A/N: As pretty much everyone guessed, the crossover story is Supernatural. *delivers cookies all around* :D It's another obsession of mine and I can't resist the idea of throwing them together since they have a fair amount in common and yet the main protagonists of both stories come from pretty much completely opposite sides of the spectrum. I also think it will be interesting to see Rachel and Trent cope with a world where the inderlanders are still in hiding and are significantly different from the ones they're used to.

If you're familiar with the Supernatural timeline, this is set during season six. I believe "Ever After" takes place in around 2009 or 2010, so a year later would make it around 2010-2011 which roughly coincides with SPN season six. It's an imperfect match up, since I'm not totally sure about the Hollows dates and SPN runs on soap opera time with years that happen off camera and don't move the actual dates forward ;) but I figure it's close enough. Plus, that timing works well for my purposes for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'm setting this not too long after the SPN episode "The French Mistake", wherein it becomes canon in the SPN universe that there are in fact other realities and other versions of earth out there besides the one in which the show is set.

Specifically, this story is set somewhere in between SPN episodes "... And Then There Were None" and "My Heart will Go On". In "And Then There Were None" the boys are somewhere near Sandusky, OH - which is only about 4 hours away from Cincinnati. :) Way too coincidental for me to not use it. :)

If you're not familiar with Supernatural, don't worry. This story is being told from Rachel's POV and she isn't familiar with it either, so anything important will be revealed as she and Trent discover it.

At least for now, I've decided not to move this story to the cross-over section since the bulk of the story is about Rachel and Trent. I may change my mind later, but we'll see.

Oh, also, I'm not sure whether Rachel should be able to use her second sight or not when she can't tap a line, but whatever, they're in a different world with different rules so ... let's just pretend she can, okay? ;)

CHAPTER 5 - "Strangers in a Strange Land"

I was relieved when the darkness of the woods outside the window gave way to street lights and heavier traffic once the smaller road joined the interstate and even more relieved to see the grey-pink streaks of dawn starting to lighten the horizon. Yet as we delved deeper into Cincinnati, I felt my unease begin to return for a different reason.

Something wasn't right. No ... a lot of things weren't right. I didn't notice it at first, but once we were deeper into the city, on roads I had traveled my whole life, I could no longer ignore it. I started double-checking street signs to be sure, but either I was seriously turned around, or something was seriously wrong with Cincy.

There was a bakery on a corner that should have had a gas station. A cafe instead of the spell shop I had often frequented. A factory that had been torn down five years ago was somehow standing again, parking lot already half full of the early shift workers' cars. Someone also seemed to have changed out all the billboards and road-way advertising. They were touting products and politicians I had never seen before. My heart began to beat faster, a clammy chill working through me. I felt like that guy in "It's a Wonderful Life", returning to a town he thought he knew, only to find everything just a little wrong.

I looked over at Trent, wondering if he had noticed the same thing, but not wanting to ask such a strange question outright while in mixed company. "I don't remember that cafe being there," I said instead, trying for conversational.

"The city has certainly ... changed, since we were last here," Trent agreed, and I could see in the flat look on his face and the tense set to his jaw that I wasn't losing my mind. He saw the differences too.

"You said your hotel was down this way, right?" Dean asked us as he took a right turn with traffic. We'd told the brothers that they could leave us at the first gas station with a payphone and that was fine, but they had insisted on taking us to our destination, so Trent had rattled off a familiar hotel, apparently unwilling to give them either of our home addresses. I had the faint impression that Sam and Dean weren't necessarily going out of their way just to be neighborly and I wondered if they wanted to see if our story checked out, or wanted to keep an eye on us a little longer. Maybe they still weren't convinced we weren't part of some carjacking ring or something. Whatever the case, I wasn't complaining about a warm car ride into the city.

"Yes," Trent confirmed, although I could see the worried knot in his brow and guessed he was wondering if the hotel was actually going to be there or not.

"Hey, you want to clean up a little before we get there?" Sam asked, retrieving some unused fast-food napkins from the floor by his feet.

I looked down at my hands, now crusted with my own dried blood and grimaced. We'd scare people half to death with the way we looked and since we didn't actually want to have to report an accident that hadn't happened, cleaning up sounded like a pretty darn good idea. "That would be great, thanks."

Sam pulled a silver flask out of his pocket and uncapped it, pouring some of the contents on to the wadded napkins before passing it back to me. I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of smelling like alcohol and blood at the same time, but when I took the wet mass from him I found that it was only water.

Who kept water in a hip flask? Shrugging inwardly, I gratefully wiped my hands with the wet towels, trying to get as much of the blood off as I could without the paper shredding and coming apart too badly. I had mixed results, but it was better than nothing.

I saw both Sam and Dean watching us in the rearview as I scrubbed my hands and Sam wet another wad of napkins and handed them to Trent. Trent accepted, dabbing at his forehead and trying to comb his hair straight with his fingers.

I made a face at the tacky feeling of my fingers sticking together. Unfortunately, all I'd managed to do was make the dried blood on my hands sticky again and mingle it with rolled up little cruds of paper napkin. It felt disgusting. "Hey, um, can I borrow the water for a minute?" I asked.

Sam shrugged and handed me the flask. I noticed it had a gothic cross pattern engraved on either side. I was surprised to realize that the flask didn't just look silver, it actually was silver, or at least I was pretty sure it was. It tingled slightly in my fingers like silver did. Thinking something like that must cost a lot, I held it tightly so I wouldn't drop it as I rolled down the window and held my hands out of the car, rinsing them in turns under a trickle of water from the flask. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better.

Shaking my hands dry and rolling the windows back up, I tried to ignore the pain in my torn wrists. I wet my fingers with a little more water to wipe away the smudges of blood I knew were on my face and then leaned over to look in the rearview mirror to confirm I'd gotten them all. I found Sam and Dean still watching. Yeah, that wasn't at all creepy.

"Got any more napkins?" I asked with forced cheerfulness. Sam obligingly handed me back the remainder of the stash and I dabbed my face dry before turning to Trent. He'd done a pretty good job of cleaning his forehead and temple, but had missed a trail of dried blood that ran down his jaw just under his ear.

Trent looked distastefully at the wet, bloodstained, shredding napkins like they were ... well, wet, shredding napkins stained with blood. "Why is it that every time I'm in the back seat of a car on a road trip with you, I end up bleeding and needing to clean up with paper napkins?" he muttered.

I grinned despite myself, struck by the memory of our mostly disastrous little cross-country road trip a few years back. That was right before Lucy had entered Trent's life. He had changed so much since then ... maybe I had too, a little. Life was such a funny thing.

"I don't know, you must just be a trouble magnet, Trent," I said brightly, earning me a wry look. Wetting another napkin, I handed Trent the flask to hold and used the moistened towel to wipe away the red stains on his jaw and neck. I noticed that the way he'd arranged his hair, it covered the tops of his pointed ears, making him look like the human he'd been passing himself off as for most of his life. Trent had been out as an elf for over a year now, but either old habits died hard, or he was simply taking extra precautions due to the uncertainty of our current situation. I'd always thought Ivy was an obsessive planner, but Trent seemed to have covering his bases down to an art form. Most of the time it was annoying. Occasionally it was useful.

A bruise was starting to form on Trent's cheekbone and I tried to tilt his head to get a better look at it, but he pulled away from me with mild annoyance. Handing the flask back to Sam, Trent neatly bundled up the used, wet napkins inside of a couple of dry ones and set them aside on the seat.

In the front seat, I saw the two brothers exchange glances as Sam pocketed his flask. Sam raised his eyebrows slightly and shrugged. Dean cocked his head and gave a one-shouldered shrug as if agreeing with whatever unspoken thing was passing between them. The body language of both men seemed markedly more relaxed now, and I had the oddest feeling that Trent and I had passed some kind of test, although I couldn't imagine what.

"The hotel is just down there. Anywhere here is fine," Trent said, glancing out the window and looking a little relieved to see the familiar edifice of the ten story building looming ahead, glass windows glinting in the early morning sun light. "Once we get checked in and changed, we can call someone about the car," he added, ostensibly to me, but I knew it was for the benefit of our good Samaritans.

I just nodded, not really seeing that it mattered much what they thought at this point, but content to let Trent play cloak and dagger if that rocked his boat. I just wanted to get out of this car and to a phone. I wanted to call Ivy and Jenks ... and I was more than a little terrified of what would happen when I did.

Dean pulled the car up to the curb in front of the hotel, engine idling as Trent and I quickly slid out of the backseat. I carefully grabbed up all the soiled napkins to take with us as we got out. Not so much out of a compulsion for neatness as because I was simply always wary of leaving anything lying about that could be used as a focusing object.

The cold air was bracing after the long, muzzy warmth of the car and it helped me shake off a little of the weariness that was tugging at the edges of my endurance.

"Thanks so much for your help and the ride," I told the two brothers through the rolled down window after we'd shut the door. I was tired and hurting, but nervous energy was bouncing in my stomach, warring with the tightening knots of dread in my stomach that I was struggling not to show.

"No problem," Sam said with a smile. "Glad we could help."

"You two stay safe. Stay away from any more creepy deserted night time roads and ninja Bambi's!" Dean called over as he shifted gears and pulled away, the long sleek shape of the car disappearing into the flow of morning traffic.

I pushed my hands in my pockets and headed quickly across the concrete towards the hotel. We weren't checking in, of course, but they would probably have pay phones somewhere inside. When I reached the glass doors, I froze as I was confronted with the reflection of the Cincinnati skyline behind me, painted in the clear golden strokes of morning light.

I whirled around, nearly running smack into Trent who had been following behind me. He stepped back quickly, frowning at the look on my face and turning to see what I was staring at. The familiar edifice of Carew Tower was clearly visible from here.

I swallowed hard. "Trent ... the restaurant's gone," I said stupidly, feeling numb with shock. I don't know why this one thing stood out from all the rest, but maybe some part of me had still been telling myself that I was just turned around and imagining all the other little inconsistencies I'd been seeing. But this... there was no mistaking this. Carew Tower looked just like it had every other time I'd seen it ... except that the revolving restaurant at the top was clearly missing. Not missing like it had been destroyed ... missing like it had never been built in the first place.

I heard Trent draw his breath in sharply beside me.

The juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar was beyond unnerving. It was like looking at reality from the Ever After, only more disturbing. Caught by that thought, I quickly brought up my second sight.

I saw nothing.

Panic flooded me, hot and biting. For a minute, I thought maybe I just couldn't do it in the same way I still couldn't find a line, but no, that wasn't it. It wasn't that I truly saw nothing, I simply didn't see what I expected to see. I felt my hair start floating and I could see the auras of the people passing by us. What I didn't see was the wash of red to which I was accustomed. What I didn't see was the broken, decaying landscape of the Ever After superimposed over the image of reality.

The shock hit me hard and I stumbled sideways, catching myself against the door with one hand. "It's not there," I whispered, dropping my second sight and trying to make sense of all this.

"Rachel?" Trent's hand was on my shoulder, his voice concerned. I met his eyes, shaking my head in disbelief. "The Ever After. It's not there."

The sinking feeling in my gut becoming painful, I whirled on my heel and pushed my way quickly through the lobby doors. Ignoring the bell man who tried to greet me, I almost ran towards the restrooms and the bank of shiny, deserted payphones that could be seen lining the hall towards them.

Fumbling through my coat pockets for change, I scrounged up enough to feed the black and chrome machine and call Ivy at the church. The phone said the number was out of service. Ivy's cell rang through to a floral shop. Jenks' was answered by an Asian woman who hung up on me when I insisted she tell me where she got the phone. I tried to dial my Mom, but the annoying recorded voice demanded that I insert more change, which I didn't have. Hands shaking, I slammed the phone down hard on the cradle ... then did it again for good measure. I was thinking of going for a third time when Trent's hand closed over mine and guided the object of my wrath back to its resting place with more gentleness than the piece of crap technology deserved.

"Rachel, calm down, people are looking," he said quietly.

"Calm down?!" I bristled angrily, although hey, I wasn't stupid, I was keeping my voice down ... mostly. "Trent, have you not noticed that we woke up in the freaking Twilight Zone this morning? This city is wrong. The ley lines are gone, the Ever After is gone and I really, really need to call my Mom."

"You can't, Rachel." Trent choose to focus on the last part of my tirade. Grabbing my arm, he pulled me further into the hallway, out of sight of the lobby.

"Yeah, because the rates these phones charge is just highway robbery!" I seethed, the anger only barely covering my fear as I yanked my arm away from him. I'd been worried about being displaced in time ... but this? I wasn't even sure what this was yet, but it felt worse.

"That's not what I mean. You know your mother is not going to answer. No one else has, have they?"

I stared at the elf, my eyes narrowing. "You got something you want to share with the class, Trent? You know something about what is going on here? Because if so, you'd better spill it quick, I am not in the mood for any of your cryptic games. "

Trent sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't know anything more than you do, but from what we've seen so far, I think it's fair to assume that we are not in ... " he paused, seeming to search for a suitable word or phrase. "Not in our Cincinnati," he finally finished, his brows furrowing.

I frowned at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Trent looked frustrated. "How in the Turn should I know?" he said quietly, but with a decided bite of irritation in his tone. "All I'm saying is that the dates on the papers in the vending machines outside are correct, but so many other things aren't. There's too much different, too much wrong for us to be able to assume that we are in fact in the same city that we were in yesterday."

I nodded sourly, agreeing that far. "It's like when they put a city you know in a movie and get the major land marks right, but mess up on the details," I concurred.

"This is like our world, but ..." Trent ran his hand through his hair. It was one of his tells and I realized that beneath his reasonable facade, he was every bit as disturbed as I was. "Well, I suppose your Twilight Zone analogy fits as well as any."

I knew that, I just didn't want to face it. Didn't want to believe it, and I bit back a wave of anger at him for forcing me to look at something I didn't want to see. I knew that wasn't fair or logical, but I was tired, hurting, and emotionally run out. I took several deep breaths and tried to think more coherently.

Reaching for one of the huge, brick sized phone books, I hoisted it out of its slot beneath the phone. Flopping it open, I started flipping through the "K" section, scanning for any of the multiple listings that should have existed for Kalamack Industry's offices and related businesses.

Trent looked over my shoulder, apparently guessing what I was doing. I could feel his tenseness behind me.

There were no Kalamacks in the directory. The only thing we found that was even close was a Kalmack Dry Cleaning shop down town and a Kalamatas Greek restaurant in the suburbs. I couldn't find Vampiric Charms' listing either. Just as strange, I didn't see a single ad or listing for any of the hosts of Inderland specific services I was used to seeing in the phone book. The maps in the center of the book didn't even list the Hollows.

I snapped the heavy tome shut in disgust. Phone numbers and maps didn't mean that much. Places were harder to do away with. My heart clenching, I turned and strode back towards the doors.

"Where are you going?" Trent's hand on my arm stopped me before I got more than a few paces and I frowned at him.

"Home," I said firmly.

Something crossed Trent's face, but he wisely didn't argue with me. Instead he drew his breath in slowly and then let it out. "All right," he said. "But perhaps we should wash up a little better first. No offence to paper napkins, but I believe we could do better." He nodded meaningfully towards the restroom signs and I looked down at the blood still under my finger nails and staining Trent's shirt.

"Okay," I agreed reluctantly, struggling with the a burning need to get moving and find answers. "We wash up, and then we go."

I washed my hands and face in the restroom, wincing as I washed out the scabbing wounds on my wrists before shrugging back into my coat. The washing part was quick, the going part not so much. Trent and I swiftly realized that we had no transportation and no money. I didn't have my purse, Trent didn't have his wallet and even when we talked one of the girls behind the front desk into letting us borrow her phone with a tale of car accidents, lost luggage and other whoa, Trent had no more luck calling anyone he knew than I had.

When I saw the same woman break a $100 for one of the other guests while we were using the phone, I began to wonder if it would have done us any good even if we had had our personal effects. The bills she handed the man were either in a foreign currency, or they were as subtly wrong as the rest of the city because they didn't look quite like the dollars I was used to.

Fortunately, wealthy people and their penchant for ridiculously expensive watches turned out to be a universal constant and after a while we were able to find a pawn shop within walking distance that took Trent's Rolex in exchange for enough money for us to get by for a couple days, if we were careful. I hoped we weren't going to need to get by on it for that long, but the truth of our situation was eating away at the wall of denial I was trying to hold onto like slow acting acid.

Trent divvied up the wrong-looking dollars, dividing the amount in half. He tucked one half into his pocket and handed the other to me. "In case we get separated," he said simply when I hesitated to accept it.

He had a point, and I took the money. The shape and color was right, but the pictures and text were wrong. It looked like play money to me and I felt weird as I put it in my coat pocket.

We got Trent a jacket and a hat at the run down little thrift shop that sat adjacent to the pawn shop. The garments were clean and fairly new. Trent looked at them like they might crawl away on their own, but made no complaint. We both knew we had better make our money stretch as far as possible until we knew more about what was going on. The jacket hid the blood on his shirt and the pin-striped fedora hid his ears. No one had yet noticed or commented, but it was better safe than sorry. Thus outfitted, we looked deceptively normal and fit in just fine in this city that we didn't really fit into at all.

We argued briefly about taking a cab versus the bus. Trent seemed to think that busses were some strange and foreign third world invention made for homeless people and eco-conscious hippies. I pointed out that they were also a lot cheaper than taking a cab, but didn't fight the point very hard. The truth was that I didn't want to wait around for a bus either.

It was only a short cab ride from the hotel to my church. I got out of the cab and quickly made my way down the sidewalk towards it while Trent settled up with the driver. It was there. It looked just the same as it always had, and my heart leapt despite my better judgment. For one moment, I thought there was a chance that I'd get up the steps, open the door and find that everything was okay ... then I saw the worn, lettered sign out front advertising the Sunday worship hours and a Pre-K daycare program.

My steps slowed as I approached. The building was the same, but the door was different. From this angle I could glimpse the back yard and see that where the garden should be was a fenced in area holding a children's playground and an assortment of brightly colored plastic toys.

I stopped at the base of the stairs, next to a trash can and recycling bin set out for collection. I could bring myself to go no further. This was the right building, but it wasn't my church. It wasn't my home.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," Trent's voice beside me made me jerk and turn to him. "Do you want to go in?"

The look on Trent's face said this was more or less exactly what he'd expected to find. If I were honest, so had I, but it still hit me hard. I shook my head, shoving my hands in my pockets. "It's probably locked up between services," I mumbled. That wasn't the reason, of course. I just couldn't bring myself think about going in through that familiar doorway and finding my living room still full of pews, my life completely displaced and erased.

I glanced sideways at Trent, trying not to feel too depressed and attempting to figure out what to do now. "You want to try your place?" I asked.

Trent shook his head. "There's no point. It's clear that wherever we are, we don't exist here. Neither, it seems, do most of the people we know."

"Yeah," I agreed. "How is that even possible, anyway? I mean, are we really saying we think we're in like ... some other version of earth? Like another dimension or something?" That sounded ridiculous, even saying it. It sounded like every bad, cheesy sci-fi movie Ivy and I had ever made fun of. I shook my head.

"What if none of this is real?" I asked, thinking that sounded a lot more likely. "What if this is like my kitchen and us making cookies when you were trying to get my soul back in my body?"

Trent looked away, and I wasn't sure if it was because of the particular events I was referring to, or because he didn't have an answer. Maybe both.

"Does it matter?" he said softly, and I could hear the weariness and defeat beneath his tone now. "Does it matter what reality is, if we're trapped either way?"

I had to admit, it didn't seem to at the moment. "Exile," I thought morosely. "Have I told you lately how much I hate wild magic?"

Trent smiled thinly.

I let my breath out slowly and pushed my tangled and probably god-awful mess of hair back out of my face. Standing around feeling sorry for ourselves wasn't going to get us anywhere. We knew the problem, now we needed to start working on the solution. "Well, real or not, there's got to be a way out. It dumped us here with our bodies for a reason, and if there's a way, then we're just going to have to find it."

Trent nodded and I could clearly see his determination, but I could also see a wary note of hesitation in his face.

"What?" I demanded. I knew Trent wanted to get back as badly as I did, maybe even more so. He hadn't said anything, but I knew he was worried about Lucy, Ray and Quen and what kind of trouble Ellasbeth's actions had stirred up.

Trent shook his head. "It's nothing, just ... be careful putting too much trust in anything you heard," he warned. "If the goddess exists, she's called a trickster for a reason. The story books are full of people broken for her amusement."

"Comforting," I said sarcastically. He knew he was right, but it was still the best and only lead we had. "Just about as comforting as the fact that even if we can find a spell to get us home, I still can't tap a line since they don't seem to exist here. What about you?"

Trent shook his head. "I keep trying. Nothing. No luck with wild magic either," he admitted with a frown. "Which is strange, because it should work independent of the lines. The thing is, I can feel it, I just can't get it to acknowledge me."

I squinted questioningly at him and he shrugged. "I tried several times in the woods and in the bathroom earlier. I'm doing the spells right, but they won't invoke. The magic tastes different, like the difference in the west coast lines versus the ones we're used to. I don't know how else to explain it."

"Great," I sighed. "I wonder if earth magic even works here or if this is some kind of giant magical dead zone."

Trent shrugged. "It's possible. Have you noticed the completely lack of any inderland activity? I've seen nothing but humans since we got here."

I nodded, and something in the recycle bin beside me on the curb caught my attention. Bending, I picked up a glossy restaurant direct mail flyer from atop a pile of similar mail advertising and crumpled newspapers. The flyer was emblazoned with the restaurants' name and location followed by a row of coupons that touted gourmet pizza delivery as well as a bar and fine dining experience. It was the name at the top of the flyer that caught my attention. Holy crap. Was it a coincidence? Seemed like a pretty big one.

"Well, maybe we should go here and see if that continues to hold true or not," I said, turning the bit of paper towards Trent so he could see that I was holding an advertising flyer for Pizza Piscary's.

Our morning's adventures had taken longer than I realized and by the time we reached Piscary's the sun was already high and edging towards noon.

Like my church, Piscary's was a disturbing mix of familiar and foreign. There was no MPL license on display, but otherwise the downstairs portion of the restaurant looked fairly identical to the way it had looked when I first went there some years back, before the changes Kisten had tried to make.

Except of course, for the fact that the patrons were all human and there were a lot more families present, making the downstairs portion of the restaurant seem more like casual family dining than a bar. Although that might only be because of how early in the day it was. The restaurant had just opened and was only beginning to fill with an early lunch time crowd, but seeing even this many humans sitting around eating pizza - tomato sauce and everything - was nothing short of weird.

"We'd need to find a history book to be sure, but I'll give you good odds that there has been no T4 virus in this world," Trent leaned over and whispered in my ear as we chose a seat at one of the unoccupied tables in the corner. He glanced around at the patrons and then tapped his finger on the large image of a tomato and other artful fresh vegetables that adorned one corner of the table menu. It was artistically done, but it was like putting a skull and crossbones on your menu, or at least it should have been.

Spread by tomatoes, the genetically engineered T4 "Angel" virus had wiped out something like half the world's human population during the late 60's and led to the world's T4 resistant, non-human inderland population to collectively come out of the closet, an event that came to be referred to as the Turn. As a lingering result, most humans still wouldn't eat tomatoes in any form, even though they were perfectly safe again. Well ... most humans in our world.

"No Angel virus means no Turn," I agreed. "Trent, this world isn't devoid of inderlanders; they're just all still in hiding."

Trent's brows furrowed at my logical leap. "Maybe. We can't be sure of that yet."

"Yes we can." I smiled at him and nodded towards the pretty, dark-haired waitress who was approaching our table, her movements just a little too fluid, her hips swaying in a familiarly seductive sashay.

Trent followed my gaze. "Oh," he agreed simply as he too recognized the woman for what she was. It was subtle unless you knew what to look for, but to the practiced eye she was almost certainly a vampire.

"Welcome to Pizza Piscary's, can I get you two started with anything to drink?" the woman inquired pleasantly, smiling at both of us.

For a moment, I second guessed my own conclusions. Her teeth were normal; her blunt canines lacking the delicate little points sported by my friend Ivy and all the other living vampires I knew. She also intimated none of the familiar, almost expected double-entendre when asking for our drink order - although if they were in hiding, then that wasn't too surprising. As soon as I got a scent of her, however, my doubts receded. The familiar tang of vampire was clear, albeit somewhat different. She smelled less like incense and more like blood and dust.

As she left with our drink order, Trent surreptitiously scanned the restaurant before leaning forward on the table as if we were having an intimate conversation. He kept his voice pitched low. "They smell different, but they're all vampires," he murmured, nodding towards the rest of the wait staff, including another male server and a woman behind the bar. "Don't you find that a little curious?"

I considered the question. At first blush it did seem kind of odd that with so many other differences, this Piscary's should still be run by vampires just like our Piscary's was, but the more I thought about it, the less odd it was. "Not really," I finally answered. "It's no different than there being a Carew tower, or my church still being in the same place. Some things are the same, some are different. It's like that movie where what the guy changed in the past kept changing the future. If this is some kind of alternate world and not an illusion, and if here there was no virus and no Turn, there's probably a lot of things that developed differently than in our world, along with some that remained the same. However, we can't be sure that the Turn itself isn't the origin of the differences, I mean, it could go back a lot farther than that and it could be the lack of the virus is as much a symptom as a cause for the shifts."

Trent cocked a smile at me. "Why does it sound like you've thought about this kind of thing before?"

I gave him a level look. "You've never been to movie night at my place," I told him wryly. "You should try arguing plot plausibility and time travel conundrums with a pack of opinionated pixies and a bored, over-analytical vampire sometime."

Trent's smile widened playfully. "If that's an invitation, I think I'd like that."

Caught flat-footed but the sudden 90 degree turn the conversation had taken, I felt a flustered heat creep up the back of my neck for absolutely no good reason. I squinted at Trent, guessing he'd done that intentionally. "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. Jenks' kids may be gone, but Jenks and Ivy both talk to the screen."

"Then it's a date," Trent was still grinning at me and it made me want to smack him. Or ... maybe something else.

"Yeah, sure, if we ever actually get back," I said sourly. "Right now a day care and a choir have kind of taken over what should be my living room, you know."

I was a little relieved when the waitress showed up with our drinks and that put an end to the conversation. She flirted with Trent as she took our order but he knew better than to encourage a vampire when he had no interest in being a donor and his manner remained carefully polite and distant. I could swear she was lingering at our table longer than she needed to, but then, Trent and I did both have blood on our clothes under our coats, which wasn't a great thing to be sporting in a vampire bar. She could no doubt smell it on us clearly.

As I watched her walk away, I tried to decide how advisable it would be to see if the vampires here could connect us with whatever passed for an inderland underground in this world. On one hand, it would be good to find out more about how magic worked here, we were going to need that if we were ever to get home. On the other hand, if the inderlanders were in hiding, they might not appreciate us poking our noses in. Vampires especially had had a reputation for disappearing people who found out about them before the Turn.

While I was still weighing the pros and cons, I noticed Trent stiffen in surprise across from me. I quickly followed his gaze towards the door. When I saw the two new patrons who had just come in, my eyebrows went up. They both looked taller, now that I was seeing them standing and not seated in a car, but the men who had just walked in were unmistakably the two brothers who had given us a lift into town. Talk about coincidences.

For a fleeting moment, the paranoid thought that maybe they'd followed us flittered through my mind, but the genuine flash of surprise on their faces when they scanned the room and saw us staring at them more or less put that thought to rest.

"Well, I guess it really is a small world after all," Dean said as he and Sam angled their way through the filling tables and took one of the empty ones beside ours. He flashed a grin at me. "Not following us, are you?" It was a joke ... but maybe not entirely.

I smiled back and shrugged. "I was going to ask you the same thing. You do realize it's creepy to stalk a girl you only just met."

We all laughed politely, but I got the feeling more explanation was needed. Geez, and I thought I was paranoid. "We saw a flyer for this place at the hotel," I said, gesturing to folded set of coupons I'd taken from the recycle bin which was now sitting on the table by my elbow. "Thought we'd check it out. What about you two? Find out anything about the job?"

Sam and Dean did that exchanging looks thing, again, and Dean shrugged. "Looks pretty promising. More than one job in town, as it turns out. Probably going to be a lot of cleanup work though," he said cryptically.

"What about you two? Get your car towed okay?" Sam asked. Our waitress was on her way over with the pizza Trent and I had ordered and in my periphery vision, I saw her take note of the two new people in her section. I could swear she didn't look happy to see them. Maybe she'd been hoping for a light shift?

"No, they seem to be having some difficulty with it, but they've assured us it will be taken care of," I heard Trent saying as the waitress quickly plastered on a smile and set our pizza down on the table between us.

She gave no sign of whatever I'd seen earlier once she was at the table. She took the brothers' order in the same pleasant and intentionally flirtatious way she'd taken ours, but she got a much better response out of them. Well, out of Dean, anyway. He flirted back with well-practiced ease and I was sure his laid-back charm got him a lot of phone numbers.

I shifted uneasily in my seat as I transferred a piece of pizza from the tray onto my plate. Crap on toast. Dean probably had no notion what a bad idea this was. I was a little surprised the woman's eyes weren't dilating more. I couldn't sense emotions like a vampire though, so either she was really good at controlling her reactions, or Dean wasn't as into her as he seemed.

If the inderlanders were still in the closet, then humanity as a whole was probably as unaware of them as they'd been in the pre-Turn days of our world. That meant a life of hiding what they were, but for a predatory species like vampires, it also meant no laws governing their actions. No police force that would recognize or correctly investigate inderland related crimes. No one to hold them accountable for anything they did. There was a reason many of the older vampires missed life as it had been before the Turn.

I hadn't known the brothers long, but I felt protective of them anyway. Sam and Dean were human and therefore likely to have no idea what the pretty waitress with the nice ass actually was. That worried me, but what was I going to do? Tell them to be careful because she was a vampire and probably more interested in their blood than their bodies? Oh yeah. That would go over great.

Morosely taking a bite of pizza, I pushed aside my unease. Nothing was about to happen out here in the open, especially not if the vamps were hiding. If it looked like one of the brothers was actually going to leave with the woman, or make a date with her, I'd figure out some way to deal with the situation then.

The pizza was delicious and that distracted me from my fretting. I was immediately reminded how long it had been since I'd eaten anything and between the two of us, Trent and I had polished off most of the pie by the time the brothers' order arrived.

The waitress topped off our drinks and Trent asked for the check.

Sam and Dean kept looking around the restaurant, their gaze often following the wait staff. If they were a little shadier, I'd have said they were casing the place. They hadn't actually touched their drinks and didn't show any signs of being about to dig into their newly arrived food either, which seemed a little odd. I got this vibe from them sometimes that I wasn't sure how to explain.

I glanced over to Trent to see if he'd noticed, but Trent was just looking tired. Elves and pixies both generally slept the four hours around noon and midnight. I didn't know when Trent had last slept, but we'd been through a lot and it was getting on towards noon now, which meant his body clock was probably trying to shut him down. He was rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily, but quickly stopped and acted like he wasn't tired at all when he saw me watching.

Cleaning my fingers on my napkin and rising, I excused myself to use the restroom while we waited for our bill. It took me a minute to find it because it wasn't where I had expected it to be. I finally located the washrooms in the back of the restaurant, past the kitchen. Some things are the same and some are different, I reminded myself, yawning as I pushed my way inside.

My sleep schedule was different from Trent's, but considering that I would normally be just getting up around now and had instead been up all night, I wasn't feeling terribly perky either. Now that my stomach was full, my lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me. My eyes felt scratchy and my head was getting muzzy. In the restroom, I splashed cold water on my face and tried to fight back my fatigue. Trent and I were going to need to find some place to crash for a while. I was really having trouble keeping my eyes open...

The room started spinning. I had to grip the edge of the sink hard to keep from losing my place and falling either upward or downward, I wasn't sure which. With an alarmed jolt, I realized something was very wrong. I'd been dead tired before, and it didn't make me feel like this. I wasn't just sleepy. I'd been drugged.

The burst of adrenaline triggered by my panic at the realization cleared my head a little. I had all but slumped over the sink and now pushed myself up right. As my head rose, I met the dark eyes of our waitress in the mirror. She was standing behind me, smiling a very unpleasant smile. "Everything all right in here, ma'am?" she drawled in a decidedly smooth and mocking tone.

I whirled around, my hips still propped back against the sink counter for balance as I faced her, my face wrinkling into a scowl. "You drugged me!" I seethed. It had to be her, or someone in the kitchen. No one else had touched our food or drinks. I remembered how tired Trent had been looking when I left him and the panic in my gut twisted harder. Crap on toast, he'd probably been drugged too!

I felt totally stupid for letting this happen. Here I'd been worried about everyone else in the restaurant but myself, since I was actually aware of the threat, and yet here I was, the one facing down the vamp in the bathroom – without a whit of magic I could call on. Some days my luck just sucked. To be fair though, I'd never expected the vampire to drug me. Come on to me, maybe, try to draw me in with pheromones, sure ... but slip a mickey into my drink? I had a feeling I was about to learn the hard way that I couldn't expect these vamps to act like the ones with which I was familiar.

"Sure I did, sweetheart," the woman purred, still smiling at me. "You and that delectable blondie smell so good. Most of us could hardly think after you two came in." She lunged for me, but I anticipated it and was already in motion, scrambling sideways towards the door. She adjusted quickly and I felt her strong hands close about my shoulders. Shifting my hold, I brought my knee up hard into her mid-section, feeling it land with a satisfying thump that I knew had to hurt.

The woman snarled in pain and threw me into the wall with vampire swiftness. Lights exploded in my vision as my back crunched into the tile. Struggling to draw breath, I slid down the wall, the drugs making me weak and robbing my knees of the ability to support or catch me. The room was still whirling and either I was seeing double or the waitress from hell had spontaneously grown a twin.

I drew in a breath to scream, but her hand was over my mouth before I could. She clamped down painfully hard, straddling me on her knees as I slumped on the floor. I tried to bite her hand, struggling with my motor control and gripping at her arm with failing strength.

The woman snarled at me with an open mouth, her face showing clearly what she was now. Through the drugged haze clouding my thoughts, I was shocked to see a complete second set of thin, shredder-like fangs descend from her gums, over her normal teeth. What in the hell?! I had certainly never seen a vampire with teeth like this before. Apparently, the differences in this world extended far beyond buildings and historical events.

The woman's open mouth curved into a malicious smile when she saw the way my eyes widened and she mistook my surprise at her unusual dentistry for fear. "Tell me, sweetheart, are you a hunter too?"

I had no idea what she was talking about, and no way to tell her that while she was gagging me. I shook my head, but she just smiled wider. "Like you'd tell me if you were. Well, it doesn't matter. You'll tell me everything and anything I want to know, soon."

Fear and anger made my breath pant harshly against her muffling hand. This was so unfair it was ridiculous! I had faced down things a lot scarier than this woman and come out on top, but I was at a serious disadvantage here. My physical strength was being ebbed away by whatever drug she'd given me, and without any energy to power my magic, my spelling knowledge was completely useless to me. I was helpless and I hated it.

"I was going to use one of our slower acting drugs and have a couple of the boys follow you two when you left. That's what we usually do. Not good business to take people directly from the shop, you know, better to find nice dark alleyways. We've had such a good thing going here," she sighed before her expression became ugly with hate. "Then the fucking Winchesters had to show up and now we'll all have to clear out for good ... and in the middle of the lunch rush, too. We won't go empty handed though; you can be my consolation prize."

With another snarl, she jerked my head to the side, one hand still clamped over my mouth as her other yanked aside the neckline of my shirt. Some part of me registered the ugly fact that drugging, stalking and killing their patrons was a way of life for these vampires, but I barely had time to process what she was saying before I felt the hot, painful burn of her fangs sinking into my shoulder.

I screamed soundlessly into her hand, my body bucking and struggling against hers. But my struggles had no strength and every movement just made the world spin harder as it began to darken along the edges and go yellow. I had been bitten before, but this felt different. There was no pleasure around the pain of the bite. There was no seduction, no toxins pleasurably burning their working their way into my skin. This was animalistic and raw. This woman was just feeding, pure and simple. She was a shark, not a succubus.

She retracted her teeth and pulled back, her eyes cold and dead, ruby red mouth pulling up in a grin that dripped with my blood. Yes, shark fit pretty well ... I thought blearily, struggling not to pass out. We were alone in the bathroom, but I bet she had someone outside watching the door. The risk of someone walking in on us would have been pretty high otherwise.

"Mmm, I was right, you taste as good as you smell," she murmured in a throaty voice. "There's something different about your blood, but don't fret, sweetheart," she murmured. "I just wanted a taste. I'm not going to kill you." Her bloody grin widened. "I would have preferred your boyfriend, but Raymond will like you, you're his type. You're the one I could get alone, so it's your lucky day. We'll be sisters, you and I."

The woman cut open her palm with her own teeth and switched the hand she was gagging me with, pressing her injured one over my lips. I spluttered and twisted my head, tasting the bitter, metallic tang of copper as she forced her blood into my mouth. What the hell? Gross!

"Now, just be good, it'll be over soon," she crooned to me like an evil mother with a child, holding me down as I thrashed against the bathroom floor. "Then we'll take you home and you can tell us everything you know about Sam and Dean Winchester. And don't worry, even if you don't know that much, we'll find plenty of other uses for you."

I struggled harder, struck by the irony of the fact that if Sam and Dean were these Winchesters she was talking about, then she actually already knew far more about them than I did. I hadn't even known their last name. The fact that she did meant that there was probably more about the brothers than met the eye, and Trent and I had landed feet first into a giant, steaming mess of crap without realizing what we were doing. Fantastic.

The vampire laughed softly at my struggles. "But you don't understand a thing I'm saying anymore, do you? I know sweetheart, all you're going to able to think about for a while is blood. Don't worry, you do as I say and we'll take care of you, promise."

Confusion swamped me. She was talking like she could turn me, but she was clearly some kind of living vamp, not a true undead and in any case it took longer than a few minutes to infuse someone with enough of the vampire virus to make them a shadow or a ghoul. Unless of course, that was another difference between our two worlds.

Double crap on toast with a side of more crap!

From somewhere outside in the restaurant, I heard a muffled crashing sound and the vampire holding me stiffened. "Sounds like it's time to go."

Panic was icing through me again, but aside from the way my head was swimming from whatever drugs she'd given me, I didn't feel any different. In my world I could be bound by a vampire's pheromones, but I could not be turned. It wasn't possible for witches, demons or elves to become vampires. The woman gave my head a quick, brutal slam against the wall with the obvious intent of rendering me fully unconscious and I had just enough time to think how much I really, really hoped that was still true in this world too, before blackness rushed up to swallow me and I fell gracelessly into its waiting embrace.