Author's Note: Wow, I'm hitting the home stretch here. Unbelievable. Once again, thanks to my faithful reviewers. You always brighten my day! Glad to hear that people are enjoying the tale. (Not to say that concrit isn't accepted too, because it is, it is.) And now, Part Four.

Part Four: Things Past Redress

Chapter One

On his fourteenth birthday, Chris awoke early with the strangest feeling — an irresistible call to go to the Manor attic. For a few minutes, he lay in bed, thinking about it, and when it was clear he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, he decided to answer the mysterious summons.

Still in an old T-shirt and pajama bottoms, he headed upstairs, noticing the smell of potion-making wafting from the first floor. Mom had called her sisters the night before, insisting they come over early to make a potion that could be a possible defense against the Fortalice. "We're getting it out of the way," Piper had declared. "We're going to minimize the chances of any magical distractions on Chris's birthday."

It seemed to be her way of doing what she could to make this a better birthday than it promised to be, given the emotional strain that had settled over the Manor since Wyatt had been expelled two days ago. Nothing big had been planned anyway, but the family dinner was to go ahead and some friends from school were invited for some movies and a sleepover. No one seemed too scared of Wyatt to come; he even had sympathy from those who had been the subject of bullying by Joe or his gang.

"It's not like Wyatt's going to do anything bad to me," as Vincenta said. "I didn't do anything to deserve it."

Chris reached the attic, opened the door and found …

No one. Nothing unusual or new. He checked out the open Book of Shadows on its stand, but it was only open to the page Mom had found for the potion being currently concocted downstairs. It wasn't an entry for the Fortalice of course — she wasn't in there — but for some other creature obsessed with Excalibur. The sisters were hoping the potion's effects might apply to the Fortalice as well.

With a sigh, Chris settled on the sofa. It was stupid of him to come up here. He wasn't Phoebe; he didn't have her power of premonition. There was nothing in the attic to justify the intuition that had drawn him here.

His thoughts drifted to his brother as he leaned back in lazy morning meditation. If Vincenta didn't think Wyatt had gone off the deep end, maybe it would all work out. Maybe once all the grown-ups calmed down, Wyatt would be let back into school again. Things would be normal next fall. Maybe if Chris hoped for that enough, he could believe it.

It will all be all right. It will all be all right.

He didn't believe it.

A distant crash from below diverted his attention from inner conversation. He leapt to his feet, only to watch, in awe and dread, a golden glow descend over the attic's window like a sheet of water. Chris bolted for the door and ran downstairs.

On a landing, he met his mother and Wyatt, who was emerging from his room fully dressed for the day.

"What's going on?" Wyatt asked, his voice raised above the unexplained clamor and scuffling down on the first floor.

Piper did not answer. "Paige!" she called.

His sister orbed in beside them, holding two potion vials. She handed one to Piper. "That's as done as it's going to get, I think."

"Is that …?"

"The Fortalice? Yeah, from what I saw. She looks same as she looked in that book. Don't know what the racket's about."

Chris glimpsed Phoebe crossing the entryway, toward the sun room, where the noise was coming from.

"You two!" Piper ordered her sons. "Get out now. To Magic School. Paige, get upstairs and orb the sword and stone — anywhere. The school, up to the Elders, wherever, just out of here. Then come back."

Paige nodded as she orbed up to the attic, and Piper, grasping the potion vial, headed downstairs, turning to shout once more to Wyatt and Chris: "Out!"

They stood there on the landing, listening to the shouts and commotion. Chris looked to his brother, who simply said, "No way."

The scene that Piper rushed into was chaos. The tall, robed female in the center of the room — presumably the Fortalice — appeared to be using telekinesis, as darting movements of her head and wide, forceful gestures produced barely visible charges of light through the air, followed by upended furniture. The room seemed to be swirling from the energy, and an odd, intense golden glow coated the glass doors that led outside.

From behind a couch, Phoebe called out, "The potion had no effect!"

Nevertheless, Piper flung hers, in hopes that doubling it up couldn't hurt, but the Fortalice barely acknowledged the blow and the vial that shattered at her feet.

The demon's attention was quickly drawn, though, when Paige came plummeting into the room in a cloud of orb lights — sword, stone and all, her leg barely escaping being pinned.

"Paige? What happened?" Piper called over the din, ducking behind some shelves that had been knocked out from the wall.

"There's some kind of shield around the house! I couldn't get out — it bounced me back down here."

Piper scarcely had a moment to realize her sons would also be trapped inside when, on cue, both boys orbed in.

Chris landed right next to the stone. Piper saw him almost immediately go down, as if his legs had been knocked out from under him, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Fortalice's arm follow Chris's trajectory as he skittered across the floor on his back, where he collided with one of the glass doors. There he lay stunned — or unconscious. Paige, who was nearest, began to crawl over to him.

With a growl, Piper moved from behind her cover and let loose the full strength of her own power.

It had little effect. The Fortalice did not explode, but staggered slightly and turned in Piper's direction, her expression almost stern. The demon threw her arm out in a determined push in Piper's direction, a faint pattern of gold light shot out …

It was as though Piper had been run through with knives. Shuddering, she looked down at her own torso to see two gaping wounds, before she collapsed and darkness came over her.

Chris was not unconscious. From across the room, he had seen the blood appear at the demon's command; he had seen his mother fall.

His brother had seen as well. With an inarticulate roar, he held out a hand.

"Excalibur!"

Chris and Paige covered their heads as an explosion rocked the room. The sword indeed orbed into Wyatt's hand — but the force of his rage shattered the stone around it, sending its shrapnel around the room, breaking one of the doors, showering them with rocks, dust and glass.

Wyatt did not hesitate. Only one thing would kill this Fortalice. He strode over and ran Excalibur through her.

Unlike Piper, her final victim, the Fortalice did not collapse. She froze in shock before dissolving in a kind of mist. There wasn't even blood on the sword left behind in Wyatt's hands. As she dissolved, so did the golden shield covering the Manor. A final flurry like a light breeze stirred the debris, then at last the room was still.

"Oh god," Phoebe moaned in the sudden silence, and crossed the room to kneel by Piper, passing Wyatt, who stood staring mesmerized at Excalibur. Chris dimly perceived Paige's shaking arm wrapped across the front of his shoulders, holding him tightly.

"Wyatt!" Phoebe choked out. "Heal her! Wyatt!"

He had just begun slowly to heed his aunt's words, when Phoebe, frustrated, called for another.

"Leo!"

Chris watched his father orb into the Manor, and his face fill with shock as he took in the destruction, Wyatt holding the sword, and Piper on the floor.

"Heal her! Heal her!" Phoebe insisted, but Leo was already beside his wife.

It felt to Chris to be an eternity as his dad tried to heal her, before he finally faltered, "I can't. She's already …"

"No!" Wyatt, shaken out of his trance, shoved Leo out of the way as he knelt — finally putting the sword down — and held his hands over his mother. Chris almost dared to feel hope.

But just as it had been with Leo, the seconds turned to minutes, with no response, no cry of joy from the son, husband or sister who surrounded Piper's bloody form. Wyatt was failing.

"Dammit! This will work!"

Chris thought his brother would never give up, but he did, when Leo seized his hands and pulled him back. Wyatt stood abruptly, stumbling back a little, and swept the room with glowering eyes, as if he hoped more killers might still lurk for him to exact revenge.

Finally shaking off Paige's hold, Chris rose and moved nearer to the place where his father was holding Piper, weeping. Chris saw nothing but his mother. Something was building inside him. He was going to sob or scream … or both.

It will all be all right. No. It would never be all right again.

"Chris." He heard Phoebe's voice, gentle, reaching out to him, but she sounded so far away. "Chris…"

Paige took charge, fiercely clearheaded: She cleaned up the room's destruction with her "Object of Objection" spell, then staged the appearance of a robbery. A lesser mess was created to imply signs of struggle, some valuables were taken away to Magic School — as was Excalibur, so that it wouldn't be mistaken for the murder weapon — and Chris and Wyatt were sent to the care of Vincenta's parents (the less people who had to maintain the made-up story, the better, Paige said). When the lie had all been arranged, the police were called.

At the Barraza's, Chris moved through the scene in a catatonic daze. Mr. Barraza's grave expression, Mrs. Barraza's anxious care could not touch him. It was only after a morning of excruciatingly slow and shrouded hours that Vincenta broke through.

She came to the room where he was sitting alone, knelt beside him and laid a tentative hand on his arm.

"Chris," she said in a small voice, "um, do you want your birthday present?"

He looked at the box she offered, and the bright colors of the wrapping began to blur before his eyes. "Thanks," he managed to choke out before he broke down in sobs.

When the boys were brought home, after the police had cleared out, he clutched the still-unopened gift as he retreated to his room, withdrawn again.

Phoebe had gone home to take care of her daughter, while Paige stayed, still handling practical details like dinner, which no one, not even her, wanted to eat. Wyatt had asked that Excalibur be brought back to him, and Paige had obliged. Now, after sitting with Leo in the living room before leaving him alone with his grief, she found her older nephew in the dining room, staring at the sword that he had placed on the table in front of him.

"I could have saved her," he said without looking up.

"You shouldn't blame yourself …"

"I don't. I blame her. And Dad." He broke his gaze from the sword and, responding to her frown, he said, "They're the ones that wouldn't let me take possession of Excalibur until they thought I was 'of age,' whatever that was supposed to mean. If I had already had the sword, she wouldn't have been killed."

After the endless day, Paige could feel herself on the verge of disintegrating, but she was determined to hold on. At least until she got home. She said, "Or you might have been killed instead."

Wyatt returned his eyes to the sword. "Not likely," he said grimly. "Not likely."