A spell that I use is the same Phoebe read to activate their powers in the first episode. I had to remove one line from the spell since it didn't fit into the story. Also, this fanfic takes place somewhere around 2065.
Twilight - Chapter 1
Melinda Halliwell Wyatt sipped at her tea with almost closed eyes. The hot liquid felt burning against her tongue, yet she drank it, eager to taste it's sweetness. Putting down the tea cup on the coffee table, she pushed her reading glasses up her nose. She was about to reach for her book when she heard quick footsteps from another room. A few seconds later someone was coming down the stairs in a hurry.
Melinda smiled at herself, glad that her hearing hadn't become that much worse as time had passed.
"Melinda, I'm going out!" a perky and cheerful called from the hall. Melinda didn't take her book, instead she picked up some keys that were lying on the table. She smiled again, got up from the couch. As she was leaving the sitting room she twirled the car keys playfully between her fingers. Upon entering the hall she saw a blonde woman in her early twenties going through her small bag.
Shannah Reeves' cheerful nature was reflected in her clothes. She rarely, if not never, wore colors that made her looks anything but cheerful. The blonde nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and slowly emptied her bag in the search for something. Among the things that she put away for the moment was bubblegum, lips gloss and lip balm, a cell phone and a wallet.
"I can't find my car keys," Shannah told when she in the corner of her eyes saw Melinda. Melinda stretched out her arm and held the keys right in front of Shannah's face.
"You know it's bad luck to leave your keys on a table," Melinda teased. She chuckled and gave the keys to Shannah, who couldn't resist smiling.
"I thought that I had lost them," Shannah said and started to put everything back in her bag.
"Where are you going out tonight then?" Melinda asked and leaned slightly against the wall. "Leaving me and Sadie all alone with nothing to do on a Friday night."
Shannah opened her mouth to answer, then her face expression suddenly changed, as if she had just remembered something important.
"I'm going on a date with Josh," Shannah answered after a while. "And Sadie called, I forgot to tell you. She's staying at the office the entire evening. Some kind of deadline I think."
"Oh... but that's okay, I'll just do some reading until Sadie comes home."
Shannah looked at Melinda, knowing that Melinda disliked being left behind. She hugged the older woman, who wasn't only her friend but also her grandmother's sister.
"Tomorrow we can pop some popcorn and watch those old movies of yours if you want to," Shannah suggested. Feeling happy that Shannah had noticed her dislike, Melinda hugged her back and patted her gently on her back.
"We'll do that," she said and heard a car being parked on the driveway outside the manor. "I think your date is here. Looks like you didn't need your car keys at all."
"I forgot that he was going to pick me up!" Shannah exclaimed when she drew back from Melinda. She slapped herself on her forehead in frustration, she had spent nearly an hour looking for the car keys before Melinda had found them. "This is so typical of me!"
"Go now," Melinda urged. "He's waiting."
She followed Shannah to the doorway. Once Shannah was outside Melinda stayed by the door, curious about who Shannah was going with this time. It was a typical blonde, athletic guy who Shannah greeted with a kiss on the check. He probably went to the same college as Shannah. Once he noticed Melinda standing in the doorway and greeted her.
"Hello, mrs Wyatt!"
Normally Melinda would get upset, she was plain sick of people
assuming that just because she was at her age she had to be married or had been married. Everytime someone called her mrs Wyatt she had to tell them that Wyatt was her maiden name and Halliwell had been her mother's maiden name. The truth was that Melinda had never gotten married. A fact that she could live with but was reminded of every time someone called her mrs Wyatt.
"Good evening, John," Melinda greeted with a sigh that no one else could hear. Shannah didn't know if Melinda called Josh John on purpose or if it was just a mistake.
It was when Shannah had left with Josh that Melinda went back inside. She didn't go and read her book like she had told Shannah to do. In fact, she had never intended to. There was no one in the manor, formely called the Halliwell manor, except for Melinda. She was finally alone.
Instead of going back to the sitting room, Melinda went up the stairs and to the attic. She opened the door, it was never locked. Like many other places in the manor, the attic hadn't changed much over the years. The only change had been the addition of some boxes and the removal of some other things.
However, the Book of Shadows was no long at it's ordinary place.
It had been hidden by Piper Halliwell and Phoebe Turner, Melinda's mother and aunt, when Melinda had been a child. She didn't remember that much about it, only that her mother used to worry a lot. What she worried about... Melinda never asked, but she guessed. It was the death of her aunt Paige, the safety of the entire Halliwell family. The Book of Shadows had been hidden and locked away, powers had been bound.
It was three years ago that Melinda had moved back into the Halliwell manor, when her younger sister Beth had decided to move to Seattle with her husband. Almost a year ago Shannah Reeves and Sadie Harding had moved in because Melinda had asked them to. Living alone in such a big house was beginning to wear her out. Shannah was Beth's granddaughter. Sadie was the great granddaughter of Melinda's aunt Phoebe and was five years older than Shannah.
Living with Sadie and Shannah brightened Melinda's life. One day she had been cleaning the attic and suddenly there was a wooden box she had never seen before. It hadn't taken her long to find the key and when she did... she found the Book of Shadows in the wooden box. Memories of watching her mother and her two aunts looking through the book had resurfaced then, memories of herself sneaking up late at night to find Piper and Phoebe in the middle of binding her powers. It was things that she hadn't thought about for decades. Things that she had forgotten.
Now, she was sitting on the floor with the Book of Shadows in her hands. She flipped through the pages and found the page that she was looking for. Melinda had thought over things many times since she had found the Book of Shadows again. She had tried to be objective, to see things from her mother's point of view and her father's too. But she had still come to the same decision. The powers had been given to her for a reason.
She took a deep breath and then started to read the spell that was written on those old pages.
"Hear now the words of the witches,
The secrets we hid in the night,
The oldest of Gods are invoked here
Great work of magic is sought.
In this night and in this hour,
I call upon the ancient power
We want the power, give us the power."
Nothing happened. She didn't feel any different from before. She had expected some sort of sensation that would confirm that the spell had worked. Melinda looked at the book, feeling disappointment starting to build up inside her. Had the spell worked? Negative thoughts had formed inside her mind. They told her that it had been too much time had passed for her to regain the powers she had as a child.
* * *
When Melinda came down the stairs the next morning she wasn't surprised that she felt the smell of coffee. She covered her mouth and yamned as she made her way into the kitchen. A fresh pot of coffee had been put on the table along with a cup that Melinda had seen practically every morning for six months.
Shortly after Melinda had entered the kitchen a tall, woman in her mid-twenties came inside through the kitchen door. She had almost strawberry blonde hair that was wavy and had recently been trimmed. She wore a simple white shirt and a pair of black pants, but somehow she still looked elegant and refined. Unlike Shannah who dressed in a trendy way, she preferred to look efficient, elegant and serious. The woman wore a watch on her wrist, normally she would look at it every five minutes. But this Saturday morning was seemed to be one of the few mornings where she paid no attention to her watch. The woman caught sight on Melinda as she walked over to the kitchen table and put down the newspaper.
"You're up as usual, Sadie," Melinda said and went to get a cup of coffee for herself.
"If I had it my way I wouldn't be up," Sadie answered. She drank the what was left of the coffee in the cup. Then she looked at her watch and Melinda already knew what she was going to say. "I have to go to the office today."
"A deadline?" Melinda guessed but already knew. Sadie nodded and put the cup in the sink in a hurry.
"Yeah... I have to go now. I'll go the grocery store on my way home, so you don't have to do the shopping."
"When will you get home?" Melinda asked just before Sadie left the kitchen.
"Around five! I'll see you later!"
Only a few seconds after she had finished the sentence, Melinda could hear the front door open and close. She sighed and shook her head. One day Sadie was going to suffer the consequences of working as much as she did. But Sadie's path to a workoholic wasn't what troubled Melinda most. It was that she had failed with the spell last night. She had thought that it would work, she had been so excited to see what would happen.
[Nothing...] Melinda thought sadly. [Perhaps I didn't read it the right way or something...]
She went to the refrigerator to get some milk. Sadie had opened a milk bottle for her coffee but because she had been in a hurry she had more or less tossed the milk bottle back inside the refrigerator. As soon as Melinda opened the refrigerator the bottle rolled and fell. Melinda held out her hands to catch it and gasped when she saw what had happened.
The bottle was frozen in mid air.
* * *
"We need to get this done before Monday," Jill Watson said, putting down several folders on Sadie's desk. Sadie took the first folder and began to look through the files.
"I'll have it done before I leave today," Sadie replied. She glanced at her watch and then returned to looking through the files. Jill smiled, but she looked tired. Sadie assumed that Jill had been working for several hours non stop.
"Thank you so much," Jill thanked sincerely. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."
Sadie returned the smile and was about to answer her when the phone rang. Sadie picked up the phone and didn't even had the time to greet the person who was calling.
"Sadie, it's me," said a voice that Sadie recognized as
Shannah's. At the same time someone called for Jill and Jill ran out from Sadie's office in a hurry.
"Could you pick me up later on your way to the grocery store?" Shannah asked. Sadie noticed that Jill was on her way out.
"Hold on a sec," Sadie said to Shannah. "Jill, could you close the door..."
Jill was already gone and out of sight. Sadie sighed and got up to go and close the door by herself. She had just gotten up when the door was closed and all the buzzling sound from the rest of the offices was closed off. Sadie stared at the door in disbelief. The door had closed on it's own. No one passing by had closed it. Sadie hadn't opened the windows in her office either, so it couldn't be the wind that had closed the door. But she doubted her own eye sight despite doctors telling her that it was perfect. Had the door really closed itself on it's own? Impossible.
"Sadie? You there?"
Recovering from her shock, Sadie picked up the cordless phone and returned to talking to Shannah.
"Yeah, I'm here," Sadie murmured, still standing up and staring at the door.
"Are you okay?" Shannah asked. "You sound a little... weird."
"I'm fine," Sadie assured without thinking. "So... you wanted me to pick you up?"
* * * *
As the lunch hour approached, Jill kept looking at the watch. She drummed her fingers impatiently against her desk while waiting for lunch hour to begin. As soon as the clock turned 11:30, Jill grabbed her purse and left the office. She went down all the way to the parking lot and quickly found her car since she always parked it at the same place.
Flipping her red hair over her shoulder, she settled in the driver's seat and took out her cell phone from the purse. She dialed a number she knew by heart. While waiting for the person to pick up the phone, she sighed, letting out some of her frustration. The past few days had been stressful, but dealing with the stress and working was a way for her to appear more normal.
[I'll be more than happy when Orlando assigns me to someone else,] Jill thought, running her hand through her already messy hair. She had to wait for almost an entire minute to pass before someone answered her call.
"What do you have to report?" a smooth, male voice answered. At the sound of this voice Jill forgot all about the frustration she had felt. The voice... although spoken coldly to her, was beautiful and she could spend all day listening to it.
[Orlando...]
Jill blinked and got a little angry at herself for wandering off in her own little world.
"Their powers have been unbound," Jill told. There was silence. For a moment she thought that Orlando was so angry that he couldn't express it in words. To her surprise, he didn't sound angry at all when he spoke again.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive," Jill answered. "But they don't seem to be fully aware of it, at least not all of them."
"Keep an eye on them," Orlando ordered. "I'll send Roman to them later."
Before Jill had the opportunity to say something, Orlando had hung up. She felt disappointed that she hadn't been able to talk a little more to him, but during the small conversations she had had with him he had managed to make all her frustration and irritation to disappear. Jill put the cell phone back into her purse and took out a hair brush instead.
In the mirror she looked at herself and began to brush her hair. Then, as if it was by fate, she saw Sadie Harding in the mirror. Jill looked through the car window but lowered herself so that she wouldn't been seen. Sadie Harding was walking towards her car in a hurry. Orlando's words echoed inside Jill's head.
"Keep an eye on them."
Jill smiled to herself and put the hair brush away. This day was just getting better and better.
* * * *
Melinda looked at the apple in her hand. She stood in the kitchen, where she had returned after going to the attic to check the Book of Shadows. Shannah had wondered what Melinda was doing in the attic, but had believed her when Melinda had said that she was just looking for some old things.
Melinda stared at the apple for a few seconds, then tossed it up in the air. She flicked her hands, in a way similar to the way her mother used to do it.
[Freeze!] she thought, her eyes still following the apple. The apple went up, down a few inches... and stopped. Melinda circled the apple, looking at it from different angles. One could have believed that the apple hung from the ceiling. But there was no string attached to the apple, nothing. The apple had just been frozen in mid air.
[Let's try this then... unfreeze.]
She flicked her hands again and hardly a moment after she did, the apple fell to the floor. It bounced lightly once and then rolled off to one of the corners in the kitchen. Melinda smiled, satisfied with what she had managed to accomplish.
[Wow... the spell really worked.]
"What are you up to?"
Melinda turned around and saw Shannah entering the kitchen. For a moment she feared that Shannah had seen what Melinda had done to the apple, but the expression on Shannah's face told otherwise. Shannah smiled towards Melinda before looking through the mail that Melinda had brought in before.
"Nothing special," Melinda lied, putting on a smile on her lips. She watched Shannah look through the mail. A thought entered her mind. Was it possible for her to freeze Shannah too? It was worth a try.
When Shannah turned around Melinda flicked her hands, doing exactly what she had done with the apple. But nothing happened. Shannah continued to move as she had done before. Melinda looked at her hands, puzzled. She tried again but again, nothing happened. Shannah suddenly turned around and Melinda lowered her hands.
"What is it?" Shannah wondered, noticing the strange look on Melinda's face.
"Nothing," Melinda answered, perhaps a little to quick. "I... was just wondering if you could go and rent a movie for me. I'd like to have something to watch tonight."
"Okay..." Shannah said slowly and put down the mail on the kitchen table. She didn't look convinced. "Anything special you want me to get?"
"No..." Melinda replied and shook her head. "Just... pick something that sounds good."
* * * *
After parking the car on the driveway Sadie quickly left the car and rushed back to the manor. She wondered briefly if she could convince Shannah to get a car of her own instead of asking Sadie to drive her all around town.
Sadie opened the front door and stepped inside the manor. Shannah came down the stairs only moments afterwards. She held a small piece of paper in her hand and her purse.
"What's that?" Sadie wondered, looking at the piece of paper.
"It's a list of things that Melinda asked for," Shannah answered and looked at the list. "It's... herbs?"
"Let's go, it's five already and we need to get home before dinner," Sadie said, not bothering to ask why Melinda who ask for herbs. Shannah nodded, put the list in her purse and then followed Sadie out of the manor. Once Sadie opened the car door she heard her cell phone ringing. She managed to answer the cell phone just a few seconds before the caller was about to hang up.
Shannah got into the car, put on her seat belt and waited for Sadie to finish the call. She didn't have to wait long. Sadie hung up and sighed.
"I have to get back to the office," Sadie told. She sat down in the driver's seat and closed the car door. "I just have to take a look at some things. It won't take long."
Shannah nodded silently, her mind more occupied with thinking about Melinda. Melinda had behaved so strange in the kitchen before and now she was asking for herbs? Melinda had never showed any interest in herbs before. And judging by the amount Melinda wanted the herbs weren't for cooking.
Once they arrived at the office building, Shannah preferred to wait in the car while Sadie went up to her office. Shannah occupied herself with playing the mini-games on Sadie's cell phone while waiting. Sadie had promised to be back in fifteen minutes but when those minutes and another twenty minutes had passed she still wasn't back. Impatient and eager to do something else than playing the mini-games, Shannah decided to go up and look for Sadie.
Sadie had left the car keys, Shannah took them and locked the car before putting them in the pocket of her jacket. She started to walk towards the entrance to the office building. She hadn't left the parking lot yet when she heard a male voice calling:
"Excuse me, miss!"
Seeing that she was the only person in the parking lot, Shannah turned around to answer the person. A tall and broad shouldered man walked towards her. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt and a black tie.
[He really likes colors,] Shannah commented sarcastically to herself as the man approached.
"Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" the man asked politely. Shannah held up her wrist and looked at her watch.
"It's 5:50 p.m. righ..." she began but didn't have to chance to finish. She glanced up briefly to see the man coming closer to her. She had to time to react, the man had grabbed both her arms and had a crushing hold on them.
"Let me go!" Shannah shouted, trying to pull herself away from the man without any success. She opened her mouth to scream for help but found that it would be useless since there was no one else in the parking lot, not even near it. Everyone was in the office building and no one could hear her.
The man lifted her up, then tossed her carelessly a few feet away. Shannah let out a cry in pain as her back made contact with the hard ground. She had hardly gotten the time to get up on her feet when the man approached her again.
"What do you want?" Shannah asked, thinking that she could buy some time with talking. The man came closer, glaring at her with eyes that Shannah for a moment thought glowed.
"Die witch!" the man hissed, the normal voice he had had before had been replaced by a very deep and demonic one. He held up his hand and punched Shannah across her face. Shannah lost her balance upon being hit by the man. Her cheek burned, she felt the pain deeply. The man raised his hand to hit her again. Shannah closed her eyes.
And found herself being raised.
She opened her eyes and found herself floating about six feets above the ground. Her body felt light, as if she could stay in the air forever. There was nothing holding on to her or lifting her. She was floating. Shannah felt her heart beating faster, fear entering her as she couldn't explain why she was floating.
The man was equally surprised and shocked. His jaw had dropped as the punch he had delivered had hit nothing but air. In his confusion he had failed to notice someone else entering the parking lot. Sadie was walking towards her car when she caught sight on Shannah. Levitating.
"Shannah?" Sadie whispered. Shannah was made aware of Sadie's presence and the man's shock. She decided to use the chance she had and kicked the man across his face as hard as she could. The kick wasn't as powerful as Shannah had wanted it to be and the man recovered quickly. He reached out both his arms to grab Shannah.
Sadie stepped forth, recognizing the danger to her relative.
"No!" she called and instinctively held out her arm. Pulled by an invincible force, the man was pulled off the ground. He flew across the parking lot, slamming hard into a car window. Sadie stopped, looking at her hand briefly before making her way to Shannah. Shannah slowly floated down on the ground and Sadie grabbed her hand.
"Let's get out of here," Sadie said, then pulled Shannah with her as she ran back to her car. After Shannah had unlocked the car, they both threw themselves in. Sadie drove away from the parking lot as fast as she could. For once in her life she didn't care that she was almost driving faster than the law permitted her to. Once she had drove far enough from the parking lot, she glanced at Shannah.
"Are you okay?" Sadie asked and then turned her eyes back on the road. Shannah nodded silently, thinking that the pain in her back would disappear eventually. "Who was that? Or more importantly, what happened back there?"
"I don't know," Shannah whispered, answering both questions. Sadie looked at Shannah and saw that she still seemed to be too shocked to answer.
"Let's get home first," Sadie decided. "Then we'll figure out what to do."
* * * *
Melinda hadn't expected Sadie and Shannah to be home so soon. She had gotten a little tired of sitting in the attic all day and had brought down the Book of Shadows downstairs to the sitting room so that she could look through it. Less than an hour after Shannah and Sadie had left to go grocery shopping, the front door opened and both Shannah and Sadie ran into the manor. They entered the sitting room immediately and Melinda had no time to hide the Book of Shadows from them. She prepared for questions about the book, but then she saw the looks on Sadie's and Shannah's faces.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Shannah was attacked by a man," Sadie told. She seemed more calm than Shannah. Melinda hadn't expected it to be in another way.
"Attacked?" Melinda repeated, looking at Shannah.
"I floated," Shannah said suddenly. "I closed my eyes and I floated!"
"What?"
Shannah's words had caused Melinda to become more confused. Sadie drew a deep breath and started to pace back and forth while Shannah sat down on the couch next to Melinda.
"I didn't see everything," Shannah told. "I went to the office to check a few things and Shannah stayed in the car. When I came back to the parking lot there was a man and Shannah... she was like five or six feet up in the air. I don't know how but... when the man tried to attack her again, he was thrown into a car. Just like that. There was nothing throwing him and nothing that was holding Shannah up in the air. It was like..."
Sadie couldn't find the right word. Shannah looked at Sadie and finished the sentence for her.
"... magic."
Both Sadie and Shannah looked at Melinda, expecting her to be shocked. Instead, Melinda sighed and strangely picked a flower from that vase on the table.
"I should have known that something like this should happen," Melinda said. Confusion entered Shannah and even Sadie looked puzzled.
"What are you talking about?" Shannah asked.
"Take a look at this," Melinda simply answered. She tossed the flower up in the air. All eyes were on the flower and it began to fall to the ground. Melinda flicked her hands. The flower frooze.
Sadie frowned and walked over to the flower. She waved her hand over and below the flower to assure herself that there was nothing attached to it. Once Sadie had taken a good look on the flower Melinda flicked her hands again. The flower continued to fall as if nothing had happened. Shannah stood up.
"Melinda, that's creepy..." she began. "What did you do?"
"I froze the flower," Melinda explained. "There's something that I need to tell you. You better sit down again."
Shannah did as she was told but Sadie remained standing. Her arms were crossed and she was impatiently waiting for Melinda's explanation. Melinda cleared her throat as she flipped the pages of the Book of Shadows. She found the page with the spell that she had read last night.
"You both know Paige Matthews was, right?" she wondered.
"Our relative who was executed because she was a witch?" Sadie guessed. Melinda nodded.
"She was my aunt," she went on. "What people don't know is that she wasn't the only witch in our family. It began with our ancestor, Melinda Warren. Ever since there have been witches in our family."
"You're joking..." Shannah whispered, instantly thinking about the witch debates and people's fear of witches that she had heard so much about recently.
"No, I'm not," Melinda said seriously. "My mother and my aunts were the Charmed Ones, the most powerful witches ever. When aunt Paige died, my mother and aunt Phoebe decided to bind the powers of their descendants to protect them. There have been no witches in our family ever since. But a few weeks ago... I found this."
Melinda pointed at the Book of Shadows. Shannah leaned forth and looked at the spell.
"That looks like some kind of spell," she commented.
"It is," Melinda replied. "I read that spell yesterday. It's a spell that unbinds the powers of the descendants of the Charmed Ones, us."
Sadie shook her head, she was almost smiling.
"Melinda, you are aware of that this sounds like something coming from a book or a movie?" she said. "Yes, witches do exist. Everyone knows that. But that we are witches? I find that a little hard to believe."
"Then how do you explain what I just did?" Melinda questioned, looking at Sadie. "That Shannah levitated? Or that it was probably you who threw Shannah's attacker against a car?"
Sadie was silent. Melinda wondered if Sadie was mad at her, for unbinding powers that neither Sadie or Shannah had asked for. Melinda closed the Book of Shadows, picked it up and got up from the couch.
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "When I read the spell I thought that it would only affect me. I didn't know that it was going to unlock your powers too."
With that, Melinda left the sitting room and went up the stairs. Once the sounds of Melinda's footsteps had faded out, Shannah turned to Sadie.
"So... what do you think about this?" she wondered. Sadie shrugged and sat down on a chair.
"I don't know," she answered. "I can't answer until I know more. But it seems so unbelievable... that we actually have powers."
Shannah was about to answer when the door bell rang. Smiling vaguely, she got up from the couch.
"I'll get that," she volunteered. She walked to the hallway and looked into the mirror, making sure that she looked okay. Except for that her jacket was a little dirty she looked good. Shannah put her hand on the door knob and opened the front door. Her eyes widened in fear as she saw her attacker standing there. She quickly tried to close the door, but the man pushed the door open.
"Sadie!" Shannah screamed as the man grabbed her and threw her into a wall. The man stepped into the manor and would have continued to approach Shannah if Sadie hadn't stepped out in the hallway.
"Get away from her," Sadie hissed angrily. The flower vase that had been in the sitting room flew out in the hallway and towards the man. But before it could hit him, he grabbed the vase with one hand, stopping it. He crushed the vase with one hand. Shards of porcelain threw across the hallway and water was splashed. Sadie covered her face with her arms to protect herself from the sharp porcelain shards. In the blink of an eye the man was gone and reappeared behind Sadie. He grabbed her with both arms and threw her into the stairs.
Sadie managed to stop her fall a little by reaching out her right hand. Her hand made contact with the stair and she felt a strange pain in it but if she hadn't reached out her hand then the fall would have been much more painful.
Sadie looked over her shoulder to see the man coming closer to her. He held out his hand and a small sphere of light formed over it. The sphere was growing in size as seconds passed. Sadie sat up and moved a little up the stairs as she tried to think of ways to escape.
Shannah got up, her back hurting after being thrown by the man twice in an hour. She sneaked up behind the man, without thinking about what she did she levitated up in the air and landed a powerful kick on the man's back.
The man turned around and spotted Shannah. The sphere flew from his palm and began to quickly make it's way towards Shannah. Both Sadie and Shannah stared at the sphere in terror.
Melinda came running down the stairs. As soon as she caught sight on the man, she flicked her hands. The man frooze and so did the sphere, much to Sadie's and Shannah's relief.
"A warlock..." Melinda murmured as she helped Sadie up.
"A warlock?" Sadie repeated, still not taking her eyes off the man. "How do you know that?"
"Super strength, can charge energy balls, wears black, what more evidence do you need?" Melinda said. Both she and Sadie walked past the frozen warlock and joined Shannah's side. Shannah descended to the floor.
"What do we do now?" Shannah asked. She stared at the energy ball, it had been merely inches from her when Melinda had freezed it.
"Sadie, use your power to deflect the energy ball back to the warlock," Melinda told. Sadie didn't protest, even though she really had no idea how to use her powers. She began concentrate on moving the energy ball, visualizing how it would turn around and hit the warlock instead of them.
Suddenly the warlock began to move again and the energy ball continued to move against them again. Sadie felt anger within herself, she was angry that she hadn't been able to do anything.
Then, the energy ball made a sudden turn and headed straight back to the warlock. He didn't have the time to react as the energy ball struck him and he began to shake almost violently. Melinda, Sadie and Shannah backed off, not sure about what would happen. The warlock continued to shake and it was only after a nervous minute that he dissolved into nothing.
The warlock disappeared without a trace, leaving the three women wondering if he was dead or a live. Seconds passed and nothing happened. Melinda let of a sigh of relief.
"I think we vanquished him," she said to the others and saw them look relieved as well.
* * * *
At 11:00 p.m. Melinda, Sadie and Shannah sat in the couch, watching an old movie on TV while eating popcorn. The mess in the hallway had been cleaned up, except for Shannah's aching back and the pain in Sadie's hand they were all alright.
"So... are you mad at me?" Melinda asked. She sat in the middle of the couch, between Shannah and Sadie. "For unbinding your powers... you know that you'll have to live with them for the rest of your lives."
"Nah..." Shannah answered. She smiled, grabbing a fistful of popcorn from the bowl. "If you hadn't unbound our powers we'd be dead right now."
"There'll probably be more warlocks after us," Melinda informed. "The world is full of them, you know."
"We'll just have to be prepared and deal with them," Sadie replied, leaning her head lightly against Melinda's shoulder. "Besides... I want to learn more about this."
* * * *
Jill looked at the Halliwell manor while sitting in the driver's seat of her car. She had been watching the manor for hours. The lights were on and the people who lived in the house seemed to be perfectly fine. Jill was already holding the cell phone in her hands. She dialed the same number she had dialed before and waited for Orlando to answer her. This time he answered it pretty quick.
"What do you have to report?"
"Roman failed," Jill told. "They appear to be fine... they must have used their powers to vanquish him."
"Keep me updated," Orlando replied. "Don't let them out of your sight."
With that he hung up. Jill sighed at the orders he had given her. She had hoped that he would assign her to do something else. Keeping her eye on Sadie Harding and her two other relatives wasn't her idea of an exciting mission.
Twilight - Chapter 1
Melinda Halliwell Wyatt sipped at her tea with almost closed eyes. The hot liquid felt burning against her tongue, yet she drank it, eager to taste it's sweetness. Putting down the tea cup on the coffee table, she pushed her reading glasses up her nose. She was about to reach for her book when she heard quick footsteps from another room. A few seconds later someone was coming down the stairs in a hurry.
Melinda smiled at herself, glad that her hearing hadn't become that much worse as time had passed.
"Melinda, I'm going out!" a perky and cheerful called from the hall. Melinda didn't take her book, instead she picked up some keys that were lying on the table. She smiled again, got up from the couch. As she was leaving the sitting room she twirled the car keys playfully between her fingers. Upon entering the hall she saw a blonde woman in her early twenties going through her small bag.
Shannah Reeves' cheerful nature was reflected in her clothes. She rarely, if not never, wore colors that made her looks anything but cheerful. The blonde nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and slowly emptied her bag in the search for something. Among the things that she put away for the moment was bubblegum, lips gloss and lip balm, a cell phone and a wallet.
"I can't find my car keys," Shannah told when she in the corner of her eyes saw Melinda. Melinda stretched out her arm and held the keys right in front of Shannah's face.
"You know it's bad luck to leave your keys on a table," Melinda teased. She chuckled and gave the keys to Shannah, who couldn't resist smiling.
"I thought that I had lost them," Shannah said and started to put everything back in her bag.
"Where are you going out tonight then?" Melinda asked and leaned slightly against the wall. "Leaving me and Sadie all alone with nothing to do on a Friday night."
Shannah opened her mouth to answer, then her face expression suddenly changed, as if she had just remembered something important.
"I'm going on a date with Josh," Shannah answered after a while. "And Sadie called, I forgot to tell you. She's staying at the office the entire evening. Some kind of deadline I think."
"Oh... but that's okay, I'll just do some reading until Sadie comes home."
Shannah looked at Melinda, knowing that Melinda disliked being left behind. She hugged the older woman, who wasn't only her friend but also her grandmother's sister.
"Tomorrow we can pop some popcorn and watch those old movies of yours if you want to," Shannah suggested. Feeling happy that Shannah had noticed her dislike, Melinda hugged her back and patted her gently on her back.
"We'll do that," she said and heard a car being parked on the driveway outside the manor. "I think your date is here. Looks like you didn't need your car keys at all."
"I forgot that he was going to pick me up!" Shannah exclaimed when she drew back from Melinda. She slapped herself on her forehead in frustration, she had spent nearly an hour looking for the car keys before Melinda had found them. "This is so typical of me!"
"Go now," Melinda urged. "He's waiting."
She followed Shannah to the doorway. Once Shannah was outside Melinda stayed by the door, curious about who Shannah was going with this time. It was a typical blonde, athletic guy who Shannah greeted with a kiss on the check. He probably went to the same college as Shannah. Once he noticed Melinda standing in the doorway and greeted her.
"Hello, mrs Wyatt!"
Normally Melinda would get upset, she was plain sick of people
assuming that just because she was at her age she had to be married or had been married. Everytime someone called her mrs Wyatt she had to tell them that Wyatt was her maiden name and Halliwell had been her mother's maiden name. The truth was that Melinda had never gotten married. A fact that she could live with but was reminded of every time someone called her mrs Wyatt.
"Good evening, John," Melinda greeted with a sigh that no one else could hear. Shannah didn't know if Melinda called Josh John on purpose or if it was just a mistake.
It was when Shannah had left with Josh that Melinda went back inside. She didn't go and read her book like she had told Shannah to do. In fact, she had never intended to. There was no one in the manor, formely called the Halliwell manor, except for Melinda. She was finally alone.
Instead of going back to the sitting room, Melinda went up the stairs and to the attic. She opened the door, it was never locked. Like many other places in the manor, the attic hadn't changed much over the years. The only change had been the addition of some boxes and the removal of some other things.
However, the Book of Shadows was no long at it's ordinary place.
It had been hidden by Piper Halliwell and Phoebe Turner, Melinda's mother and aunt, when Melinda had been a child. She didn't remember that much about it, only that her mother used to worry a lot. What she worried about... Melinda never asked, but she guessed. It was the death of her aunt Paige, the safety of the entire Halliwell family. The Book of Shadows had been hidden and locked away, powers had been bound.
It was three years ago that Melinda had moved back into the Halliwell manor, when her younger sister Beth had decided to move to Seattle with her husband. Almost a year ago Shannah Reeves and Sadie Harding had moved in because Melinda had asked them to. Living alone in such a big house was beginning to wear her out. Shannah was Beth's granddaughter. Sadie was the great granddaughter of Melinda's aunt Phoebe and was five years older than Shannah.
Living with Sadie and Shannah brightened Melinda's life. One day she had been cleaning the attic and suddenly there was a wooden box she had never seen before. It hadn't taken her long to find the key and when she did... she found the Book of Shadows in the wooden box. Memories of watching her mother and her two aunts looking through the book had resurfaced then, memories of herself sneaking up late at night to find Piper and Phoebe in the middle of binding her powers. It was things that she hadn't thought about for decades. Things that she had forgotten.
Now, she was sitting on the floor with the Book of Shadows in her hands. She flipped through the pages and found the page that she was looking for. Melinda had thought over things many times since she had found the Book of Shadows again. She had tried to be objective, to see things from her mother's point of view and her father's too. But she had still come to the same decision. The powers had been given to her for a reason.
She took a deep breath and then started to read the spell that was written on those old pages.
"Hear now the words of the witches,
The secrets we hid in the night,
The oldest of Gods are invoked here
Great work of magic is sought.
In this night and in this hour,
I call upon the ancient power
We want the power, give us the power."
Nothing happened. She didn't feel any different from before. She had expected some sort of sensation that would confirm that the spell had worked. Melinda looked at the book, feeling disappointment starting to build up inside her. Had the spell worked? Negative thoughts had formed inside her mind. They told her that it had been too much time had passed for her to regain the powers she had as a child.
* * *
When Melinda came down the stairs the next morning she wasn't surprised that she felt the smell of coffee. She covered her mouth and yamned as she made her way into the kitchen. A fresh pot of coffee had been put on the table along with a cup that Melinda had seen practically every morning for six months.
Shortly after Melinda had entered the kitchen a tall, woman in her mid-twenties came inside through the kitchen door. She had almost strawberry blonde hair that was wavy and had recently been trimmed. She wore a simple white shirt and a pair of black pants, but somehow she still looked elegant and refined. Unlike Shannah who dressed in a trendy way, she preferred to look efficient, elegant and serious. The woman wore a watch on her wrist, normally she would look at it every five minutes. But this Saturday morning was seemed to be one of the few mornings where she paid no attention to her watch. The woman caught sight on Melinda as she walked over to the kitchen table and put down the newspaper.
"You're up as usual, Sadie," Melinda said and went to get a cup of coffee for herself.
"If I had it my way I wouldn't be up," Sadie answered. She drank the what was left of the coffee in the cup. Then she looked at her watch and Melinda already knew what she was going to say. "I have to go to the office today."
"A deadline?" Melinda guessed but already knew. Sadie nodded and put the cup in the sink in a hurry.
"Yeah... I have to go now. I'll go the grocery store on my way home, so you don't have to do the shopping."
"When will you get home?" Melinda asked just before Sadie left the kitchen.
"Around five! I'll see you later!"
Only a few seconds after she had finished the sentence, Melinda could hear the front door open and close. She sighed and shook her head. One day Sadie was going to suffer the consequences of working as much as she did. But Sadie's path to a workoholic wasn't what troubled Melinda most. It was that she had failed with the spell last night. She had thought that it would work, she had been so excited to see what would happen.
[Nothing...] Melinda thought sadly. [Perhaps I didn't read it the right way or something...]
She went to the refrigerator to get some milk. Sadie had opened a milk bottle for her coffee but because she had been in a hurry she had more or less tossed the milk bottle back inside the refrigerator. As soon as Melinda opened the refrigerator the bottle rolled and fell. Melinda held out her hands to catch it and gasped when she saw what had happened.
The bottle was frozen in mid air.
* * *
"We need to get this done before Monday," Jill Watson said, putting down several folders on Sadie's desk. Sadie took the first folder and began to look through the files.
"I'll have it done before I leave today," Sadie replied. She glanced at her watch and then returned to looking through the files. Jill smiled, but she looked tired. Sadie assumed that Jill had been working for several hours non stop.
"Thank you so much," Jill thanked sincerely. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."
Sadie returned the smile and was about to answer her when the phone rang. Sadie picked up the phone and didn't even had the time to greet the person who was calling.
"Sadie, it's me," said a voice that Sadie recognized as
Shannah's. At the same time someone called for Jill and Jill ran out from Sadie's office in a hurry.
"Could you pick me up later on your way to the grocery store?" Shannah asked. Sadie noticed that Jill was on her way out.
"Hold on a sec," Sadie said to Shannah. "Jill, could you close the door..."
Jill was already gone and out of sight. Sadie sighed and got up to go and close the door by herself. She had just gotten up when the door was closed and all the buzzling sound from the rest of the offices was closed off. Sadie stared at the door in disbelief. The door had closed on it's own. No one passing by had closed it. Sadie hadn't opened the windows in her office either, so it couldn't be the wind that had closed the door. But she doubted her own eye sight despite doctors telling her that it was perfect. Had the door really closed itself on it's own? Impossible.
"Sadie? You there?"
Recovering from her shock, Sadie picked up the cordless phone and returned to talking to Shannah.
"Yeah, I'm here," Sadie murmured, still standing up and staring at the door.
"Are you okay?" Shannah asked. "You sound a little... weird."
"I'm fine," Sadie assured without thinking. "So... you wanted me to pick you up?"
* * * *
As the lunch hour approached, Jill kept looking at the watch. She drummed her fingers impatiently against her desk while waiting for lunch hour to begin. As soon as the clock turned 11:30, Jill grabbed her purse and left the office. She went down all the way to the parking lot and quickly found her car since she always parked it at the same place.
Flipping her red hair over her shoulder, she settled in the driver's seat and took out her cell phone from the purse. She dialed a number she knew by heart. While waiting for the person to pick up the phone, she sighed, letting out some of her frustration. The past few days had been stressful, but dealing with the stress and working was a way for her to appear more normal.
[I'll be more than happy when Orlando assigns me to someone else,] Jill thought, running her hand through her already messy hair. She had to wait for almost an entire minute to pass before someone answered her call.
"What do you have to report?" a smooth, male voice answered. At the sound of this voice Jill forgot all about the frustration she had felt. The voice... although spoken coldly to her, was beautiful and she could spend all day listening to it.
[Orlando...]
Jill blinked and got a little angry at herself for wandering off in her own little world.
"Their powers have been unbound," Jill told. There was silence. For a moment she thought that Orlando was so angry that he couldn't express it in words. To her surprise, he didn't sound angry at all when he spoke again.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive," Jill answered. "But they don't seem to be fully aware of it, at least not all of them."
"Keep an eye on them," Orlando ordered. "I'll send Roman to them later."
Before Jill had the opportunity to say something, Orlando had hung up. She felt disappointed that she hadn't been able to talk a little more to him, but during the small conversations she had had with him he had managed to make all her frustration and irritation to disappear. Jill put the cell phone back into her purse and took out a hair brush instead.
In the mirror she looked at herself and began to brush her hair. Then, as if it was by fate, she saw Sadie Harding in the mirror. Jill looked through the car window but lowered herself so that she wouldn't been seen. Sadie Harding was walking towards her car in a hurry. Orlando's words echoed inside Jill's head.
"Keep an eye on them."
Jill smiled to herself and put the hair brush away. This day was just getting better and better.
* * * *
Melinda looked at the apple in her hand. She stood in the kitchen, where she had returned after going to the attic to check the Book of Shadows. Shannah had wondered what Melinda was doing in the attic, but had believed her when Melinda had said that she was just looking for some old things.
Melinda stared at the apple for a few seconds, then tossed it up in the air. She flicked her hands, in a way similar to the way her mother used to do it.
[Freeze!] she thought, her eyes still following the apple. The apple went up, down a few inches... and stopped. Melinda circled the apple, looking at it from different angles. One could have believed that the apple hung from the ceiling. But there was no string attached to the apple, nothing. The apple had just been frozen in mid air.
[Let's try this then... unfreeze.]
She flicked her hands again and hardly a moment after she did, the apple fell to the floor. It bounced lightly once and then rolled off to one of the corners in the kitchen. Melinda smiled, satisfied with what she had managed to accomplish.
[Wow... the spell really worked.]
"What are you up to?"
Melinda turned around and saw Shannah entering the kitchen. For a moment she feared that Shannah had seen what Melinda had done to the apple, but the expression on Shannah's face told otherwise. Shannah smiled towards Melinda before looking through the mail that Melinda had brought in before.
"Nothing special," Melinda lied, putting on a smile on her lips. She watched Shannah look through the mail. A thought entered her mind. Was it possible for her to freeze Shannah too? It was worth a try.
When Shannah turned around Melinda flicked her hands, doing exactly what she had done with the apple. But nothing happened. Shannah continued to move as she had done before. Melinda looked at her hands, puzzled. She tried again but again, nothing happened. Shannah suddenly turned around and Melinda lowered her hands.
"What is it?" Shannah wondered, noticing the strange look on Melinda's face.
"Nothing," Melinda answered, perhaps a little to quick. "I... was just wondering if you could go and rent a movie for me. I'd like to have something to watch tonight."
"Okay..." Shannah said slowly and put down the mail on the kitchen table. She didn't look convinced. "Anything special you want me to get?"
"No..." Melinda replied and shook her head. "Just... pick something that sounds good."
* * * *
After parking the car on the driveway Sadie quickly left the car and rushed back to the manor. She wondered briefly if she could convince Shannah to get a car of her own instead of asking Sadie to drive her all around town.
Sadie opened the front door and stepped inside the manor. Shannah came down the stairs only moments afterwards. She held a small piece of paper in her hand and her purse.
"What's that?" Sadie wondered, looking at the piece of paper.
"It's a list of things that Melinda asked for," Shannah answered and looked at the list. "It's... herbs?"
"Let's go, it's five already and we need to get home before dinner," Sadie said, not bothering to ask why Melinda who ask for herbs. Shannah nodded, put the list in her purse and then followed Sadie out of the manor. Once Sadie opened the car door she heard her cell phone ringing. She managed to answer the cell phone just a few seconds before the caller was about to hang up.
Shannah got into the car, put on her seat belt and waited for Sadie to finish the call. She didn't have to wait long. Sadie hung up and sighed.
"I have to get back to the office," Sadie told. She sat down in the driver's seat and closed the car door. "I just have to take a look at some things. It won't take long."
Shannah nodded silently, her mind more occupied with thinking about Melinda. Melinda had behaved so strange in the kitchen before and now she was asking for herbs? Melinda had never showed any interest in herbs before. And judging by the amount Melinda wanted the herbs weren't for cooking.
Once they arrived at the office building, Shannah preferred to wait in the car while Sadie went up to her office. Shannah occupied herself with playing the mini-games on Sadie's cell phone while waiting. Sadie had promised to be back in fifteen minutes but when those minutes and another twenty minutes had passed she still wasn't back. Impatient and eager to do something else than playing the mini-games, Shannah decided to go up and look for Sadie.
Sadie had left the car keys, Shannah took them and locked the car before putting them in the pocket of her jacket. She started to walk towards the entrance to the office building. She hadn't left the parking lot yet when she heard a male voice calling:
"Excuse me, miss!"
Seeing that she was the only person in the parking lot, Shannah turned around to answer the person. A tall and broad shouldered man walked towards her. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt and a black tie.
[He really likes colors,] Shannah commented sarcastically to herself as the man approached.
"Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" the man asked politely. Shannah held up her wrist and looked at her watch.
"It's 5:50 p.m. righ..." she began but didn't have to chance to finish. She glanced up briefly to see the man coming closer to her. She had to time to react, the man had grabbed both her arms and had a crushing hold on them.
"Let me go!" Shannah shouted, trying to pull herself away from the man without any success. She opened her mouth to scream for help but found that it would be useless since there was no one else in the parking lot, not even near it. Everyone was in the office building and no one could hear her.
The man lifted her up, then tossed her carelessly a few feet away. Shannah let out a cry in pain as her back made contact with the hard ground. She had hardly gotten the time to get up on her feet when the man approached her again.
"What do you want?" Shannah asked, thinking that she could buy some time with talking. The man came closer, glaring at her with eyes that Shannah for a moment thought glowed.
"Die witch!" the man hissed, the normal voice he had had before had been replaced by a very deep and demonic one. He held up his hand and punched Shannah across her face. Shannah lost her balance upon being hit by the man. Her cheek burned, she felt the pain deeply. The man raised his hand to hit her again. Shannah closed her eyes.
And found herself being raised.
She opened her eyes and found herself floating about six feets above the ground. Her body felt light, as if she could stay in the air forever. There was nothing holding on to her or lifting her. She was floating. Shannah felt her heart beating faster, fear entering her as she couldn't explain why she was floating.
The man was equally surprised and shocked. His jaw had dropped as the punch he had delivered had hit nothing but air. In his confusion he had failed to notice someone else entering the parking lot. Sadie was walking towards her car when she caught sight on Shannah. Levitating.
"Shannah?" Sadie whispered. Shannah was made aware of Sadie's presence and the man's shock. She decided to use the chance she had and kicked the man across his face as hard as she could. The kick wasn't as powerful as Shannah had wanted it to be and the man recovered quickly. He reached out both his arms to grab Shannah.
Sadie stepped forth, recognizing the danger to her relative.
"No!" she called and instinctively held out her arm. Pulled by an invincible force, the man was pulled off the ground. He flew across the parking lot, slamming hard into a car window. Sadie stopped, looking at her hand briefly before making her way to Shannah. Shannah slowly floated down on the ground and Sadie grabbed her hand.
"Let's get out of here," Sadie said, then pulled Shannah with her as she ran back to her car. After Shannah had unlocked the car, they both threw themselves in. Sadie drove away from the parking lot as fast as she could. For once in her life she didn't care that she was almost driving faster than the law permitted her to. Once she had drove far enough from the parking lot, she glanced at Shannah.
"Are you okay?" Sadie asked and then turned her eyes back on the road. Shannah nodded silently, thinking that the pain in her back would disappear eventually. "Who was that? Or more importantly, what happened back there?"
"I don't know," Shannah whispered, answering both questions. Sadie looked at Shannah and saw that she still seemed to be too shocked to answer.
"Let's get home first," Sadie decided. "Then we'll figure out what to do."
* * * *
Melinda hadn't expected Sadie and Shannah to be home so soon. She had gotten a little tired of sitting in the attic all day and had brought down the Book of Shadows downstairs to the sitting room so that she could look through it. Less than an hour after Shannah and Sadie had left to go grocery shopping, the front door opened and both Shannah and Sadie ran into the manor. They entered the sitting room immediately and Melinda had no time to hide the Book of Shadows from them. She prepared for questions about the book, but then she saw the looks on Sadie's and Shannah's faces.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Shannah was attacked by a man," Sadie told. She seemed more calm than Shannah. Melinda hadn't expected it to be in another way.
"Attacked?" Melinda repeated, looking at Shannah.
"I floated," Shannah said suddenly. "I closed my eyes and I floated!"
"What?"
Shannah's words had caused Melinda to become more confused. Sadie drew a deep breath and started to pace back and forth while Shannah sat down on the couch next to Melinda.
"I didn't see everything," Shannah told. "I went to the office to check a few things and Shannah stayed in the car. When I came back to the parking lot there was a man and Shannah... she was like five or six feet up in the air. I don't know how but... when the man tried to attack her again, he was thrown into a car. Just like that. There was nothing throwing him and nothing that was holding Shannah up in the air. It was like..."
Sadie couldn't find the right word. Shannah looked at Sadie and finished the sentence for her.
"... magic."
Both Sadie and Shannah looked at Melinda, expecting her to be shocked. Instead, Melinda sighed and strangely picked a flower from that vase on the table.
"I should have known that something like this should happen," Melinda said. Confusion entered Shannah and even Sadie looked puzzled.
"What are you talking about?" Shannah asked.
"Take a look at this," Melinda simply answered. She tossed the flower up in the air. All eyes were on the flower and it began to fall to the ground. Melinda flicked her hands. The flower frooze.
Sadie frowned and walked over to the flower. She waved her hand over and below the flower to assure herself that there was nothing attached to it. Once Sadie had taken a good look on the flower Melinda flicked her hands again. The flower continued to fall as if nothing had happened. Shannah stood up.
"Melinda, that's creepy..." she began. "What did you do?"
"I froze the flower," Melinda explained. "There's something that I need to tell you. You better sit down again."
Shannah did as she was told but Sadie remained standing. Her arms were crossed and she was impatiently waiting for Melinda's explanation. Melinda cleared her throat as she flipped the pages of the Book of Shadows. She found the page with the spell that she had read last night.
"You both know Paige Matthews was, right?" she wondered.
"Our relative who was executed because she was a witch?" Sadie guessed. Melinda nodded.
"She was my aunt," she went on. "What people don't know is that she wasn't the only witch in our family. It began with our ancestor, Melinda Warren. Ever since there have been witches in our family."
"You're joking..." Shannah whispered, instantly thinking about the witch debates and people's fear of witches that she had heard so much about recently.
"No, I'm not," Melinda said seriously. "My mother and my aunts were the Charmed Ones, the most powerful witches ever. When aunt Paige died, my mother and aunt Phoebe decided to bind the powers of their descendants to protect them. There have been no witches in our family ever since. But a few weeks ago... I found this."
Melinda pointed at the Book of Shadows. Shannah leaned forth and looked at the spell.
"That looks like some kind of spell," she commented.
"It is," Melinda replied. "I read that spell yesterday. It's a spell that unbinds the powers of the descendants of the Charmed Ones, us."
Sadie shook her head, she was almost smiling.
"Melinda, you are aware of that this sounds like something coming from a book or a movie?" she said. "Yes, witches do exist. Everyone knows that. But that we are witches? I find that a little hard to believe."
"Then how do you explain what I just did?" Melinda questioned, looking at Sadie. "That Shannah levitated? Or that it was probably you who threw Shannah's attacker against a car?"
Sadie was silent. Melinda wondered if Sadie was mad at her, for unbinding powers that neither Sadie or Shannah had asked for. Melinda closed the Book of Shadows, picked it up and got up from the couch.
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "When I read the spell I thought that it would only affect me. I didn't know that it was going to unlock your powers too."
With that, Melinda left the sitting room and went up the stairs. Once the sounds of Melinda's footsteps had faded out, Shannah turned to Sadie.
"So... what do you think about this?" she wondered. Sadie shrugged and sat down on a chair.
"I don't know," she answered. "I can't answer until I know more. But it seems so unbelievable... that we actually have powers."
Shannah was about to answer when the door bell rang. Smiling vaguely, she got up from the couch.
"I'll get that," she volunteered. She walked to the hallway and looked into the mirror, making sure that she looked okay. Except for that her jacket was a little dirty she looked good. Shannah put her hand on the door knob and opened the front door. Her eyes widened in fear as she saw her attacker standing there. She quickly tried to close the door, but the man pushed the door open.
"Sadie!" Shannah screamed as the man grabbed her and threw her into a wall. The man stepped into the manor and would have continued to approach Shannah if Sadie hadn't stepped out in the hallway.
"Get away from her," Sadie hissed angrily. The flower vase that had been in the sitting room flew out in the hallway and towards the man. But before it could hit him, he grabbed the vase with one hand, stopping it. He crushed the vase with one hand. Shards of porcelain threw across the hallway and water was splashed. Sadie covered her face with her arms to protect herself from the sharp porcelain shards. In the blink of an eye the man was gone and reappeared behind Sadie. He grabbed her with both arms and threw her into the stairs.
Sadie managed to stop her fall a little by reaching out her right hand. Her hand made contact with the stair and she felt a strange pain in it but if she hadn't reached out her hand then the fall would have been much more painful.
Sadie looked over her shoulder to see the man coming closer to her. He held out his hand and a small sphere of light formed over it. The sphere was growing in size as seconds passed. Sadie sat up and moved a little up the stairs as she tried to think of ways to escape.
Shannah got up, her back hurting after being thrown by the man twice in an hour. She sneaked up behind the man, without thinking about what she did she levitated up in the air and landed a powerful kick on the man's back.
The man turned around and spotted Shannah. The sphere flew from his palm and began to quickly make it's way towards Shannah. Both Sadie and Shannah stared at the sphere in terror.
Melinda came running down the stairs. As soon as she caught sight on the man, she flicked her hands. The man frooze and so did the sphere, much to Sadie's and Shannah's relief.
"A warlock..." Melinda murmured as she helped Sadie up.
"A warlock?" Sadie repeated, still not taking her eyes off the man. "How do you know that?"
"Super strength, can charge energy balls, wears black, what more evidence do you need?" Melinda said. Both she and Sadie walked past the frozen warlock and joined Shannah's side. Shannah descended to the floor.
"What do we do now?" Shannah asked. She stared at the energy ball, it had been merely inches from her when Melinda had freezed it.
"Sadie, use your power to deflect the energy ball back to the warlock," Melinda told. Sadie didn't protest, even though she really had no idea how to use her powers. She began concentrate on moving the energy ball, visualizing how it would turn around and hit the warlock instead of them.
Suddenly the warlock began to move again and the energy ball continued to move against them again. Sadie felt anger within herself, she was angry that she hadn't been able to do anything.
Then, the energy ball made a sudden turn and headed straight back to the warlock. He didn't have the time to react as the energy ball struck him and he began to shake almost violently. Melinda, Sadie and Shannah backed off, not sure about what would happen. The warlock continued to shake and it was only after a nervous minute that he dissolved into nothing.
The warlock disappeared without a trace, leaving the three women wondering if he was dead or a live. Seconds passed and nothing happened. Melinda let of a sigh of relief.
"I think we vanquished him," she said to the others and saw them look relieved as well.
* * * *
At 11:00 p.m. Melinda, Sadie and Shannah sat in the couch, watching an old movie on TV while eating popcorn. The mess in the hallway had been cleaned up, except for Shannah's aching back and the pain in Sadie's hand they were all alright.
"So... are you mad at me?" Melinda asked. She sat in the middle of the couch, between Shannah and Sadie. "For unbinding your powers... you know that you'll have to live with them for the rest of your lives."
"Nah..." Shannah answered. She smiled, grabbing a fistful of popcorn from the bowl. "If you hadn't unbound our powers we'd be dead right now."
"There'll probably be more warlocks after us," Melinda informed. "The world is full of them, you know."
"We'll just have to be prepared and deal with them," Sadie replied, leaning her head lightly against Melinda's shoulder. "Besides... I want to learn more about this."
* * * *
Jill looked at the Halliwell manor while sitting in the driver's seat of her car. She had been watching the manor for hours. The lights were on and the people who lived in the house seemed to be perfectly fine. Jill was already holding the cell phone in her hands. She dialed the same number she had dialed before and waited for Orlando to answer her. This time he answered it pretty quick.
"What do you have to report?"
"Roman failed," Jill told. "They appear to be fine... they must have used their powers to vanquish him."
"Keep me updated," Orlando replied. "Don't let them out of your sight."
With that he hung up. Jill sighed at the orders he had given her. She had hoped that he would assign her to do something else. Keeping her eye on Sadie Harding and her two other relatives wasn't her idea of an exciting mission.
