Chapter Thirteen
Sam opened his door and headed downstairs as quietly as possible. He knew that the events of last night had been inevitable; nevertheless, he felt extremely awkward – and he hadn't even been involved in it. Sam wasn't too keen on finding out what Charlie would say once she got wind of what happened, and that was bound to be sooner rather than later. Besides, between Castiel and Charlie's unexpected lip-lock in the garage and then the obvious advancement of Dean and Ivy's relationship, it looked to Sam as if he was the fifth wheel on this crazy adventure.
On the plus side, though, Dean was going to be in a better mood.
Sam made himself breakfast and sat down to tuck in as he mulled over the task that lay ahead of them all. Clearly, Titania was a part of the problem plaguing the Griffins and, therefore, Pine Valley. She had a vendetta against the Griffins and clearly wasn't going to let anything stop her from getting what she wanted.
"So, how does one stop a Faerie?" he murmured to himself.
It looked like yet another long day of reading lay ahead of him, but at least time his research would have some kind of focus now.
Charlie woke up slowly, the edges of her vision unusually blurred. As she came to, she became aware of somebody else's presence in her room. Sitting bolt upright in her bed, she found herself floundering: the hand she had slid under her pillow to collect the knife she usually tucked there was empty.
"What the – " she sputtered, still groggy.
"You didn't think I'd let you sleep with a pillow under your knife, knowing how impulsive you are."
Charlie whirled around to see Castiel sitting on the other side of her bed in her armchair.
"You!" she stammered. "You! You…you kissed me last night!" She gasped, and clutched her bedsheets to her chest despite the fact that she was fully clothed. "Did you do anything to me?!"
Castiel looked at her, confused. "No. Why would I?" He paused, then shook his head. "See, this is why people don't understand you sometimes. You're tempestuous."
"Temp...argh!" Charlie exploded. "You're no less difficult, you know!"
"I'm sorry if my actions offended you. I was overcome by a strange feeling inside me."
Charlie stared. "What?"
"It was kind of like the feeling I had when I watched the video of the pi –"
"I don't need to hear it!" Charlie interrupted. "Oh, man."
Ivy woke up slowly and, once her eyes were fully open, she turned over and immediately smiled at the sight of Dean lying on his side next to her, his green eyes lighting up at the sight of her awake.
"Hey," he said, pushing a lock of hair away from her face and cupping her cheek in his hand.
She kissed his palm. "Sleep well?"
"Incredibly well." He propped himself up on his elbow to lean over her for a kiss. Ivy welcomed it gladly, breathing in his scent and carressing his stubbled cheek.
It had been so long since she'd last woken up this way, and it felt so good to lie in the warm circle of rumpled bedsheets and tangled limbs. As they kissed, Ivy instinctively shifted her body under Dean's, and he pulled away from her momentarily to look at her with a mischievous expression.
She raised an eyebrow at him and pushed him over onto his back. As she pinned his hands down above his head, Dean shut his eyes with a smile, fully intending to let her do whatever the hell she wanted to him.
"Cas," Charlie said, "what exactly are you doing here. In my room, I mean. All night."
"Making sure your soul healed properly," Cas said simply. But of course, the simple answer confused Charlie.
"My soul? What?"
Castiel pursed his lips. "You really don't know what kind of an effect Titania's power has on you?" he asked.
"I wasn't even aware she had any affect on me at all, other than the whole let-me-immobilise-you-so-i-can-torture-you bit," Charlie retorted.
"That's exactly it," Cas said. "When she exerts her magic on you, she has an effect on you. Internally. How could you not know? Do you even know how she does this to you?"
"Does what to me, exactly?" Charlie asked impatiently.
Cas shook his head, agitated and clearly worried now. "No, no," he murmured. "This is not good. Not good at all."
Dean entered the kitchen, shirtsleeves rolled up and a slight smile playing on his lips. Sam looked at his brother with a look that was halfway between amused and worried.
"What?" Dean asked, noticing the way Sam was looking at him.
"Nothing. Nothing at all," Sam said apologetically, awkwardly looking away.
Dean quickly put two and two together and realised what was making Sam so weird. "Oh, so you –"
"I didn't hear anything, if that's what you're about to ask," his brother interjected. "Nope. I just heard you coming up the stairs and I thought you were drunk, so I opened the door just in time to see you and Ivy getting all Notebook on the landing."
"Huh?"
"The Notebook. It's a movie."
"Sam, what have I told you about chick flicks? I don't want to know about them," Dean reminded his brother.
"Whatever, Dean," Sam laughed. "Look, I'm not one to judge about your…recreatonal activities – "
"'Recreational'?" Dean interrupted. "Do you think I'd do a one-night stand?"
"You've done loads of them before, Dean."
"I wouldn't do that to Ivy." The words were out of his mouth before he could really think about it.
Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother. "Okay, then," he said. "Well, in that case, what I was going to say doesn't really apply anymore. But, Dean, have you seriously thought about this entire situaiton? You do realise this is going to put you over the edge with Charlie?"
"Your point?"
"Dean, we have to co-operate here. I don't think she'll be too keen knowing you and Ivy…well.."
"Maybe Cas will loosen her up," Dean smirked.
"And have you forgotten that we, unlike the Griffins, are not the settling-down type of hunters?" Sam continued, ignoring Dean's remark. "Dean, once this job is done, we probably won't see them again. Either forever, or for a really, really long time. You do remember that, right?"
Dean pursed his lips. "Look, Sammy," he said, "I'm not going to justify myself to you. Like you said, you're not going to judge me, right? So don't. And let me deal with my own business."
The first thing Charlie noticed about Ivy when she made it down to the Motors that morning was that Ivy was singing along to the Hair Metal Hit Parade.
"'Cause baby we'll be at the drive-in, the old man's Ford. Behind the bushes, until I'm screaming for more. Down the basement, lock the cellar door – and baby, talk dirty to me," Ivy sang into a wrench as she headbanged across the garage.
"Good morning!" Charlie yelled over the music. Ivy whirled around, saw her cousin, and grinned. She walked over to the stereo and turned it down a few notches.
"Hey. How are you feeling?" Ivy asked, twirling her wrench like a baton.
"Loads better. Evidently, you're walking on sunshine," Charlie laughed. "I hope you didn't pick up the wrong jar when you went to put sugar in your tea this morning."
Ivy laughed, clearly embarased about something. "Sorry," she said for no reason. "I'm just…I dunno. I feel great today."
Charlie stared at her cousin suddenly, an intent look on her face. It was no use trying to poke around in Ivy's mind – Ivy knew Charlie too well and had put up the walls. But Charlie didn't need to read Ivy's mind to know…
"…you had sex?!" she exploded a moment later.
"What?" Ivy asked.
"You! You look all…glowy! And you can't stop smiling! And you're singing along to Poison! You slept with somebody last night!" Charlie insisted, jabbing her finger in the air for accusatory emphasis. "When were you going to tell me this?"
"Um…"
"Who was it? Did you get distraught over my Angel-induced coma and call Skipper again?"
"Ew, what? God, no." Never again, Ivy added silently to herself.
"Then who?" Charlie insisted. "Who else is around here that you could have slept with?"
Ivy avoided Charlie's gaze momentarily, then sheepishly looked her cousin in the eye. "Now, don't get mad…"
Sam and Dean had the house to themselves, as both Griffins were down at the Motors that day. Once Sam and Dean filled each other in on the information they'd come into the night before, they began doing a honed search for information pertaining directly to anything in Faerie lore that would expose weaknesses they could potentially exploit to prevent Titania from taking Ivy.
"What's the plan, then?" Dean asked, shutting yet another leatherbound tome and stretching in his chair. "Do we draw Titania out, wait for her to show up again, or go looking for her?"
Sam smiled. "Don't forget that we have to discuss this hunt with the girls," he reminded Dean, "one of whom is apparently your new…attachment."
""Attachment'? Oh, wow, Sam, what on earth shoved itself so far up your –"
"What?" Sam cut him off. "I'm only trying to be delicate about this. Because clearly you can't."
Dean sighed, exasperated, and staring out the window, said, "Look, just…" He trailed off.
"Just what?" Sam taunted, then realising almost instantly that something outside had caught Dean's attention. "Dean?"
"It's Cúchulainn," Dean said, moving towards the window. "Sam, he looks…he looks hurt."
"I can't believe this," Charlie said for the umpteenth time. "You and Dean? Of all the people you could have chosen, you chose him?"
Ivy laughed. "What do you mean, 'of all the people'?" she said. "He's just about the only one around here who I can possibly be attracted to anymore. Every other guy our age is either already married, with another girl, or too much of a good friend."
Charlie rolled her eyes. "I would have been able to understand if it was Skipper," she said.
"Jesus, Charlie," Ivy giggled as she walked over to the sink in the garage. "Never again."
Ivy's phone beeped and, after washing off her hands, she took it out of her pocket and took a look at it. Seeing that she had a message from Dean, she smiled to herself and unlocked the phone to read it,
"Your house-pooka is back. He's hurt."
"Charlie!"
Luckily, Skipper Delahunty was available and willing to take over the Motors for the day, and because everyone in Pine Valley knew what the Griffins got up to when they had to leave anything abruptly, he was completely understanding of why they called to tell him he needed to come in and reopen.
Charlie and Ivy rode their motorcycles in single file back to Griffin's Clearing, the same thoughts racing through their heads. Cúchulainn, wounded? What had happened to him?
Sam was on the front porch waiting for them when they roared up to the house. Pulling off their helmets and discarding them on the porch, the Griffins raced inside to the living room, where Dean and Cas were keeping an eye on the púca.
Dean rose to his feet when they burst in, and Ivy went immediately into his arms. "Is he alright?" she asked, clutching his forearms and fighting back tears of worry.
"I don't know," Dean replied. "He just walked up to the house looking like this."
The púca's dog form was in bad shape. The dark stains on the ratty old bedsheets Dean had found in the linen closet told Ivy and Charlie that he had been bleeding badly; fresher, brighter spots, fewer in number but still present, told them he was still bleeding in some places. Three claw-like lacerations severed the skin and fur around his snout, standing out in a sickening, blackish-red trio.
Charlie knelt by Cúchulainn and he looked up at her with eyes full of pleading and pain. "We have to do something," she said briskly, straightening up. "I'll go see if we have anymore old linen to bind his wounds."
Ivy blt her lip. "Castiel? Can you communicate at all with him?"
"Yes, I can." Castiel's voice was grave. "He told me...he told me that Titania's minions did this to him."
"That bitch," Ivy spat. "Why the hell would she do this to him?"
"He won't say."
Charlie returned, holding a bowl of warm water she'd mixed with some rubbing alcohol as well as some linen strips and a few towels. She and Ivy knelt by the púca and began to sponge off the blood on his many wounds, working slowly so that they would not cause him more pain. Meanwhile, Sam – who had disppeared yet again into the reading room after hearing who had hurt Cúchculainn – came back with a small, dark red leather-bound tome in his hands.
"I knew I'd seen it in here earlier," he said. "Listen to this. If a púca or any other Fey-dweller is harmed on this side of the veil by another creature of the Fey who used magic or trickery to inflict the damage, it can only be healed in a Faerie ring."
Ivy and Charlie froze, staring at each other with horror visibly written on their faces.
"We are so fucked," Charlie said.