SPN fic: The Open Invitation
Chapter Four
Genre: futurefic
Characters: Kate Doolittle, Ben Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated: R for language
Summary: It's December of 2021, and the children of Cicero once taken by the changeling have come a long way down a strange road since then. Ben Braeden brings his childhood friend the worst Christmas present in the history of Christmas or presents.
Notes: Spoilers for all aired episodes, particularly for 3.02 "The Kids are Alright." Apologies for the lag on this chapter. Many thanks to
luu_alita for the encouragement and the endless patience. You sure you're the evil twin?
[Chapter One] [Two] [Three][Four] [Five]
With the silent assent of all the big people, “opening presents” translated in practice to “opening Becky’s presents.” Trapped in the egocentrism common to small children, Becky didn’t even notice.
This old farmhouse had a real fireplace, and Becky settled in front of the broad brick hearth, proudly wearing the adhesive-backed bow Ben stuck in her hair. “What are you going to open first?” Sam said, and we were off.
The first package, From Mama, Daddy, and Parrain, was a polyester Batgirl costume, and we had to wait for Becky to go change into it before the great gift ritual could continue. She returned shortly, mask askew. From then on, plush Disney characters and beautiful, spindle-legged Breyer horses were the principal actors in this little floor show. Becky named every single one of them-Silverwings, Blackie, Moonlight, Sarafina-before tearing into the next present.
“I love how your dad sent her a whole zoo, and we don’t even get a card,” Dean said to Maria, nudging her where she perched on the sofa arm with a camera.
“She’s his granddaughter,” Maria said in an undertone, searching for a Kodak moment. “Last time you were in New Orleans, you called him a pretentious, uptown arugula-muncher. To his face.”
“Cause he is,” Dean grumbled. “You forget what he said about you?”
“Beb, I know that part. That part is why I don’t get a card.”
Embarrassed to be listening, I braced myself instinctively for the first round of ritual Christmas bickering. God knows I’d developed an ear for it in the two years before my parents divorced. Someone would fling an accusation, and then-
“I never said that, Annette,” Dad would snap.
“Of course not,” Mom would sigh grandly. “My mistake.”
“Look, don’t put this all on me. I’m not the one who-”
And Ms. Braeden would usher me to the next room, muttering: “Oh, yeah. Now it feels like the holidays.”
But the Winchesters-or the Harrisons, or whoever the hell they were-didn’t take it any further. Becky was tangled in her Batcape, and so Maria needed pictures and Dean needed to work the string loose.
There was a rectangle of neat brown paper from an Uncle Bobby, who wasn’t actually anyone’s uncle. It turned out to be a wooden case of watercolors and colored pencils.
“There go the walls,” Sam muttered. But any rancor was lost in his smile, because the main event was coming up-the huge box in the corner with the red bow and the tag reading From Santa.
Sam showed Becky how the cardboard sides fell away once the ribbon was untied. The room echoed with a silent drum roll as she tugged the box apart impatiently.
Silence. Her eyes got very big, and her mouth got very small.
“I guess the old man got your letter,” said Maria.
The dollhouse was three stories of gingerbread detail, high as a seated child’s head. It was a Queen Anne in miniature-the kind that came in pieces to be meticulously glued together by whatever saint had the patience. It wasn’t furnished, but it was painted powder blue and decked out in truly ugly wallpaper.
I knew how time-consuming those things were, because Dad tinkered for weeks putting one together for me, and it was still just a flimsy plywood shell when he died.
“Eee!” Becky squealed gleefully.
Ben’s snort rolled straight into a cackle. “You guys are unbelievable,” he hissed at Dean and Sam, and then crawled over to help Becky move Moonbeam and Silverwings into their new house.
“No, that’s going to be Princess Luna’s room,” she protested, rearranging.
On either side of the coffee table, Santa’s incredibly tall elves smirked at the dollhouse. Then they smirked at each other. The self-congratulation stopped just short of exchanging high-fives. I forgot the lump in my throat long enough to smile at the pair of them.
“Y’all done good,” Maria muttered, leaning over the back of the sofa to hug Dean’s neck. “Is she going to be showing off her loot to Monica and Rosie tonight?”
“Looks that way,” Dean said, nodding to me. “Kate’s game for tonight, so the munchkin needs to get packed after this.”
Maria regarded me thoughtfully, a hint of a good luck smile on her face. Then something seemed to hit her. “Oh, you know what…” she said slowly. “I’ve got presents for you, too.” And she disappeared down the hall.
I looked at Dean and Sam. Bzuh?
They shrugged at me. Bzuh.
Maria’s voice preceded her back into the room: “Okay, the blue ones are painkillers.” She held out her palm, where various brightly-colored capsules rolled and clicked against each other. “That’s an antibiotic, and the little round guy is an iron supplement since you’re so wiped from the blood loss.” She tipped the rainbow of drugs into my hand. “Sorry I didn’t wrap them.”
“Really not a problem.” I downed them with the glass of tap water she’d brought. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
On cue, Sam hauled himself out of the armchair, and Dean gathered his sprawled limbs and stood. “You ready to help demon-proof the room?” Sam said, easy as offering to take me to a Colts game.
“Lead the way,” I said with a shrug. “Or, you know, carry me.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
“That overhand stab looks real badass, but it also leaves you open to a claw up in your ribs. So don’t do it.”
Dean reached for my hand, the one wrapped around his Bowie knife, and my uncertain fingers yielded easily to his rearranging. He crossed his arms and stepped back, expectant.
Cross-legged on Sam’s bed, I took a few practice swings. “Like this?” I said. I didn’t quite believe him when he nodded. The knife looked awkward and wrong in my hand.
Blood will be no improvement.
I shoved the thought away.
Sam twisted around at his desk, and with the afternoon window behind him, the lines of his face looked darker and harsher than they had downstairs. “You’re sure the mora never told you her name?” he asked me.
“Never. Why?”
“It would just make things easier,” he said, hunching over his book again. “We could tailor the seals on the door and windows to her.”
“We’ve got the claw Mia pulled out of her leg,” Dean pointed out, marking off points on the windowsill with a stick of charcoal. “It’s something of hers.”
Sam’s cheeks sucked in thoughtfully. “You’re thinking of using it to focus the seals? Like that time in-”
“Alexandria, yeah.”
“It’s an idea. But cauchemar are at least tangentially related to the hoodoo tradition. Mora not so much, you know?” Pages flipped efficiently, books exchanged space in front of Sam according to some hierarchy of usefulness. “I mean, you don’t drag out the Rituale Romanum to get rid of a kappa.”
“So bastardize the hoodoo. Throw in some Eastern European shit.”
I tried to follow the next few minutes’ worth of Demonology in Theory and Practice, but I lost the thread of the argument when Latin started cropping up five times per sentence. In the meantime, I did as Dean had told me and tried to internalize the muscle memory of wielding a ten-inch hunting knife.
I should have known when Sam said “Help us demon-proof the room,” he actually meant “Make sure the bed doesn’t run away.”
Ben came in, newly freed from Becky’s clutches, and paused a few paces away from me. “Now you’ve got a knife?” he said, frowning.
“Yeah.” And if I look like a pathetic impostor, rest assured I feel like one too. “Now I’ve got a knife.”
He shrugged uneasily and his whole body seemed to follow the movement as he sank onto the comforter next to me. He narrowed his eyes at Dean. “Dude, you got that seal done yet?”
Eyes on the symbol he was sketching, Dean muttered, “Dude, you finished playing My Little Pony yet?”
“Yeah, actually,” Ben said, smiling appreciatively at the dig. “I even got your kid packed for her sleepover. She’s in the front pocket with Silverwings, so tell Monica to unzip that one first.”
“Who’s Monica?” I asked, the stranger amongst comrades once again.
Sam and Dean glanced at each other, so I half-expected some cagy standby like: It’s a long story. But Sam cleared his throat and said, “A family friend. She and her daughter live nearby.”
“Family friend?” Ben repeated, sitting up to smirk at Sam. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”
Sam let loose the weary, dignified sigh of a man who’d heard this crap before. “You watched a lot of Gossip Girl as a kid, didn’t you?”
“Point is,” Dean said, apparently talking to the windowsill, “no Becky allowed in the house with a mora loose.”
Sam slid a leather-bound notebook-not a notebook, a journal, he’d called it-off the desk and tossed it at Ben’s chest. “Make yourself useful. There’s a section on hoodoo somewhere in the middle, a couple pages past the coffee stain.”
I fidgeted with the knife, nearly sliced a finger off, and chewed my lower lip for a long moment. Finally, I blurted: “Can I help you guys with something?”
Dean twisted around to make pensive ducky lips at me. “How are you with stick figures?”
“I’m decent.”
Sam relinquished his chair, and Ben helped me hobble over to it. I scooted up next to the window, and Dean held out a thin black stick of charcoal. “Okay. This is what we call a devil’s trap.”
= = = = = = = = = = =
At sunset, everyone gathered in the foyer, and Ben and I sat on the staircase to watch the goodbyes. Sleepovers, I assumed, were still something of an occasion when you were four.
“Be nice to Rosie, okay?” Sam said to the miniature Batgirl currently hugging his knees. “And please, please don’t color on Ms. Holt’s cat again.” He ruffled Becky’s hair, and his jeans rubbed her nose pink when she nodded.
“Come here, you,” Dean said, crouching next to her. With a dejected sigh Becky plopped onto his knee like it was a park bench.
“I don’t like Rosie,” she whispered nervously.
Dean and Maria exchanged glances, and I looked to Ben for clarification. He avoided my gaze.
He’d been doing that more and more the darker it got outside.
“Becky, we talked about this,” Dean said quietly. “She’s just a little different, remember?”
Becky thought it over and tried for a more compelling grievance. “But she never wants to play horses.”
“Parrain will play horses when you get back,” Dean promised.
Ben snorted, and Sam just barely managed not to roll his eyes. “Only if I get to be Silverwings.”
“Okay?” Dean said.
Becky gifted Parrain with the shy brightness of her smile. “Okay.”
Maria fought with a snicker, and when she lost she muffled it in Sam’s shirt. It was an odd sight, her hugging him goodbye-like watching a Cocker Spaniel snuggle up to a Great Dane.
Then she held her arms out for her daughter. “All right, ti-bé. Time to go.”
A few cogs in my brain did some panicked whirring-no no no don’t leave yet-because the second they walked out that door, I was headed upstairs to be demon food. But I sat quietly, because nobody could stop the sunset, and there was no use trying Bambi eyes on the guy next to me.
Dean boosted the kid into Mama’s arms, where she settled comfortably on her hip. “We’ll see you in the morning,” he said to both of them.
“Save me something, would you?” Maria said, chin tilted for a kiss.
Dean obliged her swiftly, and then leaned back in confusion. “What, the pecan pie? Even Sam and I can’t get through all the Christmas leftovers that fast.”
“No, the mora,” Maria said impatiently. “Just a little sample is all. I could take it to the clinic, put it on slides-“ She made a moue. “Quit looking at me like that.”
“Geeks,” Dean muttered, shooing her out the door. “I’m surrounded by geeks.”
“Y’all give her hell,” Maria said with a last smile just for me and Ben. Becky waved, black cape fluttering, and the door shut behind them.
The house seemed to go cold and quiet. Ben slid an arm behind my knees, I latched onto his neck, and Sam slipped past us and led the way upstairs. My heart beat triple-time with the rhythm of boots on wood.
Sam paused at the top of the stairs to ask, “You’re sure you’re ready?”
My mouth worked. No took a wrong turn somewhere on the way out, and instead I sighed, “Do I have a choice?”
“Yeah, you do,” Dean said behind us. “But the other options suck worse.”
Sam’s room was at the front of the house, next to the nook with the window-seat. Through the glass I saw taillights grow distant and then disappear around a corner. Wait, come back, the trembling child in me called after them. I changed my mind.
But it was too late for that. Ben stepped over the salt line and set me down on Sam’s bed.
The Winchesters didn’t say anything more. They just gave me steady looks and then settled into chairs at the foot of the bed. Machetes materialized in their laps.
Ben dragged the desk chair right up next to me and plopped down. With a gleaming silver knife and a wolfish expression, he looked as cocky as the first time he tugged on his A-2 jacket. But I saw the staccato tap of his thumb on his knee. He was nervous.
“You all right?” he asked me.
“So far, so good,” I said, hoping that my smile looked cool and together. As opposed to, you know, terrified and slightly manic.
“Anything else you need before we do this thing?”
A clue what I’m doing. “No. No, I’m good.”
“Okay. You took the Percocet?”
“Two.”
“Then you should be out pretty soon. Just relax, okay?”
Then Ben did something he’d never done before. His knuckles dimpled the comforter, and he leaned over and kissed my forehead. He mumbled something, too, but all I caught was my name.
A switch flipped, the room plunged into darkness, and then Dean plugged in the unicorn nightlight he’d swiped from Becky’s room.
It was a long ten minutes before the anxious haze of drugs overtook me.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
For the first time in hours, nothing hurt.
I sat up in Sam’s double bed, unhindered by the tired ache of deep-set pain. I pawed at my t-shirt and shoved away the pale blue sheets-no stitches.
That was the good news.
I looked around, noting curiously that the bed stood at the end of a long stretch of Victorian hallway, dully yellow in the flickering light of gas lamps. Doors stood open like soldiers at attention on either side.
I slid my hand beneath the pillows and felt for the Bowie knife.
Toe-heel, toe-heel, my feet touched down on the cold wood floor. When nothing snatched my ankles to pull me under the bed, I risked standing. God, it was good to feel my legs sturdy under my weight again.
A glance at the windows on either end of the hall, and I decided they didn’t deserve the name. One was completely black, and the other featured my laptop screensaver.
The Windows symbol bounced contentedly from jamb to sill to jamb.
“Hey, subconscious?” I muttered to the ugly walls. “You’re freakin useless.”
I padded over to the nearest flimsy pine door, knife held out as Dean had shown me. With no real desire to see what was on the other side, I yanked the door open like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Nothing. A square of emptiness, brightly lit in the absence of any light source, breathed chilly air at me. The room was notable only for its hideous flower-print wallpaper.
“The hell is this?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” a voice behind me said.
I spun around.
Becky leaned against the screensaver window, little girl solemn and speaking in her mother’s lazy-voweled voice. I shouldn’t have lowered the knife, but I did. Seemed like that easy alto had soothed me once upon a time.
“No, I don’t,” I told her. “I’ve never been here.”
“Technically, no,” she admitted. “But you’ve seen it before.”
I had another look; it was all right to take my eyes off her. There was no malice in that cherub face.
The room was still empty, alien, and sprouting flowers nature would be ashamed of. If I’d seen something so garish before, you’d think I would-
“Your dollhouse,” I murmured.
Suddenly at my elbow, Becky nodded.
“But why?”
“When you used to play Barbie,” she said thoughtfully, as though I’d never spoken, “did she and Ken fight custody battles for Skipper?”
Surprise knocked the breath out of me. “What?”
The smile Becky turned up at me was ringed with needle teeth.
I ran.
Doors and gas lamps blurred past me, and I lumbered hard through air that suddenly felt thick and cold as deep water. The guardrail of a stairwell rose up at the end of the hall, and I swung around it-
It led nowhere. There are no stairs in dollhouses.
God damn my brain, choosing this moment to be effing logical.
I spun around, and Becky was gone. Coming down the hall toward me were a half dozen children I had all but forgotten except in nightmares. Gray rags of flesh hung from their bleached bones, and beneath their hollow eyes black holes gaped hungrily.
“No,” I muttered, knife held out and shaking. “No no no-“
Frantically I reached for the doors on either side of me. They slammed shut just ahead of my groping fingers, and no amount of yanking or kicking could open them.
One changeling child, not six feet away from me, flickered in and out of Dakota’s likeness. Becky held her hand and grinned.
“Go away!” I screamed at her.
With a gunpowder boom, she dissolved into mist. Behind her, the other five shrieked into nothingness.
Heavy, booted steps made the floorboards sing. The man reloading the shotgun wasn’t Ben, but nor was he quite Dean Winchester. The short, dark hair and the broad stance could have been either, but there was Dean’s reddish beard, Ben’s bomber jacket…
His voice froze me where I stood.
“It’s all right,” he said. “’Sokay, Katie.”
“Stay away from me.” The knife handle was still sturdy and rough in my hand. I kept it between us, because somebody had told me to do it like that. I remembered somebody had told me. “I-I said stay away.”
“Take it easy,” he said, and his voice was rough as whiskey and twice as narcotic. “Come on, I’m here now. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to get you out.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t take a single step back from that voice. Already I imagined the creak of leather next to my ear if I let him fold me up, let him surround me.
“Put the knife down, Katie. Please? Put it down, and we’ll leave. No more of this crazy-ass dollhouse, okay?” There was that rumble of humor in his voice, a note I recognized. “Hey, you hear me? You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“How did you get here?” I whispered.
“You needed me; I showed up.”
He couldn’t be what he seemed. Nothing in this place was.
“You don’t think I’m in your head, too?” he said gently, and every word was another sip burning down my synapses and settling warm somewhere deep in me. “Just as real as pain or fear?”
“I don’t know you,” I said. It was barely a breath.
“Let me get you out, Kate.”
“I don’t-“
“Come on, babe.” He raised his arm, and the leather protested in just the pitch I’d imagined. “Drop the knife. Give me your hand.”
Metal clattered on hardwood.
He was warm as his voice had promised, and his arms around me were steady. I squeezed my eyes shut tight against grateful tears. He was going to take care of this. I wasn’t alone in my weird, ax-crazy head.
Then I looked up into his face, and thank-you died in my throat.
Ice blue eyes stared back.
“Holy fucking shit,” I hissed.
The second after I accepted my Darwin Award, the mora’s teeth plunged into my neck.
I screamed, I thrashed and kicked, and with one bare foot I scrabbled for the knife. Dropped the knife, Dean told you never let go of the knife, so fucking stupid-
The nape of my neck burned with the sharp, sucking bite of that rounded mouth. But it was Ben’s hand that muffled my screams, Dean’s rings that bit into my wrist. The mora would finish me this time, and I would die with the familiar scent of leather in my nose.
Please no not like this no please-
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
I woke screaming.
“Jesus Christ, Kate!”
Hands firm as shackles stilled my thrashing, and an arm lay like a bar across my midriff.
“Cut it out,” someone barked. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I fought harder, twisting and squirming in the damp sheets. Only the pain stopped me. It slammed into me with enough force to make me see stars.
The skin over my sternum felt taut as a tissue about to rip, but it was my left leg that I noticed. Every nerve in my thigh screamed mercy.
I lay still and reminded myself how to breathe. Slowly, the pain became a livable throb in time with my racing heart-thud ow thud ow thud ohmygod ow.
I couldn’t see a damn thing through the sheen of tears in my eyes, but I knew Ben when he hovered over me. The unicorn nightlight cast heavy shadows across his face.
“Katie,” he murmured soothingly.
For a moment, terror turned my stomach, and I might have actually whimpered, “Don’t touch me.”
Soft pressure lifted from my shoulders. “Katie?”
His voice did what all that gentleness couldn’t, because he sounded scared and powerless. He sounded like Ben.
I rolled over and clutched at his bent knee, setting fire to half my nerve endings. It hurt to cry, but it hurt too much not to. “I am not fucking doing that again.”
“Katie.”
Say something other than my name. Say I don’t have to. “I’m not.”
“It’s all right,” Sam sighed from somewhere by my feet. “Don’t worry about it right now, Kate.”
I nodded and shook and snotted on his sheets. That was exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Okay, Kate,” Dean said, but there was nothing reassuring in it. “Okay.”
He and Sam left the room, and I could hear them muttering out in the hallway. Dawn peeked in the windows, and Ben tried to disentangle me from his knee.
“You’re squishing your bad leg,” he told me.
I said nothing, and I didn’t move.
He sat with me for a long time while morning burned shadows from the room.
[Chapter Five]
Genre: futurefic
Characters: Kate Doolittle, Ben Braeden, Sam, Dean, OFCs
Rated: R for language
Summary: It's December of 2021, and the children of Cicero once taken by the changeling have come a long way down a strange road since then. Ben Braeden brings his childhood friend the worst Christmas present in the history of Christmas or presents.
Notes: Spoilers for all aired episodes, particularly for 3.02 "The Kids are Alright." Apologies for the lag on this chapter. Many thanks to
luu_alita for the encouragement and the endless patience. You sure you're the evil twin?
[Chapter One] [Two] [Three][Four] [Five]
With the silent assent of all the big people, “opening presents” translated in practice to “opening Becky’s presents.” Trapped in the egocentrism common to small children, Becky didn’t even notice.
This old farmhouse had a real fireplace, and Becky settled in front of the broad brick hearth, proudly wearing the adhesive-backed bow Ben stuck in her hair. “What are you going to open first?” Sam said, and we were off.
The first package, From Mama, Daddy, and Parrain, was a polyester Batgirl costume, and we had to wait for Becky to go change into it before the great gift ritual could continue. She returned shortly, mask askew. From then on, plush Disney characters and beautiful, spindle-legged Breyer horses were the principal actors in this little floor show. Becky named every single one of them-Silverwings, Blackie, Moonlight, Sarafina-before tearing into the next present.
“I love how your dad sent her a whole zoo, and we don’t even get a card,” Dean said to Maria, nudging her where she perched on the sofa arm with a camera.
“She’s his granddaughter,” Maria said in an undertone, searching for a Kodak moment. “Last time you were in New Orleans, you called him a pretentious, uptown arugula-muncher. To his face.”
“Cause he is,” Dean grumbled. “You forget what he said about you?”
“Beb, I know that part. That part is why I don’t get a card.”
Embarrassed to be listening, I braced myself instinctively for the first round of ritual Christmas bickering. God knows I’d developed an ear for it in the two years before my parents divorced. Someone would fling an accusation, and then-
“I never said that, Annette,” Dad would snap.
“Of course not,” Mom would sigh grandly. “My mistake.”
“Look, don’t put this all on me. I’m not the one who-”
And Ms. Braeden would usher me to the next room, muttering: “Oh, yeah. Now it feels like the holidays.”
But the Winchesters-or the Harrisons, or whoever the hell they were-didn’t take it any further. Becky was tangled in her Batcape, and so Maria needed pictures and Dean needed to work the string loose.
There was a rectangle of neat brown paper from an Uncle Bobby, who wasn’t actually anyone’s uncle. It turned out to be a wooden case of watercolors and colored pencils.
“There go the walls,” Sam muttered. But any rancor was lost in his smile, because the main event was coming up-the huge box in the corner with the red bow and the tag reading From Santa.
Sam showed Becky how the cardboard sides fell away once the ribbon was untied. The room echoed with a silent drum roll as she tugged the box apart impatiently.
Silence. Her eyes got very big, and her mouth got very small.
“I guess the old man got your letter,” said Maria.
The dollhouse was three stories of gingerbread detail, high as a seated child’s head. It was a Queen Anne in miniature-the kind that came in pieces to be meticulously glued together by whatever saint had the patience. It wasn’t furnished, but it was painted powder blue and decked out in truly ugly wallpaper.
I knew how time-consuming those things were, because Dad tinkered for weeks putting one together for me, and it was still just a flimsy plywood shell when he died.
“Eee!” Becky squealed gleefully.
Ben’s snort rolled straight into a cackle. “You guys are unbelievable,” he hissed at Dean and Sam, and then crawled over to help Becky move Moonbeam and Silverwings into their new house.
“No, that’s going to be Princess Luna’s room,” she protested, rearranging.
On either side of the coffee table, Santa’s incredibly tall elves smirked at the dollhouse. Then they smirked at each other. The self-congratulation stopped just short of exchanging high-fives. I forgot the lump in my throat long enough to smile at the pair of them.
“Y’all done good,” Maria muttered, leaning over the back of the sofa to hug Dean’s neck. “Is she going to be showing off her loot to Monica and Rosie tonight?”
“Looks that way,” Dean said, nodding to me. “Kate’s game for tonight, so the munchkin needs to get packed after this.”
Maria regarded me thoughtfully, a hint of a good luck smile on her face. Then something seemed to hit her. “Oh, you know what…” she said slowly. “I’ve got presents for you, too.” And she disappeared down the hall.
I looked at Dean and Sam. Bzuh?
They shrugged at me. Bzuh.
Maria’s voice preceded her back into the room: “Okay, the blue ones are painkillers.” She held out her palm, where various brightly-colored capsules rolled and clicked against each other. “That’s an antibiotic, and the little round guy is an iron supplement since you’re so wiped from the blood loss.” She tipped the rainbow of drugs into my hand. “Sorry I didn’t wrap them.”
“Really not a problem.” I downed them with the glass of tap water she’d brought. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
On cue, Sam hauled himself out of the armchair, and Dean gathered his sprawled limbs and stood. “You ready to help demon-proof the room?” Sam said, easy as offering to take me to a Colts game.
“Lead the way,” I said with a shrug. “Or, you know, carry me.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
“That overhand stab looks real badass, but it also leaves you open to a claw up in your ribs. So don’t do it.”
Dean reached for my hand, the one wrapped around his Bowie knife, and my uncertain fingers yielded easily to his rearranging. He crossed his arms and stepped back, expectant.
Cross-legged on Sam’s bed, I took a few practice swings. “Like this?” I said. I didn’t quite believe him when he nodded. The knife looked awkward and wrong in my hand.
Blood will be no improvement.
I shoved the thought away.
Sam twisted around at his desk, and with the afternoon window behind him, the lines of his face looked darker and harsher than they had downstairs. “You’re sure the mora never told you her name?” he asked me.
“Never. Why?”
“It would just make things easier,” he said, hunching over his book again. “We could tailor the seals on the door and windows to her.”
“We’ve got the claw Mia pulled out of her leg,” Dean pointed out, marking off points on the windowsill with a stick of charcoal. “It’s something of hers.”
Sam’s cheeks sucked in thoughtfully. “You’re thinking of using it to focus the seals? Like that time in-”
“Alexandria, yeah.”
“It’s an idea. But cauchemar are at least tangentially related to the hoodoo tradition. Mora not so much, you know?” Pages flipped efficiently, books exchanged space in front of Sam according to some hierarchy of usefulness. “I mean, you don’t drag out the Rituale Romanum to get rid of a kappa.”
“So bastardize the hoodoo. Throw in some Eastern European shit.”
I tried to follow the next few minutes’ worth of Demonology in Theory and Practice, but I lost the thread of the argument when Latin started cropping up five times per sentence. In the meantime, I did as Dean had told me and tried to internalize the muscle memory of wielding a ten-inch hunting knife.
I should have known when Sam said “Help us demon-proof the room,” he actually meant “Make sure the bed doesn’t run away.”
Ben came in, newly freed from Becky’s clutches, and paused a few paces away from me. “Now you’ve got a knife?” he said, frowning.
“Yeah.” And if I look like a pathetic impostor, rest assured I feel like one too. “Now I’ve got a knife.”
He shrugged uneasily and his whole body seemed to follow the movement as he sank onto the comforter next to me. He narrowed his eyes at Dean. “Dude, you got that seal done yet?”
Eyes on the symbol he was sketching, Dean muttered, “Dude, you finished playing My Little Pony yet?”
“Yeah, actually,” Ben said, smiling appreciatively at the dig. “I even got your kid packed for her sleepover. She’s in the front pocket with Silverwings, so tell Monica to unzip that one first.”
“Who’s Monica?” I asked, the stranger amongst comrades once again.
Sam and Dean glanced at each other, so I half-expected some cagy standby like: It’s a long story. But Sam cleared his throat and said, “A family friend. She and her daughter live nearby.”
“Family friend?” Ben repeated, sitting up to smirk at Sam. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”
Sam let loose the weary, dignified sigh of a man who’d heard this crap before. “You watched a lot of Gossip Girl as a kid, didn’t you?”
“Point is,” Dean said, apparently talking to the windowsill, “no Becky allowed in the house with a mora loose.”
Sam slid a leather-bound notebook-not a notebook, a journal, he’d called it-off the desk and tossed it at Ben’s chest. “Make yourself useful. There’s a section on hoodoo somewhere in the middle, a couple pages past the coffee stain.”
I fidgeted with the knife, nearly sliced a finger off, and chewed my lower lip for a long moment. Finally, I blurted: “Can I help you guys with something?”
Dean twisted around to make pensive ducky lips at me. “How are you with stick figures?”
“I’m decent.”
Sam relinquished his chair, and Ben helped me hobble over to it. I scooted up next to the window, and Dean held out a thin black stick of charcoal. “Okay. This is what we call a devil’s trap.”
= = = = = = = = = = =
At sunset, everyone gathered in the foyer, and Ben and I sat on the staircase to watch the goodbyes. Sleepovers, I assumed, were still something of an occasion when you were four.
“Be nice to Rosie, okay?” Sam said to the miniature Batgirl currently hugging his knees. “And please, please don’t color on Ms. Holt’s cat again.” He ruffled Becky’s hair, and his jeans rubbed her nose pink when she nodded.
“Come here, you,” Dean said, crouching next to her. With a dejected sigh Becky plopped onto his knee like it was a park bench.
“I don’t like Rosie,” she whispered nervously.
Dean and Maria exchanged glances, and I looked to Ben for clarification. He avoided my gaze.
He’d been doing that more and more the darker it got outside.
“Becky, we talked about this,” Dean said quietly. “She’s just a little different, remember?”
Becky thought it over and tried for a more compelling grievance. “But she never wants to play horses.”
“Parrain will play horses when you get back,” Dean promised.
Ben snorted, and Sam just barely managed not to roll his eyes. “Only if I get to be Silverwings.”
“Okay?” Dean said.
Becky gifted Parrain with the shy brightness of her smile. “Okay.”
Maria fought with a snicker, and when she lost she muffled it in Sam’s shirt. It was an odd sight, her hugging him goodbye-like watching a Cocker Spaniel snuggle up to a Great Dane.
Then she held her arms out for her daughter. “All right, ti-bé. Time to go.”
A few cogs in my brain did some panicked whirring-no no no don’t leave yet-because the second they walked out that door, I was headed upstairs to be demon food. But I sat quietly, because nobody could stop the sunset, and there was no use trying Bambi eyes on the guy next to me.
Dean boosted the kid into Mama’s arms, where she settled comfortably on her hip. “We’ll see you in the morning,” he said to both of them.
“Save me something, would you?” Maria said, chin tilted for a kiss.
Dean obliged her swiftly, and then leaned back in confusion. “What, the pecan pie? Even Sam and I can’t get through all the Christmas leftovers that fast.”
“No, the mora,” Maria said impatiently. “Just a little sample is all. I could take it to the clinic, put it on slides-“ She made a moue. “Quit looking at me like that.”
“Geeks,” Dean muttered, shooing her out the door. “I’m surrounded by geeks.”
“Y’all give her hell,” Maria said with a last smile just for me and Ben. Becky waved, black cape fluttering, and the door shut behind them.
The house seemed to go cold and quiet. Ben slid an arm behind my knees, I latched onto his neck, and Sam slipped past us and led the way upstairs. My heart beat triple-time with the rhythm of boots on wood.
Sam paused at the top of the stairs to ask, “You’re sure you’re ready?”
My mouth worked. No took a wrong turn somewhere on the way out, and instead I sighed, “Do I have a choice?”
“Yeah, you do,” Dean said behind us. “But the other options suck worse.”
Sam’s room was at the front of the house, next to the nook with the window-seat. Through the glass I saw taillights grow distant and then disappear around a corner. Wait, come back, the trembling child in me called after them. I changed my mind.
But it was too late for that. Ben stepped over the salt line and set me down on Sam’s bed.
The Winchesters didn’t say anything more. They just gave me steady looks and then settled into chairs at the foot of the bed. Machetes materialized in their laps.
Ben dragged the desk chair right up next to me and plopped down. With a gleaming silver knife and a wolfish expression, he looked as cocky as the first time he tugged on his A-2 jacket. But I saw the staccato tap of his thumb on his knee. He was nervous.
“You all right?” he asked me.
“So far, so good,” I said, hoping that my smile looked cool and together. As opposed to, you know, terrified and slightly manic.
“Anything else you need before we do this thing?”
A clue what I’m doing. “No. No, I’m good.”
“Okay. You took the Percocet?”
“Two.”
“Then you should be out pretty soon. Just relax, okay?”
Then Ben did something he’d never done before. His knuckles dimpled the comforter, and he leaned over and kissed my forehead. He mumbled something, too, but all I caught was my name.
A switch flipped, the room plunged into darkness, and then Dean plugged in the unicorn nightlight he’d swiped from Becky’s room.
It was a long ten minutes before the anxious haze of drugs overtook me.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
For the first time in hours, nothing hurt.
I sat up in Sam’s double bed, unhindered by the tired ache of deep-set pain. I pawed at my t-shirt and shoved away the pale blue sheets-no stitches.
That was the good news.
I looked around, noting curiously that the bed stood at the end of a long stretch of Victorian hallway, dully yellow in the flickering light of gas lamps. Doors stood open like soldiers at attention on either side.
I slid my hand beneath the pillows and felt for the Bowie knife.
Toe-heel, toe-heel, my feet touched down on the cold wood floor. When nothing snatched my ankles to pull me under the bed, I risked standing. God, it was good to feel my legs sturdy under my weight again.
A glance at the windows on either end of the hall, and I decided they didn’t deserve the name. One was completely black, and the other featured my laptop screensaver.
The Windows symbol bounced contentedly from jamb to sill to jamb.
“Hey, subconscious?” I muttered to the ugly walls. “You’re freakin useless.”
I padded over to the nearest flimsy pine door, knife held out as Dean had shown me. With no real desire to see what was on the other side, I yanked the door open like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Nothing. A square of emptiness, brightly lit in the absence of any light source, breathed chilly air at me. The room was notable only for its hideous flower-print wallpaper.
“The hell is this?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” a voice behind me said.
I spun around.
Becky leaned against the screensaver window, little girl solemn and speaking in her mother’s lazy-voweled voice. I shouldn’t have lowered the knife, but I did. Seemed like that easy alto had soothed me once upon a time.
“No, I don’t,” I told her. “I’ve never been here.”
“Technically, no,” she admitted. “But you’ve seen it before.”
I had another look; it was all right to take my eyes off her. There was no malice in that cherub face.
The room was still empty, alien, and sprouting flowers nature would be ashamed of. If I’d seen something so garish before, you’d think I would-
“Your dollhouse,” I murmured.
Suddenly at my elbow, Becky nodded.
“But why?”
“When you used to play Barbie,” she said thoughtfully, as though I’d never spoken, “did she and Ken fight custody battles for Skipper?”
Surprise knocked the breath out of me. “What?”
The smile Becky turned up at me was ringed with needle teeth.
I ran.
Doors and gas lamps blurred past me, and I lumbered hard through air that suddenly felt thick and cold as deep water. The guardrail of a stairwell rose up at the end of the hall, and I swung around it-
It led nowhere. There are no stairs in dollhouses.
God damn my brain, choosing this moment to be effing logical.
I spun around, and Becky was gone. Coming down the hall toward me were a half dozen children I had all but forgotten except in nightmares. Gray rags of flesh hung from their bleached bones, and beneath their hollow eyes black holes gaped hungrily.
“No,” I muttered, knife held out and shaking. “No no no-“
Frantically I reached for the doors on either side of me. They slammed shut just ahead of my groping fingers, and no amount of yanking or kicking could open them.
One changeling child, not six feet away from me, flickered in and out of Dakota’s likeness. Becky held her hand and grinned.
“Go away!” I screamed at her.
With a gunpowder boom, she dissolved into mist. Behind her, the other five shrieked into nothingness.
Heavy, booted steps made the floorboards sing. The man reloading the shotgun wasn’t Ben, but nor was he quite Dean Winchester. The short, dark hair and the broad stance could have been either, but there was Dean’s reddish beard, Ben’s bomber jacket…
His voice froze me where I stood.
“It’s all right,” he said. “’Sokay, Katie.”
“Stay away from me.” The knife handle was still sturdy and rough in my hand. I kept it between us, because somebody had told me to do it like that. I remembered somebody had told me. “I-I said stay away.”
“Take it easy,” he said, and his voice was rough as whiskey and twice as narcotic. “Come on, I’m here now. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to get you out.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t take a single step back from that voice. Already I imagined the creak of leather next to my ear if I let him fold me up, let him surround me.
“Put the knife down, Katie. Please? Put it down, and we’ll leave. No more of this crazy-ass dollhouse, okay?” There was that rumble of humor in his voice, a note I recognized. “Hey, you hear me? You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“How did you get here?” I whispered.
“You needed me; I showed up.”
He couldn’t be what he seemed. Nothing in this place was.
“You don’t think I’m in your head, too?” he said gently, and every word was another sip burning down my synapses and settling warm somewhere deep in me. “Just as real as pain or fear?”
“I don’t know you,” I said. It was barely a breath.
“Let me get you out, Kate.”
“I don’t-“
“Come on, babe.” He raised his arm, and the leather protested in just the pitch I’d imagined. “Drop the knife. Give me your hand.”
Metal clattered on hardwood.
He was warm as his voice had promised, and his arms around me were steady. I squeezed my eyes shut tight against grateful tears. He was going to take care of this. I wasn’t alone in my weird, ax-crazy head.
Then I looked up into his face, and thank-you died in my throat.
Ice blue eyes stared back.
“Holy fucking shit,” I hissed.
The second after I accepted my Darwin Award, the mora’s teeth plunged into my neck.
I screamed, I thrashed and kicked, and with one bare foot I scrabbled for the knife. Dropped the knife, Dean told you never let go of the knife, so fucking stupid-
The nape of my neck burned with the sharp, sucking bite of that rounded mouth. But it was Ben’s hand that muffled my screams, Dean’s rings that bit into my wrist. The mora would finish me this time, and I would die with the familiar scent of leather in my nose.
Please no not like this no please-
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
I woke screaming.
“Jesus Christ, Kate!”
Hands firm as shackles stilled my thrashing, and an arm lay like a bar across my midriff.
“Cut it out,” someone barked. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I fought harder, twisting and squirming in the damp sheets. Only the pain stopped me. It slammed into me with enough force to make me see stars.
The skin over my sternum felt taut as a tissue about to rip, but it was my left leg that I noticed. Every nerve in my thigh screamed mercy.
I lay still and reminded myself how to breathe. Slowly, the pain became a livable throb in time with my racing heart-thud ow thud ow thud ohmygod ow.
I couldn’t see a damn thing through the sheen of tears in my eyes, but I knew Ben when he hovered over me. The unicorn nightlight cast heavy shadows across his face.
“Katie,” he murmured soothingly.
For a moment, terror turned my stomach, and I might have actually whimpered, “Don’t touch me.”
Soft pressure lifted from my shoulders. “Katie?”
His voice did what all that gentleness couldn’t, because he sounded scared and powerless. He sounded like Ben.
I rolled over and clutched at his bent knee, setting fire to half my nerve endings. It hurt to cry, but it hurt too much not to. “I am not fucking doing that again.”
“Katie.”
Say something other than my name. Say I don’t have to. “I’m not.”
“It’s all right,” Sam sighed from somewhere by my feet. “Don’t worry about it right now, Kate.”
I nodded and shook and snotted on his sheets. That was exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Okay, Kate,” Dean said, but there was nothing reassuring in it. “Okay.”
He and Sam left the room, and I could hear them muttering out in the hallway. Dawn peeked in the windows, and Ben tried to disentangle me from his knee.
“You’re squishing your bad leg,” he told me.
I said nothing, and I didn’t move.
He sat with me for a long time while morning burned shadows from the room.
[Chapter Five]