Chapter Text
“It’s good to see you, boy.”
Bobby speaks as he crosses the quiet, dusty room and gathers Sam in a relieved hug, patting the tall man’s back heartily. Sam’s expression is grim and wooden. Standing stiffly, hands at his sides, Sam makes no move to return Bobby’s embrace. The only movement visible on the large man is in his eyes and the clenching of his jaw as Bobby hesitantly releases him and steps back. Sam’s eyes track Bobby’s movements and he fixes a flat, impassive stare on the older man.
“What are we doing here, Bobby?” Sam asks.
Bobby shakes his head slightly as if he knows that the answer he has is not one Sam wants to hear.
“It’s the last place we’re sure the Trickster worked its magic.”
“So?” Sam’s brow twitches upwards impatiently but he quickly reins in his expression.
“So you want this thing?” Bobby asks as he begins to back away towards the circle he has drawn on the floor of the room behind him. “I found a summoning ritual to bring the Trickster here.” He stops next to the ornate bowl he has placed within the circle and glances back at Sam.
Sam steps slowly into the room, glancing over the gathered supplies.
“What do we need?”
“Blood,” Bobby responds after a moment’s hesitation.
Sam barely flinches, only nods slightly as he asks: “How much blood?”
Bobby gives a barely visible shrug, “Ritual says near a gallon and it’s gotta be fresh too.”
Sam’s gaze travels up from the assembled occult paraphernalia to lock with Bobby’s.
“Meaning we have to bleed a person dry.” His voice is still calm, hardly acknowledging that murder is being proposed.
“And it’s gotta be tonight,” Bobby says as he nods in resigned agreement, “or not for another fifty years.”
“Then let’s go get some,” Sam replies as he turns for the door…
* * * * * Six Months Earlier * * * * *
As the sun crept over the horizon, Sam reflected bitterly that he could find no joy in seeing Thursday’s arrival. He’d spent hundreds of Tuesdays just trying to get to Wednesday and now all he wanted was to go back. It had been approximately 15 hours since Dean had drawn his last breath on the rain-soaked pavement outside that shabby motel in Broward County, FL; it had been 12 since Sam started digging that lonely hole some 150 odd miles from that bloody patch of blacktop. There was something about seeing the new day dawn that cemented the realization that Sam wouldn’t be waking from the nightmare this time.
When the morning light had begun to paint the sky with whispers of pink and orange, Sam finally managed to tear himself away from the jury-rigged cross which he’d erected there in the Florida backwoods and headed for a hotel. Sam almost always slept in hotels when he wasn’t travelling with Dean; unlike his brother he didn’t feel a constant necessity to sleep within a few yards of the Impala and he liked the extra anonymity.
Once he was checked in, Sam showered, clothed himself and sank onto edge of the bed. He sat there for hours, almost catatonic, hardly blinking, hardly seeming to breathe as he stared blankly at the curtains over the window across from him, watching the grey dawn fade and the sun slowly creep upwards over the fabric.
He couldn’t go to Bobby for help. Sam would tell him about Dean’s death but he couldn’t get him involved in this hunt. The Trickster knew Bobby; he’d be expecting Sam to go to him. He had to assume the Trickster would know about Ellen and Jo. Bringing in any of his and Dean’s known associates would be risky.
A thought prickled the back of his mind and Sam shoved aside the grief and pain and anger, smothered them and let the tiny idea be heard. When it spoke, it said a name, a name of someone new, someone only Bobby knew about, someone no one talked about because of Dean’s alternately dismissive or annoyed reactions.
Sam’s jaw clenched with resolve and he reached for his phone. The only way back was forward.
* * * * *
The rattle of Layla’s primary cellphone vibrating noisily against the wood of the bedside stand echoed through the drab motel room. Her consciousness was dragged kicking and screaming into the light where it sat and pouted, refusing to cooperate as she fumbled blearily for the chattering contraption.
Layla Parker was holed up just outside Flagstaff. She’d come here to check out a simple haunting a couple weeks after working the vampire case with the Winchesters back in Ohio. Descriptions she’d gathered had made it sound like a poltergeist just ramping up, flashing lights and throwing things, but probably headed for something violent. It was better to cut these things off before they got bad and she could use an easy case; this was her first time back in the game since the injuries she’d received on the last one. Although she still had a cast on her left forearm, she could use that hand now and the sling was gone. The rest of her cuts and bruises were well on their way to mending.
The haunting had been a no-go, however, turning out to be a case of rich kids with too much time on their hands and nothing to do but terrorize the neighborhood. Layla had chased them off with a scare of her own, flashing of a fake state badge and the threat of trespassing and vandalism charges. Still, it had been 4 a.m. before she finally climbed into bed. As she raised her head to find the phone now, she noted the time: 5:47.
“This had better be an emergency,” she muttered into the phone, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. If someone had this number, then they knew her well enough to expect a lackluster greeting at this time of morning.
“Layla?” Sam Winchester’s voice sounded on the other end of the line.
Layla blinked in surprise and rolled over into a sitting position.
“Hey, Sam. I’ve been meaning to call. I was –“
“Layla,” Sam interjected in a level, monotone voice. He sounded almost mechanical and Layla’s skin crawled, sensing something sinister when he hesitated before proceeding. “Layla,” he repeated uncertainly, “Dean and I…we were tracking something… investigating a disappearance. Turned out it was a Trickster, one we’ve run into before. We thought we killed him last time. Now he...he wants to make me suffer and Dean…Dean’s dead…”
Sam was still talking but for a minute Layla couldn’t make herself focus on the words. The proclamation had struck her like a blow to the chest and she was left breathless and shaken, the world seeming to spin off-kilter around her. She forced her mind to cease its startled antics and resolve her attention on Sam’s words.
“…it’s not really real…or it doesn’t have to be. We can bring him back, Layla. We can go back to that day. I just need your help to find the Trickster. I’ll make him bring Dean back.”
Layla’s brain suddenly kicked into gear, wheels churning as it dredged up every bit of lore she could remember on Tricksters and then started playing out scenarios. She’d never encountered one herself but the lore was well known. Hell, Loki was even in comic books now. But how do you trap something as capricious and powerful as a god of mischief?
“Who else have you told?” Layla asked brusquely.
“No one yet.”
“Keep it that way. At least, leave out the details and get off the grid. This thing’s gonna be watching you or watching for you to get close.”
“That’s why I called you. I can’t track this thing alone but I couldn’t bring in someone he might know about either.”
Layla exhaled slowly and ran a hand down her face, trying to clear her mind and impose some sort of order on the chaos of her thoughts. She tried to focus on the problem, to work out plans for tracking a Trickster and anticipating any possible missteps but every train of thought seemed to carry her mind back to the same place: Dean was dead. The flash of his teasing smile and the spark of his green eyes crossed her mind and she shoved it away with aggravation, trying to ignore the leaden weight that it left resting on her chest.
“Good thinking,” she replied at last. “Besides, I owe you…both.” She cleared her throat as she reached over and flicked on the bedside lamp, blinking in the sudden glare. “So tell me everything.”
Layla could hear Sam draw in a long, shaking breath as he steeled his nerves to relate the story. He explained about their first encounter with the Trickster, about how they thought they had killed it with Bobby’s help. He related how they had come to the Mystery Spot for lack of a better lead and how he had gotten caught in a time loop of Tuesdays, watching his brother die over and over, always waking again on the same morning only to watch Dean die again and start the process anew. As he ended the story, recounting the gunshot that had brought him running to the Impala and Dean’s last gasping breaths on the blacktop, Sam’s voice cracked audibly.
Layla gritted her teeth and shoved all emotional reactions to the back of her mind; it was like seizing a fistful of razorblades but she locked them away nevertheless.
“You’re right,” she said after a long moment of silence spent integrating the new information with the lore she knew already. “You can’t bring in anyone else. This thing said the joke’s on you. That means he’s going to be watching you. This joke’s not over.”
“What do you mean it’s not over?”
“This thing doesn’t tend to leave people standing when he’s done. And he likes to linger afterwards and bask in his own cleverness. But he let you just walk away, lesson learned? No. He’ll want to be there when you really crack. He knows you’re going to come for him. He’s betting he’ll break you first.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Sam‘s voice was uncharacteristically grim with resolve and it elicited a small smile from Layla. “I’m going to save my brother.”
It felt like Sam had reached through the phone and squeezed that fistful of razorblades that Layla had locked away. Her smile faltered and suddenly she was struggling to confine the pain that seeped from that cell in the back of her mind. As much as it might hurt her to lose a…friend, the realization of Sam’s agony in the loss of his brother was soul crushing. All the more reason she had to make this right. Unfortunately, the Trickster hadn’t left them the option of being sentimental. Not if they wanted to fix this.
“I know, Sam. You just can’t forget. Because it’s going to get hard and it’s going to get lonely.”
Two thousand miles away, Sam sighed and lowered his head into his hand. He sat in silence for a moment, struggling to swallow the lump in his throat.
“It already is.”
“It’s going to get worse,” Layla said flatly. “This is has to be the last time we talk. I’ll text you once a week so you know I’m still looking but other than that you’re not going hear from me until I find something. You have to do the same.”
Sam grunted his agreement. He had thought many of the same things but he’d already witnessed Layla’s habit of thinking aloud. He found it oddly comforting now, the way she outlined and organized the maelstrom of his thoughts, so he let her proceed without comment.
“I’ll have to go dark too,” Layla was saying, “I can’t tell any of my contacts what I’m looking for because if the Trickster somehow hears that I’m hunting him, I’ll be useless and you really will be on your own.”
Sam sighed heavily. He didn’t want to face the thought of what the future held, of hunting completely alone, not just without Dean; but this was the other reason he had called Layla: she lived under the radar. If anyone was going to be able to do some surreptitious digging, it would be her.
“You’re right,” he said. “So what’s our first step? What do I do while you’re tracking it?”
“Do whatever you would do. Hunt. Watch for clues about this thing. But in the end, he’ll probably come to you so you just have to be ready. We’re playing for the long game here and the first step in a long con is letting the mark think they won the first round.”
“So I act defeated, make a big show of looking for revenge and keep his eyes on me.”
“Bingo. Be what he thinks you would be, what he expects to see. If he wants to see you broken, you have to pretend you are. Just don’t get lost in it. He’ll slip up eventually.”
“You realize our ‘mark’ here is a literal Trickster, right?”
“That’s right, Sam. You’re going to trick the Trickster…again.”
* * * * *
Over the next the few months, Sam walked the dangerously fine line between playing his role and becoming it. Dean’s absence was a yawning void in his life but at the very deepest core of his being, he refused to accept it, to let himself feel it. If Sam gave up on that thought, that Dean wasn’t really gone and all this could be fixed, he truly would be broken.
Sam had made one more phone call after going over the plan with Layla. He had called Bobby and told him Dean was gone. He hated himself for it but he had barely spoken with the man, simply laying out the facts of Dean’s death before backing out of the conversation and hanging up. He didn’t have to tell Bobby he was hunting the thing; he knew the older man would know. He’d probably be hunting it too and part of Sam wanted desperately to turn to him for information and guidance, for some sense of stability. There was just no way to know if the next person that claimed to be Bobby really was. Technically, there was no way to know if the person he’d just hung up with was really Bobby either but he felt he owed it to the man to try and let him know what had happened to Dean in case his own plan failed.
There was the great irony of the situation, the Trickster wanted him to resign himself to life without his brother and now Sam resigned himself to a life without anyone in order to bring his brother back. The younger Winchester became almost robotic, cleaning and organizing his weapons compulsively. The only books he read now were research and what down time he had was consumed by relentless searches through every available news report for bizarre, unexplained or suspicious deaths. He made a trip John’s storage unit and brought out the heavy artillery. If they’d been loaded for bear before, Sam could have gone hunting a T-Rex now.
In his methodical way, Sam made as much noise in the hunting circles as he could, targeting any supernatural threat he could find and making sure stories of his exploits and his mission to find the Trickster made the rounds. Two months in, he exorcised the demon in Death Valley; he took a bullet to the ribs before managing to trap and exorcise that black-eyed bastard. Six weeks later he cleared a small but nasty vampire nest in Austin. Along the way, he took down every minor monster and vengeful spirit he could find.
In his brief and sporadic downtime, Sam let himself play into some of the stranger compulsions that arose to cope with his solitude. At each dinner where his nonstop schedule allowed him to sit and eat, he ordered a second meal with all the trimmings for Dean. Sam let it sit untouched as he mechanically forced down a bland, healthy dinner. It didn’t matter what Sam ate. Everything turned to ash in his mouth now anyway. He just had to keep himself fueled for the unceasing regimen of hunting, tracking, and research.
Bobby started calling around this same time…or maybe it was something claiming to be Bobby and using his voice. Sam didn’t know what to believe; only that he couldn’t trust anything anymore. He never answered the calls but always listened to the messages immediately. The maybe-Bobby told him he was worried, said he had heard some of the stories and wanted him to check in but Sam couldn’t risk that it wasn’t Bobby. When he faced the Trickster, he had to know it going in.
Layla texted once a week, as promised, but mostly it was to ensure him that she was still looking. He found the messages to offer some small measure of reassurance, a reminder that he was not alone in the world or on his mission, but Sam rarely hoped for a breakthrough anymore. He occasionally wondered whether the texts were coming from the Trickster but he doubted that that fickle fucker would have the consistency to maintain the schedule for months.
It was almost six months later when the messages stopped. At least, Sam had been expecting the next one for the last three days. That was when maybe-Bobby called one more time, saying he knew how to trap the Trickster. Sam couldn’t help thinking that the sudden development might not be a coincidence. A knot of anger and fear twisted in his gut when he considered what that might mean about Layla’s sudden silence.
* * * * * 3 Days Earlier * * * * *
For Layla, the last six months had been more quiet than usual. She hadn’t known Dean long when he’d died but in a lot of ways Layla felt she knew him well, that he mirrored a part of herself. And yet he hadn’t been a part of her life, not in the everyday sense. To Layla, Dean’s absence was only a vague awareness that lingered in the very back of her mind, waiting to pounce onto her unsuspecting chest at three in the morning when she’d dozed off next to her laptop. Still she couldn’t help thinking each morning that the world seemed somehow bleaker for the knowledge.
Layla made every effort to lay low even by her own secretive standards. She spent days doing nothing but research, tucked away at some random motel or some backroom at a university library. She poured over reports of strange disappearances and revisited the news reports surrounding the events Sam had attributed to this Trickster, trying to recognize a pattern.
When she did follow up on a lead, it seemed that usually meant a day talking to someone with extreme mental illness, listening to their hallucinations and trying to decode any clue that their ramblings might be indicative of something more. After all, this Trickster didn’t kill all its victims; sometimes it just left them damaged. She heard stories of everything from UFOs and alien abductions to unicorns and fairies to Bigfoot but none appeared to hold up under scrutiny. None of them matched this Trickster’s M.O.
Most of the real disappearances she followed up on tended to be mundane, unfaithful spouses or angry teens running away. Only one turned out to be supernatural: a Woman in White taking victims on a lonely stretch of road in Nebraska. She’d managed to wrap that up with a midnight trip to the graveyard and an impromptu bonfire, extra salty.
Even Layla’s contact with Kinsey, her research buddy, occasional hunting partner and the closest thing she had to family, was minimal. She couldn’t risk that the woman would figure out what she was hunting. She was already suspicious that Layla had been begging off cases, always on the pretext of following some new lead or clue that never seemed to pan out and would never be explained. It wasn’t that Layla didn’t trust Kinsey; it was that the woman would be unable to resist the urge to help. Kinsey could be subtle but she worked via a network of people like Layla, not all of whom Layla knew. Too many people asking similar questions were bound to draw the wrong kind of attention.
And so the time crawled by interminably as she scraped and dug and questioned and hid. She held little hope of discovering anything more than a madman as she drove through the small, thriving city in the Arkansas foothills; after all Mike Houder was already being treated in a psychiatric unit. That didn’t mean that what he claimed to have experienced didn’t really happen. Granted, he was claiming he had been mercilessly ravished for days by a group of attractive co-eds who had kidnapped him for their sex games and left him outside of town naked, unconscious and severely dehydrated. Reports said that when he woke and saw an attractive nurse over his bed, he had screamed until they’d been forced to sedate him.
She’d found the story in some backwater of the internet, a below the radar, News-of-the-Weird type site that claimed to track unusual events. There was something about the story, which on the surface seemed absolutely ridiculous and more suited to the pages of a Penthouse Forum, that nevertheless seemed to ring of a now familiar, juvenile sense of humor. It had taken a few days of phone calls and meetings with family members to arrange an interview with Mr. Houder and as she drove towards the hospital now, Layla prayed that she hadn’t been wasting her time.
* * * * *
Layla followed the signs on the walls through the glistening gray and white corridors of the hospital. She finally arrived at a heavy steel door, solid except for a single pane of security glass. There was an intercom next to the door and she prodded the button impatiently.
She explained to the voice that answered about her appointment with Mike Houder. After a long interval, there was a loud buzzing noise and the heavy ‘thunk’ of the door mechanism unlocking. Layla entered with a feeling of trepidation. She hated being locked in anywhere and the instant the door slammed shut behind her, she was already anxious to be on the other side of it.
She crossed a small waiting area to the large circular desk where overworked nurses bustled to and fro, carrying trays and files. One nurse was apparently on break and she stood at the far side of the office area; one knee was propped on an office chair and her hands gripped the stethoscope around her neck as she arched her back enticingly at a male orderly who leaned on the desk across from her. The blonde man made a comment, his eyebrows rising comically and Layla could hear the young woman giggle in response as she neared the desk. A plump, middle-aged receptionist in teal scrubs sat glued to her keyboard and only glanced up briefly at Layla’s approach.
“You’re Kelly Morris, right? Here to see Mike Houder?” the woman said tersely.
Layla nodded and opened her mouth to respond but was cut off as the woman shouted over her shoulder.
“Danny!”
The man who’d been flirting with the nurse on the other side of the circle of desks jogged around and leaned an arm next to her computer.
“Ladies,” he said by way of greeting, raising his eyebrows first at Layla then at the receptionist. Layla had trouble pinpointing the man’s age, his charming smile and youthful demeanor making him seem younger than he probably was. He was of average height and build, generically nondescript but with a spark of charisma. His brown eyes flashed as he winked at Layla conspiratorially before addressing the receptionist, leaning forward over the desk.
“Julie, my love. Which of your desires can I fulfill?” he shot her an exaggeratedly debonair grin.
“Can it, Danny,” Julie said impatiently but Layla noticed the blush that crept over the woman’s cheeks. When she lowered her head to dig in a desk drawer by her knee, Layla was certain it was to hide her flattered smile from the orderly. Julie withdrew a disposable facemask and tossed it at Danny. “Take Ms. Morris here back to Houder’s room. You know the drill.”
“You’re a cruel temptress, Julie,” Danny said as he straightened and grabbed the mask that slapped against the breast of his white uniform. He turned towards one of the three hallways that branched out from the main reception area and waved a hand over his shoulder for Layla to follow. He twirled the mask absently around his finger as he strolled down the hall, waiting for her to draw up beside him.
“Gonna talk to Mike, huh? Good luck with that.” He smirked knowingly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.
“What do you mean?” Layla frowned slightly. “He told his wife it would be fine.”
“I’m sure it will,” he replied as he nimbly dodged an oncoming nurse. He turned a corner and continued when Layla was beside him again. “It’s kind of ironic, this thing with Mike. He had a reputation as a bit of a player, if you know what I mean.” The orderly’s tone left little question of what he meant and Layla frowned slightly in distaste.
“You make it hard not to. And “player” isn’t exactly groundbreaking slang with the kids anymore.”
Danny shrugged and stopped outside a closed door, extending the blue paper mask to Layla.
“You’ll want to wear this.”
Layla accepted the mask hesitantly. “Why? Is he contagious or something?”
“No. It’s just better than the screaming.”
“So why don’t you have to wear one?” she asked as she arranged the mask over her face.
“I guess I’m just not his type,” Danny replied with a chuckle. He tugged his security card from its spot on his shirt and swiped it at a panel next to the door. He pushed the door open and held it with his toe as he let the card snap back into place on its elastic lanyard.
“So you lock up all your patients like this?” Layla asked, trying to ignore the way her pulse was beginning to race at the thought of being behind yet another locked door.
“No. He insists on it. I’ll wait out here. He shouldn’t be any trouble but just tap when you want out. And remember, he’s more scared of you than you are of him.” The orderly entered the room, ushering Layla through behind him.
“Hey, stud. Ms….uh… Morris is here to listen at ya.” Danny said with a barely suppressed laugh. Layla shot the orderly an irritated glance and stepped past, extending a hand to the man in the bed. Mike Houder recoiled from her hand as if she had offered him a snake and Layla quickly withdrew it, throwing another annoyed look over her shoulder at Danny; but the orderly only grinned enigmatically and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him.
Layla cleared her throat self-consciously and gestured to a chair near the end of the bed.
“May I?”
Mike Houder nodded slowly. His eyes were wide as he watched her circle to the chair and take a seat. Under normal circumstances he was probably a pleasant looking man, on the handsome side of average, creeping up on 40 but toned for his age.
“I spoke with your wife, Anne. She said you’d be expecting me. I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.”
Mike blinked a few times as if he had trouble concentrating on her words, then shook his head as if banishing whatever thought was distracting him. He fixed his eyes on his hands, which fidgeted nervously in his lap, as he spoke.
“Yeah. I mean, no….I…I mean I knew you were coming.”
Layla nodded slightly. She felt like having her face covered removed half her arsenal. The right expression of pity or concern or anger at the right moment could be more critical than the most brilliant string of questions.
“Do you need anything before we begin?” she asked, trying to make the man feel at ease. The calmer Mike was the more details he would remember and any tiny clue could help her. That was the infuriating thing about tracking the Trickster, most of the time she wasn’t even sure what to look for or ask about. People didn’t tend to admit when they’d been slapped with a harsh dose of cosmic justice.
“First….you have to tell me…what you’ll do with it.” Mike’s words rushed out in short bursts as if he had to gather his courage before attempting a phrase of any length.
“I’m working on a book, Mr. Houder. Unexplained phenomena, disappearances, abductions…”
“I won’t be a joke,” he stated, his voice suddenly and surprisingly stern.
“Of course not. I’m not writing a joke book. I know there are strange things out there in the world, mysterious things in the dark. I intend to bring them into the light.” Layla’s tone was passionate and sincere as she flipped open the notebook she had brought and rested it on her knees.
Mr. Houder seemed assuaged by her speech and he gave a small nod, settling back against his cushions gingerly.
“No names?”
“No names,” Layla confirmed. “Just first names for my notes.” The man nodded again, gesturing for her to proceed.
Layla retrieved a tape recorder from the pocket of her suit jacket and held it up questioningly. When Mr. Houder nodded she flipped the switch and spoke into it briefly:
“Interview one…” Layla set the recorder on the swivel tray beside his bed. “So tell me your story. What happened to you out there?”
The man wrung the edge of his sheet in his hands and Layla could see his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously but she waited patiently for him to speak. Pushing was always counter-productive in these situations.
“I was at the bar…after work, ya know, with some of the boys from the bank. It was just….a normal night but when we all went to leave…there was this woman outside and she was…”
Mike trailed off and grimaced, rubbing his hand across his face as if trying to wipe away a thought or image. After a few deep breaths, Mike calmed and forced himself to continue, his voice monotone and robotic.
“She was…. attractive. She stopped me by my car. Said she had friends …that wanted to meet me. She took me back in the bar…and suddenly there were …w-…w-…women everywhere,” Mike’s words began to tumble out faster, his voice raising in pitch. “And they all wan- wanted me …and we were drinking…and then there was this bus….and I don’t know! I couldn’t stop. Three days straight and I couldn’t stop. It was horrible but I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to want to…but I couldn’t…” he trailed off and lowered his voice to a whisper, raising his eyes for the first time to look at Layla. “Not even when I … broke it.”
For a moment, Layla wished the mask covered more of her face as she struggled to keep her eyes from widening in horror and disgust. And maybe, just slightly, an intense desire to laugh.
“…’it’?” she inquired hesitantly.
“It,” Mike confirmed; his pained expression and tone left no questions as to the referent. “I had to have surgery and everything.”
Layla nodded and jotted down some notes studiously, if only to buy herself some time to mull over the situation and quell her instinct towards inappropriate humor.
“What about your friends who were with you at the bar? Did any of them see this mystery woman or her….sex bus?” she had a hard time delivering that last line seriously.
When Mike only shook his head, Layla pointed to the tape recorder and he cleared his throat. “No. No one saw her…them. They ….they weren’t inside…before.”
Layla arched one dark eyebrow questioningly.
“How do you know?”
He gave her an exasperated look, twisting his sheet in his hands again. “I…we…would have known,” he replied cryptically.
“How can you be sure?” Layla probed. When Mike only bit his lip and looked away, she tried a different approach, “Mike, the more details I can provide, the more I can fill in the story, the more believable it will be.”
“I don’t have proof or anything. It’s just that these…women, they obviously weren’t… from around here. They were the type …to definitely get noticed.” Mike shot her an beseeching gaze from the corner of his eye; he was obviously not going to be able to go into details.
“Is there any way you were drugged? Did they run a drug panel when you were admitted?” Layla asked, derailing the conversation away from specifics about the women.
“They didn’t find any-…anything I don’t remember taking. Nothing that would do that,” he replied circumspectly. Layla didn’t really care about what he’d taken; she wasn’t on the hunt for one skeevy guy’s recreational drug habits. She continued to let her hand drag the pen absently across the paper. With the tape recorder, there was no need to write down Mike’s words but as they spoke, Layla jotted down impressions, expressions, flinches and twitches and changes in his cadence, noting the triggers and twinges.
“Do you have any enemies, Mike?” she asked flatly as she shifted her gaze sharply from her notepad to the nervous man’s eyes.
“What? Enemies?....I….I don’t even know why you…what’s that have to do with this?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. What about lovers? Any reason why those women or anyone else might be holding a grudge against you?”
“What?” he repeated, “No. Look, I’ve been married…over ten years. This wasn’t some psycho ex-girlfriend.”
“I never thought it was. Am I also right to assume that you have been less than forthcoming with your wife about your other…extramarital entanglements?”
The man gasped like a fish out of water, mouth working silently in surprise, as Layla confronted him on his infidelity. A sheen of sweat appeared on his features as he clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head vehemently.
Danny, the orderly, hadn’t been the first Layla had heard of it. She’d done her share of research on Mike Houder upon arriving in town and the stories she’d dug up around him went a lot further than a string of adulterous affairs.
“I’ll take that as a yes, as well.” Layla said, flipping her notebook closed. Continuing this interview would be useless. Every time Mike got close to revealing any details, the trauma of what he’d been through derailed him. It didn’t matter anyway. The look of terror in the man’s eyes, the absurdity of his story, and his otherwise coherent demeanor had Layla convinced that Mike Houder might not be another delusional schizophrenic. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t a scumbag who had gotten we he deserved either. Layla retrieved her recorder from the table but paused before turning it off. She folded her arms and pointed it towards him distractedly.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop here. We have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“Too many questions you can’t answer. Like why you, a married man, would leave with a strange woman. Like why your wife thought you were still at work the night you disappeared… Or why she didn’t know about your secretary’s leave of absence,” Layla paused and appreciated the look of renewed surprise that accompanied that statement. She leaned forward in her chair and basked in the look of guilt and fear that was spreading across his features.
“It was nice of you to give Beth the week off after she got that abortion to cover for you. But really, Mike, you could have at least paid for it. And telling her you’d get her fired if she didn’t…that’s a whole new level of low.”
The man began to stammer out a protest but Layla flipped off the recorder and pocketed it pointedly as she rose to her feet. She spoke over him as she tucked her notebook under her arm. “And that’s why I’m going to leave and you’re going to stay here. And no one’s going to believe your story. You might be a victim, Mike. But personally, I don’t think you deserve the sympathy.”
She turned sharply on the heel of her words, crossed the room and tapped on the door. Before it opened, she pulled off her mask and looked over her shoulder. A rictus of terror froze Mike’s features and Layla smirked, pouting her lips in a playful kiss and winking just as the door cracked open. She replaced the mask and turned innocently towards door, stepping through it just as a scream echoed down the hallway.
Layla made a show of removing her mask again as Danny looked in concern from her to the room. He didn’t rush in immediately, however, and when the screams faded away after a few seconds, he shrugged and turned his attention back to Layla.
“Sounds like that went about like I expected,” he commented as he started walking back the way they had come.
Layla balled up the mask and tossed it into a waste basket along the wall as she followed the man back towards the lobby.
“It could have been worse,” Layla replied.
“For you or him?” Danny chuckled.
“Have you had any other people admitted with weird stories like that?” she inquired, sidestepping the question.
Danny shrugged and gave her an innocent smile. “Sorry. Orderly-patient confidentiality.”
Layla noted to herself that that was definitely not a “no.”
“What kind of book did you say you were writing?” Danny continued.
“I didn’t.”
“I know. Julie from the front desk told me. You’re not a patient. You don’t get confidentiality. So what’s it about?”
“Unexplained phenomena, mysterious disappearances, that kind of thing,” Layla said absently.
“Huh. So what did you think about Mike’s story?”
“I think he’s crazy,” she replied without hesitation. They were crossing the lobby now, drawing close to the metal door that barred the main entrance.
The man chuckled and stretched out his badge, swiping it through the panel by the door.
“Well, I’m sure you can dig up something good around here. I’ll look forward to reading about it,” Danny said as he held the door open for her. Layla slipped past and began digging through her pockets for her car keys then paused and looked back at him briefly.
“Thanks, Danny. I’ll see you around,” she said.
“Not if I see you first,” he laughed and gave a wink, letting the door close behind her.
* * * * *
Layla visited her motel room long enough to change into more casual clothing and gear up with her usual array of concealed weapons; she always felt exposed without their familiar weight. She dumped her laptop into a messenger bag, threw the strap over one shoulder and headed up the street towards a nearby diner. It had the dual attractions of offering wifi and having the kind of low-key, hometown atmosphere that always promised gossip.
The diner was only a few blocks from her motel and as she walked, Layla reviewed what she knew about Mike Houder’s encounter. This guy wasn’t just a player, he was practically a predator, using his money and position to pressure women into sex and worse; now suddenly he was almost sexed to death? As far as Layla was concerned, the Trickster may as well have left his calling card. Although she hated to admit it, she could almost appreciate his style, at least with this case. But she knew there would be more victims and they would not always be so satisfying…but then again, who was she to decide? That was the whole point, wasn’t it? It wasn’t her place, or the Tricksters, to decide people’s fates. It certainly hadn’t been his place to kill Dean or torture Sam with it.
Layla sighed and adjusted the bag slung over her shoulder. An oncoming pedestrian, her head down as her thumbs danced across the keyboard of her phone, was walking straight towards her. The woman didn’t glance up and would have slammed right into Layla if the hunter hadn’t snapped out of her thoughts at the last moment and quickly sidestepped. The brick front of the building they were passing didn’t allow Layla enough room to clear the woman’s path completely and when the woman made no similar effort to detour, their shoulders collided roughly. The impact knocked the messenger bag from Layla’s shoulder and it landed with an unpleasant plastic clattering sound. The woman hardly glanced in Layla’s direction before continuing unperturbed.
“What the fuck, lady?” Layla snapped at the woman’s back as she snatched up her messenger bag. The woman made no indication that she had heard or that she cared about Layla’s question, if she had. Layla scowled at her retreating figure for a moment then quickly threw back the flap of her bag to check the condition of her laptop. When she decided the computer was still in one piece, she closed the bag and returned it to her shoulder; this time, however, she settled the strap diagonally across her chest. Layla started to let her mind wander back to the task at hand but kept a slightly more wary eye on her surroundings.
Now, the trick was to figure out where the Trickster was going to hit next, to find a pattern or a likely target. Hopefully with a little research she’d find something else in the area, maybe something that had appeared innocuous at the time; then she just had to find the common thread, the person who always seemed to be around before or after; the person that fits but doesn’t…or maybe fits too well. That was how Sam and Dean (well, technically, Bobby) had found it the first time at the university, and how …
Layla’s train of thought careered of its tracks as she threw herself out of the street and the path of a car which suddenly accelerated into the intersection and veered around the corner. She landed roughly on her hands and knees, a sharp indrawn breath hissing through her clenched teeth as her palms erupted in fire. She pushed herself quickly to her feet and looked around, dabbing her palms on her jeans.
The car was gone and the few other people she could see on the street hadn’t seemed to notice. She glanced to the crossing signal on the corner just in time to see the flashing red outline of a hand appear. So she hadn’t zoned out and walked into traffic, she reassured herself. That car hadn’t been aiming for her either; they wouldn’t have missed at that distance if they’d been trying. She’d barely made it out of the street as it was.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle. Something was wrong. She turned slowly, senses straining for any hint of something out of place, anything that didn’t belong, someone not acting the way they should; but everything seemed completely normal. People were walking the streets individually or in small groups; traffic flowed by in a steady rhythm. It occurred to Layla that she must look strange standing on the street corner, peering suspiciously around in every direction and she grudgingly turned once more towards the diner.
Luckily, the restaurant was only a half block away now and she managed to make it inside without further incident. A sign near the entrance invited her to seat herself and she settled at a corner table near the door to the kitchen. Sitting there, she had a clear view of the rest of the dining area and she’d have good access to kitchen gossip. There weren’t many other patrons at the moment which further increased the likelihood of getting one of the servers to sit and dish out the local rumors.
As she waited for the waitress, Layla set her laptop on the table and started it up. The wi-fi connection wasn’t secured so she quickly logged online and started skimming local news sources. Nothing of immediate interest caught her eye and she lost track of time as she skimmed and clicked through the stories. A loud growl of protest from her stomach a short while later reminded her of what had really brought her to the diner and she glanced up with a thoughtful frown. One of the three wait staff she had noticed, a pretty middle-aged woman with auburn hair, was walking towards her table. The woman continued past and through the door to the kitchen. When she re-emerged a minute later, Layla raised a hand as she passed.
“Miss?”
Something about the way the waitress continued past blankly and sent a chill down Layla’s spine. The kitchen door swung open again and a teenage busboy came through, carrying an empty tub.
“Hey, kid!” Layla called at the young man but he also took no notice. He continued past and Layla rose to her feet. “Hey!” she repeated more loudly at his back as he quickly cleared the dishes from a recently vacated table. Not only didn’t the boy seem to hear, but no one in the diner reacted to her sudden outburst either.
As the busboy began to pass Layla again on his way back to the kitchen, she shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. The young man jumped as if he had been grabbed by a ghost, his eyes wide and startled as they turned to fix on her.
“Shi-…I mean, you almost scared me to death,” he stammered nervously. Layla’s racing heart slowed a bit as he acknowledged her.
“You…you can hear me? See me?”
The young man, whose name tag read Steven, nodded slowly, his expression making it apparent that he would prefer not to see a crazy stranger gripping his arm.
“Sorry…” Layla began uncertainly. How the hell did she explain this one? “I just…uh…I’ve been sitting here for ages and no one’s taken my order.”
Great, I look like one of those people. I’ll be lucky if there’s only food in my food now.
“Sorry about that, ma’am. I’ll let your server know,” Steven said as he tugged his arm away gingerly. Layla released his arm with an uncomfortable, apologetic smile and sank back into her chair. Steven shook his head slightly and disappeared back into the kitchen.
What the hell had just happened? She rechecked the time on her watch; she’d definitely been sitting there unnoticed for close to 20 minutes. Not impossible, but unlikely in a fairly quiet diner. And then she’d practically shouted at Steven and the boy hadn’t seemed to notice. He hadn’t noticed her in fact, until she’d touched him…until he’d had to. Layla’s pulse began to quicken again and she scanned the restaurant’s other patrons, looking for some glance back, the awkward eye contact, the curious gaze, the small smile, any hint that someone noticed her watching them. Nothing.
Another server went through the kitchen door without looking her direction. When she reentered, Layla leapt to her feet, her chair grinding out a screeching sound against the linoleum as it slid behind her.
“Hey! Lady!” Layla gave in to her frustration and shouted at the woman, who still didn’t seem to hear.
The murmuring tides of conversation continued around her, undisturbed by the noise or the sudden movement. Layla’s pulse began to pound in her ears and she strode to the middle of the diner, directly in the center of the scattered clusters of couples and families. She grabbed a handful of napkins from a table and tossed them into the air.
“Look at me!” Layla shouted at the nearest occupied table as a blizzard of paper napkins fluttered to the floor around her.
God. I’m going to end up locked up next to Mike Houder….
But there was still no reaction among the diner’s patrons or staff. The young couple at the table continued as before, sharing a plate of fries and a lot of awkward flirting.
“Fucking look at me!” She snapped and stepped forward, slamming her palm on the edge of their table. The impact caused the table to shake and the two teens paused briefly in their conversation, sharing a confused look. They both shook their heads a moment later, laughed and resumed their conversation as if nothing had happened.
Layla stepped back in shock. This couldn’t be real. It didn’t make any sense. The busboy, Steven, was walking through a nearby aisle and Layla quickly skirted the table and rushed after him.
“Steven!”
She grabbed the young man’s shoulder and he started, gray plastic tub full of dishes clattering to the ground. The voices in the diner died away as the conversation faltered and everyone turned curiously towards the sound.
“Fuck!” The teen didn’t even try to stop himself from cursing as he looked over his shoulder, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Shut up!” Layla snapped, locking her hand around his slender forearm. When he looked up at her in wounded surprise, she locked her eyes on his and he seemed to sense that something was wrong. A mix of worry and consternation spread across his youthful features. “Steven…do you remember me?” Layla asked in a rush.
Steven chuckled uncomfortably and glanced around but the rest of the diners had returned to their meals and resumed ignoring Layla.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Answer the fucking question, Steven! Have you ever seen me before? Ever?”
The young man shook his head slowly. “Never seen you in my life.”
Layla searched his eyes for some glimmer of deceit, praying this was all just some big prank or misunderstanding. She saw only sincerity and a tiny, growing spark of fear at the madwoman latched onto his arm. Layla realized she was probably gripping his arm to the point of pain and she snatched her hand away, mumbling an apology.
As soon as she began to back away, Steven gave the same distinctive shake of his head. A befuddled expression settled on his face as he surveyed the mess of dishes and spilled food at his feet. Layla could hear him muttering under his breath as he knelt and began clearing the mess. She rushed back to her table and gathered her things then quickly fled the diner.
As she hurried through the door she careened off the chest of a tall, barrel-chested man who glared at her briefly from beneath a mass of black and gray facial fair.
“What the hell are -…” the man began. His words halted as Layla bounced off his solid frame and was promptly forgotten. He shook his head and resumed his route down the sidewalk.
Layla started back towards her motel at a hurried pace. She dug out her cell phone and dialed Kinsey’s number with shaking hands.
Thankfully, the second ring wasn’t even completed when it was cut off and replaced by the sound of Kinsey’s voice.
“Hello?”
A grateful tide of relief flooded through Layla’s body at the sound of her friend’s voice.
“Kinsey! Something’s wrong…”
“Hello?” Kinsey repeated, her tone impatient. Layla’s heart sank into her stomach.
“Kinsey. Can you hear me?” Layla’s voice was pleading, almost hysterical.
“I don’t know who this is…”
“It’s Layla! Fucking hell, Kinsey! It’s Layla!” She didn’t bother trying to muffle her voice as she shouted into the phone.
“…but there’s something wrong with your phone. Try back from another line,” Kinsey had continued to speak through the outburst and Layla was barely able to piece together the bits she heard. The connection cut off a moment later and Layla stopped in her tracks, lowering the phone to stare mutely at the silent contraption as the screen blinked off.
So she was completely invisible…no, not just invisible, completely undetectable until she forced someone to see her, to acknowledge her. It was like something was telling everyone to ignore her…but when she touched them, or changed something they couldn’t ignore, their minds couldn’t reconcile the information; it was like they were forced to accept her presence in order to maintain a cohesive reality. The moment that pressure was removed, they forgot it had ever existed, that Layla existed.
There was only one thing she knew of that could alter perceptions and change reality at a whim like that. In that instant, Layla was absolutely convinced of two things: Mike Houder’s story was true and the Trickster knew she was tracking him.
* * * * *