Author's Note:

I'm sooo sorry it took me this long to update. I've been traveling a lot and things get mixed up in my brain. Lol Sorry for the wait!

Oh, and chapter thirteen has been edited. I needed to change some things up a bit.

Chapter Fourteen

"You're going to what?" Erika asked, putting away what was left over from that night's dinner.

"We have to break into the funeral home," Dean said again. "If we want to find out where this chick is buried, we have to."

Erika shook her head in disbelief. "I don't even know why that surprises me. I've already helped you dig up a damn body."

Dean laughed. "You'll get used to it."

"I'd better not," she said, waving him off. "Go on, get out of here. You and Sam go add some more to your rap sheets." She laughed and listened to his footsteps trail out of the kitchen.

"Don't get caught!" she called out to them and took the flickering lights above her head to mean they'd already headed out the door. She muttered under her breath, "I'd hate having to explain that to Burke."

--

Dean stomped mud off his boots as he jiggled the handle to the back door of the funeral home. He listened to the tumblers click into place and chuckled in satisfaction, having picked the lock in just under a minute.

"You know," Sam whispered as they walked in the back door, "Burke said that the locks at the school were picked by an amateur."

Dean whirled around. "What?"

Sam barely suppressed a laugh. "Yep."

He gave Sam an indignant glare. "Like he would know."

Sam laughed and followed Dean through the back of the funeral home, the bright beams of their flashlights showing them the way. They found a maze of small parlors and show rooms, none of them giving a hint that they could be hiding old records. Dean walked into one of the showrooms to find caskets spread around the room, some open and others closed.

"Dude," he commented. "That's creepy, even for us."

He closed the door quickly and walked on.

When they had come almost full circle around the building they came across two heavy wooden doors, both marked "records."

"Jackpot," Dean said, fishing his lock pick out of the pocket he'd shoved it in outside. He unlocked both doors. "You take right, I'll go left."

Sam nodded and they split up. Dean put his flashlight in his mouth and held it there while he leafed through the drawer at the top of the file box. Dismayed by the recent years on the paperwork, he tried the next drawer. The next three after that all had ascending dates, making him curse.

"Sam!" he yelled. "Any luck over there?"

"Not yet," he replied. "You?"

"Nothing," Dean said, slamming the last drawer shut.

An hour later, they had gone through every document in both rooms. Though the deaths were admittedly few, the earliest date that either of them had found was just after the shooting, in 1935. They locked the office doors behind them, wiping their fingerprints off the door if, for any reason, they hadn't been careful enough covering their tracks.

"Let's get out of here," Dean said angrily. "I guess we're back at the frigging library tomorrow."

"Dean, wait," Sam said, stopping in front of a door a little further than the two they'd gone earlier. Dean walked back to him and read the door marked "Storage". He shrugged.

"It's worth a shot," he said and picked the lock. "I wonder if this is where they keep all the bodies before they put them out on display."

"Dude," Sam said, amazed. "You're sick."

"What?" Dean asked defensively. "It could be."

Sam rolled his eyes and walked in, half expecting to see a morgue layout and cold storage. Finding neither, he walked around looking for something that could be suitable for record storage. Near the back of the room, Sam found dilapidated old boxes with a series of numbers on them. He took the lid off the top of them and found older versions of the records he'd been looking through earlier.

"Dean, I found it," he said, pulling out the record with their spirit's name at the top.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, get over here," Sam said while he read the document. "She was cremated after all."

"Damn it," Dean said. "What else does it say?"

"I don't think it was released to her family," Sam said. "'Not applicable' is in the space for next of kin."

"Then who was she released to?" Dean asked. "If it was the county's responsibility she would have been in a pine box six feet under."

"It says here the remains were released to a David E. Chamberlain, who opted against a formal service for Ms. Kelley."

"Who the hell is David E. Chamberlain?" Dean asked. "Fiancée, maybe?"

"I don't think so," Sam replied. "There wasn't any marriage certificate for her on record. It said on the coroner's report that she was single."

"Then who is he and why would he claim her remains but not give her a service?" Dean laughed raucously. "Maybe he decided to pull a Keith Richards and do a few lines."

Sam stared at him with abject horror. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Keith Richards?" he prompted. "You know, lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones?"

Sam stared blankly.

Dean sighed. "How am I related to you, exactly?"

"No idea," Sam said. "But we'll find out who Chamberlain is tomorrow. Maybe they were lovers. He might have kept something of hers we can burn to get her out of the school."

"We can only hope," Dean commented. "Alright, let's get out of here. I'm cold, I'm wet, and I'm tired."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said, putting the file back in its place.

--

They pulled in front of the house just in time to catch a fresh wave from the storm that had seemed to rest for the last few hours. They were practically blown in the front door by the wind and looked around to notice a house completely at rest. The porch light had been left on for them, but the rest of the house was dark and seemingly deserted. It creaked under the force of the wind, but remained otherwise silent.

"Erika must have called it a night," Sam said, shrugging off his jacket.

"Yeah, must have," he said. "Listen, you go ahead and get to bed, and I'll run up and check on her."

Sam eyed him knowingly but nodded, grinning. "Okay, sure."

"What?"

"Nothing," Sam said, shaking his head. "I guess I'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah," Dean said, watching him work his way back to the kitchen.

It was just after eleven when Dean climbed the stairs to Erika's wing of the house. The hallway was darkened almost completely, the window at the end of the hallway offering no light in the midst of the thunderstorm. Dean walked to the end of the hallway and came to face Erika's bedroom door. He didn't knock, but pushed the door quietly open.

He expected to see Erika in bed, but instead saw an empty room and an open balcony door. He crossed the room and saw that the enclosure beyond the doors was empty. He closed the doors behind him, blocking what little rain hadn't already spilled on the hardwood floor. He saw that the bathroom was dark and he walked quickly back out into the hall, finding nothing but darkness and closed doors. A light under the door of another room down the hall caught his attention and he sought it out, throwing the door open with a crash that echoed menacingly down the empty corridor.

Before he'd realized it, he managed to scare Erika half to death. She jumped at her desk, pushing her chair away from it. A small cry escaped her and she dropped her pen, looking up at Dean with frantic eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?" she swore, catching her breath. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"Sorry," Dean said, clearing his throat. "I couldn't find you."

He turned in circles, looking around to disguise the fact that he'd been worried. He noticed the books lining the walls up to the top of the ceiling and raised his eyebrows.

"I didn't realize you had an entire library."

"They've been in my family for generations," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"Nice," Dean said, looking back at her. She'd changed into a robe and had braided her hair away from her face. Perched on her nose was a pair of black plastic reading glasses that made Dean smile.

"I didn't know you wore glasses," he said, fighting the smirk that was threatening to turn up the corners of his mouth.

"I do when my contacts bother me," she said, eyeing him warily. "What? What's that look about?"

"What look?" he asked, standing front and center on the other side of the large wooden desk.

"I'm not sure," she said, watching him circle around the desk to stand beside her. "But I think I'm being objectified."

Dean laughed. "You're not far off," he admitted, taking the pen from her hand.

"How did yours and Sam's little field trip go?" she asked.

Dean exhaled noisily. "Super," he said, sitting on the edge of the desk next to her. "Found out that she was cremated."

Erika turned to him and pushed her glasses up with her finger. "Then how are you going to salt and burn the bones?"

"We can't," he said. "Usually if a body's been cremated, they've left something behind of theirs strong enough to keep them here. We just have to find out what that is, and then salt and burn it."

"What is it with you guys and salt?" she asked, earning a laugh from Dean.

"It's a spirit deterrent," he explained simply. "Anyway, her remains were claimed by some guy we've never heard of."

"Hmm," Erika said. "Family?"

"We don't think so," he said. "There was no one listed as next of kin on any of the papers we found of hers."

"Then who was he if he's not family?" she asked, turning back to her papers. She marked another red "X" and corrected the student's answer.

"Some guy named David Chamberlain," he said and looked down when Erika's head popped up.

"What was that name?" she asked quickly.

"David Chamberlain," Dean repeated. "You know him?"

"He was the first principal of St. Theresa's," she said slowly, working through the new fact in her mind. "He helped found the place."

"Seriously?" Dean asked. "A principal?"

"Yeah," Erika answered quickly. "It must be the same guy. They would have worked together."

"Why would he claim her remains?" Dean asked.

"Well, if she didn't have any family he would have felt obligated," Erika said hurriedly, the excitement of discovery coursing through her. "She died trying to protect her students. Of course he would have made sure someone was there for her after her death."

"Makes sense," he agreed. "But it doesn't really tell us how to get rid of her."

"True," she said, turning her attention back to the stack of papers on the desk. "But that was my stroke of genius. Don't expect anything else for the rest of the night."

Dean smirked, feeling a little more like himself than he had in a few days as he leaned forward to take in the perfume he'd smelled behind her ear.

"Anything?"

Ignoring the feigned exasperated eye roll aimed in his direction, Dean's eyes flicked to the movement of her hand across paper and caught a familiar name at the top of the paper she was grading, written in the big, lopsided handwriting of a child.

Madeline McAlister.

"Is that Maddy's homework?" Dean asked, taking a serious look at it.

"Yeah," she said, letting him take it from her to study. "Why?"

"You didn't notice the name?"

"Yeah, actually, I did," she said. "It's a strange kind of coincidence, huh? It must be a more popular name than I thought."

"Or not," he replied solemnly. "Didn't you say Maddy was a new student?"

"Yeah, sugar," she said, the fine lines around her brow sharpening into a frown. "Why does that matter?"

"How long has she been here?"

"It'll be a month next week, I think," Erika said. "What does Maddy have to do with any of this?"

Dean took the time to study the paper, working through his theory in his head. He finally nodded, convinced of its plausibility.

"Don't you see it?" he asked earnestly. "Maddy shows up a month ago, one week before the first death. Her last name is McAlister, like the guy who shot the place up and killed those people."

Erika shook her head. "Maddy's not doing this. There's no way," she said sternly. She held Maddy's homework in front of Dean's face. "She can barely write her name, for God's sake."

"I'm not saying she's doing anything," Dean said. "What if she's the reason Virginia Kelley came back in the first place?"

Erika scowled. "I'm not following."

"Maddy could be the great-great-granddaughter or something of Michael McAlister," Dean explained. "Maddy coming into the school could have disturbed Virginia Kelley's spirit, making her think that Michael was back for round two."

"So she really was protecting her students," Erika said, catching onto his reasoning. "She thinks that because she can feel Michael in the building, then he must be a hearing person." She paused. "I bet that's why she's been knocking things over in all the classrooms."

"She was testing them," Dean said. "If they reacted to the noise, she would know they could hear and gank 'em."

"Oh my God," Erika said. "That means she's after Maddy."

Dean's expression sobered. "She'll figure it out eventually," he agreed. "And by that time she might not care that Maddy's deaf, or that she's a kid."

"Jesus. We have to do something," she pleaded. "We can't let her hurt Maddy. She's just a baby."

"Call Maddy's parents," he said. "Wake them up. Make something up and tell them that they've decided to cancel school tomorrow."

Erika shook her head. "Maddy doesn't have parents for me to call," she said. "She's a ward of the state."

"You don't have a number for her foster parents?" Dean asked and Erika shook her head again.

"I don't even know their names," she scoffed. "What are we going to do?"

"See if you can't reach her foster parents tomorrow morning," he said. "Do whatever you can to keep her out of that school. Just long enough to find whatever's left of this Kelley woman and destroy it."

"Is that going to be enough?" she asked, thinly veiling her fear for the small girl who was just beginning to open up to her.

Dean pressed his lips together and nodded.

"I hope so."