Beckett jumped when the phone hanging on the wall beside him rang. Answering telephones was never something he liked doing when he was at the very beginning of a new leap, but someone else came into the room at that moment and said, "Well, are you going to answer it or what?"

Uncertainly, Beckett took the phone off the hook. "Hello?"

"Oh, hey Rufus," came the voice at the other end, sounding surprised and nervous. "Not to be a prick, but is Bobby there?"

Beckett hoped Bobby was the man standing in front of him. "Bobby?" he asked.

The other man had moved to a bookshelf across the room and now glanced back over at Beckett.

"Guy on the line wants to talk to you," Beckett said, holding the phone out.

Bobby creased his brow and crossed to where Beckett was sitting. "Why me? You've got more brains about this than I do."

Beckett shrugged and stood, still holding the phone out to Bobby. "No idea, but he asked for you."

Bobby took the phone and Beckett moved out from behind the desk to let Bobby take a seat. He then took the opportunity to study the books on the shelves and try to get his bearings. There were a few newspapers scattered around the room, some local and some national. All of them had dates in the early 1990s, so Beckett assumed that's when he must be. The guy he was in was called Rufus, and this guy with the rusty hair and beard was Bobby. Both were hunters, and apparently Rufus was more experienced than Bobby, which did not sit well with Beckett at all, since he still knew next to nothing about all this hunting nonsense.

"You're sure they're Demon signs?" Bobby was asking, his voice betraying just a hint of anxiety.

This question did not sit well with Beckett at all, as he was convinced it was smarter to be decidedly against the idea of going up against Demons, especially since Sam Winchester had told him the story of the Apocalypse and the role a certain Demon had played in the start of all that. And there was also the fact that Bobby's voice didn't sound too confident, so Beckett was inclined to believe Bobby was against going up against Demons as well.

"Alright, and where are you?" Bobby asked, searching out a pen and scrap of paper. He scratched out a location and said, "Yeah, we'll take care of it."

"We?" Beckett thought, slightly alarmed. "Who's we?" If Bobby was giving hunting advice over the phone, he thought he could handle that. If Bobby planned on taking him along on another God-forsaken hunt, for Demons no less, he thought this was surely the leap he wouldn't come back from.

"Lincoln, Nebraska," Bobby said, hanging up the phone. "There's a town half an hour north of it that's got a Demon problem."

"Glad we aren't there," Beckett said, trying to brush it off. He hoped he didn't sound as terrified as he felt. Then a thought struck him: where was he exactly, and how did he know he wasn't just down the street?

Bobby raised an eyebrow at Beckett. "The kid's scared to death. He's never gone up against a Demon. You have, and-"

"You mean you haven't?" Beckett asked, forcing his voice to remain level and decidedly not-panicked.

Bobby winced almost imperceptibly. "I hardly think Karen counts. And we've only come up against one since then; it's not like Demons are crawling out of Hell every day. Or even every year."

"But there's one in Nebraska."

"That's what all the signs are pointing to, and the hunter who's there is a kid, and he asked for help."

"He had to talk to you to ask for help? Am I that intimidating?"

"To a kid who's been in the game for only a couple of years? Yeah, you are. You've been doing this a lot longer than a lot of us have, Rufus."

"Yeah, maybe too long," Beckett muttered. This might only be his second leap into a hunter, but he was already convinced he wasn't cut out for it.

Bobby decided to let this go. "I told him we'd help him. We can be there in just a couple of hours and get this worked out before anyone else gets hurt."

Beckett sighed. "Well, we can't just let a Demon walk free," he finally agreed.

"I'll get the salt, you get the holy water," Bobby said, leaving the room.

When Beckett was alone, he decided it was a good time to panic. He let his thoughts jump around in his skull. The thought that cropped up most often was "Why do I have to deal with these people at all? What happened to normal people with normal problems?"

Not that he thought hunters weren't helping; quite the opposite. They seemed to be tough people who cared about others, and that was great, but Beckett didn't see himself as a person who had the starch to run around killing things that were intent on killing him.

"You know, I like this Rufus guy a lot more than that Dean character," Al said around the cigar in his mouth, stepping through his door and fiddling with controls on Ziggy's transmitter. "He didn't attack me when I walked into the waiting room, for starters. He said he could use a break anyway. And a bottle of some kind of whiskey."

"You're kidding," Beckett said, unable to comprehend how Al could be talking about this and not about this leap that was bound to end badly for Sam Beckett.

"Hand to God," Al said, taking the cigar from his mouth and holding up his hand for effect. "He just asked for a drink. Said he'd take a nap."

"I don't care, Al," Beckett said, exasperated. "What the hell am I supposed to be doing?"

"Something with Demons," Al replied, unconcerned as he read from Ziggy's screen.

"Yeah, I gathered." Beckett shook his head to clear it and looked around the room, noticing a doorway that led to a kitchen. He figured that was the first logical place to look if he was going to find holy water. Luckily, he had been a priest in a past leap, so he knew how to bless water if he needed to. "But what am I supposed to be doing? And who are these guys?"

Al followed Beckett to the kitchen while navigating Ziggy's screen for information. "Well, Bobby's a hunter who was dragged into this mess when his wife, Karen, was possessed by a Demon and he had to kill her."

"Ouch," Beckett said, checking cabinets for holy water.

"Rufus is the hunter who helped him exorcise the Demon and cover up Karen's death. Ziggy says Bobby only goes on occasional hunts now, and keeps an eye on the phones to help other hunters with their situations. Apparently there's always someone who does that and the last guy was killed hunting..." Al paused, trying to figure out how to pronounce the word on the screen. After a moment, he gave up. "Hunting something that starts with an 'R.' Anyway, Bobby has only come up against one Demon since his wife's death."

"And now there's another." Beckett found a flask with a cross engraved on its sides, and when he opened it he found it contained what looked like plain water.

"Yeah, and that isn't the worst part. The last time they were against a Demon, Bobby panicked. He couldn't get rid of it."

"Have you found it yet?" Bobby asked, entering the room with two duffel bags slung over his shoulders. Noticing the flask in Beckett's hand, he said, "Took you long enough."

"You think I know where you keep your stuff?" Beckett asked, screwing the lid back on the flask. He grabbed a second holy water flask from the cabinet and stuffed one into each of the duffel bags Bobby had plopped on the table. He tried to ignore the shotguns that also occupied the bags.

Slinging one of the bags over his shoulder, Beckett followed Bobby out into the yard, which was littered with old cars. Some of the cars were rusted out and looked useless (even for parts) while others still looked like they could be convinced to start. Bobby led the way to a blue car, throwing his bag in the backseat before taking a seat behind the wheel. Beckett set his bag beside Bobby's and took his spot in the passenger seat. Al, who had vanished when Bobby entered the kitchen, reappeared seated behind Bobby.

"The good news is Ziggy says no one died on this hunt the first time, so you don't need to worry about saving anyone," Al said, reading from the screen as Bobby pulled out of the salvage yard. "Well, there's no one who died the first time who needs to be saved this time."

"And the bad news?" Beckett asked under his breath, rubbing his chin in the hope that Bobby wouldn't notice he'd said anything.

"What was that?" Bobby asked, glancing over at Beckett.

"I said this is bad news."

"Which is why the kid asked us to help him."

"Technically, he asked you," Beckett pointed out.

"And I need your help," Bobby said. "I can't exorcise the thing. You remember what happened last time."

"Actually Sam," Al chimed in, "he needs to exorcise it. Ziggy says there's a ninety percent chance that you getting Bobby to exorcise the Demon himself is what will get you out of here."

"Sure you can exorcise it," Beckett said to Bobby. "You know how to do it."

"Do you not remember what happened last time?" Bobby demanded. "I can't do it."

"That was years ago," Beckett said, waving off Bobby's concern.

Al took advantage of the heavy silence to continue. "Last time, Rufus took care of this Demon too, and when Bobby was helping those Winchester kids with the Apocalypse business-" here Beckett shook his head slightly, a little surprised that this leap was so closely tied to the one he had just left "-he wasn't able to help with the Demon problem."

"I need a drink," Beckett said, feeling as if his head would explode.

Bobby glanced over again and when he turned back to the road he said, "There's a flask in the glove compartment. It's not your whiskey, but it'll have to do."

Beckett decided not to worry about whether this was legal or sanitary and rummaged around in the glove compartment, finding a plain flask and unscrewing it. He wasn't sure what was in it, but it burned on the way down.

Al eyed Beckett uncertainly. "Easy on the booze Sam. You don't want to be caught without your senses." With that, he disappeared again.

"Bobby'll take care of the Demon," Beckett thought, taking another swig. "He doesn't have a choice. I don't know how to."