By the time Phoebe had come back downstairs, Book of Shadows in hand, Maria had read the articles Phoebe had collected. "Anything strike you?" Phoebe asked, sitting down and laying the book open on the table in front of her.
"Not really," Maria replied. "It's so sad though. I mean, look at the one about Jessica Norvell. She's an amateur goldsmith, so her boyfriend spent months learning about it from her so that he could make her an engagement ring – and then she disappeared the night before he was planning to propose."
"Yeah, it's pretty bad," Phoebe replied. She had actually kind of skimmed that part of the article when she'd read it. It hadn't sounded like it had anything to do with the kidnapping, and Phoebe hadn't felt up to dealing with the girl's personal info at the time. Prue's death had made these girls' disappearances just a little too close for comfort. "But we can get her back. We can get all of them back."
"Do you really think so?" Maria asked. "The guy were looking for might have killed them already."
"Then we'll make sure it doesn't kill anyone else. But we can't think like that. If the demon wanted to kill them right away, it wouldn't have kidnapped them. So the question is, what is it waiting for?" Phoebe turned the pages of the Book of Shadows, looking briefly at each page before moving on.
"A complete set?" Maria suggested.
"But of what?" Phoebe asked, sounding frustrated. "Different hair colors? Astrological signs? Favorite TV shows?"
"Well, I can't give you favorite TV shows, but I'm thinking hair color is not a factor, because Jessica's a blonde and the other three are all brunettes." Phoebe shot Maria an amused look at her answer to Phoebe's mostly rhetorical questions, but Maria didn't notice. "And astrological signs are a no-go too. They were actually all born within a few months of each other." Maria said. "Maria Lopez and Tamara Oldham are both Pisces, and Jessica and Ashley Marsh are Aries. Come to think of it though, they'd all fall within the same Chinese astrological year. Lets see, they're all twenty-five, so . . . 1976 . . . the year of the dragon."
Phoebe stared at Maria, eyes wide. "How did you know that?"
Maria flushed slightly. "I'm just kind of into astrology," she muttered.
"And I thought reading my horoscope in the morning and getting a tarot reading every so often made me an astrology enthustiast," Phoebe cracked, shooting Maria a teasing smile.
"Yeah, yeah, so I'm superstitious. I blame my mother," Maria said, waving her hand dismissively in the air. "So how about this whole 'year of the dragon' connection? That sounds kind of bad."
"You're not wrong," Phoebe muttered, paging through the Book. "I feel like I remember seeing something about a dragon in here somewhere, if I could just remember where . . . ah. Gotcha. And it's a Chinese demon. Looks like we might have our guy. And- oh, that sounds bad."
"What's it say?" Maria asked, craning her neck to see the page.
"Aolong Dao was first encountered in China in the early 15th Century, although he was around for years beforehand. He is believed to have been the most powerful from a small Chinese demon cult which drew its power from the different years of the Chinese calendar, using each year to draw on a different power. The year of the dragon is the most powerful of these. On the year of the dragon, the cult would use a special ritual to restore the power of its members for the next twelve years. While the rest of the cult mysteriously disappeared in the late 1300s, Aolong Dao went on a vicious killing spree across Asia. Afterward, he disappeared, although it is theorized he may someday reappear."
"His cult 'mysteriously disappeared?' Yeah, right. Obviously, this Oohlong dude killed the rest of the cult and used their power to go rip the guts out of a bunch of harmless Chinese peasents." Maria said.
"It seems likely," Phoebe said. "And I'm thinking he can be upgraded from 'possibly still around' to 'definitely around and on the hunt.'"
"But if he was so powerful, why did he just vanish? Somehow I don't think he's been spending the past 500+ years brooding in a cave somewhere."
"Yeah, it's weird." Phoebe was silent for a moment, thinking. "Well," she said finally, "whatever his reason for disappearing, now he's back and we've got to stop him from repeating his last rampage."
"But Phoebe, it doesn't make any sense." Maria said, not quite ready to let up. "This isn't a dragon year. Why didn't he just wait for the next year of the dragon, when he can get more power?"
"I don't know Maria, maybe he was tired of the cliché. You know, wanted to break out of the whole 'only every twelve years' thing."
"I guess," Maria said, sounding skeptical. "It just doesn't seem to fit."
"Okay, you're right, it doesn't fit," Phoebe admitted. "Maybe it has something to do with the ritual itself. If we can get our hands on that, it might tell us why this guy's not waiting for a dragon year. Plus, it could give us a clue who he's going to target next." She paused. "You know Maria, I have to be at the dentist in about . . . five minutes, but it would be really helpful if we had someone here researching Aolong Dao's ritual."
Maria met Phoebe's hopeful gaze. She rolled her eyes. "I'm never going to have even a hint of a life anymore, am I?"
"Sorry," Phoebe said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "If it helps at all, Leo seems to be busy, so you might have been stuck here for the rest of the day whether or not this guy needed researching."
"It doesn't, but thanks for your concern," Maria said.
Phoebe smiled and started putting on her shoes. "There are a ton of books in the attic you can look through, and feel free to grab something out of the kitchen if you get hungry. If Piper comes home, bring her up to speed, but try not to sound too worried. Piper has a tendancy to freak out about stuff like this, and we like to give her her normal life when we can. And now I really have to go, so goodbye and good luck."And with that, Phoebe grabbed her purse and hurried out the door.
"Bye," Maria said gloomily after Phoebe had left. She looked down at the Book of Shadows, reading over the entry on Aolong Dao once more to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything in the last two minutes. After all, she'd never been very good at retaining history knowledge for class, and she figured ancient demon trivia wouldn't be much different. Then she stood and trudged up the stair toward the attic. First, though, she stopped off on the second floor, walking the hallway and peeking into each room. Hey, I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time here. I might as well familiarize myself with my surroundings, right?
She made her way from room to room, taking a brief survey of everything. Piper's room was neat and practical, with photographs covering the night table and other counters. Her sisters, Leo, and a few older pictures that Maria figured were probably the sisters' grandmother and mother (or maybe an aunt). Phoebe's room suited Maria's tastes a little more, although like Piper's, it was relatively neat. She had a TV and a VCR with a small stack of horror movies next to it.
At the third sister's room though, Maria paused. She still knew next to nothing about Piper and Phoebe's recently dead older sister. Quite honestly, she hadn't thought about her much. Her own new powers had been consuming most of her thoughts since she had discovered them. As Maria thought about it now though, it was weird to think that she had basically been given her powers to take this woman's place. And I refer to them as 'my powers,' but they're really her powers, now aren't they? I just kind of inherited them. Maria shuddered a bit at this thought, but it spurred her to walk all the way into the room.
She quickly focused in on a diploma on one of the walls. Prudence Halliwell. Another 'P' name. I guess I'm the first Charmed One not to have one. That's me, bucking the trend. The room itself was nice, although it was somewhat crammed, because there were boxes of what were presumably Prudence's old possessions filling the space. She knelt by one of the boxes and picked up a framed photograph on top of it. Maria had seen pictures of Prudence in the downstairs of the manor and back in Piper and Phoebe's rooms, but this was the first time she looked closely at the deceased sister. The picture showed all three sisters standing together outside the manor, not smiling, but not looking upset either. Prudence was staring straight into the camera, squinting a little as though she was looking toward the sun. She looked smart. Intense. And strong. Now how am I supposed to measure up to that? This woman clearly had a hold on the whole 'power' thing.
Maria put the picture back down and left the room. Generally, snooping gave her a feeling of satisfaction and superiority, but going into Prudence's room was like taking a large dose of some very strong medicine. She might be able to help Phoebe look up stuff and say a few words in unison with Piper and Phoebe to made some demons go poof, but she was still the weakest link. She was nowhere near Phoebe or Piper or the ghost of Prudence when it came to skill. She had a long way to go.
Thoroughly shaken, Maria walked the rest of the way to the attic. She went to the shelves and ran her fingers over the spines of the books, skimming over their titles. A few looked pretty new; these were mostly compendiums of different items used in spellcasting and their properties. Probably Phoebe's, Maria mused. Most of the books, though, looked older. Some appeared to have been bound by hand, some were faded and stained so badly as to be barely readable, and one had a small scorch mark on the cover. Maria chose a book that looked old without being obscure simply titled Spells. It was one of the handbound ones, and as she flipped though the pages, Maria could see handwritten notes in the margins.
She was just about to settle herself down on the sofa for a fun-filled morning of demon research when she saw something that wasn't possible. The very space by the door of the attic seemed to shift for a moment. Then, where Maria was sure there had been nothing before, there was a large figure. So Maria did the first thing she thought of. She screamed.