Pop, the bulb flashed from the camera. Light blinded him, and before he knew it she was gone.
He remembered it well. The year was 1927, and Duncan had finally left Amanda and their life together. Duncan had decided to put his time as a carnie behind him, and he was dressed like any dapper young man would be. Soon enough, he had been discovered by the attention of a young Hollywood silent film star and had ended up in the glamorous world of Hollywood parties. That was why the witches' magic had brought him back here.
Mac looked around, his feet moving of their own accord. He knew where he was going, what he was about to do, but had no control over this visitation. Ducking behind a corner, he waited to catch a glimpse of her dress and tugged her hand until she crashed into him and he could push her into a closet.
Kissing her, he pressed her against a wall and pressed kisses down her neck as she purred with enthusiasm. "You little minx," Duncan whispered in his Scottish brogue. "Did ye really think ye could run from me?"
"The best part about running is being caught," she told him. "Meet me at my hotel room, after the party," she begged as he ran his hands over her body.
"What do I get for waiting until then?"
She grabbed his chin and forced him to look into her smoldering eyes. Duncan had forgotten how amazed he was that such deep blue eyes could burn like fire; bright blue flames, the hottest kind possible.
"You get to learn my name," she said and kissed him passionately before pushing past him and exiting the closet.
Duncan woke with a gasp, reaching for Richie who had stayed by his side.
The sisters had placed large pillows on the floor, and he had lied down as they recited their spell. Now, his friend patted him on the back and told him that he was safe.
"Did you find out who she is," Billy asked. Sitting on the ground next to Richie, she tried to edge forward to get a look at the Scotsman.
"Yes and no."
"What the hell does that mean," Piper demanded.
"It means," Duncan paused, "that I saw her. The only problem is that I never had the chance to learn her name."
"How exactly did you know this person," Paige asked.
"We met back in the 1920s. 1927 to be exact. She was a photographer and very well known. I thought when she didn't meet me that I could find her. It turns out that she was using a false name. Nothing could trace her and I never did find out what happened. Why she never showed for our meeting."
"What was the name that she gave you," Phoebe asked.
"I only knew her by Persephone. When we met, she told me that she had just finished the half of her year she was obligated to spend in hell. I told her that must be true, because being together was pure heaven for me."
"And you never learned what happened to her," Phoebe wondered. "Why she never met you that last time?"
"We had been together for six months. I knew why she left. She was going back to hell, where she belonged," Duncan said, suddenly angry and wishing that these memories had never been awakened. Standing, he stormed out of the attic leaving five very confused people.
Duncan stood in the backyard. The memories from that time had assaulted him; never had he thought that he would be forced to deal with his feelings for that heart wrenching bitch that had broken his heart.
Normally, he would never say or do anything to disrespect a woman but the pain still burned in the depths of his soul. He was still fuming when he realized he wasn't alone.
"Are you okay," Piper asked. She was rubbing her belly, and Duncan softened. It would be the one thing he could never have; a family. A life with a woman he loved and their children. He was cursing himself mentally when Piper caught his gaze.
"I know what its like," she told him. "Loving someone you hate almost as much. The thing is, when you love them that much it just makes the anger you feel that much stronger; much more pointless. Because you still want them. You still want her, don't you?"
"I've loved other women," Mac told her, "before and after. I thought I had moved on; that she didn't mean anything to me. All it took was one memory for me to want to be near her again; to make me forget all those women who actually wanted to be with me forever."
Piper brushed her hair behind her ears, and rested her hands on her belly. "How do you know that she didn't want that too? I mean, this immortal obviously still cares for you if she's devoting her spare time to dedicating portraits to you. You must mean something to her."
"Why now," he nearly cried. "It's been over eighty years!"
Piper looked at him, her eyes suddenly filling with awareness. Rushing back into the house, Piper ran –as much as a pregnant woman could—up the stairs with Mac on her heels.
"Piper, what's wrong," Phoebe asked.
"We cast the wrong spell," Piper said. "Why are we focusing on a past life when we know that this woman is a fairly new immortal? We should be writing a spell to learn who she was in her last life, right before she was turned."
"Can you do that," Richie asked. "Write a completely new spell?"
"We can do anything," Billy replied. "We're witches."
"So how should we focus this spell," Phoebe asked. "We don't know anything about her other than she's Duncan's soul mate."
"That's how. We focus on him," Paige offered. She had returned from meeting with the Elders with no leads. Apparently witches were a lot safer in the years following their ultimate battle, seeing as the Triad had been eradicated. "If the only connection we have is through him, then he should be the focus of the spell."
"Still, it would be easier if we had something of hers," Phoebe said. "A personal item that she was attached to that we could use in the spell to figure out her identity."
"Yeah, well he seemed kind of bitter," Billy butted in. "What are the chances he kept something of hers?"
"Actually," Piper said, "who here hasn't kept a memento from past relationships?"
It was a week after the scene at the Manor and the girls were still figuring out how to write the spell the figure out who their mystery woman is. Duncan and Richie were working with them to figure out how to track her down in the mean time, following new leads with the help of Henry and Darryl.
Piper and Duncan had formed a friendship in that time. Maybe it was because they were like two sides of the same coin. Both knew what it was like to lose the one person that meant the world to them because of what they were. Piper at least had been able to get her soul mate back.
She knew that as much as he had claimed to have let "Persephone" go, he would have held onto the last connection he had to her. It would have been too painful to ever really let her go.
Piper, Mac and Leo had been spending a lot of time together in the past week. It didn't hurt that Leo had spent a considerable amount of time being, well…dead. It was a bond the two men shared and the time they had in common gave them lots of things to talk about.
Heading down the stairs of the Manor, Piper made her way to the back door and headed for the garage. Leo and Mac were restoring a vintage Ford truck Leo had bought years ago before the ultimate battle. It was nice to see someone messy with oil all over them rather than potion ingredients. It was a good change.
"Hi, boys. How's it going?"
"Good," Leo said and used a rag to wipe his hands. "I think the truck is finally in mint condition. Want to go for a ride later and test it out?"
"Sounds like a date," Piper smiled at her husband. "But until then, I was kind of hoping to steal Duncan from you."
"Well, I think we're all finished here," Mac said. "What can I help you with?"
"Is there any chance you might have something that belonged to our mystery woman?"
Duncan's face soured at the mention of his old lover. "I might have something. It would be in storage for my antique shop. I never could bring myself to sell it. Why do you ask?"
"Well, we were brain storming strategies for figuring out her identity," Piper said, "and we think if we use something that belonged to her in a past life we might be able to figure out who she was in her most recent life. Souls tend to stick together; born back into their family lines with other soul mates like siblings and friends from one life to the next."
"It makes sense," Leo said as he put the tools away. "How far is it to your storage unit?"
"A couple of hours away. If we go now, we could be there and back by dinner," Mac told them.
"I guess we're going on a road trip," Piper said.
The metal door to the storage unit lifted, letting in light and displacing the dust that had built up since the last time Duncan had been there. There was a large lot of antiques and it brought Piper back to the days when she would visit Prue at Buckland's. That was almost eight years ago.
Walking around, she admired jewelry and perfume decanters as Leo looked over old school medical equipment and baseball cards. Looking for the immortal, Piper followed him to the back of the unit. Mac was reaching up for an old shoebox. Wiping it, he blew dust off the top and removed the lid.
"We were together almost six months," he told her. "Silly thing about being immortal, it makes you think that you have all the time in the world. I didn't care that I didn't know her real name because I thought that I had forever to learn it. That I could enjoy our games for as long as they played out and that we would eventually settle down."
"Maybe you were right," Piper said, choosing to believe that there was a happy ending in all of this for her friend. Standing on tippy toes, she strained to get a look over his shoulder and look at the contents of the box. "Is all this hers?"
"After she disappeared I tried to find her," Mac whispered. "I took everything I could find. Everything that was left behind in her room at the boarding house; that she had given me during those months. She gave me this our first night together," he told Piper and held out his hand. It was a locket with intricate detail on the front. "She said it was a symbol of her heart and that I should wear it to know that it would always belong to me," Duncan laughed through his tears. "The funny thing is I could never get it open."
Piper turned it over and looked at the back. "There's an inscription. P.B. Do you think that they're her initials," she asked him.
"I did at the time. I went through every contact I could. No one knew any photographers with those initials. That was why I thought she was using a pseudonym for her work."
Piper continued to inspect the locket before running a finger over the latch, springing it to both her and Duncan's surprise.
"That's impossible," he said and moved closer to Piper as she opened to locket to peer inside. A cry escaped her lips and her hand immediately covered her mouth.
Leo walked up to his wife and looked at the picture inside the locket before looking at Duncan and then cradling his wife in his arms. "It's okay," he said, rubbing her back in circles as he tried to calm her down. "Shush," Leo rocked her back and forth. "We'll figure this out," he told her and just let her cry.