Six months later.

"Goddammit Sam! April is sitting in my duffel bag. Again."

Sam smiled across the motel room at Dean. "I think she likes you Dean."

"Just get her off my stuff!"

Sam went over and picked up April and she purred in his arms. She had assimilated into the Winchester trio surprisingly well in the last few months. She was always content to sit for long periods of time either in the various motel rooms, apartments, or during long drives. She quickly found the small aluminum pan that Sam turned into a litter box and used it perfectly. She also stuck to Sam like glue, including hiding out inside his backpack on many occasions. The only problem was that she seemed to like Dean, although Dean remained at best indifferent to her existence and at worst, well, shouting at Sam to get her off his stuff.

Dad had been in the middle of what seemed to be quite a complicated hunt out in the woods of Southern Illinois, and they had been living in the town of Medora for almost two weeks. There wasn't much to do in back country Illinois in the middle of July, and cabin fever appeared to be setting in, at least in Dean's case, and his annoyances with both his little brother and the cat being underfoot were becoming noisier.

"Sometimes I don't believe I helped talk Dad into keeping that ... thing." Dean mumbled, checking his bag for any traces of cat contamination.

Before Sam could compose an appropriate response, John opened the door. "I need you boys to come help me out today."

Quickly, both were standing at attention waiting in anticipation of their hunting orders. "We have to go talk to quite a few people, will probably be out all day. I need you two to talk to the kids of the family's we stop at. Find out anything you can about what's been going on. We leave in five minutes."

The boys moved quickly to gather stuff and finish getting ready. Sam put April in his backpack leaving the zipper open and she stuck her head out the side.

"Really?" Dean said, scowling at Sam. "We finally get out of here and you have to bring the cat?"

Sam shrugged. "I could leave her. You have lots of clothes laying around for her to sleep on."

Dean shoved past his brother to the door. "I suppose you'll need something to talk to while I help Dad anyway." The two left the motel room racing out to the Impala.


"So, what is there to do around here in the summer?" Dean asked the smaller boy with the dirty blond mop of unkempt hair sitting on a tire swing. This was the third kid they had spoken to today. Nobody seemed interested in talking about much of any thing. Of course, everyone here was pretty on edge due to the disturbances that their father had been investigating.

Dad had given the boys the rundown in the car. The small portion of this town seemed to have been infested by some kind of prank-loving ghost that didn't appear to be bound to a particular house. A variety of what seemed like practical jokes were being played on about 5-6 families, and the jokes had been escalating. They started with objects simply being lost from one house and found in another, up to and including one man's car, which had somehow gotten into his neighbor's fenced in backyard.

The pranks had increased tension among the neighbors and then finally came to a head when one man slipped on his kitchen floor that had been covered in bowling alley wax and cracked his head open on the edge of a counter. His wife found him dead when she woke up in the morning. That was when John Winchester got involved.

Unfortunately, he'd gotten almost nowhere. It wasn't a ghost. That was about it. Getting information had been difficult, and all the families in the area simply kept blaming each other. However, they did all have kids that apparently used to play with each other, before the trouble started. The kids didn't seem interested in talking to John though, parents around or not. That's when John got the idea to interview the kids using his own. Hopefully, Sam and Dean could find out something useful.

So far, not much luck.

The kid on the tire swing, his name was Mitch, dragged his feet in the mud below the swing as he shrugged at Dean. "We used to swim in the lake, but Mom said I can't go since Dave got his leg caught and almost drowned. We used to have a secret club too, but nobody's parents will let us play together anymore. So, I guess there's nothing to do."

Dean was getting awfully tired of this. The boys were closer in age to Sam, but Sam was so busy messing with his freakin' cat that he barely listened to the conversation. Dean felt like he was babysitting, not hunting.

Mitch noticed Sam poking around in his bag. "Whatcha got there?" He pointed his chin in Sam's direction.

Sam looked around a bit nervously. "Umm, a cat."

Mitch perked up a bit. Maybe that furball will be of use after all! Dean sighed with relief.

"Can I see?" Mitch jumped off the swing and went over to Sam. Sam opened his bag and April's white head poked out. Mitch stuck his hand toward her and she nuzzled against it. "Hiya." Mitch said. "You know, we had a cat, the secret club. He was black with white patches and kept hanging around our clubhouse, so we would bring leftovers and put out water for him. I hope he hasn't starved since we quit meeting."

Dean, ever the careful hunter, came over to listen to Mitch. "There's a clubhouse? Where's that?"

Mitch looked at Dean skeptically. "It's a secret clubhouse."

Dean dug into his pocket and produced a five-dollar bill. "How secret?"

Mitch snatched up the money and gave Dean directions. Soon, he and Sam were on their way.


The clubhouse was pretty nice. Apparently these backcountry Illinois kids all have tons of time on their hands and carpentry skills. Dean searched for odd things, dead plants, EMF, etc, but found nothing. Sam was looking around inside when April leapt out of the backpack and ran out the door.

"April!" Sam shouted and ran after her.

"Shit." Dean mumbled. This was going to be it. The cat was going to run off and Sam would be miserable to be around for the next month. He sighed, and then started off for the door to watch the inevitable.

When he reached the door, he froze. It wasn't the sight he expected. Sam was standing about two feet outside the door and about five feet in front of him was April, back arched high and tail straight up in the air. She was hissing at the mostly black cat that was pacing about two feet in front of April. She bent her front end low, and then pounced toward the other cat.

"April, no!" Sam shrieked and started to leap forward.

"Sam!" Dean grabbed his little brother and held him tightly while they watched the cats. The black cat deftly bounced out of April's way and April reached out a paw and scratched at him. He hissed at her then glared at Sam and Dean and ran back out into the woods. Dean let Sam go and he ran toward the cat and knelt down next to her. April came right up and jumped into Sam's arms as if nothing had ever happened. She began to lick her paws and smooth back her spiked fur.

"What was that all about?"

Sam was still breathing heavy and hugging April. "I ... don't know ... she's never ... been like that ... before."

"Yeah." Dean was in agreement. The cat might drive him crazy, but she has always seemed to like everyone and everything she'd ever met. This was the first time they'd even heard her hiss. "We gotta tell Dad."

Sam nodded in agreement and both boys quickly grabbed their stuff and returned to meet their father at the Impala.


"So you're saying she attacked this other cat?" John was pacing the room, thinking, and questioning his boys for about the third time about their story.

The boys were sitting on opposite beds nodding at their father. April was still in Sam's arms and had been since the clubhouse. She seemed fine. Sam was still pretty shaken up by the whole thing.

"She's never done that before." Sam's voice was small and trembled slightly. John looked at him for a moment and then remembered that he had to be a father as well as a hunter. He sat down beside Sam and put an arm around him.

"I don't think that anything is wrong with April, okay?" Sam nodded, but didn't look up. John looked over at Dean who also appeared to have relaxed now that his father was no longer pacing. Well, his boys were getting older. If they were going to be involved in this hunt, they should be completely involved.

"It is widely held belief that animals have an innate sixth sense, especially about supernatural things. So, I think April may have sensed something in this other cat. Problem is, I'm not sure what it could be."

Sam's head snapped skyward at the explanation and his eyes lit up. "So, you mean April helped us find information!"

John smiled at his youngest. "Yes, that's what I mean. The only problem now is to find out what that information means."

Dean stood up from across the room and came over by John and Sam. "We can help with that, too. Come on, Dad."

Now with both his sons staring eagerly at him, John knew that he had no choice but to keep them in the loop on this hunt. "Okay." He said. "Well, we need to do some research."


After an hour of combing John's books and another hour in the local public library, they were still pretty stuck. At least Sam was much happier than before, and absolutely content to read through books with April in the backpack at his side. Dean, on the other hand, was starting to drive John nuts with the constant pacing and changing books and general stir-craziness that his eldest tended towards during research times. John had also called most of the contacts in his journal and was starting to wonder himself if they would ever figure this out.

"Dad, what about this?" Sam came over with a book of myths and folk legends, usually good material for finding supernatural beings. He pointed to a story called "The Maiden and the Imp" and started explaining.

"The imp is a little creature that likes to play pranks on people because it thinks that they will be its friend afterwards. In this story, the imp could look like a little man or a bird or a cat. I think we have an imp!"

John took the book and skimmed over the story. "I think you're right, Sam. Now how do we kill it?"

After a bit more digging around, and about a topic that was much more interesting to Dean, they were pretty sure they had some sort of solution. They returned to the motel room to prepare before heading out the clubhouse.

"Now, repeat the plan back to me." John said to his boys, both standing at attention.

Dean jumped first. "First, we salt the inside edges of the clubhouse and put lighter fluid on the walls, then we play in the clubhouse while you wait nearby in the trees, then when the cat comes to see us, we lure it inside and you salt the door and we run out."

Sam cut in at this point. "Then you say the spell that will keep the Imp from changing form and we burn down the clubhouse. Do we have to burn down the boys clubhouse, Dad? It was really nice."

John sighed. Sam always did care about the people they helped. "I'm sorry, son, but I can't think of another way to be certain we've burned out the Imp."

Sam nodded sorrowfully. "What about April?" He added.

John looked at the cat resting quietly on the bed. "I think April has done enough good today, and we don't want to scare off our Imp, so she should stay here. However, I'm pretty sure we can manage to hunt down some fresh fish for her tomorrow as a reward."

Sam beamed and John smiled at the cat. As if she could understand him, April stood up, jumped down off the bed and walked over to John's legs weaving around his ankles. He bent down to pick her up, something he'd rarely done since he let Sam keep her. She purred in his arms.

"You just might end up earning your keep around here after all." He said quietly. Then he stood back at attention and looked at his boys. "Okay! Let's get ready and get this trouble causing imp!"

A quick scatter of preparation and the hunt was on.