ALL ADS FEATURED IN THIS WORK ARE NOT THE CHOICE OF THE CREATOR AND HAVE BEEN ADDED IN WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT, IN SPITE OF WHATEVER THE ADS MAY SAY.

Netta stared at the box on the worn welcome mat, her tired mind seeming to be trying to catch up to the realization of what she was seeing.

For a moment, she wondered if it was intended for her. After all, she lived with a roommate.

And who would have anything to leave for her?

Still, Netta bent awkwardly in her huge, thick snow coat, taking a glove off and picking the box up. She turned it this way and that in her hand, examining it, then paused, her hand hovering over the box's top.

Netta took in a breath, her gaze jittering over the flat, white surface. When she exhaled, she more felt her hand moving than was aware of it, tipping back the top.

Inside of the box sat a business card that was only a few measures smaller than the walls of the box that it rested in. Netta took hold of the card from out of its box, staring at the embossed, raised letters on its front.

Holding the cracked, worn thing in her hand for a moment, she quickly turned it into her closed fist, shoving it into her coat's pocket.

No.

She glanced down at the opened collar of her coat, saw the curling, worn lapels of her uniform's polo shirt as they poked out. She zipped the front of her coat up in preparation for the cold that would be waiting for her outside and affixed her scarf around her neck.

Down Netta went, the clodding weight of her snow boots sending rumbling with each blow of her feet on the stairs. Outside of the dilapidated building, Netta, who had thought that she was prepared for the blustering, freezing snow to wait for her, was nevertheless taken off guard by what she walked out on.

Netta flinched as she felt the wind as it managed to blast through the thick layers of her scarf. Holding her hand over her face, Netta looked around her, astonished by the unbridled power of the wind that morning.

How could it be early October?

That question was punctuated by the sight of the snow drifts, as high as her knees in some spots. Her gaze was more drawn, however, to the sparse groove of a trail that had been cut into the snow by those who had walked on the side walk.

With a moan, Netta leaped into the snow from the top step, wincing as she felt the cold wrapping around her legs. She trudged through the snow for some more time before she found her hand fishing in her pocket like an unintentional tic. Her fingers ran over the edges of the card like a partially healed scab, longing to yank, pull loose.

She gave into the urge, as she passed by a street light that gave a sickly yellow glow amidst the snow. Pulling it out, she examined its face one more before she turned it over, compelled for some reason to look on its back.

As soon as she saw the hurried cursive on its back, she shoved the card back into her pocket.

Irritated, Netta pulled her phone loose from her other pocket. She tried to distract herself, looking through an old couple of messages. She only had a few moments to do so, as the battery died.

Cursing, Netta was about to shove the phone back into her pocket, then she stared at the black, reflective surface of the screen. In the small square of the glass, she saw the vague shape of her face. As she passed another street sign, she could see for a moment, the haggard, tired expression on it.

With her head mostly obscured by the hood that covered, she had to imagine the wrinkles, the bags under her eyes and, of course, those light freckles that seemed to have been sprayed across the pale skin of her upper cheeks and nose. What was it that her Father had called them once?

Her war paint.

Some women did not look their ages. Even some human - mortal - women aged so gracefully that it seemed as though they changed in subtle ways. Even though Netta had only, for the past decade, allowed her body to age so that she appeared to be in her thirties, she looked every bit to be that old.

Goddess, but I look far older, even, than my mother did when she died.

Most women like her - Witches - usually stayed in their early twenties, but some preferred even to stay so that they looked eighteen for most of their long, long lives.

Thinking of her family brought her mind, unerringly, back to the card.

Sighing, Netta gave into temptation and pulled the card loose from her pocket once more. She glanced at its front and read the name of the business, hardly able to believe she was seeing it again after just over a decade.

Medium Cafe and Tarot Emporium

The card's paper looked wrinkled even before she had kept it clenched in her fist - how old was it?

Hesitating, Netta slowly turned the card over in her hand, reading the message on the back.

Come back home. The Coven needs your help.

For one moment, before she could shove it away, she found herself longing for what she could never have.

Cutting that feeling off abruptly, Netta shoved that piece of paper into the oversized pocket of her coat. She walked to the subway's entrance. For a moment, Netta paused, taken in a way that she had not for a long time by the way that the pit reminded her of the entrance into the underworld.

Once she got into the back car, Netta found a seat - one of two that sat next to each other.

In spite of her exhaustion, Netta found her attention brought almost exactly across from her.

Somehow - like how no one had taken the seat to the right of Netta - no one was standing in Netta's line of sight between her and the girl.

The girl, who did not look all that far away from being post-Kindergarten, sat on the ground before who Netta assumed was her mother. She seemed preoccupied with a Barbie and a Ken doll in breezy summer clothes. She tottered them on their long legs in a play trance.

Given few minutes, the woman found that the familiar sound of the subway had the effect of rocking her into a comforting haze.

Netta laid her head back against the window, her eyelids fluttering shut. Everyone else on the subway seemed to be similarly exhausted - a side effect of the endless snow.

It was during these morning shifts that she rode the line. During almost every one these rides, Netta wished then that she could doze off amongst the other passengers.

She had long since resigned herself to the fact that she could never be able to rest around other people in such close proximity. Their very presences made it impossible for her to feel well in amidst the cloistering of their bodies. She had once heard it said that Humans, the ones that did not possess some sort of a spiritual antennae into what little existed of magic, unintentionally siphoned off the magic that was now slowly being eaten away within Netta's body. Living here was surely, literally, killing her.

And Monsters were once supposed to be the greatest enemies of Witch-kind.

It was so futile to sleep that Netta considered bringing a book or a crossword. If not for the headaches and slowly growing fever she experienced by just being in such close proximity to so many Humans, Netta might have.

Today she wished that she had done just that this morning. Anything except thinking about that card and its impossible request.

Netta's head loosely lolled and she began to really focus on feeling the rhythmic movement of the train. Netta began to feel the sickness starting, low, in her stomach, where it would surely spread if she remained in the car for very much longer. She had vomited on more than one occasion on the train, and once had had some man patting her on the back, murmuring something to her about it "getting easier" to deal with chemo down the line. She had wondered since that day, how the kindly older gentleman would have reacted if she had told him that it was his presence - touching - that made her feel so, violently, ill.

Glancing to her right, she saw, reflected in the darkened window glass, her face reflected back at her.

She stared into her own green eyes - ones that she had borrowed from her mother. She wished that she could find answers in them, some comfort. She tilted her head up, then down, watching the way that that awful jowl that she had been growing in the last two years showed that it was still there, like it was her only friend.

What had he ever seen in her?

Angry, Netta jabbed her middle finger up, gesturing to the haggard face in the darkened glass. You fucking hundred year old bitch. Quit dreaming about things that could never be.

Shutting her eyes and turning away, Netta closed her eyes and sank into her seat. She wished that she could drink coffee to wake up, but that, too, wasn't a possibility.

Side effects, side effects. I'm not supposed to be here, and if I used magic, I would not need fucking coffee.

Most Witches did something about their aging. Then again, there were not many Witches who lived in a human metropolis.

She bit back a yawn.

It was some time after the Orchard Station people got on approximately five minutes later that Netta was aware of the small voice. At first, the murmur of the inside of the compartment was so that she could not focus on it. As it continued, she found herself tuning into it.

"-but I don't know."

For a moment, through the sound of the train rushing through its labyrinthine system of tunnels, Netta could clearly hear the sound of the voice.

It was some time later that she recognized it as the sound of a young child's voice, a girl's.

It didn't even rouse her from her attempt at sickened slumber, until she heard the girl speak again.

"You're so funny!" She giggled, a high pitched sound.

Netta looked up. About ten feet away, the little girl at her sitting mother's feet seemed to be speaking to someone. It would have been easy to assume that the girl was speaking to her mother.

The longer Netta looked at the pair, the more obvious it became to her that the mother was dead asleep.

The rest of the innocent and the truly fatigued.

The girl continued her one sided conversation, her legs pulled up in front of her as she seemed to have difficulty moving in her metallic rose-colored wintercoat. She had sat her dolls down next to her, face down on the off-white linoleum. She giggled.

"We don't get to see much nature - Momma takes me to a park when the weather's nice..." the girl trailed off, busying herself with trying to tie her shoelaces.

A quick look around would have confirmed what Netta already knew. None of the other passengers in the car cared in the least about a little girl playing make believe with an imaginary friend.

As long in the city as Netta had spent, she should have gotten over her particular attention to the antics of little girls playing with imaginary friends. Still, her memories of the old days taught her things that none of these people could ever conceive of.

For some little girls, an imaginary friend meant something different than it did for boys. For most little girls, for that matter. For some special girls, their imaginary friends were all too real. And dangerous.

The girl continued to speak merrily to her, in all probability, innocuous imaginary friend.

As Netta closed her eyes once more, she half-listened to the line of one sided conversation, could not make herself ignore it.

"Think I get the good pony toys for Christmas? ...teacher said that the weather said that this will be the worst winter in decades an' we need to show up as often as we can. School's gonna get canceled all winter, maybe?"

The conversation droned on in a squeaky little voice, and Netta found herself unable to not imagine an imaginary friend answering her back.

"...do my friends wanna go to the zoo to see the lions?"

Well, no, the zoo's closed. It's far too cold for the animals to be out.

Netta felt a smile wanting to tug at her lips. It was funny, but thinking about the voice answering her back actually reminded her of someone's that she had once known. She could not, with her sleepy mind, think of who, exactly, she was imagining.

But there it was - a voice prone to sarcasm, softly burring and masculine. Familiar.

"I wanna play tag."

Not a good idea in here, it'll make you mother and everyone else angry. Hey, how about you do me a favor instead - can you go talk to that lady over there? The one who's trying to pretend to be asleep?

Netta's eyes fluttered open in shock, before she closed her eyes, slamming them shut.

Her breathing sped up. She started to recall, then, whose voice she had ascribed that side of the conversation to. Her heart beat in her chest.

"That lady?"

You got it.

"But - momma'll be mad. She said no talkin' to strangers..."

Netta's breathing sped up. She tried to unlock her mental image of someone that she knew all too well as being the voice who picked up the other side of the conversation.

Oh, we'll be quick. I just need to talk to an old friend. We haven't spoken in a decade.

"What's a decode?"

Please help me speak to my friend.

Netta wrapped an arm over herself and tried her best to look as though she were sleeping. Concentrating, she tried to ignore whatever they were saying.

It came in her mind, unwanted, the whispered remnants of dreams. Ones that she could not recall, no matter how hard she tried. It was as though they were covered in writhing layers of gossamer, obscuring.

She tried to stop herself from recalling a face that belonged to that voice. A strong - unhandsome - face that she had once dreamt of running a hand along the harsh planes and jutting valleys of.

"Hey lady," Netta suddenly heard no more than a foot away from her. The girl repeated herself, then sounded as though she were shifting, uncomfortable, in her heavy coat. "She's not awake..." She murmured.

Trust me, she thinks that she's pulling a fast on you. Wake Netta up.

"Hey Netta!"

For a moment, Netta weighed the consequences of pretending to be deeply asleep or to run. She eventually decided to open her eyes. She felt as though she was submerged in a nightmare.

"What - what do you want?" Netta asked cautiously, trying to ignore the look she was getting from some of her fellow passengers.

The girl wrinkled her eyebrows. Close up, Neith could see how clean - naïve - her face was. "I dunno. My friend says he wants to talk to you. Hey, Ash-" She paused, turning to look back. She turned around then, suddenly uneasy. "Ash! Where'd you gooo?"

It was with this that brought the little girl's mother awake. She jolted in her seat, then leaped up, retrieving her daughter without acknowledging Netta.

Not that Netta noticed. She stared forward for some time, shaking. The feel of the arm falling, almost casually, over her shoulders made her leap out of her skin.

And then Its rough voice murmured, lushly, against her ear. "You rang? And here I was, starting to believe that you never would miss me."

Ash chuckled, and it was like ice had been dropped in her blood.