Chapter 8, Connections

"Winchester residence." Grace answered the phone, momentarily taking Sam's breath away. God, he missed her.

"Grace, it's me," he said.

"Thank God. I was starting to worry." There was warm relief in her voice. Sam smiled as he imagined her keeping the phone to her ear with one shoulder while folding laundry with the other.

"Sorry, we're still sorting things out here," Sam said tiredly. He glanced at Erin through the doorway to the patched up remains of Cassie's bedroom. She had come to during the cab ride but hadn't been coherent enough offer any kind of explanation. Though she was asleep now, her face was pale and she slept kind of fitfully. Dean and Sam had decided to take cover for the darkest and most dangerous hours of the night while the girl recuperated. Sam, aware that Dean was worried about Cassie and Ellie, was taking the first shift while Dean went to check up on his girls. He had taken the opportunity to put a call through to Grace.

So they talked for a bit about the kids and the house, then Sam asked Grace to do them a favor and do some checking about the amulet for him. The brothers were still wracking their brains to figure out why the necromancer was after Cassie. Sam couldn't think of any connection between the stranger witch they had taken up with and his relatively normal niece and her mother. Not knowing made Sam feel helpless and he wanted to make progress on this thing before anyone else got hurt.

"Okay, buddy, but you owe me," Grace agreed with a mock growl.

"I promise, I'll cook for a week," Sam responded with a laugh.

"Haven't I suffered enough!" Grace snorted.

"Too cruel, lady." Grace missed his puppy dog eyes as his tone went all forlorn on her.

"Okay, well, you can take me out to dinner and buy me flowers. I think we can call that even."

"How magnanimous."

"You with your big words, are you trying to turn me on?"

"What, the five-year-old vocabulary not intellectually stimulating enough for you?"

Grace promised to kiss the boys for him and Sam promised to be careful and find some time to rest and they flirted a little more before Sam wrenched himself back to the unconscious witch and the supernatural he was hunting

As he set his mind to the problem, let it brood over the seemingly unconnected pieces to this puzzle, Sam put himself to work fixing up the place. Dean had already patched up the doorjam and the bedroom had been put in relatively good order. The rest of the apartment definitely needed a once over, though. Hell, maybe it would uncover something, Sam thought as he picked up a broom. He and his brother weren't amatures, but there might be something they had missed.

When Sam was half finished with the main living quarters and had cleaned up all the broken glass in the kitchen, he got a call from his brother.

"Hey Dean, can't say I was expecting to hear back from you again tonight."

"Yeah, well, we've had a couple of unexpected visitors." Dean's voice was taunt and Sam knew that something big had gone down without him.

"What the hell?"

"Yeah, I know. We had two ugly ass zombies show up. Dude, this is getting pretty personal."

"Are you okay?"

"Hell, yeah, we're fine. But we're headed over, so you better shut down that raging party I know you were planning."

"Grow up."

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