Fic: Gods and Monsters (7/7)
Gods and Monsters (7/7)
By: Pen37
Beta: clarksmuse
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Jo.
Pairing: Chloe/Dean Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: Not Mine, Fun only.
Summary: The Orpheum theatre in Memphis has troubles with a Ghost. Sam has issues with Trust. What is Chloe hiding from the Guys? What are the Guys hiding from Chloe?
This is part of my Sam Dean and Chloe crossover series Special Projects.
They follow in this order:
Unstrung Hero
Now Stop Me if You've heard this one,
The Greatest Hits of Mapquest,
Devil's Dance,
Phone Calls From the Edge,
Didn't AC/DC Do A Song About this?,
We find Ourselves in the Same Old mess
Sam, Chloe and The Naked Teenage Wiccan Newbie Adventure.
Gods and Monsters Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.
Crossfire,
The Language of Waffles,
Conservation of Pain.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #100 Writers choice. (For this fic, I'm saying that the prompt is Trust) The table is here.
Dean tugged at his collar uncomfortably and looked in the mirror. Sam and Chloe had dressed him so that he looked like what Chloe said a Daily Planet photographer looks like.
Apparently, Daily Planet photographers look like giant dorks. The sweater vest by itself was killing him with the august humidity. But to add insult to injury - Chloe had put him in a bow tie. He didn't see how anyone could be taken seriously while wearing a bow tie.
He supposed that Sam should be the one going with Chloe. He was geek boy with the technical stuff. But Dean really wanted to be the one with her on this thing. And for some reason, Sam kept throwing paper on rock, paper scissors for who got to use the camera.
Which probably explained why they picked out this outfit: revenge.
“What do you think?” Chloe said once she'd finished tying the thing around his neck and stepped back.
Jo took one look at him and let out an unladylike snort. He glared at her while her lips twitched. She attempted to school her face in a neutral expression. “He looks like a four year old dressed up for Easter.”
Sam grinned one of those dorky grins that showed all his teeth. Dean glared at him. When they got finished with this job he was going to super glue the big dork to something.
“I ain't wearing this,” Dean reached for the bow tie, with the intent of yanking it off his neck. But Chloe trapped his hands in her own tiny ones.
“I think you look nice,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sam chimed in. “All you're missing are the short pants and the basket with the bunny.”
Dean let out a low growl and ripped the bow tie from his neck. “Where do we keep our fed suits?” He threw the bow tie at Sam as he stomped toward the roadhouse door. Behind him, Sam and Jo collapsed in fits of giggles as Chloe shrugged. “Well, he did look nice.”
“Nice,” he groused as he pulled the sweater vest over his head. “You'd think she's never been with a guy who has fashion sense before.”
* * *
Once Dean found a suit that he actually liked, he changed and drove Chloe back to the Orpheum. As he helped her out of the car, she handed him a laminated press Pass.
“What's this?” Dean glanced from his picture on the pass to the Daily Planet logo, to the name under it. Dean Kent - freelance photographer.
“If you ID doesn’t match mine, it’s going to look weird,” she said with a smile.
“You made me an ID?”
“I made you an identity,” Chloe took the tag and clipped it to his lapel. “Including a paper trail: employment history with The Planet, bank accounts, birth certificates, the whole nine yards. My cousins helped by filing hard copies with Human Resources back at The Planet. Welcome to the world of the gainfully employed.”
Dean raised his eyebrows in shock. She created an identity. For him. And not one of those pansy-ass false backgrounds for a credit card. The real deal. No one had ever done that for him before. “Wow,” he said with quiet awe.
He covered her hands as she was working on the tag. She looked up at him with a faint smile.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “This is pretty amazing.”
She shrugged. “I figured - if you’re going to be going on assignment with me, you’re going to have to pass the occasional background check. Not to mention that Human Resources is going to need a place to put the money you earn. Just - try to keep this ID squeaky clean. Dean Winchester may be wanted by the FBI, but Dean Kent is the second cousin by marriage to a state senator.”
“Nose clean. Gotcha.” He felt a goofy smile cross his face. “So are you going to do one of these for Sam, too?”
“I guess I can,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “It won’t be the same, though.”
“Why not?”
“You were my first. And you never forget your first.”
His brain locked up at that statement. With a saucy grin she turned, and sauntered into the building
Dean watched her go while he attempted to unfreeze his brain. What was it about Chloe that she enjoyed torturing him with innuendo? If she wasn’t careful, he was going to have to throw her over his knee and give her the kind of spanking that could only lead to her screaming his name.
With a lecherous grin, he shut her door, retrieved the camera equipment from the backseat, and followed after her into the theater.
The Orpheum's press secretary was a short, slightly pudgy woman named Dinah. When Chloe introduced them, she reached out and pumped his arm enthusiastically. She had a firm but damp handshake, and she smelled like baby powder.
When he smiled at her, she turned tomato-red and looked down at her feet. All of Chloe's questions from that point on were met with hesitant, stammering words.
“Dean?” Chloe shot him a pleading look. “Why don't you poke around the theater and get some basic shots for the article? I'll finish up my interview here and call you when it’s time to come back.”
Dean glanced from Chloe to Dinah with a thoughtful nod. He'd never met a woman he couldn't charm. But it was easy to overdo it with the shy chicks. He gave Chloe an apologetic look and slipped from the room.
Three hundred exploding-monkey theater pictures later, his cell phone buzzed with Chloe's message to come back up to the office. When he got there, the contents of a time capsule were laid out across an open table. Chloe opened the door for him, and pointed to the capsule.
“I think you scared our contact off,” she grinned. “Good thing shyness isn't contagious. Otherwise I'd have to hide in a closet every time you came around.”
“Better find a roomy closet then, sweetheart,” Dean smirked at her. “Because I can think of all kinds of things to do to you in one of those.”
She shook her head. “You're encourageable.”
“You're encouraging,” he countered. “And if you don't stop winding me up . . .”
“But it's so much fun.”
Her answering smirk was all Dean needed. He placed his hand firmly on the door so that he could tell when someone was coming. His free hand snaked around her waist and pulled her firmly up against him. She only had a moment to look surprised before he crushed his lips to hers. For a moment, her posture was rigidly strait. Then she melted against him.
He slanted his lips over her hers and nipped on the lower one with his teeth. His question was unspoken. Her answer equally so. She parted her lips, allowing him access to her mouth. He explored there leisurely. She tasted of coffee, cream and sugar.
A line from one of those old movies she liked so much drifted through his mind. A kiss is just a kiss. He wasn't so sure. As far as first kisses went, this one was awesome. He was on sensory overload, and he wanted to remember everything about this moment from her intoxicating vanilla scent to the soft, hungry moans that she was making in the back of her mouth.
The tiniest vibration of the door told him that someone was coming. Reluctantly, he broke the kiss and stepped back. She looked dazed and a little bit confused. But one look at his business expression made her realize what was going on. She hastily smoothed her rumpled blouse, picked up the notebook that she'd dropped when he pulled her to him and schooled her own features into a carefully businesslike expression.
Dinah returned with a list that she handed to Chloe. “Here is a catalog of everything that was in the capsule,” she said.
“Thank you,” Chloe flipped through the catalog while Dean started to photograph the items with the camera. There were playbills, cardboard tickets and theater props from productions that ran the year that the capsule was buried. As he leaned over the wooden box that the capsule had been stored in, the familiar smell of spent fireworks wafted up to him.
He swallowed down a curse as he glanced surreptitiously at Dinah. When he was sure that the shy woman wasn't looking at him, he ran his index finger around the lip of the box. It came away sticky with a familiar yellow substance.
“I smell sulfur,” he reported at last.
“Sulfur?” Chloe raised an eyebrow. The she glanced at Dinah for confirmation.
“It was there when the box opened,” she said. “We think that it was put in the box before it was sealed, possibly it was a stage effect from a production of Dante's Inferno.”
“Dante's Inferno,” Dean mumbled, and tried not to roll his eyes. He was amazed the lengths people would go to in convincing themselves that there was nothing unusual going on. Under the cover of taking light readings, he pulled out his scanner, and got readings off of the box and its contents.
The readings were high enough to show that something demonic had been there. But whatever it was had already gone. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Something had gotten loose, and now it was no-telling where.
“Was there anything else in the box?” he asked Diana.
“I'm not sure,” she stammered.
Chloe stepped up beside him, and checked the contents of the capsule against the list in her hand. “Looks like a ventriloquist's dummy isn't here.”
“Oh, the dummy,” she shrugged. “We sent out a press release on that already. I thought you had it.”
“It must not have reached me,” Chloe said with a smile that hid the seriousness in her eyes. “Could you get me another copy?”
* * *
When they were done at the theater, Dean took her to this hamburger dive called Huey's. It had been Jo's recommendation. The hamburgers were supposed to be the best in Memphis. As an added bonus for dean, the patrons were allowed to shoot toothpicks into the ceiling, blowgun style, though a straw.
While Chloe ordered - two burgers, a basket of fries to share, longneck for him and bottomless tea for her - he worked on his precision accuracy. Buy the time she returned with their food, he'd spelled out the words DW was here in six-inch long toothpicks over their booth.
She looked at it, handed him another toothpick and pointed to the end. “Don't forget to put the period on it.”
“You’re editing me?” He grinned at her.
“Good punctuation is important.” She sat down across from him, and spread the press release out in front of her. They called Jo's roadhouse on Chloe's cell phone, and then conferenced in Dean's phone as well. Sam picked up the phone on the other end. Judging by the background noise, he had put the call on speaker phone for Jo to listen to as well.
“So what do you have?” Jo asked.
“Well,” Dean said between bites of burger. “There was definitely a demon there at one point. Sulfur is all over the inside of the time capsule.”
“But it's gone now?” Sam asked.
“Long gone, judging by these readings,” Dean confirmed.
“So any theories?” Sam asked.
“One,” Dean looked at Chloe.
“I guess that's my cue,” she laughed. “There's a ventriloquist's dummy in the box. According to the Orpheum's press secretary, they think that there is a rare possibility that it potentially maybe might have belonged to Charles Middleton.”
“Who?” Dean and Jo chorused.
“He played Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon serials in the 30's,” Sam said.
“How did you know that?” Jo asked.
“Sammy's a one-man game of Trivial Pursuit.” Pride colored Dean's words, and Chloe found herself smiling at him for it. He smiled back at her as Sam rattled out statistics in the background.
“Middleton worked in Vaudeville before he made the transition to silent pictures. But I've never seen any information that he was a ventriloquist.”
“I think the folks who found the time capsule may have embellished things a little,” Chloe said.
“Look, it doesn't matter who the dummy belonged to. What matters is that we think that's where the problem is.”
“You think it's possessed?” Sam wondered. “Like those adoptable dolls in the eighties?”
“Not like that,” Dean said. “Those were inhabited by spirits of the factory workers who were killed by machinery where the dolls were made.”
“I thought that was just an urban legend,” Chloe said.
“Half the stuff we hunt are urban legends,” Dean said. “It’s just that they happen to be true.”
“I’m definitely going to have a word with the folks who run Swopes.com,” Chloe grumbled.
“Mythbusters is more accurate,” Sam said.
“With the added bonus that they blow things up,” Dean added. “Getting back on the subject -- this is more like that doll that Raggedy Ann Doll the nurses had in the seventies.”
“So you think the demon attached itself to the dummy,” Jo summarized.
“And the more attention it gets, the more powerful the demon gets,” Dean said. “When they found it, it wasn't very powerful, so all it could do was some rattling of pipes.”
“It's gotten a lot of attention,” Chloe mused, “with all the media coverage.”
“Soon it's going to be able to full-on manifest,” Dean said. “Then all it has to do is leave the dummy, and attach itself to a person.”
“We better find it first,” Sam said. “Any idea where it went?”
“Elizabethtown, Kentucky,” Chloe shuffled her notes.
“Like the movie?” Dean asked.
“Same place, no Spasmodicas.” Chloe deadpanned. “There's a Hardin County History Museum up there. They purchased the dummy for a vaudeville exhibit.”
“Sounds like we're going to Elizabethtown,” Dean said.
* * *
Sam was just throwing the rest of his clean underwear in his duffel when Jo walked into his room.
“Jo!” he jumped and quickly shut the duffel so that she couldn't see his underwear. “Um . . . hi!” He rubbed his neck sheepishly.
“You're cute when you blush, Sam.” She grinned at him. “I brought you guys some food for the road.” She handed him a brown paper bag. “Chips, sandwiches, beer. Some Jerky and M&M's for Dean. Sweet Tea for Chloe.”
“Thanks,” Sam took the bag from her, and grinned. “So . . . Thanks for all your help the past couple of days. Working with you has been . . . great.”
“Great,” Jo nodded to him. She bit her lip, and looked away. “Great. Your help has been . . . great too.”
Sam bent at the knees, and dipped his head to catch her eyes. “How about I call you in a couple of days? You know . . . to let you know how the hunt went. And . . . other stuff?”
Jo looked at him with wide eyes. “I'd . . . I'd like that.” She gave him a sheepish smile.
Down the hall, Dean's voice echoed back at him. “Come on, Sammy! We're burning daylight. Kiss her and let's hit the road.”
Sam scowled in Dean's general direction. He turned back to see Jo's own face was inches from his own. A fierce look of determination there made Sam think that Jo was in favor of the idea. She grabbed the back of his head and left a short, firm kiss on his lips. Then she pulled back. Her face was carefully masked as she gauged his reaction.
Sam touched his lips in surprise. Then he grinned at her and leaned forward to leave his own quick, hesitant kiss on her lips.
“So I'll call you.” he said as he touched his forehead to hers.
“You better,” she said with mock-sternness.
As Sam made his way to the Impala, he couldn't hide the ear-to-ear grin that had etched its way onto his face.
By: Pen37
Beta: clarksmuse
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Jo.
Pairing: Chloe/Dean Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: Not Mine, Fun only.
Summary: The Orpheum theatre in Memphis has troubles with a Ghost. Sam has issues with Trust. What is Chloe hiding from the Guys? What are the Guys hiding from Chloe?
This is part of my Sam Dean and Chloe crossover series Special Projects.
They follow in this order:
Unstrung Hero
Now Stop Me if You've heard this one,
The Greatest Hits of Mapquest,
Devil's Dance,
Phone Calls From the Edge,
Didn't AC/DC Do A Song About this?,
We find Ourselves in the Same Old mess
Sam, Chloe and The Naked Teenage Wiccan Newbie Adventure.
Gods and Monsters Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.
Crossfire,
The Language of Waffles,
Conservation of Pain.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #100 Writers choice. (For this fic, I'm saying that the prompt is Trust) The table is here.
Dean tugged at his collar uncomfortably and looked in the mirror. Sam and Chloe had dressed him so that he looked like what Chloe said a Daily Planet photographer looks like.
Apparently, Daily Planet photographers look like giant dorks. The sweater vest by itself was killing him with the august humidity. But to add insult to injury - Chloe had put him in a bow tie. He didn't see how anyone could be taken seriously while wearing a bow tie.
He supposed that Sam should be the one going with Chloe. He was geek boy with the technical stuff. But Dean really wanted to be the one with her on this thing. And for some reason, Sam kept throwing paper on rock, paper scissors for who got to use the camera.
Which probably explained why they picked out this outfit: revenge.
“What do you think?” Chloe said once she'd finished tying the thing around his neck and stepped back.
Jo took one look at him and let out an unladylike snort. He glared at her while her lips twitched. She attempted to school her face in a neutral expression. “He looks like a four year old dressed up for Easter.”
Sam grinned one of those dorky grins that showed all his teeth. Dean glared at him. When they got finished with this job he was going to super glue the big dork to something.
“I ain't wearing this,” Dean reached for the bow tie, with the intent of yanking it off his neck. But Chloe trapped his hands in her own tiny ones.
“I think you look nice,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sam chimed in. “All you're missing are the short pants and the basket with the bunny.”
Dean let out a low growl and ripped the bow tie from his neck. “Where do we keep our fed suits?” He threw the bow tie at Sam as he stomped toward the roadhouse door. Behind him, Sam and Jo collapsed in fits of giggles as Chloe shrugged. “Well, he did look nice.”
“Nice,” he groused as he pulled the sweater vest over his head. “You'd think she's never been with a guy who has fashion sense before.”
* * *
Once Dean found a suit that he actually liked, he changed and drove Chloe back to the Orpheum. As he helped her out of the car, she handed him a laminated press Pass.
“What's this?” Dean glanced from his picture on the pass to the Daily Planet logo, to the name under it. Dean Kent - freelance photographer.
“If you ID doesn’t match mine, it’s going to look weird,” she said with a smile.
“You made me an ID?”
“I made you an identity,” Chloe took the tag and clipped it to his lapel. “Including a paper trail: employment history with The Planet, bank accounts, birth certificates, the whole nine yards. My cousins helped by filing hard copies with Human Resources back at The Planet. Welcome to the world of the gainfully employed.”
Dean raised his eyebrows in shock. She created an identity. For him. And not one of those pansy-ass false backgrounds for a credit card. The real deal. No one had ever done that for him before. “Wow,” he said with quiet awe.
He covered her hands as she was working on the tag. She looked up at him with a faint smile.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “This is pretty amazing.”
She shrugged. “I figured - if you’re going to be going on assignment with me, you’re going to have to pass the occasional background check. Not to mention that Human Resources is going to need a place to put the money you earn. Just - try to keep this ID squeaky clean. Dean Winchester may be wanted by the FBI, but Dean Kent is the second cousin by marriage to a state senator.”
“Nose clean. Gotcha.” He felt a goofy smile cross his face. “So are you going to do one of these for Sam, too?”
“I guess I can,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “It won’t be the same, though.”
“Why not?”
“You were my first. And you never forget your first.”
His brain locked up at that statement. With a saucy grin she turned, and sauntered into the building
Dean watched her go while he attempted to unfreeze his brain. What was it about Chloe that she enjoyed torturing him with innuendo? If she wasn’t careful, he was going to have to throw her over his knee and give her the kind of spanking that could only lead to her screaming his name.
With a lecherous grin, he shut her door, retrieved the camera equipment from the backseat, and followed after her into the theater.
The Orpheum's press secretary was a short, slightly pudgy woman named Dinah. When Chloe introduced them, she reached out and pumped his arm enthusiastically. She had a firm but damp handshake, and she smelled like baby powder.
When he smiled at her, she turned tomato-red and looked down at her feet. All of Chloe's questions from that point on were met with hesitant, stammering words.
“Dean?” Chloe shot him a pleading look. “Why don't you poke around the theater and get some basic shots for the article? I'll finish up my interview here and call you when it’s time to come back.”
Dean glanced from Chloe to Dinah with a thoughtful nod. He'd never met a woman he couldn't charm. But it was easy to overdo it with the shy chicks. He gave Chloe an apologetic look and slipped from the room.
Three hundred exploding-monkey theater pictures later, his cell phone buzzed with Chloe's message to come back up to the office. When he got there, the contents of a time capsule were laid out across an open table. Chloe opened the door for him, and pointed to the capsule.
“I think you scared our contact off,” she grinned. “Good thing shyness isn't contagious. Otherwise I'd have to hide in a closet every time you came around.”
“Better find a roomy closet then, sweetheart,” Dean smirked at her. “Because I can think of all kinds of things to do to you in one of those.”
She shook her head. “You're encourageable.”
“You're encouraging,” he countered. “And if you don't stop winding me up . . .”
“But it's so much fun.”
Her answering smirk was all Dean needed. He placed his hand firmly on the door so that he could tell when someone was coming. His free hand snaked around her waist and pulled her firmly up against him. She only had a moment to look surprised before he crushed his lips to hers. For a moment, her posture was rigidly strait. Then she melted against him.
He slanted his lips over her hers and nipped on the lower one with his teeth. His question was unspoken. Her answer equally so. She parted her lips, allowing him access to her mouth. He explored there leisurely. She tasted of coffee, cream and sugar.
A line from one of those old movies she liked so much drifted through his mind. A kiss is just a kiss. He wasn't so sure. As far as first kisses went, this one was awesome. He was on sensory overload, and he wanted to remember everything about this moment from her intoxicating vanilla scent to the soft, hungry moans that she was making in the back of her mouth.
The tiniest vibration of the door told him that someone was coming. Reluctantly, he broke the kiss and stepped back. She looked dazed and a little bit confused. But one look at his business expression made her realize what was going on. She hastily smoothed her rumpled blouse, picked up the notebook that she'd dropped when he pulled her to him and schooled her own features into a carefully businesslike expression.
Dinah returned with a list that she handed to Chloe. “Here is a catalog of everything that was in the capsule,” she said.
“Thank you,” Chloe flipped through the catalog while Dean started to photograph the items with the camera. There were playbills, cardboard tickets and theater props from productions that ran the year that the capsule was buried. As he leaned over the wooden box that the capsule had been stored in, the familiar smell of spent fireworks wafted up to him.
He swallowed down a curse as he glanced surreptitiously at Dinah. When he was sure that the shy woman wasn't looking at him, he ran his index finger around the lip of the box. It came away sticky with a familiar yellow substance.
“I smell sulfur,” he reported at last.
“Sulfur?” Chloe raised an eyebrow. The she glanced at Dinah for confirmation.
“It was there when the box opened,” she said. “We think that it was put in the box before it was sealed, possibly it was a stage effect from a production of Dante's Inferno.”
“Dante's Inferno,” Dean mumbled, and tried not to roll his eyes. He was amazed the lengths people would go to in convincing themselves that there was nothing unusual going on. Under the cover of taking light readings, he pulled out his scanner, and got readings off of the box and its contents.
The readings were high enough to show that something demonic had been there. But whatever it was had already gone. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Something had gotten loose, and now it was no-telling where.
“Was there anything else in the box?” he asked Diana.
“I'm not sure,” she stammered.
Chloe stepped up beside him, and checked the contents of the capsule against the list in her hand. “Looks like a ventriloquist's dummy isn't here.”
“Oh, the dummy,” she shrugged. “We sent out a press release on that already. I thought you had it.”
“It must not have reached me,” Chloe said with a smile that hid the seriousness in her eyes. “Could you get me another copy?”
* * *
When they were done at the theater, Dean took her to this hamburger dive called Huey's. It had been Jo's recommendation. The hamburgers were supposed to be the best in Memphis. As an added bonus for dean, the patrons were allowed to shoot toothpicks into the ceiling, blowgun style, though a straw.
While Chloe ordered - two burgers, a basket of fries to share, longneck for him and bottomless tea for her - he worked on his precision accuracy. Buy the time she returned with their food, he'd spelled out the words DW was here in six-inch long toothpicks over their booth.
She looked at it, handed him another toothpick and pointed to the end. “Don't forget to put the period on it.”
“You’re editing me?” He grinned at her.
“Good punctuation is important.” She sat down across from him, and spread the press release out in front of her. They called Jo's roadhouse on Chloe's cell phone, and then conferenced in Dean's phone as well. Sam picked up the phone on the other end. Judging by the background noise, he had put the call on speaker phone for Jo to listen to as well.
“So what do you have?” Jo asked.
“Well,” Dean said between bites of burger. “There was definitely a demon there at one point. Sulfur is all over the inside of the time capsule.”
“But it's gone now?” Sam asked.
“Long gone, judging by these readings,” Dean confirmed.
“So any theories?” Sam asked.
“One,” Dean looked at Chloe.
“I guess that's my cue,” she laughed. “There's a ventriloquist's dummy in the box. According to the Orpheum's press secretary, they think that there is a rare possibility that it potentially maybe might have belonged to Charles Middleton.”
“Who?” Dean and Jo chorused.
“He played Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon serials in the 30's,” Sam said.
“How did you know that?” Jo asked.
“Sammy's a one-man game of Trivial Pursuit.” Pride colored Dean's words, and Chloe found herself smiling at him for it. He smiled back at her as Sam rattled out statistics in the background.
“Middleton worked in Vaudeville before he made the transition to silent pictures. But I've never seen any information that he was a ventriloquist.”
“I think the folks who found the time capsule may have embellished things a little,” Chloe said.
“Look, it doesn't matter who the dummy belonged to. What matters is that we think that's where the problem is.”
“You think it's possessed?” Sam wondered. “Like those adoptable dolls in the eighties?”
“Not like that,” Dean said. “Those were inhabited by spirits of the factory workers who were killed by machinery where the dolls were made.”
“I thought that was just an urban legend,” Chloe said.
“Half the stuff we hunt are urban legends,” Dean said. “It’s just that they happen to be true.”
“I’m definitely going to have a word with the folks who run Swopes.com,” Chloe grumbled.
“Mythbusters is more accurate,” Sam said.
“With the added bonus that they blow things up,” Dean added. “Getting back on the subject -- this is more like that doll that Raggedy Ann Doll the nurses had in the seventies.”
“So you think the demon attached itself to the dummy,” Jo summarized.
“And the more attention it gets, the more powerful the demon gets,” Dean said. “When they found it, it wasn't very powerful, so all it could do was some rattling of pipes.”
“It's gotten a lot of attention,” Chloe mused, “with all the media coverage.”
“Soon it's going to be able to full-on manifest,” Dean said. “Then all it has to do is leave the dummy, and attach itself to a person.”
“We better find it first,” Sam said. “Any idea where it went?”
“Elizabethtown, Kentucky,” Chloe shuffled her notes.
“Like the movie?” Dean asked.
“Same place, no Spasmodicas.” Chloe deadpanned. “There's a Hardin County History Museum up there. They purchased the dummy for a vaudeville exhibit.”
“Sounds like we're going to Elizabethtown,” Dean said.
* * *
Sam was just throwing the rest of his clean underwear in his duffel when Jo walked into his room.
“Jo!” he jumped and quickly shut the duffel so that she couldn't see his underwear. “Um . . . hi!” He rubbed his neck sheepishly.
“You're cute when you blush, Sam.” She grinned at him. “I brought you guys some food for the road.” She handed him a brown paper bag. “Chips, sandwiches, beer. Some Jerky and M&M's for Dean. Sweet Tea for Chloe.”
“Thanks,” Sam took the bag from her, and grinned. “So . . . Thanks for all your help the past couple of days. Working with you has been . . . great.”
“Great,” Jo nodded to him. She bit her lip, and looked away. “Great. Your help has been . . . great too.”
Sam bent at the knees, and dipped his head to catch her eyes. “How about I call you in a couple of days? You know . . . to let you know how the hunt went. And . . . other stuff?”
Jo looked at him with wide eyes. “I'd . . . I'd like that.” She gave him a sheepish smile.
Down the hall, Dean's voice echoed back at him. “Come on, Sammy! We're burning daylight. Kiss her and let's hit the road.”
Sam scowled in Dean's general direction. He turned back to see Jo's own face was inches from his own. A fierce look of determination there made Sam think that Jo was in favor of the idea. She grabbed the back of his head and left a short, firm kiss on his lips. Then she pulled back. Her face was carefully masked as she gauged his reaction.
Sam touched his lips in surprise. Then he grinned at her and leaned forward to leave his own quick, hesitant kiss on her lips.
“So I'll call you.” he said as he touched his forehead to hers.
“You better,” she said with mock-sternness.
As Sam made his way to the Impala, he couldn't hide the ear-to-ear grin that had etched its way onto his face.