A/N1: My friends, I need to hand out a huge apology. I'm so sorry! I should not have posted the last chapter as quickly as I did. Since I hadn't planned it, some important things got shuffled around and dropped. I have been reworking and editing it all week. You don't have to go back and reread it, though. Here are the plot points I put in it after posting it:

1. Aya might be a living reaper.

2. Unicorns. They've popped up twice. If it happens again, I'm calling it a running gag.

3. Dean totally noticed Cass and Aya giving each other looks. His (obvious) conclusion may or may not be accurate.

Lastly, for this chapter, I need to add a TRIGGER WARNING: Paulie refers to himself as a faggot. It's his word. He owns it. I am not allowed to use it, ever. And neither are you, unless you are Paulie's kindred spirit. You know who you are, you beautiful otter-person you.

Onward!

Thank his dark father in the pit that he hadn't tried waiting for the girl in her apartment.

When Vahe heard the distinctive rumble of a classic muscle car, he darted into the shadowed hallway that cut the small apartment building in half. Disbelieving his rotten luck, he peered into the parking lot. A sleek black boat of a car, coated in dust, purred into a parking place. Its Ohio plate read CNK 80Q3. The halogens shut off at the same time as the engine. The doors opened, and three figures emerged.

Damn it. Not only could that little slut see his real face, but she'd also brought the two worst possible men home with her.

Vahe breathed a snarl that the human throat wasn't built for producing. It had been so long since he'd been sent topside on a mission. With great disappointment, he watched his hope of sneaking a taste of the girl before he delivered her going up like brimstone fumes. He was not about to get in line for a Winchester's sloppy seconds.

Hunters. The pair of them oozed arrogance. Unconcerned with what might be lurking in the dark, they swaggered up the walk. Their layered clothing was loose enough to hide an arsenal apiece, but Vahe observed them with contempt. From here, they didn't look so tough.

Too bad he'd had to abandon the Luka meat suit, though. That one had been bigger.

Then the brothers and the girl turned into the ill-lit hallway. Vahe put his back to the cone of yellowish light filtering through the open-faced, roughcast staircase. He pretended to unlock the door to the corner apartment as three sets of feet clad in work boots, leather lace-ups, and lavender running shoes thudded up the steps to the third and top landing. Not one of the shoes' owners so much as looked his way.

"Does it always do that?"

"What?"

"The light."

The smallest shoes hesitated. "Yeah, um . . . lots of ghosts around here?"

A low-pitched chuckle.

In the unreliable cone of light, Vahe edged toward the stairs and then crouched under them, peering up. He couldn't see much up there, but he could hear just fine.

Tiny metallic scrapes floated downward. Then a hushed voice.

"Are we really breaking into my apartment?"

A pssh sound. "Relax. The first time may seem a little questionable, but it gets more fun after that."

"Right, Dean. You treat all your dates to a standard B and E after dinner. Really ramps up the romance, doesn't it?"

"First of all, Sammy, I wouldn't be caught dead letting my little brother tag along on a date. Second of all, how else are we going to get in? That demon stole her keys."

A click. A slight squeak as a door swung inward.

The girl made a whimpering noise. "Please don't tell me you've already broken in."

"No, of course not," said one brother, at the same time the other said, "Seriously, relax. We put everything back where we found it."

"Dude!"

"What?"

Vahe imagined the conversation had turned non-verbal, for he heard nothing else as the three slowly passed across the threshold and the door clicked shut. The hunters weren't as stupid as they looked. He was sure they'd gone in with guns drawn, the traitor Ruby's Kurdish demon-killing knife at the ready.

Shut out from his target for the foreseeable future, Vahe frowned, rethinking his plan. He needed two sacrifices. One woman. And one man.

If he couldn't get to the girl – and for all intents and purposes, she was locked up nice and tight behind the broad backs of the Winchesters – then he would have to make her come to him.

Ditching her bag had been his first order of business, but he hadn't gotten rid of everything. He jogged out to the walk, passing between straggly juniper bushes. Several identical buildings away, he slowed, stopped, and then dug her small black phone out of his pocket. Thumbing the slide, he bypassed her PIN with the barest burst of demonic energy. As he scrolled through her contacts, he paused on the thumbnail of a bottle-blond boy, who looked the right age and took up a good third of her call history.

Vahe opened their text messages. He read them, smiling when he came across happy birthday wishes in February. Selecting the text box at the bottom, Vahe began to type.

..::~*~::..

What was that noise?

Aya, her hair washed, blow-dried, and braided, and confident that this time, she'd remembered deodorant, padded along in her comfiest jammies, the ones printed with cats cavorting in bowls of ramen. Lemara had given them to her last Christmas.

Marr.

It was Wednesday. She'd last seen Lemara on Saturday. She was beginning to wonder if she'd ever see her best friend again.

Clasping her fist over the ache in her heart – Marr, where are you? – Aya followed the high-pitched chatter. It reminded her of a theremin, that sort of interrupted electronic squealing. It led her to her living room.

Dean had his back to the hallway, a picture frame in his hands, but Sam saw her emerge. His spine stiffened and he thrust his hand inside his coat. The lined corduroy muffled the noise but didn't prevent it. He stood there, eyes roving the walls and ceiling, as the scratchy squealing continued.

The volume change got Dean's attention. He glanced at Sam's guilty expression, then at Aya, and then set the frame down on the fake wood mantel.

"Hi," he said, as he had in the motel room when she'd learned they were not, in fact, FBI, and flashed her a white-toothed smile.

"Hi," she said, smiling back. They looked so funny, like a couple of boys caught writing rude things on the school's bathroom walls. She thought it kindest to put them at ease. They were her guests, after all. And her self-appointed bodyguards.

Dean tilted his head toward the picture. Her and Lemara, taken at the Elitch Gardens amusement and water park last summer, both of them shiny with sunscreen and huge sunglasses, wearing bikini tops and cutoffs and brilliant smiles. "Is this your roommate?"

"Yes, that's Marr," she said, a bit sadly. Lemara had always brought happiness and life with her.

The thing in Sam's hand squealed again. She turned to him, pushing her anxiety to the side, and brightly asked, "What is that?"

"Uh," he said, and then hesitated, as though formulating and discarding several cover stories. Then, he sighed and brought his hand out of his coat. "EMF meter."

"You mean it picks up on electromagnetic frequencies?"

"Yeah."

He showed her what looked like a deconstructed Walkman, a small, collapsible antenna rising from one corner. The row of red LEDs at the top flared brightest when the squealing reached its peak.

In other words, when Sam pointed the antenna at Latte, perched on the back of the couch, who laid her ears back and hissed. If she could have taken a swipe at him without tumbling off, Aya was sure she would have.

"Let me guess," Aya said as he frowned at the redlining meter, oblivious to Latte's growling. "Soul detector?"

"Yep. I made it myself," Dean said proudly.

"Cool. It works great," Aya praised him, and his smile widened. Then she pointed at what was, to them, the empty space above the couch. "It found my cat."

Sam had a very expressive face, but he excelled at not blurting out everything on his mind. Hurriedly, he shut off the EMF meter and tucked it away.

Dean wasn't so good at it. He blinked. "Wait. You're saying you have a ghost kitty?"

"I do. She died last year." Aya moved next to Dean and picked up a different frame. It held several photos: Latte, her manic-eyed cat face poking out of the cuff of one of Lemara's long-legged pairs of jeans; Latte, dancing on her hind legs as Aya dangled a bit of rainbow yarn above her; Latte, curled up and sleeping with her paw over her eyes.

"Tripod," Dean said in a low voice to his brother, grinning, but Sam made a Shut Up Right Now face at him.

"I didn't know there were animal ghosts," the younger brother said, but not as though it were the truth. More like he was testing her.

"I've never seen one of a wild animal that wasn't bound here by a witch," she said, eliciting raised brows from both of them, "but pets are different. Pets form attachments. Pets can love. They don't want to leave what they've always known. If there's no one left, they just sort of drift, lost."

"Do you help them, too?" Dean asked, trying to look serious but obviously hung up on the fact that she knew what witches did.

"Sometimes." Aya wished she could pet Latte, convince her that these men were friends. "Dogs are easy. I point, and they go where I want them to, into the light. But cats? I point, and they sniff my finger. Not a lot I can do with that. Maybe when I die, she'll come with me."

Latte, claws extended, hunkered down and pushed herself to the edge as the brothers took seats on the couch. Her eyes gleamed in a remarkably unfriendly way.

"Why didn't we get a reading on the cat when we were here before?" Sam asked his brother, who shrugged.

"Latte doesn't like guests," Aya said, not quite believing she was having this conversation with not one, but two men she'd just met. "She used to hide inside my box spring, so she probably hid in the Veil until you left. Can I, um, can I get either of you some iced tea?"

It was a pathetic and see-through attempt to change the subject, but they let her do it.

"That would be nice, thank you," Sam said.

Dean declined. He stretched out his long legs, kicking his brother's feet out of his way. Sam kicked him right back, sprawling to take up two-thirds of the cushion real estate.

Latte growled at the back of Sam's shaggy head before diving off the couch and vanishing.

"Bitch," Dean muttered, and for a second, Aya thought he was referring to her cat. He extracted a throw pillow from under his butt.

"Jerk," Sam retorted. He snagged the pillow before Dean could hit him with it and crammed it behind his back.

Wanting to laugh but too hopped up on the weirdness of it all, Aya fled.

..::~*~::..

The college campus at night seemed too quiet, too dark, and too full of whispers.

It looked deserted but for a few cars moving on the street. Paulie stayed in the circles of light under the streetlamps when he could. After what had happened to Lemara, he didn't blame Aya for texting him so late. He wished, as did Darika, that Aya would ask for help more often. She was always there for them; it was nice to be there for her.

Paulie checked his messages one last time.

Hey~ Guess what I forgot to do! I need to pick up my graduation cap and gown at the Administrative Offices building, but I don't want to walk there after dark. Mrs. Graves said she'd wait for me. Could you meet me in ten?

More like fifteen. Though he didn't live far from DU, the Administrative Offices building stood by itself in the far northeastern corner. Paulie strode along as quickly as he could. His flips slapped the concrete, criticizing him. He should have worn shoes. The night sky had clouded over and his feet were freezing.

Without warning, the light overhead doused itself in a shower of sparks. So did the one ahead, and the one behind.

Paulie hesitated, staring up at them. That wasn't normal. Was it?

Oh, well. Not his problem. He hunched his shoulders, seeking the warmth of his wool-lined flannel, bunched under a denim jacket, against his neck. It was so much colder out here than he'd thought. He couldn't tell if he still had toes.

A voice floated out of the dark. "You're a pretty one."

Paulie frowned in the direction of the voice and its forced accent. Someone – a guy – lounged against the pole of one of the dark streetlamps.

"You have a light, yes?"

"No, sorry," he said automatically. "I don't smoke."

He kept walking, too used to the homeless begging from every dirty nook downtown to let this one bother him. Those that came out during the day were belligerent. They demanded change, or cigarettes, or the jewelry and sunglasses people were wearing that they liked, or the takeout containers clutched in people's hands. They'd been videoed following people who wouldn't acknowledge them for blocks at a time, yelling insults. The cops didn't have time to deal with them, so maybe they were getting bolder, coming out at night, too. That was okay. Paulie's legs were long. He could get away quickly. And if this dude wasn't homeless and was just looking for a date, well, he'd picked the wrong faggot.

The stranger let Paulie get halfway to the next streetlamp before he spoke again.

"No, I didn't think you smoked," he said, sounding amused. "But I do."

Paulie turned, ready to tell the creep to go screw himself, but the stranger had already thrown back his head and begun to scream. A pull-your-guts-out-of-your-mouth kind of scream. A thick scream, choked with vomit. Except there was no vomit. A cloud of black smoke burst out of the guy like lava. Even in the dark, Paulie could see the tendons straining against the skin of his neck as he screamed and screamed and the smoke shot skyward.

An unnamable fear took over Paulie's body, like the time he and his best friend had stumbled upon a rattler on the trail behind his house, back when he'd been about eight years old. Not that he'd seen the snake. The sound was all it took. He'd found himself in his backyard before he'd decided to run. Jordan, who said that Paulie had disappeared between one second and the next, had made fun of him for it for years.

It happened again. Paulie didn't realize that he'd broken into a run until one of his flip-flops flew off his frozen foot and he went crashing to the ground.

He rolled onto his back. The smoke was already upon him.

His last thought was, I should have worn shoes.

..::~*~::..

Vahe, now Paulie, stood up. Limped back to the lost flip-flop, turned it over, and scooted his foot into it. Then he stared down at his old vessel. It wasn't breathing. Its wide eyes were bloodshot, its lips bloodless. Oh, well. He'd always ridden them too hard, but there were so many to choose from. An endless supply.

Disposing of the cold slab of meat wouldn't take long. He laughed, trying out the sound of Paulie's baritone against the unquiet night. He was one step closer to the girl, one step closer to proving to Lilith how useful he could be.

Paulie reached down and slung Vahe's corpse over his shoulder. Whistling, he carried it down the sidewalk, blowing the bulbs in the streetlamps as he passed under them.

..::~*~::..

Aya handed Sam a glass of iced tea, turned around, and almost ran smack into Julia.

They both jumped backward.

"Oh!" Aya gasped. She'd spilled her tea.

"Sorry!" gasped Julia, looking like she'd gotten the scare of her life. "I'm sorry!"

"What's wrong?" Sam asked.

Warmth crept toward Aya's hairline. "It's, um . . . Julia's here," she squeaked.

Sam sat up straighter, but Dean cracked a grin. "Do you mean to tell me, Aya, that ghosts scare you?"

"When they come at me out of nowhere, they do," she said angrily. She rounded on Julia. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know," Julia said. She wrung her hands together, her eyes darting from left to right.

The distress billowing from her overruled Aya's embarrassment. "Hey," she said in concern. She set down her glass, drying her hand on her leg. "Julia, hey. It's okay. What happened?"

Julia sniffled. "The river. I was at the river," she babbled. "I mean, I was at the river. Me. My body. In the river. I tried to touch it, and then I ended up here. Like . . . like something pulled me."

Any awareness of her audience flew right out of Aya's head. "What part of your body did you try to touch?" she asked.

"Her body?" Dean demanded. He looked furious at the thought of the murder that he hadn't been there to prevent. "She found her body? Where?"

Julia blinked, unshed tears trembling on her lashes, but as she answered a little color came back to her face. "On the northern bank of the Platte below Gates Rubber Co. In a bush."

Aya relayed the message. Then, when Sam moved away from the couch, already dialing Sergeant Mollerson, the police officer in charge of the case, she said, "This is important, Julia. What did you try to touch?"

Julia blinked. "This. My wristband."

She held up her arm.

"Dean." Aya held out her hand. "Give me the wristband."

He did, but he couldn't seem to resist asking, "Are you going to tell us what's going on?"

"I think Julia has formed a connection with this," she said. She pulled the dirty paper strip taut, indicating the dried smear of blood. "It called her here."

Julia reached trembling fingers toward it. "Marr," she said, her voice full of tears. "That's Marr's. She got it off before Kittney got her in the trailer."

Now she wasn't the only one with wet eyes. Aya bit her lips briefly, determined to stay strong. Good girl, Marr!

Sam lowered his phone. He hadn't given his name after reporting finding a body in the Platte, nor had he said goodbye. "So, what are you saying?" he asked. "Do you think Julia could find them with that?"

Them. The demons. The missing people. A wild expression took over Julia's face. She stared at the wristband in Aya's hands as though it had grown a mouth and was talking to her like an oracle would. "Yes," she said. "It's buzzing. Just like mine did."

Before Aya or the Winchesters could say anything else, she touched the wristband and disappeared.

A/N2: Lots of POV changes! Oh, my little demon friend. You are such a screw-up. LOL

Reviewer Thanks! Topkicker26, MiMiMargot, happyperson42, Darwin, and Momochan77. This is all for you! X3

What did you think of this chapter? This is your chance to review and let it all out! As always, I'm most concerned with making sure it makes sense, it flows well, and you aren't bored.

Cheers!

Anne