"Ah!"

I jerked awake when the scream met my ears, shooting upright in my bed. The blanket pulled up tight around me fell down onto my lap and I blinked, trying to clear my vision, my fists flying up defensively before I realized where I was.

Serenity and Dean were both up on laptops, Serenity on hers and Dean on Sam's. Dean was at the table by the door while Serenity was on the edge of my bed. Sam was passed out on the other mattress, shouting out in his sleep without realizing it.

I raised a hand up to my head and rubbed my temple, trying to get rid of the head rush from sitting up so quickly. "Sam!" I shouted, scowling and tossing my head back. My fingers slid up into my hair, a tangled mess. So I was sleeping restlessly, too. I looked over to the clock; it was almost ten in the morning.

Sam rolled over, grasping his pillow like a desperate lifeline.

"Sam!" I shouted again. Without the patience or compassion from a completely arisen consciousness, I grabbed blindly at the bedside table. I ended up finding the television remote. Without looking what I was doing, I threw it at Sam and heard a satisfying thunk as it collided with his chest. Sam shouted again and his eyes flew open wide, chest heaving as he panted in fear.

"Ready for school tomorrow?" I asked Serenity dryly, doing my best to comb through my hair. Serenity shot me a filthy look and stuck out her tongue.

Sam moaned softly, pushing himself up into a sitting position. The blankets pooled over his legs and he rubbed his forehead with his hand. "Why'd you let me fall asleep?" He asked Dean in a low grumble.

Dean took a deep breath in and answered on the exhale. "'Cause I'm an awesome brother." He left one hand resting on the laptop's keyboard and leaned back in the chair, staring at Sam knowingly. "So what did you dream about?"

"Lollipops and candy canes," Sam replied sarcastically.

Dean scoffed angrily, looking the other way. He didn't want to listen to his own brother lying to him. "Yeah… sure."

I know Sam picked up on the discontent with the answer, but he ignored it in favor of not starting a fight. "Did you find anything?"

Dean's upper lip pulled back in the beginning of a snarl. "Oh, besides a whole new level of frustration?" He growled. Sam threw his legs over the edge of the bed, yawning widely. "No." He threw his arms up like he was giving up. "I've looked at everything - a few local women, a Laura and a Katherine committed suicide in front of a mirror. Oh, and a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave. But no Mary."

"Poor Dave. I can't believe we've actually got a Bloody Mary case," Serenity grinned rambunctiously. I shot her a look and hit her knee.

"Don't say the name, we don't know for sure how to summon whatever the hell she is."

Sam flopped back down on the bed, despairing over the lack of anything good or interesting to make waking up worthwhile. "Maybe we just haven't found it yet," he suggested halfheartedly.

"I've been looking up odd fatalities in the surrounding area," Serenity piped up helpfully, giving me a returning shove on my leg. "Bleeding from the eyes, internal skull hemorrhaging, that sort of thing. There's nothing aside from a couple of normal aneurysms. Whatever's happening here…" she shut her eyes in grief. "Oh, I hate to say this, but maybe it's not really Mary."

My phone vibrated loudly on the bedside table, rattling and shaking next to the alarm clock. I sighed, yawned another time just to get it out of my system, and then grabbed it up off of the table, sliding my thumb across the screen and accepting the call.

"Hello," I said, wincing slightly when I heard my voice slightly slurred so it sounded more like herro. "SSA Holly Kasakabe."

Charlotte and I sat on a park bench by a local playground only a couple of blocks from her house. Charlie's eyes were red and bloodshot, puffy tear tracks marking down her cheeks. Her hair wasn't completely straight, some tangles remaining in the locks. She was an absolute mess, doubled over on the bench and sobbing and gasping, trying to speak through her crying.

Jill. Jill was the name of the other blonde that had been with Donna and Lily at the service. Apparently Charlie had only recently found out that Jill had been found dead in her en suite and immediately upon finding out how, she called me, like I told her to.

She wanted to meet at the park, so it was lucky that there were no children there. Serenity sat on a bench next to ours, but there was still several feet between them because of the way they'd been built. The boys stood leaning on a tree between and slightly behind the benches that Serenity, Charlie and I occupied.

"A-And they found her on the b-bathroom floor, and her-her eyes," Charlie gasped, running out of oxygen. Serenity was cringing every time she stammered and I was uncomfortably rubbing her back, trying to offer her comfort enough to calm her down. "They were g-gone!"

"I'm sorry," I offered lamely, biting at my lower lip and waiting to be called out on the insincerity of my apology. Yes, it was devastating, but I couldn't bring myself to completely empathize with a crying teenager practically throwing herself over me with her tears soaking through the sleeve of my jacket. I was far more uncomfortable and awkward than anything else.

"And she said… she s-said it," she whispered, looking around fearfully, like saying even the word "it" was going to have the sky raining down around us. Serenity's head jerked up as she heard it and Sam and Dean shared a look. Charlie was oblivious to the silent communication going on between the other three. "I… I heard her say it," the other girl insisted. "B-But… it couldn't be because of that… I - I'm insane… right?" She asked me, reaching gently to rub her eyes with one hand.

"No," I answered as softly as possible, squeezing her shoulder gently, like she would easily break. This is what she wants to hear, right? "No, I promise, Charlie, you're not insane."

Evidently I was wrong, because she only started crying harder, doubling over again, elbows on her knees, covering her face with her hands. "Oh, God," she sniffed. "That makes me feel so much worse!"

If she wasn't practically leaning on me, I would have thrown my arms up and stormed away in exasperation. I'm pretty sure she would have started crying no matter how I answered, but that didn't make me feel any better about it.

"Look," Sam said, using his gentle, soothing, low tone of Ultimate Winchester Comfort. "We think something's happening here," he tried to explain vaguely enough not to frighten Charlie, though he approached from the tree cautiously, reaching out timidly and setting a hand on Charlie's back. "Something that… can't be explained."

"We're going to stop it, okay?" Serenity promised, finally taking pity on her poor, tortured sister who was suffocating from all of the clinging and the tears. "But to do that, we need you to help us with something."

And that's how we convinced an emotionally vulnerable, guilt-ridden teenager into helping us break into one of her best friends' house. Yeah… we're all going to Hell sooner or later. Preferably later, because I've seen that low-budget Hellhazers movie, but still.

I grunted under my breath as my nails scratched at the black roofing of Jill's two-story house in the middle of a populated neighborhood - thank God that whoever decided where Jill's bedroom would be placed her room by the backyard, where people on the street wouldn't see four adults sneaking into the house via ninja-ing up the roof. Little grains of flaky paint wedged under my nails, and it was almost painful if I scratched too hard.

Charlotte had the window slid open helpfully, propped up and locked in place. Serenity swung her legs over the sill and pushed herself in, landing with a thud inside. Sam and Dean gave me what I'm sure they thought were helpful little shoves as I went through the window headfirst. I looked around, saw only Serenity and Charlie inside, and pushed against the wall with my hands, kicking against the roof with my feet, and falling inside. I ended up doing a somersault to continue without brain damage.

"I hope you came up with a time-consuming excuse for Jill's mom, because this is going to be really awkward if she sees us," I told Charlie, standing up, adjusting the collar of my jacket, and brushing myself off.

"I told her that I needed some time alone with Jill's pictures and things," Charlie said quickly, offering Sam a hand through as he found it a bit difficult to get his lanky limbs through the window. "Ugh, I hate lying to her."

"Trust us," Dean urged, coming through the window last and then turning around to pull it shut. "It's for the greater good. Hit the lights," he ordered as an afterthought.

Charlie's frown deepened, but she was a smart girl and realized she was in far over her head on this one. She turned around, her neatly-brushed hair pulling out from under the collar of her unzipped jacket, and hit the light switch on the side of the wall by the door. "What are you guys looking for?"

The lights were turned off and for a moment I was plunged into pitch darkness - I only knew where Sam was because I heard a loud zip as he unzipped his supply bag, a dark green color with a duffel-like shape. Then my eyes started adjusting; the light from through the window reflected off of the mirror in Jill's bathroom, the door swung open. There was a black tarp over the bathroom tiles - probably because of the blood. It Jill's murder had been anything like Shoemaker's, then there was a lot of it.

"You'll know as soon as we do, because it's generally something freaky," Serenity answered helpfully. I saw her form move back to the window and she twisted the long rod, closing the blinds as far as she could. "It's not completely dark but is this good, Sam?"

"Yeah, yeah. This is fine." A light flashed in Sam's face before turning off, and then a glow illuminated his entire face. He held a video camcorder, sleek and silver, in one hand as it turned on. I heard a mechanical noise as the lenses adjusted. "Digital camera," he said. I caught his brown eyes glancing up over the screen towards Serenity, then looking over at me. "Sometimes catches what we can't see for ourselves."

"Like Poltergeist," Serenity suggested curiously. Dean made a noise in his throat of agreement. "Cool."

"I wonder if my phone would work the same way," I murmured, more to myself than anything. "Because if so, then… that's awesome." Then I looked to Charlie's silhouette. "Yeah, we're weird, just try not to read too much into what we're saying."

"Hey!" Sam cheered quietly. "Night vision!" The lenses adjusted again and Sam swung around so that the camera was facing his brother. "Perfect."

Dean looked at the camera sideways from where he was standing by Jill's desk - neat and orderly, but not obsessively so. There was a cellular phone lying open on the top, and a half-complete essay on presidential rights and powers over Congress, if I had read it right before the lights were hit. He stuck out his bottom lip in what I think was supposed to be a whiny pout and he bat his eyes several times. "Do I look like Paris Hilton?"

Sam shook his head, not dignifying that with an answer, but Charlie had to stifle a wrenched giggle from her throat. The tall one swung around with the camera, moving around the room with surprising fluidity.

"So, Charlie," I said conversationally. I wanted to sit on the bed as Sam opened the closet door and held the camera out, looking through the screen at the pleated skirts, short dresses, and skinny jeans on one half of the rack, the other full of blouses and secondary layers. "We're putting a secret operative in your school. Serenity's dressin' up like her alter-ego. Is there anyone she should avoid?"

Charlie stared at me and tentatively stepped forwards, holding her arms out to keep from running into anything, even though she could probably see my figure illuminated by the window well enough. "Why are you doing that?"

"Well, don't ask me, it wasn't my idea," Serenity huffed, crossing her arms and scowling angrily.

"You know. Insider's view." I brushed it off with a shrug. "Gotta find out if there are any rumors that might be relevant." And to try to keep tabs on who says Bloody Mary. But Charlie had enough stress to deal with already; it wasn't fair to load more up onto her shoulders and expect her to stay cool, especially not given that she'd already had one mental breakdown thus far today.

Charlie tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at me in confusion, like she was unable to decide whether or not I was being serious.

"So, I don't get it." Sam called, shutting the closet door with a click and moving on towards the bathroom, holding the camera out to take recordings of the entire room. "The first victim didn't summon Mary, and the second victim did. How's she choosing them?"

"Beats me," Dean shrugged.

Serenity padded over to the tarp-covered bathroom floorboards and hesitated for a moment before stepping lightly onto the plastic, which crinkled under her. "But if Jill summoned Mary, then why did she say the chant to begin with? Bloody-" She caught herself abruptly. "It's a middle school game. Jill was seventeen."

Charlie raised her shoulders, looking down defensively and wringing her hands together. "It's just a joke," she mumbled, stricken and beginning to come to terms with that it was far from funny.

"Someone's going to say it again," Dean sighed, shrugging his jacket further up his shoulders. Sam moved into the bathroom, moving the camera slowly and carefully around, and Serenity stepped back, out of the way. "It's just a matter of time."

"Hey!" Sam called suddenly. I jumped, shoulders raising in alarm, and spun to see him staring through the camera screen at the bathroom mirror. "There's a black light in the trunk, right?"

"Ah!" I cried happily, reaching to my pocket. "Hang on, I usually carry this with me. It's a flashlight, doubles as a UV light." I pulled it out, dangling it from the chain around my finger, and then flipped it up into my hand. I pressed down on the button at the end and it turned on, the thin end shining bright white. I clicked it again and it changed to a more filtered, darker glow. "With my work, it helps to identify crime scenes and weapons, because you can see blood. Let's check it out."

Sam shrugged and hit the bathroom light. He didn't turn off the camera, but he did set it down on the edge of the sink before leaning over it to gently grasp the top and bottom edges of the mirror's frame, lifting it off of the nail holding it in place against the wall. He took it gingerly and pressed one side to his torso, shifting awkwardly to fit it back through the doorway.

Serenity picked up the camera as an afterthought as she followed him back to Jill's bedroom. "I don't know how you'll explain needing the mirror for sentimental value," she commented to Charlie.

Sam laid out the mirror on top of the blankets on Jill's bed, the reflecting side face-down and the black paper on the back facing up. I bit my lip and took up a position next to him, looking over the backing. "Um…" There was a small hole punched into it where a nail had been holding it up. I held my UV light over it, but I couldn't see anything. "Nothing on the back. Sam, help me get this backing off."

Sam didn't object or question me, which made me a little proud. There was a slight adhesive keeping the backing on the mirror, but it wasn't too strong, and Sam pulled it at the corner until it parted with the glass from one corner to the next, then pulled it down and discarded it on the floor.

I held up the UV light again, letting the light shine off of the back of the mirror. In a light, glowing purple, what was very clearly a handprint (supposedly of blood) was revealed on the mirror's back surface, the name Gary Bryman written directly underneath. Some spots were bigger than others in the words, and other ends of lines would trail down incorrectly; like paint had been used, or even blood, sense it was showing up under black light.

"Gary Bryman…?" Charlie breathed, leaning over the bed to see. Her long blonde hair fell forwards over her shoulders, brushing over the top of the quilts.

"Damn. We're a letter off," Serenity pointed out with a disappointed snap of her fingers. "Oh, well. Relevance? Charlie, do you know who that is?"

Charlie stared at the back of Jill's mirror in an odd fascination, shaking her head slowly. "No."

"Right…" I sighed and set the UV pen down on the mattress beside the upturned mirror, instead digging through my pockets for my phone. "Of course you don't." I opened my messaging app and scrolled through my many, many contacts - I wouldn't call them all friends, but if I have their personal numbers, then we generally stick up for each other, or help out when we're needed. It's like Serenity and her mafia; there are only some that she'd invite home to meet me or have dinner (her right-hand-man Benny, for example), but she'd trust most of them to have her back.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked as I swiped the screen to start typing out a message.

"Finding out who Gary Bryman was or is," I answered with a brief pause. I figured that would have been pretty obvious.

I need age/date/sex/race/C.O.D./crim. record of Gary Bryman, likely in Ohio.

-SSA Holly Kasakabe

"Are you sure it's a good idea to get other people involved?" Dean asked in a low hiss, precautious need to keep off the grid coming out in paranoia. "What if they find out why?"

I gave him a look and turned on one of Sam's most-frequently-used bitch faces, notching it up to a high setting. "Yes, Dean. I'm definitely worried that my empirical contacts in the FBI or police are going to read so far into a data request that they unearth the shocking discovery that my sister and I are allied with fraudulent hunters, and that I'm investigating the alleged homicides of people killed by a child's horror legend." I deadpanned.

Dean's shoulders slumped and he rolled his eyes. "Fine. When do you think you'll get a reply?"

My phone buzzed in my hands, giving my palms a nice massage.

"I think that would be now," Serenity stage-whispered.

I answered the text. It was a link to a newspaper article from the next city over. I clicked the hyperlink and only waited a moment for the screen to load before I could skim the details. "Got it. Gary Bryman was a Caucasian child, an eight-year-old killed in a hit and run in two thousand three. Nobody saw the driver and there were no cameras within range of the plates, but eyewitnesses described a black-painted Toyota Camry."

Charlie's eyes went wide and she clapped her manicured hands up to her mouth to cover a squeak. "Oh my God."

"What?" Serenity asked abruptly.

Charlie lowered her hands to the point where her fingers skimmed her chin, just so that her voice wasn't muffled. "At the end of two thousand three, she'd just gotten her license. Jill drove a black Toyota Camry, it was a family car but her dad gave it to her on her sixteenth birthday."

Lips slightly parted in confusion, I looked over to Serenity for response. She met my eyes and in her irises I saw suspicion and then, a moment later, realization.

"So She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named killed Jill, because Jill killed the boy, and Jill was present at the incantation - she's the one who said it. Shoemaker wasn't in the bathroom when Lily said it - well, I hope not, anyway, because that's all new levels of creepy - but it was his house. What if-" Serenity pointed at the back of Jill's bathroom mirror. "-That's like her signature? Lily didn't kill anyone or she would have been killed, but what if Shoemaker did?"

Dean and Sam shared a long, dark look over Serenity's head and then Dean looked back to Charlie, his eyes shadowed, no longer joking about being Paris Hilton.

"We need to get back to your friend Donna's house."

"Do you think Serenity's right?" I asked Sam, frowning in concentration as I pulled the drapes shut over the window opposite the sink. Sam carefully raised the elder Shoemaker's bathroom mirror off of the nail it hung on and carried it over to the side of the bathtub, setting it down with the front up.

"I don't know. I mean, with this sort of thing, it's hard to tell, you know? There are vengeful spirits who take out their anger directly," Sam started to explain, a bit hesitant to decide for sure without good evidence. "Poltergeists, who take it out on everyone… spirits that are just too bitter to move on, so they exact their revenge on people who wronged others the way they were… sometimes they think they're helping or doing justice, like death omens."

"Death omens?" Try as I might, as I got my UV pen from my pocket and Sam pulled the backing off of the mirror, the only thing I could think of was a big black dog. "You mean like shaggy dogs or skull-and-crossbones?"

Sam chuckled. "Not quite. Some spirits appear to people before they die, but they aren't actually the cause. They're more like a warning because they want to help others. Just because they died awfully, doesn't mean they want others to. The black dogs you're thinking of are called Hellhounds, they're commonly associated with death."

"Which was probably why I thought of them," I remarked, kneeling down in front of the mirror next to the taller brother. I turned on the ultraviolet light and in the same purplish glow, there was a handprint smacked on the back of the mirror, the fingertips pressed harder than the arches of the phalanges, the palm smudged. Underneath the handprint, the name Linda Shoemaker was written in the same dripping script as Gary Bryman's had been.

"Linda's feminine," I whispered to Sam. "So if it's connected to Shoemaker, since that's her last name, it could have been… ah… cousin, mother, daughter, sister, wife…"

"So You-Know-Who is picking off people based on people in their pasts," Sam finally agreed, looking over the scrawled, messy writing. "Jill killed the boy, and Shoemaker killed Linda."

"One thing doesn't make sense," I breathed, narrowing my eyes at the mirror in puzzlement, listening closely for Charlie's warning at the same time. "Shoemaker proved you don't have to be the one to say the chant, you just have to be there in the surrounding vicinity at the time. I'm sure more murderers over the years have said or been near the incantation."

Sam considered this for a moment and narrowed his eyes. "Charlie said the Toyota was Jill's, but no one else knew. It was a secret. Maybe that's what it is."

"Right!" I nodded quickly in understanding and agreement, turning to look up at him. "Because if she was brutally killed, then it wasn't necessarily a closed case. Maybe she's bitter because her killer was never caught, and wants to punish people who got away with murder."

"It fits," Sam agreed, taking the mirror by the edges and lifting it back up. He rose to his feet to hang it up again.

A shrill whistle pitched up the stairs of the two-story Shoemaker home. Recognizing Charlie's cue, I jumped up to my feet, grabbed the abandoned backing of the mirror from where it lay near-forgotten on the ground, crumpled it up, and shoved it in the waste basket in front of the sink. I heard a soft clink as Sam mounted the mirror back where it had been and then I stepped out into the hallway just in time for Donna, the black-haired teenager, to reach the top of the stairs.

She looked a lot different today; her book bag was over one shoulder, and I saw a court seal over a folder sticking out. She must be fighting for Lily's custody. I genuinely hoped she got it. Lily and she were sisters; Donna had the experience of living with a younger sibling already, and while it wasn't the same as being a parent, after a trauma, Lily and Donna could both use some familiarity. Donna would be eighteen in less than a year, anyway. Her hair was pinned away from her forehead with a barrette, and she wore a dark purple sweater over a tank top, with skinny jeans and sneakers.

"Donna!" Charlie called in alarm, her footsteps pounding up the stairs after her friend. "Donna, wait a moment, please!"

"It's alright, Charlotte," I called softly, offering Donna a smile. I hoped Sam would get the hint and stay hidden in the bathroom for a moment longer - it was creepy enough having me in her house, forget a tall, strong stranger with no legal background to speak of. "Donna, right? Um, we met at the funeral ceremony. Condolences again, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

Already I was thinking of a pretty good cover - child protection wasn't so unbelievable, was it?

"Agent Kasakabe…" Donna looked like she'd been slapped in the face with a brick, but she nodded despite the stunned and bordering on suspicious frown. "Yeah, alright."

"Er, it's about Lily's custody," I lied quickly, putting on my best 'honest' face. "I just have to know about your family history - pardon the tact, but do you have any still living relatives over the age of eighteen?"

Donna nodded once, briefly, and hesitant. "Yeah, our mom's younger sister, but she lives in a different state. Lily doesn't want to move."

"Right," I said, nodding, this time sincere in the sentiment. I could understand that entirely - Lily was well-adjusted to this place, and here she had the support system of trusted adults in the community, her friends, and her older sister. "Does she have any medical or health complications that may make caring for her needs difficult for you?"

Donna's shoulders lifted defensively and she turned more guarded. "Nothing that I can't handle. Just some seasonal allergies, you know, but those can be fixed with some Tylenol, and a humidifier."

"Absolutely," I agreed. Damn. I should get a freakin' medal for this. "One last thing, and I'll leave you alone. I just need to know how your mother passed away. Sometimes a strange death could mean potential health concerns for individuals that shared DNA," I said, completely truthfully. "If Lily could be at risk for any sort of medical condition, then that will, of course, have to be taken into consideration - although I doubt that you wouldn't be granted charge, seeing as you have your father's life insurance." I winced immediately thereafter, but Donna didn't seem as bothered as she could have been.

Donna crossed her arms, her book bag swaying and the strap sliding down to one of her elbows. "My mom's name was Linda Shoemaker. She overdosed on sleeping pills." Her eyes flickered back to Charlie, when the blonde girl reached the top landing and paused before approaching. "Prescription sleeping pills," Donna added more insistently. "It was just an accident."

Whether or not it was, it didn't seem like a good idea to argue it with her, so I dipped my head politely in acknowledgment. "Okay, thank you. I'll just… be going, then." I tilted my head to the side and frowned. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Donna and Charlie both looked around curiously, to try to find the source of the imaginary noise.

I smiled slightly and shook my head. "Sorry, I just thought I heard a squirrel or something out on the roof." Get the memo, Sam, I thought mentally. "Good luck in the trial, Donna."

"Yeah… thanks." Donna looked past me to a closed door, her attention already slipping. "Charlie, can you get some coffee?"

"Of course," Charlie replied immediately, watching Donna retreat to her room empathetically. "I'll be up in just a moment. Vanilla or caramel?"

Donna swung the door open and called, "Caramel," over her shoulder before disappearing inside.

A moment later I heard a quiet slide of a window opening and then a soft grunt as Sam lifted himself out of the second-story bathroom and out onto the roof. Good.

As the door clicked shut, Charlie turned to me, shining eyes wide in distress. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Do you really think her dad could have killed her mom?"

I shrugged noncommittally. "It seems like it," I replied softly, casting a cautionary glance back to Donna's bedroom door. It stayed shut. "I'd believe it. I once investigated someone torched alive because his pal lost a fantasy football game."

"But… sleeping pills, that really could be an accident," Charlie tried to reason.

"Could be," I allowed, before locking eyes with her meaningfully. "I'm sorry, Charlie, but it's far more likely that her medication was altered or she was given more than she was supposed to take. The strong sleeping pills can be dangerous. Doctors don't prescribe many things stronger than Melatonin if there's a potential for suicidal thoughts or actions, and people on prescriptions for insomnia, sleep apnea, and the works have regular doctors' appointments. A doctor would know if something was wrong - depression would drastically change her weight, appetite, and appearance, too."

Charlie looked down, frowning softly, as she tried to reason this out to herself, before she nodded reluctantly, accepting it from me. "I think I should stick around."

"Good on you, Charlotte." I gave her a smile. "Donna and Lily are going to need all the support they can get, especially Donna. She knew her father longer and knew Jill better, too, plus now she's taken on responsibility of another person. Just, whatever you do…" My smile faded. "Don't-"

"Believe me," Charlie scoffed, raising a hand and cutting me off. "I won't say it."

I nodded, firmly convinced that she meant it.

The next morning, I woke up to a pillow being held over my face. The moment I stopped being able to breathe, I jerked up. Serenity shoved the pillow to the side to crankily stare down at me.

"It's seven," she griped, reaching back up to run her fingers through her hair before securing a bobby pin. "You're supposed to give me a ride."

I had to grin shamelessly at her attire. Serenity dresses casual far more than I do, but it's still odd to see her without a jacket. She wore skinny jeans, a popular style, and instead of her boots or sneakers, she had on sandals with wedged heels. The straps crisscrossed over the tops of her feet, the purple glitter sparkling. Her shirt was solid black with the exception of the front, which looked like the white and red background and borders of a nametag that said hello, I'm Awesome. Under that was a long-sleeved plain white shirt; the contrast of black and white on her upper arms was very nice.

She had on a metallic blue and soft yellow eye shadow job that fanned out to the sides. With the addition of eyeliner, she had a beautiful, Egyptian-like style going on, and she had added some lip gloss to make her lips shine. A necklace with a heart-shaped silver pendant was around her neck - it was cheap, a twenty-dollar clearance item at Claire's meant to complete the masquerade. She'd wanted to try a choker, but Sam and I had shared one look and vetoed it while Dean stared in both confusion and disgust at the racks of Justin Bieber, One Direction, and Five Seconds of Summer merchandise.

"Very nice," I praised with a grin, narrowly avoiding being clobbered by a swinging fist.

Thirty minutes later, I was dressed in a business pantsuit, my hair tied behind my neck and sunglasses slipped on over my face. They were gridded with black plastic in place of lenses, with the words Party over one lens in blue and the word Rock over the other in pink. Serenity hates my Party Rock glasses but I love them. In Claire's when we bought them she'd tried to sabotage me by taking them out of the basket; but I was too attentive.

We entered the Winchester's bedroom after knocking once and not hearing any shouts in the negative response. I pushed the door open and leaned in, looking around. The shower was running and Dean was on one bed with Sam's laptop on his thighs.

"Still searching?" I asked, mostly rhetorically since I already knew that of course he was still searching.

"Yep," Dean replied, popping the 'p' as an idiosyncrasy. "The NCIC, the FBI database - at this point, any Mary who died in front of a mirror is good enough for me."

"I thought that for someone to haunt a town, she'd have to have died in the town."

"I'm telling you, there's nothing local," Serenity called from behind me irately. She fidgeted with the thin necklace chain around her neck. "I spent hours looking before. Unless you suddenly think that you can find something I can't in time to give me that ride, because I am not walking to that Hell on Earth you call a high school, get your ass in gear and let's go."

"Impatient?" Dean asked me with a raised eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. "You have no idea."

Serenity gave a long-suffering sigh and shoved my back, forcing me further into the room so that she could take my place by the door frame. "Obviously you're going to have this conversation no matter what I say; I'm thinking that the Mary who started it was murdered, like she was in some of the versions of the story. But then her killer was never found or prosecuted."

I nodded towards her and crossed my arms, looking from Serenity to Dean. "Shoemaker and Jill both killed somebody. Difference between them and others is, no one knew it was them… until now, because Mary essentially told us."

"You know that old superstition about broken mirrors bringing seven years of bad luck?" Serenity asked rhetorically. "I don't know where the "seven years" part came from, but there's tons of lore about mirrors saying that they give a true reflection of one's self, revealing all lies, secrets, and sins. That's why you're not supposed to break them."

"Maybe if you've got a secret, I mean - like a really nasty one, where someone died, then by summoning her you allow Mary to see it, and she punishes you for it," Dean hypothesized. In the hotel's bathroom, the shower shut off, leaving the rushing of water into the drain as the background noise.

"Whether or not you're the one that summoned her," I finished. "You were near something that worked as a mirror. It's good enough for her."

"Holls, take a look at this." Dean pushed Sam's laptop around so the back was to him and I stepped closer, leaning down to see it. It was a newspaper article that had been uploaded to the internet under a police database, so it was in black and white, but several hues were easily recognizable as the greyed out version of colors like red and brown.

It was a crime scene photo. A woman was lying face down in a small pool of what was probably her own blood - either black or dark brown hair was curly and tangled, and she wore a bloodied, stained, and torn light-colored dress. There was a mirror next to her with the letters Tre written out and a bloody handprint smack over it.

"Wow…" I murmured. "The handprint looks the same. And the writing, the way the letters look, and how it looks like it was done with running paint, it's the same look as the writing on the back of Jill's and the Shoemakers' mirrors."

"Her name was Mary Worthington," Dean explained, turning the laptop back around and bookmarking the page. "An unsolved murder in Fort Wayne, Indiana."

"Not too far away." I straightened back up and rolled my shoulders, cocking my head at Serenity. "I guess we have something to do while you go to P.E.."

The resulting scowl I got made my day quite a bit brighter.

We didn't exactly have enough time to stop for a picnic - never mind that Dean would murder Sam and I if we tried that, but getting Serenity a ride back to the hotel meant we didn't have much time to waste going between Ohio and Indiana. Luckily, my sabbatical didn't mean I was totally cut out of the law enforcement world - I placed a couple of calls while Dean and Sam shut their mouths, and by the time we were forty minutes away from Fort Wayne, I had arranged an interview with the detective who had been primary on the investigation of Mary Worthington's murder.

"He's not anyone you'll have heard of," I said to the boys, reaching over to turn down the Metallica so that I could speak over it when Dean took the exit off of the interstate. "No prolific arrests, but he does have a good track record. Everyone has a few unresolved cases by the time they're done in the field, but I talked to him on the phone. He remembers the Worthington case with exceptional detail. There are no guarantees, but he probably still has the crime scene photos and first drafts of reports."

"Didn't the departments start to get everything digitized?" Sam asked, leaning up to the front seat with his elbows on his knees.

"Well, yeah, we started," I admitted. "But there have been some serious offenses committed by hackers and internet geeks."

"Sam, leave the police alone," Dean ordered without warning, casting Sam a warning glare through the rearview mirror. He kept a poker face but I cracked a grin and laughed at Sam's disgruntled expression.

"Anyway," I continued. "There was one a couple of years ago that crashed down the servers of the Department of Defense. It brought to light how easy it is to damage less monitored systems if you know what you're doing. As tech schools become more advanced and more and more people learn the methods, some officers are keeping paper records in their own time, especially on the ones they can't close. Some of them just haunt you, and it's hard to let them go. In this case, it's a good thing for us."

"I was on the job for thirty-five years… detective for most of that."

The retired detective in question was African American and reaching his higher fifties. Still, he was articulate and of sound mind, so his age didn't matter all that much. His eyes were dark brown and his black hair was cut short. Even though he wasn't on the force anymore, he was still a frequent visitor of the Fort Wayne precinct, welcomed and respected by the current officers. I suppose he didn't get the "you retire, you go to Hawaii in hideous tropical shirts" memo, because he still wore suits.

"Now, everybody packs it in with a few loose ends. You know how it is." This phrase was said with a look solely directed at me and a respectful nod. "But the Mary Worthington murder - that one still gets me."

I inclined my chin in acknowledgment. "Hillary Sowards," I answered curtly, bowing my head for a moment in what he'd perceive as respect for the victim. "Twenty-nine. Raleigh, North Carolina. Ankles slit with a knife… she was thrown in a tub of lye, blood staining on the tissue implies she was still alive at the time." I blinked my eyes shut for a moment. I didn't want to get into this, especially not with Sam and Dean present, but it was a way of assisting that collegial trust that Worthington's detective had for me. "I knew who it was, but he was extradited to another country. I didn't have jurisdiction and aside from unofficial confession, I had no concrete evidence."

Dean cleared his throat subtly, breaking up the reminiscence that must have been uncomfortable for himself and his brother. "What exactly happened?" I couldn't show it now, but later I'd have to thank him.

The former detective looked behind me and to the boys standing on either side, sort of flanking me. Although they were pretending to be my loyal, submissive do-good trainees, I recognized the way that they were behind and on both sides; it was as much protective as anything else.

Finally he looked back, seeming to have decided that Sam and Dean really didn't have any bad intentions with the information. "You said you're trainees?"

"They are, yes," I answered with a quick nod. "Over in Ohio, and they're assisting me in my own tasks for credit. We were filling in data and we came across a computer copy of Mary Worthington's case - of course, you know how things were. We thought we might be able to expand on it with anything you remember that wasn't in the official report." It was innocent enough - it was always best to have more, if unnecessary, information than not enough.

"We know Mary was nineteen," Sam supplied quietly. He seemed more calm and soft-spoken around authority, despite his sometimes loud, sarcastic behavior when it was just his brother, Serenity, and I. I had to wonder if it stemmed from his law breaking. "And lived by herself. We know she won a few local beauty contests, and was trying to get out of Indiana by being an actress."

"We also know that on March twenty-ninth, an unnamed suspect broke into her apartment and killed her, cutting her eyes out with one of her kitchen knives perimortem," I finished quietly, looking away from the detective, slightly sickened myself. I had to say perimortem, because at the time, people didn't have the right technology or knowledge to determine whether or not her eyes had been removed while she was living or after she was dead.

I hoped she was dead first - I mean, a ghost can be pissed off by what happens to their body after the fact, right?

The detective just nodded his head once in agreement to what Sam and I had stated of the case. "That's right."

I didn't look back and see, but I'd bet money that Sam and Dean did the sibling thing where they look at each other at the exact same time and come to an agreement silently. I raised my eyebrows at the detective and honestly responded, "Sir, when we ask you what happened, we want to know what wouldn't have been in the official report. Theories, opinions… although you didn't have proof, who do you think killed her?"

The detective must have known that this would be coming, because he leaned over stainless steel cabinets and pulled open the second drawer from the top. While he was looking away, finding the right folder, I looked behind me to the Winchesters. They both sent me questioning looks, probably about the Sowards case I'd described, and I just shrugged and mouthed true.

"Technically…" I looked away from Sam and Dean quickly as the detective started talking again, turning around and shutting the file cabinet with a clang. "I'm not supposed to have a copy of this."

He opened the folder. It was thin, considering that it was for a murder case. Inside was a black-and-white Polaroid of a feminine body face-down, hand bloodied, hair ratted, gown filthy, with the letters T-R-E drawn in blood over a mirror, with a bloody hand print above it. The same as the one that Dean had found on the internet.

"Now, see that there? T-R-E?" The detective prompted. Although I had long since committed the photograph to memory, I indulged him by leaning down closer to the picture and nodding. "I think Mary was trying to spell out the name of her killer."

I looked up to him. It was like a switch was flipped; suddenly, he had my full, rapt attention. "So you know who her murderer was?"

"Not for sure," he denied after a moment of reluctant hesitation. "But there was a local man - a surgeon - Trevor Sampson." That fit with the theory - T-R-E could have been meant to spell out Trevor, but Mary probably lost too much blood before she could finish writing. "I think he cut her up good."

"Did you have a motive?" Dean asked, his tone somewhere between curious and hopeful.

The detective just raised his shoulders in a feeble shrug. "Her diary mentioned a man that she was seeing," he confided. "She called him by his initial, T. Well, in her last entry, she said she was going to tell T's wife about their affair."

"So from the entry, you knew that she was involved with a married man." I confirmed. "That's motive right there." Looking away from the photograph again, I sighed. Humanity disgusts me sometimes. So what if his marriage would have broken up? Too fucking bad. He would have deserved it for being unfaithful to someone who pledged to love him 'til death do they part.' But killing someone? That was not an acceptable solution, especially since Mary had been about to do the right thing and tell the wife what was going on, rather than continue behind her back.

"What evidence makes you think it was Sampson who killed her?" Listening to Sam's use of pronouns, I noticed that he was still refraining from saying Mary's name unnecessarily. So… he's killed and kept it a secret? It was a bit surprising, considering how closely-knit he and Dean seemed; then again, Serenity and I are the same and yet we know we keep secrets. We love each other, but there are some things that are just meant to stay unsaid. She doesn't need to know what I do; even if there isn't another option, I'm not happy with it. And she knows I don't always want to know what she does.

"It's hard to say," the detective admitted. "But the way her eyes were cut out - it was almost professional."

"And he was a surgeon," I recalled, sending a glance over my shoulder at Dean, who met my eyes and nodded. I looked back to the detective. "In these days, juries have convicted for less. Is Sampson still alive?"

The detective shook his head and sighed, closing up the folder with deliberate slowness. "Nope. He lived to fifty-seven and stroked out. If you ask me, Mary spent her last living moments trying to expose this guy's secret… but she never could."

Which made sense. It really did. She was pissed off her killer went unapprehended, despite her best efforts, so now she makes other people pay when they commit similar crimes. Obviously, there was no means of disrupting Mary's streak of vengeance by bringing down her murderer, either literally or through legalities, but how do we bring her down then?

"Where's she buried?" Sam asked, making me jump a bit before I recalled Lake Manitoc, when Dean had explained to the now-deceased Sheriff Jake that the only way to lay Peter's spirit to rest was to salt and burn his bones.

"She wasn't. She was cremated," the detective answered, taking it in stride - in all fairness, despite the intentions behind it, it would be normal for a record to list that.

But it was bad for us, because it meant that Mary was attached to an object rather than her own decomposed body - an object seemed like it would be a lot harder to pinpoint than a casket.

Dean stepped forward and pointed at the corner of the photograph, sticking out of the paper file. "What about that mirror in the photo? It's not in some evidence lockup somewhere, is it?"

She died right next to it. Given how the legend went, it was probably as good a place to start as any. It's a good thing Dean thought to ask of that, or I probably would have tried to find Sampson's house or Mary's evidence box and smashing or burning everything in a last-ditch attempt.

I might have also been convicted for desecration of evidence and/or insanity, but that's a technicality.

"Ah… no. It was returned to Mary's family a long time ago," he answered with a frown, reaching up to rub the back of his neck in confusion.

Sam leaned forward. "Do you have the names of her family, by any chance?"

Serenity slouched in her chair at the desk. With two hours left to go of school, she was positively bored out of her mind. Holly had gotten her in the same classes as Donna and Charlotte, but she could only keep so close an eye on them while keeping up appearances. Personally, she couldn't give a damn about football, but if she wanted to stay with the other girls, then she had to deal with getting tackled to the ground in P.E..

It wasn't her fault that the boy had to sit out the rest of class. Her knee moved of its own accord - it was purely self-defense. If he wanted to take females to the floor, then he should be prepared for the complete lack of empathy when they take action.

Charlotte recognized her, she knew. Some other people kept taking surreptitious glances, probably having seen her somewhere but being unable to place it. It was risky enough to pose with a well-known sister, but hopefully by changing her temperament and clothing style a bit, people would assume it was just coincidence. It seemed to be going well so far.

The science teacher stood up at the front by the marker board and Serenity dutifully had her college-ruled notebook out, a mechanical pencil on top of it. The margins were mostly filled with moustaches drawn in moments of particularly painful boredom during the lecture as the long-haired teacher read aloud from his science textbook.

"...Elements that lose electrons become positive ions, which are smaller than other atoms of the same element." Charlotte sighed, her shoulders shrugging, and Serenity watched her carefully from a row behind as the blonde opened up a compact mirror. Serenity didn't particularly care about her worry for her appearance, but any mirror could mean trouble. Charlotte rubbed at her makeup, anxiously fixing a spot, before she stopped frozen and her entire body tensed up. "Therefore, the ionic radius is smaller than the atomic ra-"

Immediately set on-edge, Serenity straightened in her seat. With a barely audible thud, her pencil fell from her hands and on top of her notebook just before Charlotte screamed at the top of her lungs, dropping the compact face-up on top of her desk.

Charlotte shot out of her chair so fast that it tipped backwards, and she nearly fell over the legs as she scrambled away from her desk in wide-eyed, wild terror, staring at her compact like it would jump off the desk and spontaneously attack her.

Which it might, Serenity realized grimly, raising from her chair swiftly. She'd been keeping a careful eye out for anything, but she hadn't seen or heard of anyone saying the Bloody Mary chant - but she couldn't be everywhere at once.

The teacher closed up his textbook, probably deciding whether to be alarmed or irritated, and shoved it onto the tabletop of his desk. "Charlie!" He called.

Charlotte spun around to face him but stopped as she saw the long window running length-wise on the same wall as the door. On the other side was just a hallway - Charlotte stared at the glass like she was seeing something aside from lockers through it, and she bent forwards as she screamed again. Serenity stared intently - she could see the reflections of the entire class, but nothing else.

Charlotte dove at a stool by the black-topped counter in the back of the room, meant for chemical experiments, and picked it up by the legs. She lugged it to the window and before the teacher could reach her, she threw it with as much strength as she could, which sent it crashing into the window and out into the hallway. A security alarm started to go off in the hall.

The teacher caught Charlotte by her shoulders before she could run again or destroy anything else. "Charlie!" He shouted, shaking her slightly in an effort to break through what he must have thought was psychosis. "Charlie, stop it! What's wrong?!"

Serenity hedged to the side. Wasn't the teacher wearing glasses? … Yes, he was.

"Just calm down," the teacher said gently, honestly trying to keep Charlie's wits all in one piece. Charlie stared into his eyes, her eyes looking around the reflection of his glasses' lenses, before they locked in one place and she screamed again.

"Aah! Let me go!" She shrieked, writhing and wriggling out of his grip, ducking to the side and running towards the door, frantically grasping onto the door handle and pulling at it. She was so terrified she forgot to twist it first.

Charlotte was the only student in the school aside from Serenity who knew what was going on - and also the only person to understand what danger seeing a mysterious form in a mirror currently was, and since she freaked whenever she saw a reflection, Serenity could guess what the problem was. Charlotte wasn't stupid enough to say the incantation, she knew that, but apparently she was stupid enough to keep potentially lethal secrets to herself, even though Holly had been making a point of giving Charlotte reassurances.

If Mary could only kill through reflections, then all Charlie had to do to put it off was not to look at anything that could have a reflective surface, right? But there were too many to do that without just shutting your eyes, and Charlotte was in such a panic that she probably wasn't thinking all too deeply. No matter what she had done, Serenity's job wasn't to dish out punishment or judgment; it was to protect the people in the city from the mirror-killer-bitch.

Serenity shut her eyes tightly and whispered under her breath.

"Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary."

If she drew Mary to herself, then Mary would be a bit too preoccupied trying to claw out her eyes to continue attacking Charlotte. Whether or not she loved having a Bloody Mary case, Serenity had never wanted to do this; but at this point, it was best to attract Mary's attention and keep herself as safe as possible.

Just to be sure that it was working, Serenity stepped over to Charlotte's desk for her compact and leaned over it, looking at her reflection in the mirror. With a bit of makeup, she looked less like herself than normal, so it was a bit weird. When she moved her eyes over the frame, she saw what she was looking for; a figure clad in a dirty white gown with long, matted black hair covering her face in the background.

Unless there was a student whose hair was defying gravity and whose body was defying physics and sticking to the ceiling (although she believed in a lot of things she never used to, she still didn't quite believe that was possible), then Mary was after her head - well, eyes.

Hopefully, that lead Dean, Holly, and Sam went to investigate had panned out.

"Oh, really?" Sam feigned disappointment into the phone. "Ah, well, that's too bad, Mr. Worthington. I would have paid a lot for that mirror." Dean and I responsibly stayed quiet while the goodbyes were exchanged as quickly as Sam could manage them. "Okay, well, maybe next time. Alright, thanks."

Sam didn't wait for a reply this time before pulling his mobile away and snapping it shut.

"Well, that didn't work out," I guessed, going off of Sam's dialogue from my side of the conversation. I rested my arm just inside the Impala's window while Dean drove and Sam sat in the middle of the back seat, leaning forward without a seatbelt on.

"That was Mary's brother," Sam explained. "The mirror was in the family for years, until he sold it - one week ago."

"Oh." I tossed one hand up in the air in exasperation before lowering it again and shaking my head. "Of course, that's just our luck, isn't it?"

"Where'd he sell it to?" Dean asked, pulling one hand away. He continued driving with one hand on the steering wheel, leaning back on the seat with the other hand drumming lightly on his thigh.

"A store called Estate Antiques," Sam replied more happily. "A store in Toledo."

I paused and nodded to the side in acknowledgment. Well, that works out better for us, doesn't it? "That's around the time Lily had her sleepover. Wherever the mirror goes, Mary follows?"

"Her spirit's definitely tied up with it somehow," Sam agreed.

Dean looked up at Sam through the rear view mirror for a moment before going back to the interstate. "Isn't there an old superstition that says mirrors can capture spirits?"

"Uh, yeah, there is," Sam answered after a moment of surprised hesitation, like he hadn't actually expected Dean to know or ask that. "Yeah, when someone would die in a house, people would cover up the mirrors so the ghost wouldn't get trapped."

"So… Mary dies in front of a mirror, and it draws in her spirit." I summarized, shutting my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose lightly between my thumb and index finger. I whistled lowly at the oddness of the summation before continuing. "Alright, so she's tethered to or trapped in the mirror she died in front of. But unless Shoemaker bought it, and Jill lifted it from the house, then Mary's moving through the mirrors. How is she trapped in just the one?"

"I don't know." Dean's casual shrug was far from relaxing. "But if the mirror is the source, I say we just find it and smash it."

"I don't know, man. Maybe it would work, but if she can move through mirrors, then can't she just latch on to another?"

"Well what would you suggest, oh-huntress-extraordinaire?"

I wisely chose not to reply to that with some choice sarcastic words of my own. "I'd suggest drawing her out of the mirrors," I stated, giving Dean a sideways, half-hearted glare. "I mean, unless Mary's hypnotizing her victims into scratching their eyes out themselves, she has to be able to get out. Maybe we lure her out with bait, then take her out while she's vulnerable outside of the mirror." A vibrating in my pocket made me pause. "Oh, hold on."

I fumbled to get my phone without moving around too much and finally succeeded in grappling it out of my pocket. It was a phone call, playing my ringtone for Serenity.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked, leaning forward over the shoulder of my seat to see.

"I don't know. School's not out yet, is it?" I looked to the time at the top bar of my phone; there was still supposed to be an hour left until the school dismissed, so why was she calling now? I held the phone up to my ear and accepted the call. "Hello?"

"Holly? Is that you? I wasn't sure which number I dialed."

I frowned, but my eyebrows rose in bemusement. "Yes, it's me. How do you not know which number you dialed? Don't you have me in your contacts?"

"Yes, but it's hard to call a number you can't see. I've called four wrong people already." Going by the testiness in her voice, it probably wasn't an exaggeration and she was probably just about done with the phone attempts.

"That's what your eyes are for," I pointed out with an exasperated roll of my own.

"And I couldn't use them, because I'd like very much to keep them." I stopped smirking at her words - if she used her eyes, then she couldn't keep them? What the hell was that supposed to mean? "Charlotte and I are at her house. Where are you three?"

"Um…" I craned my neck to see an exit sign that Dean was speeding past. "We're on the interstate, about forty minutes from Toledo. Why? What are you doing at Charlie's? Is someone else dead?"

"No." The sound became muffled as the phone was moved away from her mouth and then there was hushed arguing in the background; followed abruptly by the sound of something crashing and a dull thud. "Not yet, anyway. Just get over here as soon as you can, alright? I said the incantation and now I have to keep my eyes closed. It's the only way I can think of to hold her off."

I felt my heart skip a beat. "You what?!" I shouted loudly, my voice going into a higher decibel. Dean grimaced next to me at the sudden raise in volume. "Why would you do that, Serenity?" My anger wasn't really directed at her - I knew she must have had a good reason - and actually stemmed from fear. Fear of losing my sister, fear of her being hurt.

"Mary was after Charlotte. Charlotte was a bit busy screaming to focus on not looking in reflections. I had to draw her away." Her answer was short; empirical. Most people would think she wasn't affected; but I could hear the slight note in her voice of nerves.

I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then lowered my phone down to press the microphone against my shoulder. I looked over at Dean and stonily commanded, "Drive faster. We're going back to Charlotte's before Mary gets another dose of vengeance."

We rushed into Charlie's two-story home and found Serenity and Charlotte both in Charlie's bedroom. The curtains were drawn over the windows, a wall mirror was taken down and turned the other way, and the television screen on the dresser had a throw blanket tossed over it; there were several other things in the room that had the potential to reflect, but they weren't as obvious so Charlie probably missed them.

Serenity had her legs crossed and she sat at the head of the bed, leaning back so her back pressed against the wall, pillows cushioning her. Her eyes were shut tight, but her head moved when she heard noise, so I knew she was still completely concentrating.

"I helped her get here," Charlotte explained to me the moment I stepped through the door with Sam in front of me and Dean just behind. She looked tired, frightened, and guilty all at once - I was half afraid she was going to burst into tears again. "I told the school she's my cousin. I didn't know what else to do."

"Yeah, after she took off screaming down the hall…" Serenity paused to face Charlotte's general direction in the sightless equivalent of a glare. "I said the incantation so Mary couldn't finish her off. Of course, after that, Charlie drove me back here because evidently a place full of electronics and technology has much less reflective surfaces than our hotel."

"Not the best insight on my side of things," Charlie admitted sadly, chastened, reaching up to rub the back of her head. Her hand tangled in her hair. "But I was panicking."

"Boys, get sheets and blankets and cover up the room," I muttered softly in command. Dean grabbed at the knobs of the dresser and started pulling at them, looking for bedclothes, and Sam moved to the closet for spare blankets or larger clothing articles, like dresses or ponchos.

"Do you know how to ice the bitch?" Serenity asked. With her eyes shut and her hands on her knees, she looked remarkably similar to a meditating woman. I half expected her to start repeating 'ohm' over and over.

I sat on the bed next to her at an angle and wrapped one arm around her back so my hand was on her shoulder. "We're thinking of drawing her to us and smashing the mirror she's tied to."

"Tied to? She's moving all around," Serenity reminded me, elbowing me firmly in the stomach to emphasize just how stupid I was being.

I took a deep breath, groaned softly in discomfort, and then launched into the explanation about Mary Worthington's murder, her lover's affair, and the murderous husband's precision with cutting out her eyes in front of a mirror. Then I went over the basics of the discussion in the car on the way back before she had called.

When I finished, Charlie was looking at Serenity in concern, but her attention was riveted on the story. In disgust, she clarified, "So Mary's killing other people because her murder was unsolved?"

I hesitated before shrugging slightly. "Your guess to the exact motive is as good as mine. I don't know whether it's because hers was unsolved or because her murderer didn't get the karma or whatever else it could have been, but theories along those lines make the most sense, given her M.O.."

Dean threw a black jacket over a shining laptop case and gave Sam an 'okay' symbol with one hand. Sam crawled up onto the bed in front of Serenity and sat on the comforter, reaching for her hands with his. Serenity was hesitant to respond - she could probably tell it wasn't me, but at the same time, she knew I'd have told her if someone else came into the room. Before I needed to tell her, Sam spoke, and his voice being so close answered it.

"Now, listen," Sam whispered calmingly, running his thumbs over the backs of her hands soothingly. "You're going to stay right here, on this bed, and you're not going to look at glass, or electronics, or anything else that can have a reflection, okay? And as long as you do that, she cannot get you."

"I might as well just keep my eyes closed," Serenity muttered dishearteningly. "Almost anything has the ability to reflect, and who knows how much of the haunting is necessity? Maybe Mary just shows up so much to freak out her victims, and she only needs to see them once to kill them."

Charlie whimpered in fright and crowded closer. "She's gonna die, isn't she?" She looked about two seconds from breaking down.

"No," I snapped, rougher than I'd have liked, but the very thought angered me. I gripped Serenity's shoulder tighter before looking back to her. She kept her eyes closed. "No, no one else is going to die. Mary is a pathetic bitch who can't deal with her own problems. She's not going to keep taking it out on other people."

Dean sighed at the drama and sat next to his brother on the bed, legs swinging off the side. "Alright, Charlie. We need to know what happened."

I looked to the blonde; everyone did, even Serenity looked towards where she'd last heard Charlie's voice.

Charlie shook nervously under so many close stares. "We were in the bathroom," she whispered, hedging and avoiding the subject. "Donna said it."

"That's not what we're talking about," Sam said lowly, giving her a long, searching look.

"My sister's in danger because she was protecting you," I growled, staring at Charlie and hoping to get the truth out of her via intimidation, if need be. "Mary was after you because of a secret you kept where someone died. Moral compasses aside, we deserve to know what you did."

Charlie sighed quietly and wrung her hands low over her stomach, looking down. She was unable to meet any of our gazes, reluctant to explain - on one hand I understood, but the part of me that was in control of my mouth really didn't give a damn.

"Charlie," I said again, firmly in a warning.

"I had this boyfriend," she started, moving across the room uncomfortably with her shoulders raised high. "I loved him. But… he kind of scared me, too, you know?" She sat down in her desk chair, legs over the side, and leaned against the back, gripping the wood with a vice fist.

I actually didn't know. If someone scared me, I wouldn't be dating them. My life comes before my emotions. If someone you love is hurting you, I understand not killing them - but you should either run or injure them so they can't continue.

"And one night, at his house, we got into this fight." Charlie swallowed and stared down at her dark carpet. Considering how dark the room looked at this point - with the curtains drawn and dark clothing covering most of the things - it was fitting. "Then I broke up with him, and he got upset, and he said he needed me and he loved me… and he said, "Charlie, if you walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kill myself.""

I understood then what had happened and my hatred for the supernatural increased. We were in this mess because someone Charlie dated had committed suicide?! That's no one's fault except his own - I get where Charlie might feel guilty, but it's in no way her fault.

"And you know what I said?" Charlie's voice broke and she shook harder. "I said "Go ahead." And I left." Her trembling was violent and with one hand she had to reach up and rub tears away from her eyes. "How could I say that? How could I leave him like that? I just… I didn't believe him, you know? I should have…" She pulled up one of her legs onto the chair and doubled over, pressing her forehead against her knee to try to hide that she was crying. It was fruitless but the attempt probably made her feel better.