Have Spell, Will Travel

"Where can Stuart be?" Phoebe asked. "We're supposed to be going out in fifteen minutes."
"Maybe he got stuck in traffic," Leo suggested.

"That's something that never happens to you with your orbing," Piper said. "Or does it? Do white-lighters have a rush-hour when your orbing slows down in orb traffic?"

"Uh, no, not really," Leo said. "It doesn't work that way. When we-"

"ARRGGHH!!" Phoebe's scream interrupted him as blood started running from her nose.

"ARRGGHH!" she screamed again. Bruises suddenly appeared on her cheek and chin. A gash opened up on her forehead and blood streamed from her mouth.

"ARRGGGHH!" Phoebe doubled over in pain as she felt her ribs being pushed inwards.

"Phoebe!"  Piper shouted.  The image of Phoebe started to shake and blur and their eyes couldn't focus on her.

The door to The Manor opened and Tallor strode into the living room.

"Tallor!" Prue cried, anger filling her. She waved her hand and sent the demon flying back into the wall.

"What are you doing to Phoebe??" she demanded.

"It's not me," he said as he started to get up.  "It's Jôlét.  He's gone back into time.  And he's changed something in the past that is about to kill her."

"What's happening to her? Why is she blurring?" Piper cried as Phoebe fell to the floor.

"The changes in time caused by what Jôlét did are rolling forward through time until all of the changes catch up to the present.  As each instant in the past changes, her present is affected and changed by it.  Because her present time is changing she's out of phase with your present time, which isn’t changing.  That's why she's blurred to you."

"Leo - heal her!" Prue shouted.

"If you have the power to heal you have to use it before all of the changes rolling through time reach the present," Tallor said. "Once that happens she'll be dead."

Leo tried putting his hands on her blurred chest.

"I can't touch her," he said. "She's all blurry. She isn't solid."

Tallor pushed Prue aside and knelt down beside Leo.

"Give me your hands," he ordered. Leo looked at Tallor, then moved his hands near him. Tallor grabbed one of Leo's wrists in each of his hands and put Leo's hands onto Phoebe's chest.

"Now you can heal her," Tallor said.

Leo could now feel Phoebe's chest and as he held his hands on it an aura of light began to glow around them. He held them there for ten seconds until the blood stop gushing from her.

"Her head," he said to Tallor, who nodded. Tallor moved Leo's hands to Phoebe's head and the bruises and gash disappeared. Leo kept his hands on her a few seconds more.

"She's OK," he said looking up to Piper and Prue. Tallor let go of Leo's hands and as they both stood up Phoebe's image stopped blurring.

"The changes in time have reached the present," Tallor said.  "In the changed present, Phoebe would have been dead from those wounds had you not healed her.  And had I not been here."

Phoebe started to sit up.

"Are you OK?" Prue asked as she knelt down beside her.

"Yes..." she said as she stood up. "I'm OK."

"How were you able to touch her when Leo couldn't?" Piper asked.

"I have other time powers that Jôlét doesn't know about," Tallor said.  "I can synchronize myself to changing time.  When I held Leo's wrists tightly in my hands he became synchronized with her time through me."

"How did you know something was going to happen to Phoebe?"  Prue asked, her eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

"I didn't," he said. "But I knew Jôlét was going to double-cross you.  So when I sensed that he had taken someone back in time I thought it was one of you."

"And you came to kill Jôlét and us," Prue said.

"If I was going to kill you I wouldn't have saved your sister," Tallor replied. "Jôlét is another matter."

"What did you mean about sensing that Jôlét took someone back in time?" Leo asked.

"Everyone has his own personal past in time, as he experienced it, and his own pathway that connects him to this past," Tallor explained. "You can't access your pathway to go back through it but Jôlét can access it with the power you took from me and gave him. That power lets him use someone - let's say it was you - he uses you to take both him and you through your pathway to any particular time in your past that he wants to go to.

"Then there would be two of me in the past," Piper said.

"No,” Tallor said. “When you go back through your pathway you're going back through your own time, your own life. Only one of you existed at any time in the past so only one of you will exist in the pathway.  You're inside yourself, the 'you' that existed at that time. You wouldn't even know that you had gone back through time while you were there, nor would you know anything about the future."

"And through this Jôlét can change things in the past," Phoebe said.

"He can only use the power to directly change what's in your pathway - your own past.  But the past is all intertwined in countless subtle and indirect ways. What he changes in your past will affect others."

"How does he get back to the present?" Piper asked. "And what does the person he uses remember?"

"After he's done, he returns with you via your pathway to your present," Tallor said.  "You would remember nothing.  Not of being in the past.  Not of what the present was like before anything in the past was changed.

"Jôlét didn't know that I have the power to sense when that happens and to track where he went."

"Who did he take back to the past?" Prue asked.

"I can't tell who," Tallor said. "I also can't tell if he came back with him."

"You mean he could leave him in the past?" Phoebe asked.

"Not exactly," Tallor said. "He could do something to the person he's using so that he no longer had a future, or at least not a future that reached to the present."

"Then how could Jôlét get back to the present without him?"  Piper asked.

"Jôlét would have to be fast," Tallor said. "He would have to get back through the pathway before time rolled the changes caused by whatever he did to that person forward to the present and that person, and his pathway, no longer existed.  It's risky.  It would have to be really important to Jôlét to try it."

"Why did you save Phoebe?" Prue asked, still distrusting him.

"She could have removed my memory in the warehouse, as you told her to, after she took away my power to give to Jôlét," Tallor said. "Not knowing who and what I was would have effectively destroyed me. But she didn't. She didn't hurt me. So I was in her debt."

"Since when do demons care about debts?" Prue asked.

"I'll admit it's a minor weakness," he answered.  "I don't like being in debt to anyone.  Especially to one of The Charmed Ones."

"Jôlét didn't take one of us back into our past," Piper asked, "so how did he hurt Phoebe like that?"

"I could feel how much damage was done to her," Leo said. "Her whole insides were crushed. The bleeding, those wounds...I've seen similar ones. It was as if she had been in a car crash."

"Or more precisely...run over by a car," Prue said, slowly.  "Stuart saved Phoebe from being run over by the demon car.  If Stuart had been killed in his past before that happened, Phoebe would have been crushed by that car."

"If Jôlét wanted to kill Phoebe, why didn't he take her back into her past?" Leo asked.

"Because it wasn't just me he wanted to kill," Phoebe said.  "Remember how incensed he was when Stuart said he would protect Piper from him?  And when he left, he told Stuart that he wasn't through with him.

"It was Stuart he really wanted to kill."

"And Stuart's not home yet," Prue said.

"And he should have been a long time ago," Phoebe said, fear in her voice.

"I didn't expect to ever say this to a demon," Prue said, taking a deep breath. "Thank you...Thank you for saving Phoebe."

"How did you know where to find us?" Piper asked.

"Phoebe told me her name and so I asked around," Tallor answered.  "There are quite a few demons who know that you're The Charmed Ones and know where you live. They showed me how to get here."

"Oh, that's just great!" Piper said.  "Now we're on the demon's version of The Beverly Hills Map to the Stars' Homes."

"Stuart would have called if he was stuck somewhere," Phoebe said, looking at Prue.  "Jôlét took him and...did something to him."

"It seems that way," Prue said, unhappily.

"We have to go back into Stuart's past and stop Jôlét," Phoebe said turning to Tallor. "And you have to help us."

"No," Tallor said.  "I've paid off my debt to you.  I'm done here."

"We can't find Jôlét without you," Phoebe said. "You said so yourself."

"That's true," Tallor said. "But why should I help you? I'm not in the habit of helping good witches."

"Because," Prue said to him with a steely, determined look, "I'm not going to just stop Jôlét." She paused, and her head began to bob slightly.

"I'm going to take that power away from him," she said. "And then I'm going to vanquish him.  And if you...if you want your power back...you'd better help us."

Tallor raised his eyebrows and thought about it for a moment.

"Without that power, I don't have any way of traveling back in time," he said, sounding hooked.

"We do," Prue said.

"We do?" Piper asked.

"We have a spell for it," Prue said.  "We used it in that episode when...uh, that time when we traveled back to see Mom and Grams to stop Nicholas from killing us."

"Oh. That one," Piper said.  "Uh...it will take us a while to find that one.  I don't exactly remember where, uh, it is."

"We'll also need to find a spell to vanquish Jôlét," Phoebe said.

"And to transfer the power back to Tallor," Prue said.  "We'll come down as soon as we're ready.  Leo will keep you entertained while we're preparing."

"Uh...I don't know if I'm permitted to have a good time with a demon," Leo said.

"Then have a miserable time with him," Piper said in an impatient tone as she walked past him. "Just keep your eyes on him."

 

"Here it is," Phoebe finally announced with a trace of incredulity, staring at what she had found. "The spell to go back in time. Just as we said it on Charmed. It's tied into that bond with Nicholas. I'll change it just a little for Stuart.

"And here is the spell Grams used to send us back to our time," she continued, looking at the bottom half of the page. "Grams must have added it here after she sent us back. We'll use this spell to come home, just as we did in the episode."

Piper looked over Phoebe's shoulder at the page in The Book of Shadows.

"We're going to use a Charmed script's make-believe spells," Piper said with incredulity, "that were dreamed up by a writer, that we read as actresses in a scene, shot on a set in the first season, to really travel back through time to the past in real life. And then to return to the present time."

She looked at Prue and Phoebe.

"Am I the only here having trouble with this?" she asked.

"They're both in The Book of Shadows so they will work," Prue said, matter-of-factly.

"But I can't find Jôlét in The Book," Phoebe said.

"Than we'll have to improvise," Prue said.  "Take any vanquishing spell from The Book and change it to fit Jôlét, the way you would have done on Charmed.  We can't wait any longer. I don't want to give Jôlét any more time to change anything else in the past."

 

Leo and Tallor sat facing each other in opposite end-chairs.  Leo's face was an odd mixture - an expression of pain and discomfort vying with a forced smile.  At the first sounds of someone descending the stairs he jumped up with obvious relief.

"We're ready," Prue said as they came into the living room.

"Here's where Jôlét was when he used the pathway to return to the present," Tallor said, giving Prue a piece of paper.

"We'll go back to a time one-half hour before that," Prue said. "That should give us enough time to stop him."

"Be careful," Leo said. "You saw what Jôlét can do." He went over to Piper and put his hands on her arms. He looked into her eyes for a second then lightly kissed her.

"We'll have to hold hands when we say the spell," Prue said. "You too, Tallor."

Prue and Piper were on either side of Phoebe, who held up the spell for them to see.

   "The breaking of our bond which was not to be done

       Give us the power to see it undone

    And turn back time

       To when it was begun."

 

They were standing on the edge of a greensward that ran in either direction alongside the water.  To their left, two sailboats passed each other in front of the breakwater, their sails glistening in the afternoon sun.  To their right was a roadway and beyond it a wide harbor.  A bridge spanning its width split the view of the harbor in two as it connected the roadway to the harbor's other side.  A cliff overlooking the harbor ran the length of that other side, a road running up its edge to the houses on its summit.

"It worked," Phoebe said.

"Hmmphh...score one for Charmed's writers," Piper said, conceding the spell's success.

"Where are we?" Phoebe asked.

"Dana Point," Prue said, reading the sign on the sculpture in front of them.  "It's just south of Laguna Beach.  We're back in Southern California."

"Jôlét must be around here," Piper said. "Let's split up-"

"Wait," Phoebe said, and started walking towards someone sitting on a bench about twenty yards away.

"Stuart!" Phoebe called out.

Stuart turned around and stared at her as she walked up to him.

"Don't you know me?" she asked, hopefully.

"I...know...who I think you are but...how do you...know me?" he asked.

"Who am I?" she asked.

"Are you...Phoebe?" he asked hesitantly.

She nodded. "Alyssa Milano," she said.

"Of course," he said, stunned, "I'm sorry. I...just think of you as Phoebe. I always watch Charmed."

"I know," she said. "And you have a special leaning towards Phoebe."

"How...how did you know that?" he asked.

"You don't remember," she said.  Though Tallor had told her he wouldn't she was still disappointed.

"I'm sorry," he began, "...Ms. Milano please forgive me...we must have met...but...I don't know how I could have forgotten meeting you. I'm so embarrassed...I just don't remember..."

"It's all right," she said. "Don't feel embarrassed. It's because you're a mortal that you don't remember when you travel through time."

"Through time?" he asked, feeling completely confused.

"I don't see Jôlét," Prue said as she approached them.

"Shannen Doherty?" Stuart said, staring at her. "Uh...what..."

"But he has to be around here," Prue said.  "We'll watch you and be close by."  Phoebe nodded and Prue went back to Piper and Tallor.

Stuart, dumbfounded, could do nothing more than stare at them.

"Let's take a walk," Phoebe said. "OK?"

"Uh...a walk...with you..." he said, feeling tongue-tied. "Of course that's OK, Ms. Milano."

"Ms. Milano," Phoebe repeated. It was so formal, so proper. So...cold. She thought of the walks they'd taken together in San Francisco. But now, those walks hadn't even happened yet.

"Call me Alyssa," she said to him, with a slight smile. "Come on."

They started walking along the path, the water off to their left. The sun, though still fairly high, nevertheless backlit the few people ahead of them. Phoebe stopped and stared intensely at someone walking towards them until she was able to see that it wasn't Jôlét.

"What I'm going to tell you will be hard for you to believe," she said, as they resumed walking. "I don't really have any way of proving it to you. But I know that you'll be able to accept it.

"What's today's date?" she asked him.

"Today...uhh..." Stuart nervously fumbled with his watch. "Uhh...March 5th," he said, looking at the date displayed on it.

Phoebe took a deep breath.

"In exactly two months from today, I'm going to become Phoebe Halliwell - in real life.  Our roles - Shannen's, Holly's and mine - will become real."  She stopped and turned to Stuart.

"We'll be changed into the Halliwell sisters.  Charmed won't be a TV series anymore - everything on it will have become real.  And the world...the real world...will somehow be changed, too.  There won't be a lot of changes.  Just enough to accommodate our becoming The Charmed Ones in real life.

"In two months from now, demons will have plans for major destruction in the world. And the three of us will be transformed into real witches to stop them, to save the lives of millions of innocents."

Stuart looked at her bewildered, not knowing what to make of what she was saying.

"We'll be just as we appear on Charmed," she continued.  "Only it will all be real.  The powers, The Manor...and the demons.

"In two months from now...you'll be with us, helping us fight the demons, though you won't have any powers to use against them"

"In two months?" he asked. "How...how do you know...what will happen in two months?"

She took another deep breath.  "Because...I'm not the Alyssa Milano from today.  I'm from the future...from almost three months in the future.  I've come back to the past. To today."

Stuart, feeling more confused the more Phoebe spoke, tried to say something. But he was too overwhelmed by her story to coherently ask anything.

"It's a long story," Phoebe continued, "and there isn't time to go into it.  But there's a demon who's gone back to the past...to this time...and changed something.  And because of that...something's going to happen to you.  We've come back from the future to stop it."

They approached a bench and Stuart stopped.

"Excuse me, but...I have to..." he said, and sat down to steady himself,

"Ms. Milano...Alyssa...please, forgive me for asking this but...you are an actress. Is this...something that you're filming?...to see people's responses to such a story? Are you making some show out of people's reactions?"

"No," she said. "It's all real. Our becoming witches, the demons, your being there with us.

"When we were changed, you were with us.  You accepted our becoming witches before we did and helped us to accept it too.  Because you can accept things, accept facts, even if they seem impossible. Like something that happened to you a long time ago, something that still seems impossible, something you still can't explain. But you accepted that it happened...because it did.

"You accepted having the car keys." Stuart's jaw dropped at those words.

"The...car keys...from the rented car," he said, astonished. "I returned the car, went home...and the keys were still there in my house. I never told anyone about that."

"In about ten weeks from now you're going to tell me," she said.

Stuart closed his eyes. He felt the world, his world, being turned upside down. And he was having trouble hanging on.

"How...did I become part of...what happened to you?" he managed to ask.

"You saved my life when a demon tried to kill me. You were with me when I was transformed into Phoebe Halliwell and got brought along with me to San Francisco."

"I...saved your life? I actually saved your life?" She nodded. "I know I would do that...without hesitation. That's one thing I can accept."

"You saved my life twice," she said as she took his hands into hers and held them with her eyes closed. Stuart couldn't believe that they were really holding hands.

"Ohh!! Prue, Piper!" she called.

"You got a premonition of what Jôlét is going to do?" Prue asked as they hurried to them.

"Holly Combs, too?" Stuart asked, staring at her.

"A railing," Phoebe said. "Stuart is leaning against it...it's high up...I could see the harbor below it. The railing gives way...and Stuart falls down..."

"Jôlét is going to kill him," Piper said.

"Kill me??" he asked. "What are-"

"Where were you going before I stopped you?" Phoebe asked him.

"I...I was going to drive up to...to Violet Lantern," he said, feeling even more confused.

"Lantern?" she asked.

"That's what the streets in Dana Point are called. Lanterns, instead of streets and avenues."

"Is there a railing there?" Phoebe asked.

"Uh...uh...yes...uh...by Blue Lantern...  Uh, no...it's by Amber Lantern.  It has a magnificent view of the harbor.  I was going to walk the short path to it from Violet Lantern.  It's up there," he said, pointing to the cliff overlooking the harbor.

"Jôlét must have done something to it, weakened it," Phoebe said. "Don't go up there, Stuart. Stay away from it and you'll be safe."

"Only if we find Jôlét," Piper said, "before he realizes Stuart didn't go there and finds some other way to kill him."

"That railing is a danger to anyone who goes there and leans against it," Prue said. "Someone else can be killed. We have to stop Jôlét from weakening it. We'll have to go back in time to when Jôlét first came here.  And take the power away from him before he can do anything to that railing - or to anything else in the past."

"Explain this to me," Stuart said.

"Go ahead," Prue said. "I'll call you when we're ready."

"I'll stay here and watch out for Jôlét in case he comes to check on why Stuart isn't up there," Piper said.  Prue nodded and walked back to where they had left Tallor.  Piper walked a few yards down the path to give Stuart and Phoebe some privacy.

"Find where Jôlét came into this time when he left the pathway," Prue said to Tallor.

"Why?" he asked.

"We're going to stop him from hurting anyone in the past," Prue said.  "And the only way to be sure of that is to get to him as soon as he comes out of the pathway.  So find when and where that was and we'll go back in time to it."

"It may take a while to track him from here," Tallor said.

"Start!" Prue ordered.

Stuart looked off at a sailboat turning astern on the water.

"Everything is happening so fast," he said. "I'm feeling things that...that I never even admitted to myself.  That...I never realized that I felt when I saw you."

"The weeks we've spent getting to know each other have been condensed into fifteen minutes here," Phoebe said.  "I've overwhelmed you."

"And now," Stuart said, "I know why I never admitted to myself what...what I might be feeling for you. Because it was so...impossible.  Even preposterous.  It...couldn't happen.

"And now it is happening. I'm sitting here and...I can...hold your hand."

"When we stop Jôlét before he weakens the railing, " Phoebe said, "this present won't have happened. It will go back, for you, to how it really happened before we came back in time. We won't have met now."

"If that happens...then I'll lose you," he said.

"You won't lose me. We'll be seeing each other in the future," Phoebe said.

"The future...you can't be sure about the future," he said turning around to her. "But right now, this time here with you, has been the most un-believable thing that's ever happened to me."

A single tear started to roll down from the corner of his eye.

Phoebe saw the tear, threw her arms around him and kissed him.  He hesitated for a second, then put his arms around her, too.

"This...uhh, this is so un-believable."  He looked deeply into her eyes and was silent for a moment.

"You have real demons to vanquish...you really do have to save the world from them - don't you?" He shook his head slowly. "And I have to lose you for you to do it."

"You helped fight the demons in the future, too," she said. "And you're not going to lose me.  I'm going to take away Jôlét's powers and undo what he did.  And then we'll see each other again in the future."

"I found his time trail," Tallor said as he and Prue came up behind them.

"Who's that?" Stuart asked.

"Tallor. He's a demon," Phoebe answered.

"A demon?"  Stuart said and looked at him for a moment until it registered.  "Hey!" he said and started to pull Phoebe away.

"He's not going to hurt me," she said and looked into Stuart's eyes. "You never stop trying to protect me, do you."

"The advance knowledge you've given him," Tallor said, pointing to Stuart, " is enough of a change to alter the future, perhaps in ways that you might not like.  Going back in time now will undo that."

"I have to go now," Phoebe said gently.  They threw their arms around each other once more and kissed.

They let go of each and she gently brushed the tear from his cheek with her hand. "We will be going for walks together in the future," she said. "I promise."

Stuart nodded. "Be careful."

"I will," she said and walked back to join the others.

He hesitated, then took a deep breath.

"I really do care about you," he called after her. She stopped, turned back to him and looked at him silently for a moment.

"I know," she said. She peered into his eyes for a moment, then turned around and continued walking.

 

Piper looked across a marina filled with white boats, an occasional maroon or green bridge enclosure interrupting the sea of ubiquitous blue canvas cockpit covers.

"I think we came from the other side of the marina," she said, pointing to the greensward that the marina separated from them.

Having said the spell again, they found themselves on a walkway running alongside the harbor. A small building with a sign 'Dana Island Yachts' stood to their left.

"Which way?" Piper asked.

"This way," Phoebe said.  She pointed across the marina parking lot to a one-story shopping area that ran parallel to the water.  A figure walked out from between the shops, went into the parking lot and headed towards them.

"Stuart," Prue remarked.

"It would be best not to talk to him here," Tallor said. "You want to prevent changes from happening. Don't introduce new ones, again."

Prue nodded. They turned towards the water until Stuart reached the walkway and passed them.

"Stuart came out of there," Phoebe said, pointing to a break in the row of shops. "Since Jôlét exited Stuart’s pathway with him he must be there."

They crossed the parking lot and walked up the nine steps to the shops' walkway. A restaurant stood before them and to its right was a row of boutique shops. There was a gap between it and a second row of shops that followed.

"Let's go - carefully," Prue said.  They walked to the end of the first row and turned into the beginning of an arcade.  It ran between the two rows of shops, a shop entrance from each row on either side of the arcade, before turning right. Piper walked past the shop on the arcade's right side and peered around the corner.

An inner arcade continued for another fifty feet.  Two gift shops were at its end while a third adjacent store stood empty.  And in the center of the arcade stood Jôlét.

"Jôlét's there," Piper said to them.

"You'll freeze him," Prue said. "We'll take the sphere from him, transfer the power to it, then transfer it back to Tallor."

They turned at the sound of voices behind them. Two women and a young girl had turned into the arcade from the walkway. One of the women was talking to the girl while the other woman adjusted the collar on the girl's jacket.

"We have to stop those people from coming into the arcade," Prue said. "They'll get hurt."

"Get out!"  Phoebe said, running to them and motioning with her hands.  "There's a man waving a big knife running around by the stores."

"OHHHH!" one of the women cried. She grabbed the young girl and pulled her towards her.

"Let's get out of here," the other woman said, frightened.  They each took one of the young girl's hands and ran hysterically back outside and down the walkway.

"Let's go," Prue said. Piper peered around the corner again and raised her hand.

"OK," she said. They walked into the inner arcade and approached Jôlét. Piper took the sphere and, holding it facing Jôlét, stepped back a few feet from him. Prue took out the paper and began the spell.

   "Take the power of time travel

        That this demon may hide,

     Link it to this sphere

        And to the power that's inside."

 There was a low rumbling sound as the sphere glowed and started to revolve in Piper's hand.  But as the light extended from the sphere to Jôlét he suddenly unfroze.  Seeing them, he waved his hand at the sphere.  Suddenly it started swinging wildly in Piper's hand.  The light stopped but then shot out again, this time towards Prue.

"Arrggh" Prue cried as she ducked below it.

"Jôlét's controlling the sphere," Piper shouted.

A second light shot out towards Phoebe but she saw it coming and ducked, too. Prue waved her hand at Jôlét and sent him flying against the wall.

"When we link the sphere to him he unfreezes," Piper said.

"Then we'll transfer the power with him unfrozen," Prue said, waving her hand and sending Jôlét flying back into the wall again.

"Here," Prue said, handing the spell to Phoebe.  "Say the spell.  I'll keep Jôlét from controlling the sphere."

As Phoebe said the spell Prue waved her hand at Jôlét, preventing him from concentrating on the sphere.  The light extended to him and she waved her hand again, then a second and a third time.

This was more than what was needed to stop Jôlét's concentration, Phoebe thought.  Then she saw the look on Prue's face and realized that this part, was for her, purely personal.

The rumbling ended and the sphere came to a stop in Piper's hand.  She raised her other hand and froze Jôlét, then un-froze Tallor.

Prue looked at Tallor and took a deep breath.

"Return the power to him," she said to Phoebe. Piper looked at them for a second, then held up the sphere to face Tallor.

      "Link time's power

           Contained in this sphere,

       And return it whence it came

           To the one who stands here."

 The light shot out towards Tallor as the sphere glowed and revolved for a few seconds.

"I have it!" Tallor proclaimed. "I have my power back!"

"Get out that vanquishing spell," Prue said.

"I'll need time to try to change it to work on Jôlét," Phoebe said.

"Don't bother," Tallor said.

He walked over and grabbed Jôlét as he tried to get up.  They disappeared for a second, then Tallor re-appeared alone.

"Where's Jôlét?" Prue asked.

"I took him into his own pathway and left him trapped in it," Tallor answered.

"Trapped? How?" Prue asked.

"Jôlét came here through your friend's pathway," Tallor explained.  "But doing that changed Jôlét's own pathway.  Think of Jôlét's pathway as being in the shape of an upside-down U." Tallor made a  1 shape with his finger in the air.

"The left side, the old leg, led from his past to the present that we came from," he continued. "A past in which he actually existed. The right side, the new leg, went back from the present to this past we're in now.  But Jôlét never really existed on his own in this part of time in this leg because his pathway was inside your friend's pathway.

"So I took him forward in time to one week from now through his own pathway on that right leg and left him inside the pathway - between now and the future we came from.  He existed in that time only in the other part of his pathway - the left leg of the 'U'.  He didn't exist in that time in this leg - the right leg - of his own pathway.  Jôlét only passed through it , inside your friend's pathway, when he brought him here.  So Jôlét's in an anomaly. He can't get out and get back into the real world.

"He's never going to bother me - or you - again."

"I would have preferred to have vanquished him," Prue said. "But this will do."

"Then we're done here," Tallor said.

"Not quite," Phoebe said.  "Tallor, you have to return Stuart through his pathway to our real present."

"Very well," he said. "He couldn't have gone too far. I'll find him and take him back." Tallor walked out of the arcade and headed down the walkway.

"We didn't have a choice," Phoebe said, as she took the spell to return to the present out of her pocket.  "But we have to recognize what we just did.  We gave a demon a power to use."

"It's not a new power," Prue replied. "Jôlét had it."

"Jôlét's gone," Piper said. "He can't use the power anymore. But Tallor can. Against innocents."

"We saw what Jôlét did with his power," Prue said.  "It was only a matter of time before he would have done something more to us.  And to innocents, too.  We just put things back to how they had been before Jôlét came to us."

"That's just a rationalization."  Piper said.  "We are responsible for whatever Tallor does with that power.  We made a choice and we have to accept the consequences of it."

Prue pursed her lips as she took Piper's hand to say the spell.  Her face took on a serious, upset, look and for a moment she just stared ahead silently.  Then she looked down at the spell Phoebe was holding and exhaled.

"Let's go home," she said flatly in a low voice.