Chapter 9
Shattered Dreams, Wounded Hearts, Broken Toys

When the noon chimes rang, Agatha felt no small measure of relief. The morning she'd had made her very grateful for the administrative experience she'd gained working for Dr. Beetle at Transylvania Polygnostic University—everyone wanted her input on everything or needed to update her about various projects or situations. Fortunately, she had Van and Mamma Gkika to run interference for her, along with a very efficient secretary whose name she still hadn't caught, and Van had convinced Moloch von Zinzer to stay on as Chief Mechanic (a designation he preferred greatly to "chief minion") and oversee the reconstruction efforts that Castle Heterodyne hadn't already completed itself. Still, there was a lot of planning and organizing going on that did genuinely need her input. She'd been busy, even by the standards of the past couple of weeks. Lunch was going to provide a much-needed break, and since no one was in immediate mortal peril, she was going to take that break.

But thinking of that made her run through her options of whom to have lunch with. Since Agatha had been meeting with Mamma Gkika, Gen. Zog, Krosp, and Castiel about the defenses and the latest intelligence briefings for the last couple of hours (having been constantly interrupted, which dragged out the meeting), Zeetha and Violetta had gone off somewhere with Maxim. Krosp was going to want to talk shop if she had lunch with him, and she thought she'd heard Castiel accept an offer to lunch with the Jäger generals. Theo and Sleipnir were at the hospital, she thought, probably overseeing the castle's rearrangement of that part of town to clear space for the new spark asylum without destroying any houses, which was apparently going to involve shifting the town walls several hundred meters in a direction or two. Van was busy and said Wooster had left town on business but would be back sometime that night; von Zinzer was across town dealing with repairs and not likely to want to eat with her anyway; Dimo had sent Oggie with Gadreel to meet Gil, Tarvek, and the Winchesters in Sturmhalten and guide them through the Deepdown; Dimo himself was attending to some sort of business with Jenka... who did that leave?

Suddenly, she realized there was someone she hadn't seen all morning who might need the reassurance of having lunch with her. "Forgive me," she told the generals. "I have a guest I've been neglecting."

Castiel frowned briefly, then raised his chin in understanding. "Kevin. I'm not sure the castle's let him out of bed yet."

"Don't be ridiculous," the castle replied, sounding slightly insulted. "Master Tran is not of the family line."

Krosp had a suspiciously timed hairball. Mamma Gkika and Gen. Zog just rolled their eyes.

"Where is he, then?" Agatha asked.

"In the library, Mistress. Looking for a dictionary, I believe."

Castiel blinked. "What sort of dictionary?"

"He said something about... Proto-Elamite. I told him I couldn't be certain what we might have in that line, since that language died long before the Ht'rok-din came to Mechanicsburg and any library the previous castle might have had would have been destroyed when Egregious Heterodyne created the River Dyne."

Castiel muttered something in a language Agatha had never heard before.

"Right," said Agatha. "Castle, please ask Mr. Tran to meet me in the gallery above the Gate of Lamps and have someone bring us lunch there." Not many people in the castle at present could actually cook, and no one wanted to eat von Zinzer's cooking anymore, so until Van could get a good staff hired, he'd arranged a catering rota with various restaurants around town.

"Lunch? Above the Gate of Lamps?" The castle sounded puzzled. "I can suggest several much more romantic overlooks—"

"This is not to be a romantic lunch! Mr. Tran is a prophet, not a prince! Besides, I've already got two suitors; I don't need more."

"Oh, but the harem quarters—"

"HETERODYNE!"

The castle sighed. "Yes, Mistress."

"Hyu iz getting better at dot," Mamma Gkika observed, amused.

Agatha smiled wryly. "Yes, well, I suppose I'll have to keep at it unless I manage to reprogram it."

"You wouldn't!" gasped the castle.

"Don't give me a reason to!"

It sounded a bit strangled when it reported, "Master Tran has been delivered safely to the requested meeting place."

Now it was Agatha's turn to sigh. "That wasn't what I meant, but thank you anyway."

Lunch arrived about the same time she did, which was a good thing because Kevin was yelling at the castle about manners—she thought. It was a little difficult to follow his line of thought, since it mostly involved people and places she didn't know and occasionally lapsed into another language. The castle seemed bemused by the rant, but that didn't stop it from continuing to provoke him until she told it to shut up and leave him alone.

"Thanks," Kevin said with visible relief. "Uh, do you mind if I call you Agatha? Since you're my age, it's a little weird to go by last names."

She smiled. "That's fine, Kevin. We should probably remain formal in public, but it can be pretty awkward."

He smiled back, even more relieved.

"Would you join me for lunch? I'm sorry I've been tied up in meetings all day and haven't had a chance to speak with you properly yet."

"Yeah, no, sure, lunch sounds great. Sorry, I'm just... still pretty jet-lagged after the jump here."

She wasn't sure what jet-lagged meant, but she took the food from the delivery boy and looked around for the best place to sit. She'd misremembered there being tables up here.

"I don't mind sitting on the floor," Kevin offered.

She considered, then nodded. "We can make it a picnic, then."

As chilly as the castle still was at this hour, she opted to set things out in a sunny spot—they wouldn't be able to see out, since the windows started about a meter and a half above the floor, but at least they'd have plenty of light and more warmth than if they were sitting closer to the cold stone walls. He sat down across from her and accepted a sandwich, but he was leery of the vacuum flask until it turned out to hold only tea.

"Do you not drink?" she asked, pouring him a cup.

He grimaced. "I do; I'm just trying to be careful. Got pretty wasted a few weeks ago without meaning to."

"And in Mechanicsburg, you can never really be sure what's safe to drink."

He blinked and accepted the cup from her. "You do understand."

She nodded. "I'm new here, too."

They raised their cups to each other with a smile, but he still let her drink first. She couldn't blame him.

"So!" she said after a few bites of sandwich. "Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?"

"Neighbor, Michigan. Then for a while I lived on a houseboat in Missouri, but after some... really crazy stuff happened, I had to move to a secret hideout with Sam and Dean."

"Was the houseboat while you were at uni?"

"Uh, no. I... didn't get the chance to go to college. We leave high school later than you guys, but I was in Advanced Placement classes and skipped a couple of grades, so I was going to graduate early with a bunch of college credits. But then I got struck by lightning and turned into a prophet." He sounded kind of bitter about that.

"Where did you want to go to college?"

"Princeton. You may not have heard of it, but in our world and our time, it's one of the most prestigious universities in America. It's in New Jersey. What about you?"

"Transylvania Polygnostic, in Beetleburg, which is where I grew up. It's not far from here. I was studying applied sciences and robotics, but they wouldn't let me do much on the medical side. I could go to lectures and watch demonstrations, but nothing hands-on."

"That stinks. I was planning to major in political science, maybe try to get into the School of Public and International Affairs if I was accepted to Princeton."

She blinked. "Really?"

He nodded. "I wanted to be the first Asian-American president of the United States. Figures I'd lose my shot at that before I was even old enough to vote." That comment was definitely bitter.

But she was intrigued. "And before that, in... high school, you called it—did you study politics then?"

"Sort of, mostly extracurricular stuff. I was in Student Council, went to Boys State, that kind of thing."

"What's Boys State?"

"It's a program sponsored by the American Legion where high school juniors learn how city, county, and state governments work. Some of it's lecture; some of it's hands-on stuff. There's a version for girls, too, called Girls State. And then every year two guys from each state get to go on to Boys Nation in Washington, DC. That's about how the federal government works, and the delegates form kind of a mock Senate to learn about the legislative process. I was one of the youngest guys ever selected from Michigan to go to Boys Nation."

She was definitely intrigued. "So you've practiced being part of a government?"

"Uh, yeah. Did Model UN, too—um, UN means United Nations. It's not exactly an international government, but it does a lot of work with peacekeeping, disaster relief, human rights, and so on."

"You didn't happen to bring any books with you, did you? About government, I mean."

"I... don't think so? I don't remember what all is on my Kindle, and I have to be careful about using that anyway, since there probably isn't a good way for me to charge the battery here."

She bit her lip and restrained the urge to ask what a Kindle was. "Would you tell me everything you can, or write it down somewhere?"

He blinked. "Why?"

"I never studied political science. I've never liked politics at all. But now, not only am I the ruler of Mechanicsburg... the baron said he was leaving the empire to us, to Tarvek and me as well as Gil. I assume that means he wants all three of us working together to govern it."

"That, or to divide it among you. That used to happen a lot with big empires when the conqueror died—Alexander, Charlemagne."

"Right, but either way, I really need to learn as much about politics as I can as soon as I can. And even though I know there must be books in the library and people in town whom I could ask for advice, I don't think I can rely just on their judgment. Mechanicsburg is... different."

He considered that and nodded slowly. "I don't really know how much of the American way of doing things would really apply here. I mean, you might have to go with a legislature that's more like a parliament—like, have a House of Lords, a House of Sparks, and a House of Commons, or something like that."

"Yes, but it would help to have a foundation to build on, to know what's worked somewhere else. The details can be adapted to fit."

"Why don't I try writing it down, then? Might be easier for you to follow if I can draw graphs and flowcharts and stuff like that."

"Perfect. I'll send someone to find you a blank journal."

His eyes looked suspiciously bright as he smiled. "Thanks."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just... it's been a couple of years since anyone's wanted me to do anything but read old stone tablets about monsters. I wasn't sure I'd ever get anything like my old life back."

"I know what you mean." It had been only a few months since Omar von Zinzer had stolen her locket, which at the time had been keeping her from fully breaking through as a spark, and her world had turned upside down literally overnight. "Listen, I still have a couple of friends among the faculty at TPU. Maybe when all this is over, I could get you in on a scholarship or something."

He huffed and looked down at his sandwich, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward briefly. "Last person to make me that kind of offer was a monster. A Leviathan. He meant it as a bribe to get me to translate the tablet that explained how to kill him."

"It wouldn't be a bribe this time. I know what it's like to have your life changed—ruined—by something you never saw coming. I probably can't go back myself, especially since Dr. Merlot expelled me in an attempt to stay on the baron's good side, but that doesn't mean I can't help you."

He sniffled and looked up again with a watery smile. "You know something? For the first time, I'm... I'm kind of glad we came."

She smiled back.

"Are you sure you don't want me to put him in the harem quarters, Mistress?" the castle asked.

Kevin choked.

"Quite sure," Agatha replied firmly. "Stop asking."

"Oh, very well. I suppose the Jägers will retrieve your other consorts soon enough."

"Consorts?" Kevin squeaked.

Agatha rolled her eyes and took a bite of sandwich to cover long enough to find a way to change the subject.


The drive from Mulverschtag to Sturmhalten started out fairly boring, which made Sam glad for the food the innkeeper had sent. Baby took over driving to let Dean eat with both hands, but the road was clear and straight until they got to the area where the hazmat team was still cleaning up the residues from the slime monster battle. The Carpathian scenery was pretty, but nothing that put the Tetons to shame, at least not when they were driving only about five or ten miles an hour to let the Sturmhalteners keep up. Maybe the speed would seem leisurely if they were taking a drive for pleasure, but as it was... Sam was ready to be there already.

At least until, about half a mile past the last mound of lime-green foam that was all that remained of a slime monster, a wild-eyed blonde in a hospital gown staggered out of the woods and onto the road. Baby braked hard and blared the opening fanfare of "Lucretia MacEvil."

"It's Zola!" yelped Gil.

"Dead or alive?" Dean asked, looking back at the princes.

Gil looked at Tarvek, who swallowed hard. "Alive. We need to know where the Geisters went; she's our best shot at getting the information quickly. I know she knows where one of their most secret bases is."

Dean nodded, opened his door, and got out, sticking close to Baby's body and thus remaining shielded by the door.

"Please!" Zola gasped, blue eyes wide and too innocent for belief. "Oh, please, help me, kind sir! The evil baron is—"

Dean drew his gun and, with almost medical precision, shot her once each in both shoulders, her right hip, and her left knee.

"Vot der dumboozle?!" roared Gen. Khrizhan, charging up from behind the car.

Baby responded by turning up the volume on the second verse of "Lucretia MacEvil."

Gil got out, studiously looking only at Gen. Khrizhan. "General. Have her wounds dressed and bandaged, and bring her to Sturmhalten restrained and under heavy guard. Give her morphine only if she must be sedated; we'll need her awake and talking once we get there. Otherwise, nothing stronger than goldenseal or willow bark, maybe yarrow for the bleeding—absolutely no battledraught. Dean shot to disable. Let's keep her that way."

"Hyu dun vant her taken to de hospital?" Gen. Khrizhan asked, though it sounded more like a test than a serious question.

"She's already escaped from the hospital once, when she was injured much worse than this. We can't take any chances with her this time. That's the fake Heterodyne girl—and she's got a copy of The Other in her head."

Gen. Khrizhan roared again and started barking orders to the Jägers who were in earshot, who leapt into action at once.

"GIIIL!" Zola squealed.

Gil clenched his jaw and got back in the car. Dean did likewise, and Baby closed both doors after them, though she rolled down Gil's window as Gen. Khrizhan bent down to talk to him again, his broad face almost entirely filling the window.

The general's voice was deceptively mild when he asked, "By de vay, vot hyu gun do vit her ven ve getz to Sturmhalten?"

Gil had his eyes fixed on the back of Dean's head. "Question her about the Geisterdamen," he said tightly, "and about her role in the Storm King conspiracy."

"Und after dot?"

"She'll stand trial for treason, espionage, and at least six counts of attempted murder, after which I might just give her to Castle Heterodyne and tell it to get creative."

Gen. Khrizhan chuckled, which was a rather disconcerting sound. "Hyu do chust fine, Herr Baron." He patted Gil's shoulder surprisingly gently and went to oversee the Jägers taking Zola into custody.

"NO!" Zola screamed. "NO! HELP! GIIIIIIL!"

"Stop lyin', stop lyin', stop lyin', Lucy!" wailed David Clayton-Thomas from Baby's speakers.

Gil's eyes shut in evident pain as he swallowed hard and grabbed the armrest of his door in a death grip. Baby locked her doors, rolled up his window, and kept the music volume high enough to mostly drown out Zola's cries. And when the song ended, she switched right over to Electric Light Orchestra's "Evil Woman."

As soon as the Jägers had Zola cleared out of the way, Dean said, "Let's go, girl."

Baby leapt into Drive and sprinted up to 70 mph, and after a few seconds, once Dean convinced her to slow back down to 30 so as to let the Sturmhalteners sort of catch up, Gil finally relaxed and opened his eyes.

"You all right, Gil?" Sam asked.

Gil took a deep breath and let it out again. "I... I will be. Thank you, Dean. And you too, Baby."

"Hey, ain't it good to know that you've got a friend / When people can be so cold?" Baby replied.

Gil huffed. "No kidding."

Tarvek gave Gil a long, assessing look. "Wasn't sure you had it in you, even after the way you got me shipped home."

"Don't know whether to be glad or worried that I did."

"We both knew Zola in Paris," Tarvek explained to the Winchesters. "Seemed like a completely useless idiot at the time. She was always getting into scrapes, and Gil was always getting her out of them."

Gil huffed again and shook his head. "Figures that of all of us who've turned out to be more than we seemed back then, hers would be the deadliest secret."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look at that. Then Sam cleared his throat. "Y'know, maybe Dean and I ought to handle this interrogation. Zola knows you two; she knows what buttons to push, whichever personality is in charge. She's got no information about us, aside from the fact that Dean shot her and that you were in our car."

"As far as we know, anyway," Dean amended.

"Dude, what are the odds of Lucrezia even knowing enough to get hold of the books?"

"Pretty damn low, but anything's possible. Barry Heterodyne wound up in our bunker, after all."

"He what?" Gil gasped at the same time Tarvek leaned forward and asked, "Bunker? What bunker?"

"Later," Dean told both of them.

"Look," Sam insisted, "the point is, it wouldn't be like going up against Crowley or Meg or—or Alastair. She's not even a full-fledged demon. And you've already shot her up once."

"So?"

"So, good cop, bad cop, Mr. Untouchable. You probably won't even have to say anything, just glare at her."

Dean gave Sam a sidelong look before smirking slowly. "You're on."

Baby merrily started playing "My Boyfriend's Back."

Tarvek started asking questions then, all about the bunker and its library and about why Sam had called Dean "Untouchable," which led to the subject of Dean's getting dragged back to 1944 and working with Eliot Ness to track down and kill Chronos, which led to more complicated discussions about time travel and all the ways the Winchesters had and hadn't experienced it. Sam very carefully did not reveal any specifics of the Enochian time travel spell their grandfather had used to reach them from 1958 (with Abaddon on his tail, no less), and when Tarvek pressed, Sam noted that they had no way of knowing whether magic from their universe worked in this one.

Gil, he noticed, was listening very intently and not saying much, even about the time travel technicalities. Well, good; at least whatever intelligence he was gleaning and whatever calculations he was running on that basis would get him thinking of problems other than Zola for a while.

As Baby began the steepest part of the climb northwest toward Balan's Gap, however, a Wulfenbach airship flew past and landed a few miles ahead. Gil leaned forward to track its progress and declared, "That must be Higgs. Looks like he's landing about where the circus ambushed Father."

Tarvek let out a startled cough. "The circus? I hadn't heard that part."

"Well, they had had Agatha traveling with them. Evidently he tried to ambush her, and she did something to trigger the defenses she'd hidden in all the wagons."

Baby started playing "Send in the Clowns"—no, that was probably Three Dog Night's "The Show Must Go On," but it fit anyway.

"What was Agatha doin' with the circus?" Dean asked.

"Kind of a long story," Gil replied, "but the short answer is, hiding from my father."

"And playing her mother onstage," Tarvek added. "Master Payne's Circus of Adventure happens to be a Heterodyne show, and somehow Agatha wound up playing Lucrezia—which is unfortunately how my father discovered that her voice was enough like Lucrezia's to identify her as Lucrezia's daughter."

Gil looked skeptical. "By sound?"

"By voice print—oscilloscope readings. And her first line was to thunder 'Kneel, you miserable minion,' so..."

"Let me guess. All the revenants in the audience knelt."

"Which was the entire audience and the ushers. Anevka and Lord Selnikov probably had them all killed, since they'd imprinted on Agatha and wouldn't respond to Anevka's retuned voice."

"Lucrezia's, you mean."

"Ah, no, Anevka's. I'm not sure exactly when my sister died, but the clank had become sentient enough not to realize that she wasn't controlling it anymore. I wasn't sure until it killed my father, ostensibly to save Agatha's life, and then decided to torture Agatha for fun after she got sufficient readings for me to retune the voice box. I managed to stop it before it could hurt her, but... well, then the Geisters caught Agatha and installed Lucrezia, and everything went sideways in a hurry."

Gil sighed heavily. It seemed like the only proper response.

"Look, I thought I had the situation under control before Agatha came along—Father was lucid enough with Anevka around, and we usually managed to keep him from sending any more girls through the beacon engine. And Anevka herself hadn't done anything particularly psychopathic by our standards with the clank. Maybe I could have gotten things under control again if the Geisters hadn't escaped. As it was... well, let's just say that at the time, it seemed like putting Lucrezia in a new clank head and using it to replace Anevka was the least dangerous option."

Gil very pointedly didn't say anything.

Tarvek noticed. "Red fire, Gil, I'm here, aren't I? I'm going to help you clean up the mess."

And Gil relented. "I know you will."

"You... you do?"

"I've seen what happens to people who make sacred vows and try to worm their way out of them." Gil shot Tarvek a sidelong look. "I think you have, too. And I know you're smart enough not to take the risk."

Tarvek sighed. "Even vows to false gods can backfire. Look what happened to Selnikov."

"Well, to be fair, I happened to Selnikov."

Tarvek couldn't suppress a slightly hysterical giggle. "I wish I'd been able to see that. Too bad I was busy not dying."

Gil chuckled.

"Wait, who?" Dean asked.

"Count Rudolf Selnikov," Gil replied. "Leader of one faction of the Knights of Jove, one that had sworn fealty to Lucrezia. He showed up at Mechanicsburg with a regiment of war stompers—and I fried him with my lightning stick. I understand Dr. Sun managed to revive his head, though."

Baby started playing "Thunderstruck." Sam chuckled.

They reached the clearing just then, and Dean steered Baby off the road and over to the airship. Higgs was standing outside talking to two guys—no, a man and a Jäger, probably, since what looked like a fair-haired man with a fez and a triple-bladed poleaxe actually had sharp teeth, a horn growing out the left side of his head, and bare, forked feet.

"That's one of Agatha's Jägers, isn't it?" Tarvek asked as Baby rolled to a stop. "Her honor guard or whatever they are?"

Gil nodded. "I think his name's Oggie. But who's the other fellow?"

Dean looked and frowned. "It can't be..."

"Pretty little angel eyes," Baby played as if in confirmation.

Sam blinked. "That's Gadreel?! But... how did he..."

"He did say he might be able to make his own vessel," Gil interrupted. "He just wasn't sure he'd have the strength to do it immediately after healing you."

Dean cursed quietly. "He must have done another shot from the Dyne. Idjit."

Sam's heart gave a pang. He wasn't sure whether it was from missing Bobby or from hearing Dean use that term of affectionate exasperation toward an angel—one about whom Sam still had extremely mixed feelings. (Still? Hell, he'd only known about Gadreel's existence for less than a day!)

Mercifully, however, as Baby opened her doors and the four men stepped out, any other potentially awkward conversation was forestalled by Oggie's joyful cry of, "HOY! Iz de schmot guyz! Miz Agatha vas sure vorried about hyu!"

"We've only been gone overnight," Gil replied, amused.

"Yah, but ve heard hyu iz goink into de Deepdown after de Geisters. Hy followed dem a long vay down, zo Hy ken show hyu. Dot's vy she esked Meester Gadreel to bring me here."

Gadreel looked uncomfortable. "Perhaps I should be getting back to the hospital."

"Wait," said Gil. "We may need you here. Higgs?"

Looking grave, Higgs took his pipe out of his mouth. "Scout ship spotted children in the town, sir. Little 'uns, like five and under, too young to be wasped. They look scared stiff—and hungry."

Tarvek ran a hand over his face. "It's been nearly a week since Anevka activated the revenants. From what I've heard, Lucrezia's orders left them too mad to function normally; they may not have eaten at all, never mind thinking to take care of the children. I've... I've..." He faltered to a stop, as if his mind was shutting down.

Sam put a hand on Tarvek's shoulder. "Take care of your people first. Let the rest of us deal with Zola and the Geisters."

"Zola?!" Higgs echoed.

"The Jägers have her," Gil assured him quickly. "And she won't find it easy to get away, thanks to Dean."

"And don't you go healing her," Dean added sternly to Gadreel. "Stick to the kids."

Gadreel huffed. "Very well."

"Seems to me we've got four things on our collective to-do list," Gil stated. "Taking care of the Sturmhalteners, going through any of Aaronev's notes that may be left in the castle, questioning Zola, and exploring the Deepdown. The Geisters have a week's head start, more or less, so it's probably going to be most efficient for Oggie to lead the Jägers into the Deepdown while the rest of us split up the other tasks."

Oggie nodded. "Hokay, Meester Gil. Dot's vot Miz Agatha thought, too."

"Gadreel, if you would, work with Tarvek to get the children squared away first, then the rest of the Sturmhalteners when they arrive. The more we can care for here, the fewer we have to burden Dr. Sun with."

Gadreel bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement.

"Higgs, you can help me search the castle while Sam and Dean interrogate Zola."

"Will do, sir," Higgs replied.

"I'll give you the combinations to the safes," Tarvek volunteered. "Father's top secret one is tricky to open. And if you haven't found the chapel by the time I get back this evening, I'll show it to you."

Gil nodded. "Thanks."

"We'd better go scout the road into town," said Dean, "make sure there's no surprises waiting for us."

"Good idea," Gil agreed. "Oggie?"

"Diz vay," Oggie replied and led Gil and Dean a short way off, out of immediate earshot but not out of sight.

Sam, feeling awkward, went to the front bumper on Baby's passenger side and sat down on her hood, looking around at the forest. He was genuinely scanning for danger, but he was avoiding Gadreel, too, and everyone else seemed to know it from the tense silence around him. But they left Sam alone, so that was all right.

"Er, Gadreel," Tarvek suddenly asked quietly, "could I ask you something?"

"You have already done so," Gadreel replied, sounding confused. "Did you wish to ask another question?"

Sam had to smother a laugh.

Tarvek cleared his throat. "As an angel, you can see... well, spirits, right? Ghosts?"

"Yes," Gadreel answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, this is a bit awkward, but... is Impala haunted?"

"Haunted? No. She is what Dean has made her."

"It's just that... well, I thought I saw..."

Baby piped up, "The eyes of Texas are upon you / 'Til Gabriel blows his horn!"*

Sam couldn't pretend not to be listening now. He turned around to find both Gadreel and Tarvek giving Baby very odd looks. "Wait," Sam said. "You seriously think Gabriel is driving Baby?"

"So long to Texas University," Baby blared, "Goodbye to the orange and the white!"**

Sam threw back his head and laughed.

Tarvek raised an eyebrow. "I... take it that's a no?"

"That's a hell, no!"

Baby continued, "'The eyes of Texas are upon you,' / That is the song they sing so well—SOUNDS LIKE HELL!"

Sam doubled over with laughter and had to catch himself on her hood.

"Dude," Dean said, coming back over. "What—"

Sam gasped for breath. "Your car's an Aggie!"

"What, you don't like the Jayhawks? Traitor."

Baby honked five times, laughing.

Tarvek looked at Gadreel, who shook his head with the patented angelic expression that meant I will never understand humans.

"Seriously, Sam," Dean pressed.

Sam was still trying to regain his composure and his breath, so Tarvek answered, "I saw someone in your car. Impala seems to think I saw Gabriel."

"When you're hot, you're hot," Baby sang. "When you're not, you're not!"

Gadreel looked skeptical. "I have never sensed Gabriel's presence in this car."

"When was this?" Dean asked Tarvek.

"This morning," Tarvek said, "after we dealt with Tryggvassen."

Dean frowned, studying Baby. "When's the last time you saw the weasel?"

Tarvek opened his mouth, then paused. "Oh. I'm... not sure. Is it important?"

"Probably not." But Sam could tell Dean didn't mean that. Of course, they had no evidence that Gabriel had ever taken non-human form—but that didn't mean he couldn't. "No sense worrying about it now, though, right, Baby?"

Beep-beep! Baby replied. "I'm a Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jayhawk, / Up at Lawrence on the Kaw."

"Ah!" said Gadreel. "College football. I see."

"I'll take your word for it," said Tarvek. "We don't go in for university sports much here."

"Gabriel's not here," Dean continued. "If he's in this world, he's not with us making himself useful, which is pretty much par for the course. And Baby is herself."

Baby agreed with a few bars of "Just a Girl."

"So let's quit worryin' about Gabriel and get into town. Those kids are waitin' on us."

Tarvek blew the air out of his cheeks. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go, little darlin'!" sang Baby.

That got Gil's attention, and he rejoined the group as Baby held her doors open. And then Tarvek started giving Baby directions as to how to get into town, and they were off, leaving Gadreel to follow with Higgs and Oggie. For his part, Sam was just glad no one expected him to talk at the moment, because his abs were alerting him to just how long it had been since he'd last laughed that hard.

So worth it, though. So worth it.


.


*The last lines of the University of Texas fight song.

** The first lines of the (Texas A&M) Aggie War Hymn.