The PASSAGEWAY WAS suddenly Full of SNAKES.
  "Ahh! Ahh!" Doreen shifted from one foot
to another to avoid a mass of wiggling green,
yellow, and black snakes. She was terrified and
fell into Larry's arms.
  "Okay, dear. Time to go." Larry slung
Doreen's arm over his shoulder and helped her stumble
forward. He started into the next tunnel and stopped
dead. "I hope there's another way back."
  "Me too." Paige shone her flashlight
inside the narrow stone corridor. The passage
floor was covered with snakes. Several began shedding
their skins.
  "Cross-country," Tammy said, taking charge.
Ignoring the snakes sliding out of the rock pile,
she climbed it. "This way."
  Paige let Joyce and Daniel go first, then
steadied Larry as he carried Doreen up the rock
pile. When Paige reached the top, she realized that
cutting through the woods was only a slightly better
alternative than taking the tunnels.
  The ground was alive with thousands of writhing
snakes.
--------------------------------------i
  Charmed[*reg]
  The Book of Three: The Official Companion
to the Hit Show
  The Power of Three Kiss of Darkness The
Crimson Spell Whispers from the Past Voodoo
Moon Haunted by Desire The Gypsy
Enchantment The Legacy of Merlin Soul of the
Bride Beware What You Wish Charmed Again Spirit
of the Wolf Garden of Evil
  Date with Death Dark Vengeance Shadow of the
Sphinx
  Something Wiccan This Way Comes
  Mist and Stone Mirror Image Between Worlds
Truth and Consequences Luck Be a Lady
Inherit the Witch A Tale of Two Pipers The
Brewing Storm Survival of the Fittest Pied
Piper Mystic Knoll
  Published by Simon and Schuster
--------------------------------------ii
  MYSTIC KNOLL
  An original novel by Diana G. Gallagher
  Based on the hit TV series created by
  Constance M. Burge
  SjSlEvery
  EDBBCDBD
  SIMON SPOTUGHT ENTERTAINMENT
  New York London Toronto Sydney
------------------------------------comiii
  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should
be aware that this book is stolen property. It was
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher,
and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."
  This book is a work of fiction. Any references
to historical events, real people, or real locales
are used fictitiously. Other names, characters,
places, and incidents are the product of the
author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
  SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
  An imprint of Simon and Schuster Children's
Publishing Division
  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York,
New York 10020
  [*reggg'and [*copygg'2005 Spelling
Television Inc. All Rights Reserved.
  All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or
  in part in any form.
  SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT and related
logo are
  trademarks of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
  Manufactured in the United States of
America
  First Edition 10 987654321
  Library of Congress Control Number

  ISBN 0-689-86854-5
--------------------------------------iv
  For my sister, Wendy-
  Thanks for the New Hampshire vacations
  And the salt and pepper frogs!
--------------------------------------v

  bar (ltfl 3 basket of fresh gardenia
blooms in one hand and a cup of herbal tea in the
other, Paige paused at the living-room dpor on
her way back to the attic. Leaning against the
doorjamb, she watched supermom Piper in action.
  ""Wheel"" Piper exclaimed, reading from a
children's picture book. She sat on the sofa with
baby Wyatt propped up beside her. ""Puddles
arefunVery"
  "Eeee!" Wyatt squealed.
  "'Big paws make big splashes." See?"
Piper pointed to the picture in the book.
  Paige laughed. Wyatt turned to look at his
aunt and squealed again.
  Piper looked up at her sister with a smile.
"Welcome to the
distract-baby-so-he-doesn't-use-his-powers
story hour."
  "Whatever works," Paige said. They couldn't

  be sure what might trigger Wyatt's
developing imagination, but they weren't taking any
chances. A week ago he had turned his plastic
bathtub toys into real turtles and ducks. He
wouldn't change them back until the ducks escaped
and started to fly away.
  "What are you reading?" Paige asked.
  "Good Dog, Bad Dog." Piper held up the
book. The cover pictured a large white dog with
floppy ears, a red tongue, and big black
spots.
  "Sounds fascinating for a toddler tome," Paige
said. "But isn't Wyatt too young to understand it?"
  "Probably, but I figure it can't hurt
to start teaching him right from wrong." Piper brushed
Wyatt's hair with her hand. "I've been doing some
research on how young kids learn. Reading aloud
imprints words and, eventually, the relevant
concepts in little baby brains."
  "Well, good luck with that," Paige said. "I'm
off to practice potions."
  "Anything in particular?" Piper asked, eyeing the
basket of flowers and inhaling the pungent scent.
"Gardenias. Are you stressed?"
  Yes! Paige thought, exasperated. Because I've
been working nights and weekends at extra temp
jobs to save money for a vacation nobody wants
to take!
  "More tired than strung out," she explained. She
didn't want to start an argument, but she had to be
honest. "And since I can't convince you or Phoebe
to get away from it all for a couple of

  weeks, which we all desperately need to do,
I'll have to settle for herbal tea and the soothing
properties of fresh flowers."
  "We're the Charmed Ones," Piper said. "We
can never get away from it all."
  Paige rolled her eyes. "You know what I
mean."
  "Yes, and you know the magical mission is just one
reason we're a no-go for vacation." Piper sighed.
"I can't leave P3 for two weeks, Paige.
There's payroll and ordering-was
  "Isn't that why you hired a manager?" Paige
interrupted. "To take care of things so you can spend more
time at home with your family?"
  "At home," Piper repeated, "where I'm
only a few minutes away from P3 if anything
goes wrong."
  "Except you haven't had to rush off to handle a
single emergency since the guy started two months
ago," Paige countered.
  Piper wasn't swayed. "We can't afford to go
on vacation."
  "If you ask me, we can't afford not to,"
Paige muttered.
  "Buh!" Wyatt pounded the book with his small
hand.
  "Let's talk about this later, okay?" Piper
lowered the book so Wyatt could see the pictures.
"Look, Wyatt! "Puppy puddles!""
  Paige trudged up the stairs. Between the extra
temp jobs and the inescapable demands of being

  one of the three most powerful witches in the world, she
was more exhausted than she had admitted. Being
overtired had diminished her mental acuity and
physical readiness, which endangered all of them.
  No wonder I'm stressed out, Paige thought as
she entered the attic. She set the basket of
gardenias and the cup of tea on the table by the
cauldron. But that's about to change.
  Blowing a strand of hair off her face, Paige
dropped six gardenia blossoms into the mixture in
the pot. She added ten dried carnation petals for a
jolt of vitality and stirred.
  Paige understood why Phoebe resisted taking
time off from writing her advice column. Phoebe
was becoming something of a celebrity. But even beyond the
recognition she was getting for her work, she truly
enjoyed it-she loved helping people. Her work at the
Bay Mirror was similar to her Charmed destiny:
She was helping people vanquish demons, though for the
column, they were usually inner demons, as opposed
to the big, ugly ones that turned up. So it made
perfect sense that she wouldn't want to spend time
away from people who needed her.
  But Piper didn't have a good excuse, which was why
it frustrated Paige so much.
  Paige added a pinch of faerie fern spore as
a catalyst and continued stirring vigorously
to activate the potion-and work out her frustration.
  The profits from P3, in addition to Phoebe's

  salary, were more than enough to pay the household
bills, invest, and save. Piper, however, was making
decisions as though the sisters were back in the lean days
before P3 was operating in the black and Phoebe was
gainfully employed. To nullify that argument,
Paige had worked the extra jobs to cover some of the
vacation expenses. She intended to press the point
later, when Wyatt was asleep and Piper could
focus.
  In the meantime she needed a quick fix for the frayed
nerves and weariness a long getaway would cure.
She dipped a small glass into the potion and raised
it.
  "To calm me down and pick me up." Paige
drained the glass.
  Phoebe stared at the computer monitor, her
thoughts as cluttered as the desk in her small office
at the Bay Mirror, one of San
Francisco's daily newspapers. Letters from the
lonely, lost, and lovesick were piled around her and
sorted by category: definitely answer, maybe
answer, and file. She never threw one away.
  "Okay, "Not a Birdbrain,"" Phoebe
muttered. She stared at the handwritten letter, trying
to formulate a response. "I'd love
to recommend buying your insensitive husband a
parakeet and telling him to stuff it, but that won't
solve your problem."
  And Elise Rothman, her editor, would never
sign off on the wording. The paper would be

  inundated with calls from bird lovers outraged
over the unintended image of stuffed parakeets.
  Phoebe leaned back in her chair to read the letter
again. "Not a Birdbrain" was a classic case of a
woman who tried too hard to please a man who
wouldn't give her credit for anything. Nothing made
the guy happy, a situation that screamed for an
emancipating solution delivered with a sarcastic sting.
  But today Phoebe was at a rare loss for words.
Something inspiring or amusing would come to her eventually.
  But will it come before my four o'clock deadline?
Phoebe wondered, worried.
  Lately her creative juices were overtaxed by the
grind of writing a daily column and putting together
a book proposal. Elise thought Phoebe could
sell a manuscript based on the advice
published in her column. However, before they could
submit the idea, Phoebe had to decide what
chapter categories to use and provide examples
of her additional commentary.
  Yesterday she had taken home hard copies of the
book proposal arid her half-finished column.
She often accomplished more sitting in bed with pen and
pad than typing into her laptop. Last night,
however, she had wasted time writing a response she
finally decided not to use. A woman called "All
or Nothing" became angry whenever her boyfriend
wanted a minute of hassle-free time to himself.
Phoebe thought the

  woman was way too needy and selfish, but telling
her to "grow up, get real, leave the guy alone,
or get dumped" was too brutally blunt. She
might have to run with it, however, if she couldn't think
of a suitable response to "Not a Birdbrain."
  Phoebe highlighted the text she had finished and
was about to copy it into a separate backup file. A
sudden thought made her sit back.
  "If "Not a Birdbrain" goes on strike
and stops doing everything, maybe this jerk will realize
he's lost without her," Phoebe mused aloud. "A
long shot, but it might work."
  Phoebe wanted to get the thought written down before
she forgot it, but the phone rang.
  "Hi, Elise." The lilt in ifhoebe's
voice didn't match the pained expression on her
face. She mentally repeated her unwritten
advice to "Not a Birdbrain" as she listened.
  Go on strike. Don't do anything. Go on
strike...
  "Is it four o'clock already?" Phoebe tensed.
"I'll have it on your desk in ten minutes. Right,
not a minute more."
  Hanging up, Phoebe hit Enter to begin a new
section for her reply to "Not a Birdbrain."
  The text she had highlighted to copy vanished.
  "What!" Phoebe starred at the blank page
on her screen. The column she had just promised
to deliver in ten minutes was gone. "Where'd it go?"

  Panicking, Phoebe hit Backspace. The
page remained blank. Then she remembered that she
could Undo a mistake! She found Undo Typing
on the menu and clicked on it, but it didn't work.
Refusing to accept that her work was irrevocably lost
in cyberspace, she clicked again.
  Nothing.
  Phoebe sagged, realizing that she had panicked and
compounded the mistake. However, she didn't have time
to beat herself up over it. Elise needed copy
Phoebe didn't have.
  Although Phoebe knew she could probably
retype the column in ten minutes, she'd never
remember everything she had written or exactly how
she had written it.
  "Maybe I don't have to remember ..."
Sitting forward, Phoebe rifled through the file
folders on her desk. She had brought the hard
copy draft of her column back to the office that
morning. She found the file, flipped it open, and
groaned when she saw the notes for the book
proposal.
  She had left the Manor with the wrong file.
  Furious with herself, Phoebe tossed the file on
the floor and picked up the phone.
  ""No, no, no!"" Piper raised the pitch
of her voice and furrowed her brow to emphasize the
meaning of the words. This was the second read-through of Good
Dog, Bad Dog since Paige had gone
upstairs. Wyatt had pounded the book for

  more when she finished the first time. ""That's sooooo
bad!""
  "Buhff8Wyatt echoed.
  ""The floor is all muddy!"" Piper shook
her head with mock displeasure. ""What a bad
dog!""
  "Buh duh!" Wyatt matched his mother's frown,
then grinned.
  "Right!" Piper looked from the picture book to the
tiny boy on the sofa beside her. "That bad dog got
dirty paw prints all over the clean floor."
  Wyatt laughed and clapped his hands.
  Not exactly the response I wanted, Piper
thought.
  Every child had to learn to respect the person and
property of others to get along in the world. The
hammer of social justice came down hard on those
who didn't play by the rules. Wyatt had to learn
the same lessons as other children, but for different
reasons. Her magically superior son wouldn't be
harmed if he chose to ignore the laws of modern
civilization. The world, however, could suffer greatly at
Wyatt's whim if he didn't accept that good was
better than bad.
  "I know you don't get it yet," Piper said in
a motherly coo. "But you will."
  Wyatt pounded the book, an impatient signal
for Piper to turn the page. The next picture
showed the spotted, floppy-eared dog wiping his paws
on a mat by the door.
  "Now this is better," Piper said with an
approving nod. ""That's a good dog!""

  Wyatt stared at the picture, content to listen
to his mother's animated voice.
  "No mud this time," Piper said.
  When the phone rang, Piper looked around for the
cordless, but she had forgotten to put the handset on the
end table. Setting the book aside and gently
placing Wyatt on the floor, she ran to answer the
phone in the front hall.
  "Piper! Thank goodness," Phoebe said, sounding
breathless and distraught. "Is Paige there?"
  "She's in the attic playing with her good-witch
chemistry set." Piper scowled. "Why? What's
wrong?"
  "Just a little emergency," Phoebe said. "Nothing
awful-unless I get fired and can't concentrate on
fighting demons or saving Innocents because we're
going broke while I'm looking for another job I
may not be able to find."
  "You were fired?" Piper's eyes widened.
  "No," Phoebe said, "but I might be unless
Paige orbs to my office with the file folder I
left by my bed. A-S-A-P, please!
I'll make sure the coast stays clear."
  "Okay. I'm on it." Piper hurried toward
the stairs as soon as Phoebe hung up.
"Paige!"
  "What?" Paige hollered down from the attic.
  "Phoebe needs the file folder by her bed,"
Piper yelled back. "Right now."
  "Right now this second?" Paige clasped the
upper railing and leaned over to look down.
  "Immediately," Piper said. She doubted that

  u
  Elise would fire the Bay Mirror's
celebrity advice columnist. Phoebe was just being
dramatic because she needed the file in a hurry.
"You have to orb, but Phoebe's guarding the office
door."
  "I certainly hope so. Nothing ruins a day
quicker than a sister who materializes out of thin air
in front of witnesses." Paige disappeared
to retrieve and deliver the file.
  An ominous thump and a squeal reminded Piper that
she had left Wyatt alone in the living room-with
an open storybook.
  "Oops!" Piper raced to the doorway and stopped
short to stare. A very large, white cartoon dog with
black spots and floppy ears bounded around the
room, then sprawled on the floor to plant puppy
kisses on Wyatt's face. The carpet and sofa
were dotted with big, muddy paw prints.
  Wyatt's protective shield wasn't
operative, so Piper knew he wasn't in
danger. He laughed when the three-dimensional
cartoon dog sat back to scratch behind its ear. The
live-action toon scene was comically surreal.
  Piper covered her mouth to muffle a laugh, but she
caught the storybook creature's attention
anyway. The huge dog lunged toward her with its
long, red tongue flapping from the side of its mouth.
  "Down, boy!" Piper yelled as the dog
sprang.

  "This file?" Paige asked when she finished
orbing into Phoebe's office.
  "Let's see." Phoebe took the folder from
Paige's hand. She flipped it open, scanned the
page, and nodded. "This is it. Thanks."
  "Happy to help," Paige said. "Gotta go."
  "Okay. I can't tell you"-Phoebe looked
back at Paige and changed her thought in
midsen-tence-"how did you learn to do that?"
  "What?" Paige asked innocently, looking
down at her feet. She was floating twelve inches
off the floor. "Hover?"
  Phoebe nodded.
  "An unforeseen side effect of an experimental
pick-me-up potion," Paige explained. "I'm
still exhausted and stressed, but floating on air."
  "I don't want to seem unsympathetic, but"-
Phoebe glanced at her watch-"I accidentally
erased my computer file for today's column, and
I've only got seven minutes left to retype
this before I'm in big trouble with Elise."
  "You erased your work?" Paige arched an eyebrow
and barreled through the opening Phoebe had given her.
"So tell me again why you won't take a vacation?"
  "Because Elise won't give me two weeks
off." Phoebe slid into her desk chair. "That's
one of the downsides of having the most popular
column in the paper."
  "What's another?" Paige asked.
  "Writing clever, insightful copy on a deadline


  five days a week so "Ask Phoebe"
stays the most popular column in the paper."
Phoebe opened the file and started typing.
  "All work and no play makes Phoebe a
dull writer," Paige said as she orbed out.
  "Here, Wyatt. Play with these." Piper placed
a plastic bowl of lime-flavored Jell-O
cubes on Wyatt's high chair tray. He
immediately dug in with a chubby hand. "Good boy. Now
maybe Mommy can make dinner."
  Wyatt wasn't listening. He was fascinated by the
green, squishy stuff oozing between his fingers.
  Piper set the oven temperature and pulled a
package of boneless chicken breasts from the
refrigerator. Chicken with wild rice in a white
mushroom sauce was a one-dish main course she could
throw together in a few minutes, then put in the oven and
forget about for an hour. After cleaning splotches of
mud off the sofa and carpet, she wasn't in a
gourmet mood. She just wanted to sit and relax.
  "At least the big white doggie is back where
he belongs," Piper muttered softly. Wyatt had
put the cartoon pooch back in the book after it
pounced on Piper, knocking her down. Muddy
paws prints, however, had not put her in peril,
giving Wyatt no reason to whisk them back into the
book too.
  On the plus side, nobody else was aware of

  Wyatt's latest trick. Paige had orbed
back into the attic from Phoebe's office and hadn't
been downstairs since.
  "Gurg!" Wyatt laughed.
  Piper glanced at her son. Bits of green
Jell-O clung to his face and hair. He
mashed other green globs on his tray. The messy,
harmless play was so normal, she felt a warm glow
in her stomach.
  Piper placed the chicken breasts over the rice in
a glass baking dish. Her only concession to chef's
pride was making the sauce from scratch instead of
opening a can of cream soup. She poured milk into a
saucepan, added butter, and turned to put the milk
carton away in the refrigerator. She paused when
she realized she had opened the microwave instead.
  "Maybe Paige is right," Piper said with a
weary sigh.
  "About what?" Leo walked into the kitchen and
slipped his arms around Piper's waist. He laughed
after he looked at his son. "I'd hug Wyatt but
he's covered in green glop."
  "And you're elected to give him a bath," Piper
said.
  "In a minute." Leo kissed her neck, then
drew back. "What is Paige right about?"
  "She's been bugging me about taking a family
vacation." As she talked, Piper added the rest of the
ingredients to her sauce and stirred slowly.


  "Sounds like a great idea." Leo perched on a
stool by Wyatt's high chair.
  "It is a great idea," Paige said from the
doorway. "I don't see that we have a choice."
  Phoebe walked in and dropped her briefcase
on the floor. "About what?" she asked, coming up behind
Paige. "I see you have both feet on the ground."
  "Firmly," Paige said. "Apparently the
elevating effects were only temporary."
  Piper took the pan off the heat and glanced over
her shoulder. "Am I missing something?"
  "Yes, the point." Paige sat on a stool
across from Leo.
  "Which is?" Piper spoorted the sauce over the
chicken and rice, set the saucepan in the sink, and
opened the oven door.
  "I'm listening." Phoebe reached for an apple
in the fruit bowl.
  "We need a vacation." Paige held up a hand
to stay any arguments and kept talking. "I'm not
kidding. We're all worn out and stressed out. Mothering
a magic baby and giving good advice to total
strangers and trying to make up for missing out on a
lifetime of witchcraft are not trivial
pursuits. If we don't take the time to chill
out, we are going to flame out."
  As she slid the baking dish into the oven, Piper
touched the hot rack, burning herself. She closed the
oven and turned to the sink to run cold water on her
finger.

  "Who's going to save Innocents from demonic
evil if we crash and burn?" Paige asked.
  "She does have a point," Leo said. He took
a damp paper towel from Piper and wiped Wyatt's
hands.
  "And I've got two weeks off starting now."
Phoebe shrugged when all heads turned her way.
"Elise thinks my snappy patter has been a
little limp lately so she's forcing me to take a
brain break."
  "What about your column?" Piper asked.
  "Spencer Ricks is going to fill in."
Phoebe smiled and bit into her apple.
  "No worries about him becoming a permanent
replacement," Paige observed.
  That's true, Piper thought. When a witch
doctor had hexed Phoebe to obsess about her
career, she thought the cynical, competitive Spencer
Ricks wanted her job. She had turned him into a
turkey and almost butchered him before the hex was removed
and she realized he wasn't a threat. After two
weeks of the substitute columnist's caustic
advice, the Bay Mirror's readers would be
ecstatic to have Phoebe back.
  "Looks like Leo and Phoebe agree with me,"
Paige said. "You're outvoted three to one,
Piper. We are taking a family vacation."
  Piper no longer had objections. After dealing with the
huge, muddy cartoon dog, almost nuking the milk,
and burning her hand, she was


  finally willing to admit she needed a break. Her
son, her husband, her sisters, and even the world
depended on her ability to stay focused and function
perfectly, no matter what the distraction. A
vacation was definitely in order.
  "Where should we go?" Piper asked, cutting right to the
chase. "The Grand Canyon? A movie theme
park?"
  Leo shook his head. "Wyatt isn't old enough
to appreciate a theme park yet."
  "I'm open to anything," Phoebe said, "as long
as it doesn't require bug spray or sleeping
in tents."
  "Wyatt would probably also enjoy camping more when
he's older," Piper agreed.
  "I'd like to make a pilgrimage to Salem,
Massachusetts," Paige announced.
"To explore our witch heritage."
  "Been there, done that," Phoebe said. "We already
learned the basic tenets of natural magic in
colonial Virginia."
  "Absolutely not." Piper wiped the high chair
tray with a sponge. "If I'm going on vacation,
I don't want to spend it in musty museums and
tourist traps devoted to the persecution of
witches."
  "But I do," Paige protested. "I've never
been to Salem. Besides, we wouldn't be spending every
minute taking tours. There's got to be other things
to do for fun in Massachusetts. Especially this time
of year-summer is beautiful there."

  "Antiquing!" Phoebe said, grinning. "Maybe
Piper can find pieces that match our crystal and
china."
  "To replace the broken ones I'm always complaining
about?" Piper asked. Some of the family heirlooms
dated back to New England colonial times. The
idea was appealing-to her. "I'm sure Wyatt will
love that," she added sarcastically.
  "Probably not." Leo lifted Wyatt out of the
high chair and held him at arm's length to avoid
getting sticky Jell-O bits on his shirt. "But
we can see every exhibit in modern day Salem in a
couple of days. Then we could spend the rest of our
vacation at the beach."
  "Wyatt would love tst" Piper said.
  "Works for me," Phoebe agreed.
  "Great!" Paige jumped off her stool.
"I'll make all the arrangements. You guys
don't have to worry about a thing. Just start packing."

  I flltl really sorry," Paige said as she
climbed into the rear seat of the rented minivan. They were
finally driving south to Salem, Massachusetts, from
Manchester, New Hampshire, after wasting several
hours in the Sc n Francisco airport.
  "That's four times you"
  ve apologized, Paige."
  Phoebe glanced back from the front passenger
seat. "It's not your fault the plane was late
taking off."
  "I know," Paige said. "But I'm the one who
had the brilliant idea of flying into Manchester
instead of Boston because the tickets were cheaper. The
Boston flight took off on time."
  Leo buckled himself into the driver's seat.
"Nobody's going to give you a hard time for saving
money."
  "Especially me," Piper said, strapping
Wyatt into his car seat by the window in the middle

  row. "I'm going to spend every dollar we saved in
an antique store."
  "This one had some good stuff." Phoebe flicked
her hand toward the rustic red barn they had just left.
  Paige looked at the sign painted on the side
of the barn: Country Cookin' An' "TI-QUES.
The old-style lettering was identical to the faded
billboard Phoebe had spotted from the interstate.
Floodlights illuminated the words as twilight
surrendered to darkness.
  The roadside business combined good junk with good
food for hungry, treasure-hunting travelers.
Established in 1934, the sprawling antique shop
and restaurant was located ten miles from the 1-93
exit. The scenic secondary highway that followed
a narrow river and cut through a dense forest had been a
main route before the interstate was built.
  Phoebe held up a set of salt and pepper
shakers shaped like frogs and painted brown. "These were
a steal for three dollars."
  "More like highway robbery," Leo said. He
ducked when Phoebe cuffed his shoulder and waited
until she sat back before starting the engine.
  "They appeal to my inner witch," Phoebe
countered.
  "I think they're adorable," Piper said. She
pulled the side door closed and buckled herself in.
"It's just too bad "Tiques didn't have any


  pieces in our china and crystal patterns. The
food was good, though."
  "I've never had littleneck steamer clams
before," Phoebe said. "A couple were a little
gritty, but they tasted okay."
  "Dipping them in butter rinsed the grit off,
didn't it?" Piper asked.
  "Most of it." Phoebe nodded. "Is that why
raccoons wash their food?"
  "Do raccoons eat clams?" Leo asked.
  Paige closed her eyes and nodded off to the comforting
sounds of small talk that had nothing to do with mortal
danger or demonic villains.
  Maybe fate took a hint from Elise,
Paige thought, and decided to give us a Charmed
break.
  Phoebe settled back for the drive south
to Salem and stared out the side window. With only the
sliver of a waning moon in the night sky, it was too
dark to see anything beyond the range of the headlights.
  Everyone was tired after a long day and a big dinner.
They had only been back on the road a few
minutes, but Paige and Wyatt had already fallen
asleep. Piper and Leo had lapsed into the
relieved silence of parents who didn't get enough
peace and quiet.
  "Look at that," Leo said, his voice a gentle
ripple that barely disturbed the tranquility inside
the van. "A covered bridge."

  "On this road?" Phoebe glanced out the
windshield.
  Spotlights on the ground lit up the
old-fashioned wooden structure that spanned the
two-lane highway ahead. A historical marker
noted that the bridge had been built in 1843,
restored in 1930, and reinforced in 1957. Since
the highway narrowed to fit through the old bridge, the
speed limit was reduced to twenty miles per hour.
Two vehicles barely had room to pass without
scraping paint.
  "We didn't cross this bridge when we got
off the interstate, did we?" Phoebe asked,
craning to look back as the van cleared the
structure.
  "Nope." Acting as the designated
navigator, Piper opened the road atlas and
turned on a flashlight.
  "I must have turned the wrong way out of the parking
lot," Leo said, sighing.
  "Yep." Piper ran her finger over the atlas
page. "We're headed southwest-away from 1-93."
  "So we have to turn around and go back?" Leo
sounded annoyed.
  "Not necessarily," Piper said, still studying the
map. "If we keep going, we'll intercept
another secondary road that will take us back to the
interstate."
  "Good," Leo said, "because I hate
backtracking. It's a waste of time and miles."
  "We're going to waste time and miles no matter
what we do." Piper looked up with an impish


  grin. "This route adds forty miles to the trip."
  Leo shrugged. "Well, I'd rather waste time and
miles going forward, not back."
  "I don't mind the extra driving," Paige
piped up sleepily from the backseat, "but it's too
dark to see this gorgeous scenery."
  "We could stop overnight somewhere," Phoebe
suggested. "It doesn't matter if we get
to Salem tonight or tomorrow. We're not on anyone's
schedule but our own."
  "Right," Paige said. "And since our flight was
delayed we don't have hotel rooms in Salem
anymore."
  "We don't?" Phoebe looked back. "I
thought you made reservations."
  "I did, but I didn't secure them with a
credit card," Paige explained. "So the hotel
gave our rooms to someone else when we didn't show
up by six o'clock. My bad-again."
  "Not so bad," Phoebe said. "At least we
didn't already pay for them."
  "What about tomorrow night?" Leo asked.
  "Let's worry about that tomorrow," Piper said.
  "Wow, this vacation has already mellowed you out! How
far to the next town, Piper?" Paige asked.
  "Looks like ten miles or so to Cairn,"
Piper answered. "But the town is so small it's just
a tiny black dot on the map. What if it
doesn't have a motel?"

  "Hang on." Phoebe dug into her bag and
pulled out an electronic traveler's aid she
had purchased for the trip. She punched in the name of the
town, the highway, and the direction they were driving.
Then she hit the Hotel/motel button to find the
nearest accommodations.
  "The Yankee Bear," Phoebe said, reading the
information off the small screen. "Bed-and-breakfast,
two miles north of Cairn."
  Piper turned off the flashlight. "Maybe we
should wait and see what this place looks like before we
get too excited."
  Several minutes later Phoebe spotted the
wooden sign for the bed-and-breakfast on an
expansive lawn. According to the sign, the Yankee
Bear in Cairn, New Hampshire, had been in
business for almost one hundred and fifty years.
Ida Thornwood was now, but apparently had not always
been, the sole owner and proprietor. Her name was
off center, indicating that there had been an additional
name that was now painted over. A Vacancy shingle
hung from the sign's lower edge.
  "It looks perfect," Paige said as Leo
steered the van up a long, tree-lined driveway.
  "Good enough for tonight, anyway," Piper said.
  Most of the large, three-story house was invisible
in the dark night, but lights on either side of the door
and a double-globe lamp by the steps cast a welcoming
glow over the front


  porch. Pots of red geraniums hung from the
overhanging roof braces. Colorful, trailing
petunias cascaded from a flower box under a narrow,
small-paned window by the door. A porch swing,
Adirondack chairs, and a low table invited the
road-weary to stop and rest.
  Rather than wake Wyatt in case they had to move
on, Phoebe volunteered to act as scout and ask
about rooms.
  "I'll go with you," Paige said. "I have a
cramp in my foot I need to work out."
  The red front door swung inward and stood
open. Phoebe paused before the screen door to peer
inside. A lush Boston fern sat on an
antique table in the entry hall. An ornate
mirror hung on the wall above it and an antique
straight chair stood beside it. The registration counter
at the end of the foyer was made of dark, polished
wood. Several brochures advertising nearby
tourist sites were tucked into a wooden rack on the
wall by the antique counter.
  "Where is everyone?" Paige asked.
  "Maybe we have to ring the bell," Phoebe said,
pointing toward the counter as she stepped inside.
  "I insist, Nathaniel," an unseen woman
said. Her voice had the gruff timbre of age.
"I'm going to close the Yankee Bear for three
days just as I do every month. There's no point you being
here with nothing to do."
  "But you can't close this weekend, Ida," a

  man argued in a soft baritone. "What about the
solar eclipse on Sunday?"
  "The moon will still blot out the sun whether the inn is
open or not." The woman-who Phoebe assumed was
Ida Thornwood-sounded exasperated.
  "And you'll lose a lot of business you can't
afford to lose," Nathaniel pressed.
  "That's my business, not yours," the elderly
woman said as she bustled into the foyer from a front
sitting room on the left. She stopped when she
saw Phoebe and Paige.
  The impression of hospitality conveyed by the porch
setting was muted by Ida Thornwood's brusque
demeanor. Wearing a long skirt and boots with a
long-sleeved flannel shirt over a T-shirt,
the small, wizened owner of the Yankee Bear looked
to be about seventy. Her dark eyes flicked from
Phoebe to Paige.
  "Sorry, we're closed." Ida's curt tone
was dismissive. She glanced away and stepped behind the
counter, as though the sisters had already left.
  Phoebe's immediate impulse was to go someplace where
paying customers were not an inconvenience. Paige,
however, wasn't ready to back down.
  "The door was open," Paige said.
  "My mistake," the elderly woman retorted.
"I'll lock it as soon as you're gone."
  Phoebe noticed the young man watching from the arched
sitting-room doorway. Blue


  jeans and a denim work shirt brought out the blue in his
eyes, even from across the room. Tall and muscular,
with brown hair and rugged good looks, he stood with a
backpack slung over his shoulder. Catching
Phoebe's eye, he shrugged in apology for his
employer's rude manner.
  Nathaniel, I presume, Phoebe thought.
  Paige's attention was riveted on Mrs.
Thornwood. "We just want to stay for one night."
  "It's too late to turn them away, Ida,"
Nathaniel said, stepping out of the shadows. "It's
only one room."
  Phoebe noted the subtle spark of interest in
Paige's eyes when she finally noticed
Nathaniel. However, not even a good-natured,
gorgeous guy could divert a Halliwell locked
in a contest of wills.
  "Two rooms, actually," Paige said,
addressing Ida. "We have two more adults and a
baby in the car."
  "A baby?" Ida gave in with a resigned sigh
and put a registration form and a ballpoint pen on the
countertop. "Fill this out, and I'll need your
credit card-for one night."
  "Thanks." Paige smiled with satisfaction.
  "I'll go tell Piper and Leo," Phoebe
said. As she turned to leave, a younger woman raced
in from a small hallway at the back of the house.
  "Grandma, I can't find-was The woman halted,
her hand flying to her throat when she saw the
strangers.

  "Not now, Harriet," Ida snapped, waving her
granddaughter away. "Go back to your room. I'll
be there as soon as I'm finished."
  Harriet just stood, gawking at the newcomers.
She was also wearing a long skirt and T-shirt, but
her feet were bare. She pulled the edges of a bulky
sweater closed, as though to protect herself. Her dark
hair was pulled back and fastened at the nape of her
neck in a tight bun. Although she had a clear
complexion and large doe eyes accented with dark
lashes, the young woman's middle-age wardrobe and
severe hairstyle masked a pretty face and
trim figure.
  Is Harriet trying to be unattractive?
Phoebe wondered. Or is that her grandmother's
idea?
  "Now, Harriet," Ida said.
  As the young woman ran back down the hall,
Phoebe's eyes flashed with indignation. The
relationship between the old woman and her granddaughter was
none of Phoebe's business as a mortal
busybody, but she had been helping people as a Charmed
One too long. An Innocent was an Innocent.
  "Is she okay?" Phoebe asked Ida, trying
to sound concerned rather than angry or accusatory.
  "She's fine," Ida said. "Just shy."
  "I've worked here three months," the young man
explained, "and Harriet rarely talks to me."
  Phoebe had the feeling Nathaniel was trying
to reassure her. Probably so Ida won't
lose paying customers, she thought.


  "You won't be working here at all if you don't
stop talkin" now and help these people with their bags,"
Ida huffed.
  "Yes, ma'am." Nathaniel dropped his
backpack on a chair and headed toward the door.
  Phoebe found Nathaniel's polite deference
to the cranky old woman endearing, but she couldn't
shake the idea that something more than acute shyness was
troubling Harriet.
  Then again, it had been a long day, and she was
tired. Maybe she had just overreacted to a normal
exchange between an old woman and her timid
granddaughter.
  Paige had only napped for a few minutes in the
van, but that was enough to keep her wide awake now. She
punched her pillow and turned on her side, but when
she closed her eyes, her brain clicked into high
gear.
  Would the Salem museums accurately reflect
the town's ill-treatment of witches four hundred
years ago? Had anyone remembered to turn off the
coffee pot before they left for the airport? Was
Harriet's fear of strangers indicative of something
worse, as Phoebe thought? Phoebe had gone to bed
fretting about it but had fallen sound asleep
despite her concerns.. A natural empathy for people
with problems had served Phoebe well as a
psychology student, an advice columnist, and a
Charmed One. Even in the absence of magical or
mortal wrongdoing,

  she couldn't help worrying about the lost and
helpless.
  "So why am I the one who's losing sleep?"
Paige muttered. She gave up and sat up.
  Reading might shift her mind down to a drowsy
idle, but she had left her paperback in the van.
Leo had locked the car and kept the keys, so she
couldn't get it.
  There might be books or magazines in the
downstairs sitting room for guests, Paige thought
as she slipped out of bed and threw on a bathrobe.
If there wasn't anything to read, she could at least
browse the brochures in the rack by the registration
counter. She put on socks, but left her shoes
by the bed. Since the door hinges were well-oiled and
silent, Phoebe didn't stir as Paige left
the room.
  Low-wattage bulbs in antique fixtures
lit the second-floor hallway. The
floorboards creaked with old-house complaint as
Paige padded down the stairs to the landing and on down
to the front foyer. Suddenly worried about waking
someone, she decided not to search for a book. As she
stepped toward the brochure rack on the wall, a
key turned in the front-door lock. The door
opened, and the foyer lights flicked on.
  Paige exchanged surprised stares with the
good-looking handyman she had met earlier. He had
introduced himself to Leo as Nathaniel Coffey.
  "I thought you left for the night," Paige said.


  "I forgot my books." Nathaniel pointed at
the backpack on the chair where he had left it.
"I got all the way back into town before I
remembered."
  "I'm surprised you don't live here,"
Paige said, making casual conversation. Had the
backpack slipped his mind because he was thinking about
something-or someone-else? "How often does Mrs.
Thornwood rent out all twelve rooms?"
  Earlier Mrs. Thornwood had unlocked the
case on the wall behind the registration counter
to remove keys for the rooms they had rented. Ten
additional keys hung on the remaining numbered
hooks. Paige assumed that no one else was staying
at the Yankee Bear tonight.
  "Often enough. But a word of advice,"
Nathaniel said as he picked up his backpack.
"Ida hates being called Mrs. Thornwood."
  "Warning noted," Paige said. It would seem
odd for an elderly woman to object to being
addressed with respect, but Ida Thornwood was
blatantly contrary.
  "And she doesn't want anyone else living here
full-time." Nathaniel moved to the registration
counter and set down his backpack. He didn't
seem in a hurry to leave.
  "I got the impression she doesn't want
anyone staying here anytime," Paige said.
  "Only three days out of every twenty-eight."
Nathaniel smiled. "Like clockwork."

  Another Ida oddity, Paige thought, intrigued.
  "Ida isn't very friendly, but she's usually
civil. She's just"-Nathaniel hesitated,
groping for an acceptable way to describe Ida's
dour disposition-"eccentric."
  "And Harriet's shy," Paige added,
info-fishing for Phoebe. Nathaniel had worked at
the Yankee Bear for three months. He would have
noticed if anything was amiss between Harriet and her
grandmother.
  "Very shy." Picking up the backpack again,
Nathaniel turned to leave.
  But he's not talking, Paige thought.
  "One sec before you turn off the lights." Paige
scanned the rack of brochures and pulled out a
pamphlet for a place called Mystic Knoll.
"Okay," she said, smiling. "You can go now."
  "Are you interested in the occult?" Nathaniel
asked.
  "Just curious," Paige answered warily, taken
aback by his reference to the paranormal. "Are you?"
  "Yes, but not as a believer. I'm a grad
student at the University of New Hampshire,"
Nathaniel explained.
  "They have a Department of the Occult?" Paige
asked. His scholarly credentials were not as
surprising-or alarming-as his course of study. She
was a witch, after all.
  "I'm working on a Ph.d. in American
Culture, specifically folklore," he said.


  "A Ph.d." Paige was impressed. "So
you're not really a handyman."
  "No, I'm a handyman," Nathaniel said.
"I have to do something to pay my expenses while I'm
researching my thesis."
  "A thesis on what?" Paige asked.
  "The psychological effects of local legends
on the people within a community."
  Paige raised an eyebrow. She had never thought
about how people who came in constant contact with the
inexplicable might be influenced by it.
  Which explains why Nathaniel is working on a
graduate degree and I'm not, she thought.
  "How are they affected?" Paige asked with
genuine interest.
  Nathaniel leaned against the counter. "Believe it
or not, most people completely reject scientific
explanations that shatter their myths."
  "They do?" Paige blinked. She would have thought the
opposite was true.
  Nathaniel nodded. "I know, it's mind-boggling,
but a lot of people want to believe in magic. Half
the folks in Cairn think Mystic Knoll has
some kind of weird power." He hesitated, holding
her gaze. "But you're not like that."
  "Delusional?" Paige rephrased so she could
answer honestly and pulled two more brochures from the
rack, one for Homer's Bait and Boats and
another for the Cairn Historical Society.
"No, I am not delusional."

  CkApDo
  "You should take the Mystic Knoll tour
anyway." Nathaniel tapped the pamphlet.
"They've carbon-dated pottery shards from the site
at four thousand years old. The stone configurations
are more random, but they may have had an astronomical
function similar to Stonehenge in Great Britain."
  "Really? I might do that." Paige yawned.
"Sorry. It's the hour, not the company."
  "I hope so." Nathaniel picked up his
backpack. "Maybe we could have dinner tomorrow." When
Paige hesitated, he hastened to add, "To discuss
what you think about Mystic Knoll."
  "I'd love to, but we're leaving in the
morning," Paige said with an apologetic shrug.
  She didn't want to turn down the offer.
Aside from being the most attractive man she'd
met in weeks, Nathaniel was intelligent, caring,
and easy to talk to. His academic interest in the
paranormal was intriguing, but she couldn't ask her
family to put their vacation on hold so she could
keep a dinner date.
  "Oh, right. One night. I forgot."
Nathaniel strode to the door and looked back before
he closed it behind him. "That's my rotten luck."
  "Mine too." Paige sighed as his key turned
in the lock. She watched through the narrow front window
until his headlights disappeared down the drive.
Then, as she turned to go upstairs, a pattering sound
drew her attention back to the porch.


  The staccato rhythm intensified as Paige rushed
to the window. The porch lights were still on. She
pressed her face against the middle pane and looked
down as dozens of large, winged bugs smashed into the
house. The fatal cadence increased as dozens
became hundreds. The main swarm hit with such force
Paige's heart lurched. She jumped back as
bugs splattered against the window, darkening the small
panes.
  A moment passed before Paige realized the thumping
noise coming from the back of the house wasn't being
generated by the suicidal swarm. She crept back
to the counter and down the hallway Harriet had used
earlier. It ended at the doorway to a large country
kitchen. Another hallway connected from the left a
few feet before the door.
  The frenzied beat of kamikaze bugs tapered off
and the thumping sound stopped suddenly.
  Paige paused where the two halls joined,
shivering in the eerie stillness. She was about to retrace
her steps when a door in the adjacent hallway
opened. Light poured into the hall as Ida stepped
out.
  "Are you coming back, Grandma?" Harriet asked
from inside the room. She sounded frantic but
unharmed, and anxious for Ida to return.
  "After I check the windows. Go to sleep." Ida
flicked a switch, turning on an overhead light
as she closed the bedroom door. She took a step

  toward Paige before she noticed her. "You looking
for something?"
  "Something to read." Paige held up the
pamphlets.
  "The stairs are that way." Ida motioned toward the
foyer.
  Paige had faced down too many demons to be
intimidated by a scrawny old lady with an
acerbic attitude. She stood her ground. "Are
swarms of bugs with a death wish common around here?"
  "Mystic Knoll is right down the road," Ida
explained. "Dang place makes the wildlife go
crazy sometimes."
  Paige nodded as though that theory made sense.
She wouldn't have pegged Ida as someone who gave
credence to the paranormal. Maybe Ida knew the
Mystic Knoll explanation was bunk, but she just
wanted to avoid a lengthy discussion.
  "Did the noise scare Harriet?" Paige
pressed.
  "She has nightmares," Ida said, "and I'd like
to check for broken windows before the sun comes up."
  "I'll see you in the morning, then." Nodding her
good night, Paige headed back to her room. She
wished Phoebe's laptop wasn't locked in the
van with her book so she could access the Internet.
  Something had driven those bugs to self-destruct
en masse.

  StCS-ULCQ her coffee cup as she sat on
the porch swing. Leo sat at the other end, with
Wyatt safely tucked under his arm. As soon as
she was settled, Leo pushed the swing into motion.
  "Eeee!" Wyatt laughed.
  Piper smiled. To the casual observer, her son
was a normal, happy child with proud but average
parents. As a rule, that was an illusion she
didn't dare indulge. Their reality was too
hazardous.
  "Wyatt likes that," Paige said, moving her
head in time to the rocking swing. She sat in one of the
low-slung Adirondack chairs, reading a
brochure.
  "A thrill a minute." Leo grinned.
"We're working our way up to teeter-totters."
  Piper sipped her coffee and sighed with content.
"I could get used to this."
  "What "this" exactly?" Phoebe asked.
She

  lounged in the other Adirondack chair with her
feet propped on the low table.
  Lest there be big ears lurking about, Piper
didn't voice what was really on her mind. They
had just spent twenty-four hours without being threatened
by some despicable evil that was intent on kidnapping
Wyatt or destroying them, an Innocent, or the
world. So maybe it was possible to get away from
everything after all! Until events proved
otherwise, she intended to enjoy every unexciting,
ordinary minute of her vacation.
  "Having someone else make the bed and breakfast,"
Piper said. "Morning coffee on a porch swing
followed by a whole day with nothing pressing to do.
Except go shopping."
  Paige looked up. "I thought we were going
to Salem."
  "Let's go to Salem tomorrow." Piper held up
Phoebe's electronic travel aid. "According to this
gadget, Cairn has a bunch of antique
shops."
  "Seriously?" Paige asked. "You really want
to stay?"
  "Yeah." Piper nodded. "This town is so far off
the beaten path, I might actually find some of the china
pieces we're missing."
  "And tike sooner we get going, the sooner we
can take Wyatt to the park," Leo said, standing up.
  The instant the swing stopped, Wyatt started
to cry.
  "Don't worry, buddy." Leo scooped the
boy up and held him high in both hands. "We'll
have


  fun rummaging through all that old junk. Maybe
we'll find a Buck Rogers lunch box or a
Roy Rogers cowboy hat."
  "Careful, Leo," Phoebe admonished.
"You're dating yourself. Besides, you don't look old
enough to know who Buck Rogers and Roy Rogers
were."
  "Who were they?" Paige asked.
  "A 1930's space hero and a 1940's singing
cowboy," Leo answered.
  "A Buck Rogers lunch box would probably
break the bank," Piper said, standing up. She took
Wyatt while Leo went to get the diaper bag from
their room. "Are you sure you two won't mind
hanging around New Hampshire another day?"
  "Actually, no," Phoebe laid. "I don't
mind."
  "It's all right with me, too." Paige took a
doughnut off the tray on the table. "I'll find
something to do. Take the Mystic Knoll tour, have
dinner with Nathaniel-was
  "With the handyman?" Piper wasn't being
judgmental. She was, as always, amazed at
Paige's ability to attract handsome men no
matter where she was or what she was doing.
  "Graduate student working on his Ph.d. at the
University of New Hampshire," Paige
explained.
  Phoebe's eyes widened. "Did he ask you out
in your sleep?"
  "Midnight encounter in the front hall,"
Paige said.

  CkApDo
  "Whatever. Have fun. I'm out of here." Resting
Wyatt on her hip, Piper hurried toward the
van. "Bye!"
  Piper's step was as light as her heart. She had
forgotten how it felt to have the weight of the world lifted
from her shoulders.
  She felt free.
  Phoebe sighed as Piper and Leo drove off
for a day of family fun with Wyatt. She couldn't
remember when she had seen Piper so rested and
relaxed. The Yankee Bear had had the opposite
affect on her. Phoebe sensed something sinister that
went far beyond concern for a timid young woman, but she
couldn't define it or explain why the feeling was
strong.
  "Want to check out Mystic Knoll with me?"
Paige reached for the last apple-cinnamon doughnut,
then changed her mind.
  "We don't have a car," Phoebe said, taking
advantage of the convenient excuse. She wasn't as
eager to explore rural New Hampshire as her
sisters. Between crushing deadlines and a heavy schedule
of personal appearances, her life as a popular
newspaper columnist was so hectic that now she just
wanted to sit and read.
  "It's just down the road," Paige said. "We can
walk."
  "Thanks, but I'll pass." Phoebe glanced
at the lone doughnut on the tray. She had been
fighting a carbohydrate craving for the past half
hour.


  Her willpower finally collapsed on typical
tourist grounds: She was on vacation.
  As Phoebe reached for the doughnut, Harriet
burst through the front door and swept the tray up
off the table.
  "Wait a minute-was Phoebe spoke on
reflex.
  Harriet froze with a white-knuckled grip on
the tray. "I have to pick up the dishes."
  "Okay," Phoebe said, smiling. She had
reacted without taking into consideration Harriet's
fragile personality. To counter the young woman's
unease, she clasped her hands with a pleading look.
"But could I please have that last doughnut?"
  Paige watched without saying anything, as though she
knew a sudden sound might send Harriet scurrying
for coven
  Harriet nodded and help out the tray, revealing a
large bruise under her short shirtsleeve.
  Pretending not to notice the injury, Phoebe
took the doughnut. "Thanks, Harriet."
  "Sure." With another quick nod, Harriet put
Leo's and Piper's empty coffee cups on the
tray and rushed back inside.
  "She has a huge bruise on her arm,"
Phoebe told Paige. "Any theories about how
she got it?"
  "Throwing herself against a wall, maybe," Paige
said. I
  "What?" That wasn't the answer Phoebe was
expecting. Her first inclination was to blame Ida.
"What makes you say that?"

  CllA caret MED
  "I heard something banging against a wall when I
went downstairs last night," Paige explained.
"I think Harriet freaked out when the bugs started
battering the house."
  "Bugs?" Phoebe frowned. "What bugs?"
  Paige straightened up, scanned the porch
floor, and glanced at the window. "She must have
cleaned up last night."
  "Who?" Phoebe asked, getting more confused.
  "Ida." Paige leaned to look through the porch
railing and pointed at the lawn below. "Those bugs."
  Phoebe stood up to look. Piles of smashed
insect bodies littered the grass. "That's a lot
of dead bugs."
  "Millions with nothing to live for, apparently."
Paige sat back. "Ida said Mystic Knoll
makes the wildlife around here go crazy sometimes."
  "When did she say that?" Phoebe asked. The
old woman's conversation had been limited to a
grudging "good morning" when she had brought out the
doughnuts and coffee.
  "I ran into her coming out of Harriet's room last
night," Paige explained. "She said Harriet
has nightmares."
  "Do you believe her?" Phoebe took a bite
of the doughnut and washed it down with cold coffee.
  "Don't know. You're the psychologist, so that's
your department." Paige drained her cup and set it
on the table. She brushed doughnut


  crumbs off her jeans as she stood up. "If
there's anything strange about Mystic Knoll,
maybe I'll get a clue when I take the
tour."
  "Maybe," Phoebe said absently, finishing the
doughnut. "I'll see what I can find out about
Harriet."
  Neither one of them questioned the impulse to investigate.
Phoebe couldn't turn away from a person in need,
and Paige couldn't resist a mystery. There might be
logical, harmless explanations for the suicidal
bugs and Harriet's emotional state, but they had
to find out.
  Nathaniel rounded the corner of the house. He
wore a Red Sox baseball cap and carried a
rake and an old bushel basket made of wooden
slats and wire. "Morning, ladies."
  "Hey, Nathaniel!" Paige waved. "What
are you doing here? I thought Ida gave you three days
off."
  "I only take off when she closes the
Yankee Bear," Nathaniel said, looking
directly at Paige. "But since you're still here,
I don't mind being here too."
  still don't think I can stand the sugar rush,
Phoebe thought, hiding an amused smile. At
least her inner truth meter wasn't clanging with
alarm. Nathaniel meant what he said. "Excuse
me, but I could use another cup of coffee."
  "Take your time," Paige said with a pointed
look.
  Phoebe assumed her sister wanted a few min-

  utes alone with Nathaniel to confirm their dinner
date. Taking the hint and their empty coffee cups,
she walked back to the kitchen. Ida wasn't there.
Harriet was transferring clean dishes from the
dishwasher to the cupboards.
  "Is there more coffee, Harriet?" Phoebe
asked.
  With her back to the door, Harriet hadn't heard
Phoebe come in. At the question, she jumped with a
muffled cry.
  "Sorry," Phoebe said. "I didn't mean
to startle you."
  Harriet nervously wiped her hands on her
apron, then pointed to a coffee urn on the counter.
"Coffee's there."
  "Thanks." Phoebe poured herself another cup and
paused to take a sip. She cast an
appreciative glance around the spacious kitchen.
  Sunlight streamed through the windows in the back
door and over the sink. A brick fireplace with a
raised hearth filled half of the outside wall. The
center of the room was dominated by a large
butcher-block island, and a built-in table with
booths filled one corner. Seat cushions in a
country patchwork pattern matched the curtains.
  Noting the jar of pens and pencils, notebooks,
telephone directory, and phone on the table,
Phoebe guessed that the kitchen doubled as an
office.
  "Piper would be in her glory here," Phoebe
said. "She's a chef."


  "Uh-huh." Harriet didn't look toward
Phoebe as she unloaded more dishes.
  "Your sign says the Yankee Bear is one
hundred fifty years old." Phoebe hoped her
casual interest would dispel some of Harriet's
anxiety. "Has it always been in your family?"
  "Grandpa bought it," Harriet mumbled, then
cleared her throat. "In 1950," she said in a
stronger voice.
  "I see." Phoebe nodded, taking another sip
of coffee. She was afraid Harriet would clam up
again if she pressed too hard.
  "He's dead," Harriet added.
  "Oh, that's too bad," Phoebe said. The
disclosure explained the name that had been painted over
on the sign, but it also raised another question: Why had
Ida erased the reference to her dead husband?
  "No guests allowed in the kitchen," Ida said as
she came into the room.
  Phoebe noted that the woman walked with a brisk
bustle. The message in Ida's posture was
unmistakable: She was in charge and wanted everyone
to know.
  And her timing is terrible, Phoebe thought.
Harriet had seemed to be opening up a little before her
grandmother interrupted.
  Harriet grabbed a stack of dishes and hurried
back to the cupboard without uttering another word.
  Guess that conversation is over, Phoebe thought

  with irritation and dismay. Her suspicions that
Ida mistreated her granddaughter seemed more and more
likely.
  "When do you folks plan on leaving?" Ida
asked.
  "Later," Phoebe said. She didn't want
to confront Ida about extending their stay without
backup. Paige had told Ida they wanted
rooms for only one night, and staying longer was
Piper's idea. "Piper and Leo went into town, and
Paige wants to take the Mystic Knoll tour."
  "You'll be here until this afternoon?" Ida's scowl
deepened with displeasure.
  "Yes, and I need a shower," Phoebe said.
We will be here until this afternoon, she told herself as she
left the kitchen, and until tomorrow morning, too.
  The second and third floors each had six
rooms and two shared bathrooms. The door to the bath
across from the room she shared with Paige was locked.
She put her ear to the door. The shower water was
running.
  "Hello?" Phoebe called and knocked. She
hadn't heard Paige come in, but they were the only
guests at the inn. "Are you in there, Paige?"
  "I'll be done in a few minutes!" Paige
called back.
  "No rush!" Phoebe walked down the hall to the
other bathroom on the floor. By the time she finished
dressing in white shorts and a


  spaghetti-strap top, Paige had left the
inn.
  Grabbing a towel and the thriller novel she had
started reading on the plane, Phoebe went back
outside. She settled in one of three wooden
lawn chairs by a flower garden in full, exuberant
bloom. She had barely started reading when she heard
Nathaniel shout.
  "Harriet?" The handyman strode across the lawn.
He paused and cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Harriet!"
  Phoebe marked her place with the Mystic Knoll
brochure she had borrowed from Paige and let the
book fall in her lap. She sat up when
Nathaniel hurried toward her.
  "Have you seen Harriet?" Nathaniel asked.
  "Not since I left her in the kitchen about thirty
minutes ago," Phoebe said. "Is she missing?"
  "Nothing to worry about," Nathaniel said.
"We'll find her."
  The sound of a motor drew Phoebe's gaze
toward the driveway. Ida sat behind the wheel of an
old pickup truck. She slowed the truck and
shouted out the passenger side window.
  "I'll check the road!" Ida didn't wait
for Nathaniel to respond. She gunned the engine and
drove toward the highway.
  "Is Harriet on foot?" Phoebe asked.
  Nathaniel nodded and turned toward the woods.
  Phoebe dropped her book on the lawn chair
and jogged after him. "She couldn't have gone far."

  Nathaniel paused, frowning uncertainly.
"What are you doing?"
  "Going with you to help find Harriet," Phoebe
said. Nathaniel was obviously worried about the young
woman. He was also, apparently, suspicious of
her motives. "Four eyes are better than
two."
  "You don't know these woods or Harriet's
habits," Nathaniel said. "And I need to be
looking for her, not talking to you."
  "Then you'd better get moving," Phoebe said.
"And I'll be right behind you."
  Realizing she would not be dissuaded, Nathaniel led
the way through a break in the fence. "If you get lost,
you're on your own."
  Phoebe followed Nathaniel down a worn
path through the trees. She kept quiet as he
called Harriet's name. A stranger's voice
might frighten the runaway. When the trail forked,
Nathaniel turned right without hesitation.
  "How do you know this is the right way?" Phoebe
asked, pushing aside a leafy branch.
  "I don't," Nathaniel explained. "She
went this way the last time."
  "Does she disappear often?" Phoebe asked.
When Nathaniel didn't answer, she tried
to allay his reservations. "I don't mean to meddle,
Nathaniel. I handle people's troubles professionally,
and I'm worried about Harriet. Ida is such a
strong personality-was
  "And very protective," Nathaniel interjected.


  The supportive answer told Phoebe that
Nathaniel didn't perceive Ida as a threat. She
phrased her next question with that in mind, being careful not
to sound accusatory. "Because Harriet's so shy?"
  "Are you a psychiatrist?" Nathaniel asked.
  "I have a degree in psychology," Phoebe
assured him, telling the truth without being specific.
  Nathaniel stopped and looked back. He
searched her gaze, trying to decide whether or not
to trust her.
  "And I make my living helping people solve their
problems," Phoebe added. "I'd like to help
Harriet."
  "I'm not sure that's possible," Nathaniel
said. "Harriet isn't just shy. Sh caret has .
. . periods of erratic behavior."
  "I don't understand," Phoebe prompted.
  "Screaming, tearing her clothes, throwing things,"
Nathaniel explained. "I once found her bashing
the utility shed with a shovel. She attacked me when
I tried to stop her."
  "How awful," Phoebe said.
  "Harriet can't help it, but it's one good reason
why we have to find her before someone else does,"
Nathaniel said.
  "What's the other?" Phoebe asked.
  "She might hurt herself." Nathaniel called
Harriet's name and scanned the woods as he
plunged ahead.

  Nathaniel's information supported Paige's
theory that Harriet got the bruise when she threw
herself against a wall. It also raised more questions. Since
Phoebe might not have another opportunity, she
wanted to ask them all now.
  Phoebe asked the obvious question first. "Is it a
medical condition?"
  Nathaniel stopped to peer at a large fallen
log, then sighed. He stared at the ground for a moment,
as though trying to decide whether or not to confide in
her.
  "I can't help if I don't know what the
problem is," Phoebe prodded.
  "Funny," Nathaniel said. "That's what I
told Ida when I asked questions about Harriet two
months ago. I'd only been working here a month,
but Ida must have sensed I really cared."
  "So do I," Phoebe said.
  Nathaniel nodded. "Harriet's had fits
since she was born, but they've never found anything
physical to explain them."
  A hideous screech sounded ahead.
  "She's at old man Dalton's place."
Nathaniel broke into a run.
  Phoebe had trouble keeping up. She stayed on
the path until she saw Nathaniel cut through the
trees toward a clearing. Briars scratched her
legs when she veered off the trail after him.
  "Get off my property, freak!" a man
yelled. "Get out of here!"
  Phoebe saw Harriet crouched by a stone wall.


  The young woman's face was streaked with dirt.
Vines and leaves were tangled in her hair.
Harriet shook her fists and shrieked at a
scruffy-looking old man wearing coveralls and a
cowboy hat.
  "Get!" The old man threw a rock. It
missed Harriet and sailed over the stone wall.
"Get out of here before I call the sheriff!"
  "Calm down, Jed!" Nathaniel raised his
voice, but stayed calm, as he entered a cluttered
yard. He skirted a rusted old car and piles of
discarded junk as he walked toward Harriet.
"I'll get her."
  "Ida should keep that loony locked up," Jed
Dalton huffed.
  "Be careful, Jed," Nathaniel said. "Some
folks say the same thing about you."
  When Harriet saw Nathaniel, she bolted.
The young man was quicker. He threw his arms around the
woman, pinning hers to her sides. She fought,
shrieking and kicking for several seconds before her
crazed expression blanked and she passed out.
  Phoebe waited at the tree line as
Nathaniel lifted Harriet's limp form. He
had taken effective control, and her presence might
just complicate matters.
  "Let's go," Nathaniel said as he passed
Phoebe.
  Phoebe fell into step behind the student handyman
again. He carried Harriet back to the fallen log
before he stopped to rest. Phoebe perched atop the
rough bark as he gently placed the unconscious
woman on the ground. He sat down, cradling
Harriet's head in his lap.

  CHARMED
  "After that," Phoebe said, referring to the old
man's cruel taunts, "it's easy to understand why
Harriet avoids people."
  "To be blunt, she's thought of as the town
weirdo," Nathaniel said. "Everyone has either
seen one of her episodes or heard about them. That's
why Ida finally decided to home school her when she
was fourteen, to protect her from harm and humiliation.
That was six years ago."
  "Harriet hasn't gone anywhere in six years?"
Phoebe was aghast.
  "Not without her grandmother and not very often," Nathaniel
said. "Ida only tolerates having me around because
she and Harriet can't handle the heavy work."
  "If Ida doesn't want anyone around, why
does she run an inn?" Phoebe asked,
puzzled.
  "She inherited the Yankee Bear free and clear
when her husband, Joshua, died," Nathaniel
explained. "The inn doesn't get a lot of
business, but enough to pay the bills. Still, it is too
bad Ida and Harriet can't move."
  "Why can't they?" Phoebe asked.
  "Ida's worked at the Yankee Bear since she
married Joshua Thornwood forty-something years
ago," Nathaniel said. "Running the inn is all
she knows how to do. She's too old and too proud
to work a service job for someone else."
  "That's too bad," Phoebe said. "Going where
no one knows about Harriet's affliction would be a good
idea."


  "That's not the reason Ida should leavest"
Nathaniel said. "Mystic Knoll is less than
a quarter mile down the road. Getting away from it
might cure Harriet."
  "Seriously?" Blsided by the extraordinary
statement, Phoebe asked for clarification. "Are you
saying that whatever drove a million bugs to kill
themselves last night is causing Harriet's strange
behavior?"
  "You saw the swarm?" Nathaniel asked,
surprised.
  "Paige did," Phoebe explained.
  Nathaniel leaned forward and rested his arms on his
knees. "I don't buy into the local belief that
Mystic Knoll has some kind of supernatural
power."
  "What do you think?" Phoebe asked.
  "I think huge electromagnetic discharges
affect the whole area," Nathaniel said, "some things
more than others. Mostly-but not
exclusively-wildlife ... and Harriet."
  Phoebe sat forward, struck again by the feeling that
something was dreadfully wrong. "Why Harriet?"
  "Proximity," Nathaniel said. "Except for
old Jed's place, the Yankee Bear is the
only residence within three miles of Mystic
Knoll. It's possible that an entire lifetime of
exposure made her highly susceptible to the
surges."
  "Is that Jed's problem too?" Phoebe asked.
  Nathaniel shook his head. "He only moved in

  a few years ago. Nobody lived there for years
before that. Harriet has lived at the Yankee Bear
since the day she was born."
  "But overexposure to Mystic Knoll is only
a theory," Phoebe said.
  "Yeah, but it's the only explanation that makes
sense." Standing up, Nathaniel took off his
baseball cap, smoothed back his dark hair, and
flipped the cap back on. "We'd better get
back. I'm glad we talked, but don't tell
Ida. She doesn't like people poking around in her
business."
  Phoebe smiled. "Yeah, I got that."
  Harriet moaned when Nathaniel lifted her, but
she didn't struggle. She rested her head on his
shoulder as he led the way back to the inn.
  The quiet walk through the forest helped Phoebe
absorb everything they had discussed. Nathaniel's
theory about electromagnetic emanations from Mystic
Knoll was fascinating, but it wasn't the only
explanation that made sense to a witch educated in
psychology.
  Was Ida protecting her granddaughter, as
Nathaniel believed? Or was Harriet
periodically giving in to an overwhelming sense of
helplessness and acting out a lifelong fear of her
grandmother?
  "I can't believe they have three water goblets that
match Grams's crystal," Piper whispered
to Leo. They were huddled in a corner of an
antique shop called Odds 'n" Ends, the third
store they had browsed in the quaint New


  England town. "And the price isn't that
outrageous."
  "They're thirty dollars apiece!" Leo
hissed, keeping his voice low. Since the aisles
were narrow and crammed with stuff, they had left the
stroller by the front door. Wyatt had fallen
asleep on Leo's shoulder.
  "Trust me," Piper said as she carefully took
the goblets off the shelf. "Ifs a bargain."
  "Ten bucks." Leo rattled the small toy
tractor and wagon he held in the hand cupped around
Wyatt. "That's a bargain."
  "Yes, dear." After giving him a quick peck on
the cheek, Piper went to the front of the store and put
the goblets on the counter. A thin, elderly man sat
in a chair by the front window, reading a newspaper.
  "Customer, Mabel!" the man called out without
looking up.
  "All right, Angus." A short, stocky
woman came through a door in the wall behind the counter.
"You don't have to shout."
  "Do if your hearing aid's not turned on,"
Angus retorted. He tipped the chair back with the
front legs off the floor, never taking his eyes from
the paper.
  Ignoring him, Mabel smiled at Piper.
"Is this all?"
  "And this." Leo rattled the tractor. Piper
set it on the counter.
  Mabel glanced at Wyatt and smiled.
"Looks like

  your little guy is too tuckered out to play with it."
  "It's got lots of little metal pieces,"
Leo said. "I'm going to save it till he can
appreciate it."
  "Could you pack the goblets with extra padding?"
Piper asked, handing the woman four twenties and a
ten. "We're not going straight back to the inn."
  "I can do better than that," Mabel said. "For
an extra five dollars, I'll have them
delivered. Where are you staying?"
  "The Yankee Bear." Piper gave Mabel a
five-dollar bill to cover the delivery charge.
  "The Yankee Bear?" Mabel looked dismayed.
  The legs of Angus's chair hit the floor with a
crack. His eyes narrowed over the top edge of his
paper. "Better get another twenty, Mabel."
  "Another twenty?" Piper frowned, suddenly
suspecting a scam. She wasn't about to be
suck-ered by a crafty pair of old people trying
to fleece the tourists. "What for?"
  "To bribe the delivery boy," Angus huffed.
  "Although I'm not sure extra money will convince
Edgar to go out there," Mabel muttered.
  "It's not that far," Leo said.
  "No, but that's not the problem," Angus said.
"Ida Thornwood doesn't like local folks coming
around."
  "It's not her fault," Mabel said as she
wrapped the first goblet in protective bubble wrap.
"Joshua was a hard man, and he kept poor Ida
on a short leash when he was alive.


  Twenty years and she never complained."
  Piper assumed the deceased Joshua had been
Ida's husband.
  "Old habits die hard, I guess,"
Mabel said.
  "Just like old rumors," Angus added pointedly.
  Piper just nodded. Hearing the town gossip about the
cranky innkeeper made her uncomfortable, but she
didn't want to be rude. The old couple
obviously enjoyed having an audience. Mabel was
taking more time than she needed to wrap the goblets.
  "Nobody ever proved Abigail bewitched her
father into hanging himself, but the dang story just won't
stay buried." Angus snorted with disgust.
  "It never was buried," Mabel argued. She
scowled at Angus, then turned back to Piper and
Leo. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial
whisper. "There was bad blood between Abigail
Thornwood and her father. Joshua refused
to acknowledge she even existed, but nobody blamed
him. Abigail was born deranged and marked
by evil."
  "Marked how?" Leo asked.
  A moment earlier and Piper would have nudged him so
he wouldn't encourage the gossiping. However, the
mention of "evil" couldn't be ignored by a
Whitelighter or a Charmed One.
  "An ugly red blotch that covered almost half her
face." Mabel held her hand at an angle across
her right eye.
  "A birthmark," Piper said.

  Mabel nodded and carefully placed the second
wrapped goblet in a small brown paper shopping
bag with the first. "She was touched in the head to begin withand
being the town outcast just made her madder. And I
don't mean just angry."
  "Beats me how she got in a family way with
Harriet." Angus shook his head and turned the
page of his newspaper.
  "Abigail was only nineteen when she died having
that girl," Mabel said. "Alone with her mother at the
Yankee Bear. Harriet was never the troublemaker
her mother was, but she's just as crazy."
  "And Ida?" Leo asked.
  His interest troubled Piper. Was it idle
curiosity, or did Leo detect something in the
story that escaped her? A disfiguring birthmark and a
disinterested father who probably committed suicide were
terrible burdens for a young girl, but nothing
extraordinary in the magical sense.
  "Ida takes care of her own, but nobody in
Cairn goes out to the Yankee Bear without a good
reason." Mabel put the third glass in the
shopping bag and held out her hand for the extra cash for
delivery.
  "Thanks, but we'll take it." Piper picked
up the bag and grabbed Leo's arm to haul him out of the
store. He pulled back just long enough to grab the bag
with the tractor and wagon.
  "What's the big rush?" Leo asked when they were
back outside. "They owe us five dollars."
  "It was worth five bucks to get out of there."


  Piper handed the goblet bag to Leo and took
Wyatt. He woke up when she put him back in
the stroller. "I really didn't need to hear Ida
and Harriet's tragic life histories."
  "They've obviously had a hard time," Leo
said.
  "That's probably why the whole conversation creeped
me out." Piper shuddered.
  Leo was ever the sympathetic soul, but she was on
vacation and in no mood to let anything spoil the day,
especially a problem no one had asked them
to solve.
  "I thought Mabel and Angus were a hoot,"
Leo said.
  "A hoot?" Piper rolled her eyes at the
outdated expression. Leo winced when Wyatt
started to howl. He gave the bags back to Piper and
grabbed the stroller push bar.
  "C'mon, big guyst" he said to his son.
"It's time to go have some fun!"
  The movement of the rolling stroller calmed Wyatt
down. He was dry eyed and quiet when they arrived
at the park. On a side street across from a brick
school, the grassy expanse was equipped with
swings, a push-go-round, teeter-totters, and
elaborate dimbing structures. Large oaks and
maples shaded picnic tables and a triple-tiered
water fountain. Piper sat on the ground, watching
while Leo pushed Wyatt in a baby swing.
  "Not too high, Dad," Piper admonished
Leo.
  "Don't worry." Leo laughed when Wyatt
squealed. "He likes it."

  ChApDo
  Piper lay back to stare at wisps of white
cloud in the blue sky. She had to remember to thank
Paige for pushing the vacation idea. Lying on the
grass listening to her husband and son laugh was the first
time in ages she had felt that all was right with the world.
  Then a fat brown toad jumped on her chest.
  "Ahhh!" Startled, Piper swatted the
creature away as she jumped to her feet.
  "What?" Leo stopped Wyatt's swing with a
frantic look in her direction.
  "Nothing." Piper shrugged, feeling a little
foolish. "Just a toad with no sense of direction."
  "Uh-guh!" Gurgling, Wyatt waved his hands.
  "It's more than just a toad," Leo said as
screams erupted around them.
  Following Leo's gaze, Piper turned and stared
as mothers grabbed kids off jungle gyms, swing
sets, and picnic table benches. They ran for the
parking lot, leaving diaper bags, picnic
baskets, strollers, and tricycles.
  Wyatt laughed as thousands of toads emerged from
hiding under rocks and in the grass, transforming the
park into an undulating sea of brown amphibians.

  phoebe had
  106DC IlflQuite returned to the wooden
lawn chair when Nathaniel took Harriet back
into the house. Ida's truck was parked by a large
equipment shed behind the inn. With the old woman there
to take care of the runaway, Phoebe didn't
worry when Nathaniel walked down the long
driveway with a Weed Eater a few minutes
later. She settled back to read.
  Phantom Fire had started to pick up, but she
couldn't concentrate on the intricate plot. Her
mind kept wandering back to her earlier conversation with
Nathaniel.
  She had no reason to doubt that Harriet
experienced uncontrollable bursts of odd
behavior. The question nagging at her was what caused
them.
  Ordinarily, eliminating a physical problem
would leave two other options as the cause of
Harriet's condition: emotional or supernatural.

  CiiApDo
  This time, however, Phoebe had to consider the
effects of electromagnetic discharges as well.
The scientific theory was as plausible as the
possibility that Mystic Knoll exerted some kind
of mystical power over the community.
  Plausible from a witch's perspective anyway,
Phoebe thought.
  She opened her eyes and pulled the Mystic
Knoll brochure out of the paperback. The cover
photograph depicted a large monolithic
boulder with a crude notch chiseled into the top.
Sunlight glinted through the notch. According to the
brochure, carbon-dating of pottery shards and bone
tools found at the archaeological dig site
indicated that the stone structures were four thousand
years old.
  Phoebe unfolded the pamphlet and glanced over
the color photographs inside. Primitive
monoliths guarded meandering stone walkways
overgrown with vines and moss. A network of open
passageways and underground tunnels connected
several subterranean chambers. A diagram showed
that the pattern was random, with the largest cavern off
center, near the north side. According to the text, the
stone configuration had served as a fortification or an
astronomical device.
  "Except that something about it probably makes the
local wildlife go crazy," Phoebe mumbled
to herself.
  Myths and legends did not evolve without


  having some basis in reality. The problem,
Phoebe realized, was that either magic or
electromagnetic energy could explain Mystic
Knoll's unusual properties. She had more questions
for Nathaniel, but he was weeding the gardens by the
road, and she didn't want to raise any
suspicions.
  Phoebe put the brochure back in her book and
leaned back. She closed her eyes and became
aware of a noise rising behind her that had not been
audible a moment before. It reminded her of a playing
card snapping against the spokes of a spinning bicycle
wheel. She sat up, glanced back, and immediately
rolled off the chair to lie flat on the ground,
covering her head.
  It was a scene right out of the old Alfred
Hitchcock movie The Birds. Phoebe cringed
as hundreds of brown sparrows flew by. Unlike
the squawking, screeching crows in the movie, these
birds were silent except for their beating wings.
Flying at low altitude, a few collided with the
back of the lawn chair. Breaking necks or stunning
themselves, the small birds fell in the grass around
her.
  Phoebe waited a moment more after the last few
stragglers in the massive flock had passed. Then
she stood up cautiously, her gaze locked on the
dark cloud that swept across the lawn toward the
three-story house.
  Are the birds on the same suicidal course as
the bugs Paige saw last night? Phoebe
wondered.
  She tensed, as the frenzied swarm suddenly turned
upward instead of flying into the side of

  the inn. Moving as a single entity, they swooped
up the wall and across the shingled roof. At the roof's
peak, the birds went into another vertical climb,
then reversed direction and dove into the redbrick
chimney.
  "What on earth?" Phoebe rubbed her eyes.
She had seen too many weird, disturbing things to be
totally shocked, but the mob of crazed sparrows was
particularly unsettling because the small birds were
usually so innocuous. Or should be, she thought.
  Picking up her book and towel, Phoebe
hesitated before starting back to the house.
  Was the chimney filling up with berserk sparrows or
were the birds spilling out of the kitchen fireplace?
Vivid pictures flashed into Phoebe's mind.
She imagined a feathered tornado circling the
butcher-block island, picking up speed, and flinging
off the slow and weak. Dozens might be smashing
into walls and windows, banging into hanging pots, and
dropping into heaps on the floor.
  A high-pitched shriek blotted the disturbing
pictures from Phoebe's thoughts. A moment later
Harriet ran out the front door. The young woman
raced down the porch steps and across the lawn,
screaming and waving her arms to ward off the birds
streaming behind her.
  "Harriet!" Brandishing a broom, Ida stormed
out the door behind her. Limited by age, she raced after
her granddaughter in a hobbling half stride that was not
quite a run.


  Reacting on instinct, Phoebe bolted toward
Harriet. When she was halfway across the lawn, the
flock suddenly broke off the attack and dispersed.
Surprised and confused, Phoebe slowed back to a
walk.
  As the birds flew into the sky or nearby
trees, Harriet collapsed with trembling sobs.
  Ida dropped her broom and kneeled on the
ground beside the stricken woman.
  "Is everything okay?" Phoebe asked as she
drew near.
  Ida looked up sharply and motioned her to stay
back. "She will be. Just leave her alone."
  Phoebe stopped a few feet away. "Sure.
I was just worried-was
  "I'll handle it," Ida snapped, drawing
Harriet close. The young woman's shoulders shook
as she buried her face in her grandmother's lap. "Go
away."
  Nodding, Phoebe slung her towel over her
shoulder and turned toward the house. She hoped she
wouldn't have to navigate through too many dead birds
to get to her room, but that was a stray thought. Her mind
was trying to grasp the larger implications.
  Whether scientific or paranormal forces were at
work, something strange was going on. Phoebe couldn't
shake the perception that the birds had deliberately
entered the house to go after Harriet.

  Paige spent a few minutes wandering the
roped-off paths through the Mystic Knoll
archaeological dig, but the most interesting
artifacts had been removed. With ten minutes
left before the tour started, she abandoned the dig to go
back into the gift shop.
  A sign in the window informed the public that
Cairn Township used the money collected from
tours and gift shop sales to operate and maintain the
site. The Mystic Knoll logo was designed with the
two angled lines of the K attached to the M to form
MC over a stylized rock slab. The design was
burned into a wooden plaque over the door with the words
Mystic Knoll, est. circa 2000 BC. The
ancient date made Paige laugh as she pulled
open the screen door.
  "We'll get started in a few minutes." The
woman behind the front counter spoke to Paige as she
ambled by.
  "Thanks, Tammy. I'm not in a hurry,"
Paige said, smiling. She had met Tammy when
she purchased her tour ticket.
  Tammy was forty, with short, graying hair and the
weathered face of an outdoors person. She wore
jeans and a hunter green T-shirt with the Mystic
Knoll logo, address, and phone number on the
back. She was making change for a silver-haired
couple.
  "We got here just in time, Doreen." The man
slipped his wallet into the back pocket of his
Bermuda-style shorts.


  "Will we be done in time to make the lunch special
at Gorman's?" Doreen asked Tammy. "It's
fried shrimp today."
  "Yes, plenty of time," Tammy said.
  "Excellent," the man said. "We've been
wanting to take this tour for years and never got around
to it."
  "It's just a bunch of rocks, Larry." Doreen
shook her head, a gesture that betrayed her true
feelings about the tour. She had no interest in
Mystic Knoll beyond minimal tolerance for her
husband's enthusiasm.
  Paige exchanged an amused glance with Tammy
and pointed toward the book aisle. "I'll be over
here."
  Paige had questions for [Tammy, but she
hesitated to ask in front of an audience. There were
no piles of dead bugs around the Mystic Knoll
gift shop, which was only a quarter mile from the
Yankee Bear. Had the swarms missed the
secluded building, or had Tammy cleaned up and
disposed of the bodies? Answers would have to wait
until after the tour, when she could talk to the guide
alone.
  Paige browsed the bookshelves. Only two
of the volumes dealt specifically with the Mystic
Knoll antiquity. One was a more detailed map
of the site and the other an expanded version of the brochure.
Paige decided to wait until after the tour to make
a purchase. Most of the other books were on related
subjects, such as Stonehenge in

  CllApDo
  Britain, the local Native American
tribes, New England histories, and New
Hampshire tourist spots.
  When Tammy called the tour group outside a
few minutes later, another couple joined
Paige, Doreen, and Larry. Joyce and
Daniel were newly-weds in their late twenties.
They were cruising the back roads of America in a
rented RV, stopping at points of interest they
encountered along the way. After giving everyone a large
flashlight, Tammy led the way down a path
cushioned with pine needles.
  Paige brought up the rear, enjoying the hike through
the stillness of the woods. Sunlight filtered through the
overhead foliage and glistened off wild
toadstools and ferns on the forest floor.
Squirrels scampered up and down tree trunks,
and birds flitted through blackberry briars. Bees
and butterflies drank at wildflower fountains,
reminding Paige of her brief sojourn as a wood
nymph. The almost pristine quality of this woodland
showed how much the sprites favored it.
  Tammy stopped the group by a large boulder with a
circular base. The top of the rock had been
chipped into a flat surface at an oblique
angle. The front edge was eighteen inches off the
ground, rising to four feet high in the back. The
guide waited until everyone had a chance to examine
the stone before starting her spiel.
  "Despite the structural differences," Tammy
began, "Britain's Stonehenge and Mystic
Knoll


  are accurate astronomical calendars that mark
solar and lunar events."
  "Like the solar eclipse this Sunday?" Paige
asked, recalling Nathaniel's argument for why
Ida should keep the Yankee Bear open.
  "Not quite that precisest" Tammy said. "The stones
were positioned to align with sunrises and sunsets
during the spring and fall equinoxes and the summer and
winter solstices."
  "Will someone take our picture by that rock?"
Joyce asked.
  "Monolith," Tammy corrected. "This one is
the summer solstice sunrise stone."
  "Whatever." Joyce handed Paige a disposable
camera. "Would you? I'm keeping a scrapbook
journal of our honeymoon adventures."
  "Whatever." Paige resented the young's woman's
rude, self-centered attitude, but it wasn't
worth an argument. She took the camera and snapped
a couple of shots of Joyce and Daniel posing
on the angled rock.
  Doreen watched with wistful approval, but her
husband, Larry, looked annoyed, as though the young
lovers had desecrated the pagan stone. When
Joyce and Daniel jumped down, he wiped off the
smooth surface.
  "Thanks." Joyce took the camera back and
clasped Daniel's hand as they continued down the
path.
  The trees grew larger and closer together the deeper
they walked into the woods. Fewer rays

  of sunlight penetrated the dense canopy of
leaves, and the temperature dropped a few chilling
degrees. Paige shivered, but she wasn't sure
if the sensation was real or an imagined manifestation
created by the darkening shadows. The chill did not
dissipate when everyone halted at the edge of the
Mystic Knoll clearing.
  "Oh, my." Doreen paused with her hand at her
throat, scanning the expansive collection of stone
huts, bridges, walls, and monoliths.
  "Told you it would be impressive, Doreen."
Vindicated, Larry smiled, crossed his arms, and
rocked back on his heels. "But this is even
better than I imagined."
  "What did they do here?" Joyce asked.
  "Who were they?" Daniel added.
  "That's the subject of much debate," Tammy
explained as she led them along a twisting stone path.
"This may have been the village of a primitive
tribe. They may have been the ancestors of the
Iroquois who claimed this territory five
hundred years ago. They, of course, were driven
west by the European settlers."
  Paige kept to the rear, taking in every detail of the
ancient stone artifacts. The clearing was not
completely devoid of trees. The sun warmed and
dried the open spaces, but where water seeped between
stones in the shadows, the damp was tangible. A stream
cut through the center of the clearing, bubbling over rocks,
between huts, and under a footbridge that was clearly
built for tourists.


  "Sit on that stone bench over there, Daniel."
Joyce pointed to a large slab. Stacked rocks
at the four corners raised the massive flat stone
eighteen inches off the ground.
  Daniel jumped to obey as his new wife raised
the camera.
  "Looks like a sacrificial stone to me,"
Paige said as Daniel started to sit. He jumped
up, inhaling sharply.
  "Most of the experts agree that rituals of some
sort were conducted on the site," Tammy said. "But
only the people who live around here think Mystic
Knoll is cursed."
  "I don't believe that rubbish," Doreen said.
  Tammy ignored the comment. "Some even think the
town is cursed too."
  Joyce and Daniel exchanged a nervous glance.
  There wasn't a hint of a smile in Tammy's
somber expression as she loaded the young couple's
susceptible minds with the creepy local legend.
  Unless she isn't kidding, Paige thought.
  "Who cursed it?" Paige asked.
  "A Native American shaman?" Tammy
shrugged. "A witch? There's a lot of local
speculation about that, too."
  The hair on Paige's neck prickled. She
hadn't expected a reference to witches. However,
Wiccan beliefs shared many basic precepts with
Druidic disciplines and Native American
lore.

  CllApDo
  They each embraced a natural order infused
with a universal spirituality that was akin to magic.
Stonehenge in Britain was believed to be
Druidic. Was Mystic Knoll a combination of all
three cultures?
  "What kind of curse?" Paige asked.
  "I don't think I want to know." Joyce
gripped Daniel's arm and pressed close to her
husband.
  "There's no such thing as curses," Daniel said,
closing his large hand over Joyce's smaller one.
  "Or witches," Larry said. "Maybe some
grisly ghost with a grudge haunts the place," he
added sarcastically.
  "Not that I'm aware of," Tammy said.
  "What about swarms of bugs bashing barns in the
middle of the night?" Paige asked, baiting
Tammy.
  Tammy just shrugged. "Things like that happen around
here, but the incidents can be explained
scientifically."
  "How?" Paige pressed.
  "The latest theory has something to do with
electromagnetic energy." Tammy abruptly
changed the subject. "Now, if you'll all follow
me-was
  Paige kept her place at the end of the line and
stooped to enter one of the low stone chambers. Tammy
had given her food for thought, but nothing she could sink
her teeth into. She couldn't tell if the guide
gave credence to curses or was just selling the story
to drum up business.


  She put the questions aside to focus more carefully
on her step when the floor sloped downward at a
steep angle. The interior ambience of Mystic
Knoll was even creepier than the deep woods and
abandoned stone huts in the clearing. The rock walls
were damp and covered with moss. Rotting leaves had
collected in cracks and crevices, tainting the
air with the odor of compost.
  Paige tried to picture the diagram in the
brochure, but she couldn't orient their location until
they emerged into the main chamber. The huge cave was
natural and had been incorporated into the ancient
building plan. Everyone panned their flashlight
beams around the cavern, but it was impossible to grasp
the magnificence of the immense grotto in the diffuse
light.
  "Okay, everyone," Tammy said, clapping her
hands for attention. "Turn off your flashlights."
  "Seriously?" Joyce asked uncertainly.
  "I'm right here, honey bunch," Daniel said.
"There's nothing to worry about."
  "Honey bunch," Larry scoffed, turning off his
flashlight. "He sounds like a walking romance
novel."
  "Hush up," Doreen retorted.
  The other flashlights clicked off, but the group was
not enveloped in darkness. The walls glowed brighter as
each light was extinguished.
  "Oh, my!" Doreen gasped again.
  "Told you this would be worth the time," Larry said.

  "Wow!" Joyce stared at the golden luminescence
on the rock around them.
  "Phosphorescent lichen," Tammy explained.
"It's similar to fox fire, another variety of
glowing plant that grows on decaying trees in the
Appalachians."
  "It's beautiful." Paige was impressed.
Despite the magical marvels she had seen since
becoming a Charmed One, nothing was quite as awe inspiring
as a natural wonder.
  The light source revealed the irregular,
amoeba-like shape of the cavern. The perimeter wall
was riddled with dark crevices and alcoves, and the high
ceiling was covered with stalactites. The inverted
cones were accumulated mineral deposits created
over eons by dripping water. Most of the
corresponding stalagmites on the central portion
of floor had been removed. Three large cones
remained, spaced at equal intervals around another
raised slab of flat rock.
  "What went on down here?" Daniel asked.
  "No one knows, but this part of the site has nothing
to do with astronomy." Tammy pointed up. "No
view of the sky."
  After fielding a few more questions, Tammy took the
tour out through a different tunnel.
  Paige wasn't sorry she had come. The glowing
cavern was worth the price of the tour, but she hadn't
learned anything that might explain the house-battering
bugs ... or why Harriet might have battered herself
on her bedroom wall.


  "Fresh air!" Joyce inhaled deeply when they
reached a section of corridor that was open to the sky.
  Paige realized that the piles of rock on either
side of the passageway were the remains of the ceiling.
At some point during the past four thousand years, the
roof had caved in.
  Joyce perched on a large rock halfway up
the pile. "Give the camera to someone and c'mon up,
Danny. This will make a great shot."
  "Larry's turn," Paige said when Daniel
held out the camera. She had already made her
contribution to Joyce's honeymoon digest, and she
didn't want the distraction.
  The tour was almost over, and Paige couldn't
decide if she wanted to approach Tammy for more
information. Nobody talked about real curses in
public. Besides, she hadn't seen anything on the
tour that supported a paranormal reason for the
insect incident. If electromagne-tism was
responsible, it didn't seem likely that Tammy
had the scientific expertise to explain it.
  "Danny! Stop." Joyce squealed and leaned
closer to her husband. She lowered her voice, her
expression coy. "Can't you wait until we get
back to the RV?"
  "Wait for what?" Danny looked perplexed.
  "Was I ever that dense?" Larry asked
Doreen.
  "No, dear." Doreen smiled and patted his arm.
  Paige covered her mouth to hide a smile.
  "Stop that!" Joyce giggled and shifted position

  on the rock. She raised her hand to cuff
Daniel's shoulder and stiffened. "Your hands are in
your lap."
  "Yeah, so?" Danny frowned, puzzled.
  "So-was Joyce screamed when a small black and
yellow snake slithered across her lap. She stood
up, dumping the hapless creature on the rock
floor. As it escaped into the rocks, she jumped
up and down, shrieking. "Ooh, gross. I can't
stand snakes!"
  "It's all right, sweetie." Daniel put his
arms around his hysterical wife. "It was just a harmless
little garter snake."
  "There's another one!" Larry pointed at
Daniel's feet. "And another one!"
  Paige wasn't big on snakes either, which made
their present location a really bad place to be. The
passageway was suddenly oozing snakes.
  "Ahh! Ahh!" Doreen shifted from one foot
to another to avoid a mass of wiggling green,
yellow, and black snakes. She was terrified and
fell into Larry's arms.
  "Okay, dear. Time to go." Larry slung
Doreen's arm over his shoulder and helped her stumble
forward. He started into the next tunnel and stopped
dead. "I hope there's another way back."
  "Me too." Paige shone her flashlight
inside the narrow stone corridor. The passage
floor was covered with snakes. Several began shedding
their skins.
  "Cross-country," Tammy said, taking charge.


  Ignoring the snakes sliding out of the rock pile,
she climbed it. "This way."
  Paige let Joyce and Daniel go first, then
steadied Larry as he carried Doreen up the rock
pile. When Paige reached the top, she realized that
cutting through the woods was only a slightly better
alternative than taking the tunnels.
  The ground was alive with thousands of writhing
snakes. .
  "I'm not convinced it was Wyatt," Leo said.
He smiled as he offered his son another spoonful
of ice cream.
  Piper just looked at her husband. They had taken
refuge in the Parfait Cafe, hoping ice cream
would take Wyatt's mind off his little brown friends.
Since several thousand toads weren't breaking down the
door to reach him, she assumed the distraction had
worked.
  "One or two toads, maybe," Leo
muttered.
  "He was fascinated by Phoebe's frog salt and
pepper shakers," Piper mused. "And they are
brown-like toads."
  "You think salt and pepper shakers inspired him?"
Leo sounded skeptical.
  "He brought his tub toys and a cartoon dog
to life," Piper said, lowering her voice. "Why
wouldn't he call every toad in town out to play?"
  "Maybe that's not the right question." Leo wiped
Wyatt's mouth. "Maybe we should be asking, why
would he?"

  That's actually a good question, Piper thought.
Except for raising his force field to protect
himself, Wyatt didn't use his powers often. They
didn't know what triggered his desire to use
magic.
  "Maybe he was bored," Piper said. She took
a sip of coffee, but it was getting cold. She
swallowed with a grimace and set the cup down.
  "Bored swinging?" Leo's tone was skeptical.
He shook his head. "No way. Swinging is one of
Wyatt's favorite things to do."
  Piper sighed, stumped. Until today they had been
lucky-Wyatt hadn't created any public
displays of power. She hated the idea of having
to hide out for fear he'd do something they couldn't
explain away.
  "Wait a minute." Piper sat back. "The
park was just overrun with toads. How come nobody's
upset?"
  Leo shrugged. "Maybe the town has a chronic
toad problem?"
  "Maybe we should ask." Piper raised her arm
to get the waitress's attention.
  "How's everything going here?" the pretty,
twenty-something waitress asked, smiling.
  "Fine," Piper said, noting the name tag.
"Lucy, could I have a warm-up?"
  "Sure. Do you want a clean cup?" Lucy
asked.
  "Not necessary." Piper waited until the coffee was
poured before bringing up toads. As she started to speak,
the black liquid in her


  cup started to boil. "Uh, that's a little too
hot, isn't it?"
  Leo nudged her knee and pointed to his
half-empty cup. His coffee was boiling too.
He quickly scooped more ice cream onto the spoon.
"Hey, Wyatt! Ice cream."
  Piper noticed that the coffee inside Lucy's
glass pot was bubbling, but she was pretty sure
Wyatt wasn't to blame. He had no idea what
"warm-up" meant, and he was totally into his ice
cream at the moment.
  "Well, this could be worse." A man at the
next table threw up his hands. "Lucy, could I have
an ice cube?"
  "Right away, Mr. Farley." Lucy hurried
back to the counter.
  Leo and Piper exchanged a confused glance.
  "No, no!" A woman at the table behind Leo
knocked her chair over as she stood up. Her
blond hair was too blond comto be natural, and
her jeans were too snug to be comfortable. She was forty
but determined to look twenty-nine as long as
possible. "No, no, no!"
  "It's all right, Gretchen," Mr. Farley
said. "Just a little hot coffee. Nothing to worry
about."
  Gretchen apparently didn't agree. The
woman burst into tears and ran into the ladies'
room.
  When no one moved for a moment, Piper leaned
toward Mr. Farley's table. "Should someone go after
her?"

  so ChApDo
  "Nah." Mr. Farley shook his head. "Just an
anxiety attack. She'll get over it.
Gretchen hasn't been quite right since her teeth
turned black when she was sixteen."
  "That's enough, Mr. Farley," Lucy chided the
man. She dropped an ice cube into his coffee
cup. "You know Gretchen's still sensitive about that."
  "How could such a thing happen?" Leo spooned more
ice cream into Wyatt.
  "Happened overnight," Mr. Farley said. He
leaned toward Leo. "But I don't believe for a
minute that Abigail Thornwood used some kind of
mumbo jumbo to get even with Gretchen for making
fun of her at cheer leading try outs."
  "You spread more tall tales than an old
woman, Mr. Farley," Lucy scolded.
  "They're not tales if they're true," the man
shot back with a triumphant smile.
  Leo cast another quizzical glance at
Piper.
  Piper smiled tightly. She didn't know what
kind, but some kind of mumbo jumbo was definitely
in play.
  All the coffee in the cafe had boiled for no
apparent reason.
  And everyone except Gretchen had acted like it was
no big deal.

  36 UdlCU in the front foyer of the Yankee
Bear, wondering what to do about Harriet. She never
questioned her Charmed right to act when the danger was
supernatural. The decision wasn't that simple
when the situation fell entirely within the realm of
human endeavor.
  Phoebe had watched from the landing as Ida guided
her distraught granddaughter into the house after the sparrow
attack. Harriet hadn't said a word, but the
helpless misery she felt was evident in every labored
breath and shuffling step. Even when the two women were out
of sight, Harriet's despair was like a heavy,
inescapable haze permeating the inn.
  Although everything about the young woman's situation cried
out for help, Harriet hadn't asked for any.

  Phoebe's indecision evaporated when a keening
wail rose from the back of the house.
  "That's it." Phoebe started down the hall,
taking care to maintain a calm exterior, and paused
at the junction of the second hallway. Straight
ahead, the door into the kitchen was closed. Honing in
on the fading wail, she turned down the second
hall. The left-hand wall partitioned the narrow
passageway from the area behind the registration counter in
the foyer. She heard muted sobs coming through the
second of three doors on the right.
  Taking a deep breath, Phoebe grabbed the
knob. The sound of Ida's gruff voice stopped
her from barging in.
  "Calm down, girl," Ida said. "I'll get
some lotion. You'll be fine."
  Phoebe took a startled step back when Ida
pulled the door open. Pain and fear washed over her
like a wave, drawing her gaze past Ida's slim
frame.
  Harriet sat crossed-legged on the floor,
rocking back and forth. Long strips of dry skin were
peeling off her hands, face, and arms ... but she was
not sunburned.
  Ida took a key from her pocket and forced
Phoebe back another step as she moved into the
hall. She closed the door and turned to lock it.
  "What are you doing snooping about?" Ida asked,
turning back to face Phoebe.
  "I was worried about Harriet," Phoebe hon-

  estly answered, her voice even. "Paige
told me she has nightmares. After what happened
with the birds, I thought maybe I could help. I'm
a psychologist."
  "Harriet doesn't need a psychologist."
Ida spat out the word. "She has fits sometimes, like
you saw today. Messing with the poor child's head won't
fix it."
  "Are you sure?" Phoebe asked, standing her
ground.
  "Yes." Ida glared at Phoebe.
  Phoebe had already determined that Ida wouldn't
back down if cornered or challenged. The old
woman used cantankerous bluster to keep people at
bay. Most of the Yankee Bear guests probably
liked the crusty New England persona Ida
presented. Harriet's plain appearance and bumbling
behavior no doubt repelled them, which helped Ida
enforce Harriet's isolation.
  Phoebe, however, was not a typical guest.
  "Why is her skin peeling?" Phoebe asked.
  "Allergies," Ida said without hesitation.
"I've got to get her medicine-if you'll get out
of my way."
  . Since Harriet's sobs had stopped and
Ida's explanations matched what Nathaniel had
told her earlier, Phoebe decided to back off.
For now, she thought as Ida impatiently motioned her
to move.
  "This area is off limits to guests too," Ida
said as she bustled behind Phoebe to the kitchen

  hall. "Besides, it's long past checkout time."
  "We'd like to stay another night," Phoebe said.
In fairness, she couldn't hide their plans from Ida
any longer.
  Ida frowned. "You said you'd only be staying one
night."
  "I know, but something came up." Phoebe
shrugged. For a moment, she thought Ida was going
to argue. Instead the old woman turned toward the
kitchen.
  "Checkout time is two o'clock and not a minute
later." Ida opened the door into the kitchen and
looked back before closing it behind her. "Tomorrow."
  We'll see, Phoebe thought. She wasn't
leaving until she was certain Harriet wasn't in
danger- from her grandmother or herself.
  "You don't have to do this," Tammy said as she
unlocked the gift shop door and threw it open.
  "I'm not leaving you here alone to close up,"
Paige said. She jumped over a tangled mass of
snakes on the steps, landed on the front stoop with
one foot, and put her other foot down inside the
shop. She grabbed the door to steady herself and looked
back at the serpentine knot with a shudder. She
pulled the screen door closed and latched it.
  "I don't think they can get in here," Tammy
said. She walked up and down the aisles to make
sure.

  Through the screen, Paige watched Larry and
Daniel dart, bob, and hop around piles of
snakes to the dirt parking area. They were both helping
their wives run, which made eluding the serpents
harder.
  The group had made the harrowing run through the woods
harder on her. Being in human company prevented her
from orbing the snakes to clear a path. An infestation
of shedding snakes was beyond strange but still within the bounds
of possibility in a town that thought nothing of thousands
of kamikaze bugs. Snakes disappearing in
swirls of blue light was not.
  Forced to rely on her nonmagical abilities,
Paige had developed a fairly proficient
means of snake avoidance. The trick was to not
hesitate leaping from one rock, downed tree, or
rare snake-free spot to another. The realization that
the creatures were immobilized or slowed down during
the process of losing their skins had helped.
  "All clear." Tammy paused beside Paige as
Daniel and Larry drove away. "Where's your
car?"
  "I walked from the Yankee Bear," Paige
explained. She patted the cell phone clipped
to her belt. "I'll call my sister for a ride."
  "Most cell phones don't work around here,"
Tammy said. "We're too far from the city."
  "Oh. Well, that's okay," Paige said.
"If I run into any stray snakes, they won't
bother me."
  "I don't want to leave you with the wrong

  impression of Mystic Knoll," Tammy said.
"I'll give you a ride. I just need a few
minutes to fill out the bank deposit."
  "Great." Paige followed Tammy to the counter.
"How often do you have to close down because of snakes?"
  "This is the first time," Tammy said. The
old-fashioned mechanical cash register dinged when
she opened the drawer. She pulled out the one-dollar
bills and started counting.
  Paige nodded, but Tammy's matter-of-fact
tone surprised her. She had assumed the guide
stayed calm about the snakes to avoid total panic
in the tour group. She hadn't expected Tammy's
unruffled acceptance of the bizarre event to persist.
  "First time for snakes, that is." Tammy set the
one-dollar bills aside and wrote the amount in a
ledger. "Poison ivy shut us down for a few days
three months ago."
  "Did we run through any today?" Paige asked,
choking back a gasp. She did not want her
vacation ruined by an itchy rash.
  "No." Tammy began counting fives and paused.
"That was pretty weird too. One morning the whole
site was overgrown with poison ivy vines, and four
days later they were all gone."
  "Huh?" Relieved, Paige kept the conversation
going. "So this kind of thing happens a lot, then."
  "Every once in a while." Tammy finished


  counting out the fives, then frowned. "Although I
don't remember as much stuff happening when I was a
kid."
  "Like swarms of suicidal bugs?" Paige
asked.
  "Bugs fly into stuff all the time," Tammy
said. "That's just how bugs are." She took two
tens and four twenties from the drawer and noted the
amounts.
  Paige let the subject drop, realizing that
Tammy hadn't encountered millions of berserk
bugs.
  "But," Tammy continued, "we haven't had
anything as freaky as the snakes happen since all
the squirrels in town went on a rampage when I
was nineteen."
  "Squirrels?" Paige asked, confused. "The
cute little furry kind?"
  "Believe me, they aren't cute when they're
leaping off trees to yank out your hair." Tammy
grimaced as she stuffed the bills into a green
deposit bag. "That was twenty years ago, and I
still get chills thinking about it."
  "I can imagine," Paige said. "Does
anybody know why these weird things happen?"
  "Not really." Tammy locked the coins in the
drawer. "Almost everyone in town thinks Mystic
Knoll gives off some kind of electrical energy
that affects the natural order, but most of them
won't admit it."
  "Why not?" Paige asked. At first she was
surprised. Then she remembered something Nathaniel
had said the night bef...Most people

  CRAMMED
  completely reject scientific explanations that
shatter their myths. . . . Half the folks in
Cairn think Mystic Knoll has some kind of
weird power.
  "Because a curse is better for business,"
Tammy explained. "Except I'm pretty
sure Abigail Thornwood did put a hex on
the town."
  "Thornwood?" Paige frowned. "The same
Thornwoods who own the Yankee Bear?"
  Tammy nodded. "Ida's daughter. She died
having Harriet... before she removed the hex."
  "Do you really believe that?" Paige asked,
feigning the rational skepticism a normal person
would express.
  "Absolutely." Tammy leaned over the counter.
"I was a year behind Abigail in school. She
made Karen Stark's hair fall out in seventh
grade."
  "Abigail did? Why?"
  "Because Karen called her a mutant. Bad stuff
happened to everyone who gave Abigail a hard time.
Karen was bald for six months." Tammy zipped the
deposit bag and retrieved her purse from under the
counter. "Ready?"
  Paige nodded and followed Tammy out. She ran
every tidbit of information over in her mind, carefully
locking it into her memory. She had learned much more
at Mystic Knoll than she had anticipated,
and the various factors-freaked-out wildlife, a
possible witch, and the undefined power of Mystic
Knoll-were beginning to add up to a Charmed encounter.

  "How long is the wait?" Phoebe asked when
Leo came back to the patio from the hostess station.
The tantalizing aromas emanating from the restaurant
made the delay torturous. She hadn't eaten
since breakfast, and she was famished.
  After everyone had returned to the inn that afternoon, they
decided to grab an early dinner in town. They were
all hungry, and Phoebe wanted to discuss the
day's events away from potential prying eyes and
ears at the Yankee Bear.
  On the ride into Cairn, Phoebe realized that
she wasn't the only one who had had an unsettling
brush with crazed wildlife and Ida Thornwood.
Her sisters had both heard gossip about the
Thornwood family and witnessed bizarre behavior
on their side trips into town and Mystic Knoll.
  "Ten minutes," Leo said, sitting down at the
table in the outdoor lounge. "Apparently
Nathaniel picked one of the most popular spots in
town for his dinner date with Paige."
  Paige's face creased in a playful scowl.
"Yeah, but somehow I don't think Nathaniel thought
the whole family would tag along as chaper-ones."
  "We're not going to sit at the same table,"
Piper teased. She set down her iced-tea glass
and lifted Wyatt out of his stroller when he began
to fuss. "Besides, I couldn't resist eating at a
place called "Fish, Fowl, and Cow.""

  "That covers all the bases I care about." Leo
jangled his car keys to amuse Wyatt. Wyatt
batted his father's hand away and rubbed his eyes.
  "Are we sure the n-e-p-h-e-w
didn't start the t-o-a-d riot?" Paige
asked, leaning toward Piper and whispering.
  "Positive," Piper whispered back. "The
b-a-b-y wasn't around when the b-u-g-s
and the s-n-a-k-e-s went all wild and
weird, remember?"
  "Don't forget the b-i-r-d-s,"
Phoebe added. She didn't think they needed
to spell in front of Wyatt yet, but the
practice couldn't hurt.
  "Good point," Paige said. "So why am I not
more relieved?"
  "Maybe because our vacation is starting to feel like a
mission?" Phoebe smiled, but she wasn't kidding.
"What else did you learn about Mystic Knoll?"
  "Well, the site might have been a fort or a
village, and it's set up as an astronomical
calendar," Paige said. "The original
inhabitants either died out or evolved into a
Native American tribe of the Iroquois."
  "There's another possibility you won't find in
the tourist literature," Leo said.
  Piper perked up. "Is Daddy going to tell a
story?"
  Responding to the word "daddy," Wyatt leaned
against Piper and looked at Leo.
  "Your mommy is so smart." Leo smiled at


  Wyatt and spoke with a storybook cadence and
inflection. "A long, long time ago in Ireland,
there were magic people called the "Tuatha de
Danann.""
  "Ooh, cool." Paige reacted for Wyatt's
benefit.
  "In fact," Leo went on, "it wasn't even
called Ireland yet! But that's another story."
  Piper spoke through a tight smile. "Let's just
get on with this one."
  "Don't cramp my style." Leo turned
back to Wyatt. In his story-telling voice, he
continued. "The ancient Celts believed that the
magic people flew to Ireland from the west several thousand
years ago."
  "Several, as in four?" Paige held up four
fingers.
  "Flew through the sky?" Phoebe asked.
  "From this west?" Piper pointed at the ground,
meaning New Hampshire.
  Leo nodded. "Maybe the magic people built
Mystic Knoll before they left."
  "Maybe they left because there aren't any snakes
in Ireland," Paige muttered.
  "He's asleep," Phoebe said, pointing at
Wyatt.
  "Good." Piper clamped her arms around the dozing
boy and swayed gently from side to side.
  "The end," Leo said softly.
  "A nice story, Leo," Paige said, "but it
doesn't explain why thousands ojf snakes
decided to
  shed skin at Mystic Knoll.
  The locals think the
  place is cursed or an electromagnetic
force."

  "The bugs and the birds attacked the Yankee
Bear," Piper said.
  "Come to think of it, though," Phoebe said,
"Harriet's skin peeled at the same time the
snakes were shedding."
  "And she was bashing her bedroom wall when the bugs
hit the house," Paige added.
  "So maybe the birds didn't attack her,"
Phoebe mused, thinking out loud. "Maybe
Harriet had one of her fits at the same time the
birds wigged out."
  "Could electromagnetic energy account for that?"
Paige asked.
  "Nathaniel thinks Harriet is
supersensitive to the discharges because she's lived so
close to Mystic Knoll her whole life,"
Phoebe explained.
  "I suppose that's possible," Paige said.
  Piper flipped a lever to recline the stroller and
carefully lay Wyatt down. As she straightened
up, her iced-tea spoon flipped on end, zoomed
off the table, and stuck to the metal handle on the
stroller.
  "Hello?" Piper scowled. "What just
happened?"
  "Uh-was Phoebe winced. The pendant on her
necklace stood straight out from her neck, straining
away from her. "I think all the metal on the
patio just became magnetized."
  "You think?" Paige jumped when several loose
dimes zeroed in on her earrings.
  At the surrounding tables, metal caps on salt


  and pepper shakers wobbled and rolled, attracted
to metal watch bands and handbag clasps. A woman
walking on to the patio from the restaurant stopped
short when her bracelet latched onto her child's
braces.
  "Interesting," Leo said as he tried to pry a
paper clip off his belt buckle.
  "For a science whiz maybe." Paige flicked the
dimes attached to her earrings.
  Piper's wedding ring was stuck to the metal button
on her charcoal gray slacks. A butter knife
zooming toward Wyatt's stroller bounced off his
protective shield.
  Then, all of a sudden, the displaced items
disengaged and fell.
  "Finders keepers," Paigje said, scooping up
the dimes on the table. "I gi ess this little
demonstration supports the scientific theory."
  "The effects seem too random to be a spell,"
Leo said. "And curses are almost always
specific."
  "But we can't rule out that something supernatural
might be operating in the area," Phoebe said.
  "I can't," Piper agreed.
"Electromagnetism doesn't explain the
boiling coffee at the cafe this afternoon."
  "It could if the discharges affected the electric
coffeemakers." Leo shrugged.
  "The coffee in Lucy's pot and our cups
boiled too," Piper argued. "No coffeemakers
involved."
  "There's Nathaniel," Paige said. She stood

  up and waved at her date. "See you later."
"Have fun," Piper said, waving her away.
Phoebe smiled too, but her mind was on Mystic
Knoll and the day's strange events. She wanted the
source to be supernatural. She wouldn't need
to manufacture excuses to help Harriet if
Harriet was a Charmed Innocent.
  "Are you sure you don't want dessert?"
Nathaniel asked. "I'm not independently
wealthy, but I can afford a dish of ice cream."
  "No, I really am full," Paige said. In
deference to his grad-student status and handyman's
bank account, she had skipped having an appetizer
and ordered the stuffed chicken breast special.
"I'll just have more coffee."
  Paige had thoroughly enjoyed having dinner with the
handsome academic. Nathaniel was so positive that
magic had no basis in reality, she didn't have
to worry about exposing herself as a witch. Not that she
would. But there was a certain challenge to the fact that he
wouldn't believe her anyway.
  During the meal Paige had told Nathaniel
about her adventure at Mystic Knoll. He
handled the snake incident with the same detached
acceptance that Tammy had, except that Nathaniel
was sold on electromagnetism being the cause.
  Nathaniel leaned back as the waitress set a
dish of French vanilla ice cream with a fresh

  strawberry topping in front of him. "I hope
you don't mind if I indulge."
  "I don't mind." Paige set her cup down
for the waitress to refill.
  Nathaniel picked up the conversation where they had
left off. "Eventually someone will analyze the
physical properties and conditions on the site and
figure out why Mystic Knoll has such a powerful
influence on things around here."
  Paige waited until the waitress left before
challenging Nathaniel's premise. "How do you
explain the coffee boiling away in cups at the
Parfait Cafe today?"
  "It was hot?" Nathaniel grinned.
  Paige smiled. She was glad to see a crack
in the studious veneer Nathaniel had maintained
during dinner. He was serious about finding out why
rational, intelligent people were so willing to accept
illogical fantasies as fact. He just didn't
know he was basing his thesis on a flawed premise.
  Paige could have shot multiple holes in
Nathaniel's assumptions, but he flatly
refused to address the concept of real magic, even
as a what-if. Over coffee and' dessert she
couldn't resist needling him, to injpct some fun into the
discussion.
  "It's possible the elemental makeup and
configuration of the stones may have something to do with the variety
of effects and objects affected," Nathaniel
said.

  "The tour guide's patter mentions a curse,"
Paige said.
  "Yes, I've been here long enough to have heard most
of the stories in town." Nathaniel shook his head,
then shrugged. "Urban legends are a powerful
force."
  "Apparently," Paige said. She had promised
to find out what she could about Ida and Harriet for
Phoebe, but she didn't want Nathaniel to question
her interest. Busybodies didn't usually mean
well.
  "Piper and Leo heard that Harriet's mother-was
Paige faltered, drawing a blank on the name.
  "Abigail," Nathaniel said.
  "Right. Thanks." Paige took a sip of
coffee and went on. "A shopkeeper said Abigail
"bewitched" her father into hanging himself, and my tour
guide thinks Abigail hexed the town."
  "Unfortunately the Thornwoods have a colorful
personal history that invites speculation."
Nathaniel swallowed a spoonful of ice cream,
then picked up his coffee cup.
  Paige had the feeling he was weighing what and how
much he should say next. Curbing her curiosity,
she waited.
  "I guess it can't hurt to tell you,"
Nathaniel said finally. "I felt guilt
right-brace comb relieved-after I talked to your sister
this afternoon."
  "Why is that?" Paige asked.
  "Guilty for discussing people I care about


  behind their backs," Nathaniel explained. "And
relieved because I may be the only person in this town
who does care about them, and Phoebe's obviously
worried about Harriet too."
  "She is." Paige picked up her coffee
spoon and snitched a bite of Nathaniel's ice
cream. "We all are-and we want to help, if
there's any way we can."
  "Well, it's a long, sad story."
Nathaniel pushed the ice-cream dish toward
Paige and rested his arms on the table. "You've
probably noticed that the people in this town like to talk."
  "I noticed," Paige said, smiling warmly.
  Nodding, Nathaniel began his tale. "Ida was
the oldest of seven girls, twenty-six, and a
spinster when her father arranged her marriage with
Joshua-to get her off the farm."
  Paige sighed. "I take it Ida would have
preferred spinsterhood."
  "And no one could blame her if she did,"
Nathaniel said. "Joshua was a cruel man. Ten
years older than Ida, and he had a violent
temper. The only reason he wanted a wife was so
he wouldn't have to pay hired help at the Yankee
Bear."
  Paige frowned but didn't interrupt.
  "Ida took care of everything," Nathaniel
continued. "She cooked, cleaned, kept the books,
did the laundry. They say she hardly ever left
the property, and unless she was abnormally
accident-prone, Joshua beat her too."

  Paige clenched her jaw. Unspoken in
Nathaniel's narrative was the fact that the town
knew about the abuse and did nothing to help. She
made a mental note to tell Phoebe. Abused
people often grew up to become abusers.
  "I can't imagine going through life like that,"
Paige said, prompting Nathaniel to go on.
  Nathaniel nodded. "That's why Ida wanted a
baby. She thought a child would bring some joy into her
drab existence. Except Abigail was born just as
calculating and cruel as her father."
  "Nobody is born calculating," Paige
said. However, she finished in her mind, some people are
born evil. She wanted to see if Nathaniel
brought up the other rumors floating around Cairn
about Abigail. An ordinary teenager couldn't get
revenge by blackening teeth and making hair fall out.
  "Maybe not," Nathaniel agreed. "But
Abigail couldn't catch a break-from the moment she
entered this world to the moment she left it. She had a
disfiguring birthmark that set her up for relentless
peer ridicule and a father who refused to acknowledge
or speak to her."
  "No wonder she was mad at the world," Paige
said.
  "Furious, which is why everyone was so quick to believe
she killed Joshua," Nathaniel explained. "And
nobody was upset when she died two years later."
  "Leaving Ida with the responsibility of rais-

  ing Harriet," Paige said. She knew from
Phoebe that Ida had inherited the Yankee Bear
from her husband and couldn't leave her only source of
income.
  "And she's never complained," Nathaniel said.
"Not a word."
  "But Harriet's practically a prisoner at the
inn," Paige countered. "Just like Ida was with
Joshua."
  "Harriet has fits," Nathaniel said, rising
to Ida's defense, "and Ida's protecting her.
She closes the inn three days a month because
Harriet's episodes are worse the three days
of the new moon."
  "The new moon is this weekend?" Paige
didn't keep track of the lunar phases unless she
needed to know them for a spell.
  "Sunday." Nathaniel motioned for the waitress
to bring the check. Then he glanced back at
Paige. "Are you sure you don't want anything
else?"
  "No, I'm fine." Paige smiled, thinking that
it had been much too long since she had enjoyed a
dinner date.
  "Are you ready?" Nathaniel asked. He
tucked cash into a leather folder with the check and pushed
it aside. He'd left a generous tip.
  "Yes." Paige nodded. "This was very nice,
thank you."
  Nathaniel was quiet on the ride back to the
Yankee Bear, giving Paige time to mentally sort
through all he had said. She still had questions,

  but she couldn't ask the nonbelieving grad student
about anything related to magic.
  However, she was almost certain that the detour
to Mystic Knoll in Cairn, New Hampshire,
had not been an accident. Their New England
vacation, if they ever got to finish it, was a perk of
being on a Charmed assignment.
  "We're here," Nathaniel said, breaking
into Paige's thoughts. He shifted the truck
into neutral and pulled on the emergency brake.
Then he jumped out to open her door and walked her
to the porch.
  Paige was sorry to have the evening end so soon.
She wasn't in the market for a serious romance, but
she wouldn't refuse a kiss. Although he was
inflexible and totally wrong-headed about magic,
Nathaniel was a nice guy.
  "I really did enjoy myself tonight, Nathaniel."
  "So did I." Nathaniel clasped Paige's
hand for a second, then released it. "See you tomorrow."
  Paige stared as Nathaniel dashed back to his
truck. He obviously couldn't wait to get
away.
  What, she wondered, did 1 say or do to turn
him off?

  1/OcSo 11 always take Leo this long
to shave, Piper?" Phoebe asked. She sat in a
wingback chair by the window in Piper and Leo's
room, tapping her foot impatiently.
  "Are we in a rush?" Piper pulled blue
denim bib shorts and a white T-shirt out of
Wyatt's suitcase. "When do we have to leave?"
  "Two o'clock and not a minute later," Phoebe
said, mimicking the old woman's gravelly
voice. "Roughly."
  "That doesn't give u@. much time." Paige
perched on the bed across 'f Piper.
  "Time for what?" Piper picked up Wyatt off
a blanket on the floor and sat him next to her
on the bed.
  "To find out what's up with this town," Paige said.
"Like why everything seems to go bonkers."

  "Is Mystic Knoll magical or just a really
weird scientific anomaly?" Phoebe added,
leaning forward. She rested her arms on her knees.
"And what's the connection to Harriet?"
  Paige continued the list of questions that needed
answers: "And was Abigail a witch? Tammy
thinks she cast spells to make bad things happen."
  "Maybe she was just a gifted practitioner,"
Phoebe offered.
  "Okay, okay, I get your point . . .
s," Piper said, holding up a hand to stop them.
She was aware that she was being obstinate. It wasn't
that she didn't want to help if Charmed intervention
was needed. She just wasn't ready to completely
abandon her vacation for a magical wild-goose
chase.
  "Harriet needs our help." Phoebe's tone
implied that should be obvious.
  Piper resisted the urge to point out that
Harriet's problems were tragic but not necessarily
the result of supernatural evil.
  Paige stood up and started to pace. "And
Mystic Knoll is just too intriguing to ignore."
  Piper looked at the determined expressions on
her sisters" faces and decided not to argue. When
they were like this, she knew she wouldn't win; besides, there was
always the possibility that her sisters were right.
"Okay," she said, sighing. "So what's your
plan?"
  Phoebe didn't hesitate. "I'm going
into town to


  find out about Harriet's father. Nobody has said
anything about him. We don't know who-or maybe
even what-he was."
  "What about you, Paige?" Piper pulled on
Wyatt's shorts and fastened the straps.
  "I'll stay here," Paige said. "Nathaniel
said Harriet's fits get worse around the new
moon, which just happens to be tomorrow. Besides, he might
know more than he told me last night."
  Wyatt giggled, rolled over, and started to crawl
away.
  "So your date went well?" Piper grabbed
Wyatt's ankle and glanced at Paige.
  "Right up until he left me with a handshake."
Paige's eyes narrowed, warring against a follow-up
question. "What are yoi i and Leo up to?"
  "We're going to the used bookstore." Piper
wrangled the playful Wyatt onto his back and
reached for his shoes and socks.
  "What's he looking for?" Paige asked.
  "Books." Piper didn't specify that Leo
was trying to replace his collection of paperbacks
she had accidentally blown up while cleaning the
closet. "No promises, but I'll nose around
a little too."
  Leo sauntered through the door and tossed his shaving
kit on the bed. "Bathroom's free."
  Phoebe glanced at Paige. "Do you mind if
I go first? I need to ride into town with Piper and
Leo."
  "No. But there are two bathrooms," Paige
reminded her.
  "Yeah, but the shower in the other one spits."

  Phoebe flicked her fingers open and closed
to illustrate a spastic water spray.
  "Don't take forever," Leo said as Phoebe
walked by.
  "That's okay. We're not quite ready." Piper
held up a small shoe. "No bye-bye until
the shoes are on the feet, Wyatt. Uncurl those
toes."
  Wyatt stuck his feet in the air and pulled off
his socks.
  Fifteen minutes later Piper, Leo, and
Phoebe took their complimentary coffee and doughnuts
to go and packed Wyatt into the van. Due to heavy
Saturday traffic on the two-lane highway, the
drive into Cairn took longer than it had the day
before. Several cars ahead of them slowed to turn
into Mystic Knoll, but a sign had been posted that
the site was temporarily closed.
  After they dropped Phoebe off at city hall,
they had to circle the public parking lot, waiting
for a parking space to open up. Piper couldn't dispel
a surge of anxiety as Leo flipped open the
stroller and set Wyatt inside. She was wary and
vigilant on the three-block walk, but her
apprehension was unnecessary. Birds did not explode
out of the trees, and ants did not swarm through cracks
in the sidewalks. She hadn't realized she was
waiting for something to happen until they pushed the
stroller into the bookstore.
  "Morning." A gray-haired man with a pleasant
face sat behind a wooden counter piled high with
books.


  "Hi," Piper said with a quick glance around.
  Almost every available space in the store was piled with
books. They were stacked on the shelves behind the clerk
and on the floor around him. Public notices,
yard-sale flyers, and business cards were tacked to a
bulletin board on the wall. Next to it a faded
picture of a rainbow trout marked the month of
June on a 1976 calendar.
  On the customer side of the counter,
floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered the walls and
formed aisles down the length of the narrow room. Every
shelf was jammed with leather-bound and paper volumes.
Stacks of children's books, magazines, and romance
novels covered a table and three mismatched
chairs. Two smaller bookcases were filled with
old science-fiction and fantasy magazines and
pulp paperbacks.
  A forty-gallon freshwater aquarium stood in
front of the window display. The lower shelf on the
black metal tank stand was devoted to books about
tropical fish.
  "Brad York," the man said, half rising and
extending his hand. "You folks looking for anything in
particular?"
  "Actually, I have a list." Leo shook
Brad's hand, then pulled a worn paper from his
wallet. He had made the list immediately after Piper
confessed that she had turned his favorite novels
into confetti. He crossed off the titles as he
replaced them.
  "Let's see it." Brad took the paper and
put on

  wire-rimmed glasses to read it. "I think we
have a few of these. I'll just need a minute or two
to find them."
  "A minute or two?" Leo's gaze darted
across the store's chaotic shelves. "You know where
everything is in here?"
  "Yep." Smiling, Brad nodded and pulled a
laptop out from under the counter. "I just have to check my
database."
  Leo sagged with a sheepish grin. "I'll just look
around while you're doing that."
  "I'll wait here with Wyatt," Piper said.
"It's too crowded in here for little hands that like to touch."
  "Lef s see what we can do about that." Brad
reached under the counter again. "Have a green-was
  As Brad raised his arm, Piper froze him.
  Leo looked up from the old magazine he was
leafing through. "What are you doing?"
  "Protecting Wyatt." Piper pointed to the
seven-inch-long piece of round, green plastic with
embedded glitter dangling from Brad's fingers.
"What is that?"
  Leo stepped up to look. "A fake worm for
fishing."
  "Oh." Piper smiled tightly, then joked
to break the tension. "Places, everyone!" As soon
as Leo was back in position, she unfroze the
scene.
  "comsparkly." Brad placed the plastic worm in
Wyatt's eager hand.
  "Guh!" Wyatt closed his fingers around the green
sparkly and shook it vigorously.


  "Have a seat, Mom." Brad waved at the
chairs. "Just dump that stuff on the floor."
  "Okay." Piper lifted the stack of magazines
and set them on the floor. She positioned
Wyatt's stroller so he could see the fish tank,
then sat down.
  "You folks here to watch the solar eclipse tomorrow?"
Brad asked. He squinted at the laptop, then
typed in a title.
  "No, we just stopped overnight on our way
south," Piper said.
  "I'm surprised you found a room." Brad
jotted a note in a small, spiral-bound memo
pad. "Cairn doesn't have many motels, and they
fill up quick when something special's going on."
  "Really?" Piper tried to sound surprised.
"We're the only guests at the Yankee Bear."
  Brad looked up sharply. He was surprised.
"Ida kept the Yankee Bear open last night?"
  "Is that unusual?" Piper asked, frowning with
fake puzzlement.
  "Yep." Brad looked back at the computer
screen. "She's been closing three days out of every
twenty-eight without fail for years. Don't know
why."
  Piper waited for Brad to continue, but he started
typing on the laptop instead. Maybe he didn't
know that Ida closed because Harriet's fits were
worse during the new moon. Or, unlike the other
people she had met in Cairn, he just didn't want
to talk about the neighbors.

  "Running that inn must be a lot of work, even with a
handyman," Piper said. "Ida probably just
wants a few days off every month."
  "Maybe." Brad made another note on the
pad. "She never got time off when Joshua was
alive. That's for sure. Twenty-two years of
loveless drudgery and a hellion child to boot."
  "Yeah," Piper said. "We heard that Abigail
was difficult."
  "Well, you heard right." Brad shook his head.
"Abigail was doomed from the get-go."
  "Why?" Piper hoped Brad wouldn't balk at
her curiosity. So far he hadn't told her
anything she didn't already know. But she had the feeling
he knew more than he was telling.
  "Some folks just can't help being superstitious,"
Brad said. "They think Mystic Knoll has
supernatural power and that Abigail's birthmark was
a brand. Her own father thought evil had an
irrevocable claim on her soul. If you ask me,
Joshua's rejection and the town's ridicule drove
the good right out of that girl."
  "I guess being an outcast could poison a
person's life," Piper agreed, "but it's hard
to believe Abigail did everything the people around here
think she did."
  "Like making Ned Johnson's cat's toe wither and
fall off because it scratched her?" Brad arched an
eyebrow. "Wasn't witchcraft. Spider
bite."
  "Can spiders do that?" Piper asked.


  "Doc Randall thinks so." Brad closed the
laptop. "If I thought Abigail was a witch,
then I'd have to believe she tried to drown my
daughter."
  "What happened?" Piper asked.
  "Molly pushed Abigail into a pool at a
kid's birthday party." The man sighed, shaking his
head. "The next weekend Molly almost drowned in
Saunders Pond. She said she forgot how to swim.
I think she just panicked, but she never went into the
water again."
  "That's sad," Piper said.
  "Yes, but it wasn't magic." Brad seemed
determined to put the rumors about Abigail
Thornwood to rest, at least in her mind.
"Abigail was proud, cruel, and defiant, but she
couldn't cast spells. That's just an easy out for
everyone who tormented her."
  "Still, casting spells is an odd thing for people
to assume," Piper prodded.
  "They assumed it because that's what Abigail
wanted them to assume," Brad explained.
  Piper was inclined to agree with part of that
assessment. Dabbling in witchcraft often gave
troubled teenage girls a false sense of
empowerment over pressures and forces they couldn't
control. The majority of them outgrew the need for
imagined abilities.
  Practitioners had an affinity for magic that
allowed them to tap into and use external sources of
power. Only a few ever discovered actual talent.
Witches possessed a magical essence, an

  CllApDo
  internal spring from which their power flowed.
  Was Abigail a practitioner or a witch?
Piper suspected Ida's daughter had been a
practitioner, perhaps with a convenient source of power at
Mystic Knoll.
  "Raising Abigail must have been hard on her
mother," Piper said. She felt a sudden sympathetic
kinship with Ida. Wyatt wasn't evil, but
humanity might perceive him as a threat, and evil
coveted his powers.
  "Joshua and Abigail hardened Ida's heart,
but they couldn't break her," Brad said.
  The fake worm went flying out of Wyatt's hand.
He started to scream.
  "Sorry." Piper quickly retrieved the plastic
lure. Wyatt stopped crying the instant she gave
it back. "Looks like I'll have to buy the worm,
too."
  "I don't know if I can sell that worm."
Brad held his hands eighteen inches apart. "I
once caught a bass this big with that sparkly."
  "How big?" Piper blinked.
  "Big enough," Brad said, grinning. "I threw
him back. That fish had lived too long to end up in
my frying pan."
  "That fish fell for a fake worm," Piper
joked. She couldn't tell if Brad was serious.
  "Fish don't know the worm is plastic until
it's too late." Brad chuckled. "And since you
let me tell that fish story, Wyatt can keep the
worm. No charge."


  Leo wandered back carrying two books. "How
did you make out with the list?"
  "Found three." Brad lifted his memo pad.
"Now, this one by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a
first edition-was
  Brad stopped talking when a black angelfish
landed on the lid of his closed laptop.
  Wyatt squealed.
  Piper spun toward her son. All the fish in the
aquarium began jumping out, but it was too late
to freeze the scene. Brad had already seen the flying
fins.
  "I hate to ask this . . ." Brad pulled two
fishnets out of a jar holding pencils, pens, and
scissors on the counter. He handed one to Leo and
carefully slid the black angelfish into the other.
"Get that swordtail by your foot, will you?"
  "Has this happened before?" Leo stooped and
flipped the yellow fish into the net with his finger.
  "Last time I lost three because I couldn't get
to them before they died." Brad hustled back to the tank
with the angelfish. "It's been a long time since I
remember having so many startling incidents so close
together, though."
  Bugs, toads, birds, snakes, and now fish,
Piper thought.
  As Leo stood up he caught a vibrant
blue fish in the net before it hit the floor.
  Brad dumped the angelfish into the tank. He
took a third net off a hook on the stand and gave

  it to Piper. "You needed a fish story to tell,
right?"
  Wyatt shook his plastic worm and laughed.
  I'm glad someone's having a good time, Piper
thought. Checking to make sure Brad's back was
turned, she froze an ugly, flopping
bottom-feeder before she picked it up.
  Phoebe cupped her hand around her face to peer
through the window of the Cairn Clarion office. The
old newspaper building stood across the street from a
textile plant that had been converted into office
space. Both buildings sported window boxes
filled with purple, pink, and white petunias.
  Leo and Piper had dropped her off at city
hall to check the public records for Harriet
Thornwood's father, but the government offices were
closed for the weekend. Then she realized the best
source of information in any town was the local
newspaper.
  "Come on in," a woman said. "The door's
open."
  Phoebe straightened and turned toward the
red-headed woman smiling from the doorway. Dressed
in jeans and a sweatshirt, she had perfect teeth and
wore no makeup to soften an angular, freckled
face. She looked thirty-five, but could be a
fit-and-trim fifty.
  "It's Saturday," Phoebe said. "I
wasn't sure-was
  "We only publish three days a week, but


  Saturday is one of them." The woman stepped
back and held the door open for Phoebe. "You can
place an ad, but it won't come out until
Tuesday."
  "Actually, I'm doing some research," Phoebe
said. She pulled out her Bay Mirror press
pass as she stepped inside.
  The woman studied Phoebe's credentials, then
nodded. "San Francisco. You're a long way
from home, Ms. Halliwell."
  "Just call me Phoebe."
  "Florence Nestor-Haynes." Florence
closed the door. "Editor, publisher, reporter,
and sometimes I run the presses."
  "I've never even seen our presses,"
Phoebe said.
  "If I hadn't learned every aspect of the
business, my father would have closed the Clarion rather than
let me have it when he died." A sparkle brightened
Florence's brown eyes. "I objected
strenuously, but he was right."
  "So you're carrying on the family tradition."
Phoebe followed Florence through a waist-high
swinging door in the front counter.
  "Yes, and hoping my son will carry on after me."
Florence sat down at a large wooden desk and
pointed Phoebe to an empty chair. "Right now,
Troy would rather play basketball and video
games."
  "He must be a teenager," Phoebe said, sitting
down.

  "Seventeen," Florence said. "Now, what can I
do for you?"
  Just because other people in Cairn liked to gossip,
Phoebe couldn't assume the newspaper editor was
a talker too. She had a cover story ready.
  "I enjoy working at the Bay Mirror, but
eventually I want to write a book," Phoebe
said. She was putting a book proposal together.
  "You and a thousand other reporters," Florence said.
  Phoebe let the subtle put-down slide.
If Florence thought she was just another reporter
chasing literary glory, the editor might be more
cooperative.
  "I like to read thrillers," Phoebe said, "and
poke around newspaper archives looking for material
I might be able to use someday."
  "How long have you been here?" Florence asked.
  "Two days," Phoebe said. Her intuition
kicked in when she met the other woman's steady
gaze. Florence Nestor-Haynes was no fool.
If Phoebe wanted the editor's help, she had
to be honest. "Long enough to hear some intriguing
rumors."
  "I bet." Florence laughed. "Well, I've
been a journalist long enough to know you'll dig until
you find out what you want to know. So you might as well
get the facts."
  "That's why I came to the Clarion" Phoebe
said. "To get the facts."
  "We've got everything on microfiche in the

  back. Everyone in town reads the Clarion,"
Florence explained. "I don't have an online
edition-yet."
  Phoebe followed Florence through the large back
area that housed the presses, to a small room
filled with supplies and boxes of old copies of the
newspaper. The microfiche equipment sat on a
long table in the corner. Phoebe sat on a
folding chair in front of the reader.
  "Let me know if you need anything else,"
Florence said. She closed the door when she left.
  Phoebe had so many questions about Abigail
Thornwood she wasn't sure where to start. She
went back twenty-two years and searched for
articles about Joshua Thornwood's death. The
story had made the front page and was written
by Frank Nestor. Phoebe assumed Frank was
Florence's father. The headline read: suicide or
  MURDER?
  According to the article, the sheriff found Joshua
Thornwood's body hanging from a rafter in the
attic of the Yankee Bear. The day before, three people
had heard Abigail tell him he should do everyone a
favor and break his neck.
  "That's creepy," Phoebe mumbled, shuddering.
The more she learned about Abigail, the more certain she
was that) Ida's daughter had been a sociopath.
Abigail had known right from wrong, but had never
suffered a moment's remorse for any harm she had
done.
  Abigail may have inherited the personality
disorder from her father, Phoebe realized suddenly.

  Considering the stories Paige and Piper had
heard, Joshua had also exhibited traits common
to an antisocial personality. Ironically,
Ida had wanted a baby to relieve the misery
Joshua caused her. Instead the child had just brought her
more grief.
  Phoebe read the rest of the article. Oddly,
Abigail had not been arrested. She had been
sitting in the town square when Joshua drove back
to the inn that night. She was still sitting there when Ida
called the sheriff to report her husband's death four
hours later. Five witnesses swore Abigail
hadn't left the park.
  The article ended with the question, did Abigail kill
her father with the power of suggestion?
  Creepier and creepier, Phoebe thought.
Apparently Mabel and Angus at the antique
shop weren't the only ones who thought it was possible
Abigail had "bewitched" her father. Frank
Nestor had not dismissed the possibility either.
  Next Phoebe looked up births for twenty
years ago. Harriet's arrival and Abigail's
death of natural causes were combined in a short
column. Abigail had been survived only by her
newborn daughter and her mother. There was no reference
to the baby's father.
  "But somebody's responsible," Phoebe
muttered. On a hunch she searched the society
pages for the previous year. "Bingo."
  There was a reference to Abigail in a weekly


  gossip column called "High Times."
Abigail had gone to the senior prom with Lucas
Barnes- nine months before Harriet was born. The
author of the article, Linda Cambridge,
wondered, "Why did Lucas Barnes, star
quarterback and best looking guy in the senior
class, ask Abigail Thornwood to be his
date? Is it possible Abigail really can cast
spells? Nothing else explains this social
mismatch!"
  Phoebe wondered too. Had Abigail used a
spell to get a date for the prom-and a baby? Since
Lucas wasn't mentioned in Harriet's birth
announcement, he hadn't admitted to being her father.
What did Abigail do to get revenge on him?
  Phoebe found several references to Lucas
Barnes in the years since Harriet was born. He
had graduated from the University of New
Hampshire, returned to Cairn to teach at the high
school, married, and had a son of his own. Lucas
had escaped Abigail's wrath.
  Perhaps, Phoebe mused, Abigail had hoped
Lucas would change his mind about meeting his
responsibilities after the baby was born. Instead
Abigail had died in childbirth, and Lucas was
off the hook. He had abandoned Abigail and his
daughter both.
  With her fact-finding mission completed, Phoebe
turned the machine off. On her way out of the
building, she stopped to thank Florence for her
help.
  "Glad to do it," Florence said, smiling with

  genuine warmth. "Was your search a success?"
  "Very much so," Phoebe said. "I read a couple
of your dad's articles about Abigail
Thornwood."
  "Abigail wasn't one of his favorite people,"
Florence said. "When she was twelve, my dad
yelled at her for running through his flowerbeds."
  "What happened?" Phoebe asked.
  "All the flowers died," Florence said.
  Very creepy, Phoebe thought. She thanked
Florence again and left.
  Back outside, Phoebe tried to untangle
her conflicted impressions. She didn't blame
Lucas for rejecting Abigail, especially if the
girl had used magic to seduce him. But
Abigail was dead, and that made it harder to forgive
him for turning his back on Harriet.
  Phoebe started walking and pulled out her cell
phone. Unless they heard from her, Leo and Piper
would return to city hall to pick her up in an
hour. She dialed Piper's cell to say she had
finished early, but she couldn't get a signal.
  The first pay phone Phoebe found was outside
Stark's Pharmacy. A phone book was attached
to the stand with a heavy, coiled wire. She turned to the
yellow pages to look up the used bookstore, then
flipped back to the residence section. There was one
listing for Lucas Barnes. She wrote the address
and phone number down and went into the drugstore.
  "Excuse me," Phoebe asked a teenage
girl at


  the front counter. The name "Nancy" was
embroidered on the girl's polo shirt. "I need
directions to Prospect Street."
  "It's about ten blocks that way." The girl
pointed out the door. "Turn left on Cove
by city hall. Prospect is the street before the high
school."
  A few blocks farther on, Phoebe tried her
cell phone again, but Cairn was apparently out of
signal range for her provider. If Piper and
Leo got to city hall before she did, they'd just have
to wait.
  The distance between side streets in Cairn varied,
and most of the stretches were shorter than the average
city block in San Francisco. Prospect
intersected Cove at the four-hundred block.
She turned right and walked two and a half more
blocks to number 629. The names Lucas,
Anne, and Tim Barnes were printed on the
mailbox.
  Phoebe gritted her teeth as she turned up the
front walk. Apparently Lucas had a
pleasant family life-one he wasn't willing
to share with Harriet.
  Flowers grew on both sides of the flagstone
path leading up to a modest Cape Cod house. A
basketball hoop was attached to the one-car garage,
and a green awning hung over the front door. The
porch was too small for furniture, but a plant
stand with a large ivy stood in one corner.
  Phoebe rang the bell and stepped back. She

  wasn't sure what she hoped to accomplish or
even what she wanted to say.
  A tall man with broad shoulders, solemn
gray eyes, and dark hair peppered with gray
answered the door. "Yes?"
  "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Barnes, but"-
Phoebe hesitated, then decided to confront the
issue head-on-"I'd like to talk to you about
Abigail Thornwood."
  Fear flashed across the man's tanned face.
Without a word Lucas slammed the door.
  Phoebe knocked, but Lucas Barnes didn't
answer. He had locked her out of his house as
definitively as he had locked Harriet out of his
life.
  Paige sat on the front porch of the Yankee
Bear, watching Nathaniel spread fertilizer on
the lawn. She had been watching him for forty-five
minutes. She had waved, but he hadn't waved
back or even looked in her direction.
  At first she thought Nathaniel was concentrating on
his work and hadn't noticed her. But as he headed to the
garden shed in back, she knew that he was avoiding
her.
  If he doesn't want to talk to me, fine,
Paige thought. She stood up and stomped down the
steps. But he's not going to get off without telling me
why.
  Paige caught up with Nathaniel as he opened
the double doors on the large shed. She was blunt.
"Is there a reason you're not speaking to me today?"


  "Hello, Paige." Nathaniel stepped into the
shed without meeting her gaze. He lifted the spreader
inside and parked it against the back wall.
  Paige took a deep breath. Losing her
temper would only give Nathaniel a good excuse
to ignore her.
  "Did Ida ask you not to hang out with the guests?"
Paige asked evenly.
  "That's not it." Nathaniel wiped his face with a
paper towel, then tossed it into a large trash
container.
  "Then what is it?" Paige knew she sounded
annoyed, but she couldn't help it. Something had
happened between dessert at the Fish, Fowl, and Cow
and the front door of the Yankee Bear last night.
She just didn't have a clue what. "No long-distance
relationships?"
  Nathaniel stepped back to stand in the doorway.
"You're very pretty, Paige, and great company. And
too intelligent to believe in the paranormal. Or
you should be."
  Paige just stared at him. It took all her
willpower not to orb one of the garden tools into her hand,
just to show him he wasn't as smart as he thought he
was. That would take the superior expression off his
face in a hurry, she thought. Unfortunately the
Charmed rules didn't make exceptions for converting
attractive but insufferable nonbelievers.
  "You arrived at this conclusion based on our
conversation last night?" Paige asked, puzzled.

  "Not until we were driving back here."
Nathaniel leaned against the doorjamb. "That's when
I realized you thought magic explained the Mystic
Knoll anomaly. Only fools believe in
curses and hexes."
  Paige bit her tongue. She wanted to tell
Nathaniel she was a witch and he was the fool, but
she couldn't. She couldn't let the insult pass,
either.
  Paige leaned toward Nathaniel. Her gaze and
voice hardened with controlled wrath. "I'd rather
believe that magic might be real than confine myself
to the absolute and totally boring certainty that it's
not."
  "You think I'm boring?" Nathaniel looked
stricken.
  Paige realized she had struck a nerve, but she
had no sympathy. She got in his face to drive
her point home.
  "You won't be able to finish your thesis,
Nathaniel," Paige said, "because you're too
narrow-minded to accept why rational people cling
to illogical belief in the fantastic."
  Nathaniel frowned, but he didn't turn
away.
  "Believing in impossible things keeps people connected
to innocence and hope. Didn't you believe in
Santa Claus?" Paige asked. "What
happened to your sense of wonder?"
  "I grew up," Nathaniel said.
  "Yeah. Too bad." Paige shrugged, then
turned and walked away.

  36 UdlCU from one end of Leo and Piper's
room to the other. Findpg Harriet's human father
had cemented rather than diffused her resolve.
  Lucas Barnes had slammed his door in her
face. Why? Had Abigail so intimidated him in
life he was still afraid twenty years after her death?
Was he ashamed for fathering Harriet? Or for forsaking
her?
  "How can we not help Harriet?" Phoebe
turned to challenge her sisters and Leo.
  "Help her what?" Piper folded Wyatt's
pajamas and placed them in his canvas suitcase.
  "Escape her tyrant grandmother might be a good
place to start." Paige sat on the floor helping
Wyatt stuff blocks through the holes in a
shape-sorter cube.
  "Where would she go?" Piper asked. "What

  would she do? I'm not being insensitive. Harriet
is barely functional in everyday social
situations."
  "With good reason," Leo said. He had found one
of the socks he had worn yesterday. He bent over
to look under the chest of drawers for the other one.
  "The fits are a problem," Phoebe admitted
as she sat in the wingback chair. According
to Nathaniel, Ida had taken Harriet out of
school to protect her from the taunts of insensitive
classmates. If other residents of Cairn
treated Harriet as cruelly as Jed Dalton had
the day before, the young woman's reclusive lifestyle
was understandable.
  "Especially since Harriet's condition may be
connected to Mystic Knoll," Leo said. He
stuffed a dirty shirt into his duffle.
  "Which may or may not be magical." Paige
handed Wyatt a square block and grinned when he
poked it through the correct hole. "Yea,
Wyatt!"
  "That's what bothers me." Piper pushed
Wyatt's suitcase aside and sat down on the
bed.
  "What?" Leo asked. He pulled the missing
sock out from under the pillow and put it in his bag.
  "We don't know if Harriet's problem is
magical," Piper said. "Or if Mystic
Knoll is either. And as much as I'd like to just be on
vacation, I can't believe we took a wrong turn
and stumbled into this weird town for no reason."


  "So you think we were brought here on purpose
too," Phoebe said. "To help Harriet."
  "Maybe," Piper said, "but that brings us right
back to my original question. Help her do what?"
  Paige looked up. "Cure her condition?"
  "Is it magical or medical?" Piper asked.
  "Nathaniel said nothing physical has ever
turned up on her tests," Phoebe answered.
  "I could orb home to check the Book of Shadows
for a reference to Mystic Knoll." Paige opened the
plastic cube and dumped the blocks so Wyatt could
start over.
  "And the Elders might know something," Leo said.
  "Then what are you waiting for? The sooner we find
out, the sooner we can get on with our vacation-or not."
Piper shooed Paige and Leo away with her hands.
"Go!"
  "Buh!" Wyatt waved bye-bye as his aunt and
father dissolved into streams of sparkling light.
  Piper lifted Leo's bag onto the bed and
pointed to Phoebe. "You play. I'll pack."
  "Okay." Phoebe sat on the floor and reached
for the block Wyatt had put in his mouth. "It's not
nice to eat your toys."
  Twenty minutes later Wyatt had fallen
asleep in Phoebe's lap. Piper had finished
packing-in case they decided or were forced to leave-and
was resting on the bed with her arm over her eyes.
Phoebe felt a little drained herself. Usually

  they didn't have to work so hard to determine if their
Charmed powers were needed.
  Easing Wyatt off her lap so that he was sitting
on the floor, Phoebe stood up and stretched.
She glanced at her watch, wondering why Leo and
Paige were taking so long, then flinched when someone
knocked on the door.
  Piper sat up, instantly awake. "What's
that?"
  "Door," Phoebe said. "I'll get it."
  "I have your bill!" Ida called from the hall.
  Piper slipped off the bed, picked up Wyatt,
and moved to the wingback chair.
  Ida knocked again, more insistently.
  "Coming!" Phoebe smiled and opened the door a
few inches. "Hi!"
  "It's almost two." Ida held out a handwritten
bill.
  "And we're almost ready," Phoebe said,
stalling. This wasn't the time to discuss whether they were
checking out immediately or not.
  "I'll be outside cleaning windows," Ida said.
  "Okay." As Phoebe reached for the bill she
saw the glow of an orb in her peripheral vision.
  Leo! Or Paige?
  "Thanks!" Phoebe snatched the paper from
Ida's hand and closed the door.
  Paige had been through the Book of Shadows many
times since she had first learned about her heritage.
However, familiarity with the pages didn't always
make it easy to find what she was


  looking for. Entries were sometimes added as needed
by an ancestor, and other times they simply weren't
there to find.
  "Like now," she muttered. Frustrated, Paige
closed the leather-bound tome. It contained no
references to Mystic Knoll, Cairn, or an
evil spellcaster called Abigail Thornwood.
  Paige scanned the cluttered upper floor of the
Manor. Her family had lived in the
Victorian house since it was rebuilt after the
earthquake in 1906. The memories and
paraphernalia of generations had collected in the
attic, and they didn't dare throw anything away.
Most of the discarded belongings were unremarkable. Other
items were enchanted, but as far as she knew, the only
way to tell which was which was by luck or accident.
  "But since the key to Mystic Knoll isn't
here, there's no reason for me to be here either."
  Paige no longer needed to concentrate to shift
into orb drive. Transforming into a stream of sparkling
particles and re-forming had become as natural to her
as breathing. A wisp of thought triggered the process
in San Francisco, and an instant later she
returned to solid form at the Yankee Bear in
New Hampshire.
  Phoebe sagged against the door as Paige
materialized in Leo and Piper's room. Both
her sisters looked worried.
  "Problem?" Paige asked.
  "Ida." Phoebe held up a paper. "The
bill."

  "She's a little too anxious to get rid of us,
if you ask me." Piper sat in the corner with
Wyatt cradled in her arms. "What did you find
out?"
  "Nothingst" Paige said as Leo orbed in next
to Piper's wingback chair. "There wasn't a word
about Mystic Knoll or Abigail in the Book of
Shadows. So maybe there isn't anything magical
or demonic going on."
  "But we can't rule it out," Leo said. "The stone
configurations at Mystic Knoll focus and
amplify magic. A few witches and shamans
knew about the site's power as recently as
colonial times, but the knowledge was forgotten over the
years."
  "Except by the Elders," Phoebe said.
  "Yes, and they aren't aware of any impending
magical disasters." Leo absently brushed
Wyatt's hair back.
  Paige recognized the pensive frown Leo
often displayed prior to adding a significant "b"
to his statements of fact. "But-was she prodded.
  "But," Leo said, "total solar eclipses
mask magical events and activities, and there will
be an eclipse here tomorrow."
  Piper's frown reflected confusion. "So something
awful might happen," she said.
  "Tomorrow," Leo repeated.
  "But that's all we know," Phoebe pointed out with a
huff of exasperation.
  "Actually, we may know more than we realize."
Paige paused to collect the stray thoughts


  she knew connected in some way. They just hadn't
figured out how yet. "Think about it."
  "Okay." Phoebe dropped the bill on the
night-stand and sat on the bed. She stared at the
wall. "We don't know, but the wildlife and
Harriet are probably affected by magical forces
that are either generated or amplified by Mystic
Knoll."
  "I agree, and the effects are getting worse,"
Paige said. "Tammy told me there haven't been
this many weird incidents this close together since she was
a kid."
  "Brad said basically the same thing," Piper
said. "He owns the bookstore."
  "Harriet's twenty years old," Phoebe
said, rubbing her chin.
  "Is that relevant?" Paige asked.
  "I don't know that yet, but some basic,
old-fashioned research seems in order."
Phoebe stood up. "I can use the phone line in
the kitchen to get on the Internet. It might help
to know Harriet's birth date, though."
  "How do we get it without making Ida
suspicious?" Paige asked.
  "I saw a Bible in the front sitting room,"
Leo said. "If Ida doesn't use it to record
family dates, I'm sure someone in town would be
more than happy to tell us."
  "That's for sure," Piper muttered.
  "I'll check it out," Paige volunteered.
"If the Bible is a bust, I can orb into town and
back without being missed."

  Leo looked at Phoebe. "What if Ida
walks in while you're online?"
  "I'm just checking my e-mail." Phoebe
shrugged with a what's-the-problem look. "Did she
say which windows she was cleaning?"
  "Watch Wyatt, Leo." Piper handed him the
sleeping boy. "I'll go with Phoebe, just in case
she needs an emergency freeze."
  Paige looked out the window. "Nathaniel's
truck isn't in the driveway, but he could come
back anytime too."
  Her chest constricted with a pang of regret. If
she and Nathaniel wanted to pursue a relationship,
being separated by a continent wasn't an insurmountable
obstacle. But the chasm created by Nathaniel's
chauvinism against magic was too wide to bridge.
She couldn't overlook his contempt for those who thought that
what could be imagined might also be real.
  "Nathaniel doesn't give me the
heebie-jeebies," Phoebe said as she started for the
door.
  Paige followed Piper and Phoebe into the hall
and kept going when her sisters stopped to get
Phoebe's laptop from the other room. Since she
didn't know where Ida was, she walked downstairs
with an excuse rehearsed and ready. Ida wasn't
visible through the foyer window. Still, as a precaution,
Paige grabbed a couple of brochures from the rack
before she strolled into the front room.
  The Bible sat on a table at the far end of a


  colonial-style sofa. Several magazines were
fanned on the coffee table, an invitation for guests
to sit and relax. Although Ida wasn't at the
front-room windows either, Paige sat down and
flipped through the pamphlets. She heard Piper and
Phoebe come down the stairs and turn into the hall.
She waited another minute, then opened the Bible.
  There were very few entries on the ornamental
family pages in the middle of the book. Beginning with
Joshua's birth in 1925, Ida had recorded
her own birthday, her wedding day, and Abigail's
birthday. Her daughter's death had occurred the
same day Harriet was born, on May
19,1985.
  Paige committed the date to memory and stuffed the
brochures in her pocket. As she rose to leave,
the sound of metal hitting wood warned her that Ida
was nearby. In danger of being trapped with no options
except to be seen, to orb, or to wait, she walked
toward the foyer. Something, perhaps a bucket, banged
against the house again. She glanced back, but the old
woman had not reached the sitting-room windows.
  Paige hurried down the hall, opened the kitchen
door, and ducked inside.
  Phoebe sat hunched over her laptop at the
built-in table with attached booths. Sitting across
from her, Piper whipped her head around and raised her
hands to freeze.

  CkApDo
  "It's just me!" Paige whispered, closing the
door behind her. "How are you doing?"
  "We're making progressst" Piper said.
"Solar eclipses only happen during the new
moon."
  That makes sense, Paige thought, recalling what
she had learned in a college astronomy course.
  The moon circled Earth every twenty-eight days.
The new phase was dark because the moon passed between
Earth and the sun, and sunlight reflected off the
side facing away from Earth. During a solar
eclipse, the moon passed directly in front
of the sun, blocking the light. Whether or not a
total or partial eclipse could be seen was
determined by the observer's location on Earth.
  "And Harriet's episodes are the worst during
the new moon," Phoebe added.
  "Did you get her birth date?" Piper asked.
  "May nineteenth, 1985." Paige stayed by the
door so she could hear if anyone approached.
  "Bingo," Phoebe said.
  "What?" Paige asked.
  Phoebe looked up from the computer screen. "The
last total eclipse in this area happened in
1985, a month before Harriet was born."
  "What's the significance of that?" Paige
asked.
  "I certainly don't know," Piper said. "It just
raises more questions."
  "If we want answers, maybe we should go


  straight to the source and ask Harriet."
Phoebe disconnected from the Internet and shut down
her laptop.
  "If she'll talk to us." Piper slid out of the
booth.
  Paige cracked the door and waved her sisters
into the empty hall.
  "Where's Ida?" Phoebe whispered as they
crept toward Harriet's room.
  "She was still cleaning windows a few minutes
ago." Paige knocked softly on Harriet's
door.
  "Grandma?" Harriet asked, her voice muffled
by the heavy door.
  Phoebe stepped up to the door. "It's
Phoebe, Harriet. We talked yesterday." When
there was no reply, she tried again. "Can I come
in?"
  "No! No, no, no!" Harriet yelled. Within
a second or two, her shouts became increasingly
hysterical.
  "Try the door," Paige said, her expression
worried.
  Phoebe turned the knob, but the door was
locked. "Ida must have locked her in again."
  Harriet shrieked and spewed nonsensical
gibberish. Then, judging by the sound of unidentified
objects hitting the walls, she began to throw things.
Then something repetitively hit the bedroom door.
  "Is she banging her head against the door?"
Phoebe asked.

  "I can orb in to find out," Paige said.
  "You've got to orb in to stop her," Piper said,
"before she hurts herself."
  Phoebe nodded. "I agree."
  "Then it's unanimousst" Paige said. The
Charmed Ones never risked using magic in front of
witnesses except in extreme circumstances. This
time Harriet's safety outweighed the concerns about
revealing Paige's power.
  Besides, Paige thought, Harriet has seen a
lot of really weird stuff in this town. Mystic
Knoll may have deadened the shy young woman's
capacity for surprise. In addition, she rarely
spoke to anyone except her grandmother and
Nathaniel. Nathaniel wouldn't believe
Harriet had seen a lady made of light, and
Ida wouldn't expose her granddaughter to more town
ridicule.
  A second before Paige began to dissolve, Ida
turned the corner into the hall.
  "What are you-was
  Piper whirled to freeze her.
  Not good, Paige thought as she streamed inside
Harriet's room. The young woman continued shrieking
as she re-formed.
  Harriet wore a shapeless nightdress that was
stained and torn. Long strands of tangled, dark
hair hung in her face. The purple bruise on
her arm had changed to greenish yellow.
  Paige choked back a rush of pity and
desperately tried to calm the young woman. "It's
okay, Harriet."


  Harriet grabbed her own hair and kept
screaming, too terrified to realize the intruder
wasn't a threat.
  "Paige!" Phoebe pounded on the door.
"What's happening in there?"
  "Oh, nothing," Paige muttered, at a loss
for what to do. She was afraid that shock and sustained
fright might cause Harriet unintended harm.
Piper could calm and quiet the young woman
instantly, but Piper's magic hands were on the other
side of the door.
  But since Ida was frozen, Paige could orb
Harriet out.
  As Paige gripped Harriet's arm, she
noticed two things that destroyed her previous
assumptions.
  The nails on Harriet's
  bare feet had thick-
  ened, elongated, and curled into hawklike
talons.
  And a key was in the lock.
  Harriet had locked the door from the inside.

  I lpCF 1C3116U against the wall and
massaged her throbbing temples. She had held out
hope that the series of odd, but not totally
inexplicable, incidents in Cairn didn't
require magical attention. She should have known
better. Although the mysterious links among Harriet,
Mystic Knoll, and two total solar eclipses
twenty years apart weren't conclusive evidence they
were knee-deep in a Charmed situation, they now had
two witnesses to Paige's traveling light show.
  When Harriet's door opened, Piper
straightened up and peered inside.
  Paige tried to hush the shrieking woman standing just
inside the door. She staggered when Harriet
suddenly bolted past her into the hall.
  "Wait-was Phoebe reached to grab Harriet.
  The instant Harriet saw her immobilized


  grandmother, she stopped and screamed louder.
  "Piper!" Phoebe stuck her fingers in her
ears.
  Piper froze Harriet. "Okay. Anybody
got any more bright ideas?"
  "No, but-was Paige pointed downward. "What
if Harriet isn't our Innocent?"
  Piper stared at Harriet's bare feet. Her
toe-nails had grown into curved, pointed talons.
"Did she have those before?"
  Phoebe shook her head. "She was barefoot the
night we checked in, and I would have noticed the
eagle-claw manicure."
  "And"-Paige held up a key-"the door was
locked from the inside."
  Phoebe squinted, puzzled. "Then Ida's the
good guy?"
  "Let's ask." Before heri sisters could object,
Piper unfroze the old woman.
  "She-devils!" Ida's eyes flashed with
revulsion and fear when she saw her granddaughter.
  Piper glanced at Harriet. The young woman's
face was twisted in a grimace of pure terror.
Her expression was a portrait of the pain and panic
she had endured throughout her life.
  "Monsters!" Ida raised her fists to fight the
sisters off as she rushed forward.
  "No, we're not." Phoebe grabbed Ida's
wrists, stopping her advance.
  "Let me go!" Ida snarled and fought to get
free.
  Not to save herself, Piper realized, but to save

  her grandchild. In a moment of crystal clear
insight, Piper recognized in the furious old
woman the same all-encompassing love that drove
Piper to protect Wyatt. No threat was too
evil or too dangerous to override that universal
maternal instinct.
  "Harriet is not hurt!" Phoebe raised her
voice, but the meaning of her words didn't pierce
Ida's blind rage. Gambling that surprise would
break through, Phoebe suddenly released her hold.
"We won't hurt you."
  Ida stumbled back a step, rubbing her wrists.
Her suspicious gaze darted from one to the other before it
rested on Harriet. "What did you do to her?"
  "Slowed down her molecules," Piper
explained.
  "She was a little upset," Paige added with an
apologetic shrug.
  "Can you calm her down if I free her?"
Piper asked. When Ida nodded, she unfroze the
young woman.
  "Grandma!" Harriet burst into tears and threw
her arms around the smaller woman.
  "It's all right, Harriet." A few inches
shorter and thirty pounds lighter, Ida was in danger
of suffocating within the terrified girl's crushing
embrace. She didn't struggle, but spoke in
soothing tones that coaxed Harriet to loosen her
hold. "I'm here. It's okay."
  The comfort conveyed in those few short


  sentences cemented Piper's revised opinion.
Ida cherished Harriet and would do anything to keep her
safe. Even yell at her, Piper thought. She
hadn't had to reprimand Wyatt-yet-but she knew
she'd be devastated every time she stung him with harsh
words for his own good.
  Harriet cowered against her grandmother and glanced at the
three sisters with frightened brown eyes. Her skin had
a raw quality, the result of the peeling Phoebe
had seen.
  Ida gently pushed Harriet away. "Let's
get you back into your room."
  Harriet clutched Ida's shirt and wouldn't
move until Piper, Paige, and Phoebe eased
back. They pretended not to notice her hobbling
gait or the click of her deformed nails on the
wooden floor. As soon as the two women were through the
bedroom door, the three witches quickly followed.
  It was the most depressing bedroom Piper had ever
seen. The gloom was oppressive; she had to pause
inside the door to adjust.
  Heavy drapes were drawn over a single window
to keep out the day. The glow of a small bed lamp
did little to brighten the artificial twilight. Sparse
furnishings-a bed, chest of drawers, desk, and
chair-added to the dreary ambience. No mirror or
picture broke the monotony of faded wallpaper
on four walls. Books and clothes were scattered
where Harriet had! thrown them. There were no
knickknacks, jewelry, or photographs,

  nothing that hinted of a vibrant personality buried
under Harriet's bleak, defeated demeanor.
  "At the risk of being pushy," Phoebe said,
"we have to talk, Ida."
  Ida walked Harriet to the bed. "The only thing
we have to talk about is paying your bill so you can check
out."
  "No, we have to talk about Mystic Knoll and
Harriet," Piper said. "We're here to help
her."
  "Nobody can help me," Harriet mumbled.
She crawled into the comer and wrapped her arms around her
knees. "She did it, and someone had to pay."
  Abigail? Piper wondered. And why was
Harriet saddled with her mother's debt to society?
  "Try to rest." Ida jostled Harriet's
shoulder until the girl stretched out. The old
woman picked up a blanket and noticed that one
corner was shredded. She tossed it aside and pulled
another out from under the bed. After covering Harriet, she
waved Piper and her sisters out. "We can talk in the
kitchen." On their way out, Piper watched from the
corner of her eye as Ida locked her
granddaughter's door.
  Phoebe studied the older woman as they filed
into the kitchen. She had accurately defined some of
Ida's character traits, but she didn't have all the
pieces yet. Ida was stubborn, confident, and
stoic. And although her affection for her afflicted
granddaughter seemed genuine,


  she might also be the cause of Harriet's
damaged psyche.
  "Would anyone like tea?" Ida picked up the
kettle from the large stove and walked to the sink.
  "Yes, please." Paige said. "We all
would," she added when Phoebe and Piper nodded.
  "Why does Harriet think she's being punished for
her mother's actions?" Piper slid into the booth at the
built-in table.
  "Good question," Paige said, sliding in beside her.
  Exactly what I want to know, Phoebe thought,
setting her laptop on the counter. She sat in the
booth opposite her sisters, keeping an eye on
Ida. bar
  "Because she is." Ida turned the gas burner on
under the kettle.
  "By whom?" Phoebe asked, taken aback by an
answer she hadn't anticipated.
  "Her mother," Ida said.
  Again Phoebe was caught off guard. She had
expected Ida to accuse the people in Cairn of
persecuting Harriet for Abigail's egregious
crimes.
  "Abigail couldn't command magic without the stones."
Ida turned to look at them. Her gaze was
direct, her tone matter-of-fact. "But you
  c.
  "Yes," Piper replied. "We're witches."
"Good witches," Paige added quickly, raising

  a cautionary finger. "We're not like Abigail."
  The exchange answered a few of their questions,
Phoebe realized. Abigail had been a
practitioner, as they suspected, and she had used
Mystic Knoll to augment her limited power.
Ida, apparently, knew everything.
  "Did Abigail kill her father?" Piper
asked.
  "Yes." Ida took four mugs and a tin of
teabags from a cupboard. "She did a Svengali
on the miserable old coot and told him to break his
neck. So he hanged himself."
  Phoebe only recognized the reference to the
fictional evil hypnotist, Svengali, because she
liked old black-and-white horror movies. She
thought it was ironic that Joshua, who had dominated
Ida for his own malicious purposes, had
Svengali traits too.
  "My daughter used spells to hurt people who hurt
her." Ida set a teabag in each mug, then
lifted the kettle and poured boiling water.
  "Yes, we know," Paige said.
  Ida nodded and carried the mugs to the table. "The
town likes to talk."
  "More than most." Piper took a mug from Ida
and blew on the steaming tea.
  "But the folks around here only think Abigail
used magic. I know she did." Ida set the other
mugs down and went to the refrigerator.
  Phoebe watched her, amazed. The woman's
unemotional delivery was more evidence of a
remarkably resilient nature. Subjected to the


  hardships inflicted by Joshua and Abigail,
weaker people would have broken down or lashed out. Somehow
Ida had processed the torments in a way that
preserved her dignity and ability to love.
  "How do you know Abigail used magic?"
Paige asked.
  Ida didn't answer right away. She set a
small pitcher of cream on the table and handed everyone
a spoon. Then she pulled a step stool over to the
coffee counter and opened the upper cabinet. She
returned to the table with a blue book.
  "Abigail wrote everything down in her diary."
Ida placed the book on the table.
  Phoebe glanced at the diary as she moved over
to make room in the booth for Ida. The vinyl binding
had a locking clasp and a pink flower stamped in one
corner. "Everything?" Paige asked.
  "If it was important," Ida said.
"Abigail found out about Mystic Knoll's
magical power at the historical society. I
can't imagine why Clara Beady let a
twelve-year-old girl rummage around in the
colonial archives, but she did."
  Phoebe didn't interrupt. As often happened
with people who had kept I traumas and secrets
bottled up for a long time, once Ida started
talking, she kept talking.
  "Easily fooled about helping with a school
project, I guess. Clara was almost eighty
back then. She's dead now." Ida left the
teabag in her

  mug and took a sip. "Abigail was wicked at
the core before she learned magic. Nobody liked
her, but no one was afraid of her."
  Paige nodded, and Piper silently stirred
sugar and cream into her tea. When Ida paused,
both resisted the urge to prod, for fear of shutting the
old woman down.
  Ida stared over her cup at nothing in particular.
"The birthmark made things worse, I'm sure, but
Abigail was born with something missing. She didn't
understand why people wasted time and energy caring for anyone but
themselves, because she couldn't. She couldn't even care about
the baby inside her."
  Ida's voice cracked. She paused to take a
sip of tea.
  Phoebe realized that Ida's emotional insulation
came apart when Harriet was the topic of discussion.
  "Abigail wasn't satisfied just giving her
peers warts or bad breath," Ida went on.
"She made sure they would all worry for a very long
time."
  "Worry about what?" Phoebe asked.
  "Payback," Ida said. "Abigail told
Lucas that he and his friends had to be punished for ruining
her life. They wouldn't know when or how, but they would
pay."
  "Do you know?" Paige leaned forward, her hands
clasped around her mug.
  "Abigail used the power of Mystic Knoll
to curse Harriet a month before she was born,"
Ida


  said. "My granddaughter will be the instrument of my
daughter's revenge against her old tormentors and their
children."
  "I'm sorry, but"-Piper looked stricken-"how
could anyone hate their own child that much?"
  "It wasn't a question of hate. It was all about
power and winning," Ida explained. "Abigail
didn't feel anything for anyone."
  A sociopath with magical t
  It was an explosively dang
  bility, Phoebe thought. "rous combination.
  "Now, do you young ladies still think you can help
Harriet?" Ida asked.
  The old woman's expression was one Phoebe
had seen before. Ida wanted to believe, but she
didn't dare hope.
  "Yes, I think we-was Phoebe reached for the
diary. As her fingers touched the vinyl cover she was
suddenly ripped from the present into Abigail's
past....
  In the stone maze at Mystic Knoll,
Phoebe watched as Abigail paused outside a
tunnel entrance framed in stone. Barefoot in a
long, black skirt and a white lace top, she was
as small in stature as Ida and pregnant.
Thick, dark hair fell in waves past her
shoulders. She turned to look up.
  Even in her vision-trance state, Phoebe's
gaze was drawn to the red blotch that covered
Abigail's right eye and cheek. She had been
pretty, but no one had ever noticed.

  As Abigail disappeared into the stone labyrinth, the
sunny day dimmed.
  The 1985 eclipse, Phoebe thought as the moon
began to move across the face of the sun ... and the stone
walls glowed.
  Phoebe remembered the phosphorescent lichen
Paige had described. The fox fire relative
grew abundantly in the heart of the ancient site.
Shadow and patches of yellowish bioillumination had
formed an eerie truce between light and dark in the
underground cavern. Tendrils of lichen created webs
of light in alcoves and depressions.
Stalactites and stalagmites glistened, and the musty
scent of damp debris was permanently embedded in
the rock.
  Phoebe shifted her perspective as Abigail
emerged from a tunnel. The young practitioner skirted
large outcroppings of rock at the perimeter.
Obviously familiar and comfortable with the surroundings,
Abigail climbed onto a raised slab of flat
rock in the center of the chamber and paused to modulate
her breathing.
  Her gaze flicked to each of three large
stalagmites spaced at even intervals. She
closed her eyes and began to hum a steady,
one-note incantation. Within seconds crackling
bolts of red lightning appeared in midair.
Thunderous booms filled the cavern as the crimson
spikes broke through an invisible barrier. Snapping
and sizzling, the bolts zoomed about the cavern in


  frantic spurts before they were attracted to and
absorbed by the three cones.
  When the stalagmites began to pulse red,
Abigail raised her arms to chant:
  "Cast from creatures of the night,
  Fang and claw, leather and flight.
  Two times ten shall pass before
  They know my vengeance, hear us roar."
  The enormous power unleashed in the cavern filled
Phoebe with awe and a grudging respect for
Abigail. No one on the higher planes knew
about her horrendous spell because the eclipse had
hidden the magic.
  A chill wind whipped through the cavern . . . and in
Phoebe's mind, a scream rent the quiet.
  Phoebe didn't have serial visions often. They
were too taxing both to sustain and survive on a
regular basis. Suddenly, trapped in the trance,
she was vaguely aware of the weakness seeping into her
body. She ignored it as she watched a younger, more
robust version of Ida Thornwood.
  Ida stood at the end of a four-poster bed in a
room at the Yankee Bear. Sweat drenched
Abigail's face and arms as she gripped the
uprights and groaned. Harriet was being born.
  And Abigail was dying.
  "Breathe, Abigail," Ida implored her
struggling daughter. "Deep breaths. It will help."

  "No help," Abigail whispered, her voice
an agonized rasp. "I'm not done here."
  "Abigail-was Ida tensed, then bent over the
straining young woman.
  Another scream reverberated off the ceiling and
ended suddenly-with Abigail's life.
  Ida's keening cry filled every space as she
picked up the small form that had just come into the world.
  Phoebe peered at the baby girl, not sure she
could believe what the vision showed her.
  Another form was superimposed over the infant. The
beast resembled a lizard with bat wings, fangs, and
talons.
  "Abigail! What did you do?" Ida wailed.
  Phoebe knew exactly what Abigail had
done. She had condemned the daughter in her womb.
One day Harriet would become the monstrosity
Abigail had conjured to punish her enemies and their
offspring. Striking from the grave was the ultimate
exercise of power.
  Ida had seen the monster her granddaughter would
become. For twenty years she had been protecting
Harriet from the taunts of her peers, minimizing how
many people witnessed her fits, making sure no one saw
the temporary physical changes she developed
during the new moon, hoping somehow to save Harriet
from the cruel fate her mother had devised.
  Before the monstrous image had faded completely,
Ida wrapped the newborn in a blanket.


  She hugged her granddaughter close as the room
dissolved . . . and Harriet limped into the cavern.
  Phoebe felt light-headed and nauseous as the
vision shifted again. Still, she took in every detail as
Harriet stumbled to the raised rock slab.
  The young woman's eyes were not liquid brown and
human, but yellow and reptilian. Shimmering
scales had begun to cover her skin.
  Since Harriet's birth Ida had not known when
the creature would emerge, only that her
granddaughter's condition was worse during the three
days of the new moon.
  Phoebe realized that Harriet's fully formed
talons were a physical manifestation of an
imminent transformation-tomorrow, when the solar eclipse
would mask the change.
  Red magic crackled in glowing stalagmites as
Harriet began to chant her mother's spell.
  "Cast from creatures of the night, Fang and
claw...
  Phoebe's vision blurred. She was ... wrenched
back to reality-in a sudden, sickening second- and
then she passed out.
  Paige was the first to realize that touching
Abigail's diary had triggered a vision for
Phoebe. Usually her sister was only "gone" for a

  few seconds. This time the vision lasted some
seconds longer.
  "Is she aUs right?" Ida asked.
  "She will be," Piper assured her.
  "I don't think so." Paige jumped up when
Phoebe started to open her eyes and then slumped
over the table.
  Ida moved out of the booth. "Can I do anything?"
  "We don't know what's wrong." Paige
shifted into the cushioned seat beside Phoebe and gently
raised her head.
  "Leo!" Piper yelled.
  "I don't think he can hear-was Ida clamped
her mouth closed when Leo orbed into the kitchen
withWyatt.
  Leo glanced at Ida, then Piper, his eyes
questioning the call.
  "Phoebe." Piper held out her hands to take
Wyatt.
  "She fainted coming out of a vision," Paige said.
She gave Leo her seat and slipped back
into place beside Piper. They could explain how Ida
had gotten into the magical loop later.
  As Leo took Phoebe's hand, she opened her
eyes. "What happened?" he asked.
  "Overload, I think." Phoebe fell back
against the seat and took a deep breath. "I'll be
all right. Just give me a minute."
  "I didn't know men could be witches," Ida
said.
  "He's not a witch. He's an angel."
Paige sup-


  plied the stock answer, which was easier than trying
to define a Whitelighter.
  "I see." Ida looked at Wyatt. "Would
he like a cookie?"
  "Yes," Piper said, smiling tightly when Leo
frowned.
  Paige realized her brother-in-law was worried
about having to erase Ida's memory, which was doable but
inadvisable. Memory dusting wasn't an exact
magic, and the subjects often lost more than their
unauthorized knowledge of magic. On the other hand, good and
evil magical types didn't want word of their
existence to get around. Mortals always reacted
badly.
  "I orbed in front of Ida," Paige
confessed.
  "Right before I froze her," Piper interjected.
"But it's okay. Harriet has hawk feet, but
she and Ida aren't evil."
  "Unlike Abigail, who practiced magic and
wrote it all down in a diary." Paige held
up the blue book.
  "Which Ida read," Phoebe finished. "Then I
touched it and went off on a whirlwind tour of
Abigail's wicked ways."
  "You've been gone less than an hour," Leo
said.
  Paige couldn't tell if he was appalled because
they had exposed themselves or pleased with their
progress. "We work fast," she joked.
  "Where's Nathaniel?" Leo asked.
  "I sent him home." Ida set down a plate
of

  chocolate-chip cookies. "It's too close
to Harriet's bad time."
  Obviously he didn't want to hang around
to see me, Paige fumed. She had hoped her
morning outburst might have made Nathaniel rethink
his inflexible attitudes about myths, magic, and those
who believed. Apparently not.
  Wyatt almost leaped off Piper's lap to reach the
plate of cookies. She handed him one.
  "I know what's happening to Harriet," Phoebe
said. When all eyes turned toward her, she added,
"I saw Abigail cast the spell that cursed
her."
  "Is it hopeless?" Ida dragged the kitchen
stool over and sat down.
  "Curses can be broken," Phoebe said. She
took a swallow of cold tea and described
everything she had seen and heard.
  Since Paige had taken the Mystic Knoll
tour, it was easy to envision Abigail on the flat
center stone surrounded by bursts of red lightning.
  "The red lightning is free magic," Leo said.
"Mystic Knoll probably attracts
concentrated fragments. Apparently Abigail had
the ability to extract it from the ether. The stone
configuration absorbs and amplifies power, so the more
free magic she captured, the stronger the spells
she could cast."
  "Abigail used a lot of magic," Paige
said. "Why didn't the Elders detect those
spells?"
  "It's just not feasible or possible to track every


  spell and random magical emission," Leo
explained.
  "And the total solar eclipse masked the
curse," Phoebe said. "Abigail knew there would
be another eclipse in twenty years, and she
designed the curse to take advantage of it."
  Paige was more concerned with the present and the future
than with the past. "Well, if we don't figure out
a way to break it, Harriet will turn into a hideous
monster tomorrow."
  "A Jersey Devil," Ida said. "That's what
Abigail called it in the diary."
  "May I?" Paige asked, reaching for the diary.
When Ida nodded, she released the unlocked clasp
and opened the blue book.
  As she flipped through the pages, Paige realized
that the diary was a journal and a spell book.
Abigail had written everything down in a bold
script. A few pages included crude
diagrams or pictures.
  "The Jersey Devil is a colonial myth from
1735," Leo said. "A woman who was suspected
of being a witch was so furious about having a thirteenth
child, she swore she'd give birth to a devil." I
  "What did it look like?"'" Paige asked.
  "As the story goes," Leo said, "it was born
normal and almost instantly grew into a beast with bat
wings, a horse's head, and a dragon's body."
  "Like this?" Paige turned the diary so Leo

  and Phoebe could see. The head on the creature
Abigail had drawn looked more like a seahorse
than a terrestrial equine. Otherwise, Leo's
description was accurate.
  "That's close to what I saw." Phoebe took
a cookie off the plate. When Wyatt reached out,
she gave it to him and took another. "What did this
thing do?"
  "It poisoned rivers and lakes and brought other
pestilence and hardships to the Pine Barrens of New
Jersey," Leo explained. "There have been
unverified sightings of the beast over the past three
centuries, usually as a harbinger of shipwrecks and
wars."
  Paige wondered if Nathaniel was familiar
with the Jersey Devil myth. It was the type of
local legend that might have inspired his thesis. It
had definitely inspired Abigail.
  "Harriet will go after Abigail's enemies and their
children," Ida said softly. Her lined face showed no
emotion, and she spoke with a calm that belied the inner
turmoil revealed in her eyes.
  "I think it's pretty clear we didn't stop
here by accident." Piper took a paper napkin from a
holder and wiped cookie crumbs off Wyatt's
face.
  "No question," Phoebe said. "We're here to help
Harriet, Ida."
  If we can, Paige thought. She stared at the
drawing of the monster in Abigail's book.


  Harriet was the innocent pawn of a vindictive,
spell-casting mother. But what if they couldn't stop her
from changing into the savage bestial weapon of
Abigail's vengeance? It was a question none of them had
considered.
  "I'm really worried about Lucas Barnes,"
Ida said. "He's a decent man. Abigail
bewitched him, too."
  "I know." Phoebe smiled. "Someone wrote
about it in the Cairn Clarion."
  Ida's sigh was heavy with guilt. "Lucas and his
wife, Anne, are teachers at the high school.
Tim is on the football team, a quarterback-just
like his father."
  For a recluse, Ida kne caret very a lot about
Lucas Barnes and his family. Perhaps, Paige
realized, because he was Harriet's f ither, and it
wasn't his fault.
  "It's not just Harriet-was Ida faltered.
  "No, it's not," Paige said.
  Piper and Phoebe both looked at her.
  Paige finished Ida's thought. "Harriet's
potential victims are Innocents too."
  Piper swallowed hard, and Phoebe paled as the
implication of Paige's observation sank in: If
they couldn't prevent Harriet's transformation, they
might have to destroy the beast to save Abigail's
other intended victims.

  j lpCr I00K6Q up from Abigail's
diary when Harriet moaned. She waited, ready
to freeze the girl at the hint of unusual
activity.
  They had set up a rotation to watch Harriet
overnight. Piper sat on one of two chairs they
had brought into the bedroom. A 1960's lamp-table
provided a place to set a soda and enough light
to read. The glow from the bed lamp on the chest of
drawers lit the corner where Ida lay on a
rollaway parked beside Harriet's bed.
  Piper tensed as Harriet tried to kick her
blanket away. The fabric snagged on her
claws. She pulled it off, tearing another hole,
then rolled onto her side and fell back into a
fitful sleep.
  Ida was so exhausted and relieved to have help with
her monthly vigil, the disturbance didn't wake
her.
  "False alarm. Good," Piper mumbled.


  The night had not been without its exciting moments.
Just after sunset, every animal within twenty miles of
Mystic Knoll had barked, bellowed, howled,
hooted, or croaked. Two hours later, hordes
of cockroaches had swarmed out of the bathroom
plumbing. Piper and her sisters had brushed their
teeth with bottled water.
  Three hours ago, when Piper had come down
to relieve Paige, Harriet had suddenly started
scratching, as though plagued by fleas. She had gouged
her arm with a talon-toe, drawing blood before Piper
could act. She had frozen Harriet and unfrozen
her-twice-before the Mystic Knoll effect had run
its course.
  Leo thought the bizarre animal behaviors were
caused by free magic interacting with, rather than being
independent of, electromagnetic forces at
Mystic Knoll. He believed the configuration of the
stones attracted magical power and manipulated
natural energies. The dual aspect of the stones and
their resulting phenomena were probably unique in the
world.
  "The just-before-dawn shift has arrived." Phoebe
walked in with a mug of hot coffee and her paperback
novel. "There's more coffee in the big urn if you
want some. I just made it."
  "After being awake half the night?" Piper shook
her head. "Don't think so."
  "Anything to report?" Phoebe asked, sitting
down.
  "Harriet had an itch. It passed." Piper
held up

  CliApDo
  the diary. "Abigail's spell book was
interesting, though. Except for the fact that she was a
deranged homicidal maniac, some of her early
spells and assumptions are amusing. You'll get a
kick out of it."
  "It's four o'clock in the morning," Phoebe said.
"Cliffs Notes version. Phantom Fire just
started getting good."
  "How can you read thrillers when we're always living
one?" Piper asked.
  "It's fun when it's not real," Phoebe
explained.
  "I guess." Piper thumbed through the diary
to give Phoebe a quick rundown of the contents.
"Abigail's first spells were simple
manipulations of the elements. She made a creek
run dry, melted a bicycle, stuff like that.
Mostly to see if she could."
  "Like a hobby," Phoebe said.
  "Basically." Piper nodded. "At first, just being
able to do magic made up for being the ugly kid
everyone teased."
  "And then?" Phoebe asked.
  "And then she got older, smarter, more powerful, and
became the primary target of typical teen
torture," Piper said. "But Abigail wasn't
a typical teen. She learned to refine her
spells for specific individuals and results.
Rotting Gretchen's teeth and making Karen Stark go
bald, for example."
  "And Mr. Nestor's dead flowers," Phoebe
added.


  Piper nodded. The flower incident was mentioned in the
diary. "All her revenge spells were annotated
with the identity of her victim, what they did to her,
what she did to them."
  Phoebe raised an eyebrow. "Lucas?"
  "His name is on a blank page right before the
page with the spell to curse Harriet." Piper
pointed to the verse. "No notes, but at least we have
the spell."
  "That's not much help," Phoebe said. "I heard
the spell in my vision."
  "And saw the ritual." Piper closed the book
and dropped it on the table. "So you're elected
to write a reversal spell."
  "Okay." Phoebe put her coffee and book
on the lamp-table and reached for the diary.
  A ticking sound caught Piper's attention.
"What's that?"
  "What?" Phoebe frowned. "I don't hear
anything."
  "That scratching sound." Piper glanced around the
darkened room, trying to pinpoint the noise.
  The sound traveled up the wall by the closet and
across the ceiling. Piper's breath caught in her
throat when she looked up. A mouse peeked out from
a hole at the base of a broken fan fixture in
the ceiling. She jumped off her chair when it
dropped.
  It fell on Phoebe's head.
  "What? What is that?" A cry lodged in

  Phoebe's throat as she sprang to her feet and
frantically shook her head. "Piper! Something's
clawing my scalp!"
  And nibbling your hair, Piper thought.
  "Do something!" Phoebe demanded. She jumped up
and down, trying to dislodge the terrified mouse.
  "Stand still!" Piper ordered.
  "What-was Ida sat bolt upright.
  Phoebe squeezed her eyes closed, and Piper
flicked her hands to freeze the rodent. She was so
tired and stressed, Phoebe and the mouse were lucky it
didn't explode.
  "What's wrong?" Ida asked. "Harriet-was
  "She's fine. Don't move, Phoebe."
Piper walked over and parted Phoebe's hair.
  "Don't worry." Phoebe winced as Piper
picked the mouse up by the tail. Then she opened one
eye. "A mouse? There was a mouse in my hair?"
  "I've got it. I just don't know what to do with
it."
  Piper spotted a metal waste can by the desk that
would hold the captured critter. As she walked
toward it, a sound like a heavy rain rose from the
walls, the ceiling, and the floor.
  "More company?" Phoebe asked with a worried
glance around the room. She jumped onto Piper's
chair, out from under the broken fan, as dozens of gray
mice invaded the room.
  Ida clutched her frayed blanket to her chin.


  The small rodents darted from unnoticed holes
in the woodwork and under the furniture. They squeezed
through a grate in the floor, and more popped out of the
ceiling hole above Phoebe's chair.
  Piper dropped the frozen mouse and lunged for the
desk under the heavily draped window. She changed
her mind when mice poured out from under the windowsill.
On an intellectual level, she knew it was
ridiculous to be squeamish about mice after the
horrors she had seen and vanquished. On a more
primal level, she couldn't help it.
  When a mouse ran over her shoe, Piper
squealed and dove for Ida's bed.
  Harriet, taking her cues from the same source as
the mice, scrambled out of bed and stumbled around the
room. The click of her talons was lost in the
scurry of a thousand tiny mouse claws racing across the
floor. Noses and whiskers twitching, the mice
ran in frantic circles. A few rushed the bed
and tried to climb the bedspread.
  "Freeze them, Piper!" Phoebe shouted.
  Piper froze everything in the room except her
sister. "Now what?" she asked. The hardwood
floor had vanished under a carpet of fur and pink
noses.
  "I don't know." Phoebe flicked a frozen
mouse off the chair with her shoe. "But it's easier
to think if they're not moving."
  "Yeah," Piper agreed, "but if they're not

  moving, they can't leave." Every time an eruption of
aberrant animal behavior had occurred, the beasts
had reverted to normal within a few minutes.
  Phoebe scowled. "Well, then-unfreeze
them."
  "What about Harriet?" Piper asked. The young
woman stood about three feet from the end of her bed.
  "Don't look at me." Phoebe raised her
hands. "I'm not walking on furry things to get over
there."
  Piper unfroze the old woman on the bed beside
her. "We need to get Harriet onto the bed,
Ida. Can you hold her?"
  Ida let go of her blanket and nodded. "I'll
try."
  Piper moved mouse bodies aside with her shoe
to clear a spot on the floor. She put her foot
down, reached for Harriet's arm, and unfroze her.
As Harriet's forward momentum resumed, Piper
pulled her onto the bed. Ida flung herself on
top of the younger woman.
  "Hurry," Ida said, struggling to hold
Harriet down.
  "Okay-was When Piper set the scene back in
motion, Harriet suddenly stopped flailing, and the
mice ran back into the walls. A few slowpokes
scrambled for cover under the chest of drawers. Another
mouse hit the wall. It paused, looking slightly
dazed, then disappeared behind a loose flap of
wallpaper.


  "Are they gone?" Phoebe scanned the floor.
  "All except"-Piper cringed when a disoriented
mouse leaped off the lamp-table onto Phoebe's
jeans-"that one."
  "Off! Get off!" Phoebe shook her leg
until the little beast dropped to the floor and ran for
its life.
  "Such a fuss." Ida smoothed Harriet's
tangled hair back. "Over a poor little mouse."
  Piper's heart went out to the old woman. Not
knowing whether Harriet would survive the next day had
to be agonizing. Even so, Piper felt no guilt
over the fact that her son wouldn't be at risk when the
moon eclipsed the sun. Right after breakfast Leo
and Wyatt would be off to visit the Elders, far
away from Cairn, New Hampshire, and
Abigail Thornwood's vendetta.
  "Morning!" Nathaniel walked through the back
door into the Yankee Bear kitchen.
  "What are you doing here?" Ida asked.
  Paige was getting a cup of coffee to take
back to Harriet's room. Leo had left with
Wyatt an hour earlier. Once Paige took
over the guard duty, Phoebe wanted to get some more
sleep. They had to be as rested as possible for the
eclipse that afternoon.
  "I gave you the day off for a reason,
Nathaniel." Ida tried to shoo him back out the
door. "I don't want you here today."
  Nathaniel balked when he noticed Paige.

  "You're still here?" The question was an accusation.
  His shock and suspicion didn't surprise
Paige. Since Ida hadn't let anyone stay
at the Yankee Bear during the new moon in
twenty years, Nathaniel's reaction wasn't
unreasonable.
  "What? You're not glad to see me?" Paige
deliberately acted flippant. One way or
another, she had to get Nathaniel far away from the
inn. He cared about Harriet, who was getting
progressively more restless and difficult to keep
quiet and contained.
  "Did they threaten to sue if you made them
leave?" Nathaniel turned worried blue eyes
on Ida.
  "Oh, don't be a jerk." Ida gave him a
gentle push. "Go home. Go fishing. Just go."
  "C'mon, Nathaniel." Paige grabbed a
biscuit and walked toward the door. "I'll see
you out."
  Nathaniel hesitated until Ida threw him
a what-are-you-waiting-for look. "So why are you still
here?" he asked, following Paige out the door.
  "We wanted to be here for the eclipse." Paige
hated lying, so she avoided outright fibbing by becoming
adept at misleading with the truth to mask her Charmed
identity. She backed up her excuse with another
fact Piper had learned at the bookstore. "All
the other rooms in town are booked."
  "Right." Nathaniel frowned. "What time is the
eclipse?"


  "Two seventeen this afternoon," Paige said as they
reached the truck.
  Nathaniel nodded. "I just don't understand why
Ida-was
  Paige cut him off. "She didn't want
to spoil our vacation. Total solar eclipses
don't happen every day."
  "True enough." Nathaniel folded his arms and
leaned on the truck fender. "The last one around here
was twenty years ago."
  Time to change the subject, Paige thought.
Nathaniel looked like he was settling in for a
conversation she didn't want to have-at least not right now.
  It was past nine, and Paige had promised
to look over Phoebe's reversal spell.
However, they would have to cast it at MV-STIC Knoll
under less than ideal circumstances.]
Abigail's curse had two integral parts: the
original spell in 1985 and the spell Harriet
would use to activate the curse during the afternoon
eclipse. Consequently they couldn't reverse the
curse until the spell was complete, after the
transformation had begun.
  "What are you doing here on your day off?" Paige
asked.
  "I wanted to borrow Ida's plumbing tools,"
Nathaniel explained. "My apartment is in an
old converted house down on Pine Crest. None
of the tenants are rich, and the drains in all four
units are clogged with cockroaches. Just thought I'd
save everyone a few bucks."

  "I don't think Ida would mind if you used her
tools," Paige said.
  "Probably not," Nathaniel said. "Be right
back."
  While she waited for Nathaniel to get back from
the shed, Paige glanced toward the woods that
separated the Yankee Bear from Mystic Knoll.
A flickering sheen drifted through the dense forest.
  Lightning bugs or fox fire lichen? Whatever
had created the phenomenon, Paige was pretty
sure it wasn't normally visible during the day.
  When Harriet went wild with no warning,
Phoebe couldn't orb away or freeze to control
her.
  "Harriet!" Phoebe exploded off the chair
when the woman dashed toward the window. "Stop!"
  Strong and sturdy to begin with, Harriet's power and
ability were enhanced by the alterations in her
biological matrix. Over the past two
decades, three days per month, her body had
undergone conditioning to facilitate the final
transformation. Phoebe's martial-arts skills and
rigorous training were useless against her.
  "Paige!" Phoebe yelled as she grabbed the
loose folds of Harriet's nightdress.
"Piper!"
  They had agreed to meet at one o'clock, more than an
hour before the eclipse. Since Harriet had to be
at Mystic Knoll to complete the curse,


  it logically followed that Abigail had encoded
into the spell a compulsion to go there. The plan was
fairly straightforward: After Harriet left the
Yankee Bear, Paige would orb them all into the
large cavern to wait for her. As soon as Harriet
began to change, they would use the Power of Three
to reverse the curse.
  Compared with many of their schemes to get the bad
guys, it should have been a snap. Except that
Harriet had moved the schedule up twenty
minutes.
  "Paige!" Phoebe called, digging in her
heels to hold Harriet back.
  Operating under Abigail's influence, the cursed
woman had only one priority: Nothing would stop
her from going to Mystic Knoll.
  So why am I trying? Phoebe realized she was
still protecting Harriet when she had to let her go.
  Harriet ripped her nightdress free of
Phoebe's grasp. As Phoebe staggered back,
Harriet grabbed her arm, yanked her off her
feet, and sent her sprawling across the room.
  Phoebe lay in a dazed heap, watching as
Harriet pulled the drapes off the rods. Paige
orbed in just as the young woman crashed through the window.
  "Is Harriet okay?" Phoebe asked,
drawing herself to her knees. "Whaf s she doing?"
  Paige glanced out the window before giving Phoebe
a hand up. "She's headed for the woods."

  "Then we'd better leave now." Phoebe rubbed
a sore muscle in her arm. "Where's Piper?"
  "Right here." Piper walked in the bedroom door.
  Ida followed her inside. "She's gone?"
  "Yes," Phoebe said. They had been over
everything with Harriet's grandmother. There was nothing more
to say.
  Phoebe checked her back pockets for the
written spell and a small flashlight,
precautions in case they forgot the words in the dark
cave. "Ready?"
  "Let's do it." Paige took Phoebe and
Piper by the hand and orbed.
  No matter how many times Paige turned her
into a zillion particles of magical light,
Phoebe would never get used to the sensation. During the
transition, she was a spark of eternity and infinity-of
everything and nothing. And then she was herself again.
  They materialized at the mouth of the tunnel that
opened into the main chamber inside Mystic Knoll.
  "Whoa!" Piper looked around the underground rock
chamber. Her expression and tone held the same
awe Phoebe had felt seeing the glowing cavern the
first time in her vision. "I didn't realize it was so
big."
  "Pretty impressive." Paige nodded.
  Being on the site instead of viewing it in her


  mind entirely changed Phoebe's
perspective. During the vision she had known that the
cavern was magnificent. However, the flat ritual
stone in the center of the chamber and the three evenly
spaced stalagmites were more massive than she had
realized. The irregular shape of the cavern, combined
with shadow and lichen light, camouflaged an
extensive network of alcoves, crevices, and
narrow passageways to smaller caves.
  But she didn't have time to gawk. "We'd better
postpone the sightseeing," Phoebe said. "We know
Harriet will get here before the eclipse. We just
don't know how long before."
  "She'll need time to collect free magic,"
Piper said, "or her spell won't work."
  They had discussed trying to prevent Harriet from
gathering the magic she needed to cast the spell, but they
had decided against it. Although it might keep the beast
from emerging, Harriet would still be cursed, living a
dismal, unbearable existence until the next solar
eclipse. And Ida wouldn't be around forever
to protect and care for her.
  Letting the process play out was the only way
to save everyone and thwart Abigail.
  "Where should we hide?" Piper asked.
  Phoebe shrugged as she surveyed the cavern.
They had to confront the creature to recite the
reversal spell, but it was foolish to endanger themselves
before they had to. They wanted to watch from the wings
while Harriet chanted her solo.

  CRASHED
  "What about over there?" Paige pointed to a large
outcropping where the cavern wall bulged inward.
  An alcove, formed by the outcropping and a deep
depression in the back wall, was not glowing with lichen.
The pocket was positioned midway between the magical
stalagmite behind the flat center stone and the one in
front of the flat stone to the right. From her vision,
Phoebe knew they would be standing on Harriet's
right. Harriet would be facing the main entrance into the
cavern, looking between the two forward cones. The
Charmed Ones could hug the shadowed alcove wall
without being seen, while having an unobstructed view
and easy access when they needed to perform the spell.
  "It smells like compost in here," Piper whispered
as they cut across the floor.
  "Just don't sneeze," Phoebe said.
"What're all these papery things on the floor?"
  "Snake skins," Paige hissed.
  The discussion ended there as Piper and Paige
stepped into the depression in the back wall.
Phoebe pressed into the corner of the outcropping and
tried to track the time. The passing minutes seemed
like an eternity while they waited, but when Harriet
limped out of the tunnel, it felt like no time had
passed.
  Harriet moved along the far wall, a shadow
only partially visible in the biolight, threading a
path through stalagmites and boulders.


  As Phoebe watched, she thought her breathing was
too loud and that Harriet could surely sense that she
and her sisters were there to thwart Abigail's plan.
And it wouldn't be easy. Even now, before the final
stage of transformation had begun, the woman exuded
a terrifying primal power.
  Hidden in the dark space, Piper and Paige were
so still that Phoebe would have felt completely alone if
not for the Charmed compact that bound them. They all tensed
when Harriet turned abruptly and hobbled to the
center of the chamber.
  In the glistening glow of illuminated stalactites
above, additional changes in her appearance were
evident as she climbed onto the ritual stone. In
place of Harriet's tangled hair, a crest of
bone formed a ridge over the crown of her head and
down her neck. Yellow, reptilian eyes
gleamed with predatory disdain. Bony spikes
protruded from her shoulders, and loose skin hung from
her arms.
  Phoebe breathed in deeply, slowly, steeling
herself for the task ahead. Piper found her sisters"
hands in the dark and squeezed them for luck. Feeling
the Power of Three bolstered their confidence.
  As Harriet stood, silent and unmoving, on the
raised slab, she showed no sign of knowing she had
company. After several more minutes she closed her
double-lidded lizard eyes. Somehow

  she knew that the moon had begun to pass between Earth
and the sun.
  At first the humming sound in Harriet's throat was
almost inaudible. But as the sound grew louder, the stale
air in the cavern compressed.
  Phoebe's ears reacted to an increased
pressure she hadn't detected in her vision. She
felt as though she had been suddenly submerged in the
depths of the ocean.
  Paige inhaled, and Piper clamped her hands to the
sides of her head.
  Then red sparks snapped through the barrier between the
magical ether and Earthly reality.
  Every burst of magic felt like a needle of fire
in Phoebe's stomach, then molten knives when the
sparks elongated into bolts. Booms and cracks
sent tremors through the rock as each fragment of
free magic broke through the invisible boundary.
Flaring bolts arrowed through the cavern, rebounded off
walls, and crackled as they were swept into a swirl.
  Phoebe's head spun and her stomach churned as
ribbons of red streaked past. The flow shifted in an
instant. Instead of a circular pattern, the streams
traveled in straight lines between the three cones
anchored to the floor. Holding her ears against the
pressure, Phoebe suddenly imagined she was being
pulled into the maelstrom.


  "Phoebe-was Piper murmured her name, but
Phoebe was too stunned to respond. She was being
pulled into the speeding stream of crimson magic.
  "What's happening?" Paige's voice betrayed
uncertainty and fear.
  "Not sure." Phoebe turned, grabbing at the
rock wall and finding nothing to hold on to. As her
feet began to slide out from under her, she realized
something they had overlooked: The chamber absorbed and
amplified magic.
  Using a power inherited from or instilled
by Abigail, Harriet was drawing free magic
into the chamber. Magic contained in artifacts or
possessed by beings was not affected. Usually not
affected, Phoebe thought. .they were at ground zero,
directly in line with two of the cones that absorbed
magic! I
  "We're right in the path of the receptors!"
Phoebe had to yell to be heard over the thunderous
booms. Harriet was too immersed in the ritual
to notice them now.
  "Mystic Knoll is going to absorb our
magic?" Piper was aghast and angry.
  "No, I don't think so!" Remembering how the
cones absorbed magic in her vision, Phoebe was
pretty sure Mystic Knoll couldn't ingest them.
Since the pull was getting stronger, she hoped her
deductions were right. "We're being attracted! Like
iron filings to a magnet!"
  "I can't hang onnnnnn-was As Paige was

  whipped into the magical flow, the sound of her
voice hung over Phoebe for a second.
Phoebe thought she saw a white orb sparkle, but
it vanished almost as soon as it appeared.
  "Phoebeeeeee-was Piper shouted as she entered the
stream. She flicked her hands to freeze, but nothing
happened.
  Uh-oh, Phoebe thought as she was grabbed by the
stream. Had their powers just been temporarily
neutralized, or were they gone for good?
  Zipping by rock walls and under pointed
stalactites, Phoebe couldn't concentrate on
anything except what was happening at the moment. And
everything was happening at blinding speed. She was not
aware of breathing, and all her senses but sight had
been suppressed. Hurtling toward the forward wall,
she tensed in anticipation of a bone-crunching
collision. But the stream made a hard left,
carrying her with it.
  Several ribbons of red split off toward the
forward cone to the left of the ritual slab. As
Phoebe sped by, she realized that Paige was
flattened against it. Paige winced as bolts of red
magic struck the stalactite around her. The
fragments were quickly absorbed.
  The cone behind the center stone slab where Harriet
stood had captured Piper.
  Phoebe braced for impact as she zoomed toward
the third cone at the front of the cavern. A
passive passenger in the stream, she couldn't


  extricate herself or alter her course. The wind
was knocked out of her as she slammed into the hard
conical receptacle. A blaze of incoming red
engulfed her, and she flinched as spear after scarlet
spear hit the cone. She couldn't move or speak.
She could only watch and listen when the conical traps
pulsed, and Harriet began to chant.
  "Cast from creatures of the night, Fang and
claw, leather and flight..."
  Harriet's voice resonated in the massive
cave, gaining intensity as she drew strength from the
stones. Incorporated into the ancient mechanism,
Phoebe convulsed with each phrase spoken. The
stones amplified the power within her and her sisters,
adding it to the free magic the cones radiated toward
the center stone.
  "Two times ten has passed, the core Of her
vengeance waits no more."
  The pulsations in the cones didn't abate as the
last word echoed down the corridors of the Mystic
Knoll maze. Residual threads of red static
continued to skim the surface of the cones.
  Held fast to the stalagmite, Phoebe fought
nausea and weakness to witness the insidious events
Abigail had instigated so long ago. Piper and
Paige hung like rag dolls on the other two
receptors. She had no doubt her sisters were also

  watching and waiting, hoping for a chance to execute the
reversal spell.
  Atop the flat stone, Harriet Thornwood
changed into a mythical creature brought to life by her
mother's depraved spell.
  Harriet's human face elongated into a knobby
shape that was a cross between a dragon and a seahorse.
The ridge on her head grew outward, then
flattened and fanned into a saurian crest.
Smaller bony plates covered her lengthening
neck. Arms thickened and grew longer with scales
replacing skin. Hands and fingernails morphed
into shortened forefeet and claws. As her legs
muscled up into powerful hindquarters, her tail
grew out. The bony protrusions on her shoulders
transformed into the supporting structures of ribbed,
leathery wings.
  The shreds of Harriet's nightdress fluttered
to the floor as the beast rose on huge hind legs and
roared.
  The entire transformation had taken less than
two minutes.
  Phoebe cringed as the creature's massive
tail whipped from side to side. The motion generated
a gale-force wind that howled through the cavern in an
erratic frenzy, turning snake skins to dust.
  Like it wants to get out, Phoebe thought, fighting
to stay conscious.
  The ferocious roar of the beast and the batter-


  ing wind shook the bedrock foundation of the chamber.
Each roar and movement of wing and tail caused more
damage. Rock walls cracked. Stalactites
were shaken loose to shatter on the floor. Patches
of glowing lichen dimmed as boulders shifted and parts
of the ceiling caved in.
  Phoebe had faced death too many times not to be
prepared for a premature but inevitable end. But she
didn't want to die, bound and helpless, under tons
of rock.
  The beast screamed.
  The wind shrieked.
  And the roof of Mystic Knoll's main chamber
blew away.

  jjCan W3S furious, sick to her stomach,
drained of energy-and maybe even her magic-and stuck
to stone! She'd had bad days before, but this one ranked
with the worst.
  Especially if I end up buried alive or
dead, she thought with a glance upward.
  When the walls of the cave began to crumble, she
expected the ceiling to come down. Instead a large
hole was blown in the top of the cavern with such force,
most of the debris rained on the surrounding area.
Paige was so elated to have escaped being crushed, she
almost didn't mind smashing into the rock floor.
  One second she was plastered against a stalagmite
that doubled as a free magic amplifier, and the next
she was flat on her face on the ground.
  Paige rolled onto her back just in time to see
Harriet-or the thing that used to be Harriet-

  n s
  fly through the opening with a defiant roar. The beat of
huge wings created massive air currents.
Dislodged pebbles cascaded into the cavern.
  Paige barely felt the bits of stone that pelted
her face. They had lost their Innocent. She could
think of nothing else.
  "Is anybody else sore, mortified, and
thoroughly irate?" Piper asked, groaning.
  "Yes." Gritting her teeth, Paige slowly
got to her feet. Her legs were wobbly, and a dizzy
spell threatened her balance. She closed her eyes
and breathed deeply until her equilibrium was
restored.
  Phoebe hurried toward them from the cone that had
held her with its magical forces. She limped
slightly, holding her hand over her thigh.
  "What happened?" Piper brushed dust and crushed
rock off her arms.
  "I was skewered by a stalactite." Phoebe
held up the pointed shard that had impaled her leg.
"But we've got worse things than my flesh wound
to worry about."
  Paige nodded. "We lost an Innocent, and now
she's the enemy."
  "Let's not be too hasty here," Phoebe said.
"Based on what we've seen of evil before, I'm
willing to bet Harriet's innocence won't be lost
until she kills somebody. We can still save her."
  "If we can catch her," Piper said. She
examined a bruise on her forearm, then looked up,
giving Phoebe her full attention.

  "Okay, how do you hunt down a giant
bat-lizard?" Paige asked.
  "Beats me. I don't think anyone's wanted
to try before," Phoebe said. "But we have no
choice."
  "Plus we have this nifty spell that will go to waste
if we don't find her!" Paige knew she was
making a feeble attempt to keep things more upbeat
than she feared they really were. She wanted
to believe saving Harriet was possible, but they had
to face facts: Success was a long shot.
"Okay. So say we find her. How do we get
her back here to Mystic Knoll?"
  "Do we have to get her back here?" Piper asked.
  "I think so," Paige replied. "Abigail
used the free magic and amplification power of
Mystic Knoll to cast the curse in the first place.
Harriet was programmed to use the same forces
to finish it."
  "Right." Piper folded her arms. "But why would that
affect our reversal spell? We have all the
magic we need."
  "Maybe not," Paige said. "What if
Harriet the beast is magically stronger than she should
be because while Mystic Knoll had us pinned, it put
the Power of Three in the magical mix?"
  Piper's eyes widened. "So to change her
back, the Power of Three needs a Mystic
Knoll boost too?"
  "I hate to say it, but that makes sense,"


  Phoebe said. "There's still magic in the cones."
  Paige glanced at the nearest stalagmite
receptacle. Streaks of bright red flared against a
muted red glow. "Leftovers?"
  "Could be," Phoebe said. "With our magic added
in, the site had way more than necessary to complete the
spell."
  Paige frowned. "But how do we access it without
becoming the main attraction again?"
  "Balance," Piper said. "We have two major
forces of magic, us and Mystic Knoll. There has
to be a position within the configuration where both forces will
combine without one overpowering the other."
  "Great." Phoebe raised a quizzical
eyebrow. "Where?" His
  "I'm working on it," Piper said.
  "I don't think we've got an open window for
doing this spell," Paige said. "Eventually the
magic in the cones will leak away. So the sooner we
get Harriet or the creature or whatever back
here, the better."
  "How are we supposed to do that?" Piper asked.
"I'm fresh out of mythical beastie kibble."
  "Bait," Phoebe said. "Abigail created the
beast for one purpose-to get revenge on her
enemies and their children."
  "That might work." Piper rubbed the purplish
bruise on her arm. "Abigail had a lot of people
on her hit list. We should be able to convince a few
of them to come here."

  "I'm on it," Phoebe said. "But I'll have
to go back to the Yankee Bear."
  "I'll look for Harriet." Paige looked
up at the sky. "I don't know if I'll find
her, but I'll try-our spell won't matter if
she kills someone. Or something."
  "Our spell won't work unless I find out how
to tap Mystic Knoll's magic without it killing
us!" Piper exclaimed. "I'll stay here and try
to figure it out."
  "Better orb me back to the inn before you take off
after Harriet, Paige," Phoebe said. "I
don't have time to waste walking."
  After she dropped Phoebe on the edge of the
Yankee Bear property, Paige surprisingly
had no trouble tracking the beast, despite its head
start. She orbed into a tall tree, then followed the
swath of broken treetops the creature had left
in its windy wake. At the edge of the woods she
plotted a course over flattened crops, fences,
and through another extensive stand of woods. The beast's
flight path angled away from town, but it was too
direct to be random. The creature knew where it was
going.
  Orbing from tree to tree, Paige pursued the
beast through dense forest and up the side of a mountain.
When she caught up, the creature was circling a
lookout tower that forest rangers used to spot fires.
The tower reminded her of a notation in Abigail's
diary.
  In the third grade, before her abilities
emerged,


  a little boy named Dennis Flynn had plagued
Abigail with typical pranks and taunts.
Dennis had called her names, ignored her, and
dumped her cafeteria tray, among other childish
offenses. She slipped off his radar in fourth
grade, but Abigail never forgot. Her first
revenge spell had turned Dennis Flynn's
lucky baseball bat into sawdust. And according
to Abigail's notes, from age nine on, Dennis
had wanted to be a forest ranger.
  The creature screeched and buzzed the top of the
fire tower. The structure was a series of
platforms connected by open staircases. The top
floor was enclosed by a four-foot-high wall and
capped with a peaked roof. Shingles and wooden steps were
torn off by the wind as the beast flew by. The corner
struts snapped. Since its prey wasn't inside
the tower, the enraged creature screamed and moved on.
The wooden lookout post crumbled as Paige orbed
after the beast.
  The new course followed a narrow river that wound
around the mountain, through a wooded valley, and into a
large fenced pasture. The wind created by massive
wings churned the creek into a torrent of white-water
rapids. A herd of horses raced for safety as
the creature passed overhead. Spotting the roof of
an isolated farmhouse, Paige wondered if
Laurel Savarin was the next target.
  Laurel's entry in Abigail's diary had
been notated with a star. An accomplished
equestrian

  and straight-A student, Laurel had organized
a schoolwide shunning of Abigail that had lasted
weeks in their junior year of high school. Soon
after, Laurel had scored below average on her
college entrance SAT'S and fallen off her
horse in every jumping trial at a regional
horse show.
  The house had been built on a dead-end dirt
road, several hundred yards from a paved country
highway. A barn was connected to the two-story
farmhouse by a long wooden passageway. The
passageway provided protection from severe winter
weather. Paige couldn't tell if anyone was home
until the creature blasted the brick chimney with
its tail. A woman inside the house screamed.
The floors shook as Paige orbed into a bedroom
on the second floor. On the creature's next
pass, something crashed on the lower level, but there was
no scream.
  Paige tiptoed to the top of the stairs. A
middle-age woman lay on the floor in a puddle
of water. Pieces of a broken vase and flowers were
scattered around her. She was out cold.
  When the beast grazed the side of the house, plaster
fell from the ceiling and knickknacks rattled on
tables. The creature landed outside the front door
with a resounding boom, shaking the building and cracking the
walls. A framed collection of horse-show
ribbons hung on the wall beside Paige. A
brass plate on the wooden frame identified
Laurel Savarin as the 1981 Junior


  Jumper Champion. The framed piece fell,
but didn't break.
  Paige orbed downstairs, knelt beside the
unconscious woman, and orbed her out just as the
creature obliterated the front porch and rammed the
house. They materialized on the edge of the pasture
by the woods, where Paige could watch the beast. She
suspected it could sense the people Abigail had
targeted, and she tensed to orb again. The beast, however,
seemed to be growing more frenzied and less focused.
After it demolished the front of the house and discovered
the prey was gone, it flew off, roaring in frustrated
anger.
  Anger or hunger? Paige j wondered.
Harriet had used enormous energies to become the
beast, and then had expended more, hunting without success.
  When Laurel moaned, Paige orbed her home
and put the woman back on the floor where she had
collapsed. Laurel would never know what had
happened to her house or how she had survived.
  Paige took to the trees again, wondering how
to feed the beast without serving up Abigail's old
classmates. Eating might postpone the inevitable
kill that would destroy Harriet's chance for salvation.
If Paige could, she had to buy time while Piper
and Phoebe prepared to lure the beast back
to Mystic Knoll.
  Still tracking the creek, the beast's route took

  it deeper into the wilderness to a small lake.
Paige watched from her perch in a tall pine as the
creature executed a monster-style
cannon-ball. When it hit, the water level in the
lake dropped several feet. Water shot a
hundred feet into the air and a wave washed a
hundred yards into the woods. Hundreds of fish were
stranded on dry land when the water receded back into the
lake.
  When the beast began to gobble its catch, Paige
took advantage of the break to orb back to the inn.
  Ida was sitting on the front porch, waiting,
when Phoebe returned. Phoebe did not mince
words. She told the old woman everything, but she
made no excuses for why they had failed to save
Harriet. When she finished, Ida just sat, staring
down the driveway.
  Watching the grieving grandmother digest the news was
one of the harder things Phoebe had done lately.
Regardless of the problems Ida had faced raising her
cursed granddaughter, Harriet had been-was-her
joy and reason for living. To lose her was more than the
old woman could bear. The light in Ida's dark
eyes, icy with suspicion when Phoebe first met
her, had brightened with hope when it seemed there might be
a chance to save Harriet and now began to dim. That was
more than Phoebe could bear.
  "It's not over." Phoebe gently gripped
Ida's


  arms and stared into her pain. "We still have a chance
to save her."
  "Too late." Ida shook her head.
"Abigail always wins. Always."
  "Not this time." Phoebe's eyes flashed. "I
mean it, Ida. We can beat Abigail, but I
need your help."
  Ida frowned, searching Phoebe's face for the
lie that wasn't there. "I don't believe you can
save Harriet, but"-she sighed, then shrugged. "But
I know you think you can, and I think you have to try. So,
yes. I'll help."
  "That's all I wanted to hear." Phoebe
smiled. "I'll get the diary and meet you in the
kitchen."
  Ignoring the throb in her injured thigh, Phoebe
dashed into Harriet's room and grabbed the blue
book off the lamp-table. As she turned to leave,
she realized that the drapes and rods had been put
back over the broken window. The rollaway was
gone, and Harriet's bed had been made with fresh
linens and a blanket that wasn't torn.
  Denial or acceptance? Phoebe wondered.
Ida had fixed up the room before she knew
Harriet's fate, but whether she had expected the
best or the worst, love had dictated her actions.
Although there were serious exceptions, most of the people who
wrote to "Ask Phoebe" wanted advice about
trivial, ridiculous, or selfish problems.
They could learn a few things about caring and courage from
Ida Thomwood.

  CftA caret MED
  Ida had mugs of tea waiting when Phoebe
got to the kitchen table. The old woman noticed the
blood on her jeans for the first time. "I'll get the
first-aid kit."
  "It's nothing," Phoebe said, sitting down with the
diary.
  "Just drink your tea and let me take care of
this." Ida got a metal first-aid box from under the
sink. She set it on the table, then added a clean
dishcloth, a pan of hot water, and a bottle of
hydrogen peroxide.
  Phoebe talked while Ida tended her injury.
  "All the people Abigail wrote about in her diary
are targets," Phoebe said. "We don't need
everyone for our plan to work, just enough to make Mystic
Knoll irresistible to the-Harriet."
  "Um-hmm." Ida cut Phoebe's jeans and
poured hydrogen peroxide into the exposed wound. The
oxygen fluid bubbled, killing any bacteria.
  Phoebe had mentally compiled a list of the people she and
her sisters had met or heard about. She pulled a
pen from the jar, ripped a sheet of paper off a note
pad by the phone, and wrote the list. "Does
Gretchen have any kids?"
  Ida shook her head. "Never married. No
children."
  "Karen Stark ...," Phoebe went on.
  "Karen's brother owns Stark's Pharmacy,"
Ida said. "Her daughter, Nancy, works there."


  "Oh, right. I met Nancy." Phoebe
wrote down the names of the women. Abigail had
mentioned the tour guide in the diary because of a
squirrel attack. Although Tammy had never done
anything to her, Abigail thought she was too nice and
too perfect-a phony who deserved to have her hair
torn out by the roots. "Brad York's daughter?"
  "Molly went to college in Arizona and never
came back." Ida placed a gauze pad over the
cut.
  Phoebe frowned. Abigail had noted that
Brad was Molly's father, which made him the parental
surrogate for her wrath. Florence
Nestor-Haynes's father had yelled at
Abigail. He was dead, but his daughter and his
grandson, Troy, were at risk. She added their
names.
  "Will you ask Lucas Barnes?" Ida asked
without looking up. She taped the gauze pad in
place, then enlarged the slit in Phoebe's jeans.
  "Yes," Phoebe said. "Lucas is our best
chance of luring Harriet back."
  Ida nodded and wound a gauze bandage around
Phoebe's thigh, under her jeans. "I don't think
it would be a good idea to mention this to his wife.
Anne is a little touchy about-was
  "Harriet?" Phoebe watched as Ida cut the
bandage lengthwise, separated the sliced ends,
wrapped them around her thigh in opposite
directions, and tied them. ,
  "Abigail," Ida said. "Anne is scared
to death of Abigail."

  "Understood." Phoebe counted the names. "Nine.
Guess that's it."
  "Plus me and old Ned Johnson," Ida
said. She took a needle and thread from the kit and
stitched Phoebe's cut jeans back together. It was
a temporary fix to protect the bandage.
  "You're not a target, Ida," Phoebe said.
"I'm not sure you understand how dangerous-was
  "Doesn't matter," Ida cut her off. "If
you get Harriet back, I have to be there, because she
trusts me. If you don't-well, then Idon't
care what happens to me."
  Phoebe didn't argue. "Who's Ned
Johnson?"
  "An old friend," Ida said. "Ned never believed
Doc Randall's spider story, and he never forgave
Abigail for making his cat's toe fall off.
Cat's dead now, but he still wants to get back at
her."
  "Eleven it is, then," Phoebe opened the phone
book.
  "And Nathaniel," Ida added. "He's the
only other person Harriet trusts-and likes."
  "Uh, I'm not sure about Nathaniel, Ida."
Phoebe didn't want to refuse Ida or
Harriet anything, but she might not have a choice.
"Paige said that Nathaniel doesn't believe in
the paranormal, and he has no patience for people who
do."
  "Yes, I know," Ida said.
  Phoebe pressed gently. "And we are dealing with
some super-paranormal stuff here."
  Ida almost smiled. "I hired Nathaniel because


  he's so positive that what he believes is
right. He's so sure, he won't believe his own
eyes, even if he sees something that proves what
he believes is wrong. Like Harriet with fangs
or scales."
  Phoebe knew from her psychology studies and
her mail at the Bay Mirror that the trait Ida
described was remarkably common. An astounding
number of people simply did not let facts get in the
way of their beliefs.
  "All right." Phoebe flipped though the phone
book to "N." There was one listing under "F."
Nestor-Haynes. She dialed. "Florence? This
is Phoebe Halliwell, from San
Francisco. I'm sorry to bother you on a
Sunday-was
  "No bother, Phoebe," Florence said.
"Troy and I just came in from watching the eclipse."
  "Cool." Phoebe got right to the point.
"Since you run the local newspaper, I thought
you'd probably want to be at Mystic Knoll this
afternoon. Troy, too."
  "What's up?" Florence asked, intrigued.
  "For one thing, there's a big hole in the top of the
main cavern," Phoebe said. "For another, we're
going to realign the electromagnetic field
to stop all the freaky animal uprisings and other
miscellaneous weirdness that happens around here."
  Ida kept sewing, but she was listening intently.
  "You're kidding," Florence said. "I won't

  have anything interesting to write about." The
editor-publisher paused. "You're not kidding.
When?"
  "As soon as you can get there. Wait for me in the
parking lot." Phoebe hung up and opened the book
to B for "Barnes." At least it was Sunday,
when most people were home. As she started to dial,
Paige sauntered in the back door.
  "Where's-was Phoebe let the unfinished question hang
in the air. Paige was supposed to be keeping an
eye on the beast.
  "Lunching on sushi at a little lake in the
mountains," Paige said.
  "She didn't-was Phoebe didn't want
to mention the no-killing rule in front of Ida.
  Paige shook her head. "No, just a close
call, so I don't want to be gone too long.
How're you doing?"
  "We're on it." Phoebe picked up the list
and looked at Ida. "I have to talk to Paige about
something. Could you call a couple of these people?"
  "Everyone in town thinks I'm nuts." Ida
knotted and cut the thread, then took the list. "But
I guess I can talk to Ned and Nathaniel."
  Paige's head snapped toward Phoebe, and she
mouthed Nathaniel's name in disbelief.
  Phoebe scowled a warning at Paige and glanced
at Ida.
  The old woman had a point. Phoebe had met
Florence at the Cairn Clarion, so she wasn't
a total stranger. Appealing to the editor's
journalistic


  instincts had made Florence an easy sell.
But what if Abigail's other victims didn't
want to get involved with her reclusive mother?
Especially in some harebrained scheme to alter the
electromagnetic nature of an ancient
mystical site?
  "And Lucas. I can talk to Lucas." Ida
took a deep breath. "But what if he won't
come?"
  "Tell him this is his only chance to get payback
on Abigail," Phoebe said, "and his last chance
to help his daughter."
  "Don't worry, Ida," Paige said. "If
you and Phoebe can't convince Lucas to come on his
own, I can always orb him."
  "Just get Ned and Lucas and his son, Ida.
I'll take care of the rest, including
Nathaniel." Phoebe had an idea, but first she
had an errand for Paige. She motioned her sister
into the front foyer. "I need the crystals to make
a cage."
  "To trap Harriet," Paige said.
  "Yes, and to keep our other twelve Innocents
safe," Phoebe said. "But as far as our guests and
Nathaniel are concerned, we're using the crystals
to alter the electromagnetic dynamic at
Mystic Knoll."
  "And why are we inviting Nathaniel?" Paige
asked with a hint of annoyance.
  "Ida insisted." Phoebe shrugged.
  "I'll get the crystals." Paige rolled her
eyes as she orbed out.
  When Phoebe got back to the kitchen, Ida was
still on the phone.

  CliApDo
  "Yes, it will be good to see you again too, Ned."
Ida's sad smile suddenly changed into an amused
look of shock. "Stop that! You haven't changed in
sixty years, you old scoundrel. No wonder
Ms. Stinkle made you stand in the corner every day."
  "Sounds like somebody had a crush on Ida,"
Phoebe teased.
  "Ancient history." Ida held up the list.
"Ned is going to call Brad. They're fishing
buddies, and Ned won't take no for an answer."
  "Excellent," Phoebe said. "And Lucas?"
  "He'll be there with Tim." Ida fought back a
tear. "All I had to say was, 'Harriet needs
you.""
  Phoebe gave her a thumbs-up. "So that
leaves Karen and Nancy, Gretchen, Tammy, and
Nathaniel. I'll need their addresses and phone
numbers."
  Phoebe dropped off Ida by the Mystic
Knoll gift shop. Although groups made her
nervous after decades of seclusion, Ida was willing
to do anything to help Harriet, including play
hostess to several past victims of her daughter's
abuse. Phoebe promised to hurry back, and
cursed the lack of cell-phone service as she sped
toward town.
  Nathaniel's apartment house was on the corner of
Pine Crest and Lewis Avenue. He was outside
tossing Ida's plumbing tools into his truck when
Phoebe parked the van.


  "Hey there, Phoebe." Nathaniel nodded with a
slow frown. "Did you enjoy the eclipse?"
  "Uh-was Phoebe's brain stalled. She hadn't
actually seen the eclipse because she was underground. "It
went off pretty much as I expected."
  "Not as exciting as Paige thought it would be,
huh?" Nathaniel's obvious irritation shifted
to curiosity. "So what brings you out here? Is something
wrong at the Yankee Bear?"
  Phoebe didn't answer the question. "I have an
idea that might jump-start your thesis."
  "Really?" Nathaniel leaned on his truck.
"That's right. You're a psychologist."
  "Yeah." Phoebe launched into the pitch she had
rehearsed on the drive into Cairn. "I've been
thinking about your premisk about locals believing their
legends and how many residents of this town want
to believe that Mystic Knoll is magic."
  Nathaniel nodded. "That's why I'm here."
  "In fact," Phoebe said, "they want it so
much, they won't let facts interfere with what they
think is true."
  "I'm listening," Nathaniel said.
  Phoebe could tell Nathaniel was intrigued and
that he couldn't see thaj: her premise applied
to him. But whatever he thought was irrelevant, as long
as he agreed to help.
  "So I've come up with a field experiment, to see
if anybody can be convinced they're wrong,"
Phoebe said. "Twelve people, mostly believers, and
you. Interested?"

  "Yeah, but why are you?" Nathaniel asked.
  "I'm a psychologist who writes an advice
column for a newspaper," Phoebe confessed. She
plunged ahead when Nathaniel frowned. "This
particular mind-set isn't restricted to people who
believe in ghosts or UFO'S. All kinds of people
ignore facts for all kinds of reasons. I've
just never been in a town where half the population
adamantly believed in variations of the same
fantasy."
  "Cairn is distinctive that way." Nathaniel
rubbed the dark stubble on his unshaven chin. "It does
kind of beg to be explored, doesn't it? What
does Paige think?"
  Phoebe rolled her eyes to give the impression
she and her sister disagreed. "That it's mean to debunk
harmless myths. Are you in?"
  "Yep," Nathaniel said. "What do you need from
me?"
  "I need you to call these ladies and convince them
to drive out to Mystic Knoll right away."
Phoebe handed him the paper with the addresses and phone
numbers.
  "For what exactly?" Nathaniel asked. "A
picnic? Ancient ritual?"
  "No." Phoebe's grin betrayed her
mischievous nature. "Tell them we're going
to realign the electromagnetic patterns at
Mystic Knoll so all the crazy stuff will end."
  "We are?" Nathaniel laughed. "And you
expect these women to buy that?"


  "In this town?" Phoebe exaggerated a look of
amazement. "Where half the locals think Abigail
Thornwood used spells to torment them? Yes!
They'll definitely buy it."
  Nathaniel hesitated, then nodded. "Only one
way to find out. Let's go inside and call."
  Phoebe exhaled deeply as she followed
Nathaniel up the walk. She didn't have a clue
what anyone would believe when the day was over. The
only thing that mattered was saving Harriet from her
mother's curse.
  Piper stepped out of the shadows when Paige orbed
into the chamber and placed an armload of crystals and a
blue bathrobe on the ritual stone.
  "Okay, I understand thei crystals." Piper
nodded her approval. Trapping the beast would make
casting the spell a significantly safer
process.
  "That was Phoebe's idea," Paige said. "She
thinks the free magic in the stones will make the
Crystal Cage bigger and strong enough to hold the
beast."
  "I hope she's right." Piper picked up the
bathrobe. "And this?"
  "That's my idea," Paige explained. "The
beast shredded Harriet's nightdress, so she
doesn't have anything to wear when she gets back."
  "Good thinking," Piper said. Paige had a
knack for details she and Phoebe sometimes
missed.

  . Paige brushed a lock of hair off her
face and nodded toward the cones. "Any luck
figuring out how to tap into those?"
  "Sort of." Piper glanced at the
stalagmites. Streaks of red flashed over a
reddish glow, but the glow had dimmed. "It kind of
depends on your definition of lucky."
  "Can we use Mystic Knoll's magic?"
Paige asked.
  "I think so," Piper said. "But do we want
to?"
  "Lost me," Paige said.
  A demonstration would make the point better,
Piper decided. She waved Paige over to a
spot midway between the rear cone and the forward-right cone.
  "Can you feel it?" Piper asked when Paige was
in position.
  "What?" Paige asked, puzzled.
  "Never mind. You'll know," Piper said. "Move
back and forth between the cones. I think the field
shifts as the free magic leaks away."
  "Okay." Paige moved a few feet to her
left.
  "Can you feel it now?" Piper asked.
  Paige shook her head and moved back the other
way. She stopped, hesitated, then stepped back
to the left.
  "Now?" Piper couldn't keep an edge of
frustration out of her voice.
  "No, I-was Paige suddenly stiffened, as though
she had been struck by a massive dose of
electricity. Her eyes widened with astonishment and


  fear before she tore herself out of the field.
  "Guess you felt that," Piper said.
  "What was that?" Paige's face was ashen.
  "That was an infusion of concentrated, raw magic,"
Piper explained. It had taken several minutes
before the buzzing noise in her head had subsided when
she first connected with the field. The effects were
staggering, but not debilitating. "I'm glad you're
here so we can find out what happens when we increase
the Charmed factor by one."
  "When both of us are in the field?" Paige
asked.
  Piper nodded. She wasn't thrilled by the
prospect of being zapped by megamagic again. But it
was better to find out now if they could take it than
to realize they couldn't handle it when the Harriet
monster was rampaging around the cavern.
  "Here goes." Piper walked across the floor to the
area between the rear cone and the forward-left cone.
"Ready?"
  "No, but a witch has to do what a witch has
to do." Inhaling and exhaling slowly, Paige stepped
into Mystic Knoll's magical field.
  Piper stepped back, then to the side, until she
made the connection. The raw magical energy hit
with a force she could only equate with being struck
by lightning. Every molecule in her body was on
fire, every nerve was electrified. Her hair
billowed out from the ponytail band, and her

  heartbeat boomed in her ears. She tried
to remember the words of Wyatt's favorite
nursery rhyme as practice for the spell.
  Wrinkle, starkle, katy diddle...
  She knew that wasn't right, but her mind refused
to focus. For a moment she was mesmerized by the
kaleidoscopic stars twinkling in front of her
eyes.
  Out! Piper screamed at herself. With a monumental
effort, she lunged forward just far enough to break the
connection. She fell in a heap, convinced that she and
her sisters could not survive Mystic Knoll's
raw power.

  your everybody! Phoebe gathered her band of
unsuspecting volunteers around the ritual stone.
  Nathaniel hung back with Ida, an interested
observer, pretending to participate for appearance's
sake. He didn't have a clue that the experiment was
a front for a magical spell. He was both
fascinated and amused that no one had turned down the
chance to take part in the pseudoscientific
exercise.
  If the circumstances weren't so dire, Phoebe
would have been fascinated and amused too. Harriet
wasn't the only one at risk. Everyone in the
cave was in danger, including herself and her sisters.
Piper and Paige had discovered that Mystic Knoll
amplified their power internally. Their own magic
might kill them.
  "This is Piper." Phoebe introduced her
sister. After Piper and Paige had almost fried
themselves

  with boosted magic, Paige had left to check on
the beast. She wouldn't return until it did.
  "Hey, Piper!" Brad York waved.
"Remember me?"
  "Sure do." Piper smiled. "How are those fish
doing?"
  "They're alive." Brad laughed.
  Gretchen was stuffed into jeans and a tank top with her
bleached-blond hair pulled back in a large
plastic clip. "How long has the hole been in the
roof, Tammy?"
  "Not long." Tammy shrugged. "It wasn't there
Friday."
  "How'd it get there?" Troy Haynes asked.
He was a basketball player, tall and lanky,
with the curiosity of a born newspaperman.
  "Caved in, I guess." Tim Barnes
cocked his head and nodded as he studied the ceiling.
He was a handsome boy with dimples and his father's gray
eyes.
  Lucas was the only one who didn't look up.
His troubled gaze darted around the cavern. He was the
only one who knew that Harriet had something to do with
what was going on. If Harriet was involved, then
Abigail might be too. To his credit, he showed
no signs of regret that he had come.
  Karen Stark was slim with short dark hair. She
wore a ruffled blouse, pleated slacks, and
sandals, a classy contrast to her teenage
daughter's oversized T-shirt and sweatpants.
Nancy's


  light brown hair was held back by an exercise
headband.
  "Is it okay if I take notes?" Florence
held up a memo pad and pen. She had left her
camera and tape recorder in her car at
Phoebe's request.
  "Yes," Phoebe said, "as long as you don't
move once you're in position."
  "Just don't quote me, Florence," old Ned
Johnson said. Tufts of white hair stuck out from
under a blue baseball cap. He wore a plaid
flannel shirt over a T-shirt and baggy denim
coveralls. The toes of his heavy work boots were
scuffed.
  "Don't worry, Ned," Florence said. "I
won't."
  "All right, listen up." Phoebe clapped her
hands for attention. "It's absolutely vital that you
follow our instructions exactly. We're not
messing around here, people. This is a serious experiment."
  Everyone nodded with somber expressions.
  Phoebe suppressed a pang of guilt. Although
Abigail had loosed the creature of vengeance on
the town, she had brought twelve Innocents into a
deadly situation under false pretenses. They were
Innocents by Charmed standards, she realized, but they
weren't all entirely innocent. Some were unjustly
meant to pay for the sins of their families. A few
had been targeted because they had taunted and
humiliated Abigail. None of them knew that the
real reason for their presence in the cavern was to lure
the beast.
  Piper had already placed four of the five crys-

  tals in deep alcoves and crevices around the
perimeter of the cavern. The bait would be split
into five groups, each placed beyond the crystals, behind
walls of rock, where they wouldn't be able to see what
happened in the center of the chamber.
  "Ned, you're with Karen and Nancy," Phoebe
said. "Piper will show you where to go. Nathaniel, take
Ida to that cone"-she pointed to the stalagmite behind the
ritual stone-"and wait for me. Brad and
Tammy-was
  Phoebe faltered when Paige ran out of the
tunnel. She had orbed into the passageway
to avoid being seen. Paige flapped her arms and
gestured toward the hole above to indicate that the
creature was en route.
  "Brad and Tammy," Phoebe repeated. "With
Paige, over there." She pointed and waved, hoping
Paige remembered to place the people on the far side
of the crystal.
  Piper returned to hustle Lucas, Tim, and
Gretchen into position. Phoebe took Florence and
Troy to an alcove near the spot where she and her
sisters had hidden earlier.
  "What's that?" Troy asked when he saw the
crystal.
  "You ask really good questions, Troy," Phoebe
said as she pointed the boy and his mother to a spot behind a
bank of tall stalagmites. Aware that Troy's
inquisitive instincts could get him killed today, she
issued a warning. "Stay here


  with your mom, and I'll answer your questions later.
If you don't do what I say, you might not be around
later. Got it?"
  Florence dropped her notebook and wrapped her
arms around her son. "Abigail?"
  "Is dead," Phoebe said. She was glad
Florence had gotten the message, but she wasn't
going on the record. "And she's going to stay that
way."
  Phoebe rushed back into the center of the chamber.
Piper and Paige were standing behind the flat stone,
watching the sky.
  "Better hurry, Phoebe," Piper said.
  "On my way." Phoebe grabbed the fifth
crystal off the raised stone and ran for the back
wall. Nathaniel and Ida stood by the cone,
waiting as she had asked. "You've got to move
back, Nathaniel. C'mon."
  "I want to watch whatever it is you're going to do
to convince these people the electromagnetic character of these
stones has changed," Nathaniel said.
  Ida cuffed his arm. "You are the most stubborn
man I have ever met, Nathaniel Coffey. More
than Joshua. He was nasty, but you're just plain
pigheaded. Now do as Phoebe says!"
  Nathaniel looked stunned as Ida strode
toward the back wall.
  "Please, Nathaniel," Phoebe pleaded.
"Now!"
  "They blew the roof off the place," Ida
snapped with a quick look back. "What more do you
want?"
  "We didn't blow the roof off," Phoebe said,

  pushing Nathaniel ahead of her. "Not
technically."
  Phoebe steered them into a deep cleft in the
wall, then knelt down just outside the entrance with the
crystal. "Move all the way back and wait."
  "What are you going to do with that?" Nathaniel
pointed to the rock in her hand.
  "I'm going to make sure you survive what's
about to happen, Nathaniel." Phoebe didn't have
time to play games. "You can believe that or not. I
don't care, as long as you get back there and keep
Ida safe."
  A screech sounded above, and a wind kicked up the
dust on the floor.
  "Here she comes!" Piper yelled.
  "Go, Nathaniel!" Phoebe commanded. She
exhaled in relief when Nathaniel vanished
inside the crack in the wall.
  Muffled cries and a choked scream sounded from the
others when boulders moved, stalactites crashed,
and the floor shook. Phoebe scanned the perimeter,
but all the volunteers were still hidden. If she couldn't
see them, they couldn't see her.
  Paige and Piper backed off as the creature
came in for a two-point landing on the ritual stone.
Phoebe narrowed her eyes against the sting of swirling
dust. As soon as the beast was within range, she
placed the fifth crystal to activate the trap. As
she had hoped, the leftover magic on the site
amplified the power of the crystals, enlarging the
Crystal Cage.


  The Innocents were safe outside the magical
prison.
  The Charmed Ones were locked in with the beast.
  Paige's emotions were in turmoil as she faced
the fangs in the creature's slashing jaws and ducked
to avoid being snagged by a hooked front claw. They
had put their own and countless other lives in jeopardy
when they decided to give Harriet a second chance.
  But that's what we do, Paige thought. The Charmed
Ones had to do everything possible to save Innocents and
make sure good triumphed. If Harriet was lost
because they didn't try hard enough, then Abigail's
evil victory might have catastrophic consequences
down the road. They simply couldn't give up
while they still had a play.
  "Let's do this!" Phoebe shouted as she ran
up.
  Paige nodded. After she and Piper had recovered
from the bond with Mystic Knoll, they had decided that
tapping into the ancient amplification system was too
risky to attempt. Piper had forgotten the words to the
spell, and she hadn't been able to talk. The
unbbosted Power of Three would have to be enoughj
  The Charmed Ones began to recite the memorized
spell:
  "Begone cursed creature of day-night, Fang
and claw invoked by spite..."

  The creature snarled and heaved back on its
powerful hind legs. It shook its massive head,
its reptilian tongue flicking toward them.
Paige didn't flinch.
  "Two times ten has now passed The child will be herself
at last."
  As the last word echoed in the chamber, the beast
shrieked in agony. The three sisters stood their
ground when the huge winged lizard began to convulse.
The tail whipped up and swung around to batter them,
then suddenly went limp. Leathery wings began
to shorten, the supporting ribs to recede. Yellow
reptilian eyes turned brown. The cranial
crest shredded into finer and finer slivers of bone,
becoming hair....
  Paige saw Harriet's face under the
translucent scales on the beast's head. She
looked hopeful, determined to be free-then suddenly
terrified as her face faded and another took its
place. A red blotch covered the new visage's
right eye.
  "What's happening?" Piper shouted as the waning
wind suddenly grew stronger.
  "Abigail's back!" Paige pointed.
  "We have to use the Mystic Knoll stones and do the
spell again!" Phoebe yelled. "Now! Before she
gets too strong!"
  Paige knew Phoebe was right. Abigail had


  made up for her lack of natural magical
power with cunning. Somehow, when she died, she had
transferred her essence into her newborn daughter.
Her lingering spirit had easily subdued the docile
Harriet within the beast, taking control to fight the power
of the three witches.
  "Go!" Phoebe yelled and bolted for the space
between the rear and forward-right cones.
  Jaws snapping and fangs bared, the beast lashed out
as Phoebe dashed under a leathery wing. With
Abigail in command, the monster began to regain its
hideous form. Transparent scales became more
opaque and hair hardened into a bony plate.
  Paige hesitated, watching as Phoebe ran
around the back of the raised slab and scrambled to get
over the beast's useless tail. But Abigail,
acting through the monster, had quickly recovered her
strength. Phoebe was lifted into the air astride the
tail. She jumped to the ground before she was flung
into a rock wall and dashed for the magical zone between the
stalagmites.
  Piper attracted the beast's murderous attention
as she backed up to take position between the rear and
forward-left stalagmites. A prickly tongue
snaked out and wrapped around Piper's leg, jerking
her off her feet and pulling her away from the cones.
  Paige picked up a pointed shard of
stalagmite

  and jabbed the beast's tongue. Roaring in pain and
anger, it let Piper go, and both witches bolted
for their positions.
  Paige had to pinpoint the connection point. As she
moved sideways in the space between the cones, she
realized that the crimson crackles and pulsing red
glow inside them had diminished further. She saw
Phoebe stiffen an instant before the power grabbed her.
  Paige fought to keep her wits and her senses
functioning as she looked toward Piper. Piper's
nod was almost imperceptible, but it signaled that the
Charmed Ones were now part of the primal magic surging
through the stones.
  Paige ignored the burning within to chant the
reversal spell again:
  "Be gone cursed creature of day-night,
  Fang and claw invoked by spite,
  Two times ten has now passed
  The child will be herself at last."
  Her body shook so hard Paige thought her teeth
would shatter in her jaws. The energies radiating from
her heart into every limb were molten rivers in her
veins.
  Red starbursts exploded within the cones on either
side of her, one after another and another. Then, as the
red glow faded and the streaks fizzled out, the
stalagmites crumbled.
  Paige fell to her knees. Dazed and drained,


  she forced herself to stay conscious. The beast was losing
cohesion, and she didn't want to miss a single
second of the fatal show.
  A wisp of something vaguely human with a red stain
fled as the creature contorted in a seizure. The
last bit of Abigail had nowhere to go, nothing to cling
to, and it dissipated.
  The massive beast began to disintegrate, not
into dust or ash, but like its creator-into nothing. The end
took no more than a minute, and when the beast was gone,
Harriet-wholly human and only herself-remained on
the slab.
  Phoebe sat on a rock and indulged in a slow
exhalation of relief as everyone emerged from
  the underground labyrinth sun streamed through the
  The late afternoon trees, drenching the
  ancient stone plaza in warm, golden light.
Birds chirped in the trees, and a gentle breeze
rustled the leaves. A sense of peace settled over
everything, as though Mystic Knoll was celebrating
its freedom from Abigail's malicious magic.
  Phoebe exchanged a smile with Florence as she
and Troy began interviewing the other witnesses. The
newspaper woman and her son had questions about the
events in the cavern, and she had answers. Her
answers weren't factual, but they were believable.
  After the beast was vanquished and before the stones had
stopped rumbling, Paige covered

  Harriet with the bathrobe she had stashed under a
rock. She had orbed Harriet and Piper to the
surface, then returned. After they retrieved the
volunteers from their hiding places, Paige had
enlisted Nathaniel's help to get everyone
topside before another "earthquake or aftershock"
brought the cavern walls down around them.
  Phoebe had hung back with Ida to tell her the
good news-that Harriet was alive and finally free of
her mother's insidious curse. Ida had been too
overjoyed to speak, but twenty years of pent-up
tears had rolled down her gaunt cheeks.
  Phoebe glanced across the plaza. Ida had run
to her granddaughter and wrapped her arm around
Harriet, as always the source of the shy young woman's
comfort and support. Lucas squatted in front of
his grown daughter, not saying a word, just holding her
hand. Now that Abigail's spell had been broken
and her spirit expelled, Harriet was cured. The
monthly fits, physical manifestations of the
curse, and Mystic Knoll's influence would no
longer rule her life. That, plus Lucas's
acceptance, was evidence that the Thornwood women
wouldn't be ostracized and alone anymore.
  Giggling drew Phoebe's attention to the banks
of the nearby stream. Tim Barnes and Nancy Stark
had taken off their shoes and socks. They were splashing
in the water, getting to know each other better.
  Seated on stones by the bridge, Florence was


  recording as Ned talked. Piper sat with them,
listening intently, making sure nobody had seen
anything that exposed them.
  Tammy was huddled with Gretchen, Brad, and
Karen, all members of the town committee in charge
of the Mystic Knoll tourist attraction. They were
discussing safety concerns raised by the unexpected
earthquake and cave-in. Phoebe was certain an
investigation would prove the incident had been a
geological fluke that would not recur.
  Phoebe straightened when Paige and Nathaniel
walked over. Nathaniel sat down beside her.
  "Nathaniel has some questions," Paige said, "and
he doesn't want to ask me."
  "It's a psychology question," Nathaniel sajd.
He hesitated, as though embarrassed. Paige
took the hint and left to see how Harriet and Ida
were doing. When she was out of earshot, he continued.
  "I know this is going to sound ridiculous,"
Nathaniel said, "but I thought I saw some kind of
dragon down there. Just for a second, but-was
  "A dragon?" Phoebe held his troubled
gaze.
  "But it was Harriet." Nathaniel threw up his
hands. "I know it sounds crazy-was
  "Not really, Nathaniel," Phoebe said, hoping
she could negate his memory and put his mind at
ease. "You've been soaking up strange stories
and dealing with the natural anomalies in this

  CkAFTER caret MED
  town for three months. I'm not at all
surprised you imaged something that wasn't there,
especially under these circumstances. Think about it. You
were hiding in a dark cave, playing a mind trick
on other people in the middle of an earthquake."
  "I imagined it?" Nathaniel didn't look
convinced, but he desperately wanted to be.
  "Yeah." Phoebe nodded. "Or you really saw
a dragon."
  Nathaniel sighed, then frowned. "About that
earthquake. Where did that come from?"
  "Actually-was Phoebe paused, trying to come up
with a plausible explanation. She had to, so
Nathaniel could diffuse any speculation that
circulated around town. "We were pretty sure a
geological event was imminent. Old wives'
tales are usually based on fact."
  Nathaniel just looked at her.
  "All the weird wildlife behavior,"
Phoebe continued. "Animals can detect changes
in their surroundings, and the animals around here have been
reacting to subtle hints of a major event for
years."
  That sounded great! Phoebe thought, keeping her
fingers crossed that it sounded logical to Nathaniel.
  "What does that do to the electromagnetic
theory?" Nathaniel was asking himself more than her.
  "That may have been a factor," Phoebe said,


  "before the earthquake shifted the stones and altered the
electromagnetic pattern."
  Phoebe suspected that the scientific and
magical forces at work in Mystic Knoll had
both been changed. The stalagmite receptacles
had crumbled because they couldn't withstand the Power of
Three. The ancient niagical amplification
mechanism had been destroyed, and the animal
anomalies were history.
  "I think I'd better write all this down
while it's still fresh in my mind. Thanks."
Nathaniel rose and hurried toward his truck.
  Paige immediately came back over. "Now I have
a psychological question. More like an "Ask
Phoebe" question."
  Piper overheard the last p, irt as she
strolled over to join them. "This should be good," she
joked.
  "I already know the answer, but in case I'm wrong
..." Paige cleared her throat. "Nathaniel
would never accept having a witch for a girlfriend, would
he?"
  "Nathaniel would never believe his girlfriend was a
witch," Phoebe said. "Probably not a good
match."
  "Yeah." Paige sighed and shrugged. "That's just as
well, I guess. I think Harriet has a
crush on him."
  "For what it's worth," Phoebe said, "the
feeling may be mutual. Nathaniel just doesn't
know it yet."
  "Interesting," Piper said. "You won't believe

  CkApDo
  this, but most of these people are sad that the animals around
town won't be going bonkers anymore."
  "It is kind of sad," Phoebe said.
  "Yeah, but what are the chances Harriet the beast
flew all over this county without being seen?" Piper
grinned. "A new local legend is born."
  "At least we saved her and got rid of
Abigail for good," Paige pointed out. "Ida said
she was going to burn the diary."
  Phoebe knew that, symbolically, destroying
Abigail's spell book would help Ida and
Harriet adjust and heal. The events set in motion
when Ida's father had forced her to marry Joshua were
finally over. The old rumors about Abigail would
never die out completely, but as memories dimmed,
they would lose importance.
  "Can we get on with our vacation now?" Piper
asked.
  "Yes!" Phoebe had been so involved with
Harriet and Ida's troubles she had forgotten they were
supposed to be relaxing. "Are we sticking with the
original plan?"
  "If we were following our original schedule,"
Piper said, "we'd be finished touring Salem and on
our way to the beach."
  "If it's all right with you"-Paige looked from
Piper to Phoebe-"I'd just as soon skip
Salem and go directly to the beach. I've had enough
New England witchcraft on this trip."

  oll

  "I second that," Piper said. "Vacations
shouldn't have schedules. I vote for a nice,
leisurely dinner in Cairn and a fresh start in the
morning."
  "Good plan," Paige agreed. "I'll go ask
our new friends to suggest a good restaurant."
  "I'm going to duck back into the tunnels to call
Leo," Piper said. "See you back at the
Yankee Bear."
  Before Phoebe could object, her sisters were
walking away. On her own again, she walked over
to Ida. She hesitated to interrupt the quiet
reunion of father and daughter and stood off a couple
of feet, waiting.
  "What is it?" Ida asked.
  "I don't know how to tell you this, Ida,"
Phoebe said, "but-was
  "You want to stay another night," Ida finished
for her.
  Phoebe winced with a sheepish shrug. "Yeah."
  "I've never had guests who were so hard to get
rid of," Ida huffed. "One more night. No
charge."
  "Deal," Phoebe said. Ida's offer was an
expression of gratitude for help she thought she could
never repay. Phoebe Couldn't explain that there was
no debt without belittling the old woman's
gesture.
  Then Harriet smiled, and the Charmed Ones were paid
in full.