A/N: I started this story thinking it was just a short diversion between working on my other stories and it grew into a monster. It now has the highest word count of any of my other stories and is still growing. I want to say that I appreciate my readers and thanks for the reviews! (I'm looking at you, Starpossum, Charmed Angel 101, Taboo Hearts, and Miss Ink!) However, I do have one tiny request: those of you who have faved and run, or alerted and run, please drop me a note to tell me why you like the story. It only takes a minute and it'll make me love you forever!

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They all stared at the girl, eyes wide and mouths open. It was Dean who finally broke the stunned silence. "Tell me that's a joke," he said hoarsely. "Tell me I'm supposed to be laughing right now."

Mallory blinked at him and shook her head slightly. "Um...no. What's going on?" She pointed at Marax's corpse with a shaky hand. "Who was she, and why was she trying to kill me?"

Dean stepped toward Mallory, reaching out to her with his bloody hand. She recoiled in horror away from him and he stopped. "You're telling me you don't remember the last week?" he demanded, much more sharply than he intended. Mallory flinched and backed away a few more steps.

"What are you talking about?" she whispered.

Jimmy scrubbed his hand over his face and gave Castiel another useless jab. He wasn't surprised when the angel didn't respond. If he didn't have bad luck, he'd have no luck at all. "Mallory, calm down," he said in an even tone. "We're not going to hurt you. Just, please, tell us the last thing you remember."

Her gray eyes darted from Dean to Jimmy to Jo and back to Jimmy. "I...I dropped my mom off at the airport," she said uncertainly. "Then...nothing. And I woke up here. With that woman...she was screaming at me...and..."

"Calm down," Jimmy said again when she started working herself up. "What was the date?"

"The date?" Mallory's question came out a little squeaky. Jimmy nodded.

"Just humor me."

She gave him a strange look and obliged. Jimmy nodded again.

"Yeah. Uh, that was three weeks ago."

"What?" Yup. Definitely squeaky. "That's impossible!" Mallory cast about as if looking for someplace to run, but Jo darted forward and grabbed her arm. Surprisingly, she didn't fight her. Instead, she stared up at her with huge, wet gray eyes. "What the hell is going on?" she asked plaintively. "I don't—I don't understand."

"Mallory, we'll tell you everything," Jo promised. She sent a glare at Dean, who was being singularly useless. "But right now you have to come with us. We're not safe here."

"I'm not going anywhere with you! I don't know you." The squeak was back in Mallory's voice, and under any other circumstance, Jimmy would find it somewhat amusing, but not now.

"Yeah, well if that were true," Dean shot back, "Then how come I know that you're a student at University of Detroit Mercy, that you're in the nursing program, and that you like applesauce and cinnamon on your french toast?"

Mallory froze, her mouth dropping open. "How—" she began, but Dean cut her off.

"Because I've spent the last week dragging your ass back and forth across the country!"

She gaped at Dean for a moment, and abruptly burst into tears. Jo glared at Dean again and put down her shotgun to wrap the girl in a tight hug. Again, Mallory didn't fight Jo, and even slipped an arm around Jo's waist to hold the other woman closer. Jo made soothing noises and smoothed her hand over Mallory's pale hair.

"It's okay," she murmured. "Everything's going to be okay."

Jimmy sighed heavily. He definitely didn't feel as awkward as Dean looked. He'd been through more than one of Claire's breakdowns and knew exactly what to do: stay out of the way until she'd cried herself out. However long it took. He caught Dean's eye and jerked his thumb at Marax's body.

"We should get rid of that," he suggested. Dean instantly brightened.

"Yeah. Good idea." Leaning his shotgun against the wall, he helped Jimmy carry the corpse out to the parking lot. They wrapped the body in a tarp and stowed it in the trunk of the Impala for later disposal.

"She deserves a decent burial," Jimmy said, looking down at the covered body. "She probably had a family, you know."

"I know," Dean replied. "We'll drop her off at a hospital. They should be able to get her home."

"Yeah," Jimmy said without much hope, and slammed the trunk closed. When they returned to where they had left the girls, Jo was helping Mallory wipe her face clean and tidy her hair. Mallory looked over at the approaching men.

"Could somebody please tell me what's going on, now?" she asked in a small voice. Jimmy, Jo, and Dean exchanged glances for a moment, waging a silent argument that Jo eventually lost. She sighed and rolled her eyes before turning back to Mallory.

"Okay, look. I know what I'm about to say sounds nuts, but I need you to promise you'll listen to everything before you ask questions, all right?"

Mallory nodded hesitantly. "All right."

"Right." Jo sighed again. "Demons are real," she continued bluntly. "That woman was a demon. Her name was Marax. Angels are real, too. He's an angel." She jabbed a finger at Jimmy. "Well, not at the moment, but he's got an angel somewhere inside him. He's...kinda unconscious or something. Anyway, not all angels are friendly. Some of them fell a really long time ago. Like Lucifer. Marax has been trying to free a particular fallen angel named Belial but to do it she had to capture two other angels. Castiel," again she pointed at Jimmy. "And his sister, Amitiel. We tried to stop her but we got our asses handed to us and Marax freed Belial. Then Belial tried to kill us but everything got blasted to pieces and here we are."

Mallory blinked. She opened her mouth. She closed her mouth. She blinked again. "Even if all of that is true," she finally said in a tiny voice. "And I'm not saying it is, but if it is, then what does it have to do with me?"

"Because you're Amitiel!" Dean burst out. Mallory's face went completely blank, absolutely void of emotion. Jimmy recognized that expression. She had completely shut down.

"You're insane," she said flatly.

"You don't really think that," Jimmy told her softly. Her gaze darted to meet his. "Because there's something there, something inside you," he continued. "It's like there's someone right beside you, but you can only see them out of the corner of your eye and it frightens you like nothing else ever has."

Her eyes widened. "How did you know?" she whispered.

"Because that's what it's like for me," Jimmy replied. He reached up to point at her forehead. "That's Amitiel. And it's okay, you don't have to worry, because she's not going to hurt you. She'll use you, yes, and make you do things you don't want to. She'll scare the hell out of you, but she'll never, ever hurt you. And, I'm sorry," he continued with a sigh, "But you agreed to this."

"But," she protested. "I—I don't remember anything!"

He shook his head. "That doesn't matter. It's just the way it works. She asked, and you said yes. I'm sorry."

Mallory took a long step backwards and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved and sagged as she pulled in a deep breath. For a moment, no one dared to move. Then she lifted her head, her eyes hard and dry. "Okay," she said, her voice even and steady. "Okay. What do we do next?"

XxxXxxX

The motel room was stifling with five of them crammed into it. Dean (the bastard) had made off the instant they had returned, claiming he needed to take care of the body of Marax's host. Sam was pacing along one wall, talking to Bobby on Jo's cell phone, and the Harvelles were going over the armory. Mallory was in the shower, and had been in there for the last half hour. Jimmy figured she needed the time to think and recover, and so wasn't begrudging her the hot water.

He sat in the corner out of the way, his hands resting uselessly in his lap. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing right now. He was so exhausted there wasn't anything he wanted to do right now. He scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling the stubble on his cheeks scratch his palms. He knew what had to be done: they had to defeat Belial. But how were they supposed to do that when the only advantages they had were locked inside the brains of their team's non-combatants? Jimmy grimaced. Well, he wasn't quite the non-combatant he thought he was. He still wasn't sure how he'd managed to kill Marax, just that Castiel must have had something to do with it.

He wondered if maybe somehow he'd be able to find Belial the way he'd found Amitiel, but immediately dismissed the though. He had known where to find Amitiel because Castiel cared deeply for her. Even with Castiel injured and unconscious, Jimmy could feel the relationship between the two angels, and it fostered a protective instinct for the girl. It felt natural for Jimmy to want to keep her safe.

Jimmy blinked when Sam suddenly appeared in front of him, holding out Jo's phone. He stared at Sam's outstretched hand for a moment before lifting his eyes inquiringly to Sam's face. "I thought you might want to call your family," Sam explained quietly.

Jimmy took the phone slowly. "Thanks," he replied, and got to his feet, exiting the motel room. He wasn't stupid; he didn't go more than two steps away from the door, but he just needed to get away from the others for a few precious moments. He dialed her number from memory and prayed she hadn't changed phones.

"Hello?"

He felt like crying from relief. "Amelia? It's me."

She gasped. "Jimmy? Oh my God, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he tried to tell her, but she kept babbling over him.

"The Detroit police called, Jimmy! They said you were in the hospital and then you disappeared! What's going on?"

He closed his eyes and rubbed at them wearily. "I'm okay," he said again. "Castiel had a run-in with a demon, that's all. Everything's okay now."

"Are you...free?" she asked hesitantly. "Can you come home?"

"No," Jimmy replied thickly. He cleared his throat. "No, Castiel still needs me. I'm sorry, Ames." When she didn't reply, he continued hopefully, "Are you okay? You and Claire? You're safe?"

"Yes, we're fine. Nothing's come for us since...we keep the wards on the house, though. Salt lines and iron and everything."

"Good," Jimmy said with a nod. "How—how's Claire?"

Amelia was silent again. "She's starting at a new school. It's hard for her, but she's managing. She...she misses you, Jimmy."

A tear escaped and Jimmy wiped it away quickly. "Yeah, I miss her, too. Could you tell her—No, just let her know I'm okay." He rubbed his face again, feeling the moisture on his skin. "Ames... I don't—I don't know what's going to happen...but it's going to get pretty rough. These next few months are going to be pretty bad. I want you and Claire just to keep your heads down, okay? Don't take any risks. If you're safe where you are, stay there. Okay?"

"Okay," Amelia replied softly. "We will. But Jimmy...you be careful, too. Please. Just promise...promise you'll come home."

Jimmy didn't even bother to try to stem the tears flowing down his cheeks. "I promise," he said, though his throat kept trying to close. "I'll do everything I can. I'll come home, Ames. I will."

"Okay. Oh, wait, Jimmy! Claire's here. Do—do you want to talk to her?"

"Yes!" Jimmy said fiercely, gripping the phone tightly. After a beat of silence, another voice came over the line.

"Daddy?"

"Hey, baby," Jimmy said with a watery smile. "Happy birthday. Sorry it's a little late."

"That's okay. Where are you?"

"I'm in Detroit," Jimmy told her, shuffling his feet.

"Are you still with Castiel? Are you fighting demons?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. To both questions. But I want to hear about you. Have you made any friends at school?"

"Not yet. I've only been going there for two weeks. I miss Pontiac."

"I'm sorry you had to move, sweetheart," Jimmy said, swiping at the tears running off the end of his nose. He fought to keep them out of his voice; he didn't want Claire to know he was crying. "But you know it was to keep you safe, right?"

"I know. It's okay, Daddy. I understand. Castiel told me everything, you know. Is he hurt? Is that why you're awake?"

"Yeah, I think he's hurt, but he'll get better," Jimmy replied.

"Okay. I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too, baby girl." Jimmy took an uneven breath while Claire gave the phone back to Amelia.

"Jimmy, what's going to happen next?" Amelia sounded worried and he wished there was something he could say to reassure her.

"I don't know," was what he was forced to reply. "I just don't know."

The Impala pulled up to the space in front of the motel room door, and Dean got out, casting a questioning look at Jimmy.

"Listen, Ames, I have to go," Jimmy said quickly. "I'll call again as soon as I can."

"All right. Take care, Jimmy. I love you."

"You, too." Jimmy hung up and quickly tried to hide the evidence he'd been crying as Dean approached. "All right," he said when Dean reached him. "Let's get to work."