Back at the motel but in a different room, Netta flopped face first on the bed almost as soon as she had entered it. After a preliminary moment she spent relaxing, she was shocked to realize that the warmth that she had felt all over her body was due to the Monster that had pressed himself to her.

Gasping, Netta struggled to extricate herself from Ash's grasp, only to find his arms clamping around her tightly in response.

"Ash-" Her words were muffled against the thick fabric of the comforter and she struggled to twist her head away from it.

Ash pressed closer, curling around her more tightly with his left arm reaching over to wrap around her midsection. "I'm not doing anything right now, Netta. Just holding you - see?" The muffled sound of his voice, pressed against the fabric of her shirt, sounded soft, intimate.

Netta made a weak attempt at pushing the Monster. When it did not work, she sighed and grew slack. "Why're you doing this?"

Ash leaned forward and seemed to breathe in deeply against her hair. The sensation nearly stopped Netta's heart. She could smell him all around her, Ash's body was a truly shocking generator of heat.

She cowered back against his frame, and found pleasure in imagining his handsome face in the dark. She allowed herself to hold onto that image, too weak to deny herself that pleasure.

Finally, she managed to repeat her earlier question. "Why are you doing this?"

Ash, running his hand up and down her arm in the dark of the stale-smelling room, softly said, "You looked like you needed some companionship. You always look so lonely when you sleep."

Netta felt a blush beginning at her face and spreading through her whole body. "I - I appreciate your kind thoughts, Ash, but - d'ya think that you can let me get back to sleep?"

Ash paused for a moment before he rose on his elbow to look down on her. She managed to turn, rolling over halfway to look up at him. When he spoke, Ash's breath, those potent pheromones, wafted over her. "As opposed to what?" He laughed. "I don't lie, remember? I just want to hold you, like a man would his wife."

Netta felt a shiver run through her body at his words. Unbidden, her mind brought the image of Ash, not as a Monster, but a man.

A man who wanted her as a wife.

Netta squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to push - it - all of it - away for the moment. She thought of the reality of their situation, forced herself to recall it clearly. She believed, deeply, that all someone like Ash would want with someone like her was a partnership. A chance to exert control, power.

The more she thought of it, in fact, the more aware she became of how stupid she was being. That she could give into the farce of the idea that he was made of flesh. A human man.

Still, she bit her lip and allowed herself to sink into the bed, his warmth enveloping her, his voice a lulling wind in a forest. In her mind, she heard him speak very plainly to her unconscious self, so that even falling into sleep he managed to speak to her without disrupting her sleep.

I've always been there for you.

Yes, she wanted to tell him back, even as she drifted asleep. like a curse. Or a disease.

She was back at the Homestead, but when Netta turned, she realized, with a sickening jolt, that she was not alone.

A loose-fitting sweater hung off of the gawky preteenager's body and her hair was put into two plaits that fell down her back. It did not take Netta long at all before she looked up and realized that she was not looking into a mirror, but was rather looking at herself.

She was gazing at a much younger version of herself that coincided with how the rest of the house looked.

Backing away from the girl in time to let her run through Netta as if she were a ghost, Netta watched as the younger version of herself walked across room to pull a book out of a box.

She watched as the girl - herself - sat down on her bed and began to read from it. When the door to the room burst open to reveal a young girl, Netta realized, with a sick twist in her stomach, where it was that she knew this from.

Sure enough, Beryl - even back then carrying an unhealthy obsession with the trappings of girlhood - rushed in.

"Come on now, Nettles - Mother wants to speak with us. You'd better hope that you developed something worth showing Mother, before she sends you to live like a Human." Her face looked grotesque, heavily painted in thick, colorful make-up,her baby-toothed smile sharp.

Netta dropped her book as though she were embarrassed of being caught reading it. That was a very real possibility, given past incidents that involved her being shamed for her eccentric habits. When she stood up, the girl was caught by Beryl in a harsh grasp as she pulled her out of the room with no small amount of force.

Sighing, Netta followed this out of the room, dreading already what was sure to come. Sure enough, as soon as she left the room, she heard the sound of an all-too familiar voice calling out downstairs.

"What have you done?"

Netta cringed, feeling the woman's words as though they had burned through her bones. She walked slowly to the railing separating the second floor from the lower and looked down.

Almost directly beneath the railing, Netta watched as the version of herself that she had just seen became surrounded by what she remembered, sickly, to be all of the Witches of the Coven.

Her mother was impossible to miss in the circling of teenagers. She stood, her arms crossed over her dress with a glass of red wine in her right hand. The closer that she looked at the woman, the more that the bulk of the memory of her mother returned to Netta. Possessing dark, curly hair and with intense eyes that were always circled with make-up that was applied carefully every morning, afternoon and evening the old way, even with the possibility of magic to apply it, Hera was meticulous.

The only thing that Netta felt that she had ever shared with the woman was the shape of her face.

They were waiting for her to answer.

Netta closed her eyes and leaned forward, her hands closing over the wood of the railing.

Just tell them what she wants to hear.

Instead, Netta heard herself, in a shaking voice, say, "I - I didn't know that I was doing anything wrong. All I was doing was - was trying to fit in with the Humans - the children -"

A bark of laughter, followed by a voice that Netta remembered as belong to Sia. "You know better than to try to mesh with Humans. You don't even make a convincing one, why do you even try?"

The room grew silent again as everyone waited for Hera to speak, as was the custom.

True to form, Hera gestured grandiosely with the hand that held her glass of wine. Smiling with a warmth that was opposite to the cruelty of her words, she said, "The teacher told me that your little... "friend" has been frightening the other children - poltergeist behavior - and that you worry them with your - oh, how did that simpleton put it? - "uppity attitude". Tsk, tsk, didn't I tell you once, If I haven't already told you a thousand times, that you have no place acting anything out of the norm, especially with your low level of potential?"

When Netta didn't answer her, Hera stepped forward and swept her middle child's chin in the cradle of her palm.

"You told me before that this character of yours was some imagined creation of yours. Now, you wouldn't happen to be lying to me, would you?" Netta watched, with a growing feeling of horror as she watched a memory, as real as though she truly were living it anew.

She closed her eyes and wondered why she was here - why only the cruel dreams seemed to be the ones that she was cognizant of.

When, finally, she managed to open her eyes, she saw that Hera was staring at the pre-teenaged version of herselfl, flanked and surrounded by the others girls of the Coven.

Abruptly, she turned around, throwing her hand off of her daughter's chin. Sighing as though in tiredness, she beckoned for a nervous-looking Calliope. Hera was begining to walk away when she threw over her shoulder, "Ground your Sister, girls."

Netta watched as it happened from the corner. She wondered what it would feel like to break through the girls who carried out her mother's orders, pull herself out of that box.

Save her from what was to ensue.

Instead, she stood by and clutched her arm in a grip that felt as though it could break her arm.

Once the girls had finished with their work and trudged upstairs, Netta looked back in time to see the pre-teenaged black-haired boy that she knew all too well, crouching over the freshly laid dirt that the box had been buried beneath.

Or, she should more properly think of him, the Monster who took the form of a boy.

Ashwood spoke in a low, almost whispering voice. "Would you like me to take you out of this?" He paused, then said, "I do not understand why you allow this when I can simply stop them." He paused again, his oddly expressionless face betraying little, but his voice had an annoyed, even angry note to it. "I want you out of this prison. This undignified torture is an affront to me, Neith." His voice was a rasping middle ground between a boyhood that never was and a teenaged boy's deepening bass.

He paused for a moment, then snapped out, "I can do that, too. I can make it so that they never even knew that you had left the box, until She lets them dig you back up." The boy's deep red eyes were visible in the dark room, as he looked up for a moment.

Netta jumped a little, her heart speeding up a notch as she wondered, crazily, if it were possible that he saw her there.

The moment passed when he looked back down, continued to speak. "They think that they own you, are better than you. They're worms to you, with me by your side. Allow me to prove them wrong. Please." There was a silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity.

He squeezed his eyes shut, slamming his tightened fists onto the ground. "Very well. If you mean to debase yourself, then I will insist that you use me as a way of spending your time trapped like this in a more pleasant place."

Netta felt the wave of magic hit her like a change in atmosphere of the room.

Her skin prickled underneath her clothes. When Netta thought that she could feel her hair blowing in a wind that should not have been there, she glanced, watching as her hair stood almost clear off of her shoulders to float, ghostly, like a phantasmal cloak.

She shut her eyes. When she opened them, Netta was standing in a wood that she did not recognize at first.

When Netta glanced up, she saw the heavy arms of the ancient trees as they crossed over one another above, almost in an embrace.

When she looked around. Netta was struck by the fact that even in her memory, she could tell that it was nearing fall in her dream. Here, it was surely in the end of spring.

After she allowed her lungs to fill with the air of the place, through a few trees, Netta could see two small shapes standing next to each other in the thicker part of the wood ahead.

She walked up behind them cautiously for a moment before she realized that they could not possibly hear her. After that realization, she walked hurriedly in the hope that she could catch their conversation. As Netta approached, she heard her younger self speaking, breathlessly, to her best friend.

"Ash, where are we?"

Maybe it was Netta's imagination, but she thought that Ash stood a little taller from where she watched them from close behind.

"To me, this is my birth home. I was born -" he pointed ahead, to what looked like a vigorous-looking tree that stood with its roots growing thick above the line of the ground around it. "where that tree grows now."

Her younger self gasped. Netta closed her eyes and found that she had finally gotten a clear grasp on this memory. It was so clear in her mind, then.

She found herself mouthing the words of both her and Ash, sometimes speaking before they did.

"This is your homeland?"

Ash nodded - Netta could see him doing it in her mind, recalled the way that the sun had struck his dark hair to make it look as though it were alight with honey. "The very heart of what was once called the Godswoods. I was born here, it's where I spent my youth." He paused and looked around before adding, "A lot has changed since then."

Her younger self paused. Netta recalled easily her struggle with trying to understand Ash as she had never been taught to. A Monster's feelings was as alien a concept to a Witch as the thought of an insect's thoughts and dreams.

Finally, her younger self declared, "Your home - it's beautiful, Ash. Thank you for sharing this with me."

Ash laughed, warmth infecting the heavy sound. "Wait - you haven't even seen the best part yet."

He pulled her along past the tree that marked the place where his consciousness came into the physical world. Down a narrow trail they walked, with Ash pulling her along eagerly.

Netta was struck by his impulsiveness, his frankly uncharacteristic showing of generosity in showing her younger self something so personal, so eagerly sincere.

It was here that Netta found that she could take no more of this dream. She had lost the heart that she had had, to continue along after the two youths. She looked up at the sky - a perfect representation of the sky, and said, "I don't want to do this anymore."

A pause, and then Ash's voice, directly in her ear in spite of him physically not being there, said, "I think the next part's rather beautiful, Nettles." He paused again, and then said, "What's the matter with this?"

Netta looked up at the trail ahead and felt a sudden itching in her feet to follow the children. She said, "I can't bear it - seeing you deceiving me."

"Huh." The sound of a bird in the distance, making a chirruping sound, was the only noise in the silence. "I don't recall the theme of this visit to our past to be me deceiving you."

Netta threw her arms out, angry, tired. "What else can you call the lies that you pushed into my head? What about that line about this temple of yours?"

"What part of what I said was a lie? What happened to me not being a liar?" His voice sounded soft, airy - infuriatingly innocent.

Netta clenched her teeth tight to the point that her jaws ached. "Every bit of it. There is no temple in reality, you created it for me. You had no intention of ever bringing me to it, after - after -" She found that she could not say the next part aloud. Netta's voice died away in her throat before she could say it.

After you destroyed me.

Another long pause. Netta wondered for a moment if Ash, in his stubbornness, had left her in this memory that they shared.

Ash said, in a strangely stern and sober voice, "I promised you that I wouldn't lie to you, and I'm not right now, same as I was when I was with you a century ago. Although I can promise you that I was quite incapable of much in the way of subterfuge with you, let alone lying."

What's ever stopped you from not being straight with me - with hurting me?

Netta stalked away then, in the opposite direction of the children. Ash had been softly requesting that she turn around, but Netta ignored him. Finally, she was stopped, not by his voice, but by him physically taking her shoulders and turning her around.

Ash's handsome features were contorted in some unnameable emotion that Netta found herself immediately discounting. When Ash spoke, it sounded almost as though it pained the Monster to speak.

"Lovely, I brought you here to give you pleasure, not to cause you pain. I remember this moment very fondly in my memory and I was under the impression that you did as well."

Anger was alight in Netta's chest, feeling as though it were the life force from which she breathed.

"You lie to me, even now. If you had any regard for my emotions - how could you continue to do this to me, even after what peace we've forged between us?"

Ash grasped her shoulders more tightly in his hands and pulled himself down so that his face was inches from hers. His wide, seemingly so sincere purple eyes almost hypnotized Netta, even in the depths of her anger.

"Listen to me. What is this strife between us that you speak of? No more games. My emotions towards you," he pounded his chest with his left fist. "have always been exactly as I told you all those years ago - and have not changed. I may have changed, I may have grown more bitter, but I don't think that I am capable of not caring for you."

Netta shut her eyes and willed sense back into her. She felt as though she were becoming bewitched by the Monster, his power more obvious then that it had ever been to her. Her very blood called out to embrace him, to accept him.

He was the reason for these confused emotions, he was forcing them on her. The answer felt so clear to Netta, so obvious, that it made her feel stupid, used.

It was just his pheromones, the power that he now exerted over her. It was all mirage.

"I would have died to have heard those words from you a century ago." She closed her eyes, scoffed. "To have you - and you have me - that was my greatest aspiration. You forced these feelings on me and then you left me out in the cold. Just like the rest."

"No-"

Netta pulled herself out of his grasp, opening her eyes and trying to see the Monster in front of her for what he was, in spite of all of the pain it brought her.

"I have been wavering in what I need to do with you, Ashwood. I considered giving myself to you, more fully than a Witch ever should, but then I found that it's impossible to forget what you are, your nature." Netta's voice had begun to waver, but she had nothing in her power that she could do to prevent it. "If you want to possess me, go ahead. But you will not get my emotions, what you don't deserve."

Ash shook his head vigorously and appeared, in spite of never moving, to sit on his knees. He gazed up at her, his mouth fallen open, his eyes as luminous as a whole galaxy of stars.

"You're making a mistake. I have no power over this relationship, I can't do anything you don't want to do."

Netta laughed without any humor. "What, are you above haunting my subconscious now? Above trickery?" She stopped and got the sudden impression of all of her pent-up anger leaving her worn out soul.

Netta reached a hand up to her face and covered her eyes, finding that she could no longer bear to look at him.

"Ash, I've had enough of this. I don't want to lie any more, to you or to myself, about us. Just let me out of this memory."

She dreaded opening her eyes, but when she did she was surprised to find that he was no longer there.

For that matter, she was no longer in the fabled, so-called woods of Ashwood's early life.

Netta lay, alone, in her rented bed.

The cold that wrapped itself around her back was almost painful in its completeness.