Ellie sighed, looking out the window of the old black car. Her father had always maintained the beautiful black stead while her mother had been alive. It was the first thing her parents talked about; her father's car. It was a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, built like a wall and made of steel most cars nowadays had never seen.
Although Ellie preferred the view from the passenger seat, her uncle was taking that position. She wanted to protest, but it'd do her no good. Long before she'd been put in the backseat of the four door classic car, she knew well enough that her Uncle out ranked her by a mile. Throwing a fit would only make her father give her the 'don't give me attitude about this' look.
And it was a terrible look. It was a lecture and a guilt trip all rolled into one. Those were the worst. The man didn't even have to say a word and she knew exactly what he was trying to say to her. Her uncle would generally just smirk like he knew exactly what her father was trying to relay. Actually, he probably did if the stories they told about their 'glory days' were anything close to accurate.
"Ellie, did you do any research on the coven in the area?"
Leave it to Uncle Sam to bring up the fact she'd neglected to do the only task they'd given her so far this hunt. She sighed again, rubbing across her forehead. "I uh… I mean, I did… I did some." She muttered out, hoping it would be a good enough answer while simultaneously knowing it wasn't.
"You didn't do the research like we asked you to?" Her father's voice broke out, sounding so much harsher in the car and suddenly the boat of a vehicle felt very, very small. "The only thing we asked you to do and you forget?"
She hadn't forgotten; she always did the research like they asked her to. But this time was different. She'd wanted to visit San Francisco since she was little. The Golden Gate Bridge, the history, the art, the classic Victorian structure of the houses; it was all gorgeous to her and she was too excited to just be there that the thought of having to hunt witches had been put at the back of her mind.
"You gonna answer me, or you just gonna stare out the window?" Dean's voice asked sharply and when she turned, she could see him looking at her in the rearview mirror.
"I was just excited to be here. I'm sorry. It won't happen again." She mumbled quietly, ducking her head and watching the road whirl by outside the car.
"Dean…" Uncle Sam sighed, looking over at his older brother. Sam had a tendency to throw her under the bus and then doing his damnedest to pull her back out from under it.
She saw the look her father gave her uncle and she didn't know quite how to translate it; she hadn't seen it nearly as often as the guilt-trip-lecture laced look.
"Ellie," Her father started, looking in the rearview mirror at her again. "I love you. But if we ask you to do something, it's because it's important. If we ask you to do research that means we need your help. I know you've wanted to come here for a long time and I'm gonna do my damnedest to go to some of those museums or whatever it is you wanna see," He told her. "But we gotta get rid of these witches first."
She sat there, thinking about it for a moment before she glanced up to catch his gaze in the rearview. She nodded slowly. "I'm sorry about dropping the research."
"You're forgiven if you make up for it when we get to the motel." He told her, his voice easing its hard edge, but she knew it was a command, not a request. Dean Winchester wasn't a soft father, after all.
"Wyatt! You get down here, right this second!"
He cringed, hearing his mom's words from the bottom of the stairs. Oh man if she was yelling, that could only mean he'd forgotten to take the trash out again. He sighed, trudging his way down the stairs. He paused at the landing, seeing his mother with her arms crossed over her chest, an irritated look on her face.
And then he remembered how he'd cursed Chris's hair to stay pink until he'd apologize for smashing his game station.
"What is this?" Piper asked, fluffing Chris's pink hair.
Wyatt might have been eighteen, but he was definitely still scared of his mother. "Um… pink… hair?" He deadpanned.
His mom looked mad enough to spit. "Try again."
"Okay, look, yes, I cursed him to have pink hair. But it'll go away as soon as he apologizes for crushing my iBox yesterday!" Wyatt said, gesturing to his younger brother.
"That was a pretty good idea." Melinda, his youngest sibling, said, coming to lean on the wall at the end of the stairs.
"Thanks." He mumbled, knowing his mother wouldn't appreciate the comment.
"Why did you crush his iBox?" Piper whirled on the younger boy, knowing the game system was barely six months old and still very expensive.
Chris cringed, the same as Wyatt had when he'd first heard his mother yell. "Well, I mean, aren't we here because Wyatt cursed me? That's against the rules anyway!"
"Christopher." Piper said lowly, showing her anger.
The younger brother gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I didn't mean to!"
"You sent it flying through the air." Wyatt said, glaring slightly at his brother.
"Well… Okay, he made me mad and the only thing I could think to do was send it flying." Chris said, hanging his head.
"Wyatt, you will not curse your brother again. Chris, apologize sincerely so your hair changes back. Melinda, go change your shirt; you're not going to school like that." Piper said. "And hurry up. You're gonna be late!" She said, rushing off to the kitchen.
Chris sighed as Melinda headed upstairs to change her top. "I'm sorry for breaking your iBox." Chris told his older brother.
Wyatt nodded his acceptance of the apology as Chris's hair slowly turned from bubblegum pink to its normal dark brown. Melinda came back down the stairs and Piper rushed back into the hall.
"What are you doing standing there? Come on. Get in the car." She shooed her kids, moving them towards the entry way to grab their backpacks and propped the door open for them to file out of the manor.
Wyatt shook his head as he climbed into his hand-me-down Jeep Cherokee with Chris in the passenger seat, waving to his mother as she drove off with his sister.
"So," Ellie started after pushing open the door to her dad and uncle's motel room. Dean had been kind enough to offer her a room to herself, as it was the only time she had any space to herself. He'd sold their house when her mother had died, but this was as close as she got to 'having her own room'. "I found a book in the local library that isn't released online. It keeps looping back to this 'book of shadows'. I can find pretty much jack squat for lore on the book, but there's a few things that keeping mentioning like this master book of witch spells that is guarded by three sister witches, the strongest of all witch magic."
"Like, the Crowley of witches?" Dean asked, glancing at his brother with a look of disapproval for the situation.
Ellie shrugged. She'd never met Crowley, but she'd heard some stories. "That's kind of what it sounds like, but it's like all the other lore has been erased except for this book at the library."
"Gonna go check it out?" Sam asked.
Ellie nodded. "Yeah, and before you ask," She said, looking at her dad. "Yes, I do have a silver knife and a vial of dead man's blood, just in case."
Dean smirked, but she could see that it was laced with worry. "Want me to go with you?"
Ellie shook her head. "No, it's fine. I've got it covered. I've also got my cellphone unless anything comes up in the meantime." She told her, moving for the door again and heading straight across the parking lot.
She knew the library was only ten minutes away. Although, now that she thought of it, Google had probably meant by car… But still, the distance wasn't as far as across town and she liked walking along the road. The people were always different no matter the city they ended up in and the houses were gorgeous, even the ones that looked a little dilapidated. She liked how the new and modern met with the old and classic here in the city. It made her smile a little bit.
The library wasn't a hard building to find; it was nearly three times the size of the normal library she'd stumble upon. Usually, they'd end up in smaller towns where superstitions ran deep like tree roots. Here, the city was big enough to forget a lot of the folklore that had originally worried their ancestors.
With a little guidance of the librarian and a few insistences that she wasn't part of a cult, she ended up sitting on the floor with half a dozen books sprawled out around her. She was kind of flipping back and forth from one to another as they each referenced each other, scribbling down notes from passages she thought might be useful.
She glanced up, feeling a pair of eyes on her, but a quick scan of the area showed that nobody was obviously watching her. She shook it off, telling herself to stop being paranoid and focus on the task. But after another few moments, she felt the sensation of being watched, like someone's eyes boring into her.
She looked up again and this time, found a boy a few feet away from her. Well, if she had to guess from his height and amount of facial hair, he was probably more of a man than a boy. He was standing at the bookshelf she had her back to, glancing at the books sprawled around her. She looked at him until his eyes shifted to hers. She wasn't going to say anything, just watch him until he asked what she was doing or just bolted.
"Doing some light reading?" He asked with a smirk.
Ellie watched him for another moment. She'd been prepared to argue with the passerby, or glare him down. But being friendly hadn't made her list of possible outcomes.
"Um, yeah, actually." She said, glancing down at the books before looking up at the tall brunette.
He slowly moved closer, twisting his head to read the book that had previously been upside down to him. "The Tales of the Salem Trials, Spellcasting and The Fundamentals, A Witch's Last Breath, and the Architecture of San Francisco." His tone was questioning, curious as he listed off the four different books she'd strung out.
"Well, the first three are for a school project and the last one is just for me since I was already here." Ellie murmured, suddenly feeling embarrassed for the book about San Francisco's famous structures.
"May I?" He asked, gesturing to the empty span of floor to her right.
"Uh, yeah, sure." She told him, moving the book about the Salem trials so he could sit down.
"What kind of school project are you doing exactly?" He asked, pulling the spellcasting book closer to look at it.
"Well, I'm homeschooled. My dad is huge into mythology and stuff. Every week is a different legend or myth. I have to do a bunch of research on whatever the subject is, and then I have to give a report on why I think it's real or not, and where the first legend may have come from. This week is witches." Ellie explained
She'd thought out this reason a long time ago. Most people tended to buy it pretty easily, especially in the smaller towns where they knew she wasn't from the area.
This boy, however, glanced at her for a moment like he didn't believe her.
"Crap, I'm sorry. I'm Wyatt." He said quickly, holding out his hand to her.
She smiled. "Nice to meet you. Ellie."
He smiled back before taking another look at the spellcasting book. "Do you…" He trailed off, seeming like he was trying to organize his thoughts. "You don't actually believe in this do you?"
Ellie scoffed, rolling her eyes for effect. She'd mastered the technique of avoidance from her father a long time ago. "What? Are you kidding? This is the stupidest stuff." She said, shaking her head and picking up the book about the trials. " 'The general populace of people accused of witchcraft were women who had probably been in the wrong time at the wrong place. A few of them were accused of holding back the rains, making crops wither, or for owning a black cat.' I mean, a black cat? That's not witchcraft; that's genetics."
Wyatt smiled at her. "No, I totally agree. But you know how the world's going now a days. Everybody's into something weird." He said with a shrug as he set the book down.
Ellie nodded. "So you live here?"
"At the library? No. But that'd definitely be a lot cooler than where I do live now." He told her.
She gave a breathy chuckle and a sigh, shaking her head at him. "I didn't mean this building; I meant this city."
Wyatt grinned over at her. "Yes, I do live in this city. But if I had to guess, I'd say you don't."
"Ah. A guesser. Interesting." Ellie smiled. "But correct."
"What's wrong with being a guesser?" He asked, giving her a funny look.
"Nothing." She told him, shaking her head.
"No, now you've got to tell me." He said.
She sighed, smiling a little. "My family's a bunch of 'knowers' instead of 'guessers'. That's what my mom used to call it. She told me my dad was the biggest knower she'd ever met, because he always had a steadfast answer for everything; regardless of the situation."
"Used to?" Wyatt asked quietly, dropping his voice a little as the librarian came around the corner and glared at them both.
"Sorry." Ellie said quietly, giving a little wave before she turned back to Wyatt. She thought about just telling him the generic version of the story, but really; she'd know this guy all of ten minutes. "I reserve that story for people who earn the right to hear it."
Wyatt's eyebrows moved higher on his face and Ellie considered how it didn't seem to match the rest of his features. "Oh?" His eyebrows came back to rest in their natural position, but there was a kind of worry line running across his forehead.
"It's just… I move around a lot, going with my dad when he works. And I don't like to give out secrets to people who are just curious; to people who are going to forget me when I leave again." She said, moving to gather the books up. "But it was very nice to meet you, Wyatt. Thank you for keeping me company." She told me, standing up, picking up her armful of books and her notebook before dumping the books on a cart and moving for the exit.
God, her dad was gonna kill her for being late.
"Who was that?" Chris asked, coming around the corner shortly after Ellie had left.
Wyatt looked up at him from his place on the floor, although he wasn't really surprised. Chris had a knack for eve's dropping. "That, my friend, was a girl." Wyatt said, pushing himself off the floor and patting his brother on the shoulder. "Don't get too excited."
"No, but did you hear what she was talking about? Witches?" Chris asked, before glancing around their direct area and lowering his voice. "Is she onto us?"
Wyatt rolled his eyes. "Onto us? Listen to yourself. Have you been watching the old X-Files shows?"
Chris looked put out. "Well, yeah, but that's not the point."
"Chris, nobody believes in witches anymore, remember? That's why nobody burns at the stake, because nobody believes they exist. No, would you calm down and help me find the culinary section? I need to figure out how to make that thing mom was talking about." Wyatt spoke, trying to rationalize where the food books might be.
"Don't you know the dewey decimal system?" Chris sighed, taking a glance at the shelf nearest them before heading off in another direction.
"Some of us don't have ridiculously vast memories for stupid things." Wyatt commented, making his brother turn around.
"I'm not gonna help you if you're going to keep insulting me." Chris said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Wyatt sighed. "Alright, I'm sorry. Please."
Chris nodded his approval before leading the way.
Melinda came around the corner, her nose in a fiction book about witches.
"Isn't that kind of stupid?" Chris asked his sister, while looking at his brother and gesturing to the shelf unit he stood in front of.
Wyatt got to worked scanning the titles, looking for the French cookbook his mother had mentioned yesterday morning before school.
"It's not stupid. I like to see how people fictitiously write us." Melinda said with a shrug, closing the book.
"This is what I'm talking about." Chris said, turning to look at Wyatt. "People still believe in us. We've got to be careful."
Wyatt rolled his eyes before looking over at the middle child. "They don't believe in us," He said, gesturing to the three of them. "They believe in the idea of magic. Why's that so bad? The world's a bad enough place. Let them believe in whatever kind of distorted magic their innocent minds can create to make their lives a little easier to handle." He said, going back to the book shelf.
"Are you looking for that book mom told you about? The one for that French pastry thing she wants for her birthday?" Melinda asked Wyatt.
He grinned, pulling a book off the shelf before he cracked it open and starting shuffling through it, looking for the recipe. "Yeah. Aunt Phoebe said she'd get whatever I needed for it so it didn't look so suspicious."
"Well, hurry up. Mom wanted us all to work at the restaurant tonight." Melinda said, looking at her watch.
"Alright, alright. Here goes." Wyatt said, heading for the checkout counter, his younger siblings following behind him.
"Do you think anybody really believes in us?" Melinda quietly whispered to Chris behind Wyatt's back, gently waving her book back and forth to illustrate what she meant.
Chris shrugged. "There's always somebody that believes, I think."
Melinda nodded like she agreed, looking a little worried. "Let's just hope they don't really believe."
Chris nodded along with her and Wyatt knew that while he always wished the best of his situation, deep down he knew if demons were real, if witches were real, and evil was real, there would always be somebody out there who believed it was real.
