Chris uncrumpled the page from the Book of Shadows and spread it smooth on the floor in front of him. As he did so, its words, the spell to travel to the past, faded under his fingers. He could not feel any surprise. Wherever, whenever, Wyatt was, if he didn't want Chris to follow, he'd make sure that didn't happen. Chris could recite the spell from memory, of course, but he honestly didn't think it would be worth the effort to redraw the triquetra.

All the same, he tried saying the words aloud, staring at the blank wall. Nothing happened.

Finally, he picked himself off the floor and turned to the wreck of the attic. He needed to find some way to contain Wyatt should he come back through that wall, but before anything else, Chris pulled a blanket – it should have been dusty, but it was museum-clean – from the daybed and covered Bianca's body. Only then did he start to scrounge for anything that he could use.

After about a half-hour, he found a box of crystals buried in a trunk. He laid them in a semicircle around the wall where the portal had been, and muttered a spell to activate them.

Now, the Manor.

He knew Wyatt had set up a powerful spell to enclose this place – that was why he and Bianca had had to sneak in with a tour group. For the time being, Chris needed that spell to keep working, but against Wyatt's minions. On the other hand, keeping everybody out could be good, just right now. To make sure of that, Chris had to figure out the spell.

It took him the rest of the night, paging through the Book of Shadows for clues, examining the perimeter of the backyard in the dark. He didn't dare go out front – too exposed – but what he found here had to go all the way around. It was almost elegant: all around the property, a winding, unbroken circle of ivy twined along the ground, in the grass, around flower beds, studded by crystals that were buried but for the occasional glint above the soil line.

Gingerly, Chris moved his hand over the line, and got a shock. Great, he was locked in. One more problem to solve.

But the thought struck him: For as long as Wyatt was gone from this time, the Manor was Chris's. His to protect, his to use as sanctuary. He had not expected to feel that connection ever again. Even while he had been in the past, it was the sisters' home. While he had enjoyed the strange freedom of coming and going there as he pleased, it was the family's and he wasn't family.

But in this time, he was family - the only Halliwell around for the moment.

So, the spell protected the house, and the house was his. Would that be enough? Could he tweak the spell to make it obey him?

So Chris settled himself in the kitchen and stared at a blank page in the faint light that came through the window.

Aunt Paige used to tell him – his Aunt Paige, not the younger woman who had been his charge these past months – that the effort of writing a spell helped create the magic, focus it on whatever you wanted it to accomplish. When Chris got frustrated trying to get rhymes just so in his first attempts to write spells, she assured him it was worth the time.

The thing was, Chris was sure Wyatt had not bothered writing anything when he had created this protection spell around the Manor. Paige's theory didn't seem to apply to him, never had.

Chris put that out of his mind and eventually cobbled together something he hoped would work.

He considered where best to recite his spell, and reluctantly climbed back to the attic, where he stood next to the Book of Shadows and said:

Protection circle set round

To shield one within its ground,

Let its power treat fair

This blood that is shared,

Serve any Halliwell found

He couldn't help a small smile of satisfaction as he saw the faintest shimmer in the air outside the window. And he had felt the power of it. But he had to make sure. Give it a test - a minimal risk test. And he knew just what to do.

Pre-dawn was turning the backyard a blue-gray as Chris stepped outside again. He walked to the perimeter, just inside it, and recited a different spell, a simple one created many years ago by his great-grandmother:

Creature low, vile and base,

Come right now to this place.

A slight whirling breeze disturbed the flowers as the figure of a scrawny male demon materialized with an indignant "Ow!" as he bounced off the invisible barrier and landed in the grass. Then he spotted the Manor and scrambled to his feet in terror.

Chris stepped forward. "Penka. It's okay. It's just me."

Penka froze, his mouth dropping open.

"I had to make sure no demons could get past my protection spell," Chris said as Penka gaped. Then he added, "Uh. Sorry."

Since Penka still seemed unable to produce a sound – though he might have been trying – Chris kept talking.

"I know you're probably surprised to see me after…"

"Surprised? I thought you were dead!"

"Um…"

"Bianca said you weren't, but then she went back to working for Wyatt, and so we thought she had to be lying, that maybe she was lying all along, but you were just gone, so – where the hell have you been?"

"It's a long story…"

Penka noticed the Manor again. "And how are you here? Putting protection spells around this place, of all places?"

"Look, I need you to do something for me. I need you to contact-"

"No! Answers!"

Chris was taken aback. Sure, Penka seemed a bit panicky, but that was his default mode. Standing up for himself was a little more unusual. Chris expected complaining, but not demands.

"Okay," Chris said. "Fair enough. But it's got to be quick. I'm putting protection spells around this place because the Manor is mine, for now. Wyatt's gone."

"He's dead?" Penka's voice was immediately hushed hopefulness.

"No. Just gone. Temporarily, at least."

"Gone where?"

"Same place I've been."

"And you're not going to tell me where that place is."

"Not yet. Look, I didn't die, I didn't run away – I was on a mission, for all of us. I had good reasons for keeping it a secret. But it's gone kind of haywire, and I need time to think it over, to figure out what I can tell, okay? Can you trust me on this?"

"But I know what you're going to ask me to do. And I'm guessing it's because you already trusted him with this secret?"

"As a matter of fact, no. I trusted Bianca. Only she knew."

"Great choice. Is she why whatever you were doing went haywire?"

Well, yes. But for a flash Chris wanted to drop the protection spell just to get through and throttle Penka. He had to remind himself that he didn't know how long any of their compatriots had been living with her betrayal.

All the same, defensiveness on her behalf colored his voice when he demanded, "Do we still have a man on the inside?" Chris asked like someone who was sure of the answer. Whatever had happened with Bianca, he was confident she would have kept this secret, at least.

That shred of faith was rewarded by Penka's grudging answer: "Yes, we do. He was never exposed."

"Then can you please go get him for me?"

"Since you say please. Where should I bring him?"

"This spot. I'll wait inside, but keep an eye out. Oh! Tell him to bring food. What? No one's been living here. And I haven't eaten since…" 2004? Not since before Bianca showed up in P3, which, according to his internal clock, was something like two days ago.

Penka gave Chris a look both aggrieved and resigned – that was more like the Penka of old – and shimmered away.

It was full daylight when a zap caught Chris's attention while he lurked downstairs. He sidled up to a front window to peer out.

He was pleased to find out his spell worked on mortals too. Backing away from the shield, rubbing her nose, was a guide. A different one from the woman who had led the tour he and Bianca had been on ages ago, but the uniform was the same.

Chris also found it heartening that this one looked so put out – because, as far as she could know, Wyatt was responsible for shutting the place down without telling anyone, not until she ran straight into the invisible wall. Good for her that she had enough spark, enough courage, to look pissed off.

But that look vanished quickly, replaced by a cowed expression. Following her gaze, Chris saw Penka strolling down the street, carrying a grocery bag. Penka technically looked like a human, and not at all an intimidating one. But there was something indefinably off about him. In this age when mortals were all too aware of the magical world – and this guide would know more than most - even they could pin him as a demon.

Penka stopped and talked to her, to Chris's mind looking silly with his groceries, but she soon turned and walked away. Penka watched her go, then tromped off toward the backyard, carefully skirting the property line.

"How did you get rid of the guide?" Chris asked Penka when they met by the flower bed.

Penka shrugged. "I acted like I was a minion. Told her that Wyatt wanted use of the Manor, so the museum was closed until further notice. I think he does that occasionally, so she didn't argue."

"I'm impressed. Quick thinking."

Apparently still in a bad mood, Penka wasn't going to dignify compliments by accepting them. He held out the grocery bag. "Do you want this or not?"

"Uh, yeah, hang on. I don't want to drop the whole barrier, but there's a way to open a door."

"What, you've locked yourself in?"

"It's Wyatt's spell originally. Probably he could walk right out, but he probably also found it useful to trap other people in."

"True."

"Anyway, I made a key." He pulled two bits of cloth he had found in the attic, small decorative things that he was sure had belonged to the house for generations. Crouching down, Chris scoured the ivy's leaves until he detected one of the crystals. With a light TK, he covered it with a one cloth, then repeated the process with the next crystal in line. Tentatively, he put a hand forward between them, over the line. No shock. The "door" was open.

Penka wasn't budging. He just held out the bag, and Chris stood up, stepped through and took the groceries.

"Why are you alone?"

"He said, and I quote, 'Who the hell does that kid think he is? He disappears for months, his girlfriend betrays us, and now he wants me to blow my cover?'"

"Did you tell him that Wyatt is gone?"

"I told him Wyatt was temporarily gone."

"And he didn't like the 'temporarily.'"

"No, not so much."

"Look, tell him that no one knows I'm here. And Wyatt was last seen at the Manor, so he can act like Wyatt is summoning him. Now."

"Uh, Wyatt doesn't normally send me. Wyatt just gets into his head, sends a summons. It's like the Whitelighter thing, in reverse."

"Creepy. And I can't do it. Go back and tell him-"

"He said if I came back he'd sic the guards on me. What do you want from me? I can't make him do anything. Nobody can – a Halliwell ought to know that better than most."

"Fine." Chris stooped to uncover the crystals and he felt the energy resurge between them as he pocketed the cloths.

Penka must have too, since he took a step back. Then he seemed to relent a little. "He did give me money for the food. I can bring you more. Just, if you use Penny's summoning spell again, open a door, will you?"

"Got it."

After Penka shimmered away, Chris returned to the house. In the kitchen, he rummaged through his groceries – Penka had smartly picked non-perishables. Chris briefly contemplated a granola bar, but then realized he still wasn't hungry.

The attic seemed to hang over his head. He had hoped for help with Bianca's body, but since help was not arriving…

He regretted letting Penka go right away. Maybe this new, semi-confident Penka had discovered how to throw fireballs. But he decided against summoning him back. Best not completely alienate his apparently only friend in this time.

Nothing to do for it, but one more trudge to the attic, one more look through the Book of Shadows for something, anything to help him with this terrible task.

When Chris reached the top of the stairs, his stomach lurched as he heard a voice.

"You've gotten sloppy. Open the door even a crack, and somebody's going to slip in."

Through the attic door, Chris spotted the speaker sitting relaxed on an old sofa, not six feet away from where a blanket covered Bianca's corpse.

"Granted, getting in here - I've had more practice than most. Now, where the hell have you been all this time?"

The adrenaline shock still rattling in his veins, Chris moved into the room. "And hello to you too, Cole."