This is a disclaimer.
In my hand a sword of gold
You've been driving for nearly two days in silence now.
Not complete silence, of course. You still talk. Important stuff, like haven't we been through this town before and what do you want for dinner and pass the salt and gotta stop for gas, you want coffee?
Two fucking days, and not a word about the Colt. Does he think you're stupid? Did he really believe you wouldn't notice one of your all-important demon-killing bullets suddenly going missing? Was he gonna try and con you into thinking it had fallen down the back of the seats into the upholstery, or something?
Highly unlikely. Sam never did have the imagination to come up with the really good excuses; that was always your job.
Sam never did have the self-restraint to not talk about things, either, and the fact that in two whole days he hasn't said a word about his killing of the Crossroads Skank sits about as well in your gut as really bad chilli. Which is to say, not at all. It's too much like... like Dad.
"You know, the original stories had a lot more gore in them," he says out of the blue as you take the next exit onto another empty highway, headed east.
"What?"
"The fairy tales. The ones you spent all last week dissing? Tolkien compared them to the nursery furniture: at first they're for grown-ups, but with time and use they get relegated to the nursery, out of the way and hidden."
You're so lost you can't even answer, just make a face and wave your hands above the steering wheel.
"I – you – nursery furniture, Sam?"
"Yeah! The Grimm brothers, the ones who collected them in the first place, they had to edit them – bowdlerise them, because people were reading them to their kids at bedtime, like the doctor. And there was all these references to people dying in various gruesome ways, or Rapunzel getting pregnant outside of wedlock, and so on. So they cut stuff out, made them harmless. You'd like the originals."
Oh, you get it. Nice try, Sammy. Really. Commendable. First the if-I-ignore-it-it'll-go-away silent strategy, and now weird-ass non-sequiturs that are failing miserably to distract you from the real issue... it's good. But unfortunately for the little brat – not working.
Because Sam isn't Dad, no matter how he acts like him. He's your baby brother, and you're going to pry this out of him if it's the last thing you do.
(Considering how stubborn he is, it might be.)
"Funny you should bring that up."
He blinks. "It is?"
"Well, I've been waiting since Maple Springs. You got something to tell me?"
A week later, it looks like you're destined to spend the last year of your life fighting with your brother. He's like a stormcloud – a full-on fucking thunderhead – stomping around and glaring and so not caring where we go right now, Dean. Pick a route yourself.
Latest job looks like a simple haunting. You've checked the place out, asked around, gathered all the intel, and three hours later, Sam's still in the library, checking into the history of the town.
Well, he was when he started. That he's still in there after all this time means he's sulking. Probably surfing for porn or updating his log or whatever those whiny lame-ass loser Internet diaries are called, cause seriously. A diary is one thing; you've been keeping them since you were yay old. But this making them public crap is just another way of fishing for compliments and trying to attract attention.
Sam is very, very good at that sort of thing. Probably all younger siblings are; they seem to share some kinda gene that makes 'em go hey look at me! I'm so emo! or something.
You'll be damned if you give the bitch the satisfaction of walking into the library to look for him.
Coffee and chocolate cake and a newspaper later, Sam still hasn't shown his face. You amble around the town for a bit and eventually find yourself in the bookshop, poking around absently, the new John Connolly novel clamped under your arm. There's a couple Discworld ones in the fantasy section you haven't read yet, but somehow just looking at them makes your black mood even worse. It's beyond you how people can manage to be cheerful right now.
Place is a small college town, and the little shop is full of students. You're one of the oldest people there, you suspect, and end up leaning against some shelves, watching them all. There's a group in one corner animatedly discussing the merits of this textbook versus the other; there's a girl heading over to the tills wearing a Stones T-shirt, carrying a pile of historical biographies and giving the "women's fiction" stack a baleful glare on her way past. There's a guy clutching a copy of Gormenghast and looking like he's just won the lottery. There's another two girls rather sullenly loading up with classics: coursebooks they really don't wanna read, probably. A few kids in the children's section, watched over by a tall woman a little older than you, with blonde curling hair and a wide loving smile.
Her eyes are grey, but when she glances around the shop you duck away from her gaze just the same, and that's when you spot it.
Sheer bored there's-nothing-else-here-I-haven't-read-ness makes you pick it up, flip through it. It's heavy, one of those ridiculous super-sized paperbacks, but good quality; it's not about to fall apart and spill pages all over the Impala by the end of the week. A few titles catch your eye. Every now and then, you realise you're actually reading a page, and flip hastily on.
In the end, you buy it.
Girl at the till gives you a charming smile, tells you she loved the stories as a child, you must be doing European Lit?
No, you tell her, just folklore. Bit anthropology, that sorta stuff. Tell the truth I haven't really decided yet.
Anthropology's a good one, she says, and slips you her number on the back of the receipt.
In a fit of pique over Sam's subliminal mindfuck thing that made you buy the damn book in the first place, you drive back to the motel without him, get more coffee, and settle in.
You're a good ways into it when he finally turns up, and the pissy look on his face disintegrates into astonishment when he spots the title and then becomes amusement.
"Good book?" he asks.
"Yeah, not bad," you say. "There's this chick here who's locked in a tower, makes the mistake of thinking babies come by stork. You'd think she'd look into that a bit more thoroughly before she goes letting random unnamed princes into her panties."
"Only the one," Sam says, mouth twitching.
"Still," you say. "It denotes a terrible lack of common sense on her part."
"Where would we all be if everybody thought things through all the time?" Sammy wants to know.
"You're the expert at it," you point out. "You work it out. What'cha got?"
"The final resting place of one Hepzibah Jones," he says, tugging a bundle of papers out of his laptop bag.
"Man, if I had a name like that, I'd haunt people too."
"Thank God for Mom and Dad, huh?"
"You think?" you say dryly. "Mom's full name was Marianna Victoria. She loathed it. Dad said she'd probably kick his ass just for telling me about it."
"Marianna Victoria," Sam says, surprised and thoughtful. "Huh! Marianna Victoria." He turns it over in his mind for a few minutes, trying it out. "Marianna Victoria Winchester."
"He used to call her Guinevere."
God only knows where this sudden openness is coming from, but you can't help it; the words slip out quietly while your back is turned and won't be unsaid. Sam, thankfully, doesn't look at you.
"From the song. I know. He told me once."
"Yeah."
Silence for a few minutes, full of sombre quiet grief. Then Sam gives himself a shake.
"Anyway. Once we've sent Hepzibah on to a better place, I think I've found a vampire trail. One killing so far – more gruesome than usual, but your basic vampiric modus operandi."
"Dude," you sigh, putting the book down. "What happened to don't worry about it boys, they're practically extinct?"
Sammy laughs, shakes his head, grabs the duffle holding your weapons, salt and lighter fluid.
"God only knows. Hey, the next time you ditch me in town like that, I so won't bother with saving your immortal soul," as he ducks out the door, and you get a sudden urge to slap the self-important little brat upside the head.
Thinks he's so fuckin' awesome.