Author's Note: Andrea finally meets Sam and Dean! After this chapter they don't appear again until chapter 8, so enjoy it while you can. ;-) With the oneshot style, this is the first story where I can really do this, so here it goes: requests, anyone?

Chapter 4: In Which a Ghost Becomes a Wanderer

"Oh my God! A ghost!" The teenage girl screamed and dropped her latte. It splattered all over the pavement and right through my legs.

"Aw, c'mon!" I glared after her as she ran away down the street.

I had almost been solid that time. As soon as I sputtered back to transparency, the street light above me flickered and popped, causing the rest of the intersection to become invisible for the space of a second. Sometimes I was able to control my effect on electronics and sometimes I wasn't.

I sighed and plopped down on the dilapidated park bench by the power pole that I had crashed into. A deep rusty stripe still ran down it on the street side, but I couldn't see that from where I was sitting. I didn't want to see it. It was the thing that was binding me to this stupid intersection, though I had spent the last six weeks working on expanding my range. I flickered sadly once more as a set of headlights pulled into view.

I watched with detached disinterest as the black '67 Impala stopped at the intersection and a tall young man jumped out. He was probably just one more person concerned to see me sitting by myself at night. The man had long brown hair, and I could tell that he would tower over me even though I was still wearing heels. I was a little surprised when he came and sat down next to me, but not enough to look up.

His soul was uninteresting; a bit dark, a bit bloody, but uninteresting all the same. It glowed from the same position near his heart as any other. One of the perks of being a spirit was that I could see others' spirits, even when they were still connected to a living body. Lately I had been able to see signs of angels (though they were few and far between) and even something that I suspected was a demon.

"Andrea Fosters?"

"That's me."

I noticed how he played with his hands as he spoke. He couldn't seem to stop twining his fingers together, setting them in is lap, spreading his thumbs, then separating his hands and doing it again. "I'm Sam Winchester. Do you mind if I talk to you?"

"Shoot." I scuffed at a weed growing through a crack in the pavement with my heel. The name, which I remembered from my conversation with Ash, had sparked my interest. I decided to let him do his thing and then do some recon of my own.

Sam seemed startled that I didn't object. "Great, thanks. Uh… why are you here?" I wrinkled my nose as I thought of Zachariah and all the things I would like to do to him, but I didn't respond. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"A girl running away from me about five minutes ago yelling 'ghost' at the top of her lungs." I grimaced even more. I figured that if I could get as solid as possible and break free from the place of my death, I might be able to get around and explore the world as I now knew it to be.

"OK, well, this may be hard to accept, but… you're dead." I looked up at him and his face softened. "I'm sorry."

I rolled my eyes and snorted. "No shit, Sherlock." I went back to staring at the ground.

"Wait, you know?" The man glanced over to the car, clearly confused, where another man had appeared. This one was more interesting. He was more attractive, for one thing, with his strong jaw and kind eyes. But he also had a deeper soul. It was torn, and damaged, but somehow still pure. He shrugged at Sam and a light mark glowed on his arm. Now I was definitely interested; this hand print burned bright in a way that I had only ever seen in one place.

"Are you the Winchester brothers?" I asked, ignoring Sam's last question. "Sam and Dean?"

They exchanged an alarmed look before the one I assumed to be Dean shrugged and answered. "In the flesh." Sam stood and strode over to stand next to his brother.

I glared. "Tactful. Nice." Sam elbowed Dean hard but I didn't give them time to continue before I pointed at Dean's arm. "Angel?"

"Yeah…" He looked down. "Wait, how can you see that?"

I pointed to myself. "I'm a spirit. That means I can see both of your spirits, as well as any angelic signs."

Sam furrowed his brow and ignored a surprised look from Dean. "Wait, were- are- you a hunter?" I saw Dean shift something in the hand that I couldn't see. I wondered if it was a gun, but surely that wouldn't do any good against a ghost?

I sighed and spun on my heel to walk over to the Impala. I leaned against it despite an annoyed look from Dean. "There's that word again. I think that this would be easier if I told you my story from the beginning and you can fill me in on what I don't know. Then maybe we can talk about you helping me get away from this intersection." I crossed my fingers behind my back, hoping that they would fall for my confident and knowledgeable act and finally give me some answers.

"You can't leave?" Sam glanced around and spotted the blood on the power pole. "Ah. That explains that."

"I just have one question before I start. Which angel did that to you?"

Dean and Sam walked over to join me and we all sat on the hood of the antique car. "His name is Castiel."

"Ah." I kept my face blank while I tried to figure out how all the pieces put together. Castiel had been punished for becoming too attached to Dean Winchester… I looked at the mark again and smirked. Well, what an angel got up to on his day off was his own business, I supposed, though I could see why his brothers weren't exactly happy with him.

"OK, starting at the beginning…" I explained about my dream because I understood now what most of it had meant. Then I told about the black-eyed man by my car, the accident, and the entrance to heaven and my conversation with the angels. I noticed a few significant looks exchanged when I mentioned Zachariah's name which made me think that I wasn't the only one who disliked the winged bully. I skipped over most of the description of my particular heaven to the part where I met Ash.

"Not Ash with the mullet and the plaid?" Dean interjected.

I grimaced. "The very same."

Sam laughed with what looked like relief on his face. "Good old Ash. How's he doing?"

"Productive. He figured out how to jump heavens and translate Enochian with his laptop, and he's going around asking about you guys and some people named Bobby, Jo, and Ellen. You know them?"

"Yeah," Dean said, "they're hunters too. But keep going, we agreed to fill you in at the end."

I continued to explain about following Ash back to the entrance hall and Castiel getting dragged off somewhere.

"That explains the larger-than-usual stick up his ass then," Dean muttered. "OK, here's your information. Mr. Mysterious Eyes was a demon. They're not uncommon, especially since the apocalypse has started. They go around causing mischief and mayhem in the name of Hell, like so." He made a gesture that included me and my eternal intersection. "Hunters… well, they hunt. Demons, ghosts, monsters… lots of crazy fun crap."

I chuckled a little. "Sounds awesome. So, I believe you mentioned the apocalypse?"

Sam shifted uncomfortably while Dean answered, something which I had been trained to immediately pick up on. "Yeah… Lilith was the baddest bitch demon. She broke the seals, released Lucifer. Now we have angels riding our asses to try and save the world. Again."

I stared at them and my introspectiveness caused me to flicker a little. I heard the radio in the Impala behind me switch on and start going haywire, and I hastily focused on quieting it. "Yikes. That... sounds like a problem. And I thought the whole 'you're a ghost' thing was a big revelation."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, sorry about that. We thought you were just another car accident victim in denial, clinging to this world. But kicked out of heaven…" He glanced at his watch, then at Dean. "It's getting late. Is there anything we can do to get her away from this intersection? I think we could really use her help."

I grinned. Two and a half months of being dead and I hadn't been useful in all that time. "And you're going to trust me just like that? You don't know anything about who I was before I died."

"Yeah we do, actually." I wasn't sure if I was more alarmed to see the thick file on me which Dean pulled from his coat or the shotgun which he had to put down to retrieve it. "This may have just been a quick case on our way back to base, but we still did our research." He caught me eyeing the gun uneasily. "That's loaded with rock salt. It repels spirits." He kicked it a little farther out of reach.

"So I gather," I said dryly. Even being over a yard away from the stuff was making me uncomfortable. After a few more moments of silent thought, I stood. "So it sounds like you guys have places to be. Maybe you could leave me some reading material or something until you get back…?" I didn't hold out too much hope of being immediately rescued.

"Actually," Sam started, "since you've already been cremated and heaven isn't letting you back in anytime soon- whatever that's all about- removing this blood should just sever your tie to this place instead of killing you. That would make it really easy." He glanced at Dean, who nodded.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Probably." I ignored the murmured exchange and Dean stood up and clapped his hands. "All right, I'll go get some soap and a brush. But here's the deal." I tilted my head to show that I was listening. "We're going to release you. Sorry about this, but we don't really have the time to research your case at the moment. I want you to go to this address." He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. "Besides you, there was only ever one spirit that we chose not to lay to rest. His name is Walker and he might be able to help you adjust."

I examined the paper and groaned. "Montana? And I can't drive?"

Sam shrugged. "You can probably hitchhike. You also don't need to sleep anymore, which will save you a lot of time." He coughed a little bit and something like black light flared through his veins. My eyes widened and I stumbled backwards. "What? What's wrong?"

That dark light had been present in traces of shattered glass from the metro bus on the other side of the intersection, and I already had a pretty good guess that it was demon-related. "There's something in you."

Dean sighed and Sam seemed to shrink a little bit. "Long story. You do us a favor and keep your ear to the ground for anything useful and I promise we'll tell it to you sometime."

"How are we going to be able to talk back and forth? It's hard enough for me not to be doing this constantly." I relaxed and allowed the street lights and the radio and headlights of the Impala to spaz for a minute. "It's not like I can use a cell phone."

"We have a spell that we can use to summon you as long as we're able to swipe some of your ashes."

"Some of my-" I shook my head. "Never mind. But what if I need to call you?"

Sam coughed once more, this time harder, and even his eyes radiated that unsettling light this time. Dean looked at him with real concern. "Listen, we really need to go. You'll figure something out. I'm going to drop Sam off at the hotel and I'll be back to take care of the blood."

I sighed without disturbing the air around me at all.

I had waved goodbye to the Winchesters over half an hour ago, but I was still standing at the corner of 8th and Main. I was one street over from where I had died, and this was the farthest that I had ever been able to make it. One more step and I would know for sure that I was free. I tried to suck in a reassuring breath but all I got was a void in my lungs reminding me of just how insubstantial I was. I never had to breathe, really, but it was a hard habit to break, so I settled for pretending.

Far away and over a wooded hill a light corona of lavender dusted the horizon. The sun would make its appearance soon, and here I was standing on a street corner like an idiot. Regardless of this thought, I waited for a few more minutes and watched the sky fade to pink and the stars disappear.

Without really realizing what I was doing I swirled my hand at my side like I was conducting an orchestra, or perhaps stirring a hot bath. A gentle dust devil of dead leaves and candy wrappers gusted in circles at my feet, proof of my advancing skills as a ghost. I sighed one more time and used pure willpower to deliver a corresponding puff of frosty breath to the air in front of me. It misted and hung there, daring me to step through it.

Gathering my resolve, I did. I lifted one ethereal foot off of the curb and set it onto the crosswalk, then the other, then the first one again, and before I knew it I was across the street. As I marched through downtown and the sun rose in a blazing glory to guide my way, I felt excited for the first time since I had died. Sure, I was leaving behind everything that I had ever known, but that was probably a good thing. Dean had told me enough for me to realize that staying and watching my home deteriorate around me was likely to bring insanity more than anything else. So I allowed a laugh, a little nervous a lot exhilarated, to bubble up through my lips. I lifted my only possession, the meager scrap of paper with my destination written on it, and read the address one more time.

Missoula, here I come.

One More Note: Please make my day and review?