It's less than three weeks after I treated the hunter, Dean, when my cell phone rings on a Wednesday afternoon. It's an unfamiliar number, but I pick up anyway, knowing that my number has been shared by dozens of hunters. "Hello?" I shut my office door so that no one overhears.

"Jeremy?" It's an older man, and I don't recognize his voice. Not at first.

"Yes. Who's speaking?"

"Boy, it's been ten years since we last talked, but I thought you were a smart one."

"Bobby." I lean against my desk for support, somewhat shocked.

"That's right."

Bobby Singer and I have something of a history together. That was the reason I wasn't suspicious of Dean when he told me Bobby sent him. If that guy was allied with Bobby, he had to be trustworthy. By hunter standards, at least.

What I hadn't felt necessary to share with Dean was that when my parents and sister were killed by a demon, Bobby was the hunter that saved me from sharing their fate. He wasn't able to exorcise it, he told me later when I understood more, but he scared it out of the body it was possessing.

When I told Dean I ran as fast and far as I could in the other direction, it wasn't entirely true. I went into foster care, but Bobby kept an eye on me. He would pick me up sometimes and bring me back to his house, which was full of interesting books in ancient languages and other weird things. He told me so much about monsters and hunting that I hadn't learned from my hunter parents yet, only because I wouldn't stop asking. He taught me how to shoot a gun and how to put an angry spirit to rest and how to exorcise a demon. When I was fourteen, he let me go on my first hunt with him. A relatively routine poltergeist case, but it was as close as I'd gotten to anything like that since the night of my family's death. And I liked it.

Bobby mentored me for years, and hunting became my only outlet for my grief. I liked learning, sure, and I was a total science nerd, but that was more of a distraction than anything. I went through four foster homes and one group home before I turned eighteen and went off to college with the help of scholarships and financial aid.

I continued occasionally helping Bobby on hunts (and even doing a few on on my own) until my second year of college, when everything changed. I was nineteen, head over heels in love with a guy named Theo who was in my second-year anatomy class. Things were going good; we'd been dating for nearly six months, effectively evading the local homophobes' taunts.

That was until I had to stay after class one day and when I got back to my dorm, I found Theo dead on the floor, his head turned at the wrong angle, his neck broken. Bobby looked into the medical examiner's report for me, and as expected, things were a little strange.

I knew then that what happened to Theo was the same thing that happened to my parents and sister. I'd watched in horror as the demon, which I had barely understood at the time, flicked his hand, and my little sister's head snapped to the side. Some nights, I could still see the terrified look, frozen in her dead eyes, as she fell to the floor.

I felt sure it was that same demon that hurt Theo, and though every part of my being screamed for revenge, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to find it. If Bobby hadn't been able to find the demon in all of the years since I'd known him, how was I supposed to do it? I'd told Theo about hunting-a fact I always regretted, because maybe if I hadn't he wouldn't be dead-and he was always telling me that I needed to move on and keep going with my life, get my medical degree and do something that made me happy.

So that's what I did. Two weeks after Theo's death, I stopped answering Bobby's phone calls. Eventually, he gave up trying to call. I knew he would track me somehow, keep an eye on me, but I hadn't known for sure until Dean walked through the door of the practice that Bobby knew where I was these days.

There's a long, long silence on my end of the phone. I don't know what to say. I suddenly feel terrible; this man had helped me through the worst time in my life, and I just stopped talking to him one day. I can't maintain the cold I-don't-give-a-shit attitude that I give most hunters now. This is Bobby.

"I'm sorry, Bobby," I finally say. I'm tearing up, and embarrassed for doing it.

"I know, boy." A pause. "You had to get out of the life. I know."

"I still don't want anything to do with it. I'll help hunters get medical attention, but that's it."

A pause. He's thinking about something, but he doesn't want to tell me yet. "I heard you met Dean."

"Yeah. He came in here a few weeks ago with a nasty Hellhound scratch."

"He reminds me a lot of you, you know. Like a son to me." A pause, maybe a swallow. Bobby isn't the warm-and-fuzzy type, but I can tell that something about me is weighing on him. "I thought of introducing you to John Winchester's boys when you were younger, but you were on different paths. I knew you wouldn't stay a hunter forever."

Even though it's Bobby, or maybe especially because it's Bobby, this conversation is getting a little too personal for me. I don't do touchy-feely.

"Why'd you call, Bobby?"

A pause. Like he's not sure he wants to drop whatever bomb he has on me. "I found the demon that killed your family and Theo, Jeremy."

I swallow. I've been pacing around my small office, and now I pause to look out the window of my door. Business as usual, nobody paying attention to me. But I've got a patient scheduled for ten minutes from now.

It's hard for me to find words. "I can't go back to hunting, Bobby. Not even for this." But my voice wavers.

"You don't sound too sure about that." He sighs. "Listen, Jeremy, the last thing I wanna do is drag you out of a good, normal life and back into hunting, but I thought you should know. I'm gonna track down this son of a bitch, and Dean and his brother Sam are gonna help me. I can keep you in the loop if you want."

"I don't know, Bobby." I look at the clock, then down at my schedule. I'm going to need those ten minutes to get my head back in the right place. "I'm at work now. I'll call you back when I figure things out."

"Alright, boy. It was good to hear from you."

"You too, Bobby."

I hear a click on the other end of the phone as he hangs up.