Early the next morning, Sam's fingers were flying across the keyboard of his laptop as he brought up pages upon pages of backed up case files.
"Are you sure you're up to this?" he asked McKenna without looking up from the screen.
"Positive," she said. "So, what do you got?"
Sam skimmed the screen with his eyes, going back and forth from one job to the other, trying to pick between his top two choices. Suddenly, a strong hand clamped down on his shoulder and dug in its claws. He felt Kenna's hair brush across the side of his face as she pressed against his back, and leaned close to his ear.
"And don't even think about picking some little, pansy job, Sam," she hissed. "Do not patronize me on this."
Sam cleared his throat and closed down every single window on his computer screen. Every single one of the jobs he was going over were all simple, basic salt and burns. Cases that would've taken no more than ten minutes. Kenna was smart. And he should have known better.
He pulled up a new search engine and started all over again. After a few minutes spent looking over a few online newspaper clippings, he finally found one that had some merit. And best of all, it involved a family with a small child.
McKenna's specialty.
"Hey, here's something," he muttered, pointing to the screen.
Kenna leaned over his shoulder and followed his finger as Sam read aloud:
"There's a wealthy family in Abilene, Kansas who recently purchased and are currently restoring a twelve bedroom Victorian mansion. They were living in the house for a short time during the restoration, but after a number of 'accidents', they were eventually forced to leave."
"And here comes the good part…" Kenna whispered. She smiled and squeaked out a sound that could only be referred to as a little girl's giggle.
Sam grinned at her and shook his head, happy to see someone who loved the job as much as he did.
"The mother suffered a complete nervous breakdown after spending an afternoon working in the basement," Sam continued. "She had to be physically removed from the house and was put in the mental ward at the local hospital. She was screaming about her son trying to kill her."
"Well, did anybody, at least, look into it before they stuck her in a padded cell?" Kenna asked.
Sam shook his head. "There was no need to," he answered. "The family only has one child…a daughter."
~~~~~*****~~~~~
Dean leaned his left shoulder against Kenna's bedroom doorway as he watched her begin to pack her duffel bag. He shook his head and chuckled as she rushed around the room, grabbing as many things as possible and shoving them into her bag.
"You know, right now I should be asking you a bunch of questions," he said, only half teasing her. "Questions like, 'what the hell do you think you're doing? Are you trying to make yourself die sooner?'"
Kenna looked up at him and glared. Dean lifted his hands and held them up in silent defense. "But," he sighed. "I'm not gonna do that."
He pushed himself off the doorjamb and slowly ambled into the room. "Instead, I'm just gonna step back and let you do your thing."
"But, you're coming, right?" Kenna asked. "You and Sam are both coming?"
Dean closed his eyes and nodded. Of course, he was going with her. There was no way he'd let her go alone. He pressed a kiss to her temple and sat down on her bed, continuing to watch her pack for the trip.
"Sam showed me the newspaper article," he said. "And based on that, what are we thinking? Demonic possession, or a spirit that makes people go crazy, or what?"
Kenna shrugged. "I'm more on board with the spirit theory," she began. "It doesn't sound like a typical possession. There's no sign of any black smoke or—"
Her sentence was completely interrupted when Dean suddenly leaned up and covered Kenna's mouth with his own. She gasped into his kiss at first, but eventually found herself smiling against his lips. After a long euphoric moment, Dean pulled back and smiled at her.
"What was that for?" Kenna asked when she had finally caught her breath.
Dean grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. I guess I kinda like hearing you talk shop."
Kenna giggled and slowly removed herself from his grasp, fully intent on hitting the road as soon as possible. If this was going to be her last hunt, she couldn't let anything stand in her way.
Not even Dean.
"Are you ready to go?" she asked.
Dean stood up and walked back over to the hallway, poked his head out, and grabbed his duffel back from around the corner. It was already fully packed. He glanced back at Kenna and winked.
"Just waitin' on you, babe."
~~~~~*****~~~~~
A trip should have only taken about four hours, had quickly turned into an all day affair. Along the way, Dean stopped at every roadside attraction and tourist trap they came across, all of them at Kenna's request.
"Billboard on the Interstate said this place had the best fudge in the whole country," she said, chomping down on her second piece. "Weren't you guys the least bit curious to see if their claims were true?"
Sam and Dean didn't complain. Not once. Even when they'd stopped to see the world's one and only Cyclops prairie dog, which sadly enough, turned out to be nothing more than a bad example of poor taxidermy skills.
The little pit stops may not have been a part of Kenna's new Bucket List, but the boys decided to pretend that they were. She was living life like a woman who might not see tomorrow.
And the worst part was that they all knew that she was…
Just before dark, the trio reached Abilene and thanks to Kenna's earlier phone conversation with the homeowner, found the mansion quite quickly.
"I still can't believe you just called this guy up and told him who we were and what we do, Kenna," Dean scoffed.
"I still can't believe he believed you," Sam added.
Kenna shrugged. "The guy's wife is in a mental ward and his little girl's having nightmares," she explained. "And it's all because of whatever's in this house. He's…"
She was about to say 'desperate', but as Dean reached the end of the long driveway, and the house came into view, every word Kenna wanted to say was completely knocked out of her mouth.
The newspaper clippings had described the home as an "eight bedroom, Victorian mansion", but in actuality it should have been called a castle.
"Holy…crap…" Sam gasped. Dean muttered something as well as he parked the Impala, though his expletive was a little more colorful.
McKenna climbed out of the back seat and Dean snuck a kiss while Sam's back was turned.
"What was that one for?" she whispered. Dean just shrugged and made his way up the front steps.
"Good Lord," Kenna mumbled to herself. "I wasn't even talking shop that time..."
"Are you McKenna?" a voice called from around the left side of the porch. She looked up and saw a well-dressed man in his early thirties getting up from the porch swing around the corner. He should have looked much younger than he actually did, but given his current situation, it wasn't surprising that he didn't look as well as he probably used to.
Kenna followed Sam and Dean up the front steps and they each introduced themselves.
"I'm Neal. And you three must be the…hunters," he said, his expression turning sour on the word. Apparently, he was having some trouble accepting the whole concept.
"If you don't mind, we can sit and talk on the porch," he said, and cast a wary glance at the large front door. "I don't umm…I don't go in there anymore."
Sam, Dean, and McKenna followed Neal around the side of the porch and found a seat. Neal began to tell his story of everything that had taken place at the mansion since the day they'd bought it.
Kenna couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a grown man break down in sobbing tears, but Neal did just that.
"I was on my way home to tell my wife, Emily that we were leaving," he sniffed. "I could hear her screaming the second I got out of the car. I ran down to the basement and found her curled up in the corner. Our daughter, Sophie was so scared that she locked herself in the hall closet…"
Kenna reached up and placed her hand on the man's shoulder. The simple touch seemed to give him just enough strength to continue. "Emily was on the floor, screaming her head off and covering her eyes. I heard a voice…whispering, saying something about a boy, a son. Emily kept screaming and wouldn't let me come anywhere near her…I had to call the cops. She's been in the mental ward at the hospital for four days now."
"Neal, the newspapers said something about Emily talking about her son," Sam ventured. "I thought you only had one child."
Neal nodded his head and wiped the tears from his eyes. "We do," he said. "But we almost had two."
"What do you mean?" Dean asked.
"About a year ago, we found out Emily was pregnant," Neal said. "It wasn't expected, but we were both very happy about it. Anyway, when Emily was about four months along, she was on her way home from a doctor's appointment. She had just found out the sex of the baby and she was so excited that she accidentally ran a red light…"
Sam, Dean, and McKenna each dropped their gazes to the floor. They didn't need to hear the rest of the story in order to understand the ending.
"The accident was pretty bad," Neal murmured. "Emily survived, but…we lost the baby."
"I'm so sorry," Kenna whispered.
"Me too," Neal agreed. "Because Emily was going to tell me that the baby was a boy."
Dean took a sidelong glance and Kenna and noticed that her hands were shaking. If he had known the case was going to involve something like this, something so close to home for her, he would've put his foot down and simply said no. But it was too late for that now. Now Kenna was clearly involved and there was no way he could ever get her to walk away from this case.
Dean closed his eyes and blindly reached for her. Without any further prompting, she took his hand and squeezed it tight.
"Neal, is it possible that you and your wife are just still mourning for the loss of your son?" Dean asked, respectfully.
"Of course, we are," he agreed. "But I'm not crazy. I heard that voice in the basement, and there was no way in hell that it could have known about our son."
"Why's that?" Kenna asked.
"Because Emily and I never told anyone that the baby we lost was a boy."
