Love's A Witch
Paige takes a new temporary job of tending to an elderly woman, Miss Callaway. While playing pinochle, she is hit by an Energy Ball. Phoebe realizes that Paige wants her help, though Paige won't admit it.
Chris tries to purchase a potion to hide a secret. The shop owner will need weeks to prepare it, because the potion requires a rare egg.When Paige returns to Miss Callaway, she is warned off by a neighbour, Richard Montana, who claims to be a witch and that the Callaways and Montana's are feuding. Richard tells Paige that the energy ball fired at Miss Callaway didn't come from the Montana's, that it was a set-up. He was engaged to a woman from the other family, Olivia Callaway, who had wanted peace, but was killed in the crossfire the year before. Shortly after, Olivia's ghost appears to Richard's father and blasts him with an Plasma Ball. Paige thinks the Callaways killed him. Phoebe, however, was in the Callaways' house and felt no murderous anger from them.
Piper believes that a third party is behind the two attacks. Chris suggests that Leo mediate between them. Chris appears at the potion shop with the egg.
Piper works magic on the blouse that Paige was wearing when she was attacked and determines that a ghost had attacked her. The sisters go to the two families and perform a seance. Olivia appears and says she was attacked by the Montanas (the Callaways had thought that one of her own had killed her). She is angry that she wasn't avenged.
After the seance, Olivia possesses Paige. Paige goes to Richard and flirts with him, suggesting that they kill off everyone else in both families. Chris is ready to receive his potion, but a suspicious Leo appears. Chris claims that the potion is meant for the sisters, so they could keep their secrets from Phoebe. He gives the potion to Leo as Piper calls for him. After Leo orbs away, Chris asks the shop owner for another potion.
The Callaways attack the Montanas. The two families hurl energy balls and potions at each other. Piper and Phoebe appear as the fighting dies down. Richard is injured in the fighting and Paige, calling herself Olivia in earshot of the sisters, orbs Richard into a sarcophagus.
Olivia's father and Richard's mother come to the manor and lead the sisters to the Callaway crypt, having decided to end the feud as neither side wants anymore death. Piper blasts the sarcophagus open. Olivia emerges from Paige's body and then Piper and Phoebe prepare to banish her spirit with a potion, but Paige convinces them to stop as, while possessed, she felt Olivia's intense pain, while all they felt was her anger. Paige and Richard try to convince Olivia to move on as the feud's over, which is something she'd really wanted and there will be no more death. After Richard forgives her, Olivia finally moves on peacefully.
Piper and Paige take the potions and Phoebe is no longer being bothered by their emotions. Once he's alone, Chris takes the same potion. Leo and Piper then talk about their current problems, and agree to make their divorce official.
Tropes:
- Demonic Possession: Olivia's ghost possesses Paige.
- Expy: The feuding Montana and Calloway families are the Montague and Capulet families from Romeo and Juliet, complete with Star-Crossed Lovers Richard Montana and Olivia Calloway.
- Feuding Families: The Montanas and the Callaways.
- Foreshadowing: Chris is very nonchalant about breaking off Piper's date, to the point of blurting out he's from the future, as if he did it on purpose.
- If I Can't Have You…: Olivia (while posessing Paige) declares that if she can Richard can't be together in life then she'll have him in death and teleports them to a crypt.
- Levitating Lotus Position: Phoebe does this to get out of the way while Piper vacuums.
- Lost Lenore: Richard's fiance Olivia Callaway died a year before the episode.
- Overcomplicated Menu Order: Piper makes a lot of specific adjustments to her dinner order, such as which herbs to use and how to cook the fish. Luckily her date finds it charming to date a trained chef and they share a laugh over it.
- Power Incontinence: Phoebe's Empathy power doesn't come with the same No-Sell-on-your-siblings clause that Piper's active powers do. So she's stuck feeling everything that Piper and Paige feel which is making everyone unhappy.
- Power Nullifier: The potion Chris had brewed protects the drinker from having their emotions read by an Empath. Piper and Paige eagerly take it once they learn what it does to block Phoebe's power from reading them.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The plot with the feud between the Montanas and the Callaways is one to Romeo and Juliet. The families' names even start with the same letters and Richard's mother is outright called "Rosaline".
