The knocking at the door startled everyone. Not only were the Wheelers just sitting down to dinner, but they sounded especially loud and urgent. Nancy was the first to stand up and answer, and was shocked further to find Margaret White at the door, with a disconcerting grin on her face.

"I'll be taking my daughter back now," she said.

Nancy's parents had followed her and now stood beside her. Her mother promptly replied, "Did you forget how this ended last time?"

At the shock of seeing Margaret, none of them noticed the man behind her until he spoke. "That's what I'm here for. I'm Todd Bowden, and I guess you could call me Mrs. White's legal council."

Todd grinned to himself at the stretch of the truth which wasn't nearly the biggest such he'd done in his life. After bluffing that he could accuse his guidance counselor of molesting him, this was nothing. In fact, he'd gotten his own legal help in this case through more blackmail, of a man the same mysterious force that brought him here had led him to. Billy Halleck might be disgustingly fat, but he was a great lawyer, and even against his will had come up with some quite good strategies.

He held up an intimidating amount of papers. "Everything's right here. There's no question that Mrs. White has the legal right to her child. If you persist in keeping them away, I'll be more than happy to call the police right now."

Nancy scoffed, and turned to her parents. "Well, Carrie's not going anywhere, right?" But she was met by downturned expressions from them both.

Ted was surprisingly the first to speak. "Honey, we were on your side about this from the start. But if he's right about the legality of it…Karen, what do you think?"

After rolling her eyes at once again getting the buck passed to her, Karen nodded. "We'll have to look all this over, but we can't continue with this if it's against the law."

Nancy stared at them wide-eyed. "But it's the right thing to do! You know it is!"

Todd chuckled. "Little girl, you have no idea how the world works, do you? The law is on our side here, and that's all that matters." He held the papers out to her. "Feel free to look through them, but we'll be expecting Carrie down here and ready to go within an hour."

Nancy snatched them away. "Well, she's not here anyway. And I'm going to make damn sure you're right about this before I tell you where she is."

Jane was struggling mightily to keep her temper. "You are focusing like I told you, right?"

Carrie seemed just as exasperated. "Just like all the other times you asked, yes! It's just not working."

Hopper offered from the kitchen, "Maybe you could be getting mad enough right now to do it anyway, you ever think of that?"

Jane shook her head. "I've got this." She stopped before the final word "Dad," which she still wasn't quite comfortable saying out loud no matter how much she wanted to.

A loud knock came at the door, but the three barely even had time to turn to it before Carrie's mother came barging through, looking furious. Todd entered behind her. "I've already done this once tonight, so the short version: Carrie, your mother is legally your guardian and if you don't come with her right now, all these people you like so much are going to be in big trouble with the law."

Hopper stepped forward. "Well, it happens I'm part of the law, so you want to run that by me again?"

Todd shrugged. "Unfortunately, there's other people currently looking over the full argument I came up with, but trust me, it'll hold up in court, and if you really respect your job, you'll be on our side here."

Hopper turned to Carrie to assure her he would do no such thing, but was brought up short by the look on her face. It was such a deep well of anger that he found himself helpless to protest as she said, "I should have known it couldn't last. Everyone being so nice to me, when all I've heard my whole life is that I can't be loved." She turned to Margaret and Todd. "But I'm not going back. And you can't make me." They were both suddenly thrown off their feet and slammed hard into the wall, where they remained pinned by Carrie's attack. Holding up an arm to keep them there, she turned to Hopper. "And you're not going to do anything either."

"NO!" Jane shouted, and as soon as Carrie started her attack, she blocked it with one of her own. Margaret and Todd slumped to the floor as Carrie focused all her attention on her one equal in this fight.

And high above, the energy from two such powerful psychic assaults opened a tear in the sky itself, and the Shadow Monster looked through.