Chapter 6

Rose scanned the room searching for the Book of Shadows, her eyes roaming every dusty nook and cranny the eye would care to note, she found old dolls, a dollhouse replica of the Halliwell Manor and even some old potion phials but the Book of Shadows was nowhere to be found, Rose figured it was stashed away so her mom wouldn't stumble upon it by accident.

"Okay, missy, start talking!" Rose spun around as she heard Piper trotting up the stairs and into the attic, she set the tea down on an old table and tilted her head curiously, a dazed Katherine in tow.

Rose started talking and Piper didn't miss the glint of sadness as she did so "Well, you see...something awful happened, something that never should have happened and it's all my fault, so I decided to cast a spell to take me back in time to the moment right before it happened but for some reason we've ended up here and not at all where we were meant to end up." A long breath came gusting out of Rose s lungs the moment she finished, she glanced at Katherine who had definitely seen better days, for a moment indulging that little pang of guilt she felt festering for her cousin as her gazed then lingered on her black eye, bloody nose and split lip, she offered a half smile which Katherine rejected accordingly with a scowl.

"And where was that?" Piper asked, katherine saw the cogs turning in Rose's mind, stalling whilst weaving her over-elaborte lie because for some reason she thought it was a good idea to lie to the one person in this timeline that could help them.

"Rose, whatever lie you're cooking up forget it, just tell grams the truth." Katherine said, trying not to move her swollen jaw which felt like it was on fire right now so she didn't notice Piper cock her head in her direction, "You just called me Grams?" She said with a little smirk which made katherine's cheeks glow red with ernest, "Uhh..yeah...I'm Katherine...Montgomery..Mike's my dad." She tried to smile but winced when the purple bulge of her swollen cheek restricted her from doing so, in addition to having the power of premonition, Katherine was also an empath, so Rose knew Katherine was senseing the wave of guilt that was washing over her, Piper could only watch on as she gazed at her grand daughters in awe, trying to decide whether they were either extremely powerful witches or just plain reckless, but they were Halliwells, to harbour a power unlike any the magical community has ever seen was, at this point, a family trait, she could tell the by the menacing glint in Rose's eye that she was not averse to a sticky situation or two, but the girl sitting on the rickety old chest of draws she was less sure of, she seemed gaunt and jaded, like she was when Prue died, hollow behind the eyes, far too morose for one so young, Piper guessed she couldn't have been much older than Rose.

"And your mother would be?" Piper urged.

"Mona." She said after a long, stalling silence, the name causing Katherine to make a face that looked like she had just been chewing glass. "But that's not important right now..I..I can't see the Book of Shadows anywhere, grams."

"I hid it so Aria wouldn't find it, are they all still frozen down there?" She asked, only now remembering the five girls downstairs, plus the girls who were with Rose.

Katherine sprung to attention, "Oh yeah, that potion was super strong, they won't be going anywhere for a while." Piper only quirked an eyebrow and gave little snort before turning her attention back to Rose.

Her Grams looked at her for four seconds before she caved, she had to tell her, even if it meant having to relive the horror of it all over again, "Okay...fine...we came back to save Spencer. She's dead in our time. I killed her - but it was an accident!" Rose said hurriedly when she saw Piper's face contort into one of horror, "I swear...it was an accident...I..." She began, quoting a speech of defence she had all but perfected by now, she'd said it enough times, a defeated sigh left Rose as she slumped into an old deckchair, she had never told anyone the intimate details of Spencer's death, not even Aria, about how she'd howled for the Elders to save her, for her uncle Wyatt to come an heal her, that weak little smile Spencer gave her when she told her not to blame herself, and the very distant sounds of unearhtly shrieking, "She followed me...I told her not to but she follwed me anyway.. I had a lead on some demons...nothing too dagerous, just some low-level trouble makers...turned out he could throw pretty powerful fire balls..I didn't have time to freeze him so..." She took a shaky breath as the memories came flooding back...it was as if she was back there all over again: the pitch black sky, the smell of burning rubber, the scattered flames that consumed everything in her immediate vacinity, "So I tried to blow him up but...but he shimmered out and I..." She couldn't finish her sentence for the sob that clawed it's way up her throat, "I h-I hit Sp- Spencer!" She sobbed brokenly.

Those sobs were the only sounds that inhabited the attic for the next two minutes.

After a while Rose heard the floorboards creak, then raised her head inches from her hands to see soft boots clattering across the floor to settle beside her, she had gone to lean into Piper's embrace only to be met with the menacing black of Katherine's leather jacket as she wrapped her arms around Rose, "Sometimes I hate being an empath." She said, glancing between Rose and Piper, she made a mental note to speak with her aunt Phoebe about it at a later date, she'd had her premonition power down to a tee, being able to will herself into a premonition whenever she wished, but her empathy power she had only recently acquired. Sometimes she loved it, she revelled in the moments where she could take the piss out of Rose and her friends when she picked up on an emotion they would rather keep to themselves but it was moments like this when she loathed it.

Rose picked herself up off the floor and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, falling apart wasn't going to bring Spencer back and she'd be damned if she let her down again. "No this-this is getting us nowhere. I came back to stop what happened, and to do that I need to-"

Stepping forward, Piper cut her rambling off, "I think the first port of call would be to-"

"Sort this out?" Katherine said, her index finger circling her bruised and bloodied face.

"Ah...yeah...sorry." Rose mumbled before she chanted.

Let the object of objection become but a dream

As I cause the scene to become unseen.

The bruises vanished, the wounds healed until they faded completely, and Rose afforded herself a moment of pride, "Well, don't you shine up like a new penny?" She grinned as she pinched one of Katherine's cheeks, only to have her hand swatted away along with a playful scowl. The girls felt hands on their shoulders, both craned their necks to see Piper between them,

"As I was saying," She began, never taking her eyes of the stairs that led back to the scene all three of them were dreading, "The first port of call, is to tell your parents everything."

They began to descent into the Montgomery living room, when Rose remembered something, something she was mentally kicking herself for because it was too important to forget, she latched onto Piper's arm and gasped, "Oh yeah, one more thing grams, when you sit mom down and have that whole supernatural talk with her, you might wanna have a few words with Hanna too." She grinned bashfully, hoping to cushion the bombshell.

"Why?" Piper's voice was laced with suspicion and dread, and when Rose answered, she knew why.

"Well...because...her and Kara...they're banshees."