When Netta had told the roomful 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 alone time to spend it dancing in the woods for ten minutes before returning.

Ash swept her around the room in his arms, with Netta finding herself unable to track the movements in the room around them. Nor did she want to. Her eyes were locked on Ash's face, the breadth of his shoulders.

Ashwood had, undoubtedly, changed sometime in that bubble that he had wrapped them in. Coming out of it, she found that the change she had witnessed appeared to be, to whatever degree Ash was beholden to, permanent. In the light of the warm candlelight in the living room, she fully witnessed how he had transformed.

He had become some measure shorter, less feral looking, his hair and skin shades lighter.  It was his eyes that 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. Netta had been so shocked by what she had found in the temple of her mind that she had not, at first, registered the change in his eyes, drastic though they were.

As she stared into Ash's eyes, the smile that had been at his slightly fuller lips faded and he stared back at her and he slowed their dancing down. 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 realization that he had her eyes.

To confirm what she had seen, Netta excused herself from Ash's arms to glance in a tall mirror. Although she had planned it to just be a quick glance, Netta found that she could not tear herself away as soon as her eyes had passed over the surface of the mirror.

Staring back at her was a woman that could have been her sister. Her hair was a few shades darker than the one she had always seen in the mirror, taking on a true chestnut color.  Her skin, too, was more than a few blushes darker from her paperwhite pale. Richer looking, more than a mere tan.

Netta saw that there had been another reason for why Ash seemed less tall to her, for 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 tauter on her frame. Gazing at the stranger who matched her every movement and facial expression, she felt as though her eyes were about to pop from her head.

It was as Netta 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 stranger who had been irretrievably altered by a deal made with an ancient creature.  A deal for some relationship, some power, she could not comprehend.

A slow panic had started in Netta as she felt existential horror, staring at the strange woman who had robbed her of her identity.

The feel, of the hand falling on her shoulder, made Netta jump.  She turned, looked in the mirror, saw that it was Ash who was standing beside her.

When he spoke, it was no longer an alien thing in her mind. 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 about what happens to Witches who share intimacies with their Familiar, no?  You told me you had heard of the legends...

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. He looked down, uncharacteristic shame and sorrow turning his softened features down his face, his eyebrows falling.  They say... our kind are fated to only share unions that become doomed.  I have - I've shared myself with you.

And you've taken from me? Netta felt as though her tongue was leaden.

Ash's mouth pulled into a tight frown and he tose his eyes to meet hers in the mirror for only a moment before he looked back down. An exchange. He paused, shook his head. Truly, I am sorry that you did not know what was to come. It just - I suppose that I never thought that my Nettles - that you wouldn't know about something like this.   He shut his eyes, every aspect of his body becoming still.

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 -t -ll, don't you?

Ash ran his hands through his hair and looked away, a surprised smile lightening his face. 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 fresh new smile on his lips that he seemed to have difficulty repressing. Nevertheless, it faded as quickly as it appeared. You must have been... so scared. He closed his eyes, the thickness of his longer lashes fanning out under his shut eyes. I'm sorry.

Netta turned around, 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, found that Ash was sprawled out partially on her. The arm stretched across her abdomen felt endearingly intimate. Superfluous in the light of how he was a part of her mind, but - sweet - nevertheless.

Was he only playing at sleeping? Netta did not get the chance to find out, for as she tried to move, careful on the off-chance that this altered Monster now needed sleep, he seemed to stretch like a cat awakening from sleep and lazily answered her movement with images that he had hinted at to her all throughout her adult life.  Only now, it could be said that she was cursed to know what lay behind what she had once, innocently, deemed to be idle threats that he could not have possible fulfilled.

When he gazed at her, it was her green eyes staring down at her, but it was Ash's fire that blazed, electric, in them. She barely had a chance to breathe before she found him positioned atop her, crouching. Surrounding her.

They had gone through whatever it was that the incident at the temple had done to them, and with the events of the night passed, everything in Netta should have been crying out for reason, to figure out what everything she had learned meant for her.

Instead, shuddering, Netta was a slave to desires that she was shocked to find she could never bleed out of herself.  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 her shaking body.  Answering the door, she was surprised to see Ophelia standing there. 

A solemn, frightened look aged the young girl's wide eyes.

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

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.

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

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

Netta watched as Ember turned the ill-used tv on in the living room. She watched in silence as magic enabled the local stations from the town in Wisconsin 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 a murder. Police are accepting any and all leads, but it is expected that with the time of death established as late Christmas Eve, it is suspected that the murder happened on the scene -"

Someone had turned the television off. Still, Netta continued to stare at the black screen, hoping that if she continued to stare at 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.

Standing in the bathroom of the gas station, Netta gave a last cursory look at her chosen clothes. Black pants, a gray hoodie and - oh - a black kerchief to cover her face.

Gone was the memory of the black dress, the red satin of the imagined bed amongst a sea of snow that did not chill. Left behind, perhaps forever, was the very Coven that she had only the night prior been celebrating Christmas with.

She had disobeyed Lucia to leave, risked communication from her new family by escaping in secret with only Ash at her side. She had no choice, she felt, other than to rise to the obvious bait. To stop further murders that she could prevent, by any means necessary.

Netta stood in front of the mirror, examining herself. Her face had become less round, more stark and hollow, and her eyes gave her away in an instant that she was not Human. If she was to take comfort in her change in appearance, it was that she looked different from who she once was, so as to not be immediately recognizable. It was, however, hard not to be struck by the perception that she looked like she had stolen more aspects of Ashwood's features. She now looked as though she was nearing forty years of age, with a certain hungry hollow quality to her eyes-

She paused as she looked down at her hands, resting on either side of the dubiously clean sink. She had wondered what she should use, the tool of her work.

She was interrupted when Ash spoke. You don't need a weapon. Let me be your sword.

She looked in the mirror, back at Ash, standing against the wall that faced the mirror. His smile was strained but encouraging.

Walking to the location of the murder, Netta kept as low a profile as she could while all in black.

When she got to the place, Netta was surprised by the lack of police tape - or presence. She looked at the sad, lonesome little house, shrouded by the falling snow and the yellow glow of the old street light. Uneasy, Netta pretended to be lost, then tired so that she sat on the stoop of an abandoned shop across the street sat an older home that had been transformed into a duplex. The very same house that she had seen on that news report.

Netta sat there, feigning cold with Ash's heat enveloping her. She had to admit that it was far easier to come off as one of the Humans - or, at least, sane - when she didn't have to speak aloud to Ash. And to have him speaking, softly, intimately, in her mind -

When Ash spoke, it was in a husked whisper. What're we waiting for?

Netta breathed out a puff of air, wrapped her arms tighter around herself. It was impossible, now, to hide the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake when Ash could read everything in her mind. Finally, she said, Something. Anything. She's a Witch or else this place wouldn't be this empty, so soon after a grisly murder. I'd wager that that work was done by the victim's surviving Coven members or I'll eat a hat.

What do you plan to do?

Netta forced a breath from her lungs, then watched as a huff of her breath turned to vapor. She did not need to breathe anymore - there, too, was something more that Ash had given her. The choice to, as he had once put it, "play human". Wait to see if there's anything that looks like what could be Witches.

You're not wanting to catch one of your Sisters, returning to the scene of the crime, are you? Beneath the sobriety of his question there was, undeniably, humor.

Netta looked up at the duplex, a smile spreading on her face, in spite of the worry that had been digging at her. The feeling, of being the sole person in the silently falling snow, changed abruptly.

Looking up with feigned calm, Netta saw the person next to her. Standing where no one had been before was an older woman wrapped in a thick coat. A long, thin scarf that wrapped several times around her head. Through the layers of heavy cloth, Netta heard her speaking, good-naturedly "Hidey-ho there, stranger!" She said, waving enthusiastically at Netta. "You're not waiting her for anything, are ya?"

Netta balked, for a minute thinking that she could lie. Instead, she answered, "I... am. I came here because of something that I saw on the news."

The woman laughed. "Ooh, the news? I watched that this morning, didn't see anything about interesting that happened in town." She laughed, the sound muffled by the sound of the wind and through the thick layer of the material of the scarf that she wore. When she finished laughing, the woman spoke, her voice dropping, subtlely, from her her earlier good will. "Are you so sure about that? You don't seem very friendly. Why, someone would even say that you reek of something not Human."

Netta stood up, for a moment shocked by the thought that her lack of humanity was so obvious. Trying to steel her voice, Netta answered, "I'm as serious as a heart attack."

The woman paused. Finally, she began to unwrap the mask that was the long scarf from around her face. Behind that covering was revealed the light brown face of an older woman with the bright liveliness of a Witch in her yellow-green eyes. When she spoke, it was with a hard, clipped edge to it, all of the hospitality in it gone from before. "What's your business in our territory, Sister?"

Netta flicked a smile on her face that would have reminded her of Ash if she had seen herself do it in a mirror. "Me? I'm here as a public service. I am here to catch pests."

The woman tilted her head to the side. "What kind, pray tell, are you here to catch? The only thing left here are two crows, what with the third having already been dealt with." The bite in the woman's words, the held-back anger in them, was potent.

Heartbreaking.

For a brief moment, Netta felt touched by the ferocity of the Witch, her obvious pain, barely kept in check by righteous, burning anger. It was a feeling that Netta had grown to know all too well. "I am not hunting crows, who I have no quarrel with. I am... duty bound in my hunt for some rats. A large family of them, as a matter of fact."

The woman seemed to deflate in front of her, her defenses beginning to break.

"You - someone is already been sent to exterminate the rats who have caused so much damage?" When Netta nodded, the Witch closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the expression on her face said what she did not dare to say aloud. Thank you.

The Witch spoke, her voice barely hiding the emotion that she seemed to struggle to keep in check. "What do you need of me to complete this accursed task?"