Piper, who had returned to Leo's side, looked up from his face. "No. We have a spell to go on. Since when was the last time a demon used a spell?"
Paige's face brightened. "So it's probably a warlock, right? Easy vanquish." Piper nodded. "If we can find him, anyway."
"And that's what Phoebe and Chris are very... slowly... working on." Piper shot an impatient look at the two.
"Hey! Don't you feel that at me!" replied Phoebe, who was still readjusting to her recently regained empathy. "This has to be precise. We don't want this thing to backfire."
Piper sighed. "I know, I know. It's just…" She looked down at Leo, who was fast resembling the man she had met a few months ago in their distant future.
"I know, honey,” replied Phoebe. “We’ll fix this.”
"Got it!" announced Chris. Phoebe looked over the verse.
"Looks good." She looked to the ceiling and called out, "Coop!"
"You rang?" Coop hearted in with a smile, next to Phoebe.
"Yeah. I need you to watch the boys – and Leo," she said, nodding across the room at him. Coop's mouth dropped open slightly in surprise when he saw Piper cradling a man who appeared to be decades older than her. "Don't ask." Phoebe said quickly, "if all goes well, we should be back within seconds of leaving. Well, to you anyway. If we're not back in a couple minutes you've got your ring, right?" Coop wiggled his fingers in front of his face in response and Phoebe smiled dejectedly.
"Hey…" he cupped her face. "You'll be alright. Now go – do what you need to do."
"Thanks." Phoebe gave his hand a squeeze before turning back to her sisters. "Ok, let's do this thing!"
Piper slid a fluffed quilt under Leo's head before joining her sisters at the center of the room. Chris handed each sister a slip of paper. "Ready?" She glanced at each of their faces, getting three nods in response.
"Oooh! Oh, wait!" Paige suddenly cried. She scrambled over to the potions shelf and stuffed a few vials into her purse, then scrambled over to the book, shoving it into Chris' arms. "Ok, ready! What?" she said at her sister's expressions. "Hey, pays to be prepared I always say!"
"Since when?" said Piper sardonically.
"I'm not so sure bringing the Book is a good idea," worried Phoebe. "What if something happens to it?"
"What if something happens to us?" shot back Paige. "Besides, what if we're going back to like, World War Two or something? We might not have access to it."
"Fine, whatever! Let's just go!" exclaimed Piper impatiently as she took her sister's and Chris' hands. They began reciting the spell.
“Hear these words, hear the rhyme,
heed the hope within my mind,
send me back to where I'll find,
the spell that warped Leo in time."
A swirling mass of lights appeared with the sound of tinkling chimes and converged around the chanting witches, obscuring their vision in white. When the lights faded Coop was left alone to tend to Leo. "Good luck," said Coop to the empty space.
__________________________________________________
The glittering wind soon subsided and the girls and their nephew found themselves in- "The kitchen?" asked Paige, surprised.
"Well… I don't sense Coop or Leo. Which means we must have gone somewhere," replied Phoebe.
"More like some time," said Piper, bemused. "Look…" she pointed at her Grams' old cookie jar which had been destroyed in a demon attack well over 3 years earlier. Fully taking in their surroundings, the sisters noticed that the whole room was subtly different from the one in the house they'd left only moments before. The room was still mostly furnished with Grams' old furniture, paintings, and knick-knacks, much of which had been either broken in fights or stored away in the attic. "This is not good," worried Piper, "If we've gone back too far we may not even know we're witches."
Paige shrugged. "So explain it to yourselves. Like you did me."
Phoebe responded with a noise. "Phhbbt! Yeah, sure. That would go over real well! You know how resistant to the whole idea Piper and Prue were back when we first found the book!"
Piper nodded. "And that was discovering it ourselves – not from some mystical 'us's' from the future trying to prevent disaster."
"Not to mention the major future consequences of revealing magic to your past selves!" said Chris.
Paige shrugged it off. "So we wipe their memories. No muss, no fuss, no messy future!" Suddenly a vase exploded against Chris’ head and stumbled, dazed.
She heard a panicky Piper shout, "They won't freeze!" Only it came from the doorway behind her. The four Halliwells flipped around to see a younger Piper and Phoebe , accompanied by Prue, dashing up next to them. That Piper was frantically flicking her fingers as Phoebe picked up another household item and hurled it at the intruders.
As it flew at her face Paige cried, "Toaster!" and orbed it into her hands. "What kinda demon ya gonna stop with a toaster?" she asked her Phoebe incredulously, and set it down on the counter. Suddenly Chris went flying, cutting off any response from Phoebe as she flew up to catch him.
Piper winced at the sight of their doubles. "Aw, crap."