"Joanna Beth!" Ellen screamed from the other side of the roadhouse."Mom you can't stop me!" Jo yelled from behind the bar pulling off her apron and throwing it to the floor. "Oh really?" Ellen said cocking and eyebrow and placing one of her hands on her hips, "Because I am pretty sure that I am your mother!" "Really?!" Jo said raising her eyebrow to match, "You could have fooled me with all this possessive protective shit!"
"JOANNA BETH HARVELLE! Do not use that tone of voice at me and how dare you cuss at me, you will not go off on your own to fight monsters, do you hear me? Those Boys put some half cocked notation in your mind that this is a good idea?!" Ellen yelled.
"Mom," Jo said trying to calm down. " be reasonable, I can help people."
"Jo" Ellen said desperately walking towards her daughter ," You could get yourself killed."
"Other people are already dying!"
Ellen lost her cool again, this was her baby she couldn't lose her like she lost her Bill. " You will not hunt under my roof!" She said in front of Jo looking her straight in the eye, daring her to say something.
"FINE!" Jo said pushing her way past her mom out of the door. " I'm leaving then," Jo grabbed the bag she had packed in case it had come to this. Jo stormed out of the front door of the road house, only momentarily thinking of the turmoil she was leaving her mother in. she turned her head just enough to give her mother a sideline glance, "Goodbye." She whispered just loud enough for her mom to hear and then she left. She climbed into the car she had recently bought and drove away.
Ellen stood in place, the last words of their fight ringing in her ears. Ellen felt a tear fall down her cheek, her daughter had just left her, Jo was gone. Ellen sank down against one of the walls facing the bar, She held her face in her hands started to cry. She was overcome with worry and fear; her daughter had chosen the life that she had fought so hard to keep her away from. After a little while she pulled herself together and stood up. She leaned against the wall and wiped away her tears with her sleeves.
Ellen walked away from the wall and pulled on her apron, she pulled out the dish rag and wiped down the counter. She cleaned it until she could see her reflection in it. Then she reached down and picked up the apron that Jo had thrown on the floor. She bunched it up and pulled it up to her face, and breathed in the smell of her daughter, the smell that her daughter carried on her hair and in her clothes. Ellen felt a few tears betray her and slip down her face. Ellen walked across the roadhouse to the window and flipped the sign to say "Closed".
Ellen spent the rest of the night looking at the phone on the wall waiting for Jo to call and debating whether or not to call Jo herself.
Jo sat behind the wheel of her car and turned on the radio, she drove away. Just away with nowhere in mind, just to get away until she could think of where to go next. Jo drove until she was a state over and more than two towns away. A seedy motel came up in her side mirror and she flipped a turn into the drive. She dropped her bag onto the table from the room she was staying in. the room she had rented held a table, a few chairs, the shabby bed, a small bathroom and an old TV.
Jo sat down on the bed and thought about what had happened with her mom a couple hours previous. She replayed the conversation in her head over and over. She felt terrible about the fight with her mom and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. She spent half the night debating on calling her mom, and she fell asleep looking at the phone.
Jo woke up in the motel bed, and pulled her messy hair into a loose bun. She pulled the knife from under her pillow and set it on the night stand next to her phone. She showered and dressed in under thirty minutes and holstered a gun and three different knives. She pulled her laptop from her bag and the file from the hunt she fought to come for. A few college kids disappeared from a bar right down the street. The victims where all her age, really smart managing 4.0s and scholarships. Nobody's had shown up yet, it was like they had just fallen off the face of the earth.
Jo pulled on her blazer and placed one of the badges the boys had given her, in her pocket. She double checked her weapons and picked her phone off the bed table where she had put it last night. She flipped it open and checked to see if she had any notifications. Nothing. Her mom hadn't called or texted, nothing. A tear slipped down her cheek and onto the screen of her phone, she wiped it away and slipped the phone into her pocket.
She pulled her bag off the table and locked the door behind her. Jo slipped behind the wheel of her car and head off to the nearest victim's house. Jo walked to the front door and knocked.
"Hello." A woman said as she pulled the door open.
"Hello, Mrs. Robertson is it?" Jo asked "I'm Mea Fotheringham. F.B.I." she pulled the badge from her pocket and flipped it open as she introduced herself.
"Oh, well um… come on in Agent Fotheringham." Mrs. Robertson said a little confused.
"Thank you. Mrs. Robertson." Jo said walking into the small comfortable living room.
"Please just call me Bailey." Mrs. Robertson said, "Can I get you anything?" disappearing into the kitchen of her house. Jo sat tentively on the seat pulled up to the table. Bailey pulled a couple of mugs from a cupboard above the stove, and filled them with coffee. "Do you take anything in it?"
"No just black thank you." Jo said, "I'm here about your son."
"Oh… you were put on his case?" Bailey said sitting down and sliding Jo her mug, " What do you need to know? Jo worried inside a little panicked, she had no idea about how to continue, she had no idea what she was dealing with. She wondered if leaving had been such a good idea.
Ellen woke up her head resting on the bar she realized then that she had spent the whole night staring at that phone until she fell asleep. She systematically got the bar ready for the day trying to ignore the pain from Jo leaving had caused her. She flipped the sign in the window from "Closed" to "Open" and did a final check of the roadhouse before she checked the individual rooms. Once everything was done she fixed the liquor by the bottles, something she had been meaning to do but never got around to until well until now. She busied herself cleaning everything she could get her hands one, but she never took a step into Jo's room. She sat down and was plagued again by thoughts of Jo, at least when she was cleaning she could focus on something else.
Ellen's thoughts lingered on Jo and what she must be up to. Every bone in her maternal body told her to pick up that damn phone and call her daughter, but she knew that if she did she would just be pushing Jo away. She couldn't lose Jo. Ash walked into the road house from the trip he had taken. Ellen just about shot out of her chair to ask Ash for news. "Anything Ash?" Ellen said her heart racing with some emotion she couldn't quite place. "Jo's left the state she is in Iowa." "What's in Iowa?"Ellen almost shrieked. "A couple of missing person's reports and some omens." Ash replied. "Demons?" "Not that I can tell, I will look into it" "Okay keep me updated." Ellen said biting her nails and walking over to a customer that had just walked in.
A hunter by the looks of it, he wore a gun on his belt and had an antipoesssion amulet around his wrist. "What can I get ya?" Ellen said from behind the counter. "Scotch." He said, " And a room if you got one" Ellen poured his drink and slide it across the counter, "We got a couple." Ellen replied and poured herself a drink while the bottle was still out.
Jo sat down on the bed of her motel room and looked at her hand work. She had gone to see all the families that were missing members and had pin pointed every place that this case had touched, the houses the places they worked and most of all where they went missing. Jo looked at it and silently cursed that she was alone. Someone else could probably make sense of all of this. Jo fell back onto the bed and thought of all the possibilities until her head hurt. She woke up an hour later just as the sun came through the windows. Run through the facts, that is what Ash always told her right? They had all disappeared from the same month. They all came from the same school. All their mothers had seen them recently, really recently actually. Wait a second, Jo thought, they had went to see their mothers after school had said they disappeared. Jo shot straight up and started writing and drawing connections across the wall she had set up. She went out to her car and pulled open the trunk. She had taken a leaf out of Sam and Dean's book stalked her trunk full of so many weapons that she would be put in jail if anyone even saw it. She had everything, pounds of rock salt, iron weapons, silver knifes, a machete, guns, guns, and more guns, and every kind of bullets that you could make without losing a finger. She took a handful of weapons and locked up her car. Jo walked into her motel room and locked the door behind her.
Jo went to the scene of every missing persons case and walked through from where they were last seen to the moment their trail ends. "Holy Shit!" Jo murmured under her breath, she looked at the ground and found a man hole, just like every other scene. A man walked up behind her, "Can I help you?" his gruff voice called from over her shoulder, Jo spun on her heal to face him. He was a built man mid to late twenties with dark brown hair and dark eyes. "Um… no" Jo said, "actually I think I have everything handled thank you." Jo took a step back from him "Are you sure?" this strange man said in a booming voice taking a step to close the gap she created between them. The man walked into the light cast from the lamp post hanging over the street, Jo gasped and reached for the knife tucked into the waistband of her pants when she saw the silver white glint the light had cast on the man's eyes. He lunged at her and knocked the knife out of her hand, it hit the sidewalk with a metallic pang.