Fire slammed into me, knocking me sideways and into the burning web of the volleyball net. I bounced off and hit the ground hard on my side, rolling and jumping to my feet the way I'd been taught and practiced a thousand times. I shoved my arms straight out in front of me and focused my fire out through my hands, shooting a fire ball back towards my unseen attacker. Without pausing, I turned and pelted towards the school. I was outgunned, and I knew it. Fire didn't burn me but it was like being hit with a baseball bat every time.

I didn't even know who was attacking me, but a niggling at the back of my mind said I should as I ran into the burning school. This all seemed so familiar. Pausing at the doorway to the school, I turned. Behind me a wall of flame surrounded the empty school yard and volleyball court. The flag was on fire. Was this even real? I took a tentative step towards the volleyball courts and was shoved from behind. I went sprawling onto my hands and hit my chin hard on the cement. Dazed, I rolled over to find Gabby standing over me. But it wasn't Gabby, it was Vinnie's body with Gabby's face.

This was a dream. Only a dream. I needed to wake up.

"Wake up!" I yelled into the smoky, red-orange sky. Nothing happened.

The Vinnie/Gabby creature grabbed my head, pulling my chin down until we were eye to eye. "You'll never wake up," she hissed. Then she burst into flames, the burning silhouette morphing into the faces and bodies of all the girls Gabby had tried to make into her priestesses, then Ella, Sister Grace, and finally, Alice.

"Wake up!" Alice's scream was a mocking shriek of my words and she reached her arm out towards me. Hair shriveled to black threads, sloughing off as skin turned red, blistered, and then blackened, fiery bits sliding from her first in drops, then larger and larger until huge swaths of skin and muscle just fell from her bones. She screamed and crumpled to the bones of her knees before slamming backwards onto the cement, and breaking into a million tiny flames as I watched, my hands over my mouth in horror.

I couldn't do anything. Nothing. She was just gone.

I sat up screaming, and Dean was out of his bed and next to me in a second, only beating Sam because Sam's bed was a little further away.

"Get her a pill," Dean said over his shoulder, pulling me into his arms as he sat down on the bed. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him to me and sobbing into his chest. "It was just a dream," Dean soothed. "It's not real."

"Alice," I cried. "It was about Alice." I tightened my hold on his neck.

"Jessie, let go a little, sweetheart," Dean gasped.

I loosened my grip just a touch just as Sam sat down on the bed. "Honey, give Dean a chance to breathe and take this."

Still crying, but calmer now, I took the little pink and white pill Sam was offering, chasing it with a glass of water. Handing the glass back to him, I wiped my face with my hands. The dream was fading a little and I was starting to feel a little bit better.

"You want to talk about it?" Dean asked me. I shook my head. "All right then, come on," he said and stood up in a single, fluid movement with me in his arms. With Sam in his wake, Dean carried me to his bed and put me in it. He pulled the blankets up to my neck and went around to get in the other side. Sam crouched down at the edge of the bed and kissed my forehead, handing me my snowman again.

"How am I supposed to sleep after that dream?" I asked Sam, clutching the snowman to me.

He gently brushed my hair back from my face with his hand. "That pill we gave you will help," he said as Dean got into the bed on top of the bedding and pulled an extra blanket over him. "And Dean is right here with you. Is there anything about the dream that wasn't scary?"

I shook my head but then paused, remembering the fireball part. "No, but there were some details that were neat."

"Close your eyes and think about that then, ok? Don't think about Alice or the rest of it," Sam suggested.

My eyes filled with tears. "The ones with Alice in them are the worst," I whispered.

"I know, honey," Sam said. "Don't think about her. Close your eyes."

Not thinking about Alice seemed like a betrayal, but I understood his point. I closed my eyes and heard Sam head back towards his bed. I was already sleepy and images started flashing behind my eyes immediately. I whimpered and Dean touched my shoulder. My eyes flew open.

"Roll onto your side, sweetheart," he murmured. I obeyed and he rubbed my back. "I'll tell you about the time that Sam and I lit off fireworks." I closed my eyes and concentrated on his words and his hand on my back until I fell asleep, long before the story was over.

The next morning, Dean shook me awake. "Get a move on, Jessie. We've got another crime scene."

"Leave me here and let me sleep," I groaned.

"You're on lockdown. You don't have that option," Dean said, but his voice softened a little at the end. "Get up; get dressed."

I sat up and looked around. The room was fuzzy at the edges. I rubbed my eyes, but it didn't help. They kept fighting to close. "What was in that pill you gave me?" I asked.

"It's Benedryl," Dean said. "It's an allergy pill, but it makes everyone sleepy. Come on, chop-chop." He clapped his hands together and then went back to tying his tie.

I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. When I came out, Sam had picked out clothes for me and put them on the bed. I frowned and rubbed my eyes again, still tired. "I wanted my purple t-shirt."

"Jessie, just get dressed. We're in a hurry," Sam said, shrugging into his suit coat.

I scooped up my clothes and slouched back into the bathroom, grumbling under my breath the whole way. Sam and Dean exchanged looks as I closed the bathroom door. I didn't hurry getting dressed. It felt like I was moving through water. Every motion hampered. I was sitting on the edge of the tub to put on my socks when Dean banged on the door. "Jessie!"

"I'm almost ready, god!" I yelled back. I shoved myself to my feet and opened the door to find Dean leaning on the doorjamb looking down at me. "What?" I snapped.

Dean stopped leaning on the doorjamb and reached down to take my chin in his hand. I jerked back, but he caught me anyway. "You've been up for fifteen minutes and you're already headed for a trip over my knee. Cut it out."

"I'm tired," I whined, not meeting his eyes.

"I don't care. Get your shoes on and get your ass out to the car," Dean said. "Move." He let go of my chin and turned on his heel to walk back over to the table where they were stocking their pockets with guns and stuff. I found my shoes and put them on, not looking at either of them. They were just finishing when I was done, but I didn't wait. I just walked out the door to the car, half expecting them to yell at me for leaving their sight without permission. If they did, I had a great retort about how I was obeying Dean, but neither of them said anything. It annoyed me.

I leaned against the car door and waited, sulking, until they came out. Sam had my backpack shrugged over his shoulder, and I scowled to see it. Dean let me into the car and Sam slid my backpack into the backseat with me before he got in. I shoved it onto the floor with a satisfying thump and smiled.

Sam turned to look at me as Dean started the car. I stopped smiling. "What?" I asked.

"You know what, young lady. Stop it. Now."

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out the window, not answering. Sam turned back around.

Fifteen minutes later we were in front of a huge house surrounded by crime scene tape and police officers. Sam told me to get my notebook and a pen because he wanted me to write down my nightmare from the night before while I waited. Dean told me to get out and follow them. I trailed after them to the house, and Dean pointed to a bench in front of the house where a dark-haired woman dressed in a maid's uniform was sitting with a blanket around her shoulders.

"Sit there, be quiet, and work on your nightmare," he growled at me.

"Why can't I go back to the car?" I whined, my eyes flitting around the chaos in front of the house. There were too many people and I was so tired.

"You know why," Dean snapped. I set my jaw and went to open my mouth, but he beat me to it. "Jessie, you are riding my last nerve and it's not even eight a.m. Sit your ass down and behave yourself before you can't sit." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Are we clear, little girl?"

I clenched my jaw and fought myself. He raised his eyebrows at me and I gave up. "Yes," I muttered, looking away.

"Go," he said. "Don't leave that bench."

"This sucks," I muttered and stomped over to the bench, my eyes on the dark-haired lady. She looked distraught, but didn't seem to mind when I threw myself onto the bench next to her. With final warning looks at me, Sam and Dean headed into the house.

Twisting the notebook in my hands, I seriously considered getting up and going back to the car. Abandoning that idea as foolish, I considered tossing my notebook behind the bushes. I glanced behind me at the bushes for about ten seconds before abandoning that idea too. Sighing, I put my chin in my hand and stared at my feet. I didn't want to write in the stupid notebook and I didn't want to think about the dream. Stifling a yawn, I glanced at the maid, but she was alternating between staring at her hands and watching the cops.

Opening the notebook, I stared down at the empty page. There was nothing about last night's dream that I was ever writing down, except… that fireball thing was pretty neat. Maybe I could do that in real life. Fifteen minutes later, I had a page full of doodles about fireballs and streams of fire that I could shoot out from my hands instead of using the invisible tendrils of power that connected me to the flame. By then, the cops had come over to ask the maid questions and she was speaking incomprehensibly and excitably in Spanish to the cop. I was doing my best to ignore her.

Sam and Dean came out of the house to talk to the maid, but she wasn't speaking English to them either. Dean ushered me off the bench so Sam could sit down next to her. He was speaking Spanish, too; freshman Spanish, he said. It was impressive. After a bit of back and forth between Sam, Dean, and the maid, she said that President Lincoln had killed the victim and then asked if she could go home. Sam said that she could and thanked her. She got up and left while Sam and Dean exchanged confused looks.

"What now?" I asked.

"Back to the room for research," Sam said. They turned to head towards the car.

"Oh good," I responded, shoving myself away from the wall I'd been leaning on to follow with my eyes on my feet. "You dragged me out here to sit on a bench for twenty minutes only to head back to the room when I could have been sleeping the whole time…"

Dean stopped and I almost ran into him. He turned around, his face thunderous. "Enough," he said, looking down at me. "You know why you're with us and you know you earned it. One more complaint out of you and we're going to have a talk when we get back to the room. Understand, little girl?"

I blanched. "Yes," I whispered, losing all my fight… again.

"Yes, what?" he demanded.

That was new. I struggled for a second. "Yes… sir?"

He nodded once and turned on his heel. I trailed after the two of them all the way to the car, my head down, chewing my lip.

We drove through a fast food place for breakfast on the way back to the room. Sam and Dean discussed possibilities and research strategies on the drive. I kept my mouth shut and looked at my drawings in the notebook. I really wanted to try this, but I knew Dean wouldn't let me unless I talked to Bree first. I called her every week or so to check in with her and tell her how my powers were progressing. I still hadn't found out how 'deep' my furnace was because unless I got too cold, it never seemed to empty, but I had found out that I couldn't set a fire through something unless I burned that something, too. So, if there was a window and I wanted to set a fire on the other side of it, I had to melt the glass on the window first. Anything I wanted to light up had to be in my line of sight with no complete obstacles, but, a partial obstacle I could go around with one of my tendrils. I'd also confirmed that if a fire was already lit, it was easy to take control of it once I connected to it, but I could still only control one fire at once. The only thing I wanted to do but really couldn't was make my tendrils smaller. They were still about a foot across no matter how much I struggled to get them smaller.

When we got back to the room, Dean disappeared into the bathroom and Sam asked to see my notebook. I handed it over reluctantly before sinking into the chair by the television.

"This is not what I told you to do," he said mildly, looking at the pictures. "What is this?"

"It's from the nightmare. I lit fireballs. I did this…" I put my two forearms together and stretched my arms out full length in front of me, my hands splayed out at the ends. "And then I pushed a fireball out through my hands. It was really cool."

He flipped the notebook closed and crossed his arms over his chest. "And the reason you didn't do what I told you to is…?"

I flushed and leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees and staring at the floor. "It hurt too much," I said.

Sam crouched down next to me and put his hand on my arm, his expression sympathetic. "Ok, honey. You don't have to do it right away. Can you break the dream into sections? Maybe handle the parts that weren't really horrible first?"

I thought about it and nodded. "The first part was scary but wasn't so bad. I could try with that part."

He smiled and handed the notebook back to me. "How about you work on that first, then."

"Ok," I said.

Dean came out of the bathroom then and glanced at me, and then the two of them sat down at their computers across from each other at the table. I joined them and started writing out the first part of the dream, the part before I yelled "wake up." I wrote out what had happened and then wrote out how I could have pulled the fire surrounding the school into me or walked through it away from the school into a nice, cool forest. Or how I could have called in a stake and staked the Gabby/Vinnie creature before she started shifting. I spent a good hour scribbling it all out, and when I was done, I handed it to Sam. He took it and set it next to him but didn't stop his research.

I looked at Dean. "Can I call Bree?"

He clicked a couple times before he answered, not looking away from the computer. "Sure," he answered.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I got up from the table and went to the front door, but when I opened it, Dean said, "Freeze."

I stopped, my hand still on the doorknob and turned a little. He was twisted around in his chair looking at me with raised brows. "But you said I could call Bree," I started.

"I didn't say you could leave the room to do it and you didn't ask. Are you allowed out of our sight without permission?" Dean asked.

Aggravation crawled up my spine in sharp pricks. "Will you let up? God! I just want some privacy!"

Dean was out of his chair and across the room in a second. He pushed the door closed hard, pulling it out of my hand. I made an eep noise and retreated quick until my back was pressed against the wall. He gripped my shoulder.

"I'm done with your attitude. Get in the corner. Now!" he said, steering me into the corner behind the door. After quickly checking for spiders, I glanced back at him out of the corner of my eye. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood behind me. "You are on lockdown because you can't be trusted not to go off and do things that you are not allowed to do, and you're going to stay on lockdown until you can be trusted again. You are not winning any points with this attitude, little girl."

"I just wanted to talk to her in private," I whined.

"Then you should have asked first, but since you didn't and you gave me shit about it, now you don't get to," Dean snapped.

"That's not fair," I wailed.

"I don't care. You're going to stand here and think about how bad your attitude has been all day and when you get out, you're going to behave yourself, or you're going over my knee and then you'll spend the rest of the day sitting on your bed staring at the wall, because I'm done with this," he said, moving his hands to indicate me. "Not one more word until I call you out. Understand?"

I nodded. He went back to the table, and I leaned my head against the wall. He left me in the corner for a good fifteen minutes before he called me out. Between the corner time and the threat, I was much subdued as I made my way over to him at the table. I did not want a spanking, and even more, I did not want to sit in boredom on my bed for the rest of the day.

"You done?" he asked, turning sideways in his chair to face me.

"Yes, Dean," I whispered, my face red.

"We clear on what's gonna happen if you're not?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

"Yes, Dean," I said, not meeting his eyes.

"Good." He turned back to the computer. "Go call Bree."

"Can I call her from the bathroom?" I asked, hopeful.

"Yes," he said, pulling up the video of the first victim.

I practically ran into the bathroom.