Chapter Text
When the crashing noises from out in the apartment jolted Jess out of a sound sleep, she lay still and silent for the few seconds it took her to contemplate her next move.
Sam wasn’t next to her, and the noises sounded like a fight. If there was an intruder in the house, Sam was in danger. Her phone was on the nightstand. Maybe she should stay in the room and call 911—but Sam was in danger right now . She needed to go to him. She’d taken self-defense lessons; she could be useful in a fight. She knew that Sam would probably want her to stay put and call the police—but she also knew there was no way in hell she was leaving him to face an attacker on his own.
Before she could get out to the place where the noises were coming from, though, they stopped. Instead, she heard the murmur of voices. One of them was Sam’s, the other she didn’t recognize. She listened closely—maybe Sam was trying to negotiate? But he didn’t sound frightened or stressed. He sounded calm. Whoever this mysterious intruder was, Jess decided, Sam definitely knew him.
A moment later, her suspicions were confirmed as the unknown voice said “if I’d called, would you have picked up?”
Jess decided this had gone on long enough and turned on a light. “Sam?” she called, announcing her presence and inquiring what-is-going-on-here at the same time. As she turned on the light, she saw a man standing next to Sam. He was wearing a leather jacket, had short hair, and might have seemed tall if her boyfriend had been any shorter. The thing she noticed first about him, though, was that he was looking at her in a way that made her uncomfortably aware of how skimpily she was dressed.
“Jess!” said Sam. “Hey! Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.” Right away, the name Dean set off all sorts of alarm bells in her brain. Sam had talked about Dean on the rare occasions he’d talked about his past— Dean , his brother. Jess didn’t know much about Sam’s life before he got to Stanford, but she knew his mom had died when he was very young and he’d been raised by his dad and his older brother—from what he’d told her one night while a bit tipsy and very sleep-deprived, more by his brother than his dad. Now that she was seeing him in person, he couldn’t be that much older than Sam—five years, max.
“Wait,” she said. “Your brother Dean?” Sam nodded.
Well, then. Her opinion of Dean was getting lower by the second, given that he was still leering at her. “Oh, I love the Smurfs,” he said, and it took Jess a moment to realize he was referencing her shirt. “You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother’s league.”
“Just let me put something on,” she said, but he called after her, and she turned around. She didn’t really know why. Maybe she was just too curious about Sam’s family to leave, given the little she knew of his past.
“Anyway,” said Dean, “I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business. But, uh, nice meeting you.”
“No,” said Sam, putting an arm around Jess. “No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.” Jess, feeling a rush of affection for Sam, leaned into the contact.
“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” said Dean, “and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Sam was silent. Jess couldn’t make out anything in his face that would tell her if that meant something beyond the obvious, but in a moment, she was fairly certain it did.
“Jess, excuse us,” said Sam. “We have to go outside.”
Jess’s insides went cold.
Jess knew something was very wrong here. It wasn’t like Sam to change his mind so quickly—when Sam got his mind set on something, changing it was almost impossible—and it certainly wasn’t like him not to trust her. Which meant his family had a secret, and it was big. And it had something to do with this... hunting trip thing. Are they serial killers? Jess wondered. Maybe “hunting” was a euphemism, and Sam had run away to college because he didn’t want to do it. It would certainly explain why Sam never talked about his past. And his minor serial killer obsession. Or maybe it was something else, something equally big. Rationally, Jess knew she was jumping to conclusions, and that the explanation for Sam’s weird behavior tonight was probably perfectly mundane. But she needed to know for sure, and there was only one way to do that.
When Sam and Dean went out the door, Jess waited for a moment, and then followed.
...
From below her on the stairwell, Jess could hear Sam’s voice.
“—poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil’s Gates in Clifton? He was missing then too. He’s always missing, and he’s always fine.”
Hang on. Poltergeist? The ghosts that threw stuff around? Was that code for something?
She kept listening.
“When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45!”
“—So we kill everything we can find—”
“The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets?”
By now, Jess had heard enough.
There were four possibilities. They were speaking in code (not likely, too elaborate), they were both delusional (not likely, if Sam was delusional Jess thought she would know about it), they were making all this up (why would they do that? They were alone, as far as they knew), or, fourth and strangest, it was true.
The Winchesters hunted, all right, but they hunted creatures . What sorts of creatures, Jess didn’t know, but not the kind people normally hunted. Creatures like poltergeists, and maybe werewolves, going by the silver bullet comment. Sam had wanted out of that life, gone to college, and sworn to never look back.
And never told her.
“Okay,” said Jess, stepping out of the shadows and looking at Sam, “I think you have some explaining to do.”
For a long moment, there was quiet.
“Dean, excuse us,” said Sam. “We have to go inside.”
...
“So, run that by me again,” said Jess. “ What’s real?”
“You know when you’re a kid, and you’re lying awake at night, and you hear a noise, and you start thinking about all the scary stories you’ve read or heard, and you think to yourself, ‘don’t worry, ‘blank’ isn’t real’? Well, fill in the blank—it’s real,” said Sam.
“And... your family hunts all that stuff?” Jess confirmed.
Sam nodded. “It’s sort of the family business. Except it doesn’t make any money, so it’s hustling pool and credit-card scams.”
“What I don’t understand is, why didn’t you tell me?”
“We have a rule, in our family. Never, ever tell outsiders our secret.”
“Doesn’t seem like you care much for your family’s rules,” said Jess. “What’s the real reason?”
Sam took a deep breath. “I was scared, okay? I was scared you’d think I was crazy and leave. I was scared I was gonna lose you.” He paused, then looked her square in the eye. “Am I gonna lose you?”
“Sam,” said Jess, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere. And, by the way? If you’d told me this, yes, I would probably have thought it was a delusion at first, but I wouldn’t have left . I love you, regardless of your grip on reality. I believe you now, and eventually I’d have believed you then, but if I hadn’t, I’d still have stayed.”
Sam laughed softly. “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“I try,” said Jess, smiling.
The smile dropped off Sam’s face. “Could you be amazing for just a little while longer?” he asked.
Jess looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—Dean’s going to go try to find Dad, and... I’m going with him. I promise, I’ll be back by Monday morning, in time for the interview, I just... have to do this.”
“Sure,” said Jess, “on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“Take me with you,” said Jess. “I want to see what your world is like—”
“That’s not my world anymore,” said Sam. “I left it behind. This is just for a few days, just until we find Dad. If you were listening to our conversation earlier, you know that our dad going missing isn’t exactly new. Shouldn’t take long to find him—and when we do, I’m going right back to my life. My real life.”
“How can you say that?” Jess asked. “You know there are monsters in the world, and you want to be a lawyer? I’m pre-med because I want to help people—and I know that’s true of you too. It’s part of why I love you. Remember that time when you were running late to class with that professor who locks the door when class starts, and you still stopped to ask some random person why she was crying and talk to her? From what I heard, it sounds like what your family does helps a lot of people. I want in on that—and the Sam Winchester I know would too.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Sam. “It’s dangerous—really dangerous. And we don’t always win. And—I just got tired of always running straight toward the ugly.”
“I repeat: you want to be a lawyer.”
“Okay, fair point,” said Sam. “But there is no way I’m dragging you into this. I want you to be safe—”
Sam broke off. Jess was about to interject that she was a grown-ass adult and could make her own decisions, thank you very much, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be necessary. Sam seemed to be considering something. After a moment, he spoke again.
“All right,” he said. “You can come with. But only for this one trip, just to show you how much you’ll hate it.”
“Sounds fair,” said Jess. “And if I don’t hate it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” said Sam.
“Works for me,” said Jess.
“Okay,” said Sam, “let’s go get Dean. He’s probably getting tired of standing around in the parking lot.”
Jess sighed slightly.
“Oh, about that,” said Sam. “I’m sorry about how he’s been acting. He’s just trying to piss me off. He’d be acting totally different if he actually wanted to sleep with you. If he’s making you uncomfortable, you can talk to him, and I think he’ll stop. I’d talk to him, but that’d just encourage him, so...”
“I’ll talk to him,” said Jess.
They went out to the car.
...
“So,” said Sam when they arrived, “what was Dad hunting?”
“Hang on,” said Dean, “what’s she doing here?”
“I’m coming along,” said Jess.
“Um, no, you’re not,” said Dean. “This isn’t some field trip. This is serious. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
“That’s what I tried to tell her,” said Sam. “She’s pretty stubborn.”
“ You’re saying that?” said Dean incredulously.
“Yeah, which should tell you you’re not getting anywhere if you try to keep her out of this,” said Sam.
“I know you guys help people,” interjected Jess. “I want to see what you do. I want to know what’s out there.”
“No, you don’t, sweetheart,” said Dean.
“Dean,” said Sam. “I actually don’t think this is the worst idea. Let her come along, satisfy her curiosity, show her it’s not something she wants to do full-time.” He paused. “Dean. Trust me.” He paused again and sighed. “Please.”
Dean looked away, then back at Sam and Jess.
“Okay,” he said. “But you have to stick close to us and do what we say. This could get rough, and you have no idea what you’re doing.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Jess nodded.
“Right, then,” said Dean, opening the trunk of the car. Inside was a truly impressive array of weapons, through which he began digging. “Where the hell did I put that thing—oh! Here we are,” he said, pulling out a folder full of papers. He turned to look at Jess. “You want in? Let’s see what you make of that.”
Jess opened the folder and started leafing through. After a moment, she spoke. “Ten disappearances along Centennial Highway outside Jericho in the past twenty years, and they’ve been getting closer together. Most recent just a month ago, September nineteenth. All men. There’s a pattern—the cars are found with no one inside. No signs of a struggle, no evidence, no leads—at least not that they’re sharing with the public.” She looked up. “Did I miss anything?”
Dean gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. It wasn’t in any way inappropriate, though, which was a nice change. “Actually, not bad,” he said. “That pretty much sums it up. Anyway, our dad went to go check it out about three weeks ago, and I hadn’t heard from him since, which would’ve been bad enough, but yesterday I got this voicemail—” Dean broke off, retrieved a tape recorder from the trunk, and pressed play. The sound was staticky, and the words kept fading in and out.
“Dean,” said the voice on the tape recorder. “Something big is starting to happen. I need to try and figure out what’s going on. It may...” The voice continued speaking, but Jess couldn’t make out the words. “Be very careful, Dean. We’re all in danger.”
“You know there’s EVP on that?” said Sam.
“Not bad, Sammy,” said Dean. “Kinda like riding a bike, isn’t it?”
“EVP?” asked Jess. “Like electronic voice phenomena?”
“Oh, great,” groaned Dean. “She watch ghost shows?”
“Not with me,” said Sam.
“My dad,” said Jess. “I used to watch with him, sometimes. I never took it seriously.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to unlearn about eighty percent of that stuff. Anyway, I slowed the message down, ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got.”
He pressed play again, and a woman’s voice spoke in an eerie whisper.
“ I can never go home. ”
“Never go home,” muttered Sam.
“All right, you two,” said Dean, “get packed up and let’s hit the road.” He looked at Sam. “And, for the record, I still think her coming along is a terrible idea.”
“Noted,” said Jess and Sam in unison.
They then went inside to pack.
...
On the ride to Jericho, Jess discovered several things.
First: she rather liked the music Sam derisively referred to as “mullet rock”. Jess hadn’t listened to much of that sort of music before her life took this particular unexpected turn. When she had announced this, Dean had immediately decided he needed to show her the best of the best, and played all his favorites for her. When she’d started nodding her head and tapping her feet in time to the music, Dean had grinned. Sam had looked less than pleased, but Jess had recognized his “I’m-pretending-to-be-annoyed-on-principle-but-really-I’m-not” face.
Second: When they said everything was real, they meant everything . Sam talked and talked, as though he was making up for an entire relationship’s worth of keeping his silence, and Dean happily filled in any gaps. Ghosts? “Can’t cross salt lines, iron makes them go away for a bit.” Vampires? “Holy water does nothing—that’s demons. Neither does a stake through the heart. You have to cut off the head. Oh, and they’re fine with sunlight—it just gives them nasty sunburns, and they mostly sleep during the day.” Werewolves? “Lore’s closer to right on that one—silver kills them. Silver bullets are most reliable.” And—hang on—you said demons are real? “Yeah. Haven’t hunted one personally, but there’s loads of lore on them. Can’t cross salt lines, holy water hurts them, and there’s a ritual that sends them back to Hell.” Then Hell is real? “Presumably.” Okay, what about zombies? “Haven’t hunted one yet, but there’s a first time for everything!” (That was Dean.)
Third: her long-suppressed wish for a sibling was resurfacing with a vengeance. As was her gratitude for being an only child. Watching the Winchesters interact evoked both feelings, sometimes separately, sometimes at the same time. Once Jess’s questions were answered, they mostly drove in silence, save the music and Dean’s off-key singing. When the Winchesters started talking, though, they fell into an easy back-and-forth rhythm, filled with references to events she hadn’t been part of, that made her feel strangely lonely. Mostly, she tried to let them catch up—they were brothers who hadn’t seen each other in two years, after all—but every now and then, she would reach out and squeeze Sam’s shoulder, and he would make an effort to include her in the conversation. Still, the three of them talking felt awkward and stilted by comparison. Jess was a bit astonished at how easily the brothers seemed to have fallen back into their rhythm, considering how the evening had gone. If Jess had had a sister who’d broken into her apartment, flirted at her boyfriend, and demanded her help to find their missing mom, Jess would not have been pleased. Which perhaps explained the other thing she was detecting. Despite the easy way they talked, there was an undercurrent of... something staining the conversation. She couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t distrust. It might have been anger, but that felt like an oversimplification. Whatever it was, Jess was glad she didn’t have to deal with it herself—even as she felt like she was perhaps missing out on something vital.
By the time they arrived, it was morning.
After making a few phone calls, Sam looked up. “All right,” he said, “there’s no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue. So that’s something, I guess.”
“Hey,” said Dean, “check it out.”
Up ahead was a bridge with police cars and officers swarming a vehicle. Jess, sitting in the backseat, leaned to the side to get a better look.
Dean, meanwhile, had pulled over and was rummaging through a box that appeared to contain an assortment of fake ID’s, for Dean and someone else Jess assumed was Sam and Dean’s father. Jess saw that some of them were FBI. Dean pulled one out and grinned up at Sam.
Jess realized she’d reached a tipping point. Either she could stay in the car and go back to her safe, ordinary life when all this was over, or she could go with them, impersonate a federal agent, risk getting caught and sent to prison for a very long time (seemed unlikely—she had a feeling these two knew what they were doing), and start actually getting her feet wet with this stuff. Where that might take her—who knew. But, Jess realized, she needed to find out.
Because her life wasn’t safe. Not really. And it never had been.
And neither was anyone else’s.
So, when Sam and Dean got out of the car, Jess did the same.
“No,” said the Winchesters at the same time.
“Look,” said Dean, “you don’t know what you’re doing, and you could get us all caught.”
“I won’t say anything unless I absolutely have to,” said Jess. “You can do the talking.”
“Besides, federal marshals work in pairs or alone. Not in threes.”
“Well, I need the experience more than either of you.”
Sam stared at her. “You don’t need experience. You’re here for one job.”
“I’m here for one job if I hate it . Don’t I need to get the full experience to know that? No fair otherwise.”
Sam sighed. “Fine. I’ll stay in the car.”
“Dude. Really?” said Dean, in an irritated tone.
“Just go,” said Sam.
As Jess walked with Dean up to the crime scene, she heard the voices of the deputies fade in.
“So, this kid Troy, he’s dating your daughter, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Amy doing?”
“She’s putting up Missing posters downtown.”
“You fellows had another one like this just last month, didn’t you?” Dean interjected.
It started out as an excellent performance. Dean brushed off the deputy’s “aren’t you a little young for federal marshals?” comment with a “thanks, that’s awfully kind of you” that seemed utterly genuine. From there, the facade slowly slipped until the very end, when he sarcastically said “that is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect out of you guys” in response to the deputies’ theories. Jess, true to her word, said nothing, but did, as subtly as she could manage, stomp on his foot.
“You were saying about blowing our cover?” she hissed once they were well out of earshot.
“People see what they’re expecting to see,” said Dean. “If you carry yourself right, act like you belong there, nobody’s going to suspect a thing no matter what you say.”
Jess glared at him.
“C’mon,” said Dean, “let’s go talk to Amy.”
Jess must have looked surprised, because Dean followed up with “yes, you too. You said it yourself—you can’t figure out if you hate it if you sit in the car the whole time. And, frankly, I hope you do hate it, because my dad is in trouble and the last thing I need while I’m trying to find him is another complication, which you are. If you don’t...” Dean sighed. “Let’s go talk to Amy.”
They arrived at the car, opened the door, and briefed Sam, whereupon it was decided that Sam and Jess would handle questioning Amy.
...
Once they had Amy and her friend settled in a diner booth—Sam had provided their cover story—Sam complimented Amy on her pentagram necklace and explained that it was protection against evil. Jess smiled a little—that was Sam, sharing knowledge whenever he had it. Some people called him a know-it-all, but he was always happy to learn something new, and he’d readily admit when someone knew more than him about something. Still, he liked being the expert—and he often was. It was one of the reasons Jess had thought he’d make such a good lawyer. Before.
“Do people... say anything about the disappearances?” Sam was asking. “Are there any theories, besides what the police are talking about? Don’t worry about how crazy they sound, just tell us.”
Amy and her friend looked at each other, and Jess knew whatever they said next was going to be important.
“Well,” said Amy’s friend, “it’s just... with all these guys going missing, people talk.”
“What do they talk about?” asked Sam.
“It’s kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like, decades ago. Well, supposedly, she’s still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? They disappear forever.”
“Thank you for your time,” said Jess.
They got up and went to get Dean.
...
The search through the online Jericho Herald archives went fairly quickly, as Sam promptly figured out that it was a suicide and not a murder (yay for smart boyfriends!) and an article popped up on the screen. “Suicide on Centennial”, read the headline. The article concerned a woman named Constance Welch, who had jumped off a bridge after her children had drowned in the bathtub.
“That’s weird,” said Jess.
“What’s weird?” said Sam.
“The article says her kids were five and six. Isn’t that a little old to drown in a bathtub?” said Jess, puzzled. “I mean, things happen, but...”
“No,” said Sam, “you might be right.” He turned to Dean. “What if this is a woman in white?”
“You think...”
“Yeah.”
“What’s a woman in white?” asked Jess.
“They’re spirits,” Sam said, “They’ve been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, Hawaii, Mexico, lately Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women, but they all share the same story. When they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them, and these women—basically suffering from temporary insanity—murdered their children. Once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives, and now their spirits are cursed, haunting back roads, waterways, and if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again.”
“It fits,” said Dean. “Disappearing men, same stretch of road...”
“So, you think Constance killed her own children?” asked Jess.
“You said it yourself,” said Sam, “they were a little old to drown in the tub on their own.”
“If we’re dealing with a woman in white,” said Dean, “Dad would’ve found the corpse and destroyed it.”
“She might have another weakness,” said Sam.
“Yeah, well, Dad would have made sure. He’d dig her up,” said Dean.
“Only one way to find out where she’s buried,” said Sam. “Talk to her husband. If he’s still alive.”
“You two handle that,” said Dean. “Jess, see if you can get an address. I’m going to go check out that bridge. Look familiar to you?”
Looking closer, Jess saw that it was the bridge where the police had found Troy’s car.
Dean left, and Jess sat down to find Joseph Welch’s address.
...
The interview with Joseph Welch went about as expected—which was to say, very uncomfortably. They got what they needed, though, which was all Jess had been hoping for.
Sam gave Mr. Welch the same spiel about women in white he’d given Jess earlier, which confirmed two things: Joseph Welch had, indeed, been unfaithful, and Sam’s earlier excuse about not telling outsiders the family secret was, indeed, utter bullshit.
“Okay, let’s go salt and burn her, if Dad hasn’t already,” said Sam once they’d left the premises, by which time it was getting dark.
“Salt and burn?” asked Jess.
“Salt is basically superpowered evil repellent, and fire is pure destruction,” said Sam. “The combination will kill an awful lot, including ghosts, when you use it on their bodies. Or sometimes ghosts get attached to an object, usually something that has their DNA on it, and then you have to burn that. But generally it’s their corpse,” said Sam.
They got in the car and started driving.
Breckenridge Road was a ways away. It was fully dark by the time they arrived.
Just then, Sam’s phone rang.
“Dean?” he said, then paused. “Okay.” He put the phone down and looked at Jess. “Dean needs us to meet him at this motel, right now. He found something important. About Dad.”
They turned around and drove to the motel Dean had mentioned.
...
When they arrived, Dean was waiting outside a room with the door shut. “Got us two rooms,” he said. “One for me, one for you two. But get this—I go to pay, and the man behind the desk says he’s seen the name on my card before. So I pick the lock and go into his room, and—you have to see this.” He opened the door, and they went in.
Jess blinked. It looked like something out of a movie. Papers blanketed the walls, covered in news articles about the missing persons, information about various creatures, and, over the article about Constance Welch, the words “Woman in White”.
“Dad figured it out,” said Sam. “By the way, the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white.”
“Good to know,” said Dean. “Given she ran me off the bridge with my own car.”
“What?” said Sam and Jess in synchrony.
“Yeah, apparently the bitch can possess cars. Would make killing people in them a lot easier, I imagine. Oh, and I don’t think Dad’s been here for a couple of days at least.”
“How do you know?” asked Sam.
Dean indicated a half-eaten burger. “You wanna smell that, be my guest.”
Jess was examining the salt lines on the floor. She looked at Sam. “You said salt is evil repellent. Is this normal... hunter behavior, or was he afraid of something?”
“Cat’s-eye shells, too,” said Dean. “Definitely trying to keep something out.”
“What sorts of things does salt keep out?” asked Jess.
“Well, ghosts and demons, mainly,” said Sam. “But ghosts tend to stick to one area... I don’t get it. Why would he be trying to keep a demon out, specifically? They’re super rare.”
“Let’s think about this later,” said Dean. “I’m starving. I’m going to get some food at that diner down the street. Who’s with me?”
“No thanks,” said Sam.
“I’ll go,” said Jess. “I’m hungry too.”
Once they got outside, Jess noticed a knot of police officers, two of whom were the deputies from earlier. One of them pointed in Jess and Dean’s direction.
Jess’s blood froze.
Dean pulled out his cell phone. “Dude,” he said. “Five-oh. Take off.” Pause. “Yeah, uh, they kinda spotted us.” He held the phone away from his ear slightly at Sam’s reaction to that. “She’ll be fine, I’ll take care of her. Go find Dad.” He turned to Jess, speaking rapid-fire. “They give you a chance to turn evidence against me, take it—make shit up. We’ll be fine. Ain’t my first rodeo.” He looked up. “Problem, officers?”
“Fake U.S. marshal, fake credit cards... you got anything that’s real?” the deputy asked.
“My boobs,” said Dean, grinning, and Jess was torn between irritation (this was serious , dammit) and grudging respect.
They were promptly slammed into the hood of a police car, cuffed, and loaded into the back.
...
When they arrived at the station, they were taken to separate rooms, which Jess had been expecting but found oddly unpleasant. Not that she couldn’t handle this on her own—she knew enough to keep her mouth shut—but having Dean there, troublesome as he was, would’ve been... nice, somehow. Maybe just because he’d been through this before. Even though he was the one who’d gotten her into this mess , she thought with annoyance.
“So,” said the officer interrogating her, “what’s your name?”
Jess shook her head and said nothing.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me,” said the officer.
Jess remained silent.
“Why were you impersonating a federal marshal?” the officer asked.
Jess said nothing.
“Okay, let’s try this,” said the officer, “what’s your partner’s name, and what was he doing impersonating a federal marshal? This will go a lot easier for you if you answer that one.”
Jess shook her head again, more vehemently this time.
They passed a few hours that way, with the officer asking questions and Jess not answering them, until another officer burst into the room. “Nine-one-one call, shots fired at Whiteford Road,” he said. The officer cuffed her to the table and left the room.
A moment later, Dean came in with a finger on his lips. I haven’t said anything all night, idiot, you think I’d start now? Jess thought but, naturally, did not say. Dean picked the lock on her handcuffs, then led her to the fire escape, which they climbed down. Dean then proceeded to steal a car, which process she watched with interest. It didn’t bother her—she trusted it would be returned to its rightful owner eventually (if not by them), and they were trying to stop more killings, after all. Jess hopped in shotgun, and they started making their way to Breckenridge Road.
When they were fairly close, they saw a phone booth and stopped. (Their phones had been taken, and they hadn’t had time to get them back.) Dean picked up the phone and dialed Sam. “Fake nine-one-one call? I don’t know, Sammy, that’s pretty illegal,” he said, grinning. There was a pause. “Dad left Jericho.” Another pause. “I’ve got his journal.”
“What’s that?” asked Jess, and Dean handed a leather-bound journal over to her for inspection. Inside, Jess found writings about all sorts of creatures, complete with drawings. She could hear the conversation continuing. Then she heard something that made her heart stop.
“Sam!” shouted Dean. “SAM!”
“What happened?” she asked, even as she already knew.
“He said ‘whoa!’ and the line just went dead,” said Dean.
“But... she can’t hurt him, can she?” said Jess. “She only kills unfaithful men.”
Dean looked at her in wonder. “You are ridiculously secure, you know that?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?” asked Jess.
“Not that I know of,” said Dean. “But I’d rather not chance it.”
“Me either,” said Jess.
“He would’ve been going to destroy the body,” said Dean. “That’s behind the house on Breckenridge Road. Going there’s our best bet.”
Jess was already in the car.
...
Jess didn’t know cars could go that fast, but she was very glad they could, because by the time they pulled up to the house, Jess could hear pained shouting.
She and Dean looked at each other.
“Sam,” they said at the same time, and Jess did not care if Sam had apparently been unfaithful (though she suspected that, later, she might), she wanted to murder whatever was making him sound like that with her bare fucking hands .
They sprinted to the Impala, and Dean opened the trunk and retrieved a shotgun. Jess, meanwhile, had a very clear view of what was happening inside the car. Sam was lying back in the reclined driver’s seat, face contorted with pain, with the ghost straddling him. The implication made Jess sick to her stomach, and that feeling was in no way reduced by the ghost’s horrific face or the fact that her hand appeared to be inside Sam’s chest.
She didn’t have to look for very long, though, because Dean promptly shot out the window. The ghost turned to him, glaring, and he kept firing through her until she disappeared.
Sam dragged himself up and started the car. “I’m taking you home,” he said, and Jess thought about the voicemail— I can never go home —and remembered what Sam had said about ghosts mostly sticking to one area, and what Joseph Welch had said about not wanting to live in the house where his children died, and was immensely proud of her boyfriend.
She only hoped what she thought was his plan worked.
As the Impala crashed through the house, Jess and Dean followed. Sam was quickly surrounded by a chorus of “Sam!” and “are you okay?”
“I think...” he said, which had Jess very worried. If Sam’s response to “are you okay?” was anything less than an instant “yes”, something was seriously wrong. She supposed, after what she’d just seen, she couldn’t blame him.
Dean had apparently picked up on the same thing, because his next question was “can you move?”
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Help me?” Jess and Dean both went to help. After an awkward moment, Dean leaned into the car and helped him get to the passenger’s side, then they each took an arm to help him up. As soon as Sam was on his feet, Dean closed the door behind him.
“Look,” said Jess. The ghost was standing by the stairs. She held her arms out, and a dresser went sliding towards them. Before they could move out of the way, all three of them were pinned between the dresser and the car.
Then the lights flickered, and Jess heard water running.
Jess saw something in the ghost’s eyes. Fear? Definitely fear. By now, Jess could see water pouring down the staircase.
“You’ve come home to us, Mommy,” said an echoing voice—or maybe two voices? Either way, it was creepy as hell.
Jess couldn’t quite make sense of what happened next. There was a lot of light, and a lot of shouting, and the ghost (and the two little ghosts) sort of... melted?
When it was over, there was a puddle on the ground and an echo in the air.
Together, the three of them pushed the dresser away and walked over to the spot where the ghosts had vanished.
“So this is where she drowned her kids,” said Jess.
Sam nodded. “That’s why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them.”
“You found her weak spot,” said Dean. “Nice work, Sammy.” He slapped Sam’s chest, and Jess winced in sympathy as Sam recoiled slightly. He was laughing, though, which made Jess feel a little better.
A little.
She listened to the brothers joking, about shooting Casper in the face and death threats if the car was messed up, and wondered how this had gotten to be their normal, and if it would ever be hers.
And if she really wanted it to be.
Jess shook her head. How many more people would that ghost have killed? The attacks had been getting closer together at an astounding rate—would it have burned itself out, or just kept killing? And even if it burned itself out, how many more victims before it did? No, this was her life now.
She just had to get her boyfriend to accept that.
She wouldn’t make Sam abandon his dream of a “safe” life. She knew how hard he’d worked to get away from the life she’d just gotten a taste of. But...
If he wanted to come with her, amazing. She’d go with the Winchesters, look for their dad, kill whatever nasties they found along the way.
If he didn’t... she’d strike out on her own. Maybe the Winchesters could point her in the direction of people who’d mentor her, or maybe she’d learn as she went along.
Either way, she had to do this.
...
Sam was sitting in the passenger’s seat with a map in his lap, locating some coordinates the Winchester brothers’ dad had apparently left for them. He found them at Blackwater Ridge, Colorado, about six hundred miles away.
“But first,” said Dean to Jess, “I gotta take you home. You are not coming with.”
“Uh... Dean...” said Sam.
“Oh. You too, huh?” said Dean.
“I gotta make the interview,” said Sam.
“Before you decide that,” said Jess, “there’s something you should know.”
“Oh, no, here we go,” muttered Dean.
“I’m going to do this,” said Jess. “With or without you, so if you want to stay out that’s okay. I don’t want to keep you from following your dreams or make you do something you don’t want to do. If you don’t want in—I’ll find my own way, that’s okay. But if you do—let’s go to Blackwater Ridge.”
Sam was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “all right. I’m in. Let’s go.”
“What?” sputtered Dean. “Sam, how are you okay with this? She knows next to nothing, and she’ll be a liability when we need to be on top of our game!”
“Dean,” said Sam. “There’s something you need to know. Stop the car, we need to go outside.”
“No,” said Jess. “If this is about me, you can say it in front of me.”
“Fine,” said Sam, “but you’re not going to like it.” He took a deep breath. “For the past couple of nights, I’ve been having dreams. Not normal dreams. Really vivid ones. About Jess dying.”
“I’m sorry, but not too worried,” said Jess. “It could be just anxiety dreams. I know you hate Halloween.”
“Did I ever tell you why?” Sam asked. “Mom died on November second. Nobody in our family was ever happy this time of year. And these dreams—they’re not normal, generic person-you-love-dies dreams. They’re very specific.” He paused and looked at Jess. “I dream about you, on the ceiling, with your stomach slashed open. And then you catch fire. And everything burns.”
The color drained out of Dean’s face, and for a moment, Jess thought he looked like a small child.
“Did I ever tell you how Mom died?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “She died in the fire that destroyed our old house. She was pinned to the ceiling. I figured the dreams could have been because of that.”
“Yeah,” said Dean. “But I’m pretty sure no one’s ever told you her stomach was slashed open.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to look terrified.
“We know psychic people exist,” said Sam. “We know some personally. And the thing that killed Mom is still out there. What if I can predict the future, and it’s coming after Jess? I don’t need to tell you what day it is.”
“November first,” said Jess. “Second by now.”
“I’ve never heard of psychic powers manifesting this late,” said Dean, “but there’s a first time for everything.” He glanced at Jess in the rearview mirror. “Jess? Did you want to come with us?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” said Dean. “Because otherwise, we would have been kidnapping you.”
“The sooner we find our dad,” said Sam, looking at Jess, “the sooner we figure out what this thing is, and the sooner you’ll be safe.” He paused and looked at Dean. “On that voicemail, Dad said, ‘something big is starting to happen’. What if this is it? What if the thing that killed Mom is back?”
“Hold your horses, there,” said Dean. “One thing at a time. Whatever wants to get at Jess is gonna have to get through both of us. For now, Dad wants us to go to Blackwater Ridge, so I for one say we go there. To Blackwater Ridge?”
“To Blackwater Ridge,” Jess and Sam chorused.