Kat had stopped eating. Chin and mouth stained with blood, she stared down at the gouged out remains of the deer, then back up at me. "You're bleeding," she said.

"Yeah." I swallowed the morsel still melting in my mouth before reaching for my nose with my good hand. A sharp ringing in my ears and head made me soon regret the action as I barely touched the crooked thing. "Pretty sure that asshole broke it."

"It'll heal, but it would be better if we set it first." Kat started to reach for me, but hesitated when I tensed up. "May I?"

I took a deep breath before nodding. No matter how many times the various parts of my body had to be shoved back in place, I never got used to the feeling. And Kat was never the kindest about doing it, not that there was much to be done besides a quick jerk or—

With one hand, Kat reached out and snapped my nose back in place. I cursed at the feeling of a spike going through my skull, but it was a small price to pay for the majority of the pain lessening and being able to breathe out my nose again.

"Good as new," Kat said with a small grin as she pulled back her arm. "Or as close as we can get. Your nose always looked kind of funny."

"Thanks. I'm sure getting it broken repeatedly hasn't helped much."

Kat shrugged. "Gives it character."

I smiled despite myself. Despite our situation, this woman had been smiling and cracking jokes more often then I had ever seen her. I wouldn't go so far as to say she was happy, but maybe more genuine. Like out here—alone with me—she could truly be herself.

And that's why I did this, right? Why we're here. Not just for my sake, but for theirs.

"So, you know that 'asshole'?" Kat asked, smile diminishing as she dug her hand into the hole in the deer's stomach. "Sounded like he knew you."

A heavy sort of weight dropped in my own stomach as my smile fell away. Right. That just happened. If it wasn't witches from Wildwood, it was stuff like this.

"He's Tusk, another familiar like us, in case you couldn't tell."

"Tusk?" Kat dropped the hunk of bloody organ she had pulled out as her eyes widened. "Minerva's familiar?"

Right, of course she heard of him. Until the whole thing with Fawn's children and the cabin happened, Kat had probably been gearing herself up for an end all fight with the familiar of the witch who tormented the family she was sworn to protect. Funny how things end up. I thought I killed him, and he nearly kills us years later.

"He was there, years ago, back when Minerva attacked. When you and Stallion...Do you remember?"

Kat shook her head, her gaze on the ground. "I don't remember anything from after the bite to being in that cabin with fire...everywhere. At least, I don't remember anything I might have seen or heard, just this constant feeling of...of suffocating."

Kat's body shook like she had a sudden chill. I had been spared being turned into one of Minerva's puppets, but I had seen up close what it did to Kat and Stallion. What it almost made them do to me. It was probably better that she couldn't remember.

"I thought he was dead," I continued, wanting to change the subject the more I saw Kat's skin whiten. "I threw him into a tree and figured he burned down with everything else."

"If he's alive, do you think his Master still lives too?" Kat's hands were practically trembling as she braced herself against the dead deer. "He said something about a mothe—."

"No, Minerva's dead," I asserted before she could go further down that line of thought. "I saw what Maple...She's dead, Kat. Believe me, no Knowledge can bring her back."

Kat looked up at me and I hoped she would see in my expression that I was speaking the truth. It was hard to even think about. The witch's last moments. Seeing her engulfed in flames and reduced to a black skeleton. Seeing Maple's never changing expression. Even after everything I'd been through since then, it was still one of the most haunting things I had ever experienced. Back when I could still remember my dreams, there were countless times I woke up screaming, feeling like my whole body was on fire and having the image of that grinning skull burned into my brain.

So I hoped Kat would just take my word for it. I hoped she wouldn't force me to say the words out loud. For her sake, just as much as mine.

"Okay, Foxy." She reached out and grabbed the hand I had unconsciously left on a shoulder of the deer. She squeezed it until I looked back up into her waiting eye. "I understand."

We were quiet for a time, just staring into each other's eyes. Maybe she was taking all of me in, like I was of her. The dirt and blood on her face. The dark circles around her eyes and the sunken cheeks. The burns that ate into her skin and the milky blue eye that rested inside it all.

But, deeper than that, was the way she bit at the corner of her lip when she was really thinking of something. The way her shoulders tensed up self-consciously when I stared at her. The way her one, remaining green eye could still trap me like the pair had done all those years ago. Maybe even more so now. Now the eye was seeing me like I saw her.

This was Kat. This was my friend.

"So, if Minerva isn't this 'mother', then who is?" Kat wondered, releasing my hand to fetch her previously discarded deer organ. She bit into it viciously, like we hadn't been spending the last half-hour gorging ourselves.

I clenched my hand and pulled it back so it was resting in my lap. Was it wrong to say that I didn't want to talk about this anymore? That I wanted to go back to holding hands and just...enjoying the moment? I knew that was selfish. I knew that, but how much time did we have before the next life-threatening thing happened? At this rate, how much time did we have left period?

But it was selfish. Kat was eating again, but I could still see the paleness of her skin. Her hands still shook even as she tried to tear off more pieces of deer. She was afraid of what was happening around us. First the Quincy children, and now Tusk? It was like her past was coming back to haunt us. And Maple was still out there. Whatever she was planning, there's no way she could stay away if she knew her familiar, her mother's familiar, and her siblings were all sharing the same forest.

Be selfish when it's safe. Once Kat and my friends are safe, I can be as selfish as I want.

"It has to be the witch, right? The one we're after," I said as I watched Kat biting into a sizeable chunk of flesh. "Just like with Fawn, if Tusk doesn't have a Master he's going to listen to her by default."

"We shouldn't assume that." Kat swallowed before glancing up at me, her face lined with renewed tension. "Not when Minerva still has five children."

I hadn't thought of that, and the realization sent another cold wave through my body. Not the kind that gave me the strength to move. It was colder, freezing up my muscles and making me never want to have to move again.

"Maple?" I said.

Kat nodded. "She's the oldest. And if it had skipped her because she has me and went to Gust, the second oldest, why would Tusk call him 'mother'?"

"Why would he call Maple mother?" I countered.

"Does it matter?" Kat asked with a loose shrug. "I think it's her. I think she's coming back for me."

"If it was her, couldn't she just take you?"

I didn't like this. I didn't like talking about this. Kat wasn't my Kat when Maple was around. She was a doll. Lifeless, emotionless. She had to fight to keep herself from killing me, and even then only avoided it by nearly killing herself.

"Maybe she can't control two familiars very well," Kat said. She sounded far away, like she was talking to herself.

But if it was Maple—if she was back—what then? What should I do? What could I do? I let her get away twice now. I could have killed her twice, but didn't. What was I waiting for? For her to change? She's had years to make the right choice. She was a monster now, and she was coming for my Kat again.

"When Tusk comes back for us, we'll be stronger," I said, not realizing Kat had been talking until I interrupted her. She watched me silently, meeting my eye before I continued. "We'll overpower him and find out who his new Master is."

Kat waited for a moment, then asked, "And then?"

Right, what then, Alex Foxy? Can you kill Maple if you were given a third chance? Can you kill the witch who helped make you?

Can you kill again?

There was still the taste of blood on my tongue. It lined the roof of my mouth, invaded every corner and crevice in my teeth. Wasn't it just like then? It tasted just the same. When I bit down on his throat, all I tasted was blood. All that was in my head was blood.

I've killed before. I'm a killer. I could kill again.

"I'll handle it," I said to Kat's question.

Whether or not my friend could read my thoughts, she had to have seen the resolution on my face. I could practically feel it stretch the skin on my forehead and cheeks. She reached out with blood stained hands and grabbed both of mine, squeezing them tightly.

"We'll handle it," she corrected.

Could you kill Maple, I wanted to ask her. But I knew better. Maybe she believed she could, like I did, but wouldn't know how to act when the time came. She hasn't failed as much as I have. She didn't yet know the pain of true regret and guilt. I wouldn't give her the chance to know that pain. When the time came—for her sake—I'll know what to do. I won't make the same mistake again.

...

More days passed and there was no further sign of Tusk, the Quincy's, or Stallion. What meat was left of the deer that we could stuff into Kat's jacket-turned-bag managed to hold us through, but it spoiled fast and we were soon left with nothing again. With the continued absence of any sort of resupply, we came to our first hard choice. Give up our search for our friend and confront the witch with Mary, or continue trying to find him and risk starving ourselves again in the process.

Kat wasn't happy, not in the least. "He gave up everything to stay with us," she said, her voice hot yet also quiet, as if she was speaking to herself. "He isn't even human anymore."

"What would he want us to do?" I asked.

I honestly didn't know. I thought I knew who Stallion was, just like I thought I knew who everyone was before my life turned sideways. But, since then, I've grown to truly know Kat, Mary, and even Mutt at the end of it all. Not Stallion. I didn't understand why he wanted to come, why he pressured and lectured me at every turn. I had no idea what he wanted.

Kat had closed her eyes at my question. She bit down on the corner of her lip as her hands clenched and un-clenched. Was she struggling to come to terms with what Stallion truly wanted, or was she just as in the dark as I was?

"He wouldn't want us to worry about him," she said at last. She opened her eyes, but they weren't looking at me. They stared off into the distance, like he did from time to time.

"If he was hurt or couldn't move, we would have found him by now," I ventured. "He's a lot faster than any of us. If he was running just as much as we have been, we'd never catch up. He might even be waiting for us at the meeting point already."

It was all just weightless platitudes, but it made Kat look at me. She even smiled when our eyes met. I would say a thousand more if it could make the doubt wash away from the rest of her face.

"Maybe you're right," she said.

So we moved again. We left behind the green water and drooping trees and found ourselves once again among the mountains. I didn't need my extraordinary sense of smell or months worth of memories to know where we were, exactly. I could feel the heavy weight in the air all around me. I could see it in the way Kat hardly ever looked up from the ground.

Somewhere, nestled into one of these looming mountains, was the charred remains of a cabin. A cabin where my family was torn apart, and whatever part of Alex that remained before he drank the tea died. Why the witch apparently made her home so close to the Quincy's was concerning, but not worth thinking about. None of it was, really.

The odds of accidentally running into those ruins was way too low.

"Foxy," Kat spoke up while we traversed down a mountain. The sun was sinking somewhere behind us, and it was the first thing she said since waking up that morning. "If we have time, I'd like to see their home again."

I didn't look back at her. I didn't need to ask her how she thought we'd find it. If she didn't already know the location by heart, she knew I could smell it. While Stallion's scent blended in perfectly with the world around us, what was left of the cabin seeped through the air like a bad omen. It had to be telling all the wildlife to stay away, warning them that death could only be found there.

"Okay," I said.

Kat picked up her pace as soon as I answered. She moved ahead of me, and I was left only to follow. The sun soon fell away and the world swallowed us in pitch darkness, but that had long stopped being an obstacle for us. Kat didn't slow down and her tense shoulders and clenched hands weren't hidden from me.

What started to make things difficult was the rain. At first it was just light drops occasionally falling on my head, but in just a few minutes it came down like a monsoon. It shook and weighed down the towering trees that surrounded us and I almost lost my friend in the sudden sheets until I reached out and grabbed the back of her jacket.

"Maybe we should wait this out first!" I shouted over the never-ending pounding of rain on leaves.

I watched Kat shake her head, slowly, from side to side. "It won't go away," she said, just loud enough for me to hear.

And then I knew the truth about why Kat wanted to come here. Even before I saw the bright red and orange light appear as we ascended the familiar path. It was almost a feeling of déjà vu. Except, instead of a warm, early morning sun shining down on us we were trapped in darkness and rain. And, instead of Quinn waiting with plates of hot breakfast in front of a sprawling mansion, there was a young girl.

A young, tanned girl swathed in the very fire that had turned the building behind her into a burnt out wreck. She stood beside the young man in a ravaged fur coat who helped start this whole thing.

His fog and her fire. The beginning and end of Alex's story.

...

*Author's Note*

Looks like things are...heating up (Have I used that one before? I don't think I have.)  for our Alex Foxy. What will come of this reunion with these unpredictable witches? Whatever you guys think, I'd love to hear it!