-----

Paige Matthews wandered around the attic of Halliwell Manor aimlessly, running her fingers along the various objects in storage in the little room. She rarely got much alone time in the house, never mind the attic, and she enjoyed being by herself in the space, trying to connect with her blood relatives. Poking around the attic and finding items that belonged to the Halliwells of the past helped her feel connected, helped her fill in the little holes in her family history.

Once she was lucky and found an old diary with the name “Penny Johnson” and the year 1939 inscribed on the inside cover in a childish scrawl. From her quick calculations, she determined that it was what her grandmother had written in as an eight-year-old girl. Mostly, though, she just found old clothes, toys, and photographs. But each item was a treasure, one more thing to help her understand where she came from.

She had met Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, her half-sisters, five years prior. There were times that she couldn’t believe it had been five years. In that time, she had become extremely close to them, so close in fact that she couldn’t imagine living without them now. But there was always a certain distance, one that Paige wasn’t sure could ever be overcome. Though they were inseparable now, there was still a large portion of time that they weren’t together. Paige could very rarely chime in whenever one of them would say, “Hey, remember when . . .” And likewise, when she talked about her own childhood, Piper and Phoebe couldn’t interrupt her and finish the story like they could do with each other.

Paige looked around the attic and smiled. She had tried moving out once. She had thought she had found happiness with a man named Richard and have moved in with him. But she missed her sisters too much, and she was missing too much of watching her nephew Wyatt grow up. After a few months, she had moved back into the Manor. Her relationship with Richard faltered and they eventually had split up. Phoebe, who had moved to Hong Kong to be with her boyfriend Jason, moved back in as well not long after Paige did. It was a lesson they all had to learn; they needed to be together. And Paige was never sorry she learned that lesson.

As Paige’s eyes scanned the room once again, she noticed something on the shelves she hadn’t seen before: a small picture in a silver frame. She walked over to the picture and smiled sadly. It was of Prue, Paige’s oldest sister, and Piper in a park somewhere. She couldn’t tell just by looking at it how old they each were, but she guessed that the photo wasn’t taken all that long before Prue had died. One of the hardest things Paige had had to deal with was finding out that she did have another sister who had died before she could meet her. It was a large part of Paige that was missing that could never be filled. She tried not to let Piper and Phoebe know that she thought it was unfair that she’d never get to meet Prue. Her death was still a hard thing for them both to talk about, and Paige knew that no matter how much she missed the chance to get to meet her third sister, Piper and Phoebe missed her more. “Just once,” she whispered to the picture. “I wish I could meet you just once.”

She turned away and headed out of the attic. Piper was coming home soon, and Paige didn’t want her to know that she looked through the attic like she did. Piper would more than likely understand, but the discovery sessions were something Paige liked to keep to herself. She stopped in the doorway with her hand on the lightswitch, glancing back over her shoulder at the picture on the shelf. Sighing, she turned off the light and closed the door at the top of the stairs. No point dreaming about something that just can’t happen, she thought with another sigh.

-----

“Hey, Piper! Hi kiddo!” Paige exclaimed as Piper and Wyatt both walked in the door, Piper with her arms full of groceries and Wyatt sucking his thumb and clutching at Piper’s pants. Paige hopped down the last step in the staircase and took a couple of the bags from Piper.

“Hi Auntie Paige,” Wyatt said around his thumb.

Paige giggled and tousled Wyatt’s hair. Sometimes she couldn’t believe that he was already three and a half. It seemed like only yesterday he was born, right there in the Manor. She and Phoebe had trained for months to be Piper’s midwives, and it wound up paying off when they had to deliver the baby right then and there.

She followed Piper into the kitchen and set the bags down on the center island. Piper did the same, heaving a sigh. “What’s the matter?” Paige asked. “Hard day?”

“Long day,” Piper replied. She put the milk in the refrigerator and then turned back and began emptying the grocery bags. “I had a full morning at the club meeting with band managers, then my afternoon was spent meeting with the preschool teachers because apparently, Wyatt’s been telling the kids he can do magic. They don’t believe him, of course, and I had to sit there and pretend that I would give him a stern talking-to about making up stories.”

“Why would we want kids to have imaginations?” Paige asked jokingly.

Piper gave her an icy look. “Paige, he can’t be telling the kids about his magic.”

“I understand that, Piper,” she replied sympathetically. “But it could be worse. He could be showing them his magic.”

“He knows better than that.” Piper sighed and looked over at her son, who was running his little finger up and down the basement door. “And he should know better than this. But after tonight, he will. He’s being sent to bed early and without dessert tonight.”

“Aww,” Paige said, pouting. Then her eyes widened in realization. “That’s why you’re so agitated. This is the first time you’ve really had to punish him.”

Piper met Paige’s eyes quickly before looking down. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Paige said nothing; she simply gave Piper’s shoulder a squeeze and then started putting the rest of the groceries away.

With the both of them working, they got it all put away in about ten minutes. Paige looked around for Wyatt and found him still standing at the basement door, poking his finger into the door and then pulling it back. She grinned, then snuck up behind him and began tickling him. He started laughing out loud, pushing at her hands to make her stop. She did after a minute, then picked her nephew up and gave him a hug. “Hey, kiddo. How about I read you a story before dinnertime?”

“Okay!” he replied. “Can you read The Gingerbread Man?”

Paige smirked; she knew that’s what Wyatt would want to read. “Only if you do your part when I tell you.”

He laughed. “Run, run, as fast as you can!”

“You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” Paige finished with him, grinning. “You want to read it upstairs in your room or down here in the parlor?”

“Here.” Wyatt said matter-of-factly, pointing at the kitchen floor. “It’s sketti night.”

Paige chuckled. “Yes, I know it’s spaghetti night, but we’re not going to read the book in here. Your mommy has to cook the skettis! She doesn’t want us in the way. We’ll read the story in the parlor, okay? That way we’ll know right away when dinner’s ready.”

“Okay!” Wyatt exclaimed, then ran out of the kitchen, presumably to go get the book.

Paige laughed. “Piper, he is so adorable.”

“And you are amazing with him,” Piper said, smiling. “Thanks for offering to read to him. It’ll keep him out from under my feet while I’m cooking dinner.”

“I figured,” Paige said, returning her sister’s smile. She was about to say something else, but then Wyatt’s little voice calling her from the parlor filtered into the kitchen. “I have to go read to your son.” Paige winked and left Piper to cook the spaghetti.

She loved spending time with her nephew and was glad she could help Piper out. Thinking about it, she realized that they were quite lucky that the biggest supernatural crisis they’d had in a while was Wyatt telling the other kids in preschool that he had powers. Now you just jinxed yourself, Paige, she thought to herself jokingly.

Piper sighed as she buckled Wyatt into his car seat. Another day of picking him up from preschool. He had been in preschool for a few months already and he was adjusting to it fairly well. The first couple of weeks were hard; he had cried every morning when she dropped him off, and it pained her to leave him there when he was so upset, even though it was only a couple of hours. But Leo had told her she was doing the right thing and that Wyatt had to learn to be away from his mother for a little bit eventually. And Leo had been absolutely right. Within a couple of weeks, Wyatt was actually excited to go to preschool and play with the other kids.

As soon as Wyatt was settled in the back seat, she climbed in the drivers’ side, put on her seatbelt, and started the car. She glanced up in the rearview mirror and smiled at Wyatt, who was waving goodbye to one of his friends. “How was school today, baby?”

“Fun!” Wyatt exclaimed.

Piper smiled. She had just had a talk with Wyatt’s teacher, Mrs. Willams, and told her that she had talked to Wyatt and that he would no longer be telling the other kids he had powers. If he did say anything else, Mrs. Williams promised she’d tell Piper immediately. Piper was relieved, but not for the reason that the teacher assumed. She was just relieved that Wyatt wouldn’t be going around telling random people about their magic anymore.

As Wyatt waved to another little boy from his car seat, Piper smiled. Her son was already more outgoing at three than she was in elementary school. Must get that from his aunts, she thought. “You have a lot of friends here, don’t you, baby?”

“Uh huh!” he said, bouncing in his seat.

She giggled. “You have more friends than I did when I was your age.”

“You were my age once?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes, I was,” she replied, laughing. “I’ll have to show you pictures when we get home.”

“Was Auntie Paige my age once, too? And Auntie Phoebe?”

“Yep!” She pulled the car out of the parking space and headed back to the Manor. “We were all your age once, sweetie.”

“Why aren’t you my age now then?” he asked, completely confused.

“Because everyone grows up, honey. Kind of like how on your last birthday, you went from two to three. Remember that?” He nodded. “And on your next birthday, you’ll go from three to four. It’s called growing up.”

“Oh.” Wyatt leaned his head back in his seat and turned to stare out the window. Piper could tell he had already lost interest in the conversation, so she just turned on the radio very quietly and focused her attention on the road.

Once they were home, she asked Paige if she knew where the old photograph albums were. She had known for a while that Paige liked to rummage around the attic, but she had decided to not let on that she knew. She wanted to let Paige have that bit of privacy. “Maybe in the basement?” Paige replied once Piper specified which albums she was looking for. “I know they’re not in the attic.”

Piper picked up Wyatt and carried him down the stairs to the basement. The poor basement had had many uses over the years, from a darkroom for Prue to a training area for Phoebe. It was back to simply being used for storage now; all the things that couldn’t fit in the attic due to the witchcraft supplies were kept in the basement. She set Wyatt on the floor and began digging through some of the older boxes.

She found them in the fourth box she opened. “Ah ha!” she exclaimed. “Wyatt, want to see Mama when she was your age?” She turned around to find her son digging his finger into a crack in the cement floor. “No, Wyatt, that’s dirty.” She picked Wyatt up, settled him on her hip, then picked up the photo albums in her other hand.

“Come on, sweetie. We’re going to look at old pictures of Mommy and Auntie Phoebe.” As she started up the stairs, she thought she saw Wyatt waving to someone out of the corner of her eye. She shook her head, figuring she must have been seeing things, and climbed the stairs, leaving the chilly basement behind her. “Paige! Phoebe! I found the pictures!”

“Oh, really?” Phoebe asked from the refrigerator as she poured herself a glass of soda. “Yay! Let’s go in the parlor.”

Piper and her sisters settled on the parlor couch, Piper in the middle with Wyatt on her lap. She rested the picture album on Wyatt’s legs and opened to the first page. “Oh, look at how little you guys are!” Paige exclaimed as she looked down at a photograph of Prue, Piper, and Phoebe when they were very young. Prue looked like she was about eight.

“See, Wyatt? This is me and this is your Auntie Phoebe,” Piper said, pointing out herself and her sister in the picture.

“Mama, who’s that?” Wyatt asked, pointing down at Prue.

“That’s your Auntie Prue,” Piper said softly. “I’ve told you about her.”

“Yeah, a lot,” Wyatt said, leaning his head back against Piper’s chest. “Tell me about her again.”

Piper went through the album, narrating the pictures in the album. At one point, she looked up at Paige and smiled. Paige was enjoying the narration just as much as Wyatt was. She knew Paige thought that it was unfair she’d never get to meet Prue, and frankly, Piper thought it was unfair, too. She’d always wished she could get all three of her sisters in one room, even if only for a minute. She wanted Prue and Paige to get to know each other. The closest she could get to that is to fill in the holes for Paige by showing her pictures and telling her stories.

“I wish I could meet Auntie Prue, Mama,” Wyatt said, interrupting Piper’s thought process.

“I wish you could, too, honey,” Piper replied, giving her son a quick but tight hug.

“Will I ever get to?”

“Someday, pumpkin,” Phoebe said, running her finger down Wyatt’s cheek. “But it won’t be for a long, long time.”

Wyatt nodded and looked down at the pictures again. “Mama? Why aren’t there any pictures of Auntie Paige?”

“I didn’t grow up with your mommy, kiddo,” Paige explained. “I grew up with another family.”

“Oh.” Wyatt looked confused, but uncharacteristically, he didn’t question it. “Mama? I’m sleepy.”

“Okay, baby. I’ll take you up for a nap.” She set the photo album down on the coffee tables and chuckled when Paige snatched it up and began flipping through the rest of it. As she carried Wyatt up the stairs, she saw him waving again. At first, she thought that Wyatt was just waving to his aunts, but when Piper looked over her shoulder, she realized that he couldn’t see them from their position on the stairs. “Who’re you waving to, hon?”

“My friend!” Wyatt said excitedly. “I met him today.”

Piper frowned. Wyatt had enough friends at school; she couldn’t understand why he would need an imaginary one. But she shrugged it off. The imaginary friend stage was typical for kids Wyatt’s age, so as long as it didn’t get too out of hand, she supposed it was all right. What could it hurt? she thought.

-----

“Ms. Halliwell, may I speak with you for a moment?” Mrs. Williams asked when Piper came to the door to pick Wyatt up from preschool.

“Sure,” Piper said, gesturing to Wyatt to tell him he could keep playing with his friend Kevin. “What’s going on?”

“Has Wyatt mentioned anything to you about an imaginary friend?” the teacher asked, welcoming Piper into the little school.

“I have seen him waving to someone I can’t see and I do hear him talking at night after I put him to bed,” Piper shrugged. “Why? Has he said anything to you?”

“I have noticed him talking to himself over the past week or so. That wouldn’t normally be so bad except for he’s starting to isolate himself from the other kids in favor of the imaginary friend.” She ran her fingers through her short blonde hair quickly, then spoke up again. “I want to show you something else.” Piper frowned as the teacher grabbed some papers from the drawing table. “Wyatt drew these earlier today; he says they’re of his imaginary friend.”

Piper took the papers from her warily. She looked down at the dark purple squiggle on the page and immediately knew what had Mrs. Williams so concerned. While Wyatt wasn’t the world’s best three-year-old artist, he usually drew more than just squiggles. Sighing, she handed the papers back to Mrs. Williams. “I’ll talk with him again tonight. I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of this.”

“Good,” Mrs. Williams smiled. “Wyatt’s made a lot of progress here and when some children make this much progress, a little setback is to be expected. I just want to catch it before he regresses too much, you know?”

“Thank you very much,” Piper said with a smile. She met Wyatt’s eye and waved him over to the door. As he ran up to her excitedly, she couldn’t help but watch him with a concerned eye. He turned around and waved goodbye to Kevin, then held his arms up to Piper, asking to be picked up. She complied, picking him up and carrying him out the door.

As she settled him into the car seat, she took a deep breath and decided to ask him about the drawings. “Wyatt? Can I ask you something?”

He shrugged. Piper bit her lip; it was unusual for Wyatt to be so distant, and he’d been even moreso over the last few days. “Honey, Mrs. Williams told me about your imaginary friend.”

“So?” he said with another shrug.

She sighed and sat down in the backseat next to him. “So I was just wondering what your friend was like.”

“He’s nice, Mama. I can talk to him about my magic.”

Piper smirked and almost immediately felt a little better. Wyatt hadn’t created a friend because he felt he didn’t have enough already; he created a friend he could talk to about his magic. “Do you just talk to him about your magic?”

“Sometimes,” he said, somewhat uncomfortably. “Sometimes we talk about you and Auntie Phoebe and Auntie Paige. He asked me about Auntie Prue once, too.”

“He did?” Piper asked. Wyatt nodded. “What’d you say about her?”

“I said I didn’t know her, but I wish I did. Then he said he met her once.”

Piper smiled and tousled her son’s hair. “Okay, baby. What do you say we go out for lunch today?”

“Yay!” Wyatt exclaimed. “Can I get a cheeseburger? And some fries? With ketchup?”

“Sure,” Piper said, giggling. There were times when her son reminded her so much of Prue, and this was one of those times. “That was what your Auntie Prue loved to eat when she was little, you know.”

“I know.” Wyatt smiled.

Piper smiled back at him, then got out of the back seat and settled in the drivers’ side. On her way to Wyatt’s favorite place to get burgers, she realized that she still had to talk to Wyatt a little more about his imaginary friend because she didn’t like what Mrs. Williams had said about Wyatt isolating himself from the other kids in his class, but at least now she know why he had invented the friend. It put her mind at ease, at least enough for her to get through lunch and get home.

-----

Leo gave his wife a kiss as she stirred the stew simmering in the crock pot. “Hey, honey. How are you?”

Piper turned around excitedly and threw her arms around Leo’s neck. “Oh! It’s so good to see you!” He had been away for a whole week, doing business “up there” and she hadn’t heard from him in all that time. “I’m all right, except we have some Wyatt issues. He’s got an imaginary friend.”

He hugged her back, then let her go and held her at arm’s length. “Well, yes, but imaginary friends are normal for kids his age.”

“I know that,” Piper sighed. “But this imaginary friend is . . . different.”

After they had gotten home, Piper had probed more into the imaginary friend question. Wyatt apparently hadn’t given him a name and really couldn’t describe what he looked like, but he kept assuring Piper that everything was okay and that his friend was good. Still, Piper didn’t like how this “friend” seemed to know things about the family and how Wyatt was cutting his other, real friends off in favor of his imaginary one. “I just don’t like it, Leo, but I don’t know what to say to him to make him give him up. He created him so he could talk about his magic . . .”

Leo gave her another hug. “How long’s that stew got?”

“At least half an hour. Why? You want to go try to talk to him? I just put him down for a nap.”

“Well, let’s just go see if he’s asleep yet. If he is, it can wait. But if he’s not, we should talk to him.”

Piper nodded and leaned into her husband as he walked her up the stairs. And to think that right after Wyatt was born, she almost let him go. She wasn’t sure even now what she had been thinking; she had just been so shocked and hurt by Leo’s becoming an Elder that she wasn’t sure if she could have lived without him. But after Leo had proved to her that his being an Elder wasn’t going to effect how much time he spent with her and his son, she had gladly welcomed him back, apologizing for ever doubting his devotion to her. He had apologized, too, for having to leave when he did.

When they got to Wyatt’s door, she knocked quietly and pushed it open. Wyatt was lying on his side with his head propped up on his arm and when the door opened, he turned around with a glare that made Piper jump. She had never seen her son that angry before. “Wyatt, baby? Daddy’s home and he wanted to see you.”

Wyatt sat up and pulled his knees to his chest. “What if I don’t want to see Daddy?”

Piper closed her eyes a moment, then entered the room and sat down on the bed. As she went to wrap her arms around Wyatt’s little shoulders, he pulled away from her. She had been expecting this, the day that Wyatt would start questioning why his father had to keep leaving him. “Honey, you know Daddy has to leave every once in a while. And you know that that doesn’t mean he loves you any less.”

Leo sat down at the foot of the bed, giving Wyatt some space but also letting him know that he was there for him. “I hate that I have to leave you, sport, but I do love you, you know that. I miss you all the time when I’m gone.”

Wyatt refused to look up. “No. My friend says that I can be mad. He says I should be mad.”

“Well, that’s what we want to talk to you about, baby,” Piper said. “Daddy and I want to ask you about your friend.”

“He’s my friend,” Wyatt said angrily. “It’s all you need to know.”

Piper raised her eyebrow at Leo, who shot her a concerned glance. “Wyatt--”

“No!” Wyatt pushed Piper away. “Go away! I hate you!”

Leo reached out to Wyatt, only to have Wyatt put up his shield to isolate himself from him parents. “Wyatt, put the shield down.”

“No!” Wyatt yelled. He looked over at the side of his bed and nodded, then orbed out.

Piper’s jaw dropped. “Leo, follow him! Paige! Orb Phoebe and follow us!” She just hoped that her sister heard her from the other room because she didn’t have time to yell twice. She grabbed onto Leo as he orbed after their son.

The sensation from Leo’s orbing never failed to leave Piper a little woozy. She admired both Leo and Paige for orbing in and out many times a day and not getting sick each time. After steadying herself, she opened her eyes and was surprised to find herself in the basement. “Leo, what--”

“I followed him,” Leo whispered. “Look.”

She followed Leo’s gaze and saw her son standing facing the wall, talking to his shadow. She barely noticed Paige and Phoebe orb in behind them as the pieces started fitting together. He hadn’t started talking about his friend until after the day she took him down in the basement to get the photo albums. And he had been playing with a crack in the floor. He had to have released the Woogyman. She didn’t understand how it had happened and she didn’t understand everything, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting her son back from the clutches of evil. “Wyatt, honey? Come to Mama.”

“No, Wyatt, come here.” A man stepped out of the shadows and approached Wyatt slowly.

“Who the hell are you?!” Paige asked.

“My name isn’t important,” the man said nonchalantly. “I’m here for the child.”

Piper wasn’t even listening to them. She couldn’t. She couldn’t deal with yet another demon coming after her son to take him away from her. Their bond had been tried and tested so many times over the course of the past three and a half years, but each time a demon came after Wyatt, it felt like the first time all over again. She had lost so much due to the magical nature of her life, but she felt that her son should be one thing that couldn’t be taken from her. “No, you will not take him from me. Wyatt, honey, come here.”

“Wyatt, come with me,” the man said gently. “Your friend sent me to come get you. He wants you to come with me, Wyatt, and you know he wants what’s best for you.”

“Wyatt, stay right there,” Piper said, tears welling in her eyes, “I’m going to pick you up, okay?”

Wyatt finally turned around, then looked from his mother to the nameless demon and back again. “No, Mama.”

“No, Wyatt, you belong here,” Piper cried. “Baby, please . . .”

She watched as her son walked toward the man. The demon picked him up and tousled his hair. Piper turned around and buried her face in Leo’s chest. She heard Paige call for Wyatt, but the demon must have left too quickly. Feeling two more sets of arms wrap around her was confirmation enough. Her baby was gone, and he had chosen to go. The worst of it was, she realized, she hadn’t done anything to stop him. She had let him go.

-----

“Goddamn it!” Prue cried, smacking a teacup off the small table where she was having tea with her mother and grandmother. She stood up and turned towards where the Elders usually congregated. She couldn‘t see any of Them, but that didn’t mean that They weren’t there. “How could you let this happen?” she shouted in Their general direction.

“Prue, darling.” Penny stood up as well and rested her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder. “Your sisters’ll fix it.”

“How, Grams?” Prue whirled around and glared at her grandmother. “How are they going to get him back? Wyatt may be little, but he’s damn powerful.”

“The Power of Three--” Penny started.

“--Is not enough,” Patty interrupted. “Not against the Woogyman, the demons that have Wyatt now, and Wyatt. She’s right, Mom. They can’t get him back. Not without help.”

“Oh God, Piper’s so lost,” Prue said, watching her sisters comfort Piper. “She needs me. Damn it all to hell.”

Penny wrapped her arm around Prue’s shoulders and pulled her into a hug. “I know how much you miss them, my darling. I miss them, too. And I know how much you want to help. But you can’t. You just have faith in them. They’ll find a way.”

“Grams, I love you, but now’s not the time for platitudes,” Prue muttered. She pulled away from her grandmother and turned back to watch her sisters. “I don’t even get it! How the hell did this happen?”

“Evil earned a child’s trust,” said a voice from behind the three women. “It’s as simple as that.”

Prue spun around to see Leo standing behind her. She ran up to him and gave him a hug. “Hey, how’re you holding up?”

“As well as can be expected.” He hugged Prue, then let her go. “I think we’ve finally nailed down what happened. When Wyatt was playing in the basement, he released the Woogyman. The Woogy realized that Wyatt didn’t know who he was and that he was evil and purposely stayed out of Piper’s sight, but not before showing himself to Wyatt and pretending to me a friend. He then visited Wyatt often, talking to him and getting him to trust him, all the while slowly turning him. It took about a week for the transformation to take place, quite a difference from when he went after Phoebe.”

Prue nodded. “Leo, you don’t--”

“Yes, Prue, I do. Young children trust easily, and the Woogyman provided Wyatt with something he wanted, a friend to talk about his magic with. He also somehow twisted everything we said and did and it turned him against us. So when they went in for the kill, so to speak, Wyatt already trusted him quite a bit and didn’t trust us. I’m assuming you saw the rest.”

“Yeah, we did,” Patty said apologetically.

“I wish I could help,” Prue said softly.

“You’re going to get to,” Leo informed her. Prue looked up sharply, raising her eyebrows at him. “I was up here discussing options with the other Elders. They all agree that the Power of Three isn’t strong enough to counteract all the magic involved, and one of the better options suggested was that we try the Power of Four. Get ready, Prue. I’m taking you back down there with me.”

“What?” Prue asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Prue’s jaw dropped. After five years of wanting to go back down to see her sisters, she was finally getting that chance. What was she going to say, to Phoebe, to Piper? To Paige? “D-do they know I’m coming?”

“No,” Leo said with a small smile.

“I-I can’t go yet! I’m not ready . . . I have . . . I can’t just go back there after being gone for five years, Leo. I-I don’t know what to do any more than you guys do.”

Leo frowned. It wasn‘t like Prue to be so indecisive, but then again, he was asking her to reunite with people she hadn‘t seen in five years. She was more than likely just nervous about seeing her sisters again and finally meeting Paige. “They’re not going to expect you to have all the answers, Prue, I promise. But I think just seeing you is going to help a lot. Come on, take my hand.”

She nodded, then gave her mother and grandmother a quick goodbye hug and couldn’t help but smirk when her grandmother told her to be careful. “I will, Grams. Cross my heart. Tell Andy I love him, please?” Then she walked up to Leo and slipped her hand in his.

-----

Phoebe stood at the stove, waiting for the water in the tea kettle to boil. She had declared that now was as a good a time as any for Grams’s special hot cocoa recipe. She just wished she could do more for Piper, who was sitting at the kitchen table, so in shock that she couldn’t even cry anymore. She just kept muttering, “I let him go” over and over again.

Paige was seated next to Piper, holding her as tightly as she could and trying to tell her that everything was going to be okay and that they would get Wyatt back. But as Phoebe exchanged a worried glance with Paige, she knew that she and Paige were both thinking the exact same thing: they had no idea how they were going to get Wyatt back.

Leo had left over two hours ago to talk with the rest of the Elders, to brainstorm ways of getting the most magical child any of them knew out of the clutches of evil. The fact that he hadn’t returned yet was telling; it proved that this was a lot more serious than she had originally thought. The tea kettle started to whistle and Phoebe jumped, torn from her thoughts by the shrill sound. She began pouring the steaming water in the three mugs she had set out, each one already prepared with just the right blend of cocoa powder, sugar, and chocolate chips. “Why isn’t Leo back yet?” she heard Piper mumble.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Paige whispered. “They probably just want to make sure They’re doing what’s best. You know, working out all the options and stuff.”

Phoebe carried Piper’s and Paige’s mugs to the table, then went back to retrieve her own. “It’s going to be all right, Piper,” she said as she sat at the table with her sisters. “I promise it’s all going to be okay. We’ll get Wyatt back.”

“How, Phoebe?” Piper asked wearily. “How can you say that? How can you be so sure? He left voluntarily, Phoebe, and I let him. What kind of mother am I?”

“You’re the kind of mother who fights for her son, Piper, the kind of mother who doesn’t give up.”

Phoebe started at the sound of that voice. Was she imagining things? She had to be. She hadn’t heard that voice, Prue’s voice, in five years. But as soon as she looked at Piper, she knew she hadn’t imagined it. She turned around and was very surprised to see Prue standing in the doorway to the kitchen, hand in hand with Leo. “P-Prue? Oh my God, Prue!” Phoebe leapt out of her seat and practically tackled Prue, wrapping her in a tight hug. It took a second before she realized that Prue was hugging her back. “H-how? You’re . . . you’re not a ghost!”

“No, I’m not,” Prue said, smiling through the tears in her eyes. She wrapped her arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and turned to Piper and Paige. Piper was staring at her in shock and Paige looked like she didn’t know what to think. “I know I’m the last person you expected to see right now, Piper, and you too, Paige, but I can help. With the Power of Four? We’ll be unstoppable. We will get Wyatt back. I’m not quite sure how yet, but we will, I guarantee it.”

Piper let out a choked sob and rushed to her sister’s arms. Prue pulled her into a tight comforting embrace. “Shh, it’s okay, sweetheart. It’s all going to be okay now.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Piper whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too, honey.” Prue let both of her sisters go and turned to Paige, who was still seated at the table, completely unsure of how to act. After wiping the tears from her eyes, she approached the kitchen table and sat down where Piper had been sitting. “I know this is awkward for you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I also don’t want to make it seem like I’m ignoring you. I--”

“No, I know exactly what you mean,” Paige said. “After all this time of hearing about you and never expecting to meet you . . . I’ve wanted to meet you so badly. Do, um, do you think it would be okay if I gave you a hug?”

“Of course,” Prue said with a huge smile. “Come here, hon.”

Phoebe watched as Prue and Paige hugged for the first time. She wondered what was going through both their heads, if any of it even made sense to either of them. Her own thoughts weren’t making sense to her, not after the shock of losing Wyatt and then seeing Prue again. She turned to Leo and whispered, “I know that she was brought down to help, but what are we going to do?”

“You’re going to be the Charmed Ones,” Leo said with a determination that surprised Phoebe, “and the four of you are going to get my son back.”

-----

“Okay, so what are we going to do?” Paige asked nervously.

“First up on the itinerary is research,” Prue answered, looking up from the Book of Shadows. After a small reunion party in the kitchen, she had gotten her sisters right down to business. She figured that this wasn't a race against the clock in the strictest sense of the term; after all, the demons wouldn’t have taken Wyatt if they wanted to kill him. But even still, Piper had been without her son for too long already, and Prue didn’t want her to be without him for much longer. “We look through the Book, try to see if you guys recognize which demon actually took him. We know we’re fighting the Woogyman, so a quick banish back to under the cement is all that’s needed for him. Then, we track Wyatt down and get him back.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Paige said, amazed. She had without hesitation let Prue take over the rescue mission. She had to admit to being almost starstruck; she had, for five years, had this image of Prue the Superwitch in her head, and now she was finding that Prue was just as she imagined. “How did you just know what we have to do?”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Prue cautioned, her voice growing softer. “It’s going to be one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do. They have a lot of magic on their side, a lot of dark magic. But what they’re trying to do is tear us apart at the seams, using our own family against us. They’re hoping that we’re so focused on just getting Wyatt back that we ignore what we’re actually fighting here--”

“But he’s my son, Prue,” Piper spoke up. She hadn’t said much since Wyatt had been taken. “How am I not supposed to focus on getting him back?”

“That’s not what I meant, honey,” Prue said. “What I meant is they’re hoping you go into this as a mother.” She flicked her eyes to Phoebe and Paige. “And they’re hoping the two of you go into this as aunts and sisters, not as Charmed Ones. But we can’t do that; we can’t think about it like that. Yes, they have Wyatt. No, they won’t have him for long. But it’s not going to be his mother and his aunts that are going to get him back . . . it’s going to be the Charmed Ones.”

“So what you’re saying is it’s not personal?” Phoebe asked.

“No, it is personal, Phoebe,” Prue said. “That’s the whole point. But we have to be stronger than that. It’s like when we had to fight the demon that killed Mom. We had to rise above our own emotions to do anything. We couldn’t go into that fight as daughters against their mother’s killer. We had to go into that fight as witches against a demon. Same principle here.”

“I just don’t know if I can,” Piper said, tears welling in her eyes.

Prue stepped away from the lectern and wrapped Piper in a tight hug. “Yes, you can, Piper. You are stronger than you give yourself credit for, and you can do this. I need you to believe that for me. You need to believe that or this will never work.”

Paige watched in amazement as Piper almost immediately calmed down, sniffing back the rest of her tears. She was just as Piper and Phoebe had described her, always knew the right thing to do and the right thing to say. Paige just wished they had a little more downtime so that she and her sister could really get to know each other. After exchanging a glance with Phoebe, she decided to ask Prue a question, one she’d wanted to ask all afternoon. “Prue? Are you back for good? Or only just to get Wyatt back?”

Prue smiled sadly. “I’m pretty sure I’m only here until Wyatt’s back in his mother’s arms, hon.”

“The Elders’ own little form of torture,” Piper said bitterly. “You’re here because my son is gone. Once he’s back, you leave again.”

“Oh, sweetie, don’t look at it like that,” Prue said softly.

“I’m trying not to.”

Prue once again pulled Piper into a hug, then gestured to Phoebe to begin looking through the Book of Shadows for the demon. Phoebe complied and Paige got up to join her. She kept one eye on the Book and the other on Prue and Piper. It was still so hard to believe that Prue was standing right in front of her, talking to her, and taking charge. She was just what they needed to keep them grounded, to keep them from following their emotions, and Paige had no doubt that Prue could get Wyatt back. She just hoped she was strong enough to do what Prue had quietly asked her to do on the way into the attic: to hold everyone together. “You’ve done it more than once for this family,” Prue had said, “I know you can do it again.” And the last thing Paige intended to do was disappoint her eldest sister.

-----

“I am beat,” Phoebe said with a yawn, hefting the Book of Shadows closed. After searching through the Book for nearly two full hours, she and Paige had finally found the demon that had come from the shadows to snatch Wyatt. He was from a race of shadow demon that had evolved into being able to take on physical form. Though the species of demon was advanced in terms of form, they were still underlings of the more powerful shadow demons and were usually given tasks that the other shadow demons could not perform. Like picking up a child and taking him somewhere.

“Me, too,” Paige agreed, rubbing her eyes. “But at least we know what we’re dealing with now.”

“Right,” Prue nodded. She wrapped her arm around Piper’s shoulders and smiled. “And knowing what we’re dealing with is half the battle.”

Piper nodded, hiding her own yawn behind her hand. “Why don’t we call it a night and pick it up tomorrow morning, okay?” She looked to her big sister, realization suddenly hitting her. “Um, do you sleep now?”

“Normally, no, but I am getting tired. Must be because I’m corporeal and stuff now . . .”

Phoebe bit her lip in the small awkward silence that followed. Prue didn’t have a room in the Manor anymore, and she knew that was what everyone else was thinking of, too. “You could always stay with me, Prue,” she offered.

“Actually,” Piper spoke up, “Leo’s gone back up to talk to the other Elders. I don’t know how long he’ll be and I really don’t want to spend tonight alone. Would you mind staying in my room?”

“Not at all, honey,” Prue smiled. She led her sisters downstairs. They separated in the hallway, each going to her own room. Prue followed Piper into her bedroom and closed the door. “It’s been a helluva few hours, huh?”

“Heh, you’re not kidding,” Piper muttered as she unmade the bed. “I lose Wyatt, you come back, we completely missed dinner . . .” She glanced at the clock, then groaned when she saw that it was almost one in the morning. She sank down on the bed and looked up at her sister. “Prue? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, honey,” Prue said, sitting down next to her. “Anything.”

“How come you never came back before?” she asked a bit nervously. “I-I mean, we see Mom and Grams on occasion, but we’ve never seen you since . . .”

Prue brushed Piper’s hair out of her face and smiled sadly. “I wanted to see you, honey, you have to know that. But the Elders . . . They wouldn’t let me. They said that you three needed time to learn how to work together and to get to know each other and--” She broke off, sighing and trying to fight the tears that were prickling in her eyes. “Mostly? It was my fault. I kept wanting to go back and help, but They said They wouldn’t let me go back until They were sure that I was ready to see you again without wanting to stay. Because They knew that if I saw you again, I wouldn’t want to come back.”

“Were They right?”

Prue nodded, biting her lip to keep from crying. “I don’t want to go back now, Piper. I don’t want to leave you again. But I know I have to. I’m just . . . I’m trying not to think about it, though. Not yet. Not until we do what I came here to do.”

Piper gave Prue a tight hug, then smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re back, Prue. Even if it’s only for a little bit. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I miss you, too, sweetie. Every day.” Prue glanced at the clock, made a face, then crawled under the covers. “We should try to get some sleep, hon. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Of course.” Piper turned off the overhead light, then climbed into bed and switched off her bedside lamp. “G’night, Prue.”

“Night, Piper,” Prue said through a yawn.

But Piper couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind was racing a mile a minute. Her son was gone, but her big sister was back. She was alternating between extreme sadness and extreme joy. Her entire afternoon was a blur, and it felt as if all she had done since Prue had been back was business. She understood that time was of the essence, but she wished she could enjoy her time with her big sister rather than have it all rush by because they were busy. Her thoughts were all so jumbled that nothing made sense anymore and she couldn’t make it make sense if she tried. After lying awake for what seemed like hours but was in reality only twenty minutes, she turned onto her side and faced her sister, trying to see if Prue had fallen asleep yet. “Prue? You still awake?”

“Mm-hmm,” Prue mumbled sleepily. “What’s the matter?”

“I-I have so many things I want to ask you . . .”

“So ask away.”

Piper smirked. “What do you do up there?”

“Nothing hugely exciting,” Prue said, yawning. “I have tea with Mom and Grams every afternoon--”

“You can drink?”

“Sort of. It’s not real tea. It’s kind of hard to explain. Anyway, we have tea, I sit and talk with Andy, we play cards and other games. . . it’s actually kind of boring now that I’m thinking about it. I do watch over you guys, though. All the time.”

Piper smiled at that. “You see Andy?” Prue nodded. “Are you happy there?”

“Yeah, I am. I miss you guys terribly, but I am happy. I never even realized how much I missed Andy until I saw him there waiting for me.”

“That is so sweet.” Piper fell silent for a minute or two, just letting things process. “Prue?”

Prue started slightly. “Hmm?”

“How are we going to get Wyatt back? Because we can’t vanquish the demons if they’ve turned him, right? Vanquishing them will vanquish him. Right?”

“Not quite sure,” she mumbled, her voice soft. “I’ll have to go in and get him out first.”

“How would that work? He doesn’t know you.”

“Precisely. He doesn’t know me, so he doesn’t think I’m the enemy like he thinks you guys are . . . I’ll get him back for you, Piper, I promise . . .” Her voice trailed off as she slipped into sleep.

Piper sighed and turned onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. She had no doubt that Prue would get Wyatt back. And oddly, she was starting to feel tired. Perhaps it was the talking that had helped clear her mind, or perhaps she was just comforted by the sound of Prue’s even breathing right beside her. Either way, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall into a somewhat uneasy sleep.

-----

“So, do they know what they’re going to do yet?” one of the more senior Elders named Sarius asked Leo.

“Prue’s got them on the right track,” Leo answered. “I think she’s just what they needed. She’ll keep them focused on what this is really about, even more than I could.”

Sarius nodded, then gazed down at the ground. “I’m sorry this happened, Leo. I’m sorry we couldn’t prevent it.”

“Wait . . . did you know ahead of time that this was going to happen?”

“Not in this way, no. But we had been getting rumbings of something big going on down there, something about demons banding together to try to take your boy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Leo asked quietly.

“We couldn’t. We didn’t know anything more specific than what I just said. And what good would it have done, telling you that we knew your son was in danger but we didn’t know specifics?”

“Yes, but Sarius . . .” He sighed, shaking his head. “You should have told me. I could have kept an eye out. I could have told Piper to watch him more closely. Maybe she would have picked up on the imaginary friend thing sooner if she had known . . . maybe I would have been home instead of up here going to meetings.”

“Leo, I know that splitting your time between here and the Manor is very difficult for you. I can’t even imagine how hard that is. But you cannot blame yourself for this. Let Prue work with them, let Prue lead them. Everything will turn out fine.”

“Are you saying that as a friend or as an Elder?”

“As a friend right now,” Sarius said. “As an Elder, I don’t know what’s going to happen any more than you do. But I do have faith in the Charmed Ones, all four of them. And you need to have faith in them, too.”

“I do have faith in them, as an Elder,” Leo replied. “As a father, though, I want to be doing something more than sitting up here putting faith in them.”

“This isn’t about familial relations, Leo, you know that. This is about getting an innocent child out of the hands of evil.”

Leo nodded. “I’m going to go down and check on their progress. I’ll report back with what their plan is.” And without another word, Leo orbed out of what he affectionately called Elderland.

-----

Phoebe poured some coffee grounds into the filter, set the filter in the machine and flicked the switch to the on position. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and she could tell from her sisters’ faces that none of them really had, either. As the coffee began brewing, she sank down at the kitchen table. “Anyone want anything to eat? I can make, um . . . toast. Or cereal. Anything else is asking for trouble.”

Prue smirked. “No thanks, Pheebs.” She gazed around the table. “I take it no one else slept well, either?”

“Nope,” Paige yawned. “I was awake every hour on the hour.”

“I kept having unsettling dreams,” Phoebe affirmed.

“Me too,” Piper said.

“When you were asleep,” Prue added. “Every time I woke up, you were staring at the ceiling.”

“Yeah.” Piper looked up at Prue and grinned. “You snore, you know that?”

“I do not!”

“It’s light, but yeah, you do.”

Prue blushed, which caused Phoebe and Paige to giggle at her. “Quiet, you two.” She sighed. “We need to focus. We have a big day ahead of us, which we can start talking about as soon as we get some caffeine into our systems.”

“Just how are you planning on finding where they’re hiding him?” Phoebe asked.

“First things first; we have to banish the Woogyman back under the basement floor,” Prue answered. “Once that threat is out of the house, we can work on the rest of the plan. But the finding Wyatt thing is easy. There’s enough of his stuff in the house that scrying will be a snap. It’s the whole getting him out of the demons’ hands thing that I’m most nervous about.”

“Well, we’ll have the element of surprise, right?” Paige asked. “I mean, they’re not expecting you to be with us. It’ll be easier for us to go up against them with the Power of Four if they’re expecting to counteract the Power of Three.”

“Yes, definitely,” Prue nodded. “We’ve got a lot of power on our side. What Piper and I were discussing last night, though, is that if Wyatt’s already turned, we can’t use any of it on the demons until we get him out. We can’t go in and vanquish the whole band of shadow demons if he’s one of them.”

“Wait, it’s not definite that he’s already turned?” Paige asked, confused.

“No, it’s not.” The coffee machine beeped, and Prue shot Phoebe a smile as Phoebe got up to pour four cups of coffee. “From experience, the transformation from witch to demon isn’t instantaneous. There are a lot of steps to the transformation, the final one being the first kill. There’s generally no coming back from that. Because Wyatt’s so young, they’re more than likely not going to have him attempt the first kill right away, so we’ve still got time in that regard. However, the more steps one completes in the transformation, the harder the transformation is to reverse. He can still be one of the shadow demons without having killed. It all depends on how far along in the process he is.”

“Kind of like when Piper was a Fury?” Paige asked. “She was still one of them even though she hadn’t killed someone yet.”

“Yes, exactly, but please don’t remind me of that,” Piper cringed.

“Aww, come on, Piper, you weren’t that bad,” Phoebe giggled, setting the coffee mugs down in front of her sisters.

Piper stuck her tongue out at Phoebe and sipped her coffee. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening. You know, I went to check on him last night. I must have been dreaming that he was crying for me or something and I got all the way to his room before I remembered.”

“Oh, honey, why didn’t you wake me up?” Prue asked, pulling Piper into a hug.

“I tried,” Piper giggled. “You were out cold.”

“Yeah, you do sleep like the dead at times, Prue,” Phoebe teased.

“Phoebe!” Paige exclaimed, giggling.

Phoebe cringed and blushed once she realized what she had said. “Okay, that was an unfortunate choice of words, but still.”

Prue laughed. “It’s okay, Pheebs. I know what you mean.”

“So, what do you say? Want to go banish the Woogyman?” Piper asked. She was starting to get antsy.

Suddenly, the man that had taken Wyatt shimmered into the kitchen, holding Wyatt on his hip. Prue raised her hand to throw the demon across the room, but Piper grabbed her arm, stopping her. “No, you’ll hurt Wyatt.”

The man whispered something to Wyatt, who threw his hand out and tossed an energy ball at Paige and Piper. Phoebe pushed Piper out of the ball’s path as Paige ducked and then tried to call for Wyatt. They shimmered out just as fast as they came in. Paige groaned that she missed him again. “Is everyone okay?” Prue asked.

“Yeah,” Paige said.

“Okay, good,” Prue replied. “We have to step this up now beause they know I’m here, for one.”

“What’s the other?” Phoebe asked.

“They’re further along with the transformation than we thought,” Piper said, on the verge of tears. “My son just almost killed me.”

-----

Paige held the crystal over the map loosely, trying to clear her mind enough so that there would be no way they could get any false leads on Wyatt’s location. So far, the crystal hadn’t moved so much as a centimeter. She didn’t want to question why the scrying wasn’t working; doing so would only worry Piper and besides, she didn’t want to question Prue’s instruction. But at the same time, she knew she couldn’t keep sitting in the wicker chair in the conservatory, waiting for the crystal to do something it might never do.

“Have you gotten anything?” Phoebe asked from the doorway, almost unnecessarily. She could tell simply by the frustration on Paige’s face that she was getting nowhere.

Paige sighed, shook her head, and finally dropped the crystal gently onto the map. “Nothing. Either they’re masking him somehow or . . . I don’t know. But we’re not going to find him like this. Where are Piper and Prue?”

“In the kitchen. They just banished the Woogyman back under the basement floor and now Prue’s trying to calm Piper down.”

Paige nodded and sighed again, looking down at the map and crystal. With no magical help, she had no idea where her nephew could even be. The city itself was huge with tons of places were a man and a child could blend in. But chances were, they weren’t even in the city; they were more than likely in some secret area in the Underworld. Then she gasped, suddenly getting an idea. “Let’s lure them here.”

Phoebe looked at her younger sister quizzically. “Excuse me?”

“Well, the Manor’s where we’re the strongest anyway, right?” Phoebe nodded, still not following Paige’s train of thought. “So why go to them? We should bring them to us, to where we’re the strongest together.”

“I can get behind that,” Phoebe said, nodding in approval. “But how?”

“Summoning spells. God knows there’s more than enough in the Book of Shadows. One of them has to be right; we’ll just have to reword it a little.” Paige took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. “I just can’t think of any other way to get to them, Phoebe. And we need to get Wyatt back.”

“I know we do,” Phoebe sighed.

She stepped into the conservatory and sat down next to Paige. She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated. Paige furrowed her brow, suddenly concerned. “What is it, Phoebe?”

Phoebe looked into Paige’s eyes through the tears quickly welling in her own. “I don’t want to let her go, Paige.”

Paige immediately pulled Phoebe into a tight hug. “I know, sweetie. I can’t even imagine what’s going through your head right now.”

“Prue and I . . . we had a rocky relationship, yes. Neither one of us will deny that. But when she died, Paige, I was so lost. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, she’d always been there, you know? She was always there, willing to go beat up the kids who picked on me or any boys that treated me wrong. If I ever needed anything, I went to her. And now she’s back, right here in front of me, and I don’t think I can watch her leave us again.” Phoebe started crying, so Paige held her more closely. “And no one knows this, but I’ve always felt responsible for that day . . .”

“Oh, Phoebe, shh,” Paige whispered. “Shh, it’s okay.”

“No, Paige, it’s not,” Phoebe cried, burying her face into Paige’s shoulder. “If I hadn’t gone after Cole that day . . . if I had just stayed with them like they wanted me to . . .”

“Shh,” Paige whispered, trying to comfort Phoebe. She had never asked what had gone on the day Prue had died, but she knew, just from little snippets of conversation over the past five years, that it had been really violent and very sudden. And she also got the sense that Phoebe knew a lot more about it than Piper did. Phoebe and Leo shared these small looks, little glances, whenever Prue was mentioned that Piper never picked up on. She wanted desperately to ask what had happened -- and she would have liked to know just how her eldest sister had died -- but she knew it was still too fresh and too painful for them to talk about with her.

After crying for a couple of minutes, Phoebe pulled away from Paige and ran her hands over her face. “I’m sorry. I just--”

“No, don’t apologize, Phoebe,” Paige interrupted, smiling at her sister. “I understand, believe me.”

“I . . . they can’t see me like this,” Phoebe said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t want them to know, Paige. I need to be strong for Piper, especially now . . .”

“It’s okay,” Paige said comfortingly. “Come on, let’s get you up to the bathroom and get some cold water on your face.” She took Phoebe’s hand and pulled her up from the wicker chair. As they were walking hand in hand up the stairs, Paige looked over, brushed Phoebe’s hair out of her eyes with her free hand, and smiled. “You know, you’re more like Prue than you tend to think you are.”

Phoebe giggled. “Perhaps.” She sighed. “I just didn’t expect this to be so hard.”

“What, seeing her again?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I mean, when we see Grams, it’s . . . I don’t know. It’s not this hard. I don’t know why, but it’s not.”

“It’s because Prue was taken from you so suddenly, sweetie. And you haven’t seen her in five years and then, suddenly, she’s here and you can talk to her, hug her, everything like that. And you’re faced with having to tell her goodbye for another what, like, fifty years? But you know what, Phoebe?”

“What?”

“At least this time, you can say goodbye properly. I know it’s not much of a consolation, but . . .”

Phoebe smiled. “True.”

“And I really think you need to talk to Prue about what you’re feeling. You need to tell her, Phoebe, if only for your own peace of mind.”

“I will,” Phoebe promised. “Just . . . when the time’s right.”

“Good.”

Phoebe grinned at Paige. “What would I do without you?”

“Be completely miserable, obviously,” Paige replied with a wink.

-----

Prue and her sisters, all three of them, sat assembled in the attic. Paige was telling them her plan to get Wyatt back, and truthfully, Prue was glad she hadn’t been afraid to speak up with her ideas. Once the scrying didn’t work, Prue had no other ideas to get to Wyatt. Even though she was supposed to be leading her sisters in this rescue mission, she felt so out of practice that she wasn’t even sure she was helping at all.

“--so we lure them here, snatch Wyatt, and then vanquish,” Paige finished up. “The four of us need the element of surprise, what with them knowing about Prue now. What’s more surprising than being taken suddenly right where you want to be?”

“But how are we going to get Wyatt away from them to vanquish them?” Piper spoke up.

“I can call for him,” Paige said.

“He’ll fight you to get back to them,” Piper said, shaking her head.

“Orb him to me,” Prue said, trying to work out the plan in her head. “Let me talk to him. Just don’t mass vanquish anyone until I get through to him. It’s going to have to be individual vanquishes until then. But between the potions we’ll have to make and Piper’s fire power, it shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll just make a lot of that potion.”

“So, is this the way we want to do this?” Phoebe asked nervously.

“It’ll work,” Prue nodded. “And it’ll work better than anything I can come up with. Piper, what do you say?”

“If you three are sure . . .” she said hesitantly. Then, she set her shoulders and a look of pure determination settled onto her face. “Let’s do it. I want my son back now."

-----

Prue set the little potion vials on one of the side tables in the attic. She had counted at least twenty and she knew that Piper and Paige each had a couple more. Phoebe was working on rewording the blood-to-blood summoning spell so that it called only Wyatt to them. They were sure that once Wyatt was back in the Manor, the demons wouldn’t be too far behind, but even a second or two alone with Wyatt would give the sisters a slight edge.

“Okay, I think I got it,” Phoebe said, standing up from her spot on the floor while still looking down at her notepad. “I couldn’t think of a way to reword it so that all of us could say it, so . . .” She handed the pad to Piper. “We just have to hope that the mother-son bond is strong enough to get him here despite the transformation.”

Piper read the reworked spell over and nodded, swallowing hard. “Okay. Everyone ready?” When each of her sisters had nodded and settled into their respective places, Piper positioned herself in the middle of the attic, closed her eyes, and began chanting the spell. “Powers of my son rise, course unseen across the skies, come to me who calls you near, come to me and settle here. Blood to blood, I summon thee. Blood to blood, return to me.”

A small wind kicked up in the attic, then a cloud of white swirling smoke appeared in front of Piper. Prue raised her hand, changing the potion vial’s position in it in case she had to let it go quickly. But as the smoke disappeared, she saw that Wyatt had answered the call, and he had answered it alone. She quickly set the vial on the table and ran forward to pick Wyatt up before he realized what was going on. “Hey, kiddo,” she said gently, keeping his view of Piper and the others blocked. “I’m your Auntie Prue.”

Wyatt looked at her with a very concerned and very disbelieving expression. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am, sweetie.” She took him to the corner of the attic and stood him on an old table so that he was facing the wall. As soon as she had him settled, she saw the demons starting to appear in the attic, having followed Wyatt’s trail. Knowing that her sisters had plenty of fire power to vanquish the demons one-by-one, she focused her attention solely on Wyatt. Hearing the commotion and not being able to see anything, he suddenly felt threatened and raised his hand to conjure an energy ball, but she gently grabbed his arm and put it back down at his side. “Don’t. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”

He just looked her in the eye warily. “What do you want?”

“I want you to come back home, Wyatt,” Prue said. “I want you to fight the evil people and come be with the good people again.”

“I am with the good people,” he said, opening his hand once more.

Prue clasped his hand and held it from underneath as he conjured an energy ball. By holding his hand steady, she wasn‘t allowing him to throw the energy ball anywhere. “No, you’re not, Wyatt. If you were, your first thought wouldn’t be to kill me. That’s what you want to do right now, isn’t it?”

He nodded, his face clearly showing his surprise. “H-how did you know that?”

“Because I know the signs of evil.” She used her power to fling the energy ball from Wyatt’s hand into an old box of toys. Wyatt jumped and looked on in horror as the box disintegrated, then disappeared entirely. “Now, that’s what would have happened to me if you had thrown that at me. And that’s what will happen to anyone you throw that at. Do you really want that, Wyatt? Do you really want powers that do that?”

He shook his head. “No. But they said that the powers I had were the bad ones.”

“Your powers are not bad, sweetheart.” She picked him up and settled him on her hip. “Your powers are very, very good. Your powers are so strong that the evil people want them on their side, and they’ll tell you anything to get them. And that’s what they did. I bet you they told you things like your Daddy doesn’t love you and that your Mommy doesn’t want you to talk about your magic because she’s ashamed of it. Am I right?” He silently nodded, amazed that she knew so much. “Those were all lies, honey. Your Daddy does love you very, very much and your Mommy is very proud of you and your powers.”

“Prue, hurry!” she heard Paige cry. Prue looked over Wyatt’s head and drew in her breath. Her sisters were out of potion vials and the demons were still coming. Piper was trying to fight them off with her exploding power, but they were coming too fast for her to keep up with on her own.

Wyatt heard Prue gasp and turned to see what was going on. Upon taking in the scene, he orbed out of Prue’s arms and in front of the three sisters. Just as one of the demons opened his hand to throw an energy ball, Wyatt threw up his protection shield. The energy ball bounced off the shield and broke apart into pieces, all of which found their way to a demon. They all turned into small piles of ash, which disappeared in a matter of seconds. Wyatt let his breath out and lowered the shield, then turned to face the Charmed Ones.

There was a small moment of nervous hesitation, then Wyatt began crying and reached his arms up to Piper. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay,” Piper whispered, picking up her son and holding him close to her. “Shh, it’s all right now.” She looked over Wyatt’s head to Prue and smiled through the tears in her eyes. Prue just smiled back.

Paige and Phoebe ran over to Prue to make sure she was all right. After being assured that everything was indeed okay, Paige just grinned at her eldest sister. “That was great! What did you say to him?”

“You know, I honestly don’t think it was me,” she answered, watching as Leo orbed in and joined the hug with his wife and son. “I think that when Wyatt saw you three in danger, he went with his true instincts, which were to protect you. To be there for his family.”

“But still, Prue,” Phoebe said, “you had to have said something to make him doubt the demons. I mean, if familial bonds were enough, why couldn’t we get him back before?”

Prue just shrugged. “Before he was being babied. Both here and with the demons. Yes, he’s only three, but no one ever showed him just how dangerous magic can be when used the wrong way. I showed him what the energy balls do, how destructive they are . . . and I think he got scared. He got something, at any rate. And it helped me get through to him.”

Phoebe nodded, wrapping her arm around Prue’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s go downstairs and get something celebratory to eat.”

Prue grinned. “Works for me.”

-----

Paige let out a contented sigh and quickly glanced around the parlor. Piper was nestled on the sofa, cradling a napping Wyatt in her lap. She hadn’t let him go all afternoon, and he had been content to just sit with her. Leo was seated next to her, lightly gripping her hand. Phoebe and Prue were both squeezed into one of the easy chairs, and Paige herself was sitting across from them in the other chair. The sun was setting and Leo had turned on the table lamps, so the room was lit with a soft, comforting mix of both the natural and artificial light. Paige leaned her head back against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

“I’ve missed this,” Prue spoke up softly. Paige lifted her head and looked over at her sister. “Sitting here together like this . . . I’ve missed it.”

“We’ve missed you,” Phoebe said. Piper nodded in agreement.

Paige looked from one sister to another and could tell they all the same question on their mind. None of them seemed willing to voice it, however. Paige decided to be the brave one and ask. “Are you sure you have to go back?” Prue nodded. “Because, I mean, Wyatt’s back with us and fine and you’re still here, so I was just thinking that maybe you could stay . . .”

“I’m being given the extra time to say goodbye.” Prue looked to Leo for confirmation. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Prue, you’re exactly right,” Leo said with a nod.

“But why?” Piper asked quietly. “Why can’t she live out her life like she was supposed to?”

“I did live out my life, Piper,” Prue said. “I was only meant to spend thirty years here. And believe me, I wouldn’t trade those thirty years in for anything. But it’s not my time here anymore. It’s time for you three to be a family, to focus on your own family, to live out your lives. Just because I died young doesn’t mean I didn’t have a full life. It just means I didn’t have a long one.”

“But Prue--” Phoebe started.

“No, Phoebe, don’t--”

“No, let me say this.” Phoebe turned and faced Prue. “I-I always felt like . . . like it was my fault. I-I mean, I went down to the Underworld that day, and--”

“Phoebe, stop,” Prue said, tears welling in her eyes. “This was nobody’s fault. It happened. For whatever reason, it happened. I don’t blame you, okay? Please, please, don’t blame yourself.”

Phoebe nodded, throwing her arms around Prue and pulling her into a tight hug. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Oh, sweetie, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you guys. But I don’t belong here anymore.”

Paige got up out of her chair, her own eyes filling with tears, and joined Prue and Phoebe’s hug. “You have a place here, Prue. Always.”

“I know,” Prue replied, reaching up to hug Paige as well. “I know that, believe me.”

“Then stay,” Phoebe whispered.

Prue hugged them both tightly then let go. “I can’t.” She stood up and when Leo stood up to make room for her, she went to go sit next to Piper, wrapping her arm around Piper’s shoulders. “I love you. I love you all so much.”

As Piper moved closer to Prue, Wyatt awoke with a start, looking from his mother to his aunt. “Mama? Why is everyone crying?”

“Auntie Prue has to go home again, baby,” Piper answered, tousling her son’s hair gently.

“Oh,” Wyatt said sadly. He climbed from Piper’s lap to Prue’s and wrapped his arms around her neck. “I’m going to miss you.”

“And I’ll miss you, sweetie,” Prue said, smiling down at him. “But I’ll never be very far away. I’m watching over you all the time and if you ever need me, I’ll do what I can to help you.” She looked up at her sisters. “And that goes for all of you. Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m not there.”

She gave Wyatt a quick but tight hug, then handed him back to Piper. After giving Piper a strong hug, she stood up and walked over to where Leo was standing. She clasped her hand in his and gave her sisters a smile. “It’s time.”

“No, wait!” Piper cried. She ran forward and hugged Prue one last time. A moment later, Paige and Phoebe joined the hug.

“I’m so glad I finally got to meet you,” Paige whispered in Prue’s ear.

“I’m glad I got to meet you, too,” Prue whispered back. After the group hug disbanded, Prue once again clasped hands with Leo. “Be good and be safe. And we will see each other again. It just better not be soon.” She winked.

Paige smirked. She lifted her hand and gave Prue a small wave goodbye. Prue waved back as she and Leo orbed out. Paige turned to Piper and Phoebe and gave them a small smile. “She’s right, you know.”

“I know she’s right,” Piper said quietly. “She always is.”

“You going to be all right?” Paige asked.

Piper looked from Phoebe to Paige and down at Wyatt, who was clinging to her shoulder. Then she smiled at Paige. “Yeah. We all are.”

And Paige knew that they would be. Prue was right; it was time to focus on their family now. And they were, of course, the Charmed Ones. They could pull through anything. She tousled her nephew’s hair. “Hey, kiddo, want to read The Gingerbread Man?”

“Yeah!” He reached his arms out to her so she could carry him upstairs to get the book.

“And I think I shall go make some spaghetti,” Piper said, wiping the last of her tears out of her eyes. “It is spaghetti night after all.”

“Yay sketti!” Wyatt giggled. “I love you, Mama.”

“I love you, too, baby,” Piper smiled. “Go on and read your story. We’ll have spaghetti in a bit.”

Paige smiled as she headed upstairs with Wyatt. Things were already getting back to normal. Well, as normal as things can get around here, Paige thought, grinning.