Janus McLandon was quite sure that he had never worked harder in the 13 years he had been alive. The first few months had been easy, but now it was getting harder, he was being fought against; it was trying to pull him into the darkness. Nevertheless he continued to work non-stop, and his sleep was slowly dwindling down to nothing. His energy was seriously lacking, and he couldn't say much for the deep, dark circles under his eyes, either. Delilah was starting to worry about her big brother.

Tentatively she knocked on his door, hoping desperately for an acceptance, however hostile or half-hearted, to her silent request. After all, her JanJan was all she had now. There was nothing but a grunt from inside the room, but Delilah was thankful without doubt. She snuck in so silently that she was surprised Janus noticed she had entered. Delilah was disappointed to find her brother's nose buried in those freaky books again. The pictures were more of symbols than anything, and she was almost certain she had spotted something in a different language once. Given that she was only 8 and she had a limited literary ability, but she knew what the alphabet looked like and some of that stuff looked nothing like anything A-Z.

"Janusssss," she whined to get his full attention, "I don't like it when you read those books, they don't make sense, the pictures scare me, and, and what do you need them for anyway?"

Janus looked up and shook his head. He was sick of this, sick of her whining and sick of hiding from her. He was going to have to tell her, he just wasn't sure how to. His 13 year old mind decided the best way to do this was to just tell her flat out. She needed to know. Delilah caught something in her brother's eyes and it made her falter.

"Janus…talk to me JanJan," she whimpered pathetically.

"Dee, we need to talk," he replied, sighing heavily.

Running a hand through his blonde hair, he looked at his baby sister with a large amount of apprehension. Delilah, on the other hand, had never liked the words 'we need to talk', but the tone of Janus' voice made her fear them more than she ever had.

"What is it?" she asked shakily.

Janus pulled his little sister up onto his lap despite her resistance. Then he started in on an explanation. "Do you remember when Pepper died?" he began slowly, "And how mom went to that psychic downtown to 'contact the spirit or whatever? Well, that was about the time I started reading these books," he gestured to the pile of books that Delilah had never approved of.

"I wanted to help Mom, yanno? So I found out that I could bring Pepper back, but it was going to take a lot of work, and then when I finally had him back, he just started killing things and I couldn't get it under full control until two months ago. Then Dad; he did some bad things and I wanted him to hurt for it," there was another pause, because he knew that this was a lot to take. It was a lot to explain.

"So…." Pause. "I decided to take the thing that was most important to him, even if it would hurt us too. Then he just kept being naughty and I got sick of it, and I got sick of him," it was all coming out in one anger-fuelled rush now, "so I set Pepper on him as well. But now I think I'm losing control. It's not listening to me anymore. It's going after anything it sees as a threat. So you've got to go Dee, 'cause I've got to get back to work, but I had to tell you because you deserve to know." He finished with a sigh and finally brought himself to look at his baby sister.

The reaction he received was not what he had expected, or what he had been hoping for. Delilah started at her brother, her hero, her JanJan in wide-eyed horror. He was lying, he had to be. It was a joke, a sick and wrong joke, but it had to be a joke. Any moment now Janus was going to holler "GOTCHA" and it would be over. Yet something in that serious and sad look was enough for even the 8 year old to comprehend. He was serious. It was all the proof she needed. Her brother was a killer. Not only that, he was the reason both of her parents were dead. No matter how much she loved her brother she couldn't forgive him for this.

She shook her head a few times before hopping off Janus' lap and backing away disgustedly. She opened her mouth to speak but the words balled up in her throat and created a lump that made her eyes water. She closed her mouth, swallowed hard, and tried again. This time the words made it out.

"Janus! You didn't, you couldn't have, I can't believe that you- JANUS!" Her voice was high-pitched and hysterical, but it was also firm and shaking with as much anger as her exhausted little body could manage.

"Dee, come on, you have to understand, it was for us Dee, they didn't deserve to be our parents," Janus tried to explain, but as the words spilled out of his mouth they started making less and less sense in his brain. But he was too far gone now, and he had to stand by what he had started. He had to finish it.

Delilah shook her head as the ever familiar tears of late once again sprung to her eyes. She started backing away again. "No!" she shouted, and Janus was taken aback by how fierce she sounded. "No Janus, you weren't thinking! I'm gonna-"she stopped short. The words "tell on you" hung on her lips when she realized there was no one to tell.

He had killed their parents. If she told Aunt Laura she would never believe them, all hope was gone. Delilah broke down in tears and Janus instantly felt horrible. He reached out to touch his younger sister in comfort but she wriggled out of his reach and looked up at him with those brilliant blue eyes that, over the years, he had seen convey emotion after emotion. Happiness, glee, joking, hurt, sadness, and now they were empty. If there was any emotion left in the void of blue, Janus could only identify it as hate. Hate for everything he had done, and here he thought he had been protecting them. His plan wasn't working. But it had to be, because he had worked so hard.

"Don't touch me," Delilah growled, and Janus swallowed. He had never seen her like this.

Then Delilah did the only thing and 8 year old with no where to go could do, she ran. She ran out of Janus' room and down the hall, down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the living room. On her way out of the living room she ran into the coffee table and toppled to the floor with the entire contents of the table piling on top of her. She pushed the various books, papers, and coasters off of her small body and moved her hand to her mouth to remove a small piece of cardstock out of it. On the paper were the words "Dean Berkowitz" and a series of numbers that Delilah assumed belonged to a phone.

An image shot into her mind of the two policemen. One of them, the shorter one she thought, had handed her dad a card. Hope rose in her crushed heart, so she grasped the card as though it were a piece of pure gold and ran into the kitchen. She grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed the numbers as fast as she could.

"So what exactly did you use to contact the McLandon's dog?" Dead demanded of Carl.

Carl sighed tiredly and pulled a book off of the shelves of his apartment in the heart of Knoxville and moved back to where the boys were. He flipped through the pages and stopped suddenly.

"This was it," he confirmed pointing to the page.

Sam took the book before Dean could and looked the pages over. Some of it was in Latin, but most of it was in English. Sam opened his mouth to explain it and verify that it looked official enough. Not to mention that ever since they walked into the apartment Carl had given him every reason to believe that he was real deal, and an impression that he was a very nice guy. Why he would be doing such an awful thing as what both brothers thought he was doing was beyond Sam. When the words of explanation and confirmation were on the edge of his tongue, Dean's cell phone rang.

Jumping slightly due to the sudden change from silence, Dean fished his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Hello?"

The response he got was a small girl's voice sounding very scared. "Mr. Policeman? You need to come here right now. JanJan is doing something with Pepper and he's the reason Mommy and Daddy are dead and I'm scared. Plleeaasseeee?" She said it all in one breath, the words tumbling one over another.

Anyone but Dean would have been completely lost, and would have hung up assuming it was a prank call, but he knew enough to pick up on the little things. Things like the girl's voice and her use of the words "JanJan" and "Pepper" which was clearly a dog's name.

"Alright, we'll be right over," was all he said before hanging up, putting his phone away and standing up as though Sam knew everything he did.

It was only when he caught sight of the look on his baby brother's face that he realized that wasn't true. Dean shifted his weight from one foot to the other and the motioned for Sam to get up. "Sam, we've got to go."

When Sam gave him a very skeptical look and nodded towards Carl, Dean added firmly, "Now."

Sam sighed resignedly and looked at Carl, "Sorry, but apparently we've got to go. We'll finish this later."

Carl nodded but it was obvious from the look on his face that he would have no objections if he never saw Sam or Dean again. As the brothers climbed into the Impala, Sam finally piped up.

"God Dean, what was that about? We were getting somewhere."

Dean shook his head and started the engine. "We were getting nowhere." Then he explained the phone call to Sam. How it was Janus who had been controlling the dog, and how Delilah was scared out of her mind that her own brother, the one person she should have been able to count on for protection, was going to set the thing on her next. Or at least, he explained how convinced Delilah had been of that fact. And the whole time he talked, he sounded completely disgusted. He was disgusted.

"…And damn it Sam, I'm not going to let anyone else in that family die. I knew that Janus kid was hiding something."