Chapter 1 That Was Then

There's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me.

~ Gretchen Kemp

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, June 2012

Under the bite of the early summer sun, the yard was dusty and still and hot, the mess the demons had made of the black car showing up all too clearly in the pitiless glare.

Dean wiped his face, tucking the mostly-clean rag into the back pocket of his jeans as he walked to the bench in the workshop's shade, picking up his beer, now tepid and almost flat, and swallowing a mouthful, his gaze moving over the boxes of tools that covered the bench's surface.

"Can you fix it?"

He looked around as his brother walked slowly toward him, Sam's eyes on the car, his expression doubtful.

"Yeah, with some time," he answered, swallowing another mouthful and lobbing the empty bottle into the trashcan by the shed's side wall. "Nothin's so broke it can't be fixed."

Sam reached the shade, turning his head to look at his older brother. "You believe that?"

"Yeah," Dean said quietly. "I do."

He picked up the socket wrench and walked back to the car, spinning the tool idly between his fingers. The car had been fucked over worse before this. He would be able to put it all back together and make her beautiful again. He leaned on the frame, looking into the engine bay without seeing it. His brother – his brother might be another matter. But time would help Sam, he thought. Time and being off the job, out of it, for a while.

"Think Cas'll give us any time?" Sam asked, and Dean exhaled, the question too close to his thoughts.

"Nothing we can do about Cas," he said, not turning around.

"Dean –"

"Sam, I gotta work on this," Dean cut him off. He knew Sam wanted to talk, needed to talk but he couldn't face up to that conversation right now. So much had happened in the last few weeks, he couldn't think of any of it, didn't want to go near any of it.

"Right," Sam said softly. "I'll, uh, leave you to it."

"Yeah."

He forced himself to look at the roof, to ignore the quiet shuffle of his brother's footsteps as Sam returned to the house. If he could get the worst of the crimps and folds out of the damned thing, he thought he'd be able to beat it out straight again. But not the way it was now.

The screen door slammed in the distance and he let out the breath he'd been holding. His brother had somehow managed to integrate the memories he had of being trapped in the pit, but he was fragile. More fragile than Dean'd ever seen him. He wanted to get Sammy talking about it, get the feelings that surrounded what'd happened to him out where they couldn't keep poisoning him, he did. He just wasn't sure he could take it. Hearing it. Reliving it with his little brother. And he wasn't sure Sam could either.

His fingers closed hard around the wrench. The angel that'd fractured Sam, that'd caused all of this, was running around like a demented tin-pot god, killing randomly. And there wasn't a fucking thing they could do about it.

THEN. January 16th 2010

Putting the phone handset back in the cradle, Ellie felt the tingle of alarm as she heard a flutter of wings behind her. She turned around slowly, and saw Raphael's tall, slender form standing between her and the doorway to the bedroom. There was no way to warn him, not without alerting the archangel. The thought flashed through her mind and she struggled to keep her face impassive, her body still.

"Eleanor Katherine Morgan," the archangel's voice was deep and cultured, but cold, the words drawn out like a threat. "Uriel said you were a spoiler. No line of destiny connects you to the world's fate. It really doesn't happen that often."

Forcing herself to watch him, she didn't respond, hoping Dean would hear the archangel and head for the fire escape.

"Not feeling talkative?" He looked away from her, around the room, his gaze scouring from one corner to the other. Behind her, the bottle of Blue Label and two glasses were still standing on the sink, and she shifted her position very slightly to one side to block his view of them.

"No matter, there are ways to help you to help me." He looked back at her. "I understand that you know the Winchesters."

She waited, her thoughts beating frantically at her, in time with the racing of her heart. If Dean stayed in the bedroom, if he didn't hear …

"Where are they?" Raphael's voice held the slightest hint of an edge now.

"I have no idea," she told him flatly, a little more loudly than normal, her voice pitched to carry. "They're hunters, they could be anywhere in the country."

"Yes, they could. But they're not. They're somewhere here, somewhere close. I can't see them, but I can feel it." He took a slow step closer to her. "You can tell me now, willingly and free of pain, or you can tell me when your mouth is filled with your blood and your organs are steaming inside of your body. I'm feeling in a generous mood this morning and that is your choice. But you will tell me."

Licking her lips nervously, she looked at him. "If I knew exactly where they were, I would tell you – I have no desire to become the scratch toy of an archangel, Raphael."

His eyes narrowed suddenly, his expression malevolent. "Why are you persisting in these lies? Even loyalty can only go so far."

Ellie felt her muscles tense. Castiel had mentioned that Raphael had a very small tolerance limit. She had the feeling she'd reached it. From the bedroom, there was a faint click and she felt her stomach sink as the glass door opened and Dean walked out.

"Sam's tracked omens to –" Dean stopped halfway into the room, looking past the archangel to Ellie, his face smoothing out as his gaze flicked back to Raphael.

Raphael slowly turned his head to look at Dean, and a smile stretched his mouth, a reptilian expression as cold as his eyes.

"So, you've been deceiving me," he said, glancing back to Ellie. "Uriel was right. You are a meddler, wildcard. But not for much longer."

"Raphael. No hard feelings about the oil, I hope." Dean took another couple of steps into the room, drawing the angel's attention.

There was holy oil in her backpack, a small bottle, enough to make a circle if she could get to it, she thought, watching the angel twitch at the man's insouciant comment. The bag was on the other side of the room, slouched in the armchair where she'd dropped it. At least three seconds, probably five to get to the bag, she thought, breathing deeply to oxygenate her muscles. Another ten minimum to find and get out the bottle –

"Castiel will pay for that, in time." The archangel looked back at Dean. "You, I can't touch. At least … not yet."

He swung back to Ellie, lifting his hand and she recognised she was out of time. "But you, you have meddled in our business enough."

"No!" Dean shouted, accelerating toward her. Ellie lunged to the side and felt her feet root to the floor, her body held in place as solidly as if she'd turned to stone. The archangel didn't even turn to look at him, his focus on her, but from the corner of her eye, she saw Dean lifted off his feet and flung to the other end of the long room. He hit the wall with a crash of breaking plaster, bringing down a painting as he fell to the floor.

"Dean! Get out! Get Sam and get out of here," she yelled, fighting to move, her gaze on the palm of Raphael's hand, her efforts doubling when she saw the centre lighting up, aglow with a fierce blue-white light.

"No! This is not fucking happening! Ellie–!" Dean rolled to his feet, heading back toward her.

There was a flash through the room, as brilliant as lightning, and the beam increased, flooding outward from the angel. Ellie realised she could no longer see Dean or the archangel, screwing her eyes almost closed as heavenly incandescence blanketed her. Trust in God, she thought, lifting her arm over her face. There was nothing else to do, no one else to call on –

"Castiel!" she cried out. He came for Dean, Sam'd told her. Sometimes when Sam called, but always for Dean. She hoped he'd come now.

"Castiel cannot help you," Raphael's voice was distorted beyond the wall of fierce brilliance, thickened with contempt.

"No, but he will take Dean far from your reach," she spat back at him.

Throughout the room, things began to shake and rattle in their places, the building itself humming then resonating at the frequency of the light, rumbling and creaking as the luminescence spread out, continuing to intensify, bleeding the colour from everything it touched. She couldn't see Cas or Dean beyond it, couldn't see anything, but she heard Dean's shout. She screamed at Castiel to take Dean out and get Sam, get them both to safety.

Surging with the power drawn from the souls of Heaven, unable to change the focus without losing control and destroying more than the meddling woman in front of him, Raphael turned his head as he felt his brother's presence, seeing angel and man disappear within feet of him. Rage filled him, as incandescent as the molten energy flowing through his essence and vessel, and he poured it out at the woman who'd been a party to ruining all their plans, uncaring of the way the building was groaning and shuddering.

Ellie ducked her head, arms crossed over her as she heard the windows blow out one by one. Then the noise and chaos vanished abruptly. In her mind, she listened to a voice, not really a voice but something, something that spoke to her quietly, not in words, but in intent.

One wall of the building exploded and the room was filled with wind, concentrating the unbearable smell of scorched metal for an instant then whipping it away. She thought she heard the gunning of an engine, off in the distance.

Souls held the power of the universe, Katherine had told her once, the memory coming back as the voice faded away. The archangel had been channelling a lot of them, she thought, letting her arms fall and straightening slowly as the light died beyond her closed lids. The wind blew through the suite and she opened her eyes, seeing Raphael's hand drop to his side as the power dissipated.

He'd expected to see a pile of ash where she'd stood. She thought he looked very surprised to see her whole, upright and intact. She could understand that, she was pretty damned surprised herself.

"That's impossible." Raphael stared at her, fury warring with disbelief, his face finally animated by the all-too-human emotions. "No mortal can stand against my power."

The smile she gave him was dry. "Hubris is a sin, Raphael. I expect you know that."

He lunged toward her, and was stopped, his body held in place, his eyes widening in shock as he fought to move and couldn't.

"Don't look at me, I'm not doing it." Ellie told him with a shrug, picking her way through the debris and shards of broken glass that littered the floor. "Perhaps you should check first, before telling everyone that your Father is dead."

As she came alongside him, she turned to look into his eyes. "You cannot kill me," she told him, her voice hard and cold as she studied him. She could see from his reaction that it was true. Something had touched her, in the middle of that light. And the archangel could see it. "And you will not harm the Winchesters or Castiel. That's a message from God."

Walking past him to the armchair where her bag lay, she wondered if that was true, as she picked the backpack up by the strap and shook it to dislodge the glass and rubble from it. She couldn't imagine who else might've been able to stop the angel's wrath from destroying her. She slid the strap over one shoulder, and walked to the door. Not much hope of getting her deposit back now, she thought as she hurried down the stairs. She had to get a long way from here.

Raphael was released when the door slammed shut. He slumped forward, looking around wildly. God was dead, he'd told Winchester. Dead and vanished. Nothing could have protected the woman from the power of Heaven. Nothing but …

Under the moan of the wind through the bare structure of the building, there was a muted flutter of beating wings and he was gone.

When she reached the street, Ellie turned left and walked the next block to her truck. Throwing her bag into the seat and climbing into the truck, she got the key into the ignition, twisting it hard and starting the engine. She slid an arm over the wheel, her forehead resting against it when reaction kicked in, shuddering through her so strongly she couldn't keep a grip on the key.

What had just happened, she wondered shakily, recognising and ignoring the fear that was trying to get out from behind her mental walls. An archangel had just thrown his best Heaven-pulled whammy at her and she'd survived? No one survived that.

But she had. The memory of the not-voice was already fragmenting, dissolving, becoming more and more vague as she tried to drag it closer. Within the high-pitched, painful frequency of the light, it had surrounded her, somehow, blocking everything out but what it had tried to impart to her. A message. A warning. A sense of – what? Compassion? Understanding? Sympathy? None of them were right and she let out her breath in a frustrated exhale, dragging another deep one in to counteract the trembling in her muscles.

Dean and Sam were hidden but far from protected. She had the feeling that whatever it was that had kept her from being killed by Raphael, it'd made her a lot more visible to everything else, her memory of Raphael's reaction vivid in her mind's eye. The realisation brought a sudden twist of pain. Not now, she thought, forcing another breath through the constriction in her chest. Not now.

Pulling out and turning south, Ellie headed for Missouri, driving out of the town and through the countryside for three hours before she pulled off into a long lay-by, sheltered by trees.

She got out of the truck, shivering in the damp air, and reached back into the cab, dragging a jacket from her bag and zipping herself into it.

"Castiel? Cas? Can you hear me?" Ellie wrapped her arms around herself as she waited, wondering if he'd even respond to a prayer from a stranger, with Dean no longer in need of help.

The soft sound of wings and the scrape of a shoe on gravel had her spinning around, her gun in her hand, although, she thought later, it couldn't have done anything.

Castiel stood a few feet from her. "How is it possible?"

"I don't know. You could ask your Father, Cas." Ellie smiled humourlessly at him. "Are they safe? Did they get away?"

He nodded, his gaze cutting aside, looking up and down the county highway. "Dean is very unhappy."

Taking a deep breath, Ellie nodded. He would think she was dead, and even when Cas told him she wasn't, he wouldn't be happy with the next bit either. "I know. I want you tell him that I'm alive. That I'm alright. He needs to know that at least."

Castiel looked back at her. "Do you want to go to them?"

Staring at the flat fields that bounded the highway, she tried to remain objective about the situation. The truth was she did, more than she wanted to admit to, even to herself. She wanted to feel his arms around her, and look into his eyes, and know that out of everything that had happened, in her life and his, something had begun between them, something that felt important and true.

But.

She shook her head. "No. Raphael found them because he could find me," she said to the angel. "It doesn't matter how careful I am. They could be found again. It was risky before, but now …" she trailed off, the look in archangel's eyes returning to her again. "I'm easy to see – now – aren't I?"

Castiel nodded. "Yes. You are clear – and bright," he said, his head tilting a little. "What happened?"

"Something gave me a message," she said slowly, trying to recapture the detail of the moment. "And a warning. And something else."

"Something?" Cas asked, his expression intent as he leaned forward. "What kind of something?"

She opened her mouth to tell him, then shook her head, turning away. "I don't know. Not really. I thought –"

"You thought it was God?" Cas finished, his dark blue eyes widening.

Ellie shrugged uncomfortably, trying to dismiss it. Was it really likely that God would speak to her? Personally save her? Not so much. "Maybe. I don't know."

She looked away. "I just know that I can't take the risk of leading whatever's hunting them straight there. So," she added, turning back to him. "You have to tell Dean I won't be back. Not until Heaven and Hell have stopped hunting them."

"I can protect you, Ellie. Hide you from angel view," the angel said. She bit her lip then nodded at him, and Castiel took a step closer to her, lifting his hand.

He laid his hand against her side, over her ribs, closing his eyes. Ellie looked down at his hand, then up to his face as he frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"It's not … I cannot affect you." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "It's not working."

"Because of what happened."

"Yes. If it was … I believe so," he said. "Whatever protected you from Raphael's attack, it's … touch … is still there. I don't think an angel could harm you now. But …" He drew in a deeper breath. "I think … we can all see you."

Ellie looked down at the ground, feeling the implications of that hitting her, one after the other. She wouldn't just be easy to find, she thought. She'd be visible no matter how she tried to hide. And that would make her a danger to others.

"Castiel, you have to make Dean understand that I can't go anywhere near them until Lucifer is dead or back in the cage, and Michael has stopped looking for him." She hesitated for a moment, wondering what his reaction would be to that. Their beginning had been so short. Maybe it mattered more to her than to him. "Can you tell him I love him? That –"

That what, she wondered? That she'd wait? That she wanted him to wait? What if the waiting was too long or got too hard? What if he didn't want to wait? She looked up at the angel and shook her head.

"I'll try," Castiel said uncomfortably, his gaze shifting to her truck. "Where will you go?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. So long as I'm far away from them, they'll stay safe." She wrinkled her nose at the blatant untruth of that statement. "Well, safer anyway."

Digging in her coat pocket for the keys, she turned for the truck.

"Ellie," Castiel called out, striding abruptly to her side. Looking at him, she was surprised to see his eyes filled with emotion. "Is God alive?"

"I don't know, Cas," she said, thinking of that voice in her mind. Not a voice. Not even a feeling. But some kind of intent. "I think I wouldn't be here if he wasn't. You either," she added, remembering what Dean had told her of what had been done to the angel in the past.

"Where is He?"

"I don't know that either," she said honestly. "But that's never really mattered, has it?"

The angel stepped back as she opened the truck's door and settled herself in the driver's seat. "Cas, please … tell Dean I'm sorry."

He nodded and vanished, and she started the truck, wondering what the hell she could do to keep the attention of any angel who might be watching her far away from the brothers.

NOW. June, 2012

Ellie stood looking at the church. "Lady of Serenity Church" the sign proclaimed. Castiel had been here. He was getting hard to keep track of, despite the news reports that seemed to be flowing across the country.

She sighed and walked back to the white pickup. As she drove out of the town, she saw a public garden near the river. She pulled over and walked under the stone arch into it, breathing the cool, morning air in deeply.

Looking around at the mature trees, gowned in their summer growth and a thousand different shades of green, at the tended beds of rioting flowers, she felt a little of the peace of the place seeping into her. For what felt like half her life, she'd spent time in the old churches, places of worship, shrines and tombs and altars where the stones and timbers had drunk in human emotion and reflected it back. She knew the power of those places, but she sometimes wondered if people understood that open spaces, filling with perpetual life, could hold the same full emotions, could give the same comfort.

If he was still in the vicinity, she thought, it was a place that an angel might like.

"Castiel?" She looked around, her gaze tracking through the open grounds. "Castiel, can you hear me?"

It hadn't worked the last twenty times, of course, but that was no reason to give up now. Purgatory had been opened. Millions of souls had come out. Been subsumed by an angel, she'd heard through the mixed grapevine of hunters and those on the periphery of the hunting life. Rumour. Speculation. Confirmation finally from a psychic down south. The news reports had begun and she'd seen him.

"Ellie."

She turned around and felt her eyes widen as she looked into his face.

"Oh, Cas, what've you done?" she breathed.

The angel looked ill. His skin was white and grey, pouched in places, unnaturally shadowed in others. The clear, dark blue eyes she remembered were bleary, bloodshot and heavy-lidded and he couldn't keep them still, his gaze flicking from side to side.

"What do you mean?" He seemed to struggle to concentrate, his eyes crossing as he forced them to focus on her. "I am the new God."

"Are you?" Her gaze swept downwards, seeing the bulging of his torso beneath the blood-spattered white business shirt and beige trenchcoat. "You're burning out your vessel, Cas."

"I know. I will heal it when I'm finished."

"You can't assimilate those souls, Cas. No one could."

Purgatory, Seb had told her, held the souls of monsters, condemned to their choices of life-everlasting and bloodlust for eternity. But Purgatory held other things as well. Creatures from other dimensions, distant ones. And the first beasts. Voracious experiments that had been considered a failure and locked away, according to the oldest biblical texts. "Cas … there are things that are not souls in you," she added uneasily. "You have to get them back into Purgatory. They'll kill you."

"No. God is dead. I am the new God and I can handle them."

"God isn't dead, Cas," Ellie said to him sadly. "I told you that."

"That was … a long time ago, Ellie." He looked at her, and for a second, his gaze cleared, she could see he was really seeing her. "I prayed for guidance, that I was doing the right thing. I prayed to Him for a sign, that He heard me, that He still cared."

He turned away. "There was no sign."

"Cas, he's not dead." She stepped toward him.

"Then why didn't He stop this? Why didn't He stop me?" Castiel spun around, his voice rising. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me; yet here I stand."

She looked at him. "You're not God, Cas."

The angel stared at her and she watched his face twitch with emotion, her breath catching as a shadow moved under his skin. He was trembling, she realised, seeing the coat's collar shaking a little against the bloody stains on his shirt. For a long moment, he seemed to be gone, then expression returned, slowly smoothing out as he came back from whatever impossible state his mind was in.

"Tell Dean –" Castiel began, and Ellie frowned as his expression drained away into vacancy once more, his eyes paling and almost empty. She started slightly when they abruptly locked onto hers, suddenly much darker. "Tell him not to rise against me. I am content to let them live if they do not betray my goodwill."

He took a staggering step closer to her, his gaze fixed as his expression lost animation again and his eyes seemed to grow distant. "But if they do, I will destroy them. Do you understand?"

She looked at him and nodded.

He disappeared.

Oh, crap, Ellie thought as she sank on the bench behind her. It was a lot worse than she'd imagined.

Along with the souls, the angel had clearly taken in the creatures who'd been imprisoned in Purgatory and her sketchy knowledge of those monsters, just from Seb's quick phone call, was enough to make her realise that unless someone could convince Castiel to return them to Purgatory and lock them away again, the world was going to be in a lot of trouble.

She closed her eyes. She was going to have to see them. She was going to have to see him.

The thought brought a mass of conflicting emotions. Elation and anxiety, desire and fear, a marrow-deep sadness and a longing she couldn't bear to acknowledge, churning nauseatingly in her stomach. She'd tried to bury what she'd felt. Tried to drown it out with work, with research, with hunts that had sometimes bordered on recklessness. None of it had worked. And he was the only one who had a chance of getting through to the angel, the only one to whom Castiel might listen.

Even if he could, she thought, it wouldn't be enough. Penemue had explained the nature of the angels' power – of Heaven's power – and of Hell's. Holding the souls within his vessel, Castiel was a walking reactor, a power sink of unimaginable force. Dean would need something … or someone … to bind the angel, keep him from detonating.

She'd kept tabs on what they'd done, and where they'd been, this past two years. Most of the time it'd been a torture she'd repeatedly told herself she could do without. That rational approach hadn't stopped her from checking in with the hunters she knew they saw, from time to time. She thought she'd made her peace with everything that had happened. But as the emotions stormed away behind the too-thin walls she'd erected around them, she could see that clearly she hadn't.

Exhaling softly, she got to her feet, following the narrow concrete path out of the garden and walking slowly to her truck.

Three days later. Richmond, Virginia

The basement room had been a steadily expanding library for as long as she'd known the Macdonalds, two stories under the ground and the plaster on the walls not hidden by shelving, showing the excavations where objects and protective bags, wardings and sigils had been inserted and covered over. The floor-to-ceiling shelves covered most of the walls, filled to capacity with books that were beyond old, some beyond ancient, tattered covers and mildewed pages waiting patiently to be restored. Some of them, she knew, would never be restored. Their contents were irreplaceable but the miasma of evil that leaked from them meant that no one could work on them safely.

"He's taken the souls of Purgatory and the creatures that lived there," she muttered, half to herself as she stared down at the yellowing pages in front of her. "What's going to be strong enough to lock him down?"

Sebastian looked at her, one overgrown grizzled brow rising. "What makes you think anything is strong enough?"

"Yure –" Ellie started, cutting herself off as Katherine came down the wooden stairs, carrying a tray of cups and a pot of black coffee and putting on the table.

"Yure and Kasha are optimists," the tall woman said, pouring the aromatic brew into the cups. "Patrick called earlier," she added, taking a cup for herself and sitting at the table next to her husband. "He got hold of John."

"Really?" Ellie reached across the table to take a full cup. "I thought he'd – well …"

"Apparently not," Katherine said. "He's been in hiding, according to Patrick. I didn't get the full details. He said the only thing that's going to be able to stop the angel is God."

"Well, we can't exactly call for an appointment." Ellie frowned as she sipped her coffee. "And that's not true anyway," she added, keeping her gaze firmly on the table. "Death has the power as well."

Seb's gargantuan snort sent the unswallowed coffee in his mouth and throat spraying across the floor as he turned from the table, the snort becoming a hacking cough and his wife pounding on his back while she looked at Ellie disapprovingly.

"Death!" Seb said, when his airways were more or less clear again. "You're joking!"

Ellie shrugged. "He has the power over every living creature. He can hold Castiel, keep him from exploding until the doorway can be opened again."

"And how do you imagine you'll convince that entity to help?" Katherine enquired frostily.

"Everything has a key," Ellie said, looking down at the book on the table. "You told me that. An opposite, a binding force."

"The only binding force I ever heard of for the Pale Rider was the one Lucifer used to keep him on a leash when he brought him back to this plane," Seb said, his tone repressive. "No one – and I mean no one, Ellie – knew where he'd gotten it."

"Probably Heaven," Ellie speculated, picking up her cup. "The question is – where did he leave it when he was done with it?"

"What!?" Katherine stared at her. "You can't possibly be seriously thinking of trying to find a spell to bind the Horseman. It's preposterous! Unthinkable!"

"Very thinkable," Ellie said. "And possible. It's just –"

"Goin' to be impossible!" Seb snapped, moving closer to Katherine, the two of them unconsciously drawing together to provide a united front.

"No," she said firmly. "Just not easy."

"Ellie," Katherine said, trying to unclench her teeth and drawing in a deeper breath. "Even if Lucifer had kept that spell, where do you think it would be?"

"He didn't leave anything up here," Ellie said, glancing at her. "So, probably in Hell."

"Right!" Seb pounced on the word. "In Hell. Where there's a new ruler and a new regime and a horde of demons, as pissed as the angels that their visions of paradise were stomped on and wrecked, all of 'em looking for someone to kill to make 'em feel better. Impossible."

It wasn't even close to impossible, Ellie thought, though she knew why the two of them were trying to convince her it was. She had rituals for opening the gates, had everything she needed, collected and stored at her apartment four years ago when she'd thought she'd have to go in there to get Dean out.

The new ruler of Hell was, according to the demons she'd interrogated six months before, a crossroads demon. Nothing more. A human-born, crossroads demon that had somehow wrested control of the accursed plane from the archdemons without so much as an argument and had been running it ever since.

Not that she could take him lightly, she considered, hands wrapped around her cup as she swallowed. Crowley had a powder-keg temper and he'd almost caught her once. He had the power of the souls in Hell at his command. However she did it, it would have to be in a way that no one ever suspected a thief had been in and out.

"Did Patrick ever find the old documents, the ones about the angel histories, in the Vatican vaults?" she asked, looking up over the rim of her cup at Katherine.

"Not that he told us," Katherine said, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

Ellie waved a hand in a vague gesture. "If anyone knows how to circumvent Death's decisions, it'd be the angels, wouldn't it?"

"You think you can get an angel to control Death?" Seb asked, his voice filled with disbelief. "To take down another angel? Lucifer was cast down for ideas like that."

Shaking her head, she put her cup down and closed the book on the table. "No, although from what Castiel was saying, it can't be any better in Heaven under his stewardship than it is here," she said. "Penemue said that the angels had gone into Hell."

"A lot of people have gone into Hell," Katherine told her sharply. "And never returned."

"And some have," she pointed out, getting to her feet. "I've got to go. I'll call at the end of the week, see if you've found anything else?"

"Where are you going?" Seb got to his feet, glancing at Katherine as she rose slowly as well.

"LA." Ellie picked up her backpack, slinging the worn strap over one shoulder. "Told Iain and Fionnula I'd see them while I was on the coast."

"What's in Los Angeles that can't wait?" Katherine asked, arms folded over her chest in an interrogatory stance.

"Pick up. One crate of holy oil for Andreas and Alyssa," Ellie said, smiling disarmingly at her as she turned for the door. "You want anything delivered to Fionnula while I'm over there?"

The couple exchanged a glance. "Yes, you could take Nonna's quilt with you and give it to her," Katherine said, following her out. "She's been asking for it."

"No problem."