Lois, Louise, Katherine Louise.

From a window in the corridor upstairs, Russell watches Katherine and her grandmother move for the gardens on the west side of the house.

The scent of apples and honey engulfs him before she speaks. "Can you communicate with each other yet?" Louise asks from behind him. Russell glances to her and shakes his head. He finds she's a little closer than he expected, right in his bubble of space. Like if it was someone you'd known for years.

"Not voluntarily," he answers. "It's usually when she's asleep."

Louise purses her lips. "I wonder if she's shielding without knowing it."

"Shielding?" Russell asks.

Louise nods. "Protecting her mind, essentially. It's quite a difficult skill to master."

"She's very hard to read," Russell offers, glancing over his shoulder at her again.

She smiles. "Must be it, then." She moves away from him, taking her honeyed apple scent with her. "So what have your experiences been with the supernatural, Russell?"

Lois is a character. She swears, she huffs, she's animated, unconventional. She offers pieces of a peach on a knife for Katherine.

The garden is full of all kinds of smells. There's honeysuckle, lavender, wisteria, the cluster of magnolias, the huge willow. And the peach they're sharing.

"Our ancestors had no idea what a peach was when they came here," she laughs.

"So they built this place?" Katherine asks. Lois nods, offering the knife to her again. Katherine takes the slice of peach and eats it.

"Your father really didn't say anything, did he?" Lois asks.

"You and Louise keep saying that," Katherine hums. They sit on a stone bench by the pond. Huge koi are shimmering underneath the glistening surface of the water.

"The koi are my own touch on this place," Lois says, as if Katherine noted them aloud. "I stay here all the time. Louise doesn't."

"She knows a lot for not practicing."

Lois barks out a laugh. "Is that what he told you?" A frown wrinkles Katherine's face. "What a crock of shit." Lois eats another slice of peach, and offers Katherine the last. She takes it. "Katherine, we should start by you forgetting everything your father told you about us."

"O...kay."

"You were trained as a hunter, right?" Sharp blue eyes sweep over her, brows raised. Katherine nods.

"Demons, primarily, but we don't discriminate."

Lois hums, sucking the peach juice from her fingers. "So he kept that part true, then."

"Did...were you taught to hunt?"

Lois hums again. "Every Donovan is taught to hunt, but they're given the choice: defend those from what they don't know, or don't." She shrugs. "No one is excommunicated from the family because of their choices. You can carry on hunting demons, practicing magic." Lois watches Katherine's face with careful eyes, and she's met with a storm of steely blue.

I didn't have to do this.

"Your father didn't have the gift," Lois says. "Unsurprising to me."

Katherine frowns. "Why?"

"Because he was adopted." Lois studies Katherine once more, again met with the same swirling blue gray in her eyes. Katherine grits her teeth.

"He what?"

"When he was ten," Lois says. "His mother, apparently, died under drug-related circumstance. Another in the coven brought it to everyone's attention." She shrugs. "The second I met him, I decided he was mine."

The wheels are slow to turn in Katherine's head. She looks away from Lois and takes a deep breath, sliding her palms along her thighs.

"So we're not even family."

"Family is what you make it," Lois says.

Family don't end with blood.

Goosebumps run along Katherine's arms, and she feels ill. How long has it been since she's spoken to Bobby? She hasn't spoken to Sam all summer.

He doesn't even know about the baby.

"But what I mean is...earlier, you said I was the first Donovan in a century to have a familiar."

Lois nods. "First in half of that for the coven," she adds.

Katherine's eyebrows furrow. "But if I'm not a Donovan by blood, then..."

"Well if you want to think of it that way, Katherine Louise, then you're free to do so, but I won't. Neither will Louise."

"But the rest of the coven might." She shrugs.

"The coven wouldn't do anything to you," Lois says. "You've got the name. You've got the magic. Strongest in a long time, if we're to go off of your bond." She nods towards the house.

Katherine stares at it with a frown. If I'm not a Donovan, then...none of this is even real.

All it does is open up more questions. Who were her father's parents? Where did her power come from, if it couldn't be from the Donovan line? What are the chances she was even born with this kind of power, into a family of witches?

What a silly game of fate this all seems to be.

Katherine sits on her bed, thumbing through one of three old photo albums Louise left on the bed for her. These all seem to be high school...prom, homecoming, football games, field trips...band rehearsal. Katherine smiles a little. Piccolo or flute, she couldn't tell the difference, but at least she knew there was one. Her father is in a lot of the pictures with Louise. Christmastime, first days of school, the prom pictures. It's so strange to see him this young when she hadn't before. He shares a lot of features with her brother, Mitch.

Another hole in her stomach opens up and threatens to swallow her whole. Mitchy.

Katherine puts her head in her hands and sighs. So much loss.

Memories swell and wash over her. Riding horses with Mitch, how he fell and broke his leg. Jumping off of the diving board in their backyard pool, into her father's arms. At the dinner table...Dylan was really small. Picture day.

Visions of her mother turn fuzzy. She feels warm and safe, remembering her smile. How she would always touch Katherine's hair.

How her parents would fight. All the time.

Katherine picks her head up and sighs before looking at the photo album again.

The album starts to get spotty in Louise's collegiate years.

Katherine frowns and brings the book closer to her, focusing on her sweatshirt. Yale.

A breath of laughter forces itself from her lungs. "No way," she mutters.

There are no more photos in this album. Katherine trades it out with one that seems much older. Childhood.

They start with Louise as a baby. Hospital photos. Her father, Bill. Grandparents. People Katherine never met.

She remembers seeing very little of her father's family growing up, but frequently visiting her mother's. It leaves her to wonder what happened. Why Katherine saw so little of this family, when they seem perfectly normal. Especially kind, given the circumstance of adoption, and Louise's warm, albeit a little strange, demeanor. Katherine has yet to entirely figure out Lois, but there's the sense of a kindred spirit.

There's a little boy in the hospital bed with Lois, whose hair was quite long at the time. His hair is a dark blond, but that's all she can tell from this picture, dated July 3 1964. Katherine does quick math in her head. Her father and Louise are just months apart.

Her mother was older than her father, but sifting through her memories to pinpoint it is difficult. She feels a headache coming, and her stomach is just turning with hunger, pain, anxiety.

Katherine pushes herself from the bed and moves for her backpack in search of the orange bottle. She pops one in her mouth, washes it down, and sighs.

The worst of the withdrawal has seemed to pass...yet another thing she feels indebted to Russell for. If he wasn't bonded to me like he is, would he have agreed to help? Or would he be normal and tell me to kick rocks?

Katherine tries to swallow her doubt, and starts thinking of her mother some more. What, three years? Maybe three years older than her father. Maybe.

Well, no...she would be forty-seven this year, so she was born in '61...then yes, I guess.

Katherine rubs her temple and moves for the bed again, trying to cut the strings of thought weighed by cinderblock-like guilt. Russell is tied to me, for better or worse, and the poor bastard can't even decide for himself.

She stares at the photo of the hospital bed again, the one with the little boy. The strip of paper underneath it reads Glen meeting Louise...very curious!

Glen?

Katherine quickly flips through the photo album. Glen here, Glen there...Glen and Louise at Thanksgiving, Christmas...Louise watching Glen color, Louise watching Glen do spelling homework. Louise with Glen at his senior prom. There, in the corner, leant against the wall and obivously engaged in another conversation, but he's smiling, is Clay. Her father.

They had a whole brother she didn't know about.

Katherine closes the photo album and slowly pushes it away from her, like it would help with...anything.

"Hey." Katherine doesn't look up at the light sound of Russell's voice. "Louise told me to get you for dinner." He continues toward her with a smile. "That lady can cook. She made this pasta, but she threw some sundried tomatoes in there—you've just gotta come try it, but I already had her write the recipe down for me." He sits on the edge of the bed, and his smile quickly fades. "What's wrong?" He follows her eyes to the offending photo album. "Whose nude did you see?"

She sits up and frowns at him, but Russell grins. "No one put a nude in there," she mutters.

"Yet."

"Russell," Katherine sighs and shakes her head. "Okay, I'm coming to terms with the fact that my father was adopted, and I'm looking through these photo albums, and I see that he had a whole ass brother that he never said a thing about!"

Russell chews on his lower lip. "This is bad."

"Yes, Russell, this is bad."

He chews some more. "At the risk of you tearing my head off, I'm going to suggest digesting this with some food in your stomach," he says. "At the table. Where you can ask your long lost family questions instead of letting it eat away at you." She turns her gaze to him with pursed lips. "And have you taken your medicine?"

"Yes, I took my medicine," she defensively mutters. "Five minutes ago."

Russell nods. "Let's go eat," he says. "Let's eat, let's sleep on today's developments. It's been a long day, Kat."

"I know."

"And you know how you get when you're tired."

She backhands his hip and pushes herself up from her hip.

"Crabby," he mutters, moving to follow her.

Moving down the stairs, the luxurious smell of home-cooked food floats up from the kitchen.

It's easy to see why this is Louise's favorite place of the whole house. The tile is a honeycomb mosaic pattern, white with evenly-spaced black tiles. The backsplash over the oven is a pretty off-white, a little gray. The countertops look like a rich brown sealed wood, including the deep green island. The sink and large hanging light fixtures are gold, and the appliances—including the potfiller closed in by the stove.

The deep olive paint of the island matches the color of the dining nook's walls, past the island, and the table matches the wood of the countertops. Pot and pan storage is built into the walls, but it doesn't look cluttered, even with the small vase of flowers and various other trinkets. The chairs around the circular dining table are a light tan leather, and look well-worn, but well-preserved.

"That does smell good," Katherine sighs, turning her attention to Louise. The woman grins at her, hair clipped back, towel draped over her shoulder.

"Russell helped," Louise says. "He certainly knows how to elevate a dish. Good thinking with the burrata."

Katherine blinks, turning to Russell. "I thought the only thing you knew how to cook was a steak."

Russell smiles sheepishly. "Hard not to be inspired in a kitchen like this."

You should've opened your own place. It's a sentiment echoed from an earlier conversation, when Katherine was talking about his baking. It's in her eyes, molten blue steel.

It's in his head.

She turns away from him before he can say anything, and reaches for a plate on the island. Even the plate fits this decoration profile, perfectly misshapen, glazed cream pottery.

"Thank you for taking us in," Katherine says. Louise just smiles at her, close-lipped and a poor attempt at reining in big emotion.

"Thank you for coming."

Anything would be good in Katherine's stomach right now, but homemade pasta is something she'll always have a weak spot for. Bright flavors like basil, garlic, the vodka in the sundried tomato sauce...

If this is Louise's cooking, Katherine missed out a lot.

Lois has the sweet tooth. Before the other three have finished cleaning up dinner, she's already scooping globs of pre-made cookie dough onto a baking sheet and throwing it into the oven for ice cream sandwiches.

"Is this how you guys always are?" Katherine asks, eyeballing the two.

"I always eat better when Louise is here," Lois says, patting her daughter's shoulder as she passes. "She should do it more," she says pointedly. Louise playfully rolls her eyes.

"Some of us have a day job," she says.

"What is your day job?" Russell asks.

Louise smiles. "I'm a lawyer."

"Yale graduate," Katherine says. Louise nods. "I went to med school there."

"She's kind of a prodigy," Russell says.

How much sadness would she know if Dean Winchester never found her apartment?

"Who's Glen?" Katherine blurts. Russell sighs quietly, lowering his fork. Everyone's eyes flit to Katherine.

"Glen was my brother," Louise says. "He died in 1994."

"How?"

"Katherine," Russell begins.

"He was murdered," Louise answers. "By the things he hunted."

"You never figured out what?" Katherine asks.

"Demon, we think," Lois says from the other side of the table. "A high-level demon. He'd been talking about this one for several months."

"Do you know which one?"

Lois' icy blue eye bore into her skull. "We don't talk demons at the table," is all she says.

"Mother, it's already been brought up," Louise sighs.

But Lois doesn't have to say anything for it to be understood that the matter is paused.

Katherine looks down at her plate, chewing on the inside of her cheek. "Do we talk about the coven at the table?"

"We can," Lois answers.

"There's something you need to know about that, actually," Louise says, reaching for her glass of wine. But she doesn't have time to elaborate, because the front door opens, and heavy bootfalls start towards them. The hair on the back of Russell's neck stands straight up, and he pushes himself from the table. Katherine does the same, alarm knitting her brow.

"Guys?" A male calls from down the hallway.

Louise sighs, resting her forehead in her fingertips. "Fuck," she mutters.

Katherine looks to Louise, then Lois. Lois is the only one who returns her gaze. There's something of an apology there. Katherine's heart races in her chest, and her fingers reach for her fork, her body running through muscle memory of self-defense before her brain can catch up.

What's wrong what's wrong what's wrong

"Smells good!" The man calls. He sounds friendly enough. "Who's car is out front?"

He's taller than Russell, hair a golden sandy brown, light eyes. Tanned skin,  a small cleft in his chin, sharp, cleanly-shaven jawline.

Thousands of faces fly through Katherine's mind as she tries to place this one. She's seen him before...where?

He's young, though, so it would've had to be recent.

Bright blue eyes stop on Russell, and Katherine bristles as the man's easy smile fades. Then his eyes move to Katherine's, and they freeze.

Lois sighs. "Katherine, a dirty fork isn't necessary," she says.

"Katherine?" The young man asks. His voice is oddly tender.

Her mind stops flipping faces at that of a young man from the photo album upstairs. He had the same hair, the same piercing blue eyes, a cleft chin, and an identical, easy smile.

Glen.

Katherine looks to Louise, confusion pulling at her face. Some sort of cousin, then? Louise swallows.

"You weren't supposed to be here yet," Louise says to the young man.

"I called, but...no one answered." The stranger drops his motorcycle helmet on the ground. 

"What the hell is going on?" Russell asks.

The stranger stands taller, shoulders broader, as he frowns and looks Russell up and down. "Who are you?" 

"No, who are you?" Russell is reaching behind his back for a weapon Katherine didn't realize he had. 

"Oh, boys, enough," Lois scoffs, pushing herself up from her seat. "This is Katherine's brother Mitch."

Katherine's knees buckle, and she stumbles to grab the chair behind her. She looks to Louise with burning blue eyes, then Lois.

"How..." Katherine looks back at the young man in the entryway. He hasn't moved. "Mitchy?"

𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍
⤷ SCOTT EASTWOOD