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Sam had been a college student for eighty-three days when he had his first encounter with the supernatural since leaving the hunting life behind. He was pretty sure it was a poltergeist that had attacked Professor Lowery’s daughter and sent their nanny screaming out of their university-provided house. Rumors were flying all over campus that Lowery was abusive, had gone on a bender, but that didn’t track with what Sam knew of the kindly, if eccentric, philosophy professor. After he spent some time looking at back issues of the campus newspaper and discovered suspicious incidents taking place in the same house going back years, he thought he could pinpoint the origin of the malevolent spirit.
Only now what? He couldn’t exactly waltz in and tear up the house on a theory. But he knew someone who could.
Sam thought about it for a whole day. If he made the call, it might save lives, not to mention Professor Lowery’s reputation. But it would also mean that the paper-thin scar tissue he’d grown over the last eighty-three—make that eight-four—days would be picked open and the festering infection that was his depraved longing would be exposed to the air again. There was no telling what might happen then.
But people were in danger. He gritted his teeth and called the number he knew by heart.
It rang three times before someone picked up. “‘Lo?”
“Dean.”
“Sammy?”
The two syllables were enough for his heart to start beating triple time. “I need you. I mean, I need your help.”
There was a long silence, long enough that Sam thought maybe he’d hung up. But then— “I can be there in…six hours.”
Sam didn’t ask why Dean was so close. He felt only a soul-deep relief that he’d be seeing his brother again, and soon. “I’ll meet you at 344 Maple Street, Palo Alto. And Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“‘Course, Sammy.”