SN Fic: The Lucky Strikes (1/4)

[thatgirlsix]

Supernatural Fic: The Lucky Strikes

Disclaimer: I do not own my education and won’t for many years, so I certainly can’t buy myself a copyright. Kripke can owe me until I get my student loan sharks paid off. Until then, I’ll just pine away in my little corner of happiness.

Author’s Notes: This is a quick little four chapter dealio that came to me when my muse finally came back from his extended vacation. /  Rated PG13 for language in the other chapters because I’ve been married too long to the military not to have a mouth.

This story is set between "Fresh Blood" and "A Very Supernatural Christmas".

Thanks for reading!
Six

The Lucky Strikes

- November 19, 1942 -

Charlie and Lillie Wallace walked into the train station and surfed through the crowds hand in hand just to keep from being separated by forces that they could control. They had enough worldly forces trying to separate them as it was. Her hand was small and cold in his, feeling more like it belonged to an old lady than to the normally bright eyed twenty-one-year-old bride at his side. His normally strong and steady hand shook around hers, jerking in time with the slip-slide of his lower jaw. He sent a glare at a young boy who looked like he might dare to try to walk between them instead of around. It would not be worth it, his clear blue eyes promised.

They found an unoccupied wooden bench and took it up before anyone else could. He put his bags under the bench, tucking his feet around the one side while she gracefully placed her feet on the other side. He took both her hands in his and held them in his lap. He wasn't sure who was shaking more, him or her.

"We'll be back before you know it," he told her quietly. "Inside a year, this will all be over, and we'll get on with our lives. You'll see."

She didn't look at him as she asked, "Can I hold you to that?"

The already flimsy optimistic illusion shattered, Charlie tried to keep the despair from his voice as he said, "Bob isn't going to let anything happen to me, and I won't let anything happen to him. We're trusting you and Susan to do the same for us. You know that, right?"

Lillie nodded and smiled but didn't say anything in return. She didn't feel like trying to keep up the pretense of bravery. They had had enough bravery the night before. Today she was a mess and didn't really care if she looked it or not. Maybe that was the bourbon talking, maybe the fear, but it didn't matter; she didn't feel like it. The fact was, she didn't know when her husband would be coming back to her. It didn't seem appropriate to her that she lie to him in their last moments together. She couldn't send him off with a lie. She wouldn't.

There was an odd, awkward silence that Charlie knew he needed to fill. Silence meant that things were being left unsaid, and he refused to do that to either of them. His girl didn't deserve silence. "This spring, once everything melts off, I want you to talk to my father. He'll help you out with whatever you need done. Okay? Don't be bashful about it. He wants to help. So does my mother."

"I know she means well, but, Honey, the extra-special relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law is one that can't be helped by spending more time together. If anything, your leaving is going to be good for us. I don't think I've ever been so grateful to know people who don't have a telephone."

Charlie tried to stifle a laugh but failed miserably. He secretly had been grateful for that as well when he moved out of his parents' home. There was only so much motherly smothering that a man could take. "She isn't that bad."

"She isn't your in-law," smiled Lillie, the first genuine smile she'd had all morning. "And you can't fix everything. I don't care how good you are with your hands. Some things weren't meant to be fixed. A girl's relationship with her mother-in-law is one of them."

"So then I suppose you aren't going to take her up on the offer to move in with them while I'm gone?"

"Tradition be damned," said Lillie with a sarcastic Aw, shucks snap of her fingers.

"Fine by me." He leaned over and placed an agreeable kiss on her temple. This was one issue he wasn't going to push. Another silence ensued, waiting for him to make it better. He ran through an entire list of things in his head before he settled on "I'll write as soon as I can."

That's not good enough, she wanted to say. She wanted to scream at him that it would be nowhere near good enough. Two days of marriage would never be enough. She knew it sounded like she was thinking of him as already dead and not gone, but at this point, her heart didn't want to see the distinction. She just wanted him to stay and be hers and never leave.

When she didn't say anything, he lifted her chin so that she would look him in the eye. He wanted to memorize her eyes and everything else about her. This would be the face that would bring him home. He needed to see in her eyes that she believed it. He covered her left hand with his, a small clinking noise telling him when his wedding band had found hers. It was better than a stack of Bibles.

"I'm coming home to you."

"Can I kill you if you don't?" she asked, trying to laugh through her tears.

"Absolutely," he smiled, thumbing the saltwater away. "So what are you going to do today?"

Before Lillie could answer, an obviously forced cheerfulness came from about ten feet away, announcing the arrival of their best friends. Susan Beckett stood arm-in-arm with Bob, an almost identical vision of homegrown beauty to Charlie's own wife. It was scary sometimes how they thought alike; they'd often thought the same about the girls as well. He knew he was leaving her in the most capable of hands, just as he knew Bob felt the same of Lillie for Susie. Their girls would be worth fighting for, just for the homecoming.

Susan dropped her hand onto her friend's shoulder, squeezed, and informed them all, "She's going ice skating down at the lake. I didn't make him sharpen the blades for nothing, you know." To Lillie specifically, she added, "Don't even think about trying to get out of it. I've had today planned for weeks."

Lillie wiped away what was left of her tears. She had convinced herself to hold off the lies; now she needed to hold off the tears. Their last few minutes would not be about her tears. She said happily enough, "Only if you promise that if we see Bette Jean, I can shove her through the ice."

"That's my lady!" Charlie howled. After five years, his girl was never going to forgive their classmate for daring to throw herself at her man. Lillie made even holding a grudge endearing.

With a dead on poker face, Susan asked the men casually, "So what are you guys planning to do for kicks today?"

Bob and Charlie exchanged looks of incredulity until they both looked at Bob's wife and saw the smile. Their own smiles grew, which they turned on Lillie. The foursome all glanced between one another until they all broke out in laughter loud enough to make other passersby regard them as ill-behaved children. The tension finally broken, they spent the next half an hour back to their usual selves. They all complained of the hangovers they were suffering thanks to their excursions the night before. The girls shared a cigarette while the men each had one of their own, attempting to impress their wives with what most definitely were not smoke rings. Bob produced a deck of cards from his pack, which led to a quick hand of poker. The men let the women duke it out at the end, wanting the pleasure of seeing their girls have fun. For their part, Lillie and Susan let them think they'd let them lose.

When their train was called, a silence fell over the quartet once again. The men helped their girls up and took their arms. They made the walk out to the train yard with chills in their stomachs all, and it had nothing to do with the winter temperatures. When they reached the door, Charlie pulled them all to the side, out of the way of other couples and single soldiers making their way to their destinies. He didn't say anything, but he wrapped his left arm around his wife and his right around his best friend. Bob followed suit so that they were in a tight circle of family and friendship.

It was a rare show of affection for Charlie, but he had no doubt in his mind that this needed to be said. His blue eyes shone bright as he said, looking each of them in the eye, "We were lucky enough to find each other in this world. That kind of luck doesn't run out. And if it does, we'll find each other in the next."

"Lucky Strikes," said Bob, nodding.

"Lucky Strikes," said Susan and Lillie together.

"Lucky Strikes," Charlie said, his usual crazy grin right where it belonged.

The husbands and wives said their most secret goodbyes in private, making the promises they knew they couldn't control or keep. They meant them, though. That was the important part.

A whistle screamed through the yard, telling them that the time was truly there upon them. The girls were given their gentlemanly kisses. Their men boarded the train as they joined elbows. As the train began the slow trudge out of the yard and town, Lillie couldn't help but think it all felt a little anti-climactic. Then again, what in her life these days wasn't?

Smiles properly in place, the girls spent the day ice skating with the aid of some very grown up hot chocolate and sandwiches from the Boyd's around the corner. Susan's mother fussed over their wet stockings, throwing them on the oven door to dry out over more hot chocolate (light on the grown up part). Neither woman said so, but it was stunning at how normal it all felt.

Life went on.

It wasn't until well after dark that Lillie finally excused herself. She and Susan made a date for the day after the next. What they were going to do, they didn't know, but they'd deal with it when the time came. It wasn't like they had ever had a problem stirring up trouble without their men before. Whatever it was going to be, it would be ridiculously normal.

When she finally got back to her new home that she had yet to really share with Charlie, Lillie sagged briefly with her back to the screen then went ahead and slammed the wood barrier shut. The oppressive click of the door catching in the lock was louder than what she had ever imagined a gunshot to sound like. She held her breath until her lungs started to protest, slammed her purse down on the kitchen counter, and stalked to the living room. She took one look around the room, palmed her eyes once to wipe away any tears that dared to show themselves, then set about the work of rearranging all of the furniture in the house, moving the heaviest pieces with nothing more on her side than her newfound determination not to cry.

- December 6, 2007 -

Somewhere in between Bumfuck and Podunk, Sam Winchester popped two ibuprofen to get himself through until they settled down for the night and he could whip out the heating pad. His back had yet to forgive him for two jobs ago when he'd ever so graciously acted the protector and stopped a brick hurtling for his brother's head with his shoulder. Height had its disadvantages. He could feel his brother dividing his attention seventy-thirty with him and the road, fully in mother hen mode. He was about to tell the guy to be a man and take a Midol when his phone trilled at him.

A nervous laugh answered him first, as if the caller couldn't believe he had actually picked up the line. There was a beat and then a reluctant sigh before a woman asked, "Is this either Sam or Dean Winchester?"

"Can I help you?" he asked cautiously.

"This is ridiculous. I feel ridiculous just saying this. Look, you don't know me, and you're probably going to think I'm nuts, but a friend of a friend, or a cousin of a friend, or you know, whatever ... " The woman spurt out what she said so fast that Sam barely caught every other word. She must have realized how she sounded because she took a deep breath, blew it out hard, and pulled another in, sounding like she was plastering a smile on her face as she started again. "Sorry. I have a little problem, and I was told that you might be able to help me - if you're Sam or Dean Winchester."

Sam glanced over at Dean, who was carefully glancing between his brother and the road ahead of them for an entirely different reason now. When Dean cautiously shrugged his face at him, Sam answered with raised eyebrows, "This is Sam."

"Oh, thank God. If you were somebody just playing with me, I was going to lose my mind, really."

"What can we do for you, Miss ... ?"

"Andreea Oian. Two 'e's. Yeah, I know. My mother thought she was doing me a favor, but I'm sure you can guess it hasn't been the best thing for meeting people. It's a curse, I promise you. People can't spell it right, and even if they do, they can't pronounce it right. I end up like that girl on 90210 being an Ah­n-dray-uh instead of just plain old Andreea. Or people try to do me a favor and call me 'Andy', which is really not a good way to start with me, and then we have chaos. Can I tell you how much I hated the first day of school? Seriously, the name is a curse. You don't have to tell me otherwise just to be polite. It's okay." Again she stopped, apparently realizing that she'd started to ramble once again. She went through another series of deep breathing exercises while Sam glanced at Dean, who rolled his eyes. He was apparently happy to let Sam deal with it. When she came back, she didn't talk any slower than she had during her other rants, but she did sound a little less shaky. "Okay, I'm okay. Like I said, this is going to sound crazy, and you can tell me if you think I'm crazy because I definitely think I'm going crazy even though my friend's friend seems to think that I'm not even close to crazy even though she's never met me, but she says that you would know that I'm not crazy because you deal with crazy all the time and don't think anything of it, so - "

Sam laughed now, wanting to make sure that she took a breath and gave his mind time to catch up. Man, this woman could talk MicroMachines Guy fast, or at the very least, give the guy a run for his money. "Okay, okay, Andreea. Take a breath. I'm sure I'll believe you. Just try to tell me what the problem is."

She didn't bother with the breath, but she did finally move on to the explanation. "My house. My brand new house that I spent far too much money on for just myself because there sure as hell isn't a man in my remote future, let alone near future, which means I'm probably going to become an old bitty in this ridiculously expensive house that I just fell in love with on sight and am now having a freaking heart attack over because this perfect house also happens to be a freaking haunted house, and I have no idea what to do because, I mean, really, who actually buys a freaking haunted house? But I can't afford to move out and - "

"Andreea? Andreea, slow down. It's okay. Seriously, take a breath, and I'll see what I can do about helping you out. Where are you?"

"In the kitchen. It's really a great kitchen. All the original woodwork and everything. The cabinets actually go all the way to the ceiling. They don't make houses with cabinetry like that anymore, you know; for some reason everyone has to have that space for spiders and mice to crawl on on top of their cabinets now. There is never enough room for a plant to actually grow up there, and really, how is a plant supposed to grow there anyway when the sun doesn't exactly get up there? And if it's for the extra storage space, finish the damned cabinet, People, and you'll have the extra storage space. But apparently no one thought to consult me or, you know, the logic police on that one. I really don't get people."

This time, Sam waited until Andreea got her rant out of her system, finding her kind of fascinating. He'd never heard anyone talk that fast without hurting themselves. When she stopped for air, he broke in and asked, "No, where in the country are you? So that I can figure out how to get to you?"

"Oh, right. Because it doesn't do you any good to know about the house until you can actually see the house because you can't exactly tell over the phone if a place is haunted. I mean, you can't, can you?"

"Over the phone? No, but if you'll just tell us where you are, we can come by and check it out."

"Oh. Um, Saint Cloud? Minnesota?"

Sam wracked his brain for a moment, trying to remember why he knew the name. Pastor Jim had lived just on the other side of the Minnesota-Iowa border, so he knew the southern portion of the state fairly well, but once he got north of the Twin Cities, he didn't exactly know his way around. A few names were familiar but didn't entirely stand out. He reached over the seat into the back to find the atlas, but to save time he also asked her, "Can you give me a general direction from Minneapolis where you are?"

"A little over an hour and a half north."

"So between there and Duluth?"

"West, not East. If you take 494 around the west side then take 94 north once it comes back together out of the suburbs and then pick up 15 when you see the exit, you'll go right by us. That's the easiest way, at least. You could always get on 10 once you get to Clearwater so that you get to my side of town without having to drive the traffic on Division because it really, really sucks this time of year to drive on Division on the weekend, I have to tell you, but it's up to you. It's not so bad, though. I don't mind. I like traffic. I don't think of it as wasting time like most people do, you know? It's nice to just have some time to myself. Yeah, I have a lot of time to myself once I get to this freaking haunted barn of mine, but then again, if it's haunted, I'm not really alone, am I? That's the whole problem, isn't it?"

Stifling another laugh because he didn't want to sound like he was laughing at her problem, Sam asked her to wait a moment, covered the phone, then turned to his brother. "How far are we from Minneapolis?"

Dean rolled his eyes up as if the answer were magically on the roof of the car. "Five hours maybe? What's going on?"

Sam looked at his watch. It was already nearly four in the afternoon as it was. "Okay, Andreea? We're still out quite a ways, but we'll head up there and give you a call first thing in the morning, if that's all right with you?"

"Really? Seriously? Oh, that would be so fantastic. I can't thank you enough, because I know how crazy all of this sounds. I know I sound crazy. I was told you wouldn't think I was crazy, but everyone I've talked to about this thinks I'm crazy. My realtor is seriously going to be hearing from me about this. Of course, she'll probably tell me that I should have specified 'no haunted homes' on my application of requests, you know? She's like that, the anal retentive bitch. I'm just so glad that you picked up the phone. I couldn't believe it when Kim told me to call you. I thought for sure she would think I was nuts, but she said that you had helped out her friend or her cousin or whoever, and that it would - "

Out of curiosity, Sam interrupted her there and asked, "We did?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, I forgot. I was supposed to tell you that Jenny from home and the kids say 'hi' and that you're supposed to call or stop by when you get the chance."

"Wow," Sam breathed. That was unexpected. Still, if Jenny was acting as their new publicity machine, that meant that everything was still okay in their 'shared' home, so to speak. It meant that Sari and Ritchie were safe and that the poltergeist that had threatened their lives really had been taken care of. Someone was finally living safely in the house that had meant anything but safety to Sam and his family. That was really good news. Really good. "Um, yeah. I will. Well, try to get some sleep tonight and we'll talk about all of this tomorrow. We'll be in a motel somewhere in town, though, if anything comes up after, say, ten or so. All right?"

"Really? Oh, wow, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. I can't believe it. Kim told me that Jenny said you were stand up guys, but I was a little nervous, you know, because really, who in their right mind believes in this stuff? I mean, I do now, because I'd be crazy not to, but it still sounds so freaking crazy, and I can't - "

"It's no problem. We were looking for a new job anyway. Get some sleep, Andreea. We'll see you tomorrow." Before she could start up again, Sam closed his phone, cutting the connection. With a wry smile on his face, he stuck a finger in his ear and rattled it around, shaking his head. Man, that woman could talk fast. He whistled, "Okay."

"Gig?"

"Yeah. Possible haunted house." Or possession. No one talked that fast without a little help. "A friend of a friend or cousin of Jenny's actually."

"'Jenny from Lawrence', 'Jenny in our old house' Jenny?"

"Yeah. We're supposed to call her, by the way."

Immediately Dean's gaze darkened. "What's wrong? Something with the house?"

"Nothing that this woman said anyway. She probably just wants to make sure we're both kicking and breathing."

Dean's grip on the steering wheel lessened a little. "She really got our name from Jenny?"

The urge was inexplicable except to say that, if Sam was going to call his brother on not acting like his brother, he needed to call himself on it, too. He hadn't been acting like a real little brother lately. He needed to keep his big brother on his toes. The urge won out - not that he really fought it - and Sam starting singing, "It's a small world after all. It's a small world after - "

A backhanded whap into his chest only made him stop long enough to catch his breath. Dean responded by cranking the stereo to full volume. Sam just sang louder (if you could call what he was doing 'singing').

Finally, Dean growled, "God, you're a pain in the ass."

"Hey, it takes talent to get to my level."

The excessively goofy grin on his little brother's face made Dean want to laugh, cry, and pummel the kid in no specific order. Sam looked so young when he smiled like that, like his big brother was the king of the world and together they were unstoppable. Sometimes he forgot just how incredibly young they both were.

"You always were an overachiever."

Sam thought about violating the anti-schmaltz rule to tell Dean he was that way because that's what his big brother taught him to be, but he wasn't sure he wanted to go there either. Things had been good the last few weeks. Going there could change that in a not so good way. So instead Sam opted to stay the little brother and belted out, "This is the song that never ends ... "

Dean thought about telling his brother that there was a special circle in Hell reserved for annoying little brothers like him, but Sam was smiling and he didn't want that to go away. Things had been almost back to normal lately. He couldn't risk it. So instead he started to sing out in contrast, "I'm Henry the Eighth, I am, Henry the Eighth, I am, I am - "

It was a good ten minutes before they called Jinx and another five before the truce.

"So tell me about the job."

"Cold, snow, haunted house: what else do you want to know?" On the sideways look he got, Sam explained, "I don't know. She somehow knows someone who knows someone who knows Jenny. I couldn't really catch much with as fast as she was talking. I told her that we'd call her in the morning. Other than that, I don't think there's much to tell yet. She mentioned some banging and the fact that modern interior design sucks. It might not be anything at all, but until something else pops up, there's no reason we can't head up that way. We can always swing by Bobby's if it's a lost cause. I guess I'm looking at it as, if Jenny told her to call, something this woman said must have meant something to her."

"Then let's hope all of her appliances know well enough to stay plugged in," said Dean as he stepped on the gas. As an affirmative that they would take the job, he tapped his fingertips on the atlas and ordered, "Find my road, man."

Once they found their way, the trip was smooth sailing. Sam slept off the ache in his shoulders again with only a little mothering from his brother. They made only one stop so that by the time Dean rolled into the parking lot at the Country Inn and Suites, Sam could have sworn he'd only been asleep for a few minutes. He did have to blink a few times at the signage to make sure he wasn't entirely lost.

"Here? Really?"

Dean shrugged. "They have whirlpools, and your back needs it. It's not exactly the Ritz, kiddo."

"I know, but ... "

"It's an extra ten bucks a night over what we would have done otherwise. It's okay."

Sam knew it was a lot more than ten dollars over their budget that they were looking at, but Dean looked so insistent about it that he wasn't going to argue the point. If his brother wanted a room instead of a hole for a few days, who was he to rain on the guy's parade? They were both making an effort these days. This was one more that could easily be made.

Neither of them could remember the last time they had been so comfortable for a night. Dean had been right; the whirlpool had been exactly what Sam had needed. It had put Dean out faster than if he'd been knocked on the head. Sam was up first, as usual, and brought breakfast back to the room for them both. They actually ate decently, still in bed. They took their time getting themselves together for the morning before calling Andreea, whose early morning enthusiasm was enough to make even Sam want to go back to bed.

The directions she gave them were easy enough to follow so that they were pulling up to their new job just short of ten a.m. Before Dean even had the car in park, a woman in her late thirties came rushing out the door, wrapping a long sweatercoat around herself with one hand while blowing her mouth on the other. Her enthusiastic wave had Dean fighting not to reach across his brother and lock the door to protect them both.

Not a possession, huh?

From the outside, there were two things that screamed to them that the house would be haunted in a slasher flick: the fact that it obviously hadn't seen a paint brush in thirty years and the way the tree out front seemed to be guarding the front door (from things coming in or getting out, it wasn't entirely clear). Still, it looked pleasant enough in the daylight. The place certainly needed some work done, but the sun shining on the snow helped to make the need appear a little less dire. Still, it wouldn't hurt to ask if any little old lady previous owners had kept bodies in the basement, just to be safe.

Andreea chatted away about how much she loved the town from the day she started at the university and had just known that she was meant to be in this town for the rest of her life while Sam and Dean unpacked a few preliminary supplies from the trunk. She kept on talking as she led them around to the back of the house into the pantry. They all kicked their shoes off then half-tripped over them to get up the two steps up into the kitchen. She shut the door behind them and ushered them through into the dining room.

She stopped them there in front of the formal dining table where she had put out a considerable spread of breakfasty foods. "I didn't know what you would like," she started. "So I just got a little of everything. I mean, really, you never know what to do, and I have never been very good in the kitchen, so I didn't do it, but I put a call in at Cub last night and they got it ready for me right away. They're really good about that. I get them to do all of my short notice catering when I need to. So there's a little of everything. I figured you didn't get a real breakfast. Continental breakfast isn't a real breakfast. And it was the least I could do since you guys came into town so quickly for me. Where were you, by the way? Did I even remember to ask? Because I know I was a little nervous last night and - "

Giving her the opportunity to catch her breath, Dean said, "That's awfully kind of you. Thank you."

"Yeah, it looks great," chimed Sam.

A few minutes later, they were all sitting around the one end of the table, munching away like it was the first time they had ever seen a doughnut. Sam was kind of grateful for it because it kept Andreea from talking too fast. He had a feeling he'd have a wicked headache from her company after too long. She was a nice person, but it took an awful lot of stamina to keep up with her. While Dean started in on his third cream-filled something, Sam tried to get things moving along while he knew Andreea would have to stop talking to take bites and breathe.

"Why don't you tell us about the house?"

Andreea nervously downed the entire contents of her juice glass, licked some errant grape juice from her fingers, then rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Is that a good idea? To, you know, talk about it actually in the house?"

To answer her question, Dean pulled his EMF reader from his inside jacket pocket and turned it on. There was a slight initial flicker in the yellow end of the spectrum, but after that, the device remained quiet. "You see this," he asked, explaining. "When this little baby gets up in the red end, then we have things to be slightly concerned about, but until then, we're fine to talk. There's nothing in this room."

"Well, let's see then. Um, it still has all of the original woodwork from 1905 when the house was built, except in the new section. There was a fire in 1930 after the original owner killed himself and his wife after they lost everything in the market crash like everybody else. Or is that killed her then himself? He can't really do much after blowing himself away, right? But anyway, he apparently knocked over a kerosene lamp after he blew his brains out, which I guess does count as doing something after, considering it sent the northwest corner of the place up in smoke. The neighbors were able to put it out and save most of the original structure. The people who bought it after rebuilt that section and sold it off after that. It changed hands a few times over the next ten years until another couple bought it in 1942 or somewhere around there. I didn't exactly ask for all these details, but you know realtors: they just talk and talk and talk. He died just a few years ago, by the way. It's been empty ever since. Sad, really. It's such a beautiful house. You can tell he loved this place. He restored every inch of it, loved it like it was his mistress. I should be so lucky to get a man to lay his hands on me the way he did the woodwork in this place."

When Sam had told him that this woman talked like Speedy Gonzales on cheap crack, Dean hadn't quite believed him, until now. He had wanted, several times, to interrupt her and tell her that this wasn't exactly what he was looking for - research was what he had his trusty sidekick geek brother for - but she didn't sound like she was going to come up for air any time soon. Then, when she managed to realize that she'd made a joke and found herself funny, he was able to jump in and hopefully keep her quiet for at least thirty seconds before the cattle came out of the gate for auction. "Can you actually just tell us what's been going on that you thought you needed to call us? You must have had to go through a lot of work to find us, so something had to have scared you pretty good there."

"Finding you wasn't the hard part. A friend of a friend of a friend and all that. This woman from Missouri who knows my friend's cousin was happy to put me in touch with you. The cousin said she wouldn't give me your number herself, but if I talked to this woman and she said it was okay, then she would be willing to let me have the number. Apparently this woman is a really good judge of character or something. She made me chatter at her for a good ten minutes before she would even let me talk about what was going on here in the house. She wouldn't say why except that she only sent the real deal your way. After that, she made me keep talking about the house and, wow, did she make me go on and on. I was starting to think she was making fun of me the way she kept asking all these questions. It's not like I have time to just sit and talk all day, you know what I'm saying? But she eventually gave me your number. So really, other than some expensive phone calls and something akin to the Spanish Inquisition, you weren't all that hard to find."

Both Dean and Sam perked up at that, but it was Sam who asked, "You talked to Missouri?"

Dean immediately followed up with a question of his own, before she could get a good wind going. "And what exactly did you tell her?"

"Like I said, she wanted to know all about the house and me. I swear, if we were within driving distance, she would have wanted a blood sample before she even told me your names. She really likes you guys, I think. She was kind of bossy, too. She reminded me a lot of my mother. It was scary. But once she was okay with me, she just wanted to know about the house. She asked about how much I knew about the history of the place and then what I have been seeing and hearing around here to make me call someone. I felt like I was at a job interview or something. It was just weird. But she gave me the number, and here you are. I can't believe you're here. It just makes it all that much more real, you know? I mean, they have those stupid shows on TV where people claim to be ghost hunters and all that, and they try to scare each other for the ratings and all that, but you never really imagine that there are people out there who really do what you do. The woman on the phone said that you were the real deal, though, and that I had better be good to you or she would hunt me down, have me thrown in jail, and tell the warden to tell the prisoners that I was a kiddie raper then let them have at me. She was pretty specific about what she wanted them to do to me, too, if I got either of you in any way hurt. Why would she think you would get hurt? I mean, I have a ghost in my house, not a rabid dog."

"Rabid dogs would be nice," snorted Dean. He was obviously getting this from a nervous second-hand source, but he felt a small rush of affection for the psychic who he had only met the once. She may have been instrumental in setting their father off on the journey that their lives had taken, but she hadn't washed her hands of the responsibility of that. She still looked after them anyway. It was kind of nice. His comment got an emphatic roll of the eyes from Sam, though, so he shoved the impulse down and tried to find a better way to explain to their job what Missouri had been trying to say. "Your friend's cousin had a poltergeist in her house that pretty much tore the place apart and tried to kill her kids. A rabid dog would have been easier to deal with. Missouri and Sam both got tossed around pretty good. That's all she meant. She means well. Jenny probably made her say it, too."

For the first time since their arrival, Andreea looked a little afraid. "Is that going to happen? I haven't had that kind of trouble. It certainly hasn't tried to kill me. Do you think it's going to try to kill me?"

This time Sam gave his brother a very pointed look that clearly said Way to be, Genius. Trying to be a little more gentle than his brother, Sam said, "No, I don't think your spirit is going to get violent on you. If it was going to, it would have by now, I think. Missouri and Dean are both being a little over-dramatic here. But why don't you tell us what you told her so we can figure out exactly what it is that we are going to have to look forward to? What makes you think you have a spirit instead of, say, mice or something?"

"Banging. Lots and lots of banging. At all hours of the night. Even Mighty Mouse doesn't have the strength to make the kind of noise that's coming from the attic and a few of the other rooms. There're heavy footsteps in the hallways, and let me tell you, hard wood floors don't exactly muffle the noise, if you know what I mean. You'd think an entire herd of buffalo was stampeding my kitchen half the time. It's crazy. I hear crying sometimes, if I'm not listening for it. As soon as I hear it and try to figure out where it's coming from, it stops. It's this really awful sounding moaning, actually. The windows rattle, and it isn't just from the wind. I know, Minnesota and wind and winter and all that, but really, it isn't coming from outside. It's like the wind is coming from inside the house. It gets really cold, no matter how high I have the heat on. And banging. Did I mention the banging, because there's a lot of banging. I'm not kidding. Lots and lots of banging."

When she came up for air and a bite of her danish, Dean asked, "Where does it sound like the banging is coming from?"

"All over. It echoes. But the thudding ones sound like they're up in the attic somewhere. Most of the time, it just sounds like a hammer hitting the walls. I swear, I think I'm going to wake up one morning and find all the drywall on the floor, but it hasn't happened yet. I thought the ceiling was going to come down the other night, too. I'll hear bangs coming from down in the kitchen in the middle of the night, but then I'll come down and there won't be a single dustmite out of place. I can boil water in the tub, but as soon as I get a toe in, it'll be ice cold. It's really starting to freak me out. The crying is the hard part. I can't stand to hear people cry."

"Neither can I," said Dean sympathetically. It was the truth, sort of. He was never more uncomfortable than when any one of the revolving door of strangers in their path started to cry. Spirits, though, when they cried, all it did was make him want to get the job over faster. Dean dusted the crumbs from his hands, pushed back his chair, and offered his hand to their hostess. "If you don't mind, I think it's probably time for you to give us a tour."

"You bet," Andreea said rather enthusiastically.

She guided them through the first level of the house, pointing out different sections that had either been rebuilt or were of the original design, and talking like they were merely guests at a housewarming party. Here and there, both brothers would check the EMF for signs of any activity, but there was nothing to be found beyond the original oak shelving units and the ornate carvings in the stone of the fireplace.

The second level of the house was much colder than the first. Sam quietly nudged Dean and pointed to the green readings they were getting as Andreea took them into the first room of the master bedroom suite.

"Did you leave that on?" asked Dean as they walked through the sitting room.

"What? The radio? Oh, yeah. I hate being in a quiet house, so I always have a stereo turned on on every floor. I suppose it's going to be a bitch of a habit when I see the electric bill, but I have to. I grew up sharing a bedroom with my sister, so I never had any privacy. I don't know how to be alone without at least some noise. It's silly, I know, I'm a grown woman and I need my security blankie, but when you live alone, you're willing to look like an idiot if it means you aren't spooking yourself when you walk into your own reflection. Now granted, that would probably be a little easier if I wasn't living in a freaking haunted house, but a girl's gotta do, you know? So any spikes on that thingy to show you exactly where my ghost is hanging out? Did I tell you that I named him? Yeah, I figured if I was going to be yelling at something to stop making all the racket in the middle of the night, I better at least have a name to call the damned thing; and I've seen too many episodes of Angel, so I started calling him Phantom Denis just because it seemed entirely logical to me at the time. I wonder if he is a Denis. That would be funny. At least, I think it would be funny. You never really can tell what's going to be funny to people. I can't. But then, I do tend to have my own little world, if you can't tell."

He didn't mean to, but Sam zoned out a moment, ignoring Andreea's little tangent. He heard the song on the CD player, caught in a half-memory that iced his stomach. He couldn't remember where he had heard it or why it was stuck in his mind, but he heard it there anyway. As he listened to the words, though, he wished like hell it would go away. It struck just a little too close to home these days. "Not to be rude," he interrupted both Andreea and Neil Young. "But could we do something about the music? It's kind of creeping me out."

Dean's eyes widened questioningly as he looked toward the CD player, obviously planning to give the music some attention, but no sooner were the words out of Sam's mouth than the EMF lit up like a Christmas tree. The last note in the chorus snapped off abruptly as the stereo switched to the radio function, shot up in volume to the top of the scale, and blared out another song that sounded vaguely familiar.

"Thank you, Denis!" Andreea threw both hands up in the air in exasperation. To the brothers, she said as loudly as she could over the music, "He seems to like that one. If he doesn't like what I'm listening to, he'll throw this on."

"The same genre or the exact same song every time?" asked Dean, showing Sam the once again yellowed EMF.

"Same song, I think, but I can't tell for sure. Those songs from around then all tend to sound the same to me. I don't think he cares for the long-haired hippy riffraff, as my mother calls it. Can you tell she was a Republican back in the day?" She looked around the room, tilting her head back so that she was almost addressing the ceiling and said, "Sorry, Denis! I didn't mean to. I'll try to be better. But you can see I have guests, so could you please turn it down?"

Immediately the music was returned to a reasonable level.

Andreea perked up, flipped her hair, and said genuinely, "Thanks, Denis! You're the best! I mean, you're the only ghost I've ever had, but considering the horror stories I'm guessing these two could tell me, we could probably rank you up there with being one of the best. 'Best' on a scale of one to ten, ten being 'best', 'best' being not killing people or scaring little kids on more than just Halloween, I think I could easily give you a seven. I'd rate you higher, but you really do kind of scare me, because the banging around up there in the middle of the night isn't exactly conducive to beauty rest, you know what I'm saying?"

Sam wrinkled his nose at the way his question was about to come out, but there really was no good way to ask it. "Does Denis spend a lot of time in your bedroom?"

She cocked her head for a moment before shrugging her eyebrows at him. "You know, I can't tell? This isn't exactly normal for me. I mean, I notice things, but I don't really notice things. I probably should have paid more attention, especially since I called you all the way up here, but I don't know. Does it matter?"

"It might," said Sam. "We never know what will help us figure out who a spirit used to be."

"You really have to know who a ghost is? Isn't there some way to just get it to leave me alone without having to know who it is?"

"If we're going to get rid of it, yeah," said Dean. From the look on Andreea's face, that didn't sound like a very good idea to her, so he kept the details of what 'getting rid of' a ghost would entail. He tried to put it a little more gently by saying, "We can't put a spirit to rest without knowing where it's buried."

Yeah, that didn't come out any better.

"I just think it'll be a lot harder to do if I have a name to go with the bang, you know?"

Sam swooped in the for the rescue, seeing that look on his brother's face that warned that Dean was about to say something really stupid - not that Andreea hadn't set him up beautifully for it. "Why don't you show us the rest of the house, Andreea? I think we're getting closer to finding out where your spirit might be hiding out the most. That would be a good place for us to start so that we can help you out."

"Right, sure. Of course." With a spin of her heel, the woman started back through the sitting room and toward the door, talking about how much closet space she had and how she had never imagined having this much closet space when she was in college. "You never realize just how important it is to have your own space until you start to miss having someone there all the time. Trust me. It's weird to suddenly have even a closet to yourself when you've always had to share one. That's why I like the radio. Even if I didn't have Denis banging around, I'd still think it was too quiet in here. If I was planning on being single my whole life, I wouldn't have bought this place. There's only so much quiet a girl can take, you know?"

As their hostess led them out of the bedroom, Dean nudged his brother in the side and asked quietly, "How much cash do you have on you?"

"Why?"

"Tour Guide Barbie is going to drive me into an early grave if we don't get her out of here. I can't work like this."

Sam stopped for a moment, even though Andreea was already half way down the hall (albeit completely oblivious to the lack of company, if her chattering about them going into the reconstructed rooms of the house was any indication). "We can't just kick the woman out of her own house because you don't like her."

"Consider it for her safety and ours. Besides, I don't like it. If Phantom Denis ... " Dean rolled his eyes at the idiocy of that one. "Or whoever this guy is can control the electronics in the house, what else can he do? Banging is one thing: they all can do that. But we don't know how old this spirit is. It might not be as helpful when it realizes what she brought us here for."

Realizing that, as much as he hated the idea, his brother was right, Sam said, "I can probably cough up forty for the night if I have to, but can we just get rid of her for the afternoon first before we worry about shipping her off? We're going to need that cash if we have to stay in town too long. It's supposed to dip below zero tonight."

They had been very careful lately to avoid even motels on the off chance that any of their credit cards had been tagged, squatting in abandoned houses instead, but that wasn't going to be an option in the dead of a Minnesota winter. Call him 'crazy', but he liked his room temperature to be above freezing. Last night had been a luxury, but it wasn't one that they could afford to take on for more than two or three more nights if they were going to have to foot Andreea's bill, too. The point taken, Dean nodded. "All right. But really, we do need to get her out of here, at least for now. Something about this house isn't right, and I'd rather not have a civilian caught in the crossfire if this goes south."

"Yeah."

"You guys coming?" hollered Andreea from a few doors down.

Sam quickly called back, "Yep. Sorry."

Once they caught back up with their hostess, Dean jutted his chin toward a door at the end of the hallway. "What's in there?"

"That's the stairway to the attic. He seems to spend most of his time up there. Don't ask me what he's doing. He could be spooning out his escape route, for all I know; he won't let me in. He just keeps banging and dropping things. I have no idea what's up there. I don't think the last owners cleaned it out before putting the house on the market, and like I said, it's been for sale now for a few years now, so who knows? I suppose anyone could have been up there in the meantime. I've tried asking him to let me come up and see what's going on. I thought that maybe if I could help him find whatever it is he's looking for, he'd be a happy camper and we could have a little less noisy of a peaceful coexistence, but so far, he's not in for negotiating. I'm sure it was probably a silly idea, but I didn't know what else to do. Anything else seemed less than polite. After all, he was probably here a long time before me. He had dibs, whoever 'he' is. You know, I've seen Ghostbusters. I really hope you guys aren't going to catch him and stuff him into a little itty bitty box like they did. That's just cruel, if you ask me. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, I suppose; it would be cruel to kick him out of his own house. You don't, do you? Put them in little boxes?"

"No," said Sam simply while he watched his brother's cautious approach to the doorway.

Dean got one hand on the doorknob but didn't manage to get even a quarter of a turn in before he was quite unceremoniously dumped on his ass in between Andreea and her little kitschy decorative table. The Christmas poinsettia she had recently over-watered fell into his lap, leaves down. Sam was able to save the rest of the stand from tipping onto his brother, but lost his grip on it, sending it tipping the other way. The little knick knack on the undershelf slid right off, chipping off on the wall on the way down. Sam winced, not sure who to apologize to first.

Taking the hand held out to him, Dean stood up and stared at the door with a pout to rival Sam's usual expression. "A 'please leave' would have been enough, Dude."
On to Part Two