Chapter 1
Flesh and Spirit

February 7, 2013

"Morning," said Dean Winchester, bringing waffles to his brother Sam at one of the tables in the library of the Men of Letters' bunker. "Better eat fast."

Sam looked up from his laptop and accepted a plate. "Why? What's the rush?"

"Need to run up to Whitefish for the weekend, check on the cabin. We kinda left in a hurry, if you remember." The cabin in question had originally belonged to fellow hunter Rufus Turner and, at his death, passed to the brothers' long-time friend and foster father Bobby Singer, who had moved into it after his own house was destroyed. Since Bobby's death on a hunt, the Winchesters had been using the cabin as a home base—at least until they'd inherited the bunker shortly after Martin Luther King Day.*

Sam blinked. "I thought you went up there last week, after you went to see Kevin and Garth."

Dean frowned and sat down across the table from Sam with his own plate; Sam had already set a second mug of coffee there for him. They'd just missed each other in the kitchen, apparently. "No. Stopped off in Lawrence to see Missouri, but she wasn't home. Oh, and..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I went to Normal, checked on Henry's grave. Was thinkin' maybe we should use some of the Men of Letters' funds to get him a real headstone; I dunno how long that wooden cross is gonna last." The recent death of their time-traveling grandfather still weighed heavy on Dean's conscience.

Sam nodded slowly. "Okay. That's... that's fine. Good idea. But Dean, we just got back three days ago."

Dean squirmed a little. "I dunno, dude. I just... have this feeling we need to head up there. Call it a hunch."

Sam sighed, shrugged, and picked up his fork. "All right. I guess we can pick up a load of Bobby's books to bring back while we're there."

"Heh. Bet you can't say that ten times fast."

"Bet not taken."

"Aw, c'mon, Sammy."

Sam very pointedly took a bite of waffle, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth.

That evening, the brothers stopped for supper in Casper, Wyoming, and at the end of the meal were debating whether to stay there for the night or get a few towns further down the road when Dean's cell phone rang. "Hey, Dean," said Garth when Dean answered. "Are y'all on a hunt right now?"

Dean's eyebrows shot up. "No, actually. Why, has Kevin got something on how to close the gates of Hell?"

"Not yet. Apparently this tablet's way harder than the Leviathan one. No, this one's just a regular case—and honestly, it might not be supernatural, but my gut says it is. Y'all are the closest hunters right now, so I figured I'd give you a call."

"All right. Lay it on me."

"Ebott, Idaho. There've been six stabbings since the first of the year. Couple of the victims lived long enough to describe the attacker as 'a kid with red eyes and a creepy smile.'" Garth's Tennessee twang shifted just enough on that last bit that Dean could tell it was a direct quote, either from a news article or a police report.

"Red eyes. That's usually..."

"A crossroads demon, right, but it ain't the right MO. There's no sign of hellhounds, an' none of the victims had any sudden successes or anything like that."

Dean hummed thoughtfully. "Okay, we'll check it out. Thanks, Garth. Tell Kevin hello for us."

"Will do, and you say hey to Sam for me. Say, have you an' Sam quit bein' idjits yet?"

The corner of Dean's mouth quirked upward in a wry smile. Just a few months earlier, Garth had played a crucial role in preventing a specter from exploiting hard feelings between the brothers and using Dean to kill Sam over Sam's failure to look for Dean during the year he'd been missing in Purgatory. "We're workin' on it. 'Course, Bobby'd tell you we'll never quit bein' idjits."

Garth chuckled sadly. "All right. Y'all take care, now."

"We will, dude. Thanks." And Dean hung up. "Garth says hey," he told Sam.

Sam had his notebook out and was just putting the pen back in its loop. "So not something we need to add to our list of reasons to kill Crowley?"

Dean huffed. "Nah, but it's weird enough to take a look at. Six stabbings since New Year's."

"Huh." Sam put his notebook away and got out his wallet. "We're going straight through, then?"

"Yeah, better. We can switch off in another couple of hours."

Sam blinked. "You're... actually letting me drive?"

"Hell, Sam, you've been asleep half the day. And I don't know where in Idaho this place is—could be another nine, ten hours. I gotta sleep sometime."

Sam blinked again, then shrugged. "Okay. I'm just... surprised, is all. You don't let me drive much these days."

Dean sighed heavily. "Sam..."

Sam shook his head. "Never mind. Forget I said anything. You want me to start researching this place before we switch?"

"Yeah." Dean didn't want to have the conversation Sam had started anyway. "Need to have some idea what we're up against."

"Okay." Sam dropped a $20 on the table, and the brothers left.

As the Impala pulled out of the restaurant's parking lot, Sam quickly found directions to Ebott, which was way up in the mountains near Salmon (well, for certain values of 'near'). "Mostly ranchers and tourists now," he reported an hour or so later, "since that area's full of national parks; only about a thousand residents inside the city limits year-round. But it started out as a mining town. The population's heavily Irish. The Mt. Ebott Mine played out shortly before World War I, and the mine company tried to cover up the entrance and the main shaft. But there are rumors that the shaft is still open, reports of disappearances over the years. And get this: the old-timers say the mountain is home to a branch of the Tuatha De Danaan."

"Great," Dean groaned. "More fairies. Just what we need."

"Either way, the local lore says that those who climb Mt. Ebott never return."

"But there's nothing about the fairies going into town?"

Sam shook his head. "Nothing that I can find. Now, there was a tremor in August, and afterward hikers started reporting hearing voices in the woods around the mine entrance, music, laughter... even construction noises, which is weird. But after Labor Day, the tourist traffic drops off, and so do reports of anything out of the ordinary outside of town. And nothing unusual happened in town until the first stabbing."

"Found the police reports yet?"

"No. The police department doesn't even have a website, so they're probably still mostly analogue. We'll have to get those when we get there. No, all I've found are reports in the Salmon newspaper, and if there's a pattern, it's not showing up yet. The stabbings usually happen after midnight, but they're all over town, all ages, all walks of life. I'd say crime of opportunity except that the last victim had one of those high-end security systems, and the police chief said that the killer would have had to be, quote, 'extremely determined' to get past it."

"Huh." Dean found a safe place to pull over and did so. "You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"It's deliberate. Whoever this is wants attention."

"Question is..."

"Why. If it's a terrorist group, they'd have claimed it by now. So is it someone with a grudge against humanity, or..."

"... does someone want our attention?"

The brothers looked at each other for a moment. Then Sam shut his laptop and put it in the back seat, and they got out at the same time to switch drivers.

Dean slept relatively well despite his nagging doubts about the case and woke only when Sam pulled in at a gas station in the town just south of Ebott. Road conditions still being treacherous at this time of year, Sam had erred on the side of caution and driven slowly, so the trip from Casper had taken quite a bit longer than the nine hours his map app had predicted. After getting gas and coffee and changing into their Fed suits, the brothers switched off again and arrived at the Ebott Police Department right around first light. They walked in to find the female officer at the front desk, a brunette with a nametag that read Sullivan, nodding off and about to faceplant into a pile of paperwork.

Dean cleared his throat. "Excuse me."

Sullivan startled awake. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"Agent Page, Agent Plant, FBI. We're here—"

"Oh, thank God!" she interrupted, bursting into tears and burying her face in her hands before they could even present their fake credentials. "Thank God someone called you! I'd been praying for help—I can't take this case anymore!"

The Winchesters blinked at each other. "The stabbings?" Sam ventured.

The officer nodded and reached for a Kleenex. "There's been another overnight. My mother." She swallowed hard. "What good is being the police chief if I can't even protect my own mom?!"

As she started sobbing, Sam went around the desk and put an arm across her shoulders. "Hey. It's okay. That's why we're here. We're gonna stop this."

"What if you can't?"

"We'll find a way, Chief, I promise."

"Angela," she choked out. "Please call me Angela."

"Angela. We've got a good track record with this sort of thing. Check with Sheriff Mills in Sioux Falls if you want; we've worked with her for several years now."

"And we've got resources through the Bureau you don't have access to," Dean added. "I know even one murder in a town like this is a big deal. Seven in five weeks... it's seven too many. But we'll do everything we can to make sure your mom's is the last."

"I've never worked a serial case before," Angela admitted. "If I had... if I'd been faster..."

Sam rubbed her shoulder. "Don't blame yourself. I wasn't able to stop a serial killer from killing my dad. You just... you can't save everyone, even in the best of times."

She sobbed again, then got a fresh Kleenex to dry her eyes and tried to pull herself together. "Thank you, Agent."

"Sam. This is Dean."

"Sam, Dean. My... my officers are finishing up at the c-crime scene." She sniffled. "Uh, here." She threw away the tissues and gathered up the stack of folders in front of her, then handed them to Dean. "Here's everything on the first six. The last one... the last one, before last night, we got some video off... off the security cameras. It's, uh." She ran a hand over her mouth and looked at Sam. "C-can you..."

"Is it on this computer?" Sam asked, gesturing to the monitor off to the side of the desk.

She nodded. "It's... the folder's open."

"Okay. Why don't you go to the break room for a few minutes? We can call for you when we need you."

She nodded again and pointed. "It's... down this hall."

"Great. Thanks." Sam supported Angela as she stood and let go of her only when she proved steady enough on her feet not to need him. Then he waited until she had made it partway down the hall before sitting down in her chair. "Some hunch," he murmured.

"Shut up," Dean murmured back and came around the desk, setting the folders down as he leaned over Sam's shoulder. "What have we got?"

Sam quickly pulled up the video from the outside of the next-to-last victim's residence, displaying the sidewalk that presumably led to the front door. The camera had clearly been operating in night-vision mode, as the footage was in black and white. Nothing happened for several seconds; then a child, maybe eight or nine years old, walked into view. The kid's dark hair was cut in a Buster Brown style, and between the angle of the camera and the fact that the kid was looking down, Dean couldn't tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Whoever it was didn't have on a coat, though, only an already bloodstained sweater with two bold horizontal stripes across the front, and was clutching a wicked-looking knife. The image fritzed a few times as the kid approached, probably reacting to EMF.

Then suddenly the kid stopped and looked up, straight into the camera, eyes wide and dark corner to corner and mouth curling up into a smile that made Dean's skin crawl. The kid stood there smiling at the camera long enough for several good stills, then walked off beneath the camera—and seconds later, the feed ended.

"Cut the wires?" Sam asked.

Dean checked the crime scene report. "Yeah. Hey, back it up and zoom in. I wanna check something."

Sam nodded and backed up to a frame of the kid staring into the camera, then zoomed in several times. The kid's ears weren't visible, but... yes, just below the bottom of the hair, there was a dark blotch on the neck.

"Yahtzee." Dean pointed.

"Ectoplasm," Sam agreed. "Wish the video were in color so we could be sure what type of ghost we're dealing with, a specter or a regular ghost."

"We can see if there's ectoplasm at the latest crime scene. Check for EMF, too, just in case. The weird thing is the red eyes."

"Yeah. Well, maybe it's not a full-fledged demon yet."

"But wouldn't the eyes be black, then?"

"Mm, maybe. If we can trap it, maybe we can ask. So crime scene first, then locate the kid?"

Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Better print off that screenshot so we can show it to people."

"Right."

Sam was still trying to coax the aging laser printer into printing the still without jamming when an exhausted-looking male officer with a name tag that read Hennessy walked in. "Who are you?" he challenged as soon as he saw the Winchesters.

"Agent Page, Agent Plant, FBI," Dean replied, and the brothers flashed their fake badges.

Hennessy blinked. "Got here awful quick, didn't you? Angela wasn't gonna call you guys until 8."

"Actually, we got word yesterday through some... unofficial channels."

"Ohhh, I bet it was Mrs. Kennedy. She said she was losing confidence in Angela's handling of the case."

"It's not Chief Sullivan's fault," Sam noted. "Crime investigation's not like CSI—it's pretty rare to solve a case inside of a week, especially a serial case like this."

"That's what I said!" Hennessy huffed and shook his head. "Civilians."

"Yeah," the brothers chorused.

"Name's Jerry Hennessy, by the way." Hennessy shook hands with both brothers. "It's gonna be a few hours before my report's done, but is there anything I can help you with in the meantime?"

"Have you uncovered any connections among the victims that would suggest a pattern to who's being targeted?" Sam asked as the picture finally printed correctly.

Hennessy shook his head. "No. I mean, in a town this size, everybody knows everybody, except... no one remembers ever seeing this kid before. The one from the video, that is—you've seen it already, right?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, we just watched it. Weird behavior, like the kid wants to get caught."

"I know, and that smile." Hennessy shuddered. "Anyway, like I said, the victims all knew each other, but the age range is pretty wide; only a couple of the vics were related, and I think that was chance. Education level varies from high school drop-out to MBA—that was the victim before Angela's mom, and he was pretty new in town, just moved in about ten years ago. He was black; another vic was Hispanic. None of 'em went to the same church. They weren't all in the same clubs. And it's not like we can gather anything from the locations, either, because it doesn't take more than a couple of hours to walk from one side of town to the other, even for a kid."

"And you can't think of anything happening around New Year's that would have set somebody off?"

"No. It was real quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. The Methodist church had a Watch Night service, and we had fireworks down at the city park, but that was it."

"Anything else, anything at all? Grave desecration, new construction..."

Hennessy gave Dean an odd look. "Grave desecration?"

"We have to consider all the angles," Sam replied. "You know a lot of neopagans and such move up this way for occult reasons."

"But there's never been anything like that around here, unless you believe the old stories about the fairies in the mine. It's not like we advertise that. There's a lot of Shoshone heritage around Salmon, but nobody's found even a campsite around here, never mind an old burying ground. And by now, even the newcomers know where the old-timers say the fairies revel and such, and even people who don't believe in that kind of thing will at least stay away from those places just to humor the neighbors. Plus, that kid was definitely not a fairy."

Dean frowned. "You say that like you've seen one."

Hennessy froze for a moment. "Uh, well, I mean... that smile."

Dean shrugged. "I'll give you that."

Hennessy relaxed. "Say, did you guys want to take a look at the latest crime scene? There's a crime scene team coming up from Idaho Falls, but it's probably gonna be another half hour or so before they get here."

"Yeah, sure," said Sam. "Agent Page should probably check with your boss first, and I need to print a couple more of these in case we need them to distribute."

"Good idea," Dean agreed. "Excuse me." He left the files with Sam and went down the hall to the break room, where he found Angela sitting at a table staring into the cup of coffee she was cradling between her hands. He knocked on the doorframe to get her attention.

She drew a deep breath and looked up. "Hi."

"Hey. How you holdin' up?"

"Oh, well... you know."

"Yeah. I do. I've been there."

"I, uh... I called Sheriff Mills. She said you two were the best."

He couldn't help smiling. "She's not bad herself. She's a good friend. Listen, Angela... we've got a pretty good idea of what we're dealin' with here. Especially since there's a minor involved, it might not ever go to trial. But I can promise you this: we're gonna stop these killings."

She drew another deep breath, more ragged this time, and sounded very young and scared when she asked, "It's not... the fairies, is it?"

He came over and sat down across from her. "You believe in the supernatural?"

She shrugged a little and looked down at her coffee again. "Me and Jerry, when we were little, we... we were playing out in the woods too close to dark one time, and... it was Midsummer's Eve, and we... we saw... something up near the mine. Lights and... and dancers." She huffed and looked up and away, toward the corner of the room. "It probably sounds crazy."

He shook his head. "No. I've seen 'em, too. Not here, but... just a couple weeks ago, actually, we had a case where a guy bound a fairy to kill for him."

She looked back at him, wide-eyed. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. But that's not what's goin' on here. We'll know more when we check out your mom's house, but right now we think the kid's possessed by a vengeful spirit."

"But... but why?! My mom's never had an enemy in her life! Everyone in town loves her!"

"She was probably picked at random, unless the spirit knew she was your mom. We think this thing wants attention."

She swore, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"Hey." He reached across and covered her hands with his own. "We're gonna stop this."

"How? Nobody recognizes the child. We've asked."

"Like I said, we've got resources. We'll figure something out." He really hoped they weren't going to have to call Castiel in, given how erratic the angel's behavior had been off and on since his return from Purgatory and how badly he'd handled his attempt to help with the Fred Jones case back in December. Maybe Garth or Charlie could hack a facial recognition database or something if the Winchesters couldn't find clues about the kid's whereabouts from anyone in town.

She sniffled and nodded. "Yeah. Okay." Then she pulled her left hand away to wipe the tears off her cheek. "Uh. You, um... need me to show you how to get to Mom's house?"

"Nah, Jerry's here. We've been talkin' to him. He can give us directions."

"Oh, good, good. Yeah, okay."

"You take some time off, okay? Get some rest. Let us take it from here. Losin' your mom like this... it's hell."

She sniffled, huffed, and tried to smile. "That sounds like the voice of experience."

"Yeah. I was four."

"Ho. Ouch." She turned her right hand to grasp his left and gave it a slightly shaky squeeze. "Dean, thank you. For coming and taking the case and... for understanding."

He smiled and squeezed back. "You're welcome."

He was just pulling his hand away when Sam came to the door, files under his arm. "Hey, you ready?"

"Yeah." Dean pushed back from the table as Sam and Angela shared a tight, tired smile, and the brothers left.

Hennessy was waiting for them in the parking lot and gave them directions to the crime scene. Dean paid attention, but somehow his eye was drawn to the mountain just east of town, where he caught sight of smoke rising from what looked like a bunch of buildings.

And Hennessy noticed his distraction. "What?"

Dean nodded that direction. "What's out there?"

"The... east end of town?"

"No, I mean up there." Dean pointed toward what he was seeing.

"That's... where the old mine is."

"There a logging camp up there or something?"

Hennessy was starting to look a little weirded out. "No. There's nothing there except the mine. Everybody stays away from it."

Sam turned to look as well, shielding his eyes against the sun that was starting to peek past the mountains below the edge of the clouds moving in from the west. "Where are you looking?"

"There." Dean pointed again. "Bunch of buildings, looks like somebody's living up there."

Sam looked, then turned back to Dean with a skeptical expression. "Dude, there's nothing there."

"You don't see the smoke?"

"No. All I see up there are trees."

"Um," said Hennessy. "If you guys don't mind, I'd better get back inside and get started on my report."

Dean sighed and tore his eyes away from the mountain. "Yeah, all right. Thanks."

Hennessy nodded and beat a hasty retreat, and the brothers got back in their car. But Dean sat for a moment before starting the engine, staring out at the buildings that were still plain as day to his eyes.

"You seriously see something out there?" Sam asked quietly.

"Yeah. It's like... hell, almost like a whole other town up there."

"Okay. I believe you. But... how come you see it and I can't?"

Dean shook his head. "I dunno. Could be fairy magic; Angela said she saw fairy dancers near the mine once on Midsummer's Eve. But something tells me our ghost is up there somewhere."

"Well, let's check out the crime scene first, ask around here in town, just to make sure."

Dean sighed again. "Okay." He started the engine and backed out.

Mrs. Sullivan's house was close enough to the police station that the Winchesters technically could have walked, except for the fact that it was starting to snow. There was still a police car parked in front of the house that turned out to belong to the third officer on duty that morning, who introduced himself as Tom Walsh. He was clearly hurting for Angela's loss, too, but he willingly showed the brothers around and let Dean view photos from the scene that had been taken before the body was sent to the mortuary. His hypothesis, which tallied well with the evidence as far as Dean could see, was that the kid had shoved a brass planter through the back window into the breakfast room, used the mat from outside the back door to get past the broken glass without injury, then attacked Mrs. Sullivan when she came down to investigate the noise. Dean wasn't sure which of the three deep gashes across Mrs. Sullivan's chest had been fatal, but their ghost evidently knew what it was doing; it wouldn't have been a long fight, despite the golf club with which Mrs. Sullivan had armed herself.

Sam made a sweep with the EMF meter while Walsh was showing Dean photos and got hits along the route the kid had probably taken into the house. But there was no ectoplasm to be found, inside or outside the house. Nor did they find any mention of unidentified goop in any of the previous reports, which they went through back in the car.

"This is so weird," Sam concluded as Dean started the car to drive to a coffee shop or diner before the CSI team could arrive. "In some ways, it's a classic case of ghost possession, but with no ectoplasm beyond what we saw on the video and the thing with the eyes..."

"Yeah, I know, plus the attention-seeking. But it avoided the broken glass, and apparently it keeps the kid in the same clothes. It's almost like... it doesn't want the host to know anything's going on, but it sure as hell wants us to know it's killing."

"Or maybe it doesn't want the host's parents to know what's happening. That would explain why the attacks are not just after dark but after midnight. It clearly doesn't care about whether the vics are awake or not—in fact, it had to know breaking in that way would wake Mrs. Sullivan."

"What about whether there are guns in the house?"

Sam flipped back through the files. "Three cases, and in all of them the vic was caught in his or her sleep. Third one, the wife woke up and went for the gun in the nightstand, and the kid slashed at her and then took off—that was the one where Angela was able to get a witness statement. The husband died on the way to the hospital."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "So Mom and Dad go to bed late, would notice if the kid was hurt... probably notice if the kid woke up covered in blood, too. But the family doesn't live in town, although they're close enough for the ghost to walk the kid into town. They probably don't get local news, either, or they'd know something was up with the crime spree." He parked in front of a café on Main Street and looked up at the mountain again, finding the buildings exactly where he'd seen them before. "Sam, are you sure..."

"I see nothing but trees up there, Dean. C'mon, let's get some breakfast."

Dean sighed. "All right. Might as well start asking about the kid while we're here."

But nobody at the café had ever seen the kid. Nor had anyone at any of the businesses on Main Street that they checked after breakfast. The elementary school had no record of any new students that year, and the secretaries didn't recognize the kid's face. The brothers checked everywhere, even at the incongruous Walmart that stood at the north end of town. Nada.

"Kind of surprised to see a Walmart in a town this size," Dean confessed to the manager there.

"Well, we do most of our business in the summers," the manager replied. "We get enough tourist traffic through town to turn a good profit that sees us through the winter, and the ranchers and townspeople appreciate not having to go all the way to Missoula or Idaho Falls to do their shopping. Although..." He paused.

The brothers were instantly alert. "Yes?" they chorused.

"Well, this might not have any bearing on the case, but... there was a big group that came through on Halloween, bought up a bunch of stuff—a year's supply, in some cases. Normal prepper type stuff, y'know, canned goods and so forth, plus some clothes and electronics, bunch of DVDs and CDs and books. All in very good costumes, too, like Hollywood quality."

"How do you mean?" Dean asked. "The clothes?"

"No, the makeup. Well, some of them must have been suits: a couple of bears, some rabbits and dinosaurs, a robot, a couple of... well, they looked sort of like giant white goats, except they had fangs and paws like bears, and the 'ram' had this... golden mane and beard. But there was one lady made up like an exotic fish, and another short lady dressed as a yellow lizard with an overbite, and two pretty realistic skeletons. The lizard lady I remember 'cause she bought a ton of anime, ramen, and Pocky; those aren't real popular around here except with the tourists. Oh, and Sudoku books. And the skeletons bought out practically all our pasta and sauces!"

Sam frowned. "You wouldn't happen to have any security video footage that far back, would you?"

"No, not video, but I snapped some pictures because the costumes were so good. I mean, the fish lady had fins over her ears that actually moved as if they were real!"

"Could we get hard copies of those? As you say, it might not be relevant, but if these people live nearby, they might know something more about the case."

"Yeah, sure. Just a minute." The manager ducked into his office.

"What do you think?" Sam asked quietly while he was gone.

"Sounds like a bunch of monsters tryin' to hide in plain sight," Dean replied at the same volume. "Can't pass for human, so they come into town the one day they know they won't have to pass for human."

"I agree. Sounds like they're new here. And a year's worth of supplies means they live fairly close and plan to stay here."

"Weird part is the food. I mean, ramen, Pocky, spaghetti?"

"Well, maybe they don't feed on humans, Dean. Not all supernatural creatures do."

Dean grimaced. "Guess we should check Dad's journal, see if he encountered any of these types. Especially the goat-things."

"Yeah. I wonder, though... tremor in August, monster shopping spree in October..."

"Ghost killing spree in January. Yeah, that's a hell of a coincidence."

"Here you are, Agent," the manager interrupted, returning with a stack of printouts that he handed to Sam. "I'm afraid the quality might not be very good; I took these on my phone."

"What about credit card receipts?" Dean asked as Sam flipped through the pictures.

The manager shook his head. "No luck there, I'm afraid. They all paid cash. Some of them looked like they were carrying gold—might have cashed some of it in at the pawn shop downtown."

"Well, these are distinctive costumes, even though they obscure the faces," Sam noted. "We can see if they went anywhere else while they were in town. Did you happen to notice where they went from here?"

The manager hadn't, but one of the checkers had helped the shoppers load their vehicles and said they hadn't gone back into town. When asked which way they had gone, the young man replied, "East, I think—but that's really weird, y'know, because there's nothing out that way except the road to the old mine."

"All right, well, we'll check it out. Thank you both for your time," Dean said, and after a round of handshakes and the purchase of a couple of bags of rock salt, the brothers were off again.

The pawn broker, it turned out, hadn't dealt with the shoppers, but the jewelry store owner had seen the male goat-creature and marveled at the dexterity of the paw 'gloves'; he'd cashed in several thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion—not minted with an identifiable image, but genuine gold—and presented a foreign ID card with the name Asgore Dreemur. Some of the nearby shop owners remembered the fish lady and the tall skeleton, who had been loud but friendly, and the waitress at the café had seen the short skeleton a few times since Halloween, always well wrapped up and wearing sunglasses and always buying a different flavor of pie that he claimed he would take home to his brother and girlfriend. He was so well disguised, in fact, that she recognized him only because he'd been wearing the same blue hoodie every time he'd come in. She'd never seen him arrive or leave, however, and he'd always paid cash. Almost nobody had seen the shoppers driving into town or leaving town, either. But the few who had all agreed that they'd gone east—and everyone, regardless of what they'd seen, agreed that the only thing east of town was the old mine.

"Welp, I guess we'd better go check out the mine," Dean said as they left their last witness.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean."

"Humor me, Sam. Okay? It's our only lead anyway."

"All right, fine. Maybe we can find out what's causing you to see things out there."

Dean didn't take the bait on that one, just pointed the Impala toward the old mine road. The pavement gave out about a mile from town, but the dirt portion of the road was mysteriously clear even though it was beginning to snow in earnest. For his part, Sam mostly busied himself reviewing the notes from their interviews and the files from the first six stabbings.

Then, just about the time Dean rounded a bend in the road and caught sight of a sign reading WELCOME TO EAST EBOTT, Sam looked up and gasped. "What the hell—where did the town come from?!"

Dean only snickered and kept driving.

.

* It really is a tight squeeze trying to fit "LARP and the Real Girl," "As Time Goes By," "Everybody Hates Hitler," and this case in before "Trial and Error," which takes place over Valentine's Day. To make it work, I've assumed that the Moondoor event—contrary to the one dated prop hells_half_acre found in the ep—quite sensibly takes place over the MLK weekend, that "As Time Goes By" picks up no more than a day or two later, and that, as hells_half_acre suggests, Dean's "two weeks" away from the bunker in "Everybody Hates Hitler" is not a full fortnight.