4

Kya pulled up at the diner, hunger guiding her motions, and she stepped off the bike, carrying her helmet under one arm. She slid into an unoccupied booth and waited for the waitress to notice her arrival.

Her thoughts churned over the meeting with Jeremiah. She sighed deeply, wondering how she had gotten herself into this so deep. Her gaze turned out the window to a black Chevy Impala parked outside and a silent alarm went off in the back of her head. She had seen that car before she just couldn't remember where. The door to the diner opened and a pair of young men walked in.

Kya's breath caught in her throat as they turned purposefully in her direction. One of them was the man from the bar the other night. He was even better looking in broad daylight and the man next to him wasn't so bad either. They were both tall, although the one she didn't recognize was taller than the one she did. They were both broad-chested and muscled well, as though they spent their spare time in a gym. The one she recognized had the same confident swagger to his walk, short blondish brown hair, the same devil may care grin, the same chiseled face and gorgeous green eyes tinted with gold flecks. The one she didn't had kind dark brown eyes that masked a hidden pain and intensity, longer chocolate brown hair, a narrower nose, and the same chiseled jaw as his companion. They walked up to her table without hesitating and she had to stop herself from jumping up and running out the door. With all that she had just learned she was on edge and jumpy. Her world was fast taking a turn for the funland of the weird and the wacky, and she was about to jump off the bandwagon.

"Dean Winchester," the shorter one said, before jabbing a thumb at his companion. "My brother Sam. Can we sit?"

"Do you have a reason to?" she countered.

That set the one called Dean back on his heels a bit. His expression changed to one of surprise and Kya got the feeling he wasn't used to girls telling him no. She hid a smile. The one he called Sam appeared embarrassed and uneasy to be intruding like they were and he had trouble looking her in the eyes.

"I saw you the other night," Dean said. "I wanted to talk to you, but you ran off."

"Does that line usually work?" she asked.

"Well, no," he admitted. "Usually I just ask for a number and it's magic."

Kya found herself smiling. He was charming, all right, and she knew that made him all the more dangerous. She motioned for them to sit before they drew anymore attention, curiosity getting the best of her better judgment. They eased into the booth together and the waitress came over, taking their orders and walking away with a shy grin at Dean's wink.

"No more games," Kya said when she had gone. She leaned across the table and her hair fell forward. "I want to know why you're following me."

Dean leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "I still haven't gotten your name, not to mention your number."

Kya scowled at him. "And you're not going to until I have a reason to trust you. Which I don't. So start talking."

"Your cousin was one of the people killed around here recently, right?" Sam asked quietly.

"Yeah, Elizabeth," she affirmed. "But how do you know that and why do you care?"

"We don't think . . . .uhh . . .well, that is to say . . .," Sam started. He cleared his throat and started staring at the Formica table top with interest.

Kya arched an eyebrow impatiently. "Spill it. I don't care how crazy it sounds."

"We don't think that the murders were your garden variety killings," Dean supplied smoothly, getting a glare from his brother.

"When you can define garden variety killings is when I'll start thinking about giving you my name," she said.

"As in, we don't think that a person did all this," Sam said quickly.

Kya sat back. There was more to these two than they were letting on, but she didn't get the feeling they were purposely trying to hide anything from her. It seemed to her that Sam was more embarrassed and nervous than anything else and Dean was just to into the ladies. Sam rubbed his thumb at the table, trying to clean off a mark that wasn't there while his brother eyed the waitress from across the diner.

"If not a person than what did?" she demanded in a low voice.

"We don't know," Dean said, turning his attention back to the table. "That's what we're trying to figure out."

"Your cousin, there wasn't anything strange about her death was there?" Sam asked.

"You mean besides the fact that she died in her bedroom where all the doors and windows were inaccessible to an intruder and there was no trace of one anyway?" she asked sarcastically.

"How do you know all that?" Dean asked.

"I got a hold of the police report," she admitted.

"Did it say anything else?" Sam asked, his interest caught. "That was the only one I couldn't get."

"You have all of the police reports? Who are you two? What do you care what happens in a small town like this?" she demanded, still keeping her voice low.

"It's, uh, kind of our job," Dean said.

Kya sat back as the waitress brought their food and drinks and once again waited patiently while Dean flirted and Sam stared at his soda blankly. The waitress wandered off with another grin on her face and Kya thought seriously about slapping her impromptu companion.

"You were saying something about how prying into murders is your job," she prompted after a moment.

"Not murders exactly," Sam corrected, chewing on a French fry. "Just unusual murders."

Kya sighed. "Okay you two are not being straight with me. So I have no reason to be straight with you."

Dean swallowed the mouthful of hamburger that he had been chewing and regarded her warily. She returned the gaze and they sat there for a moment, sizing each other up.

"We travel a lot," he said finally. "And everywhere we go we hunt down things that other people don't."

"Dean!" Sam objected.

"Like ghosts and demons," she supplied.

One eyebrow rose. "Now you're not being straight."

"I wasn't the one that came up here uninvited," she reminded him.

"Right," he said. "Yes. Those kinds of things."

She nodded. "And you think something supernatural killed my cousin and all those other people."

Sam looked at his brother in surprise and Dean shrugged as if to tell him that spilling their secret had been the only way to break the communication ice barrier. Kya watched the silent exchange and found herself wishing once again that she hadn't been an only child. She had always wanted a sibling to be close to and she could tell just by watching them that these two brothers were very close.

Sam finally returned his attention to her and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "That's about the gist of it."

"Good," she said absently. "Glad I'm not the only nut around here."

Dean looked up from his plate in obvious surprise. "What?"

"I think the same thing. I've thought so from the beginning, right after I read the file."

"How do you know about things that go bump in the night?"

"I'm blonde but I'm not an idiot," she said. "I have reasons to know. That's all you need to know for now. And my name is Kya Winters." She looked sharply at Dean with the hint of a smile playing at the edges of her lips. "But you're not getting my number."

Dean sighed and turned his attention back to the waitress.

5

Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot of the small museum, showcasing the history of the town, beside Kya's motorcycle. She climbed off and shook out her curly blonde locks before setting the helmet on the back of the bike. Dean shut his door and walked around the side of the car to stand next to her. Sam joined them from the other side and together they walked up to the entrance and into the front door.

"We should split up," Sam suggested. "We might get more answers if we don't gang up on people."

Kya nodded. "Yeah, we've got the Mod Squad going on here. Sam is right, we don't want to be intimidating."

She had taken the time to share the information that Jeremiah had given her, figuring that it couldn't hurt to have allies in her search for the truth. At first Dean had objected to her tagging along but she had pointedly reminded him that they had intruded on her search, not the other way around. She would continue looking for the answers with or without their assistance. She separated herself from the two men and walked around a winding corridor that displayed a hallway filled with important figureheads throughout the history of the city. Kya walked faster when she got the creeps from the many pairs of eyes staring at her.

Dean walked straight up to a young brown haired girl with an unofficial looking uniform. Her name tag read "Volunteer: Megan" and she looked as though she were a high school student looking to fill in lonely summer hours. So, off limits, he told himself as he caught her attention.

"Excuse me," he said with a charming smile.

The young girl turned and her eyes met the floor with astonishing speed when she caught sight of the man addressing her. A slow blush crept up her cheeks and Dean knew that she wasn't used to guys even looking at her much less speaking actual words to her. She appeared the studious, dedicated, learned type that spent much of her spare time reading books and getting lost in alternate worlds of daydreaming.

"Can I help you?" she asked quietly.

"Well, let's hope so," he said. "I heard of this book that an inmate wrote, I'm not sure what it's called but I heard that it was here and I wanted to see it."

She looked up at his words and her eyes lit up as she realized she had the information that he needed. "The book written by Colton Banks?"

"Yeah, that rings a bell," he replied.

"It's called Abi In Malam Rem," she said with a smile. "Roughly translated from Latin it means 'go to the devil'. He wrote it when he was imprisoned but never finished it. From what I've heard it was a horror fiction, which is unusual because his genre usually followed science-fiction and fantasy."

"You haven't read it?" he asked curiously.

"None of us here have," she said. "That book hasn't been touched since it was encased in glass after he died. People say it gives them the creeps. But it went missing a few weeks ago. Somebody broke into the museum and shattered the casing."

"They didn't catch who did it?"

"No," she said earnestly. "Some of us think it was an inside job but others thing it was just a bunch of kids playing a prank. The book hasn't resurfaced yet. If you ask me, the farther away that thing gets the better. It's a creepy old thing."

Dean thanked her and spent a few more minutes chatting before meeting up with Sam near a wall at the back of the museum. Sam shifted anxiously from foot to foot as his brother approached.

"I think we found our culprit," Sam said.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say you found out the same stuff I did."

"Dead writer, cursed book, big body count?"

"That sounds about right," Dean answered. "Why can't we just deal with the Marshmallow Man for a change?"

Sam ignored the rhetorical question. "So we have to find this book and figure out how it's killing people."

Dean nodded. "Way to come up with a plan, Sammy. I would have never thought of that myself."

Sam cast his brother a scowl and Dean laughed. "What I'm wondering is if it's a good idea to bring Kya along," Sam said after a moment.

"We don't have a choice," Dean answered. "Like the girl said, we intruded on her hunt. We can't push her off now because she'll just find another way to get involved again."

"I want to know what she's hiding."

"Don't we all want to know what women are hiding," Dean said with a chuckle. "But she'll tell us sooner or later, when she thinks she can trust us."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, I suppose."

Dean looked over as Kya walked up on them. Her expression told him that she had found out the same line of information that they had. She read their faces as well and came quickly to the same conclusion.

"So it's the book," she said, more to fill the silence than state the obvious.

"Looks that way," Dean agreed. "We have to find the damn thing before we can do anything about it."

Kya nodded. She walked back to the front of the museum with the brothers in tow before pushing out the entrance doors. The sunlight caught her hair and lit it up with streaks of gold set in the blonde, making it appear as if it were on fire. She turned back to the boys before donning her helmet.

"I have to go back to my room to change," she told them. "I'll call you when I'm ready to meet up again."

Dean nodded and watched her drive off again. He cast Sam a sidelong glance before starting his own engine up.

"We're in trouble now, brother," he said dryly.

Sam sighed and looked in the direction that Kya had gone. "You can say that again."

"We're in trouble—," Dean started but Sam cut him off with a look.

"Dean," he said tiredly. "Don't."

The earpiece in Kya's ear beeped softly as she was alerted to an incoming call. The sun was bright today, beating down on her leather jacket and causing it to warm up to what should have been an uncomfortable degree. There was a slight breeze coming down from the surrounding hills that did little to wipe away the humidity in the summer air.

"Hello?" she asked, pushing the button on the cell phone belted onto her hip to answer the call.

Jeremiah Dawkin's voice came over the speaker in her ear. "Kya," he said. "I'm sure you know by now that it's the book."

"Yeah," she answered, steering the bike into the right turning lane. "We found that out for sure about five minutes ago."

"I have a suspicion as to who might have stolen the book," he said seriously. "Colton Banks had a son."

"You think his kid stole it for revenge on his father?"

"It's possible that Hunter Banks knows what that book can do."

Kya sighed. "How old is this kid?"

"He should be about 29 now."

"Even if he did steal the book it's doubtful that he still has it," she told him. "The book has to circulate in order to claim victims."

"Yes," Jeremiah agreed. "But you might look to Hunter for answers on how the book works. Or where he sent it too, if it was him, and where it might have ended up."

She found herself nodding even though he couldn't see her. "I still want to know why you're helping out so much."

"I want the deaths to stop as much as you do. I want to know what killed Elizabeth and stop it. My bones are too old to do the heavy lifting, but my head isn't that old yet."

"Alright," she said. "I'll check into Hunter Banks."

"Good luck, girl," he told her before disconnecting.