Chapter Text
Tamora stepped out of her bedroom and started down the stairs of her home. She could hear her mother and father cooking together in the kitchen, her brother blaring music in his room, and her twin sister in her room watching TV. She loved Sundays, they were always calm and relaxed because nobody had work and everybody had done the cleaning the day before.
She stepped into the kitchen and Paige looked up at her from her mixing bowl. “Morning honey, how are you feeling?”
Tamora laughed, “I’m okay, just stressed with college, I’ve got exams soon and they’re killing me.”
Her mother gave her a sympathetic smile, turning back to whatever breakfast she was preparing. Tamora leaned against the kitchen counter for a moment, enjoying the rare feeling of having absolutely nowhere she needed to be and nothing to do.
She had spent most of the week buried beneath college work, and even though she knew she had to keep studying, Sundays were the one day when she could actually breathe. Between being a nineteen-year-old in college, helping her mother at Magic School, and her responsibilities as a whitelighter, it sometimes felt like she had three separate lives competing for her attention.
Her charge Mia was one of those responsibilities.
Tamora had been Mia’s whitelighter for long enough that the fifteen-year-old witch had become more than just another name on a list of people she was supposed to protect. She was someone Tamora genuinely cared about. Their relationship had its ups and downs, especially when Mia was being stubborn or trying to handle magical problems without asking for help, but Tamora had always been there when she needed her, and always would be.
Which was why the sensation that tore through her out of nowhere was so immediately recognisable.
All of a sudden, she got this overwhelming urge that something bad was happening, and before she could even open her mouth to ask her parents about it, she heard Mia calling for help.
Her entire expression changed, and the relaxed Sunday morning disappeared from her mind in an instant.
She could hear Mia's voice calling for her, desperate and terrified, and Tamora's instincts immediately kicked in.
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
Without even saying anything to her parents, she grabbed her phone from where she had placed it on the counter, squeezed her eyes shut to stop the motion sickness, and orbed to Mia’s location.
The familiar sensation of orbing swept over her, but she barely registered it.
She was already concentrating on Mia.
On her voice.
On the desperate call for help she'd heard just seconds ago.
When she opened her eyes, she let out a scream so loud that it hurt her own eardrums to listen to. In front of her was Mia, but not in one piece. Her body parts were scattered across the dark alley she had landed in, and Tamora stood in a pool of her blood.
For several seconds, Tamora couldn't move. Her brain seemed incapable of processing what she was looking at. She'd come because Mia had called for her. She'd heard her. She'd **heard her asking for help**.
Tamora's first instinct was to rush forward, to heal her, to do something, anything, but there was nothing left for her to heal. Her charge wasn't injured.
She was dead.
“No!” Tamora shouted, barely recognising her own voice.
She stumbled backwards and her back hit the wall of the alley, and her eyes shifted upwards ever so slightly to the wall behind Mia. There was a symbol carved into the brick and traced with what looked like Mia’s blood. She froze, her heart pounding, before snapping herself out of it and pulling out her phone. She took a photo of the symbol and then texted the first person who came to mind with a rapid-fire “I need you”, the photo, and her location.
Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped her phone. She didn't know what the symbol meant. She didn't know who had done this. But she knew one thing. Someone had killed Mia. And whoever had done it had deliberately left that symbol behind.
Paige orbed in seconds later, taking one look at the body, the symbol, and Tamora’s shaking form, and pulled her into her arms, orbing them both to Halliwell Manor. Tamora clung to her mother as they orbed, barely able to process the fact that she was no longer standing in that alley.
The moment they arrived, Paige kept one arm around her daughter.
Chris and Leo were in the living room as they orbed in and immediately jumped up from the sofa when they saw the state she was in. Tamora stuttered her way through an explanation of what had happened, and Leo looked down at Tamora gravely as she showed them the photo.
Chris's expression hardened as he looked between Tamora and the photograph. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
“I don't know,” Tamora admitted, her voice still shaking. “It was on the wall. Above her.” Paige's hold around Tamora tightened.
Leo took the phone from her carefully, studying the photograph. For a moment, he said nothing. Tamora watched his face change. Whatever he'd seen in that symbol, he recognised it. And judging by the sudden seriousness in his expression, she didn't think that was a good thing.
Leo looked over at Paige.
“Paige… You need to go to the Elders. Now.”