CHAPTER TWENTY

Paige choked on her lasagna, and I had to pat her on the back. She was doing such a bang-up job making our suspicions obvious. I downed the rest of my wine and poured another glass.

"Our families are actually related, you know," Rori told us when Paige was calm, and Piper grinned from ear-to-ear to have her theory confirmed. "Mom showed me our family tree. We have the same great-great-great grandmother, and our great grandmothers, who would've been cousins, actually owned a speakeasy together back in the 20's--right here, in fact. Though our grandparents had a falling out and it must have been a helluva fight. My grandma wrote on our tree not to associate with any of those cousins--nothing but . . . Well, it wasn't nice. But you guys seem okay to me."

"And you've kept the name all these years?" I asked, even as I was snickering at the idea of Grams having a fight with her second-cousins. Doing some quick figuring, I realized that Mom and Rori's mother would be third-cousins, making us fourth-cousins. Either that or this demon had really done her homework!

"Oh, yeah. Bowen's a big deal. I mean, girl power all the way, right?"

It was hard not to smile at her enthusiasm, I could give her that. Of course, the wine seemed to be loosening me up anyway.

"Wow, I can not believe you guys actually get to hang out with your Whitelighter," Rori said. "I mean, not that I would want to hang out with ours. He's all bald and fat and gross."

"Well, there's nothing gross about our Chris," I laughed, and got glares from both him and Paige. Why was I saying this stuff?

"Oh, Chris isn't around all that much," Piper said cheerfully. "He's usually out trying to find demons for us to vanquish. He's here from the future, although we're not quite sure why."

Chris put his head in his hand at Piper's divulgence. I knew how much he didn't want just anyone to find out about him--and if she was truly a demon, she would be able to report to the other demons!.

"From the future?" Rori sounded excited. "Oh, that's just so cool! What's it like? Do you know me there? Am I famous?"

Chris seemed to be trying very hard not to tick off the questions on his fingers; he must have known they'd be coming as soon as Piper slipped up. I wasn't all that focused on his annoyance, though.

"Chris won't say anything about the future to any of us," I told her, and suddenly felt really turned on by the mystery. "Believe me, I've tried just about everything to get something from him." And, oh, my God, nephew mine, you will not believe what I did then. Beneath the table, I slipped my foot out of my shoe and slid it up the side of Chris's leg. He literally jumped in his chair, which startled Rori into spilling her water.

While he tried to help mop up the mess from the table, I stared feeling really, really nauseated at what I had just done. I reached for my wine to down some more for my nerves, then thought better of it. I figured it might be a good idea to stay away from that particular vintage since it had to be some strong stuff to make me act like that.

"Here, let me pour you some more." Piper picked up the water pitcher.

"No," Paige stopped her. "I think I see something floating in there. I should just run some more." She took the pitcher from her, but I took it from Paige.

"I'll do it," I said, because, boy, I needed to get away from that table.

My thinking seemed to clear up a bit once I was in the kitchen. I emptied the pitcher, ran some more water over the ice, and added the potion to test Rori, which, after all, was supposed to be the whole point of this dinner fiasco. I took a couple of deep breaths before I turned back to the dining room. Standing in my way was the very last person I wanted to see.