Patty retraced her steps through the upper west wing of the house and scanned the wall. When she found the picture she was looking for, the collage of old-timey photos with wiped down glass, her eyes darted from face to face, scene to scene, until she spotted it. Bingo.

Since she didn't need the entire collage, Patty took the picture frame off the wall and laid it glass-down on the ground. She ripped at the back, removing the brass fastenings and stock paper holding the pictures secure in the frame, and then shook the entire thing. Photographs fluttered out of the casing and to the ground like dead leaves, and when she was sure that there was nothing left, Patty dropped the picture frame and glass so she could sift through the pile for the image she was looking for.

Finally, she found it-a candid polaroid of a young man with a dopey smile making small talk with a beautiful redhead in her garden. The Blight House was looming behind her in its former glory, and though the young man's face was slightly turned away from the camera, she no longer had any doubt of who it was.

As for the ginger, she was easily recognizable as the same woman whose portrait hung in the Blight House-Tamsin Blight, or so she was called. Patty hadn't known what she was looking at when she had first glanced at the collage in passing earlier that afternoon. Now the image was too significant to leave behind.

A small note was written on the bottom, but it was too faded to read. Patty didn't mind that, though. There were some mysteries about this house, about the Evans family, that weren't her place to solve.

She slipped the photograph into her pocket and skipped back down the main hall, where all the fun was still happening.

The police descended upon the Evans mansion for the second time in as many days, but this time several three-star meisters and witch guards were waiting for them. Liz had taken care of that via mirror when she called Kid to confirm a few theories and identities. The paramedics, too, had quickly come and gone. The rain was nothing but thin spittle as an ambulance peeled out of the drive to carry Maka to the nearest hospital, where she would undoubtedly meet her parents (or at least Spirit) before getting her stomach pumped.

August was locked in Victor's downstairs office with Shibusen security, where he couldn't escape. Soul was awake in his room, also monitored by Shibusen security and his parents. Victor and Cressida were shocked and confused when Patty returned from the roof with their son unconscious and draped over her shoulder. They were so worried about him that they hadn't asked why August was trailing behind them with his hands in full view, burdened with guilt.

It made Patty sad, thinking of Victor and August. What was grouchy Vic going to do when he finally heard the truth?

Liz was waiting for her in the front hallway, where she was warily looking out the window at the police slowly gathering at the property. Patty couldn't help but notice how at ease Liz appeared in the opulent mansion. When you spend an entire day unraveling a family's secrets and running amok in their home, it was hard to remain intimidated.

She cast a cursory glance towards Patty before saying, "Just finished up with Kid. You were right. We just need to make him say it."

A police car with shimmering lights parked in front of the house, and Officer Bollero emerged from the passenger seat. Both sisters groaned.

"This bitch again," Patty murmured. "Why can't she just go home and let us take care of everything?"

"Relax Patty," Liz said, confidence shining through her smile. "We'll let the police know who is calling the shots here."

Officer Bollero was stuck in a permanent grimace. Various officers milled around in the front garden, uncertain what they were supposed to do since Shibusen had already arrived, but Bollero had no qualms with storming inside. Her progress was halted by the presence of two blonde demon weapons grinning like cheshire cats.

"It's high time you arrived," Liz said with her hands on her hips. "Now that the local police have deigned to get their asses over here, maybe you can actually be useful."

The policewoman gave them both a curt nod. "Your assistance was not asked for, but it is appreciated. If you and your, er, associates could clear out, we'll take it from here."

"Not so fast!" Patty said, holding up a hand. "The perp tried to murder a Shibusen meister. This is our investigation now. You've been out-investigated by girls in belly shirts."

Liz leaned on her forearm on top of her sister's head. "The two of us amateur Nancy Drews figured out everything without your help, and we're going to see it to the end while you wait out here, handcuffs at the ready. Got it?"

Bollero narrowed her eyes into thin slits, but she did not challenge them. With her shoulders back and head high, the officer stalked out of the house to join the other police officers. She looked back at the sisters, and her gaze was met with Liz's stony stare and both of Patty's middle fingers. Well, that settled that.

They headed to the office, where August was waiting for them. Patty came prepared with the photo and the old pig hat. Liz, meanwhile, had collected all of the damn notes involved in this web of mystery-a feat that included breaking into a vehicle for the first time since they lived in Brooklyn. Their pockets and hands were full with the only real physical evidence they had, but a couple pieces of paper and an old hat weren't going to convince anyone that August was a murderer. That would require some creative interrogation.

They paused before the door. Patty could tell through the casual intertwining of their wavelengths that Liz was feeling the same apprehension about shutting the door on this case once and for all. What if they were wrong? What if they just weren't cut out for this?

"Do you want to take the lead here?" Liz asked.

"Nah," Patty responded. "We work better as a team."

"Then let's bag this sucker so we can go home. I have a trashy novel with my name on it."

The sisters never had any reason to go snooping inside Victor's office during the investigation. It smelled of burnt cigars, and the interior was illuminated only by a single lamp on the thick, wooden desk.

Somehow, it was in this dim light that Patty saw exactly how similar August looked to his brother. Take away some wrinkles, cut his hair, and add a mustache, and they could be twins. When he noticed their arrival, August looked up sleepily. It was time to begin.

First, Patty dropped the old hat onto the table. Recognition flickered in August's eyes, but he said nothing. "We found this in your old room," she said. "The one Soul took over when he was a kid. You put it in the floorboards." She wasn't asking him questions. Just stating the facts. "Did you do that before you left home or after?"

August swallowed. "You know."

"Know what? That you were canoodling Tamsin Blight? Who was actually born a witch named Circe Swine?"

"Who?" he asked, feigning ignorance. As if he did not know. As if August hadn't found a souvenir of his dead ladyfriend and hidden it somewhere in his childhood room.

Liz sat on the edge of the desk. Thanks to her long torso and neck, she towered over the sitting August. "Listen," Liz said. "I was just talking to Lord Death, and he had a lot to say about Circe Swine. So I'm going to give you a history lesson to jog your memory. She first started appearing in human history in ancient Greece, where she had a penchant for transforming the people she didn't like into animals-pigs, mostly. Eight hundred years ago, when Shibusen started warring with the witches, Ms. Swine went underground. Took a lot of different names, lived all over Europe. By the time she made it to the states, she had a new name and reputation. And no one suspected a damn thing, even when the locals started turning up in her pig pen without knowing how they got there."

August reached out his hand to touch the moth-eaten felt of the pig hat's ear, and he chuckled. "Circe always had a droll sense of humor."

Now Patty placed the photograph on the table and slid it forward. His attention snapped to it instantly, though he still kept his hand on the hat.

"Who took this?" she asked.

August's eyes remained trained on the dead witch's smile, preserved for all time in a candid picture. "Victor did. I had just returned from my first year at college, got a bit lost in the woods. Vic found me and took the picture before realizing who it was. He spent the rest of the day telling me to stay away from the Blight girl. I just made sure he never found out."

One piece of the puzzle-Tamsin Blight's true identity and August's connection to her-was secure. A small vibration in Liz's wavelength signalled that it was time for phase two.

"When Maka's father called here, he said he recognized your brother," Liz said. "But it was you he thought he recognized. Easy mistake to make, if you haven't seen someone in decades. I'm sure if we reintroduced you two, it would improve his memory."

The room was silent for a long moment. "I hardly remember him myself," August said. "It was a blur...everything fell apart on the night when...the night..."

"The night Spirit and his ex-wife showed up at the Blight House," Liz finished. "The night they showed up to collect their last soul before Spirit could become a deathscythe."

Thinking back, it was so clear that the Blight House wasn't attacked by any run-of-the-mill burglar or murderer. The gashes gouged into the walls, the portion of the house that had been cleanly cut away, these were the signs of a scythe slicing a warpath during a fight to the death. From Kid's account, Circe Swine had not gone down easy.

But August was there too, though he had not gotten injured in the crossfire. In his escape from the house and the love story that was collapsing upon its own foundations, carrying only a single memento to later cry over, August had glimpsed Circe's attacker.

"I didn't fully understand what had happened until a few weeks later," August explained. "The new Deathscythe's coronation was in the papers. I could only grieve in secret, but I never forgot the name."

"And you never heard of it again," Patty said, "until Maka showed up. This was your shot at revenge."

Now August's eyes met Patty's with burning defiance. "It was a slap in the face, her waltzing into our family, regaling us with stories of murdering witches. Like it was normal, like it was justice. Especially when I learned of Soul's ill-thought proposal. I could bury Circe alone. I could shoulder that burden. But I couldn't welcome her killers into my family.

"I knew who I was dealing with. I had to plan it in a way that I could strike first before she could retaliate. Wes and Soul finished up writing the clues for our annual tour of the Blight House. I took some of the paper and forged a note to lure my wife away, and then another to lure Maka to the roof. I found a hunting rifle from my college days and laid the trap. I waited for what felt like years. I thought she wouldn't come at all."

His voice trailed off, and he tore his eyes away from Patty. "She didn't fall for the trap because she never got the note. Wes did," Patty said flatly.

Her stomach churned at the sight of him, so she rose from her seat and walked away from August and towards the window. Wes died for nothing. Soul lost his older brother for nothing. An old man's half-baked attempt at revenge had hurt so many people, and it would continue to hurt long after he was thrown in jail. The Evanses were a dysfunctional bunch, but they didn't deserve this. It was so unfair.

The only upside to this whole damn mess was that he hadn't succeeding in hurting Maka.

"They say that time heals all," she heard August say behind her. "But that's a lie. When you really, truly love somebody, the pain never goes away. A broken heart is like shard of glass, burying itself deep and bleeding you out one drop at a time."

"Poetic," Liz murmured.

"Witches are chaos. It's in their nature. Your lot are the ones who made the leap between chaos and danger. Tamsin-Circe-she had her fun, but she never killed anyone in her entire lifetime. She didn't possess that brand of evil inside her."

"But you do," Patty responded, watching rain droplets leave long, watery trails on the window pane.

She felt a hand on her right shoulder. Liz, too, had abandoned August to wallow in his guilt at the desk. Patty leaned into her touch. "We did it," she said. "Let's tell Officer Bollero to take it from here. I don't see any point in sticking around."

"Would you like to collect Wes' soul?" August asked with a gravelly, almost concerned voice. "Don't you need to do something with it?"

Patty spun around fast enough to give her neck whiplash. "Huh? Didn't Wes' soul dissolve like normal? On the roof where he died?" August stared at the wood grain of the table and said nothing. Patty's heart picked up. They couldn't ever fix the Evans family. They couldn't ever bring back Wes. But they could recover the last part of him left in this world.

He breathed out slowly. "At first I didn't even know what I was looking at. Before that moment, I had never seen one before in person. I was in shock. At a loss of what to do with it."

"We don't give a damn about any of that," Patty said urgently. "Where did you stash Wes' soul? Where the hell is it?"

August revealed his last, tantalizing secret, and Liz and Patty opened the office doors to the police.

Together, they walked past the bright police lights, the enormous house, and its paved walkway now stained with only a few flecks of Wes' blood after the light rain. Linking hands, Liz and Patty tramped back through the soggy, leaf-covered path in the woods. It was funny how a small journey could feel longer and more significant the first time, but fleeting the second. The Blight House, too, had lost its gloom and majesty. They wordlessly walked back through the front door, weaving around corners until they had returned to the kitchen.

Patty seized the pipe she had discarded on the kitchen floor. Her target, the old iron oven, was already weak from her earlier assault. She looked over her shoulder to get an approving look from Liz before raising the pipe over her shoulder and bringing it down on the chains securing the oven door.

CLANG!

Groooooan.

The chains fell away in a clattering heap, and there was the loud keening of metal hitting tile as Patty dropped the pipe. Without the chains obscuring the oven itself, she could see now that it had two doors latched together. The sisters were silent as they knelt before the iron husk, placing a hand on each door handle. With a heave, they opened the doors at the same time, and for a brief moment the room was bathed in blue light.

Wes' soul bobbed inside, a shining beacon in musty darkness. Liz was the more gentle of the two sisters, so she reached inside and plucked the small, fragile thing.

When they returned, Officer Bollero had finally cuffed August and escorted him to her police car. Both were trying in vain to ignore the insults and curses hurled by Soul's bereaved father.

"Traitor!" Victor called from the porch. "Murderer! I'm ashamed to call you my brother! How could you do this to us?" His voice broke, and his wife appeared from the shadows to wrap him in a tight embrace.

Soul emerged from the house beside his parents and watched the police cars drive away with a stone face. After the red lights disappeared around the bend, his eyes found Liz and Patty approaching the house. His face was a map of sorrow and grief, but in his eyes was also gratitude. Hopefully, a part of him was glad Patty handed him his own ass, if only to prevent him from making a huge mistake.

But then Soul saw what was cradled in Liz's arms, and his whole face went white.

"Where were you two?" Victor asked with suspicion. He held his wife protectively and maneuvered in front of Soul, like a shield. "You don't need to poke around our lives anymore. Please leave-Soul, where you going?"

Soul stepped off the porch like a sleepwalker, his gaze never leaving the bright soul glowing in Liz's hands. The soul's light illuminated his face, revealing the watery gleam percolating around his eyes.

"What is that?" Cressida asked. She and Victor were tentative as they ventured off the porch. "Soul? What's she giving you?"

With the utmost delicacy and care, Liz slid the soul into her friend's waiting hands. When the transferred occurred, Patty heard a weird, low tone, like a plucked guitar string or piano key echoing in the icy air. "It's him, Mom. Come over here and see," Soul said.

His parents were at his side instantly, and they stared with apprehension at the luminous orb Soul claimed was their eldest son.

"I want to hold him," Cressida said. "I made him, I raised him. Let me hold him."

They didn't speak as they cupped their hands around Wes-Cressida on the bottom, Victor the sides, and Soul on the top. Wisps of light peeked through their fingers and danced across their faces and reflected off their tears. Standing apart, Patty found the comfort of Liz's hand.

"Do you feel that?" Victor said suddenly. Patty and Liz glanced at one another, for they hadn't heard a single sound. "It's like...my god, he's laughing at us."

Soul snorted softly. "He's laughing at me, that bastard. He probably thinks I look funny all red-faced."

His father nodded. "Well Wes' sense of humor is certainly dry. And it's true; you're more red than your mother after two sherries."

Cressida snickered despite the deluge of tears rolling down her face, and Soul shared a loud head laugh with his father. This moment of catharsis, Patty thought, was something the family had desperately needed.

When their laughter calmed, Soul's mother bit her lip to stop a sigh. "Do we have to let him go? What am I saying, of course we do," his mother said, clearing her throat. "So, shall we then?"

The three let go of the soul at the same time, and parents and son stepped backwards so they tracked its ascendance. Huddled so closely together, the Evanses looked like a family, like a real, united family. From the porch, Annette and her two children watched from afar, transfixed by the rising light.

Patty and Liz held hands and watched Wes' soul slowly float towards the sky, gradually growing more transparent with every foot it climbed. Just as it seemed to disappear, it emitted a final, blazing burst of light fitting for a soul as brilliant as Wes. With their hands clasped tight, the Thompson sisters felt their own spirits lift with him.