"No," said Prue angrily. "I don't believe it. Grams could not have been a warlock. She was a high priestess for crying out loud. We lived with her every day of our lives. We would have known if she was evil."
"Just like you knew she was a witch?" Leo asked. "Prue, I don't like this any more than you do. I knew Penny a lot longer than you did. But I'm telling you those items could only belong to a Dark Priestess. That black book? It's called a Dark Grimoire. It's the spell book of a warlock. It's similar to the Book of Shadows, containing all their spells, descriptions of creatures, everything they need. Those robes are their vestments that they use during rituals as are the black candles."
"And the pendant," said George. "An inverted pentagram. That's the traditional symbol for a Dark Priestess. I could never understand why she suddenly sent me away like she did. Why she enchanted the attic so I couldn't orb in or why she wouldn't let me know what she was working on. If she had converted to evil it would explain everything. She knew she couldn't kill me. All she could do was keep me from knowing what she was doing."
"Wouldn't the Elders have known she turned evil?" Phoebe asked.
"Not necessarily," said Leo. "If she hid it from them she might have been able to keep it a secret for quite a while."
"I'm with Prue," said Piper. "Grams couldn't have been a Dark Priestess. She cared about us too much. She did everything she could to vanquish demons and protect us."
"Look at the evidence," said George. "You keep the Book of Shadows on the pedestal in the attic. She did too for many, many years. Then one day she suddenly took it off the pedestal and put in the chest. There's no reason for her to do that. And the items in the chest. Only a Dark Priest or Priestess would have them.
"And the murders of the descendents. They stopped the year Penny died. And there was no murder this year either. The warlock is still alive and if she had hired him to kill them, why didn't he continue? You said he told you he didn't know she had died. If that's true, why did he suddenly stop killing?"
"Because the warlock who hired him didn't show up with his payment," said Prue.
"Which would have been the murder in 1997, not 1998," said George. "But there was a murder in 1997. And Grams was still alive after that. If she had hired the warlock to kill them, she would have paid him like she did every year before. But according to him, she didn't. How do you explain that?"
"I can't," said Prue.
"Stuart said that Grams stole some stuff from him," said Phoebe. "Couldn't that be the items she stole? The ones he came looking for? He didn't seem interested in the athame. It was sitting out in plain sight and he was still searching the attic."
"That's not likely," said George. "A Dark Priestess would have been comparable in power to Penny. Even if she had somehow managed to steal them, she would have destroyed them. And the warlock would have come looking for them immediately, not wait almost two years before he did."
"Besides," said Leo, "if that warlock was a Dark Priest, you wouldn't have stood a chance against him. Especially the first time with Prue not here. You may be the most powerful witches in history but you're still learning to use your powers. A Dark Priest has had decades to master their control. He would have just killed you and then kept looking for these items."
"He did try to kill us," said Phoebe. "We stopped him."
"No," said George, "that wouldn't have stopped him. A Dark Priest without these items would be like the three of you without the Book of Shadows. Especially the Dark Grimoire. A Dark Priest will die before giving that up."
"No," said Prue. "I don't believe it. I won't believe it."
"Leo told me you found a power-stripping potion after Penny died," said George.
"Yeah, so?" questioned Piper.
"Don't you see?" George asked. "There would have been no reason to strip your powers. She had bound them when you were little girls. The only reason to strip them would be to assure that you never got them. A witch wouldn't have done that."
"But you said a witches' spells are cancelled when they die," said Phoebe. "If she knew how sick she was she might have planned to strip our powers so that we'd always be protected from demons."
"No," said George. "She connected the binding to the Book of Shadows. Only she and I knew that. Even with her death the binding would remain in place by the power of the book. Only by finding the book and reading the incantation would the binding be released.
"The only thing to gain from stripping your powers would be to weaken the forces of good. To take away their most powerful weapon. The Power of Three. As her Whitelighter, I was her only connection to the Elders. She would never have shut me out the way she did, especially if she were after a powerful warlock."
"So why ask Jessica to help her find out who was killing the descendents if she were doing it herself?" Prue demanded. "If she were doing it she wouldn't need Jessica's help."
"Because of this photo," said George, picking up the newspaper article. "She was potentially exposed by this. I think when she saw this photo she realized that she might have left clues to what she really was. So she contacted an old friend on the other side of the country to check into it. Then she could take what Jessica learned and eliminate anything that might connect her to the murders."
"But why go after the descendents?" Prue asked. "They didn't do anything. Even assuming you're right, and I'm not conceding that point, why go after innocents who had nothing to do with the Salem trials."
"Remember what you were like a little bit ago?" asked Leo. "You were so angry you were ready to go after that warlock and rip him apart. You said yourself how much Penny despised what had happened in Salem. Her anger over something she couldn't do anything about must have grown little by little over the years.
"Remember what I said about anger? Hold it in long enough and it turns to hatred. And then to evil. I've seen it happen. So has George. In fact, George has seen a lot more of it. He's been a Whitelighter for more than three hundred years."
"That's true," said George. "I've seen some very powerful witches twisted and corrupted by hate. Corrupted so much that they eventually become evil and seek nothing but revenge for some wrong or imagined wrong. And I've seen it happen in mortals as well."
"Not Grams," protested Prue.
"Prue," said Leo, "the only reason you feel that way is because she was your grandmother. You loved her very much, I know that. Think about it unemotionally for a minute. Look at the facts. Look at all the strange things she did, especially the last couple of years of her life. Can you honestly say that if this all applied to a complete stranger that you'd believe them innocent?"
Prue glared at Leo. He was right about that. If this had been anyone other than Grams she would have been the first to agree that the person had been corrupted to evil. But this was Grams they were talking about. Leo may have known her longer but Prue knew her better. She knew there was no way Grams could become evil, no matter what the evidence said.
"Prue, I'm sorry," said George. "I knew Penny for almost fifty years. I've seen all the good she did in the world. How she raised you after your father left and your mother died. I've seen how she helped young witches reach their full potential. But the evidence is overwhelming. Despite how we may have felt about her, everything points to only one possible conclusion. Your grandmother was corrupted by evil and became a Dark Priestess."
Prue just stared at George not knowing what to say.
