Zoe Trilling voice-over: "Collinwood is an intimidating and imposing structure at night. Under the fall of moonlight, shadows fly around the great estate and the apparitions of former residents once again walk its halls. It is a very haunted structure during the nighttime hours, but by sunrise, the vestiges of darkness no longer hold her grasp and the family once again takes hold. Generations modern and present transcend its halls and the living turn it into a home once more. Laughter and gaiety fill its halls… voices forgotten in this great place once known more for the dead than the living."

From the doorway under the stairs into the drawing room, two beautifully charming little girls raced giggling and screaming through the house. Little Lainey Collins was in the red jumper and pink t-shirt diving under the table, coming out the other side and hurrying into the front alcove. Behind her with the long brunette pigtails was her big sister, Georgia, in the tiny blue jeans and white shirt. They could have been twins except for their respective heights. They both had big brown doll-like eyes and little pointed chins with grins of pearl-shaped teeth and incalculable juvenile energy to stay ahead of their father's cousin. Her red hair trussed back into a ponytail, Amanda fought to keep her breath as she raced after the giggling pixies trying to catch them. Clad in a tank top and shorts, she gasped a bit out of breath. What had started out as story-time in the den at the front of the house had turned into a foot race around the room and under the balcony into the foyer.

"I'm going to get you…" She chanted after them. "I'm going to get you." She noticed William's baby girls had dashed into the front entry hall with the coats and umbrellas. "Why where did they go?" She pretended to wander past the front doors. "Did they fly away?"

Lainey giggled. Running through these long halls and big rooms was a lot of fun!

"There they are!" Amanda squealed and dashed after them. Both the little pixies squealed as she let them run past her into the drawing room. Amanda was just a big kid at heart. She loved babysitting them even if Ally did not like her spoiling them rotten, but then, what were the chances Amanda would ever have in having her own babies? She chased the giggling and laughing little girls around the sofa in front of the fireplace and over to the piano toward the end of the room passing the liquor cabinet and back to the piano, this time charging at great speed through the back hall at the back of the house from the drawing room to the dining room, passing the back stairway on their way. When the room opened up the great size of the dining hall, Lainey dined under the table toward her grandmother, Angelique Collins. Georgia meanwhile raced around her Aunt Carolyn and out the open double doors, crossing the main hall toward the ballroom.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Carrie…" Amanda braced on her knees to catch her breath.

"Amanda, honey…" Carolyn gracefully turned her head up to her niece. "Could you take the babies out of the house for a while? We have a lot of work to do here."

"Pizza!" A voice squeaked by Angelique's skirts. "I want pizza!"

"Okay…" Amanda relented with a light breath. She'd want to change clothes if she had to go out. Lainey meanwhile peeked her head out to her grandmother's beaming and smiling face. Angelique hugged and kissed her baby grand-daughter as Amanda came round the table and collected her, lifting the little fairy up to her hip to carry her upstairs. She'd have to borrow clothes from her Cousin Lizzie instead of returning to Rose Cottage. She'd also borrow the extra car instead of taking her little Volkswagen. With the sounds of screaming children subsiding, Angelique turned to the business on the table.

"The town council meeting must have run overtime…" Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis checked her watch. "Maggie promised to be here by now."

"Or maybe she's avoiding us." Angelique shined a bit. Stacked over the end of the dining table were envelopes, invitations, itineraries, schedules and all the paperwork for the Annual Collins Family Cotillion. Jamison Collins had started the parties around 1895 after years of being invited to the gatherings of other fortunate and powerful New England families, but Carolyn's mother did away with them in the Sixties shortly after the public death of her husband. There was much more to the story than that. After all, Paul Stoddard had turned up alive and well back in 1969, at least ten years after he was reportedly dead. Carolyn restarted the parties in 1973 after she married. Other celebrations such as birthdays, holidays and ceremonies had been restarted after ignoring them so why not recreate the cotillions her grandfather had created. Carolyn sipped her coffee as Chloe Edwards, one of the family servants, refilled it for her.

"At last count…" Angelique checked the invite list. "We had a hundred and thirty-eight responses. That's just a bit more than last year." She thumbed through her list of telephone numbers.

"You didn't add in the invites your son sent out." Carolyn lightly scratched her left ear. "All together, it's three hundred and seventeen."

"Oh, who is he kidding?!"

"Angelique, your son has a lot of friends." Carolyn sipped her coffee.

"Let me see his lists…" Angelique took the cotillion invitation list and scanned it for new names. Dr. Thomas Shaw was the family physician, and Chris Jennings was an old friend of the family. William and Georgia Thomas were friends of his wife, but where the known family friends and local acquaintances ended, she noticed new names on the list.

"Well, I know Michael Bluth and London Tipton by reputation, but who's Ben Gates?" She asked.

"He's that historian who found writing on the back of the Declaration of Independence." Carolyn sat back at the head of the table stirring her coffee.

"Hannah Montana?"

"Your grand-daughters are big fans of her."

"Temperance Brennan?"

"Your son is a fan of her books."

"Well, I know Fox Mulder is his friend in the FBI…" Angelique started getting the feeling her son had sent invites to practically everyone he had ever met. "Who are Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson?"

"They're some of his ghost-hunting partners." Carolyn knew their TV-Series. "He promised them visits to Collinwood."

"Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage?" Angelique was only a third through her son's friends. "I'm getting my son on the phone." The former sorceress reached out and took her cell phone. "William can throw his own cotillion if he thinks…"

"Seems like just yesterday he was about so tall and running loose through the estate…" Carolyn reminisced a bit. Angelique looked across as she waited for a response. "He was just an adorable little scamp, always breaking things, much like…"

Something shattered in the hall. Carolyn and Angelique turned their heads to look out to the source of the noise. Just outside of the dining room, Georgia was standing at the broken shards of a large vase.

"Uh-oh…" The little brunette rascal chirped.

"…His daughters…." Carolyn added.