Surprisingly (Especially when you consider that I hadn't had a normal interaction with a male human in nearly 9 months) I didn't even think of calling Dean throughout the first few months that I worked as a hunter. I was also surprised by the sheer amount of hunters there were and the sophisticated network they had. I was a rookie, and didn't have the resources or contacts that the other hunters did, so I found myself inadvertently working alongside different hunters on just about every case of the first few months I hunted. A lot of them ignored me, treating me like a shadow on cases. Most treated me like an intern of sorts, once they realized what I was up to. I spent most of the jobs acting as a gopher. I considered it on the job training.

I learned how to scam credit card companies, research paranormal activity (so that I didn't just get a list of IMDB pages) and where the best midnight food specials were on the road. I learned about Angels, Demons, werewolves, Djinn… I even killed a chupacabra. I learned to fight, shoot- Okay, to be honest, I learned how to hold a gun well enough that anyone who saw me would assume I could shoot. I was still working on the whole hitting a moving target thing. – Anyways, I could paint wards and had learned about different rites of exorcism.

I also learned a HELL of a lot about the Winchester brothers. Those guys were hunter royalty, and everyone either loved them or hated them. Not everyone who loved them was your typical "Good guy" and some of the folks that hated them weren't bad guys at all. When I learned that they had been at the center of more than one apocalypse, I wasn't surprised that they were polarizing in the hunter community.

It almost made me feel strangely proud that they had descended from the heights of the hunter elite to handle a measly little vamp infestation in my home town. To clarify, I didn't feel like they had done it for me or anything… It felt like it did when I went to the Coney Island on Hamilton Blvd. back home and saw a picture of Elvis sitting in the booth I was. I had been celebrity adjacent.

I also learned that if Dean Winchester saved your girly ass from a monster, people tended to assume you guys had screwed. While I did have the honor of experiencing a little light bondage, it wasn't in the sexual nature that everyone had expected. I spend a lot of time blushing when other hunters were around, if they found out I'd "worked" with the Winchesters. Hunters are like women in a sewing circle, so every hunter I worked with found out, whether or not I was the one who told them.

Eventually, I wanted to call Dean. I wanted to call and rip him a new ass hole. The more people reminded me about my dry spell by assuming I got laid when Dean was around, the more angry I got with him for existing. Rationally, I was aware that he really hadn't done anything to me. Well, other than tie me to my bed, kill my ex boyfriend, and introduce me to the idea of monster hunting.

Now that I think of it, I probably should send him a thank you card.

I was musing on whether or not Hallmark made "Thanks for killing my monster ex boyfriend and tying me to my bed cards" when I pulled up to a little flea bag motel just off old 70 between Sarasota and Myakka in Florida. The façade was sickly pink, dingy and chipped Spanish missionary style architecture. I parked around the corner so the desk wouldn't see Ninja. I didn't want to half to pay extra, and I didn't want to sleep in the truck if I was turned away. I headed inside and rented a room.

I was glad to not have to provide a cover story. Beach towns like Sarasota saw a lot of traffic from folks in their twenties heading out on spring break. In fact, I was lucky to get a room at all. The hotel was nearly full of "bro's" and "ho's." I was in the last remaining parking spot, so I had to collect my dog and my things and hoof it to my room.

Thank God all 250 lbs of Ninja can look a lot meaner than he is. The lot and pool area was crawling with drunken frat boys, and none of them wanted to risk tangling with my puppy. I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked, slipping as quickly in to my room as possible, willfully ignoring my surroundings. It all went off without a hitch.

That should have been my first clue that I was in for something big.

a/n Thanks for the reviews so far.

Sunshine1984- I am going to take some time today and go through my chapters and read them out loud for auto correct type errors like the ones you mentioned.

MK72- Thanks for the constructive feedback. I mentioned briefly in the first sentence that the protagonist's parents are civilians, but I updated the chapter and elaborated on their "normal-ness."