"I told you, he was just gone!"

The cop jotted something in his notes. "And there was no one in the house?" he confirmed.

"Yes!" Dean roared. "Now, are you going to find him or not?!"

"Sir, you need to calm down. You can't report an adult as missing until they've been gone for twenty-four hours. We have no evidence of foul play here. We'll file a report, then you can list him as missing when the limit is up. I'm sorry we can't do more."

"You're frigging useless!" Dean snarled. He ignored the police until they left.

"I'll find him myself," he vowed. "No matter how long it takes."

Two Years Later

Dean was at the end of his rope. For two years he had searched, and had found nothing of his fiance. Now, he was resorting to the use of a psychic.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Sam asked, concerned. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his brother, waiting for the clairvoyant to show up.

Scrubbing a hand across his jaw, Dean nodded. "I just...I have to know, Sam. I have to know what happened to him."

"Okay," Sam nodded. "But...are you sure you've tried everything?"

"Everything I can think of. There wasn't much to do, Sam. I've listened to the emergency recording and followed the investigation. I checked everywhere I could think of. I tried tracking his phone. Nothing, Sam."

"Alright."

They sat in silence for a long while. Sam used the time to observe his older brother. He looked older than he had before, scruffy around the jaw, dark circles under the eyes. He was worried about him-and his sanity.

Ding-dong.

Dean shot to his feet and hurried to the front door. A pretty, middle-aged black woman stood on the stoop, dressed in a satiny purple dress. She hadn't yet entered the house, but the look on her face spoke levels of dread. This didn't bode well.

"Come in," Dean invited. The psychic drew herself to her full height and stepped over the threshold.

"This is a dark place," she muttered. "Something bad happened here."

The brothers followed the woman through the hall and up the stairs. She seemed to know exactly where to go; she stopped only when they reached the door to Dean's room.

"Oh, my," she breathed. Muttering a swift prayer in a foreign language, she pushed the door open. She didn't enter, just stood there staring. "I think we better go downstairs, Dean Winchester. We have many things to discuss."

The brothers followed behind the woman, confused. She settled into a chair in the dining room and waited for the boys to sit on the sofa.

"What I'm about to say to you is going to sound crazy," she warned, "but every word is the truth."

Dean leaned forward eagerly and clasped his hands between his knees.

"What took your fiance...it wasn't of this world."

Sam let out a snort and opened his mouth, but his brother quickly silenced him.

"It was a demon. There is a world on the fringe of ours. Most people aren't aware of it, but there are some-very few- who know. These people are usually hunters. You, Dean Winchester, need to seek these people out and convince them to help you."

"Help?" Dean repeated, confused. "With wha-"

"Don't play dumb with me," she said sassily. "You need help with training. There is no way you can get your boy back right now."

"So let me get this straight," Sam interrupted, leaning forward. "Dean needs to find a bunch of eccentrics who 'fight demons' so they can teach him how to kick demon ass. Did I get that right?"

The psychic leveled a penetrating glare at the younger Winchester. "You are skeptic now, Sam, but you will believe. And you better start believing soon, because your brother is going to need all the help he can get."

Before she left, the psychic wrote out an address for the boys. She said that hunters could usually be found here, trading information.

"How do we get them to trust us?" Dean asked, following her to the door.

"Tell them the truth," she advised, "and drop my name."

"Which is…?"

She grinned, a little wickedly. "Just say Mama Tia sent you. You'll know the good hunters by their reaction."

With that, she swept out of the house.