*Note: Due to some editing and additions, I have reposted a small portion of the end of the previous scene. What follows after is entirely new.

"You heard them talking?"

"Um hm. John was driving, and Daniel was flipping through that book of his. He told your father that he thought vampires had an anticoagulant in their saliva. John said he was nuts and that vampires were extinct anyway, so it didn't really matter."

"They're not extinct," Sam corrected automatically.

"Oh, I know that now, but John was very sure back then."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "It doesn't make sense though. Vampires sometimes keep victims alive for days or even weeks, feeding on them slowly. An anticoagulant would make that impossible."

"That's what your father said, too. But Daniel said that he thinks they can control it. I don't really know how it works, just what they said."

If that was true, if the vampires could control the bleeding of their victims, that meant that Gordon had had every intention of sucking Dean dry before moving on to killing Sam. The fiery rage in his gut burned hotter the longer he thought about it, and he wanted nothing more than to go find Gordon and kill the bastard again. But he had to pull himself together. After all, Dean still needed caring for and Baby was still sitting there, watching him intently. He swallowed against the anger tightening his throat. "What else do you know about vampire bites? Anything that might help?"

Baby shrugged then leaned sideways and gazed past Sam at Dean's sleeping form. "He is going to be okay, isn't he?"

"He's going to fine. I told you."

"I know, Sam. It's just… I've been so worried about him ever since you died." Her eyes filled with tears. "It was so awful. You were so cold and still and Dean just cried and cried and cried."

Sam leaned away, taken aback by her tears and her words. How could she know all that? How could she know any of that unless she really was who she claimed to be? Or unless she was a demon who'd been working with Azazel. He just kept cycling back around to that. She knew too much to just be a crazy woman, and a run of the mill monster wouldn't be able to pull something like this off. So, no matter how you looked at it, she was either exactly what she claimed or she was a demon. The problem was deciding which to believe. Sam knew which he would prefer. A car transformed into woman was way the hell too much trouble to even contemplate. A demon he could kill. One bullet from the Colt and – holy crap! The Colt was in the trunk of the Impala. The Impala was missing. This woman was the only one who could possibly know where it was.

Swiftly running down a checklist of signs of demonic possession in his head, Sam leaned forward and said, "Christo," in a firm clear voice.

Baby sniffled, looking startled. "Why do you keep saying that? I'm not a demon. At least, I don't see how I could be."

Sam blinked at her for a moment, then, pursing his lips he got up and fetched a flask of holy water from his go-bag. "Here," he said, unscrewing the lid of the flask and shoving it at her. "Drink this."

"What is it?" she asked. She leaned forward and peered at the open flask, then she pulled back abruptly, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Ewww. What is that?"

"Whiskey, apparently." Sam silently cursed his sleeping brother as he returned to the go-bag and dug for another flask. Dean really needed to stop filling all of Sam's flasks with whiskey. It wasn't funny damn it, and… there it was. Sam pulled out his backup flask and returned to Baby. She looked highly dubious when he held this one out. "It's just water," he explained, and she reluctantly accepted it. "Drink it. Please."

Baby sighed and gazed at him mournfully for a moment, but then she said, "Okay, Sam," and put the flask to her lips.

He watched carefully as she tilted it back and swallowed a good mouthful. She choked briefly. For a moment, Sam thought, "Aha!" but there was no smoke, no shrieking and no sudden appearance of solid-black eyeballs. Baby just sat there and spluttered as the water, apparently, went down the wrong pipe. Before he quite knew what had happened, Sam was patting her on the back and admonishing her to breathe. She smiled gratefully up at him once she'd regained her equilibrium, looking utterly adorable with her hair in her eyes again. Did demons do adorable? Didn't matter. It didn't matter. He had to be thorough. Determined to carry through with every possible check he could, Sam sat down in front of her again and began to recite a string of exorcisms. Figuring time was of the essence, he started with the short ones.

"Crux sancta sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux," Sam intoned. "Vade retro Satana. Numquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas." Baby yawned when he was done, but nothing else happened. He tried again with a longer, more intense rite. "Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad orientem, ecce dabit voci suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio,infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica." And on it went. Baby yawned several more times, and once, to Sam's chagrin, she corrected his Latin when his tongue tripped over a string of syllables. Aside from that, and Dean's continued snoring in the background, absolutely nothing else happened. Still, Sam was not finished. Leaving Baby sitting in the chair and watching him with wide, curious eyes, Sam pulled one of the cheap bedspreads off of Dean and spread it on the floor in front of the bathroom door. Then, grabbing one of the small cans of spray paint that they routinely carried in their go-bags for emergency sigils and the like, Sam began to inscribe a devil's trap on the blanket.

"Is that a Key of Solomon?" Baby asked, when he was nearly finished.

"Variation on a theme," Sam replied as he closed up the last line. "Come here." Baby got up and walked over to his side, only stumbling a bit as one of the legs of sweat pants partially unrolled. "Stand there, please," Sam said, pointing to the center of the devil's trap." He expected her to balk, was ready for it in fact, but she stepped calmly onto the blanket and then stood looking at him expectantly. Sam was on the verge asking her to step out of the trap, when a groan from behind them sent her running across the room. Well, he could check devil's traps off the list. Clearly, they weren't a problem for her.

"What are you two doing?" Dean croaked, levering himself up on one arm.

"Dean!" Baby exclaimed as she launched herself at the oldest Winchester. She landed on the bed with enough force to send the mattress bouncing and knocked him flat on his back.

Dean let out an, "oof," as he tumbled back into the pillows. Baby leaned over him on her hands and knees, peering anxiously into his face.

"Are you okay, Dean? Do you feel better now?"

"I'm good," he assured her. Then, blinking his vision back into focus, he took in the change in her appearance. "Nice clothes, sweetheart. I'm a Led Zep fan myself. Got a shirt just like that, but I think we're going to have to find you something that fits a little better."

She laughed, her eyes lighting up. "It's your shirt, Dean!"

Her eyes really were sparkling, he thought. Then, abruptly, he realized why her eyes were so bright, and it wasn't just the reflection of the morning light seeping past the edges of the motel room curtains. "Sam!" Dean barked, sitting up so fast that Baby had to scurry back onto her bottom to avoid being bowled over. The Sasquatch materialized at his side so rapidly that Dean would have suspected teleportation if all of Sam's freaky psychic powers hadn't died along with Azazel in that cemetery in Wyoming.

"What is it, Dean? What's wrong? Are you hurting?"

Dean jerked back slightly in the face of his brother's minor overreaction to his summons. "You need to chill out, Sammy," he said resignedly, then, growling, he added, "and you need to tell me what the heck you did while I was out to make Baby cry!"
"What?" his brother asked, seemingly taken aback by Dean's anger.

"She's been crying, Sam. It's not exactly subtle. What'd you do?"

"Me! I didn't – I wouldn't – What do you think I…" Sam stammered, transforming instantly from paranoid and overprotective younger brother to geeky and incoherent younger brother. Dean grinned. He couldn't help it. This was the Sammy he loved the most, the one he'd willingly sold his own soul for. This was the kid he'd die to protect. The grin disappeared off Dean's face, however, when Sam announced, "You're the one who made her cry anyway!"

"I did not!" he protested. They glared at each other

"I was crying?" Baby asked, looking back and forth between them. She reached up a tentative hand and tapped at the rapidly drying tear tracks on her face. "Oh. I was."

"Are you okay?" Dean asked as she stared in bemusement at her now damp fingertips. He reached out and brushed the remainder of the tears from her face. Her eyes were still sparkling, but no longer with tears.

Baby nodded. "Yes. I'm fine. You just scared me."

"Me?!" Dean squeaked. He'd scared her? He hadn't meant to –

"When you fainted," she explained.

"I did not faint," Dean exclaimed, outraged. "I never faint. I might get knocked out or black out or pass out but I do not faint!" Baby's subsequent giggle was not a reassuring response. Nor was Sam's blatant smirk. "Stick it, Sam!" The smirk turned into an open laugh, and Dean glowered at both of them impartially. "Soooo," Dean drawled, have we confirmed who our little lady is yet?"

"I'm Baby," she insisted.

"She's not a demon," his brother replied at the same time.

"But is she the Impala? That's the only thing I want to know at this point, Sam." Dean rubbed irritably at the bandage on his neck as he got off the bed and began to pace. "Is my Impala a chick? Well? Is it? Is my home now a chick?!"

"I, uh, I don't know."

"But she's not a demon?"

Sam and Baby shook their heads in unison.

"Then what the heck is she?"

"I told you," Baby insisted, slapping the flat of her hands down on the tops of her thighs as she knelt on the bed. She sounded angry. No, angry was too strong a word for an emotion that adorable looking. Piqued. She sounded and looked piqued. Or maybe miffed. And if she was anything at all like every other woman Dean had ever known, he wasn't about to point out the miffed thing. Women reacted badly to the word miffed. He couldn't imagine why. Narrowing his eyes, Dean considered and disregarded means of proving who and what she was. It wasn't like she had a VIN number he could check. Though come to think of it…

"What's the torque on my girl's 327 4-barrel?" he demanded.

Baby's eyes widened for just an instant, then, without hesitating, she answered. "355 at 3200 rpm."

"Horsepower?"

"275 at 4800 rpm." She grinned, clearly proud of herself.

Sam shot Dean a startled look, but Dean just shook his head and waved his hands in a hold on gesture. "Anyone could know that," he insisted, meeting Sam's incredulous gaze. "They could. Anyone could know that," he repeated as he turned back to face Baby. He tried a different tack. "What was the mileage on the odometer when we pulled into the motel parking lot?"

Baby laughed. "Too easy. It was 16,427 miles."

"Is that right," Sam whispered sotto voce, coming over and standing beside Dean.

"I have no idea," Dean whispered back, temporarily stumped.

"It seems kind of low, don't you think?"

"Yeah, well, the odometer just rolled over a couple months back."

"Oh," Sam said.

"Give me a harder one," Baby demanded, climbing off the bed and standing in front of them. "Ask me anything."

Dean thought hard for a moment, thought about the last rebuild he'd done on the Impala's engine, and said, "What's the firing sequence?"

Baby bounced on the balls of her feet, nearly tripping in place as the cuffs on both legs of the sweat pants drooped down to her toes. "1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2!"

Holy crap. Dean looked at Sam out of the corner of his eyes and saw that, typically, the information meant absolutely nothing to his little brother.

"Is that right?" Sam demanded. "Is it?"

Turning his back on Baby, Dean placed a hand on his kid brother's shoulder and squeezed. Then, pursing his lips and widening his eyes, he said, "Congratulations, Sammy. It's a car."