All four were staring at the screen on what had traversed there. The two boys turned to the two witches, in a full rage.

"What was that?!" Kevin growled. Willow sipped her soda, her nose wrinkling at the carbonation.

"What was what?" She asked, setting it down on the table in front of her.

Kevin growled, clenching his fist in rage. He pointed at the screen. "That!"

Willow turned her eyes to the screen. On the television was the news, the headline read Strange Creatures in Town? It switched from the reporter talking to the footage of a lion killing the fire horse and then to a rabbit cloaked in black; the rabbit's mouth was ripping open, showing the row of sharp shark-like teeth caked in blood.

"You told me it was a dream!" Kevin said, his tone accusative. Jason turned to Elvira.

"I thought it was a dream!" He hissed at the girl who still showed almost no emotion. They both shrugged.

"We never told you," the witches said in unison, leaning back into the sofa, "you came up with that on your own."

Both boys growled before storming off to a room together, most likely to discuss the aforementioned events.

Willow's gaze set hard on the small, blonde girl. She stopped petting Bonbon and gave her a questioning look.

"Vhat?" She asked.

"How did ye know about that?" Willow asked, picking up the demanding cat at her feet.

"The soul fusion?" Elvira asked, then turned to the doll she had been fixing. "Bonbon told me about the soul fusion, and something about Soulborns."

"What do you know about..." Willow hesitated before continuing. "...the Soulborns?"

"Not much," Elvira said, shrugging. "I don't even know the meaning of the word."

Willow almost spit out her drink, holding it back just in time. She casted a side glance at the girl, whom resumed to make her doll.

~*~

"What the hell happened out there, man?" Kevin asked Jason, who had sat on the bed and leaned back with his arms supporting his neck.

"How should I know?" He responded.

"You could've told me that you had transformed into a giant, psychotic rabbit!"

"Hey! You didn't tell me about the lion thing!"

Both were silent for a moment.

"Hey, a murder bunny is pretty neat," Kevin muttered. Jason's brow furrowed.

"You turn into a freaking lion. Lions eat bunnies. We all know how this is gonna work." Jason's lip then twitched into a grin. "Murder bunny," he repeated before bursting out into laughter; Kevin soon followed him.

"So, what happened?"

Jason paused, collecting his thoughts. "I don't know... One minute I was myself, the next I couldn't control my body."

"Same here. Man, I felt complete, though. Oddly complete," Kevin added. Jason nodded in agreement. They sat in silence, pondering what exactly had transpired that night.

~*~

Willow stared at her friend after giving her a brief explanation. Elvira stared back, confused as to how any of what her friend said was relevant.

"Okay? Vhat am I supposed to say?" Elvira asked, raising an eyebrow. Willow sighed.

"I'll go into more detail later, but we owe both of them an apology," she said, turning to follow the boys into whichever room they had stormed off to.

Judging by the amount of art on the walls, the paint-smeared clothing strewn over the bed and the art supplies taking over an entire corner of the room, it was not at all a stretch to assume this was Jason's room. The fact that Jason was flopped out on the bed while Kevin occupied a swivel chair was also good reasoning.

Elvira cleared her throat just a bit, enough to startle Kevin, causing him to fall out of the chair. Hopping up quickly, he prepared to fend off an attack, but relaxed slightly as he saw it was just the two witches. Willow was distinctly not looking at him, focusing on a paintbrush lying on the ground, as if flung by an excited hand and forgotten. Elvira was fiddling with a mouse-like doll in her hands.

"We owe ye both an apology, both for transforming ye against yer will, and for fibbing about it," Willow said, everything about her body language uncomfortable. Kevin had grown up in enough uncomfortable situations to understand what it looked like.

"Okay, no, I'm not going to let this slide," he announced, walking over, grabbing the red haired's wrist, and all but dragging her out of Jason's room and into his own, ignoring her rather weak protests. He let go as soon as they were both in, shut the door, and faced Willow, folding his arms. "Explain. Fully, this time, with no loopholes." She looked bewildered.

"Why'd ye drag me in here?" She asked, folding her arms as well. But where his action was a show of stubbornness and determination to get an answer, hers was meant to be defensive, protective.

"Well, you clearly need to say something, but I have a feeling you wouldn't say it in front of those two. So now we're not in front of those two, tell me what you need to." She seemed to shrink slightly, once again focused on the ground. Kevin was about to say something more before she finally spoke.

"There's a reason ye and Stardust were able to join, and there's a reason ye and Jason were able to break the spell. There's a reason Stardust and Bonbon brought ye both to our tree," she began. Her voice was soft at first, but got louder as she spoke.

~*~

After Kevin had dragged Willow out of the room, Jason looked back to the spot that Elvira had been standing in. Not finding her there, his eyes searched the room. Still not finding the apparently elusive girl, he began to stand up and search his extremely messy room. Without any results, he sat on the bed and ran his head through his hair.

How could he have lost her in less than a sec--

"Gotcha," a monotonous voice said as two hands latched onto his ankles tightly. Jason jumped and barely kept a shriek from escaping his mouth. Escaping her hands, he knelt onto the floor, only to find two brightly glowing eyes.

"What are you doing there?" He asked, chuckling nervously. She gave no response, only her eyes blinked and didn't reopen. The underside of the bed being extremely dark, it took him a moment to realize that she was gone from under it. He scratched his head, standing up. He began to turn around to the entirety of his room when his blue eyes were met with two green ones; again, he almost let a large scream escape his lips. "Stop doing that!" He hissed.

Elvira only chuckled, the first happy feature she had revealed to him. "But your expressions are much more fun than theirs," she said, her accented voice toned with malice at the last word.

"Who's they?" He asked, blinking once and finding her no longer in front of them. He was growing tired of her tricks, and didn't care who she was -- she deserved a bucket of paint on her face.

"Oh, the people who are undoubtedly dead by now." Her voice came from the chair beside him, and he almost jumped out of his skin at her malicious tone.

"What ever did they do to deserve such hatred from you?" He asked, sitting back on his bed and fishing under it for a drink. Finally finding it, he victoriously pulled a Gatorade out from under it and began to unscrew it, drinking the sweet contents.

"The courtiers. Those males did not deserve their social status through such trickery." Jason almost spit out his drink.

"Courtiers?" He asked, wiping his lip of the juice.

"Right," Elvira said, looking at the wall next to his bed that was covered in pictures of nature. "Courtiers. Being adopted by a vealthy household, they wanted me to be ved to a vealthy male. Gaining Villow was a bonus, to them, anyway. So ve vere sent to parties frequently, to build up our charisma and political and economic connections through the nation. This did not exclude parties to help find us a husband. Sadly, magic chooses its own destiny in each vitch, so many things vent vrong with each failed engagement. Those jesters thought that through deceitful tricks they vould gain more power."

Jason was quiet for a while, listening to her explanation. Even after she had finished, he sat there with the Gatorade pressed up against his lips. Finally, he broke the thick silence.

"Can you explain more about magic?" He asked, his voice soft and could hardly be heard. Her green eyes jumped from the pictures on the wall to his face. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he focused on the floor.

And so, she did -- while inspecting his paintings. She explained the different classes of witches, their limitations, and their special abilities. She explained the many threats and costs of magic, as well as the advantages. She explained the different uses of magic, and that led her to familiars. Elvira noted to him the fact that she didn't know everything, seeing as their training was stopped mid-teaching from... Circumstances that she didn't really elaborate on.

The only time he spoke was after she had finished, and even that was a simple, small question. Yet, it made her reveal something about herself that she wouldn't have done if he had phrased it otherwise.

"If familiars are living creatures, then why is yours a stuffed voodoo rabbit?" Jason asked.

"Vell," Elvira began, hesitating slightly and talking almost as if anything she said could be a landmine. "Mine vas, at one point." She glanced at the dark haired boy, and his gaze urged her to go on. "It vas a rabbit, but it died. My special ability is sensing souls... And seeing them, I guess I could put it." She let her words sink in before continuing. "I made a doll, stitched it together by hand, and harnessed the soul into it. As Fate vould have it, my chosen -- and supposedly veak -- familiar thrived in the magic of the doll. It morphed and changed Bonbon's magic slightly." Her eyes reflected an ominous emotion, and no matter how long Jason looked, he couldn't place it. Elvira looked up at him, the emotion now gone and replaced will cold seriousness. "The magic of my veakest familiar should've kept me at the level of the veakest of the vitches, but instead it festered and grew to an unimaginable power inside of my magical ability."

Jason felt his breath catch in his throat at his next question. "What is that ability?" He asked cautiously. She looked at him, amusement glowing in her green eyes.

"The ability to control those souls," she said, a small, malicious grin tugged at her lips. That's when Jason noticed that the small mouse-doll was gone. Fear tickled him as his eyes searched the room for it, and he found it.

The mouse was next to his hand on the bed, waving at him with its small paw. A nervous grin appeared on his face.

"In-interesting..." He chuckled anxiously as the mouse sniffed the air and peered at him through a large button-eye, placing a paw on his hand.

Elvira scoffed, playing with her long blonde hair as she stared at him. "Those vere my dolls." She said, mentioning the dolls from the evening before that saved them that time from the Nightmare. She had noticed that Jason was shifting around uncomfortably. "Vell? Spit it out." She demanded.

Jason bought some time by taking an exaggerated drink from his Gatorade. "You control humans?" He asked, his voice held a sad tone.

She rolled her eyes and stood up from the chair so abruptly it sped backwards. With several long strides, she reached his spot in the room. He shut his eyes tightly when she reached out towards him, thinking that the end was neigh.

Needless to say, he was extremely surprised to find that she was only going to flick him harshly in the forehead.

"I'm not that heartless." Elvira grumbled.

"Okay, then." Jason said, trying to keep his tone even. "What are the things you can sense?"

Elvira huffed and sat down in the swirly chair, spinning herself around in it. The blonde girl seemed to find an odd kind of amusement in this action. "They are the emotional attachments of humans to this vorld. They are only phantoms of emotion."

Jason gave a sigh of relief, and earned a raised eyebrow of confusion from the petite girl. He smiled playfully.

"So, I didn't absorb humans."

"No."

Jason's brow furrowed in thought. "How much of that night was real?"

"Do you remember turning into a large demonic, phantomic rabbit?" Elvira asked.

"Yes...?"

She folded her arms and leaned back in the chair, giving a slight cruel grin. "Then everything."

"Are..." Jason's voice trailed off as he collected himself. "Are you saying that I turned into a large shadow rabbit?!"

Elvira did not hesitate. "Yes."

Jason rubbed his temples. "I cannot believe that I am being told by someone who was in a comatose state for the past few hundred years that what I thought was a dream, was truly real. I did, in fact, turn into a giant murder bunny." There was a sound then that Jason could not register in his brain. In confusion, he looked up.

Elvira was laughing. "Murder bunny," she whispered to herself before doing so again.

Most people would think that hearing a girl laugh for the first time was sweet and touching, but hell no. Not in Elvira's case. Her laugh was sadistic and malicious and demonic and terrifying; it was the kind you heard in horror movies.

"So, then," Jason began, choosing his words carefully. "When the fire-horse-thing charged at you, why didn't you run or flinch?"

He felt the girl's gaze, and looked up to see her green eyes burn with intensity.

"Because I trusted you to stop it." Her gaze made him want to shrink away.

"What about the mist thing?"

"Your body couldn't become compatible with such a dark magic," she said, her eyes closed as she thought. "The mist vas some of my life source to help feed your own, so the darkness vould halt from poisoning it."

Jason wanted nothing more than to be rid of this girl. Sadly, he knew he could not be, as something made him want to never leave her side. Not in a romantic way, no; it was more of a dignified dutiful way.

~*~

Kevin had never actually felt the blood drain from his face, but he was certain that was what had just happened when Willow fully explained the situation between the pair of witches and the two college students. She looked slightly worried at his long silence, as he sat on his bed, and she on his desk chair.

His room seemed much tidier than his roommate's, with books and sheets of notebook paper littering most surfaces, rather than art supplies. But he had several works of art on his walls, obviously made by his roommate.

"So... You. And me. And we?" He stuttered, pointing first at the girl with fiery hair, then himself, then both of them simultaneously. Willow nodded, just slightly, clearly not much less awkward about the situation. "Oh man." He flopped backwards on his bed, arms flung to the sides. This earth-shattering revelation made him want to throw up from shock, or do something much less gross but equally embarrassing like scream into his pillow for a good hour and a half, just for good measure.

"Are ye sure ye're alright? I know ye said ye were, but ye don't seem so now," she commented. Kevin sighed.

"What about them?"

"The same goes."

"So basically our entire lives have been leading up to finding you two in the Blood Amber?"

"Basically."

"Magic and destiny and all that hoodoo shaped me mentally and physically for you?"

"And I for ye."

"And Jason for Elvira and vice versa?"

"Aye."

"That's unheard of. And absurd."

"That's magic."

"I can't believe it. We are bonded for eternity. Our destiny literally written in the stars."

With his face directed at the ceiling, he couldn't see the witch's glare. "I suppose."

"God. I cannot believe that we're..." He hesitated to continue, gulping. "...Soulmates."