Dean stumbled into his bedroom, his hands red, his white shirt red, his face red, and he could not keep whimpering, deep in his throat, like some wounded animal. He needed Benny, he needed Benny now, but the bed was empty, the covers pulled up sailor-neat with a note pinned to the pillow that he'd gone and a walk and that he'd be back soon.

Well, that was useless-even Aslan called all times soon.

Dean held the note in his shuddering palms, re-reading the lazy scrawl even as his vision blurred, even as his eyes stung as he wiped them hurriedly with his wrist-his red wrist, and suddenly there was a swath of blood like a mask over his eyes, and Dean splashed cold water on his face.

He hadn't seen something like that since before he'd seen Mary's skull sliced in two by just such a headspade.

He let the cold water run over his hands until the skin turned numb. His rubbed his ring finger, still empty, the ring still missing.

Nobody should see something like that once in their lives-and he'd seen it twice.

He didn't even care about Luke Dante, but this one was worse somehow-and that was terrible, an insult to his mother's memory-but he'd found her like that, found John dragging her way to the may tree, hung with bodies torn to shreds instead of pastel ribbons-and Dante-Dante had been alive, had been standing, and then the thing had fell, and he'd crumpled, and it was just a three second picture replaying again and again and again.

Fine, then not.

Fine, then not.

"Shut up," he whispered, squeezing his eyes against the image. "Shut up."

He stripped out of his clothes, putting his nice white shirt and his nice grey slacks into a plastic bag, tying it into a hard knot.

Then he turned the hot water on, all the way to hot, and stepped under the streaming spray that burned his skin scarlet.

And even that pain was not enough to interrupt the endless loop of fine, head-spade drop, not fine, fine, head-spade drop, not fine, fine-head-spade drop, not fine-

Lilith and Meg and Ruby gathered together, some ways away from the church as the sheriff tried to keep people in order and attempted to preserve the crime scene.

They were splashed with red.

"He's dead," Lilith said, her voice tight.

"But that can't be," Meg said, fingers coiled tight in her hair. Castiel stood a little to the side, his hands in his pockets, watching the body through the window. "It was just a head spade. And he was Lucifer."

Ruby kicked at a stone with her boot. "Believe it. Didn't you feel it? A shift like the air following a thunderclap?"

The women nodded.

"That was a spell," Ruby went on. She rubbed her upper arms, prickled with goose bumps from the chill, fervently. "I don't know what kind of spell-but, it was probably something that made Lucifer vulnerable."

"Oh wow I'm terrified," Meg said, deadpan. She spread her hands towards the church so that her thumbs and forefingers shaped a camera. "Do you think it was just targeted at Lucifer? Or do you think we're all affected and vulnerable ugly ducklings?"

Lilith stiffened, and her eyes strayed towards two women-Ruby thought their names were Bela and Sarah but she wouldn't have been able to tell you which was which. They were huddled together, their hands on each other's elbows, forehead to forehead, lips whispering together.

Ruby exhaled a shuddering breath. "I don't know."

Meg bit her lips. "Always one way to find out. Anybody have any supernatural buddies they've secretly always wanted to get ganked but never had the time to find the right amount of whatever it was to do the job properly and didn't feel low enough to bribe a hunter to do it for them?" Three pairs of eyes turned towards Castiel.

Lilith narrowed her eyes, a satisfied smile curling around her teeth. "He's beyond his use-has been for sometime."

"Use them and then spit them right back out." Meg licked her fingers as she dropped a wink. "That's how I like them too."

Lilith, tall in her white, red-splattered shift, nodded in approval. "Well, someone's observant."

"Oh, I know everything." Meg took a step closer to Castiel, who still peered at the window. His face was still, betraying no emotion. "I thought he would have been happier. I guess even he knows that we're in for some deep shit."

"Suspect list now," Lilith said. "I don't trust the sheriff to run this one down, to hunt the person who did this like the dog he is."

"Did you ever trust the sheriff for anything?" Ruby said.

Lilith shook her head, then snapped her fingers. "I'm waiting."

"Clarence," Meg said. "I think our little angel may be just about ready to make it up as he goes, penned up with all that frustration not just toward Lucifer, but towards Michael too-wherever he is in all this mess."

"I know where he is," Lilith said. "I'll speak to the sheriff about returning our friend back to him so that she can keep an eye on things. In case Dean decides to off another major player."

"You really think Dean had something to do with this?" Ruby's eyebrows were slanted upwards. "He doesn't even know that he's a major player in the apocalypse-he still thinks his surrogate mommy hates him."

"It's not a risk we can take," Lilith said. "One major player is already down, and the only one who survives is the one that wants to wear Dean like an evening tux? No, we can't rule out any options."

By this time, Sam had sidled close to Ruby. He put his arms around her. There was still streaks of blood caked along his upper arms. "We talking suspects?"

They nodded, though Lilith's eyes slitted at him. Ruby wondered if she could suspect Sam of all people-but no, Sam loved Lucifer as a father, fought with him like one too, sometimes. But this? This would have been patricide, and Sam, legacy to hunters or not, would have thought more than twice before taking such a step.

"Get this," Sam was saying, "but when we were looking for Father Gil-whom we found, by the way, in pieces in the river-" Lilith made a snarl in her throat, her head half-turned away- "we also found a dead goat on the altar, like a sacrifice to god."

"I thought I'd smelled something," Ruby said, "something holy. It was itching under our skins, didn't you feel it?"

The demon ladies nodded.

"Who owns the goat?" Lilith asked.

"Adam does. Dean's kid brother."

Lilith frowned. "I can almost see it. Adam finds out the secrets his mother's been hiding-offers two sacrifices to god. One for the murder he is about to commit, and second, the head of Lucifer, god's own worst enemy." She looked back towards the church, where the head-split body still lay crumpled and dead. "Truly the Abel to Dean's Cain, who was too selfish to sacrifice what he loves best."

"Do you want us to speak to the sheriff?" Ruby asked. "Meg and I can handle it."

Lilith's eyes burned white as she turned from them towards the church, towards Lucifer's dead body, toward the insignificant sheriff running the crime scene like it was any other any other crime scene instead of the single most devastating tragedy of an entire history of demons.

All their years of hell, all their years of torture, had been filed to this knife's edge that they walked, honed to this point, waiting to thrust themselves into the belly of the beast that god and his weakened warrior angels had become-waiting to spring from the shadows to wreak punishment and wrath for their king, for Lucifer, and to burn heaven to ash and dust and forge a new kingdom on its bones-one that was better, one ruled by Lucifer, one-

"No," Lilith said. "I will deal with Sheriff Jody Mills and her treacherous, scheming ways myself." She tugged at both their elbows though before they could depart. "Remember-it's easy to lay blame at Adam's feet-hell, it might even be true. But-we'll also need someone that Mills would rather go after-and someone who'll let us corner the only other people in the series of deaths who haven't been targeted yet-people besides Lucifer, that is."

Meg lidded her eyes half-closed, bit her lip as she stared at the grass at her feet, the blood on her boots.

"Make Castiel look guilty. Put some pressure on the angels. God knows he's wanted to kill Lucifer for years-let him reap the consequences of his lack of loyalty." She turned to Meg, cupped her cheek with her palms. "Will you be able to do that for me, Meg? Will you make me proud?"

Meg's throat was soft and vulnerable as she swallowed. "You know where my loyalties lie."

Lilith sealed a kiss against her forehead.

"To you, my lady," Meg whispered. "Now that Lucifer is dead, to you."

Sheriff Jody Mills would have laughed if the truce, hanging by a few tenuous threads, still did not need to be preserved. "You think my boy Adam did this?"

"I do," Lilith said, her voice dangerous soft. "And I want him to pay for it."

"If you asked him, how do you kill demons, he'd say that you don't kill demons-you just send them back to hell." Jody Mills nailed Lilith with a piercing stare. "You really think that even if he could do this-he knew how to do it? Lucifer is gone. I can feel it. You can too. Not gone to hell gone. But gone-gone."

"You've received confirmation then?" Lilith said.

Jody pulled her cell phone from her pocket. No signal. As usual. "I can get it. In the meantime, I need your people not to do anything rash. Remember-humans, hunters too, and demons have both been killed in the past few days. Maybe it has something to do with what happened here, maybe it doesn't-but we cannot act before we know for sure."

"And what's your vested interest in making sure the killers are found? What's to stop you from killing Michael, and ending this whole thing, right here, right now?"

"I made a deal," Jody hissed. "Kissed you on the mouth for it too. I'm as good as my word. You're pissed off because I found a loophole fine, be pissed off. But don't for one second think that I would violate the truce as grievously as this."

Lilith rose to her feet, wrapping her lacy shawl around her shoulders. "You keep your people in line, and I'll keep mine in line. Ruby and Meg will pursue their own lines of inquiry of course."

"Just as long as they keep the murdering and bloodshed to themselves I don't care what they do," Jody said.

"Good." Lilith smiled, her eyes rolling up into white. "Shall we kiss on it?"

"Go screw yourself," Jody said, settling her hat more firmly on her head. She gave some parting instructions to her deputies regarding the crime scene and the evidence they needed to pull, then hauled herself into her police jeep, red and blue lights strobing but no sirens. She almost made it out the drive without incident when she had to slam on the breaks because Lilith had appeared, standing in the mud in the middle of the road, dirtying the hem of her white dress.

"Not so fast, Sheriff," she said. And Jody could do nothing but wait helplessly as she climbed into the front seat, drawing the seatbelt over her breasts, and snapping it quietly into place. "And drive."

She made it to the hospital in no time. It was a small island and there was no traffic. She found Tessa easily enough, leaning against the wall in her blue scrubs and her white lab coat, chewing on a pen.

Tessa looked up at them. If she knew who Lilith was, she showed no fear. "I know why you're here."

"Do you?" Lilith asked.

"I do." Tessa snapped the silver case of her clipboard closed. "You're here about Lucifer." She paused, her head tilted, as if she heard a voice from a great distance.

"Fallen angels the caliber of Lucifer do not die by a simple fisherman's head spade," Lilith said. "Ruby and Meg could find nothing supernatural about the blade itself. He should not be dead, yet he does not rise."

"That is a problem," Tessa said. "A puzzle, certainly. Why come to me?"

"Did you reap him?" Jody said.

Tessa huffed a half-laugh. "We reap souls. Do you think that Lucifer had a soul?"

"Monsters have souls," Jody said. "Demons too. What's left of their human ones, that is. So what about angels? You just don't let their grace or whatever leak like ozone in the atmosphere do you?"

Tessa pursed her lips. "Angels don't really go anywhere when they die, and they have no soul to reap-unless they've ripped out their grace and fallen, then they have a soul, like the former angel Anael possesses a soul. Lucifer fell, but he never ripped out his grace, so he has no soul for me to reap."

"Tell us something useful, Reaper," Lilith hissed. "Or I promise that I will find a way to kill you in a way that brings more pain than a multi-dimensional being such as yourself could ever realize existed."

Tessa smiled at her. "Patience." She slipped her pen behind her ear. "Angel grace was spun from the stars, and their true forms usually exist outside the dimensions of this world unless they are dragged out of it by supernatural force. What you see there is the vessel that was used as the conduit for this one particular part of Lucifer-one of his many faces, if that's easier for you. The face that fits best in this dimension. What makes an angel blade unique is that it is capable of piercing through the heart of the dimension the blade and angel share, and forcing its way through all other dimensions the angel possesses-thus killing the angel simultaneously in each plane of existence. Killing the single face of an angel in only one of its planes merely wounds it, and they can and do return."

"So this head spade," Lilith said slowly, "only killed Lucifer in this dimension?"

"It should have. But it didn't. A witch is at work here," Tessa said, her voice lowering to a whisper. "It tore the dimensions in the place that Lucifer stood, focusing his dimensional presence into that single point, killing him instantly, and scattering his grace through the space of all dimensions-including this one."

Lilith staggered against the wall and, for the first time in Jody's memory, looked haggard and old. She raised her arm against Jody, finger pointing threateningly. "You will bring me Pamela and Missouri immediately-"

"Not so fast," Tessa said. "This is blood magic. It's built on death. Pamela and Missouri do not work that kind of magic. They are not your suspects. And I will not see myself reaping their souls from your blood-lust."

"Death?" Jody remembered Casey, Father Gil, Garth. "What kind of death? The kind of blood ritual that raised Lucifer in the first place? The kind that Azazel wearing John Winchester wreaked?"

Tessa nodded her head. "Yes."

Jody slid as close to Tessa as she dared. "How many people have died on this island?"

"You know I can't tell you that," Tessa said, looking up at Jody from under her lashes. "It's against the rules."

Lilith scoffed. "She probably doesn't want to know anyway. God, or you know whoever, forbid she realize the full extent of her failure." She chewed her lip, then gestured toward Jody. "I need to know the full extent of this spell. Was it just targeting Lucifer, or are we all targeted?" She settled herself firmly on the ground, feet shoulder width apart. "Hit me."

Jody looked her up and down. "With my fist?"

"Do you think you'll ever get another chance?" Lilith smiled up at her, sweetly, but only for a moment before Jody lashed out, splitting her lip, gashing her own knuckles on her teeth.

Lilith staggered under the force of the blow, which should not be. She was a demon, beyond touch of a mortal's hand.

Something wet touched her lip, and she prodded it gently with her thumb, because it was tender and sore. Her flesh came away red.

Tessa did not gasp, and her eyes held no surprise. She had known. She probably even know what the spell was, Jody figured, but that was probably also against the rules. Perhaps she should have made sure the pact included reapers instead of finagling them as standing referees.

"You hurt me," Lilith said, her voice dazed as she struggled to find her balance. "You've wanted to do that for an age, and now it's possible."

Jody stared at her hand, at the gash across her knuckles. She didn't even have time to be concerned with demon cooties that could be transmitted by blood and saliva when she had her gun in hand, barrel focused towards Lilith, deadeye dick square and proud. Her mouth twitched, waiting for Lilith to raise her head, to see that her end after a millennia, had finally come. "Prepare to die," she said, when Lilith, her eyes almost human, raised themselves to hers.

Tessa stepped between them. "I was not affected by the spell-and you cannot kill me even you wanted to. I will not let you kill Lilith in cold blood. It is not her time, and I was brought here to ensure that you kept your word-loopholes that you found or no." She turned around towards Lilith, who still stared at the blood on her skin. "Leave us."

Lilith did not need to be told twice, but she still left with her head held high, her hair flowing loosely down her back.

Jody still found her beautiful, even after all this time. Even though she knew that the body was just something Lillith had spun in hell to hold her vaporous form here on this earth.

Tessa shook her head, tsking her tongue against her teeth as she guided Jody towards one of the gurneys. "Such a hot head. Hasn't anyone told you that that's a good way to get you killed?" She leaned in close, whispering in her ear. "Trust me, I would know."

"For the first time, she was vulnerable," Jody said. "For the first time in seven years!"

Tessa put her finger to Jody's lips. "You have courted death, Jody, and yet you live to tell the tale or complain or utter threats as you desire. You still walk a knife's edge, and I fear that I will reap you before the week is out. Please be careful."

"I thought you weren't allowed to take sides."

Tessa smiled sadly. "Even at this moment, I am speaking the same words of caution to Lilith and her kind."

"You say that to all the girls, I imagine."

Tessa reached for her hand, patted it comfortably. "I suppose I do."

Dean wandered from the bathroom, still towel-drying his hair. Benny still wasn't back. There was still no cell reception. There were still no notes.

Just…nothing.

He licked his lips to keep himself from trembling, wished desperately for the silver ring he could spin round and round on his thumb.

He'd never felt so alone. Never felt so helpless, so trapped, so-

A rock pinged his window, nearly shattering the glass as hairline fractures spider-webbed the pane. Dean raised it, peered down, and saw Adam already climbing up the sides, up to his window. "Please, Dean," he gasped, words coming in husks of air. "You need to help me."

It only took a moment for Dean to grasp Adam under his armpits, and to haul him into his bedroom, where he collapsed on the floor, body splayed in all directions, limbs falling open like he knew he could trust Dean not to hurt him or maybe he just didn't care anymore.

He'd not been this open with him since-well, since before.

"They think that I did it," he said, his voice hoarse. "They think that I killed Lucifer because of the goat. My goat." He propped himself up on his elbows, tears and dirt streaked across his cheeks. "Like I'd hurt her. I loved her. I loved that stupid goat." He shook his head, too long hair falling into his eyes. "Meg and Ruby are out for blood."

"The sheriff?" Dean asked.

Adam laughed, collapsed again into helpless giggles. "Mom? You think that Mom can do anything?" He sobered up them, looked Dean right in the eye. "Boy, you have been gone a long time if you think that Mom can do anything useful, anything helpful. Mom hasn't been doing jackshit for years."

"Hey," Dean said, his voice sharp. "Don't talk about her that way."

"What-" Adam's face turned mocking, insolent - "like you call her sheriff all the time? She may not be mom by blood, but she's mom by right, even if she's lost her way. At least I still recognize that."

"Did you come here to fight? Or did you want my help?"

"I don't want your help," Adam said. "But I need it."

Dean nodded. He got that. Knew what that was like. "Hit me."

"Help me figure out once and for all what kind of mess Mom has gotten herself in." Adam leaned in close. "She's been buttoning it up for close to seven years now. There's gotta be something we can find. And, I know that this thing isn't just targeting Lucifer, it's targeting other demons too." He moved in even closer, his voice lowering with every inch he got nearer to Dean, until they were sitting practically next to each other. "I found something, Dean. I need to show you because I don't know if it's real. But if it is-then I know it wasn't me, and everyone else will have to know too, and then Meg and Ruby will have to leave me alone." He shivered, and it looked as if his flesh had gone pallid and clammy.

"Okay," Dean said, his throat dry. How could there be even more bodies?

"Shimmy out the window?" Adam said, "just like old times, okay?"

"Okay." As Dean flung his leg over the sill he said, "I cannot believe that the Sheriff always said that I was the bad influence instead of you."

Adam just grinned up cheekily at him and swung down, overestimating the drop and tumble-rolled down the space for a little while, eventually climbing to his feet, and groaning, while Dean still felt carefully for the ground, and stepped on it without so much as even jumping. "And that," he said, "is how it's done."

"Shut up, you big time city boy." Adam brushed shoulders with him, but it was more like the good natured way he used to have done such things, instead of a way that said get lost.

Dean closed his eyes, treasured it, then followed.

"I found it this way," Adam called, hurrying through the brush despite his sore limbs. "Couldn't believe it when I saw it-almost didn't recognize him he'd been dead for so long." He stopped up short, raised his finger to the trees. "There." Then he dashed to the trunk, fingers fumbling for a green rope that had been secured around one of the lower hanging branches.

Dean squinted-not sure what he was looking for at first-but then seeing dark splotches in the green foliage. Something shook, and a shoe-a nice, businessman shoe that should have been polished to a gleaming black but was now caked with blood, dirt, and something that looked suspiciously like guts-dropped to the ground, right at Dean's feet.

He jumped back a few paces as more branches groaned and the body-for yes, it was a body, Dean could see that now-split in two, spilling out guts and an odor that had Dean on his knees, clutching his stomach sucking in breath after panicked breath in his sleeve, and Adam too.

"I didn't do this," Adam said. "I didn't do this, whoever did this did Lucifer too because don't you see, don't you see John Winchester kills with a head spade, this dude kills with a head spade. John Winchester swung someone up, nearly torn in half, and this dude swings someone up, nearly torn in half. I didn't do it, I didn't do it!" His voice was shrill now, and Dean groped for him, and pulled him down so that they clung to each other on their knees in the woods, looking up at the mutilated body swinging pendulum slow.

"I didn't do it because he's back," Adam moaned, his eyes closed, "he's back, he's back, he's back-"

"We need to show Sam," Dean said. "We need to show Sam right away."

Adam looked up at him, his back hot and sweaty against Dean's stomach. "Why?"

"Because-I think that's his Uncle Crowley. Or Ruby's Uncle Crowley. I'm not sure which one. They just said Uncle Crowley. We'll go to the sheriff too."

"You think Mom will believe me?" Adam said.

"She already does. I'm sure of it."

They didn't have to go all the way back to the inn before they found Sam. "I saw you guys leave. I just wanted to make sure you guys are okay. Ruby's pissed." He looked at Dean, his mouth turned at an unhappy slant. "She blames me, I think."

"I'm pretty sure she doesn't," Adam said. "Last I heard, they were all looking after me."

"Well, I mean-"

"-but you need to see this," Dean interjected. "Something is very wrong, and I swear to god if there is one, that my brother had nothing to do with what happened to Ruby's dad."

Sam frowned. "Let's go then."

So in no time around, Dean found himself going back to the corpse, and he'd thought he'd been able to avoid it, to at least defer it, but no. Sam stared up at the corpse, his mouth open, his eyes wide, blood draining from the red in his cheeks. "Uncle Crowley," he whispered.

"But do you see," Adam said, his voice pressing and urgent, "it couldn't have been me, it couldn't have because John Winchester's returned."

Sam's mouth pinched over his teeth, and he turned his eyes away from the bloated, rotten, torn corpse. "Sheriff Mills said she killed him."

"What if she was lying-" Adam's voice came out in a rush. "What if she was mistaken. What if his ghost's come back. You know that happens, you know it."

"Dean," Sam said, "What do you think?"

Dean remembered the sheriff's attic. Remembered the pictures. Maybe he should have shown this to Sam earlier. "I need to show you something, something in the Sheriff's attic-"

When they went up steps, Dean went for the key that was under the mat, but Adam pushed him aside. "Don't bother. She changed the locks yesterday. Should've known something was up then."

"Do you think she knew you came over?" Sam said.

Dean shrugged. "If she did, she never confronted me about it."

After they went aside, Adam hauled the attic ladder-case steps down and they all climbed up, one after the other. Hunched over in the cramped space, Dean never realized just how tall they were. "Look," he said. "It's John Winchester-photographed after his death."

"Oh shit," Adam said. "Shit, shit, shit. This is my worst nightmare. Oh my god, I thought Tracy was crazy, but she was right. He's alive, and he's here again." Adam clutched Dean's hand. "Do you remember how many we lost last time?"

"Get a hold of yourself," Sam said, wandering closer to the photos, his finger trailing the profile and face of each one. He unpinned one from the board, and turned it over to look at the back, before putting it in his pocket. "We don't know for sure if he's here. The only one who's seen him is Tracy, and she claims to have been seeing him for the past seven years."

"What if she's right?" Adam said.

Sam turned back to him, hands in his brown coat pockets. "Then it means it's taken him seven years to make a move, and that you've lived in safety all this time with him at your doorstep."

"That's hardly comforting," Dean said.

Adam pushed Dean way. "That's rich from someone who left."

"Was sent away," Dean shouted.

Sam slipped between the two of them, hands out against their chest, but his fingers rested lightly along Dean's sternum-a comforting, warm presence that reminded him to stop, to step back, and to breathe.

"Look-do you think we're dealing with a ghost? The seven years would make sense if it were a ghost." Sam's voice was all business. "Seven is a pretty significant number."

Dean shook his head. "There are pictures of him in different towns from all over the world. Ghosts are tethered to locations."

"Or objects. Or people," Sam put in. "What if the sheriff visited all these places? What if she brought him with her. What if she knew, and she didn't know how to get rid of him?"

Dean's voice caught in his throat, air in his lungs, pain in his heart. The sheriff had been to Los Angeles, and she hadn't visited him? "No, it doesn't make sense." He cleared his voice as they all looked at him. "I mean, she's a hunter. If she was haunted with him, she'd either dig up his body and salt and burn it, or she'd find the object and salt and burn that."

"Unless she's the tether," Sam said.

A stillness descended upon them. "No."

Adam echoed Dean. "No."

And they both shook their head. "No. Can't be."

Sam shrugged. "Could be. Look, I like the sheriff just as much as any of you. Hell, I love her like my own mother. Assuming my mother hadn't abandoned me like she did," he added, flashing a grin at them.

No one laughed.

"But it's just something we need to consider."

"No, it's not," Dean said, already making his way back to the attic stairs. "If she's the tether then fine. But we're not going to salt and burn her."

He was on the floor, looking at the rose papered walls that he'd once called home. There were family photos of him and Sam, Jody and Mary, hell even Jody and Bobby. The ones with John in them had been taken down and replaced with sunsets and beaches - beautiful things, Dean realized, things with life.

He peered up at Sam's face, curtained by the long fringe of his hair. "Even if more people die?" Sam said. His mouth had an unhappy turn to it, his eyes hard. "We've got to look at the bigger picture, Dean."

"We'll figure something us out," Adam said, voice mean and harsh. "We don't even know if this is true. It's just a theory. A hypothesis. We gotta test it."

Sam rolled his eyes. "This isn't science class in highschool, Adam."

Dean paced the house, biting his lip pink. "We need to start back to the beginning. We need to dig up the grave, and work from there."

"And why the hell," came the Sheriff's voice, "are you talking about digging up a grave from my cemetery?"

Sheriff Jody Mills stood in the doorway, her face pale, her hair a halo of flyways. Skin was drawn and tired, and Dean had never felt like such a piece of shit in his life.

The three boys stared at each other, then at her, until Adam, stumblingly, told them what had happened, who they'd found. About the pictures in the attic.

"Are you going to arrest me now?" he asked, his voice faint.

"No," Jody said, sitting slowly down into her Lazy boy. "No I'm not, and Mrs. Dante can't ask me to. She doesn't run this town." She looked at her scabbed over knuckles, and Dean contemplated on asking how'd they gotten like that, but chickened out at the last minute. "But I'm begging you, Adam-and Dean, you and Sam too-please leave this alone. I've got it under control."

"People want me arrested for murder, Mom! And it's not my fault, it's John Winchester, and nobody believes me because they don't know what we know. They don't know that the dead can still kill."

Jody looked up at him, sucking on her lip, her eyebrows puckered up not in a frown, but in something that resembled begging. "You don't think I'm going to protect you?"

"Well, will you?" Dean asked. "Or are you just going to send him away too?"

"I will," Jody said. "And I will do whatever I need to do. Be gone with you. I'm not making dinner tonight because I need to meet with Tessa. We still need to talk about Father Gil."

Sam eyes shifted. "He's dead?"

"Of course he's dead," Jody said. "Everybody's dead."

The boys filed out of the house, loitering in the driveway as they looked back out towards the living room, as if the sheriff would come running after them, telling them everything, telling them the truth-but the doorway remained undarkened, and only the wind shuffled at the screen door.

"She was lying," Adam said, scuffing his boot against the driveway. "She was lying to our faces!"

"Well, there's only one thing to do with lies." Sam turned to them both. "Dig them up."

They found shovels in the in the shed. They tumbled into Sam's car and they drove to the area where John was buried-some place that was not considered consecrated land, someplace far from a church, deep in the woods.

They dug until dirt streaked their skin, washing with sweat, turning to mud. They dug until their shoulders ached, and they were strong boys, too, and still they dug until their shovel heads hit rotten hood, and then they chopped that rotting coffin to bits to reveal a plain pine box, that laid empty six feet under the ground.

John Winchester-whoever or whatever he was-was gone.

Jody drove back to the inn in her jeep after closing her eyes for thirty minutes. Her brain felt calmer, a little more intuitive. Going back had been the right call. Maybe it had been a premonition, the sense, seeing as she had caught all three boys she considered her sons red handed in her affairs, raring like horses to go after John Winchester.

But she was their mother-they'd take her word for it.

She had to believe that.

She settled her shoulders, gripped her steering wheel a little tighter, and drove.

The first order of business was to find hard, concrete evidence. Talk to everybody who had dealings with Luke Dante, find the motive, find the weapon-or the spell-and find the murderer. Done. Just like any other day.

And for crying out loud, this was the devil they were talking about.

Someone was always wanting to kill the devil.

Sheriff Jody Mills was too good at what she did to bypass complete suspicion from her son-she knew Adam held no love for the Dantes, knew that he'd struggled for seven years-struggled with depression, suicide, anger, rage-but that didn't mean he was violent, and he'd never taken it out on anyone but himself, and she'd gotten him help for that when he'd been beyond her help, even though he'd never forgiven her for it.

But she didn't need to be forgiven. She only needed to make sure her boys were safe.

She rolled her vehicle to a stop at the front of the hotel. Scared faces peered from the windows. There were a lot of guests to speak with-and they weren't going to interrogate themselves.

She chose to speak with Lilith first. She played the role of the Widow Dante to perfection, even draping a shawl of black silk over her shoulders as she dabbed her eyes with her hankie.

"Can you think of anyone else who might want to hurt your husband?" Jody said, by rote.

The charade skipped, like a smudged disk, and something dangerous and harsh flashed in her face. "Perhaps-you know, Castiel and I-we had our affair, on the side."

Jody remained stoic. Funny. It seemed difficult to believe that someone so proud as the devil would have his consort consort with someone else.

"Castiel-" her voice broke here - "he's such a proud man. It's difficult to be under someone like Luke. And - he'd fantasize things." She bit her lip - "he'd fantasize about things that he wanted to do to him, did them to me instead." She brought her hands to her throat. "He frightened me, sometimes."

Jody rolled her eyes. Never trust Lilith with something as small and frail as one's ego, she thought. She'd destroy it, just as soon as she'd destroyed any countless lives for her slightest whim.

"I get the picture," Jody said. "Anything else?"

"Besides your son's sacrificial goat?" Lilith smiled. "Nothing, Sheriff Mills."

Meg corroborated what Lilith had said earlier-not that that meant much to Jody. She knew that Lilith ruled the roost of this demon henhouse, and they'd do whatever was asked of them. But why they'd want her putting pressure on that poor schmuck Cas when there were bigger fish to fry-

Unless Cas was actually a big fish.

For the first time, she was uncertain. She thumbed through her notes, the information she'd gathered and collected against the players. She had no idea who Cas was. As far as she could tell-he'd been no one.

She'd assumed he was human-Meg's patsy, Meg's boy-toy, and nothing more.

She studied Cas now-his scruffy features, smaller now without his tan trench coat, which was bloody and folded in an evidence bag.

"I've made no secret of the tensions between my-stepfather and myself." Cas looked at his hands, folded loosely in his lap. "He was difficult and overbearing to work with. Domineering."

"So you fucked his wife? To what? Humiliate him?" Jody decided to play with the charade they had so carefully crafted seven years ago. What did he know? Did he know too little, just enough, or too much?

His clear eyes looked at her. "That was part of it. The other part was because it was fun." He leaned back, trying to look suave and cool, Jody imagined, but somewhat failing-perhaps because he was being interrogated for murder. "I like sex, Sheriff Mills. I proposition sex to those who catch my eye for whatever reason, and if they say yes, we have a grand old time." His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. "I propositioned your son."

"Which one," Jody said, voice a thin blade. Adam was barely eighteen.

Cas smiled, briefly. "Dean. Turned me down though."

"He's a smart boy," Jody said.

Cas tilted his head at her, his eyebrows frowning. "Is he?"

Cold rage hit heavy in her abdomen, but she flipped her notebook. She would be professional. She would do her job. "Did Meg know about your dalliances?"

Castiel nodded. "She did. I whispered them to her as I did everything I did to her that I did to Mrs. Dante." He smiled at her, almost sadly. "There is nothing here, Sheriff. The only person who did not know of our little-affair-was Mr. Dante himself. And he died in ignorance."

Jody closed her eyes. Palms over her brows. "Well don't leave town anytime soon." Not that he could, with the missing boats-but if-but if he wasn't human, there was no telling what he could do and she'd rather put this Cas in the spotlight than have it find its way back to her son-even if she was playing right into their hands.

She could always bluff her way out of any problem. She'd never had trouble before, not since she was emptying men's wallets at the poker tables.

It was night when she was finished. And it felt as if she was no closer to solving the riddle than before. She'd already called and requested that Pamela and Missouri attempt to locate the source of the spell-but that took time-and it felt like time that she did not have, to save herself, to save her boys, to save the whole damn island.

Cas walked briskly along the stone path, his numb fingers fumbling with his phone. That was the first indication that something was wrong.

Angels don't get numb. They don't get cold.

They're not weak like humans are weak.

Yet here he was, shivering, and not just from the cold which was even worse.

He couldn't go to Michael. Michael and Cas had not been communicating for the past five years. Michael would have said that Cas went rogue, Cas would have said that Michael went rogue, but it didn't matter because nobody cared. This charade would have carried on until the end of days and now-

Now, Lucifer was gone because someone had thrown up the book, ripped out the pages, and said ces la vi.

Why would Cas reach out to someone who was probably on the murderer's next list? You didn't take out Lucifer without taking out Michael.

Two sides, same coins.

The world would be out of balance if one survived while the other did not.

Cas scrubbed his hand through his jaw, feeling mortal and weak and alone. His steps slowed as he thought about that again, forced himself to confront that image of himself.

He shuddered and felt mildly sick.

But he knew another angel-a had-been angel-who would have known what that felt, by her own hand no less, not by some spell that sucked the supernatural strength from his bones, siphoned his grace, and bent his knees to humanity.

Anna would understand. Anna could-offer some suggestions.

He stopped then, looked up towards the sky. "I know you can hear me," he said. "You might not be an angel, hollow without your grace, but prayer-prayer is something you can hear." He let his phone slide back into his pocket.

He'd been relying on it too long, masquerading around as a human.

"Anna-listen to me." He swallowed, licked his lips, and thought about his next words carefully. "I think that the demons think we're behind the attack. We as in angels. So I guess we're not a we anymore. They can't go after Michael directly without risking Raphael's wrath-and with no Lucifer to protect them I shouldn't wonder that they're pissing themselves scared-so I think they're gunning for me as a show of force, to remind anyone who's still watching that they're still to be reckoned with, Lucifer or no."

He wondered if the spell would affect Anna's ability to hear prayers. He hoped not-but nobody had prayed to him in a long time. Not even the moaned Oh, Cas, or the half gasped oh god, yes, please, Cas that fell from his lovers' lips were prayers anymore.

"Anna-" he said, his mouth open-"Anna, please-don't make me beg-"

A harpoon slid through his chest cavity with a soft splat, a sploosh of blood, mucous, and bone fountaining from his abdomen as he sank to his knees, quite dead, even for an angel.

The wind blew the ash marks of his wings away like dust as his killer shouldered his corpse, entrails and something else, something strange, something not quite of this world, streamed behind like ribbons.