Chapter 9

He crept down the stairs not making a sound, his eyes adjusted to the darkness around him as he came down the final steps. He could hear something coming from the front of the house. The floor of the living room was completely covered in glass. There was a relatively large rock in the middle of the mess. There was no one in the room, the street lights provided enough light to confirm that. He moved on to the front door and opened it, gun still in hand and aimed.

"Holy shit" there was the sound of a metal canister hitting the ground. "Guys he has a gun." Dean lowered his weapon and looked at the cause of the disruption to his evening. Three teenagers with beer cans and spray paint, there was also a lingering smell around them that was quickly identifiable as pot.

"Do you guys think this is fucking funny?" they all looked at Dean completely lost for words and all too scared to move. One of them finally spoke and Dean figured he was probably the ring leader for his little gang of lost boys. "We thought no one was home, Dino said the chick who lives here was gone."

"So you thought 'hey why not, let's go break some shit and tag someone's house? Not to mention you get your information from a guy named after a purple pet dinosaur? Really?"

"Yo man whatever, what are you gonna do anyways. That's probably not even a real gun."

"You really want to take that chance kid? Take my advice, get your shit together, go home and don't come back."

"Or what? You can't do shit with that little toy you got anyways." Dean was at his limits, he wouldn't shoot a kid, but this one was changing his mind and fast. He looked around and saw the cases of beer next to the loud mouthed ring leader. "Fuck it." The three teens looked confused, then Dean fired off two rounds at the case. They jumped, one looked like he was about to cry while the ringer looked like he might have peed in his skinny jeans. "Go home." It wasn't a suggestion anymore and they all knew it, running off so fast that Dean could almost see a smoke outline of where they had been standing.

He went into the garage to see if there was something he could use to board up the window for the night. Luckily he found some ply-wood, a hammer and some nails. He closed off the window and re-salted the area deciding that he could clean up the mess in the morning.

"Idiot kids huh?" Dean jumped a little.

"Explain to me how you can be so quiet when you practically have a bionic leg?" Janie just smiled at him. She was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. "A hunters always quiet Dean. Now it's a shame that they didn't break more stuff." Her statements had Dean thoroughly confused.

"What?"

"You make a good looking handy man."

"Oh, is that so?" he smirked at her, moving up to where she had been sitting. She had this look on her face that Dean just couldn't resist, and he kissed her. He pulled away "If you think handy man is a good look, you should see me when I'm working on a car."

"Well my car is due for an oil change."

"Tomorrow. We need to get some sleep, the walking encyclopedia said he's probably going to stop be in the morning, and he gets up early. So, back to bed we go."

"Aww" with that he picked her up, which made her laugh this time. Their previous plans were put on stand-by due to the window and to the fact that Dean did not feel like dealing with the look Sam would give should they not wake up early enough and he so happen to find them in bed together made it slightly hard for Dean as he desperately tried to ignore Janie's hands at the moment. She had one at the nape of his neck in his hair gently clenched to help hold her in place, and the other was tracing his tattoo. "You know I meant to ask what does it mean?"

"It's an anti-possession symbol. Comes in handy in my line of work."

They reached the room and Dean put her down. "You know for a minute I was really freaked out back there. And to know that it was just some stupid kids that broke my window, it well it pisses me off. But at the same time I'm a bit relieved that it wasn't the ghoul again."

"Well it's going to have a hard time getting in here if it ever does come back. And honestly I think at this point we just really need some rest."

"Agreed." With that they both settled into the bed, Dean holding Janie in a protective manner as they both drifted off.

The alarm had been set for 8:00am and by 8:15am Sam was at the door. Janie was in the kitchen, table set with coffee, creamers, milk, and sugar. The brothers joined her at the table "What happened outside?" Sam looked genuinely concerned.

"Stupid teenagers, thought there was no one in the house."

"Dean gave them the fright of their lives. He shot at them." Sam looked over at his brother and gave him a look that read 'are you trying to draw attention to us?'

"Good job Dean." There was a silence that followed. Janie sipped her coffee then ended the silence.

"So Sam what did you find? I mean that is why you came by today right, you found something?"

"Nah he came by to talk tea and doilies. Come on Sammy let's get down to this!" Sam looked at the two sitting before him with a raised eyebrow to give them a small hint of just how un-amused he was with his brothers comments. He pulled out his laptop. "Well" he started "seeing as this goes back a long time, I put together a genealogy tree to keep track of everyone involved." He turned the computer so that Janie could see her family tree. "If you look at the top there's Arthur, he was the second to go missing, but I found some new names too. The very first one to go missing was Bartholomew Morrison." Janie was transfixed, she had never had this much information on her family in her life. "Bartholomew's mother was Rosella Morrison. This is where it becomes interesting. See the name Rosella is not a common name outside of the gypsy culture at this time and most people back then would not have wanted to be associated with them, so it's not really likely that they would just give her a gypsy name. Especially when from I found your family was kind of really higher up in society." Janie looked almost scared. "Sam I've seen her name somewhere before. Rosella Morrison. My sister fell in love with the name when we were kids. It's her daughters middle name. Christine Rosella Morrison. She called her Chrissie Rose all the time. She found the name in an old journal my grandfather had bought at an old estate sale, because it was owned and written by William Morrison, and he has always said 'you never know girls we could be related to him'. He had a copy made so that it could be read and handled without getting destroyed. I have the copy in the attic." The three made their way up to the attic. It was exactly as you would expect it, there were boxes and dust everywhere. "When's the last time anyone was up here?" Dean was genuinely curious, to him it looked like it had been a century. "Years, I haven't been up here since my dad died. Beth couldn't bear to bring his things up here so I had to. The book is somewhere in his things." She looked around the attic as Sam and Dean started opening boxes with her. It was like a graveyard of memories, some of which she was not ready to have resurface. Not really paying attention to which boxes she had been opening, Janie stumbled upon an old David Bowie record that made her freeze. It was a box filled with Ziggy's old things. "Janie is this it?" Dean was holding a leather bound book. Janie looked at the book with a dead stare, and nodded.

They headed back to the main level of the house. Sam reached the kitchen first which truly surprised no one considering his leg length. "Alright I'm going to get started on the book, see if I can't find anything about Rosella."

"Okay." Janie looked to Dean "What should we do?"

"Well Janie Sam's really more of the book guy and since there's only one usable copy of the book, we could watch a movie?"

She laughed then addressed Sam "Do you need us to do anything, it doesn't really feel fair to leave all the work up to you."

"No, but thank you. It'll probably be much faster this way, Dean's not much of a book without pictures kind of guy anyways."

"Alright well let us know if you need anything in that case." It didn't take Sam too long before he was scrawling notes on the reading. Janie kept going in and out of the living room to check on Sam, refresh the pop corn, really any excuse she could find to see if Sam had any new information providing that the book was at all helpful. There were also moments when Janie was afraid Sam was getting annoyed with her yet he had yet to tell her to get out. From Sam's side he couldn't help but over hearing his brother and Janie in the next room. Sometimes they were laughing, other times it was far too quiet for them to actually be watching the movie and when those moments rolled around he could hear the shifting of bodies on the couch followed by little giggles or deep inhales. Whatever they thought they were hiding from him, Sam had more than caught on to a long time ago not really understand why Dean didn't just up and tell him something was going on between them already.

They were about to start another movie when Sam called them back to the kitchen. "I've found something. First off William was Rosella's father and the journal was more like his memoire than anything else, it traces his life from when he was a young man to the last few years before he died. It also turns out that I was right about her name. Rosella's mother was a gypsy named Nettie, who William fell in love with when he was 17. According to his memoire he planned on leaving his family, his inheritance, everything behind to marry her, he wanted to live his life with her amongst the gypsies. He also writes about how her family wasn't too happy about their only daughter wanted to marry what they called a gorger. And yet it was his mother that was far more upset when she found out about them."

"So my ancestor ran away with a gypsy?"

"No, there's more. Nettie got pregnant before they could leave, William being ever so honorable promised he would marry her within a fortnight. Then his father got and died before he had the chance to do anything leaving him as the head of his household. This made him think that he could bring her in, he presented Nettie to his mother, who upon the knowledge that her son and this part here is verbatim 'cavorting with a gypsy heathen' collapsed. Needless to say with such a warm welcome from mom Nettie ran back to her own family, where William spent almost every day with her."

"Wow he really loved her." Janie seemed truly happy about that.

"Yeah seems like it. Uh here it says that when she gave birth he made sure that Rosella carried his name making her full name Roselle Wilhelmina Morrison. If you ever get the chance to read this I think you'll really be able to see just how proud he was to be her father. He also went against everyone's wishes and told his family about his daughter. There was apparently a huge fight over the fact that he gave her his family name to a bastard gypsy girl. His mother was convinced without a doubt that if anyone found out about Rosella that they'd be ruined. This also where it gets kind of dark. He writes about how his mother dragged him out to the gypsy camp so that she could take the child away, saying that his mother decided there was no hiding her and that taking the child to live with them was best, so was telling everyone that she was a charming young woman who had died in childbirth. Here he says that he had no choice and that he had always regretted how things went that night, how Nettie was screaming, crying on her knees begging him not to let her be taken away. He held her as she cried before his mother could get into the carriage with the baby she turned back to say that she would never see William or her daughter again."

"And he just let it happen? How could he just take her away from her own mother? I thought he loved her?" Janie was absolutely livid at the thought that someone she was descended from could do that to a person whom he had loved.

"This part is the most important though, he mentions how his mother as she lay dying kept saying over and over 'you'll never rest not until she lays safe with me again' he never believed that his mother was telling the truth when she had said that the gypsy cursed them until he heard those words." Dean's attention was finally fully caught. "According to his mother Nettie vowed never to rest until she knew what had happened to her child and until she knew that her family was safe, she had also swore that the Morrisons would suffer the same fate she did, to lose a child, something so beloved that they would never feel whole again."

"But everyone she's taken away are part of her family, why are we living her curse? I don't understand."

"I think it might have something to do with the fact that Rosella never took her husband's name, he took hers instead. Nettie might never have known that meaning she was never able to track down her daughter, never knowing that she's cursing the ones that she wants to keep safe."

Dean had a very serious look on his face, one that made Janie think of a CEO during a business meeting. She reached over and placed her hand on his arm. "We can end this curse, right?"

Dean stayed in his stoic pose "We just have to find the ghoul giving out Nettie's justice and destroy it. Once we do that we just have to find her ghost, trap it and maybe if she can be reasoned with if not we destroy her too. That, that should end her curse. What do you think Sammy?"

"I couldn't have said it better myself Dean." In the background Gus had become inpatient and was now whining to be let out. Janie had then to oblige him lest she clean up an avoidable mess saying she was just going to take him around the block. As soon as she was out the real conversation broke out between the brothers. "Sam, do you really think that we can break this, a centuries long curse!?" Dean sounded like he had when they were trying to find their father all those years ago. He wasn't sure it could be done, yet he so wanted to believe and Sam knew there was nothing that could be said to stop him from trying everything they could think of to bring this to an end where people came out alive. "We're going to try Dean."

"And if we can't break it, we keep her safe. No matter what."

Sam knew there was no arguing that with Dean, he was determined to keep Janie safe…