Chuck managed to ditch them while the crowd was filing out of the room and they headed back to the bar area.
"Can you believe this? People dressed like us, like monsters, like our lives are a fucking tourist attraction?" Dean was furious.
Kayla smiled. "Imitation is the highest form of flattery."
"Don't you dare think this is funny."
"Too late." She smiled.
They saw Chuck sitting with Becky and Dean stormed up to him. "In case you haven't noticed, our plates are kind of full! Finding the colt, killing Lucifer, we don't have time for this crap!"
"Hey I didn't call you."
"He means the books, Chuck," Sam told him. "Why are you publishing more books?"
"Um, for food and shelter?"
"Who gave you the rights to our life story?"
"An archangel!" He answered confidently. "And I didn't want it!"
"Well, the deal's off." Sam ordered. "No more books, our lives are not for public consumption."
"Um, Becky, would you excuse us for just one second?"
"Uh huh!" She agreed quickly when she saw all the tension.
Chuck took them into a more private area. "Do you guys know what I do for a living?"
"Yeah Chuck, we know."
"Then could you tell me? Because I don't know. I'm not a good writer. I've got no marketable skills, I'm not some hero that can just hit the road and fight monsters. Until the world ends, I've got to live. The Supernatural books are all I've got. What else do you want me to do?"
They suddenly heard a scream from upstairs and took off running; they didn't even hear Chuck telling them to stop.
Sam got to the woman first, a housekeeper, and helped her off the ground. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"I saw a ghost!"
"A ghost?" A dramatic voice came from behind them and they saw the guests had joined them. "Mam can you tell us what it looked like?"
Dean held his hand up. "Why don't you leave this to the grown ups?"
"A woman, she was in an old-fashioned dress. Really old."
"Did she say something to you?" One of the fans asked.
"Yes, listen! Listen everyone!" The woman was not so scared now. "Listen as I tell a tale of terrifying terror!"
They walked away. Unfortunately, Becky followed them. "Ooo, the LARPing's started."
Dean tilted his head. "What is that again?"
"Live action role play. The convention puts it on." She handed Sam a flyer.
He grimaced as he saw the title. "Dad's journal. Dear Sam and Dean, this hotel is haunted. You must hunt down the ghost. Interview witnesses, discover clues, and find the bones. The first team to do so wins a fifty dollar gift card to sizzler. Love dad."
"You guys are so gonna win."
They wandered the hotel as the LARPing went on, all the staff at the hotel played along. The guests changed into suits to pose as FBI agents for questioning, and the hotel manager told them a story of when the hotel was an orphanage, run by a mean old woman who ended up butchering four little boys before killing herself. Charming story.
"Dad said I may have to kill you." Two of the guests stopped in front of them, in the middle of their own conversation.
"Kill me? What does that mean?"
"I don't know." He growled as they kept walking.
Kayla laughed out loud. "I don't know."
"Stop."
"You know, we're already here." She saw their looks and sighed. "You want some drinks?"
"That, is a great idea."
While the actors roamed around them searching for clues, they got to sit at the bar and get to look at themselves from an outside standpoint. It was disturbing, to say the least. Dean seemed to be relaxing after a few drinks and Kayla slid her stool closer to him.
"I think we should do the Live Action Role Play."
"Kayla." He sighed. "I'll take you to the Sizzler right now if you want to go, we really don't need a gift card."
She laughed. "No come on, it'll be fun. Okay. You play Dean, I'll play Kayla, and we'll ditch Sam in research and find an empty room."
It had completely caught him off guard in a very, very good way. He tried to cover it up and stay smooth. "Yeah well you know, we might as well get into the spirit of things."
As he rose from his seat, a guy was arguing loudly about something he'd seen upstairs. "I'm not making this up okay? She was upstairs, a real live dead ghost."
"I'm sure it was just one of the actors." The other one told him.
"Who beat the crap out me and then vanished?"
Dean looked to Kayla. "Interrupted by a case, just like real life."
"I hate it when that happens."
"You saw something?" Sam asked him.
"This isn't part of the game jerk. I'm getting out of here, you should all do the same."
He stormed off with his buddy running after him. They couldn't even take a breather on a fake emergency.
After greasing some palms, they found out that the story behind the convention's hunt was actually a true one. The hotel was an orphanage in 1909, and tonight really was the anniversary of when Latisha Gore murdered four boys with a butcher knife and killed herself.
Kayla grumbled as they climbed into the attic. "Why can't people be murdered in bright, neutral places? Like the kitchen. No one's every brutally murdered in the kitchen under fluorescent lighting."
"Quit whining." Sam pushed by her with the EMF. The reader was topping out.
"Great." Dean noted the EMF. "We got a real ghost and a bunch of dudes pretending to be us poking at it." He shook his head. "It serves them right."
"They don't know it's real, that we really exist." Kayla reminded them. "You can't get mad at the players, anymore than you can get mad a kids dressing up like Superman for Halloween."
"I can get mad at them all I want thank you." He shone his flashlight over a corner of cobwebs.
"My mommy loves me."
They all flinched at the sound of a child's voice and turned to the corner. A little boy, probably too pale to be alive, sat in the corner with his hands on his head.
"I said my mommy loves me."
Sam nodded. "I'm sure she does."
"My mommy loves me this much." He pulled his hands away from his head and showed them a huge open wound; his brain was exposed through the blood. The boy disappeared.
"Yeah." Kayla shuddered. "Because who wouldn't want to do this for a living?"