When we got back to the house, Bobby handed me the Latin book. "I'm going downstairs to talk to the demon. You stay up here and work on your Latin." I took the Latin book to the table in the kitchen and sat down to open it when he said, "Jessie."

When I looked at him, he gave me his serious look. "Stay in the house, stay on this floor. Don't go outside. Don't answer the door. Don't answer the phone. If something happens, come get me or yell for me as loud as you can."

I rolled my eyes. "I knoooow, Bobby."

He tilted his head. "Don't give me any of that attitude," he told me. "You know how serious this is."

I flushed and my heart sped up at the thought of hunters finding me. "Sorry, Bobby. I know. I'll do it."

He sighed. "Listen, you might hear yelling. Just ignore it. Don't come down there."

"I won't, Bobby. I promise." I looked up at him with earnest eyes. "I don't want anything to do with a demon. Not ever again."

I spent the morning studying the Latin book. Bobby went in and out of the basement and the house. I didn't ask him what he was doing. I didn't want to know. I'd just finished with studying when the phone rang. Bobby wasn't in the house, so I ran to the back door and yelled for him. He came in wiping his hands on a rag and answered the phone. Turned out it was Dean and they needed help identifying something. They sent a picture of a claw and despite Bobby telling them he was busy, they insisted they needed his help.

"What about the demon?" I asked Bobby after he hung up.

"It's trapped in a devil's trap. Can't go anywhere. It can wait," Bobby said.

"But what about your soul?" I asked.

"That'll have to wait too," Bobby said and headed to the library to pull down some books.

"Can I help?" I asked.

"Knock yourself out, kid," Bobby said and handed me a book.

It took hours but we didn't find anything in Bobby's books and he said we needed to go to the university library. I wasn't allowed to stay in the house alone so I went with him, but by the time we got there, the library was closed.

"What do we do now?" I asked, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as he peered through the library door.

"Break in," Bobby said, pushing away from the door. "Come on."

My eyes wide, I followed Bobby around to the back of the library where no one could see us. "Are you gonna lock pick the lock on the back door or something?"

"No," Bobby said and crouched down by one of the downstairs windows. Then he punched the middle pane, breaking it inward.

"Bobby!" I gasped. I'm not sure why I was surprised. Dean and Sam broke into places all the time. Of course Bobby would too.

"Keep your voice down," he said as he unlocked the window. "Let me go in first and then I'll help you down."

He opened the window and went to crawl in but he misjudged and fell instead. "Balls!" he swore. It was probably the fifth time I'd heard him swear since he'd started researching the claw.

"Are you okay?" I asked, getting on my hands and knees and poking my head through the open window.

"Yeah," he grumbled and got to his feet. "Nothing hurt, nothing broken. Probably a couple bruises. Get in here."

He held his hands out and helped me into the basement so I wouldn't fall like he did. I could tell Bobby came here a lot because he went straight to the section he needed and found the book in about two minutes.

"All right, let's get out of here before we get arrested," he said, leading me back to the busted window.

"It wouldn't matter; it would just be Jody," I told him as we descended the stairs back to the basement.

"No reason to risk Jody's career over something stupid like this," Bobby grumbled. He boosted me out the window and then hauled himself up and out, too. He closed the window. "Just in case it rains," he explained. "That'll keep most of the water out until they find it."

I followed him to his car. "Are you gonna keep the book?" I asked him, glancing behind us to make sure there were no white vans and no one following. My thoughts were on the time I'd stolen a book from the library and Sam had come down on me like a ton of bricks. I still didn't think that was fair. I'd left money and I was going to return the book when I was done with it.

"Nah," he said. "Once I'm done with it, I'll bring it back and put it in the book return."

"Isn't it still stealing?" I asked.

"Technically, yeah, but we need this book or people are going to die," he said as we got to the car.

I nodded. This was what Dean meant when he said don't steal unless it was necessary to save yourself or someone else. I slid into the passenger seat and watched Bobby round the car to the driver's side. He handed me the book and tried to start the car.

It didn't start. He tried again and again and finally ground out "Balls!"

"What do we do now?" I asked. He sighed and got out of the car, popping the hood.

He fiddled with some things under the hood and had me try to start it for him a few times, but eventually we had to give up. Then he called a taxi and we took it to an auto parts store where he bought some parts. Then we had to take a taxi back to the car. It was dark and I had to hold a flashlight for him while he fixed the car.

Dean called me while we were fixing the car. I told him Bobby was still researching his monster and gave him a shortened description of everything we'd gone through so far to get the book. He was sympathetic but distracted. There was a lot of noise wherever he was and I could tell he was only kind of paying attention to me. My chest and stomach tightened with frustration, and I decided I was done with the call. I told him I loved him and I'd talk to him tomorrow. Then I hung up before he could answer.

By the time the car was fixed and Bobby and I were headed home, I was yawning so hard my jaw was cracking. He drove through a hamburger place to feed me. "Cheap food with lots of calories," he told me. "Keep that furnace stoked up."

"Can I practice when we get home?" I asked him while I ate my cheeseburger.

"Not tonight," he said. "Gotta find that monster for your dad."

It was supposed to be the first night that I spent sleeping upstairs in Bobby's room on my cot, but Bobby didn't want me that far away, so I dragged blankets and a pillow down to sleep on the couch in the library while he researched. It was after one in the morning when I finally went to sleep.

I woke up when I heard Bobby's voice. He was talking to Dean, but I couldn't hear Dean.

"You're hunting a lamia," Bobby said. Then after a second, he continued, "It's a monster. Juices hearts, chugs the blood." He sighed. "Never heard of one popping up outside of Greece though."

He paused while Dean said something and he yawned before answering Dean's question. "There's a couple of ways. Easiest is a silver knife blessed by a padre."

Then Bobby blinked and pulled the phone away from his ear. He looked at the receiver and muttered, "You're welcome." He yawned again as he hung up.

I sat up. "Now you can sleep," I said.

Bobby started to nod but a woman's voice floated up from the basement. "Hey, I'm still here!"

Bobby sighed again. "I gotta go deal with that. Go make yourself breakfast," he told me. "Same rules as yesterday." He turned and headed to the basement.

I chewed on my lip. He'd left the door to the basement open. As long as I didn't go down in the basement, I was still obeying him, right? I crept to the basement door and sat down on the floor with my back to the wall to listen.

The demon was really insulting and dismissive to Bobby at first. Bobby demanded that she talk and said that he wanted Crowley's real name from when Crowley was flesh and blood. The demon ignored his request, taunting him about the fact that he killed his wife.

Her tone changed suddenly, became uncertain. "What's that?" she asked.

"You don't recognize them? They're yours," he said. Then a couple seconds later, I felt the call of fire, just a small one, and wondered what Bobby was doing.

The demon's tone changed to challenging, but I could hear a bit of fear behind it. "It won't work. It's a myth."

"Then you got nothing to worry about," Bobby said. I felt flames flare, and the demon screamed at the same time.

"I can't," she yelled as the flames died down. Then they flared again and the demon screamed again.

"You don't know what he'll do to me," she told Bobby.

"Right now you better worry about me," Bobby warned in a voice he'd never used on me.

The demon broke in. "You don't get it. He's the King…" Then she screamed again as the flames flared.

"King of the Crossroads," Bobby said derisively. "I've heard the speech."

"No," the demon said. "King of Hell."

The doorbell rang and I got to my feet, moving away from the basement door so Bobby wouldn't catch me there.

"You gonna get that or what?" the demon asked.

I was in the kitchen making a bowl of cereal when Bobby came up the stairs. "Stay here," he told me on his way to the front door. I shrugged and sat down with my cereal knowing I'd be able to hear what was going on at the front door.

It was Bobby's neighbor, Marcy Ward. She scolded him for not welcoming her to the neighborhood and then gave him a peach cobbler. The demon started screaming for someone to help her while he was talking to Marcy, but he told Marcy that it was a horror movie, so Marcy invited him to dinner and a horror movie at her house on Saturday. He didn't accept, but he did say he'd go by and look at her wood chipper, which she said wasn't working.

After she left, he came into the kitchen to put the cobbler on the counter.

"She likes you," I told him around my mouthful of cereal. "You should do the dinner and a movie thing with her."

As he passed me, he bopped me on the top of the head with his beat up cap. "Stay out of it and don't talk with your mouth full."

I giggled and went back to eating. He went back downstairs so I abandoned my cereal and went back to stand by the basement door.

The demon was still being an asshole, taunting him about Marcy now, but Bobby ignored her. I felt the flame light back up and then flare again. The demon started to scream.

"I want Crowley's name now!" Bobby yelled over the demon's screams. He waited a second and then said again, "Crowley's name!"

"Okay! Okay!" the demon wailed. The flame died back down for a moment and the demon said, "MacLeod. Fergus MacLeod. I swear. We call him Lucky the Leprechaun behind his back."

"MacLeod's Scottish, Einstein," Bobby said. I could still feel the small fire burning, so I knew it wasn't over.

"You got what you want, now send me back," the demon demanded frantically. Then she burst out, "No, we had a deal."

"I gave it my best effort," Bobby said flatly.

The fire flared again and the demon screamed "No!" The fire continued to burn until the screaming stopped.

I booked it back to the kitchen and my now soggy cereal. Bobby came out of the basement a couple minutes later. I turned to look at him, my face white.

"What did you do?" I asked. "What was that? Why was she screaming like that?"

Bobby went to the sink to wash his hands. "I burned her bones. It killed her the same way it kills ghosts."

I stared at his back for a second. "Really?" I asked.

"Yeah," Bobby said. "Finish your breakfast."

Thinking, I looked down at my bowl and took a couple bites while he made coffee. Then I turned in my chair. "Bobby, how come you're telling me this stuff? You know, about how you don't have your soul back and now about how you burned the demon's bones to kill her. And you've been letting me help with research, but I know you don't want me to be a hunter any more than Sam and Dean do…"

Bobby turned around and crossed his arms over his chest. "You're right, I don't. But I don't think they're handling you right. You need to know as much as you can to stay out of danger. I don't want you out there fighting these things, but if you know what they're fighting and how to kill it or you can get them out of the hunt faster by driving them, then that's better for all of you. That's why I'm telling you."

"A long time ago, Dean told me I could help with everything but actually going after the monster or questioning the witnesses, but they still didn't let me help with research," I said.

"They should be," Bobby said. He ruffled my hair before turning back to the coffee maker to pour himself some coffee. "I'm glad you stayed out of the basement."

Guilt rushed through me and I felt myself flush. Dropping my spoon into the milk in my bowl, I said, "I… uh… I did eavesdrop by the basement door while you were talking to her." I kept staring at my bowl. I'd managed to stay out of trouble most of the time I'd been here, and the trouble I'd been in had only gotten me scolded. I hoped that wasn't about to change.

"Yeah, I figured you would," Bobby said, turning away from the coffee maker and taking a sip of his coffee.

I blinked in surprise and raised my head. "You did?"

"Yeah, kid. You pull that crap all the time, but I only told you not to go into the basement. She couldn't see you or hear you. You were safe where you were."

Relief washed through me and I smiled at him.

Bobby started searching for Crowley almost immediately. He didn't even take a nap, but he told me to after I finished my breakfast. I'd only gotten about five hours of sleep and despite my whining that I didn't need one, he insisted, so I lay down on the couch certain that I wouldn't go to sleep. I was wrong. I slept for a couple hours, only waking when I heard a frantic banging on the front door. I sat up just in time to hear a voice that seemed a little familiar, although I couldn't place it.

"Oh, good, you're home! Listen. You gotta help me bury a body."

I was off the couch in a second and poked my head around to see out the front door. It was Rufus Turner. I'd last seen him when we'd been in River Pass, Colorado where the guys had ganked the horseman War.

"Hi, Mr. Turner," I said, coming around the corner.

"Hey, kid," Rufus said before turning his attention back to Bobby. "So, about that body?"

Bobby sighed and rolled his eyes. "All right, I'm comin'." He turned to look at me. "Go down and lock yourself in the panic room."

"I can't help bury a body?" I demanded. "I've helped dig graves or undig graves before. Besides, that demon's body is down there…"

Rufus chuckled, but Bobby wasn't having it. "Panic room. Now."

I huffed, grabbed the novel I was reading, and went.

Bobby came and got me when Rufus was gone. "Why couldn't I help?" I demanded. "I can dig!"

"I wanted to talk to Rufus alone," Bobby said as we climbed the stairs. "He wouldn't have given me as much if you'd been there."

"Oh," I said. I understood that feeling.

"You want some peach cobbler?" Bobby asked. "I was just about to get some."

"Yeah, I do!" I exclaimed and went to sit at the table. Bobby got out two plates and had just pulled out his kitchen knife to cut into it when the phone rang. It was Dean. I couldn't hear Dean's side of it, but it was clear from Bobby's side of it that the silver knife blessed by a priest hadn't worked out. Bobby went into the library to the book we'd gotten from the university library to give Dean another way to kill the lamia, but then someone knocked at the door.

"Police!" came a yell from the door.

Eyes wide, I leapt to my feet and turned towards Bobby at the same time Bobby said, "Balls!"

"Bobby, the police!" I said, but he was still concentrating on Dean.

"Where are you?" Bobby said into the phone. Then, after a pause, "Is there a kitchen? …Find salt and rosemary."

"I'll get the door," I offered and Bobby whipped his head up with the most forbidding look on his face that I'd ever seen. He pointed at the chair I'd abandoned and I sat.

Then the knocking at the door became pounding. "Open up, Singer!"

Bobby left the library to answer the door, the phone still held to his ear. I followed behind after a second, peeking my head around the doorway to see who was there. It was Jody and some snooty guy in a suit.

The guy flipped open an FBI badge and said, "Mr. Singer, I'm Agent Adams. I believe you know Sheriff Mills."

Bobby nodded and held up a finger. "My mom. Just a sec."

Bobby turns to walk into the study, grabbing my arm to pull me along with him, away from the agent and Jody, still listening to the phone.

"Bobby, they're coming in," I hissed at him. He ignored me, letting me go when we were by his desk in the library.

"Great, great," Bobby said into the phone. "Now blend the herbs, sauté over a high heat, and cook well."

"Bobby…" I whispered.

He was still listening to the phone and after another moment, he said, "Okay. Great, great. Enjoy the roast, Mom." He hung up and turned around.

I turned with him and held my hand up, "See?" Agent Adams and Jody were standing in the doorway from the hallway to the library. Jody was leaning against the door jamb with a serious look on her face. Bobby pushed me behind him.

Agent Adams held up a sheet of paper. "Have you seen this man? Rufus Turner, aka Luther Vandross, aka Ruben Studdard."

Bobby raised his arm in annoyance and dropped it against his side. "No, I've never seen that dick," he grouched.

"How do you know he's a dick," the agent asked.

"Lucky guess," Bobby said. I saw Jody roll her eyes and I dropped my head to hide a smile.

Agent Adams wasn't amused. "Funny. 'Cause I got a couple of guys working the highway said they saw him pull in here, carrying a body."

"Well that's ridiculous," Bobby responded. "Look, it's a workday, I gotta…"

Agent Adams interrupted. "I just want to take a look around."

That didn't go over well. Bobby closed the distance between them. "You got a warrant, sonny?" he asked in a quiet, serious tone.

Agent Adams took one step closer to Bobby until they were in each others' faces. "Well, do I need one, sir?"

"Yes," I said from where I'd stayed by the desk. Neither of the men paid me any attention as they glared at each other.

Jody pushed herself away from the wall and went over to them, patting their chests. "Okay fellas, put the rulers away. Zip up." She looked at Agent Adams and slid in between them. Bobby backed up to let her, still glaring at Agent Adams. "Look, Bobby here is a kind of a crank. And he ain't what you call a fan of big brother, but me and him…" She turned around to glance at Bobby. "How long I been arresting you now? Ten years?"

Bobby refused to take his eyes from the agent, but answered her anyway. "Thereabouts."

Jody turned back to Agent Adams. "Yeah, we got a history, so... what do you say just let me scope the place out? That okay? You could just wait outside."

Agent Adams looked away from Bobby finally to meet Jody's eyes, a smarmy, fake smile on his face. "Five minutes," he said and left with Jody watching him.

"Why did you send him outside?" Bobby asked.

"'Cause I didn't think you'd want him in here," Jody said.

"I don't. I've got a body in the basement."

"My point," Jody said.

"Yeah, but I've got another body buried in the yard," Bobby pointed out.

"Damn it," Jody said. She went to the front door to look out and returned to the library. "He's not there."

"Balls," Bobby sighed. He turned to me. "Get your butt into the panic room."

"Bobby, he's just an FBI agent!" I objected. I really wanted to follow along and see what happened, but Bobby's eyes narrowed.

"So am I. So are Dean and Sam. Get your butt in the panic room now!" Bobby snapped.

My face flushed and panic belatedly flowed through me. "Yes, Bobby," I muttered and ran down to the basement to wait.

Maybe a half hour later, Bobby came down to tell me I could come out. "Are you out of your god damn mind?" he asked when I opened the panic room door.

"It was the police, Bobby, and I thought they'd bust the door down."

"Hunters act like police and FBI agents all the time, and you know that! Did you hit your head on something?"

"Bobby…" I started, embarrassed now. "Jody was there."

"Which you didn't know when you wanted to go open the damn door, did you?"

I dropped my head and whispered, "No."

He sighed. "You need to be more careful," he scolded. "I can only keep you as safe as you let me."

Hot shame flushed through me. "Sorry, Bobby," I said.

"All right, we got some work to do," he said, letting it go. "Come on."