Katherine stares at Mitch across the table, watching as he chews. Slowly, blue eyes so similar to her own scan across the wall before they meet hers.

"I'm not gonna disappear," he says around a mouthful of cereal.

"What?"

"You keep looking at me like I'm gonna disappear."

She didn't have the energy for a bitter remark, so she just looked away from him. But the more it sits at the forefront of her mind, the more she's about to explode.

"Do you remember Glen?" Katherine carefully asks.

Mitch frowns at her. "Yeah, I remember him. Why wouldn't I remember him?"

Katherine shrugs. "'Cause I don't."

Mitch hums. "I mean...your childhood was a lot more fucked up than mine." She scoffs, running her finger along the edge of the kitchen table. "It would make sense you don't remember some things."

"No, it's not like that." She shakes her head and crosses her arms. "I remember a lot of things, but I specifically do not remember him."

Mitch offers her a lame shrug. "I mean, we weren't around him a whole lot."

"Holidays, Mitchy," Katherine sighs.

"Holidays here," he reminds her. "Which you somehow thought was abandoned."

She holds a finger up. "Louise already told me this place is warded."

"Yeah, against people who don't like us," he mutters. "Not against our own family."

Katherine frowns a little. "People like who?"

Mitch offers her a lame shrug. "Not specific people. It's...it's an intention thing, how Grandma explained to me. If the intent to cause harm is there, then...it looks different."

She shakes her head. "I don't get it. How can a house know if there's intent to cause harm?"

Striking blue eyes meet hers, and all she sees is Glen in her brother's face. "Magic is alive, Katherine. It's...it's not this unchanging...inanimate object." He gestures vaguely with his hands. "It's a tangible thing. It's old and it's powerful...it's a feeling, a sense you just have."

She sighs. "You said a whole lot of words," she admits. "I kind of understand, though."

A feeling. Her eyes wander to the willow tree at the edge of the pond. It's directly centered in the window straight across from her.

"It's like..." He sits up straight. "You remember those plasma balls, from when we were kids? We would touch it, and the lightning in the ball would move to our hands, and it was kind of warm and buzzy?" Katherine nods. "Magic feels kind of like that."

"Buzzy," she muses, eyebrows raised high.

"It's energy," he says.

"Magic is buzzy and has a mind of its own."

Mitch shrugs. "Yeah, you could say that. I mean, it just goes back to nature, right? Everything in balance, so...it has to be intelligent."

"Giveth and taketh away," Katherine sighs, crossing her arms.

"You do get it," Mitch hums, and goes back to his cereal. "I just can't believe something hasn't manifested yet, if you were already able to cast spells and shit."

She bounces her knee and clicks her tongue. "You and me both."

Silence lapses over the two. She's taken to gazing out of the bay window behind the table again, at that huge willow tree. She's longing for it, oddly enough. Maybe it's the intrigue of it. The whole meditation and her newfound perspective on magic. Alive, tangible...buzzy.

"I'm sorry," Mitch says. Katherine's eyes snap to him, pulling her from whatever drifty current her mind was caught in. "For leaving you with him."

Instantly, her throat closes. Her nostrils flare, and her eyes well with tears. Katherine looks away from him.

"You were seven, Mitch," Katherine murmurs. "None of it was your fault. I just...wouldn't go with you."

"I think you would have, if I told you I was coming here."

"You planned it?" She asks.

Mitch nods. "I cried to Grandma about it at Christmas. Then mom talked to me when we got home." He rubs his arm. "Grandma told me she was going to leave him, you know."

Katherine shakes her head. "We talked about that, when you were gone..." She exhales sharply. "They fought a lot...until one day, they didn't."

"What do you mean?"

Katherine shrugs, looking out of the window again, back at that willow tree. She's thinking hard for a couple of minutes, remembering those years, how confusing they were for her. Then Mitch watches her face kind of glaze over. "It just kind of...stopped one day."

It's whispering her name.

"She threw her ring at him," Katherine murmurs, her voice not entirely her own. "And she said she..." She doesn't finish her sentence. Her eyes are locked on the willow, brow tilting up. Staring.

Come...come see. Come to me.

Mitch looks out the window, following her gaze. "It's talking to you...isn't it?"

"Yes," she breathes.

In the study, Louise and Russell are sat at the huge meeting table, books open between them, histories of the Donovans. The first demon to fell a Donovan was a crossroads demon. It was the typical scenario. Someone makes a deal, they're collected in ten years. There are photocopies of pages of journals from a Brennan Donovan, from the early 1700s. His father, Seamus, was the one who was claimed, a deal made to save his mother from her deathbed. Brennan chronicled hunting demons, exorcising them...and then he found the demon who took his father.

Crowley.

Russell sits up tall, something like static tickling the back of his head, his arms, the space between his shoulders. It's...almost as if something is staring at him. And then, a soft, sighing whisper.

Come...come see.

He turns over his shoulder, and his gaze meets the wall. No one's there. No one's in this room, spare himself and Louise.

Katherine's aunt looks up from her hands, watching him look towards the door. He seems calm, though distracted. "Russell?" Louise hums.

"Did you hear that?" He asks.

"Hear what?"

"It...sounded like Katherine," Russell admits. "But I've never...felt that before." He rubs his arm, watching the hair rise. Louise watches the goose flesh run up to his shoulder.

"What do you feel?"

Russell thinks about it for a moment. 

A tug in his belly. A longing. Sorrow. Peace. "I need to be with her," he decides, and pushes himself up from the table. 

Lois is at the back window with Mitch, both staring out towards the garden, and speaking in soft voices. Mitch looks up at the sound of Russell's footfalls.

"Is she out there?" He asks, to which Mitch nods.

"You should go be with her," Lois says. "The tree of our ancestors is calling to her, and she'll need you now more than ever." It sends a wave of searing heat down Russell's spine. 

"What's going to happen?" He asks.

"She'll see them, on the Other Side," Lois replies. "They'll either accept her, or..."

"Or?"

"Or she dies," Mitch says. 

"Dies?!" Russell repeats. "She can't...she can't die."

"She won't. Probably."

"Should she be rejected, her magic will be stripped," Lois says. "And that alone is sometimes enough to kill the witch. It's a trial, of sorts."

"Like judgement day," Russell says. Lois nods, and blue eyes look over him.

"Go, Russell."

A sense of duty fills his chest, like it did in the cabin with the wendigo.

A man lies on his back several feet from Katherine Louise, in a patch of sun between the shadowed limbs of the weeping willow. His arms are tucked underneath his head and his ankles crossed. Brown hair burns gold under the sun. He's in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Barefoot. Peaceful.

A citrus-kissed wind washes over her face. Floral, citrus, spice, seabuckthorn. It's a very particular smell, but she can't place where or how she knows it.

The sound of the forest fills the silence in the air, dulls the roaring in her ears. She watches the man breathe slow, deeply. Like he's sleeping. She turns to look over her shoulder, at the house she just came from.

No one is around but the two of them.

I fell asleep. I'm dreaming.

"Come on over," the man invites, voice warm and inviting and playful. He hasn't turned to look at her. "There's room for one more."

It tickles her brain in a deja vu kind of way, and she finds herself moving before she has the thought to.

Katherine sits beside the man in that patch of warm golden light, and rolls onto her back. The birds are singing in the trees, and weeping willow vines tickles her face, her elbows, her belly.

"I'm dreaming," she murmurs, letting her eyes close. They're so very heavy, pulling her towards sleep. The vines feel nice against her skin. Like the softest of touches. Russell's fingers ghosting over her skin. 

"Yeah," the man sighs. Almost like he's disappointed by it. "Yeah, you are."

"Who are you?" Katherine lightly asks.

"I'll give you a guess," the man quietly replies, humor coloring his low drawl. 

Katherine sits up on her elbows and turns to look at him. A hint of scruff on his squared jaw, a prominent mustache. Familiar cheekbone, roundness at the end of his long, straight nose. Full, straight eyebrows. Until one of them curves, and he rolls his head to look at her with familiar piercing blue eyes. Katherine goes still as death, but warmth blooms in her chest. 

"Uncle Glen," she whispers. Uncle. She hadn't really associated the word with him this past week. But it rolled from her tongue as if it had hundreds of times before. Familiarly.

He smiles warmly at her, all white teeth and crinkled eyes. "Hey, pretty girl," he drawls. "It's been a while, huh?"

Katherine slowly shakes her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Glen's smile fades, and he turns his face to the sun again, bringing his arms to fold over his stomach. "I guess that bastard really did wipe your memories, didn't he?" Katherine just stares at him.

His voice twists at something in her chest, resonates in her gut...brings her sadness and comfort in the same wave. It's the warmth in her chest she felt earlier. His voice...it's so familiar, so lovely.

Her eyes wildly roam his figure, trying to decide why she's dreaming of him...if she fell asleep at the table. 

"We used to come out here, you and me," he says. Sadness washes over her again, pulling her deeper under. "When you'd come visit, if we weren't on the horses or on the swing, we'd sit right in this spot...for hours. Your brother didn't care much for the outdoors, but you did."

Fields of wildflowers with her mother. Laughter. Katherine always felt like something was missing from those memories, but she'd assumed the shadowy figure she couldn't quite reach was her father. Glen's face fills voids she didn't realize she had. Pushing her on the swing, lifting her up onto a chestnut horse. Kissing a scratch she got from climbing trees, or a pricked thumb from the thorns of a rosebush. So much warmth, golden light fills those images in her mind...and her stomach twists with sorrow.

"You fell asleep under this tree so many times, and...I'd carry your little body back inside, up the stairs and into bed. You were so little then." His voice is sad, too, but...wistful. 

She remembers pretending to be asleep one afternoon. He picked her up on his strong arms, gave her a long squeeze. She couldn't help but hug him back, and he'd laugh. Then he'd sigh into her hair, kiss her head, and just sway with her under the tree. Hum a song...

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...

Tears well in her eyes. "I know your voice," she whispers. "You...the werewolf, in Tampa. That was you."

He turns to look at her again, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "I told you I'd never leave you."

Tears pull at her eyes, and she swallows. "I don't understand," she quietly admits.

Glen sighs, turning to look up at the willow vines. He purses his lips and then sits up, turning to face Katherine.

She can see it just like the pictures she found. They have dimension, life, character. Glen.

Russell sits underneath the willow vines beside Katherine. She's on her back, tears gliding down her cheeks and catching the sun. Quick pulls of breath, fidgeting fingers. He reaches for her hand, and he's pulled into the mirage just like a regular dream.

"I, uh...told your mother that if something ever happened to me...to put me in a necklace, and put it around your neck." He rubs his hands together, eyes not meeting hers.

Immediately, it flashes in her mind. A small disc of gold, etched with her birth flower, and another. A lily...and two cosmos. An October flower. On the back, three small words, in a scrawl she hadn't seen on any other piece of jewelry.

I love you.

"Why?" Katherine whispers.

"So I would always be with you." Blue eyes lift to hers, and it's like looking into a mirror. Deep blue eyes, glittering with tears. Set jaw, stubborn brow, straight hairline. 

"Why?"

Glen smiles at her again, though it's small in nature, his eyes crinkle. It tugs at her heart, and tears pull at her throat. A tear skates down his cheek, and his palm quickly wipes it away. "God...you look so much like your mother." He laughs a little. "Here...gimme your hand, honey." He reaches toward her, palm up. She reaches for him, and his fingers close over her hand. He closes his eyes, slowly exhaling through his nose. When he looks down again, his thumb is running over her mother's small diamond ring. "I remember the first time I held you." He's smiling down at her hand, thumb still running over the ring. 

And she sees it. It's like the memory swallows her, masks the trees around her.

She's staring down at a baby, resting on a pillow in her lap. Tiny hands wrap around thumbs, and  huge fingers loosely grasp newborn fists. Big blue eyes bore up at her, and a thin blanket of soft, fine dark hair is smoothed over the baby's head. Big cheeks and a small, perfect pink mouth. There's a stuffed animal to her right, tucked between her body and elbow. 

A plush, fuzzy dog with deep brown yarn for fur. Glittering brown eyes. And from a collar of orange hangs a bone-shaped name tag that reads Russell.

The voice that sounds isn't her own. It's deep, and feels like home. It's Glen's.

Hush little baby, don't you cry...daddy's gonna sing you a lullaby...hush little baby, don't say a word...daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird...and if that mockingbird don't sing...daddy's gonna buy you a diamond ring...

...and if that cart and bull turn over, daddy's gonna buy you a dog named...Russell. 

Glen's hand reaches for the stuffed dog and nestles it against her cheek.

"That doesn't rhyme." she recognizes the soft, light voice of her mother. As Glen looks up, she comes into view. Tucked into a chair in the corner by the window, wearing a striped button-up sleep shirt and matching pants, knees folded up. She's smiling at him, tucking her hair behind her ear, looking at him with more love than she ever saw in her gaze to her father. To Clay.

"I don't give a shit," Glen says, and looks down at the baby. At Katherine. "I'm gonna buy her a dog named Russell."

"Oh you are, are you?"

"Russell's a good name. My first dog was a Russell."