Precious Illusions
part 12
"So who's that again?"
Cole Turner looked down at his little girl, lightly laying a hand upon one of her tiny shoulders, as he steered her just out of range of the discussion that had since resumed in the living room. Voices continued to intensify and chatter noisily about, trying hard to determine the next possible course of action. He glanced briefly at Arvo, his demeanor still not entirely relaxing in the other man's presence, his blues slightly narrowing themselves, as he contemplated him for just a moment. "That's the man who's going to help us find out more about Laurel."
"Well, I don't like him," Alexandra Turner declared, quickly crossing her arms over her chest. "Can we get a new one?"
He very nearly laughed, catching himself just in time, so as not to command any attention from across the hall. "He's actually not worrying me right now. You are."
She looked up at him, her expression struggling to feign perfect innocence, as she quickly batted her eyelashes at him. "What do you mean?"
He smiled. "Ah, see, that may work on your mother, young lady, but today it's not going to work on me."
"But it does on other days, right?"
"Maybe, but not-"
"Today," she finished, her lips forming a short pout. "Look, I know it was wrong to try and hurt that girl. But she wasn't wearing them when I did it, Daddy."
"We can't have anything coming back to us, Ally. It doesn't only catch the attention of people up here. Not that there are actually people in the Underworld..." he remarked, his voice casually trailing off. "But I think you get the point."
"Yeah," she murmured, defeated.
"You need to be more careful, sweetheart."
"I know," she repeated. "But what about you? I heard Uncle Andy talking about something with the police and Laurel."
"Come here and sit with me for a minute, okay?" He eased himself down near the lower half of the stairwell, allowing his tall frame to slide to the second step from the bottom. She just shrugged, plopping her small body down beside him, her green eyes both inquisitive and yet somewhat tainted with suspicion. She placed her hands upon her lap, crossing her fingers, her thumbs slowly beginning to twiddle without her knowledge, as she let out a quick breath.
"It isn't really about the fight, is it?" she finally asked him.
"How did you know where I was taking Laurel the other night?"
She averted her gaze, pausing slightly, her brown hair shadowing her face from exposure, her expression unreadable to him. "You told me, Daddy."
"No, I didn't." He gave her knee a small pat, causing her to absentmindedly turn toward him before she'd realized it, her face almost saddened and frightened by the prospect. He hadn't anticipated such a strong reaction in response to her actions that night, but he also hadn't anticipated one like this in particular, his heart cracking just a little, as he gently tilted her chin up to face him. "Alex?"
"Are you going to yell at me?"
"No," he answered her honestly, shaking his head, "I'm not going to yell at you."
"Okay. I...it...it just started happening," she whispered. "I didn't want it to, but it did. I thought it might be bad, so I tried not to say too much."
"But you didn't see what was in that coffin."
"I only knew where you had to go. I don't know anything about a coffin."
"Have you had it happen since I took Laurel to visit her grave?" he asked her.
"Well, I knew that I wanted to set that girl's shorts on fire, but I don't think that counts."
He laughed, gathering a gentle arm around her small shoulders. "No. No, I think that's what we just like to call sweet revenge, isn't it?"
"If it is, I sure wanted a lot of it," she breathed, and offered just the briefest of smiles.
"And that's why you're my girl through and through," he murmured, pulling her close and giving her a quick hug.
"I would hope you're still my dad," she told him, her smile growing wider, "because I wouldn't even know where to find a new one."
"But you might still share something with her."
"To who?" she queried, immediately interested. "Who do I share it with?"
"Laurel," he suggested. "It wasn't happening to you before she came, was it?"
"I don't think so," she offered, trying her best to be helpful. "If it did, I don't remember."
"Yet Arvo thought this concerned me."
"You don't think it does?"
"Not anymore," he confirmed.
"You should talk to her again."
"Laurel?"
The little girl nodded. "You might find out more, and it might help."
"They might have needed her to go back and destroy me though. I mean, it would make sense. The history we had...it wasn't just something I could put behind me. I still can't." He frowned, deep in thought now. "Sending her back with that spell, would pave way for my own demise. She gets to live out her life, and meanwhile, everything else is completely altered. It brings me right back to the beginning again..."
"I thought you said it wasn't you, Daddy."
"I don't-" he cut himself off, sighed. "I don't, Ally. But I also can't doubt the fact that someone in this house is in some kind of danger."
"She wants to talk to you."
Cole craned his neck to look behind him, meeting Prue Halliwell's persistent gaze, as she quickly lowered herself to a sitting position, her hand steadying her petite frame upon the railing. "Now?"
"Hey, we might have something," she pressed eagerly, urging him up. "She's still claiming responsibility for Wilkinson's death, but she's also going on about the blood on the wall. It's all about the blood on the wall...she's just been saying it over and over again. It's almost like she can't even separate one thing from another anymore."
"Death and the accused."
She raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Death and the accused," he reiterated. "Death is worse than dying."
"So?" She spread her hands in a perplexed gesture, waiting for him to come through with some kind of an explanation that she could actually follow, as her fingers carefully tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear.
"It's common knowledge that most people would automatically believe there's no fate worse than death, right?"
"Yeah, okay, maybe if you're a vampire."
"I'm serious."
"Well, in case you're just tuning in, she's not exactly like most people."
"Yes, and we've already covered that, Prue, haven't we?"
She shot him an annoyed expression. "Fine But I still don't see where you're going here. If we've covered all the bases, what's left?"
"Death disrupts the way things were. It evokes fear in humans. The standard response. It makes them dread what they know is coming. And yet, at the same time, they long to know what they'll see on the other side. What if...what if something came back from that other side? What if you couldn't bring back good, without bringing back evil, too?"
"Like another half?"
"Not like Belthazor," he elaborated. "But more along the lines of an entirely different entity. An entity that was strong enough to think for itself, but possessed all the characteristics of the person in question."
"A doppelganger then."
"I'm not talking about ghosts. I'm talking about another living, breathing...another you. But one that doesn't allow the other to know of her existence because she was designed for a greater purpose."
"Okay, then why hasn't your friend said anything?"
"He's not my friend."
"Cole-"
"And for all I know, he could be feeding me lies, so I can't get to the truth. In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been that quick to believe the garbage that's been coming out of his mouth. He's a life demon. They're not infamous because of their kind and forthcoming honesty."
"Sure, whatever. But it really doesn't tell me where you're headed with this, does it?"
"Andy asked if people could be brought back wrong."
"Wrong? As in evil, wrong?"
"No, as in happy, wrong, Prue, because you know those kinds of people just love to go skipping around town telling everybody their secrets and spreading lots of cheer."
"Hey, I'm trying to figure this out just like you- like all of us are."
"The past life spell is gone, and it basically alerted Phoebe to the fact that she had an evil side to answer to."
"A side that got her in loads of trouble," Prue finished.
"Tempted."
"Yep. So you think someone created two of them."
"I think a spell went horribly wrong, and there were two. Whoever did it may have discovered it could essentially work to their advantage. The good keeps us occupied, while the bad..."
"Struts her stuff all over San Francisco, putting the blame on and diverting attention to her other self. While it's not without merit, it's also a little crazy, even for us. Past Phoebe and present Phoebe couldn't co-exist on the same plane."
"Present Phoebe is still susceptible to evil though," he cleared up, shaking his head. "She hasn't always had good intentions."
"Neither have you, but whose keeping track?"
"I guess I deserved that, but you know what? It's long past. Not every demon is destined for a vanquish, despite what you and-"
"I'm not saying it to be cruel," she defended herself, holding up a hand. "I'm saying it because this concerns someone you cared about...someone you've obviously come to care about again. And if she's got a darker side out there somewhere, you have to prepare yourself for it."
"I'm aware of that."
"Are you?"
"I'm over a hundred years old, Prue. It's not the first time I've seen evil up close and personal. It's also not the first time it's sent me a postcard."
"Wow," Alex breathed, finally entering herself in the conversation, her green eyes widening with pure amazement, as she gazed up at her father, obviously impressed. "You look really good, Daddy. We took a class trip to the old people home before for school, and none of those people looked like you. This one lady was one hundred and one and she had more wrinkles than Mommy's curtains do."
"Cute," Cole sided, giving the Charmed One's knee a quick pat as he picked his tall, lean frame up from the stairwell, ascending the steps with caution, as his hand reached out for the banister, slowly getting a grip on it.
"Do you think this could have anything to do with necromancy? I mean, we've got mythology- a reasonable and workable angle...a demon who can resurrect the dead to living form, and if-"
"Necromancy is black magic," he murmured.
"So? A lot of this is. I think we can both safely say that whatever's going on here is not on the side of good. More like it desires the good for evil, right? The balance."
"Necromancy deals in communicating with spirits of the dead to more or less predict the future, Prue. I hardly think they want the future when so much of this is rooted in the past. Whoever this is doesn't want to draw power to himself, he wants it to provoke chaos."
"So maybe what we need is the board in the manor's attic."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The night Piper, Phoebe, and I found out we were witches. Phoebe used it, and it told her to go up to the attic."
His raised his eyebrows, struggling not to smirk. "You think the answers are in the attic? Maybe we should just call Grams too while we're at it."
"No. I mean- look, Paige is good with tarot cards, isn't she? She's able to determine some kind of impending doom, right?"
"Ugh. You know, do we really have to talk about this? Hmm? Because the last time I was around Paige and tarot cards, I was evil. If I ask her to try them again now, she might try and curse me on purpose."
"You watch too many old movies."
He let his handsome, unshaven face fall into a full smile, still not glancing behind him. "And you'd be confusing me with Phoebe."
"She can read Laurel," she replied simply.
"I'll...I'll have to get back to you on that," he added, raising and waving a hand behind him, as he rolled his eyes out of the slightest bit of annoyance, his feet taking him down the dim hallway. The light from the day had not quite filtered through the emptiness that still hung in the air, and for an instant, he was reminded of the way he'd felt before he'd met the witch he'd unknowingly fall in love with. It was the same kind of emptiness that crept inside him- that same, small realization that something was missing from the long life he'd managed to lead up until then. He couldn't quite shake it, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to. She was sitting quietly in the bedroom he shared with Phoebe, perched on the very edge of the bed, a framed photograph in her grasp, consisting of three very small and giggling children. She gently trailed her slender fingers over the clear glass, her lips curving in the tiniest of smiles. Her long, blonde hair hung neatly about her shoulders, overlapping the worn hooded sweatshirt she wore, her green eyes somewhat hopeful. "They're beautiful, you know. And they seem like they really love you."
"I like to think so," he offered somewhat jokingly, as he randomly shrugged his shoulders, carefully placing his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
She frowned then, setting the object down upon the bed sheets besides her. "So what's your friend going to do with me?"
"Nothing, because I don't think you did it."
"And how would you know that?" she scoffed softly. "You weren't even there."
He calmly tilted his head in her direction. "And you're sure you were?"
"I-" she cut herself off, as if to think better of it, the briefest of sighs escaping her. Her green eyes shut their lids; her lips just on the verge of trembling. When she spoke again, her voice was a bit hoarse, and struck him as carrying the burden of fearsome exhaustion, revealing a woman who still seemed so incredibly alone. "I remember what he looked like, Belthazor. I remember what he looked like after I killed him, and I..."
"Where did he live?"
"Excuse me?"
His expression belied very little. "Derek. If you were there, I mean...you'd know, wouldn't you?"
"What are you doing?" she whispered, her voice on the verge of cracking completely, the pain surfacing and emerging in hesitant strides, overshadowing the fear. He could sense it all too well, noting much too quickly that it was exactly the kind of pain she'd expressed to him when he'd been trying to hurt her, to take away her life, leaving her barren and without any kind of soul to speak of. "Dammit, I've confessed."
"And I don't accept that."
"You have to."
"Oh, for God's sake, Laurel." He pulled his hands from his pockets, shifting them neatly across his chest. "You can sit there and you can go on and on about something your heart wasn't capable of doing, but you can't trust that same heart to believe-"
"I've always believed!" she shot back, angrily cutting him off, as she finally felt her rage break free. "That's the problem. And then, well...I come back here, don't I? I find some evidence of some kind of creature in my coffin, I find you again, and I killed some guy I never knew."
"The way I see it, we've got a number of ways to go with this one. There's a life demon involved now, and there's Surma, and there are a few possibilities Prue and I were considering that might-"
"And all of that blood on the wall. Can't forget that, right? I mean, c'mon. Someone who is of sound mind and body couldn't have done something so horrific. But just because I have a body, doesn't mean I'm not completely insane right now, and you're actually speaking with a raving, mad lunatic."
"Oh, believe me, I think I'd know if I was."
"What?"
"I've met enough of them over the years to know."
She just stared at him, dumbfounded. "Okay..."
"Look, either way, you're not gone like Penny and Patty Halliwell define gone. And that's something."
She blinked, immediately resorting to pure confusion. "Who?"
"The sisters' grandmother and mother. Penny and Patty visit them now and then in spirit form when The Charmed Ones need help. They can only temporarily sustain corporeal form when the situation calls for it. But you're whole, you're visible to the human eye."
"I'm still insane though," she said quietly.
"Can you just listen to a hypothetical for a minute here?"
"Can't he just arrest me?" she pleaded. "At least that way I won't have to face whatever's out there looking for me. I'll be safer."
"I'm afraid the only person they're probably looking to arrest at the moment is me. I tampered with both the victim's place of residence and his place of employment. If I didn't know better, I'd say I'm looking at life."
"And you'd do that? You'd just let yourself be taken away on my account?"
"See, I think it's you."
"I don't understand."
"The life demon? Arvo? He seems awfully set on the fact that this is just another elaborate ploy to trap and capture my soul. My former mentor used my father's soul against me that way- he wanted me to turn against Phoebe, to rejoin the ranks of evil. I'd deceived the Brotherhood, and Raynor was determined to see me fail for my betrayal against my own kind." He winced slightly. "I was easily manipulated in the end, and for awhile Phoebe stopped trusting me. Raynor forced me to kill an innocent, a witch. I still had my demonic half then, and he took advantage of that. Played on my weaknesses. And he won...at least until he died at my hand."
"You took that's woman's life," she murmured.
"Oh, I've taken a lot more, but I'm sure you already knew that."
"So what does this have to do with me?"
"When something or someone is resurrected using black magic, consequences are never out of the question. They're always there, only they're obviously never considered or taken seriously enough, because the person doing the resurrecting knows no good can ever possibly come from it...they probably don't want it to. Makes sense, doesn't it?"
"You're saying I'm evil and I don't know it yet?" she asked, still not altogether suspending her disbelief.
"You were an only child," he surmised.
"So I'm committing all of these sins, doing these...bad things, and I don't remember any of them?"
He paused for a moment, clasping his hands in front of him, drawing them forward as if entirely ready to attempt a prayer. "Not exactly."
"Then what exactly?"
"Surma guarded Kalma in the Underworld, and it would explain the presence in your coffin. It was probably guarding you because you were technically dead. It's commonly described as being this really big dog with a snake-like tail. There's also been talk that aside from mauling someone to death, the creature can cause you to turn to stone with a single stare. I'm not entirely clear on what works when and where, but I do know that it's likely still guarding the evil it brought about."
"Then it's not this Arvo."
"He does have the power to bring the dead back to life, but the catch...the...astonishment in all of this, is that he wants to protect you, help you. Phoebe and I found him snooping around in Derek's office, and discovered some kind of wall of fame with your picture on it."
"That's actually kind of creepy," she admitted, a shiver rushing up her spine. "I think guys like that were called stalkers back in my time."
"They still are," he confirmed, almost laughing at her precise declaration, his lips falling into a smile.
"Where's this evil then?"
"I think it's you."
"Yes, you said that already. But nothing that you're impl-"
"Another you, to be more specific."
"And this other me is letting me me think I'm taking lives and trying to hurt you."
He nodded. "To draw me back to the past, maybe. To have me die in your place... There isn't really a direct motive at work here yet. Prue brought up necromancy earlier, but I'm not even sure I want to go there again. It's dangerously bordering on madness. If there were a necromancer in question, the only one that comes to mind as even remotely capable would be your father. He's dead, but it doesn't rule him out, and it plays right into summoning a demon, and the transference in spirit. He had unfinished business, and may have awakened Kalma to his troubles, desiring some kind of future through your forgiveness. Maybe he wants you to know something regarding the debt he owed the Underworld...another chance to pay it back."
"That's absurd," she hissed.
"You still can't see it, can you? Because you loved him. Because you thought he loved you, too."
A small tear had begun to trickle down one of her cheeks, softly cascading and falling into a downward spiral over the curve of her chin and jawline. Her shoulders shook roughly against her will, and she fought to bring the fingers of each hand tightly around both of her arms, attempting to rock herself back and forth out of habit. "He told me he did. He told me whenever I'd ask him."
"We can be so blind to what's right in front of us, Laurel."
"I know."
"You were with me, and you were with him."
"It was different with you. You had me the day I met you, and I never knew..."
"Laurel, I'm sorry. If I could say it a thousand times over, I would. I'm so sorry."
She acknowledged it, sniffling. "I was his little girl. His special little girl. He was my father, my...my dad, Belthazor, the man who raised me. And when you think about it, it never even mattered. None of it."
"My mother raised me with my demonic half. Did you know that?"
"And you still found Phoebe."
He carefully knelt down directly in front of her, his knees sinking into the carpet, his hands coming to rest themselves upon the legs of his faded jeans. He met her gaze directly, his blue eyes connecting with her green ones, pleading once again with them to open up to him, to trust in him in terms of his own forgiveness. "I did, and I'm glad I found you again, too."
And yet she proceeded to shield herself with a reaction to his confession, still not entirely removing the veil of doubt she was currently shrouded in. "If there is someone else, how do we find her?"
"The law firm might still be a way in," he offered, his own heart immediately fading in response, "but I'm more concerned with finding out who's responsible for and has ties to the Underworld. If this person has their own...special abilities, it might not be out of the question to have one of the sisters scry for him or her."
"Scrying?"
"It'll help us find an exact location. Then there's Arvo, and as much as it pains me to say this, I'm afraid I might just have to go and beat a little more of it out of him."
"Is your father still here?"
He nodded. "And there are times when I feel like we still have so much to talk about."
"Maybe some people are better off where they are," she suggested quietly. "You may think you want them to come back, but in the end, you really don't."
"I'm sorry for what I did to you," he whispered. "All this time and I never realized that he betrayed you, too. I was too wrapped up in myself to see it."
"You keep apologizing to me," she noted, her mouth forming the smallest smile she could manage, "and I just keep remembering the first time we met."
"I misled you, and I didn-"
"Maybe I'd never change it," she abruptly cut him off. "I don't know. I was young and I was careless. I can recognize that now." She filtered her gaze past him then, as if to glance at something that didn't appear to be there, wincing rather briefly, the sudden bout of warmth having vanished and gone, her green eyes dimming with the softest hue of sadness. "We met under false pretenses, Cole, and I was probably as much to blame for that as you were. I was so naive, and so-"
"Laurel."
"I just never-"
"Laurel," he repeated, immediately noting the fact that she'd finally stated his given name, gingerly placing one of his hands over hers. But the emotion that proceeded to wash over him, wasn't happiness or pending forgiveness in terms of relief. It was black, unwavering darkness that encompassed and chilled him right to the bone, allowing him to see into a world that was both hallow in thought and vividly empty physically- embracing him with long, invisible fingers, threatening to pull him into its enticing grasp. It wasn't quite strong enough to overtake the rejection she sought from it, but he could feel it just the same. Pieces of history started to casually seep undetected through the mere nothingness, forcing him to honor their memory against his will, begging him to hear the screams that traveled through vacant, damp air. He could smell the dirt planted firmly upon the earth, the old, tattered wood of a box that trapped him far, far below the surface, unable to reach any kind of safety that wished to free him.
He quickly pulled back as if he'd been struck by lightning, taking a deep breath, as he fought to gain a firm hold on his composure, the power literally overwhelming him to the very core. It was something he'd never felt when he'd touched Phoebe, and he wasn't sure he ever wanted to feel that way again.
He calmly inspected his hand, immediately noticing and deciphering the scratches that had taken form upon his palm, forcefully imprinting and weaving themselves intricately into his skin.
"What is it?" she asked him, her eyes widening, as she shifted lightly on the bed, her pretty face exhibiting profound incredulity, her head craning itself to the side. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not sure," he murmured. "I've never- I'm just not sure."
"Are you hurt?"
"I've got it," he assured her, averting his injured hand from her line of vision just in time, drawing it to his chest, as he brought himself to his feet. "It's okay, I'm alright."
"You saw something, didn't you?"
"I don't know what I saw," he confessed, shrugging. "I'm not even positive I saw it."
"What was it?"
His feet were already moving him towards the door of the bedroom, fast and determined. "Just stay here, okay? I'll be right back, I promise."
"Did I do something wrong?" she pleaded. "Cole?"
"For some reason we're all connected," he muttered more to himself than to her, as he took another look at the damage inscribed in his hand, his beautiful visage still completely frightened and yet entirely fascinated by the results. "Me, Alex, we're...we're somehow connected. It's true."
"Connected?" Laurel beckoned.
"To you," he concluded simply, his expression rendering bewilderment.