There was rain pattering outside the old red house as Piper Halliwell skittered up the front steps in the rain. There was the rumble of thunder in the distance, and as she looked up the walk, she could see the silhouette of a young boy staring out the window nervously, but perking up as he saw her. Part of Piper sighed as she continued up, closing her umbrella as she reached the porch and the door swung open like she expected.
"There you are," her fifteen year old cousin, Sam, sighed at her as she shoved her way through the door, looking up as the lights flickered a little. "Dean left to get Phoebe. Have you told Prue-"
Thunder rumbled as a look flashed into his older cousin's eyes. He knew what that look meant, and it told him that they were all in trouble.
"Piper!" he blurted accusingly.
Piper hushed her voice as she hung up her umbrella and started to put down her bags. "Look, we still have time-"
"Yeah. Like an hour. No way she-"
"What are you two talking about in there?"
The two of them straightened up at hearing the voice, and immediately hushed. Piper put down her bags before sliding towards the next room.
"Prue?" She questioned, glancing nervously at Sam.
"In here, working on the chandelier."
Hearing the world chandelier made Piper wince a little before she looked back at Sam, who just continued to look at her pointedly.
"Sorry I'm late," Piper muttered, before starting into the main room with Sam behind her.
"What else is new?" questioned the woman standing on a ladder in the living room. Piper pursed her lips, trying to ignore her older sister's annoyed tone. Prue looked away from the light fixture she was working on, down at her sister and cousin. "You know, I'd have been here to meet the electrician myself, but you know I can't leave the museum until six. I haven't even changed."
Offhandedly, Sam interjected, "I could've let him in, you know." Prue's only response was to look at him and silently say No Way.
Piper looked back up, drawing her sister's gaze again. "Sorry, I just didn't realize how long I was in Chinatown," she said. "Did Jeremy call?"
"No, but he had some roses and a package delivered," Prue responded, pointing towards the dining room table. As Piper started in that direction, Prue's face twisted a little in confusion. "What were you dong in Chinatown? I thought you had an interview in North Beach."
"I did, but I had to go to Yung Lee Market to get the ingredients for my audition recipe tomorrow," Piper said walking into the dining room, looking appreciatively at the flowers on the table as her sister and cousin followed her.
Sam made a face. "You mean that idiot didn't hire you today?"
Piper winced a little again, before looking at the youngest Halliwell as she unwrapped the package her boyfriend had sent her. "No. But this," she started, before pulling out the bottle, "just might get me the job."
While Sam only looked at the bottle curiously, Prue's face lit up. "Jeremy sent you Port?"
"It's the ultimate ingredient for my recipe," Piper said lightly, looking at the bottle.
"Nice boyfriend," Prue said.
Again, Sam made a face. He wasn't fond of his cousin's boyfriend, and certainly wasn't fond of how she was ogling at the flowers he had sent. He was more than happy when Piper's eye caught on the spirit board lying on the other side of the table and her face lit up.
"Oh my god. I don't believe it. Tell me that's not our old spirit board…"
The others smiled as she looked at it, and followed her as she rounded to the seat where the Ouija board sat. "Yeah," Sam said brightly. "Prue found it while she was looking for a circuit tester downstairs."
Piper smiled over at him before looking down to the board where an inscription was written clearly on the back. "To my three beautiful girls, may this give you the light to find the shadows. The power of three will set you free, love Mom…" she trailed off before looking back at the other two. "We never did figure out what this inscription meant…"
"Well, we should send it to Phoebe. That girl is so in the dark, maybe a little bit of light would help."
Piper and Sam both froze as the oldest Halliwell said her youngest sister's name with such malice. Sam winced a little, always having hated it when the family was fighting.
"You're always so hard on her," Piper said, looking at the table tensely as she set the board back down.
"Piper, the girl has no vision," Prue said flatly. "No sense of the future…"
"I really think she's coming around," Sam muttered, looking at the table too.
"Well, as long as she doesn't come around here I guess that's good news," Prue responded, before turning and going back to the chandelier.
Piper looked to her cousin as he looked away from the table, and silently communicated to her that they really needed to tell her already. Piper looked away again, and moved to put away her ingredients.
Sam sighed a little, and moved to follow Prue to see if he could help with the chandelier,
None of them, of course, noticed as they passed the pointer on the spirit board was slowly gliding across the triquetra in the middle of the board.
Life in the Halliwell household had always been a little complicated.
With five kids running around and only Grams in charge, a lot happened at the Manor. If Prue and Phoebe weren't fighting, Dean was getting in trouble at school. If Piper wasn't freaking out about going to school after something awful had happened, someone had played a trick on Sam that needed to be dealt with before the youngest boy got a persecution complex. Really, they all loved each other like siblings, but things had always been chaotic when their Grams was alive. Things had only gotten worse when she died.