"I don't know. I love Matt Damon." Ellis said from her spot on the couch. Dean had laid down on it and had his head in her lap. She toyed idly with his short hair, running fingers through it.

Sam felt a weird pang in his stomach. Layered. The first was a longing. An utter stomach-clenching yearning for tender hands carding through his hair. The peace of lying against Jess on a day home from school and work.

The second was something else entirely. A wish that Dean could know that feeling. He seemed so content to be there, legs folded to fit his bulk on the old couch, but he looked relaxed. Warm. Safe. By his eyes rolling occasionally into the back of his head, he was enjoying the impromptu scalp massage too. Sam wondered if Ellis even knew she was doing it. They had a comfortability together that made him wonder how long Dean and their father had stayed with her while he was at Stanford. And what the nature of their relationship had been. It seemed platonic but there was definitely heat behind the flirting.

"Bourne Identity was pretty awesome." Dean admitted. "I still say he's an Ivy League Douche." Dean opened his eyes to look at his brother as he said it, challenging, teasing.

She batted Dean on the shoulder. "You be nice to your brother."

"Why would I do that?" He asked.

"Because I said so." She responded with a bit of a dare to challenge her authority.

Sam smirked. "Well Dean, the Ivy League Douche is now a millionaire. How do you like them apples?"

Thump!

The bang from the upstairs startled all three of them. Sam felt his heart speed up at the sound. They turned to look at each other. Sam snapped into Hunter Mode, rose quickly from the recliner, and was followed by Ellis. He reached to the coffee table and grabbed Dean's ivory handled pistol.

He motioned for her to stay back and mounted the steps with unusual grace for his size.

Another clatter.

Sam swung around to face the noise coming from Ellis's library and found a single book on the floor. A large, thick book with leather binding and yellowed parchment pages clearly revealing it's substantial age.

He looked over at movement and saw Taco perched on the top shelf of the old white painted built-ins. Everything they contained was completely askew now. Taco had pushed over the heavy Horsehead bookend as well. That had clattered and landed in the corner. Sam would be surprised if it hadn't dented the old wooden floor.

Taco stopped moving and stared Sam down, then started slinking along the top of the books, clearly enjoying his made up game of balancing on the half toppled covers.

Sam put his gun down and tucked it into the back of his pants.

"It's just the cat!" He shouted down.

He could hear Ellis's voice answer faintly. "What did he break now?"

"Nothing. He just knocked over some books. I can put them back."

She appeared at the stairway. "Just leave it, sweetie. I have a fucked up way of organization."

"Okay." He said, bending over to pick up the marble horse head. He set it on the old desk in the back of the room. Ellis's library reminded him of Bobby Singer's. A couple hundred old dog eared books of lore and, in her case, occult phenomenon. He'd love to get a hold of some of them. Probably would now that he knew it existed. For all the time he'd spent at her place he'd never really explored her upstairs. He picked up the fallen book and flipped it over. Ancient Myths and The Feline Mystique.

He snorted. "Nice choice, Taco."

He tucked the book under one arm and walked over, stood on his tiptoes toes and seized Taco off the shelf.

Taco looked affronted. He flailed until Sam tucked him under his other arm and carried him out like a fuzzy hostage. He set him down. "Go on. Get."

Taco glared at Sam and sat down at his feet. Sam nudged him gently aside with his stockinged foot and closed the french doors to the library. He started down the stairs.

Ellis had moved into the kitchen. Dean was shifted into a different position on the couch.

Sam set the book down on the coffee table and looked at his brother. "Hey that's a pull out couch you know. Want me to unfold it so you don't have to lie all scrunched like that?"

"Are you kidding?" Dean asked. "I am so fucking sick of lying on my back in bed I'd take this thing if it was the size of a love seat."

"Fair enough."

Dean looked toward the kitchen. "You think she's alright, Sammy?"

Sam followed the gaze. "No." He said honestly.

"Me either."


Sam was bored and had taken to reading The Feline Mystique. There was a lot of lore about cultures that once worshipped cats as Gods. And then cultures that reviled them as witches, like the Europeans in the dark ages, who would put cats in wicker baskets and toss them into bonfires. There was some sort of poetic justice that the Bubonic Plague, a disease spread by vermin, swept through Europe, fueled in part by lack of cats to control the rodent population.

But whatever the civilization, all of them attributed something supernatural to them. There were a million powers associated them. Protection, stemming all the way back to Bast in Egypt. Luck-good or ill- Prophecy, Omens, Astral Travel, the ability to cross dimensions. Guardians of the Underworld. The list went on. It was actually pretty fascinating stuff and Sam was absorbed.

"I read that a long time ago." Ellis said, sitting down at the table next to him.

Sam looked up, his bangs starting to fall into his eyes. She reached out and brushed then aside. "You need a haircut."

"So Dean tells me."

Ellis looked at what he was reading. "Taco would pick that book, wouldn't he?"

Sam laughed. "Yeah. Of all of them to pick."

"He does have a habit of throwing books onto the floor up there. A mouse got up there once and World War III mouse won and I was picking up books for a week. Sometimes I kind of let him choose what to read for me. If he knocks it down I take a look. Kind of like tarot. If you're shuffling and a card falls out, it's trying to get your attention."

"What do you think he's trying to tell you?"

Ellis glanced at the book and laughed. "That he's a God. Therefore deserves canned cat food."

"Reasonable guess." Sam said, his dimples showing. They reminded her of John.

"You have your Dad's smile." She said without thinking.

Sam flushed. "Yeah? I always figured Dean looked more like him."

"He does. But you have his smile. His dimples."

Sam ducked his head with a flash of teeth. "I'm glad I got something of his."

"You got more than you think." She reached out and touched his knee, gave it a little squeeze. "He loved you, Sam."

Sam looked like she'd punched him in the solar plexus. He gave a startled little huff of air. "We fought so much."

"He loved you." She stood up and tenderly leaned over and kissed his forehead.

Sam closed his eyes in pain and nodded.


The house was quiet again; it was night time. Both the boys were asleep before the crack of dawn, which was a nice change. Ellis sat down in her room, cross legged in a circle. John's dog tags clutched in her hand, cold but warming quickly with the heat from her hands. She had five candles lit. Five colors for the elements. A pentacle in blue chalk on the floor.

She could feel John on these tags. Even though it was cold and less satisfying then the feel of the jacket, the metal held the vibration well and he was ON them. Really on them. There was that steady, weighted John Winchester presence. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, uncertain of what she was actually looking for or hoping to do. Maybe just to touch his mind, let him know they were here. They loved him.

She saw flashes of two young boys. One with freckles and green eyes. The other with a shaggy mop of brown hair. Saw John come to get them from a babysitters, both boys running to him like he was a celebrity. She saw a father. John scooping them up in his arms, a genuine smile on his handsome face. God, she missed that face. Missed him so much.

She saw a lonely man. Hunched over a bottle of whiskey, head in his hands. Missing his wife.

She saw a hunter. Dangerous and methodical.

She saw a victim. John was a victim of all the cases he'd seen. All the torn bodies and blood and nightmares.

She saw all this. But this wasn't what she was looking for. She was looking for him now.

"John, baby, where are you?" She muttered, her breath warm in the coolness of the air.

And then she saw him. Stretched out on a rack, mouth twisted in pain. Tears streaming down his face. Surrounded by darkness. By EVIL. Fear thrilled through her. Took her breath. Evil. She'd never encountered evil like that. So much of it in one spot. What could she do? It was too awful to see. She broke contact, unable to take the feeling and fell sideways into one of the candles. Her hand skidded through the chalk circle and the errant candle snuffed out without her being able to close the spell properly.

She was crying. Taco walked into the circle and watched her passively. "I don't know what to do, Taco. I can't leave him there." She sobbed. "I can't!"

She pulled herself up, tried to close the spell and ground herself. Taco settled into her lap and she cried into the orange fur.

...aaaaaand all the dominoes are set up. Time to knock them down!