Netta decided that it was time to go to the Homestead. Pulling up, however, Netta was astonished to find a complete lack of wards on the place.

In fact, there was so little protection around the property that by her estimates, a child could wander onto the property.

Netta tried to not seem bothered and she also tried to make herself stop looking over at Ash, wishing that he would meet her gaze.

His lack of a connection bothered her more than she wished to believe, sticking like a burr.

As she entered the house, Netta turned to Ash as the others followed her. She tried to speak to him with her mind, but found the same wall of silence that had met her each time she tried to probe.

"Hey," Jaste said as he entered, a smile painted huge on his face. "I remember this place! Ooh, any chance I can see where my Master slept?"

Before Netta could answer, Ash started through the mud room, beckoning to Jaste to follow. "Sure thing, Brother. Let's go find it."

Netta wanted to stop Ash, but found that before she could call out to him to come back, she found that Ophelia had taken ahold of her hand.

In a hissing breath, Ophelia said, "Are you crazy? If Miss Kienna knew that you were traveling with a rogue Monster - an ex Familiar, at that - she would lose her shit."

Netta thought of Ash's recent behavior. Nevertheless, she tried to will a reassuring smile on her face.

"Not for long, and he seems harmless enough -"

It was no sooner than she said that than a loud crash came from outside.

Netta happened to be looking in the direction of the windows and watched as what appeared to be a four-post bed came falling out of the floor above. It bashed into a thick layer of snow, sending a tsunami wave of snow dust bursting from the impact.

Running upstairs, Netta rushed into Calliope's old room. The first thing she saw was Ash, who stood with his back to the door. When Ash turned to look at Netta, she saw the astonished look on his face.

When she looked further into the room, she saw how Jaste leaned over the broken remnents of the room's window.

She felt herself yelling. "What the hell, Ash!"

Ash stared at her, his mouth falling open to reveal his sharp teeth, eyes wide. "I didn't do anything this time - we walk in here, and he takes the bed like it's a kettle bell and tosses it out of the window-"

Netta looked at the offending Monster, who finally acknowledged the two Witches.

His mouth twitched in an odd, obviously uncomfortable smile. "She didn't need it anymore, right?"

After searching the house, Netta found nothing to keep them fro getting ready to sleep there for the night. After some consideration, she told the two tag-alongs to stay at the house while she and Ash went out to visit her Mother's grave.

The thought of visiting the grave, a place where she herself had never visited, but knew where it was, came to her quickly, and she seized upon it. It was a a chance to be alone - with her Familiar.

However, as she started the car and looked over to see the now-familiar sight of Ash in the passenger's side seat, she realized that she had no decent excuse to give to him for why she was set on going.

With a sigh, Netta backed the car out of the drive and finally said, "It's nice to be away from the both of them for a while. Right?"

"Sure."

His voice was flat, and he seemed dead set on staring out of his window.

Netta looked over at Ash and debated putting the car in park.

"What's going? Seriously."

Ash sighed and rubbed at his face.

"What are you talking about now?" In spite of his words, they lacked his normal bite to them.

Netta felt her eyes roll up to the ceiling.

"Oh, maybe how you can go from trying to get me to suck your dick in a car with a minor in the backseat to not speaking to me?" She paused, then added, "You won't talk to me in our minds any more."

Ash glanced over at her, his red eyes dark with some emotion.

"I'll talk about it later. Of that you can rest assured of."

"How much later?" She wished that her voice did not reflect so much worry, fear.

Ash looked forward, his jaw tight. "After all of this is finished with."

Netta laughed, not feeling in the least as though she wanted to laugh.

"When what's finished? You know what I think, Ash? I think you were onto something about this being a suicide mission for me. Maybe this is the end for me, maybe it'll be for you as well. I think it'd be asinine to promise to share our emotions only after we're sure to be killed by my sisters."

She had to bite back more than she wanted, so desperately, to say. To fling in the face of the Monster who she thought she was beginning to understand.

Now - all she wanted to know was if she had imagined half of what she thought he must feel for her.

Ash laughed himself then, his arms crossed.

"I can assure you that neither of us will be killed. This isn't something that we can talk about - solve - before we finish this nonsense you've gotten us involved in."

And Netta did the one thing that she had told herself that she would not do.

She gripped the steering wheel hard and, not daring to look at him, Netta spat out, "It's either we at least care about each other, in light of what we've been doing together, and you know what? Ash, I do care about you."

The words couldn't be unsaid.

Netta didn't dare look at him. Instead, she kept driving.

As though the words were not coming from her, she felt herself adding, "I know - you think that I was ashamed of you, because you're a - I don't even know what the hell you are, even if you're as old as the biblical Adam - but I've wanted you, too desperately since the day that I kissed you. It burns me from the inside, Ash, it hurts."

Netta shuddered back a sob then, unexpected, and tried with all of her might to will away with tears that formed at the brim of her eyes.

Ash said nothing.

She wondered, after some time in the still sundown, what it was that she had been expecting.

By the time that she pulled to the front of the Auburn Resting Hills, Netta was actually relieved to have something to do besides sitting in a car next to Ash.

The Auburn Resting Hills was a decrepit cemetary. Unknown to anyone who might have wandered the gravestones, it was the resting place of a mausoleum that had places in it for every member of the Oleander Coven.

"Stay here," Netta said automatically, jumping out of the car before she could quantify that.

Netta walked up the gravel pathway that she could barely make out in the snow that covered it.

After walking though the beginning of what looked like a valley of forever, quietly resting human's remains that laid beneath her feet, Netta saw it.

A building, marked with the epitath of "Oleander" over the ornate doorway, stopped Netta in her tracks.

The building in the near dark looked ominous, almost seemed to be beckoning her with a seductive, dark pull. It was a promise of something akin to sanctuary, seclusion. That, she decided, would be a welcome emotion, after the horror of what she had just dealt with in the car.

And in light of what must be awaiting her in the future.

Feeling a brief flicker of worry, she pushed it away. What was there to worry about here? There was no way that that a Monster, even a Familiar, could come into consecrated Witch's burial ground.

She did not need to worry that he would find herself confronted by Ash.

Nevertheless, she gave a start when the chamber filled with light from the candle sconces on the walls.

"It's automatic," she reminded herself nervously, forcing her legs to move further into the room.

Inside, she was surprised to see the amount of stone tombs in the large, mostly empty rooms. She counted them, found that there were three of them with lids sealed on top of them amongst many more that remained unsealed.

Walking over to the sealed ones, Netta looked down at their names. She found, with surprise, that she had discovered the resting places of not just Hera, but also her father, Tristan and Calliope.

She had never known where her father had been laid to rest, and she felt an unexpected surge of anger at the discovery. How had she never been told about where her poor, human father had been buried?

She looked over at Calliope's closed tomb and felt the words come out of her automatically.

"I don't know how deep you were involved with what's going on, but you were always one of the nice ones, out of so few. I'm sorry it had to end this way."

She sighed, looked at her father's resting place. She felt the lump in her throat grow until it threatened to choke her. "I'm sorry I never visited you in here. You left me way too early, I never stop thinking about you."

Turning to look at Hera's - the one right after Tristan's, the beginning of the long line of Witches - she said, simply, "Fuck you."

Turning to walk out of the mausoleum, Netta thought that the emotional weight on her shoulders felt, somehow, lighter. Still, she glanced, briefly, at the opened tombs. She wondered what it would feel like to be inside of one - her own.

And then she wondered how many of these she would fill before her grim duty would be finished.

The feeling of being smashed to the ground by something hitting her in the side of the head came, quickly, as she attempted to cross the threshhold of the mausoleum.

The only thing she heard as she stared blindly at the hard ground that she had crashed into was an all-too familiar, throaty female voice.

"Hello, Nettles, glad to see you were interested in a full family reunion after all."