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Chapter Eight: Black Magic Woman

"So, you really do know us?" Sam asked, clearly setting aside his concerns about the man's grip on reality in favour of learning who they really were.

Dean was less willing to set aside that little detail.

"'Course I know you. You think I'd drive half way cross the country for two complete strangers?" Bobby replied looking at them closely. Then he shook his head. "You're telling me neither of you remember anything?"

"Well, Dean remembered my name, sort of." Sam piped up helpfully.

Bobby rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well, last I heard from you boys, you were heading up here on the trail of some witch. So maybe a spell?"

Dean blinked at the man in disbelief. The guy looked completely serious. Like he did not think it at all odd that he was sitting there suggesting that their memory had been erased by a witch's spell. Enough was enough, no way was he letting this nut job stay here.

"Hold it right there," Dean said. "Look uh. . . Bobby. No offense, but, well. You're insane. So we're really sorry to have bothered you and all, but maybe you should go. Now."

Bobby sighed, but made no move to leave. "Sorry, I forgot. You don't even remember your names, of course you won't remember the rest. Look, I know this is all going to be hard to take, but witches are real. So are a host of other paranormal beings," he added as an afterthought. "But we'll set that detail aside for now. What we need to do is find a way to reverse this spell, and get your memories back."

"I said, I want you out," Dean said pointing to the door. Sam grabbed his other arm and gestured with his head for Dean to follow him. They moved a short ways across the room. Bobby remained on the bed, still watching them.

"What?" he asked, his voice low, as he turned to the kid.

"Maybe we should just let him stay, I mean—"

"He's insane Sammy, or did you miss that part?" Dean hissed.

"No, I mean, obviously he's not. . . well. But Dean, he knows us, and well, maybe we look out for him or something. We probably shouldn't just throw him out. Besides, what harm can it do to let him stay?"

Dean glanced back over at the man on the bed. He didn't seem to be a threat to them at the moment. Though Dean was still wary, as the man had been gripping some sort of weapon earlier. Looking back to the kid, who was now fixing him with what could only be described as a 'puppy dog look' Dean sighed, "Alright, he can stay. For now."

He made his way back over to the man and repeated his offer to let him stay. "But that don't mean I want to listen to more of your ramblings," he added.

Bobby shook his head frustrated. "I'm being straight with you Dean," he said. "I know it don't seem possible. But there are a lot of things out there. Things most people never know about. But you and your brother," he said with a nod over in Sammy's direction, "Aren't most people."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean muttered before stopping and staring at Bobby, "Wait, brother?"

The man blinked at them stunned. "You didn't know? What the hell did you think you were?"

"Uh. . . we didn't really know," Sam offered, finally joining the conversation.

Dean snorted, "Fruitcake there," he said gesturing to his . . . brother. "Thought we were marching under the rainbow banner."

Bobby just stared at Sam. The kid blushed brightly, "I just said it seemed logical, the whole one bed thing and all," he muttered seemingly to the floor. "But I told you, you were right all ready."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean replied dismissively. Then addressing both men he asked, "What do you say we go find some food. Since we're up and all," he added darkly.

"Are you even capable of thinking with anything besides your stomach?" Sam muttered.

Bobby smiled. "Seems memory is the only thing you two have lost," he commented. Then added, "I think I'll stay here if that's fine with you, I'm beat."

Dean looked at the older man suspiciously. Leaving this lunatic alone in their room? Sammy was already grabbing his jacket, seemingly unconcerned. Was he just being paranoid? Then maybe he had reason to be paranoid, he thought, remembering the trunk of his car.

The man was already stretching out on the bed, not waiting for an answer and Dean sighed. There really was not anything incriminating in the room anyway, and they had already told this guy as much as they knew, so Dean could find no real valid objections.

The car, and therefore the contents of it's trunk, would be with them at the diner anyway.

"Fine," he reluctantly muttered, turning to follow Sam out the door, hoping he would not regret this.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He knew he should have kicked the loony-toon out, when he'd had the chance. He knew it. Damn that kid and his 'puppy-faced what-could-it-possibly-hurt' look.

They had only been gone maybe a half-hour. Had a quick breakfast, and had hurried back, as Dean had still been feeling on edge about the stranger. Sam had remained oblivious. Hell, he'd even brought some food back for the guy.

At least he had the sense to seem concerned now.

He and Sam were both standing frozen in the doorway of their motel room, looking in on the chaos. This was so not what their room had looked like when they had left. Everything had been pulled apart. Everything.

The mattress was on the floor, the dresser drawers removed, the bathroom cupboards emptied. All the furniture had been pulled a few inches away from the wall, as though to allow one to see behind them.

And in the middle of it all sat Bobby.

"That's it!" Dean called finally moving into the room. "You. Out."

Bobby looked up. "Hey," he greeted. "Sorry 'bout the mess. Was hoping there'd be a hex bag. Turns out not, looks like our best shot is to track her down."

"No, no, no," Dean said coming into the room. "We are not going to track down anyone. You are going to leave, and we are going to pretend that you were never here. Understand?"

"Dean," Bobby tried once more to reason with him about completely insane, unreasonable things. "I did a little looking while you were gone. There's a entire convention full of Wiccan women in town. One or some of them must be into real witchcraft. Somehow they've wiped your memories, and you are just going to have to trust me, if you want them back."

"Why the hell should we trust you?" Dean demanded. "You're crazy!"

Bobby sighed, glanced at Sam who still looked completely freaked out, and seemed to make up his mind about something. "Fine, fine. I'm going," He moved to the door.

"Just like that?" Sam said, flashing another uncertain look at Dean. Why did the kid keep expecting him to come up with everything?

"You boys'll thank me when this is over," Bobby said cryptically, "Or at least, you'd better," he added in a lower voice.

"Wait, what are you going to do?" Sam asked anxiously. But Bobby didn't answer. He was already out the door. Sam turned on Dean angrily. "Well, that was just great, Dean! You chased him away."

Dean stared in disbelief. "The guy was nuts."

"He's still the only one we know of who knows who we are," Sam said, "And who knows what he's going to go do now. He could be tracking down some poor woman who he thinks is a witch. We have to stop him!"

Dean sighed. Then, unable to come up with a decent argument to Sam's logic, he swung the door open and headed out to look for Bobby.

Except the man was no where in sight. How far could he have gotten in a couple of minutes?

"Bobby?" Sam had followed him out and was looking around as well. The parking lot was still full, and there was no sign of Bobby or anyone else as they walked between the rows of cars.

"He drove here, right?" Sam said, "Where do you think he parked his car?"

Dean shrugged. "Either he didn't park it here or he didn't take it with him when he left."

"We have to find him," Sam insisted.

"I don't really see how it's our problem," Dean replied tiredly. All those early mornings were starting to catch up to him. "If he wants to go chasing after some witch that doesn't exist, I say let him."

"Dean, we're the reason he came here. He obviously believes the witch is real, and if he finds 'her' what do you think he's going to do?"

"Uh, have a nice whacked-out chat?" Dean asked hopefully. In reality, he had a pretty good idea of what Sam was getting at.

Sammy felt the need to elaborate anyway. "He talked about hunting her down, Dean. He's going to kill her!"

Yeah, that was probably a bad thing. But he couldn't shake what Bobby had told them, that they had used to believe this stuff. It would certainly explain the back of his car, if they thought they were hunting monsters and other. . . things. But that was insane. Like, really freaking I-cut-the-heads-off-cats-because-the-voices-tell-me-to insane. You didn't just recover from that level of crazy because you lost your memory, did you?

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Sam demanded, "We have to find him before he hurts someone!"

Dean nodded. "He said something about a Wiccan convention. We could check around and see if we catch him there." And what they were going to do if they found him, Dean had no idea.

As it turned out, the Wiccans were not too hard to find. There were several of them staying in the same motel as Sam and Dean.

"Are you witches too?" one of them asked cheerfully after Sam and Dean had introduced themselves (vaguely) and explained what they were looking for (even more vaguely).

"It's so rare to meet male witches," her friend said, flashing Dean a stunning smile, "Welcome!"

"Uh, no, no – we're not—" Sammy began.

"Why thank you," Dean said, completely cutting the kid off, "We were worried we wouldn't fit in." He had no idea where all this bullshit of his was coming from, only that it kept popping into his head and he was running with it.

"Oh no! We always welcome new practitioners to the craft," the one that had smiled at him answered, "And even if you're still in the broom closet, that's fine too. Besides, there are too few men in this town, if you know what I mean. . ." She looked at him slyly.

"Is that so?" said Dean, grinning, "Well, I certainly wouldn't mind—" At that point something hard and elbow-shaped jabbed into his side and he had to work not to wince and glare at Sammy.

"We're looking for a friend of ours," Sam said easily, as if he hadn't just stabbed Dean in the ribs with his bony arms. "He's sort of an older guy, um, baseball cap, beard. . ." he made a gesture around his face, "You haven't seen him or anything?"

The girls looked at each other and shook their heads. "No, sorry. Is he a witch too?"

"Not so much," Dean said.

They thanked the ladies, and then Sam forcibly dragged Dean away. Cockblocker.

"Okay, where else do you think Bobby would have gone to look for witches?" Sam asked.

"I dunno, but I could use some pie," Dean said.

Sam gawked. "Dude, pie? Pie? At a time like this?"

"A man's gotta eat, Sammy," Dean told him.

"Is that all you think about? Food and – and what, sex?"

Dean considered it. "Pretty much."

Sam threw his arms up in exasperation. "You know, maybe Bobby was wrong about us. I'm not seeing how we could possibly be related."

"Yeah. You're nowhere near as handsome as I am."

They wandered toward the impala. "So are we just going to interview all the Wiccans in town and hope we hit them all before Bobby does, or what?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head, clearly seeing the problem with that plan too. "There has to be a better way. . ." However, he was at a loss to think of one.

Dean was still brooding over how insane this whole 'hunting' thing was. Bobby obviously believed it, enough to follow them out to this town because he thought they were in danger and track down some witch to do God knows what because he thought it would help them. And then there was the teenagers being burned to death around town, and the gasoline and the shotguns and the knives and whatever else in the back of his car. The whole thing was creepy and messed up in ways he couldn't begin to understand.

Maybe the kid was right. Maybe when they they remembered, if they ever remembered, they were going to wish they hadn't.