A/N1: Dedication time! This one is for you, St4r Hunter. Thanks for all the encouragement this week!

So, while I hadn't been able to write for a couple of weeks, some themes throughout my work passively made themselves known to me. I enjoyed adding or switching little details around. None of them are important enough to mention except two: I forgot to add, while in Aya's bedroom, that though Cass knew there were a bunch of souls on the other side of the veil, he couldn't see them while occupying a human vessel. He can only see them on this side with Jimmy's eyes. Also, there was a dead mouse in the motel room . . . ^_^ Please enjoy this update!

For the fourth time that morning, the strains of Dean's favorite heavy metal riff emanated from the pocket of his dad's old leather jacket.

Dean slapped the Impala's steering wheel. He stared out the dirty windshield as he fished his black flip phone from his pocket. It wasn't like he was going to bother getting out of the car this time, so he left the engine idling, the A/C blasting like an Arctic storm through the dashboard vents. Preoccupied, he didn't read the incoming caller ID before answering.

"Sam," he barked into the microphone. He shot another venomous glare out the windshield. "Number twelve is a bust."

"You're not going to check?" Castiel, sitting shotgun, his hands relaxed on his trousered knees, his hair sticking up in dark brown tufts, asked.

Dean shifted his glare to the angel who had first dragged him out of an extremely pleasant dream, and then had teleported him to the Impala before explaining the new plan. A shaky plan, at best. There was no guarantee that any of these hidden places were going to be the right one. Angel-proofing was just one way to hide something, and not even the most effective way. "No, I'm not going to check. It's an outhouse, Cass."

Castiel squinted. What had once been a construction site seemed abandoned now, tucked between a train yard and a bank of ugly gray warehouses. Chain link enclosed a lot of churned-up yellow dirt, which made the spring sunshine feel like an oppressive weight. Three-quarters of a bare-bones self-storage facility presided over fallen framing, shattered windows still encased in crusty cardboard, and a dumpster bristling with broken doors and sheets of perished drywall.

The teal Port A Potty sat crookedly on a pile of rocky dirt, its door partially caved in, the whole thing decorated with faded graffiti and fresh warding sigils. Dean couldn't read Enochian, the ancient language of angels, but thanks to Anna once demonstrating an angel-banishing blood spell, he could recognize it.

"Still. We must check it to be sure," Castiel said with the utmost confidence that Dean would see it his way.

"It's an OUTHOUSE, Cass!" Dean rubbed his eye with a thumb. He was tired and hungry and sick of this mickey mouse. Then, already feeling guilty for his outburst, he cast a glance sidelong. At the sight of Castiel's kicked-puppy expression, he attempted to reign it in. "Trust me, we do not want to deal with any demons that might be in there."

Castiel tilted his head as he tried to puzzle through what Dean meant. "I suppose you're right. I do not see how twenty-four people could fit inside such a small structure, let alone however many demons Lilith has recruited."

Dean opened his mouth, and to his surprise, heard laughter gasp out of it. He leaned against the car door, covering his eyes with his hand, and laughed until he started to sniffle. Castiel sat like a trench-coated tree stump through the whole episode.

"Did I say something funny?" he stiffly asked as soon as Dean had settled down.

"Hoo!" Dean wiped his nose on the back of his hand. The altitude must be getting to him. He hadn't laughed like that in ages. "Never mind," he said, clapping his friend on the shoulder with the other hand. "Maybe we'll strike paydirt on the next one."

Castiel nodded approvingly, hinting at a smile. "That's the spirit."

A passing train sounded its horn. Hearing it, Dean realized that he was still holding the phone and that his brother had not answered. "Sam?"

Silence. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. It wasn't on. Then, just as he was about to bring up his call history, it lit up, his ringtone much louder out there in the cab. The caller ID said SAM.

Castiel watched curiously as Dean pressed TALK. ". . . Sam?"

"How goes it?" He sounded far more alert than Dean thought he had any right to be.

"There's nothing here," Dean said, determined to never mention this Outhouse Incident if it killed him. He wouldn't be surprised if someone had spray-painted a giant HA HA inside it. "They knew we'd do this. It's like they're not even trying."

"Hmm." A pause. "There's no point in looking into the other locations then, is there?"

"I don't think so –"

"We have to check," Castiel insisted. Damn him and his angel hearing. "Please, Dean. This is important."

"– but Cass says we have to."

"All right," Sam said thickly. Another pause. Then, clearer, "Keep us updated. We're fine here for now."

"Sam, wait." Dean swallowed a sudden mouthful of saliva. He spoke very low, striving to keep his voice even. "Are you . . . eating?"

"Yeah," Sam said, unaware of any impending doom. "Aya baked these bacon cinnamon rolls with maple syrup icing. They're amazing. I think I've eaten four. Too bad you missed them."

"Yeah, too bad," Dean said hollowly. He snapped the phone closed and pitched it over his shoulder.

"You sound upset," Castiel ventured to say.

Dean put his car in reverse, then lowered the A/C. It was getting downright frigid in there. "Cinnamon rolls, Cass. You wake me up at the crack of dawn, expect me to go spelunking in a portable toilet, and he's eating cinnamon rolls without me. What was the rush this morning, anyway? It was like you wanted to get away without seeing Aya."

Castiel examined something in the middle distance as Dean navigated backward out of the lot and onto a dirt road. "It's not safe for her."

Dean wasn't going to argue with that. Aya weighed about ninety-five pounds soaking wet and had almost cried when she saw the dead mouse in the motel room. They'd given the "poor thing" a burial at sea for her.

He cleared his throat. "Speaking of Aya," he began, glancing into his rearview mirror. He thought he'd seen something move, but the street was clear. His phone lay motionlessly on the black leather backseat and the mountains had dwindled to a smudge on the horizon. "What's going on between you two? Do you like, like her? She's hot. She's hot, right?"

He looked over at Castiel, but the passenger seat was empty.

"Hey!" he yelled. "You can't just take off like that! This was your idea! I'm not doing this alone! Son of a bitch. Castiel!"

"Calm down, Dean," Castiel said, as monotone as ever. He was sitting shotgun as though he'd never left, a clear plastic box and a to-go cup in his hands.

Dean bit off a curse and corrected his course before the big car could swerve into the ditch. He would never get used to angels popping out and in like that.

"I have observed that humans suffer several debilitating side effects if they do not receive enough nourishment. Slowed neural responses. Hypotension. Dizziness. Short-temperedness. Dehydration. Here." Castiel passed over the box and cup.

A convenience-store cinnamon roll and hot black coffee. Good enough.

"Did you steal this?" Dean asked suspiciously.

Castiel head-tilted side-eyed him. It wasn't a friendly look.

"Right. Angel." Dean balanced the box on his thigh, braking for a stop sign. "Thanks."

"Eat. We need to head south."

..::~*~::..

Julia sat back with a sigh. She was so tired.

She gazed out the window, following the black lines of electrical wires, the peaks at the poles and the long dips in between, as Dean accelerated toward the highway. Her disappointment had about crushed her when she fought free of the hole but Aya was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Julia had ended up here in this old car with Dean and the strange guy named Cass.

Worse, no matter how loudly she'd shouted, snapping her fingers in their faces and kicking the backs of their seats, neither one could see, hear, or feel her.

She'd been so desperate to tell Aya what she'd found after that blonde woman had blasted her apart that she'd forced her way through the misty gray fog in the hole, despite the pain and the sensation of being dragged backward in an undertow. She'd been terrified the effort would kill her. Again. Instead, she hadn't materialized all the way.

Julia lifted her hand and pressed it against the window. She watched the electric poles zip by through what used to be flesh and bone.

Dean must still have the wristband in his pocket. With it there, she couldn't find Aya the way she had before. The buzzing of Marr's blood was too strong, and Julia was so weak. She let her hand drop. It left a frosty handprint on the glass, which quickly faded.

She'd thought, for a brief, shining moment, that she could contact Dean through his phone. She'd made it ring, all right, but he hadn't heard her voice, a whisper amid waves of hushing static, over the deafening rumble of the car's engine. Worse, she'd lost most of her substance in the effort. She sank into the movement of the vehicle, her numb body barely visible even to her. It was as though she were dissolving. She was so, so tired. She wasn't going to be able to keep her eyes open much longer.

The flip phone lay beside her. Lacking anything better to do, she poked her finger into it.

As before, it responded, coming online with a glow. Then a bump in the road knocked it off the seat. It bounced open on the floor, rolling halfway under Dean, luminous in the shadows.

New Message? Y/N flashed on the screen.

Julia slid off the seat. She got down on all fours in the footwell, hope springing to life in her heart. She couldn't make herself heard, but there were other ways of talking, weren't there?

Trembling, Julia concentrated all of her remaining energy into her fingertip, which hovered over YES.

..::~*~::..

"Was that your phone?" Aya asked. Looking toward the living room, she swiftly set down an icing-smeared baking dish and paused the music streaming from her iPod.

He'd heard the beep, too. Sam released the plate he was washing, let it disappear under the soapy water, and dried his hands on the tail of his shirt. He'd just hung up with Dean. Had something happened? Better find out quick. He strode into the living room, and then he rummaged under his jacket for his Motorola Q. He found it wedged between the cushion and the arm of the couch where he'd been sitting. It must have fallen when he'd gotten up to help clean after breakfast.

New text message – Sam frowned – from a number that ended in two-four-two-four. Not a number he recognized. Not a local number, either. It didn't even look like a real number at all. A spoof? Or something else?

He rolled the trackball, selected the message, hesitated, and then clicked it.

redrockssummon4144171

Aya, a dishtowel in her hands, cried, "Whoa! Did you see that? Your phone, it glowed for a second."

He knew she didn't mean the screen. He weighed the device in his hand, thinking fast, his mind racing along and collecting points of data. Aya had seen something that he had not. Two-four-two-four, over and over. Someone's age? Something about a summoning, and finally a string of other numbers that added up to twenty-two – "I think . . . I think Julia texted me."

"Julia?" Aya's big, dark eyes got bigger. "I didn't know a soul could do that. I know about electronic voice phenomenon –"

"EVP, yeah," Sam said, "the sounds of human voices found in recordings that include static or background noise –"

"Because souls often try to contact their loved ones through phones, radios, and computer monitors –"

"And it's not that much of a leap to go from voice to text, it's all manipulation of energy –"

"– but why wouldn't she just talk to me?" Aya finished.

They looked at each other, their enthusiasm dying.

"Maybe it wasn't her," Aya said, fiddling with the fringe on the dishtowel. She raised her head and turned toward the back of the apartment. "Julia?" she called in an oddly formal tone of voice. "Julia! It's Aya. If you're here, I need to talk to you."

They waited, but all Sam could hear was the soft burble of the coffeemaker, an excited dog whiffling on the stairs outside while its tags jingled, and a TV turned up way too loudly in the apartment below. Aya relaxed, turning back around. They exchanged shrugs.

"Should we trust this information?" he asked.

"It's weird," she mused. "It was definitely a ghost text. There's an energy unique to human souls, and that was what it looked like, in your phone. Just a flash. White but kind of iridescent around the edges." Aya pondered the damp towel, then folded it into neat thirds. "I wonder if something happened to Julia when she left here last night and that's why she didn't come here herself."

"I don't know," Sam said, already moving to pull his laptop out of his bag, "but I think we should look into this ghost text, just in case. Do you have any idea what 'redrocks' means?"

Aya peered at his phone when he set it down on the scuffed, mismatched coffee table. "I would guess the amphitheater at Red Rocks, where they hold all the outdoor concerts and stuff. The rocks really are red, iron-rich sandstone, but it's a smaller venue than you'd expect, and it's been closed for some repairs." She clapped her hands. "If Julia sent the text, then that must be where the demons are! Are you going to call Dean back?"

"Not yet," Sam said. He was positive about that. "What if it wasn't her? If I call them now, they'll go charging in there without any idea of what's waiting for them. Just give me a bit and I'll find out what this number means."

He retrieved a battered yellow legal pad, a handful of loose Post-Its, and a black Sharpie from his bag, waiting for the laptop to finish booting.

Four one four four one seven one. A name, maybe. The true name of this Void thing in Castiel's prophecy? That would be the kind of information they'd been hoping to get from Julia. So, back to what had originally gotten his attention about this case, way back in Texas: The practice of numerology was all about assigning a numerary value to letters, the most common being the classic A = 1, B = 2, et cetera. So, utilizing Occam's Razor, the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity," (4)D-(1)A-

Leaning over the coffee table, Sam got to work.

..::~*~::..

Paulie opened his eyes.

Bewildered, he pushed into a sitting position. He swallowed against a sore throat, winced as his piercings pulled at his dry lips. He couldn't remember ever being this thirsty. Where was he?

Inside a swimming pool enclosure, apparently, tucked against a clubhouse in the shade, using a coiled green hose for a pillow. The pool had been filled but the outdoor furniture hadn't yet been brought out of storage. Probably tomorrow, when most pools were scheduled to open for the season. It all looked very clean and expectant. The mid-morning light sparkling off the bright blue surface of the water and the sharp smell of chlorine aggravated his thirst.

Paulie got shakily to his feet. Not only was he stiff from cold, as though he'd spent the entire night outside, but he was also sore and dirty. There was both blood and mud on his clothes and hands. He struggled with himself for a moment, torn between the desire to jump fully dressed in the pool to wash all the horrible off and the spark of reason that told him he needed to get out of there before anybody saw him.

The reason won. A brief check of the gate proved it to be secure. Paulie glanced around. This wasn't the pool near his apartment, but it was familiar, anyway. It looked like the one by Aya and Lemara's place.

Paulie grasped the bars at the top of the gate and, kicking, hauled himself over. His right ankle folded upon landing, spilling him into gravel and juniper bushes. He lay there, gasping in pain. What had happened to him? Besides his sore throat and a headache he could feel in his queasy stomach, his biceps, lats, and pecs felt weak, as though he'd done too many pushups with Aya sitting on his back, laughingly losing count. Even breathing hurt.

Aya. If he could get to Aya, she would help him.

Wobbling, Paulie set off across the parking lot. He wrapped one arm across his ribs, kept the other tucked close. He limped along, not bothering to hurry as a rattletrap Geo Metro swerved impatiently around him.

What had happened? The question pestered him like a persistent fly and refused to be shooed away. It dogged his bare heels as he staggered up the walk to Aya's building. What had happened to him last night?

Walking on campus. The beggar under the streetlamp. The black smoke.

Paulie stumbled on the roughcast staircase, scraping his knee through his loose jeans. He caught himself before he tumbled down the steps, but not before nearly yanking the nail clear off one of his toes. The pebbles embedded in the steps dug into his legs.

He moaned softly. The beggar under the streetlamp. The black smoke. The invasion, the throat-stretching fire that had lit up all his nerves.

Paulie hung on to the railing as the stairwell swooped around him. He couldn't remember how to breathe without these great, hitching wheezes. Blood slipped from his big toe in scarlet streaks.

The black smoke. The invasion. The firing of nerves. The presence that had ripped control from him and had slammed him into a corner of his brain while his body went on operating without him. It had buried the beggar's corpse in a clump of trees on the border of Wash Park.

God. What was going to happen to him when the police found that?

Paulie made it to Aya's door without crawling, but barely. Where had the black smoke gone? Why had it brought him here, but then abandoned him? Constantly glancing over his shoulder because he expected the smoke-presence to come zooming at him out of the sky, he pushed the doorbell.

The broken bell emitted its usual mournful clunking sound. Paulie waited, shivering as though he had a bad sunburn, trying to remind himself that boys don't cry.

A/N2: Guess what. DEAN HAPPENED. AGAIN. Apparently, I am a huge Dean fan. Did not know this. Do not mind it, either. LOL. I know I promised butt-kickery in this chapter but I ran out of room. So I'm dedicating a huge chunk of next chapter to exciting action. I hope that's all right!

Reviewer Thanks! Darwin, MiMiMargot, happyperson42, Topkicker26, Momochan77, YaoiLovinKitsune, and St4r Hunter. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH I LOVE YOU TO PIECES!

Did you like this chapter? I hope you did! I had so much fun with it! ^_^ Leave a review before you skedaddle, please! I adore reviews so much. I'm feeling shameless today. We are SO CLOSE to the end. So close now. I can do this.

Oh, one more thing. In case you missed the reference, Paulie is a fan of The Cure.

And now that we all have that song stuck in our heads, I'm out (HA HA). Hugs, you beautiful people!

~ Anne