They got back on the road early the next morning and, much to Sam's relief, without Dean banging the desk clerk. Of course, some of that might have been because of how Sam had charged into the office, glared at the clerk, and then possessively tugged Dean by the elbow, effectively hauling him out of the lobby. At the time, Dean had just given the girl a winning smile, winked, and thanked her for the keys, then shot Sam a "what the hell" look the minute they were out of the office and walking to their room, but they hadn't talked about it. They weren't talking much so far during the car ride down to Montrose, either. That wasn't necessarily unusual; they did a lot of driving and there's only so much you can find to talk about with someone who you literally spend nearly every minute of every day with, but the silence was making Sam uneasy. He was sure Dean didn't want to talk about anything that happened last night but the heavy tension in the car told him that they probably needed to. Dean was clearly trying to escape the feeling that filled the car, probably along with the inevitable talk coming, by making frequent stops to fill up their still pretty full tank, add more snacks to their growing pile of food cluttering up the backseat, and use the bathroom way more often than any human should need to. After his many sex dreams about Dean last night though, Sam was more than grateful to be let out of the car as often as possible so he could keep himself from pouncing on his brother and acting out at least one of his many fantasies.

They had been on the road for about seven hours now and Dean had already made his way through his Def Lepard mix, then moved on to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motorhead, Metallica, Rolling Stones, and had just switched back again to Def Lepard. "Coming Under Fire" started playing and Sam felt as if he might actually die from torture if he had to listen to it again. He hastily turned off the tape player and then stretched, trying to look casual, and turned to Dean. "So, where you want to start when we get to Montrose?"

Dean jumped a little at the sound of Sam's voice. He had been so deep in thought that he'd almost forgotten Sam was there. "Huh?"

Sam shot him one of his usual concerned looks that he saved for when he knew something was wrong but knew better than to ask about it. "Uh, where do you want to start when we get to Montrose?"

"Oh." Sam must not have liked the silence between them anymore than he did, Dean thought. Sometimes being on the open road for hours on end was the most relaxing, wonderful feeling in the world and other times it was pure torture. Torture like right then when Dean was stuck thinking about a dozen different things that he would have much rather forgotten. For one, he was still thinking about last night. He felt awful for beating up that poor guy. Jim might have been a little aggressive for his taste, but he still seemed like a pretty cool dude. Also, Dean didn't know if he was ready to go there with a guy just yet, but if he had let him, that guy probably would have given some pretty good head. He was almost wishing he had because it would have helped to remedy this sexual tension he was feeling the whole car ride with Sam sitting right beside him, which brought him to problem number two. He was now to the point where Sam made him hard just by being near him and Dean was having to make a bunch of extra stops just so he could keep a level head and resist the urges of his fingers to touch him.

And, thinking of Sam, what was up with him last night? First he friggin' smirked at him when he came out and told him he was bi, which was a real dick thing to do. It was hard for him to come out and say that to anyone, let alone Sam, and he never would have said it at all if he thought he'd had any other choice. With Sam demanding answers like he was though, he knew that his options were to tell Sam about his feelings for him, tell him he was bi, or let him leave and walk straight to the devil. Telling him that he was bi seemed the most sensible, least damaging thing to do at that moment and he never thought that sensitive, touch-feely, tell-me-your-feelings-and-give-me-a-hug Sam would want to make fun of him for something like that. And then there was that weird thing back at the motel where he gave the desk clerk the cold shoulder. The clerk thing wasn't a huge loss; he wasn't all that interested anyway, even if she was hot. But still, Sam was acting strange.

"Any ideas?" Sam prompted again.

Dean shook his head, trying to bring himself back to the present. "I don't know, motel, maybe grab something to eat, then head back to the room and do a little digging online, maybe start interviewing the vic's family tomorrow?"

Sam nodded his head. "Sounds good."

They sat there, mostly in silence but at times trying to make awkward conversation, for the next hour and a half until they finally got to Montrose. By the time they pulled in to the Blue Fox Motel, they both practically jumped from the car the moment Dean cut the ignition.

"I'll go check-in," Sam hurriedly mumbled as he powerwalked around the car.

"Yeah, I'll get our bags," Dean said, though he doubted his brother heard him as he had already practically sprinted halfway across the parking lot away from him.

Dean grumbled as he grabbed their few belongings and a small assortment of weapons from the trunk. Ever since Chuck wrote that story about them, things had just gotten worse and worse between them. Although, really, he knew he couldn't honestly blame Chuck for what had happened. Sam was right; he didn't make them do anything. He had wanted to fuck Sam. Him. And the blame was his and no one else's. But if things kept going the way they were, Dean had to wonder how much longer their professional relationship as hunters or even their brotherly relationship was going to last without some serious complications.

Finding out who they should interview first was as easy as checking Candace Adams' obit. She had no husband, boyfriend, or children and her closest living relative was her sister. Digging a little deeper in her life yielded no arrests, possible enemies, or any reason why anyone would want her dead. Her being so squeaky clean was probably going to make the investigation a little more difficult to solve, and Dean was thankful for it. As long as they were actively hunting something it usually helped to take Dean's mind, at least a little bit, off of wanting to jump Sam. At the moment, they were both sitting on their beds with their laptops in their laps looking up information.

"Hey, check this out." Sam turned his laptop screen towards Dean and revealed the bruised, bare throat of someone who it looked been strangled with something long and slender. "Look at these striation marks," he said, gesturing to the thin, dark line of heavy bruising at about the middle of the young woman's throat.

"Huh. What do you suppose could have made that?"

Sam wrinkled his brow and turned the laptop screen back towards him. "I'm not sure. A rope, maybe?"

Dean shook his head. "Would have to be a pretty thin rope."

Sam shrugged. "It'll probably make more sense once we find out what we're dealing with."

"Yeah, about that, any ideas so far?"

"Well, it didn't seem to want to eat her, so that narrows it down a bit. But still, this could be any number of things; vengeful spirit, witch, demon, shapeshifter, you name it."

Dean nodded. "So we just gotta find a reason why someone would wanna gank Miss Vanilla and go after it. I mean, whatever it is could be doing someone else's dirty work."

Sam raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Maybe, but I think it's a little too early to start making up any theories just yet."

Dean ran a hand down his face. Yeah, it was a little early for theories, but he was running out of things to say about the case. So much for keeping the tension out of the room by keeping up a conversation about hunting. He slammed his laptop shut and was just about to suggest they go out to dinner when Sam pruned his face up into a pensive look.

"Dean." Sam looked up at him and once again turned the laptop screen towards him. Now he was now seeing the same strangled neck, but this time the camera was panned out enough that he could see the girl's whole face, neck, and chest. Her eyes were closed and she showed no other signs of trauma aside from the hideous, dark marks on her neck. He shot Sam a look that said, 'what the hell am I looking at?' and Sam pointed to a thin chain with a large, onyx stone hanging loosely from the woman's neck. "Look at the necklace she's wearing. Now, it's thin, like…"

"As thin as the marks around her neck," Dean finished for him. "You think someone strangled her with her own chain? That thing doesn't look strong enough not to break with marks that dark on her neck."

"Exactly, you're right, it doesn't, but what if it wasn't a person who strangled her?"

"Then what? The necklace?" Dean straightened up. "So, you're thinking cursed object?"

Sam turned the laptop back around to himself and stared at the police photograph once again. "I mean, maybe." He started hitting a bunch of keys feverishly as he spoke. "If it is, we should head down to the station first thing and see if we can get it out of the evidence locker. The width of the marks seem to match…here we go!"

He turned the computer around again and Dean was surprised to find the first photo that he had seen before with a picture of the chain of the necklace superimposed over the marks on the victim's neck. They fit perfectly. "How did you do that?" Sam just grinned and turned the screen back towards himself and Dean smirked. "Well, I guess that Stanford education and your zero point zero hook-up rate in high school ended up being good for something after all."

Sam scowled at Dean and looked down. The now familiar awkwardness began to creep back into the room. He stood up and backed towards the door ever so slightly. "So, you ready for dinner? I saw a diner down the street just a little ways down the road as we were coming up here."

Sam shut his own laptop, got up, and grabbed his jacket. "Sure, sounds good."

When they reached the doorway together, they stared at each other awkwardly.

"Oh, ah…" Sam cricked his neck to the side and motioned for Dean to go first.

Dean stepped through the doorway and saw Sam lean backwards so they wouldn't even rub shoulders as they left the room. They drove in silence, hid behind their menus at the diner, ate quietly, and headed back to the motel room. Dean almost felt as if he was going to scream but he tried to ignore it, still weakly holding on to the desperate hope that if enough time passed, things would eventually quiet down. All he had to do was quiet the raging nymphomania he was feeling towards his brother and keep Sam from finding out about it before it ruined their relationship. And he had to successfully do that because Sam was all he had.

When they got back to the motel room, Sam spent an eternity in the bathroom while Dean settled down on the bed and watched some TV. He was well into the middle of "Boogey Man" when Sam finally made his way out of the bathroom still fully dressed and settled down on the bed beside him. Neither of them changed into comfortable clothes for the night much anymore; with angels, demons, horsemen, and probably other hunters (if Sam's run-in with some of their old buddies when they separated a while back was any indication,) after them, it seemed best to just be prepared to have to jump up and run in the middle of the night if need be.

As soon as Sam was back in the room, Dean was once again uncomfortable. He had seen this movie about ten times already and wasn't really into it and he didn't have any guns or knives that hadn't been cleaned or sharpened more than a week ago.

He stretched and gave an exaggerated yawn. "Well, I'm going to bed."

Sam lay his long body down on his own bed and turned out his lamp. "Yeah, me too."

It was only 9:30 but Dean put the remote on the nightstand, rolled onto his stomach and tried willing himself to go to sleep.

The next morning, when they finally stepped into the office of the lead investigator involved with the case, the man looked impossibly confused to see two federal agents in his office. The portly, middle-aged, balding man sat at his desk in his uniform that looked about a size too small and folded his hands as he sat staring at them before finally asking, "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

"We're here about the Candace Adams case," Sam said in his best official tone of voice.

"Um, okay. What about it?"

"We'd like to see the evidence collected from the crime scene."

The investigator sighed and threw up his hands. "What evidence? I mean, I can show you the crime scene photos, but there wasn't much evidence to collect. The crime scene was clean."

"What about Miss Adams' personal affects?" Dean asked, beginning to feel slightly agitated.

"Oh." The investigator looked really bewildered now but he stood up, moved slowly around the two men, opened the door to his office, and then gestured for them to follow. "Sure, right this way." The three of them made their way through several offices before finally stepping into a quiet room filled with a desk at the front entrance and then behind it shelves upon shelves of boxes. The man stopped at the first row of shelves, reached awkwardly to the very top one, pulled down a box marked with the victim's name, and handed it to Sam. Sam held it, looking like he was assessing the weight, and frowned.

"Here it all is, guys. I gotta tell you though, I don't think you're going to find much that's gonna help you in there. We couldn't even find a single fiber or piece of hair on her clothes. Why does the FBI care about this, anyway?"

"We're uh," Sam thought fast on his feet, "we're looking at a couple other cases in other states, think there might be some kind of connection."

The man gave him a single, slow nod. "Like a psycho serial killer? Or a trained assassin, maybe?"

Sam shrugged. "Honestly, we're not sure yet; that's why we're chasing the leads."

The man shook his head, then went over to the desk beside Sam and grabbed a box of latex gloves, offering them to Sam and Dean. Dean got his gloves on pretty quickly but Sam struggled to get his large hands to fit inside. Finally, Dean stepped around Sam and grabbed the evidence box from the desk where Sam had set it down to struggle with his gloves, opened it up and smirked at Sam.

"Why don't I take this one on, eh, big guy?" He quickly rooted through everything in the box and then frowned. "Where's the necklace?"

The investigator looked at Dean as if he was speaking a foreign language. "Necklace?"

"The – the necklace she was wearing when she was found. The strangulation marks matched the width and markings of the chain."

Now the man looked at Dean as if he was half-mad and sighed. "You're telling me you came all the way out here for that? We looked at that chain and it was far too dainty to be responsible for Miss Adams' death. The pattern has to be some coincidence."

"Where is it?" Dean felt like he might rocket through the ceiling just knowing that the stupid cops might have let a cursed object leave the station and go to God only knows where. "If it's not in evidence, it has to be somewhere." He felt a large, warm hand firmly clamp itself on his shoulder and knew instantly without even having to look up that it was Sam silently warning him to calm down.

"The, ah, necklace along with her other jewelry was sent back to her sister, Laurie Pickett. I can get you an address if you'd like to get in touch with her." The man was now glancing shifty-eyed back and forth between the two men, obviously not knowing what to make of their insistence to see this necklace.

Sam nodded courteously at the man and removed his hand from Dean's shoulder. "That would be great, thanks."

"Why don't you guys put everything away here and I'll be right back with that address."

Sam smiled politely. "Sure." The minute the investigator was out the door, he took the box out of Dean's hands and placed it back on the desk. "You gotta calm down."

"Calm down?" Dean spluttered, feeling outright furious for reasons he didn't fully understand. Normally he would be annoyed with the cops, but he'd figured out a long time ago that they sucked at doing a hunter's job. He lowered his voice though, just to make sure no one passing by the evidence room might overhear him. "These douchebags might have let a cursed object out into the world and I'm supposed to calm down?"

"Might have," Sam assured him in a gratingly even tone. "We're not even completely sure if that's what we're dealing with yet. Look, we'll go over to this Laurie Pickett's house, talk to her, get the necklace and destroy it. No big deal."

Dean rolled his eyes, closed the evidence box, and slid it back onto the shelf. They might go over to Laurie Pickett's house, but he seriously doubted it wouldn't be a big deal. Since when was anything in their lives ever that easy?

Twenty minutes later, the two of them were sitting in Laurie Pickett's living room on a pink couch covered in a hideous flower design, listening to the woman ramble on about her sister while she cried, blew her nose and held her husband's hand. Well, they were half-listening. Mostly though, they were both staring at her neck, upon which hung their cursed necklace.

"It was just so awful," the woman cried out. "I mean, she was having such a rough time."

Sam leaned forward, either feigning interest or possibly seeing some new option to pursue in the investigation that didn't involve ripping that chain right off the woman's neck and setting it ablaze in the living room. "What do you mean she was having a rough time?"

"Well, she was having a bad day at work the day she died. Her boss told her last week that she was going to have to fire this woman who worked under her in her department and Candace was having such a time of it because this woman was a single mother with four kids and she knew that firing her was going to just ruin her life. She had just typed up the pink slip at the end of the day and called me on her way home from work. It couldn't have been a half-hour later when she was attacked. I just wish she'd had a good last day!"

Sam pulled a sympathetic face and gave her his infamous puppy-dog eyes. "Did this woman know she was about to be fired? Could she have possibly been angry with Candace and wanted to get revenge?"

Laurie pulled her face out of her tissue and shook her head emphatically. "Oh no! There was no way. Candace was keeping it a secret from everyone. In fact, she waited so long to type up the formal slip because she kept hoping her boss would change her mind, but she never did."

Sam twitched his face up into the semblance of a smile. "Okay, thank you. Uh, one last thing; I couldn't help but admire your necklace. Where did you get it?"

The woman absent-mindedly touched the chain. "Oh, this? It's a family heirloom. It was our grandmother's and it was put up when she died. My sister only recently found it and started wearing it. The police let me have it back after she passed."

Dean leaned forward and tried for a smile. "Oh well, that's – that's –" Creepy. "Nice. That's nice. So, your grandmother was the first person to own the necklace?"

Laurie looked at him confusedly, obviously wondering at the sudden interest in the seemingly ordinary piece of jewelry. "Um, I think so. Her husband gave it to her as an anniversary gift one year."

"And they had a relatively happy marriage I take it?"

Dean wasn't entirely sure why he asked this question, but it had a noticeable effect of Laurie. Her face darkened and she looked even visibly more upset than before. "I'd rather not talk about if it's all the same to you. In fact, if you're done asking me questions, I'd like to get back to making lunch for my family."

"Of course," Sam answered in an apologetic tone. Both men rose from the couch and let themselves out through the front door.

As soon as they were out of the house and making their way back to the Impala, Dean shook his head at Sam. "So, Candace started wearing the necklace not long before she died. I gotta say, I'm liking your theory about a cursed object more and more."

"Yeah, but if the necklace belonged to their grandmother and no one else touched it before it reached Candace, who could have put a curse on it?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe the grandmother."

Sam snorted. "You think this family is hiding some powerful witch in its past?"

"Hey, maybe. Did you see how she kicked us out the minute we started asking about her? She's definitely hiding something."

Sam looked doubtful. "Yeah, maybe."

"Well, either way, the necklace was hers; I say we dig up some dirt on Grandma."

Dean dropped Sam off at the motel and went to get them both some lunch. As he pulled back into the parking lot of the motel with a garden salad and a chicken fried steak, however, he immediately sensed that something was wrong. He never knew how or why, but whenever something was wrong with Sam, Dean oftentimes felt it with an irrational wave of anxiety, exactly like the one he was feeling right at that moment. Without grabbing the food, he sprinted to the door and let himself into the motel room, only to find it empty.

"Sam?"

There was no response. He raced inside and threw the bathroom door open, but it too was empty, so he raced outside and shouted his brother's name, now feeling crazed with worry.

"Dn." He heard a muffled noise from around the corner and quickly ran towards it. In front of the soda machine, Sam lay on the ground, weakly gasping for air and pulling at some invisible force around his throat. Before him, a semi-transparent young woman stood staring down at him with a half-smile on her face.

"Oh, you bitch!" Dean almost always kept a small vile full of rock salt in his pocket. He grabbed it, popped the top, and threw its contents at the spirit, making her vanish instantly. The moment she disappeared Sam gasped, greedily taking in lungfuls of air. Dean ran to Sam and crouched down beside him, then cradled his head between his hand and thigh.

"Sam? You okay?"

"Yeah." Sam gasped for air again. "I'm good." his voice was barely a raspy whisper.

Dean threw an arm underneath Sam's armpits to help him up. "Come on, I'm outta salt, so we gotta get back inside the motel before she comes back!"

Sam grabbed onto Dean's arm and together they got uneasily back on his feet. Once Sam was finally standing, he wrapped an arm around Dean's neck and Dean let himself take the bulk of Sam's weight as he helped him inside. He lay Sam on the bed, closed the door, and checked the salt lines to make sure they were still unbroken, then ran back to the bed to help his still gasping brother. As he leaned over him, he saw that Sam's neck was beginning to bruise in a thin line and it didn't take Dean long to connect the dots.

"Jesus Sam, are you going to be alright? Can you breathe?"

"Yeah," Sam rasped out, "Just give me a couple of minutes."

Dean grimaced. He was going to kill this thing nice and slow for even daring to touch Sam. "Alright." He backed off, sat down on the opposite bed, and watched Sam for a little while until his breaths become more even. "What the hell was that thing?"

"Berta Miller." Sam's voice was still low and throaty, but not as bad as it was thirty seconds ago and Dean breathed a sigh of relief.

"Who?"

Sam pointed to the desk across the room near the front door where a fresh pile of papers lay beside his laptop. Dean went over, grabbed the papers, and started leafing through them. "Son of a bitch. We're dealing with a vengeful spirit, aren't we?"

"Yep."

"It says here Berta Miller was strangled by her husband –"

"On their wedding anniversary, yeah."

"Well, he sounds like a real charmer."

Dean turned around and saw Sam sitting on his bed, watching him. Sam rubbed the front of his neck and cleared his throat. "Well, apparently," Sam said in a voice that had almost completely lost its earlier raspiness, "Berta's husband decided to take on a new lover and when the lover demanded she have him all to herself, he reacted by murdering his wife. Now, here's the interesting thing; according to reports, Berta's sister knew about the affair all along and had even written Berta a letter telling her about it, but never got up the courage to send it. Berta's husband kills her on their anniversary, and the sister, feeling guilty and responsible for her death, hangs herself."

"You think Laurie's husband is fooling around and Candace knew about it? That maybe this spirit is going around taking out vengeance on other people because she can't gank her own sister?"

Sam sighed. "That was my original theory, that is, until I went outside to grab a soda and got attacked in broad daylight."

Dean scrunched up his face in confusion. "Wait a minute, if it's a spirit, how did it leave its usual haunt and follow us to our motel?"

Sam looked thoughtful. "It's actually not all that crazy. Remember that death omen Claire? She became attached to people and followed them."

"Right, yeah, I remember. All those people were tied to the same douchebag who arrested us and then tried to kill me."

"So." Sam was quiet for a few seconds. "We must all be tied together somehow in a way that's so significant to the spirit that she can follow us around."

Dean nodded. That was weird and confusing. "So, another spirit changing the rules. Awesome. Have you figured out the connection?"

Sam shrugged. "Obviously Candace was a blood relation to our ghost and, who knows, she might have known something about her sister, but I can't figure out how we fit in to it."

"Okay, so where does the necklace come in?"

"Um, remains, maybe? I mean, it could be something as little as a flap of skin or a piece of hair, but there's gotta be some part of her that's still in that necklace."

"Okay, so whatever the bitch's problem is, why she's ganking people, I don't care. We find the necklace and we destroy it."

"Yeah, not gonna argue with you there, but how do we get the necklace and remain in one piece with Berta coming after us this whole time?"

"Salt. We'll load up our shotguns with salt rounds, keep vials of it in our pockets, whatever it takes. But if we have enough salt, we can hit the spirit with it whenever it comes near, she can't touch us."

Sam nodded. The plan was far from perfect, but without being able to know why the spirit was coming after them, it seemed like the best chance they had.

Later that evening as Sam and Dean drove furiously away from Laurie's house, Dean clutching his bleeding upper arm and Sam wincing in pain at a bruise forming over his right eye, they were beginning to seriously re-think their plan.

"That bitch comes back fast!" Dean remarked, as she once again appeared right in front of Sam and had to be repelled by a handful of salt Sam grabbed out of a large container sitting upright in the backseat. "Why didn't burning the necklace kill it? All we did was piss her off!"

"Maybe it's not just about burning it; maybe we have to melt the whole thing down."

"Great. So we need a damn furnace?"

Berta appeared at Dean's side. Sam grabbed a handful of salt and threw it at Dean, temporarily clouding his vision and stinging his eyes. The car swerved, but Dean wiped his eyes and quickly steered out of it.

"I just wish we knew why – wait!"

"What?" Dean winced, not knowing whether Sam just figured something out or if he was going to get another face full of salt.

"Berta's sister! She wrote a letter telling Berta about something that she thought would destroy Berta's life and so she never sent it. Candace had just written that pink slip and was afraid to give it to her employee because she thought it would do the same. Maybe this spirit – duck!" Sam threw another fistful of salt at his brother and Berta once again disappeared. "Maybe this spirit at first wanted to go after her sister because she knew about what was happening and never sent her the letter, but she couldn't because her sister had already offed herself. So now it's going after people who have a secret that's written down but they're too afraid that it will ruin the intended recipient's life to let them read it."

Dean looked at Sam and he realized what Sam was talking about. "Chuck's story."

"It's the one thing we all have in common."

"Well, what the Hell are we going to do? We don't even have it to read it!"

Sam ducked his head in embarrassment for a moment. "Yes we do."

"What?"

"I got it from him the morning after we went to his house."

Dean growled. "No Sam, there has to be some other way!"

"I don't think so, Dean. It's either that or s-"

Sam's sentence was cut off and he once again began tugging at something on his neck. Dean couldn't see the spirit so he threw salt all over Sam's general direction and Sam once again was able to gasp for fresh air. Dean growled unhappily as he considered his options with this case, knowing that if they didn't want to die, they were really only left with one.

"Where's the story?" he asked.

Sam hurriedly reached into the backseat and began fishing through his duffel. Dean quickly pulled off the road and to the shoulder and watched Sam in his search for a moment before he was distracted by the feeling of something cold and otherworldly in his lap. He looked in front of him to see Berta straddling him a look of sheer malevolence on her face. He was about to try to grab for some rock salt when he felt something smack him on the chest and Berta disappeared. He grabbed at it and saw that it was Chuck's story.

"Well, I guess that proves the theory," Sam said.

Dean stared down at the manuscript without really looking at it. "Right. Sam, whatever you're about to read in here, I'm sorry."

Sam looked down fearfully at his own copy. "Yeah, me too."

Without another word, they each lifted Chuck's story to their faces and began reading.

17