For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.

Then...

Dean learns that Darcy, at the morgue, is more than what she seems. In fact, she's pretty supernatural herself, having telepathic abilities. They make a deal to help each other. Meanwhile, in the depths of a deep dark bayou, a woman makes a deal with deadly consequences.

Now...

Shortly before midnight, Darcy let herself into the break room, where Dean had been resting on the couch. He was somewhat handsome, she had to admit. He definitely had that bad-boy quality, somewhat James Dean-esque. Normally, that wasn't her type, but something about him was intriguing, attractive even. Maybe it was the whole idea of what he did, hunting what went bump in the night.

Maybe she was drawn to his sense of isolation because she felt that way often herself. Only one other person had understood her, her ability, and that person was long since gone. Ultimately, she knew that Dean was not the settling down, staying around type. She was fairly certain that, once he had solved this little mystery, he would vanish from her life just as quickly and as abruptly as he had entered it.

"Dean..."

She couldn't help but notice that he looked adorable while he slept, though he had yet to budge.

Reaching out, she gently placed a hand on his shoulder. "Dean, it's time to wake up..."

He stirred slowly, opening one eye, followed by the other. "Darcy...?"

"The next guy'll be here shortly. You should go on out of here, get your car, and I'll meet you there. Where are you parked?"

"Uh, down the street," he said, slowly sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "A '67 Impala. Hard to miss," he told her.

She smiled. "All right. I'll be right there."

He nodded, getting to his feet. "I really slept at a morgue..."

"See, it's not so bad," she said, guiding him out of the room.

"Well, it's certainly a first," he told her. He glanced at her, as they walked to the lobby. He caught a whiff of something. Maybe her perfume, or her shampoo... It didn't really matter. Whatever it was, it smelled wonderful, warm, and soft, like... comfort. Like home. He again wondered what, exactly, she was capable of reading off of him, just how privy she was to his innermost thoughts and feelings. "If you want, just give me directions and I can meet you at your apartment."

"You aren't going to give me a ride?"

He blinked. "You don't have a car?"

She shook her head.

"How can you live without a car?"

"Out of necessity," she said. "But, again, long story, and you should get out of here. I'll tell you on the ride home."

"Good enough, I guess."

She watched as he exited the building, and she eased behind the front desk once more. It had been a quiet night, with no late-night runs by police officers. No requests for the coroner on call to head out to some shady location to check out one of the newly departed.

In order to allow Dean unimpeded dreams, she'd worked all night with her iPod at full blast, focusing on the music. Music seemed to be the only thing to drown out the voices in her head. She listened on the walk to work, when she would try to get sleep at night. It helped save her sanity. Being party to the city's secrets was difficult. She didn't want to know about the number of adulterous women. About the gay guys shoved deep within their own closets. About the white collar criminals in the corner offices embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

She'd heard someone think about a murder once, in another city, in what seemed like another lifetime. She had gone to the local police with her information. They said they didn't have the time for parlor-trick psychics. Last she had heard, before she moved, the murder was still unsolved. The murderer still walked the streets with his murderous thoughts.

Without being John Edward, she simply wasn't capable of helping anyone.

Lost in her own thoughts, she looked up when another voice entered her mind. One thinking about the sexy car he'd seen on the way in. A real beauty, back when muscle cars were really muscle cars.

Frank, she realized, standing up and sliding a jacket on before shouldering her bag.

"Graveyard shift, reporting in," announced the same voice she had just heard in her own head as an older, balding guy walked in.

"Evening," Darcy said. "It's been quiet tonight. Hopefully it'll stay that way."

"Yeah, right," he chuckled. "You have a good night."

"Thanks, Frank. You, too," she said before making her own way out of the morgue, and towards the pizza place.

Down the block, she saw the sleek-looking black car Frank must've been thinking about. More importantly, she saw Dean leaning against the trunk. She smiled slightly, making her way towards him.

"Your chariot," he told her.

"Nice car. My coworker likes it, too."

"Well, your coworker has good taste." She smiled, moving towards the passenger seat, as Dean headed for the driver's side. "Next stop, your place. Where is it?"

"Not too far," she admitted as she climbed in. "About two miles."

"You walk two miles a day to work and two miles back at midnight?"

"Sometimes I take the bus, or a taxi."

"Crazy," he said, shaking his head as he started the car.

"And believing in and hunting ghosts isn't just a little on the peculiar side?" she asked, glancing over at him.

He looked over at her. "Yeah, but any girl walking at home at midnight is crazy, especially in New Orleans, which doesn't have the safest crime record ever." That said, he turned his attention to the road again, and pulled out into the late-night traffic.

"It might be pretty crazy that I'm going to take a total stranger home for the evening, too," she pointed out.

Dean was silent for a moment. "I'm not a total stranger."

"Did we or did we not meet about a couple hours ago? Have you or have you not been asleep most of the time after that...?"

"All right, so we're both certifiable," Dean acknowledged before quickly changing topics. "Now, you were going to tell me why you don't drive..."

"It isn't exactly the safest of driving conditions, to be going down the road and then, all the sudden, hear another voice in there, y'know, making a grocery list, or thinking about stuff that happened at work that day, or... whatever. Especially if there are lots of people around, then there are lots of voices. Lots more distractions than your average everyday driver. Makes me somewhat of a hazard on the roads. I stick to walking."

"With your music."

"Y'know that saying, about trying to drown your sorrows?"

"That they know how to swim?" he asked, glancing over at her.

She nodded. "Mine swim, but they can't compete with Bonnie Tyler at full blast."

"Bonnie Tyler, huh? See, I'm more of a Led Zeppelin guy..."

"Somehow I got that," she said, smiling a little.

"You pulled it out of my head."

"I try not to be invasive," she admitted. "But, no, I just figured you for a hard-rock kind of guy. The way you dress, the way you look... Just, summed you up like most normal people do."

"Yeah?"

She nodded.

"Normal people are entirely overrated."

"You think so?"

"If you were normal, we wouldn't be here right now. 'Cause I'd have gone into that morgue, figured out what I needed to find out, which, turned out to be nothing much, and then I would've gone and found some crappy hotel so I could think about what to do next. Instead... I'm going to crash on your couch and we're going to talk to some professor in the morning."

"If you were normal, you wouldn't have even come to the morgue."

"Exactly," he told her, glancing over at her. Her features looked soft in the dim light. Attractive. "You didn't just read my mind then, did you?"

"You want the truth?" she asked, looking over at him.

"Yeah," he said slowly.

She shrugged a little. "It's hard not to."

"Does it make you uncomfortable?"

She smiled. "That you think I'm pretty? No. Does it make you uncomfortable?" she challenged.

"Nah," Dean said, shaking his head. "Must've been easy for you to ask somebody out in school, during the otherwise awkward teenage years. You could figure out beforehand if he actually liked you."

"It was still a nerve-wracking process," she admitted. "Turn left up here," she said.

Dean drove as he was told.

"My building is up there at the corner."

"So, where are you from anyway? Because you're not from New Orleans."

"I was born and raised in Virginia. After high school, I started moving around. I've been trying to find somewhere to call home ever since."

"Have you found it yet?"

She shook her head slowly. "Not yet. But New Orleans isn't bad for right now."

"Why not Virginia? Why isn't it home?" he asked, pulling into a parallel parking spot in front of her apartment building.

"My parents didn't exactly understand when I told them what I could do. Even though I read their minds, even though I told them what they were thinking, they decided I was crazy or something. Something that didn't need to be with them anymore."

He glanced over at her. "You aren't a 'thing.'"

Slowly, she looked up at him, with her dark green eyes. "You never know," she said. "I might be."

He shook his head confidently. "Not possible."

She smiled a little then climbed out, finding her apartment key. "C'mon."

Dean popped the trunk, pulling a duffel bag out. He conscientiously thought about other things, anything other than the fact the Impala's trunk had a false bottom. He thought about AC/DC lyrics as he slammed the trunk before he followed her up into her building, to her apartment on the fourth floor.

"Home, sweet home," she said, welcoming him inside.

The apartment wasn't very large, but Dean felt at ease. She did have what looked like a comfortable cream-colored couch, complete with plush pillows in coordinating accent colors and a matching throw. The coffee table was actually an ottoman, one that matched her couch. Her walls held framed vintage record covers, some bands he recognized and some he didn't. She didn't have glaring overhead lighting, but instead, soft lamps throughout the room.

"Make yourself at home. Kitchen is through that door," she said, pointing across the room. "There's only one bathroom, and it's off the bedroom, which is this way," she said, moving towards it. "I'll be right back."

"Sure," he said, taking another look around her living room. She had a turntable. He hadn't seen one of those in ages. She had crate after crate of vinyl albums. Beside them, she had a few bookshelves. He figured her for a poetry girl, or maybe someone who read Shakespeare in her free time. Instead, upon closer inspection, he saw that her bookshelves didn't have a single paperback or hard-cover text. They were filled instead with CDs: Classical music to swing, pop and rock, orchestral pieces, soundtracks to musicals, even country and folk. She had everything.

He smiled a little, when he pulled out a CD by a familiar group.

Darcy emerged from her bedroom in a pair of black yoga pants and a soft, well-washed tee shirt that hugged her curves, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. "Found something you like?"

"Hell yeah," he said, proudly holding up a Metallica CD.

"CD player's over here," she said, tapping an entertainment cabinet on her way to the kitchen.

"I figured you weren't a Metallica chick."

"I'll listen to anything," she said, leaving the kitchen door open as she headed for the fridge. "But, that one, they covered a traditional Celtic song."

"You like the Irish or something?" he asked.

"My dad's family, way, way back, is from Ireland," she said, pulling out a bottle of water.

"I have no idea what my family is, technically. Never had the time to look it up," he admitted.

"Mmm. Dad told me my name was Celtic. Y'know what it means?"

Dean shrugged. "Mind reader?"

She shook her head. "'Descendant of dark one.' They named me that, I was told, anyway, because I had dark hair when I was born. When they told me not to come home anymore, they told me my name fit me more than they had ever realized."

Dean was fairly certain he heard her voice break ever so slightly, and he could see a distant look in her eyes, as though she were reliving the moment. Sliding the CD back into its spot on the bookshelf, he shook his head. "Believe me, Darcy. I've seen a lot of evil in my time. You know it when you see it, you see it so much. You're not evil."

She offered a faint smile, deciding to move on rather than dwell. "So, I emailed Dr. Yates at work, told him we'll be by to see him in the morning," she said.

"Darcy..."

She looked at him.

He merely looked back at her, holding her gaze. He figured, maybe, this would be more convincing coming from his thoughts, rather than his lips. 'You aren't evil. When people come across things they don't know, it's almost always the same. Because they didn't understand you, they didn't know how to respond to you. So, they forced you out, so they don't have to try to figure it out. You are different, but that doesn't make you horrible. Your parents, they were the horrible ones, when they learned the truth.'

He watched as her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't pull her gaze from him, not until he blinked, giving her the opportunity to look at the floor. "I haven't been around someone who understands in... in a long time," she said quietly.

"It's okay," he told her, reaching out, and cupping her face in his hand. His thumb grazed her skin gently.

"Dean," she whispered. She didn't want to move into his arms. Moving into his arms could be very bad, because when it came time for him to leave, she might not want him to. When he had to go, she might have a very hard time coming to terms with the idea that the only other person on the planet who understood was gone. Again.

But, by the same token, there was someone there, in front of her, who understood what it was like to be truly and utterly one of a kind. To be extraordinary, in a supernatural way.

Setting her water down, she eased against him, wrapping her arms around him, resting her head on his chest.

Dean's arms had no other place to go but around her. He noticed how she was the perfect height, how she seemed to be made exactly for that spot against him, in the protective safety of his arms. He rested his cheek against her hair, noting again that yes, her shampoo, whatever it was, smelled divine.

His eyes closed as he just held her close. There were days he wished he could read minds. It would make his job one hell of a lot easier. There were days he wished it was more than just he and his dad hunting. He wished that Sammy was back with them. He wished that more people understood what the Winchesters were doing, what they had to do, in order to protect the rest of the country.

But, he didn't count on that ever happening. Slowly, he raised his head. "You, um... You must be pretty tired after a long day. Plus, we should get up early, see that professor..."

She nodded, pulling back from him. "If you get hungry or anything, y'know, just... help yourself, okay? There's a TV and everything..."

"Thanks," he told her, noticing she had yet to look up at him.

"Good night," she said, grabbing her water again and heading for her bedroom, pulling the door closed ever so slightly.

Dean scratched his head. This had to be a first for him. Staying the night at a girl's house and not... He quickly stopped that though because she probably still had her telepathic radar on, and, well, that could give her a bad impression.

Exhaling, he flopped down on the couch. The television remote sat on the ottoman. He thought about turning it on, but the thought of flipping past infomercials and ads for singles lines wasn't really his idea of a great evening.

Removing his boots, he stretched out, pulling the throw over him. Tomorrow, he'd really get this case moving.

It was yet another seedy hotel room. Yet another space for John Winchester to turn into a ghost war room. He posted pictures, newspaper clippings on the wall about the anomaly happening out on lonely stretches of Centennial Highway at Jericho, California. He had this gut feeling, though, this nagging sensation in the back of his stomach that refused to stop eating at him.

He found himself unable to focus on the task before him, thinking instead about the events that brought him to this very place in time, on that night, so many years ago, when his little Sammy was snuggled into his crib, safe and sound. Dean had begged for one more story before John had been able to tuck him into bed. And Mary, his sweet, sweet Mary, looked so completely angelic, lying there in their room.

For some reason, sleep just wasn't coming to him. He'd tried laying with Mary but, for all his tossing and turning, was too afraid he'd wake her up, and heaven knew, little Sammy would be up periodically through the night. They both needed their rest, and neither would be able to get it unless he headed down to the living room.

He'd channel surfed for a while, finally finding an old war movie. It reminded him of his days in the Marine Corps, before he had been honorably discharged. Before he really had a family to worry about. He didn't mind reliving his war hero days through cinematic experiences. Mary didn't worry so much anymore either, now that he was home full time.

And his boys. He had two handsome boys. Dean, always full of energy, always ready to help out, and Sammy... Sammy didn't say much yet, but John just knew that Sammy was full of potential. His life, at that point in time, was perfect. Of that, he was certain.

But in one moment, his whole life shattered. In one moment, in one shrieking, shrill moment, he knew something was beyond wrong. Mary... Where was his Mary? Sammy seemed to be fine. But, that little, dark puddle, there by his head...

And then his entire world changed. Mary was gone, in a fiery blaze, and Dean, little four-year-old Dean, had the responsibility of saving his baby brother. At first, John was stunned, shocked. The anger, the sadness, it all tumbled all around him, on a daily basis. No one could offer any answers. No one seemed to care that, before the roof of Sammy's nursery caught fire, that his beautiful Mary had been on the ceiling, held there, by some ungodly force.

In the weeks and months that followed, John started devoting a lot of his time to reading, to studying, to learning everything he could about demons and devils, spirits and specters. He was going to find what had done that to his Mary, to his family, to his world, and he was going to make the bastard pay.

In the coming years, he'd had trouble, trying to locate what he learned had been a demon. But now, while trying to focus on the Woman in White who seemed to be killing dozens of young men, he could think only of his two young men, his Dean and his Sammy.

He'd vowed to avenge their mother's death. And he hadn't done it yet. He'd saved others, but he had yet to save himself, or them, from the lives he'd laid out for them. Lives of hunters. A life Sammy had escaped, and a life Dean rarely questioned.

Dean. Dean was such a good, brave boy. Always had been. Dean would understand best what John had to do. This hunt in New Orleans would be good for him, give him confidence in his solo abilities. If Dean could take over for the day-to-day Winchester operation, then it would free John to focus on what he felt he had to do. John could find that damned demon and send him back to Hell forever, never to return to walk the earth. He would find a way to do that, whether or not it killed him.

He looked at his journal, what had become his operational bible. Dean would need it. Dean had the basics covered, but there would be some things that would elude him. Some things that the journal might help him uncover. And, in order to get him started, John turned to a page in the back, and wrote, in big, bold, black letters, just exactly where he needed to go to get started on his solo career, after finishing up the Woman in White mystery, of course. The code John used was unmistakable. Dean would know exactly what John wanted him to do, and Dean would do it, without question.

Closing the journal, he closed his eyes. "Please, God, help him continue on without me. And help me find the evil that walks this place. Let it torture no more souls. Let us figure this out, once and for all, so we can all be at peace." He wasn't entirely sure anyone was listening, but he figured it didn't hurt.

With that, John left the journal in the hotel room, and he left California.

The Road Ahead...

"Just... keep an open mind, yeah?"

"I believe in demons that walk the earth. How much more of an open mind do you want me to have?"

"C'mon," she said, standing, and holding her hand out to him.