"How does someone… get... jiggy…with a spirit?" Lory popped curiously in between girlish laps at her vanilla ice cream cone.
"Your theory," Dean shrugged as he caught a couple stray drips before they soiled his hand.
The girl shook her head persistently.
"Only it's not a theory. David Fisher found a way. You saw the way Mr. 'I did not have sexual relations with that ghost-woman' blew up back there."
"Hold on…" Sam said almost to himself, so neither Lory nor Dean paid much attention to him when he headed for the trunk.
"He wasn't the only one doing the blowing…" Dean provoked in an almost sing-song voice, "Didn't know you had that in you."
"Well, I'm just full of surprises…" she challenged, maintaining a pleasant smirk
"Oh, I just bet you are," Dean granted with a sardonic wink.
Sam rounded the front of the car, holding a thick, worn, leather-bound book.
"I think I got something!" he smiled triumphantly, beginning to flip through the book.
"Aw, come on, Sam. I taught you to wrap it before you tap it," Dean said through a smart-aleck grin.
With a mock-smile, Sam continued to flip fervently but not recklessly though the old book.
"I was reading this at Bobby's and I came across some really interesting stuff, so I asked him to let me borrow it..."
Genuinely interested, both Dean and Lory leaned in toward him for a better look, bumping upper arms.
"Sorry," Dean grunted, shooting her a brief look in the eyes.
She nodded gently before they both directed their complete attention to Sam.
"Here," he said as he finally picked a page and tapped a finger confidently on it, "During sleep, the soul is sort of suspended from the body. No, not really suspended, but more… open? Vulnerable to certain supernatural things. Prophetic visions-"
"Point?" Dean prompted.
"Spirits can even interact with each other during sleep," Sam implied gravely.
"So I could catch some Z's and get a little nookie at the same time?" Dean questioned skeptically, "Where was this all my life?"
He continued nursing his ice cream until by chance his eyes met Lory's which seemed to have been fixed intently on him for a number of seconds. He decided he would stop doing that until she looked away.
"Actually, you can't, Dean," Sam matched, "unless you have some occultist affiliations you want to share with me."
Dean snorted, "A member of the occult? MENSA, probably. The Hair Club For Men, hopefully. But the occult?"
"We've seen stranger things, Dean…"
"Well, there was nothing even slightly… culty about their place. I know we've fingered some pretty squeaky-clean people, but there was nothing. No clues. No hints."
"We were just in the living room, and for how many seconds?"
"If he does anything like that, I'm pretty sure he wife doesn't know…" Lory trailed.
"Okay, well let's say- and I can't believe I'm saying this- let's say he has been sleep-fucking this ghost after all," he began, pausing only for a lick of his ice cream, "He won't own up it. He won't even let us back if we mention it, so why is this even a topic of discussion?"
"Because there's an innocent woman and an innocent baby back there," Lory piped, her eyes filled with passion, "and she will hurt them if she continues to be ignored."
"All I'm saying is we find the bones, salt them, burn them, and it's over."
"But we can't do that without knowing who she is," reasoned Sam.
"And we'll never know exactly who she is if we don't communicate with her," Lory added, "and there's no way she'll tell us what we need to know until she's avenged. She doesn't want her soul to move on until Fisher- or at least, his family- is punished."
"Like I said," sighed Dean, "we're chasing our tails."
"Like puppies" said a low female voice from behind their backs.
Simultaneously, all three turned around.
"Oh," sneered Dean to Sam, "you just really wanted some ice cream, huh?"
"You wouldn't have stopped if I told you."
"You know me so well."
"I love you, too, Dean," Ruby waved snidely.
Giving Lory the once-over, she smiled politely, however forced.
"Friend of yours?" Lory asked Sam, keeping her suspicious eyes glued to the strange woman and her exuding darkness.
"Something like that," Ruby replied, unhooking one of her thumbs from the pocket of her jeans, extending it, "Ruby."
"Lory, nice to meet you."
Her suspicion eased as they briefly shook hands.
"Sam filled me in. And now that we're all friends, I'm here to inform you that we are indeed smack dab in the creamy center of a seal. The legion of spirits."
"Ooh. That sounds pleasant…" Dean sighed heavily.
"Oh, it gets better. You know all those souls kind of still floating around because they have unfinished business? Well, the ones that hell has called dibs on have been Shanghaied into doing Lilith's bidding- AKA fucking shit up."
"That's nice. How do we stop it?" pressed Sam.
"Funny thing about that is, I'm pretty sure you don't."
"Wait, what do you mean 'we don't'?" Dean interjected, "There's got to be some way of taking this down."
"Well, unless you want to salt and burn the corpse of every pissed-off spirit on Earth-"
"Earth?" Sam asked incredulously, "You are exaggerating, right?"
"Do I look like I'm exaggerating?"
"Well, then, what do we do?" Lory asked, her eyes searching between their faces for an answer.
"We hope I'm wrong," Ruby said with a wry smirk.
Sam rolled his eyes as he reached into his pocket, unsheathing his inopportunely ringing phone.
"Yeah?" he said, holding it up to his ear.
Ruby, Lory and Dean could faintly hear the frantic female voice on the other end, and… the sound of a baby crying.
.