#kasakabe

            I stuck my tongue out at him and started going through the bag, tossing a wrapped candy back over the seat to Serenity and held out a bottle of water for Sam over the top of my seat. It took a moment for him to look up from his phone, but he took the bottle once he saw it.

            “And just for that, you don’t get your soda,” I told Dean, feeling childishly triumphant over the miniscule punishment.

            Dean shut his car door and hit the lock mechanism before diving over from his seat, grabbing at the bag. Taken by surprise, I shrieked and tried to wiggle to the side, but with my door locked there was only so far I could go. One of Dean’s hands met my side and started prodding under my ribcage and I giggled, trying to hold the bag as far away from him as possible.

            “Ah!” I screamed happily, trying to weakly bat at Dean’s shoulders for my freedom. The soda and candy still in the gas station bag knocked lightly against the window as I tried to keep it away. “No fair tickling!”

            “Give me the soda!” Dean commanded, continuing the assault on my side.

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Serenity muttered in the back seat. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Winchester, you’re assaulting someone over a soda.”

            “Fine!” I squealed. “I give, I give!” My toes curled in my socks and when Dean lunged for the bag, it took me a moment to force myself to relax my fist. Reluctantly, I gave up my prized plastic bag to the older Winchester and lowered my hands to my sides. Tucked against the car door, I pulled the seat belt over to latch the buckle and glared at Dean as a last-ditch attempt to retain some of my dignity.

            “Well, Holls, next time you shouldn’t play boss in my car.” Dean advised arrogantly, getting his soda out of the bag, popping the lid of the can, and then setting in the cupholder. He tossed it over to me a moment later so I could get my Three Musketeers out before hanging the plastic over the gear shift for a trash bag when we inevitably finished our snacks and drinks. “Alright, Sam, I figure we’d hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south to hit Bisbee by midnight.” Sam made no sound to indicate that he’d heard, so in the exact same tone of voice, Dean tested if he was listening by adding, “Sam wears women’s underwear.”

            Sam looked up from his phone and gave Dean one of his famous bitch faces. “I’ve been listening,” he assured him, annoyed. “I’m just busy.”

            “Busy doin’ what?” Dean put his arm over the back of his chair and turned around.

            “Reading emails,” Sam answered casually.

            “Oh.” I stopped and pouted. “Huh. Well, I should probably do that sometime. God knows how full my inbox has gotten since we were in Wisconsin. Who are you emailing?” I asked, changing my interest and ripping open the candy wrapper.

            “My friends at Stanford,” Sam answered pleasantly, seemingly happy just at the thought of the people he’d left behind. I hadn’t heard any mention of continued communication since he’d left his college and I thought back to the image of Jess a couple of weeks ago, vanishing behind a telephone pole after saying our goodbyes to the friendly local high school girl, Charlotte, whom we’d helped.

            “You’re kidding,” Dean stated in surprise, a reaction opposite to my own in one respect; he sounded more dismayed. I was happy for Sam - if he was talking to them, then maybe he’d gotten a measure of closure over Jessica’s death, but Dean seemed upset that Sam was communicating with his Stanford friends. “You still keep in touch with your college buddies?”

            Sam looked up from his phone with his eyebrows pulled together in innocent confusion. “Why not?”

            Dean scoffed like it should have been obvious. “Well, what exactly do you tell them?” His voice suggested that this was only the first in a long list of objections he held. “You know, about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing?”

            Sam looked to the emails on his phone and then up to his brother with narrowed eyes, looking for a trick in the question. “I tell them I’m on a road trip with my big brother and a couple of family friends.” Serenity and I met each other’s eyes at the clear reference to us. I suppose it’s not too weird that Sam included us; we are helping them to find their father and get around on hunts, and we’re friends, so it’s not exactly inaccurate, but at the same time it seemed like maybe he would have kept that portion to himself. “I tell them I needed some time off after Jess.”

            “Oh.” Dean nodded and turned around, seeming okay with it now. “So you lie to them.”

            “No!” Sam denied quickly, shaking his head violently. “I just… don’t tell them everything.”

            “Yeah,” Dean agreed. “That’s called lying.” He caught a look at Sam’s crestfallen expression in one of the mirrors and backtracked, chuckling. “I mean, man, I get it - telling the truth is far worse.”

            Sam went on the offensive, glaring at the back of Dean’s neck. “So, what am I supposed to do, then? Just cut everybody out of my life?” Although it was clearly meant as a line to make Dean realize he was being silly, Dean took it seriously and shrugged his shoulders in a noncommittal agreement. “You’re serious?”

            “Look, it sucks,” Dean admitted with complete seriousness. “But in a job like this, you can’t get close to people. Period. The only people you can be close to are your family and your hunting contacts, and even then you’ve gotta keep it clean, close to the vest with most people.”

            That made me stop. I hadn’t considered it too much before - hunting was quickly becoming something that I focused all of my energy on, along with the Winchester Family Ruins, which I had mentally and tactlessly dubbed the boys’ mother and Jess’s deaths and John Winchester’s disappearing act. I didn’t really make any plans to go back to the normal crime-fighting I’d been doing, but when I thought about it, I hadn’t made a decision not to, either. At the same time, how could I just give up hunting when it was new and exciting? And yes, I’m good at my job - but there are a lot more FBI agents than there are hunters, I’m willing to bet, for two reasons: the first being that a lot of hunters are probably killed by the hunted sooner or later, and two, if hunting was a large community, then the supernatural wouldn’t be unknown to the vast majority of civilians.

            And if I can be a target for the venom of the supernatural monsters, then does that mean my friends can be linked to me? If contacting them puts them in danger… I won’t be able to tolerate myself if staying in contact with my friends puts them in harm’s way. The last thing I want is my foray into another side of the world getting anyone I care for killed. What if I’m risking just that by emailing them still?

            I started hunting to learn and to save lives, not to kill off people I love and protect. By hunting, have I already signed myself into a lifetime of living like Sam and Dean, as a huntress? Or have I just gathered enough information to begin considering the decision of which world I want to live in - the FBI’s or the hunters’?

            Sam glowered at Dean. “You’re kind of antisocial, you know that?”

            Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

            Neither of them seemed to realize that I was freaking out a bit over here, and I took a large bite of my chocolate to try to calm down and chill out. Chocolate makes almost everything better, so long as you have enough of it.

            I was nearly done with my Three Musketeers by the time that Dean decided he’d had enough of sitting around patiently. Just as he twisted the keys to put the car back into gear, Sam muttered a horrified interjection. “God…!”

            “What?” Serenity asked without pause, leaning over to try to read the emails, too.

            “In this email from this girl, Rebecca Warren-” Sam paused, looked up to Dean, and clarified, “One of those friends of mine.”

            Dean only particularly cared about the femininity of the name. “Is she hot?” He asked, looking at Sam over the shoulder of his seat. I scowled at him and punched him in the arm hard enough to get across the message of my irritation.

            Sam tactfully ignored Dean’s superficial question. “I went to school with her and her brother, Zack. She says Zack’s been charged with murder.” I leaned my head back against the headrest, already able to tell what was going to happen - we’d go say hi to Rebecca and Zack. “He’s been arrested for killing his girlfriend. Rebecca says he didn’t do it, but it sounds like the cops have a pretty good case.”

            “Dude,” Dean said after a stunned second. “What kind of people have you been hanging out with?”

            Sam shook his head in disagreement. “No, man, I know Zack. He’s no killer.” His voice was forlorn and sad, longing to go back and help and upset that his friends had to be going through this.

            “Well…” Dean only paused for a minute before he gave up his filter and finished, “Maybe you know Zack as well as he knows you.”

            Sam looked up from his phone and fixed Dean with his bitch stare, but Dean wasn’t looking and he didn’t see. “They’re in St. Louis,” Sam said, clipped and final. “We’re going.”

            Dean laughed, taking it as a joke. “Look, I’m sorry ‘bout your buddy, okay? But this does not sound like our kind of problem.”

            Serenity reached up from her seat behind Dean and flicked one of his ears audibly. Dean scowled and leaned forward, raising a hand to cup his ear protectively while Serenity glared fire at him. “Sam’s friends, Sam’s problem, our problem,” she stated definitively, daring him to defy her ruling.

            “St. Louis is four hundred miles behind us!” Dean protested, leaning forward so that Serenity couldn’t pull the same trick again.

            “And at what point does friendship and loyalty mean nothing?” I asked, frowning at Dean softly in disapproval, thinking that maybe if Sam was pulling the ‘brother’ card and Serenity was being the bad cop, then I could be the good cop and come off as sweet and innocent to gain points. I widened my eyes and looked up at him, blinking slowly and willing tears to well in my eyes.

            Dean groaned. “Ugh. Alright. We’ll stop by, check it out, and drive right through Missouri.” He glanced at me and did a double-take as I lifted my head again and rubbed away the falsified tears contently, then growled under his breath when he figured he’d been played. “I’m telling you, though, this isn’t our type of gig.”

            Despite his misgivings, Dean was smart enough to realize that he was completely outnumbered with three against one. The fact is, even if there isn’t anything we can do, they’re Sam’s friends. Dean’s closest relationships seem to be with Sam and his father, and I know he moved around too much in school to really have a best friend he wasn’t related to. Dean means well, but he doesn’t understand that sometimes when your friends are in trouble, you feel as compelled to help them as if it were Sam or his father who needed his help.

            Rebecca Warren owned a house near downtown St. Louis with two stories and white paint. There was a driveway and a small garage just big enough for some storage and a small car. The trim was a pleasant lavender. It seemed altogether welcoming and happy, except all of the curtains were drawn in a clear message to clear off and leave me be.

            I hung back behind Sam, Dean, and Serenity. I was a bit nervous as to how this reunion was going to go; going on two months since Sam left Stanford to travel to Jericho in search of their father, Sam hadn’t seen any of his college friends before today. While I was sure Rebecca wouldn’t mind seeing Sam, there was no telling how she’d react to his brother, a virtual stranger - let alone Holly Kasakabe and her sister standing on her porch, apparently the surprising and mysterious ‘family friends’ of the Winchesters. Dean was his normal self - giving the “charm smile” and ready to flirt the clothing off of anyone that he didn’t think would… ah… let’s just say he’s heard detailed threats from Serenity that, if completed, would make it extremely difficult for him to have sex any time in the near future.

            A woman who I guessed was Rebecca pulled open the white, four-panel front door at first with a hostile attitude, but it quickly morphed into delight. She sported a California tan and a modest green top, an earthy-colored beaded necklace around her throat. Her lips had a light, glossy sheen, and there was a slightly darker tone around her eyes like she’d used makeup to cover up that she’d been crying or tired recently. Her hair was very light blonde and looked naturally straight, hanging down a few inches past her shoulders and parted slightly to the left.

            “Oh my God!” She cried, pulling the door open further and then letting it swing in towards her wall, stepping out over the foyer to wrap her arms around Sam’s neck. “Sam!”

            Sam laughed - a genuine, cheerful laugh, and raised one arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and the other hand rose to ruffle her hair lightly. “Well, if it isn’t little Becky!”

            “You know what you can do with that ‘little Becky’ crap,” Rebecca said, shoving him away with her hands playfully.

            Sam’s smile faded slightly but his eyes were still sparkling happily at seeing his friend. I hadn’t stopped to think about how he must feel through all of this; Dean had few emotional connections to people and Serenity and I are closest to each other, but Sam had been at college for years before being dragged away from a completely different life compared to the one we were leading now. First he lost Jess, and now it’s like he’s lost everyone he knew at Stanford; this is more than meeting up with a friend for him. It’s reuniting with another side of himself.

            “I got your email.”

            Rebecca seemed to immediately sober as her smile faded, too. “I didn’t think that you would come here,” she admitted, reaching up to push her hair out of her face and back behind her shoulders.

            Dean had had enough of being ignored and he stepped forward closer to Sam, holding out his hand to Rebecca. “Dean. Older brother.”

            “Hi,” Rebecca said politely, not quite charmed yet.

            “Hi.”

            “I’m Serenity, and this is -” Serenity looked behind to me as she tried to introduce us, but when she saw I was partially hiding behind Sam and Dean, she scowled and fisted the collar of my shirt, dragging me forwards with force. “This is my sister, Holly Kasakabe,” she finished now that I was in view.

            Rebecca went straight to looking surprised and Sam looked first at the two of us and then back at her. “Oh, yeah. Serenity and Holly are those family friends I mentioned,” he said, waving at the two of us and offering Rebecca another cute trust me, I’m adorable smile.

            “Holly and Serenity… Kasakabe.” Rebecca looked between the two of us uncertainly, saying our last name more like a question than a statement. I don’t quite blame her - you can hear about well-known people but you’d be surprised when they show up on your porch. Serenity and I aren’t famous in the same sense as performing artists, but I’m on the news frequently enough for her to know who I am. Most children don’t recognize me, but I’m still a big name in the FBI. Serenity isn’t as well known - maybe in shadow societies or criminal syndicates, but not to the general public. She’s a badass mafia boss to the gun-toting minorities, but to most civilians she’s just my snarky but well-meaning sister.

            I offered her an unsure, slightly shaky smile. “Don’t worry, Miss Warren. I’m not working against your brother, I’m just here because a friend of Sam’s is a friend of ours.”

            It was only when it was out of my mouth that I realized how cliché that sounded, but Rebecca didn’t seem to mind. Visibly set at ease, she stepped further out onto the porch and held out her hand for a greeting handshake. “Rebecca, please. It’s a pleasure to meet you - all of you.”

            “We’re here to help,” Sam vowed earnestly. “Whatever we can do.”

            Rebecca looked around and held out a hand towards the open doorway, leading into the front hall. “Come in, please.”

            I waited until Sam, Serenity, and Dean were in the house before I followed, and I made sure to shut the door quietly behind me. Rebecca had a tall floor lamp turned on in the living room, which was down the hall a few yards and had a door attaching it to the kitchen, that provided sufficient light, but Rebecca hit a light switch anyway, flooding the interior of the main space with light that seemed yellow due to the light marigold paint.

            The bedrooms must have been upstairs because it seemed like the first floor was mostly just entry hall, wide living area, fairly-sized kitchen, bathroom, and pantry. The kitchen had an island in the middle and a coffee pot on the visible left side of the sink, a wide fridge with a college class picture pinned on the front with a magnet. The living room had an oval-shaped rug of green, red, orange, yellow, and brown muted colors, a sofa in the middle and facing one wall, an armchair on either side, a coffee table in the middle of the arrangement, and a television set on top of a three-foot-high stand on the opposite wall. Behind the couch, there was a billiards table that was a little bit dusty, pool sticks resting on top of the green felt. There was a window on either half of the far wall.

            “Nice place,” Dean commented.

            Rebecca shrugged modestly. “It’s my parents’. I was just crashing here for the long weekend when everything happened. I decided to take the semester off.” She took a deep breath and nodded like she was steeling her own resolve. “I’m gonna stay until Zack’s free.” And since there was no guarantee that that was going to happen, she was risking her college standing by doing so.

            “Where are your parents?” I asked, fixing my hands in front of me and interlocking my fingers. “Do they know what’s going on?”

            “Of course,” Rebecca nodded matter-of-factly. “They live in Paris for half the year, so they’re on their way home now for the trial.” She stepped backwards, her heels passing over the line of change between carpet and tile into the kitchen. “Do you guys want a beer or anything?” She offered.

            Dean broke out into a grin. “Hey-”

            Sam interrupted Dean and, right on cue, Serenity elbowed Dean in the ribs, the motion hidden from Rebecca by the angle of the wall. “No, thanks,” Sam corrected Dean with his empathetic puppy dog expression. “So, tell us what happened.”

            Rebecca paused where she was and rested one of her hands flat on the wall just inside of the kitchen. “Well, um, Zack came home, and he found Emily tied to a chair.” Rebecca looked away from Sam and the rest of us. She must have been very upset - I assume she knew Emily, if she was the sister of Emily’s boyfriend. So not only is her brother being charged for assault and homicide, but also, her friend was beaten and murdered. “And she was beaten up and bloody, and she wasn’t breathing.” She blinked and the light over her head reflected on the tears beginning to fall. I flinched back in discomfort.

            She must have been told the story secondhand, but clearly she had quite a vivid imagination, otherwise she probably wouldn’t appear to be quite so traumatized by it.

            “So…” Rebecca stopped, swallowed hard, and tipped her head to the side, blinking rapidly. “He called nine-one-one, and the police - they showed up, and they arrested him!” Well, yeah, of course, I thought to myself in confusion. His girlfriend, his house, and he was the only non-victim at the scene. It was pretty cut-and-dry, however tragic. “But, the thing is, the only way that Zack could have killed Emily is if he was in two places at the same time!”

            Now, that exclamation actually made my train of thought come to a screeching halt. Yes, hysteria and tragedy combine badly, but was it actually possible that she was telling the truth? If she had anything time stamped, or any proof - maybe some monster had, I don’t know, attacked Emily?

            Oh, or before I get ahead of myself - A: Zack actually did kill his girlfriend or B: Someone broke in, beat and killed Emily Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is, and Zack took the fall because he was an easy arrest.

            “The police,” Rebecca continued, hiccupping slightly as she worked herself up into an emotional fervor. “They have a video. It’s from the security tape across the street, and it shows Zack coming home at ten thirty. Now, Emily was killed just after that, but I swear he was here with me - having a few beers - until at least after midnight!”

            “You know…” Sam started, shuffling his feet and gaining his confidence all into one place. “Maybe we could see the crime scene?” He suggested hopefully and kindly at the same time. “Zack’s house.”

            “We could?” Serenity stated as an inquiry, looking at Sam in wary surprise; like she knew he was up to something but she wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

            I just looked straight ahead at the wall and felt my jaw go slack. This doesn’t bode well for me.

            “Why?” Rebecca asked, her breath slightly huffy since she didn’t think that seeing the crime scene could benefit any of us. “What could you do?”

            “Well, me, not much,” Sam admitted, laughing in good nature. “But Holly here - she’s FBI. She outranks even the local cops.”

            Rebecca looked back to me in a sort of new light - like she’d considered me an adversary against her and her family, and then as a guest, but not as a potential ally. There was hope brightening her eyes now. It was a sort of unspoken question - if she asked aloud it was presumptuous and awkward, but it wasn’t a possibility she could just ignore. And damn, either Sam is one manipulative little bastard or he didn’t think how this would make me feel - because I don’t want to get involved in this for so many reasons, only a couple of which being that I’m on sabbatical and that it draws attention to the people I’m trying to legally protect. Yet on the other hand, if I deny the help then not only do I make Rebecca feel worse than she already did, but I also make Sam look bad for suggesting it, and then I feel guilty for that, too.

            I am so screwed.

            So instead I just plastered on a smile. “Yep! They can tell themselves they call the shots, but I get the veto.” Internally I repeated a mantra of how I am so going to make Sam regret putting me in this position, because this is not what friends do to each other.

            But then again, who said we were friends? This is exactly the reason why we all started working in conjuction in the first place; so that Sam and Dean could reap the benefits of a contact in the FBI. That’s what they planned on doing and that’s what they’re doing now, and it was never a secret to Serenity and I. Maybe I was reading too far into things and we weren’t all friends, just in a mutually-beneficial relationship where we lived together for weeks on end.

            “You guys…” Rebecca paused and her lips pulled down in agonized indecision. “It’s so nice to offer-” I never offered anything, Sam just implied that I would help- “-but I just - I don’t know.”

            “Bec, look.” Sam tried again, his voice soft yet firm at the same time as he tried to sensitively drive his point across to his friend. “I know Zack didn’t do this. Now, we have to find a way to prove that he’s innocent.”

            Sam successfully melted Rebecca’s qualms. She pushed herself away from the wall and, sniffing, she rubbed her at her eyes with the heels of her palms to pull herself together. “Okay,” she decided. “I’m gonna go get the keys.” She pushed herself away from the threshold and down the hall back towards the door - she probably kept the keys on one of the coat hooks or something - leaving the four of us to hang out awkwardly in the living room.

            “Oh, yeah, man,” Dean sniped in a sarcastic whisper at Sam’s taller figure once Rebecca was out of earshot. “You’re a real straight shooter with your friends.”

            “Dude!” Serenity held out her arms in offense, baffled by the turn of events. “What was that for? I get you want to help, but you pretty much forced Holly into this one!”

            “Yeah, what was that about?” I agreed, crossing my arms defensively. Really, I was more upset by Sam’s lack of consideration than I was angry at having to help Rebecca - if Sam wanted to see the crime scene, all he really had to do was ask me to my face and I would have probably gotten him in. It’s not like I have anything against helping him out. But asking me in that context was completely passive-aggressive. I believe he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but there’s no way a guy as smart as Sam doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

            “Look, Zack and Becky need our help,” Sam said, giving me pleading eyes. “I just want to help them out. I know Zack wouldn’t do this. He used to go on about Emily all the time. No way he kills her. And two places at once? We’ve looked into less!”

            “So he has a conflicting alibi. Supported by his sister,” I hissed fiercely. “Of course Rebecca’s supporting him, Sammy, they’re family, they love each other. We made a deal in California - you want something from me as an agent, if it’s within reason, I do it for you in turn for being taught how to hunt. You don’t manipulate me in the off chance that I might disagree with you!” I hissed, finding it hard to keep my voice down low so Rebecca, only separated from us by the barricade of walls, wouldn’t hear the ensuing argument. She was grief-stricken; the situation wasn’t her fault.

            “That wasn’t a smooth move, Sam,” Serenity agreed, glaring. “We’re not pawns. You don’t get to decide how we act and we can tell when we’re being pushed around. You want us around for your uses? Fine, but at least be man enough to tell us to our faces.”

            Sam gave Rebecca all of his sympathies outside of Zack’s house once again. Zach’s place wasn’t unlike his sister’s, except the trim was a light green and the paint was a few shades different in the cream color. Most of the curtains actually weren’t pulled shut, but there was yellow crime scene tape wound around the columns of the front porch, blocking off the top of the short stairs. The door was shut firmly and no police cars were around, but evidently the CSI unit was still pending results.

            “Bec, you wanna wait outside?” Sam offered. I just shot a glare at the back of Sam’s neck. I had already been roped into this, but I didn’t have to be happy about it. I stepped up the front stairs and pulled up on the CSI tape. The sides of the banner wound around the columns slid up a bit but mostly it just pulled at the center and I still had to duck to get under.

            “No,” Rebecca refused, but she was giving Sam grateful eyes in return for the consideration. “I wanna help.” Her last word was almost completely drowned out by the dog next door to Zack, chained up by a doghouse outside in the back - I don’t know what breed it was. I couldn’t see it very well but the color and size made me think either a Rottweiler or a Beauceron.

            Help us how? I thought snidely, but knew better than to take out my frustration with Sam by saying it aloud to Rebecca. I wish Serenity was here, but she and Dean had thought to go get a hotel room since it seemed as though we’d be staying for at least overnight, and we agreed to meet at Rebecca’s afterward. I twisted the door handle, not completely surprised to find it unlocked, and pushed it in gently. It gave in without so much as a creak and I hit the light switch just inside. Without waiting for Rebecca, I crossed over the front foyer and held the door still, running my fingers along the edge to feel for any chipping or damage.

            “There was no sign of a break-in,” Rebecca told me, trying to be helpful. Sam, unlike me, was so tall that he actually had an easier time stepping over the crime scene tape rather than under it - when Rebecca tried to do the same, she ended up hopping a bit to stay upright once on the other side. “They say that Emily let her attacker in.”

            “Makes sense,” I pointed out, giving up on the door and walking further in towards the living room. This room was more obviously marked; crime tape was tied along short markers to point out specific blood stains and positions for the serologists and cops on the case to try to put together what had happened with the best accuracy. I tipped my head to the side and stared at the red on the tan rug, letting myself slip into that mind frame.

            Most of the blood was just off of the center of the room - far enough to the right and close enough to the fireplace that no one would have been able to see in from the sidewalk outside. That was probably where the victim had been tied up to the chair and beaten. Most of the blood was over there, but there was a faint stain on the other side of the room that didn’t seem like it had come from direct bleeding - transfer from something else, maybe - clothes or a weapon?

            “But the lawyers can’t even refute that,” Rebecca worried. “They’re already talking about a plea bargain.”

            I glanced back behind me and my eyes landed on Sam. “Keep calm, Rebecca,” I cautioned. “Plea bargain’s bad but it could be worse and the police have got a point. If Zack wasn’t responsible for the murder, then someone else was.” I emphasized the ‘if’ in the statement, locking eyes on Sam. His jaw stiffened rebelliously but he didn’t comment on it; he knew he’d already pushed boundaries with me and honestly, I wasn’t sure how he’d make up for that. “Now you might think something is irrelevant, but even the most seemingly unrelated thing could be important. Do you know anyone who would have it out for Zack or Emily? Either someone in a public service or someone they socialized with?”

            Those were the only reasons I could think of for Emily letting someone who might kill her into her home.

            “No, people loved Emily, she was always so sweet to everyone.” Rebecca pushed her hair away from her face and back behind her shoulder, sniffing slightly, but looking like she was seriously considering the question. “I mean, not in a fake way, but she was genuine. She’d offer notes if you missed a class or bake you cookies if you were sick. Zack hasn’t really had fights since he was in middle school; never provoked anyone…” her voice kind of trailed off slowly and I rolled my eyes. Three seconds before she realizes a clue.

            I was dead-on. “Um, there was something,” Rebecca recalled, holding up one hand in excitement. She carefully ticked off something on her fingers. “It was about a… a week before. Somebody broke in here, and stole some clothes - Zack’s clothes. The police, they don’t think it’s anything. I mean, we’re not that far from downtown, sometimes people get robbed.”

            The dog from next door was still barking incessantly outside; I was about ready to go outside and cut its tongue out, except there would be a lot of blood on my shirt if I went through with that.

            “They think that’s nothing?” I repeated incredulously, pulling at a handful of my hair irately. “Seriously? Someone gets their clothes robbed and a week later, someone that looks like them goes into their house and murders someone while alibis point to their suspect being somewhere else, and they think that the stolen clothes are just a funny little coincidence?!” Even without knowledge of the supernatural, the cops here should have put two and two together and at least looked further into it. “Jesus Christ, I think I need to have a talk with local P.D.,” I muttered, more to myself than to the other two. “And damn it, what the hell is wrong with that mutt?!”

            Rebecca sighed and looked out one of the windows in the kitchen to the ink-and-cinnamon-colored dog yapping its lungs out in the neighboring yard. “You know, that used to be the sweetest dog,” she reminisced.

            “What happened?” Sam asked, suddenly interested with the dog’s transition.

            Rebecca shrugged. “He just changed.”

            “Do you remember when he changed?” Sam asked hopefully, his tone bordering far too much on excitement.

            Rebecca gave him an odd look for it, but she answered anyway, giving it her best guess. “I guess around the time of the murder.”

            Sam tried to cool his attitude by making it into a simple “nod and look away like it never actually mattered” thing, but I didn’t buy into it for a second. Looking back to Rebecca, I smiled kindly. “Hey Rebecca, do you mind looking through the kitchen?” At her look of sudden confusion, I explained, “Just see if you notice any sharp instruments missing. Being able to guess whether or not the weapon came from the house could indicate whether or not the attack had been premeditated.”

            “Of course,” Rebecca nodded, her eyes lit with determination, and she turned around, storming off to the kitchen with the speed of lightning. A moment later I heard the clattering of cutlery moving in a drawer as it was opened.

            I looked back to Sam sharply. “So the neighbor’s dog got mean. Does that actually mean anything or are you thinking of becoming a dog whisperer?” I asked bitingly.

            “Animals can have a sharp sense of the paranormal,” Sam whispered back, after looking over his shoulder to be sure that we were in the clear. “Often when a supernatural entity is around, pets or even wildlife can start behaving strangely. Usually they get more hostile. Like the dog.” Sam motioned vaguely behind him through the wall towards the other yard.

            “So you think whatever killed Emily was supernatural?” I asked somewhat skeptically. Can’t a dog just have a bad day? Am I sure that something’s up, or is Sam just grasping at straws to try to preserve his memory of Zack? But Sam nodded with such sincerity that I sighed.

            “Alright, then I need to see the security tape. If there’s neighborhood watch, I can compare the video from Rebecca’s house and Zack’s, see if Zack left before Mr. Psycho got home.” I raised my voice just in time as Rebecca came back from the kitchen, shaking her head. “Anything?”

            “No, I don’t think anything’s missing. I mean, I don’t know how much of anything they have, but it doesn’t seem like anything’s out of place,” she answered confidently. I guess she thought that would be a point for Zack’s favor. To a small degree. And by small I mean… miniscule. But I needed you away, so it worked.

            “Good. Rebecca, the security footage - do your lawyers have a copy?” I asked her, putting myself back into the attitude of a normal investigator. “I could get it, but that would require taking the time to get a new disc burnt.” In reality, contacting and meeting with a lawyer would probably take longer than getting the technicians at the St. Louis Police Department to create another disc, but she didn’t know that, and the longer I could keep my name off of the official record, the happier I’d be.

            Rebecca looked down guiltily and wrung her hands. “I, ah, I’ve already got it,” she admitted, risking a glance up to me. I raised an eyebrow, pretending not to be impressed with her, but internally I was actually applauding her disregard for procedures. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of you, but I stole it off of the lawyer’s desk. I just had to see it for myself,” she hurried to try to explain.

            I just rolled my eyes in mock exasperation and dutifully muttered, “Civilians,” under my breath. “Alright. Let’s go back to your house and you can show me that. Serenity and Dean are probably waiting, anyway.”

            Sam’s trusty laptop, to the rescue again. Complete with a D.V.D. rom and wide screen, it makes a great way to watch a video, even one as boring as a neighborhood watch recording.

            Sam had it set on Rebecca’s coffee table and Serenity, Dean, Sam, and I were all crowding around it, too absorbed in watching it to notice that it was slightly awkward that Serenity was leaning over Sam’s lap sideways to see well and that I was on the floor in front of the table to make room for Dean, whose feet were planted on either side of my legs. He leaned forward over me to see the laptop and, in turn, Rebecca was leaning over the back of the couch behind him.

            “Here he comes,” I said, pleased to have finally made headway when I saw a man turn from the sidewalk and step up the front steps to Zack’s porch. I let go of the arrow button that had been controlling the fast forwarding. The video paused for a minute to readjust accordingly before it continued at a much better pace.

            A timestamp in the top right corner used military time. When a man who most certainly looked like the Zack in the picture on Rebecca’s mantel opened the door, looked around cautiously, and slipped inside the house, it was timestamped twenty-two-oh-four.

            “That’s just after ten,” Dean said out loud, doing the translation from military to twelve-hour in his head. “You said time of death was about ten thirty.”

            “Our lawyers hired some kind of video expert. He says the tape’s authentic. It wasn’t tampered with.” Rebecca started to scratch characters on the back of the couch with her fingernail and I focused back on the tape. Right before Zack (or his lookalike) disappeared inside, he looked around, happening to look right over the camera without seeming to realize it was there. As the camera lens caught his eyes directly, they seemed to change like a shutter sliding down over the irises and turning them silver before he looked away and went in, shutting the door behind him.

            I know Sam caught it too, because he twisted around in his seat to look up at Rebecca. “Hey, Bec, can we take those beers now?” He asked.

            “Oh, sure.” Rebecca straightened up and moved quickly around the couch, half jogging out to the kitchen.

            “Hey!” Sam called for her attention again and Rebecca poked her head back into the living room. Sam offered her a smile. “Maybe some sandwiches, too?”

            Rebecca smirked. “What do you think this is, Hooters?” She retorted, rolling her eyes and disappearing back into the kitchen - but I heard cupboards and drawers open and knew that despite the smartass rebuttal, we were going to get a free meal.

            “I wish,” Dean muttered under his breath. I felt something pick up a strand of my hair from on top of my neck. I assumed it was either the wind or Serenity - she does that sometimes. It’s what we do when we’re bored and don’t care about how we come off to other people. We’ll play with each other’s hair - braiding or fishtailing or curling - or draw or write on each other’s’ arms with a pen, or we’ll draw with our fingers on each other’s backs and have the other try to guess what was being drawn.

            “Hey, you lot saw that thing with the eyes, right?” I asked just to be sure that I wasn’t tired and seeing things. I hit the back arrow key and let it rewind at the first speed, going back to the door closing, opening, a man stepping out backwards, and him looking around again. I lifted my finger up just in time for it to start playing forwards at the moment where his eyes went through the transition to an eerie silver.

            “Well, maybe it’s just a camera flare,” Dean suggested, his voice surprisingly close behind me.

            “I’ve never seen a camera flare like that,” Serenity discredited skeptically. “I mean, it looked like his eyes turned silver - not were silver. I swear they started off brown. It was like some sort of slide came down and the color changed with it.”

            “Like a shutter,” I agreed with her. “A flare wouldn’t have an effect like that. Not from this angle, anyway.”

            Sam tipped his head to the side and bit lightly at the inside of his cheek. “You know,” he started thoughtfully. “A lot of cultures believe that a photograph can catch a glimpse of the soul.”

            “Right - like mirrors,” Serenity grumbled, crossing her arms. In the last hunt we’d had, we’d found a real life case of Bloody Mary - if anyone said the Bloody Mary chant three times, then the nearest person to have murdered someone and kept it a secret was haunted and killed by the ghost of a murdered girl named Mary Worthington from thirty-five years ago. For about two hours, Serenity had had to keep her eyes closed or risk having Mary claw her eyes out. It went without saying that she did not particularly like mirrors anymore.

            “Remember that dog next door to Zack’s?” I asked, more rhetorical than anything because I highly doubted that Sam had already let it slip his mind. “Maybe he saw this. Maybe it’s not Zack, just looks like him.”

            “Like an evil double?” Serenity hypothesized, more curious than anything at this point. “A doppelganger - looks like him, but isn’t actually him, except no one really knows that he exists so no one thinks twice about arresting the innocent version.”

            “Well, it would explain how he was two places at once,” Sam murmured.

            I pulled forward to hit the button to eject the security tape C.D., but had to stop when my hair was pulled. I grimaced and turned my head to glare at Serenity, except her hands were in her lap. I looked back further to glare at Dean, who just then realized what the problem was - he had a lock of my ginger hair in his hands, absentmindedly curling it around his fingers and then combing it out straight again. I raised my eyebrows and he dropped my hair immediately, clearing his throat and replacing his hands on his knees.

            I sighed and sunk down into my seat. It seemed that Sam wasn’t quite ready to get up and go face the demons, although it did give me some much-needed time to think, regardless of the less-than-relaxing setting.

            I leaned to my left until my forehead touched the cool glass of the small window, looking out to the darkened sky. The estimated arrival time was somewhere around nine thirty; but with the additional time it always takes to lift off from the runway, it would probably be like nine forty, nine fifty by the time we got off into the security strip, and then we’d have to book tickets to get back. It was going to be a long night, demon hunting aside.

            I had never put a lot of thought into demons and devils. It was all biblical to me, and the words were perverted into a modern slang or insult. “Angel” used to mean one of God’s warriors, designed to protect and love humanity and the Creator, but was now used carelessly as pet names and endearments. “Demons” were either fallen angels or ruined souls trapped in eternal damnations; now it’s used for a bad person, Halloween idea, and the concept of emotional baggage. Although I could have remembered a lot if I’d read the Bible, I never actually had, so I had no idea what I knew that was right and what was falsified. My knowledge came from occasionally overhearing sermons and attending religious funerals, as well as a bunch of pop-culture books and media.

            Of course, if I’d known that any of it was real, I’d have done a lot more research and tried a lot harder to understand it all. If demons were real, then didn’t it mean Hell was, too? Demons have to originate from somewhere, and there has to be somewhere for them to go when they’re exorcised. It corresponds with the demon leaving a trace of sulfur, when the churches preach of Hell being a place where the sinners burn in an eternity of brimstone and fire.

            How many times have I told someone to “go to hell” and how often have they literally done just that? No one’s a saint, but I don’t think that many people deserve to spend so long being tortured that their humanity itself twists and maims itself into that of a supernatural monster of chaos and destruction.

            A soft humming that didn’t sound mechanical caught my attention and I turned to look at Dean on my right. His fingers were turning white with how tightly he was holding onto the armrests and he looked about ready to pass out, his jaw set in stone and his eyes going back and forth between Sam, Serenity, and I.

            “Are you humming Metallica?” I asked uncertainly, turning so that I was facing him more.

            “Calms me down,” he explained shortly, not moving his lips any more than necessary.

            I smiled at him sympathetically. He acted like a vengeful woman in white, a wendigo, and a spirit out for revenge were absolutely nothing compared to an airplane ride - he must really have aerophobia. “Hey… did you know that I used to be nervous to fly, too?”

            “Obviously, it’s not much of a problem anymore,” he said brusquely in reply.

            “My father died in a plane crash.” I said softly in barely over a whisper. The admission made him stop humming and he actually turned his head to look at me with both pity and surprise. I could easily call Sam and Dean some of the closest friends Serenity and I had ever had; though I wouldn’t exactly tell them all of my deepest secrets, anyone who Google searched us could find our parents’ C.o.D.’s, so it didn’t feel like too grave of a story to tell. “It was sabotage. Never really found out who did it.”

            “I’m… I’m sorry,” he offered quietly, bowing his head in either condolence or a lack of knowledge on how to appropriately reply.

            “Don’t be.” I gave him a sad smile. “I miss him, but Serenity and I were kids when it happened. We didn’t know him all too well, if you think about it seriously, and we’ve had plenty of time to cope. I just thought it would help if you knew that I understand. Look, Dean,” I said softly, feeling like I probably owed him for the comfort he’d offered after saving Lucas Barr from Peter Sweeney’s spirit. I leaned forward and set my hand on his knee - totally safe territory, I figured. “The only chance this plane has of crashing is that demon. We just need to exorcise it, and that’s your element, okay? We’ll be fine.” I smiled supportively. “You just have to remain focused on it, is all.”

            Dean nodded jerkily and lifted one hand from the armrest, setting it over mine and squeezing. “Okay.”

            “Now…” I looked at my phone briefly, turning my hand over on his leg so it was palm-up towards Dean’s. “The plane will crash in thirty-two minutes if we don’t stop it. We have to find out who the demon is possessing, and perform the exorcism.”

            “Yeah, on a crowded plane.” Dean added in a mutter, moving to look at the two people in the seats behind us. One of them was already passed out against the window and the other had headphones in. “That’s gonna be easy.” I didn’t have to be right next to him to know that he was being sarcastic.

            “Baby steps,” I calmed, running my thumb over the back of his hand repeatedly. “Just help me learn how to do this. Is there any way to tell who it’s possessing, besides black eyes?”

            Dean looked over at Sam and Serenity. Serenity caught my eyes briefly and she nodded towards Sam. I nodded back at her to show that I’d seen and understood; she was asking Sam questions along the same line as I was asking Dean, so it was time for us to double down and get this demonic son of a bitch.

            “It’s usually gonna be somebody with some sort of weakness,” Dean replied, looking straight forward again at the back of the chair in front of him. “You know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through.” A mental weakness, not necessarily a physical one, then. “Somebody with an addiction or some sort of emotional distress.”

            I rewarded him by drawing gentle circles into his hand. “Well, this is Amanda Walker’s first flight since the crash. She’s also the person the demon wants killed.”

            Dean nodded, swallowing, and hummed in agreement, slowly calming down and relaxing from his aerophobia. I think it was helping that the flight was, thus far, smooth. As a woman with blonde hair tied back behind her head, with a red and white uniform, walked up by him, about to inquire about services, he offered her a smile. “Excuse me. Are you Amanda?”

            The attendant smiled warmly in reply and shook her head kindly. “No, I’m not.”

            “Oh…” Dean shrugged sheepishly. “My mistake.”

            “Mm-hmm,” she agreed, moving on to the people in the row ahead of us.

            I pushed myself up so I could see over the back of my seat and down the aisle. At the far end of the plane I could see a red apron on a feminine figure moving by a metal cart, but most of the view was obscured by a dark black curtain hanging from the roof, between the lavatory and the supply closet.

            “Amanda must be in the back,” I said, sitting down right again. “Why don’t you stay here - unmoving and relaxing - and I’ll go talk to her and see if she’s shaken up.” A thought occurred to me then and I tipped my head. “Hang on - what if she’s already been possessed?”

            Dean rolled his shoulders. “There’s ways to test that.” He leaned down to the backpack he’d shoved under the seat in front of him and unzipped it, muffling the sound as best as he could, and pulled out a small see-through canteen of water. He held it up and towards me. “I brought holy water.”

            I took it from him and turned it around, looking at the container for any sigil or writing. It was weird; I suppose water is made holy by an incantation or a blessing, but it still looked like normal water to me. I could probably drink it and be just fine, like drinking normal water.

            “What, so I just splash some on her, repeat “the power of Christ compels you,” and demon-be-gone?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. Somehow that seemed too easy.

            “It won’t exorcise the demon from a body, but it’ll hurt it,” Dean replied, glancing over at Serenity and Sam. Sam was staring at the canteen in my hand and Serenity was tapping on her phone. “Oh. Check your messages.”

            I got my phone from my pocket right as it vibrated with an incoming text.

From: Serenity Kasakabe

DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE START THROWING WATER AT PEOPLE.

            I looked up to see Serenity glaring at me very pointedly and I smiled meekly, looking back up to Dean. “Serenity says we can’t do that.”

            The next message I got was from Serenity as she looked down to her phone and typed faster than I thought was actually possible.

From: Serenity Kasakabe

Sam says a demon would be repulsed by the name of God. Just go around saying “God” or whatever and if someone either tries to kill you or flinches from you, then you can start forcing water down their throats.

            I rolled my eyes but held out my phone so that Dean could read the text, moving to put one hand on the armrest. Dean pulled his legs in as far as he could and I stepped over his backpack and into the aisle, making sure I was clear of the overhead bins before straightening up. I dropped the canteen in Dean’s lap before bending over to talk to Serenity and Sam.

            “Happy now?” I whispered. “I don’t get to throw water and I don’t get to tackle people because of you. Satisfied?”

            “If you tackled a demon, it would probably snap your neck,” Sam whispered back to me, completely serious.

            I blinked and sighed. “Oh. Lovely.”

            I straightened up to go talk to Amanda but Sam reached out and grabbed my sleeve. “Hey!”

            “What?” I asked wearily, hoping at least it wasn’t something depressing.

            “Say God in Latin,” Sam responded with certainty. I suppose it made sense, seeing as Latin was the root of most European-based languages. It was also an ancient language, and if demons are old enough to be in the Bible, then obviously they’re pretty ancient, too.

            “Got it.”

            “Hey!” Serenity hissed.

            “What?!” I replied with the same quiet intensity.

            “In Latin, it’s Christo,” Serenity told me with a cheeky smile.

            I scowled at her. “Ser, I know, I took that Latin class with you, remember!” When we were going through middle school education, we’d been required to take a Latin course in addition to the normal literature studies. We’d both enjoyed it but we’d never taken it further. Luckily for us, the class had gotten pretty detailed.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your first officer speaking…”

            The plane seemed a lot smoother while I was sitting down. Any time we hit a bit of turbulence or changed angles while I was standing, I could feel the gravity shift with greater focus and I stumbled once going back when the plane shifted to go up a bit higher, throwing out a hand to catch myself on the side of a chair. I mumbled an apology before I continued to the black curtain and pulled it aside.

            Amanda was still by the metal cart with the drinks. Several shelves under the top was filled with canned drinks of juice and soda surrounded by a pool of half-melted ice and the top had a few piles of napkins and plastic cups stacked on top of each other. The wheels must have been locked, because it wasn’t rolling. Amanda was humming softly under her breath, her dark strawberry-blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail behind her. The color of her hair went well with the red and white of her flight uniform.

            “Hi,” I said to introduce myself. I thought it was pretty eloquent.

            “Hi,” Amanda replied, looking up with a friendly smile. I guess you need charisma to deal with people all day. “Can I help you with something?” Her voice was the same as it was through the phone line, although it was clearer and easier to understand in person.

            I seriously considered just saying “God” in all the languages I could think of in a short litany and being done with it. Christo, God, Kami, Dio, Dieu, Bog, Dios, Gud, Gott, Dia, Hananim… But if she wasn’t possessed, I might need the assistance of an official on the flight to get the possessed human somewhere relatively isolated, so alienating the one person who had the highest chance of believing there was a demon on the plane was probably not the best thing to do.

            “Ah, not particularly,” I replied with a smile of my own. “I’m just a little uneasy on airplanes. I usually feel better if I walk around some.” It was a blatant lie and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she called me out on it, but she didn’t seem to know any better.

            “Oh, it happens to the best of us. Would you like some water?” She offered kindly.

            “Er, yeah, please.” I wondered for a moment if she even recognized me. Most people could tell who I was on sight from publicity, but then again, I wasn’t wearing my work clothes anymore, and the odds of her ever actually meeting me were slim. She wouldn’t be on the lookout for an FBI agent, anyway. Then I decided it probably didn’t matter. “I guess easy fliers are the people who work on airplanes, right?” I laughed, trying to make it into a joke.

            Amanda giggled softly at the irony. “You’d be surprised.” She picked up one of the translucent cups from the stack and dumped a scoop of ice in.

            “You’re a nervous flier, too?” I asked, feigning surprise. If someone wasn’t a nervous flier after being in an airplane crash, then there’s something wrong with them.

            “Yeah, maybe,” she admitted, handing over the water to me. “A little bit.”

            I made myself comfortable for the conversation, leaning back against the closed steel drawers of a large cabinet behind me. “Now how is it that a stewardess is scared to fly?”

            Her expression became more guarded and she looked back down to the tray. “It’s kind of a long story,” she answered vaguely.

            I waved at her with the free hand. “Right, yeah, okay. I’m sorry I asked.” Actually I wasn’t, but damn social etiquette. I lifted the cup to my lips. Cover or not, I was actually thirsty.

            “It’s okay.”

            Despite that I apologized, I didn’t stop speaking on the same line of the conversation. “Have you ever considered other employment?”

            “No,” she answered shortly. Aw, she’s getting irritated. “Look… everybody’s scared of something. I just… I’m not going to let it hold me back.”

            I tilted my head to her in acknowledgment. I hadn’t realized she would see fear as something like that. I try to overcome the things that I’m scared of, but after being assaulted or kidnapped, I liked to try to shove it away and pretend it didn’t happen. She was not only accepting it, but processing it so that she could move onwards. “That’s an admirable stance,” I praised earnestly, before adding, “Thank Christo, huh?”

            I watched her closely, but Amanda just frowned a bit in confusion. Her eyes remained green and she wasn’t bothered by it. “Sorry?”

            “Ah, Christo?” I repeated with a small smile. “It’s another word for God.”

            “Oh.” Amanda nodded in understanding and then looked back down to the tray, closing up a steel container of ice.

            I sighed in defeat. I had actually hoped Amanda would be possessed - not because she deserves it, but because it was predictable and took a lot of the hassle out of finding the demon. “Well, thanks,” I murmured, throwing the cup and the ice in a trash can and pushing the curtain aside to go back to my friends.

            When I got back I found that Dean had taken his backpack and switched to what had used to be my seat so that I didn’t have to cross over him again, but he had drawn the cover of the window down so the row was darker than it had been. I raised my eyebrows at him, but I was actually a bit proud of him for being man enough to move and be closer to the window (even if it was closed) so I didn’t tease him about it.

            I beckoned for Dean to lean over so that I could speak and be heard by all three of them in our opposite rows. “Well, it’s not Amanda. She’s definitely not going to be needing therapy any time soon.”

            “You said Christo?” Sam asked just to be sure.

            I nodded once, shrugging.

            “And?”

            I gave Sam a dirty look. I may not have fought a demon before, but I’m pretty sure I can tell when someone wants to kill me for mentioning God. “No demon in her, Sammy. No demon getting in her, probably no demon after her body to begin with.”

            “Well I should hope not. That’s a whole new level of morbid,” Serenity whispered, leaning over Sam’s legs to talk, and she added a wink so I’d know exactly what kind of joke she was making. I just rolled my eyes and subtly flipped her off, leaning back in my seat and leaving them to their own devices.

            I rested the back of my head against the headrest. For an airplane, it actually wasn’t that uncomfortable. I rocked my head to the side so that I was looking towards Dean. “If it’s on the plane, then it can be anyone, right?”

            Dean opened his mouth to reply but the plane hit a spot of turbulence. He snapped his mouth shut violently and his fingers clenched tightly onto the armrests again, his eyes widening as the gravity shifted and the angle changed. “Come on!” He snapped, raising his voice. “That can’t be normal!”

            “Hey,” I said sharply, before realizing how mean I sounded. “Dean,” I tried again, softer, and reached over to set a hand on his leg. “It’s just turbulence. It’s normal. It’s all good, man.”

            “Holls,” Dean growled, sending me a dark glower. “This plane is going to crash, okay?! So quit treating me like I’m freakin’ four!”

            This time I really did roll my eyes out of annoyance. “Dean Winchester, you cool your jets right now,” I hissed lowly, before noticing my unintentional choice of words and smiling. “Listen, I get you’re stressed, but you said yourself that a fear or mental weakness is how a demon gets to possess someone. You need to stop lashing out at me and start relaxing and helping. This plane isn’t going to crash so long as you keep your head on straight.”

            “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t!”

            Talking down people has never been my forte, but I’d be a serious bitch if I just let Dean freak himself out by stewing over his fear. “Yes, you can. Look, Dean, I need you to pull up your big-boy pants now and calm your ass down before it gets kicked by a demon with freakish strength and a penchant for homicide.” I am so very lucky that the people behind us weren’t paying attention.

            Dean grit his teeth and took several deep breaths. I patted his leg gently in praise. “There we go,” I murmured. “So once we find the demon, how do we kill it?”

            Dean lifted his hand up from its death grip on the armrest and set it over mine, squeezing it in a tight grip. I winced slightly but pretended not to notice for his benefit. “We send it back to Hell,” he corrected, his eyes flashing dangerously. Someone dislikes demons. “There’s an exorcism in Dad’s journal called the Rituale Romanum.”

            “And how does that work?” I asked, not just out of necessity, but also extremely curious. You hear things about “the power of words” all of the time, but seeing an incantation of Latin actually vanquish a demon could be just plain fascinating.

            “It’s two parts,” Dean answered, swallowing. His grip on my hand was beginning to relax. “The first is supposed to… force the demon from the victim’s body, makes it manifest itself, which… actually… makes it more powerful,” he finished, lowering his voice again in dread.

            “More powerful,” I repeated, feeling my spirits sink dramatically lower. “Yeah, and that’s… well, I suppose that makes sense. It doesn’t have to control another person anymore,” I mused. “If it doesn’t have to temper its power through human limitations, then I suppose it can actually do more damage… so tell me why that’s a good idea?”

            “Because the second part sends the son of a bitch back to Hell,” Dean answered firmly, determined.

            I smiled at him, exhilarated by the danger and the thrill. “Well, you know I’m down with that.”

            “First thing’s first: we’ve got to find it.”

            I watched Serenity carefully as she wandered back up the aisle from Amanda’s station at the very back of the airplane. She had a pair of airline-issued headphones on over her hair and it was plugged in to Dean’s former-Walkman turned-EMF meter. She held it in one hand and covered the awful state it was in with the other so no one asked questions.

            I had my own Maxell purple earphones in, the third Daughtry album (Break the Spell) playing softly on shuffle on my iPod. I kept an eye on my sister as she had gone up towards first class, then walked all the way back under the pretense of getting a drink from Amanda, and was now making her way slowly back up to Sam, Dean, and I.

            Sam had John Winchester’s journal out and was mouthing something either silently or extremely quietly; probably the exorcism incantation for practice. Dean was staring resolutely ahead, back to humming his classic rock songs, but he still held my hand resting over his leg while the knee of his other bounced restlessly.

            Serenity finally came up to our aisle and when I looked up at her hopefully, she shook her head in the negative. She slid the headphones down from her hair and they made an incomplete circle around her neck before she unplugged it from the Walkman and handed it to me. “Nothing,” she murmured.

            I unplugged the headphones from my iPod and plugged them into the EMF meter. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust her - Serenity has more ground on this sort of thing, having been more into it when we were younger - but I wanted to hear what it sounded like. From what I’d gathered on TV, it was kind of like a constant frequency that was supposed to spike when in the presence of EMF.

            What filled my ears was actually an annoying, constant keening. It was seriously irritating.

            I shook my head in disappointment and pulled one of the ear buds from my ear. “Well, what do we do now?” I asked my sister in frustration. “I mean, unless we want to go hijack the intercom and start repeating “Christo” until we notice someone trying to claw their ears off, I think we’re out of options!”

            “Well, you’re FBI. You could totally do that,” Serenity pointed out, giving me a look that suggested she was beginning to doubt my intelligence. A door opened not far ahead by the cockpit and one of the pilots stepped out briefly, wearing a black and white uniform.

            “Yeah, and be committed. How can we comb the whole plane? If they’re looking away we won’t see black eyes.” I bent my head in reluctant defeat, unable to think of another option. “How much time do we have left?”

            “Until forty minutes in the air?” Serenity had to lean down both to keep her balance on the moving plane and to keep from hitting her head on the overhead storage compartments. She pulled her phone from her pocket, hit the button to light up the screen, and then looked up, letting air escape her lungs with a whoosh. “Less than fifteen minutes.” She looked down the aisle, sucking in her lower lip to lightly bite. “Maybe we missed someone. Hey, maybe it’s not even on the plane. It doesn’t take down every plane, they’re all scattered, so maybe it can’t go directly one after the other - maybe there’s a time slot.”

            I raised my eyebrows and looked up at her, unimpressed. “You actually believe that’s a possibility?”

            Serenity waited a moment before shrugging her shoulders as apathetically as possible. “Well, I’ll try to convince Sam if you convince Dean.”

            The continuous keen in my ears changed pitch rather suddenly, heightening to a shrill wail that then fell before spiking again. My eyes widened and I looked up, straightening and holding out the EMF carefully.

            The copilot who had left the cockpit was only a few rows in front of us, kneeling down to express something to one of the passengers who had apparently wanted to ask a question of him. I looked down to the old Walkman and then experimentally held it out into the aisle. The frequency in my ear went higher and I blinked. Nothing’s changed but the copilot.

            “What?” Serenity asked, following my eyes from the Walkman and to the copilot in alarm. “What is it?”

            The copilot didn’t seem to realize that anything was wrong. He wore that warm, charismatic smile that came along with a sociable job, and he moved with fluid ease and grace, like he was comfortable in his own body and free of pains, and if he was a demon, then that was so wrong. Sure, people are made individual by their experiences and personalities and memories, but their bodies belong to them. If an intruder was able to manipulate someone like that… I nearly shuddered, a chill going down my back. If a demon could control someone that totally, could use their bodies so easily, then how was possession much different from rape in essence? The mechanics were different but it seemed like the principles were the same: owning or using someone’s body without consent.

            “Christo,” I called softly, just loud enough for the people a few rows away to hear, as the man rose to his feet and turned his back to walk away.

            The copilot stiffened and then slowly turned around. I could swear the light nearest to him dimmed slightly. With the eerily smooth movements from a horror movie and lots of practice from the actors, the copilot’s head turned in an unnaturally far rotation to look over his shoulder directly at me, locking our eyes.

            And slowly, a foreboding grin spread across his face as I stared, taken aback by the completely solid black of his eyes. It wasn’t the same as dilated pupils; the color was too dark and too encompassing to be that. The pigmentation in his eyes was changed, becoming inky. Not even the whites of his eyes remained.

            It stared at me for several seconds, that eerie, malevolent smile making me temporarily forget to breathe. It was like by calling to it, I’d given it the information it needed to ensure its success, because it certainly wasn’t afraid; just happy, if anything. I’d basically told it, I’m a hunter that knows you’re a demon. Come screw over my plans and kill me.

            The copilot turned away suddenly, blinking his eyes back to the normal colors, and strolled back towards the cockpit, opening the door and sliding in the narrow gap with easy coordination.

            I didn’t realize how dry my fear had made my throat until I tried to speak again. “Son of a bitch.”

            “It’s the copilot.” Serenity stated, having seen the unnerving eyes. I nodded slowly, dumbstruck, before she quite accurately summed up the situation. “We’re fucking screwed.”

            “She is not going to believe this,” Sam sighed under his breath, just barely audible to the other three of us. Let me just say; four people trying their hardest to get to the back of the plane while staying close enough to whisper? Not easy, nor fun.

            “Twelve minutes, dude,” Dean whispered back in sharp reply, the reminder both unnecessary and stressing.

            “She’s not going to have a choice,” Serenity pointed out to Sam grimly. “Someone with authority has to get it back here. It’s the most isolated place on the plane, we can’t risk innocent bystanders getting hurt. It already knows Holly’s a hunter.”

            I pushed the black curtain to the side and held it pinned against the wall, turning my body so that I was just inside the back room. Serenity and Dean slid inside with their footfalls soft on the carpet and Sam pulled the curtains out of my hands, fixing them to cover ourselves up from sight.

            “Oh, hello.” Amanda said, slightly startled, her words measured and a bit alarmed. Well, I probably disturbed her a bit earlier, and besides, it would be pretty weird if a stranger brought three other strangers to say hi - especially Sam, the over six-foot-tall giant. “Flight’s not too bumpy for you, I hope.”

            Despite the survival instincts yelling in my head to get my back against a wall, I stood my ground in front of the curtains so that no one could come in or out without my say-so. “Actually, that’s the problem. See, they’re not bumpy yet, but in a little over ten minutes, they will be.”

            “Oh, well that’s a nice, tactful way to start things off,” Serenity mocked, shooting me a glare. “Why don’t you just hold a gun up to terrify her some more?”

            Amanda fidgeted and pushed the cart firmly into place against one side of the back cabin. “Look, what do you want?” She asked, antsy and put on edge. Yeah, Serenity had a point.

            Dean rolled his eyes and backed up against the door to the lavatory as the plane tilted slightly to the left, changing its direction. His hands clenched into fists. “Alright, Amanda, this is gonna sound nuts, but we just don’t have time for the whole, “the truth is out there” speech right now,” he started, sounding like he was about to start bumbling about things without good explanations.

            “We know you were on flight twenty-four eighty-five,” Sam deadpanned quite effectively.

            Amanda’s weary smile slipped off of her face, replaced with a look of anxiety and apprehension. This was just really not going well for us. “Who are you guys?”

            I sighed impatiently and dug around in my pocket before getting out my credentials. I held out my badge so that she could see it. “Holly Kasakabe, FBI. That’s my sister, Serenity, and these guys are our coworkers. Call us insane but we’re here to help, so don’t scream and don’t run.”

            “We have duct tape,” Serenity added in completely serious warning. “Don’t make us have to use it.” I know Sam only packed it up in anticipation of binding something supernatural, but I highly doubt Serenity, and her absurd love of strong and multicolored duct tape, would particularly mind an excuse to use it.

            “We’ve spoken to some of the other survivors,” Sam asserted carefully, standing closer to Amanda and holding up his hands to show he meant no harm. The only thing he held was the book and unless he planned to slam it down on her, he was unarmed. “We know something brought down that plane, and it wasn’t a mechanical failure.”

            “We need your help because we need to stop it from happening again. Here. Now.” Dean stared at Amanda with increasing intensity, trying to will her with his locked gaze to believe he was speaking truth.

            Amanda ducked her head, a long strand of dark strawberry blonde hair falling forwards and making a shadow across her cheek. “I’m sorry, I - I’m very busy,” she stammered uncomfortably, looking between myself and Sam, probably trying to gauge how she could get out of here. “I have to go back-”

            Dean held up his hands but he took a step to the side so that there was no way she could go anywhere. My morals conflicted for a moment with the situation but I brushed them away. The ends justified the means. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. We’re not gonna hurt you, okay?” Dean nodded, trying to get her to agree. “But listen to me. That, uh… the pilot in twenty-four eighty-five, Chuck Lambert? He’s dead.”

            Amanda gasped, one hand moving up to her chest in shock. “Wait - what? Chuck is dead?”

            “He died. In a plane crash,” Serenity bluntly explained, fixing Amanda with a stern glare. “Two plane crashes in as many weeks, and one on the first flight of an original survivor? Tell me that’s not one hell of a coincidence.”

            “I-” Amanda started, eyes wide and doe-like in nerves and uncertainty, but she was cut off.

            “There was something wrong with twenty-four eighty-five. Now maybe you sensed it, or maybe you didn’t, but there’s something wrong with this flight, too.” Sam motioned out towards the long aisle of over a hundred people. “If you don’t cooperate, then all of those people will die.”

            “We’re not saying you have to believe us.” I rolled my eyes at her still shell-shocked expression. “I’m pretty sure you won’t if we explain, anyway, but we are the only people here who can save the lives of everyone on this airplane, so either you trust us for five minutes or you write up your will.”

            Amanda swallowed, still looking down, unable to look up and meet our eyes. “On… on twenty-four eighty-five.” She stopped and shook her head, like she was knocking herself out of a memory. “There was this man. He… he had these eyes…” she lifted one hand like she was motioning to her face in clarification.

            “Yes!” Sam exclaimed, breathy in relief. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about.”

            Amanda shut her eyes tightly and when she opened them again, her hands were fists at her sides. “I don’t understand. What are you asking me to do?” It wasn’t a “whatever you say” but I would take what I could get. It meant, at the very least, that she was willing to listen.

            “The copilot,” I stated, looking over the four of my accomplices. We were literally partners in crime now, after the fraudulent identities Serenity and I had supported. “We need you to bring him back here, no one else, and don’t tell him we’re here.”

            “Why?” Amanda asked with a brief spark of fire in her eyes, like she was protecting someone she considered a friend. I had the feeling that if the circumstances were different, I’d like her a lot more than I currently do, but I’m feeling kinda apathetic to anyone who isn’t a Winchester or Kasakabe at the moment. “What does he have to do with anything?”

            “Ten minutes, over a hundred people dead,” Serenity snapped, losing her patience. “What about that don’t you get? We just need to talk to him, capisc?” It wasn’t a lie; I imagined the exorcism would be incredibly painful (for the demon, anyway) but it really was just an incantation.

            Amanda’s shaky voice sounded oddly like she was trying to push her fear away, trying to make excuses to get herself out of this undesirable situation. “How am I supposed to go in the cockpit and get the copilot-”

            “Do whatever it takes,” Sam interrupted, giving her the expression with the big eyes and sad face that was hard to say no to, as if the pressure of our words wasn’t enough. “Tell him there’s something broken back here. Whatever will get him out of that cockpit, where he can’t touch the controls, more importantly, to us.”

            Amanda canted her head to the side, fixing her fiery eyes on Sam. “Do you know that I could lose my job if you-”

            “Okay? Well, you’re gonna lose a lot more than that if you don’t help us out!” Dean barked out the interruption tensely, staring down the shorter flight attendant.

            Amanda hesitated, recoiling at Dean’s tone, but she dipped her head once in acquiescence. “Okay,” she murmured, sounding remorseful, like she knew that she’d regret it later. Dean took the okay as the sign to move and I stepped away from the curtain. Sam backed up, giving Amanda a clear route to the aisle, and after sending another glance at me, she stepped through, the curtains swishing in her wake.

            As soon as she was gone, the boys snapped into action. Serenity reached up into a hidden pocket inside her jacket and pulled out a roll of wide grey duct tape and Sam got the holy water from where it was stuffed inside his loose jacket. Dean caught their dad’s journal when Sam tossed it over and with expert skill, like he’s been practicing, Dean flipped it open and then only had to turn a few pages before he found the right one.

            “If for some reason we have to switch who’s doing the exorcism, we’re doing the one with two verses,” Dean said, speaking quietly but authoritatively, assuming the role as the eldest hunter. I leaned to the side to see through the gap between the curtains and the wall. Amanda was on her way back, the copilot taller and looking over her shoulder curiously. I pulled back before he saw me.

            His voice grew louder as they drew closer and Amanda must have moved so that he stepped through the curtains and into the back cabin first. “Yeah, what’s the problem?” I heard his voice ask as a light-skinned hand pulled the curtains to one side to step through.

            I whirled around in nearly one hundred eighty degrees, clocking him hard in the face. His head snapped to the side, taken by surprise at the attack, and I grabbed him by the collar of the jacket the poor bastard being possessed wore and dragged him in while he was still stunned.

            The curtains closed behind him, blocking us off to everyone else, and Sam dove at the demon, grappling to uncork the canteen of holy water. He splashed a big slosh over the copilot’s chest and I really didn’t expect it to work as well as it did; the clothes burned through to skin that turned red and angry, like the water was actually a volatile acid. I clamped my hand firmly over the demon’s mouth and grit my teeth when he bit down, trying to make me let go. The teeth weren’t sharp enough to break skin before Serenity kicked his legs out from under him and I let go in time for him to go sprawling on the ground.

            Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and rolled him onto his back, and Serenity jerked a long strip of duct tape from the roll, falling to her knees and slapping it over his mouth before he could scream. His chest sizzled as Sam splashed more holy water onto it to debilitate it, and the skin underneath was so damaged by the blessing that it turned white and welling blood started to cauterize.

            Dean crashed down on top of the demon and wrested the holy water from Sam, who took the book in exchange. Dean grabbed the demon by the collar and forced it against the dark blue floor, holding the plastic bottle up threateningly while the demon writhed underneath him, screams and protests muffled by the duct tape over his mouth.

            Amanda let out a small whimper when she stepped through only to see that we’d beaten up her copilot. “Wait - what are you doing?! You said you were just gonna talk to him! I-”

            “We are going to talk to him,” I responded grimly. “Sam, any time now.”

            Dean squeezed the canteen, another small spray of water raining down onto the demon’s chest. It sizzled through the clothes and as the burns turned to a charcoal color, white steam rose up in plumes from the skin. I sincerely regretted doing something so awful to a living human being, but wasn’t it better to be hurt than to be a prisoner in your own body?

            “Oh my God,” Amanda cried, raising her hands to dig her fingers into her hair. “What’s wrong with him?”

            I spun around to her and pressed a hand not entirely gently against her back, trying to push her back into the aisle. “We need you outside,” I said firmly. “And calm. Stay calm.”

            Amanda didn’t get the hint and her feet remained planted. She stared in horror as the copilot struggled under Dean, who rewarded it with another stream of holy water, and the muffled, agonized screams increased a bit in volume. “I don’t understand - I don’t know -”

            “Don’t let anybody in,” I instructed, pushing her back with more force, tugging open the side of the curtains. “Can you do that? Amanda!”

            Amanda’s lower lip trembled as she tried hard not to tear up. “Okay…” she murmured, more to herself than to me, turning and allowing herself to be pushed back out into the aisle. The curtains swung closed behind her, granting us more privacy and more room.

            “Hurry up, Sam,” Dean grunted, splashing the water on the demon again. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold him.”

            Sam’s tongue darted out to wet his lips and he swallowed, nodding to himself, and began to read off of the page in his father’s book. He spoke clearly, with good enunciation on the Latin, and made sure to be loud enough for the demon to hear even through the sounds of his struggling.

            “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas-” the Latin died on Sam’s lips when the demon broke free.

            One of the flailing arms finally struggled loose from under Dean’s knee and with a well-aimed hit, it smacked the holy water out of Dean’s hands to clatter on the floor on the opposite side of the cabin. It reached out and grabbed Sam, who hadn’t been expecting it, and then shoved him away and into the wall. Sam hit his head and cried out, grimacing, and I wondered how no one had heard yet.

            Serenity jumped over the demon’s legs while Dean struggled to keep his knees on either side of its’ stomach. I grabbed the demon’s free arm and tried to pin it down, but it was incredibly strong. I pressed the wrist with the palm facing up on the floor and then brought my knee down on his hand, forcing my weight onto it. I could feel him struggling beneath me still and without the holy water’s effects, I had no doubt that he could have picked me up and thrown me easily.

            Serenity prized the book from Sam’s hand and held it up until she saw the right incantation again, picking up where Sam left off.

            “Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis le-”

            The demon’s writhing grew stronger without the subduement of the holy water and with a particularly violent thrash, it unseated Dean. The hunter lost his balance and wobbled on one knee, and the demon freed its other arm. It reached up to rip the duct tape away from its mouth as Sam crawled forward, dazed but still going, in an effort to help.

            The demon threw the hand under me up and uprooted me, as well, sending me crashing onto the ground, and one of its legs hit Serenity in the shins. She cursed loudly, dropping the book and throwing herself onto its legs so it couldn’t get up and walk. “Sam!” She shouted.

            Sam glanced at the journal but before he could move for it, the demon snapped its arm up and caught him by the front of his shirt, wrapping its fingers tightly around Sam’s clothes. Its eyes were completely black, like ink had been spilled over them, and it smiled maliciously, spitting up at the hunter that was forced to lean over or risk being choked.

            “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” It taunted Sam. The voice gave me shivers and I groaned as I sat up, my shoulder protesting. Fuck. I was lucky I hadn’t dislocated it with the way I’d landed. The voice was deep, dark, and rough, echoed by not only the man’s actual voice, but also a lower tone that must have been the actual demon. It sounded like two people were speaking at once. It didn’t sound nice.

            Sam froze, stopped trying to fight, staring at the demon in horror. Although it was a month ago now, Sam still dreamt of his girlfriend’s brutal death, so he took the distraction bait easily, staring in open-mouthed shock.

            “She must have died screaming! Even now, she burns!” The demon swore, before cackling manically at Sam’s distraught expression.

            Serenity growled and as she held down the demon’s legs, she fisted her hands as tightly as she could, her fingernails digging into his thighs certainly hard enough to leave bruises. Dean didn’t like Sam’s suffering much either, and he lunged forward, decking the demon across the face with enough force to make its head collide with the floor.

            A disturbing thought hit me then. This body was taking a lot of damage as a result of our fight with the demon. I don’t think any of it is fatal, but if something has the potential to be lethal, then does the unwilling host suffer, too?

            “Sam!” I snapped loudly. Sam snapped out of it while I grabbed the demon’s arm and forced him to let go of the younger Winchester’s shirt. Still gasping in terror, Sam lunged for the book and he carried on with the exorcism.

            “Omnis legio, et secta diabolica!” Sam declared, his chest heaving as he fought to keep breathing. He set the book down with a heavy thump on the ground and crawled up on his hands and knees, helping me to stop the demon’s ridiculously strong fighting. “I’ve got him, I got him!”

            “Yeah, I can tell by the fact that we’re still getting our asses kicked!” Serenity agreed sarcastically, followed by an impolite swear when a leg got free from her imprisonment. The demon kicked the field journal under the curtains and I heard the swish as it slid down the aisle outside the cabin.

            The demon convulsed like he was having a seizure, his eyes returning to white as they rolled back in his head. His head jerked up and down like he was choking, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. I seriously thought that the demon was killing the man, as well, before a supernatural black smoke shot out of the man’s mouth. In a ridiculously long stream, the flailing died down as the long wisps of smoke curled in the air. I turned my head to follow the insubstantial monster with my eyes and watched the tendrils of black swim into the vent on the floor near the wall, the convulsions stopping immediately thereafter as the man laid limp under the four of us.

            “That was a demon?” I breathed, staring, transfixed, at the vent where the black smog had disappeared into.

            “Forget that, I thought that getting it out of the host was supposed to be the easy part!” Serenity shouted, just as the lights flickered overhead, plunging us into a secondary darkness before lighting back up, significantly less bright than they had been before.

            “It was,” Sam answered gravely, turning around and looking fruitlessly for the book in the cabin. “Now it’s in the plane. Hurry up, we have to finish it. It’s not going to wait to bring down the plane, it’s going to now, before we can stop it!” He scrambled to his feet and I followed suit with aching limbs. Serenity clambered up to her feet. Dean got up faster than any of us.

            The plane swerved suddenly and I could feel the gravity shifting dramatically, to a point that was so extreme that none of us stayed where we were. Inertia sent me against the far wall by the emergency door while Serenity lost her footing and tripped over the unconscious copilot’s legs, flying spectacularly out of the cabin and down the aisle, landing with a strangled scream somewhere beyond my field of vision. Dean grabbed onto Amanda’s cart as the plane dipped, going into a nosedive, and Sam was thrown against the wall.

            That was when the lights decided to go out, sparking and then shutting off completely, plunging the plane into darkness aside from the small emergency light sources that were barely bright enough to see the room around me. Air pressure accumulated quickly, growing in my ears until I had a swiftly developing migraine.

            “We’re losing altitude fast!” I screamed, heart going at what must be the maximum beats per minute. My voice was just barely audible over the screams of the passengers in the long aisles.

            And with the rapid and unplanned descent came a change in gravity, came a change in the location of the book, which meant that by the time we found the book, we’d be about ten seconds from crashing in a fiery explosion. If we were lucky.

            My fingernails scratched at the plain walls for purchase and finally I grabbed onto the metal door handle of the emergency exit, planting my feet in at the newer angle to stay relatively upright while the plane shook violently, cups, ice, first aid, and snacks falling over the floor like a bad shot from Final Destination. My head felt like it was about to explode from terror and pressure.

            Say the incantation. Repeat this: ergo draco maledicte et sectio.

            It was the same voice that I’d heard when I was hallucinating from suffocation in the lake. Not having enough oxygen to fuel my lungs, I’d started thinking someone was talking to me, urging me to go up for air. But while I was absolutely terrified, there was no explanation nearly as rational for the voice this time, how I was of sound mental state aside from fear, how I could hear it as clearly as I could hear the screaming, nor the information that it gave me when I had no recollection of such.

            Do it now. Ergo draco maledicte et sectio.

            My body trembled, and not just because of the plane. I was genuinely afraid of why I was hearing the voice and what the implications were, but hey, crashing plane and no other options. It’s not like it could make things any more fatal than they already were, right?

            “Ergo draco maledicte et sectio,” I shouted out loud at the top of my lungs, because I’m pretty sure that the demon has to hear it for the exorcism to work.

            Good. The praise was short, to the point, and unoriginal. Ergo draco maledicte et legio secta diabolica.

            I repeated the phrase as I heard it, hoping distantly that I was getting it right. “Ergo draco maledicte et legio secta diabolica!”

            Ut Ecclésiam tuam secŭra tibi fácias servire libertáte, te rogámus, audi nos.

            “Ut Ecclésiam tuam secŭra tibi fácias servire libertáte, te rogámus, audi nos!”

            I shouted the last line and shut my eyes against the screaming of all of the passengers - hell, I could even make out Dean’s screaming, which was surprisingly high-pitched. The thought would have made me smirk under less deadly circumstances.

            But then the lights turned back on, the light bleeding through my eyelids. I tentatively opened my eyes against the splitting of my head as the air pressure decided to try to drive me insane. Much slower than it had changed before, the plane’s gravitational center changed again, angling back to level. I saw currents of electricity passing over the roof just in time to let go of the metal door’s handle and the lights surged before returning to the original brightness and the plane gently tilted to begin ascending again.

            I sank down onto my knees, heaving for breath, throat sore from shouting so loudly. I can’t believe that worked, I thought, both awed and stunned. Body sore and head heavy with exhaustion, I forced myself to look up, resting the back of my head against the wall at the upwards angle, and met Sam’s eyes. He gave me a brief nod through his panting, like yeah, we did it, we’re alive, great job! Now let me figure out how to not have a heart attack and I made sure Dean was alright, looking to him, too. He was out of breath, shaking terribly, and he looked ashen pale.

            I really don’t think this helped his aerophobia.

            I knew Serenity was okay, too, because through the curtains and the desperate calls of people making sure others were alright, unhurt, and indignant and frightened yells of just what the hell had happened, I heard my sister’s voice screaming loud curses, swears, and threats to a demon that was no longer present. Time for that anger management class again, sis.

            I resumed my role as an FBI agent and went up to the cockpit, lying through my teeth. We hadn’t yet passed the halfway point to wherever the hell the plane was actually supposed to be going, so in light of the unconscious copilot (I said he had tripped when the plane started crashing, hit his head, and burned his chest on falling cleaning solvents) the plane turned around to go right back to the airport from where we’d come.

            I helped Amanda to soothe over the crash for the forty minute flight back to the airport. The other attendant had hurt her ankle getting thrown around, so I got her an ice pack and set her in my seat next to Dean before going in the back to attend to the copilot as a doctor.

            There wasn’t really much that I could do. His chest had been burned really badly by the demon’s intolerance, but it didn’t seem like there would be any lasting damage done once the burns healed. In the end, he woke up about fifteen minutes before descent and I found that when he’d been taken to the floor, his shoulder had been thrown out of the joint. I took away his jacket and shirt to bind his arm in a sling from the medical supplies on board and then disinfected the burns as best as I could with rubbing alcohol before binding his chest in gauze.

            Needless to say, he wasn’t going to be on any flights anytime soon.

            Amanda helped me to get Sam, Dean, and Serenity off of the flight as soon as it landed so that we could avoid the general masses of officers. There was no sneaking out undetected, but they weren’t pulled aside for questioning. I got the copilot to an agent of the FAA while Amanda, having been one of only three other employees, was questioned by another FBI agent.

            “Sir, can you tell me what happened?” The FAA agent - Roberts or something generic like that - had his notepad out to write down the firsthand accounts.

            “I don’t know,” the copilot answered honestly, his voice riddled in confusion and a bit of pain. He looked up from his place in the wheelchair. “I was walking through the airport, and then it all goes blank. I don’t even remember getting on the plane.”

            “Agent, I’m sure you can understand that this man needs to see paramedics immediately,” I cut in, having given the officer time to ask the big questions already. “There are severe burns that need to be seen to and his shoulder needs to be reset.” I could have done it myself, but I figured that he probably didn’t have a very high pain tolerance. He didn’t seem like he’d ever been really roughed up before, with no visible injuries or scars, so I’d decided that the hospital would be good enough. And they could give him painkillers.

            “Of course, Agent Kasakabe. We’ll have him seen to.” The FAA agent dipped his head in respect and closed his notebook, tucking it back into an inside breast pocket of his jacket. “Do you know anything pertaining to the accident?”

            I shook my head, offering a mockery of an apologetic smile. “Sorry sir, I don’t. We were hit by lightning, though.” It probably wasn’t the truth. I suspected the energy surge was actually more to do with the exorcism than the weather, but I highly doubted any of the panicked passengers would speak with reasonable doubt that it wasn’t a lightning strike. “That may have had something to do with the near crash. It all straightened out quickly, though, and I’m not an airplane expert, so you really would have better luck with someone else.”

            “Yes, miss, and thank you for your time.” I took this as a dismissal and left, slinking back towards the wall of the airport. Hopefully I could get my friends out unnoticed and to the Impala.

            Amanda caught my eye, looking at me over the shoulder of a taller FBI agent. She looked frazzled and had definitely seen better days - her makeup was messed up, probably from a bit of crying, but she had made herself relatively presentable. I don’t think anyone would really blame her for looking worse for wear.

            Thank you, she mouthed silently, before looking back to the FBI agent and listening to his continued questions.

            I nodded even though she wasn’t looking anymore and slipped behind a group of EMTs, getting to the side of the wide hall, and meeting up with Serenity and the boys. Serenity looked from the FBI to the FAA groups warily, her eyes going back and forth rapidly like she expected them to charge. Her paranoia wasn’t too surprising - she’d never been very comfortable around many people in law enforcement due to her involvement in the mafia.

            “Can we leave now?” She asked impatiently.

            “Yeah. Let’s get moving. If we’re lucky we can get out of here without being noticed,” I said, holding out one hand to usher Sam into moving, but the younger Winchester stood staring at the ground, transfixed and confused. “Hey, are you alright?”

            Sam looked up and I saw his eyes were absolutely devastated. Immediately I moved forward and wrapped my arms around him, hugging him tightly. Fuck. The sad face got to me.

            “It’s about Jess, isn’t it?” Serenity asked softly, lifting her hand up to Sam’s shoulder.

            “It knew about Jessica,” Sam confirmed flatly, one hand raising up to wrap around Serenity’s shoulders and the other up to return my hug, accepting the comforts that we were offering halfheartedly. He appreciated the gesture but it wasn’t really helping him.

            Dean shook his head and looked around to make sure we weren’t being approached. “Sam, these things - they read minds, they lie. Alright?” He cleared his throat and nodded decisively, like that solved everything. “That’s all it was.”

            Sam nodded reluctantly and his arm dropped from around my back. Taking the hint, I stepped back and swept my hair out of my face. “Yeah,” he agreed dully, probably just not having the energy to disagree.

            We stood out in the heat of day the next morning outside in the parking lot behind the airport, a fair distance from the other cars parked further up. The airport wasn’t quite as popular today, which, while bad for their business, was good news to us. Jerry had wanted to meet us out here for a few final words before we ditched town to search for something else to track down.

            Serenity and I were sitting next to each other, close to the center on the hood of the Impala. I’ll say this for the beautiful car: it’s strong. I mean, for God’s sake, I crashed it into a fucking house and it withstood. Dean didn’t even blink as my sister and I turned his Baby into a makeshift couch, further testament to its durability.

            Sam stood at Serenity’s side of the car, leaning against the driver’s side door with one arm up on top of the Impala. Dean was talking to Jerry in front of the car - Serenity and I had a really good spot, because we could see and hear them both clearly.

            “Nobody knows what you guys did, but I do,” Jerry declared sincerely, stretching out one arm to clap Dean on the shoulder. Serenity and I exchanged a look, but neither of us deemed it a worthy use of our energy to point out the oxymoron. “A lot of people could have been killed.” Jerry moved past Dean and towards Serenity and I, so I pushed myself further down the hood to shake his hand. He had a confident but friendly grip. “It was a pleasure to work with you, Agent and Miss Kasakabe. Serenity, you could really make a name for yourself, the work you put into this was as admirable as your sister’s. I must say, though, that I hope we never meet under such dire circumstances again.”

            I arched one eyebrow and couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Yeah, well, no offense, but I hope I never have to work with you again. Poltergeists and now demons - you sure don’t seem to have it easy.”

            Jerry laughed in good spirits, before pointing to Sam, bringing him into the focus of the conversation. “Your dad’s gonna be real proud of you,” he declared surely.

            Sam lifted his chin to show he’d heard, but he didn’t reply in affirmation nor denial of the claim. I’m not for all happy, emotional families, but Sam’s relationship with John Winchester just seems sad. I mean, he didn’t have to be so surprised the other day that John had talked about him while on hunts, and couldn’t he believe his dad would be proud of his work? “We’ll see you around, Jerry.”

            Jerry nodded in agreement and raised his hand in a last wave, but Dean called out to him before he could take his leave. “You know, Jerry,” the older brother started.

            “Yeah?”

            “I meant to ask you… how did you get my cell phone number, anyway?” Dean asked, shoving his fists in his pockets and stepping back to lean against the side of his car. “I’ve only had it for, like, six months.”

            Jerry gave him a half-smile. “Your dad gave it to me,” he answered matter-of-factly.

            Serenity’s eyebrows threatened to disappear up into her hair and Sam leaned forward so far I thought he might be about to lose his balance. “What?” Sam choked, covering up the shocked tone with a cough right after.

            “When did you talk to him?” Dean asked, his tone upset. Jerry either missed it or didn’t think much of it. Dean sounded wounded, almost betrayed at the thought of his father skipping out on he and his brother but talking to a casual acquaintance.

            Jerry reached up to rub the back of his neck a bit nervously, detecting that this was a sensitive topic. “I mean, I didn’t exactly talk to him,” he amended carefully, “But I called his number. His voice message said to give you a call.” He explained, before giving us a final smile. “Thanks again, guys.”

            Dean looked across Serenity and I to meet Sam’s wounded stare and return it with one of his own, questioning and uncertain and, above all, hurt. Jerry’s footsteps began to slowly fade as he crossed the large lot to get back to the building.

            “This doesn’t make any sense, man!” Sam complained, shaking his head forcefully as Dean dialed their father’s number for another try. “I’ve called Dad’s number like fifty times. It’s been out of service.”

            Dean held the phone up to his ear and Serenity leaned forwards with me, watching him for any reaction. The hurt on his face turned to confusion after a moment and Sam stared expectantly. Dean slowly pulled the phone back, looked at the screen like he was checking he’d call the right number, and then put it on the speakerphone option so that Sam could hear, too.

            “... This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. He can help.” He proceeded to give the phone number that I vaguely recognized as Dean’s. As I listened, I couldn’t shake the disconcerting notion that I’d heard the voice before somewhere. I shook it away. I’d never met a John Winchester, and what were the odds of having met him previously, anyway? Nothing I’d possibly learned then would help find him now.

            Dean shut the phone with a click and Sam took a deep breath, clearly about to pour smoke from his ears at his dad’s infuriating avoidance of contact.

            Finally, Serenity ventured to break the silence. “Well, you guys realize what this means, right?”

            “Your Dad’s still alive.” I pointed out, offering them the only comfort I could really think of right now. They had every right to be upset, every right to be mad. Their father left them without a warning and after a month of no contact and no clues, they finally find out he’s back up and moving through his voicemail rather than himself.

            Sam shook his head in disgust and turned on his heel, his sneaker kicking up a small puff of dust from the ground. He yanked open the back door of the Impala and threw himself in behind the driver’s seat, shutting the door soundly as he sulked.