Chapter 19

Salt and burns are not interesting. I feel it's important to mention that.

We got to the cemetery a couple of hours after dark, having spent the intervening hours in the hotel room in near-total silence. When I came out of the bathroom, Dean's gaze was fixed to the TV set in the corner of the room, and Sam was hunched over the laptop at the table and neither looked up.

That's about how it stayed until we got into the car and drove to Northview. Oh, and it continued when we got out of the car and walked back and forth through the gravestones, looking for the plot number. Both men were carrying shovels. I had a flashlight, which was turned off since the streetlights threw enough ambient light to make walking around okay, and a small can of lighter fluid. Sam was carrying the salt.

We found the plot and I kept watch while they got stuck into digging. The pile of dirt grew beside the grave and eventually the hole got deep enough that Sam told me to turn on the flashlight. I shone it into the hole, trying not to get it in their faces, keeping it fixed as much as possible on where they were digging. I didn't get any complaints, at least.

The clunk of a metal blade hitting a wooden box was obvious. It took them three hours to dig down to it, something else brushed over on the show, and I was yawning my head off by the time they made it, but the lid was raised and I passed Dean the salt as Sam clambered out of the hole, then helped his brother out, the butane went in and for a surreal, Warhol-type moment, we stood there, watching the coffin and bones burning, as if we were standing around a camp-fire. The temptation to ask if we'd brought marshmallows was horribly overwhelming. It was another one of those things that should have felt normal – or at least, not peculiar – yet didn't. Like those two LARPers in the episode about Chuck's first convention, I found that watching it was not the same thing as doing it.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I was feeling like a hundred percent chewed-over dog food, and all I wanted to do was have a scaldingly hot shower, find a comfortable position on the sofa, and sleep.

Sam put the laptop on the table and opened it, then turned for the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee and I headed for the bathroom, only to be forced to an abrupt stop when I found Dean in the doorway as well. For a second, I thought he was going to snaffle the shower before I could get in, but he looked down at me then stepped closer, leaning past and pushing the door open, leaving me about six inches to squeeze past him.

"Ladies first," he said, his expression faintly challenging as he stayed where he was.

I was just too tired to play that game, and a part of the tiredness was being at odds with him, not even able to figure out how to start a conversation that might have made things better.

I shook my head. "You need it more than I do," I said, and turned away. Going back to the sofa, I flicked the switch on the lamp next to it. The shade caught my eye, an Egyptian stylised drawing, half done with gold-leaf paint, as out of place here as a chandelier.

The door closed with a soft snick behind me and I dropped onto the sofa, only then realising that I could've done some pushing back, if I'd thought of it. The trouble with games like that is that they get out of hand all too quickly. And the next thing you know you find yourself in Vegas. Married.

I pushed those memories away and let myself topple over onto my side, just as Sam whistled softly between his teeth.

"What?"

"Another weird attack," he said, looking up and around the room, head cocking slightly as he registered the sound of the shower.

"What?" I sat up and looked at him. "You burned the bones."

"Yeah." Sam looked back at the screen. "Over the AP an hour ago, some guy was attacked by a dog."

We both looked around in surprise as the bathroom door opened and Dean stepped out, half-dressed in unbuttoned jeans, his hair wet and spiking in every direction.

"All yours," he said, not looking at me as he walked to his duffle at the end of the bed.

"Got another one," Sam told him. "Local man, Christopher Fisher, ripped to pieces in an animal attack."

Dean didn't even turn around. "Dangerous world out there."

"He was in the restroom of a diner."

There was a moment's silence. "Yeah, that doesn't sound right."

"Apparently, uh, none of the patrons saw anything. Guy calls 911, screaming about a dog, but the operator didn't hear anything, either," Sam continued reading from the wire report.

"Huh, ghost dog," Dean remarked, turning back to the bag and pulling out some clean clothes. I stood up as Sam opened another window on the screen and started typing, heading for the bathroom. If Dean had had a one-minute shower instead of his usual ten-fifteen on my behalf, I wasn't going to waste the tacit act of chivalry.

"This guy had quite a history with dogs," Sam said as I passed him. "Five years ago, he was running a dog-fighting operation."

"Classy. Alright, so, what? He causes so much misery some Rottweiler goes Cujo on from beyond the grave? Wait a minute –"

I didn't hear the rest of that conversation because I'd closed the bathroom door. Stripping my clothes off and leaving them on the side of the sink, I stepped into the shower recess and turned the water on, standing there in blissful peace as the water beat down on my sore everything and washed the smells of dirt, butane and a day's anxiety from me.

The bathroom was minimalist, just the shower, basin and toilet, and the shower curtain was almost transparent, some filmy half-plastic, half-cloth thing that tried to cling on to any part of me it could whenever I turned around. I was wrestling with it when the door opened.

"Dorothy," Dean said. I looked up to see him standing in the doorway, his face blurrily expressionless through the curtain that was attempting to adhere to my face.

"Get a move on," he said a second later, and I thought his voice had gotten more gruff on the last bit as he backed out, closing the door behind him.

Wonderful. I looked down. The curtain was persisting in its desire to be as close to me as possible, like that transparent film you wrap food in, coagulated around my legs and hips. I peeled it off and grabbed the soap, washing my hair and everything else, ignoring the wild cacophony of thoughts that were simultaneously sending flushes of heat from head to foot and reminding me that there were nothing there. Whether he got an eyeful or not, it didn't make any difference, I told myself, searching for the high ground – any high ground – before I drowned. None whatsoever.

Getting myself out of the recess and drying, I realised I hadn't brought anything clean in with me, and after a minute's hesitation, I pulled the towel around me and opened the door. It sounds easy, right? You've got the towel, you're covered. I'm here to tell you its not. I kept my eyes fixed firmly straight ahead, going to the sofa and not bending over as I dragged clean clothes out of it straight-armed. As with most motels, it was a small bath towel, perhaps made with children in mind, and rigidly upright it just covered my ass. With my clothes bundled against me, I about-faced and walked back to the bathroom, still in with my militaristic bearing. I think I could've pulled it off, if only I'd noticed that with a pair of jeans, two shirts and underwear in my hand, one corner of the towel wasn't as secure as I'd thought it was. I felt it slipping as I'd almost reached the door, one side swinging out and down. I hoped that the steam coming out of the room had hidden enough, but as I slammed the door shut behind me, I caught a half-strangled guffaw from behind me.

"Come on, you two, get suited up," Sam said, when I emerged a minute later, dressed and cleaned and just with sleep on my To Do list.

"What?" I asked.

"What?" Dean echoed, turning around to look at his brother.

"What?" Sam said, looking from me to him. "We gotta check out the body."

"But I need to sleep –" I protested, cut off a half-second later by Dean.

"Now? I need to eat –"

For once, the antagonism was gone in our mutual desire to not leave the room. Sam sighed.

"After," he said, getting up and grabbing his suit from the closet. "Eating and sleeping after."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I was stretched out, face down on the back seat of the Impala, more-or-less dozing when they got back from the morgue.

"More of that red dirt," Sam said, sliding into the passenger seat.

"Cops had nothing on it, said it was local but didn't have a match," Dean said, pulling the driver's shut with a clunk. "Hey, Dorothy, any thoughts on red dirt."

"Apple farms," I murmured, waving my hand vaguely in the direction of the laptop at the end of the seat.

"What?"

I propped myself on my elbows cautiously. "Apple farms, used to be loads around here. Still a number of orchards operating, a bunch more abandoned."

"Well, that's a big help," Dean remarked as he started the engine.

"Sounds more like vengeance to me anyway," I muttered and slumped back down again.

"What?"

"Vengeance," Sam said. His hearing had to be super-powered, somehow, I thought blearily.

"Doesn't make sense that way either," I contradicted myself, muttering it into my forearms and heard the rustle as Sam turned around to look at me.

"Why?"

"Guy was sorry, the hit-and-run," I told him, giving up on the idea of catching a couple more z's and pushing myself up again. "The dog guy ran a shelter for dogs after he got out of jail for the fighting operation."

"They did bad things, went to jail for 'em, felt bad about it, and then got wasted," Dean summarised. I nodded, yawning as I leaned against the back of the front seat.

"Doesn't make sense for vengeance."

"So," Dean said, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror for a second before they looked back at the road. "You don't have any theories."

"No."

"Good to know."

Sam frowned at him again and I saw the quick sideways look Dean gave him, accompanied by a shrug.

Dropping Sam and I off at the hotel, Dean turned the car around and went in search of someplace that would serve or at least, sell, food given that it was just past two in the morning, and Sam and I climbed the stairs back to the room. My energy levels were very low, and I could feel myself getting teary again. Low-blood sugar and over-tired, I told myself. A good night's sleep was the magic cure-all.

We'd just gotten inside, Sam dumping his gear bag and the satchel on the table and me flopping carefully onto the sofa, when he turned and looked at me, his expression unreadable.

"It's Dean, isn't it?" he said. "You fell for him."

I blinked. Apparently asking personal questions was fine so long as they weren't about themselves. I was too exhausted to debate the pros and cons of trying to get around the subject now, and I just shrugged and nodded.

"What's the problem?" he said, sitting down in the armchair.

I swear, I was under control – teary, okay, but I had a firm grip on it – up to the point he said that. I'd figured I was just too tired for any more emotions, but when the words came out of his mouth, my chest locked for no reason, my throat closed up and I felt a whole new flood of tears pricking at the back of my eyes.

"There's no p-problem," I said, trying to manoeuvre the words past the thickness. "Just s-s-some-something I have to get p-past. You can't s-say anything, please? Don't s-s-say anything."

You notice that emotion always hits you on the sibilants and plosives? It's embarrassing. I was leaking from the eyeballs and spraying as well.

"I won't, I promise, but, Terry, that's –" Sam started to say then stopped, getting up and moving to the sofa, probably because he saw the drips hitting my hands. "He's not –"

"I'm so tired, Sam," I told him, and I felt my bottom lip trembling as every thought I'd had for the few last days, held back, battened down, padlocked even, came loose and fell out in a heap between us. "I don't think I'm supposed to be here, everything I've done here has been a f-failure, one w-wa-way or another. I think this is a huge mistake –"

"Come on, Terry," he said, bracingly, I guess. "I wouldn't still be here if you hadn't been here, you got me out of that nightmare, no one else."

I think I've said it before; I'm no good with sympathy. Throw rocks at me and I'll laugh it off, but offer me something warm and fuzzy and you'd better have a life-ring because I might just fill up the darned room. I dropped my head into my hands, hunching over, and almost shrieked with the pain as that incautious movement stretched out the cuts on my back, making me jerk back up and shudder at the unexpectedness of it. I'd been so good all day to keep from stretching or touching anything. Sam moved closer and put his arms around me, holding me tightly as I tried to curl up into a foetal position and just disappear.

And of course, this was the exact moment that Dean chose to return from the store.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I was asleep, pretty sure I was asleep anyway, when something woke me. Two days of see-sawing emotions, pain-killers and the ever-present low-grade pain had not improved my ability to think clearly and concisely. I opened my eyes and saw Dean, sitting on the edge of his bed.

He got up and walked to the bathroom, not quite closing the door, a thin line of light spilling from the crack when he turned it on.

I wasn't sure if I should get up, see if anything was wrong or just go back to sleep when I heard the loud smashing from the room, and Sam bolted upright in his bed, his gaze raking over me and around the room then stopping at the crack of light.

"Dean?"

There was a muttering from behind the bathroom door that I couldn't make out and Sam got up, walking over to it.

I closed my eyes and listened.

"What happened?"

"Dropped a glass."

From the noise that had come from the bathroom, and the silence that followed the comment, I wondered how many times he'd dropped it.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just dropped a damned glass," Dean said irritably, his voice slurring on the end of the word.

"Can't sleep?"

There was another pause and Sam's voice dropped a bit lower. "Dean, look, about before –"

"Christ, Sam, I dropped a fucking glass, do we have to make a federal case out of it?"

I heard the tap running, and over that, Sam's deep exhale. "We're not talking about the glass, alright?"

"I'm tired, Sammy," Dean said, his voice clear as he turned off the taps. "I'm sick and tired of never ge–" He stopped, and started again. "This job, all it does…all we do…all I do is bring a shitload of pain to people, we can't save these assholes, and even if we could, are we supposed to? Look at what they did!"

"Come on, that's not true," Sam said, his voice rising a bit. "And they paid, right? They paid their dues, Dean. Like you did," he added pointedly. "Like I did."

Another silence and Sam went on, "You were the one who told me, saving people, that's what we do. And before, what happened…"

I strained to hear what he was going to say, my stomach shrivelling into a little ball at the thought that he was going to break his promise.

"It's not what you think," he finished, dissatisfaction at being gagged in his tone.

"Whatever." Dean said, and the bathroom light clicked off. "I'm going to bed."

I felt for Sam, I really did. He had two people he was trying to help, neither of whom were prepared to listen to him or talk to him, or help themselves in any way, really. It must have been frustrating.

There was a squeak from one bed, footsteps across the room and then another squeak from the other bed. I lay perfectly still, listening to them both breathing in the dark. I didn't think Dean's insomnia and anger had anything to do with what had happened earlier. He'd come in, glanced at us and shut the door behind him, turning back and dumping two plastic carrier bags of food on the table without making any comment. Sam had been stuck there, since abandoning me in mid-sob would've been ungentlemanly and he'd thrown out something about the wound on my back. Dean's only response had been a disinterested grunt as he'd unpacked his meal and gone to the fridge for a beer.

Not exactly the reaction of someone who gave a tiny rat's ass, right?

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I woke, sore, but without the stinging ache of the previous day. My face, however, felt stiff and my eyelids were swollen and heavy, one of the less appealing after-effects of a crying session for me. I have no problem admitting my envy for those women who can cry gracefully and attractively. I'm not one of them.

Opening my eyes and looking around the room, I could see Sam sitting at the table, and both beds mussed up but otherwise empty. I sat up and wiped my eyes carefully with my fingers, running a hand through my hair in case it was all sticking up on one side, the way Sam's was.

"Where's Dean?"

Sam looked up and shrugged. "He was gone before I woke up."

It seemed safer not to ask anything else about that, so I got up and walked to the bathroom.

When I got out, Dean was back, sitting at the table opposite his brother, the laptop pushed to one side, the smell of fresh coffee and bacon-and-egg rolls filling the room and Sam was talking.

"Cops have four crimes committed at the orchards outside of town." He picked up his coffee and had a mouthful. "It's a long shot, but I thought I'd check with them if any was a match to the stuff we picked up at the crime scene."

"They haven't tried that?" Dean asked.

"Apparently not." Finishing his roll in two bites, Sam got up and pushed the laptop across the table. "Both vics have one thing in common," he added mushily through the chewing as he pulled his coat on. "They shared the same watering hole."

Dean looked at the news report on the screen. "Neal's Tavern."

"Not open for another four hours," Sam said dryly. "See what you can come up with on vengeance or judgements. I called Lauren and Bobby, told them to get back to both of us."

Dean leaned back in his chair, eyes half-closed as he watched his brother leave the hotel room.

Sitting on the armchair, my designated cup of flat white in my hand, I kept my eyes on the floor as I worked my way slowly through the roll and thought about what possible search criteria would return anything of use on terms as vague as 'vengeance' and 'judgement'.

After a lengthy but not especially uncomfortable silence, Dean cleared his throat and I looked up at him.

"You okay?" he asked, not quite looking at me but somewhere over my left shoulder. "Sam said you hurt your back."

It was, I guessed, some kind of peace offering since we were stuck here until his brother got back. I swallowed the bite I'd been chewing and nodded.

"Yeah, it's calmed down," I told him, moving my shoulders for emphasis. "Better than yesterday."

He looked back at the laptop and leaned toward it, clearing the screen and starting to type. I wondered what else Sam had told him and thought that it was probably better I didn't know.

I have to say, I felt nervous, a bit anxious, and a lot vulnerable. Dean seemed…subdued, I guess was the word for it. Tired, maybe, but definitely not his usual self. I finished my coffee and roll and stood up, walking to the table and picking up the bags, wrappings and cups, and putting them in the trash. When I turned around, he was staring at the screen, his expression drawn.

"Are you okay?" I asked before I could think about it.

He blinked a couple of times and looked over the top of the screen. "Yeah, I'm fine, just didn't get a lot of sleep."

The brush-off was the usual one, but he'd said it without any commitment and I walked back to the table, sitting down on the other side. Looking at him, the problem – what was going on with him – came into my mind like a snapshot. All of it. All there.

"Nothing you've done is like this, Dean," I said, tucking my hands together in my lap under the table to stop them from shaking.

He glanced at me then tucked his chin against his chest and snorted. "No, what I've done, it's a helluva lot worse."

"You killed monsters, set ghosts to rest, sent demons back to Hell, stopped the Apocalypse…saved people," I told him. "You don't think any of that counts?"

"I sent friends to their deaths," he said, his voice getting a little harder as he unwillingly lifted his gaze to mine. "I – you know what I did, don't you?"

I nodded, forcing myself to keep my eyes fixed on his. "You didn't have –"

He shook his head, cutting me off, "If I hadn't, none of it, nothing that followed, would've happened."

"Dean, you can only do the best you can do. It's not on you to be perfect."

He smiled, a one-sided lift of his mouth that held no humour in it at all. "You can say it, Terry. I wasn't strong enough for any of it. My best fell a long way from the mark."

"That's not true and I don't think you believe that," I told him. My stomach was churning away like a Mix-Master and I was head-to-foot tension, knowing that with the wrong word, he could just shut down, or explode…or leave. I couldn't stop, though, not now, not while he was trying to talk about it. "You couldn't have done any more. And you paid for every mistake, Dean."

I saw his brows draw together tightly. "I can't pay enough – ever – for what I've done."

"Why? Why isn't what you've done enough? Why do you hang onto this?"

"I can't – I can't get rid of it!" he said, twisting away and getting up. "Don't you think I've tried? You think I want to feel this hell twenty-four-seven?"

"Then let it go!" I stood up too, unable to just sit there and watch him twitching. "I know you felt like you'd paid enough, I know that."

He stopped dead and looked at me. "I was wrong."

Everything about him, in that second, was open. He stared at me and his eyes were all shadows, things that I couldn't imagine, pain that he normally kept buried.

"It doesn't matter," he said very quietly, turning away, his shoulders slumping down as he visibly gave up. "It's done, and there's no undoing it."

"Don't say that."

It was probably the most inadequate thing I could've come up with, but I honestly didn't know what else to say. How was I supposed to convince him that he hadn't damned himself forever? I didn't know the first thing about it.

He had his back to me, his head bowed and he cleared his throat. "I got nothing from those searches," he said indistinctly. "You should try."

"Dean…" I already knew it was going to be a futile attempt, but I really didn't want to leave this the way it was.

"Try, uh, guilt, maybe, too," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me. He walked to the bathroom and I watched him go, my chest so tight I could hardly breathe. No one deserved what he put himself through, or the memories that he couldn't get rid of.

He wasn't going to revisit this subject, not today, at least, I thought tiredly. I sat down in front of the laptop and typed in the most comprehensive phrase I could think of to track down something that seemed to be working from either vengeance or some form of weird justice or that was targeting too much guilt.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Sam came back a bit under three hours later and Dean was sitting on the sofa, reading through the printouts we'd found. Not many of them were worth the paper they were printed on. I kept trying new combinations of search phrases but it wasn't returning anything different. Dean had come out of the bathroom ten minutes after he'd gone, his eyes a little red but his expression cold and shuttered again. I'd taken one look at him and returned to trying to find out what we were here for.

"Got lucky," Sam said by way of greeting as he swept into the room. "Milton Orchard had a double-murder fifteen years ago, the place was abandoned and they took soil samples from the perp's car and nailed him with it."

"Yeah, well, we got practically nothing," Dean said sourly, tossing the papers back onto the low table in front of him and getting up. "You wanna check out this orchard?"

"Ready to go?" Sam looked at me and I nodded, getting my coat from the back of the chair and easing it on. He threw the keys to Dean and let him go out first, waiting for me as we went out of the room and locked the door behind us.

"You alright?" he asked me in a low voice. I had the feeling he was only partly asking about my back. The tension between his brother and me hadn't entirely gone but it wasn't full of pits and traps anymore either. Sam had a gift for picking up on atmosphere.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I told him. "Any word from Bobby or Lauren?"

"No, nothing yet, though Bobby said he's still packing the library and he'll look as he goes." He looked down, Dean already a flight ahead of us. "Dean alright?"

"No." I wasn't sure if telling Sam about the cut-short conversation was a good idea, but I couldn't let him think that things were as they had been. "I haven't seen him like this before."

As the words came out of my mouth, I grimaced. It made it sound like I'd known them both for years and years, and that wasn't really the case. "I mean, he was out of choices when he tried to hand himself over to Michael, but it was still his decision," I added, trying to recall other instances of seeing him so without hope. "But this is worse."

Sam nodded. "I know. Did he say anything?"

"He said he doesn't think he can ever pay for what he's done," I said in a low voice.

I looked at him and saw his mouth tighten up. Sam knew the same bare bones as I did. I thought only Cas knew more. And Dean, of course.

"Why is this coming back to him now?" I asked him.

We'd reached the foyer of the hotel and I felt Sam stare at me. "I don't know, not for sure –"

There was a sharp hoot from the car outside and we both hurried through the front door, the Impala's engine grumbling impatiently by the kerb.

"How far?" Dean asked as we got in, turning the wheel and pulling out smoothly into the traffic.

"About two miles, out on Michigan," Sam told him. "The house was burned down but the barn's still there."

I was surprised by how quickly the tightly packed suburban houses opened up, becoming further and further apart until there were just fields and orchards to either side of the road. Sam looked at his map and waved a hand toward the next right, and Dean turned off onto a graded gravel road, the small rocks pinging the underside of the car as the tyres threw them up and back.

"How big is this place?" I asked Sam, in my usual position, leaning on the seat between them.

"Uh, pretty big, a few hundred acres," Sam told me over his shoulder.

"A few hundred?" Dean shot a startled look at him. "We're gonna be searching for years!"

"Dean!" Sam's head snapped to the left as an old man jumped out in front of the car from the verge, waving his hands and running toward us.

"Whoa!" Dean slammed on the brakes and the rear end fishtailed wildly as they bit in, the car stopping less than three feet from the guy.

"Son-of-a-bitch."

Sam was out of the car as the man leant on the hood, doubled over, puffing and blowing. I slid out of the car and walked around to the front behind Dean.

"Hey, uh, you okay?" Sam asked him, looking around the calm and peaceful countryside.

The old man looked up at Dean, sweat beading his skin and dampening the iron-grey tight curls that covered his head and frilled around his jawline.

"Guy just jumped in front of a car, Sam," Dean said dryly, reaching out a hand and gripping the old man's shoulder, steadying him.

"Uh, can we help you, sir?" Sam tried again. The man looked at him, his breath slowly easing.

"Okay," Dean said, looking down the empty road. "Well, why don't we just get you out of here before you get roadkilled, huh?"

"Yeah," the man breathed, nodding.

We were a little short of the farm, and Sam was studying the surrounding land, head turning as he got into the passenger seat. I climbed in behind Dean and the old man got in the other side.

"I'm Terry," I said to him as he scrunched down in the seat. "That's Dean and Sam."

"Warren," the man said, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. "Warren Dobey."

"What were you running from, Warren?" Dean asked, turning the car around and heading back to town.

Warren shook his head. "I'm sure you're good folks, and you want to help but I'm past the point where anyone can help me."

I watched Dean and Sam exchange a look in the front seat. "Well, where can we take you, Warren?"

"Nowhere," Warren said, his face bleak as he opened his eyes and stared at Sam. "Nowhere."

"Uh huh," Dean said noncommittally. "The hotel it is."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"So, Warren. Just, uh, take a minute. Tell us what's going on," Sam said, handing him a glass of water.

"You won't believe me," Warren said, taking the water and gulping it down. I looked at his hands. They were shaking.

"Try us," Dean offered.

The late afternoon sunshine spilled through the half-open curtains, shadowing Dean's face and lighting the old man's. His skin was greyish under the warm, coffee-brown tones, his eyes slightly bloodshot.

"I was just put on trial and sentenced to death," he told him bluntly.

Dean didn't even blink. "What'd you do?"

"Held up a liquor store," he said, letting out a long breath. "I killed the owner and his wife." He made a helpless little gesture with his hand, not dismissively, but as if he couldn't explain what had happened. I looked at Dean, seeing his jaw tighten, his eyes turn cold. It wasn't hard to see that his small stock of sympathy for the guy had abruptly run out.

"I wasn't thinking," Warren added, looking down at the floor as if he sensed the disapproval that had manifested in the room. "I was young."

"Young? When was this?"

"1981."

"And they just put you on trial?" Dean asked, his voice rising a little with disbelief.

"No, no, I just got out of prison," Warren corrected him.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, you're making less sense the more you talk."

He got up, and Sam held out an arm automatically, the slight head-shake holding his brother still, for a moment at least.

"No, it's okay. Just...go on," Sam said. Dean looked down at him and turned away, walking to the window and leaning back against the frame. I couldn't see his expression, his face was in shadow with the light behind him, but I was a bit surprised at the impatience that seemed to be filling him. I had a strong impression that it wasn't directly related to what Warren had done.

"Did thirty years. I just got paroled," Warren said. He looked down at his hand, still curled around the empty glass. "Not that you're ever free of that. I think about it every day."

"So, then, what were you running from?" Sam asked insistently.

"Well, I told you – the trial!" The old man looked up at him, his dark eyes wide. "All I know is, one minute I'm at the bar, minding my own business, just my first damned drink in thirty years, and the next, I get jumped, wake up in a damn courtroom."

"Courtroom? Like a...courtroom?" Dean frowned at him.

"Well, no. There was a judge." He shivered suddenly and shook his head, presumably at the memory. "Everything was crazy. It was in a barn."

"At the apple farm?" Sam prodded.

"Yeah."

"And this bar where you were grabbed?"

I had to admire Sam's persistence. I didn't think Dean valued it highly enough.

"Neal's Tavern."

The response was expected, but Sam looked at Dean anyway. That the victims were all connected didn't seem to be in doubt for either of them. The question was, how were they being targeted? Sitting in a bar? Mouthing off about what they'd done? What'd happened to them? What?

"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Sam looked back at Warren.

"You believe me?" he asked incredulously. "Who the hell are you?"

"We kind of...specialize in crazy," Sam said wryly. "So, uh, this judge – he got a name?"

"No," Warren said slowly, his gaze becoming a little distant again. "But there was these weird symbols."

"Symbols?" Getting up, Sam walked to the nightstand, grabbing a notebook and a pen. "Do you remember any of them? Can you draw them?"

He handed the pad and pen to Warren as Dean walked over to the table.

"Excuse us a sec," he said to Warren, turning to his brother. "Can I talk to you?"

"Terry, you okay here?" Sam looked down at me. Dean was heading for the door.

"Sure," I told him, getting up as well to make a pot of coffee. It didn't seem like it was going to be a restful evening. I might have managed about four hours sleep the previous night and I had no high hopes for any more tonight.

Sam followed his brother out and I looked back at Warren. "Coffee?"

He looked up. "I'd appreciate it, thank you, miss."

Busying myself with refilling the pot kept my hands occupied. I thought about the twitch I'd seen on Dean's face as Warren had told him what he'd been to jail for and had a pretty good idea of what the conversation downstairs was going to be about.

"This is what I can remember," Warren said, getting up and bringing the drawing around the table.

I took them from him. There was something strangely familiar about the symbols, which were pictograms, really. Getting out my phone, I laid them on the table and took careful photos of each one, then sent them to Bobby, typing in the suggestion that he pass them on to Lauren. Wasn't much point having a bona-fide academic nephilim on the team if we didn't use her, I thought.

Sam came back as the pot finished brewing and I'd just handed Warren a cup. I looked past him to the door.

"Where's Dean?"

"He went to check out the bar," he said, shrugging. The gesture implied that I'd been right about my speculations on their conversation and that Sam hadn't been successful in changing his brother's mind. Dean used alcohol regularly to turn down the volume in his head. Sometimes he drank himself into unconsciousness if whatever was torturing him got too bad. Neither Sam nor I thought it worked all well, given the nightmares that woke him, sweating and shivering, his jaw locked together to hold back whatever was trying to get out.

Sam turned to look at Warren. "Look, we need to get back to that farm."

"No," Warren said, looking at him from over the rim of the cup. "Oh, no. No, I ain't going back there."

"Warren, I need your help to find it," Sam said, his voice rising a bit in exasperation.

"Big red barn, you can't miss it," Warren told him stubbornly. "I'm not going back. They're out there."

"Who's out there?" Sam asked him.

"Those folks I killed," Warren muttered into the cup. "I – just – no. Okay? No."

"Okay," Sam said, looking at the papers on the table. "Are these the symbols?"

"Yeah."

"Terry, can you –" Sam turned to look at me.

I nodded. "Sent them to Bobby and asked him to forward them to Lauren. Bobby'll call you if he finds a match."

"Thanks," he said, turning back to Warren. "Alright, stay here with her, do not leave this room. Terry, can you salt the room? There's salt in Dean's duffle."

I nodded again. I'd figured on the baby-sitting job as soon as we'd brought Warren back here. "Sam, be careful, okay?"

"I will," he said distractedly. "If Dean comes back here, see if you can keep him here till I get back."

We both knew that was a tall order, but if he got loaded at the bar, at least he probably wouldn't go too far.

The door closed on him for the second time and I walked around to get the salt bag from Dean's duffle, aware that Warren was watching me curiously.

"This – this is what you specialise in?" he asked, his head turning as I tipped the salt out in thick lines across the vents, the window ledges, the threshold of the door.

"Um, they do," I said, making a circle around the table and chairs as well. Just in case. "The salt is protection against ghosts, Warren," I told him, putting the remains by the kitchenette wall. "They can't cross it, can't get to you while you're inside the circle."

"Oh, girl, you pulling my leg?"

"No sir, I'm not," I said, getting my cup and sitting at the table opposite him. "This is what they do, and it works. You're perfectly safe here." I sipped my coffee. "What happened – exactly – at this trial you were at?"

"There was a – a stage, on one side. I woke up at a table, sitting up, all chained up," he said slowly, his hands curling more tightly around the warmth of the cup. "This guy, the judge, he was sitting in on the stage. Looked like one of those guys, you know, at that big casino, with the pyramid, in Vegas."

I frowned. "The Luxor? He looked Egyptian?"

"Yeah, like that. Security there, they all wear these short skirts and robe things."

The image that popped into my head wasn't so much the casino staff but an old Cecil B Mille movie. I looked at the symbols on the page in front of me. Egyptian hieroglyphs. My head snapped around to look at the lamp shade next to the sofa. That's what it had on it, two stylised, ancient Egyptians, carrying something, the gold-leaf of their sarongs gleaming.

It was a tenuous connection, I admit it, but a hinky one.

"What then?"

"He put me on trial for killing those folks!" Warren burst out, his eyes beginning to swim. "I told him I'd done my time, told him I'd paid!"

"What did he say?"

"Said he didn't judge my remorse, only my guilt."

Guilt.

The phone rang and I snatched it up. "Sam?"

"It's Bobby, Therese," Bobby said gruffly. "Sam's phone's going to voicemail and so's Dean's. You there alone?"

"No, I – no," I said, looking at Warren. "The guy we got here says an Egyptian judged him on his guilt."

"Yeah, that's the bad news," Bobby said, his tone sour. "Found those symbols in the Book of the Dead. They represent Osiris, real authoritarian type. He gets a hold of you, he's judge, jury, and executioner. Lore says that he can see directly into the human heart. He weighs the guilt. If he finds more than a feather's worth – boom, you're done."

"Crap!" I squeaked.

"Right," Bobby agreed immediately. "Seems like he travels all over, spends a bit of time here, bit of time there then disappears again. That's all I got so far, but Lauren's on it."

"Bobby, c'mon, a god?"

"You know what this means, right?"

"Means we're in deep –"

"Means you gotta get the boys and get the hell out of Dodge, Therese," Bobby cut me off harshly. "This guy homes in on guilt, who's that sound like to you?"

My stomach dropped like a stone. "I – I'll try Sam again."

"Get them out," Bobby said and hung up.

I just about jumped right out of the chair when the phone rang a second later, a reaction that probably didn't do much for Warren's nerves either.

"Bobby?"

"Terry, it's Sam."

"Sam, Bobby just called, he tried to get you but you –"

"I know, I got no signal inside the barn," Sam said hurriedly. "What'd he say?"

"Said that it's an Egyptian god, Osiris. Said that this god is looking for the guilty and that we have to get out of here."

"Why?"

"Dean."

"Oh…crap."

"Right."

"Alright, listen, stay there," Sam said, his voice sharpening into decisiveness. "I'll get Dean. Don't let Warren out of the room."

"I won't," I said. "Sam, hurry."

He hung up and I stared at the phone for several seconds before I could get my thoughts to restart. I was just putting the phone down on the table when Warren's eyes flashed to the door and the lights in the room started to flicker and die.

"What?"

"They're here," he said, letting the cup thump to the table. "They're here."

"Warren, they can't get in here, I promise," I said very slowly. His eyes had widened and sweat was once again beading his face. "Warren? Can you hear me?"

"I paid my dues," he said, oblivious to me, I think. He didn't seem to be hearing what I'd said. "I done my time! I'm sorry for what I did!"

"Warren!"

"I'm sorry!" he shouted, pushing the chair back and jumping up.

He was out of the circle before I could get out of my chair, and I forgot about everything as he headed for the door, launching myself in a mid-thigh tackle from a standing start.

It worked, after a fashion. I brought him down but the pain that ripped through my back completely immobilised me and he scrambled out from under me, wriggling across the floor while I lay there, hyperventilating and clenching my teeth.

"Warren, don't!" I managed to get out, tipping my head back and watching him reach for the doorknob. "It's SAFE in here!"

I don't know if he heard me, it didn't seem like it. He looked back at me, as I struggled to get to my knees without making the wrenching agony worse, and his eyes were glazed, unseeing.

"I'm sorry for what I done," he said, very quietly. "But you never forget, you know? What's done, it stays."

"Warren, wait –"

His hand closed around the doorknob and he twisted it, pulling the door open and breaking the line of salt in front of it. I couldn't move any faster, crawling unsteadily to the end of the sofa and clawing my way up the arm to get to my feet. Upright, the pain wasn't so bad, but he was already gone when I went into the hallway.

The lights were flickering and I ran down to the stairwell, hearing him as I reached the landing.

"No. Please, I'm sorry."

I grabbed the banister and ran down the steps, and I hadn't gone down more than a flight when the lights stabilised, their uncaring, flat white illuminating the man on the next landing down, sprawled across the narrow stretch of carpet, his eyes open and staring.

I did the usual things, I guess. Felt for a pulse, checked for breath. There wasn't a mark on him, on the outside anyway. He'd shot the couple, so perhaps there was a gunshot wound somewhere on the inside, I thought, getting up and looking around. Whatever he'd seen and heard, I hadn't. And it was over.

Downstairs, I heard the front door of the hotel slam, and I waited as familiar bootsteps thumped up the stairs toward me.

Sam stopped and looked at Warren for a moment, then back up to me. "What happened?"

"He heard them, and ran out," I said, waving a hand vaguely. "It was guilt, for what he'd done, I think. Like Bobby said."

"I can't get hold of Dean," Sam said tightly, turning around. "Come on, we need to get to that bar."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~