A/N: a summary of chapter nine events…

Penny opened her eyes and saw the brothers sitting on the old, dingy bed. "I …have a small problem, I'd like to talk to you about." She glanced at Sam. "Privately."

"He knows."

"He knows? You know? How could you two know?"

"Melinda was prophecized to be a powerful child, as she was born on the Wiccan sabbat samhain; when witches are most able to tap into nature's power. She was burned at the stake when her lover, Matthew Tate, exposed her to the town as a witch. Before her death, she told of three sisters who would be the most powerful source of good the world had ever seen."

"There your family, right?" Dean rubbed his jaw line.

"But they don't know that and I can't tell them."

Penny sat on a park bench, waiting for Dean to arrive. When she looked up after hearing approaching footsteps she saw all three of her accomplices.

"Did you make contact?" Sam asked, brows raised and lips pursed.

Currently…

The last few months had changed Dean Winchester. He had found that the brother he had grown up with—hell, he'd practically raised him—had become some "demon blood" whore; that his "ungirlfriend" Penny was pregnant and possibly taking his kid back to the future or undoing the entire thing when she managed to save Sam, and that he had had a second brother; one who he would never get to meet because this lifestyle; hunting had made him a target in a baddie's revenge plot against his deceased father.

Dean took a sip of his beer, as Penny and Bobby discussed strategy. They had managed to lock Sam in Bobby's fallout shelter in order to stop his addiction to demon blood. The truth was he was strung out and things were looking bad. Ruby was being held by a crystal cage, which Dean had thought to be some new age crap until he had touched it and wound up being zapped and thrown about ten feet. It would hold longer than a devil trap and Dean had the added pleasure of knowing the skank would electrocute herself every time she attempted to break the cage.

Dean shook his head while thinking about what could possess Sam into doing something like this. Well, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Sam had always been the moral center of the family and somehow it had been twisted until he thought that using demonic mojo to waste Lilith was a good idea when in truth it was going to end up turning him away from good for the rest of his life. Penny's mission was enough to tell him that.

"I have to involve the charmed ones. They can help protect the seals and I think I might have a solution to our problem with Sam."

Dean began to pay attention to the discussion at this point. "Oh, yeah?"

Phoebe Halliwell walked up to the Manor House for a lunch with her father. She walked toward the entrance, where a cute, average height blonde man held the door for her. If she were five years younger and not passionately in love with Coop she might have tried her luck with him. She saw her father, and walked past the hostess who knew her.

"Hi, dad," Phoebe said and hugged her father before sitting down. "What's up?"

"Nothing much. I wanted to discuss a small financial matter with you."

Phoebe looked up from the menu at Victor. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yes; it's fine. It's just, you're the last of my daughters I will ever see marry…"

Tears began to form in her eyes; it was small things and comments that brought back memories of her older sister, Prue, who had been killed nearly six years ago. While Phoebe had moved on with her own life –something Prue would never have the chance to do—she held onto the memories she knew would be some of the most important of her life.

Looking into her father's face, she felt sorry for the man. It was true that he made his own decision to leave years earlier, which Phoebe acknowledged was heavily influenced by her grams, but Victor had loved his daughters. It was his misfortune that the choices he had made had cost him a lifetime of guilt he would always feel over missing out on knowing his children as they grew. Yet he was here now, and if he had to live with the knowledge that he had lost out on knowing Prue for so many years, than he could make the effort to not make the same mistake again with his remaining daughters and their families.

"…I would like to pay for your wedding to Coop," he finished.

"Oh, Dad, you don't have to do that."

"I know, but this will be my last chance. Prue is gone and I messed things up with Piper and Leo because of my own insecurities. I would like to do this, Phoebe."

"I know you would, and I really appreciate this. Thank you."

The waitress came to deliver their entrees. "Here's your salad and the raspberry vinaigrette, miss."

"Thank you…" Phoebe trailed off as she looked up into the eyes of a familiar young woman.

"Here are your utensils," the girl said as her arm brushed against Phoebe, who was pulled into a premonition.

Black smoke rose from the ground as it searched for a vessel to hold it. A woman walking down the street while holding the hand of her seven year old child stops and her eyes turn black before reverting back to normal.

The young girl standing across the street from the manor turned to a blonde man sitting on an old impala. He handed her a potion and a knife. She walked up to the manor and he stayed outside as backup.

Inside, the charmed ones were questioning her when they became under attack by a legion of demons. The girl pulled out the knife and stabbed the young mother from earlier. The woman went down and turned to ash.

"Phoebe, are you alright?"

"Yeah, dad. Where'd the waitress go?"

"To get more coffee, why?"

Phoebe looked up as a different waitress appeared with her father's coffee. Looking around the restaurant, she saw the back of a girl she knew was the girl she had seen earlier in the day. And she was being ushered by the blonde guy from her vision; the one who opened the door for her earlier.

Phoebe walked into the manor, where Piper was sitting at the table with the boys, unsuccessful in getting them to eat their lunches. "Hey, Phoebs. What's up?"

"We have a problem. Something's coming."

The sisters sat on opposite couches in the attic. Leo had taken the boys to the park and Paige was on her lunch break from her social services job. Phoebe had checked the book of shadows for the weapon from her vision as well as the man and woman. While nothing had come up on the couple, the book had a somewhat vague description of the knife. Whoever had entered the information into the tome hadn't given the sisters much to go on. The short summary only said that the knife was effective in killing demons, and that it was seemingly ineffective when used on other beings.

"Hey, this looks like Grams handwriting," Piper said looking up at her sister.

"Should we summon her?" Paige sat next to Phoebe on aunt Pearl's couch. "I mean, if she wrote this entry maybe she knows more about the knife's origins.

"No," Phoebe shook her head. "Grams would have put down every single little detail if she knew it. She's not the type to get the job done half assed. If Grams knew, it would be there."

"So what do we do? If they're coming here with this knife than it can't be meant for us. They have to know it won't work on witches."

"So, they're coming to us for what reason?" Paige said directing her question back at Piper.

"For the same reason that girl planted that premonition on me. They're recruiting us for something. They need our help," Phoebe said.

The sisters made their way down the stairs. "I'm sorry I can't stay longer, but I need to get back to the office," Paige said. "I'll be back after work. I'll bring take out."

"Thanks," Piper said reaching for the door. The three hovered in the entrance for a moment. "I'm gonna have Leo go to dad's with the kids. If you had that premonition in the same day that you ran into this chick twice then I think it's safe to say they're gonna make an appearance soon."

Piper opened the door to see a young woman with her hand raised in the air as if to knock. Looking past her, she saw a man sitting on an old Impala across the street, exactly like Phoebe's vision.

"C'mon in."

Paige returned to the manor with Chinese food and strolled through the doors while taking a generous sip of her strawberry milkshake. When she walked through the foyer and glanced into the conservatory; seeing no one there she continued past the dining room and headed for the kitchen where she saw her sisters and the girl from before.

When she had pulled up to the street the black impala had been moved, still a Pontiac firebird had seemingly taken its place. "What's happening in here," Paige wondered as she placed the food on the table top.

Piper pushed away from the table and stood from her seat, making the way over to the cabinets where she reached for four plates. "This is Bess Singer," Piper started. "She's a hunter and she came to us for help."

"With what, target practice," Paige said in her own uniquely sarcastic voice everyone could recognize as signaling her lack of patience with the information she was getting. She sat and began to load up her plate with moo moo gai pan and sesame seed chicken and broccoli.

"No, as in a person who makes a life out of hunting the supernaturally charged villains of weird and mysterious cases. Her father is a hunter named Bobby singer, and they hail from South Dakota. Unfortunately, their hunting group seems to have stumbled on something and they came to us for help."

"So—" the phone began to ring, interrupting the youngest in the middle of her question.

"Halliwell residence," Piper said. After a minute of listening she 'uh-huhed' and 'mm-hmmed' before saying, "okay, I'll get that ready for you and you can just send Dad over to pick it up. Okay, see you later, sweetie."

"Leo?"

"Yeah, he needs some extra clothes since the boys thought it would be funny to throw food all over him and Dad after they had already changed for bed. Hey," she said, glancing at Phoebe. "Can you help me pack an extra bag for the kids?"

"Sure." Phoebe pushed away from the table and walked around the end where their guest was seated. She made her way out into the dining room toward the stairs where Piper was waiting for her. The two sisters started heading up to the second floor.

"Do you buy what she's saying," Piper asked.

"Absolutely not."

"That's what I thought."

Dean called Bobby to see how Sammy was doing. He and Penny had left them back in South Dakota so that Sammy could go through withdrawal safely in the confines of Bobby's demon proof panic room, where Ruby couldn't get to Dean's little brother.

"She's in their right now. I don't think she's had any problems so far. I saw the third one go in about half an hour ago and there haven't been any yelling or banging or other signs of struggle. If things go like she's planned, we might end up saving Sammy for good."

"Bess, was it?"

"Yeah," Penny replied easily. Her family might suck at keeping secrets but somehow they could manage to lie their asses off when they wanted to. "Don't mind me asking, but you aren't…"

"Aren't what?"

"It's just the way you're going at that milkshake and the moo moo gai pan. It's like you're using the ice cream to wash down the Chinese food."

"So?"

"Are you pregnant?"

"What? Me? No way, I'm just having really weird food cravings for another perfectly good reason which I will think of as soon as I can…" her voice trailed off as she tried to shake the accusation.

"I don't know, Piper. I feel like I know her from somewhere."

"Of course you do. You've already run into her twice today."

"It's not like that, Piper. It's like I know she's lying because I'm an empath. But I know she's good because of a completely different reason," she said clutching a fist to her chest as though pounding her heart.

"So what you're saying is that we should trust the liar," Piper asked sarcastically as she zipped up another diaper bag for her husband.

"For now, until we figure out who she really is, yeah. We should trust her," Phoebe said in a low voice that signaled that it was the only decision to be made in the situation. It was times like these, when Phoebe's voice softened and her tone sounded as if there was a quiet desperation to it that Piper knew that Phoebe couldn't be budged. It was her sister's feeling as if there was no other choice that had Piper convinced. Phoebe wasn't easily subdued, so they would help this Bess chick out until she did something to make them question her actions.

The two sisters walked down stairs and saw Paige and Bess arguing in the foyer.

"Hey, what's going on here," Piper demanded. Just then, a legion of demons like none the charmed ones had ever seen appeared in clouds of smoke.

"Hello, bitch," it said looking at Penny. "I see you've recruited some help. It's a shame they h to die because of you."

"I don't think so," Penny said reaching for her waistband and pulling out the knife from Phoebe's vision.