"Mornin', Sleepin' Beauty!" Bobby's gruff voice woke me, and I groaned, lifting my head from the pillow and turning to peer blearily at the old hunter standing at the bedroom door. "I'm makin' breakfast. You want any?"

I smile and nod, letting my eyes fall shut and my head drop back onto my pillow. I hadn't slept well; I never do when I have to sleep alone.

Bobby grunted and left, shutting the door. I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled towards the bathroom, wrapping one arm around my sore tummy and rubbing at my eyes.

Ten minutes later I joined Bobby in the kitchen, he was cooking eggs and bacon and the smell was divine. I hummed appreciatively and fetch myself a glass of orange juice before setting the table for two, refiling my hot water bottle and topping up Bobby's coffee. We ate in amicable silence, until Bobby finished his food; sitting back with his coffee and watching me chase the last forkful of eggs around my plate with one hand.

"What you got planned for today?"

"I need to phone the guys, let them know that I've found neither hide nor hair of Dad."

I gave in and used my knife to push the eggs onto the fork, scooping it up into my mouth as Bobby asked the question I didn't really want to think about. "Ya ever think your Daddy maybe don't want to be found?"

I looked down at my empty plate, chewed, swallowed and nodded, before getting up to gather the dirty dishes into the sink and start the water.

"Well, how about you help me strip down that new wreck we got last weekend?"

I smiled down into the soapy water. "Okay, let me finish this, phone the guys and change into my work clothes, I'll come find you in a bit."

The phone rang as I was finishing the dishes and drying my hands, Bobby was already outside so I picked up. "You've reached the Ghostbusters hotline, we ain't afraid of no ghost. How can I help?"

"You can improve your sense of humour for a start." Sam's disgruntled tone greeted me and I grinned.

"Good morning, Sammy! I was just about to call you."

"Did you find him?" His voice was eager and hopeful, I sighed, hating to have to crush his hopes.

"I'm sorry, Sammy. I've hacked every database I could think of. There are no John Does matching Dad's description, his plates haven't been caught in any traffic violations, and none of Bobby's contacts have any news of him. There's just nothing, Sammy."

"Your, uh, half-caf, double vanilla latte." Dean's voice joined in the background; presumably they were calling from a coffee shop somewhere.

"Bite me." Sam's voice was flat, in response to Dean's teasing tone.

"So, anything?" There was a pause while Sam must have responded non-verbally before Dean sighed. "Guys, I'm tellin' ya, I don't think Dad wants to be found." It was uncomfortably close to what Bobby had said. There was a pause, and a rustle of paper, "Check this out. It's a news item out of Planes Courier. Ankeny, Iowa. It's only about a hundred miles from here."

Sam read the paper aloud, "The mutilated body was found near the victim's car, parked on 9 Mile Road."

"Keep reading."

"Authorities are unable to provide a realistic description of the killer. The sole eyewitness, whose name has been withheld, is quoted as saying the attacker was invisible."

"Could be something interesting."

"Or it could be nothing at all. One freaked out witness who didn't see anything? Doesn't mean it's the Invisible Man."

"But what if it is?" Dean argued, "Dad would check it out."

And that was the end of that. The boys were going to Ankeny, Iowa for a hunt, and I would be spending the day pulling working parts out of a mashed up engine.


Ten minutes later I joined Bobby in the garage, wearing an overlarge boiler suit and with my waist length brown hair tidied away into two buns on either side of my neck. The wreck looked like it had been in a head on collision, the front and driver's side mangled beyond reasonable repair. If it had been Baby, we'd have fixed her up and had her back on the road in a month or two of hard work, but it wasn't Baby, it was some mass-produced Ford truck that no one loved. So we were scraping it.

The interior of the truck was in relatively good condition, so I got to work unbolting the seats and striping them out. This wasn't the only Ford truck Bobby had on his lot, chances were good that we'd be able to cobble together a working car from various different wrecks and sell the resultant Frankenstein's monster as a second-hand. Though the paperwork to get it all licensed was a bit of a headache, I tended to leave that side of things to Bobby.

We'd been at it for maybe half an hour before I heard a phone ringing in the house, I was twisted under the rear seats, trying to persuade a particularly stubborn bolt to move, so I shouted to Bobby to let him know and he left, cursing about how hunters couldn't even give him one day off. I chuckled slightly, listening as Bobby was very short with whichever police officer had good enough intuition to know that the hunter's FBI badge was a fake.

The bolt finally came loose and I was able to take the bench seat out of the back of the truck, I stacked it at the side of the garage for now, Bobby would find a home for it latter; I couldn't work out his system for storing things, from his books to his car parts, it all just looked like chaos to me. Carpets came out next, then undamaged doors and side panels; there was plenty to recover from this wreck, even if the damaged chassis meant that it was a write-off.

Eventually I fished the now cold hot water bottle out of my boiler suit. I scowled at it and headed into the house for a break. It wasn't until I had finished in the bathroom that I realised that Bobby had never returned. I found him at his desk in the living room, nose buried in a book and an empty coffee mug at his elbow. I smiled slightly at the old hunter, and moved into the kitchen without a word, to refill my water bottle. There was some bacon left, but not much else in the fridge. I'd have to do a run into town later, but for now; we were having bacon butties for lunch. I served it up with a fresh mug of coffee for Bobby and a hot chocolate for me, using up the last of the milk.

He looked up as I placed his food on the desk for him, grunting his thanks. He ate one handed, the other hand still paging through the book in front of him. I finished my sandwich and started on the washing up before breaking the silence.

"What are you reading up on?" I asked, collecting his dirty dishes.

"I don't even know." Came the angry mumble in reply. "Richie is looking for something up in Alaska that's been eatin' hearts."

"Not a werewolf?"

"Nah, lunar cycle's wrong."

I thought for a bit, what else eats hearts? There's plenty of things that die if you shoot them in the heart, but eating them… the list's a little shorter.

"Skinwalker?"

"That was my first guess, but Richie doesn't think so."

"He say why?" If this is the same Richie Dean and I met a couple of years ago then I'm not sure I trust his judgment.

"Nope." Bobby looked up from his book, clearly exasperated.

"Wait, Alaska? Isn't there some local lore about mouse like demons that eat hearts? They hunt by movement, and if you can kill them you become a skilled hunter?"

Bobby snorted, "Richie could do with some of that." And fetched a book on Alaskan myths and legends from the second deep row of books on the bookcase behind his desk.

I finished the washing up before returning to the wrecked Ford in the garage. The dashboard was my next target, and with all the wiring in these modern cars it was always a sod of a job.


The next day, I got a call from Sam. They'd spoken to the witness and the MO sounded like the Hook Man. He and Dean were going to be in the University Library all day by the sound of it, looking up old arrest records, trying to find anyone whose spirit might have started the legend and who might be responsible for a frat boy being suspended over the roof of his car, killed by a "sharp implement".

I offered to look into the legend, to see if I could trace it to its origins, but Sam told me not to bother; they were pretty confident they knew what they were dealing with.

So it was day two of ripping up the old Ford and week two of grumbling at biology. I'd finished gutting the interior of the truck yesterday, so today I would be tackling under the bonnet. Though it was in such poor shape I had a job to even get the bonnet open. Eventually I managed to remove the whole thing, though it had taken a good half hour of cussing and swearing, and more strength than I was used to exerting, more than a human would have been capable of. I was in a foul mood by the time I'd wrangled the bonnet off, the movements and force required further upsetting my tummy. Most of the engine was in pretty poor shape, though I was able to salvage some of the headlamp units, the alternator, battery, water pump and a few of the spark plugs, there wasn't much worth having.

I jumped down into the inspection pit with a lamp in hand to have a look at the exhaust, gear box, drive shaft, and suspension and so on, which was mostly in pretty good nick. It would probably be worth the extra effort of removing the engine to get at the gearbox; those sell for a pretty penny.

I was removing the exhaust when Bobby came out with a sandwich and a hot chocolate for me. I dropped the exhaust away from the car, leaving it lying underneath the truck for now and hopped up to sit on the edge of the pit at the rear of the truck.

"Bobby, you're the best." I gratefully accepted my lunch and tucked in. Bobby wasn't a great cook, but he could make a mean sandwich.

"Good call on the Wi-Lu-Gho-Yuk yesterday." He told me as I sneered with distaste at the greasy black fingerprints I'd gotten on my sandwich.

"The what-now?"

"Demon mice."

Oh, no wonder I hadn't remembered what they were called. I think Alaskan Demon Mice would be much simpler and clearer.

"We clear of hunter duties for a bit?"

"Why? You wantin' help on this thing?"

"Well, taking an engine out really is a two man job, Bobby."

"Yeah, quit battin' yer eyelashes at me, girl. I know you too well to think yer's innocent as ya look." He wandered around to the front of the truck and gave a low whistle. "Dunno what yer tryin' to save here. All looks like scrap to me."

I finished my sandwich and jumped up onto solid ground, bringing my hot chocolate to join Bobby at the front of the wreck.

"The gear box seems to be alright. Though I'd say you're right about the engine."

He grunted and stepped back, eyeing the truck and the stacks of parts I'd already stripped off it. "I got another one of these out on the lot. You get a workin' truck out of it and I'll give ya half the sale price. Should be 'bout $5000."

I rolled my eyes at him and returned to the pit to grab the exhaust out. "Half the profit, not the sale price."

We argued for a while, but when I pointed out that I had Sam and Dean making a dishonest living and very little to spend my money on, whereas he was trying to run a business around being a hunter, he did eventually cave and we settled on a rather lower amount.

By the time we'd come to an agreement, we'd unbolted all the remaining engine mounts and we'd fallen out. I was so used to Bobby's gruff exterior that falling out didn't bother me; I knew he was more grumpy that I'd won our argument than actually cross and he'd forgive me as soon as dinner was on the table. The engine had to be cut out eventually, the twisted metal of the ruined chassis preventing it from being a simple job. The gearbox was in good condition though, so we called it a job well done and headed inside for showers and dinner.

A couple of days later Bobby had most of a working truck in his garage and the twisted skeleton of the wrecked truck had taken its place out on the lot, to rust until the end of time. I was missing a few suspension parts, and I'd need new filters and fluids, but otherwise the truck was pretty much ready to go. Except that for some reason it wouldn't start.

I was head and shoulders into the truck, testing the connections from the battery and all the spark plugs, when Baby's familiar throaty growl pulled up to the front of the house. I grinned, extracting myself from the engine and wiping my hands on a rag as I left the garage to greet my brothers.

Sam had a bandage on his arm. "What happened?" I demanded, holding his arm just above the injury and sucking the pain away for him.

"Hook Man; comes complete with hook." Dean snarked as he carried both his and Sam's bags into the house.


I slept well that night for the first time in days, curled into Sam's side on the tiny twin bed. Normally he'd have insisted that there wasn't room for me, but with his arm hurting him, suddenly the bed wasn't so small after all.

Not that I'd have ended up alone again anyway. It'd been almost two weeks since my brothers had dropped my off for my biannual visit to Bobby, and the nightmares had been tormenting me. Even is Sam had been unwilling to let me sleep with him, I'd have insisted on sleeping with one of them.

I woke when he did, with a start, in the middle of the night. Dean's snores continued uninterrupted on the other side of the room, and Sam was feeling grief and guilt again; another dream about Jess.

"Are we ever gonna talk about these dreams, Sammy?"

"No." His voice was as quiet as mine had been, but filled with sadness, almost defeat.

"What about what Bloody Mary said?" The accusing voice had stayed in my mind after that hunt, I'm not sure I could ever forget. "You had them for days before she died!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You had premonitions? These nightmares started before the fire."

There was silence for a long moment. "We're not talking about that either."

We would have to eventually, but for now, maybe I should just leave it alone. Sam was still hurting, still trying to come to terms with what had happened. He knew now, that I knew; he'd come to me when he was ready, just as he always had.