When Netta had told the room of Witches that she and Ash were taking their second dance of the evening, it was Wu who remarked that it was an awful waste of a honeymoon to spend it dancing in the woods for ten minutes before returning.

Ash swept her along the room in his arms. Netta didn't much track the movements in the room. Her eyes were locked on his face, the breadth of his shoulders.

Ash had, undoubtedly, changed sometime in that bubble that he had wrapped them in.

Coming out, she saw that the change she had witnessed seemed to be true. In the light of the warm candlelight in the living room, she saw how he had changed.

He was some measure shorter, less feral looking, his hair a few shades lighter. Ash's skin was lighter as well. As she recalled thinking before, his flesh seemed to her to be a pale gold.

It was his eyes were the most enormous change. To her shock, they were no longer red, but were rather a shade of green normally reserved for the color that tinged the edge of a magic flame.

When he looked down at her as they danced, the smile that had been at his lips faded and he stared back at her.

Entranced, she tried to recall where she had seen those eyes before, so familiar, too intimate...

It was when she looked away to deal with one of the Witches threatening to throw a piece of mistletoe at them that Netta was jolted with the knowledge that he had her eyes.

Just to confirm what she had seen, she excused herself from the comfort of his arms and tried to take a second to glance in the mirror. Although she had planned it to just be a quick glance, she found that she had stopped as her eyes had passed over the surface of the mirror, meaning it to be a skim.

Staring back at her was a woman that could have been her sister.

Her hair was a few shades darker, taking on a true chestnut color, her skin, too, was more than a few blushes darker from her paperwhite pale. Richer looking, deeper than a tan.

She saw that there had been another reason for why Ash seemed less tall to her - looking in the mirror, she saw that she had gained some height. Sure, she wasn't thin, but as she looked more closely at herself, she saw that her skin seemed more taut on her frame.

She felt as though her eyes were about to pop from her head.

It was as she looked into her own eyes in the mirror that the realization of where Ash's red eyes had gone struck her. She gazed into a tumultuous sea of flowing red surrounding her pupils, set into a stranger's face.

A slow panic had started in Netta as she felt a type of existential horror that one only feels when they look in the mirror and see someone else staring back at them.

She felt a hand fall on her shoulder.

Jumping slightly, Netta looked in the mirror and saw Ash standing beside her.

When he spoke, it was no longer an alien thing, she had found. It was as though some other aspect of herself was speaking aloud to her. Even his voice sounded different, lighter somehow.

She wondered, then, if her voice had changed.

You seem... surprised.

Netta found herself answering him back in his way without realizing it.

I am. What's happened to us?

The smile on Ash's face faded.

I thought - you did know what the ceremony entailed, right?

Netta stared into eyes that used to be hers, found it eerie to see her greens taking on an unnatural glow. They seemed to ripple with energy, as though their color was just the aspect chosen by some form of arcane magic to present itself as.

Ash sighed, a sadness turning the fuller shape of his lips turn into a frown.

I thought that you knew. Understood why we mated - made love - like we did. To make the conversion easier.

Conversion? Netta felt as though her tongue was leaded.

What - what happened?

An exchange. Truly, I am sorry that you did not know what was to come. It just - I suppose that I never thought that my Nettles - uh, that you wouldn't know about something like this.

Netta felt a smile tugging at her lips. In spite of the situation, she found it hard to fight the urge to smile.

You think I'm a know it all, don't you?

Ash ran his hands through his hair and looked away. Uh - I never said Know-it-All.

Netta laughed.

She was rewarded when Ash looked back at her in the mirror, his green eyes warm, a new smile on his lips that he seemed to have difficulty repressing.

You must have been... so scared.

His smile faded and as he closed his eyes, the thickness of his longer lashes spread out under his shut eyes. I'm sorry.

Netta turned around then, wrapping her arms as much and as high on him as she could. It cheered her to realize that she could now hold onto his shoulders, if she really reached.

That was your first time as well. It's alright.

Ash was silent for a moment, then she felt his arms tightening around her.

Yes. Yes, you're right. You have me - a piece of me - in you, now. So, a warm laugh reverberated in Netta's mind. How does it feel to have a little Monster in you?

Maybe it was the wicked part of him that he had given her, along with the darker hair, skin and eyes, but she knew where his joke was going.

Biting her lip, Netta looked up at her eyes set in his face and said, I wouldn't mind a bit more in me, really.

Netta had woken up, only to find that was alone. When she wondered where Ash was, she felt an answering jolt in her mind, felt him inside of her mind.

He seemed to stretch like a cat awakening from sleep and lazily answered her panicked mental call for him with images that he had hinted at to her all throughout her adult life.

When she opened her eyes, it was her green eyes staring down at her, but it was Ash's fire that blazed, electric, in them. He was positioned atop her, crouchign with his limbs holding him up. Surrounding her.

Shuddering, she was about to let him take her for as long as he wanted when she heard the frantic knocking at the door.

After making a stubborn Ash get off of her with no small amount of reluctance, Netta walked to the door after throwing a robe on.

Answering the door, she was surprised to see Ophelia standing there. A solemn, frightened look was in her eyes.

"Miss Neith," she said in a cracking voice that reminded Netta of the oft forgettable truth that the moody, fiery Witch was indeed still a teen. "please come downstairs."

Any attempt to get an answer out of the girl yielded nothing.

Netta magicked some clothes on, and even the act of using magic to wear clothes for the first time was spoiled by the worry that clawed at her throat.

Downstairs, Netta was struck first by the incongruous image of the Christmas regalia and the Witches who sat in the room.

She didn't need to ask what was wrong.

Lucia becknoned Netta over her and handed the note, written in an all too familiar hand on thick parchment.

Rockridge, WI, turn to the local news to see what you've caused. Who took your place.

Netta watched as someone turned the ill-used tv on in the living room. She watched in silence as magic enabled the local stations from the town in Winsconsin to come alive on the screen.

They didn't need to look for long.

A reporter, a human man who looked oddly pleasant in spite of what he soon said, spoke.

"-it was discovered late this morning - the gruesome scene at Twenty Twelve Rose Penny Drive. The scene of what is suspected to be one Violetta McLachlan's murder. Police are accepting any and all leads, but it is expected that with the time of death established as late Christmas Eve and judging by the amount of blood, it is suspected that the murder happened in the home -"

Someone had turned the television off.

Netta continued to stare at the black screen, hoping that if she continued to stare at it that the glass screen that things could be reversed.

Instead, her eyes became used to the blackness, until she could first see the twinkling of the lights on the reflective surface, the lights of the still beaming tree, and then she could see the shadows of the others in the room.

She saw the Witch who stood up and walked out of the room as a shadow in the reflection.

"What are we going to do?" Ember asked softly, breaking the spell of silence that had fallen in the room.

It was Wu who spoke up, her voice tinged with determination, cold.

"We've been talking about being at war, but we're surprised when they draw blood. I say that we do was we've been threatening - it's time for a Witch's War, a real one, not one fought in the shadows, taking innocents..."

It was Lucia who spoke up, silencing the others. "We must prepare ourselves. I have no doubt where they will strike at some point, so we will defend our home, take as many of them as we can on our homeland -"

Netta shook her head, feeling the icy grip of despair beginning to unlatch itself from her.

"No. This has nothing to do with you. At least, it doesn't have to. I'll go, destroy them before they can come here."

Did she believe what she said? To her, it did not matter. Only that she could stop it, do her best to, before it spread to this home of such warmth. Love.

Lucia snapped her gaze over to Netta. Gone in that moment was the softness of the adopted mother, leaving only the matriarch of Coven Gardenia.

"Absolutely not. Their plan is to root you out so that they can kill you in the manner that they've done that poor Witch. At least if we stand united we'll stand a chance against them."

Netta shook her head.

It was odd. She felt frightened, enough fright where she should be shaking to consider what she was saying aloud. Instead, she could only feel it - determination.

Perhaps it was not her doing alone, but was rather Ash's iron, his will, enough to save his sanity from a human's lifetime of being forcibly forgotten about, encasing her spine.

"I need to do this. They are not bound by loyalty to their own kind and have no pity - they'll come here, then they'll hurt you to get to me." She said it aloud and could feel the truth in it ringing in her voice.

They'll continue to try to do what they think is the will of my husband. I will be sure to teach them differently.

Lucia stood then, seeming to tower over her. "You are asking me to let you go on your own, without the aid of your Coven at your side. You want to carry the terrible burden of serial murder against your own kin on your own shoulders. That I cannot allow."

Netta stood up and realized that with her change in height that she was on the same level as Lucia.

"It's a good thing I'm not asking. And, maybe a Witch would not be able to withstand the mental damage caused by sororicide, but I'm not a Witch any more, am I? No one's mentioned it, but what I did last night, it took away my humanity, didn't it?"

She looked at them all, felt their answers in how they wouldn't meet her eyes.

"I've always said that I had no talent for magic, but what if I was just repressing my true calling - death."

Some of the other Witches flinched.

Netta continued. "When I took one of my sister's lives, it felt - it felt natural, somehow. And when I had to kill another, it was like nothing to me. Nothing. It's as though my magic is made for extermination. And what's more, I felt - rejuvenated after I killed them. Like I had gotten..." Netta looked away then and found that, for some reason, she could not suppress the humorless laugh that bubbled out of her. "As if I had just had a full night's sleep."

"That, that's not true," Wu said suddenly. "it can't... it can't be true."

It's too terrible to be true.

"I think it is. It's why -" she felt him brushing against her in her mind, as though he were trying to tell her without overwhelming her that he was there. "I gravitate to Ashwood. It's why I never showed any aptitude for anything else. Goddess help me, but I could feel their powers passing through me as they died, and I swear I could feel some of it leeching into me..."

"Enough," Lucia ordered her. "you've said enough. I cannot in good conscious let you leave here, with this mad claim of yours -"

"Shut me out from your Coven, Matron," Netta said, turning to the Witch. "banish me if need be. Do it. I have my code of honor that I must live. Someone else died in my place, and I've had enough of other people dealing with these women."

Lucia cringed, her eyes looking wet.

"I - that I cannot do. I will not allow someone under my protection to wander, of their own free will, into oblivion."

"What do I have to do to be banished from your family?" Netta ignored the cries of the others, begging her to calm down.

It was funny - Netta would wager that she never felt calmer a day in her life before that moment. What she did feel more than anything cold and calculating, as though she were simply stepping into a role more natural to play than the one that she had been before.

Lucia tightened her mouth, and for a moment, she looked every day over two hundred that she likely was. Her sadness should have broken Netta's heart, but instead, she felt more determined than before.

She had the power to wipe away the other's despair, their fear.

With barely trembling lips, Lucia said, "You walk out that door, and you are never to return here again."

The others cried out as Netta did not bother to go upstairs to retrieve her things.

She did not ask for it - Ash soon enveloped her in his warmth.

She looked up into the sky, about to shoot into it, when she turned around and saw someone in an upstairs window. Standing there was Erwinnia, looking at her with panic as she seemed to be shouting something.

Netta looked up at her Sister, then registered the look of shock - then horror - on her face.

Erwinnia backed away from the window, as though expecting Netta to launch at her.

Are we an abomination, Ash? Netta asked before regretting asking it.

She launched into the air, lifting, not feeling the cold once through the impenetrable layer of heat that Ash enfolded her in.

She flew, somehow knowing where she had to go next, as a bird knows where to fly.

When he didn't answer, Netta felt relief enough to smile, a bitter, funereal grin.