Sam came in after an hour or so and whispered, "How's he doing?"

"Hasn't moved a muscle, doesn't seem tense or anything, breathing hasn't even picked up. Score one for the Shaman."

He nodded, "Good, come here. Need to talk and I don't want to wake him."

I eased off the bed and joined him in the hallway, we left the door cracked open and took a step or two away from the room. "What's up?" When Sam looks that concerned and serious it's usually not good.

"Krissy gave us more details on how he killed them. Sounds like the blade gave him some serious strength too. There's no way in hell a kid his size could slice that deep into people's chest. We're guessing he sliced their throats first then went to town, she had some pictures of the symbols he engraved into them and I'm running a search to see if anything comes up. Meantime, Coyote wants to look at the blade she what she can pick up off of it."

You'd think after all these years I'd be pretty incapable of having my blood turn to arctic temps because of fear, guess not. "Hell no! She's technically a priest, that thing was designed for someone like her. Not happening."

Sam stepped aside and gestured down the hall towards the main room, "You want to tell her that? I tried, she told me to shut the hell up. I refused to tell her where I put the blade, she's not that happy with me right now. Apparently there's another reason you two get along so well. Sheer idiocy."

Great, she was digging her heels in. "I accepted limits on how far I'm allowed to go with this, she can too. Watch him, I'll go talk to her." Sam didn't look all that optimistic that I'd win this fight. "I'll get her to see reason."

"Good luck."

"Thanks."

He slipped into Jacob's room and I went down the hall. Coyote saw me coming, she was way past mildly stubborn and had hit "I'm doing this my way." mode.

Krissy took one look at me and got up from the table, "I'll just go get our stuff from the car." She made as quick an exit she could without actually running.

"Why?" I asked Coyote. "That thing is designed to call to someone like you. We already know what it put Jacob and the other people who got their hands on it through. No need to ask it directly. This is too dangerous." I probably would have had a chance until I said that last part. The minute I said it I knew I'd dug a hole that I'd have to work hard to get out of.

She stood up, her hands and shoulders tensing, "I am capable of taking care of myself, I've dealt with visions before, if you remember. It's not like I don't have any familiarity with cursed objects, thanks to you."

That was a low blow, but she, like me, tends to go for the jugular when she thinks she's right. "Shove it. You have no damn idea. You know what I felt, but that was filtered through me. You don't know how strong the compulsions are, how they twist you and you have no idea fast it can hit. You also had no damn idea that I had actually turned into a demon or legitimately wanted to kill Sam, you thought those were nightmares. They weren't. So no, you don't know shit about cursed objects and I will not risk you, fuck that."

That seemed to cool her off, "Can you see how that thing is linked to him? Can you use that knowledge to try to retrieve some of his soul and get him back to normal?" Or not, apparently she'd learned how to shove her anger down in all those tribal meetings. "I thought that was why we were here, to heal Jacob, or am I mistaken somehow."

"No. I can't see what you can. Yes, we're here to heal him but not to put ourselves at risk, I thought that was the whole point of putting limits on what we'd do." I was losing this fight, because I had no real reason to block her from doing this other than deathly fear that she'd get hurt. She knew it too.

"I know why you and Sam don't want me anywhere near that blade, I do." She closed her eyes and exhaled, the tension started to leave her shoulders, "I don't really want to look at it, I don't want to see the death and the corruption but I have to if I want to help him. I won't touch it, I don't need to. I swear. Dean, please. Let me do my job."

"Isn't that how it always starts, just wanting to do our job?" There was so much compassion on her face, but she wasn't going to give ground on this. I wanted to tell her no, every inch of me wanted to, but there was a kid down the hall who we had a chance to save. Since she wouldn't back down I went for piling on as many restrictions as I could. "We do this this way then, you don't get a choice in this. I accepted limits, you do too. I'm going with you, I take it out of the warded drawer, I open the curse box, it stays in the box and you stay at the other end of the room. I show it to you. You get thirty seconds, I shove it back in the drawer and we leave. You move towards it, have a personality shift or go the least bit weird I throw it back in the drawer and we do not ever open it again. Are we clear?"

"Yes."

I was about to let it go at that but my instincts were screaming at me and I had no way to actually protect her. I wasn't going to go into this without trying everything I could keep of to keep her safe. "And I want one of your guides there, I don't care which one, the Coyote, Crow, whoever cares enough to show up." We'd talked quite a bit about her guides after I got introduced to the Coyote. I won't claim that I know what they are or aren't capable of but they had to be able to block her from getting taken over. I wasn't sure if she was pissed at me stepping over some serious boundaries and telling her how to run her side of things or offended that I thought her guides would come when she called like some sort of pets, or both. "Otherwise I'm not letting you do this."

"They aren't servants," she growled.

"I know, so what. I'm not about to let you walk into a set up like this without doing every damn thing I can think of to protect you. No guides, no blade. Glare at me all you like, I don't care."

"We're wasting time."

"He's sleeping, probably for the first time in weeks. If you're worried about time, you should get to chanting then shouldn't you." She went from utterly livid to expressionless, shit. "Sorry, last part was uncalled for. Point still stands though. Your choice."

"And if they don't come, then what?"

"Then we hit the books, we barely scratched the surface last night. Those were just the obvious ones. There's plenty more lore we can delve into."

She got this sneaky look in her eyes, "Don't we need to see what the blade looks like to help narrow it down?"

Time to think on my feet, "I figure we can send Clive pics of what we have already in the lore, he's seen it. Maybe he'll recognize something."

"And if not?"

"We'll figure something else out, maybe show Jacob pics and see if he reacts to anything." I had another idea but I wasn't going to tell her that. Sam or I could probably get a pic, I doubted anything else could have a stronger compulsion than the Mark and First Blade had and I wasn't a powerful Shaman, neither was Sam. I didn't want this blade anywhere close to her. I hadn't left her an out, which was pretty impressive since I'd cobbled this whole thing together on the fly. If I'd been closer to her I'm pretty sure I would have heard her teeth grinding.

"Fine. I will ask my guides." She emphasized asked, maybe even over emphasized it. "I need a room."

"Pick one. There's plenty down the hall." I'd won but it didn't feel all that great, especially when she stalked past me without another word. I watched her and waited until she'd disappeared into a room after gathering her things from the one we were sharing. Krissy still hadn't come back, she must be waiting for an all clear sign. I went outside and saw her leaning on the hood of her car looking guilty.

"I'm sorry Dean, I didn't mean to start problems between you and Coyote. I can take Jacob home and figure out something else. You've retired, I should have never called."

"It's fine, you were focused on helping Jacob, I don't blame you. Don't worry about it." That wasn't what I really wanted to say. No fights in a year and here we were, at each other's throats over a job. Was this even worth it? "You can go back inside, she's going to look at the blade but I set some pretty strict parameters before she gets a chance to. If she pulls it off then we'll probably have a decent idea on how to help him. If not, we'll figure something else out. Jacob's sleeping in the third room on the left. He didn't seem to be having any nightmares or anything. Can you send Sam out? I want to talk to him."

"Sure," Even though she was worried, finding out Jacob was still sleeping brought a smile to her face, "If you guys don't manage to do anything else for him, that's more than I've been able to do in a month. So, thank you."

"You're welcome."

She headed down the stairs. Sure, I was happy we'd gotten him to sleep a bit but that didn't mean a whole lot compared to the complete terror on his face when he was freaking out. I wanted to help him but I didn't want to lose anyone in the process, including, and this was the odd part, myself. And I used to be all about martyring myself to save the day.

Sam ambled his way up the stairs and shot me a speculative look, "Pyrrhic victory I take it?"

"Could be, depending on how up to helping her guides are."

"Her guides?"

"Yeah, told her she could look at the blade if I'm in the room, holding the box, she's on the other side with a guide. She only gets thirty seconds to look at and if things go sideways box is closed and we're done. No second looks."

It took him a second to process all that, "She went for that?"

"She may not talk to me for a day or two, but yeah she did. I didn't leave her any choice."

He winced, "Sorry. Guess this ruins the no fight streak huh?"

"You know, I could say it was bound to happen but the fact is if we were still home, it wouldn't." I couldn't bring myself to say it, even though it was true. I hated this, hated the tension, hated the shitty choices and most of all hated feeling like an asshole for hating it. Sam didn't say anything, he'd been here before. There was nothing really to say. I found myself wishing she'd fail, her guides would blow her off and we could move on. Which made me feel even worse, because I knew she'd succeed and if she ever found out I was hoping she wouldn't she'd kick my ass, and I'd let her.