Chapter 9


I felt very chastened, since I was pretty sure my mouth had been wide-open the whole time. Dean looked somewhat abashed, but not that much. We walked closer to Portia as she crossed the room.

"Why can't James come here?" Dean asked as we stopped near a small grouping of armchairs.

"He's a cop," she said, looking around, her expression a mix of annoyance and worry.

"And a witch…apparently," Dean said.

"That makes it worse," Portia said. "The community here feel that he should be using his position to keep them out of jail, and he disagrees."

In her short, gleaming, metallic-gold cocktail dress, she stood out like a neon sign on a dark night, but no one had approached us. Huffing out an exasperated exhale, she turned around a couple of times then sat on the armchair closest, waving a hand indicating that we should do the same. I could see Dean was ready to make a joke about the turning around thing and I leaned closer to Portia.

"So, what's the story with the witches here? Is it all covens and raising cones of power?"

"Cones of power?" she repeated mockingly, one brow arching up. "Uh, no. Every practitioner operates differently. Some work with others, some work alone, some use power from one source, some from many different sources…they all have different preferences, different views of the uses of power, different abilities and skills and experience."

To be honest, my only knowledge of witchcraft was the stuff from tv and movies – Bewitched, Bell, Book and Candle, Charmed…you know the ones I mean. It made me wonder how James had gotten involved, if he was a cop first.

"Did James somehow discover he had power? After the, um, case he worked, I mean?" I asked Portia, glancing at Dean and back to the familiar.

"He did," she said, a bit caustically as she also glanced at Dean. "He studied the alchemist's work for months after, and he felt the Call."

"The Call?" Dean asked sceptically.

"Every witch, warlock, necromancer and magician feels it, at some point in their lives, if they have even the slightest talent," Portia explained, leaning back in her chair. "They can't escape it, once they've felt it."

"How's it took so long for James?" Dean looked around at the other customers in the place. Although we were only ten or twelve feet from a group at a table and another seated in a cosy ring of sofas, I couldn't make out anything of their conversations, and I hoped the acoustical trick worked both ways, keeping our business private as well.

"The Call comes when it will," Portia said, with a lot more hoity-toity pompousness than I thought was strictly speaking necessary. "Like the sacred bond between witch and familiar, we do not choose but are Chosen."

"Portia, ma chère," a drawlingly languid voice said from behind us. "Where have you been, luscious thing?"

Portia looked up and Dean and I turned around to see an immaculately dressed and lacquered man with jet black hair and heavily made-up bright green eyes standing close the back of the sofa.

"Dean, Terry, meet Philippe LeChat," Portia said, smiling coolly at the man. "Dean and Terry are Wiccans."

The eyes widened slightly as Philippe picked his way between the sofa and the armchair and turned gracefully in front of the free armchair, dropping into it lightly.

Now, I'm not what you might call highly educated by any means, but two years of high school French had enable me to decipher big yellow pencils, directions to the Eiffel Tower and creatures of a feline persuasion. The man's last name was even more obvious than Portia's and I watched him fuss and fidget in the chair for a few minutes until he'd settled, knowing where I'd seen that behaviour before.

Dean sneezed and looked around the floor.

"You're allergic to cats?" I asked him, a little incredulously I had to say. Was that why he'd leapt through the roof at that wood mill when he'd been infected with ghost fever?

"Yeah," he said, frowning as he peered behind the sofa. "Not all the time, but certain kinds."

Philippe chuckled delightedly and Portia gave him a bored look. He put a hand over his mouth and shrugged.

"What's happening with James?" he asked, ignoring Dean's second sneeze. "There's been a lot of talk lately."

"About?"

"Karma and the threefold law and numerous other speculations, none of which, I'm sure, are true," the familiar said, looking at his fingernails. "He did bring this on himself, you know."

"After years of being everyone's darling cop-in-their-pocket?" she retorted sweetly. "Where's Spencer?"

"Somewhere around," Philippe said, waving a hand vaguely toward the bar. He leaned forward. "You shouldn't have gone so far, sweetness, they would've forgiven him but for that."

Dean and I exchanged a glance at that slip, wondering what the familiar could've done. We didn't get the chance to ask, though.

"Portia," the voice behind us this time was a deep, male one, belonging to a tall, slender man dressed in a featureless black suit. The jacket looked Chinese, with the high collar around his neck, not a single button or bead to draw the eye from the face above it.

He looked at Dean, dark-grey eyes thoughtful, then turned his gaze to me. For a moment, I felt like a bug on a pin, held still and voiceless and trapped in that gaze, then the feeling disappeared but his expression seemed complicated, and his eyes flicked back to me before they turned to Philippe.

I don't think it was my imagination that the familiar flinched away slightly from him.

"I missed you at Rachel's," he said to the smaller man.

"I'm sorry," Philippe said, his gaze dropping submissively.

Beside me, I could feel Dean squirm in his chair.

The tall man turned to look at Portia, and his expression softened. "It's good to see you out, Portia," he said, inclining his head a little toward her. She seemed uncomfortable, although she smiled and nodded at him.

"How is dear James?"

"He's much better, thank you, Spencer," she said, her chin lifting a little at the lie. "I'll tell him you asked after him."

"He is an extraordinary power, you know," Spencer said, his voice dropping a little. "I would hate anything to happen to him."

At that, Portia's unease seemed to dissolve, although I wasn't sure why. I wouldn't have trusted the guy as far as I could throw him.

"Thank you," she said, then seemed to feel Dean's high-voltage stare burning into the side of her neck. "We were wondering if you knew of any way that a mage might be able to effect a transference to another?"

The man stiffened, very slightly, as he shook his head. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who caught it. "No, my dear. It would take an incredible amount of power and for what possible purpose could one use it for?"

He glanced across at Dean and me, his eyes lingering a second or two longer on me, I thought, then looked back at the familiar. "If one wanted to persecute a fellow practitioner, there are many easier ways to do so," he continued. "A psychic drain – or even meddling in the witch's life – is more effective and demands less."

Nodding at the explanation, I saw her slide a told-you-so look at Dean.

"Philippe, come," Spencer said abruptly. He looked back at Portia and smiled, but I got the feeling it wasn't a real one. "Tell James I am watching out for him," he said to her. "And for you too, my dear."

On the armchair opposite us, Philippe blinked a few times and then – well – he morphed – there's no other description for the peculiar transformation. You know how you can take two photos in a graphics program and make them go through the process of turning from one into the other? That's what it looked like, except that it was fast and it was pretty smooth. His black suit shrank and became fluffy and shiny as his frame reverse-telescoped, his face and eyes disappearing into the tri-cornered face of a feline, ears popping out through smooth black fur on his head. Dean sneezed again, as the big black cat stared at him, its back arching up involuntarily when Spencer stroked a hand down it.

"Good night."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean paced back and forth across the motel room, brows pulled together. "C'mon, Bobby, you gotta have something!"

From the speaker of the phone sitting on the table, I could clearly hear the old man's exhale. "Nuthin' so far," Bobby said and I watched Dean's scowl deepen.

"How's Sam, Lauren?" I asked, partly to defuse the tension in the room, partly because Dean had started firing questions at Bobby and Lauren the minute the call connected and we hadn't heard anything about his brother.

"His temperature is fluctuating," Lauren said, her tone worried. "It doesn't seem to have a cause, it's not an infection."

"Or if it is, it's one we can do anythin' about," Bobby added and I could almost see the look that must've passed between them. The reference wasn't subtle enough, and Dean came to a halt next to the table, staring at the phone.

"You think it's his blood?"

There was a sigh on the other end of the line.

"Mebbe," Bobby allowed reluctantly. "Kevin said that the contract is between the contender an' God."

"So – what?" Dean asked, a little belligerently. "God's trying to get rid of Sam's…impurities?"

"Dean, we're not sure what's going on," Lauren interjected hastily. "Kevin hasn't found anything further about the trials so far, and Sam's functioning, he's just tired –"

"And burning up," Dean muttered, possibly too low for them to hear him.

"We'll keep looking for this witchcraft stuff," Bobby said, changing the subject adroitly. "But if you've got some high'n'mighty adept there, there's a good chance you're not gonna be able to do anything about it."

"Witches die if you put a bullet in them," Dean said, glaring at the phone.

"And that's a real neat trick, when you can't find 'em," Bobby retorted, ending the call to ensure he had the last word.

Dean reached out and picked up the phone, stabbing his thumb on the end button and shoving it back into his coat pocket. For a few seconds he stood still, his head bowed as he stared at the floor. Then he looked up.

"Should've been me," he said, his expression hardening to stone.

I thought about that. If Dean'd killed the hellhound, had been the one to do the trials, would the same process being going on with him? I had to guess that it would be, it was God's game, after all. He might not have had demon blood to be burned out of his veins, but I had a horrible feeling that his nightmares would have been a whole lot worse than Sam's could be, given the way he felt about what he'd done in Hell. And if this contract was going to get rid of the demon blood, leave Sam as purely human again, who was to say it wasn't supposed to be that way?

"Maybe it worked out this way because Sam needed it more?" I suggested to him, very tentatively.

"I don't want to hear that," he growled, turning away, and I realised he'd already come to that conclusion on his own.

There was no percentage to pushing him about this, I knew all too well. At the moment, he was pissed because he felt like he'd been boxed in, seeing a problem, unable to fix it. He'd get over it, eventually, and bend his mind toward working around the problem, but for the moment, the old Bette Davis line ran through my head about seatbelts and bumpy nights and I pulled the laptop around on the table top and opened a search window instead of arguing with him.

Lauren had made up two pendants, of the gold we'd acquired for the bunker's protection, and had cast them in the same sigils Cas had given us. Dean wore one, Sam the other, but we didn't really know how well they worked out in the real, wide world. I was wearing a pendant as well, the only protection Cas could find that he thought would keep me mostly out of the line of sight of the likes of Crowley and demons in general. It was not the same sigil as the one Sam'd had found before. It was Enochian and designed to deflect the attention, rather than really hide the wearer. Touching wood, I thought it seemed to be working pretty well, but again, there was no real way to tell if it was without some sort of confrontation that I didn't really want to have.

The search screen returned about one and three-quarter million hits. I let out a frustrated exhale and propped my chin on my hand as I started to look through them. Witches, witchcraft, magic, spells…this world was as entranced by the concepts as my own, but with far less ability to do anything about it.

I looked up as Dean grabbed his keys and opened the door, lifting an eyebrow in query at him.

"Going out," he muttered. "I'll get some food. Won't be long."

It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest I go along as well, when I decided he would be better off having some time to himself. I nodded and looked back at the screen, hearing the door close behind him and a bit further away, the engine of the black car grumble into life.

I kind of got lost in reading about the various permutations of magic in this world, making notes of things to ask James or Portia in the morning, wondering if half the cantrips and fancies listed on the 'net here were as effective as they claimed to be, when my stomach started growling and I looked at my watch.

Two hours had passed since Dean had left, and while that's not an excessive length of time to go and have a think and get your head together, it was a long time for him when he'd promised to go get some food. I got up from the table and wandered around the room, feeling useless and uneasy and finally went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee simply for something productive to do.

By the time it'd perked, I was starting to wonder if I shouldn't be calling Bobby and asking what the heck I could do, and the door opened, and he came back in, lugging a couple of big sacks of food and a six-pack of beer. I leaned back against the counter and pretended that I hadn't been on the verge of full-scale panic.

"Sorry," he said, by way of explanation, putting the food onto the table and going to the fridge to stash the beers.

"For what?" I asked him, relieved my voice was not above its usual pitch and was quite steady.

He looked around, knocking the top off a bottle and tossing it without looking into the trash can in the corner.

"For taking so long," he said, giving me a look that said plainly that he'd known I'd been worried, nervous, anxious and on the verge of a panic attack. So much for the cool, calm exterior.

"I saw James," he added, going to the table and moving the laptop and my notes aside so he could unpack the take-out. "He said that there're only three witches he knows of in St Louis who have the juice to pull off this spell."

"He knows them?"

"Yeah," he said, catching my eye and nodding. "One of them is that guy, Spencer, we met at the bar. The other two follow a different kind of discipline, he said."

"What kind?" I asked, going to the table and taking the burger he passed me, unwrapping it and holding it one-handed as I flipped through my notes. "There are, like, forty different kinds of practitioners of both sides and in the middle."

"Well, what kind they are isn't so important as why they might be targeting James," he said, sitting down and picking up his burger.

"I thought everyone was annoyed at James for not using his position to their advantage?"

"They are," Dean agreed, pushing his mouthful into one side of his mouth to keep talking. "Portia arranged a meet with one of the community snitches," he added, chewing and swallowing fast. "The dude said that most of them are pissed but not enough to put a whammy on him. He said that there were a few who were really offended about something else."

"What?"

He took another bite, taking his time to chew and swallow that one. I stared at him impatiently.

"Apparently it's a big no-no to get familiar with your familiar," he said finally.

Philippe's comment came back to me, the regret in his voice. "You mean…?"

"Yeah."

"Why are they taking it out on him? Why not on her?" I asked, taking a bite as I realised I was still holding the burger.

"He's the witch," Dean answered with a shrug. "There was something about how they don't choose each other, how it just happens, but that was about all I got from him."

"So," I said, taking another bite and trying to think through what we knew. "James and Portia became an item, and that's against someone's idea of good witchy behaviour, so now they've framed him for a string of murders?"

He finished the burger and scrunched the wrapping, throwing it overhand into the trash can from his seat. I heard it go in, and wondered how long I'd have to practise to do that as casually as he could.

"Seems like it," he said, pulling out the second burger and unwrapping it. "If it's not James himself who is killing and blocking it out for some reason."

That took me by surprise. "I thought you thought he was innocent?"

"He's a witch," he said, looking at me over his burger. "How innocent do you think that is?"

"But he hasn't done any harm to anyone," I argued. "Except the people he's put in jail, and that's his job."

It occurred to me that he was swinging on this point, and I couldn't work out why.

"Are you regretting letting the werewolf go?" I asked, frowning at him.

He looked away. "My job is to hunt down evil sons-of-bitches and make sure they don't go attacking the population."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing," he said, taking a huge bite and looking blandly at me with cheeks bulging.

I wasn't sure how to tackle that so I waved a hand at my notes instead. "Anyway, it's not James," I told him, licking the ketchup off my fingers before I reached over and pulled one of the sheets of paper from the pile and handed it to him. "There're a few spells that can invade the victim's consciousness and make them think that they're doing things they're not."

He took it and read through slowly, finishing his food at the same time.

'Spencer said this'd take more effort than it was worth, didn't he?" he asked when he finished.

I nodded. "He said it would be easier to do in other ways, but I checked those out and they don't leave the same impact – not on the victim and not in the real world."

"So, if someone wanted to really screw with you," he said. "They'd do it this way?"

I nodded again. "And the St Louis PD have been building a case against James," I added. I'd found the information using Charlie's password cracking software. It really was pretty depressing how easy it'd been to break through their security with her little set of programs. "There's a case file on him, that's why he was suspended."

Dean frowned. "I can't go in there," he said, thinking about the last time they'd been seen in St Louis. It hadn't been them but it was too recent, and on top of the previous occasion, a lot of cops would know his face.

"I thought I'd go, as a reporter," I told him, coming up with that idea on the spot. "I could interview the lead detective, see what they've got?"

He nodded, a bit unwillingly, I thought. "Alright, I'll see James in the morning."

It was the morning, nearly three a.m. in fact, but I repressed the desire to point that out.

We got ready for bed slowly, me thinking of how to raise his unhappiness with the trials and what they were doing to his brother, him thinking about the same thing, I think, but seemingly unwilling to talk about it. I wondered if his about-face on the issue of helpful or at least, harmless, monsters was due to those thoughts.

When he turned off the lamp on the nightstand, I rolled closer to him, sliding a hand over his stomach. He moved his arm, wrapping it around me.

"Lauren said that God tests those who work for him, but not to death," I said softly. I was paraphrasing, of course, but I thought it was an important point. Even Abraham hadn't had to kill his son, only show that he would if he was asked.

He let out a long exhale. "Yeah. Maybe you were right," he said, his arm tightening around me. "Maybe this is something that Sam has to do, get through."

Clearing his throat a little, I felt his head duck to look down at me. "I was thinking of what I'd've had to go through, if it was me," he admitted softly.

I kind of froze then, hearing that. It was the best excuse ever to talk about it, and I could hardly believe he'd let it out.

"People change without having God's eye on them," I said, not sure where I was going with it, only trying to follow my instincts.

I felt his cheek lift against my hair as he smiled. "Knowing what the consequence was, I wouldn't do it again," he said. "But if I didn't know…"

He shook his head. "I could feel the way I was losing myself, Terry," he said, his voice hardly audible. "Every day, every minute, it was – it was –" He stopped, unable, I think, to find the words to describe it. "When I got out that box, and I breathed clean air, I hardly remembered any of it." His breath whispered out, brushing over my hair, and under my cheek, I could hear his heart beat, a little faster than it should've been. "Like - like the way you can't remember a nightmare, when you first wake up, just the feeling of panic and terror, but none of the details. Sometimes the detail comes back later. What happened down there came back, and after a while I remembered all of it."

He was silent for a few minutes, but it wasn't the right time to ask questions. I'd never heard this much from him about what had happened and how it'd felt, just bits and pieces, little ones, mostly. I curled my arm around his ribs and waited.

"Before, about a year before, I think," he said, turning a little bit more toward me as his head tilted back to the pillow. "It was before we knew the demon was possessing Dad, we were in the cabin, lying low…and I couldn't get it out of my head, how easy I'd shot that demon, how easy it was to keep at Meg, knowing she was dyin', not caring about that at all, just caring about what she could tell us. I told Sam, told him it scared me."

I remembered the scene clearly, and felt a slight double-take sensation as I recognised that in this case, the writers had gotten him completely right. It came slowly to me that it was that fear that'd been the basis for his fear of what he'd done in Hell. The fear that there was something missing from him, some part of being human that he thought he didn't have.

"What happens to us, when we're young, what we see the adults around us doing, that has more of an impact than we know," I said, wondering again if I was saying the right thing. "Your role model – your father, he was –" I hesitated because all I really knew of John Winchester was his brief appearance in a few episodes. He'd seemed consistent to me each time the show had shown him, but was it right?

"He was dumped into a situation that he had no idea how to handle," I said, half-cringing as I expected him to contradict me. "With two small children and no way of knowing how to protect them and keep them safe but the way he'd been raised, the things he'd learned in service."

To my surprise, there was no argument from him. He dragged in a deep breath, his chest lifting under my head, and let it out.

"I know."

"What you learned was that your family had to be protected, no matter what it took, no matter what the cost."

"Yeah."

"So," I said, rolling up onto one elbow to look at him. "Could you have done anything other than what you did?"

He didn't answer that and I could barely make out his features in the almost-dark of the motel room.

"It's a part of who you are," I said, leaning against him. "It's not all you are."

"Why doesn't that scare you?"

"Maybe I'm braver than you give me credit for," I said, a little loftily, glad to hear his disbelieving snort.

"Maybe I know what you'd do rather than let anyone you care about get hurt," I added a second later, and a shiver ran through him, his arms wrapping more tightly around me.

"Maybe you don't have the sense to know when you should run," he suggested, wriggling down a bit, until we were level, his breath gusting over my lips.

"That's a possibility too," I allowed graciously. "But you're not getting rid of me that easy."

"You think Sam'll be alright?" he asked. It sounded to me like he needed someone to say that yeah, Sam was gonna be fine, and I couldn't do that, but I tried my best to get as close as I could.

"I don't think any of this has been a coincidence," I told him.

"Not even this?" he asked, his hands warm on my back. I could feel him letting go of some of the feelings that had been plaguing him, his focus back here in the present, right here, right now.

"This least of all," I managed to get out without my voice wavering as his fingers traced small, inexplicably heated patterns over my skin.

"You think we've got the time to show our gratitude for non-random events before we have to get up?" he asked, his voice dropping into that deep, soft rumble that he seemed to know crumbled whatever defences I might have in place.

"I think it would be churlish to not show sufficient gratitude for things like this," I said breathlessly. "We've got a couple of hours."

I tried to remember what it was I was supposed to be doing when daylight arrived, but it was all too much trouble, and I let it go.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The St Louis police department's offices were very, very modern and very, very open. There was glass everywhere and I wondered briefly how anyone could work there when every conversation in the place practically could be heard by anyone in there.

The detective's name was Ed Stoltz. Looked nothing like Eric, more like a short line-backer for some football team. And he was arrogant. And, I thought, after talking to him for a few minutes, jealous. Of James.

"Yeah, well, a lot of guys thought he cut his teeth too early and wasn't up to the pressure of the position," he was saying as I made notes in my little notepad.

I nodded sympathetically at him. "That meteoric rise started with the – uh – serial's case, didn't it?"

"Lucky break," Stoltz said, his gaze cutting away. "Tell you the truth, he always seemed a little too interested in that case, if you know what I mean."

I didn't, but I could guess, and I didn't think it would further our information. "The murders in the last four weeks," I prompted him. "How is the evidence shaping up? Can I get a quote on your progress?"

"No names, but yeah, but you can say a source told you we're closing in on the son-of-a-bitch," he said, puffing his chest out a bit.

"Thanks, that's terrific," I said, writing it down. "Gonna give me a hint?"

"Not today," he said, his face closing up again. "Try me tomorrow, end of the day."

I nodded and felt my stomach sink. That didn't leave much time at all.

"Thanks for your time, Detective," I said, getting to my feet and tucking my notebook in my purse. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"You do that," he said, glancing around. "You can find your own way out, right?"

I nodded and turned away, hurrying for the distant wall and the staircase.

It was just as well Dean hadn't tried to fake his way in here, I thought as I passed desk after desk of cops. He'd have needed a mask to get through without being recognised.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"Why's this dick building a case against you?" Dean asked James.

We'd met for lunch and to compare notes and Dean had driven us straight to the apartment when he heard about the detective's attitude.

"I don't know," James said, glancing at Portia. "He's bent out of shape because I made Lieutenant before him, but my record stands on its own."

"What could they have to tie you to the murders without question?" I asked him and again he shook his head.

"There's a way you could find out," Portia said, staring at James worriedly.

"Breaking into the local police department, in this town, is not something I can do," Dean said, looking at her.

"Not physically," she agreed, her gaze remaining on James.

"I can't do that with these on," James reminded her, lifting his arms, the iron chains clanking from the shackles on his wrists.

"Astral travel?" Dean asked, looking from Portia to James. "You can take me with?"

"Out of these? Yes," James said.

Dean glanced at me and I looked back at him, unable to even give my opinion. The witch had asked for his help, not the other way around.

"Alright." He got to his feet and walked around to unlock the chains holding James.

I couldn't really imagine what iron felt like to a witch but watching James face when they fell to the floor it looked like the chains had been draining him, somehow. His face regained some colour and he breathed deeply for the first time since they'd gone on and Portia seemed relieved as well.

James stood up and waved a hand to the door of the bedroom. "I need to eat before we go," he said, and Dean gave a shrug of acquiescence, following the witch and the woman out of the room, with me trailing along behind.

At the kitchen counter, James sat down and picked up a remote for the small tv at the end of the counter as Portia opened the fridge and started making something or other for him.

The news blared on, the anchor looking tense and drawn as he reported another murder for the previous night.

I think we all swung around and stared at it.

"It couldn't've been him," Portia said, her gaze shooting over to Dean. "It couldn't!"

Dean studied the report without commenting then he plucked the remote from James' grip and turned it off.

"No," he agreed, looking at the witch. "Eat fast, man, we need to know what's going on."

James nodded agreement.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

What is there to say about astral travel? It's not going to overtake planes, trains or cars for visiting other places.

Dean and I sat on either side of James and I shivered involuntarily when the witch's hand picked up mine. For a moment, nothing happened and I had time to wonder if he really could do it, then I was yanked into his mind and vision and rocketed out of the building, over the city and down to the street of the police department's building in a nauseating and violently jerking kind of way, much like you feel on the Japanese high speed rail, if it included vertical and horizontal curves.

We bounced into the building, through walls, sometimes not making the bends in the corridors but going straight through them, slightly above the people present on the floor, thankfully because I didn't think I was gonna cope all that well with even a fractional glimpse of someone's insides, and to the bull pen where I'd interviewed Ed. Ed was just getting up when we saw him and we somehow slammed to a halt, a sensation that couldn't've been real but nevertheless shook my teeth in my skull. Following the cop at a more sedate pace, James took us into a room at the other end of the floor and stopped completely.

I only had time for a fleeting impression of what the room contained, as I was seeing through James' vision instead of being able to look around at what I wanted to see. I got a vague impression of a huge noticeboard, pinned with photos and sheets of paper, strings leading across it, then a closer look at an open file on the desk and a sense of familiarity before we were zapping back, out of the room, the floor, the building, lifting up over the streets and thrown back into our bodies back in the apartment.

"Whoa!" I heard Dean say as James dropped my hand and launched himself to his feet. "Some warning next time!"

"You were right," James ground out, ignoring Portia's hand on his arm. "He's setting me up."

"How?" Portia asked him. "Why?"

"There was a witness statement," James said tightly. "Signed by Philippe."

"WHAT?!"

"I have to go," James told us, swinging around.

"Uh, no," Dean said, getting to his feet. "No, you have to stay here and let us deal with this."

James turned back and looked at him, and I saw a regret in his face. "I'm sorry, Dean, you shouldn't be here at all."

He lifted his hand abruptly, twisting his wrist and Dean was thrown into the corner of the bedroom, hitting both walls with his head and back before he was dropped onto the nightstand and crumpled to the floor.

"James!" Portia looked at him in shock.

"He can't help now," James said, turning to look at me. "Are you going to stop me?"

"I wouldn't know how," I admitted to him, and he nodded, satisfied, apparently.

"You don't know what's going on," Portia tried again, her hand reaching out to clutch at his sleeve.

"I know who's behind it," James countered, pulling his arm free. "And you cannot help me."

"James, don't!" she cried out, shaking her head. "We'll do this together."

He stared at her, his face cold and hard. "No, we won't. It's not safe for you."

Turning away from her, he said, "Our time together is over."

I was surprised to hear that, not surprised at all to see her face screw up in anger. "Standing by you is my duty, my choice!"

"Portia, the ceiling is coming down on me," he said, looking back at her. His voice had gentled a little. "You still have a life."

"No, I don't," she told him, tears filling her eyes. "Not without you. Please."

For a second, I thought she might've gotten through to him, but his face got all stony again as he shook his head. "Portia, go."

"James…" She backed up a step, then another and I suddenly realised he was controlling her, forcing her away from him.

"Go!" he thundered, lifting his arm to point to the door.

Like a robot, she turned mechanically around and I heard her heels clicking across the wooden floor, much like her claws had clicked when she'd been in the persona of a dog the other day. The sound got fainter and fainter and then I heard the front door of the apartment open and close with a resounding clang.

James' face crumpled up a bit, his eyes shutting tightly as he heard it.

"It's Spencer, isn't it?" I asked him, and he shook himself, seeming to snap out of the funk.

"Philippe is his familiar," he said, turning to the bureau against the other wall of the room and going to it. "Spencer is – was – my mentor, the one who showed me what I could do."

There was a profound sadness in his voice, and I still couldn't get an idea of what he was thinking.

"Why would he turn against you?"

"I don't know," he said, pulling out a drawstring bag from the top drawer. "That's what I have to find out."

"You think going in to confront this guy without any backup is a good idea?" I asked, looking at Dean's sprawled frame in the corner.

He followed my glance and shrugged. "He's a hunter," he said, frowning. "I didn't ask him to help."

"I thought he was your friend," I said noncommittally.

James turned back to look at me, his expression cold. "I have brought this on myself," he said. "Being who I am, breaking the rules of the community I committed myself to. None of this would've happened if I hadn't loved her."

"James, let us help," I tried again.

"You can't," he said, shaking his head. "Spencer wouldn't even break a sweat killing you two and I don't need more deaths on my head."

He turned away and strode briskly out of the room and I went around to Dean, half-lifting, half-dragging out of the broken furniture and the tight corner, trying to see if there was any more damage done than just knocking him out.

He groaned as I got my arm under his shoulders, his eyelids fluttering in protest. "Wh-a?"

"You hurt?"

"What?"

"Are you injured?" I said, exasperation making my voice sound a little bit like Reese's in the Terminator. I think Dean might've got that as well, because he made a concerted effort to sit up, rubbing the back of his head.

"No," he said, looking around. "Where's James?"

"Gone," I said, rocking back on my heels. "He's gone to confront Spencer."

"He's sure about the guy?"

"Seems to be," I told him, straightening up and holding out my hand. Dean took it and let me struggle for a while trying to pull him up, then exerted some effort of his own and got to his feet.

"Where's Portia?" he asked next.

"James sent her away, told her it was too dangerous," I said.

"Would that work if I said it to you?" he asked, his tone a bit lighter.

I made a face at him. "No. And it was weird, she looked like she had to go, like he was controlling her."

He nodded. "Yeah, the witch can do that."

"Huh."

"Thought you were researching all the order stuff so's you'd know about this?" he asked, looking at me speculatively.

I wondered if he'd guessed what I'd been trying to do and decided that he was just fishing.

"Haven't got to witches yet," I said with a sniff. "What are we going to do about this? The consensus seems to be that Spencer is a major-league player."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, scowling as he saw the crack in the front. "You got your phone?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling it out of my coat pocket. "Call Bobby?"

He nodded.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

We walked down the street toward the club and I refrained from yelling at him.

"You knew he'd do something like this?"

"It was a fifty-fifty," he said, looking at my phone.

On the screen, the little red dot blinked in the one spot without moving. Dean'd slipped a micro-dot into James' pocket before we'd gone a mind-travellin' with him, and the dot reported back faithfully on where he was. I should've been used to it, he'd bugged the Legacy, after all. It just wasn't something I'd ever seen them think to do on the show.

He handed the phone back to me and pulled out the glass bottle he'd made up with what Bobby assured him was a witch-killing potion. It didn't look like much, just a clear liquid, a bit oily-looking. Unscrewing the lid, he stuffed a length of cloth in the top as we stopped at the mouth of the alley leading to the club, then looked at me.

"We've never exactly had a test run with this," he said and my protest died on my lips as we both heard a familiar click-click of heels on the alleys' asphalt.

Portia was walking fast toward us. "I'm coming with you."

I could see Dean thought this was a bad idea.

"We're both coming with you," I added my five-cents-worth and watched his face screw up.

"No. I can't do this if I'm worried about protecting you two," he said, looking from me to her.

Portia gave him a fine snort. "You're the one who's going to need protecting if you go in there with nothing more than that," she said acerbically. "He'll wrap you in so many spells you won't know what's up and what's down."

Dean considered that. "Can you run a diversion?"

"Of course," she said, as if there was no doubt to the matter.

"You're staying here," he said, looking at me.

"Two diversions are better than one," I told him, feeling my expression settle into stubbornness. Darned if I was going to let anyone else go in there with him and save his ass.

Don't ask me where all this misplaced bravado was coming from, I couldn't've told you to save my life. Usually, I was happy to let him call the shots on what he wanted but that, I realised a bit belatedly, had been when Sam was his backup and I trusted the two of them to handle anything that came along. That sounds bad, doesn't it? I trusted Dean to handle anything as well, I just didn't like the idea of him going in blind and without anyone to take the heat if he needed it. Maybe I'd been reading too much about the derring-do of the order's Legacies and Hunters, I didn't know. I just didn't want to leave him with no one but a familiar who was clearly more concerned about her witch than she would be about Dean.

"No." He scowled at me. "I should've left you in the car."

"Too late," I snapped back.

"Don't think I won't next time," he threatened, but there was no bite to it and I just stared back at him.

"Stay behind me," he said, his voice resigned.

"Yessir!"

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The club was empty and I saw Portia bite her lower lip as she took that in. We crept down the stairs and it wasn't until we'd almost reached the bottom that we heard them.

"Portia? This is about her?" There was disbelief in James' voice, disbelief and a lot of hurt.

"Can you imagine the insult when she chose you?" Spencer drawled out, his tone bored and yet, under that, furiously angry. "I wanted her as my soul mate the moment I saw her."

"She was meant to be my familiar."

"Oh, she's way more than familiar, isn't she? When she picked you as master, I endured it," he said, that anger seeping out more clearly as we got closer. "But you went too far, James.

Trefoil, vervain, John's wort, dill, hinder witches of their will. The little ditty was playing over and over in my mind. I'd found it on the searches and Dean had three of the four ingredients in the car. Picking up the dill from the local store, I'd made two hex bags for us, and I was hoping like heck they'd work long enough for Dean to chuck his witch-be-gone molotov at Spencer.

"I love her!" James said to the mage.

"And she you," Spencer agreed straight away. "And she will know it wasn't to be when she finds your body."

There was a deep growl from beside me and my head snapped around to see a sleek Doberman with a diamante collar launch itself across the room.

"Dammit," Dean muttered. He looked at me and waved a hand toward the nearest pillar, the unspoken command clearly get out of sight and stay out of sight.

To say things got confusing after that would be to understate the situation completely. Portia hit Spencer in the chest and knocked him to the ground, James shouted and Dean swore, racing in behind the dog.

There was a terrible high-pitched yelp as Portia was thrown across the width of the huge room, cut off when she hit the opposite wall and fell to the floor. Spencer rolled onto his feet and his hand snapped out as James' did as well. It was like watching Star Wars. Two beams of – light? magic? coherent energy? – struck each other, James' was all shades of blue, Spencer's all shades of red and gold. There was something eerily familiar about those colours, I thought as I cowered behind my pillar.

Dean barrelled and Spencer's gaze flicked to him, then he was lifted and thrown with the same ease the mage had tossed the dog, flying backward through the air over the bar and hitting the mirror and bottles with an almighty crash before falling behind it. I couldn't tell if he'd managed to light the fuse on the bottle or not.

James' power was being forced back, into him, it looked like.

"Seriously, James, you think you can me on?" Spencer said, his eyes narrowing as he pushed more of whatever it was he was exuding onto the other witch. Images of short-circuits, blow-backs, flash-points and the like filled my mind as I crawled along the floor to reach the end of the bar.

In the midst of piles of shattered glass and gooey, eye-searing and stinking alcoholic liquids, Dean moved slightly as I reached him, groaning. I pushed him up and saw a long sliver of glass protruding from his shoulder, turning my stomach as I reached out and warily gripped the end.

It came out pretty easily, but it was gross, and you know what I mean. He didn't seem to have any other pieces sticking into him and he passed me the bottle as he gingerly put his hands on the floor to lever himself onto his knees.

"What's goin' on?" he whispered to me, taking the bottle back.

"James is dying, I think," I said, lifting my head very cautiously above the level of the bar. "Spencer's stronger."

He ducked his head, and after a second, he nodded, passing the bottle back to me. "Can you get around behind him?"

Well, while I hate to admit it, of course, the thought of going anywhere near the fury of the older witch just about turned my legs to water. I nodded anyway, not wanting Dean to see my moments of weakness. From the sudden darkening of his eyes, I think he might've seen it anyway.

"I'm going to draw his attention," he said, pulling his lighter from his coat pocket and handing it to me. "I'll say the spell, you light the fuse and throw it at Spencer."

I nodded again. I couldn't've answered, my mouth was as dry as the desert.

He looked at me, his face twisting up. "You can do it."

To be honest, I didn't have his confidence in me, and to be really honest, I didn't think he had that sort of confidence in me either, it was just that we were down to the wire and there was no other choice.

Turning away, I gripped the bottle and lighter and shuffle-crawled my way back to the end of the bar. There was an open area where James and Spencer were struggling together, sort of surrounded by pillars supporting the ceiling and I thought if I stayed low and moved slowly, I might be able to slip around them.

When I cleared the end of the bar, it became horribly apparent that I wasn't going to be able to go that slow. James was suspended in the air, his body convulsing and jerking in the red-gold light of Spencer's power, his mouth open wide. He was obviously in agony.

I belly-crawled as fast as I could to the first pillar, by the stairs, stopping there for a second to force a few more deep breaths into my lungs, then started to worm my way across the floor to the second.

Behind the bar, Dean stood up, his gun drawn and aimed at Spencer. The witch saw him straight away, I think, his face, backlit by the intense colours of the energy he was controlling showing a nasty-looking smile spreading over his features.

"Insect!" he said, his fist closing tighter and James started to scream.

"Hunter," Dean corrected him and pulled the trigger.

The bullet stopped mid-air, about three feet from the witch and Spencer threw back his head and started laughing.

"It's not only his head I can get inside," he said, and I saw Dean freeze up, the gun falling from his hand, his eyes getting wider and wider.

From the expressions that flickered over his face, I doubted that whatever Spencer was doing to him was a happy experience.

And he's fully occupied now, my sadistic-personal-trainer-voice said in my head. Move your ass!

Ego voco impetu delere vos caelum et infernum.

It was the Latin incantation that gave the potion I was lugging along with me its power. Dean had been muttering it to himself the whole drive over in the car and it came back to me easily now.

Ego voco impetu delere vos caelum et infernum. Ego voco impetu delere vos caelum et infernum. Ego voco impetu delere vos caelum et infernum.

I got around the second pillar and inched my way across the floor behind the witch. When I was right behind him, I got to my knees and ran my thumb over the lighter's wheel, holding it under the loose cloth protruding from the top of the bottle.

"Ego voco impetu delere vos caelum et infernum," I shouted at the top of my voice, staggering to my feet, making sure of my aim and throwing the bottle at the back of the witch's head.

Somewhat to my surprise, it hit him squarely, dousing the witch in flaming liquid that consumed him in a second. That's when I realised why the red-gold colours he'd been wielding had seemed so familiar.

James fell from the air to the marble floor with a crack. Dean shook himself free of whatever spell Spencer had put on him. And from the tendrils of smoke rising from the pile of ash that had been the older witch, there was a deep and reverberative groaning rumble and another curl of smoke rose, this one thickening and darkening to charcoal as I stood there, open-mouthed, watching.

Demon.

The ribboning coil twisted around and began to solidify, eyes appearing first, black and shining in the blob that seemed to be turning into a head. I took a step backwards.

The body stretched out then compacted, head, neck, shoulders, chest forming rapidly from the smoke. What happened to needing a meatsuit, I wondered futilely, taking a couple more steps backward.

Neither the demon nor I saw Dean. He'd pulled his knife, Ruby's knife, from the sheath on his belt and he threw himself across the intervening space without a second's hesitation.

I saw the knife blade disappear into that half-gaseous, half-solid form and dropped to my knees as it shrieked, the noise thundering around the room. I could barely see, the explosion of red-gold light seemed to boil out from the smoke and fill every single inch of the space. In the middle of it, his face hard and expressionless, Dean stood surrounded by the writhing, burning smoke, holding the knife in place, his eyes slitted against the brightness.

Then it all died, and there was a second, smaller pile of charcoal next to Spencer's ashes, and Dean looked over at me, his face pinched and white and drawn, the hand holding the knife dropping to his side.

James got up at the same time I did.

"That explains the power he had," he said, looking down at the piles of ash on the floor. "He took a demon into himself."

It explained why Spencer had looked at me so carefully, I thought, feeling a shiver pass through me as I stopped in front of Dean.

James turned away and ran toward the other side of the room and I looked at Dean, seeing raw, reddened contusions starting to swell on his face and shoulders, where I guess the demon had pummelled him after the knife had gone in.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Still alive," he allowed, looking down at his knife and wiping it haphazardly on the side of his jacket. He swayed a little and I stepped up to him, wrapping my arms around him, knowing how useless I was going to be if he collapsed.

"You can drive," he muttered against my hair.

And at that, I knew he was in a pretty bad way.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

James and Portia turned up at the motel two hours later, their car packed to the roof with their stuff, I guess.

Opening the door, I stepped back to let them in, James' face twisting up as he saw the rainbow of bruising over Dean, sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed. I'd been slathering the numbing lotion over him and he could move a little more easily now.

"Sorry," James said.

Dean looked up at him and shrugged on his not-aching-bruised side. "No need."

"We're, uh, heading out," James told him, waving a hand vaguely toward the parking lot. "Find someplace new to start over."

Dean frowned at him. "You sure you don't want to stay and fight this?"

James shook his head, glancing at Portia. "Ed Stoltz has built enough of a case against me to make life hell for a long time, and the community here wants no part of us," he said, his tone a little wry.

"We'll start over," Portia said, walking to the window and looking down at the lines of salt spread along the ledge. "We're used to it. It's the way it's always been, for all of us."

I wondered if that was the case – for all of them, of us, living in the shadows behind the normal world. Was that what she'd meant?

"I'd sooner give up life, than give up what we have," James added, going to Portia and putting his arm around her. "So, for us it's time to go. We just wanted to say thanks."

Dean tucked his chin against his chest for a moment. "It's not so easy to start from scratch."

James nodded. "We won't come up on your radar again, Dean," he said. "We're square."

I still didn't know what the debt between them had been, although I guessed that maybe James had saved Dean's life, or Sam's, back on that case with the alchemist killer. Since Dean had certainly saved all of our lives when he'd jumped the demon, I thought they probably were square now.

They left, and I stood by the door, listening to the sound of their car pull out, then turned back to Dean. He was watching me; his face not worried, exactly, not concerned, but maybe thoughtful was the expression I could see on it.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking off whatever he'd been thinking. "C'mere and finish what you started."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~