CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Zak

'Pie' was clearly some sort of code word, because when Sam came back twenty minutes later, he was loaded down with two pies, at least a dozen frozen burritos, a box of waffles, two bottles of whisky and a liter of cola. Oh, and one bag of fruit. This was apparently standard research food as Sam handed Dean the pies and a bottle of whiskey, then headed to the kitchen and came back with a red cup for each of us, opened the second bottle and started pouring.

Now, it was almost midnight and we were no closer to having a plan, or anything for that matter, than when we'd started this morning. It didn't help that one of the grimoires had a particularly difficult cipher / spell on it. Damn words kept moving. And, despite their innocent and sloppy appearance, two of the three Lisa Frank notebooks had a vicious burning spell woven into the pages. Dean was the one who'd discovered that one and ended up with some severely burned fingers. Fortunately, Aaron still had some burn serum, so he'd be fine in an hour or so.

I rubbed the heel of my palm to my eye, I was starting to get a headache from the constantly moving words, then sat up from where I'd been lying on the couch and took a look around. The tables were littered with pizza boxes and cups. An empty pie container and half a glass of Jack and Coke sat on the coffee table in front of Dean. Sam and Aaron were at the kitchen table, reading and sharing the last half of their disgusting Hawaiian pizza. Ezra was sitting across from me, translating, while Brian sat next to him at the head of the coffee table, trying to remove the burn spell. Something that was proving to be extremely time consuming as every page had the spell in it.

My gaze eventually returned to Sam, who straightened suddenly, held the book out in front of him then turned it upside down. I watched with interest as his mouth moved as he read whatever it was, and then started scribbling furiously. The frantic paper shuffling broke the silence and everyone turned to look at him.

"Sammy?" Dean called from the armchair as he tossed back the rest of his Jack and Coke.

Sam held up a finger, "One sec," he let out a slow breath. "Okay, so this might be a long shot," he looked at his notes and scratched his head, "because whoever wrote this was either a genius, or certifiable."

"How so?" my curiosity piqued.

"Heh, well," he looked up at us with a lopsided grin, "the entire book is like a weird combo of a cookbook and grimoire… Plus stream of consciousness journal entries and riddles… I mean," he slapped the paper, "this 'maybe spell' is written under a recipe for fish-head soup."

"Fish head soup?" Aaron grimaced.

He looked over to Aaron and smiled, "Oh yeah, and it earned a four out of five star rating. Also, pretty sure he wrote this spell to win a bet."

"A bet?" Aaron smirked.

"Yep. 'not worth the fifty bucks'"

"Well, at least he won." Dean smiled and took the last bite of his pie. "Alright," he started, through a mouthful of pie, "well, crazy is better than our current 'nothing'…. What's it say?"

Sam cleared his throat, " 'To Summon and (sort of) Trap a Fae'…"

I canted my head and arched an eyebrow, " sort of?"

Sam looked at me and nodded, "Yeap, 'sort of' . Tsst, step one: draw these in a forested clearing. Then there's a drawing of the array. The outer circle looks kinda like the one we used to summon you," he nodded at Brian, "then inside is another circle with symbols I definitely do not recognize…" he sighed in frustration.

"Let me see, " I pushed off the couch and headed to the table. Sam turned the book to me, "more Fae runes." I leaned in closer and squintd at the array. There was something familiar about the inner circle. I picked up the grimy, leather bound book to get a better look. "Holy shit." I couldn't believe it, and traced the array again with my index finger to double check I was right.

"Well?" asked Dean, sounding impatient.

I ignored him and looked at Ezra, "This inner circle is almost exactly like the one we used for you… Except most of the runes are Fae."

"Really?"

I nodded. "But these," I canted my head and took a hard look at the odd runes scattered throughout the array, "I've never seen these before."

"Tsst, well that's not good." I heard Aaron mutter from behind me.

It probably wasn't… Bane and my previous profession had required me to be, at the very least, conversational in multiple languages. Besides English, Russian and de facto Latin (Roman and Medieval) I was fluent and literate in Greek, Fae, and French. And was 'decent' at Japanese. I hated working through interpreters… So the fact that I'd never seen runes like these was frustrating, to say the least.

"Give it here." Brian's voice broke my thoughts. He was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, and was now looking up at me with his arm outstretched, wiggling his fingers. Forty-eight hours ago, his casual human-like behavior had really unnerved me. He was a Fae Royal after all and I'd suspected he was putting on an act to make us trust him faster. But after spending so much time with him in close quarters the 'angry, arrogant Fae' we'd met when we summoned him seemed to have been the act. I guess living as a human for a few millennia had made him more human than Fae. So, with only a slight hesitation, I handed him the book.

"Oh my…" he brought the book closer to his face.

" 'Oh my' what?" Sam leaned to the side so he could see around me.

"Well, I'm definitely leaning towards 'genius'," he mumbled, studying the book carefully, "and whoever wrote this was a Druid who was held in very high favor by the Fae, or…" he canted his head and blinked as if he'd had a sudden realization, "a descendant of one of my first students."

"What makes you think they were a descendant?" I crossed my arms and leaned in to look over his shoulder.

"Because these runes here," he tapped the array and looked up at me, "are The Spoken."