“Are you sure this is the spot?” Prue asked her sister as they exited the Jeep in the warehouse district, looking around for some sign of demonic activity.

  “Yes! God!” Piper exclaimed.

  “Why are you snapping at me?” Prue questioned.

  “Because I know how to read a map, Prue!” said Piper.

  “Alright, fine, jeez!” said Prue, coming to a halt and raising her chin.

  “What? You hear something?”

  “No, smell something.”

  At that moment, Cole Shimmered into view before the girls. “Found you!” he declared.

  Piper expelled a puff of air in amusement, thinking of Prue’s words and the pungent green substance that had coated the man that morning. “Well, that solves that little mystery. He must have missed a spot.”

  “What mystery?” Cole enquired.

  “No, not him,” said Prue, ignoring the man’s arrival and her sister’s joke, her serious expression unbroken. “Smoke. I smell smoke.”

  Prue, Piper, and Cole scanned their surroundings. Pointing to the large wooden doors of one of the warehouses, Piper said, “It’s coming from in there.” From the gap beneath the doors, smoke was rising steadily.

  “A fire?” Cole suggested as he approached.

  “Stop! Stop! Get away from me!” a man’s voice pleaded from the inside of the building.

  “Not an ordinary fire, at least,” Prue determined, waving her arm at the heavy door. It rattled but resisted her magic. “It must be bolted from the inside.”

  “I’ll Shimmer in—”

  “I got it!” Piper declared, raising her hands with a flourish, but rather than blowing up the door bolt as intended, Cole was frozen in his tracks.

  “Uh, Piper?” Prue chastised. “There’s an Innocent in there!”

  “Yeah, yeah, gimme a minute!” Piper snapped irritably in reply, tearing off her jacket and throwing it on the ground. She shook off her tension, took a focusing breath, raised her arms, and opened her palms with purpose.

  This time, the right power was triggered, but the doors were hit with so much magic, the force of the ensuing blast reduced them to splinters and sent Cole flying across the alley. He landed hard on top of a parked car before falling to the ground with a thud.

  “What the…? Oh no,” Piper muttered, more surprised than anyone by what she had done.

  Prue’s jaw dropped. She eyed her sister with a modicum of concern, then moved to check on Cole.

  Before Piper could enquire about him, a man emerged from the now doorless warehouse amid a field of smoke and knocked Piper over in his zeal to escape. And no wonder, since he was closely pursued by three female demons, easily recognizable as such by their wild hair, ragged burgundy attire, tribal markings, and cloven hands.

  “Piper, let them go,” Cole advised weakly, still winded.

  Not fully cognizant of his warning, Piper raised her hands to use her power again, this time missing the demons and igniting a parked car. This act of aggression caught the demons’ attention, and they rounded on her, growling, baring their teeth, and raising their three-pronged talons in a threatening manner.

  “Uh-oh,” Piper muttered.

  “Piper, freeze them, so we can regroup,” Prue urged.

  Remembering herself, Piper did as her sister suggested. However, the demonic women continued to advance on her. “They’re, they’re, th-th-they’re immune to my powers!” she stammered.

  Prue stepped forward and whipped her arm at them. “Damn it, mine too!” she despaired, then looked to their half-demon ally, who was now still as a statue. “But Cole isn’t! Quick, unfreeze him!”

  Before she could react, one of the demons slashed at Piper, which she only narrowly avoided. Her heart raced as she backed away, trying to think of a plan. She hated close combat. It was too messy. Her sisters were the fighters, not her, as demonstrated by Prue now engaging the other two monster women, just about keeping them at bay with her martial arts skills.

  “Piper, heads up,” said Prue, telekinetically passing her sister a nearby metallic trash can lid mid-battle.

  Piper caught the lid and brandished it like a shield, but the enemy’s razor-sharp talons tore through it like it was made of paper.

  Afraid that she wouldn’t be able to help her sister with two opponents keeping her busy, Prue shouted through gritted teeth, “Unfreeze Cole!”

  “What if I blow him up?” Piper panicked, but seeing Prue struggle, outnumbered, she realized the danger of their situation and raised her hands to give it a try. Luckily for Piper, panic was the emotional trigger for her freezing power, and Cole was freed from his immobilized state. However, her attempt left her vulnerable.

  The demon pushed Piper down, pinned her to the floor, and breathed a stream of smoke directly into her open mouth.

  “Cole!” Prue cried out as Piper began to sputter, unable to intervene. The moment cost her a long but relatively shallow cut across her right thigh. She winced but tried to ignore the pain as she parried follow-up swipes.

  Cole, still hurt but able to assist now, generated a crackling blue Energy Ball in his palm and tossed it at Piper’s foe. Assaulted with its concentrated electrical energy, she burst into flames and combusted.

  Seeing the two demons she was fighting momentarily distracted by the third’s vanquish, Prue used her Telekinesis on her own body as she jumped on the spot, allowing her to mimic Phoebe’s Levitation power and stay aloft long enough to deliver a horizontal scissor kick.

  The demons were simultaneously struck with a boot to the head and knocked off their feet. Growling in anger, they moved to retaliate, but when they noticed Cole charging a second Energy Ball, they begrudgingly fled, dispersing into the air like smoke itself.

  Prue, Piper, and Cole all breathed a literal sigh of relief, though Piper’s was interspersed with chesty coughing. It had been a close call, but they were safe. For the moment.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  After retrieving the Book of Shadows, unnoticed by Leo, and returning to work, Paige had the bright idea to photocopy its pages, hoping she could return the book before the Halliwells even knew she borrowed it. Unfortunately, the South Bay Social Services copy machine was temperamental at the best of times, and she was having some trouble with it today.

  While she was leaning over the copier, trying to figure out why it would only churn out blank sheets of paper, her colleague Donnie entered the room. “Nothing like a copy room with a view,” he said, admiring her rear.

  Paige cringed and straightened up, doing her best to ignore the vile man. He would get his just desserts soon enough…if she could just figure out the problem with this stupid copier.

  Donnie continued to ogle Paige as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the communal pot. When Billy walked in, he asked the boy, “Hey, Clearasil, what’s popping?”

  Billy flushed scarlet as Donnie exited the room, laughing at his own disgusting joke.

  “Don’t worry about him, Billy. He’s a jerk to everybody,” Paige assured the boy.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Billy. “That’s why his mail gets lost. Frequently.”

  Paige smirked. Billy could handle himself. The problem was that he shouldn’t have to. Nobody should have to deal with Donnie’s antics. “Hey, is there something wrong with the copier?” she asked the boy with an exasperated sigh.

  “The copier? I don’t think so. I just ran off a whole bunch.”

  “Everything keeps coming up blank.”

  “Are you trying to copy a book?” enquired Billy, the office’s resident expert on the tired old machine.

  Usually, Paige would have welcomed his help, but seeing as how she was attempting to make personal copies, and of a magic book no less, she pushed the lid of the copier down to conceal the green leather binding and said dismissively, “Nah, it’s nothing. It’s cool.”

  “Well, if you need me to do it for you, just say the word,” said Billy.

  “Thanks. You’re sweet,” said Paige sincerely. When Billy smiled shyly and turned to pour some coffee, she decided now was as good a time as any to see what, if anything, the spells in this book could do. Thinking of Billy, Paige turned over the Book of Shadows and read the words from the Vanishing Spell page under her breath, “Let the object of objection become but a dream, as I cause the seen to be unseen.”

  All of a sudden, Billy groaned and staggered, and a faint light emanated from beyond his turned head.

  “You okay, Billy?” Paige asked tentatively. Something had occurred, but what, she wasn’t quite sure.

  “Yeah,” Billy answered, turning to face Paige. “I just, uh, got a little head rush.”

  “Oh my God, it worked,” Paige marveled at the sight of the boy’s acne-free visage. Relieved of his skin condition, Billy was cuter than she had realized, as beautiful now on the outside as he was inside. Satisfied with her handiwork, she closed the Book of Shadows, her mind racing with a whole host of possibilities its contents now presented. “Oh my God.”

  “Paige, is, uh, everything okay?” Billy asked nervously, apparently uncomfortable with the way the woman was staring at him.

  Paige picked up the book and walked over to Billy, her eyes still fixed on his face in disbelief. “It will be from now on,” she replied enigmatically. She then kissed him on the cheek before leaving, secure in the knowledge that this was not the same Billy from her vision.

  Confused but delighted, Billy beamed, ignorant of how this encounter with a nascent witch had just changed his fate.

  Walking up the steps to the manor, Prue hissed in pain and felt her wounded leg give way. She recovered her balance and waved away the arm of support Cole had so annoyingly offered her. “I’m fine,” she snapped as he shook his head.

  “I’m gonna take out those chain-smokin’ bitches if it’s the last thing I do,” Piper wheezed as she opened the front door. She had been coughing ever since the encounter with the demon women, to the point that Cole had insisted on taking over driving.

  “It might be the last thing you do,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Prue asked, following Piper to the kitchen with a noticeable limp.

  “It means that the pair of you are going to get yourselves killed,” Cole clarified. “You’re injured, she’s about to hack up a lung….”

  “I’m fine,” said Piper, pulling a bottle of water from the refrigerator and taking a sip as she eyed Prue’s bloody thigh, “but Leo should take a look at your leg. Leo?”

  “It’s fine, it’s not deep,” said Prue dismissively.

  “It’s not fine! What is it with the two of you?” Cole exasperated, turning to Piper. “And you! Your control of your powers seems to be getting worse, not better!”

  Prue bit her tongue to avoid chiming in. As much as she would hate to admit it, the man had a point. Piper’s overloaded exploding power aside, she couldn’t even freeze reliably anymore.

  “Look, I’m sorry you got hurt, Cole, I am,” said Piper, clearing her throat and taking another sip from her bottle. “Next time we go out, you can stay home, okay?”

  Cole laughed derisively and growled, “As long as you two continue putting yourselves in harm’s way, staying home isn’t an option for me. What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up today, huh? You don’t even know what kind of evil you were fighting!”

  Piper rolled her eyes and left the room, draining more of her water. “That’s why I’m going to find out what the cancer girls are, so we can send their carcinogenic asses straight to Hell. Leo!”

  Prue followed, but with her leg bothering her now, climbing the stairs up to the attic wasn’t an inviting prospect. She lowered herself onto the sitting room sofa just as a glare in the corner of her eye signaled Leo’s arrival.

  “Everything okay?” he asked immediately, looking his wife over.

  “Heal her,” Piper ordered curtly without meeting his eye, gesturing toward her sister with a cough. “I’ll be upstairs.”

  “What was it this time?” Leo asked, perched on the coffee table as he tended to Prue’s leg wound.

  “We’re not sure. They were immune to our powers, but now that we know, we’ll be prepared next time we—”

  “Next time?” Cole repeated, shaking his head. “You should have been prepared this time! What’s the point in having that damned book if you’re not going to use it? Not to mention the fact that you didn’t even have an athame! What happened to the one from this morning?”

  “I must have left it behind after the vanquish,” Prue replied through gritted teeth. “In case you forgot, I was busy trying to avoid—”

  “I remember just fine,” Cole interrupted to prevent the woman from recounting the embarrassing incident in Leo’s presence.

  “You left a ceremonial dagger lying around on the streets of San Francisco?” Leo questioned, disappointment clear in his face.

  “Not on purpose! I’ll write a spell to summon it, okay?”

  “What about personal gain?” Leo questioned, completing his healing.

  “Where’s the personal gain in that?”

  “You’d be saving yourself gas money. It’s a slippery slope.”

  Prue huffed and rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll drive all the way back there and look for it! Happy?”

  Leo didn’t answer. There was nothing to be happy about right now.

  “There’s no need for that,” said Cole. “I’ll Shimmer over there. You and Piper work on a plan. Find a spell, a potion, whatever. These demons are dangerous.”

  Prue frowned. “Wait, you know what they are, don’t you?”

  Cole had been reluctant to share information that would encourage the women, but knowing that they were better off informed, he relented, “They’re called Furies.”

  “Furies? As in the mythological goddesses of vengeance?”

  “They’re modern knockoffs. Their M.O. is the same, though. They punish evildoers.”

  “Sounds like they’re on our side.”

  “Well, these Furies have no temperance. They’ll go after a shoplifter as soon as a murderer, and they take great pleasure in the kill.”

  “Alright, bad guys it is,” said Prue, springing to her feet now that her leg was healed. “Let’s go get ‘em.”

  With some hesitation, Leo interjected, “Already? Paige is coming over later. Wait for her. Fight them with the Power of Th—”

  “Cole’s Energy Balls worked just fine,” said Prue dismissively.

  “Well, they won’t help next time,” Cole elucidated. “When Furies focus their thoughts on a target, they force them to hear the cries of all their former victims. If they sense what I am—what I was—I’ll be incapacitated. Work up a plan that accounts for that.” Looking downcast, Cole Shimmered out at that point.

  Prue bit the inside of her cheek. Whenever she allowed herself to forget what Cole was, who they were working side by side with, she was reminded of the uncomfortable truth. He was Belthazor, the hundred-year-old demon that had served at the Source’s side. Was she right to keep him in their lives now that Phoebe was gone? Should she ever have allowed it while Phoebe was alive? Maybe if she had tried harder to put a stop to their relationship….

  Just then, a shriek from above interrupted Prue’s thoughts. “Piper!” she panicked, racing up the stairs with Leo on her heels. Upon reaching the attic, they found Piper open-mouthed, bleating incoherently. “Piper, what is it?”

  “Evil got the Book of Shadows!” she shrilled in response, gesturing at the empty lectern. “How did evil get the Book of Shadows?!”