Ophelia's voice rose with a trembling unease. "What's with you two?"

Netta found herself speaking. "Ash-"

Ash spoke in her mind, the sound reverberating more than it normally did - as though she was not being spoken to directly, but was rather eavesdropping on him.

-reveal yourself to me. Show yourself.

Netta wanted to question him on his odd choice of words, but was stopped. It was the sight of the painting, as it seemed to swell outwards.

With an audible, inhuman sigh, the painting seemed to yawn open. It deposited what looked at first like a crumpled pile of clothes onto the ground.

Netta felt like screaming as the pile rose up, in a stiff, but undeniably sentient way. As it staggered to its feet, the motley clothes were revealed to be hanging on what looked like a man.

Ophelia did scream then.

When she finished, the man glanced anxiously at her. Grabbing at his face, he proceeded to run his hands in a hectic, slapping manner down the space of his body. When he had finished, he turned to Ash, asking, "My appearance isn't frightening her, is it?"

Ash smiled. "You know how their sort is. If everything doesn't go their way, then -"

Netta stepped forward. She felt unsure of how to approach any Monster she came into contact with, but this one seemed to take the cake above all others, in terms of eccentricity.

"Hi. We came here to find out any information that we can about the death of Calliope, the proprietress of this cafe, do you happen to know anything about -"

"Oh, hot damn," the Monster shouted, leaping in the air with a yell. "what year is it?"

Both Ash and Netta both seemed too surprised to answer him.

Weakly, Ophelia did instead.

The man clapped a hand over his whisker-thick face, his blue eyes wide with shock.

"Oh. She really did mean it when she said that she'd keep me contained for over a human's lifetime."

Ash tried to coax out of him what he meant by that, but the Monster brushed him off. He turned around and busied himself with trying to fix the crooked picture's frame that he had been spat out from.

Ash looked back at Netta, a truly astonished look on his face. When Netta shrugged back at him, Ash turned around and put a hand on the man's arm.

"Brother, how long were you imprisoned in that painting for?"

Instead of answering him, the Monster, still seeming intent on fixing the picture. Finally, in an annoyed voice, the Monster said, "Approximately seventy-seven years, sixty-three days, nine hours, eleven minutes and -" he twitched and paused his manic fixation of the picture in its frame for a moment before he added, "fifty-nine seconds. Now, if we get into microseconds-"

Ash clapped a hand on the wiry older-looking man's shoulder. Gently, he asked, "Why were you kept in there?"

The Monster turned to look at him, then turned around, seeming to see both Netta and Ophelia for the first time.

His eyes grew wide.

"O-oh, Witches -" he rubbed his face in an almost caricature of nervousness, then started to laugh wildly, before he began to babble manically.

"I-I-I was told that when my Master died that I would be free - fair and square, mind you - oh Goddess, please don't put me back in there, the horses are not what they seem, let me tell you -"

Netta felt a blush creeping up her face As she looked at the wild little man, a memory clicked in her mind.

She had to cover her mouth as she gasped. "Jaste? Jaste, is that you?"

The Monster, who seemed to have been trying to beseech both Ophelia and Netta, turned to look solely at Netta. He cocked his head to the side, as though he were trying to fix the frame that was her face with those luminescent blue eyes of his.

After a moment of hesitation, his brow creased and he said, "...Netta?"

Netta felt her mouth fall open then. "Oh, Goddess, you were - Calliope told us - told all of us - that you'd left."

Jaste smiled wildly and let out a laugh that sounded as though it were creaky from unuse. "It wasn't from lack of trying, lemme tell you that!"

Netta pointed blindly to the painting. "Ah - why - why would she have trapped you in that painting?"

Jaste shrugged. "Marital differences. She wanted me to have sex with her and - I wanted to travel."

For some reason, Netta felt her gaze being pulled by Ash. When she looked over at her Familiar, she saw him standing to Jaste's side, a surprisingly introspective, sober look on his face.

Turning back to Jaste, Netta continued her line of questioning. "Why would she have done that to you?"

"You mean, as opposed to making me continue to be her magic reservoir?"

Jaste sighed and leaned back, his head tapping into the painting. At the feeling of his head hitting the canvas, he yelped and jumped away from the thing as though it had shocked him.

Ash's hands flew out to grab onto the Monster's arm and he murmured something into Jaste's ear.

Jaste clutched at the front of his throat compulsively, his eyes looking as though they were liable to bug out of his head at any given moment.

"...Oh, I think I might go on an art killing spree." He cleared his throat and looked at Netta.

"To answer your question - the way she saw it, I could find a way out of our agreement if I was out and about. I made the mistake of telling her that she looks like an ogress, she asks me what I think of this painting she had just gotten for the backroom of the cafe, boom," he smacked his hands together for emphasis. "next thing I know, I'm living in and around a barn for -" He paused, tilting his head to the side before continuing. "Seventy-seven years-"

Ash cut him off, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

"On topic, Brother." Ash paused, looking as though he were about to ask another question before he looked over to Netta meaningfully.

Netta coughed, then asked, "So - she was murdered, I think. Did you happen to see what happened?"

Jaste answered, "I was in the barn when I first heard her - screaming. I thought she was having a heart attack or something. I came out and saw the other ones surrounding her, doing a damned good job of filling her full of gaps, if that was their intention."

Netta exhaled the breath that was caught in her chest."So - she was actually killed up here. They must have taken her body downstairs, after they - after they were done. Who were they?"

Netta felt another breath lodge in her chest and threaten to stay there.

The Monster hesitated, then spoke in a rapid-fire tempo. "It was those Witches of yours, Beryl, Arabella and - Millicent, I think. They look a lot the same, unlike my Master, who looked like an ogress."

Netta looked at the Monster who had been put out of time for a near indefinite period. All she could do was think - try to wrap her mind around the way that the world had changed since she was young.

How everything had, irretrievably, changed.

She sighed, releasing the air that she had kept trapped in her lungs.

"Thank you," she murmured.

Looking to Ash, who was close to glowering at her - something that she would have to deal with, at a later date - she motioned for him to follow her and she turned around to leave.

"Wait!" The Monster yelling out, making Netta turn around to look at him. When she did, she saw that Jaste, wild hair askew from rending at it with curving, thick claws, looking at her with something akin to panic. "You're not going to leave me here, are you?"

Netta glanced over at Ash, then looked back at Jaste.

"...I would expect that you'd want to go become an element of nature, or whatever you were before you were in a Contract with Calliope. Ash..." she looked at him, motioning blindly. "Help me with this."

Ash turned to the man, and with a kind smile softly said, "You are free to become a piece of the whole of the energy of this world. With time, you'll be able to speak the language of the wind and feel the sigh of the trees again -"

Jaste waved at him impatiently, obviously to the shock of Ash.

"That sounds fun n' all, but if at all possible, I want to sit this one out."

Netta thought that she had imagined what the man had said. "Excuse me?"

Jaste turned to her and shrugged. "I've been doing this for a long, long time. I don't know if I know what else to do with myself. I mean, thinking about it, I'm curious about where this whole thing with your Coven is going to go -"

"I'm no longer a part of them," Netta said immediately.

Jaste blinked and started to smile. "Ah! See? This story only gets more interesting as time goes on. Frankly, speaking to someone no longer affiliated with my Master, I have been waiting with bated breath to witness karma hitting those Witches squarely in their asses - or heads. Whichever hurts more." He turned to look at Ash, as though looking for back up. "Which would hurt more on a Witch?"

Netta interrupted before a bemused Ash could answer. "You want to come with us?"

Jaste looked at her, and trying to smile and failing, he said, "Well, either that, or I would prefer if you could put me back in the painting." He motioned to it wordlessly, then said, "I don't know what else to do with myself."

Before Netta could answer, it was Ash who spoke, almost automatically. "You're free to come with us, if you wish."

Jaste yelled and leapt in the air with a clap. "Oh! Oh, Brother, you do me a kindness beyond the exemplary!"

As they were getting back into the car - with Ophelia, who was seemingly stuck in a state of shock, finally saying something to the excitable Jaste by murmuring for him to put a seatbelt on - Netta shot Ash a look and thought, with full knowledge that Ash could read her thoughts, If he needs puppy training, then that's your problem.

Ash did not answer her, turning away to look out of the passenger's side window.

As they pulled out onto the road, Netta glanced over at her Familiar. She felt a worry course its way through her as she felt his silence like a cold rock against her bare skin.