Chapter 4 September 2010
"Winchester!"
Dean looked around at the bellow, lifting the saw blade from the plank, thumbing the off switch as Harker Davies walked around the end of the workbench. The scream of the circular blade trailed off to a whine and then stopped.
"Got another two weeks on this place," the burly foreman said, his eyes flicking left and right, a nervous habit Dean'd determined, after watching him for a few weeks to make sure it wasn't an unnatural sensitivity to light or movement. "Then a six month contract for a hotel downtown – you in?"
He'd almost wished Davies was a monster, just for the chance to legitimately take the cheap-assed, two-faced, spiteful conman out of the gene pool. Fortunately for Davies, he was just another example of the human race, out and about on their daily business, Dean thought, pushing goggles back from his face. An asshat, but one that was paying the bills. "Sure."
"Good, see Marie for the sub-con before you go home."
He nodded, looking down at the cut in the plank in front of him. Davies was skimming wherever he could and he'd been a little surprised to realise that most of the men working for him knew it. He didn't play around with wages, Ted had told him, over a fast beer after work a week ago. Didn't screw the IRS or his work team. Just the owners.
Driving a thumbnail into the soft wood lying on the workbench, Dean's brows drew together. Just the owners – and the poor bastards their substandard construction would fall onto one day.
Dude, they're just people.
Sam's voice came back to him, his little brother had sounded almost offended. People, he'd told him back then, had no rules or patterns to keep them vulnerable. They were just crazy. He'd take monsters any day of the week.
He felt someone come up behind him.
"Don't sweat it," Mitch advised him, looking over his shoulder at the plank. "Harker's on the way out, we just have to hang in there for a few more weeks and we'll have a new foreman."
Glancing at the man's back as he kept walking, Dean wondered if the new foreman would be any better than Davies. This was the second outfit he'd worked with in the last three months. The previous one, building low-cost tract housing over dirt-cheap repossessed farmland, had been worse.
Looking around the hangar-sized furniture warehouse, Dean wondered again if this was really necessary.
"I like these," Lisa said, ten yards away and sitting comfortably in a beige-coloured armchair. "Two chairs, sofa and the table, all together. What do you think?"
He schooled his expression into something he hoped approximated some kind of interest and walked over, dropping onto the sofa. It was alright, he thought.
"It'll go with the walls, and we can get cushions and throws to add some colour," Lisa told him, waving a hand toward the far end of the warehouse as she stood up to try the other armchair. "Or, better yet, I can get some slipcovers made up, change the look for every season."
He watched her in bemusement. The decision to buy new furniture had come on as suddenly and with as little warning as the decision to move. He wasn't sure he'd gotten the exact reason the old armchairs and sofa were no longer satisfactory, something about not matching, he thought vaguely, but once he'd indicated that he wasn't opposed to the idea, Lisa had been on it. And here they were. In a building that had arrows painted on the floor and no way of short-cutting through the damned place but following the arrows to the other side. The tray of the pickup would just accommodate the set he was sitting in, but he could see they were gonna have to get through a whole bunch of other room possibilities before they got to the checkouts at the end.
"We really need a bigger dining table," Lisa said, more or less on cue, he thought. "Nancy invited us for dinner next weekend and I'd like to return the invite sometime."
Getting to his feet, his stomach dipping and rolling a little with the thought of more socialising with the neighbours, he followed Lisa as she made a u-turn on the arrow-path and headed for the dining section, her gaze scanning the store automatically for Ben. They both saw him a moment later, leaning awkwardly against a display wardrobe and talking to a couple of other kids.
"Ben!" Lisa called out, lifting her arm and waving a hand in the general direction of the dining room furniture.
Ben nodded and Dean watched him look back as he wandered reluctantly away from the other kids, tripping slightly over a dragged toe of his sneaker.
"What's up?" he asked the boy when Ben had caught up. "You know those kids?"
"Yeah," Ben said, glancing back toward the kids again. "Just – uh – they're going, well, they're going to the park concert tonight, and they wanted to know if I was going."
Dean let out a small exhale. The concert was a regular summer thing, apparently, held in the biggest park and usually with an enthusiastic, mostly-under-twenty turnout. He recalled Lisa's stance on the event when Ben had raised it.
"No," she'd said, her face hardening along with her voice. "He's too young."
"I don't mind –"
"No," she'd cut him off. "I went to it a few years ago, and it was badly handled, several people were injured in the crush and just – no. He can go when he's fifteen, if he wants to then."
She didn't say no to Ben often, but when she did, that was the end of it. There was no possibility of renegotiation.
"I heard it wasn't so great," Dean offered, looking down at Ben's morose expression as they followed the winding path and oversized arrows through the displays. "Kind of lame."
Ben looked up at him, his mouth twisting up disbelievingly. "Where'd you hear that?"
"Work guys."
"Yeah, well, they're wrong," Ben told him, his head ducking to stare at the floor again. "All the kids are going."
But all the kids are going to be in the play.
Dean suddenly heard his little brother's voice, piping out from his memories. He heard his father's sharp response to the plea as well. It hadn't killed Sammy to miss out on the play, or on the countless events of his school years, he knew. It might've had something to do with the way he'd come to see his family, all those resounding denials.
"Ben, you know your mom's just looking out for you," he said, knowing it wasn't enough.
"Yeah, I know," Ben admitted unwillingly. "It's just – I'm not a little kid anymore, you know?"
"Sure," he agreed immediately, repressing his smile. At ten, he'd been doing salt'n'burns with his father, or with Jim, just as full of adult importance as the boy walking beside him.
"And, you know, it's not like she has to worry about me all the time anymore," Ben continued. "She's got you now."
"Uh, I'm pretty sure –" Dean frowned. "– pretty damned sure – it doesn't work like that, Ben."
"No, that's not – I just mean, for most of the time, it was just us, her and me," Ben hurriedly added, his expression a little nervous as he slid a sideways glance at Dean. "And we did most stuff together, you know? Now, she gets to do the things she likes to do without having to think about if I want to do it too, you know what I mean?"
He wasn't sure he did. "Not really."
Glancing around the store, Ben shrugged. "I don't know, she's happier now. And, um, not so stressed. Like everything, it's not all just on her anymore?"
"Right." He looked away, knowing he should be talking to Lisa about this, not her son but unable to prevent himself from asking anyway. "Your mom, uh, she didn't have much help?"
Ben's voice was matter of fact as he answered, "Sometimes, but they didn't last too long. Mom said most guys aren't up for a ready-made family."
There wasn't the slightest hint of disappointment in Ben's voice, but Dean grimaced inwardly at the mental image anyway, his imagination, always too vivid, giving him a sudden view into their lives. He had no moral ground in this arena, having walked away from too many girls who'd wanted more from him, knowing his pleasure had come at the cost of their pain, but he'd never lied to them, never raised expectations deliberately, or told them he was anything but a passer-through.
"Guess they didn't know what they were missing," Dean said, looking back at the boy.
Ben grinned at him. "That's what Mom said."
"Yeah, well, she was right," he said firmly, pushing aside a faint thread of discomfort. He was here, with them, looking out for them, but … he switched his thoughts back to Ben's disappointment of the missed concert.
"Maybe we could figure out something else to do, you know, instead of the concert. Something cool."
The look the boy gave him was uncertain, hopeful and a little wary at the same time. "Really?"
"Why not?" Dean said, slowing down to look around for Lisa. "Why don't you see what you can come up with, and I'll square it with your mom?"
"Okay," Ben said. "Thanks."
Shaking his head, Dean stopped and looked around. "And, uh, you see her around anywhere?"
"There," Ben said, pointing instantly to a dining setting where his mother was sitting and examining the tag attached to the table. "You think we'll need a moving truck to get all this stuff home?"
That's what he was afraid of. That and assembling the damned stuff.
"You're making gumbo?"
Dean turned around, ducking his head and shrugging as he saw Lisa standing by the counter. "Yeah, just felt like it," he said, hoping it wouldn't turn into a big deal.
"No," Lisa said, smiling as she walked up to him and peered into the pot. "I mean – where'd you learn to make gumbo?"
"In, uh, New Orleans," he told her, a flashing image of Collette and her family filling his mind's eye and vanishing. The job had taken two weeks. He'd stayed on with them another six, dealing with minor hauntings and learning about hoodoo, unwilling to leave. "Got a – I was there for a couple of months, and uh, got to know a few people."
"You are full of surprises, Dean Winchester," Lisa said, turning to kiss him lightly. "What time's dinner?"
"About an hour," he told her, giving the pot another stir and turning the heat down a little further.
"Any other skills I should know about?" she asked him, leaning against the counter and watching as he moved another covered pot off the stove.
"Hundreds," he told her, flashing an immodest grin. "You should try my scrambled eggs."
"What's wrong with my scrambled eggs?"
"Uh, nothing, they're – uh –" he stammered, wondering how the hell he'd stumbled into that tiger trap without seeing it.
"Just not as good as yours?" she asked him, one brow rising. "Better be right about that, you can make breakfast tomorrow."
"Sure," he said, letting out his breath in a soft exhale of relief.
Relationships, ones that lasted longer than a week, had more minefields than he'd ever considered possible, he thought, turning back to the stove as she left the room. Aside from the dangerous areas he'd brought with him, it took a lot of effort to make sure that whatever he said wasn't somehow inadvertently insulting, or careless, or something else he'd never considered. He couldn't remember now if these problems had come up in the couple of weeks he'd spent with Cassie. He didn't think so. Of course, neither of them had paid much attention to the domestic situation back then either.
He turned the heat down a little more as his thoughts drifted back to what was waiting for him in the corner of the basement he'd set up. Another load of books. He'd lost his initial surges of hope with each delivery from the New York rare books store, the information contained in them wasting his time with fantasy or unproven myth. The memory of the place had come back when he'd seen the address in his father's journal, but the proprietor had been less than optimistic about his chances of finding something that would really help. The last two deliveries, each containing a half a dozen mouldy and well-thumbed old books, had been practically useless, a lot of speculation and no real facts.
Lisa walked out of the house and down the narrow side path, taking the end of the hose from the reel and pulling it out behind her. In the soft purple twilight, the garden looked beautiful, she thought, plugging the end of the hose into the sprinkler system and turning it on. The beds Dean had dug for her were filled with flowers, some still blooming and others just finishing, a riot of colour against the established trees and shrubs that had yet to turn their colours. The lawn was smooth and green, inviting picnics with rugs and wine and – and – other delights, she thought, ducking her head at the images that filled her mind's eye. It was still warm, most days.
It was very hard to believe in the changes Dean had brought to her life over the last two and a half months.
What are you even still doing here? We had one weekend together a million years ago. You don't know me! And you have no business with my son!
The memory popped back, fully as vivid as the day she'd said – well, yelled it – to him. She still didn't know exactly what'd prompted the defensive response. Fear, she guessed, watching the sprinklers turn, bejewelling the garden with thousands of rainbow-filled diamond drops. Fear of what'd been happening to Katie. Fear of the man she'd wanted to see again but didn't know at all. Fear of herself. Of teaching Ben the wrong things. Of being considered a bad mom … a thousand and one fears, most of which had been pretty normal and total horseshit.
She shook her head. If he'd left, after that, Ben wouldn't be here today. She hadn't believed it, not back then.
You know how I never mentioned my job? This is my job, he'd said to her, having explained what'd happened in more detail than she'd really wanted or needed. Monsters. She'd seen it, masquerading as her son, the true face reflected in the glass of her coffee table.
I so didn't want to know that, she'd replied, joking … but really not.
She still didn't want to know, she realised, turning away from the garden and walking back into the house.
The rich and appetising smells from the kitchen were filling the lower level and Lisa walked to the stairs, going up and into their bedroom. Really their bedroom now, she thought absently, a faint thread of heat thrilling through her. Closing the door behind her, she walked to the small dressing table near the window.
She hadn't asked him much about the past, not sure where to start, not sure that she wanted to know, not wanting to bring the return of his grief. The little he'd told her had been … sketched in, few details, an occasional good memory that started out with him grinning and then was sometimes truncated, halfway through, maybe by the full memory returning, something hard or painful or … terrifying.
I don't need to know all the details of his past, she told herself, looking into the bevelled mirror above the vanity. No one needs to know everything; there were things she wouldn't tell him about her life. She was living with him. She knew he was a good man. A man she could trust.
And when he sits there, staring at nothing, his eyes dark and full of pain … you don't need to know about that? The voice in her mind asked sharply. Or you don't want to know about his scars and wounds? All those things that drive him out of your bed in the middle of the night and send him downstairs to the bottle and waiting the night out in the dark, on his own?
No, she argued with herself – or her mother, she could never decide which. He just lost the last of his family, he deserves privacy while he deals with that.
It was a good rationalisation. Dean had told her about losing his mother. A house fire when he'd been four. Had told her a little about his childhood, travelling with his father, raising his baby brother. In between the words were vast badlands of things left unsaid and things she couldn't bring herself to ask him. Her childhood had been ordinary. Fighting with her sister. Boyfriends. Parents who were there all the time. School. Homework. Rebellion. Normal. She didn't like to try to imagine what his had consisted of … no home, no friends, the tacit feeling that it'd been dangerous, both outside dangers and interior ones, dangers that had left marks on both Dean and on his brother, mostly invisible but still there.
"He's responsible and caring," she said out loud to the mirror. "That's all that matters."
She got up abruptly, knocking over a bottle of perfume and snatching at it as it teetered on the edge of the table. Setting it down with a careful deliberation, she backed away from the vanity and turned to the built-in closets, pulling open the doors of hers. She flicked through the dresses hanging there and pulled out the pale pink sundress, tossing it onto the bed. It was a suitable outfit for a gumbo evening, she decided.
Dean slammed the cover of the book shut, the thud echoing a little from the basement walls.
Another waste of time. He pushed the last book across the desk's surface toward the pile of equally useless volumes and got up, running a hand over his forehead as he stared at the shelving that lined the corner. From ceiling to floor, every inch was filled, books filling the gaps between the spines and shelf-tops and stacked in leaning piles on the floor. He'd read hundreds of fucking books and not one of them had even come close to a way to get Sam out.
There had to be a way.
There probably was, he considered tiredly, turning from the corner and heading for the stairs. Just one he couldn't find … here. There were people, living on the fringes on his world, people who could find it. He didn't know how to find them. It would take leaving here to find them, he amended silently to himself. Leaving and breaking his promise.
He turned off the basement lights and pulled the door closed behind him. The clock over the kitchen windows informed him that it was three a.m. Glancing at the stairs leading to the bedrooms, he turned away, heading for the living room. He wouldn't get more than an hour of sleep, more than likely punctuated by another nightmare, and he'd do better on none at all.
The curtains and blinds were drawn but the streetlights still managed to find a way in, casting shadows over the furniture and rooms. Walking to the narrow sideboard on the other side of the room, Dean looked around absently. It'd taken him a couple of days to get all the pieces that had come flat-packed put together, Lisa hovering around impatiently, waiting for him to finish. It looked … he stopped and studied the room for the first time since the stuff had arrived … it looked like the houses he and his father, or he and Sam had visited, to talk to witnesses, bereaved family members, persons of interest. Clean. Pale shades. Tidy. Responsible. Settled.
A few framed prints decorated the wall above the sofa. Modern still lifes and landscapes mostly. On the other wall, a dozen or so framed photographs hung in a squared-up display. Portraits of Lisa. Ben. Her family. The three of them, smiling into the camera. Records of happiness. He couldn't remember being there for half of them.
The beige sofa and armchairs were scattered with plump cushions in muted colours, picked up by the rug on the floor under them. On the side-tables, vases and small boxes of no discernible function and more framed photographs stood, dusted religiously. A couple of magazines were on the low table between the chairs, bright and claiming impossible dreams in bold text on their covers.
He turned around slowly, his gaze moving around the room. There wasn't a single thing in the room that was his.
An image slid into his mind, the wooden box in the trunk of the Impala, and he flinched from it involuntarily. What the box contained was all he had in the world of his past, things that were intensely private. He couldn't imagine them sitting here, on view for all the world to see and comment about and pass judgement on.
Sucking in a deep breath, he shook himself and turned back to the bottles gathered on the faux walnut tray in front of him. It was how it was, wasn't it? Living with someone? Living with a woman? She made the cave comfortable; he brought home the bacon and took out the garbage? He could admit to not having a real good idea of how it was supposed to be, but most of the people he'd met, here and before (in his other life), seemed to follow those guidelines.
Pouring a couple of inches into a glass, he tried to force his thoughts around to more familiar ground. It wasn't like he knew what he was doing, he told himself derisively. At thirty-one, this was his only experience of sharing a place. Being with someone longer than a couple of weeks. Living with someone other than his family. It would just take some time to get used to it.
He carried the glass to the armchair, setting it down on the small table and flipping off the lamp as he sat down.
The memory appeared behind his closed lids without volition, the quiet music and the soft drone of the other diners coming back to him, the taste of the melt-in-the-mouth steak filling his mouth. He remembered the conversation. Remembered the almost-tangible feeling of being relaxed. Himself. Nothing to hide. Not pretending to be something he wasn't. The candle-light had burnished her hair to polished copper and he'd liked making her laugh.
In front of the double garage, the owners had given Dean the most perfect gift he could imagine. A perfectly level, flat stretch of concrete that made doing any regular maintenance work on the vehicles a breeze. The pickup was parked there, engine warm from a half-hour run, in gear and with the parking brake pulled on tight. He turned to look at the boy standing expectantly next to the open engine bay. Despite a couple of promises to teach Ben about the cars, he'd done the last couple of services on his own, in too much of a hurry to give the boy a chance to learn what to do without unneeded pressure. This time, they had all the time in the world.
"Gonna need a bit more height," he said, looking critically at Ben's position next to the bay. "Your mom's got that, uh, short stool thing, in the kitchen. You wanna get it?"
Ben nodded enthusiastically and ran for the house and Dean turned back to look over the pickup's engine. The truck had been secondhand but with low mileage and it wasn't new enough to have any kind of computer assistance. When Ben reappeared clutching the short stool, he pointed in front of the engine bay and thought about where to start with engine maintenance 101.
"You know this is a combustion engine, right?" he said to Ben, leaning against the bay and pointing to the manifold. "It runs by igniting petrol and forcing the mechanical parts inside to move."
Nodding, Ben's expression was intent, taking in the parts of the engine and their functions as Dean described them.
"So, to stop power loss from the friction of the moving parts, the engine is filled with a special oil," Dean continued, pulling out the dipstick. The end showed the case was full but the oil was black. "It keeps the parts from wearing, keeps the temperatures equal and picks up the grunge of soot and particle wearing that can, uh, destroy your cylinders."
"So that's what we're changing?" Ben asked, his eyes wide and round as he looked up at Dean.
"Yeah," Dean said, unscrewing the oil cap. "We change the oil every couple of thousand miles on a car like this, and it'll keep running for a long time." He leaned over the bay and gestured at a cylinder, sitting on one side of the engine. "You see that round thing?"
Ben leaned over the front. "Yep."
"That's the oil filter, that gets changed at the same," Dean said. "It traps all the crap the oil's picked up from the inside of the engine, keeps it cleaner."
Stepping back, he looked around for the bowl he'd set down. "Oil changes we do pretty regularly," he said, spotting it and nudging it under the car with a boot. "But we also have do other regular maintenance work so the car stays in good shape."
He'd have to do the gearbox oil and air filters on the Impala, he thought, and service the carby. Ben would be able to help with that stuff.
He'd learned about engines from his father and from Bobby. The Impala was as familiar to him as his own body, every nut and bolt, every belt and panel and spring and screw. At Bobby's, he'd learned about other cars, other vehicles, from the sixties and seventies sports cars Bobby couldn't help but pick up whenever he saw them, to the insides of diesel trucks and working on construction vehicles. He could drive anything with wheels, and a few things without, and he knew all their dark, oily secrets. He'd spent more time flat on his back under a chassis in his early teens than he had doing anything else.
"First thing," he said to Ben, dragging his thoughts back. "Grab the creeper and get under the car."
Lisa looked up as they came back into the house two hours later. Ben was talking non-stop and Dean walked slowly beside him, nodding seriously. Both were covered in black smears of engine oil, the rags they were wiping their hands on seeming to smudge the stuff over more of their skin instead of removing it.
"Not the bathroom!" she ordered as they hesitated in front of the stairs. "Use the laundry sink."
She couldn't remember seeing her son so uncomplicatedly happy before – or getting on with someone so well before, for that matter, she thought. His voice piped continuously, high and fast, as they walked through the kitchen and out to the back room, questioning, checking, offering his thoughts and she could hear Dean's responses, a deep rumble and occasional laugh.
They'd spent the Labor Day weekend in Clermont, watching Mach-speed race cars pouring smoke and high-octane fumes in equal amounts as the drivers felt the need for speed up the strip. The fillings in her teeth felt like they were still vibrating faintly from the roar of the engines, seeming to shake the ground, competing with old-style rock over speakers that had been oscillating almost as much. As a consolation prize for missing out on the park concert, it'd been an unqualified success and the weekend away had cemented something between the three of them, she thought. Maybe more so between Dean and her son, given that neither could remove the grins from their faces for the next three straight days, but still an unforgettable time they'd all shared, in one way or another.
That was what it was all about, wasn't it, she thought, turning back to the stove and adjusting the heat under the pot absently. Building memories, getting to know each other through shared experiences. What he'd done before … what she'd done before, that wasn't so important.
"What's for dinner?" Ben asked a couple of minutes later, coming into the kitchen and holding up his hands to show her they were clean. Dean followed him, and sniffed at the smells appreciatively.
"Beef Bourguignon," she told him, glancing at the recipe book on the counter and wondering if her pronunciation had been quite right.
"What?" Ben stopped by the fridge, holding the door open and staring at her.
"Get what you want and close the door," she said, a little repressively. "Don't need to refrigerate the whole house."
"Sorry." Ben took a soda in one hand and pulled out a beer with the other, turning and handing it to Dean. He closed the door with his elbow.
"It's beef stew," Dean told him, taking the beer and grinning at Lisa.
"It is not – just – beef stew," she retorted, waving a hand at the book. "It's French. And delicious." I hope, she added to herself.
"Right." Dean nodded vigorously. "Not just stew. French stew."
He pushed Ben out of the kitchen as she took a threatening step toward them, throwing back over his shoulder, "Delicious French stew."
They were becoming a family, she thought, turning away to hide her smile. All they needed was time.
When God cast Lucifer out of Heaven, the archangel had raised an army, and on the earthly plane, he challenged Michael to battle.
Dean wiped the sweat from his face, putting down the nail gun and reaching into his toolbox for a bottle of water. He couldn't get the damned texts out of his head and none of them had any information that was actually of any use.
Angel fought angel across the deserts for five hundred years, the monotonous dry narration continued in his mind, as persistent as the inanity of a tv jingle, and with as little chance of getting rid of it, he thought in annoyance. And Michael touched the earth with his sword when victory was his, a great chasm opening up, and he shore the wings from his brother's back and pitched him into the abyss, with the Morning Star's followers, fallen without grace or will, condemned to the accursed plane for a thousand years.
He frowned. Even with the five hundred years of fighting, a questionable figure, the math didn't add up to the length of time the devil had spent in the cage.
The prison was inescapable, a cage of ice and fire on the ninth level of Hell.
Poetic but not exactly helpful, he decided, putting the water back and looking at the frame he was working on as he picked up the nail gun. None of it was helpful. Mythological background at best, wildly imaginative stories at worst. If the fucking thing was inescapable, how was it that there'd been keys and omens and instructions for the heavenly dicks to be able to figure a way to bust the fucking devil free?
There had to be other places, around the country, around the world, where he could get hold of the real deal.
The steady clack-clack of the nail gun, firing into the frame, drove out his questions, thoughts and, more mercifully, the narrative. When he'd finished, he put aside the tools and he and Ted carried the frame to the wall, setting it in.
It wasn't until the last wedges had been hammered in tightly that he remembered another possible source, one that Bobby had mentioned a few times in reference to finding hard-to-get books and the oldest scholars' works. He'd told him about it months ago, he thought, packing his tools into the big metal case, when they'd been trying to get a line on the possible whereabouts of the Horsemen. He ducked his head, brows drawing together in a slight scowl as he remembered Bobby saying Ellie had recommended the store.
The Hidden Door. Somewhere in Richmond, he thought, sieving through his memories and trying to damp down a surge of impatience. He could look it up as soon as he got back to the house.
Six hours later, staring at the listings on the computer, he could feel his stomach twisting itself into knots. It was there. Listed with every other business in Richmond, no treasure map to follow, no secret handshake required. The number was under the address in bold. And the opening hours were there as well, he noted, looking down at his watch. He had an hour before they closed for the evening.
Taking his cell, he got up abruptly and walked to the back door, barely seeing Lisa's startled glance as he strode through the kitchen.
"Dean?"
He stopped at the door, turning to look back at her. "Uh, just got a couple of calls to make," he said, waving a hand toward the garden. "It's, um, quieter out there."
It wasn't like she was banging and crashing around, he thought, looking at her quizzical expression. At that moment, Ben decided to play a game and the familiar, loud strains of the opening credits burst from the living room, belatedly supporting his argument.
Lisa shrugged and turned back to the sink, and he opened the door, slouching through it and walking halfway around the house before he stopped in the grey-purple shadows and dialled.
The phone rang, and after a moment, the call was picked up. He sucked in a breath as a man's voice, deep and cheery, answered.
"Hidden Door, how may I help you?"
"Uh, I'm – uh, looking for some books," Dean said, frowning down at the ground.
"Well, we've certainly got those," the man told him, a hint of amusement in the burr of his voice. "Anything in particular?"
"Yeah, uh, I'm trying to find out about the – uh – levels of Hell." That was blunt, he thought, wondering if he had the right place as the silence on the other end seemed to stretch out for a long time.
"That's a very specialised field of knowledge, sir," the man said finally. "We have a strict policy when it comes to the more rare texts of esoteric knowledge –"
"Yeah, I get it," Dean cut in, recognising the spiel. "Your, um, store was recommended to me as a place I could, uh, find … hard to get books."
"May I ask, recommended by whom?"
"Bobby Singer," Dean said.
"I'm afraid that Mr Singer is quite a recent and only occasional customer, sir," the man said, his tone apologetic. "We usually require a more –"
Dean dragged in a deep breath, his eyes screwing shut. "Ellie Morgan."
Seconds ticked away as silence filled the line again, this time for much longer.
"And your name?" the man asked, a mutter in the background, just audible over the clear line.
He wanted to know how the hell that was important, but the utter seriousness of the man's voice stopped the defensive retort. "Winchester," he told him. "Dean Winchester."
There was a clunk at the other end, faint and unidentifiable background noises filling the line for long moments, then a woman's voice spoke into his ear, cool and crisp.
"Mr Winchester? My name is Katherine Macdonald. We might have the books you're looking for."
"Uh, good, that's good," Dean said, shaking his head a little at the surrealism of the conversation. Didn't these people want to sell their damned books? "I'm, uh, mainly interested –"
"It would be more appropriate if you viewed the texts yourself, before choosing, Mr Winchester," she cut him off. "We can arrange private views and consultations for any time that suits."
"I'm in Indiana," he said.
"This is our after hours contact number, Mr Winchester," she said, seeming to ignore him. "555-2041. You can reach us on that at any time. Why don't you call when you're in Richmond, and we can make arrangements then?"
Holding the phone to punch in the number she'd given him, Dean stared at it disbelievingly for a moment longer, returning it to his ear as he asked, "You can't send me what you've got?"
"I don't think that would be suitable," Katherine said, her tone stiff. "That might sound somewhat cryptic, Mr Winchester, but I believe you'll understand my reticence when you get here."
"Fine," he replied, a hair's breadth from snapping, trying to calculate when he could get enough time to make the round trip. It was a nine or ten hour drive each way, and that on the 64. The job was going to be full on for the next three weeks. It would have to be a weekend. And he couldn't wait. If he left straight from the site on Friday afternoon, he'd be in Richmond around three the next morning. "I'll be there Saturday morning, eight a.m."
"We'll see you then, Mr Winchester," Katherine said.
The call finished and he lowered the cell slowly, staring around the now-dark garden. Who the hell were these people? What the hell was he doing?