"Miss... Oleander?"  The teller behind the bank's counter had pronounced Netta's last name as though she were speaking in a foreign language.

Netta shifted her weight to one foot, then back onto her other foot. "Yes?"

"I'm afraid that I have to tell you that we do not have any records of any account of yours..."

Netta pushed her card across the counter front and was all too happy to give the woman a large and taunting grin.  "Try again by giving this a swipe. My inheritance is most certainly there."

The teller snatched her card and gave it a swipe through her card reader. There came a long pause after some quick typing on her computer.

The older woman - the woman's supervisor - hovering behind the teller, jerked, a look of surprise on her face. She stared at the teller's screen, then, slowly, looked at Netta.

They walked out of the bank, with Netta feeling as though she could finally breathe in the fresh air outside of the building.

Ash glanced over at her.  "You know they're all thinking that either this is the down payment for some sort of a consensual sex slave agreement or you're cashing out after your old geezer of a husband died of a rather unfortunate accident, aren't you?"

Netta said nothing as they walked to the car, unable to think of what to say back to the Monster. As she had started the engine in the vehicle, finally, she said, "One would have to wonder which of those options is the more morally repugnant one, knowing your nature."

Ash laughed.

"-Damn weather, that fucking bitch at the bank - fuck everything, fuck me, I'm going to miss the plane." Netta slammed her forehead down against the increasingly familiar material of the steering wheel cover.

Ash's dry voice broke through the buzzing anger in Netta's head. "For a woman that could make that airport stop in time to make sure that you get there with time to spare, you sure do seem as though you're bound by the laws of mortals."

When Netta lifted her head to look at her companion, she found the Monster leaned back in Its seat, glancing at her from underneath Its aviators.  She sat back up in her seat, looking away from the painfully attractive false Male. "Yeah, and I would rather I not give some humans a reason to think that magic exists, thanks, Ash."

"Hey, no problem. Ignore some good advice."

How could this traffic possibly be real?

Ash continued, saying, "More Witch bullshit." Ash snorted. "You could have had the humans eating out of your hands, back before they drove out so much of the magic in the world. Humanity is bullshit, and the ones that were almost killed along with the Werewolves should have not martyred themselves in the hopes that the Humans would forget about them. Co-existence is a pipe dream if there ever was one."

"Well, Destroyer, not everyone wants to hear the lamentations of their women as lullabies. For the most part, Humans are - they're alright. Just not right now. With all of them in front of me on the road - holy shit, what is everyone doing out right now, anyway?" Netta glanced up at the ceaseless lines of vehicles on the road ahead, wondered if it could be an optical illusion.

"Some football event, I think. Sports. I don't know. Typical Human bullshit." Ash leaned back deeply in Its seat and gave Netta a knowing look. "You've got a choice here - stay here, deadlocked, or we can make for the airport and do it in, oh, three minutes."

The urge to tell Ash to keep Its attempts at corrupting her to Itself stuck in her throat.  Netta considered being stuck behind all of these unmoving cars.

Finally, Netta clicked her tongue. "No, I couldn't use magic. Too visible, and-"

"And?"

"And they're going to charge me for this car. Oh, also, magic like that would require the use of your help, there's the small matter of that."

Ash laughed harshly, and to her eternal shame, it was like electric through Netta's veins. Its voice, husked from laughter, rubbed, grated. "Give me a break - is the chance that I would somehow manage to overpower you, take control of you after just one measly little piece of heaven worth living like this?"  The Monster removed Its glasses, the purple of Its eyes for a moment betraying a deeper, more familiar color beneath the surface as It looked at her. "Wake up call: there's a reason that Witches do not live in Human metropolis'. And why they covet a Familiar."

Netta felt a rush of recognition at his words and the deep, blood-rose color that seemed to bloom around the irises of Its eyes.

She felt an emotion that Netta had not allowed herself to feel in a long while. It was a rush, heady and consuming.  And, oh, how she wanted to spring, to feel flight as it tickled her to her core. It overcame her in an instant; the urge to experience what no Human could, ever.

Wordlessly, Netta turned around and began to dig in the back seat for her bags.

Ash followed her lead without a word, grabbing two of her bags and following her out of the vehicle. After the Monster had rejoined her in front of her car, Netta turned to look at Ash for a moment.   Still, she hesitated.

It was bad enough, she figured, that these people in their cars could see floating bags following the woman trudging up the road in the snow.

What harm could it do to take to some unnatural speed?

As she was whisking along through the line of cars, running with the wind whistling along with her, she could hear Ash.  "I said fly - fly -"

Settling into her seat, Netta tried to ignore about the hand that passed by her ass as she sat down.

She felt - well, more than a little - exasperated with herself.  Could it be that her attitude towards Ashwood was softening after It had provided the comfort of a companion during the nightmare experience that was the plane ride?

Well, if she had any shame over it, it began in true with the fact that she had bought two plane tickets in First Class next to each other. She had been weak after using what little magic she had, to rush to the airport. At least, that was the excuse she had told herself.

Judging by the grin on Ash's face as she paid for the damned things, It knew her true intention, in spite of what feeble excuse she had made up.

How could I have gone from wanting to banish It to needing It, if only to save my sanity from having to interact with my family again?

Netta didn't know the answer, but she did know that she could not bear to think of what the Chronicle had said.  Anything - any distraction - was worth focusing on, as opposed to the thought that something foul had happened to her Coven. 

Netta leaned back in her seat and swore that she could feel her eyes swimming in her head. Four hours into this and it never seemed to get better.  

She leaned forward and took a long drink out of her bottled water. Netta winced in pain as she felt the burning down her throat, a sign of her five trips to the restroom.   

It seemed as though her body was intent in its attempt to vomit out any of the remaining contents of her stomach.  As she leaned back and gasped like a thirsty fish, she spared a moment of relief at the fact that she had the means to travel first class. 

Ash had been busy reading a paperback that It had picked up in the airport - stolen - then closed the book in Its lap. The Monster gave Netta a grave look.  "You need to knock yourself out. You haven't slept a bit and the more you stay awake, the more you vomit up that awful diet of Tasty Kakes and cherry slurpee that you subsisted on on the road."

Netta made a mental note to tell Ash later that she tried to eat carrots as well and then to tell the Monster to fuck off.  As soon as she thought it, Netta immediately forgot what she intended to say, her eyes stuttering closed.

She reclined in her seat and croaked out, "We're just two hours from the airport now."

"All the more reason why you should get some sleep while you can get it."

Netta rolled her eyes and nearly pressed her head to the wall of the plane. She jerked away when she was reminded that she was close to the wall of a flying metal machine. She settled for shutting her eyes, sitting stock up in her seat.

She wished that she could do as Ash said, that she could trust that she would be safe in this contraption. As it stood, all that she could do was try to take her mind off of the ordeal.

"You know," she could hear Ash's voice as she sank into sleep. "you never had any aversions to flying with me, when it wasn't in some contraption for Humans. I remember a time when you once used to wrap your arms around the back of my neck and let me carry you, high above the clouds..."  In spite of everything, Its voice seemed to be as soft as gossamer, warm.

Netta seemed to have dropped into a fatigued fugue and was only aware that the plane had finally landed when she felt herself being lifted solidly out of her seat.  Startled awake, Netta struggled feebly against Ash.

The Monster whispered, "Easy. I'm just lifting you up."

She stopped struggling, having no further store of energy to draw from in order to fight It.  When, finally, Ash sat her back down, she looked around, desperate to see if someone had seen her levitate.

The walk through the airport was a haze - she was surely suffering from sleep inertia. Somewhere during the baggage claim, Netta drifted off into a sickly sleep while waiting. She was fully awoken when she felt the bitter cold outside slap her in the face, moaning.

"Good night and welcome to Paris," Ash murmured.

Tired and bordering on delirious, Netta said, "Aren't you cold or tired, yourself?"

The Monster laughed. "Aren't you forgetting something about me having no real body?"

"Your body seems real enough to me," Netta said unthinkingly.

Ash didn't answer her.

Netta did not realize that she was not holding her bags and that Ash must have been carrying them - making her bags look as though they were levitating next to her in the cold storm outside - until she was halfway to the hotel that she had made reservations at.

In the high-end hotel, Netta found her French, once expressive and well-studied, had grown rusty from a great deal of misuse and was not aided in the least by her exhaustion. Nevertheless, she got the impression that even if it was through grunts and gestures, she secured her room with relatively little fuss.

The bellboy wheeled her luggage after her, saving her from being stared at if her luggage followed her.

They went up an elevator with the bell boy in absolute silence. When she reached the room, Ash gave the door a good kick to open it after the bellboy had slid the key card in. It gave the bellboy a start at the sudden, unexplained movement as he had, thankfully, been looking away when Ash had opened the door.

Inside the room, Netta allowed her eyes to flutter open to behold her room.  It was awful large - her gut dropped as she wondered, automatically, how much this place would cost. 

How long am I going to have to work to pay off the cost of this room?

In her delirium, it took her a shockingly long period of time before she recalled where she had gotten the money to pay for this room from.  She could hardly take many steps in her old apartment. The reverberation in this room was cathedral-like as she staggered through it.

The bellboy asked something, and Netta had to murmur to him that she needed to sit.

She somehow managed to fish some order of bills out of her pocket. Judging by the wide eyes of the bellboy, she had handed him some sum of money that was well and beyond the norm, even for a place like this.

She could not, for the life of her, summon the energy to care if she was making herself conspicuous. With an aching everything and a fatigue that felt as though it were radiating through her entire core, the urge to sleep descended on Netta.

Her wake up came when she could feel a hand gently pressing against her right cheek. Groaning, Netta lifted her head and glanced around her. 

The first thing that was obvious was that she was in a massive, beautiful bed. Which she was sharing with a rather scantily clad Monster.

Ash laid so that It was facing her, staring at her with rapt attention on Its stomach. When she looked up to his face, It smiled at her.  "Did you sleep well, Lovely?" The Monster asked in an intimate murmur. There, again, was that distracting, burring roughness to Its voice. The one that did not match Its boyish features.

Netta pushed herself up and tried to wobble onto the floor.   She narrowly managed to stop herself from falling off of the bed when Ash's hand snaked out to grab ahold of her, righting her swaying so that she fell face first back into the bed.

"Oh, this attitude won't do so close to breakfast time. No little revolting revolts before you've had your coffee and protein."

Netta froze as she felt Its hand splay out and away from where It had grabbed a hold of her arm to steady her. T he Monster's hand crept down her shoulder to touch her neck, Its fingers moving in soft circles.

Turning to look at Ash's face, she saw Its wicked smile.

"What did you do to me while I slept?" Netta asked, hearing the rasping hoarseness in her voice as she spoke.

Ash managed to look genuinely hurt. "I take extreme prejudice to the fact that you think that I would take bodily advantage of you while you sleep. I do not, however, deny the fact that I projected a lot of rather intimate things between us while you slept." It shrugged.

The moment that the Monster mentioned it, the remnants of those sexual emotions came to her in full force. Netta cried out and struggled backward out of bed.

"You - you took advantage of me, while I was too tired to block off your assault on me while I'm asleep."

Ash rolled onto Its back, reclining slightly as It performed a long, relaxed stretch.  Sighing, It said, "True, it was forward of me to give you a good look at the emotions that I've had brewing for seventy years. But, Netta, seventy years is a lot of time for anyone to salivate over the idea of the juiciest fruits that Eden has to offer, dangling just beyond your reach. But, oh, for a wretched Monster, only being able to dream of the object of my sole desire is enough to drive me to, well," the Monster laughed heartily. "madness. I don't think that we've had a good chance to air my grievance with you out, so far, in many a year. It goes like this - you, Witch, need power to do any of your own magic. Me, evil little creature, capable of amplifying your powers," It threw Its arms out dramatically, Its voice rising to a cry. "Tenfold! Thousandfold! Now, really," the Monster said, cocking Its head to the side with an all too innocent smile on Its lips. "we should be able to make this work."

Netta, standing on the other side of the bed, clenched a handful of the blanket.  "You're forgetting the most important aspect here."

"And what would that be?"

"Mainly, how you're wanting me to trust you so that you can take control of me."

Possession.

The thought of it came to Netta then, the drooling, tormented souls whose consciousnesses were either so fully driven out - or somehow worse, bonded to their tormentors - that they were mindless, murderous husks.

Still, that could only come if you supped on Its magic more than you ought to, some needy, long-ignored voice whispered from inside of Netta.

And to be with a Monster - it was different than it was to be with a man - a Human man. For Witches, it was oftentimes the norm to keep a Human husband, and to consummate a tryst with their Familiar only a few times for power.

June Cleaver by day, Wicked Witch of the East or West when they needed power. One mate for a short time, another in stolen, nightmarish trysts.

Still, there were those Witches of which she had heard of. Ones who claimed to find intimate satiation with their Familiars.

But that was an urban legend.

And, yet...  There had been a time in which Netta had clung to those stories, as though the agony she had withstood as a child had been a flood that threatened to drown her.

Ash did not have to be reason enough to leave her old life behind, fully. To never see Wallace again.

She shook her head fiercely, dislodging that thought.  Being with a Monster was fine - but Ash was not a normal Monster...

The Monster is question sat up, Its elbows resting on Its kneecaps. "Or I could be willing to offer you a partnership that can prove lucrative to the both of us."

"Oh yeah? And what would you get out of our little arrangement, besides some titillation with some old maid - oh, and the small matter of being able to take control over me?"

Ash tutted at her. "I'm disappointed in you for forgetting the most important consideration. Lovely, how could you have forgotten the love between us? The trust?"

Netta laughed then, a huge belly laugh. She regretted the laugh immediately, feeling the answering pain of the muscles in her abdomen. She groaned. "I'm going to the bathroom to see if I need to evacuate one of my food holes and I'll be back with a status update while you get dressed so that I can get something to eat."

Ash was up, grasping her arm.  Turning, Netta saw how Its brow creased, revealing for a moment that the personality in that form was far older than the body the Monster had taken.  "If you did not want me, Netta, why didn't you tell your Calliope that you needed help to be rid of me?"

Netta stopped, for a moment surprised by Its question.  It was horrible, she realized, that it was him - It - that had to bring that up.

The easy answer was that she had been busy, was confused, frightened by the disappearance of her Sisters -

By everything.

The discomforting, secret feeling that she could not ever own up to - that since Ash had shown back up, she had, finally, someone to talk to, with Wallace, gone - burned inside of her like a secret sin.

Finally, she shook her head, then looking up into those accusing eyes, Netta said, "Calliope cannot help me with you. Only one of my Sisters is strong enough to help me be rid of you for some time." She jerked out of Its grasp, walking to the bathroom.

As she closed the door, she could not help but feel those intense, deep eyes as they showed, fully, their knowledge of her lies.

In the bathroom, she leaned towards the mirror and saw in her face a shaking, pale countenance staring back at her.  It was the face of a person in the depths of withdrawal - or, more than ever, regretting a promise that a teen girl foolishly made to a Monster with no idea of the repercussions of it.

Or the depraved depths of sexual need that she would one day suffer from.