Sam knew those two kids from the Kyle house were following him. They weren't exactly good at hiding their presence, especially if that presence was an old pale blue jeep that always stayed two cars behind Sam. They continued to follow him, too, conspicuously and annoyingly. He understood their curiosity at finding an FBI agent at a local murder scene, but what confused Sam was the young woman who came up to him in the middle of his search for a hotel. She seemed too random and curious for Sam's liking, and after he had decided on a rundown motel, Sam made sure to cover his tracks from any teenage tail.

The motel he had chosen was just on the outskirts of Beacon Hills. It was unimportant and out of the way, but to someone who knew all the tricks to staying hidden, it was also very obvious. But Sam set up some demon wards and basic salt lines, and he went to work reading up on past press releases and histories without much worry to being found. The only person who knew where he was had promised not to disclose the name of the small town.

One article he had uncovered was disturbingly familiar to Sam: a house fire that killed an entire family except three. The only difference was that the Hale family had been a victim of a psychopathic woman who hired arsonists to ravage the family mansion. Kate Argent. The name sounded familiar, but Sam didn't know from where. From what he knew, he hadn't been in Beacon Hills before, and he was sure he hadn't seen the woman before as he scrutinized her smiling photo for clues as to where he might have known her from.

Most of the attacks Sam read about depicted a wild animal, a cougar that had wandered down from the reservations but to a hunter, the deaths sounded more like werewolves. Sure their hearts hadn't been eaten out, but the scenes had been torn apart bywhatever it was that attacked, not to mention the wolf hairs that were found on almost all of the bodies. That alone pointed to an alpha's strength but not as to why he was randomly killing people.

And a werewolf didn't explain the murderous teenager Matt Daehler who had somehow sliced up most of the deputies in the Sheriff's Station with allegedly only a gun. Sam had originally theorized the alpha was alone and trying to make a pack but the wild, animistic instincts were killing the potentials before they could turn, but now the slicing and dicing of the police and the reported paralyzing toxin trashed that idea. Because there couldn't be more than one supernatural pack in one small town, an even if there were, the recent incidents pointed to an occult, a witch or druid.

Out of the many articles, three names repeated more than not, along with a group of students that were never named due to being minors. The local Sheriff Stilinski, a federally acclaimed arms dealer Chris Argent, and a nurse Melissa McCall were the only sacrifices that were rescued from the lunatic Jennifer Blake. Another person that was connected to the school, where more than half the incidents occurred.

Sam grinned somewhat sardonically. Everything, all of the incidents and deaths, revolve around the school. The school and the sheriff's station. Taking only a moment to put on his monkey suit, he decided his best bet to finding out anything, especially about the current case and all of the past ones—which he wanted to clarify out of curiosity. Sam was halfway down East street when every car on the road parted like the Red Sea. Two blue squad cars flew down the center of the two lanes, their lights and sirens blaring hell.

Sam didn't need a headache and vision to know something was wrong, he just hoped it was the right kind of wrong, one not involving a murderous ghost. The drive was much longer than Sam had anticipated and led to a small house on the other side of town, a couple feet from the edge of the woods. Many police cars and the sheriff's SUV were parked all over the lawn, as well as, Sam noted, a familiar looking jeep. Some officers were in the process of tying up the yellow police line while a group of paramedics wheeled out a gurney, but instead of a dying patient, there was a black bag. Immediately behind the coroners, a man was being led forcefully to a squad car, and he was beyond hysterics. Glossy tears shadowed his eyes in rivets and sobs racked his body so harshly he couldn't stand or walk straight, leaning most of his weight on the two officers in charge of delivering him to the station. The scene might have been sympathetic, but the amount of red that stained his clothes and skin was anything but.

The uniforms had to push more and more as they neared their car, and the assailant began to lament louder and louder, claiming he hadn't meant to and it wasn't him.

"Something was controlling me! I'd never harm her! Maddie!" He screamed until he was muffled by the car door and the whoop of the sirens.

Sitting on the step into the ambulance was a girl wrapped in a grey shock-blanket, glaring at the men standing before her with pads of paper. Sam couldn't hear what was being said, but Sam assumed she was the one to have walked in and find the woman covered in blood and the most likely mutilated body. A few feet away from the debriefing, one boy was being manhandled away from the scene, towards a group of four other teenagers. Sam couldn't help but smile and sigh at the same time. He should have guessed the girl was with the two boys he had met earlier. He could only assume the other girl, a tall brunette, and a third boy with curly dirty blonde hair were part of the meddlesome club.

The officer, who was handling the lanky teenager out of the house and off the lawn, held an air of authority as well as a badge identifying him as the sheriff. He was in the middle of his admonishing tirade of prying into a crime scene when Sam walked up to him. Sam nodded a greeting to the group of adolescents before offering his I.D. to the officer.

The sheriff took one look at Sam's suit and sighed, before taking the badge to confirm his suspicions. "Let, me guess. FBI?"

Sam nodded solemnly, and offered his badge. "Yes, sir. I was just passing through the neighborhood when I saw the commotion. You mind if I speak with you?" Sam tried to avoid the suspicious, incredulous glances he was receiving from the group to his right and focused on the Sheriff's slight incline of the head. The two wandered away from the kids, not before the sheriff scoldingly ordered "stay!"

"What happened here?"

"A homicide."

"You have a suspect in custody?"

The sheriff nodded. He held out an arm to Sam, stopping their passage to the new crime scene. "Can I ask what a special agent is doing investigating a small town murder?"

Sam bit his lip and smiled charmingly and tactfully, and snake-like. "Beacon Hills has a higher mortality rate than the northern Californian towns put together. The bureau just wants to make sure there isn't anything brewing that we need to be concerned with. You understand, don't you sheriff, given the recent circumstance with Jennifer Blake? She was in the position to teach anything to the students before she was ousted."

Every deputy in the vicinity scowled and openly shared their disgust with the fed, although the Sheriff appeared to be trying to seem more diplomatic. Sam felt somewhat bad about the intrusion and blatant disrespect, but if he was going to save these people from a malevolent spirit, he was going to have to ignore such feelings.

"Yes," the sheriff ground out before putting on a moderately pleasant smile, which was more of a grimace, "there have been unfortunate happenstances, but I can assure you there is no reason for the FBI to get involved."

Sam exhaled slowly. He knew local law enforcement hated when the feds got involved, but something felt stronger than the normal type of resistance. "And they won't," Sam promised diplomatically. "I just need to confirm this isn't another Jennifer Blake."

Finally, the sheriff nodded less reluctantly. "At Eleven Seventeen this morning, we received a call from Lydia Martin," at this point, he indicated the strawberry blonde who was now standing amongst her friends, "called Nine-One-One about discovering Noah Mason with his hands inside Maddison Mason's chest. Dispatch arrived and arrested the man before other officers set up a perimeter. So far that's all we have."

Sam shrugged. "Two violent murders within five days. That's not suspicious to you?"

"Maybe it's cabin fever," a voice piped up at Sam's shoulder. Sam jumped and found the teen from earlier smiling proudly, a few steps behind him was the ever present group of adolescents.

"Stiles," the sheriff sighed, although he seemed to have surrendered. "I told you to wait on the other side of the tape."

"I know. We're just curious why the FBI's here."

Sam couldn't believe how suspicious this entire town was. It seemed like every person here believed in every government conspiracy, or that the feds were trying to run a police state by how they were acting. "Does that explain why you were going to break into the last crime scene?" Sam wasn't positive that was the truth, but taking a stab that they didn't live on that street proved fruitful. The sheriff's expression was blatantly stormy as he turned on the kids. However, the confrontation was considerably different than what Sam was expecting.

"Really?" was the sheriff's exasperated response.

Stiles grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head.

"Go home, Stiles. Scott, Isaac, don't you have lacrosse practice or something?" All three boys' eyes shifted to the ground and all three stepped back from the law enforcement officers. "Lydia, you're free to go. Allison…" the sheriff seemed out of suggestions and just waved them all away with tired flicks of his hand. After all five had piled into the pale blue jeep, Sam faced the sheriff.

"Does that kind of thing happen often?"

"Too often," came the lethargic response.

~•~

"I thought you told your dad about that guy," demanded Allison. She dropped her bag by the sofa, intending to drop down herself, but she shifted at the last moment to sit in a recliner chair instead of sharing the couch with Scott.

Stiles scowled and took Allison's abandoned spot and kicked his feet up onto the McCall's coffee table. "I meant to. It just…never came up."

Lydia raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "It never came up?"

"…No?" Stiles shifted uncomfortably. "Okay, maybe I held off because we know nothing about this guy except that he likes Led Zeppelin and is really good at forging federal documents."

Scott glanced around his small pack, which he had only started calling them that because Stiles had said it enough it had caught on. Most of them were simply mildly frustrated another supernatural occurrence was screwing up their otherwise normal high school lives. There was a simple answer to this, and he knew more than three quarters of them would object to it. And still, he offered it up as a suggestion. "I think we should tell Derek."

Predictably, all of the responses were outraged 'What's and 'No's. Stiles's was the loudest as every time he and Derek were in a relatively stressful situation the former always seemed to get hurt. Stiles, although he reluctantly admitted that Derek had knowledge in the area, was still loath to bring the ex-alpha in on their ghost problem.

"He may know something about this sort of thing," Scott defended, "maybe even about the FBI guy."

"Or we may be bringing him for no reason. Remember he and Peter weren't exactly happy about your arrangement with Deucalion. Not that any of us were, but still."

Scott threw a silencing glare at Stiles, who took the look head on unflinchingly.

"I agree with Stiles," Isaac added quietly. Scott wondered if he still hadn't forgiven Derek for throwing him out even if it was to protect him.

"Can we talk about what the imposter was doing at both crime scenes?" Lydia prompted. For someone who had discovered a woman murdering her husband an hour earlier, she was doing fairly well. She was still paler than usual, but she wasn't shaking or throwing up in shock. "And how he also thinks the murders are connected?"

"That's weird," Allison agreed. "I could understand why he thought two murders within five days was suspicious but not in the way he was implying. Maybe he knows it's something to do with a ghost? Another hunter?"

"What's the probability of that, though?" Stiles shook his head then thought better of it. "Actually with our luck, he's probably the king of hell and is coming to kill the ghost for being obvious."

"How does that work if the ghost is already dead," began Isaac, but Scott intervened before the debate escalated:

"I think," he began loudly then returned to his normal pitch, "there's reason to check him out. Lydia, you know where he's staying?"

She glared at the alpha. She looked like she wanted to say something snappy and obnoxious but she refrained and settled on a simple 'no.'

"Fine. We'll have to find out by scent. Isaac, you up for it?"

~•~

Normal teenage drama was how Scott and Stiles found themselves, once again, on their own together. Since Allison was still reluctant to be alone with Scott for any period of time and Lydia still practically ignored Stiles, the groups were decided on what would be the least awkward moments of their lives. Isaac went off with Lydia and Allison to check out all the hotels on one side of town while Scott and Stiles drove around looking for a motel that a federal imposter would stay at. To say the least, they were unsuccessful until they had searched every hotel until falling upon the place that charged by the hour.

"He wouldn't…" Stiles stared, horrified, at the fat, greasy man who grinned at the two boys. "You'd think a conman could afford better places to stay."

The toothless man sucked at his gums in a disgustingly noisy way and scrutinized the two teenagers up and down before deciding they weren't worth his time and attention and focusing back on his magazine on the counter.

Scott held his breath momentarily for a reprieve from the smell of miscellaneous bodily fluids and approached the front desk. "We were wondering if someone has checked in recently." He didn't receive any sort of recognition that he was speaking but continued nonetheless. "He's huge. Height-wise, I mean. Hair falling in his face, brunette. May be carrying around a feder—"

Stiles lightly shoved his friend to the side with a warning glance. He tapped the desk incessantly until he got an annoyed glare from the manager. Stiles smirked and slapped a five dollar bill on the counter. "We're looking for a buddy. May be staying here?"

The manager didn't show any indication he understood English.

Stiles's eye twitched and he groaned, slapping down a twenty, and the first movement of life appeared on the guy's face.

"Yeah, he checked in." His breath reeked of rancid tobacco and beer.

"Which room?"

The manager's fat palm landed softly on top of Stile's hand and slimily slid down until it dislodged the bills, which he pocketed before grinning. "Don't remember."

Stiles stared openmouthed. He grabbed Scott and turned him around to talk quietly. "Dude, give me a twenty."

"What?" Scott exclaimed loudly.

"Come on! You've got a job and a motorbike. I've got a crappy jeep that needs a lot of TLC." Stiles slapped Scott upside the back and reached for his friend's wallet. "I already gave that sleaze-ball twenty-five, and we don't know when the fed's goanna be back."

Scott actually growled as he dug out a wad of cash from his jacket pocket. "This better be worth it," he grumbled. Stiles grinned and dropped all of the money he had collected before the drooling manager.

"And I want a key."

~•~

Unfortunately, there were no pictures of victims, no bloody occult symbols, and no werewolf teeth on string. It was just a simple one bed motel room with a medium bag full of stale clothes, like the guy hadn't had time to go to the local dry cleaners.

In fact, the only really weird thing was the line of white powder drawn in front of every window and the door. Stiles took care to step over the line to riffle through the drawers, but Scott busied himself with the substance lining the windows. He dragged a finger through the line and rubbed it between his hands, sniffing it. "Salt," he muttered confusedly.

"Don't touch anything," Stiles ordered as an afterthought and without turning around. Scott glanced down at the salt painting his hands and brushed them off slightly, moving on to stand behind his friend. Stiles had been digging inside the duffel bag when he had found something. There were two photos: one old, worn photo of a family and a newer photo of a guy and a girl. In the first photo were two young kids, a toddler and a baby, in the arms of an overjoyed couple. They were sitting on a classic old car, and they were happy. In the second photo there was their imposter with his arms around a bubbly young woman with long blonde hair.

"Who do you think they are?"

Stiles shrugged. "People with murder fetishes?"

"I'm serious. You're always the one talking about people showing up with hidden agendas."

Stiles shifted through the bed sheets for anymore hidden cachets, but there was nothing to be found. "Yeah," he admitted, "but I'm not a mind reader." He was on all fours then, crawling across the carpet floor with his head skimming the little furs.

Scott held back his instinct to retch at the thought of what had touched that floor. "Stiles," he groaned, yanking his best friend off the floor. "There's nothing here."

"But we still haven't found out anything about the guy." He waved a hand at the wall of salt. "Besides the fact he likes his sodium, but I doubt threatening him with pepper will do anything."

"Stiles, we should go…" Scott froze.

"We could offer him popcorn…you know I think I've read a myth about a leprechaun needing to count every grain of salt—"

"Stiles. We need to go." Scott listened more closely, but his friend was rambling on persistently.

"—if someone spills it before them—"

"Like, now!" Scott seized his friend's arm and fumbled to the door despite Stiles's protests. Scott hadn't realized how much time had passed since they had bribed the manager until he had heard the rumbling of an old, ford pickup truck pulling into the parking lot. Luckily, Stiles had had the forethought to park around the corner so if Agent Plant did come back before they were gone, he wouldn't see the ever-obvious jeep.

Unfortunately, all of the rooms were supplied with one door, all facing into the parking lot. They glanced out, and, not seeing the imposter immediately, threw themselves out of the motel room and off the motel property without looking back.

~•~

Sam was aware someone had been in his room before he knew how. He knew it hadn't been the maid because he had left the 'Do Not Disturb' sign hanging from the doorknob, and the manager had seemed too lazy to really go nosing through his guests' rooms. But he had an idea of who it might have been.

Sam looked over the room, finding little things out of place and his salt line with drags in it when there hadn't been any before. Sam sighed. He was really starting to get annoyed with the teenagers and locals of this town. And to add to his annoyance, Dean had called him so many times the sheriff had glanced at him with expectancy and had asked if he was going to answer it.

The murder had been almost exactly like the first one, only the roles reversed with the husband ripping out his wife's heart, but he had spared his wife the pain of carving into her skin before de-coring her. Sam didn't understand how this had happened. At first he had thought the ghost was attached to the house, but there had been no other person who had lived in the Kyles' house before and certainly not a gruesome murder. The Masons hadn't known Christine or Robert, and yet Noah had killed his "cheating" wife in the same manner as Christine, both claiming to have had no control over their actions.

Sam lay down on his bed and rested the clock on top of his stomach. As far as Sam could make out, the only thing he could do was to go back to the Mason house before the ghost is able to move, however it was managing to do that. And he could only do that once the sun went down and the police moved on. Sunset was scheduled to be around six o'clock, and so Sam had a few hours to kill. He set back the clock on the dresser and shut his eyes.

~•~

It was close to the second hour of waiting for absolute silence when Sam finally trusted the quiet enough for him to leave the safety of his car. Being close to eleven, the police had no reason to really watch over the house and finally left, after crossing back a few times to make sure no juvenile delinquents were trying to sneak a peek at the bloody crime scene.

Sam, still taking precautions, unlocked the side door and stepped in, the EMF indicator already replacing the lock picks. He had a faultless plan, with the only hitch being discovering the remains he had to burn. But at the moment, he just needed to see what the ghost looked like, if it was a ghost, and if it was attached to a certain item instead of her physical vestiges. That was the only explanation Sam could think of that would allow a spirit to shift between locations.

He flitted through possible non-ghost related ghouls as he scanned each item in the Masons' house, but there was nothing in the family room or kitchen. Sam moved on to the living room, completing the circle on the ground level. The layout of the house was somewhat similar to the Kyles', probably due to the same architect, but it made searching the house easier. The door Sam had broken into connected with the pantry that led to the kitchen which then led to a family room and the bedroom at the far end of the hall. All three rooms circled around the stairs that held another bedroom, an office, and a bathroom. Sam had made a loop through each room, ending in the master bedroom.

The bed was slightly ruffled and clothes lay strewn in the closet. It seemed like the owners had just gone out for the night and had not been arrested for murdering the other. The EMF buzzed faintly as soon as it passed over the threshold. Given new hope in his theory of an accursed item, Sam set about the room, quickly roving over any paraphernalia that was in sight, but before he could scour the room entirely, a horrendously loud crash brought him to a halt.

Sam immediately drew his side arm and silently cursed himself for not bringing a sawed-off shotgun with him instead. But the specially-made iron bullets would have to do, decided Sam as he skillfully crept along the wall in the direction of the sound, keeping the hand-held at eye level. His heart beat rapidly despite him having done this hundreds of times before, and his untamed thoughts connected that to him being alone. Without Dean. He was past the living room by then, nearing the turn into the kitchen when a dark shadow stepped before him, a brilliantly white light swinging rapidly.

The shape yelped momentarily, Sam responding in kind as his gaze was bridged with a blinding flashlight. The sheriff's son, as Sam had learned from his earlier inquiries, threw himself away from the sudden obstruction and collided with two equally large shadows. They squawked as well and drew up their own flashlights. Sam brought back his gun but dropped it as a flash of blinding light enlightened Sam to the situation in front of him.

"What are you doing here?"

Stiles had recovered from his shock and jabbed a finger in Sam's direction. "I hope you mean 'what are you doing here?' You're breaking and entering as much as us."

Sam holstered his gun and attempted to usher the three boys and a girl—Allison, he dimly remembered—back out the way they'd come. "You shouldn't be here," Sam began, but Scott stooped and held his ground stubbornly. He was strong, and as Sam wasn't going to physically fight him just to get the kid out of the house, Sam surrendered the attempt and settled for glaring at the teens.

"And you should be?" countered Allison. "We know you're not really FBI."

Clenching his jaw and dropping his head, Sam tried to think of something in response. He needed to get those teens out of the house before they got hurt. He didn't know what the pattern of the ghost was yet, and assuming it only possessed women and killed their spouses was likely to get someone killed if he was wrong. Looking down, it was then that Sam noticed how Allison kept her right arm behind her back and how a small, taught string protruded from behind her knees.

"Are you carrying a—crossbow?" Sam asked, genuinely curious.

Scott stepped in front of Allison protectively, an act she didn't find so endearing, but it was quickly copied by the other boy, Isaac. "Answer the question," Scott growled. "Why are you pretending to be FBI?"

Sam's pocket whirred dangerously, and it wasn't his phone. Something was woken up by the sudden upheaval in the house, and Sam doubted it was Casper. He picked up his previous attempts at shepherding the teenagers outside with a new fervor. "Fine! Yes," he admitted urgently. "But seriously, it's dangerous—"

"Dangerous for you maybe," Stiles prodded.

"If you don't get out of here, someone is going to die—"

Suddenly all source of light shattered. The house was thrown in to blackness, except for an enigma's glow that emulated moonlight. The specter appeared at the end of the hall, flowing from the bedroom like she was floating in a stream, and she was terrifically beautiful. At that moment, Sam knew they had to run. The phantom's pearly white face had been emotionless, frozen, but after registering people intruding on her territory, atrocious features warped her face into something animalistic. Black veins encircled her sunken, marble eyes, cracked black lips that overflowed with oozing russet blood, curled fingers stretched with talon-like fingernails.

Sam did the thing that had been indoctrinated in him since age five: he drew, aimed, and fired. The bullet ripped through the air, hitting the ghost dead between her eyes, and she exploded into a shower of ash. Sam spun, dragging the four teens with him as he tore down the rest of the hall, to the kitchen. Even with his back turned, he could feel the apparition reforming, sending knives through the air every second.

"Out! Go, go, go!"

The house shook, the window panes shattered, and the doors nailed themselves shut; but as Scott was the first to arrive at the back door of the kitchen, he snatched hold of the handle and yanked the entire piece of timber from the frame.

~•~

The trees flashed past as they ran. It didn't even matter that they had outrun the danger by a mile, or that the only means of transport was in the other direction. All that mattered was Sam had seen the ghost and could probably figure out who it was and where her remains were. He also had an idea of how the ghost was moving locations, although not how the item itself had moved.

Suddenly, Sam was aware that he alone was still running. The only light he had was coming from the weak crescent moon, and the verdures and tree boughs absorbed almost all the pale, golden glare. He stopped, squinting behind him to get used to the forest without light. The Beacon Hills residents were still with him, only they had stopped short in an empty copse and each of them were standing defensively. Allison held her crossbow level to her shoulder, the silver head aimed straight for Sam's chest. Stiles was openly leering and distrustful and only Scott and Isaac seemed more hesitant to show their aggression.

Usually being the one to be holding the projectile weapon, Sam found it, to say the least, uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of the crossbow, and he wasn't completely sure the girl knew how to handle it, despite the clear confidence on her face.

"Who are you really?" she demanded. "And don't give us some BS story about being an FBI agent. We've already established you aren't," she injected before Sam could even think to fabricate a story.

Sam chose to remain silent.

"Fine," Stiles called, still a good, safe distance away. "Let's start with something simple. How about your name? Your real name."

"Sam," Sam returned fleetly, grinning slightly when Stiles and Scott started back in surprise. He might as well try to get them to trust him. "You're Stiles, and you're Scott, and Isaac?" he asked, indicating each boy respectively. They nodded. Sam came back to Allison, who adjusted her grip on her bow under the scrutiny. "And you're Allison."

"What are you doing in Beacon Hills?"

Sam put out his hands, creeping towards the four teens, assuaging their nerves with calm advances. They, however, weren't to be placated. They were slow and cautious, not that Sam could blame them. Although they didn't seem that frightened, more like peculiarly annoyed that he'd imposed on their turf.

"I'm trying to figure out how to stop the murders." Sam was almost an amicable distance away from the four, and he was confident they didn't feel like he was going to attack. "And I think you know that I don't have anything to do with them. Or you'd have called the police already."

Stiles shrugged and edged closer, but Scott stayed back, only moving forward when his friend got too close. Sam thought he imagined it, but it looked like the kid was trying to sniff the air, getting a read on Sam.

"Or," Allison stepped before Sam, pushing him back a pace with a wave of her crossbow, "we wanted to see what you were doing before we called the authorities." She continued closer, taking back whatever progress Sam had made in the past minute. She grinned smugly and surprised Sam by dropping the arm holding the weapon. "Or because you're a hunter."

Sam hesitated only a second, mostly out of shock, before he nodded, although he understood it wasn't really a question. There was no point in denying it, and he was fairly sure normal teenagers didn't break into a haunted house with a crossbow and not freak out after being attacked by a real ghost. Sam looked her right in the eyes, "And you are too? All of you?" Sam shook his head unbelievingly, "Ellen had said there weren't any other hunters here; that's why I took the job. If I'd known…" He'd have done what? And why did he want to avoid the other hunters, it's not like they knew what he was going to become when Sam didn't even know.

"How'd you know to shoot the ghost?" Stile's query broke through his contemplation. "Shouldn't the bullet—I don't know—go through it?"

Sam unthinkingly waved away the question with a simple utterance of iron. He had suddenly grown tired. The entire night had been a waste of time, and it had only caused more trouble than it had cured. Sure he knew what the ghost looked like, but now he had to deal with the endless questions from the teenagers.

"What about you," Sam interrupted any thought Stiles or Scott or Isaac was about to put to words. "What the hell were you doing breaking into a crime scene. Shouldn't more experienced hunters be dealing with this?"

"Maybe," Isaac took the liberty of ignoring and distracting from Sam's question. "You're not here for anything but the ghost, are you?"

Sam's attention had flickered back to the woods, having thought he heard something. His eyes scoured the shadows for anything that had made the noise, but Sam found nothing. Returning to the conversation, he said, "You mean 'Am I here looking for the reason behind the animal attacks and sacrifices?'"

All four nodded.

Sam waited before answering. But his hesitance led to his notice of their surprise. Scott, who had been so focused on Sam's face and movement, was now alert to something behind him. A man formed from the shadows, but as the moonlight caught more of his features, black hair and cobalt eyes were soon the only human aspect. His nose was sharper, his teeth sharpening into canines, and he prowled closer, like an animal.

Sam's breath hitched. He recognized the evidence behind the characteristics, and he had already begun to reach for his gun when one of the teens behind him called out a name in a warning, and the werewolf was charging.

~•~

Dean was at his wit's end when his phone rang. He was half-tempted to let it ring. There was no reason to think it was Sam, no reason to think his baby brother had decided he overreacted and needed help. He was half-tempted but there was always a chance.

"Hello?" he answered gruffly.

"It's Ellen."

"Ellen," Dean breathed. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved or worried. Things hadn't been very friendly last time he'd been at the Roadhouse, but if she was calling then maybe, "Hey, have you heard from Sam?"

There was a reluctant pause as she seemed to be thinking over what to save, but she tentatively replied, "I have…but he made me promise not to tell you where he is."

At that point, Dean could have growled. Of course Sam would stoop so low as to make her promise, but Ellen knows what it's like to need to watch out for someone who could necessarily take care of himself. He tried not to sound like he was begging, but there was no denying how desperate he was. "Come on, Ellen, please. Something bad could be going on here, and I swore I'd look after that kid."

"Now Dean, they say you can't protect your loved ones forever."

Dean had definitely lost hope at those words. He had grabbed his keys during the conversation, throwing whatever possession he had into a duffel bag within seconds. Now he stood, heaving, in the center of the room of the cheap motel he had forced himself to rest at for the night.

"Well, I say screw that," Ellen returned strongly. "What else is family for? He's in Beacons Hills, California."

Now he was out of the door, his duffel bag in one hand, his phone and keys in the other.

"Thanks."

PLEASE COMMENT!

ESAELP TNEMMOC!

Also I check things for mistakes, but when you have written it yourself, you don't tend to see the mistakes unless someone points them out so...just message me and I'll fix it