The Devil you Know

Chapter Two

Dean perched on the edge of the bed nearest the door and waited, fidgeting, for Sam to appear with a bowl of hot water and anti-septic. He pulled his jacket off, stiffly and slowly, sucking air in through his teeth as the leather pulled at the open edges of the wounds in his arm.

Sam winced in sympathy as he emerged from the bathroom, precariously balancing a first aid box, several towels and a bowl of water which he had splashed across his own front. He dropped the first aid box and towels on the floor at Dean's feet, enabling him to set the bowl down without tipping the remaining water out across the bed. Dean smirked, breaking the tension in his facial muscles.

'Graceful, Sammy. Anyone ever tell you you should have been a ballerina?'

Sam half scowled, though another part of him wanted to grin. 'Anyone ever tell you that you should have painted a target on your back and then you wouldn't have to go looking for trouble?' he asked. The bitter sarcasm slipped out of him, unintended.

Dean frowned – or winced, Sam wasn't sure. 'You pissed at me, Sammy?'

Sam chewed his lip, and sighed. 'No, not really. I just wish you'd stop doing that.'

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam cut him off. 'I know it's not your fault… but, I don't know. I have to blame someone, I guess...' Dean raised an indignant eyebrow. 'Anyway,' Sam added, turning again to the half-filled bowl of water, to which he carefully added a generous splash of anti-septic. Dean watched the spirit mix with the warm water and winced again – that was going to sting. Maybe Sam was pissed at him. Subconsciously, maybe.

Sam seemed reluctant to touch the wound; he let his hand, holding the soaked towel, hover uncertainly before shooting an apologetic glance at Dean and dabbing firmly at the twin wounds – entry and exit – on his brother's arm. Dean hissed and tensed, tendons standing out on his neck as he willed his arm to keep still. Sam glanced up at him, and saw that his brother's eyes were tightly closed, his face taut as he visibly fought to regain control.

'You alright?' Sam asked, softly. Dean opened his eyes, puffing out a single, shaky breath.

'Yeah… yeah,' he squinted sideways at Sam's concerned expression. 'Yeah, fine… just… ouch.'

'Sorry.'

'S'ok.'

There was a pause. 'You know… I'm going to have to stitch it…'

Dean nodded. His expression was resigned. The temporary sympathy he had felt for his attacker was starting to evaporate.

'We probably have some painkillers…' Sam muttered, lurching to his feet and disappearing once more into the dingy bathroom.

'I'll be ok,' Dean called after him. The crazed girl's horrified eyes were wide open in his mind's eye again. 'Listen, Sam, we should go to the police station. We need to talk to the chick who shot me…'

Sam's head appeared around the edge of the doorframe. 'Why? You think something supernatural…' he trailed off and disappeared again, resuming his noisy rummaging. He was sure there was some Ibuprofen in here somewhere. He really didn't want to attempt those stitches without any chemical aid to smooth the process.

'You didn't see her?' Dean asked, looking up in surprise at the spot where Sam's head had recently been. 'Just after I knocked her over… she looked like she didn't know how she'd got there… It was like she was a different person. Her eyes were different.'

'What, you think she was possessed?' Sam asked, in a muffled voice. 'Ha!' he added, and reappeared, triumphantly clutching a battered Ibuprofen packet. 'I knew we had some.'

There were three left. He handed them to Dean, with a chipped mug full of water. Dean swallowed them greedily, grimacing at the bitter taste they left on his tongue when he couldn't get them down quick enough.

'Seriously,' Sam continued, 'If she was possessed, we would have noticed her spewing up demon in the middle of a coffee shop…'

'Something else, then,' Dean argued absently. 'She was… confused, or lost or something. Before I knocked her over, she was crazy; you could see this… this mad light in her eyes. And then afterwards, she was… just scared, like anyone would be.'

'Okay, so, what do you want to do?' Sam asked, carefully threading a needle. Dean frowned, deep in thought.

'You could go to the police station and… pretend to be her attorney, I guess. That's got to be the best way to talk to her…'

'Me? I can't pretend to a lawyer…' Sam protested, narrowing his eyes to focus on the first wound. Three or four stitches would do it.

'Didn't you spend four years learning how to pretend to be a lawyer? Anyway, I can't, people must have seen me – even if the cops didn't, the hole in my shoulder kind of – Jesus, Sammy!' he gasped. 'Some warning?'

'Sorry… I thought it would be better if you were distracted.'

'You thought I wouldn't notice?'

'Well…'

Dean slowly relaxed his fist, which was white-knuckled, having snatched a handful of the bed sheet when the needle had touched him. He took a deep breath, and nodded at Sam to continue, resolving not to snap at his brother again; it wasn't fair.

'I was studying law, not how to pretend to be a lawyer…' Sam muttered indignantly, in delayed reaction to Dean's comment.

'It's not the same?' Dean asked, trying to grin.

Sam growled at him. 'Well, I'll try it,' he conceded, sighing. 'But if I get arrested, it's your fault.'

Dean smirked. 'If you get arrested, it's your fault for being a terrible liar…'

'You say that like lying is such a laudable quality,' Sam objected.

'It's useful.'

00000000000000000000000000000000

'Hi,' Sam offered, in that slightly breathy, awkward tone which Dean knew meant he was lying. 'I'm…' he read the name on the nearest file, and hoped it would be his lucky day. 'I'm Rhiannon West's attorney.' Luckily, the bored duty cop, doodling on the back of an envelope behind the desk, had not yet learned that his new acquaintance was a terrible liar.

'Right, yeah… It's terrible about her; I don't know what happened.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, she worked here. Cute girl… never would have made a good cop, too nice. But never… She just lost it, man. Of all people, she seems least likely to go off on a killing spree.'

'But she didn't actually kill anyone,' Sam prompted, trying to make it sound like a statement rather than a question.

'Well, no. Shot some guy in the arm, but he disappeared, didn't make a statement. I guess if he doesn't press charges – seems unlikely - you might have an easy job.'

'What?'

'I said you might have an easy job, if that guy doesn't press charges.'

'Oh, right. Yeah,' Sam agreed, remembering that he was a lawyer. 'So, uh, where do I find her?'

'Ok, hang on…' the cop replied, standing up, and kicking back his chair clumsily. Sam followed him down the hall, and smiled his thanks as he slipped into the dull little room where the dark-haired girl he had seen earlier sat slumped and miserable at a metal table.

The duty cop quirked an eyebrow at his colleague as he shut the door behind Sam. 'Hell, I hope that guy she shot doesn't turn up and press charges. With that lawyer, she'd go down so fast…'

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Rhiannon didn't immediately look up when Sam entered the room; she remained unmoving, slumped, wrapped in dark thoughts. When he muttered some nondescript introduction, she flicked up her dark-ringed eyes. There was a weary tension in the mines of her face, and her eyes were still glazed with horror and unshed tears.

She blinked, and studied Sam critically, then swallowed, seeming to reach a conclusion.

'Is he ok?' she asked, her voice raw and hoarse.

'Who?' Sam started to ask, but stopped himself, acknowledging that his masquerade had failed to convince her. He nodded. 'He's alright. No permanent damage…' He was almost reluctant to tell her that Dean was fine; he didn't want to absolve her of guilt, and he was unconvinced by Dean's theory that she had been possessed or controlled by some supernatural agent.

'I'm sorry…' she croaked, glancing away from him, shifting nervously in her seat. 'I didn't mean… honestly, please believe I didn't want to hurt anyone.'

'Then why did you?' Sam asked, sitting down opposite her, struggling to keep the hostility out of his voice.

She met his eyes frankly, a muscle twitching in her jaw. She looked afraid of him. Clasped on the table, her hands trembled. 'I don't know. I don't remember.'

'What?' Sam shot back, sounding sceptical.

'I have no memory of anything… since… well, since just after we arrested Lucy Henshall, until I was sitting on the floor in that shop, with a gun next to me. Tell me I'm crazy,' she challenged him, a defiant, desperate light coming into her eyes.

Sam studied her face: tired, pale and drawn, but the stubborn glare she wore seemed to have shadows of honesty in it. Maybe she had been possessed: perhaps some demons were expelled in a more subtle manner than those Sam was familiar with. 'What do you remember – I mean, what's the last thing you can remember, before the blank spot?'

She nodded, as if to herself, and looked up at the grey ceiling as she tried to recall. 'We caught up with Lucy… and she was like I've never seen her. Mad – really, truly mad, no inhibitions, no flicker of who she usually is. We literally had to bring her in by force, and she struggled all the way. I interviewed her in here, and there was no… no remorse, nothing. I mean, she loved Paul – that's her boyfriend – and yet she was laughing… telling me how she killed him like he meant nothing to her. Like she was proud of it,' Rhiannon added, crinkling her forehead and twisting her lips at the horror of it.

'And then… did she… say anything?'

'She told me she wanted to tell me a secret… but then she wouldn't tell me, insisted that she whisper it in my ear. I didn't want to go up to her… the way she was acting, I didn't want to be in the same state. But I went up to her, and she was fiddling with this medallion round her neck. When my head was close enough, she threw the chain of her necklace over my head, so it was tying us together almost. She said to me, "have fun," and then she pulled her own head out of the circle…'

Rhiannon trailed off, fixing Sam once again in her glassy stare. 'I don't even remember the end of the interview.'

'Have you still got this necklace, Rhiannon?' Sam asked, urgently.

She shook her head. 'No, I haven't seen it since.'

'What did it look like?'

She shrugged, and looked up at the ceiling again, licking her lips. 'Aahh… it was a brass pendant on a gold chain. The pendant was like a ring with a teardrop inside, and a line across it, like…' She drew the shape with a finger on the tabletop.

'Here-,' Sam held out a scrap of paper and a pen. She sketched the symbol roughly onto it, then looked up at him and frowned.

'Why are you so interested in the necklace?' she demanded.

'I… well, there seems to be some link between you wearing the necklace and the time you can't remember,' he explained.

'So where is it now?' she asked. 'Did somebody take it off me in the shop?'

'I'll look for it…,' Sam replied, his mind racing with possibilities. It seemed, either this medallion was cursed, or it had a spirit tied to it which was driving people to homicide. 'Do you know whether I could talk to Lucy?'

'Trust me, you won't get any sense out of Lucy,' she warned. 'She's barely even human any more…'

'But she was wearing the necklace before she gave it to you…'

Her eyes, if possible, widened, picking up the sparse grey light which filtered into the narrow cell. 'Are you trying to tell me that this is a magic necklace which drives the wearer insane?' she requested, her voice trembling with a nervous, disbelieving laugh.

Yes, pretty much… 'To be honest… I wouldn't dismiss that possibility,' Sam admitted, making a valiant effort to be diplomatic about this revelation.

She caught air in her mouth and gaped, fish-like, turning her eyes to the ceiling as if hoping to find the words you're dreaming written there. She glanced to both sides, still apparently seeking someone who would contradict this information. 'Right,' she said eventually, in a forced, high-pitched voice. A shaky breath left her quivering lips. 'Lucy must be in a holding cell, somewhere, awaiting trial. Do you really think…?'

'I think… it's likely.'

'My God. She killed her boyfriend… I can't even imagine…' She shook her head, unable to articulate the sentiment. Sam nodded. He could imagine it.

He stood up to go, and she called him back in the doorway.

'I have to ask – your friend…?'

'My brother.'

She swallowed; somehow, that made it worse.

'Is he going to… do you think he'll press charges?'

Sam gritted his teeth. If it had been him who had been shot, Dean would not be so forgiving. The fact that his brother would forgive her left a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, it wasn't her fault – at least, it seemed that way. He still wasn't ready to entirely absolve her from blame.

'No. I'm pretty sure he won't.'

'Thank you. And – Sam?'

'Yes?'

'Just… find that necklace… in case… Before anyone else can put it on.'

He nodded, and let the door swing loudly shut behind him.

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Michael tangled the gold cord round his fingers, and held the dangling pendant up in front of his eyes. The feeble light, strained through the mud-coloured curtains of his rented room, left a pale smudge along one side of the tarnished brass symbol. His fingertips tingled, perceiving the faint buzzing coming off the object. It intrigued and infuriated him in almost equal measure. Intrigued because the entertainment he had witnessed today suggested it had the power to make people act erratically – and, more intriguing still, violently. Infuriated, because he couldn't figure it out, and his psychic ability had guttered almost out – once, he would have known what the neckalce was at a touch, at a glance.

And yet, it was true what they said; every cloud has a silver lining. He didn't want to spoil the surprise, after all. He had a pretty good idea who he wanted to test it on.

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