Detective James "Jimmy" Morris had had a rough few days. The disappearance of his partner had rocked the entire department, and he'd survived on vending machine snacks and 15-minute power naps since then. There wasn't much in the way of evidence, and only partial witnesses. The crime scene investigator who had reported Niko missing had gone dark over the last twenty-four hours too, but he was much less concerned with that creep's absence. Laurel. What kind of name was that?

Niko Hamada, "no middle name", had come up in the force quickly, a shining star of an investigator who some of the boys resented for her skill and rapid success. Hamada's naturally bashful personality had led to some lonely years to his understanding, not quite taken seriously enough to be "one of the boys", but forever overqualified for their respect. After his previous partner's retirement, Morris had taken her on as a newcomer to the homicide unit, and they'd not left each other's sides since. He'd helped and watched her improve and grow over the last couple years, and the feeling he had towards his partner was not unlike the warm affection he felt for his kids, even though she was only about a decade younger than him.

Hamada was open, humble, and honest, three traits that were not often attributed HPD officers. She could also nail a bullseye with a handgun from fifty feet away, and he'd once watched her win a grappling match with a man almost a foot taller than her. You just wouldn't know it by the way she sometimes let their fellow officers get away with stupid shit, but he couldn't blame her for picking her battles carefully. He'd personally witnessed how her various identities made her job difficult. She'd been called every slur from Gran Torino for being Asian, lots of "dyke" and "faggot" screamed in her face, and then of course just your usual for a female cop—more than a lifetime's worth of "cunt" and "bitch", rape threats, and every type of lewd comment under the sun. Some of these things came from their own ranks, not just the suspects they hauled in to the station. Through it all, she just kept working in her brilliant and professional way, like a damn saint. "You can call me all the names you want," she'd say. "But we got you dead to rights."

Hamada had made him better , no matter how much he denied it, and she'd been the best partner he'd ever had. He would lose his job or work himself into an early grave before he let her case go unsolved.

His exhaustion and anger peaked in the form of a shouting match with the FBI field agents who had shown up to offer assistance. Treasury officials had already been up his ass since finding all that cash at the first scene, and the arrival of more feds with nothing but an extra layer of complication to the case to offer had been his breaking point. After he'd calmed down a little, O'Doule sent him home for 24 hours on orders to sleep and "get a grip." Instead, he'd smuggled out his department laptop to a nearby diner and sat in a window booth, reviewing unsolved murders from across the United States. Whatever it took.

And the diner was where he was when he noticed a commotion outside, a group of people and news crews in the middle of the street. He glanced up at the small TV mounted over the open cooking area and nearly fell out of his booth, his hands slamming against the table so hard the whole restaurant grew quiet. The BREAKING NEWS chyron was superimposed over the confused, pale face of none other than Niko Hamada, her back to the diner signage. He was out of his seat in a flash and barely remembered making it outside, hoped he hadn't knocked over any of the old biddy waitresses, only focused on the thick of people in front of him.

"Move! Move! HPD!" he shouted, holding up his badge even as he shouldered through the crowd. It felt like an eternity before he burst through the edge of bodies and finally came face to face with his partner for the first time in almost a week. "Niko?"

Hamada looked at him with hazy, unfocused eyes. "Morris?"

"Somebody call 9-1-1," he shouted at the crowd. A sea of cell phones greeted him, their owners just standing there while some of the news anchors babbled through the live feed. "Call 9-1-1 right now ! And get those cameras back, Jesus Christ. Give her some room."

Morris caught Hamada as she stumbled, and then he couldn't help himself, despite knowing he shouldn't, he pulled her into a tight hug, letting out a breath as her arms tightened over his back in return. Hamada was thin, he could feel that much, but she didn't recoil from his touch or indicate that she was in pain. He pulled back enough to check her over, noting a split lip and black eye, but no obvious other injury.

"What happened?" he asked as far-off sirens sprang to life. He shifted so that she could sling an arm over his shoulder.

"Laurel," she hissed, leaning all of her weight against him.

By the time the emergency response vehicles showed up, Morris had led her over to the diner's outdoor seating so she could get off her feet, chasing away the people eating there like they were seagulls. Witnesses said she'd shown up at the edge of town, walking along Main Street like a zombie. She wasn't wearing what she'd had on when she'd disappeared, clad in a white shirt and gray sweatpants, and her clothes and skin were streaked in blood and dirt. The diner owner had been nice enough to bring her a thick wool blanket to wrap around her shoulders against the cold of the day, and the crowd of gawkers and media grew steadily with each second. Shop owners all along the street had stepped out of their front doors to watch.

"Niko!" a voice was shouting from somewhere nearby, and Morris looked up to see a firefighter sprinting towards them, shoving onlookers out of the way.

Morris held up a hand as she reached them. "Wait, wait. She could be injured."

"I'm an EMT," replied the woman curtly, drawing up to a stop with a frustrated huff. "Stephanie Hinke. I'm also a friend."

The detective did recognize the name somewhat, so he moved to the side to let the firefighter work. She set down a medical kit and knelt in front of Hamada, her eyes shining with tears.

"Hey there kid," she said around a sob. "We were real worried about you."

Hamada nodded, looking up at her blankly. "Steph. If you want to hang out, you can just call."

"Okay, too soon," laughed the older woman as she patted Hamada's knee. "Greta's on her way to the hospital. Does anything hurt? Can you stand?" Hinke watched the injured woman like a hawk as she rose to wobbly feet. An ambulance was backing through the crowd towards them, the low beep-beep-beep heralding its imminent arrival, and the crew jumped out as soon as they'd gotten close enough.

Morris insisted on riding in the ambulance with his partner, and they made it to Hilltowne Memorial Hospital just a few minutes later. The entirety of the police department, up to the Chief, arrived to show support, turning the halls and waiting area into an impromptu station, the air filled with radios crackling, chattering, and beeping. The officers formed a human tunnel to make sure the stretcher got to the exam room without incident, and medical staff launched into a the flurry of activity, checking heart rate and pulse, drawing blood, testing for injury and reflex response—while Morris felt as though he'd been dipped in concrete, frozen to the spot, and unreasonably worried that if he took too long to blink, his partner would disappear again.

Hamada's wife, Greta, arrived within a few minutes, bursting through the door so violently that she almost took out a nurse, and then rushing over to the edge of the bed. The sharp clicking of her heels against the vinyl flooring grated strangely against the muted murmuring from the medical staff and softly beeping machines. Morris had only met Greta Luanne Hamada-Smith a handful of times, a noticeably low rate for partners who had been working together for so long, and Hamada certainly didn't talk up her wife all the time. He tried to push down his own misgivings as the pretty blonde leaned over his partner, brushing sweat-slicked hair away from her forehead with what looked like genuine affection. Hamada was staring back at her with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Holy fucking shit baby, I've been so worried about you," Greta was saying, her face a mess with tears. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"I'm fine," croaked the patient, wincing as the IV port went into her arm.

"I knew you would make it back to me." The blonde kissed her wife's forehead. "I never had any doubts."

Hamada nodded weakly, but her eyes flickered to Hinke and Morris. "He kept me captive. I thought I was a goner."

"I prayed every night. It's a miracle," Greta continued, taking deep, audible breaths. She seemed more upset than the injured detective. "Thank God you're alive."

A case manager asked to speak to Greta outside, and once it became apparent that Hamada was not in immediate danger, the other medical staff began to thin out and leave the room. The quiet was comforting, the heart monitor noises just reminding him that Hamada is alive .

"Niko fucking Hamada," said the firefighter quietly as she stepped to the side of the bed and sank to her knees. "I can't believe you're here, you're okay. I mean, I hoped, but… You've been gone for six days. I think there are social media people offering giant rewards for tips on your killer."

"Takes more than some creep to kill me," she replied, a weak smile on her pale lips. "Did they sedate me? I feel…"

"Just a little bit. There's still a chance you go into shock over all this, so say something if you start feeling." Hinke smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in the blanket. "Can you tell us what happened? Where you've been?"

Morris shuffled around to other side of the bed. He knew that even if Hamada wasn't up to it, she'd push through anyway because they asked. This wouldn't count as an official interview, and technically he was still on paid leave for the next 19 hours, but he could sure as Hell get a head start on investigating this if he could. "Where is Laurel?"

"I killed him," she sighed. "That's how I escaped."

"Where did he keep you?"

"Abandoned hotel. Route J. I walked maybe… thirty minutes before I got to town. I got free, waited for him to let his guard down, and I took his knife and cut his throat." Her words sounded mechanical in Morris' trained ears, or perhaps more accurately, felt like it was in an uncanny valley of almost-truth. Then again, Hamada had just been through something he couldn't even imagine; a little weirdness to be expected.

"Jesus," sighed Hinke. "And you've been within city limits this whole time. Fuck."

"We looked there. The old Hilton." Morris raised an eyebrow. "There was nothing."

Hamada just shrugged and let her head fall back against the pillows.

"Maybe he moved her," Hinke offered quickly. "Is his body there?"

"Yeah. Go get him."

Morris popped outside the room to relay the information to O'Doule so that they could get going on retrieving the corpse and gathering evidence from the old building. When he got back, Hinke had left, but Greta was back, assuming the same kneeling position next to the bed. The detective moved a chair over, and she accepted it with a grateful smile and without losing hold of Hamada's hand.

When the doctor reentered, he paused at the foot of the bed. "Everything looks fine—heart rate and pulse are within reason, no fever, no injuries beyond the facial laceration and hematoma. Anything else bothering you?"

Hamada shook her head.

"So we can leave?" asked the blonde cheerily.

"I want to keep her here for twenty-four hours pending the results of the blood tests. Nothing you've described makes it sound like there's too much to worry about, except there's a lot of nasty stuff in abandoned buildings, so it's worth being safe. Once we've got one set up for you somewhere private, the nurses will take you up to a room for the night. You're welcome to stay with her, Mrs. Hamada-Smith."

Greta chewed her red-stained lip for a moment, glancing first at Morris and then back to the doctor. "Do you think she'll be released before tomorrow night?"

"Probably. Big plans?"

"Just getting a timeline. Her brother finally got leave, so he should be here in a couple days."

Morris frowned and opened his phone to Chrome as he leaned back against the wall. Niko's return was already splashed across the main page of Google News, with plenty of cell phone pictures and videos of her on the street. But he was looking for something quite different, his mind vaguely recalling a commercial he'd overheard at the dinner. He pulled up the schedule for CBS' 60 Minutes and noted the synopsis for tomorrow night's episode, which apparently hadn't been updated since the news broke: Wife of missing detective Niko Hamada joins us to talk about the state of the investigation and her hopes for the future .

Oh, yeah. That type of thing was why he didn't like Greta Hamada-Smith.

Maggie leaned back from where she was standing over Prudence, who sat with her legs crossed, eyes closed, and her hands held up near her head with palms facing the ceiling. "What're they saying now?"

"She's doing fine. Everyone's crying and so happy, blah, blah. Something about moving her to another room. The humans are buying it, but maybe we should have messed up Jada's face a little more." Prudence slowly frowned. "This blonde is the wife?"

"Perfect brows, really shitty personality? Like a Pinterest board that blinks?"

After a beat, Prudence actually smiled and shook her head slightly. "I suppose. She's pretty."

"Pretty fucking awful," muttered Maggie. "Tell Jada to be careful with the nice stuff, they've been fighting."

"I don't think that'll be an issue. Jada says she's already not a fan." After a few seconds of silence to relay the message to Jada-Niko, Prudence opened her eyes and ended the astral connection to her cousin. "The cop seemed to buy the hotel story. I bet they're there right now."

Retrieving the frozen corpse of Sigmund had not been a fun after-breakfast task that morning, but they'd collectively decided that the only plausible story was fairly close to the truth. They weren't sure if Laurel had any kind of paper trail, but he was guilty, so they framed him for the crime. The irony was not lost on the Charmed Ones.

"Okay," breathed Macy from where she'd been watching across the room. "So-o-o, we're just tricking the whole world on live TV, this is fine. No pressure."

From against the wall near the attic window, Mel tried her best to look engaged. The S'Arcana were doing them a big favor, and she wanted to contribute, she truly did (and probably needed to), but Mel had been unable to focus on anything for more than two minutes with Niko downstairs, locked away in the room farthest down the hall. Zelda, true to her stated backstory, had hardly left the detective's side overnight, though she occasionally popped outside to let the sisters know their charge was still sleeping. Mel's sleep spell had apparently been stronger than she intended, and Niko was going on twelve hours of unconsciousness. All the better, suggested Jada before heading out on her grand undercover operation, letting the new creature's energy recoup and body recover.

Mel couldn't bring herself to go into the room. The thought filled her stomach with lead. She'd stood outside the dark, wooden door for a solid half hour in the dead of night, her anxiety ricocheting off the walls of the silent, still house, until it reached a deafening crescendo. You did this. Then... she'd left at the sound of someone stirring. The plan had seemed so sensible until she thought hard about how Niko might react—how any person might react to wake up snatched from her life, subject to an entirely new reality she'd never asked for. How was she supposed to deliver that kind of news, or deal with the emotional aftermath? Reality was now almost everything she'd ever feared for Niko, just short of death or eternal damnation. This had to count as serious bodily harm.

And it was all her fault.

"Mel?" Maggie's inflection suggested she'd said her sister's name more than once.

The time witch cleared her throat and turned from the window to face her sisters and Prudence, all of whom were looking back at her like she was an injured prey animal about to flee. "Hmm?"

"You didn't hear that?" continued the younger Vera with furrowed brows.

Mel almost asked what she meant before it became very, very obvious—the sound of a groaning bear, muffled slightly by the floor, but still easily audible. Niko was awake. "What do we do?"

"Are you… going to go down there?" asked Macy in a cautious voice, glancing between Mel and the door. "I'm sure Z could use a hand."

"I can't."

Prudence scoffed and rolled her eyes, giving the middle sister a sharply disapproving look. "You witches are unbelievable. All this work, and you just…? You don't want to deal with the consequences anymore? Because it's a little late for that, wouldn't you say?" How someone so young could be so strikingly absolute, Mel wished she knew.

"I'll go," snapped Maggie. She grabbed the protection crystal from the table and headed downstairs. When Macy gave Mel a worried look, the middle sister sighed, crossed her arms, and followed with shuffling feet.

The rumbling groans were accompanied by the sound of chains clinking as the witches paced down the stairs and hallway. Maggie did look a bit nervous at least, but Mel felt like her stomach might fall out through her toes, or empty its contents against her will. As they came to The Door again, she had to focus on her breathing through the rush of adrenaline and flight response. She stayed one step back as her younger sister reached for the door handle and turned, pushing it open without moving inside the room at first.

Zelda was standing a safe distance from the bear, arms up as though trying to absolve herself of any blame for the state of the room. "She's not in the mood to listen to me."

The bear was tied in the same position they'd tied Niko, on its back, legs somewhat pulled out towards the posts, and one large cuff around her neck. It didn't look comfortable, but at least the enchanted chains were working.

"Hey, hey," crooned Maggie, stepping towards the bed with her hands down at her sides, a little crouched. Her head bobbed awkwardly as she tried to catch the creature's eye, the protection charm keeping her safe from the occasional wayward flailing paw or chain.

Desperate for something to pass the time and distract her overheated brain, Mel had Googled "different kinds of bears" during her sleepless night, partly to scroll through some cute videos of bears waving, and partly to actually research Niko's bear form. It hadn't taken her long to decide on a moon bear, evidenced by the tan "V" shape over the chest, breaking up the otherwise midnight black coloring up to a tan muzzle, and frill of thick fur on either side of the neck. In nature, these were smaller bears, which apparently translated out to a magical form that was maybe eight feet tall, its massive and furry skull whacking against the headboard as it struggled, feet hanging off the edge of the bed.

Luckily, and this was somehow appropriate for Niko if she thought about it long enough, moon bears were on the herbivorous side of omnivorous, which had instilled a hope that they wouldn't be hunting deer in the park for her. She wondered if it was a Patronus-type situation, hence not turning into a wolf, but had been too unwilling to deal with Prudence's hoity attitude about pop culture references to ask.

And now, seeing the bear form again so close, in her house , she found herself also unwilling to move into the room.

"Niko," continued her younger sister, who had no such qualms. "Niko, it's okay. Look at me. It's me, Maggie. Do you remember?"

"Maggie… Vera?" Niko's voice sounded hoarse in the bear's mouth. "What—where am I?"

"I need you to take a deep breath. Good. If you don't calm down, you're going to hurt yourself." The petite witch picked up the cup of water on the bedside table. "Breathe."

The bear let out a low, miserable moan, its head flopping away from her. "Why am I tied up?"

"Just to keep you and everyone safe. We're here to help you, and we'll tell you everything. It's okay, Niko." At the moment the detective's name left Maggie's lips, the bear crumbled back into human form, and suddenly the scene looked a thousand times more devastating, with the same reasonable-for-a-bear chains looking huge and cruel on a human.

"Don't," said Zelda quickly when Maggie went to undo one of the detective's wrists. "Not yet."

Niko was now just limp on her back, sobbing softly, her skin looking rubbery even in the bright morning light. The cuffs had worn angry red marks into her delicate human skin.

Though her eyes looked watery too, Maggie shuffled forward to sit on the edge of the bed and held up the glass of water until Niko finally looked back at her. After a brief hesitation, she sat up and scooted towards the smaller woman, looking all of five years old as she accepted the glass and held it with two hands to chapped, broken lips, obediently handing the cup back to Maggie once she was finished.

"Do you… Do you remember what happened?" asked the youngest Vera, her voice pitched louder for the observers to hear. "How you got here?"

"I remember being cold," Niko replied with a sniffle. "I remember… a wolf. Wait." She put a hand to her forehead, expression shifting from pained to confused. "Did I get attacked?"

"You did." Zelda cut in as she moved to stand behind Maggie.

"Aiko?"

The kitsune nodded and said in a thin voice, "Surprise."

"What attacked me? What are you doing here? I… what?"

Maggie and Zelda exchanged a look. After making sure they took any reflective surfaces out of the room, Prudence had warned them that Niko wouldn't be aware of her bear yet, would just remember those times as being in her own body. The were curse was a part of her now, as entrenched and essential as DNA, and her brain wouldn't even register the shifts until they vocalized it to her or she saw her reflection, not just her paws or snout under her own eyes. Why would a brain flag alarm at its own body, after all?

"The wolf," answered Zelda simply. "You're at the Vera house. We've been waiting for you to wake up. How are you feeling?"

"Fine, I'm just a little achey. Can you… can you take these off?" Niko shook a wrist to accentuate her point with the soft clink of the chain. "I should probably get to a hospital or something?"

"Oh boy," muttered Maggie, and then both she and Zelda glanced up at Mel. This drew Niko's gaze to her too, and the detective's eyes widened.

Over the course of this staccato conversation, Mel's heart rate had been steadily rising alongside the sound of her own blood rushing between her ears. Niko was here. Niko was looking at her. There was a split second where she wished the detective would shift back into the bear so she could think . She felt like gravy was trying to crush her into the ground, unable to breathe, and as Niko's mouth opened… She turned and ran away from the doorway, ignoring Maggie's confused calls after her and the sudden unhappy sound of a bear again. Down the stairs, across the foyer, and out the door she went, until she blinked and found herself in her car, turning over the engine and gripping the steering wheel as if she might fly off the face of the Earth if she let go. She would've pulled onto the street if not for the tears clouding her vision, and her fists slammed into the wheel in frustration.

She had fucked everything up.

All the pain, the anxiety, the denial of the last year, and yet here they were. She should have known from that first night, the dinner party. She should have taken action immediately, broken things off with Perry—now barely a footnote in her thoughts—and just left Niko alone. They never should have translated the second message. She never should have had dinner with Niko. Never had been the promise of the Morai, if only she could leave it well enough alone. Mel had fucked that up at the first opportunity.

Her phone buzzed and, assuming it was Maggie or Macy, she answered it with a half-shouted, " What?"

"Uhh… Mel?"

The witch pulled the phone from her ear to look at the screen, and she almost chucked it out the window of her car at the name there. "Perry… Hi."

"Hi. I, uh, just wanted to make sure you heard… they found Niko. She walked right back into town. I guess some CSI dude kidnapped her to cover up the murders."

Dragging a hand down her face, Mel sucked in a steadying breath to reply, "Yeah, yeah I heard. It's really great. Have you seen her yet?"

"Uh huh. I went to the hospital and visited her room. She's like, wildly chill about being held hostage for five days, but, I guess that's Niko for you."

'Wildly chill.' Mel held one hand over the receiver and allowed herself an audible groan of frustration, then put it back to her ear. "Mhmm. That's fantastic, Per. I'm really glad Niko's okay."

A pause. "Hey, uh… I know we haven't talked since, you know. I was wondering if, maybe… we could meet up? And talk about that?"

In her periphery, Macy finally appeared on the front porch, looking down at her car with hands out in a clear " what the fuck? ". Mel put on her seatbelt. "Where are you right now?"

"I'm at home."

"I'm coming over." The witch hung up and threw her car into reverse, avoiding Macy's eyes as she drove away.

Perry buzzed her up to the apartment immediately, and the trainer looked uncharacteristically disheveled when she opened the door, green eyes clearly apprehensive. "Hey, bab—Mel. Hi. Come in."

Mel shuffled into the bright loft space, letting Perry take her coat and accepting the glass of water shoved into her hand moments later. The trainer was very into feng shui, and the rise of Marie Kondo had only fueled the flames of her minimalism, which Mel secretly thought was a sign of control issues when coupled with her obsessive workout schedule and diet, but that was neither here nor there today.

"I… don't feel like this is going to be a good conversation," admitted the trainer after the silence reached awkward lengths, her face a textbook expression of "kicked puppy".

"Perry…" Mel resisted the urge to take her hand. Wrong signal. Instead, she clasped her own hands tightly together in her lap, the pressure helping to ground her to the moment. "What do you think I'm going to say?"

"That I'm a little needy and I freaked you out."

The moment she had had to consider getting back together with Perry to carry on that timeline, Mel had come to a decision: She couldn't. And if there was any lesson to be learned from all of the shit she'd just landed herself and NIko in… now was the time to take care of it. Though harmless and fun, Perry wanted something that Mel didn't have to give, no matter how much she had told herself she could when this all began. She wasn't a plaything for Mel to tolerate while dealing with her own problems.

"See? That's… that's why I like you." The witch almost smiled at the adorable tilt of Perry's head, the puppy still seeking approval and listening carefully for instructions. "I do. I like you, and I think you're a catch even without all the muscles."

Perry probably thought she was being sneaky, but she definitely preened at that.

"You're sweet, and you're funny, and you're self-aware. But you did… scare me, because you said those words, and honestly I wasn't expecting it."

"Yeah, but just because I feel that way… Does it mean we can't be… we?"

"That's the thing. I don't think an I love you should be a surprise. That means I haven't been paying attention to you like I should, and… I don't want to hurt you." Mel finally did take the trainer's wide hands in her own small ones. "That's why I have to be honest, and I don't know how else to say this without using these exact, overused words, but while I do care about and love you, Per, I'm not in love with you."

" —in love with you," Perry finished the sentence with her, miserable.

"You met me at a very strange time in my life, and you took care of me. You sent Rachel to my house to help us not get arrested, you've always tried to get me to eat better and drink more water. But I need to call this off, and it's hard, and it sucks, and I need to do it before I hurt you any more."

The trainer let out a long, ragged breath, cheeks reddening. She wouldn't meet Mel's eyes, but didn't pull her hands back. "I understand."

"Okay. Do you want me to leave?"

"I think so, yeah… but…" Perry pawed at her eyes, sniffling harshly. "Did you just break up with me using a Fight Club line?"

In spite of everything, Mel let out a weak laugh. "I thought you'd appreciate that."

They shared a long hug in the entryway, murmuring the empty things you do about "getting coffee sometime" and "we'll see each other again". When the door closed behind her, Mel took a few seconds to close her eyes and breathe. One thing down. A million other fixes to go.

As she was driving back to her house, a quick snapping sound to her right indicated a certain whitelighter had caught a ride.

"So the detective has returned home safe…" began Harry, forcefully casual.

"You're gonna make a girl crash, appearing like that," replied the witch quickly. The sisters and their guests had talked about how this was supposed to go, to keep their stories straight and not give anything away, even by mistake: Deny, deny, deny.

"I was just at your house, and your sisters didn't seem particularly surprised."

"It was on the news. You're kind of late to the punch."

"Seems… that she reappeared not long after Sigmund went off the radar."

"So do you think he kidnapped someone else? Maybe the wrong person?" Mel could feel Harry's incredulous expression.

"Don't know."

"Hmm. Seems like the Elders should work on that. Kind of hard to take them seriously when they lose track of a giant demon-wolf." Ha . She was getting in the groove. Harry didn't know it, but he'd already lost this round.

"It's just all... very strange."

"Try being a human and finding out you're a witch, and things like Tartarus exist," she countered dryly as she pulled back into her spot in front of the house. "Did you want to come back inside?"

"I think I've worn out my welcome for today." Harry waited in his seat until the witch looked over and met his eyes. "Melanie… I know you and your sisters, even your mother, have had misgivings about the Elders and us whitelighters. But you know me, Harry. Your whitelighter. If there had been a way for you to rescue the detective, and you'd told me about it, I'd have done my best to help. I just want to keep you and your sisters safe. "

Mel unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek, hoping the overly affectionate gesture would knock him off-balance. "Thanks."

It apparently worked, because he just coughed and disapparated after a stammered goodbye. Mel wasted no time bounding back into the house, greeted almost immediately with a furious-looking Maggie.

"You ran? " she shouted down from the landing.

"Sorry, sorry," Mel replied quickly as she moved towards and then up the stairs. "I'm so sorry. I panicked."

"Yeah, no shit, and she's been a bear since you left. Prudence had to put her out again, and then Harry showed up, and—"

"Maggie." The older sister gripped her younger sibling's upper arms with both hands as soon as she came within reach. "I'm sorry. I didn't handle that well, but I'm back now, and I'm in it. I just had to do one thing. I broke up with Perry."

"What, like… right now?"

"Yeah. She called me, and it needed to be done."

Frowning, Maggie batted her arms away. "Okay, fine. I guess if that's how you're gonna unpack this, fine. But you need to go talk to Niko if you're in a productive mood. Have you seen Twitter?"

Mel checked her phone and saw #FindingNiko was the top trending hashtag for the United States. One of the featured Tweets under the tag was from CBS, stating that the detective and her wife would be on tomorrow's edition of 60 Minutes . Jada was going to love that. Her Niko glamour was more reliable and much stronger than Zelda's, so the kitsune would sub in for quiet nights once they released "Niko" from the hospital, but Jada had to do all of the public appearances and heavy lifting, like police interviews. "Cool, cool, cool. And Harry didn't see any of our guests?"

"The charm worked like… a charm." Maggie shrugged about the wording as they moved back down the hall to the guest room in question. Tasked with figuring out how to avoid getting found out by an overly eager whitelighter, Macy had discovered a spell in the Book that would sound an alarm before anyone apparated from outside, in. Harry had apparated just outside the room, but thanks to the warning, Prudence had already glamoured the bear as a lumpy comforter before tucking herself in the closet, and Zelda snapped into her fox form to hide under the bed.

Luckily, he'd only peered into the room from outside of it, and their tactics appeared to have worked.

For now, Zelda was off taking a nap in her room, and Prudence sat in a chair near the bed, reading the Book. Macy leaned against the nearby window, arms crossed, and she looked pissed when the other two sisters entered.

"I've already heard it," interrupted Mel when her older sister went for the scolding. To Prudence, she quickly said, "Can you wake her up?"

"I'm sorry, Niko. I did it for you."

That was what Mel Vera had said to her when she'd been half-unconscious on the bar floor, bleeding profusely. Things had happened so quickly after the words were said that she more or less forgot about it, until she found herself being held captive ( ?) in the Vera house.

After Mel had sprinted away like Niko was a damn lagoon monster, and as the detective devolved into full blown panic, Zelda had left the room and returned with a surly teenager, and then… and this was getting annoying… she'd passed out again. When she woke up, it wasn't like being drugged or hungover — it was just a hard and fast fall from unconsciousness to wakefulness, like getting shocked back to life. Her eyes opened to find the three Veras, Zelda, and that somewhat creepy looking kid with platinum blonde hair.

The confusion blanketing the situation wasn't helped by the fact that she was still held in heavy metal chains. It was an objectively bad look.

Out of the cold, fed, and well rested, Niko's memories had come flooding back to her during that first, long sleep. Sora. Greta. Morris. Mel. Wolf. The sequence of events culminated in a blank space where the end of the snowy fight should have been, and the fight itself—had the Vera sisters battled a giant wolf? Had she almost choked someone to death? Whoever that person had been, she didn't seem to be in the house.

The memories and visuals were there, but she couldn't put them together in a way that made sense. Why on God's green Earth would three sisters from Michigan be fighting a giant wolf in the Arctic? And how? But it all felt too real to be just a dream. She could practically taste the elk liver on her tongue, but why would she have done that? Where had Laurel taken her? And why could she smell each woman leaning over her so clearly, as if their scents were as separate as their bodies? Macy, like spring grass and loamy earth. Zelda, clover and red maple leaves.

"Niko?" said Mel, worrying her bottom lip.

"Hello… everyone," she replied, sitting up slowly. Earlier panic aside, at least now she understood where she was and, with one blonde exception, who the people standing in front of her were. She supposed she should be trying to devise an escape plan, but truthfully her brain only had room for one clear thought: "What the fuck is happening right now? And so help me God, if you answer my question with a question, I will scream."

The Vera sisters started talking at once, and then quieted simultaneously, leaving them all in an extended, awkward silence.

Finally, the blonde teenager rolled her eyes and said in a clear and confident voice, "We rescued you from the wolf, but there were… complications."

It was the straightest answer she'd gotten so far, and Niko nodded appreciatively before Mel cut in, "You're going to want to sit down. This is going to take awhile."

Macy started her story with Marisol, specifically Marisol's death, and then her own arrival on the Vera doorstep, the catalyst for some kind of prophecy and the sisters' discovery of their powers. That much was easy to follow, or as easy as you could follow being told that magic and witches were real and, apparently, they lived over a portal to Hell. All of the women were witches, apparently, except for Zelda, who described herself as " technically a spirit, but a good one ". Niko had always thought of 'kitsune' as just an anime thing, never really delving into the lore of it, but before she could ask a thousand questions about her mother getting tangled with Japanese witches and yokai, Macy had pressed on with the story.

Next came words like "whitelighter" and "Elders", "light" and "dark" magical forces, and then one that made her skin crawl: "Werewolf."

"Werewolf," she repeated back to Macy, throat tightening. Her stupid brain was helpfully providing her with ridiculous reference points like Scott Speedman painted blue and Taylor Lautner imprinting a vampire baby. "Like… the kind that… turn people into werewolves?"

"Yes… but no. Not exactly."

No. Nope. Nope nope. Niko closed her eyes as the room began to spin, another rush of adrenaline hitting her veins. No.

Mel, who had been quiet through this whole confessional, suddenly spoke up, and it was so unexpected that Niko's eyes snapped open to find hers. "Let me talk to Niko about the rest of this, okay?"

After a small protest from Maggie, the other four women did leave the room, and Niko felt like she could breathe a little easier… but only a little. Once the door shut, Mel stayed across the room, watching her with an inscrutable expression.

"If I untie you, are you going to be okay? I promise we only did it for your safety."

"Yeah, you keep saying that, and I'm fine , so I don't understand why these are still on me." Niko couldn't help the note of irritation; her wrists and neck were killing her, and the fact that the women had not yet extended her even that small show of trust kept throwing suspicion against everything they said. "I'm not going to hurt you, if that's what you're worried about. If you're really a witch, you'd be a pretty uncool witch if I could , anyway."

Mel's eyes widened, and then she let out a disbelieving, short laugh. "I suppose if you're making jokes… you're okay."

"A-ha. That's the trick; jokes are how I avoid expressing what I'm really feeling."

"And what is that?"

"If you don't come over here and let me out of these chains, I'm going to start thinking this isn't a very friendly situation at all." She dropped her voice low, keeping the shorter woman's gaze with every word.

Shuffling forward, Mel leaned down to undo the chains at her wrists and neck, allowing Niko to sit up properly, and then unclasped the manacles around her ankles. Niko didn't miss the way the metal sparked with purple light as it hit the ground. When she was done, Mel took a half-step back, letting the detective put her feet down and stand.

Perhaps what made this seem like a non-surprise was that she'd been so unable to pin down the Vera sisters before, and for no good reason. They were cagey and totally innocent, somehow. But now? Depending on how this all went, and if everything turned out to be true, Niko herself wasn't sure how she'd keep all of it a secret. Adding to that, she and Morris had been right . The Veras did know more about the murders than they'd let on, and they were the targets of the messages. Witchcraft just hadn't been on the radar of what she'd been expecting at the end of all the questions and coincidences.

Steady on her feet for the first time in what felt like years, Niko rubbed her wrists and rolled her shoulders for a few minutes before looking back down at Mel, who was a little pale. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I… I'm just not sure where to start."

"Well, I'm really good at taking confessions, so how about this: Let's start with motive. Why did the wolf take me ?" Niko threw out the question casually, more curiosity than useful information, but the way Mel's face contorted with a sudden devastation gave her immediate pause. "What?"

Mel took several deep breaths before the words came: "I don't know how to even begin to say this, but... "

In response to the waves of tension coming off of the shorter woman, Niko held her own breath. What could be more difficult to explain than " my sisters and I are a coven of witches "?

"...do you remember the killings on campus about a year ago? Murderer never found, three students dead?" Mel waited for Niko to actually nod before continuing. "So, there's a version of reality that existed, that no longer exists… where your partner wasn't Morris. It was Trip Bailey."

" Bailey ? He's been dead for…" She frowned, remembering the officer's funeral, his mother sobbing beside his casket. "What do you mean, 'version of reality'? What does that have to do with the students?"

"I'll get to that. A demon killed those students. We killed the demon, but Trip figured out that we were involved somehow, and he followed us to try to figure it out. A piece of shrapnel from the spell hit him in the head, and that's how he died." The shorter woman dropped her eyes. "Our Elder made it look like Trip was the murderer instead, so the police would stop looking at us. You were… really upset, and I couldn't tell you the truth, and it was killing me."

A high pitched noise grew between Niko's ears, the periphery of her vision darkening. She could practically hear the giant hole in the story around which Mel expertly shimmied her tale, avoiding falling directly in to the key piece of missing information. Motive . "And why would you care that much about what I thought in that story? And what did you do to fix it?"

"Niko, we were together in that timeline. For about three years, by the time I…" Mel swallowed thickly, a couple tears trickling from her eyes. "Things got so bad, and I couldn't stand lying to you anymore. You almost died investigating Trip's death, and I had to keep you safe. So I changed time."

"You—what? But you didn't save Trip?"

"No, it's not…" Mel took a deep breath and wiped at her cheeks. She did look genuinely upset, and despite her efforts to stay suspicious and angry, Niko couldn't deny the twitch in her hand, wanting to reach out and comfort the other woman. Mel's scent swirled with something heavy and sour the more upset she got. "Look, it's not like time travel, and I couldn't use it to save Trip, or I would have, trust me. Instead, I erased myself from your timeline. Made it so that we never met, except… I still have my memories of the old timeline, because we cast the spell."

The pieces of this macabre puzzle came together in spite of Mel's winding retelling of it. She found herself flipping through every word and facial expression the Vera sisters had been throwing her way. The pity, the sadness, care and concern. Because they already knew me . Three years. Three years , nearly half of her relationship with Greta today, spent with someone else. Her emotions thudded against her skull, and the news became more difficult to bear than the existence of things called whitelighters and werewolves. "That's absurd ."

"No, Niko—"

"Hold on a second," snarled the detective. "If all of that is true, then why the fuck have you and your sisters been messing with me for the last few weeks, huh? You expect me to believe that just, what, you magically had this whole entire relationship with me that I don't remember? And you still wouldn't leave me alone? Being all sympathetic and nice and helping with the investigation, are you fucking kidding me ?" Her volume spike at the end, hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"That's kind of… exactly what I'm saying." The shorter woman winced and turned her chin slightly down. "I know this is a lot to process all at once, but we need you to understand what is happening so I can show you one more thing. It's why the rest of it matters, why I can't call an ambulance or let you just go home right now."

"Tell me. I'm done playing twenty questions, and don't think just because you're Perry's girlfriend that I won't—"

Mel held up a mirror. Just a simple, square mirror with a thin gold frame. Niko looked down and saw a long, white-tan snout leading up to wide-set black eyes… furry ears… She snatched the mirror out of Mel's hands and put her nose right up to it, gasping as the condensation from her nostrils billowed across the mirror, from the bear .

"Don't panic."

"Oh, I'm fucking panicking." Niko dropped the mirror when she saw the bear's mouth move, ignoring Mel's impressive catch before it hit the ground, and shook her head. "No. Nope. That's—no, let me see another one."

This time, Mel produced her phone. She put the Camera app in selfie mode. Niko tried to tap the screen to make sure it wasn't just a video, but then she finally saw it—her fingers weren't fingers at all.

"Ohhhmygod I'm panicking, what the fuck ?" Niko reeled backwards, short bear legs tripping over the bed, as if this body manifested purely by her own awareness of it, because moving around hadn't been so difficult thirty seconds earlier. Now, she could feel the thick fur, see the snout at the end of her vision, and everything else made sense , the scenting and the scared women. "I'm a bear? This whole time? You guys didn't think to fucking lead with that?"

"Breathe. Focus on me." Her voice was firm and calm as Mel got on the bed, standing, and Niko realized for the first time just how much taller she was than Mel, or how much more than usual, in this form. Her ears were brushing the ceiling of the Victorian room. "I'm sorry, Niko. I'm sorry I couldn't stop this, and that I can't fix it now."

"This is why you said that in the bar." Niko pressed herself back against the wall, worried she might fall over with out it. "You said, 'I'm sorry Niko, I did it for you.' Jesus, you're bad a keeping secrets."

Mel had her hands up, but wasn't touching her, just standing there on the mattress like a port in a storm of Niko's absolute meltdown. "I know, I know I am. When did I say that?"

"When you were coming to. After you hit your head." She shook her own head in a last, desperate hope that maybe she was dreaming or hallucinating. "Can't you do the-the time thing and change me back? So we never met again?"

"I can see if it's possible." Mel's face fell, and despite everything, Niko felt a stab of regret at her words. "I don't know if it works with curses."

"Am I—am I like this forever?"

"No. You'll be able to control it. You can control it now, if you focus. Look at me." Mel waited for the bear to comply, and she reached up a small hand to touch the hawk-shaped patch of light fur on her chest. "Breathe. Focus on your body."

Niko heard a pitiful rumble escape her throat, but kept looking at Mel as instructed. As much as she was open to the idea, maybe even expected it, she felt no threat from the woman—witch—in front of her. Her eyes slipped closed as she took in a lungful of that scent: dahlias and rainy sandstone under the sweet, artificial cloud of her shampoo and soap. The unpleasant undertone from before was gone, and so was the fear and shame from Mel's face. She followed the shorter woman's breaths, deep and slow in, quick and fully out, until her line of sight began to shrink down. The sensation was slightly painful, her bones cracking and muscles shifting back into human shapes and sizes, but unlike anything she had felt before—and somehow totally natural. The entire time, they kept eye contact, and though the exercises calmed her breaths, the intensity of that nearly ruined her progress.

Something deep in her bones, the same faraway voice that led her to bits of evidence and hiding suspects, told her that Mel was being truthful, as absurd as rewriting time sounded. It was all absurd. But the part about them , about a connection that was broken… Even without the correlating memories, and with what little she knew of Mel "in this life", the idea that they'd come together in some version of reality made sense. Still, the most important question remained unanswered: Was it worth whatever was happening to her right now?

When she came back to her body, she blinked and realized her eyes were back at the proper height compared to Mel's.

"There you are," murmured the smaller woman, her frown easing into a smile. "We can work on that until you feel really comfortable with it, and I promise, I'll answer any questions you have. How do you feel?"

Niko cleared her throat, a little embarrassed at having gotten so angry. "I'm, uh, a little hungry. I don't have to eat… raw animal parts, do I?"

"Not unless you want to," joked the witch weakly.

"I don't. I'd kill for some pizza." Niko followed Mel off the side of the bed back to the floor, and when the shorter woman turned, they were standing closer than she'd expected. They paused there, inches apart. "I'm not done freaking out about this," she murmured.

"Neither am I," agreed Mel with a sharp exhale. "Come on. We have pizza in the freezer at all times."

She followed her apparent-ex-girlfriend out of the room, only to nearly run into her back when she unexpectedly stopped. The other housemates had been caught just beyond the door in an awkward formation that couldn't mean anything but eavesdropping.

"Everything okay?" asked Macy with clearly artificial cheeriness. "You guys… have a good chat?"

Niko glanced at Mel, who had closed her eyes and looked on the verge of peak frustration, and then back at the older Vera. "You mean about how we used to date except we also didn't date at all? And I'm a bear now?"

"Right. Yes. That."

"I dunno," the detective shifted her eyes to Maggie and grinned. "Was she nice to me?"

"Never," laughed the youngest Vera, a little watery-eyed.

Morris stood with his arms crossed in the Hamada-Smith kitchen, trying not to interrupt the squabble happening in front of him. Greta had barely allowed him in the house as it was, and besides, why get involved when the lawyer friend was making all the points he wanted to?

In the living room, a TV crew had set up shop and rearranged the furniture into a prime interview setup, the bright lights making the room's sparse Scandinavian aesthetic look even colder than usual. Support staff hurried to and fro seemingly at random, and Morris wasn't convinced that it wasn't just for show.

"G, come on," Jackson had been pleading. "I'm not even this type of lawyer, and I know it's a bad idea."

"She's a victim. Why should we be worried about what she says?"

"Because she killed a guy, cut his throat, and that is still up in the air."

"Kidnapped, held hostage—you wouldn't have done that to get out?"

"Just, legally speaking, it's smarter to not . At least until she'd back to one hundred percent, I mean Jesus , it's been one day." The redhead was still talking to Greta, but had her eyes on Hamada, who was just standing across the kitchen island looking nonplussed.

"I mean… they're already here," said his partner calmly. "And I know why and how I did what I did. No reason to be shy about it."

Morris narrowed his eyes. Hamada was not one for spotlight chasing. He felt a pang of worry, more than anything, that she was maybe in denial or otherwise more out of it than they thought. When he looked up, he caught Jackson's eye, and they exchanged dubious looks.

"Mrs. Hamada-Smith, 5 minutes," interrupted a PA, who then promptly scurried on by.

"What do you think, Morris?" Jackson threw the hot potato to him, looking desperate for an assist.

"Hamada," he waited until she looked at him. "You should be resting, not doing this." Greta scoffed, but he ignored her. "You hate this type of stuff."

"I know." Her expression was appropriately warm towards him, but again, her eyes… He couldn't really put words to it. She went on, "But Greta and I talked about it for a long time this morning, and it's something I need to do."

He still frowned as Hamada followed her wife into the living room to take a seat on the meticulously cleaned gray cloth couch. The younger detective still looked a little pale and thin to his eyes, but wardrobe had put her in a striking, plunging neckline black dress with ruffled sleeves, and the television-ready makeup and simple sideswept hairdo almost made up for the subtler signs of weakness.

As the interview began, another PA ushered Morris and the attorney into the guest bedroom and left them there to watch along on a laptop. While the initial sequences ran, Jackson scrolled through her phone, shifting on the bed in clear agitation.

"Hey, uh," he said when the first commercial break started. "I just wanted to… say I'm sorry, for before. With the Vera girls."

Jackson looked up at him and locked her phone. "You were really going to arrest them based on the symbols? Today's crimes brought to you by the letter M and number three?"

He took a deep breath and counted to five. "That's why... I'm apologizing. You were right. Probably saved us a lawsuit, too."

"I'm going to chalk it up to extraordinary circumstances, but if I ever see you pull something like that on one of my clients again, and that apology will come with a settlement." The redhead's smile shifted from somewhat predatory to a genuine one, but he knew her threat wasn't an empty one.

"That's fair." Morris grinned back in spite of himself. "I'll be better."

They turned their attention back to the UltraBook as the host introduced their friends' segment, leading into a reel with the backstory of the crime and some seemingly unnecessary pictures of Hamada as a child. Cute, but off message and a bit gratuitous, in his opinion. It led into, for reasons unknown, a close up of Greta's pensive face, zooming out to include both Hamada and her wife on the familiar couch.

After a few introductory softballs, the interviewer hit her with a very serious: "So. How do you feel? "

Hamada tilted her head and let out a long breath. "Uh, grateful, definitely. It's surreal to be here right now."

"And the killer? He kidnapped you for…?"

"To stop me from solving the murders. My partner and I, we were starting to put together a real case, and Laurel wanted to stop it from getting anywhere near him."

"Did he threaten you? Was there a ransom?"

"Of course he threatened me. Would've killed me if I didn't convince him that I might be useful alive to trade, if my partner found him." Hamada cleared her throat, and Greta reached over to give her hand a squeeze. It earned her a smile from the detective, and the interviewer went on to ask the blonde how she was feeling.

Morris huffed. "This is stupid. She should be sleeping for five days, not doing this."

Jackson met his gaze, hands wringing in her lap. "Yeah… Seems a little off. But, after a trauma like that? Nothing is surprising. I'd be curled up in a little ball on the floor. She's always been a little bit like that though, you know?"

"Oh, do I." He leaned back against the headboard of the bed and crossed his arms. "Getting an admission of negative feeling out of that woman is like getting a teenager to hug you without rolling their eyes."

"You have kids?"

"Three. Oldest sixteen, youngest three. I like a healthy refractory period after each one."

Finally, Jackson laughed, and she put her phone away completely. They passed a bowl of popcorn the PA brought them back and forth as they watched the rest of the program.

Mel couldn't help but closely watch Niko's expressions as the CBS interview played. Besides a couple parlor tricks from the witches and some fox-form time with Zelda, Niko hadn't really seen serious magic until her own face, her own voice were giving an interview while she sat in Vera Manor. Much like with the rest of the news they'd had to deliver to her that day, Niko had not been thrilled to find out someone was out there living her life as an impersonator, but she also appreciated their thought: It would allow her to go back one day, when she was ready, as if nothing happened and make her own decisions from there.

Now that the worst hurdle—breaking the news—had been cleared and the sisters had had some time to research their charge's requirements, Prudence and Zelda had left the house to wherever it was that spirits and dark witches lived in Hilltowne. In the end, neither had been as unpleasant as she initially thought.

Jada hadn't been lying about Zelda's pranks, apparently a fox spirit thing, and more than once Mel had come across salt and sugar shakers switched or a bag of powder propped over a door. They were juvenile and harmless tricks, though perhaps annoying when she salted her first morning coffee, but Zelda's giggling fox form was irresistibly cute and forgivable. She did make Zelda clean up the messier pranks, though, even if she could do it magically. It was the principle of the thing.

Prudence, though unwaveringly macabre and sharp-edged, was also unexpectedly spiritual, though the young witch would never call it that. She had deep convictions related to her Dark Lord and the traditions of the Church of the Night. It gave her a strong sense of personal priorities (off-putting as those sometimes were, like the time she'd told them about how she tried to offer herself as a sacrifice to be cannibalized by her friends and family) and an appreciation for the oddities of the magical world, making her a fun sort of Wikipedia for their random witchery questions. Even Maggie had engaged in some playful banter with the blonde witch.

One important thing they'd learned from Prudence was that weres required calories sufficient for their animal form, and in Niko's case, that was currently manifesting in the gallon tub of ice cream she'd nearly finished by herself. She looked piteous and miserable despite the sweet treat, her eyes glued to the television.

"That's a nice dress," she commented flatly. "I look good in that."

Maggie and Mel exchanged worried looks. The youngest sister prodded, "Are you okay?"

"I mean…" Niko laughed, a bark of a thing that really held zero humor. "There's a witch impersonating me on national television, I can turn into a bear, and all I can think of is how happy I am to not be sitting with Greta right now. I'm great ."

Macy, who was the only one sitting next to the detective on the couch, put a tentative hand on her shoulder. "Do you want to turn it off?"

"You guys don't have to act like I'm gonna break. This is fine." Niko shoveled another scoop of vanilla ice cream into her mouth. "It's alllll fine."

Greta was going on about how scared she'd been during her wife's disappearance, and even the interviewer seemed a little bored. She looked stunning in a simple blue dress that made her eyes even brighter, with a red lip and understated makeup.

"Can I still get drunk?"

Mel looked back at Niko and raised an eyebrow. "Maybe? That… I didn't ask. Witches can get drunk."

The newly minted werebear put the nearly-empty gallon container to one side in order to better sit up, muting the television. "Okay, maybe I'm not fine. I think this is starting to sink in. I think I'm about to freak out."

Within seconds, Macy had levitated a bottle of whiskey and glass from the bar cart over to the coffee table. Niko ignored the glass and took several long pulls on the brown alcohol, enough that Mel winced reflexively.

"Okay," she said around a gasp when about half of the fifth had been emptied. "I'm good. This is fine. Yep."

After a long, awkward silence, Maggie ventured: "Do you… want some weed?"

"Absolutely, yes. Whatever you got."

"Okay," interrupted Macy. "Hold on, I'm a little worried about the possibility of a drunk and high bear in the house?"

"You can just chain me up again or whatever," muttered the detective, glaring at the whiskey bottle as Macy's face fell.

"Why don't you go get the weed, and you go get some more alcohol?" Mel quickly suggested to her sisters, thankful that they agreed and left without protest. She moved from her chair to the couch, giving the detective some space, but close enough that she could keep her voice low: "Niko. I'm not going to ask if you're okay, but I don't know how else to prompt you to tell me what you're feeling."

Niko crossed her arms, but didn't lean away. "Robbed."

"I get that. Robbed of what?"

"My life… lives."

Mel had to consciously resist the near overwhelming urge to touch Niko in some way, a palm on the knee or shoulder, anything to try to soothe away the look of defeat on her face. "You can go back to it, mostly. We just have to make sure you're really confident about controlling your shifts. You can only turn people as the bear, so everything else can be normal."

"That's not what I meant." Cheeks already reddening from the alcohol, Niko finally turned to face her. "Did I leave Greta before… you and me, or…?"

Oh. The witch swallowed thickly. "You left her for me. We…" She paused to think of a better word for cheated . "We had an affair. You never married her, for whatever that's worth."

"Okay." Her voice broke on the simple word, her energy suddenly shrinking from anger to something… else.

"You know that I don't… I would never expect anything of you after telling you all this. You know that, right?"

"I know. Thank you for saying it, though." A deep sigh, and while her brown eyes turned down, Niko's hand reached out to take Mel's smaller one, the grip gentle and cautious. "You didn't ask me about the timeline change, did you?"

"No. I didn't. And I'm sorry for that too."

Niko nodded aimlessly a few times. Her palm was warm and rough and alive against Mel's hand, which two days ago had seemed like a pipe dream. She couldn't even think of pulling hers away. The detective cleared her throat before her next words. "I have been… miserable . And that's not your fault, it's mine for not doing anything about it. But I've known you in this life for all of three times that we met, and I feel more than… Fuck, you did all these things to me, to my life, and I'm not even mad at you. Not even a little bit. I feel more right sitting here with you and your sisters with a bear in my chest than I ever did at home with Greta. It's stupid."

Mel didn't move, barely breathed for fear that she might startle away this moment. It was something delicate and raw, a dewy butterfly in the seconds after chrysalis.

"So what I'm saying is…" Niko sniffled. "I wish I could have spent the last three years with you, instead of whatever life this was. And that's weird to admit. Honestly it's weirder to me than the rest of this magic stuff. What... were we like, together? Did I… was I good to you?"

"You were so good," replied the witch with conviction. "And we were good together, before my mom died and everything went haywire. You were good with Mom, and Maggie, and then Macy, and… losing you was devastating, but I thought it would keep you safe."

Surprisingly, Niko's face shifted into a half-smile. "Yeah, I could've told you there's no keeping me out of trouble. Woulda saved you a lot of work, sounds like."

Of course Niko's take on the whole thing would be to comment on causing disruption in Mel's life. Of-fucking-course.

"Where's your sister with the goods?" said Niko quickly, wiping at her eyes and trying to smile.

Mel lifted her free hand to the taller woman's shoulder, a neutral place, and waited. After a second or two, Niko leaned forward, giving up on smiling as the first sob wracked her body, and Mel wrapped both her arms around the detective grieving two lives lost. The detective slumped against her, hands twisting in the fabric of her sweatshirt, face pressed into the crook of her neck. She stroked Niko's hair and made soothing, shushing noises, quite unable to formulate words herself. Internally, her veins sang with relief at the feel of arms she'd missed so much folding across her waist, tugging her closer. She was so tired of fighting herself, and there was nothing sexual about this, that wasn't what it was… But comfort . Like walking into a place that unexpectedly feels like home.

"I've missed you," she whispered against the top of the detective's head.

Niko made one of those laugh-sob noises and pulled back enough that they could look each other in the eye. "Big scary werebear, huh?"

"Ah, look at that—you said it out loud."

"Werebear. It's cutesy. Couldn't have been like a tiger or a lion…?"

"Please. You're a cinnamon bun." Mel got a real smile out of the detective at that, bashful and accompanied by a squeeze around her hips. "Tell me that's a lie."

"Some things stayed the same." Niko loosened her arms only enough to put her palms over Mel's hips, glancing up at her eyes with a familiar, questioning look.

She nodded, pulling back one of her own hands to run her thumb along the jawline at her eye level. "I also know about your fake glasses."

The groan Niko let out almost made her think the bear had returned. "That was codeword classified."

Apparently encouraged by the sound of their chuckling, Macy and Maggie appeared in the foyer with their assigned mind altering substances.

Mel tried not to frown as Niko pulled away from her to greet the sisters, and she could take some comfort in the way the detective stayed close on the couch.

As it turned out, werebears could get drunk and high, and though like with the food… It just took a lot more. A lot . Macy and Mel helped Niko wobble up the stairs and into the room, encouraged that she hadn't shifted to the bear while under the influence, least of because they'd never be able to move her. The older Vera gave Mel a pointed look before leaving the room, but left nonetheless.

"Hey," she murmured as Niko flopped onto the mattress on her stomach. "No throwing up in this room. Bathroom's down the hall."

"You're so sweet," replied the detective with dim sarcasm as she closed her eyes. After a pause where Mel thought she'd fallen asleep, her hand snaked out from under the covers and took hold of her sweatshirt. "I'm sure there's a thousand more things we need to talk about, but… will you stay here? Just tonight?" At Mel's distressed expression, she hastily added: "For sleeping. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not in any shape to consent, so that's not even on the table."

The witch looked at the door, then the bed, and then at Niko's languid, faded expression. The house was silent outside the door. So she relented, and the detective scooted to the other side of the bed to make room. They lay facing each other, about a foot apart, hands clasped between them, and Mel slipped into sleep seconds after her eyes closed.