Chapter 6
May 13, 2012. Old US-40 E, Kansas. An hour later.
Dean flexed his fingers around the wheel, chewing on the inside of his lip as the same thoughts went around and around. They were thirty miles out of Dorrance, heading north-west when he realised what he wanted to do, what he had to do.
"Sam, I've got a thing – uh – something I gotta do."
Straightening in the cramped passenger seat, Sam turned. "Sure, what is it?"
"It's, uh, this is something I need to do alone." Dean flicked a glance at him, uncertain of how that would go down.
His brother swivelled away, features set as he stared through the window. "Uh … oh."
Dean's mouth thinned as he heard the reservations in the comment. For the first time in weeks, he felt clear about doing something and he didn't want to lose it.
"I thought we'd stop at the next town, get you some wheels. We can meet at Whitefish later, or wherever you are if you find a new case?"
"Sure, yeah. Okay." Sam frowned. "How long's this thing going to take?"
"I don't know," Dean said. It would be fast if she didn't hear him out. He cleared his throat and tried for upbeat. "A few days, maybe."
"Dean … I thought we were done with the secrets and lying."
He could feel Sam's gaze against the side of his face. The disappointed look, he thought, shooting a fast glance to confirm. Sam's expression was undecided between disappointment and irritation. Close enough.
He looked back at the highway. "It's not – this – it's – uh - personal. I need to get some answers about something."
"What?"
Dean drew a deep breath. "Ellie."
"You're going to see Ellie?" Sam's brow immediately wrinkled with concern. Dean heard the change in his voice. "Am I the only one who remembers what happened last time? You were a basketcase."
Tossing a sour look at his brother, Dean said, "Might be exaggerating, just a bit, there, Sam."
"I'm not, but that doesn't matter." Sam bristled. "She's not going to appreciate you turning up."
"Yeah." He acknowledged that readily. She'd be mad or indifferent or … something.
I never stopped loving you.
He drew in a breath. "This is different."
Sam turned to the window, watching the farmland speed by. "You sure about that?"
"Yeah. I'm sure."
He stared ahead, not sure at all, but Sam was right. It didn't matter. He was going to try. They needed help – he needed help – and help was damned thin on the ground.
Lincoln, Nebraska
Two hours later, they were cruising through the suburban outskirts of the town, Dean keeping to the speed limit as he bypassed the business centre and headed for the river. They spent another hour driving slowly around the industrial area and freight yards, the silence between them thick enough to drown in, before Sam saw a suitable vehicle at the airport's long term lot.
Twisting the ignition wires of the four-wheel drive wagon together, Sam hummed under his breath when the engine rumbled into life. He'd been reluctantly brushing up on a lot of the skills of his childhood since Frank'd insisted they change vehicles all the time. He could break in and be gone almost as fast as his brother now.
Hunched up in the well, halfway under the steering column, he looked up at Dean. The older Winchester was leaning on the window frame of the passenger door, his gaze remote. He recognised the look – Dean was playing out possible scenarios for whatever it was he was going to do – and not seeing many good resolutions to them, he decided, noting the twitch of his brother's jaw as he eased himself back out from the well.
"You could've dropped me off at the cabin, you know."
Dean's eyes regained their focus and he nodded. "Yeah, but then you would have been stuck there. This is better."
Sam couldn't argue the point. Between Crowley's demons and the unknown number of leviathans still out there, he knew Dean'd feel a lot better if they had their own transport. He still didn't think it was a good idea.
Nothing could've made him understand more clearly the depth of his brother's feelings than seeing the fallout from their last visit to Ellie. Not just having to watch the breakup and its effects on Dean, but the days of aftermath, the apathy that'd sucked the energy out of his big brother, as if he'd lost hope and himself in one devastating blow. If this visit meant a Round Two of that, he didn't think Dean should be on his own. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was too damned vulnerable when it came to her.
"Here."
Sam frowned as his brother pulled the thick, serrated knife from his jacket and handed it to him, hilt first.
"You keep that too," Dean said.
He shook his head, staring down at it. "You might need this more than me."
His brother shrugged. "Ellie's got one. And I'm guessing her place is a lot more secure from pretty much everything than anywhere you'll be."
"If she lets you in," Sam pointed out. He took the knife and slid it into his coat pocket.
The one-sided smile wasn't forced, for once. "There's that."
"Dean, this could be a bad idea."
"No argument, little brother," Dean agreed, his gaze cutting away. "Also, no choice."
"Why?"
Dean's gaze dropped to the ground. "I can't let it go."
The admission hit Sam somewhere around his solar plexus, the unexpectedness of hearing it taking his breath. "Dean …"
His brother lifted his head, a tight grin stretching his mouth. "Not a chick-flick moment, Sammy," he said. "S'something I gotta do. That's it."
"Alright," Sam agreed unwillingly. He tried to tell himself it was a start, that Dean would - some day - let more out, but his brother was working against the habits of a lifetime and he was going to have to be patient. "I'll see you then."
"Yeah." Dean rapped his knuckles on the car's hood. "Be careful."
Straightening as he stepped back from the wagon, Dean watched as Sam pulled out of the lot and onto the road. He walked back to the Pacer and got in, a mix of anticipation, fear and doubt agitating in his stomach. A glance at the map showed he had thirteen hundred miles to go, about twenty-two hours if he went straight through.
He turned onto the I-80 ten minutes later and settled into the driving, Zep's Travelling Riverside Blues playing loudly on the stereo, his thoughts switched off for the time being as he focussed on the road, the traffic and the interplay between his body and the machine he was controlling.
Thought we were done with secrets, Sam'd said. It wasn't a secret, he told himself. Somewhere, down deep, he'd known he couldn't let go. Couldn't walk away from what he wanted this time, like he'd done all the other times. Not and keep going.
He'd seen Sam's surprise, maybe not so much at what was driving him, but at the fact he'd said it out loud. Had been relieved when Sam'd repressed his obvious emo desire to get into it. Maybe his little brother was starting to get to know him.
He needed to ask her about the oil. About talking in the car. About waking up. He needed to ask her if she knew anything about angels possessing angels. Or why a hunter would hang around the physical plane after death and not be able to contact the people he was trying to help. He needed to see her, look into her eyes when he asked all those things, try to find a way back.
A couple of months wasn't much time. Not enough time to kid himself she'd be glad to see him or even that she wouldn't slam the door in his face. He didn't have a choice. Time felt like it was flying by, faster and faster, and he couldn't keep pretending everything was just fine anymore.
I never stopped loving you.
And he didn't think he was ever going to stop loving her.
It'd taken a while for that to sink in. His attempts at the usual male solutions to loss and grief had failed spectacularly, not that he'd really believed they'd work. He couldn't get drunk. Couldn't find any spark of arousal for other women, even those with assets that he might've once deemed miraculous and a clear desire for nothing more than a night's fun. Couldn't get into enough bar fights or drive fast and recklessly enough to shut down his emotions and memories and the relentless ache of wanting something he couldn't have.
He had to make her see that. He let out the breath he'd been holding. He had to try, at least.
May 15, 2012. Thompson Falls, Montana
Ellie looked at the swirls and twists of sand on the table, the colours ranging from almost white to jet black, according to the mineral levels in the sand. The patterns were mesmerising. She glanced at the book beside her, checking the illustration photograph against what she'd done on. It seemed accurate.
It was pretty, she thought disparagingly, but a lot of work for something that was really only a tripwire for indicating spirit presence.
The book – one of the witch's, and the same volume that'd given the instructions for the gold and iron trap that she still hadn't gotten around to hanging above the doorway – claimed that any spirit around would be drawn to the sand patterns, and would show itself when it touched them. She was dubious about that. She was also doubtful about how useful such a thing would be in the field, given how long it had taken to make, and the speed of vengeful spirits generally.
Still, it was another thing she supposed, another tool, another device, to help hunters in ridding the world of what should never've been there. She reached across the table and picked up the digital camera, taking a dozen photos of the patterns from several angles. She could add the information to the database later on. Along with warnings of the time it needed and the possible usefulness, she added to herself as she set the camera down.
Picking up the book, she walked back to the study, keeping her gaze carefully averted from the nine-inch thick pile of printouts sitting on one corner of her desk.
The information kept pouring in, as regular as the tides. Slipping the book back into its place, she turned around and leaned against the shelf, the chatter of the printers a soothing background to her thoughts.
She was trying to keep up with it, to make sense of the disparate facts. She'd called three of her contacts who specialised in archaeological relics, their work not always sanctioned by the countries they were digging in, and none had been contacted by Roman Enterprises, or knew more than rumour and gossip about the highly secretive digs in Jordan, the northern borders of Iran and the flat reg desert between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The research centres had to be fronts, she thought, pushing off the shelf and walking to the desk. From what Sam'd said about Biggerson's, the levis were creating additives to turn the population into a food supply; a calm, docile food supply that would walk up to the slaughterhouse peacefully and cooperatively. So why cure cancer? Or any other disease? Were they afraid of ingesting diseased flesh? It hadn't seemed to worry them at all so far. Looking down at the stack of printouts, she rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. What she needed to do was to get out, have a look at one of these places for herself. This third-hand information scrabble was giving her a permanent headache.
The doorbell rang, its chimes muted and Ellie swung around, taking the SIG from the desk. She checked the mag and thumbed the safety off as she walked out through library and living room, crossly berating herself for the hundredth time to get the damned security monitors installed.
The front door had been designed to be an unbreakable barrier. No peephole breeched its solid timber and iron strength. Turning the lock, she jammed the toe of her boot under the edge and eased the door open a couple of inches … and stared into a pair of slightly bloodshot green eyes.
Dean waited, his stomach fluttering unpleasantly, his mouth unaccountably dry. Ellie had opened the door a few more inches and she was staring at him, her face expressionless.
"What do you want?"
He cleared his throat, feeling his palms dampen at the chill in her tone. Tucking his hands into his coat pockets, he forced himself to meet the rigid stare.
"I want to talk to you."
In the car, over the last thousand miles, he'd conjured this scene, had visualised it from every angle he could imagine. Had gone through every possible form of hostility he could come up with and figured out all the answers he'd thought he'd need. He realised abruptly that'd been a waste of his time. He searched his brain feverishly, looking for the right words, the words that would magically get through to her, the ones that were never fucking well around when he needed them.
"Exactly what part of 'I don't want to see you' did you not understand?"
Okay, he thought, his tongue still feeling too thick and dry, she was angry. He tried to work some saliva into his mouth. "I wouldn't be here, Ellie, if you hadn't sent the holy oil for Sam."
She raised an eyebrow, her gaze slipping past him. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yeah, you do." His eyes narrowed when he noticed her pulse leap in the hollow of her throat. Neither of them had ever been much good at lying to the other. "Twist called me, dropped off a bottle of holy oil. Told me he'd heard Sam was having trouble with a fallen angel. He's a useless liar, Ellie. He admitted you sent him."
"I haven't spoken to Twist in over two months," she said, the cool tone discarded and bored indifference taking over. "Or anyone else. How would I know what Sam is doing or if he needed holy oil?"
"Good questions." He took a step closer to her, feeling her shift to defence despite the couldn't-care-less expression on her face. "How would you know that Lucifer got a ride out in Sam's body? Twist told me he was just the messenger."
"Maybe he's off his meds." She looked away and he watched her mouth compress.
"How'd you know, Ellie?"
She looked back at him blandly. "I didn't. And I'm busy, Dean … so if that's all …" She pushed the door an inch toward him.
He put his hand against it, knowing the reaction he'd get but damned if he'd driven two days and thirteen hundred miles to get blown off so quickly. "No, that's not all," he said, his voice deepening. "I had this weird-ass dream, Ellie, and in that dream I told you about Sam, and you told me that you thought Lucifer had gotten a ride out of the cage with Sam's soul."
Ellie's gaze flickered from his hand to him. "Guess that's what you get when you take too many shrooms."
"Wasn't helped along by anything I did," he retorted, his suspicions mostly confirmed when she ducked her head abruptly. "Dream was on Monday, on my way to Colorado. I was driving. I woke up on the wrong side of the 90 with a big rig just about to turn me into roadkill. Tuesday morning, you called Twist and told him to pick up the oil and get it to me and Sam."
He took a step closer to her. "You gonna explain that?"
"Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about." She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with a cool stare. "And I don't have to explain anything to you."
They could do this all day, he thought, staring at her in frustration. All his plans, all his carefully thought-out ways of getting her to admit it, weren't going to do the trick. The memory of how easy it'd been between them in that dream – well, not easy, he admitted quickly, not the way it used to be, but easier than this – filled his mind and wiped out his irritation, replacing it with a silent ache.
"That dream … it was like you were there," he said, taking his hand from the door and thrusting both into his coat pockets. Turning away, his gaze swept over the clearing as the words dried up. "Like – uh – like …"
He couldn't make himself say any more. Couldn't tell her what it'd felt like, how much he'd wanted – how much he'd needed – to believe in it. He heard her exhale, gusting out behind him and pivoted back.
Eyes closed, she was leaning back against the door jamb, her arms loosely crossed over her chest. The sun edged above the ravine's wall and lit her hair to burnished copper, and he had to prevent himself from taking a step nearer, fingers curling up into fists and jammed deep in the pockets to stop from reaching out and touching it.
When she wasn't around, it'd never failed to depress him that he couldn't remember the exact shades of the colours in her hair, or the constellations of freckles that were scattered over her nose and over her cheeks, or the precise green of her eyes. Whenever she'd reappeared and he had the opportunity to look at her, he couldn't believe how familiar all those things were to him. He knew he was staring. He couldn't help it.
"Did the oil work?" she asked, straightening and opening her eyes to look at him. "Is Sam okay?"
It was, he thought, an offering, and the only admission he was likely to get about the dream. Not much of an olive branch, but her voice had lost the brittle edge and her expression was no longer cold. He nodded, his chest tightening at the realisation that it was the tip of the iceberg, given all that'd happened in the last couple of weeks, all the crap she didn't know about.
"Yeah, Sam's okay. But it wasn't the oil." He glanced at the door. "Can I, uh, come in? A helluva lot more's gone down since … uh, since then."
He regretted asking as he saw her expression chill.
"No. You can't."
"Ellie –" Dean backed off, raising his hands pacifically as she took a step backward, her hand reaching for the door. Fuck, he thought, take it slow. He hadn't thought she'd even be interested in hearing him out, he couldn't push too hard. If he had to tell her the whole deal standing at the front door, who was he to argue?
"Alright, okay? Uh, Sam was bad, and I was running out of options; I couldn't find anyone who even knew about fucking holy oil, and, uh, I gotta call from a guy Bobby used to know – Maclin Barczak – and he gave me the name of this healer–"
The small crease appeared between her brows, the coldness gone, her entire attention on him. His breath hitched in his chest, the familiarity of that regard catching at him.
"– but – uh – I – I think you were right, you know, about it being the devil. Um, the guy Mackey gave me–" He stopped, remembering his shock at the sight of the angel, the weirdness of the drive back to the hospital, Meg in the back, 'Emmanuel' knowing nothing about who he really was. And the return of Cas' memories when he'd banished the demons waiting.
"It was Cas."
"What?" Ellie's face paled, her eyes widening. "Cas? But … how?"
She hadn't argued the point about Lucifer, he thought as he shrugged. "I told you there's a lotta stuff. It's gonna be easier if we could–"
Ellie nodded sharply, the gesture silencing him. She stepped back into the house, turning and walking away, leaving the door open.
Not a gold-plated invitation, Dean thought as he followed, but definitely an invitation. The relief he felt was disproportionate to the situation. It wasn't just the angel he was going to have to explain, he thought, pushing the heavy door closed behind him.
When he came into the huge living room, Ellie was already curled into the corner of the blocky cream sofa, and he crossed to the armchair closest, sitting down, his gaze moving restlessly around the room. He'd been sixteen when he'd last been here, and he remembered it, a sensation of burning filling his hands with the recall. Rubbing his hands against his jeans, he shoved the past aside. The events of the last few weeks were enough of a mess, he thought, he didn't need the distant past adding any to them. Cas and his brother; Meg and the demons that'd been practically wall-to-wall at the hospital; all those freaky little things that'd been happening, making him hope and despair at the same time. He studied the tan carpet under his feet for a moment, trying to remember the way it'd all gone down.
"Mackey gave me an address," he started, lifting his head. She wasn't looking at him, her head bowed, but she was still and he knew she was listening. The thought of the hunter's card, falling for no reason from Bobby's address book, intruded and he pushed it away. He could go into that crap later, if she'd let him.
"I got there, and there was a demon." He drew in a deep breath, the healer's porch vivid in his mind's eye, the view of the woman through the front window, the demon's eyes; flickering to black, corner to corner. "I took care of it and Cas showed up, and it was fucking obvious he didn't know who he was."
He was leaving out a helluva lot, he thought, grimacing internally.
"The levis – I don't know what happened," he said. "He claimed to have been in a river, stark naked, found by someone –"
Daphne. His wife, he'd said. Oh … it's a strange story. You may not like it. God'd told her to find him and look after him.
"– uh … this woman – Daphne – she told him God'd told her to find him and – uh – he married her, thinking he was human –"
"What happened to her?" Ellie interrupted.
He ducked his head. "I don't know. She's probably still there –"
Waiting for Emmanuel to come home, he thought, a flash of guilt making him shift in the chair.
"I don't know," he repeated. "Cas said he could heal people, and I figured it meant he had his angel mojo back, even if he didn't know it –"
"He went with you to see Sam?"
He nodded. "We were on the way back and Meg showed up."
She was looking directly at him now, her eyes fixed on his. He should've felt relieved, he thought. Instead it was unnerving, her laser-sharp concentration adding more weight than he'd wanted to acknowledge to what'd been going on.
"Seems like Crowley, uh, rescinded his orders about leaving us alone," he said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. He knew it wasn't a good idea to work with a demon; he didn't need to see that underlined in Ellie's gaze. "Meg offered a deal. She – uh – you remember – uh, no, fuck, I didn't tell you about that …"
He closed his eyes, rubbing his fingertips over them. He hadn't talked much about the year when he'd still been trying to make things work out with the Braedens. After New Orleans, they'd been shaky enough without bringing up those kinds of memories, and there'd been other shit to think about. She'd been right about that too, he recognised belatedly. Samuel Campbell had given him to the djinn, just to make sure he'd be hunting with them.
"Uh, when we were working for Crowley, trying to bag the alphas –"
Ellie nodded. "Bobby said a demon helped out with Crowley. Said she had some sort of thing with Cas."
Relieved she knew some of it, Dean grinned humourlessly. "Some thing, right. You were right about me – you know, when you said someone'd set me up? My grandfather told the djinn where I was and he was there with Sam and the antidote to make sure I was good and worried about everything."
"No coincidences, Dean." She looked away, her shoulders sagging. "So, this demon – Meg – what sort of deal did she offer?"
"She says she wants to kill Crowley," he told her. "Said she'd watch out for Cas."
"This is the demon that possessed Sam, isn't it?" Ellie asked. "The one Azazel claimed was his?"
He nodded reluctantly. Bad choices on top of bad decisions, and no time to figure out anything before the next impossible situation came up. He hadn't believed Meg right off the bat, but he'd been out of allies and he hadn't needed another enemy.
"She said–"
Ellie shook her head. "Doesn't matter," she cut him off. "You do what you have to do."
Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins and there's no such thing as what might've been.
The lyric echoed her and he ducked his head, staring at the floor. If she'd been around, if he'd been able to talk to her about Sam – about everything – none of it would've had to have played out this way. The thought was treacherous, sneaking in, a backwash of shame following it. Not being there hadn't been her fault or choice.
"She wants your help killing Crowley?"
The question jerked him back to the conversation. "Yeah."
"That's straightforward, at least," she remarked. "Why does Cas need watching over?"
He dragged in a breath, backshifting mentally to the sequence of events. "On the way to the hospital, Cas had no clue who he was – what he was," he said. "When we got there, the place was surrounded by demons."
"Why?"
"Crowley had a demon staking out Cas' place," Dean said. "Maybe he heard I'd gone there and knew where I'd be going?"
"Maybe."
"Cas could see their faces, their real faces –" He hesitated, remembering angel's shocked revulsion. "He, uh, started smiting and his memories came back."
"Oh … fuck."
"Yeah." He'd seen it; the burden of what Cas'd done crashing down on him, the raw panic in the angel's eyes. "He saw Sam. I don't know if he knew what was wrong, but he told me he couldn't fix it; couldn't heal Sam, couldn't put the pieces back together, that what'd been there was … crumbled … somehow. But he took something out of him. It went into Cas, and he … well, uh, he's in the psych ward now, with Meg keeping an eye on him."
"What happened?"
"I don't know," Dean said, scowling at the floor. "He panicked, then he went kind of catatonic."
"Much worse than Sam, then?"
"Yeah."
Ellie closed her eyes, leaning against the back of sofa. "Did he know what it was?"
"He said he didn't," Dean said, brows knitting together as he remembered the doubt in Cas. "I think – I thought – he seemed to think it was something Sam'd created, some kind of worsening punishment …"
He trailed off as she smiled at him. "Psychoses aren't generally transferable."
"No," he agreed, unsure now of what the angel'd thought or seen in his brother.
"And Sam recovered, as soon as Cas took it?"
"Yeah, Sam was fine – is fine." He took a deep breath, still feeling the echoes of relief from that. "He feels guilty as hell about Cas, but otherwise, he's okay again."
"That says a lot right there."
"I guess," he said.
"But now there's no way to get Lucifer out of Castiel."
"Yeah." He looked down at the floor. "No way we can think of."
"If that's even what's happened." Ellie drew her legs up further, wrapping her arms around her shins, her chin just above her knees. "Were you there? What did it look like? When Cas made the transfer?"
"Uh … there was a red light." He closed his eyes and thought back, trying to remember every detail. "It flashed in Sam's eyes, then it seemed to be filling the veins and arteries of his face, his head … and then it moved down his neck and his arm and into Cas' hand where he was holding Sam."
It had looked damned freaky, was how it had looked, he thought, the memory bringing an internal shiver. "When it got into Cas, it lit up his arm, and his neck and all the veins in his head, and then his eyes flashed red, and it disappeared."
Ellie frowned, visualising what he'd described. "Following the blood vessels? So it looked like an actual, separate entity? Travelling the blood paths? And Cas somehow compelled it to leave Sam?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
She wasn't paying attention to him, and he stared at her, a painful mix of memory and hope and doubt and fear and pain making his head throb and his palms sweat. How many times had he sat with her, doing exactly this, watching her come up with an answer or a solution to something that'd seemed impossible to him, her experience and opinions jump-starting his own until things seemed blindingly, obviously clear?
He glanced away, forcing the emotions aside. "You still think it's the devil?"
She shook her head. "Yeah, I think it's probably Lucifer, bodiless, but very much there, but it may be something else."
"C'mon! What else could it be?" He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "It was out of Sam's control when it was in him; not just out of his control, but like it was taking him over. And Cas was the same, the minute he took it on board."
Mouth twisting ruefully, Ellie waved a disclamatory hand. "I don't know yet, I need to check some things. But I don't want to discount other possibilities … it could be something along the lines of a virus – something that's infected them, somehow. I'll look, alright?"
A virus, he thought unhappily. Something that could pass from a human to an angel, a semi-sentient and compellable disease. Well, that was nearly as fun as Lucifer escaping the Cage for the second time, again on him and his brother.
"If it is Lucifer," Ellie continued, her expression pensive. "Then he's without a lot of his power. I can't come up with a motive for him switching to Cas – unless he thinks he can tap into Heaven's power through him."
The crease returned between her brows, deepening. "Or … it's not really Lucifer, but maybe some kind of echo, something that got left behind … kind of like you felt about Hell for a long time."
She shook her head impatiently, unfolding herself from the sofa and getting to her feet. "There are a few possibilities and this is just speculating without any information whatsoever. Is Cas safe in the ward, with Meg?"
"I don't know." He stood as well, unwillingly. He had the feeling she was just about done talking to him, and he had a lot more to ask.
"Have you seen Crowley? Spoken to him?"
He shrugged. "No. Demons on our asses again was enough of a greeting card."
Ellie gazed around the room, her expression distracted. "Meg said Crowley was looking for Cas? Or is that what you think?"
"It's what she said," Dean said. "I'm guessing he wants some payback, or an angel on a leash."
Either or both fit the demon, she thought, walking restlessly toward the big table. At the back of her mind, emotions were pressing hard, demanding release. It'd been easier than she'd thought – to talk to him, to listen to him, to ignore her feelings and focus her mind on the problems and solutions – but she didn't want to kid herself that they could stay like that. Sooner or later, one or the other of them would slip up, want to ask something else, something personal, and the distance she had would vanish.
She killed that train of thought and focussed her concentration on how to verify what was in Castiel. Hypnosis might work, she considered, perhaps in conjunction with Pentothal. A long shot considering Sam hadn't been affected by the pharmacological drugs he'd been given. Stopping by the side of the table, her gaze drifted unseeingly over the painstakingly precise sand patterns she'd spent the morning making, then jerked back.
"Shit."
"What?" Dean said. She barely heard him crossing the room and stopping to stand beside her, her gaze moving inch by inch over the patterns on the table. "What's wrong?"
Gesturing at the table, she said in a low voice, "We've got company."
The patterns were blurred and smudged, the sand grains stirring as she watched them. Cursing herself for a moment over not hanging the gold trap above the door, she wondered how the damned thing had gotten in past the salt and iron protection she knew filled the walls. She frowned as she looked at the man standing next to her. He was looking at the mess on the table in bemusement.
"These patterns," she explained, pointing to where the swirls had been disturbed. "That's what they're supposed to do, show any spirit presence."
"What?" He looked around. "Where?"
She gave him an impatient look. "Where's your EMF?"
He shook his head. "I lent it to a friend and it hasn't recovered yet."
"Did you know you had a ghost with you, Dean?"
His hand slid to the inside pocket of the jacket he wore, and she remembered what he carried there. Bobby's flask.
"It might be Bobby," he suggested, his gaze cutting away. Ellie looked at him. He shrugged helplessly.
"We weren't sure." He turned back at the table. "There were all these things – all these little things – happening and I thought – I mean, like you said, there's no such thing as coincidence, but Sam used the talking board and nothing happened."
Ellie's brows arched upward. "He tried to talk to Bobby while Lucifer was riding shotgun?"
Dean nodded, his eyes drawn back to the table as another pattern was smudged in front of him, the swirls of black and ochre sand mixing together.
"Do you think Bobby might have felt – hell, I don't know – maybe just a tad constrained by the fact that the devil was riding on Sam's shoulder at the time?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest as she looked at him.
The astral plane sees everything in terms of energy. Michael had told her that. If it had been the fallen angel, hiding in Sam, Bobby could well have seen it, she thought. As if in answer, a faint, directionless breeze sighed through the room, stirring the the sand on the table and making the papers stacked on the chair alongside riffle in its passing.
"Yeah, uh, maybe," Dean allowed, his gaze flicking to her and back to the table. "You think that's why it felt like it was just happening to me?"
"That would be my guess," Ellie said. "Are you still in contact with any mediums?"
He shook his head. "Not since Pamela died."
He'd known it was Bobby, he'd known it, down in his gut. Why the hell hadn't he tried to contact him? 'Cause Sam tried and it didn't work, the voice in his mind retorted.
He looked up as Ellie let out a gusty sigh, swinging away from him to walk to the open bookshelf doorway that led to her study. Dean followed her, looking back over his shoulder at the blurred patterns of sand on the table. The hell she'd gotten that design, anyhow? A vagrant air swirled past him and for a second, he could smell the cheap rotgut whiskey the old hunter had favoured.
Bobby.
Why in hell had the old man stayed? To help them? A spurt of anxiety filled him, followed by a hollow ache to see him again. He could've done with the help, but not at that cost. Bobby should've gone on, kept to the natural order, taken the express elevator up that he'd deserved.
Slowing as he reached the doorway, he glanced curiously at the shelves. Sam'd told them about the lock, how it needed setting particular books in a certain way to open it. He walked through into a library, a large octagonal room with ceiling-to-floor shelving, every inch filled with books, ancient and modern and everything in between. On the opposite wall, there was another door, and he lengthened his stride as he saw Ellie disappear through it.
The room beyond was a spacious study. Shelving lined the walls, a cold hearth sat to one side and Ellie was sitting behind the big walnut desk, opening a large leather-bound book. She flipped through the pages, stopping on one and looking up as he stopped by the desk.
"Have a seat," she said, picking up the phone and waving vaguely at the chair beside him. He dropped into it as she punched in a number.
"Missouri? It's Ellie."
Missouri.
The name lit him up, both for the blast from the past it conjured and a growing annoyance with himself for not even remembering the psychic.
Missouri Mosely. Christ, he'd been in Kansas, just a couple of hours from Lawrence twice in the last month; why the hell hadn't he remembered her while he'd been down there?
"No, I need some help contacting a spirit. Mmm-hmmm." Ellie pulled a pen from the jar on the desk and a notepad toward her. "Actually, he's attached to an object. Yeah."
Dean leaned forward, listening to the one-sided conversation. He'd had no idea Ellie knew the woman and if he was going to be honest with himself, he knew why he'd forgotten about the psychic as soon as the house had been cleaned and they'd put Lawrence behind them. There'd been too much emotion connected to the place, too many feelings and memories caught together and impossible to deal with.
Ellie glanced at him and back to her notepad, listening to the woman on the other end of the line, her pen crafting complicated doodles around the address and number she'd written there.
"No, I'll send him down. Uh, yeah … Dean Winchester." She tapped the pen on the pad. "No. That's – it's – the situation changed. No, I can't really right now. Okay, yes, I will. Bye."
He watched her replace the receiver and lifted a brow. "She still there?"
"Yeah. She moved to a different place a couple of years ago, but she's still in Lawrence. You get down there and see her; she'll contact Bobby and help you talk to him." She put the pen down and ripped the sheet of paper from the pad, handing it to him, her expression distant. "This is her current address and number."
"Thanks." He looked down at the paper, one brow rising slightly as he took in the angel and demon caricatures surrounding the information. He folded it and slid it into his jacket pocket. "How d'you know about her?"
"Through Peggy. We met back in '98," Ellie said. "I needed someone – uh, I needed to contact someone and Peggy recommended Missouri."
Around the time her partner had been killed, he thought, doing the math quickly. "You know her pretty well?"
"She's very easy to work with." She walked around the desk. "I see her every few months, I guess."
Better track record than him and Sam, he thought, getting to his feet. Not that he'd found Missouri to be particularly easy to work with. She'd cuffed him a few times for the thoughts he'd never said out loud.
She was standing at the corner of the desk, and he looked around the study, aware of the sudden tension between them, but not wanting to go. Not yet.
"Looks like you settled in," he said, waving a hand around awkwardly at the organised chaos of the room. The apartment in Richmond had looked like this, he recalled. Not to the same scale, but it'd had the same air of a magpie scholar.
"Yes."
Her clipped response felt like a dismissal. Whatever the psychic had said to her during the call, it'd affected her, he thought. Her readiness to put aside emotion and talk to him, even the mild exasperation with him about Bobby … those had gone, replaced by a stiff formality. He shifted his position, looking at the study door.
"Guess I better get going."
"Long drive to Kansas," Ellie agreed tonelessly.
His feet felt rooted to the floor. This came under the banner of pushing her, he knew. Something he hadn't wanted to do. Risking a fast glance at her, he shoved his hands into his pockets and drew in a deep breath. "Ellie … uh, about that dream–"
"I don't want to talk about it."
She wasn't looking at him, arms crossed in front of her again, her face expressionless. He did want to talk about it. Needed to talk about it. The back of his neck prickled in warning. He ignored it. He'd wounded what was between them – he could accept that – but he couldn't accept it was fatal. There was still something there, he thought. Something that wouldn't let go.
"You said you still loved me. That you never stopped."
Expecting a sharp retort, something barbed and acidic maybe, her silence made him hesitate. For the last couple of hours … they'd been talking. He'd been hoping for more, but he was happy enough that she'd listened and asked.
"Was tha-that true?"
Ellie stared at the floor, the soft break in his voice as efficient in eviscerating her as a knife. The past couple of hours had been hard, but it'd felt so familiar, listening to him, being with him, that she'd almost been able to forget why it was such an impossibility.
An image of a rain-slicked street flashed into her mind, and she swallowed hard against the flood of emotion that accompanied it.
"Does it matter?" she asked, forcing the words past the obstruction in her throat. She would not cry; not here, and not now, in front of him. "It doesn't change anything."
"It does for me. It changes everything." He took a step toward her and she took a step away involuntarily, feeling the corner of the desk against her hip.
You knew this would happen, sooner or later, she reminded herself. She hadn't thought it would hurt so much to hear the plea in his voice, this man who never asked for anything.
"Ellie … I–"
"Don't." Her gaze flashed up to meet his, a surge of white anger cutting through the tightness in her chest. "Don't you say it."
He didn't have the right to say it, not to her, not out loud, not now. Hearing him would break her into pieces.
"Don't you dare say that to me."
Standing in front of her, his mouth was open, eyes wide. She wasn't sure if it'd been the vehemence in her voice or the expression on her face that stopped him. The anger dissolved as suddenly as it'd come, leaving her with an aftertaste of empty fatigue.
"Just go. Okay?" she said, dropping her gaze and turning away from him. No might've-beens. No apologies. No explanations. Some things had to run their course, and she couldn't listen to what he wanted to say.
"Just – please – go down to Kansas and talk to Missouri and leave me alone."
She walked around him, out of the study and back through the library, forcing herself to move slowly, to take deep, even breaths, her heart thudding against her ribs, a painful throbbing behind her eyes. A good object lesson in how little progress she'd made in dealing with any of this, she thought, the effort to repress the emotions that were raging inside lining her up for a stroke.
She stopped at the table, staring fixedly at the messed-up sand patterns, her ears rebelliously strained to hear his footfalls on the polished oak floor.
He came up close to her and she knew he was hovering, internally debating the advisability of saying something else. Her hands curled into fists to hide their tremble and she was turning to face him when the temperature around them dropped abruptly.
On the table, the sand started moving, the patterns breaking into pieces, being lifted into the air and dumped onto the floor.
What the–?
In the centre of the largest pattern, the grains was dragged aside, slowly and painstakingly, as if by a finger. The short straight lines formed letters; the letters formed a single, small word.
NO
Ellie glared at the tabletop.
Don't you mix into this, Bobby.
She lifted her head and extended her glare to include the room, shivering as a chill zephyr touched her face. As if a busybody ghost was going to help this situation.
This is none of your business.
Dean watched the last few grains of sand dropping from the table's edge onto the floor. Given how slow and deliberate the writing had been, like a kid just learning his letters, he was beginning to understand the ambiguous messages the old man had been sending. He thought briefly of Cole and his lessons in ghost-moves. You just gotta get mad. Was Bobby mad at him? At Ellie?
No … what, Bobby? he asked silently, his gaze flicking to the woman beside him. No, he shouldn't go to see Missouri? No, he shouldn't leave here? No … what?
Taking a step closer to the table, he looked at the message, then back to Ellie. She stood with her eyes closed, lips compressed tightly, a small line between her brows.
"What's it mean?" he asked her, glancing back at the tabletop.
"It means you should get going, ," she said, opening her eyes as she turned her head to look at him, her gaze flat and empty. "It's a long way to Kansas."
There was no arguing with that. Pushing her hadn't helped. If anything, it'd made his chances of talking to her again a helluva lot worse. Giving up, he walked out of the living room, crossing the hall.
At the front door, he stopped again, his hand resting on the doorknob. He glanced back to the living room, seeing her standing by the table. Even at the distance, she looked as if she was bracing herself against some emotion, her posture tense, completely still.
She probably was, he thought tiredly. And there wasn't a goddamned thing he could do that wouldn't make it that much harder for her.
He turned the knob and pulled. The door refused to open.
Had he locked it when he'd come in, he wondered? There was no key in the ornate iron keyhole. He twisted the knob all the way and pulled harder, and it was like trying to pull a car. It wasn't budging. Glancing over his shoulder at Ellie, he wondered how easy it was going to be to explain to her he couldn't leave.
He yanked on the knob again, was contemplating putting his foot up against the frame when he realised he could see his breath, fogging in front of him.
"Bobby?" he muttered under his breath. "Shit, man, don't do this. She's so fucking pissed at me already, don't make it worse."
He tried the knob again and the door opened, the balanced weight swinging easily. Staggering back a couple of steps, he wiped a hand over his face as he recovered his balance, walking through fast, before the hunter's ghost could change his mind.
The car was parked at the bottom of the shallow steps, and he opened the driver's door and got in.
"Bobby? You got something to say, I'm listening."
The temperature in the sun-warmed car remained the same and the air remained still, the car silent.
"Damnit." He was talking to a ghost who couldn't answer, he thought, leaning forward and turning the ignition key. He wasn't sure why Bobby'd held the door shut, but maybe it'd taken all his juice.
Nothing happened. Not a cough, not a growl, not even a click, just nothing. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. The car remained lifeless.
"Bobby," he said, irritation and anxiety in equal parts. "She's gonna kill us both if you keep pulling this shit."
He tried the key again.
Zilch.
He could feel a headache building up behind his eyes, a combination of tension and emotion. He reached under the dash and popped the hood, opening the door and easing himself out of the car's small cab. He walked around the front and lifted the hood, propping it open. Distributor was in place. Carby looked alright. He leaned over, looking at the fuel lines. They were intact.
Spark, he thought. That'd be the easiest thing to stop. Nothing he could do about that except wait it out and hope Bobby needed a nap.
Dropping the hood, he got back in the car. He was not going back to the house. He would sit here in the dead car until he rotted before he went back.
The silence began to ring in his ears.
It could've have been a few minutes or an hour later when he heard the front door opening. Twisting around, he watched as Ellie walked out and stopped on the stone steps, looking down at him, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Heh … car won't start," Dean said, his attempt at a smile fading when her expression hardened.
"Really?"
He slumped back in his seat. "Don't blame me, I'm not doin' it."
Ellie lifted her head, gaze scouring the courtyard. Dean saw the muscle in her jaw jump.
"I'm not going, Bobby, so you can just knock it the hell off," she said, her voice low and tight.
She murmured something he didn't catch, swinging around to scan the front of the house again.
"It's none of your damned business!" she said a second later, much more loudly. "What do you care, anyway?"
There was no answer in the still, warm air and he blinked as he realised he'd been half-expecting the ghost to materialise in front of her and explain what was going on, her belief in the spirit's presence felt so goddamned compelling.
"Dean," she called out, her gaze still snaking around the front of the house. "Take my truck, it's got some protection against malevolent spirits."
Climbing out of the Pacer for the second time, he walked across the gravelled turn-around to the white pickup.
The hell was Bobby tryin' to do, he wondered as he pulled open the driver's door and slid into the front seat. Make damned sure she never talks to me again?
He turned the key, waiting for the glow plugs to click. They did, a moment later, but that was all the engine was prepared to do. His palms slid on the wheel and he wiped them on his jeans, trying to dispel the irrational spurt of guilt he felt at the truck's refusal to start. Not me, he wanted to say to the woman standing on the stone porch. Not my fuckin' fault.
"Bobby, the hell you doin'?" he growled, twisting the key again. He was thirty feet away and he could see the stubborn set of her jawline, anger in every line of her body.
"You sonofabitch," she snapped.
He heard that, cringing slightly as she turned abruptly and walked back inside the house, the front door standing open.
Did he stay where he was or get out, he wondered? He twitched at the sweat trickling down the back of his neck and along the hollow of his spine, wishing he was somewhere else – anywhere else, in fact.
"Bobby, whatever it is you're trying to do, just quit it," he said as the minutes ticked by. "Pushing her ain't helping me."
He wondered if he should be doing something, although he was having a hard time coming up with anything he could do.
Ellie came out of the house, a big leather backpack gripped tightly in one hand. She'd changed into jeans and boots, a short denim jacket covering the soft turtleneck beneath. She yanked the front door closed, the slam echoing along the rock face above, and turned the key in the iron lock.
As she stalked down the shallow steps and crossed the gravel toward him, Dean tried the key again. The engine started immediately, the deep rumble of a diesel, and he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck, getting out to retrieve his gear from the Pacer.
"I'll just get my–" he started to say but Ellie didn't look at him as she passed him and he gave up, lengthening his stride to the other car. He could feel the anger emanating from her, a tangible, almost visible force, like the heat shimmer that rose from the roads in high summer.
Pulling his duffel and gear bag from the Pacer's tray, he swung around and headed back to the pickup, flinching as the passenger door was slammed shut. He tossed the bags into the back, and got into the driver's side, sliding a cautious sideways look at her.
She sat rigidly in the passenger seat, her eyes fixed ahead, her face like stone.
"Uh …"
Before he could even think of what to say, she leaned over and hit the Play button of the CD player in the dash and the opening guitar of Evil Walks rolled ominously into the cab. Twisting the control for volume over to the right, the music blasted at them, designed to absolutely preclude any form of communication, and she sat back, shifting her pack to the seat between them, her gaze again straight ahead.
He closed his mouth and nodded to himself, putting the truck into gear, the gravel spitting out behind the tyres as they rolled through the turnaround and down the drive.
No conversation. Period. That was clear enough.