Family Meeting

"Did you find anything?" Phoebe asked over her shoulder as she poured steaming hot coffee into three teacups.

Paige shook her head in defeat as she flipped through the pages of the Book of Shadows for the tenth time. Piper sat opposite her youngest sister silently staring at her hands while Phoebe tried desperately to keep her cool for the sake of her siblings.

"There is nothing in here about these masked whatever they are things," Paige muttered as she went back to the first page.

"Obviously," Piper told her. "We've put most of those entries in that book and I know we've never run into them before."

"What about the boys?" Phoebe asked Piper. "Do they have any clue what they could be?"

"If they knew do you think we'd all be sitting here at 3 o'clock in the morning trying to figure it out?" Piper spat.

"Hey," Phoebe said. "I'm just batting around some ideas. I'm just as scared as you two are. Just because he wasn't able to take Patty doesn't mean that he won't come back!"

The sisters all looked in different directions. Tensions were high in the Haliwell Manor, and they knew not to step on each others toes. Decades ago, they worked together as a team fighting with one another for a common goal. They knew that if they lost the battle they would lose each other, and nothing scared them more until now. However, much more was at stake than simply losing another sister.

"I still don't understand why they went for our grandchildren and your daughter," Paige said doubtfully.

"Yeah…" Phoebe said quietly. She hadn't left Patty's side since the incident on the beach. She immediately took her daughter and grandchildren to the manor, only to meet with a hysterical Piper in the driveway. Phoebe was horrified to find out that Jodi had been taken, thankful that Patty hadn't, and unwilling to let Patty know what she had seen in her premonition.

"Are Patty and the kids sleeping?" Phoebe asked.

"I sure hope so," Piper answered. "Why?"

"Well," Phoebe said as she sat down. "There was more to my little run in with that thing that I told you guys earlier."

"What?" Paige asked sitting up.

Phoebe played with her cuticles. She didn't want to tell them what she had seen, but it seemed imperative that she did. Even with the entire family working together to get the children back and defeat this new evil, time was certainly against them. It made her sick to her stomach to think about what she had seen, and the thought of saying it out loud disgusted her.

"When I grabbed him, I had a premonition." She said quietly.

"Of what?" Piper asked.

"I saw Jodi locked in a little cell. Patty was on a cot behind her, and she had just given birth to the baby. When Patty tried to save herself and the children, they vaporized her."

The silence in the room was deafening. Piper and Paige could only imagine the horror that was pulsing through Phoebes being all day as the image of her daughter being killed ran through her mind. To top it all off, Patty was due at the end of that month, and they knew that they only had a few weeks to save her.

"Oh my God," Piper said reaching out for her sisters hand.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Paige asked feeling guilty for not having more sympathy for Patty's experience.

"I didn't want to scare Patty any more than necessary. She was with us all day, and besides the Alexis and Dakota were in and out all evening, and they didn't need to hear that their Mommy might get killed in a couple weeks."

"She's not going to be killed Phoebe!" Piper said firmly. "You've always had premonitions so that we can stop it before it happens. We'll stop them, we'll save your daughter and all of our grandchildren."

"I wish Leo were here," Paige blurted. "He always knew what to do. He always found the answers for us."

"I do too," a mans voice said from behind them.

"Wyatt!" Piper exclaimed jumping up. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to hear about Aunt Phoebe's premonition." He told his mother as he leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"You look exhausted," Phoebe told him. She looked her nephew over. He had grown into a good man, with strong morals and a pure soul. He ran his fingers through his blond hair and looked with a silent sigh in his blue eyes.

"Chris and I have been orbing all over the planet and all through the underworld looking for leads. But it's not me that you have to worry about. Prue has been casting every spell that she can find in the books at Magic School since Jodi was taken. She's like a crazy woman."

"What about Elizabeth and the boys?" Paige asked.

"Elizabeth is fine, all things considered." Wyatt told her. "They boys were sleeping last time I checked in on everyone."

"Did you find anything out?" Piper asked hopefully.

"There's talk in the underworld about a new cult that's rising, but none of the demons are too worried about it. They're all saying that they're not powerful enough to do much. It's a long shot, but Chris and I were thinking that might be why they're taking magical kids."

"Like, to steal their powers?" Paige asked. "That seems so cliché don't you think?"

"I just don't know," Wyatt replied with resignation in his voice. "But it's the best that we can come up with."

"We've got to do better than that," Phoebe said. "We have to save my daughter!"

"We will, Sweetie." Paige said patting her hand. "We will."

"Grammy?" a sweet little voice said from the other room. "Grammy!"

"Alexis?" Phoebe called as she went into the foyer. "Honey, why are you out of bed? It's late, you should be asleep."

"I had a bad dream Grammy, and I want to sleep with Mommy."

"Okay, baby. Mommy is in the room right next to the one that you were sleeping in. Just go crawl into bed with her."

"No," Alexis told her. "Mommy isn't in there."

"Well," Phoebe said, trying to control her panic. "Did you check the bathroom?"

"She's not up here, Grammy." Alexis said, her green eyes filling with tears. "The man took her."