At the corner of Waverly Place and Lafayette a few blocks from Tribeca Prep, the traffic was back up for ten blocks in nearly every direction. A taxicab had swerved to miss a humvee going through the light and had smashed up the side of a delivery truck before driving over a fire hydrant. The cab driver was a Rastafarian black man in the garb of his native country standing face to face to the tall bald guy out of the truck and they were yelling face to face at each other. Down the block, the police got as close as they could, radioed for the tow truck to move the disabled cab and made an attempt to defuse the situation. Meanwhile, the uncapped fire hydrant was spraying in every direct from the underside of the taxicab. Something eventually gave and the steel underside of the cab was broken free as three hundred pounds of water under force now started coming up through the bottom of the cab, now filling it up with water. Thirty-nine year old Aswang Obadji, a naturalized American citizen from the Sudan, looked over and started stressing out as truck driver Carl Deacon started laughing. First the accident, now the insult, this day was getting worse and worse….

From the curb, a number of students were traveling from Tribeca Prep toward the Waverly Place housing area. Lisa and Rachel Dawson lived above their mother's flower shop and smelled the scents wafting from the Italian restaurant next door. They stopped to shoot pictures of the flooding cab with their camera phones then continued on their way. Wild-haired Jackie Condon, the son of a former child star, stood and laughed with Jerry McFarland, a resident of the apartment house above the hardware store. They were waiting to see if the cab filled up completely in case the windows exploded. Monica Hyneman and her boyfriend, Cal Savage, stood and waited to see if Deacon and Obadji were going to launch into a fight. It seemed the altercation was going to come to blows, but New York's finest were just trying to get the area cleared and the traffic going. Coming up from behind them, Justin Russo waved good-bye from his friends from the Chess Club going one way then turned and noticed the accident. The water in the cab was reaching up to the windows and Obadji was stressing at the site of it, screaming at the police to do something. Cars were honking and waiting their turn to go through the green light. Feeling a bit like Clark Kent from the comic books, Justin stepped behind the van at curbside and secretly pulled a small stick from his pack. A few silent words under his breath and the cab rolled backward off the curb and through a sudden space in the street. The geyser of water under it exploded up twenty feet for one minute then shut off completely. Obadji looked once and then again quickly as his vehicle rolled to a stop next to him; it's door popping open and vomiting a minor deluge of water at Deacon's feet. A minor crisis averted, brunette haired Monica suddenly noticed Justin popping up out of nowhere from behind the van and passing by the movie rental place onward to the coffee place on the other side of the alley. Beyond that was the Waverly Street Sub Station that Justin's parents owned.

"You will not believe what is going on up the street!" He announced entering the restaurant. There were seven customers in the shop, one of them a mother with children and another was a guy hiding behind his laptop on the table before him. His mother, Theresa, was waiting on tables as his father stood at his post in the window of the kitchen, pushing through the lunch for the mother. At a side table, his sister was sitting lengthwise across the seat with her best friend, Harper, sitting up straight checking her e-mails on her telephone. He also had a brother named Max who was off somewhere else at the moment.

"Let me guess…" Alex Russo dropped her magazine to acknowledge her brother. "Uh… something happened?"

"Yes, something happened…" Justin crossed the room behind the guy on the laptop, paused at the guys monitor and recognized the image on it. "Dude, how many images do you need with my sister's head photo-shopped on to Jennifer Love Hewitt's body?"

The unidentified patron grabbed up his laptop and the last of his lemonade and was rushing out of the place as Alex dropped her jaw and watched him vanishing out on to the street.

"Anyway…." Justin continued as Alex went chasing after the guy with the laptop. "A cab got sideswiped by a Humvee and drove over the fire hydrant. Big mess, water everywhere, but the police seem to be getting it cleaned up."

"Was anyone hurt?" His mother looked up.

"No…" Justin took a free cookie from the glass jar on the counter by the cash register. "Not that I could tell…"

"We've been having a lot more accidents here since they closed Lexington and re-routed the traffic through here." Harper came over and stood by Justin's side. "How long does it take to repair a collapsed sewer line? They should have reopened Lexington months ago."

"Harper…" Jerry Russo looked out from the kitchen. "This is a place where people eat. Don't talk about sewers here, and another thing, Lexington has only been closed for five weeks."

"Really?" She mad a face of embarrassed confusion. "It seems much longer."

"I couldn't catch him…." Out of breath, Alex came wandering back into the shop and strolled past the mother and two other customers toward her brother. "Okay, Justin, who's the guy with the laptop?"

"What guy?" Justin looked confused. "What laptop?" He paused and looked around the shop. "Anyway, dad… you know how I hate asking you for money."

"And I respect that."

"The guys in the chess league want to attend the Grand Chess League Tournaments in Orlando, but we can't afford the bus tickets." Justin looked to his mother and then back to his father. "Is it okay if we try and sell some of the junk we got here for cash?"

"Justin," Alex pulled her brother to face her. "Who was the guy with the laptop?"

"Like Alex…" Justin continued his thought. "I know she's not worth very much, but I'm sure we might be able to get something for her."

His sister started making a face at him.

"I don't know, Justin…" Jerry exited the kitchen thinking about the situation. Behind Theresa, a tall full-figured redhead had entered the sandwich shop and was standing looking around. "A lot of the old antiques have you-know-what on them…" He clandestinely referred to the family secret. "They could be dangerous if they got into the wrong hands."

The redhead had pulled out her camera phone and was openly snapping images of the interior. She snapped images of Harper with the Russos and then the surroundings.

"Justin, I'm warning you…" Alex faced her brother down. "Who was that guy and what's he doing with faked pictures of me?"

"Alex…" Justin exhaled disinterestedly and pretended to placate her. "I don't know. I don't care!"

"Hey, look at these pictures some guy uploaded of Alex onto the Internet!" Max Russo, the absent sibling, came down the stairway from the upstairs apartment carrying his laptop ahead of him. A big laughing grin on his face, he pushed past Justin and set his laptop down before his family as Alex's eyes rounded in shock and her jaw dropped embarrassed.

"You know, I can't get exactly figure it out…" Max was genuinely confused. "But she seems taller and much more…" He looked at the front of her many-colored shirt and back to the image. "Besides, when was Alex ever to the beach?"

Jerry caught the image of his daughter as a mature bikini clad beach goer and pushed his son's laptop closed.

"I'm going to find this guy and then I'm going to photo-shop his head on to Jennifer Love Hewitt!" Alex pulled her wand out with a psychotic look in her face. Harper meanwhile reopened Max's laptop and was scrolling through the images, stopping at someone else she recognized.

"So that's what I'd look like if I lost a few pounds…" She looked to Justin. "What do you think, Justin?"

Justin just pushed the monitor closed once again. Despite the fact that Harper said she was over him, she was still reverting back to her old infatuations.

"Hello, welcome to our sub shop." Theresa had come over to assist their red-haired customer. "How can we help you?"

"Hi…" Their voluptuous guest pulled a car out from her shirt pocket in her white sweater, handing it to Theresa between her fore finger and index finger where Jerry accepted it. "Donna Prepone, the locations director for Orion Studios…. I'm scouting local restaurants in the area for a movie being filmed. Have you ever considered letting your restaurant being used in the movies?"

"A movie?" Jerry looked at her card then crossed his arms before his chest; the kids behind him had drawn quiet and briefly forgotten about the voyeuristic fantasies of the phantom blogger. "What kind of movie?"

"Well, it is a horror movie…." Prepone postured a bit and tossed her long red locks back. "Most of it is being filmed at a location out on Staten Island, but the opening introductory scenes do involve two teens whose parents own a restaurant. Would you be interested in allowing the studio to film here if your location is chosen?"

Jerry and Theresa looked at each other to get the other's reactions.

"We do offer restitution for the use of your property?" Prepone mentioned.

"Ka-Ching!" Justin had found the money for his trip to Orlando and imitated a cash register with a big grin.

"And we leave your place just exactly as we found it." Prepone continued.

"How much…" Jerry cleared his throat. "…restitution are we talking here?"

"You can pull anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million for the use of the location."

"Ka-Ching!" Alex, Justin, Harper and Max all imitated a cash register with their arms pulling down the arms of invisible slot machines.

"Here's a description of the movie…" Prepone pulled a flier from a journal on a strap swinging under her arm. "It's a synopsis of the movie and its characters… You can peruse it if you like and if you're interested, call me on my card and we'll be in touch."

"Thank you very much…" Theresa couldn't stop grinning as Donna turned and headed out waving goodbye. Once she was gone, she and Jerry started jumping up and down excitedly as if they were kids.

"Jerry, we can finally go on a real vacation!"

"Yeah!" Jerry's heart was beating faster. "And finally restart our savings account!"

"Excuse me," Alex looked disgusted and raised her hand. "But, uh, we're going to get some of that cash too, aren't we?"

"What?" Jerry reacted confused and distracted as the mother dining behind him came to pay her bill. "Oh, sure… sure…" He and his wife looked at each other grinning uncontrollably.

"This sounds like a great movie!" Teresa gave their customer her receipt and held up the typed movie synopsis. "Bride of Darkness… it's even got a spooky name!" She read the outline aloud. "Jason and Ashley Russell are the children of a former stage magician who have inherited his magical powers. Jason is the tall handsome All-American boy who always does the right thing; Ashley is the attractive lazy troublemaker who tries the patience of their parents, Larry and Terri Russell, who own a Manhattan hamburger shop. Their other daughter is Maxine Russell, an unpredictable youngster of limited intelligence…" Theresa looked up to Jerry as Justin looked to Alex and then to Max and Harper. "This is starting to sound oddly familiar…."

"Let me see that!" Justin took the paper from his mother. "Their other daughter is Maxine Russell, an unpredictable youngster of limited intelligence…" He picked up where his mother left off. "When Jason decides to throw a party with his friends at Highfield Hall, a local haunted mansion, Ashley and her best friend, Hannah Dinkle, crash the party where Ashley taps into the dark energies of the house for a pact with the Devil to become even more powerful than even her brother….."

"That's going to be a great movie!" Max lit up. "I can't wait to see it!"

"Max…" Harper looked over to the scatter-brained youth. "The characters are based on us!"

"Harper, I think you're a bit mixed up." The younger Russo scoffed a bit and took the synopsis. "It said the youngest Russell kid is a girl named Max…." He lost his grin as the revelation slowly soaked into his brain. "I'm a girl in the movie?"

"Jerry!" Theresa snatched the synopsis back. "This movie is based on our lives!"

"Theresa, don't get hysterical." Jerry tried to figure out what was happening. "As far as we know, Alex has never made a pact with the Devil…."

They looked at their daughter. Alex reacted offended at their looks.

"As far as we know…."

Alex responded with disgusted annoyance.

"Maybe it's all just one big coincidence!" He really wanted that money.

"Jerry…." Theresa re-read the synopsis getting pulled around. "A magical family who live over a restaurant with a well-behaved son and a rotten daughter… No offense, Alex… with a third child who has the same name as ours? This is not a coincidence!"

"It could be!"

"Oh, really…." Theresa slipped him the movie synopsis. "Read the bottom…."

"Okay…." Jerry mugged a bit and read the bottom. "Let's see here, Justin Bieber as Jason Russell…."

"Below that…." Theresa instructed.

"Personally, I'd prefer Zac Efron…" Justin announced out loud.

"Mikayla as Ashley Russell…."

Alex dropped her head in disgrace to the counter top as Harper rubbed her back.

"Below that…." Theresa further instructed.

"Ashley Tisdale as Hannah Dinkle."

"Yes!" Harper with a big grin cheered and pumped her fist in excitement. Alex looked back at her annoyed.

"Based on a screenplay and characters by William Russo." Jerry finally got to the part Theresa wanted him to read. "William Russo? Who the heck is William Russo?"

"Yes, Jerry…" Theresa snatched the synopsis back. "Who the heck is William Russo?"

"I don't know!" Jerry paced around a bit through the tables and chairs as he rubbed his head. "I never heard of a William Russo! I've never heard of the guy before."

"Dad…" Justin strolled over to his father. "Do we have any non…. Magic-inclined relatives?"

"Justin…." Jerry tugged the boy away from the customers sitting and eating in the booth. "Not all Russos are wizards, and if there were any Russos who weren't, they'd be bound by an oath not to reveal the family secret. Whoever this guy is…" He paused trying to think. "I've got nothing."

"Jerry, whoever William Russo is, he knows the family secret." Theresa hated magic, but she loved her family. "You've got to find out who he is and find out why he's writing stories about our kids!"

"Wait a minute!" Alex lifted her head. "Could William Russo be the creep with the laptop posting the fake pictures of Harper and me?"

Justin and her parents looked at her and realized there were bigger things at stake than her pride.

"Not Mikayla, please not Mikayla…" Alex started lowering her head again as Harper rubbed her back. "Anyone but Mikayla…."