Sorry for the wait, just haven't felt much like writing now a days. But here's another chapter for ya so I can get back into it. It's much shorter than usual but that'll just mean faster updates. Only a little over a thousand words currently.

Shadows

There's a town called Chicago, Illinois. It was late one night and this woman named Meredith was walking home from the club listening to her iPod. A man bumped into her as she passed and she scowled feeling him grab a quick grope but she quickly kept going. As she turned the corner, her iPod suddenly died on her. "Great," she muttered, taking out her headphones, although she'd been so sure that she had just charged it this afternoon. She stopped walking as the wind picked up. Hello, she called cautiously but nobody answered. Her pace picked up a bit till she was running to her apartment.

Terrified, she finally reached her apartment and yanked open her door, locking all two locks and setting her alarm system. She only relaxed as her alarm said, "System armed."

Her heart race slowing down a bit, she tried to get back to normalcy. Which meant listening to her phone messages. She never noticed a shadow on the wall behind her start to take shape of nothing that was in the room. But she sure noticed as a hand clawed its way in a quick motion through her back and out her chest. She couldn't even scream as her blood splattered across the walls of her apartment.

And there her body would lay for several days till she was found by the apartment manager coming upstairs for the rent.

A week later outside the apartment building, "I feel like a kid playing dress up." I grumbled, climbing out the apartment. I wore one of those pant suits with a pencil skirt, a pen in the center of my hair forced into a much tighter bun then I ever put it in before. I also happened to be holding a clip board to my chest. The boys were dressed like repairmen, jumpsuits and everything with a tool box.

"You're telling me." Sam said, looking up to the apartment building.

"You know, I gotta say." Dean started in, carrying the tool box. "Dad and I did fine without these stupid costumes." At least he and dad did something together, unlike dad and I. "I feel like a high school drama dork." I dropped out of my class after I may or may not had punched the teacher for trying to get 'favors' from some of the female students so they could get a main part. Dean grinned, "What was that play you did?"

I snorted, "You were in a play?" I asked grinning. It just seemed to silly now, plays and school, when we were in the real world.

"He was cute." Dean teased.

I smirked a little at that, thinking of a little Sammy in costume. But all I could think of was a kid with floppy brown hair twice as tall as all the other kids. Sam didn't find our teasing so funny. "Look, you wanna pull this off or not?"

"I'm just saying, these outfits cost hard earned money." Dean insisted.

I rolled my eyes. "Whose? Cause I don't remember paying and I sure as hell know you're running low on cash.

"You think credit card fraud is easy?" Dean demanded offended. "Wait, how do you know how much cash I have?"

I smirked. "That twenty you had paid for the meal you ate an hour ago."

"Chris!" He shouted after me as I ran up to the building giggling. I had told the boys I would pay and pick pocketed Dean's wallet.

After introducing ourselves to the apartment manager, she showed us to the apartment where a certain Meredith had been found long dead. "Well the police said they were done with the place," she explained, unlocking it for us. The apartment had been cleaned after the initial police inspection. Dean closed the door behind us as we came in and I noticed the chain on the door was broken. "You guys said you were with the alarm company?" Wearing the only pair of heels I owned for cases I needed to dress up a little, I stayed clear of the blood splatters that they hadn't managed to clean all the way out the carpet.

"That's right." Dean agreed.

"Of course we are." I muttered, looking around for any kind of clues to what had done this.

The lady scoffed. "Well no offense but your alarm's about as useful as boobs on a man." Dean, Sam, and I shared a look. That would have been funny had we not been standing in a dead girl's apartment.

"Well that's why we're here." Dean said quickly. "To see what went wrong and stop it from happening again."

"Last thing we want is more people getting hurt." I said.

"Now ma'am, you found the body?" Sam asked. That sounded more like what our FBI guises would ask instead of repairmen. Why we couldn't go as FBI I had no idea. The woman nodded. "Right after it happened."

"No, a few days later." The woman explained. "She was late for the rent so I came up. I knocked on the door. That's when I noticed the smell." Probably traumatizing her more than it would have us considering our line of work.

"And you found her dead." I said quietly. A young woman's life who ended far too soon because of whatever this was.

"Any windows open?" Dean asked. They weren't now but that didn't mean they hadn't been when it happened. "Any sign of break in?"

"No, the windows were locked and front dolt bolted." She said. "Chain was on the door, we had to cut it just to get in." Which would explain the chain hanging from the front door.

"And the alarm was still on?" Dean asked.

"Or was it off by the time you got up here?" I asked seriously.

The woman scoffed. "Like I said, bang up job your company's doing." I scowled, great. Getting chewed out for a job that wasn't actually really ours.

"You see any overturned furniture?" Dean asked quickly. We had better things than do while listening to her complain when someone else could be dying because of this thing. "Broken glass, signs of a struggle?"

"Everything was in perfect condition...except Meredith."

I looked over to her curiously. "Something was wrong with Meredith?" The police report hadn't gone much in detail, just that she was found dead in a locked apartment with the security system still on.

"What condition was she in?" Sam asked.

"Meredith was all over, in pieces." The lady explained, paling a little as she remembered. "The guy who killed her must have been some kind of a whack job." Weren't they all? But I tell you, if I didn't know better, I'd have said a wild animal did it."

My brothers and I shared another look. Ripped apart could've been like a black dog or hell hound maybe. But the locked apartment indicated it was probably a spirit. "Ma'am, do you mind if we take some time?" Sam asked hoping for her to leave so we could do some real work. "Give this place a once over."

"It'll really help with fixing up the alarm system." I said quickly.

But the woman didn't seem to care either way. "Oh well, go right ahead. Knock yourself out." And then she left us alone in his apartment. Just another day on the job