The Gemini Chronicles Chapter 2
Series: AMTBR
Title: The Gemini Chronicles
Summary: Torchwood and UNIT deal with aliens. So does the Gemini team... but they also deal with demons. Witches, ex-demons, genetically-altered humans, they all can find a home here.
Primary fandoms: Charmed, Whoniverse
Primary universe: S2U
Chapter 2 - First Blood: Just over a month later (which had given him the time to take care of his affairs in San Franscisco and find a place in Boston), Cole and Paula were setting up a library of sorts. Paula had a lot of notebooks from her travels, filled with information about magic, demons, aliens... Cole wasn’t sure what she didn’t have in these things.
“Why don’t you just put it all on the computer?” he asked dryly.
“I haven’t got the patience, that’s why,” Paula said, lifting a stack of notebooks and sliding them onto a shelf. She didn’t see the photograph fall out of one of them, but Cole did, and he picked it up. The photo was of a slightly younger Paula and a strange man. He raised an eyebrow, wondering what a picture like this was doing shoved in with notebooks. The pose the two struck made it clear they were involved.
“What do you have - ?” Paula’s voice cut off when she focused on the photo. “Oh. I didn’t even know that was in there.” She grabbed it.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m fine.” She shrugged. “Let me go put this... somewhere.” And she practically ran out of the room. Huh. Looks like I’m not the only one with relationship issues. He shook his head and went back to work.
When she came back, Cole asked, “So, you never said how this place is going to run. I mean, do we do normal cases too, or what?”
“No, the PI firm’s just a front. We’re... an unofficial subsidiary of DESI.”
“DESI?”
“Department of Extraterrestrial and Supernatural Investigations. See, ever since our current president took office, their funding’s been scaled back; mostly for the Department of Defense. Not surprising, considering, but, well... DESI didn’t take it well. So they’re clandestinely supporting cells like ours - though as far as I know, which really isn’t much, we’re the only one with double duty.”
“What, aliens and demons?”
“Exactly. My fault, of course. I can’t give up one world for the other, they’re both too much a part of me.” She smiled ruefully. “Blame the Doctor. Or maybe Diana and Con. Or both. I don’t know.”
“Diana and Con?”
“Diana was my mentor, and second adoptive mother. Con was her lover, and the only father figure I’ve ever had. They introduced me to magic.” And after what the Elders did to them, they made me a rogue, though I don’t think they meant to.
“Second?”
“Long story.” She shrugged, a little too casually. “My first adoption didn’t go as well as Paige’s. I met Diana when I was 14.”
“Oh. What, she took you from your parents?”
“No, she was my foster mother. I’d been in foster care since the age of 6. Like I said, not as lucky as Paige.”
“Ah. So, does this group have a name?”
“Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah. Gemini Investigations.”
“Why Gemini?”
Good question. But I don’t want to talk about that either. That brave girl, staring down machines of death, just so we could escape... “A girl I once knew. That was her name.” This was why the Doctor had found his past so hard to discuss. So much death, so many people who no one would remember.
“Odd name.”
“I’ve heard stranger.”
“So have I. So, what do we do? Just wait for some sort of message?” As if his words had called it, the phone rang then. Paula glanced at it, then threw him a bright smile.
“Apparently.” She picked it up. “Gemini Investigations. Oh, hi, Detective.” She paused listening. “Oh. Well, sure, give me fifteen minutes.” She hung up and slanted him a look. “Come on, Turner, time to get your feet wet.”
He followed her outside, and then said, “So, who’s driving?”
“I am. Do you even have a license?”
“Yeah, I’ve got one. So I can drive.”
“When was the last time you were in Boston?”
“Uh... the forties, maybe?”
“I’m driving.”
“Right,” Cole muttered, before sliding into the front passenger seat of the black compact. “You know,” he commented, “once we have a full team, you’ll need a bigger car than this.”
“Yeah, I know, Torchwood’s got a custom SUV. I just hate big cars.” She shrugged. “Anyway, since I’m sure you’re wondering, we’re heading to the morgue. Apparently there’s something off about a corpse that came in this morning.”
“Wondeful. So, I take it you have connections with the local cops?”
“Yeah, Detective Moran’s an old friend.”
“That’s useful.”
“It can be, particularly with something like this.” She shook her head. “Wish Daniel’d been more specific on the phone.” He didn’t call her in that often, after all.
They got to the morgue and headed in, Paula flashing some sort of ID at the door to make sure no one stopped them. Cole tried to catch a glimpse of it, but only saw blank white paper. He’d ask later. Instead, he just followed her - he wasn’t usually big on taking someone else’s lead, but as she seemed to know which way to go and he didn’t, not following would be pointless at best.
A young man in a dress shirt and pressed slacks was waiting for them outside what Cole assumed was the room where this particular corpse was. “Hey, Paula.” Then he saw Cole. “Finally got a partner, huh? What took so long?”
“Oh, I needed to actually find someone who can keep up with me, you know?”
“Yeah, I know personally how tough that can be.” Moran smiled, a little ruefully.
“Well, seeing as you’re now engaged, that only proves that everything happens for a reason. And I didn’t mean it like that anyway,” Paula rejoined, rolling her eyes and muttering something about typical assumptions. Then she and Cole walked into what turned out to be an autopsy room. The M.E. looked up when she saw them.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Mitchell,” the older blonde woman said. “So, Detective Moran says you might know something about this case.”
“Maybe,” Paula said. “What’s unusual about it?”
“There’s no blood in the body.” Great. So, vampires, then, Cole thought with irritation. Didn’t they know better than to leave victims lying around?
“Right.” Paula stepped forward to take a closer look at the body. Cole wondered why; it was clear what this was, wasn’t it?
“Pam?” Moran called. “Can you come here?” Dr. Mitchell - Pam, apparently - left the room. Cole moved to stand next to Paula and looked at the body himself, surprised to see that the telltale fangmarks weren’t there.
“So it wasn’t a vampire,” he murmured.
“No, I don’t think so. I think it was a Haemovore.”
“A what?”
“Vampiric humanoids. An evolution of humans from some alternate future.” She shrugged. “Something to do with radiation - or maybe it was some kind of toxin; I don’t know much about it. The Doctor ran across them once, but that was way before my time.”
“Alien vampires? Aren’t the demonic variety bad enough?”
“Apparently not. There’s alien werewolves as well, and the Doctor had this theory that the British royal family’s among them, but that’s beside the point.” She grinned at his expression. “Sorry. Informational overload?”
“Not really, no. I’m just wondering if any of the ‘demons’ your sisters have vanquished over the years might have been aliens after all. Some of the stories I used to hear...”
“I doubt it. Potions and spells don’t work well on aliens. I tried. Anyway, about the Haemovore... the Doctor said he thought the future they came from was averted; maybe an alternate timeline... damn that Rift.”
“Rift?”
“Rift in time and space. Cardiff’s got the worst; that’s why Jack’s branch of Torchwood’s there, but part of why I came back to Boston is that there’s a smaller one here. Damn it! I remember everything he said, but he didn’t tell us much.” She shook her heac, clearly annoyed with herself.
“Maybe there’s more in your notebooks,” Cole offered.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I have a very good memory; part of learning to control telepathy involves refining other brain functions, like memory retention. Which isn’t always a good thing. But I doubt there’s anything more. I’ll check, though.”
“Well, we can’t do any more here, so I suggest we go back to headquarters,” Cole said. “Then we can go through your notes, maybe call Jack if necessary, figure out how to handle this.”
“Good idea,” she said.
Once they were back in the car, Cole commented, “You never said Moran was an ex of yours.”
“You didn’t ask. And that was high school. Daniel just likes to tease me.” She shook her head. “And, of course, the comment had all the typical assumptions. You should have heard the Doctor rant about it.”
“Oh, the innuendo concerning you and me?”
“Yeah, that.” She smiled, a little sadly. “People made comments about us and the Doctor - there were two of us, River and me. So the comments were worse at times, actually.”
She cut in front of someone on the road and Cole winced. “Are we in some kind of hurry?”he wanted to know.
“Not yet, but we may be soon, so if we move fast now, we’ll be more prepared later.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Sure - Wait. This kind of argument can last for hours. So let’s cut it short now.”
“Lots of experience?” Cole asked mildly.
“You could say that.” She pulled up at HQ and they went back inside. Once there, they began searching through her notebooks to see what they could find out. Cole was the first to find something.
“How is it that they’re aliens - or evolved humans, whatever - and yet they can still be killed with stakes like regular vampires?”
“Devolved humans, I’d say, and I don’t know why stakes kill them. Though I suppose that’s a good thing, as I’ve got a few of them lying around somewhere in this place.”
“Somewhere? You know, being organized is a useful thing.” That comment earned him a glare.
“Try two years with a guy who found jelly babies in his pockets that were over a decade old at least,” she muttered. “Still, you’re right, and I do need to work on that. But right now we’ve got an alien vamp to kill.”
~ ~ ~
Finding said vampire wasn’t as hard as it could have been. Apparently the victim they’d seen was only the latest in a series of victims all concentrated in one neighborhood. “Well, apparent;y this thing’s stupid as well as evil,” Cole remarked.
“Or reckless,” Paula agreed. “Which is why we’ll be able to take it out, no problem.” Hopefully.
“They can hypnotize, so we’d still better be careful,” Cole pointed out. Paula nodded curtly as they got out of the car.
“Of course.” It was the last thing she said before she felt a mind brush hers. “Heads up!”
The thing that came out of the shadows was hardly even humanoid, with shriveled bluish skin, suckers on its arms, and overly long fingernails. But its eyes... they were so captivating. Wait, she knew what that was! She managed half a glance at Cole, who was already transfixed, before her own eyes flew back to the thing’s. Next thing she knew, the world was gone.
~ ~ ~
“Cole, what are you doing in Boston?”
He turned, stunned, to see Phoebe standing a foot or so away from him. “What do you want?” he snapped.
“I wanted to apologize. Cole, I’m so sorry, please, I should have known, but I was stupid. Please forgive me. Please come home.”
She walked up to him and stared up at him, her eyes gleaming with tears. Before he knew it, she was in his arms and they were kissing, it was like nothing had ever happened.... No. This was an illusion. It wasn’t real. He knew that. It was fake, though he longed for it to be true.
He came back to himself in a Boston alley, and the Haemovore was gone. “Damn it!” He glanced at Paula, who was still staring into space, lost in whatever illusion had been conjured for her.
~ ~ ~
“Come on, love, we’re going to be late. I know San Francisco’s a few hours behind us, but still. Piper said four their time.”
She turned to him, laughing. “Like you care, Micah. You don’t understand Thanksgiving, you said it yourself.”
“Well, seeing as you Yanks took the Indians’ land, why celebrate a dinner with them?”
“True. But - oh, forget it, I already tried explaining and you just won’t get it.”
“No, I won’t. Oh, are Diana and Con coming by the Manor too?”
“Yeah, I think...” Wait. That was wrong. Diana and Con were dead. And Micah was gone. He’d left her alone in a Dublin hotel with nothing but a pathetic note. So what was happening?
“Paula!” Someone shook her. She blinked and looked into Cole’s face. “Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. Let’s go! Can you track it with your telepathy?”
“Yeah. You distract it with fireballs, I’ll stake it.”
“Fine.” And they ran off after it in the direction Paula’s powers indicated. It didn’t take long before they caught up, just as it was about to pounce on a lone traveler. “Go!” Cole yelled. The man hurried away, a little slowly - he looked to be drunk or high, so that was understandable - but he wouldn’t be a witness to this.
Cole began throwing fireballs. The Haemovore was confused. The fire didn’t hurt, not really, but it did make it hard to focus. What was happening?
“Cole, stop!” Paula was about to orb in and stake the thing, but not at the risk of getting incinerated. Cole looked at her, and for a second she saw what looked almost like a gleam of insanity in the blue eyes. Then he blinked and it was gone. He stopped throwing fireballs and she orbed in front of the Haemovore, staking it. It fell, dead, and Cole threw another, larger fireball once she’d moved that incinerated the body.
~ ~ ~
She sent Cole home, deciding to write the report herself. Once she was done, she went to the potions room and began working on two recipes. Had she been one of her sisters, she would only have been brewing one, as one was gray magic and technically forbidden. But Paula wasn’t about to exchange one problem for another.
After a few hours, she left, going to a bar near HQ. She wasn’t surprised to see Cole there, tipping back a glass of whiskey. He wasn’t drunk yet, she noted, but he was headed there. “Hey,” she said, sliding onto the stool next to his and ordering a kahlua and cream. “That doesn’t help.”
“And how would you know?”
“Tried it. Not only did it hurt my control over my powers, but once it was over, I felt like shit both physically and emotionally.”
“Oh. What, was it the guy in the photo?”
“Yeah. Micah.”
“What happened?”
“He walked out on me. That was nearly a year ago.”
Cole considered, then asked the question he really wanted to know. “Does it get easier?”
“Depends on your definition. It doesn’t go away. It just... gets distant.”
“That’s something.”
“I guess it is. So, ready to go?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Title: The Gemini Chronicles
Summary: Torchwood and UNIT deal with aliens. So does the Gemini team... but they also deal with demons. Witches, ex-demons, genetically-altered humans, they all can find a home here.
Primary fandoms: Charmed, Whoniverse
Primary universe: S2U
Chapter 2 - First Blood: Just over a month later (which had given him the time to take care of his affairs in San Franscisco and find a place in Boston), Cole and Paula were setting up a library of sorts. Paula had a lot of notebooks from her travels, filled with information about magic, demons, aliens... Cole wasn’t sure what she didn’t have in these things.
“Why don’t you just put it all on the computer?” he asked dryly.
“I haven’t got the patience, that’s why,” Paula said, lifting a stack of notebooks and sliding them onto a shelf. She didn’t see the photograph fall out of one of them, but Cole did, and he picked it up. The photo was of a slightly younger Paula and a strange man. He raised an eyebrow, wondering what a picture like this was doing shoved in with notebooks. The pose the two struck made it clear they were involved.
“What do you have - ?” Paula’s voice cut off when she focused on the photo. “Oh. I didn’t even know that was in there.” She grabbed it.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m fine.” She shrugged. “Let me go put this... somewhere.” And she practically ran out of the room. Huh. Looks like I’m not the only one with relationship issues. He shook his head and went back to work.
When she came back, Cole asked, “So, you never said how this place is going to run. I mean, do we do normal cases too, or what?”
“No, the PI firm’s just a front. We’re... an unofficial subsidiary of DESI.”
“DESI?”
“Department of Extraterrestrial and Supernatural Investigations. See, ever since our current president took office, their funding’s been scaled back; mostly for the Department of Defense. Not surprising, considering, but, well... DESI didn’t take it well. So they’re clandestinely supporting cells like ours - though as far as I know, which really isn’t much, we’re the only one with double duty.”
“What, aliens and demons?”
“Exactly. My fault, of course. I can’t give up one world for the other, they’re both too much a part of me.” She smiled ruefully. “Blame the Doctor. Or maybe Diana and Con. Or both. I don’t know.”
“Diana and Con?”
“Diana was my mentor, and second adoptive mother. Con was her lover, and the only father figure I’ve ever had. They introduced me to magic.” And after what the Elders did to them, they made me a rogue, though I don’t think they meant to.
“Second?”
“Long story.” She shrugged, a little too casually. “My first adoption didn’t go as well as Paige’s. I met Diana when I was 14.”
“Oh. What, she took you from your parents?”
“No, she was my foster mother. I’d been in foster care since the age of 6. Like I said, not as lucky as Paige.”
“Ah. So, does this group have a name?”
“Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah. Gemini Investigations.”
“Why Gemini?”
Good question. But I don’t want to talk about that either. That brave girl, staring down machines of death, just so we could escape... “A girl I once knew. That was her name.” This was why the Doctor had found his past so hard to discuss. So much death, so many people who no one would remember.
“Odd name.”
“I’ve heard stranger.”
“So have I. So, what do we do? Just wait for some sort of message?” As if his words had called it, the phone rang then. Paula glanced at it, then threw him a bright smile.
“Apparently.” She picked it up. “Gemini Investigations. Oh, hi, Detective.” She paused listening. “Oh. Well, sure, give me fifteen minutes.” She hung up and slanted him a look. “Come on, Turner, time to get your feet wet.”
He followed her outside, and then said, “So, who’s driving?”
“I am. Do you even have a license?”
“Yeah, I’ve got one. So I can drive.”
“When was the last time you were in Boston?”
“Uh... the forties, maybe?”
“I’m driving.”
“Right,” Cole muttered, before sliding into the front passenger seat of the black compact. “You know,” he commented, “once we have a full team, you’ll need a bigger car than this.”
“Yeah, I know, Torchwood’s got a custom SUV. I just hate big cars.” She shrugged. “Anyway, since I’m sure you’re wondering, we’re heading to the morgue. Apparently there’s something off about a corpse that came in this morning.”
“Wondeful. So, I take it you have connections with the local cops?”
“Yeah, Detective Moran’s an old friend.”
“That’s useful.”
“It can be, particularly with something like this.” She shook her head. “Wish Daniel’d been more specific on the phone.” He didn’t call her in that often, after all.
They got to the morgue and headed in, Paula flashing some sort of ID at the door to make sure no one stopped them. Cole tried to catch a glimpse of it, but only saw blank white paper. He’d ask later. Instead, he just followed her - he wasn’t usually big on taking someone else’s lead, but as she seemed to know which way to go and he didn’t, not following would be pointless at best.
A young man in a dress shirt and pressed slacks was waiting for them outside what Cole assumed was the room where this particular corpse was. “Hey, Paula.” Then he saw Cole. “Finally got a partner, huh? What took so long?”
“Oh, I needed to actually find someone who can keep up with me, you know?”
“Yeah, I know personally how tough that can be.” Moran smiled, a little ruefully.
“Well, seeing as you’re now engaged, that only proves that everything happens for a reason. And I didn’t mean it like that anyway,” Paula rejoined, rolling her eyes and muttering something about typical assumptions. Then she and Cole walked into what turned out to be an autopsy room. The M.E. looked up when she saw them.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Mitchell,” the older blonde woman said. “So, Detective Moran says you might know something about this case.”
“Maybe,” Paula said. “What’s unusual about it?”
“There’s no blood in the body.” Great. So, vampires, then, Cole thought with irritation. Didn’t they know better than to leave victims lying around?
“Right.” Paula stepped forward to take a closer look at the body. Cole wondered why; it was clear what this was, wasn’t it?
“Pam?” Moran called. “Can you come here?” Dr. Mitchell - Pam, apparently - left the room. Cole moved to stand next to Paula and looked at the body himself, surprised to see that the telltale fangmarks weren’t there.
“So it wasn’t a vampire,” he murmured.
“No, I don’t think so. I think it was a Haemovore.”
“A what?”
“Vampiric humanoids. An evolution of humans from some alternate future.” She shrugged. “Something to do with radiation - or maybe it was some kind of toxin; I don’t know much about it. The Doctor ran across them once, but that was way before my time.”
“Alien vampires? Aren’t the demonic variety bad enough?”
“Apparently not. There’s alien werewolves as well, and the Doctor had this theory that the British royal family’s among them, but that’s beside the point.” She grinned at his expression. “Sorry. Informational overload?”
“Not really, no. I’m just wondering if any of the ‘demons’ your sisters have vanquished over the years might have been aliens after all. Some of the stories I used to hear...”
“I doubt it. Potions and spells don’t work well on aliens. I tried. Anyway, about the Haemovore... the Doctor said he thought the future they came from was averted; maybe an alternate timeline... damn that Rift.”
“Rift?”
“Rift in time and space. Cardiff’s got the worst; that’s why Jack’s branch of Torchwood’s there, but part of why I came back to Boston is that there’s a smaller one here. Damn it! I remember everything he said, but he didn’t tell us much.” She shook her heac, clearly annoyed with herself.
“Maybe there’s more in your notebooks,” Cole offered.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I have a very good memory; part of learning to control telepathy involves refining other brain functions, like memory retention. Which isn’t always a good thing. But I doubt there’s anything more. I’ll check, though.”
“Well, we can’t do any more here, so I suggest we go back to headquarters,” Cole said. “Then we can go through your notes, maybe call Jack if necessary, figure out how to handle this.”
“Good idea,” she said.
Once they were back in the car, Cole commented, “You never said Moran was an ex of yours.”
“You didn’t ask. And that was high school. Daniel just likes to tease me.” She shook her head. “And, of course, the comment had all the typical assumptions. You should have heard the Doctor rant about it.”
“Oh, the innuendo concerning you and me?”
“Yeah, that.” She smiled, a little sadly. “People made comments about us and the Doctor - there were two of us, River and me. So the comments were worse at times, actually.”
She cut in front of someone on the road and Cole winced. “Are we in some kind of hurry?”he wanted to know.
“Not yet, but we may be soon, so if we move fast now, we’ll be more prepared later.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Sure - Wait. This kind of argument can last for hours. So let’s cut it short now.”
“Lots of experience?” Cole asked mildly.
“You could say that.” She pulled up at HQ and they went back inside. Once there, they began searching through her notebooks to see what they could find out. Cole was the first to find something.
“How is it that they’re aliens - or evolved humans, whatever - and yet they can still be killed with stakes like regular vampires?”
“Devolved humans, I’d say, and I don’t know why stakes kill them. Though I suppose that’s a good thing, as I’ve got a few of them lying around somewhere in this place.”
“Somewhere? You know, being organized is a useful thing.” That comment earned him a glare.
“Try two years with a guy who found jelly babies in his pockets that were over a decade old at least,” she muttered. “Still, you’re right, and I do need to work on that. But right now we’ve got an alien vamp to kill.”
~ ~ ~
Finding said vampire wasn’t as hard as it could have been. Apparently the victim they’d seen was only the latest in a series of victims all concentrated in one neighborhood. “Well, apparent;y this thing’s stupid as well as evil,” Cole remarked.
“Or reckless,” Paula agreed. “Which is why we’ll be able to take it out, no problem.” Hopefully.
“They can hypnotize, so we’d still better be careful,” Cole pointed out. Paula nodded curtly as they got out of the car.
“Of course.” It was the last thing she said before she felt a mind brush hers. “Heads up!”
The thing that came out of the shadows was hardly even humanoid, with shriveled bluish skin, suckers on its arms, and overly long fingernails. But its eyes... they were so captivating. Wait, she knew what that was! She managed half a glance at Cole, who was already transfixed, before her own eyes flew back to the thing’s. Next thing she knew, the world was gone.
~ ~ ~
“Cole, what are you doing in Boston?”
He turned, stunned, to see Phoebe standing a foot or so away from him. “What do you want?” he snapped.
“I wanted to apologize. Cole, I’m so sorry, please, I should have known, but I was stupid. Please forgive me. Please come home.”
She walked up to him and stared up at him, her eyes gleaming with tears. Before he knew it, she was in his arms and they were kissing, it was like nothing had ever happened.... No. This was an illusion. It wasn’t real. He knew that. It was fake, though he longed for it to be true.
He came back to himself in a Boston alley, and the Haemovore was gone. “Damn it!” He glanced at Paula, who was still staring into space, lost in whatever illusion had been conjured for her.
~ ~ ~
“Come on, love, we’re going to be late. I know San Francisco’s a few hours behind us, but still. Piper said four their time.”
She turned to him, laughing. “Like you care, Micah. You don’t understand Thanksgiving, you said it yourself.”
“Well, seeing as you Yanks took the Indians’ land, why celebrate a dinner with them?”
“True. But - oh, forget it, I already tried explaining and you just won’t get it.”
“No, I won’t. Oh, are Diana and Con coming by the Manor too?”
“Yeah, I think...” Wait. That was wrong. Diana and Con were dead. And Micah was gone. He’d left her alone in a Dublin hotel with nothing but a pathetic note. So what was happening?
“Paula!” Someone shook her. She blinked and looked into Cole’s face. “Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. Let’s go! Can you track it with your telepathy?”
“Yeah. You distract it with fireballs, I’ll stake it.”
“Fine.” And they ran off after it in the direction Paula’s powers indicated. It didn’t take long before they caught up, just as it was about to pounce on a lone traveler. “Go!” Cole yelled. The man hurried away, a little slowly - he looked to be drunk or high, so that was understandable - but he wouldn’t be a witness to this.
Cole began throwing fireballs. The Haemovore was confused. The fire didn’t hurt, not really, but it did make it hard to focus. What was happening?
“Cole, stop!” Paula was about to orb in and stake the thing, but not at the risk of getting incinerated. Cole looked at her, and for a second she saw what looked almost like a gleam of insanity in the blue eyes. Then he blinked and it was gone. He stopped throwing fireballs and she orbed in front of the Haemovore, staking it. It fell, dead, and Cole threw another, larger fireball once she’d moved that incinerated the body.
~ ~ ~
She sent Cole home, deciding to write the report herself. Once she was done, she went to the potions room and began working on two recipes. Had she been one of her sisters, she would only have been brewing one, as one was gray magic and technically forbidden. But Paula wasn’t about to exchange one problem for another.
After a few hours, she left, going to a bar near HQ. She wasn’t surprised to see Cole there, tipping back a glass of whiskey. He wasn’t drunk yet, she noted, but he was headed there. “Hey,” she said, sliding onto the stool next to his and ordering a kahlua and cream. “That doesn’t help.”
“And how would you know?”
“Tried it. Not only did it hurt my control over my powers, but once it was over, I felt like shit both physically and emotionally.”
“Oh. What, was it the guy in the photo?”
“Yeah. Micah.”
“What happened?”
“He walked out on me. That was nearly a year ago.”
Cole considered, then asked the question he really wanted to know. “Does it get easier?”
“Depends on your definition. It doesn’t go away. It just... gets distant.”
“That’s something.”
“I guess it is. So, ready to go?”
“Sure. Why not?”