Dead Zone Alchemy (2/5)
Title: Dead Zone Alchemy (2/5)
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hunting is an accidental occupation.
Notes: The WiP that slept throughout S4. Needless to say, now utterly, utterly AU.
Dead Zone Alchemy
"You're just about the last person I thought I'd see."
"I guess I'm full of surprises." Dawn breaks above them, the still-hidden sun's rays reflecting red and yellow and orange on the underbellies of clouds and the windows of the street's storefront churches. It distorts the shadows playing across Sam's face. "Get in."
Jo doesn't release the duffel or unshrug the backpack. "So. How'd you find me?"
"It's kind of what we do, you know." Sam makes an impatient movement with his left hand. A chill of deja vu shivers up Jo's spine. "Although it's hard to miss a person walking alone on an empty street."
A patrol car pulls up alongside the Impala. Its sole occupant, a freckle-faced deputy in starched uniform khakis, leans out. "There a problem here?"
They could be anything, Jo realizes: a couple breaking up, a sleaze soliciting a lay, a psycho luring his next victim. Behind the man's authoritative gaze is wariness and a kind of half-hope that what he's seeing will not require hauling someone to the station. Jo recognizes the look of someone nearing the end of their shift.
"'Morning, sir," Sam answers affably, harmlessly, holding Jo's eyes a fraction before turning with practiced meekness to the officer. "I was just picking my sister up."
"Your sister."
"Yep." Jo forces a smile. She knows how sweetly it comes across, aw shucks, having used it plenty of times before today. "Typical big brother, he oversleeps and so what am I supposed to do? Stay at the Greyhound station? I could get mugged there, Officer. I was just about to call him."
She points at a public phone a few yards ahead, grotty and disgusting but there nonetheless to better substantiate this lie ad-libbed by two conspirators. She and Sam have unfinished business, but the unspoken rule to keep hunting affairs from breaking mainstream held them in a temporary alliance.
"I already apologized," Sam follows up. Turning to the deputy, he says, "You just saved me from getting yelled at some more. You are totally welcome to keep me out of hot water for as long as you like."
Officer Freckles points at a street sweeper coming up fast behind his squad car and the parked Impala. "Tell you what, partner. I'll be happy to oblige, but you see that thing? You stay here any longer and you'll have a ticket to add to your troubles."
Jo considers the Impala's passenger seat.
The deputy waves them off. "Get out of here."
He waits until Sam finishes stowing away Jo's bags in the backseat. He returns their waves with a sympathetic nod to Sam before speeding off.
Silence for two traffic lights. They're off the major thoroughfare now, turning into smaller streets that lead into a mix-use neighborhood dominated by warehouses and the occasional barren pocket park. Jo ponders jumping out, anything to put some distance between her and this person who looks like Sam Winchester, anything to get rid of the creepy-crawly feeling that's making the hairs on the back of her neck stand.
"I know what you are," Sam growls, drawing out a gun and leveling it at her before slamming the brakes to a full, abrupt start that throws Jo hard against the dashboard. "What do you want?"
"You've gotta be kidding," Jo spits out, cross-eyed with pain.
A little belatedly, Jo holds up a flask of holy water, as if it's a weapon equal to his firearm.
"I know what you're trying to do with me!"
Jo hurls the holy water at his face, aiming at his eyes. He splutters, but nothing else happens. When he hesitates at the trigger of a handgun she vaguely recognizes as Dean's from its mother-of-pearl handle, she snaps.
"That's it!" She jostles the passenger handle and gracelessly falls out of the car and on to the parking lot asphalt, cursing her dumb bad luck and at the lunacy that underscores every Winchester encounter. "I'm done with you and this...this crazy you have going. I want nothing to do with you!"
To her horror, Sam makes a grab for her across the front seat, but she's already out and ready to break into a full run.
"Wait, Jo!" Sam's out of the driver's seat and towering above her, blocking her access to freedom. "Wait, I'm sorry. I thought you were something else. I've been in this town for awhile now, tracking down -"
"I don't care, have at it, whatever you're tracking down. I'm not interested in getting in your way." She pauses. "Yours and Dean's. Get out of my face."
Sam doesn't budge. The front of his shirt and jacket are soaked with holy water, and in the clean morning-after following a rainy night, its stale scent mingles with the salty pungent air blowing in from the Gulf. Sam looks crazed, intense and taut with the stress of what Jo can only guess as a frustrating hunt. She returns his unhinged stare with one of nervous disdain.
He gives her a full once-over, assessing her and the coincidence of two people like themselves crossing paths in this city.
"Let me help you," Sam says, reaching into the backseat to fetch her things. "Look, let me make it up to you."
"You were going to shoot my freaking face off!"
"I know. That is why. I want to make it up to you." Sam casts a haunted look past her before doing a full sweep of the empty parking lot. The sun had now risen fully, brightly and blindingly through dissipating clouds, hammering at their eyes. "Can we please get out of here?"
Back in the car, alone to stew in one-sided paranoia, Jo again watches the streets change.
"What happened to you?" Sam asks, turning into a motel parking lot.
"I fell." Jo catches a glimpse of herself in the side mirror and is dismayed at what she sees. Her hair is unkempt, scraggly, colorless, not framing as much as cordoning off a face haggard and rabbity with fatigue. She probably reeks, too. "Where's Dean?"
"He's gone."
And he let you take his car? "Oh. When's he back?"
"Not any time soon," Sam checks the rearview before pulling into a parking space. "He's dead."
***
Jo wakes up troubled, her head abuzz and her limbs aching. She had opted to sleep upright to alleviate as much possible pressure from her ribs, and that meant choosing the shabby armchair in Sam's motel room over the bed he politely offered.
The first thing she notices is that there are actually two beds: one neatly made but clearly slept in, the other so obviously untouched and unused that its meaning hits her like a heavy revelation.
The second thing is Sam himself. How long he has been watching her sleep, she doesn't know. What she does know is that he had probably been awake for hours, observing her for signs of trouble. Jo wants to think kindly of the gesture, but she knows he did it for his own protection more than hers. If she had been stronger, she'd have skipped the sleep and watched him for demonic possession.
"Here," he says, offering a mug of soup. "Are you stuck in this town?" he demands rather than asks.
Jo's stomach gurgles longingly. It's chicken soup, nourishing and familiar and hot as it makes its way down. Sam watches her eat with eagle eyes. She guesses that he put some holy water there, just in case.
"Stuck? No."
Sam holds up an electric coffee pot Jo guesses he'd used to heat canned soup. He tips a second helping into her cup. "Damn. It's just me then." At her silent question, he continues somewhat unwillingly, "As in, something's preventing me from leaving this town. It's restricted how much ground I can travel, about a three-mile radius. It's not a mystery spot, and I doubt it's a haunting."
"So, there aren't any records of mysterious deaths in the area you're confined to? The kind that seems to repeat itself in a sort of cycle?"
He shakes his head. "Nope, none. The place is clean, so to speak. I'm researching, but I could use someone who isn't as physically limited as I am."
"What were you after?"
Sam doesn't break eye contact, but he manages to look shifty anyway. "I wasn't on any job, just driving through this town to pick up supplies. What about you?"
Jo puts the soup down and angles herself forward to better read him. Sam is unblinking. "Some trouble at the frat house near university grounds. It didn't work out too well, as if you hadn't noticed. I hurt myself bad enough that I'm out of commission until I heal up. I gave up on my car, piece of crap that it is. I'm broke as hell and without any leads when you drove up and tried to off me. I think you missed the part where you shoot my dog dead in front of a bunch of church kids."
"Ha."
Jo smiles a bit.
"Will you help me, then? I'll trade you a favor."
Jo is already contemplating leaving the relative safety of the motel. She's not sure about this different Sam, who, while not demonically possessed, appears driven by similarly dark determination, vengeance. This is hunter's vigilantism at its infancy; Jo thinks of Casey Wandell, the troubling rumors about Wyoming, and strangely enough, her father.
"All right," she answers, ignoring the alarm bells in her head, the same ones that rang and rang in Duluth that one night. "Help me find my mother."
At that, Sam startles. "That's it?"
What else is more worthwhile? Jo stares at him incredulously. "Also, a car," she adds. "One that isn't such a P.O.S."
"Done." Sam gets up to rummage through one of the pockets of his duffel to retrieve a cell phone. It's Dean's, Jo remembers the flip-phone's polished silvery surface. "I didn't know you were looking for her." The cell hums a lengthy polyphonic melody. Sam scrolls through the phone's menu before showing her the display screen. "Here."
As she programs the number into her phone with shaking, unbelieving hands, she asks him, without glancing up: "What do you need me to do?"
***
The last time she bunked with the Winchesters, there had been none of this spartan neatness.
One wall is covered with columns of clipped newspaper articles (grisly deaths), photo-copied pages and Web site printouts (the Lazarus legend, the Coptic apocalypse of St. Paul, bezoar stones), and some vaguely mathematical diagrams that have little to do with math (enochian spellwork).
She knows without checking that the drawers and closet are empty, as all of Sam's clothes are still in his bag, folded in three neat piles Jo can count from its place on the fold-out luggage rack. On the bureau are a series of shoebox-sized boxes, neatly stacked and each of them sealed with miniature padlocks and warding seals written in white wax pencil. Charms, probably; maybe dangerous artifacts.
Wherever his weapons stash is hidden, Jo's sure that they're compartmentalized with military neatness.
"Can you fetch some things for me in town?"
"What're they for?" Jo continues reading one of the news briefs. It's about an assault at the frat house involving two of its members. The victim had been transported to a nearby hospital for his injuries; his attacker, a pledge, is facing several counts of attempted murder. The pledge had been the one to push her off the second-floor balcony a few nights ago.
"They're important."
"Will they help you break the three-mile barrier thing?" Jo asks, scanning the wall for related articles. "You need them for a spell, don't you?"
She hears the frown in Sam's voice. "Yes."
"You want me to get stuff for what's probably a dangerous ritual, knowing that we don't dabble in rituals unless we have to." Jo never liked hoodoo, especially when used in hunting. It's like going against the very nature of what they do. She's conservative like that. "You don't want to let me in on your plan and yet you expect me to trust you when you are unwilling to trust me. How is that right?"
"It isn't. But prying into the affairs of other hunters is just as bad," he answers with measured severity, coming to stand by her at the wall. "I minded my own business with you."
"I wish you hadn't." She can feel his gaze on her, waiting for more. "Clearly, I am hunting something that put me in the hospital. I thought hunting and hunters have a loose brotherhood...sisterhood-thing going. I thought we hunted for the common good?"
"That's right." Sam chuckles. She wonders how long he had been alone, how long since Dean died. "But, dude, I'm not your partner."
It's such a Dean thing to say. She smiles sadly, the ghost of him in her mind. Strange, how people in their line of business form such ridiculous attachments. "You sure damn ain't, as sure as I'm not yours."
"Jo, I wouldn't have asked you unless it was dire. And it is."
"I wouldn't have indirectly asked for your help if I didn't actually need it," Jo says, turning to him to pluck the list out of his hand. "And I do."
When she raises her eyes to meet his, she finds that she doesn't like what she sees in them at all.
***
One day, on her walk back from one of the kooky New Age shops near the campus Jo takes a detour to check out fraternity row.
A crowd of college kids and residents had gathered at the driveway of the Zeta Lambda Nu house, a squat two-story that currently serves as this fraternity's base. Its longtime home had been a handsome French-inspired house, about half-a-mile away, but it is, like most lives and homes in this part of the South, in a state of half-destruction and ruin since the last major hurricane.
The place isn't taped off, but it's blocked off by several squad cars.
Looking past the small mob and the red-and-blues, Jo notices a broken window and beyond it the violent disarray of a struggle. Off to the side is an unsteady balcony on which she had stood only a few nights ago. It still clung to the house with a quiet desperation, in an asymmetrical semi-tilt that exposes its rusting nails.
And standing toe-to-toe with one of the commanding officers at the scene, is Sam in a suit, dark hair combed back neatly, a reporter's pad in one hand.
"Then as a police information officer, you should be able at least disclose -"
"There are no comments being issued at the moment," the lieutenant tries to glare Sam into submission. "Not until our detectives and crime scene investigators clear the place."
Sam doesn't look surprised to see Jo.
"Follow me," he says as he passes her, skirting around the squad cars and stepping over crumbled sidewalk.
Jo waits out a good distance before walking.
Sam leads her to a narrow alleyway that's not so much alley as it is a narrow dirt path. It's quiet in this claustrophobic squeeze between the facing backyards of suburban homes. Street sounds echo hollowly, the chirps of Sam's EMF meter their sole accompaniment.
As they near the backyard fence of the frat house, they crouch out of eye-line and stick close to the splintering wood.
Before Sam even opens his mouth, Jo notices. A fine layer of it peppers the dark soil and shimmers on the whitewash, the unmistakable cornhusk sheen of sulfur.
"Do you have a suit?" he asks quietly.
***
The first rule of impersonating anyone in an official capacity is, you have to look the part and have the right credentials.
As large and complicated city government is, its people run in small circles, Sam explains. For it to work, the lie has to be believable and so inconsequential that it's forgettable.
"Ideally, anyway," Sam says, leaning over a fake press badge with an Exacto knife. He had sliced out his photograph to replace it with Jo's, taken at his insistence with ten of her last twenty dollars at the notary's. His passport photo will be transferred to Dean's old media badge. "One time, we made such huge asses of ourselves in Philadelphia that we had to lay low for a month. Dad was livid. This was when we were still young."
There's no telling when Sam will lapse into a chatty mood. So far, there had been no explanation supplied for Dean's death, nor what initially brought Sam to Mississippi. Among the observations that had piqued Jo are his long portentous stretches of silence. They had a presence of their own, like an inactive ghoul, like bad intentions.
Sam talking, now that's an event.
"What was it?" Jo asks, ignoring the vagueness of the 'we.' She wants to ask about Dean so badly, but her uneasy awe of Sam kept her mouth shut. "The thing you guys were after, I mean."
"A succubus."
"You two are the only people I know who have made a skill out of impersonating officials," Jo remarks, impressed. It's gutsy to skim so close to the law like that. "Everyone else kind of tries to walk around the red tape."
Sam presses her media credential between two towels before passing a steaming iron over them. "You're the only person I know who shoplifts for money. Seriously, Jo."
"I don't have unlimited lines of credit! I have to earn it the old-fashioned hard way, like a hoodlum. Stealing is a useful skill. Try stealing six pairs of jeans at a public laundromat and then selling them for a decent price at a thrift store!"
"No, bow-hunting is a useful skill," Sam grins lopsidedly. Although it's a far cry from Dean's easy magnetism, Jo for a moment sees the brothers' superficial similarities - smile lines in the same places, the lightning-quick flash of teeth, the devil-may-care tilt of the head. "And, no thanks. I hate getting arrested for minor and stupid crimes."
Jo rattles a small bottle of over-the-counter painkillers at him. They had been purchased with her hard-earned dirty money. "It's not stupid to me."
Their plans are derailed by "America's Most Wanted."
"It's a re-broadcast!" he exclaims in the tones of one greatly inconvenienced, not someone the FBI is after. "I'm supposed to be dead!"
It's only been a week or so, but Jo is already tired of the bizarre and creepy proclamations.
The broadcast might have been a heavy-handed act of petty providence. It spares Sam from hanging out with distraught members of Delta Nu sorority at the lobby of the nearby community hospital. The sisters and a group of guys have come to pay a visit to the now-conscious victim - Travis Snow - of the frat house altercation.
"I'm Travis' friend's girlfriend," Jo explains to the fiancee, the only girl in the group giving Jo the territorial hairy eyeball. "My boyfriend's on his way."
Gratified, the fiancee, Tanya, resumes fretting, leaving Jo to resume her snooping.
Travis, it turns, is "a nice guy" who fell in with the "wrong crowd."
"Hasn't been the same since Mardi Gras night, it's, like, he's a whole other person now," says one sorority sister.
"Always testing his limits by doing crap like urban base jumping and picking fights with strangers," his room mate says, "Jesus, it was like fucking Fight Club. But, um. He was the only member."
"I thought he'd go for the honor society, not Animal House," his applied mathematics lab partner admits to Jo as they wait their turn for the visitor's badges. "Those guys have the most idiotic 'secret shake.' You know what? I shouldn't talk shit anyway, my buddy's just taken a turn for the better. Don't wanna jinx it."
"Handshake? You know how you can really tell who belongs?" another a friend of a sorority sister's friend says. "The brand. One of the guys on the exec council's introduced branding. How hardcore is that?"
The friend traces the pattern on her own palm to show Jo: a perfect circle struck through with a short diagonal line.
"Freaky, huh?"
"Yeah," Jo gulps. "Totally."
***
They compare notes over a late dinner of mac'n'cheese and beers.
Sam thinks it's body-snatchers and conventional demonic possession. Jo pushes for a supernatural virus, one that triggers temporary madness before leaving its host's body. By the time the beers are gone, the theories begin to sound equally plausible. A pleasant calm settles between her and Sam, a sense of well-being that comes from a shared meal and the rightness of the company.
To his credit, Sam reacts civilly to the recreation of the brand, sketched by Jo on a paper napkin.
"That was on me, wasn't it." He pushes up the sleeve of his shirt to expose the inside of his right forearm, scrutinizing the pale, unmarred skin there as though a new demonic seal is going to reappear any second. "You know how demons pick their hosts? They don't always choose the vulnerable. They're vain beings, you know, so they prefer the strongest, the most knowledgeable, useful -"
"You're so modest," Jo says and Sam actually laughs. "You were saying? What do they look for...?"
There isn't any sense in chucking out a perfectly good hunting tip.
"They want a tool. That's us in a nutshell," Sam says, king of good cheer that he is. "I'm sorry about what happened back in Duluth. Dean told me what he walked in on, but as to what else I did that week I wasn't myself -"
"You were possessed for a week?"
Sam nods, leaning back on his chair. "Yeah. I don't remember any of it, and there's this guy I killed," he continues, his mouth twisting with evident self-loathing. "We came back to his place and I saw myself on his surveillance tapes. Dean didn't want me to take responsibility, but I knew better. The demon knew what I knew and it brought me to this guy's doorstep." He folded and unfolded a napkin. "He was a hunter."
Jo watches his hands move, weighing the harm and the advantage of breaking bad news. He has to know. She would want to know. "Sam, people know what you did. People are looking for you. His daughter found where people like us go, and she was asking questions."
The chair creaks as Sam tilts it on its back legs, stares up at the pocked ceiling, probably stalling, probably deciding how to respond. Loneliness and pride emanate from him, and without helping it, Jo feels for him. But it isn't kindness or pity that move her, but the sheer bleakness of his situation - the absence of providence, his disconnect, the lone fight. So many people, it seems, want Sam Winchester to disappear; maybe even Sam himself.
His silence is Jo's cue that the conversation is concluded. But she isn't quite done.
"There's nothing to forgive, at least on my part," she says, rising to clear the remnants of dinner. Old bar habits die hard. "You didn't want to hurt me, the thing in you did. It just used you."
She dumps two bags of empty beer bottles and styrofoam containers into the wastebasket he holds out. Sam watches her wearily, but without suspicion.
"You're a bigger person than the others."
"Ain't that the truth?" which earns her another laugh from him. Emboldened, Jo continues, in more serious tones: "I think I was nearly had once. It was trying to jump from the man I was exorcising and into me. It said things, hurtful truthful-sounding stuff. Guess it found me corruptible."
"And by that token, desirable." Sam adds, raising his brows at the blush pinking her cheeks. "Hey, there's no accounting for bad taste."
***
Carl calls first thing the next morning.
Jo had been hoping that the unfamiliar number belonged to her Momma. Nearly everyday, she calls and leaves a message. None of them have been returned.
Sam jolts awake and nods when Jo presses a finger to her lips.
"How's this fine country of ours been treating you?" Carl drawls affectionately. "Been having fun chasing ghosts and ghostly critters wherever you are?"
"Just fine," Jo answers cheerfully through a yawn. "What's the news?"
The news isn't good.
The "America's Most Wanted" re-broadcast had been seen by Eileen. One hunter, that's all it takes for word to spread like wildfire. In the space of a few minutes, Carl tells her how the rumors about the Wandell murder have been proven true, and that the community has been talking about the rise of an old power named Lilith. Anyone who comes across Sam Winchester is to be careful because he's turned against his own kind. Is she in the South? There are several guys and gals headed that-a-way to deal with loosed demons that escaped from that hell gate.
Jo says she's in San Diego.
"Good for you," Carl says. "The balls on some of these things. 'Fucked up' doesn't begin to describe what these Winchesters have gotten all us into. You okay, honey? Usually, you'd be all over an opp like this, askin' the where and when and what of the situation."
"Oh, I'm interested." Jo's on her feet, stuffing her crap into her duffel and gesturing for Sam to do the same. Pack up, now. Sam nods again and reaches for his jeans. "Tell me more."
Carl tells her everything he knows. Jo hates herself for lying, though not as much for her inability to find a compelling reason to lead them all to Sam. They would have owed her. She feels the turning-point significance of the decision. It's scary, elating. Traitorous, even.
The room's vanity mirror reflects her turncoat face: it's pale and drawn, shadowed.
This life is so full of shadows. The wisp of smoke licking out of the room's air vent seems to agree. Jo watches it wriggle and vanish.
And that's it.
"Thanks, Carl," she says, cutting him off. "I'll be in touch. Promise."
There will be consequences. The thought slams Jo back into herself. She pulls her gaze from the mirror, finally, to face Sam.
"You have no idea what you lied yourself into right now," he finally says, opening the door. "The hunting community is not a forgiving one. Tell me what your friend told you."
"My friends are making their way here," Jo answers, reaching for him. "Too bad they don't know that I've got them beat."
Jo rears back, and, with a force she never knew she had, slugs Sam hard across the face.
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hunting is an accidental occupation.
Notes: The WiP that slept throughout S4. Needless to say, now utterly, utterly AU.
Dead Zone Alchemy
"You're just about the last person I thought I'd see."
"I guess I'm full of surprises." Dawn breaks above them, the still-hidden sun's rays reflecting red and yellow and orange on the underbellies of clouds and the windows of the street's storefront churches. It distorts the shadows playing across Sam's face. "Get in."
Jo doesn't release the duffel or unshrug the backpack. "So. How'd you find me?"
"It's kind of what we do, you know." Sam makes an impatient movement with his left hand. A chill of deja vu shivers up Jo's spine. "Although it's hard to miss a person walking alone on an empty street."
A patrol car pulls up alongside the Impala. Its sole occupant, a freckle-faced deputy in starched uniform khakis, leans out. "There a problem here?"
They could be anything, Jo realizes: a couple breaking up, a sleaze soliciting a lay, a psycho luring his next victim. Behind the man's authoritative gaze is wariness and a kind of half-hope that what he's seeing will not require hauling someone to the station. Jo recognizes the look of someone nearing the end of their shift.
"'Morning, sir," Sam answers affably, harmlessly, holding Jo's eyes a fraction before turning with practiced meekness to the officer. "I was just picking my sister up."
"Your sister."
"Yep." Jo forces a smile. She knows how sweetly it comes across, aw shucks, having used it plenty of times before today. "Typical big brother, he oversleeps and so what am I supposed to do? Stay at the Greyhound station? I could get mugged there, Officer. I was just about to call him."
She points at a public phone a few yards ahead, grotty and disgusting but there nonetheless to better substantiate this lie ad-libbed by two conspirators. She and Sam have unfinished business, but the unspoken rule to keep hunting affairs from breaking mainstream held them in a temporary alliance.
"I already apologized," Sam follows up. Turning to the deputy, he says, "You just saved me from getting yelled at some more. You are totally welcome to keep me out of hot water for as long as you like."
Officer Freckles points at a street sweeper coming up fast behind his squad car and the parked Impala. "Tell you what, partner. I'll be happy to oblige, but you see that thing? You stay here any longer and you'll have a ticket to add to your troubles."
Jo considers the Impala's passenger seat.
The deputy waves them off. "Get out of here."
He waits until Sam finishes stowing away Jo's bags in the backseat. He returns their waves with a sympathetic nod to Sam before speeding off.
Silence for two traffic lights. They're off the major thoroughfare now, turning into smaller streets that lead into a mix-use neighborhood dominated by warehouses and the occasional barren pocket park. Jo ponders jumping out, anything to put some distance between her and this person who looks like Sam Winchester, anything to get rid of the creepy-crawly feeling that's making the hairs on the back of her neck stand.
"I know what you are," Sam growls, drawing out a gun and leveling it at her before slamming the brakes to a full, abrupt start that throws Jo hard against the dashboard. "What do you want?"
"You've gotta be kidding," Jo spits out, cross-eyed with pain.
A little belatedly, Jo holds up a flask of holy water, as if it's a weapon equal to his firearm.
"I know what you're trying to do with me!"
Jo hurls the holy water at his face, aiming at his eyes. He splutters, but nothing else happens. When he hesitates at the trigger of a handgun she vaguely recognizes as Dean's from its mother-of-pearl handle, she snaps.
"That's it!" She jostles the passenger handle and gracelessly falls out of the car and on to the parking lot asphalt, cursing her dumb bad luck and at the lunacy that underscores every Winchester encounter. "I'm done with you and this...this crazy you have going. I want nothing to do with you!"
To her horror, Sam makes a grab for her across the front seat, but she's already out and ready to break into a full run.
"Wait, Jo!" Sam's out of the driver's seat and towering above her, blocking her access to freedom. "Wait, I'm sorry. I thought you were something else. I've been in this town for awhile now, tracking down -"
"I don't care, have at it, whatever you're tracking down. I'm not interested in getting in your way." She pauses. "Yours and Dean's. Get out of my face."
Sam doesn't budge. The front of his shirt and jacket are soaked with holy water, and in the clean morning-after following a rainy night, its stale scent mingles with the salty pungent air blowing in from the Gulf. Sam looks crazed, intense and taut with the stress of what Jo can only guess as a frustrating hunt. She returns his unhinged stare with one of nervous disdain.
He gives her a full once-over, assessing her and the coincidence of two people like themselves crossing paths in this city.
"Let me help you," Sam says, reaching into the backseat to fetch her things. "Look, let me make it up to you."
"You were going to shoot my freaking face off!"
"I know. That is why. I want to make it up to you." Sam casts a haunted look past her before doing a full sweep of the empty parking lot. The sun had now risen fully, brightly and blindingly through dissipating clouds, hammering at their eyes. "Can we please get out of here?"
Back in the car, alone to stew in one-sided paranoia, Jo again watches the streets change.
"What happened to you?" Sam asks, turning into a motel parking lot.
"I fell." Jo catches a glimpse of herself in the side mirror and is dismayed at what she sees. Her hair is unkempt, scraggly, colorless, not framing as much as cordoning off a face haggard and rabbity with fatigue. She probably reeks, too. "Where's Dean?"
"He's gone."
And he let you take his car? "Oh. When's he back?"
"Not any time soon," Sam checks the rearview before pulling into a parking space. "He's dead."
***
Jo wakes up troubled, her head abuzz and her limbs aching. She had opted to sleep upright to alleviate as much possible pressure from her ribs, and that meant choosing the shabby armchair in Sam's motel room over the bed he politely offered.
The first thing she notices is that there are actually two beds: one neatly made but clearly slept in, the other so obviously untouched and unused that its meaning hits her like a heavy revelation.
The second thing is Sam himself. How long he has been watching her sleep, she doesn't know. What she does know is that he had probably been awake for hours, observing her for signs of trouble. Jo wants to think kindly of the gesture, but she knows he did it for his own protection more than hers. If she had been stronger, she'd have skipped the sleep and watched him for demonic possession.
"Here," he says, offering a mug of soup. "Are you stuck in this town?" he demands rather than asks.
Jo's stomach gurgles longingly. It's chicken soup, nourishing and familiar and hot as it makes its way down. Sam watches her eat with eagle eyes. She guesses that he put some holy water there, just in case.
"Stuck? No."
Sam holds up an electric coffee pot Jo guesses he'd used to heat canned soup. He tips a second helping into her cup. "Damn. It's just me then." At her silent question, he continues somewhat unwillingly, "As in, something's preventing me from leaving this town. It's restricted how much ground I can travel, about a three-mile radius. It's not a mystery spot, and I doubt it's a haunting."
"So, there aren't any records of mysterious deaths in the area you're confined to? The kind that seems to repeat itself in a sort of cycle?"
He shakes his head. "Nope, none. The place is clean, so to speak. I'm researching, but I could use someone who isn't as physically limited as I am."
"What were you after?"
Sam doesn't break eye contact, but he manages to look shifty anyway. "I wasn't on any job, just driving through this town to pick up supplies. What about you?"
Jo puts the soup down and angles herself forward to better read him. Sam is unblinking. "Some trouble at the frat house near university grounds. It didn't work out too well, as if you hadn't noticed. I hurt myself bad enough that I'm out of commission until I heal up. I gave up on my car, piece of crap that it is. I'm broke as hell and without any leads when you drove up and tried to off me. I think you missed the part where you shoot my dog dead in front of a bunch of church kids."
"Ha."
Jo smiles a bit.
"Will you help me, then? I'll trade you a favor."
Jo is already contemplating leaving the relative safety of the motel. She's not sure about this different Sam, who, while not demonically possessed, appears driven by similarly dark determination, vengeance. This is hunter's vigilantism at its infancy; Jo thinks of Casey Wandell, the troubling rumors about Wyoming, and strangely enough, her father.
"All right," she answers, ignoring the alarm bells in her head, the same ones that rang and rang in Duluth that one night. "Help me find my mother."
At that, Sam startles. "That's it?"
What else is more worthwhile? Jo stares at him incredulously. "Also, a car," she adds. "One that isn't such a P.O.S."
"Done." Sam gets up to rummage through one of the pockets of his duffel to retrieve a cell phone. It's Dean's, Jo remembers the flip-phone's polished silvery surface. "I didn't know you were looking for her." The cell hums a lengthy polyphonic melody. Sam scrolls through the phone's menu before showing her the display screen. "Here."
As she programs the number into her phone with shaking, unbelieving hands, she asks him, without glancing up: "What do you need me to do?"
***
The last time she bunked with the Winchesters, there had been none of this spartan neatness.
One wall is covered with columns of clipped newspaper articles (grisly deaths), photo-copied pages and Web site printouts (the Lazarus legend, the Coptic apocalypse of St. Paul, bezoar stones), and some vaguely mathematical diagrams that have little to do with math (enochian spellwork).
She knows without checking that the drawers and closet are empty, as all of Sam's clothes are still in his bag, folded in three neat piles Jo can count from its place on the fold-out luggage rack. On the bureau are a series of shoebox-sized boxes, neatly stacked and each of them sealed with miniature padlocks and warding seals written in white wax pencil. Charms, probably; maybe dangerous artifacts.
Wherever his weapons stash is hidden, Jo's sure that they're compartmentalized with military neatness.
"Can you fetch some things for me in town?"
"What're they for?" Jo continues reading one of the news briefs. It's about an assault at the frat house involving two of its members. The victim had been transported to a nearby hospital for his injuries; his attacker, a pledge, is facing several counts of attempted murder. The pledge had been the one to push her off the second-floor balcony a few nights ago.
"They're important."
"Will they help you break the three-mile barrier thing?" Jo asks, scanning the wall for related articles. "You need them for a spell, don't you?"
She hears the frown in Sam's voice. "Yes."
"You want me to get stuff for what's probably a dangerous ritual, knowing that we don't dabble in rituals unless we have to." Jo never liked hoodoo, especially when used in hunting. It's like going against the very nature of what they do. She's conservative like that. "You don't want to let me in on your plan and yet you expect me to trust you when you are unwilling to trust me. How is that right?"
"It isn't. But prying into the affairs of other hunters is just as bad," he answers with measured severity, coming to stand by her at the wall. "I minded my own business with you."
"I wish you hadn't." She can feel his gaze on her, waiting for more. "Clearly, I am hunting something that put me in the hospital. I thought hunting and hunters have a loose brotherhood...sisterhood-thing going. I thought we hunted for the common good?"
"That's right." Sam chuckles. She wonders how long he had been alone, how long since Dean died. "But, dude, I'm not your partner."
It's such a Dean thing to say. She smiles sadly, the ghost of him in her mind. Strange, how people in their line of business form such ridiculous attachments. "You sure damn ain't, as sure as I'm not yours."
"Jo, I wouldn't have asked you unless it was dire. And it is."
"I wouldn't have indirectly asked for your help if I didn't actually need it," Jo says, turning to him to pluck the list out of his hand. "And I do."
When she raises her eyes to meet his, she finds that she doesn't like what she sees in them at all.
***
One day, on her walk back from one of the kooky New Age shops near the campus Jo takes a detour to check out fraternity row.
A crowd of college kids and residents had gathered at the driveway of the Zeta Lambda Nu house, a squat two-story that currently serves as this fraternity's base. Its longtime home had been a handsome French-inspired house, about half-a-mile away, but it is, like most lives and homes in this part of the South, in a state of half-destruction and ruin since the last major hurricane.
The place isn't taped off, but it's blocked off by several squad cars.
Looking past the small mob and the red-and-blues, Jo notices a broken window and beyond it the violent disarray of a struggle. Off to the side is an unsteady balcony on which she had stood only a few nights ago. It still clung to the house with a quiet desperation, in an asymmetrical semi-tilt that exposes its rusting nails.
And standing toe-to-toe with one of the commanding officers at the scene, is Sam in a suit, dark hair combed back neatly, a reporter's pad in one hand.
"Then as a police information officer, you should be able at least disclose -"
"There are no comments being issued at the moment," the lieutenant tries to glare Sam into submission. "Not until our detectives and crime scene investigators clear the place."
Sam doesn't look surprised to see Jo.
"Follow me," he says as he passes her, skirting around the squad cars and stepping over crumbled sidewalk.
Jo waits out a good distance before walking.
Sam leads her to a narrow alleyway that's not so much alley as it is a narrow dirt path. It's quiet in this claustrophobic squeeze between the facing backyards of suburban homes. Street sounds echo hollowly, the chirps of Sam's EMF meter their sole accompaniment.
As they near the backyard fence of the frat house, they crouch out of eye-line and stick close to the splintering wood.
Before Sam even opens his mouth, Jo notices. A fine layer of it peppers the dark soil and shimmers on the whitewash, the unmistakable cornhusk sheen of sulfur.
"Do you have a suit?" he asks quietly.
***
The first rule of impersonating anyone in an official capacity is, you have to look the part and have the right credentials.
As large and complicated city government is, its people run in small circles, Sam explains. For it to work, the lie has to be believable and so inconsequential that it's forgettable.
"Ideally, anyway," Sam says, leaning over a fake press badge with an Exacto knife. He had sliced out his photograph to replace it with Jo's, taken at his insistence with ten of her last twenty dollars at the notary's. His passport photo will be transferred to Dean's old media badge. "One time, we made such huge asses of ourselves in Philadelphia that we had to lay low for a month. Dad was livid. This was when we were still young."
There's no telling when Sam will lapse into a chatty mood. So far, there had been no explanation supplied for Dean's death, nor what initially brought Sam to Mississippi. Among the observations that had piqued Jo are his long portentous stretches of silence. They had a presence of their own, like an inactive ghoul, like bad intentions.
Sam talking, now that's an event.
"What was it?" Jo asks, ignoring the vagueness of the 'we.' She wants to ask about Dean so badly, but her uneasy awe of Sam kept her mouth shut. "The thing you guys were after, I mean."
"A succubus."
"You two are the only people I know who have made a skill out of impersonating officials," Jo remarks, impressed. It's gutsy to skim so close to the law like that. "Everyone else kind of tries to walk around the red tape."
Sam presses her media credential between two towels before passing a steaming iron over them. "You're the only person I know who shoplifts for money. Seriously, Jo."
"I don't have unlimited lines of credit! I have to earn it the old-fashioned hard way, like a hoodlum. Stealing is a useful skill. Try stealing six pairs of jeans at a public laundromat and then selling them for a decent price at a thrift store!"
"No, bow-hunting is a useful skill," Sam grins lopsidedly. Although it's a far cry from Dean's easy magnetism, Jo for a moment sees the brothers' superficial similarities - smile lines in the same places, the lightning-quick flash of teeth, the devil-may-care tilt of the head. "And, no thanks. I hate getting arrested for minor and stupid crimes."
Jo rattles a small bottle of over-the-counter painkillers at him. They had been purchased with her hard-earned dirty money. "It's not stupid to me."
Their plans are derailed by "America's Most Wanted."
"It's a re-broadcast!" he exclaims in the tones of one greatly inconvenienced, not someone the FBI is after. "I'm supposed to be dead!"
It's only been a week or so, but Jo is already tired of the bizarre and creepy proclamations.
The broadcast might have been a heavy-handed act of petty providence. It spares Sam from hanging out with distraught members of Delta Nu sorority at the lobby of the nearby community hospital. The sisters and a group of guys have come to pay a visit to the now-conscious victim - Travis Snow - of the frat house altercation.
"I'm Travis' friend's girlfriend," Jo explains to the fiancee, the only girl in the group giving Jo the territorial hairy eyeball. "My boyfriend's on his way."
Gratified, the fiancee, Tanya, resumes fretting, leaving Jo to resume her snooping.
Travis, it turns, is "a nice guy" who fell in with the "wrong crowd."
"Hasn't been the same since Mardi Gras night, it's, like, he's a whole other person now," says one sorority sister.
"Always testing his limits by doing crap like urban base jumping and picking fights with strangers," his room mate says, "Jesus, it was like fucking Fight Club. But, um. He was the only member."
"I thought he'd go for the honor society, not Animal House," his applied mathematics lab partner admits to Jo as they wait their turn for the visitor's badges. "Those guys have the most idiotic 'secret shake.' You know what? I shouldn't talk shit anyway, my buddy's just taken a turn for the better. Don't wanna jinx it."
"Handshake? You know how you can really tell who belongs?" another a friend of a sorority sister's friend says. "The brand. One of the guys on the exec council's introduced branding. How hardcore is that?"
The friend traces the pattern on her own palm to show Jo: a perfect circle struck through with a short diagonal line.
"Freaky, huh?"
"Yeah," Jo gulps. "Totally."
***
They compare notes over a late dinner of mac'n'cheese and beers.
Sam thinks it's body-snatchers and conventional demonic possession. Jo pushes for a supernatural virus, one that triggers temporary madness before leaving its host's body. By the time the beers are gone, the theories begin to sound equally plausible. A pleasant calm settles between her and Sam, a sense of well-being that comes from a shared meal and the rightness of the company.
To his credit, Sam reacts civilly to the recreation of the brand, sketched by Jo on a paper napkin.
"That was on me, wasn't it." He pushes up the sleeve of his shirt to expose the inside of his right forearm, scrutinizing the pale, unmarred skin there as though a new demonic seal is going to reappear any second. "You know how demons pick their hosts? They don't always choose the vulnerable. They're vain beings, you know, so they prefer the strongest, the most knowledgeable, useful -"
"You're so modest," Jo says and Sam actually laughs. "You were saying? What do they look for...?"
There isn't any sense in chucking out a perfectly good hunting tip.
"They want a tool. That's us in a nutshell," Sam says, king of good cheer that he is. "I'm sorry about what happened back in Duluth. Dean told me what he walked in on, but as to what else I did that week I wasn't myself -"
"You were possessed for a week?"
Sam nods, leaning back on his chair. "Yeah. I don't remember any of it, and there's this guy I killed," he continues, his mouth twisting with evident self-loathing. "We came back to his place and I saw myself on his surveillance tapes. Dean didn't want me to take responsibility, but I knew better. The demon knew what I knew and it brought me to this guy's doorstep." He folded and unfolded a napkin. "He was a hunter."
Jo watches his hands move, weighing the harm and the advantage of breaking bad news. He has to know. She would want to know. "Sam, people know what you did. People are looking for you. His daughter found where people like us go, and she was asking questions."
The chair creaks as Sam tilts it on its back legs, stares up at the pocked ceiling, probably stalling, probably deciding how to respond. Loneliness and pride emanate from him, and without helping it, Jo feels for him. But it isn't kindness or pity that move her, but the sheer bleakness of his situation - the absence of providence, his disconnect, the lone fight. So many people, it seems, want Sam Winchester to disappear; maybe even Sam himself.
His silence is Jo's cue that the conversation is concluded. But she isn't quite done.
"There's nothing to forgive, at least on my part," she says, rising to clear the remnants of dinner. Old bar habits die hard. "You didn't want to hurt me, the thing in you did. It just used you."
She dumps two bags of empty beer bottles and styrofoam containers into the wastebasket he holds out. Sam watches her wearily, but without suspicion.
"You're a bigger person than the others."
"Ain't that the truth?" which earns her another laugh from him. Emboldened, Jo continues, in more serious tones: "I think I was nearly had once. It was trying to jump from the man I was exorcising and into me. It said things, hurtful truthful-sounding stuff. Guess it found me corruptible."
"And by that token, desirable." Sam adds, raising his brows at the blush pinking her cheeks. "Hey, there's no accounting for bad taste."
***
Carl calls first thing the next morning.
Jo had been hoping that the unfamiliar number belonged to her Momma. Nearly everyday, she calls and leaves a message. None of them have been returned.
Sam jolts awake and nods when Jo presses a finger to her lips.
"How's this fine country of ours been treating you?" Carl drawls affectionately. "Been having fun chasing ghosts and ghostly critters wherever you are?"
"Just fine," Jo answers cheerfully through a yawn. "What's the news?"
The news isn't good.
The "America's Most Wanted" re-broadcast had been seen by Eileen. One hunter, that's all it takes for word to spread like wildfire. In the space of a few minutes, Carl tells her how the rumors about the Wandell murder have been proven true, and that the community has been talking about the rise of an old power named Lilith. Anyone who comes across Sam Winchester is to be careful because he's turned against his own kind. Is she in the South? There are several guys and gals headed that-a-way to deal with loosed demons that escaped from that hell gate.
Jo says she's in San Diego.
"Good for you," Carl says. "The balls on some of these things. 'Fucked up' doesn't begin to describe what these Winchesters have gotten all us into. You okay, honey? Usually, you'd be all over an opp like this, askin' the where and when and what of the situation."
"Oh, I'm interested." Jo's on her feet, stuffing her crap into her duffel and gesturing for Sam to do the same. Pack up, now. Sam nods again and reaches for his jeans. "Tell me more."
Carl tells her everything he knows. Jo hates herself for lying, though not as much for her inability to find a compelling reason to lead them all to Sam. They would have owed her. She feels the turning-point significance of the decision. It's scary, elating. Traitorous, even.
The room's vanity mirror reflects her turncoat face: it's pale and drawn, shadowed.
This life is so full of shadows. The wisp of smoke licking out of the room's air vent seems to agree. Jo watches it wriggle and vanish.
And that's it.
"Thanks, Carl," she says, cutting him off. "I'll be in touch. Promise."
There will be consequences. The thought slams Jo back into herself. She pulls her gaze from the mirror, finally, to face Sam.
"You have no idea what you lied yourself into right now," he finally says, opening the door. "The hunting community is not a forgiving one. Tell me what your friend told you."
"My friends are making their way here," Jo answers, reaching for him. "Too bad they don't know that I've got them beat."
Jo rears back, and, with a force she never knew she had, slugs Sam hard across the face.