A Handful of Violets

by livengoo

John Winchester has faced a lot of ghosts. Some are more dead than others.

A Handful of Violets A Supernatural story By Livengoo

John Winchester, Sam and Dean belong to Kripke, McG and Bros. Everyone else belongs to me! No profit, no loss, no harm, no foul. Hope you enjoy it. - Goo

Warnings: none. No spoilers.

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John misses his kids. When he lets himself think about them, they're an ache in his gut. Just one more among so many.

The first night he spends sitting up in a battered club chair, squirming on the lumpy upholstery. The chair was a nice one once, varnished wood and satiny fabric are scratched now, and stained. The padded seat that must have been plush at one point is sprung and sunk and battered. He has to force open a window, breaking the seal of thick layers of cheap paint. The diesel-scented air that drifts in is fresher than the aged smell of cigarette smoke and sweat. No one and nothing shows however, and the steel of his shotgun barrel is warm from his hands by the time he jerks away from a doze to the sound of early morning traffic and the glare of early morning light.

Nothing happens that first night, not if you don't count the drunk staggering down the hall with the cheap by-the-half-hour businesswoman. Certainly there is no sign of whatever could leave 8 men dead by freezing in a tepid room in a shabby Los Angeles hotel.

He sags back in the chair, rubbing his eyes and blinking in the light shining dully through the nicotine-stained curtains. His beard stubble is harsh and his jaw creaks when he yawns. The bed looks so tempting, but he gives it a regretful look and doesn't lie down.

The shotgun cradled in the crook of his elbow gleams weirdly in the yellowish light filtering through the curtains. He slumps forward and snags the strap of his duffle, dragging it towards him. When he slides the shotgun home into the pocket he'd sewn into the inside for it, it's like saying see you later to an old friend.

The walls are strangely good in this hotel, reminder of a time when it wasn't a last refuge for people with nowhere else to go. The filthy, worn carpet under foot shows a once-rich pattern at the inch or so along the edges. A ghost of a time when it had been luxurious. His lips twitch upwards at the thought.

A vague, disquieting odor comes from the elevator. He pauses a moment, studying the scratched walnut of its doors; not that he'd put himself into a tiny cage like that by choice. The marble stairs are old enough to be worn in the middle, sagging and the stone is cracked. Old urine and ammonia cleaners make the hairs in his nose prickle but the stairwell itself is graceful, elegant, showing the bones of what it had once been. He pads silently down the ripped carpet runner in the middle of the stone risers, letting his gaze take in the glossy tiger maple that's gouged in obscene graffiti now. Old, converted gas sconces wrought with art nouveau flowers might once have glowed. Now they are mostly empty sockets. A few carry bare, ugly light bulbs.

At the bottom of the stairs light spills through grimy windows over cracked marble tiles. "You want anything?" It sounds like an accusation more than a question. John studies the man at the front desk. There are dark circles under his jaundice-yellow eyes and his filthy wife-beater exposes flabby, ropy biceps and flapping, toneless upper arms. John meets those vacant eyes again. "I checked in late last night."

"No shit." He clears his throat with a thick sound and spits into a styrofoam coffee cup. His smile shows a gap between filthy teeth. "Room service to your liking? Got enough towels 'n shit?"

John gives him a smile that is just as humorless as his own. "Room service was great. Love the prime rib."

That gets a small, genuine laugh. Thin and cheap, but real. "Yeah. Look . . . you seem like a nice enough guy. There's other rooms in this roach motel, ain't as dark and, y'know. Better 'n that one. I can move ya?"

"I like the room fine." He leans on the counter, summons a well-practiced bashful look, slightly rueful, sharing. "It's quiet. But . . . this is going to sound crazy but it feels like there's something there, with me."

The rheumy eyes shift, flicker away. John doesn't smile, keeps the slightly embarrassed expression firmly in place. Waits. The eyes come back to him. "I gotta get some repairs done in there. I need to move you, man. You said you liked it but I got a nice room you'll like better . . ."

John lets his smile stiffen the tiniest amount. "No. You won't. But if you feel like telling me more about that room, I'll listen."

He can hear the swallow, see how the scrawny Adam's apple moves up and down. A quick shake of the head answers him. "Nah man. This place . . .you get so much street shit and junkies you figure nothing strange about what happens."

Right. John pushes back from the counter, doesn't even bother to reply that junkies and street trash don't die by freezing to death in the middle of a Los Angeles summer night. But hassling assholes gets you shit and he can find that any time. He scrawls a number on a scrap of paper and pushes it into the middle of the counter, lets it lie there. "You feel like cutting the crap, you call me. I'll be back tonight. And I don't need maid service."

"Maid . . ." The counter guy chokes off a little failed laugh but his crabbed fingers close over the scrap of paper and it vanishes into a pocket. "Yeah. Have a nice day."

John can hear the unspoken word in his mind and he doesn't mind, is thinking it himself truth to tell. Asshole.

He hauls the duffle back up on his shoulder - maid service or no, taking chances is dumber than he's up for. The street's still in shadows cast by the buildings but it's already warm. By noon the gum on the sidewalks will melt and the trash in the alleys will reek. More.

It's not that far to the library - a few miles - but he takes the truck. By the time he's done he'll be longing for the air conditioning and even now, the radio helps jolt him a little further out of that morning funk that makes his head feel thick. Besides, it's Los Angeles. Walking would feel like blasphemy.

It's quiet and calm in the library. Blinds the color of old ivory dim the light to a pleasant glow. Dust motes hang in the sharp beams that slip through the gaps at the sides. John gives a pleasant smile to the librarian, with just enough flirtation to get a microfiche reader in a peaceful corner where no one can walk behind him, a compliment and he's got a stack of files that keep him busy for hours.

There are a lot of ways to hunt. Some leave him with aching muscles and stitches. Some leave him with blurring eyes and fingers cramped after hours of taking notes. There are eyes on him, such a familiar feeling at times like this and he looks up to share the reflexive complaint with someone who understands, who's shared hours like this with him, for years. And his rueful smile slips as he meets the librarian's eyes. He summons a friendly grin and nods to her, and sighs.

He misses his kids.

The one who's waiting for him and the one who's not waiting anymore.

Sometimes the hunt leaves him with knees soaked, sore, and thighs aching from hours crouched, waiting in damp woods. This time it leaves him with sore shoulders, grainy eyes and a jaw aching from too many wide yawns. And that nagging sense of eyes is back. He looks up to find a young guy in a t-shirt and jeans who's staking out the other microfiche monstrosity. John frowns. It doesn't make the kid look away.

His eyes are curious, focused, dark brown, the whites gleaming against dark skin. A bright smile joins them. "Ghost tours, right?"

"What?" John blinks, mentally kicks himself for feeding the animals and sags. He should have shut up but it's too late now. He chooses a reliable standby. "True crime."

"Bullshit." The smile widens further. He can see the dull, metallic gleam of a cheap filling in an incisor. "Crime'd be one year or may a few but you got a hunnerd years there."

John raises his eyebrows, riffles through the stack of folders by his reader. "Gangs."

"Niiiice try. Not enough neighborhoods."

John slumps comfortably back in his chair and bats another softball. "Title investigator."

"Ooooh I like that one. But the only people buying down that 'hood are . . . nobody."

This time his grin is genuine. "And you'd be the ghost tour?"

"Damn straight. Make it good and they give ya tips! It's not Haunted Hollywood, is it? Cause, those guys? They suck."

"Maybe I'm a detective. Hired to find a missing relative."

"A dead missing street guy? Besides, you're wearing plaid flannel. Nobody dumb enough to hire you would have the cash." The kid finishes his assessment smugly, arms crossed.

"I'm enough of a detective to know normal people don't talk to strangers in LA, and if they do they don't sound like they're from Chicago."

"Normal is relative. My college tuition, on the other hand, is NOT relative."

"Ghost tours, huh?"

The kid tosses his pen up in the air, misses it and it bounces away. "City of Angels' Fallen Angel tours." He leans forward and produces a card with a flourish. John doesn't miss that he coincidentally puts his hand on the fiche folders, spreading them and glancing down. "Tch tch tch. You really gotta dress it up if you're gonna sell junky ghosts to tourists. They like the high life."

John puts on the bashful smile Mary used to love. He doesn't have much use for it these days but you use the right tool for the job. "Your tuition, huh? I've got one hitting the books, too. Usually he helps with this . . ." A casual gesture taking in the folders. "I even miss him when I'm not stuck doing this crap."

The librarian glares at the laugh that brings. "I'm Clyde. You owe me a cup a coffee, man. And it better not be that cheap convenience store stuff."

John lets his smile widen to a grin. "Get me something good and there's a burger and fries in it for you."

"And a copy of your notes." It's not a request.

John rolls his eyes and gives in with apparent bad grace. "Shark."

"That's Las Vegas. I'm a banana slug."

This time John's snort of laughter is real and it gets them another glare. "A slug?"

"A BANANA slug, man. Gotta know your mascots. Yellow is mellow."

"That meant something very different to my generation." John slides half his stack of files over to Clyde. "I'm Joe Wilson."

"Pleased to meet ya." That brilliant grin shines against the dark skin again. "Gotta warn you, research really works up an appetite."

John lifts a brow and gives his rail-thin accomplice a quick look. "I'd ask where you put it but I've seen guys your age eat. I think there's a black hole in your guts."

"That's supposed to be secret. You tell me the brother who spilled "

"And he'll want seconds too." John shakes his head. "You better be worth it."

Clyde shakes out his hands like a magician showing off. "Watch and learn. Watch and learn."

"Old dogs know the best tricks."

"And have the most fleas."

That isn't worth trying to banter back. Instead, John takes half the stack of fiche and begins the tedious process of scrolling through years of police blotters and local news. The old dog won't be learning any new tricks from Clyde. He's no Sam, but his help gets through the stack that much faster and he's entertaining enough. John keeps his shoulders loose and his spine relaxed, rueful smile pasted on his face as he works his way through the earlier papers. Dead, cold men aren't anything new in that room. Men in tuxedos and men left ruined by the stock market crash of 1929, found cold and dead, frozen in that room on days blazing with light.

"Frozen in the summer." Clyde looks up at him. "That's cold, man, cold."

Raising boys gives John plenty of practice at the disgusted eyeball roll he uses to answer that one. "All on July 23, yeah."

"What you got?" Clyde's craning his neck, scanning John's notes. The tidy handwriting isn't that hard to read, even upside down. "Didn't Caspar freeze to death?"

John blinks. Actually considers that a moment then shakes his head. "He froze to death in winter. Out sledding or burying his money or something."

Clyde's eyebrows go up. "Do I want to know why you know that?"

"I could say the same thing." John lets a little of the shark into his smile and gets a snort of laughter in reply.

"You are one very strange man."

"That a problem?"

"Not in this lifetime."

John leans forward and hooks Clyde's notes. Pulls them over and reviews, feeling a frown deepen between his brows. "Homeless, homeless, salesman, writer . . ."

"White, black, rich, poor . . ." Clyde chimes in, sing-song.

John looks up, stares through him a moment and runs his tongue over his teeth. "And only on the 23rd. If the room's empty "

"Then the ice box is bare."

That catches his attention. He smiles ruefully. "You're disgusting, you know that?"

"Thank you and fuck you too!" Clyde gives him a theatrical little bow.

John lets that go as he scans through the notes. Clyde has gotten up, moved around to look over his shoulder. He hates that but he lets Clyde see it anyway. "Are you going to be leading your tourists past my hotel?"

"For a batch of low rent no-name corpsicles? Not hardly. But what the hell happened there?"

"On the 23rd?" Not that there's any question but John looks up with an expression he knows is innocent. He's seen it look back at him from small mirrors and can vouch for the effect.

Clyde's too young to have any acquired immunity and he falls for it. Sighs loudly and reaches past John's shoulder to tap the earliest entry. "Who was he?"

Good question. John can only shrug. "Nobody. The paper said he came from Missouri. I'd have to get the obit to be sure but if anyone had cared there'd be more here. He's just a stiff."

Clyde gives him a wince but it's just a formality. "He really the first?"

John flips back and forward through his notes and lets his affable expression slip the tiniest bit as he considers what he's read. "The first frosty or the first death?"

"Either?"

He glances up, takes in a look of simple curiosity with no avarice or eagerness involved. Grudgingly admits, "The first frozen corpse I could find for the whole hotel. There's other deaths of course . . ."

"Yeah. Hotels." Clyde chuckles. "All the comforts of home without the wife."

"Yep. There's a stabbing back around 1926, and a couple accidents with nosedives off the roof. A few arrests for bathtub gin around the same time and what do you want to bet those aren't unrelated."

"Not taking that bet when you already owe me a coffee and a dog. I found a few suicides in the fifties."

"On the -" John looks up, waiting for another piece of his puzzle but his unexpected partner shakes his head.

"Wrong day. And I'm betting if you told me the room you're scoping it'd be wrong too." He's looking at John's notes again, but not like he's reading them anymore.

Curious civilians are nothing new. John delivers a shiny smile and says "Well yeah. You're the competition. And I'm hungry."

Clyde's gaze breaks from the page and his smile brightens. "Now you're talking."

It's an easy enough distraction. Food and coffee and Clyde's admittedly entertaining descriptions of local legends and tourists let John sit back and absorb the information he's gathered. It's good to be out of the musty library, into the noisy, bright city. The late afternoon sun hangs in the haze of Los Angeles smog and puts a strange glow over everything as they sit outside and sip sour coffee and eat chilidogs. John asks about the tourists and the ghosts of starlets every time Clyde slows down. So easy, even if he didn't have all those years of practice.

It's so pleasant and normal it almost makes him laugh. John drops Clyde off at a scruffy but innocuous building and heads west, where the city hunches against a backdrop of parched, brown mountains. The civilian looks wistfully at him and John gives him an empty, friendly smile. "Thank you so much! Knock the tourists dead."

Clyde opens his mouth, frown just starting, then smiles bright and shrugs. "Yeah. And man, give up the plaid."

"You got it!" Keeping the smile on his face and ignoring the look. He knows the look - curious people caught up in some fantasy of mystery and meaning. He's listened to a few of them, the civilians, talking about lingering love and how unfinished business is the high school sweetheart who drank too damn much and got cuisinarted in their car. John always plasters an understanding smile on his face and tries not to laugh at them, and then sends them on their way. Sometimes they sneak back, too caught up to let go. He's too tired to want to see the look on Clyde's face that they get if they really do learn what they want to know.

The evening shadows don't hide the trash in the gutters or the chipped sandstone facade. The soft, July evening air is ripe with the old reek of rotting produce and urine as he steps into the lobby, and lets his eyes adjust to the gloom and glare of a few bare bulbs hanging from the water-stained remains of what had once been an elegant, pressed tin ceiling. John breathes it in deep, letting himself take the place into his lungs and his blood, feeling the wraith of elegance and the present of ruin all the way to his bones. Glamorous. He knows what it means. He's seen the creatures that wear illusion in his life, and knows how a glamour works, and what's left when existence burns it away.

There's a different man at the counter now. This one is paunchier, older, and his skin is translucent and hanging loose like he's slowly melting out from under it. He gives John a once over and nods, polite and disengaged. John nods back, doesn't bother to linger. The social atmosphere, scintillating as it is, doesn't hold him.

The light in the upper halls is still nicotine yellow. The low, evening sun is on the other side of the building, leaving his room shrouded, dim. He flicks on the overhead light, instinctively counts the dark spots of seven dead flies against the glass. The unforgiving overhead light makes everything a little harsher, a little seedier. The cigarette burns melted into the carpet are blacker, the cobwebs anchored to the light harder to ignore. He sighs and drops to the creaky mattress, pulling his stack of notes and copied pages from his duffel. It's the right light for this.

Death by misadventure is such a flexible term. He flips through, backwards and forwards. In 1973 there was a suicide. He pauses there, finger tracing the word slowly, considering a time when it was not so much a sin as a disease. In an earlier time, such a thing would bar one from hallowed ground, the taint of despair cast into unsanctified soil. He blinks and pages back, finding them in other rooms. A slip from a ledge here; carelessly cleaning a pistol there, so that it goes off. Twice. Once point blank. His smile has no humor as he reads between the lines. And then the smile fades, frown growing between his brows and he flips backwards to the earliest notes, growls and forwards and finds nothing but what he remembered. Can't read between lines that aren't there. He tenses, nearly flips the sheaf of papers across the room, then slowly sets them down and smooths them out, stacks them neatly and then tapes them to the wall in that order. One after another after another. And pulls a sheet of yellow paper from his pad, blank other than its lines, and carefully fixes it to the wall right at the start. He doesn't need to draw a question mark there.

Then he sits on the snagged, pilled bedspread, cleaning his weapons. Gun oil mingles with the smell of old sweat and cigarette smoke in a familiar blend. His fingers trace nimbly over metal contours as well known as his own face, but it's that blank yellow page he stares at, mind combing through men, and a few women, whose fates might belong there. He doesn't know names, maybe never will, but the forlorn details of the life that belongs on that page won't be so strange to him. He has no doubt.

There's no salt by the door or the windows. John leans against the headboard and rubs at gritty eyes, mind still riffling through contours of lives as he tucks away pistols, pushes his favorite knife under his pillow and settles his shotgun at his side.

It's the smell that wakes him. The smoke is gone. He smells fresh, clean, bleached sheets and a soft scent of lavender and, more faintly, faded perfume. His eyes fly open, wide, staring into darkness. The fixture in the ceiling is gone. The streetlights are wrong, softer and cleaner. He draws a deep breath and can't smell exhaust and garbage anymore. The night air is fresh and dry. John sits forward slowly, looking into shadows that are crisp, not bleary anymore. Lace curtains flutter. Only the scent of gun oil and the smooth metal of the barrel, wood of the stock, is left.

Muffled footfalls in the hall would be too soft if he wasn't listening for them. A key rattles into the lock, and the bolt clicks back. He hears silk on silk and smells that perfume, more strongly now. It had been old-fashioned before he was born, but it's fresh on her skin. She steps in, not turning on the light. His fingers close on the weapon at his side.

And she stops. Her eyes might be blue. A smile flickers over her face, then fades to confusion, then hope. Past her shoulder, he sees a hall sconce, light soft through a watered silk shade, it catches rosy in the lace of her dress, across the shiny, dark curls of her hair until she shuts the door and stands in the night, a pale shape in a beaded dress whose fringe brushes her ankles. John swallows hard and shifts the weapon to his lap.

She doesn't look at the motion. She is watching his face. The beads click and silk rustles when she walks across a carpet that doesn't have burned marks, or stains, but is thick and lush. She slides onto the bed beside him, and he can smell young skin, fresh breath and gin. She licks her lips and it catches the dim light through the windows. "Thomas?"

He flinches at her voice. It is soft, but hollow. She frowns, a tiny line between her brows and reaches towards his face. "I've been so cold."

She feels warm to him. Warm bones smooth under his hand as he draws his palm up her arm. Her eyes are large, pupils wide in the dark. Her teeth shine against the smooth gloss of her lipsticked lips.

When she leans towards him her breath smells faintly of violets and blood. She hangs there a moment, lips hovering by his own and John shuts his eyes and breathes in the faded scent of a woman's skin, a woman's hair and perfume, shivering and flushed hot and cold, blood rushing to his erection and head dizzy and light. Her hand on his shoulder leaves goose bumps as it smooths down over his arm, to weave her fingers through his and pull his hand to her heart.

The stock of his shotgun is distant and warm under his hand but his fingers feel almost numb. The hand on her chest ran over the delicate lattice of bone, traced the plate of her sternum as her lips pressed to his. Her tongue tastes wine dark in his mouth, her hand folding bony and gentle over his own on her chest. For a moment he chokes on the cold in his mouth, the brain-freeze headache that sets off sparks behind his eyes, then he's standing at the side of the bed shaking and shivering, but the shotgun doesn't waver. Its barrels are aimed firmly at her face. His chest aches from cold, and the warm, Los Angeles breeze through the windows barely touches him. She looks up into his face as if the shotgun isn't there and for her, maybe it's not. One slender hand, pale as bone, reaches out palm up. "I couldn't find you, Thomas. I waited so long."

He should blow salt through her face, but he still smells her perfume. His teeth chatter and make it hard to ask her, "Why did you wait?"

She blinks, her fingers curling, hand pulling slowly back against the lacy bodice of her dress. "You said . . .you said you had to talk to me. That we . . ." Her hollow voice trails off, eyes wide. They flicker and for an instant he sees what he felt, bare bones draped in rags of lace, but he still smells lilacs and perfume. Less than the blink of an eye and he's seeing the softly rounded contours of her face, the delicate features he's seen in silent movies, the oddly flattering, clunky clothes of a time more than seventy-five years gone. Her eyes track across his face, that tiny flicker of pupils he's seeing in people trying to take in all the details. Back, forth, up, down . . .and stop. Her lips part and a tiny sound that holds such impossible anguish hangs in the air.

He doesn't pull the trigger. Isn't sure he could right then. She reaches out again and this time she's less graceful, nothing of the languid, seductive motion as her hand darts out and pauses by his own left hand. He doesn't back away as she touches a slender gold band on his finger. There's a click of bone on metal, then she pulls back. Draws the hand against her chest and curls in on herself, rocking.

He should shoot her. He knows it. But he doesn't.

He should step back. He knows that too. No phantom is safe, no matter how harmless they seem.

Her hair is catching the light that ought to be ugly sodium vapor orange instead of the soft, diffused city light. He edges back to look out the windows and catches his breath. There's a web of electric cables out there like a trolley would use, and low to the street are street lights that glow a gentle golden white that would never line the streets he's walked in his lifetime. There aren't many cars out there, and the ones he sees are big, bulky things but oddly streamlined, like the images of rocket-ships from black and white serials. It's more a shock than a surprise.

The night air drifting through the windows smells of flowers and the scent blowing in from the mountains, and it riffles across the lace of her dress. She looks up, tears on her face gleaming. And rises to step over to him. He tenses but she doesn't touch his face this time, barely touches him at all as she reaches out again to run a finger over the gold band he wears. "Who gave you that?"

He blinks. Swallows hard and tells her the only thing that's true. "My wife."

She throws back her head and looks up into his face, bones glimmering softly through the skin. "I don't remember."

He doesn't shut his eyes, not on her. Her cold makes him shiver. "You don't have a ring."

Her eyes are swollen, nose red. Even in the gloom he sees how red they are, stealing the prettiness but leaving the beauty. She sniffs, a noisy, wet sound. "I waited. I wait so long."

"My name's not Thomas."

She's biting at her nails now, tearing them down to the quick. Her voice is very young and small. "I'm waiting for Thomas."

John gentles his own voice. "He isn't here. What's your name?"

She sniffs again. "It was going to be his."

Ghost logic. He sighs. "What name did your momma give you? What name did your daddy?"

She scuffs one of those clunky shoes, the ones he'd see in old sepia pictures of women on trolleys or standing on the running boards of big cars. "They named me Mabel. I hate it."

He feels the corner of his mouth quirk. "Yeah. Kids mostly hate what their parents do to them don't they?"

She squares her shoulders a moment, then sags again, looking at him and away. Her voice had sounded focused a moment, but it's faded back to that distant, hollow note again, eyes fixed on his ring. "I want my name to be his."

There's not much he can say to that. "He's gone, Mabel."

She blinks, shakes her head. "I like when they call me May."

"May . . ." He swings the barrels of the shotgun a moment, then lets them drop to point to the floor and slides the safety on. "Did you leave before he could come back?"

"I waited." She shivers, sinks back to sit on the bed. "I've waited for him. It's cold here."

John tenses, but she doesn't move from the bed. Somewhere, a clock is striking four deep tones. The sky outside is maybe a little less black than it was. May lifts her head and he smells the perfume again, startles at the grind heavy iron wheels on trolley tracks but when he looks towards the windows a car alarm is blaring and the light is orange and dirty. He breathes in the scent of exhaust and garbage and cigarettes.

It's a long time until dawn.

He doesn't walk past the desk this morning, but walks up to it. He can smell the man behind the gouged wooden counter, see the way he runs his tongue into the gap where that front tooth is missing. Smiles disarmingly, and gets ready for frustration. "Hey, I know this'll sound weird man, but do you have the old registers?"

Brown eyes, cloudy but shrewd, narrow. "How old?"

John looks up, around the ceiling where paint is so thick it's hard to see the pattern that's pressed into the ceiling tiles. "Maybe seventy years, or eighty?"

The clerk chokes then breaks into a harsh, phlegmy laugh. "Oh shit, oh shit man! Sev . . . crap!"

"Yeah, yeah," John smiles back. "I know. Pretty fucking stupid. 'Cept I'm doing research for this book, y'know."

"Here?" The brown eyes trail around, and then soften. "Yeah. I guess maybe back then . . . but that shit's long gone. Might try the library."

"Thanks." Handy to be able to just mouth a word without meaning it. But he tries it anyway and they send him to a small, sun-bleached house. It's got a tiny yard crowded with tall red and yellow flowers that almost hide a sign whose peeling letters announce "Historical Society". He leaves the flannel in the truck this time, though he keeps the smile he's been using for days. The staff there isn't funny and their speech doesn't have the sing-song patter of a storyteller, but they tell him stories anyway.

"The Lanthorn? Of course!" The tiny round woman with a name tag that says "Delores" with a smiley for the 'O" makes him think of a cartoon fairy godmother. She may even make his wishes come true as she bustles him back into musty-smelling stacks to pull large books out of shelves and pile them into his arms. He looks down at the foxed, age-worn covers and lets her. She's look at him expectantly and for a moment he can't remember what she asked, then he smiles ruefully. "The architects? Uh . . .not unless they were young women."

Her smile is rueful. "You're looking for starlets, aren't you? They've always kept this town running. You said you wanted the obituaries?"

Another book lands on his pile and his nose wrinkles at the acid smell of the old paper. He muffles a sneeze into his shoulders and shares a small, real smile with her.

"I think we can get you started with that. You said her name was May?"

"Well, she was born with Mabel." He follows his good research fairy out to a central island of scuffed oak tables that look like they were salvaged from a high school library. Delores shoves the Lanthorn's register in front of him while she grabs a folder of dog-eared photographs. He's flipping through summer months in 1924 as she shoves a handful of photographs in front of him. "Take a look at those, okay?" She looks up and smiles, round face flushed and eyes sparkling and he can see the plain, lovely, sweet girl she must have been. He swallows and pulls the photographs towards him.

The first three look a bit like her, all sharing a soft focus, round, gentle loveliness that John can't remember seeing in a real women in his lifetime. They're small women, bones like birds and hair carefully coiled around their faces but he can't see that look on their faces, can't imagine them with teeth drawn back in grief and tears on their cheeks. And then he finds the fourth one. And he's looking at the face of a ghost, who smiles up from the sheet of glossy paper in delicate grays and soft blacks, smile blinding and false, eyes wide and startled.

He pushes the register away and pulls her photograph to sit before him, looking back at him out of decades. He doesn't touch the picture but taps the table in front of her image. "This is her."

His dimpled helper smiles and bustles around. "I thought she'd be one of those girls. Look at the back of her picture. They often had notes. Such a sweet little thing but . . .so sad. Her smile fades into an appropriate expression of commiseration, though her eyes still sparkle with triumph.

John flips the photo over. There's a note about a fiance, a young man named Thomas Stern. And her birthdate, height, weight, measurements . . . he raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. "She was so young. And tiny."

"Yes. Well." Delores pats her own happy proportions and shrugs. "Hollywood hasn't changed that much. But oh, she was lovely."

John looks at her picture, and yes, she was. But he sees beyond that to a deeply baffled sadness in her eyes, a brittle look in her smile. He frowns. "She looks unhappy."

Delores tsks softly, a sound that almost makes him laugh. She has a file open and purses her lips. "Whoever screen tested her was . . . unkind."

The file is flat on the table and he can read the typed notes upside down. "'Temperamental?'"

"Aren't all artists?" She glances up at him then back down. Sighs.

John reaches over and snags the folder from her. Raises his eyebrows. "'Moody, difficult and forward?'"

"Hollywood men. In the twenties yet. They could prey but the girls had to be morally pure, you know. And sweet. She probably had integrity and was sensual."

John eyes the small, round woman across from him. Gives her the little leer he knows women like and asks, "Sensual?"

"Not demure," she adds, dimpling up.

He deepens his leer the tiniest hint, letting her play at flirting with him. Then looks back down at May Wiley's eyes rendered in soft focus grays and blacks and feels his leer slide away. She doesn't look playful or sensual to him. She looks crazed. The look stirs a faint shiver, raises the hair on his neck even so far away in time. "She killed herself not long after this."

"Tragic," sighs Delores. "She must have felt so betrayed."

John wonders briefly what she thinks happened. "Moody. Interesting word."

There's the tsking noise again. "That meant anything from a girl's monthlies to clinically depressed back then. But that's before your time, isn't it?"

He lets his fingertip hover just above May's picture, thinks of a blonde woman with a stronger jawline and eyes that didn't have that frantic light and shakes his head just a little. "She'd have been very brittle."

"Delicate," corrects Delores. "A little kindness would have gone a long way."

A little kindness could never have filled the yawning gulf of need he'd seen in dark eyes the night before. It would have vanished like a drop of water in a desert. John keeps the smile on his face, but he knows it's not in his eyes. "When she died . . . did they send her body back home?"

"Oh no." Delores pulls out a plastic sleeve of newspaper articles. She makes a small, disappointed sound. "She was dead before her fellow did the right thing by her. At least he did that much."

It's so much easier than the search through all the men May killed. May Wiley, nee Mabel Wysocki, didn't leave very much. There's a low-level studio contract, and a police report that lists death by misadventure. A few bills from the newspaper that ran her small obituary, and from a funeral home. There's a notice of a memorial service . . . John pulls that last to him and studies it carefully. "She was buried in Forest Lawn?"

A small, satisfied sigh answers that. "She died like a movie star."

John snorted at that. Shakes his head at the notion and then puts a carefully respectful smile on his face. "It must have been what she wanted most."

"They come here to be stars . . ." She sighs again, that little smile playing over her face as she pushes another newspaper clipping to him. "It looks like she came from Nevada. Small town girl makes good."

"Except she didn't," he murmurs. Then finds his most charming smile for the little, round woman who's helped him. "Thank you, Delores. You've been great."

Perfect. She blushes prettily and giggles then starts to gather her books. He drops a dollar in the little box by the door on his way out and steps back into blazing sunlight and garish flowers, in a world that is bright and harshly colorful.

He pauses by a tall, scarlet spike of flowers and leans down to sniff, but they don't have very much scent. He straightens and puts on his sunglasses again, and shakes his head.

His truck is sweltering, seat-belt hot enough to brand skin and black leather smelling of old coffee and gun oil. Midday traffic is a mess of rabbit starts and jarring brakes as everyone races between clogs of cars. He flips on the air, breathing in the stale, recycled scent of the box in which he's crossed the country too many times to want to count and glances again at the map he's spread on the seat beside him. He doesn't really need it - once he sees a course it's not hard to follow. Hard to put up with but easy to follow.

The sun is softer, catching in a delicate haze as he pulls into the parking lot for the last residence of so many people. The sunlight spills through the smog here in a warm blanket, sparkling off the headstones and cool in the greenery. The scent of cut grass hangs with the scents of dust and ocean and cars.

This isn't a graveyard, not the kind he knows. It's a cemetery, a showplace of the dead. They lie packaged under stones, flashy or take, or in crypts like sets for a movie. He shivers in the sun, but there's no chilled touch to raise the bumps on his skin. John sighs and finds the office, asks for help. The dead as consumer good, but they're still dead and rotting under the ground.

It's a long walk to the back corner that's circled on his map. He makes is slowly, looking around him at this place, fingering the postcards he couldn't resist. He grins to himself, composing a quick note, but the smile faces and he shoves the cards into his back pocket.

It's nice. There's ferns and trees, and a stone bench beside a path. And a man sitting on it, bouquet of purple flowers in his hands. John drops down beside him and nods genially. Takes a breath and can actually smell the pretty, humble little flowers the man beside him holds. He's noticed John, but isn't really looking at him. They smell like violets.

But graveyards aren't where a man goes to see the living. John stands slowly, keeping the stranger in the corner of his eye. There are only a cluster of stones here, as if someone thought they'd keep each other company. He moves towards them, reading the lettering that's not very worn after less than a hundred years. Hers is to the left, pinkish granite with so little written there. From the corner of his eye he sees the stranger shift, lean to the side as if making sure. He turns back, curves his lips into a small, shy smile. "Are you here to see Mabel too?"

"May," the man blurts. Looks a bit taken aback at himself, then nods. "She liked May."

John studies him openly now. He's not that old, maybe forty at most. A soft man, though he looks like he could have been hard if life had handled him that way. His face is long but smooth, chin clean shaven. The hands holding the flowers are pale and the nails shiny, well-groomed. His jeans are clean and the wear on them probably made them more expensive in some store. John meets gentle, curious pale blue eyes. The stranger looks away first, uneasy, then back. Clears his throat. "I've never seen anyone here before."

John bites down on the first thing he wants to say, considers moving back to the bench but instead crouches down and brushes a few stray leaves from the top of May's stone. Tells a part of the truth. "I've been looking for her. I didn't expect to see anyone here."

The blue eyes come back to find him. A small smile flickers. "Me either. I come every year."

Use what works. "I just started to look for her this week."

It's so easy to read the open face, even when he's being cautious. "Why? Are you related to her?"

"Are you?"

A quick shrug. "I promised my granddad. Every year I bring her . . ." He gestures with the flowers. John thinks they're violets, old fashioned and sweet.

He lets his small smile show a bit of curiosity now. "Did he ever say why?"

Another shrug. "I guess. He said a lot of things but he was kind of not all there at the end." Circling his fingers at his temple, smiling back now.

John nods like he's gotten the answer he needed, and stands to brush his knees. "She was so young. She was going to get married."

The young man startles a little, blinks very fast. "You have been looking! I didn't think anyone else knew much about her. She's kind of . . ."

"Obscure?" Now he moves back to settle beside the younger man. Holds out his hand. "Joe Wilson."

"Tommy Stern." The hand is as soft as it looked. Tommy smiles a little more widely. "It's sort of nice to find someone else here. She always seemed so lonely."

"How long have you been coming to see her?"

"All my life I think. My granddad brought me when I was little, and then my dad and me when granddad got too old. I thought no one remembered her but us. Well, but my granddad really cause I never knew her."

"What did he tell you about her?"

Tommy's eyes get softer, far away. "That she was the most beautiful woman he ever saw, and the saddest."

John glances back at the stone, lets Tommy have his moment. "He must have been crushed when she died."

"Oh no." Tommy shakes his head. Blushes and laughs softly. "That sounds really shitty, doesn't it? But granddad always sounded sad about her, but it wasn't like that. You know what I mean?"

He couldn't even begin to imagine but he smiles and nods like he does. "So he never said?"

"Nah. He was one of those old school guys. I guess he told gram but she just shut up around this time of year."

John's never been able to understand how Californians could spill their lives to strangers but he's never been adverse to using it, and he's not now. He puts his most understanding look on his face, the one he had to have to survive with his boys. "So you come now, every year. And after you?"

Tommy looks down, fiddles with the flowers and then shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe my nephew. I don't think about it really but . . ." He looks up, nibbling his bottom lip a little. "Not like she'd care."

"You never know." This time it's John whose voice is so soft and distant. He blinks and looks away for a moment, then back. "You'd just hand her story down like that?"

"Or the letters."

Magic words. John makes sure he doesn't sit up, or lean too close, or move at all. "Hope your granddad's writing's good."

"I dunno. I never read them."

" . . .you didn't look?" He keeps his voice as neutral as he can, keeps the consternation off his face.

The man beside him shrugs again, seems to enjoy how it feels. "I already give her a day of my year. She's dead. A dead girl I never knew. What could he say to her that I want to see?"

A whole lot. John nods and reaches for that look of sympathy and understanding again. "Yeah, I get that. Not like she's your gram, is it?"

"If he'd married her I wouldn't be here." Tommy's shredding a few of the flowers, staring at his hands.

"Hey," John softens his voice, working for an edge of sympathy and thoughtfulness. "I'll tell you the truth. I never knew her family or anything. I'm researching her."

"A book?" Tommy glances up fast, curious again.

"Background, you know? Hollywood in black and white, y'know?"

Tommy's nodding now, writing John's story in his own mind. "I know she was going to be in movies. Granddad was proud of that, I know."

"I wish I'd been able to talk to the old guy."

Tommy snorts. "He could talk your ear off."

"Hey . . ." Like he's just thought of it. "Do you . . .I don't know. I hate to ask but do you think I could see his letters? I know it's in your family and personal but it'd be so great . . ." Trying to get that tone he's heard from Sam and Dean so many times.

Tommy smiles sunny and bright. "You can have 'em man. I mean, I might bring my nephew but we're not holding a torch for a dead woman we never knew. You want 'em?"

"I would love them!" And there's nothing he has to pretend for that to ring true. "Where can I get them?"

"Where do you live?"

John's smile grows a little wider, thinking of Tommy's face if he saw the Lanthorn or if he even knew what it was, but this one's easy. "Hey, you're doing the favor for me. Just tell me and I'll come pick them up."

It's so easy. An office and an hour and he's got the time now. He's got a year now.

She doesn't come that night. He sits up but the breeze smells like dust and rot and the light stays ugly orange in the old, plain curtains. But he remembers the smell of violets and lilacs and clean skin in the night.

He spends the next night with her letters. Hers and Thomas's, spread out on the cover. The paper is brittle and old but he still smells her perfume as he pulls a lavender satin ribbon between his fingers and reads. It's a night for voyeurs, for love and lust and pain. And the sun comes up to find him wiping at his face again, reading their words again. Reading the way she bounced between unholy joy and black despair and the doubts and fears of a man who loved who she was, but not what she was. He looks up and around and the ceiling light is harsh on old furniture dotted with cigarette burns, except for once a year, when she's here. He reaches out and picks up the last envelope, the only one he'd found sealed. He can feel the circle inside it, a narrow little band, and he doesn't want to open this thing here, in this place.

He won't be needing towels and the maids are welcome to clean, is what he tells the clerk when he checks out. He takes a duffle full of clothes and another that clacks softly of metal and wood, but he carries those letters in his hand.

It's a long drive to Nevada, up north and over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They're lush and green on the California side, rolling earthquake hills dotted with turbines that spin in ceaseless wind. The live oaks huddle low and hunched and ancient, drawing the earth's water up to themselves. The other side is sere and dry, a world of dust and stone and light too bright for a man's eyes. It knifes off the shiny hood of the truck, bounces off the windows and mirrors of the cars strung out on the highway.

He doesn't want to think of a man who loved a girl who didn't love herself. He doesn't want to feel for a man who left a woman who needed him more than he could be needed. But there's all kinds of ghosts and he doesn't make his drive alone.

He drives until he's out in the desert, where the wind's voice has always spoken to him and where it's warm. Pulls the truck over to the side of the road and sits there, hearing the engine tick under the hood.

When he steps out he smells sage and stone and sun. Shivers in the sudden heat. Lifts his face t it and thinks that no one could be cold here.

This is where he opens the last letter and reads it. The letter Thomas never sent her, but that she got. He has to keep stopping and wipe at his eyes, rub at his nose. The ink is faded but the pain in the words is fresh.

This is where he pulls out the slender gold rings, wound with a strand of dark hair and a strand of light, that are dull now with age. He folds their hair into the letter and sets it alight, holding it until he feels the burn against his fingers and drops it by his feet. Crouches to watch it, to listen to the crackle and smell the sour tang of all that's left of them. And finally he rolls the ring between his fingers, feeling smooth gold against his skin, warming in the sun.

The wind is talking. The sun shines so hot.

He walks away from the road until he can't really hear the passing cars anymore, and then draws back his arm and throws that ring as far as he can up, into the light, out into the heat.

Then he turns his back on her ring, running his fingers over his own, and walks back to his truck and drives away. He doesn't look back.