by Paul Ruditis
Emily and the five other attackers placed their books in Austin’s arms. He struggled under the weight of them, but didn’t bother to complain. Isaac wouldn’t listen to him. Or worse, he would.
“Now, move on to your next targets,” Isaac said. “The night is young and full of promise. Austin and I will enact the next phase of our plan: revealing witches to the world.”
“That should bring us more allies,” Emily said with a satisfied smile. “It is time for us humans to take back our world from the darkness that poisons it.”
“That it is,” Isaac said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “That it is.”
Austin strained under the weight of the books in his arms as he watched the others disappear into the woods. “I don’t think I can make it back to the car carrying all this stuff.”
Isaac laughed. It was even more disturbing than the moaning sounds he’d made while his followers stole the witches’ powers. “Not a concern, Austin. We no longer need to hide behind human methods of transportation.”
Isaac placed a hand on Austin’s shoulder and they disappeared.
“Prue! Prue! Are you okay?”
“Prue! Get up!”
“What happened? What’s going on?”
“Give her some air. Let her breathe.”
The voices overlapped as Prue regained consciousness, making it hard for her to tell who was speaking. Images appeared in front of her, blurry at first, before coalescing into her sisters and Cole.
Prue was on the floor of her new magical chamber. She’d fallen on the triquetra painted on the floor. Her shoulder ached. She must have landed on her side. If this were going to keep happening, she’d have to consider mattresses for floors in her new redesign. She took Piper’s hand and let her sister help her to her feet, moving slowly as the world righted itself.
“It happened again,” Prue said as she steadied herself and moved over to the appropriately named fainting couch. “Witches having their powers stolen from them. This attack was bigger. A coven. And it wasn’t just one person. It was many. There was something else too. Something . . . more. A presence. I didn’t feel it before.”
“Presence?” Piper asked. “Like a magical one?”
“It’s possible,” Prue said. “But it’s not like I’m picking up a clear video with play-by-play commentary. It’s a combination of feelings and imagery.”
“Here.” Cole handed her a glass of water.
Prue took a sip. “Thanks. It’s all so overwhelming.”
“Tell me about it,” Phoebe said. “So you’re getting premonitions now?”
Prue could hear the concern in Phoebe’s voice mixed with what she took to be a small amount of jealousy. “Not premonitions, no. I can’t see the future. I’m seeing things as they happen, but I can’t do anything to stop them. And I don’t think it’s me. I’m pretty sure it’s this place. The Nexus is reacting to the imbalance of power. It isn’t something I can turn on and off at will.”
“Good to know you won’t be spying on us,” Paige said. Prue knew that she was going for levity, but the comment fell with a thud. This was serious business and they all knew it.
“Your arm’s glowing,” Piper said.
The star had disappeared from the tattoo that had been a pentagram earlier. It was now a hollow circle. They all watched as sections of the tattoo disappeared, taking it from a solid line to a broken series of dashes. It didn’t hurt as it changed, but Prue’s arm did tingle like she’d fallen asleep on it.
Prue assumed the broken circle referred to the coven she had seen. There was something else too. A lingering feeling, like a potential loss of innocence, like the coven had been protecting something as well.
“You should go,” she said to her sisters. “There’s nothing you can do for the coven right now, but maybe they can lead you to whoever is doing this before it goes too far. I have a feeling this is only the beginning.”
“Did you get that from your vision too?” Phoebe asked.
“No,” Prue replied. “That comes from experience.”
Phoebe breathed again as Paige completed orbing herself and her sisters into the clearing in the woods of Massachusetts. For some reason, Phoebe always held her breath when she traveled with Paige or Coop or even Cole. No matter how many times she disappeared in one location only to pop up in another, she somehow felt like she was taking her last breath as she began to dematerialize. Considering the number of dangerous situations they popped into on any given day, it wasn’t a completely unreasonable thought.
There was nothing waiting to attack when their orbs finally reconstituted into the bodies of the Charmed Ones. No, the attack had finished sometime before they arrived. A half dozen women dressed in white sat on the ground around a makeshift altar comforting each other. A few of them were crying softly. One was off on her own, away from the group, overcome with emotion. Phoebe didn’t have to ask what had happened. Prue had seen it all. They were too late. All they could do was help pick up the pieces.
A dark-haired woman saw them first and threw herself between her coven and the Charmed Ones. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Phoebe appreciated the woman’s bold move in protecting her own. Following an attack, this woman had no idea what they had arrived to do and she was still willing to fight for her family of witches. And she was going to do it without her powers as well. Phoebe assumed the crying had to do with them figuring out what had happened. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re here to help.”
She held her hands up in the traditional pose to show they were unarmed and the witches moved back. Holding hands up in these circles meant something totally different and Phoebe was quick to put her arms down at her sides lest they think she was about to throw a fireball at them or something worse. “Sorry. Forgot my audience.”
“You still haven’t told us who you are,” the woman said, still holding back with her coven.
“We’re the Charmed Ones,” Paige said as if that explained everything.
Apparently, it did, because the women in white immediately relaxed and smiles broke across a few of their faces. “The Charmed Ones?” the dark-haired woman asked. “The Warren Witches?”
“We go by Halliwell now,” Piper said, which elicited a polite cough from Paige. “And Matthews . . . well, Matthews-Mitchell.”
“I’m a stepsister,” Paige explained. “And a hyphenate.”
“We kept our last names,” Phoebe said with a nod to Piper. “But I’m guessing you all don’t care about that right now.”
“Someone took our powers,” a woman from the back said.
The dark-haired woman stepped forward. She had a more relaxed stance now. “I’m Monica. These are my coven sisters.” Phoebe smiled as Monica introduced the women by name, making note of each one and filing it for later. She met so many people in her travels that she’d become very good at committing names to memory because there was always a chance she was going to run into them again.
Piper returned the introductions by sharing her and her sister’s names, which turned out to be unnecessary.
“Oh, we know all about you three,” Monica said. “And your sister is back? Prue?”
“Guess it’s not just the demon grapevine that’s spreading the word,” Phoebe said.
“Yes,” Piper said tentatively. “Yes, she is. In fact, she’s the one that sent us to you. She’s the one that told us about your powers being stolen.”
“Couldn’t have gotten here sooner to stop it, could you?” a voice said from the back of the group.
“Vanessa!” Monica rolled her eyes. “Sorry about that. I’d like to blame that outburst on the fact that we’ve all been through a traumatic experience, but she’s always like that.”
“I thought that one got premonitions,” Vanessa said, pointing at Phoebe.
“It doesn’t always work on demand,” Phoebe r
etorted. “Which you should know if you’re really a practicing witch.”
“We know,” Monica said. “It’s just . . . not a good time for us right now. One of our sisters is in a difficult position. We were trying to help her tonight through our magical bond. Having our powers taken from us on this, of all nights, makes things more complicated. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Some,” Piper said. “We’re working out the rest. Can you tell us what happened here?”
Phoebe listened as Monica shared her story, growing agitated as she heard the details. It was fairly concise and shocking all the same. Six people had come out of the woods with six different Books of Light. They were long gone before the coven had regained consciousness to discover they could no longer call upon their active powers. Monica concluded the tale at the moment the Charmed Ones arrived. By that point, Phoebe couldn’t speak—she was so afraid to put what she was thinking into words.
“Was this guy part of the group?” Piper held out the drawing of Austin that Alysha had provided.
Monica shook her head. “I didn’t see him.”
She shared the drawing with the rest of her coven, but none of them recognized the face.
“What about a man with long, dark hair?” Paige asked, recalling the description of the gunman from the police report. “Anyone like that?”
Six heads all shook in response.
Phoebe finally found her voice. “There may be clues in the forest. You all wait here while we look.” She grabbed her sisters and pulled them into the trees.
“Hey,” Paige said as she was dragged along. “It’s dark in there.”
“Oh, light some orbs,” Phoebe said once they were safely out of earshot of the coven.
“What is it?” Piper asked, seeing the concern on her sister’s face even in the darkness.
“It’s happening,” Phoebe said. “The witch hunts.”
“Yeah,” Paige said. “For a day now. Where’ve you been?”
“No,” Phoebe insisted. “The witch hunts. We saw this coming. Ten years ago. Prue, Piper, and I traveled to this time. To a world that knew all about witches and was going after them.”
“I know the story,” Paige said. “But you stopped it from happening. That prosecutor never found out about you. Your friend is safe. You never murdered that baseball player. There are no witch trials.”
“Not yet,” Phoebe insisted. “This isn’t just a couple people going after witches. This is a group. At least eight people, maybe more. It’s bigger than we thought. And it’s happening at roughly the same time it was supposed to happen. Yes, we stopped individual elements of the future we saw from happening, but can you ever really stop fate?”
“Yes,” Piper said. “We’ve stopped it, reversed it; we’ve made it run and hide with its tail between its legs. You’re only tying this to the future we saw because it’s linked to the past with Melinda Warren. History isn’t repeating itself. This is just another form of evil like all the rest.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “This is different. These are humans.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Paige said.
“Either way, we’re not going to get anywhere worrying about this in the woods,” Piper said. “Now that you’ve pulled us out here, let’s at least try to look for some clues.”
The Charmed Ones spread out to scour the area, which was fairly impossible to do in the dark night, even with the orbs Piper called up to give them some light. Phoebe wasn’t sure what they were supposed to be looking for, but they’d learned long ago that clues didn’t always come with an explanation. They could learn a lot from a broken branch or even a discarded piece of trash.
If there really were such a thing as witch-scene investigators, as Paige had joked the other day, there’d be no telling what they could discover. As it stood, the Charmed Ones were probably some of the best detectives in the magical community. Even with the light of the orbs, it was difficult to make anything out in the shadows of the trees. Phoebe thought she saw something moving in the grass and leaned in to investigate closer, only to find it was a huge rodent. She took a sudden step back and tripped over the root of a tree. Falling, she held out a hand to steady herself and grabbed onto the trunk of that same tree. She stayed on her feet and was hit by flashes of imagery.
A TV screen with a national news anchor, the handsome one with the perfectly coifed hair. A chyron below his talking head read: Are Witches Real?
Cut to a blurry video of what looked to be a demon attacking patrons of an art gallery.
Close-up of Alysha very clearly revealing her powers to the world.
The images disappeared from Phoebe’s mind, replaced by her sisters in front of her looking concerned.
“It’s happening,” Phoebe said. “Magic is about to be revealed to the world.”
Chapter 15
Austin was underdressed. He stood out in his jeans and T-shirt mingling among the suits and fancy dresses at the art gallery. But that was the least of his concerns. He was back in Philadelphia, the city where he was wanted as an accomplice to an accidental shooting at a museum. Not that that was even his biggest concern. The more problematic issue was that Isaac was somewhere in the vicinity with his ability to teleport that could put him right beside Austin without warning.
It was hard enough to believe that witches were real, but Austin couldn’t begin to guess what Isaac truly was. The man wasn’t saying, if he was even a man at all. Either way, there was a lot more at stake here than some families with a centuries-long grudge against witches.
Austin knew that Isaac had been using them all. That much was obvious from the start. But how would Emily and Jacob and the others feel if they knew that Isaac had dark powers of his own? Powers that were probably even darker than the abilities that witches possessed. There was no doubt in Austin’s mind any longer: They weren’t on some noble mission to rid the world of the evils of witchcraft. Isaac had his own agenda. One that made Austin consider witches in a different light.
None of that mattered at the moment. All Austin could focus on was the danger he was in. The danger they were all in. Isaac had teleported him to this event for a reason. They weren’t there to take in the artwork.
It was a rare piece of luck that they weren’t at Austin’s college campus. Less chance he’d run into anyone he knew at this gallery showing of a professor’s artwork. Students and faculty mixed and mingled as the caterers walked among them with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, weaving in and out of the maze of temporary white walls with splashes of color on them.
The police were probably out in force scouring the campus of Austin’s school looking for him. His college ID was probably plastered up in the campus security office and handed out to all the officers. If he managed to get out of this situation alive without being expelled or incarcerated, the first thing he was going to do was get a new photo taken. The odds were slim that his photo was going to be used on any kind of all points bulletin ever again, but he wanted to be prepared just in case.
Security might have been alerted to him at the art school as well. It was possible that Alysha was under protection in case he came back. He doubted anyone would really expect him to show up at her school. That would have been foolish, considering the authorities had to be on the lookout; it would be almost as bad as returning to the scene of the crime.
Austin had used all that logic on Isaac, trying to convince him to teleport them someplace else. He had dozens of followers who would be more than willing to take Austin’s place. But Isaac insisted: it had to be Austin. Then again, that could work in Austin’s favor. A plan was forming as he finally saw his target.
Some people looked better when dressed up, while others were more attractive in casual clothes. That wasn’t true about Alysha. At the museum she wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Both were smudged with charcoal from her drawing. Tonight she was in the fanciest dres
s an art student could afford. Both times, her natural beauty shined through. She wasn’t conventionally attractive, but neither was Austin. But there was something about Alysha that lit up the room, and it had nothing to do with the magical witch powers Isaac said that she possessed.
Alysha hadn’t seen him so far, which was probably for the best. Now it was a question of how to make an approach without freaking her out. He didn’t need her shouting for security before he could even say hello.
The gallery worked in his favor. Partitions had been set up at odd angles to showcase the artwork. Where there weren’t walls, there were enough patrons milling about to block him from view. A few sidesteps followed by a circular route around a wall found him right in front of a picturesque painting of some mythical land where unicorns frolicked with fairies and a rainbow melted into a pool. With all that Austin had seen lately, it was possible that the land in the picture was as real as he was, but he preferred to think of it as a fantasy. It was easier to stomach.
Alysha stood alone, admiring the work.
Austin took a deep breath and said a silent prayer to a power he didn’t believe in. “If I promise I’m not here to hurt you, will you promise not to scream?”
He thought he saw the barest uptick of a smile on the edge of her lip. “Depends,” she said. “Are you worried I’ll scream for the police or just scream at you for ruining a perfectly productive afternoon at the museum?”
“Both?” he said.
“What do you think of that painting?” she asked, refusing to look at him.
The question was unexpected, to say the least. “It’s . . . cheery?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” she replied. “It would look perfect in a child’s bedroom, but since Professor Minrova is head of the art department, we all have to come out to ooh and ah at his work.”
Austin allowed himself his own smile. “That’s not what brought me to this gallery.”