When Dean came to, he found that Vera had moved him. He was now in what had once been a kitchen area, cuffed to the pipes under a commercial sink. He could feel that all his knives had been confiscated, including the ones in his socks. Vera had been thorough when she searched him.

Sam was on the floor ten feet from him. Vera sat on a stainless steel countertop, swinging her feet while she gazed at her phone. Her eyes were drawn by Dean's slight movement.

"Finally," she groaned, jumping off the counter and tucking her phone into her pants pocket. "I was just about to start smacking you."

"What the hell is this?" Dean demanded angrily, straightening until he bumped his head on the sink above him.

"A negotiation, like I said. You have something I want. I have something you want."

She nudged Sam with her foot. He didn't move, just watched her from the concrete floor with a blank expression. That struck Dean as terribly off. He expected his brother to put up more of a fight. He reasoned that Vera must have drugged Sam or something.

"What do you want so damn bad that you skipped the part where you ask nicely?" Dean growled.

"Nothing much."

She pulled a roll of parchment out of her pocket.

"Just your John Hancock on the dotted line."

Dean squinted at the document. It was composed of red ink scratched onto paper yellowed with time and ragged around the edges. Vera had unrolled only a tiny part of it. Dean could tell from the size of the segments that were still rolled up that the document was incredibly long. He could make out one other detail from this distance; the red writing was all latin.

Dean's stomach turned as he realized what it was she had in her hand. What she really was.

"You're a demon," he accused.

"Not a bad guess. But no."

"Then what the hell do you want with my soul?"

She thought about lying or keeping the information from him, but decided against it.

"I've got a deal. Your soul for mine."

Dean's confusion was apparent on his face.

"So you see, this is nothing personal," she explained. "As someone who's done their fair share of time in the pit, I'm sure you get it. You of all people should understand the lengths people like us are willing to go to if it means we can stay topside."

She crouched at his side and produced a pen.

"So why don't you make this easy on all of us," she suggested. "Sign the paper. Sam walks. This doesn't need to be messy."

Dean glanced at Sam, still prone on the ground. He lay slug-like, watching them with an expression that now seemed… mildly interested? Something was wrong, but Dean still couldn't figure out what it was. At the moment, he didn't have time to worry about it.

He met her gaze and set his jaw.

"If you've really been down there, you know I can't do that," he told her. Aspects of this situation were starting to feel awfully familiar to him. Suspicion started to curl deep in his gut about who Vera really was. He studied her deep blue eyes, torn. Sure, there was something about them that made him feel like he'd seen them before, but he knew he never had. Vera reminded him of someone, but… it couldn't be.

After all, Alice Smith had the most unmistakable eyes in the world. No matter how many bodies she jumped, her eyes always stayed with her, creepy as ever. These eyes weren't hers. This couldn't be Alice.

"Then I have to do what I have to do," she said, tone tinged with regret.

"Look, this isn't the only way," Dean said, mostly playing for time at this point. He didn't know how long he had been out, but maybe it was long enough that Bobby would show up soon. "I can help you. You don't have to do this."

"Help me? You couldn't even save your own sorry skin from hell. What do you think you're going to be able to do for me?"

"I know things now that I didn't back then," Dean bluffed.

"Stalling isn't going to help you," she informed him. "Either sign or don't. But whatever you're gonna do, get on with it and stop wasting my time."

Dean got a strong sense of deja vu from her words. It was more than the words themselves. It was the way she said them. He'd definitely heard those words before.

As she turned toward Sam, Dean grabbed her arm, stopping her. He yanked hard enough to pull her off balance. She fell to the ground at his feet and he quickly wrapped his legs around her to keep her from getting up again. She raised a fist to punch him, but he grabbed her arm for a second time, stopping the blow. Before she could strike again, he pulled her sleeve up her arm. The sight that greeted him shocked him enough that 'Vera' was able to easily wriggle out of his grasp and get back on her feet.

Torxing marks.

Dean quickly collected himself. Maybe it didn't mean anything. After all, anyone who had gone through it could do it. He had those scars, Danny had them.

Still, it wasn't exactly common. Dean was afraid to ask, but he didn't have a choice.

"Alice?"

They locked eyes for a long time. Part of her wanted to deny it. Despite what she was doing, she still cared about him. She still cared what he thought of her. She didn't want him to know it was her stabbing him in the back.

Another part of her knew the jig was up. There was no point denying it, but she couldn't bring herself to answer him.

Her silence was enough. Dean looked shell-shocked under the sink. She waited patiently, until finally, his shock gave way to anger and something deeper. Uglier.

Dean had never felt more betrayed in his life.

"Don't do this," he begged. "Not you. I can't… Alice, we'll find another way."

It was Alice's turn to be angry. She wanted to slap him, but she held back. Instead, she crouched down to his level and grabbed him by the collar.

"You had another way!" she hissed. "And you didn't take it!"

Dean frowned in confusion. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"So now I don't have a choice," she went on. "I have to take care of myself, because no one else is going to!"

"What are you talking about?" Dean demanded. "What other way?"

"You know damn well!" Alice yelled, shaking him. "You left me down there! You let them take you and you let them leave me behind!"

She stood abruptly, turning her back on him as she fought to control her emotions. This was a bad look and a waste of time, but she couldn't stop herself.

"In hell? I left you in hell?"

The confusion in his voice caught her off guard.

"Don't play dumb," she snapped. "You know what you did."

"I don't! Alice, I don't remember leaving hell!" Dean insisted. "I don't remember you, I don't-"

"It doesn't matter," Alice said bitterly. It was well within the angel's power to wipe Dean's memory. Why they would do that was another question entirely, one that she didn't have the time or inclination to wrestle with. "I don't care if you don't remember what happened. I'll never forget."

"I'm sorry. Whatever it was, I'm sorry."

"Do you mean that?" Alice asked, glancing back at him. He nodded and she held up the contract in response. "If you're really sorry, then make it up to me."

She held the pen out to him again. Dean stared at it for a long moment.

"I can't," he finally said.

Alice nodded and set the contract down on the counter.

"That's what I thought," she said. Just as she didn't love Dean enough to go to hell for him, she never really believed he loved her enough to go to hell for her. "Well. If you won't do it for my sake…"

She pulled a folding knife out of her pocket, opening it with a snap that rang out like a gunshot in the kitchen.

"Maybe you'll do it for Sam's."

She hauled Sam up into a sitting position. Sam went along without struggling, watching Dean raptly like he expected him to do something to stop her. Why wasn't he putting up a fight?

"Don't do this!" Dean warned straining against the cuff that kept him from helping his brother. The pipe it was secured to was old, strong cast iron.

"Don't make me!" Alice shot back.

"Alice I swear to god if you touch a hair on his damn head-"

"What, Dean?! What are you gonna do about it?!"

"Don't make me cross that bridge!" Dean growled. If Alice was bluffing, it was cruel, but understandable. If she really hurt Sam… that was something Dean would never forgive.

"You're not giving me a choice!" Alice yelled. "Come on, Dean! Sign the damn paper!"

"No!"

Alice thrust the knife into Sam's arm. His scream was muffled by the gag in his mouth, but its effect on Dean was the same. He struggled ferociously against his restraint, despite knowing that it wouldn't do him any good. He growled and cursed her, enraged beyond reason.

There was no coming back from this. He was going to have to kill her.

Kaydie and Castiel sat down the road from the homeless shelter, waiting for Dean to emerge. It had been over an hour since he'd entered the dilapidated building and Kaydie's gut was telling her something was wrong. Still, they had no idea why Dean was here. Interference in his activities was a last resort for both of them, so she ignored the instinct of foreboding for as long as she could. She distracted herself by texting her grandmother for the first time since informing her that she had lost Dean to the enigmatic dark-haired hunter. She tried to hold back her excitement, keeping her update strictly informational as she explained who she was working with and why.

She waited for Greta to text her back, but five minutes passed, each extended into an eternity in the stifling silence surrounding her and her celestial companion.

"We should go in and see what's going on," Kaydie said, unable to hold her tongue any longer.

"I sense nothing," Castiel repeated his words from a half an hour earlier, when Kaydie had first proposed they get closer.

"Yeah, well I sense that something's rotten in Denmark," Kaydie retorted.

Castiel fixed her with a look of consternation and she quickly rephrased.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she said instead, nodding at the shelter. She was quickly getting used to Castiel's inability to interpret metaphor. She was also realizing that she used way too many metaphors and figures of speech anyway.

"Well, as a being who actually possesses the ability to sense whether there is food in Denmark that has outlived its shelf life-"

"Spare me, I get it," Kaydie groaned. "You don't think we need to check on him and your opinion is better than mine."

"Our orders are very similar," Castiel pointed out. "We are to ensure Winchester's safety. We are not to impede his work."

"He's not in there working. There's no case in this town."

Kaydie's phone dinged at last and she abandoned her argument with Castiel to check her texts.

Be careful. Angels are dangerous. Under no circumstances allow yourself to become comfortable around them. There's much you don't know.

Kaydie frowned and quickly sent a reply.

What don't I know?

I'm occupied at the moment. I'll call you when I have a chance. Until then, keep your guard up.

Kaydie raised an eyebrow at Greta's messages. Her grandmother never texted anyone back while she was preoccupied. The fact that she had replied this time gave her words extra weight.

A glance at the clock told her that it had been a full hour and a half since she'd last seen Dean.

"Castiel," she said, a new edge of caution in her words after Greta's warning. "What can you sense?"

She nodded toward the shelter.

"Can you tell what he's doing in there?"

"Of course, if I wish."

"It's been a long time since he went in there. I think you should check on him."

"Very well. But I've told you before, I sense... nothing."

Castiel frowned deeply and was silent for a long moment.

"Too much nothing," he finally said. He disappeared abruptly and Kaydie nearly gave herself whiplash looking around for him. She spotted him at the entrance of the shelter, standing stone still.

"Friggin' featherhead," she mumbled, getting out of the car and jogging across the street to join him.

"You're right," he told her when she got there, catching her by surprise. It was the first thing he'd said about her that approached positivity. "Something's wrong."

"What?"

"This abode has been warded against angelic influence."

"You can't see inside," Kaydie realized. "That's why you've been sensing nothing."

"The warding is powerful," Castiel informed her. "I am unable to enter."

"Uh-huh."

That was all Kaydie needed to hear. She should have listened to her gut and gone in an hour ago. She drew her gun and checked the clip, before marching back to her car. She opened the back door and flipped up the seat cushions, revealing a compartment that held her hunting supplies. She grabbed three clips of bullets, each etched with different symbols and hand forged back at home. They would kill or impair damn near anything that crept or crawled on god's green earth. She also tucked a few hex bags into her pockets and traded out the knife she kept up her sleeve for a silver one. Castiel watched her silently from across the street, expression indecipherable.

"Is all that witchcraft really necessary?" he asked when she got back within hearing distance.

"Considering that the witchcraft can go places you can't? I'd say so," Kaydie replied. "Wish me luck."

Castiel stopped her before she could enter the shelter.

"Be careful, Smith. Whoever or whatever put up this warding is dangerous."

"So am I," she grinned, cocking her gun.

She walked through the door without another word, taking quick stock of her surroundings and moving on swiftly. Once she reached the hall, she heard Dean yelling. She followed his voice, gun at the ready. As she got closer, she could also make out a second man's muffled screams and a woman's voice.

"You can stop this! Just sign it!"

"You bitch! I'm gonna kill you when I get loose! I swear to god I'm gonna kill you!"

"Wrong answer!"

The muffled screams rose in pitch and volume. Kaydie knew those screams. She recognized the agonized shrieks of a man being tortured.

She peeked around a corner into a large kitchen. The scene that greeted her was grisly enough to turn even her hardened stomach.

Dean was thrashing under a sink, straining desperately against a single handcuff that kept him from attacking a woman. Kaydie recognized her immediately as the dark-haired hunter Dean had left her for at the motel. The screams were coming from the woman's feet, from a man that it took Kaydie a minute to place as Sam Winchester. He was covered in blood and writhing against the woman's hold. He was big enough that Kaydie knew the hunter holding him down must have been supernaturally strong to keep him from escaping. Especially considering the fact that she was slowing peeling the skin off his arm.

Kaydie swallowed hard as she took stock of the situation. She quickly withdrew, flattening herself against the wall as she gathered herself and considered the best strategy. Despite herself, her arm tingled unpleasantly as she imagined the pain Sam must be in.

She forced it from her mind and took advantage of the loud screams to quickly swap out her clip. Holy water forged bullets engraved with an archaic exorcism would handle a demon, if that was what this hunter was. She had a hex bag in her pocket that would take a witch out of commission and a silver knife that would give her an edge against ten different kinds of monsters. Anything else, she was confident she could kill with a little improvisation.

Ready as she could be, Kaydie prepared herself to go in shooting. She was stopped however, by unexpected silence from the kitchen. She poked her head around the corner again to find that the hunter had vanished, leaving Dean staring after her.

Cautiously, Kaydie stepped into the room.

"Winchester!" she hissed, catching Dean's attention as she approached. "Where did she go?"

Dean never anticipated that he would be so glad Kaydie Smith was following him. He nodded toward another doorway.

"That way! She must have heard you."

"Here."

Kaydie fished a bobby pin out of her hair and held it up.

"You know how to use this?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She tossed it to him and hurried toward the door he indicated.

"Get your brother out of here."

"Kaydie- Hey!"

Dean called after her, trying to warn her about what she was going up against, but Kaydie was already gone.

"Sam! Hang on!"

He took a deep, steadying breath, struggling to ignore his bleeding brother just long enough to get himself out of the cuffs. With a groan, Sam sat up shaking himself and holding his arms out to examine them.

"Dios mio!" he exclaimed.

Dean rolled his eyes internally, wondering where Sam had picked that up in the time that they'd been apart. It took him a moment to realize that his brother was suddenly untied. His eyes snapped back to Sam in time to see him stand. He gawked, unable to process what he was seeing.

"Sam! How did you..."

He trailed off. As he watched, Sam's image shimmered and faded. In his place, stood someone Dean recognized, though just barely.

"You!" he said, unable to recall the guy's name. It was the Mexican trickster Sam had shown up with when they were running from Lilith's goons. He was dressed sharply in a deep blue tuxedo and silver dress shoes that sparkled with an impractical amount of glitter. He examined his reflection in a hanging pan, straightened his glittery silver bow tie and slicked back his hair, all the while muttering to himself in Spanish. Finally, he turned to Dean, who was so dumbfounded he had forgotten he was trying to lockpick his way out of the handcuffs.

"Cazador," he greeted him. "I feel like I owe you an explanation."

Dean felt that way too, but he was still too stunned to speak.

"I never meant for this to go so far," he said. "Qué rápido se sale de control una buena broma!"

"I... You..."

"Your brother was never here, mi amigo estupefacto," he explained. "Alice called me here to help her trick you into thinking he was. Now, I thought it was going to be a marvelous gag. Being... well, me, I could do nothing but cooperate with our conocimiento mutuo psicótico."

Dean only understood half of what Huehuecoyotl was saying and he was having trouble absorbing the new information. Alice was... playing a prank on him? That didn't make any sense.

"But you see, I have a reputation to uphold," Huehuecoyotl went on. "Solo trucos inofensivos, siempre trucos inofensivos. This chick is really after your soul, muchacho. There's nothing funny about that. I refuse to have anything more to do with it. Me lavo las manos de esta locura."

He mimed washing his hands, then held them up as if in surrender.

"As far as I'm concerned, the rest of this ugly affair is between the two of you. If Alice asks, tell her I've held up my end of our old bargain... I no longer owe her anything. I'll be pleased if I never have to hear from any of you ever again."

A glittery silver top hat materialized on his head and he tipped it at Dean in farewell.

"Adiós y me alegro de deshacerme de todos ustedes cazadores y de su interminable drama!"

He walked out of the shelter, whistling to himself and leaving Dean dumbfounded under the sink. His shock was interrupted by a series of gunshots from the other room. He realized he had dropped the hair pin at some point during the aztec trickster's monologue. He quickly retrieved it and freed himself. He rubbed his raw wrist and stood, preparing to rush in to see what had happened in the next room. He paused though, and doubled back, quickly going through the cabinets. They were mostly empty, but he turned up a few desiccated rat poison pellets, unidentifiable remnants of fruit, a few unlabeled spices and...

Salt!

Dean seized the dusty container and shook it. It sounded half full. Hopefully it would do. Dean prayed that Kaydie was faring well in the other room, but he needed to prepare for the possibility that he would find her dead and still need to deal with Alice. He rationed the salt carefully, creating an open circle in front of the door and placing the container on the ground in the next room. Satisfied, he made his way down the hall, peeking through doorways carefully. In the third room, he found Kaydie standing over Alice's body. Or rather, the body of the woman she had been possessing.

She wasn't moving.

"Is she..."

Dean trailed off, unsure how he felt as he entered the room.

"Dead," Kaydie told him. She checked the clip of the gun she was holding.

"How?" Dean demanded.

"Well, you shot her fifteen times," she said. "And stabbed her... gross overkill, really."

"How did you know-"

Kaydie pointed her gun at Dean before he could finish his sentence. It only took him a moment to realize what must have happened.

"Alice," he sighed. At this point, he was more exhausted than anything else. He felt like he was stuck on an adrenaline fueled emotional rollercoaster that rivaled even hell's seemingly endless supply of creative ways to ruin his day.

"Funny thing about hunters. Anyone worth their salt has an anti-possession tattoo to keep the demons at bay... hardly anyone is worried about keeping anything else out," she observed. "Hands up. Back to the kitchen."

Dean shook his head and did as she ordered, secure in the knowledge that he was leading her into a trap.

"Boy, today is just one shitshow after another," he said.

"Today?" Alice snorted. "Our life is a never ending shitshow. What made you wake up today thinking you were gonna catch a break?"

"Right, I should have seen this coming," Dean amended in jest. "After all, what kind of idiot doesn't assume his girl is gonna come back from the dead and sell him out to save her own ass?"

"Don't get righteous with me, Dean," she snapped. "You'd do the same in my shoes."

"Never."

"You're so full of shit."

"Alice."

He stopped, turning to face her. She cocked the gun and he quickly put his hands back up, though he held her eyes solemnly.

"Not in a million years," he assured her.

Maybe he was looking too hard, tricking himself into seeing what he wanted to see, but he could have sworn that for just a second, Alice's features contorted with regret. It vanished before he could be sure it had really been there, replaced with a scowl.

"Shut up and get moving."

Dean obliged, leading her into the kitchen. Just as he passed the threshold, he made his move. He turned and grabbed Alice, pushing her into the room as hard as he could. She cried out and fell, stopping short as she reached the edge of the salt line he'd laid. Dean grabbed the container of salt, spilling its remnants in the doorway and trapping Alice.

"No!"

She scrambled back to her feet, looking around wildly. She leveled the gun at Dean again, frantic.

"Break the salt line! Now!"

"Or what? You'll shoot me? Before I sign your precious paper?" Dean demanded.

"Dean! You son of a-"

"Stop! Just stop! Alice... Put the damn gun down and talk to me, damn it!"

Alice shook with rage. Her breath came hard as the temperature in the room dropped drastically. She found it all but impossible to reason, but somehow she managed it. Slowly, she realized she was out of options. Dean had won.

"Fuck," she swore half-heartedly. She lowered the gun and leaned against the door jamb. She looked as exhausted as Dean felt.

"I know that wasn't Sam," Dean informed her. "That trickster you talked into this little... operation of yours... this was too much crazy even for him. Now, I don't know what the hell happened to you, Alice. I don't know what you think I did to you-"

"What I think you did?!" Alice snapped. "I didn't imagine anything, Dean! You did it!"

"Did what?! I don't remember!"

"I thought we covered this! I don't give a crap what you remember! You forgetting what you did doesn't make it right!"

"So tell me! Tell me what the hell it was I did so I can make it right!" Dean suggested angrily. "I'd like to know what the hell it was that could possibly be so bad that you decided to team up with the demons!"

"What other choice did I have?!" Alice demanded. "What did you want me to do, Dean, tell them to shove it when they offered me a get out of jail free card?! Come on! As if you didn't jump at the first opportunity they gave you to get off that rack! You didn't give a damn what you had to do! All you were worried about was yourself!"

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Dean snapped. "I had plenty of opportunities to get off that rack! I turned all of them down!"

"Wow," Alice scoffed. "You really don't remember, do you?"

Dean took a deep breath, resisting the urge to keep shouting. Instead, he forced himself to lower his voice, soften his tone.

"Come on, Alice," he plead. "What do you know that I don't?"

Alice was quiet for a long time. Dean waited. Finally, his patience paid off.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked.

Dean swallowed hard as hell seized the opportunity to assault him. It was like a rabid beast, jumping at any chance it had to hit him with nightmarish flashes.

"I remember... I..."

He met Alice's eyes. Kaydie's eyes, but unlike Vera's blue eyes, these resembled Alice's. They were olive green. They lacked the shifting, ever changing hues that Dean was used to seeing when he looked into Alice's eyes, but they were familiar enough that they sparked a memory.

Another day. Or was it night? Time didn't matter in hell. When he first arrived, Dean was afraid the torture would be non-stop. The first time Alastair had taken a break from carving him up like a Christmas goose, he'd been relieved, only until he figured out it was all part of the torture. Waiting for the pain to come back, the terrible certainty that it would... sometimes it was worse than the pain itself.

"Dean, my boy!"

Alastair's voice made his stomach turn. While he was waiting, Dean always wished for the wait to be over. When it was over, he always prayed for its return. Hell offered no respite, only the illusion that one might come.

"My, my, have I got a treat for you today," Alastair clucked, circling him like a shark. "We've found something of yours. Care to take a guess at what it could be?"

Dean clenched his jaw and waited for the torture to start. He had nothing to say to his tormentor.

"No guesses? Not one? You mean to say I've stumped you? I'll give you a hint."

Alastair bent low to whisper in Dean's ear. He braced himself, preparing for the agony. Maybe a knife in the ear, maybe the ear coming off. Strangely, nothing happened.

"She asked for you by name."

Dean risked a glance at Alastair and met a pair of dark eyes set in charred, twisted flesh mere inches from his. The delight in Alastair's eyes sent a chill down Dean's spine.

"As a matter of fact, she's been begging us to let you see each other for years," Alastair went on, straightening. "I always thought it would be more fitting to deny her request, until someone pointed something out to me... a brilliant opportunity that, to be honest, I'm surprised I didn't think of first."

Alastair's deformed mouth rose in what Dean interpreted as a grin. Around them, the scene shifted. Hell was incredibly fluid. Dean was never sure if the demons controlled its appearance or if it knew on its own what would terrify its occupants most. Now, he found himself in a dark, dirty concrete room with a high ceiling. A single iron wrought door stared at him from the wall. Dean ignored it. He knew from awful experience that it led nowhere. He'd accepted a long time ago that there was no escape for him.

"Well, I've kept you in suspense long enough," Alastair opined. He shouted over his shoulder. "Bring her in!"

The door behind him opened and two demons dragged a woman into the room. She was slumped over bonelessly, shoulder length hair so encrusted with blood that Dean couldn't tell what color it was.

Dean groaned loudly, snapping back to the present as he felt a sharp pain at the base of his skull. He clutched his head and doubled over as the pain intensified. The memory fractured and fragmented, breaking into splintered pieces that stabbed his brain like icicles. He let the images ebb away and the pain along with them. Alice watched him with keen interest as he gasped for breath.

"Damn. They really did a number on you, huh?" she said. "Fine."

"Who's they?" Dean asked, straightening as the effects of his episode faded.

"I'll get to that," she sighed. "First, I guess I have to tell you what happened. You know. On your last day in hell."