The first thing that reached Molly as she opened her front door was the loud screeches of a cat and the yells of a grown man. She wrenched open the door and slammed it shut causing both cat and man to pause unexpectedly.

'You are supposed to stay in the safe house, and to never come here!' She hissed at Dean as he remained frozen in the middle of her sitting room.

'I got bored?' Molly just gaped at him, mouth slack and eyes wide in bamboozlement; she blinked and walked into her room in a fugue state.

Why had her Dad told her to call this lot when she was really stuck?

Between this and his deal, Molly was at a loss as to where she got her wits from. She took out her phone, pausing and grabbing a set of hand cuffs in her emergency bag and storming into the living room. Molly grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him to her spare room and cuffed him to the railing.

'Pick this, and I will stab you. In the crotch. Carefully. With a scalpel.' She narrowed her eyes at him for a second, before patting him down and stripping him of his lock picks and other tools that could be used. Dean seemingly had not noticed her actions, face white and crossing his legs defensively. At least he knew that she was in charge of things now.

'Honestly I cannot believe you came here. This is supposed to be undercover but noooo you seem incapable of do that, or being anyway low key. Moriarty plays it big, I cannot afford the same.'

'We're the big bad secret? The secret boyfriend?' Dean recovered quickly, settling against the bed frame, eyes hooded and skimming over her leeringly.

'Never mind your shit timing; you are the exact opposite of my type.' She waved him off rummaging through one of her drawers, ignoring the feel of his eyes on her backside.

'What you don't like charm?' She looked at him in the mirror, wincing and sighing in exasperation at his antics.

'I like brains.' The sociopathic tendencies she could easily leave behind, in theory of course. Her current hypothesis needed further study; her first two had not given her much in the way of hope. Tom was not what she needed in her life and Moriarty was exactly what she was trying to avoid.

'Look Molls-' Dean started but she heard a knock at her door, she spun round and shoved a balled up sock into his mouth, patting his cheek and hissing in his ear.

'No noise, no escaping, or Mister Scalpel is going to have a miiiiiiiiiighty fine time with himself, okay?' She pulled back and gave him her widest smile, which naturally caused Dean to whiten dramatically.

She closed the door, leaning against it for a moment, before heading to the door and opening it just a crack. An impatient Mary was hovering outside her door; Molly opened the door and smiled tightly at her second unexpected guest of the day.

'Tea? Decaf coffee? Not entirely sure how I ended up with that, I have no recollection of buying it.'

'Water will do thank you Molly. I think you and I need to talk.' Not here for pleasure then, the woman meant business, eyes calculating and more than likely armed. Charming.

'We do. The boys not following you?' She asked rather cattily as Mary sat down in her favourite chair and wiggled around in it as though it was hers.

'Oh they know I'm here. They may be labouring under the misapprehension that I came to check up on you and to see how pissed off you really are.' She tilted her head, watching the pathologist with the eerily still demeanour that had Molly on edge.

'Oh of course. The truth must be a foreign concept to you.' She sat down on the couch, turned towards her frosty guest and smiled sweetly.

'So, a Hunter?' Mary asked coolly, but with a hint of acid in the words, so Molly shook back her hair and smirked.

'A spy is it?'

'This is going to be a far longer conversation than either of us wants if we remain quippy about it.'

'It will less entertaining, but quicker I suppose.' Both women nodded at one another, slightly saddened that time meant they could not see if they matched each other in wit as well as they did in subterfuge.

'So, you think the situation is because of supernatural weirdness.'

'I have received a message that would lead me to that conclusion.'

'There was a note.' Sherlock was right,the undercurrent to her seemingly bald statement.

'Of course.' Of course he was, he's not an effing buffoon. Molly could help but think that now she and Mary were circling each other and sizing each other up.

'You're investigating, with help? I see that you've haven't been active since your late teens.'

'Yes, I have consultants of sorts.' Mary's brow knotted, surprised by Molly's acceptance of her accurate deductions, neither of them had the time to waste of such antics. But then her face twisted into a smug smirk, which given the protective hand on her stomach, Molly found it a bit confusing.

'Does that include the one inside in the spare bedroom?' Ah. She couldn't have missed that. Molly settled back in the couch, crossing her legs and gave Mary the filthiest smile she could muster, rapping her fingers on the arm in quick succession.

'Oh no, that's just fun and games.' Molly made sure to add a touch of ice to her words, the underlying meaning to her quip clear. Mary's head pulled back, jaw thrust outwards, her other hand twitching to her side.

'Keep my nose out of it?'

'You are pregnant and these matters tend to get messy.'

'Fine.'

'Well have a nice day.' She smiled blandly, getting up as Mary rose and moved towards the door. She paused at the door, breathing in, nostrils flaring and stared at Molly.

'Sort it. And try not to get yourself killed; Sherlock is rather fond of you after all.'

Before Molly could react Mary left with a sunny call to Dean in the back and skipped as well as she could for a heavily pregnant lady. A deadly assassin skipping out her front door, that was a sight she would never un-see.

'Oy! You gonna free me anytime soon Lady?'

'Doctor.' She muttered as she locked the door behind the skipping woman, head dropping and resting her forehead against the door.

'Dean! What the hell were you thinking?' Molly sat in amused silence as Sam began to argue with his older brother. She was sitting on a rickety chair, sipping a cup of tea calmly and making idle notes in her old notebook.

She let the conversation wash over her as she pulled out the note and smoothed it out, examining it further. She had taken a few small samples and analysed them in the lab when she had been left alone for long enough. Sherlock and Greg had been continuing their policy of popping in unexpectedly as she insisted on slipping her tails.

'Can we please get started?' She cut across the once more escalating argument waving the note about, one foot tapping casually. Sam nodded as Dean huffed in the corner, Sam took the note and held it up to the light, eyes narrowed in concentration.

'You sure it's not Crowley?' He asked lowering it and Dean reached over and took it to take a look at it himself.

'No, but about to ascend the throne, Crowley already considers himself to be king, I doubt he'd send such a pointed message. And I've never had any contact with…. Him.' Molly trailed off for a moment, closing her eyes slowly for about thirty seconds.

'OH!' She jumped up and started digging through her stacks of books, trying to find one particular volume she had a vague memory of her father stealing. AS far as she could recall, he'd said it had been for the owners own good. Molly, at the time had been studying, so she really hadn't been paying all that much attention. A lack of attention which was now biting her in the backside as she was digging through the books with barely a clue as to what she was looking for.

'What is going on?' One eyebrow arched against her will as she looked back at the pair.

'Do you two even realise that you do that?'

'Do what?' The looked at one another and back down at Molly, once again speaking in unison and seemingly unaware of the frequency at which they did so. She gaped at the pair, tilting her head before shaking it and turning away.

'Nevvvvvvvvvvvvvvermind. I don't think this has anything to do with Crowley, I think it has to do with the demon was father was tracking before he was diagnosed.'

'Why?'

'Instinct. Crowley doesn't know me, he knows you two, but I've had no contact with him and he deals in the States now. And my Dad kept talking about a Crow becoming King, wings talking flight or something. I thought it was the cancer talking but…'

'You think you missed something?' Sam tried bending down onto his haunches and gathering the books into neater stacks out of the way.

'More like something I just barely remember. Damnit.' She closed her eyes tight in a desperate attempt to drag up the memory, but to no avail.

'I could really do with a mind palace right about now.' She stated ruefully, lips turning upwards into an empty smile, eyes shining with trepidation.

'A what?' Dean asked, crossing his arms and staring at her with a contemptuous expression.

'Doesn't matter now. This is about me, Sherlock was right; he is coming after me, but for more reasons than he knows.'

'More reasons?'

'I helped Sherlock fake his death. I was key in doing so according to him.'

'What did you do?' Sam asked, more curious than Dean who was rolling his eyes, jaw clenching. Though he had not met Sherlock, he had decided that he was not a fan. Annoyed that someone not related to him had remarkable bone structure perhaps.

'Sorry, that's spoil the magic.' She grinned at the pair getting up, crossing her arms, trying to remember where the book was.

'My Dad made a deal with a demon, and I think that demon is coming after me now, but it's not possible.'

'Why not?' Sam asked, as he started packing the books away in neat rows on the useless bed. He dragged hand through his hair, considering what she had to say very seriously. Dean, unlike Sam, seemed completely unimpressed with her revelations as he cracked open a bottle of beer.

'I was supposed to be free, no hunting no demons, I don't go looking for them; they don't come gunning for me. That was the deal.'

'What did the demon get out of it?'

'His life, as well as a miserable death for my father.' There was more to the story, but Molly didn't want to think about it, let alone share with the brothers.

'The demon gave your Dad cancer?' Dean's face whitened, fingers on the bottle of beer tightening.

'Yep. Lovely creatures, demons.' She paused for a moment, as hers eyes welled up at the memories of her fathers' final few months. Painful and long, strength draining and the usually strong man just wasting away. With Molly at his side unable to help, she took a shaky breath but stopped as her normal rang.

'Hello?'

'Molly! Thank god!'

'Greg what's wrong?' Molly stepped away from the boys, in order to try to get some illusion of privacy.

'Someone broke into your flat and well…' The hesitance in his voice resulted in her stomach dropping out of her, who had been hurt?

'Well what?'

'They torched some of it.' That seemed a tad anticlimactic she thought, frowning, surely there had to be something more there.

"Tell her I have her cat!" A female Dublin accent could be heard vaguely in the background, as well as a faint purring. At least Tobs was okay, she reasoned, and she breathed a sigh of relief at that and the fact that she had the foresight to only have copies of her research in her flat.

'Is that Janine? And what you do you mean; some of it?'

'You'd need to see it for yourself. I think you need to consider Sherlock's offer.'

"Honestly George, give it here."

"Really Sherl? Really? You can identity a litany of ash for no apparent useful reason but can't remember a friends name?'
Molly unfortunately was stuck on the other end listening to the rapidly escalating argument, why was Janine there? Why did she have Toby? Why was Greg so freaked out?

"Oh do stay out of it."

"As your ex-finace, I can do as I bloody well please."

"I thought we were now even on that."

"I won't use it for further gain… much, but I will toss it in your face as needs be."

"Can you both stop it?"

'Can either one of the three of you please tell me what is going on?' Molly snapped loudly on the phone, leading Janine to ha loudly on the other end, Sherlock to humph and Greg to curse under his breath.

'You may need to see this for yourself.' Sherlock had taken it on himself to take the phone and judging on the scuffling noises, Greg was none too pleased about it.

'Why? Aren't your eyes enough?' Truth was, Molly knew she was onto something and she really didn't want to leave in case she lost sight of the answer.

'Molly. You need to see this, there is something here and I can't place it.' For the second time in her association with Sherlock, he sounded unsure… still not something she was comfortable with, and probably never would be.

'You need my help?'

'Yes.' Well, that settled that. As much as Molly was loath to admit it, she would help him even if he didn't want it. Him wanting it was simply a bonus, usually meant new lab equipment being delivered for her use only. And he would only monopolise it, if the case was a nine or ten.

'I'll be there as soon as I can.'

She hung up and grabbed her coat swinging it on, heading for the door. She paused at it and turned back to the boys pointing at one and then the other.

'No leaving. Under any circumstances, I don't care if the place is on fire or your mother has risen from the grave and is tap dancing outside, stay put.'