"Yes," Dean said, standing up and swiping back Melanie's driver's license from Sam's hand. "I read the book. We had to read part of it in high school and I ended up reading the whole thing." Sam continued to stare at his brother in disbelieve. "I wanted to know how it would end okay?" Sam held up his hands in mock surrender.
Okay so that was only partly true. Dean had skipped his history class one too many times that year. It was the final class of the day and Dean had often found himself checking out early to help his dad either with hunting or taking care of Sam. The teacher actually wasn't bad. She knew that Dean had responsibilities toward his brother so rather than make him stay even later for detention she told him he had to read the entire book and write a report on it. She gave him specific questions he had to answer; ones that she knew and he found out weren't in the Cliff's Notes or the movie version. Dean really loved to read; it was just a pastime he could never indulge in unless it had to do with hunting. Once he got started he found himself getting into the story of the young, spoiled, southern woman during the Civil War. He remembered writing in his report how he thought that it was Melanie who was the true heroine of the book. She didn't have the outspokenness of Scarlett but she was tough and strong when she had to be, far more really than Scarlett ever was. He wondered just how true to the character she was named for the current Melanie was.
Dean turned and watched as Sam literally had to coax Melanie to his side to show her the documents they'd gotten from her office. He listened as Sam started to explain to Melanie about the houses they'd been investigating. Normally something supernatural attached itself to a specific something, be it a place, a family or a person. This thing, whatever it was, attached itself to houses that didn't seem to have anything to do with one another. As far as they could figure out the families weren't related, the houses had never been owned by the same people and nothing bad had ever happened in any of them. There was nothing they could find that would fit a pattern and it only got worse when they went to the County Recorder's office. Most of the records were old and still in hand written registrar rolls. Neither brother knew much about how real estate worked and trying to find a pattern among the documents had become too time consuming and tedious. That morning Dean had suggested trying to sweet talk one of the clerks into helping them. He never thought they'd end up kidnapping one. Their actions always boiled down to the lesser of two evils, sometimes literally. Dean was used to black and white, not the constant and varied shades of gray that littered each new job. He was tired of the innocent people that got caught in the middle. It seemed like for every one they might save, several more got caught in the cross-fire.
Dean put Melanie's license back into her wallet. Six hours ago Melanie Scarlett Lynch was a new aunt who was excited to see her new niece. She was a county registrar who he'd tried in vain to flirt with if only because it was habit. Dean looked over at her as she sat with the documents in her lap. Six hours ago she had a normal life that true to form went right down the fucking toilet the second the Winchester brothers walked through the door of her office. Dean had pointed a gun at her and threatened to shoot her. Without hesitation to protect his brother, himself and the job Dean would have shot and maybe killed this woman who'd done nothing. The worst part wasn't that he might have done it, the worst part was that he had gotten better and better at seeing the justification in every innocent life that had been lost. The "Greater Good" and all that bullshit.
Dean watched his brother with the woman. Sammy was the pied piper of the two of them. Sam had a way of making his voice and his eyes do this thing that made everyone around him trust him implicitly. Dean was a betting man and would have bet his precious car that the second Sam opened the car door Melanie would have bolted. She didn't and Dean knew it had to do with the way his baby brother handled her. There was no doubt she was still scared out of her mind but there she sat with Sam, listening to whatever he was quietly saying to her. There were times Dean envied that ease with which people took to his brother and hated the suspicion and even fear that people often showed toward him. Not for the first time Dean wondered how the two of them could be so very different.
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Sam had been trying to think of a way to explain what they were looking for without making it sound like they were stark raving nuts. Coming up with creative explanations for the unexplainable wasn't new to him. It had become slightly unnerving to discover as of late that he could be just as good as his brother with bullshit. It was probably what drew him to want to be a lawyer. Sam knew that people had a natural defense mechanism to explain away anything that was slightly out of the ordinary. On some jobs he and Dean could chip away at that defense until the person figured it out for themselves and Sam and Dean could help them. On others there was no time for 'The Truth Is Out There' speech as Dean would so poetically put it. Those were the worst, asking someone to instantly have blind faith in that which could not be explained and in two total strangers to destroy it. Sam had come to learn from those jobs that most people were stronger than they gave themselves credit for. There was no doubt in his mind that Melanie was one of those people.
Sam watched as his brother paged through their father's journal. Sam looked back at Melanie. If he was expecting her to have faith in them he needed to have it in her. Sam took in a breath.
"Something evil is killing people in those houses. Five people are dead. My brother and I are trying to stop it but we can't figure out what it is until we figure out the connection," he said as quickly as he could before he could stop himself and allow his usual reason to take over.
"Something evil," Melanie repeated.
"It could be a demon," Sam answered her. Melanie did a double take.
"Well that's really smooth there, Sammy," Dean's sarcasm heavier than normal.
"Shut up, Dean," Sam countered not looking over at his brother. His eyes remained on Melanie. "Melanie, I know how this sounds but I am telling you the truth. Someone else is going to die, tomorrow, if we don't figure this out."
"Why tomorrow?" Melanie asked.
"Because that's one part of the pattern we've figured out. The killings all happen within 72 hours of each other. The last one was yesterday," Sam answered.
"And so if I help you then what?" she asked.
"We do what we need to and we take you back to town," Dean answered before Sam could. Sam exchanged a look with his brother. The words the look didn't speak out loud were: "I think we've got her on our side…maybe." Melanie put the papers down on the table and rubbed her hands over her face before standing up.
"So, let me just see if I understand this correctly," she began pacing in a small path in front of the table. "You come to my office claiming to be federal agents, even though by the way land records are public information. You then kidnap me after my boss calls to tell me that you're wanted by the FBI, threaten to kill me, bring me to the middle of nowhere, then tell me that you're looking for a demon who's killed five people and who is apparently going to kill someone tomorrow unless you can figure out what house he's going to be at next. And if I help you you'll just kill the thing and then take me home? Is that about accurate?" she finished, her tirade having winded her.
Sam looked back over at his brother. Both of them shrugged. "In a nutshell, yeah," Dean replied.
"I just…I don't know how to respond to this," Melanie said. "Do you know how unbelievably insane that sounds? Four hours ago you pointed a gun at me and now…" Sam watched her turn her back to them and put her hands on the table, leaning on it heavily for support. After a moment she turned back around. "Okay let's say for a second that I believe half of what you're telling me. What if I can't help you? What if we don't figure it out?" she asked.
"We have to at least try," Sam replied as he walked up to her. "But nothing will change, if we don't figure this out we'll still bring you home tomorrow."
"What if I just said no?" she asked quietly. "Do I get to go home then?"
"Yeah," Dean replied. "But someone will have died and that'll be on you. So why not at least give us the benefit of the doubt and try to help us?"
"Melanie, please," Sam said, now only inches from her. He wanted to touch her, to somehow offer a connection. In any other situation that might have worked, it might have grounded the person enough to give them the benefit of the oh so enormous doubt. But with Melanie it might scare her off even more. So he'd have to use the next best thing, his voice. "I know how this sounds. Taking you like that wasn't supposed to happen. But someone is going to die in less than 24 hours if we don't figure this out. That's the only reason why we took you like that. We don't know how to read these records like you do. We don't know how real estate works but you do. You can help us find something that we'd miss. If there had been any other way you wouldn't be here."
Melanie looked from Sam to Dean and back again. Sam could almost hear the splitting of a crack in her suspicions about what they were saying. She moved toward one of the beds and sat down on the edge of it. She took in a deep breath and looked back up at Sam. Her dark eyes held so many conflicting emotions it almost hurt Sam to look at them. But he held her gaze. "Believe us, trust us, help us, I know we don't deserve that from you but please," he begged her silently with his own.
"Okay, okay," she said looking down at the floor, the palms of her hands rubbing at her eyes. She seemed to be addressing herself. After a few seconds she put her hands down but still didn't look back up at either Sam or Dean. "What do you want to know?"