Author's Note: So I'm going to do my best to start posting once a week, preferably on Thursdays. The last few weeks have been a little crazy with my visiting my parents for Thanksgiving and work being crazy when I got back, but I'll do my best to be consistent. (And, as a side note, I'd like to point out that I was originally unaware that Lawrence, Kansas, is a pretty big city. In this story it's gonna be more like a medium-sized town where you know most of your neighbors, but not everyone.)

I had always hated detention. But then, I suppose that's the point.

I never got it nearly as much as Dean did, but like I said, the two of us ended up in a lot of fights. That meant we got detention often enough. We had to be silent and do nothing for a full hour. No homework. No talking. No sleeping. We just stared at the front and tried not to die of boredom. Dean and I tried to learn Morse code at Sam's suggestion sometime around the end of our Freshman year, but Principal Crowley said if we didn't stop clicking our 'bloody' pens and tapping our desks then he was going to murder us. He tried to say it in the 'cool teacher' way, pretty much the way he tries to be around all the students, but we could tell he was pretty serious about punishing us for it. It wouldn't have lasted long anyway. Even if Crowley hadn't cared about the tapping, we couldn't really make heads or tails of the others' messages.

Crowley is probably my least favorite teachers at the school, mostly because of the whole 'cool teacher' act he pulled. He was always trying to pretend he was just one of the guys and it made me want to snap my pencil in half. Dean thought it was hilarious and would try to play it up, even using some of Crowley's attempted slang words that were at least a decade of of date.

"You know how guys are, Mr. C," Dean would say when they were taken to the principal's office for fighting. "We're wicked emotional and just don't know how to show it. I know it's not groovy to throw fights, but sometimes you just can't help it."

And Crowley would smile, somehow not catching the smirk on Dean's face, or else assuming it was some sign of camaraderie. He would punish us, but not as harshly as other teachers did. He was too busy trying to be friends with all the students, but especially guys like Dean. I think he just had a thing for rebels. Or maybe just for Dean.

By the time we got out of detention that day, I was about ready to run screaming from the building, but at least we managed to get out of there before Crowley cornered us to ask about our plans after school. He was too busy answering some question a girl in the corner was asking. We hightailed it out of there.

Charlie and Sam were waiting for us in the Impala. Charlie sat in the passenger seat, her feet on the dash while she read a Wonder Woman comic book, while Sam lay spread out across the backseat, his headphones on and his eyes closed.

"Hey! Get your feet off my baby!" Dean yelled, sprinting over to the car.

"Don't throw a bitch fit," Charlie shot back, though I noticed she immediately dropped her feet. "I didn't scratch it or anything."

"Back," he ordered, sticking out a thumb. She frowned and crawled over the seat instead of getting out, just to piss Dean off. He opened his mouth to yell at her, but she moved quickly enough that she had already landed haphazardly on Sam before Dean could say anything. Sam shoved her off of him and she fell into the floor of the car.

"Ugh. That hurt, asshole," she accused.

"Serves you right for fucking with my baby," Dean growled as we slid into the car.

Sam rolled his eyes at her and moved so she could crawl into her seat.

"I don't see why Cas always gets front seat," Charlie whined as the car started moving. "It's not fair. I get carsick in the back."

"Cas is the guest," Dean answered.

I turned around to smirk at her and she kicked the back of my seat, not really mad at me but determined to make her point.

"He's practically family," she shot back. "He doesn't count as a guest anymore."

"Yeah? Then he gets it because I say he gets it. You wanna go to the library or not? 'Cause I can drop you off at the house on the way there."

Charlie huffed and fell silent. We all knew he wouldn't make good on the threat. Dean almost never let any of them stay at home by themselves unless their dad was uncharacteristically out of town. He didn't like taking the chance that he would come home early and Dean wouldn't be there to redirect his dad's rage. Still, it was a good enough threat to shut Charlie up.

When we made it to the library, Sam was out of the car before Dean had even turned it off. It took another minute or two for the rest of us to get out of the car.

"Dean, Cas, what do you guys think about Jo?" Charlie asked as we made our way through the double doors.

"What do you mean? She's Jo," Dean asked, shrugging.

Charlie rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm aware of that. I mean, what do you think about her. Like, do you think she's pretty?"

That got both mine and Dean's attention and both our heads swiveled in her direction.

"Why do you ask?" I said, grinning.

"Do you have a crush?" Dean prodded.

Charlie's face turned bright red. "No, I just . . . I don't know," she sputtered.

Dean was grinning ear to ear now. He clasped his hands together and put his head on my shoulder, dramatically making doe eyes at the younger girl. I tried not to let my breathing hitch at his proximity or act too tense. "Our little girl is all grown up! I can already hear wedding bells."

"Same sex marriage isn't legal in Kansas yet, Dean," I pointed out.

"Yet," he answered, straightening up and allowing my breath to go back to normal.

"I hate you," Charlie answered, doing her best to look angry, but she was smiling and her face was still as red as her hair. "I shouldn't have said anything."

I put an arm around her shoulder. "I swear on my life that neither of us will say a word," I said. She looked relieved. "But for the record, I think you two would be great together."

"You think she might like me back?" Charlie asked, hope in her voice.

Dean looked at her like she was crazy. "Pff, who wouldn't like you? You're Charlie Fucking Winchester."

Charlie smiled from ear to ear and the redness started to seep out of her face. "Yeah," she said haughtily. "You're right." She sauntered away before either of us could say anything more.

The two of us made our way to a nearby table where we could spread out our stuff, Dean shaking his head with amusement.

"How did I not think of that before?" he asked as we took our seats. "Jo Harvelle and Charlie Winchester. It's perfect."

"I wouldn't have thought of it either," I answered. "But I can definitely see it now."

"Can you imagine Bobby's reaction to that? He'd be so pissed because he couldn't clean his shotguns out to intimidate her! Charlie would just offer to help." He guffawed loudly and I had to shush him to get him to calm down before the librarian came around and kicked us out before we had even gotten started on our homework.

We settled into starting on our assignments, but it wasn't easy to keep Dean on track. It never is. Every time we were silent for more than ten minutes, he would come up with something else he had forgotten to tell me or some funny memory that he had just remembered and needed to remind me.

Sam came and joined us after half an hour, his nose deep in the latest Percy Jackson book.

"Don't you have homework too?" Dean asked, surly because I had told him I was going to go sit elsewhere if he didn't stop talking to me while I was trying to finish my math homework.

"Shh," was Sam's only response.

Dean pulled a face and went back to his history essay. Ellen had told him after class that she would give him a B if he turned it in before class the next day.

Charlie didn't return until a full hour had passed. Her face was pale and drawn as she sat down.

"What's wrong, Charlie?" I asked, snapping my book shut. I was immediately concerned. She usually only made faces like that after Dean dragged her into a Haunted House, which he did almost every Halloween. So unless someone had decorated the back of the library for Halloween super early, then she was probably freaked out about something serious.

Her eyebrows furrowed together and she looked at Sam and Dean with a mixture of concern and fear. "I think I jut found something out about Mary's murder," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like something no one's told us before."

That grabbed everyone's attention pretty quickly. Even Sam closed his book and sat forward in his chair, the front to feet landed on the floor with a heavy thud.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, voice wary. It shook a little even as he asked it.

"I mean, I was looking through the police database because I was bored- Yes, I know you told me to stop doing that, Cas, that's why I used the library computer instead of mine, so they can't track the IP address- and I saw the case file about Mary Winchester's murder. Your dad never talks about it except when he's in a mood, so I figured I would look through it. Now I wish I hadn't. I just figured they had already told us everything about the murder already."

"And?" Sam asked, eyes wide. "What did you find out?"

"They didn't."

I sucked in a breath. Everyone seemed to be holding theirs, like they were afraid one wrong move would unleash something terrible. Like, if we kept holding our breaths, whatever news that was terrifying Charlie would just disappear. Part of me wanted to tell her to stop keeping us in suspense, but I was scared to find out whatever it was that she had discovered. The other half of me wanted to tell her I didn't want to hear it at all.

Charlie looked over her shoulder, then moved in closer until her chair was right next to mine. Sam and Dean leaned in from the opposite side of the table. Charlie fidgeted with the ends of her hair. "I don't know how to explain it. Your dad and everyone else always told us that they just found her dead, right? We knew there were weird circumstances, but no one ever said much about what they were."

"And you found out what they were," I said. It wasn't a question, just a statement. It was pretty clear from the look on her face that whatever those circumstances were, they were every bit as weird as everyone had said.

"Apparently, when they found your mom there were all these weird ass symbols around her made with her blood. A pentacle and some other stuff."

"What's a pentacle?" Sam asked, looking ill. I didn't blame him. I felt ill too. I think we all did.

"It's a five-point star with a circle around it. It's mostly associated with witchcraft, but it's pretty much been a prominent symbol in, like, every religion for centuries."

"How do you know that?" Dean asked.

She waved a hand in dismissal. "I looked it up when I saw it in the report. It was the only symbol that had a name, though the article did say there were others. Look, that's not the only thing though. There's something else."

"What is it?"

Charlie took a deep breath. "You know how your Dad found out something was happening because she called him when she realized someone was in the house?" Dean winced, but nodded. John had taken the boys to the park that day. They went there having two parents and were motherless by the time they got home. Everyone knew that part. It's why everyone knew John Winchester hadn't actually been the one to murder her. He got the call and went running for the car, leaving the kids with Ellen, who had been there with Jo at the same time.

"Well, they have some of the conversation transcribed, from your dad's account. He said he answered the phone only to hear her talking to her attacker. They figured she had dialed him without the attacker knowing that she had done it. John didn't hear the other voice, but he heard Mary talking to him. He didn't hear much, but he did hear her say. 'You know me. We grew up together, we've lived in this same town since we were in diapers. Don't do this.'"

Charlie let that hang in the air for a moment while we all took it in.

Dean was the first to speak. He leaned back in his chair, his face as pale as Charlie's, which made his freckles stand out all the more. "So she knew her killer and whoever it is, they're someone from Lawrence."

I swallowed. "Which means they're probably still here."