"When we get to Bobby's," Dean said, "you get out of the car, follow us into the kitchen, and make a circle of salt around yourself. Stay in the salt."
I rolled my eyes. "I know that," I said. "I don't need to be told to stay in the salt when there are ghosts around."
"Jessie," Sam sighed.
"What? I'm just saying. I know that if you say to make a circle of salt, I should stay in it. It's not rocket science."
"Just do it," Dean snapped.
"I'm going to. I'm not arguing," I complained. "Jeez."
Dean picked his hand up off the steering wheel before slamming it down in frustration. "Jessie, just… be quiet, ok?" he said, trying not to lose patience with me. I shut up.
We were all tired, worried, and stressed out. Dean had been calling and calling, but Bobby never picked up. He pulled into Bobby's yard. He parked the car, and then he and Sam grabbed shotguns from the trunk. Sam handed me a bag of salt. I tailed them to the front door. Dean pushed it open and whispered for Bobby. There were no lights on and there was no answer. I followed them into the kitchen, made a big circle of salt, and then sat down in the middle of it. Sam and Dean started moving through the house with their shotguns up.
I stayed put when Sam left the house to go look for Bobby in the yard. I stayed put when Dean headed upstairs to look for him there. I stayed put, even though I could hear the sounds of Dean fighting.
I stayed put when my dad showed up.
He crouched at the edge of the salt and looked at me sadly over the salt line. I pulled my feet up close to me and hugged my knees, meeting his eyes. His wavy brown hair was brushed back from his forehead. He looked disappointed in me, the way he did when I was grounded and snuck out to go to my friend Katie's birthday party when I was eight, the way he did when I'd brought home a bad report card in third grade, and the way he did when he'd found out I'd been sneaking into his closet to get a peek at my Christmas gifts when I was ten.
I couldn't stand the silence. "Hi, Dad," I whispered.
"Jessie," he said, shaking his head. Tears sprung to my eyes.
"I'm sorry, Dad," I whispered.
"You burned us in our beds," he said.
I shook my head. "I didn't do it. Gabija did it. She sacrificed you so that… so that…" He was shaking his head, like he didn't buy what I was saying. "She did do it! To free my abilities!"
He leaned in closer to the salt, but didn't cross it. I scooted backwards, but not so far back as to cross the salt line. "And now you're serving her," he said softly. My dad had always 'yelled' quietly. But then, louder, he said, "My daughter is serving the goddess who burned me to ashes!" A loud crash came from upstairs as if to punctuate his words. I jumped.
"I'm not!" I said. "I'm not. I'm sorry, Dad!" He fitzed and suddenly he was standing behind me, still outside the salt ring. I squealed and scuttled forward.
"You're a disappointment to me, Jessie. I would never have thought you could do this, turning away, helping the goddess who murdered us in our beds. You might as well have done it yourself." The shotgun went off and he disappeared as the rock salt hit him. I jumped again and got to my feet to find Dean standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He beckoned me to come to him. I left the salt circle and ran into his arms, hiding my face into his stomach and crying. He held me close to him with one hand, the other still holding the shotgun.
"Looks like you proved me wrong, sweetheart," he said quietly. "You are a hunter. Come on." We went into the living room so he could reload. While he was doing that, Sam and Bobby came rushing into the house through the back door.
We regrouped. Well, really, the guys regrouped. I sat curled in the corner of the couch behind Dean and watched while he reloaded the shotguns, my heart breaking at what the ghost of my father had said to me. I listened as they came to the conclusion that the ghosts were all people that we knew, people we couldn't save.
The three of them compared notes and the ghosts all had brands on their hands. Sam sketched it out for Bobby. Bobby said that he'd seen it before and grabbed some books. Then he led us down into the basement where he'd built a panic room, ghost and demon-safe. His claim was that he took a weekend off, but I didn't see how anyone could have done this in a weekend. The room was built out of solid iron coated in salt.
It was awesome.
While Bobby went through books to figure out why we were being attacked by ghosts, Sam and Dean packed salt rounds, and Dean questioned the existence and motivations of God until Bobby found the symbol. It was the Mark of the Witness. The ghosts were forced to rise. They'd woken up in agony and it wasn't their fault. The spell was what had left the mark, a brand on their souls. Bobby said that the Rising of the Witnesses was from Revelations in the Bible, and it was a sign of the apocalypse.
Bobby also found a spell that would send the witnesses back to rest. The only problem was that the spell needed to be cast over an open fire, which meant the fireplace upstairs.
At last, something I could do. "I can do that here," I said, kneeling up in the chair where I'd been curled up. "I'll just set a fire in the middle of the room."
"And burn what?" Bobby asked. "You see anything here that could sustain one of your fires for very long? Unless you can set the air on fire, we need that fireplace."
I knelt back down in disappointment, but then I said, "I'll come up there with you. I can cut some time off and make sure the fire doesn't go out." When all three of them shook their heads at me, I got out of the chair. "Why not?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "We're not going through this again. You're staying down here. It's safe here. It's not safe up there."
"Dean, you just said I was a hunter," I objected.
"A twelve-year-old hunter," Dean said. "You really want to face the ghost of your dad again?"
I blanched. "No," I said. I really, really didn't.
"So you're gonna stay here, right, Jessie?" Dean asked, his head tilted and his eyebrows raised.
"Yes, Dean," I said, dropping back into the chair with a huff.
They got their stuff together and I hugged them all before they left. Bobby gave some last minute advice, and then the three of them left me in the panic room by myself. I climbed into the bed that Bobby had in the room and sat with my legs crisscrossed to wait.
I had a good twenty minutes to think about things, and since I was trying to keep myself distracted from the noise of furniture moving and shotguns going off upstairs, I thought a lot. I wasn't going to summon Gabby again. Dean was back and I knew he'd be mad if he knew. My dad was obviously displeased even if he was an overly angry ghost who'd been trying to kill me for my betrayal. Gabby herself scared the crap out of me. I didn't want to see her again anyway, and this was just another reason why I should never call her again.
I just wouldn't summon her anymore and all my problems would go away.
An hour later, the panic room door opened, and I looked up from the tome I was flipping through. I quickly shut it and stacked it with the others, but not before Sam saw me. He gave me a half smile. "All right, come on. It's bed time for you since you have school tomorrow."
I blinked at him. "School?" I asked, confused.
"You planning on starting her lessons tomorrow or something?" Bobby asked.
Sam looked at Bobby with slightly baffled smile on his face. "No, Bobby. You enrolled her in school, right? When she came to stay with you…?"
Oh no. No, no, no. I climbed off the little bed and started edging towards the door.
"No, you idjit. She was only staying for two weeks and then she was going back to you. You're the one who changed your number so that she couldn't call you. That's the only reason she was still here."
"I never changed my number," Sam said. They both looked at me.
I ran.