By the time Sam and Ed arrived back at the motel, Dean was fuming. He had tried calling Castiel several times and couldn't get the fallen angel to pick up the phone. Sam took one look at his brother and knew something was wrong. Dean was like a band pulled too tight, ready to snap at any moment. Sam approached his brother cautiously, knowing his brother's body language. Dean was ready to blow.

"Hey, Dean, is everything OK?"

"Fine! Same old crap. Cas has up and disappeared again."

Melody chimed in, "I'm so sorry, it's my fault."

"It's not your fault, damn guy's never been able to stay put," Dean told her.

"Dean, what happened?" Sam asked.

"Nothing! Can we drop this?" Dean growled.

"I kissed Dean and Cas saw and he left. I'm so sorry!" Melody blurted out. Dean turned on her and gave her a glare that caused her to immediately shrink back and sink onto the bed.

"Really, Dean?" Sam sighed, remembering what Kevin had told him about Castiel. "Can I talk to you for a moment… in private?" Sam pulled his brother outside the motel room door by the elbow.

"What, Sam? Cas is fine. He does this all the time."

Sam shifted on his feet, running through scenarios in his head of how to tell Dean about Cas' feelings. "Listen, I was talking to Kevin earlier and he translated some more of the angel tablet."

"Great, anything about how we can gank Metatron?"

"Not exactly, he translated the spell Metatron used to make the angels fall." Sam paused, planning his next words carefully.

"And?!"

"And, the spell, its purpose seems to be to join angels and humans."

"No shit! A little too close for comfort if you ask me. Last thing we needed was a bunch of angels walking around down here."

"Right, well, all three parts of the spell required love involving humans and angels."

"OK?"

"Well, there was the Nephilim, which is the product of love between an angel and a human. And the cupid's bow, which is an angel initiating love between two humans. The third part is to take the grace of an angel… who is… in love… with a human."

"So?"

Sam sighed, "Think about it, Dean. Metatron couldn't have taken just anyone's grace. He needed Castiel's." Sam watched his brother as the recognition of what he way saying sunk in. The blood drained from his face as he went pale and sunk back against the brick wall of the motel.

Dean put is face in his hands, "Dammit, Cas!"

"Dean, do you-"

Dean put up his hand. "No! I'm gonna stop you right there, Sam. We're not talking about this. We've got a corpse to burn and no time for this drama."

Sam made a face but he knew when a conversation with Dean was over. He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the sidewalk post, giving his brother the space he needed.

When Harry walked in the room behind Sam the last thing he expected to see was Melody Waters. He had seen all of her movies. Granted, most of them were of the B variety, but she had done several sci-fi films and anime voice overs and was pretty well known across geekdom. He was definitely crushing.

He tried to pay attention to what was going on with Sam and Dean but thought that he was missing something important. So the angel saw Dean kissing Melody, so what? Maybe he was upset because it was a religion thing? Curious, he thought he would keep an ear to the ground. Castiel was, after all, a supernatural creature and they were not to be trusted. But Sam had pulled Dean out of the room, where he couldn't eavesdrop on their conversation.

Now he was alone with none other than Melody Waters! OK, Spangler, keep it together and be cool.

"So… loved you in Octocobra."

Melody just looked at him suspiciously.

"I'm Harry Spangler, professional paranormal investigator. I have my own show. It's called the Ghostfacers."

"OK," Melody said noncommittally, patronizing yet another geek with a fanboy crush.

"So… you, ah, like ghost hunters, do you?"

"No," she said flatly.

"But I-"

"No."

"Oh. OK. That's cool. Yeah. I totally have a girlfriend. We have sex and everything."

"That's… nice," Melody breathed, keeping an eye on the door as if she could will Dean to return if she just glared hard enough. Thankfully, Dean and Sam chose that moment to walk back in the room interrupting Harry's awkward advances.

Dean was all business as he showed Sam the paperwork that Cas had dropped. He had copies of newspaper and trade magazine clippings and reports about the suicide as well as the location of her burial. Castiel had really taken care of everything that they needed. If all went well, they could have this body burned and the case finished before sunrise.

Dean laid out the plan for the night. "OK, Harry, you and Ed are going to help us salt and burn the bones. Ed should be back here soon. Call him and tell him to bring working clothes for you." Harry nodded and walked off to call his friend. "Melody, you should be safe here. We'll put down a salt ring that the spirit can't pass through. Just stay in the ring and you'll be fine."

Melody's eyes grew large again, "You're going to leave me here… alone?!"

Sam noticed the panic in her voice and turned to Dean, "It's OK. You stay with her. I'll take Harry and Ed to the boneyard with me."

"I can't leave you with these two knuckleheads."

"It's fine," smiled Sam. "It'll be nice to have the help. I think it will be good for them go get a taste of what we do. Maybe then they won't be so eager to go around poking at dead things."

"Fine, just call me as soon as it's done."

"And Dean, maybe you could try to find Cas."

Dean did try to find his friend. He knew he couldn't have gone too far without transportation or his wings but this was still Hollywood and there were a thousand places that Cas could be. With Melody in tow, he checked with the motel desk clerk who hadn't seen anyone fitting Cas' description. They checked in several burger joints that were in walking distance to the motel but still no Cas. They even checked a few bars, but Dean didn't have any pictures of his friend, something he decided he was going to remedy once the angel showed his face again. There were a lot of men that fit Dean's description of a 6 foot Caucasian with dark hair and blue eyes. One bartender said he saw someone like that but he was with another man and they left a little while ago. Dean knew that Cas didn't know anyone in Hollywood so that certainly couldn't have been him.

Resigned, he and Melody picked up some carry out and a case of beer and headed back to the motel to wait for Sam's call. After dinner, Dean grabbed a bottle and went outside and took a seat on the Impala. The waiting sucked. He was waiting for Sam and waiting for Cas and stuck here with nothing to kill and it was making him antsy.

Dean pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the blank screen, hoping that there would be a new message since the last time he checked five minutes ago. It was still blank. When he heard a door close, he looked up and saw Melody walking towards him with a couple of bottles of beer in her hands. She perched next to him on the car and handed him one of the beers.

"Are you OK?" she asked him.

"Fine."

"I really am sorry about what happened. I had no idea."

"Of course you didn't. It's cool. You know, what you said about Cas in the books?"

"Yeah?"

"I didn't know… he… you know, felt like that. And he's different now. A lot has happened since the showdown with Lucifer. Cas doesn't have his grace anymore."

"Oh, that's terrible."

"Yeah. Sucks 'cause he can't hear me anymore. I used to be able to just pray and at least I knew if he was alive he could hear me. Now, he isn't even answering his phone. And he's new to being kind of human. I just hope he's OK."

"He'll be back." Melody patted Dean's knee. "Doesn't he always come back?"

Dean just tilted his head and took a swig of his beer. Yeah, Cas did have a way of always coming back. Every time he thought his friend was dead, he would show up again to shock the hell out of him. Just thinking about all of those times – Raphael, Lucifer, the Leviathan, Purgatory, Naomi, Crowley, Metatron. Damn! Was there anyone that hadn't tried to kill his friend?

And now he had confirmation that Cas wasn't just coming back out of some sense of duty, he really did love Dean. Metatron's spell wouldn't have worked otherwise. Dean had always known there was something between them. Castiel had once called it a profound bond. But he was always able to write it off, telling himself that Cas was his guardian and that's all. He also knew that he had been lying to himself. He thought he first realized that there was more to this friendship when he picked up Cas' soaked trench coat out of that reservoir. The loss had felt deeper than just a friend and Dean had been struggling to understand that feeling ever since.

Sam grinned inwardly as he leaned back against a grave marker, legs casually crossed out in front of him with his hands deep in his pockets. He couldn't help it. The sight of Ed and Harry trying to dig up a grave was too funny. The Ghostfacers had been put to work on grave digging duty and after an hour of non-stop shoveling of the hard-packed earth, they were barely knee deep in a little mess of a circle covered head to toe in mud. Their little hole was only about three feet in diameter and the two men kept bumping into each other, grumbling and arguing about where each man's side ends.

Breathing hard, Harry looked up at Sam, "You… (breath) have got to… (breath) be kidding me! How (breath) do you do this?"

Sam smirked down at the man (feeling a bit soulless again doing so) and answered, "Practice. I dug my first grave when I was eleven. Dean and I can knock one of these out in a few hours now." Sam took pity on them and picked up a shovel himself. "Look, you're standing too close to one another. All you're doing is getting in each other's way. Here, you can each take a corner and I will work from this side."

After 30 minutes or so, the men were all ready for a break. Harry stepped out of his little hole, that was a crumbling mess of a mud puddle and looked over at Sam's perfectly rectangular pit and cried, "Aw come on! Nobody digs a perfect freaking hole like that with just a shovel!"

Sam looked at his work and just shrugged his shoulders innocently.

Ed was leaning over grabbing his knees and fishing in his pockets for his inhaler. After sucking down a deep breath of the medication his breathing was beginning to settle down so he tried to stand back up and cried out, "Cramp! Cramp! Oh my back. I can't stand up!"

Harry rushed to his friend's side and grabbed his shoulders. He turned Ed, putting his body between Sam and Ed's so that he could whisper to his friend without Sam seeing. "C'mon, Ed, you can do this. Did Frodo stop at the foot of Mount Doom? No. We are Ghostfacers, we face the ghosts when the other's will not."

Ed looked up at him and feebly sang, "Ghost… Ghostfacers. We face the faces, we face the dead."

"Right, now you've got to suck it up, 'cause we can't let Thor over there think we can't do this job."

"You're right," Ed nodded enthusiastically, "You're right." He forced himself to stand up, wincing and groaning with the pain.

"We'll go see Dr. Goldberg tomorrow."

"Yes… chiropractor," groaned Ed and Harry dramatically picked up his shovel and put it back in his partner's hand.

"Let's dig!"

Finally, after several hours of digging and the sunrise threatening to expose them soon, their shovels hit something solid. They had reached the coffin. Harry and Ed scrambled out of the hole while Sam lifted open the lid of the box. Harry took one look at the rotted corpse and began dry-heaving behind the grave marker. Sam looked up and commanded, "Ed, go get the salt and gasoline from the van."

While Ed was gone Sam climbed out of the ground and went to Harry, placing a hand on his back. "You did good. We're almost there. We just burn her bones and you have just eliminated a vengeful spirit."

Harry gave Sam a weak smile, "This is a lot harder than it sounds in those books."

Sam huffed a small laugh, "You have no idea."

Sam let Ed do the honors of throwing the match into the coffin and the men stood by and silently watched the corpse burn, freeing her spirit from the earth. Sam called Dean and gave him the all clear. Dean walked over to the actress sleeping on one of the beds in the motel and gave her a small shake to wake her and let her know it was over. She was safe. They would take her back to the set once Sam returned and she could go back to her normal life.

Now they just needed to find Cas and get out of this crazy town.