"How's the wrist?"
"Same as the last time you asked. I mean, it's fine," Emma clarified quickly as Dean shot her a warning look over the top of the newspaper he was reading. Her scar hadn't flared again since they'd left Utah almost a week before. It was just there on her wrist, inert, like scar tissue was supposed to be. Emma wondered how long her father was going to keep bringing up the subject.
"Okay, well, keep it covered," he said gruffly, the same caution he'd repeated endlessly, she thought, since he'd planned this meeting. Emma rolled her eyes, but only after she made sure he was back behind his newsprint barrier.
They were in a restaurant on the California coast, a nice place with a view of the harbor. Emma fidgeted as her dad and his brother discussed the latest archeological dig Dick Roman was funding. They were here to meet a hunter, which was interesting in and of itself, but this particular hunter was named Annie Hawkins. Emma couldn't help but feel excited to meet a female in the business.
But Annie was uncharacteristically late. Sam and her dad had both remarked about it already, and Dean had tried, unsuccessfully, to reach her by cell phone. Now he folded his newspaper and turned to Sam.
"Are we being stood up?"
"Yeah," Sam said slowly, consideringly. He rose from his seat, abandoning the menu he'd been scanning. "Let's hope that's all this is."
Emma's anticipation only increased as she followed the others out of the restaurant. This wasn't some ordinary woman with ordinary, trivial reasons for missing a lunch date. Annie might be in trouble. The Winchesters' kind of trouble. Emma took her place in the back seat of the car, sighing impatiently when her father and uncle lingered outside in the parking lot.
They were discussing something, she thought, straining her ears to eavesdrop. It was always something. Leviathans. Demons. The Amazons. Emma herself. But this time it was her dad's battered old flask.
"I got to get a refill," she heard him say, tipping it to indicate that it was empty.
"You know what, man? Why don't you just pack it away for a while?" Sam suggested. "All it does is remind us of him, you know?"
The 'him' Sam referred to was Bobby Singer. Emma knew that much. Bobby was another common topic in these conversations that the brothers carried on when they assumed she couldn't overhear, or right in front of her when they assumed she wouldn't understand. Or silently, a significant look or a casual-seeming gesture that conveyed a world of information. A world that excluded her. Emma huffed out another sigh and rapped on the window.
"Can we get moving? You two natter on like a pair of aspis adelphai," she scolded them. They climbed into the car, but Emma's triumph was short-lived.
"Adel-what now? My ancient Greek is a little rusty. Okay, totally rusty." Dean met her eyes in the rearview mirror and Sam turned to look at her, always eager to learn a new snippet of lore.
Emma felt her face heat up under their scrutiny. She'd called them shield-sisters, an Amazon term for members of the tribe who shared an exceptionally close bond. She'd only heard it once in passing during her training, but Emma was pretty sure it didn't imply a platonic relationship.
"You know, um, gossipy old women," she improvised, staring determinedly out the side window to hide the blush she knew was coloring her cheeks. She just knew the brothers were exchanging one of those looks right now. Her dad snorted.
"Let's go check out Annie's hotel room," he said, changing the subject.
Emma stood in the kitchen area of Annie's suite, studying the map, photographs, and newspaper clippings pinned up on the wall. The layout of the collection of evidence was remarkably similar to Sam's notes on the Leviathans pinned up on the wall of Rufus' cabin in Montana. Annie's research had uncovered multiple disappearances, the most recent ones being teenagers. Dean passed a real estate advertisement to Sam. Emma moved to stand behind him at the whitewashed kitchen table, reading over his shoulder.
"It's creepy," she said with approval. The old Van Ness mansion looked like the set of a classic horror movie.
"Get this," said Sam, "a couple months back, someone put it on one of those 'most haunted houses in America' lists.
"Let me guess – that's when the teenagers started to go missing," Dean hazarded.
"Yeah." Sam glanced back at Emma, then turned to his brother.
They were deciding, Emma thought, whether to take her along or not. The silent exchange made her want to swear in frustration.
"I'm right here," she reminded them. Her dad ignored her comment, but apparently he'd made up his mind in her favor.
"I say we get rolling."
The Van Ness place was definitely creepy, even in the light of day. Emma was thrilled, and slightly nervous, when her father passed her a sawed-off shotgun from the trunk of the car. She'd practiced enough with the weapon to handle it with confidence, but her experience so far was limited to shooting targets behind Rufus' cabin.
They approached the front door, Dean and Sam armed only with flashlights, Emma saw, and couldn't help but feel a little let down. The shotgun she carried was probably overkill since the experienced hunters didn't seem to be expecting trouble. But her dad and his brother weren't really unarmed, she reminded herself. The Winchesters habitually carried any number of concealed weapons.
"Salt shots give a good, wide spray. All you've got to do is aim in the general direction of a ghost and the salt will disperse it, at least for a minute or two," Dean told Emma, repeating lore she'd long since memorized. "Just don't get trigger happy. Make sure me and Sam are out of the line of fire," he warned with a smirk.
How stupid did he think she was? Emma wanted to remind him that she knew how to handle a weapon. She knew how to deal with ghosts. But all she said was, "Okay." Control. A smartass attitude wouldn't impress her father. All that would get her was an order to wait in the car.
Following the brothers into the imposing entryway of the mansion, she was glad she'd kept her mouth shut. Dean and Sam searched the room, working together with the confident ease of years of practice. Emma's focus shifted from trying to prove herself to simply keeping out of their way. They looked everywhere in the old house, eventually finding Annie's cell phone, but no other clues. No bodies, no traces of blood, no other out of place items. Sam's EMF reader warbled almost continuously, flashing red lights.
"There's a whole lot of something going on," he remarked, but as they continued to search, Emma began to wonder if it wasn't a whole lot of nothing. It was dark before they gave up and headed back to the motel.
"Pizza?" Sam suggested as they drove past a pizza parlor just a few doors down from the Crow's Nest Inn.
"I'll go pick it up," Emma volunteered, anticipating an evening of research. If she put herself in charge of dinner, she reasoned, she could be helpful without having to sift through more old newspaper articles and real estate advertisements. The search for Annie Hawkins was turning into a crash course in the boring side of hunting.
"Yeah, Emma, that would be great," Sam said, pulling out his wallet and passing her a few bills before his brother could protest the solo excursion. Emma shot her uncle a grateful look.
"Make sure at least one of those pizzas has some real toppings, not just vegetables," her dad called after her.
Emma stretched out the errand as long as possible. She frowned as she returned to the Crow's Nest Inn. The car they were using that week was missing from the parking lot. As if on cue, her cell phone chimed as she unlocked the door, indicating a text message. The others had gone back to the Van Ness house. Without her. Emma read the familiar, infuriating instructions: Stay in the room.
No, she decided rebelliously, tossing her phone down on the table with the boxes of pizza. Bodega Bay was a waterfront town. In her short life, she'd never been to the beach. The moonlit ocean beckoned, just a few hundred yards away. So her father didn't trust her to participate in whatever he and Sam were up to now. Fine. She'd take a walk along the beach instead. Locking the door behind her, she strode across the parking lot, crossed the road, and was soon taking off her boots to wriggle her toes in the soft, cool sand.
But as fun as walking on the sand and wading in the surf was, the novelty eventually began to wear thin, consumed in the cold of night and the fog drifting in off the bay. Emma made her way back up the main street, the wet legs of her jeans clinging clammily to her calves, gritty with salt and sand.
She paused in the shadows at the side of a tavern as a taxi pulled up to the curb. A couple stepped out of the bar, laughing, their steps unsteady. A big man, the bouncer, Emma guessed, opened the door of the cab and guided them into their ride home. Emma waited until the taxi drove off and the bouncer started back inside.
"Hey, kid." She startled at the unexpected sound. "What are you doing out here on the street alone at this hour of the night?"
"She wasn't abducted by Amazons, Dean." Sam's tone was patient. "You remember what it was like when Dad was overdue back from a hunt. Or from a bar," he couldn't help but add dryly.
"This is different," Dean argued. "She's on their radar."
"I was on Azazel's radar," Sam pointed out. "Dean, she's a kid. Kids get bored, they sneak out. You know that."
"So what am I supposed to do, sit here eating cold pizza and waiting for her to come back?"
"Well, it's either that or tear the town apart looking for her." Sam's sarcasm was lost on his brother. Dean slammed the door shut behind him.
Bodega Bay was barely a speck on the map, small even by small-town standards, just a scattering of homes and businesses along the coastal road. Almost all of the businesses were closed now, which at least limited the scope of his search. Emma wasn't at the all-night convenience store or the gas station. She wasn't on the beach. Dean was running out of options.
He parked on the street in front of a seedy-looking tavern, the only one still open at this hour. Maybe one of the local barflies had seen Emma. If nothing else, he could get a drink before continuing his search. Dean flipped open his cell phone as he walked in, preparing to show the only picture he had of the teenager, the one he'd taken of her to complete her forged learner's permit.
Emma was sitting at a table near the door, a glass, mostly empty, in front of her. She couldn't stop herself from flinching, just a tiny bit, when she saw her father catch sight of her. His face changed from worried to stony in an instant. That cool, calm, intimidating look. Emma lifted her chin and did her best to mirror his expression.
"Really, Emma Jo? A dive bar?"
He might have said more, but turned at the soft sound of footsteps behind him. Emma watched the bar's bouncer extend a meaty hand. He was taller than her father, not quite as tall as Sam, but easily a foot wider. Her dad took a moment to assess the big man, then accepted the handshake.
"You must be Emma's dad. I'm T.J. Told the kid it was better to wait for you inside, 'stead of out in the fog and damp."
"Yeah. Thanks for looking out for her, man."
Emma felt her face heat up. She'd thought she'd been humoring the kind-hearted bouncer when he asked her to wait inside, but her dad clearly believed she'd found herself a babysitter. That was humiliating. So far, the confrontation with her father was going even worse than she'd imagined it would.
"Whiskey. Make it a double," she heard him say to the bartender. "And another Shirley Temple." She watched him fiddle with his phone as he waited, no doubt sending a text to Sam. Dean brought the drinks back to the table. Sitting down across from her, he took a sip before pinning her with a glare.
"So you couldn't let me know where you were? Send a text? Leave a goddamn post-it note?"
It took all her Amazon training not to flinch again as his voice growled lower with each query. Emma forced herself to take a sip from her own syrupy sweet drink in spite of her stomach's protesting lurch.
"Sorry if I interrupted your hunt. I know you're busy with more important things. Like looking for Annie," she added, sullen.
"We found Annie. Gave her a hunter's funeral pyre, like she would've wanted." The words hit Emma as if he'd physically struck her.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice small, but Dean shook his head.
"Annie was a colleague. A friend. And yeah, it hurts like hell to lose another friend. But you're family, Emma. You and Sam…" She heard her father swallow hard. "Nothing means more to me. Nothing. It would kill me to lose you."
"I'm sorry," she repeated, feeling the prickle of tears at the back of her eyelids. Emma stared down at the polished wooden tabletop, pretending fascination with the irregular white rings left by former patrons' glasses, at the scratches that marred the shiny surface. She couldn't meet her father's gaze, not with those shameful tears threatening to fall. Not when she could hear the break in his voice, see that tell-tale brightness mirrored back at her from his eyes.
"I won't sneak out again. I promise."
"Yeah, you will." He chuckled, a sound so unexpected Emma looked up at him, startled.
"I won't. I'm sorry-"
"Shut up. You're sorry… Now," her dad said, without heat. "But you'll get bored, you'll get antsy. You'll get pissed off at being left behind," he went on, silencing her with a look when she opened her mouth to protest.
"Believe it or not, I know how you feel. I snuck out when I was a kid. So did Sam. I get it. I can't keep you cooped up in a motel room all the time."
"So let me come with you! Let me help," Emma said, louder than she'd intended, hating to see this tired, worn down side of her father. It was even worse, somehow, than his anger.
"I'll try. But you've got to meet me halfway." He took another drink. "You may be sixteen, but I haven't actually had sixteen years to perfect the whole father routine."
"It is kind of weird," Emma conceded.
"Yeah, well, we're Winchesters. Weird is what we do."