Chapter 8
Casper, Wyoming. Next day.
Stretching out, Dean woke when his feet hit the arm of the sofa, rolling onto his back and shielding his eyes with his arm as he cracked them open.
Memory took over with the sight of the room's ancient décor, and he squinted at his watch. Eight-thirty. Not too bad. He couldn't remember dreaming, the need for sleep eating up the previous day's tensions and apparently giving his subconscious the night off.
"Hey," he grunted, turning his head and seeing Ellie sitting at the small table. She was dressed and reading a paper, a steaming cup beside her releasing some kind of herbal fragrance into the room's air.
Pushing himself upright, he rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Any coffee?"
Ellie gestured at the kitchenette behind her without looking at him. He saw the kettle on the counter, a mug next to it. He had no doubt there were sachets of the crap instant coffee motels like this bought in bulk in a shallow dish next to them. He shook his head.
"Real coffee. Breakfast."
"I'm not arguing." Ellie took a sip of her tea. "Soon as you're ready, we could go."
"Yeah, I'm on it." Looking down at the clothes he'd slept in, he let out a huff of impatience. Shower first. His stomach rumbled and he got to his feet, heading for the bathroom.
The diner on the main street was old-fashioned and served an old-fashioned breakfast. The waitress took their orders, raising one pencilled-in brow as Ellie ordered the same large serving of sausage, bacon, eggs and hot biscuits. Dean scratched the stubble on his neck, glancing away to hide any trace of expression he might've been showing to indicate he was glad someone else had noticed her appetite.
"You want coffee with that, hon?" she asked, tucking the pencil behind her ear and looking from Dean to Ellie.
He nodded, leaning back in the booth. Ellie shook her head.
"Just a cup of hot water, please," she told the woman, turning to dig in her backpack.
"No joe?" he asked, slouching forward as the waitress left.
"No."
The single word seemed to close the conversation effectively. He watched her through half-closed eyes as she pulled a small white bottle from the pack and set it next to her water, rummaging further and pulling out a plastic container. She extracted a tea bag from it, and set that next to the bottle.
"You goin' on a health kick or something?"
The waitress bustled up, arms laden with plates, cups and saucers. She set their breakfasts in front of them, placing Dean's coffee beside him and Ellie's cup of hot water beside her with the bored ease of someone who'd done it a million times before and hurried on to the next table. Ellie picked up her fork, waving it at the food in front of her.
"What do you think?"
He shrugged and picked up the ketchup.
All breakfasts should be like this, by law, he thought, revelling in the combination of tastes and textures. From under his brows, he watched Ellie clean her plate and lean back, dropping the tea bag into the cup of water and picking up the bottle. She shook a small, white tablet into her hand and swallowed it, washing it down with her water. He could read the label, but it didn't help. He'd never heard of it.
He'd never seen her go much for pharmaceuticals either, he thought. Painkillers, yeah, not many and usually only when the situation really needed it, but those she'd take. Nothing else. No uppers or downers, not even those caffeine tablets truckers used, despite her frequent cross-country hauls. Not even damned vitamins, he realised, shaking down his memories of the brief stints he'd had living with her. It was making him twitch. On top of everything else that was making him twitch, he allowed a second later, watching restively for the waitress to refill his cup and clear their table.
When the cup was full and the waitress gone, he propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his gaze travelling pointedly from the cup of herbal tea to the small white bottle before settling on Ellie's face.
"Ellie … uh, are you okay? Is - uh, you know - anything wrong?"
"I'm fine," she said, her expression perfectly bland.
Sam'd be laughing his ass off, he thought sourly, picking up his coffee and downing half of it. Now you know how it feels. He could almost hear his brother's tone. It didn't help he'd used the line in situations when he'd been so far from fine he hadn't even been able to see it. And she didn't look fine; there were shadows around her eyes, as if she hadn't slept all that well.
He opened his mouth to say something, his attention dragged back to the bottle on the table, then hesitated. He didn't really want to push her, have her clam up on him again. Following the direction of his gaze, Ellie grabbed the bottle, putting it back in her bag and swallowing the last of the tea.
"You ready?" She got to her feet, turning away and walking fast to the cash register, paying for the meal and leaving before the change was made. Dean stood, finishing the rest of his coffee before he followed her slowly out to the street.
I-70 E, Colorado
The interstate was relatively clear and Dean stayed on it, bypassing Denver and turning onto the 70. Music filled the pickup's cab as the scenery rushed by, a goddamned freaky highway of inescapable memories of the past. Some of the memories were good, and he'd sung along to the songs that'd brought them back, under his breath. Most were good and bad, at one and the same time; older memories accompanying the old songs overlaid by events happening later to the same soundtrack. Half the songs he'd loved as a kid – and even later, when his father'd given him the Impala and during the years Sam had been gone – were now irretrievably fucked up, he thought morosely, tainted by the things that had happened in the last few years, things that he didn't want to remember. And now, there were songs that brought back memories of being together and how that'd felt, and he didn't want to remember those either.
Burlington, Colorado, 12.20 pm
Ellie tried to stretch her legs, twisting in the seat to get one straightened out, at least. Her lower back had a constant dull ache from remaining in a single position for too long.
"You wanna stop? Get out and stretch?"
She glanced at the man beside her, catching a brief glimpse of his concern before he turned back to the road.
"Um, no," she said, pushing her feet against the firewall. She didn't want to drag out the trip any longer than it had to be. Stopping for her comfort wasn't a priority. "It's okay."
"I could eat," Dean said, his tone mild. He looked over to her and added, "Could use some more coffee too."
"Uh huh."
He was still worried about her, she thought, leaning against the passenger door as he slowed for the next exit. She should've been more discreet, but she was new to the routine and she hadn't given much thought to his reactions. She should've, she realised. He was a man used to picking up minute clues and running with them.
The town's outskirt fill-up included a rest area, and Dean pulled into the parking lot, parking next to a grouping of picnic tables, set in a grassed area and sheltered by young trees.
"What do you want?" he asked as he stopped the engine and opened his door.
She shook her head. "I need the restroom."
"Okay. See you back here." He closed the door and headed across the asphalt lot.
"Right," Ellie muttered to herself, grimacing as she eased herself out of the cab.
Once her feet were on the ground, she stretched up gingerly. It'd only been a day and a half and she was already missing the meditation and exercises, her body complaining vigorously. She reached back into the cab and grabbed her pack and turned for the long cinderblock building on the other side of the lot, forcing herself to stride out, hoping it would unkink her muscles.
Only another seven or eight hours to go, she told herself with a stifled groan. It might've been easier if she could've taken a shift behind the wheel, but Dean'd already seen how fast she could go from waking conversation to sleep – once, she had the horrified feeling, in mid-sentence, although he hadn't confirmed that, had just given her another one of those worried looks when she'd woken, an hour later – and his dismissal of the idea had been casual but firm. Not that she could blame him for wanting to reach Lawrence in one piece.
In the fill-up's restroom, she attended to the pressing requirements of her body, then washed her hands, cupping them under the cold flow and splashing the water over her face, avoiding the mirror above the sink. She'd looked better, she knew.
The cold water gave her the illusion of being more awake and she was hungry, she realised. Drying her hands, she glanced at her pack, wondering if she should take the pills now, out of sight of Dean's curiosity. They were supposed to be taken with food, but she'd be eating in a few minutes anyway. Reaching down, she extracted the two bottles and tipped a tablet from each into her hand, dry-swallowing them quickly.
When she'd replaced the bottles in the pack, she straightened, rolling her shoulders and leaning against the sink to stretch out the long muscles of her legs. She'd read up on what to expect, but she seemed to be bypassing the worst of the possible reactions. Some of them, she amended, running a hand down her body and frowning at the swell of her breasts under two shirts. They were aching, much of the time, visibly more full. She needed to find some time to get a bra that fit. Her hand slid lower, resting on her abdomen. Was there a change there too? She unbuttoned the loose-fitting checked shirt and lifted her tee shirt, pushing at the waistband of her jeans and peering at the smooth flesh between the two. It didn't look any different. Didn't feel any different, for that matter, her fingertips sliding from ribs to pelvis.
NO.
The word drawn in the sand appeared in her mind's eye and she shook her head. Bobby might've thought it would help, but it wouldn't. She would tell him, sometime, eventually, she thought, pulling up her jeans and smoothing down her tee shirt, but not now. It would only complicate his life – and hers – and neither of them needed any more complications. Everything he'd told her – about Cas, and Sam, and Meg – proved that beyond doubt. He couldn't take any more complications.
In any event, she told herself as she re-buttoned the shirt, it couldn't change anything between them or fix what had gone wrong in the first place – come to that, it would make things worse, add unreasonable expectations and pressure needlessly.
No, she'd have to talk to Bobby before he said anything to Dean, assuming Missouri would be able to bring the hunter's ghost through to this plane.
And, she decided, picking up her bag and opening the restroom door, she needed to do something about keeping Dean's attention off her condition and well-being, and on more neutral territory. The stack of printouts in her study had a lot of information he and Sam didn't know. The correspondence from Patrick and John had more. She wasn't sure if any of it would be helpful in the short-term, but it damned well beat the hell of out talking about herself.
Dean waited near the counter for Ellie to appear, shifting from foot to foot, the paper-bagged polystyrene foam container he held leaking chili beef scents and dribbles of burrito sauce in equal amounts. He was hovering and he knew it was the wrong thing to do, knew it would piss her off, but despite his best efforts to convince himself to knock it off, he couldn't quite bring himself to leave.
Something was going on with her, all his instincts insisted, something she wasn't telling him and probably would never tell him. It rubbed against his upbringing, years of trying to look after his father and brother, the people he'd loved. It was his fucking job to worry about them, he fumed, glancing at the glass doors of the establishment again. He couldn't stop his feelings just because she said so, just because she told him it wasn't his concern anymore.
The fuck did women do in the goddamned restrooms anyway, he wondered? The fucking things had one purpose and it took a couple of minutes, max. He looked down at his watch, spilling more rich, tangy sauce from the lip of the container in the attempt, and swore under his breath. She'd been in there for more than eight minutes, and he'd give her another five before he went in after her, he decided, lifting his hand and licking off the trail of sauce.
He was being an idiot and the knowledge wasn't improving his patience or temper.
Ellie pushed through the door a moment later, and Dean looked down, letting out a gusting exhale. He wasn't sure if the relief washing through him was that she seemed alright, or that he didn't have to break into the Ladies bathroom.
"Uh, hey," he said, lifting his head as she walked toward him.
For a miracle, the glance she returned wasn't annoyed or irritated. "What's good?"
"Burritos smell good," he offered, lifting his hand and feeling another trickle of the rebellious sauce slide down his wrist.
She didn't argue or make a snide comment about heart disease, just nodded and ordered the same, turning to him as the attendant went to make them.
"Can we eat at those picnic tables?"
He blinked at her. It'd been in his mind to suggest it before she'd appeared. Catch a few rays of the late spring sunshine and not stink up the truck with the food smells.
"Uh, yeah," he agreed, looking over his shoulder at the parking lot. The tables were still empty, clean and inviting-looking. "Sure."
Going to the glass-doored refrigerator, Ellie picked out a couple of bottles of juice and returned to the counter as her order appeared. She paid and picked up the food and drink, and Dean moved to the door, holding it open for her.
"Have you heard anything more about Frank?" she asked, walking beside him across the lot.
He shook his head. "No. Might as well've disappeared from the planet."
"Let's hope that's not the case."
He shot a sideways glance at her. She seemed relaxed, stretching out her stride to match his and tilting her face up to the sunlight.
The table closest to the car was partly shaded and they sat down at the sunny end, opening the containers of food.
"Patrick thinks the Levis are looking for a stone tablet," she said, picking up her burrito and taking a bite.
Dean swallowed his mouthful hurriedly, shifting his hold on the sodden burrito in his hands. She was talking to him. He didn't why or what'd happened but he wasn't going to question it. "What kind of tablet?"
"Rumour and speculation suggest it might contain the way to stop them, for good," she answered, taking another bite and looking across the grassed area to the interstate beyond.
"Can we find it first?" He ducked his head, staring hard at his food as he heard the question come out of his mouth. They weren't 'we' anymore. Scooping some of the fallen filling up with his fingers, he risked a glance at her. She didn't seem to have noticed the slip, her expression thoughtful as she finished her mouthful.
"Doubtful," she said, putting the burrito down and picking up a bottle of juice. "We don't have the resources or the knowledge Roman does."
She didn't seem that concerned about it, Dean thought as he tried to push the remains of his food together into a bite-sized parcel. He finished the burrito and picked up his soda.
"I don't think the tablet's what Roman's after," Ellie continued. "It might be important, maybe long term, but I think he's trying to find whatever it was Lucifer hid from them that's keeping them from multiplying."
Dean frowned. "If the tablet's real –"
"If you knew there was something in the world that detailed the exact instructions for the eradication of your species, would you run straight away to find it?" she asked, screwing the cap back on the bottle and picking up her food. "I mean, isn't that a hell of a way to draw attention to it, maybe alert your enemies that there's a blueprint that'll serve them?"
"Good point." He hadn't thought of it like that, but she was right. Why look for something that most people had no idea about and no clue how to find? If there was an instruction manual, Dick would be a moron to find it and try to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. And whatever else he thought about the bastard, he had to admit moronic wasn't one of Dick's obvious traits. "So, they're looking for the magic key to making little levis?"
She nodded, finishing the burrito and wiping her fingers on a paper serviette. "The only thing Patrick's been able to find out about those legends is what Penemue could tell him."
"Which is?"
"Lucifer had a lot of secret caches." She made a face as she told him, shaking her head. "I have no idea how you could find out which one Roman's looking for."
He had one idea, he realised, picking up the wrappings from their food and pitching them into the trash can near the table.
"Meg might be able to help with that."
He looked around when she didn't reply. "Not talkin' about trusting her."
"I know," she said, getting to her feet. "You're right. She could be useful."
Watching her walk back to the pickup, he wondered if he'd missed something vital. He strode after her, and got into the driver's seat as she climbed into the passenger side.
"What?" he asked, twisting the key. The engine rumbled into life and he turned his head to look behind them. "'M'I missin' something here?"
"No. I said you were right." Ellie's gaze remained fixed ahead. "Meg could be useful."
He reversed out of the parking space and swung the wheel. Gravel sprayed out behind them as he hit the accelerator. It felt like she was humouring him, but he couldn't pinpoint how, exactly.
"Dean."
Making the turn onto the road leading back to the interstate, Dean looked over at her warily.
"Yeah."
"I don't want to fight."
That hit him somewhere below the belt and he swallowed, focussing on merging with the traffic flow.
"I don't either," he said a few minutes later, forcibly relaxing his grip on the wheel and settling to a steady sixty in the middle lane. "I don't trust Meg, y'know."
"I know."
He flicked a glance at her. She was fiddling with the straps of her pack, her head bowed. He wanted to tell her just how little he trusted the fucking demon, wanted to tell her how fucking screwed up everything was without her … wanted to tell her how goddamned hard it was to sit here and not say what he wanted to say, to ask her if she still thought there was nothing he could do to repair the damage he'd caused. He had no doubt if he did, he'd be doing the rest of the drive to Lawrence with the music turned to maximum volume, and nothing to stop the past from mowing him down.
Letting out his breath, he tried to focus on getting back onto the road.
I-70, Kansas. 3.00 pm
Dean rolled his shoulders, straightening his back as he tried to remember all the details of the case in Portland.
They'd left the mountains behind them and were chasing their ever-lengthening shadow along the eastbound road, and the tension between them hadn't gone, but it'd retreated to a tolerable level and she was talking to him again. He thought that was a helluva an improvement over being forced to plod down memory lane.
It'd taken him a couple of goes to figure out the rules. Quick, he was, he thought acerbically. General was fine. Anything personal at all resulted in the volume going up on the stereo and her turning her back to him as she looked out her window.
"Hell, we never figured the curse that was on 'em," he continued. "Didn't even find out the history of the woman who'd had 'em. Her son had no clue."
'C'mon, ballet slippers?" Ellie asked, her expression incredulous. "How'd they even fit?"
"Part of the curse," he told her. "They looked like they were shrinking and stretching to fit whoever put 'em on."
"Some magic curse," she commented. "But you – uh – you didn't actually wear them?"
"I really, really wanted to put them on." He glanced at her, the corner of his mouth lifting when he saw her biting her lips to keep from laughing. Making her laugh was another thing he'd missed, he realised. Making her laugh. Making her smile, the way one side of her mouth tucked in a little more closely, a dimple in one cheek. He looked back at the road.
"You're making this up." She looked at him, shaking her head.
"No, no way," he said, leaning back comfortably, his hands light on the wheel. Cursed objects had a tendency to Twilight Zone any job. At the time, the thoughts that'd been looping in his head had been horrifying. It was only in retrospect, safely out of the fucking shoes' reach, he'd realised it'd probably looked pretty funny.
"I – uh – couldn't get them out of my head. Kept coming to me that if I was wearing them, and maybe a pair of those black – uh – tights – I could probably lift a ballerina over my head."
She snorted, and looked away and he grinned. It was the truth. A weird case, but all true. The grin got wider as he got a flashback of his brother's expression when he'd started humming some piece of music in the car. He had the feeling Sam'd been scarred for life by that little episode.
"The latest one was better though," he said, as she turned back to him, the smile gone but her eyes still alight with laughter.
"You can top my personal vision of you dancing on your toes?"
"Sure. Picked up a case with a shojo – only way we could see it was to get drunk."
"That doesn't sound too hard." Her mouth twisted slightly as she eased herself around to face him.
"Huh … funny. You didn't see my partners." Dean shook his head. "First time Sam's got his load on in years, and Garth could get blind on the smell of a bar rag."
"Garth? Isn't he the guy you had to work with in Delaware?"
From the corner of his eye, he saw her face screw up as she tried to recall the details of the case. Given what he'd said to her not long after, he didn't want to trip that wire.
"Uh, yeah, and Vegas. Sam getting' married, demon taking souls early, that one," he said quickly. "Same guy. It was his case, actually. In Junction City, Kansas. Boutique brewery and bad karma."
"I'm more interested in knowing how you managed to get drunk?"
"Uh, yeah," he hedged. Sam had wondered the same thing. "You ever heard of – uh – I think it was sliv-something?"
"Slivovitz?" Ellie's eyes widened. "Plum brandy?"
"I guess. S'got a helluva kick."
She laughed. "Sure does. Depending on the maker it can be anywhere between seventy and a hundred and forty proof."
He nodded. "Ahh … that'd explain it."
"How did you kill the shojo if you had to be drunk to see it? Stacking the odds against, isn't it?"
"Yeah, by the time we found it, I was sober again. We needed a sword, a blessing and spring water to make it work," he said.
"A sword?"
"Japanese sword," he clarified with a shrug. "Sam was still drunk, I rounded up a pawnshop katana and got this dude from a Japanese restaurant to read the blessing. Used a bottle of spring water, and apart from Sam's 'other right' instructions, we managed it."
The memory of the sword sliding back to him again returned and he shook his head. Sam hadn't seen that, knocked out and against the wall. Garth hadn't seen it either.
"The shojo knocked the sword off me in the first attack. I couldn't see it. It went flying and then it came back to me."
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. "Came back to you?"
"It was about six or seven feet away, and it slid back across the floor by itself, straight to my hand, like Luke-fucking-Skywalker. Except it wasn't me."
She nodded slowly. "Bobby."
He shot a sideways look at her, and let out his breath. Why hadn't Sam reacted like that? Why hadn't he? "Yeah."
"But you didn't believe it."
"I was sure it was him. At first." He scowled at the road. "Then I talked to Sam, and it just didn't seem like he wouldn't have found a way to talk to us, to let us know."
In the corner of his eye, he saw Ellie's brows shoot up. "Why? I mean aside from the fact that he could probably see or sense Lucifer, I don't recall hearing Bobby had a lot of practice in being a ghost?"
"No, uh, yeah, I know." He shot another glance at her. ""But he's, you know, like, an expert on this shit."
"You could spend your whole life reading about baseball and not get a single ball over the plate if you tried to pitch."
Mouth twisting up ruefully, he acknowledged that. "Okay. But it – I mean, it was Bobby, you know?"
"Maybe even being dead takes practice."
He thought about Cole and the windmill and the swing on the porch. "I told you about the seal with the reapers, didn't I?"
She nodded. "You said the boy'd died a week earlier."
"Yeah, my point." He stared at the road.
"Kids usually pick things up more quickly than adults," she said, lifting her hand to rub at the back of her neck. "Not so many inhibitions about what's possible."
The movement caught his eye and he turned, his gaze following the line of her arm, then down to the curve of her breast as it lifted under the close-fitting tee shirt. He frowned. Beneath the clinging material, the curve was pronounced, stretching the tee outward.
He had pretty good memories of her body – who the fuck was he kidding? – he had damned photographic memories of her body, and he didn't remember her breasts being quite that … big. He shifted his gaze back to the highway.
Ellie dropped her hand to cover her mouth as she yawned.
"What else happened? To make you think Bobby hadn't passed over?"
"Uh …" He tried to get his mind back on the last few weeks, pushing the after-image of that full curve out of his head. "The first thing was just after Sam and me got back from Kansas; I had a beer, a full bottle, and the next thing I knew it was empty. I didn't remember drinking it, but I figured … well, I thought I could've forgotten."
With everything else that'd been on his mind, Sam's explanation for that had seemed likely.
"Then when we were in –" He caught himself before he could say it, searching for another word; any other word. The fucking town couldn't be forgotten too soon for him. "– we were in – uh – Portland – and, uh, a piece of paper that was relevant to the case we were working on moved from the bottom of a pile of stuff to the top."
He slid a fast glance her way, relieved when it was apparent she hadn't noticed his floundering. "Then in Whitefish, after Sam was in the hospital, I was back at the cabin, going through the journals, looking for help for Sam, and – uh – Bobby's address book fell onto the floor and a card fell out, with the number of the hunter that knew about Cas."
He remembered the faint chill he'd felt then. He'd been through the book twice and hadn't seen the card.
"Uh-huh. Well, even all together, that's pretty vague."
He heard the yawn in her voice and glanced at his watch. It wasn't much past four.
"You sleep okay last night?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yeah, took awhile to get to sleep, that's all." She settled herself into the corner between the door and the back of the seat. "There's nothing wrong with me, Dean."
He looked over at her, seeing her eyes close. "Sure … yeah."
His brows knitted as he stared through the windshield at the road. This was a woman who'd hiked sixty miles out of the Alaskan wilderness with a broken leg … who'd climbed through the mountains of Turkey to find a handful of soil from the Garden of Eden … who'd jumped off the roof of a building and through a window and fought demons to save his ass. She'd driven over twenty hours straight to get to him when he'd needed her … and now, she was falling asleep every few hours.
But nothing was wrong. No, nothing at all.
He chewed on the corner of his lip, forcing himself to concentrate on the road.
If she didn't want to tell him, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Lawrence, Kansas
The sun had set half an hour before, but the wide skies behind them were still a fading robin's egg blue, streaked with opalescence as the vanished sun's rays curved through the atmosphere and lit up the high wisps of cloud. Ahead, night had drawn over the town, the house and street lights bright against the approaching curtain of indigo.
Second time he'd back to the place to which he'd once sworn never to return, Dean thought sourly. He hoped God was getting a good laugh making a liar out of him.
"I'm sorry you had to come back."
Ellie's voice ghosted from beside him and he started, shooting a sidelong glance at her. Her ability to know what he was thinking or feeling hadn't disappeared and he wasn't sure if he found that reassuring or unsettling.
"S'fine," he said, flexing his fingers on the wheel. "I should've remembered Missouri anyway."
"What time is it?"
"About quarter to nine." He stopped at the next intersection. Missouri's new place was straight ahead. He thought he remembered a motel, somewhere to their right. "You want to go straight there?"
"Yeah," she said, straightening against the seat. "The sooner she can contact Bobby, the sooner we can be done with this."
"Right." He put his foot down on the accelerator and the pickup lurched through the intersection. So much for hoping, he thought, keeping his gaze fixed on the road.
Ellie closed her eyes as she realised how he'd taken her unconsidered response. Too damned tired to think straight. It was the truth, but less fatigued, she'd've said something else.
Pushing herself upright in the seat, she opened her eyes and turned to look through the passenger window. He'd been back before, not long after Sam's psychic abilities had begun to manifest – without the aid of any blood at all, she remembered – and they'd returned to help a family. His mother's ghost had still been there, in their old house. Had trapped herself in the building to look after her husband and sons, only to be left alone when his father had taken them away.
He hadn't spoken of it much. The little he'd said had made it all too clear to her that it was a wound that hadn't healed and might never heal. Mary Winchester had freed herself and the house had been quiet ever since, but with all he'd learned over the years of the events that'd put them on this path, it wasn't much comfort to him.
"She made the deal," he'd told her, quite a while later, his voice cracking with disbelief. "She made the deal for Dad's life and she didn't even tell him what might be coming."
Ellie sighed, rubbing her temple with the inside of her wrist. From Dean's account, Mary had had a few short months with John before first Anna, then Michael had shown up. The memories of his parents had been wiped clean by the archangel, but Dean was still angry with his mother for leaving his father in the dark.
"She could've warned him, Ellie," he'd said, his voice harsh, and she hadn't been able to see his expression in the darkness of the car. "Maybe it would've changed things – I don't know – but if they'd been in it together – if he hadn't been blindsided –"
He'd stopped talking about it after Raphael. Her recognition wasn't new, but it seemed to shout out at her, a piece of the puzzle of him she hadn't looked closely at before.
"How could you make a decision like that?"
Like his mother, she'd made the decision for both of them, and she'd never had the chance to tell him or discuss it with him before she'd gone. Cas'd told him why and she'd thought it would be enough, but …
… it wasn't.
And he'd gone to the Braedens, on a promise to a brother gone.
She frowned, pressing her cheek against the cold glass. Dean had seen it as his little brother's dying wish, she knew. A part of him had wanted it – to break free, to get away from a life that was killing everyone he cared about, leaving him alone – but another part had known it would be an incremental death for him too, an enticing trap that only looked like an escape because too much of him was bound up and dependent on the life he'd been raised in.
Was that what he'd been running from? Too many decisions pushed on him that weren't his but that he'd had to live with?
"This it?"
Dean's voice cut through Ellie's thoughts, and she rubbed her eyes, turning to look through the windshield at the small, nondescript frame house lit up by the pickup's headlights. Parked outside the garage next to the house, a VW that'd been new in the sixties sat like a hunched toad.
"Yeah," she said. "You can pull into the driveway."
He stopped the truck behind the Beetle and turned off the engine.
"Dean – I'm sorry–" Ellie said.
"For what?" he cut her off, the swift look he gave her as he opened the driver's door without expression.
Well, had that coming, she thought, pushing open the passenger door and getting out.
Dean stood back as Ellie knocked on the front door of the little house, his momentary flush of bitter triumph dissolving and leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
She hadn't lied to him. Hadn't promised him anything. He ducked his head, staring down at the weathered floorboards beneath his feet. She'd been honest and then apologised for it, and he didn't know which was worse, that honesty or that she'd seen how it'd gotten to him and had tried to lessen the blow.
The hallway light came on, a diffused golden glow through the frosted glass panels in the door, then the porch light. The low wattage bulb darkened Ellie's hair to mahogany and the sight knocked him, familiar and unexpected, memories tangling with the present moment, all of it lost and briefly found. He was fucking this up, he thought, turning away. It might not have been much of a chance but he was fucking up what little was there.
The door opened and Missouri Mosely stood there, the light behind her ample figure, hiding her expression.
"Ellie, I thought you were sending Dean on his own," the psychic said, opening the door wide and stepping through. A button-through sweater in chocolate cotton strained over her cerise tee shirt, the matching chocolate polyester pants tapering to the ankles. It'd been seven years, Dean thought, since he'd seen her last, but she hadn't changed at all, ebony skin under crow-black hair that'd been drawn back from her face with a wide band. Dean saw her glance briefly at him before she took the younger woman's hands in her own.
"Been too long, it's good to see you – oh, my –"
He took a step to one side and closer as Missouri's expression changed from a pleased smile to frowning consternation.
"Oh, honey – what –?"
Missouri cut herself off and for what felt like an intolerably long moment to Dean, the two women appeared to be engaged in an intense staring competition, their eyes fixed on each other, hands still clasped. He resisted the impulse to clear his throat and remind them he was still standing there, his gaze moving from Ellie's quickly ducked head to Missouri's shuttered face when they both turned toward him.
"That was the plan," Ellie said, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "Other things got in the way."
"How it goes," Missouri agreed in a neutral tone. She looked Dean up and down. "Not one for keeping in touch, are you? You lose the ability to pick up a phone?"
"Uh –" He looked from Missouri to Ellie. How'd he gone from invisible to number one target without doing anything other than standing there? "Things have been – uh – kind of busy."
"Yeah," Missouri allowed, her mouth turning down. She stepped back and gestured to the doorway. "I heard all about it."
Following Ellie into the narrow hall, he stumbled into the wall as Missouri's hand flashed up and smacked him in the back of the head.
"The hell was that for?"
"You know." She shook her head and closed the front door, snapping off the porch light at the same time.
Mouth opening to protest he didn't have a goddamned clue what she was talking about, he closed it again abruptly when it occurred to him what Missouri had been picking up from Ellie while the two had been staring at each other. He rubbed a hand over the impact spot defensively, lengthening his stride to follow Ellie as she headed for the kitchen. There was no way he was buying into that conversation.
"You need to get in touch with a spirit?" Missouri settled herself at the small table, sitting between them. "You got something? Something the spirit has a connection with?"
"Bobby Singer," Ellie said, looking at Dean. "He was killed a few months ago."
"Damned man never knew how to leave well enough alone," Missouri said, her face souring. "I told him and told him he was getting too old for this business, same as the rest of us."
Dean bristled at the older woman's acid tone, opening his mouth to defend the hunter, when he felt Ellie's fingers curl around the back of his hand, the light touch delivering a frisson of shock through him. He turned to her, the desire to defend Bobby vanishing when he saw the tacit plea in her eyes. Staring down at the tabletop, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the old hunter's flask, handing it across the table to Missouri in silence.
She took it carefully by her fingertips, and closed her eyes. "He's here. And yeah, he wants to talk to you."
Her eyes opened and she looked from Dean to Ellie. "He can't manifest by himself yet. He needs more energy than he can raise on his own."
Dean's brows drew together. "What's that mean?"
"Needs our help," Missouri replied, setting the flask down and extending her left hand to him, stretching out her right hand to Ellie.
"Take Ellie's hand," she instructed him tersely. "And listen to what I got to tell you, boy."
As he took Ellie's hand, he felt the familiar jolt between them, a lot more strongly than the brief flash moments ago. It reached down right through him, an odd crackle of electricity or feeling that lit up his nervous system and sharpened his senses. He saw Missouri's eyes widen again, wondering if she'd got a blast of it as well through their joined hands. Closing his fingers around Ellie's, he let his gaze drop and tried to keep his face expressionless.
"Alright, he needs energy, and ours is the easiest to give him. Concentrate on my voice, feel that energy circulating through your body. It's a living thing, generated as natural as breathing. Visualise it flowing through you. You gotta visualise it flowing into your hands, and push out, into mine. Strongly, mind. Don't stop once you started, keeping pushing that flow out. "
Dean glanced dubiously at Ellie, watching her close her eyes, the small line appear between her brows. He looked down at her hand, enclosed in his own, and felt it warming against his palm. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine that heat as a flow of light and power. He felt a tingle in his chest, his heart accelerating.
Involuntarily, in his mind's eye, he saw again the red light filling his brother's blood vessels, flashing down Sam's arm into the angel. The image was distracting and he dragged in a breath, focussing on the pulse and flow in his own body, coloured – what? heat? light? energy? – rippling through his system and flowing down his arms, into his hands, flowing out through his fingertips to Ellie and Missouri. The tingle had expanded, it felt like the low-voltage charge of an almost-exhausted battery now, and he was getting hot, could feel sweat filming his forehead.
In the small, tidy kitchen, a cool draught, almost as audible as a sigh, brushed past him. He cracked one eye open, looking around. Ellie's face was like stone, the crease still between her brows, her skin glowing with the sheen of perspiration. She was breathing deeply and easily and her hand lay lightly in his. Missouri's face also shone under the single overhead bulb, her chest rising and falling slowly. In the corner of his eye, something moved.
At the end of the table, the air seemed to be getting darker, thickening moment by moment. Still translucent enough to be able to see the doorway and an old kitchen dresser through it, but becoming more solid with each passing moment. He opened both eyes, keeping his gaze on Ellie, watching the apparition form in his peripheral vision. His heart accelerated again when he recognised the cap, the shabby coat and gingery-brown beard and he held his breath, afraid the slightest sound or movement would fragment the growing vision.
"Idjit."
Missouri's mouth curved into a smile. Turning his head slowly, Dean stared at the man he'd thought was gone, had thought had moved on. Bobby looked the same; right down to the cap that shadowed half his face.
We remember our bodies, Ellie'd said to him once, a long time ago. Remember them because that's how we saw ourselves, all our lives. They're powerful and comforting, those memories. They'd been waiting for midnight, sitting in the car, Sam sleeping in the back seat. A while later, talking about Hell, she'd told him it was how demons were made. Their souls tortured through the memories of their bodies, their memories and all the guilt and shame in their lives.
"Bobby Singer," Missouri said, releasing their hands and folding her arms across her chest. "Don't you know it ain't a good idea to hang around here?"
Dean glanced at Ellie. Her eyes were open and bright, shining under the kitchen's bare bulb. He looked back at Bobby and a surge of emotion pressed against the back of his eyeballs, making him blink. It was true. It was real. He let out his held breath in a long, shuddering exhale.
"Didn't occur to you to try the damned ouija board on your own, Dean?" Bobby flickered and was standing by the table, between him and Ellie.
"Uh, I – I didn't think anything would happen." Dean ducked his head. "Thought - uh - I wanted it too much."
Bobby shook his head. "You got any idea of how much effort it takes to just stay on this plane?"
"Yeah, no. Not really." Dean grinned uncertainly, dropping his gaze back to the flowery tablecloth.
"Takes a lot." Bobby looked at Missouri. "Long time no see. An' yeah, I know this wasn't one of my best ideas. Just couldn't leave at the time."
Missouri nodded. "Gonna make it harder for you."
"Everyone has to go sometime. I got some extra, at least."
Dean's breath caught in his throat at the casual comment. He kept his eyes on the table, but his fingers tightened on Ellie's hand, and after a moment, she returned the pressure gently. For some reason, it made looking at the hunter again easier.
Bobby turned to look at Ellie. "Hey, Ellie."
She smiled. "Hey, Bobby."
Bobby's gaze swung to Dean and back to her. "You still mad at me?"
"Yes." She lifted her chin, eyes narrowing. "That was a low trick, Bobby Singer."
He grinned. "You can try suing me."
"Don't tempt me into thinking about what I could do, Bobby."
"You're gonna tell him, right?" His expression sobered and he drifted closer to her. "You have to tell him. He's needs to know."
The insistence in his voice was unmistakable and Dean's brows drew together as he watched them. Bobby's ghost was staring intently at Ellie, and she turned away. Had he missed something, he wondered? Tell who? What?
The spirit scowled at her for a moment before it turned back to him.
"You track down that number?"
Dean flicked a glance at Ellie. "I was going to ask you that. Frank figured there was a number missing. We got two hits, one a field in Wisconsin, Dick's building something there – we're still not sure what – the other was a –"
"Enzyme," Ellie cut in. "A necessary one. Do you remember any of it, Bobby?"
Bobby frowned. "I don't remember the number. Got lost in the transition, I think."
"What?"
He gave a shrug at Dean's expression. "Oh, it'll come back, everything's coming back slowly, but I don't know when."
"Why didn't you talk to Sam?" Dean asked.
"'Cause he had the devil sittin' right next to him." Bobby grimaced. "Didn't want anyone to know until Lucifer was gone."
"You could see him?"
"Saw the shadow," Bobby said. "Grinnin' like a goddamned 'gator."
Dean digested that and another thought hit him. "We lost Frank."
"Yeah, I know," Bobby drifted around the table, head bent, his cap shadowing his face. "He ain't dead. Whatever's holding him is somethin' powerful. I can't see him through the barriers."
"How're your choirboys doin' with gettin' information?" Bobby stopped next to Missouri, his gaze swinging back to Ellie.
She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Slow going, but they've found some stuff on what the levis might be after. They seem to have three distinct problems."
"Bein'?"
"They can't reproduce – need something that Lucifer hid from them," she said, glancing at Dean. "They're involved in genetic research – that could be to docilise their food supply, or it could be to solve the enzyme problem. Or both."
"An' door number three?"
"It seems possible that God wrote an instruction manual, detailing their species and maybe the way to kill them."
"That'd be interestin' reading," Bobby said, his gaze flicking to Dean.
"Yeah," Dean said, inclining his head. "If we knew where it was. And Crowley's let his demons loose again."
"Guess that means he's out of options," Bobby reasoned. "Or he doesn't think you boys are moving fast enough. You still got the knife?"
Dean nodded. "It's with Sam."
"How's Sam doin'? You got Lucifer out, I take it?"
"Yeah, uh, um, he's okay." Dean leaned back in the chair. "Cas took Lucifer. Sam – he feels bad about it. Did you – uh - know about Cas?"
"Yeah. I heard a little about it in the Veil. Been tryin' to find a way to tell you ever since," Bobby said, his expression souring.
He flickered, dissipating for a moment.
Missouri frowned. "Bobby, you got to concentrate on staying visible."
"I'm tryin'!" Bobby coalesced back into shape, then began dissolving again. "It's hard, goddamnit!"
"Hunting spirits for years and can't make the first connection of how to draw energy," the psychic muttered to herself, getting to her feet. "When you boys run into a ghost, what's the first thing you notice?"
Dean looked at Bobby's flickering face. "Air gets cold."
"Right!" Missouri stabbed a finger toward Bobby. "Ghost is drawing the energy – the heat – from the surroundings to come through. Sometimes it'll take the energy from the air, from the wood or stone; sometimes from people, make 'em cold as it pulls the heat out of them."
She looked at Bobby. "You have to concentrate on your body. I know it's hard; you feel like you're flying off into a thousand little pieces all over the place, but you have to concentrate on it."
"The hell you mean, woman?" Bobby fritzed in place, brow furrowed with his attempts to pull himself back together.
"You have to remember, Bobby," Missouri told him. "Feel it. How it felt to be alive."
The spirit frowned, closing his eyes. Dean looked at Ellie as the air temperature around them plummeted, and Bobby became solid-looking once again.
"Better." Missouri nodded approvingly. "Now, that same energy is in everything – living or not – it's in the table. The light. The floor, the walls – it fills the spaces between. You remember who you are, what you were, you can draw on it wherever you are. Just concentrate."
Dean watched the warm air from his lungs emerge in a crystalline fog. Under his forearms, he felt the table cooling as well.
"The more energy you draw, the more solidly you can manifest, Singer," Missouri said, gesturing to the table. "The more solid you are, the more you can interact with this plane."
Even under the glare of the light bulb, Bobby looked completely solid, Dean thought, resisting the impulse to touch him. He moved his chair back as Bobby reached out tentatively to the salt shaker, sitting at the end of the table. The ghost tapped it and it wobbled. Bobby looked around with a grin.
"That's more like it."
"Practice. You gotta keep practising." Missouri chuckled. "Most of the ghosts you boys laid to rest been around for a long time. They had plenty of practice. You're just a newcomer to the spirit world, Bobby, so you gotta work at it."
He nodded, walking around the kitchen, touching the dishcloths and making them flutter, turning the coffee pot around on the stove. The kitchen was icy cold now, and Ellie shivered in her light jacket, wrapping her arms around herself as she turned to watch Bobby move across the kitchen.
Dean looked at Missouri. "Why didn't we have this much trouble when we went out of our bodies?"
Missouri rolled her eyes at him. "Your bodies are alive; they're a source of infinite living energy. They're still connected to the soul and it can draw off that energy through the connection."
She glanced at Ellie briefly then back to him. "Don't need to pull energy from anywhere else in that state, an' that's why you need someone to guard your body if you go out of it. It has to be looked after, kept warm and safe."
Gesturing toward Bobby, she continued. "But a ghost has no body. They have to draw energy from whatever's around them. They can take it from the living, or from the air, or from the ground, the sun, anything," She rapped her knuckles on the table's solid surface.
"It's hard to remember you have a body when you first pass over. It's easy to get lost in the sunlight, or watching things that you've never seen before, or even just watching the people you've left behind. Takes a real effort of will to come back together, to manifest."
She turned back to him. "Next time someone you love passes, Dean, call me first."
He nodded. He should've thought of her. She could've told them straight out if Bobby was around or not. He exhaled softly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. It'd been a long time since they'd seen Missouri, and too much had happened. He hadn't been thinking straight in the last few months anyway, trying to deal with the losses, one after another.
He started as Missouri reached out and touched his hand.
"What's done is done. Chalk it up to a lesson and make sure you know why it happened."
"Not sure I can," he admitted in a low voice, his gaze sliding sideways to Ellie.
"Weakness is somethin' we all got, Dean," Missouri said. "Don't go thinkin' you're something special. Not a one of us can be strong every second of our lives."
She straightened and looked across the table to Bobby. "That's about all I can do for you, Bobby. But I want to know – why? Why did you stay? Why didn't you pass over?"
He looked real, Dean thought. Solid and real as life. Like everyone else in the room, he knew the risks Bobby was facing. He found he couldn't care about that right now. He needed the old man back.
Bobby's head ducked down for a long moment, then his gaze rose, turning to Dean. "Uh, well, you know, I didn't want to leave them unprotected."
Dean's throat was suddenly tight and airless. He ducked his head to stare at the tabletop, hands curling into fists under it to hide the tremble he could feel in them. Back, behind his walls, he was distantly aware of a flare of anger. Roman'd taken this from them.
Bobby nodded and turned back to Missouri, a half-smile lifting one side of his mouth. "They're pains in the ass, but I love them, like they were my own."
"You keep practising, Bobby Singer, and you gotta better shot at keeping them safe," Missouri said, with a glance at the clock. It was just past midnight. "I'd offer you beds for the night, but I just haven't got that kind of room here –"
"We'll be heading back first thing. We'll get a room somewhere on the way out of town tonight," Ellie said, getting to her feet and turning to the other woman. "Thank you."
Dean stood as well, picking up the flask from the table and putting it back into his coat pocket. "Uh, yeah, thanks. This is – uh – thanks."
Missouri's smile was wry. "I hope you'll remember your friends from now on, Dean."
"I will." He needed to talk to Sam, he thought. Needed to tell him everything.
Looking around for Bobby, he followed Ellie and Missouri as they walked back up the hall.
Ellie slowed as the psychic took her arm.
"You gonna be all right?" Missouri asked, her voice soft and low. She nodded.
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
"That boy's as sorry as he could be, you know."
"I know."
They reached the front door and Missouri glanced back down the hall.
"Ellie, sometimes what we do don't reflect who we are, but only the place we're at," she said quietly. "Lost. Confused. Afraid of what we want and how much we need it."
Looking at the glass panels of the door, Ellie pulled in a breath against an uncomfortable tightening in her chest.
"An' sometimes, we don't even get a say in what happens," Missouri continued. "Maybe somethin' else has a plan and we have to do our part; or maybe it's our plan, only we don't know it, but we need to do things to get by the past."
"Missouri –"
"No, you hear me out, just this once," Missouri cut her off. "Like with Michael –"
Ellie's stomach clenched. "There was no plan for Michael! He died because I was stupid!" she hissed at the older woman.
"Or," Missouri continued calmly, ignoring her anger. "He'd done his job and you needed to learn somethin', help you let go."
Shaking her head, Ellie said stubbornly, "No. That was – it was – it wasn't meant to happen like that. I – I didn't –"
"Everything changes, girl," Missouri said, her voice firm. "All the time. And what changes usually has somethin' to do with how we're looking at ourselves and the world."
Ellie stared at the floor. She knew that. She didn't see how it helped.
"Just think on it, would you?" Missouri asked. "And come and see me again soon," she added, raising her voice as Dean approached.
Opening the front door, Ellie nodded. "I will."
She wasn't sure which of the two suggestions she was agreeing to, she realised as she stepped outside.