Author's Notes: Just wanted to take this time to thank everyone in particular for reviewing the story and giving me such warm and friendly feedback!

charmed forever fan: I was thinking of doing a sequel after this one, but I wasn't really sure. This story has about 3 more chapters after this one before it finishes. :)

guardian music angel: Thank you! I usually update about once a day, so keep an eye out!

charmed4eva112: Mel will be okay! Well, as okay as one can be, really, with what happened to her...You'll see in this chapter, sort of :D

quillsandbolts: Your review was really awesome. Thanks for the kind words.

angeljanicemorgan4: I really appreciate the enthusiasm in your review! I love hearing that people really enjoyed my stories!

Melinda Wyatt Charmed: I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's always good to hear that one's stories aren't like the others on the site. Haha!

As always, don't own them. And since I have a lot of free time coming up (yay winter holidays!) I think I might do a fic continuation, although I don't know for sure. I was toying around with the idea of a power swapping story--Piper making her kids work together after not getting along after a while--so we'll see where that goes. This story was actually supposed to be a continuation of my first story, Parallelism, but I decided against it when the characters didn't work the same way when I was writing them...pesky things!

There were also a lot of italics in this chapter so there's half a chance I might have forgotten to change one or two over from the italic markers. If I did, I apologize, and just let me know so I can change it :D

Mel stumbled around in the dark. Her hands were out in front of her but she couldn't seem to find anything to grab onto. It was like she was walking around in a dark, endless void. Having never before been in the underworld, this was an overwhelmingly scary situation for her.

"WYATT! CHRIS!" she yelled, her voice feeling hoarse.

Suddenly, Mel yelped. Her foot had gotten caught on something in the dirt, and it caused her to stumble again, tripping over her feet. It wasn't long thereafter that her balance went out completely, and she fell to the ground with a pained "oomph".

Frustrated and scared, she muttered, "God, where are you guys?"

Nothing happened for a moment. Then, a blinding white-blue light lit up the space around her. Mel looked about just long enough to see that she had tripped over a rock, and that, at least in the distance, there were all sorts of rock formations and large stalagmites coming up from the ground. Shortly thereafter, she saw the familiar figures of her brothers, but once their white-blue light faded they were in the dark again.

The last thing Mel remembered feeling before she found herself lying on the floor of the manor was the throbbing feeling in her ankle. Soon she was being lifted up from the wooden floor and was being supported by both of her brothers while she stood.

"God, Mel, are you okay?" Wyatt asked, looking worried.

"Does it look like I'm okay?" she snapped, pulling back from her brothers' touches. Her hair was somewhat matted to her head from her sweat, and her wounds were still bleeding. She winced again.

"Here, let me heal it."

Mel stood in place while Wyatt stepped closer to her again. He stuck his hands out and, once they began to glow, he guided them over her skin, healing the cuts and scrapes that she had all over her body. When she glanced over her shoulder she noticed that Chris had disappeared.

"Where'd Chris go?" she asked.

"Probably to get mom and dad."

Sure enough, just a few moments later she heard hurried footsteps just above her, and soon her brother, mother and father were all moving down the stairs. Before Melinda had a chance to think, her mother was gripping her in a tight hug, and her father hugged the both of them. She felt squished, trapped…and unbelievably uncomfortable. Her body stiffened, but nobody seemed to notice.

When Piper and Leo pulled back, Piper said, "Mel, we were so worried…thank God you're okay."

"Yeah," Mel replied.

"She was in the underworld," Chris stated suddenly. "But we couldn't find the demon that got her."

The memory of what the demon had told her popped into Melinda's head. Without much thought to it she said, "I vanquished her."

Piper, Leo, Chris and Wyatt all looked somewhat surprised.

"You vanquished her?" Chris asked.

"Is that so hard to believe?"

Both Chris and Wyatt looked at Melinda then, which made her frown a little.

"Well?" she repeated.

"No," the brothers said together.

"Whatever the case," Piper interjected, reaching out to wrap an arm around Melinda's shoulders, "she's home. That's all that matters. She vanquished the demon, and we won't have to worry about it anymore."

"No, we won't," Melinda said in agreement. Reaching up, she ran a hand through her tangled hair, and she sighed. "Can we just…I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's—I'm tired."

"You've been through a lot," Leo said to his daughter, a small smile on his face. "You should get some sleep."

Chris began to say, "I'll stay up a little later to make sure everything—" but he paused. Piper was looking at him. "…Actually, never mind. I'll just grab something to drink and head to bed, too, I think. It's been a really long day…night. You know what I mean."

Mel didn't want to ask, nor did she want to know. All she knew was that she felt crowded, and still very uncomfortable with everyone around her. Giving her mom and dad a hug just to appease them, Mel thanked her brothers and then headed up the stairs toward her room. Once in there she shut and locked her door.

She shuddered.

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It had been about a week since Mel had been kidnapped, and in that time, things had pretty much gone back to normal. Although she had been acting somewhat strangely since she had come back, though none of her family members thought it to be anything of worry—it had been Mel's first time in a life-or-death situation, and it was bound to affect her in a profound way. They had all been there at one point or another.

Because of that, it was decided that no more demon chasing or fighting was going to happen for a while. Even though Wyatt and Chris could have easily gone off and done more of it, neither of them was particularly itching to.

…And Chris, after what had happened, was slightly more reluctant to just go out and attack demons now. Part of him wondered if the fact that they had tried to go out and get a number of demons with Mel had been the reason why they had been targeted with that spell. Not that it mattered much now; she had vanquished the one that had cast it on them. Why else would they have kidnapped her? He didn't really want to think about it in particular.

Instead he wanted to think about trying to get out there and be social again. It had been a while since he had talked to any of his friends, but usually every time he called them, they seemed to be out or busy. He couldn't blame them for not wanting to talk to him, though. The sheer number of times he had had to cancel on them because 'something had come up', or there was a 'family emergency'…it was a wonder he still had people to talk to and hang out with nowadays.

But today, Chris was determined to get out and just do something. He wasn't sure what yet, exactly, only knowing that he wanted it to be social, and that entailed getting onto campus and wandering around a bit, maybe getting some coffee at the café, or sitting in the student union, pretending to do schoolwork.

It was a hot day outside—surprisingly hot for a Friday May afternoon—and Chris had chosen to dress in pretty basic clothes: just some jeans, sneakers and a slate gray t-shirt. He headed down the stairs with his phone in hand, and was just about to head out the front door when he heard someone behind him giggling. He realized right away that it was Mel. He wasn't sure what she was doing home, since she should have still been in school.

Apparently, she didn't think that she was going to have company. She had come in through the back way in the kitchen, and was stepping into the dining room when Chris saw her. The worst part about it was the fact that she wasn't alone.

No, scratch that, he thought. The worst part was that he recognized the guy that she was with. And it made something inside him do a flip.

"Mel, what the hell are you doing home?" Chris blurted out, dropping his phone on the table beside the front door and heading through to the sitting room.

Mel, who had her arm wrapped around the waist of the guy in question, stopped in her tracks, looking caught off guard. "Chris? What're you doing home?"

"I asked you first. And why the hell is he with you?" Chris pointed at the guy. How in the world she had managed to meet one of the men in his Psychology class was beyond him. He didn't even want to ask. He was too busy staring at the nose ring and dyed hair that the other guy was sporting.

"Hey, do I know you?" he asked.

Chris restrained from making a face. "We've got a class together, I think."

"Chris, I had no idea," Mel said. There wasn't, however, any remorse apparent in her voice. It almost seemed like she sounded intrigued and even more amused by the fact that the two of them knew each other.

"You still didn't answer my question. What're you doing home so early?" He stared at his sister.

"None of your business," Mel shot back almost immediately. "In fact, I don't recall you being my keeper, so why do you care?"

"Because it's a school day," Chris said, mock sarcasm dripping off of his words. "You should be in class."

"Wow, didn't know I had to go every day."

"Yeah, that's kind of the idea." The elder Halliwell shook his head. "You go every day, you do your schoolwork, and then you come home and screw around later."

"Well, we're not all as uptight about things as you are, Chris."

Bristling a little, Chris folded his arms over his chest. "Ha. Ha."

For a moment, everything was silent. And then came, "She's just gonna have a little fun, man, what's the problem?"

"The problem, man, is that she should be in class right now. How did you two even meet, anyways? He's older than I am, Mel!"

"Why does it matter how we met, Chris?" Mel glared at her older brother. "Just because you can't get a date and are constantly prudish doesn't mean that I have to be! I've got a life! God! Get out there and live your own! Stop interfering with everyone else's!"

Mel's words had shocked Chris into silence. The only reason he stayed quiet was because she had made a really good point. And that hurt.

He watched as she and the other guy walked past him and out the front door. Not surprisingly, Melinda slammed it behind her. Chris continued to stare at it for a few seconds before he abruptly pounded his fist on the table that was behind the couch in the sitting room. His fist was throbbing afterward, but he didn't care. He was mad, and worst of all, his pride was wounded. There couldn't have been anything worse than hearing that you interfered with others' lives because you didn't have much of one to call your own.

"Damn it," he cursed under his breath.

So much for going out and being social, he thought. No, now Chris had another mission in mind. He was going to prove her wrong, even if she wasn't going to know about it yet.

And even if he had no idea how in the hell he was going to do it.

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Lilandra stared into the slightly foggy bowl, watching the scene between Chris and Melinda unfold. It wasn't long before she saw Chris heading out the door that had just been slammed. When nothing else seemed to happen, she waved her hand over the bowl, and then stepped away from it, biting her lip. Things were progressing along really well—better than she thought that they would. The way Mel was acting wasn't much different than she normally was…not from what she knew.

She paused. With Mel acting the way she was, she was sufficiently distracted, and that meant that the Power of Three had, in fact, been reduced back down to the Power of Two. And even with Wyatt's immense strength, Chris, too, was now distracted, and that was going to make things easier for her. In her ultimate quest to get rid of the three of them, she knew that dividing and conquering was going to be the easiest. One by one, picking them off…

But she was greedy, too, even if she didn't really think so. She wanted their powers, each and every one of them. The Grimoire, however, didn't have power stripping potions or spells, or even any ways of acquiring power-stealing athames. Though she didn't understand why, exactly. Perhaps since there were other ways of stealing powers…

She didn't have the time to search for any athames, however, and the only way to get power stripping spells or potions was by getting the Book of Shadows. That was going to take weakening the family bond as much as she could. Thankfully, she was on that path. All she needed to do now was find a way to get both Wyatt and Chris feeling strong, unfocused emotions. That way, it would be easier to get them angry with each other, and with that…the Power of Three would be broken, and she could access the Book. With any luck, she would be able to keep the book for herself, too…

The question was, however, what to do? Chris was clearly focused on something else, and whatever it was, it wasn't magical. But it needed to be. She needed to hit him close to home, somewhere that would surely make him suffer.

That was when it hit her. Lilandra's thin lips curled into an undeniable smile. There was obviously someone important in Chris' life that wasn't family. And all she needed to do was nix that…

It was all falling into place.

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Chris was halfway down the street before he stopped, realizing that he hadn't even the slightest clue as to what in the world he was going to do to prove his sister wrong. He had been so angry by what she had said that the urge to do something about it had just taken him over—but he hadn't really thought about it, or how. No, if he had, he wouldn't have been standing there in the middle of the sidewalk feeling suddenly confused.

He needed to find Landon. But how?

That was when he remembered the card that Landon had given him right before he had left. The memory of what he had said, too, popped into Chris' head, and that made him look down at the cement. He couldn't really be mad at Wyatt for that. It had been for family, and Mel…even if he didn't want to admit it at the moment, was still more important than his own personal life.

Turning around, Chris made his way back to the manor and stepped inside. He headed up the stairs and into his room, but he paused. What had he done with it? Was it still in that pair of pants? No, he told himself, it couldn't have been. If it had, his mom probably would have noticed it, since she pulled everything out of their pockets and put them into those little baskets above the washer and dryer. He had checked that, and it wasn't there.

So then what the hell had he done with it?

It was nearly impossible for him to backtrack that far. It had been about a week before, and so much had happened that night that he could barely remember anything aside from passing out up in the attic from lack of sleep.

All of a sudden, it hit him. Chris headed over toward his nightstand, pulling out the drawer. Inside were a few different things—a few sticky notes, a pen, a crystal—but where was it? He dug a little bit deeper inside, and sure enough, there it was. Pulling it out, Chris clutched it in his hand. He hadn't actually looked at it when he had first gotten it, instead opting to just toss it into his nightstand drawer. He remembered that.

It was Landon's business card. His last name was on it—Bailey—along with his business address, phone number, fax number, and his company's name. Chris hadn't ever heard of it before. But for Landon to have a business card…he had to have been relatively high in the company. That was his thinking, anyways.

Reaching into his pocket, Chris pulled out his phone and dialed Landon's number. But he didn't press the send button right away. Granted, what he had done was…really nice; it felt good to have that kind of freedom. He didn't want to just call Landon up for the sole reason of proving his sister wrong, though. When it came to doing things out of spite and for proof, all it did was ruin them. No, he decided that this call was going to be a social one, which was for his own good. Mel wasn't going to know about this.

Self-satisfaction was more than okay at this point.

When he hit the send button, Chris brought the phone up to his ear, hearing the familiar ringing. With each passing one he felt himself growing a bit more nervous, and in turn, a little frustrated with himself. It wasn't like this was an impossible task, so he didn't know why he was getting so worked up over it.

Shortly thereafter the somewhat familiar voice of Landon appeared over the line. "This is Landon."

"H-Hey," Chris said, although slightly hesitant at first. "It's, uh, Chris. From the club."

"Oh…hey, Chris. Yeah, I remember you. What's up?"

"Not much. I was just…calling to see what you were up to, see maybe if you wanted to hang out sometime. Sorry it took me so long to call."

Landon chuckled. "Nah, no worries, man. I'm surprised you called, actually. Didn't think your brother was gonna let you."

Chris snorted. "Yeah, my brother…isn't my keeper. Like you said. We just had a family emergency and he was short on patience. That's him, though." More like me, he thought with a pursing of his lips.

"Oh, I know how those go. But!" Landon cleared his throat. "I'm on my lunch break right now, getting something to eat. You wanna meet somewhere tonight? I don't have much to do and I was thinking of a night on the town, just hanging out."

Chris could hear the sounds of traffic and people coming from the other end of the line. Wherever Landon was, it was busy. His guess would have been the financial district. "Y-Yeah, yeah, that'd work," he said.

"Awesome. There's this really good club I went to just a week or two ago. It's called P3. I'm sure you've heard of it; it's pretty popular. What would you say to going there?"

Chris swallowed hard. What would he say to going there? His instincts were to say no, because his mother owned that club. Well, only technically. Billie ran it more now than his mom did, because Piper had to focus her attention on her restaurant. Billie had offered to help take care of the club since she liked it so much, and since most of the family did as well. It was a part of their history.

He doubted, though, that he was going to see any of them there, least of all Billie. She had a family to take care of too, so it wasn't likely that she would be spending a lot of time at P3 doing things that she could do from home.

He finally settled on saying, "Sounds great. Haven't been there in a while, so I'm curious to see how things have changed." It was only a little white lie, that. He had been there not too long ago, but Landon didn't need to know that. All he knew was that they had thrown him a party. He would eventually have to tell him his last name, though—and that alone was going to make it easy enough to put two and two together.

"Awesome. We can meet up at the club then around like…nine? So we can enjoy it before it gets too packed. How's that work for you?"

A small grin had worked its way onto Chris' face. "Sounds great. I'll meet you inside the club, all right? I'll be at the bar."

"Great. See you then."

"See you."

After he hung up, he wasn't really sure as to how he felt. Relieved? Excited? Somewhere in between. He also felt a little smug.

So much for not being able to have his own life. Mel would have to eat her words.

Well. If he told her.