Author's Notes: This chapter is just one of many more to come. Mwahaha. I thought about making the previous three chapters their own short story, but then I changed my mind and decided that it would be a background of the rest. And it worked well! So be sure to keep on reading ;-D And don't forget to review! Ah, yes, I don't own them btw. Alas.

"I know it's around here somewhere…it'sgot to be. Can't you feel its presence?"

But of course they couldn't. The demons—or rather, as decoys for possible attacks—that she had gathered to follow her for protection to the West Andes were nothing less than low-level demons, because nobody else had been willing to follow her on her mission. But she knew that what she was after was around here. It had to be. Every piece of history that she had been able to get her hands on, every demon that even knew remotely about it, they all had little bits and pieces that had fit together in a way that led her to where she was currently standing.

The demon Lilandra looked over the three men. None of them seemed particularly pleased to be there, but none of them said anything against it. She had the power to destroy them all if she wanted to. It was the only thing that was keeping them there—fear—of that she was sure. It was the universal power.

Still, that didn't matter. What mattered now was finding the Grimoire.

"You," Lilandra said, pointing to the side, "look over there. And you two," she pointed to one of the other demons, "go look over there in that large icicle. I'm feeling something coming from there."

But the truth was, she wasn't. The place she was really feeling an emanation of power from—the nearby mound of snow—that was for her to explore. She didn't want any of the other demons happening upon the Grimoire. She couldn't trust them to give it to her if they found it. They were demons, after all.

She planned on killing them after she found it, anyways…

With the other three properly distracted, Lilandra stepped towards the mound of snow and knelt down to brush some of it away. Beneath was a very thick sheen of glass-like ice, and buried deep inside was something dark brown and square-shaped. It could be only one thing. Something akin to pleasure welled up inside of her. With the Grimoire in her possession, there would be no limit to what she would be able to do. It had been a long journey to get here, but in the end, it was all going to pay off.

Lilandra turned over her palm and formed a fireball in it. She pressed it against the frozen ice, and it instantly began to melt, withering away from her touch. She could feel the anticipation and anxiousness building inside of her—she was so close…so close to having unlimited power at her disposal. She pressed on with the fireball, and once enough ice had melted away she extinguished the fire in the palm of her hand and used it to reach inside the hollowed out compartment of ice. The instant her fingers came in contact with the surface of the Grimoire she felt its power course through her body. It was intoxicating, overwhelming, unlike anything she had ever felt before…and she couldn't wait to access more of it.

She was just beginning to pull it out of the crevice when she heard the frustrated grunt and complaints of one of the other demons.

"There's nothing here! This is like a wild goose chase. I don't think it's here at all."

Clutching the Grimoire to her chest Lilandra stood up quickly, turning on her heels to face the other three. With her free hand she sent a fireball straight at the demon who was standing alone. With an agonized cry he turned into a pile of dust.

Lilandra's lips curled into a smirk when the other two demons quickly turned around and looked at her. Before they were able to respond to their fellow demon being killed she threw two more fireballs, and watched as they, too, were lit aflame, turning into piles of ashes. Now she didn't have to worry about them getting in her way, or letting anyone know that she had successfully gathered the book.

With this, she could begin her regime.

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Wyatt ran his hand through his hair and looked at his sister. "So, Patty, Penny and Henry are gonna meet us, right? Here?"

Mel nodded. "Yeah. They should be there right around the time Chris gets back from dinner with Mom and Dad. Which should be…" She looked at the watch on her wrist, "…sometime real soon, actually. So we should probably get back."

"You know, it's good that she can afford to shut the club down for a night." Wyatt, who was standing behind the bar of P3, glanced around, taking in the sights. It was a little bit over-decorated in his opinion, or at least, what he figured Chris would like. Their younger brother had never been one for glitz and glam, but Mel had insisted on making it more than just a few balloons and a cake. It would work. Hopefully.

"Yeah, it is." Mel tapped her hands against the countertop and grinned. "So you'll go get Chris, bring him back here, and we'll have the party?"

Wyatt nodded. "Yup. Hopefully we can do it demon free, too. Although any demon would have to be seriously stupid to try and attack us when there's six of us here. Especially with the three of us."

"Oh!" Mel exclaimed suddenly. She started shaking her hands. "It's seven thirty. They're gonna be home any second. Hurry, orb back!"

Doing as his little sister asked, Wyatt orbed back to the manor, into the kitchen. He arrived right around the time that the front door was opened, and he heard the familiar voices of his mom, dad and brother.

"…Yeah, thanks again for dinner, guys. It was really nice."

"I'm still a little offended that you didn't want to eat at my restaurant. It's like choosing McDonalds over…well, anything."

When Wyatt stepped into the dining room he heard his father say, "That's not really the best comparison, Piper…"

All three of them laughed, at which point the eldest Halliwell son clapped his hands together and moved toward his brother to clasp his shoulder. "Have a good dinner?"

"Yeah, yeah…Mom and Dad took me to that new Italian pasta place downtown." Chris reached up and scratched at his neck. "I feel like I'm gonna burst. It was one of those all you can eat pasta meal things."

"Chris ate more than the average person does," Leo chimed in with an amused grin on his face.

"Dad!" Chris looked somewhat embarrassed, and a little taken aback. He turned to look at his brother.

"Eh, don't worry about it, Chris." Wyatt laughed. "You know what a pig I can be sometimes. With Mom's cooking, it's hard not to be. But, that's not what I came to talk to you about. Mel and I haven't had a chance to give you your birthday gifts yet, so you gotta come with me. All right?"

Chris blinked, eyebrows rising. "Eh? Is she here?"

"She's, uh…she's in the kitchen." Wyatt nodded at that, and he started to lead his brother toward the kitchen from the sitting room and dining room. Over his shoulder he gave his parents a knowing grin, while the two of them simply smiled and headed into the living room.

Once in the kitchen, Chris turned to Wyatt and gave him a strange look. "Mel isn't in here. Wyatt, what—"

Before Chris could speak any further, his elder brother clasped his shoulder again and orbed them both to P3. When they rematerialized the younger one broke away quickly, and his hands were out, his stance defensive.

"What—"

He stopped when he realized that it wasn't anything more than his brother just orbing him somewhere. His defenses went up naturally in situations like that, especially where a little distrust was thrown in. From the look of it, though, he and Wyatt weren't the only ones there. It didn't take him but a moment to realize 'there' was their mother's club, and that Mel, Patty, Penny and Henry were all there, too. If they wanted to surprise him, they had done a damn good job of it.

"Happy birthday!" his siblings and cousins said to him.

"Patty, Penny, Henry…hey, guys." Chris grinned. "Are Aunt Phoebe, Uncle Coop, Aunt Paige and Uncle Henry gonna pop out and wish me happy birthday, too?"

"Mom's with dad at Vicky's dance recital," Patty said.

"And my parents are enjoying a night out while dad's parents watch the twins." Henry leaned against the bar. "Wy and Mel here said they wanted to throw a party for your birthday a while ago, so we all got in on it. We couldn't just let you three celebrate it on your own. Not real fun."

"If you're gonna try and get any booze…" Wyatt began, eying his cousin.

"I'm not, I'm not," Henry said, and he laughed. "Jeez, Wyatt. I'm only sixteen. You know me better than that."

They all shared a laugh then. Chris hadn't seen his cousins—at least Patty and Penny—for a while. He didn't go over to his Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Coop's house as often as Mel did, instead opting to go to his Aunt Paige and Uncle Henry's like Wyatt did. And in a way, part of him wondered if that didn't have to do with the fact that they were all whitelighter hybrids, whereas Mel, Patty, Penny and Vicky—his other cousin from his Aunt Phoebe—were

all simply witches.

Whatever the case was, this wasn't the time to think about that. It was a nice family gathering, a non-magical family gathering, and that was something that didn't happen all that often, especially without all of their parents around. They could be at ease, have fun and just hang out.

Chris would have to thank them for it again later.

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"To banish a witch…to bend someone's will…oh, and there's a potion for that…and a potion to create duplicates…hmm…"

Lilandra read aloud quietly to herself as she let her fingers drift over the wrinkled, aged parchment of the Grimoire. It was still hard for her to believe that she had been able to find it; in some ways, it felt almost as if it weren't true, and that she were simply dreaming it. Given the number of demons in the underworld who were looking for it, it was entirely possible that they had trapped her in some kind of dream world where everything was going her way.

But on some level, she knew she wasn't dreaming it. The sheer energy and power that emanated from the book was amazing. She felt ten times—even a hundred times—more powerful than she had been before. With this book's power, the opportunities were boundless, and she wasn't really sure where to start.

The Source had been vanquished, and was gone forever. Lilandra herself held no blood nor magic relation to him, but with that out of the way, perhaps maybe she would be able to coronate herself the new queen of the underworld. That was just one of many enticing possibilities. Her current favorite, however, resurfaced in her mind as she turned the page and came across the intricately written words "To Release Inhibitions". She had remembered reading something years ago about the Charmed Ones—the damned do-gooders—and how the spell had been used on them, and the disastrous effect that it had had. With the progeny of the eldest one being all grown up and doing the fighting, there would clearly be some benefits in using it.

Lilandra had gone up against the reconstituted Charmed Ones before, and had only managed to survive thanks to a number of demons that she had persuaded into coming along with her. With this book, she could then use the Inhibition Spell in combination with the one that would bend someone's will in order to kidnap the witch—the one that couldn't orb away like her brothers—and with her, turn the Power of Three sour and to the dark side. There had been those who had tried to do the same before and had failed. But there was one important thing that they didn't have: the Grimoire. With the knowledge inside of it, she was on the same level as the Power of Three and the Book of Shadows.

Things were going to work out perfectly. Almost far too perfectly, she thought. She would need to take it slow so as to not rush in and destroy a golden opportunity like the one she had. Because if she did, there was no telling what would happen if she failed.

She brushed some of her frizzy, thick black hair behind her pale ears, long fingers and black polished fingernails of her free hand trailing down the page of the Grimoire. When would be the best time to perform the spell?

She would have to find them, first…

Lilandra stood up and set the book on her old and tattered wooden table, right next to her mortar and pestle. Reaching up into a little crevice in the wall, she pulled down a large clay bowl and set it on the table beside the book. After collecting a few ingredients from her shelves and stores she tossed a few sprig leaves into her mortar and pestle, mixing it with some coca. The result was a somewhat thick goo that she then scraped into the bowl. A sprinkle of grinded faerie dust later, and an opaque film began building from the combined ingredients. She poured in some water for reflective properties, all the while thinking of Wyatt, Chris and Melinda.

Before her eyes, the film began swirling around on the surface of the water, forming a scene. It took a moment before it was in focus, but soon she could see dark blue walls, many chairs and tables, and in the middle, an oval-shaped bar with lots of glasses hanging from the top of it. There were party balloons everywhere. Once the scene was set, she focused harder on those in question before six figures formed inside the setting. She recognized them all—there were children from Phoebe and Paige there as well. She had never attacked them personally, but she knew many demons who went up against them, only to be killed by the eldest, Patty. Her ability to deflect powers and project strong human emotions made her difficult to deal with. Plus, the middle one—Penny—had premonitions just like her mother, which made attacking by surprise hard. And for Henry…that entire family, save for the mortal father, had the ability to orb away when in danger, which made any sort of non pre-emptive strike fail almost immediately.

The last thing to form in the scene was the sound. There was music playing, although it was low and not all that distracting. Lilandra lowered her head some.

"…Well, that'd explain why you were clutching the staircase like you were when I came back from the alley behind the movie theater. You could have just told me what was wrong. I would have helped you."

"Yeah, but you know with Chris—it's a pride thing."

"Shut up, Mel, it is not."

Soon listening to them become more of a chore than it should have been. Lilandra lifted her head, looking over the spell in the book. She had never actually cast a spell before, instead choosing to rely on her demonic abilities of flame throwing, fireball throwing and shimmering. This would prove to be an interesting.

Glancing between the scene in the bowl and back at the book, she read aloud, "Tucked away deep inside, that is where one's heartfelt wishes lie. From inhibition's shackles you are free, you will now do as you please."

Once she read from the book her eyes instantly darted back to the scene unfolding before her in the bowl. Nothing happened for a moment, but then suddenly, she noticed a very brief flicker on Piper's three children, one that must have signified the spell's success. In just a moment's time she could hear them talking in a slightly different manner than before.

This was going to be better than she expected.