Chapter 5 A Taste of Things To Come

Bobby sat at the kitchen table, reading as he ate. He looked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, turning around to see Dean and Ellie cross the hall and come into the bright room.

It'd been more than a few months since he'd last seen the red-haired hunter, and he could still remember the tension that had been humming in her the last time. She'd told him she going was out of the country and from what he'd heard, she had and had stayed out for awhile. He couldn't see any tension in her now. She still looked too thin, but the hard edges, the brittleness, had softened, somehow. Shifting his gaze to the man standing close beside her, he thought he understood how that'd happened.

Dean … he had to work to keep his face expressionless as he studied the younger man from under the brow of his cap. The underlying anger and uncertainty that'd been there more or less constantly in the last year had gone, he realised. For the first time he could remember in a long, long time. There was no wariness in the green eyes, and no shadows lurking behind them. Dean looked … peaceful, he thought in surprise. His eyes narrowed slightly as he checked that impression again, not sure he'd ever seen him look like that. Maybe, when the man had been a boy. Not since, he was pretty sure.

He'd made the trip out to Indiana a couple of times, to check on him, make sure he was doing okay in the civilian life. At those times, he'd thought he looked good. Calm. Happy. Doing what he'd wanted. When Dean'd brought Lisa back here and had reamed him a new one for keeping him in the dark about Sam, however, he'd looked back on those memories more carefully, belatedly recognising that the happiness he'd been sure he'd seen had been a façade, a cover for the family he'd been with. It'd made him rethink everything he'd done … and said.

"Thought I recognised that truck down the block. You didn't want get associated with the town drunk, Ellie?" he said, his gaze shifting back.

She smiled at him, shaking her head. "No, just didn't want to advertise who I was visiting. Old habits."

Bobby looked at Dean, pushing back his cap as he gave the man a one-sided grin. "Smart girl."

"Yeah, I think so too." He nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting wryly, turning to look at Ellie and edging a little closer.

Looking from one to the other, Bobby felt his heart lifting slightly. He'd watched Dean pretend that his heart hadn't been broken, when Sam had gone into the cage, and Ellie hadn't shown up. He watched Ellie pretend the same thing when she'd arrived weeks after Dean had left for Indiana, and he'd had to tell her about the promise.

Lisa had been a nice woman, and Dean had clearly cared for her. But she'd been a civilian and it hadn't been hard to see she didn't know much of what had made up the life of the man she'd been living with. Wasn't ever going to know about it, he'd thought, watching them together. He'd wanted to tell Dean about Ellie's return back then, when he'd brought Lisa and Ben to this house. But when Dean had told them what that year had cost him, he just couldn't. He'd been faced with the fact they'd been wrong, him and Sam. So damned wrong about Dean. And watching him twist himself into knots, worried about Lisa and Ben and devastated about Sam, he'd thought he'd be able to grab the younger man alone when the current crisis had passed.

He should have stepped up and told him then, he thought, looking at them now. Dean had been ready to leave Lisa, to go hunting with his brother again. He had no doubt that a lot of the misery of the last year wouldn't have occurred if he had. He sighed. Wasn't much use crying over spilt milk. And now, well, maybe something could go right.

"You get yourselves sorted out this time?"

The younger man slid his arm around Ellie, and Bobby hid a grin at the expression on his face, a mix of hope and certainty and poorly hidden desire. The bug had been a long time coming for Dean but it'd bitten finally, he thought. Bitten damned hard.

"I hope so."

Ellie ducked her head as she moved to the table, and Bobby wondered what the woman's pragmatic streak had to say about that. He'd known her for almost five years, not well, not in the early days, but she'd been around a few times when Dean had been in Indiana, passing on information and staying for a meal, or a few glasses, and once or twice, they'd talked right through the night, conversations that'd begun on some topic of hunting or monsters or the myths surrounding the other planes, but mostly ending up about the man they both missed. She wasn't in the habit of lying to herself, he knew. No matter how much she might want to.

They pulled out a couple of chairs, sitting down across from Bobby.

Dean slid the summoning scroll across the table to Bobby. "We've got some work to do."

Bobby unrolled it and picked up his glasses, reading it through. His eyebrows shot up under his cap as he finished. "This for Crowley?"

Dean nodded, his gaze cutting sideways to the woman beside him. "Ellie got it."

Bobby looked at her, eyes narrowed. "Now, where the hell did you find this?"

"Hell." She smiled at him enigmatically.

"She won't tell you about it, Bobby, so don't even bother asking," Dean said sourly.

Bobby looked at him and then back at Ellie. The spell he held in his hands was no minor league incantation. He'd never seen one quite like it, in fact. He had a feeling that he didn't really want to know where she'd gotten it.

"And why're we summoning Crowley?"

Ellie leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. "To get a binding spell for Death, of course."

Bobby blinked. He looked from her to Dean. "You want to bind Death?"

He glanced at Ellie, and back to Bobby, exhaling noisily. "Yeah, uh, not really. But Death is probably the only one who can bind Cas now. Or kill him, if it comes to that."

He still wasn't sure that this was the best course of action. Death hadn't liked being on Lucifer's leash, and despite the righteousness of their cause, he suspected the entity wouldn't be any more sanguine about being bound by them. The risks were enormous. The chance of success small. What else was new?

Glancing at the woman sitting next to him, he wondered again how she'd gotten it. Bobby's reaction made it very clear it was some kind of major mojo, and she'd refused to elaborate on where she'd found it, diverting his attention from those questions easily, knowing which buttons to push. Not, he admitted to himself, that he'd minded.

"It's gonna take me some time to get this stuff together," Bobby said, looking back at the parchment.

"Good," Dean said without thinking, grinning a little at the old man as he heard Ellie's snort beside him. She'd told him she could stay for a couple of days, or whenever they were ready to do the ritual. She didn't mention why she didn't want to see the King of Hell, had just muttered something about needing to get back to Richmond.

That looming deadline tempered his grin slightly. A couple of days wasn't long enough.

He'd told her, and the world had remained intact, and the last of the tension he'd seen in her had slipped away. It'd been something of an epiphany, as the words had come out, to realise he could never have said them to Lisa – or to anyone else. There'd been a feeling of truth, reverberating through him, a feeling that had come from down inside, where he lived and breathed. Where it was just him. That feeling hadn't wanted anything else, just to say it. He understood now the difference between the two times, and the two women, who'd said it to him.

"Uh, we took over one of the rooms, upstairs," he added to the older hunter, wondering how Bobby would see that.

"One at the end?" Bobby asked, seemingly unconcerned.

"Yeah."

"Good, needs a clean-out. The stuff in there could go up to the attic. I was goin' to get around to it one day," Bobby remarked, pushing his glasses higher up his nose and lifting the scroll. "How much longer do you need on the car?"

"Maybe another couple of days, get the last of the dips out of the panels," Dean said, thinking about that. "Then I can paint."

"Well, I guess Ellie can drive you around," Bobby said, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. "If you're stayin' for a bit?"

"For what?" Dean asked.

"Pick up this crap," Bobby said, waving a hand at the parchment. "Or do you imagine I got a jar full of salamanders sittin' here somewhere, gatherin' dust?"

"Sal-a … salamanders?"

Ellie nodded. "There's a place in Lincoln that has them," she said matter-of-factly. "I didn't make a copy of that, or look at the ingredients all that carefully but if we have a list, I can probably get nearly all of it."

She got to her feet. "My laptop's in the truck," she said, looking at Dean. "I'll be right back."

He half-rose, subsiding at her quick headshake, and he listened to her walk out to the front, the door open and close.

"So," he said, turning back to Bobby. "I heard you were keeping Ellie up to date the last couple of years."

He saw the old man's slight grimace. "Yeah, was I supposed to pretend I didn't know what was going on?"

"You couldn't've said something to me? Like, I don't know, she was back and she wanted to see me?" Dean asked, trying to subdue the bitter edge he could hear in his voice. Done was done, and he'd already seen that Bobby and his brother hadn't known him as well as he'd thought they had.

"Hell, Dean," Bobby said, pushing his cap up and rubbing his forehead. "She turned up nearly five weeks after you'd gone, after you'd told me that you were settlin' in. I didn't know what the hell to do. I thought you were happy. Thought you were out. I didn't want anything to wreck that."

"And after Sam came back?"

"Didn't you tell me that you didn't want to lose Lisa and Ben? That you couldn't figure how to hunt with your brother and have your family at the same time?" Bobby asked, his tone slightly defensive. "'Cause that sure sounded like you."

He had said it to the old man, he thought. The last thing he'd wanted was to lose what he'd thought he'd had to the life again.

"Didn't you know how I felt, man?"

Bobby sighed, pushing his dinner to one side as he stared down at the table. "After she disappeared, I thought you were head over heels, Dean," he said heavily, keeping his gaze on the scarred and battered table top. "Then you stopped talking about her. You might not remember but it was me who told you to wait a bit longer, when you got here and Cas said he couldn't see her."

He held up his hand as Dean opened his mouth to argue. "I know you couldn't see straight right then, for fuck's sake, a'course I could see that. And I figured you didn't have the time to wait 'cause grief was already eating at you." He scratched his beard, looking at the younger man. "I knew how that was gonna feel too, Dean. I knew you were gonna need someplace where you could let it out without it killin' you."

Dean looked away, chewing on the corner of his lip. Bobby'd been right about that. It still nearly had.

"I waited for you to mention Ellie again, but you – you never did," Bobby continued, his voice dropping. "I didn't know where you were at with that. Not until the minute you two walked down my staircase – and I'm sorry, but that's the truth."

Dean stared at the floor. He was right, he thought. He hadn't been able to talk about her at all after he'd moved in with Lisa and Ben. Had tried not to think about her.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Bobby said, his voice hoarse. "If I'd thought there was the faintest chance, I'd've told her. I just didn't know."

And he hadn't known that Ellie had been aware of where he'd been and what he'd been doing, Dean thought. And she hadn't known that he hadn't been at peace, in his ordinary life.

"Yeah," he said, lifting his gaze and seeing Bobby's regrets, written across the old man's face. "Yeah, I get it."

Bobby glanced at the hall. "What now?"

Following his gaze, Dean said, "I don't know. Not exactly. We'll find time however we can, I guess." He turned back to Bobby. "In the meantime, we got a summoning and binding spell for Crowley, and we're gonna have to hope that's enough to get what we need to control Death."

"This ain't a good idea, Dean."

Dean snorted. "You think I don't know that? It's the only game in town, Bobby. So we'll just have to ante up."

The front door opened, and they heard Ellie come in and close it again, the locks clicking.

She came into the kitchen and looked around, setting her bag on the floor and dragging out the slim computer. "Okay, let's go through that and see what we can get?"

"Hey, how you doing?"

Ellie looked up as Sam came through the door, knuckling his eyes as he glanced at Bobby and Dean.

"Alright," he said, turning for the kitchen and stopping in the archway that separated the two rooms. "Ellie?"

"Hey, Sam," she said quietly, trying to hide her shock at the way he looked.

Dean had told her a little about what had gone with them in the last month, Cas becoming more and more desperate for the souls, breaking the wall that Death had put his brother's mind to protect him from the memories of the cage when the hunters had refused to help him. Sam's titanic struggle to integrate those memories into his conscious mind.

"What the – what happened?" Sam asked, taking another couple of steps into the kitchen.

"She couldn't live without me," Dean told him, smirking slightly as he got to his feet and walked into the kitchen past his brother.

Ellie shrugged and gave Sam a smile. "Basically, that's it."

"You want something to eat?" Dean asked and Sam nodded, walking over to the table and sitting down opposite Ellie.

"Rough time," she said to him, making it not so much of a question.

"Understatement," he responded, nodding as he glanced at his brother. "Are you – uh – you staying?"

"For a couple of days," Ellie told him. She watched him flinch slightly, from something she couldn't see, his throat working as he turned back to her and fixed his gaze on her face.

"Gotta plan to deal with Cas," Dean interjected from the stove, flipping burgers.

"Really?" Sam looked quizzically at Ellie.

She nodded. "It's a long shot," she told him, glancing at his brother. "A summoning geis for Crowley to get a spell to bind Death."

He blinked at her. "Bind … Death?"

"Yeah, we've been through this with Bobby," Dean said impatiently, splitting rolls and turning the heat off under the burgers. "It's not that much of a long shot."

Ellie gave him a wry smile. "Just as dangerous as hell."

"I'll give you that," he acknowledged as he put the burgers, cheese and ketchup on the rolls.

She moved the laptop aside as Dean brought over a plate for his brother, thunking it onto the table top in front of Sam.

"Eat," Dean said, dropping into the chair next to Ellie. "Some cow gave up its life so you could live."

Sam's brow wrinkled up derisively as he picked up the burger.

"How far have you got?" Dean asked Ellie.

"We can get most of this in Lincoln," she said, glancing around at the open screen. "There's a guy there who supplies a lot of the mid-west with esoteric ingredients. The fulgurite and the powdered turquoise we can pick up at any New Age store in between here and Lincoln."

"What about the blood?"

"Abattoir in town," Bobby grunted from the living room. "I'll get that."

"What time you want to get going?" Sam asked, swallowing his mouthful.

"Uh," Dean hesitated, glancing at Ellie. "Car still needs some work and Ellie's got her truck here, so, um, we can handle the grocery run. You should, uh, stay here, get your rest."

She saw a flicker of unease in Sam's expression as he dropped his gaze back to his food.

"What's wrong, Sam?"

He looked up, shrugging. "Nothing," he said quickly. "That's fine."

As he looked back down at his food, his gaze twitched to the side again, his face paling as he determinedly took another big bite of the burger.

The lamp, squeezed in between two piles of teetering boxes, cast weird shadows over the half the bedroom, and left the other half in darkness. On the edge of its pool of light, their skin was gilded, and Dean looked up, bucking up a little, his fingers closing tightly around hers as her hips rolled and lifted, the muscle surrounding him rippling up his length.

The sight of her would've been enough, he thought, sucking in a breath as she dropped again, her hair wildfire around her shoulders and over her breasts, her eyes half-open and lips parted as she looked down at him, the deceptively slow rhythm building a torturous pleasure, deeply intense and as hopelessly out of his ability to control his reactions, his responses, as every other time.

He felt the change, her quickening around him, a jittery, jangling feeling that reached into him, his hips jerking up involuntarily, everything concentrating in one place, pulling at him in rapid, unbearable waves of pleasure. Deep within the heat and pressure, the staccato oscillations gave way to pummelling spasms, clutching and stroking and squeezing and her fingers, interlaced with his, tightened abruptly.

His hand slid along her hip, the skin warm and slightly flushed in the glowing aftermath and she rolled onto her side, her hand brushing up his chest, her pupils still enlarged, looking up at him.

"I could handle that as a regularly scheduled program," he said softly, his hand lifting to push the damp tendrils of her hair back from her forehead.

She lifted a brow, looking at him consideringly. "I think I'd wear you out," she said, the corner of her mouth tucking in.

"I got stamina I haven't even looked at yet," he said, leaning down to brush his lips over hers, the light touch managing to ignite his nerves in spite of the recent release. "Might, uh, take me a little longer to, uh, regroup, you know."

She laughed, lifting herself to lean on an elbow. "Prime of your life."

"Right."

He watched the laughter fade from her face as she looked around the room, letting his gaze drift over her, his body tightening in appreciation. There wasn't a part of her that didn't have that effect, he thought.

"Did you know Sam's hallucinating?" she asked, and he looked at her, desire and the warm, post-orgasmic contentment doused instantly.

"What?"

"You haven't seen it?"

"No – what –? What the hell makes you think that?" He pushed himself up the bed, leaning against the headboard.

"The way he was when he came in … while he was eating," she told him. "He was twitchy, looking at things that weren't there, reacting to something that wasn't there."

He opened his mouth to deny it, then closed it again. She wasn't prone to panic, he knew and she wouldn't've said anything unless she'd been pretty sure.

"What – uh – what'd it look like?"

"Something that was getting his attention," she said, eyes half-closing. "I don't know. I thought you might've talked to him about it."

"No," Dean said, although, he thought, he sure as hell was gonna. "The memories? He said he was getting, uh, images, you know, like flashbacks."

"Didn't look like flashbacks," Ellie said. "I might be wrong –"

"But probably not," Dean said, shaking his head. "No. I didn't know. He hasn't said much about what's going on in his melon."

"You haven't either," Ellie said softly.

"I'm – I'm better than fine," he said, looking down at her, waving his hand around the room in explanation.

The look she gave him was doubtful and he slid down the pillows, arm slipping behind her.

"I am," he said. "The last few months, yeah, they weren't good –"

"Are you dealing with what Cas did?"

"Wha–? Uh, yeah," he said, his gaze cutting away. "I mean, it doesn't matter now, we got a plan –"

"Dean," she said, lifting her hand to turn his face back to her. "Don't let that go, alright? Don't pretend it doesn't matter."

He dropped his gaze, not knowing what to say to that. It was over. Done. Nothing he could do would change what'd happened. He could allow that talking to her had helped, in some areas, but the angel'd shattered his trust, stomped all over the pieces and then used Sam as a diversion. It wasn't something he could just forgive and forget.

Don't make me lose you too. He'd said it to Cas, thinking he might get through that way, but maybe Cas'd seen that he hadn't meant it. If Cas'd been straight with them, if he'd just trusted him, most of what'd happened last year wouldn't've happened at all.

And had that been Cas' choice, he wondered uncomfortably?

"Angels aren't designed for free will," Ellie reminded him gently. "No souls. They were created to serve the Spheres. Obedient. Faithful. That's all."

"You sayin' Cas gets a free pass?" he asked, aware that she was right about this. He'd seen it himself, time after time. Didn't mean he had to like it. Or let what'd happened just go. "How is it that the arcs … Raphael and Michael and the others, were exercising their free will enough to plan the end of the world?"

"Pride is one of their flaws," Ellie said. "It always has been. And no, I'm not asking you turn yourself inside out trying to give Cas a no-fault out, Dean. Just … when you look at what happened, you have to take into account that he can't behave the way a person would. That's not in him. And you can't have expectations of him, the way you might about anyone else."

She moved away from him a little, and he saw her close her eyes. Reaching out, he turned off the lamp and shifted down the bed, rolling over to fit himself against her, feeling her ribs rise and fall with a deeper breath as his arms curved around her.

He'd been looking at the angel as if he'd been a man, he knew. Feeling the betrayal as if Cas had been human. The obedience bullshit had grated on him from the moment he'd met the angel. He'd been able to recognise that Cas was loyal and honourable, certainly in comparison to Uriel, but it hadn't been until he'd found himself trapped in Zachariah's room with no way out, that he'd seen that Cas literally didn't know what to do, how to go against the orders he'd been given.

A good soldier, he thought. A lousy tactician.

Lincoln, Nebraska

Ellie wove them through the business section of the city, pulling over in front of a large, red-brick four-storey building, a little way out of downtown. Looking around, Dean noted the small businesses and restaurants that took up most of the frontage, the sidewalks busy with people moving in all directions.

The store itself was on the second storey of the building, a plain wooden door with 'Golden Dawn Imports' painted on the frosted glass window at the top.

"Golden Dawn?" he asked, as Ellie opened it.

"It's a joke," she told him, walking across the narrow lobby to a counter and ringing the small bell there. "Recognisable to anyone who's involved in the life."

It wasn't to him, he thought, but decided against admitting. He could ask her about it, some other time. The small lobby had a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs and a poster, faded and with one corner peeling off the wall, advertising a lecture tour by some woman with the unlikely name of Dion Fortune. The tour dates were twenty years old.

"Help you?"

He turned to see a short man appear from the door behind the counter, receding pale red hair and fair skin, wearing heavy black plastic framed glasses and a white coat.

"Roland, sorry I didn't call –" Ellie said, and Dean watched the man push his glasses more firmly onto his nose.

"Miss Morgan, you know very well that I don't have many of the more esoteric items in stock here," Roland said, his mouth puckering up prissily. "Now, we have been through this time and again, and you persist in just showing up, throwing my schedule into the sort of disorganised chaos you obviously prefer your life to be in."

"I know, I –"

"Yes, I'm sure the excuse is excellent, yours always are, but it does not help, Miss Morgan," Roland cut her off, a faint gleam of perspiration on his upper lip and beading over his brow. He pulled out a pressed handkerchief from his lab coat pocket as he continued, "There's just no excuse for a lack of forethought and careful preparation in this business, you know that."

"I know," Ellie said and Dean swallowed his surprise as he saw her drop her gaze contritely. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, well, sorry didn't save the Titanic, did it?" the man said, mopping at his face and putting the damp handkerchief in his pocket again. He glanced at Dean, frowning.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm, uh," Dean said, wondering if Roland's attitude would improve with a broken nose. "I'm with the lady."

"Oh." Roland sniffed, barely hiding an eyeroll as he turned back to Ellie. "Alright, since you're here, show me what you need."

Ellie pulled the printed list from her backpack and handed it across the counter, watching Roland's face as he scanned down its length.

"You have an indecent amount of luck, Miss Morgan," he said after a moment's reading. "It so happens that I have an order of phoenix ash that was never picked up. And a fresh batch of salamanders came in yesterday."

He looked up at her. "There will be surcharge on the rest, I'm afraid. You'll be cleaning me out of them until next month."

Stepping up to the counter, Dean opened his mouth to tell the damned little nazi that a sale was a sale, when Ellie's elbow hit him in the ribs. Roland looked up from the list at him and he closed his mouth, forcing himself to smile. Sort of.

"This will take two hours to prepare and pack," Roland said, looking back at Ellie.

She nodded. "We'll come back at three."

Watching him bustle back through the door behind the counter, Dean turned to look at her.

"The hell was that all about?" he asked indignantly.

She smiled and shrugged. "He likes to feel important," she said. "It doesn't worry me to help him out with that, and if he did take offence, we'd have to drive to Laramie to find this stuff."

She slid her arm through his, turning for the door. "Let's grab some lunch, somewhere nice and relaxing while we wait," she suggested.

Dean scowled over his shoulder at the closed door, then let her walk him out of the place. He was hungry and a beer would go down pretty damned well right now too. He had no doubts that she would know a good place for both.

"No, it was back in 2002," Dean said, lifting his bottle and swallowing a mouthful of the beer it held. "Busted an arm and four ribs trying to wrestle it back into the tomb, and I stayed there until I could drive again."

The restaurant's courtyard overlooked the city, high brick walls trapping the sunshine but rioting vines shading the diners from the heat and the single open side allowing the breeze to slip through. Looking around, Dean leaned back in his chair, savouring the beer, the recently finished steak and its thick, dark sauce, and feeling himself relaxed in the quiet of the place.

Ellie gave an exasperated snort as she looked at him. "You do realise the houdoun would've given you protection against the revenant if you'd asked?"

He ducked his head. He hadn't found that out until afterwards. Colette had stamped up and down her kitchen for twenty-five minutes, shaking her fists and yelling at him about his recklessness.

"Yeah, well, it, uh, all happened kind of fast," he told her. "Anyway, Colette's uncle was more'n happy to fill me in on the right way to do it."

"They still there?" she asked, picking up a glass of pale wine and sipping it.

"No," he said, his eyes darkening slightly. "After, uh, Katrina, they left and I haven't seen them since."

Ellie nodded, picking through her salad and spearing a tomato. "I saw Annie, a while ago," she said, flicking a fast glance at him. "She had an interesting New Orleans tale too."

The beer went down the wrong pipe and came back up, spraying over the brick paving as Dean struggled to breathe in while his lungs were trying to eject the liquid back out.

"You alright?" Ellie asked him, leaning over the table.

"Uh, yeah," he rasped, sucking down a deep breath and sitting up. He coughed again and wiped his eyes, looking at her warily. "Geez, isn't anyone discreet anymore?"

Ellie laughed.

NE-15 N, Nebraska

Yonder come Miss Rosie … How in the world did you know?
By the way she wears her apron, and the clothes she wore.
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand;
She come to see the guv'nor; she want to free her man.

Letting his breath out in a long, quiet exhale, Dean watched the headlights pick out the road, the beat pounding gently in his veins.

"We get everything?" he asked Ellie.

Curled up in the corner of the passenger side, between the seat back and the door, she nodded. "Except the blood."

"Will it work?"

"Yeah, it'll work," she said, the certainty in her voice surprising him.

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a ever loving light on me.

"You were gonna tell me where you found that spell," he said, glancing over at her.

"Was I?" she asked, hiding a yawn behind her hand. "I thought I did."

If you're ever in Houston, well, you better do right;
You better not gamble, an' you better not fight

She straightened up in the seat, turning to look at him. "Did Cas ever mention how Crowley managed to take over Hell?"

Dean shook his head, recognising the diversion but finding himself suddenly disinclined to keep hammering her about it. There could be any number of good reasons for her reticence on how she'd acquired the spell. "He said Crowley came to him, while I was, uh, while I was in Indiana. Cas was getting desperate about Raphael and Crowley suggested going halves in Purgatory's souls. But he didn't say how Crowley got the top job."

Or the sheriff will grab you and the boys will bring you down.
The next thing you know, boy, oh, you're prison bound.

She was silent for a moment and he glanced at her again. "Why?"

"No one knows what he did with the archdemons," she said, staring out through the windshield. "And he had to have done something."

"He's a sneaky, two-faced sonofabitch," Dean said. "Maybe he tricked them."

"That's just it," she told him. "It would need more than tricks. It would need power, of some kind."

Huffing out a breath, Dean looked back at the road. He didn't want to talk about Crowley. Or Cas, for that matter.

"Ellie … what happened, when the cage shut?" he asked, his voice deepening. "Why didn't you call Cas, come back?"

He heard her shift her position slightly.

"I was in Oregon, checking out a lead on what I thought was a case," she said. "I don't know how they found me, or even if it was me they were looking for, but we got attacked by demons, in the middle of nowhere." She snorted softly, but the sound didn't hold any amusement. "At least the angels came in handy then."

"One of them was killed but I didn't know how. When I went over it later on, I think that maybe one or more of the demons had angel swords. They hadn't seemed surprised that the angels were there."

She rubbed the inside of her wrist over her forehead. "The other one, Iophiel, put some kind of Enochian deflection spell over us both and we got away, just kept heading deeper into the mountains. I guess we were about sixty miles to the nearest town when Iophiel told me the cage had closed, both Lucifer and Michael locked away. He said Michael had used a different vessel. Then he left, without taking the spell off."

She turned her head away, looking into the darkness rushing by the truck. "I tried to pray to Cas. I guess he couldn't hear me or see me. It took me a while to walk to Bend and I got a car and drove to Bobby's."

Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, Dean turned what she'd said over in his mind. Demons with angel swords? Knowing, maybe that there were angels with her. It didn't sound random to him. He was sure that it hadn't seemed coincidental to her either. He felt a shiver slip through him. He didn't want to know about all the near-misses, he thought, but at the same time, he had to know. Had to know it all.

Let the Midnight Special shine an ever-loving light on me.

Ellie woke slowly, stretching out in the bed. She opened her eyes and looked around, the darkness dissolving in the pre-dawn light that marked the window in a rectangle of slowly lightening greys.

Dean had moved the boxes, chests, luggage, excess furniture and cartons of books out when they'd returned from Nebraska, carrying them up to Bobby's attic with a minimum of grumbling. The bed, a couple of nightstands, a chest of drawers and a bookshelf were the only things occupying the room now, aside from its living occupants. She could see the wallpaper, a small floral pattern that had faded with the light. Karen had wanted children, she remembered Bobby saying. Had been planning their rooms.

Rolling over, she inched closer to the man beside her, her arm sliding over his chest, one leg over his thigh. There was a bad story for every hunter she'd ever met.

Dean's arm moved, curving around her, and she looked up, seeing his eyes open.

"I could get used to waking up like this," he said.

"I don't mind it myself," she replied, wriggling a little higher against him. "Did I wake you?"

"No." He shook his head, smiling a little as he caught her hand and moved it down his body. "But we could do something about what did."

"Ellie!"

Bobby waved a hand in front of his face, the fine black cloud of dust rising from the sander filling the air surrounding Ellie as she focussed on the front quarter panel.

"Ellie! Your phone!" Bobby yelled, swinging an arm in her peripheral vision.

The sander went off and she turned to him, pushing goggles up and mask down, the only clean spots on her face where they'd been. From head to foot, the rest of her was powder coated in the paint dust from the car.

"What?"

"Your phone," he said, handing it over as she set the sander on the bench behind her and took off her gloves.

"Thanks," she said to him, stepping out of the loose enclosure of hanging plastic dropsheets and walking out in the yard. Behind her, Dean flipped his sander back on and kept working.

"No, I didn't know," Ellie said, holding a hand against her free ear as she walked a little further from the noise. Bobby lifted a brow at her, and she shook her head, giving him a one-shouldered shrug.

"What? When?"

Didn't sound like good news, Bobby thought, glancing back at the workshop.

"Yeah. I'll be there," Ellie said. "First flight this evening."

She finished the call and ran a hand distractedly over her face, smearing the powdery black dust from one side to the other. Bobby wasn't paying attention to her appearance though.

"What?"

"Uh, that was Patrick," Ellie hesitated, looking back at the plastic sheets. "He said he'd been contacted by Penemue, about what's going on in Heaven."

"And?"

"And it seems like Cas isn't just smiting those on earth," she said, grimacing. "I need to see the Watcher."

Bobby turned to the workshop as well. "You just about finished the prep work in there?"

"I think so," Ellie said. "Another couple of hours."

"We'll get into it later, then," he said, pushing his cap up as he rubbed his fingers over one brow. "I gotta couple of people I can call, mebbe get a confirmation on this."

She nodded, putting the phone into her pocket and pulling up the mask again.

"Cas smited – smote – whatever – Raphael when he first took on all those monster souls," Dean argued, moving slightly closer to the woman beside him. "And good riddance, so why's it a problem now?"

""Raphael is – was – the arch who opened the way into Heaven for souls," Ellie told him. "There's going to be trouble with the Veil if they haven't found a replacement – or if all the possible replacements have been killed as well."

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat. "You're telling me that on top of an insane angel with the power of God, who might've wiped out most of the angel population, we're gonna see ghost problems, times a hundred?"

"Times a million," Bobby corrected him sourly. "The Veil's the line between the three planes. It gets full – those souls get antsy for their just rewards – who knows what'll happen."

"It's not just that," Ellie said slowly. "The psychopomps say Purgatory's empty."

"Reapers?" Sam asked, his brow wrinkling up uncertainly as he looked at Bobby.

"Soul guides," Bobby said, shaking his head. "Reapers, sparrows, crows, ravens … all of 'em."

"So, we're really out of time," Dean said, looking from Bobby to Ellie. "We gotta do this."

"You can't wait for me to find out more," Ellie agreed, setting her glass on the table. They'd finished fairing off the car at dusk, had cleaned up and eaten and she'd booked a flight from Sioux Falls to Chicago and from there to Rome for ten o'clock. She could fly to Cairo from Italy in the morning, but she wanted to see the exorcist first. Bobby's contacts had confirmed what Patrick had told her, but she still needed to talk to Penemue. The possible – and probable – impacts on Heaven would be enormous. "I don't know how long I'll be."

"Doesn't matter anyway, I mean, does it?" Sam asked, looking at his brother. "All those people … what else was in Purgatory, aside from the monster souls?"

Ellie looked at him, her expression tight. "Something God thought was better locked away."

"We'll do the binding for Crowley tonight," Bobby said. "We've got what we need."

"Stay until morning," Dean said against her neck, his breath sending a shiver through her nerves.

Ellie turned from the car door, her arms slipping around him. "You're going to be busy most of the night anyway."

He shrugged. "I still want to wake up with you."

She swallowed, the unexpected tenderness in his voice stirring her. "Next time."

He frowned at her. "When?"

She sighed. "Not long. I don't know when exactly. But I should be able to get back in a week or two." She looked at his expression, reading his dissatisfaction with that vague answer. "Or depending on where you guys are, I'll meet you wherever."

He nodded slowly, realising that nothing was going to be as simple as he'd hoped for. He didn't want her to leave at all. "You were right. This isn't going to be easy to figure out."

"It's not just what's happened in Heaven, Dean," she said, the small crease appearing between her brows. "The Watchers have older knowledge than we do."

"Yeah." Dean acknowledged reluctantly. "You gonna be contactable?"

She thought of the desert and nodded. "Most of the time? Yeah, I think so."

"I'll let you know how we do with Crowley, and uh, Death."

She looked at him, reaching up to put her arms around his neck. He leaned down, capturing her mouth. The kiss was just a reminder, a promise. They were too attuned to each other right now to let it linger or deepen too much. He held her for a moment, not ready to let go.

"Don't get yourself killed."

She nodded against his neck, then let go and stepped back, turning away to slide behind the wheel. He shut the door and backed away as she started the engine, watching her drive out of the yard. When her taillights disappeared around the corner, he turned and walked back to the house.

Logically, rationally, it made sense. She had a lot of contacts, in more fields than he, Sam and Bobby could round up between them. But he wished she'd stayed. Everything that'd been happening since Cas'd opened Purgatory had been crap from beginning to end. And it looked very much as if it was only going to get worse.

What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.

~ Henry Ward Beecher