Chapter

Stripped

"Eve are you sure you want to do this?"

Eve cast her eyes across the room, at her sister, so recently found, so worried. She looked at her, standing beside her husband, her hands laced across her pregnant belly and her face tight with worry. Eve felt a rush of love for her sister and smiled.

"Do I not want to do this, do I not want to give up being a soulless demon, who had to kill her own mother to survive, who kept pretending to love in order to kill and never got to actually feel it! Do I not want to do the spell that means I get to see you guys getting married and lets me meet my nieces, that lets me have a family again. K' I am absolutely sure! Plus I already gave the flesh for the potion. Did you bring Dad's spell?"

"You're using a spell of your fathers?" Wyatt asked, surprised.

"The spell he used to strip my demon half." Kara explained "We're going to say the spell first and then she's going to take the potion, it's just a fail safe really."

"A fail safe for her and a sentimental thing for me" Eve said gently "If I hear my sister say my fathers spell, then my family really has rescued me. Finally."

Kara raised an eyebrow at the faintly sarcastic comment and Eve flashed an enormous placating grin at her twin sister. Kara shook her head, and let out a laugh.

"Just get your ass in the circle, before I decide I can't put up with you for the rest of my life and I liked being an only child."

Eve grinned again and stepped into the circle of candles laid out on the floor of the attic of the Manor. She fidgeted quietly as the sisters lit the candles, and attempting to break the tension, she looked at the outfit she was standing in. It was a standard she demon type of outfit what there was of it was leather and it mostly looked like a crazy bondage swimsuit. Not for the first time, Eve found herself wondering, not for the first time why her soon-to-be-not kind wore these outfits so often, they were so tight and inflexible that they were nigh on useless for hand to hand combat.

"Hey girls, when this is done can we go shopping? I don't think this is the outfit for me to first go out into the world in, as a pretend human, plus I kinda don't have anything else."

Wyatt piped up again "I don't know, I don't think it looks too bad" Eve raised an eyebrow in a gesture identical to that of her sister. Wyatt had the good grace to back down. He raised his hands in a placating gesture. "OK, OK so I got it wrong..."

"Right," Piper broke in briskly, breaking up the flirting between her first born and the soon to be unempowered she demon, she could just about cope with one, good, half witch that used to have a demon half entering the family, one half demon, with no power that used to be a fully fledged, evil, half demon, who had tried to evil up her youngest son and then kidnapped her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, she could NOT handle.

Kara lowered her eyes to a piece of paper, yellowed with age and dust and covered with spidery handwriting.

"Evie, this is the spell he wrote for you, for us to use when we got you back, so I am honored to use it for what our father meant it for."

"Loved one lost,

Across space and time,

Returned to those who were always thine,

Made a demon, filled with hate,

For the prophecy to placate,

Back with loved ones, here with those who hold tight to your soul,

Say goodbye your powers, and become whole.

Eve smiled, her chin wobbling, "That was lovely K'. I just wish I could tell him to his face."

Paige spoke gently "Take the potion and maybe we'll make it so you can."

Eve uncorked the potion vial, squeezed her eyes shut like a child taking medicine and swigged the contents of the vial back in one swig, throwing her head back as if to ease it's sticky passage down her throat.

"Eugch!!" She exclaimed, her nose wrinkling in a look of complete disgust. "OK I just drank something with chunks of my own body in it and nothing is...ARRRRGGHH!!!"

She bend over as if she had been punched in the stomach, her face a mask of pain and collapsed on her knees to the floor, she bent over until she was on all fours, her hands flat on the floor. The candles flicked and went out as if they had all been snuffed out at one by one great hand. Eve retched, her back straining with the force of the convulsion and black cloud fled from her mouth and nose, rising up, until it drifted apart and dissipated into the air.

"Kara, did it...?"

Eve fell forward with such force, she busted her nose on the attic floorboards and passed out.