Chapter 6

When Sam said nothing, merely continuing to glare at him, Dean swallowed nervously and pointed at his bed. "It's umm… it's under there."

Shaking his head, his jaw clenching and unclenching, Sam stomped over and yanked his laptop out from the crawlspace under the queen bed. Then, still scowling at Dean, Sam went over and sat at the table. Dean assumed he was going to try hacking into the traffic camera recordings, as requested, and left him to it. Aside from a periodic loud sigh/growl, not remotely subtle as an expression of annoyance in Dean's opinion, Sammy ignored him after that. Exchanging a chagrined look with Baby, Dean told her he'd be right back and then headed for the bathroom. Once the call of nature had been dealt with – God knew Sammy had been forcing enough liquids down his throat the last few days – Dean went back into the main room to find that neither Baby nor Sam had moved. They looked like a couple ofwax dummies… and Sam was still grumping. Terrific.

Dean pulled out his cell phone and sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to dial Minah's number, thought better of it, and got back up to exchange his real cell for one of the burn phones they kept on hand. This time, when he sat down, Baby sat beside him. Not just beside him, but right up against him, and Dean gave her a startled look. She just gazed back at him calmly, her dark eyes filled with concern and something that looked suspiciously close to adoration. Dean squirmed and shifted a few inches further along the bed until their thighs were no longer touching. Baby didn't move, but she continued to watch him anxiously as he dialed the phone.

It picked up on the fourth ring. "Hello. Yadel residence." It was a man's voice, deep and with the slightest hint of a foreign accent.

"Uh, hi," Dean said, somewhat taken aback by having someone other than the person he was trying to reach answering the phone. "Is Minah there?"
"Just a moment, please," the man said. Then Dean heard him sit the phone down. He expected it to be immediately followed by the sound of someone yelling "Minah!" but apparently the Yadel family was more civilized than most of the people he was used to dealing with. After about twenty seconds of silence, he heard the receiver on the other end of the line moving and then a new person spoke.

"Hello," she said. Dean gulped. It was her. There was no mistaking the timber of that voice, not now that he'd finally placed it, not with the encounter with the crossroad demon so fresh in his memory. "Hello," she said again. "Who's calling?" The intonations in her voice were totally different than Baby's. For that matter they were totally different than the demon's had been, but it made no difference to Dean's gut which roiled and rolled with every syllable she spoke.

"Sorry," he said in a rush. "Wrong number." Then he snapped the phone shut, his breath heaving in his chest as he fought not to hyperventilate.

Baby put a hand on his knee. "Are you okay? Was it her?"

Dean looked up from the phone clutched in his hands and saw that Sam was also watching him, waiting for his answer. "Yeah, far as I can tell, it was her."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "No way to be certain over the phone, unless… did you try saying Christo?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in sudden curiosity.

"No, I didn't say Christo!" Dean snapped. "You want me to call her back and recite a damn exorcism? I'm sure she'd be thrilled to stay on the line while some strange guy chants at her in Latin."

Sam rolled his eyes. "We'll have to swing by and check on her. We have to be sure."

"Oh yeah. Swing by Mississippi. Sure," he drawled. "That's just right next door."

"We've driven farther for less, Dean."

"Whatever, man. Just find those recordings."

"I'm working on it."

"Well, work faster!" Sam huffed again, but his fingers on the keyboard did seem to start moving faster. Dean gave Baby's hand on his leg a reassuring pat and then got up from the bed and pulled on his socks, boots and coat. He dug around in his go-bag until he found his wallet and then headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked, looking up with a suspicious frown.

"The vending machine. I'm hungry."

Sam's frown deepened. "We'll go out for breakfast later."

"I'm hungry now."

"It won't kill you."

"Neither will going to the vending machine," Dean snapped.

"Actually, considering the nutritional content of Funyuns and Doritos, it just might," Sam bellyached. "Not to mention the fact that it's -50 degrees outside, and you just collapsed from blood loss."

"Which is why I need food!" Dean bit out.

"Wait," Sam insisted. Dean opened his mouth for heated reply, but Sam's expression flowed rapidly from disapproving to dismayed and worried, and Dean felt his resolve melting. Sam had perfected that pathetic look at the age of three, and Dean had never grown a skin thick enough to repel it. Rolling his eyes, Dean kicked off his shoes and flapped his hands at Sam in a "you win" gesture.

"Thanks," Sam said, smiling at him gratefully.

"Whatever." Dean flopped back down onto the bed. Baby immediately cuddled back up against him. He'd never had a dog growing up, but Dean was starting to wonder if that was what this was like, a big, soft warm body that snuggled up to you every time you sat still for five seconds and made contented rumbling noises. What did you call it when a dog did that? Dogs didn't purr, after all. Cats purred. Women purred. Hell, even cars purred. Just not dogs. Well, rumbling, purring or whatever, Dean was pretty certain Baby smelled better than a dog would.

Dean was bored out his mind and down to trying to find hidden pictures in the stains on the ceiling an hour later. He could have watched TV, but that would have involved getting up to turn the TV on, and there was a large, warm weight asleep on his arm. Dean vaguely remembered some story from school about a Chinese emperor who'd cut off his sleeve to avoid waking a sleeping kitten – not that he'd read the story or anything, the teacher had shown a video of it in class – but Dean wasn't about to cut off the sleeve of his dad's leather jacket. So that left him stuck. Bored and stuck.

"What's taking so long?" he demanded in a whisper when Sam passed by on his way to the bathroom. "You find the footage yet?"

Sam rolled his eyes, but Dean noticed that he whispered too when he answered. "Yeah, but it's not like traffic cam videos come in .avi or standard .mpg. I have to convert them and that's taking a while. Just be patient."

"You're in full-on geek heaven mode, aren't you?" Dean hissed.

"No, I'm in full-on freaked out mode because there's a girl claiming to be our car. Give me a break."

"My car," Dean corrected automatically.

"Whatever, man," Sam said as he walked away.

Finally, just when he'd discovered that one of the stains looked like a wendigo if he closed his left eye and squinted with his right, Sam found something. Dean knew this because his brother let out a single, heartfelt, "Crap!" Baby sat partially up, bleary-eyed, and Dean shifted out from under her to go look at what Sam had found.

"What? What'd you find?"

"Mostly a lot of nothing," Sam said, running a hand through his floppy hair in frustration. "I've checked the feed on every traffic cam in every direction for a ten block radius. The Impala hasn't passed through a single intersection that I can see." Sam had Quicktime open and was flipping between files faster than Dean could follow. "There's nothing anywhere. So, on a hunch I checked to see if the security cam on that independent ATM across the street broadcasts. It does, and it's actually in range of the hotel parking lot. The resolution is crappy, and it pixilates like crazy when I zoom in, but…" Sam brought up a new video file. Dean could see the sidewalk across the street, the street itself, the hotel parking lot and, in the bottom right corner of the screen, a blurry image of the Impala. Sam fastforwarded through time. Then, just after he hit play, Dean watched in amazement as the car simply vanished and in its place appeared a naked girl, standing utterly still. A moment later, her hair began to move in the wind and Dean felt the hairs on his arm standing on end.

"Holy crap."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "My sentiments, exactly."