A window seat booth. Sam was splitting his attention between outside the diner and inside the diner. Between watching the mid-afternoon laze of the main street drag; a hardware store, a florist, a tiny Newspaper office, and strangely a motorcycle shop, overweight, middle-aged men and women, young, hard-worn mothers and bikers, and one particularly delightful girl child complete with schoolgirl braids and a jump rope. And Dean, thoroughly enjoying a bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries. He did a quick internal check, realized he was actually happy. Content, warm. He was relaxed, and maybe even had a ready smile hidden in the corners of his mouth. He shook his head the smallest bit out of a kind of surprise and wonderment.

"What are you smiling about?" Dean asked, dragging three fries through a lake of ketchup.

"It's a good day. That's all."

"Alright then." Pointing with the soggy fries at the empty bowl. "Is that going to be enough, a cup of soup?"

"It's soup, Dean. Healthy."

"Oh, yeah, soup is healthy, Sam. And oh so filling." He barked out a laugh. "Are you going to go back to the library for research or back to that coffee shop for Internet?"

"I'm thinking," Sam glanced through the glass, across the street, "I'll try that Newspaper. Just not sure about the suit...."

"Dude, you look sharp. Sharper than," Dean floundered and Sam raised an eyebrow, urging him on, "sharper than a really sharp thing."

Sam nodded, sneering his lips up in amusement, and then he laughed. "Sweet."

***

The secretary at the local rag, however, seemed to find Sam, his suit and his final ploy fake ID neither sweet nor sharp.

"At this time, the answer is quite simply no. No, we are not going to give you access to our files, no you may not peruse this paper's archives, index or morgue. Without the proper forms, that is." She was hardcore and Sam could not help but be impressed. She was nearly quivering with a combination of outrage and a protectiveness that rivalled a mother bear separated from her cub. She held up a hand, fake nails, a pearl ring, she was classic spinster and fierce.

"What is it you're working so hard to protect?" he asked softly.

She seemed taken aback. "It's not like that. I need the proper," emphasis on proper, "paperwork to allow you in to our stacks."

"And yet, if I were a highschool journalism student, you would be polite and helpful, wouldn't you, Miss Greer."

"I'm sorry, young man, that you feel I'm being impolite. I'm trying to be as professional and firm with you as I can before I phone the police."

Sam barked out a laugh. "The police? I just showed you my Federal badge."

"Perhaps you did. But you don't have any accompanying paperwork identifying either yourself or this particular casework. I'm sorry, we're all sorry, that this young woman chose this course for her life, but what you're asking, what you're suggesting is preposterous and frankly we will have nothing to do with it voluntarily."

"You do realize that most of your indices are accessible online?"

She smiled grimly. "I think you'll find that none of our archives have been digitized."

Sam wondered why he was pushing her, why he didn't just walk away, knowing he could break back in after hours, but still he flashed his dimples.

She gave him a severe look over the top of her half-spectacles. "Please don't take me for a fool. This sort of personal tragedy tends to bring your kind crawling out of the cracks, nosing through other people's business, small town gossip and hearsay. We don't want any of that here."

"Who are you protecting?"

With a violent and yet impressively restrained movement, she pointed to the door. "Out!"

He tipped his head in compliance. He was on the right track.

***

He and Dean were sitting on the sofa in the front room of Dana and Jeanette's rented bungalow.

"This is really quaint," Sam said, looking around the vintage home, sipping at the coffee she had offered.

She smiled at him, and he wondered why he felt so indulged. "I suppose it is. We wanted to be able to walk to work and we both thought downtown was funky and fun. Rent is way cheap."

Dean sat forward, putting his coffee mug down on the coffee table and Sam knew he would have far preferred a bottle of beer over yet another cup of coffee. "Listen, I'm sure you're a perfectly wonderful girl, and totally interesting, but we've already encountered several, let's say, strange things today, stranger than what we already know to be strange," Dean frowned at the jumble of his own words but held up an apologetic hand to her and continued, "and I'd like to just move past the chit-chat and start talking about your room-mate."

"Okay," Dana said, physically subdued, but with her eyes flashing and the pink tip of her tongue making a quick pass over her bottom lip.

With a sinking realization, Sam looked at her looking at Dean and saw the electricity his brother was generating inside this woman. He shook his head, simultaneously impressed and disheartened at Dean's affect on people. He frowned into his mug before placing it beside his brother's mug and sitting forward in anticipation.

"You said earlier that you do believe there's something strange in all of this. What is it?" Dean's voice was like honey and Sam let it flow into him.

"Mmmm..." she stalled.

They waited and finally Dean leaned back into the cushion, his elbow brushing deeply into Sam's ribs and Sam held himself rigid but pressing slightly back into the pressure. Dean fished the baggie out of his front pocket and pushed it across the table towards her. "What is this, Dana? What is that?"

She reached down for it and in the moment she saw and recognized it, she drew her hand back as though bitten.

"Nope," Dean said, "actually, it's not a snake. It's a locket. Where did it come from? And why was Jeanette wearing it?"

"She was wearing it?" Dana whispered.

Sam interjected. "We don't know that. It was in her personal effects the hospital gave us. What do you know about it?"

"Of course she was wearing it." She began to cry softly. Dean reached down and Dana jumped up from her chair. "Don't touch it!"

Now Dean was on his feet. "Why, Dana? Tell us. Does that locket call him?"

Her eyes were huge and frightened, Sam couldn't discern if she was more frightened by the turn of direction in conversation or the idea of who the locket might call forth. She nodded, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. "Yes."

"Who, Dana? Who is he?"

"I don't know. Someone, something not good." Her hands were trembling and she made two small, tight passes from the living room to the tiled foyer and back. "Jeanette and I found the locket about two weeks ago, in a box in the basement of the library. One of the reasons we both were hired was to help the Library Foundation clear out decades of un-catalogued books and magazines, donated items, which had been piling up in the basement. It's a mess, really, but we've been working steadily on it for months now." She paused, looking at Dean. "And then we got to a section that looked like no one had touched it for just years and there was a box there, it had been donated by the family of a librarian who used to work at the library and that," she looked down at the necklace inside the bag, "that necklace, the locket, was in the box."

"Where is that box now?" Sam asked.

She pulled her lower lip beneath her teeth. "Still there, I'm sure. In the basement."

"Go on," Dean said.

"I don't know. We were both, I don't know, charmed by the locket. Did you look inside? I'm sure you did - the picture? Oh, god, the lock of hair? Anyway, we took it. I," she closed her eyes, "put it on. I put it on and wore it home."

"You thought you were stealing it," Sam stated simply and she nodded.

"And?" Dean led her to the chair and gently persuaded her to sit back down. He squatted down beside her.

"That night he came."

"Came?" Dean's voice was quiet, but edged with something promising safety and protection. Sam watched as Dana practically leaned down into his brother's voice, the promise of it.

"Into my bedroom."

"Did he hurt you?" Dean's voice was rough now.

She shook her head. "No." Her voice was so low Sam had to learn forward to hear her. "He...he....I didn't know what he was, what was happening, exactly, I think I thought it was a dream, and we....you know...." Her cheeks were burning red and she brought up both hands to pat gently at them.

Dean looked over at Sam, both eyebrows shot up to just below his hairline, shaking his head an imperceptible shake, mouthing something that Sam assumed was an astonished question asking if they were both really hearing this woman tell them she had slept with a vengeful spirit.

"How," Dean's voice was pitched into more familiar territory now and Sam cringed at what he knew was coming next out of his brother's mouth, "how does that work, exactly?"

***

They decided not to split up, besides which, since the surfacing of the locket, the librarian had basically become a barnacle on Dean's rock-steady ship and Sam had to be firm and shoot his brother a severe look in order to get her to sit in the back seat of the Impala and not between them on the front bench.

Dean was driving them over to the newspaper offices and Sam's eyes were unfocused as he played over what they knew, what Dana had told them. The ghost, the vengeful spirit, had apparently been entertained in Dana's bed for several nights and she deduced that it was the locket that had brought him to her. In a well-intended and wildly generous girlfriend moment, she offered the locket to her room-mate. Shared her ghost lover with her best friend. Jeanette had become obsessed within just two nights and Dana had watched as the obsession became an overpowering addiction, consuming her friend, devouring her hours, robbing her of rationality. She had actually told Dana that she thought she was in love. With a ghost. The night Jeanette was injured; Dana had tried desperately to talk with her, only to find them embroiled in a truly surreal argument and Jeanette had left the house upset. Dana had been woken in the early morning hours by the police knocking on the front door with the devastating news. A cup of crappy coffee and a stale donut in the hospital cafeteria, hours in the waiting room, and the horror of life support, it all had combined to convince her that nothing was really real or as it would seem and she had found herself nodding and wondering when she would feel solid earth beneath her feet once more. And then he and Dean had arrived on the scene. He rubbed his eyes.

They broke into the alley door of the small newspaper building and made their way down into the basement where they found the archives. Sam got to work, irritated at the molasses-thick sound of Dean's voice intermingled with Dana's whispers as the two of them stood off to the side from where Sam had his head bent, reading, taking notes, sending them to fetch more fiche and clippings.

"Here's what I've got," he said, after forty minutes, twisting himself on the drafting stool away from the long table and they both straightened and paid attention. "His name was Richard Pracket. He was something of a loner, an Ichabod Crane if that paints a clearer picture, a teacher in the small schoolhouse downtown. In 1909, when the Library opened, he became a regular patron there, and apparently, fell in love with a librarian who may or may not have returned his affection and attentions. He's definitely the gentleman whose photo is in the locket and that's most probably his hair. There is a photograph of the librarian and in that photo she's wearing the locket. Call me a sentimentalist, but I think that would indicate they did have a reciprocal thing. At least for a while. Right? According to police reports, there was an altercation between Pracket and a Deputy Ratchling the night of Pracket's death. That altercation ended with Pracket falling from the roof of the library to his death. Three months to the day later, Sarah Ratchling, the librarian Pracket loved, jumped from that roof to her own death. Yes, Deputy Ratchling's sister. They shared the same house address, a spinster sister and a bachelor brother. They weren't kids, all of these people were in their late thirties. Then in 1960, a librarian named Carol Greer was believed to have jumped to her death from the roof after reportedly acting strangely for a week prior to her suicide. And it was her daughter, who is now secretary of this paper, who refused to let me into the paper's morgue this afternoon."

"Wow," Dean said.

"Clear as mud." Sam's voice had a tinge of frustrated disgust around the edges.

"It sounds pretty cut and dried to me, Sammy."

"I don't think so, Dean. But let's either get over to the cemetery and finish this or go over to the library and take a look at the box Dana and Jeanette found the locket inside."

Back outside, beside the Impala, Sam pulled Dean away, alone.

"We have to lose the librarian, Dean," he said quietly. "This sounds like a salt and burn and we might even be able to call it a wrap in the next few hours."

"You two aren't Federal Agents." Dana had approached them silently and was now standing in front of them, bristling bravado and hands on hips.

They both looked at her.

"And the FBI isn't interested or involved in any way. Right?"

Dean nodded and shook his head at the same time.

"But, you guys are the white hats. I can tell. And I want to help. I mean, really, I know this is on me." Dean tried to interrupt her but she reached out and took his arm. "Let me fix it or help or whatever, but please don't leave me alone and don't leave me out."

"Dude?" Dean asked him.

"Fine," Sam gave in. "We're going to the cemetery."

***

"It's a crypt, it's a crypt," Dean slapped a hand on the metal door bearing Richard Pracket's name, playfully lying his cheek against the bronze.

Sam nearly laughed out loud; Dean's relief contagious. His own blisters from the last grave digging were just now skinned over thinly. He nodded, smiling. Dana looked confused and that made him happy, as well. "Yeah, bro, it's a crypt. Here, give me that crowbar."

"I got it," Dean said and Sam wondered if he was showing off but when Dean shrugged out of his leather, he wondered no longer.

He made easy work of it, forearm muscles mesmerizing, and within a few minutes the bronze door was off and together they pulled Pracket's coffin out and laid it on the floor of the mausoleum. They knelt beside it and began to pry the lid.

"Uh, you're going to open that?" Dana asked.

Sam had decided to let Dean deal with the librarian and he methodically moved around the casket, loosening the cover. "Here we go, guys."

Dana covered her face with both hands, peeking between her fingers and Sam silently dismissed her with a single "girl" inside his head. Dean slid the lid off and the earthly remains of Richard Pracket in his Sundays lay exposed.

"What on earth...." Sam squatted beside the coffin, reaching out and gently, gently hooked his finger into the chain around Pracket's neck, tugging a locket out from between the buttons on his shirt.

"Oh!" Dana gasped.

Sam opened it, leaning closer, Dean holding the flashlight steady and all three bent to see the tintype of a woman on one side, a curling lock of blonde hair on the other. Sam snapped it shut and tucked it back beneath the corpse's shirt.

"Look," Dana whispered and pointed to an envelope slid beneath the folded hands. Dean nodded to her and she freed it, grave dust floating down like hourglass sand onto the faded black coat. "It's a letter."

The cement floor was cold beneath Sam's ass, the marble wall colder behind his back and his heart's blood cooling listening to Dana read, watching how she leaned into Dean, closer to the flashlight, the feminine curve of her body, the smallness of her beside his brother.

My Dearest Richard, My beloved ~ My heart is broken, my mind unsettled. These past few days have been a nightmare from which I cannot seem to rouse myself. You are gone, dear one, and I am left bereft and grieved and cannot even don the widow's weeds to mourn you. Our secret engagement has undone me. William will not allow me to even wear a veil.

I dare not trouble the sleep of the dead, but I am frozen with fear, a suspicion....oh, Richard, what happened that night? What role does William play in this Tragedy? What role must I own that it was because of my carelessness that he found the locket? I cannot think of it, I must not let my mind play tricks upon me. I may not ever know the Truth, and I believe sometimes looking away is the only way we carry on. But in my heart I fear that my eyes will look, my gaze will fall upon....

Know this, before the year is over they will bury me in the resting place of maidens who die before marrying those to whom they were engaged. Until then, I am now and forever yours, Sarah.

***

"Something isn't adding up," Sam said, sitting heavily on the end of one of the motel queen beds. They had left the cemetery after returning Pracket's coffin to its resting place, taking Dana home and sitting with her until she fell asleep, promising to take the locket with them. Sam wanted an off switch for his brain, wanted to sleep and let the case incubate inside his head. He wanted to walk into a new day. He wanted someone to sit on the edge of his bed while he fell asleep.

"I think it makes sense, the guy was on the verge of ending a pretty long, dry spell of bachelorhood," Dean said with conviction. "He sounds like he was a lonely guy and then he meets his maker before that changes."

"Who, Dean? Pracket, the school teacher? Or the brother?" Sam snapped. "And if it wasn't for your freaky girlfriend telling us that she had ghost sex with the guy, I would even have Sarah Ratchling on the list of possibles."

Dean flashed him a leering grin and Sam rolled his eyes. "What are you suddenly so uptight about?"

Sam's words were measured. "Lonely? That kind of lonely is more of a psychosis, isn't it?"

A shrug. "I don't know. That sounds really cold, Sam. Lonely is lonely. I'm going with the schoolteacher on this one. The guy was desperate to be in a relationship."

"He was in a relationship. Desperation, as we've seen, can make for a seriously nasty spook. Whoever it was, he was desperate and now he's paying for that desperation with cursed undeadness, it drove him to murder and it's holding him here."

"Yeah, maybe." Dean grew quiet, drumming his fingers on the motel desk. "Aren't we all kinda that desperate?"

"What do you mean? I don't feel desperate." Sam felt the knife's edge of his emotions cutting through his patience. His longings, his unspoken desires, his shame and his fear, beginning to bleed out of him. "What are you desperate for, Dean?" His voice broke into a whisper.

Another long silence stretched to a painful thinness between them. "I don't know. I mean, relationships. To be in relationship with another person like that. Twenty-four seven. You know, the works. I've never had that. Longest ever was Cassie, and I swear some sixth graders go steady longer than we did." He looked up and over at Sam. "You had that, with Jess."

It rang like an accusation inside Sam's ears. He nodded, breathing through the emotions slicing through him. "You're right. I did." He looked over his brother's shoulder, out the grimy single-pane, into the night-black parking lot, let his gaze travel over the sharp lines of Dean's car parked just beneath the yellow street light, not thinking of Jess or two years or their own apartment; domesticity, shopping for eggs, milk, bread, paying the electric bill. Not thinking of climbing in and out of the bed together, in and out of the shower, coffee, tea, cold beer in the fridge. Instead he looked at the Impala and thought about Dean. He laughed and the sound was not amusement. "You know, you do have that. Dean, you do. This is just like that."

Dean shook his head, a wary confusion in his eyes.

Sam stood, made a quick motion with his hand that encompassed himself and his brother, the car, the motel. "We've got a twenty-four seven thing here and it feels really just like that did. It's the same thing in so many ways."

Dean screwed his face up. "Except for the sex and the menstruation. Don't forget the chick stuff."

Sam didn't laugh. "I'm serious. It was about, oh, maybe three or four months after she and I moved into that place that it hit me. That sort of one-on-one thing? We had that. You and I had had that. We have it now. A relationship like Jess and I, well, it becomes a sibling thing after a while," he held up a hand, nodding, "except for the sex. I know, I know. Honest to God, Dean, you and I have the....relationship that Pracket wanted, we don't need to feel that kind of desperation because we've got everything we need right here."

Dean stood, his shoulders tense, fists at his side. "Not quite. Not quite."

Sam stepped closer. "Yes, quite. It's the same thing, Dean. It's just not," he paused, searching, "not domestic like you seem to be desperate for. I know all these years you thought it was me who wanted the," quoting fingers, "'picket fence, 2.5 kids, pregnant wife in the kitchen, a dog'. It's not me, it's you. I almost had that and I'm telling you, this is that but..." He trailed off, taking a deep breath and holding it to a point of pain inside his lungs. He turned away from a look he could not identify in his brother's eyes, turned away and walked to the window and looked out, seeing nothing but Dean in the reflection of the glass.

"Sam?" Dean's voice cracked and Sam closed his eyes.

He turned to face his brother. "This is what I want, Dean. I'm not desperate for anything unless that thing is about you. You being safe. You being happy. I would murder, have murdered, to protect that. You. And that's love. Wanting more for someone else than you want for yourself. The kind of love we can have, Dean. That kind of love, we do have."

Both men looked at one another. Sam stood willingly inside the moment that grew between them, watching Dean stand outside of it. He wondering, desperately, if he should step across, through, towards. This, then, was his desperation. Holding his breath and feeling as though the world had expanded and contracted, exploded and imploded. He wanted something so intangible, so out of reality that he needed Dean to want it to make it real.

Finally, Dean shrugged, muttered beneath his breath and walked into the bathroom shutting the door behind him. Sam listened to the shower being dialed on.

He pulled the window curtains shut, defeated. Shut out the night, shut out the world and the ways in which one was allowed to move inside that world. He shut himself into the room, just he and Dean, kicked off his shoes and lay on the bed fully dressed, the sound of his brother beneath the hot water a lullaby inside his ears.