Chapter Eight.
Paige Halliwell was sat in the kitchen trying to get her nieces to eat their breakfast. But she kept staring at one niece in particular. Penny. She'd been really quiet since the Phoebe incident…in fact she'd become a recluse. She only came out of her room for school, food and sometimes a quick chat with phoebe but that was on a rare occasion.
"Auntie Pay?" Melinda's voice rang in her head. "hewwoooo" She waved her small hand in front of her aunt's face.
"What? Oh yeah sweetie?" Paige said dazed. She looked at her niece and smiled.
"I finisd." She said holding up her plate grinning.
"Oh…ok honey I'll….put it in the sink…Trish how bout u? Ya done? Pen?" Trish nodded as did Penny and the plates we're cleared. Paige turned back to the table and saw that Trish and Mel had gone. Probably upstairs she thought.
"Penny? Are you ok?" Paige said carefully. Penny nodded and stared at the table.
"Sweetie come on you know that I know your not ok." Penny looked up to her aunt and stared at her as she started to cry.
"He wants Aunt Phoebe and I tricked him n he knows it and now he's after Trish" She sobbed like she could never stop as her Aunt looked at her understanding what the young girl had just said.
"What do you mean you tricked him?" She asked as she slowly moved around the table to comfort Penny.
"He said that he wants to look like a hero. To make Aunt Phoebe love him again. But to do that he had to let her go…me too. I kind of promised to tell you guys that Cole saved us. But he didn't Aunt Paige it was his fault. He stole Aunt Phoebe's soul." She told her story with her head buried into her Aunts shoulder. For a girl so small, she felt such immense relief come over her. She was just so happy that she'd told instead of bottling it up inside.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Paige asked, her tone mixed with anger and sadness.
"I wanted to protect you…all of you. I know what he did to Aunt Phoebe. To you and everyone else. I couldn't let him do that to everyone…not again." She wiped the tears from her eyes as she silently awaited her aunt's response.
"Honey, that was really brave of you but I think you should have told us before so we could have got rid of him sooner. But I'm proud that you put us first. You're just like your mommy." Penny smiled through her tears at the compliment. She thanked her aunt with a hug. Then the two of them set off upstairs to let the others know what was wrong.
What they didn't know was that Phoebe was stood in the laundry room, she had heard every single word.