I'm horrible, I know. I am the worst and I'm sorry it takes me so long to update, I just get distracted really easily and then I forget what I'm supposed to be doing. I made this chapter long for you guys though so I hope you enjoy.
Also, tigereyekum, I wouldn't necessarily say they are in love with each other, but the just don't know it. It's more like they are attracted to each other but neither one wants to admit it to themselves or the other. Dean annoys Aubri so much and Aubri gets on Dean's nerves so often that, even though they feel the attraction, they both think that the whole idea of anything happening between them is kind of crazy.
Thanks for your review too XKaterinaNightingaleX, sorry you had to wait so long for this new chapter!
The next day they arrived on set, all anyone was talking about was the suit who hung himself. "Good thing we didn't pack up and leave." Aubri muttered grabbing a walkie and headset for herself and Dean.
"Yeah I guess Sam was right about this one." He agreed as he clipped the walkie to his pants.
"Well I'm gonna walk around a little see if I hear anything else about it."
"Ok, yeah, I'll go check out where they were filming when it happened. See if I find anything over there." Dean started to walk to the cabin set before Aubri stopped him.
"Aren't they filming over there right now?"
"Well… yeah," Dean said hesitantly.
Aubri nodded slowly and crossed her arms in front of her chest, "Ok I see how it is. I get to go do the work, while you watch them make a movie and fawn over a movie star."
Dean grinned sheepishly, yet somehow still managed to look cocky as hell, "Somebody has to make these people think we are actually PA's."
"Yeah, sure. You are taking this PA thing way too seriously hon." Aubri patted Dean on the shoulder before walking away.
After talking to about five different people, all of which gave her no new information about what happened the other night, Aubri finally found someone who had something. "So what exactly happened?" Aubri asked the sound guy, Dave.
"Well we were shooting the scene and I kept getting this weird feedback. I couldn't get anything useful off of sound really. And this was all right before the guy fell through the set and when I went back and listened to it the same interference was there when he fell."
Aubri smiled sweetly at the guy, "Do you mind if I take a listen to what recorded?"
"Uhh, yeah, yeah sure." He stuttered as he handed her a set of headphones.
"Thanks," she flashed him another smile before turning her attention to what was coming through the hea phones. After listening to it once, she looked up slowly, "Could you just play that one more time, pretty please" Dave nodded and wound back the tape before pressing play again. Aubri chewed on her bottom lip as she listened intently, trying to figure out if what she was hearing was important. "Thanks so much Dave!" She handed back the headphones and stepped over to the side.
Leaning against one of the fake trees on set, she pulled the headset for the walkie into place and pressed the button to talk. "Hey Dean?"
"Yeah?" His voice crackled through.
"I, uh, I need your help with something over by sound. It's urgent."
"Copy that." Aubri rolled her eyes and smiled. He really was taking this whole PA thing way to serious, but it was kind of adorable.
"What is it Aubs?" Dean's voice came from over her shoulder and she turned to see him walking up to her with Sam trailing behind him.
"I think I might have something, but I'm not sure. It could be nothing. I just wanted to see what you guys thought." Aubri walked back over to Dave and put her hand on his shoulder, "Dave, could you be a dear and play what you played for me for these two please?"
"Sure thing." Dave said handing the same headphones to Dean, who passed them off to Sam once he listened to the recording.
Once both the guys listened, they nodded to Dave and started to walk off, Dean putting an arm around Aubri's shoulders, pulling her along with them. "Nice work Aubs, you actually found something"
She looked up at him, a smile on her face, "Really? What did I find?"
"EVP." Sam explained.
"EV what? I really need you guys to remember I'm new to this." Aubri shook her head.
"Electromagnetic Voice Phenomenon. It's basically when ghosts or spirits, something, disrupts frequencies and you hear it on recordings. Sometimes you can even hear them saying things if you clean it up enough." Sam explained further.
"Ok, yeah that makes perfect sense. So now we know it's a ghost right?"
"Well there wasn't anything before, that's for sure, but after the night of Brad's stage dive I'm getting electromagnetic readings out the wa-zoo all of a sudden. It's officially a legit haunting now, nobody's faking this." Dean said.
"Ok, well what does the ghost want?" Aubri asked, shrugging out from under Dean's arm finally. She shivered slightly at the loss of his warmth, "Don't they usually have some unfinished business if they are still hanging around?"
"I don't know, but I think we should take a look at Brad's death scene." Dean led the way to a trailer, pulling a DVD out of the pouch on his side. When they got inside he crouched down in front of the television and popped the DVD into the player.
"Where did you get that?" Sam asked as he sat on the edge of a coffee table.
"They're called dailies. I got it from Cindy, she's kind of got this on and off thing going with Drew. He dubbed me an extra copy." Dean explained as he fast-forwarded the DVD to where it needed to be. "Ok here's where the guy fell through the roof."
Aubri winced as she watched the guy dangling from a rope and heard the screams of the actress who hand been standing in front of him. She thought she saw something in the corner of the screen, but she ignored it and continued to pay attention to the hanging man.
"Hey wait, go back, go back." Sam asked, pointing at the screen. "Right after, yeah, wait right there."
Dean paused the DVD, and in the corner of the screen, right where Aubri had seen it before, was a figure standing off to the side watching the man hang. "Who is that?" She asked, leaning closer to the screen.
"It's like Three Men and a Baby all over again." Deans said as he squinted at the screen.
"It is!" Aubri agreed, turning quickly to look at him. "The little ghost kid that got caught on tape!"
"What are you talking about?" Sam asked, furrowing his brow.
"Selleck, Danson, and Guttenberg, and I don't know who played the baby." Dean explained, hoping that would jog Sam's memory and he would know what they were talking about. "There's that scene in the movie where people say the camera caught a ghost on film."
"Yeah, in the background of one of the scenes there was this boy that nobody remembers from set. I watched that scene over and over again and I swear I saw him once." When she saw both of the guys giving her weird looks she blushed slightly. "What? Even if I didn't used to think that stuff was real doesn't mean I didn't think it was kind of cool."
"Anyways, it's that whole spirit photography thing." Dean finished, looking at Aubri out of the corner of his eye.
While Sam stared at the woman on the screen with an intent look on his face, Aubri caught Dean staring at her with and odd look on his face. "What?" She mouthed, her eyebrows rising.
Dean shook his head quickly and looked away. She just kept surprising him. One minute she seemed like this helpless girl who they constantly had to look out for cause she had no clue what she was getting herself into and then the next minute she was finding stuff they had missed or might not have found. Sure, he still thought it was probably safer for her to be back at Bobby's with her drool machine of a dog, but he had to admit it was nice having someone around who understood what he was saying half of the time. He was snapped out of his thoughts by Sam's voice, "I've seen her before." He said still examining the woman's face.
"Really?" Aubri asked excitedly, glad they were getting somewhere.
"Yeah," Sam said nodding, "I've got to get something out of my bag in the Impala, you guys meet me back on set ok?"
Dean tossed him the keys as they all stood up, "Meet us at the PA check in table, I've got to put this stuff back." Dean patted the walkie talkie on his hip.
As they went their separate ways, Aubri had to jog to catch up to Dean, her short legs struggling to keep up with his long ones. "So if Sam really does know who this lady is, then all we have to do is find her, dig up her grave, and salt and burn the bones?" Aubri's nose wrinkled slightly at the thought of having to dig up a grave, that really wasn't something that had been on her bucket list.
Dean slowed down his pace slightly when he saw Aubri breathing heavily after having to catch up with him. "Yeah that's pretty much it. Unless she was cremated, that's when things get a little hairy."
Aubri's brow furrowed as she looked up at him, "What do you have to do then?"
"Then we have to find whatever object is keeping her tied to this world and get rid of it the same way we would her bones, but it could be anything. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."
They reached the table where they had to put up the walkies and sat down. Aubri's knee brushed Dean's and she quickly jerked it away, blushing, "Well let's hope whoever she was she was a fan of burial and not cremation."
Sam walked up to the table and sat down, spreading papers out in front of him. Aubri and Dean both fiddled with the walkies while Sam shuffled through papers before finding what he had been looking for, "Here, take a look at this." He said, passing the paper to Dean.
Aubri leaned closer to Dean so she could look at it at the same time, trying to ignore the warmth she felt when her shoulder rested against his. "Elise Drummond?" She asked looking up at Sam.
"Yeah," he nodded, "She was a starlet back in the 30's. Had an affair with the studio exec. He uses her up, fires her, leaves her destitute."
"Let me guess, she hung herself cause she was just so heartbroken without the douche bag?" Aubri took the article out of Dean's hands and looked at it more closely.
"Yeah, from stage 9's rafters right into a scene they were shooting." Sam finished.
"Just like our man Brad." Dean murmured, snatching the papers back from Aubri and glaring at her briefly.
Aubri stuck her tongue out at him before turning to look at Sam, "So she's got it out for sleazy jerks in suits?"
"Yeah could be. I mean it's motive and Brad's death matches hers exactly."
Dean sighed, "We're digging tonight aren't we?"
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It was pitch black out when they pulled up to the grave yard, the headlights of the Impala lighting up the first row of headstones. Dean walked around to the back and grabbed one of the shovels, only to have Aubri take it out of his hands, "What?" She responded to his questioning look, "You said we were digging tonight." She turned quickly and followed Sam, weaving through the headstones, leaving Dean behind shaking his head as he grabbed the other shovel that was hardly ever used.
He caught up to her, holding the map of the graveyard that he had bought earlier. "When I said 'we' were digging I meant me. Sam always conveniently forgets to grab his shovel and I get stuck digging."
"Well now you have help." Aubri said, looking up at him with a faint smile. "I'm not gonna just sit around twiddling my thumbs. If I'm making you guys bring me along on these things then I'm going to pull my weight."
Dean smiled down at her and shook his head, laughing to himself, "Ok then, well let's go find this broad and light her up." He opened up the map and looked at all of the different graves that were listed on it with their locations. "This was totally worth the five bucks."
Aubri looked at the map over his arm and stuck her finger to it, pointing out a specific name, "Joey Ramon." She said, smiling.
"You guys wanna go dig him up too?" Sam called over his shoulder.
"Bite your tongue heathen!" Dean yelled at him as Aubri giggled and quickly covered her mouth.
"You know what I don't get is why now." Sam continued talking, "Why this movie?"
"Maybe she's mad that they're making a scary ghost flick." Dean responded.
"Maybe she's mad they're making a shitty scary ghost flick." Aubri added, earning a shove from Dean.
"Here we go." Sam said shining a light on a headstone with Elise's name on it.
"Yahtzee." Dean said, digging the blade of his shovel into the ground.
Aubri started digging closer to the headstone while Dean dug near the bottom of the grave. After they had dug about three or four feet Aubri tossed her shovel out of the grave and wiped her blistered hands gingerly on her pants, "I can't dig anymore Dean, sorry." She apologized.
He stopped digging for a second and look up at her, wiping his forehead off. "It's fine, you did more than princess up there." He said, jerking his head in Sam's direction.
"Hey, it's not my fault she got to the shovel before me and insisted on digging." Sam protested.
"It's fine Sam," Aubri said laughing, "Just be a gentleman and help me out of here, I don't want to get anymore dirt in these blisters than I already have."
Sam grabbed her wrist and pulled Aubri out of the grave to stand next to him. He held on to her wrist and turned her hand over. He sucked in a breath through his teeth as he shone the light on her torn up hands, "We've got some stuff to clean that up with in the Impala. We'll take care of them when we get back."
"Let me see," Dean said, his head popping over the side of the grave.
"It's fine, really, no big deal." Aubri protested.
"Aubri let me see." Dean insisted. Aubri knelt down and showed him her ripped up palms, "Damn Aubs," he muttered, "you could have stopped before they got this bad you know."
She carefully put her hands in the pockets of her jacket, "I said it's fine." She muttered under her breath, "I can handle a few blisters and this just mean digging next time won't be as bad." She shivered slightly. Sure she wanted to go back home to her life, but she also wanted to stay here. This was so much more exciting than sitting in her house reading books for classes or trying to find a job so she could be a productive member of society. Aubri sat on the side of the grave near Sam and watched Dean digging until his shovel connected with something hard with a loud thunking sound. "Hello Elise." She mumbled under her breath as she shone her flashlight down into the grave.
After Dean had completely uncovered the coffin, Sam passed him a crowbar and he set to work opening the thing. Once he pulled back the lid, a practically mummified corpse was revealed, clad in a white dress and some fur thing around her shoulders. Dean climbed out of the grave and grabbed the lighter fluid out of Sam's hand and set to work covering the coffin and corpse of Elise with it while Sam spread salt all around and Aubri watched the two work. Once they were satisfied that they had sufficiently covered Elise with enough lighter fluid and salt to get rid of her, Dean walked over to stand next to Aubri and handed her a pack of matches, "You wanna do the honors?" He said gruffly, "You never forget your first time." He added with a chuckle and a wink.
Aubri rolled her eyes, but took the matches from him anyways. She lit three at once and tossed them into the grave on top of Elise's body, "Rest in peace Elise." She said quietly, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. She could only hope that if something happened to her, she could move on so she wouldn't be trapped here, hurting others and waiting for some hunter to dig her up and burn her.
As they walked back to the Impala Dean slung his arm around Aubri's shoulders and gave her a light squeeze. "You did good Aubs." He said quietly, "Now let's go take care of those nasty hands of yours." He stumbled slightly as Aubri sighed and shoved him away from her, a faint smile playing across her lips as she climbed into the backseat of the car.
They rode back to the hotel room in relative silence and when they arrived, Aubri climbed out of the car quickly and went into the bathroom to rinse off her injured hands while Dean dug around in the back of the Impala for some bandages to put on them. When he walked inside Aubri was sitting on the edge of her bed watching TV and Sam was messing with something on his laptop. "Ok, let me see those hands." Dean said as he sat down on his bed across from Aubri.
She turned to face him and held out her hands to him, blistered palms facing up. In the light her hands looked a lot worse than she thought they were initially and she winced as Dean started to clean them. "Sorry," he murmured, "but it's your own damn fault your hands are so torn up. You should have just let me do the digging."
Aubri groaned, "You really can't just say something nice can you?" She said exasperatedly, "You have to go and blame me and talk about how it's my fault and how I messed up. God, you're annoying. Sorry I thought it would be nice to help out, my mistake, I won't do it again." Her face was hot as she looked up at him, and the smirk on his face made it get even hotter. "What are you smiling about?" She was tempted to just jerk her hands away and bandage them herself.
"Nothing." Dean said, shaking his head and laughing quietly as he returned his focus to bandaging her hands. "You're like an angry puppy when you're mad. All bark, but no bite." He put the finishing touches on the bandage on one hand and set to work on the other before adding quietly, "It's kinda cute."
"I am not being cute right now." She said through gritted teeth, eyes flashing angrily as he looked back up at her.
His gaze met her angry one and his heart sped up slightly at the sight of her flashing eyes, definitely not cute, more like gorgeous, he thought before catching himself. He banished the thought from his head as he finished the bandage on her other hand and tried to will his heart to slow down.
As soon as he was done, Aubri jerked her hands out of his and flopped down onto her bed. She stayed like that, just staring at the wall opposite of her, her back to Dean, until she could hear both of the guys talking about what they would do tomorrow and then settling down for the night. All of the lights were off and she was getting ready to close her eyes when her conscience got the better of her, "Thanks Dean." She muttered, still trying to sound angry at him for being such a little shit.
"No problem Aubs." He said back quietly, a smile slowly spreading across his face as he stared up at the ceiling before closing his eyes.
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Sam suggested the go back to set the next day just to make sure Elise was actually taken care of, so when they walked up to stage 9 they saw what they were least expecting. Cop cars were everywhere and there was police tape blocking off an area of set near a white screen that was covered with blood and bits of a person. "Run in with a giant fan." Sam said quietly, "Same thing happened to an electrician back in 66, guy named Billy Beard."
"So we took care of Elise, but now Billy is popping in to help out now that she's gone?" Aubri asked as they turned and walked away.
"Maybe, except these things don't usually tag team." Dean explained.
They walked outside as the director called everyone together for an announcement. He explained that due to a second death on set they would be postponing shooting for a few days, but they would be back in a few days for shooting.
Sam, Dean, and Aubri took this delay in production as an opportunity to get some more research done since apparently torching Elise hadn't really helped at all. Aubri was sitting on the couch next to Sam watching the scene where Tara was reading the incantation from the book. Listening to the strange words, Aubri cringed, "No honey, no." She said quietly, shaking her head. "Don't read strange things from strange books. Look at what happened to me."
Sam chuckled as Dean walked in, "Hey man, you find out where Billy was buried?"
"He wasn't, he was cremated." Dean said, opening up a drink.
Aubri shook her head, "Needle in a haystack." She muttered, remembering what Dean had told her about spirits whose bodies had been cremated. She turned her attention back to the screen, listening to the words that were being said. Then she had an idea, "Sam, what if what Tara is reading is real? I mean, I thought what I read was just a joke, but look where I am now. What if she actually read some sort of summoning ritual? Is that even possible?"
Sam looked at her with a thoughtful look on his face before nodding slightly and focusing his attention on the words that were being read. His brow furrowed, "It sounds like the real thing." He rewound it again, listening carefully. "Guys, that is the real deal!" He grabbed Aubri's shoulder and shook her slightly, "Good job Aubs, that's a necromantic summoning ritual. Why the hell is that in a Hollywood movie?"
Ok, hopefully I can convince myself to actually write the last part of Hollywood Babylon before classes start on Monday. Thanks so much to the 32 of you who are following this story and the 18 of you who favorite it! I really do appreciate it! As always review at will!