Emerson Weir

by tracygirl

Takes place after Home. Sort of an AU kind of story featuring an OFC who could show up later in a series of stories I may or may not have planned. Story is better than summary. :

Disclaimer: I don't own the show Supernatural or its characters. (I wish I did.) Pleased don't sue me. I'm only borrowing them for this story, which could turn into a series of stories featuring an original character of my creation. Her, I claim ownership of. This story takes the Winchester brothers on an alternate route following the episode "Home". Anything that has happened to Sam and Dean following that episode has not happened to them according to my story. This sort of veers them in another direction instead. I hope you enjoy it.

---

Rockford, Illinois – Rockford County Hospital

three months earlier

A pair of dark green eyes opened and blinked against the harsh light in the stark white hospital room. The boy's breath was labored, but he was, at least, breathing on his own now and not hooked up to a bunch of machines doing that sort of thing for him. He glanced around the room, clearly confused by what he was seeing. He felt a strong hand on his shoulder. It gently squeezed him and he slowly turned his head to look at the hand. The movement – no matter how slow – made the boy feel nauseous. Still, he let his eyes move up from the hand on his shoulder to the face of the person attached to the arm.

"Nathaniel," the person said. It was a man with dark burgundy red hair – it had more than just a sprinkling of gray now, the boy noted – and tear-filled, aquamarine blue eyes. He carefully ruffled the boy's sandy brown hair and smiled. "Oh, God, son. We've missed you so much."

The 16-year-old boy smiled at the sight of his father, although the man looked quite a bit older and more tired than Nathaniel remembered him being. Nathaniel still felt like he was 13, quite unaware that three years of his life had passed him by while he was lying in this hospital bed. "Dad?" His voice was weak, raspy and an octave lower than the last time he had spoken. The sound of it shocked Nathaniel a bit.

"Yes, son," he said with a small nod, joyful tears filling his blue-green eyes. His voice seemed to break once or twice. "Mackenzie and your mother will be so happy to hear that you're awake."

"Wh-where's Emmy? I want to see Emmy."

Thomas Weir's features took on a darker, more solemn look. He slowly shook his head, closing his eyes as the question was asked. "I'm sorry, but your sister is gone, son," he softly said. That was only true in the sense that Emerson Weir no longer lived with the rest of her family, but at his wife's request, they treated the 23-year-old as if she were dead.

Nathaniel gently bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. He wanted to cry at the thought of never seeing Emerson again, but he wouldn't let himself. He shook his head at what he had been told. He refused to believe that his older sister was gone in any sense of the word. But more importantly, somehow Nathaniel knew she wasn't dead.

"She left us three years ago, Nathaniel," Thomas explained, his voice soft and gentle. "Emerson doesn't want to be a part of our family anymore so we've had no choice but to let her go."

Nathaniel nodded his head, although he didn't fully understand. Bits of his memory still seemed scrambled and confused. His body felt so completely foreign to him and although his father's words registered in his brain, he couldn't properly process them yet. He just nodded again and tried to hug his father back as Thomas held Nathaniel close.

---

Mount Redding, Missouri, present day

A pair of innocent-looking, aquamarine blue eyes watched as a sleek, black 1967 Chevy Impala noisily pulled up in front of the store. Her New Age store to be exact. She looked quite a bit like the girl next door (at least that was how others described her) and she walked away from the front window and headed to the desk near the back of the store. She softly sighed to herself, tucking some of her long, dark burgundy red hair behind her left ear.

The bell on the front door jingled to indicate someone had entered the small store, but she didn't bother to look up to see Sam and Dean walk in. She absent-mindedly leafed through a glossy entertainment magazine instead, stopping to glance at some of the celebrity photos. Dean tapped on the desk impatiently with his index finger, clearing his throat at the same time in an effort to get her attention. The young woman continued to look through the magazine as if no one were there. So Dean cleared his throat again, louder this time.

She heavily sighed, rolling her eyes as she looked up. However, her blue-green eyes fell not on Dean at that moment but on Sam instead and her face seemed to pale a little. She had seen him before and on more than one occasion, but she had never allowed herself to believe he was an actual, flesh-and-blood person. She nervously licked her full lips as she tried to wrap her head around what she was seeing.

"Uh, excuse me," came Dean's deep voice. He waved his hand in front of the young woman's face in yet another effort to gain her attention. He made a slightly sour looking face when she finally turned towards him. This girl isn't right in the head, Dean thought.

"Yeah, hi. We're looking for a decent motel," he continued, not bothering to hide his annoyance with her. "Maybe some place to get some food, to fill up the car." He nodded toward her big storefront window from which the Impala was clearly visible.

She sighed a bit loudly and pulled out a small, pale pink notepad and a pen from a cubby hole under the countertop. She was used to strangers stopping by and asking her questions like these. However, none of them stuck around for very long so she always skipped exchanging niceties with them. Not that he'd notice, she thought, mentally rolling her eyes at Dean's behavior.

"There's an inn a few blocks from here. It's small, but I hear that it's nice. It should suit your purpose," she said, pointing with the end of her pen in the proper direction. Her voice, which was naturally soft, came out close to a whisper as she spoke now. She jotted down some notes and directions to a few of the more decent places in town before she tore off the sheet. "Mount Redding is a really small town so we don't have much," she said in a slightly apologetic manner. "I'm sure this will do though." She slid the paper across the counter.

Sam instinctively reached for it, his fingertips barely brushing against the top of her hand. The look on his face seemed to mimic hers at that moment. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen her somewhere before. That brief moment of skin to skin contact seemed electric to him on top of that. "Thanks," he finally said, flashing her a charming smile.

She shyly looked away, brushing some dark red hair from her eyes. She focused her attention on the bookshelf behind the young men instead of looking directly at Sam or Dean. She didn't think she could look at Sam at all – even though she wanted to – without betraying her attraction to him. "You're welcome, I guess. I mean, for all it's worth anyway." She shrugged.

Dean nodded to his younger brother and then nodded his head toward the door. "Let's go," he quietly said out of the corner of his mouth. Sam followed, but only after lingering to watch the young woman behind the desk. She was around his age and was trying her best to ignore him at that exact moment. He continued to think about it as he made his way out of the small shop. Dean was waiting for him, leaning against the car.

"I've seen her before," Sam finally said to Dean. He turned around and looked through the bay window at her again. He watched her as she tied her long, dark red hair into a messy ponytail. As she raised her arms to work the rubber band around her hair, her dark blue tee-shirt raised a little, revealing a bit of her stomach. Sam watched her, a heavy sensation in the pit of his stomach when he saw that, until Dean put his hand on his brother's shoulder, startling Sam back to reality.

"Yeah. I'm sure you have," Dean said, shaking his head with a bit of a sly smile and a light chuckle. He had to agree that she was a cute little thing, but he was surprised to see how much attention his little brother was paying her. "Let's go, Sammy. I want to find a place to eat and then a place to sleep for the night."

Sam barely nodded, tearing his attention away from the window, which took quite a bit of effort. He climbed into the passenger's seat just as Dean was closing the driver's side door. Dean might not have believed him, but Sam was certain he had seen her before. He was fairly certain he knew her name as well and she had never told either of them it.

Emerson, he thought. Emerson Weir. He figured he'd have to go back to see if he was right, but something told him he was.

---

Emerson put the magazine into a cubby under the desk and watched as the Impala drove off. She saw Sam watching her from outside and it had sent a shiver through her whole body. It threw her for a loop when she saw him. A big loop. She had thought that what she had seen four years back had been a dream conjured up by the demon. She was obviously wrong – very wrong – about that part and from what she could tell, he felt the same way.

So. Sam Winchester is a real person?, Emerson thought with a raised eyebrow. Well, this is going to be interesting to say the least.

She sighed heavily and looked around her shop. She didn't get much business these days, outside of those who came to her for special 'healing' sessions. She had a two o'clock appointment with a young girl from the other side of town, in fact. Emerson looked up at her pink, neon clock on the wall and sighed again, heavily this time. It was beginning to be too much for her, but she knew she had to do it. Emerson was the only person in town who could help them now.

She only had a few minutes before young Amara Denali and her mother, Naomi, would show up so Emerson knew she'd have to get her things together in a hurry. She had already wasted too much time talking with Sam and his brother. She pushed open the door behind the desk and propped it open with a small but heavy box. She wanted to be able to keep an eye on the shop. She'd had a fair share of shoplifters in recent weeks. She couldn't seem to figure out why that was exactly, but she knew she had to keep sharp.

The bell on the door jingled and Emerson's head instinctively shot up. She had been looking through a box of supplies and turned to face the inside of her store as soon as the bell caught her attention. She stepped out of the back room and immediately saw a familiar face. Looking down a bit, she saw a second, familiar face. Emerson smiled brightly at them both. She knew she must have looked very tired, but there wasn't much she could do to change that. She waved to Amara and then to Naomi.

"Come on back, guys," Emerson cheerfully said. "I'll just lock up and then we can get started. You know the drill, Amara."

Amara carefully watched Emerson walk past them and her mother quickly ushered her young daughter toward the back. Only a couple of people stood outside the door at the moment, which wasn't unusual. It was a small town after all and everyone knew what Emerson could do. Or at least they thought they knew. Not everyone was willing to trust the young outsider, however, but curiosity still overcame them at moments like this.

She pulled the dark, heavy curtains and locked the front door. With a quick roll of her eyes at the small crowd that seemed to be growing, she pulled down the shade and turned to find young Amara standing beside the desk, looking worse for wear. With every passing day, it seemed like the children in town were getting worse. They definitely suffered the most.

Emerson felt a gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach as she thought about what happened to her little brother. He had been a carefree, vibrant young man until her family moved to Mount Redding. Nathaniel fell apart after that. It took a few years before the damage became physically visible to the rest of them and by then there was nothing Emerson or their mother could do to make things right. Emerson had been gone for too long to be able to 'fix' him, not that she didn't try. Her father, Thomas, had taken Nathaniel and her little sister, Mackenzie, out of town when Nathaniel fell into a coma. Mackenzie had started seeming a bit more sluggish around that time and he wanted to stop it before it got worse.

Emerson remained in town, however, taking over her mother's small store. Her mother, Grace, signed everything over to Emerson a year earlier and now she lived in town alone. People liked to spread gossip about her, but she didn't care. Not anymore. In the few years she had lived in Mount Redding, she had become the one outsider that refused to leave and stay gone. Some of the residents didn't like that. They saw her as a threat and for her part, Emerson had to agree. She wasn't going to let what happened to her brother happen to another child if she could help it.

"Hey there, Amara," Emerson softly said as she walked over. "How are you feeling today, sweetheart? Any better?"

Amara tried to put on a brave face. She nodded a little bit, although it was obvious that the movement took a lot of effort. "A little better."

Emerson sadly smiled and nodded back, seeing through the mask the little girl wore to hide her pain. She placed a hand on Amara's little shoulder and helped guide her to the back room. Emerson knew that the girl couldn't make the trip without someone to help her – even if Amara wanted to insist that she was feeling better.

"Come on, sweetie. Let's get you all fixed up so you can score a couple of goals in that upcoming soccer game of yours, huh?"

---

Sam and Dean walked out of a small diner down the block from the shop where they had stopped that morning. The young woman there had been right about them getting a room at the inn so they tried one of the places that she had recommended to eat. It was starting to get dark, but the weather couldn't have been better. There was a light, tepid breeze but nothing that would require a person to wear more than a light sweater or maybe a long sleeved tee-shirt. Somehow that didn't sit well with Sam.

He looked down the block and saw the crowd gathered there. Dean noticed it as well and chose to ignore it, but Sam started toward the crowd. Dean rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air. It wasn't like his younger brother to be so impulsive, but ever since they had arrived in Mount Redding, Dean thought Sam hadn't been himself.

"Sammy," Dean called, "where do you think . . . What do you think you're doing?"

"That's her shop, Dean," Sam insisted, barely registering the fact that Dean has used his childhood nickname to call to him.

Dean sighed a little as he grabbed Sam's shoulder. "Hey." He fixed Sam with a stern, brotherly look. "I know it is and it's none of our business so let's go."

Sam wouldn't listen. He shrugged off Dean's hand and the look he gave Dean showed he was going to be stubborn about this, causing Dean to sigh again. Sam stopped on the edge of the crowd and gave a small, friendly smile to a cute, young blonde – all of about 15 years old – standing there. She looked up at Sam and smiled back. He took that as a good sign.

"What's going on?"

The teenager looked around at the rest of the crowd. She seemed skittish at the question. "I'm not supposed to talk about it," she quickly replied in a soft voice.

That caught Dean's attention immediately. "Why not?"

The teenager looked to him, then to Sam and then over her shoulder at a woman who was obviously her mother. She took several steps away from the crowd and waved them over. Sam and Dean exchanged a confused look but followed the teenager anyway. She was nervously chewing on the corner of her lower lip and glancing around as they made their way over to where she was waiting. Finally she drew in a deep breath, deciding it was safe to talk, and gave the boys a small, sort of crooked grin.

"That's Emerson's place," the teenager said, nodding toward The Ace of Cups Magick Shoppe with her head. "She's been living in Mount Redding for about seven years – off and on anyway. She was 16 when she first got here. About three years ago her little brother got sick. A little while later, her little sister started getting sick too. Their dad left with the kids, but their mom stuck around with Emerson for awhile. She . . . She was a witch." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper when she said the word.

The teenager swallowed hard and took another quick glance toward the spot where her mother had previously been standing. "Emerson's one, too. She makes these . . . appointments with all of the new people in town, mostly with their kids. They come in, she locks up and then she does some crazy stuff. Then, somehow, they come out better than when they went in."

"What do you mean, 'better than when they went in'? And what happened to her little brother and sister?" Sam asked, trying to keep himself from sounding like he was pushing too hard for information. He gave Dean an "I told you so" kind of look.

Dean rolled his eyes. "So why do you guys gather around out here?"

The blonde girl looked from Sam to Dean as if she were trying to decide which of the questions to answer first. She bit the corner of her lower lip as she looked beyond them. There would be no answers for them yet. At least not from her. Dean turned to see the girl's mother eying them with a pissed off look on her face.

"I really should go," the teenager suddenly said with a worried look on her face. "I – I've told you both too much already. I'm so sorry."

"What the hell was that all about?" Dean asked, watching the blonde teenager walk toward her mother. He shook his head as the woman first gave her a little lecture and then led her daughter away from the shop. "They can't talk about it?"

Sam shook his head in response. He was as confused as Dean was. The crowd was starting to slowly disperse however. Sam watched as the door to the shop opened and a tall, thin woman with olive skin and long, black hair walked out. She was carrying a girl who looked all of 10 years old in her arms. The girl was wrapped in a plaid fleece blanket and seemed to be sleeping. Emerson was right behind them.

"Don't you people have anything better to do with your time than to stand around out here?" she angrily shouted, waving her arms at them in an effort to get a few more people to leave at the very least. "Go home. Go ahead and start your little stories about me, but at least have the decency to do it somewhere else."

"Emerson Weir, right?"

Dean gave Sam a confused look since he couldn't remember the teenager ever mentioning the young woman's full name. Yet somehow Sam seemed to know it. Sam just shrugged a little at the look he got from Dean.

She whipped her head around so fast that some of her long hair ended up in her blue-green eyes. She quickly brushed it away and fixed Sam with a dangerous look. This wasn't the time to startle her. "Yeah, why?"

Sam calmly walked over as the last of the townspeople walked away, giving her his best reassuringly charming smile. "What was going on in there?" he boldly asked.

Emerson shook her head and beckoned for him to follow her inside. A smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth, although she was trying her best to keep from actually smiling at him. "I can do you one better," she finally said, holding the door open a bit wider. "I can show you what was going on in here."

---

Emerson settled onto a stool in the back room of the store. There were snuffed out beeswax candles and other ceremonial pieces still sitting on a short-legged table topped with a piece of dark purple, cotton fabric covered in symbols handwritten with silver ink. Both boys readily recognized the symbols as being pagan in origin. She gave them each a crooked grin when they looked at her and watched them as they took everything in.

"It was a healing ceremony," she announced with a little shrug as Dean stuck his index finger in a pestle and sniffed the thin paste that ended up on his finger. "I used that to anoint my candles."

"What's happening here?" Sam asked with a shake of his head.

Emerson smiled a little at that. "I don't really know."

Dean fixed her a decidedly confused look. "You don't know what's going on here, but you have scheduled appointments to 'heal' people," he said with a raised eyebrow. It came out more like a statement than the question he had intended it to be.

She shook her head. "That's not what I meant."

"That's how it sounded."

"I know how it sounded, genius. Your question was vague so my answer was vague. That approach seems to work best when I'm dealing with people I don't know." She looked like she wanted to slap Dean in the back of his head.

Sam sat down on a stool across from Emerson. "Why the kids?"

Emerson slowly shrugged her thin shoulders and gave him a heavy sigh. "I can't say for certain why any of this is happening at all, but something is draining their life force from them," she explained as best as she could, knowing it had to sound at least a little crazy. "I just give them a little something back."

"Couldn't you just give your brother 'a little something back'?" Dean asked as he continued to poke around Emerson's altar.

Her features darkened, but only Sam noticed. He had been watching her intently from the moment she sat down. She shivered slightly and drew in a deep breath. Her aquamarine blue eyes closed for a moment as she blinked back the tears she knew would come if she let them. But she wouldn't let them.

Dean had touched a nerve and didn't even know it. He was too busy 'investigating' to notice. She bit on the corner of her lip as she tried to fight back the emotions starting to surface without her permission. Whenever anyone mentioned Nathaniel she had the same, strong reaction. It still hit Emerson harder than she wanted to admit.

"I don't want to talk about that," she softly said.

"Well, maybe you should," Dean pressed, oblivious to her reaction to the suggestion. He was still poking around as he spoke. "Maybe we could help."

"And maybe you should learn to mind your own damn business," she shot back, clearly upset. "You're no better than the locals. Do you know that?"

"I'm sorry about your brother," Sam softly said, trying to get her attention.

Emerson shot Sam a bitter look. "Don't apologize for something you didn't do and don't apologize for your brother's tactlessness. Just do me a favor, all right? Get your car checked out and then get the hell out of town," she replied. Her tone was harsh, but they had touched a nerve – especially Dean – and she wasn't going to sit there and take it. "You'll be able to help a lot more people that way because there's no helping any of the people here."

"Then why do you stay?"

Emerson's features softened a little when Sam asked that question and she let out a small sigh. Something about the way that he looked at her kept her from staying angry with him for long. "Because someone has to try."

---

The Tuckaway Inn

Sam was rather moodily searching on the laptop for something out of the ordinary about Mount Redding. Dean had pissed off Emerson the night before and Sam was holding a serious grudge against him because of it. His Internet search led him to absolutely nothing. It struck him as odd that a town like this had no unemployment rate and no crime rate to speak of. The police force was there for show for the most part. Dean was reading over his shoulder, which was only serving to make Sam more uncomfortable.

"There's nothing here," he abruptly said. "So why are we sticking around?" Dean had thought of this sleepy little town as no more than a brief stopping point.

Sam shook his head. "You don't find it at all odd that there's nothing going on in this town," he said. It was as a question as well as a statement. "There have never been any suicides here, no unexplainable deaths. That doesn't happen. We both know that. Not even in small towns, Dean."

Dean shrugged and threw himself onto the full-sized bed on what he considered to be 'his half' of the room. "From the way it sounds," he said with an air of indifference, "it's not like she wants our help anyway, Sammy."

Sam grimaced at that name, but he bit back a retort. No matter how many times he asked Dean to just call him Sam, it wasn't going to happen. He was starting to come to grips with that, although it still bothered him. He really hated to be called Sammy. "I don't think she even knows what she's dealing with."

Dean sighed. "Dude, seriously, if you want to keep digging, you can go right ahead. Me? I'm not worried about it. We have better things to do."

Sam shook his head, closing the laptop and turning around in the swiveling desk chair. He looked over at Dean and shook his head again, sighing softly. "I'm going to talk to her again," he stated as he pushed up out of the chair. "You can come with me if you want."

Dean managed a sleepy sounding chuckle as he yawned. "If I can get a chance to get a little cat nap in without listening to you mumble in your sleep," he joked, "I'll take that over getting my head chewed off by some wannabe-witch."

Sam grabbed his jacket and walked to the door without responding. He knew that was what Dean was looking for. His older brother wanted a confrontation and Sam wasn't going to give it to him. Lately, Sam was learning to trust his gut instinct about things and right now, his gut instinct was telling him that Emerson knew a lot more than she was telling them about what was going on in Mount Redding. He figured if he showed up without Dean, he might actually get some answers out of her.

---

The Ace of Cups Magick Shoppe

Emerson shook her head, a small smile lighting her face. She bit back a laugh. "No," she said. Her tone was both gentle and authoritative. "Becky, that's not where that goes."

She walked around the desk to help her part-time assistant, Becky George, move some of the stock around to make room for some new items that had recently arrived. "Sweetie, I asked you to put those candles on the table over there. That's what the crates are for." She grabbed a handful of the candles and started resetting her store.

"I'm so sorry," Becky said. Her face was flushed and she looked very flustered. "I – I just thought that maybe . . ."

Emerson held up her hand and shook her head. "Becky, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. It's just some candles. They can be moved."

The bell on the door jingled and Becky rushed to see who it was, looking for an excuse to do anything else. She recognized the person almost immediately as the guy who was questioning her the day before. She gave him a small, flirty smile. He was definitely cute but way older than her. She didn't have a shot with him, of course, but her boss might so Becky half-heartedly decided to try to play matchmaker.

"Hey there," she said cheerfully. "What brings you in today?"

Sam had a half-smile on his face. "You work here?" he asked. He looked a little surprised at seeing the teenager again. "After the look your mom gave this place, I wouldn't think you'd have anything to do with Emerson's shop."

"I'm Becky George," she said in a cheerful tone, finally getting the chance to introduce herself. "My mom doesn't know that I work here." She gave him a quick shrug and tossed some of her blonde hair over her shoulder in a flirtatious way.

"Well, Becky George," Sam said with a smile, knowing the 15-year-old was trying to flirt with him, "I'm Sam Winchester. Is Emerson in by any chance?"

Emerson popped her head around the corner and she gave Sam a small smile and a little bit of a wave. Despite being annoyed with him for the way things had gone down the other night, she couldn't help but smile when she laid eyes on him. "Sam Winchester, huh?" she replied, although she knew his name quite well. "You'll have to forgive Becky. She's 15 years old with hormones to match."

Becky's face turned a deep shade of crimson and she muttered something unintelligible before slipping away. She quickly made her way into the backroom to busy herself, too embarrassed to stick around. Emerson softly laughed as she watched her young employee sneak off. Then Emerson slipped around the shelves that separated her from Sam. She looked up at him since she stood at all of 5' 5" while he was at least 6' 4" tall in her estimation. She shook her head and pursed her lips a little but something resembling a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

"What can I do for you, Sam?"

"Well, I just have a few questions about this town," he said, trying to maintain an air of relaxed ease between the two of them. He leaned against one of the bookshelves with his hands behind his back, resting them on the shelf itself.

Emerson nodded a little as if she knew what he was going to ask her and started toward the desk in the back. "Look," she said, walking backward so she could look at Sam as she spoke to him. "I haven't lived here for very long. I seriously doubt that I'm the right person for you to be asking about these things."

Sam followed behind her, trying not to laugh as she barely tripped over something left in the middle of the floor, although it did make him smile. She smiled at him – not looking flustered in the least by her little slip up – and turned to hop onto the desk. He guessed it was probably slow like this for Emerson most of the time so he didn't feel too guilty for bothering her during store hours. Sam waited until it looked like she was settled.

"You're the only one who would be able to answer the questions I have."

Emerson shook her head once again. "My mom honestly would have been the best choice for this," she said, a bit of sadness tinging her voice. "She researched this place from top to bottom once Nathaniel got sick. She knows the history of Mount Redding better than most of the families here that can trace their roots back to the founding of the town." She gave Sam a little smile and a shrug of her shoulders. "I'm just trying to do my part to help any way that I can."

"In all your mother's research, did she ever find anything that anyone might have considered odd?" Sam ventured.

Emerson lightly laughed. She tossed some of her burgundy red hair over her shoulder. She wasn't trying to be flirtatious with the gesture, but it came off that way nonetheless. "Everything about this town is odd," she retorted with a trace of a smile on her face, "if only because nothing odd ever seems to happen here. Trust me, Sam. I can do a lot more things outside the town's limits than I can in them. There's something happening around here that draws from that 'side' of me. If that's not odd, I don't know what is."

Sam nodded to show his understanding. He leaned against a small table beside one of the bookshelves that was facing the desk, almost sitting on the table. He didn't know where the next question that formed in his head came from, but he asked it nonetheless. "You know me from somewhere, don't you?"

Emerson immediately shook her head, almost before Sam had finished asking the question. "No," she lied with a practiced ease. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

"Anything else?"

Sam watched her carefully, looking for some sign that she was lying. Other than the fact that Emerson seemed to be more than eager to change the subject, he couldn't tell if she was lying or not. He knew he had seen her before – and more than once at that. She was a little younger then and so was he, but he recognized her. He even knew her name when she had never told him it when they first met. Those kinds of things lent themselves to being otherworldly, in his opinion. If she wasn't going to admit it now, Sam would wait. He could be an extremely patient person when necessary. He figured now was a good time.

"If you have access to your mother's research, it might be really useful."

Emerson rolled her blue-green eyes. "You're annoyingly persistent. I'll give you that much, Sam Winchester." She shook her head a little with a soft smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I'm pretty sure she left her notes at the house. I'll look for them for you. Stop by tonight and I'll hand them over if you really think there's anything in there that will help you with . . . whatever it is you're doing."

It took a long moment before she realized he probably didn't know where she lived. Emerson gave Sam a sheepish grin for that, her eyes a little downcast. "I live about six blocks from the shop. It's the only blue house on the block. It won't be hard to find."

---

Meg's Diner

Dean was only half-listening as Sam explained to him what had happened at Emerson's store. He took a big bite of his cheeseburger and noisily chewed it as his younger brother gave him an annoyed glance. He just shrugged and held out a french fry for Sam. "You should eat something, Sammy," he said. "It's actually really good."

Sam shook his head, cradling a nearly empty cup of coffee in his hands. He nodded as a waitress came by to refill it. The middle-aged woman gave the boys an almost motherly smile before she walked away, which was more than most of the people in town had done for them. Sam figured they were only getting half of the wrath that Emerson endured on a daily basis.

"Why would she stay here?"

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked, his mouth still full from his recent bite.

"Emerson," Sam replied, unfazed by his brother's lack of manners. He was used to it by now. "These people obviously don't want us here. I can't imagine how they might want her here."

"Dude, if you think I'm taking her with us," Dean suddenly said, "you're completely cracked. That's the last thing we need right now."

Sam sighed a little – although Dean didn't seem to notice – and nodded in agreement. The thought had crossed Sam's mind, however, but he had figured that there was really no way to get Emerson to leave town in the first place so he hadn't even planned on asking Dean. "So are you coming with me or not?"

Dean stuffed a fry in his mouth and grunted something unintelligible but most definitely crude. "She doesn't like me," he finally said, "and the feeling is mutual."

"Dean, she's been able to withstand something like seven years of this town draining something from her and at least three years of giving something else to others in an effort to help them on top of that," Sam continued, undaunted by Dean's statement. He shook his head. He didn't believe that Dean didn't like Emerson, nor did Sam believe that Emerson didn't like Dean. "Seven years of stares and gossip. And she doesn't get anything out of it."

"Maybe she's just trying to atone for what happened to her brother," ventured Dean.

Sam looked across the table at his brother, a bit startled by the comment and the fact that it had come from Dean. He wasn't going to say it, but he thought there might be something to that. Emerson seemed to be hurting whenever someone mentioned her brother and a majority of her appointments, from what Sam could learn from another brief talk with Becky, were with the children in town. All of them were under the age of 15. Sam wondered how old her brother had been when he had fallen into a coma but guessed he wasn't older than 15 at the time.

He took a quick drink from his mug and then grabbed his jacket, sliding out of the booth. Dean grabbed his wrist to stop him and Sam looked down at him with a glare.

"Let me go."

"You can talk to your little girlfriend tonight, all right?" Dean matter-of-factly said as he let go of Sam's wrist. "When we go pick up that research or whatever it is she has for you. Right now, we have a more pressing matter to attend to."

"What's that?"

"My car."

Sam gave Dean a confused look and Dean sighed as he opened his billfold and left some money on the table. He didn't bother to ask for the bill, leaving what he thought would cover it on the table. He grabbed his jacket and slid out of the booth as well. Dean patted Sam on the back and nodded to the door.

"It's at a garage in town. Hell, it's at the only garage in town." Dean sighed at the look Sam was giving him. "Well, she did tell us to get the car checked out before we leave, didn't she?"

---

The Pit Stop Garage and Gas Station

Dean's fist met the counter at the small garage. It was, in fact, the only garage in all of Mount Redding, attached to the only gas station in the small town. He grumbled something under his breath and Sam gave the poor mechanic an apologetic smile. Dean turned around and walked out of the building, leaving Sam to explain things.

"Are you sure there's something wrong with the transmission?"

The guy took off his grease-stained hat and scratched the top of his head. "I wouldn't say there was if there wasn't."

Sam nervously chuckled. He looked over his shoulder at Dean who was going on and on outside, using an impressive string of obscenities and kicking at stones in the dirt lot. "It's just that the car means an awful lot to my brother and he would have noticed if there was something wrong with it," he continued, turning back to look at the guy behind the counter. He couldn't picture Dean letting the Impala go to the point that the transmission needed to be replaced.

"Look, kid," the mechanic said as he placed his baseball cap back on his head, straightening the bill as he spoke. "Your brother brought 'er in for a check up. Told me to take a good look at everything so I did. It ain't my fault that the transmission needs to be replaced."

"And how long is that going to take again?"

The guy heavily sighed, resting his arms on the counter between himself and Sam as he leaned forward. He was clearly annoyed with both Winchester brothers. "I already explained this once to you both," he said, trying to remain as calm as possible. "I don't have a transmission for a '67 Impala here. I'll have to order it from another town. It could take up to a week."

Sam sighed now and nodded, looking a little discouraged. "Just let me talk to my brother," he said in an apologetic tone. He turned away before the middle aged man could make a response. He watched Dean, who was still going on and on with his string of obscenities. Sam noticed that Emerson's name flew from Dean's mouth at least a couple of times, along with a few choice words to describe her.

"It's not her fault, you know."

Dean turned quickly to glare at his little brother. "She said to get the car checked and then I find out the transmission is shot," he said in a defensive tone. "If I knew it was in fair shape, I'd drive it out of this town just to get the hell out of here."

"Dean, if Emerson didn't mention it," Sam calmly reasoned, "we could have been stuck in the middle of nowhere."

"Which is a hell of a lot better than being stuck here for another week!"

Sam took a couple of tentative steps forward, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. "At least there's something going on here for us to investigate," he said.

Dean softly sighed. He knew Sam was right, at least about the car. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck in the middle of a stretch of deserted highway when the car died. "No, Sam, you have something to investigate," he quickly pointed out. "I already told you that I don't want to have anything to do with it."

Sam nodded, ruffling his dark hair as he looked around. "You know what? Fine," he conceded, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets. "You don't have to help." Maybe once we get that research from Emerson, he'll be singing a different tune, he thought, knowing that probably wouldn't be the case. Still, there was hope.

---

Emerson was unlocking her front door when she heard someone coming up her walkway. She cautiously turned around as she held open the screen door and shook her head when she saw the brothers heading her way. She was looking forward to seeing Sam again, but she could have done without seeing Dean. There was something about him that rubbed her the wrong way sometimes. It was probably in his nature to be that way with people he didn't know, kind of like it was in her nature to keep as much about herself hidden from people she didn't know. It still left her feeling like Dean didn't like her and it made it very difficult for her to like Dean.

Still, Emerson smiled and gave them a quick, welcoming wave. "A little early, aren't we, boys?" she called out in a teasing manner. "I was just getting home myself."

"Well, Sammy here couldn't wait to see you again," Dean sarcastically quipped. He felt a hand make contact with the back of his head for that and glared at Sam. "What the hell was that for?"

"Be nice," Sam said through gritted teeth.

Dean shook his head slightly. They were at the bottom of her front porch steps so anything they said would have been easy for Emerson to hear. Dean didn't like that. "I am," he growled, still fixing Sam with a glare.

"Are you boys coming in or what?" she suddenly asked. "I'm not going to stand here holding the door open all night, y'know."

Sam took the steps two at a time, not bothering to check if Dean was following. "Sorry about coming by so early," he said with a bit of a smile. "There was a thing with the car and my brother was getting kind of fussy."

"So you got it checked out?"

Dean's glare now fell on Emerson. "What did you do to my car?"

She cocked her head to the side a bit. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Dean," she calmly said as she opened the heavy oak door and started inside. Emerson felt Sam take hold of the screen door to keep it open for himself and his brother and only glanced over her shoulder briefly to see if they were following her inside. She placed her keys on a small table in the main entryway to the house. "I didn't do anything to your car. It was already a piece of shit when you got it to the garage."

There, she angrily thought. He wants to play that way. I can play his game just as well. He wants to be an asshole. Then I'll just be the bitch he thinks I am.

"My car is not a piece of shit," Dean replied as he slammed the front door closed. He watched as Emerson slipped past him to lock it without being startled by his reactions. "The transmission was fine the last time I checked it."

"And when was that?"

Dean sputtered for a moment, recovering fairly quickly though. It had been quite some time since he'd had the car checked, since he'd checked the car himself. Probably close to three years since the last time the Impala had been throughly checked out. He wasn't going to admit that however. He just shook his head. "That's not what this is about."

Emerson sighed and waved them into the kitchen as she was headed that way herself, knowing she had won the argument. "Have either of you eaten yet?" she asked, keeping her tone light and friendly. "I was going to warm up some leftover chicken I have in the 'fridge. You boys are more than welcome to join me."

"What about your mother's research?"

She gave Sam a bright smile. "Straight to business, huh?" She shook her head with a slightly amused look on her face. "I think it's up in my dad's old office. I'm pretty sure I know exactly which box it's in, but I'm starving right now. I haven't eaten since breakfast." Emerson gave Sam a soft, pleading look.

Sam and Dean exchanged a quick glance. Dean was wordlessly pleading with his little brother to not fall for it. He wanted to get these papers and leave. He could tell, however, from the look he was getting in return that Sam had already fallen for it. Dean softly sighed and shook his head, pulling out a chair at the table and turning it around. He sat down, resting his arms on the back of the chair and rested his chin on his forearm.

"Don't mind my brother. He . . ."

Emerson quickly shook her head. She was tying her long hair into a ponytail at that moment. "You don't need to explain his behavior," she replied as she worked the rubber band around her hair. "I'm quite aware that Dean doesn't like me very much. Sadly, however, he believes the feeling is mutual."

"And is it?"

Emerson looked over at Dean as he asked the question, straightening out her tee-shirt. Smirking, she shook her head. "I don't know you well enough to say one way or the other, Dean. Although with the way you've been acting towards me, I'm leaning towards not liking you very much."

Sam had to bite back a laugh as he saw the crest-fallen look on Dean's face. "I don't think anyone has shattered Dean's notions quite the way you just did."

She chuckled as she pulled out three plates and the proper silverware, setting each item on the table in turn. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a medium-sized clear plastic bowl. She set it on the counter and opened it, taking a moment to savor the smell coming from inside it. "I made this two days ago and as usual made too much," Emerson said as she took a plate and began serving herself. "It's some Indian dish that I can't remember the name of, but it's mostly chicken and rice. My mom used to make it once a week so you'd think I'd be sick of it by now."

She turned and gave Sam and Dean a sad smile. Emerson balanced her plate in one hand. "It reminds me of home," she said in a soft voice. She quickly turned away and start to rewarm her portion in the microwave. "So anyway, you guys can help yourselves. There's plenty here and it'll just end up in the garbage if someone doesn't help me eat it anyway." She turned back and smiled a bit more cheerfully, although it was easy to see through her smile.

"Thanks," Sam said. He looked at the bowl and then at Dean. Giving his older brother a shrug, Sam took a plate and put a little bit of the food on it. "I don't think I've eaten since breakfast either." He gave Emerson a sheepish grin as he admitted that.

Dean rolled his eyes, keeping all of his comments to himself. He waited and watched while Emerson took her plate out of the microwave and put Sam's in for him. He sighed as he got off the chair and grabbed the third plate. He eyed the food suspiciously for a moment, poking it with the spoon. Satisfied that it wasn't going to kill him to eat it, he spooned some of it on his plate.

"So you're hungry, too, then?"

Dean grumbled something under his breath and Emerson just rolled her eyes at him. She took the plate from him before taking Sam's out. She set that one aside and popped Dean's in next. She saw he was already making himself comfortable at the table. Emerson heavily sighed. Getting to know him was going to be like pulling teeth and she didn't know if she wanted to be bothered with it if he was just going to be a child about it.

"I don't think your legs are broken," Emerson stated, sounding stern but still quite friendly. "When your food is ready, Dean, you can serve yourself." She fixed him with a decidedly maternal look. She had two younger siblings so she had perfected the "don't-start-with-me" look quite awhile ago. Emerson walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle half filled with grape juice.

"Don't you have any beer?" Dean asked as he saw the bottle of juice in her hands.

Emerson rolled her eyes again and pulled out a bottle of domestic beer for him. She set it down hard on the table in front of Dean and muttered something under her breath this time. She turned to look at Sam, smiling softly when her gaze fell on him. "What about you?"

Sam gave her a bit of a shrug. "Whatever works for you."

Emerson promptly stuck the grape juice back into the refrigerator. She pulled out two more beers and handed one to Sam. She set her bottle on the table before grabbing Dean's plate out of the microwave and setting it on the counter. She glanced over at him and then back that his plate. Dean sighed as he got up once more and grabbed his own plate.

"Now was that so difficult?" Emerson asked as she sat down and picked up her fork.

Dean didn't say anything as he walked past her to get back to the table. He sat down, looking at his plate and started shoveling food into his mouth. Sam kicked him from under the table, quickly getting Dean's attention. He didn't even bother to finish chewing as he looked over to his younger brother with his jaw hanging open a bit in surprise.

"Don't you dare apologize for your brother's behavior, Sam," Emerson quickly said as she saw the look Sam and Dean exchanged. "If you do, I'll have to slap you myself."

Sam nodded and gave Emerson a half-smile, looking boyishly handsome at that moment. She felt like she had to be blushing so Emerson turned her attention to opening her bottle of beer. She took a little sip from it and then started picking at her food. She wasn't used to eating in front of people anymore so she felt a little self-conscious. She noticed, however, that Dean didn't seem to have that problem at all. In fact, he was almost finished with what he had taken in the first place and seemed to be eying the bowl now, looking for seconds.

"There's plenty there, Dean," Emerson said off-handedly, nodding toward the bowl. "You can help yourself to more."

Dean looked up at her and nodded, chewing what he had in his mouth. He wasn't going to say anything to her unless he absolutely had to. He was waiting to see what kind of information she had to share with them before he was going to talk to her again. Before long, he was back to shoveling the food into his mouth and listening to Sam and Emerson make with the small talk.

"So why did your family move out here?" Sam asked.

Emerson swallowed the little bit she had been chewing on and gave him a little smile. "And so the interrogation begins," she teased with a light laugh. "My dad was a bank manager. They were opening a branch in Mount Redding so he took the job. It meant more money for the family, which we desperately needed at the time. My mom, who used to teach high school science, had been out of a job since one of her students 'outed' her for her religious beliefs. We lived in a town that was devoutly Christian so . . ." She gave a little shrug as she placed another fork full of food in her mouth.

Sam carefully watched her as he took a long drink from his bottle, listening to every word she had to say. "And you've lived here ever since then?"

Emerson smiled a little brighter now. "You're oddly fascinated with me, aren't you, Sam?" She shook her head with an amused look on her face. "Well, I went to live with my aunt and uncle in northern Illinois for awhile – near Chicago. My dad wanted me to check out a college or two out there. I was gone for about a year and a half. I came back right before Nathaniel got really sick."

It struck Sam that it must have been around that time – that year and a half when she was staying with her aunt and uncle – when the dreams started. The ones he knew he remembered Emerson from. He gave her a smile when she teased him about being fascinated with her and caught Dean rolling his eyes as he got up from his chair to warm up a second helping of food. Sam looked over at Emerson and nodded as she spoke.

"It's not that I'm oddly fascinated with you," he said. "I'm just curious by nature." Sam watched her for a moment as she ate. "So why did you come back anyway?"

Emerson took a long drink from her bottle of beer and shook her head. "It was Nathaniel that brought me back," she softly said. She didn't want to talk about that.

Sam took the hint and nodded. He knew from the last time they met that any mention of her younger brother meant that the topic was off-limits. "Why did your mom leave?" he asked instead of the questions he really wanted to ask.

Emerson looked up just as she was about to put another bite into her mouth. She stared at Sam for a long moment, not sure if she wanted to slap him across the face or answer the question. Instead, she set her fork down on her plate and gave him a soft smile. "When you said you were curious," she teased, "I didn't think you really meant it."

Sam just smiled. "That's what you get for assuming things."

Dean made a gagging noise, getting everyone's attention. He gave them a serious look and then looked at his plate, looking like a kid who had just gotten caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing. "Sorry," he said, looking up at them both again. He cleared his throat. "Must have went down wrong."

Sam gave him a reproachful look and shook his head. Dean silently let his brother know that he didn't like how the two of them were playing nice around him. Emerson rolled her eyes and finished up what she had on her plate. She had siblings of her own. She understood the whole "silent argument" thing.

"Look," she said, pushing away from the table. Emerson gave Sam a very faint smile when she got his attention. "I'm going to go look for those papers so you two can get going. I think I know where they are. Besides, I think there's been some overstaying of a welcome or something here."

Before Sam could say anything to change her mind, Emerson was already headed out of the kitchen. He sat there and listened as she ran up the stairs. When the sound had faded, Sam fixed Dean with a angry look and shook his head.

Dean didn't bother to swallow his food as he looked at his little brother. "What?"

"You don't have to scare her off like that."

Dean heavily sighed, setting his fork onto his plate. "I didn't scare her off."

The look in Sam's eyes had a slightly dangerous quality to it. He wanted Dean to know that he didn't like the way his brother treated Emerson, especially when he was around to see it. "Why do you have to be such an ass towards her, Dean?"

Dean scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "I'm not being an ass towards her," he replied. "Why? Do you like her?"

Sam opened his mouth to answer when Emerson suddenly cleared her throat. She stood in the doorway, waving a small stack of papers in her left hand. They had been so busy bickering that they hadn't heard her come back down the stairs. She had only caught the very tail end of the conversation, not that either of them knew. The boys both looked over at her as she walked into the kitchen and set the papers by Sam.

"I haven't had a chance to read them myself," Emerson explained, sounding a little winded from hurrying back downstairs, "but I think you'll find whatever it is you're looking for in those papers. I don't know if there's more to it or not, but I'll keep searching. Somehow I doubt that this is everything my mother could dig up on Mount Redding."

Sam picked them up, ignoring the food still left on his plate. He gave Emerson a slight nod before he starting thumbing through them, quickly skimming each page. So far all he saw were bare facts about the town, mostly the same things he had gotten from his own search on the Internet. Nothing jumped out at him as being of any importance. He looked up at Emerson and gave her a confused glance.

"I don't think this is all the research either," he said. "Do you mind if I have a look upstairs? Maybe I'll be able to find something you overlooked."

Emerson slowly nodded her head. She wasn't sure she wanted to let Sam look around the house, but he had a valid point. She looked over at Dean who seemed quite disinterested in anything that was being said now that Emerson was back in the room. She sighed at that and shook her head.

"Do you want to help?" she asked him, deciding that if he didn't want to be a part of the conversation then she'd drag him into it, kicking and screaming if necessary.

Dean looked up, his fork sort of half hanging out of his mouth. He pointed to himself with his free hand, looking a bit shocked at being brought into the conversation. He had figured Emerson would have been happy to be rid of him for awhile. He swallowed what he had been eating and then looked to Sam who seemed just as surprised by Emerson's question as he was.

"Gee, I didn't think it took a rocket scientist to answer as simple yes or no question."

"Are you sure you want him to come along?" Sam suddenly asked.

"Do you really think I want to leave him downstairs – by himself?"

Dean looked a little crushed by that, although he knew that if he were in Emerson's shoes, he wouldn't want to leave someone he hardly knew sitting in his house, downstairs, alone either. "Then why did you ask?"

Emerson rolled her blue-green eyes. "Well, either you come along, Dean, and help us look or you get out of my house," she said. "How's that for a choice?"

Sam was surprised by how forceful she was getting with Dean, wondering if maybe she didn't like his brother. "Look, we can do this another time."

She sighed again and basically threw herself into the chair where she had been sitting before. "Look. You're both here already," Emerson replied in an exasperated tone. "I'd rather have us find what you're looking for now instead of just prolonging this more than necessary."

Sam seemed a bit surprised by the way she was speaking to him now. He wondered if he had said something to offend her – or better yet, if his brother had. He was about to say something about it when she turned to look at him. He got the sense that she knew what he was thinking before he could even say it. It made him shiver a little.

A smile tugged at the corners of Emerson's mouth and shook her head a bit. "I'm not trying to kick you guys out," she explained. "I just don't want to have much to do with what it is that you're looking into, Sam."

"Why not?" Dean suddenly asked, curious because of the way Emerson worded her statement. "I mean, don't you want to stop what's happening here so you don't have to worry about helping all these people for the rest of your life?"

She pursed her lips as she wrapped her head around Dean's questions. She wasn't exactly sure how she felt about it. She just knew that she got a bad feeling about digging too deeply into the mysteries of Mount Redding. It had been around the time that her mother had begun digging that Grace Weir had become distant with her. Emerson got the feeling that if she dug too deeply, she'd find out why Grace seemed to resent her own daughter so much. It was something Emerson didn't want to have to think about as she had too much on her mind already.

"Let's just say that I don't want to know anything more than I already know," Emerson finally replied. "I think there are some things that people just aren't meant to know."

"But you're willing to help Sam and I find out these 'things'?"

She sighed, knowing how that had to sound to someone who didn't know her well. "I'm trying to help wherever I can, however I can," Emerson explained in a calm voice. "I don't think it's my place to know whatever it is you guys find out."

Dean looked over at Sam, giving his brother a confused look. I was right, he thought. She's definitely not right in the head.

He turned to Emerson and slowly nodded his head. "Right," he said. "See. Now, that makes perfect sense – in your little world. But in the real world, the one where we all live in, that's some seriously cracked logic."

Emerson rolled her eyes and looked over at Sam. "Are you coming or not, Sam?" she asked him, deciding it was best to ignore Dean at this point. She didn't wait to see if Sam was going to follow her as she pushed up our of her chair and headed out of the kitchen. More than anything, she wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. She felt like she had taken as much of Dean's crap as she could for one day.

---

Sam thumbed through some of the paperwork her father had left behind. It struck Sam at that moment how normal Emerson's family was in some respects. More normal than his family had been anyway. He could almost imagine her father teaching Nathaniel how to play different sports and Emerson and her little sister, Mackenzie, going shopping with their mother. All of the things he never had growing up. He looked over at Emerson and gave her a sad smile.

"Did you find something?"

Sam shook his head. "No, just some of your dad's old paperwork."

Emerson nodded. "Just keep looking. My mother hid things in the most unusual places," she explained with a small chuckle as some distant memory came back to her. She looked up at Sam as she continued to speak. "One Christmas, I found our gifts in the shower. She was planning on moving them, of course, but it just struck me as odd. Why would someone hide Christmas gifts in the shower?"

Sam chuckled as well, but Dean kept digging. Emerson quickly returned to what she had been doing, leaving Sam and Dean to their individual searches. Dean looked over and noticed that Sam had started thumbing through a large photo album as soon as Emerson's attention had been diverted. He shook his head. She had no idea that Sam was snooping into her personal business.

"Sammy," Dean said in a harsh whisper. When Sam looked over at him, looking surprised, Dean shook his head. He gestured that Sam should cut it out.

"Did you find something?" Emerson quickly turned around to see why Dean had called his brother's name.

"You have an amazing sense of hearing," Dean replied in a sarcastic manner.

"I hear what I want to hear when I want to hear it," she retorted. "So?"

Dean shook his head. He tried to keep Emerson from looking at what had caught Sam's attention. He found, however, that his attempt at a distraction was unsuccessful.

She snatched the photo album away and fixed Sam with a admonishing glare. "That's not what we came up here to look for, Sam," she said in a dangerously low voice. Emerson set the album on the desk and quickly turned her back on Sam.

Sam smacked Dean on the back of his head and Dean quickly smacked Sam back. Without saying a single word, the two brothers had an entire argument with facial expressions and gestures. Emerson did the best she could on her part to ignore them as she continued to rifle through another box.

"Look, Emerson, I'm sorry," Sam softly said as he crossed the room and squatted down beside her. He had one of those looks on his face that Dean liked to call the "puppy-dog look". "It was there and . . ."

She sighed and turned, ignoring the box she had been searching through for a moment. "It's fine, Sam," Emerson quietly replied. As quickly as she got upset with Sam, she found that she forgave him as well. "If I were in your place, I'd probably be snooping around too." She gave him a small, understanding smile and turned back to the box.

"Here. Let me help you."

Sam grabbed a handful of documents and started looking through them as Dean pulled a medium-sized locked box out of the closet. He pulled a lock-picking kit out of his jacket pocket and began working on the lock. Emerson stopped what she was doing when she saw what Dean was doing and walked over to him. She glared at him but didn't make a move to stop him. As much as she was angry that it seemed that Dean was snooping as well, she couldn't remember ever seeing that locked box before.

Dean carefully opened it. Emerson swooped down and snatched out some of its contents before he got a good look at any of it. She pulled out a phases of the moon pendant that her mother used to wear all of the time, carefully handling it. Emerson had been certain that her mother had lost that necklace. Now she was looking at and it brought up more than a few questions.

Dean handed some papers to Sam as Sam squatted down between the two of them. He looked over at Emerson for a moment and then back to Sam. His eyes seemed to say that he didn't understand what was going through her head anymore than Sam knew. Dean started going through the papers in his hands.

"I think I found something," he said as he handed some papers to Emerson.

She slipped the necklace into the front pocket of her jeans for a moment and took the papers from him. She glanced at them, seeing a few sketches and bits of Latin writing scrawled across the margin of the yellowing loose-leaf paper. Emerson flopped onto the floor and tucked her legs underneath her, getting comfortable. "I've never seen these papers before," she admitted as she turned them over, inspecting the backs of them as well. "In fact, some of the writing on these pages isn't even my mother's, but she never worked with anyone on anything like this before."

Sam cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

Emerson tore her attention away from the papers when she heard Sam's voice. "My mother sometimes hunted things before we moved here," she explained with a little shrug. "In fact, that's part of the reason my dad wanted to move to Mount Redding. He had hoped that a small town life would keep her closer to home. It worked for awhile, I guess. Eventually she and I clashed over something really trivial so I went to live with my aunt and uncle. Everything changed then." She shook her head. "That must have been when she locked her stuff away in this box. This kind of stuff would normally be in her Book of Shadows." She heavily sighed. Emerson couldn't understand why her mother would hide something like this from her.

Sam noticed that Emerson had a slightly distant look in her eyes. He gently nudged her and gave her a smile when she looked at him. He nodded to let her know that he had been listening and that he understood where she was coming from.

She handed Dean the papers as she looked at Sam. "It's nothing really," she said, although he had never voiced any concerns. "It's just that I'd like this stuff back when you're done with it." Emerson had taken the pendant out of her pocket and was toying with it as she spoke.

"I thought you didn't want to know more than you already know," Dean said.

Emerson shook her head. "It's not that. It's just that . . . my mother locked this stuff away for a reason. I suppose I want to keep it safe for her."

"And that necklace?"

Emerson held it up, examining it carefully. Her grandmother had given it to her mother before she died and Emerson had been promised it after her own mother passed. It could be traced back for twelve generations and was of Druidic design, an ancient Celtic symbol for Arianrhod, a Welsh moon goddess.

Emerson would be the thirteenth woman in her family to wear it when the time finally came. What she couldn't understand was why it had been locked away in the first place. Her mother had worn it with pride for many years and then one day it was just gone. When she asked about it, Emerson had been told that it was lost. Now, she was holding it in her own hands and she wondered if it, too, should be locked away.

"It's a family heirloom," she finally said with a slightly sad smile. Emerson carefully wrapped it in a square of dark purple velvet as it had been before Dean had disturbed the box. "It gets locked back up, too."

Dean's eyebrows shot up at that. He had been quite certain that she'd keep it for herself, especially with the way she had been holding it. He nodded to her as she slipped it back into the box, making an effort to not disturb the other contents.

"We'll have these back to you by tomorrow," Sam said as he took the papers from his brother's hand. He carefully folded them in half and placed them in his jacket pocket.

"We will?"

Sam nodded. "I'll just run off some copies at the local library or something."

Emerson softly smiled and nodded. "Thank you, Sam." She pushed up off of the floor and dusted herself off. Those three words actually spoke volumes more than just their surface meaning.

Sam and Dean each stood as well. Dean was brushing himself off as his brother turned toward Emerson. Sam smiled at her before heading to the door. Dean rolled his eyes and smacked Sam in the back of the head as he passed Sam by. When Sam turned around, his older brother fixed him with a disapproving look.

"Can you find your way out," Emerson called after them, "or do I need to show you boys to the door?" She gave them a teasing smile when they both turned to look at her. She never bothered to ask what was going on.

Dean chuckled a little bit. As much as he hated to admit it, she was starting to grow on him. It was how she seemed to enjoy being so annoyingly vague with them that bugged him the most. Of course, he also knew that he came off as abrasive to most people so part of him understood what Emerson was doing. It was a defense mechanism to keep people from getting too close.

Not that it's stopping Sam from trying, Dean mused as he watched her watching them.

"I think I remember which way to go," he finally said as he gave Sam a little shove out of the door. "Let's go, Sammy."

It was Sam turn to smack Dean. Dean rubbed the back of his head with a scowl on his face as Sam kept walking as if nothing had happened. Once they were headed down the stairs, Sam decided it was time to speak up.

"Why did you hit me?"

Dean stopped on the stairs and looked down at his little brother who was several steps ahead of him. "I could ask you the same thing, little brother." The look on Sam's face, however, answered the question before Dean could actually ask it. "You give in way too easily with her, Sam."

Sam sighed and finished walking down the stairs. He wasn't going to give Dean the confrontation he seemed to be fishing for. He shook his head a little and walked over to the front door, unlocking it. He didn't even bother to check if Dean was following. He knew his brother was right behind him.

It didn't take long for Dean to catch up and soon he was standing next to Sam. As he opened his mouth to continue his argument, Emerson appeared at the top of the staircase. Sam noticed her first although Dean caught movement out of the corner of his eye before he saw his brother actually looking up at something. She and Sam exchanged a brief smile and Dean muttered something under his breath, quickly turning away.

"I thought you guys would have been long gone by now," Emerson explained as she bounded down the stairs. "I was just coming to lock up after you." She was staring at them with a confused look on her face as she reached the bottom of the stairs. "Is there something wrong?"

Dean shook his head, turning to open the door as Sam seemed to just stand there. "It's just some brotherly bonding," he said, cracking a sarcastic smile. He turned to Sam as he pulled open the oak door. "We'll finish this discussion outside."

Sam watched as Dean pretty much stormed out. He gave Emerson a sympathetic look, being careful not to apologize for Dean's behavior. The last thing he wanted was to have her slap him as she had promised to do earlier. "He doesn't hate you. It's in Dean's nature to be antisocial."

Emerson giggled a little as she walked over to the door and nodded her understanding. "You can drop off the papers at the store," she told him as she leaned against the door frame. "If it's closed by the time you get there, just stop by here. I'll be home."

Sam nodded. He briefly glanced over his shoulder to see Dean standing at the end of the walkway, glaring at him. He turned back to Emerson with a crooked grin. "I'll make sure he stays at the inn."

Emerson shook her head, brushing some loose strands of her dark red hair out of her eyes. "If you think that's best," she said with a non-committal shrug. "I'm kind of getting used to him. I get the feeling that the feeling is mutual on that."

Sam cocked his head to the side and glanced over his shoulder again. The look on Dean's face didn't exactly convey that he might be warming up to Emerson. He shook his head as he looked back at her. "Are you sure about that?"

She laughed. "Go on, Sam. Before he bites your head off or something. It's not me that he's annoyed with this time."

Sam wondered if she could read thoughts or if she was just that good at reading people. He nodded and turned to leave. When he turned back to say good-bye, he found that Emerson had already closed and locked the door. He smiled at that and took the porch stairs two at a time to get to Dean.

"Dude," Dean said, sounding a little annoyed. "Did you have to stand around and talk for another fifteen minutes?"

Sam shrugged off Dean's question and started walking down the block. It was a long walk back to the inn from Emerson's house and he hoped that Dean would keep quiet long enough for them to make it to their room. There was also some hope that maybe the research he had with him would keep his older brother occupied enough to get him to forget about whatever it was he wanted to pick on Sam about this time.

"All right," Dean said, nodding as he took a couple of long strides to catch up to Sam. "I see how this is going to be. Now you're going to give me the silent treatment because I picked on your little girlfriend back there. That's fine."

Sam sighed and turned toward Dean. "Do you think we can save this argument for another time?" he asked sarcastically. He never stopped walking as he spoke. "I just don't see why you have to be so abrasive with her. She's never done anything to you."

"She's too vague. I don't like that."

Sam chuckled. "And you're being an ass to her, but that doesn't stop her from being decent toward you. In fact, she just told me that you're growing on her."

Dean's features took on a shocked expression that he didn't bother to hide. A couple of kids who had been playing in the street quickly ran inside as they passed, but he didn't seem to notice them. "She did?"

Sam chuckled again. He could hear the surprise in his brother's voice. Nodding, he looked to his side to see Dean's expression hadn't changed much since Sam had made his comment. "She thinks the feeling is mutual."

"Well, clearly that girl isn't mentally stable." Dean let out a low whistle and made a gesture to show he thought Emerson was crazy.

"I didn't exactly word it that way, but I told her that I doubted it."

Dean cleared his throat, trying to wrap his head around what Sam had said. "Damn," he muttered, still shocked. He shook his head to get rid of the cobwebs. "Let's just focus on that research she gave us, okay?"

A crooked grin played on Sam's lips and he nodded, glad for a change in subject. "So you think it's worth looking into now?"

Dean shook his head with a crooked grin of his own. "Of course not," he said, putting as much bravado in his voice as he could muster, "but we can still check into it. Two heads being better than one and all that."

---

Dean didn't want to wait for morning to get started, although Sam was stretched out on his bed, yawning. Dean knew he had protested a lot, but his interest was seriously piqued now. Since Emerson seemed surprised to find these papers, Dean figured they were important to say the least. He looked over his shoulder at Sam and gave him a look to tell his little brother he wanted to get started.

"Dude," was all he said.

Sam sat up, propping himself up onto his elbows. He yawned again. "Man, Dean. Can't it wait?" he replied in a sleepy voice, knowing what Dean wanted to do. He found he felt amazingly tired, although it wasn't like Sam to be the first one to fall asleep. "We can look at it in the morning with clear heads."

"My head is clear."

Sam bit back a retort before it flew out of his mouth and shook his head, although a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "If you want to check it out," he said with a little wave of his hand, "be my guest. I'm going to get some sleep." He wobbled a little until he got both arms under him to prop himself up.

Dean turned back to the papers, sitting at the desk where they had left their laptop. He considered seeing if he could do a search online for any of the writing in the margins but decided it would be better to see what he could get from the research on the pages first. He could hear Sam drifting off to sleep and rolled his eyes at that. It wasn't like Sam to fall asleep so quickly and seeing how all this was actually Sam's fault, Dean wondered if he should even start without his brother. Looking at the papers, however, his curiosity got the better of him.

Just as Dean started digging a little deeper, the snoring coming from Sam's bed distracted him. He turned around, glaring at his little brother. He looked so peaceful while he slept that somehow Dean couldn't manage to really be upset with Sam. With a sigh, he slipped on a pair of headphones, cranked up his music and starting doing a little research of his own – on his own.

---

Dean kicked the corner of the bed where Sam was still sleeping quite soundly. And he kicked it hard. Not being a morning person himself, Dean was surprised when – after only three hours of sleep – he woke up at 8 AM. Sam, oddly enough, had still been fast asleep so he ran out for coffee and donuts, figuring he'd let his little brother get the sleep Dean knew he needed so badly. Now, however, he was starting to get seriously pissed off. It was some time after 10 AM, the coffee was cold and Dean was hungry.

"Get up!" he shouted in Sam's ear.

Sam shifted a little but continued to sleep. Dean decided then that it was time to take more drastic measures. He grabbed the ice bucket left in the room and headed for the ice machine in the hall. He smiled as the maid watched him with a scowl fixed firmly on her face. She looked like she was waiting for him to snap or something. Dean just gave her a smile as he passed her again on the way back to the room. For her part, the petite Hispanic woman ignored him with a wonderful efficiency.

He sighed, holding the bucket – now filled to the top with ice cubes – with both of his hands as he kicked the door closed behind himself. Sam was still out cold and didn't move even though Dean made as much noise as possible on his way over to the bed. Setting the ice bucket aside – but within reach – Dean pulled down the blanket. Sam seemed to wake then only to roll over and continue to sleep. A mischievous smile played on his lips as Dean picked up the bucket again.

Dumping the ice cubes onto his little brother, Dean quickly jumped back and waited for the fall out. It didn't take long. Within seconds, Sam was wide awake, cursing loudly as he quickly jumped out of his bed.

"What the hell did you do that for?"

Dean smacked Sam on his back hard enough for him to jerk forward. "It's after 10 AM, Sammy," he jovially said, nodding toward the digital clock beside Sam's bed. "I think you've had more than your fair share of beauty sleep, don't you?"

Sam looked over at the clock. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked again. It couldn't be right. That meant he had slept for over twelve hours. That wasn't like him. He usually functioned quite well on a few hours sleep. He looked at Dean and yawned, stretching as he climbed out of bed. Pulling on a pair of discarded jeans, he walked over to where the coffee and donuts were waiting.

Sam grabbed a cup and took a drink, making a face when he realized it was cold. "When did you get this stuff?"

Dean walked over to the table where he had set up their "breakfast" and shrugged. "It was some time after 9 o'clock, I think. We've got a microwave in the room. We'll nuke the coffee and get right to work. I started looking over the papers last night, but the writing on the margins and the sketches were a lot more interesting. Maybe you'll have better luck with it."

Sam looked at the Styrofoam cup in his left hand and then over his shoulder at the microwave. He walked over and put his cup in it, setting it for one minute. "I forgot about those papers," he admitted with a sleepy smile. "Let me see them."

Dean grabbed them from the desk, walking over to hand them to Sam. He grabbed his own cup on the way and when the microwave beeped, he stuck his in after taking Sam's out. "Do you want to run off the copies first and get these back to . . ." Dean rolled his eyes before he finished his question. ". . . Emerson?"

Sam lifted the cup of rewarmed coffee to his lips and took a cautious sip. It was lukewarm at best, but it was warm enough. He, too, was drawn to the writing and sketches in the margins, but he did his best to focus on the handwritten pages instead. The writing was flowery but easy to read. It was clearly a woman's handwriting, which was why his attention kept falling on the writing in the margin. It was barely legible and clearly a man's handwriting.

He absent-mindedly blew at the coffee in his cup, staring at the pages. "Do you think Emerson knows who wrote the other stuff?" he asked, looking up at Dean.

Dean was stuffing a powdered donut into his mouth. He quickly swallowed what he was eating and shrugged. "Maybe," he said, his mouth still a little bit full. "Maybe not. She did say her mom liked to hunt things."

"Maybe she knew Dad," Sam said with a hopeful look.

"Maybe or maybe it was someone else," Dean said. He honestly didn't think there was a chance that Emerson's mom had worked with their dad, but he wasn't going to tell Sam that outright. He took a long drink from his Styrofoam cup. "It doesn't look like Dad's writing, but there were a few people out there that he did trust back in the day. Maybe Emerson's mom was one of them."

Sam slowly nodded. "I'll head over to the library and run off two sets of copies for us," he said. When Dean gave him a look, he sighed. "In case something happens to one set, we'll have a back-up. I'll run the originals by her shop. Then we can get started going through the research and maybe see if we can't get to translating the writing in the margin. Maybe it's important."

Dean nodded. "I started on that myself," he said. He shook his head at his brother's surprised look. "Hey. I can do stuff like that on my own, you know. It just takes me a little longer. I think I got the first few lines on the first page. I'll fill you in later."

Sam nodded. He had been getting on his shoes while his brother was talking. He tied them as he nodded again. He quickly changed his tee-shirt and pulled on his jacket. "Yeah. Okay. That sounds like a plan." He walked over to the door, looking over his shoulder as he opened it. "I'll try not to be long."

Dean chuckled. "I won't hold my breath."

---

Sam folded the copies in half and slipped them into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. He saw Becky hanging out with three of her friends. They looked to be gathered around something, but as he got closer, he noticed one of the boys slipped it into a backpack. Becky glanced at him, giving him a brief smile and then quickly turned away. Sam was confused by that. Not long ago, she was chatting with him like crazy and now she was trying to act like he didn't exist.

He walked over, slipping the original pages into the back pocket of his jeans. "Becky," he called. "Hey. How's it going?"

Becky turned around and gave Sam a smile, although it looked forced. She got elbowed in the ribs by a tall, Hispanic girl. Becky gave her a dirty look and waved at Sam. "Hey, Sam. Things are good. Checked on the car yet?"

Sam smiled, remembering how he had told Becky about Dean's car. He shook his head. "No, I'm leaving that to my brother. So who are your friends?"

Becky seemed a little nervous at that question. She looked from face to face and gave the red-haired boy a shrug. "These are just some friends of mine." She gave him another forced smile. "This is Yolanda Cruz, Kevin Tate and Michael Stover." She pointed to each one in turn and each of them gave Sam a little wave, although none of them seemed like they wanted to. "Guys, this is Sam Winchester. He and his brother were passing through town, but there was something wrong with his brother's car so . . ." She shrugged. "They're kind of stuck."

Sam stuck a thumb in the direction he was about to take. "I was just headed over to Emerson's," he said. "Do you know if she's in?"

Becky looked at Kevin as if to silently ask for his permission to speak. Kevin gave a barely noticeable nod. But Sam noticed it. He noticed it mostly because he had a big brother and silent conversations were normal between the two of them.

Becky shrugged finally. "I haven't been by yet," she said. "I'm going in to help her close the store later. Why?"

Sam briefly contemplated letting Becky take the papers to Emerson so he and Dean could start their own research a little sooner. Something about the way Becky was acting, however, set Sam on edge. He gave her a smile though and shrugged. "I was thinking about stopping by to see her," he said, trying to keep from sounding too vague. "I just didn't want to disturb her or anything."

Becky looked at him as if he were speaking in a foreign language. Yolanda elbowed her again and Michael let out an exasperated sigh. Kevin, however, stepped forward, looking Sam square in the eye. He puffed himself up, trying to make himself look bigger than he actually was. It didn't exactly work. The kid was already rail thin and didn't look like he could hurt a fly.

"What are you worried about disturbing?" Kevin roughly asked. He had a wildly defiant look in his green eyes and a scowl on his face.

Sam gave Kevin a friendly smile, trying to stop a confrontation before it started. Plus, Sam wasn't interested in getting into an argument with a 15-year-old kid. "Nothing really," he said. "Look, Becky. I'll see you around, okay? Since I'm probably stuck here for another three or four days at the least."

Becky looked from Sam to Kevin and back to Sam. Her smile now was weak but genuine. "Oh, okay, Sam. Tell Emerson I might be late for me."

"Why would you be late?"

Becky seemed scared by the look Kevin was giving her. It was one of warning and Sam took the hint, not giving Becky a chance to try to give him an answer. He waved off his own question and gave her a reassuring grin.

"Don't worry about it," Sam said to her. "I'll let her know."

Sam walked away, looking over his shoulder briefly to see Kevin giving Becky a hard time. She seemed to be taking it all right, but with a mother like hers, Sam was sure she could handle most verbal assaults. He sighed and headed toward Emerson's shop. It was several blocks from the library, but it wasn't like Sam minded the walk. It gave him a chance to get his head straight before he saw her. She seemed to mess with his head. Of course, he doubted it was really her fault. It wasn't like she tried to do it. Sam felt like he seemed to lose it a little around her.

---

Emerson's head shot up when she heard the jingling of the bell on her front door. She had come in extra early that morning to go through all of her inventory so she was tired and a bit jumpy. She knew that quite a few things were missing and decided it was time to do something about the situation. However, all thought of that was gone when she saw who had come in.

She smiled brightly. "Hey, Sam," she said as he walked to the back of the store. "Didn't expect to see you so early." She watched his every move, still unable to believe he was a real person.

Sam yawned and gave her a slow, lazy smile. "I'm glad you think it's early," he said. "I would have been here sooner, but I sort of slept in."

Emerson smiled, loosening her burgundy hair from its bun. It cascaded down, over her shoulders. She ran her fingers through it and saw Sam take an appreciative glance as her shirt rode up a bit with her movement. Emerson laughed and shook her head before straightening out the pale pink tee-shirt she was wearing. "Up late last night, were we?" she teased, with a playful smile.

Sam slowly shook his head. "No, I must have fallen asleep just a little while after Dean and I got back to our room."

Emerson's expression darkened as she gave him a concerned look. Her eyes seemed to be searching his face for signs of something and when she didn't find what she had been looking for, she frowned a bit. "You're usually a light sleeper," Emerson ventured. "Right? I mean, you wake easily . . . and you get up early, too. Like, you can function on little sleep without difficulty, right? But last night you were exhausted and you woke up still feeling in a daze?"

Sam nodded a little with each statement she made. "Yeah, why?"

She sighed, pulling herself up onto the counter. She swung her legs over and sat there, still just staring at Sam. An intense sadness filled her eyes. "You need to go . . . soon."

Sam gave her a confused look, shaking his head. "I don't understand . . ." He stopped himself before he could finish the statement. I thought you liked me, he thought, still shaking his head with a disbelieving look on his face.

"It's this place, Sam," Emerson said in a desperate tone. "That's how it started with Nathaniel. Going to bed earlier, sleeping in later. You have to go before it's too late."

Sam just stared at her, his mouth agape just a little. He didn't think she could be serious, although from the sound of her voice he knew she was. But he felt fine. He figured she was just being paranoid, but still, he thought he'd check to see if the car would be ready any sooner. Just in case, he told himself.

She sighed a little, knowing Sam didn't fully believe her. "And Dean? Is he . . ."

Sam shook off his shock and then shook his head with a little smile, glad to see Emerson was at least a little concerned about Dean as well. "He's fine."

"You two need to leave. The sooner, the better. Leave what's going on here to me because if anything happened to you, I'd . . ." Emerson sighed, her shoulders sagging. She didn't know where she was going with her statement, but she wanted him to know she wasn't trying to send him away. She wanted him to stay, but she didn't want him to get hurt by what was going on in Mount Redding.

Sam pulled the papers from his back pocket, fixing her with an oddly defiant look. "I'm not leaving until my brother and I figure this out," he told her, setting the papers beside Emerson. "I'll be fine."

She sighed and nodded, trying to give him a brave smile. "Okay. Maybe I'm just being paranoid," she conceded with a nod, knowing it was what he wanted to hear. "Stay if you want. I just don't know why this is so important to you."

Sam stared at her for a long moment. He didn't know why it was important to him either. Finally, he just shrugged. "It just feels like something I need to do," he said. "Like maybe it might help you with what you're doing here or a case Dean and I might be working on later."

Emerson sighed and nodded a little. "Okay," she softly said. "Who am I to try and tell you what to do anyway? Right?" She gave him a soft smile. "You're a big boy. You can take care of yourself. It's just that . . ." She sighed. "I worry about you, Sam. I don't know why, but I do. I don't want to see you get hurt if you don't have to."

Sam smiled just a little bit. He wanted to reach out and caress her face, to pull her in for a hug. He didn't think it would be right. Just as she had no right to tell him what he could and couldn't do, Sam figured he had no right to physical contact with her unless she initiated it. A smile was the most he could manage to do without feeling like he was pushing the boundaries. He gave her a nod and glanced over his shoulder at the door.

Emerson nodded back, a soft smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth. "You should probably go," she agreed, although Sam hadn't mentioned it yet. "You have a lot of work to do." She sighed as she hopped off the desk. "And so do I. I was thinking about making a list of all the things that have been stolen from the store. Try to figure out who's doing it and why. If I know what's being taken, I'm pretty sure I can figure out what they're trying to do with the stuff."

Sam nodded, remembering how awkward Becky was acting towards him. Then he remembered what Becky had asked of him. "Oh. Becky told me to let you know she might be late," he said. "I saw her outside of the library with some of her friends. She was acting a little shifty."

Emerson waved it off as soon as Sam said it. "I figured she'd be late today," she replied. "One of her friends stopped in just as I opened up, getting some supplies for an offering of gratitude to some god or something. She's been testing the waters where witchcraft and the like is concerned for at least a year now. I figured she'd be with them for the ceremony." She shrugged.

Sam nodded. "I'll try to stop by if Dean and I find anything," he said. "Or before we leave. Whichever comes first."

---

Dean looked up as soon as Sam entered the room. "So, like I was saying before you left . . ."

Sam looked a little dazed. He pulled out a chair and sat down, his shoulders sagging. "She thinks it might be happening to me."

"Excuse me?" Dean sat down next to his brother, confusion all over his face. "Dude, what are you talking about?"

"She thinks it's starting to drain me," he replied in an even tone. "Which kind of makes sense if you think about it. Maybe it detected whatever it is that's different about me so it's draining me like it drains her."

"Well, it doesn't seem like it's affecting her sleep that much to me," Dean sarcastically said.

Sam shook his head and then buried his face in his arms as they rested on the desk. If she was right, then Sam wanted to figure this out even more, but he knew that in doing so, he was placing himself in serious danger. He sighed when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to reality.

Dean was never good with this kind of thing, but he couldn't stand seeing his little brother like this. For a second, he worried that maybe Sam had fallen asleep, but when Sam picked his head up to look at him, the worry immediately left his features. He wouldn't let Sam see him that way if he could help it.

Clearing his throat, he held out his hand, while the other still rested on Sam's shoulder. "Where's the research?" Dean asked, sounding all business.

Sam sat upright, shrugging off Dean's hand, and fished the copies out of his jacket pocket before taking off his jacket. He remembered as Dean took the papers how cold Becky acted towards him. When he brought it up to Emerson, she seemed to brush it off. She seemed far more worried that Sam might be "sick".

"You remember that girl we talked to on our first day here, right?"

Dean snapped his fingers as he tried to recall her face, but he knew who Sam was referring to. "Short, blonde, adorably cute, like 15, right?"

Sam nodded. "Her name's Becky George. She actually works at Emerson's store."

Dean looked mildly impressed by that. He nodded, trying to get his brother to keep talking. "So what does that have to do with anything?"

Sam shifted his weight in the chair and fought back a yawn, not wanting to give Dean a reason to worry that Emerson might be right. "I saw her outside the library after I made the copies. She's usually really friendly towards me, but she acted kind of . . . I don't know . . . shifty." It was the same way he had described her to Emerson.

"She's 15, Sammy. Who do you expect?"

Sam shook his head. He knew something felt off about the situation. "No, it's not that. She was with some friends. Three of them."

"Three friends? And she works at Emerson's shop?" Dean tried to wrap his head around that. "She makes four."

Sam nodded his understanding. Dean was thinking what Sam had initially thought about the situation. "Emerson said she's been having a lot of shoplifting happen lately," he said, "and when I told her Becky said she'd be late for work, she said she had figured as much. One of Becky's friends had bought supplies for some ceremony of gratitude. She's already dabbling, Dean." Somehow it felt significant to Sam.

Dean sat back in his chair. He laced his fingers behind his head and blew out a breath. "What do you think they're planning next?"

Sam shrugged. "I think we should warn Emerson of the possibility."

"Why? You don't think they'd try to . . ."

Sam quickly shook his head. He didn't even want to consider what Dean was hinting at. "No, but if they're messing with forces they don't understand, she needs to know."

Dean sat forward in the chair, his hands now resting on his knees as he leaned in towards his brother. "You're just gonna walk in there and say what? 'Hey, Emerson, so here's the thing. We think Becky might be messing with some dark magick. Maybe you should check it out.'?"

Sam softly sighed. In truth, he had no idea what her would have told her. It had been hard enough to tell her that Becky would be late only to hear about the ceremony. Emerson acted as if it was nothing, but it set Sam on edge. He shook it off and nodded to the papers sitting on the desk by Dean. "Let's get started on that," he said, deciding the conversation about Becky and her friends was clearly over.

---

Sam was highly disappointed. Although the research Emerson's mother had done was beyond thorough, he felt like there were chunks missing from it. And it didn't seem like what was missing was minor by any means. It was almost as if she had been censoring herself, although he couldn't seem to understand why. He told Dean as much.

Dean heavily sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands. He felt like his head was going to explode from all the information he had just digested. "It might be," he said with a shrug as he stood up. He stretched the kinks out from sitting so long. "It's that book that she mentioned once or twice that I'm most interested in."

Sam thumbed through the papers he had in front of him, finding one that referenced the book Dean mentioned. "She said she found it once, under the floor boards of the old church on Pine Street. It was 'thick with yellowing pages' and 'smudged writing'. She thought it looked at least a couple hundred years old."

Dean nodded, pointing to the last page that he had read which also referenced the book. "And here she says she 'lost it' before she had a chance to dig any deeper into it," he added. "It says she had started translating some of the Latin passages but got stuck when she reached some passages that were in Gaelic."

"Maybe some of the Latin writing in the margins is from the book. Someone else taking down notes for her or something."

Dean hadn't considered that possibility. He gave Sam a thoughtful nod. "Well, I got the first two lines or whatever," he explained, "and I have some notes on the sketches. The three on the first two pages are almost a diagram on how to set up an altar or something for some ceremony. There's an inverted pentagram on this page . . ." He paused to point at it. ". . . which I thought was odd for about a second, but there's also some other symbols used to represent different demons on that one, too."

Dean shrugged and rubbed his eyes again. "The rest of it threw me until I laid out all the pages together." He gathered the remaining pages and set them up as Sam watched. "I did a search online for it. This is some kind of Hindu soul-sucking demon. I can't remember the name of it. Or maybe it's just that I can't pronounce it."

Sam's eyebrows shot up at that. "You think this is the demon we're dealing with?"

Dean leaned on the desk, eying the crudely drawn figure. Even if it wasn't drawn in great detail, it was still grotesque looking. He looked over at Sam. "The first two lines or whatever make up a phrase," he continued. "It's either 'the demon below' or 'the hidden demon'. Or at least something along those lines." He sighed, still looking at Sam. "I think this ugly son of a bitch is exactly what we're looking for."

"We need to translate the rest of this writing," Sam said, sounding excited that they might have actually found a real clue that could lead them to something else, "and see if Emerson knows who might have been working with her mom on something like this."

"I'll translate this stuff if you talk to Emerson," Dean said, giving Sam a hopeful look.

"I've always been better with Latin," Sam matter-of-factly said, shaking his head. "I'll translate this stuff. You talk to Emerson." It wasn't just that Sam had a better grasp of the language. He also figured it would be a good way to get Emerson and Dean to air out their differences.

Dean made a sour face, almost pouting at the prospect of having to meet with Emerson. "Man," he muttered. "This is your little girlfriend." He gave his brother a pleading look. "Come on, Sam. She doesn't even like me."

"She likes you," reasoned Sam. "You just won't give her a chance."

Dean stood up and lightly kicked at the chair he had been sitting on. He was acting like a two-year-old about the whole thing, but he really didn't want to talk to Emerson any more than necessary. "Come on, Sam."

Sam stubbornly shook his head. He pulled a pad of paper – with the name of the inn embossed on the top – and a pen out of the desk. He started deciphering the Latin writing, recopying it first so he could get a better look at it.

Dean noticed his little brother was ignoring him and muttered something obscene under his breath. He took a long drink of his coffee, practically draining the cup. "This sucks," he said. "You know that, Sammy? This really sucks. I get stuck talking to the one person who dislikes me more than you."

Sam looked up and frowned. "You're my brother," he said. He was about to add something that he knew Dean would have found too "touchy-feely", but instead gave his brother a small smile. "Give her a chance, Dean. You might find you two have more in common than you think."

Dean rolled his eyes, grabbing his jacket. He figured he'd get this torture over with sooner rather than later. "So you keep saying." He slipped on his jacket and grabbed his coffee cup. It was almost empty, but he found it comforting to have in his hand at the moment. When Dean offered to stay and do research, you could be sure he'd rather not do whatever it was he had do to. This was one of those times. "Come on, Sam. You get along with her better than I do. She's not going to tell me anything."

Sam shook his head with a very faint smile playing on the corners of his lips. "You're doing it, Dean. You've killed countless demons and other things that go bump in the night. I think you can handle one conversation with Emerson."

Dean made a sour face at that comment and headed for the door. He finished his coffee before he shut the door behind himself, leaving the cup on the window sill.

---

Becky ran to the door when she heard the bell jingle. She smiled when she saw it was the other Winchester brother. She hadn't talked to Dean beyond their little question and answer session outside of Emerson's shop. She had been waiting to see when he would finally stop by, hoping to talk to him like she sometimes talked with Sam.

"Hey," she said, twirling some of her long, blonde hair around her index finger. "You're Sam's big brother, right? Dean?"

Dean smiled a little. The fact that this girl was flirting with him was not lost on him. "Yeah," he said. "It's Becky, right? Sam and I were just talking about you."

Becky's face flushed a bit. She, however, didn't look away from Dean like she sometimes did with Sam. "If you're looking for Emerson," she said, "she just stepped out to get something to eat. I guess she hasn't eaten all day. You can wait here if you want or I'll tell her you stopped in."

Dean began debating whether or not he should go. He knew Sam would read him the riot act when he got back so he gave Becky a crooked grin and nodded. "I'll stick around for awhile," he said. "There's something I need to talk to her about. It's too important to wait until it's convenient for her."

Becky a little bit smiled, still twirling her hair around her finger. "Anything that I might know something about?"

Dean shook his head, noticing that she seemed to be perpetually flirting with him. It felt odd since she was only 15-years-old, but he didn't exactly discourage her either. "Not really," he told her in an easy manner, smiling a bit. "So have you lived in town your whole life, Becky?"

She narrowed her eyes a little and stopped twirling her hair. "Sam asked me the same thing." Becky watched Dean a little while longer. When he didn't seem to fidget under her gaze, she shrugged and smiled a little brighter. "My family is one of the founding families around here. We've been here for generations."

Dean nodded a little, taking in that bit of information and wondering why Sam had neglected to mention it sooner. "Sam never mentioned that to me," he said. "That's . . . interesting. So you would know all about this town then."

Becky shook her head. "I don't know any more than the next person actually," she said, sounding like she was bored with the conversation. "I can tell you where some of the older buildings in town are and where certain things used to be, but that's about it and that's only because my grandpa showed me stuff like that. My mom isn't interested in stuff like that and my grandpa knew I was so . . ." She shrugged.

"What about your dad?"

"Oh. Well, he died when I was like two or something like that." Becky gave a flippant wave of her hand as if it didn't matter. "I never met him. My mom kept the family name so I don't even know what his last name was."

Dean nodded, although he was surprised by that. "I'm sorry to hear about your father," he said. "It must have been hard on your mom."

Becky shook her head. "Nope. She said she was happy that it was just the two of us," she replied. Her voice sounded oddly chipper. "We lived with her parents for awhile, but she ended up being willed her Great Aunt Ellie's house so that's were we live now."

Dean was about to ask Becky a few more questions when the bell tinkled. Both of them turned toward the door. Emerson was laden with bags and without thinking twice, Dean walked over and took a couple from her. Clearly, dinner wasn't the only thing she had come back with. He gave her a smile and a slow smile crossed her lips as well.

"I didn't expect to see you here," she said.

Dean shrugged. "Where do you want me to set this stuff?"

Emerson bit back a laugh. "On the counter is fine," she said. "I got enough for Becky and myself, but I'm sure we can share if you're hungry."

Dean peeked into a bag. He could smell pasta sauce inside and garlic bread. "Don't worry," he said, although his stomach was growling in protest to his words. His mouth was salivating at the thought. "I wouldn't want to impose."

Becky waved him off. "I think I should be headed home anyway," she said. "I have a lot of homework tonight so . . ."

Emerson smirked and shook her head. "I'm working you three times as hard tomorrow since you want to sneak out early after coming in late."

Becky smiled brightly and nodded. She ran to the back to gather up her things. Emerson shook her head and looked over at Dean.

"She's a good kid," Emerson said off-handedly. "Smart as hell, too, but I worry about her home life sometimes. Usually she spends more time here than she does at home."

Dean nodded a little. "Mind if I . . ." He pointed inside the bag he had set down.

Emerson laughed and joined him at the counter just as Becky hurried out of the back room. "Go ahead," she told Dean, before grabbing Becky's wrist to stop her. She gave the teenager a serious look. "I'm not kidding when I say I'm going to work you three times as hard tomorrow, Becky. I want to do inventory and it's not going to be easy."

Becky gave her boss an impatient look, tapping her toe on the floor. "I know," she replied, sounding irritated. "I won't flake. I promise."

Emerson sighed a little and let go of Becky's wrist. "I want you in right after school," she said as the girl took off. "I'm serious!" She hear the bell jingle and the door close soon after that. She turned to find Dean already going through the Styrofoam containers of food. "Just help yourself," she teased with a wave of her hand.

Dean looked up. He looked like a kid who had just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Sorry," he said, giving her a sheepish grin.

Emerson shook her head. "It's fine. I won't be able to eat all that anyway," she said with a trace of a smile on her lips. "I swear that place makes individual portions as if they were feeding an army with just one serving." She laughed, slipping past Dean to get into the back room. She came back with two plastic forks and handed one to Dean.

Dean watched her as she moved. She was tying her hair up into a ponytail and he had to admit that Sam had pretty good taste. Emerson was beautiful in a very inconventional way. He eyed her, temporarily forgetting about the food in front of him. When she slapped his arm, Dean sheepishly smiled and looked back at the spaghetti dinner.

"You're worse than Sam is," Emerson teased, smiling a bit. "At least Sam doesn't leer at me when he watches me."

Dean put up his hands in a defensive manner, looking up at her again. "Hey. I don't leer."

"So why did you come here, Dean? And don't say it was for the food because you had no idea that I'd be eating," Emerson suddenly said, cutting right to the chase. "And if you say it was for the conversation, I'll have to slap you again."

Dean cracked a smile and began moving some of the pasta around in the container. "Sam sent me over," he said, looking at the food.

Emerson lightly sighed. She hopped up onto the counter and placed one of the containers on her lap. She twirled some spaghetti around the fork and took a bite before saying something. She pulled two bottles of Coke out of another bag, tossing one to Dean. He almost didn't catch it and she smiled at that.

"What did you guys find out?"

Dean slowly twisted the cap on his bottle. He watched Emerson eat a little bit more as she waited for him to respond. She seemed more comfortable in the store than in her own home. "Some of the sketches," he said. "If you put them together, it gives us a nice picture of our demon."

She nodded. "So it's a demon then? For sure?"

Dean took a long drink from his Coke and nodded. "Yeah, why?"

Emerson opened her own bottle of Coke and shrugged. "I thought it might be, but since I never really looked into it, I never knew for sure."

Dean eyed her as he ate a little more. For someone who said she didn't want to know about what was going on, she seemed to know a little bit already. "Anyway, Sam's going through the Latin in the margins right now, trying to translate it," he said. "We were just wondering if you knew who your mother might have been working with on that."

Emerson shook her head. She was in the middle of chewing a big bite. She put her hand in front of her mouth and held up her index finger on her other hand, the fork still in her hand. She shook her head as she swallowed. "If my mother worked with anyone," she finally said, "she never told any of us about it. Especially not me."

Dean thought he noticed a bit of sadness lacing her voice. He gave her a reassuring smile, although he got the feeling Sam would have been better with this sort of thing. "So you don't know the names of any of the people she might have trusted with something like this?" he asked, trying not to press her too hard for information. "It's just that . . . Well, we found several passages where she mentions this big book. It was taken from her. We thought maybe if you knew who she might have trusted with something like that, then maybe we could find that book."

Emerson sighed, setting her container aside. She suddenly wasn't hungry anymore. "I think I know what book you're talking about," she softly said. "My mother tried to hide it from me, but I glanced at it once." She let out a heavy sigh. "A majority of it was in Latin, which I can read decently, but some of it was in another language. I didn't recognize it at all. It disappeared just before I got shipped out of town."

Dean nodded as she spoke, listening carefully to the way her voice seemed to crack a bit at certain points. "That would be the book," he affirmed with another nod. "Your mom said the other language was Gaelic. She was having trouble translating it, but . . ."

Emerson's face sort of lit up when Dean mentioned Gaelic writing. "There was this one guy," she said, interrupting him. "He was kind of weird. He came around every once and awhile, usually when us kids were outside playing or away from the house for more twenty minutes at a time."

Dean set aside his container and leaned on the counter top, watching Emerson intently now. "Do you remember his name?"

Emerson shook her head slowly. She pursed her lips as if she were thinking about it. "I don't think so," she said. "He wasn't from around here. I know that much. He had an accent. It might have been Scottish." She shrugged. "The book disappeared around the same time he did. I remember my mom pitching a fit about it, blaming him for taking it, but I don't think he did."

"Why not?"

"He . . ." She paused, trying to think of how to word it. "He was really weird, but he was a nice guy. He wouldn't hurt a fly, never broke the law if he could help it. The last thing he would have done was steal something like that from my mom. He knew how much it meant to her because she was looking for a way to save her son."

Dean walked around the counter. He decided he had drudged up enough bad memories for Emerson for one night. He gave her a sad smile. "I'm really sorry . . ."

She waved him off. "You don't have to apologize and if you have to go, go." She packed up the food and put it in the bag. Then she handed it to Dean. "I barely touched mine so if you and Sam want to eat it, it's fine. I'm not really hungry anymore anyway."

Dean looked at the bag and then at Emerson. His smile grew a little. She was growing on him. The longer he was in Mount Redding, the more he seemed to like her. "When we leave town . . ."

Emerson waved him off again, giving him a little nudge toward the door. "If I'm right about Sam," she suddenly said, "you guys are going to need to disappear before you can do anything about this demon. But don't worry. I'll take care of it."

Dean noticed the determination in her eyes at that moment. It hadn't been there before and he wondered if it was because of Sam. He nodded with a faint smile as he opened the door. "Thanks," he said, "for everything, I mean." He held up the bag. "This and everything else."

Emerson softly smiled, understanding that was about as close to being tender that Dean could muster. "Yeah, I could say the same thing about you guys. You've helped me more than you'll probably ever know."

---

Sam jumped a little bit when he heard the door open to the room. He quickly rubbed the sleep from his eyes and then shifted his attention to the sheet of paper where he had been working on the translations. Sam didn't know when he had dozed off or for how long, but he realized he had done only a little bit of work before that.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

Sam yawned and stretched. "Just took a little cat-nap," he said as if it were nothing. "What did you find out?"

Dean eyed Sam suspiciously before pulling out a chair and sitting down. He took off his jacket and glanced at what Sam had been working on. After the last talk he and Sam had – and then after talking with Emerson for himself – Dean wondered about his little brother's well-being. "Looks like it was more than a little cat-nap, Sammy," he said, pointing to the paper. He could tell Sam hadn't gotten much done since he left.

Sam rolled his eyes a little bit and turned in his chair to face Dean. "Let's not argue about this," he said. "Not when we're so close."

Dean sighed and nodded. "Well, she told me she thinks she remembers the guy her mom might have worked with on those papers. He was Scottish and a little weird but a decent enough guy."

"Doesn't sound like anyone Dad ever worked with."

Dean nodded, still watching Sam carefully. "She might have ran in different circles than Dad did," he agreed. "Emerson doesn't think this guy took the book, but I guess her mom had a different idea."

"Another dead-end," Sam muttered. He looked at the paper and pushed it towards Dean. All of the Latin writing was put together neatly and Sam had begun going through different possibilities for translations, but in all honesty, he was stuck.

Dean looked at the page and sighed. "Sam, I think she's right," he softly said.

His little brother looked up at him, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"I think we need to leave town soon," he continued. "I'm going to stop by the garage tomorrow to see if the car's ready. If it is, I'm sorry, Sam, but we're leaving."

Sam scoffed and shook his head. "We can't. We're too close. We've got this, Dean."

"That's the problem, Sam. We're too close. You're too close. You don't normally take naps in the middle of investigations. I come back and find you've been sleeping. I could hardly wake you up this morning. It's not normal, man."

Sam shook his head, running the fingers of both of his hands through his hair. He locked his fingers behind his head and sighed, closing his eyes. He didn't want to consider the possibility that something was happening to him. "You can't be serious."

"I am, Sam. We're leaving as soon as the car is ready. I'm not going to have you end up in a coma or something because of this."

Sam turned his attention back to the translation. The words seemed to be a blur and he could feel himself wanting nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep. He rubbed his eyes, hoping to rid himself of the feeling, but it wouldn't go away. "I'm not leaving here until we figure this out."

"I'm not going to lose you because of something this stupid," Dean replied. He was raising his voice now, frustrated with his little brother's stubbornness. "Dammit, Sammy. For once don't be so stubborn about something like this. She's got this. When we're gone, she'll take care of it."

Sam eyed Dean now. "What are you talking about?"

"I told her a little bit about what we found out," he explained. "She wants to destroy this thing more than we do."

"But she said . . ."

Dean shrugged. It had been his first thought as well, but the look in Emerson's eyes had told Dean not to argue with her. There was no way he convey that to Sam, but he knew how his brother felt. "I don't want to have to leave this to her either, but we can't help her any more than we already have. You can't help her. This thing is targeting you. If we try going up against it, it might kill you."

---

Emerson was staring at nothing, her chin resting in the heel of her hand. Her fingers were curled up and resting against her mouth. Her mind was racing with thoughts. She knew she couldn't do what needed to be done alone, but the last thing she thought she could do was pick up the phone and give her mother a call.

She sighed heavily as she shifted her weight before getting off of the stool she had been sitting on. She grabbed her thin, black cardigan sweater and pulled it on. Emerson had never felt so alone in her life. She walked to the front door and locked it, pulling down the shade. She closed the curtains and turned away from the big bay window.

Hugging herself, Emerson walked the length of her store at a slow and steady pace. She could almost feel this thing draining her now. It was something she never felt before. She wondered if it knew people were close to discovering it and that it was now gathering strength for the fight.

She bit down on her lower lip hard enough to actually break the skin. Emerson could taste the blood in her mouth but paid no attention to it. Her mind was still trying to work out what was going on and what she could do to stop it. She kicked the desk in the back of the store and let out a frustrated scream.

I can't do this alone, Emerson thought, closing her eyes. And I don't want to do this with her She knew she was stuck between a rock and a hard place, but if she was close to ending this, Emerson figured her mother would want to be a part of destroying it. As much as it pained her, she knew what had to be done.

---

When Dean had checked the first time, the car wasn't ready yet. Two days later, it was finally done and in those two days, any work he and Sam did seemed to be worthless. With each passing day, Sam seemed to go to bed earlier and sleep later. The translations were done and Dean thought he knew where this thing was hiding, but he wasn't going to stick around to defeat it. He couldn't do it if it could put Sam's life at risk.

At the moment, Dean pulled out a credit card, handing it to the guy behind the counter. The mechanic eyed it suspiciously and then turned around to run it through the machine. Dean looked over his shoulder at his brother, nervously tapping his index finger on the counter as he waited. Sam stood several feet away with his arms folded across his chest and wasn't looking at Dean if he could help it.

When he heard that the car was ready to be picked up, Sam knew what it meant. They were leaving. He'd never be able to finish this case and he didn't understand why Dean was being so adamant about them leaving. They were so close. They knew where the damn thing was. Sam wanted to finish this, but Dean wasn't going to let them. That wasn't like his big brother, but in a small way, he understood. Dean was just trying to save Sam from the same fate Emerson's little brother had suffered.

Dean signed for the charge and took his keys, enjoying for a moment the feeling of having them back in his hand again. "Thanks," he told the guy as he turned to leave, flashing the mechanic a quick smile. He grabbed Sam's shoulder and began pulling him out of the garage. "Let's go," he said, giving Sam a stern look.

Sam followed slowly. His feet didn't seem to want move with him, his legs felt heavy. He started to wonder if Dean and Emerson weren't right, but his mind seemed hazy. Dean stopped walking and looked at Sam.

"Come on," he said impatiently. When he saw the glazed look in his little brother's eyes, Dean began dragging Sam to the car. "Let's go."

Sam looked like he was sleepwalking and Dean had to force his brother into the car. He sighed, not understanding what was going on. He ran around the back of the car and got in, starting it. The one place he thought to go was to see Emerson.

---

Dean pulled up in front of the store. Sam was sound asleep in the passenger seat. Dean had tried several times to wake him on the way. None of it had worked. He hurried to get out of the car, jogging around the back of it to get to the front door of the store.

Emerson opened the door before Dean could even grab the handle. They practically ran into each other, but they didn't exchange a smile at the incident. Dean gave her a look and she just nodded. She walked over to the car, practically pushing her way past Dean.

"When did it happen?"

Dean shook his head. He wasn't sure when it happened. "It was like he was sleepwalking on the way to the car," he explained. "I started driving here and before I even got here, he was out."

Emerson slowly nodded, her back to Dean. She tenderly touched Sam's face. She ran her fingers through his hair only a little, to move some of it out of her way and then let her index fingers come to a rest on his temples. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. All she wanted was get a sense of what kind of damage this thing had done to Sam. When she opened her eyes again, her hands slid down Sam's face, her fingers brushing his cheeks. Emerson's left hand still sat on his shoulder as she turned to look at Dean.

"He'll be fine," Emerson softly said. "You just have to get him out of town. In a day or two, it'll be like nothing ever happened. It's doing this on purpose. To get you both out of town. How close did you two get?"

Dean swallowed hard. "We've been working on it non-stop for the last couple of days," he admitted. "I wanted to get you involved sooner, but Sam wouldn't . . . He was being more stubborn than usual."

Emerson smiled a little at that. She looked back at Sam again and sighed, her hand sort of massaging his shoulder now. "This is nothing like what happened to Nathaniel," she explained, turning back to face Dean again. "Sam will be fine. I promise. Just . . . Did you leave the stuff at the inn? Do you have it with you?"

Dean shook his head. "It's at the inn," he said. "Why?"

She let go of Sam and walked towards Dean. "I want it," she said. Her voice was calm, but there was a determination in it. "I want to kill this thing once and for all. If you stay, Dean, it will kill Sam. You don't have much choice in the matter. That just leaves me."

Dean nodded his understanding. "I was headed there to grab our stuff. I'll get our work too. My first thought, though, was to come here. To get him to you." He gave her a soft, sad smile. "You sure you can do this?"

She smiled a little at that and nodded. "With some help, yes," Emerson said, "but don't worry about that. Take care of your brother, Dean. Let me take care of this demon."

---

Dean had left Sam in the car. Of course, short of dragging his little brother along, he didn't have much choice. He was throwing all of their stuff into the bags, not bothering to be neat about it. He didn't really think he had the time to worry about something like that. He saw the papers – the copies of the ones Emerson had given them as well as the notes they had made – and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.

He gathered up the bags and practically ran to the car. A couple of the townspeople were standing near the car and Dean glared at them. He didn't care if they were just being curious or not. He didn't want them anywhere near Sam. As far as Dean was concerned, they were as much a part of the problem as this demon was.

"Get the hell away from my brother," he shouted as he got to the Impala. Dean opened the trunk and threw the bags in. He jogged around to the driver's side door. He didn't even bother to make sure everyone was clear. He just got in, started it up and put it in drive. A few people had to actually jump clear as Dean drove by them.

---

Emerson stood in front of her store. She was hugging herself, still wearing the cardigan sweater even though it was a little warm outside. Definitely too warm for a sweater and too warm for her to feel so cold. She was nervously chewing on her lower lip, waiting for Dean to come back. She had to stop herself from pacing, which she had started to do as soon as Dean had driven off.

She actually heard the Impala before she saw it. Dean stopped the car in the middle of the street and left it idling with it in neutral. Emerson jogged across the street. Before she even got to the car, Dean had the papers out. She nodded and took them from him.

"Let him know I said good-bye, okay?"

Dean looked at Emerson when he heard her voice crack. He gave her a little smile and nodded. "He'll be pissed he didn't get to say good-bye himself."

Emerson smiled a little, fighting back the tears she could feel forming behind her eyes. "Yeah, well, you guys know where I live," she said with a light sort of laugh. "I have Sam's number and I gave him mine so . . ." Her smile looked a little pouty for a moment before it brightened just a bit. "Look, Dean. Don't be a stranger, okay?" Her voice cracked again and this time she had to wipe away a tear.

Dean slowly nodded. "We won't," he said. "I'll call you as soon as he wakes up." He emphasized the word 'we' on purpose when he responded to her.

She nodded. She was hugging herself again, the papers crumpled against her chest. "Just go, all right? Before I get all sappy on you."

He put the car in drive and started down the street. Looking out the rear-view mirror, he saw Emerson was still standing in the middle of the road, watching him drive out of town. Dean glanced over at Sam and let out a little sigh. "Dude, you are one lucky son of a bitch," he told Sam. "A girl like that? Who's probably willing to die for you? You have no idea what you've got going for you, man. No idea."