Eight

[Astral Vision]

Grey Area

August 16th 2005

Paige Matthews orbed onto one of the highest girders of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was relatively windy up there, so her ponytail moved with the breeze. The whitelighter-witch's left arm was now fully healed after six long weeks. In recent days, she had been allowed to take off the cast and sling.

While waiting for the Elders to turn up, Paige looked out onto the horizon of the Bay Area. It was a bright sunny summer afternoon. The water was glistening in the sunlight and the city was alive with movement. Paige shivered a little. Despite the sun, the breeze was chilly at the very top of the bridge.

The youngest Charmed One turned around as she heard the familiar jingling sound that prompted the arrival of blue and white orbs. The blue and white orbs disappeared to reveal two robed Elders that Paige had met a few times before: Sandra and Odin.

'Thank you for agreeing to this meeting, Paige,' said Sandra.

'I only agreed to show up on behalf of my sisters and myself to give you a message: We have never agreed with your policies. We never will. We may still be alive, and if an innocent falls into our path, we will help them. However, don't expect us to ever go running after errands, demonic leads, or anything of that sort for you again,' Paige told them.

Odin did not respond. His only reaction was a seething expression of anger.

Sandra nodded solemnly. 'We foresaw this when it came to light that you had survived but been in hiding for over a month. However there is a lot of dispute over you and your sisters' reasons. We are all trying to help the Greater Good.'

'Our reasons?' Paige said, scowling at Sandra's choice of words. 'You broke off all connection with us during our battle against Zankou! You left us to die!'

Odin interjected at this point to say: 'The three of you managed to escape alive and you didn't need us for that!'

Sandra had an expression of guilt on her face as she said, 'Paige, no one knew how that battle was going to end. We had to leave you and your sisters to figure it all out on your own.'

Paige shook her head, but she decided not to reply. She was about to orb out until Sandra began to speak again.

'How does this affect your whitelighter duties, Paige?' asked Sandra.

Paige looked surprised. 'Sorry? I know I officially took on whitelighter duties last year, but after my little speech about us not working for you Elders anymore, I thought you'd know the answer to that…'

'That was not the question,' snapped Odin. 'How does your lack of communication with us affect your whitelighter duties?'

'Well, just like with innocents, if a charge comes my way, I can't ignore them,' said Paige, accompanying her sentence with a guilty shrug. However much she disliked the Elders, Paige found that her whitelighter duties gave her some direction in life.

'Good,' said Sandra. 'The main reason we wanted this meeting, Paige, was because we had a special charge to assign you.'

'Special?' questioned Paige, raising a quizzical eyebrow. 'This isn't like when you made me look for Sam a couple of years ago, or when I had to help a future whitelighter that turned out to be me last year, is it?'

'No,' said Sandra, smiling. 'Not exactly. Your charge was once a whitelighter – in fact, he was once an Elder – but now he is mortal. We want him to be a whitelighter again. His actions six weeks ago alone prove he is ready to return to this way of life.'

'What do you want me to do?' Paige asked.

'Guide him. It always has been his destiny to be a whitelighter. He needs to be guided,' said Odin. 'That's all that we ask of you.'

'Who is it?' asked Paige. The description of the ex-whitelighter who had formerly been an Elder already sounded familiar and she knew that if it happened to be this person, then all she could say was no. She knew he was happy with his life as it was, he was happy with his family, and he did not need guiding.

The reply came quickly, confirming Paige's fears: 'Leo Wyatt.'

...

Leo Wyatt surveyed the state of the basement that he had spent the last six weeks fixing up: All of the wreckage was gone; the beams and the wooden staircase had been strengthened and stabilised; and the wooden hatch in the concrete floor had been bolted down to prevent any unwanted visitors from using that as an access point.

Marvelling at his craftsmanship, Leo smiled. He picked up his toolbox as he stood up. He made his way up the wooden staircase into the kitchen. Leo put the toolbox down as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink.

There was a sudden beeping sound. Leo turned around to see the kitchen timer sitting on the table. On the display of the timer '00:00' was flashing on and off as it beeped. He pressed the button that would reset the timer and stop the beeping. However when the beeping decided not to stop, Leo gave up – letting it continue to beep – and looked around at the stove. Assuming that the beeping indicated that something had finished cooking, Leo switched the oven off, picked up some oven gloves, and removed a tray of freshly baked pie from the oven.

Finding a plate and cutting the pie into eight, Leo took a slice for himself. He sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat his slice of home-made pie that he realised was raspberry flavoured.

Piper Halliwell came running into the kitchen shouting, 'Leave it! I'll get it!' She had noticed Leo's presence in the kitchen, but ran straight past him towards the timer. Piper tried to reset the timer to turn the beeping off. When it did not work, Piper flicked her wrists and the timer blew up.

After swallowing a bite of the pie, Leo said a little astounded, 'Piper!'

Piper put on the oven gloves and opened the oven while replying, 'Not now, Leo. I don't have time for a stupid broken kitchen timer.' Piper closed the oven door with a look of puzzlement on her face when she noticed that the oven was empty and switched off. She turned to face Leo as she said, 'Have you seen the..?' She trailed off as she saw the plate of a half eaten slice of raspberry pie in front of Leo. 'Leo!'

Leo blushed guiltily. 'I wasn't supposed to have any of the pie, was I?'

Dumping the oven gloves on the counter and sitting down at the table next to Leo, Piper sighed. 'Yes… No… Well… The pie wasn't for anyone in particular, to be honest… What do you think of it?'

Leo looked at Piper thoughtfully. 'Why do you even have to ask that? You know that your food is always the best.'

Piper shrugged guardedly. 'I don't know… It was kind of a test, I guess…'

'A test?' Leo questioned.

'Well, it's my way of making a decision…' muttered Piper.

Leo raised an eyebrow and said teasingly, 'You cook a pie every time you make a decision? No wonder demons are always turning up here. They want to get free pie out of you.' After a small pause, Leo added more seriously, 'What is it that you are trying to figure out?'

Piper let out a deep sigh. Looking directly at Leo, Piper said, 'I want to start up my own restaurant.'

Leo smiled. 'That's always been your dream. I'd say go for it.'

'That's not the problematic part,' said Piper. 'The difficult decision is that I will have to give up P3.'

Leo frowned. 'Do you not want to give it up?'

'I do. I've always wanted a restaurant, not a club. I've always wanted to be a chef. I never got around to it…' said Piper. 'If I don't make that decision now, I never will.'

'Then do it, Piper. If that's what you want, sell the club,' Leo said encouragingly.

Piper shook her head. 'I'm worried about what Phoebe will say.'

Leo furrowed his brow. 'Why? This has nothing to do with her.'

'She technically owns a third of the club,' said Piper. 'The ownership of the club was originally split three ways… Prue, Phoebe, and me… Prue left her third to me in her will…'

'Phoebe will be fine with you wanting to sell the club, Piper,' said Leo. 'Why wouldn't she be?'

The phone began to ring.

'I think I'm just trying to come up with any reason to postpone making the decision,' said Piper. 'It's a big step.'

Piper stood up and picked up the phone. Meanwhile Leo went back to eating his slice of pie.

'Hello?' Piper said into the phone.

'Hey Piper. It's Paige,' said the voice on the other end of the line that belonged to Paige.

'Oh hey. How'd the meeting go?' Piper asked. When she saw Leo mouth the words Who is it? Piper said away from the phone's receiver: 'Paige.' Leo nodded.

'Not good,' came Paige's reply. 'Do you think you could drive down to the Golden Gate Bridge and pick me up? I shouldn't be too hard to find along there.'

Piper frowned. 'Can't you orb home? I was going to head to P3 with Leo this afternoon.'

'Yeah… Er… I wish I could orb, but…' There was a brief pause. 'I gave the Elders our message. After that was over, the Elders were going to assign me a charge. I… Uh… I refused to take on the charge… So the Elders temporarily suspended me…'

'In other words, they clipped your wings. Except they can't take away your powers, because you're inherently a whitelighter,' Piper responded.

Although Leo could not hear Paige's side of the conversation, Piper's side allowed him to realise what was known so far. Leo was fully intrigued by the contents of the conversation now – despite only being able to hear half.

'Yeah. That's what I thought. Except the Elders decided that they could be even more annoying than usual by temporarily taking away my whitelighter abilities,' explained Paige. There was an understandable amount of frustration in her voice.

'Ugh,' said Piper. 'What's gotten on their nerve that's made them so angry at you for turning down a charge? I mean, they were lucky that you were still willing to continue whitelighter duties despite our refusal to work alongside them when it comes to Charmed business.'

There was an unusual amount of hesitation before Paige was heard saying: 'Is Leo in the same room as you?'

Piper's eyes wandered over to Leo, who was staring directly back at her. 'Yes…' Piper replied.

'Okay. Don't overreact. Leo doesn't need to know about this,' said Paige.

'You're worrying me now. What is it, Paige?' Piper asked.

'They want Leo to be a whitelighter again,' Paige said.

'What?' Piper said immediately.

'I said don't overreact,' Paige said. 'They wanted me to be his whitelighter… To guide him… Make him want to be a whitelighter again…'

'It makes no sense,' said Piper. She wanted to say more, like ask why the Elders would want an ex-Elder to return as a whitelighter after falling from grace. However Piper could not ask this in front of Leo without him cluing onto the exact thing that Paige did not think Leo needed to know.

...

Standing on the side of the road, leaning up against the railings on Golden Gate Bridge, Paige said into her phone: 'I know. We can discuss this further later on when Leo's not around. Could you come and give me a lift now, please?'

'Sure,' said Piper. 'Except I don't think my car can reach the part of the Golden Gate Bridge that you went to meet the Elders at.'

Paige smiled. 'Ha ha. Fortunately the Elders were kind enough to orb me to the roadside of the bridge.'

'I am just going to assume that the Elders made sure no one sure you suddenly appear on the roadside of the bridge,' Piper added.

Paige shrugged, guessing the assumption had to be correct, before continuing with: 'Odin had the nerve to say 'At least without your whitelighter powers, you and your sisters will be completely cut off from communicating with us, just like you wanted' as his parting words to me.'

'If only that could be permanently true – the lack of communication with them part, not the loss of your whitelighter abilities part,' said Piper. 'Give me around fifteen minutes and I'll be there.'

'Okay. See you then,' Paige said. Paige put the phone back into her bag and watched as car after car sped past her in either direction.

...

The headquarters of the Bay Mirror newspaper was brimming with busy reporters, buzzing computers, and humming printers. An assistant with a pile of unopened envelopes walked through the bustle of busy staff towards the office that belonged to Ask Phoebe's Phoebe Halliwell.

As the assistant entered the office, she placed the envelopes down on Phoebe's desk. Phoebe stopped typing and looked up from her computer.

'Hey,' said Phoebe. 'I haven't seen you around before.'

The assistant nodded a little nervously. 'It's my first day.'

'Oh cool. Well, if you need to know where anything is, feel free to ask me,' said Phoebe.

'Thanks,' said the assistant. She quickly exited the office while Phoebe picked up and opened the first envelope.

Ask Phoebe had grown in popularity since its commencement in two thousand and two. The height in fame that the column had reached was quite ridiculous, really. Even Phoebe could never understand why a local advice column had become a national favourite. Phoebe had never admitted the peculiarity of this, because she enjoyed that her column had peaked the interest of more than just the Bay Area.

Each day the column received countless letters and vast numbers of emails. It was never possible for Phoebe to read through them all. Her aim over the years had always been to read as many as possible, so as she could pick out the best ones to reply to. At one point she even tried to answer them all – even the ones that she did not put in the paper. However with her chaotic demon vanquishing schedule, Phoebe had found that she was not able to keep that up. In addition to that, Phoebe found that in the past year, she had been reading less and less of them.

Phoebe finished reading through the first letter – a letter sent by someone that called themselves 'Always Finding Mister Wrong'. Deciding that it was not interesting enough for her to answer in the column, Phoebe put it in a tray that was labelled 'no'.

Phoebe picked up the next envelope and opened it. She read the letter – this one was from 'Sleepless In San Francisco'. For now, the psychic witch decided to put this letter in a tray labelled 'maybe'. When there was a suitable number of letters in the 'maybe' tray, Phoebe would stop opening the unread letters and start sorting through the 'maybe' tray to pick out a select few.

The third letter did not seem like anything special at first. However as the middle Charmed One read further into it, she went pale. Phoebe picked up her phone and began to dial.

...

[Astral Vision]

In the bar area of P3, Piper was moving some bottles out of crates; Leo was polishing glasses; and Paige sat on a barstool, recounting what had happened in the meeting between her and the Elders to Piper and Leo. The only part that Paige made sure to leave out was the details alluding to the identity of the charge that Paige refused to take on that led to the Elders suspending Paige.

'So it looks like we are going to be limited to using cars to get to demon vanquishes for a little while,' concluded Paige.

Piper placed a bottle at the back of the bar as she said, 'No more instant orbing. We haven't had that, since…' Piper turned around to look at Leo as she continued. 'Well, I guess it wasn't until a little after P3 opened that you started to agree to orb us around.'

Leo shrugged, putting down the glass he had been polishing. 'Not really. The only person who I would orb with was you. It's generally against the rules but, after a while, that rule sort of went out the window and never got mentioned again.'

Piper rolled her eyes. 'Honey, we didn't need the history lesson.'

'I did,' said Paige. 'I only ever seem to learn what it was like back then in snippets.'

Piper took a deep breath and turned to Paige. 'The point was that I wanted to lead the topic onto P3.'

Paige looked at Piper questioningly. 'What about it?' Paige took a glance at her surroundings. 'It doesn't have money troubles again, does it? I mean, I know it took a lot of effort for you to get its popularity back up after we came back from the dead, but the club sure does tend to always be on the brink of closure – or at least it continually has been on the verge of getting closed down every other week for the past few years.'

'It's not on the brink of closure, because of a lack of money,' said Piper. She hesitated before adding, 'To be honest, I doubt the club will be closed at all if the owner knows a good business when they see one.'

Paige furrowed her brow. 'Paige wants to know why Piper is speaking in third person now.'

Piper smirked. 'Cute.' Piper's expression became grave almost immediately again as the smirk faded away. 'Paige, there's something you should know…'

'I think I'll go out back and bring up some more crates,' Leo said suddenly. He left the bar area, disappearing through a back door.

Piper smiled in the direction that Leo had left in. He knew that it would be easiest for her to tell Paige the news about Piper's idea to sell the club in private.

Paige sat up straight in her seat and quickly said, 'Right. Whatever you want to say can wait. While he's gone, we need to discuss you-know-what.'

Piper shook her head. 'Paige, what I want to say can't wait, or I might change my mind again.'

'I think the fact that your husband is listed as a potential whitelighter again is a lot more compelling than whatever you need to say,' Paige argued, adding one of her patented mugs of an expression to her persuasion tactic.

Piper nodded. 'You're right. So how is this even possible? He picked family over being an Elder. He fell from grace. Why do they want him back as a whitelighter?'

'I asked them that, all of that,' Paige replied. 'All they told me was that Leo's most recent actions have proved him worthy of a role as a whitelighter again.'

'That's not a good enough answer! If that was the real reason, they would have demoted him back to whitelighter status last year and then temporarily clipped his wings rather than the whole amnesiac test that resulted in that falling from grace malarkey!' complained Piper.

'Don't worry. I covered all of that when I spoke to them,' continued Paige. 'That's when they admitted that there's more to it.'

'What was it? What's going on?' Piper asked.

'They refused to give non-cryptic answers,' said Paige.

Piper narrowed her eyes suspiciously. 'So they did give you some form of answer then?'

Paige shrugged. 'Yes, but their answers lacked any detail. Apparently the Elders are preparing for something that they have sensed will happen in the near future.'

'What's that got anything to do with Leo?' Piper asked. 'Were they not more specific?'

'I don't know and no they weren't. Before I could ask anything more, Odin made his quip about us wanting no more communication with the Elders, and then orbed me down to the roadside of the bridge,' said Paige.

'Great. Just great,' said Piper sarcastically. 'Something's happening in the magical world and we don't know a thing.'

'That is what we wanted though. To have a life separate to that sort of thing,' Paige pointed out.

'I guess,' Piper began, but before she could continue, the P3 phone rang. Piper picked up the phone and said, 'Hello. You've reached P3.'

'Finally! I tried the manor, you weren't there. I tried your own phone, it went to voicemail. I don't know why I didn't try P3 sooner. I always know I can contact you here if you're not home,' came Phoebe's voice.

Piper winced at the last part about Phoebe always being able to depend on the thought that Piper could be found at P3. However, Piper pushed that thought away for the moment and asked, 'What's wrong, Pheebs?'

'You've got to listen to this. We may have an innocent to find,' Phoebe said.

'Hang on a sec,' said Piper. 'I'll put you on speaker. Paige is here.' Piper pressed a button on the handset. As Piper was doing this, Leo walked back into the bar area.

...

Phoebe sat at her desk in her office at the headquarters of the Bay Mirror newspaper. Her phone was held between her right ear and her right shoulder as she held the letter in front of her.

'The two of you need to hear this. Okay. Here's one of the Ask Phoebe letters I received today: 'Dear Phoebe. I guess you're used to getting letters asking you what to do when you find out a secret that a guy you've been dating has been keeping from you. I want to break up with him, but I don't know the safest way to do it. See, the problem is that the secret I found out was that he is a demon. When you take into consideration the fact that I'm a witch – and yes, I think he knows – I think I need some help from the Charmed Ones. From Dating A Demon.' Got it? Or do I need to repeat any of it?'

'I'm sorry?' came Paige's voice. 'Since when did innocents contact us via your column? I thought they usually take the route of finding us at the manor or at P3.'

Phoebe put the letter down on her desk and turned to her computer as she continued to speak. 'No. It's demons that like to find us at the manor and P3. Besides, Jinny used the column to contact me.'

'Who?' came Paige's voice.

'The genie. Over a year ago,' Phoebe said, putting her hand to her forehead as she waited for the expected response from her younger sister.

Paige laughed a little before adding, 'I'd almost forgotten about the time you turned into a genie.'

'The point is that Jinny sent her letter into my column. That's how I found her,' Phoebe said.

'How do we know if we can trust the letter?' Paige asked, all amusement had vanished from her tone. 'She was a demon. What if this one is too?'

'I don't know. I'm trying to get a premonition from the letter, but… nothing,' Phoebe said dejectedly, focusing her eyes on the computer screen that currently had a search engine open.

'You're the one who rang us, Pheebs,' Piper reminded her sister. 'What are your instincts telling you?'

Phoebe sighed. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes in an attempt to clear her mind and find an answer. As a consequence of this, Phoebe forgot all about making a response to her sister's question.

'Phoebe?' Paige asked, breaking the twenty second silence of the phone call.

Phoebe opened her eyes. 'I want to believe that she's what she says she is.' Phoebe began to type a postal address into the search engine that she had loaded up on her computer. With the confidence returning to her manner and her voice, Phoebe added, 'I don't know who this woman is, but she did leave her return address on the back of the envelope. We can go straight there and find out what's going on.'

'So we can try and figure out whether she's a witch like she says…' said Piper.

Phoebe frowned at the computer when the results of the postal address came back with no name as she continued to listen to her sisters speaking.

'And then there's this demonic boyfriend of hers. We don't know what type of demon he is…' said Paige.'It does seem sort of odd for a demon to fall for a witch… Don't look at me like that, Piper! I know I'm speaking to Phoebe, but I think she'd rather we don't bring up her relationship history!'

'Then don't hint at it,' Piper countered.

'I didn't want to blatantly bring it up in front of Phoebe, but you have got to admit that it's relevant!' Paige argued.

Phoebe was glad that she was speaking to her sisters via phone call at the moment, because if they could see her expression, they would realise just how much Phoebe no longer wanted to be part of the conversation. Annoyed with the current tangent, Phoebe decided to interrupt the discussion.

'There's an innocent involved, remember? Or at least, we hope she is one. Drop whatever you were doing and orb over here,' said Phoebe. There was a lot of hesitation on the other end of the line. Phoebe noticed this and added, 'What?'

'Meet us in the car park outside your building. We'll be driving,' Piper eventually said.

Phoebe looked puzzled. She took the phone in both her hands as she said, 'We need to act fast. I think orbing's more beneficial in this case.'

'I can't orb,' Paige said almost immediately. 'I'll explain when we get to your work.'

'O… kay…' Phoebe said a little tentatively. Many possibilities of why her little sister could not currently orb were racing through her mind at the moment. 'Hurry.'

'We will,' said Piper.

...

In the bar area of P3, Piper put the phone down. Paige was already standing up to leave. Leo was leaning up against the bar.

'Honey, are you okay with continuing to set the club up for later without me?' Piper asked Leo.

'Of course. I know how it is. The innocent always comes first. Just like how my charges always had to come first when I was a whitelighter,' said Leo.

Piper and Paige exchanged an uncomfortable look as Leo's words reminded them of the thing they had not yet told him about.

...

A twenty something year old man walked through the streets of San Francisco. He had the appearance of a man with money. He wore an expensive looking suit, with an open collared shirt, and his entire outfit lacked a tie.

He entered a small florists and started looking through the selection of bouquets. The only other person present in the store was the owner who, after quickly glancing at her new customer, disappeared behind a door into a back room. A slightly younger demon shimmered in behind the smartly dressed man as he picked up a bouquet of red roses and surveyed them.

Without turning around to face the demon, the smartly dressed man said, 'What are you doing here, Joseph?'

The demon known as Joseph scowled. 'Why do you call me by that name?'

Still keeping his eyes glued on the bouquet of roses in his hands, the smartly dressed man said, 'We're on the surface world, Joseph. We have to blend in.'

'I don't like being on the surface world,' growled Joseph.

'Then go back to the Underworld,' replied the smartly dressed man. He put down the bouquet of roses and picked up a bouquet of yellow daisies instead.

'I intend to. You have to return with me,' said Joseph. His temper was rising and he was annoyed that his companion was not paying any attention. Joseph made his right hand into a fist and the bouquet of daisies in the smartly dressed man's hands disintegrated into ashes.

The smartly dressed man turned to face Joseph. 'I wish you wouldn't use that power in public.'

'You need to stop worrying about keeping up appearances, Jimmy,' said Joseph, putting emphasis on the smartly dressed man's mortal cover name.

'I have a life up here on the surface world,' said Jimmy. 'Father has nothing against it. He knows that I always put demonic duties first, but having an identity on the surface world is always beneficial to our family.'

'Yeah, but I bet he doesn't know that you are in love with one of them.' Joseph said this very spitefully. He looked disgusted at just the thought of it.

Jimmy looked at his feet guiltily. 'No. He doesn't…' Looking back up to face his brother, Jimmy added with a return of his poise: 'He doesn't need to know. You are not going to tell him and I am remaining here.'

'No…' mumbled Joseph.

Jimmy ignored his brother. Turning away from Joseph, Jimmy picked up a bouquet of petunias. With the bouquet in one hand, Jimmy pulled some cash out of his pocket with his other hand. Leaving the cash on the side for the owner to see when she returned, Jimmy left the florists.

As Jimmy continued along the street, he realised that his brother was following him. Slowing down so as Joseph could walk beside him, Jimmy asked, 'What are you doing?'

'You're on your way to see her, aren't you? I think it's about time she met a member of your family,' said Joseph unkindly.

Jimmy rolled his eyes. 'Please don't scare her off. You know that she doesn't know that secret.'

Joseph grinned wickedly. 'Why would I ever let that slip?'

Jimmy stopped and turned to face his brother. 'Don't you dare,' Jimmy said as his pupils flashed red for a second or two.

...

Piper's jeep skidded around a corner as she turned onto a new street. Piper was sat in the driver's seat while Phoebe was sat in the front passenger's seat with the letter still in her hands. Her eyes were closed tight. Paige was sat on the back seat with a street map open in front of her. Paige was leaning forward as she gave Piper directions.

'Piper, you were supposed to go left, not right!' Paige exclaimed.

Piper grimaced before spinning the steering wheel around to turn the car in the opposite direction.

'Tell me again why we don't have a sat nav,' complained Piper.

'We've never really needed one before,' said Paige. 'Just be glad that, thanks to scrying, we have tonnes of street maps of San Francisco lying around at P3, Phoebe's work, and the manor.'

Piper winced. Her sisters seemed to be mentioning P3 more often than usual that day of all days.

'Quiet down a little,' Phoebe said, opening her eyes. Her hands tightened on the letter, crumpling it a little. 'I am trying to trigger a premonition.'

'Maybe if you let the person who's giving the directions sit in the front seat, then you would be able to concentrate in the back,' Paige said a tad grumpily.

Ignoring her younger sister, Phoebe looked out the window, and suddenly said, 'Piper, this is it. This is the road.' Piper slowed the car down as Phoebe looked out for the correct house number. 'Okay, Piper, that's it. That's the house there. Number fifty eight.'

Piper stopped the car outside a big cream coloured house. The three sisters got out of the jeep and walked onto the front drive of the house.

'Let's hope our innocent's home,' said Piper. She knocked on the front door.

'I hope my readers don't start to think that I pay house calls to all the letters sent in,' Phoebe joked while the three of them waited for an answer. She looked down at the letter in her hand as she said it and her smile vanished completely.

After another minute of waiting, Piper sighed. 'This is pointless. She's not in, but we need to find out who she is.' Piper took one quick look around the street to check that it was still empty before flicking her wrists towards the door. The blast was small enough not to blow the door off it's hinges, but big enough to break the lock, allowing the door to swing open.

Piper stepped inside. Phoebe and Paige exchanged wide eyed looks of surprise at their sister's impatience. Paige entered the house next. Phoebe remained on the doorstep for a few seconds more – grimacing at the letter that she held tightly in her hands – before entering the house.

Phoebe found herself in the main hall of the house. A staircase to her left led to the next floor up, a door opposite her led to what looked like the kitchen, and a door to her right led to what looked like the front room. From her position in the hallway, Phoebe could see Piper rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen. Phoebe was about to follow her older sister into there when she noticed Paige in the front room.

The front room was quite spacious. It consisted of a flat screen television, a sofa, two overstuffed arm chairs, a coffee table, and a few bookshelves. Paige was looking through one of the bookshelves for any vital clue that would tell them something about the woman. She turned around when she heard footsteps behind her. Paige smiled at Phoebe.

'I don't know if you want to look upstairs… See what you can find…' Paige trailed off when she noticed that Phoebe was still holding the letter. 'Are you okay?'

Phoebe let out a sigh, not releasing her grip on the letter. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

Paige frowned. 'Why are you still holding the letter?'

Phoebe shrugged. She looked around the room, avoiding any eye contact, as she replied, 'You know… It's a premonition requirement…'

Paige was not accepting that as Phoebe's response. Completely ignoring the innocent identification task at hand, Paige said, 'Apparently me being a nosy little sister is also a requirement. So tell me, what's wrong?'

...

Jimmy and Joseph finally rounded the corner onto the street that Jimmy had been looking for. Unfortunately for him, Joseph was still making as many complaints as possible. He had so many that it was impossible to list them all. There was: 'The sun is far too bright. My eyes are literally burning up here'; 'That guy didn't even stop to let us cross the road! Why didn't you let me make him stop?'; 'It smells up here. You know, the Underworld smells better'; and many more. All of which included the most recent:

'You know we could have just shimmered straight to her house,' Joseph said spitefully.

Like with every other complaint, Jimmy made no response or reaction. He just continued walking, and to his disdain, Jimmy kept on following him.

The two brothers finally reached the cream coloured house that was number fifty eight. With the bouquet in his left hand, Jimmy approached the door. He was about to knock when he noticed that the door was already ajar.

'Something wrong?' Joseph asked with a smirk.

Jimmy turned to his brother and indicated for him to be quiet. Jimmy quietly pushed the door further open so as he could enter the main hall. Joseph followed silently.

The first thing the two men heard was the sound of two female voices coming from the front room.

'I told you. I'm fine,' said the first voice a little irritably.

'You're not fine. I think I know you well enough by now to know when you're not fine,' said the second voice.

Jimmy and Joseph walked to the doorway of the front room. One of the women had her back to the doorway, but the second one did not. She noticed the men straight away.

'Er, Phoebe, we have visitors,' Paige said, not taking her eyes off the two men.

Phoebe slowly turned around. 'I guess you're wondering what we're doing here…' she said uneasily to Jimmy and Joseph.

'Is one of these two her?' Joseph asked, glaring at Phoebe and Paige.

Joseph decided not to even wait for a response. Instead he channelled his power into his right hand, closing it into a fist.

...

[Astral Vision]

The kitchen of the house was relatively messy. Piper's instincts had made her choose the kitchen as the first room she would search for evidence of the woman's identity.

The first few cupboards that Piper had checked contained nothing but unused, still boxed cooking equipment and utensils. It was clear to her that whoever this woman was, she did not often get a chance to cook. This was backed up when Piper opened up a drawer that was overfilled with takeaway fliers.

The fifth drawer that Piper checked contained exactly the sort of thing that Piper had been looking for. Inside were a pile of opened envelopes. They were bills that had been stored away so as they could be used for accounting and tax purposes when necessary.

Piper took the top envelope and looked at the name that it was addressed to: Miss Rachel Stone. Piper grimaced. She was sure she recognised that name from somewhere, but she could not place it.

A shriek from another room was quickly followed by hearing Paige shout, 'Bo – Oh crap!' as a loud crash was heard and caused the floor to shudder. Piper immediately ran out of the kitchen into the hallway.

Two men were standing at the doorway to the front room. Piper flicked her wrists in their direction, causing the two men to freeze. Since the two frozen men were blocking the only entrance into the front room, Piper stood on her tiptoes to try and catch sight of her sisters.

'Are you two alright in there?' Piper asked.

From within the living room, Paige helped Phoebe to her feet. One of the bookshelves had collapsed not far from where the two sisters now stood. A pile of ash was visible on the floor in the same area that a sofa and two overstuffed armchairs were present.

'We're okay…' Paige managed to say, staring in awe at the fallen bookshelf. 'I hate my power. Apparently normal telekinesis doesn't need a vocal command and apparently I can't control it very well.'

'You did that?' Piper asked, still on her tiptoes as she peered past the two frozen men. Piper made the connection between the scene before her and what she had heard from the kitchen. Paige's shout of what must have been 'books' had been cut short by a shuddering crash of what must have been the entire bookshelf.

Phoebe had made her way over to the pile of ash. She looked from the pile of ash to the frozen man on the left that still had his fist raised. The frozen man on the right had grabbed hold of the former's raised arm.

When she saw that both her sisters were staring at her, Phoebe said quietly, 'He did that… He turned a television to ash.' Phoebe paused to gulp as she looked over at Paige. 'That was almost you, Paige…'

'What?' Piper said, perplexed.

'Don't worry. The other guy grabbed his arm to make him lose his aim,' Paige said.

'We know they're both demons,' Phoebe stated. 'So which one is the demon that happens to be the boyfriend?'

Before Piper could answer, the two men began to move in slow motion as they shook off the freeze. Piper flicked her wrists up instinctively, sending a blast at the backs of the two demons. However, it only helped to bring them out of the freeze faster as the blast knocked both of them further into the front room by a step or two.

Forcing Jimmy to release his arm, Joseph spun around to face Piper. He snarled at her as he said to his brother, 'There are three of them and they're witches!'

Jimmy did not immediately respond. He placed the bouquet of petunias gently on the nearby coffee table. He moved to the side to allow Piper to join her sisters. Instead of Piper entering the front room, however, Phoebe and Paige joined their older sister in the hallway. Jimmy eyed the three witches and he let a smirk fall upon his face.

'They're not just any witches, Joseph. I believe we are honoured by the presence of the Charmed Ones,' Jimmy said. There was no anger in his voice despite Piper's violent reaction a few moments ago of attempting to vanquish him and his brother with both her defensive and offensive powers.

'Do you live here?' Paige asked, ignoring the glare she was receiving from Joseph, while trying to get some information out of the two demons by pretending she did not know.

'No, but I also know the person that does,' responded Jimmy confidently. 'May I ask who you are?'

'We're friends of the woman that lives here,' lied Phoebe. 'She likes hanging around with the Charmed Ones. We've taught her a lot about vanquishing demons.'

'Yeah? What's her name?' Joseph suddenly asked. It was obvious that he had not believed Phoebe's lie.

Phoebe exchanged a worried glance with Paige as neither of them could answer the question. Phoebe tightened her grip on the letter, hoping for an insightful premonition now more than she had before. Piper, however, smiled.

'Her name's Rachel,' Piper said confidently.

Joseph looked over at his brother for confirmation. Jimmy only nodded.

'Do you often break in to her house when you visit?' Jimmy asked, letting the sisters know that their lies were not working.

Phoebe sighed. 'Look, can we just get down to business? You know who we are. We know that you're demons, so… Which one of you is the boyfriend?' Phoebe asked, her hands still firmly grasping the crumpled letter.

'Rachel is safe. She's not a target. Leave now and she never has to know that people broke into her home,' Jimmy said seriously.

'We're not leaving. We're here to help her,' Phoebe said stubbornly.

'I don't want to fight you,' Jimmy said exasperatedly. 'We have no quarrel. So, please, leave now.'

Joseph let out an impatient growl as he said, 'You've been on the surface world for too long, brother! First you don't let me kill one of them and then you tell me they're the Charmed Ones! That's the only motive we need to start a fight!'

'Excuse me,' Jimmy said politely to the sisters. With those words, he grabbed his brother's shoulder before Joseph could start an attack, and shimmered the two of them out of the house.

The sisters exchanged confused looks.

'The demon of good manners. Who would have thought?' Piper said to lighten the atmosphere.

...

The two brothers reappeared in the main room of a small apartment that Jimmy had been renting out. Joseph fell to the ground as Jimmy let go of his shoulder. Joseph jumped to his feet angrily.

'What is wrong with you?' Joseph snarled.

'You are, blatantly,' Jimmy said. 'You don't know how I handle things up here. Stay away from that house. If I find you there again, that will be the last destination you ever shimmer to.'

Joseph made no reply. He shimmered out, back to the Underworld, while glaring at his brother.

...

The three sisters had returned to the front room of the cream coloured house. Paige was waving her arm towards the bookshelf, trying to trigger her telekinesis to move the piece of furniture upright. The crumpled letter was still gripped between Phoebe's two hands as she stared at the ash on the floor.

Piper wandered over to Phoebe. 'Is everything okay with you?'

Phoebe jumped, having been so far off in her thoughts that the sudden sound of Piper's voice had scared her.

Phoebe looked at Piper and replied, 'Why is everyone asking me that?'

'This must be bringing back memories that you'd rather not think about,' Piper said with concern in her tone.

'Piper, please, do me a favour and don't continue that train of thought,' Phoebe said, allowing her tears to go no further than making her eyes look watery. Phoebe took a deep breath and continued a little more assertively with: 'You two should go. See if you can identify those two demons in the Book. I'll stay here. Someone needs to be here when Rachel gets home.'

'What if the demons return?' Piper asked.

'That's the point. I'm here to keep Rachel safe,' Phoebe replied frostily.

Piper wanted to argue with Phoebe. She also wanted to say something to make her younger sister feel better. Both instinctive reactions contradicted one another, so Piper decided to let Phoebe be.

'When you're ready to talk, let me know,' Piper said resolutely.

Piper turned to face Paige. The youngest Charmed One was still swinging her arm in aggravation at the unmoving bookshelf. Piper smiled to herself, realising that with Paige's growing annoyance, it would not be long before Paige triggered her power of telekinesis.

Right on cue, the bookshelf flipped back up against the wall, causing the wall to shudder a little from the jolt. This action was quickly followed by the bookshelf's original contents flying back into their previous positions.

Panting a little from the length of time she had been waving her arm, Paige turned to her sisters and said with a grin, 'This telekinesis thing is a piece of cake.'

...

The drive from the cream coloured house to P3 had only taken around twenty minutes. Piper and Paige made their way down the stairwell until they reached P3's main floor. Leo was not present at the bar which probably meant that he was out back sorting out some crates. Therefore the main floor was empty except for the two sisters.

'Tell me again why the Book's here and not at home,' Paige repeated for what seemed to be the twelfth time within the past twenty minutes.

Piper sighed. 'I already told you. With all the demons that like to invade our home when we're out, I thought it might be best not to let it out of our sight. The Book goes wherever we go. We can't risk another demon getting a hold of it after what Zankou managed.'

'The Book didn't go to that house with us,' Paige pointed out.

Piper rolled her eyes. 'Well, duh. Leo was still here with the Book. I think I can trust my own husband.'

The two sisters had reached the door that led to Piper's office and entered. Paige sat down on Piper's office chair, while Piper removed some crystals that had surrounded a locked filing cabinet. Piper then unlocked the filing cabinet and pulled out the Book. Rather than placing it on the desk, Piper walked out of the office with the Book. Paige followed with the crystals.

Out on the main floor, Piper placed the Book on top of the bar. She began to flip through it. Paige joined Piper and sat down on a barstool, putting the crystals down on the bar.

'What's going to happen if someone walks in and sees you with that?' Paige asked, raising an eyebrow.

'Go and lock the entrance then,' Piper replied, not looking up from the Book as she continued her search.

Paige let out a huffy breath before standing up and disappearing up the stairs. Meanwhile Leo re-entered the bar area with a crate of freshly polished glasses.

'You're back,' Leo said happily. He suddenly noticed the Book and added, 'I'm going to guess that the demonic boyfriend's still walking around.'

Piper nodded. She did not look up to greet her husband, but she did ask 'Do you know anything about demons with the ability to turn objects to ash?' as she turned another page.

Leo frowned as he thought through the knowledge of demons that he had collected during his time as a whitelighter, his time as an Elder, and his time as an Avatar. Piper stopped turning the pages and looked up at her husband when she realised he was taking quite some time to make a response.

As their eyes finally made contact with one another, Leo came out of his thoughts and said, 'Help me narrow this down a little. Was he immune to your power?'

'They wouldn't still be walking around if they weren't immune to her power,' Paige interjected as she returned to the bar area and sat down next to Piper.

'Right,' said Leo, breaking eye contact with his wife to greet his sister-in-law. 'Wait, did you say they?'

'There were two of them there, and one of them was the boyfriend,' Paige continued.

'Okay…' Leo said. 'So they must be upper level to survive your power.'

'We already sussed that much, Leo,' Piper said, returning her gaze to the Book. 'Have you got any suggestions for us?'

'What else did you find out about them?' Leo asked.

Piper had begun flipping through the Book again, so Paige opted to answer. 'The boyfriend was eerily polite… for a demon. Oh, and it sounded like they called each other brother. So either they're part of a demonic clan or they actually are brothers.'

Leo furrowed his brow. 'Anything more? This is all sounding familiar, but I can't figure out where I know it from.'

'One of them said something to the other about living on the surface for too long, I think. I guess that could imply this demonic family or clan is spread out between both the Underworld and our world,' Paige said with a shrug. 'I don't know if that's any help.'

Leo shook his head. 'That's still far too broad.' Leo turned to Piper and asked, 'Any luck?'

Piper sighed and looked up. 'Nope.'

'See. This is why the attic is a better place for the Book,' Paige said righteously. Looking upwards, she added, 'If we were there, we could be asking for a little supernatural help right about now.' Nothing happened. 'They're probably watching us right now thinking it's best not to risk that here.'

Piper let out another sigh before slamming the Book shut. 'You'll be happy to know then that the Book won't be finding itself here anytime soon, Paige, because I'm selling it,' Piper began to say in an annoyed tone.

Paige's eyes widened in surprise. 'You're selling the Book?'

Piper slumped her head onto the Book in frustration.

'Okay. That was the wrong time for me to try a joke. Piper, are you sure you want to sell the club? Isn't that a little out of the blue?' Paige said.

Piper did not pick her head up from the Book. Instead she made a motion with her hand, indicating for Leo to answer for her.

'Piper's always wanted a restaurant. She thinks that if she doesn't do it now, she never will,' Leo replied. Then changing his tone, he hinted, 'And we are all very supportive of her decision.'

Catching on to Leo's implication, Paige said, 'Of course. Sure, I'll miss P3, but you've got to follow your dream…' Paige paused for a second or two before adding: 'Does Phoebe know?'

...

Phoebe was pacing the front room when a woman with short, curly blonde hair wandered in. At the sight of Phoebe, the woman's first words were: 'I'm calling the police.'

'Wait,' Phoebe said, finally dropping the letter as she rushed into the hallway where the woman was already dialling a number. 'Rachel, I'm here to help you.'

The woman put the phone down before she had completed dialling. She stared at Phoebe angrily.

'You break into my own home while I'm at work, and then you have the audacity to tell me that you're here to help me. Here's a helpful hint: Don't break into my home,' Rachel said spitefully.

Phoebe's expression became apologetic. 'I'm sorry. That wasn't exactly my choice. It's just that I take my column very seriously and when you –'

'Your column. Oh, that's right. That's where I know you from. You're Ask Phoebe,' Rachel said, rolling her eyes. 'Are you really going to all this trouble just for an interview?'

'An interview?' Phoebe questioned, puzzled. 'Look, I think your boyfriend must have found out about your letter and put you under a spell, because you don't seem to realise why I'm here.'

'A spell? Are you nuts?' Rachel said. 'Could you please leave before I call the police?'

Phoebe stared at Rachel, trying to figure out whether the woman was saying these things, because: a) she was scared that her boyfriend would find out; b) he had in fact put her under a spell; or c) she really did not know anything.

Phoebe decided to take the cautious route. 'You misheard me. I said… he put you down as so swell when he told me all about you.'

Rachel looked at Phoebe suspiciously.

'He contacted me and suggested I write a piece about your relationship in my column,' Phoebe continued to improvise. 'Do you mind telling me about your relationship?'

Phoebe tried to direct Rachel into the front room, but Rachel did not move. She was still standing right by the telephone.

'Do you mind telling me why you broke in?' Rachel asked sternly.

'I told you that I didn't…' Phoebe said guiltily. It was the truth. She had not broken in; Piper had. 'I arrived at the same time as your boyfriend. We noticed the door open and he asked me to look after the house while he ran a few errands that involved finding a locksmith to sort you out a new lock.' Phoebe finished with one last lie: 'It's already been reported to the police.'

Phoebe paused to peer into the front room. When she noticed the bouquet that Jimmy had left on the table, she picked them up and handed them to Rachel.

'He left these for you,' Phoebe said.

This final act of revealing the petunias that Jimmy knew were her favourite was all that was needed to convince Rachel that Phoebe had met Jimmy and therefore might be telling the truth.

'Was anything stolen?' Rachel asked Phoebe.

Rachel noticed Phoebe's eyes quickly dart into the front room and back to hers. This caused Rachel to run past Phoebe into the front room. Rachel didn't even notice the ash on the floor. All she noticed was that the flat screen television was not there.

'Great,' Rachel said sarcastically, slumping onto one of the overstuffed armchairs. 'That television was new.'

Phoebe had remained at the doorway, but she chose this moment to enter and sit down on the sofa.

'Tell me about your boyfriend,' Phoebe said with a helpful smile. 'It will help to take your mind off things.'

'Well, you already know his name is Jimmy Walsh…' Rachel began.

Phoebe nodded, pretending that this information was not new to her. 'Of course. He hasn't told me much about how the two of you met. Could you?'

Rachel shrugged. 'Why not? I could do with looking back on some good memories after such a terrible day.'

Phoebe sighed. 'Good memories with him, huh? That's nice. Would you like me to make you a cup of tea first? Or maybe a coffee?'

'You don't have to offer. It's my house,' Rachel said.

Phoebe smiled half-heartedly. 'Really, I don't mind. You've had a busy day and a burglary.'

'Tea please and… Thank you,' Rachel said, giving Phoebe a friendly smile for the first time that day.

Phoebe stood up and made her way into the kitchen. She switched the kettle on and let out a defeated sigh. Good memories with a demonic boyfriend… Phoebe felt like she was having a worse than terrible day.

Regaining her composure, Phoebe removed her phone from her purse and dialled her sister's number.

...

[Astral Vision]

Paige was taking her turn at looking through the Book at the bar. Meanwhile Leo was in the middle of putting up some posters. Paige's mind was beginning to wander. She could not help but think about the Elders' words earlier that afternoon.

'Do you like this work?' Paige asked Leo, looking up from the Book.

Leo put down the poster that he had been about to attach to a wall. He turned to face Paige who had swung around on her barstool to face him.

'Are you asking that because you have reservations about Piper selling the bar?' Leo asked. 'I'm happy helping out wherever I can.'

Paige shook her head. 'No. It's not because of that. I was just wondering whether you ever miss being a… an Elder.' Paige frowned and then corrected herself. 'Or you know, a whitelighter.'

Leo shrugged. 'A normal life is definitely… different, but I'm with my family and that's what matters.' Leo furrowed his brow, making the wrong assumption as to why Paige had asked him that. 'Paige, you shouldn't feel lost just because they've temporarily clipped your wings. You're still helping people as a witch – a Charmed One – like you always have. Being a whitelighter does not change who you are.'

Paige blushed and decided it was best to agree with his assumption rather than have him think there was something else going on: 'Thanks for that, Leo.'

Leo smiled. 'No problem.' He picked the poster back up and turned back to the wall.

Piper walked out of her office over to the bar and put her phone down on the bar top.

'Phoebe just phoned,' Piper said. 'The boyfriend's name is Jimmy Walsh. See if you can find the name Walsh anywhere in the Book. For all we know, he may have been dumb enough to use his demonic name in his mortal cover.'

Paige nodded and flipped to the front of the Book again. Leo put down his most recently picked up poster and wandered over to the bar.

'Walsh… Walsh…' he murmured.

Piper eyed her husband. 'Do you recognise the name?' she asked.

Leo nodded. He turned to Paige. 'Try 'ancestral demons', Paige.'

'I think I passed that entry earlier, but that had nothing to do with –' Paige began but Leo interrupted her.

'Then go back to that page,' Leo insisted.

'Okay,' Paige said agitatedly. She flipped a few pages until she found it. 'Here.' Paige shifted over on her barstool so as Piper and Leo could read over her shoulder.

''Ancestral Demons' is an umbrella term for demons that are part of a lineage that goes back further than most demons. They consist of an indefinite number of families. Each family has a type of power that is unique to that of others.

Unlike the average demon, ancestral demons have a similar lifespan to that of a human. All ancestral demons are upper level, but unlike the average upper level demon, they have no demonic form.

In order to fit in amongst mortals, some members of a family may live on the surface while the rest of that family remains in the Underworld. This allows the family to have a multitude of options available to them when required.

Ancestral demons are more discriminative in their choice of victims than the average demon. An ancestral demon will only target a being that they have a disagreement with. They do not kill in order to gain power.'

Piper stopped reading at this point and said, 'Well, that explains Mister Manner's reluctance to attack us.'

'Looks like his little brother didn't agree with that way of life, if that's what those two really were,' Paige said, still not agreeing that Leo had identified them correctly. 'This can't be them.'

'It is.' Leo's words were adamant. 'Walsh demons are a well known family of ancestral demon. Their unique inherited powers tend to revolve around molecular manipulation. Sounds like one of the two that you met had the power of molecular deconstruction.'

'So I guess that leaves us with one big question: Is Rachel one of their targets?' Piper brainstormed. 'Demons can't actually love, especially when these ancestral demons are full demons…'

'There's only one way to find out. You need to speak to the head of their family,' Leo said.

'There's no summoning spell in the entry,' Piper pointed out.

'Yes, but there is still a way to contact them,' Leo countered. 'Keep reading the entry.'

Piper sighed and looked back at the Book of Shadows. Paige was already reading the next part.

'Ancestral demons are impervious to spells and potions, due to the various immunities that they have inherited throughout their existence . This means that they can be difficult to summon and vanquish.

How to contact an ancestral demon: Summon a 'Squealer Demon'. See the entry on squealer demons for the correct spell.'

Paige groaned. 'They couldn't put the spell on the same page?' Fortunately, the squealer demon entry happened to be on the following page, so it did not take long to find.

'A 'Squealer Demon' is a relatively low level demon that knows everything that's going on in the Underworld. Despite their lack of offensive powers, squealer demons have a knack for surviving due to their ability to provide their adversaries with the required information. This species of demon is also widely used amongst demons to spread a message or relevant information around the Underworld.'

Below the entry were a summoning spell and a simple vanquishing spell. No potions were required. The Power of Three was not even required.

Piper turned to Leo and asked, 'If these squealers are easy to summon and get information from, why have we never used them before?'

Leo sighed. 'It's always been against the rules for me to mention them. The Elders don't like the use of demons for finding information.' Noticing the glares he was getting from his wife and sister-in-law, Leo added, 'Yeah. I know they're not my bosses or colleagues anymore.'

Paige turned away from Leo to her sister. 'Are we summoning this demon then?'

'It's the only way to find out what we need to know about this Jimmy guy,' Piper replied. 'Be ready to put those crystals down when our visitor arrives.'

Paige picked up the crystals from the bar and waited for Piper to start, but Piper turned to Leo, and added: 'Honey, could you try and make sure no fragile glasses or equipment are out in the open. I know this demon doesn't have much power, but I am going to be selling this place soon, so I kind of don't want to start making losses now.' Leo smiled at his wife's neurotic tendencies and began to move a couple of glasses out of view.

Piper picked the Book of Shadows up and turned to face the empty main floor as she read from the entry: 'Demon that squeals in the night, answer my calls in this plight.' A tunnel of wind had begun to form in the middle of the main floor as she had read the first two lines of the spell. 'I summon thee here, to find information that I hold dear,' Piper concluded.

The tunnel of wind disappeared to reveal a stout, balding man. Paige had already placed the crystals around him before he could figure out where he was.

'This… this isn't the Underworld..?' the squealer demon said as he eyed the club. His eyes finally landed on the three figures before him. He gulped with sudden fright. 'Witches? Er… You surely haven't summoned me just to vanquish me… If you let me survive I can give you information…'

Piper rolled her eyes as she muttered, 'Coward.'

Paige – expert demon interrogator that she had proved herself to be over her years as a Charmed One – decided to play along with the possibility that they had summoned him just to vanquish him: 'There's only one thing that's going to stop us from vanquishing you.'

The squealer demon's eyes widened in fear. 'What is it? I'll do anything. What do you need to know?'

Paige smirked. 'Fine… We won't vanquish you if you find the head of the Walsh family for us. Get him to turn up here. Tell him the Charmed Ones invited him to P3.'

The squealer demon's jaw dropped in surprise. Whether his gaping had been caused by realising that the two witches that had summoned him were two of the three Charmed Ones or by the suggestion of having to pass a message onto the head of the Walsh family.

After a brief silence, the squealer demon nodded. 'I agree. Let me go and I will make sure he gets your request.'

'We want him here within the next ten minutes,' Piper added as she approached the demon.

The squealer demon nodded quickly. 'Express delivery. I understand. Now let me go.'

Piper bent down to pick up one of the crystals, but then she stopped. Without picking it up, she stood up to face the demon – or look down at him, as he was a little shorter than her.

'One more thing. After you've given Walsh the message, could you spread the word throughout the Underworld that the Charmed Ones will no longer have ownership over P3. Therefore demons shouldn't turn up here looking for us, because they won't find any of us here. Okay?' Piper said mulishly.

When the squealer demon nodded again, Piper removed one of the crystals. By the time she had stood upright again, the demon had already shimmered out. Piper turned to face Paige and Leo who were staring at her from the bar.

'Did you just tell a demon – and, as a result, the entire Underworld – that you were selling P3 before telling Phoebe?' Paige asked, her expression full of shock.

Piper suddenly looked a little at fault. 'What? I had to get the message out there, especially after you and Phoebe pointed out to me earlier how often demons choose to come here.'

...

Phoebe was sitting in the front room of the cream coloured house with Rachel. The owner of the house sat on the very edge of her seat as she explained her relationship history to the advice columnist.

Rachel's body language was extremely positive as she spoke so lovingly about Jimmy. Phoebe could not understand where the letter had come from, because this woman did not seem to know that her boyfriend was a demon. Phoebe also was starting to get the feeling that the woman was not a witch.

However these were not the thoughts that were plaguing Phoebe's mind as she sat on the sofa listening to Rachel's words. Phoebe was over Cole. She knew that. She had had many relationships since that one; she had even briefly dated another demon since.

Despite Jimmy's deception, Rachel's relationship with him seemed so real. Jimmy's earlier actions: Saving Paige from his brother's fatal power and refusing to start a fight with the Charmed Ones. Jimmy had not done that out of fear. He had done that, because he did not want to get involved in a fight that had nothing to do with him. Then there was that nagging feeling in the back of her mind: …but, like Cole, he's a demon and despite the possibility that they think they can love, they can't, and as a witch, it's my duty to vanquish him…

'…but as someone so invested in helping others find love, is it?' Phoebe found herself muttering in response to that irksome thought.

'Pardon?' said Rachel, realising that Phoebe had uttered something.

'Nothing,' said Phoebe, not realising that, like her priorities, her expression was currently contorted.

...

The lights suddenly went out in P3, leaving Piper, Paige, and Leo in complete darkness.

'Is it me or do the bigger demons always like to make a grand entrance?' Piper said touchily. She rolled her eyes, which was a pointless action considering no one could see her.

'Well, how else can they amuse themselves when they're not planning how to kill us?' Paige asked rhetorically.

'I don't think this is the best time to be making jokes,' Leo warned the sisters.

'No, Leo. Let Piper and Paige continue. I'm sure they invited me here just to waste all of our time,' said an impressive, smooth male voice.

'If you already know our names, don't you think you could make it fair by telling us yours?' Paige asked.

'And,' Piper added with increasing aggravation. 'Turn the damn lights back on!'

'All you had to do was ask. There is no need to swear, Piper,' responded the voice.

The lights came back on. A man was visible all the way across the main floor. He was sitting in the sisters' personal booth. He had short dark hair and looked like he was in his forties. He had very similar features to that of the Walsh brothers. The man wore a dark suit with a matching tie. His arms were folded as he leant back against his seat with his sights on the two sisters and Leo.

Piper, Paige, and Leo slowly walked over to their usual booth. When they reached the familiar circle table, they did not sit down. They remained standing.

'Thank you for the invite, Piper,' the demon said condescendingly, the self-righteous smile never leaving his expression.

'My sister asked you to tell us your name,' Piper said, glaring at the demon.

'My name? You need not know my demonic name, but… Seeing as this is the surface world, let's stick to mortal cover names…' rambled the demon. 'Jackson Walsh.'

'It wouldn't surprise me if Jimmy's brother's name starts with a J too,' Paige commented to Piper.

Jackson overheard this remark. His smile was replaced with a look of concern as he stood up from his seat at the booth. 'You have met my sons?'

Piper smiled at hearing the snide demon's bewilderment. 'How can you know so much about us, but not know that we bumped into them earlier today?' she asked.

Jackson's smile returned along with a slightly bored tone at having to explain. 'You are mistaken. When I received your invite, I did some research into the background of the Charmed Ones.'

Leo raised an eyebrow. 'That squealer demon only left with the message five minutes ago.'

Jackson nodded indifferently. 'What can I say? I'm a quick study.'

Piper rolled her eyes. 'Obviously not quick enough if you didn't get to the part about what happened today.'

In a bored tone, Jackson said, 'I doubt Jimmy committed any offenses according to your witchy rules…'

'It depends whether or not our innocent is being targeted by your family,' Paige countered.

'Targeted? Whatever do you mean?' Jackson asked, still extremely uninterested in the direction that the discussion was going in.

'We've read the entry on ancestral demons. You may be very selective about your victims, but, like any demon, you still kill,' Piper explained candidly.

'That's a moot point,' Jackson argued.

Piper narrowed her eyes apprehensively. 'I don't think it is.'

Jackson shook his head. 'I'm disappointed in you, Piper. Your Book of Shadows told you all about my kind, yet you won't let it get through your thick skull.'

'Don't you speak to Piper that way!' Leo shouted angrily.

Jackson looked over at Leo regretfully. 'You of all people, Leo. From being an ex-whitelighter and an ex-Elder, you are so one-sided. Even as an ex-Avatar… You're not very open to new ideas.'

'Okay. This guy couldn't have found out all of this about us in five minutes,' Paige muttered irritably. She quickly corrected herself with: 'I meant the part about the Book and Leo's past actions' so as to stop herself receiving a glare from the sister that had been accused of being thick skulled.

Becoming evermore bored with the conversation, Jackson ignored Paige's rambling in order to continue his explanation: 'Does your book not tell you that we're not like the average demon? We don't start fights.' He paused to look at each member of his small audience. 'My older son may live on the surface world, but our family has had no quarrels with mortals or witches for a very long time.'

'Ha. Yeah, right,' Piper said, not convinced. 'I don't think we're going to believe hearing that from a demon.'

Jackson shook his head again. 'You all seem to forget that it's not all black and white. Not all demons do bad. Just like, not all witches do good.' Jackson chuckled a little before adding: 'Pity that the Charmed witch that that applies to most isn't even present.'

Piper snarled at the demon. 'Phoebe isn't anything like you!'

Jackson's smile loitered as he replied, 'So you admit then that a demon doesn't have to be bad?'

Paige had an expression of disbelief on her face. 'Next you're going to suggest that ancestral demons can love.'

Jackson's interest in the conversation made a sudden return on hearing Paige's remark. 'What are you implying?'

'That our innocent is under threat from your son, because we know that demons – whatever type – cannot love,' Paige said bitterly.

If this bout of news had not thrown the Walsh demon so much, he probably would have retorted with the names Cole Turner and Drake dè Mon. The seriousness of the matter made him hold his tongue on continuing the debate.

Jackson pointed upwards with the index finger on his right hand. He moved that hand in a counter clockwise circle as he uttered the name: 'Jimmy.' Within seconds a trail of bubbling molecules whizzed in through an air conditioning vent. As the bubbling molecules reached the floor in the space between the Jackson and the others, it coalesced into the form of Jimmy.

Jimmy was facing Piper, Paige, and Leo. He looked at them before noticing where he was: 'This isn't the Underworld.'

'I'll tell the estate agent to add that to the list of unique selling points for this place,' Piper said snippily after hearing it from two demons in the space of one afternoon.

Jimmy did not reply. Instead he spun on his heel to face his father. 'Father? Why did you bring me here?' He turned back around to face Piper, Paige and Leo. 'You told my father on me?' he said disbelievingly.

'We need to know that our innocent is safe,' was Paige's unsympathetic reply.

'I told you already!' Jimmy growled. 'I'm not a threat to her!'

'So the Charmed Ones were telling the truth? You do have feelings for a… for a…' Jackson's words trailed off as Jimmy turned to face his father.

'Yes, father. I am in love with a mortal,' Jimmy said, shamefacedly.

'Wait, did he just say mortal?' Leo questioned. 'Didn't Phoebe say that, in her letter, Rachel said she was a witch?'

Jimmy turned back around to look at Leo. 'She's definitely not a witch.'

'Why would she lie in her letter?' Piper asked.

'What letter?' Jimmy asked, not waiting for an answer. He turned back to face his father. Jackson had not spoken a word since Jimmy's admission. Jackson stared stonily at his son. 'Father, I am sorry.'

'You must return to the Underworld,' Jackson finally uttered, little to no feeling visible in his words.

Jimmy declined the order. 'I can't do that. Not until Rachel's safe.'

'Safe?! Haven't you just been trying to convince us that she already is safe?' Piper pointed out.

Jimmy turned around again; this time, he faced Piper. 'She is safe… from me.' He took a deep breath before continuing with: 'She's not safe from Joseph.'

'Joseph? That's your brother, right? The extremely antagonistic guy from the house?' Paige asked.

Jimmy confirmed this for Paige with a sullen nod. 'Joseph's going through a rebellious phase where he thinks that every non-ancestral demon is a threat.'

...

Joseph shimmered into Jimmy's presently empty apartment. His expression was seething with anger, an anger that was only growing by the minute.

The young ancestral demon started throwing object after object into the walls as he rampaged the apartment. Finally he reached a cabinet on which sat a quaint framed photo of Rachel hugging Jimmy closely.

Joseph's pupils flashed red as he made a fist with his hand, causing the photo and its frame to disintegrate. Joseph shimmered out, his destination already decided by the anger within him.

...

[Astral Vision]

Back in the cream coloured house, Phoebe was still wondering whether her past vanquishing decisions had been necessary as she listened all about the wonderful relationship that Rachel had had with Jimmy.

Rachel paused in her sentence to ask: 'Are you sure you're going to remember all of this? You're not writing it down.'

Phoebe looked taken aback at the random question before remembering that the lie she had given to convince Rachel to let her stay had been to do with an Ask Phoebe feature.

'Oh, er, I've got a Dictaphone in my bag,' Phoebe quickly improvised. 'It's been recording this the whole time.'

Rachel smiled. 'Oh, of course. That would make sense. Now where was I?'

Rachel sat back in her overstuffed armchair that happened to have its back towards the doorway. From where Phoebe sat, she could see the doorway clearly. Therefore, Phoebe was the only one to notice Joseph's entrance as he shimmered into the hallway.

Phoebe's eyes widened in alarm. She stood up automatically. Not knowing what was wrong, Rachel also stood up. She turned around and saw Joseph walking into the room. He was glaring at Rachel as he used his strength to throw her recently vacated armchair across the room.

Rachel let out a small shriek of terror. 'Who are you?' she managed to say.

Phoebe pushed Rachel behind her, so as Joseph would have to go through Phoebe before he faced Rachel. Recalling that Joseph's power emanated from his hands, Phoebe grabbed hold of both of his wrists as she propelled her knee upwards into his abdomen.

Joseph was not fazed. He ripped his hands out of Phoebe's grasp and shoved past her to get to Rachel. He lifted Rachel up with his right hand and began to close his left hand into a fist.

Phoebe took a fighting tip out of Leo's book and jumped onto Joseph's back, clinging to him, in order to divert his attention. Angered evermore, Joseph released his grip on Rachel, sending her flying across the room into one of the bookshelves. The contents and fragments of the bookshelf collapsed on top of Rachel as she lost consciousness.

Joseph shimmered out and Phoebe fell to the floor. Joseph shimmered back in right next to Phoebe.

'If you wanted me to kill you first, you only had to ask, witch,' growled Joseph.

...

Back in P3, Piper was still in a rather argumentative mood about the morals of demons.

'I thought you said ancestral demons didn't do bad,' Piper said harshly.

'We only usually attack others as a form of defence. Joseph is finding it hard to cope with the possibility of living like that,' Jackson replied. 'He doesn't understand our concept.'

'He's not the only one,' muttered Paige.

Jimmy – who had joined his father's side, so as not to be in the middle of the discussion – suddenly grimaced. His grimace quickly changed into a look of utter outrage.

'What is he doing there?' Jimmy fumed.

'Who's where?' Piper asked.

'Joseph. Rachel's house. I told him not to go there. I told him I'd kill him if he did.' Jimmy said no more than that before shimmering out.

'Phoebe,' Piper breathed, worriedly.

'Rachel,' Paige added with concern.

They turned to look at Jackson who was still standing by their booth.

'What are you waiting for? Do that twirly thing with your hand to bring Joseph here, away from our innocent!' Piper ordered.

Jackson shook his head remorsefully.

'Not even to stop one of your sons from killing the other?' Leo asked.

'Both of my sons have a lesson to learn. Once they have learnt it, I will intervene,' Jackson clarified.

Pointing upwards, Jackson whirled his hand around, causing the P3 lights to go out. When the lights turned back on a few seconds later, Jackson was nowhere to be seen.

'The house is a twenty minute drive away,' Piper said frantically. 'We'll never get there in time.'

Paige grabbed Piper's shoulder. 'I'll orb u –' Paige stopped halfway through that final word. 'We'll drive as fast as possible.'

The two sisters spared no time in running up the staircase and out of P3, leaving Leo to hope that everything turned out for the best.

...

The atmosphere of the cream coloured house's front room had turned into that of a sparring ring as Phoebe and Joseph stared one another down, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Phoebe was vigilant of his hands. She was pretty adamant that she did not want to be turned into a pile of dust. Joseph began to close the fingers of his left hand into a fist. Phoebe swung a kick at his hand.

Joseph grabbed his left hand as he howled in pain. Phoebe smiled, believing that she had found a weak spot in the demon's resistant armour. Phoebe ran out into the hallway, hoping that Joseph would follow her rather than turn his attention back to Rachel.

Fortunately for Phoebe, Joseph had meant what he had said about killing her first. He followed her into the hallway and then into the kitchen as Phoebe made her way to it.

In the kitchen, Phoebe scanned the countertop in her search for anything sharp. She immediately found the block that held the knives. She drew a knife out of the block and turned around just as Joseph reached her.

Phoebe threw the knife towards him, but Joseph easily swatted it away.

'Only another demon would be strong enough to kill me with a knife,' he said menacingly.

'Good thing there's another one present then, isn't it?' Jimmy exclaimed as he shimmered in behind Joseph.

Jimmy grabbed Joseph and shimmered out with him. Phoebe assumed that Jimmy was attempting to take Joseph back to the Underworld. However, there appeared to be a struggle mid-shimmer, because both men re-materialised further down the hallway, falling onto the floor.

A brief fight on the floor took the two men into the front room. Phoebe ran into the hallway and then into the front room, running past the fighting brothers to check on the unconscious Rachel. Phoebe began to move the bookshelf debris and books off Rachel's injured form.

Jimmy eventually managed to pin Joseph down on the floor.

'What are you going to do? Kill me?' Joseph suggested mockingly.

'That's the intention, though I hoped I wouldn't have to do so in this house,' Jimmy replied.

'I'm not moving,' Joseph said spitefully. 'The only way I'm leaving is if you kill me.'

'You don't believe I'll do it?' grumbled Jimmy.

'Why would you?' Joseph asked.

Jimmy lifted one of his hands from the floor and held it out towards the ash that had once formed a flat screen television. With his hand held out flat, the ash began to propel towards it. As the ash flew across the room, it reconstructed into the form of a very sharp dagger. Jimmy caught it and pointed it at his brother.

'You hurt someone I love,' Jimmy replied, before plunging the dagger down towards his brother's chest.

Before the dagger could make contact with Joseph, he vanished in a bubbling form of molecules that flew out of the room and then out of the house. The dagger plunged into the carpet. Jimmy stood up, brushing any dirt from his suit with his hands.

From her position next to Rachel, Phoebe asked, 'Where'd your brother go? That wasn't shimmering.'

Jimmy sighed as he approached Phoebe and Rachel. 'My father transported Joseph back to the Underworld.'

'Does that mean Joseph may come back?' Phoebe asked as Jimmy leant down next to his unconscious girlfriend.

The only injury that Rachel had received from the collapsing bookshelf was a bloody gash on her forehead. Jimmy hovered his hand over the wound, flattening his hand as he did so. Using his power of molecular reconstruction, he was able to reconstruct the skin cells necessary to close the wound – in effect, he was healing her.

As Jimmy did this, he replied to Phoebe's question with: 'My father's intervened. That means that he won't let Joseph return to the surface world for a long while. Rachel will be safe.'

Rachel's eyes opened at this point. She immediately hugged Jimmy on seeing him there.

'You're okay now,' Jimmy assured Rachel. Phoebe noticed that Jimmy had an expression of despair as he said those words.

Jimmy helped Rachel to her feet and she looked around. 'What happened?' she asked.

'Something that won't ever happen again,' Jimmy said cryptically. After a long pause, Jimmy said, 'Rachel, I can't see you anymore. Your safety is my utmost concern, and with me around, you'll never be safe.'

'What? Jimmy? Why?' Rachel asked, her breathing pace speeding up and tears threatening to fall.

'I'll go,' Phoebe said as quietly as possible, walking as quickly as possible out of the front room.

As she left the cream coloured house, Phoebe began to walk slowly along the street.

'Phoebe.'

Phoebe stopped and turned around to see that Jimmy was approaching her.

'Why did you break up with her?' Phoebe asked.

Jimmy was puzzled by Phoebe's question. 'You actually believe me?'

'That you loved her? After all I have seen today, yes,' Phoebe confirmed with a weak smile.

Jimmy sighed. 'As long as I'm around her, there will be trouble. Whether it's other witches realising that I'm a demon and coming after me, or general demons doing what they do best. I had to leave her.'

'I am so sorry,' Phoebe said.

Jimmy's look of grief turned into a sudden fit of frustration. 'You should be. If you and your sisters had not have interfered none of this would have ever happened.'

Phoebe gaped. 'Excuse me? My sisters and I did nothing wrong! It was your brother that tried to kill her!'

'Yes, but he would never have gotten so worked up if you and your sisters hadn't turned up in the first place!' Jimmy countered.

'She was our innocent!' Phoebe argued. 'We had to help her!'

Jimmy kept his mouth shut, unwilling to add anything more to the conversation. After a short pause, Jimmy said, 'It was low for your sisters to go to my father about this.' Jimmy turned around and began to walk in the opposite direction to the one that Phoebe had been going in. However, he stopped for a second to face Phoebe again. 'You should really reassess your own morality before you go about blaming every demon for being evil without allowing for a first impression.' He walked away.

Phoebe turned to carry on walking on down the street. The fears that had surrounded her all afternoon were returning as she began to sob.

...

On the scene of the same street a little while later, Paige opened the door of Piper's jeep and got back into the passenger's seat. 'The homeowner, who I am going to assume is Rachel, said that Phoebe left a while ago. Rachel looked really upset about something.'

Piper's jeep was currently pulled up outside the cream coloured house. They had only arrived moments before and Paige's sentence confirmed that they had been too late to help with the fight. Fortunately, their innocent was still alive.

Piper started the jeep back up and pulled away from the kerb. 'Phoebe can't have gotten far by foot.'

'She could have gotten further by shimmering,' Paige suggested.

'Don't say that, Paige. The brothers haven't taken her anywhere. Please don't suggest something like that,' Piper pleaded. 'Phoebe's okay. She won't have gone far.'

...

Phoebe had been walking for a little while now. However her tears had not subsided yet. She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand as she sniffed.

A jeep pulled up beside Phoebe as she continued to walk. Phoebe paid no attention to it, hardly even noticing that it was there. Both front doors of the jeep opened. Piper and Paige came running out of the jeep to embrace their sad sister.

Phoebe stopped walking and looked at her concerned sisters.

'Pheebs,' Piper implored. 'What happened?'

'All those years ago, when time after time, Cole asked me for help and I kept turning him away with the excuses that he was evil…' Phoebe began.

'He was evil, Phoebe,' Paige insisted.

Phoebe shook her head. 'How do we know for sure? How do we know that we didn't misjudge him? How do we know that my spite did not cloud my judgement?'

'He was evil,' Piper said, shaking her head. 'He was the Source of All Evil at one point, for crying out loud! He tried to kill Paige numerous times during and after that! He was evil, Phoebe.'

Phoebe sniffed. 'No. After all of that Source crap, I bid farewell to the Cole that I knew in the wasteland. That Cole was not evil. That Cole had spent a very long time possessed. I said my goodbyes then, and knew that I couldn't – we could never be, because it was never going to work out between us.' Phoebe paused as a choking sob made speaking impossible for a few seconds. 'When he came back, I was so focused on pushing him away that I tried to convince myself of any reason to explain why I couldn't be with him.'

'Phoebe, why are you blaming yourself? You shouldn't be blaming yourself for anything that happened,' Piper said.

Phoebe stared Piper right in the eye and said, 'Cole died twice. I vanquished him twice!'

'If it makes you feel better, you didn't do it the second time, since it was an alternate reality,' Paige added as consolingly as possible.

'Yes, but I led him to it,' Phoebe said.

'He was obsessive,' Paige continued. 'However you would have gone about the separation, he would not have accepted it.'

Phoebe shook her head.

'Phoebe, please. You did nothing wrong,' Piper said, hugging her sister.

'I do everything wrong, Piper,' Phoebe said, still in her state of self-blame. 'Especially today. I couldn't get a premonition off that damn letter. I couldn't stop Jimmy's brother by myself. I even almost exposed magic to a mortal when I thought she was a witch.'

'You can't blame yourself for that either,' Piper said. 'We all thought she was a witch, because of that letter…'

'Why would she put that in her letter if she isn't a witch and doesn't know about magic or who we are?' Paige asked.

'She didn't write it,' Phoebe said. 'She can't have done.'

'And that would explain why you couldn't get a premonition from it,' Paige realised. 'She wasn't originally supposed to be our innocent.'

'Why would whoever wrote it go to all of that trouble?' Piper asked.

Phoebe's tears were finally beginning to dry up as she replied, 'Have you never heard of Rachel Stone?'

Paige shook her head, while Piper said, 'I recognise the name, but I can't think where from.'

'She's the main radio host over at KQSF Radio,' Phoebe stated. 'Exposing magic to someone in the media is obviously what the letter writer wanted.'

'So who's the letter writer?' Paige pondered.

'What time is it?' Phoebe asked somewhat randomly.

Puzzled by the suddenness of what seemed like a digression from a serious conversation, Piper looked at her watch and said, 'Six. Why?'

'There'll still be people at the Bay Mirror,' Phoebe replied.

...

After the time it took to drive there had passed, Phoebe came barging into Elise Rothman's office at the headquarters of the Bay Mirror. Elise looked up from her desk, startled.

'Phoebe, I thought you were off for the rest of the day,' Elise said.

'I was. I mean, I am,' Phoebe said. 'Elise, I was just looking for one of the assistants…'

'Mary's just gone for her break,' Elise began, but Phoebe was already shaking her head.

'Not her,' Phoebe said. 'The new one. The assistant that started today.'

Elise deadpanned, before saying: 'No one started today.'

'Yes, someone did. She brought my Ask Phoebe letters into my office this afternoon,' Phoebe persisted. 'She had long auburn hair. Green eyes. She was around the same height as me.' Phoebe continued with a guess: 'She looked like she was around twenty five or twenty six-ish.'

Elise shook her head. 'I am sorry, Phoebe, but we have not hired any assistants since last year, and I have never seen anyone of that exact description around here.'

Phoebe gawked at Elise in disbelief.

...

It was a typically busy and loud evening at P3. The three sisters and Leo sat in their personal booth, discussing the main outcomes of the day.

'I can't believe your selling P3,' Phoebe said quietly, not allowing her reaction to appear in her tone or her expression.

'Are you okay with that?' Piper asked.

Phoebe smiled gleefully and hugged Piper. 'Of course I am,' Phoebe began in her patented baby voice. 'My big sister is finally going to be a chef!'

'Slow down a little, Pheebs,' Piper said. 'I still need to sell this place before I can get around to opening up a restaurant.'

Phoebe released Piper from the hug and nodded. 'That should be easy enough with the success this place is. I mean you even managed to get that band to play here tonight.'

Piper laughed. 'Pheebs, it's a random DJ today.'

'Yeah, I know. I was practicing my sales pitch for you,' Phoebe giggled.

'Thanks, but I think I'll leave the selling to the professionals,' Piper said. 'Besides, I think our main focus should be finding out who that woman was…'

Paige decided to interject with, 'Or what she was. We don't know her motives. She could be a magical creature that got her information wrong, or a demon that wanted to cause trouble for us.'

'Or an Elder trying to get through to you another way,' Leo added. 'Even if the information about the witch was wrong, that could have been a mistake. The part about her dating a demon was still true.'

'Or your future daughter,' Paige joked.

Piper grimaced. 'I hope not. I think I've had enough of time travelling kids for one lifetime.'

Leo looked a little uneasy. 'Aren't you also supposed to point out that we don't have a daughter just yet, or is this something you're thinking about?'

Piper smiled, hugging Leo. 'We're kidding around, Leo.'

Phoebe laughed before adding a little more seriously, 'Whoever – whatever – she is, we'll find out.'

One of the bartender's approached their booth at this point and said, 'I'm sorry, Piper, but we need some more people on bar to deal with the orders. Do you think you co –'

'I'll give you a hand at the bar,' Leo interrupted, standing up.

Piper took Leo's hand and said, 'Leo, you don't have to.'

Leo smiled at Piper. 'It's fine.' He released his hand from Piper's grasp and followed the bartender over to the bar.

Piper sighed as she watched him walk away. 'Do you think he's happy being a mortal?'

'Piper, we know he is. Anyway, I thought that falling from grace thing was permanent,' Phoebe said.

'So did I,' Piper sighed.

'Apparently not,' Paige said.

Phoebe did not seem convinced by Paige's assertion.

Leo came back over to the table. He chuckled. 'It's a little chilly over there with the air con,' he explained. 'Could you pass me my jacket?' Piper handed Leo his jacket. 'Thanks, Piper.'

Leo was about to walk away again, but Phoebe stopped him.

'Leo, I have a question,' Phoebe began.

Leo nodded for Phoebe to continue.

'You fell from grace, right? Is that permanent, or would it ever be possible to become a whitelighter again?' Phoebe asked.

Leo wondered where this question was coming from, but decided not to ask. 'Let's put it this way. If clipped wings are a temporary suspension, falling from grace is a permanent firing. It's not possible.'

'Thanks, Leo,' Phoebe said, letting him go back to the bar.

The sisters exchanged bewildered looks when Leo was safely out of hearing distance.

'Why would the Elders lie about something like that?' Phoebe asked, completely stumped.

'They took away my whitelighter abilities – powers that I was born with – for refusing to take Leo on as a charge when he can't even be made a whitelighter again,' Paige said in incredulity. 'Why?'

'They knew you were going to refuse the assignment…' Piper realised. 'I think they wanted any excuse to suspend you…'

Paige frowned. 'I know some Elders dislike us as much as we dislike them, but I hardly call that a reason to trick me into a reason to take away my whitelighter powers.'

Phoebe shook her head. 'No, Paige. I think Piper's onto something. What was the reason that the Elders gave you for wanting Leo back?'

'They're preparing for something they've foreseen, or something along those lines. Why?' Paige asked.

'I think part of the preparation was making sure you didn't have your whitelighter abilities…' Phoebe sussed.

The three sisters exchanged questioning glances. What had started as a normal morning had progressed into an eventful afternoon and finished as an evening that revolved around more questions than answers.

---

Next episode: When their innocent is killed before they have a chance to save him, the sisters find themselves in a race against time to find the demon responsible before the police get involved.

---

A/N: Please comment on this chapter and let me know what you think.

[Chrisaholic]

Interesting plot. If Leo will become a whitelighter but the whole situation for Paige is awkward, so to say.

[Astral Vision]

Sept 20, 2013 9:32:25 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

Interesting plot. If Leo will become a whitelighter but the whole situation for Paige is awkward, so to say.

^_^ Thanks.

[Astral Vision]

A/N: Here is chapter/episode four of my alternate season eight. I'll put it up in multiple posts like usual. Read and enjoy, and if you want: let me know what you think!

---

CSI: P3

August 23rd 2005

A jeep pulled into the last remaining space along a busy San Francisco street. The street was lined with shops and cafés. Piper Halliwell got out of the jeep dressed in formal, smart-looking business wear.

Piper spotted the SWA Properties branch that happened to be along that particular street. Like most estate agent offices, the front of the building was practically one big window with a glass door in the middle. On either side of the door, the windows were plastered with advertisements of houses and buildings for sale.

A man walked past Piper to a green door that was positioned between the estate agency and the shop next door. Piper assumed the door led to the apartment above SWA Properties. In a bid to remove the key from his pocket, a piece of paper fell from the same pocket onto the floor.

Piper picked up the piece of paper for the man, noticing that the piece of paper was, in fact, a leaflet for a nearby hotel. He turned to face her, flashing his pearly white teeth in a grin as he thanked her. The man looked a little older than Piper. He had the start of a beard growing on his face and his glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose as he took the leaflet from her.

'No problem,' Piper said in response to his gratitude.

The man turned back to the green door, unlocked it, and went inside. As he shut the door, Piper made her way through the glass door into the estate agents.

The humming of computers in an office was barely audible beneath the sounds of employees chatting either on their phones or to customers. It was only a small office with four desks and hence four employees.

A couple sat at one of the desks, speaking to an employee about local house prices. The employee that occupied the second desk was speaking to an old man about fees. The third desk's employee was on the phone to someone, while the owner of the fourth desk was busy typing away at her computer's keyboard.

Piper wandered over to the fourth desk. The employee looked away from her computer and stood up to greet Piper.

'Piper Halliwell?' the employee asked, holding out her hand for Piper to shake.

Piper shook her hand. 'Yes.'

'Hi, I'm Lisa. We spoke on the phone,' said Lisa. 'Take a seat.'

Piper sat down on the chair facing the desk. Lisa sat down on her own chair.

'So you were thinking about selling your building,' Lisa began.

'My business,' Piper corrected her. 'SWA Properties sold the building to me almost six years ago. I was hoping that you'd be able to sell it this time around too.'

'That's wonderful to hear that you have complete faith in our abilities, Piper,' said Lisa with the fake sincerity that was required in her voice as part of her job. 'Did you say you want to sell the business?'

Piper nodded. She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she continued. 'I know you don't specialise in selling businesses, but I was hoping that you could specifically search for people interested in buying P3 as the club rather than buying it as an empty building.'

'Well, I guess that would be a unique selling point,' Lisa said after a brief pause. 'I'll tell you what: I'll do some research to see if I can find the right buyers for your buil – business.'

'Thank you,' said Piper.

'For now, let's talk about the sort of price you're looking for,' Lisa continued.

Piper nodded, but before the discussion could go on, her phone rang. Piper looked at the display on her phone. It said Home.

Deciding it could be important, Piper looked up at Lisa and asked, 'Do you mind if I answer this?'

Lisa offered Piper a very fake smile as she replied, 'Of course.'

Piper stood up and went to stand by the front window of the office as she answered her phone.

'Hi,' Piper said.

'Hey Piper.' It was the voice of Phoebe Halliwell. 'I was wondering where those chocolate biscuits that Wyatt likes are. I was looking through the cupboard and couldn't find them.'

Piper sighed. 'I have to keep them in my car, because – when he knows they're at home – he keeps orbing them into his room.' As Piper said that part, she looked around the room to make sure that no one appeared to have overheard her. No one had, so she continued. 'And unfortunately, the car's across town with me.'

'Aw, he's getting a bit hungry and I thought those would be perfect,' Phoebe grumbled.

'I'm sorry. Try offering him something a bit healthier. It would save me a lot of hassle over the next sixteen years if we could get him to like his fruit and veg at this age,' Piper replied.

There was a sarcastic laugh on the other end of the line as Phoebe said, 'Fruit and veg? Really? You're worried about him being a fussy eater? Oh wait, don't answer that. I remember Dad telling us how a certain sister of mine wouldn't eat any white foods when she was little.'

Piper rolled her eyes. 'Well, that fussy eater is now a professional chef who will one day have her own restaurant, so that doesn't count.'

There was a crashing sound from the floor above. Piper looked out the window and could see a woman run hurriedly towards the green door. Still on the phone to Phoebe, Piper curiously stepped outside onto the street.

'Okay, Piper. This isn't funny! Have you been moving all the food out into your car?' Phoebe said in a disgruntled manner.

The woman was knocking frantically on the green door, a look of terror on her face. Piper watched nosily as she raised a puzzled eyebrow at Phoebe's notion.

'What makes you think that?' Piper asked.

'Mmm, nothing,' Phoebe began innocently, before bursting with: 'Except that the fridge is empty!'

When no one opened the door, the woman stood on her tiptoes and reached above the doorframe. She found the spare key and used it to unlock the door. She ran up the stairs in a hurry.

Piper closed her eyes for a second. 'Wyatt's been doing that a lot recently. Is he within hearing range of you?'

'Of course. I never let him out of my sight when on babysitting duty. He followed me into the kitchen,' Phoebe answered.

Piper shook her head. 'That's your problem then. He heard you say 'fruit and veg'. You might want to figure out where he's hidden them.'

'Hidden them?' Phoebe questioned. 'You mean he's orbed them somewhere else? Wow. You weren't kidding about his fussiness. How did I miss the start of this phase of his?'

'Probably because you've spent the past week trying to either track down or summon your fake assistant,' Piper replied.

'Yeah, well, it's kind of important that we figure out who she is,' Phoebe explained.

'I know, but you're not the one that's supposed to go all obsessive over this sort of thing,' Piper replied. 'That's my role…'

Piper trailed off as the green door was thrown open. The woman came running out, shrieking loudly. There was a red liquid covering her hands. The green door slammed shut behind her.

A crowd was forming around her. It was becoming clear that the liquid on her hands was blood. She managed to console her shrieks enough to shout: 'I – I went up there and – and he – he's d – d – dead!'

Some members of the crowd began to try and break down the green door to gain entry as the woman had presently misplaced the spare key she had used to access the apartment.

'Piper?' Phoebe was saying on the phone. 'Hello? Are you still there?'

Piper's eyes wandered upwards to the windows of the apartment above. There were three windows that faced the street. Piper noticed someone looking out of the window on the far left.

'Piper? Hello?' Phoebe said on the phone.

Piper almost dropped the phone as she gawked at the woman that was looking out of the window. The person looked exactly like Phoebe. Phoebe stared down at Piper from the window before moving out of sight. Piper's eyes grew wide in shock. She could not believe what she had just seen.

'Earth to Piper! Phoebe here!' Phoebe shouted through the phone. 'Why have you gone quiet on me?'

...

Not too long after an abrupt end to their phone call, Phoebe found herself waiting for Piper to return home. Apparently Piper had something important to tell Phoebe all of a sudden. Piper had not elaborated on any details so Phoebe had no idea what had suddenly got Piper so apprehensive.

The youngest-turned-middle Charmed One was in the kitchen with Wyatt when she heard the front door slam shut. With Wyatt trailing behind her, Phoebe wandered into the front hall expecting Piper.

However rather than Piper, Phoebe found Paige. The youngest Charmed One was rummaging through a small phone book. She looked up when she noticed Phoebe.

'Phoebe, what's the number for the police station?' Paige asked.

Phoebe let out a small laugh. 'Did the Elders take away more than just your whitelighter abilities, Paige?'

Paige scowled at Phoebe. She was not in the mood to be called stupid by her older sister.

'I wasn't on about nine-one-one,' Paige said, rolling her eyes. 'I meant to ask, what's the number that will take me straight through to Darryl's desk?'

'Darryl doesn't work there anymore, remember?' Phoebe replied.

Paige sighed in exasperation. 'I know, but if I'm going to get straight through to the station for something that's not an emergency, that's the best number to use. That desk still exists, even if it doesn't belong to Darryl anymore.'

'What happened?' Phoebe asked with concern.

Paige grimaced and found another address book on the bureau. 'One of my charges got arrested.' When Paige could not find the number she needed in that one, she picked up a third address book from the bureau. She mugged as she realised that they had so many. 'How many address books do we even have?'

Phoebe smirked. 'We meet so many people that we never see again in this witchy line of work that it tends to fill up the address book with one time only contact numbers.' Phoebe's smirk was replaced with a quizzical expression as she took note of the first part of Paige's reply. 'A charge? Haven't they been reassigned since your suspension started?'

Paige was searching through yet another address book, but looked up to give Phoebe an explanation. 'Yeah, but considering the Elders deliberately came up with an excuse to suspend me, I wanted to find out why. The best way to figure out their motives is to stick to doing the very thing that the Elders don't want me doing: Being an on-duty whitelighter – albeit, without the whitelighter powers. That limits me to only looking after my San Francisco based charges, and this morning, one of them got arrested.' As Paige finished the explanation, she slammed the address book down and moaned, 'The number's not in here either!'

'Try the strawberry coloured address book. I think it's in the bottom drawer,' Phoebe suggested, pointing at the third drawer on the bureau. All of a sudden the outline edges of the third drawer were filled with a blue and white glow.

Paige pressed her hand to her forehead in annoyance as she realised what had happened. 'Pheebs, did you have to say the s word in front of Wyatt?'

'What did I do?' Phoebe replied, feigning innocence, despite the fact that she had cottoned on to her mistake.

There was no point in Paige opening the drawer as she knew that the mentioned address book would no longer be in there. She turned to face her eldest nephew.

Wyatt stood innocently next to his aunt Phoebe. His vacant expression suggested that he had no idea what was going on around him, and his aunts would have believed that he had nothing to do with it if it was not obvious that he was the culprit behind the most recent use of telekinetic orbing.

Paige leant down to Wyatt's level and asked very nicely, 'Wyatt, please could you show me where you orbed that address book to? Or could you orb it back here?'

Wyatt blinked naively a couple of times before breaking into a mischievous smile and shaking his head.

'Froot bad!' Wyatt proclaimed. He followed this up by running up the stairs while giggling. Phoebe was about to follow, to stick to her never-let-him-out-of-sight-whilst-babysitting rule, but was stopped by Paige who had just stood back up.

Paige glared at Phoebe. 'You couldn't have called it the pinky-red address book? You just had to say the s word!'

Phoebe was saved from having to make a response by the sound of the front door opening. Both sisters turned to see Piper entering the foyer, a strawberry (or pinky-red) coloured address book in her hands.

'This somehow orbed into my car as I was pulling up on the drive,' Piper explained, motioning to the book.

Paige's face lit up on seeing it. She snatched the address book from Piper's hands with a brief 'thanks' before darting into another room with the portable phone in her other hand. Piper took hardly any notice of Paige's dire need for the address book. The eldest Charmed One's sights were set on Phoebe.

'Pissed off any shape shifting demons recently, Pheebs?' Piper asked.

Phoebe raised an eyebrow as she tried to think through a possible answer. 'I don't think so… I know I've summoned a lot of demons this past week in my search for the mysterious fake assistant, but that involved a lot of vanquishing… but I don't think any of those demons were shape shifters, unless they knew some shape shifters who weren't happy at having a fellow demon vanquished.' Suddenly her eyes narrowed warily. 'Wait, why?'

Piper's reply came out in her usual preferred tone of nonchalant sarcasm: 'Oh no reason…' The nonchalant sarcasm disappeared as Piper became serious: 'Except that I saw someone that looked exactly like you at the site of a crime scene, less than a minute after the murder had taken place.'

Phoebe's eyes widened in shock. 'What? So demons are trying to get us framed for murder now?'

Piper nodded sadly. 'It looks that way.' Her expression became taken aback as she added, 'Oh no! The demon probably saw me talk to that guy moments before he went into his flat! That guy probably only got killed because he was seen talking to me!' Piper sat down on the nearest sofa as she took it all in. She looked up at Phoebe and repeated faintly: 'He was killed because of me.'

Phoebe shook her head and sat down next to Piper, taking her older sister's hand consolingly. 'Don't blame yourself, Piper. Do you remember what you didn't tell me when I felt the same way all those months ago?'

Piper raised a quizzical eyebrow. Phoebe's question had made no sense.

Phoebe smiled light-heartedly. 'It was Zankou pretending to be you, but he sure did dole out some good advice.'

'That advice was?' Piper asked.

'For all we know the innocent could have been a witch himself. We don't know the reason a demon went after that guy until we look further into this,' Phoebe began.

'We do know the reason though. It was to frame us…' Piper mumbled, still down hearted.

'Maybe the demon was killing two birds with one stone though,' Phoebe continued. 'Getting rid of an enemy while also getting us blamed for it. It's not your fault, Piper. You've got to believe that.'

Piper let out a hefty sigh. 'Damn, Zankou should have had an advice column of his own.' She smiled weakly at Phoebe as the two of them stood up.

Phoebe glared jokingly at Piper. 'That's not even funny.' Phoebe began to walk towards the front door, picking up her jacket.

'Where are you going?' Piper asked.

'We are going to that crime scene,' Phoebe replied. Paige walked into the front hall and put the phone back on the bureau as Phoebe continued. 'We have no idea what we're looking in the Book for yet, so getting a premonition from the crime scene is the best place to start.'

Paige grimaced. 'Is this a Power of Three thing?' she asked reluctantly.

Phoebe shook her head. 'No' – Paige looked relieved until Phoebe resumed – 'but I was hoping you could stay and look after Wyatt. Leo's not back with Chris from the grocery store yet, and Piper needs to show me a crime scene.'

Paige sighed. 'I really need to go to the police station though.' She turned to Piper. 'Any chance you could take Wyatt with you?'

Piper look horrified. 'To a crime scene? No!'

Paige nodded. 'Fair point. I didn't think that one through. Do you mind if he tags along to the police station with me then? It's just that I really have to go there now. From what I found out, my charge is still in custody there and –'

Piper motioned for Paige to stop speaking. 'It's okay. Go to the station. No need to explain. I'm sure Phoebe can tell me on the way to the crime scene. Oh, and thanks for agreeing to take Wyatt.'

Paige smiled and ran upstairs to find Wyatt. Piper picked up her coat and made her way out of the front door with Phoebe.

...

Within the time it took to drive there, Piper and Phoebe found themselves approaching the green door. Unlike earlier when Piper had originally been there, most of the path was cordoned off by cones and a yellow police tape lined the green door. The door looked a little battered as it had been broken in order for the police to gain entry. The street itself was relatively empty of people. The crowd of gawkers must have died down in the hour that had passed since Piper's last visit to the street.

Piper and Phoebe exchanged silent glances before making their way past the barricade and opening the green door with ease as its lock had been broken already. They made their way up the staircase that led to the flat above the shop as silently as possible. They could hear voices from the floor above. As they were about to turn the corner of the stairs – where they would then be in full view of the police inside the flat – Piper motioned for Phoebe to stop. Piper poked her head around the corner and quickly flicked her wrists before any of the cops had a chance to see her there.

The three policemen present at the crime scene immediately froze. Piper and Phoebe entered the flat. One of the policemen was posed, brushing a desk for fingerprints. Another had been frozen taken a photo of the flat, the bulb in the camera was glaring as it had been frozen mid-flash. The third policeman stood stock still staring down at the floor.

The sisters followed the frozen man's gaze to the white sheet that shielded the late innocent from their view. Phoebe took a deep breath, feeling slightly squeamish as she bent down. She hardly noticed Piper pick the man's glasses up off the floor. She hardly noticed Piper murmur, 'Maybe you could use this to get a premonition.' With her focus only directed at one thing, Phoebe clutched the white sheet and –

Phoebe closed her eyes as she felt a shiver. Automatically, she let go of the sheet. Opening her eyes, Phoebe looked down to see the sheet gone. Staring up at her with glassy eyes was the dead innocent. There was no sign of scorch marks. The demon that had killed him had not used fire or energy balls. Instead, the innocent had a chest wound, the shape of which Phoebe recognised immediately.

'The demon that did this used an athame, Piper,' Phoebe muttered. As she said this, she turned to her right for a look of confirmation from her sister. However Piper was no longer there. Phoebe jumped to her feet in surprise. 'Piper?' she yelled, looking around for any sign of her sister. That is when she noticed that the three frozen policemen were all absent from the scene too. Where had everyone gone?

Suddenly Phoebe heard hurried footsteps on the stairs. She looked for somewhere in the room to hide, but before she had a chance to duck behind the desk, a woman – the source of the footsteps – had already entered the apartment.

The woman went pale, the sight in front of her validating the terror that was already in her expression. She ignored Phoebe completely as she knelt down by the innocent's side, weeping as she pressed her hands against his chest in a futile attempt to resuscitate him.

'Robert, please, no… Please be okay…' the woman murmured between sobs.

Phoebe slowly approached the woman. 'It's too late. I'm sorry,' Phoebe told her consolingly. The woman made no sign of having heard Phoebe. The psychic witch took no offense in this as the woman was obviously in a state of shock. She went to put a supportive hand on the woman's shoulder, but was surprised when her hand passed right through the woman.

Phoebe's eyes widened in disbelief. She took a few steps back, waiting for the desk that she knew was behind her to stop her in her path, but it did not. Phoebe went pale when she realised that the desk had not stopped her because she was currently standing in the middle of it. Wherever she was, Phoebe was somehow incorporeal.

Phoebe's train of thought suddenly returned to the woman and the innocent as the woman stood up, her hands now covered in the innocent's blood. The woman ran down the stairs. Phoebe did not move from her position, still unsure of what was going on. If this was a premonition, it was nothing like any of the one's she had ever had before.

Seconds later, Phoebe heard screaming from outside. It was that woman's voice again. Phoebe approached one of the windows, careful not to touch the walls as she was afraid that she could fall through it – although she did wonder how she could successfully remain on the floor in this intangible state.

Down on the street below, Phoebe could see a crowd was forming around the woman as she continued to shriek about the innocent's death. Phoebe's eyes scanned the crowd until they settled on an immediately recognisable brunette that was watching the street scene while holding a phone to her ear.

The brunette's eyes wandered up to Phoebe's. Their eyes made contact as the brunette – Piper – went pale with shock, almost dropping her phone. Once sure that Piper had seen her, Phoebe moved away from the window, distracted by a voice behind her.

The surprises kept coming as Phoebe turned around to see another Phoebe standing on the opposite side of the apartment. The other Phoebe was wearing the exact same outfit as Phoebe, except for the addition of a jacket, a scarf, and gloves, which Phoebe found a little odd considering how warm the August weather was.

'Just a warning for later, you're going to want to wear something warmer. The side effects of this power development aren't the nicest,' the other Phoebe advised.

Phoebe furrowed her brow in confusion as the other Phoebe waved light heartedly as if she knew that Phoebe was about to leave. Phoebe felt another shiver and closed her eyes –

Piper felt the forehead of an unconscious Phoebe. Piper was wary that the three policemen could unfreeze at any moment, but her main concern was Phoebe. Her forehead felt very cold.

Phoebe suddenly let out a gasp, her breath visible as she quickly sat up and folded her arms to try and retain some heat.

Phoebe managed to stem her chattering teeth for long enough to say: 'No one's trying to frame us, Piper… When you saw me earlier today… That was me.'

...

[Astral Vision]

Paige made her way into the police station with Wyatt by her side. She walked over to Darryl's old desk and sat Wyatt down at it before looking around for any sign of her charge.

She caught sight of the girl sitting by a desk in an office just around the corner. Realising she could not leave Wyatt alone at Darryl's desk, Paige stopped an officer that was walking past her right at that second.

'Hey, could you do me a favour and look after my nephew for the next few minutes? I'll only be right over there in that office,' Paige asked, and – before the dark haired man could get a word in edgeways – then, 'Thanks.'

Paige darted past the stunned man and made her way towards the office. The charge looked up from her chair as she saw Paige enter.

'Do I know you?' the charge asked.

'We've met once before, Laura. Way back in May,' Paige began. 'I told you I was your social worker –'

'And I told you that I didn't need one as much as I didn't need a parole officer,' Laura interrupted, annoyed.

'Yeah, well, you wouldn't have a parole officer if you didn't keep getting yourself in trouble,' Paige said, unperturbed by her charge's attitude as she was used to future whitelighters acting up like this.

The girl scowled. 'That doesn't concern you, because I also believe I remembered saying that, since I was over eighteen, I don't need a social worker to watch my every move.'

Paige rolled her eyes. 'Obviously not, but at the rate you're going, you sure are going to need a lawyer.'

'Great,' Laura groaned sarcastically. 'Just another authority figure that's going to start bossing me around.'

'Stop speaking, just stop speaking,' Paige said, beginning to lose the last of her patience. 'I came here to help bail you out, okay? The least you could do is hear me ou–' Paige stopped mid-word as she heard the presence of footsteps at the door behind her.

Paige turned around to see the dark haired man at the door, holding the blonde whitelighter-witch in his hands.

'Could you give us another minute?' Paige asked him. 'I need you to keep an eye on my nephew for a little longer while I finish my chat with Laura.'

The dark haired man let out a small smile at Paige's request. 'The last I remembered: This little boy belongs to you, and Laura, here, is under my care. Oh, and there's the fact that this is my office. In other words' – The dark haired man passed Wyatt into Paige's arms and then shut the door behind him – 'Do you think you could tell me who you are and how that allows you to be here right now?'

'You're her parole officer?' Paige questioned.

The dark haired man nodded and introduced himself: 'Officer Henry Mitchell.' He held out his hand to shake Paige's, but quickly retracted it when he remembered she was too busy keeping a hold of her nephew – who, quite frankly, was getting a little too big to be carried around.

'Paige Matthews,' Paige replied. 'I'm Laura's…' Paige trailed off. She had used the social work cover to her charge, because that had been the best cover at the time. However, she could not exactly use the social work cover when talking to someone that could easily check out her background and figure out that Paige Matthews had not been a social worker – well, technically even then, an assistant social worker – since two thousand and two.

Figuring that the pause had gone on for too long, Laura broke in with: 'She's my social worker, but I don't need one of those.'

Paige put her hand to her forehead in annoyance. So much for not using that cover with an officer of the law.

Henry nodded disbelievingly. 'Yeah, I think you're a little old for a social worker; and I think I'd have known by now if you had one.'

Paige let out a relieved sigh, glad to hear the parole officer's doubt.

'Look, I'm just a friend of hers…' Once again, Paige trailed off. She was twenty eight and the girl was nineteen. There was no way the cynical parole officer was going to believe she was a friend, so Paige corrected herself. 'I was just a friend of her older brother – before he moved away – and I promised to keep an eye on her for him.'

Henry narrowed his eyes suspiciously. 'You knew her older brother?'

Paige nodded, hoping he would believe her. Paige had never actually met Laura's older brother. When the Elders had assigned Paige that charge not long before the Charmed Ones had faked their deaths, the Elders had provided Paige with a fact file on her charge. This fact file had included the charge's family history – including how her older brother – the only living relative – had moved away so as he could live closer to his workplace. With the whole Zankou saga in the way, Paige only had the chance to meet Laura once before faking her death along with her sisters.

Paige sat Wyatt down on a chair near the desk. Leaving her charge to keep an eye on her nephew, Paige ushered Henry out of the office. Henry shut the door behind them and they continued their discussion in the corridor.

'Henry, she's a good person who is just a little lost. She just needs guidance, not a jail cell,' Paige appealed.

'I may be a parole officer, but that's why I do this job, Paige. I do it to guide these kids before they get into anymore trouble. I know her past just as much as you do. She lost her parents at sixteen; she was left in the care of her older brother, and he was working as many hours as possible to keep their house; she's been constantly caught for underage drinking since and petty theft. As she legally turned eighteen in January, her brother left her so as he could live closer to his workplace, hoping that she would come with, but she refused, because she was legally allowed to live on her own.' Henry paused for a second to let Paige take it all in. 'The issue is that however many times she has been taken into custody… she just doesn't listen. How can you guide someone that won't listen, Paige?'

...

In the kitchen of Halliwell manor, the freshly brewed pot of instant coffee let out a pillar of steam as Piper poured its contents into a mug. She passed it to Phoebe, who was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a jacket, scarf, and gloves, and then sat down.

'Thanks,' Phoebe said, taking the hot cup of coffee as she shivered a little. 'I don't understand what's going on with my powers. That wasn't a normal premonition.'

'That's not the main concern here, Pheebs,' Piper pointed out. 'I'm more worried about the chilly consequence of your power development.'

Leo walked into the kitchen and took a seat next to Piper.

'Is Chris down for his nap?' Piper enquired. When Leo nodded, she added, 'So what are your former whitelighter instincts telling you about Phoebe's advanced premonitions?'

When Piper and Phoebe had returned to the manor, Leo had already been there waiting with Chris. Phoebe had gone up to add layers to her outfit, while Piper had caught Leo up on what had occurred. This had been followed by the two sisters heading to the kitchen for the magical heating effect of coffee and Leo taking a moody Chris up to the nursery.

Now that they were all in the kitchen, it was Leo's turn to give his opinion on the whole matter.

Leo sighed. 'It's a natural development from premonition.'

Phoebe looked up from her coffee. 'I just don't understand why I would have a power advancement on my premonitions. Shouldn't I be getting empathy or levitation back first?'

Leo shook his head. 'With your secondary powers still blocked by the Tribunal, your premonition power has consequently been given the chance to progress.'

'Levitation would have been no use in this particular scenario and empathy was always just plain annoying,' Piper butted in. 'That's not the point though. This power development is dangerous if it's causing temperature issues. Why do you think that is, Leo?'

Leo frowned. 'Well, I can only guess just as much as you two. Phoebe did portray a development in her premonition powers years back, remember?'

Phoebe nodded slowly as she thought back to that time. 'When we were helping to save the gypsy clan… It was like I had astral projected into the near-future. All of us in the attic… the demon turning to attack me… Me flying back into the kitchen only to find myself injured by my own premonition…' Then she shook her head. 'That was a terrible advancement, and besides, this one was nothing like that! I was incorporeal in this one and no one could see me, except…'

'Except me. I saw you…' Piper finished.

Leo nodded. 'It's an evolving power, so it's going to fix things that went wrong the first time around. Your intangibility will probably keep you from changing things whilst in the vision and stop you from getting directly harmed by other beings in that vision.'

'How about the fact that Piper could see me?' Phoebe asked her brother-in-law.

Piper decided to provide a possible answer to this. 'Maybe magical beings are the only ones that can see you when you're in astral vision mode?' Piper frowned. 'That still doesn't explain the fact that you went so cold… I thought something had happened to you… You were unconscious and rapidly cooling…'

'When Prue first learnt to astral project, the power always exhausted her when she returned to her body. Maybe it's the same thing here, except instead of exhaustion, I get to lose a lot of heat,' Phoebe suggested, letting out an involuntary shiver.

Piper bit her lip with worry. 'And then there's what you saw… From what you told me, that astral vision of yours only gave us one piece of information. The innocent's name. You didn't need a vision to tell that he had been stabbed by an athame. His body was still at the crime scene when we got there. I found out his cause of death while you were still out cold.'

Phoebe shook her head slowly. 'No… We did learn something… If our theory about only magical beings being able to see my temporal astral form is right…' Phoebe looked at Piper seriously. 'That woman, whoever she is, is a mortal, but she did know that something was going to happen. You should go and speak to her. Find out what she knows.'

Piper raised an eyebrow. 'You mean both of us, right?'

'Nope,' Phoebe expressed quickly. 'I'm returning to the crime scene to see if I can find out anything more about what went on.'

'Pheebs, you can't go back there. The body's probably gone –' Piper paused, realising what Phoebe had been hinting at. 'Do you think you can trigger another astral vision?'

Phoebe sighed. 'I don't feel confident in it, but I know it will happen. I already saw myself return there.'

'I hate time travel,' Piper said, rolling her eyes.

'Yeah, the rules of time travel do seem to vary each time we use it, don't they?' Phoebe asked rhetorically.

Piper stood up. 'Well, I guess we've all got a job to do. Pheebs, be careful and don't catch a cold. I'll phone Paige. Since she's at the police station, maybe she can find out what the police have figured out so far. We don't want them getting too close to the demon.'

...

Back at the police station, Paige's purse lay on the floor by her feet, the display on her phone lit up silently with the word Home, before switching to the words Missed Call: Home. Paige sat at the desk, Wyatt looking as bored as ever in her lap, Laura on the chair next to them, and Henry in his seat opposite them.

For the past half an hour or so, Paige had been talking on behalf of her charge's case, and surprisingly to Paige, Henry seemed to agree with most of what she had said. During her time as an assistant social worker, Paige had disliked having to work with parole officers, as most of the time, they tended to not listen, deciding instead to stick to what they knew and not have an open ear to outside advice.

This Henry guy was different though. He listened. Paige and he had managed to come up with a plan for Laura whether the parolee liked it or not. The parole officer and the ex-whitelighter were going to make sure that Laura was not going to be arrested again or get into anymore trouble.

...

Now alone in the kitchen of Halliwell manor, Phoebe was sitting on top of the table with her legs crossed and her eyes closed. She was focusing on returning to the crime scene. Clasped in her hands was the glasses that Piper had found and taken from the crime scene.

Phoebe kept her eyes closed, compelling her power to work. She had never been able to get premonitions when she had wanted them, and these astral visions were probably going to hold a similar problem, but as long as she could activate it when she needed, that was all that mattered.

'Come on,' Phoebe muttered to herself. She gripped the glasses tighter as she thought back to what she had seen at the crime scene: The frozen policeman… the white sheet… the innocent –

Phoebe felt the shiver down her spine. Her hands loosened up, causing her to drop the glasses. She fell forward as if the table had disappeared from beneath her, except she did not fall to the ground with a thud. Instead, Phoebe opened her eyes to see herself standing firmly on the ground. She was back at the crime scene and there was her past self, staring out of the window.

'I am so glad I didn't keep my hair short,' Phoebe muttered to herself, admiring her hairstyle on the other Phoebe.

The other Phoebe must have heard her – correction, had heard her because Phoebe remembered this event occurring earlier and her own voice had been what had caused her to turn around – because she turned around to face Phoebe.

Noting the chilling side effects of her power, Phoebe warned her other self with: 'Just a warning for later, you're going to want to wear something warmer. The side effects of this power development aren't the nicest.' At the other Phoebe's confused expression, Phoebe provided a light hearted wave knowing that the other Phoebe was about to return to the land of the present – that Phoebe's present, which was now technically this Phoebe's past… Phoebe grimaced: Time travel was confusing.

As the other Phoebe faded away, Phoebe turned her sights away from the now empty spot. She did not have time to waste. She needed to figure out what was going on. Sure, it would have been more helpful to go back to when the actual attack had taken place, but she had no control over when she went back to, and was only lucky that it had worked. Besides she knew she would be going back to this particular point in time at one point that day considering she had already seen herself and now been that Phoebe… She grimaced again: Time travel was confusing.

Trying to avoid looking at the lost innocent, Phoebe eyed the room for any evidence of a fight. Had the innocent put up a fight against the demon before his untimely demise? Phoebe's gaze flittered around the room. No furniture was overturned, no picture frames were knocked over… Whatever had taken place, the innocent must have not put up too much of a fight…

Phoebe's thoughts were quelled as she heard footsteps on the stairs. Her instincts told her to look for a hiding place, and she was halfway towards ducking down behind an armchair, when she remembered that no one could see her anyway.

Into the room walked the three police officers that Piper had frozen earlier – was yet to freeze… Time travel equalled confusing! – accompanied by a fourth: Immediately recognisable as Inspector David Sanders, one of the officers that had worked on the 'Basement Blast' case at Halliwell manor. Sanders came to a halt the moment he stepped onto the floor, running a hand through his sandy hair as his eyes met with Phoebe's.

Phoebe went pale, her expression was similar to that of a deer caught in the headlights. Her heartbeat increased in trepidation. This eye contact was only brief before Sanders turned to survey the room in general.

The psychic witch's panic slowed. Why had he not said anything about her presence there? He had been looking right at her. Then she turned around and blushed. She was standing directly in front of a mirror. He must have been looking at his reflection, Phoebe thought, banishing all possibility that the officer could have noticed her to the back of her mind.

As one of the police officers began to remove some forensic equipment from a solid grey briefcase, Sanders stopped him.

'You've got to wait for the coroner before getting DNA samples from the victim. He'll be here in a few minutes,' Sanders explained.

The officer nodded. 'I know the procedure by now, Sanders. I'll do my job and you do yours… What are you even doing here?'

'Just overseeing the case,' replied Sanders, his eyes momentarily darting towards Phoebe again, before returning to that of the office he was speaking to.

The officer scowled. 'I'm pretty sure you weren't even assigned to this case.'

Sanders shrugged. 'What can I say? I'm here as extra help if you need it.'

'We don't need the extra help,' said the officer sharply.

Sanders held up his hands innocently. 'That's alright with me. I'll be going now.' His eyes wandered down to the body on the floor, widening as he spotted the wound. 'Although I'm pretty sure what the coroner's going to say about the cause of death.'

The officer rolled his eyes. 'Some sort of knife attack, yeah. We don't need you to tell us that, now go.'

Sanders let out a small laugh. 'Some sort of knife…' he repeated. His eyes briefly wandered back towards Phoebe – no, the mirror, because he could not see Phoebe like the rest of them could not see her either… – as he said that. Returning his sights to the officer, Sanders said, 'I'll be at the station. I'm interested in seeing where this case goes even if I'm not on it.'

Phoebe felt a shiver down her spine… The telltale sign that the vision was about to end… She closed her eyes –

Her legs still crossed as she sat on the table in the kitchen in the manor, Phoebe opened her eyes.

...

Sanders' eyes were locked on the phone on his desk in the police station. Deciding that his patience would hold no longer for the phone call that would tell him the results from some of the forensic tests at that crime scene, Sanders picked up his jacket and left the main precinct room to head for the forensics' lab.

...

[Astral Vision]

In Henry's office, everyone was on their feet and making their way toward the shut door. Laura stopped at the door, just as she was about to open it.

'So I can go now? There's no catch?' the parolee asked.

Henry shook his head. 'No catch. As long as you stick to everything we've set out to do today, you'll be fine.'

Laura frowned. 'I don't know if… What if I make a mistake…'

'You won't,' Paige encouraged her.

'And if you do,' Henry added. 'You have people here to help you. Me and Paige. Plus, your brother's only a phone call away if you ever need to speak to him.'

Laura nodded with a sigh and bade the two goodbye as she left the office. She shut the door behind her, leaving Paige and Henry (and Wyatt) alone.

'Should I expect to see you wandering in as the 'family friend' of my next parolee?' Henry asked as a smirk.

Paige blushed. 'You didn't buy the 'family friend' bit?'

'My parolee didn't appear to buy it either and she's part of the family that you're supposed to be a friend of,' Henry replied.

Paige shrugged. 'When she said I was her social worker, that wasn't a lie… Sort of. I used to be one – well, an assistant - but I quit just as I was about to be promoted. Recently, I've kind of realised that quitting may have been a mistake as this knack for wanting to help people is sort of in my blood…' Paige trailed off, going a little redder in the cheeks than she always was. 'Great, I'm rambling and I probably sound crazy now.' She held a hand in the air to stop Henry from interrupting. 'I don't randomly look for strangers to help… I – I – Yeah, I am starting to sound crazy, aren't I?'

Henry smiled and nodded. 'A little, but…' Henry furrowed his brow. Something in the atmosphere had changed, and Paige had noticed it too. 'Did it just get a little quieter in here?' he asked.

Paige nodded slowly. Throughout the last few hours that they had spent in the office, the background noise of the police station precinct had been alive and vibrant. Only moments ago that background noise had completely disappeared.

Henry opened the door to his office and walked out into the corridor. Paige followed him – momentarily leaving Wyatt in the office – and almost immediately dragged the parole officer back into the office, shutting the door on him. Paige turned to face the door and made a motion at the door handle. She heard a clunk that confirmed for her that she had successfully locked the door with her telekinesis.

She smirked. Who needs a key?

Paige turned away from the door – ignoring the sudden sounds of Henry attempting to open the locked door from the inside, with no success – and walked out into the main precinct area.

The room full of officers was completely still and silent, except for two individuals and their restless baby: Piper, Leo, and Chris. Piper was looking at some notes on a desk while Leo was occupied with the task of rummaging through a filing cabinet. Chris, meanwhile, was idly sitting on the floor, intrigued by his surroundings. Paige put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat.

Piper looked up and automatically flicked her wrists. Her hands went back to the desk when she recognised her sister.

'I hope that was supposed to be a freeze,' Paige said, annoyed.

Piper shook her head. 'You don't get to be the annoyed one here, missy. You didn't answer your phone.' Piper paused and picked up a sheet of paper. She smiled. 'Finally!'

'That's not the point,' Paige argued. 'Do you know how many officers could walk out of an office and stagger into this room? One almost did just now. You're lucky I stopped him.'

Piper rolled her eyes. 'I was ready to freeze anyone if that happened.' Abruptly reasserting herself into the lead Charmed One role, Piper turned to her husband, who was still skimming through a filing cabinet, to ask: 'Found it yet, honey?'

'Found what?' Paige asked, cautiously looking from one frozen officer to the next. 'What did you two come here for?'

'Three things,' Piper began. 'One: We needed to find a woman – that you would know something about if you'd have answered your damn phone – and the police have her in custody, and I just found the document that told me what room they have her in. Two: To catch you up on what's going on – because you didn't answer that damn phone of yours – and ask you to see if you can find out what the police know. And lastly, we thought that while we were here, we may as well see if there's a new Halliwell file that we should know about.'

'Now that I'm here, do you think you could catch me up then? Preferably before everyone unfreezes,' Paige requested.

Piper nodded, but before she began her brief summary, a question popped into her head. 'Where's Wyatt?'

'With Henry,' Paige said, too nonchalantly.

Leo finally closed the drawer of the filing cabinet and turned to face Paige. 'Henry?'

'A parole officer,' Paige detailed.

Leo wandered over to a desk and began rummaging amongst its papery contents, whilst the two sisters continued their talk.

'Paige, why is Wyatt with a parole officer?' Piper asked, trying to remain calm.

Leo shuffled through a heap of papers, finding beneath them a brown file with the name HALLIWELL printed on top. He opened it up and began to skim through it.

'I was so busy trying not to expose your magic to Henry that I ended up locking Wyatt in the room with him,' Paige justified.

Piper's response – whether it was positive, negative, or just plain Piper-shtick – never appeared, because her attention was won over by her husband returning to her side with the file in his hands.

'That doesn't look good,' Piper murmured before she had even gotten past the name on the cover.

'Which desk did you find that on?' Paige asked.

Leo pointed Paige over to the desk while Piper began to flick through the file. Paige jostled past the frozen police officers until she got to the desk. She saw the name plate on the desk and immediately recognised the name: Inspector D. Sanders.

'So I guess he never did forget about those curtains,' Paige mumbled.

The youngest Charmed One's mumble was not as low as she believed, because Piper replied with: 'There's a whole entry on speculative theories behind the spontaneous combustion of our living room curtains in here. This guy sure does have a lot of free time.'

Paige wandered back over to her sister and peered over her shoulder. 'Are any of his theories correct?'

'Fortunately, he doesn't seem to know anything. All of his theories are normal, non-magical presumptions… 'Loose cable, randomly sparked, set curtains alight', wow, he's really grasping at straws,' Piper said with an amused smile. The smile quickly went away though as she sighed. 'Seriously though, it looks like we've got another cop to hide from.' Piper looked imploringly at Leo as she shut the file: 'This just never ends, does it? Between demons and nosy cops, I'm never going to be able to have that normal life, am I?'

Paige cleared her throat to regain the couple's attention. 'The cops don't have to be too nosy to figure out something's going on if they unfreeze any second to see us standing here.'

Piper raised an eyebrow. 'When did you turn into the neurotic one? Besides, I'd know if they were about to unfreeze.' Piper looked around the room. An expression of worry passed over her face. 'The freeze won't last much longer. Let's find an empty office to continue this conversation in.'

The eldest Charmed One picked Chris up off the floor and led the way down a corridor, followed by Leo – who had kept hold of the file – and Paige. As they disappeared down the corridor, Henry's office door burst open. The parole officer stumbled out into the corridor as the momentum of shoving his entire weight into the door had not yet left him. With Wyatt trailing behind him, Henry wandered into the main precinct area to find the office brimming with noisy officers.

Henry scratched his head, puzzled. 'Where'd she go?'

...

Phoebe remained still on the table, having not moved from her spot in the kitchen. Her eyes were shut and her grip remained tight on the glasses –

A shiver eclipsed Phoebe as she opened her eyes. Phoebe was back at the crime scene. However, this time things were different. The innocent was nowhere to be seen. Phoebe's first instinct was that she was about to witness the murder itself. She winced at the thought of having to be a silent observer to such a thing.

Phoebe suddenly noticed that the room was very dark. It was night time. Two figures entered the apartment from the stairs. Phoebe could not see them in the darkness until they walked far enough into the room to be illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the window. Phoebe recognised both figures straight away: the innocent (who, at this moment in the past, was still alive) and the woman.

Phoebe remained still and silent. Although she knew neither would see her in her astral vision form, Phoebe remained in the shadowy corner of the room. She did not want to chance missing a word of their conversation by concentrating on moving closer instead of listening.

'It's not safe here. You should leave,' the innocent – Robert – said to the woman.

The woman shook her head. 'I don't understand what you've been so worried about. What aren't you telling me?'

...

Sanders stood in the middle of a small lab, a piece of paper in his hands. The inspector was reading the sheet as a technician in a white lab coat spoke to him.

'The results only came through a couple of minutes ago,' the technician said. 'As far as I can tell there was some unidentified substance in the victim's blood. It will take another few hours to find out what exactly that substance is. My best bet at the moment would be a poison.'

Sanders folded the piece of paper up and put it in his pocket.

'Uh, Inspector…' the lab technician started. 'You can't keep that.'

'Yes, I can,' said Sanders. 'I'm going to need you to stop running your tests.'

The technician frowned. 'You don't have the authority to do that.'

'I don't, but I do have my reasons,' Sanders said cryptically.

...

Piper, Paige, and Leo – along with Chris and the Halliwell file in his arms – left the empty office that they has used to catch Paige up on everything they knew and their general plan of action. The decision had been made that Piper and Leo would go down to the lab to check what the police had found out had not exposed any magic, while Paige would track down the woman in the room that Piper had found out she should be in.

With that plan set in motion, the group dispersed into the police station. Paige made her way down a corridor, eventually coming across the room that the woman was in. Paige opened the door, finding the woman sitting alone at a table. The woman was sobbing quietly to herself.

Shutting the door behind her, Paige sat down at the table so as she was facing the woman.

'Hi,' Paige said softly.

The woman wiped her tears away and sniffed. 'Who are you? I've already told the police everything I know.'

Paige sighed. 'I'm going to need you to tell me. My name's Paige Matthews and I believe that my sisters and I can help you more than the police can.'

The woman hesitated before giving Paige her own name: 'Becky Miles.'

'And your friend that got hurt… His name was Robert, right?' Paige asked, Piper having given her that particular name during the catch up session.

Becky let out another sob as she nodded.

...

The conversation between Becky and Robert continued to unfold in front of Phoebe at the apartment that had not yet become the crime scene that it would be.

'Becky, you really should go,' Robert reaffirmed.

'It's my apartment,' Becky argued.

'Yes, but you won't be safe here,' Robert continued. 'Stay away from your apartment for the next twenty four hours. Please?'

Becky shook her head. Tears were beginning to run down her cheeks. 'You're not going to come here and face whoever-you-think-is-after-me alone, are you?'

Robert sighed. 'It's my job.'

'Job? You're my friend! I can't let you do this!' Becky shrieked.

...

Back in the present, in the precinct's crime lab, the lab technician stood flabbergasted by the inspector's words.

'I must have misheard you, because you can't do that,' the lab technician repeated. 'You can't just halt a whole police case! A man was murdered!'

Sanders' determined expression did not waver. 'Oh I know he was murdered, but I can't let the police figure out who did it or how they did it. I can't let that trail be followed.'

The lab technician gulped, a little terrified. 'W-What are you going to do?'

...

Piper and Leo – with Chris and the file in either of their hands – made their way down a stairwell in search of that crime lab.

'I never even realised the precinct was this big,' Piper muttered.

...

Back in the past, Phoebe continued to watch the conversation between the pre-murder victim and Becky as the puzzle pieces began to slot together.

'Becky, promise me, please,' Robert pled, his expression plastered with worry.

Becky nodded. 'Okay, I promise. I won't come here tomorrow.'

'Thank you,' Robert said. He passed her a key. 'Here. This key is for a hotel room. Okay? Stay there over night. I'll call you tomorrow when it's all over.'

Becky took the key reluctantly. She then passed him her own key. 'Here's the key for my apartment, but… please, if he breaks in again, just call the police and get out.'

Robert tried to put on a brave face. 'It's just not that simple.'

'Why? Why isn't it that simple?' Becky asked. 'What don't I know?'

...

In the interview room of the San Francisco police precinct, Becky continued to tell Paige everything she did know.

'There was something that Robert never told me. We met a few months ago at a film convention. Turns out we've got quite a lot in common. We became quite good friends. I'd tell him everything. He was always good at giving me advice. The strange thing was that I never knew that much about him or his past.'

Paige nodded. 'You still trusted him despite knowing so little about him?'

'There never was a reason to not trust him,' Becky said.

Paige frowned. 'And why did you go to his apartment today?'

'It's my apartment, not his,' Becky corrected her. At Paige's puzzled explanation, Becky began to explain further: 'Over the last few weeks, some guy has been following me. I don't know who he is and have never spoken to him. One day, I returned to my apartment to find him there. I ran out of my apartment to the local bar and called the police… Robert found me minutes later – I don't know how he knew I was there. While we were waiting for the police, I told him all about finding the strange man in my apartment. The police were unable to help, because they did not find the man or any signs of breaking and entering. There was nothing to go by. Robert believed me though, and he was very concerned.'

Paige furrowed her brow. 'Teleportation…' she muttered under her breath. 'Must have been teleportation.'

Those words went unheard by Becky as she continued: 'It happened twice again. Both times I left before the strange man had the chance to speak to me. Both times I went straight to Robert to tell him. Last night Robert decided enough was enough. He would wait in my apartment today…' Becky trailed off as sobs interrupted her words.

Guessing by the outcome, Paige said: 'He went to your apartment today to confront the man if he was there? That man, whoever he was, killed him…'

Becky nodded as she continued to sob. 'I couldn't just let Robert go alone. I went back, despite him telling me to stay away all day. I went there, found the spare key, and –' Becky's tear-filled eyes met Paige's as her voice went quiet. '– I was too late.'

Paige took Becky's hand consolingly. 'We'll find the man who did it. Don't worry.'

...

Piper and Leo made their way onto the corridor that led to the crime lab. As they approached the crime lab door, Sanders exited. If he had gone to his right, he would have walked into them. However, Sanders went to his left, so his back was to the couple as he walked down the corridor and they turned into the crime lab.

'That was close,' Leo whispered to Piper. 'That was the inspector that this file –' Leo indicated the Halliwell file in his hands '– belongs to, right?'

Piper nodded whilst telling Leo to be quiet. She froze the lab technician before he had a chance to look up from his desk. She went straight over to his computer. Piper frowned when she found that the computer was completely empty of files.

The couple searched the entire lab for any samples that corresponded to the case they wanted to look at. There was nothing.

'What is going on?' Piper grumbled.

The eldest Charmed One flicked her wrists at the lab technician, unfreezing him. There was a moment of confusion at two people having spontaneously appeared in front of him, something that was quickly blamed on a lack of sleep.

Piper began asking questions. 'Where are the results for the murder that happened today?' The lab technician looked puzzled by the question, so Piper decided to specify: 'The one above that estate agents?' The lab technician still looked blank at these words.

'What are you talking about, lady?' the lab technician asked. 'Should you even be down here?' The lab technician looked from Piper to Leo to Chris. 'You know, it's dangerous to bring a kid that little into a lab?'

Annoyed at how unhelpful he had been, Piper froze the technician as she and Leo left with little Chris. They exited the lab to the left as a sign pointed them in that direction for the morgue.

'How can the lab technician not know?' Piper moaned.

'I don't know, but if the body's been brought in then that may hold some clues,' Leo said. 'If this is magical, the demon is probably trying to cover their tracks. Neither good nor evil wants to be exposed.'

'Yeah, well, it's kind of annoying when we want to use that trail to track down that particular evil being,' Piper said.

Sanders was leaving the morgue just as they got to it. He recognised Piper and Leo right away. Leo hid the Halliwell file behind his back.

'You don't have authority to be down here,' Sanders pointed out.

'Er, we got a little lost,' Piper made up.

'Shall I escort you back upstairs?' Sanders said in disbelief.

'Hang on. Just answer us one question. We saw you leave the lab just now. Was that not the lab where the forensic analysis of the murder in the property above SWA was taking place?' Piper asked abruptly.

Sanders frowned. 'What case?'

Piper scowled. 'You must know. A body should have been brought down here in the past hour.'

Sanders shook his head, puzzled. 'There's no case… Now if I could escort you upstairs.'

'What?' Piper asked. 'Yes, there is. There was a murder today!'

'There's been no murder…' Sanders said.

Piper was about to continue arguing with the inspector, but Leo stopped her.

'Let's just leave, honey,' Leo said quietly.

...

'It's really best if you leave now,' Robert said to Becky.

Phoebe did not know how long she had been witnessing this conversation for, but she did know that she had been there a while.

Becky nodded solemnly. 'Please be careful.'

Robert sighed. 'That's exactly what I was going to say to you.'

The two hugged. Becky made her way down her apartment stairs, while Robert remained still. Soon the front door was heard closing.

Still obscured by the shadows, Phoebe watched as the man took a deep breath before… he orbed out.

Phoebe's eyes widened in shock. 'What the –?' Phoebe's words came to an abrupt stop as she was taken over by a shiver and –

Phoebe found herself sitting back on the kitchen table in the manor.

...

[Astral Vision]

Piper, Paige, and Leo entered the manor with Chris. Leo took Chris straight upstairs for a nap, while Piper and Paige headed straight for the kitchen.

As they entered the kitchen, Phoebe was stumbling off the table. She walked over to her sisters and blurted out:

'Our innocent. He's a whitelighter!'

'How could he be a whitelighter? It was an athame that killed him, not an arrow,' Piper began, but Paige shook her head.

'It makes sense,' Paige said. 'From what Becky told me about him, he did seem like a whitelighter. Right the way down to her not knowing anything about magic… She must have been his charge.'

'So she was a future whitelighter?' Phoebe asked.

'Sounds like it,' Paige said supportively.

Piper looked from one sister to the other, shaking her head in disbelief.

'No, no, no. It makes no sense,' Piper exclaimed. 'An athame was used to kill him. An athame should not have killed him.'

'I saw him orb, Piper,' Phoebe stated. 'There's no doubt about it. He was a whitelighter.'

'So it's a darklighter that we're looking for,' Paige suggested.

Piper sighed, giving into her sisters' train of thought. 'So we're looking for a darklighter that uses poisonous athames?'

'Well, that's the best way to throw off anyone trying to track them down,' Phoebe said. 'The darklighter just didn't count on us figuring anything out.'

'Hang on. How did he die so quickly? I thought the poison takes a while to kill a whitelighter, arrow or no arrow,' Paige pointed out.

Piper frowned as she thought about it. 'The athame wound was directly in his heart. I'm going to take a guess that the poison works a lot faster when it's that direct,' she said regretfully. 'I just can't believe how good a job the darklighter did in covering most of their tracks. No one at the station remembers anything about the case.'

Phoebe looked surprised. 'I didn't think evil beings cleaned up so well after themselves.'

'The question is: How are we going to find this specific darklighter?' Paige presented.

Piper took the glasses that Phoebe had left on the kitchen table and held it up. 'Well, we know a darklighter was involved now. I think – with the innocent's glasses as the main connection and the right words – we can use a summoning spell to bring that specific darklighter here.'

Paige nodded. 'I'll get the Book down so as we can get started on a vanquishing potion.' The whitelighter-witch left the kitchen just as Leo was entering with the file.

Phoebe's gaze fell upon the brown file, specifically noticing the name HALLIWELL.

'Is that what I think it is?' Phoebe asked.

Leo nodded and passed the file to Phoebe. 'We found it while at the station,' he explained.

'We've all met the author of that file,' Piper said nonchalantly. 'It's our good old friend: Inspector Sanders.' Piper frowned at the end as if she had realised something.

Phoebe raised an eyebrow. 'The inspector from our faked deaths' case?'

'Yeah, that one,' said Leo, who, like Phoebe, had not noticed that Piper's thoughts were suddenly elsewhere.

'He turned up at the crime scene, by the way. It wasn't his case, but he decided to be there,' Phoebe stated.

This statement seemed to catch Piper's ear as more pieces began to fit together.

'He returned to the scene of the crime,' Piper murmured. Phoebe and Leo faced Piper, confused by her words. 'He was covering his own tracks at the station…' Piper scowled as she made eye contact with her younger sister and husband. 'That liar!'

Phoebe smiled weakly. 'Er, Piper, do you mind telling us what you're on about? We're not mind readers.'

'The darklighter… It must be Inspector Sanders…' Piper said, still a little distant as she was putting the pieces together in her mind.

'Why would he be a darklighter..?' Phoebe trailed off as she recalled the moment when he had seemed to have seen her astral vision self. She had passed that moment off as him looking in the mirror behind her, but what if… If he was a darklighter, he would be magical and technically would have been able to have seen her… 'No… He couldn't be…' Phoebe said. 'He can't be.'

'Why would a darklighter go undercover as a cop? Piper, it makes no sense,' Leo reasoned.

'Yes, it could. It could makes lots of sense,' Piper rationalised. 'He goes after future whitelighters in the general area, while using the station as a base to cover up any of his crimes if he gets the chance to kill an actual whitelighter.'

'If all of that was true, why would he have a file about us that does not blatantly cry out that we are magical?' Leo asked, pointing at the file in Phoebe's hands as he made his point.

'It's simple, Leo. He's onto us, but can't let the actual cops know that he's onto us,' Phoebe said. 'That would be exposing magic, and even the bad guys don't want that exposed.'

Leo shook his head. 'It can't be that simple.'

Paige walked into the kitchen with the Book. 'What can't be simple?'

'Let's get that potion made, a summoning spell written, then we'll find out who here is right,' Piper said, taking the Book from Paige. Piper began to get the correct potion ingredients out, but she quickly stopped and looked at Paige, asking what she had asked earlier: 'Where's Wyatt?'

Paige's eyes widened. 'Er, I'd gather that he's still with Henry…'

'Henry? Who's Henry?' Phoebe questioned. Her question went unanswered.

Piper looked annoyed, but quickly calmed herself down. 'It's okay… I don't want you to stay for the darklighter vanquish anyway. Your wings may be clipped and your powers bound, but you're still inherently half whitelighter. Go back to the station and pick up Wyatt.'

Paige frowned. 'What if you need back up, Power of Three style?'

'We shouldn't need the Power of Three,' Piper insisted.

Paige sighed. 'Fine.'

...

It did not take much longer for the sisters to have a summoning spell and a vanquishing potion ready. In that time, Leo had left to go upstairs and console a crying Chris, leaving Piper and Phoebe alone in the kitchen.

Piper held the vanquishing potion in her hand and indicated for Phoebe to start reciting her spell. Phoebe nodded and began: 'Darklighter that has recently made a kill, send them here against their will.'

'That's it?' Piper asked, a little unimpressed by the spell. 'Just a couplet?'

'Not my best spell, but it's working,' Phoebe debated as a funnel of wind appeared in the middle of the kitchen, depositing a darklighter.

Piper and Phoebe's eyes widened. Rather than throwing the potion, Piper flicked the wrist of her free hand, freezing the darklighter.

'That's not Sanders,' Phoebe declared.

'I can see that it's not him,' Piper agreed. 'Do you think we summoned the wrong darklighter?'

Phoebe shrugged. 'There's always one way of finding out. Ask the darklighter.'

Piper flicked her wrist again, unfreezing only the head of the darklighter.

'Where am I?' the darklighter growled.

'In the home of the Charmed Ones,' Phoebe answered patronisingly.

The darklighter suddenly went pale. 'I'm back in San Francisco? Already?'

'Already? So you are the darklighter that killed that whitelighter?' Phoebe asked in a bid to confirm that they had summoned the correct darklighter.

'I had the opportunity to, so I took it,' the darklighter said with a cruel smile on his face.

Realising now that her Sanders-is-a-darklighter theory had been debunked, Piper stepped forward and asked: 'Why did you use a poisoned athame? Did you run out of arrows?'

The darklighter rolled his eyes. 'Any darklighter that gets an assignment based within San Francisco knows that they're pretty much cinder ash since it's where the Charmed Ones are based. I just thought that using an athame instead of an arrow would send you off in search of a demon instead. You'd have no reason to know that he was a whitelighter.'

Piper furrowed her brow, the loose ends had not yet been tied up. 'And you covered your tracks at the station too? What did you do? Use a darklighter's version of whitelighter dust on the police?'

Now the darklighter looked puzzled. 'What are you on about, lady? I orbed as far away as possible from this place and didn't even look back as soon as that task was done. I didn't even go back to continue keeping an eye on the future whitelighter. It was enough that I'd killed the whitelighter to not have to continue the task any further.'

Piper and Phoebe exchanged confused looks before Piper threw the vanquishing potion at the partially frozen darklighter. He burst into flames.

'So… Sanders is off the hook,' Phoebe said quietly.

'Yeah…' Piper said, a little absently. 'Then who made the police forget..?'

Phoebe shrugged. 'I guess we'll just have to blame it on the Elders setting the Cleaners loose when they realised that a whitelighter had been killed.'

'I guess so,' Piper murmured.

...

Henry was sitting on the floor of his office next to Wyatt. The young whitelighter-witch was refusing to eat the healthy snacks that Henry had laid out in front of him.

'Come on, kiddo,' Henry said. 'If your auntie comes back and sees that you haven't eaten anything, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.' Henry picked up a piece of sliced kiwi and ate it. 'See, it's good and tasty.'

Wyatt hesitantly mimicked the action. He slowly picked up a piece of kiwi and stuck it in his mouth.

'It's nice, isn't it?' Henry asked with a smile as the little boy went to pick up a second piece of kiwi.

'I'm impressed,' a voice said. Henry looked up to see Paige leaning up against the doorframe of his office. 'We've been trying to get him to eat his fruit and veg for the past week,' Paige explained.

Henry stood up from the floor and walked over to Paige. 'I think you forgot someone earlier,' he said with a smile.

Paige blushed. 'Yeah. I don't think my sister will ever let me do babysitting duty again. Although, to be fair, she was the reason I left earlier and I did leave with her. So she is at as much of a fault as I am.' Wyatt got to his feet and wandered over to Paige, taking her hand. 'Thanks for looking after him.'

'No problem,' Henry said. 'Oh, and as to our conversation earlier… I don't think you're crazy. Eccentric, maybe, but definitely not crazy.'

'Thank you…' Paige said, wondering if that was the closest she was going to get to a compliment from the parole officer.

'We should keep in touch…' Henry began. 'You know. If you help me out with some other parolees, you could use me as a reference when you decide to go for social work interviews.'

Paige raised an eyebrow. 'You think I should go for social work interviews?'

'Well, you did say that you had made a mistake by quitting all those years ago. You're not exactly going to get a job though if you haven't had any recent experience in the field, which is why I meant what I said.'

Paige smiled. 'Thanks. I guess we'll keep in touch then.'

Paige made her way out of Henry's office with Wyatt trailing by her side.

...

Later that night, Phoebe lay asleep in bed. She stirred as a cold breeze blew across her room. The temperature decrease caused Phoebe to wake up. She immediately spotted a figure standing in front of her closed bedroom door.

With one hand, Phoebe grabbed for the athame that she kept hidden in her bedside drawer and with the other, she switched on her bedside lamp.

As the light illuminated the room, the intruder shielded their eyes from the light intensity. Phoebe meanwhile dropped her athame in surprise. The intruder was not a demon, but an astral version of herself. She must have been from the future, but how far?

Phoebe surveyed the astral Phoebe as astral Phoebe focused on adjusting her eyes to the glare of light. Astral Phoebe did not look more than a year older than the present Phoebe. She wore an outfit that Phoebe had never seen before – Phoebe made a mental note to herself to buy it when she next saw it in a shop; it looked good on her, despite the fact that the outfit seemed a little worn. Astral Phoebe's hair was slightly longer, if a little bedraggled. Astral Phoebe looked like she had been dragged through the Underworld backwards, and for all Phoebe knew, maybe she had.

Before Phoebe could bring herself to ask her future self what was going on, astral Phoebe finally moved her hands from her eyes and squinted at Phoebe.

'She's…' Astral Phoebe's voice was a little hoarse. 'She's… The mysterious fake assistant? Have you figured out who she is yet?'

Phoebe shook her head. She was a little too stunned to make a sound.

'She is a threat,' astral Phoebe announced. 'Have you been through the whole summoning demons to try and track her down phase yet?'

Phoebe slowly nodded.

'You can stop with that now then, because doing that won't help you find her,' astral Phoebe declared.

Phoebe narrowed her eyes and finally managed to utter some words: 'Who is she? Can I find her in the Book?'

Astral Phoebe nodded. 'Yes, you can. There's a whole entry on her. She's known as –' Astral Phoebe paused to involuntarily shiver. 'I don't have much time. I'm about to go back. Her name is –'

Astral Phoebe disappeared mid-sentence. Phoebe remained awake for the rest of the night, waiting for her future astral self to make a reappearance, but she did not.

---

Next episode: With one sister close to death and untraceable, the other two will try anything to find and save her.

---

A/N: A brief explanation of Phoebe's power development: It's the exact one that is used in the canon season eight episode nine (I refuse to write the name of that episode in case I misspell it), except for the fact that she is temporally astral projecting into the past rather than the future - Oh, and with the added bonus of consequences from using the power, because it can't be simple. Both Piper and Paige will also get upgrades to their powers during this season rewrite, to keep things level between them all.

Oh, and did I leave another loose end? This time about Sanders? Feel free to come up with theories about him. The truth behind him will be revealed in a couple of episodes/chapters time.

[Chrisaholic]

Wow, you've been busy here.
So much is going on, yet I hope that the sisters and their relatives will find what they're looking for - may it be good or bad. With Charmed you can never know.

Keep going, please.

[Astral Vision]

Grave Matthews

September 12th 2005

Paige Matthews strode out of her bedroom. Her long black hair was loose and she wore a smart sleeveless white top and, as a contrast, dark trousers. Draped over her arm was a jacket.

The youngest Charmed One stopped at the first bedroom door and knocked. When there was no reply, she continued a crusade down the corridor until she reached a door on the end. There she knocked. Once again, there was no reply.

The jacket still draped over one arm, Paige made her way downstairs, peering into the living room, parlour room, dining room, and sunroom as she passed – all of which were empty.

Paige eventually found some life in the kitchen in the form of her brother-in-law attempting to persuade little Chris to eat his lunch.

Leo Wyatt looked up from the tricky task as Paige entered the kitchen.

'Hey,' Paige said. 'Have you seen Piper or Phoebe? I need advice.'

Leo frowned. 'Phoebe's been at work all morning, and Piper left the manor with Wyatt half an hour ago to meet up with Phoebe for lunch. What advice do you need?' Before Paige could respond, Leo added: 'Aren't you supposed to be meeting up with Henry in…' Leo paused to glance at the clock. 'Ten minutes?'

Paige nodded. 'Yeah. I've already phoned him to say that I'm running a little late. We're meeting up over lunch to go over some plans for a few of his parolees.'

'Oh really? There's nothing more to it? It's just the consultancy gig that makes you keep meeting up with Henry?' Leo teased with a smile.

Paige swatted Leo. 'Yes, just the consultancy thing. It's nice to be able to help others without any magical issues surrounding their problems. I don't have to vanquish a demon or come up with ridiculous rhymes to help these people. All I have to do is go with my instinct and know-how.'

Leo's smile faded as he returned to the source of the conversation. 'So what do you need advice on? Anything I can help with?'

Paige shrugged. 'Well, I kind of wanted to ask Piper or Phoebe, but since you're the only one around…' Paige held the jacket – that had been draped over her arm – up in front of Leo. 'What do you think, Leo? This outfit… Jacket or no jacket?'

Before any reply could be made, purple and black orbs coalesced near the kitchen counter. Instinctively, Leo picked up Chris to shield him from any possible attack, while Paige dropped her jacket and got ready to fight.

In a puff of smoke, a crossbow appeared in the darklighter's hands. Paige swung her arm forwards in a telekinetic attempt to knock the crossbow to the floor. However, the weapon did not move from the darklighter's grip.

Leo placed Chris on the floor behind him, before stepping forward to join his sister-in-law.

Having concluded that the crossbow could not be removed from the darklighter's clutches, Paige had decided to telekinetically throw as many kitchen items and furniture at the darklighter as was possible. The darklighter continued to orb out of the way of each and every attack.

As the darklighter orbed back in for the final time, he pressed the trigger on the crossbow. The arrow went speeding towards Paige. Unable to redirect the arrow with her telekinesis – as like the crossbow, the arrow seemed to be immune to her powers – Paige found herself unable to avoid the attack. If she moved out of the way of the arrow, her nephew might get hit. She would never let that happen.

As the arrow grazed Paige's arm, Leo grabbed it. Due to the force that the arrow had been moving at when Leo took it, the point pierced his palm. With an anguished look on his face, the ex-whitelighter pulled the arrow out and threw it back at the darklighter.

Not expecting this response, the darklighter did not orb out of the way. Impaled by his own arrow, the darklighter went up in flames.

Paige had fallen to the floor at the shock of being scratched by an item that she had learnt to be very poisonous indeed over the years. She turned to look at her arm where a small scratch was bleeding. Bleeding… The poison had entered her system which meant she would not have long –

Her gaze travelled over to her nephew. He was fine and safe, busy staring at… Paige followed Chris' gaze to… Leo, with one hand clenched shut in pain, was offering his unhurt hand to Paige. With the aid of her brother-in-law, Paige got to her feet.

'Leo, your hand –' Paige said in fear.

Leo interrupted his ex-charge. 'I'm a mortal now. I don't think the poison will affect me. You, on the other hand, probably need healing.'

Paige frowned. She had suddenly realised that despite the dull ache of the scratch, she did not feel like she had been poisoned. She did not feel light headed, she did not feel faint, and she did not feel ill. More importantly, she felt absolutely normal.

Paige shook her head. 'No… I don't. I feel… fine. There's no point endangering Wyatt by getting Piper to bring him back to heal me… I'm sure Piper wouldn't want him anywhere near darklighter poison.' Paige paused a second and looked at her wound and smiled. 'I don't think the poison's affecting me, because my whitelighter abilities are bound. An unexpected side effect, but definitely a good one. It's just a scratch. I'll survive.'

Leo nodded in agreement. 'Okay, but you better phone if you change your mind.'

Paige agreed. She dropped down to the floor to pick up her jacket. Standing up, she again glanced at the scratch on her shoulder. She sighed: 'Jacket it is, I guess.'

...

No more than half an hour later, Piper Halliwell came wandering in through the front door with Wyatt by her side. She put her purse down on the foyer table and continued further into the house.

'Leo!' Piper called, not wanting to search the entire house for her husband. Wyatt went running ahead towards the sunroom, possibly having sensed his little brother in there.

'In the kitchen!' was Leo's reply.

Piper made her way into the kitchen, saying as she walked: 'My lunch with Phoebe was cut short as she had some sudden inspiration for an answer to one of her letters –' Piper stopped when she saw the state of the kitchen.

Items and furniture were erratically distributed all over the room. Her blender lay smashed on the floor, the toaster was partially embedded in the oven window, and a chair leg currently sat in the kitchen sink. The list of strewn objects was longer, but Piper's attention was quickly diverted by the blood soaking through a bandage on the palm of Leo's hand.

'Leo, are you okay? What happened?' Piper asked with worry. Her eyes turned to the door that led through to the sunroom. In there, Wyatt had settled down next to Chris. Both sons were playing with some toys, safely and quietly. 'Is Chris okay?'

'He's fine,' Leo assured Piper. 'It was just Paige and me that got caught in the crossfire.'

'A demon attack? A demon did this to my kitchen?' Piper scowled. 'I'm going to kill the demon that wrecked my kitchen.'

'You're a little too late for that,' Leo said.

Piper looked downhearted. 'Paige already vanquished it? That's not fair. The demon wrecked my kitchen. It was my vendetta, not hers.'

'Well, actually, Paige was the one that wrecked the kitchen,' Leo explained. He then added, sounding very pleased with himself: 'She wasn't the one to vanquish it, either. That was me.'

Piper looked surprised. 'You vanquished the demon?'

Leo smirked. 'Have I not mentioned yet that it was a darklighter, not a demon?'

Piper's eyes widened in anxiety as they darted back to his bandaged palm. Leo noticed this action and put a calming – non-injured – hand on her shoulder.

'I'm fine, remember? I'm mortal now. The poison does not affect me,' Leo reassured her. As Piper's head whirled around to the sunroom, Leo turned her back to face him again. 'Chris is fine too. Paige and I made sure of that.'

Piper's eyes were now looking directly into Leo's comforting green eyes. Piper gave her husband a quick kiss, happy that he was okay. She turned away from him, wondering where to start on tidying the kitchen.

The eldest Halliwell bent down to pick the broken blender up from the floor. Her eyes were trained on the blender as her mind went through everything she had been told about what had occurred in the kitchen. Her eyes widened in realisation as her thoughts stopped on one single point. She finished standing up and turned around to see Leo knelt down by the oven, carefully removing the toaster from it.

'Leo…' Piper uttered. Leo completed the task of detaching the toaster from the oven and got to his feet to face his wife. 'You said that both you and Paige were caught in the crossfire.' Leo nodded to confirm this, so Piper continued: 'You were hit by an arrow. Was Paige? Is she o –?'

Leo interrupted his wife. 'Yes, she was grazed by one, but the poison took no effect. We assumed that it's because her whitelighter abilities are bound –'

'Your assumption could be wrong,' Piper interjected, a look of worry on her face.

'She seemed fine when she left. Besides I already had that debate with her and made her promise to call here if she began to feel not-so-fine,' Leo quickly explained.

Piper did not look satisfied with the answer.

...

Henry Mitchell sat at a table in a quiet café. The table was cluttered with a few documents and a couple of files. He looked up from a document he had been noting something down on to see Paige approaching the table.

The parole officer offered Paige the chair next to him which she accepted as she sat down.

'Sorry I'm so late. There was… traffic,' Paige apologised. This was partially true. After she had eventually left the manor, there had been traffic on the roads between the manor and the café.

Henry smiled. 'That's okay. The café's quietened down since I got here earlier, so it will be easier to discuss these parolees.' Henry gestured to the two files on the table.

A waitress came up to the table and smiled at the two customers. 'Are you ready to order?' she asked.

'Er…' Paige said, fishing under the documents on the table for the menu. Once she had found the menu, Paige asked, 'Could you give us a few more minutes?'

The waitress smiled and nodded, pushing a strand of her long auburn hair behind her ear. 'Sure.' She walked away from the table.

Paige turned back to Henry and suddenly blushed. 'Aw crap. You wanted to order right now, didn't you?'

Henry smirked. 'It's not like I've been waiting to eat lunch for the past forty minutes or so,' he said jokingly.

Paige opened the menu and looked at the choices available. However, she found herself having to blink. The words all seemed a little blurry. She put the menu down for a second, freeing up her hands to rub her eyes.

'Are you okay, Paige?' Henry asked, noticing her actions.

'Yeah… I just had something in my eye,' Paige lied. She picked the menu up again and squinted at the words. No words were yet conceivable from the blurry mass.

The youngest Charmed One put the menu down again. This time she picked up one of the documents. The words on that were blurry too. Putting it down – and ignoring Henry's concerned questions – Paige rubbed her eyes again.

Paige closed her eyes and grabbed the menu again. Okay, if I still can't read this, I have to call home, she thought. Slowly, the witch opened her eyes. She sighed a sigh of relief as the words had become clear again.

Scanning the meal choices, her expression refreshed with a smile of relief, Paige finally said: 'I think I'll have the…'

...

'Cookies aren't a possibility anymore,' Piper sighed. She was sitting in the kitchen with Leo. So far they had managed to clear away all of the moveable broken kitchen equipment and furniture, leaving Piper staring at the broken oven.

'You were planning on baking cookies today?' Leo questioned.

Piper shook her head. 'No, but if I had been, there'd be no way it would be possible now.' Piper let out another sigh. 'I'm trying to sell the club and buy the perfect place for a restaurant. I don't have the money to spare on a new oven at the manor.'

'Piper, we don't need a new oven,' Leo said. He got to his feet and wandered over to the oven. Patting the broken oven window, Leo explained: 'All we need to do is replace the door and it will be as good as new.' Leo's hand suddenly flew to his forehead as he furrowed his brow.

Piper stood up from her seat. 'What's wrong?'

'Just a little headache,' Leo murmured, not moving his hand from his forehead. 'I'm sure it's nothing…'

Suddenly Leo lost his footing and had to take his hand away from his forehead to grab onto the counter to keep himself standing. Piper ran over to him to give him some extra support.

'This is not nothing,' Piper protested, helping Leo over to a chair. 'What if it's the poison?'

Resting his thumping head in his hands as he slumped onto a chair, Leo mumbled: 'It can't be… I'm mortal now… There's no whitelighter blood in me…'

Piper shook her head and called for her son. 'Wyatt!' Hearing the urgency in his mother's voice, the toddler orbed directly to her side. Neglecting the need to moan at her son for orbing into the kitchen when he could have walked, Piper focused on what was important. 'Please heal Daddy.'

At hearing the D word, Wyatt looked at his father. Piper picked Wyatt up and placed him on the table – something she would not approve of doing in any other situation. Wyatt reached his hand out to Leo's bandaged palm.

A warm golden glow became visible between Wyatt's palm and Leo's bandaged palm. As the healing effect took place, the redness of the blood soaked bandage began to vanish.

As Wyatt's healing power tapered out, Leo took his hands away from his face. His pained expression had turned into one of composure. He slowly unwrapped the now useless bandage and smiled thankfully at his son.

'I told you it was the poison,' Piper said matter-of-factly.

'How?' Leo asked, picking Wyatt up off the table and placing him on his lap. Leo turned to face Piper who was still standing next to them. 'I'm a mortal. It shouldn't have affected me!'

Piper shook her head. 'No… Maybe not exactly mortal…'

Leo narrowed his eyes curiously. 'What do you mean?'

'Well, you were dead before you were made a whitelighter,' Piper mused. 'Seeing as the Elders can't resurrect people that they aren't making into whitelighters…'

'So I'm still a whitelighter, but my powers were bound?' Leo sussed.

Piper shrugged. 'It's just a guess, but it makes sense.'

'So because my whitelighter abilities are bound, it means that the poison took longer to take effect on my system…' Leo assumed.

Piper went pale. 'P – P – Paige!' Piper whirled around to the kitchen counter and picked up the phone.

...

Paige wiped her forehead a little. She was beginning to feel a little light headed and her vision had gone blurry again. As well as the words on the files that she and Henry were discussing, the objects and people around her were becoming more difficult to see.

However, Paige refused to believe that it was the poison. If it was the poison, it would have acted faster. She was fine, just a little light headed from not having eaten yet. As if right on cue, the waitress returned to the table and placed a plate – in the space around the documents and files – in front of Paige and another in front of Henry.

'Thanks,' Henry said to the waitress, who, in reply, nodded and left them to get on with their meal.

Paige looked down at her meal, trying to focus her eyes on the food she had ordered. However everything had gotten a little too blurry and she felt like she might collapse any second.

Turning to where she knew Henry was sat, Paige uttered, 'Excuse me for a second.' She reached for her purse and quickly made her way – not without bumping into a few tables due to a lack of balance and an inability to clear her blurry sight – across to the café's bathroom.

Once in the bathroom, Paige placed her purse by the sink and then retrieved her phone. She could not see the buttons clearly enough to dial the number she needed for the manor. Fortunately, at that moment in time, her phone decided to ring. Paige fumbled around for the 'accept call' button.

Paige put the phone to her ear. 'Hello?' Paige asked, realising how difficult it was to talk, it took a lot of effort to produce just one word.

'Paige! Please tell me you're okay!' It was Piper's voice and she sounded worried.

Paige was now resting her elbows on the sink counter, staring into the mirror as she replied. 'I don't know… I feel… I think I –'

'You need healing? Okay, we'll be right over with Wyatt. You'll be okay. I promise,' Piper replied quickly.

Paige suddenly lost her grip on the phone, dropping it to the floor. Her vision had completely blurred by now and she could hardly see her own reflection in the mirror in front of her.

Someone walked in through the bathroom door. Paige made no reaction to their entrance and hoped they would disappear into a cubicle or leave rather than remain in the sink area. Paige's energy was currently rooted in trying to keep herself standing. She did not want to have to start explaining to a mortal that she did not need to go to a hospital.

Whoever had entered the bathroom was now standing directly next to Paige. 'Are you alright?' the person asked, and Paige recognised their voice immediately: the waitress.

'I will be…' Paige managed to say.

'Are you sure? You don't look well at all,' the waitress asked, placing a hand on Paige's shoulder.

Paige tried to stop herself from trembling. 'I know… I – I forgot some medication at home… My sister's on her way with it…' Paige fibbed. Her voice was extremely quiet, but the waitress appeared to have heard her.

'Are you sure about that?' the waitress asked. Her tone had suddenly become menacing and her grip on the Charmed One's shoulder tightened.

Paige slowly managed to turn her head to face the waitress. 'Yes,' Paige said, her instincts starting to tell her that something was wrong about the woman.

Despite her blurred vision, Paige could not help but catch the orange flare that consumed the waitress and then herself in turn… The waitress flamed out of the bathroom with Paige in tow.

...

The two adults and two children that made up the Halliwell-Wyatt family wandered into the café, after having had Wyatt orb them to a quiet street corner nearby.

Leo held Chris in his arms and Piper held onto Wyatt's hand tightly as they peered around the café for Paige. They could not see her anywhere.

'Any idea what Henry looks like? Maybe he could tell us where she went?' Leo suggested.

Piper shook her head, concern etched all over her face. 'I'll check the women's bathroom for her,' Piper said and immediately began to sprint in that direction, dragging Wyatt along with her. Leo with Chris, meanwhile, continued to look around the café for any sign of the youngest Charmed One.

Piper burst into the bathroom. 'Paige!' she called. There was no answer. Then she noticed Paige's purse on the sink counter and Paige's phone on the floor. 'Paige?' Piper repeated this time as a question. 'Where are you, Paige?'

...

Not long after, back at the manor, Piper was kneeling down next to Wyatt, pleading with him: 'Please honey, tell me you can sense Auntie Paige…' Wyatt shook his head sadly.

Phoebe Halliwell, who had quickly returned home after a phone call from Piper, was dangling a scrying crystal over a map. Her expression was one of distress.

'I can't get a lock on Paige! She can't have gone that far!' Phoebe's words were filled with worry.

Piper stood up and wandered over to Phoebe. 'We'll find her. We have to. She's our sister.'

Leo walked into the room with a globe. 'I found this in the attic,' he said, placing it on top of the paper map. 'Try scrying with this.'

Phoebe grimaced. 'There's no way she could have left San Francisco… How could she leave San Francisco?'

'I really don't want to have to answer that,' Piper said gravely. 'Just scry with the globe.'

Phoebe stopped the questions, nodded, and began to move the scrying crystal over the globe. Piper turned to face Leo.

'Why can't Wyatt sense her?' Piper asked. 'Please don't tell me it's because she's somehow in the Underworld.'

Leo shook his head. 'Hopefully that's not the reason.'

'Then what could the reason be?' Piper asked, ignoring Phoebe putting the scrying crystal down and running out of the room.

Leo sighed. 'When a whitelighter has been affected by a darklighter's poison, the Elders and other whitelighters cannot sense the location of the injured whitelighter. That's why each time I've been hit by an arrow in the past, neither a whitelighter nor an Elder has ever come to heal me.'

Piper raised an eyebrow. 'You mean it wasn't because they're just selfish and don't care whether or not you die?'

Phoebe wandered back into the room with the Book of Shadows opened to a specific page. Placing it on a spare table, Phoebe left the room again.

Piper gulped, not paying any attention to Phoebe's actions. 'That's why Wyatt cannot sense her?'

Leo nodded. 'Most likely.'

'Is that also why we cannot scry for her?' Piper asked.

Leo sighed. 'No… The poison wouldn't block the ability to scry for a witch. Some other sort of magic must be blocking her location.'

Phoebe returned again. This time she had a silver mortar, some herbs, and a knife in her hands. She placed them on the table by the Book. Kneeling down by the table, Phoebe began to add the ingredients to the mortar one by one.

Piper and Leo approached the table. Piper peered at the entry in the Book and nodded. 'That should work,' Piper said hopefully.

Phoebe agreed. 'It will. We'll find her and then we'll get her healed.'

The psychic witch finished adding the ingredients and then picked up the knife. She pricked her finger, allowing the blood to drop into the mortar. She offered the knife to Piper, who took it without hesitation. Piper made the same action with the knife and let her blood fall into the mortar.

The eldest sister sat down next to the younger sister and they began to read the spell from the 'To Find a Lost Witch' entry – that is, the version that was modified for finding a lost sister.

Once the recitation was finished, both sisters looked expectantly around the room for any sign of their sister. There was none.

Piper and Phoebe exchanged fearful looks.

'What do we try next?' the younger of the two Halliwell sisters voiced.

...

Paige opened her eyes. Wherever she was, she was outdoors. She knew that for sure as she could feel the cold breeze on her face. She was lying on the ground, wherever she was. She could feel the grass beneath her and see the glare of the sun in the pale blue sky above her.

The youngest Charmed One was so weak by now that she could not move. Her breathing was slow and her heartbeat seemed faint. She did not know how long she had left.

A shadow was suddenly cast over the Charmed One as the waitress walked over to her.

'You're still alive then?' the waitress asked. 'I am surprised the darklighter poison is taking so long, but I can wait. The death of a Charmed One cannot be rushed.'

...

[Astral Vision]

The two eldest Charmed Ones had retreated to the attic with the Book of Shadows. Piper was pacing the room while Phoebe was flicking through the Book.

'There must be something we can do,' Phoebe said as she continued to look for any solution. 'Even if some powerful demon has cloaked her from us, we should still be able to find her, shouldn't we? How did we find Prue when that dark priestess married her to that warlock?'

Piper shook her head and did not stop pacing. 'We were evil, remember? We used dark magic – well, blinking actually – to get to Prue.'

Phoebe sighed. 'If dark magic is the only way to find Paige…'

'We're not consulting a demon for help. We've had enough of that over the past seven years to know it's not a good idea,' Piper said, finally stopping by the podium. 'Have you had any premonitions yet?'

Phoebe shook her head, annoyed at herself. 'Nope! Not normal or astral! Why can't I use my own damn power to find my lost sister?'

'Find… Lost… Phoebe, maybe that's it! The Lost and Found spell!' Piper exclaimed.

Phoebe suddenly smiled at the possibility, but the smile quickly vanished. 'She was our long-lost sister the last time that we cast that spell… That spell got so big that we were finding lost souls, but not Paige. She did not turn up on our doorstep that day. So if a Paige with no magic in her life isn't affected by that spell, then I doubt a Paige who is currently being hidden from us by dark magic will be affected by it either.'

Piper let out a sigh and slammed the Book of Shadows shut. 'This is hopeless. We just need some sort of sign to lead us to her!'

Phoebe's eyes widened. 'A sign! Piper, that spell should work!'

Piper looked confused. 'What spell?'

'Do you remember the spell I used to help you choose between Leo and Dan?' Phoebe asked. 'Remember how it ended up…'

'Helping us find Prue instead!' Piper finished for her. 'Do you still have a copy of the spell?'

Phoebe nodded and the two sisters ran out of the attic, Phoebe leading the way.

...

Around five minutes later, both Piper and Phoebe were sitting on Phoebe's bed. An old shoe box packed full with scraps of paper was placed open on Phoebe's lap. In Phoebe's hands was the Signs spell. Both sisters were reading over the spell.

'We're going to need to edit that a little,' Piper said.

Phoebe thought about it for a few seconds, her eyes trained on the words of the spell. She reached into the box for a pencil and then began to scribble some words out and replace them with others. 'How about we switch that word with this one and we'll sub a few of these and switch them all around… And we'll add some words here and here.' She grimaced. 'It doesn't quite rhyme anymore.'

'Safe and place are a close enough rhyme,' Piper reasoned. 'It will do.'

Once it was all written and the sisters were in agreement, they wasted no time in reciting the altered spell: 'I beseech all powers above, send a sign to ensure our sister is safe, one that will lead us to her place.'

The two Halliwells looked up from the piece of paper to see some paper lying on the floor by Phoebe's open bedroom door. Phoebe put the piece of paper down on her bed and moved the old shoe box next to it, while Piper went over to inspect the paper on the floor.

Piper picked it up and frowned. 'It's a blank page from the Book of Shadows.'

Phoebe was about to reply, but then she noticed something out in the corridor and wandered past Piper. The eldest Halliwell followed her younger sister into the corridor. Phoebe was picking up another blank Book of Shadows page. There appeared to be a trail of them leading the sisters to the attic staircase.

'Do you think it's the spell?' Piper asked.

Phoebe shrugged. 'I guess so. To the attic?'

'To the attic,' Piper affirmed.

The sisters followed the blank pages up the attic steps and then all the way over to the podium on which the Book now sat open.

'I swear I closed that,' Piper pointed out as they approached it.

Phoebe smiled when she saw the page that the Book was open to. 'If we can't figure out her location, we can at least enter her mind and ask her subconscious where she is!'

Piper glanced at the Mind Link spell, a little unsure about Phoebe's confidence in it. However, the Signs spell had led them right to it, so Piper nodded.

'Okay. Let's get going,' Phoebe said, finding some candles and setting them out in a circle, while Piper scribbled the spell down on a piece of scrap paper.

Within minutes, both sisters were stood inside the circle and reading the spell: 'Life to life and mind to mind, our spirits now will intertwine. We meld our souls and journey to the one whose thoughts we wish we knew.'

As soon as the spell had been spoken, both sisters dropped to the floor, unconscious. As the sound of them hitting the floor had travelled to the floor below, Leo came running into the attic, worry on his face.

Noticing his wife and sister-in-law on the floor and lifeless, Leo was initially weary of a demon attack. However, observing the circle of candles and the scrap of paper containing a spell, Leo quickly realised what had happened.

The ex-whitelighter left the attic to return to the task of keeping an eye on his sons.

...

Piper and Phoebe appeared in a grassy place. The lowering sun glared down from above them in the pale blue sky. Before the sisters had much more of a chance to peer at their surroundings, some unknown force blasted them backwards. Reassessing their surroundings, they found themselves in…

'P3?' Piper questioned.

Sure enough, Piper and Phoebe were standing in the midst of P3. The club was relatively quiet and calm, but it was definitely open as a few customers were milling about. Music was playing from speakers rather than a live band. Most noticeable of all, daylight was pouring in from high-up ground level windows of the underground club.

'Why are we at P3? Why is it even open at this time of day? I haven't opened P3 during the daytime for years, because it was always too quiet and wasted money rather than added to the profit,' Piper rambled.

'I don't know, but shouldn't the question be: Where's Paige?' Phoebe replied. 'If she's conscious, she would be thinking about wherever she is, wouldn't she?'

'So you're saying that a demon decided to take our fatally injured sister to my club?' Piper asked sarcastically.

Phoebe shook her head. 'Grass… A split second before we appeared here and just after we left the manor, I saw grass.'

Piper nodded in agreement. 'And the sky… Wherever Paige is, maybe the demon did not want us to know, so they tampered with the effects of our spell,' Piper put forward.

'So we should get out of here then, because we're obviously not supposed to be here. We'll undo the spell and find another way,' Phoebe said and Piper agreed.

However, just as the sisters were about to begin reciting the reversal, they heard a familiar voice.

'Why did you say we're here?'

Piper and Phoebe edged past a couple of people – who were apparently unable to see the two Halliwells – and found the owner of the voice sitting at a table. The table was situated very close to the P3 staircase. The voice belonged to Paige and she was speaking to Glen. Except, this Paige looked around four or five years younger. Her raven coloured hair was much flatter and straighter than the way she had it these days. Similarly, Glen looked younger than the last time either Piper or Phoebe had seen him and no wedding ring was visible on his left hand.

'You know you said that you haven't opened the club this early in the day for years?' Phoebe murmured to Piper as they approached the table.

'Please don't tell me we've time travelled,' Piper said.

'No, not exactly. I think we were knocked out of her direct subconscious into her memories,' Phoebe sussed.

Piper and Phoebe were standing right by the table now. Predictably, neither Paige nor Glen took any notice of the two Halliwells and continued their conversation.

'I told you. I thought this place would be great for a going away party,' Glen replied, a smirk on his face.

Paige rolled her eyes. 'This club is terrible though. The music sucks and so does the interior design. It's trying to be cool, but it just isn't.'

Glen let out a laugh at his best friend's remark. Piper, meanwhile, scowled at her youngest sister's remark.

Amused, Phoebe said, 'I guess this memory is from before she found out that she was related to the club owner.'

'Well, us being in her memories isn't going to save her, so let's just say that spell and get out of here,' Piper said. 'That way we can find her, save her, and then I can yell at her for destroying my kitchen and knocking my club.'

Phoebe smirked, but rather than replying, she took Piper's hand and began to recite the return spell. After the spell had been cast, however, nothing happened. Piper and Phoebe were still standing in front of Paige and Glen's table, witnessing the friends' discussion.

Smirking, Glen said, 'Well, this club's not going to be as good during the day as it is during the evening. Besides, if you hate this club so much, what made you agree to come here?'

Paige picked up the bottle of water that was on the table in front of her and took a sip from it before answering. 'Since someone's disappearing off on another round the world trip tonight, I couldn't say no to hanging out with him this lunchtime, could I?'

'You could always come with me, Noogie,' Glen offered before picking up his bottle of beer to take a mouthful.

Paige smiled regretfully. 'We're going have this debate every time you are about to leave for one of your excursions, aren't we?'

Glen placed his bottle back on the table and nodded. 'Only because you really should come. Ditch your nine to five lifestyle and explore the world with me! You know as well as I do that it's only your job that keeps you here.'

Paige shook her head. 'No. You're wrong. I keep in regular contact with my aunt and my uncle.'

'You could contact them from anywhere, Paige! You can quit your job and travel the world with me!' Glen reasoned.

Paige sighed, casting her eyes down at her bottle of water. 'I can't… Not this time… It's all a little short notice… Ask me again next time you're back in San Francisco and about to leave again.'

Glen grinned. 'I'll hold you to your word.' Glen stood up. 'I'll be back in a minute. I just need to use the little boy's room.'

Paige nodded and watched as Glen walked off towards the bathroom. Since Glen had vacated the seat, Phoebe decided to sit down on it. Paige suddenly looked very bored and lacking anything to do as she remained in her seat, completely unaware of her yet-to-be-reunited-with sisters being in her vicinity.

Piper looked at Phoebe questionably. 'You can sit on the chair?'

Phoebe nodded. 'Seems like it.' She then grabbed both ends of her seat and tried to rock the chair a little. It did not budge. 'Either someone glued one of your chairs to the floor all those years back or we can't affect anything in this memory.'

Piper nodded in understanding, but her understanding expression was quickly replaced by a glare. 'The chair's not important! We should not still be here! Why didn't the spell work?'

Phoebe looked up at Piper. 'Maybe the spell not working was a sign? Maybe we're supposed to stay here?'

Piper frowned. 'Paige is depending on us to save her, Phoebe. I don't understand how staying in her memories is going to help us do that.'

Piper and Phoebe were suddenly distracted when a man – who they thought looked very familiar – came down the stairs and stopped at the table. He looked straight at Paige.

'Excuse me,' the man uttered.

Paige looked up at the man. There was no sign of recognition on her face. She had never met this man before.

'Yes?' said Paige.

'Hi. I… er…' the man seemed a little self-conscious of what he was saying as he continued 'I spoke to your sister here last night.'

Paige looked extremely puzzled. 'My sister?'

'Yes. I'm not too sure which of your two sisters it was. She did mention her name, but I'm afraid her name's slipped my mind,' the man continued, thinking that Paige's questioning tone had originated from the desire to know which sister he was on about.

Paige's puzzled expression had only grown. 'Two sisters?' She paused for a moment, reasserting herself before she resumed. 'Look, I think you've got the wrong person, because I don't –'

The man interrupted her. 'Your sister started to say something very similar yesterday, but I am sure I have found the right people.'

Paige shook her head in utter confusion. Piper was standing right next to the very familiar man and she was still trying to figure out where she had seen him before. Phoebe, meanwhile, was more intrigued by where the conversation was going.

'I doubt you've found the right people,' Paige began, standing up from her chair. 'I don't have any sisters.'

The man was about to argue again, but Paige's last few words made him turn bright red with embarrassment. 'You don't have any sisters? Are you sure? You look so much like the woman I spoke to yesterday.'

Paige nodded. 'As far as I've ever known or cared, I'm an only child,' she stated.

'I am so sorry,' the man hurriedly apologised. 'I'll just be on my way.'

Piper's eyes widened as she suddenly realised who the man was. 'It's him,' she muttered. 'The ice cream man.'

'The ice cream man?' Phoebe repeated questionably and then it clicked. 'The new ice cream man!'

As the ice cream man walked away from Paige's table, his eyes wandered over to the bar. Suddenly he began to approach the bar at a brisk pace as if he had just found the people he had been searching for. Piper and Phoebe looked over in the direction that he had ran in: The bar area.

Behind the bar, clearly visible all the way from the other side of the club, was Memory Piper – the Piper of five years earlier – who was busy chatting to two people sitting at the bar. Both of the people who she was talking to had their backs to Piper and Phoebe, so the two sisters could not see their faces, but they realised who they were straight away. Who else would Memory Piper be chatting to so casually at P3 other than Prue and Memory Phoebe?

Neither face could be seen, only the long raven coloured hair of Prue and the back-then fuzzy blonde hair of Memory Phoebe. Piper did not realise that she was following the ice cream man towards the bar until she had already started. It had been too long since she had last seen her eldest sister as a three-dimensional person and not just as a two dimensional person in a picture frame. Even if Prue could not see or hear Piper, she did not care. She had to see her sister.

The ice cream man had already gotten to the bar and was already having a conversation with Memory Piper and the other two. Piper was almost at the bar – if she was going to get an actual view of her eldest sister, she would have to join her memory self on the other side of the bar – when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Piper came to a stop and turned to see Phoebe by her side.

'We're here for Paige, not to see Prue,' Phoebe reminded her.

Piper took one last glance at the long raven black hair that belonged to her then-alive-now-deceased older sister before turning back around to peer at her then-clueless-to-her-heritage-now-lost-and-close-to-death youngest sister – whose hair colour was so similar to that of the eldest – sitting now in deep discussion with her best friend who had returned to their table moments earlier.

Words were not needed for Phoebe to know that Piper knew she was right. All those years ago, they had been unable to save Prue, but it was not too late to save Paige. They just had to focus and follow the signs that would lead them to Paige.

Suddenly both Piper and Phoebe were engulfed by a blinding white light and the scene of P3 around them dissipated.

...

[Astral Vision]

The blinding white light cleared. Piper had to blink a few times before her new surroundings came into focus. She and Phoebe were standing in the middle of a busy office. It was not just any office, it was an office that neither Piper nor Phoebe had entered more than twice in their lives: It was South Bay Social Services, Paige's old workplace before she quit to focus on magic.

'Either this is where the demon took her or it's another memory,' Piper sighed.

'Obviously this memory is from when Paige was still working here,' Phoebe pondered. 'I wonder whether it's before or after she met us.'

'There's only one way to figure it out. She's sitting at her desk right over there,' Piper declared, making her way over to her youngest sister's desk.

Paige was sitting at her desk, typing away at her computer. She did not look more than a month older than in the previous memory.

'I don't see why the Signs spell would specifically pick this memory or the one before it for us to see. It's not helping Paige,' Piper said to Phoebe. 'I swear this is just a spell-gone-awry because of the demon's cloaking spell on Paige.'

'You know as well as I do that magic works in mysterious ways, Piper,' was Phoebe's best explanation at that moment in time.

Out of nowhere, two voices began to echo throughout the room, but no one – not even Paige – took any notice as that occurred: 'Guiding spirits I ask your charity, lend me your focus and clarity, lead me to the one I cannot find, restore that and my piece of mind.'

Piper and Phoebe exchanged surprised glances. The echoing voices had belonged to them.

'Okay, this is just a hunch, but I'm going to gather that the Lost and Found spell did actually reach Paige all those years ago,' Phoebe voiced.

'If this is her memory and she never originally heard it, then why did we hear it just now?' Piper pointed out the flaw, scepticism filling her tone.

'It must be part of the Signs spell to point this all out to us?' Phoebe suggested with a shrug, not giving up on the theory that the Signs spell was directing them through their sister's memories.

Both sisters turned their attention back to their youngest sister. Nothing seemed to have changed in their youngest sister's behaviour. She still sat at her desk, continuing with her work as if the spell had had no influence at all.

With a folder in her hands, a work colleague of Paige's – who neither Piper nor Phoebe had seen before – approached the desk. She stopped at the desk and waited for Paige to turn in her seat to face her.

'You'll never guess what I just found,' the work colleague began, holding the folder up.

'What is it, Lila?' Paige asked, unable to read the name on the folder as Lila's hand was covering it up.

Still not letting Paige see the folder properly, Lila began to explain how she came across it: 'So I was searching through the archives to find a case that would make a good comparison to the case I am working on at the moment… I had gotten halfway through the alphabet to M… Guess who I found a file on in there?'

Paige suddenly went a little paler than usual. 'That's my file?' she uttered.

At Paige's reaction to the news, Lila's smile faded as she nodded and handed Paige the folder. 'Don't worry. I haven't opened the folder to read anything in it.'

Piper and Phoebe watched as their little sister eyed the folder. Her name was printed on the top in block capitals: 'MATTHEWS, PAIGE'. Paige turned it around in her hands, looking from the front cover to the back cover and back to the front, all to avoid opening it and seeing the contents.

'I'm sorry,' Lila broke the silence that had taken hold of the conversation. 'I shouldn't have brought the folder up here. I should have just stayed quiet about finding it. It's just… I was wondering why you were on file… It's okay though… I understand that it's personal and you don't have to tell me.'

Paige shook her head and feigned a smile at her work colleague. 'You don't need to apologise. I just… I tend to like to keep my work life separate to my personal life, or more than that, separate to my past…'

While Lila began to apologise some more to Paige for bringing it up, Phoebe made her own comment on the discussion to Piper: 'Do you remember when we found out about how her parent's died? Do you remember how she refused to talk about it and then when we confronted her at work, she told us to go back to the manor and then she'd talk?'

Piper nodded to show Phoebe she had been listening, but her eyes were glued on her other sister. After one final apology, Lila had left Paige alone at her desk with the folder. Paige had turned back to her computer to continue working in an attempt to ignore the folder, but she kept glancing back at it. Eventually, Paige found the courage to open it to the front page. Both of her older sisters peered over her shoulders in order to read what she was reading.

The contents were relatively straight forward. Social services had never properly been involved in Paige's original adoption by the Matthews family as that had occurred via the church. This particular folder was all about social services' opinion on the suitability of Paige's aunt and uncle becoming her full time guardians after her parents' deaths as she was still only a minor at the time.

Paige decided against looking any further into the folder. It would only consist of documents about her, nothing of any particular interest. She closed the folder and stared at her name on the cover for a few seconds.

'I wish we knew what she was thinking right now,' Piper said softly.

Suddenly the soon-to-be Charmed One stood up from her desk. She dumped the folder in her bag and headed out of the office door. Piper and Phoebe quickly dissolved along with the scene. This time there was no blinding white light to engulf them as they switched to a new scene, suggesting it was occurring within the same memory.

The two sisters evaluated their new surroundings. Once again, it was a building they had not visited since the first few months of having Paige in their lives: the apartment that their sister had always referred to as her 'loft'. The sun outside was setting, suggesting that several hours had passed for Paige since the previous scene.

A lamp was the only thing illuminating the room as Paige removed a dusty box from beneath her bed. Sitting on the wooden floor, Paige blew the dust from the top of the box before opening it.

Piper and Phoebe sat down either side of Paige on the wooden floor as she began to pull objects out of the box, throwing them onto the floor haphazardly in search of something deeper down. Paige suddenly came across an old diary which she opened to a particular page.

Phoebe leant closer to Paige to strain her eyes on reading the 1994 entry in the little light the lamp provided, and began to read aloud for Piper's benefit:

'Dear Diary,

It's been over a week since it happened. I still don't know how to feel or what to do. I'm not even too clear on what happened that day. All I know is that it was my fault. I am going to change and it's not just an excuse this time.

Then there's the other thing… When my parents told me I was adopted, I did react badly at first – but then again, I never really was the perfect golden child, was I? Unfortunately, the terrible rebellious teenager that I was is how I'll always be to them now that they'll never see what I can do to change (because I will change this time! This time I mean it). Anyway, when I first found out that I was adopted, I never had any interest in finding out who my birth parents were. What was the point? They obviously hadn't wanted me.

Over the last few days, it's suddenly struck me that I actually want some answers, so I've been looking for my birth mother. I've frequented the police station a lot over the last few days (and years, actually, but that's for a different reason) due to having to give statements as I was (somehow) the only survivor in the crash.

Anyway, at the station, they were able to tell me what church I was dumped at all the way back in 1977. Maybe my birth mother lives nearby… I don't know… The policeman, who was helping me search this stuff up, got a list of families in the local area. The most likely person appeared to be someone called Patty Halliwell. However on looking her up on the system, the policeman found out that Ms. Halliwell had died in 1978. He said that her death did not necessarily contradict the possibility that I was her daughter, but in my opinion it does. I mean… Maybe it's just the fact that right now I cannot stomach the idea that every parental figure in my life is gone. If I can just keep believing that my birth mother is still out there and alive –'

Paige shut the diary before Phoebe was able to finish reading the entry, but she had read enough. Piper and Phoebe exchanged disheartened looks at the idea of how their little sister must have been feeling back in 1994 and right now, six years later, after having reread such a thing. Piper gave her little sister a hug that she knew Paige would not be aware of.

Piper released Paige as the youngest sister leant forward to grab a Yellow Pages directory from across the floor. It was a very old yellow pages from the seventies. It looked a little tattered, but in good condition. Piper wondered how long Paige had been putting off contacting her potential birth family as she must have gone to great lengths to find such an old phonebook.

Sitting back down between her two sisters – obviously still unaware of their presence – Paige opened the directory and began to flip through the 'A – Z's, coming to a stop at 'H'.

With her finger, Paige skimmed down the list of surnames that began with that letter until she reached the list of many Halliwells that inhabited San Francisco. She continued down the list to 'P. Halliwell'. Fortunately, there was only one listed and a phone number right next to it.

Paige brought her phone and its cradle down onto the floor and began to dial the number.

Piper's eyes were wide. 'Paige phoned us that day? We've spoken to her before?'

'I – I don't know,' Phoebe replied, just as stunned by the outcome.

As she felt a little anxious, Paige put the phone on speaker mode so as she could free up her hands and brush them through her hair nervously. The dial tone was loud and went on for a while before the answering machine picked up:

'Hi. You've reached the Halliwells,' the answering machine began in Phoebe's voice. 'If you're calling for Prue, Piper, or me – Phoebe! – you've come to the right place! Don't worry, the message will get passed on to the correct sister! Just leave a message after the beep –' Instead of a beep, a notice that the answering machine was full and therefore unable to save anymore messages came up. Therefore, Paige hung up.

Piper glared at Phoebe. 'I can't believe we ever left you in charge of sorting out the answering machine message. No wonder Prue decided to change it a few weeks later.'

Phoebe blushed.

Paige suddenly began speaking to herself, probably trying to give herself the courage that she needed to ring again in case someone actually answered the phone. 'If the Halliwells are still living there and Patty Halliwell is dead, then maybe that makes those her other daughters…' Paige's eyes widened. 'Which would make them my sisters? No… Wait, maybe… Piper?'

Automatically from hearing her name, Piper replied with a 'Yes?'

However, Paige reached over to pick up an up-to-date copy of the Yellow Pages. Rather than flicking through to the personal pages like before, she remained in the business section. She stopped when she saw the P3 advertisement – at the bottom of which was written: 'Owner and Proprietor: Piper Halliwell. To contact, please phone…' The contact information was not important to Paige, what was important was the name.

'Piper Halliwell,' she muttered.

Phoebe smirked. 'I'm going to guess that this is the moment that she changes her mind about your club, Piper.'

Paige put the directory back down and was about to redial the number for Halliwell manor when one voice echoed throughout the room – Phoebe's voice:

'I return what I didn't want to find. Let it be out of sight, out of mind.'

As the last of those words resonated throughout the loft, Paige's hand retracted from the phone. 'No, this is silly,' Paige said to herself. 'Their Mum isn't whoever my Mum is… That's just silly. I can't just phone them and suggest that I could be their long lost sister. What proof do I have? I'm not even sure myself that I am.'

Piper and Phoebe were engulfed by a blinding white light and they were no longer in the loft.

...

Phoebe looked absolutely devastated. 'I didn't not 'want to find' Paige, I just didn't know that she existed.'

Piper sighed. 'I know you didn't, Pheebs. How could you know?'

At the sound of a doorbell ringing, Piper and Phoebe suddenly realised that they were in a new memory. The two sisters looked around. They were in the front hall of Halliwell manor. Daylight was pouring in through the colourful glass panes of the front doors, except for where a shadow was cast from the person waiting to enter the house.

Paige came running down the staircase towards the door. Her dark hair was in bunches and she was wearing a strappy top with jogging bottoms – an outfit that suggested she was not expecting to leave the house that day.

'So we at least know that this is after she met us and after we convinced her to move in,' Phoebe sussed and Piper agreed.

Paige opened the front door to reveal none other than Victor Bennett at the front door.

'Hi,' Victor said, a little confused at not being greeted by Piper, Phoebe, or Leo – or even on the off chance, Cole – but by a complete stranger. As if to back up this confusion, Victor did a double take and asked, 'I'm pretty sure I came to the door of the right house. This is definitely Halliwell manor.'

Paige nodded and made the assumption: 'Oh! You must be the electrician! Piper told me that she had called one.'

Victor raised an eyebrow. 'The electrician? Where is Piper, by the way?'

'Yeah. A few days ago, there were multiple issues with circuits shorting out. We managed to sort out the – er – cause of the fault, but now a lot of wiring needs to be redone,' Paige explained as Victor entered the house and shut the door behind himself. 'Oh and Piper is at work, which is why I was left to do this task.'

'I think you're a little confused. I'm not the electrician,' Victor said, following Paige into the living room. Then he added, 'And Phoebe? Is she not in either?'

Paige suddenly went still. 'You're not an electrician? And I never mentioned Phoebe… How do you know about Phoebe?' Paige eyed a nearby lamp. She flexed her hand, ready to redirect the lamp the moment she called for it if the man turned out to be a demon. Her eyes returned to Victor. 'Who are you?'

'Do you mind if you answer that question first? I mean, I know I haven't spoken to my daughters since the funeral, but I didn't realise they had gotten a lodger in,' Victor said.

'Y – Your daughters?' Paige stuttered, suddenly changing her demeanour. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Halliwell. I didn't realise. Piper and Phoebe didn't tell me they were expecting you.'

'It's Bennett. Halliwell was their mother's surname,' he corrected her. 'They wouldn't have been expecting me. After their sister's funeral, I've been a little distant, burying myself in my work. I had to find some time to grieve for the loss of my eldest.'

Paige nodded in understanding. 'I see. Well, it's nice to meet you, I guess,' Paige said, a little unsure how to introduce herself. 'I'm –'

'Daddy!' Paige and Victor turned back towards the front door which had just opened to reveal Memory Phoebe. Her hair was extremely long and a shade of light brown. She ran over to Victor and gave him a hug. 'I knew it was your car that I saw outside. Where have you been these past couple of months?'

As the hug finished, Victor replied, 'Burying myself in work. I am so sorry that I haven't been here for you and Piper as much as I should have been.'

'That's okay. We've been coping. Piper has Leo, I have Cole, and now we also have…' Memory Phoebe finished her sentence by turning to smile at Paige. Victor followed her gaze.

'Speaking of which, Phoebe, are you sure it's a good idea to get a lodger in? Especially with all the – er – unexpected visitors you get around here,' Victor began, ushering Memory Phoebe to just inside the parlour room and lowering his voice. However, Paige's insecure expression and body language both suggested that she could still hear their conversation. 'If you and Piper were having problems keeping up with the bills for the manor without Prue's income, you should have told me and I would have helped you out.'

Memory Phoebe shook her head. 'Oh, she knows about magic, Dad. She's a witch too. Also she's not a lodger. She lives here.'

Victor sighed. 'Phoebe, that's what a lodger is. They pay rent to live –'

'No,' Memory Phoebe interrupted with a smile on her face. 'Paige does not pay rent. Piper and I asked her to live here.' Memory Phoebe dragged her father back into the front hall to introduce him properly to her sister. 'Dad, this is Paige Matthews. She's –'

'A witch too. I know, you've already said that,' Victor interjected. He held out his hand to shake Paige's. Then he turned back to Memory Phoebe and asked, 'So I guess you decided that without the Power of Three, you needed an extra witch around to help you out?'

Memory Phoebe blushed. 'Not exactly. You see… We do have the Power of Three…'

Victor looked surprised. 'Okay, I know I'm not that involved in the magical side of your lives, but I swear I remember you explaining to me once that the Power of Three only exists between you and your sisters.'

Memory Phoebe nodded a little sheepishly. 'It does and we still have it – even without Prue.' Memory Phoebe looked a little upset at having to voice her response in such a way and Paige was continuing to look increasingly uncomfortable throughout the conversation.

Victor shook his head doubtfully. 'How?'

Memory Phoebe took Paige's hand as she said, 'Dad, Paige is… She's my sister.'

Whatever Victor had been expecting, it was definitely not this answer. He was stunned. 'Y – Y – Your sister?'

'Yes,' Memory Phoebe confirmed. 'She's my sister, she's Piper's sister, and – though Prue may never know it – Paige is her sister too.'

Victor had gone a little pale as he took it all in. 'Patty and I… We never had…' His brow furrowed as he realised what had happened. His gaze landed on Paige. 'You're Sam's daughter?'

Paige shrugged awkwardly. 'Should I assume that that's the name of my birth father?'

Victor looked from Paige to Memory Phoebe. 'You never told her about Sam?' he asked in disbelief.

Memory Phoebe looked a little guilty. 'It never really came up. Between 'we're your sisters', 'magic exists', 'our Mum's a witch and your dad's a whitelighter, so you have powers from both', 'oh and the Source of all Evil is after us', it never really came up. Especially with all the demon attacks and Piper trying to teach her everything, we've been a little preoccupied. Although we did have the chance to introduce her to Mum…'

Memory Phoebe turned an apologetic gaze to Paige, but the whitelighter-witch shook it off. 'Don't worry, Phoebe. I don't need to know more about him. At the moment, the here-and-now is a little too much to grasp without adding in past information on top of that.'

Memory Phoebe nodded and smiled. Both the newly middle Charmed One and the newly youngest Charmed One set their eyes back on Victor. His sights were set on the floor as thoughts were being processed in his mind. Eventually, his gaze flitted back up to his daughter and her sister.

'How is Piper?' he asked, casually taking the topic on a tangent. 'The last time I saw her, she wasn't taking Prue's death very well.'

Trying to return the topic back to that of Paige, Memory Phoebe said, 'She's doing a lot better now. Paige has really helped to bring this family back together.'

There was a short silence between the three of them. Phoebe took the silence as a moment to remark to Piper: 'I can tell you what I was thinking right at this moment. I was expecting Dad to come back with a quip like: 'Really? All her father ever did was tear it apart' or something like that, but he didn't.'

'Well, it's not like he could be mad at Paige for who her parents were. She couldn't control that,' Piper replied.

'I know. It was just weird to see him so accepting after how he reacted to you marrying a whitelighter,' Phoebe reminded Piper.

The silence between Paige, Memory Phoebe, and Victor was broken by the whitelighter-witch. 'So… I'll leave you two to catch up,' Paige said, beginning to walk towards the staircase.

Paige stopped when Victor put his hand on her shoulder. The youngest Charmed One slowly turned around to face her sisters' father.

'You don't have to leave the room just because I am here. You may not be my daughter, but you are still a key member of this family,' Victor enthused.

'Th – Thank you, Mr. Bennett,' Paige said.

'Call me Victor,' he said with a fatherly smile.

The memory dissolved around Piper and Phoebe in a blinding white light.

...

[Astral Vision]

As the blinding white light dissipated, Piper and Phoebe noticed that they were still in the front hall of the manor. However, Paige, Memory Phoebe, and Victor were no longer present.

A crashing sound came from the kitchen as Paige flew out into the corridor, landing on her back.

'Ow,' she moaned, getting to her feet as she prepared to go running back into the kitchen where the voices of Memory Piper and Memory Phoebe were audible. By the sounds of things, the sisters were fighting off a demon in the kitchen.

Before Paige had started her way back towards the kitchen, there was a knock at the front door. Paige glanced at the front door from her position in the gangway between the front hall and kitchen.

'Please think no one's in,' Paige murmured quietly, hoping the person would leave before they heard any strange noises from within the manor. When the person continued to knock, Paige decided the best thing she could do was get rid of them as quick as possible, so she walked towards the front door.

Paige opened the door ajar. Her face dropped as soon as she saw who had been knocking. Piper and Phoebe peered over Paige's shoulder to survey the man who they had never seen before. He looked like he was in his late forties. He had greying hair and his face looked rather gaunt.

'U – Uncle Dave? What are you doing here?' Paige asked.

Piper and Phoebe exchanged puzzled looks. 'Uncle Dave?' Piper echoed.

'Her adoptive parents' family?' Phoebe suggested, albeit in a very quizzical tone.

Their attentions turned back to the man in question as he replied to his niece with: 'No 'how are you?' or even a 'hello'? Paige, your aunt has been very worried about you. You used to phone once a week and now we haven't heard from you in months.'

There was a crash from the kitchen, followed by Memory Piper yelling 'Paige! Get back in here, we need you!'

Trying to prevent her uncle from hearing any of this, Paige opened the front door wider and let herself out, shutting the front door behind her so as she was on the porch. Piper and Phoebe appeared outside on the porch as they continued to observe the memory.

'What's going on in there?' Uncle Dave asked.

'My – er – sister has a faulty washing machine. It's been making those noises all morning and I was helping her fix it,' Paige lied.

The terrible excuse was not what her uncle focused on. It was the word she had used to describe the owner of the voice inside.

'Your sister? You have a sister?' Uncle Dave inquired.

Paige smiled gingerly. 'Two, actually. Three, if you count my late eldest sister. You see, a few months ago, I found my birth family – or they found me… I'm not too sure which way round it was. That's why I've been a little preoccupied – Wait, how did you know where to find me?'

Uncle Dave sighed. 'I went to your loft and found out you had moved out, so I went to your work to find out where you lived now. They gave me this address.' He smiled weakly at Paige. 'It's nice to know that you have found your birth family. Just don't forget about the rest of us, Paige.'

Paige shook her head, sadly. 'I didn't forget about you guys. I won't ever. You will always be family to me. I just…' Paige looked away from him guiltily.

The whitelighter-witch was quickly distracted by the front door opening to reveal a still-a-whitelighter Leo. He smiled politely at Paige's uncle for a second before turning his gaze on the Charmed One.

'Paige, your sisters need you in there,' Leo said urgently. 'Now.'

'I remember that demon fight,' Piper muttered. 'We needed Paige for a Power of Three vanquish, but she disappeared halfway through the battle.'

Paige sighed and nodded. 'I'll be there in a second, Leo.'

Leo repeated the urgency by saying 'Hurry' as he headed back inside, leaving the front door ajar.

'Is that another member of your family?' Uncle Dave asked.

'My brother-in-law,' Paige said. 'Look, I've got to go and help them with that dishwasher.'

'With the broken washing machine?' her uncle corrected, disbelief in his tone.

'Yeah…' Paige replied, beginning to open the door. 'Let Aunt Julie know I'm fine and I'll phone you when I get a chance.'

Paige let herself back into the manor and as she shut the door – a look of worry on her face – the memory was eclipsed by a blinding white light.

...

As the light cleared, Piper and Phoebe looked around. They were back in the front hall of the manor. The phone was ringing as a Paige with red shoulder length hair ran over to it and picked it up. As the voice of the person on the other end of the phone was part of Paige's memory, Piper and Phoebe could hear it as if they had the phone to their ears themselves:

'Hi. Is this the… er… Halliwell residence?' the voice asked.

Paige furrowed her brow. 'Yes it is. Who am I speaking to?'

'Eric Matthews. I'm a cousin of Paige's. Is she in?'

At this revelation, Paige's eyes widened. She gulped a little before lowering her voice and replying: 'No. She's not. I'll get her to ring you back.' Before Eric could make a response, Paige had hung up the phone.

'What the?' muttered Piper, confused. 'Why would Paige avoid her family?' Phoebe could only speculate for her sister as the two of them were engulfed in that all too familiar blinding white light.

...

The location of the next memory was completely unfamiliar to Piper and Phoebe. It was an office type environment. They were standing next to a Paige with long red hair behind a receptionist's desk.

Phoebe smirked. 'This is Paige at one of her temp jobs,' she guessed.

Paige was occupied with sorting some documents out, but her attention was quickly redirected by a man in a suit who had shown up at the desk. He handed Paige a file.

'This is the name of a client I am expecting in a few minutes. When they show up, could you direct them through to my office?' the man asked.

Paige nodded and the man walked away. The whitelighter-witch glanced down at the file. She frowned at the name: 'Leah Matthews'.

'That can't be Cousin Leah,' Paige muttered to herself. Her conjecture was quickly answered as she looked up to see a woman entering from the far side of the office, heading straight for the receptionist's desk. Going by Paige's startled reaction, the woman was most probably 'Cousin Leah'.

Paige quickly ducked down behind the desk. Now that she was out of view, Paige orbed out. The mixture of blue and white orbs was overtaken by a blinding white light as the memory melted away to reveal the next one.

...

Once again, Piper and Phoebe found themselves in the front hall of Halliwell manor. A Paige with bouncy dark hair and one arm in a sling – much like their present day Paige, suggesting that this memory was a recent one – had opened the front door to Sanders. He was standing on the porch with a brown sack hanging over his shoulder.

'Hi,' said Sanders, putting on a genuine smile.

'Who are you supposed to be? Santa?' Paige asked, eying the full brown sack. 'Sorry, but you're about six months early for Christmas.'

Sanders ignored the quip and placed the brown sack on the floor just inside the door. 'It's all the mail that was addressed for here while you and your sisters were… missing,' he explained.

Paige nodded. 'I see. Thanks. Is that all?' she enquired, not particularly a fan of the inspector since their initial meeting.

'That's it,' Sanders said, holding his hands up innocently. 'No ulterior motives here.'

Paige thanked him stonily for the letters and then shut the door.

The youngest Charmed One began to go through the sack of letters with her one uninjured arm, speaking to herself as she did so: 'Bills for Piper, bills for Phoebe, bills for me, bills, bills, bills…' She paused when she pulled out a fancy envelope addressed to her.

Paige slowly opened the envelope to reveal a card consisting of a flowery design. Piper and Phoebe looked closer to see the words 'Save the date' written in calligraphy on the card.

'It's a wedding invite,' Phoebe muttered.

Piper nodded. 'And look at that. It's from that cousin she was avoiding in the previous memory.'

Piper and Phoebe by now were not shocked to see that Paige's next action was to throw the invitation into the nearest bin. However, it did lead them to question further why their sister was avoiding her other family.

Paige continued to rifle through the sack of letters. Meanwhile, Piper and Phoebe began to talk.

'I don't think these memories are telling us anything, Pheebs,' Piper said. 'Out there somewhere, Paige is close to death while we're stuck in here, in her head. How are we supposed to help her from here?'

Phoebe smiled. 'Piper, you're a genius.'

Piper frowned. 'Thanks for the compliment, Phoebe, but I don't see how you got to that opinion.'

Phoebe pointed at their oblivious little sister. 'We're not just in her mind, we're in her head. Which means, if we can get out of her head, we'll be right wherever the demon took her.'

Piper sighed. 'If the return for the Mind Link spell had worked, we would have only been sent back to our bodies in the manor –'

'Yes, but if we use another spell, one that will allow us to leave her head to wherever outside is –' Phoebe interrupted, but was soon enough interrupted by Piper with:

'That sounds like it would require the Power of Three, which we don't have –' who was, in turn, interrupted by Phoebe again:

'We're in Paige's head,' Phoebe said, placing a hand on Paige's shoulder. 'We have the Power of Three. We've had it all along whilst we've been watching these memories.'

Piper placed a hand on Paige's other shoulder, uncertainty in her expression. 'Are you sure?'

'I think so,' Phoebe said. 'And I think I've thought up the perfect spell: The power within us sisters three, draw upon the powers of our destiny. Take us out of our sister's mind, send us to where our sister we shall find.'

Phoebe smiled as she finished her spell. While the Paige of the memory remained oblivious to it all, Piper and Phoebe disappeared in swirls of blinding white light.

...

Leo switched the nursery light off after having made sure that Chris was fast asleep in his crib. The sun was setting outside. Piper and Phoebe had been under the influence of the Mind Link spell for a few hours now. Leo could not help but worry that Paige may not last much longer. He just hoped that the sisters had reunited by now.

Next Leo entered Wyatt's bedroom. His eldest son was also fast asleep. Leo closed the door gently and walked back into the upstairs hallway.

The ex-whitelighter heaved a heavy sigh and was about to make his way back down the stairs when a flicker of blinding white light came from the attic staircase. Abruptly, Leo changed course and headed towards the attic.

As he bounded into the attic, Leo watched as Piper and Phoebe's unconscious forms were engulfed by swirling white lights and vanished from sight.

...

Back at the grassy landscape, the waitress viewed the setting sun with a smile.

'I do love seeing the giant fireball in the sky disappear to bring on the eternal darkness of the night,' the waitress conveyed as she turned around to face the injured Charmed One.

Paige was still lying on the grassy ground, having not moved from the position she had awoken in. She had managed to maintain consciousness all this time, but the pain of the poison reverberating throughout her body was a constant reminder of how little time she had left. She had no idea how much longer her body could deal with the suffering.

The youngest Charmed One stared icily at her captor. With great effort and through gritted teeth, Paige managed to say: 'I'm not dead yet and my sisters aren't probably far from finding me.'

The waitress' expression did not change. 'Your bound whitelighter abilities may have slowed down the entire process, but you've been here for hours and your sisters are still not here. Doesn't that say anything to you? I've cloaked you from any good magic. The only good magic powerful enough to find you would need the Power of Three. Without you by their side, they don't have –'

The waitress' speech came to an abrupt end as something in the distance caught her eyes. She furrowed her brow. A stream of swirling white lights was fast approaching their location.

As the lights got closer, a similar stream of swirling white lights began to fly out of Paige's head. The waitress stepped back – both in curiosity and as a defensive measure – as the two streams collided near the ground. Once joined the swirling white lights coalesced into two figures.

The lights dispersed leaving Piper and Phoebe standing in their place. Both sisters immediately dropped down by their youngest sister's side.

'Paige!' Phoebe exclaimed, taking one of her hands.

Paige smiled weakly at her older sister. 'Hi,' she managed in response.

'We're going to get you home and healed, Paige. Just hold on,' Piper encouraged, taking her sister's other hand and squeezing it supportively.

From their places next to their sister, Piper and Phoebe squinted through the darkness. The sun was no longer up and all they could rely on for light were the stars.

'Are you looking for me?' a voice said not too far from the sisters.

Piper and Phoebe turned around to see a figure obscured by the shadows. Piper flicked a wrist in that direction, but her explosion power had no effect on the figure.

'Who do you think you are?' Piper yelled in what was almost a growl.

'I'll leave the guesses up to you,' the figure responded teasingly.

As she began to flame out, her face was illuminated. Phoebe's eyes widened in shock.

'Oh! It's her!' Phoebe shouted.

'Who?' Piper asked.

'My fake assistant!' Phoebe revealed.

Piper nodded resolutely. 'Okay. That's an important bit of information right now, but not as important as Paige's safety. We need to get Paige to a whitelighter now. Got anymore spells we could use?'

'Er…' Phoebe replied, trying to think up some rhymes. 'Can't you call for Wyatt?'

'I don't know if he'll be able to hear me from here,' Piper replied. 'It depends how far from the manor we are.'

Phoebe nodded. 'Okay. I'll try to summon a nearby whitelighter or something instead.' She closed her eyes and began to speak: 'Redirect a nearby whitelighter's orbing path –' Phoebe stopped there, frowning. 'Damn, rhymer's block.' She turned to Piper. 'Path? Half? Calf?'

...

Leo was pacing around the empty attic. He looked up at the ceiling and began to speak his mind.

'If I can be poisoned by a darklighter's arrow, that means that my wings are only clipped, which means that you can give me them back! Piper and Phoebe have disappeared and Paige is probably dying! Give me my wings back and I can locate Piper and Phoebe! I'm sure – I'm certain! – that they've found Paige! Just give me back my wings! It's not permanent like you always led me to believe, is it? Is it? I can't just stand here and do nothing! I can't just give the burden to my eldest son whenever his mother and aunts are in this much dire of a need for healing! Give me back my wings!'

Leo glared at the ceiling as he completed his soliloquy. He waited for the familiar glowing sensation to take over his hands with the return of his powers.

...

Piper tried to sit Paige up, only to realise that her youngest sister had lost consciousness and her breathing was faint. Piper began to well up.

'Paige, wake up. Please hold on,' Piper begged. 'Please.'

The eldest Halliwell turned to Phoebe. The psychic witch had her eyes tightly shut as she tried to ignore the time pressure and think up a spell that would, in effect, save her sister. One hand was still gripped on Paige's.

'Hold on, Paige. You're going to make it, okay?' Piper whispered. 'You're going to make it and I won't moan at you for destroying my kitchen or for thinking my club sucked. Please, Paige. Hold on.'

The dark grassy landscape was suddenly lit up by a mix of blue and white orb lights. Phoebe opened her eyes just to shield them from the brightness.

'Was this your spell, Pheebs?' Piper questioned, having not heard Phoebe recite one.

Phoebe shook her head. 'I hadn't gotten the correct wording for mine yet.'

The orb lights had dematerialised and the figure that had appeared was now shrouded in darkness. The figure ran straight over to the sisters. As he got closer to them, the figure became distinguishable. It was Leo and he had Wyatt in his hands. He placed Wyatt down by Paige.

Leo went to stand by Piper's side, pulling her into a supportive hug. Phoebe held onto Paige's hand – unintentionally noticing how faint the pulse in her sister's wrist was – as she watched her nephew stare at his unconscious aunt.

Slowly Wyatt held out his hand, allowing it to hover over Paige. A golden glow emanated from his hand, descending upon Paige's still figure. Piper, Phoebe, and Leo watched in silence, hoping that the healing process would not take much longer.

After a few tense minutes in which there were two main worries – 'Why was it taking so long to heal Paige?' and 'Was all this healing having a draining effect on Wyatt?' – the golden glow finally faded from Wyatt's outstretched hand.

Phoebe smiled as she felt Paige grip her hand. Paige's eyelids wavered a little before opening. Piper and Phoebe helped her sit up while Leo picked up Wyatt.

Paige tried to get to her feet, but Piper and Phoebe stopped her.

'I think you should let yourself rest,' Piper suggested.

The family linked arms and waited for Wyatt to orb them back to the manor.

...

Later that evening, P3 was vibrant and noisy. The club was crowded and a live band was playing a relevant song in the background.

In the back office, Piper was putting the phone down. Leo watched from behind the desk.

'Everything okay?' he asked as she turned to face him.

Piper nodded. 'Yeah. Dad said the boys were fine. I just… I had to check up. Especially since a darklighter dared to enter the manor earlier.'

Leo sighed, taking Piper's hand. 'I just wish I didn't have to wake Wyatt up and get him to orb to and heal Paige. It wasn't exactly fair on him.'

'What other choice did we have?' Piper asked. 'We don't have an assigned whitelighter anymore. Wyatt's the only one with the power to heal. I agree whole-heartedly with you that our son shouldn't have that burden, but what can we do?'

Leo bit his lip, looking at the ceiling for a couple of seconds, before turning his gaze on Piper. 'I tried to get my wings back… but the Elders didn't listen.'

Piper raised a surprised eyebrow. 'What?'

...

At the sisters' private booth, Paige was leaning back in her seat, looking exhausted after the events of the day. Phoebe approached the table with a bottle of water in each hand. She placed one in front of Paige as she sat down.

'You shouldn't have come to P3 tonight, Paige,' Phoebe pestered. 'You look shattered. All the healing did was take away the poison. You're probably still weak.'

Paige sighed, sitting forward to pick up and take a sip from her drink. 'I know, but I told Henry I'd meet him here. I have to apologise for disappearing at lunch.'

Phoebe looked intrigued. 'What are you going to tell him?'

'I'm going to stick as close to the truth as possible,' Paige began.

'As close to the truth as possible?' Phoebe repeated.

Paige shrugged. 'Without exposing magic obviously. I'll just tell him I was a little under the weather so had to get out of there.'

Phoebe smirked. 'And you just had to tell him this in person? You couldn't just tell him over the phone?'

Paige rolled her eyes. 'He's just a friend.'

Phoebe's smirk grew wider. 'I see he's been promoted from 'work colleague' to 'friend' then.'

Refusing to continue with the teasing topic any further, Paige decided to change it. 'So your fake assistant is now pretending to be a waitress? She doesn't really have the best career goals, does she?'

Phoebe did not laugh at Paige's remark. Instead the psychic witch sighed. 'Do you think she sent the darklighter to the manor? I mean, how many low-level darklighters – that are easily vanquished by their own arrow – are immune to witch powers?'

Paige frowned. 'She knew I'd be suffering from the effects of the poison which is why she came after me while I was away from the manor…'

Phoebe nodded. 'What I don't understand is why she went to all the trouble of cloaking you from us. Why didn't she just kill you when she had the chance? I mean, I am extremely glad she didn't, but if she wanted you dead, why didn't she do something while you were weak, defenceless, and alone?'

Phoebe's question left both sisters thinking in silence. Not long after the silence had begun, Piper came over to the booth and sat down to the other side of Paige.

Phoebe looked around for Leo, but he did not join them. 'Where did Leo go?'

'He's frozen in the office. He'll be here in a few minutes,' Piper hurriedly replied.

'Ew,' Phoebe said, grimacing. 'I thought you went in there to phone home, not to –'

Piper made an annoyed face and interrupted with: 'We were phoning the manor! I just had to freeze him so as I could have a head start back to the table, so now if you could just listen I can say what I need to say before he gets here.'

Paige looked puzzled. 'What's going on?'

Piper took a deep breath before beginning: 'Do you remember the Elders' excuse for clipping your wings?'

Paige sighed. 'Yeah. It was because I wouldn't take Leo on as a charge, but I thought we had already come to the conclusion that it was impossible for Leo to be made a whitelighter again. He's mortal for good, isn't he?'

Piper shook her head. 'He doesn't think so anymore. He thinks his wings are only clipped. As in, he thinks he can get them back.'

Phoebe and Paige's expressions became ones of shock.

'Apparently he wanted to get his powers back last night,' Piper continued.

'He didn't though. Unless I've interrupted too soon and you were about to say that he actually did,' Phoebe pointed out.

'He's still mortal,' Piper confirmed.

'Okay, which proves he did not, which further proves the theory that he is permanently a mortal from now on, doesn't it?' Phoebe implored.

The sisters exchanged questioning glances, unsure of how to answer the question. Before the sisters could continue to discuss that particular topic, the ex-whitelighter in question walked over to the table. Leo sat down next to his wife.

'Did you freeze me?' Leo asked, a frown on his face.

Piper blushed, but in order to avoid answering the question, she shushed Leo. 'Don't interrupt, honey. We were talking to Paige about her family.'

Paige looked taken aback by the new choice of topic. 'My family?' Knowing that she had to look a little less surprised by a discussion they were apparently having so as Leo would not know what discussion they really had been having, Paige reasserted her tone: 'Yeah… We were talking about my family, which Piper seems to have abdicated from?'

Catching Piper's eye, Phoebe nodded and turned to Paige, smiling. 'Not this family, Paige. Your family. You know… Your Uncle Dave and Aunt… Julie, was it?'

Paige furrowed her brow. 'How? When did I tell you those names?'

Piper – not wanting Leo to catch on that this was a completely new discussion and not a continuing one – said: 'Aaww, Paige, you're still a little out of it after such a long day.'

Paige looked confused. 'Yeah… I must keep zoning out,' she said a little annoyed. 'So what exactly did I miss?'

'Well, our method of finding you sort of led us through your memories,' Piper admitted.

'My memories?' Paige asked, looking more alert at this revelation than she had all evening. 'Which memories?'

Phoebe became a little sheepish. 'Well, they all revolved around either your connection to this family, or…'

'… Memories that revolved around you avoiding the family you grew up with,' Piper concluded, seriously.

Paige went a little red with embarrassment, but did not try to come back with a response.

'Paige, why would you do that?' Leo asked considerately.

The youngest sister shook her head sadly before finally confessing: 'There are two reasons, I guess. Although the second one only backs up the first one… When I met all of you, it was a mixed blessing. I had met my birth family and I had magical powers, but with that came the constant threat of demons. I felt like if I distanced myself from my other family, they would stay safe…' Paige paused, a look of shame on her face now. 'I felt like if they were part of how my life is now, there would be no avoiding demons for them.'

'That's not true, Paige,' Phoebe refuted.

Paige shook her head. 'Really? I mean, how many times has your Dad come into contact with demons just because he's in your lives?' Paige looked from Piper to Phoebe who both looked away, unable to answer that question. 'Exactly.'

Leo shook his head. 'Paige, you shouldn't distance yourself from them like that.'

Paige glared at Leo. 'Are you suggesting that I put them in danger of being attacked by demons?'

'You said there was a second reason,' Piper stated without emotion.

Paige gulped. 'Piper, when Glen found out about our family's secret, you were mad. You pretty much told me that no one else can know, even after you had gotten over the fact that he knew.'

Piper sighed. 'So you distanced yourself from your family, because it's difficult to keep such a secret from the people you've grown up with?'

Paige nodded silently.

'This is going to change,' Phoebe said.

Paige frowned. 'What is?'

'You're going to stop distancing yourself from them,' Phoebe declared.

'What about the risks?' Paige pointed out. 'They're still there.'

Piper shook her head. 'No, they're not, because we'll be with you every step of the way. You can start by introducing us to your family at that wedding that's coming up next month.'

Paige's jaw dropped. 'What wedding? That wedding? How many memories did you go through?'

'Enough to know that –' Piper began, but stopped when she realised Paige's attention had suddenly gone elsewhere.

Paige was staring over at the staircase where Henry had just shown up. He did not seem to have noticed where Paige was yet as he was still glancing around.

Paige stood up from her seat, but could not leave. Her sisters and Leo were sitting to either side of her, leaving her trapped in the middle. Phoebe stood up, allowing Paige room to get through.

Both sisters and Leo watched as Paige wandered over to Henry and began chatting.

'You know what's annoying?' Piper questioned, bringing Phoebe and Leo's attention back to their own table.

'What's that?' Phoebe asked.

'I didn't even get the chance to snipe at Paige for her brief dislike of my club.'

---

Next episode: A major part of the sisters' heritage is lost, while Leo is having an identity crisis.

---

A/N: What should have been a simple chapter sure did end up quite complicated by the end, but it was fun to write the memory scenes (One of my favourite episodes of the show will always be Pre-Witched). If it was not clear: The first memory took place during a scene in We All Scream For Ice Cream; the second memory took place during Wrestling With Demons; the third memory took place between A Knight To Remember and Brain Drain; the fourth memory took place some time after Trial By Magic; the next two memories took place anywhere in season five and season six respectively; whilst the last memory would obviously have taken place within my alternate season's timeline sometime between the second and third chapter.

[Esmeralda]

I've been wanting to get back to reading his for a long time but have just been too busy. But since I'm on vacation this week, I decided to go for it. Like your earlier episodes, I'll admit I'm still not nuts on your writing style, but I'm very nuts on your plot, definitely wishing that Season Eight had been more like it, so I'm just skimming it so I can find out what's going on. If I miss something, don't be afraid to let me know . I decided to go ahead and put all of my reviews into one post.

“Grey Area”

I really like this one's plotline - it would've made a great episode – the innocent was interesting and the demons made for good bad guys – you do both so well!

I also liked the idea of the Elders wanting Leo to be a whitelighter again and Paige getting her whitelighter powers taken away (although like it was said, since they’re inherent to her, that shouldn’t have happened – she should’ve only lost her Charmed power to summon stuff) and I’m more than a bit curious to see what comes from that.

I also like the idea of Piper wanting to sell P3 and instead open the restaurant she’s always wanted to own. I like the idea of Prue willing her third to Piper while her still wondering what Phoebe will think – I’m wondering, too. It’s nice having this happen now when the sisters want some sort of a normal life rather than only seeing it sometime in the future.

As always, my favorite parts are the reminders of what happened before – consistency, what a concept! And Paige forgetting what happened before – no doubt the show showed her as a bit absent-minded. It’s part of quirky Paige who I don’t like because it was part of the ruin of Charmed, but since it’s very much Paige, it’s consistent, as are Piper, Phoebe and Leo. Good job.

"CSI: P3"

First of all, I LOVE that title. Still not sure about Grey Area - maybe I missed something?

Also got a huge kick out of Wyatt's fussiness with food - it's always fun to show the sisters as people and not just witches, and when you add in Wyatt's powers, that's definitely part of the fun. I'm curious if you're going to give him a bunch of powers because he's Twice Blessed or just let him be a witch with whitelighter powers like his brother and let both of them be twice blessed - having a Charmed One for a mother and a whitelighter for a father.

Did I miss something? Is Darryl also gone in your version? I was hoping you'd keep him, since that sending him off to the East bit was a typical Charmed budget-cut that you don't have to worry about, so I was hoping you'd figure a way for them to make up. Darryl helped keep the real world in Charmed.

I definitely get a kick out of all of your mentions of Paige's mugging. Even if it's something I hated, it's just so typical Rose McGowan playing Paige.

The more I read this episode, the more I truly think you should write your episodes as script rather than prose. Although your non-quotes tend to be so wordy as to be boring, your quotes are so fantastic - both very, very in character for the sisters and often so very, very funny! And, yes, I know, you can't post scripts at fanfiction.net, so you wouldn't be able to post it there, but, oh, if you could do that here and at other messageboards where script is allowed, I'll bet you'd get a lot more readers!! I've reached the point where I ignore all the scenes that don't include the sisters and just read their quotes. Just using them, this is fantastic - such, such, *SUCH* fun, and I strongly urge others to read it the same way. It's especially fun to find out what's going on at the same time as the sisters.

I think I missed something else. I thought the Elders didn't start their annoying ringing and giving Paige charges until the eighth season. Why does she all of the sudden have so many? Not that I mind - they make great innocents - it's just the inconsistency that I'm not sure about.

OH! I definitely like the way you introduced Henry much better than the way Charmed did - and I like the fact that you kept him a parole officer.

I also like Phoebe's power upgrade, even if I don't think she should get one after the horrible way she misused her premonitions in Season Seven. But since she hasn't ben doing that for a while, maybe that's why she got it. But it sure explains why Piper saw Phoebe....even if that was a vision of the past and not a premonition of the future.

'Yeah, the rules of time travel do seem to vary each time we use it, don't they?' Phoebe asked rhetorically.

Hehehehe! Ain't that the truth???

Oh, you are having such fun with this astral vision thing, aren't you? OH, I just realized that that's your screen name! Is that how you came up with the power or the other way around? I do like the idea of magical people being able to see the astral projection.

I don't think Paige should be able to use her TK to lock a door, unless that's an upgrade. Sounds like you're turning the sisters into super witches, being able to use their powers to do whatever you want them to. *sigh*

Now that Darryl's gone, it's good that there's a new Halliwell file....good job!

So Piper's upgrade is being able to tell when her freezes are about to end. Not much of one compared to the others, but with her powers, she's the last one to need an upgrade.

I'm getting a giggle out of the sisters - why can't they consider the idea that Paige might not be the only whitelighter with witches powers or Wyatt and Chris might not be the only witches with whitelighter powers around? That would explain how an athame could kill him. I'm very curious to see if I'm right....

Well, it appears that I'm wrong, but I love you using the idea of a darklighter going after him and using an athame directly to the heart to try to throw witches off. Good job! Just be careful, Paige! (Since Wyatt and Chris are witches with whitelighter powers, they don't have to worry about it).

Definitely like the way this all works with the darklighter except they don't orb - they dark-orb.

Oh, yes, doing it this way, just reading the quotes and skimming the rest of it has definitely made this my favorite episode so far. I definitely wish I'd done the same thing with the earlier ones.

Both Piper and Paige will also get upgrades to their powers during this season rewrite, to keep things level between them all.

Oh, I sure hope not! They both got one in this episode and both Piper and Paige are already too powerful as is. If anything, like Phoebe, they need some powers taken away.

"Grave Matters"

*sigh* First, please don't keep using the sisters' last name or which witch they are during each episode - we already know, and it makes it feel like this is a whole new story, not part of this series. Thanks.

Hehehehe, I love how Paige and Henry's relationship is progressing - especially the fact that it's not rushed!

Hmmm...since Paige is inherently a living whitelighter who can also cast spells and make potions, does that mean she's no longer vulnerable to darklighters just because the Elders bound her powers? Um, I don't think so. Now Wyatt and Chris, they're perfectly safe since they're not whitelighters, just witches with whitelighter powers. (Hehehehe, I know, I know - you're doing it the way most fans think it is, where all three of them are both, just like I don't plan on changing any of my stories to make them only one or the others. But it's still fun to point it out. Although I still don't think 1) the Elders should be able to bind any of her powers outside of her summoning power (I refuse to call it telekinetic orbing since it has nothing to do with telekinesis (a witch power) and everything to do with summoning (a whitelighter power))

Oh, oh! Sounds like the darklighter figured out how to take Leo down, too, besides affecting Paige. Not good! But great job on your part. If you go along with the idea that with Leo a whitelighter with his powers bound (and I LOVE that explanation! Makes so much more sense than the Elders agreeing to resurrect a dead man they're mad at), with Paige a living whitelighter and somehow Wyatt and Chris also being part whitelighter (I don't think they are, but it works for most fics...), you'd think most demons would know that they're the best breed to use against the Charmed Ones.

YOUCH! When you mentioned what color the waitress' hair was, I couldn't help wondering if she was magical - either good or evil - and it certainly looks like I was right!

Leo sighed. 'When a whitelighter has been affected by a darklighter's poison, the Elders and other whitelighters cannot sense the location of the injured whitelighter. That's why each time I've been hit by an arrow in the past, neither a whitelighter nor an Elder has ever come to heal me.'

Piper raised an eyebrow. 'You mean it wasn't because they're just selfish and don't care whether or not you die?'

ROFL! That has to be one of my favorite pieces!!! GREAT JOB!! It's just SO Leo and Piper!!

Oh, oh! I was so proud of Phoebe for remembering the Lost Witch spell, but if that didn't work...

Phoebe shook her head, annoyed at herself. 'Nope! Not normal or astral! Why can't I use my own damn power to find my lost sister?'

'Find… Lost… Phoebe, maybe that's it! The Lost and Found spell!' Piper exclaimed.

Phoebe suddenly smiled at the possibility, but the smile quickly vanished. 'She was our long-lost sister the last time that we cast that spell… That spell got so big that we were finding lost souls, but not Paige. She did not turn up on our doorstep that day. So if a Paige with no magic in her life isn't affected by that spell, then I doubt a Paige who is currently being hidden from us by dark magic will be affected by it either.'

Hehehehe, another piece I love...it's so logical, but so convoluted Phoebe!

I also totally adore the fact that you're letting them try to use spells they've used before. I hate that the show kept trying to reinvent the wheel. Consistency, what a concept!

Hmmm...unless Paige is with Henry, I truly don't think the Sign spell should work. That's what that did in "Show Me a Sign". It didn't point Piper to Leo, since he's not her true love - Mark the Ghost is. It pointed Prue to hers - Bane.

Okay, since they changed the word of the spell, I guess that worked properly. And I love the use of the Mind-to-Mind spell....but can they use it to get to Paige quickly enough to save her?

*roll eyes* Oh, did I skim quickly past the Paige/Glen scene. Please don't tell me the Sign spell is saying *HE'S* her true love. He's a friend, not a love!

Oh, I do love how you keep bringing in people from earlier episodes! (well, except for Glen...) - the use of the Ice Cream Man is great! The fun of fanfics - don't have to worry about budgets or whether the actor agrees or not!

Oh, oh!! Are the signs saying that since they couldn't save Prue, they now can't save Paige??? OH, OH!!!! You should've ended this chapter right here!!! What a cliffie that would be!!!

Oh, all of the memories were truly lots of fun, even the Glen one now that I understand what's going on. I love that you're bringing up something that got so left out of the loop in the latter seasons - Paige's relationship with her real family, not her blood one. Typical Kern wanting us to forget all about them!

And I loved the way that you got them out of it!! GREAT JOB!!!

LOL! I love Phoebe running into a "rhymer's block" - but what a time to run into one!

YAY!!! Leo gets to be a whitelighter again, just like should've always been his true destiny, so that just like last time, he can save one of Piper's sisters!! YIPPEE!! The question is - what will Piper's reaction be to that?

Okay, now I'm confused. Why did Wyatt have to orb his dad and why did Wyatt heal Paige rather than Leo? Isn't this what the Elders wanted - Leo back to being a whitelighter? So why isn't he?

*sigh* Okay, I'm totally confused now. Is Leo permanently mortal or not? Or, no, wait a minute...in order to become a whitelighter again, does he have to die?

Ah, now that's a great reason for why Paige has stayed away from her real family, I must admit - to keep them and magic safe. But I'm glad Piper sees the necessity for getting to know them anyway so they'll now them at the wedding. But, wedding??? Aren't you rushing them as badly as the real Charmed did? Can't you wait and have them get engaged during the last episode? And please tell me that you're not planning a rushed wedding for Phoebe, too....

BUT, oh, am I enjoying this (even while I still think you should do it in script form - at least here...) and oh, do I want to read more!!

[Astral Vision]

Jan 8, 2014 22:01:02 GMT -5 Esmeralda said:

Unfortunately I'm not a fan of writing in script format, but it's good to know you're finding a way of reading it anyway.

"CSI: P3"

First of all, I LOVE that title. Still not sure about Grey Area - maybe I missed something?

"Grey Area" was just a pun of "Bay Area" because I could not think of a better title.

I'm curious if you're going to give him a bunch of powers because he's Twice Blessed or just let him be a witch with whitelighter powers like his brother and let both of them be twice blessed - having a Charmed One for a mother and a whitelighter for a father.

This is where you and I differ in opinion. To me they're whitelighter-witches, but Wyatt's whitelighter side is more dominant (hence he's more like Leo) and Chris' witch side is more dominant, but that's not a debate for this thread.

Did I miss something? Is Darryl also gone in your version? I was hoping you'd keep him, since that sending him off to the East bit was a typical Charmed budget-cut that you don't have to worry about, so I was hoping you'd figure a way for them to make up. Darryl helped keep the real world in Charmed.

To me, Darryl's last official season was season seven where he had his happy ending.

I definitely get a kick out of all of your mentions of Paige's mugging. Even if it's something I hated, it's just so typical Rose McGowan playing Paige.

Did I write that in? Oops. I'm just trying to keep Paige in character. xD

I think I missed something else. I thought the Elders didn't start their annoying ringing and giving Paige charges until the eighth season. Why does she all of the sudden have so many? Not that I mind - they make great innocents - it's just the inconsistency that I'm not sure about.

They started it during season seven (the second half) when Paige took on whitelighter duties (after she quit magic school). As far as I can remember that season, Paige did have quite a few pre-season seven finale.

OH! I definitely like the way you introduced Henry much better than the way Charmed did - and I like the fact that you kept him a parole officer.

Thanks. I don't see why I wouldn't keep him as a parole officer. It wouldn't be the same character if I changed his job.

I also like Phoebe's power upgrade, even if I don't think she should get one after the horrible way she misused her premonitions in Season Seven. But since she hasn't ben doing that for a while, maybe that's why she got it. But it sure explains why Piper saw Phoebe....even if that was a vision of the past and not a premonition of the future.

Yeah I know. I realised afterwards that the one (or two?) episode(s) in season five where she had had astral visions (and  the one in canon season eight) were all of the future, but it would not have worked for this episode if they had been future ones.

'Yeah, the rules of time travel do seem to vary each time we use it, don't they?' Phoebe asked rhetorically.
Hehehehe! Ain't that the truth???

I just love pointing that sort of thing out. xD

Oh, you are having such fun with this astral vision thing, aren't you? OH, I just realized that that's your screen name! Is that how you came up with the power or the other way around? I do like the idea of magical people being able to see the astral projection.

Well, a variation of the power was already used in two episodes of season five (The Eyes Have It and Sand Francisco Dreamin') and that's where I took the screen name from, because in my opinion, that's the power she used in those episodes. I just wanted to expand on that little used power by bringing it into my version of season eight.

I don't think Paige should be able to use her TK to lock a door, unless that's an upgrade. Sounds like you're turning the sisters into super witches, being able to use their powers to do whatever you want them to. *sigh*

Admittedly, that may have been lazy writing on my part.

So Piper's upgrade is being able to tell when her freezes are about to end. Not much of one compared to the others, but with her powers, she's the last one to need an upgrade.

Not an upgrade. She's always been able to tell. I'm pretty sure she's been able to tell since the very second episode. I just don't have a direct quote to verify this. When she's frozen the kitchen at Quake and is telling Prue and Phoebe that the freeze won't last much longer.

Well, it appears that I'm wrong, but I love you using the idea of a darklighter going after him and using an athame directly to the heart to try to throw witches off. Good job! Just be careful, Paige! (Since Wyatt and Chris are witches with whitelighter powers, they don't have to worry about it).

Why wouldn't Wyatt and Chris have to worry? Whatever your opinion on them is, they still have whitelighter blood.

*sigh* First, please don't keep using the sisters' last name or which witch they are during each episode - we already know, and it makes it feel like this is a whole new story, not part of this series. Thanks.

The "which witch" thing is only because I need other ways to describe them other than by their names.

Leo sighed. 'When a whitelighter has been affected by a darklighter's poison, the Elders and other whitelighters cannot sense the location of the injured whitelighter. That's why each time I've been hit by an arrow in the past, neither a whitelighter nor an Elder has ever come to heal me.'

Piper raised an eyebrow. 'You mean it wasn't because they're just selfish and don't care whether or not you die?'
ROFL! That has to be one of my favorite pieces!!! GREAT JOB!! It's just SO Leo and Piper!!

Glad you liked that.

YAY!!! Leo gets to be a whitelighter again, just like should've always been his true destiny, so that just like last time, he can save one of Piper's sisters!! YIPPEE!! The question is - what will Piper's reaction be to that?

Okay, now I'm confused. Why did Wyatt have to orb his dad and why did Wyatt heal Paige rather than Leo? Isn't this what the Elders wanted - Leo back to being a whitelighter? So why isn't he?

*sigh* Okay, I'm totally confused now. Is Leo permanently mortal or not? Or, no, wait a minute...in order to become a whitelighter again, does he have to die?

I did not want a scene that ended up too similar to that scene in Murphy's Luck, so that's one of the lesser reasons why Leo did not get his powers back just yet. The main reason why he hasn't gotten them back yet? You'll have to wait on that one. xD

Ah, now that's a great reason for why Paige has stayed away from her real family, I must admit - to keep them and magic safe. But I'm glad Piper sees the necessity for getting to know them anyway so they'll now them at the wedding. But, wedding??? Aren't you rushing them as badly as the real Charmed did? Can't you wait and have them get engaged during the last episode? And please tell me that you're not planning a rushed wedding for Phoebe, too....

Wedding? You think I meant Paige and Henry's wedding? Gosh, no! Those two aren't even dating yet. It's the wedding that Piper and Phoebe found Paige had been invited to in the last memory. It just so happens that that wedding invite was a very early one (because I have no idea when people usually send 'Save the Date' type invites). So it's a random family member's wedding.

Glad you're enjoying it so far.

[Chrisaholic]

I loved it, especially Leo's attempt to get his whitelighter powers back, yet the Elders didn't want it.
I'm glad that Piper and Phoebe are for a family reunion with Halliwells and Matthews. They know of Paige and Henry's maybe relationship and now the families can't ignore each other. Piper will hopefully make sure of it.

Good work!

[Astral Vision]

Jan 12, 2014 9:28:39 GMT -5 Chrisaholic said:

I loved it, especially Leo's attempt to get his whitelighter powers back, yet the Elders didn't want it.
I'm glad that Piper and Phoebe are for a family reunion with Halliwells and Matthews. They know of Paige and Henry's maybe relationship and now the families can't ignore each other. Piper will hopefully make sure of it.

Good work!

Glad to know you like it.