Netta was startled awake by someone shaking her.

Rushing so that she was sitting up in her seat, she turned and looked up at the man who leaned over her.

Looking tired himself, the stranger shook his head disapprovingly at her and began to walk to the back of the bus. It was then that she realized that her phone's alarm had been blaring in her lap.

Oh, no.

Netta reached down, resurfacing with her phone clutched in her hand. She hardly needed to look at the time to see that she had gone well over five minutes past the time that she would have needed to cast the Banishment.

She had gotten onto the bus - according to the clock on her phone, three hours back. By the time that she had gotten on the bus, the weather had all but died down, leaving a relatively calm ride through a gentle haze of snow as the bus drove on its way out of the city.

Still, she clicked the alarm off, sinking into the bus seat.

Her heart pounded in her chest - the shock of being woken up from the man shaking her, as well as the realization of what she had just done. Despicably - traitorously - her body, it seemed, was recalling with shocking muscle memory things that Ashwood had planted firmly in her sleeping mind. Things that she could not recall to save her own life.

Her breasts seemed to have become heavily swollen in her bra, and between her legs she could feel a tight, discomforting sensation that she was loath to admit to the reason for. When she moved, she could feel the undeniable sensation of warmth, moisture between her thighs. She groaned, dropping her head into her hand.

And then she heard Ash as It spoke up - sitting in the previously empty seat next to her.

"Whoa, you slept through that whole alarm!" The creature whistled. "I mean, you were pretty tired before, and you just looked like you were so enjoying that little dream of yours. I couldn't bear to wake you."

Netta closed her eyes, and turning to the man that only she could see, hissed out, "Abi sis, belua!"

Ash blinked, then Its eyes lit up, a boyish smile framed by dimples came to Its youthful facade. "Oh, now there's a fine waste of effort. Lovely," It leaned in closer to her, until the Monster was only a breath away from her. "your chance to do anything to me with those words left five minutes back. I'm here to stay for the long haul, it seems."

Ash blew air towards her, then laughed as Netta almost leaped away, to the concern of the other people on the bus.

Four bathroom breaks, three meals, and uncounted hours later, a very haggard Netta was resting, slumped, on a public toilet.

She focused on breathing in through her mouth and out through her nostrils. It aided little in pushing away the rough fire that tore through her.

She had not yet had the heart to examine the plethora of text messages - or listen to the phone messages - that Wallace left on her phone.

She had fallen asleep again, sprawled back in the bus. When she awoke, she found the needy desire that she had woken up to before was nothing in comparison to what she felt then.

When Ash made a quirky remark about how haggard she looked, Netta had ignored It, rushing to the rest room in the stop that the bus had pulled into.

Sighing, Netta removed her hand from where it had been buried between her thighs.

She wanted to keep those fingers there, to gyrate them until the furious desire, mindless, was gone from her body like a toxin. As it was, she was surely a few moments from being late to catching the bus. For another thing -

The sound, of knuckles rapping on the metal divider to her toilet, shook Netta out of her reverie.

"Now, Lovely, don't tell me my little flirtations have had such a powerful effect on you?" The creature clicked its teeth with its tongue. "I'll have mercy on you. Just say the word, and I can take us away from this loathsome place and we - you - can finally be done with this torment. Don't you want that, Lovely - an end to your tortured desires?"

Netta slammed out of the stall, her face bright red, rushing to wash her hands.

She pushed out Ash's remarks, shoving herself into her coat.

It wasn't until she was set to leave that she was stopped, physically, by Ash. Netta shoved the Monster away, feeling her face warming even more than it had previously.

Ash put Its arms up defensively. "Hey, I am only trying to help you. You've left your buttons un-done on your jeans, miss. I suppose it's good for ease of entry for your greedy little hand, but I don't think that that's a hobby you want to practice in front of the humans."

Somehow, Netta survived another day. Between Ash's increasingly sexual dreams - reaching its peak when Netta awoke with her hand jammed, horrifically, down her pants, not to mention the way that she had become ill on the bus twice, she had managed to reach the desert. When she reached it, however, at first she did not even realize that that is where they were.

For one thing, when she looked out of the window, all she seemed to see was snow. It was not until she stood outside during a pit stop that she realized that it was warmer than it had been the last time that they had stopped.

Netta looked around her, up the road that they were going to be driving down and realized that the snow, similarly, seemed to be thinner than it had been.

"It can't be - this can't be the desert," she said, looking at the expanse of what was surely, disturbingly enough, snow covering sand.

A male voice, belonging to a fellow traveler, spoke up. "Oh, ya. Pretty wild - never seen snow in a desert, myself."

Can't say I ever have either, human. Netta cleared her throat and went back into the bus, where she sat, ignoring Ash as best she could. She could not stop looking out of the window, at all of the snow.

A small town that had been rapidly drying up in the desert waited for Netta.

Having rented an SUV that was large enough to be at a tasteful distance between her and Ash once the buses stopped wanting to run where she needed to go, Netta drove into Flower Pass. It was a town that had experienced its heyday back when the metaphysical revolution had been a big thing for humans.

Now -

"What do you think is the problem?" Ash asked suddenly after a long period of silence between them had passed.

For what had to be the twentieth time since they had gotten into the vehicle together, Netta answered, "I dunno."

"You've got to think something, some guess, some imagining..."

Netta rubbed at her eyes. They had felt like sand was lodged in every pocket in her eyelids. She was starting to become only tired of being this close to such an old, dear friend. The creature was finally - thankfully - starting to ease up on the sexual - flirtatious - torture.

"What's the point of guessing when we're ten minutes away from finding out?"

"I'm just trying to be pragmatic, Lovely. You don't know what you're walking into. It could be a trap, with your dear Calliope at the center of it."

Netta couldn't suppress the laugh that bubbled up if she wanted to. "Someone in my Coven, conspiring against me?"

Ash leaned back in Its seat, arms crossed. "Just looking out for you, out of a sense of simple - misplaced - affection."

She muttered beneath her breath, not caring if he heard her. "Simple - that's right, Ash. Nothing complex at all about what's happening between us."

They drove in silence after that, until she parked the SUV in front of what looked like a simple boutique store lodged in the center of a line of stores that were mostly boarded up and abandoned.

It almost looked abandoned as well - if not for the small, oddly optimistic "OPEN" sign in the window or the perfectly kept sign that hung well above the purple-painted entrance-way that proclaimed it to be the "Premiere Tarot Cafe". When she began to get out of the car, she hesitated for a moment, considering something before she turned to Ash.

"Stay in the car," she said, in the belief that no matter what she said, It would undoubtedly disobey her.

She did not miss the meaningful look that Ash gave her as she walked out.

Netta could not shake the feeling that she was making a massive mistake.

Walking through the door and out of the disturbing, light chill, she first heard the intricate wind chimes that the woman kept above the door.

As soon as she breathed in, she was hit by a musty, old smell that hung in the air - the smell of the desert kept out, barely, by the heavy, oppressive smell of incense.

It took her eyes a few moment to adjust to the low light in the small front room. In the meantime, Netta yelled out for the proprietress.

After taking a few steps into the eerily quiet space of the Tarot Cafe, Netta was finally greeted by the sound of a woman's voice.

"Who is that - Netta? Netta, dear, is that you?"

The voice was muffled by distance. Walking further into the room, Netta was able to see that the room.

Small, cramped, "cozy" - the space was made to look like an overly exotic, "Turkish" area. To that end, the aging, worn carpet was covered with an array of a variety of collected rugs.

Based on the amount of cushions on the floor and the fact that there was more than one short table set up on the floor, Calliope was still more than prepared for the day that she would get more than one walk in that came in mostly out of curiosity.

The place looked little different from the last time that Netta had seen it (could it really be twenty years?). In spite of the length of time that had passed from her last visit, with, perhaps, a noticeable stockpiling of tchotchkes lining the walls to really offset any sort of mood that the rugs and the cushions gave off, the place looked the same as it always had.

Netta still wasn't sure how the older woman figured that her storefront was in the least bit welcoming to the errant tourist. After all, a town or two away a much more clean-cut operation owned and operated by naive humans existed, surely.

Netta walked half of the distance of the surprisingly cavernous, long hallway of space that came out of what had looked, from the entrance, compact. As she crossed the floor, she saw a shape moving out from behind the red drapery that hung in the doorway at the back of the room.

Netta's stomach felt as though it was about to wrench its way out of her body.

It took her a moment before she came face to face that she realized that tears were streaming down her face, while, curiously, she did not feel a single hitch in her chest or throat.

Calliope walked up, pushing aside a cushion with her long-sock-covered foot. Dressed in a heavy housecoat and the kind of baggy silk pants that brought back memories, Calliope looked as though she had returned from those bleary memories.

The older looking woman examined Netta from behind a set of glasses that were attached to the back of her neck by a gold chain. Hesitantly, she smiled.

After a moment, however, she looked shocked.

"Oooh, oh my dear," she cried out, rushing forward to sweep Netta into her arms. "you're crying. What's the matter - I haven't even told you anything about what's going on, yet."

Enveloping her was the older witch's smell - like artificial oranges and dried flowers.

Netta gently pushed herself away, wiping ferociously at her soaking wet cheeks. "I'm fine, I'm fine..." She tried to smile, could feel herself failing at it. "How have you been?"

Calliope laughed softly, wiped away a few tears of her own. "Same as always, in a sense. Come - you look exhausted. Did you come up here alone, dear?"

Thinking of Ash, she mentioned that she had driven from the city with a close friend. When she turned, she could see the Monster itself grinning in that horrible, knowing way of It, all too present in the room.

She wanted, desperately, to tell Callie of the shadowed, venomous personality that had been breathing down her neck for days, but found that she was more interested in knowing, first, what had been the reason for her summons in the first place.

The older woman carefully waded back the way that she came through the sea of pillows with a practiced ease that bespoke of a long time dealing with the space. Gliding her through the gloom of the almost unlit room, she asked, "My dear, forgive me for saying this, but much like myself, I do believe that there is a good deal more to you than there used to be."

Netta laughed, allowing the woman to steer her to the back room. "Don't worry, I'm aware that I'm getting a good deal away from that ravenous look that Sia works on - and getting the human way." Netta patted her noticeable ass.

She allowed herself to be led through the curtain and into the back area that Calliope called her home, past her back office.

Netta's first reaction to the woman's kitchen area was to gape at the sheer amount of knick-knackery that had happened since she had last been back here. She knew that Calliope understood full well to keep most of her obsession with the porcelain and painted ware mostly away from where she conducted her business, but Netta had not prepared herself for what she would see of it in her personal area.

Rows upon rows of it - a good deal magically held up - seemed to line the walls. It was hard, also, to not catch a general theme - namely, porcelain Swedish children, looking bashful in different poses. All deathly pale, with the exception of their rosy cheeks and lips.

Ash, who had bent so that It was leaning next to her, said, "Unlimited cosmic power - such an intriguing way to spend it all."

Ignoring Ash, Netta found herself turning, looking at an ugly painting. It took her a moment to recognize from long ago, back when Calliope had first opened the store.

An odd scene to see in the desert, the painting looked very much like one of those mass-produced, halcyon works of a rolling green pasture and a fantastically red barn in the near-distance.

The only thing that seemed to draw her attention was a man - what an odd, out of place man to be in such a painting - waving from the top window of the barn.

Funny, had that character always been there?

So fixated was Netta on it at first that she missed what the older woman had asked her. "I'm sorry," Netta stuttered, turning as she settled down to the card table that must have lived in Calliope's quarters since the seventies, "can you repeat yourself?"

Calliope blinked and asked, "Your companion - she's not terribly cold out there, I hope?"

Netta shook her head, and had to bite the inside of her cheek. She also had to fight the sudden urge to look over to the creature who stood in the corner of the room like a malevolent shadow.

"Ah, he'll be fine. He's got a great way to regulate his internal body temperature, if I don't say myself."

When Calliope's eyes went wide with some sort of an understanding, Netta hurried to correct herself. "Ah, I don't know from any sort of a personal experience, it's just that he does great in the cold."

Netta laughed and it was a little too exaggerated. Thankfully, Calliope seemed to have become focused on working on making tea.

As she worked, Netta shook off her coat and relaxed back into one of the brown padded chairs surrounding the card table. She stared, blearily, at the two figurines who got predominate placement in the center of the small enough table.

A boy, eyes closed, leaning forward for a kiss and a girl leaning away, her eyes closed serenely.

How inopportune a time for her overtired mind to cruelly insert mental imagery of touching, kissing the creature who had been torturing her for the last few days...

She was too tired to stop it from entering her mind, and she felt as though she loathed Ashwood all the more for it.

"Well, if you're certain that he can handle the cold..." Calliope paused, filling a tiny pitcher with cream and pulling her cut-glass sugar bowl out of the cabinet.

Still turned away from Netta, she asked, "I take it that you've been dealing with those human gentlemen callers that seem to find Witches irresistible?"

Netta wanted to call the woman out on her bullshit. Calliope was under the distinct impression that there did not exist a human who was not obtuse enough to sense magic, somehow, and not a man who was not in some way drawn to it.

Netta knew, however, that in spite of how eccentric Calliope seemed now as an older woman, she had seen pictures of the woman in a much younger body. She knew that the Witch's beauty had been able to rival even her older sister, Sia, in her own heyday. Magic, it was said, was so much stronger only a century ago, and it was no large thing to regulate age and physique for a Witch, as much as immortality had once been a sure thing.

She was certain that if the woman had had a masse of human gentlemen callers, that it simply was because she looked like Betty Paige with a cloud of blond hair.

She didn't say this, however, blurting out, realizing at the last moment that she had forgotten someone, "Uh, I am seeing someone - he's out in the car right now, actually. His name's Wallace."

Ash laughed, a cruel-sound. "Not for long, and no, he is not."

Unable to see or hear the Monster, Calliope said, "Well, while I am glad that you brought some bed warmth along with you, I suppose that it's good that you came in here alone. You'll probably want to send young and pretty back to the city where he belongs. I know you have that whole sharing the love thing solidly in your taboos." She waved at Netta loosely.

Calliope handed her her tea, and Netta wrapped her cold hands around the mug. She looked up into Calliope's eyes, watched her as she settled in the chair opposite hers. She gave the older woman a trepidatious smile that felt like it was going to fall off of her face at any moment.

"Any particular reason that you seem to be suggesting I go and consummate with a Monster? I mean, that is what you are getting to, right?"

The sick pit in the center of Netta's stomach felt like it was about to swallow her at any moment.

Calliope took her reading glasses from off of the sharp edge of her nose to let her glasses hang off of the chain around her neck. She stared deeply into Netta's eyes.

"Have you gone up to the Homestead yet?"

Netta was annoyed, deeply, with the woman's willful rounding off of the important aspects of conversation. "No."

Calliope motioned loosely in the air for a moment, looking away, perhaps hunting for a good word to use before she dropped her hand.

"Netta, everyone's fallen off of the radar. You're the only one that I could account for after about a month of doing everything that I have in my wheelhouse to find - someone. Anyone. It's as though a fog is covering their whereabouts and I can't see through it."

Calliope stared blindly forward, a forlorn expression on her face before she turned to look at Netta. "My dear," she said, clearly steeling herself for what she needed to say next. "I do believe that your Sisters are in some terrible sort of danger and they need help. You need to find them and discover the cause of what has been happening. I believe that while this may seem... wild and unusual, this has all of the makings to, finally, be your Witch's Journey."