Sammy is fifteen today.  He'll start high school this fall.  Next spring he'll have a driver's license.  Can't wait to have the boys fighting over the Impala.  It's a little easier with Sammy lately.  He seems more committed.  Maybe that's because he's able to have more control over being in school, having a friend here and there.  I try not to tell him what I really think, which is he's shirking sometimes.  Winchester's don't quit.  I don't think he's quitting, but he gets stubborn, and then he won't listen to anything I say.  He and Dean don't get alone as well as they used to.  Could be Sammy's getting tired of being the little brother, and always having Dean take the lead.Could be it's time for Sammy to go out on his first solo.  I should look around for something simple, like I did for Dean.  Don't know why I'm so worried, really.  Sammy's never hesitated when it push came to shove.

Bulls-eye.  Dean is a helluva shot with anything.  He's coming into his own as a hunter.

Dean turns sixteen today.  We're in Montana, and I think we're on the trail of a werewolf.  That bow-hunting practice is going to come in handy.  Sometimes you can't use a gun, and this is one of them.  Tomorrow we're going out on a hunt, and I'm going to let him take the lead.

Dean turns fifteen today.  A week ago he helped me take out a spirit haunting a grocery owned by an Indian family in Erie, Pennsylvania.  It was like any other spirit- you find the remains, you salt, you burn.  But also it wasn't.  I'm learning that all spirits have some things in common, but it matters who they're haunting.  It matters what their traditions were when they were alive.

I thought the lesson was learned back in Wisconsin, but the same thing almost happened again.  I left the boys next at the beach in Two Lakes State Park and went looking for a skinwalker, and then it was Ichi all over again.  Only this time the skinwalker took on the appearance of a park ranger it had killed, and nearly got the boys to come with it because they trusted the uniform.  I still can't completely trust them on a hunt.  I took it down, and lit into the two of them.  Especially Dean.  I have to be hard on him because one of these days I'm not going to be around, and he's the one who's going to have to look out for his brother.  He's a badass, though.  I thought I was tough when I was thirteen, but Dean would have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday.

Something new yesterday.  i took out a nest of succubi - at least that's what everyone I talked to says they were.  Sexually predatory, voracious demons.  They can change their appearance, and they all transformed to look like Mary at one point.  God help me, I was weak.  It was like seeing her there again, in the flesh, and I let myself believe for just a minute.  Or not believe, really, I agreed to their deception.  And then, when I'd gotten my head straight again, I killed them.  All of them.  Was going to stay here for awhile, but I think we'll need to be on our way.  I'm going to stay in the West.

The Germanic Nix combines attributes of vodyanoy and rusalka.  In human form, the Nix is usually male and handsome, and dangerous to unmarried women and unbaptized children.  Most active as summer and winter solstice (Christianized versions of the legend say Christmas Eve).  Play music to beguile its target.  Also an omen of drowning- similar to banshee - can be heard screaming from the water, signaling that someone is going to drown there.  Like vodyanoy, the Nix likes tobacco, and also vodka.  Can be made to appear by dripping blood into water, or by sacrificing a black animal.Once, in Pinckney, Michigan, I suckered a Nix by using a Black Shuck as the sacrifice.  That was a show, a demon dog tangling with a water spirit.  The Shuck won, and I sent it back to Hell for its trouble.