Chapter Two

"You know what else is weird?" Sam said as the brothers stood side-by-side in front of the desk, staring fixedly at the items before them. "It's been two weeks since this guy died. Why is all of his stuff still here?"

Dean actually did have an answer for that. "According to Lily his parents did come down to pack up his apartment after the funeral, but they didn't want to linger long and only took his personal effects. His department volunteered to handle all of this – " he made a sweeping gesture around the room with one hand " – and his parents asked her if she'd take care of getting his apartment cleared out."

"That's a pretty hefty burden on a friend."

Dean shrugged. "She said it wasn't all that bad. He rented out a furnished studio in town and he didn't have too much to box up."

"Did she keep anything?"

"She said whatever she didn't throw out is in her basement."

Lily's phone buzzed on top of her pad of yellow legal paper and she looked at it, mildly annoyed. After her interview with the FBI agent – who had introduced himself as Bruce Dickinson, to Lily's amusement – she had been subjected to an altogether different kind of grilling at the hands of Cassie and Liz. She had only just gotten back into a good groove over her studies but when she saw the number on the phone and recognized it as the same one on the card Agent Dickinson had given her in exchange for her info, she took the call.

"Hello?"

"Uh, yeah – Lily? Agent Dickinson here."

"Can I help you with something?"

"Yeah, actually. Remember how you told me you've got some of Adrian's stuff in your basement?"

"Yes. Whatever I didn't throw out, I boxed up."

"Right. Well…I need to take a look at his personal effects."

On a daily basis Lily parked her car in the small lot behind the Green Flag and walked the three blocks from town to the college campus. Though she was on the university payroll as a TA, the terms of her contract didn't extend to free prime parking on campus – and besides, Lily enjoyed the walk after her half-hour drive from beyond the other side of town.

The plan was to meet Agent Dickinson and his partner at her car, and so Lily was currently leaning against her 1974 Matador. She loved the car for more than its high "badass" factor – Adrian had jokingly referred to it as her Batmobile, even though the Matador was famous for having been a Bond car. The Matador had once been her uncle's pride and joy, and he had given it to her along with his house. The circumstances under which she had received these immense presents were somber: in mid-July he died while camping during his last big road trip and the tow truck hauling the Matador had rolled into town behind the van bringing his body home and the local sheriff.

"It was a bit unusual," Sheriff Anderson said with his hat in one hand while the other scratched his head, as though the mere recollection was enough to bring his initial puzzlement to the forefront of his mind. "I mean, it's not often that somebody travels around with a fully notarized copy of their will in their jacket pocket."

But Uncle Pete had been an unusual character, all in all. He'd lived on a few acres beyond the town and the car shed out back had always been locked up and battened down as though Uncle Pete perpetually expected a hurricane to tear through New England. Once, when Lily was about ten or so and staying overnight for some uncle-and-niece bonding time, she had gone into a closet that was normally always locked and had found inside it a small gun rack loaded with shotguns and hunting rifles along with a small chest of drawers. The top compartment was stuffed full of old red maps covered in bright red symbols and shorthand, and a locked metal cash box that was heavy and, when shaken, evidently contained things that both rustled and clinked. At that point, Uncle Pete had caught her, and after hauling her away from the closet he had locked it up – and it had stayed that way right up to his death.

On another occasion some years later – a few months before that last trip out, actually – she had been helping him out while he rested a broken arm and found numerous boxes of shotgun shells stashed in the very back of his pantry next to several large canisters of kosher salt. While a closet of guns wasn't so terribly weird in rural America, Lily's curiosity goaded her into asking Uncle Pete why he kept the ammo so far from his guns. His gruff response was that even if he didn't have any kids of his own, his nieces and nephews deserved to be safe whenever they set foot in his house.

It was then that Lily had remembered that the one rule he had in his house was that if a door opened, you were welcome to use whatever you found there; if a door was locked, under no circumstances were you to even try opening it. Even now – almost two months since she'd moved onto the property – she hadn't yet gone into the car shed or unlocked that closet door. Funnily, the thought of doing either hadn't even occurred to her.

The rumbling purr of an engine brought Lily quickly out of her memories and she looked up from her hands to see a low-riding black muscle car pulling into the lot. On sight Lily knew it was a Chevy Impala – late Sixties, she figured.

And definitely not your standard-issue FBI vehicle, Lily thought when she recognized the driver as Agent Dickinson.

He pulled into a spot a few spaces down and cut the engine, and he and his partner got out. Lily had figured that Dickinson's partner was the guy she'd seen him with the night before and her guess was proven correct.

"Hey, Lily. Thanks for meeting us on such short notice," Dickinson said with a half-smile.

Damn, that look works on him, Lily couldn't help but think. She shrugged one shoulder in response, adding, "It's the least I can do, I guess." She paused as her doe-like eyes fell on his partner. "I'm Lilly," she said, straightening up out of her leaning pose against the Matador's hood and sticking out her hand.

"Agent Harris," he replied in kind.

Dickinson…Harris…that's funny. Like that time when...

Like that time when she had overheard a message on his answering machine from somebody asking for a guy named "Christopher Lee." Uncle Pete had brushed it off as a wrong number, but later on she'd heard muffled snatches of a conversation and had picked up another house phone just in time to hear the person on the other end refer to Uncle Pete as "Chris."

...and last night these two looked like they were the ones one some long-ass camping road trip…just like Uncle Pete used to when he got home from one of his trips.

Lily couldn't help it – her brain noticed details and strung them together in these kinds of thought processes all the time, and seemingly of its own accord. And suddenly all these guys were stirring up memories of her uncle for no apparent reason…and that in turn was making her gut clench.

Like Adrian, Lily had grown up in one middle-of-nowhere town and had exchanged it in her adulthood for a home in a "slightly-closer-to-civilization" one, but she wasn't some bumbling backwater bumpkin. Like her brain, her intuition often worked in overdrive.

In a flash her first conversation with Dickinson came back to her. After she'd told him about the disastrous production of Macbeth, he had asked her several questions about Adrian's behaviour in the weeks and days leading up to his death. He hadn't asked if Adrian had been exhibiting any indications of sudden depression or suicidal tendencies; he'd asked if Adrian had seemed paranoid or extremely anxious, and if he had ever mentioned anyone taking a grudge against him. At first she thought that maybe they suspected foul play, even though the local authorities had successfully ruled it out, but now that the conversation replayed in her head it only added to the vise-like grip around her guts.

She crossed her arms over her chest and said in an abrasive tone, "Did one of you bring a rancid tuna melt? Because I smell something fishy and started right when you two rolled up."

"…excuse me?" Harris asked, visibly taken aback. Dickinson's eyes narrowed, though, and he said nothing.

"You heard me." Lily's wide, doe-like eyes narrowed back at them as she added, addressing each in turn, "Bruce Dickinson, right? And I suppose your first name is Steve?" She shook her head. "I've been listening to Iron Maiden since I was a kid, guys. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of guys named Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris running around, but the what are chances of two of them ending up as partners in the FBI? I'm getting some really strange vibes off of you two and I'm not sure I want to be letting you anywhere near my house, much less inside it, until I can trust you."

They glanced at each other.

"The local cops didn't ask the same questions you guys are asking and they didn't go through the belongings in his house, either," Lily continued. "So why is it that you two are here two weeks after everything's already happened – including Adrian's funeral?"

They exchanged another glance and Lily realized that this kind of wordless communication was way too intimate for two professional partners. Even if they had been partners for long, Lily had the nagging suspicion that there was a bond much stronger than that between them.

She arched one eyebrow expectantly. "Well?"

"Maybe…maybe out in the open isn't the best place to talk about it," Harris suggested after a long stand-off of silence and hard looks.

"And neither is the pub," Dickinson added quickly.

"Can we just…drive back to your house with you and explain everything there?" Harris asked.

"Why, because it'll be safer?" Lily snapped in irritation. "What's so safe about letting two shady-ass suits follow me home?"

About five minutes and forty bucks later – from their wallets, not hers, and into Michael's gleeful palm – Lily ushered the pair into Liam's office above the pub and shut the door behind her.

"It's a good thing he's out for a few days," she told them. She brushed by the one who called himself "Bruce Dickinson" and turned, her arms crossing again over her chest as she leaned back against the desk. "Spill."

The taller one, "Harris," sighed and began, "Okay. You're right. We're not –"

" – not really named Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris," finished his partner. "I'm Dean and this is Sam."

I'm still asking the question you're obviously trying to avoid. "Okay. And are you FBI or not?"

"No," said Sam quietly after a moment.

"So why are you investigating my friend's suicide?" Lily demanded hotly.

Dean sighed. "Look, Lily, it's…it's complicated to explain, okay? And you might not even believe the truth."

"Try me," she challenged.

Another shared look – Lily was starting to get really annoyed by that – and Sam said, "We think…we think Adrian was fooling around in the occult."

Lily gaped at him. "You're joking, right? If so, this is in really poor taste. I have half a mind to call the Sheriff right now and–"

"Listen, sister, you wanted the truth and now we're giving it to you," Dean interjected. When a moment long enough to convince Dean that she had backed down for the time being had passed he went on, "Like Sam said, we think he was fooling around with some heavy-duty witchcraft. Yes, that stuff is real and yes, it is very dangerous. Regular people don't know what to look for but we do."

"All those things happening at the college ever since he died? We think they're all directly related to his death," Sam added.

"That's impossible." Lily shook her head to emphasize the statement, her dark brown ponytail swinging wildly behind her head.

"Only if you don't know that vengeful spirits are real," Dean said bluntly.

Lily blinked, then laughed. "Okay, guys. Good one," she scoffed. "Witches are real, you say? Yeah, okay – God knows there are a ton of religions out there and I'm not one to judge. But Adrian was a practicing Episcopalian, so I think you're barking up the wrong tree on that one. And evil ghosts?" She laughed derisively again and made a move to walk by them towards the door. "You're crazy."

"Lily –" began Dean, but she whirled around on her heel. Brown eyes flashing and angry, she glared at him so intensely that suddenly he was dumbstruck. And just as suddenly, she was gone and the door banged shut behind her.

"Vengeful spirits, my ass," Lily snarled under her breath as she yanked open the driver-side door of the Matador. "Of all the disrespectful and cruel things you could possibly say to somebody who's lost a friend…"

She threw herself into the seat and slammed the door shut. Gripping the wheel so tight that her knuckles blanched and her keys stuck up between her fingers, Lily clenched her jaw and fought back tears.

It had only been two weeks. Two goddamn weeks, and those two jackasses thought it was appropriate to pull shit like this? It was hardly ever appropriate, but there was such a thing as it being far too soon.

When she finally stopped hyperventilating, Lily's hands relaxed on the wheel and slowly slid off it to land limply in her lap. She hung her head and shut her eyes, but the action was too late to stop a few tears from running down her cheeks. After a moment she opened her eyes but kept them downcast so that she stared at her hands while she breathed in deeply three times.

The last exhalation came out in a puff of white air, and Lily was suddenly freezing…but it was lateen the afternoon in mid-October, and she had only needed a sweater that morning when she had left her house.

It got so cold in the car that a thin veneer of frost crackled across the windshield right before her brown eyes; already as wide and round as a doe's, now they were positively huge with confusion and fear.

"What the…"

A straight line appeared in the frost, first sliding down before turning sharply to the right for a bit and stopping. Another line appeared next to it, then a third in the same fashion as the first.

L…I…L…

As the "Y" cut into the frost, Lily was already so frozen that wasn't sure if her blood had run cold - wasn't that supposed to happen in situations like this? – but she did know that this was too much for today. She grabbed the icy door handle and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

A sob choked out of her as she glanced back to her name on the windshield, and then a scream followed when she saw Adrian sitting next to her in the passenger seat.

She swiped at him instinctively with her free hand – the one holding her car keys – and he vanished in a literal puff of smoke.

It was suddenly warm again and the frost began to thaw. Her other hand was still clenched around the door handle and it suddenly worked again, and she practically fell sideways out of the car.

Lily scrambled to her feet as she simultaneously tried to run away from the car. Once she was standing squarely on the pavement a few steps away from the Matador, she saw Dean and Sam standing not too far away, both in a battle-ready stance with their guns drawn.

"You okay?" Sam asked her, lowering his gun.

"What the hell just happened?" Lily sputtered. "What the fu– "

"You finally going to hear what we have to say?" Dean demanded, cutting Lily off mid-sentence.

"Oh, you sure as hell had better be ready to explain this," she fumed. She turned her look of utter disbelief back to her car. "Oh, God…I need a drink."

"Well, the good news is, we're still right behind the bar," said Sam optimistically, but Lily shook her head.

"After what happened just now I think I need something a little smoother and stronger than the stuff they've got," Lily explained. "You guys…you guys said you needed to check Adrian's stuff out, right? It's a bit of a drive but if you're going to go all that way…might as well have a drink while you're at it?"

Dean and Sam looked at each other and Sam shrugged.

"Alright," Dean crowed, always happy at the prospect of alcohol. "Nice wheels, by the way." Sam nodded his agreement at the latter, still somewhat concerned in the back of his mine at Dean's current and constant enthusiasm for the former.

"You too," Lily said. "And I'm glad you like mine, because I don't trust myself to drive right now."