Dean moved Mae's laptop safely out of the way as he joined Sam at the kitchen table. "How you feeling Sammy."

"Been better," he admitted. "My head's killing me."

He nodded in agreement and leaned back in his chair. "Yeah, that kitsune had it's claws in you for a long time. How'd you let it get to you?"

Sam shifted a bit, looking towards Mae. Dean cast a glance towards the tall redhead as well. He pictured her making their late lunch from scratch for some reason. It made more sense she would have something made beforehand. He watched a little longer as she took a container from the freezer, shook the contents into a pan, and placed it on the burner to warm.

He fought a smirk as she stood on her tip toes to reach the high cupboard, the hem of her shirt riding up just a bit over the waist band of her sweatpants. Dean shook his head, knowing that he didn't want to find that as erotic as he did.

Sam caught Dean's smirk and raised an eyebrow. "What's so funny?"

Dean cleared his throat and returned his attention to his brother, trying to shake the thoughts of Mae. "Nothing, man. So, how did it get the jump on you."

The younger man hesitated, shrinking back a bit. "Well... it didn't exactly do that."

Dean raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "What do you mean?"

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I kind of let it in."

After setting two boxes of crackers on the table, Mae joined the boys. "Like, in you? Gross."

"No, not like that. Well...I guess but later."

"What, you needed it to buy you a drink first?" Dean tried to joke.

"Can either of you be serious for a minute?"

Mae shrugged a bit, idly toying with the corner of a cracker box. Her expression suggested a casual commitment to continue teasing him, but her eyes held clear concern.

Dean leaned forward, any hints of levity gone from his frame. "It sounds like you're tellin' us you just... went with the kitsune and let yourself get possessed?"

After another weighted silence, Sam tried to explain. "I didn't...Listen, we were watching the video feed of Mae's room when it went to static. All of the sudden, you kinda slumped over and I couldn't wake you up. Same thing with Mae when I checked on her. And then it was in the room with me."

"After that, you don't remember anything?"

Sam shook his head. "No. I... we stood there for a while. But it didn't do anything, not like before."

"So you could have killed it there."

"It wasn't doing anything. Plus it was in human form and, you know, it's not like we had a plan for how to kill it when it looked like Mae. There wasn't really anything I could do. Then, it asked me to follow it and I did."

Dean worked his jaw, barely stopping himself from yelling. Of all the decisions any of them Mae that went poorly, he couldn't decide it this was the worst one. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"It needed our help."

"It needed our help?" He repeated, "It came after us, after Mae. That's not..."

"Dean-" Mae tried to retort.

"No, it was stupid." He turned his attention back to Sam, "It was a needless risk. You just go off with it because we're both unconscious? Especially when we're both knocked out. Like that had nothing to do with the kitsune? What did you think was going to happen when we came to, and you were missing?"

"It's not-"

"What, it's not a big deal because we're all here now? Your tender heart might have let us all get set up to be killed by that thing. Did you even think of that? What? What are you gonna say Sam?"

"It wasn't trying to hurt us, Dean."

"Are the two of you teaming up to save any evil thing that crosses our track?"

Sam glanced a Mae a moment, not entirely sure what she had done but assuming something similar to the leap of faith he took in trusting the kitsune. "Not every time. Just when it's the right thing to do. Can you calm down a little bit here?" Sam asked.

Dean took a deep breath and tried to let go of his anger. He knew that Sam and Mae meant well, but sometimes their idealism could put them all in danger. She placed her hand on his knee. It was supposed to be soothing, reassuring but in that moment it only inflamed his frustration.

"It's not like we can go back and do this differently." Mae said softly.

Dean shrugged her hand off, standing up abruptly. "No, we can't go back. But we damn well better learn from it. We can't keep taking these kind of risks. It's not just ourselves we're putting in danger, it's innocent people too."

He paced around the kitchen, his hands balling into fists. "We need to start thinking more strategically. We need to plan ahead and never let our guard down. We can't just trust anyone or anything that comes our way."

There wasn't anything to argue with him. The other hunters knew he was right. They also knew there was nothing more they could do to reassure him. While they braced for his ongoing lecture, instead, they only received a huff of air from Dean before he stormed off.

He reached the front door, almost leaving the house before recalling the situation. Not wanting to backtrack while he was still indignant, he turned on his heel and went upstairs. Mae winced a bit as she heard one of the doors slam.

Sam sighed and rubbed his temples. "Has he been like this the whole time?"

"No. He's definitely been annoyed and frustrated but mostly not outright angry when it comes to the kitsune."

"So he's just pissed at me then."

It wasn't a question, but Mae still answered. "I just think the way he sees things, his job has always been to protect you, us. And now, he's just not able to. At least not the way he wants. He's having a hard time because on top of everything, we just won't fall in line with the way he thinks that needs to be done. He probably just needs to blow off some steam."

"What did you do to get lumped in with me as too trusting?"

Mae shrugged, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Basically the same thing you did, without letting a monster, you know, up in me. But now I have an invisible fox living in my backyard and an angry guy who doesn't want to risk leaving."

"I can see it. Besides, it wants to die but not be killed. As long as it's safe, I don't think it's going to risk that."

Mae looked over her shoulder at the door to the back deck. Dean wouldn't like it, but she could argue that the deck was still technically in the safe zone. It had no entry or exit point beside the French doors and was within the boarder of iron encircling the house. "That's what it told me too. Much as Dean hates to believe it, I do. Do you want to see if you can see it? Check if it's still here?"

"You can't see it?"

She shook her head. "Not unless it wants me to."

"I'll see what I can see. No guarantees though."

Mae shrugged. "Never are. Let's just see." She suggested standing from the table before retrieving the knife from the kitchen. She knew it was largely pointless since she wasn't sure she would have any time to go after the kitsune if it came back for Sam. She wasn't even sure she would stay conscious.

As the pair stepped on to the back deck, Mae wasn't sure if her paranoia was heightened more by the kitsune or by Dean. He wouldn't like or go along with this either. She sighed lightly as her attention passed between Sam and the door.

Squinting against the bright light, he scanned the horizon. "It's out there by the tree line."

Surprised that he saw something so quickly, so easily, she refocused on the trees along the river. She didn't see anything. "You sure? You're not just seeing a regular fox?"

"You have a lot of glowing foxes out here?"

"Huh. Well, I guess it's good to know it's still here. Let's get back inside."

Sam didn't comment on her blatant unease, nor did he argue with her request. "I don't remember a lot after it possessed me" Sam said, walking back to sit at the dining room table. He would have helped her around the kitchen, but he was feeling his energy wain again. "but it's close. It's not going to be here very long. Whatever that means."

"It told you that?"

"Not explicitly. Before it possessed me, it just said it needed my help to get somewhere safe. Like I said, I don't have memories of anything after, just little flashes. I don't even know if they're real, but I got a sense that it was...ready."

Mae suspected Sam knew more than he was sharing but she couldn't pinpoint why. She thought it might have just been an idle hope. Now wasn't the right time to press him though. "You still hungry?"

Sam nodded and Mae moved back to the kitchen to dish up their meal. They ate in relative silence. It was obvious the young man had yet to recover his energy, despite the day and a half he'd spent in bed. He would likely be heading back to bed until another more pressing need woke him again. When they finished eating, Mae's features suddenly brightened with in recollection.

"Hey, let me do something."

Without further explanation, Mae stood and walked around the corner. Sam wasn't sure where she went but soft sounds came from the other room. When she returned, she had a bottle with a dropper lid and a linen bag full of something. She set the bag on the table, then assessed him as he sat in front of her.

She unscrewed the bottle, she squeezed a line of amber liquid from the start of his hairline at his forehead to the back of his head and then massaged it along his scalp. Sam was a little taken aback by the action, but it wasn't unpleasant.

"What are you doing?"

"Just sit still." Mae said as she worked the mystery substance around his scalp. Her touch was firm and warm, oddly maternal.

"What is that?"

"Something I learned from a healer years ago.. a little mint, cinnamon, juniper, frankincense, calamus root, devil's shoestring, and scotch broom. It's good to recover from possession."

"For real?" Sam asked skeptically. He didn't stop her though.

"It's certainly not going to make you more possessed now is it."

He chuckled. "Fair enough."

"Okay so, leave that on as long as you can. When you shower, rinse off with this." Mae closed the bottle and returned it to the table, picking up the bag and handing it to him. A quick sniff confirmed it was similar if not the same as the oil she had applied.

"Yes, ma'am."

Upstairs, second upstairs bedroom door wasn't locked, it never had been, at least not in Dean's time at the house. Given Mae's inclination for locking nearly everything else, he wasn't sure why this room was kept open. Surely, no one else ever came here but this was the most out of place of any part of her house. There we all kinds of occult books, pictures, articles related to possible cases, possible creatures or spirits responsible. Everything else in the house suggested she was maybe just a sad and lonely widow. This suggested she might be more. If you didn't know what you were looking at. To him though, it was pretty impressive.

When he came in, he'd been running hot and slammed the door shut. Almost immediately, Dean regretted blowing up at Sam and Mae, not because they didn't deserve it since they were making stupid choices, but because it seemed disproportionate with Sam's revelation about his interaction with the kitsune. And now he was stuck waiting things out upstairs. They were being stupid though. Both Mae and Sam. It wasn't sustainable.

With a heavy sigh, he took a seat at the desk, scanning over the books and papers. She had a computer up here too, in addition to the laptop. He thought about turning it on but suspected it was password protected. Looking over the papers, most of them were about kitsune. He assumed she'd started her research here before heading out on the last job. There were some notes in the margins on some pages, reminding him that he still didn't totally understand the weird shorthand she took notes in.

He thought about reading over what she had pulled together but knew there wasn't much they hadn't already discussed. He knew he wasn't going to find a secret that solved their problems that both Mae and Sam over looked. He opened some of the desk drawers. There wasn't much interesting in there, just office supplies, and some odds and ends any hunter might use like crosses, bullets, and other such things. He shook his head, unable to figure out how she straddled that world between normal and hunter the way she did.

"Weird fucking chick. Hot but weird." he muttered to himself.

He spun in the chair a little. There were other older articles on the cork board, patterns or possible cases she was trying to connect or get a bead on. Nothing that particularly caught his eye but something they could develop more. It might even be fun to work something like that out with her.

He spun a little further, eyeing the filing cabinet in the corner. It seemed odd, out of place. Despite her notebooks and research, Mae didn't strike him as the record keeping type. It matched the desk however so perhaps it was a left over from her married life. He opened the top drawer. To his surprise, she did keep important papers there, things like tax returns, birth certificate, banking and mortgage paperwork.

Nothing particularly attention catching for him there. Normal people stuff. It was something he thought most people would have locked since it was full of personal information. But since he wasn't interested in it, they were all an odd reminder that she had a different life from him sometimes. Then he got to the bottom drawer. That one was locked. He should have left it alone, but he was trying to kill time before he could go back downstairs without losing face. And his ongoing curiosity around what she thought was important enough to keep locked up was driving him crazy.

He remembered she hid another key in a picture frame. It wasn't out of the question that she would have done the same here. He scanned the room for one before finding one at the back of the desk. There were four women in the photo, including Mae who was sporting a dark black bob. They seemed to be having a good time but couldn't place where. He recalled the severe hairstyle but couldn't claim it was his favorite. He liked her best as a redhead.

Before he took the picture off the desk, his gaze flicked back to the door. Mae wouldn't take kindly to his snooping, and he knew it. The door didn't open, and he didn't hear any sounds. Dean proceeded to slide the metal tabs holding the back to the picture frame. He smirked when he found the key. He was torn between mentioning to her that he knew about her secret hiding place, so that she could change it and keeping it to himself in case he might need to find something in the future.

Quietly, he unlocked and opened the bottom drawer. This drawer seemed less organized than the others. Inside, he found a blue velvet box that held a fairly large diamond pendant. He thought was a real too. It wasn't Mae's style at all, not just because it was clearly impractical for hunting. He knew he wasn't competing with a dead man, but he felt certain the jewelry he'd given her was better. Mae still wore it, wore it even when they were fighting. She'd worn the gifts he'd given her for years, none of them were tucked and forgotten in a drawer.

Maybe he was reading into it too much but diamond or not, it was a generic romantic gift a husband might give a wife but not something Dean would have given Mae. He wasn't sure if she kept this for sentimentality or because she would pawn or sell it if needed. It was surely worth several thousand dollars.

Also in the drawer was a photo album. He only briefly flipped through it. Mae and friends, her husband, them all together, all having fun. She did look genuinely happy in the few pictures he looked at, leaving him jealous of complete strangers. Placing the album aside, he continued to go through the items in the drawer. There were some documents, including her marriage certificate, husband's death certificate but also all of the documents associated with the identify she used in college. This was more than just a fake ID; she had faked an entire identity. Again, it was impressive. She had a much more complex life than he'd imagined.

Near the bottom of the drawer, he came across a police file. He had no idea how or why she got her hands on it, but he felt his stomach sink as he opened it. He wasn't expecting the crime scene photos. It was Mae's house. The living room. But there was so much blood. And a body. Her husband, clearly dead. He didn't look so impossibly handsome as he had in every other picture he'd seen. In these photos, he'd been beaten severely and stabbed. It was hardly the most gruesome sight he'd seen. It wasn't even the worst that Mae had seen. Except this was her husband and, as she had told him, she had done this to him. She had been possessed at the time, but she would have still seen this.

There was too much blood for it to have just been from her husband though. Some of the blood had to be hers, maybe even someone else's. There were streaks, footprints, and boot prints in the blood. It was difficult to totally know what had happened from photos alone, except it all ended with her husband dead. Mae had told him parts and pieces of it. He'd read the sparse news articles he'd found but since the body of who they decided had committed the crime was located and already dead, there weren't many stories. The extent of the violence had not been shared widely or publicly, likely to Mae's benefit.

The next set of pictures were more difficult to look at. There wasn't nearly the amount of blood she should have been covered in. Most of it had been cleaned off, as she was clearly in a hospital bed. Her body was exposed but it was hard to consider her naked, given the stitches and bandages that covered her slim frame. She'd been sliced multiple times across her chest and abdomen. Her face was significantly bruised with some lacerations as well. It was hard to tell from the pictures if she was awake or asleep, but he hoped she was at least out of it enough to not recall. Her leg was bandaged but blood had seeped through, leaving slim trails of red on the large white gauze. There was one photo with the bandage removed, showing three long, diagonal cuts, neatly stitched closed.

He realized now what the snake tattoo on her thigh actually covered. He couldn't look at the rest of the photos of her. Not that the report out from the ER painted a rosier picture. She'd lost a lot of blood, as the photos suggested. Her femoral artery was nearly sliced. She had a severe concussion. Her injuries were life threatening. There were signs of forcible penetration, but it was noted Mae never mentioned or confirmed it.

Dean wasn't sure if that was because she knew it was a result of what had happened between her and his father or something the demon did while possession her husband or if it was the man who had been pinned with everything. He suspected in was one of the first two options for Mae not to say anything. Either way, he didn't want to dwell on it, and he knew he couldn't ask her.

It was no wonder they didn't suspect her, as he gleaned from the police reports. He knew that she had stabbed her husband, multiple times. According to the report, 17 times. She admitted it to him, having been possessed at the time but she clearly remembered it. He couldn't imagine what that night must have been like for her.

As he read the rest of the report, he learned his father had been there, gave a statement, using his real name and everything. Bobby was there too. He hadn't expected that. He recalled after catching Mae and his father together that both and John both left. He didn't realize that John had followed Mae. He always though he took off to let things cool down a day or two before he came back and the two of them would pretend like nothing ever happened. Would it have changed anything?

He shook his head and closed the folder. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to find when he went snooping. It wasn't this. It wasn't knowing exactly what had happened to her, being able to imagine how it happened. Worst of all, he couldn't say anything to her because he had violated her privacy in a major way here. This had certainly cooled down his temper.