The short, balding man had stolen the list of spell ingredients from Sam's pocket. Cas was sure of it. He had been behaving oddly the whole time Cas had been sitting in the park with Dean. Cas hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but he and Dean had been sitting there for several hours, and the small man had remained a short distance away, reading a newspaper and occasionally making a phone call until Sam had arrived. Sam was somewhat sceptical; he could not believe someone could pick his pocket without him noticing. Cas nearly argued with him, annoyed at his input being discarded, but at the same time knowing he did not deserve the forgiveness the Winchesters had extended to him. He'd enjoyed himself that afternoon, though. He liked sitting with Dean, even if it wasn't the same as it used to be, and he thought things were improving between them after their talk. So he didn't argue with Sam, instead simply suggesting that they add a concealment factor to the hex bags.

They spent the rest of the afternoon improving the hex bags (for once, Dean made no comment about their origin), and going over the ritual for the spell and the plan for entering the house of the witch and confronting him. They were unfortunately somewhat lacking in weaponry, the weapons bag being abandoned in the hotel, and the Impala being parked safely out of Manhattan traffic in a parking building on the outskirts of the city. They had handguns and spare bullets, several knives of various metals, and hipflasks of holy water. No shotguns or salt, though, which meant they were in trouble if the witch called the spirit down upon them before they could disable him.

In the end, Cas was dispatched to buy salt and food while Dean and Sam found a motel to return to after disabling the witch. Dean made him wear the colourful hat and the sunglasses as a 'disguise'. Cas privately thought he would be more noticeable wearing them, but Dean was smiling so he wore them anyway.

There was a poster with Jimmy Novak's face on it in the window of a car-hire facility he walked past. He was beginning to think staying in Manhattan was a very bad idea.

He found his heart was beating unusually fast as he waited in line to purchase the salt. He paid quickly and tried not to look like a psychopath. The young woman at the checkout barely looked at him, although the other people in the line were glancing curiously at the bulk bag of salt and studiously avoiding his eyes. He felt the strange emptiness inside again.

He realised then that nobody recognised him from the posters. They simply found him strange and wanted nothing more to be out of his presence.

When he returned to the Winchesters with salt and cheeseburgers, everything was prepared. All they had to do was wait until the witch would be sleeping.

They waited until nearly midnight before beginning to walk to the witch's house. It was some distance away from the motel, but they could not use public transportation because bus and subway stations were the first places wanted posters were put up. It was strange that now driving seemed so much faster than walking; when he had still had his wings, he had been used to travelling at speeds that made the two modes of travel seem almost the same. Now, as the urge to do something useful filled him, he realised that walking was very slow indeed.

They broke into the house undetected, due in large part to the hex bags they all carried. It was darker inside the house, where the glow of the streetlamps did not penetrate, and to Cas's ears it sounded like they were making enough noise to wake the dead as they stumbled about looking for the altar.

There seemed to be no-one home, and the only sign that the witch lived there was the hat on the post of the stairs. There was an apartment at the top of the stairs, shut off from the rest of the house by a locked door. Sam picked the lock. It seemed the witch lived in someone else's house, and it didn't seem fair to kick in all the doors in the house of an innocent bystander.

There was a growl in the dark as they edged the door open. Cas felt Dean go tense beside him and then pretend he hadn't. They held their guns ready. Something rushed at them. Sam flicked the light switch.

There was no-one in the room. Sam gently removed the dog from Dean's leg and deposited it outside the door.

"Frickin' pug," Dean growled, "Look what it did to my boot."

XXXX

Neal let out a sigh of relief. They hadn't hurt Bugsy. The dog had escaped from the wardrobe where Neal was concealed, apparently because of some misguided determination to protect its home. Neal hadn't been able to call him back without revealing his hiding place. He sent another urgent text to Peter. How the hell had they managed to bypass the feds outside? Neal could have done it, but Neal was clever and charming and didn't walk into pianos in the dark.

The Winchesters were talking. Neal had decided to lump Novak, or 'Cas' as he seemed to be calling himself, in with the brothers. It was easier that way. The light was blazing in his room. He peeked out through the hidden peek-hole and watched them.

They were looking for something. Neal stifled an angry exclamation as the stack of paintings against the wall tumbled down. He heard his bed being moved and the sound of books being thrown from his shelves to the floor.

"Dean, watch it! Those are valuable books!"

Well, that was interesting. Peter had said that Sam was the more educated of the pair, but Neal still hadn't expected him to care about destroying the property of a victim. They had no history of stealing valuables and on selling them. From what Neal had heard they tended more towards armed bank robbery.

"There is no altar here." Neal couldn't see Novak from his vantage point but the clinking of bottles told him his wine collection was being interfered with.

"There must be a hidden room somewhere," Sam said, "A lot of these old houses were built as secret gambling dens during the prohibition – there's probably hidey holes and secrets passageways everywhere."

Neal felt a thrill of panic run through him. There really weren't that many hiding places. Where was Peter? Neal was pretty sure he could forgive any amount of rubbing it in if Peter would just come charging in to heroically rescue him right about now.

"Awesome," Dean said, running his hand along the wall by the wardrobe door. "Do you think there were smugglers?"

Neal stepped back from the peek-hole and huddled against the wall, trying to disguise himself amongst the clothes. The wardrobe door opened slowly and a figure entered, gun first, silhouetted against the bright light of the room.

"Holy crap," said Dean. "Who needs this many clothes?"

It struck Neal that Dean would probably get along very well with Peter, if he wasn't a psychopath. Neal stepped away from the wall, hitting Dean with the brightest smile he could muster. "Hi," he said, "Can I help you find something?"

It all happened very fast after that. One minute he was having a perfectly nice conversation in his wardrobe with a gun-toting lunatic, and the next he was tied to a chair in his dining area and three large men were pointing guns at him and demanding to know the whereabouts of his dark altar.

It didn't really seem like they were going to shoot him, though. He knew a bluff when he saw it. People who buy stuffed rabbits so they don't have to sacrifice live ones don't shoot before they find out where the dark altar is. Neal worked at distracting them while he slipped his bindings.

"What makes you think I'm a witch? Can you explain your reasoning?" He asked, working at the knot around his wrists.

"Just tell us where it is. We know you're killing those people." Dean's voice was quiet and menacing. He was really a lot more threatening than he had seemed when he was pretending to buy artwork.

"Now come on," Neal protested, "I've never killed anyone. I don't like guns."

"We know you're controlling the spirit. We know you're doing it. We saw the chicken bones."

Neal was never having chicken for dinner again.

"He's not going to talk. Sammy, just do the spell."

"I can make him talk," Novak spoke up. His voice was level and emotionless, and the barrel of his gun didn't waver from Neal's forehead. It was terrifying.

"Don't be too hasty, Smitey McSmiterson. We need him to tell us what he did." Dean spoke to his friend, but he never took his eyes off Neal. "Where's the fake painting?"

"Stolen," Neal gasped out. Cautiously, he pulled his right hand out of its binding, careful not to move the rope.

In the background, behind Dean and Novak and the guns, Sam Winchester was getting blood on the sofa. A faint tinge of annoyance bubbled up through Neal's fear. "Can you tell your brother to do that somewhere else?" He asked.

Dean and Novak ignored him.

Sam was chanting and slitting open the belly of the toy rabbit, pouring blood from a jar onto the clean white stuffing. Neal watched in horror as he sprinkled some kind of herbs over the blood-soaked rabbit and set it on fire.

"Could you do that in the sink or something? You're going to burn the house down."

And finally, finally, just as Sam was tipping water over the flaming rabbit, leaving a pool of charcoal-filled water on June's beautiful flooring, and Neal was insisting that the fake painting really had been stolen, the door burst open and Peter came in with the SWAT team.

XXXX

Peter ran straight to Neal, ignoring the commotion around him. He'd told Neal not to stay at home. He'd even offered him the spare room at his house, even though Neal would take it to mean he could come over whenever he wanted and steal the toys from the cereal boxes and generally behave like a child. But no, Neal had insisted, and now he was tied to a chair and there was a flaming rabbit on his precious sofa.

"Where have you been?" Neal hissed as Peter finished untying him.

Peter wasn't really sure how to answer that. He wasn't sure how the Winchesters had got past his team at all, just that there had been no sign of them at all until Neal's text came in, and then when they had started to go in everyone had started behaving very strangely. Even Peter had found himself suddenly forgetting why he had his gun out and was going into June's house, and had had to look up the Winchesters to figure out who they were after re-reading Neal's text.

"Cowboy up," he told Neal unfairly, "You're not dead are you?" But he patted him on the back and put his arm around the consultant's shoulders, silently saying "Of course I came for you. I always will."

Jones had Jimmy Novak at gunpoint. Novak did not seem particularly concerned by this, or by the two members of SWAT who were closing in behind him. He was walking slowly towards the agent, his hands at his sides, gun held loosely in his right hand. His cold blue eyes were staring at Jones, and Peter could see Jones struggling to stand his ground.

"Run, Dean," said Novak.

"Cas!" Dean shouted from the door to the roof.

"Go, Dean!" Novak raised his voice this time.

And then Sam Winchester was pulling his brother away and Peter was shouting at them to freeze and shots were being fired, and the Winchesters were disappearing over the edge of the roof.

"They will probably not come back for me," Jimmy Novak said mildly, and allowed himself to be handcuffed.

XXX

Sam and Dean sprinted along the street, ducking into an alleyway. "Don't worry man," said Sam, patting his brother on the shoulder, "We'll get him back."

XXX