Season 8 spoilers are present. I repeat. SEASON 8 SPOILERS ARE PRESENT! Read at your own risk. After this chapter we're going to start getting some action outside the bunker, and some development between the characters, so be ready. :)

"Wait. You're saying that bit on sigils was written by—by our grandfather?"

"Yup." Sam passed one of the folders to Dean. "Now, there isn't a lot of extra information, but there is an interesting passage in that case folder. You see, Henry shadowed Sinclair quite a bit before his mentor's crazy magics got the guy kicked out. So he took notes on a lot of his research."

Dean frowned. "But I thought Henry hadn't started a journal yet."

Sam shook his head. "He hadn't. These are more like meeting minutes, like I was saying before. Henry almost had full clearance before Abaddon came in and killed everyone, so for things like basic spell research, he was allowed to be present. They considered it part of their field experience, which they were required to get a lot of before reaching their final initiation. They just gave him a job while he was there. Now, I guess until Sinclair's expulsion they didn't notice just how far from 'basic' his research had really gone." Dean nodded slowly, like he understood. But his eyes were focused on the page in front of him. Sam waited for Dean to read the last passage. Dean's eyes froze at the bottom of the page, before flicking up to meet Sam's own.

"Is this saying what I think it is?" Sam nodded. Dean kept going. "No, I mean, this description, it sounds like—"

"Yeah." Sam said quietly, smile no longer as prominent as before. "Endria."

Dean swore. "So that bitch TAUGHT Sinclair how to use all of that soul slicing stuff?"

"And not just that," Sam added, "He also learned how to use others' souls to power his own spells, and how to steal said souls and place them in objects for later use. I'm pretty sure that when Henry turned these notes in Sinclair's sentence was set then and there." Sam laughed darkly.

Dean was looking at the page again. "This sounds bad, Sam. Really bad." He looked back up at his brother, watching him closely. "How are you feeling?"

"Great." He said, almost looking surprised at himself. Dean was equally surprised at his answer. "It hasn't spread in a week now, and I'm sleeping and eating normally, and honestly feel better than I have in a while."

"Good," Dean said, though the look in his eyes suggested he wasn't satisfied. Sam sighed. "I know this—" he gestured to his neck, "sucks, but until it starts acting up again, I'm not going to drain myself worrying about it. And neither should you." He gave Dean a pointed look.

Dean ignored it. "Have you found anything else?"

"I'm working on it." He gestured to a stack of filing boxes sitting next to him.

Dean walked over, tossed his now empty beer bottle into the nearby trash can, picked the files up off the floor, and headed toward the door. "Well, let's work on it together." Sam sighed quietly as he gathered his messy stack of notes and followed his brother to the library.

Two days later, and Sam and Dean had read every case file that involved Cuthbert Sinclair. Henry had written many notes, and they had even come across a few in Sinclair's own hand. Dean had spent hours laboring over his sloppy chicken scratch—apparently if it wasn't a spell it wasn't worth writing it down. Nothing else about Endria cropped up, though some information on sigils had appeared. Dean sighed as he compiled a list of the things he had learned:

1) Endria was apparently some big-time witch; some of Sinclair's notes hinted that the stories she told were centuries old.

2) Thanks to Cass, they knew the spell on his brother was one of the soul-slicing specialties that Endria had taught Sinclair. According to his notes, once bonded with the spell only the caster could remove it. Which meant Sam was stuck with it.

3) The mark on Sam's neck was definitely a sigil; those had been Endria's specialty. Sinclair had even recorded a few of her sigils, and her "signature" was pretty clear. While the sigils he recorded had notes decrypting the spell's meanings, none of them quite correlated to Sam's mark. So they still had no clue what exactly her spell was supposed to do.

4) Like they had suspected, she had set up the spell to respond to a trigger, which could be any thought, image, color, smell, sound or event the caster chose. The partial expansions of the mark suggested Sam had come close to the trigger, but had not reached it. No matter how Dean prompted him Sam insisted he had no clue what it was. Which frustrated Dean to no end.

5) Sigils cannot kill; well wishes could be twisted to serve an ill purpose, but one could not reverse "long life" to "short life;" It was easier to use things like "wealth" and shift it to "a wealth of misfortune." Which meant while Sam's life wasn't in danger, there were a lot of ways this spell could screw him up, potentially permanently.

6) Just like her spells had a trigger, in order to keep a spell effective permanently it needed a lock. And that lock typically had a key. Whatever key the caster chose would have to be related to the trigger, but be something that caster thought was such an impossibility that it would never be encountered.

7) Dean needed to find that damn key, as soon as possible, whatever it took.

Resources exhausted, Sam started looking for cases. Dean was reluctant at first, not wanting to put his brother into the potentially trigger-filled world without a hint of what the trigger was, but Sam pointed out that it was in the bunker where the mark spread the most so for all they knew, the trigger was in the bunker. And in an instant it was settled. Case or no case, they would be hitting the road.