"Now you eat eggplant?"

Cole placed the fork back on his plate with a slightly guilty look on his face: he remembered all too well the epic eggplant battles of his childhood.

"These are white eggplants," he told his mother defensively. "I happen to like them better than the other kind."

She glared briefly at him before turning her attention back to her own plate with a contemptuous sniff, and Cole gingerly pulled a cabbage leaf over the zucchinis lest his mother spotted them, too.

Phoebe watched surreptitiously as the demoness poured gravy over the vegetables on her plate. As her mother in law took the first bite, deliberately tasting the food, Phoebe found herself holding her breath despite Cole's earlier assurance that Erzsebet would be more likely to judge her by her fighting skills than by her food.

Without a word, Erzsebet put the fork down and dabbed her lips with the napkin before taking a sip of wine, but she definitely brought the next bite to her mouth with more gusto, and Phoebe couldn't help but feel relieved even as she was fully aware of the ludicrousness of a Charmed One trying to impress her demonic mother in law with her culinary talents.

She didn't have to look at Piper to know that her older sister was smiling, the mother-in-law-less vixen. Then again, Phoebe thought as she reached out for her glass with a resigned sigh, how could one be mad at a sister who agreed to come over to dine with an upper level demon and even hauled her very unwilling husband along with her? Paige had lost no time making dinner plans with a friend, but Piper had agreed to come have dinner at the Turners' and help keep Erzsebet company.

"Baby," -- Cole's voice brought Phoebe out of her musings, "at what time will your interview begin tomorrow?"

"Interview?" Leo asked, giving her a curious look.

"Gail Reed in the Morning," Phoebe said. "The talk show," she elaborated when the Whitelighter's puzzled look didn't vanish. "Gee, Leo!" she exclaimed in good-natured exasperation. "Just this morning I was asking Piper if she could watch Ben tomorrow."

"I missed breakfast today," he reminded her.

"Still, I told everyone about this last Tuesday, over dinner."

"Missed that one, too," Leo said with a sheepish shrug.

"Well, your wife should of told you," Phoebe pouted.

"I should," Piper owned mindfully, smiling at her sister who had already spent more time trying on outfits for that interview than she had for any date Piper could remember.

"Gail Reed hosts a nationwide talk show," Phoebe proudly told Leo, "and tomorrow she'll be interviewing the author of 'Ask Phoebe', aka yours truly."

"Are you sure that you can all be back at a moment's notice if the charm shows that the Chameleon is moving?" Erzsebet asked Cole while Phoebe told a properly impressed Leo the details of her upcoming TV appearance.

"As soon as the stone starts to glow, Piper will text message Phoebe, Paige and me to give us an excuse to bail out of our respective appointments," he assured her. "And then she'll call Leo, and he'll pick me up at the courthouse while Paige goes get Phoebe at the studio."

"I can't for the life of me understand why you chose to go back to human courts," his mother sighed, shaking her head and turning her eyes back to her plate, "when at a trolls' court you could so easily ask for a recess to go demon hunting, with no need to make up excuses."

"How did you know I've been taking some cases at trolls' courts?" he asked, intrigued.

"Sarsour told me."

"What! Is Sarsour back in the Underworld?" -- Cole's stomach sank at the thought of what might have caused Sarsour to leave the elves' company.

"Not that I know," Erzsebet said conversationally, her eyes still trained on her meal. "And I believe I would know if he was. After all, he stopped by to let me know when he was leaving," she added frostily.

Cole opened his mouth to reply, thought again, scratched his head and finally closed his mouth again. Life lesson for when Ben is older: if you cause your mother to believe you're dead, even if unintentionally, you'll be apologizing for the rest of your life.

"To answer your question, I have to be at the studio at eight," Phoebe came to his rescue, filling the silence. "Which reminds me, I'd rather take the first watch tonight," she proceeded, motioning toward the stone that sat on the table beside Erzsebet's plate, "if that's okay with the rest of you."

"I'll take the second shift," Cole said. "The hearing only begins at ten; I can make up for the lost sleep in the morning."

"How many shifts are we talking about here?" Leo asked.

"I'm thinking only four," Cole told him. "We can make it from eleven tonight until seven tomorrow morning with four shifts of two hours each."

"Sign me up for the third shift, then" said the Whitelighter. "I'm going to bed early today: I have to be in Memphis at eight thirty tomorrow morning."

"That leaves only the fourth shift," Erzsebet chimed in. "I'll take it."

She snorted when her offer was met with surprised looks:

"Oh, please! That Chameleon would have held an auction of my powers before she" -- she pointed at Piper -- "managed to toddle her hundred-month-pregnant ass here to warn us."

"She's probably right," Piper said, unruffled. She wasn't about to take offense to a statement that was going to spare her from waking up at 5am.

"That settles it then," Phoebe said with a smile, just glad that she wasn't the one in charge of waking the demoness up before sunrise.

"So, hum..." -- Leo shifted on his seat, the extent of the trouble he had just gotten into beginning to sink in -- "How should I wake you up?"

"With black coffee," Erzsebet replied dryly.

- x x x x x -

"He usually eats a piece of fruit at around ten..."

"Apple sauce or mashed banana," Erzsebet impatiently cut him off. "Cole, your wife has already spent a good half an hour harping on every single thing Ben can possibly need or want this morning." -- she reached out and stopped the toddler from hitting his own head with the xylophone mallet he had been gleefully waving around the nursery -- "Which, mind you, I bore with uncharacteristic patience," -- she stroke the xylophone keys a couple of times, hoping that Ben would get the idea -- "and with a civilness that would have raised quite a few eyebrows in the Underworld."

"You might want to ask yourself, though," she proceeded while extricating Ben from the frilled curtains in which he had managed to entangle himself, "if you really want to wear out what is left of my goodwill when it's not even ten in the morning yet."

Instead of answering, Cole leaned on the doorframe and dug his hands into his pockets, not quite sure of how he felt seeing his mother sitting on the nursery's rocking chair while Ben frolicked around the room.

"Piper is just across the backyard, if you need her," he quietly changed the subject.

"Oh, I will need her," Erzsebet asseverated. "The moment Ben needs a diaper change, I will. In fact," she added, watching with mild curiosity as Ben crawled under the crib for no obvious reason, "I intend to drop him at your in law's and come right back here to wait until he is all nice and clean again, just to make sure it doesn't bring back any long buried, unpleasant memories."

"Mother," Cole hastily interrupted her, "I have to stand before a judge in forty minutes and dismantle the DA's case piece by piece. I can't possibly do that if I have a mental image of myself in diapers in my head."

"Last time I checked, you were a DA," she remarked, raising a quizzical eyebrow at him even as she helped Ben wiggle his way out from under the crib.

"Last time you checked, I still had my demon powers and was out trying to kill the woman who's now the mother of my son," he reminded her. "Look, I gotta go now," he said, glancing at his watch. "I'll catch you up on my career over lunch."

"Ben, Daddy's leaving for work now," he said, resting one knee on the floor and pulling the toddler to him. "Be good," he added before planting a kiss on his son's cheek.

"Goo," Ben merrily echoed, because he knew how much Daddy liked to hear it.

"And make sure Nana behaves, too," Cole added in a stage whisper, affectionately ruffling the toddler's hair.

His mother eyed him and he sighed.

"Mother, I'll be back in three hours tops; just don't kill Piper in the meantime, and don't get yourself vanquished, either."

"I'm doing my best here," she said wryly.

"I know, mother," Cole said gently. "And I appreciate it. See you at lunch," he added, standing up.

"Cole?" Erzsebet called out just as he was leaving.

"Yes, mother?" -- he stopped at the doorway and gave her an interrogative look.

"Kick some ass."

"Don't I always?" Cole said, his grin not vanishing even when she humphed and rolled her eyes.

He winked at Ben before leaving the room, and smiled when the toddler waved a chubby hand at him:

"Buh-bah."

"The DA will never know what hit him," Erzsebet said evenly to the toddler after Cole was gone.

- x x x x x -

"So," Gail Reed said, leaning across her desk, "do you think the advice that you give to readers who write to ask you about their kids has changed now that you're a mother yourself?"

"God, yes!" Phoebe said, laughing. The audience and Gail laughed along with her, and Phoebe waited for the laughter to subside before she proceeded, sobering: "It's not that I gave thoughtless advice back when I didn't have children; it's just..." -- she hesitated, smiling at the thought of the little imp she had left at home -- "You think that you've got everything covered. Everything. Your house is childproof to the point of inconvenience. Your child is never left without adult supervision." -- she sighed -- "And then you blink. You just. Blink." -- Phoebe shook her head, half smiling and half grimacing at the memory -- "Next thing you know, he's covered in dirt and has a fern leaf sticking out of his mouth."

The entire set erupted with laughter again, and Phoebe chuckled, too.

"I swear," she said, still laughing. "It was just one second. Just a moment ago he was enthralled by his toys, and then suddenly it was 'ravage Mommy's plants time'."

"So, to answer your question," she proceeded with a smile, "while the advice is still the same, now there's also this relatedness that wasn't there before. When you tell me that your child loves butter cookies to bits... and hides them in places that you only find by following the trail of the ants," -- she turned to the audience and placed her hand over her chest in a gesture that made them laugh again -- "I hearyou, sister. I really do."

- x x x x x -

Ben watched with great interest as the paper napkin he had thrown over the banister swirled and twiddled on its way to the first floor. Pretty. Suddenly the breeze coming through the open window blew the napkin out of Ben's view and the toddler frowned, intrigued. He watched the spot where the napkin should be for a moment before turning to Nana again.

"Hi!" -- he chirped before taking another pretty, pretty, colorful napkin out of the box she was holding for him and sending it over the banister to go join its peers downstairs.

- x x x x x -

"I wish I could be a fly on the wall," Piper sighed, tapping her fingers on the monthly report the manager of P3 had given to her the day before, "to know what's going on there."

Leo looked up from the loose baseboard he was fixing and she shrugged:

"I know that if Cole believed there was any chance she would be mean to Ben, he would have put his foot down about Ben staying here with us. And Phoebe trusts Cole's judgement, and we must trust their judgement when it comes to Ben's well being..."

"But...?" Leo stretched the word, encouraging her to proceed.

"You know how sweet and trusting Ben is," Piper said, toying with the report she was holding. "She might hurt his feelings even if she doesn't mean to. He'll expect her to play with him, and to cuddle him, and..."

"Piper," Leo gently admonished her, and Piper sighed, placing the report back on her desk.

"Ben will be fine," he assured her, standing up and going to stand behind her chair, rubbing her shoulders. "If her aloofness didn't bother him yesterday, I find it unlikely that it'll bother him today. That's the way she is, and he doesn't seem to have a problem with it." -- he leaned towards her and kissed the top of her head. -- "He seems to like being around her, even if she's not going to be all doting on him."

- x x x x x -

"Dis?" Ben asked, pointing at the picture in the very expensive coffee table book that was opened on Erzsebet's knees.

"That's a hoary marmot," Erzsebet said, reading the caption.

"Dis?"

"That's a porcupine."

"Dis?"

"Beaver."

"Dis?" -- the plump little finger traveled back to the first picture and Erzsebet obligingly started all over again.

"Hoary marmot."

Erzsebet shifted position on the couch to better accommodate the toddler and the book on her lap; she had already read the names of the same animals twice, and if her memories of the early years of a certain kick ass lawyer were any indication, she'd still be naming them for quite a while.

- x x x x x -

"I have to agree with Mr. Turner here, Mr. Grant," the judge said, leaning back on her chair and giving the DA a critical look. "Unless you have something else up your sleeve, I'm going to not only dismiss this case but also hold a serious grudge against you for the waste of my time that this hearing represented."

"Your honor, I'm sure the..." the District Attorney started to speak but the judge cut him off:

"Do you have any more evidence to present, Mr. Grant?"

"No," he sighed.

"Then the case is dismissed," the judge declared dryly, banging the gavel. "Mr. Nash, you're free to go."

Cole smiled and lightly patted his client's back as the other man let out a relieved breath. Andrew Nash was a small man with an almost pathological fear of authority, who had earlier confessed to his lawyer that he had had little sleep since he had been charged with robbery.

"Thank you, Mr. Turner," he said with a grateful smile, holding out his hand.

"Just doing my job," Cole said, shaking his client's hand and returning his smile.

"Daddy, daddy, you won!" -- both man turned around to see the young girl who was running towards them, dark brown pigtails bouncing gleefully around.

"Mr. Turner won, Buttercup," Andrew happily corrected his daughter as he reached out over the courtroom banister to pick her up, and the girl giggled when Cole winked at her.

"You behaved very well, Tanya," Cole told her with a smile. "Sitting there all nice and quiet, just like a big girl."

"I was taking care of mommy," Tanya proudly announced, pointing at Mrs. Nash, who had just joined them.

"Yeah, those mommies," Cole agreed with a straight face, "they can be quite a handful."

- x x x x x -

"So," Erzsebet explained to Ben while she braided her hair, watching him through the vanity mirror, "we'll tell your parents that you ate a banana, but there is no need to mention the whipped cream and the peanut butter unless someone asks a direct question."

The toddler was sitting on the floor in his parents' bedroom, chewing on Mr. Floppy's ear and watching Nana with mild interest.

"And, if I were you, I wouldn't say anything about the incident with the remote, either. After all, it's not even broken."

"No no." -- Ben mindfully shook his head. That 'broken' word usually meant trouble.

"It's good to know that we are on the same page here," Erzsebet said, tying the end of the braid with a small piece of ribbon. "Now," she said, standing up, "it's about time you have lunch. Are you hungry yet?"

"I'll take that as a yes," she said when Ben promptly lifted his arms to be picked up. "Come on," she said, picking up the toddler and the stuffed bunny, "let's see what we can loot across the backyard."