The motel came up fast, Ben barely looking up from his thoughts in time to see the flickering green neon sign hovering above his head in the dusk. He turned in, headed to their room. The door unlocked easily, surprisingly enough, and Ben slipped in. Silent, in case something was lying in wait.

The only thing lying in wait was a house fly, concussing itself against the window with a symphony of percussion and confused buzzing. Ben let it out, cracking the window to let out the bug and let in a quick draft of cool air. He shivered, slammed the window shut.

Ben then occupied the remaining half-hour packing all the weapons into one duffle, the clothes and blankets into another. They'd take both with them, of course. But they did not need the weight of twelve shirts and seven pairs of jeans while trying to fight... whatever it was they might be fighting.

Ben was betting on demons. Also a concussion. Because really, he was gonna be useless. Amy had the fancy not-silver knife and Ben had a plain old silver knife. Great for being a distraction, and great for irritating said demons, but not much else. He'd just have to hope that Amy was quick enough to skewer anyone that came after him, or hope that he'd be able to trap them or exorcize them before inconveniently dying.

Speaking of, he needed to get on the memorization. He'd got the first couple sentences down, along with (he thought) a pretty good Devil's Trap.

Amy said it sucked. Apparently, the circle needed to be more circular, and the star thing's points more even. How the hell Ben was supposed to draw a freakin' perfect circle freehand without making a deal with all the devils they were trying to kill, he didn't know.

So Ben settled himself down at the kitchen table and muttered the exorcism to himself thirteen times, and then got out his book and started doodling Devil's Traps over some of the truly illegible pages.

He'd managed to get the squiggly parts down - Enochian, Amy had said - before he caught the powerful rumbling of the Impala outside and Amy herself slumped through the door in a truly despicable mood.

"Nothing," she said, "I've got absolutely freaking nothing. The only thing that happened at the bar is that this creepy dude checked me out and then tried to flirt with me."

Ben winced, feeling bad for the poor soul. "What'd you do to him?"

A deeper scowl, somehow. "Asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, then told him to piss off. Couldn't do much more because he was frigging six foot something and had a buddy even taller."

"I dislike taller people." Ben said, to great affirmatives from Amy. "Although I suppose that's unfair 'cause I'm not exactly short myself."

Amy didn't seem to agree with that one. Ben stood, offered her the chair. It occurred to him for the first time that Amy was actually a hair shorter than him in socked feet. She was always wearing those boots of hers, the ones with the big heels.

He restrained himself from making a comment.

She plopped herself down and slammed her face to the table with a reverberating thunk. "You better have something," she said, voice muffled by the wood. "Cause I want to stab something."

Ben sat, leant back against the table leg. "I left you a voicemail."

"Nobody checks voicemail." she said crossly.

"Right," Ben said. "Anyway, I'll tell you in person then." Cheeky smile. "Apparently there's a house on Sycamore - got directions - that houses a couple gone-weird townies."

That seemed to brighten up Amy's day considerably. "Demons?"

"No mentions of black eyes," Ben admitted. "But everything else seemed to point to that. One of the earlier people talked about that rotten egg smell."

Amy peeled her face off the table. "Excellent. Pack up the weapons-"

"Already done."

"Okay, then the rest of our stuff-"

"Done."

She smacked his shoulder. "Oh, stop overachieving. Its just irritating."

"I can always dump all the stuff back out and let you clean it up," he said. "If you're so eager to do something."

That earned him an infamous shin kick, and then Amy popped to her feet, cheery again. "Right! So, I'm going to go finish my book-"

"Bag on the left."

"-and then when it's pitch out, we'll go check out the house."

"Car?"

"Car."

Ben closed his eyes as Amy rummaged for her book, exclaimed and cackled when she found it. He still couldn't give it a try - the title included the work "Raven", which was going to be a steer-clear word for the rest of his life. He shuddered, clonking his head on the table. Winced.

The room settled into comfortable silence, as Amy read, and Ben tried to sleep. Eyes closed, mind open. Peace.

Right, so, on a completely opposite path from Ben, I am here to inform you that I literally gave myself an adrenaline rush the size of the CN Tower writing some of the upcoming scenes. Writing. I can't wait to see what you think of reading it. Mwahaha.

And I'm super duper sorry for how short these chapters seem to be. I think they start to get longer as we go along.