Author's Note: Okay, the next few chapters are going to focus on setting up the new hunt, and on how Reggie and Dean are dealing with their developing relationship. I'm afraid they are going to be stubborn about it.

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Twenty-four hours later, Dean returned from another scouting trip to town. He'd spent the better part of the previous evening and today talking to the locals, trying to find people who had seen the Will O'the Wisps. He figured after yesterday's 'encounter', Reggie could use some space and, quite frankly, so could he.

Yesterday's little episode had forced him to admit that living in such close proximity to her was making him crazy. Even when she wanted to kill him, all he could do was think about how beautiful she was. That was inconvenient for several reasons, not the least of which was that she could hardly stand the sight of him, and she may, or may not, have something going on with his brother. So, she and Sam had stayed at the motel, to do some research and see if they could unearth any other signs of paranormal activity.

Dean exhaled slowly and pinched the bridge of his nose as he pulled into the motel lot. He hated dealing with the screwballs this kind of case always brought out. At least in England (where the legend of the wisps was most prominent) people had the sense to assign them supernatural status; you know, corpse lights; the legend of Will the smith, doomed by the devil to roam the moors; they were even the basis for the whole Jack O'Lantern thing.

No so in America.

Mostly he'd been forced to suffer your average UFO enthusiasts. They were always mistaking Wisps for evidence of extra terrestrial activity. In this case, area 56 hadn't been hard to find. There were a large number of the nutters camped out in the woods, near an old abandoned plantation house where the sightings originated. Some of them were even living in the old slave quarters. He rolled his eyes, why go looking as far a field as outer space when there was so much fucked up weirdness right under your nose?

Most of their information was useless too. It was difficult and exasperating work, trying to coax out what people had actually seen, as opposed to what they wanted to have seen. Unlike your average witnesses to the supernatural, it wasn't that they wouldn't talk, it was that they wouldn't shut up. Of course some of them were just plan nuts, but others could eventually be cajoled into admitting that they hadn't seen the mother ship, but rather, only a small rotating disk of light flickering in the distance. Every bit of information came with a high price tag, a substantial chunk of Dean's time and forbearance spent listening to their crackpot theories.

He'd spoken to abduction victims, conspiracy theorists, abandoned alien children, and one interstellar vacuum salesman. Dean shook his head.

When you got to the bottom of it, the pertinent stories had only a few things in common. The lights were bluish white, they appeared and disappeared suddenly, seemed to flicker, and then there was the interesting part. Apparently Zostan, whom he was assured was the divine leader and the first contacted of the chosen, those soon to be returned to the mother planet Xacatan, (Dean considered keeping a serious face through that bit a not inconsiderable feat), had followed the light into the woods and never come out. That had been two days ago. It wasn't much, but it was something.

Maybe Reggie and Sam had had better luck.

He opened the door to the motel room. Sam sat in a chair with his feet on the small table, ploughing his way through a stack of articles. Reggie was lying on her stomach on the far bed with Sam's computer in front of her. There were papers scattered across the duvet. It looked like chaos, but Dean had learned that Reggie's eccentric filing system was perfectly functional. She could lay her hands on anything she wanted in a matter of seconds. She was dressed for bed.

Even in the hotter weather, Reggie wore long sleeved tee shirts and yoga pants. For his benefit he was sure. Tonight was no exception, but the indigo top was made of such diaphanous cotton it didn't conceal nearly as much as she thought it did. The white pants weren't form fitting, but draped lovingly around her curves as she turned onto her side at the sound of his entrance, propping herself on her right elbow. Her brow furrowed in a frown as she concentrated on a piece of paper in her hand, looking for some specific information she wanted to pass on.

Her hair was still damp from her shower, curling softly around her face, and her golden eyes glowed in the low light cast by the bed side table. Her eyelashes were long enough to cast crescent shadows on her alabaster skin. Dean swallowed, alabaster! Who the hell was he trying to impress! But somehow the poetic term seemed appropriate.

His gaze traveled over her, following the line of a long leg to the generous curve of a hip, dipping down to the tiny waist and, his mouth was dry, the tantalizing fantasy of full breasts cradled by dark, amethyst fabric. His eyes slid to her mouth, it was lavishly full and curved, the naked lips a dusky rose. Dean had known beautiful women, but he'd never known one who was as many kinds of beautiful as Reggie.

She had the kind of body that screamed of full-on femme fatal potential, sensual colouring and a softness that whispered of equally erotic but less overt pleasures, a classically beautiful, delicate face that should belong to a painting in a museum, and the kind of warmth and supple female strength that made men want…well, things they shouldn't, especially if they were Dean Winchester. Dean shook his head sharply and glanced back a Reggie's face, she hadn't noticed his perusal. She was still studying the paper intently, her small white teeth worried her lush lower lip in frustration.

Christ Jesus!

Defeated, Dean keeled face down onto the bed.

She was trying to kill him.