Last time:
Seven years into the future, Jo Harvelle and her partner are working their own gigs across the country; she's holding down a part-time job in a bar and has a casual boyfriend. All seems fine, until an old face turns up asking for her help on a case.
Sam's back.
Thrust into the middle of another crazy Winchester adventure, Jo comes face to face with things she'd never thought she'd see; a new demon, hunters being slaughtered across the country, and an evil Dean.
Now:
A wise man once said 'three's a crowd'.
He wasn't half wrong.
"Who used up all the hot water? I'm so gonna kick his skinny ass!"
"I can't find my Lucky Charms."
"Give me back my toothbrush, Dean!"
"Go pop a Prozac, Sam."
"And you can shove your Lucky Charms where the sun don't shine!"
"Bitch."
"Jerk!"
"Shut up!" The bathroom door flew open, and Jo stalked out, wrapped in a towel. "Dean, your cereal is in the cupboard where it's supposed to be, Sam, you left your toothbrush in the sink last night. And all this pales in significance compared to the fact that someone has used up all the hot water for the fifth day in a row!"
Sam and Dean both took discreet steps away from the hysterical female, exchanging guilty looks. Hey, at least she's not bitching about leaving the toilet seat up, Dean thought.
"Now, Jo-" He began reasonably.
"Don't you dare 'now, Jo' me. Time might have stood still for you, but it hasn't for the rest of us. Don't try to tell me what to do."
Sam conceded that she was right. Part of Dean still viewed both his brother and Jo as children that needed protection, not fully comprehending what the pair of them had done in the intervening six years. Lost time. You never made up for it.
"Sorry, Jo." Sam said. "I'll try to have shorter showers."
"Brown noser," Dean whispered as he passed to retrieve his toothbrush.
Jo dressed quickly in the bedroom, her eyes on the darkening horizon at the window. One problem with being the female was the unspoken rule that she would undress and dress in another room relative to the one that the brothers had colonised. (Though she was pretty certain she didn't have anything the boys hadn't seen before with their previous conquests.)
She walked back into the boxy lounge room to see Dean eating cereal from the packet and Sam sitting hunched over his computer. Five days, and their last hunt was completely bust. Case turned out to be a job for the cops, with the ex-boyfriend trying to spook the girl out with a whole bunch of occult crap.
Five days it took to get the kid to admit to what he was doing, and at the end of that day, Jo had wanted to kick the living snot out of him. So, he'd learnt a few tricks that would let him bend spoons and make tables float. It was like Sam said, 'd'we really want an amateur messing around in this stuff?'
What was beginning to unnerve her was how seemingly anyone could dabble in the occult and get the desired results. What was the point doing good and always getting into trouble when you could do the opposite and end up living in Fiji or Hawaii or somewhere else ending in 'i' surrounded by everything you ever wanted?
At the same time she had to wonder. What if someone who had a real grasp of spells and darkness went bad? Say, a hunter?
She'd already lived through Evil! Sam and Evil! Dean. Honestly, she didn't think she could live through anyone else going dark side on her.
Jo plonked down beside Sam. "What have you found, Dick Tracy?"
She had stopped calling him 'Allison Dubois' three days ago when Dean had agreed that Sam would have indeed made a nice little blonde woman and Sam had snapped back that he couldn't because he didn't have the aptitude of one. Of course Jo had been just around the corner at the time and proceeded to tell them exactly what she thought about their humour.
Both of them got really quiet for half an hour and she hadn't heard another blonde joke out of them since.
"I think I might have something." He said. "It's on your way home too so we wont have to go much out of our way."
"Great." What was home, really? Was it the place her mum was in LA with a pack of crusty old men? Was it the place her dad was, buried up the back of the Roadhouse among the bones and the ash and the shattered dreams? Or was is where she was now, sitting between the two men who had first thought of her as someone more than Ellen's daughter and Bill's kid? "Really great."
Sam glanced up at her. He recognised the tone but didn't say anything. It would only provoke an outraged denial from her if he asked what was wrong.
"There's this girl." He said. Jo rolled her eyes. Like so many Winchester stories, it all started with a girl. "Nearing bottom of the class, no particular major talents and not very popular. But about the time her parents divorced, she suddenly picked up. Grade A."
"Funny things happen to kids when their parents go different ways." Jo glanced at the computer screen. It was open on a page from a community college newsletter, giving the names of several people that had recently been kicked out for their destructive behaviour. She scanned the article. "How the heck did you get that from this?"
"I didn't." Sam said. "I dreamt about her."
"There's a no-brainer." Dean replied, eyebrows raised. Jo had to agree. Sam glanced at them both in annoyance.
"I got her name from here." He tapped the screen.
"Yeah?"
"You're not going to believe it."
"Say it already."
"Regan McNeill."
"You're kidding." Dean frowned. "The kid from The Exorcist?"
"Odds are that there would have been someone out there with the same name." Jo said exasperatedly. "It's just a movie."
"Just a movie? That's the movie, the one the whole horror genre was based on." Dean stared at her as if she had uttered the highest blasphemy ever blasphemed. "Don't tell me you haven't seen it."
"I am happy to say I am still Exorcist free." Jo frowned at him. "But I have seen Poltergeist, The Frighteners, Witch Story, The Exorcism of Emily Rose andread the collective works of Stephen King and Tom Clancy." Sam could see the glint in her eyes. Beat that.
"Can we get back to me for a minute?" He asked.
"Sorry."
"Right."
"And I've been having this dream about her. For a while now, actually."
"Yeah? And what do we have to save her from?"
"Well, I don't really know." Sam said.
"You what? Then how do we really know that there's anything wrong?"
Sam stared determinedly at his computer. "I don't know."
"Okay, then." Jo sighed. "What happens in your dream, then?"
It was a dream he had been having for weeks now, and nestled in among Lilith's visions and the nightmares she had planted in his head, it had gone unnoticed for a while. Until he saw that picture in that paper.
It was late when he finally got home. The car honked in farewell then slowly pulled out back onto the street and was gone. He was tired, but it was a good tired that bespoke of a job well done. He couldn't wait to see her again.
His nose followed a delicious scent and he found a fresh plate of biscuits. The extra sugary ones with the chocolate buttons that she said would rot your teeth but she smilingly made anyway. There was a note in front to the plate. He picked it up and ran his thumb over the familiar loops of her writing.
Miss you. Love you.
Smiling, he took a bite out of a biscuit and went into their bedroom. She wasn't there, was probably out with her girlfriends. Doing what everyone else did. That's part of why he loved her; she was so normal. He set the cookie to one side and brushed down his shirt. She'd kill him if she found crumbs in the bed.
Lying back, he closed his eyes. For a minute it didn't matter who he was, or that his father was missing or that his brother was crazy. This was home. Just the two of them.
Something splattered onto his forehead. For a moment he thought that the roof must have started leaking again from when it had been repaired last summer, then it happened again and his eyes blinked open.
Blood. On the ceiling. And there she was. Just hanging there. Staring down at him with big, frightened eyes.
For a moment he didn't believe what he was seeing, didn't want to believe what he was seeing. And then he started screaming.
"Jess! No!"
"Why, Sam?" She whispered, dying.
It was an old nightmare, one that Sam had been having on and off for years. Staring up at her beautiful face, helpless as she began to burn, shouting and crying as his brother dragged him from the room.
Jessica.
Only this time she wore the face of Regan McNeill. And Sam would still cry out Jess's name, while she asked that one question that he hated with every fibre of his being as she burned.
'Why, Sam?'
And he knew. Without question. He would not be dreaming about her, she would not have somehow become imprinted in his worst nightmare, unless she was in very real danger.
Regan McNeill was going to die unless Sam stopped it.
