"Detective Weaver." He was the last person Ivy expected to show up on her doorstep. "Is this about my mother?"

He shook his head. "That's old news. Do try to keep up, dearie."

Ivy winced. If he was calling people "dearie", he wasn't exactly here as Weaver tonight. Still, she wasn't going to be the one to say it. "So? What's this about, then?"

"A woman was murdered at the hospital. A doctor."

Ivy folded her arms defensively. "People are murdered all the time. It's nothing to do with me. Probably just some random attack."

"Unlikely. It seemed to have been planned, given the timing and the choice of a security blind spot for the attack. According to her colleagues, the good doctor kept predictable hours, barring emergencies. It looks like someone deliberately set up an ambush."

"Fine. But I'm still not seeing the relevance. Why aren't you interviewing her friends, family, co-workers, whatever?"

"We have. She had no enemies in this world, as far as anyone knows." Weaver gave her a dark look.

"You're suggesting it was someone who held a grudge from the other realm. Someone who is now awake?" Then Ivy realized what he was implying. "Don't look at me. I didn't do it!"

"But I think you knew the victim." Weaver pulled up a photo on his phone and showed it to her. "She was known as Andrea Sage here. Before that, she was the hedge witch Rishika. Among other aliases."

Ivy glanced at the images. It didn't take more than a glance. She knew Rishika as one of Gothel's loyal followers. "We met once or twice."

"One of Gothel's gang of eight." Weaver swiped through to another picture, a close-up of the tattoo on the victim's wrist. "As you can see. You recognize this mark, of course."

Ivy didn't bother to ask how he had known. "So?"

"And so was the blind baker. Once may have been a coincidence, but twice is a pattern. If I were you, I'd be worried about the killer coming after me next." Weaver smiled grimly. "Not that that's something I care to explain to my colleagues at the station."

"Alice..."

"She's with her father. He'll protect her. You need to do the same for your sister. She may be a target as well."

"No," Ivy said with sudden intuitive conviction.

"No? And what, may I ask, is the source of your certainty?"

"I know who the killer is." It took a moment for her rational mind to catch up to her intuition. "Hansel. King Henry's friend."

Weaver's eyes widened. "He's his friend here, too. You're sure it's him?"

Ivy scowled. "He tried to kill me twice already. He has a personal vendetta against witches. Gothel was responsible for his sister's death, and before that, they lost their father to another witch."

Weaver nodded slowly. His eyes went distant for a long moment before he said, "You could well be right. But how was he awakened from the curse, and when did it happen?"

"I have no idea," said Ivy. "Something for you to figure out, detective."

"I'll make sure to ask him once I've caught up to him." Weaver turned to leave.

"Wait!" Ivy closed the door behind her and followed Weaver. "I want to see Alice."

"Tilly," Weaver corrected her. "She doesn't remember. Not really."

"That doesn't matter."

"Unfortunately, it does. When trying to break a curse, for example." Weaver didn't mention the word "love", but they both knew what he meant.

"I still have to try." It wasn't as if they had any other options offering themselves.

Weaver inclined his head in a slight nod. He said softly, "Then I wish you luck. And I mean that quite sincerely."

Ivy sighed. Love was one thing. Hate was another. "It may not matter to Hansel, either. If he goes after her, she won't have magic, and neither will her father."

"He has a gun. That should suffice against Hansel."

"What if he misses?"

Weaver's hand rose as if about to defend his partner's reliability, then dropped again. "Fair point. Actually, you'll all be safer together, and even better if you're somewhere less obvious."

"What did you have in mind?"

"I'll tell you later. Go fetch your sister. Pack for a few days at least."

"Fine." Ivy could see the sense of that, especially if they were wrong and it was some other serial killer striking at random. She couldn't leave her younger sister all alone in the house. Ivy explained the move to Stacy as going into witness protection, which was exciting enough that Stacy didn't complain much.

"You saw a murder? What happened?" Stacy began typing into her phone.

"No, they think I saw the murderer. And... hey! You can't tell anyone. Are you trying to get us killed?"

"I was just telling them I was gonna be away, jeez."

They dumped their bags into Weaver's car and he drove them to Rogers' apartment, remaining tight-lipped about their eventual destination the whole way.

Chess helped Tilly focus when a day was falling to pieces, the bad feeling threatening to suffocate her. Today had been bad.

Now she sat on the floor in Detective Rogers' living room, a chessboard set up on the coffee table. Rogers had taken the couch, saying something about it being easier on his less flexible joints. This was the third game today. The first one had ended prematurely when all the pieces rebelled, fleeing the board. The second one had ended with Tilly victorious, and then Rogers had insisted on a rematch.

Night had crept up on them unawares, and both players were yawning through their moves. Tilly frowned at the board, unhappy with the weakening position of her pieces. She was glad of the distraction when someone rang the doorbell.

"That must be Weaver." Rogers clambered up to answer the door.

It was Weaver, but he wasn't alone. "Rogers. Tilly. New plan."

Rogers looked at the other two visitors. "Ivy Belfrey? And this is...?"

"My sister Stacy," said Ivy. "Weaver thinks we may all be in danger, so he's moving us somewhere safer." Ivy's gaze slid past Rogers to meet Tilly's.

Tilly scrambled to her feet. "We're moving? Good, good, can't let our little wheels stop turning." She squinted at Ivy, hoping to read the answer to the question she couldn't remember asking. "This is you? You you?"

Ivy nodded, not taking her eyes off Tilly. "But are you, you?"

Weaver cleared his throat. "Yes, well, I'm sure you'll have plenty of time later to get acquainted, or re-acquainted, as the case may be. Come along, chop chop."

"That's a terrible thing to say to a tree," Tilly told him.

Stacy gave her a startled look. "You're a tree?"

"Did I say that?" Sometimes she felt tree-ish, and sometimes she didn't. She couldn't explain it, and wished people would stop trying to pin her down on their mental cork board. Tilly glanced at Ivy, and was grateful that she at least wasn't looking at her like she was crazy.

"Stacy, be nice." Ivy gave Tilly a small smile, one of secret understanding and sympathy.

Tilly smiled back, grateful to be seen. She turned away before it got awkward and packed up the chessboard. Did Ivy play chess? She couldn't remember, and couldn't remember why she thought she would know.

"Ready to go?" Weaver had vanished into the corridor with Rogers, but now he returned and shooed them all down the stairs to the street, where he packed them into his car, a tight fit with five of them.

"Two and three, a snug fit — less than a byte and more than a bit," Tilly noted. She eyed them in turn: Weaver, Rogers, Stacy, and Ivy. "Yes, no, no, yes... I wonder what that makes?"

"An Ivy sandwich," muttered Ivy. She climbed into the back seat, and Tilly squeezed in one side while Stacy took the other.

Rogers peered at them worriedly from the front passenger seat. "Everyone all right back there?"

"Fine. Lovely," said Ivy.

A bad day for her, too, thought Tilly. She touched her leg in reassurance.

Neal hadn't been sure what to expect when his father texted him asking his help to hide three women (well, two women and a girl) from a possible serial killer, but he readily agreed. Faye Lipson's townhouse was larger than either Weaver or Rogers' apartments, as well as being farther removed from the potential targets or Weaver himself.

They showed up at the door an hour later. Stacy seemed an ordinary enough teen, but Ivy spoke in that careful way Neal had learned to recognize from his father's ability to dance around the truth, concealing and revealing at the same time. As for Tilly, she used her words in an impressionistic splatter that left the listener unsure of what he had just heard.

"Right, well, there's three bedrooms." Neal led the new guests on a tour of the house. "That's the one I'm using." He glanced at Ivy. "I guess you can share with your sister, and Tilly can take the other?"

Rogers tagged along, offering at this point to help Tilly settle in while Ivy and her sister inspected the room they had chosen.

"She's his daughter," Weaver said from behind Neal. "Tilly. Alice in the other realm. Ivy is... her true love."

Neal turned in surprise. "Hook has a daughter?" He kept his voice low with an effort. The man Neal had known in the other timeline had not had any children. "He... he moved on from Mama, then." He wasn't sure how to feel about that. He remembered how obsessed Hook had been with his vengeance, and couldn't imagine any woman being content to be second in her lover's heart to a ghost. The other Hook had pursued Emma, but he claimed to have given up his quest for revenge.

Weaver shook his head quickly. "Not exactly. It was no love match."

Neal tried not to think about what that meant for Emma. Different realities, different people. "Who's the mother?"

Weaver sighed. He glanced over at the bedrooms, and finding the others still occupied in their own conversations, pulled Neal downstairs to the kitchen. "Gothel. Count yourself lucky never to have met her. She used Hook to begat a child for her own purposes, then abandoned that child and cursed Hook with a poisoned heart."

"She what?" Neal was appalled, though he should have stopped being surprised by such stories by now.

"She's known as Eloise Gardener in this world. A powerful witch." Weaver kept his voice calm, but Neal saw the fury leaking through the neutral expression. Neal wasn't sure if he was angry for Alice's sake or Hook's, which was a mildly unsettling thought. "Very dangerous. Very dark, though she doesn't see it that way. Rogers, who remembers nothing, believes her an innocent."

"Shit, what if she comes after us here? I don't have any magic. Right now I don't even have two functional hands..." Neal waved his broken wrist at his father.

Weaver smiled grimly. "She is safely contained for now. Ivy cast a rather ingenious bit of binding magic on her."

"That's sweet of you to say," Ivy said, stepping into the kitchen from the foyer and giving Neal a curious look. "So you're awake, then. Who were you in our world?"

Neal gave his father an uncertain look, not sure how much Ivy was to be trusted. "Ah..."

"This is Sir Baelfire," said Weaver. "Young King Henry's father."

Ivy's eyes widened. "You're supposed to be dead!"

"Gee, thanks," Neal said wryly. "My best wishes to you, too."

Ivy scowled. "You know that's not what I meant."

"It's a long story, one I'd rather not get into today," Weaver broke in. "He's alive, he remembers, he's here to help."

"His son's best friend is the murderer!"

Weaver sighed. "Let me remind you that we've all killed people, with varying degrees of justification. I don't believe Hansel is irredeemable, but I need to find him first."

"'Hansel'. You mean Nick Branson, right?" Neal considered what he knew of the boy. He had always seemed a little wary of Neal and protective of Henry, but Neal had put that down to the ordinary suspicion of a friend's father showing up after a seventeen year absence. Had he recognized him, then? But his friendship with Henry seemed beyond doubt.

"Yeah, that's the one," said Weaver.

"And he's a serial killer? And you let him near my son!?"

Ivy scoffed. "The Dark One is as the Dark One does. The Evil Queen was one of his students. Why would a bit of stabbiness bother him?"

"Not. Helping," grated Neal. He glared at his father. "Well?"

Weaver grimaced. "The people he's killed...they're no innocents, Bae. The blind baker was the witch who kidnapped Hansel and his sister when they were children. They were lucky to escape alive. Dozens of others didn't. In our world, as Henry's steward, it would have been Hansel's right to carry out the king's justice or to order it done."

"We're not in that world. And he's only a kid, ferchrissakes."

"You were what, two years older when you were knighted?"

"It's different here." And it was different when it was his own son, or his son's friend, Neal admitted to himself. "You didn't tell Henry, did you?"

Weaver shook his head. "We don't even have proof, yet."

"Gods," Neal groaned. "How can we even explain? His best friend. How will he feel when he finds out?"

"Yes, that's great, you can be father of the year later, but our priority here has to be catching the killer," said Ivy. "Enough chit-chat, Detective Weaver. Do your job."

"And you do yours." Weaver stepped back towards the foyer, patting Neal on the shoulder as he moved past. "It'll be all right, Bae. We'll figure it out."

Neal turned to Ivy. "'Your job'?"

"I'm your guardian angel." Ivy smirked. "Didn't he tell you? I'm a witch, too."

"And what did you do to Hansel, that Weaver thinks you're a target?"

"I killed his sister."

Well, shit. That was just great, wasn't it? Neal was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know. "I hope there were extenuating circumstances."

Ivy's smirk faded, and she lowered her voice to a near-whisper. "Gothel. Gothel forced us to fight each other in a duel to the death."

Neal made a face, muttering, "I'm really glad I never met her."

Weaver stuck his head in the kitchen again. "As long as you don't go looking for trouble, you shouldn't have to."

"Shouldn't have to what?" asked Rogers, a step behind Weaver.

"Nothing you need to worry about. Let's go, Rogers." Weaver oriented Rogers towards the door with a gentle shove to the back of his shoulders.

Neal stared after them. He mumbled under his breath, "At least those two aren't trying to kill each other anymore."

"They almost came to blows over this 'Eloise Gardener' case, according to Tilly. She's glad they're friends again." Ivy chuckled. "It's a bit like how it was back home, only she and her father don't remember."

"She'll remember you. We'll beat this curse somehow." Neal tried to sound confident. Then the implications of her words struck him, and he turned his stare to Ivy. "What do you mean, 'how it was back home'? Clearly I'm missing something here."

Ivy stared back. "You're not the only one. Who exactly are you to Rumplestiltskin? How do you know him?"

"Oh, did they leave?" Stacy and Tilly's arrival saved Neal from having to answer.

"Yeah. Off to catch a serial killer and all that," said Neal. "Come on, it's getting late. How about I order pizza?"

But Ivy hadn't forgotten her question. Catching Neal alone later, she proposed an exchange, answers to her questions for answers to his. Not knowing if it was a mistake, he agreed.

Weaver's mysterious suspect turned out to be Neal Cassidy's long-lost son's best friend, one Nick Branson.

"That's one hell of a coincidence," Rogers complained to Weaver.

"That's fate," Weaver replied.

"I don't understand why he would do something so monstrous. I mean, good student, well-off family, clean school record." Rogers knew the files could lie, but usually there was at least some hint.

"Reasons aren't all so easy to explain." And if Weaver knew the reasons, he was keeping them to himself. Again.

Rogers sighed, remembering what Tilly had said about reasons. "Well, he can explain himself once we have him in custody."

"We need to move quickly, before he gets wind of our suspicions."

"How would he know? Don't you trust your own team? Or me?"

Weaver gave him a dark look. "Secrets have a way of getting out. But I forget, you don't believe in magic, Detective Rogers."

Not that again. Rogers gave up that line of questioning and focused on preparations for the raid. Nick Branson lived with his father, who was apparently some kind of real estate investor. Despite their wealth, their house was a modest affair in the suburbs.

Weaver had obtained an arrest warrant, based on what evidence Rogers still wasn't quite sure. Ivy Belfrey must have had something to do with it. Victoria had had her fingers in everything, and Ivy had presumably inherited her mother's network, with which Weaver himself was somehow entangled.

Two in the morning and they were finally ready to go. Rogers gulped down the rest of a can of energy drink. He and Weaver would be going in the front door, while the rest of Weaver's team kept an eye on the street and the back door, blocking off any escape.

Weaver took the lead, as he had insisted despite technically still being restricted to desk work. He pounded on the door. "Seattle Police—"

The door swung halfway open; it hadn't been locked or even shut properly. Weaver kicked it wide, his flashlight blazing into the dark foyer while Rogers had his gun drawn.

Empty.

Weaver nodded to Rogers, and the two of them stepped warily inside, Weaver sweeping the space with the beam of light. It caught movement at the top of the stairs, zeroed in on a man's face. Too dark to be Nick Branson. It must be the father, thought Rogers. Baron Samdi.

"Hands in the air! No sudden moves." Weaver held the man in the light and moved swiftly up the stairs, preparing to handcuff him.

Rogers shifted slightly, keeping an eye out for Nick Branson. Weaver's surveillance had the boy in the house tonight, and surely he would have woken up by now. Then everything blinked, and Weaver hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs with a hard thump, thrown down with casual violence.

Shocked, Rogers raised his gun to aim at Samdi. Or that was his intention. His arms didn't move.

The ceiling lights blazed on, and Samdi was descending the stairs one deliberate step at a time, hands behind his back. He spoke, his voice gentle with malice, "No. I don't think so."

Weaver stared at Samdi in horror. He gasped, saying shakily, "You. It's you. You're awake. How... how did I not see you?"

Samdi brought out his right hand. He held what looked like a doll, or perhaps an action figure. It bore a disturbing resemblance to Weaver, with similar hair and clothing. A tiny black blindfold was tied around its eyes. Samdi shook the doll lightly, and the blindfold fell in shreds. "Alas, that spell only works once, and once broken, is useless. But it served well enough."

Rogers struggled against whatever force was holding him immobile, but it was futile. Spell?

"Now that you are here, it will get me what I need." Samdi stopped on the landing, four steps from the bottom, where the stairway turned to face the door. He showed his other hand, this one holding a doll that looked more like Rogers.

"You think... you think you can hold me with your little poppet?" Weaver clambered to his feet. But instead of drawing his gun, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a stick. No. Rogers remembered where he had seen it before, and what Neal Cassidy had called it. A wand.

"Agggh!" Rogers had his voice again, but only to let out a scream of pain. A sharp spike of agony went up his spine, driving deep into his bones. He gasped, his vision going gray as he tried to control the pain.

"Rogers!"

"You won't use that wand on me," said Samdi. "Not unless you want your little friend to die a most excruciating death as I shatter every bone in his body."

This time Rogers couldn't doubt the truth of the threat. He finally believed in magic — not that his belief made any difference anymore. Not unless Weaver stopped Samdi. Rogers gasped raggedly, "Weaver. Don't... don't listen..."

"Kill him and I'll make sure you never existed," said Weaver, the fury in his voice startling Rogers. He raised the wand, and Rogers hoped to hell he wasn't bluffing. If nothing else, the pain shooting through his bones ebbed to a steady ache. Samdi must be perturbed, even if he kept it off his face.

"He'll still be dead, and you won't be able to bring him back." Samdi sounded as assured as ever. "That power was never yours. I, on the other hand... I have friends on the other side."

"I can't allow you to win," said Weaver, but Rogers could tell he was wavering.

Dammit, Weaver. This is no time to get sentimental! he wanted to shout, but his tongue had gone heavy again, too thick to form the words. "Ughh..."

"You're willing to pay the price?"

"If I don't, we're all dead anyway."

"Ah, but I won't kill you today. If you surrender the wand now, you still have hope. Perhaps the tide will turn." Samdi smiled, all teeth and charm as he dangled the bait. "Come now, you know it's the most favorable deal on offer."

Weaver was silent for a long time, while Rogers willed him to refuse. Not that he wanted to die, but Weaver was out of his fucking mind if he thought he could trust Samdi to honor a deal.

Then Weaver spoke, and Rogers knew his partner was an idiot after all. "You won't kill either of us, ever. Nor will you maim, injure, or otherwise damage us. And we are free to go."

"What do you take me for?" Samdi looked amused. Well, why not, now that victory was within his grasp? "I won't kill either of you, ever. Nor will I harm you today. But I make no promises beyond the day, and you remain my prisoners until I decide otherwise."

"Or we escape." Weaver grinned viciously. "Or someone else frees us."

Once again Rogers hoped he wasn't bluffing. A memory of their conversation at the hospital flashed through his mind — Kris Kringle, as his friends call him — and he imagined Santa Claus riding to their rescue, and choked on a hysterical laugh. Needless to say, there was no sudden tinkle of magical sleigh bells.

"A risk I'm willing to take," Samdi decided. He descended the rest of the way to the ground floor and shifted both of his voodoo dolls (that was what they had to be, Rogers decided) into his left hand and proffered his right. "Do we have a deal?"

Weaver agreed through gritted teeth, "We do." He shook hands with Samdi, then relinquished the wand.

Samdi waved a hand, vanishing the wand in a puff of violet smoke. "Thank you. And thank you for bringing me test subjects." He grinned as he glanced out the window, and Rogers remembered the rest of Weaver's team, still waiting outside.

Damn. Rogers strained against his invisible bonds, but they held fast. And this time, Weaver didn't move either.

"Ah. The wand was protecting you. I suspected as much," said Samdi. "That simplifies matters."

Neither of them could move a muscle to resist when Samdi divested them of firearms, phones, radios, tools, and anything else remotely useful. From Weaver he also extracted a necklace, a pendant on a chain. Weaver groaned feebly in protest as that last was taken.

Samdi chuckled. "The deal was only for your lives and the wand. For everything else, well, what do they say in this world? Ah yes, finders keepers!"

Rogers glanced mutely at Weaver. What was that all about? Why was he carrying a bloody necklace around, anyway? More magic, judging by his reaction to its loss.

Then Samdi did something to his voodoo dolls. Rogers felt it as a buzzing noise inside his skull, and seconds later the world went dark and silent.