The Witches of the Gardenia Clan had wasted no time in taking the intruder into their home.

Their living room was a messy area that bespoke of many different hobbies and focal points. Netta was asked - without it ever really seeming like a request as much as an order - to sit down in a chair. Before she could, it had to be uncovered by some hasty work to remove the stacks of books on it.

They were a ragtag group of women. Even at a glance, they seemed older than their youthful bodies let on. Unlike most Witches, they all looked firmly in their twenties as opposed to the late teens.

With the initial pleasantries out of the way, the Matriarch, Miss Kienna, spoke.

"Do you mind telling me how you know that two nights past, we suffered the loss of one of our own?"

Netta shut her eyes and clenched her hands together. "I - I'm sorry. I had hoped that it was a warning, that there would be time to stop it before it happened..."

The feeling of weakness and failure overcame Netta.

She pitched forward to press her hands to her face, feeling the potent memory of the girl's fear and her pain. It went away only she felt hands - Ash's - caressing her shoulder.

The feeling of his touch felt surprising, like the touch of a blast of heat on her skin.

Netta looked up then into Miss Kienna's eyes, trying desperately to suppress her trembling. "I came as soon as I had this - terrible dream that felt too real."

Another one of the Witches, spoke up then - a woman who looked liek a stern primary school teacher. "A psychic dream? Those don't happen between strangers."

Netta shifted, feeling the weight of all of the assembled womens' gazes on her.

"Right - but I think that it's possible that the strength of Anais' will must have infected my dreams - somehow. How else would I be here if I wasn't telling the truth. How else would I know what her last moments looked like?"

Another one of the Witches, a stout woman who smelled like a heady array of spices and earth, spoke up. "Don't need much deductive reasoning on this one - you killed Anais."

Netta jerked back in her seat and blurted out, "I didn't kill your little Sister! I would never kill -" She paused then, the admonition stuck in her throat.

The one that looked like a teacher snorted. "Don't sound so sure of that, you don't mind me saying."

The girl that Netta had first thought looked like Anais spoke up. She had been quiet while Netta had hurridly been trying to explain why she was there. Her words surprised everyone, shocked them into silence.

"She didn't kill my sister."

There was a deep, long silence that stretched in the room. Before Netta could thing of anything to say to agree with the young woman, the girl continued.

"First of all, she wouldn't of come back if she had. Second off, she doesn't smell like my sister's blood."

Another of the Witches softly said, "Morbid, Ophelia."

"Thank you," Netta said.

The girl ignored her and turned to Miss Kienna.

"That doesn't stop me from not trusting her. But I want her help with discovering who murdered Anais."

Kienna, a tall, elegant woman with dusk-toned skin, cast a long glance over at Netta before she turned back to Ophelia.

"Are you sure that this one's innocent?"

Ophelia nodded. "Positive." She turned to Netta expectantly, sighed, then turned her unsmiling face back to address Netta.

"What more can you tell me about this dream you had?"

Netta bit her bottom lip and could feel all of the Witches' gazes on her.

"I don't know what else I can offer. I mean - she was running through the forest to meet up with someone -"

Ophelia held her hand up to stop her talking. "We already know that from what you told us before."

Netta replied, "In her mind, she called it - her Beloved."

"Wait a minute, there -" the Witch who smelled strongly of herbs and spices interjected, then continued,  ""It?" Did I hear that part right, Miko?" She turned to the more youthful-looking Witch that sat next to her.

Ophelia's ungentle gaze seemed to, unexpectedly, soften. She looked down."My twin was involved with a Monster."

There was a shocked silence in the room, broken by Miss Kienna, who said, "That's impossible. She would have told one of us if she had gotten involved with one. I'm... sure of it."

"Oh, yeah, because she was so easy to keep track of, right?" The Witch who had been called Miko called out, her soft pitched voice dripping with sarcasm.

Ophelia spoke quietly and in an almost monotone. "That means that there's something out in the woods that knows about what happened." With that, she turned and began to walk out of the house.

"Huh - where are you going, Pelly?" Someone cried out as she left.

All of the women shared a questioning look before they all stood up from their seats almost at once. Running outside, the women caught a glance at Ophelia as she wheeled around the corner of the house.

Someone yelled out, "Don't run into the woods all by yourself; there might be something bad still out there!"

Running down the path behind the house after the girl, the women had tried various methods of trying to get her to turn around. When they didn't work, they all entered the wood.

The one who smelled of herbs turned to her and jabbed a menacing finger at her. "I don't like this, I don't like you."

The one that looked like a teacher interjected, saying, "Morgan, that's enough - it's not fair to attack her like that, we don't know if she has anything to do with what happened to Anais."

Morgan glared at her in a way that suggested that she considered what the other woman had said to be traitorous. "Ember, whose side are you on? Your Sister's, or this interloper?"

Miss Kienna ended the conversation. "Enough! We need to keep our wits about us - these woods should not have held any danger to young Anais, but her death proves that belief to be the contrary. We do not need to have more of us dead or divided by petty arguing to prove this point to us." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the path ahead. "We need to fan out, so that we don't suffer the loss of young Ophelia as well. If it's all the same to the rest of you, I don't relish digging a twin grave next to her sister's in this dreadful weather."

The rest broke off as Miss Kienna ordered them to, but insisted that Netta stay with her.

"I have a few things I wanted to ask," She answered when Netta asked why she wanted her to remain.

Netta kept her teeth firmly closed on her tongue.

The others broke off, going along the secret paths through the woods, calling out Ophelia's name as they went.

"The air smells of corruption and ill luck," Ash offered to Netta some time later.

Netta sighed and looked at the unfamiliar, snow-laden wood around her.

"Yeah, I believe it," she said.

Netta had not so subtlely interrogated by the Coven leader for a while now, beginning with simple questions that seemed innocuous - where she was from - to point blank asking her what her intentions had been in coming there.

Netta's obvious struggle to answer that one had her wanting to bang her head against a tree. At some point, Ash had strode up to her and whispered to her that if her intention was to get involved in someone else's problems, then she needed to sound as far from being insidious as possible.

While to untrained ears, Netta did not sound as though what she said originated from malicious means, but she certainly sounded as though she was hiding something, even to her own ears. It was frustrating; since she had gotten here, all she tried to do was be helpful.

And then the woman asked her about her Coven.

"So normally, for something like this, most Witches would use some means to communicate with us with these details instead of driving down here herself. Why would you make the drive down here, if you would just have to do a rather simple spell?"

Netta was quiet - for a moment overcome with all of the things that she would have to explain. It was then that Ash stepped forward and recommended what she should say.

"We're newlyweds, actually." He stepped forward and took Netta into his arms, pressing her back to his chest. Netta stiffened. "We were traveling anyway, so we decided to make a stop here and tell you in person. The dream really bothered her."

The woman swept a glance to her as Netta only reluctantly repeated what he said - switching out newlyweds with friends.

Miss Kienna brought her arms across her chest. "Just friends? I thought that you said that you're over half a century old..."

Netta bristled in Ash's arms and the Monster kept her trapped there for a moment longer. "We were - um, it's actually a long story."

The woman glanced at her, her brows furrowed. Finally, she shook her head and continued to walk.

Ash pressed Netta close to It and bent down to whisper in her ear. "Be careful of these ones. You Witches aren't the most hospitable to outsiders."

Although Netta had to agree, she kept her mouth shut.

Finally pushing her way out of his arms, Netta continued after the woman, leaving Ash behind her.

The interrogation calmed down after that, to Netta's painfully obvious relief. Still, though, the forest seemed only to open up further to reveal more of itself instead of reaching an end.

As Netta looked up at the sky, she was unsurprised to find that it had begun to darken to a velvet shade of orange.

Netta sighed. She did not love the thought of wandering through the wilds in the dark.

About to point out the out that it would be best for the Witches to make some choices regarding the oncoming of night, she stopped as she looked around her.

"I know where we are now."

Kienna turned to Netta, stopping for a moment. "Go on."

"I saw this, in my dream. If you cut to the left of here, there's a path that you can't see all too well, especially in this dark. But... the girl, she knew this path by heart. It's - it's where she met the guardian of the springs."

"The springs? You mean, the natural water?" Netta nodded.

Miss Kienna sighed. "And how do you know this? We keep dancing over this issue, but at this point the joke's stale, girl. Just come clean and I'll let you go, as long as my youngest doesn't have to suffer -"

Netta spoke up then, feeling more than a little irritated. "I had a clairvoyant dream about this incident, and I came here out of a sense of responsibility to that, and you people don't seem to appreciate that. Now-"

Netta thought, in a moment, that she could hear something.

And then she was running, breaking past both her Familiar and the Coven head.

When she finally stopped, Ash reappeared next to her.

She had no time to evaluate the expression on Its face. Her focus was, instead, drawn to the dark-skinned teenager crouched on the ground.

And, who Ophelia was looking at, crouched over the shimmering person in the clearing.

She was far too translucent to be real. From behind then, Netta could hear Miss Kienna's approach.

Ophelia spoke, her gaze hard as she rested it on the Monster. "I could feel someone watching me, so I tripped up the creature long enough for me to catch it." With Miss Kienna's help, the teenager stood up over the prone figure, wiping sweat away underneath the hood of her jacket.

Miss Kienna stepped closer to the figure on the snow-laden forest floor. It was a pale figure with eyes so very pale blue and wide.

Looking at the female Monster, Netta forgot for a moment what It had been caught doing and felt guilty for frightening it.

"Name." Miss Kienna ordered

The pitiful, fish-like Monster stuttered and then said, "I - I - I am Elluvia."

"It's a Selkie," Netta offered, recognizing for the first time the nature of the Monster's physical form. It was her pale skin, long black hair and the barbed ruffling of fins that sprouted from her wrists and poked through her hair.

"That's strange," Ophelia said quickly, "I didn't learn about the hobby of Selkies, the killing of innocent Witches."

Elluvia cried out, a sound more reminiscent of tortured marine life. When she spoke, her voice sounded softly garbled. "I... would never dirty myself with blood - I would never kill my beloved, my trusted Master Anais..." her voice fell away into sobs as she laid her head back, grief overcoming her.

Ophelia quickly asked, "How did you know that my sister was killed?"

Ophelia rushed forward, and it was only the quick intervention of whom Netta guessed to be Miss Kienna's familiar taking a grasp of the young woman's arms that stopped her from launching herself at the Selkie.

Ophelia hissed. "I didn't tell you about her death, you Monster..."

Finally, Ophelia stopped then and nodded at Miss Kienna and righted herself. Turning away from the Selkie, she said, "It smells of Anais. It has to have been this one that killed my sister."

Netta stepped forward. "Just because It smells like your sister doesn't mean that It has anything to do with your sister's death."

"Stay out of this," Miss Kienna ordered.

Netta relented. "I remember what the thing - the thing that killed Anais - felt like. It was nothing like what she - It - feels like." The energy in that dream she could recall far too easily - the way that the the darkness that seemed to chase the girl felt unending - crazed.

It was nothing like this frightened, tiny Monster felt.

Ophelia said nothing for a long while, then her shoulders sagged.

"You don't smell of her blood. Tell me, how do you know my twin?"

The Selkie looked up then, finally bold enough to look into Ophelia's face. The Monster gasped, Its eyes glowing briefly in emotion.

"You're the very likeness of my Master. So, so beautiful -" Its lips quivered and the Monster ducked Its head. "I am sorry, Witch, I forget myself since I found the familiarity of your sister over the years - she encouraged my boldness, you see, wanted an - an equal, or something like that."

"Sounds like her," Ophelia said softly.

After a moment of hesitation, she offered a hand down to the Monster. She waited until, hesitantly, the Selkie took her hand.