Nick surveyed the second body that had sprawled on his couch in less than a week. This man was so tall he took up the entire length of it. Juliette kept his body covered by a blanket and damp cloths over his mouth and forehead. She came in behind him to change the cloths.

"How's the patient?" Nick asked. He had a plastic FBI badge and a license that gave his name as Jared Jenson, but Nick knew that was a fake name; he wondered if this guy had also been the "Spenser McGillicuddy" who had called the other day and gotten his address.

"The swelling is almost gone, but he hasn't woken up yet," Juliette answered him, taking the cloths back to the kitchen.

Trubel came downstairs. She eyed the tall, unconscious man dubiously.

"You think he has something to do with Brooke?" She asked, cautiously moving closer.

Nick shrugged. "I dunno; call her and we can find out."

"Call her?" Trubel repeated. "With what? She doesn't have a phone."

Nick frowned. "She's not upstairs?"

Trubel shook her head. "No, she's not home yet."

"Oh great!" Nick rolled his eyes. First, some creepy man asks him to be Brooke's protector till some kind of brothers show up, then she gets lost when he should have been with her—

He was distracted from his thoughts by a sudden flinch from the stranger. Trubel's hand was on his shoulder. The man peeled the cloths off his face and looked around the room, and at the two people watching him.

"Who the hell are you?" A third person joined the other two. "Where am I? What happened to me?" He fought to sit up, but his body felt weighed down by sandbags.

The third person, a redheaded woman, took him by the shoulders and eased him back down again. "Whoa, whoa, take it easy," she said. "You've just recovered from the mother of all bee-stings."

Sam vaguely recalled noticing the bees at the bus stop—but what had he been doing there? "Bee-sting? What?" He fought to sit up, but his head swam, and it seemed like the world spun around him. He only batted the air feebly, with his hands.

Nick pulled up a chair close to the sofa and smiled. "You don't have to be scared. We're friends here. We just saved your life. I'm Nick Burkhart, this is my fiancee, Juliette," he pointed to the redhead, "and our friend Trubel." He indicated the one with the dark pixie cut. "What is your name?"

"S-Sam; Sam Winchester." His tongue felt ungainly and seemed to fill his mouth. Dean! Where was Dean? Sam tried sitting up again, and this time, he at least just made it. "Please, I need to-"

A door clicked, and a voice called, "Nick? It's me!"

Sam blinked; the voice sounded oddly familiar, but where had he heard it?

Nick stood and walked into the kitchen. "Brooke! Thank God, I was beginning to-" he stopped as a tall, broad-shouldered man with hazel eyes walked in behind the girl. "Who's this?"

The man smiled and extended a hand. "Nick Burkhart?" He guessed. "Hi, I'm-"

"Dean?" Sam Winchester had somehow managed to heave his body from the couch and now leaned against the railing of the stairwell. Looking between them, Nick at last saw the family resemblance.

Dean strode to his brother, catching his shoulder with a relieved grin. "Sam!" He cried.

"Where did you go?" Sam demanded as Dean helped him back to the couch. "I waited there for hours and there was this swarm of bees that attacked me."

"I went to find Brooke," Dean explained, nodding toward the girl.

"Wait," said Juliette, "you know about Brooke?"

"Well, yeah," Dean answered slowly. "I mean, I think we do." He shrugged it off. "Meanwhile, we haven't officially met, even though Brooke's told me your names. I'm Dean Winchester."

"Juliette Silverton," she shook his proffered hand.

Dean nodded to the other girl. "You must be the one they call Trubel, then."

She nodded, "Yeah, that's me."

"Wait, Dean," Sam cut in. "Are you saying you found Brooke?"

Dean wondered fleetingly if the shy blond was as invisible to his brother as the creature people because of the hex. "She's standing right there, dude."

Sam looked at Brooke with the same expression she had given Dean at the park. "You're Brooke?" He asked.

"I'm Brooke," she answered.

Sam stared fixedly at her. "No," he said finally. "You're not Brooke."

"What are you talking about, Sam?" Dean demanded.

"That's not Brooke!" Sam was beginning to shake. "Brooke is—" he was having trouble speaking again. "She has—"

Juliette took that moment to say, "I'll get everyone something to drink."

She came back with beers for the guys and lemonade for the girls, and Nick decided that it was time to change the subject. He wanted to find out more about these brothers. He turned to Dean. "So where are you from?"

"Kansas," Dean answered.

Juliette took a sip of her lemonade. "What brings you to Portland?" She asked.

Neither brother seemed eager to answer. Nick recognized Dean's squint as a sure sign that he was trying to make something up.

Sam glanced at his brother before speaking, "Well, ah... We're kind of-"

"Oh!" Trubel cried. "You're the Winchester brothers, the demon hunters."

"Demons?" Nick almost spewed his beer.

"You've heard of us?" Sam asked incredulously.

Trubel shrugged. "Yeah, here and there; I'm originally from New York. I knew I heard the name somewhere, then I remembered this roadhouse in South Dakota I stopped at on my way west, some kinda Orville's or something, run by this old lady and her daughter-"

Nick and Juliette glanced at each other; why had they never thought to ask Trubel about her trip west?

Sam chuckled. "No way, you found Harvelle's?"

"Dude, you met Ellen?" Dean added with a shake if his head.

Trubel finished her lemonade and fiddled with the glass. "I wasn't really the friendly type at that point. I didn't meet anyone," she admitted.

Juliette huffed impatiently and raised her hand. "Excuse me, can we get back to the whole demon hunting thing?" She pointed to the brothers. "You're telling me there are demons in Portland, too? Implying that demons do in fact exist."

Dean nodded. "Oh they do, trust me, and they're every bit as freaky as your Vesters."

Everyone froze.

"Vesters?" Juliette repeated, puzzled at the name.

Brooke clapped a hand to her forehead. "Wesen, Dean."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Come again?"

"The term is Wesen."

"Whatever—"

"Hold it," Trubel squinted at Dean. "Are you Grimms, too?"

Dean shrugged, "What the hell is a Grimm?" he asked, with an edge of challenge in his voice.

"How would you know what a Wesen is?" queried Nick.

Dean nodded to Brooke, "She told us; that's what they're called, right? The creature-people?" He glanced at his brother, "Come on, Sammy, back me up here; remember that thing that attacked us the other night?"

Sam was just as confused as everyone else. "Oh, the one in the suit? Dean, it was just a man—a really super-strong guy."

Dean all but glared at him. "A guy?"

"Mostly..."

Dean turned to Brooke, "You were there; that thing was Wesen, right?"

Before Brooke could answer, Trubel muttered to Nick, "I thought only Grimms could see Wesen in woge."

Brooke sighed, "Apparently, Dean can too."

Everyone stared at him in surprise.

For the first time, Sam realized just how serious his brother was. He turned to Dean. "When were you going to tell me that you were seeing strange things? Is that why you were so freaked at the library and the burger place?"

Dean raised his hands defensively. "Dude, I had no idea where it came from, I thought I was cursed or hexed or something!"

Sam smirked and walked back to the front room to retrieve his computer. "You should have told me, man—I could have filled you in."

He opened his laptop to reveal that he had been doing research on Grimms, the Wesen world, and the strange goings-on around Portland.

"I should have told you?" Dean snapped back. "Why didn't you speak up when Brooke was going on about the Wesen? I felt like a friggin' idiot!"

"Dean, check this out," said Sam, showing him the screen. "Apparently these things are a lot more widespread than they might seem."

Dean scanned the page. "Wait a minute," he cried, "Grimm? As in the brothers who wrote stories? You're trying to tell me the fairy tales are true?" His eyes darted accusingly at the faces around him.

"Well, considering the Winchester family business," Sam answered, taking his computer back, "it's actually not that big of a stretch. See, the Brothers Grimm wrote the fairy tales as sort of a cautionary official statement to alert people about these Wesen that they and their descendants-also known as Grimms-used to hunt and kill." When Dean continued staring at him, Sam admitted, "It's what I was going to tell you when those bees attacked me."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Glad to see you're doing all right now, Kenny. So if Brooke is a Grimm, and she's friends with Wesen, how does that happen?"

Nick stepped forward to offer an answer. "I guess it happened when my ability was activated, after my aunt-the last of that generation of my family-died. She was the one who told me to hunt only the bad ones-not all Wesen are dangerous."

Dean pointed to him, "You're one of these descendants of the Brothers Grimm, too?"

"And me," Trubel added as Nick continued.

"When a Grimm dies, the next generation is activated. I went from normal to seeing these things everywhere. I didn't know whether I had suddenly snapped or maybe I was in some kind of alternate reality. There was nobody to explain it to me, at least not till I met Monroe, who's Wesen himself."

Dean grunted, "I know the feeling. So... I'm not a Grimm, why can I see these things?"

Nick shrugged. "I couldn't tell you that. Is there some kind of ability that lets you see demons?"

Dean shook his head. "The only ability we need is the ability to know what to look for and how to kill them."

"So your job is to find the demon that's here and kill it?" asked Juliette.

Sam nodded to her. "That's the plan, yeah."

"Well, that," Dean added, "and there's also the thing about Brooke's key."

Brooke flinched in surprise. "You know about my key?"

Dean frowned, "Well, yeah; you told us that you needed to find it."

"Find it?" Nick repeated. There was horror on his face as he asked Brooke, "You lost the key?"

"Did not!" Brooke snapped, reaching into her collar and pulling up the chain. "I have it right here!"

Sam and Dean glanced from each other to the ancient-looking brass pendant hanging around her neck.

"Where did you get that?" asked Sam.

Brooke let the pendant drop. "I've had it around my neck all this time," she said. "Everyone keeps talking about how dangerous it is."

Dean didn't like the way the mysteries seemed to pile up. "Brooke, I know for a fact you weren't wearing that the last time I saw you, this morning."

"This morning?" Juliette echoed. "Did you go somewhere after breakfast, Brooke?"

"No!" Brooke cried. "I never went anywhere till Nick called and told me to meet him at Laurelhurst!"

Sam nudged Dean. "Told ya it wasn't Brooke."

The blond turned on him, "I am Brooke!"

"If you're Brooke," Dean challenged, "then I want you to clear up something for me: see, we came all the way from fricking Ohio to rescue a girl named Brooke, and we show up, find you about to be roasted by some danged dragon Wesen, never let you out of our sight, and the one time you give us the slip, all of a sudden you talk different, you act different, and you don't remember us?"

Brooke stared into his face, completely mystified—until she figured out the missing piece in all of this. "Oh! Well now it all makes complete sense!" She gasped. "I don't know why I didn't figure it out sooner!"

"Figure what out?" Nick asked.

Brooke nodded to the Winchesters. "Sam and Dean, the girl you met the other night and thought was me, was actually my twin sister, Raven."