"What the hell?" Aria said under her breath.

"I couldn't say it better myself." Nathan replied.

"Our throw-down to get Branwen back is happening at some fancy house?" Caleb chimed in.

Aria really wished he wouldn't. All she wanted to do was blow him up. She had spent so much emotional effort stressing over him and his issues and now he acts like it was nothing and he thinks he has the right to be pissed off that she'd want to know about Sarah? Every fiber of her being had wanted to lash out at him and his big stupid man ego. But her best friend had been witch-napped. And all signs pointed to it taking everything they had to get her back.

So, she had bottled up her anger and saved it for when she would need to get homicidal on somebody. Arriving at what looked like a mountain paradise instead of the dark and foreboding den of sinister hoodlums she had expected, that just shook up that bottle, tempting the cork to pop. Caleb's presence and any stupid, irritating, useless thing that came out of his mouth, only made her more and more annoyed.

"What are we missing here?" Nathan mumbled, looking across the property in front of them.

"You mean other than any clue as to what to do now?" Caleb responded, causing Aria to grind her teeth and dig her nails into the palms of her hands. Reacting to him now might just lead to blowing them all up in this expensive sardine can Nathan called a car.

Distracting herself, Aria leaned forward and looked out the window at the house in front of them. It was a large, impressive timber-frame house, with fancy stonework and extravagant but natural looking landscaping. Judging by the view of the mountains past the house and the slanting of the property at the sides of the house, Aria assumed there was a walkout on the back of the house.

Overall assessment, Aria deemed this house, big, fancy, expensive, and not a traditional place of holding someone when you kidnap them.

"Are we just going to sit here?" Pogue asked quietly? "Shouldn't we get out? Maybe ring the doorbell?"

Nathan and Caleb turned around to look at him. "Are you stupid?" Caleb asked.

"We don't know what is going on or what to expect and you think we should leave the safety of the car?" Nathan said scornfully. "We don't even know if this in that place we're looking for.

"The blood led us here!" Aria replied, the anger growing.

"Maybe it was wrong?"

"So like maybe we just drove across the country for nothing? That's Bullshit."

"The attitude isn't needed right now, Aria."

Aria lunged forward, determined to wrap her arm around his seat and strangle him to death, but Pogue reached out and stopped her. Pogue was the only person in the car she wasn't increasingly annoyed at right now, so she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Not that it helped much. Getting out of the car and getting some fresh air might help. Sitting in the car and staring at the house wasn't getting them anywhere anyway.

Pogue echoed that thought and the only response was scoffing from the front seat. Aria was about to revolt and demand they get out of the car when there was a tapping on the side window and everyone jumped.

It made Aria glad she didn't know any big magic spells or she might have blown them all up herself. However, she was immediately distracted as she looked around and caught sight of Caleb's eyes. They were a dark, shining black. The kind of darkness you felt sucking at your soul.

She was only distracted by the sound of a voice speaking.

"Are you getting out of the car or camping in it?"

The slight Irish lilt was distinct and revealing. "Son of a bitch." Aria mumbled, trying to get out of the car so hard that she couldn't get the door open. Nathan didn't have that problem.

No sooner had Kieran taken a few steps away from the car when Nathan sprang from the car and had Kieran up against a tree with a hand around his neck before anyone else had even gotten their doors open. Considering Aria wanted to kill him a few minutes ago, she was strongly agreeable with his actions now.

Pogue finally reached over and opened her door, unlocking the seatbelt she'd forgotten she was still wearing. Real elegant she would have looked trying to get out of the car with her seatbelt still on.

Elegant? Why was she thinking about looking elegant? She had an uncomfortable inkling as to why when she finally got out of the car and looked up to see cat-green eyes on her. Mentally shaking herself, Aria waited for Pogue to come around the side of the car before approaching the tree. Conflicted with her own up and down emotions and anger right now, Aria took the opportunity to observe Pogue.

Before she had met him, from what Branwen had said and her general assumptions from what she'd heard from the coven, Aria had pictured Pogue as some aloof bad boy with a lot of money but not a lot of intelligence, empathy or motivation. After meeting him, she found him quiet, withdrawn and moody. Now, after everything they had all gone through and what they were still going through, she was beginning to see that Pogue was a very loyal and dedicated friend. She hoped that when all things were said and done, she would still have him as a friend.

"Did you have to bring them?" Kieran asked. Despite Nathan holding him by his throat, he seemed perfect calm and comfortable. Something she assumed was possible only due to magic.

"Bring them?" Nathan echoed. "You say that as if you didn't act like nothing was going on and then kidnapped my fiancé. What did you think I would do? Let her go?"

"No. I knew you would come, I just didn't know if would be so soon and I didn't know you would bring the trash with you."

Caleb took a few steps forward but Nathan dropped his hand to turn and stop Caleb. Kieran, laughing, just slowly floated back down to the ground. Despite growing up in the coven, Aria had never seen such casual use of magic.

"First of all," Nathan said, turning back to Kieran, "How did you think I was going to find you when you blocked almost every way of tracking Branwen?"

"Once we got here and set up we would have lifted some guards. I'm impressed you found us before then."

"Second, they are not trash," Nathan motioned to Caleb and Pogue. "They are friends and that is more than I can say for you right now."

Kieran rolled his eyes. "I think you're being a little melodramatic, Nate. No one has been hurt, everyone is safe, and despite our different opinion of your friends here, I'd say the situation is rather amiable."

"I'd say you're full of shit." Aria responded.

"I'd second that." Nathan agreed.

"Where is Branwen?" Pogue asked, making Aria realize they hadn't even bothered to ask that yet.

"Inside, still recovering." Kieran said. He walked past them towards the house and turned back to them. "Why don't we take this inside where we can all get a drink and rest?"

Begrudgingly, they grabbed their bags from the car and followed his towards the house. Aria noted that is seemed even bigger and fancier up close. She was so distracted looking at everything around her that she ran into the back of Kieran and, in turn, Caleb ran into the back of her. Kieran gave her a wide grin that only grew when Caleb bristled.

Turning and opening the door, Kieran motioned them in. He walked in past them and looked around before looking back at them. He gave them all a once over before smiling arrogantly. "Welcome, frenimies, to Loon Lodge. I'd say make yourselves at home but it's not my place."

Confused, Aria said, "Then who does it belong to?"

Kieran turned and looked to the top of the stairs. Standing there was a woman who looked to be in her late sixties and, despite her small stature, she gave off an authoritative air that left Aria immediately intimidated.

"It's my home." The woman said in a deep, rough voice that was somehow melodic at the same time. "Please, make yourselves at home. Kieran, be a good young man and bring some drinks before you leave."

"Of course. I'd say I've never been so politely dismissed but I've known you too long for that to be true."

The woman smiled as she made her way down the stairs. "Kieran, be a good boy and get the drinks and then run back to the apartment you don't pay rent for."

Smiling himself, Kieran brought a tray of glasses with a pitcher of water into the living room and sat it on the coffee table. Then he came over and leaned down to kiss the woman on the cheek before leaving again.

It was adorable. And him being adorable was irritating.

Then again, in Aria's current mood, there was little that wasn't irritating. And standing in some strange house, belonging to some old woman, when she still hadn't seen that her best friend was safe, wasn't helping.

"Please, sit." The woman said, motioning towards the living room.

Nobody really moved. Caleb even moved to lean against the wall. Nathan, whether it was the southern manners in him or that he was technically older than the rest of them, stepped forward, taking the lead. "I don't mean to be rude, but this isn't exactly what we expected to find when we thought we were traveling here to rescue our friend."

The woman nodded. "I understand that. The rescue party isn't exactly what I expected when I had her brought here."

"Yeah, about that…" Caleb began, but the woman held up her hand.

"All in good time, but if you'll forgive me, I'm not as young as I used to be and I'd like to sit down. Feel free to stand it you're so inclined." Without waiting for a response, she went over and sat down in a large, worn, leather high-back chair by the fire. As she threw a blanket over her legs, Nathan sat his bag down by the stairs and went to sit on the sofa.

Aria looked at Pogue before, reluctantly, going to sit beside Nathan. Pogue, thankfully, sat beside her, leaving Caleb with the choice of two other chairs. But whether it was because he was in asshole mode, or maybe he was stiff from all the driving, a little voice said in Aria's head, sounding a lot like Branwen, Caleb chose to remain standing.

The woman looked all of them over, her gaze lingering on Caleb, before she said anything. "I don't know whether you're aware, but Branwen has been targeted recently. If was how she ended up in the hospital."

"You're saying the car accident wasn't an accident?" Nathan asked. Aria already knew he suspected as much. Nathan had been working with Branwen on how to stop the attacks on her and Aria for a while now. Branwen had told Aria that a few weeks ago. Aria, however, wasn't surprised Nathan was being calculated. That seemed to be his main feature sometimes.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him. "You're saying your engagement wasn't a sham meant to stave off the attack and dupe your poor, dear grandmother?"

"How did you know that?" Aria asked, more intimidated by this woman's knowledge of them. She wasn't scared; she was still too irritated and angry to be scared, but somewhere inside her there was a sensor that told her there was something about this woman that she naturally respected on a base level. That, coupled with the knowledge about them she seemed to possess, made Aria leery.

"I've had an eye on the two of you for a while. It was impossible to miss Branwen's connection to Mr. Parry, here. It's why I used his image to get her out of the Condo."

Aria felt stunned. Branwen had spent months trying to figure out who had done that. Aria felt there was a small part of Branwen that had hoped her mother had done it. Like she hadn't really wanted them to burn; only to threaten them. But it this woman had woken Branwen, that didn't bode well for Branwen's standing with her mother.

"Wait, what?" Caleb asked. "Used his image? What does that mean?"

Looking at Pogue, not Caleb, Aria explained. "The night our condo burned down, Branwen had a dream. In it you came to her and told her she had to wake up and get out of the house. If she hadn't woken up when she did we never would have made it out. It's why she came to see you before Thanksgiving. She was trying to figure out if it had actually been you who had helped us."

Pogue frowned and looked to the woman before looking back at Aria. "So she came over because she thought I'd saved her?"

"She realized right away that you were completely unaware, but it was her first sign that someone else knew we were in contact with you and that the coven was threatening our lives."

"Then there was the darkling before Christmas and now the accident." Pogue said, shaking his head. "We need to stop this."

"My thoughts exactly." The woman said. "Which is why I had Kieran bring her here to cloak her until we can sort it all out."

"Or until the coven thought she had left and left the Sons alone." Nathan said, nodding. "You knew Aria would come after her, any way she could. That would leave it looking like they had caved to the coven's threats and removed themselves from the situation. And then we brought them with us."

"Yes. You did a very good job of messing up the entire plan." She said, smiling. She shrugged. "I suppose we will just have to deal with it quicker than I had originally planned. I don't suppose I could talk you into going back home for a while?"

Pogue looked at her solemnly before giving a slight shake of his head.

She nodded and took off the blanket, getting to her feet. "Very well, let's get you all settled in then. Oh, what have I been thinking? How rude of me. My name if Catherine. Welcome to my home."

They all pick up their bags and began following her up the stairs. Aria was almost to the top when she faltered, almost falling backwards before catching the railing. Catherine? Why did that name sound so familiar? It couldn't be…

Squeezing back past a confused looking Pogue, Aria turned at the bottom of the stairs and pulled the doors open. On one door, in beautiful wrought iron over the glass inset, where the letters "LL" for Loon Lodge. On the other door was "CA". Aria had a feeling she knew exactly what that stood for.

Closing the doors again, she picked her bag up and ran up the stairs to catch up with the others.

A/N: Any guesses? Were you paying attention along the way? Hope you enjoyed it regardless. Comments always welcome!