Sweat stung in Dean's eyes. His breath sawed in and out of his chest so hard he swore he tasted metal on his tongue. Fire bloomed all over his body, the kind of muscle heat that promised gleefully to translate into pain and stiffness in the morning - back, chest, shoulders, arms, thighs. His ribs and spine creaked, gristly, with the need to pop. The handle of the shovel in his palms seemed to have found every spare millimeter of skin on his hands that wasn't protectively callused and worn a blister into it.

Dean had never really thought about it. But it turned out that digging up a grave, especially one that had had over fifty years for the dirt to settle in and sprout a network of roots, freaking sucked.

They were about shoulder-deep in the hole they'd so far managed, Sam and Dean. Working by flashlight, breath puffing in the cold that somehow both froze Dean's ears to the point they burned with agony on either side of his head and completely failed to cool the ocean of sweat under his flannel. Sam was sweating too, hair hanging over his forehead and neck in limp tails with glittering diamond droplets hanging off the tips, but he didn't seem to be breathing quite as hard as Dean. Made him think maybe there was something to that health-nut bullshit but, mostly, it just made him hate Sam that little bit more.

Of course those muscles couldn't just be for show, Mr. Never-did-a-damn-thing-I-wasn't-instantly-good-at.

Dean leaned on his shovel and lifted his head, taking a breather for a second as he squinted up at Victor and Art, standing over the hole. Victor was leaning casually against the nearby fence, holding a flashlight aimed down into the grave, and Art was fiddling with the little doohickey he'd brought along. It looked like the Frankenstein lovechild of a Gameboy Mini and a high-end metal detector, and was apparently a jerry-rigged ground-penetrating radar device. From the way that Sam's eyebrows had drawn together when Art explained that, Dean wasn't so sure he bought it.

"You two wanna remind me," Dean asked raggedly, "why we're down here and you're just sitting on your asses?"

Sam shot him a warning look fast enough to flick sweat off his hair. Dean ignored him. Didn't seem to throw up any red flags for Victor, anyway.

"Same story everywhere," Victor said easily, switching the flashlight to his left hand and putting his right back in his pocket. He'd been doing that all night. "Rookies do the scut work."

"Uh huh." Dean looked down at the dirt packed under his boots. He guessed he ought to be grateful that they at least hadn't had to contend with overly, frozen ground, but somehow, he wasn't. "You even sure that this is the kid's grave? 'Cause if this is some kinda stupid hunter hazing ritual, I'm taking this shovel to your family jewels."

Another look from Sam, and a hissed warning that the scrape of metal on a buried rock ate up. Dean ignored him again.

"This is what the maps said," Art answered, with a rock-solid surety in his own research that made Dean think of Castiel. "And according to this…" He shook his gadget. "There's a body down there."

Dean wanted to ask how they'd know that it was the right body. He was tired and sore enough to want to tack on a question about if any body would do for them, considering everything else they'd done today was bullshit and, given the photo album he and Sam had found, there were a whole lot of real monsters out there who might get away with it. Probably for the best that, when he started digging again, his shovel hit wood, and they were suddenly too busy to ask anything.

He and Sam dug the walls of the hole out a little bit more so that they could get the lid of the coffin open. It was a cheap thing, almost like they buried dead prisoners in, and it was kind of a miracle that it hadn't fallen apart sometime in the last few decades. As it was, the seal had to have broken, because even before Sam jammed the blade of his shovel between lid and box and began wiggling, Dean could smell decay.

This wasn't like the kind that he'd noticed at the house, the blood and whatever meat had been left behind starting to go off. This was old, stale, dry. The almost-mild scent of a body that had done the worst of its rotting before he was even born, albeit in a space so small it had trapped the stench. It reminded him of a case he'd worked years ago, corpses walled up inside a Victorian house. The BAU hadn't gotten involved, the Bureau's presence just a formality, and Dean had gotten stuck with babysitting a bunch of crime scene techs as they carefully pulled skeletons free of asbestos nests. Him and Benny.

So, what should we call this'un? Benny had drawled, leaning an elbow on Dean's shoulder. Never mind Dean was taller than him. I know - the Amontillado killer.

What?

Good goddamn, Rose. Read a book. Wouldn't kill you.

No, I know what it means, asshole, I just don't think -

The sound of splintering wood pulled Dean out of the memory like an icepick out of a wound, and he was grateful for it in a sick, adrenaline-rush-y way. He looked down at the coffin, lid beginning to move, and…something happened. Like the cliched cold finger on the back of his neck, except it actually, literally felt like that. It felt worse. Like that finger had pressed effortlessly through meat and bone to touch raw nerve, and then run down the chain of his spine, all the way to somewhere just over his kidneys.

Dean didn't want to see what was in the coffin. In fact, he was suddenly convinced that, if he so much as got a glimpse of whatever was waiting under the wood, it would kill him. Stop his heart in his chest sure as a bullet.

"Wait," he blurted out, and everyone looked at him, Sam pausing with the shovel.

There was a second's silence. Then Victor asked, "What, you wanna get a picture or something?"

But the unnatural, paralyzing fear had started melting away as soon as Dean opened his mouth. He felt a hell of a lot more stupid than scared now, and even if he'd had any idea of how to begin describing what had just come over him, he was way too embarrassed to even try. So he just shook his head, trying to tuck his face down into the collar of his coat, and muttered, "Never mind. Thought I…thought I saw something."

Sam was glaring. Dean could feel it, even though all he could see under his hair and that caveman brow of his was the shine of his eyes. Probably thought Dean was trying to be funny or something. Dean absolutely did not give enough of a shit about Sam's opinion of him to try and clean it up.

Art and Victor, however, looked at each other, and then Art dug another gizmo out of his jacket pocket. This one was hand-held, and while he'd introduced it to them earlier when Dean asked what the hell it was (triggering another Sam-glare - seriously, did he think that was an actual punishment?), Dean had forgotten the name pretty much the second Art told him. Some jumble of letters that sounded like a government agency. AMF. BAF. Whatever, it had a lot of lights and made obnoxious noises. It had been off, but now Art turned it on, and it lit up red and let out a squawk that sounded like a theremin getting kinky with microphone feedback.

"Think it's the ghost?" Victor asked Art, and they weren't looking at him, so Dean rolled his eyes almost hard enough to sprain something.

"Well, I think it's a ghost," Art replied, and snapped the machine off. "We've had this conversation before. Thing's damn near useless in a boneyard."

"Why the hell'd you bring it, then?" Victor shook his head. "Whatever. Let's just crack this coffin open and torch whatever's inside. Sooner, the better."

So Sam pried open the coffin. Dean's muscles must have held onto the memory of the fear longer than the rest of him, because he tensed. But there wasn't much left inside beyond a thin, dried thing, part leather and part bone, halfway mummified. Dean had seen worse things in kids' books.

Probably the most disturbing thing was the size of a skeleton. It very plainly had belonged to a young teenager, one with a massive hole blown through the top of his head.

Art reached into the backpack he'd brought with him, bringing out a mason jar, and tossed it underhand into the grave. It shattered on impact, soaking the coffin and its contents with the liquid it'd been holding, and Sam jumped back even though the hole was too deep for any of it to splash on his boots.

"Whoa!" He sniffed, frowning. "Was that…kerosene?"

"And salt," Art said cheerfully. "More convenient, doing it this way." He grinned. "Fun, too."

"Uh huh, right. Awesome." Dean cleared his throat. "Quick question: why the hell'd you do that?"

Victor, who had just taken something out of his pocket, paused. "You two have never done a salt-and-burn before?"

"We've never done a bunch of stuff before," Dean answered breezily, eager to shake off the last dregs of that weird fear. He didn't even have to look at Sam to know how scrunched up his face would be, and that helped, too.

Victor shook his head, and Dean saw that it was a book of matches he was holding when he swiped it across a fence post and it lit up. He tossed it into the grave, which went up with an almost-liquid fwoomph. "You really jumped feet-first into the deep end of the pool, didn't you?"

"Might even say we were pushed," Dean said, and Sam's eyes were like lead weights on him.

The four of them stood around, watching the corpse burn. A dead body on fire almost smelled worse than one rotting where it lay, but at least there wasn't much left of this one. Dean appreciated the warmth, although his hands ached as blood returned to them, made him wish he'd thought to pick up gloves. Next time.

It didn't take long. Bones, no matter how dry they were, didn't make for good fuel. As the fire began to burn itself out, Art mentioned, "Almost too bad, y'know. In the start, poor kid was just tryin' to protect his sister - doin' his job." He glanced at Victor. "And it isn't like these last victims were any great loss. Maybe we should've just left him to it."

Victor shook his head, eyes on the flames. "You know we can't do that." After a second, he lifted his head, sucking in a deep breath. "All right, fire's almost done. Let's fill it back in and get outta here - don't know about the rest of you, but I'm about to freeze my ass off."

"So you didn't read a word of the information packet Kevin gave us," Sam said flatly. "Did you."

Dean, whose brain had been single-mindedly focused on how bad he wanted-slash-needed a shower and then bed, in that order, took a second to parse both what Sam had just said and the fact it hadn't been a question. Hands on the wheel and eyes on the darkened road, he only halfway turned towards him. "What are you talking about? Course I read it."

"Then why'd you ask Art about the kerosene and the salt?" Sam waited, like he was actually expecting Dean to give him an answer, before flintily continuing. "There was a whole section in there about ghost hunts. Salt-and-burns. About how purifying the corpse forces a trapped spirit to move on."

"Ooh, neat," Dean said, "and here I thought we were just digging up a random grave in twenty-degree weather for shits and giggles."

Sam sucked in a breath. Dean tensed, the whine that Sam's voice rose into when he was annoyed already a phantom needle in his temples. But instead of saying anything, Sam just let the breath back out again after a second, and slumped against the car door, shaking his head before he propped it up on a fist.

"Just - whatever," he muttered. "Fine, Dean."

He didn't say anything else. After a second, Dean looked fully over at him.

He guessed, when Sam was just sitting like this, staring at nothing, rather than bitching him out, he could sort of get what other people saw in him. The COs who seemed to be willing to cut him ten miles of slack, the vics or families who gushed about him in the articles he popped up in, the people Dean knew he'd dated…and an awful lot of names fell into that last category, for all he felt like Sam tried to play the psych dork who just cared too much and that was why he didn't follow the rules.

He was exotic, if not pretty. Even under the dirt smeared on his face and the sweat lanking out his hair, Dean could see that. Wide cheekbones, sweeping down into a pointy little chin and a pink pout of a mouth. Strong brow over amber-hazel cat eyes, the stray streetlights picking out the color of them in seaglass glints. There was a mole dark enough to qualify as a beauty mark next to his sharp nose.

Even the exhaustion looked good on him. Softened some of the harsher angles of his face, drew his eyes down out of the haughty, brooding squint he aimed at Dean so often. Like this, Dean could see what he'd looked like when he was younger, the coltish, soft-mouthed boy that had peeled back into the razor-boned man.

Dean probably would have kept on thinking all kinds of stupid thoughts like that, if nothing had startled him out of it. He couldn't help being grateful for the dapple of red-and-blue lights that suddenly washed over Sam, making him sit straight up in his seat as his eyes widened.

Was it hot in the car all of a sudden? It was really hot. Good thing Dean had something else to focus on.

"Oh, what the hell?" he muttered to himself, turning to look as he eased off the gas.

They were passing the house they'd been in earlier that day. The murder house. The driveway and yard were full of cop cars, flashlights, and sheriff's deputies in heavy jackets. There was even an ambulance, although its siren was off and its lights were revolving slowly.

"Okay, well." Dean scrubbed a hand up through his hair. "We gotta check that out."

"W-we can't," Sam said immediately.

"The hell d'you mean, we can't?" And god, if it didn't feel good to snap right back into normalcy, after the direction Dean had found his thoughts somehow turning in. He was almost grateful to Sam for being such a grade-A pain.

First the fear, now this. Maybe he ought to get his head scanned.

"We're FBI agents to them," Sam argued. "Do we look like FBI agents right now?"

He gestured to himself. Dean looked.

"What, the - the flannel? The denim? We're off the clock."

"We're covered head-to-toe in grave dirt, Dean!"

"Welp." Dean nodded to Victor's car, right in front of them. As they watched, Victor tapped the brakes, lights flashing, and then led them up to a turnoff. "Looks like the choice is outta our hands." As gravel crunched under the tires and Dean threw it into park, he looked over at Sam again. "Stow the bitch face. I'm taking things seriously. That's what you wanted, right?"

He raised his eyebrows, then slid out into the night with the keys in his hand. It was a relief to be out in the cold again, after the inside of the car had suddenly become unbearably hot. Crappy heater. No wonder, with the way it rattled.

"Hey, there," Victor greeted, climbing out of his own car. "You two wanna head on over there and see what's going on? I mean. You are the FBI agents."

Even knowing what he meant and that their cover had most definitely not been blown, a tiny frisson of fear crawled up the back of Dean's tight throat. God, he was jumpy tonight. He asked Victor, "What d'you think it is?"

Victor shrugged. "Sometimes ghosts get a little nasty on their way out. Walt probably just fucked up their crime scene."

Art climbed out of the car, too, and for a second, all four of them just stood there, like they had back at the grave. Looking down the road at all the cop cars, and especially the ambulance. Victor eventually cleared his throat.

"Can't hurt to make sure, though. If it looks like something else is up, give us a call and we'll figure out what to do from here."

Dean was absolutely not thrilled that he and Sam were once again being expected to do all the legwork, while Art and Victor apparently just went home. He would've said so too, but Sam was already moving down the road. So Dean followed him, hands stuffed into his pockets, as Art and Victor got back in their car and drove off.

They didn't have any trouble getting close to the crime scene. The sheriff, who was directing the three-ring circus that had sprung up around Discount Amityville and looking like he'd rather be eating day-old coffee grounds instead, recognized them with a near-tangible relief. He waved them over even though they were already headed in his direction.

"Agents," he said as soon as they were in earshot. "Boy, am I glad to see you two." Then, apparently taking in how they were dressed, he paused, eyes flicking up and down them. "Were you…"

"W-we were off-duty," Sam said immediately. "Sorry. Had the scanner on, picked this up while we were…" Dean could practically see the wheels turning in that big brain of his. Only maybe it wasn't as big as he'd thought, considering what Sam came out with. "Getting in a little night - ice fishing."

"Yup," Dean agreed, because if Sam was going to dig himself into a hole, far be it from him not to throw a shovelful of dirt down on top of him. "Full moon. They bite better."

"That so?" The sheriff put a hand on his hat and tipped his head back, squinting up at the black spread of the overcast sky. "Could've sworn it was a crescent tonight, but - "

"Like I said, we caught it on the scanner." Sam cut in forcefully, steering the conversation back on track. "But the quality wasn't great. Can you give us a rundown?"

The sheriff opened his mouth. But, before he could say anything, a paramedic appeared, grimly wheeling a gurney out of the house. There was a black bag buckled in on top of it. His partner came right behind him with identical cargo. As they loaded them into the ambulance, the sheriff shook his head, and spat on the ground.

"Our killer struck again," he said grimly.

"What?" Dean asked, even as internally he thought about what a shocker it was that Art and Victor's little body bonfire hadn't worked. "Who're the vics?"

"Couple'a local dumbasses," the sheriff said wearily. "Got loaded, broke in."

"How in the hell did that happen?" Dean demanded. He didn't want to get pissed, but it was hard. "You didn't have anybody watching the crime scene?"

"Course we did," the sheriff snapped back, matching Dean's anger with his own. "This happened during shift change. They were still warm when the fresh deputies got here - they smelled the blood from all the way outside."

"Was it the same MO?" Sam asked.

"Yep. Throat slit," the sheriff said, "gutted like pigs. I got guys out there now." The sheriff turned to nod out into the surrounding woods, pitch black except for the occasional bob of a flashlight. "Called the surrounding counties, too, told them to be on alert. The son of a bitch couldn't have gotten far."

"Probably would've been easier if he'd never gotten in the house in the first place," Dean said, and the sheriff glowered at him.

"You wanna see the crime scene?" Pointedly, the sheriff directed the question at Sam and Sam alone. Sam hesitated, then shook his head.

"Not right now," he said. "We've gotta go touch base with our CO."

The sheriff didn't seem all that happy with the fact they couldn't actually do anything. Shaking his head, he turned to talk to the paramedics. Sam and Dean left him to it, heading back to the car.

Dean stayed silent for as long as he could, breathing in for a count of four, holding it, back out. Once his boots hit asphalt and he was reasonably sure he wouldn't be overheard, though, he dropped the calm-keeping.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, mostly to himself.

"They've never had to deal with anything like this before." Sam was apparently reading Dean's mind.

"Yeah, I know, Sam, but Jesus Christ." Dean wiped a hand over his mouth, regretted it when he felt grave grit on his teeth. "If you're watching the crime scene, how the hell do you leave it empty for long enough two guys get fucking butchered inside without anybody hearing?" He glanced over his shoulder. "And that's assuming the killer didn't sneak in under Barney and Andy's noses while they were standing guard."

"It shouldn't have happened," Sam agreed, and Dean looked at him, a little surprised. Then, remembering what looking at Sam had led to in the car, Dean cleared his throat and looked away.

"Wonder if Opie back there knows he's got blood on his hands. 'Local assholes' or not."

"I'm sure he does."

"Doesn't seem like it." They walked in silence then, until they'd almost reached the car. Dean had seen Sam thinking, seen his mouth twitching and his brows furrowing, so he told him, "Bring Spencer Reid back out. What's this do to the profile?"

"Uh, honestly?" Sam glanced at Dean as they climbed back into the car. Still warm, mercifully. Dean's internal temperature gauge had swung far back enough the other way his ears were hurting again. "I'd have to look at the crime scene, know a little bit more about the new vics' backgrounds, but…as of right now, it - it kinda turns it on its head."

"How so?"

"I don't think we're looking at an avenger anymore." Sam reached up, tucked his hair back behind his ears. "This is probably another predator, one who might be incriminated by some of the pictures in the album. The most likely scenario's that they came back to the house to get it because they didn't find it or take it the first time they were there, and either these new victims just had really shitty timing, or our killer realized it was gone and thought they took it. Or at least knew something about who did."

"You think he tortured 'em?" Dean had turned the engine on. The heater was rattling once again.

"I don't know that without looking at the bodies."

"But it's a possibility."

"I…yeah. It's possible."

Dean sat with his hands on the wheel for a second, just for a place to put them, then shook his head. "Four bodies. So we're officially in serial killer territory now, right?"

"Spree killer." Sam corrected him like it was a reflex. "A serial killer's over more than a month."

"Uh huh. But still." Dean squinted. He knew they needed to call Victor, but…he didn't want to. Not yet. "The house, its history. The ghost thing. What's it mean in all this?"

"Uh, it means something," Sam replied, "but I can't give you a solid answer off the top of my head."

"What, Mr. Super Genius Brain, the puzzle's outta your age range or something?"

Sam scoffed out a laugh, but it wasn't annoyed. Sounded genuine. "No, it's just the middle of the night and I spent three hours digging up a grave and it's freezing. My brain feels like it's full of sawdust."

"Well, you and me both." Slouching a little in his seat, Dean sucked his teeth. "Field office is definitely gonna have to come in on this. Can't just consult with this kinda body count."

"Oh, it's gonna be more than the field office," Sam said with a sort of world-weary awe in his voice, shaking his head. "Quantico's gonna get involved. Send a whole unit."

"Yeah?" Dean looked over at him. With no light in the car but the ghostly kind that came from the radio display, Sam was mostly just a silhouette. All their illumination still came from the first responder lights, red and blue. "You think they're gonna send your old squad? The BAU."

Sam didn't say anything for a second, then said, "For this? Maybe."

"Y'know…I never heard why you left." Dean wasn't sure why he said that, rather than got kicked out.

Sam made a little grunting noise.

"You feel like telling me?"

"No."

Dean's eyebrows lifted, the flatness of Sam's tone a shock after how lively he'd been just a second ago, but he didn't press. Just asked, "You miss it?"

Sam looked at him. And Dean was suddenly so fully, completely sure that he was going to ask, in a biting tone, if he missed Benny. So sure that he was already getting prematurely angry. But all Sam said instead was, "We should call Victor."

Dean's anger, without anywhere to go, swirled and fizzled down into something confused. He had to keep swallowing, had to look away.

"Right," he agreed. "Yeah. Let's call Victor."