Four days later, we were back in the Impala speeding down the road. Sam had heard news of blonde girls going missing, all from a particular club, and they suspected vampires based on a bunch of clues in the news story that I wasn't really sure of yet and that they didn't seem inclined to discuss in front of me.

"We should send her to Bobby's," Dean said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

"We don't have time, Dean. We'd have to drive halfway across the country and back, and by that time more people will be dead."

"We can't take her on a vampire hunt with us. It's too dangerous."

"We've got no choice."

"We could get room at another motel and put her up there until we're done," Dean suggested, pulling into crappy looking motel.

"After what happened the last time she was left alone for any length of time? I don't think so," Sam said.

Stung, I piped up from the back seat, "I'll stay out of the way. You won't have to worry about me."

Dean turned the car off and turned around. "If you don't follow orders exactly while we're on this hunt, I swear to god, I am sending you back to Bobby's and you are never coming on another hunt with us again, ever. Do you understand me?"

I flushed bright red. "Yes, Dean."

"This will be extremely dangerous. Vampires hunt by scent. There will be no point where we can relax our guard. You need to follow every order we give you, no exceptions." He was deadly serious.

"Yes, Dean," I whispered.

He turned to Sam. "How did Dad do this?"

Sam shrugged. "He mostly left us on our own and you in charge," Sam said. He looked up from the paper he was reading. "Let's get set up."

They spent the rest of the day doing preparations: sharpening their weapons, visiting the morgue to get dead man's blood, putting the blood in syringes, and that kind of stuff. I stayed in the hotel studying, reading, or watching TV, but when they weren't paying attention to me, I jotted down notes on vampires in one of my new notebooks. I'd lost the old one to the accidental fire in the old house, but there was no way I wasn't going to learn as much as I could about everything they did.

As the sun was going down, Dean beckoned to me. I climbed off my bed and followed him outside to a brush pile that the hotel had behind it. "Burn it," he said shortly. I looked at him questioningly. "We're not going to have time later. You need to get it out now." I shrugged, braced myself, and lit up the brush, burning it to ashes in seconds.

"All right, we're going to make some modifications to the room to make it safer. Stay away from the windows and door." He led me back to the room where Sam was dismantling the beds and putting the mattresses and box-springs against the windows and outside walls. Dean helped him. They left my roll-away bed as it was.

I flopped back on the roll-away and picked up my novel. I pretended to read it as they gathered up their weapons and syringes. Dean looked at me. "Be good," he said. "Stay away from the windows and door," he repeated.

I got up and hugged both of them, and they left. I listened to the Impala drive away with a hard knot in my stomach, hoping that they would make it back ok. Then, I realized that I was alone for the first time in days.

I started with Dean's duffel bag. I dug through his clothes, looking for the journal. It wasn't in his bag. Next, I dug through Sam's clothes in his bag, but it wasn't there either. That left the laptop bag. I found it in a pouch at the front of the bag. I lifted it out carefully, noting how it had been placed in there in the first place. I cradled it carefully in my hands and took it over to the roll-away bed. I flipped it open and started looking for information about vampires.

A half an hour later, I hadn't seen any mention of vampires, but there was a lot of information in this journal, all about the guys, apparently written by their dad, who was looking for truth on what happened to their mom. It was fascinating. It had all sorts of stuff that I didn't know in it. I leaned against the wall and settled in to read.

I woke up when the motel room door crashed open and Dean came in carrying a blonde girl over his shoulder. Shit! I had fallen asleep reading the journal! I quickly shoved it under my pillow and stood up.

"Get in the bathroom and shut the door," Dean said to me as Sam came in after him. "Do not come out until we give the ok." He paused a beat and when I didn't immediately act, he said, "Move!"

I jumped, grabbed the blankets off my bed, and hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me and locking it. I doubted the flimsy lock would actually protect me if something went wrong, but I couldn't help it. I put my blankets into the bathtub and climbed in, settling down on top of them. It seemed cleaner, and maybe a little bit safer, than the floor.

The bathroom door was in no way sound-proof and I could hear Sam and Dean as they questioned the girl they had brought back. She was a vampire and they wanted to know where her nest was, but it turned out that she didn't know she was a vampire. Some guy had basically spiked her drink with vampire blood and turned her unawares. She said she could hear a heart pumping half a block away. They talked for a couple more minutes and then I heard her scream and a thud.

It was another forty-five minutes before Dean knocked on the bathroom door. I opened it and looked around the room. Nothing looked different. The girl was gone, but there was also no sign she had ever been there. "Time for bed," Dean said. He looked tired and worn down. Sam wasn't in the room. I grabbed my blankets from the tub and let Dean tuck me into bed. I fell asleep to the sound of the shower running, my hand under the pillow on the journal.

When I woke up the next morning, Sam and Dean were already up. Dean was gone and Sam was working on his laptop. I sat up and looked at Sam. "Should I go for a run?"

He didn't even look up from the laptop. "No. You're not leaving the room alone."

"It's daylight, Sam. They're vampires. They can't even go outside in the daylight."

"That's a myth," Sam said. "It just hurts their skin. They can still go out in it." He looked up. "Shower and get dressed. When Dean gets back, we'll go out for food."

I hesitated. The journal was still under my pillow. I wished I had a better place to stash it until I could get it back in Sam's laptop bag. I decided a little more cover than the pillow wouldn't hurt, so when I got up, I scooped up my blankets and dumped them on top of the pillow. Then I grabbed my clothes backpack and headed into the bathroom.

The day was basically a repeat of the previous. After Dean got back and we went out for some food, I spent the rest of the day studying, reading, watching TV, and basically staying out of their way as they prepared for the evening's hunt. Both of them were incredibly tense and I was trying to do everything I could to stay on their good sides, especially since I knew I had the journal under my pillow. So far they hadn't noticed it was missing. I could only hope that would continue.

Since I'd burned up the motel's brush pile the previous evening, Dean drove me to a local park, put a couple of bags of coal into a charcoal grill, and had me burn the charcoal. It worked surprisingly well. The charcoal took much more effort to burn, and it took longer to burn the smaller amount. We still went through four bags before the excess was burned off. Dean looked incredibly satisfied when we were done. I was pleased too. Burning the charcoal was way less noticeable than burning huge piles of wood or brush, and much easier to come by.

He took me back to the room and they left on their hunt. I got the same warning that I had the night before. Be good, and stay away from the windows and door.

It was the perfect time to put the journal back in Sam's satchel, but it was also a great chance to start reading it again. Curiosity won out, and I unburied the journal from under my pillow and opened it back up. I hadn't gotten very far the night before. The journal was handwritten and the words were all cramped together. Plus, sometimes I didn't know what the words meant, so I had to go look them up or write them down to look up later. After a couple of hours, I gave up reading and started flipping through the pages looking for information on vampires.

I jumped about a foot when Sam slammed the door open and then shut it behind him. He immediately went to the window to look out and I took the opportunity to shove the journal back under my pillow. I got up and took a couple of steps into the room to draw attention away from the bed. "Where's Dean?" I asked.

Sam sighed. "There were some complications. He should be here soon." He looked at me and looked at his watch. "You should be in bed. Go on, brush your teeth and put your PJs on." He went back to pacing the room and looking out the window now and then. I got ready for bed and he tucked me in. "Go to sleep," he said. "Dean's fine." He didn't sound too sure of that.

I rolled over so that I was facing the wall and waited, worrying whether or not Dean was even going to come back. I reached under my pillow and put my hand on the journal. I should've put it back when I had the chance. I just hadn't though Sam would be back so soon.

I lay there for an hour, listening to Sam pace the room. Finally, the door opened and Dean came in. Sam started yelling at him for risking himself and Dean brushed him off. Someone named Gordon was hunting them and Dean figured out that Bela was the one who had told Gordon where we were. Dean called Bela and after talking to her, told her in a deadly voice that he was going to kill her. It scared me.

Dean hung up, and I climbed out of bed and wrapped my arms around his waist. "Go back to bed, sweetheart," he said, stroking my hair.

"I can't sleep. Can I please stay up with you?" I asked. He sighed and scooped me up, putting me into a chair next to the table. He grabbed my blanket off of my bed and covered me with it. Then he and Sam got out their whetting stones to sharpen their knives. I curled into a ball in the chair and rested my head against the wall, watching them.

They discussed Gordon. Sam said that Gordon needed to die, and Dean was surprised at that but agreed with him. Then Dean's phone rang. Dean glanced at the screen and answered the phone with an angry "What?"

It was Bela. She told Dean where to find Gordon, mostly to prevent Dean from killing her. They hung up. The guys looked at each other. Dean said, "Let's go."

He picked me up and put me back in my bed. "Stay here, sweetheart. We'll be back soon."

"Promise?" I whispered, scared. I'd heard Bela's warning not to go after Gordon.

"Promise," he said. He tucked me in, turned out the light, and he and Sam left.

Not taking any more chances, I got up, dug out the journal, and put it back in Sam's satchel. I went back to bed, secure in the idea that I'd made sure I wasn't going to get caught.