And here we go, straight into it.

Why hadn't the blood disappeared? Why was the metallic stench filling their nostrils, the sight of the crimson pool turning their stomachs? Ben was breathing heavily, taking shuddering gulps of air, hot tears pricking the back of his eyes. His head was shaking side to side, disbelieving, his face was two hazel tunnels of despair.

Leo was on the floor, his hand over his jaw, massaging it and working it slowly. Ben didn't acknowledge him. Instead he just looked down at his knuckles, not sure if it was Leo's blood or his own staining them a red-brown. He didn't care.

The pain of loss gnawed at his heart and he suddenly wished he was anywhere but here. Anywhere but in this room. Back in the future would be good, where they had all been relatively safe at least, but not here, not with Nixa dead and Bridget disappeared. Everything seemed to be falling apart in his hands, slipping through his fingers as he tried to hold on to the pieces in a vain hope he'd be able to put them back together again, make everything all right again.

Chris was suddenly on his feet again, anger emanating from him in dizzying waves. "All you had to do was listen, Dad. Just once be there when I needed you, come when I called — not when Wyatt called, when I called. Why is that so hard? But now, guess what? You think of me as so worthless that someone is dead because of it. She was one of my best friends…" He broke off, his throat constricting too much to carry on.

"Chris, look-" Leo said, hurt. He had gone so far for some peace, just to think about things he had said and thought about Chris that he should never have done, to digest the news that it was hard for him to hear anyone calling, even the Elders, so deep was he in thought. He couldn't explain that to Chris, though. Even he felt selfish, and Chris would think of it as much worse.

"Oh, I'm doing so well, aren't I," Chris said bitterly, cutting Leo off. He watched his father fall silent before carrying on; he didn't want to hear what Leo had to say right now. "I bring everyone back here and what happens? Bridget gone, Nixa dead… They all get hurt; it's all my fault…"

"It's not your fault." Piper snapped, suddenly savage. She had surprised herself. "You didn't know this would happen. Demons just…" Piper struggled but her speech petered out. She couldn't find the words. How do you comfort someone? How did other people do it? Surely there was supposed to be a mother thing she had to do somewhere, but the last kid disaster she had dealt with was Wyatt scraping a knee falling down after trying to walk. How was she meant to do this? This was hardly a situation in which she could stick a multi-coloured Band-Aid on it and kiss it better, was it?

Chris looked up at her, "Piper… Mom. I really did get used to you saying things that could make everything all better but… But I don't think there's a whole lot you can say. She's dead because of me. Don't you get that?"

"Chris-"

"Would everyone just stop saying my name?!" He yelled suddenly, "Just… stop…" God, he was loosing it, wasn't he? Snapping at everyone like that. He forced himself to calm down slightly.

Leo got up and tentatively put a hand on Chris's shoulder. The witch-whitelighter turned, temper flaring again and green eyes blazing with venomous fury.

"Don't touch me! What right do you have to touch me? After what you did?" He didn't remove his hand and Chris snarled at his father, "Get off me."

The hatred hit Phoebe like a cold blow to the heart. It was like an iron fist in her chest, squeezing so hard she didn't think she could breathe. Was it possible for someone to hate their father like that? Surely not even Prue had hated Victor as much as Chris felt now. A small nagging voice told her, 'No, but then Daddy never let one of Prue's friends die, did he?' She shook the thought away.

Suddenly her nephew used his power without meaning to, hitting Leo full in the chest and blowing him off of his feet and through the dining room window in an explosion of noise and shards. He let out a deep breath, momentarily stunned, before a small smile turned his mouth upwards.

Okay. He tried telling himself that loosing control was not the smartest or most mature thing to do, but it felt good to shake off annoying inhibitions and just do something. His mind felt growing slightly clearer now, cleansed of a little anger from his outburst.

Piper gasped as her sort-of husband shattered the pane, coloured glass falling around him and blasting outwards. Suddenly all was quiet until a piece of glass clinked to the floor.

"Chris!" Piper snapped at son, her mouth working but her brain not connecting enough to find words. Kids don't throw their fathers through windows, they weren't supposed to. All Piper could think of was a ridiculous notion of grounding her son. Like that was going to work, the state he was in. . .

"Sorry about the window, Mom," he said, turning to her.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," she snapped, folding her arms in anger.

"Oh. He'll be fine," Chris said coldly, sneering slightly. "He's kinda like a bug that you can't squash, don't you think? With being immortal and all, right?"

"Don't say that about your father, Chris Halliwell. He's a good man, he tried…"

"Well he didn't try very hard, did he? He didn't try to listen; he didn't try to get here in time to save Nixa, did he? It's all very well for someone to try, Mom, but he didn't. If he had tried at all, he would have had plenty of time to get here. But he didn't even try."

He turned to Ben for support, but his friend was looking down at the near-black blood on his jeans and shirt. He tried to rub away the tears on his face with his sleeve but only smeared a crimson stain across his face. A tear rolled through it, creating a pink-coloured drop and track mark. He sniffed.

The look of anger on his friend's face began to scare even Chris. Ben so rarely got angry. When Chris looked at the witch's hands he saw crackling flames dancing around the fingertips, snaking their way through bright red and glowing fingers. The fire began twisting its way up his arms, coiling and changing colour to silver-white.

"Ok…" Phoebe breathed, feeling so many emotions she wished she could split open her skull and tear them out one by one, just to make sense of them. They all came to her in a jumbled mass, most of the time not even one after the other.

"What, Pheebs?"

"Anger… Pain with sadness, hate and… pain… anger, grief… Gods there are no many…" She moaned slightly screwing her eyes shut and placing the heel of her hand to her forehead.

"Honey, you're not making too much sense," Piper prompted gently. "Which one?"

"Both. They're so angry. It hurts… They're crumbling from the inside…"

Silence followed Phoebe's dramatic announcement. They had known that the two of them were bad, but could they be as bad off as the empath was trying to make out? Surely not.

"Hey, didn't you say anger was…" Paige began, breaking the silence at last and frowning slightly.

"The trigger to Prue's power…" Piper finished softly.

"Then I don't need Phoebe to tell me that we have two seriously big ticking time bombs over there."

"Can we handle them?" Piper asked doubtfully.

"The Power of Three can handle anything." Leo said, orbing back into view. The confidence in them that Piper normally felt radiating from him barely penetrated her skin. She doubted he was right.

"What took you so long?" Paige asked.

"Look, Leo…" Piper said, sighing and beginning to show the rest of the room her doubts. "There might be nothing stronger than the Power of Three, but they have had their powers more than two decades. Compared to that we're only just coming into our powers. That and the fact that someone they knew and it looked like loved has just died. God, I know that that feels like…"

Leo thought he understood what his sort-of wife was saying, but at the same time, he knew that these were not the same circumstances. "She wasn't Prue, Piper."

"I know that. What I'm trying to say is that they're hurting and I understand why. And they're good; we can't exactly vanquish them, can we? He's my – our – son. And loss hurts, a lot. Don't you get that? We can't just say a quick rhyme and have everything sorted out. The Power of Three is strong, but how does that work against pain?"

"We're still here, you know," Chris interrupted. "We're not bits of furniture; we can still hear what you're saying." What his Mom had said had touched him, it really had. But Leo wouldn't even look at him. How do you like that? Leo knew that he had screwed up and he couldn't even face Chris and say he was sorry. It would be fine with him if he never saw his Dad again. He clenched his fists, the nails digging into his palms.

"We don't mean it like that…" Paige said, sighing, her voice tired. "We just…"

"Then how did you mean it, Paige?" Chris's voice broke and he put his head in his hands, massaging his eyes with his palms.

Paige closed her mouth, unable to answer that show of grief. How did other people do it? When her parents died she knew that nothing that anyone could say to her had comforted her in the slightest. There was nothing you could say to someone in this situation.

Leo tried a different tack, and Paige knew immediately that this was not the best idea. It was an over-used cliché, one she personally hated.

"Do you think this is what Nixa would have wanted?"

Paige winced inwardly. Oh boy, here it comes…

Ben's head snapped around, "Don't you dare assume anything about her! All you know is that she's dead because you can't do your job!" The flames that had been wrapping themselves around Ben's forearms were suddenly released in two columns, narrowly missing Leo as he orbed and obliterating the sideboard behind him.

Piper and Paige threw their arms over their faces as wood and other miscellaneous debris blew at them. Phoebe ducked behind the wall between the dining room and the conservatory. Only Chris and Ben seemed unaffected. When the smoke cleared Ben was standing alone in the middle of the chaos, burning wood littering the floor around him. Paige spat ash out of her mouth and looked on in disbelief at the wrecked sideboard.

"Uh, Leo? Are we sure we can handle this?" She asked uncertainly to the ceiling, trying to comb charcoal dust from her hair.

"Still talking about us?" Chris asked, glaring at his father's back as Leo orbed back into view.

Chris seemed to take the re-arrival of his father as a personal insult, and turned away from him, back to Ben. Icicles were forming and retracting absently at the end of his fingers.

"I don't know about you, but I'm all talked out. So, what do you say about rescuing Bridget now?" Ben asked, creating a disc of ice in his palm, perfectly rounded.

"I say why the hell not?" Chris said, the glint back in his eyes. Killing a demon was just the sort of therapy he needed right now.

Piper noticed the change and the glint and immediately tried to dissuade them. "What? No, wait. You can't go off like that," she pleaded, making this all up as she went along. "You're hurt, you're angry. I get that, because after Prue died I did the same thing. But please think about it, yeah? I put so many people – and myself – in danger because of what I did…" The one thing she was sure of was that, as a mother, it was her job to protect her child. And that meant not letting Chris run off to fight evil without a proper plan.

Chris was suddenly caught up in a struggle inside himself. His Mom was right and he knew it. Maybe this was one of her famed times where she was saying something to make everything better, but slowly one side of the argument won a landslide victory, and he tried to explain to her.

"I've got to find Bridget, ok? I've got to. We… Bridget and I…"

"History. A whole lot of history," Ben supplied shortly, suddenly impatient. His fingers were tingling.

"Exactly. So just understand. Can't you understand?" He asked her, pleading with her to understand, to get why he had to do this. He wasn't sure she did, and he was desperate to make her understand, he just didn't know how…

"We get it, sweetie," Phoebe said, wobbly standing up. Chris turned to her. "We know how you feel, and I'm not just saying that. We really do. But if you give us old ladies a moment to catch up, we'll blast him to pieces courtesy of the Charmed Ones, okay?"

"Hey, watch who you're calling old!" Paige called. She was in the kitchen, for some reason, rummaging through some of the drawers.

Chris smiled and Paige and then spoke to the middle sister. "Phoebe… Thanks. But I think we got this one, okay?" As he finished speaking orbing lights surrounded himself and Ben.

"Wait!" Piper cried, and Leo waved a hand, stopping the orb.

"Leo!" Chris yelled, raising a hand to blast his father into the foyer, preferably as far away from him as he could manage. Leo hit the table in the middle of the hall, knocking the vase to the floor.

"Stop it! Now!" Piper commanded. "Stop this fighting before someone gets hurt!" Piper went to step forwards but Ben held out his arm, catching her in the chest and stopping her.

"Don't," he instructed her simply.

"He's hurting him!" Piper shouted, trying to cram some reason through the young witch's skull. She failed miserably in her aim.

Ben shrugged, "It's something Chris has got to do." Another shattering noise from the foyer and Piper smacked Ben's shoulder in frustration, but he wouldn't budge. She looked down at her sister, who was gently rubbing her temples and muttering to herself. Phoebe was a total mess, there was no help there. And Paige… Paige was still rummaging, clinking glass and metal together in drawers. What she was looking for was a mystery. By the sounds of it she was turning into as big a basket case as Phoebe.

This time splintering wood made even Ben look round. Chris had walked into the entryway and had thrown Leo into the banisters, smashing them into splinters of wood. Leo fell back down to the floor as Chris's sneer became much more pronounced and he lifted the Elder towards the ceiling with a violent motion of his arm.

A loud thud announced Leo hitting a wall. Piper thought she heard the wind being driven out of him. A picture fell from its nail in the dining room and shattered as the partition shook with each impact. Piper hit Ben's arm with her fist, but he didn't even flinch. This was hopeless…

"Don't you get it? Chris has got to do this. For his sanity as much as everyone else's." Ben tried to explain to Piper again, but he still wasn't sure she got it totally.

"Damn it, Ben!" Piper yelled, angry for him getting in the way and not allowing her to stop Chris half-killing Leo. How could he be so calm? She hit his arm yet again, but got no reaction. Perhaps she wasn't hitting him hard enough…

Her assaults slowed as she suddenly thought clearly enough to see maybe why it was that Ben was doing it. Helping Chris get away with what he was doing, that is. Not only was he angry at Leo Chris was too, and Ben might be the only one of them there apart from Chris knowing exactly how many father-son issues that the pair of them had to work through. Well, the issues that Chris had to work through with Leo, seeing as Leo hadn't had many – or, better put, none - father-son moments with Chris yet.

He and only he could even begin to comprehend how much Chris was hurting over everything that had been done or said to him by Leo. The pain he was feeling over Nixa and the hatred towards Leo was dwarfed by the need for Chris to let out pent up aggression he had against his father. She thought she might be beginning to understand, but that did not mean she had to support it. Or did she? Did she have to stick up for Chris's cause and not Leo's? Her head span as she quickly tried to work out where her loyalties led, and then where they should lie.

With every impact of Leo's body Piper wondered if it was helping dissipate the anger that was fuelling her son's power-kick, and then she always felt guilty. What he was doing was unjustifiable, especially to his own flesh and blood. A nagging voice asked her if she was sure that Leo didn't deserve everything that he was getting. The question didn't leave her, and that was something that made her worry even more.

But there was the sound of splintering glass and a cloud of gas billowed up from the floor with a loud 'whumph', engulfing Ben. The brunette witch immediately crumpled to the floor, and Piper quickly stepped backwards from the rush of fumes.

Another vial was tossed in Chris's direction but by sheer, dumb luck it didn't break. That is, it didn't break until Chris trod on it, crunching the glass beneath the sole of his sneaker. The glass emitted the same rush as the first had done, and soon Chris hit the deck just as quickly as his friend had done.

Piper looked to the kitchen and when the potion had finally cleared it revealed a very guilty-looking Paige standing in the doorway, gnawing on her bottom lip.

"They're gonna be pissed when they wake up," Phoebe warned, looking down at her nephew and his friend who had just been orbed onto the couches.

"Phoebe! Little ears!" Piper scolded, pressing Wyatt's head to her chest and covering up his free ear. He was awake and slightly fussy; it seemed the explosion had shaken him up. Piper was pacing the room with him, shushing him, hoping to get him back to sleep.

From behind his blue triquetera blanket and his thumb he kept casting dubious looks at Ben. "It's ok, Honey…" Piper shushed, bouncing him gently and removing her hand.

"Yeah, I know they're gonna be…" Paige looked at Piper, rolling her eyes, "Annoyed. It just seemed like a good idea…"

"Sleeping potions cause hangover-like symptoms. They really will be incredibly irritable." There was an odd note in Leo's voice that sounded to Paige like he hoped they ended up with some of the worst side-effects going but was much too much of a pacifist to voice it.

"I just thought it would stop them hurting themselves. And us… I'm sorry… I just knew Piper had some potions in the kitchen and, well… From experience people who are grieving don't always have the best judgement. And they seemed to be grieving on a huge scale… Kinda not good for killing demons…"

"Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe now you can go after their friend unhindered," Leo said, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe.

"Without them?" Paige asked, blinking.

"Yeah, why not?"

"Why not? Because we don't know her, and they're unconscious… And…"

Piper shifted Wyatt from one hip to the other. "Look, when you were all gone Nixa was telling me about them. Well, kind of inadvertently but anyway… She was telling me that they used to hunt demons as teenagers…" She trailed off, untangling her necklace from Wyatt's hand. "Which, by the way, gives me the upper hand if Chris ever tries to sneak out… But a demon has taken their best friend, and is using her to make the new Source. Come on, we've got to help out."

"Been there, done that," Phoebe said dryly, looking down at the two sleeping guys.

"Well Leo's right… If they're that close to each other then they're gonna be pi-" Paige caught Piper's scowl and cleared her throat, "They're gonna be annoyed that we don't get her."

Leo took Wyatt off of Piper, as if the decision had already been made. It was clear what he wanted, even if he didn't say it. Paige wondered when her kind-of brother-in-law became so manipulative. Maybe those Elders weren't having a positive affect on him. "Hey, Buddy! Mommy's gotta go out for a while, kill some bad guys, yeah?"

"Leo! Not the k-word!"

Now she knew that her sweet, blonde son became the ruler of the world, not just all evil, paranoia had set in. Not once did she allow anyone to mention anything to do with killing of any kind, or even the sword, in front of him. If there was something she could do to stop him becoming evil then she would do it. God help her, she would.

"What? Oh, Piper, come on…" Leo caught her look and quickly stopped protesting. "Mommy's gotta go out. You're gonna spend some time with Daddy, yeah?" Wyatt offered Leo his thumb. Leo chuckled. "No, that's yours, little man. You keep it."

"Aw… I'm betting the scene down there won't be so cute." Paige orbed potions into her hands. "Right, here we go, step right up, people, one at a time, don't push."

"If your temp jobs don't work out you could go work at a fairground," Phoebe joked, taking a potion.

"What? And waste my talents selling defective rubbish to children?" She flicked her hair behind her shoulder. "Never."

"Come on, you," Piper said, rolling her eyes and laughing. "Down there, please." And they orbed away.

"It's about bloody time, Chri- Oh, hey…" Bridget blinked, standing up and the Charmed Ones separated, clutching potion vials and going into battle positions. "Um…" Bridget stepped aside and revealed the dead demon on the floor, turning to the side to reveal it fully. "Oops… Sorry."

"Oh." Piper lowered her potion, slightly sheepish. "Well okay…"

"You killed him? There's not even a tiny bit left for us?" Paige asked, disgruntled and cramming her vial into her pocket.

"No, sorry… He got on my nerves. Where's Chris? Is he ok?"

"Uh… He's fine." Phoebe said, "He just couldn't make it."

"Oh, I'll give him 'couldn't make it'," Bridget said darkly, her eyes narrowing. After all of this, he couldn't even be bothered to orb his ass down her and come and get her?

Piper was looking curiously at Bridget's sideways on, ignoring the conversation and noticing the size of her stomach. "Honey…" She started, not quite sure what to say. "Honey are you… if you don't mind me asking, pregnant, maybe?"

Bridget huffed, "Just slightly, only around three months." She tried smoothing her top down over her abdomen, sighing as she failed to conceal it. "I don't think these are maternity clothes…" She said more to herself than the witches, looking down to where she could see her belly coming slightly out of the top.

"Oh…" Guilt suddenly hit Piper. They'd now lost an innocent and let Bridget become infused with the new Source. The Charmed Ones were really doing their job right today, weren't they? "We got here too late… We're so sorry… We tried…" Piper fumbled for the right words, but what could anyone say in that situation?

"Well there's not much you can do now…" Bridget said, looking up and giving Piper a rueful half-smile. What was done was done; she'd just have to trust in magic to undo it.

Piper was completely unused to Bridget, her ways and her attitude, so she wasn't really sure if what she was coming even close to the right thing to say. With most people you could tell by the way they responded to what you were telling them, but Bridget… She had her own unique way that was confusing Piper. Hell, it confused most of her friends and they'd known her for so much longer than Piper.

Paige was absently kicking away rubble from the smashed altar, sneezing as the dust attacked her nostrils and throat. A small cascade of rocks showered her shoe in dust and when it subsided the corner of a book was sticking out. Frowning she tugged at it.

"We can reverse it, it will be ok…" Piper soothed.

"Can I just go and see Chris? Please?" Bridget said, sounding completely worn out. She was bone tired. She could barely remember the last time she had slept and everything today seemed to be draining her.

"Guys?" They turned to see Paige blowing the dust off of the cover of the book she had found. "I think this might be his grimoire or something…" She flipped it over, looking at the spine.

"Is it useful?" Piper asked, rubbing Bridget's hand with her thumb, a small gesture but it was really all she had to give.

"Could be," Paige said, flipping open the cover, "Hm… This is odd. It's not even protecting itself from me…" As she said this she yelped, dropping the heavy tome to the floor with a thud. Tears pricked her eyes as her hands swelled and grew large, painful welts before her eyes.

"Paige! Are you ok, sweetie?" Phoebe said, shrugging off her jacket and picking up the grimoire with it before taking her sister's arm.

Paige sniffed, "I spoke to soon, I guess. Leo can heal me, right?" The pain continued to grow and her hands blistered even more. They were now too stiff to move her fingers.

"Of course he can, Honey… Come on; let's get everyone home, alright?" Paige nodded, reaching out for Piper and Bridget before orbing them all back to the Manor.

When Leo saw the state of Paige's hands he immediately put Wyatt down into his playpen and began to heal her. Wyatt reached up for someone, anyone, but no one came to pick him up. He sat down heavily. Slowly the wounds smoothed and faded and Leo stepped back.

"Thanks, Leo," Paige said gratefully, sniffing.

"Chris!" Bridget yelled suddenly, seeing the half-witch lying on the couch. She had made the others in the room jump, and Wyatt was making noises of discontent from his playpen. Bridget knelt down next to him, turning her neck to look back at the rest of the family and taking his hand. "What happened?" Her eyes were looking too panicked for Piper's liking, as if she was expecting the worst. Piper then realized that between the blood staining his hands, face and clothes and the way his face was still pulled into a frown even in sleep, she would have thought the worst, too.

"Uh… An accident with a sleeping potion," Phoebe said, looking sideways at Paige, who studied the floor. "They'll be okay; they've just got to sleep it off."

"Oh, is that it?" Bridget asked, standing up using the couch and automatically pulling her top down. The four other adults in the room blinked, surprised.

What they didn't know was that as long as she had known the two sleeping witches, they had been knocking themselves out, changing their colour and shape, and burning themselves making potions. It wasn't really a big deal any more; you could hardly make it a drama when it happened once a week. But with that much blood involved, she had leaned toward the far side of panic. "I thought he was dying again…" She laughed in her own relief and then paused, her eyes widening. "You didn't hear that."

"Hear what?"

Bridget smiled gratefully, sitting down on part of the couch that Chris didn't currently occupy and picking her nails, hating the silence but not knowing how to break it. She silently willed someone to speak.

"Bridget, we don't have many places left for you to sleep…"

Relief washed over her, as well as gratitude towards Piper. She'd just made the situation less awkward.

"I mean there's the couch in the attic but it won't be very comfortable… It's been blasted too many times…" Piper apologized. "You'll get springs poking in you."

Right now, anywhere Bridget could lay her head and sleep was fine with her. Her eyes were heavy and exhaustion was making her ears ring. "That's ok, I've slept on worse."

That was true; she'd once slept in a storm drain and had been woken up in the middle of the night by a rat crawling on her face. Suddenly she had been wide awake and ready to get up.

"Really?"

"I promise," Bridget assured Piper and the rest of them. Compared to the storm drain, the Halliwell couch was a feather bed.

"Well, if you're sure…" Piper said, sounding slightly doubtful. "Phoebe will find you some blankets and stuff… And tomorrow we'll work on that baby, ok?" What a horrible choice of words. Piper looked to see if Bridget had been offended, but she just gave a tired smile. Piper wasn't sure if everything she was saying was computing anymore in the Hunter's mind. She was beginning to enter that drowsy stage herself, the stage where it felt like someone had poured treacle into her ear and it was slowing down everything going on in her brain to a hard struggle, barely a crawl. She could sympathize totally with Bridget right at this moment, and the Hunter looked even more tired than she felt.

"Thanks, Mrs. Halliwell."

"It's Piper, sweetie."

"Thanks Piper," Bridget mumbled sleepily, suddenly ready to fall asleep right now.

"Ok, come with me and I'll get you something to sleep under." Phoebe steered Bridget quickly into the foyer and up the stairs, before she could really fall asleep where she stood. Relief showed on her face that she hadn't asked about Nixa. That was not going to be a pleasant conversation, and the fact that everyone was dead beat would not help matters. No. Tomorrow was another day, thank God. As long as this one didn't go on forever. If it did, Phoebe wasn't sure she could handle it. Her head still pounded through the aspirin she had taken to dull the headache that empathy had given her.

When they had climbed out of sight Leo asked, "What are you going to tell her?" He had read Phoebe's expression, and to be honest, they had all been just as relieved as she was that Bridget hadn't asked about Nixa. That was something they would all prefer to be done in the morning.

"We'll have to think of something…" Piper said, a weight settling in her chest. She sighed rubbed her eyes, which were glassy with tiredness. "It'll be okay. We'll do it somehow. Break it gently, yeah?"

She picked up Wyatt from his playpen and Paige picked up the grimoire wrapped in the jacket, examining the cover. She took it out of the lounge and into the foyer, frowning as she carried it up the stairs and tucking it under her arm. She disappeared into her room, and her door closing echoed down the stairs.

"Guess she was too engrossed to say goodnight…"

"Night, Piper," Leo said.

"Good night, Leo." She headed for the light switch in the foyer.

"Uh… Piper?"

She turned without snapping off the light. "What?"

He kissed her softly on the cheek before orbing away without waiting for her reaction. Piper stared at the place the orbs had occupied for a second or two before flicking off the light and plunging the Manor into darkness.

Whew! And there we have it. Chapter for LOS is coming soon as well, stay with me here, people!

Twisted Flame

Nemesis' Arrow: - Congratulations on being the first of many to say that. Thanks for the review.

Dark Fires: - I also finally updated the sequel. Heh. Anyways thanks for your review.

Crimson Amber: - Heh… About that fast update…

AK8: - Thanks, I hope you're happy.

Claddagh Ring: - Ah, I have two sets of grandparents like that. One set just got a cell phone. Now THAT'S hilarious. They panic if it rings. Thanks for your review, you're too kind. Hoping you liked this chapter even more!

Queen Isa: - Lol, thanks.

Faith: - You're going to have to just wait and see… =P Lol, thanks for your review, and your comments.

Aldrea7: - I don't really do fast updates, do I? Heh, no. Thanks for your review.

Stony Angel: - Nixa? Yes, she has gone. :: sniff :: Gone to where there is damn elevator music played by harps and lots of clouds… I'm gonna shut up now, thanks for reviewing.

princesscatie21: - I thought you might say something like that. Heh. Thanks for reviewing.

Charmed Amber: - Meh, well I don't like Leo. I used to, but now he's evil all the time. Sure it's me making him evil but that's beside the point… Holidays are fun, yes. Ok, see you soon.

Dominique1: - Ah, the law? I think I might need to be in jail right now. I won't pass go, and I won't collect £200. Thanks for reviewing, by the way, you're… wacky! Lol, ahem. Anyways…

cherry7up56: - Heh, that's fine, because I'm always late on updating. Lol.