Not Exactly Ovid

by ErtheChilde

When Castiel mysteriously disappears the night Dean is reunited with Sam, the brothers hit the road to find answers. But the Apocalypse was not as neatly tied up as they hoped, & pursuit by enemies forces them into "supernatural witness protection". Along the way, new truths come to light, Dean re-evaluates his relationship with Cas & Sam seeks redemption. [short arcs now long eps]

8. 6x04 - Like Which Fury Hell Hath No

Four

White Valley Motel,
St. Charles, Minnesota
Sunday 30 May 2010

"Have I mentioned how much I hate this idea?" Dean growled as they got back into the car and drove away from the local Biggerson's.

"Only a million times," Sam rolled his eyes, putting the paper bag down to rest by his feet. "Look, I know you're still pissed about being overruled, but Cas is right – we can't have any angels knowing where we are, even if they are friends with him."

"Yeah? And what's to say this guy really is on Cas's side? What if we get back there and there's no motel, just ground zero of an angel hissy fit?"

"You really think he would have suggested having an angel show up in the same county as us, let alone the same motel, if he thought there was any danger?" Sam replied. "Come on, Dean, he knows what he's doing."

"Guy's been in a coma for two weeks, it doesn't matter what he thinks he knows," Dean complained as he pulled onto the road leading to the motel. "Maybe after he's been on the road as long as we have, then he gets a say." There was a short silence, and Dean's gaze flitted to his brother. "He's gonna need someone to show him to ropes on being human, you know."

'At least until I figure out how to get his damn wings back without hurting Sammy,' he thought as he waited for his brother's thoughts on the matter.

He didn't expect any kind of resistance to the idea. Sam had a pretty decent relationship with Cas despite their not-so-friendly beginnings, but Dean still felt a measure of comfort when his brother snorted and gave him the 'are-you-seriously-asking-me-this?' look that Dean himself had perfected over the past twenty years.

"The guy's a homeless ex-soldier that got abandoned by his deadbeat dad and has a tendency to make ridiculous sacrifices for the people he cares about," Sam deadpanned. "He's also one of the five people alive that don't think you're a complete waste of space. Of course he's coming with us. He's practically a Winchester already."

Dean rolled his eyes to cover up the feeling of gratitude toward his brother. "Bitch."

"Jerk."

Of course, given their luck, it wouldn't be that easy.

In the days following Cas's rescue from Sinai Grace, Dean learned that taking in a fallen angel was a task easier said than done. If he had thought that just showing his friend the tricks to being human would be enough, he was quickly proven wrong.

The first problem became apparent the morning after Cas's super-secret little angel powwow.

After meeting with whatever angel was protecting Bobby from the wrath of Heaven and Hell and assuring Sam and Dean that the older hunter was alright, Cas had conked out again. Dean wasn't sure if he was exhausted from the car trip or the exertion of the summoning; either way, Dean felt unaccountably pissed off at the angel. He angrily shrugged off Sam's attempts to help him lug Cas to the bed closest to the heater, and ignored the glances Sam was giving him which invited him to talk about it.

Their meal was a silent affair, the burgers settling uncomfortably in his stomach, and beyond a few half-hearted suggestions about what their next move should be, the brothers settled in their respective beds rather quickly.

Their slumber was interrupted barely an hour later, when Cas awoke, yelling and muttering in what could only be Enochian. Sam and Dean were up instantly, knives drawn, expecting an attack. Instead, they found Cas tangled in his blankets, thrashing around and drenched in sweat.

Fitful sleep was an occupational hazard of the job, and the brothers' custom usually demanded it be ignored. Still, Dean was on his feet and across the room before he was even aware of it, grasping Cas's shoulders and shaking him awake. "Cas – man, wake up."

Cas's body, which had been rigid before he got there, relaxed as soon as Dean put a hand on him. When Cas opened his eyes, Dean could see the rampant confusion, but even more importantly, he saw the terrified gleam behind that. It was the same look he himself saw in the mirror on many a night after his resurrection, pale and drawn in a badly lit mirrors.

"Dean," Cas murmured, and it was all at once a question and a form of reassurance.

Behind him, Dean could hear Sam moving around and then a light flicked on. Cas winced, ducking his eyes from the harsh brightness that even a dim hotel lamp emitted.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, looming beside them.

"I…I appear to be," Cas managed, looking around as though to make sure the motel was not suddenly going to disappear on him. "I thought I was…but I couldn't possibly…"

He was still disoriented and not making sense, but from the way he looked at Dean with such naked relief, Dean knew what had happened.

"You had a nightmare," he stated, voice carefully level.

Cas looked appropriately appalled, though Dean suspected it had as much to do with the novelty of dreaming as with whatever his mortal mind had cooked up for him. Now that the initial exhaustion of becoming human had worn off, Cas's mind could make dreams. Given how many millions of years he had existed as some kind of wavelength of celestial intent, Dean could only imagine what kind of screwed up crap his mind was projecting for him. And where Castiel the angel might have stared emotionlessly down at such things, Cas the human now had a built in sense of preservation and fear.

Still, he managed to force his expression into an approximation of his usual blank stare and he finally said, "It seems probable."

"Whatever it seems, it's okay – none of that's real," Sam assured him. "It's just your mind coping with the stress of the last couple of days. It probably jumbled up a bunch of your thoughts and…memories…"

The way Sam trailed off made Dean sure his brother had just clued in to what memories Cas might be reliving.

"You'll get used to it," Dean said, not wanting to linger too long on what was turning into a moment. He realized that he was still grasping Cas by the shoulders, and pulled back as though burned. For a fraction of a second, Cas seemed to list forward, but he righted himself so quickly that Dean told himself he had imagined it. "The dreams will die down a bit eventually."

The way Cas looked at him, Dean could tell he didn't believe him, but he sat up straighter in his bed and resolutely pulled the motel comforter tighter around himself. "Then I will wait for them to subside."

"It's not…something that happens overnight," Sam attempted.

But Cas was not to be dissuaded. He refused to go back to sleep that night, instead sitting stiffly in the chair staring at the brothers like they were about to disappear on him.

Between the three of them, it looked like they were never going to have another quiet night of sleep again. Dean doubted he would ever stop having memories of Hell, and although Sam was stubbornly quiet about his own nighttime mental escapades in the Cage, Dean knew his brother better than that. And now with Cas jumping on insomnia bandwagon…

'This is gonna be harder than I thought,' was Dean's last thought as he eventually succumbed to sleep.

He awoke several hours later to the sounds of a Star Trek: The Next Generation rerun and Cas still sitting ramrod straight in his chair. Sam was nowhere to be found.

"Good morning, Dean," Cas said, not looking away from the screen. "Sam has gone to get coffee. He spoke to Sherriff Mills again this morning to assure her of Bobby's well-being."

"That's great," Dean yawned, stretching.

"He also wished for me to tell you that he asked after your vehicle, which remained out of harm's way during the attack on Bobby's home."

"Awesome," Dean said, actually meaning it. He noticed that Cas had finally looked up from the television and was regarding him thoughtfully.

Dean shivered, feeling naked suddenly despite wearing boxers and a t-shirt, and more aware than ever of the fact that he didn't have a bra on. Which was not a thought he had ever expected to cross his mind.

"Dude, the staring thing's creepy enough when I'm me, but word to the wise? You look at woman like that in public, she's gonna think you're a pervert."

"Look at her like what?"

"Like you're trying to see through her clothes to what's underneath," Dean said, fishing around for one of Sam's sweaters. "Women don't like knowing you're imagining them naked." He considered his words, and then shrugged, "Well, most of 'em don't."

"You are not a woman and I have no need to imagine you unclothed given that I –"

"Rebuilt my body from the bones up, yeah, yeah…"

"My observation was not meant to make you uncomfortable."

"Oh, yeah? Then what was it meant to do?"

"I was attempting to sense your soul," Cas confessed. "I may be mortal now, but even humans have some extra sensory perceptions. It was my hope that I might be able to cultivate some of my old abilities."

"Well, do me a favor and cultivate those abilities when I actually have pants on, okay? Gotta preserve my sense of modesty."

"I was not aware that you had modesty," Cas replied, his lip twitching.

Dean snorted. "Ha-ha, Jokey McJokerson. Hey, I've got an awesome idea – why don't you hop in the shower and get rid of the lingering smell of hospital? You reek."

Cas appeared bemused, but eventually he did take a tentative trip to the bathroom, while Dean set about getting dressed and packing up the room. Sam returned with three cups of caffeine and a newspaper that he had bought to make sure their kidnapping of Jimmy from the hospital hadn't made the front page.

Dean was just trying to drag a brush through the tangled mess of hair he had inherited when Cas finally re-emerged.

It had obviously been a long and arduous battle for him putting his theoretical knowledge of taking a shower into practice, but despite the shivering and disgruntled expression, he looked like he had managed well enough. Dean was thankful for whatever residual memories Cas had, because it saved him and Sam the awkward possibility of having to demonstrate basic hygiene.

Or worse, how to use a toilet.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean watched Cas, his lower half clumsily wrapped in the motel's too small towel, reach for the nearly folded pile of Jimmy Novak's clothes. From where he sat checking his emails, Sam cleared his throat.

"Cas, you can't wear those," he said gently. "They're completely rank."

"I have nothing else," Cas replied, as though that should be obvious.

"Right, well, that's our first stop today, then," Sam said, closing his laptop in resignation. "Until then, I guess you can borrow some of our things – or at least Dean's. You guys are closer in size than me and you. Right Dean?" There was a pause. "Uh…Dean?"

"What?" Dean replied, not looking away from the former angel's too-thin body. It bothered him that in addition to the faint outline of his ribs and jut of his hips, he could still see traces of the banishing sigil he had noticed in the hospital. The thing should have healed over long ago, considering Cas's über-healing abilities.

Other than that lingering mark, Cas's skin remained untarnished, showing no sign of having been stabbed, shot or blown up in the recent past. The rest of his body was probably as unblemished as Dean's had been the day he crawled out of his grave.

It made Dean wince inwardly at the idea that just by becoming human, Cas was going to experience watching his body become more and more damaged.

"Dude."

Dean blinked and glanced up at his brother, who was watching him stare at Cas. Sam's eyebrows were raised in calculation, and it took Dean a second to realize he had been gazing at a half-naked man more than was appropriate as per men's locker room etiquette. His brain stuttered in an effort to come up with a deflection before Sam could make a comment, and his thoughts flitted back to Cas's otherwise clear chest.

"Tattoo," he grunted.

"Huh?"

"Cas. Needs a tattoo," he clarified with a casual shrug. "He's human now. He's wide open to demonic possession, which we definitely don't want. Remember how determined the demons were to get to Anna?"

"That's actually a good point," Sam allowed, and Dean tried not to bristle at the surprised note in his voice. "Charms are too temporary, and I doubt they'd be strong enough for a former angel. Guess that's two things we've got to do today."

Before they had a chance to do either of those two errands, though, they made yet another inopportune discovery about Cas's new mortality.

After hurrying out of the motel so as not to be questioned about the blood sigils on the walls, they headed up the highway and stopped at a diner for breakfast. It was there that they discovered Cas wasn't yet at a hundred percent functionality. It turned out that his ability to digest food was roughly like that of an anorexic or a person who had been starving to death for two years.

"It looks like re-feeding syndrome," Sam remarked, wincing as they listened to Cas heave his eggs and sausages up inside the bathroom stall of the highway diner. "I think he's gonna have to take it easy on certain foods for a bit. If we're not careful, he could go into shock."

"How long's a bit?"

"I don't know. It shouldn't be too long, but his digestive system isn't going to be back to Jimmy's standards overnight. The only reason he hasn't had any major problems in the past two weeks was because he was fed intravenously during his hospital stay."

The notion of re-feeding syndrome wasn't completely foreign to Dean; he knew his father must have mentioned something about it growing up. Either way, he let Sam take point, merely raising his eyebrows when his brother tried to tempt Cas with dry toast or bland cheeses over the course of the day.

They had to put off the tattoo for another day until Cas looked a little less like a walking corpse. As with the night before, Cas slept only when he was too exhausted to keep his eyes open, and then, fitfully.

The next afternoon, the brothers and Cas drove farther up the highway to Rochester, where it was agreed that Sam would run to a Wal-Mart and pick up some clothes based on Jimmy's measurements while Dean brought Cas to a local parlor to get inked.

"That way we can save a little time and get back on the road," Dean explained.

"You just don't want to go shopping," Sam rolled his eyes, swinging out of the car.

"And tear you away from your mother-hen routine? Never!" Dean shot back, pretending a scandalized tone.

He sent a glance at Cas through the rear-view mirror, where the former angel sat with his arms crossed and shoulders hunched, like he was trying to protect himself from attack. Dean knew it had more to do with the constant cold the angel felt in his new body than any real concern for danger.

'I used to belong to a much better club. And now I'm powerless. I'm hapless, I'm hopeless.'

The words had been echoing in his head since they busted Cas out of the hospital. More than once Dean looked at his friend wearing his hand-me-downs and felt nauseous at how much Cas resembled the future version of himself that Dean had met in a Croat-infested future.

Human or not, Dean had no intention of letting Cas rot away into that sad excuse for a human that he had seen in 2014. If he had anything to do with it, Cas would never even learn the words to Sweet Leaf. The other reason he insisted on Sam picking up Cas's new things was that Sam had girly tastes. The guy would probably try to dress Cas more respectably than typical hunter ware, so at least the visual reminder would be somewhat downplayed.

Dean must have been caught up staring again, because when he came back to himself Cas was eyeing him with his usual intense gaze. Trying to cover up yet another momentary lapse, he barked out, "Hey, get up front with me. I ain't a chauffeur and you're no Miss Daisy."

Which garnered a puzzled look, but at least Cas did as he was told.

The place Dean drove them to was on the poorer side of town and had perhaps been a small movie house in the 1930's. Now it was a graffitied yellow-stone with frosted glass windows showing the various tattoo designs. Cas stared, ostensibly fascinated, by a drawing of a zombie ninja riding on the back of a dinosaur ("Tyrannosaurs did not look like that," he pointed out), before Dean dragged him inside.

The place looked the same as the one where Sam and Dean had gotten their ink several years earlier – dimly lit, with pictures of the tattoo designs covering the walls, and a few chairs (albeit empty) set up for customers. It smelled of Vaseline, plastic and disinfectant and there were glass display cases with every kind of jewelry for body modification imaginable; crappy punk and alternative rock played in the background, but Dean could deal with it for the few hours it took to get Cas some protection.

"Can I help you?" the chick at the register asked. She was petite, platinum blond and skinny, with more metal in her face than Dean had in the trunk of the car. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Cas's trenchcoat hobo look, which persisted despite Dean's BOC t-shirt and jeans.

"Yeah, he wants this," Dean said, tugging down the hem of his own shirt and displaying his own tattoo.

The woman made the obligatory comment about how interesting a choice it was, and then crouched behind the counter.

"I need you to fill out this form here," the tattoo chick said unconcernedly, sliding a sheet of paper and pen across the glass display case to Cas. "It's standard medical issues and consent. I just need it on paper that you're doing this of your own free will and not because your girlfriend is pushing you into it."

"I'm not his girlfriend," Dean snapped.

"Fine, wife, whatever," the woman rolled her eyes, earning a wordless splutter from Dean which Cas interrupted by quietly insisting, "It is of utmost importance that I receive this design."

"Sure thing, professor," she drawled. "Just sign your John Hancock and tell me where you want it."

After a nerve-wracking minute of wondering if Cas even knew what a John Hancock was but then being relieved when the former angel reached over and signed a clumsy Jimmy Novak on the sheet (and why was it so weird to see Cas actually using a pen?), the chick led them to one of the chairs and started to sketch out the anti-possession symbol that Dean showed her.

He and Cas quietly corrected whatever imperfections they noticed, and while she went to get the transfer papers to finalize the design, Dean suggested adding a few Enochian symbols to keep Cas off of Heaven's radar as well.

"My brother saw to that already," Cas assured him quietly. "I have the same protective sigils on my body as you and Sam do."

Which was one less thing to worry about, at least.

Thankfully the tattoo artist wasn't chatty, instead focussing on her task. Once she traced the design onto Cas's chest, she went to work quickly. Cas, for his part, only jumped slightly at the sound of the tattoo gun starting up, but as the woman began to etch the symbol into his chest and blood began to flow, he remained quiet. The only betrayal of any pain was when he suddenly reached out and tightly grabbed hold of Dean's hand.

Dean's instinctual response to any man holding his hand was to pull away, but the knowledge that Cas was only in this mess because of him forced him to tamp down that reaction. Instead, he simply told himself he was glad Sam wasn't around to see it and waited it out.

It was an uncomfortable few hours, which Dean filled with mindless chatter about how he was going to fix up the Impala once they got around to it and how he was going to teach Cas to drive. Cas made an occasional response if required, but seemed focused on the entire tattooing process. Dean eventually stopped talking as well, and simply watched in fascination as Cas's face went through several variations over a short period of time, expressions he never imagined actually seeing on the former angel.

"You okay?" Dean asked about halfway through the session, noticing the tense set of Cas's jaw as the pierced chick got up to answer the phone.

"It is…interesting," Cas replied, testing the word for appropriateness.

Dean wasn't able to hold back a chuckle. "Only you would classify someone poking needles into your skin as interesting."

Cas met his gaze, blue eyes almost as intense as they had been when it was an angel looking out from behind them. Solemnly, he replied, "Dean, I laid siege to the depths of Hell to retrieve you, while the fires of damnation ate at my grace. You, of all people, should understand that this –" he nodded at the outline of the pentagram, " – is hardly something to be concerned with."

Which, when put like that, Dean had to agree with.

An few hours after that, they left the tattoo parlor considerably more broke, but at least protected once again. When they settled in their motel of choice for the night, Sam had bags of new clothes to offer Cas, and had set up his laptop and camera in the living area in order provide Cas with his own identity. The process took until the next day, and it wasn't until Sam slid into the seat across from Dean and Cas at the diner a block away from the Copymart in Molline, Illinois that they actually got to see the finished products.

"Here you go," Sam said, pushing a handful of cards forward.

Cas blinked blankly down at the topmost square of plastic. "What is this?"

"We've been over this. It's your new identifications – well, one of them," Sam explained; the expectant look on his face was similar to the one he used to wear waiting for Dad to stop cleaning his guns to glance at his term report card. "This one's your primary one, and I'll made a few for you to use on cases."

"This is not the name of my vessel," Cas remarked.

"Yeah, well, it's not a vessel anymore, Pinocchio, you're a real boy," Dean muttered under his breath as the waitress appeared and poured steaming hot coffee into their cups. As she took their orders, Cas angled the card in his hand toward Dean, who squinted at the false driver's licence.

"That's the whole point, Cas," Sam went on, as though they hadn't been interrupted. "Pretty sure since our great escape, people are going to be looking for Jimmy Novak."

"'Cassidy Campbell'?" Dean read. He shot Sam an unimpressed look. "Dude, could you pick a girlier name?"

"It's unisex," Sam defended with a scowl, bringing out the other ID cards. "And it was either that or 'Casper', and I figured our lives are ironic enough. Hey Cas, pass the sugar, would you?"

"At least that's a guy's name," Dean retorted as Cas reached for the requested condiment.

"I am neither male nor female," Cas pointed out. "Angels do not have –"

Dean's ready retort for that line of rebuttal was cut off when Cas's sleeve caught on the coffee cup placed before him and knocked the thing over. Apparently, thousands of years as an angel didn't make an overly graceful human. He and Dean both jumped to avoid it, but a large amount of the beverage landed on Cas's trenchcoat.

"Nice moves, butterfingers," Dean snorted, although he checked surreptitiously to make sure none of the scalding drink had hit Cas. Third degree burns from coffee were not pleasant, or so he'd learned from McDonalds. "You good?"

"I will survive," Cas replied gravely. "Although, I believe I should…compose myself in the washroom?"

"Yeah," Sam said, already getting up. "You need help, or – ?"

"I am not an infant," Cas reminded them, almost impatiently as he shrugged out of his sodden coat and headed across the diner.

Dean watched him go, and then offered Sam a mock-proud look. "They grow up so fast, don't they, honey?"

Sam shook his head and busied himself with mopping up whatever amount of the mess hadn't landed on Cas.

Dean shrugged and took a gander at some of the other IDs. In each of them, Cas looked tired and pale, with dark circles underneath his eyes. Sam had tried to Photoshop as much of that out as possible, but it was still obvious.

He noticed some of the other names, and stared for a moment. He flipped through all of them quickly, and when he realized what he was seeing, he full-on glowered at his brother. "What the hell, Sammy?"

"What?" Sam asked, the butter-wouldn't-melt look not fooling Dean.

"Cassidy Joplin? Cassidy Larkin – why do all his IDs have the same names as mine? You run out of imagination, or something?"

"No, I'm trying for more authentic," Sam retorted with a self-satisfied smirk. "Even when we look normal, Cas doesn't resemble us in any way, so we can only say he's our brother so many times before someone who's actually paying attention gets suspicious. So, next best idea, you guys are married."

Dean gaped. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Come on, Dean, admit it, it's a good idea," Sam continued, unaware of the way Dean's fingers clenched and unclenched with the desire to strangle his little brother.

"So why aren't you married to him?"

Sam snorted. "You really need me to answer that one? You're the one he can stare at for hours at a time, not me."

"He does not stare for hours. And besides, he so does do it to you too."

"Not like he's trying desperately to see if he can see my soul again," Sam replied smugly. "Guess my soul's just not as bright as yours, huh?"

"I will cut you," Dean threatened.

In the end, he let the issue lie. He may not have liked the idea, but Sam had a point.

'I'm just gonna be the one to make the next batch of IDs,' he decided as he finished off his coffee. 'And if Sam's new name is 'Ivana Tinkle', than that's his issue, not mine.'

"Speaking of significant others," Sam went on. "I was thinking we should maybe stop by Cicero. Maybe check in with Lisa and Ben."

"No," Dean stated, levelling a glare across the Formica diner table at his brother, who stubbornly mirrored the expression.

"It's on the way," Sam pressed, his mouth twisted into the petulant little-brother bitchface he had been pulling since he was old enough to complain.

"I don't care. That's all I need to make this week suck more."

Sam's expression turned knowing, and Dean cursed his brother's tendency to be able to pick up his thought wave-lengths. "You really think she'd care?"

"I have no intention of finding out."

"Finding out what?" Cas asked as he returned to his seat beside Dean, his trenchcoat folded awkwardly over his arm.

"I was just telling Dean it might be an idea to stop in to see Lisa and Ben on the way back east," Sam explained, altering the pitch of his voice so that he sounded like he was trying to be reasonable instead of whining about why he was right and Dean was wrong.

"That is the woman you sought asylum with after the Apocalypse failed," Cas stated, with an almost curious hitch to his voice. "If you considered it a safe location, why would you not wish to return there?"

At this, Sam's expression turned mocking. "He's worried they'll be intimidated by his new breasts."

"Screw you."

"Why would she be unsettled by your cleavage?" Cas asked, his forehead wrinkled as he waited for whatever English-Enochian translator thing he had going in his head to catch up with the conversation. "It does not appear to be overly large or in any way threateni –"

"Dude – just – no," Dean managed, caught between glaring at the inept former angel and his smirking brother. The blood was rushing to his face, because were they actually talking about this?

"In all seriousness, we're going to run out of cash soon and it'll take a bit before the new cards come in. Especially since our usual P.O. Box has closed down on account of huge truck," Sam went on, taking a sip of his coffee. "It'd be nice to have a place to crash while we make a few bucks instead of sleeping in the car."

"Your vehicle is much more confining than Dean's," Cas allowed reasonably, filling Dean at once with pride that the former angel had at least developed an appreciation for the Impala since the last time he was human, followed by annoyance that he was agreeing with Sam.

Neither of those emotions completely drowned out his overwhelming regret that he wouldn't be seeing or driving his baby any time soon. She was safe, for now, but still a wreck.

"I don't care what either of you think," Dean said, returning to the problem at hand. "And even if I didn't look like the psycho Slayer from Buffy right now, I still wouldn't go there. We don't need to be bringing our issues down on them. Or have you forgotten just how many sons of bitches are lookin' for us?"

"Got any bright ideas, then?" Sam challenged. "Without Bobby's, we don't have anywhere to go. Cicero's the only place I can think of that's protected and where no one wants to kill us."

"We'll come up with something else," Dean stated firmly. "Right now, I'd stay with Becky Rosen before I went back to Lisa's." Sam's mouth closed with an audible snap, which Dean counted as a win, and he continued, "Although, - hey, here's an idea – we could always crash with Chuck for a bit."

"That is not advisable," Cas shook his head. "After the release of Lucifer, Raphael was given the responsibility of guarding him. Now that my brother has returned, he will be even more protective. If the prophet remains in his abode, which is unlikely, he will be heavily guarded. You would be needlessly exposing yourselves to danger."

The tone had the familiar doomsday intensity that had characterized most of Cas's past warnings. Still, Dean was having trouble reconciling the familiar image of the untouchable, very inhuman angel that had helped them in the past with the unshaven guy in jeans, a grey thermal undershirt and a navy sweater.

Cas moved his hand absently toward the place where his new talisman had been etched, his fingers lightly brushing against the shirt covering it.

"Don't scratch, man, you'll get it infected," Dean reminded him, reaching forward and slapping his hand away. "Or worse, mess up the lines."

"It itches," Cas told him blandly, even though he folded his hands back down into his lap.

"It's going to do that for about a week," Sam told him. "Try to ignore it."

"How?"

"Find a distraction," Dean suggested, casting his gaze about and then grinning when he saw the waitress headed their way, balancing a tray of mouth-watering dishes. "Look, food! That's distracting."

"Maybe if you're you," Sam said under his breath, but Dean ignored him in favor of biting into his double cheeseburger once it had been set down in front of him. "You know, substituting salad for the fries once in a while wouldn't kill you."

"That you know of."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Dean, what did vegetables ever do to you?"

"They're not meat and grease, that's what they've done to me," Dean answered cheerily, tossing back a slug of soda.

"You should be trying to set a better example," Sam muttered, inclining his head toward Cas.

The former angel was watching them with thinly disguised curiosity and apprehension, and then stared distrustfully down at the tall glass of milk that Sam had ordered for him. Dean had almost laughed at the ridiculousness of a grown man being ordered for, except he was beginning to think that Sam was just really enjoying the sense of taking care of someone. Dean rarely let him do it without major teasing or protest, and Cas didn't yet know any better.

"He's an ex-soldier of God, not a three year old," Dean maintained.

"He's never had a human body before that was actually fully operational," Sam shot back. "You saw how sick he got with those breakfast sausages yesterday."

"Maybe he just doesn't like sausage," Dean returned facetiously, waggling his eyebrows. "To each their own."

Sam wasn't impressed. "Real mature."

"I am beginning to understand your annoyance with being talked about as if you were not present," Cas remarked mildly. "Is this merely more human behaviour or a specifically Winchester brand of comportment?"

"Both," Sam and Dean chorused, and then grimaced at one another.

"Moving on," Sam finally said after watching Dean drench his fries in ketchup, "if Lisa's out, what's the game plan?"

"I say we stick to the idea of heading for New York," Dean declared. "It's going on two weeks now, and as nice as it is not to have the world on our ass about something, I'm getting tired of having to remember to put on a bra every morning or be stared at by perverts at every diner we stop at."

"Dean…" Sam began, looking like he was preparing his own arguments on the subject.

"Plus, Dad's lock-up is back that way. It'd be nice to have an extra arsenal if we need it," he went on, pretending he didn't see the constipated twist in Sam's face. "What do you think, Cas?"

It was remarkable how easy it was to include Cas in their future plans. Despite having been 'Dean and Sam' for so long, Dean didn't feel any kind of resentment or discomfort at the idea of Cas travelling with them. He'd teamed up with other hunters before, but it had always been out of necessity and with the unspoken agreement that as soon as the job was done, they would go their separate ways. Even before that, when Dad had been alive and it had been him, Sam and Dean hunting together, there had always been that undertone of tension that never went away. Sam and Dad had been too alike for their own good, and it had caused problems, while Sam and Dean had always made one hell of a team.

'Minus the occasional betrayal and tendency to get ourselves killed for each other,' Dean added thoughtfully.

But Cas was almost like Bobby, in a way; the brothers were comfortable enough with him by now to welcome him into the fold.

"I believe Sam is correct in suggesting that you will need some kind of base of operations," Cas said thoughtfully, "especially if you are going to attempt to rescue your brother. The car is not conducive to that. However –" he frowned, as though unfamiliar with trying to put his thoughts in order, "– Dean is also right. Placing other innocents in danger is not wise at this juncture. And it will attract undue attention."

His tone was calm and businesslike, a very big difference from the way he behaved at night.

"I'm thinking we could probably find somewhere in New York to stay while we figure everything out," Dean said without preamble. "And it might be an idea for you to meet this guy Bobby sent us to, Cas. I know you don't actually have any of your mojo left, but do you think if you spoke to him you'd be able to figure out if the way into Hell is the real deal?"

"It is a possibility," Cas allowed, expression shifting from the serious look he had sported while he confided in Sam to a calculating one. "However, I was under the impression that this contact of yours was reluctant to share information with you until you had procured the help of a witch."

"Well, yeah, but he's never met you before and you could, I don't know, act like an angel or something to get him to let something slip," Dean suggested.

Cas appeared both offended and bemused by this.

"I'm gonna grab the cheque so we can leave when you finish off your rabbit food," Dean said, swinging out of the booth. "And so help me, Sam, if you eat that side order of beans, I will be hanging your rotten ass outta the window while we drive."

(*)

"Dean has told me that you remember Hell," Castiel remarked almost as soon as Dean left the table.

Sam accidentally inhaled some of his yoghurt and had to cough a few times to regain the ability to breathe. Castiel was staring at him in his usual penetrating way, completely unaware of the effect his words had had.

"He did?" Sam managed finally, trying not to show how much that bothered him. It had taken Dean months to finally tell Sam about his experiences in Hell, and Sam had kept that secret close to his heart.

The fact that Dean had told Castiel felt almost like a betrayal, until Castiel added, "He wished to know if there was some way to help you once again forget you experiences there."

Sam jerked his head up to where Dean was paying the bill, flashing the waitress a smile that would seem flirtatious on his usual face but which came off as overly friendly on this one. It figured that Dean had known he was still relieving his brief stint in the Cage; unfortunately, his brother still had that uncanny ability to see through Sam's attempts at soldiering on with annoying clarity.

"If there were a way, you would have helped Dean forget when you were still an angel."

"No, I would not."

Now Sam was full-on staring at Castiel, disbelief rising up along with something close to anger at the revelation. Because it had been Sam, not Castiel, who had had to share a room with Dean the past two years and pretend he didn't know what Dean was dreaming about. And it was Sam, not Castiel, who had gone on the road with his brother and sometimes been afraid to look him in the eye on the off chance that the hell-ravaged part of his brother was staring back at him.

"Are you kidding me?" he hissed.

"Maybe before," Castiel went on pensively, "but not now."

"Why the hell not?"

"Dean's nightmares and memories allow him to compartmentalize his experiences. They help him work through all he has seen," Castiel explained lightly. "He has not remembered everything yet."

"He remembers enough," Sam answered tightly. "I know that much."

"He has not yet remembered how my garrison saved him, or the journey from Hell," Castiel went on, oblivious to Sam's mounting anger. "I do not know if he ever will, in this lifetime. He has a tendency to focus on the worst parts of his life, you see. But there is one particular moment of his time in Hell, one which is so valuable, that I would never risk destroying it by taking those memories away."

"One moment…over thousands of terrible ones?" Sam demanded. "Cas, maybe you haven't been human for very long, but one good point, whatever it is, doesn't make up for a lifetime of bad ones."

"Perhaps I have judged it incorrectly," Castiel allowed. "You are better versed in your brother's behaviour and worth than I am, perhaps you could offer your opinion." Before Sam could ask why Castiel was getting into this with him now, in a diner of all places, the former angel continued, "When I came for Dean, he was elbows deep in the shredded carcass of a damned soul, feasting on flesh and blood and revelling in the suffering. I am sure you can imagine what that looks like."

The way Castiel was considering him, all-too-knowing, made Sam think that maybe Dean wasn't the only one who knew exactly what Sam saw in his dreams every night.

"When my brothers and I entered the circle of Hell where Dean was ensconced, and he realized that we were making our way to him, he did not flee the way many other demons would have or beg to be saved as any damned soul might," Castiel recounted. "He begged us to take someone else – the soul he had been torturing, those waiting their turn – it didn't matter, anyone but him. He fought me when I approached him."

"What?" Sam whispered, stunned.

"Part of the reason was, I believe, that he didn't believe he deserved to be saved – I do not know if you have noticed, but your brother has a notoriously low sense of self-worth," Castiel said, and though the words were said in the rueful way of someone lamenting a character flaw, Sam also detected an almost affectionate twist to the former angel's mouth. "The other reason was that he was afraid if I removed him from the Pit, he would be dooming you to the death you might have had the first time." Castiel took an experimental sip of from the glass before him, made a face, and then glanced back at Sam. "Do you see why I might be hesitant to destroy that memory?"

Sam was silent.

"He was in Hell…a dimension that destroys any sense of kinship between souls within the first minutes of arriving there," Castiel continued, almost harsh. "And after forty years and nearly becoming a demon himself, his thoughts were still on others. On you."

Sam swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat, glancing up again at Dean who was giddily pointing through the display case up front at what was probably some kind of pie or another. The waitress, obviously charmed despite herself, was laughing and likely explaining the different offerings.

"Why are you telling me this?" Sam asked, his feminine voice a little more hoarse than usual.

"I believe humans have a saying along the lines of 'that which does not destroy you makes you more resilient', yes?" Castiel said softly. "I deeply believe that to be true in Dean's case. And in yours." He paused. "At first, the deal I made required that you not remember. My intentions were clear, Sam, I wished you and your brother peace. I had not counted on your encounter with a leprechaun breaking down that wall. But now that it has happened, I can only imagine you benefitting from them."

"How the hell am I supposed to benefit from watching myself carve open my younger brother every night?" Sam demanded tightly.

Castiel fixed him with the same look that he often aimed Dean's way, and Sam felt absurdly like he was being x-rayed.

"Your memories from the Pit," Castiel finally said, "whatever they show you, might hurt now, but I have no doubt there are moments that will more than make up for that. And if that possibility is not sufficient for you, I have another theory."

"Oh, yeah?" Sam grunted.

"You spent the equivalent of ten years in the Cage with Lucifer and Michael," he said. "You likely have a better picture of them than any angel of the Host has had in a long time. No one has known Lucifer as intimately as you have –" Sam made a face at the phrasing, "– and even when he was in Heaven, Michael remained apart from the rest. The last time I had spoken to him was when the first creatures crawled out of the seas."

And if that didn't give Sam a second's pause, the next thing did.

"I never told you what happened to me when the Host…recalled me…last year," Castiel told him evenly, continuing to watch Sam's face.

"Well, you sort of implied…and Anna said it was probably unpleasant," Sam hedged, not entirely comfortable talking about Heaven and torture. As much crap as the angels had put him and Dean through, it was hard to have an ideal you had grown up believing in completely shattered the way his faith had.

"That is putting it mildly. It was not unlike experiencing one of the nightmares this body is prone to," Castiel said. "I was tortured, of course. Disciplined, my brothers called it. And then they started off my re-education by having me experience destroying you, Sam. Over and over." A hard, almost angry tone inched into Castiel's voice. "I was hesitant at first, because I had seen first-hand that you truly believed what you were doing could help people. Even as an abomination, you had a good heart."

Sam bristled at the word. "You haven't called me that in a while."

"I have not believed it in a while. I could see the good in you, where others could not. But once that belief was ripped away from me by the Host, I still hesitated to strike you down because it would invalidate the promise I had made to Dean."

Sam shifted uncomfortably, once again aware of just how badly he had treated his brother during that year with Ruby. Dean had been killing himself trying to make sure that the angels were going to leave Sam alone, and Sam hadn't want to hear it.

"Better men than you have been led astray," Castiel reminded him, as though he could read Sam's thoughts. "Even angels are not immune to adversity. I learned that lesson myself." His forehead wrinkled at the memory. "Once it became nothing to me to burn your very soul from its body in my brothers' little simulations, they changed the lesson. It was Dean I had to rid the world of, because he would ultimately be the biggest obstacle in getting to you."

Castiel went quiet for a moment, and this time Sam was sure he saw more than a little heavenly fury burning in Castiel's eyes at the memory.

"You know, we don't have to talk about this if it upsets you," Sam attempted, but Castiel waved him away and continued talking.

"It was a last resort exercise, of course, but my brothers wanted to ensure that when the time came to act decisively, I would not hesitate. I was forced to kill Dean over, and over, and over. I am sure you appreciate what an effect that might have had on my state of mind."

"A little," Sam admitted tightly, remembering the Mystery Spot in Florida all-too-well.

"I was kept prisoner by my brothers quite a bit longer than you and Dean were in Hell," Castiel explained. "Heaven is eternal, more so than Hell, and so time passes much slower there. And when I returned to you, I returned full of Heaven's intent and firm in my convictions once again."

"Yeah, I remember that," Sam said. "Dean was in a funk for a week after that."

"I apologize for that. My mind was not my own after the ordeal," Castiel inclined his head to one side. "But in the end, what I suffered by the hands of my brothers meant nothing. Dean – and you, to an extent – broke through the lessons they had forced on me. I was able to regain the sense of self I had developed because of you both."

"Uh…well, that's a relief."

"What I am trying to impart to you, Sam, is that as bad as the situation is, there is hope. Adam has already been down in the Cage longer than you or Dean. Longer than I was in Heaven. And while every moment is indeed a trial – I am sure that once you find him, you will find a way to help him back to himself," Castiel concluded.

Sam stared, feeling the bizarre urge to reach out and hug Castiel. Which would be completely awkward, even if Dean hadn't been striding back down the aisle towards them.

"I take it you haven't said any of this to Dean?" Sam asked, lowering his voice the closer his brother got.

"Dean does not take kindly to sensitive conversations," Castiel stated matter-of-factly. "You, on the other hand, are more likely to appreciate the value of them. Even more so in your current form."

Sam blinked. "Did you just call me a girl?"

He might have imagined it, but it looked like Castiel's lips twitched. "If you wish to interpret it that way." The expression was gone a minute later as Castiel glanced up. "What has happened?"

Sam glanced up to see Dean standing by their table, a grim expression on his face.

"Nothing happened. But…look." Dean brandished something at them; it took Sam a moment to recognize that it was a newspaper.

"What – did the Detroit police decide to circulate our photos across the country or something?" Sam asked, automatically reaching for the paper to see if their cover was blown. There were no photos in the paper though.

"Huh? Oh, nah, they probably didn't get a good enough look at us," Dean said, waving that away. "But check that out." He tapped one of the columns in the newspaper.

Sam scanned through the story. "Decatur, Illinois – series of murders of brides minutes before their wedding ceremony – locals believe it to be the Greenwood Bride, the ghost of a –" He looked up sharply, thinning his lips. "Dean, is this you suggesting we take a job? Weren't you just bitching about wanting your junk back?"

"You know any other hunters we can call to deal with it?" Dean returned. "Last I checked they all hate us. Or worse, they're on angel lock-down who-the-hell-knows where." He scowled. "It's not the best timing, yeah, but last I checked, this was still our job up until a few weeks ago."

Sam stared, trying to collect his thoughts. Despite Castiel's revelations and their previous conversation, he still felt more than a little conflicted about the entire issue. "What happened to our plan of helping Adam?"

"It's still our plan," Dean retorted, sounding defensive, like he didn't like it being implied that he wasn't trying his hardest to find their brother. "But so far, the best lead we've got on that front is a spell that's going to need a witch. And it's not like we can just place a personal ad saying 'SWM seeking reject from The Craft to open a gate to Hell' in the local paper."

"So you're just going to troll through the paper looking for random hunts and hope there's a witch at the other end of it?" Sam asked, incredulous.

"It's how we used to do it," Dean shrugged. "And it already sounds kind of like more than your usual ghost, right?"

"It is odd, considering evil spirits cannot usually cross sacred ground," Castiel agreed thoughtfully. "If something as lowly as a spirit can break such ancient laws, it might be something to look into. We may be able to discern how it did it and use that for our own purposes."

"Exactly," Dean asserted. "It sounds like our kind of thing. We should look into it."

"It might also provide an opportunity for me to become more familiar with hunting as a human," Castiel suggested. "If I am to be of any use to you, I would need to accrue experience in this life, yes?" At Sam's unchanging expression, his shoulders slumped a little. "It is, of course, your choice."

Which, of course, made Sam feel guilty; as important as Adam was right now, so was Castiel. It wasn't an easy thing going from an all-powerful being to just a human, and he supposed that right now Castiel was feeling more than a little frustrated at his weakened state. If Sam had been in his position, he would have been eager to better himself as well.

"Look, man, I know this isn't how you want to do things. But…we looked into less when you were trying to keep my deal from coming due," Dean pointed out. "An extra day out chasing down a lead to help Adam, whether it's this ghost thing in Decatur or hunting down the crap we need to do the spell, it's not going to make much difference."

Sam considered the earnest expression on Dean's face, for once devoid of the frustration and desperation he had become so used to seeing during the Apocalypse. He sighed, and looked back at the newspaper. "So, Decatur, huh?"

(*)

Tongues of flame licked at his skin, making it blacken and curl while the smell of burning flesh and fat filled his nostrils. Adam was splayed on the ground before him, choking up blood while Sam groped around in his chest cavity, shredding organs and breaking bones in his attempts to burrow clean through the body.

"You see, Sam?" Lucifer whispered to him, using Sam's lips and voice to speak. "Family only goes so far."

His response was cut off as Adam's hand suddenly flashed out, dealing a blow to Sam's throat that made his head jerk back with an audible crack and his windpipe crush inwards. As he staggered back, grasping at his throat with blood encrusted hands, Adam – no, Michael – loomed over him, the flesh on his chest knitting up.

"You stupid son of a bitch," Michael growled, coming forward. "You ruined everything. You always ruin everything."

He grabbed hold of Sam's – no, Lucifer's – ruined throat with one hand, while a sword made of fire and light and grace materialized in his other hand. Before Sam could scream, he brought it down across his face –

SLAM!

Sam jerked awake, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling as he did so. For a moment, he was disoriented and confused at his surroundings, unable to separate reality from the nightmare. As his senses returned to him, though, he relaxed and glanced out at the gas station; in the side view mirror he could see Dean leaning against the car as he filled up the tank. Jefferson Airplane was playing on the radio, a soft counterpoint to Castiel's rhythmic breathing in the back seat.

'Probably passed out again,' Sam thought, sitting up straight and rubbing crud out of his own eyes.

Much as he was onboard with Castiel joining them now that he was human, it was going to take some getting used to, hunting in a unit again. It had been Sam and Dean for so long he had almost forgotten what it was like to hit the road with an extra body. He was sort of glad that Castiel was in hibernation mode a few hours a day, because it gave him some time to slowly adjust to his presence.

Castiel was still waging his war on sleep after the first few nightmares he had had, snoozing only when exhaustion forced his body into shutdown-mode. Usually this only happened during the day, and Sam was pretty sure that it was because Castiel felt more secure when either he or Dean was awake to put an end to any nightmare that threatened. If Dean slamming the car door hadn't roused Castiel, he was probably going to be out for a little while. Sam wished he could say the same for himself, but unfortunately a lifetime of hunting had made him a light sleeper.

Wanting to forget the images that were seared into his brain, he watched Dean in the side-mirror for a while, smirking when the gas station attendant sidled over to him and attempted to strike up a chat. For someone who was so smooth when it came to charming women, Dean was beyond useless when it came to holding a conversation with a man that was genuinely hitting on him, rare an occurrence as that usually was. Living in California, Sam had managed to develop a politer form of rejection when he was hit on by an interested party of the same sex, but Dean's default setting in that respect gravitated between awkwardly stuttering through excuses or lashing out with a punch.

'Wonder which one we'll see today,' Sam thought idly, not particularly wanting to have to bail Dean out of a local jail cell for assault but also sorely needing something amusing to cheer him up from the nightmare he had just been having.

Fate intervened before anything could happen, because the attendant was flagged by an annoyed looking trucker wanting the keys to the washroom, and Dean was able to finish pumping the gas. He wandered into the small station, paid the cashier, and then returned, swinging into the drivers' seat.

"I hate this body," he said for the millionth time as he tossed Sam a plastic bag and glanced into the back seat. "Mr. Comatose there still down for the count?"

"Yeah," Sam said, frowning at the contents of the bag: chips, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks. "You know, I'd blame your new physique for the junk food cravings, but you always eat like this. Wasn't there anything in the store not packed with sugar or sodium?"

"Yeah, the toilet paper," Dean rolled his eyes and turned the key in the ignition. "Quit complaining. I've seen you down more than a few Butterfingers in the past few days when you thought I wasn't looking."

"'Cause they were the only thing you'd bought. Seriously, are you channeling the Trickster's spirit now?"

"I haven't dipped your fingers in warm water lately, have I? 'Sides, you got a problem with what I buy, you do the grocery runs from now on."

"I would, if we stopped anywhere for more than five minutes!"

"We've got a schedule to keep," Dean reminded him. "Speaking of, run me through the case again."

"Jawohl, mein Führer," Sam muttered under his breath as he opened the browser on his Treo to the page he had bookmarked earlier. "Says here, Stephanie Hindley was getting ready to marry her fiancé…a Roger Aitchison at St. James Catholic Church last week; she was in the back room getting ready and sent her bridesmaid out to get her father for the big walk down the aisle. When he got there, though, the door was locked and she wouldn't answer. They thought she might have gotten cold feet and ran off, so they broke down the door."

"Let me guess…she was still there but significantly less alive?"

"The paper doesn't give too many details, but the word 'shredded' was used," Sam allowed with a wince, able to imagine what had happened only too well.

"Shredded? Could be a werewolf."

"Lunar cycle's not right."

"Deva maybe? Or a Hellhound?"

Sam pretended not to notice the subtle pitch of fear in his brother's voice at the notion. "There was no damage to the doors or windows, and there's no mention of her behaving suspiciously or paranoid before her death," Sam said. "At least not in what I've been able to find."

"So what's the official theory?"

"Police think there's a serial killer on the loose, while a lot of the locals are saying it's the resident ghost doing the killing."

"Wait, they're actually blaming the ghost?" Dean asked, glancing at Sam. "Scratch that – they have a local ghost?"

"Yeah, it's a famous legend around these parts," Sam replied, opening a new browser window to search for the actual story of the ghost.

"And no hunter's come to check it out before this…why?"

"Probably they did and found nothing – or they got rid of it, but people keep talking up the story anyway to generate tourism," Sam shrugged, entering a search term into his browser. He opened the first link that looked promising. "Oh-kay, according to the legend, Irving Jones and Anne Williams of Decatur fall in love and decide to run away when her parents don't approve of the match. Jones was a bootlegger during Prohibition – "

"He made videos?"

"No, Dean, he smuggled booze."

"Dude's my kind of awesome."

"Anyway, they run off to get married, but he decides to go on one last whiskey run. I guess he wanted to make sure they were living the high life wherever they were going. He ends up cornered by business rivals, who murder him and leave his body in the Sangamon River. When his fiancée finds out, she drowns herself in the same river. Ever since then, she supposedly haunts the Greenwood cemetery. People reportedly see her walking among the graves in a wedding gown and crying or wringing her hands."

"Almost sounds like a Woman in White," Dean pointed out. "The whole river thing, and the white dress. When was the first death in town?"

"Five months ago."

"Anything before then?"

"Nothing that I've been able to find."

"So if this happened a hundred years ago, why hasn't the ghost been offing Bridezillas until now?"

"Someone must have disturbed something," Sam theorized.

"Could be a simple salt-and-burn, then."

"Maybe. But I don't think so. Especially if this spirit is able to cross church grounds to go after its victims."

"The spirit of the Hookman managed it."

"He was tied to a physical object, though," Sam pointed out. "And from what I've seen in the paper, only three of the weddings were going to happen in churches. The others took place at city hall. I really doubt it's the same case."

"Has anyone actually seen the ghost?"

"No one who's lived to tell about it," Sam answered grimly. "It's probably just the dead bride thing that's got people thinking it's the Greenwood Ghost."

"Awesome," Dean sighed, turning onto the last exit to Decatur. "So, what's the game plan? Morgue first or victims' families?"

"I checked the business hours online, the local morgue isn't open until noon on Wednesdays, so we've got time to kill. I figure we should probably check the crime scenes first."

"Well, City Hall's gonna suck, but the churches might be an easier place to start."

"Don't count on it. I called around last night to see if we could swing an interview, but I was practically hung up on every time. The reporter thing isn't going to work here. Maybe we could try the FBI angle."

Dean made a face, and shook his head. "Nah, it's pretty rare for two chicks to be on assignment in general, but FBI? They'll see right through that."

"One of us could go with Cas?"

Dean cast a would-be surreptitious glance in the rear-view mirror. "I dunno if he's ready for that. The last time he and I pulled that, we were lucky he didn't blow it. Besides, he looks dead on his feet half the time. Also not believable."

There was silence for a moment, and then Sam shifted, a sudden idea forming in his mind. "You know, there is something else we could try…"

(*)

"I am not comfortable with this," Cas pronounced as he and Dean proceeded up the small flight of stairs leading into the church.

St. James Catholic was a decently sized brownstone edifice on the corner of Clay and Webster. It had recently been refurbished, if the pristinely painted white panes were anything to go on. Its roof remained the original copper, though, judging by the oxidized green hue. The sound of Old Glory flapping in the wind overhead mingled with the noises of local traffic going by. There was an odd collection of objects off to one side, surrounding the portrait of a sheepish looking, heavy-lidded blond woman.

"Who are you telling?" Dean replied in disgust.

"I believe I was telling you."

"You were…? No, you – Cas, look, just let me do the talking and we can get out of this with minimal awkwardness," Dean groaned. "When I get my body back, just let Sam try to pull his crap…of course he gets to be the one actually working while we do all the distracting…"

"That is not the reason for my discomfort," Castiel insisted. "I simply do not wish to lie to a man of God."

"Get used to it. Happens a lot in this line of work," Dean shrugged. "Just don't try to hug or kiss me, okay? That'd be weird."

Cas looked up from where he had been staring at the collection of flowers, stuffed animals and handwritten notes that were gathered off to the side of the church entrance. "Why would I attempt to do any of those things?"

"Because we're pretending to be…never mind," Dean sighed as they went through the front doors. "Stick to what we went over the car and we'll be okay."

"Very well," Cas nodded, thoughtful. "Should I clasp your hand then?"

Dean jerked his head up. "What? Why?"

"I have noticed that humans who have established a relationship based on mutual affection and sexual attraction often grasp each other's hands," Castiel explained. "Since being cut off from Heaven, I have also noticed that human touch creates a feeling of comfort as well."

Dean blinked, mind flashing back to all the moments in the past few days when he or Sam had reached out for Cas, whether to wake him from his nightmares or the casual brush of fingers when they passed him things. Every memory was tinged by an expression of great relief on the former angel's face.

With a start, Dean realized that Cas was lonely. That thought was immediately followed by a mental kick to himself. He had been so focussed on Cas's decision to give up Heaven to help him and Sam, he hadn't thought of the little things.

'Damn it, this is Sam's department, not mine,' he thought half-heartedly, although he had a certain amount of dislike for the idea of Sam being the one Cas might lean on for comfort. Dean was the one he'd hauled out of Hell, not Sam.

Rolling his eyes skyward and inwardly praising the fact that Sam wasn't around, he reached out and clapped Cas on the back, his fingers squeezing the curve of his shoulder lightly.

"Look, this here? This is fine," he said in a slow, patient voice that he hoped Cas recognized as his 'teaching-the-angel' voice. "But for no more than five seconds, 'kay'?" He pulled away after the requisite amount of time, and Cas nodded, that expression of relief blossoming on his face again in a way that made Dean's stomach warble uncomfortably. "But no more talk of handholding. Even with me in a girl's body, that's way too gay."

Castiel cocked his head to one side. "I do not understand your aversion to happiness."

"I'll explain it to you later, let's get in there before the priest notices Sam's sneaking around."

Like most churches Dean had been inside, the interior had a domed ceiling from which hanging ornate lamps cast shadows on the floor. High windows with stained glass displayed the Stations of the Cross, the colours creating patterns on the polished pews. Beyond this, the altar and tabernacle were built into the elevated chancel, carved ornately out of some kind of marble. The images of Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph resided in a display that Dean thought looked like it had been ripped off from the Disney castle.

They had timed their arrival to be long enough after the morning service to avoid strangers, but early enough so as to not run into anyone coming for afternoon mass. As luck would have it, the only person in the church was the black-clad priest up front, who was arranging programmes in the wooden display.

"Good morning, Father," Dean greeted, his voice echoing in the church despite his softened tone. He strode forward, forcibly relaxing his body to seem nonthreatening. "We're not bothering you, are we?"

"It's no bother at all, as long as you're not reporters," the priest said, straightening up and peering at them. "I've had my fill of them this week. One guy in particular…" the man shook his head in annoyance, before sighing and smiling again. "Anyhow. What can I help you folk with, Miss…?"

"Ritchie. Erica. And this is my…fiancé Cassidy Spungen," Dean said, schooling his face carefully as he halted on the offending word and offered his hand.

"I'm Father Matthew," the man said, taking Dean's hand and shaking it briefly, and then reaching for Cas, who stared at it for a moment, before taking it as well. "And congratulations on your upcoming nuptials."

Dean had to work hard not to wince at the man's earnest well-wishes; behind his wide smile, Dean's teeth were gritted and he had to remember to keep his body angled toward Cas in what he hoped would be interpreted as closeness. "Thank you."

He was still not impressed with his brother's grand plan. He had nearly pitched a fit in the car when Sam had first suggested it.

"There something you wanna say, Sammy?" he had snapped, glaring at Sam between glances at the road. "'Cause joking around with our IDs and telling a drag queen I bat for the other team is one thing, but this idea of yours? Makes me think you've been reading some of Becky's fucked up stories.

Sam couldn't keep his mouth from twitching. "Come on, Dean, it makes the most sense."

"How does my pretending to be with Cas make any sense?" he had shot back. "Ever? Beyond giving you something to chuckle about for the rest of the drive."

"Not everyone stays up nights thinking of ways to make other people squirm, you know," Sam had pointed out flatly. "Besides, any idiot can see you guys have a connection –" Dean had bristled at the word choice, " – almost as much as people can see you and I have a connection."

"I swear to God, Sammy, if you start spouting that soul mate crap –"

"Look, I could go in and do this with Cas, but it's pretty obvious that we're nothing more than friends. You two have this, like, profound bond or something that anyone just looking at the surface would figure you were into each other –" At Dean's threatening look, he had raised his hands in defence and amended, " – you know, now that you look like a girl."

"Screw you."

"If you have that much of a problem with it, you and me could go in there. It's not like we haven't pretended we were a couple before –"

" – we do not talk about that. Ever."

" – but somehow I don't see the priests being too enthusiastic about a pair of lesbians wanting to get married in a church. And then there's the whole Cas not knowing how to pick locks, or work the EMF, or –"

"Alright, alright, Jesus!" Dean had cut him off. "Fine, we'll do it. But you're talking him through it, because the more I think about this, the more likely I am to change my mind."

Sam had smirked in triumph, and then an expression like he had just remembered something appeared on his face.

"Hold on," he had said, shifting in his seat to haul out his wallet. Neither he nor Dean had given into the temptation to carry a purse yet, no matter how practical it might have been in their new bodies.

Sam slid his wallet open and began to rifle through it, and then pulled something out which he offered to Dean. "Here. For your cover."

A small silver ring with some kind of gem inset had gleamed in the sunlight.

Dean had cocked an eyebrow. "Dude, I love you an all, but that shit's illegal in this state, last time I checked."

"It's the one I bought for Jess , asshat," Sam had retorted, shoving Dean none-too-gently in the shoulder. "And it's just for you to show off. You're going to be pretending to be engaged, and engaged women wear rings. I want it back when you're done."

"I feel so much less creeped out about you apparently carrying an engagement ring around in your duffle now that I know it belonged to your dead girlfriend," Dean had said dryly, trying to make light of the situation despite the worry that cropped up inside. It had been five years, and yet despite everything, Sam was still carrying a piece of his past around with him. Dean had felt his expression turn serious. "Sam, I can't –"

"Dean, just put the damn thing on," Sam had snapped, clearly not wanting to talk about it.

Dean had sighed, made a face and taken the piece of jewelry, shoving it onto his finger. "Shit – did Jess not have any bones? This thing is tight."

"Not my fault you have sausage fingers – maybe lay off the double cheeseburgers."

The ring was still cutting off the circulation in Dean's fingers now, but when he noticed the priest's gaze flick to his left hand, he silently admitted that maybe Sam had been right. About that, at least.

"So what is it I can help you two with today?" Father Matthew asked.

"We were just passing through on our way to St. Louis and we saw this place – it looks a lot like the church where my folks got hitched," Dean explained. "Except theirs got burned down a couple years back."

"It's always a shame when something like that happens," the priest said in a sympathetic voice, but Dean caught the inquisitive note in the tone that begged why this was his problem.

"Anyhow, we saw this place and I just had to check it out for the wedding," Dean lied, laying it on as thick as possible.

'Girls say shit like that, right?' he asked himself, glancing at Cas to make sure the former angel was going along with this. He would have laughed if they hadn't been in the middle of a job; Cas looked like he was concentrating so hard on being normal that he might poop himself any second.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've performed a ceremony for out-of-towners," the priest said, sounding both surprised and gladdened. His tone became hesitant, "Er, were you hoping to do this today, or…?"

"Get married? Oh – no! God no," Dean burst out, and then coughed in embarrassment, "I mean…"

"It's alright, I've heard worse," the priest said with a smile.

"Uh, what I meant was, I thought we'd see if it was okay to check this place out and put it on a list of possible venues. I've…" He winced inwardly, knowing that if Sam were there and not stealthily sneaking around the church premises right now he would be laughing his ass off, "had my heart set on something small and homey – you know, needs just the right kind of atmosphere."

"It's always nice to hear people wanting to stick with the traditions," Father Matthew said genuinely, unaware of Dean's uncertainty. "Especially considering the fad of flying out to a beach somewhere."

"Oh, well, I don't do planes and this guy's practically allergic to the sun," Dean responded smoothly.

"I do not have any particular aversion to the sun," Cas said, offering Dean a sidelong glance.

"Well, you may not, but your skin sure does," Dean replied, a note of warning in his voice.

Thankfully, Cas seemed to get the message, because he nodded thoughtfully, and said, "Ah. Yes. It…festers."

Father Matthew raised an eyebrow and looked on the verge of asking a question, but Dean cut him off, "Really, this place is so charming. Really, uh, welcoming. Not like some of the other places we've seen." He lowered his voice, would-be-conspiratorially. "Cas's family's pretty overbearing. They can't do anything small. They throw a party like it's the end of the world."

"Well, if you would like to discuss arrangements and terms, there is some time before midday service," Father Matthew offered. "My office is just off to the side of the nave."

"Well, thank you kindly, Father," Dean beamed, motioning with his head for Cas to follow them.

The priest led them into a small room behind the church, which was brightly lit by two small windows on the sides. Bookcases and shelves with curios lined the cramped walls, and a worn couch was squeezed into the corner of the room, covered with neatly folded bedding. In the center were a filing cabinet, two chairs and a desk that held an ancient looking computer.

Father Matthew offered them the chairs by the desk and took the couch himself. "I apologize for the cramped space, we've had a few months' lean living."

"It's no problem at all, Father, real cozy," Dean assured him. Then, he began casually, "If you don't mind me asking, we passed that wall of flowers and candles outside the door. What happened?"

Father Matthew went quiet for a moment, and then sighed, sadly, "It was a tragedy. There was a death in our community recently. It happened the day she was supposed to get married, which made it all the worse."

"Wow, that's terrible," Dean simpered. "Now that you mention it, I think I read something in the paper about that."

The priest sighed. "With that reporter trolling around the past few months, I'm surprised this hasn't been turned into a made-for-TV special."

"Wasn't she…wasn't she actually in the church when it happened?"

The priest's expression became rather closed. "It is unfortunate, but yes, the incident did occur here. I'll understand if that affects your decision about having your ceremony here…"

Dean felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, and surreptitiously glanced down at it. The message was from Sam, and read, 'Church is clear. No EMF or ectoplasm.'

He pasted the smile back on his face and looked up at the priest. "Of course not. I just have a few questions about the place, if you don't mind?"

"That depends on the questions," the priest replied, his smile warm but his eyes guarded. Considering what had happened here, it was more than likely the man had had to deal with a lot of negative media attention lately.

When they left a half hour later, after discovering there was nothing in the entire history of St. James Church that might explain Stephanie Hindley's death, Sam was waiting for them by the car.

"What is the point of those items?" Cas asked, eying the memorabilia for Stephanie Hindley as they drove away. "The woman is not here to read the messages or take comfort in the objects. She has no use for them where she is."

"It's not always just about the person who's died, Cas," Sam said gently, and with infinitely more patience than Dean ever managed when he was on explain-humanity-to-the-ex-angel detail. "Mostly it's about the people they've left behind."

"And humans take comfort in the collection of useless objects and dying flora?" Cas inquired.

"Some do," Sam nodded.

Cas considered this, and then in a thoughtful voice remarked, "Such offerings were absent when Ellen and Joanna Beth perished."

Dean and Sam both tensed, and Dean made a mental note to have yet another conversation with Cas about what topics you didn't bring up.

"Everyone grieves differently," Sam explained after a pause. "Besides, Ellen and Jo…if they were around, they'd probably kick our butts for leaving flowers and teddy bears lying around for them."

"And then tell us we were being wusses and to go get drunk already," Dean added. "Which we did, remember? It's what they would have wanted."

"I am to take it that you would not engage in this particular practice, then?" Castiel indicated to the makeshift shrine across the street.

"Nah, we'd just go Dark Side and bang demon chicks," Dean deadpanned, only a little pointed. Considering what Sam had just put him through, he figured he had the right to be a little snarky.

Sam's face turned shadowy, and he glared, "Or sell our souls. Because that always works out so well."

Cas glanced between them, apparently having difficulty following the subtext of their conversation. "You find humour in such unpleasant reminders?"

"It's either bitch about it or go nuts, Cas, and life's just too damn short," Dean said, clapping him on the shoulder as he opened the car door. "Trust us, we definitely know that." He nodded at Sam. "So, where to next?"

(*)

"Well, that's City Hall and every damn church on the list," Dean complained a few hours and a trip to a diner later. He groaned and stretched his arms along the back of the booth, in an action which would have annoyed Sam but which Castiel either didn't mind or didn't notice. "Not only were they all a total waste of time, but I feel completely emasculated to boot."

"Wow, five syllables, I'm impressed," Sam put in.

"Bite me."

"We should view the body now," Castiel remarked, picking unhappily at the salad Sam had bought for him. He had been eyeing Dean's plate hopefully, but had given in to Sam's recommendation that he put off really heavy foods for another week or so. His first experience kneeling before the porcelain god was obviously still fresh in his mind.

"That's a good idea," Sam agreed, out of habit glancing around the restaurant to make sure no one was paying them any attention. "The morgue should be open."

"Yeah, well, you can go with Cas this time," Dean told him. "You look like the less fun chick anyway, you could probably rock the serious med-student look real easy."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Sure, if you feel like making the rounds of the local library and bookstores for information on the Greenwood Bride."

Dean made a face, and Sam knew he had won that argument; Dean and books would never be good friends. "Fine. Drop us off there first, nerd."

"I should make you take the bus."

"Try it, Samantha," Dean shot back, making a 'come on' gesture with his hands. Jess's ring glinted on his finger, which he noticed at the same time Sam did.

The pang of pain at the memory of how long it had taken him to pick out the stupid thing was lesser than it had been when he first lost Jess, but it was still there. He had brought the ring with him all those years ago because it was the only thing he had left of her after the fire that hadn't gone back to her family; in the first few months, there were days when he would take it out and look at it when Dean wasn't around. As their lives became more complicated and dangerous, especially after losing Dad and Dean selling his soul, he had barely glanced at it, consigning it to the bottom of his wallet like an afterthought.

There had been some days back then, especially after returning home to Lawrence that one time to exercise the poltergeist from their childhood home, that Sam had wondered if Jess might have ended up like Mom – a ghost trapped in the home she had died in. But knowing what he now knew about Mary Winchester, who had definitely had some unfinished business, he felt sure that Jessica had moved on. She was probably in her own version of heaven, living out her days with her family and perhaps dragging a simulation of himself to parties he didn't want to go to.

Wherever she was, Sam was sure that Jess was at peace.

Staring at the ring, Sam wondered if he would ever have that luxury.

Dean tugged the trinket it off and handed it to Sam, mercifully not saying anything although his expression suggested that he very much wanted to.

Sam cut that off by standing up. "Well, come on, let's do this quickly. We still have some witnesses to talk to today, so we should finish up the scut work quick."

Dean shot him a look that clearly told him he wasn't buying it, but instead said to Cas, "Come on, buddy, finish your rabbit food. We've got to see a man about a corpse."

Sam dropped the two of them off at the morgue where two of the bodies, including Stephanie Hindley's, had been taken following the murders, and then left the car in an all-day parking zone.

There was little success to be had at the library.

It seemed that the recent string of murders had attracted not only Sam and Dean's notice, but local history buffs' as well. Every book on the local history or having to do with the Greenwood Bride was out on loan. Sam supposed he should just be glad that the crazier element of urban legend enthusiasts hadn't entered town, as in the case of the UFO followers in Elwood. Or even worse, the Ghostfacers.

'I would take going to another Supernatural convention over running into those clowns again,' he thought as he walked through the doors of a small hole-in-the-wall bookstore called Pyewacket's. It was the fifth place he'd been too, all of the other bookstores in town catering more towards the Oprah's Bookclub crowd than the occult.

This place smelled like potpourri and dust, and shelves upon shelves of old books, some in different languages. There was an entire section based on the town's history, which Sam was glad for. It was a single level bookstore with wide aisles and more books than cheap items for sale, which brought it up in his estimation. It was a mark of how well a bookstore was doing if it could get by on just selling books instead of kitschy gift merchandise.

Unfortunately, nothing in the section looked the least bit promising. He went through every book on the shelf, even crouching down to peruse the bottom levels, but there was nothing. The books were more along the lines of travel and tourist guides, with a few coffee table books thrown in for good measure, than what he was looking for.

He must have looked disappointed, because someone asked, "Can I help you find anything?"

He glanced up to reply, but was surprised to see the person who had spoken was eye-level with him while he crouched.

The woman was about his age, perhaps a little younger, and strikingly pretty in the blond, blue-eyed way that wouldn't have been out of place in sunny California. She looked like she had once been the athletic sort, with long legs and tanned skin. The only thing out of ordinary was the fact that she was sitting in a wheelchair.

"Uh, I don't know," he said, a little flustered.

"It's just, you've been going through that shelf for about half an hour now and you look like someone kicked your puppy," she told him. "Also, if you don't buy something soon, you're going to screw up my conversion for the day."

Sam blinked, realization setting in. "You work here?"

"On occasion," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Considering I own the place, and all."

"Wow, that's kind of awesome."

"When people buy stuff it is," she told him wryly. She offered him her hand. "I'm Nicki."

"Jane," Sam stated, taking her hand briefly.

"So, what can I help you find?"

"I'm looking for anything you might have on the town's history – specifically about town legends and myths," Sam said. "I'm on a road trip, and every time we stop through a small town, I like to pick up some interesting reading material. I heard there's a famous ghost around these parts and thought I'd read up on it. The Greenwood Bride?"

"Greenwood Bride, huh?" Nicki asked, the sudden depreciating curl of her lip at odds with her otherwise pretty face. "So you're just another vulture coming to read about the town's stupid ghost."

"Uh…kind of a hobby," Sam said, sheepish. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Who doesn't?" Nicki rolled her eyes and then wheeled back out of the stacks. "I'm afraid you're S-O-L. That's been a hot topic the past few months, what with all those weird deaths in the newspapers. I've got book orders on backlog trying to get material on that particular subject. I'd suggest ordering something from Amazon."

"There's absolutely nothing here?" Sam asked, following her.

"Nothing in print, anyway."

"Do you know anything?"

Nicki shrugged. "The basics. It's Bonnie and Clyde meets the Notebook, I guess. Girl meets guy, guy turns out to be a schmuck who skips out on their wedding plans for whatever reason, screws up the whole thing, and she ends up spending her eternity pining for him in a boneyard."

Sam snorted. "That's a pretty unromantic way of looking at it."

"Let me tell you, if you've ever shelved entire carts of bodice-rippers in one shift, you'd lose your appreciation for romance too," Nicki replied, and Sam couldn't help grinning at that. "Tell you what, though. If you're that interested in a comprehensive look at the legend, you should talk to the writer that's doing a story on it."

"Writer?" Sam echoed. "What do you mean?"

"He's this freelance writer or journalist or something. He's really interested in the deaths that have been happening here and the possibility of it being some pissed off emo chick from the beyond. He showed up here right around the time that first girl died," Nicki shrugged. "Guy's kind of a nutjob, if you ask me. I guess he's just trying desperately to be the next Stieg Larsson."

Sam opened his mouth to ask for more information on what could possibly be a lead, when his phone rang.

"Can you give me a sec?" he asked, reaching for his phone. Nicki shrugged and wheeled herself off toward the front desk, and Sam accepted the call. "Hello?"

"Yeah, we've got zilch at the morgue," Dean told him over the phone. "Or at least as much zilch as before. Going in, I thought we might be looking at Hellhounds, what with the whole shredding thing. But this chick's body…it's not anything with claws that did that. She was ripped apart by something with fingers."

"Or someone."

"Considering there was no DNA or fingerprints anywhere, it's gotta be some kind of spirit," Dean said.

Sam turned away from Nicki and lowered his voice. "Did you try using a black light?"

"Course I did – what, you think I'm an amateur? Nothing showed up."

"And even Cas couldn't figure it out?"

"He said he can't think of any supernatural creature that it could be, but then again he's no CSI…which I learned first-hand when he took one look at the body and bolted. Had to tell the medical examiner he had food poisoning."

"You're kidding!"

"Turns out now that he's human, the smell of formaldehyde doesn't agree with him," Dean answered with a depreciating affection in his voice. "Pretty sure he's still in the bathroom puking his guts up."

Sam sighed. "Awesome."

Apparently, it wasn't a good week for Castiel.

Dean chuckled. "Anything on your end?"

"Not anything concrete, but the owner of the bookstore I'm at says there's a local writer who's been doing some research linking the ghost story with the recent deaths. We should check him out."

"Got any coordinates on this guy?"

"I'm going to get them now. I'll call you back with anything concrete."

"Right."

Sam hung up and wandered up to the front desk, where Nicki was checking through order forms. "So…this writer guy. He come in here often?"

"Yeah, almost three times a week for the past couple of months," she answered. "He practically lives in the section you were checking out, even though I don't think he ever found what he was looking for either. He just hangs out there reading in the stacks until I ask him if he needs help, then he leaves."

"You sure he's coming in here for the books?" Sam asked, voice only a little suggestive.

Nicki made a face. "Uh, ew. First of all, no one's knocking down doors for a piece of this –" she gestured to her immobile legs, " – second of all, the guy's like fifty and looks like John Wilkes Booth. He kind of reminded me of a hobo, actually."

"This guy have a name?"

"Not that he's ever told me, but according to the credit card slips he's signed, his name is D. Wood."

Sam stored the information away for later. "And you said he only showed up when the first deaths occurred?"

Nicki raised an eyebrow. "Uh, yeah. Why?"

"No reason," Sam assured, and then offered a hopefully beguiling smile. "Do you have his address on file by any chance?"

(*)

Dean grunted and hauled Cas over his shoulder, watching as the ex-angel landed with a painful exhalation on his back. He blinked in surprise for a moment, as though waiting for his mortal reflexes to kick in, and then he rolled to the side before Dean could take another run at him.

They circled each other in the wide open living area, and Dean watched Cas's eyes flit calculatingly up and down Dean's body as he tried to locate an opening. Despite his ready position, Dean could tell Cas was still holding back. Whether it was because he still felt disconnected from his body or if he was having trouble looking at Dean as a target, Dean wasn't sure.

He hadn't even realized that that was a thing until he had suggested taking advantage of an hour's worth of down-time the day before.

Cas had been reluctant.

"It reminds me too much of my re-education by the Host," he had explained when Dean commented on that reluctance.

"Meaning?"

Cas had gotten what could only be described as an uncomfortable expression on his face, but before Dean could ask about it, Sam had jumped in, "You know, maybe we should give him a little more time to adapt before throwing him into Dad's training regimen."

Cas had offered Sam what Dean could only have interpreted as a grateful look.

"He's gotta learn sometime," Dean had pointed out, glancing from one to the other. Sam had had that air about him that he tended to get when he was trying to avoid talking about something; Dean had a suspicion that it had something to do with whatever he and Cas had been chatting about while he scoped out pies at the diner in Molline.

"Maybe we could enroll him in a self-defence class or something?"

"Uh, why spend the money when he's got two damn good fighters to learn from right here? Boobs or no," Dean had pointed out. "Actually, make that one. Pregnant prom queens throw better right hooks than you do."

"Real funny, Dean," Sam had responded sourly.

"It is not about the cost," Cas had interjected quietly, offering Sam a look that was both appreciative and pacifying. "It is simply that from my first moment, I have been expected to exploit my enemy's every weakness. To think of you – either of you – as targets, when you are the only comrades that I have, is…rather difficult."

"Yeah, I can see where that might be a bit of a disconnect," Sam had said, nodding sympathetically. He had fixed Dean with a meaningful look. "Angels aren't exactly great at compartmentalizing."

Dean had felt oddly touched by Cas's admission, but rather than lapse into a chick flick moment the way he knew Sam was dying to do, he had shrugged, "Yeah, fine, but he's not an angel anymore. And on the off chance that we end up in a town with a siren or a crazy ghost doctor playing with electroshock therapy and one of us goes Dark Side, it'd be nice to know he can beat some sense back into us."

For once his logic must have made some kind of sense, because it penetrated whatever reservations Cas was holding onto. Cas had agreed to light sparring bouts to start off with.

Which Dean decided was going to be as difficult and frustrating a process as any of Cas's humanity lessons. Despite Cas having observed human combat techniques for thousands of years, he had trouble adapting any of that knowledge to his new body. Apparently Jimmy hadn't been a physically active guy, and as Cas was already somewhat weakened from his two-week nap and lack of food, the former angel was having trouble making his body move the way he needed it to.

Still, he was a fast learner, and never made the same mistake twice, Dean observed as he dove at Cas with a flurry of jabs. Cas managed to dodge all but the last, which grazed him lightly across the jaw.

'Dude needs to shave,' Dean thought idly at the rough scrape across his knuckles when he pulled back, giving Cas a moment to recover. It was an allowance that an actual opponent would never have given, but Dean agreed with Sam's suggestion that they needed to take things slow. There was no point to hauling out the full-fledged John Winchester training regimen until Cas stopped tripping over himself like an inexperienced puppy.

Considering the guy was still having trouble putting his socks on in the morning, it would be a while. That didn't mean Dean was just going to lie down and take a beating to stroke the ex-angel's ego, though.

Dean vaulted forward as soon as Cas recovered himself, using the forward momentum to give his diminished form some extra force. His arm hooked around Cas's neck as he swung his body around, pulling Cas into a combination of a headlock and chokehold. At the same time, he bent and nudged his knee inwards, trying to force Cas into a kneeling position.

He expected Cas to lean into his body and flip him over, as Dean and Sam had demonstrated at least twice. What he didn't expect was for Cas to curl into him, reaching one arm in and around Dean's left leg, and the other arm up behind his back. He bodily lifted him into the air and threw him down to the ground.

"Fuck!" Dean grunted in surprise as he belatedly curled his back and shoulders to keep from hitting his head on the barely carpeted floor.

As Cas continued to pin him down, a look of concentration on his face, Dean swept his free right leg upward. He knocked Cas upside the head, toppling the ex-angel over.

"Watch your balance, otherwise I can do this," he ordered as he crawled over, seized one of Cas's arms and twisted it behind his back, effectively pinning him face down into the carpet. Cas muttered something breathlessly, and Dean leaned closer. "What'd you say?"

Cas moved unexpectedly, pushing himself upwards and rolling them both over until he was holding Dean to the ground. He was panting. "I said, 'I am not the only one getting used to a new body'. Human or not, I remain stronger than you.'

Dean smirked.

"If that was an issue, I'd have stopped scrapping with Sammy fifteen years ago," he pointed out, scissoring his legs to reverse their position once again. "If you tell him that shit, though, I'll kick your ass." He took in their positions and grinned. "You know, more than I'm doing now."

Cas grimaced and shoved Dean backwards, forcing him to tuck and roll away. As Cas scrambled to his feet, Dean grabbed him around the neck and hauled him upwards in another chokehold. Before he could settle back into a more grounded position, though, Cas reached around and flipped him over his back.

This time, Dean head did hit the floor, and he saw stars as the air rushed out of his lunges. "Ow."

Cas immediately loomed into view, upside down from Dean and with a worried expression. "Dean? Are you alright?"

He was kneeling by Dean's head and brought his face down within inches of Dean's, so close that the latter felt the ex-angel's every breath on his own cheeks. In the dim light of the room, Dean could see how the blood had flushed his cheeks and how a drop of sweat was inching down the side of his neck. It was a far cry from the stoic angel that had beaten him bloody in an alley outside Cicero; even back then, Cas had moved like a statue come to life.

'No more of that, though,' Dean thought idly. 'Might actually be able to get him drunk the human way now. Or laid.'

Staring up at the breathless man above him, with his perpetually dishevelled hair and pupils dilated from the stress of their bout, Dean could almost imagine what the guy might look like during sex.

There was a weird quaver in his stomach, and about a second after that particular observation Dean experienced a very vague sense of disengagement. He could still feel his own heart rate responding to the fight and the warmth of his entire body, but neither fact seemed half as important as enjoying the sight of Cas looking ruffled and human for once.

Then his good sense caught up with him.

'Seriously, where the hell did that come from?' he wanted to know as he blinked up at Cas.

Cas, who was still entirely too close, seemed just as perturbed by the infinitesimally short lull in Dean's movements.

Rather than dwell on it, Dean spurred himself into action, rolling his hips and knees up over his head to clamp around Cas's neck and haul him forward

Castiel let out a surprised cry as Dean reached his arms up and used them to propel Cas up and over him, throwing him until it was the former angel lying on his back staring up at the ceiling while Dean landed in a crouch.

In an effort to recover himself, he put himself at a decent distance away from Cas and grinned down. "Just peachy."

Cas grimaced. "I was a warrior of God for hundreds of thousands of years. There should not be this amount of difficulty involved in learning to fight as a human."

"Yeah, well, no offense, but you chose a pretty wimpy vessel," Dean offered jokingly. "Jimmy wasn't exactly Hulk Hogan, if you know what I mean."

"I rarely do," Cas muttered.

Dean laughed, satisfied, and glanced around the farmhouse they were crashing in.

Rather than spend their limited funds on another motel, Dean had made the executive call to squat in an abandoned home that was about half an hour outside of Decatur. The small structure was built off one of the side roads of the one-lane highway and had no sign of recent habitations. The only clue to why it was so far from the town lay in the long since abandoned fields and a decrepit, falling-down structure that had probably been a barn once.

The house itself wasn't much better; the front door hung off one hinge and many of the windows had been reduced to nothing but shards of glass clinging to the wooden frames. The grey walls beneath peeling red paint seemed to lean away from the wind, as though it always blew in the same direction here, and the roof was caved in on one side of the structure.

The interior was just as dismal, although the main living area where they had set up their things was closed off from the elements. There were water stains on the walls and the distinct smell of mildew. Patches of concrete showed through gaping holes in the worn wall-to-wall carpeting, and the beaten furniture had been pushed all to one side by whoever had occupied the house before them. The wide open concept of the room had been especially useful once Dean suggested they do some sparring.

The sound of a door slamming caused Dean and Cas to glance over to the entrance of the living room.

"I've tracked down D. Wood," Sam announced, in the exact moment that Dean suddenly felt his legs fold out from beneath him. Cas had used the distraction as an opportunity to sweep his foot out and send Dean over on his ass. "Whoa. Nice one, Cas."

"Cheap shot," Dean grunted, leaning up on his elbows to glower at the ex-angel on the floor. "You're lucky this body has extra padding."

"I would apologize, but as this was the entire point of the exercise, I feel justified in my actions," Cas replied, trying and failing to not look smug.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Dude, you could just say, 'Owned'. Takes a lot less time."

"You're just mad he got you," Sam pointed out. "It's a good thing he's such a quick study."

"Faster than you are, at any rate. It took you how long to be able to pin me?"

"You used to cheat."

"Had to compensate for your mutant growth spurts somehow, Gigantor."

"Anyway," Sam drawled, ignoring the attempt to bait him. "It took me a while to catch up with this guy – he might have visited Nicki's shop as D. Wood, but he's been living in a motel off the main highway under a different name – motel owner said it was David Shelley."

"Well, you said he was a writer, maybe it's a penname," Dean shrugged, but he was already getting up off the floor and reaching down to offer Cas a hand. The former angel accepted it without complaint, his grip strong. When Dean pulled away, he thought he saw a glimmer of reluctance in his friend's eyes, but it could have been the dim lighting. "Either way, it's a bit suspicious – this writer shows up in town the same time as the first murder? Come on."

"Have you found anything else on him?"

"Nope. Whoever he is, he hasn't been sharing his real name with anyone."

"So he's just jumped to the top of the list," Dean decided. "Well, if he's not completely human, he could be one of the serial monster types, like a shtriga or a siren. Any other towns going through a sudden wave of dead brides?"

"Just here as far as I can tell, but I haven't searched every city over the past hundred years," Sam replied. "We've kind of been on a schedule."

"If you wish to speak to this witness today, I can continue your investigation," Cas offered. "I am tired after our training exercise. I can spend the time researching as you taught me. Besides, it is probably best if I learn how to better use that infernal contraption." At Sam and Dean's identical looks of incredulity, he added, "The laptop."

"Sure, Cas," Sam said after a moment, sounding vaguely amused. "Just…don't break it. And if you go on the Internet, don't download anything, okay? I haven't put a new antivirus in there yet – and call me if there's anything that looks useful –"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean rolled his eyes, ushering his brother out of the room. "He's not going to break your toy, you giant girl." He turned and pointed a finger at Cas, parting with a joking admonition, "And stay away from the porn."

Beside him, Sam turned red and spluttered, "Dean!"

(*)

The drive to the motel where Sam had tracked down the elusive D. Wood was mostly spent in their usual back and forth bickering over whether or not Dean was corrupting the former angel or not. As usual, Dean brushed off Sam's complaints like they were nothing.

"He's been around for a few millennia – he's probably seen more weird shit than anything you or me could show him," Dean insisted once again as they pulled into the dilapidated motel on the other side of the city.

"Yeah, well, he's never seen your taste in entertainment," Sam retorted as they climbed out of the car in the back corner of the parking lot. They were obscured from most of the motel windows, and started gearing up their weapons and supplies. "What story are we going with today?"

"Reporters again?" Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Dude, I know you've been surfing my porn."

"I don't surf anything – you just never delete your browser history," Sam replied. "I was thinking something more personal. Friends of the family?"

"If he's really writing some kind of book and he's been here five months, he probably knows them all. And it's okay, Sam, there's nothing to be ashamed of. Porn is a natural –"

"I swear to God, if you don't stop talking about porn I will beat you," Sam hissed, shoving Dean roughly.

Dean made an inviting gesture. "Bring it."

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Family from out of town, then?"

"Yeah, okay," Dean snorted. "Wuss."

A quick cash bribe to the motel management later, and they stood outside of the room where David Shelley had apparently ensconced himself.

The person who answered Sam's knock was a swarthy, unshaven man with grey eyes and a square face. He was slightly out of breath, but that seemed to be due to the rather large suitcase he was lugging in one hand as he glanced out at them suspiciously. Sam noticed that the guy's gaze rested on him a little longer than was usual when meeting someone for the first time, but instead of commenting on it, filed the information away until later.

"Mr. Wood?" he ventured.

"Can I help you?" the man asked in gruff, insincere voice. His speech was a rough, accented rasp that reminded Sam a little of how Crowley spoke, only with a more polished diction.

"I'm Jane, this is Erica – we're Stephanie Hindley's cousins," Sam introduced.

"I see," Wood said, his tone trailing upwards in a question.

Dean picked up the inquiry. "We're in town for the funeral and heard you were sort of investigating what happened to her…unofficially. That you might have more of an idea or some theories about it than the police did."

"And who gave you that idea?"

"A few people in town mentioned you were a writer and that you had interviewed a bunch of families like ours…families of people who died. Women," Sam explained. "We thought maybe you had another angle on what happened to Stephanie."

"I'm afraid I know as little about it as the police do," Wood said, striding past them with his bag and heading toward his car.

He didn't even offer any type of condolences, which was odd, for an investigative writer; they usually had to be able to feign some kind of human emotion in their work. Sam was actually having a hard time seeing this guy as a sympathetic person at all.

Beside him, Dean nodded meaningfully at the suitcase; it seemed like Wood was getting ready to skip town or something. Sam agreed with a barely-there nod that it was suspicious.

"As it is," the man continued on brusquely, "I have been asked to cease and desist in my continued research, and I am inclined to do exactly that."

"But you've been here for months," Dean protested, following Wood after he tossed his suitcase into the back of a beat-up pick up and started back to his motel room. "I heard the police have been after you to stop for months now, and you didn't. Now you're suddenly going to? Did you find something and they're paying your off, or what?"

It was a weak attempt at wheedling, but Sam knew Dean was just trying to keep the guy talking to them. They needed to figure out his angle before he left town.

Wood snorted. "It has nothing to do with that. My…creative spark seems to have burned out. I require a change of scenery."

Sam frowned at the lie.

"It kind of looks like you're running away," he pointed out. "People only really do that when they think they're going to get into trouble or if they think they're in danger."

Wood leveled a long look at him, and out of nowhere asked, "Have we met before?"

Sam blinked, nonplussed, and his eyes flicked to Dean. His brother appeared calm, but Sam could sense him trying not to tense up. "Uh, no. Why?"

"You remind me of someone," Wood said unhelpfully. He headed back through the door and turned to face them. "Ladies, I am sorry I cannot help you, but I am hoping to get out of here before the traffic picks up. Now, if you would excuse me –"

He started to close the door in their faces.

Dean, in his usual impulsive way, barged forward.

"Hold on a sec!" he cried, sticking a steel-toed boot into the door to keep it from closing. He brought the other one up and nudged the door back open, taking a step into the small room. "We just want to know –"

Several things happened at once.

Sam heard the familiar ratcheting sound of a gun's safety mechanism being undone and found himself staring down the barrel of an MK23; at the same time, he felt his brother move beside him and out of the periphery noticed that Dean was aiming his .45 directly at Wood's forehead.

For a long, tense moment, there was silence. Sam remained still and Wood didn't even flinch at the firearm pointed at his head.

"Who are you," he asked coldly, attention shifting from Dean to Sam but without any suggestion that he was paying either of them less attention than the other.

"I think we could ask you the same thing," Dean returned, keeping his own voice steady. From his position behind Dean, it would be difficult for Sam to disarm Wood if he decided to pull the trigger; while Sam was sure Dean could move before that became an issue, he knew better than to rely on something that could backfire that badly.

He cast his gaze around the motel room for something that could be used to help him, and his eyes fell on the window sill. A familiar looking white substance lined the ledge, and as he glanced down at the door, he saw that the same line was there, broken only by Dean's clumsy feet.

"D – Erica, look," Sam said, trying to call attention to his discovery. His brother continued to stare down the other man with his usual stubborn determination, searching for the right moment to act. "Hey, moron, put down the gun. The guy's a hunter."

Wood blinked in an approximation of surprise, but didn't lower his weapon. Dean didn't relax either, which given their current relationship with the hunter community was understandable, but which also wasn't something they really needed to worry about with their current disguises.

Sam grumbled softly and then sought out Wood's gaze, holding it and nodding at his empty hands. Wood's head moved incrementally, as though giving him the go ahead, and he continued to watch Sam warily as he moved closer to Dean and got his brother to lower the gun. "Put it down, man, we're on the same side."

"Maybe," Dean said through gritted teeth. "Maybe not. Could be another homicidal asshole like Gordon, for all we know. 'Scuse me if I don't wanna take that chance."

This time Wood's expression did lose some of its tension. "Gordon? Are you talking about Gordon Walker?" He finally began to lower his weapon, glancing from one to the other as his jaw clenched. "I hope your next words are that the depraved lunatic has shuffled off his mortal coil."

"Yeah, guy got turned by a vampire and had to be put down," Dean said, and then added, "Or so I've heard."

"A more fitting end I can't imagine," Wood remarked frostily.

There were several more seconds of a stand-off, before Sam let out an exasperated noise and hauled down the collar of his shirt and then his brother's. "Look, we're not demons."

Wood raised an eyebrow. "That's a clever idea there. I'm afraid I lost my taste for tattoos several years ago, however –" He completely lowered his weapon and dug a chain out from under his shirt; charms of many different religions and belief systems decorated it, "– you can see that I am also demon-free."

Dean finally lowered his gun as well, and they both clicked the safety back on.

The other hunter held out a hand. "Daniel Ryder."

"Jane Campbell," Sam reintroduced them, accepting his hand when Dean didn't. "This is my sister, Erica." The man formerly known as Daniel Wood continued to study him carefully as he took his hand. When he didn't give it back, Sam shifted uncomfortably.

"Unless you're planning on going steady, maybe you should let go there?" Dean suggested, irritated. Sam wanted to roll his eyes at his brother's overprotective routine and remind him that he was a grown man – current female body notwithstanding – but he didn't get the chance.

"Campbell, you say?" Daniel Ryder asked, finally releasing Sam's hand and glancing at Dean like he still expected an attack. Knowing Dean, it wasn't a bad judgement call. "I met a few Campbells up in Michigan. They were good hunters. You look an awful lot like the youngest one."

Which was kind of the last thing that Sam had expected to hear; judging from Dean's blank expression, he wasn't the only one.

They had never known very much about their family. It had always just been John and Mary, and after Mary died it had just been John. He'd never talked about his parents very much while Sam and Dean were young – all they knew was that John's family was from Indiana and that his father had been a mechanic; Mary's family had never been talked about at all. Sam and Dean had known about an uncle who had died not long after Mary, and a great-uncle they had never met but who had paid for their mother's headstone. In fact, they had learned more about Mary Winchester when the angels stuck their noses into their lives than their father had ever told them.

Thanks to Dean's first trip to the past, they had learned all about the Campbells and the family business. Their grandparents and their mother had been hunters, and after Sam had done a little digging, he had learned that there had been Campbells associated with strange happenings since the time of the Mayflower. He and Dean had even encountered an old case of their grandfather's in San Francisco a few years back.

Given how much they still didn't know about their family history, though, it was entirely possible they had relatives somewhere – relatives who were hunters.

"We don't know a lot about our folks," Sam said when it became clear Dean wasn't going to step up to the plate this time. "Our family's all dead so far as we know. Dad raised us and sort of fell into hunting by accident. Passed it on to us."

"That's a rather unusual undertaking," Ryder observed. "I've known a few women in my time who hunted, but they usually fell into the life by accident. I've never heard of a man intentionally teaching his daughters. Your father must have had immense confidence in you both."

He sounded surprised and Sam felt insulted by that, despite the fact he wasn't actually a woman. Dean also looked like he had a thing or two to say about it, but wasn't sure where to start.

Ryder turned away and began to move around the room, moving empty take-out cartons out of the way and tossing a bag of weapons aside. "I assume you're here working the Greenwood Bride case, then?"

"Yeah – but we didn't know there was someone here already," Sam said. "We'd heard that you've been here since the first death?"

"A coincidence, really," Ryder sighed. "I was passing through here on my way to Louisiana and the day I was here, the first murder took place. I stayed to see if I could suss out the cause – and that was five months ago."

"And you didn't find anything? For five months?" Dean snorted. "Maybe you're in the wrong line of work."

"And perhaps there is nothing to be found," Ryder retorted icily. "But, by all means, if you think you will have better luck than I have." He made an accommodating gesture and nodded to a box of papers and pictures. "I've been over this entire town and found nothing. None of the victims' families have had anything helpful to say and none of the leads have panned out. The police are adamant that nothing is going on and they've even been so kind as to allow me to see the evidence."

He gathered together his things and nodded at Sam and Dean.

"I would suggest finding another job to work that has the possibility of resolution.

"Wait – you're leaving?" Sam asked, incredulous. "In the middle of a job?"

"This case isn't going anywhere, and I have expounded enough energy on it when I could be doing something else," Ryder shrugged. "Besides, I'm needed elsewhere."

"What could be more important than stopping innocent people from being killed?" Sam demanded.

Ryder leveled an unimpressed glare at him. "A colleague of mine needs help with a demon infested town three states over. Perhaps you haven't noticed, Miss Campbell, but the natives of Hell have been acting out quite a bit in the past two weeks."

"We've been out of commission the last few weeks," Dean lied shortly. "Came off a job with a nest of kappas kinda badly. What's goin' on? Demons havin' a party or something?"

"I have no idea," Ryder shrugged. "But it's not just the demons. Another contact of mine told me about a town in Oregon that had every man, woman and child turned to salt. The authorities are calling it a major nuclear reactor disaster, but we're pretty sure the cause is of a more…divine nature."

Sam stiffened. "You think angels are involved."

"Have you ever read the Bible, young lady?" Ryder asked. "There's a specific story about Lot in Genesis that you might consider examining."

"We've been a bit more concerned with Revelations lately," Dean said through gritted teeth.

"But why would angels…?" Sam began, and then shut his mouth. After all, he, more than any other person in the world except for Dean, knew that there was nothing angels wouldn't stoop to. And if Raphael was really in charge, the archangel wouldn't care how many innocents he hurt in his quest to restart the Apocalypse or whatever he was trying to accomplish.

'Which is an argument for why Cas shouldn't have brought me back,' Sam thought sadly. 'Humanity could have used an angel like him in their corner.'

Dean's rigid stance told Sam his brother was thinking along the same wavelength of at least half that idea.

"Everyone has been, ever since this Winchester business," Ryder was saying, causing the brothers to look up at the sound of their name. "None of this would have happened if it weren't for them."

Sam and Dean exchanged glances. It was possible they could continue to play the dumb card, but that might be too unbelievable. Dean's eyes narrowed slightly in an encouragement Sam doubted anyone but him (and maybe Cas) would be able to notice, and hesitantly said, "Winchester…You mean those brothers, right?" He glanced at Dean again, before going on, "We'd heard rumours that something happened lately, but we never heard what exactly."

"Those damned fools started the End of Days," Ryder said angrily. "The way the story's being told, Sam Winchester opened the Gates to Hell and let out the Devil. And his coward of a brother didn't have the strength in him to stop him. Dean Winchester would have let the world burn because he couldn't do what needed to be done."

"I heard they were trying to stop it," Dean said, unable to keep the tense note from his voice. "I heard they did."

"And who are you getting your news from, Robert Singer?" Ryder inquired coldly. "The man practically raised those boys, if I've got my facts right – of course he'd be telling tales about them that show them in a better light. From the way things are looking right now, though, I would say they didn't stop anything. They just delayed it, then up and disappeared like the guttersnipe they are."

Sam had to nonchalantly grab hold of Dean's arm to keep his brother from flying across the room at the older hunter. As it was, Ryder took their silence as thoughtfulness.

"Things are a lot more serious right now than a few dead brides. If you wish to continue here, I wish you luck – you may even make use of what research I've done. But you would be advised to go somewhere where your help is truly needed," he said. And then, he gave a short little bow which would have seemed ridiculous on anyone else, and then disappeared from the motel room.

Sam and Dean watched him go, and then turned to each other.

"Do you think…do you think he's maybe right?" Sam asked, hesitant. "We do have more important things to do right now."

"Yeah, we do, but we've never up and quit a job before because there was something better we could be doing," Dean grumbled. "So I say, we stick it out. These deaths are going to keep happening if we don't do something about them. Unlike some douchebags." Sam chuckled, earning a raised eyebrow from his brother. "What?"

"Look at you, going all 'Righteous Man'," Sam teased. "Next you'll be donning a pair of tights and fighting for truth, justice and soccer-moms."

Dean snorted and shoved Sam aside on his way to Ryder's box of research. "Shut up and help me lug this shit to the car."

(*)

After deciding that the FBI cover story was the best and most believable angle to work after all, Sam had made another quick shopping trip for clothes that looked more professional than what they had. He had left Dean to talk Cas through the process of working a job again. As Dean was going to be off trolling the town graveyards looking for evidence of the Greenwood Bride, Sam had hoped that their chat would be a little more comprehensive than an admonition of 'shut up and let Sam do all the talking'.

Not for the first time did he regret agreeing to Aggie's genderswap; it made something as precarious as posing as federal agents all the more complicated.

Dean must have done something right, though, because Castiel hadn't made any major blunders as yet. They had spoken with three of the five families of victims that morning, and although Sam had done most of the actual talking, Castiel had occasionally added one or two questions of his own. They were asked in a stilted, neutral way which suggested that Dean had forced him to memorize a list of acceptable questions to ask, but which enhanced the detached FBI image they were aiming for.

Their last stop of the day was the former fiancé of the first victim.

"Well, it took you long enough," Joe Cooper said flatly, frowning across the threshold at Sam and Castiel. Cooper was in his twenties, blond and with a swimmer's build, and dressed in an electrician's coveralls. He had been on his way into his house when they approached him. "This nutcase has been killing people for months now and you guys didn't even look into it. Even that sleazy writer was doing more. Maybe if you'd looked into this sooner…"

He trailed off, grief obviously still fresh.

"We're very sorry for your loss," Sam said, leaning forward and trying to meet the man's eye. He knew exactly what Cooper was feeling right now, and tried to convey that with his body language. "I can assure you, though, catching this killer is priority one for us. I know it won't bring Caitlin back, but if you could help us in any way, we can bring whoever did this to justice."

Cooper shifted angrily, but in the end nodded and ushered them into his home.

"Was there anyone who would have a grudge against Caitlin?" Castiel asked flatly.

"No," Cooper said with a sigh. "Everyone liked her. She was a veterinarian…who doesn't like a veterinarian?"

"People who do not like animals, I imagine," Castiel commented and Sam made a mental note to add 'sensitivity training' to Castiel's list of need-to-know human accomplishments.

He sighed inwardly, discouraged; none of the other victims' families had been able to come up with a possible enemy either, which closed yet another avenue to investigate. He was beginning to think that Ryder had been right, that this case was just a waste of time –

"Actually," Cooper said after a moment, as though remembering something from long ago. "That's not entirely true. There was someone who was on the outs with Cait…but there's no possible way she could have had anything to do with it."

"She?" Sam inquired.

Cooper nodded, hesitant; like he wasn't sure he should be saying this. "Yeah. Uh, see, Caitlin had this best friend growing up and…they weren't really talking to each other when we were…getting ready to get married."

"This person got a name?"

"Well, yeah, but…see, it couldn't have been her because she wasn't there and even if she had been, she couldn't have done it –"

"Mr. Cooper?"

He sighed. "Nicole Tobin. Though Caitlin always called her Nicki."

Sam blinked. The same was familiar…

"The woman who owns that bookstore in town?" Sam asked, searching his memory. "The one in the – ?"

"Wheelchair?" Cooper finished. "Yeah, that's her."

Knowing that being handicapped didn't necessarily mean someone was innocent, Sam pressed on, "Why would Ms. Tobin have a grudge against your fiancée?"

This time, Cooper shifted more in discomfort than in anger. "That's…a long story."

Sam didn't say anything, simply raised an eyebrow. Sometimes, silence was the best way to get someone to open up.

Cooper sighed again and looked away. "A few years ago, Nicki…Nicki and I used to date. More than date. We were going to get married, but…" Now he looked up, guilt clouding his expression. "Look, it's my fault she is the way she is. We were at the rehearsal dinner and…I don't know, we were having problems and there was all this stress at work, and Caitlin was there and – Nicki sort of caught us going at it in the bathroom. She got pissed off and then ran out of the building and got hit by a car."

"Paralyzing her from the waist down," Sam finished, careful to keep the judgement out of his voice.

"I tried apologizing. I tried giving her space. But she broke everything off and we stopped talking after that. She wouldn't talk to me, or Caitlin. And we both tried not to see each other after what happened, but…we couldn't help it. I loved Cait in a way I never loved Nicki. So I asked her to marry me. And then…"

"She was killed."

"Yeah. But there's no way Nicki could have done it. Even if she wasn't home the night it happened – which the police told us a while back – Nicki wouldn't have done something like that. She was always the most Zen person I know – she did yoga, meditated – she's a freaking vegetarian."

Sam exchanged glances with Castiel.

After another few questions which didn't reveal very much, Sam and Castiel thanked the man and left.

"It is possible for someone who has been offered so confining a fate to perhaps seek occult solutions to their problems," Castiel remarked as they left.

"I'm surprised Ryder didn't mention it, though," Sam mused.

"Perhaps he just didn't find any evidence to support his suspicion."

Sam thought back to something Nicki had said the previous day. "When I was in her shop, she did mention he spent a few weeks just hanging out in the bookstore. You think maybe he was watching to see if she was involved in the murders?"

"It is likely."

"Well, we should still look into the history of all the other victims to see if Nicki's connected to any of them – maybe she's not doing anything. She could have a poltergeist attached to her," Sam said, digging his phone out of his pocket, "In the meantime, I'll get Dean to put the graveyard search on hold. This is sounding less like an angry spirit and more like a 'woman spurned'."

(*)

The Tobin family lived in a picturesque bungalow just outside the city. Other than the fact that it had been retrofitted with ramps and a slightly wider driveway than the others in the neighborhood, it looked like every other house.

Dean yawned as he waited for Nicki's mother to finally leave the building. He had been watching the place since that morning when Nicki's father drove her to work. He hadn't returned, which Dean decided meant he was the breadwinner in the family while the wife stayed at home. In fact, she hadn't shown any signs of actually leaving until Dean got tired of waiting and placed a bogus call to the house pretending to be the local radio DJ giving away free gas gift cards.

The woman still took forever to leave the place, though.

If Mrs. Tobin had been home to vouch for her daughter's whereabouts, it was no wonder the police had crossed her off the suspect list. Even Ryder might not have done more than a cursory check of the wheelchair bound, always watched young woman.

According to the police database that Sam had hacked into the day before, the investigating officers had come to the Tobin home just after Caitlin Robinson's murder. It was protocol to check in with people who had been on bad terms with the victim, Dean knew. According to Mike and Linda Tobin, though, their daughter had been asleep in her bed at the time of the murder, and given the tricked out van Dean had seen in the driveway, there wasn't really any other way Nicki could have left the house to rip apart her former best friend.

'Or any of the other vics,' he mused.

If Ryder's notes on the subject were to be believed – and they were pretty extensive and written in such minute script that Dean figured the guy must have been a teacher or a secretary before he fell into the life – the other hunter had done some surveillance on her home and looked around the place, but found nothing.

"It doesn't hurt to be thorough, though," Sam had said that morning over breakfast. Sitting beside Dean, Cas was eating his first plate of pancakes with a look of such bemused enjoyment that Dean almost didn't hear his brother continue, "That way when we finally leave, we can at least know we tried everything."

Dean had nodded wordlessly. He knew Sam still wasn't too happy about the detour they had made and the apparent lack of direction the case was taking. Still, if it somehow led them to a witch, it would be worth it.

Though what they'd do when they did finally find the witch, Dean still wasn't exactly clear on. Demons he could deal with, no problem; demons had a single-minded commitment to a master plan of evil and suffering, which made them easy to figure out. Witches on the other hand, never had really clear motives. There were the ones that loved their bit of chaos, but the run-of-the-mill witch was generally just in it for their own personal gain. It was usually hard to find those ones because they were so good at keeping under the radar.

'Still hate witches,' Dean thought with a frown, glancing back at the house. The expression turned to a triumphant smirk as Mrs. Tobin headed for her sedan and climbed in. He doubted he would need much time to go through the house, especially considering he was alone.

Initially he had argued with Sam that it was important that Cas come along with him to learn how to properly break and enter a house, but as he got out of the car, he was actually a little relieved that he was doing this on his own. He was all for teaching Cas the ropes – it was actually a hell of a lot of fun schooling the guy in how to hunt evil as a mortal instead of a bad-ass angel of the Lord, but considering this job was already looking like a lost cause, the sooner he got in and out of the house, the better.

Besides, there was a better chance of Cas being of use when they checked out the bookstore. From what Sam had said, there were quite a few titles in other languages, and if they were dealing with a witch and she was working from a grimoire, it wasn't likely going to be in English; while Sam's ancient language skills were better than Dean's, Cas had probably forgotten more languages than humans knew existed.

'Next time,' Dean thought jovially as he heaved himself over the fence in the yard and headed for the backdoor entrance. There was a windowed door with muslin curtains and a key lock, which he smirked at and brought his tools out. 'Gonna have to teach him to do this, too. It's like Sammy all over again.'

It really did feel like it, sometimes; being around Cas so much felt a little like being back on the road with Dad and having to teach Sam the ropes. The only difference was, the constantly hovering sense of duty wasn't as present with Cas as it was and always would be with Sam. That wasn't to say that he resented Sam, or that he didn't care about Cas. If anything, the two weeks when he thought the angel was dead had proven the opposite. But where his relationship with Sam was born of something desperate and ingrained, his relationship with Cas was…complicated.

Sam had once joked to him that Dean was so socially retarded that he'd had to go to Hell before he made his first friend. Dean had slugged him and called him a bitch, instead of saying that 'friend' was somehow an insufficient explanation for having a guy pull you out of the Pit.

As was usual when his feelings wandered into that particular territory, Dean forcibly shook them off and thought about something else. Like the alarm that he managed to disarm in about twenty-five seconds.

'Why people still fork over so much money on these things is a mystery,' he thought, rolling his eyes disdainfully at the number pad. 'A dog would have been cheaper and more useful.'

A first glance of the main floor of the Tobin household showed a home as low-key and non-threatening as any other suburban house he had ever been in. As with the exterior, the stairs in the home had been replaced with ramps. The hardwood floors were covered in plush rugs, and the furniture buried under more throw pillows than anyone could ever need. The place smelled like potpourri and home cooking, and was brightly lit by windows in every room. Curios lined the window ledges and fireplaces, and family portraits and pictures covered the walls. In the background, he could hear Josh Groban playing over a tinny sound system someone had forgotten to turn off.

'These people are clearly evil,' he told himself sarcastically.

Wandering through the linoleum floored kitchen, with its polished cupboards and stainless steel appliances, he had to duck a few hanging plants and herbs. These he checked through quickly for anything with magical properties, but the only thing that would have been of use in a spell was the white sage and that he knew was for purification. It was highly unlikely that it would be used to conjure evil spirits or harm people.

He studied a few photos on the living room coffee table, noticing that most of the oldest pictures showed a pale, overweight young girl with braces and glasses, while the more recent ones showed a slim, blond athlete. Some of them looked like they had been cropped from the side, clearly cutting one or two people out of the photograph.

'Probably Caitlin and Joe,' he figured.

Once he got upstairs, it was easy to suss out which room belonged to Nicki. Even though it didn't look very different from the décor of the rest of the house, it had a lived in quality that was conspicuously absent of any place the Winchesters had ever resided. The room was painted off-white and smelled of the same potpourri smell. The bed and desk were kept neat, and there wasn't any clutter on the floor. Stained glass ornaments were hung in the windows, and there was a dream catcher over her bed; kitschy ornamental bottles of perfume lined the bureau beneath a round mirror. In the corner, looking like it hadn't been touched in ages, was a rolled up yoga mat and block.

Dean raised his eyes at the Precious Moments crucifix over the doorway, and then set to work, methodically going through every corner of the room. He mentally catalogued everything's proper place in order to avoid leaving a trace of himself.

After a half hour of searching, he had yet to find anything to suggest she was more than a bookworm with an obsessive collection of Self-Help books.

Dean crouched in front of the desk by the window and booted up her laptop. Nicki Tobin didn't seem to have anything to hide, if the lack of password on her personal computer was any indication.

Her desktop was lined with colorful, weirdly named icons, and when his eyes lingered on one called WitchingHour he couldn't help but check it out. It turned out it was one of those online games that charged money just to play. Apparently Nicki hadn't been satisfied with it either, because she hadn't accessed it in about a year.

'Another dead end,' he decided, clicking through her browser and her favorites. It seemed she was part of several forums that discussed contemporary literature ranging from several Russian titles whose names he couldn't pronounce to Harry Potter.

'Guess when you lose your mobility, your imagination's the best way to escape,' he thought, opening up some of her chat logs. Not that he would know, personally. He was a much more visually stimulated guy himself, but he remembered how Sam had been growing up: so desperate to pretend their constantly-on-the-go-lifestyle was just a dream.

As he scanned through some of her chat history, most of which concerned online book clubs and what looked to be support groups for people permanently injured in accidents, Dean decided that Ryder and the police must have been right.

He flipped open his cellphone and pressed the speed dial. As it rang, he lazily read through some of the emails from Nicki's primary contact, a QueenBeeStark according to her username.

"Find anything?" Sam asked when he picked up.

"No sign of anything to do with witches on this end," Dean replied. "No suspicious herbs, no bodily fluids – and if she's summoning the spirit, there's no bones around here for her to do it. I think she's clean."

"Or maybe she's just good at hiding stuff."

Sam sounded suspicious, and Dean raised an eyebrow; usually he was the one who thought the worst of people, not Sam. "Meaning?"

"Meaning Cas and I just called back a few of the witnesses to see if Nicki knew any of them."

"And?"

"And she didn't – personally, anyway. But one of the victim's sister's said she bought her wedding gift at Pyewacket's."

"That's Nicki's store, right?"

"Exactly. It turns out that all of those other weddings, the bride and groom registered for gifts at Pyewacket's."

"So every bride who died was one who was registered at the store," Dean mused. "Other than the first vic, she had no real, personal connection to the other guests, though. What, she just up and decided to ruin their lives on a lark?" Dean stood up and shook the kinks from his knees, closing down the computer. "I dunno, Sam, that's kind of a big leap to make, even for us."

"Well, we're across the street from the bookstore now, so we'll find out," Sam said. "You gonna meet us back here or back at the motel?"

"Motel, I guess," Dean said, getting up. He rummaged absently through the knick-knacks on Nicki's bureau. "How's Cas doing?"

"Aw, is Mommy worried about her little angel?" Sam cooed over the line, in such a loud and obvious way that Dean knew Cas was probably not within earshot. Sam may not have had a problem mocking Dean, but he still hadn't entered the comfort zone where he was okay with teasing Cas.

"More worried about your influence on him," Dean retorted. He fiddled with a small, ornamental bottle on the dresser. "You've already got him eating like a bird, next thing you know you'll be trying to get him to grow his hair out like some kind of freak."

"You're just jealous I got the good genes."

"If you were the son of Andre the Giant, I'd agree with you," Dean retorted. "Seriously, though, keep an eye on him. Just because he put me on my ass yesterday doesn't mean he's ready for the big leagues."

He could practically hear Sam's eyes rolling. "Weren't you the one who was telling me he's not a three-year old?"

"No, but he is a millennia-old angel whose way of dealing with things didn't really boil down to fistfights and a .45. I'd kind of like him to survive long enough for us to get his wings back in a way that doesn't put you back in the Cage," Dean grumbled. "Or did you forget we could kind of use someone on our side up top?"

"Of course not," Sam sighed, "Still, Cas was pretty clear on not wanting us to do that."

"No, he was clear on not wanting to invalidate the deal – which I'm on board with," Dean replied. "We're going to find a way to get him back his wings. He shouldn't be stuck down here because he was unlucky enough to take a liking to us."

"To you."

Dean paused, the bottle in his hands. "Huh?"

"Oh, come on, Dean, you're really sticking to the story that he gave up his grace because me and him are friends?" Sam pointed out. "We both know that's not true."

"Are we seriously having this conversation now? Because I gotta say, your timing s – shit!" Dean cursed loudly as the bottle, which he had put down rather harshly onto the dresser, suddenly cracked into two chunks.

"What?" Sam demanded over the line as Dean automatically reached for some nearby Kleenex to mop up the liquid he had spilled.

"I just knocked over…" he trailed off, pausing as he waited to inhale a waft of cloying perfume that most women liked to douse themselves in. Instead, he stared down at the dark stain spreading over the wood and cloth of the bureau. The shiny, dark red tint was more than familiar to him, as was the sudden metallic smell in the air. "Hey Sammy…you might want to wait for me to get there."

"What? Why?"

"I think there might be more to this Nicki chick than I thought," Dean said, his tone neutral. "Unless every successful twenty-something woman likes to keep bottles of blood in her bedroom –"

The phone was out of his hands and he was across the room before his mind caught up with him. Dean groaned as his back connected with a picture laden wall.

Swearing as he tried to get his breath back, Dean glanced up to see what had thrown him.

The young woman standing above him was blond and athletic looking, staring down at Dean with an expression of anger. From the pictures around the room, there was only one guess as to who she was.

"You're kinda spry for a cripple," he pointed out, struggling to his feet.

Her eyes blazed, and before he could react, she launched herself at him.

(*)

"Dean?" There was a commotion on the other line and Sam pressed the phone to his ear with more force. The sound of a dial tone blared in Sam's ear and he stared at it for several seconds in disbelief. "This is becoming a thing, isn't it?"

"What is becoming a thing?" Castiel asked, coming up behind him. He was dressed in some of Dean's casual clothing and carrying a newspaper that he had likely not even been reading; Sam had figured it was time to give the guy lessons in observing people without being creepy and stalkerish. Watching the bookstore seemed to have been a good job to start with.

"Is she still in there?" Sam demanded, already starting toward the bookstore.

"I was just coming to tell you she placed a sign on the door suggesting that she will return in fifteen minutes," Castiel reported. "Yet, I have been watching the building since the woman was dropped off this morning and she never left."

"Is there a back entrance she could have gone through?"

Castiel looked confused. "You asked me to watch the front."

Sam held back an aggravated sigh, "Come on, let's check it out. Even if she didn't have a back entrance, she probably couldn't get very far."

They hurried around the building, which housed several other businesses, and as soon as Sam was sure there was no one around to see them, entered the alleyway behind Pyewacket's. As it turned out, there was a backdoor, and after making sure there were no cameras to watch them, Sam quickly got to work on jimmying it open.

"Does it always take so long?" Castiel wanted to know, eying Sam's fingers at work.

"Mere mortals don't have the power to open doors with their mind, Cas," Sam replied, tongue between his teeth. "Don't sweat it, when we get a minute we'll teach you how to do this too." He grunted in triumph as the door finally clicked open, and straightened up, noticing the ex-angel was frowning thoughtfully. "What's up?"

"There is something I should tell you that I never got a chance to," Castiel told him, still staring at the door and sounding unsure.

Sam made a face as he reached into his jacket for the spare gun. "This really the time?"

"Given my mortality and the probability of getting killed on any given hunt, it would be foolish not to take advantage of every moment," Castiel answered flatly. "And it had not occurred to me to tell you this while we were preoccupied with the Apocalypse."

"– Cas –"

"When I was under Heaven's orders, I was the one who released you from Bobby's panic room," the former angel ploughed ahead. "For that, I am truly sorry."

Sam was frozen for a moment, staring blankly at the door which had prompted the confession, and then over at Castiel who was eyeing him uncertainly. A sharp, angry realization that his role in the Apocalypse – which he had always just blamed on the faceless denizens of Heaven – could be partially attributed to the one angel they had come to trust, flared up within him. His hand briefly tensed around the handle of the Beretta he was about to hand to Castiel, but at the naked sincerity in the angel's face, he relaxed.

It wasn't Castiel's fault that he'd been manipulated by Heaven, and regardless of how crappy things had gone done after, his sin still wasn't quite as bad as willingly letting a demon call the shots. Angels were supposed to be the good guys, but Sam had followed Ruby even knowing she was a demon and that it was in her nature to lie.

"Dude, we're going to have to work on your timing," he sighed, methodically pressing the spare gun into Castiel's hands. "Like, not saying stuff like that when someone's got a gun in their hand."

"Should I have waited until your hands were unoccupied?" Castiel asked, taking the firearm carefully.

"Uh, we'll talk about it later," Sam said, and gestured to the gun. "You remember what Dean taught you about the safety?" Castiel nodded, his expression taking on the same business-like quality that Sam was used to seeing when the former angel had gotten ready to kick some ass. He clicked and unclicked the mechanism to prove he could. "Okay, cool. That one's filled with rocksalt rounds, mine's actually loaded, just in case. Stay behind me for now."

'And don't shoot me, that stuff hurts,' he added silently as they crept in through the door and into the back of the store.

The place was completely silent, devoid even of the easy listening music Sam had noticed when he was in here the day before. He and Castiel made their way slowly through the cramped passage of the store and out into the stacks, both checking through the shelves to make sure no one was about to jump out at them. Titles in different languages caught Sam's eye; the ones in languages he knew seemed to be nothing more threatening than classical literature. Off Castiel's expression, it seemed he hadn't noticed anything amiss either.

They did a cursory check of the front desk and front of store area, but couldn't find anyone. It wasn't until they made their way to the office off to the side of the store that they made a discovery. The door to the office was partially closed, but as they came closer, Sam caught sight of her.

He slowly opened the door. "Nicki?"

When there was no response, he threw the door open and marched into the room, taking in her still form and the way her head lolled forward. He could see a line of red trickling down the corner of her mouth.

'It wasn't her?' he thought as he crouched down in front of her, checking for a pulse with one hand and trying to see if she had any other wounds with another.

Castiel lingered in the doorway. "Is she alright?"

"Yeah, I think she's still alive, but –" Sam's voice caught in his throat, his eyes falling on the track of blood running down her chin. It dripped onto a small ornamental vial that was clasped in her hands. A familiar scent filled his nostrils, and for a moment Sam felt something shudder through him. He could smell metal, iron and sulfur, and his mind transported him back to a time when he had felt powerful, when the strength of Hell had coursed through his veins –

Sam threw himself away from the unconscious woman, the action as violent as his panic.

"Sam?" Castiel asked, taking a step forward and lowering his gun.

"It's demon blood," Sam choked, forcing himself to breathe through his mouth even though it didn't help quell the nostalgic alluring quality of the substance. If anything, it made it worse, and so he had to stop. He hadn't craved the stuff since before the Apocalypse, but the smell was intoxicating. "But why would she have – ?"

His mind suddenly began to whir to life, a crazy idea blossoming. He knew better than anyone how demon blood amplified natural strengths and abilities. What if she had gotten her hands on the stuff in an attempt to cure her legs? It would have taken more than a few draughts to make any significant change, especially to someone who wasn't already mentally gifted. But what if while she was drinking the stuff to make herself stronger, she somehow managed to find a psychic solution to her problem?

And right on the tail of that thought was the question of where a handicapped bookstore owner had managed to procure the stuff…

He stared at her quiet face, remembering that Nicki had been asleep during the first homicide – possibly during every homicide.

Panic seized him and he started for the door. "Cas, we have to get out of here – Dean's in trouble – !"

His words cut off as he watched the air between himself and Castiel waver, before swirling into the upright and very angry looking form of Nicki Tobin.

"Jane," she said, her voice the breathy, quavering echo that Sam always associated with spirits. Before he could respond, she moved in the same lighting quick, flickering motion that ghosts did and shoved her hand hard against Castiel's chest, sending him clear out of the room. In another blink, she was in front of Sam, leaning down at him with eyes that shone preternaturally. "Trespassing is illegal."

The next thing he knew, Sam was sent flying through the open doorway as well.

(*)

Dean was really glad that the house was filled with ramps, because if this thing had decided to toss him down a flight of stairs, he probably would have a few broken ribs. As it was, he was pretty sure he was going to have some spectacular bruising if he lived through this encounter.

The apparition or spirit was coming for him again, flicking in and out of existence in the same spastic way that ghosts did. Her every movement, even when she reached for him, was like the jerky, disconnected movement of a flipbook animation, only a hell of a lot less fun.

'I thought this chick was alive,' he thought as he desperately picked himself up from the ruins of an end table the Nicki apparition had decided to chuck him at. Considering he had tried to grab hold of her a few times while she was kicking his ass, and failed, that story was obviously not completely true.

For the moment he couldn't see her, but that rarely meant anything when dealing with ghosts.

He hauled his gun out of its holster, glad that he had had the foresight to load it with rock salt that morning even if they had been looking for a witch and not a ghost. He hated cases where they never figured out what they were hunting until it was too late – and even now, he still had no idea what the hell Nicki was. Thinking back to the fact that she'd committed her killings within protection of sanctified ground, she was obviously not the run of the mill spirit.

Still, it was best to try every venue while he tried to come up with a plan.

When she appeared before him again, he noticed that she looked a little less solid, and there was an expression of concentration on her face, which was odd – ghosts usually didn't express much beside rage, if they expressed anything at all.

She reached for his throat, and he brought up the gun, emptying a few rounds into her spectral face. There was a clatter of glass as several hanging pictures were hit, falling to the ground.

She jerked back, although whether it was from surprise or pain, he wasn't sure. What was clear, he realized with a sinking feeling, was that the rock salt was having about the same effect as it had had against that Tulpa he and Sam had fought in Texas.

He swore inwardly as she looked back at him, her expression dark. "That was my favorite picture."

And then she was in his face again, hauling him up by the collar as though he weighed nothing. Her eyes were shining with the same otherworldly gleam as he had seen in ghosts, but they seemed more focused than the average spirit. He also noticed that she lacked quite a few of the attributes that ghosts tended to mimic, like the decaying, rotting smell of dust and cold.

'Not a ghost, something else – some kind of deva? No, she's pretty damn visible – might say shtriga, they don't necessarily go after kids,' he thought urgently. The idea sparked something in his memory, and he almost remembered it before she gave an angry snarl and threw him once again.

He slid to a halt in the kitchen, his face skidding painfully against the floor before his head knocked into the bottom of the stove.

With the amount of times he'd been hit on his head, Dean wondered why he hadn't fallen into some kind of a coma yet.

He blinked.

'That's it.'

There had been that girl in New York. She had been manifesting as a spirit, but she hadn't actually been dead yet. She had been in a persistent, vegetative coma but her frustration had caused her to lash out, causing deaths all over her small town. In her case, she had been psychically influencing people around her to commit terrible, violent acts, but who said this type of thing manifested the same way all over?

'Maybe this Nicki chick is doing the same thing,' he thought, staggering to his feet and looking around for a sign of her. She had disappeared again. 'Instead of lashing out psychically, though, she's projected herself with her mind to escape her chair.'

It made more sense than anything else he had come up with.

"You're all the same," a voice said quietly in his ear, and then he was sent crashing into the island in the kitchen. "What is it about girls like you? You have no respect for other people's belongings?"

Dean barely had time to recover before a set of steak knives came flying at him, and he rolled back over onto the floor to avoid them.

'Of course, the theory doesn't explain how she did it or why she's such a bitch,' he thought grimly, crawling away on his hands and knees. He ducked out of the way as the kitchen table flung itself across the room at him, followed by several wooden chairs.

He had no idea how long he could keep up outrunning Nicki. Considering she wasn't a real spirit, none of the usual defences worked against her, and he had no idea when she was going to get tired. There was only one way he could think of getting rid of her, and it wasn't pleasant, nor was it anything he could do where he was.

'Gotta tell Sam,' Dean thought desperately, casting his eyes about for a phone; his was still in pieces up in Nicki's room.

He knew his brother wasn't going to like this – exorcising something and killing someone still alive were two very different things – but if they didn't stop Nicki, more people were going to die. Cas was with him, though, and he knew the former angel was the more practical minded of the two. All that time as an angel meant Cas wouldn't hesitate to carry out what needed to be done –

Dean yelled in pain as the projection of Nicki was in front of him again and he felt her rake nails down his front, tearing through his shirt and into his flesh.

(*)

Sam shook off a bout of dizziness caused by several rather large tomes falling on his head, and automatically cast his eyes about for both Nicki and Castiel. The former was nowhere to be seen, but the ex-angel was crumpled several feet away across a fallen bookshelf, his left arm wrenched into a painful looking position and his eyes staring up at the ceiling in a dazed manner.

As Sam struggled to his feet, the projection of Nicki shimmered back into view. She was less distinct than before, but still too threatening for comfort. He briefly glanced back at the office where her body remained slumped, wondering if he could maybe wake her up somehow and if that would stop the attack. It wasn't the best plan, but he couldn't think of anything else off the top of his head. If all else failed, he could shoot her, he supposed, but his gun had fallen out of his hands somewhere…

"I've never killed a man before," Nicki's echoing voice remarked quietly as she advanced on Castiel. "Do they make the same noises, I wonder?"

Sam had the sudden, sharp thought that Dean would never forgive him if he let Castiel die, and for a moment he abandoned any half-formed thoughts of waking Nicki in favor of at least distracting her.

"Nicki! Stop!" he called out, taking a step forward. "Why are you doing this?"

The projection of Nicki halted, and then turned around to face Sam in the same flickering manner that characterized all of her movements. It was almost like she was constantly being hit by a strobe light. She eyed him coolly, cocking her head to one side and then before he could react, she was up close, her nose inches away from his.

"You wouldn't understand," she whispered quietly, eyes roving over him. "You've probably never felt powerless in your life…travelling around whenever you want, looking the way you do…you never had to work for anything, did you?"

Sam held his tongue, knowing that chatting with an angry spirit about how he had spent most of his life feeling powerless against other people's plans for him wasn't going to mean anything to her.

"I spent my whole life being mocked and picked on for not looking right, for not being the popular, cheerful one – everyone wanted to know why I couldn't be more like my best friend. Caitlin, the perfect daughter – a freakin' veterinarian," she hissed at him, wrath dripping from every word. Her form wavered again in anger. "So I changed. I did everything I could to become what people wanted me to be – pretty, sporty, successful, social – and it worked. I got everything I wanted. I got Joe." Her expression turned pained. "Too bad he didn't want me either." The lights in the store sputtered with the weight of her fury. "Even after that, I was trapped. Trapped in that damned chair, trapped with my parents, forever."

"But there are other ways," Sam reasoned gently. "Demon blood's not the answer."

She seemed surprised and peered at him searchingly. The mad gleam in her eyes faded somewhat. "You knew what it was. You're not just someone on vacation, are you, Jane?" Before he could respond, her eyes hardened again and he was pinned back against the wall behind the cash register. "Another liar."

"I can offer you truth."

Sam's eyes flitted over to where Castiel had managed to get up. He was watching Nicki's spirit with a carefully blank expression. She too eyed him speculatively.

"Every drop of demon blood that you drink consigns your soul farther into Hell," Castiel told her, eyes intent on her. "Even before you took innocent lives, partaking of that sin condemned you. But there remains hope."

Sam felt the power holding him to the wall ease a little, as Nicki's attention turned to Castiel.

"You have not fallen into damnation as far as some," Castiel continued. "If you stop now – if you ask forgiveness, God will listen."

Sam winced, as on the word 'forgiveness', Nicki's hold on him tightened painfully.

"'Forgiveness'?" she repeated, voice ringing cold in the empty store. "I'm not the one that needs forgiveness! They should all have been asking me – begging me for it, after ruining my life!" She waved a hand and several other stacks of books fell on top of Castiel.

"You're the one drinking demon blood," Sam pointed out, trying to pull himself away from the wall. "That's your choice."

Her expression changed from mad rage to uncertainty for a moment. "She said it would help. She said I could use it to get out of the chair again."

"Who?" Sam prompted. "Who told you about all of that?"

But Nicki wasn't listening any longer, and Sam made the difficult realization that the woman they were dealing with was no longer completely sane. Whether she had been before the accident or before she took the demon blood was one thing, but whatever sanity she had had before had been eradicated by the sinister drug.

'Why do you think so many flamed out already? They weren't strong enough,' a chilling voice murmured in his mind, and he could practically hear Azazel's voice in his head, see his yellow eyes gleam with terrible mirth.

'We aren't going to be able to save her,' Sam realized.

"They don't deserve to be happy," Nicki was murmuring. "And I can make it right. Who's going to suspect poor little paraplegic Nicki asleep in her parents' house?" She smiled at Sam in an ominous way. "Don't you see?"

"Nicki, come on, it doesn't have to be this way," Sam pleaded with her.

"Yes it does," Nicki told him, a look of concentration on her face. "But don't worry, I won't make it too messy. I don't want to have to clean blood off my floors. You and that bitch in my house will be able to have closed caskets at your funeral, okay?"

'Dean,' Sam thought blankly, realizing with dismay that Nicki wasn't just projecting herself to him and Castiel, but that she was also projecting herself to Dean halfway across the town. The demon blood hadn't just amplified her madness, and he could only wonder with mounting horror just how much she had been chugging over the past few months to get strong enough to do that.

She was wrapping her fingers around his throat, and he could already feel the pressure cutting off his airway –

BANG!

For a moment, they were both frozen in surprise.

Sam looked over her translucent shoulder and saw Castiel, Sam's gun in his raised functioning hand, glaring over at them.

Nicki stared at him for a moment, before saying quietly, "You're really stupid, you know? Guns don't work on me."

"They work very well on your human body, though," Castiel told her stiffly.

Nicki's eyes went wide, and she whipped her head around, staring into the open office in horror. Sam wrenched his own gaze toward the door, and saw with startling clarity that Castiel's shot had indeed hit Nicki – there was an entry wound on the side of her head and bloods-spatter all across the walls of the office.

"I would say you have a few seconds left before death finally sets in," Castiel continued quietly. "Now would be the time to ask God's forgiveness."

Nicki let out a shriek of rage and threw herself at Castiel, releasing Sam as the last of her thrall over him broke. He saw the former angel go down hard and Nicki loom over him, laying into him with fists and clawed fingers.

Sam stared in shock, looking around in vain for the rock salt loaded gun Castiel had been carrying with him. If she was actually dead now, likely it could work as a repellant to get her away from Castiel until they –

He tensed up when he realized what they were going to have to do to ensure Nicki's spirit finally went to rest.

His hesitation lasted barely a second when Castiel let out a pained sounding cry, and Sam hurried into the office, digging through his pockets for the extra salt rounds he had brought with him. Ignoring the sight of the plum-sized exit wound in the side of Nicki's head, he let the open salt rounds spill over her body and dumped some of the lighter fluid on her before setting the flame.

There was a shriek from the other room as the fire surged to life, and he added as much flammable material that he could find in the office to the blaze as he could. He was once more thrown from the room as Nicki made a last desperate attempt to take him out, but a second later her spiritual body disintegrated into embers before him.

There was silence in the store.

Sure that she was gone now, Sam picked himself up and went looking for Castiel. The former angel was huddled in a heap, bloody scratches down the side of his face and soaking his shirt. "You okay, Cas?"

"I dislike pain," the ex-angel mumbled as he tried to get to his feet. Sam reached over to help him, earning a wordless yell as Castiel's left arm jostled. Sam winced at the sight of his shoulder, which had looked slightly dislocated before and now looked like it actually belonged to someone else.

"Yeah, well, no one does," he pointed out. "Let me fix that for you. You can't walk out of here looking like that."

"Get it over with, then," Castiel told him through gritted teeth.

"This isn't like using angel mojo to heal things, Cas, it's gonna hurt," Sam told him. "Even more so if you don't relax."

Castiel grumbled, but visibly loosened up somewhat.

Sam braced himself. "Okay, so I'm going to count to three and I'll pop it back into place, okay?"

"Yes."

"One –"

Sam shoved the former angel's shoulder back into its socket, and Castiel let out a stream of Enochian that Sam could only imagine was some rather impressive cursing. He glared up at Sam. "You lied. You did not count to three."

"That's the point," Sam said, hauling Castiel to his feet. "You can't be tense, so I had to catch you off guard."

Castiel opened his mouth, possibly to argue, and then blinked. "That makes sense."

Sam snorted. "Yeah, well, stick with me, kid and you'll go places. For now, we just have to go find Dean."

Castiel's face clouded over instantly. "Yes."

They left the bookstore in a hurry, knowing that it wouldn't be long before someone came to investigate the sound of gunshots and the smell of burning flesh. Sam drove them as quickly across town as he could, a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that wasn't just caused by his worry over Dean. He hated cases where he was forced to kill people who had become corrupted by circumstance. Now it was Nicki joining more names of once innocent people – like Madison and Jack – that he had been forced to take out.

"What happens to them?" Sam asked quietly as they pulled onto the street where Nicki lived – had lived. "They don't just…get sent to Hell, do they? Is she going to…?"

"The demon blood makes a strong case for her eventual resting place," Castiel told him earnestly. "Her sins were…not forgiven as yours were. And even if they had been, she would not enter Heaven immediately. She would need time for penitence. Purgatory, most likely."

Sam blinked, staring at Castiel. "That actually exists?"

Castiel cocked his head to one side. "Of course."

Sam forcibly stifled his curiosity, recognizing that now was not the most opportune time to exercise it. They parked a ways away from the Tobin house and went in the back way, which was still open.

Dean was lying on his back in the kitchen, covered in blood from deep wounds down his front.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, running forward with Castiel on his heels. Had they been too late?

Leaning over his brother, he saw Dean's eyes – one of which was swollen shut – spring open and he groaned. "I think I might have pulled a muscle."

Sam let out a harsh chuckle. "You think?"

"Job's done?" Dean asked as Sam leaned over him.

"Yeah, she's gone. Still a few things left unanswered, but I don't think any more brides are going to be ripped apart in this town," Sam replied as he helped his brother to his feet. He made a face at the ripped cloths and shiny red scrapes down over Dean's sternum and one breast. Nothing fatal, thankfully. "You good?"

"I'll live."

"I am glad you are unharmed," Castiel said tightly, as Sam pulled away from his brother.

"Yeah, me too – it'd suck if I got schooled by a chick in a wheelchair," Dean replied with an easy grin at Sam, who rolled his eyes.

Castiel seemed to hesitate a moment, and then reached out tentatively, patting Dean's left shoulder in an awkward approximation of a friendly tap. His hand rested there a bit longer than was a standard comforting touch.

Sam raised an eyebrow, waiting expectantly for Dean to go rigid and tell Castiel off about personal space. To his surprise, Dean simply shook his head at Castiel as though to say, 'you're something else, you know that?'. For an even bigger wonder, Castiel seemed to get it because there was subtle quirk to his lips as he pulled back his hand.

There was a brief instance where they were both watching each other, and for the first time in years, Sam felt like an interloper in a private moment.

That moment passed just as quickly as it had come, leaving Sam to think he had imagined the entire thing, and Dean was looking up at him again.

"So, what was her deal, anyway?"

"You aren't going to believe it," Sam warned him. Off Dean's curious look, he added, "Demon blood."

Dean's eyes widened in surprise. "That's what that was? You sure?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty sure."

Surprise turned to worried suspicion. "Are you…?"

"I'm good – zero cravings," Sam assured him. "But I'm kind of confused as to how some girl in Decatur, Illinois gets a hold of the stuff. She said someone gave it to her, but…well, there wasn't much time to ask her the particulars."

"She had already begun to exhibit signs of insanity," Castiel put in helpfully. "It was imperative to stop her."

"You think someone's handing out DB to desperate folks, then?" Dean asked. "Could be a demon."

"Maybe. Not like we have a clue."

Dean frowned. "You know, we might. I was up in her room before, and checked out her laptop. Some of the forums she was active on were really weird. Maybe she found someone selling the stuff online?"

Sam raised an eyebrow. "That's kind of farfetched."

In the distance, they could hear sirens. "It's our only lead right now."

"Okay, fine, go grab it and we'll split," Sam said. "I don't think we're going to be getting off scot-free with stuff anymore, either. Our blood is all over Nicki's store…" He eyed the trails of red across the floor. "And here. They might not know our identities, but the authorities are going to start compiling info on us again."

Instead of looking chagrined, though, Dean appeared hopeful. "Does that mean we can head back to New York?"

Sam knew what his brother was getting at, and sighed. "Dean –"

"No way, Sam, we said two weeks," Dean stated, voice firm. "If the universe is out to get me, it's gonna take its issues out on the ass that actually belongs to me. Besides, there's no point in keeping the boobs if they're about to lose their effectiveness anyway."

Sam watched his brother practically bound up the stairs despite his injuries, sure that his annoyance over the latest job was clouding his judgement. Sam didn't like being trapped in a female body any more than Dean did, but he'd be stupid to say it wasn't useful.

Sam supposed New York was as good a next destination as any, and they did need to check in with Yong. Perhaps along the way there Sam could appeal to Dean's common sense and try to wheedle some more time out of him. All they needed was to stay off the radar long enough to figure out how to enter Hell.

Because after that, no spell in the universe was going to hide them long.