Chapter 3

2016

I don't really care that I'm grounded, it's not like I can't get out of the house if I really want to. Even if they locked all the doors and shut all the windows with superglue I could still shimmer out. So the punishment is actually pretty pointless, but I'm not about to tell Piper that.

She and Paige are fighting again, I listened from the top of the stairs for a few minutes after my shower. Paige is even more intent on killing my parents than usual. It's probably because it's the anniversary of her husband's death. Three years since Phoebe killed him, and she didn't do it in a nice way. Paige was helpless, the only thing she could do was sit with him and watch him suffer until he finally died. Before that she was just as reluctant as Piper to hurt Phoebe - although she's never cared for Cole - but she's changed now. She wants revenge.

I think she's right. The number of demons we've had to fight has risen dramatically lately, and I don't think we've saved an innocent since last month. Evil is getting stronger, there's no doubt about it. There's also no doubt that we have to do something about it, before it does something about us. The only real solution is to kill Phoebe and Cole, like Paige said. There's no way any new Source could be stronger than them. But Piper doesn't want to, and without Piper there's no way we'd have enough power.

I think she still believes that Phoebe's good, or at least that a part of her is. Or maybe she just wants to believe it, I'm not sure. She refuses to kill Cole, too, but I really don't know why that is. Maybe she thinks it's not his fault that he's evil.

You probably think I'm weird, calling my parents Phoebe and Cole instead of mom and dad. The truth is, I just don't think of them like that. After all, they're my greatest enemies. I only think of them as mom and dad when I think of them in the past tense. There's a picture of them next to my bed, one that used to belong to my mother. That's a picture of my mom and dad. If you showed me a picture of them as they are today, I'd say it was the Source and his Queen. To all intents and purposes my parents are already dead, and killing them would just be cleaning up the mess they left behind.

But how do we convince Piper that it's the only way, the only way to save ourselves?

How do you convince someone to kill their own sister?