Sam hung up the phone and turned back towards where Olivia and Dean were sizing each other up. Looking at them from a distance, Sam could see resemblances there too. She definitely had Dean's strong chin and even his stockiness. He noticed that she had been working out as her arms flexed where she crossed them over her nearly non-existent chest. Her hair may have looked like their mother's at first glance, but now looked even closer to Dean's own color with Mary's texture.
But who was she?
Olivia sighed in frustration. "Look, I get that for some reason you don't remember me, therefore I know that you don't trust me. We're Winchesters, after all," she said finally, rubbing her temples, "So, I have a proposition. I prove to you I'm not a bad thing out to eat you, and you let me stay until we figure out why you don't remember me, okay? I'll even cook for you."
Both of the brothers' eyebrows raised. "You can cook?" Dean asked, "You couldn't have mentioned that sooner?"
"I was still operating under the idea that you had just been pranking me, Dean. It didn't come up," she sassed back at him and rolled her eyes. "Idjits."
Sam's eyes widened and he grinned a little bit at the perfect Bobby impression she just did, and Dean frowned. "So how are you going to prove that you're not one of the monsters… Olivia, right?" Sam asked. Olivia smiled brightly and easily slid out her demon-killing dagger. Before Sam or Dean could react more than putting their hands up to stop her, she sliced a clean line across her left bicep, and it bled a brilliantly human red color. Blood trickled down as she sheathed her knife and she held out her right hand to the brothers.
"Got any holy water on you?" she asked, "I'm thirsty."
"No, no, no, we believe you!" they chorused clumsily, trying to stop her from doing that again.
"Good! Now, let me get my stuff, and do not lock me out again! You guys have the only key," she said cheerily, stuck her tongue out at them, and scurried off to the door, blood still oozing down her arm. The resounding thud left the brothers in stunned silence once again.
"What just-" Dean started.
"I don't know," Sam replied.
"She said she's our sister."
"Little sister."
"She looks just like Mom."
"And you."
"Shut up, she does not. And she's got grandma's name."
"Give me that license," Sam ordered, and Dean handed him her card from where she left it on the table. Sam inspected it; it looked legitimate, but something was off. He looked at her birth date, and he gasped ever so slightly.
"What is it?" Dean asked urgently.
"It says here she was born exactly one year after I was."
"That's impossible, Mom was dead!"
"I know that! I understand it about as well as you do, but…" Sam snapped back, then hesitated. "She looks like Mom, Dean. She looks like you. She knew our names, she knew where we were. Can we just… look for answers to this and see where it leads? We could use a break."
Dean sat resignedly into one of the chairs and placed his head in his hands. Too many surprises. Too many things he couldn't take care of. Sam had already done two of the three trials, and that was a road Dean couldn't go on with him. Kevin and Castiel were in the wind. Garth was working himself silly trying to find Kevin. Meg was gone, Naomi seemed to be stalking them, and Crowley was no doubt after them. And now… an impossible sister.
What else could happen?
He didn't have time to verbalize his mental question before Olivia's loud knocking cut him off, and Sam went to go let her in. He heard her say, "Thank you, Tam-tam!" and start chattering at Sam, who he knew was a little perturbed. Especially at the nickname.
"Tam-tam?" Sam asked, still holding the large green suitcase she seemed to have handed him, and it took all of Dean's willpower not to laugh.
"Oh, right," Olivia explained as she began to set up her laptop and dump out the books she had been carrying in an over-stuffed burlap messenger bag, "you don't remember. When I was little, I couldn't say your names. So, I called you Tam and Bean."
Now it was Sam's turn to stifle his laughter at how Dean's nickname fit his small stature, and Olivia continued without skipping a beat, "And you two always called me Ollie. Not in front of Dad, of course, he thought it was stupid. But over the years, you came up with nicknames for me - Ollie-wog, Ollie-wollie-doodle. It was our little secret. Something we didn't have to tell Dad. When we got older, it was how we knew it was really us in case of demon possession or Leviathans or something. They were our… code names…" she said, trailing off. She looked sadly down at her laptop but tried to fake a smile as she typed furiously. The brothers looked at each other, and Dean could see that any of Sam's hesitation about helping her had disappeared. If he was honest with himself, his was kind of shaky too. Her memories sounded like nice ones, and he almost felt bad for telling her they were wrong.
"Here we go!" she said, turning the laptop around to show them a bunch of pictures featuring what appeared to be a bunch of gibberish.
"Okay… what is it?" Dean asked. Olivia rolled her eyes.
"It's Hebrew! Duh! You two really should have paid attention when Bobby was researching, honestly," she said, turning the laptop back to her and highlighting a specific section.
"What's it for?" Dean asked brusquely, "Kevin's gone, so is Cass, we don't have anyone here who can read-"
"Ahem. 'The nature of angels is complex. I have discovered that though they claim to be on the side of good, they-'" Olivia began before Sam cut her off by slamming his hand on the table and leaning close to her, his eyes wide.
"You can read that? Without a translator?" he asked.
"Of course! I've been studying dead languages since Dad brought you and I into the family business! How else were we supposed to find some of these baddies? We would have been so screwed if I hadn't had that Gaelic manuscript for that banshee," she said matter-of-factly. "I can read Sanskrit, Gaelic, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Coptic, and Old Norse fluently, and I'm still working on translating heiroglyphics and why are you drooling, Tam?"
Sam wiped at his chin and then frowned at her for duping him. She giggled, turned the laptop around, and pointed to a certain section of text that looked damaged. "This was written by the prophet Daniel while he was at the court of Nebuchadnezzar and it talks about his dealings with angels. I figured we could use this to track down Cass," she said sensibly, and the brothers' jaws dropped.
"You're looking for Castiel?" Sam asked, and Olivia looked down at her feet.
"Look, I know he's caused us trouble. And he almost killed Dean. But he's stronger than us by a long shot, and he could help us find Kevin more easily than we could do it by ourselves. He needs us, and Castiel may be able to find him. And…" She started scuffing her moccasins on the floor as color tinged her cheeks. "I miss him, guys. He… he helped me a lot when you two…" She exhaled slowly, looking like she'd made a mistake, but finished, "He's our friend."
Dean rolled his eyes but Sam grinned a little bit, knowing how ticked Dean was that she had called Cass their friend. Olivia also seemed to know because she began setting up a wall of huge books around her laptop, none of them in a language Sam could read. She continued, "So I'm going to be here restoring and translating the texts while you two keep working on finding Kevin, okay?"
"Wait," Dean growled, and the other two looked at him, a little nervous. "You mentioned you could cook." Olivia's face lit up as she quickly finished setting up her mini-portable library and scurried around the table to jump onto Dean in a bear hug.
"Oh, you don't remember the half of it! I'm gonna make you guys fried chicken and collard greens with red beans and rice and an apple pie for dessert! It's been a long week and you two need your strength back!" she squeaked, holding onto Dean so tightly that she would not be budged when he tried swaying to swing her off. This time Sam couldn't help laughing at him and Dean shot him a grouchy look, though the younger brother could tell that Dean actually didn't mind it.
"All right. We're in," Sam said, nearly tearing up after laughing so hard.
"But I'm driving," Dean insisted. Olivia rolled her eyes.
"You never like taking my Prius, do you?" she commented as she packed only a couple of her books back in the messenger bag as well as the laptop. Sam's eyebrow raised.
"Prius?" He asked. Olivia bonked her forehead with the inside of her wrist.
"Doy! You don't remember - yeah, I have a Prius. Won it in a game of wits with a Djinn when we went to Chaco Canyon. And I nicked your leather jacket from that angel, Sammy, and you left it at the houseboat. Again. Oh! And Dean, stop leaving your kukri in my car without telling me. It was a gift from that ōkami in Bellevue, how dare you," Olivia cleared up, checking her guns and slipping her jacket back on. She looked back up at them to see them staring at her with incredulity. "What?"
"Nothing, I'm just really wishing we remembered you," Sam answered, impressed, and Olivia flashed them a huge grin as she dashed to the front door.
"Come on! I want to eat before midnight," she teased, and the brothers followed after her, not entirely sure what they were getting into but not minding for the moment.