Author's Note: So Demon!Dean was way more depressing and short-lived than I expected. I was emotionally compromised for a while. Also, Camille might be a Mary Sue. A lot of the hiatus on this was figuring out how to minimize that. (I know where I'm going, and I'm just worrying about it. Probably depends on your definition of a Mary Sue. Wait for more information before deciding.)

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Chapter 3

Sam had a moment alone with Camille, and he decided not to waste it. He went back into the kitchen to talk with her, trying to think of the most important question to ask. She was rooting through her cabinet. He decided to just cut to the heart of the matter. "What are you?"

"I'm a teacher." With her back still to him, she paused and then nodded. "You know that." She continued rifling through her herbs shelf. "I could've sworn I had something with garlic in here," she murmured.

She had neatly deflected the question. Sam tried a different approach. "That vampire said you were perfect. Do you know what she meant by that?"

Camille turned to face him and shrugged. She bit her lip, and reluctantly answered. "I think she meant a perfect vampire. In hindsight, that's probably what Robbie was saying too. But I don't know why they thought that. Or is—is that a thing?"

Sam supposed vampires probably had some kind of criteria for choosing who to turn, but this was way outside the norm. It did put a different spin on the mystery of Camille, but he quickly rejected any vampire specific theories. They wouldn't explain why Dean was ignoring her sketchiness. He sighed. "Possibly." By this time, Dean was back with the tarp. "I should help him," Sam said.

Camille peeked her head around the wall that separated that part of the living room from the kitchen. "Shouldn't you call for back-up or like a CSI crew?"

Dean grinned sheepishly. "We're not actually FBI."

Sam finished for him. "We're hunters." He watched to see if Camille reacted to the word. But if she was a thing, she'd probably already figured all of this out. If she was a thing, he thought, she was the best actress he had ever seen.

"Hunters? Like you hunt vampires?"

"Among other things." This time, maybe for the first time, Sam hadn't said it to test her reaction. He was getting pretty tired of second guessing her every move. "I think you know more than you're letting on."

Dean protested. "Sam, leave her alone."

Sam ignored him. "Penn State has no record of any Camille Monroe attending that school in the last 40 years." That brought up the question of whether she was the Camille Monroe who graduated in 1972, but Sam did not even know where to fit that into a theory.

"Well, I did," she said, at a loss. "I definitely graduated from there. Class of '05."

"Then prove it. What classes did you take? Who were your professors? Who would remember you?"

Camille got defensive. "I don't have to prove anything to you! You're not even FBI. And what does my college have to do with anything?"

Dean put himself between them, facing Sam. "Why don't you take the first body out?"

"I'm not leaving you alone with her," Sam said through gritted teeth.

"I'm a big boy, Sammy. I can take care of myself."

"We don't even know what she is. She killed a vampire with a knife to the chest." Behind Dean, Sam saw Camille make an "o" with her mouth. Something had occurred to her.

Dean patted his hip. "And I have the first blade. I'll be fine." He gently pushed Sam away.

Once Sam was out the door with a vampire slung over his shoulder, Camille spoke up again. "He's right; I do know something."

Dean turned to her. He realized Sam had a point at least about one thing; this was the first time he was actually alone with Camille. He had no real desire to spend this time talking about a few dead vampires, but she sounded so earnest. "What?"

Camille bit her lip. Dean had noticed that she did that when she was nervous. It was pretty adorable. "This is about the knife, right? I . . . kind of did something to it."

Dean was sure, as he had always been sure, that Camille did not do anything wrong. He thought about what Sam had said, it was the knife or it was the teacher, and the knife didn't work. That made sense, but he still just couldn't believe this woman was anything more than she appeared. "What did you do?" he asked without any trace of suspicion. Because really, what could she have possibly done?

She took a deep breath. "You said there were witches, right? I think I might've put a spell in it."

"You think?" he repeated.

"Right before I stabbed him, I said . . . something. I don't really know what it was; I don't think I could repeat it. But the knife, it glowed."

"You can't just accidentally become a witch." Especially not one powerful enough to put that kind of whammy on a knife. "It's not something you manifest like Harry Potter. It has to be developed."

Camille seemed disappointed. "Then why did the knife glow?"

"I don't know." That should bother Dean, but it just didn't seem that important. Whatever it was, it wasn't Camille's fault. And all she did was kill a vampire, so no big loss anyway. "We can run that by Sam when he gets back."

She wasn't thrilled with that idea. "Sam hates me. Unless," She looked a little hopeful. "Unless that's just a tactic. Like a good cop/bad cop thing."

Dean smiled. "We're not cops."

Her face fell. "So Sam really just hates me."

"Sam . . ." Dean wasn't really sure what Sam's problem was. "Sammy's just the suspicious type."

"Or she's just suspicious." And there was Sammy now.

Dean sighed. "There was something with the knife. Tell him what you told me."

Camille repeated her story, which clearly just made Sam all the more suspicious. "You said something? What did you say?"

"I don't know. It just came to me."

Sam turned to Dean. "An incantation 'just came to her?' That's not normal. You have to see that."

Dean could recognize that it was out of the ordinary, but that did not make Camille some kind of monster. "Or it means it was the knife after all, and you just weren't using it right. Maybe she didn't do something to the knife; maybe the knife did something to her."

Camille snapped her fingers like that had triggered something. "I did feel, like, a surge of something when I grabbed it."

Sam laughed. "Now you're just feeding her explanations."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Why are you being like this? Camille's the victim here. What has she ever done to make you—"

Sam did not need him to finish the question. "She drank vampire blood and didn't turn."

"Okay," Camille interjected. "So, I'm definitely not going to become a vampire?"

It sounded like this was something that had really concerned her. Sam shook his head. "If you were, you'd already be going for his neck."

"Maybe the holy water worked." Even Dean seemed skeptical, and it was his own theory. "Who knows? Has anyone ever tried it before?"

Sam was sure that somewhere someone had tried holy water, and if it had worked, they would know about it. But he couldn't point to a specific instance. And he couldn't say it had ever been tried immediately after the ingestion of blood, before the transformation even had time to begin. He was still convinced that this meant Camille was not human, but he knew he wasn't going to be able to convince Dean. Yet.

"Look," Dean said. "I still think our best bet is with the knife. So what now? It's research time, right?"

Right, the mystery incantation. "We don't even know what she said. How are we going to research that? Besides, I think it's dispose of the bodies time."

Dean nodded and then he pretended like something had just occurred to him. "Oh, but someone should stay with Camille."

It wasn't the first time Dean suggested he stay behind with the damsel in distress, far from it, but it was the first time Sam was concerned about it. "Why?"

"Well, first of all, there's apparently a group of vampires out there that's obsessed with her. Plus, you don't trust her. So, I'll stay behind, clean up the bloodstains, and keep an eye on her."

Sam looked at Camille, who was still standing right there, listening to every word. Not even a flicker of triumph or satisfaction. Dean had a point about needing to have someone keep an eye on her; the problem was Sam couldn't trust Dean's eyes right now.

He was going to suggest they bring her back to the motel with them, but Dean leaned in and made another fairly good point in a lowered voice. "I have a better rapport with her. She only told me about the spell or whatever after you left. I might be able to get her to open up more."

Sam half laughed, half scoffed. He had no doubt Dean would try to get her to "open up" with him. He thought about the first blade tucked in Dean's waistband. Sam really did need to do some research, and maybe that would be more fruitful without Dean there naively believing the best about Camille. It would definitely go better if Dean could get even a word of that incantation out of her. He lowered his voice too. "She's not perfect. She's either just a human or she's something worse. Promise you'll remember that. And find out more about the knife." He patted Dean's shoulder. "I'll be back soon."