Chapter 18: A Rose By Any Other Name
"Oh look, it's the happy newlyweds!"
A smattering of applause and cheers broke out upon Kevin's announcement. Sam groaned and hid his face in embarrassment while Gabriel, having gone in ahead of him, took a dramatic bow and flourished under the attention.
"Thank you, thank you! We appreciate the well wishes."
"I hate all of you," Sam sighed, cheeks red as he shut the door behind him.
Gabriel took off like a shot to mingle with the people that had gathered under his roof, allowing Sam the opportunity to toe off his shoes and accustom himself to the influx of auras. None of them were unfamiliar, but some were more easily recognizable than others. Sam could sense Kevin, Adam, Charlie, and Jo of all people gathered in the living room, as well as a smaller, less familiar aura down the hall. There were two other auras in the kitchen that took him a little longer to identify, but between the savory smell of cooking food and the wisps of purple in the air, it wasn't too hard to guess who could be in his kitchen, no matter how unbelievable it seemed.
"No way," Sam said, stepping in to see Meg sitting on the counter and Benny cooking up what looked like a mountain of food. "I thought you two had purposefully fallen off the face of the Earth?"
Meg smirked, waving an idle hand in greeting at him while Benny looked up from a simmering pot with a smile. They both looked good given the circumstances, but Meg was a true shock. She looked much better than she had in the days before the Roadhouse had burned down, with fuller cheeks and a slightly softer edge to the harsh hues that characterized her.
"Writing letters got boring, and the gangs are so obsessed with each other right now that we can afford to be here tonight. Marriage suits you, Sammy," she said with a lecherous grin.
"Don't tease him too much, Meg," Benny admonished before Sam could snap back with some kind of embarrassed retort at the marriage comment (Meg hadn't lost that acidic tongue of hers). "You are sitting on the man's counter."
"That I am," she drawled, crossing her legs and leaning back. "And I shall continue to sit here since there's a gathering of children in the living room."
"You're not much older than them," Sam pointed out, blatantly ignoring the fact he had this very debate in the car earlier with Gabe.
"Doesn't stop them from being children."
Sam rolled his eyes and walked out before he could get roped into an argument with her, but he did so with a smile on his face. It was good to see her, even if she'd been a wild card of a coworker that had caused more than one headache in their days at the Roadhouse.
"Why am I not surprised you two are doing schoolwork?" Sam remarked as he properly entered the living room and stood over Kevin, who had claimed the floor with Adam and their alarming amount of textbooks and coursework.
"Education stops for no one, not even an insane serial killer," Adam chirped, dragging his highlighter with the practiced motion of a weary expert over his meticulous notes.
"It exhausts me just looking at them," Jo said from the couch. Beside her, Charlie hummed with agreement, sipping what Sam suspected wasn't her first cup of coffee if the jagged, wobbling edges in her jewel-toned aura were any indicator.
"Then don't look," Kevin said mildly, flicking through flashcards with one hand while he scrolled through his laptop with the other.
"Ah, the joys of school," Gabe sighed from the armchair. He'd taken the liberties of shrugging off his coat and shoes and threw his legs over the arm in such a casual manner that, if his holster hadn't given him away as an adult, he could've passed off as one of the people around him.
"I'm glad mine got canceled," Jo countered before looking up at Sam. "How's it been, stranger?"
Sam couldn't help but feel guilty as he looked at her. It wasn't blatantly evident in her sea-blue aura, but he could pick up on the undercurrents of emotion that ran beneath the surface. Stress and exhaustion colored the once warm, bubbly hues of teal dark, casting a shadow that matched the faint circles under her eyes.
"Hey, none of that," Jo chided, sounding enough like Ellen in her tone that Sam didn't immediately reply like he wanted to as she stood. "It's been a long week for all of us, and I know you cared about the Roadhouse too."
"Yeah. But it's still a shitty situation, and I could've called," Sam mumbled as Jo tightly hugged him. Her perceptiveness was welcomed tonight, as he hadn't been sure how to broach or navigate the topic of the Roadhouse when there were others around. He didn't even like thinking about it himself whenever the old restaurant he'd spent so long working in crossed his mind.
"Like I said, it's been a long week for us all," Jo repeated, her mouth set firmly as she looked up at him. "Now, sit with your boyfriend before your shadow makes Adam stab you in the ankles."
Sam blinked before looking down at Adam, who was indeed now sitting in his shadow and didn't look happy about it.
"Whoops. My bad, man," he said sheepishly, pulling a chuckling Gabe up off the armchair so they could squeeze in together, with Gabe half on top of him and their limbs a tangled miss. Charlie subtly got up with her coffee to sit at the breakfast bar, where an impressive hardware set up was up and running.
"So, how long have you guys been here anyway?" Sam asked as he looked around the full apartment. He could moderately gauge when people arrived by the decay of their auras in the air, but it wasn't an exact measurement system, and getting the full story from their auras would require a lot of staring. Sometimes, it was better to just ask.
"Well, I came over with Adam and Kevin a few hours ago," Jo explained, gesturing to the pair laboring away on the floor. "Kevin's been conspiring with Meg for a while, and this whole shindig was born when Alfie got Kevin in contact with Charlie. Alfie's brother works in the LPD, so he knew stuff that Alfie told Adam, but I'm still not sure how that whole connection works out."
"I've come across Alfie on campus a few times. He somehow worked out that I sometimes help the police and he knew Kevin was trying to get certain people together, so he facilitated our meeting," Charlie clarified without looking up from her laptop. "It's ironic that he's the only one not here."
Ironic indeed. Sam thought, thinking of the hazy recollection he had of Zeke's brother. He'd only seen him once that day at the library, but his link in the chain of mutual gathered made sense and tied everything together. Everyone else's connections he either knew about or could be logically deduced.
Except for the person sleeping in Kevin's room, Sam thought, frowning faintly in the direction of the hall. Entering the living room had bettered his position to read the aura and determine where the person was, but he still couldn't say for sure who it was.
"I didn't expect Benny to come with Meg, but I'm glad he did because now we get to benefit from his cooking," Kevin remarked, sniffing in the direction of the kitchen as his aura colored sienna with hunger.
"I drive better than Meg," Benny explained, "And I wanted to cook in a different kitchen. I got tired of cooking in mine all the time."
"The career cook has spoken," Adam proclaimed, jabbing his highlighter in the air. "Everyone, hide your kitchens before Benny breaks in and starts cooking in them."
"He's already victimized mine!" Kevin exclaimed, throwing a hand over his forehead and slumping back dramatically. "Sam, I did my best to hold him off, but his cooking prowess was just too much. Guard your boyfriend's kitchen!"
"I'll guard it with my life," Sam replied dryly as Gabe and Charlie lost it at the pair's antics.
"You two are unbelievable," Jo sighed before standing. "I wouldn't joke the cook right when he's about to serve dinner."
Even Meg looked openly amused as Kevin and Adam paused before simultaneously scrambling to the kitchen to grovel for Benny's mercy, to which the cook made a big show of thinking it over. However, Sam could see in his navy-blue aura that Benny had never been offended by their jokes.
"It's a full house tonight," Gabe remarked as they were left alone in the living room. "Has your apartment ever held this many people before?"
"Only once when we moved in," Sam said, tilting his head a bit to make room for Gabe's head when he settled in on his shoulder. "Or maybe that day when Talbot dropped by."
"Quite a different crowd from this one," Gabe pointed out.
Sam made a noncommittal noise, watching as the unexpected guests fought over bread rolls and who would sit where and how to keep Charlie's set up safe from the exuberant motions made for food. Their auras intermingled with proximity, some more than others depending on the people involved. Kevin and Adam's were more mixed than Jo and Charlie's due to familiarity, and Meg's kept itself largely aloof except for some timid mingling with Benny's. They were a motley bunch, but they all meshed together in a surprisingly cohesive way that led to a pleasant coloring of the apartment's atmosphere.
"There's someone in Kevin's room," Sam said, pitching his voice lower as his eyes skimmed over the familiar forest greens of Kevin's aura. There wasn't any sign in it that gave him any clue to who the mystery person might be.
"Can you tell who?" Gabe asked, voice just as low.
"Nope," Sam murmured, raising a hand to play with Gabe's hair as he let himself look in the direction of the hall.
There was a faint trace of beige in the air, a bit like a shimmery dust cloud. It was too deteriorated for it to be useful, but if Sam had to take a gander, the beige had once been an earth-toned aura.
"Whoever it is, they've been here for a while," he said, content to relax and curl around Gabe for a few more minutes. "But considering everyone's links here, I'd say it's more likely to not be a stranger."
"That's still pretty useful to be able to pick out," Gabe said, gold aura spreading out to envelop Sam as he tilted his head upward to look at him with a cheeky smile. "You'd make a good P.I, but I suppose that sort of skill would be good in a courtroom too."
"Having a built-in lie detector will make me an excellent lawyer. It's a shame I can't exactly advertise it," Sam replied with a put-out sigh.
They managed to unwind and continued to act "lovey-dovey" as Adam put it for as long as the others ate, but eventually, not even the lure of good food could keep them from the original intent. Sam could see it in their auras and their eyes: in some manner or another, everyone gathered in the apartment were dead set on helping in their own way, and hopefully producing the one thing that could give them a much-needed edge over the killer.
Charlie was the first done, practically scarfing down her dinner before cracking her knuckles and sitting in front of her laptop with an expression equal parts eager and determined.
"Gabe told me that you guys have a flash drive that'll be useful. Can I have it now?" she asked, turning on her stool to face Sam with an expectant expression.
Sam glanced at Gabe, who shrugged a shoulder and made a face that he interpreted to mean something along the lines of "get the flash drive but don't say a single word about how we got it."
"Sure," he said, gently disentangling himself from Gabe and getting up to fetch it from where he'd hidden it in his room.
As he did, he passed Kevin's room. The door was slightly ajar, enough for Sam to glance inside and see that a girl was asleep on top of the covers, her back to the door as she curled up around a pillow.
Sam's first (and wildly improbably) thought was that Kevin had somehow gotten laid, but he immediately discarded the idea when the vague familiarity to the aura finally clicked in his head, providing a name that matched the dark hair that he could see and the slightly old fashioned coat thrown over the foot of the bed.
Hannah?
He hadn't seen her since….well, since the very beginning of the case, but her name had come up a few times. She was quiet in a different way to Cas; the kind of quiet that made her blend into walls and slip from people's minds when they loosened their tongues in conversation. If Hannah was here, she must've overheard something, and whatever it was had driven her to do something about it that somehow led her here.
I wonder if Cas knows she's here. She's her own person, but maybe she should talk to him at some point since they're both in now both in deep.
When he returned, the atmosphere had taken a serious turn. Gabe was sitting in a stool by Charlie, while Benny and Meg leaned on the counter in the kitchen, heads bent towards each other in whispered conversation. Kevin, Adam, and Jo were still eating from the makeshift spread they'd made on the coffee table, but the boy's study attempts had fallen flat as they'd both turned to focus on Charlie.
"I've created a program that can help us narrow things down. Jody and Donna were the first ones to ask if such a thing was possible, and I said yes, but before they could follow up with me on it I was sidelined. Not good for chain of evidence and whatnot for an unapproved civilian like me to stick around, which was for the best, because I need at least 72 hours to adjust to the fact that the FBI is in town," Charlie rambled, fingers flying over the keyboard as Gabe took the flash drive from him. "I won't say I've done anything to garner their attention, but it's best if our paths don't cross, you know?"
"Ditto," Meg smirked.
"What about the cameras?" Gabe asked, to which Charlie made a pained noise and scrunched her nose. Sam could already tell by her aura that the answer wasn't going to be as good as they'd hoped.
"The angle I thought would be some good ended up being crap. He had his hood up and shades on," she pouted, closing some windows to make room for more before perking up. "But, there was something noticeable about the shots I got."
She opened up a photo gallery containing grainy stills from a security camera, picking a specific one and zooming in on it.
Sam and Gabe moved in sync, leaning it to study the flash of metal and dark stone on the hooded figure's thumb. His raised hand obscured what was left of his profile after the hood and sunglasses, but the ring stood out. The trapped, dark smudges of aura that outlined his figure the camera had tried to capture was further confirmation for Sam, who was the only one that could see the hidden malevolent layer to the shot.
"Same ring?" Gabe asked, and Sam nodded, straightening back up to look at the figure.
"Definitely. Too bad we can't see his face, but it shouldn't matter for long if this works out," Sam said, reassuring a still contrite Charlie over the anticlimax of the security camera.
"I guess. I couldn't get much detail from it, but it's a pretty dated looking ring, like an heirloom or something, " Charlie said absently as she reopened new program windows. "This might take me a few minutes. Don't be alarmed if the fan starts going into hyperdrive."
Gabe shied away with a mild look of alarm as her laptop fans began to do just that. Meg took the opportunity to slide into the conversation, dark eyes flicking between him and Gabe with unabashed scrutiny.
"You know, when I served you at the Roadhouse for all those months, I never thought you'd make a move on Sam," she commented bluntly, purple aura curling around her with sharp satisfaction as Gabe spluttered in shock.
"I don't even want to entertain this line of conversation! I only made like two or three comments about Sam," Gabe squawked, crossing his arms and half turning away from Meg. Of course, that only put him closer to Sam's line of sight, triggering a new round of embarrassment as Gabe had to now make his case to an amused (if confused) Sam.
"How long did you have your eye on me?" Sam asked, the momentary confusion turning into full amusement as he watched Gabe's aura glow with peachy orange embarrassment.
"You made a very cute waiter," Gabe grumbled, turning his nose up as Meg began to snicker at his expense. "I only saw you a handful of times, but you were easily the hottest part of my work nights sometimes."
"He definitely made more than a few comments about how cute you were, but I can't even be mad when he's right," Meg sighed, rapping her chipped nail polished fingers against the counter. "Looking that good at the end of an 8-hour shift at midnight should be a crime."
It was Sam's turn to sport a flushed face, but luckily, Kevin sidled up with empty plates and a keen desire to talk business reflected in his aura before Meg could press her advantage too far.
"Don't give me that look," Meg sighed, pinning Kevin with a dark glower as Benny began the arduous process of cleaning the kitchen.
The look was one Sam was intimately familiar with. It was the same intent gaze that caused adults in the past to question their entire existence in the face of Kevin's genius and authority figures to waver whenever he leveled it their way when they were being unfair.
He wasn't surprised when Meg's aura retreated slightly or when her glower softened and crumbled a few seconds into the look. Sam hadn't met anyone that was able to resist it when it was turned their way, but he admired her attempt regardless.
"Fine. Damn, no need to be dramatic," Meg snapped, wrinkling her nose as Kevin shifted from the look mode to a satisfied smile.
"The timetable on demon blood has been moved up," Meg announced with a sigh, dissatisfied with the bad news she was delivering. "Too many gangs have sampled it and got hooked, and word got out. Even the twig here heard about it at the parties he's circulated through, and no offense Kevin, but the parties you go to are pretty low grade."
Low grade? Sam thought, alarmed by Meg's standards as he recalled how Kevin had run in fear for his life from one such event after running into a handful of Dead Eyes. What kind of parties has Meg gone to?
"They're the ones I hear about," Kevin grumbled, deeply offended.
"Wait-does this mean they're starting to distribute it?" Gabe asked, raising a hand to halt the potential argument between the two.
Meg shook her head. "No, but certain gangs have started getting deliveries, and they're already fighting for selling rights. Just last night, the Dead Eyes and The Vipers got duped by someone that said they had demon blood and ended up having a shootout that blew a block into high heaven."
"We think that might've been facilitated by the killer," Gabe said grimly. "Do you know any information about how the meeting was set up between the two; if it even was a meeting?"
"Not much. Just that one guy approached the Dead Eyes and said he had a load he wanted to sell. Never mentioned anything about the Vipers, and I assume he did the same with the Vipers," Meg said, running her fingernail along the counter. "One guy only. No name, no face, but he talked like he was familiar with the streets."
"It's too vague to be sure, but it could've been the killer just as easily as it couldn't have," Sam mused, rubbing his jaw. "It's too convenient that the shootout occurred just a block from Hoffman's place at the same time he got snatched."
"And no, we can't answer too many questions about that," Gabe said as Kevin opened his mouth. "It's bad enough we're doing this. A court would frown heavily on the way we're going about things right now."
Kevin relented with a sigh and grudging nod. He knew better than anyone (besides Sam at least) how the justice system worked and the dos and don'ts of a criminal investigation. Sam himself had gotten entangled in so much red tape that it was a miracle they hadn't broken any serious laws yet.
Excluding my venture at the WM library with Gabe, that is.
Sam counted that as a freebie since unlike Dean, he had a squeaky clean record, and if he was going to stretch laws it might as well be for something as vital as that. Not that it made much difference in the face of the fact that he had trespassed on a crime scene.
"Then there's one last thing you should know," Kevin said, turning sheepish as he glanced down the hall. "There's one more person that's technically part of this meeting?"
Sam and Gabe pretended to appear caught off guard; Gabe more than Sam since he had the excuse of having gone to get the flash drive to have seen the "one more person" in question.
"I thought I saw someone in your room. Who is it?" Sam asked nonchalantly after exchanging a glance with his amused boyfriend.
"Hannah Novak. She said she met you two early on by linking you guys with her brother for some language consulting? We ran into each other as she was coming off campus, and she looked really spooked by something. Like, almost panicking spooked."
In the kitchen, Meg dropped some silverware. The clatter was largely masked by the fact that she dropped it into the sudsy sink, but Sam could see the visceral reaction in her aura, turning the violets pale with startled recognition at Hannah's name. She muttered something to Benny before turning and making a beeline for the door, hands dipping into her jacket for the smoke waiting in her pocket.
Sam caught her eye on her way out with the thought of intercepting her, but let the idea go when he saw her face. Meg was too unsettled to confront her former best friend's little sister; especially when she hadn't seen Cas himself in years. She must've assumed it was only Cas in town, and from the way her aura swirled around her shoulders in agitated bursts of purple, Meg was most likely compounding her worry for Cas along with Hannah.
It's better if she sees Cas first. If they ever see each other, Sam thought, chewing his lip. He could still remember how angry Cas had been, and how adamant Meg was that she stayed away from Cas for what she believed to be his own good.
"She was on campus? What for? She's not still working there, is she?" he asked, frown deepening.
"Student workers aren't required to be on campus, but Hannah's dedicated, so I assume she was working. I couldn't get much out of her," Kevin said helplessly, spreading his hands. "All she said was that she had to talk to the P.I that talked to her brother. That and something about a mess in the history building's basement, but she just got more incoherent when I asked her about that. I had to calm her down in a Starbucks before I could get her back here."
"We must've just missed each other," Sam mumbled, mind already racing at the vague bits that Kevin had given him. For Hannah to be that upset about something was uncharacteristic, and the comment about the basement only made him think about the unsettling fact that not only was a large part of LU old enough to have more than a few subterranean secrets but that the history building was undoubtedly one of the oldest.
"The program is up! I'm feeding the data into it now, but there's a lot on this flash drive, and I might have to help it figure out what goes where. The woes of manual verification," Charlie sighed, her mini victory dance at her original announcement cut short as a window popped up. "Be glad none of you are CS majors."
"I leave the majors and minors and whatever the hell else higher academia has to offer to you bright youngsters," Gabe replied, glancing at Adam and the open textbook in front of him that was thicker than a dictionary with a shudder. "I'm glad to be a P.I."
"I should wake her," Kevin said, looking as if that was the very last thing he wanted to do.
"You should," Sam replied, leaving no room for Kevin to wiggle out of. However much he loved Kevin, his friend couldn't sidle out of every awkward situation when he wanted to, and it was time to break the habit.
Kevin scowled at him, but Sam took the expression with a regal grace that couldn't be argued with. A moment later, he huffed and turned on his heel, walking down the hall like a man striding to the gallows.
"The uncle side of you just came out right then. Very authoritative," Gabe remarked.
"Shut up," Sam said mildly, tugging him back towards the armchair. "Come sit with me."
"Of course, sir."
Sam arched an eyebrow at the cherry red running through Gabe's aura and his brash smile before nudging him back with an eye roll.
"That's just weird coming from you."
"You're right," Gabe sighed, walking backward until he hit the armchair, which he flopped into with the smile still on his face. "I'm just too scornful of authority figures. But perhaps I can get you to call me sir."
"Good turnabout!" Charlie called, reminding an extremely embarrassed Sam that they had an audience.
"I'll get you back later," he hissed as they elbowed each other for space in the armchair, not feeling nearly as charitable with affection as they had the first time.
Gabe only smirked and kicked his knee, getting a leg over the arm and bringing an expectant spark to his gold aura.
"I'm counting on it."
…
Hannah's aura revealed more about her than her face did.
Her stoicism must've been something encouraged in the Novak family, but whatever the reason, Sam got more from the earthy amber colors that swirled around her than her carefully drawn face. From it, he could see that she was still a bit sleepy, extremely hungry, and worried. So worried and agitated in fact that the deep umber color ate away at the edges of her aura, only abating when she caught sight of Gabe waiting for her at the counter.
Benny handed her a plate, and Gabe got her situated so everyone could hear her as she launched into her tale after she wolfed down her food with a speed that would've put Dean at his hungriest to shame.
"There's more where that came from," Benny said, already taking the plate off her hands.
"Much obliged," Hannah said with a small smile before it faded from her face. "I kind of lost my lunch earlier when I…found what I found."
"Why do I get the feeling I'm about to hear a horror story?" Jo asked, biting her lip as she sidled closer to Benny. Meg still hadn't returned, and Sam didn't think she would until Hannah was gone.
"It isn't pleasant," Hannah warned, glass clutched in her hand and trembling just the slightest. Her face was still blank, but her striking eyes gave away how serious she was.
"Then I'll make cocoa," Benny said firmly, slapping his hands gently against the counter before pushing off. "Everyone sit down, and out of the kitchen with you Jo!"
Everyone shuffled into position, not daring to ignore the rare assertive tone in Benny's voice. Charlie and Hannah remained at the counter with Gabe while Sam retreated to the armchair. Jo, Adam, and Kevin sat on the couch, a bit closer than normal for both subconscious support and because they had no other choice. The sagging couch swallowed them up just like it did everyone else.
"Don't mind me," Gabe said, slipping into work mode as he pulled out his black journal and a pen. "This is all fairly informal, but depending on what you say, we may have to go to the police."
"That's alright," Hannah said, taking a fortifying sip from her glass before continuing, "As long as I get to call Castiel first. He'll be mad if I talk to them without him."
"That's an understatement," Sam murmured, only loud enough for himself to hear, but he knew by the brief flare of amusement in Gabe's aura that he was thinking along similar lines.
"So, where does this all start?"
"Um…this afternoon, I guess," Hannah sighed, frowning as she began to recollect. "Campus was closed, but I live in the dorms, and it seemed silly of me to waste my time doing nothing in my room when I could head over to the history building. I didn't really want to work, but I was tired of being a sitting duck. Besides, people are getting unruly with all the limitations in the dorms, and I like my peace.
"I headed over, and it was nearly empty as I expected. There were only a few people there besides staff, and I got assigned some trivial basement duty. Just checking on the archives, making sure nothing was too out of place, and that everything important was preserved in case spring flooding caused water damage. It's an old building; it happens. I'm one of the few people that can go down there by myself without being scared of my wits, but…well, I don't think that's happening anymore."
Hannah's aura filled with a crackling, dark umber spike of fear that she struggled to tamp down.
"Did you find something in the basement?" Gabe asked, pen scribbling along as he spoke just before Hannah sunk too deep into her anxiety, gently tugging her back on track.
"Below the basement," Hannah murmured before shaking her head slightly and speaking louder. "It's not common knowledge, but there's a condemned lower level to the basement in the building. Anytime a senior member of the staff spoke of it, it was only to say that it was taped off, unusable, and filled with all sorts of nasty stuff. Mold, stagnant water, you name it. I never bothered to go looking for it, so I didn't know exactly where it was since no one ever said, but I had my suspicions.
"When I heard the noises, I thought I was just imagining it. The pipes make all sorts of strange sounds, not to mention everything else that comes with a basement," Hannah said, eyes fixed on her glass with a faraway gaze. "But then the noises…changed. They became less distinct and more nameable. It sounded like…a person, coming up from the depths."
Jo and Kevin's auras took predictable turns into fear. Sam glanced at them and hoped they'd be able to make it through the end of Hannah's tale with Adam's slightly less fearful presence to reign them in.
"Did you see who it was?"
Hannah shook her head. "No. By the time I even considered it might be a person, the noises stopped. I kept working for about 10 more minutes, debating if I should even investigate, but curiosity eventually overcame me. That, and the smell."
"Please don't tell me you smelled a dead body," Kevin said, horrified.
"No, nothing like that," Hannah denied with a vigorous head shake. "It was…rotten, like sewage. I logically thought that maybe there was a pipe leak, and something like that would be devastating in the building. It was gross, and I didn't want to look for it what with the odd noises I heard, but someone had to check.
"You didn't get anyone to come down with you?"
Hannah shook her head with a wry smile. "I'm...not that well-liked on staff, and I'm only a freshman. I would've been dismissed, and it seemed a waste of time when I was already in the basement.
"I followed the smell down, and eventually came across a short hallway with the taped off door. It's not too hard to find, but the path to get to it isn't clean at all and very dark. I had to pull out my phone for light."
"You're much braver than I would've been," Kevin muttered with a nod of agreement from Jo.
"I had my duties," Hannah replied solemnly, and for a moment, she sounded exactly like Cas.
"When I got closer, I could see that the tape had been broken, and the door was unlocked when I touched it."
"You opened it?" Gabe asked, not accusing in the least, but Hannah's face reflected a bit of shame and repentance.
"I know it was a bad idea, but…my mind didn't go to the immediate worst scenario. I was still rational at that point, and the door swung open easily," she said, aura battling between fear and logic.
"Was there anyone down there?"
"No. I only went down about halfway down the stairs; just enough to see the whole room," Hannah said, the tremble back in her hands. "It was very dark and musty. I didn't even bother trying the lights. Rats squeaked in the corners, the fat kinds that my farm friends hated because they'd chew and eat their way through a cellar if they weren't dealt with. There was a lot of broken furniture and file cabinets, and a few inches or so of standing water on the floor. I couldn't tell how much, but it wasn't completely flooded. What spooked me the most was the far wall."
At this, Hannah's aura took a strange turn from fear to apprehension as she looked at the people crammed on the couch. She looked hesitant to speak the next part in front of them, but most of all, she looked downright unwilling to speak in front of Sam when she glanced back at him with her wavering blue eyes.
A shiver ran down Sam's back as he held Hannah's gaze. It was the first time in her tale he'd really gotten a proper look into her eyes, and his gut feeling began to twinge with an insistency that only put him more on edge as her mouth pressed into a sad line.
"There was blood, and I knew it was blood and not red paint because of the smell. Someone had painted all over the wall in Enochian, but sloppily as if they'd done it in a hurry. There was a shelving unit that was out of line, and behind it, I could see a sliver of a doorframe. I suppose there's a path that leads deeper below ground through that door, but I didn't go that far. As soon as I saw the Enochian, I knew I had to leave."
There was a beat of taut silence that everyone seemed loath to break, even Gabe. Sam took the opportunity to watch the pale beige ripple across Hannah's aura, cutting through the last of the fear with something else: a lie, or more specifically, something being held back.
She saw something even more concerning down there she's not telling us.
Gabe glanced back at him, seeking out silent counsel. Sam could see in his aura that he too knew Hannah was hiding something, but whether or not they pushed her now in front of an audience…
The others have heard enough. We can pull her aside and ask her later.
Sam shook his head just the slightest. Gabe inclined his head at him and clicked his pen with decisiveness, breaking the silence.
"And you're sure the noises you heard suggested someone coming up from that door?"
Hannah nodded. "Very sure. I hightailed it out of there when I thought I heard noises coming from that hidden door I caught a glimpse of. That was when I got really scared."
"People noises?"
At this, Hannah grew less sure of herself and could only offer a shrug, dark hair brushing her shoulders.
"Maybe. Might've been the rats, but I heard something coming from that door, and I didn't want to stick around to find out what it was. I ran back upstairs, but by that point it was late, and just about everyone was gone save for a few staff. It was easy for me to leave. I didn't tell any of them what I found, which was dumb of me, but they wouldn't have believed me, or they would've spent too long debating with me over it when I needed to use that time to find someone who would believe me."
She let out a big sigh and grasped her glass with both hands, staring down into it with a mixture of relief and renewed tiredness.
"I'd like to call my brother now," she asked meekly, and her soft words spurred everyone into renewed action.
Benny began handing out the now ready cocoa as Gabe called Cas, letting Hannah speak with him before explaining the situation in more depth himself. Jo and Kevin were visibly unnerved by what they'd heard, no doubt realizing that things were far more serious than they appeared at surface level. Adam wasn't quite as frightened as them, but he readily accepted the cocoa and the shoulder pat Sam gave him when he wandered over to briefly check up on them.
"How's it going?" he asked Charlie. She'd remained largely quiet ever since Hannah began recounting her earlier venture in the basement, eyes fixed on her computer.
"Interestingly," she said, chewing on a thumbnail. There was a degree of unsettlement that stirred up some of the darker colors in her aura, but like Adam, she didn't appear too shaken. "I think…well, I can't be sure until I'm done checking, but…"
She pulled up a window and gestured for him to come closer, jabbing her finger at an entry on what Sam realized was a login tracker.
"Remember when I said the guy was sneakily logging into the system? I first tracked all the times he used Reynold's, and then the ghost logins he was using. Those were harder, but luckily-or, er, unluckily-when the librarians were killed, I realized he started using theirs," she said, finger trailing down to names that Sam recognized.
"Wilkes and Olsen both appeared to have logged in post-humously; just twice each, but enough that it couldn't have been a fluke. It's where he logged in from that confused me. Some were made from the library and a couple were made from other random computer labs across campus, but it was the ones in the history building that I never understood," Charlie continued, pointing out several before turning her head to look at him. "There aren't many computers in there, and it's not the most convenient location on campus despite its centrality. But if Hannah's right about that subbasement…"
"The history building would be the most convenient to him," Sam concluded.
Sam had to admit that he hadn't expected the underground theory to gain such unprecedented traction. The irony wasn't lost on him that the history building of all places could somehow be the location on campus that was the gateway to the long-lost tunnel system.
And to think Gabe and I were there a few weeks ago at the start of all this.
"It's still pulling data from the files just from the sheer volume, but the process is going faster," Charlie said, pulling up a progress bar that was about ¾ filled. "Five more minutes or so."
"Sam? We've got parents en-route," Kevin interjected bashfully, holding up his phone.
"One responsible Winchester coming up," Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair and hoping he could pull together the persona just enough to sate the worries of whoever showed up. He crossed his fingers that Ellen wasn't one of the parents coming. She sometimes saw through him like he was glass.
"Should I throw a sheet over the hacking station?" Charlie asked innocently.
"You could be the cable repairman," Jo suggested to her, dark eyes sparkling as she sipped her cocoa. She'd bounced back as quickly as Sam hoped.
"We'll just meet them in the lobby. Everyone under 18 get your shit together," Sam said firmly, gesturing for them to hustle. "Kevin, who's coming exactly?"
"Uh, my mom and Jo's?"
Damn. The worst possible combination to fool, and both he and Kevin knew it. The wince they exchanged was not lost on Gabe, who let Hannah take his phone and gestured for her to go back to Kevin's room for some privacy before coming over.
"Am I going to have to help prop up the "responsible Winchester" façade?" he asked.
"Perhaps, but I think you'd hurt more than help my act," Sam replied dryly.
Gabe gasped with a faux wounded look on his face, but let it lie in order to help gather up the empty mugs scattered about the apartment. They were now even from earlier, but Sam was sure they'd get right back to picking at each other when they had the chance. It was just too much fun not to.
"I really want to know who it might be," Jo admitted to Sam as they rushed about cleaning the apartment and getting ready to leave.
"I think everyone does," Sam remarked. The atmosphere was frazzled from the hubbub, but beneath it was an undercurrent of anticipation that stretched their patience thin. After weeks of torment, the possibility that they could put a name to the killer was just too tempting to avoid the pull of.
The ding of Charlie's laptop had an almost comical effect of freezing everyone into place, heads whipping around to look at her and watch as she opened a program window.
"It's ready," she announced, breaking the fragile, fraught silence of anticipation.
Sam just barely kept Gabe from tripping in his rush to get over to the counter. Kevin and Adam bumped into each other, tangled up in their half shrugged on coats, and stumbling over untied shoes. Jo was more graceful, but her aura was aglow with eagerness, the adventure put back into the night and turning her aura a brilliant shade of teal as she leaned over the counter with an equally curious Benny in tandem. Hannah slipped over to Charlie's side like a shadow, silently palming Gabe's phone to Sam with a soft smile before she fixed intense blue eyes on the laptop.
This is it.
"I could go over the intricacies of my program, but we don't have time for that, so just know that I invested a lot of hours and caramel lattes into it," Charlie said, fingers rapping on the edge of her laptop to keep them from the keys. She was raring to go, her aura practically chomping at the bit to push the program to its limits. "So! Keywords, if you would, P.I Milton extraordinaire."
Gabe had been fumbling for his journal, so excited that his haste made him clumsy, but the question stilled him in a way that ran right through his frenzied aura. His focus sharpened and condensed, putting a controlled fire in his eyes that Sam wanted nothing more than to see in private and up close.
"He's a white male between 18 to 22, but 22 is pushing it in my opinion. His grievances with the librarians would have been within the last 5 years as a result. I believe he majors in computer science, but if he's young enough that he hasn't declared his major, I don't know how much use that will be."
"Can still be useful," Charlie said, fingers flying away. "But we still need to minnow it down."
"He'll have taken a linguistics course, or a specialized history elective," Sam added. "He learned Enochian somehow, and it was on campus. Hannah, do you have any idea which classes would cover Enochian to such a degree that it'd catch his interest? I know the class I took wouldn't have been enough to do it."
Hannah looked startled at being addressed but quickly composed herself as she mulled over the academic question lobbed at her.
"Only three," she said after a moment's thought. "The linguistics course my brother took is too high of a level for him to have taken if he's not a history major. That only leaves a 200 level lost cultures history elective and a religious studies elective."
"The religious studies elective," Sam and Gabe said simultaneously before looking at each other and smiling a bit.
"It makes more sense, what with all his references to religion," Gabe said, his pen twirling through his fingers in a quickening blur. "Let's hope the class is just rare enough to cut down our choices."
"Oh, it is," Hannah assured before telling Charlie the proper class name. The program was somehow connected to the university's database, an impressive feat that Sam knew they wouldn't be able to tell anyone of.
"We've narrowed it down to…56," Charlie declared.
"Damn," Gabe said, chewing on his lip as he opened his journal and began to flip through it for some other tidbit they could feed into the program to help them out. Time was ticking, and they could all feel it.
There has to be something else we can use…
"Can you narrow it down to who kicked the student out?" Sam asked, the faintest threads of a hunch coalescing in his mind.
"Since the librarians got that specific with their master list, I can. Got someone in mind?"
"Olsen," Sam said, and upon feeling curious eyes, explained further after a mild hair tug. "Wilkes was treated similarly to previous victims, but Olsen…Olsen got special treatment. I think he had a special grievance against her."
"He's right," Gabe said, shooting him a proud look that warmed Sam in a pleasant way. "It's more likely than not Olsen was the one that gave him the original boot."
"And since she hardly left her desk, surely that reduces the possibilities?" Adam asked as Charlie inputted the new parameters.
Everyone held their breath, waiting for Charlie to announce the new magic number.
"Eight."
That's a far manageable amount.
"Look at Sam putting that big brain to use," Jo crowed as Kevin and Adam pounded him on the back.
"It's not like I made an earth-shattering revelation," Sam mumbled, ducking his head in embarrassment.
"But it might've just cracked the case," Gabe said gleefully, snaking an arm around his waist and grinning at him like he'd taken the weight of the world off his shoulders. "Does anyone recognize those names? We might have to look deeper into them, but…"
"Miller."
People quieted down as Hannah leaned over Charlie's shoulder to peer at the laptop screen. Her dark sweep of hair shielded her face from Sam's angle, but the tone of her voice and the flare of her aura was more than enough to reveal she'd been hit by a revelation.
"Max Miller," she said quietly. "He's a regular at the history building. He's asked Castiel a few questions about Enochian. And he was there today when I found that door."
Max Miller.
The name was ordinary; unrecognizable to Sam. He didn't know this person in real life, but as Charlie's fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up every scrap of information she could, the unassuming moniker slid into place like a glove along with the other names in Sam's head.
The Crucifier. Death. Max Miller. Were they all one person?
"Hannah, does he wear a ring on his thumb?" Gabe asked, breaking the hush that had fallen over them when Hannah picked him from the list.
"Yes. He said it was an old class ring from a family member. Gold, with a blue stone," Hannah replied, eyes wide and hand creeping up to cover her mouth. "Is he-is he really…?"
"Perhaps," Gabe said, ever the professional, but Sam could see the doubts lessening in his aura. "We can't be sure yet. But right now, he's a suspect."
The only suspect we have, and a strong one at that.
Kevin's phone rang, signaling that it was time for half of the assembled party to leave. There were some protests, but the immediate goal had been achieved, and parents were waiting after all.
"Not a word of this to anyone," Sam warned just before he opened the door to escort them down.
Kevin, Jo, and Adam gazed back; Jo with innocent eyes and Kevin and Adam with an identical tell flickering in their separate and very different auras.
"OK, anyone except your friend Alfie," Sam conceded, ignoring the discrete fist bump the two exchanged out of the corner of his eye.
"But seriously, don't tell anyone else," Gabe said as they left, fixing a surprisingly stern look on the younger three. "This is police work now. If word gets out, things can go sour fast for all of us."
A chorus of "yes sirs" and "yes Mr. Milton" went up, putting a priceless expression on Gabe's face. Sam snickered and shut the door before he could squawk indignantly at how all the unnecessary respect made him feel old; he could just see a rant building up in his aura.
Ellen and Mrs. Tran were waiting in the lobby, talking with hushed voices in what looked like an in-depth conversation they dropped as soon as the group came into view. Their auras were a combined wall of maternal color; one marbled pink and white, and the other a vibrant red, co-existing in a strange way that Sam had long learned only occurred when mothers were in proximity.
"I'm sorry you had to deal with all this fuss Sam," Mrs. Tran said, reaching up to pat his cheek and examine him with a critical eye that Sam could never escape whenever he saw her. "We don't want to be overbearing, but with everything that's been going on…"
"It's just best to be careful," Ellen finished, coming up to greet him with a hug. "You look pale, Sam. Don't tell me you're coming down with a cold."
"Winchesters don't get sick," Sam recited dutifully, quietly absorbing her familiar aura. He hadn't realized it until now, but after years of working and being around the Harvelles, he'd missed the familiarity of their auras.
"Don't give me that bullcrap John fed you," she replied mildly, pulling back to hold him at shoulder's length. "Tell that new boyfriend of yours to warm you up better!"
Sam groaned in embarrassment, looking up to the ceiling for supplication as his friends ooh'ed behind their hands and shot him shit-eating grins.
"How do you even know about that?" Sam asked before looking at Ellen's aura and her expression with narrowed eyes.
"Lisa? But she just found out today!" he said, answering his own question with exasperation.
"There's something called a phone that we use from time to time, particularly on Fridays. You should give it a try more often," Ellen said with a small smile and twinkling eyes.
Sam grunted, only appeased by how pleased and genuinely happy her aura showed she was for him. Mrs. Tran's was the same, and the combined warmth; both different, but fundamentally the same, eased his ruffled pride.
"Maybe I will if people would stop teasing me behind their mother's backs," Sam said, pinning a bitch face at Kevin and Jo, who were making kissy faces and using Adam as a prop for their exaggerated wooing expressions. Adam took it like a good sport, his blue and gray aura mildly amused by their antics.
"We should get going," Mrs. Tran said, leveling a look at Kevin that got him to cut it out and straighten up so quickly that he nearly knocked his own beanie off. It was clear where'd he'd gotten his look from. "I have to give a call back to Lottie. Even though I'm off the P.T.A, they still call me from time to time when something happens."
"What's got them ringing you up now?" Ellen asked as they ambled towards the door, Sam trailing behind just to complete his duty as the responsible Winchester.
"Apparently, Mr. Frazier hasn't been heard from all day. He missed a conference call, and for some reason, they think I might know what he's up to. As if even I could get through to that recluse," Mrs. Tran sighed, pushing open the door and holding it for her son and accompanying friends to go on ahead before looking back at him. "You take care now, Sam. And congratulations on finding romance in the middle of all this crap! Only a Winchester could pull off such a feat."
"Ain't that the damn truth," Ellen sighed jealously before fixing him a stern look. "I'd say don't do anything Dean or John wouldn't do, but…"
"That'd be a wholly useless sentiment," Sam finished with a smile. One time a few years ago, Ellen had absent-mindedly told him "not to do anything Dean wouldn't do" at the end of a shift and he'd nearly busted a rib laughing at the ridiculousness of her statement. After that, it'd become an old joke between them.
Sam watched as they drove off, only turning away once their headlights pulled out of sight. His thoughts were tumultuous, but not in a bad way; just busy as they got caught up on threads that seemed to go nowhere and new connections that Sam couldn't quite travel down yet until they'd settled.
They now had a name. Of course, they'd have to go through the compiled list of eight to be certain, but Sam had a suspicion that Max Miller, whoever he was, would be the strongest suspect of them all.
His certainty didn't just come from Hannah's testimony. Sam's gut instinct was going off about as close to a klaxon alarm as it got, warning him that things had just stepped up several notches. Death was one big step closer to being unmasked, but it would take a lot more than a potential name to do it properly.
Sam knew that the killer wouldn't let himself be caught so easily, not when he'd come this far and spread so much vicious terror across Lawrence. Death would take down as many as he could with him, and Sam would have to be careful that the people he cared about weren't dragged along.
He'd had already lost his mother to a serial killer. Sam wasn't losing anyone else to another.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
July's been a rough month. My summer class picked up in workload at the beginning of it and I ended up having to write a 15 pg paper on the Salem Witch Trials over the course of a week, and then there was a very stressful few days when I thought my financial aid for the upcoming semester wouldn't process in time. It was only when my summer class finished (Got an A on the paper!) and my aid was processed just a couple days ago that I could buckle down and finish this chapter.
Anyway, explanation aside, here's the big reveal! I did say ages ago that the killer himself wasn't ever a major character in canon; Max is from season 1 and was one of the special children chosen by Azazel, hence my reasoning in picking him. Besides that, and some choice scenes, I'm not a fan of this chapter, but it was necessary. I do like the chapter title though! It's from that Shakespeare quote, and I think it's apt given the nature of the chapter.
Also I've been going over Chromaticity, and wow was my writing mindset different. Once I finish this series, I'll definitely be editing it, because the continuity errors and grammar that slipped past are ridiculous in hindsight. To clarify, Alfie and Zeke are half-brothers, not son and father! I don't even know how that happened…no wonder people have beta readers!