"Viva Las Vegas! Viva... viva... Las Vegas!" Paige Matthews sang to herself as she pulled her little green VW Bug up in front of Halliwell Manor on a beautiful Thursday evening.

The sun was just starting to set, painting the sky over San Francisco with streaks of bright pinks, purples, and yellows. It was Paige's favorite time of the day, when work was over and the whole world seemed to sigh with relief. But on this particular Thursday she'd been alternately singing and humming ever since the early afternoon. Unfortunately, she'd been singing the same three words over and over and over again because they were the only words she knew of the classic song. But Paige didn't care. She couldn't have stopped singing if she'd magically clamped her own mouth shut. She was just too excited.

Paige grabbed her crocheted bag and climbed out of the car, then took the steps up to the front door of Halliwell Manor two at a time. She had always wanted to go to Las Vegas -- to see the Strip and all its lights and sights and sounds for herself. Maybe even score a huge jackpot. And now she was actually going! This time next week she would be there -- playing the slots, cruising the casinos, winning some cash....

If she could convince her sisters to come with her.

Paige's two older sisters, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, had been a little less than sociable lately, what with all the demon fighting they'd been doing in the past few weeks. But that was part of the package when you were the Charmed Ones -- the three good witches destined to protect the innocent from the forces of evil. Maybe things had been a little more demonic of late, but that could actually work in Paige's favor. She was going to stay positive and hope that her excitement would prove to be contagious. Her sisters wanted a vacation. They needed a vacation. They just didn't know it yet.

"Piper?! Phoebe?! Are you guys home?" Paige called out as she burst through the front door. She pulled a computer printout from her bag as she paused for an answer. The sound of hurried footsteps greeted her, and moments later Phoebe came barreling down the stairs, while Piper rushed in from the kitchen. Both of them looked stressed and concerned.

"What is it?" Piper asked, pushing up the sleeves on her white peasant top. "What happened?"

"Nothing!" Paige said with a grin. "Everyone chill. I am not here to announce a brush with death, demon related or otherwise. Although this guy did cut me off on the freeway, and it was all I could do to keep from orbing him out to Alcatraz."

Piper and Phoebe exchanged a disturbed look, and Paige rolled her eyes.

"I would never actually do it, you guys," she said with a scoff.

And she wouldn't. Paige knew better than to use her powers as an outlet for road rage -- or to vent any other emotion, for that matter. The Charmed Ones were not allowed to use their powers for personal gain. It had a way of backfiring when they tried. But there was nothing in the Book of Shadows that said they couldn't daydream.

"Okay, Paige, so what's up?" Phoebe asked, coming down the last few steps and sitting on the landing. She swung her dark brown ponytail over her shoulder and looked up at her younger sister. "What's with all the shouting?"

"It's good shouting," Paige said, putting her bag down on the floor near the stairs. "The best kind. See?" She held out the computer printout to Piper and smiled. "We're going on vacation!"

"We are?" Phoebe asked, her perfect eyebrows shooting up. She seemed psyched at the proposition, and Paige felt a little flicker of hope rise up in her chest. Maybe this would turn out to be an easy sell. Of course, she hadn't gotten to the part she was worried about yet. The part her sisters would probably have a hard time swallowing.

"No, we're not," Piper said flatly.

So much for the hope flicker.

Piper handed the page to Phoebe, who glanced over it quickly, then smirked.

"You're kidding me, right?" she said, holding the paper out in Paige's direction.

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Paige asked. She gingerly took the printout back and looked down at it morosely. What was wrong with them? Didn't they see the potential for fun in the sun? For an enriching experience? For huge jackpots?

"You want us to go to a Gathering of the Covens?" Piper asked in a disdainful tone she usually reserved for talking about the troublemakers and drunks she sometimes had to have booted from her nightclub, P3.

When the sisters weren't fighting demons, they did have their day jobs. Piper ran the most popular nightclub in town, Phoebe wrote an advice column for one of the area's newspapers, and Paige was a social worker. Yet another reason why they needed a vacation. Technically they were each working two jobs!

"Yeah!" Paige said, her eyes wide. "What's so far-fetched about us going to a Gathering? We are witches, you know. We're, like, the witches."

"Exactly. And I'm guessing ninety percent of the people who show up at that thing don't know the first thing about the kind of evil we have to deal with on a daily basis," Phoebe said, standing up on the bottom stair. She pushed one hand into the pocket of her denim skirt and rested the other on the gleaming wooden banister.

"So? We don't know very much about the Wiccan religion or culture," Paige argued. "We spend most of our time vanquishing demons. Don't you want to know more about the craft behind what we do?"

"Paige, we know about the Craft," Piper said. "Or did you already forget the hours of potions studying we did when you first moved in here?"

Paige groaned. How could she forget the most torturous study sessions of her life? Piper had been like a drill sergeant when Paige first came to the manor, teaching her all about crystals and herbs and the various reptilian body parts that were used in spells and potions. Paige had found her sisters only recently, so she had a lot of Charmed learning to do to catch up. But there was so much more Paige wanted to know! Maybe she and her sisters were pros at throwing together vanquishing spells and conjuring protection crystals, but that didn't mean their knowledge of magic had to end there.

"How did you find out about this, anyway?" Piper asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"It was slow at work this afternoon and I started surfing the Web," Paige said with a shrug. Her spirits were starting to deflate more with each passing moment. "You wouldn't believe how many covens have their own Web site."

Piper and Phoebe laughed, and Paige felt her face color. "I'm not saying we should go digital," she said, frustrated. "But it sounds so cool. The Gathering is going to be around the summer solstice, and there are all these rituals they perform to honor the Goddess...."

Paige looked to Phoebe, hoping at least to find an ally in her middle sister. Phoebe had always been a little more into the spiritual, romantic, mystical side of things than Piper, who was all about practicality. But Phoebe was still looking at Paige with a skeptical expression in her big brown eyes.

"Besides, you guys, it's in Las Vegas!" Paige said, not willing to give up quite yet. "We could have so much fun!"

"That just makes it even more bizarre," Phoebe said. "If they're going out there to be all spiritual and commune with one another, why are they going to Sin City, of all places? I have this vision of chicks in black hats smoking cigars and playing craps."

Even Paige had to smirk at that mental image, but she quickly wiped it away.

"Piper--"

"I'm sorry, Paige, I just don't see the point," Piper said, running her hands through her light brown hair. "I mean, we're out there fighting evil every day. What do we have in common with a bunch of people whose idea of being a witch is casting magic circles and blessing their cats?"

"You're so judgmental," Paige grumbled, looking away.

She had no idea why she was letting herself grow so upset over getting shot down, when she'd suspected all along this was going to happen. She'd known Piper and Phoebe long enough to know that they were going to be skeptical about the Gathering. But she couldn't help it. She hated the fact that her sisters wouldn't even consider her plan. They had to be able to tell how excited she was. What was she supposed to do, go to this thing alone? Not likely. It was a Gathering of the Covens, not a Gathering of Lone Loser Witches.

"It's just not my idea of a vacation, sweetie," Piper added apologetically.

Paige wracked her brain for a good, convincing argument, but she couldn't find one. At least not one that would change the minds of the Stubborn Ones. That was what she was going to call her sisters from now on -- the Stubborn Ones.

"Besides," Phoebe put in, "Cole and I just got engaged. I don't know if I want to leave him here while we go dancing around under a full moon with a bunch of phonies. Especially not with all the demons that have been popping up around the manor lately. Cole's human now, and there's no way he could defend himself."

"Well, Leo will be here," Paige argued. Piper's husband, Leo, was a Whitelighter, a kind of guardian angel who looked over the Charmed Ones and came whenever they needed help.

"But he can't be here all the time, and there's not much he can do to fight demons on his own," Piper pointed out.

"I can always orb us back here if I need to," Paige said.

"I don't know...," Phoebe said, looking at the floor. "I just don't think it's a good idea."

Paige took a deep breath and pushed her dark hair behind her shoulders, trying not to look as disappointed as she felt. Usually when Paige got an idea like this in her head, she wouldn't give up until she got her way. But she could tell she wasn't going to get anywhere with this argument, and it was clear that Piper and Phoebe thought it was pretty much over anyway.

"Okay, fine," Paige said, crumpling the page up in one hand. "It was just an idea."

She picked up her bag and started up the stairs, brushing by Phoebe. She knew that Piper and Phoebe would probably start whispering about her in approximately five seconds -- talking about whether she was really upset and if they'd handled the situation properly. It was what they did. And Paige didn't mind, really. She'd been on the other side of it many times. She just didn't want to catch one word of it.

Frustrated, Paige thrust out her hand. "Paper," she said through her teeth. The ball of paper was engulfed in a swirl of blue white light, then appeared in Paige's hand again. She chucked it at the garbage can once more, this time executing a perfect basket. Then she flopped back on her bed and looked up at the ceiling.

"So much for viva-ing Las Vegas," Paige muttered.

Copyright © 2003 by Spelling Television Inc.