Author's Note: It's double-update day! I'm trying to get you guys caught up to my writing so I can get more instantaneous feedback.

In the first chapter, the boys are back in town! (Or, rather, Andrea is.) The second chapter started out as a filler to get through a couple of key episodes and evolved into an important plot point.

Chapter 8: In Which a Hunter is Tested

"You're sure?" Walker asked for the millionth time.

"Yes," I responded softly. "It's been three months since I moved here. I've killed a Wendigo and a werewolf, exorcised three demons, and put five spirits to rest. I think I can handle a visit back to my home town."

"It's just-" He stopped and looked down. The concern in his voice was touching, admittedly, but I really needed to get back home. Besides the obvious reasons of wanting to see Cas and check up on my friends, Bobby had called when he had caught wind of some mysterious deaths in the area. It seemed like an urgent thing, and, while Sam and Dean were near town, I was the only one who could get there in a matter of seconds.

"Walker, I'm coming back," I reassured him again. "If worse comes to worst, I'll be gone two weeks. That includes working the case and hitchhiking back. I can buy a cell phone and some supplies as soon as I get there and I'll be set."

"You might not though. You might get too attached and decide to stay." His eyes finally met mine. "Or you might start travelling around with the Winchesters."

I couldn't lie; the thought had crossed my mind. What better way to keep busy and get hunting experience than travel around with the two best hunters in the country? I loved my new home, but I was all too aware of the eternity that I would have with Walker. I wanted to get the chance to know the famous Winchesters.

"Look," I said, dodging the subject slightly, "I'll call you when I get there. Just to be safe I want to call the Winchesters before I leave, though."

With a deeply depressed expression, Walker gestured towards the phone. "Go ahead. I'll see you when you get back." He trudged upstairs without any further goodbye.

My first instinct was to be angry with him for his cold treatment, but as I dialed the frustration ebbed away. I reminded myself that I was probably the first friend that Walker had had in two centuries. Could I really blame the guy for wanting to keep me safe and nearby?

Dean answered his phone on the first ring. "Hello?"

"Hey Dean. It's Andrea."

"Oh, hey!" I rolled my eyes. It was the sort of greeting that I had given to plenty of half-forgotten acquaintances at parties. "What's up?"

"Bobby called me, said there was a case in my hometown and you might want some help. Are you guys on your way?"

"Yeah. When can you be there?"

"Seconds. I think I can just jump through the connection to my ashes or the intersection."

"Awesome. Go ahead."

I looked out into Walker's- our- small yard as the sun rose over the hills to illuminate it. "When I get there, I won't have a phone or money or anything. I hope you guys can get there soon."

"We're less than an hour away."

"Great. See you there." I hung up the phone, proud of myself for the complete lack of static. That skill had taken the longest to perfect of any I had worked on with Walker. Speaking of, I wondered once more whether I should go seek him out and say a proper goodbye. I turned around and walked a few steps towards the stairs, but the eerie sound of music wafted down towards me. Walker had put on his old records, a clear sign that he didn't want to be disturbed.

I sighed and closed my eyes, telling myself that I would see him soon enough anyway. When I found that deep inner focus which granted me access to my powers, I could feel a gentle tug pulling me home. I had never encouraged it before, worried that it would snap me back to my intersection if I blacked out again, but now I plucked at it curiously. I flickered and caught a glimpse of a familiar road. Encouraged, I lifted both hands in front of me and imagined tugging sharply at the tie. With a breathtaking leap and a moment of shuddering darkness, I was suddenly standing at my old intersection.

The battered Impala was parked against the sidewalk and two welcome figures leaned against it. "Hey!" Then turned to look at me and I waved, running over. I almost hugged them both, but I resisted the urge. "I thought you were an hour out?"

"We were," Sam said, clearly puzzled. "We've been here waiting for an hour."

I glanced down at myself to see that I was shaking visibly and glowing translucent. "Oh. I guess it took me longer than I thought to get here."

Dean grinned reassuringly. "No problem. So you've settled in OK with Walker?"

"Yeah," I replied, wondering if we really had time for small talk. "He's been teaching me a lot, and I have a few tricks of my own." Dean nodded casually but didn't say anything else. "Hey, um, random side note, but have you ever heard about the Men of Letters?"

"Nope," Dean responded after glancing at Sam. "Why?"

"Bobby and Castiel haven't mentioned it?"

"No," Sam said this time. "Have you seen Cas?"

I shrugged. "It was a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned them in passing; I thought you guys might know who they were."

"No such luck." Dean finally stood and opened the back door of the Impala, gesturing me in. "Come on, we've got a phone and some money for you. We'll fill you in on the way there."

"On the way where?" Bobby hadn't given me very many specifics of the case.

"Your old apartment."

"When a demon makes a deal," Sam explained, "they take your soul as payment after ten years. Sometimes they collect themselves, but usually they send a hellhound and it drags you downstairs."

"Hell?"

"Yeah."

I examined my new fake ID in the evening light shining through the windows of the Impala. "OK, so someone in my building made a deal and their soul got collected. What can you do about it now?"

"Not just someone." Dean tossed a heavy file back to me as he drove. "Five people so far, and they were all collected within two days of each other. Now, sometimes that happens. A demon stops into a hotel or a bar, makes a bunch of deals, collects all at once. But these five people were scattered around the country ten years ago. It doesn't make any sense."

"Do your cases usually make sense?"

"Fair point."

I looked up from the file to examine Sam again. So far, I hadn't seen any demon traces in his blood, but I wanted to keep an eye on him. I could tell that he and Dean were both exhausted. I flipped through a few more pages in the file, praying not to see any familiar faces, as I continued to carry the conversation. "So have you guys worked any interesting cases recently?"

"Well, we got trapped in TV land by the archangel Gabriel, then summoned to a fan convention for Supernatural."

"Aren't those some cheesy ghost hunting books?" I asked, remembering seeing them on the shelf at an all-night gas station on my way to Montana.

"They also happen to be about us and written by a prophet," Sam explained with more than a little bitterness in his voice.

I grinned. "This promises to be an interesting story. I pick up a little about you boys on the grapevine and from Bobby, but I'd like to know what you've been up to. Especially if we're going to end up working cases together and I'm supposed to be helping you with the apocalypse."

As we drove around town waiting for it to get dark and for Sam and Dean to finish their burgers, I read the file and the two brothers took turns telling stories about their most recent cases. They were some of the most interesting stories I had ever heard, and I was determined to buy the book series as soon as I got home. Rather, back to Missoula, I reminded myself. I was home right now.

I did pause when I recognized one of the faces in the thick stack of papers I was reading. It was the ever-polished, blonde, heavily-eyelinered Marcy Graham who worked behind the desk every morning at my old apartment building. I had seen her on the morning of my death.

Just like every morning, the shiny blonde woman behind the reception desk looked pointedly at the clock as I ran past. "Running a little late, Andrea?"

"Shut up." I winked to let her know I wasn't actually mad. Just like every morning.

"You OK?" I looked up to see Dean's concerned eyes in the rear view mirror and I realized that I had made some sort of sad noise.

"Yeah," I mumbled. "I'm fine." I flipped to the next page and was confronted with the grizzly image of Marcy, bloody and torn, lying on the ground in a circle of police tape. Feeling a little sick, I set her pages to the side and continued reading about the next victim.

"Hey, I hear you ganked a Wendigo," Sam finally prompted me in an obvious effort to divert my attention.

"With a lot of help from Walker and a hunter named Garth," I lied.

"Wendigo was the second case Dean and I ever worked alone together," Sam explained hurriedly. "It was in Colorado."

And so the stories continued, reaching farther and farther back into the boys' career until I had read the file three times and felt comfortable enough to just sit back and listen. We were parked outside my apartment building, but all of the residents had been relocated. Our best bet being to wait and see if anything strange happened to the building itself, we waited long into the night as the words flowed.

I think that the stories were a way to distract me at first, maybe to keep me focused away from anything that could make me vengeful, but then the Winchesters really got into the telling. I learned more about Tessa, and I told them that she was the reaper who had brought me up to heaven. After I knew everything possible about Azazel and Lilith and Meg (and a few enigmatic bits about a demon named Ruby), the tales cast out to interesting spirits who had special cases of their own. In the early hours of the morning, the boys couldn't think of another story to tell me, so I started to describe my own hunts and interactions with spirits. Then I told them about how my powers differed from those of average ghosts. We discussed the more interesting points of that for a while, though I didn't describe my meeting with Castiel. Finally, I was reduced to recounting stories which I had collected during my time at the newspaper.

I finally realized that they would have been taking shifts sleeping by now if I wasn't there, so I quieted as the sun began to peek over the horizon. It seemed like our stakeout had achieved exactly nothing (except that I felt like I finally knew something about the Winchesters) until a tall figure strode past the car and towards the structure.

"Who's that? I thought they closed the building," I asked, pointing.

"Who?"

"That tall man there."

Sam and Dean shook their heads and I realized that they couldn't see him. My suspicion was confirmed when another woman simply materialized next to the first figure.

"I think they're reapers," I whispered. They certainly didn't look like ghosts. Without waiting for a word from the Winchesters, I slid out through the door and strode towards them.

"Hello?" I called, my curiosity overcoming my caution.

The woman turned around, her jet-black bob swinging, and smiled. "Ah, Andrea. You can help us with this, I'm sure."

I cocked my head and made a wild guess. "Tessa?"

"I see my reputation precedes me." She beckoned me forward as the tall man, also dressed all in black, knelt down.

"Here, doggy! Here puppy puppy!"

I stifled a laugh at the sight of a reaper trying to call a hellhound with the same tactics I might use to call Cas, but to my surprise, a low bark responded from inside the building.

"He's still here, I told you!" The reaper grimaced. "I'll leave you two to take care of it." And with that he disappeared.

I looked at Tessa. "It's a hellhound, isn't it? What help am I going to be?"

"It's not yet a hound," she explained. "Much like demons come from the twisted souls of humans, hellhounds are the spirits of dogs who long for their masters so much after death that they are driven insane with grief. It helps," she added, "if the creature is already in mourning before its death."

I stared at her blankly for a minute, and she stared back like there was something I should have figured out by now. Then it all clicked into place.

"No!" I cried, horrified. "You're saying that Cas did this? You're insane!"

"No," Tessa quietly assured me, "Casper is going insane. He refuses to come with us and is mad with grief for you. You must go to him, and then he may choose to stay with you or come with me."

I gulped, holding back tears. I was touched more than I could say by how deep my bond with Cas truly ran, as well as horribly guilty that I hadn't returned to him sooner, both for his sake and the sake of the people who he had now killed. I took a trembling step forward, then threw caution to the wind and ran inside.

The lobby of my old building was painted maroon with gory splashes on the walls and floor. Police tape blocked all hallways and doors, including the one through which I had just snuck. Ignoring the gruesome image, I whistled.

"Here Cassie!" I called. "C'mere, boy! Brekkie! Din-dins! Wanna go for a walk? I'm home!" I tried every phrase which had ever made Casper run to me with excitement. A cautious silence responded, then a tentative sniff from somewhere up the stairs to my right. Then there was a mad scrabbling of claws and I was being thrown to the floor by my sweet dog.

Pinned against the ground with his hysterically excited body on top of me, I encircled him with my arms and buried my tearstained face in his fur. The frightening red glow and foaming spittle which made him such a terrifying image slowly faded as he shrunk back to his normal size, and finally I was wrapped around my little chocolate lab with the big brown eyes.

While I wasn't sure they were audible to the human ear, the euphoric keening noises Casper was making lifted my spirits higher than they had been since I had died, even with Walker. "It's OK, buddy," I sobbed. "I'm here. No more killing people, I'm here and I'm gonna take care of you."

Casper nuzzled his head into my lap as I sat up and he curled neatly into my lap. Tessa's head appeared around the corner, and she smiled, relieved. "I see that he has made his choice. Just be warned that one more relapse and we'll have to take him away."

I nodded, wide-eyed. "I understand. That won't happen."

She disappeared just as Sam and Dean finally finished picking the lock and skidded into the room. I flickered into visibility, still grinning and crying like a maniac with a crazy dog in my lap.

"It was my dog," I whispered, too emotionally worn to explain any more for the moment. "It was Casper. But he's OK now, and Tessa said I could keep him."

The two brothers exchanged a surprised and concerned look but didn't comment. Finally, Dean suggested, "Maybe we should head to a hotel. We can get you and Casper a room."

I nodded, wiping my face, and struggled to my feet. Casper never moved more than a foot from my side, even when it meant crowding into the backseat of the Impala. I knew that Dean would be concerned about having any kind of dog, even a dead one, in his precious car, and that both brothers would require a more detailed explanation later. But for now, I realized that I hadn't called Walker yet, and I just wanted some time to myself with Casper.

"Look who finally decided to call." Walker sounded annoyed, but, judging by the fact that he had answered on the first ring, he had been waiting by the phone.

"Sorry."

"Sorry?" he yelled, and I held the phone a little farther away out of habit even though the sound mostly just passed through me. "Sorry? You were going to call when you got there, Andrea! I'm guessing that you're only calling now because the case is finished."

I dodged his accurate guess. "Look, it took me longer than I thought to get out here, OK? I am sorry that I didn't call, but things happened fast."

There was an injured silence on the other side of the line. "Well…" I sat down on the bed while I waited for him to find the words and Cas put his head in my lap. "Well, are you at least coming home soon?"

A hearty laugh sounded through the flimsy motel wall and I smiled. Even though the boys had started out wishing for sleep and quiet, their post-hunt rowdiness had led to a beer and burger run and them sitting down to watch Mystery Men on TV. I planned to join them as soon as I got off the phone, though I certainly wasn't about to tell Walker that.

"Andrea?"

"Oh, um, I don't know. I guess it depends whether there are any other cases in the area."

"Andrea."

I sighed deeply. "Walker, you don't have to worry yourself over me. I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Just…" He trailed off again and I began to feel bad for him. I realized how it must look to him, my leaving our relatively quiet life to go adventuring with the Winchesters.

"I will come back, Walker," I assured him like I had… 24 hours ago? Had it really been an entire day? "Since I died, you're my best friend and the closest thing that I have to family. Missoula is home now, and I'm not going to give that up for anything. Besides," I continued as another loud laugh echoed from next door, "it's not like the Winchesters will be around forever. When everyone else is up in heaven, you and I will still be here."

"I know," he sighed, and the bitterness had retreated from his voice to be replaced with resignation. "And I understand the urge to wander. I just miss you."

I smiled. "I miss you too. Hey, let me tell you about the case!"

After another half an hour, I finally hung up the phone and was feeling a little less exhausted. It wasn't like eating or sleeping was an option, so I crept out of my door into the mid-morning warmth and around to the Winchesters' room, cautiously pulling Cas along with me.

We both slipped easily through the door without knocking, much to the initial alarm of the brothers, but they were too tired and full to reach for any salt or iron before they identified me.

"Hey Andrea," Sam greeted me.

"Hey." I stopped awkwardly, one hand still on Cas's collar and the other nervously fingering my sleeve. "Do you mind if I, um, join you?"

"'Course not," Dean responded without a second thought, moving over to sit on the bed with Sam so that I could have the chair. With some amount of focus, though less than it would have taken me two months previously, I settled into it to watch a movie with the Winchesters.