Who Wants Some Tea?

The roof didn't have any benches – presumably to prevent against the smoking hospital staff getting too comfortable and forgetting that they had work to be getting on with – so they sat down on the stones. Nina didn't have a coat, so Mitchell gave her his.

'Won't you get cold?' she asked. 'You were in intensive care just a few days ago.'

Mitchell pushed his shirt aside to show the area where his wound used to be. It hadn't even scarred. All the evidence was gone. There was just smooth skin.

Nina gasped. 'How?'

Mitchell smiled wryly. 'Hello, vampire.' He gave a cheerful little wave. 'I don't get cold either. The coat's just for show.'

Sam filed that away for future reference too.

'Right,' Nina said, crossing her arms over her chest. 'So you're a vampire?'

Mitchell nodded.

Something occurred to her then. 'Oh my God, is that why you work at the hospital? Are you feeding off patients?'

'What?' The idea appeared to be both new and disgusting to Mitchell. 'No! I'm clean. I just work here.'

'Clean?'

'Off the blood.'

This didn't seem to pacify her for long. 'So why do you work here?'

'Because I need the money to pay the rent.'

This threw her for a loop, as if it was completely unimaginable that something like a vampire would do something mundane as pay the rent. 'Yeah, but…'

Mitchell huffed. 'It's a bit hard to get a good job when you can't get your picture taken and your birth certificate says that you were born in 1891.' He reached into his coat for a cigarette and lit one. 'Best to keep a low profile before people start asking all sorts of questions they really don't want answers to.'

That shut her up for a bit, but not for long. 'So, you don't show up on camera.' It wasn't a question. 'I saw it.' So that was what had caught her attention in the hall. 'How about mirrors?'

'Nope. Haven't seen my face for almost a century.'

'What about garlic?'

'Delicious.'

'Sunlight?'

'Bit bright, but sunglasses help.'

'Do you sleep in a coffin?'

'Bed is comfier.' The corner of his mouth curled up. He was enjoying this, wasn't he?

Sam really wished he had a notebook so that he could take this all down. As soon as he had his laptop, he'd have to do some more research. At the very least he'd like to figure out why vampires and werewolves were so different from what he was used to on his side of the ocean.

Nina considered this. 'Anything else I need to know?'

'I have to be invited into someone's house before I can enter,' Mitchell offered.

'Really? Why?'

He shrugged. 'To give the humans a fighting chance, I guess. Same with the religious stuff. I'm not so good with that.'

Nina shook her head before he had even finished talking. 'No, you had that Star of David and the holy water didn't do anything either.'

'Intent,' Sam said. It was about time he made some sort of contribution to this conversation anyway. 'I meant to hit Herrick and got Mitchell by mistake. I didn't want to hurt him. And the Star of David belongs to George, who's your friend. I guess you have to want to use it against a vamp for it to work like that.'

Nina looked at him at last. 'So, what are you? Another vampire?'

'Human. Hunter.' When she didn't immediately get it, he added: 'Anything supernatural steps out of line, I deal with it.'

'With a super soaker.' Nina was not very impressed.

'Sometimes.' Thanks again, Dean. 'Only if it's filled with holy water.'

'So, what is George then? A wizard?'

'Werewolf,' Mitchell answered. He pointed towards the full moon in the sky. 'That's why he can't answer his phone right now.'

'Oh. Oh.' She thought about this. 'So why did he send me that text? He made it sound like he was about to die and…' Some of her earlier anxiety returned.

Sam took pity on her. 'George is taking out the rest of the vampires. My brother, a friend and Mitchell's housemate Annie are helping, but there are quite a few of them and he was a little nervous about it. He should be fine.' It was Dean he was really worried about. George was only a danger to everyone else, Castiel could look after himself and Annie was already dead. Dean was supposed to go out and stand guard as soon as George started to change, but Sam knew his brother. This wouldn't be the first time he threw a perfectly good plan overboard for what only he thought was a very good reason.

'Should be…?'

'Nothing we can do about it now,' Sam said. 'Our job was to cut the head off the snake.' He indicated the pile of dust. 'They are doing the rest.'

'I want to see him.'

'You can't,' Mitchell said. 'Not now. Listen, Nina, you've got to think about this. No, you do,' he insisted when she opened her mouth to protest. 'George and I, we're not human. We're trying to be, but we're not. You need to think about if you want to get involved with that. Because this,' he made an arm gesture in the late Herrick's general direction, 'all goes with it. We're not normal and it's not always safe.'

Compliments to her, because she did actually seem to give it some thought. 'Why didn't he tell me?'

'He likes you,' Mitchell replied promptly. 'Really likes you. George likes to keep the wolf separate from everything else.' The fact that he really couldn't was left unsaid, although Sam suspected that it had been on the tip of his tongue. 'Think it over. Properly. There aren't many of us who get a choice in this.'

Nina let that sink in and so did Sam.

When neither of them said anything, Mitchell rose to his feet. 'I'm going home.'

Nina stood too. 'I'm coming.'

Mitchell groaned. 'Nina, George is not there yet and I need to sleep. I almost died forty-eight hours ago,' he added, rubbing the spot for effect, although Sam suspected it wasn't all an act. 'Just drop by tomorrow morning.'

Curiosity and worry battled with professionalism. The latter won. 'Oh, fine. So, what am I going to do? Am I just going to go back to work and pretend like nothing has happened?'

Mitchell shrugged.

Nina took a deep breath, then looked at the pile of dusty Herrick. 'Go on, then. I'll fetch a broom and sweep him up.' She shooed both Sam and Mitchell back inside.

They made their way back to the car in silence. Sam toyed with the idea of calling Dean, but he'd be up to his eyeballs in vampires by now, so best not. Dean would call when he was done. Or not. Sam was prepared to give him until sunrise at the latest.

'Good work,' he told Mitchell when they were back in the car.

Mitchell nodded. 'There was a moment there when I thought…Were you…?'

Sam looked away. 'I'm going to stop.' Before Mitchell could comment on his choice of words, he asked: 'How did you do it?'

'Went to a friend who'd gone clean a while before I did, had him tie me to a chair and toughed it out. Cold turkey. Worst week of my life.' He started the engine and drove them out of the car park.

Sam had to do a double-take. 'You were tied to a chair for a week?'

'It was a comfy chair.' Mitchell kept his eyes on the road. 'You can't do it on your own, Sam.'

It was not the encouraging advice he'd hoped for.

Dean's watch was entirely uneventful, despite the cacophony of noise coming from the building. Screams and howls held a contest for what was loudest without a clear winner. Then there was the noise of breaking furniture and nails on walls and wood. At some point the lights went off and didn't come on again.

To Dean's endless disappointment not a single vamp escaped through the window.

The longer he waited, the less screams there were. Even the howling and growling seemed to move to the back of the building. If he had to guess, he'd say that it was almost over.

Annie appeared out of nowhere. 'It's done.'

'Where's Cas?'

'Locking the wolf in the back,' she said, looking a little embarrassed. 'No windows.'

'Ah.' It was really not that hard to feel sorry for George, even if he wouldn't remember a thing about it in the morning. Werewolves always got a bit of a raw deal. Some of them never even knew what they were, well, the ones in the States anyway. George admitted that he did not remember what the wolf did, but Dean suspected that he remembered the transformation – or a part of it at least – well enough.

'What about the vamps?' he asked.

'All gone.' She sat down on the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees. 'I've never even been in a fight before…' She made a wide arm gesture. 'Before all this.'

Dean sat down next to her. 'You did pretty well.'

Annie pondered that. 'I don't think they got doors,' she said. 'I didn't see any. Do you think… do you think that they just stop to exist? Do vampires get an afterlife?'

This was the kind of question Dean never bothered to ask and one she was probably better off asking Cas, who of course wasn't here yet. He'd never seen a vampire in hell. Which did not say much, because there were a lot of people in hell – something most of the living did not want to know about – and he hadn't seen them all.

'I don't know,' he said, which was the honest answer.

'So Mitchell…?'

'I don't know, Annie.'

'We won't let anything happen to him then.' It was the kind of tone that suggested arguing the point was not going to do him any favours here. 'We won't.' But she sounded all kinds of gloomy and depressed, which was not her default state.

'Why don't you make us a cup of tea?' he suggested, because if she didn't have to drink it, then neither did he. And it might make her feel better at least.

'Can't,' she said, but a hesitant smile showed through. 'George smashed the kettle.'

'Coffee then?'

She looked a little bit sheepish. 'He… ehm… kind of smashed the whole kitchenette. And then a vampire started throwing knives at him, so I threw him against the wall and Castiel finished him off.'

'Team work.'

'We were pretty good.' She twisted the hem of her shirt between her fingers. 'I didn't actually kill anyone, though.' She looked at her feet. 'I dropped my stake and it rolled under the counters.'

Sometimes… 'Annie, you're a ghost. You could have pulled it back with your ghostly powers.'

She seemed surprised to hear it. 'I can?'

'If you can throw stuff away, then you can make it come to you too, yeah.' Which was a major pain in the arse too. Then again, a clueless ghost like Annie could use all the help she could get. 'You should try and get some practise in.'

Somewhere in the back of the building the wolf was still tearing anything it could get its claws and teeth into. Dean understood now why George liked to think of it as something unconnected to him; the beast was nothing like the fussy human. He really hoped human George didn't remember anything of this whole thing.

Castiel appeared out of nowhere. 'The wolf cannot escape,' he announced, because small talk was still a little beyond him.

'God knows what the police are going to make of all of this,' Annie said.

'Not much,' Dean assured her. 'Didn't I say? We're going to set fire to it as soon as George sheds his fur.'

She poked his side. He actually felt that. 'That's not funny.'

It was a bit.

'Will he be all right?' she asked, all serious again.

'He'll be fine,' Dean said. 'He won't remember any of it.' Not beyond the initial transformation at any rate, which did not seem the thing to mention. And, because it seemed the thing to do and Sam wasn't around to see, he put an arm around her shoulder. He was a little surprised that it did rest on something that looked and kind of felt like a shoulder and that it didn't fall right through it. Annie wasn't an ordinary ghost anyway.

She wasn't warm, but she was a lot more solid than any ghost had any right to be. She put her head on his shoulder, but didn't say anything. If Sam would ever ask Dean about it, he would say that he didn't hate it. If he was however really honest with himself, he might admit that he liked it. More than he probably should. There had been too few friendly touches in his recent history.

He sent off a text to Sam with his free hand. Vamps all dead, wolf contained. Then it was a matter of waiting. Castiel had no idea what to do with that, so he just stood, back ramrod straight, staring down the street, until Annie invited him to sit with them. For a moment he tilted his head quizzically as if this was quite a new concept to him, but then he sat down on Annie's other side. Annie put an arm around his shoulder too.

It was strangely peaceful.

Mitchell and Sam were the first ones back. Sam got Dean's text just as Mitchell reversed into a very tight parking spot. He took the news quite calmly, as in he didn't say a word and his face gave nothing away either.

Once inside, Mitchell fell onto the couch and didn't move again.

'You all right, dude?' Sam asked.

'Fine.' But he didn't get up.

Sam was not well-versed in vampire care – or care of any human being other than Dean, come to think of it – but they were on the same side, so perhaps he should do something, but a text on his phone distracted him.

Where are you? Ruby demanded from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the last in a series of texts all sent in the past five hours or so, sounding alternatively worried and annoyed. I'm putting my life on the line here for this, read the second to last. The least you can do is let me know what's going on.

Since Mitchell had apparently dropped off to sleep – could vampires wake up with an aching back, he wondered, because if they could, Mitchell was not going to feel good after a couple of hours in that position – and was unlikely to make an active contribution to any sort of conversation, he scrolled through the rest.

Are you in trouble?

Sam, where are you?

You should keep this up so you can get stronger!

Sam!

You've missed our meet. Are you okay?

Hey Sam, give me a call when you get this.

He leaned back against the wall and thought. On one hand he really needed the edge over the demons, but on the other… It had become increasingly clear that there was a price to pay and that, on the whole, he was well on his way to becoming something that may not be all that easy to distinguish from Herrick and his merry band of addicts.

On a hunt, talk later, he texted back to Ruby.

But that was delaying the decision and he knew it. Yes, he needed something that made him stronger, but he had started because… well, because Ruby told him he needed it. Dean wasn't strong enough after his stay in hell. He was a liability, off his game and who was going to pick up the pieces if not Sam?

Except Dean was doing well, really well. Yeah, he had been through a lot of crap that he of course didn't want to talk to Sam about – what else was new? – but he was doing well on hunts. His judgements were on point. He hadn't dropped the ball even once since his return actually.

So that was that excuse down the drain. Sam watched it go and realised that he didn't have another.

He was becoming far too dependent on the blood. What was it that Mitchell had said again? They're addicts. And they don't want to go clean. Mitchell had to be tied to a chair for a week to break the habit. He had very deliberately not asked how long ago that was. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, not if Mitchell was still struggling with it.

So he sent off another text. I'm quitting. We're done.

Then he blocked her number, put his phone away and went into the kitchen to see if anywhere in this tea-soaked mess he could perhaps find some decent coffee. As nice little human addictions went, caffeine was miles better than cigarettes anyway.

The moon set a little before dawn, but they only went in when Cas said George was human again. Annie pushed the container – brakes still on – back to its original position and then rent-a-ghosted into the building before Dean had even unlocked the door.

She was back within ten seconds. 'He's okay. He's asleep.'

Dean would be lying if he said he wasn't relieved to hear it. 'Cas, can you take him back?' he asked.

'Do you not require assistance?'

'Have you ever set fire to a building before?' Sure, he was probably a formidable warrior, but pyromania did not sound like a very angelic trait to Dean. 'And make it look like it caught fire naturally,' he added when he realised that Cas could probably reduce this place to a hole in the ground if he was in a smiting mood.

Cas, who had been about to point that out, reconsidered and shook his head. 'No. I shall bring George home and then return for you.'

Probably a good idea. It might be best not to hang around once the fire got going. Being arrested by the Brits was not on his to-do list. Besides, for all he knew he might be forced to share a cell with Owen.

The place was a mess. It was impossible to see that it had ever been a funeral parlour or even a business. The wood panelling was scratched and there were deep grooves in the floor. Body parts lay everywhere.

'It's like a jigsaw puzzle,' Dean told the other two, neither of whom appeared to appreciate the sort of post-hunt jokes Dean liked. Cas might not actually know what a jigsaw puzzle was, come to think of it.

Annie rent-a-ghosted over a very large puddle of blood. 'Will this burn?' she wondered.

'Wooden furniture, wood panelling and carpet? This place will go up like a rocket.' The structure would be mostly fine – the building was made of bricks – but everything inside would be toast when he was done. The bodies might need some extra help, but he could manage that. Or rather, the jerrycan filled with petrol could manage that.

It was interesting to see that George had apparently been more than capable of killing vampires on his own, without the use of a stake. Dean's idea was to set a rampaging wolf among the vamps to get them nice and panicky and maybe torn up a bit so that Cas and Annie had an easier job. But these werewolves could kill vampires.

Nice.

George was in the back room, where there was less blood, but more dust. Here too the walls and floor were scratched to within an inch of their lives. Not as much wood here as there was in the front, but the front was the place that needed to be dealt with more anyway. They could afford to leave this place mostly untouched.

The police wouldn't be able to make any sense of this anyway.

'Want to help?' he asked Annie. 'Or do you want to go home?' He suspected she might.

She drew herself up straight. 'No, this is my life now.'

'Afterlife,' Dean grinned at her.

She actually stuck her tongue out at him.

Dean didn't look at George, because well, that would be inappropriate and Sam would bitch about that. And there was something sad about the whole picture anyway. He knew George hated what he was. It was only decent not to linger over it.

So he left George to Cas and moved back to the reception area with Annie. 'See if you can collect the furniture,' he instructed. 'Pile it in the middle of the room.' Where he would bring the bodies. 'Maybe you can use your ghostly powers.' He grinned some more.

She grinned back. 'Ghostly or ghastly?'

He shrugged. 'What's the effect you're going for?'

She was one ghost he was happy to leave right where he found her. It was hard to imagine her becoming vengeful. Besides, she'd already had her revenge. Annie was a bit like a little sister he never knew he wanted. Only deader. It was easy to forget sometimes that she wasn't alive when she very much acted as though she was. Dean wondered if perhaps she too sometimes forgot that she wasn't alive anymore.

He heard the whoosh from the back room that told him that Cas had gone with George.

'Maybe it's better if you go outside now,' Dean said when he picked up the jerrycan and doused the pile of bodies with it.

'I'm not going to burn to death, am I?' Annie retorted. 'Maybe I should do it?'

'Nah, I'll be fine.' He'd lost count of the times he'd had to set something on fire. Mostly corpses of course, but that seemed like the kind of thing not to say around a ghost. He emptied the last of the contents of the jerrycan and then pulled out a bag of salt, on the premise that he was rather safe than sorry. He didn't think vamps could come back as ghosts – cheating death twice seemed like a little too much power for anyone – but these British vamps were weird and why take chances when he had salt on him anyway?

'Is that salt?' Annie asked.

'Yeah.'

'From my kitchen?'

'… Yes?'

'Why?'

'Purification,' he explained. 'Just to be sure that they won't come back as ghosts.'

Annie shuddered. 'Could they do that?'

'Don't think so, but why take chances?'

She considered that. 'That's actually a good point.' She looked around her. 'I don't see them anymore, so that's good, isn't it? Not that I've seen anyone die before. A normal person,' she added as clarification at the end.

'It's fine, Annie.'

It wasn't supposed to be easy to see people die. Dean had got used to it out of sheer necessity. That didn't really make it any easier, though. At least she hadn't been here to see the vamps draining the life out of their victims, who were by now no longer distinguishable from the monsters that killed them. And he wasn't going to tell her about that either.

He reconsidered his decision. 'Here, want to light the fire?' he asked, holding out the matches to her. At least it might be a distraction and like she said, she couldn't actually burn to death.

'Really?'

'You're a hunter now.' A ghostly hunter, but a hunter – of sorts – all the same. 'And it's not as if you can set fire to yourself.'

'Is that what you do, then?' she asked interestedly. 'Setting fire to things?'

Dean grinned at her. 'Best job in the world.'

A lot of the time it wasn't, but, Dean reflected when he watched the funeral parlour go up from across the street with one arm on the shoulder of the friendly neighbourhood ghost, it definitely had its moments.

Castiel only stayed long enough to drop a very groggy and still mostly naked George off at the pink house before he disappeared again. Mitchell woke up and dragged himself from the couch to help George up the stairs. Not long after that Sam heard the water running in the bathroom, so he assumed that George was about to wash off the evidence of last night.

Mitchell returned shortly after and put the kettle on.

'You all right?' Sam asked.

'I could sleep for a week,' Mitchell replied and yawned the evidence of that.

Sam knew how that felt. 'The wound still hurting?'

'A bit. Twinges. It's mostly healed.' But he rubbed at it again. 'Herrick missed the heart. He always had a rubbish aim.'

The conversation petered out after that. They heard George stumbling around upstairs, then a boing and a startled yelp as he stubbed his toe on the furniture. The corners of Mitchell's mouth curled up in the barest hint of a smile. Sam suspected that this might be the closest these supernatural creatures ever got to normal.

Dean, Annie and Castiel returned just as George was coming down the stairs. Dean smelled of smoke and he missed half an eyebrow, but there was no missing his good mood when he sauntered into the kitchen and snatched a piece of toast off the table.

'We came, we saw, we kicked their undead asses!' he announced triumphantly.

'And roasted yourself on a barbecue?' Mitchell suggested. He wrinkled his nose at the stench.

'We should have brought marshmallows,' Annie said wistfully.

George shook his head. 'You can't eat them, Annie!'

'Your point?' Clearly she suspected that George had a great many points he could be making and he was indeed gearing up to do just that, so she continued: 'Breakfast, anyone?'

'Already made it,' Mitchell said with a winning smile. 'That reminds me, George, we ran into Nina last night.' He rattled off the highlights of their night to an increasingly pale George. Looking at him, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world was about to come to an untimely end.

Of course, it still might.

George's concerns were slightly less pressing, but one wouldn't know it from his behaviour. Barely had the last word left Mitchell's mouth, before he turned around with a whimpered 'Nina' on his lips, already reaching for his phone. He thundered up the stairs. Somewhere a door slammed shut.

'That went well,' Mitchell said. 'Breakfast?' He offered a plate piled high with toast to Castiel, who stared at it in bewilderment.

'I don't need human sustenance.'

Mitchell gave the good example and took a generous bite out of his own toast. 'Neither do I, but it's tasty.'

Castiel hesitantly took a piece and stared at it. 'We must depart,' he announced. 'You have work to do.'

'What? Like now?' Dean demanded. Sam had a lingering suspicion that he may be the only one in the whole world who could take that tone with Castiel and not get killed for it. 'Dude, just because you don't need sleep…'

'Ah, yes, you require rest.'

'And food.' Dean held up the half-eaten toast to demonstrate what you were actually supposed to do with it. 'And maybe something to drink.'

Annie got the hint and perked up. 'Right, who wants some tea?'

Sam just sat down again. It looked like they were going to be some time.

Just the epilogue left now: choose your own ending.

The epilogue will be up on Sunday, since once again I'll be exceedingly busy on Monday.

Until then!