Chapter 11 Bad Love


Forest Edge, Oregon

Ellie exhaled as she closed and moved another file from the pile in front of her to the pile beside her, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She picked up the cup of tea next to her and sipped it, making a face at the tepid liquid.

Outside, rain spattered against the glass panes of the windows, and the sky was dark, necessitating the lights on in the house. September had swept in with a rush, and the month, normally fine and cold and dry, had been subject to two rain fronts so far, barrelling up the west coast and turning inland, stalling against the western flanks of the mountains. The kitchen was warm and cheery, but the steady downpour of the last two days had given them little chance to do anything other than try and catch up on the research, and prowl around the house in increasing frustration.

"Look at this," Dean said, pushing the newspaper across to her. She picked it up, leaning back in her chair as she read the story.

Dean got up, taking their cups to the sink. He filled the kettle and set it on the stove, pouring himself a fresh coffee from the pot. Standing at the window, he watched the rain absently while he waited for the water to boil.

"That doesn't sound good," Ellie remarked as she put the paper down. "It would be a good case for Sariel and Achina to take for their first solo run."

He cleared his throat. "I thought we could take it."

Ellie raised a brow. "You hate witches."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, they're usually gross. But, they're also, as a general rule, not all that physically demanding, and…I think that, you know, now…that wouldn't be such a bad thing."

"You don't want me chasing monsters," she said, the corner of her mouth lifting.

"Right. Yeah, I don't want you chasing monsters or chasing anything that needs chasing," he agreed immediately, walking over to her and sitting down in the chair next to her. "Look at it…Santa Barbara…for cryin' out loud. They don't come any better than that."

She snorted. "Not all witches are cake-walks, of course."

"No. But I figure we're due," he said, with a sour smile. "Given the last one."

"You're right."

The smile disappeared. "I am?"

"Absolutely." Ellie nodded, her expression guileless. "I have to be careful, and this kind of job will make that easier."

"Okay then," he said, still unsure about the speed of her capitulation. He'd never won a round that easily.

Ellie smiled. "We could take Carl or Sam along, give us some backup?"

"What's going on?" Dean growled. Not just agreeing with him, but suggesting backup? It didn't sound like her. At all.

"Nothing. I just think you're right, and I don't want the risks to be any greater than they need to be," she said, leaning toward him. "I don't want you to have to be any more worried than you need to be."

He let out his breath in a gusting exhale. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously." Her gaze shifted past him, to the steam rising from the spout of the kettle and she rose, walking around him to the stove. "How long do you think it'll take?"

He swivelled to keep her view, resting his arm over the back of his chair as she made a cup of the herbal tea she preferred when she was pregnant. "A couple of days, maybe. Santa Barbara's not that big a town."

She nodded. "Do you want to see if Sam feels like it?"

"Yeah." He pulled the paper closer to him, scanning over the story again. "How d'you think a witch managed to screw up a love spell so badly?"


Highway 101, California

Ellie kept her attention on the road, the wipers going full speed as they passed under another front drenching the coast. The traffic was light and they'd made good time, heading out just before dawn in the morning and already past San Jose with another three or four hours to go. Behind them, Carl was keeping pace, his lipstick-red truck easy to see, even in the miserable weather.

Dean had been right.

No witch, no matter how incompetent, could screw up a love spell as spectacularly as the ones the paper had reported. Not that the paper had covered all the details. The reported story had just been about a guy who'd proposed to a girl with a single red rose, and then had somehow convinced her that they should dive out of a plane without parachutes. Neither were dead, miraculously, although the guy would have a severe limp for the rest of his life.

The second report had come in the next day. The couple—if you could call them that—had been separated for a month. Then they'd gotten back together again, but the results had been…chaotic. The guy had raped his girlfriend and six other women in the neighbourhood before the police had caught and arrested him. The woman had claimed that she didn't know what had happened, but in the grainy picture the paper had run of the guy in his apartment, there'd been a single rose sitting on a table in the background. Thin, Dean had said. She agreed.

Some kind of spell that took the emotions already there and turned them up to eleven? She pushed the speculation aside. They would know more when they got there, when they could talk to the people involved. The thing was…it didn't sound like incompetence. It seemed deliberate.

The rain disappeared behind them as the highway curved closer to the coastline and she picked up her sunglasses from the seat beside her and put them on to cut the glare. The sunshine was heating the closed truck cab. A glance at the passenger seat showed her Dean, slouched into the corner between the back of the seat and the door, legs extended into the well, a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes as he slept.

He'd told her what he'd seen and felt, cursed and locked into an alternative reality, utterly alone and spiralling down into a depression that seemed to have no bottom, no end. Most of what he'd gone through had been the same as his life over '11 and '12. She remembered his despair over Cas, how lost he'd felt when he'd lied to Sam about killing the kitsune. And the deep black grief over Bobby's death. The difference was, in this life, their real life, they'd gone through it together, and he'd been able to deal, slowly but surely, with all that pain, all that anger and frustration and sorrow. He'd told her how much it had scared him, when he'd finally woken, realising it could've been his life, without her.

There was still a residual fear in him. She could feel it. Perhaps it was more uneasiness than fear. She suspected he was worried about what was coming, more than anything from his or their past. She was worried about that too. He and Sam, and their children, were right in the firing line, and there was no way to keep them completely safe, no place for them to go where they would be out of reach of the power of the firstborn.

After Jesse mentioned it, she'd had to tell Sam about the original nine and the sacrifice the Watcher council had decided on to ensure that the circle could never be raised. He'd been shocked. Dean's reaction would be the same; or worse, she thought nervously. Family was everything.

Dean stirred and rubbed his eyes, levering himself upright with a low groan.

"Where are we?" The Pacific glittered in the sunlight to his right and dry chaparral-covered hillsides ran down to the road to the left.

"About two hours past San Jose," Ellie said. "Another couple of hours to go."

"You want me to drive for a while?" He yawned widely. She shook her head, smiling.

"I'm good." She pushed the file lying on the seat between them a little closer to him. "Those people, Dean…thinking about it, it doesn't seem like an incompetent witch to me."

"No?" He snagged the file, dragging it over and flipping the cover open. "What then?"

She wrinkled up her nose. "Well, more like a very competent witch having a bit of fun at those people's expense?"

"Don't they have better things to do?"

"You'd think," she agreed. "I haven't been able to keep track of which witch has been doing what since The Way Within was destroyed." The esoteric store had been more than a valuable resource, its owners both practising adepts of the Right Hand Path, committed to the Light, and good friends. She'd had neither the time nor heart to go searching for those who been friends of Eamon and Fionnula, who might have been able to tell them more about the Wicca; the white witches and the practitioners of the Path.

"Sam's trying to contact Nora. He's got Ray and Frank looking for her," Dean grunted, as he skimmed through the reports. "Is there any way of tracking a spell?"

"Why?"

He tapped the file. "Looks like whatever affected these people was delivered through contact with the rose. By touch."

"There are plenty of spells and poisons transmitted through the skin," Ellie said. "It's one of the millions of things we still have to get into the database, the common ingredients and their effects."

Dean grinned at the impatience in her voice. "Yeah, so one day all we have to do is push a button and it'll all be laid out for us, complete with map and a set of instructions on how to gank the monster?"

"Laugh it up; one day it will," Ellie retorted. It would cut their time spent on research, cut the numbers of errors that every hunter's journal contained, things passed along orally never quite the same as the original information.

"Bring it on, I'm okay with just getting out there and doing it, not having to read about it," he said with a shrug, his gaze returning to the file on his lap. The rose bothered him.

"So these roses, they work like a cursed object? You just have to touch one and that does it?"

"Could be. Or it could be as simple as a structured hallucinogenic—a poison—absorbed by touch."

His brows rose. "Come again?"

"It's just as easy to change the parameters of something that already exists in nature as it is to curse the object to a particular purpose." Ellie glanced at him. "The effect of those roses is really specific. It didn't add anything new, it just took whatever was already there and dialled up the volume to max."

"So this guy wanted to rape women but it was under his control until he touched the rose?"

"More or less." She shrugged. "Maybe he just liked angry sex, I don't know, but whatever it was it went to the furthest extreme he was capable of—it didn't turn him into Ted Bundy, just into someone who had no inhibitions about doing what he felt like doing."

Dean nodded slowly. "And this kind of spell takes a lot of skill?"

"More than your garden-variety witch, yeah. More than a demon-assisted witch, unless of course it was the demon's idea, not the witch's." A small line appeared between her brows as she considered that option. "But, at the same time, the witch might not be the problem. It might be a contract."

"What?"

"When Becky convinced Sam to marry her," Ellie said, "she wasn't the one creating the 'want-me' spell, was she?"

He grimaced. "No, a demon gave it to her."

"Right."

He closed the file and put it back on the seat beside him, tipping his head back. "How're we gonna find this witch?"

Ellie exhaled. "We'll start with the usual, and then go door-knocking if we can't turn anything up."


Santa Barbara, California

They drove into the ridiculously picturesque town a couple of hours before sunset, Dean slowing right down as he took in the stucco buildings with their red-tiled roofs, sprays of neon-bright fuchsia and lilac and fire-engine red bougainvillea cascading over walls and archways and trellis, gardens filled with massed hedges of azalea, rhododendron, camellia and gardenia, all bathed in warm golden sunshine under a cloudless blue sky, the deeper blue of the ocean visible in glimpses at every cross street.

The scented air came in through the open car windows when he turned off the highway south of the harbour and drove slowly through the small streets until he found a motel with a vacancy. Behind them, Carl's truck pulled up with a squeak of brakes. Ellie got out and walked into the office to get two rooms.

The rooms were plain and simple, decorated in blues and greens to go with the seaside motif. Opening the windows brought the fresh tang of the Pacific in on a light breeze, and Dean flopped back onto the bed, breathing deeply, a smile creasing his face.

"It's a job, remember, not a vacation," Ellie reminded him. He opened his eyes and rolled onto his side.

"Working vacation. Worth it to be really warm for a change," he countered, pulling off his jacket. Under it, his plaid flannel shirt was unbuttoned, showing off a once-white tee shirt with several rust-coloured stains.

"I know you have new clothes at home," Ellie gestured to the tee shirt. "Is there any reason you don't wear 'em?"

"They don't feel right," he said lazily, eyes closed again. A thought occurred to him.

"You wearing that business suit for the interviews?"

She laughed. "No, didn't bring it. You and Carl can handle the cops and hospital. I'm going to talk to the local talent."

"Damn," he muttered, just loudly enough for her to hear.

The knock at the door cut off her response, and she walked over to open it. Carl stood outside, a hesitant smile on his face.

"So…what's the plan?" He glanced past Ellie to Dean, the smile faltering a little as he took the man's unmoving position on the bed.

"Come in, Dean's just…thinking," Ellie said, ignoring the muffled snort behind her.

He sat up, and gesturing to a chair. "It's a good question, Carl." He turned to Ellie. "What is the plan?"

Ellie glanced at her watch. "Got another hour before closing time for most places. You two take a run at the newspaper and see if you can find the reporter who did both stories. I'm going to visit some of the new age stores and see if there's anyone new in town."

Dean raised one brow at Carl. "Hope you brought a suit?"

"Sure did," Carl said. "What are we after from the reporter?"

"Background mostly. Who they talked to, what the scenes looked like, what the vics said," Dean said, yawning in between words. He smiled at Ellie. "Must be that sea air."

She snagged the car keys from the table. "You can ride with Carl in that case."

Dean's mouth opened and closed as she disappeared out the door. He heard the rumble of the Impala's engine a moment later and the low growl as she reversed out of the space and drove out of the motel's parking lot.

Carl smiled. "Must be cool to be able to work with your wife on jobs."

"Sometimes," Dean agreed. "Sometimes she's a pain in the ass."

He looked at the younger man resignedly. "Get changed, grab your gear."

Carl nodded and got up, walking out quickly, Dean watching him go. A rookie. He was watching a rookie. He let himself fall back onto the bed, then rolled to the side and got up. Just because the kid had the same last name didn't make him family, not yet. Ellie had orchestrated the situation so that he could get to know Carl, and find out, one way or the other.


Ellie drove slowly back toward State Street and the business area of the town. The last time she was here, there'd been a small but thriving Wiccan community living here and the businesses that served them had been clustered around a three block length of Chapala Street. If they were still there, it would be the place to start asking about anyone new in town.

The traffic was heavy and she circled around the downtown area on the residential streets, the car unfortunately conspicuous, the engine's deep notes bouncing off the single storey houses as she went by. She let out a sigh of relief as she saw the stores, still adding their glitter and whimsy to the small street, half-moons and stars and crystals flashing and reflecting in the late afternoon sunshine. A car pulled out from the curb in front of her and she parked in the space it had left, in the middle of the half dozen or so occult businesses along the road.

The oldest was a frame house with its front wall almost on the sidewalk, the large, heavy painted sign proclaiming its age and respectability under the name. The Morrigu's Cauldron. She smiled slightly. Nice blend of Celtic and Shakespeare and all the '70's chutzpah, she thought. Bells tinkled as she pushed the painted glass door open, and the smells of incense and herbs and wax crowded into her nostrils and throat, so thick it felt as if they should be visible in the dim lighting.

"Can I help you?" The voice was female, deep and soothingly mellow, and Ellie turned to see the woman emerge from the rear door and stop behind the glass-topped counter.

Tall and willowy, with long, dark auburn hair drawn back from her face and almond-shaped, whiskey-coloured eyes, bright against the smooth, olive complexion, Ellie felt a faint jolt, as if she'd seen her before somewhere. Her features were delicate, high, wide cheekbones and eyes, and a sloping jaw line.

"I'm sorry," Ellie said when she realised she was staring. "Have we met somewhere?"

The woman gave her a polite smile. "I don't think so. I'm sure I would have remembered someone with as vivid an aura as yourself." She reached a hand across the counter. "Isabeau Ramsey."

"Ellie Winchester." Ellie took the woman's hand, the long fingers closing around her own.

"Eleanor Katherine, isn't it?" Isabeau stared at her. "Sorry, I have a touch of clairvoyance, and I get very strong impressions from you."

"Are you a witch?" Ellie withdrew her hand, a tingling in her fingertips. She was having misgivings about the woman already, sensing a lot of power and knowledge in the slender frame.

"Not really." Isabeau shrugged delicately with one shoulder. "I prefer research to spell-casting. You're looking for a witch?"

Ellie glanced away, noting more details as her eyes adjusted to the soft lighting of the store. "Possibly. I was wondering if any of the locals had noticed newcomers in the last couple of months."

"As a matter of fact, there have been some arrivals." Isabeau nodded. "A couple came just after Litha actually. I haven't seen them myself. A few of my customers have mentioned they took a big house hear Hidden Valley."

Litha was midsummer's eve, Ellie thought, her gaze dropping to the counter. A couple. That was unusual.

"Did anyone catch their names?"

"Not that I know of," Isabeau said. "I was dubious at first. The estate is a rental for a part of the year, but out of most people's price range and it seemed unlikely that those following the old Path would want that kind of ostentation in their lives. They seem to like the high life though, and they've been to the Smoke Crystal a couple of times, picking up supplies."

She lifted a brow at Ellie. "You're a hunter?"

"I'm looking for whoever was responsible for the love spells used over the last two months," Ellie hedged.

Isabeau nodded. "We've been looking for them ourselves. I wouldn't have thought that couple would be involved though." She made a vague gesture. "They don't seem the type."

Ellie shrugged. "Hard to tell types these days. Thanks for your help."


Dean got out of the truck's cab and tugged impatiently at the collar that felt too tight around his neck. Carl'd just managed to catch Chris Ravenwood before he'd left the office, arranging a meeting at the small bar down the street from the newspaper office. There was still warmth in the late summer air and the suit felt hot and uncomfortable. He glanced over the pickup's tray at Carl, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when he saw the young man running a finger around the inside of his collar and tug at it.

"How often do you need to wear these on jobs?" Carl asked as he came around the rear of the truck.

"Too often," Dean replied, turning for the neon-outlined door behind them. "Depends on what kind of job, but sooner or later you need to get information from someone in an office or with better authority than just curiosity, and this is the easiest way to do it." He glanced over his shoulder. "You got ID?"

Carl nodded, pulling out the FBI badge he'd gotten from Frank. Dean sighed. Frank must have been having one of his rare humour days. The poor kid looked about fifteen in the photo.

He pulled open the door and followed Carl inside. The bar was narrow but long, clay-tiled floor and bare white walls giving the space a relaxed, Spanish feel. A dozen or so customers were spread out along the long polished wooden bar, and a few others scattered in small groups around the tables that were set out a little from the opposite wall. They walked slowly to the end of the bar, looking for the reporter.

"FBI?" A woman's voice, low and amused, came from behind them. Dean turned around to see a tall woman slip from a barstool, her hand extended.

"I'm Chris Ravenwood," she said, golden-grey eyes smiling into his as he took it. She was very close to his six foot one, pale blonde hair cut into a smooth, curving bob that framed the heart-shaped face.

"Special Agent Doug Wiley. My partner, Special Agent Curt Winston."

She acknowledged the introduction with a humourless smile, waving a hand toward an empty table. "What can I do for you, gentlemen?"

"You did both stories on the love spells in town recently, didn't you?" Dean followed her to the table, taking the chair opposite her, leaving Carl with the chair to her left.

"The FBI is investigating love spells these days?" She set her glass of wine on the table, one brow rising. "Kind of a waste of the taxpayers' dollars, isn't it?"

Carl leaned on the table, his expression earnest. "Ma'am, people were injured and the Bureau has the jurisdiction to investigate—"

"Ha ha, take it easy there, Bobby." Dean gave Carl what he hoped was a quelling look. He turned back to the reporter. "There have been several other cases in Nevada that have been similar;, we're just here to find out if there's any connection."

"Have there?" Chris sipped her wine. "That's weird, because I ran a full nation-wide search for anything even remotely resembling this sort of thing and came up with nothing."

"We don't release all the details of strange cases to the general public, ma'am," Carl pointed out.

She glanced at him, then back to Dean, as he smiled.

"And of course, your search wouldn't have included state and federal law enforcement databases, would it?"

"No. I don't have access to that kind of data, Agent." She conceded the point, and leaned back in her chair. "What do you want to know?"

"You stated that you saw the first couple in hospital, after the, uh, plane incident?" Dean rested an elbow on the table, wondering at the woman's resistance. On the phone, she'd sounded more amiable. "Can you tell us what they said about it?"

"Well, the girl did most of the talking. The guy was pretty much out of it when I got there." Picking up her glass, she looked into the contents, seeming to reflect on the memory. "She said that she'd been to a witch, got a love spell guaranteed to make her boyfriend love her forever—those are her words, not mine—and then he proposed on the plane. The next thing she knew he jumped out the door, pulling her with him."

"Did she happen to mention if the spell was a potion or a powder?" Carl asked, his pen poised over the small notebook in his hands. "And, uh, where she met the witch?"

She smiled. "Does that matter?"

"Every detail counts, ma'am," Carl said.

Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably, shooting another warning look at Carl. "He just loves to dot the i's and cross those t's."

"She said she got a rose, from a shop called The Black Unicorn, down on Chapala Street. According to her, all the boyfriend had to do was smell it, and the spell would start." She looked from Dean to Carl and back. "You guys aren't, uh, you're not really taking this seriously?"

"Ma'am—"

Dean cut his partner off quickly. "We're obliged to double-check everything about a situation like this. I don't suppose that the guy was under the effect of a spell, but the case might involve a hallucinogenic or other mind-altering substance to create a kind of temporary madness in some victims." Leaning on the table, he could see Carl staring at his notebook from the corner of his eye, jaw twitching. "Did the police take the rose from the girl's apartment?"

"Hallucinogenics. Okay, that's more real-world based." The reporter's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. I would guess so."

"You didn't check with the police about the two incidents?"

"No. There wasn't enough for them to go with, and the day sergeant told me that they were probably going to try and forget about them." She smiled, her expression sardonic. "I only wrote the stories because it was a very slow week; they wouldn't have made the paper if anything else had happened."

"Thanks for you time, Ms Ravenwood." Dean stood up, Carl rising reluctantly after him. "We'll be in touch if we need anything else."

"You know, Doug, you look very familiar to me—have you spent a lot of time in Seattle?" Chris asked.

He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Haven't been there in years, and even then it wasn't a long visit."

"Oh, my mistake." Her gaze dropped to her glass and Dean turned away, a prickle at the back of his neck. What the fuck had that been about?


"Drop me off at the police station, Carl," Dean said as they got back into the truck. "And then run a comprehensive background on that reporter. If you can't find anything out about her, call Frank and tell him and Ray to run one and send it out as soon as he can."

Carl nodded. "You didn't buy what she was telling us?"

He hadn't bought anything about her. She'd seemed all wrong for a small town reporter, even a town as upmarket as this, and she'd known a lot more than she'd let on.

"No, she doesn't fit in here," he said shortly.


Carl pulled up in front of the police station and he got out, crossing the street and going in the front door. The desk sergeant nodded and buzzed him through when he showed his ID.

"I need to see the evidence for the love spell cases you guys had a couple of weeks ago."

The sergeant waved his hand toward the rear hall. "Third door on the left. See Bucky, he'll get whatever you need."

Bucky? "Okay, thanks." Dean walked down the hall and opened the third door.

The officer at the desk smiled at him and Dean smiled back. Bucky. Okay.

"I'm after the evidence in the so-called love spell cases."

"Sure. What did you want to see?" His oversized front teeth mangled his diction and he had an unfortunate habit of sucking the saliva back into his mouth after every second word. Dean suppressed an urge to wipe his mouth in sympathy.

"Everything you've got."

"There's a table in the next room," Bucky said, slurping unselfconsciously and gesturing to a door to the left of the counter. "I'll bring 'em through there."

There were two boxes of stuff, and Dean pulled out the tagged bags one by one, laying them on the table and looking at each sealed item. Most of it was junk. Two items caught his attention. A bag held a small coin, silver and old-looking. He couldn't make out the markings on it.

The other was the condition of the roses. They were fresh. They should have been wilted and dried up by now, he thought, picking up the bags that held them gingerly, but both looked as if they'd been cut that morning, the petals velvety and deep with colour.

"Uh, Bucky?" He stuck his head back through the door. "I need to sign out some of these."

"Yessir, I'll bring the forms in."


Dean tucked the brown envelope under his arm, pulling out his cell as he came out of the building.

"Ellie, you still driving around?" He glanced both ways along the street, and spotted the black car, cruising slowly along the manicured street like a raven among pigeons. "Yeah, I see you. I'm in front of the cop station."

She pulled over and waited for him, an eyebrow raised as he dropped the envelope on the seat between them.

"Present? I didn't get you anything."

"I'll live. It is romantic, but not for touching," he said. "How'd you do?"

"A reclusive couple have been buying magical supplies from a store on Chapala Street. They arrived at the end of June. Keep to themselves but definitely in the game."

"A couple?" Dean frowned.

"Yeah, my reaction too." She glanced at him. "Did the reporter have anything to add?"

"Not so much." The frown deepened. "But she wasn't on the level, and she wasn't what you'd expect to see here."

He turned to face her as she made the next turn.

"She was…I don't know, hard, like a big-city girl?" He shrugged. "I told Carl to get Frank to run a background on her. She said that both the girl and the guy got the roses from a store on Chapala, called The Black Unicorn."

Ellie nodded. "Yeah, sold on consignment, according to the owner of the Smoke Crystal, another store there. Our mystery couple were getting their supplies from the Smoke Crystal and putting roses in the other stores. I went to see the owners and they gave me a list of what the couple had purchased. Also, all of the practising witches in the area have been trying to find out who's been doing these spells." She glanced down at the envelope. "The roses in there?"

"Yeah, and something else the cops found at Murray's apartment. A coin."

"Huh."

"Yeah."


Dean's phone rang as they pulled into the motel parking lot.

"What's up?"

Ellie half-listened to his end of the conversation as she gathered up the stuff from the seat and got out of the car, locking it and walking to the room door, aware of Dean a couple of steps behind her.

"Thanks. Yeah." He closed the phone and followed Ellie inside.

"Well?"

"Frank ran the check. The chick doesn't exist. Name's from a gravestone in Milwaukee, two-year-old girl died of pneumonia in 1984. No school records, no college records, no employment, Social Security, health insurance, nada on everything." He pulled off his jacket and slung it onto the back of the chair at the small table. "She must have forged some documents to get a job as a journalist, but there're no records of her existing before eight months ago, when she got the job here."

"Well, that's interesting." Ellie opened the envelope and shook out the evidence bags onto the table, pulling a handful of written notes from her bag as well. Dean tugged at his tie, snorting.

"Yeah, not quite the right word for it." He turned at the knock on the door, opening it and letting Carl in. "Why would anyone want to fake their way into becoming a reporter for a small town paper?"

"Did Frank call?" Carl asked as he came in, his attention caught by the bags on the table.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. But we're no wiser as to who she was, or why she's here."

He leaned over the table and picked up the bag with the coin in it, smoothing out the plastic and taking a couple of shots of it with his phone. He dialled Sam.

"Sam? Sending you a couple of photos of a coin the cops found here. Have a look and see if it rings any bells for you?" He sent the photos through and closed the phone.

Carl looked down at the roses. "Uh, are these the roses from the cases?"

"Yeah." Dean sat down at the table.

"Are they fake?"

"Nope. Real, fresh roses."

"Shouldn't they, uh, be…kind of dead by now?"

"Yep," Dean said. "It's been three weeks since the first case, two since the second."

Ellie picked up one of the bags, examining the soft, lush petals. "Well, we can rule out all the non-magical possibilities from this."

She left the bagged rose on the table and moved her bag to the floor, pulling out the chair between the two men and dropping into it. "The Smoke Crystal sold the couple belladonna, aconite, mandrake root, powdered dragon's blood, thirteen black human tallow candles, nine beeswax red candles and a pint of menstrual blood."

Dean made a face. "Witches…"

"Uh, human fat candles?" Carl's brows shot up, his expression warring between disgust and curiosity. "How do they get the fat?"

"Liposuction clinics these days, I guess," Ellie said absently, reading through the rest of her notes.

"What kind of spell would they use those for?"

"The candles are general; used in most spellwork, although made from human tallow, that's a bit more specific to a spell that has a physical effect," she explained. "Belladonna is a hallucinogen, and aconite works as a local anaesthetic absorbed through the skin, so they would suit these spells. Mandrake's used for a lot of things, including summoning the more powerful entities. Powdered dragon's blood…I don't know. I've never even heard of it being sold in this country. It used to only be available in northern China. The menstrual blood…that'll be for these spells; fertility is strongly connected to attraction."

"Uh, I know you've been doing this for a long time an' all, but how do you know so much about this stuff?" Carl asked, his eyes wide.

"Research, Carl," she said, smiling.

"She dated a witch," Dean added. Ellie made a face at him.

"I knew about this stuff long before I met Remy," she pointed out. "The owner of the Smoke Crystal said the other stores were taking the roses on consignment, but had heard the roses were only to be sold to certain customers."

"What certain customers?" Dean asked.

She shook her head. "He wouldn't say. Just not for general sale."

"What does that mean?" Carl looked from Dean to Ellie.

"I'm not sure," Ellie said. "It depends on the criteria for the sales."

"Anyway…do we know where these witches are?" Dean took the list of ingredients from the pile, looking down it.

"They rented a big place out of town." Ellie rubbed her forehead lightly with the inside of her wrist. "You could probably call around the real estate agents and find out quickly enough, there can't be many around."

Dean recognised the beginnings of weariness in the gesture. "We'll grab some food and work out the details while we eat, okay?"


"Did Laney tell you that Emma bailed, right after we left Oregon?" Carl chewed and swallowed the last of his burger.

"She called and said Emma left, went to look up some signs of a vampire nest in Maine," Dean said, flicking a look at Ellie, who was making a pot of coffee in the kitchenette.

Carl shook his head. "Nuh-uh, Laney was pissed. Emma didn't say a word to anyone, just took off when we were going through South Dakota."

"Anyone know why?" Dean's gaze dropped to his food, a prickle at the back of his neck.

"No," Carl said. "I didn't like her much. She thought she was better than everyone else, but the truth was she just didn't care at all."

Dean nodded. He'd gotten that impression as well. "Did it leave Laney short-handed?"

"Not really," Carl said, picking up his bottle of beer. "With Twist and the folks you sent along, we've been pretty much on top of the wendigo situation. There was another nest of vampires, a big one, in Wisconsin, but we took care of that pretty easily. They seemed kind of disorganised, really random."

"Why'd you get into this, Carl?" Dean put down his burger. "I thought all Dad's people were pretty much the normal, apple-pie kind?"

Carl laughed self-consciously. "Yeah, I guess most of us are. My uncle was the black sheep. He was a hunter, but none of us knew it. Used to turn up from time to time and my dad would have to stitch him up, and he'd stay for a couple of days and scare the crap out of us kids with his stories, then he'd go away again and we wouldn't see him til the next time he came in the middle of the night, all torn up." He tipped his bottle up, throat working as he swallowed.

"He tried to warn my dad. Came to the house just before Christmas in 2009, and said that things were happening, really bad things and Dad needed to get us all out, away somewhere else."

When Lucifer rose. Dean saw conflicting emotions pass over the younger man's face, shadowing Carl's eyes.

"Dad didn't, of course. Didn't believe a word of it." Carl let out a long, slow breath. "I don't know exactly what happened but something came for our family in the night, and Mom hustled us down to the basement, and there was a lot of gunfire, a lot of screaming."

"We were in that basement for two days, then Mom went out, to look for food," he said, his voice dropping low. "She didn't come back and I had to go out a couple of days later. My baby brother wasn't doing good down there."

"Carl…" Ellie's voice was very gentle behind Dean, and the young man raised his head, his eyes bright with tears.

"It's okay…you guys, you're just the, uh, first I've really told it all to," he said, catching his breath. "Uncle Pete near killed me when he saw me sneaking around what was left of the house, managed to swing the barrel of his gun away in time. He got us out, but Toby—my little brother—he died anyway, didn't have enough food all that time. Uncle Pete took us to Peg's and we stayed there for a while."

He shook his head. "Emma told me it was because of Pete we were attacked, but that was just the sort of crap she liked to spread around. Pete saved us kids, anyway. And, growing up with it, I knew I wanted to do what he did…make sure it didn't happen to anyone else's family."

Dean closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair, Ellie's hand closing tightly around his shoulder. The cycle was endless. There was no escaping it. He let out the breath he'd been holding and opened his eyes, meeting Carl's.

"It's not the way to deal, Carl," he said. "You should get out."

"No, I know," Carl's expression twisted, then smoothed out in resolve. "I'm not hunting out of revenge or because I need payback."

"I'm not that smart. I know that…" He shrugged. "It's not like I'm going to get into college or have a career. But I'm good at this, and it means something, means something to me, that I can do it."

Dean smiled involuntarily as he listened to him. Sounded like someone he knew, had known, a long time ago. He didn't agree, not now, not with what he'd discovered over the years, but he knew what Carl felt.


The top of the curtains didn't quite meet the top of the window frame and the headlights from the occasional traffic flickered over the smooth plaster, creating shadows and flashing gleams as they passed by.

"He's like me, isn't he?" Dean asked Ellie. She curled her arm closer around him.

"Hopefully not just like you, one's enough," she murmured against his skin.

He snorted. "Who taught him all that crap? Saving people and making a difference?"

He heard her low laugh. "It's not crap, and you know it. And I guess he picked it up the same way you did, surrounded by hunters who needed to justify themselves and what they did, make themselves feel okay about it."

She lifted her head, shifting to one elbow. "It's not safe, and it's not stable, but it's not the worst way to live your life, thinking about others instead just about yourself."

His brows drew together. "It's a good way to die young."

"A lot of people die young because they take risks and chances that a young hunter never would," she said, leaning close to him. "Get some perspective, there are a lot of ways to die in this world. And hopefully Carl will get some pointers from more experienced hunters as to the things not to do."

Something ran out of him, some pressure or tension he hadn't even been aware of. "Just because you're right all the time doesn't mean I have to like it."

She grinned at him and leaned close, brushing her lips over his. "You know, even if he turned out exactly like you, that wouldn't be a bad thing. You haven't turned out too badly at all."

His breath caught when her teeth dragged lightly down his chest. "In fact, a lot of people think you're damned nice to have around."

"Nice?" He closed his eyes as her lips moved softly over his stomach. "Just nice?"

He felt the lift of her cheek at the crease where hip met thigh as she smiled. "Very nice."

"Uh, still not quite…feeling…that appreciation, Ellie," he said, arching up involuntarily, his breath sucking in fast a second later.

"Feeling it now?"

He couldn't find a breath free to answer her, his body shaking, trembling under the sensations that formed and spread and broke apart and reformed with what she was doing to him. No matter how much he thought he'd prepared for it, no matter how well he knew what was happening, when she touched him, it all fell apart, and his control dissolved, thoughts scattering like a dropped box of those proverbial fucking marbles, reaction and nerve endings and arousal and desire and an aching, building need taking over.

It wasn't a one-way street; he could do it to her just as easily, just as thoroughly. It was more something that they did together, between them, than just one or the other. And every single time, it was stronger, and it somehow bound them together more closely, as if this magic alchemy of biology and chemistry and emotion was reaching into them deeper and deeper, weaving itself tightly into every part of them, every cell and fibre.

He groaned as her mouth slid up him, and the relative temperature of the air felt like a slap, pulling her up and rolling onto his side, his lips and tongue on hers, hungry and demanding and feeling her open to him, pliant and wanting, wet and hot and tight.

There was a part of him that knew, when he bitched and growled about Fate and the way his family had been torn apart by it, that he never would have found her, never would have had this, if the events of his life hadn't occurred just as they had. She'd have bled out, ten years old and dead with her parents if his father hadn't been hunting the psychic and the elemental created. Or saved by someone else, belonging with someone else, because she'd chosen this life, and hunting was what she did and who she was. He couldn't quite reconcile the two things, losing one thing he'd loved more than anything, gaining another he couldn't live without.

Hot. Slick. Pressure. Comfort. Sensation. Ache. Thrusting inside, a deep throbbing flex around him, making him cry out with a feeling of every cell glowing, incandescent, a discharge rushing through him, setting his nerves alight. Oscillation. That soft hum, a delicate vibration, tickling almost at first, except that it wasn't a tickle, it was a shifting grip enclosing him, moving faster and faster, punctuated with shockingly powerful spasms that choked him with their intensity. The sound of their breathing, hoarse and raw and desperate, filling the space between them, her hips bucking against his, her fingers tightening over his shoulders, pads flat on his skin, begging him wordlessly. She arches up beneath him, and he can't believe how it feels, swallowing him, squeezing him, no analogies match it, nothing can describe it, but he's in her and with her and a part of her and then every muscle tenses, contracting, drawing up until he's gone, nothing left but feeling and light and heat and a silence that's so loud it hurts him somewhere deep inside.

She was more prosaic about it. It wasn't a choice, she'd told him, not an either/or. If it had gone the other way, if he'd grown up with his family in the normal way, he never would have felt the loss of what might have been. He'd thought about it; growing up like any kid, finding a job, meeting someone (someone ordinary?), settling down maybe. Would he have been happy? Or wouldn't he have known the difference? Would it have felt like this did? Or would some part of him have always known that somewhere in the world there was someone he was made for, made to be with and he'd have felt that missing piece his whole life.

Dean shifted his weight to one arm, forehead resting against Ellie's shoulder as his breathing slowed, eased. He opened his eyes and looked down at her, her skin sheened with perspiration, hair damp along her forehead, eyes half-closed as she breathed deeply in and out in time with him. He thought she was extraordinarily beautiful, loved watching her, loved looking at her at any time, but never more so than now, her face sublimely relaxed, all armour and defences utterly abandoned, just herself, warm and her barely open eyes looking at him from under long dark red lashes, their expression soft and filled with the way she loved him.

Maybe he wouldn't have missed this, in another life, not knowing it, never having known it. Maybe. But it didn't feel true. He thought that somewhere, he would have known, would've felt it gone.


"Have you seen this place?" Dean muttered to Carl, lying face down on the rock overhang, binoculars over his eyes.

Ellie had been right. The place was easy to find. The estate was at least fifty or sixty acres, encompassing an undeveloped tract of land, a deep ravine that ran almost east-west and divided the wealthier suburbs from the town-side. The lavishly scaled and ludicrously pretentious house had been built on the northern side of the ravine facing south, with a long driveway and high security fencing running all the way around the property.

"Saw it on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless, I think," Carl lifted his pair of glasses. "Recognise that pool."

"Cut the chatter, you two." Ellie's voice was surprisingly clear in their earpieces. "Anyone home?"

"Negatory, Red Leader," Dean drawled, the throat mike transmitting his words to Ellie who was crouched in the line of scrubby brush on the edge of the estate a half-mile distant from them. "But hold up and wait for my signal to start your run."

"Never gets old, Dean," Ellie muttered.

"I know, darlin'." He grinned at Carl and scanned across the back of the house. "Wait a minute… Ellie? Wait a minute."

He increased the magnification, bracing the binoculars hard with his elbows to counteract the shimmy from the higher resolution and stared at the vegetation running alongside the patio and around the pool.

"Carl, get the tripod and the scope," he breathed. He couldn't increase the magnification on the binoculars any further and he wanted to be damned sure of what he was seeing before he let Ellie get any closer to the house.

He blinked when he let the glasses drop, eyes crossing slightly as they adjusted to normal vision. It took a moment to set up the tripod and high mag scope. The house leapt into view when he put his eye to the scope, as if he were standing next to the pool, and he panned slowly around the garden, the wilted and dried up shrubs and grass, the blackened young trees and flowers in perfect detail.

"Crap. Ellie, get out of there."

"Why? What is it?"

"Uh, Dean, I gotta car coming up the driveway, white Merc E-class Cabriolet, two people in the front seats," Carl said.

"Shit!" He shifted the direction of the scope to the drive, picking up and following the car around the curve. "Ellie, fade back now, repeat, get out of there now. I know these two, we need a different approach."

It took him almost twenty seconds to find her against the cluttered vegetation of the hillside. He watched her slide backwards down the slope, away from the house, not raising so much as a puff of dust from the dry ground.

Panning back to the car, he saw the couple got out. The woman's brows drew together suddenly as she said something to the man, then they'd moved past the corner of the house, and out of his view. When he looked back to the ravine's steep slope, Ellie had vanished too, down into the gully that lay to the north-west of the estate.

A sheen of sweat covered his forehead and he wiped it away with one hand, swallowing and leaning on one elbow.

"What happened?" Carl's expression was bemused.

"Bad news," Dean said. Sam hadn't gotten back to him on the coin but he already knew what his brother would find. Something from the fifteenth century, possibly a ducat as the others had been, although he didn't recognise the design on it, so maybe a different type. Sonofabitch.

"Pack it up, Carl. We'll be leaving as soon as Ellie shows," he said, rolling over to look down the twisting gully for any sign of her below. He heard Carl pick up their gear, packing it away into the canvas duffle, the muffled click of metal and plastic against each other as the younger man lifted the bag and carried it back to the car.

Five minutes later, he saw Ellie climbing up the steep trail, fatigues darkened with sweat. He knelt by the overhang, and waited for her. She came up the faint track and lifted her head, reaching up to take his. He pulled and she climbed out and over the lip of the overhang, the small pack bouncing on her back. Under the cover of the shadows of the small trees a few feet back, she sat down and took the bottle of water he offered, swallowing half of it in great gulps.

"Okay," she said, wiping her mouth. "What's the problem?"

"I know them. We ran into them, in Indiana, the chicken feet," he said, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead.

Ellie's eyes narrowed.

"The witch who put the Levi out of action?"

"Yeah."

She nodded. "That…well, that explains a lot."

"Yeah." He leaned back against the slim trunk behind him. "What now?"

Ellie got up, finishing the water. "Plan B."

"Do we have one?"

She gave him a wry one-sided grin. "Not yet."


"These two are powerful—they just about destroyed that little town between them and that was just some kind of marriage problem!" Dean said, reaching into the fridge for the beer. He took out two bottles and passed one to Carl.

Ellie came out of the bathroom. "Well, we can't just leave them to it here. Especially if they've got a grudge against you as well."

Dean scowled. "More her than him."

"Either way. Did Sam keep the spell that Bobby found to kill them?" She sat down at the table, dropping her towel over the back of the chair, and combing out her hair.

"Yeah, it's in the journal." He didn't want to even think about what'd happened the last time he'd run into the two witches. "It didn't work the last time."

"Mmmm…the chicken feet have to be kept chilled."

"Whatever." He swallowed a mouthful of beer and got to his feet, returning to the fridge to pull out another bottle. "How do we know it'll work this time?"

"Only game in town. Thanks," she said, taking the beer he passed her. "It's either that or we try to appeal to their better natures to stop harassing people."

"Is that what they're doing?" Carl frowned. "I mean, that first guy, he jumped out of a plane, he could've been killed."

"Yeah." She opened the bottle, a crease appearing between her brows.

"What?"

"That was just chance," Ellie said. "That he survived. That his girlfriend did. And the other one. He could have been harbouring Bundy-type tendencies, but he wasn't."

"And?" Dean prompted.

"And the spells were only to be sold to certain people." She tipped the bottle up, taking a mouthful. "Which sounds to me as if there was a point—"

"Bait?" Dean asked. "For hunters? Well, that's not freakin' reassuring!"

"No."

Carl looked at them. "This witch was trying to get us here?"

Ellie lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Maybe not us specifically."

"Or maybe me—specifically." Dean leaned back against the counter. "Unfinished business."

"It's been years, Dean," Ellie argued. "I'll admit, you are unforgettable, but these two have managed to survive a long time and I'm not sure they would've if she was that hell-bent on getting revenge."

He dropped his gaze to this bottle. "Yeah, I guess."

Carl frowned at the front window he faced when a white, low-slung car pulled up. "Uh, guys?"

"What?"

"We have company," the young man said, standing and walking for the door as a peremptory knock rattled it.

The woman who entered would have been tall in her bare feet, but the four-inch heels took her to almost six feet. Slender and tanned, hair immaculately styled in a long, layered cut that framed her face, she wore a simple sleeveless suit in a shade of coral that made a warm foil to her skin and eyes. Large, dark eyes, subtly made up, scanned the room. The man who walked in behind her was also tall, lean and tanned, the pale brushed silk of his jacket and pants looking both expensive and casual.

"Don. Maggie," Dean stood, putting his beer on the counter behind him and using the movement to check the automatic tucked into the back of his jeans.

"I can't say it's a pleasure seeing you again." Maggie's expression was cold. "But we thought it was a good opportunity to catch up."

Ellie got to her feet, holding out her hand to the witch. "Marchioness Marguerite del Carmen Matheu-Arias-Davila y Carondolet, isn't it?"

Shock widened Maggie's eyes, and she took Ellie's hand without thinking. "How did you—"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, my lady," Ellie said. "I've read a great deal about you."

Maggie blinked. "You have?"

"And about you, my lord." Ellie looked past her. "Count Stephan Szálláspataki?"

"Just Don these days, no one can get their tongues around the old names," Don leaned past Maggie and shook Ellie's hand. "You have been doing your homework."

He glanced at Dean who was staring at Ellie with the same wide-eyed look as Maggie. "Shall we sit?"

"Please do," Ellie said and gestured to the small table. "Your exploits have been well-documented, in some centuries, at least. I've studied many of the notable witches of the sixteenth century. I'm surprised you came to the U.S."

"Ah, well, Europe hasn't been much fun since the various and sundry revolutions," Don said, ushering Maggie past Dean to the table. "And with all the nouveau riche, just being wealthy isn't enough these days."

"How vexing," Ellie said, without a trace of irony in her voice. Don smiled appreciatively as he took a seat.

"What brings you to Santa Barbara?"

"We're on vacation." Don smiled at Maggie, taking her hand and drawing her down into the chair. "Sun, sea—"

"A few people almost killed," Dean interjected. "Or was that to get our attention?"

Maggie turned to look at him. "You tried to kill me."

"You tried to kill everyone in Prosperity," Dean retorted.

"Now, now," Don said soothingly, patting his wife's hand. "I'm sure we're all past that. It was a long time ago."

Maggie glared at Dean. His face was expressionless as he stared back.

Ellie drew in a breath. "Kind of a busman's holiday for you, isn't it?"

"It wasn't us," Don continued. "The problems started about six weeks after we arrived, and we've been trying to find the witch responsible ever since."

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat. Ellie shot a look at him and he turned away with a small shrug.

"I can understand your disinclination to believe it, but it's true." Don sighed.

"We're supposed to believe you haven't been able to find whoever's doing this in the last eight weeks?" Dean crossed his arms over his chest, his expression derisive. "Come on."

"There are a few possibilities. We haven't been able to narrow it down to a single certainty."

"And we're here on vacation," Maggie spat. "Supposed to be here on vacation to get our probl—"

"I don't think they need all the details, sweetheart," Don cut her off. "There's a man who turned up at the end of July, a woman whom I'm sure I recognise from 1586—"

"And I'm sure I don't want the details of that!" Maggie snapped.

"And there's a woman working for the newspaper who is definitely not kosher," Don continued.

Dean flicked a glance at Ellie. She shrugged. "What did you have in mind?"

"We're having a small soirée this evening, at our place. Just a few of the locals, and we'd like you to come. We could share the information we have and possibly figure this out together."

"Wow, walking deliberately into the lion's den—who could resist an invitation like that?" Dean's expression soured.

"You have my word we don't want to harm you and we won't let anyone else harm you," Don said, raising his hands pacifically. "We just want to get rid of this witch before she or he brings some real publicity to this place and we have cancel our rental."

"'Cause that would put a damper on your vacation?"

"Do you know how long it's been since we had a real holiday?" Maggie leapt to her feet and stalked to the counter. "Three hundred years. So don't even think of getting snarky in front of me about it."

Dean leaned back as she crowded into his space. Don stood and slid his arm through hers, drawing her away.

"Eight o'clock, I think you already know the place?" He glanced at Ellie, one brow raised. Ellie nodded. "It's not formal."

"No, feel free to come as you are!" Maggie threw over her shoulder at Dean, her gaze fixed on his stained tee shirt.

Don smiled as he opened the door, and Maggie walked out. "She's been kind of tense the last couple of years. We need your help, we're too close to the community here to see it clearly right now. It's not a trap."

He closed the door behind him. Carl swivelled in his chair to look at Ellie and Dean.

"What the hell was that all about?"

"It's a trap," Dean said, picking up his beer and glowering at Ellie. She shrugged.

"It might be, although they were here, if they'd wanted to kill us, I can't see why they'd bother to set an elaborate trap to do it. Even if it is, I don't see that we've got a lot of choices here." She stood, finishing her beer and taking the bottle to the trash can in the kitchenette. "From the sounds of it, there are at least five potentially powerful witches here. We can't take them all on our own, and getting some intel on what's going on here might be useful."

"What's a swar-ay?" Carl looked at her.

"Evening get-together, in this case," Ellie explained. Her gaze flicked to Dean. "Alright, what do you want to do?"

He looked over his shoulder at her, mouth curling down in defeat. "We'll go. Against my better judgement, for the record, but yeah, I don't see another option."


The sky still showed traces of light although the sun had set almost an hour ago, disappearing behind the mountains. The sea breeze was cool and laden with salt, giving it a damp feeling. Ellie pulled her jacket closer around herself as they got out of the car on the gravel turnaround in front of the house.

She glanced at Dean, still stubbornly wearing the clothes he'd had on earlier. She'd compromised between comfort and courtesy, the wide-legged black silk pants holding her knife, tucked into the waistband and hidden beneath the hem of a cropped lace jacket, and a beaded black silk top giving the illusion of elegance. Carl had put on clean clothes and topped them with a surprisingly attractive coffee-coloured suede jacket.

Don opened the door as they walked up the steps, smiling. "I'm glad you decided to come along."

"Didn't have much of a choice." Dean stopped by the door.

"Well, you're the first to arrive, so come in," Don said, ignoring the tone and stepping back.

Ellie and Carl followed Dean inside, and Don led the way through the marble-floored and frescoed hallway to a massive living room, six sets of French doors opening onto the paved patio, the outside lights shining on the dead foliage and turning the pool into a glowing turquoise octagon.

"You guys really slum it on vacation," Dean said, his gaze travelling around the room.

Several groupings of plush sofas and armchairs were spread throughout the space, a grand piano took up a corner, and a flat screen TV covered most of a wall at the other end. Don walked to a long cupboard serving as a bar and gave a short laugh.

"Well, we've been used to the finer things of life for a long time. Kind of hard to lower your standards." He gestured at the bottles sitting on the cupboard. "What's your preference?"

Dean shook his head. "Maybe later."

They turned at the click-click of heels tapped across the hard tiled floor, and Maggie came in through a pair of double doors near the piano. She wore a white, off-the-shoulder evening gown, jewellery sparkling at her ears and throat. Her gaze skated over Dean as she approached, lips thinning as she took in his attire.

"Glad to see you didn't make an effort," she said, stopping by Don and accepting the martini he held for her.

"This is how I am," Dean said, smiling at her.

"Hon, what time did we give everyone?" Don looked at his watch, then at Maggie, a frown creasing his brow as she fidgeted with her bracelet.

The frown deepened when two more people walked into the room, from the same doorway. Ellie saw Don's gaze flick to Maggie in accusation.

The man was very tall, broad-shouldered and lean in the hips, his hair long and a dark gold, loose over his shoulders. He wore a long grey leather coat over a black silk shirt and close-fitting black pants. Beside him, the woman was also tall, pale blonde hair cut into a smooth bob that curved around her face, the long skirt of her dark red leather coat swinging out as she walked, the front buttoned to her neck, tight charcoal pants delineating the length and curves of her legs.

"Well done, Maggie," the man drawled softly, his attention on Dean.

The tall blonde was the reporter, Dean realised. Seeing her beside her companion, he realised what'd bothered him about her when they'd met. Like so many of the nephilim, she was almost perfect, lacking the asymmetry of most humans, the flaws and scars and lumps and blemishes that gave every human their own unique appearance.

"Mags?" Don looked from them to his wife, his face expressionless.

Maggie's expression hardened as she turned to him. "You saved him, and his brother. In spite of the fact that they tried to kill me, Don."

"It wasn't much of an attempt, sweetheart," Don said softly.

"We haven't met." The tall man stepped toward Dean. "I am Maluch, son of Bezaliel. This is Reuma, daughter of Araquiel."

Dean glanced at Maggie, his smile sour. "Sold me out, that must have made your day."

Don's gaze flashed from him to Maggie. "We don't deal with angels or their offspring, Mags."

She lifted her chin. "You didn't do anything about him. I didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice, Maggie, especially for us!" Don said. "I gave my word!"

She turned away, shrugging. "They want to kill him. It suited me."

Dean laughed. "They don't want to kill me, Maggie; they want to use me to open a door to Heaven."

Maggie looked at the nephilim. "What?"

"It's true." Ellie walked away from Dean and Carl, watching the nephilim over her shoulder. "They want to start the Second War."

Ellie stopped between the witches and the nephilim.

Carl took a step closer to Dean, trying to remember what Ellie had told him about them, these children of angels; more powerful than a man, able to survive every injury unless their hearts were cut from their chests.

Maluch's eyes had narrowed thoughtfully at Ellie's words and he turned to watch her pass. "And what would you know of what we want?"

"Your father told us all about it," Ellie said. "The Circle and the Nine and the way back in. The sacrifice of the children to prevent Lucifer from ever being able to regain Heaven's halls." Her expression was cool and distant. "And the key to the circle he and Baraquiel destroyed."

The words hung in the silence for a moment, and Dean realised that she'd drawn their attention from him deliberately.

Maluch moved fast, reaching out for her, and the strained tableau was broken, everyone scattering.

Maggie grabbed Ellie and pulled her behind Don as Maluch's hand swept where she'd been. Don shouted a spell, throwing up his hand and the power went out, darkness filling the interior of the house, pale moonlight spilling through the glass-paned doors throwing everything into stark black and white.

Dean fired at Maluch, his 9mm punching through the nephilim's back and grazing Don's ribs on exiting, and Carl drew and fired at Reuma, the .45 calibre bullet hitting her in the back of the shoulder and sending her flying to the hard floor.

Both nephilim lay still on the floor.

"Maggie, the banishing spell?" Don looked at his wife. Maggie shook her head.

"It's upstairs. I didn't think—I summoned them, I didn't think—"

"Get it, sweetheart—now," Don looked down as Reuma moved her arm. "Hurry!"


Ellie drew her knife, crossing to the blonde. She knelt and gripped Reuma's shoulder, rolling the taller woman onto her back. The big exit wound from Carl's bullet lay above the woman's breast. Driving the knife in through the ribs to the left of it, Ellie levered the length of the blade against the ribs, breaking two and pulling them away from the breastbone, the knife tip driving into the chest, slicing through the blood vessels.

She didn't see the blue eyes open wide.

Reuma sat up, one hand gripping Ellie's hand and twisting her arm around as she threw her backward. The knife fell to the floor, blood spilling from the ragged hole, soaking through the leather coat.

Ellie hit the closed French doors, splintering through one with the force of the throw and rolling across the patio. She put her hand down, and sucked in a breath as a bolt of pain shot up her arm. A long shard of glass was sticking out of her palm. She pulled it out and rolled onto her knees as Carl's gun boomed inside the room, two shots in quick succession.

"Carl! The guy!" Dean yelled and there were another two shots.

Forcing herself to her feet, she heard the crunch of wood and glass when a shadow burst from through the broken door in front of her. Maluch hit her head-on, his weight and speed knocking them both down the broad, shallow steps that led from the patio to the pool, landing on the stone-paved surround.

"Shit! Wait! Don't shoot, Ellie's down there!"

Ellie rolled to her side, gritting her teeth as the aches of the two successive impacts made themselves felt. Ribs, hip and wrist were throbbing and her head hurt, she realised, opening her eyes and seeing shining flecks filling her vision.

A hand fisted in the back of her clothes, hauling her upright, and she choked back a scream as her injured wrist knocked against the nephilim behind her, his arm curling around her throat as he held her in front of him.

He was cutting off her air, and she tried to drop, her weight pulling at his grip for a second before he tightened it, her rib flexing under the increased pressure. She kicked backward, her heel hitting the inside of the nephilim's knee. He yanked her backwards, depriving her of anything to push against, and she drove her elbow back, feeling it skate off his chest as he turned.

Running out of options, she thought, struggling to get in another breath. He was too big, too strong, and she couldn't use one hand. She twisted hard as he dragged her to one side, catching a glimpse of the low parapet wall that divided the pool from the hillside from the corner of her eye. Could she push him into it? She pushed her feet down against him and he staggered backwards.

She could see two figures on the steps, indistinct in the moonlight, coming slowly toward them.

"Let her go, Maluch, I'll come along quiet," Dean's voice carried on the damp air. "Just let her go."

"Let her go?!" She heard the anger in the voice behind her, rumbling in the chest against her back. "I'll let her go, Winchester."

The nephilim shifted his grip and Ellie reached out with her hand to grab his coat as she was swung over his head. Her fingers scrabbled along the slick leather, and then she was free, and falling, hearing gunshots and shouting, seeing the wall and the figures behind it getting smaller, further away, and she remembered how the ground dropped here, down the edge of the ravine, and twisted herself in the air, trying to see into the darkness under her. She felt her foot catch something, and she somersaulted, head snapping against a tree branch, the momentum catapulting her into the slope.


Dean watched as Maluch threw Ellie over the wall and into the darkness, and he was firing, the muzzle flash and the roar of the gun blinding and deafening him, slowing his movement forward. He threw an arm across his face as a brilliant blue light exploded in front of him, distantly hearing Carl's yell of frustration behind him, then the poolside lights came on and he stopped, seeing blood on the stone pavers but no body. He half-turned to look back up at the house, blazing now with light, Carl on the patio, Don and Maggie standing close to him.

Ellie. He ran to the wall and looked down, seeing the drop, the line of trees fifty yards below, hearing the silence in that space. He thumbed the safety and shoved the automatic into his pocket, feeling for the smooth cylinder of his flashlight and pulling it out. The small beam flashed back and forth under the wall, showing the steep drop, the rocky slope, and he vaulted over the low wall, leaning back as he slid down, trying to brace himself, hand grabbing at whatever it touched to slow his descent down into the dark.

He caught a sapling as he came to the thin line of small trees, flashlight playing over the hillside, broken branches ahead of him. He had to inch down the slope as it fell away again, boots feeling for solid footing, his heart slamming against his chest when he caught a glimpse of the jumble of rocks below him.

The flashlight's beam swept from side to side as he searched, then lit up a patch of colour against the dark rocks, fifteen feet below him. Bright, copper-coloured hair. Holding the beam steady, Dean scrambled down the last few feet, slowing slightly as the light revealed her, sprawled across the rock, still and broken.

He crouched beside her, fingers resting against her neck, feeling the slow pulse there. In the bright light of his flashlight, her blood was very red, spilled around her, a lot of it, but he couldn't see where it was coming from. He was afraid to move her, even to lift her to free the arm he could see was bent under her, afraid he would make it worse, the injuries inside, where he couldn't see them. Her face was raked with cuts, one long gaping wound disappearing into her hair, her face pale under them. He could see blood in her hair, a sticky mess at the back of her head, and the black fabric of her top and pants were slick and shiny with it. He leaned over her, pressing his ear to one side of her ribs, listening to her breath slipping in and out, relieved to hear no bubbling, no gurgling rush of liquid in her lungs. Looking down at her forearm and hand, he could see the cuts and scrapes, swelling and tears and thought she might have had her arms and hands over her head when she'd landed, trying to protect herself.

"Dean!" Carl's voice was just above him. "Don't move her!"

He nodded, shifting the flashlight so the light pointed down at her as Carl skidded down the final drop to them, a big hard case in one hand. In the reflected light, he saw Carl's face, wide-eyed and taut with worry. The young man knelt beside Ellie.

"I called rescue and an ambulance, they're on their way," he said, his attention on Ellie, his big hands moving lightly over her. "They're sending a helicopter to get her out."

"I can't tell where the blood is coming from," Dean said, unsure of how long he was going to hang on the emotion rising.

Carl nodded. "On three, we're going to lift her shoulders, just a little so I can free her arm, alright?"

They lifted together, and Carl drew out Ellie's arm out from under her, grimacing as he saw the multiple breaks. "Okay. Let her down."

"She's going to be okay, right?" Dean stared at her, unable to reconcile what he was seeing.

"Her pulse is steady, she's breathing," Carl looked at him. "That's good."


Dean sat in the waiting room. The helicopter had come and brought her here. He and Carl had had to follow in the car. Don and Maggie had dealt with the police. Ellie had already been in surgery when they'd arrived at the hospital, no doctor available to tell them how she was, what was going on, just a nurse who'd led them to the waiting room and told them to wait.

Carl sat next to him, and he saw the frequent glances the young man kept shooting at him, but ignored them. He felt numb and disconnected from everything. He was waiting. Here in the waiting room.

Deep inside of him there was an ocean of pain. But it couldn't come out, couldn't get past the control holding it back and down. Not here. Not out in the open like this. The nurse had rattled off a list of injuries when she'd brought them here. Broken wrist. Broken fingers. Broken tibia. Broken femur. Cracked pelvis. Fractured skull. Fractured jaw. Dislocated shoulder. Contusions. Ruptured liver. Bruised spleen. He couldn't connect the list to Ellie. Couldn't connect anything.

"Mr Winchester?" The nurse stood in front of him and he looked up.

"Your wife is out of surgery. She's been moved to ICU. She's in critical condition. The doctor will give you a clearer picture in a short while. She is scheduled for several more operations." She gestured to the hall. "If you come with me, I can let you see her in a few minutes."

He stared at her blankly then nodded, getting up. Beside him, Carl got up as well, and the nurse turned back.

"I'm sorry, sir. Only family are allowed."

Dean stopped, his gaze shifting to Carl. "He is family."

The nurse nodded, turning for the elevators.


"The breaks aren't a problem, and we were more worried about the brain and the internal injuries," the young doctor said to him, standing beside the raised bed. Dean could hear him talking but he couldn't take in what the man was saying. He could hardly see Ellie through the tangle of tubes and wires that connected her to the banks of machines surrounding the bed.

"We've relieved the pressure on the brain, and we've done what we can at this time for her liver and spleen. When she was brought in, we didn't know about the pregnancy. The rupture of the uterus and subsequent placental abruption was the cause of massive blood loss and shock to her body." The doctor paused, looking at the man who was standing in front of him, staring at the woman on the bed. "Mr Winchester?"

"Yeah." Dean dragged his gaze from Ellie to the doctor's face.

"I want you to understand that she's not stable at this time. That kind of traumatic shock…sometimes we see after-effects within the first seventy-two hours of being brought in," he said hesitantly. "Mortality of the mother in this kind of situation…you need to be prepared."

Dean felt the words penetrate, like a slow, drawn out incision. He licked his lips as he looked back at Ellie. "You mean she could still die."

"Yes. I'm sorry." The doctor's expression was guarded. "I'll be here, if you have any questions."

He had questions, a lot of questions. But he knew the answers to all of them. He heard the squeak of the doctor's rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum, moving away from him. There was a chair next to the bed, and he sat down in it, resting his hand next to hers, careful not to touch the tubes and wires and dressings, his fingertips touching the small amount of bare skin that was visible.

Around him, the machines were beeping or humming or sighing softly, pumping blood into her, and oxygen, nutrients and antibiotics and sedatives and anti-inflammatories. She was strong, and she would be fighting to stay alive, he knew. All that blood. Now he knew where it had come from.

They'd shaved her head, and he could see the bruises and the cuts over her scalp, fine black stitches and vivid purple and grey lines with bone-white centres. The dirt and blood had been washed from her, but he could still see a fine line of it under her fingernails, where she'd scraped them in the earth, trying to stop herself from falling further.

Under the pallor, there was a grey tinge to her skin, like a shadow lying under the surface. Her lashes lay still against her cheeks, dark red, a little darker than her brows. The scattering of pale freckles stood out over her nose and across her cheeks, but the bruising would hide them soon.


The smell of herbs, of wax and incense, so completely foreign to the smells surrounding him, hit him and he turned in the chair, rising to his feet as Don and Maggie followed Carl into the unit.

"Get out," Dean grated, his eyes narrowing on Maggie.

Don stopped in front of him. "I know how you feel, but—"

"No, you don't know how I feel, Don." He took a step toward the witch. "You don't have the faintest fucking idea of how I feel."

"We're here to help her, Dean," Maggie said. "I'm sorry—"

"You're what? Sorry?" He dragged in a breath, fists clenched by his sides. "You're sorry you called the firstborn and she—" He looked back at Ellie, swallowing convulsively as he forced out the words. "—she was the one who got hurt, sorry she might die because of your—"

"I didn't—" Maggie's voice cracked.

"Dean." Don cut in between them. "We don't have much time. Let us do what we can to heal her."

He positioned himself between his wife and Dean, gesturing to the machines. "She could die. Do you want that?"

No. He didn't want that. He could feel that ocean of pain lapping at the edge of his control, threatening to break through.

"Can you give her back our child?" he asked Don softly, and watched the other man close his eyes, turning his head away.

"Dean, come on, let them do this," Carl walked forward, hand curling around Dean's arm and pulling him away from the bed. "Please."

He let himself be drawn to one side, the desire to put a bullet in Maggie's head held back again. They were powerful. Maybe they could do something. He couldn't take the risk of not letting them do whatever they could.


The two witches worked fast, Maggie drawing the circles and Don mixing the herbs and oils, making the sigils over Ellie's skin. The room seemed to shimmer as they chanted together, the words almost indistinguishable, the circles and sigils and patterns lighting up as power was drawn and directed through them into Ellie.

Dean watched the monitors, his head and chest and throat aching from the efforts of holding everything back, from the white-knuckled control he was holding over himself. In the bluish reflected light from the circles he watched Don's face, still and beaded with perspiration.

The light of the circles died away, and he started slightly, feeling as if he'd been in a dream, unsure of what had happened. He walked closer to the bed as Don and Maggie removed all traces of the circles and the sigils that had marked Ellie.

Don turned to look at him. "We've repaired the damage. We can't do too much too quickly because the physical body can't cope with it, but the healing process has been accelerated and the effects of the shock have been dealt with—she won't die, and she'll heal up fast now."

Dean looked down at Ellie's face. The grey shadow under her skin had gone. He turned back to Don.

"This doesn't wipe out what she did," he said. Don nodded.

"I know."

"What happened to Maluch and Reuma?"

"We banished them, sent them back to their homeland." Don looked around the room. "We've kept out of most of the instances of this kind of thing for hundreds of years. But we have contacts, and if we find anything to help you with them, we'll pass it along." He looked back at Dean. "I'm sorry. I gave you my word, and—I'm sorry."

Dean turned back to the bed, hearing the low murmur of Carl's voice, of Don's, fading away as they left the room. He sat down in the chair, glancing up at the monitors, his hand slipping under Ellie's fingers.


Three weeks later. St Theresa's Hospital, Santa Barbara.

The small room was dim, the curtains drawn across the windows. Dean came in quietly, closing the door behind him, and walking to the bed. Ellie lay on her side, hands tucked under her chin. The dressings had gone, the casts on her arm and leg still there. Her hair was growing back, a short pixie cut now, barely framing her face, making her eyes look huge. He saw the darker damp patches on the pillow and the sheets under her head.

"Hey." He sat down in the chair next to the bed.

"Hey," she said, her gaze flickering to him for a second before it returned to the wall in front of her.

He didn't know what to do. She was healing, as fast as Don had promised, astounding and bewildering the doctors. Another few days and she could come home. But it wasn't Ellie lying on the bed. Not all of her, at least. She hadn't smiled once. She barely looked at him, barely acknowledged what he said to her, her fingers would lie limply in his if he took her hand. She was grieving; he knew that. For the child that would never be. He understood that. He didn't know how to reach her through it.

"Doc says you can come home in a couple of days," he said. She didn't move.

He tried again. "John and Rosie really want to see you."

Ellie closed her eyes briefly, then tilted her head to look at him. "Maybe that's not such a great idea right now, Dean. I was thinking—I was thinking I would go and spend some time with Katherine and Seb."

"What?" He frowned. "No. No."

"I'm not…I can't…" She closed her eyes, and tears slipped out from between her lashes. Dean's heart jumped in his chest.

Don't let her shut you out, don't let her get so overwhelmed by her loss that she forgets everything else. Maggie had said to him, just before they'd left. He hadn't understood it at the time, but he wondered now if she'd been speaking from experience.

"No, you're not. You have people who love you, Ellie, who need you right here," he said, voice thickening. "I have a mountain of pain that I nearly lost you, but I'm not gonna give in to it—god, you taught me that. Ellie—you are not bailing out on us."

She drew in a fast breath, her eyes opening, shimmering in the half-light but focused on him this time.

"I'm no use to anyone like this, Dean."

It was anger but that was okay, anything other than the blank expressions and searing pain was a step forward, he thought.

"It'll heal. You'll heal, with us." He leaned forward, pulling her hand toward him, enclosing it both of his. "You have two kids who are pining for you, heartbroken that they can't see you, Ellie. You have me, you can't just give up and wallow in this, we need you, we want you back."

"I don't know how to come back." Her voice was less than a whisper.

"You do, you just don't want to come back," he said, a thin thread of anger hardening his words.

He didn't want to be the one goading her back to life. Why the hell did it have to be him, pushing at her pain? Because you're the only one who can, the small voice in his head said prosaically. The only one who will, the only one she'll listen to.

Ellie closed her eyes again, turning her head back into the pillow.

"Ellie, dammit, open your eyes and look at me!" He inched forward, leaning close to her. "Don't you love us, me and John and Rosie? You want us to disappear so you don't have to think about what's real and you can lie there until you die from sorrow?"

He thought of all the times, all the conversations and the outright fights they'd had, when she'd been pushing at him, pushing to make him see what was real, pushing to make him acknowledge his fear and doubt and anger and guilt and shame. How had she done that? How had she looked inside him and seen what the problem was, all the things he'd done to cover it up, to hide it away. He stared at her fixedly.

"You never let me give up, Ellie. I'm not going to let you get away with it."

She mumbled something into the pillow and he frowned. "What?"

"I shouldn't have been there," she said again, and he heard the guilt in the words.

He moved closer, leaning on the edge of the bed, pressing his forehead against hers. "Maybe not. We didn't know that, didn't know what was going to happen. Ellie, don't do this. It wasn't your fault, what happened—"

"No." Her lashes fluttered against his skin when she closed her eyes. "I should've known; something always happens."

"Ellie, if this is anyone's fault, it's mine," Dean whispered to her. "The nephilim were after me, Maggie hated me, it had nothing to do with you."

"I should've been thinking about protecting my child, about not getting into a situation that could go bad, that could—I should've known, Dean, I shouldn't've been there, should've been home, should've been thinking about—"

She gasped as a sob shook through her. He slid his arm under her neck, curling it around her, at a loss to know what to say to that. It wasn't true, and he thought she knew that, somewhere inside. But he knew, better than most, that what is true and what feels true sometimes get confused.

"She warned me," Ellie said, opening her eyes and looking into his. "She said there would be a blessing and a tragedy."

He looked at her. "Who warned you?"

"Jofranka, the Roma, in Georgia." She shivered in his arms. "She said that I would be strong enough. But…I don't think I am."

He closed his eyes. "You are, Ellie. We are. Together, we are."