As Phoebe slept in, Piper approached Prue over breakfast. Prue glared at her across the breakfast table. Piper sat across from each other, setting down her cup of coffee.
"Prue," she began.
"I'm not happy."
"Prue…"
"I know you think I should be over it by now, or just put it aside because-"
"It's not that. Listen. Phoebe told me something last night that you need to hear."
Prue listened. Once Piper finished the whole story, Prue was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, "The sad thing is I'm not shocked." She laughed without humor. "He wasn't a good man, was he? I wasn't even that hurt by him."
Piper nodded.
"I don't know if I even cared about him that much. It was her, I couldn't believe she would do that to me. But to know that she didn't… She didn't do anything to me, did she?"
Piper shook her head. "So you'll-"
"Build a bridge and get over it? Yeah. I still have plenty of other reasons to be pissed at her." She smiled wryly. She sucked down the rest of the coffee. "I'm going to work."
"Do you want me to tell her… ?"
"Yeah. Tell her I'll get over it. And I'm sorry. And I'm pissed at that asshole. And I just want things to get back to normal."
"I'll extend the olive branch. And I expect another fight by… 8 o'clock tonight?"
Prue smirked. "See ya."
Phoebe was glad to hear Piper's message. Though she still felt a little awkward being here, she was looking forward to the girl's night Piper promised.
The sisters snacked as they waited for Prue to get home from work. Phoebe had found herself seated in front of the spirit board. "Come on," said Phobe, gesturing for Piper to join her at the pointer. "Feel the vibrations," she whispered, once Piper placed her hands on the pointer.
"Hey! You're moving it. Stop pushing the pointer."
"I'm not!"
"You always used to push the pointer." She sat back. "More popcorn?"
Phoebe nodded, still trying to attune herself to the 'vibrations.'
She heard Piper rummaging in the kitchen. She peeked out from under her eyelids. "Hey, wait! I forgot what your question was."
Piper yelled back, "I asked if Prue would have sex with anyone besides herself this year."
"That's disgusting," Phoebe murmured, but again placed her hands on the pointer.
Suddenly, she felt her hands being dragged forward. Quickly. Much quicker than she's ever felt the spirit board pull her before. "Piper!" As soon as the pointer landed on the 'A,' it returned to its resting spot at the bottom of the board. "Piper, get in here."
"What?"
At that moment, as Piper came in from the kitchen, Prue came in the front door. She sat her purse on the entry table and placed her hands on her hips. "What's all the yelling? What did you guys do now?"
Piper said, "Me? I didn't do anything."
Phoebe, breathless, said, "The pointer on the spirit board. It moved on its own."
Prue and Piper stared at her.
"I'm serious. It spelled 'A' 'T'."
Piper sighed. "Well, did you push it?"
"No."
"You used to always push the pointer."
Piper looked over at Prue and snorted.
Phoebe could feel her voice becoming impassioned. She felt like a kid again, defending herself against her older sisters. "My fingers were barely touching it. Look." She put her fingers on the pointer. Nothing happened.
Prue and Piper turn to leave.
As soon as their backs were turned, Phoebe felt the pointer tug her hands again. It moved to the bottom of the board, then back to the letter 'T'. She yelped. "It did it again! It moved!
They turned back.
Prue said, "It's still on the letter 'T.'"
"I swear it moved."
She looked each sister in the eye. Prue rolled hers and left the room.
Piper sighed, "Scoot over."
Once more, the pointer moved. This time, Phoebe's hands were not even touching , she looked up at Piper. "There. Look. You saw that right?
Piper's eyes were wide. Quietly, she said, "I think so, yeah."
"I told you I wasn't pushing it."
A final time, the pointer shot up toward the 'C' and back to home.
"Prue, can you come in here for a sec?" Piper called.
"Now what?"
Phoebe didn't look up to see Prue come in. "I think it's finished," she murmured. "I think it's trying to tell us something." She grabbed an envelope from the pile of mail on the table. She wrote the letters the board had spelled out: A-T-T-I-C.
She held up the envelope. "Attic."
A loud clap of thunder. Then darkness.
Piper was triple-checking that the doors were locked.
"Don't you think you're overreacting?" Prue said. "We're perfectly safe here."
Piper wagged her finger. "Don't say that. In horror movies, the person who says that is always the next to die."
"Die? Piper, come on."
"Found them!" Phoebe emerged from the kitchen, a flashlight leading her way. She passed the other two to her sisters, then headed upstairs.
"I'm just saying, it's spooky. The storm, the spirit board. And with what we heard on the news? About the women being killed?"
Piper was scared. Genuinely. But there was also a small part of her that felt comforted by the fact that they were all together again. All three sisters under the same roof. Sibling banter and silly arguments, instead of the ice cold hostility they've had the past six months.
Piper watched Prue languidly unplugging appliances. Urgently, she said, "Prue, I saw that pointer move."
"No, look." Prue stood back up and put hands on hips. "What you saw was Phoebe's fingers pushing the pointer. There's nothing in the attic, she's playing a joke on us."
"We don't know that. We've lived in this house for months and we've never been able to get that attic door open." She crossed the foyer to give Jeremy a call. Maybe he could come over to keep them safe. "Great, now the phone doesn't work." Aaaand now was the time to panic.
"No shit, the power's out. Come with me to the basement."
"What?" she nearly yelled.
Exasperated, Prue said, "I need you to hold the flashlight while I check out the main circuit box."
"Phoebe will go with you to the basement." She called up the stairs, "Won't you Phoebe?"
Phoebe peeked her head down the stairs. "Nope! I'm going to the attic."
"No, you're not. We already agreed. We don't have time for all that."
"I am not waiting for some handyman to check out the attic and I'm certainly not waiting until tomorrow. I'm going now." She disappeared upstairs.
"Fine, let her tire herself out," Prue sighed. "Let's go, Piper."
She headed to the basement, and Piper, groaning, followed suit.
Growing up, the girls were never allowed to play near the attic. The narrow stairs always scared Phoebe, especially since they seemed to lead to nowhere. Just a tiny landing and a door. Just looking at it would make her claustrophobic.
But tonight, what used to scare her seemed to call to her. She tread carefully each step. It did still have the aura of danger, but tonight that danger felt like destiny. At the top of the stairs, she twisted the brass knob of the attic door. And twisted again. And again.
It was the strangest thing. She could feel no resistance in the knob. It wasn't locked. But the door still wouldn't budge. It was like it was deadbolted, but there was no deadbolt. She twisted and shoved. Twisted, lifted, and shoved.
Still nothing.
Foolishness melted over her. Great. Now, she'd look dumb, and Prue definitely wouldn't believe her about the pointer. She steeled herself against whatever her sisters would have to say, then turned to head back down the narrow, musty stairs.
Creeeak.
She turned her head. The door had inched open, just a crack.
She let out a breath. She had pounded on it, and now it opens like nothing?
She pushed open the door, slowly. She let her flashlight's beam fall over the room before she dared take a step in. Particles of dust floated in the air, any way she pointed her flashlight. Either side of the expansive room were stuffed with odd boxes, baskets, and pieces of old furniture. Phoebe smiled when she saw her old rocking horse tucked beneath a disassembled bed frame.
She took a step forward, her slippered feet landing on a colorful antique rug. The whole room seemed to be covered with rugs. Two of them Phoebe recognized. They used to live in the living room and sitting room. Through the far windows, Phoebe could see tree branches shaking in the wind. She could see slants of rain slamming against the stained glass windows.
She walked forward, not sure what exactly she was looking for. She felt the right side of her body tingle. She looked forward and to the left. There, under the multicolored window, was a trunk. While she recognized some of the items in this attic, she certainly didn't recognize that. It looked ancient.
She popped the locks, then lifted the lid. She coughed, then swept the dust off the book that lay at the top of the trunk. It was smooth leather, a strange symbol embossed on the cover. It was a circle, the size of a coffee cup stain, with three interlocking petals sprouting from the center.
With a huff, she lifted the book, then went to sit on the window ledge. She propped it in her lap and flipped to the first page. "The Book of Shadows," she read aloud, barely a whisper.
In her brief stint at college, Phoebe had taken an art appreciation class. The style of this book reminded her of those illuminated bibles they made in the middle ages, with the huge capital letters at the beginning of words. She thought it was real ink, like with a bottle and a quill. "How old is this thing?" she muttered. She knew the manor had been in their family for nearly a century, but this book looked much older than that.
She turned to the next page. "Hear now the words of the-" She fell silent. Phoebe had seen enough movies in her time to know not to read an ancient incantation out loud without knowing what it might do. She read in her head, Hear now the words of the witches, the secrets we hid in the night...
She flipped through the pages, careful not to touch the ancient illustrations, for fear of messing them up. She stopped every so often to read the pages that caught her interest.
The door creaked open. Phoebe looked up. She felt an odd sense of embarrassment, as if she had been caught doing something… private.
Prue and Piper stood in the doorway, like stern parents.
"What are you doing?"
"Uh …" She smiled. "Reading an incantation?"
Piper looked around, aghast. "How did you get in here?"
"The door just opened." She shrugged.
Prue said, "Wait a minute, an incantation? What kind of incantation?"
"It was in this 'Book of Shadows.' I found it in that trunk."
Phoebe stood up, holding the Book in front of her like a passionate schoolgirl clutching her textbooks to her chest. "According to the Book Of Shadows, one of our ancestors was a witch, named Melinda Warren."
Piper cut in, "And we have a cousin who's a drunk, an aunt who's manic, and a father who's invisible."
Prue snickered.
Phoebe protested, "I'm serious. She had powers, real magical powers. The Book said something about… the three essentials of magic. Uh, timing, feeling, and phases of the moon."
Prue raised an eyebrow.
Phoebe took a steeling breath. "If we're ever gonna do this, then now, midnight on a full moon, is the most powerful time."
"'This?' Do what?" Piper's patience was wearing thin.
"Receive our powers."
Her sisters were silent. Phoebe suddenly felt very small standing in front of her sisters, talking of magic and fantasy.
Prue held her hands out for Phoebe to hand her the Book.
Piper said, "What powers? Wait, our powers? You included me in this?"
Prue answered, "No, she included all of us." She read aloud from the Book: "'Bring your powers to we sisters three.'"
Prue looked up at her sisters. "It's a book of witchcraft."
Piper cocked her head to the side. "Let me see that." She looked over Prue's shoulder.
"This thing is ancient," said Prue. She met Phoebe's eye, then set it gently in the trunk. She let the lid close with a snap. "I think that's enough for tonight."
"Hey!" said Phoebe.
"Phoebe, it's interesting, sure," said Piper. "But you can't really think it's real. It's probably one of Grams's weird antiques."
"I'll say," said Prue, drifting her eyes back to the trunk. "We can deal with this tomorrow." She shuffled her sisters out of the attic.
Now that Phoebe was out of the surreal and mystical attic - she did feel a bit silly. But the Book really did feel so real. Had she fallen under its spell?
As they descended the stairs into the foyer, Prue joked, "Spirit boards, books of witchcraft. It figures all this freaky stuff started when you arrived." She ribbed Phoebe with her elbow.
"Hey, I wasn't the one who found the spirit board."
"But it wasn't my fingers sliding around on the pointer," she said, pointedly.
Piper crossed her arms over her chest. "It doesn't matter. Because nothing else … weird … happened up there. Right, Phoebe?"
"Well, my head spun around and I yelled 'your mother sucks cocks in hell!'"
Prue groaned.
A couple hours later, Prue tiptoed out of her bedroom. She looked down the hall to see if both her sisters' lights were out. They were. She peeked in Phoebe's room, then Piper's. Sound asleep.
Prue quietly swept across the hall to the attic steps, using her flashlight to guide her. Once in the attic, she quickly found the trunk, then the Book. She sat cross-legged on the rug, and set the Book before her.
It was strange. It looked - and felt - ancient, but it was in remarkable condition. Prue was a museum curator with extensive training in preserving documents, scrolls, and codecis. There is no way a book like this would be in this good condition just rotting up here in their dusty attic.
Carefully, she thumbed through the pages, wishing she'd had the presence of mind to bring up a pair of document gloves. The more she looked at it though, the more she thought it had to be a forgery, maybe a mock-up for some horror movie. But then why would Grams have it? Maybe she bought it at a resale shop, thinking it'd make a good Halloween decoration?
When she got to a page with an inked floral illustration and a tight, pointed script, she stopped. "Grams," she whispered. Forgetting all of her museum training, she ran her fingers along the handwriting. This was Grams's handwriting.
Carefully, Prue read the inscription. To Lose a Love Forever.
Prue chuckled. Sounded like Grams alright.
In Grams's hand, the spell dictated the use of herb oils, a poppet, and a cauldron in order to banish a love forever. "When the flames die out, the spell is complete," Prue read aloud. Not your ordinary love spell… Well, Grams wasn't an ordinary woman. Prue smirked, looking down at the book of spells. Clearly.
"You feel it too, don't you?"
It was Phoebe's voice. Prue looked up, surprised. "Feel what?"
"The Book," Phoebe insisted. "Doesn't it feel…?"
"Magical?" Prue finished.
The sisters laughed. Then fell silent a moment, looking at each other.
"I'm sorry, you know," said Prue, looking away.
"I know. It's okay."
"It's not; I should have -"
"What matters is that we're here now. Sneaking up to the attic to look at a magical book."
Prue laughed.
"Wouldn't Grams be proud?" she said sarcastically.
"Actually… Maybe. Look at this."
Prue shoved the Book into Phoebe's laugh.
"Do you recognize it?"
"Should I?"
"Yes, if you ever bothered to read Grams's letters. It's her handwriting."
"Oh! Shit. You're right. 'To Lose a Love Forever?' Yep, sounds like Grams."
"That's what I said."
"So Grams was a witch," said Phoebe.
"Or at least thought she was one."
Phoebe sat the book down in front of her and crawled over to the trunk. "Did you take a look at this stuff?"
Phoebe held up crystals, candles, bottles of goo.
"Holy hell."
"And look at this! Some of her jewelry is in here! No wonder we couldn't find it in her room!"
"IS ANYONE UP THERE?" came Piper's frightened voice from downstairs.
"Shit," said Prue.
"IF YOU'RE UP THERE, YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE."
"With what phone?" Prue called back. "The powers out, genius."
Phoebe giggled.
"Prue?"
"And Phoebe!" Phoebe added.
The girls heard Piper grumbling as she clopped up the steps. She appeared half-dressed in pajamas, holding a flashlight under her chin. "Boo."
"You're going to have to be scarier than that," laughed Phoebe.
"What are you guys doing up here?"
"Well, Prue thought it would be a good idea to come up here and cast some spells-"
"I did not."
"And y'all are just up here without me?"
"Well," said Prue. "I was meant to be up here alone."
"She heard the Book calling to her," teased Phoebe.
"Oh, shut up."
"And with good reason," said Phoebe. "'Cuz Grams was a witch."
"A what?"
"See for yourself," said Phoebe, pushing the book toward Piper, who sat down across from them.
"That's Grams's handwriting," she said in shock.
"Mmhm. And this is Grams's pendant that she wore almost every day of her life. And guess where it was? With the Book."
"The Book of Shadows," replied Piper. "So Grams really believed this stuff?"
Prue shrugged. "She must have."
"Well, why wouldn't she have told us?"
"Maybe she thought we would judge her?"
"No," said Phoebe. "That's not it. It's this." She flipped back to the first few pages in the Book. "I read it earlier, remember, about the three essentials of magic?" Phoebe groaned. "You guys never listen to me.
"Look, we had this ancestor named Melinda Warren in the 1600s. She was a witch. She could move objects with her mind, see the future, and stop time."
"Stop time?" said Prue, doubtfully.
Phoebe nodded. "Before Melinda was burned at the stake, she vowed that each generation of Warren witches would become stronger and stronger, culminating in the arrival of three sisters."
Piper looked back and forth between her sisters' faces.
"Now," Phoebe went on. "These sisters would be the most powerful witches the world has ever known. They're good witches, and I think we're those sisters."
Piper traced her finger under the lines in the Book. "We're the protectors of the innocent. We're known as the Charmed Ones? Oh come on, Phoebe."
"Prove it. Prove it's not real," said Phoebe.
"How are we supposed to 'prove its not real?'" asked Prue.
"Simple," she replied. "Let's say the incantation. All three of us. Let's see if it brings us our powers."
"Oh no," said Piper. "No, no, no."
"Come on, Piper," said Prue, surprising both Piper and Phoebe. "If it's not real, nothing will happen, will it?"
Piper groaned. "Seriously?"
Prue smiled, twitched her eyebrows.
"... Let me look at the incantation."
Phoebe flipped to the page. Piper mouthed the words as she read. Finally, she looked up. "I don't know, you guys."
"I know," said Phoebe. She rolled over and grabbed a bottle out of Grams's trunk.
"Liquor? She had liquor in there?" Prue exclaimed.
Phoebe uncorked the bottle and took a swig. She passed the bottle to Prue, who sighed. "As long as I don't have a hangover in the morning." She gulped, then passed it to Piper.
"Peer pressure!" said Piper. "Grams would be ashamed."
"It's her brandy and her witch stuff."
"Uuugh. Fine." She took the longest drink of all of them. Then took another.
"Woo! Piper."
"Let's just get this over with. I have my interview at 3pm tomorrow."
Piper scooted around so that all three sisters sat in front of the book. They leaned into each other, and began to chant:
"Hear now the words of the witches,
The secrets we hid in the night.
The oldest of spells are invoked here,
The great work of magic is sought.
In this night and in this hour,
I call upon the ancient power.
Bring your powers to we sisters three.
We want the power, give us the power."
"A little demanding, isn't it?" said Piper.
Prue giggled, and Phoebe shushed her. "Shh.. Do you feel that?"
"Feel… what?"
"The magic."
Now they were all laughing.
"I don't feel particularly magical," said Prue. "Oh- Oh, hold on. Hold on." Prue's eyes closed, and her face went slack. "I'm getting a vision."
Phoebe and Piper's eyes widened.
"I see… I see you two… Washing my car?"
"Oh, fuck you," said Phoebe, shoving her.
Prue laughed. "Well, what? Do you feel any different?"
Phoebe licked her lips and closed her eyes. She wiggled her nose, then opened her eyes. "Anything? Did I move anything?"
"Yeah, your upper lip," said Piper. "Well, hate to kill the fun, but I'm going to bed. See you 'witches' in the morning."
Prue got up to follow Piper. "You coming?" she asked Phoebe.
"I think I'll stay up and read awhile."
"Oh come on, Phoebe. Don't get your hopes up."
"Good niii-ight."
"Phoebe!" shouted Piper from the bottom of the attic stairs. "Phoebe, you can't possibly still be up there."
Phoebe popped her head out the door. "Oh," she said, "But I am."
"Are you telling me you didn't sleep?"
"Nah," she said. "I'm pretty much nocturnal these days, anyway." She walked downstairs, the Book under her arm.
"Well, I was just going to tell you bye. I'm heading to the audition."
"Good luck, good luck, good luck. I know you'll get it."
"You got any good luck charms in there?" Piper said.
"Well actually…" She started thumbing through the pages.
"Kidding!" said Piper. "I don't feel like saying any more spells. I still have the heebie-jeebies from the one last night.
"Come on, Pipes. It's our heritage. Grams was a witch, and probably Mom too."
Piper rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well. I'm a chef. Or at least, God, I hope I am after this audition."
She started to leave, then turned back. "Phoebe, I was kidding. Do not say any spells for me."
"Okay, okay. But you will come around. It's our destiny."
Piper was already halfway down the stairs.
Phoebe raised her voice. "We're the protectors of the innocent. We're known as the Charmed Ones."