Supernatural ain't mine.

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Hope you all enjoy this chapter :).

----

The Crow on the Cradle, Chapter Four.

"I'm sorry, no," said the woman, shivering slightly from the fresh morning air,and Dean resisted the urge to shove the photo in her face and say look again. Look again. There was no reason for her to have seen Sam – she didn't even live that close to Sam's apartment – but God, they'd been at this for two freakin weeks and how could no-one have seen anything? Granted, Jessica said Sam had left in the middle of the night, but Palo Alto wasn't exactly Nowheresville, Idaho, and did no-one stay up past ten o' clock in California?

The woman stared at him. "Was there something else you wanted?"

Dean shrugged, stepping back from her door. She was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, he noticed for the first time. The slippers had bunny faces on them. Ugly as fucking sin. No-one saw anything.

Maybe he should be grateful, he thought, moving on to the next door. If something dramatic had happened to Sam, someone would have seen or heard something, right? So if no-one had, then maybe Sam was OK, maybe he was just...

Just what?

And that was the problem, because no matter how hard he tried, Dean couldn't reconcile the idea of Sam being OK with Sam being gone. And if there was one thing Sam definitely was, it was gone.

His cell phone rang thirty minutes later, John calling to let him know that the library had closed and ask him where to pick him up. Dean was half-glad, because he was tired and foot-sore, and only having one car was turning out to be a massive drag (but neither of them had wanted to break off the search long enough to go and fetch the truck from the shop where they'd left it in Salt Lake City). The other half of him wanted to scream, because he'd been doing this all day, and he was no closer than he'd been when they arrived in town, and he didn't want to stop, didn't want to stop until they found what they were looking for.

John was quiet in the car on the way back to the motel, and Dean didn't ask, because knew that if there was anything he needed to know, he would be told it. He was surprised, then, when John swore under his breath as they pulled into the parking lot, and he looked up to see Jessica sitting on the step outside their room.

"What is she doing here?" John asked. "Did you tell her where we were staying?"

Dean swallowed, because it had been a gamble, telling her, making it easy for the cops to find them if she did decide to call them, but he wanted, he wanted her to believe them. Sam loved her, of that he had no doubt. Sam shared his home with her, shared his life with her, had been doing for years, and God, Dean didn't even know her, didn't even know her last name, for Christ's sake. He wanted to know her last name.

"I'll talk to her," he said, already getting out of the car, because she'd told him to get out the last time she'd seen him, but she'd threatened to call the cops the last time she'd seen John, and Dean figured it was the lesser of two evils. John said something, but Dean didn't hear, he was already out of the car and Jessica had seen him and was standing up with such a mixture of rage, grief and fear on her face that it made Dean, a veteran of more than ten years hunting things that would kill you soon as look at you, take a step back in apprehension. Then she was striding towards him, and something about the way she walked reminded him painfully of Sam in that moment, as if all the time they spent together had fused them into a single person. There wasn't time for freakin reflection though, because Jessica was right up in his face, and before he had time to work out how to handle the situation – to work out what he'd done wrong this time – she'd slapped him, hard enough to snap his head to one side, and before he'd really had time to process that, she was all faliling limbs and flashing eyes, kicking and scratching and he was holding her wrists but she fought like a goddamn trapped animal, growling at him in a way that made the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand on end.

And then John was there, pulling Jessica back, pinning her arms to her sides, and she was still struggling, but Dean knew from experience that she had no chance in hell against those biceps. He put his hand to his cheek, feeling the blood begin to well up from the scratches she had got in before he'd had a chance to block her. "What the hell, Jessica?"

"What did you do?" she spat, and her voice sounded scraped-raw and painful. "What the hell did you say to him, Dean? How could you take him away from me like that?"

Dean stared, trying to wrap his head round what she was saying, but he couldn't because it didn't make sense. Who was she talking about?

"Goddammit,"she screamed then, and managed somehow to wrench herself away from John, whirling so that she was facing both of them and backing away. "What are you even doing here? Did you just come to torture me? God, Jesus, what did you do with him?"

OK, this was totally getting out of hand, and Dean felt uneasiness growing in his stomach, because whatever it was that Jessica was talking about it was pretty goddamn serious and it was freaking him the hell out. He took a step forward, but Jessica glared at him, breathing heavily, her hair hanging in dishevelled hanks around her face. "Don't you touch me," she said. "Don't you come near me."

Dean raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. He could tell that John was ready to explode, the line of his jaw tense, but they'd agreed that Jessica was Dean's problem, and Dean hoped that John would stick to that now. "Hey," he said, "hey. You need to calm down and tell me what it is you think I did."

Jessica laughed, and the sound dragged across Dean's skin like sandpaper. "There's no point pretending any more," she said. "I know. I know. I've seen the fucking phone." And she produced an object from her pocket, holding it up like a talisman. Sam's phone.

John stepped forward now, his arm extending like a whip. "Where the hell did you get that?"

Jessica took another step back, out of his reach, though Dean knew he could have caught her in a moment if he'd wanted to. They needed to play this carefully, though. Something very weird was going on. "Jessica," he said, trying to keep his voice gentle, even though he was beginning to get pretty goddamn frustrated because OK, yeah, this girl was Sam's girlfriend or whatever and she obviously loved Sam but she was acting like a total nutjob and that wasn't going to help get him back. "Where did you get the phone?"

Jessica shook her head. "Does it matter?" she asked. "I know it was you who called him that night, Dean. It's all right here. No wonder you tried to hide it from me. And now he's gone, Jesus, he's gone, you've taken him away and he was happy, we were happy, why did you have to come here and ruin everything?" Her hand – the one that wasn't clutching the phone – was clenched into a fist, and Dean could hardly understand what she was saying, she was so incoherent, but he understood enough to feel like the ground had suddenly dropped out from beneath his feet.

"What?" he whispered, and it felt like his lips had gone numb, he could barely form the word, and John spoke at the same time, his What? splitting the mild October air like a gunshot.

Jessica shook her head. "Don't play games with me. I just want him back. Tell me where he is."

"I..." Dean glanced at his father. John's eyes flicked sideways, just for a second, and Dean felt ice in his veins. "I don't know. I don't know where he is. I didn't... I didn't call him, Jessica."

Jessica's eyes narrowed. "You think you can just play me," she said. "I'm taking this to the police. I hope you guys have a good lawyer."

"No..." Dean said, stepping forward again as she half-turned to go. "Please, Jessica, please. I didn't call him, I promise, God, why would I even be here if I had? Please, let me look at the phone. Please." And God, he could feel Sam slipping between his fingers even now, feel his brother sliding away with every step that Jessica took. Don't go, Sam. Don't leave me here by myself.

Jessica turned back, and she eyed Dean with open suspicion. He stared at her, and he didn't even know how to put on an act now, didn't have an act to put on, he just stared and willed her to believe him, and beside him he felt his father, tensed and ready for action if he failed (except he'd already failed).

Finally, Jessica clenched her jaw and pressed a couple of buttons on the phone. She held it up so he could see the screen, and he leaned forward, not wanting to step any closer, not wanting to do anything that might break the uneasy truce. It was hard to see in the light, rapidly dimming now as the sun dipped towards the horizon, but he squinted and then he saw how the dark-grey letters spelled out the word Dean.

He stepped back, staggered really, falling heavily against the side of the car, and he felt rather than saw John look at him sharply.

"Dean?"

Dean couldn't answer though, he was too, God, he was, what was he, shit, how, how? He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, his fingers clumsy with confusion, and what had he been doing, what had he been doing that night? They had been in Arizona, hunting, he had been out all night in the desert, he even remembered it, remembered thinking that it looked like there were a billion stars up there. He hadn't lost his phone. He hadn't called Sam. He hadn't.

John was still staring at him, and Jessica was too, and he shook his head, because he couldn't deal with them right now, couldn't deal with this. He flicked through his call list, back to October the second, stared at the list for a long moment before it even penetrated his brain that he hadn't made any calls on that day. "I didn't," he said, and Jessica frowned, her jaw tight.

"Show me," she said, and he handed the phone over, her long fingers snatching it, not stepping any closer than she needed to. She stared down at the screen, and then her eyes narrowed.

"You erased it," she said, and tossed the phone back to him.

"No," he said. "No. Dad, I didn't. I didn't"

John was watching him with careful eyes, and Dean just held his breath until his father nodded.

"I know, son," he said, and his voice was gruff but Dean caught the gentleness underneath it, because God, he knew that tone well enough by now. "We're going to get to the bottom of this."

Jessica looked from one to the other, and she still looked furious (and terrified), but she wasn't walking away. "So, what?" she said. "You're telling me someone stole Dean's phone and called Sam and told him to come help change a tyre? That makes no sense."

Dean scrubbed a hand over the lower half of his face. "None of this makes any sense," he muttered, and, on a whim, he flipped through his address book to Sam's number and pressed call. The little phone in Jessica's hand started ringing, and she stared down at it in surprise, starting to answer before Dean said, "It's just me."

Jessica frowned, then looked up at Dean. "It's not you," she said. "It's someone else."

"No," said Dean, and held up his own phone, showing her the display. "It's me."

Jessica swallowed and stared at the phone in her hand for a second longer, then held it up to show Dean. The display read unknown number.

"Shit," said Dean, the realisation hitting him like a freakin truck, because what the hell was going on now?."Shit. I changed my number. Sam didn't have the new one. I changed it, like, three months ago."

Jessica looked at him like he wasn't making any sense. "Did someone else get your old number?"

"I don't know. Here." Dean held out his hand for the phone, and Jessica watched him for a long moment before reluctantly putting it in his palm. He scrolled through the address book to Dean and pressed call. A moment later, an electronic voice told him that the number had been disconnected.

"How..." Dean pulled the phone away from his ear like it had bitten him. "Dad?"

John was watching him, his face impassive. "Whatever it was, it wanted him to think it was you."

"What do you mean, whatever?" Jessica said, and her tone was a challenge.

John turned to her, raised his eyebrows. "My son told you the truth," he said. "It's up to you whether you accept it."

----

They give her coffee, and it's just as bad as the stuff she ordered in the diner, if not worse, but she's grateful anyway. She sits on the stained coverlet of the motel bed and wills her hands to stop shaking (but they won't). Everything's wrong, everything's upside down, and she's been away from the apartment for hours now, and what if Sam's called, what if he's called and she wasn't there to answer? Except she knows he hasn't called. Just like Dean never called him, even though that's impossible. All of this is impossible. But it's happening anyway, and there's nothing she can do to stop it.

Dean is pacing around the room, nervous, almost bouncing off the walls, and she sees the guilt in his face, even though he says he didn't do it, didn't call Sam, and she believes him even though she thinks she must be crazy. John is sitting calmly at the table, and there's a bag open in front of him that contains what amounts to an arsenal, more weapons than she's ever seen in one place before, not just guns, but knives and tasers and things that she can't even identify and is that a crossbow? He's touching them, one by one, like he's counting them or grounding himself, and the growth of rough black beard on his face hides his expression.

The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, in maps and newspaper clippings and diagrams, and she knows this is what serial killers' houses are supposed to look like, God, she's seen enough horror movies, and yet here she is, sitting here on the bed with two men who she's pretty damn certain could kill her in a moment without the aid of any of the weapons in that bag, two men she was convinced were delusional this morning, and the sun's gone down on another day and maybe she's the one who's delusional.

"So how?" she says, and winces at the ripped-up sound of her voice, because she doesn't want them to know just how fucked up she is.

Dean shakes his head, still moving, always moving. "There's plenty of things... Spirits can imitate voices, shape-shifters, maybe. I don't know how they could use the number, though..." he trails off, looks at his father.

John doesn't look up. He's still running his hands deliberately over his God his arsenal, what the hell is she doing here? "I don't know yet," he says. "We'll find out. It's good, it's new information. It can help us."

"Dad," says Dean, and he sounds helpless, close to tears, and Jess looks at him sharply. He's stopped moving now, is standing still, or as still as she imagines he ever gets, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. She thinks about Sam, about how Sam was the quiet centre of the whirlwind of her life, how he could sit concentrating for hours and never move a muscle. They're so different, these brothers.

"Dean," says John, and he sounds indifferent. "It wasn't you. You couldn't have done anything."

She wonders how he can say those words in such a cool tone, but Dean seems to shrink a little, his shoulders relaxing, and there's still misery etched in the lines on his face, but there's less of it now. She wonders what he hears in John's words that she doesn't. She wonders if Sam would hear it too.

John has finished with the weapons, and he stands up. "There's not much we can do until the library opens again," he says, as if somehow he needed that time to sit and take stock before moving into making plans. "Dean, go and get us something to eat and take Jessica home. I'll make some calls, see if anyone's ever heard of anything like this."

Dean nods once, moves towards the door, but she's already on her feet. "The campus libraries are open all night," she says. "I... I can get in. I've got a card." I've got Sam's card.

John and Dean both look at her, and then exchange glances. Dean looks surprised; John looks impassive. She swallows, because she doesn't really know what she's agreeing to, doesn't know anything except that this might be the only way to find Sam. "I want to help," she says.

John looks at Dean. "Do the campus libraries have internet access?"

She hesitates. "Yes... but I only have one card. We have the internet at home, though."

John thinks for a moment, then nods. "Internet first. Dean, go with Jessica. Keep me posted."

Dean nods again, no arguments, smoothly switching gears at his father's word. Jessica looks from one to the other and wonders what she's getting herself into, getting involved with these men, with this life that Sam left behind.

But Sam's not here now, and she is.

----

At first, she doesn't know what to look for. Everything is strange, websites full of gruesome pictures and books of occult symbols, everything couched in mysterious terms, shadows and melodrama, nothing like the colourful textbooks and careful references of her sociology degree. Dean helps her, though, he shows her where to look, shows her how to look, and pretty soon she's better at it than him, because she's always been good at studying, not like Sam is but good enough, she got into Stanford after all, and Dean has no patience for it, she discovers. He'll pick up a book, read it for ten minutes, then sigh and go to make himself coffee or go to the bathroom; sometimes, he'll start to get up from the table and then it's like he remembers why he's reading in the first place and he'll sit back down, eyes shadowed with guilt. They don't talk much, though what they do say is civil enough. What they don't say would fill enough pages for Dean to make a million cups of coffee.

After a couple of days, when he's sure she's got the hang, Dean leaves her alone. She doesn't know what he and John are doing – she calls them sometimes to keep them updated, not that she ever finds out anything useful, though she discovers a hell of a lot of things that she doesn't think ever could be useful, like the best way to skin a chupacabra or how many times widdershins to walk round a pentacle in order to cure the pox. She feels like she's been transported five hundred years back in time, and sometimes she's almost surprised to look up from her book and see the cheerfulness of the yellow curtains at the kitchen window and the cars passing on the street beyond. She feels herself gradually pulling away from that world, the world of TV and baseball and law school and science, and into a new one, a world of isolation, of superstition and alchemy and creatures that want nothing more than to kill for the joy of it. She doesn't want to go there, doesn't like the walls she feels building themselves up between her and the view out of her window, but Sam's had his feet in those shadows all this time and now they've swallowed him up, and she has no choice but to follow him.

After a week (Sam's been gone twenty-two days), she receives a phone call from her academic advisor concerning the number of classes she's missed. Doctor Simmons is sympathetic, claims to understand what a difficult time this must be for her (and she looks at the sheets of paper covered with magical diagrams that are spread out across the kitchen table and thinks no, you don't understand anything), but if she misses any more she's going to fail out the semester. She feels her hand tighten on the phone until it actually hurts, and she says she'll take the rest of the semester off, and doesn't listen when Simmons tells her what a bad move that would be academically. She feels dazed after she puts the phone down, and she realises she hasn't spoken to anyone except John and Dean for two days.

The next day, Zack comes to see her. He doesn't call, and so it's a scramble to get all the books and papers hidden away in time. Zach smiles sadly, asks her how she is, asks her if she's heard anything, anything at all. He says he and Becky tried to get their father to put pressure on the police to keep the investigation open, but nothing worked. He says he's there to listen, if she needs to talk.

She shifts awkwardly; she doesn't want to talk, she wants to get back to her studies, to doing something, to finding Sam. Zach's looking at her with this sympathetic expression, this worried smile. He says something about how she shouldn't cut herself off, let herself get disconnected, and she almost laughs out loud. He frowns, says they're worried about her. She shrugs, says she's fine, she's dealing, she's OK.

When she sees him out, he turns and there's sadness in his face. "It's the not knowing," he says. "That's the worst thing."

When she gets back to her books and stares down at the endless words, the arcane knowledge accumulated over thousands of years that may or may not contain the snippet that will lead them to Sam, she thinks that he's right.

----

"Hello," John said, and Dean found himself drifting up through layers of sleep. He neck and back ached, and he became vaguely aware that he'd fallen asleep in the armchair again, which sucked because that meant most likely he would be stuck with this aching back shit for the rest of the day. He blinked a few times to clear his vision. John was sitting on the bed across from him, and Dean thought he probably hadn't slept at all. Lately, neither of them had been doing much in the way of sleeping.

"Morgan," John said, and stood up, and Dean saw that he was on the phone. "You need something? I'm busy on a case..."

Dean stretched, craking his vertebrae and wondering about coffee, wondering what time it was. It was morning, anyway, that was clear from the sunshine spilling through the window. He scowled at it. Sunshine was so not his thing right now.

"Look, if you've got something to say, then say it," John said sharply, and Dean looked up, frowning. Had Dad and Morgan managed to get into an argument? But they'd only just started talking (not that it would be the first time Dad had managed to piss off one of his friends pretty much instantly, but still).

"No, I told you I couldn't take that case," John said. "I'm working on something else."

Dean shuddered. Something else.

"No, Dean's right here," John said, his voice rising, and Dean was wondering what the hell this conversation was about when John suddenly stood stock still. "What?" he said, and sounded so shocked that Dean was instantly alert, ready for anything. John didn't signal to him, though, he just stood there, his knuckles white on the phone. "You're... you're sure it was him?" he said, and Dean felt his stomach lurch because these days there was only one person him referred to. He stood up, raising his eyebrows at his father, but John shook his head sharply. "No, look..." he said, and then sighed loudly. "I can't... No, I didn't know he was going down there. You know we don't talk. No. Fine. Well don't come running... Fine, I won't." He snapped the phone shut, and Dean stared, because he'd heard his father arguing with one guy or another about a million times, and he'd never heard him be so half-hearted about it. Of course, that wasn't the important thing now.

John stared at him. "Morgan went down to Jericho," he said. "He went to take on the case I said I couldn't do. Said he saw Sam there."

Dean felt his knees give slightly, and he put his hand on the back of the armchair to steady himself. Jericho was only two hours away. Two hours. "Was he sure it was him?"

John shook his head, laughed like he was hopped-up or something. "He was pissed at me for sending one of my boys to do it when I said I wouldn't, wasting his trip." John rubbed his hands over his face, and Dean thought one of my boys. "Said he didn't see him too well, just passed him when he was driving through town. Could be someone else."

Dean sat down now. Could be someone else. God, this didn't make sense. What the hell was Sam doing in Jericho? They'd been here for almost a month, they'd investigated every goddamn thing they could think of and found nothing, and Sam was two hours down the road in a podunk town with a probable ghost problem? Could be someone else.

Could be Sam.

John cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders. "Get your stuff," he said. "We're leaving in ten."

----

When the doorbell rings, she thinks at first it's going to be trick-or-treaters, even though it's barely midday, and she remembers how much she was looking forward to this Hallowe'en, how she bought her outfit six weeks ago in a joke shop, a PVC nurse's outfit, she thought it would drive the boys crazy, maybe make Sam a little jealous, make him possessive. Just thinking about it makes her feel ill.

The next thought she has is that it'll be one of her friends again. They've been coming in a steady trickle, obviously planned, they've been talking about how to fix her. She doesn't need fixing. She needs Sam.

She almost doesn't answer the door, almost, almost, but then she reminds herself that they're her friends, hers and Sam's, and maybe they're driving her crazy but she owes them something at least. When she opens the door, though, it's Dean standing there, and he looks nervous and determined and more confident than she's seen him for weeks.

"We're leaving," he says, and she feels something inside her break, because Sam's been gone for thirty days and his family are giving up.

"You can't," she says, and she remembers how all she wanted a few weeks ago was for them to leave her alone.

"We've got a lead," Dean says. "We think Sam might be in Jericho. We'll let you know what we find."

She gapes at him, but only for a moment. Then she pushes past him, out of the door and onto the street, and strides across the road to where their car is parked, sleek and black and out of place. Dean ctaches up with her, his face full of confusion, catches her arm, but she shrugs him off and wrenches open the back door of the car, slides into the seat, wonders how often Sam sat here, how many hours of Sam there are locked into the leather and chrome.

John looks at her in the rear-view mirror. "Jessica," he says evenly.

Dean slides into the passenger seat and flashes an apologetic look at his father. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm coming with you," she says. You're not leaving me behind again.

Dean and John exchange looks. "It's too dangerous," Dean says.

She could argue with him, protest that she's not a child, that she can cope with danger, that his attitude is chauvinistic. Instead, she says, "I don't care."

Dean chews his lip. "At least get an overnight bag," he says, and she thinks wow, you really think I was born yesterday, don't you and just stares back at his eyes in the mirror, daring him to make her leave.

John's face twitches, and he starts the engine.