I am eight years old, and I am well and truly screwed.

As my brother pulls the car around back at Bobby's I devise a plan to open my door and make a run for it. I could head for the woods, but he's faster and the best tracker I know. I think my best bet is to bolt into the house and barricade myself in the upstairs guest room that's really my room.

So before the car is even fully stopped I yank the handle and throw myself out into the fresh air, running like my life depends on it, which I'm actually pretty sure at this point it does.

And then an arm darts out and catches me around the waist so suddenly and I'm running with such speed that it knocks the breath out of me in a loud "OOF." I'm spun around none too gently and come face to face with Dean, his blazing green eyes pinning me to the spot. When he pulls me to the side by the elbow and lands three stinging smacks on my butt, I cry out in pain and surprise.

"Don't you EVER jump out of a moving car like that again, you understand me?" he growls.

I can't find my voice so I just nod, and he glares for another few moments before releasing my arm. "Go to your room. I'll be up to deal with you later."

So that's how it's gonna be. Resisting the urge to rub my smarting behind or wipe the tears from my eyes, I dart up the back porch steps, through the den, and upstairs to the cozy little room I've spent so many nights in.

I curl up on the bed and try not to cry. Dean is so mad. He's mad because I disappeared again, sure, and he's even more mad about what I was doing when he found me. Staking out a haunted house. Not just any haunted house, but THE haunted house. The one he and Sam are in the middle of researching for a hunt. I'd thought I was so cool, showing my friends Anna and Stacy how scared I wasn't, showing them the EMF and watching their eyes widen and widen when we got even so much as a tiny blip of activity. I really don't even know how to use the thing; for all I know it was picking up rats in the walls or radio waves. It was just fun, for once, to pretend to do what my big brothers do, to have people look at me the way I look at them sometimes, when it hits me how cool they are.

Not so cool, though, when Dean busted into that house. Not so cool when he hauled us out and yelled at us until Anna and Stacy were both in tears, threatened to tell their parents what we were up to, and ordered us into the car before dropping them off at their houses.

Not so cool when he refused to look at me the whole way home, and really super not cool when he grounded me to my room for the afternoon with the promise to "deal with" me later.

So when heavy footsteps sound out in the hall I cringe. But the door swings open to reveal Sam's towering figure. He looks mad, but in a quieter way than Dean. His anger is tinged with disappointment, worry. A little compassion, probably because he knows as well as I do that Dean is going to kill me.

"What were you thinking?" he asks. When I shrug, he crosses the room to sit next to me on the bed. "No, I want an answer, Callie. What were you thinking, doing something so dangerous and stupid?"

"I just wanted them to think I was cool," I say finally, looking up at him through my lashes. He doesn't melt underneath my charm. He just raises an eyebrow at me.

"How'd that work out for you?"

"Well, it was going pretty good until Dean found us," I say.

"And then?"

"Then he scared my friends and now he's going to kill me. And if he doesn't kill me it doesn't matter because they'll never speak to me again."

"He's not going to kill you," Sam says wisely.

I look at him hopefully. "Really? Did you talk to him?"

"Oh, he's going to yell some more, do his scary Dean thing, but he's not going to kill you. Too much work to dig a grave in this heat."

"Saaaaam," I whine. "Can't you help?"

"Cal. You know the rules. You know better. You put your life in danger and you put your friends' lives in danger. Those aren't small offenses, are they?"

I look at my lap. When I don't answer, Sam puts a finger under my chin and lifts my face up so I have to meet his eyes. "I didn't think anything would happen," I say with a touch of a whine.

"You got lucky."

"I don't feel lucky."

"You're lucky you're alive and you're real lucky Dad's not here."

That, I have to admit, is true.

It's hours later, or at least it feels like it, when Dean finally comes in. He doesn't knock, he doesn't waste any time. He pulls out the desk chair and straddles it, folding his arms over the top and fixing me with a look that makes me squirm.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" he demands.

"I'm sorry?"

He raises an eyebrow at me. "You askin' or tellin'?"

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, that's a start. How 'bout you list for me all the things you did wrong today. I wanna see if you know exactly how much you messed up."

I bite my lip, thinking. "Well … I didn't come right home after school."

He gives a brief nod. "One."

"I went off in the woods without you knowing where I was."

"Two."

"To a place I know is haunted."

"Three."

"Where you and Sam are working a case. And I told my friends what we do."

"Four, five, six."

"But Dean, they—"

"I don't care that they didn't believe you anyway," he interrupts. "It doesn't even matter to me that nothing bad happened, because it could have. Do you understand that? You could have been hurt or killed, or one of those girls, and all because you were breaking every damn rule in the book. Oh, and you forgot a couple. You lied to me and you deliberately put yourself in danger. Those are biggies."

I nod, blinking back tears. "So what now?" I ask.

"Now you spend a whole lot of time earning back the trust you lost today."

I'm surprised that those words sting so badly. "You don't trust me?"

"No. I'm disappointed in you, kiddo. I thought you were smarter than what you showed me today. You scared us to death and you broke the rules and yeah, you lost my trust. You want it back? It's gonna take time. Until then, you're grounded—and if you step one foot out of line, you're gonna wish you hadn't. We clear?"

I nod. He leaves the room without hugging me, and that hurts more than anything else I had feared he might do.

Letting my brothers down? It seems to be a thing I do. Standing in my bare feet by the humming vending machines, demon blood warming my insides and my arm being drained by a demon for mass distribution, I flashed back to that time when I was eight and heartbroken by the idea of never getting Dean's trust back. This? This was something so much darker, so much less forgivable. How could I have let it get this far?

Sam froze.

My heart stopped.

Time stood still.

The demon dropped my arm like it had burned him.

And then Sam charged forward and for a terrified moment, I thought he was going for me. But he pushed me aside (not too gently, either; I stumbled hard into the humming, neon plastic facing of the Coke machine). And suddenly a blade was in his hand and he rammed it into the demon up to the hilt. I bit my lip hard to keep from screaming and turned away from the sizzle and flash that accompanied the demon's death.

The moment it was done he turned on me, yanked me around to face him, and his eyes were seething with a fury I'd never, ever seen in them before. Not from Sammy.

"I'm sorry, Sam, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I was muttering softly, hoping to ward off his anger before he actually exploded.

He didn't seem able to form words, but the death-glare was quite enough, thank you very much. I flinched when he reached for me, grasping both of my hands and tugging my arms forward into the dim light so he could examine them. Only one was freshly cut and bleeding (we'd been interrupted, you see), but the other arm held the same half-healed gash he'd found on me in the library earlier, and it looked just as bad as the bloody one now, spelling out my guilt as it were and leaving me utterly defenseless. I grasped for a defense anyway.

"It's not what you th—"

"Don't!" he barked, and I cringed. "Don't you dare tell me it's not what I think! Get inside. Get inside now."

"Sam, please. Please? Can you just let me explain?"

"Explain what, Callie? The fact that you're selling your BLOOD to a DEMON?"

"I'm not! I'm not … selling it, jeez! You make it sound like I'm a prostitute or something!" My heart was jackhammering in my chest from fear but at the same time his anger was fueling my own. Winchester knee-jerk defense response. Kind of a stupid one, now that I thought about it.

His fingers sank into my shoulders and he pressed my back against the wall, bending down so his face was just inches from my own. When he spoke his voice was quieter, but deadly. "What possible explanation is there that would make this any better? You have blood on your lips, Caroline."

I quickly reached up to swipe at my mouth. My hand came away with a dark smear, and that was it. I knew there was no way out of this. Tears welled in my eyes and I looked away from my brother's accusing eyes, gluing my own to the concrete, my bare feet with their pink-polished toenails.

Sam held me there for another long few moments, but when I didn't say anything else I guess he gave up on waiting for me to explain the inexplicable. He seized my elbow with one hand—that hand big enough for his fingers to wrap all the way around my bicep and then some—and towed me behind him back down the breezeway to our rooms. We were going to face Dean, now, and he was going to know how badly I'd screwed up. This was it. If Sam was this upset, Dean would never forgive me.

He was asleep when we busted into the room, but in the time it took the door to fly open and bounce off the wall he was not only awake, but standing, gun in hand, ready for action.

When he saw the blood on my arms he dropped the weapon and was at my side in half a second. "What happened?" he demanded. When neither of us answered, he looked sharply between us. Sam was running his hand through his tousled hair, trying to get his own breathing under control, and he was sorely mistaken if he thought I was about to kick off this conversation.

"Somebody better start talking!" Dean pressed more urgently. "Callie, Sam? NOW!"

"She's on demon blood," Sam blurted out.

And there it was.

Wow, people, it makes it so much more rewarding to write when I get reviews! BIG thanks to everyone who took the time to throw me a bone. I got this chapter out as soon as I could. I hope you like it. Keep reading, keep reviewing, and I'll keep writing!