Sam saw the problem straight away as soon as he got to the principal's office. He was no stranger to this part of administration, having been sent in several times in the past year; Mostly because of concerned teachers who believed he was being bullied. Maybe once to talk about the possibility of skipping a grade next year.

This time was different. This time it wasn't the principal waiting for him, or a concerned guidance counsellor. It was a woman in a conservative blouse and navy blue skirt, a briefcase sitting at her feet as she waited. He recognised her immediately, the too-sweet smile the exact same kind he'd seen before on TV.

Sam stuck his hands in his pockets and played shy, looking away and biting his bottom lip.

"Sam Winchester?" The woman stuck out a hand, soft but unmanicured, and her smile widened unconvincingly. "My name is Justine Puryer. I'm a social worker with the Children s Services department."

"I know," Sam said quietly, looking at her shoes and not at her face. "I mean, I figured..."

"Your principal tells me that you're a very smart boy," Justine's smile turned sympathetic. "So I know you know exactly why I'm here, don't you? Why don't we step into the office so we can talk properly. There are just a few questions I need to ask."

Sam followed her into the office. He knew better than to run, knew better than to advertise the fact that he wanted to run. He was smarter than she thought, and he planned on using that to his advantage. "It's my dad, isn't it?" he asked before he had even sat down. "Was he arrested?"

Justine hesitated, then answered with a question; "Do you think he should be arrested?"

Sam shrugged. He made the gesture as forlorn as he could. "I dunno." He looked up. "What about my brother? My brother's Ok, right? Couldn't he take care of me?"

"Sam, I think you know that your brother is part of the problem."

The next hour was a constant discourse of dull, ridiculous questions that Sam answered with either negatives or shrugs. No, his father never hit him. No, he was never touched in a bad way. Yes, his father loved him... No, he didn't know if his father was responsible for killing anyone.

Sam answered questions about guns, about the occult. He cooperated without giving anything away. He agreed that his situation wasn't ideal, that it wasn't normal. He agreed that it would be best if the state took him into custody, and nodded when Justine asked whether he'd be ok coming back to the office to get him processed and find him a temporary place to stay until foster parents could be found.

-

He waited until he was at the halfway house to show any sign of temper.

Police had combed their house from top to bottom, that much was obvious. Sam had been given a bag with a few changes of clothes, a new toothbrush (he supposed they didn't know which one was his), and a couple of books. His pocket knife had been confiscated, and the .45 he carried around while not in school was clearly not going to be handed over.

Sam paced back and forth in front of the bunk bed he'd been given. As far as he knew he was alone in the room, but there were several other people in the house itself. He clenched his hands into fists, his eyes flashing yellow. The entire house shook, rumbling as if in some kind of earthquake; Clocks jumped off walls, ornaments broke, and the fire alarm inexplicably started wailing.

Exhausted from the burst of energy, Sam slumped down on the bed still fully clothed. He was asleep before the alarm even stopped.

-

Dean picked the motel while John went out and got dinner. They'd come to that agreement at a rest-stop just outside of town, that it was best if Dean checked in to the motel just in case John had finally made the most wanted list. It was overcautious, but that was how they operated.

John used cash to buy takeout dinners through a drive through and by the time he got back Dean was waiting for him outside a motel suite in the parking lot.

"I don't like this," Dean said, arms crossed over his chest as his father approached.

"Too bad," John replied frankly. "This is what you get."

"I meant Sam."

"So did I." John stared at his son for a moment, a small and silent battle of wills.

Dean sighed and uncrossed his arms. He unlocked the motel door and both men stepped inside. The space was spartan, furnished only with the most basic of furniture and utilities. The cord on the electric jug was frayed. The time displayed on the microwave was wrong. Two beds with plain white linen took up most of the available space. John took the bed closest to the door, leaving Dean by the tiny green bathroom.

With a relatively large space around them, John took stook of what gear they had left. Two hunting knives, a couple of smaller speciality blades, several small handguns, and the two large arms left in the back of the truck. And one old fashioned straight razor with a bone handle.

Funds were low. Depressingly so. John frowned at the small stack of cash in his money clip. He doubted Dean was any better off, and Dean's resigned nod and empty wallet confirmed it.

"Spent the last on the room," Dean told him, throwing his wallet down onto his bed in disgust. "We've got it for a week."

"We'll need more than what we have," John mused, frowning and absently tucking a handgun into his jacket.

"I'm coming with you," Dean said, off the bed and grabbing one of the guns without a second thought. "I want to splatter brains."

"Dean, temper wont get you anywhere." John stood, remembering the gloves in the back seat of the truck. "You follow my lead. Anger makes you sloppy, boy. We don't shoot to kill until we have Sammy back. Killings will get too much attention - you shoot to the legs, understand?"

"I know."

"I need to know I can count on you."

Dean shook his head, most of the anger draining from the set of his shoulders. He smiled at his father and it was far from relaxed, but it wasn't the livid, white-hot blade of a smile that Dean got when he was about to be reckless. "You know you can, Dad."

They drove two hours before finding a suitable store to knock over. The process was efficient, as smooth as any heist had ever gone. Dean shot the clerk in the knee when he went for the silent alarm and that was that. A quick six hundred in cash, minus one bullet. They were already long gone by the time the cops actually showed up.

The CCTV footage was too low quality to see much of their faces. They could have been anyone.

-

Sam made the other kids in the halfway house nervous and he knew it. He made the carers nervous too, though they explained away their uneasiness by saying that they weren't used to a kid who seemed so well adjusted. They weren't used to cooperation, or offers to help with chores. They were used to sullen, scared or moody teens who had to be prodded and cajoled into doing anything.

Sam was different. He was polite, intelligent, and never once tried any of the usual tricks that kids often tried to test authority and see how far they could push. He smiled with a happy, innocent charm that made his cheeks dimple and his brown eyes glow.

It was that smile that go this paperwork fast-tracked. The calm, quiet and studious facade what got him slotted straight into a foster home only a week later.

The house was painted salmon pink on the outside, and boasted a homey, old-timey decor. The bedrooms were big, and furnished like hotel rooms; Done in matching colours and little personality, ready to be decorated with extra posters and different bedspreads.

The foster-parents, Oscar and Hayley Stuart, seemed the kind that planned for their kids to stay on long term. They already had two other children under their care, a ten year old and a thirteen year old, both boys. Both who had been in the system before.

Sam played nice. He listened to the talk about house rules with quiet attentiveness. He agreed to do set chores and start his homework straight after school each day. He agreed to talk to his foster-parents about any concerns he had, or to come to them if he wanted to talk about his past.

Then he retreated to the room they'd sectioned off as his and the act dropped. He slid under the bed to scrawl protection runes on the hardwood floors in red crayon. He added a devil's trap under the rug in the middle of the room just in case, knowing full well that it was entirely possible that if a demon got wind of his presence it would come after him. He was vulnerable here.

He wondered how long it would be until he could get word to his father and Dean to come get him.

-

The police came to talk to him several times. After the fifth discussion that involved nothing but faked innocence Sam was sent to a child psychiatrist for evaluation. He answered two questionnaires before he even got to see the man face to face.

Sam kept his sweet, perfect smile in place through the chat. The only sign of how livid the psychiatrist's questions made him were his eyes, which burned bright and yellow throughout most of the interview. At the end he was pronounced certifiably sane, and as well-adjusted as any teenager from a normal, happy household.

As meanwhile the psychiatrist set up an appointment for himself with his GP to discuss the disturbing hallucinations he'd begun having.

-

Hot, sticky blood coated the thin suede gloves. The razor blade was stained, a red so dark it was almost purple. Arterial blood. Carotid blood, from a python as long as his body.

Dean chanted bastardised Latin from a book that was practically falling apart at the seams while John used his gloved hands to paint symbols onto the floor in blood. Dean didn't recognise the symbols, or the quatrain he was repeating. He felt that was something of a feat, considering the dabbling in various forms of the black arts he'd witnessed over the years. Most of the things he'd seen were glorified blessings, charms meant to protect or to discourage harm from befalling the subject.

This was something different.

After three repetitions Dean stopped the chanting. He looked at his father.

"You wanted to be here for this," John said to him, peeling the bloody gloves from his hands and tossing them into a metal drum with the dead snake. "Get the girl."

The girl was sixteen years old, blonde, and as pretty as any other girl who'd grown up on fresh air and wholesome fun. She was bound at the wrists and ankles, gagged with a strip of towelling that was tied tight enough that it bit into her cheeks. Dean pulled her up with his hands under her armpits and dragged her sobbing, doped up form across the floor.

John pointed to the centre of the circle. So that was where Dean dropped her.

"What now?"

"Now you sit back and keep your mouth shut," John instructed his son, using the razor blade to slice through the zip ties around the girl's ankles.

For a moment Dean was sure he was going to witness his father performing some kind of ritual rape and hid his disgust behind a practiced smirk. But then John picked up the chanting where Dean had left off. The light fixture overhead sparked; It flared and died. True darkness descended just as John cut the ties holding the girl's wrists together.

The gloom parted just as suddenly as it had arrived. The girl stood in the centre of the circle, her hands raised to pull the gag from around her head. When she spoke it was nothing like the panicked pleading Dean had heard when they'd first got the drop on her. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

"Me and my boy can send you back to hell," John stated. He looked up rather pointedly at the devil's trap painted on the low ceiling just above the circle on the ground. "Looks to me like you're stuck."

The girl's face contorted into a haze of anger. She opened her mouth in a scream of rage and darkness thrashed through the cylindrical cage. When she shut her mouth again it twisted into a wry little smile. "So," she said. "You got me. Very smart, but you can't hold me here forever."

"I'm counting on you getting loose," John replied. "Dean, the water bottle from my bag."

"Holy water coming up," Dean said, playing his part perfectly despite not knowing what the hell was going on. He tossed the bottle to his father and stood back to watch as John unscrewed the cap.

"I want to make a deal." John's smile was like steel, as cold and forbidding as any demon.

The girl - the demon - in the circle laughed. "A deal? You have to be joking."

"All demons can make them, in one form or another. For this one, all you have to do is agree to do what I say until I release you." The smile wiped itself from John's face. "Or I send you back to hell, still smoking from all the salt and holy water we throw in there with you."

"That's not a deal, that's servitude!"

"Servitude or suicide. It's your choice."

Without so much as batting an eyelid John flung the contents of the water bottle on the demon in the circle. The water hissed and sizzled as it came into contact with the girl's face, and angry red welts appeared across her cheeks and mouth. She raised her hands, ineffectively scrabbling at the water and trying to wipe it off.

"You're new," John said calmly. "Or you would have known not to show up to this summoning. I specified, you fit the specifications. Make the deal and serve me, or go screaming back to hell."

The demon said nothing. John nodded at Dean, and in response Dean tossed a handful of rock salt into the circle at the girl's bare feet. The salt covered the ground in a fine layer, a perfect torture for a being that couldn't stand to touch it. A look of anguish crossed the girl's face.

"Alright!" She snapped, stopping Dean before he could sift another handful of salt across the floor and deepen the layer of agony. "Alright! I'll make the deal!"

"Swear," John said, producing a small, blunt knife with crosses carved deeply into the handle. He held it out, handle-first, so that the tip just pierced the invisible wall that the demon couldn't cross. "Cut it into your arm and swear that you'll do exactly what I say until I release you from your bond."

Only after the cut was made, the words repeated in an angry hiss, and demon blood was dripping on the floor did John step through the barrier himself. He had learned his lesson where demons were concerned.

"Firstly," John said, taking back the knife and wrapping the blood-stained article in a clean white handkerchief, "you do not, by any means you can think of, hurt my sons or myself. Understand?"

The demon in the girl's body nodded sullenly. "Understood."

John Winchester would never trust a demon, but now he knew how to use their one and only mark of honour against them. A demon could not break the terms of a deal. Negotiate, yes. Twist and change, certainly. But deals made could not be broken, not even by the demon who made them.

He sent the demon off with instructions to find Sam. To observe, not engage, and to report back with its findings. The devil's trap on the ceiling was scratched through and made redundant, and the girl the demon inhabited beat a hasty exit. John watched her go, keeping an eye out to make sure he hadn't missed something that would allow her to double back and kill them.

When he finally turned away it was to see his son looking at him as if he'd never really seen John before.

"When were you going to teach us that little trick?" Dean demanded, brushing a fine layer of salt from his fingers.

"That trick is very dark magic, Dean." John walked calmly over to the metal drum with his gloves and the dead snake and poured lighter fluid inside before striking a match and dropping the whole book in with it. "It's not something anyone should use lightly and you weren't ready for it."

"Not ready?" Dean scoffed, shoving the bits and pieces they still needed back into the bag John kept all of the collected mystical paraphernalia he had. "Why the fuck wouldn't I be ready?"

"Humans are never really ready for demons," John stated firmly. "When your brother is older he might be, but not you. Not us, Dean. We're human, and you better remember that."