I have absolutely zero self-control! I'm loving your reviews! This is a love triangle story, please don't try and get who she chooses out of me, I have no self-control, and I don't want to spoil you! Thanks to trinastar818 for fixing up this mess that I wrote during NaNo!

After four hours, Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot of a dinky motel.

"Stay here," he said, throwing open the door. "I'll go see what kind of vacancy they have and get us a room. Then we'll change and head over to the police station and see what they can tell us about the murder."

"Wait," Hermione said. "We're going to stay here? It looks like you can catch about five different diseases from this place just standing in there."

"It's cheap," Dean answered before slamming the door closed and walking up to the door into the lobby.

Hermione twisted in her seat to look back at Sam. "Any luck in your book?"

"None," Sam answered closing his. "There was one symbol that seemed to look similar, but it's not it. Yours?"

"Oh, you must be talking about the symbol for life force, I saw that one as well. I started to wonder if maybe the symbol for the polar opposite of that one would be our symbol, but then when I went to look it up, it was completely different so I stopped pursuing it. I think we're on the right track though. While you two are at the police station, I'll keep looking. It has to be along the lines of the runes relating to life and death, they're just too similar to ignore."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. What happens when you find the right rune? If it even is a rune?"

"Then I start researching magic to counteract the rune. I don't even know if that rune is something that can be counteracted, but most of them can. My ex-husband's oldest brother is a curse breaker, so if I can't figure it out on my own, I'm sure that he can either help me, or point me in the direction of someone who can. We will figure this out, and I bet if I can narrow it down, we'll be able to have this mark off of Dean when we get back to Boston. It all depends on how much of my help you need on this case."

Sam's jaw dropped open. "Wow, you really think that you'll be able to get all that work done in just a few days? And that it will be as easy as you're saying it will be?"

Hermione shrugged. "I don't see why not. Ancient Runes are pretty basic and since you said he got this mark from Cain, that rune is as ancient as it can get. If it's not a rune, which I firmly believe it is, then I we'll need to definitely confer with someone else, because I don't think I'll be able to help you. This is the last idea I have."

"No, no, this is great. We'll try and leave you alone as much as possible so you can get a lot of work done," Sam said.

"No, I want to help. If you need me, please don't hesitate to call or text. I'm very intrigued by this idea of a vengeful spirit. Back at Hogwarts we had ghosts floating around who interacted with the students but none of them could be described as vengeful. We had a troublemaking poltergeist but he was fairly harmless in the pranks he played."

"Friendly ghosts? That's something we don't usually encounter," Sam said.

"Yeah, it's pretty wicked. One time, during second year, our house ghost, Nearly Headless Nick-"

Hermione was cut off by Dean's return to the car.

"That took a while," Sam said when Dean threw himself into the driver's seat. "I thought they had a vacancy, do they not? Is that what took so long?"

"They have a vacancy. Just one. One room, two beds. It took a while because I was sweet-talking the old lady into switching rooms around to accommodate us. Originally it was one room and one bed. I don't think the three of us want to get that chummy. So, we have two beds. Let's go in and change, and then go talk to the police about," he paused and read the name off the print out he had with him, "Charles Drake's unfortunate death and see what we can find out."

An hour later, Hermione had the room to herself after the boys had changed and headed out. The room was much cleaner than she had anticipated. Right now, the boys planned on her taking one bed, one of them taking the other, and one taking the floor. She wasn't sure why the boys wouldn't just share a bed, but she didn't question it. They had changed into their suits, which changed their appearances completely. They really looked the part of federal agents. Their aliases were a bit ridiculous, names of some classic rock artists she vaguely recognized, but they cleaned up real nice. As soon as they were changed, they left the room and she had gotten right to work. She had at least three books spread out around her and she was trying to find every single rune she could that related in anyway to life and death, even vaguely. There were a lot of runes that had similarities with the one on Dean's arm, but none that matched it exactly and that was beginning to frustrate her immensely. She placed her head down on the book and closed her eyes. There had to be something she was missing. Something that was completely obvious. Her phone rang.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Hermione? It's Sam."

"Hey, Sam. How did questioning go?"

Sam sighed. "Not well. Dean lost it on the Sheriff."

"Lost it how?"

"The sheriff was being shifty, and not really being very cooperative or wanting to offer up any information on the case. And Dean just lost it. He started screaming at him, and grabbed him around the collar and pushed him against the wall, screaming in his face about how he's obstructing a federal murder investigation. It took me and two other officers to pull him off."

"Where is he now?" she asked.

"Sitting in the car, cooling off. I wanted to give you a heads up that he's not doing well. And we now have eyes on us. We're going to have to be extra careful on this case. I'm going to try and figure out a way to get you in the field with us. We might need your power to keep him under control when we're dealing with people."

"Yeah," Hermione said. "Whatever you need, I'll do it."

"Thanks," Sam said. "I really appreciate it. How's the research?"

"I feel like I'm running in circles, but I have this feeling that I'm close, really, really close."

"We're going to go check out the murder scene and then pick up some food along the way back. Anything you're in the mood for?"

"Nah, surprise me," she said.

"Okay, see you in a bit," Sam said, before hanging up.

Hermione set her phone down and put her head in her hands. It sounded like Dean's anger issues were getting worse. She really needed to figure out what was wrong with him and she needed to do it before he did something he was going to regret. But everything she was finding led to dead end after dead end. Frustrated, she began angrily flipping through the pages of the book in front of her. She stopped flipping with a gasp. There, sitting on the pages of one of her more rare runes books was the symbol that had been carved into Dean's arm.

Hehehe. Please review! :-D I'm going to stick to my guns and wait at least a week before the next update. I want to wait for trinastar818 to get my Fallen chapters back to me before I update anymore!