Big thank you to Jenmm31 for helping me out with this chapter! Couldn't have done it without her and her wonderful ideas :)

Unfortunately, I'm leaving to college this Friday so I won't be able to write the next chapter to this story until maybe December. I have a month off for Christmas break so I'll be sure to continue this story then :)

Thanks for reading!

"Ooo," Camille mocked and waved her hands. "Spooky."

Dean squinted at the old hotel, searching the windows with one sweeping glance. It was pleasantly calm. Bees hummed from flower bud to flower bud across the colorful bed quilted around the building. A little stream babbled on one side, and the sunlight landed on that old hotel like candlelight.

Camille was staring lovingly at the homely structure, deep in thought. "Hotsauce musta meant another hotel 'cause this place looks like Santorini."

Dean's eyebrows furrowed and his mouth formed an 'o' in confusion. "Who said what looked like what?"

She twisted her mouth to one side and took the plastic shopping bag filled with her few clothes while Dean grabbed his own duffle from the backseat.

"Did you say Hotsauce told you about this place?"

She nodded.

"Who is Hotsauce?"

"She," Camille's sentence broke for a moment while she cupped a wilted rose in the flat of her palm, "was my pregnant bunk mate. Well," she couldn't suppress the nagging grin that pulled at her mouth, "she was my bunk mate before Panda broke her nose." Her grin grew even wider when Dean's confusion turned into blatant disbelief. "Panda's mom gave birth to her in prison. She had had a white cellmate. Black and white," she pushed the shopping bag back to her wrists to have room enough to entwine her fingers, rocking back and forth on her heels slightly, "panda."

"I - I got it." Dean brushed past her and walked toward the veranda, piloting himself up the stairs.

Camille nearly skipped after him. "Guess what my nickname was."

"Gabby?"

"No," Camille recoiled in confusion. "Why the hell would it be Gabby?"

"Because you never shut up."

Shaking her head to dismiss his comment, she clarified further with her answer. "They called me Sinatra. Dude, I do a mean Fly Me to the Moon."

"You sing?"

She nodded, beaming over with pride. It was like her singing was the one thing that made her human. It set her apart from the forest of mistakes that she made. Without another word, she skipped up the wooden steps to the porch, glancing back to make sure he was following. "Hurry up. I wanna hit the continental buffet."

Dean blanched and threw his arm out back to the road where they had just drove up. "We were literally just at a burger joint."

"Well," she raised one shoulder, saying slowly, "I want the continental food. It makes me feel fancy."

He followed close behind her as she entered the hotel, watching her almost skip into the lunch room. Prison cafeteria's were far from good and it was just a little sad to see that crappy European knock-off food was a big step up for her.

"Gabby," Dean called out and stopped at the main desk, "I'm gonna check in. Save me a seat in there."

Pulling out his wallet, Dean fished out a credit card he hadn't used in a while, memorizing the name. Joseph Carpenter. A devilish smirk splayed across his face when he read the name over and over again. He had really outdone himself this time.

"Tell me something, uh, Jules," Dead read off the receptionists name-tag, noticing her pregnant belly, "how Amityville is this place?"

She shrugged. "People report hearing a child singing in the middle of the night. They'd say that they could hear little footsteps up and down the hallway, going down to the room at the far end of the hall upstairs. The singing would always stop as soon as it got to that room and it'd start again when footsteps start back down the hall again. It's pretty cooky stuff but it's only second-hand accounts. Some people even said that their children would have imaginary friends while they stayed here."

"And what do those kids say?" Dean lowered his voice and continued, bringing the conversation in closer.

"Well," the receptionist thought, "it's really strange because nine months later those same three kids just disappeared. This happened like ten years ago, all of them dying in a span of four months."

"Do people still hear the woman singing? Or the kids?"

"No. But actually, a couple of months ago we had a few - " she faltered and only went on when Dean insisted. "A couple of months ago I was working the graveyard shift down here. It was like three in the morning and I would've gone home but I need the money, you know? I'm sitting here and I hear this beautiful music. It was like a clarinet or a flute. And I sorta just thought it was just some asshole playing his instrument in the middle of the night but the music just seemed to move through the hotel. I tried to find it. Running up and down the building like a madwoman but I got to that room at the end of the hall upstairs and the music just stopped. It was so creepy."

Dean leaned against the counter on one arm. "How long was a couple of months ago?"

"Seven, eight months. Why?"

He shook his head dismissively. "Any chance I could get that spooky room for the next few nights?"

"Your choice, Mr. Carpenter," she put him into the system and slid the key across the counter. "Have a nice stay."

"You hear anything else going on you let me know, you hear?"

She smiled and nodded, watching with a hand on her belly as he meandered through the lobby and into the dining hall.

Dean made a quick stop at the buffet and had his plate filled high with food when he sat across from Camille. She was leaning over a crosswords puzzle in the local newspaper and hadn't even touched her food.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Dean asked.

She shook her head no, too preoccupied with racking her head for the answers to the clues. But after a moment of silence and inaction, Camille was ravaging the three plates she had neatly set out in front of her.

An hour later a toothpick dangled from between her lips as she continued to mutter over the crossword puzzle. She had pushed her empty plates to the side and threw her head back in frustration.

"I hate these things!"

"Whoa," Dean put on hand up to stop her from overexerting herself, "I just watched you down three plates of food piled high with steak, mushrooms, zucchini, rice, chicken, and fish. And honey, that was just the appetizer."

Camille passive-aggressively chewed a cube of ham that she had speared from his plate. "You callin' me fat?"

Dean's mouth flopped open in preparation for his answer but realized that his affirmative wouldn't faze her either way. She folded back over the newspaper, spitting out the toothpick to chew on the end of her pen instead.

"What is an 'Actress Thurman'?"

"Uma," Dean replied.

"Uma," she repeated slowly, as if she was memorizing that piece of information, and writing it in. "1982 hit for the Flock of Seagulls? Oh. 'I Ran.' Hotcha!"

Dean took the newspaper from her and read the clues over. "One-Down. Aidan is the 'Actor Quinn' from Legends of the Fall. Forty-six-Down. Sumac is a reddish-purple spice. Fifteen-Across. Petruchio tamed the shrew."

"Show off," Camille snatched the paper from his fingers and wrote the answers in rapidly. "They don't teach that stuff in jail."

"Shakespeare's overrated anyway," Dean shrugged in a far-fetched attempt to alleviate whatever inferiority complex he assumed she had.

Camille continued to whine and fret to herself over the crossword puzzle until Dean had finished eating. She pulled at her hair and dug her nails into her scalp, wondering how the hell she didn't know who the wife of Angel Clare was. Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented wouldn't come close to all those critically-self-acclaimed books filling up the prison book shelves.

"Let's go," Dean pulled her rather unwillingly away from the crossword. "Let's go check out the haunted room. I got it just for you, come on."

"I can't leave this puzzle half complete, Dean." The look on her face clearly conveyed how radical it would be to leave it unfinished. She took it with her and followed him up the stairs and down the hallway to the mysterious room.

Camille's jaw dropped in mortification. The sheets over the king-sized bed had ugly tears down and hung in ribbons on the ground. The window sill had various nail marks running along the wood and a chilling breeze blew through the open window.

"It's just like my cell," her words cracked and caught in her throat.

Dean took the plastic bag filled with her meager belongings from her tight fingertips and set it on the floor beside his duffle. He quickly shut the window and stripped the bed sheets off the bed, feeling cold spots bubble down his leg and slither underneath the mattress as he did so.

"I don't want to stay here, Dean. Please." Camille was pressed flush against the door, shrinking in the sight of the small room. "I know I wanted to see the ghosts but, god, at what cost?"

The vulnerability in her face was clear like a giant neon light. Her eyebrows were knit together and she curled herself into a ball at the feeling of the room getting smaller and smaller on top of her. Her breath hitched in her throat and her eyes fell to the floor, catching sight of two bright red orbs glowing from underneath the bed. She stifled a scream by clapping her hand over her mouth with one hand and pointing underneath the bed with her other hand. Dean pulled out his gun from the small of his back and nearly flipped the mattress out of the frame to catch a glimpse of whatever Camille had seen.

There was nothing.

Dean's hands worked fast to rummage through his duffle to uncap the jerrycan filled with salt. He made a thick line around the bed and along the window sills while Camille watched with eyes as wide as saucers, the crumpled up crosswords puzzle in her clenched hand.

"Salt?! Are you insane? What the hell was that?" Her voice was wavered and broken in more than one spot, kicking herself half into the closet to get far enough from the salt lines. "What is wrong with you?!"

"What did you see?" He continued to draw lines of salt across every crack and crevice.

Camille tripped over her words. "Eyes. Two - two glowing red eyes and this pale hand coming out of the woodwork. It was a really small hand, like, a baby's though."

"Did it say anything?"

"It was a baby!" She screamed. "I don't know anything about infant care but I sure as hell know that babies shouldn't be saying anything! Or crawling under people's beds!"

Dean knelt beside her and slowly extended his hand to place on her shoulder. "Did you hear anything at all? Please, Cam, it's important."

Camille's eyes danced across the room, searching for the glowing red eyes but seeing the contents inside of Dean's circle instead. Sawed offs, lighter fluid, lighters and match sticks...her gaze buffered on the matches. She swallowed hard. She could set that haunted bed on fire if she wanted. All the ingredients for another jail sentence was at the reach of her hand.

Dean shook her eyes back on him. "Did you hear anything or not?"

She shook her head no. All she could think of was the sparks flying as she dragged the match over the matchbox. All she could think of was that bitter smell that fumed up into her nose and the crisp brown that'd be smeared across the bed sheets as it went up in flame.

"What do we do? It looked really real, man."

"Relax," Dean assured her, "I'll get us the room next door and you can sleep it off."

"No, no, no, no," she grabbed his collar and kept him close, "I'm going nowhere near that salt. I told you how much I hated it! Who the hell are you?!"

He pried her fingers off from his collar, looking her dead in the eyes and seriously saying, "My name is Dean Winchester. I hunt ghosts. And that thing you saw under the bed...I think it's a spirit haunting this place."

"You're crazy…"

There was a long pause before he replied. "I know."

But slowly. So slowly that Dean didn't know it was there until it was already slapped across her face, Camille stared at him. The same scary concentration he had seen her doing the night he met her. She rolled her sleeve up to her elbow, showing him the tattoo of his name on her forearm.

"It showed up on my sixteenth birthday. That's when I started going to the crapper for setting shit on fire. I dunno," she sighed and rolled her sleeve back down to her wrist, "uhm, I think after I got it I started having aspects of your life meld into mine. Like, how you were burning that body that one night. Did you get a tattoo too? Of my name?"

Her eyes fell to his arm. Dean pushed his sleeves up to show his arm, clean of any names, not saying a word.

Camille rubbed her eyebrow nervously. "That's - That's really weird."

"Not for nothing," he started getting up and migrating toward the door, "but I'm just gonna step out...grab something from the car. I'll be back."

She gave him an incredulous look that sharply turned into a dirty scowl. The pit of her stomach tightened at the thought of her alone and surrounded for all this salt and an evil ghost just underneath the bed. Camille was about to ask to come along but Dean was already halfway down to the hall to the stairs to the main floor. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs, curling into a ball.

"I'll just wait here then."

Dean nearly tripped down the stairs, catching himself against the banister just in time to scrub his hand across his face, organizing thoughts and streamlining all of it through his mind. It wasn't too late to call John. Hell, Dean had been contemplating calling his father for a long time and, though now seemed liked the best time to get some back up if in case Camille hit the fan, Dean shook his head of it and patted his pocket to make sure his phone was still there.

Pushing out the main door to the squeaky hotel, Dean stepped onto the porch and took a moment to breath in the fresh air. From where he stood he could see the Impala at the other end of the parking lot and just the long trek made his head-ache even more. Dean went down the whitewashed steps and walked down the cobble-stoned walkway, absent-mindedly throwing his gaze to three children playing with the mud by the banks of the stream.

The oldest, a girl around six years old, sat knee-deep in the muck, patting the mud into cakes while her baby brothers watched her with wide eyes, enthralled. A smile spread across Dean's face, momentarily stopping the pounding in his temples, as he stopped to watch them. Of course, Dean never had the luxury of playing in the mud because he was always too busy keeping an eye on Sam, but it was nice to see that other children had different childhood experiences.

Dean moved on from the muddy sight and continued on toward the Impala, propping the trunk open with one arm over his head while absently rummaging through the content. He had made up an excuse to leave Camille for a few minutes. He liked to think that he was keeping his mind on the job wholly but he also liked to think that there was no way like a snowball's chance in hell that it was a coincidence that Camille had been at the right place at the right time.

Digging up John Winchester's journal, Dean closed the trunk and headed back toward the building. The three kids weren't at the stream anymore and the dirt on the banks seemed to be untouched previously. Dean caught sight of an older woman rocking back and forth in her rocking chair at one corner of the wrap-around porch.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he cautiously approached her, "would you have happened to see three little kids playing in the dirt down but that stream there? By the tree?"

The elderly women gave him a critical once-over, narrowed her eyes suspiciously, and sneered, "what did you say?"

"Uhhm," Dean proceeded with caution, "kids. Did you see a little girl and her two brothers playing in the mud down there? I saw them a few minutes ago and they disappeared. Just wanted to make sure they're safe. That stream is pretty deep."

"You see them too?"

"Excuse me?"

The woman cast a glance toward the stream. "I see them all the time too. Lily would always be playing in the mud and her brother's would always follow her around, watching everything she does and copying her. You have no idea what a miracle they were to me. I was in my mid-forties when I had Lily. The twins came four years later. They were the light of my life."

"What happened?"

She laughed softly to herself. "I'll tell you what didn't happen, young man. I couldn't get pregnant."

Ugh, T.M.I, Dean thought to himself.

"I always wanted three children," she continued. "Never could have any though."

"But you did."

"I did. And they were the way I spent the best ten years of my life."

"I'm sorry for your loss, ma'am."

She just brushed his condolences into the wind. "It was my own stupid fault. Shouldn't have made a deal with a nasty little Rumpelstiltskin."

"I'm sorry, what?" His eyebrows arched in disbelief.

"Well, it wasn't Rumpelstiltskin, of course. That's only a story. No, he said he was Kokopelli or some nonsense." She scoffed at how crazy she must have sounded but Dean only motioned her to continue. "He asked me if I wanted to have children and I said yes. I said I wanted children more than anything in the world. He was playing his little flute and told me that I should take a pregnancy test in a week. I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world but I checked anyway."

"And it was positive?"

She nodded, rubbing rising tears across her face to stay composed. "I had Lily. He came to me again four years later and said he could give me twins. And I figured, 'hey, the first time went well. Why not?' But that son of a bitch only gave me a few more years then took them away."

Tears were free-falling from her eyes, and she had a hand pressed against her heaving chest, trying to formulate words through her quivering lips. She shook her head, eyes tightly shut.

From behind them, the netted storm door screeched open and Camille stepped on the porch. She looked between Dean and the crying woman before lowering her eyes, folding her hands in front of her. She didn't know what to do and thought about just going back inside but she had already opened her mouth to talk so the woman wouldn't buy that she was just a stranger. Camille fought inwardly with herself, shut her mouth, and went back inside to wait for Dean in the lobby.

"You mentioned something about a kokopelli," Dean gently enticed, taking her hand in his.

"That was his name. Kokopelli." She took a moment to sniff and to steady her voice. "It sounds Italian."

"And he promised you children? With his…" Dean caught his words, "flute?"

She nodded.

"And your name, ma'am?"

"Angela Hawkins."

"Well, Ms. Hawkins, I'm working with the FBI on the disappearance of your children. I'm going to find my...partner. I'm sure we will see you around to ask some routine questions later." Dean stood and gravitated into the lobby, pulling Camille away from her bee line toward the dining hall. "I need your help."

"I'm hungry," she gently opposed, eyeing the free food lined up and warming on the counters. "There's food in there. I was - I was going to go get some food."

"We are going to the library and I need you to help me do research on an Italian man called Kokopelli."

Camille stared down at him, coiling back in confusion. "You do know what a Kokopelli is, right? It's definitely not Italian."

"Wait, what is it then?"

"It's the Native American god of fertility. He's like the Loki of the Native American Hopi community."

"How the hell do you know this?!" Dean pulled her out into the porch and toward the Impala.

She pointed at her tattoo. "I looked up weird things. It was a phase. That lasted like seven years. It's not my fault. If anything, it's your fault."

"My fault? How the hell is it my fault?"

Pulling out of his grip and opening her own door, Camille sneered, "you're welcome for the information that you would've been too ignorant to figure out yourself."

"I would've figured it out just fine!"

"Dean, you would've gone on Google Images looking for an Italian man named Kokopelli."

He threw up his arms in defeat, getting into the driver's seat without another word. He fumbled with the key and waited until she was sitting beside him to start the engine. "Hurry up and get in."

She groaned in opposition but consented, slamming the door shut. "I didn't ask for this, you know. I didn't want my life to turn to shit because of a stupid name belonging to a stupid asshole. You ruined my life, Dean! I didn't even have to meet you for you to fuck up a life that I had planned out perfectly."

He looked at her calmly. "You're blaming me for that tattoo? You're blaming me for you being a pyromaniac? You're blaming me for you hating salt?"

"I don't even know you, Dean!" She sobbed. "I didn't even know you but I missed you since I was sixteen years old staring out of a prison window. I did not ask for this. I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to go to Scranton, Pennsylvania and I wanted to be a professional journalist. What did you want to be? Huh?"

Dean scoffed. "Not a professional monster hunter, that's for sure. I wanted to be a fireman. Wanna know why? Because I would never have to look up at the ceiling in the middle of the night and see another person I love burning to death. So don't you dare talk to me like you're the only person who's trying to dig himself out of the early grave."

A sheet of tension, thick enough to slice with a machete, fell over them until Camille changed the subject. "Did you, uh, figure out who that creepy little kid under the bed was?"

"Angela Hawkins' kids," was Dean's reply. "Their spirits are bound to that hotel because of the Kokopelli dude." Pause. "You wouldn't happen to know how to kill him would you?"

She buckled herself in and shrugged. "No idea. But I'll figure it out. Just get this hunk of junk moving."

"Hunk of junk?!"