Chapter 4
He had to wait another day before he could act. It was worse than the day before, because there was less to do. Nothing to do, in fact, except sit, and wait, and count all the ways that everything could go wrong, and contemplate all the things his father was likely to say when Dean called to tell him he'd let Sammy get stolen by the fairies. By the time dusk came around, Dean was ready to start punching holes in the walls.
Removing all traces of cold iron from his person proved unexpectedly difficult, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure how cold iron was different from regular iron, and which items actually counted. Guns and knives were out, he was sure of that, but other things he had to stop and think about. He had no clue what the innards of his watch were made of, or the zipper on his jeans. In the end, he decided to take no chances and showed up at the clearing barefoot, in sweatpants, t-shirt, and flannel shirt. The only metal item he dared to take was his lighter, which was silver-plated and therefore, according to Tam, "safe enough, like as not."
It was almost as bad as showing up naked. Dean couldn't remember the last time he'd gone anywhere so completely and thoroughly unarmed. He was sharply aware that if the whole thing turned out to be a trap, he would have nothing to defend himself with. Hell, even if the whole thing wasn't a trap, and some random non-fey nasty decided to leap out of the bushes, he'd be reduced to punching it in the nose and hoping for the best. Just thinking of it made the back of his neck feel prickly.
It didn't help that, on Tam's insistence, he'd turned the clothes inside out before putting them on. Tam had claimed it would help conceal his presence somehow, and Dean had figured it couldn't hurt to go along, but now, in addition to being unarmed and practically bare-assed, he also felt like a total idiot.
There wasn't much by way of cover in the clearing, but the stream did have a few bushes growing along the banks. Dean crouched behind the largest, thickest one and hoped to hell he wasn't sitting in poison oak. He wasn't sure what time it was, having left his watch at the ranger station along with the rest of his stuff, but the last glimmers of daylight were fading from the sky, which meant he needed to look sharp and be ready to move at any moment. Dean flexed his shoulders, winced, and shifted his weight into a marginally less uncomfortable position.
A flutter of wings overhead made him duck down lower into the greenery. He held perfectly still for a few seconds, not even breathing, then crept forward a little and pushed a few branches aside with one hand to get a view of the stream.
The three weird birds he'd seen earlier were now perched in the grass just down the stream bank from him, cooing softly to each other and preening their feathers. Dean could make out the slashes of color on their wings far more clearly than he should've been able to, given the low light. They seemed... not to glow, exactly, but to show up more vividly than normal against their background. Then, as Dean watched, the air around them began to shimmer, like a filmy silk curtain blowing in a breeze. It obscured the birds from sight for a few seconds, and then, when it cleared, there were no longer any birds to see. Instead there were--
Holy fuck. It's not as if he hadn't known they were going to be girls. "Maiden sisters three" was how Tam had put it, and Dean had snickered and made some smirking comments about how he hoped they'd be pretty, but no amount of hope or warning could be enough to prepare him for all the smooth, graceful curves, and the creamy white skin, and the flowing manes of silvery hair, and--
They were down in the water now, giggling and splashing at each other. Their hair clung to their backs in thick wet strands. The water had to be ice cold, but it wasn't bothering them as far Dean could see, thought it was making their nipples very, very perky...
Dean's throat felt dry. He was acutely conscious of his own heartbeat, and of the matching pulse in his groin. Down, boy. Focus. This shit was better than late-night cable, but he wasn't here for the peep show. He had a task to perform. Dean fixed his eyes on the spot where the birds had first landed, and slowly edged toward it on his hands and knees.
It was full dark now. The three chicks acting out Dean's favorite new fantasy down in the water still had that uncanny clarity to them, but up on the bank there was only moonlight to see by. Dean swept his hands over the grass and hoped that the darkness was hiding him from sight as well. The inside-out clothing trick was only supposed to work as long as he didn't call undue attention to himself, and he really had no idea if what he was doing now counted as "undue."
Something that didn't feel like grass tickled against his palm. Dean snatched it up, and bit back a cry of triumph at the sight of a sapphire-blue feather gleaming in the moonlight. He tucked it into the pocket of his sweatpants, and kept searching. Now that he knew he was at the right spot, it didn't take long to find the other two feathers. Dean clutched them all in his fist and stood up.
"Hey, girls! I think you've lost something."
It was like a perfectly choreographed dance: they all jumped in unison, turned toward him in unison, gasped in unison. Three matched sets of perfect boobs heaved in unison. Dean gulped and forced his gaze upward, locking eyes with the girl who stood in the middle.
She had a pale, heart-shaped face with a wet pink mouth and pale gray eyes fringed by ridiculously long lashes. Her hair had a single blue streak in it, just off-center, matching the red and yellow streaks her sisters had. When she saw Dean looking, she took a step forward and reached out with one hand.
"Give them back," she said. Her voice was high and clear as a wind chime. "Please. We need them, and they're of no use to you."
"Give them back," the other two echoed.
Dean wanted to do it. They looked so sad, and they gazed at him with those big shining eyes as if he was the only man in the entire world who could help them, their hero, their knight in shining armor. He wanted to do anything for them, anything they asked, anything to make himself worthy of being looked at that way. And they weren't even asking much, were they? Three silly feathers that belonged to them in the first place. He didn't even know why he'd grabbed them in the first place, it wasn't as if he needed them for anything, no reason in the world not to just hand them back...
Icy water lapped at his bare feet. The shock of it snapped him back to reality, made the glamour they'd wrapped around him come apart at the seams. Dean looked down and found he was standing ankle-deep in the stream, the hand with the feathers in it half-raised toward the smiling girl in front of him. Her fingers were only inches away from his.
"Fuck!" Dean scrambled backwards. His feet skidded on the wet pebbles that lined the streambed, and he came down hard on his ass in the water, but managed to make it back to the bank without losing his grip on the feathers. He took the lighter from the pocket of his sweatpants, flicked it on, and held the feathers a couple of inches above the flames. "Cut that out! I mean it, stop messing with my head right now, or I swear I'll burn the damn feathers."
That stopped all three of them in their tracks. They looked at each other, and Dean had a sense that some sort of silent communication was taking place, before the one with the yellow-streaked hair spoke to him.
"What do you want?"
"To speak to the Green Lady."
"If we bring you to her, you'll return the feathers?"
Dean took another step back, looking steadily above the sisters' heads rather than into their eyes or at their oh-so-distracting bodies. "If you bring me to her," he said, "I'll trade her the feathers for my brother and for Janet Macalvie."
They made distressed little noises at that. Dean held his ground and continued not to look. He didn't know which one of them spoke to him next, and he didn't especially care.
"We can't--"
"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
There was a long silence. Dean flicked the lighter off but kept it in his hand, and tilted his head a little so that he could watch the sisters in his peripheral vision without looking directly at them. He was starting to shiver. His wet clothes felt cold and clammy against his skin, and his left hip ached from his fall. Dean knew there'd be a hell of a bruise there later. He welcomed it. The memory of the glamour still tugged at the edges of his mind, enticing and unnerving, and he suspected it would be far too easy to slip under it again, even without looking, if he didn't have his present physical discomfort to keep him focused on reality. It was not a pleasant thought.
The sisters must've come to some sort of decision, because they linked hands and walked toward Dean together. Dean took another step back, holding the lighter in plain sight.
"Okay, so what's it going to be?"
"You must give one of the feathers back." Now it was the one with the red streak who spoke. Did they go around taking turns, or what? Dean shook his head.
"No way."
"You must, if you want us to help you. One of us needs to return to Faerie to speak to the Lady. We can't go in this shape."
"All right, fine." Dean held the red feather out to her and she snatched it from his hand. He stuck the others into his pocket along with the lighter. "Just don't take too long, or I might get impatient and start setting fires."
"I won't be long." She tucked the feather behind her left ear. There was another silk-curtain shimmer in the air around her, and the girl was gone and the bird was circling overhead. It flew over the toadstool ring, circled it three times, and vanished.
More waiting. Great. Dean sat down in the grass and rubbed his feet, which still felt half-frozen from his earlier foray into the stream. I have just sent a bird to make me an appointment with the queen of Faerie so that I can trade my brother for a couple of feathers. My life is now officially too fucking weird. He risked a glance over at the two remaining sisters, who stood huddled together a few feet away from him. They didn't seem inclined to attack, or to put the mind-whammy on him again, so he figured it was safe to keep looking. Problem was, the sight of them standing there all naked and fragile-looking and fluttering those feathery eyelashes made him feel guilty and turned on at the same time. Almost as bad as the mind-whammy in its own way.
"Oh, hell." Dean shrugged out of the flannel shirt, pulled the t-shirt over his head, and held both garments out at arm's length. "Here. They're a little damp, but it's gotta be better than standing around naked, right?"
He hadn't exactly expected them to fall all over him in gratitude, but even so, their reaction was kind of insulting. Blue-streak turned up her perfect little nose, and Yellow-streak pursed her perfect pink lips into an unbecoming pout.
"We're fine as we are," she said after a moment.
"What, do I have human cooties or something?" Dean rolled his eyes as he put both shirts back on. Last time I ever try to be chivalrous...
He was tugging the shirt cuffs down to his wrists when Red-streak flew out of the ring again, shifting into girl shape as soon as she was outside the toadstool border.
"The Lady will see you now," she said. "Come into the circle with me."
From his reading, Dean had had some vague idea that a trip to Faerie involved a lengthy horseback ride, with many symbolically branching roads and possibly a river of blood to wade through. He was kind of disappointed to discover it wasn't like that at all. Just a moment of dizziness when he stepped into the fairy ring. His vision blurred, and the ground seemed to dissolve under his feet. There was a sensation of falling that lasted long enough to make him start worrying about the landing, but the landing never came. The fall just stopped, and he was on solid ground again, but in a different place, alone.
It was bright daylight. He was standing in a field, and the sky overhead was a brilliant, eye-piercing blue, but there was no sun in it. Dean wondered where the light was coming from, then realized it was the same brightness that had clung to the three bird sisters back in Pisgah, only now it was on everything. The grass beneath his feet was a rich emerald green, dotted with unfamiliar, jewel-toned flowers. The air smelled clean and sweet.
There was a pavilion of some sort at the far end of the field -- a domed room held up by four columns, all entwined with flowering vines and leafy branches. It was huge. Dean thought they could've fit a couple of good-sized circus tents under it. And the crowd of freaks milling around under the dome certainly could've staffed a good circus or two.
There were things that looked like garden gnomes, and things that looked like two-legged foxes with human faces, and things that looked like skeletons made out of twigs. There were giant butterflies that proved, upon closer inspection, to be tiny naked people with butterfly wings. There were squat, bearded toad-like things that looked like Tam's cousins, and tall, androgynous folk in flowing robes that looked like extras from Lord of the Rings. Clothing seemed to be optional, but those who bothered were sure as hell making a fashion statement. Dean looked down at his damp, grass-stained sweatpants, and decided that the statement he was making was "fuck you." He squared his shoulders, straightened the collar of his shirt, and walked toward the pavilion.
Coming closer, he could see that it wasn't actually covered in vines and branches -- it was made of them. Or rather, grown of them. What he'd taken for columns were actually trees with slender trunks and smooth, silvery bark and long, flexible branches that twined together to form the roof. Bright spots of color skittered among the leaves. They might've been beetles, or just some very tiny fairies; Dean decided he didn't want to know. The freaks he could see were quite enough, thank you.
They gave him a wide berth as he walked by. Dean was grateful for that, but he really wished they weren't all so obviously watching. They didn't stare -- hardly anyone would look at him directly for any length of time -- but all the darting, sidelong glances were making him twitchy.
A little blonde girl in a gauzy white dress skipped past him, giggling. Dean actually thought she was cute for a moment, until she turned her head and grinned at him with a mouthful of long, needle-sharp teeth. She had a fawn on a leash, all wobbly legs and big liquid eyes, like something out of a Disney cartoon. She dragged it over to where a gaggle of other children were waiting, and they gathered round it with delighted squeals. Dean hoped they were just going to play with the poor thing and not eat it, but there was no time to find out. The crowd was scurrying out of his way. He was almost there.
Dean fixed his eyes on the ground and took the lighter out of his pocket again. As defenses went, it was a pretty pathetic one, but just the weight of it in his hand was comforting somehow. Dean flipped it open and held on to it tightly as he raised his head to look at the Green Lady.
She was seated on a wooden throne that, like the pavilion, seemed to grow straight out of the ground. Her dress was the color of fresh spring grass, with gold embroidery along the hem and the edges of the long, trailing sleeves. There was a faint green tint to her pale skin, too, and even to the blonde elbow-length hair that framed her face. Dean wondered what color she'd bleed.
The bird sisters stood to the left of the throne. All three were still in their birthday suits, but Dean was no longer interested in them. Because to the right, seated awkwardly on a stool much too low for him, was Sam.
He looked exactly the way he had on the night he'd been taken -- everything the same, from his scruffy clothes and disheveled hair to the small cut on his chin where he'd nicked himself shaving two mornings ago. Everything the same except for his eyes, which glanced at Dean with blank disinterest.
"Hey, Sam." Dean fought to keep his voice steady, and wasn't entirely sure he'd succeeded. "You okay?"
"Hey, Dean." Sam gave him a blandly polite smile, as if Dean was a stranger he had to make small talk with. "I'm great. How are you?"
Dean was still struggling to come up with an answer to that when the Green Lady spoke.
"Dean Winchester. We've been told you are here to ransom what you've stolen."
"Yeah? Well you've been told wrong." Dean scowled at her, not bothering to hide his anger. "I'm hear to ransom what you've stolen."
"But we have stolen nothing." The Lady arched one delicate eyebrow at him, and swept her hand out to the side. "See for yourself."
Dean turned his head in the direction she was pointing, and saw Janet Macalvie standing there in a long blue dress and a circlet of flowers in her hair. She was holding hands with one of the Legolas wannabes, gazing at him with a besotted expression.
"Janet is where she wishes to be," the Lady said smugly. "She has shared food and wine with us, and is betrothed to our kinsman."
Dean's heart sank a little. "And Sam?"
"See for yourself." The Lady gestured, and one of the fox-like things stepped up with a tray of fruit. She took a strawberry and held it out to Sam, who bit into it happily.
Dean took a shaky step forward before he could stop himself. God, Sammy, what did you do?
"So you see," the Lady said, "they are bound here by our rules, and you are a thief. Return what you've taken and kneel to beg our forgiveness, and perhaps we shall grant it."
"I don't think so."
"Kneel."
The Lady's glamour was stronger than the bird sisters', but Dean had known it was coming. Even as his knees hit the ground, he was flicking the lighter on and holding his hand to the flame.
Predictably, it hurt like hell. He managed three, maybe four seconds before crying out and jerking his hand away. It was enough. By the time he blinked the tears from his eyes and rose to his feet again, his head was clear. Dean clicked the lighter shut and bared his teeth in a snarl at the Green Lady, who was looking a little greener than she had before. Apparently, he'd shocked her. Well, good.
Dean looked down at his right hand. It didn't look so bad, just a patch of blistered red skin at the base of his thumb, but the pain seemed to throb through every nerve from his fingertips to his elbow. He flexed his fingers, and just barely managed to hold back another cry.
Something bumped against his left leg, making him totter for a moment. Dean looked down, and saw that the little blonde girl's pet fawn had slipped its leash, and was now head-butting his leg and bleating at him. The children had apparently been playing dress-up with it -- there were a string of little silver bells and a couple of daisy chains draped around its neck. Dean tried to shoo it away, but it dug in its hooves and refused to budge until two of the kids ran up to drag it away. Dean watched them go, shook his head, and turned his attention back to the Lady.
"So," he said, "can we bargain properly now, or do you want to play more head games?"
She looked at him for what felt like a very long time, her face cold and still.
"Name your bargain," she said finally.
Dean reached into his pocket again. There was a fresh spike of pain as burned skin brushed against cloth and some of the blisters burst. He gritted his teeth and waited until it faded to a bearable level again, then wrapped his fingers around the feathers and held them out.
"A trade," he said. "One feather for Sam, one for Janet. Then we all walk away from here and never bother you again. And don't give me any crap about them eating your food, because I really don't give a flying fuck about your rules." He waited for an answer, but the Lady just gazed at him in silence. Dean twirled the lighter in his fingers, letting the silver catch the light. "Or, you know, I could just burn them."
This got a predictable burst of dismayed squealing from the bird sisters. Dean actually felt kind of bad for them, though not nearly bad enough to back down.
He looked over at Sam, and found him still sitting in the same position on the stool with the same blank look on his face. Dean leaned forward and waved his hand in front of Sam's eyes.
"Get with it, Sammy. I'm taking you out of here."
Sam stared at him without blinking. "But Dean," he said calmly, "I don't want to leave."
"Yeah, right. Tell me another one." Dean fought down the mix of fear and irritation that was threatening to choke him, and glared at the Lady again.
"So is it a deal, or what?"
The Lady tapped one slender finger against her chin. Her fingernails were green too, Dean noted. It was really kind of gross.
"We will trade you your brother for both feathers," she said, "if you can make him leave with you of his own free will."
"And Janet?"
"For her, you must make a separate bargain."
Dean hesitated. The green bitch clearly had something specific in mind, and he was willing to bet it wasn't anything good. For a moment, he was tempted to just make the trade for Sam and leave it at that. But the memory of Catherine Taylor crying over her chocolate cupcake would not be shaken off. Janet Macalvie had people who cared about her, too. He couldn't just leave her behind.
"What do you want?"
The thin smile the Lady gave him wasn't nice at all.
"There are occasions," she said, "when, for one reason or another, the Queen of Faerie might require the service of a competent mortal. If such an occasion comes for us, we will call on you and you will do as we request. Whatever we request."
Oh, hell. He'd known it wouldn't be good. Dean paced back and forth in front of the Lady's throne, and wished that his father was there, or that Sam was in a condition to give advice, or that his hand didn't feel as if he was still holding it to a flame. Trying to concentrate through pain was better than trying to concentrate through glamour, but not by much.
"One occasion, right?" he said after a while. "Because there's no way I'm signing up for a lifetime of servitude."
"One occasion."
Well, that wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it still sucked. "I don't know, Your Greenness, I'm thinking you need to give me more than that. After all, the way you've set it up, you could tell me to rob Fort Knox or kill the Pope, and I'd have to do it, right?"
"We would ask you no such thing."
"Yeah, I'm sure you'll come up with something worse." Dean took a deep breath. "Look, if I agree to this, then I want your word that you'll never carry off another person ever again. I don't care how pretty they are, you keep your hands off, all right?"
The Lady frowned at him, then stared down at her folded hands for a while.
"Very well," she said finally, "I agree to both your bargains. But they both depend on Sam freely agreeing to leave. If he refuses, then you must stay here too." She gave Dean that thin, scary smile again. "You don't glow as brightly as your brother does, but I'm sure I'll find a use for you."
"All right," Dean said, "it's a deal."
Behind him, the air stirred, as if several hundred assorted creatures exhaled all at once. Dean looked behind him and saw that practically every damned thing in the pavilion was staring at him, except for the children, who were too busy draping sparkly ribbons over the long-suffering fawn. Dean watched them and wondered what would happen if this bargain of his went wrong, if he was making a mistake somehow. Was he going to be turned into somebody's pet, too? It really didn't bear thinking about.
"Dean Winchester." The Lady spoke in a ringing voice, not glamoured but pitched to carry throughout the pavilion. "It's time to seal our bargain. Come before us and kneel."
Dean considered refusing, just on principle, then decided it wasn't worth the bother. The whole fucking mess was almost over, one way or another. He could pretend to be obedient for a couple of minutes; no one was going to believe it anyway.
There was one thing to do first, though. Dean plastered a smile on his face, walked around the throne toward where the bird sisters were waiting, and held the feathers out to them.
"Here," he said. "Sorry for the inconvenience."
They stared at him with stunned expressions for a second or two, then snatched the feathers, transforming into birds before Dean had finished lowering his hand.
"You're welcome," he muttered as they fluttered away from him to soar in dizzy circles under the domed roof.
The lady was watching him with an impatient frown and tapping her fingers against the arm of her throne. Dean walked over to stand directly in front of her.
"Let's get it over with," he said, and dropped to one knee. From the corner of his eye, he could still see Sam's slouched form, sitting unnervingly still on the stool.
Damn, I really, really hope I'm right about this...
The Lady leaned forward and rested both hands on Dean's head. Her touch was light and cool, and her skin smelled faintly of lilacs.
"This is our pledge," she said in the same carrying voice she'd used earlier. "Your brother is free to leave with you provided you can get him to agree, as is Janet Macalvie, and we shall take no more mortals from this forest for as long as we hold court here. On this, you have our word. In return, you pledge to perform a single service on our behalf, whenever in the future we might request it. Do you agree to these terms?"
Dean licked his lips. "Yes."
"In addition, should your brother refuse to leave here when you ask, you both shall remain in Faerie for the rest of your mortal lives. Do you agree?"
"Yes."
"Very well." The Lady's hands suddenly felt unnaturally heavy against his skull. A sharp pain flared behind his temples, making him gasp, then faded as quickly as it came. "Our bargain is sealed. Our geas is on you. You may rise."
Dean rose. He felt a little light-headed, but otherwise fine.
"Okay," he said, "what now?"
The Lady spread her hands, palms up. "Now you go and talk to your brother."
"Right." Dean took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. He turned his back on the Lady and walked into the crowd. It wouldn't part for him the way it had when he was coming in, so he simply elbowed aside any creature that got in his way and kept moving, moving, moving until he reached the spot where the freaky elf-kids with their freaky sharp teeth were playing with the fawn.
"Scram," he said in his best threatening voice. They scrammed. Only the fawn stayed. It was trembling all over, from the tip of its nose to the white tuft of its tail, making the bells around its neck chime faintly. Dean took a step toward it, and it stumbled forward and butted its head against his knees, hard.
Dean gave a short, strangled laugh and patted its neck with his good hand. "Hey, Sammy," he said. "What do you say we blow this crazy joint, huh?"
Nothing happened at first. Dean held perfectly still and wondered, with a sick sort of feeling, if he had just royally fucked everything up. Then the air between him and the fawn did that shimmering-curtain trick, and when it cleared, Sam was sitting on the ground in front of Dean, looking dazed and scruffy and draped in way too many daisy chains. The bells around his neck were still chiming, and a crumpled gold ribbon clung to his hair. He batted it away with a shaking hand.
"Yes," Sam said through clenched teeth. "I'm saying yes. Yes, as in I want to leave, as in get me the fuck away from here, right now, this very minute, and did I mention yes?"
"I'll take that as a yes." Dean held out his hand, and Sam grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet. Together, they turned to face the Green Lady just in time to see the not-Sam at her feet collapse into a small pile of twigs and leaves. Dean rolled his eyes. "So are we done with the mind games? Can we leave now?"
"Please do," the Lady said coldly. Dean did his best not to smirk.
"Janet--"
"--Will be returned within the next three days." The Lady held up one hand to forestall Dean's protest. "Whether or not you respect our rules, they do exist. It will take time and effort to undo the bindings on her. You have our word that it will be done, that should be enough. Now go." She clapped her hands together, and the light went out.
Leaving Faerie was a rougher trip than entering it. It felt rather like being kicked down a steep staircase by a giant, and when it was over, Dean was sprawled face-down in the grass, with a ringing head and a mouthful of dirt. He coughed, spit, and pushed up to his knees, turning his head to see Sam doing the same a few feet away.
"Vindictive little bitch, ain't she?" he muttered under his breath. "You okay, Sam?"
"I think so." Sam rose unsteadily to his feet. "What about you? How's that hand?"
"It's fine." All the remaining blisters had burst, and there was probably dirt where dirt had no business being, but they could take care of it when they got to the first aid kit in the car. "I'll live."
"Not when I'm done with you!" Sam snapped, and smacked him in the chest, hard. "Are you insane? What the hell were you thinking?"
"Excuse me?" Dean gaped at his obviously furious brother, and wondered if he'd brought back a changeling after all. "What was I thinking? Don't you mean, 'thanks for saving my ass, Dean, you were brilliant?'"
"No, I mean, what were you thinking? You just swore to do an unspecified service for the queen of fucking Elfland! Are you nuts?"
"Hey, it's not like I had a lot of options to choose from. Anyway, we don't even know if she'll ever ask anything."
"You let her put a geas on you! I'm so telling Dad."
"Hey, you started it. If you hadn't let her carry you off--"
"I didn't let her carry me off."
"Well, you didn't stop her, did you? Honestly, Sam, you gotta stop with this 'getting abducted by freaks' shit. I don't care if it's psycho rednecks or snotty green bitches, just cut it out, okay?"
"Dean..."
"And how come you didn't see it coming, huh? All those visions, and you never get a hint that you're about to get carried off by a crazy green chick who wants a psychic boy toy? What's the deal with that?"
"Dean..."
"I mean, seriously, what's the point in being the Visionary Wonder if it draws all the freaks to you and then doesn't let you see them coming? Who designs these things, anyway?"
"Dean!"
"What?"
"Thanks for saving my ass. You were brilliant."
"Huh." Dean blinked rapidly and combed his hand through his hair. He was breathing much too fast, and his nose was running, and now that he thought about it he realized that he'd just been shouting. "You're welcome."
"Can we get out of here now? 'Cause I'm starving."
"Sure," Dean said, and managed something like a laugh. "You gotta do one thing first, though."
"What?"
"Get all these damn flowers off you. You look like a goddamn hippie."
"Asshole," Sam said, and Dean knew he hadn't come back with a changeling after all.