountain of deli meats, cheeses, and condiments. Prue had to laugh.
“What?” Phoebe protested, flipping a strand of blond hair out of her eyes. “It’s my after-school snack. You know I’m always starving after my painting class.”
“I hope it’s not some cute guy that’s got your metabolism going,” Prue said, striding across the room and flopping into a chair between her sisters.
“No way!” Phoebe said, taking an enormous bite from her sandwich. “The only guy I’m involved with at the moment is Vincent van Gogh.”
Prue smiled and shook her head.
“It’s hard to believe that only a week ago we were slogging through Hades.”
“With five fashion models!” Piper blurted, giggling.
“Thank goodness they didn’t remember a thing when they woke up in the sunroom,” Phoebe pointed out as she popped an olive into her mouth.
“Yeah,” Prue said. “And all it took was one more handy-dandy time-travel spell to erase the fact that they’d just taken a two-day nap.”
“That was a lot easier than getting my old blond ’do back,” Phoebe added. “I spent like three hours at the salon undoing Nikos’s damage! My hairdresser thought I had gone nuts.”
She twirled a tendril of silky blond hair around her finger and grinned while Prue and Piper laughed out loud.
“So, anyway,” Piper said, turning to Prue, “what are you so excited about that you, Prue Halliwell, slammed the front door, ‡ la Phoebe?”
“Hey,” Phoebe protested, throwing a corn chip at Piper.
“I was just at 415,” Prue announced, pulling her gorgeous faux-Victorian print out of her portfolio to show her sisters. “Mr. Caldwell loved the photo! He called it ‘magical.’ ”
“Insightful guy, your editor,” Phoebe said dryly.
“And I got the cover!” Prue said.
“Prue, that’s fabulous,” Piper shrieked.
“You are so kicking butt,” Phoebe agreed. “And you didn’t have to sell your soul to do it! Pure talent—that’s my sis.”
“Which reminds me of the other thing I saw today,” Prue said. She grinned and pulled a thin newspaper out of her bag. “Check this out.”
She flipped through the tabloid size newspaper— one of the less-distinguished free weeklies scattered around San Francisco—and came to one of the last pages.
“It’s an obituary,” Phoebe said, looking at Prue blankly. “Do we know this person? And why are you looking so amused, Prue? The man’s dead. And he was only ninety-seven!”
“Not the subject,” Prue said. “The author. Look at the byline.”
“Obituary by staff writer Mitchell Pearl,” Piper read. Then her eyes widened. “Mitchell? Your Mitchell?”
“Yup!” Prue giggled. “Without Nikos’s evil influence, I guess the only gig he could get was an entry-level job at a fish-wrapper.”
The sisters burst into laughter.
“And what about the newly mortal Nikos?” Piper said to Phoebe. “Seen him around town?”
Phoebe shook her head.
“Maybe I should check the reptile house at the zoo,” she sneered. “I know he’s partial to snakes.”
“So, I think this is a record,” Prue said dryly, grabbing one of Phoebe’s chips. “Two of us fell for demons at the same time.”
“Ugh, I know!” Phoebe said. “Why, oh why do we have such bad luck with men?”
“Well, at least Prue got some necking out of it,” Piper teased, poking her in the arm.
“Hey,” Prue protested. “You promised you wouldn’t mention it again if I did your laundry for the next month.”
“Mention what?” Piper teased. “That you almost abandoned me on Mount Olympus because you were making out with a guy?”
“Aaaaigh!” Prue shrieked with a laugh. “You promised!”
“That’s the last you’ll hear of it,” Piper said, getting up to fix Prue some iced tea. “Witch’s honor.”
Phoebe took a bite of a pickle and chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
“We should look at the bright side,” she announced. “Maybe we’ll meet some hot new guys, nondemon, thank you very much, when we go to Heaven tonight.”
“What?” Prue and Piper blurted.
“Didn’t we jus
t put all that stuff behind us?” Piper demanded, sitting back down at the table with Prue’s tea.
“Not Mount Olympus,” Phoebe said. “Heaven— the cabaret! We vowed that when Prue made her deadline, we would paint the town red. You were angsting about your life being too boring, Piper. Remember?”
“Please,” Piper said with another laugh. “I’ve been to Mount Olympus. I’ve vanquished a three-headed dog, a Gorgon, and some Sirens. I’ve been to Hades and back. My life is anything but boring.”
Phoebe took another huge bite out of her sandwich and grinned at her sisters. “I’ll eat to that!”
“You know, we have one bit of unfinished business after this whole Hades mess,” Piper reminded them.
Prue nodded. Then all three sisters twisted in their seats to glare at the Gorgon in the kitchen doorway. It was the ugliest sculpture imaginable and totally in the way. All week, they’d been trying to figure out how to get the thing—which must have weighed a thousand pounds—out of their house. They couldn’t call in a professional mover, they’d agreed—it would look too suspicious. And, even with a dolly, they wouldn’t have been able to get it down the steps without doing major damage.
“Well, funny you should mention our Gorgon friend, Piper,” Phoebe said. She grinned sneakily and headed to the broom closet on the other side of the kitchen. “Because I think I came up with a solution today. I made a little trip to the hardware store and bought . . . these!”
Phoebe spun around and held up three sledgehammers.
“Phoebe,” Piper said, slapping her forehead. “Of course. You’re brilliant!”
“So, you ready to play whack-a-Gorgon?” Phoebe said.
“Oh yeah,” Prue declared. “Let me at it.”
The sisters each grasped a hammer. Then they circled the Gorgon.
“Who gets the first crack?” Piper asked.
“I think Phoebe should,” Prue said. “After all, she was the one held hostage.”
“And don’t forget the hair,” Piper pointed out with a giggle.
Phoebe grinned at her sisters. Then she swung her sledgehammer over her head.
“Hiiiii-YAH!” she screamed, bringing it down on the stone Gorgon with a clang. A cluster of snakes crumbled and snapped off the statue’s head.
Soul of the Bride Page 14