Dean calls up the cell phone carrier, and when someone answers he speaks directly into the phone. "Yea, hi, I have a cell phone account with you guys, and uh, I lost my phone. Could you turn the GPS on for me?"
"Yes, of course, sir, anything to help. Can I get a name?" a gay male receptionist asked on the other end of the line.
"Yeah, Name's Wedge Antilles."
"Security number?" That annoyingly valley-girl voice asked.
"Social is 2474."
"Alllrighty there, Wedge, we'll get that GPS started right up for ya." That nails-on-a-chalkboard voice chirped all-too-cheerily.
"Thank you," Dean said curtly. Then he hung up the phone.
Next step, walk over to the laptop on the table across the room. On the way there, Bobby speaks up. "How'd you know he'd use that name?"
"You kiddin' me? What don't I know about that kid?" Dean replied.
Having reached the laptop, Dean brings up the web browser and looks up the address for ARC MOBILE. While he's there, he hears the tingle of glass as Brianna picks up one of the empty glass bottles of liquor scattered around the room. "Hey, Uncle? What's the deal with the liquor stash? You don't even have this much whiskey around at Christmas." She said.
"Like I told Dean. Last few months ain't been all that easy." Bobby said without inflexion.
Brianna was silent for a moment. "Right..."
Dean's laptop beeps and his attention snaps back to the screen. The display shows a city map with a blue arrow pointing to a star. The locator reads:
Phone Location:
263 Adams Road
Pontiac, Illinois.
"Sam's in Pontiac, Illinois," Dean repeated.
"Right near where you were planted," Bobby noted.
"And right where you popped back up, too," Brianna added.
"Helluva coincidence, don't you think?" –Dean's question faded with the silence.
The hall is dingy and dim, overshadowed by the two large men I am following to Door #207 — the golden numbers sitting inside a red heart. I felt immediately awkward with the wet mix of dark grey and soft, lustful red tendrils of hazy colour extending from within the room.
Dean is the first to knock on the door, with Bobby at his side and me hidden behind their massive arms, forming the point of a human triangle in the hall. A stunningly pretty young woman answers the knocking with dark hair, olive skin and darker eyes. The only thing that could make me feel more self-conscious and awkward was the fact that the prettiest girl in the room was wearing nothing but a tank top and underwear. I'd only just laid eyes on her, but there was something there I didn't like. The aura around her was too dim, and she was way too pretty for her own good. She looked up at Dean and Bobby expectantly.
"So where is it?"
The three of us look at each other, the air around us swampy green with confusion. "Where's what?" Dean asked.
"The pizza." The pretty young woman clarified. "The one that takes tw—three people to deliver?"
I clear my throat and tap Dean and Bobby on the shoulders. They both look at me struggling to whisper; "I think we got the wrong room."
Of course, right on cue, Sam steps up from behind the pretty young woman. His face and the air around him painted with a sort of dark grey focus. He's still fully clothed, unlike the woman, in a grey t-shirt and jeans.
"Hey, is…" he starts to say.
Then he sees Dean. Then he stops dead. His Adam's apple bobs, shocked. His eyes were flickering between Dean and Bobby as if I don't even exist. I can feel a vein of blue slowly sliding into my chest. He doesn't even know that I'm here. He only has eyes for Bobby and his brother. I can sense the emotion welling up in Dean, his aura a constant kaleidoscope of colours.
"Heya, Sammy." He greets quietly.
Sam doesn't reply. Dean steps into the room, ignoring the beautiful young woman. She has to move and let him in for fear of being run over. She doesn't even exist to Dean. The blue starts to slip away like the tide when I see this. At least I'm not the only one who gets ignored, whenever the Winchester boys are so wrapped up in each other like this. As Dean gets close, I see a glimmer of silver in Sam's hand. My stomach drops.
"Sam, no!"
But I am too late. Sam lunges at Dean, the beautiful young woman screams. I grab Dean's denim jacket and yank him away from the point of his brother's blade. Meanwhile, Bobby pulls Sam away, gripping him around the shoulders. Sam struggles against Bobby's grip.
"Who are you?!" Sam shouts, his voice burning red with anger.
"Like you didn't do this?!" Dean yells back incredulously, his voice the same angry brand of red.
"Do what?!" Sam snaps.
"Sam!" I interrupt desperately. "It's him. It's him. We've been through all of this before, with Bobby. It's really him! I swear it is!"
Sam stares at me, then at Dean, as the fight slowly goes out of his body and his eyes. "What…?"
"I know, I look fantastic, huh?" Dean asks, trying to lighten things up a little as he walks cautiously towards his brother, not breaking eye contact with him.
Bobby lets go of Sam, once he catches wind of the change in the atmosphere. Sam himself looks like he's on the verge of tears just seeing his brother alive. Not even a nanosecond later, he steps forward in one giant stride and pulls Dean into a desperately tight hug. I smile as I watch it all unfold. The air itself so heavy with emotion it could storm.
My surrogate uncle looks on with tears in his eyes as the embrace goes on. Sam is finally the one to break it off, pushing Dean back to arm's length. He opens his mouth to say something, but the beautiful woman beats him to it, she saw the whole thing go down.
"So, are you two like…together?" she asked, glancing back and forth between Sam and Dean.
I peer at her. It may just be the general darkness of the room, but even so, the girl seems to me as if she was wrapped in shawls of shadows — dark grey and ghostly. Hackles rise on the back of my neck.
Sam blinks, finally, as if he just remembered she was there. "What? No. No. He's my brother."
"And her?" the woman asks, motioning to me with her eyes.
Sam glances at me. "Oh. Um, that's my cousin." He outright lied, his teeth were practically yellow when he said the words.
I grit my teeth, slightly disappointed with my assigned cover story. Though, if Sam counts Bobby as a mentor or whatever, I guess he could be right, considering the fact I call the man 'Uncle' all the time.
"Ok. Uh…I got it. I…I guess. Look, I should probably go."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Sorry." Sam apologised, though he didn't sound all that sorry.
A few minutes later, Sam had a white button down over his T-shirt, and he opened the door for an entirely dressed, beautiful woman in a sexy blue plaid shirt. She was still far too pretty to be human so… I was rather glad to see she was leaving.
"So, call me." I heard her tell Sam from the hall.
"Yeah. Yeah, sure thing, Kathy."
I could feel a whiff of grey come in from the hall. "Kristy."
"Right," Sam said, without much remorse.
I smiled. Sam didn't even care enough to remember her name. Now I was even happier that she was leaving. Once she was gone, Sam shut the door and came back into the room to sit down. Bobby was sitting in the couch across from him, I was sitting against the wall on Sam's right, and Dean stood across from me, staring at Sam, his own arms crossed over the top of each other.
"So," Dean begins, dark grey fog of tension hanging over his head. "Tell me, what'd it cost?"
Sam smiles cheekily. "The girl? I don't pay, Dean." At first, I scoffed in amusement, but the mere thought of that girl soured my levity in moments.
"That's not funny, Sam," Dean says sternly. "To bring me back. What'd it cost? Was it just your soul, or was it something worse?"
Sam's smile immediately dropped. "You think I made a deal?" he asked.
"You didn't?" I asked out of the blue.
"No, I didn't."
"Don't lie to me," Dean says, even harder than before, the dark cloud of tension he had hovering over his head growing ever more significant as he spoke.
"I'm not ly—" Sam tried to say.
"So what now, I'm off the hook and you're on, is that it? Are you some demon's bitch-boy? I didn't want to be saved like this!" Dean shouted, now standing so close to his brother they were nearly nose to nose.
"Dean, stop," I said firmly, getting to my feet.
Sam stood with me. "Look, Dean, I wish I had done it, alright?"
Suddenly, Dean had Sam gripped by the front of his shirt. "There's no other way that any of this could have gone down. Nothing else could have pulled me out. Now tell the truth!"
"Dean, stop!" I shouted at him finally, shoving him away from Sam, breaking his grip.
"Look, Dean, I tried everything," Sam said once he had enough room to breathe. "That's the truth. I tried opening the Devil's Gate. Hell, I tried to bargain, Dean, but no demon would deal, alright? You were rotting in Hell for months. For months. And I couldn't stop it. So, I'm sorry it wasn't me, alright? Dean, I'm sorry."
I put my hand on Sam's arm, hoping to give him comfort and support. Seeing this, it seemed, helped Dean to relent in his anger. "It's okay, Sammy." He says, the tension easing from his shoulders. "You don't have to apologise, I believe you."
"Don't get me wrong," Bobby said after a few moments of silence had passed. "I'm glad that Sam's soul remains intact, but it does raise a sticky question."
Then it occurred to me. "If Sam didn't pull Dean out…"
"Then what did?" Dean wondered, finishing my sentence for me.
Little did we know, there were only a certain few of us that were going to find out.
Now both Dean and Bobby were sitting on the couch across from his brother Sam, once he had passed out beers to everyone. After Sam had resumed his seat, Dean spoke up. "So, what were you doing around here, if you weren't digging me out of my grave?"
"Well, once I figured out I couldn't save you, I started hunting down Lilith, trying to get some payback," Sam replied.
"Really? You never told me anything about that when you called." Brianna spoke up.
Sam shrugged it off. "Wasn't important to you. You were watching over Dean's grave. You had nothing to do with her."
Dean saw Brianna's lips start to curl into a snarl as if she resented being left out of the loop. Either that or she didn't like being told that she didn't matter for anything besides being the keeper of the grave. He felt terrible that she had had to babysit his tomb for four months and nobody was there to appreciate her for it. He probably wasn't even worth babysitting half the time. Taking care of a dead man's grave isn't exactly interactive, between corpse and keeper or whatever.
"All by yourself." Bobby snorted accusingly. "Who do you think you are, your old man?"
Dean looks over at Bobby, concerning his father. No one hardly ever talked about John Winchester, much less Bobby, Sam or himself. But looking at Bobby, something else caught his eye, on the other side of the room. He rose and walked over to investigate while Sam kept talking: "Uh, yeah, I'm sorry, Bobby. I should have called. I was pretty messed up."
The older Winchester snorted. With the combination of what he was seeing with what he was hearing, he knew all of it was cheese and corn. Dean reached down and picked up what he saw…a pink flowered bra. He holds it up to Sam, waving it at him. "Oh yea, I really feel your pain." He said to his brother dryly.
Brianna laughed a little.
Sam blushed a little, in return, but was otherwise unaffected. "Anyways, uh, I was checking these demons out of Tennessee, and out of nowhere they took a hard left, booked it up here."
"When?" Brianna asked.
"Yesterday morning," Sam replied.
"When I busted out." Dean realised.
Everyone looked over at him. "You think these demons are here 'cause of you?" Bobby asked.
"But why?" Brianna asked.
"Well, I don't know…some badass demon drags me out and now this? It's gotta be connected somehow." He decided.
"How are you feeling, anyway?" Bobby asked.
"A little hungry," Dean replied honestly.
"No, I mean, do you feel like yourself? Anything strange, or different?"
"Or demonic? Bobby, how many times do I have to prove I'm me?"
"Yeah. Well, listen. No demon is letting you lose out of the goodness of their hearts."
"They've got to have something planned…" Brianna realised.
"Yeah? Well, I feel fine." Dean assured the room.
"Okay, but we don't know what they're planning. We got a pile of questions and no shovel. We need help." Sam pointed out.
"I know a psychic. A few hours from here. Something this big, maybe she's heard the other side talking." Bobby said, thinking out loud.
"Well, it's worth a shot," Brianna conceded.
"Alrighty then." Dean readily agreed.
Bobby quickly took out his cell phone and walked out of the hotel room to make the call; leaving Dean with his brother, and with Brianna leaning against the wall. Dean stands, thinking about going out of the place as Bobby had when Brianna suddenly stops him.
"Dean, wait." She says.
He stops and looks at her as she walks over to him. She grabs Sam by the elbow and drags him with her to stand in front of Dean. Once there, she speaks again. "I think Sam has something of yours." She said, looking expectantly at Sam. Sam looked at her a moment, confused. She motioned at his chest instead, blatantly, with her eyes. Then he remembered.
"Oh, yea." He realised pulling on a cord and pulling it over his head. The cord turns out to be an amulet, Dean's amulet. Sam takes Dean's hand and puts the amulet in it. "You probably want this back." He said. Dean looked at it, a ghost of a smile on his face.
"Thanks." He said to his brother.
"Don't mention it," Sam says,
Quickly Dean slid the amulet over his head, keeping the charm close to his chest where it belonged. Then he heard Sam speak again.
"Hey, Dean,"
"Yea?" Dean replies, looking up at Sam.
"What was it like?" he asked.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noticed Brianna stiffen. The look on her face made it seem like she had half a mind to smack Sam upside the head for what he said.
"What, Hell?" He asks, making sure to sound nonchalant. "I don't know. I, I must have blacked it out. I don't remember a damn thing." He told his brother.
Sam nodded, a relieved smile stretching across his face. "Well, thank God for that."
"…Yeah."
Bobby in the lead, the four of them end up on someone else's doorstep. Standing near the back, Sam watches as a woman in her thirties open the door. She seems durable, even for her age, and surprisingly pretty. She greets everyone at the door with a ready smile.
"Bobby!" she cheers, grabbing him into a hug and lifting his feet briefly off the ground. Sam shares a look with his older brother.
"You're a sight for sore eyes." Bobby greets happily like he's welcoming an old buddy from his high school reunion. Which must have actually been…what? Nineteen sixty-eight? Ish?
Pamela steps back and scans the whole team over, appraising them. "So, three men and a little lady, huh?" she jokes with a smile, then points to Sam and Dean. "These the famous boys then?"
"Yep and yep," Brianna says affirmatively.
"Hey." Says Dean, (flirting of course).
"Hi," Sam says, feeling a little awkward just standing there.
"Hello." Brianna smiles cheerily, wiggling her fingers with her greeting.
"Nice to finally meet you all, the name's Pamela." She says cordially, then focuses solely on Dean. "Mmm—mmm—mmm. Dean Winchester. Out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh? Makes you quite the rare individual."
Sam's brother only shrugs. "If you say so."
"Come on in." Pamela invites with a warm smile. Once everyone's in, Sam being last in line, Pamela closes the door behind them.
"So, did you hear anything?" he asked.
"Well, I oujia'd my way through a dozen spirits. No one seems to know who broke your brother-boy out. Or why."
"So, what's next?" Brianna asked.
"A séance, I think. See if we can see who did the deed."
"You're not gonna…summon the damn thing here." Bobby said, warily.
"No," Pamela replied decidedly. "I just want a sneak peek at it. Like a crystal ball without the crystal."
"I'm game." Dean offered immediately.
Turns out, there's actually a particular room where 'the best psychic in the state' practices her magic voodoo. In the middle of that room, there is a small round table. Tonight, Pamela spreads a black tablecloth covered with symbols. Dean is extremely wary of it, and so is his brother Sam. Bobby just sits there like everything's normal.
Brianna, she's fascinated; tracing all the symbols on the tablecloth with her extended index finger, smiling with awe and intrigue. It was only in moments like this that Dean was reminded just how new Brianna was to all this stuff. Sure, Bobby's her uncle (at least that's what she calls him). But hearing about it was very very different…from actually living it. Living the hunting life.
Something catches Dean's attention from the corner of his eye. Pamela is squatting in front of a cabinet, revealing scrawled tattoo across her lower back. 'Jesse Forever.'
"Who's Jesse?" Dean asks.
Pamela just laughs. "Well, it wasn't forever." She said simply.
"His loss," Dean shrugged with a charming smile.
Pamela stands from her cabinet with several pillar-shaped candles in her hands, then stops in front of Dean as he sits down. She smirks at him. "Might be your gain."
Dean felt someone recoil besides him. He realised it was Brianna, she was on his right side. Sam was sitting an empty-chair away from his left hand. Dean could only smile. "I am so in," he murmured to himself.
Sam either scoffed or chuckled on his right. "Yea, she's gonna eat you alive."
"No kidding," Brianna grumbled.
"Hey, I just got out of jail. Bring it." Dean challenged his two friends.
Pamela passed by Sam this time with a wink. "You're invited too, grumpy."
Dean could see a secret smile creeping onto his brother's face, and he snorted at it. "You are NOT invited." He snapped in a hoarse whisper. Brianna laughed from beside him.
Now that everyone, including Pamela, was seated around the small table, she lit all six candles waiting patiently in the centre of the table. "Right." She said. "Take each other's hands." She instructed. Everyone did so. "And I need to touch something our mystery monster touched.
A slight brush then a sudden grip attacked Dean's inner thigh. He jumped…Then realised it was only Pamela's hand. "Whoa. Well, he didn't touch me there."
"My mistake," Pamela said with false innocence.
Taking a nervous glance around, Dean just decided 'to hell with it', took off his flannel shirt and pulled up his left t-shirt sleeve to reveal the hand-print brand. He caught Sam staring at it, then glancing at Bobby, practically screaming for an explanation. Even Brianna, who's seen the brand once before, still seemed stunned by the starkness of it. Pamela lays her hand on the brand.
"Okay, everyone closes your eyes." She said. Everyone followed her directions.
Then she began to chant.
"I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.
I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.
I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.
I invoke, conjure and command…Castiel? No. Sorry, Castiel, I don't scare easy."
A television flicks on to static, reminding Dean of what had happened in Brianna's shop before all the glass erupted in the place. "—Castiel?" Dean asked.
"Its name. It's whispering to me, warning me to turn back."
The white noise and static continue to buzz. But this time the tiny table begins to shake on its legs.
"I conjure and command you, show me your face.
I conjure and command you, show me your face.
I conjure and command you, show me your face.
I conjure and command you, show me your face."
All the noise and rumbling start to become more violent, wrenching the table back and forth…
"Maybe we should stop…" Bobby begins to suggest.
"I almost got it!" Pamela insisted. "I command you, show me your face! Show me your face now!"
Suddenly, all the candle flames soared several feet into the air, in tune with the sound of Pamela's screams. Everyone's eyes fly open. Even hers. But her eyes are no longer any human colour. Instead, they are filled with white-hot flame. A moment later, she collapses. The rattling stops. The white noise shuts down. And the candles blow themselves out.
Dean is the first one to catch Pamela in his arms as she collapses. Then carefully, and ever so gently, he lowers her to the floor. "Call 9-1-1!" He shouts at Sam and Bobby. Bobby yanks out his phone and Sam runs out into the next room with his.
Brianna is beside Dean and Pamela in seconds. The poor woman is conscious, but bleeding and burned. Her eyes are closed, and she whimpers in pain. Apparently hoping to comfort the dear woman in distress, Brianna reaches out and puts a soothing hand on her shoulder. Pamela's eyes fly open; only to reveal black, empty sockets. She sobs and screams;
"I can't see! I can't see! Oh, God!"
"Shhhhh..." Brianna hushed gently petting the woman's shoulder in soothing strokes. "You're alive, Miss Pamela. You are going to be ok. You're alive. Everything is going to turn out alright. As long as you are still with us, you are going to be brilliant. Do you understand? Absolutely brilliant! Shhhhhh…"
In the next room, Bobby's and Sam's voices mingled: they were both calling for an ambulance.