"How much longer do we have, Ash?" Jo asked, running in from the back room, arms full of supplies. She didn't know what any of it did, but the look in Ash's eye when she dumped the box out in front of him told her that this was exactly what he needed.
Ash clapped his hands. "Don't know. Excellent, Jo, absolutely excellent. Now grab me a PBR. I need a refuel and have some work to do."
Jo wanted to chuckle, but she held back, only letting the slightest smile cross her face before returning to her stern look of being consumed by tension as she crossed behind the bar. She grabbed a PBR and tossed it at Ash, who caught it without looking and thanked her with a fist raise, his eyes not leaving the plans he had laid out across the table.
Ellen and Pamela came from the back, their arms full of spell items in boxes.
"I think that's everything," Ellen said to Ash, placing their boxes on the next table over to give him his space.
"Great, that's fantastic. Call Bobby, tell him I need him to look up a few things real quick."
"Oh he's gonna love that," Ellen muttered under her breath.
"Just a few things," Ash swore, flipping through the pages of a manual with one hand and digging through the box Jo brought him with the other.
"You call. He likes you better," she said to Pam.
"Lies. Blatant lies," Pam hissed. "I called him last time. Jo, you're up."
Jo groaned. "What's he so twisted up about anyway?"
"The game's going on downstairs, his boys need him, and he's up here trapped like all of us," her mother answered quickly. "Now get your cute little girl voice on and see if you can drag some help out of that grumpy old ass."
Ash pounded his hands on the table. "Get him on the phone, please?"
"Okay, okay," Jo said as she walked to the phone. She twisted the phone cord around her finger. Why would Ash have one of these old corded phones in his Heaven? She didn't have but two rings to wonder before Bobby picked up.
"Who the hell is this and what do you want now?"
"Hey, Bobby!" Jo said as delightfully as she could. "Get a lot of telemarketers lately?" she said, trying to lighten the mood. Before he could answer, she cleared her throat and continued. "Is there any way we could borrow you and that book collection of yours? Ash needs a little help on the spell part of this thing he's trying."
"Oh so they sent Goldilocks to wake the bear," he huffed. "Fine. Put him on."
Jo untangled herself from the coiled line and stretched it to where Ash was sitting at the table in front of the bar. "It's for you."
"Bobby!" Ash shouted. "Seeing as how I've got some things going on here on the tech side, I was hoping you could help me and the gals in getting some spells straightened out. Put together I think we got ourselves a master plan."
"Take down Heaven from the inside?" Bobby asked.
"Take down Heaven from the inside. Damn straight." Ash kicked back the table and rummaged through the boxes sitting at the table next to him, getting the cord all tangled up in the process. "Various bloods, angel feathers, angel ashes – that one was fun to get, an angel's grace – even more fun to get. And a couple other little knickknacks that might come in handy."
"You got an angel's grace?" Bobby asked, dumbfounded.
"Oh yeah. Went on a covert op into the big guy's area of operations while he was downstairs stirring up shit. Before he got his roadies crawling all over. Totally ruined the vibe. Anyway, got grace in a bottle, wrapped up like a gift. Figured it come in handy."
"You're damn right it would. Let me get to looking, I'll call if I find anything."
Ash turned and stopped moving for a minute, speaking quietly into the phone. "Bobby, man, why don't you just pop on over when you find what we're looking for? I think the girls'd like to see you. I know Ellen would."
Bobby looked at his surroundings. His heaven was his house, quiet and full of books, dust drifting in the air, beer in the fridge and whiskey on the shelf. "Nah, I'll stick around here." He looked over to the phones on the walls that never rang. FBI. CIA. Insurance company. All the phones with all the labels, just like he'd remembered. Except now they never ring.
"Bobby," Ash started.
"God damn it I'll think about it, okay?" Bobby spat into the phone before he hung up. He sat in the silence for a minute before wondering aloud, "Boys, what are you getting up to this time?"
He sat for only a minute before getting up out of his chair, throwing back his whiskey, and started searching. Angel lore was a pain in the ass to figure out. Having only acknowledging their existence for a few years, and with all the contradicting accounts and conjecture, weeding out what was helpful and what was absolute bunk was the real test. It'd be helpful if they had an angel to ask these questions to, but Angel Radio had been silent for going on a year except for a few things here and there that made no sense. The only thing any one of them knew was that it was awful quiet on the angel side of things up there, and the Winchesters and Cas were the only things consistently talked about. Wouldn't that figure, Bobby thought. Heaven closes down shop, his boys had to be involved. He chuckled wondering how many hunters must see something catastrophic happening and curse Sam and Dean, just knowing they either caused it or knew something about it, most likely the former.
Ash fiddled quickly with coated copper wire and old circular speaker from a car door panel, looking nervously between his plans and the clock. He didn't know what he was counting down to, but he felt the quicker he could get his contraption working, the better. He'd rigged Angel Radio easy enough. In theory, this shouldn't be too hard. In theory, that is.
Jo, Ellen, and Pamela watched him work, afraid to bother him to see if he needed any help, knowing they wouldn't be able to do much anyway.
"I'm bored," Jo declared, straightening up. "I'm going to go help Bobby and maybe get him to come back with me. At least for a bit."
"Jo," Ellen started.
"Mom, I want to do something," Jo interrupted, her arms crossed and determined. "And I know how to get there." She knew her mother's hesitancy was her having to remember Bobby's house, her last night alive. She gave her a flat smile she knew was of little reassurance, but turned heel and walked away. She got to the door of the Roadhouse and rested her hand on the knob. She remembered Dean, the coolness of the fridge against her side, the taste of beer. Closing her eyes she remembered the kitchen, the living room, his entry. She remembered his house at the salvage yard, and as she turned the handle her hand was touching, she pushed in through Bobby Singer's front door.
She stepped into the entry and closed the door behind her. She never had walked into someone else's heaven before – Ellen and Pamela had always done the traveling. The smell was familiar, as if she had been there just the day before. She watched the dust particles swim through the sunlight that poured in through the windows and took in the house in a way she hadn't before. As her eyes drifted across the shelves of books, she heard the pop of a beer opening in the kitchen behind her.
"You lost or somethin'?"
"Hey, Bobby. Came to visit." Jo said, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "Thought maybe I could help with something?"
"Well after I finish this beer, you can help me figure out how to get to Ash with these books," he said, nodding to the pile of archaic works stacked on the kitchen table.
"You're coming to the Roadhouse?" Jo said, her voice high and a smile spread across her face. Bobby never left his house.
"Stop looking like you got told you're going to Disneyworld," he huffed. Jo stood very still and tried to make her face look solemn, but her eyes were still shining with happiness. "I keep waiting for those phones to ring," he said, nodding to the far wall, "and I need to realize they're not ever going to."
Jo's heart sank a little. "Well then drink up old man so you can let me and Mom help you rummage through these things." Her hand patted the books and dust flew into the air. "Three pairs of eyes are better than one."
"Who do we have down there that might be able to help us get to Sam and Dean if we can't directly?" Ash asked.
"Well isn't that what this…whatever it is…is for?" Pamela asked.
"Yeah we can try. But if they aren't in the Impala, or they're otherwise indisposed, it might be easier to have someone send a message. You know of any psychic friends that know the Winchesters?"
Pam scoffed. "Just about every one of us I know. Don't know who is still around and who we can trust."
"Missouri Moseley," Bobby said as he came through the door, Jo trailing behind him. "She's known the boys forever, was friends with John. She's about the only person I'd trust down there now."
"Bobby!" Ellen shouted, meeting him at the door. She threw her arms around him, ignoring the books pushing against her ribs. "You came!"
"Yeah, well, three pairs of eyes are better than one."
Jo cocked her eyes at him, and then looked to Ash. "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"
"There's been a development that requires another covert op," he answered.
"But it's not going to happen," Ellen interjected. "We'll find another way."
"Ellen, we've only got a little to go on. We need more intel. Without that we might as well be going in blind."
"He's got a point," Pamela said. "More information is better than anything we've got. And those boys," she sighed, smiling. Her arms crossed her chest. "They need all the help they can get. They can call it divine intervention from heaven."
Jo's look of confusion deepened. "What is happening?"
"What do you mean a covert op?" Bobby asked.
Ash exhaled and put his arms in the air in a stretch. "Well here's the thing, we got mostly static if not dead silence from Angel Radio for what, the first three months? Then there was talking, and talking, and more talking, but it was nothing helpful, and still static-y enough for us to not be able to figure out what the hell was going on. The first time we went out and gathered random things we could find that could be helpful was during radio silence. But now there are angels out there. Doesn't seem like many, but enough to make getting information hard. This is where it gets dangerous."
"And where I object."
"Ellen just hear me out," Ash pleaded. He turned back to Bobby. "It'd be hard to get into angel headquarters and snoop around with even a small army walking around in business suits, but it wouldn't be too hard to snag one of those holy tax accountants and bring them back here for questioning." He paused, eyebrows raised, waiting for a response.
"So you want us to A-Team into HQ and steal a soldier of God?" Bobby asked.
"It sounds easier if you call them holy tax accountants?" Ash suggested.
"And which one of us is going to be able to walk in there without immediate detection?"
"You and Ellen can be back up and snatch whoever Jo, the most angelic looking of us all, lures away from the pack," Ash said. "You stay out of sight, Jo brings one to you, you bring them here."
"And we put 'em in a circle of holy fire?"
"Basically."
Bobby huffed. "So how do we bring one here?"
Jo pressed her hands down on the front of her clothes, a pantsuit and blouse with matching blazer. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, looking professional. Ash handed each her, Bobby, and Ellen a Taser, "just in case." They tucked them into their waistbands. Ellen went to the door and gripped her daughter's hand as they stepped through.
The road in front of them was pressed dirt with flecks of gravel. Trees lined the horizon, and in the center of the road was another door, this a one solid and clean decorated oak. The three looked at each other and continued on, wondering how many doors they would go through before they hit the right one.
"So what do we do while we wait?" Pamela asked Ash.
"Well, we keep an ear out on the CB when we're not using it and hope that our crew doesn't get made or lost, and use this thing to do a test run and find either Sam and Dean or Missouri Moseley." Ash gestured to his homemade PA system, hooked up to a car battery, ran through a car stereo with a karaoke microphone plugged into the input. All of this was wired into the laptop on a constant scan for anything he could pick up in heaven. It was all in working order technically speaking.
"You really think this it'll work?" Pamela asked.
"I certainly hope so." Ash flicked the switch and the battery hummed. He tapped the mic. "Testing, testing…anybody out there?" He put his head in his hands, wiping his face before continuing. "Missouri Moseley, if you're listening, I need your help to get a message to the boys. We're friends of Sam and Dean Winchester. If someone can find Missouri Moseley, we need her help. Over."
"Now what?" Pamela asked, listening to the hum of the battery and the static fluctuating over Ash's 'holy-rolling police scanner'. "If someone does hear it – and not an angel – how do we get someone to answer back?"
"Somebody'll hear, that's for sure. Just hoping the angels who aren't on our side are too busy to pay attention."
"You pretty much just put out a BOLO for the Winchesters. I think they might be interested in that," Pamela scolded.
"There're plenty of angels probably mumbling about the Winchesters. Their name flies across this scanner at least twelve times a day. We just have to hope that the right person hears our message. Preferably Missouri." Ash popped the tab on another PBR. "Now we need to pay attention and listen to see if anything stirs up about our amigos and Operation Snatch an Angel."