Episode 15: Ghosts (Part 1 Continued)

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She doesn't know how much time has passed as she comes around, blinking open crusty eyes and shivering in the chill, wrinkling her nose at the earthy smells of rotting leaf matter and wood, inhaling something more fetid as she breathes deep to steady herself, base notes that hint at stagnant water, the stench of decay.

She paws feverishly for her cellphone again, hears a small, frustrated sob break up and out of her as her pocket shows up empty. She wipes angrily at her eyes. "Mom," she sniffs.

She looks up past the trees that arrow their way into the sky, and through the latticework of leaf fronds. The sky is nudging the pinkish-gray of early morning, but at ground level the forest is still dark and shadowy, the distorted tree trunks threatening and claustrophobic, the shrubs bulky with menace. Branches creak ominously around her, the leaves whispering to each other as she crouches at the base of her tree.

A sound startles her: the mournful hoot of an owl on the hunt, followed by the busy scurry of wildlife in the undergrowth, eyes, eyes, low down and furtive, spotlighting her like the glow of a lantern. Bear, her nerves scream at her in sheer terror, but her brain rewinds until she hears her teacher's voice, back away, never run, and do not climb a tree unless you have time to climb at least ten feet before the bear reaches you. As a last resort, play dead. She'd liked him, it occurs to her, as she curls herself up into a ball and slides her hands up to cover her head. "I'm sorry Professor," she mutters under her breath. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The animal pokes its head out from a low bush. Raccoon, she realizes, with a choking sound of relief, and then, abruptly, something else is crawling across her senses, something more than her fear and anxiety, something more than the lurid images in her head, her friends covered in a seething mass of black, their screams as they stumbled and sank to the ground while she ran.

Something is watching her, something more than a raccoon. Somehow she knows this, knows that whatever it is, it's just as wrong as the things that hurtled at them from the trees.

Some part of her recognizes what it is.

Crack.

It's a twig snapping underfoot, she realizes, and now there's more movement, and she can hear the churring noise of fabric, the crunch of boots on mulch.

The figure looms up out of nowhere, and she gasps.

Whoever it is doesn't address her, but she hears rummaging, a rustling sound, smells phosphorus as a match strikes.

The man looks down at her with bright, interested eyes, studies her silently for a long moment while she shivers and stares up dumbly.

He cocks his head then, smiles whitely, and chuckles. "Well, well, well," he says, and his tone is part surprise and part amusement. "Seems my radar was pinging for a reason. Anyone ever tell you you've got your daddy's eyes?"



Bobby is heaving in deep breaths, his hand to his chest, when they arrive. He turns astonished eyes on Castiel, and his jaw is slack. He's gripping onto Castiel's arm, his fingers clawed and desperate, as he croaks out, "What the hell just happened?"

Castiel shrugs off his hand, ignores the tiredness that swells inside him after his exertion. He examines the house at the top of the driveway, finds it's larger than he expected, and for a moment he wonders why he expected anything at all. He ranges his eyes across a neatly kept lawn and tidy shrubs, before shifting back to the matter at hand. "You said we had trouble," he offers. "I assumed that meant we should travel fast and light."

Bobby splutters impotently at him for a minute before his head snaps around to scan the quiet suburban street. "Wait just a…you mean. What? Is this Amelia Novak's house? You flew us to California in…" He stops, goggles at his wristwatch.

"Nine tenths of a second," Castiel confirms automatically. "I'm afraid I'm not as fast as I once was now my powers have dwindled." He turns, takes a few steps further up the driveway, and then Bobby is tugging at his henley, pulling him to a halt.

"Wait a minute." Bobby's face is aghast, and he spends several seconds making manic shapes in the air with his hands. "You've brought us to this woman's home with no plan, no weapons, and no help," he goes on eventually. "What the hell were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?"

Castiel doesn't confirm that no, he didn't consider any of this rationally before he took to the air, only felt pulled, compelled to come here for reasons that are obscure even to him. Instead, he gestures behind them. "I stopped off for the weapons."

Bobby swings around, but the sight of the large duffel lying on the concrete isn't enough to mollify him. "What about Dean?" he snaps. "We could have done with his help on this."

Something burns at Castiel when Bobby says the name, something he hasn't felt since those last days of despair before he destroyed himself with the taint of Purgatory, something he knows is hurt at Dean's words back in Sioux Falls. It makes his throat go tight for a moment but he pushes it down, replies as nonchalantly as he can. "You were closer," trips off his tongue smoothly, and he hopes the disorientation of that microsecond of flight means Bobby might not be quite as astute as he was ten minutes ago in his kitchen, when it was clear from the old man's expression that he'd read Castiel like an open book. "In any case, he said he's meeting his brother in New York."

Castiel can tell his affected indifference isn't working from the beady-eyed examination that follows his words, but he squares up to Bobby's gaze and makes his own look a challenge. "Does the child's mother know about me?"

Bobby folds his arms across his chest and purses his lips angrily. "Sure she knows," he growls. "I called ahead, explained it all to her before we packed our bags and got in the truck to drive here. Don't you remember?" He cocks his head and tents his brows in exaggerated surprise. "No? Maybe that's because it never happened, flyboy."

His eyes still bore into Castiel as an awkward silence falls and hovers between them, and maybe it's the clumsy humanity that's creeping insidiously up on him that makes Castiel blink first. "You gave them new identities?" he detours quietly.

"Well, you upped and disappeared, left them defenseless," Bobby accuses.

After swiping suddenly nervous fingers through his hair, Castiel says, "It isn't that simple." The irony of his own echo of Dean's words isn't lost on him, and he stops and studies his boots for a few seconds. There is a fleeting memory in his mind, of feverish, agonizing pain, indoctrination that Zachariah called enlightenment, and over his shrieks and pleas and prayers for mercy there is the insistence of infallibility, the drilling of dogma, and the moment he gives in, please…no more, before climbing off the rack to his own shellshocked, stuttering reiteration of his faith and obedience. He thinks of it often, and sometimes he thinks of it as his own first seal, fancies that Zachariah was his Alastair, flaying his grace just as the demon flayed Dean Winchester's soul.

"You alright, boy?" Bobby's voice is less fierce now, still gruff but undercut with what might even be concern.

Castiel realizes he's hugging himself, and his breathing has gone fast and ragged. He unbraids his arms, forces them to hang down by his sides, and wonders if Dean would think this is karma. "It isn't that simple," he repeats. "It wasn't that simple. Back then, I mean. I had to…there were orders. Orders I had to follow, or I would have been - reassigned." He doesn't clarify what reassigned means as he flicks his eyes up again.

"Well. Anyway…" Bobby shrugs. "We assumed the kid might be a target, since she was a vessel. Dean said Anna told them as much. And it turned out her mom was already getting packed up to move out here near her brother, so we went one better, put them in witness protection."

Castiel nods, clears his throat and rallies. "We should see her now," he decides, and he steps around Bobby and starts walking again, only to be gripped by the bicep and hauled back.

"Will you stop?" Bobby's voice is ramping back up and his face is going red as he fumes hot again. "You're wearing the body of her dead husband, for Christ's sake. And it's the asscrack of dawn here."

Castiel feels a flash of annoyance himself, and he doesn't really understand why since Bobby's blustering doesn't typically rouse his own mood much higher than a low simmer. "Seeing me wearing the body of her dead husband would be preferable to identifying the body of her dead child, don't you think?" he retorts testily. "And she called didn't she? She must be awake. We're wasting time."

Bobby levels a glare at Castiel that he has seen reduce Dean to stammering ineptitude on many occasions. "Wait," the old man hisses. "There are things you don't know about this, things her mom said when she called that…" It's too late though, Castiel can see it in Bobby's gaze as it snaps abruptly away and past him, towards the house.

Castiel turns around, and he's staring at Amelia Novak's face, seeing an instant of astonishment flit across it before her expression settles into a strained combination of fear, grief, and antipathy reminiscent of the look she directed at him before he turned and walked away from her and her child in Pontiac.

Everything else blurs so that her face is the only thing in sharp, cruel focus, and the effect is instantaneous and incomprehensible, a sudden, overwhelming draining of will and focus that makes Castiel feel empty and unsure. He takes a step back, bumps into Bobby, solid behind him. "I don't know what to do," he says, and his voice floats up distantly from the hollow space inside him, comes out smaller and more guarded than he has ever heard it.

He feels Bobby's hand flat and steadying between his shoulder blades, propelling him forward, and the old man's reply is serious and reassuring.

"I'm right behind you, boy."



It's ten minutes before Sam gets back to him, and when he does his voice is sleep-slurred. "Whuh…? Dean, I-"

"Novaks," Dean raps out. "Do you remember anything about where Bobby might've stashed them - the new name, an address?"

After a brief silence, his brother sighs and scratches out, "Uh. California. Didn't Amelia Novak have a brother there or something? That's about as much as I can remember…you told Bobby to keep it to himself in case anything ever tried to get the intel out of us."

Dean chews his lip as he eyeballs Bobby's laptop. He's tried any number of password permutations, cracked his way into file after file, and nothing. "The old bastard's back catalogue is tight as a drum," he complains. "Though I've found out exactly what he used to get up to in the Dominican." He shudders. "Believe me, it isn't pretty. And Rufus too. Jesus. Brain-bleach me now."

A noncommittal and barely responsive grunt drifts over the line, followed by a barely-stifled yawn. "Dean. I've been up half the night on a stake-out," Sam mumbles. "You think I need images like that in my head right now?"

Point, Dean thinks. "Least you didn't see the pictures," he defends, and he snaps the phone shut. "Okay," he murmurs to himself then. "Doing it the hard way." He taps his way to what he's looking for. "Births, marriages and deaths, state of Illinois. Novak, James and Amelia whoever-you-were…"

It takes just under ten minutes of link after link, form after form, and as he searches it occurs to Dean that he has never thought about Jimmy, not really, hasn't thought much beyond the memory of the devious little bastard giving them the slip so he could go find his wife and kid. And now he's following a long, winding trail through Novak's life: smart but not very ambitious, married his childhood sweetheart, devoted family man, devout churchgoer, reported missing September 2008. There is his death certificate, nicely faked by Bobby so his wife could cash in the life insurance, and there is what Dean is looking for.

"Bingo," he celebrates as he scans the marriage certificate. "Amelia Schweitzer. Now let's track down your brother."

Less than a minute later, his phone blasts at him, and it turns out Sam is fully awake now, voice crisp and alert.

"What is this about, Dean?"

Dean rubs a hand across his brow. "Some trouble came up with the Novaks, the mother called. Kid's gone missing. Cas lit out after her, took Bobby with him. Cas has his cell but it's switched off, so I can't track him on the GPS. I need an address to head for."

He can almost hear his brother's brain thinking at him through the phone, and sure enough Sam asks, "Why didn't Cas take you too?"

Dean kids himself it's true when he answers. "He knew I was supposed to be driving up to meet you. So…"

A huff travels across the airways followed by Sam's voice crackling up and at him. "If she phoned, just check caller ID and follow up with her."

Dean rolls his eyes. "How stupid do you think I am? The number's restricted. She must've used star sixty-seven to block it." He snorts. "Bobby probably told her to if she ever had to call here."

Sam makes a clucking sound. "Well, you're in luck. Lucerne, it's on Clear Lake. I'm sure that's where her brother lived - back then, anyway. So, if you can find out her maiden name, maybe you can trace her bro-"

"One step ahead of you, kiddo," Dean tells him.



Castiel doesn't speak. He focuses on Bobby's voice, low and considerate, grounds himself with the old man's reliably bulky presence at his side.

The woman doesn't look at him. Her face is drawn, and her eyes dart about nervously, shadowed with worry. She's sitting stiffly on the very edge of the couch, wringing her hands over and over again, and Castiel remembers that Julie Ames sat like this, thinks how ironic it is that he had watched her and thought about this very scenario: Amelia Novak's vigil for her lost husband.

He finds that he can't stop watching her hands, the knuckles bloodless and bony, the fingers slender. She's wearing a wedding band, the twin to the one his vessel wore until Castiel cast the meaningless snare of it into the snow as he walked away from the woman's child that first time in Pontiac. As he watches her hands twist and curl, it occurs to Castiel that she must have used them to caress this body he wears, and he stares down at his own fingers, thinks of how another consciousness, Jimmy, used them to trail patterns on Amelia Novak's skin, used them to pull her close, and tangled themselves in her hair as the lips he speaks through kissed her. He wonders if that other consciousness is imprinted in him to the extent it said the words he says to Dean in the dark, if it breathed them into Amelia Novak's willing mouth as it drove the body he wears into her. The thought is vivid and sensual, and he blinks at a snapshot impression of her mouth, was it as soft as Dean's, is it?, and he can taste something sweet, her lipgloss, strawberry, I bought it for her, and I loved her once. He swallows. It isn't real, he tells himself, despite the wave of tenderness he can feel. It's recall that isn't his, a memory that seeped into his grace through a crack in the boundary wall between angel and mortal; the ghost of Jimmy Novak haunting him. It happened before, he remembers. Famine.

"So, you said your brother was one of the paramedics who found the schoolteacher? And this guy said something about a demon before he died?"

Bobby's question shakes Castiel out of his reverie, and he looks up to see that Amelia Novak finally has him in her sights, her examination of him a mix of fascination and revulsion. "He said there was a man," she says faintly, after licking her lips, and she doesn't look away. "He said a man found him in the woods, and that he looked down at him and his eyes went black. And I remembered it from before…and you'd said to call if anything like that ever happened again."

Bobby nods. "It's best that you did. Do you have any-"

"Can you find her?" the woman interrupts, her tone devoid of emotion and her eyes still locked on Castiel's. "You have - powers."

The question is clearly directed at him, and Castiel sees Bobby glance towards him in his peripheral vision, senses the old man's hesitance. He shakes his head, gathers himself enough to reply. "It doesn't work like that. I can find…" Dean, he's going to say. Dean, who he marked as his own and loves as his own, Dean, whose tug and call is as constant as the tides, Dean, who is his touchstone. He cuts off the words, and he doesn't know why. "Certain people," he tells her instead. "Not her."

She nods, barely. "Can you sense her? Can you tell if she's alive?"

This he can do, and his voice is firm. "She's alive."

The woman closes her eyes and he can see her crumple all through her body, see the way her face falls out of its rictus, the way her jaw unclenches and her shoulders drop, the way a tremor shakes its way down through her arms. Her lower back unlocks to hunch her forward with a gasp, and still her hands wind around and around, and in and out in their restlessness.

Her loneliness is a palpable thing in that moment, and Castiel feels a confusing hurt and compassion well up in response to it, feels seized with a need to reach out, to protect. There is a blanket on the couch, a sign someone might have slept there, he notes, but the house is still and silent, no sounds of life anywhere else. "You shouldn't be here by yourself," he says awkwardly. "I don't like to think of you being alone."

Her reply is suddenly sharp and raced out, as she snaps back to attention. "What business is that of yours? Is my welfare suddenly a concern for you? After all this time?" She laughs a harsh, frantic-sounding laugh. "Have you ever thought about what you did to us? You destroyed our family."

The accusation is ferocious and devastating, and Castiel hears the rustle of denim beside him as Bobby shifts uncomfortably. The cutting edge of her words is well deserved, he knows, but he answers the woman honestly, over the ache of his conscience. "No, you don't understand, what I did, it was - it was meant to be. Every second of your husband's life was leading to this, it was his fate, it was…it never could have been different for him." He pauses a beat. "I'm sorry."

Her eyes narrow. "Really? Are you really sorry?"

Castiel doesn't truly know if he is in the way she would understand it, only knows that what he said is the truth. He ignores her question and looks away. "It never could have been different for him," he repeats softly. "Or for me. I didn't - do this. There was never a choice, for him or for me…it was pre-ordained. He was the one. And there were bigger things at stake than him, or you." He speaks the words, but he doesn't know why he feels the need to defend himself. He looks at his hands again, and he realizes that he's sliding them one on the other, around and around, in a motion that mimics Amelia Novak's nervous gesture. When he glances up again, he sees that she tracked his point of focus, and she's staring at the movement herself, matching it with her own.

"He did that," she says after a moment. "Jimmy did that. When he was worried."

She looks up, and her eyes study Castiel in a way that seems more calculated now. "My sister-in-law is with me," she offers slowly. "She went home to do the school run but she's coming back. Jennifer…" She lets it hang there, and he can see her eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly, an unasked question, a glimmer of what might be hope.

Jennifer.

Castiel doesn't remember her, he can't, not really. And yet he finds he's able to put a face to the name, brown hair, anesthesiologist, two children, she made a pass at me one New Year's Eve, finds that he's sifting through stirred-up memories that don't really exist for him, people, places and events that he, Castiel, has never known or even thought of in passing. "I don't know Jennifer," he says aloud. "He isn't here any more, and I can't know these things, not really." His voice is as faint and desperate as hers was when she first spoke to him, and he finds that he can't look away from her stare, that her regard gives him a tight feeling in his chest, makes him feel stifled, claustrophobic.

"It's funny," she sidetracks after a moment. "We believed. We went to church, we prayed, and we never asked for proof. And then there you were, the evidence that it was all real, God, the angels, Heaven." She smiles, and it's twisted and bitter. "I still believe, but I don't go to church any more, and I don't pray. I saw your light, and you proved to me my faith wasn't in vain. And my faith died in the very same second."

Bobby clears his throat then. "Look, ma'am," he says gently. "I know this is difficult…and I don't mean to…but. We have priorities. We need times, locations if you can. Where did they find the teacher? And the other kids, you said they'd found some of them?"

The moment snaps like dry bones, and Castiel feels it recede into the past with something that dances between relief and crushing despondency, as the woman leans forward and pushes a notepad across the coffee table.

"It's all there," she says tonelessly.

Bobby snags it, flicks through the first few pages. There are photographs scattered on the coffee table where the notepad was, Castiel notices, and he doesn't think, reaches a hand across.

Amelia Novak catches it between her own so quickly he doesn't see her strike. Her grip is incongruously strong, her fingers cold. She gasps as she runs her thumb across his knuckles, and she draws him closer. Her eyes are blue, he notices, as blue as his own and covetous, and he's mesmerized by her, he's lost, he's at a loss. He isn't sure what this is or what she wants from him, and he's painfully aware of Bobby's alarm, can feel it radiate out from the man as he sits there next to him.

"I thought you were his ghost come to say goodbye to me," she whispers. "But you're solid. Real." She smiles, desperate and agonized, and her gaze is like a magnet, drawing him in. "I never said goodbye to him. He was my lover and my best friend…I was his, and he was mine, and I miss him. I miss him at night, in the dark, and I dream of him, dream that he might come back. And now here you are, and - is it possible…?"

Her words are an almost-exact facsimile of his own as he lost himself in Dean just hours before, and Castiel swallows through a sort of numb horror at her not-quite-spoken question, at her hope that he might be the answer. "No, it isn't possible," he mutters. "I'm not him. Please. Please…" He has no idea what he's asking for, only knows that he's as close to panic as he has ever been in his long existence.

Perhaps she sees it, because she drops his hand, and sits back. "You can have one of the pictures if you want it," she says, and her voice is distant and detached again.

Castiel feels himself being hauled out of his trance as Bobby pulls him back by the scruff, and it's Bobby who reaches across and slides one of the photographs away from the others. He slips it into his inside pocket, pushes up, heaving Castiel with him. "We'll find her," he says firmly. "Any chance we can borrow that truck outside? Only we flew, and we're out of airmiles."

Amelia waves a listless hand. "The keys are on the hallstand." She keeps her focus full on Castiel as Bobby turns away. "Claire missed you," she says suddenly, and her tone is harder than it was before. "She's had some problems."

Castiel frowns down at her, feels the strange, turbulent upheaval start up inside him again. "I'm not him," he insists again, and the thin rasp of his voice makes him sound like he's pleading.

"I didn't mean him," the woman answers frostily. "I meant you."



Dean is making good time and breaking every traffic law on the book, pedal to the metal, as the Impala streaks along route 83, through Nebraska's great plains. It's a vast plateau of semi-arid grassland, cattle country, and the rich smell of cowshit drifts in through the open windows and makes him think longingly of the steak and prime rib to be had if he had time to cut off the road to nowhere.

This stretch of the highway is deserted, making it no problem whatsoever for him to steer sharply over onto the verge when he hears his cell. "Cas? What the fuck?" he demands down the receiver as he hears his friend's sigh.

What am I doing, Dean? I have no idea.

The rueful undertone punctures Dean's irritation like nothing else can or does. "You tell me, buddy," he replies quietly. "Where you at? We narrowed it down to Lucerne, I'm on my way…you got a location I can make for?"

We're in the forest…Mendocino National Forest. The Novak child went missing somewhere in Snow Mountain Wilderness. We're taking the Overlook Loop trail, you'll need to head for…

Castiel's voice vanishes in a pop and fizzle of white noise that blasts up and out of the phone aggressively enough to make Dean flinch. "Cas?" he says. "You there? Say again, you're breaking up…Cas?"

…I said, you'll need to head for Summit Springs trailhead and access the trail from there…we're driving there now. Dean, we think a demon may be involved. The child's teacher was found, and he told the paramedics he saw a man with black eyes in the woods. Be careful.

Dean scowls. "Fuckin' typical. I'm a ways out. You got enough juice left to come get me?"

I doubt it. All I really want to do is sleep.

After rolling his eyes, Dean asks, "You got supplies? And bear spray, until the mojo switches back on?"

We stopped off. We're well equipped.

There's a brief silence before his friend's voice sounds again, muffled, like Castiel is holding his hand over the phone.

Dean. I need you here. I don't really know what I'm doing, and I think I've made a mistake. I need you here.

Castiel sounds odd, sounds a little shocked if Dean were to choose a description, and it pings his radar. "What's the deal, Cas?" he says, his voice rising with his worry. "What do you mean by mistake? Did something happen up there? With Amelia Novak?"

There's a minute of nothing before the angel speaks again.

I'm not sure. It's just - Amelia. It was strange, seeing her again. She was - unsettling. Things she said, they made me feel…I'm not sure.

Castiel's voice is breaking up but something about the remoteness of his tone is ringing klaxons in Dean now. "Not sure about what?" he barks. "Cas? You there? Dammit." He glares at his wristwatch. "It'll take me a day to get there. We'll talk when I find you, but just turn off the phone after this, okay? Save the battery…switch it on again this time tomorrow."

He pauses but there's no response, and he tries again. "Cas?" And Dean can't help it, doesn't even know if it's relevant or connected to the distance in his friend's voice, and when it slips out he knows he sounds a little desperate but he still says it. "Cas, I meant what I said. It is simple. Can you hear me? I meant it."

One final burst of static crackles before the call is gone, dropped, the line dead.

"Fuck," Dean hollers, and he slams his hand down on the horn, honks out his frustration at a herd of watching cows as they stare at him curiously.



Dean's voice comes through the phone in staccato bursts, odd, distorted words that don't add up to anything comprehensible before the line goes dead. Castiel stares at it like he might will Dean through the receiver, and the dull yearning he always feels when Dean isn't within reach starts its relentless, distant throb.

Bobby hasn't said anything since they left Amelia Novak's house, didn't offer much more than the odd that'll do, as Castiel trailed after him up and down the aisles at Vern's Camping Supply, but his mouth has been a grim line, and his eyes have been distant. It's Bobby's thinking face, Castiel has come to know, and he has used the communication blackout to backtrack through his disorientation in Amelia Novak's presence, to consider the power of the woman's grief and anxiety for her child, alongside the influence of his own guilt and false memories from a past life that was never his.

Now they're bearing left up a rough track that cuts through the outskirts of the forest, the truck jouncing along the deep ruts that mar the ground, and once Castiel slides his cellphone back into his pocket Bobby finally clears his throat.

"What the hell was that back there?"

Castiel has only been waiting for the question, has run the answer over in his mind on a constant loop. "Transference," he replies, with absolute certainty. "Her grief led her to substitute me for the true object of her feelings and impulses. I'm a physical replica…she looked at me and she saw him."

Bobby punches out a sound that's too blurred at the edges to be proper speech but manages to convey intense frustration even so. "Like I said," he retorts. "You're wearing the body of her dead husband, for Christ's sake." He shakes his head as he goes on. "Anyway, that isn't what I meant, Professor Freud. I meant you. What the hell was that?" He takes advantage of the lack of traffic to take his eyes off the road and fix Castiel with a searching look.

Away from Amelia Novak's absorption of him, and bolstered by his own application of logic to the situation, Castiel finds he can at least attempt to present a reasonable-sounding defense of his reaction to her. "He was here," he tells Bobby. "Jimmy Novak. His consciousness, his experiences…they're woven through the fabric of this body." His voice is steady, disguises the uneasiness that starts churning inside him again. "My reaction wasn't real, wasn't conscious. It was involuntary. Sense memory."

Bobby grunts, "Uh-huh," in a self-satisfied way that suggests Castiel just walked straight into a carefully laid trap. "You didn't sound quite so sure of that on the phone to Dean," he leads.

Castiel casts a look to his left, sees the old man is wearing a smug expression. He refuses to be led, just matches Bobby's stare with a steely glare of his own, and prepares himself to parry the next question.

"Did you mean what you said back at my place? About giving that life back to Dean?"

It's a total change of direction but Castiel doesn't hesitate in his reply even if he suddenly feels short of breath, feels his pulse speeding up. "If he chose it, yes."

After his brief contemplation, Bobby's expression goes curious. "And what would you do if he did choose that?" he asks.

"I would let him go."

Castiel hears his voice break on it, and there is a split second where he acknowledges his subconscious fear that losing Dean might well be his penance for everything he has done. The thought of being alone, of never seeing Dean again, scalds his heart like the flames of Hell, even if he deserves it. But, "I would wish him well," he adds softly, and it is the truth. "He is my reason. I want him to be happy. They were his family. Perhaps they could be again."

Bobby's answer is unexpectedly edgy, even a little defiant. "Don't mean to pry, but what about what you want?"

It’s a simple enough question, but Castiel flounders helplessly as he considers it, thinks the answer might be so complicated he might never find the words to voice it, doesn't even know how to begin to find them. Instead he reiterates cautiously, "I want him to be happy."

Bobby gives Castiel a pointed look before he goes on. "He seems happy now. Where he is. With - you know. Present company." Then he shakes his head as he pulls the truck to a halt in front of a couple of squat posts that block the rough, narrow track they've been grinding along. "Trailhead," he sidetracks abruptly. "Guess we're on foot from here. We'll head for the coordinates where they found the teacher."

Despite the tangent, Bobby is still exuding what Castiel senses is a sort of complicated chagrin, but he can't quite work out why that is so he simply nods and slides out of the truck as Bobby maneuvers himself out the opposite side with a huff of effort.

The trailhead is sheltered and quiet, utterly still, a dead zone. It's disquieting, but Castiel thinks ruefully that the distraction of this new worry is almost a relief. "There are no sounds," he notes, as he looks up into the dense canopy. "No birds or insects."

Bobby ranges up behind him, dumps the weapons duffel down next to him. "Sounds or not, there's probably bears in there and worse," he grouses. "How soon do you think you'll get the mojo back?"

Castiel blinks, finds his head still feels vaguely muddled, his thoughts cloudy, his energy sapped. The electric tingle of what remains of his grace isn't furious, vital power enervating every fiber of his being; instead it's plodding and dull. "It's there," he decides, but he knows he sounds unconvincing. "But it's weak yet," he qualifies. "The bear spray was a wise precaution."

Bobby meets his gaze for a few seconds and quirks his eyebrows in a way that seems dubious before he speaks again. "You, uh…alright with this, boy? I mean, really alright with it?"

In the distance Castiel can see the mountain this place is named for rising up on the distant horizon, its higher elevations covered in a grayish-green haze of trees, its peaks still capped with snow, and the bright orange ball of the sun balanced on top of it. It's desolate, beautiful, but its peace is unsettling and eerie. "No I'm not, this place is definitely wrong," he replies, and as he speaks he can feel his unease prickling even more keenly.

Bobby grunts. "I didn't mean that. I meant - you know. The kid. Claire."

There's a strange formality in the consideration with which Bobby broaches the subject, Castiel realizes, as if the man thinks he should care, really care, and it's a brief, if troubling diversion from his sense of foreboding back into the turmoil of guilt stirred up by Amelia Novak. "I'm fine," he offers. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Bobby's face twists into an uncertain grimace. "It's just that - back there? With the mother? That was weird enough. But this, well. Claire, she's…well, in a way she's your-"

"No, she isn't."

The reply bursts out of him sharp and spontaneous, Castiel knows. "No, she isn't," he repeats. "I don't know her, not really. She doesn't know me."

But now she's there in his mind's eye, the spare, and he can remember how she stared at him from the porch that first time, how he could see in her eyes that she knew he wasn't her father any more even before he told her. He can remember how easy it was to entrance her with his light when he returned to this plane of existence, the tendrils of his grace trailing across her cheek like kisses, his voice persuasive in her ear, soothing her fright, say yes to me, and everything will be well…

Her hand was cautious as she reached up to play her fingers through his radiance as it bathed her, and her eyes were wide with awe. He remembers her hope and wonder as he flooded through her, her struggle as she fought his will at the very last second when she was still herself, before he engulfed her. He remembers her muffled terror and love as her father struggled for breath and begged for her life, and he remembers her grief as she clung to him and begged him to stay while his glow left her, her stricken expression as he stared back at her through Jimmy Novak's eyes.

He still doesn't know why he looked back as he walked away.

Bobby is casting an odd look at him, and Castiel realizes that words are rolling off his tongue unbidden. "She isn't," he insists again. "She - I'm…not. Her parent. I'm a replica. Like I said. That's all."

Bobby is still uncharacteristically gentle. "Just making sure you're okay with this, son. And even if this isn't genetics strictly speaking…well. Just keep in mind it might be hard for her, like it was for her mother." He clears his throat after a moment of silence. "So. Your angel radar is picking her up then? She's definitely alive?"

After a shrug, Castiel says, "I can't sense her, I'm assuming the demon has her and has warded her."

Bobby's eyebrows pull low, into a frown. "So, how is it you're so sure she isn't dead?"

Castiel isn't sure how to answer for a moment, doesn't even know how to describe this certainty he feels, but Bobby doesn't give him a pass, he stands, expectant, until Castiel throws up a hand. "I would know if she were dead," he says. "I would feel it. I would know. I would just know."

Bobby's stare has gone slitty-eyed and analytical at Castiel's answer. "Kid must be, what? Thirteen? Four-"

"Fifteen," Castiel interrupts decisively. "She's fifteen now."

The old man nods slowly, starts threading his arms through the straps of his pack. He already has his gun ready, and a bandolier of salt rounds draped around his neck. He stabs a finger down at the soil. "Lot of dead leaf matter and twigs," he observes. "Take it slow. Put your foot down flat and careful, and you'll make less noise. No point in tipping it off, whatever it is." He looks back and scowls as he eases his way onto the trail. "Assuming it didn't smell us ten miles out and knows we're here already."

For a moment Castiel watches Bobby pad stealthily away, and he forces himself to relax, lets himself feel safe in his company. Even if Bobby frequently laments his advancing age, Castiel appreciates his sharp mind and respects his instinct for the hunt, and while his honesty is often brutal, his bluntness leaves no room for doubt and ambiguity. Bobby isn't a politician, like Castiel's brothers, doesn't conceal his meaning and intent in obfuscation. For those reasons, Castiel is utterly clear on where he stands with the man, and he finds that it's a refreshing clarity. Bobby doesn't take any shit, Dean informs him regularly, and Castiel can't help a weak grin as the old man stops and turns back to demonstrate exactly that, his brow corrugating in annoyance.

"You plan on sitting this one out?"

Castiel squats down to retrieve his crossbow and sling, hefts the duffel up onto his back, and strides forward to fall into careful step behind Bobby.

After a few minutes, Bobby clears his throat. "If Dean did choose that, well. You're welcome to stay at my place. You're good with your hands, good on the hunt. I could use the help. The company too." He doesn't give Castiel the chance to respond before he continues gruffly, but not unkindly. "Take it or leave it."

The offer is a surprise that catches Castiel off-guard, and the flood of gratitude he feels leaves him speechless for a few minutes, until he regains sufficient equilibrium to offer a tentative, "Thank you."

He gets a grunt in response, and they push on, not talking now. After an hour or so, the trail narrows to not much more than a deer path that creeps over the face of the mountain in a roundabout, illogical fashion, detouring around rocky outcrops and threading through thick stands of moss-covered pine and spruce that rise up like dark walls on either side of them, just a rare shaft of sunlight playing warmly down to dapple the ground. Underfoot is a mix of hard-packed soil and hummocks of dry grass and brush, thick with fallen leaves and shed pine needles, scattered with seedpods and clumped toadstools. Castiel can feel the gradient change gradually as they march. The ground isn't yet steep, but they are ascending, and sometimes he can pick out the trail miles ahead, snaking through the trees on the higher slopes, briefly disappearing from sight entirely as it hides in dales and ravines, before twisting up and out again.

Castiel still feels the exhaustion of flight, has to fight the urge to drowse as he places one leaden foot in front of the other. But their surroundings are taciturn and judgmental, as if the forest is glaring at them, daring them to travel further. There are still no sounds except for the low rustling of their own progress, and when Castiel gazes up through the higher branches into the clear blue sky, he sees no birds wheeling and curling. The hush is as sinister and hostile as the one that heralded the attack near Quonochontaug, and the deadness of the place somehow manages to feel alive and hungry. He shivers, quells his lethargy, and maintains a state of alertness.

Bobby reads his mind. "Way too quiet for my liking. You picking anything up?" He circles as he speaks, eyes alert and darting around them, peering into the denser undergrowth and thickets they're passing through.

There is something, and Castiel breathes in deep, frowns at the sour odor of it. "Blood. Not fresh…not very old either. Hours, not days." He can taste terror on his tongue, rank and desperate. "Blood…and violence," he murmurs. "There are predators here. Someone was prey not far from here. Someone was - meat."

Bobby inhales deeply himself. "Someone?"

The look Bobby shoots him is suspicious, the look that Castiel categorizes as his I truly believe you would kill me while I sleep look, but Castiel knows what he knows and knows it precisely. "Human blood. Human adrenaline, fear, death. This place is steeped in it."

After a headshake, Bobby retorts, "I don't want to know how you can tell all that. Are we safe?"

Castiel sweeps his own eyes around them. "I'm not sure." His admission makes Bobby tsk, but they hike on.

The route continues silent and mysterious, with no signs of any life, only shadows that seem to reach out for them with clawed, greedy hands, and the same sickly, cloying miasma of dread and horror that has Castiel wondering if venturing into the depths of this forest was nothing so much as pure idiocy. As the thought occurs to him, he can feel his shoulders tighten instinctively, feel the urge to take flight and flee this place. He fights the compulsion, eases it down to a flex of his tired muscles, poises himself to react as best he can at a split-second's notice if he has to. I wish you were here with me, Dean he thinks.

He lets his mind wander for a second, loses himself in a comforting daydream, the heated press of Dean in the night, Dean's fingers winding through his hair as he breathes words Dean doesn't understand into his mouth, the feel of Dean under him as he treasures him with careful hands, the sounds Dean makes as Castiel traces his devotion across his skin with gentle fingertips while they move against each other in the dark. This is real, he tells himself, Dean is real. But still the image blurs, and green eyes turn blue and accusing as a ghost from another man's past encroaches.

He puts the woman out of his mind, for she doesn't belong there. He sets his jaw, moves ahead of Bobby to take point. Claire Novak is lost in these woods, and he will find her.



After an hour or so they come to a clearing bisected by a narrow stream cutting through the forest. Bobby squats in a beam of hot, dusty sunlight and cups a handful of the water, wiping the cool liquid across his face.

He glances up to see Castiel standing guard. The angel is motionless, seems lost in secretive thought, either that or bored beyond description. But Bobby knows his calm is deceptive; Castiel's shoulders may be loose and relaxed but his eyes are alert, constantly scanning their surroundings, and Bobby has hunted with him often enough now to be in no doubt that Castiel's whole body is coiled and ready to pounce beneath his camouflage of stoic reserve.

Even as his own eyes sweep around and in between the trees, and he strains his ears to pick up the slightest sound, Bobby finds himself speculating on what Castiel actually is now that he's falling closer and closer to - something. I have no soul, he'd said to Bobby randomly and almost viciously one night, after he screamed himself awake with Dean unconscious and oblivious on the couch in the study. Sometimes Bobby thinks on it, and it never fails to send chills up and down his spine, because it reminds him of the cold-eyed, stone-hearted fake Sam, Sham, looming over him with its knife raised. He isn't always sure what Dean created when he revived Castiel, but it sometimes makes him think of mad scientists and lightning bolts bringing dead, monstrous things back to life, and he can't help but stare and be appalled at what Dean made. And then he watches the heat that glows in Dean's eyes when his falling angel skewers him with his stare, and the way Castiel's gaze softens to transparent affection as he basks in that warmth.

Not for the first time, Bobby wonders if they know how much he sees, how much they give away, and he shakes his head at it again, for the umpteenth time, the fact his boy has found a warped sort of happiness and contentment with his angel after all that has happened. But now this, this odd spiral from Castiel's stricken expression as he hovered outside the kitchen door just a few hours before in Sioux Falls, to his confusion in the face of Amelia Novak's strange mixture of hostility and hope, and the disturbing intensity in his eyes as he stared at her. Sense memory, Castiel had said, and Bobby runs over it again in his mind as he pushes back up to stand, sets it alongside the angel's absolute certainty that the woman's child is alive, and tries to ignore the gnawing, unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Stop right there."

Castiel's tone is mild, but it's a command that Bobby obeys instantly. He doesn't even flinch at the fact he has been caught out, because he always has suspected Castiel can still hear every unspoken thought as clearly as if it was being hollered through a megaphone even if his powers have dwindled.

It turns out he's way off the mark.

"It's on your left shoulder," Castiel tells him. "Don't move."

Bobby curses inwardly, vows to give the angel a lecture in reverse psychology as his head twists reflexively and he finds himself nose to nose with a spider roughly the size of his fist. He swallows, slides his eyes back ahead of him, and stays statue-still as Castiel shrugs off his pack and unclips his crossbow.

The thing is crouched ready to strike as the angel pulls up the bowstring, and Bobby can't hold back his wince at the audible click that sounds as the string settles into the cocking mechanism. Castiel feeds in the bolt smooth and unhurried, lifts the bow and tucks the butt into his shoulder. His stare blazes at Bobby like methane as he takes aim.

Slanting his own gaze back to meet the creature's compound eyes, Bobby can see the sly intelligence that lurks there as it watches him, see it tense, see its long, segmented legs locking at every joint, the claws digging into the fabric of his shirt jacket. He can see its pointed jaws work, see the single drop of venom that pearls at the pointed tip of each fang that protrudes. He fancies that it's licking its lips, that it's hungry, that it's teasing him, that it will pounce the same second the bolt flies.

He hears the thunk of the shot, hears the zip of air splitting around the missile, hears his own yelp as it slices so close to his ear he can feel its draught. The trajectory is one hundred percent accurate and the bolt impales the thing, ripping it away as it flies on, and Bobby spins around in the same instant to see it embed itself in a tree a few feet behind him.

Castiel walks up past Bobby to stand and examine his quarry as he clips the crossbow back on its sling. Bobby leans in beside him, and he feels his guts do a leisurely barrel roll as he studies the spider. It's the size of a man's fist, its exoskeleton shiny black. Its legs droop and twitch slightly in its death throes, as yellow fluid oozes out of its cracked carapace, and Bobby doesn't even try to conceal his shudder.

"This could present problems," Castiel says thoughtfully. "If there are more of them."

As he speaks, the spider suddenly starts emitting a chirruping noise, quiet but insistent. Rhythmic too, Bobby realizes. "You think that's some sort of signal?" he suggests. "An alarm?"

Castiel doesn't reply, just swings his head around to look behind him, the movement so fast it makes Bobby blink. In that same instant, the ground underneath their feet starts to vibrate, and then comes a cry that hovers thinly on the air before soaring into a wail of sheer distress that rips through the abnormal quiet.

"What the hell…?" Bobby looks down, puts out his hands, widens his stance as the surface they're standing on starts to judder more violently. He casts his vision up again to see Castiel's eyes sparkle cold and calculating, see the angel smile the wolfish smile of a predator.

And then he's gone, crashing off the trail and into the trees.



Castiel can't fly, is too weighed down by his fatigue to take to the air again so soon. But he can run, and run he does, hearing his boots pound down into the soil as it rocks underneath him. He vaults a fallen log, rolls smoothly up to his feet, his balance perfect as he zig-zags around a dense thicket, and he can hear his near-human heartbeat thundering in his ears as he goes.

He can smell his quarry, the rank stench of sulfur, and he savors its acrid, familiar tang. He knows who it is, perhaps he knew all along, and it sends a fierce, heated delight coursing through him, a feeling of finally. He has his blade drawn already despite the effort it costs him, and he will look into the demon's black eyes and wreak the dream of vengeance that has comforted him so often in the night.

He catches a flicker of movement off to his right, tunes his ears to the low sound of pleading, and changes his course swiftly, bending his body agilely in space as he bounds up onto a boulder that blocks his path, hitting the ground at full speed. His prey is running from him but he has its scent, like a beacon that guides him. The demon is fast, and Castiel accelerates still faster himself, while every nerve pulses and every sense streaks to attention. Its nearness sends ecstasy thrilling though him, and he's barely aware of how the land pitches and dances around him, how the trees come loose of their moorings and smash to earth, how boulders clatter from the slopes of the rocky pass he's sprinting through.

He hurtles out the opposite side, and there the demon is. He's chanting loudly, ancient, abrupt words, and he holds a curved, ornate dagger in one hand, and the child's arm in the other. When his gaze falls on Castiel he scowls, stops the stream of words, and lets the girl go, so that she collapses and crabs clumsily away to press her back up against the rock.

Castiel skids to a halt on the shale, wipes his sleeve across his brow.

Crowley smiles at him. "So it's true," he says cheerfully. "I heard it through the grapevine, but nothing definite." He sidles to the right, licking his lips, and his eyes gleam. "I also heard you aren't packing the full load. The fact you haven't already burned me out of this meatpuppet makes me think I should test that theory."

Castiel rolls his shoulders, bends his knees slightly to compensate for the quaking ground. He keeps his eyes locked steady on the demon's, his ears closed to the child's heaving, panicked breath. He knows he can afford no distractions. "Maybe you should," he taunts. As he speaks, the ground lurches under them, and he sees Crowley's eyes give a telltale flicker. He attacks as the demon does, twisting as Crowley charges, and he feels the swish of the dagger under his chin.

The demon spins. "I'm fixing the mess you made," he snaps. "Calling in the cavalry." He points a decisive finger over to where Claire Novak huddles, but Castiel doesn't follow it. "That can help me do it." Crowley's eyes narrow then. "Either that or you. I'm not fussed either way."

The statement pulls Castiel up, and an anxiety beyond his concern for the child suddenly consumes him, a desperate keenness to know what the demon is implying, even if some small part of him is reluctant to hear it. "What mess?" he says hoarsely, and his heart freezes in dread at the question, at his fear Crowley might confirm his culpability in the vanishings they've been tracking. He puts out his free hand, palm down, conciliatory. "What cavalry? What does that mean? What do you know, Crowley? How can it be fixed?"

Crowley gives him a clinical look. "Do you seriously think I'm letting you get one over on me again? Do me a favor." His lips twitch into a hard smile that adapts itself into a snarl, before he darts in and thrusts with the knife.

Castiel hops back nimbly, slashes diagonally with his sword, feels it catch on fabric as Crowley jumps back, his face puce. The demon leaps up onto a rocky rise, lifts the hem of his jacket up. "This is a Paul Smith suit, you wanker," he bellows, before he launches himself full at Castiel, his eyes black with anger.

That the demon's strength matches his with his grace depleted is in no question, as Castiel is knocked to the floor by the headlong rush. He feels a bolt of pain rocket up from his hip to his back, but he steels himself, throws Crowley off and rolls, springing to his feet just in time to meet the demon's next advance with a roundhouse punch. The blow ends in the satisfying crunch of knuckles on bone. There is no finesse in it; it's visceral, brutal, human combat of the kind Dean has schooled remorselessly into him as they spar, and it sends a dizzying, seductive rush cascading through Castiel, a vicious, logical desire for justice undercut by a more frantic, disorganized need to save, protect.

Crowley staggers, comes back with his own swing. Castiel ducks under the fist as it flies towards his face, braces himself on one hand and kicks the demon's legs out from under him. "Tell me what you know," he grates out harshly, as he tucks his feet under him, but Crowley reacts blindingly fast, and Castiel barely catches sight of the knife as it slices through the air, barely registers the engraved sigil on the flat of the blade. He rises into a jump, lifting his legs above the shining metal as it arcs, and he hears the hoarse rasp of his own breath, Crowley's too, as he lands and kicks out accurately enough to send the weapon flying out of the demon's grasp.

Castiel snatches viper-fast, plucks the weapon from mid-air with his free hand as he tries to regain his balance, but the ground is undulating and heaving under him now, and its jolt sends him tumbling to the ground. He sees Crowley's tense, desperate expression in the same second his skull crashes onto granite. His vision grays so that he's only dimly aware of what happens next, only feels the flat surface under him rise, fall, shimmy from side to side, and hears a grinding, rending noise that builds into a roar that thunders around them.

But even through the tumult, he hears Claire Novak scream, and hones in on her terror.



Bobby has been staggering through the swaying, creaking trees, hoping to God one doesn't crash down on top of him, cursing their proximity to the San Andreas fault line even if he suspects this quake isn't natural at all. He has no idea if he's headed in the right direction, hopes the bent, cracked branches he's following mark Castiel's chaotic dash and not an elk trail.

He comes to a narrow ravine with rocks and smaller stones being shaken loose as it wobbles. He pulls off his pack, rests it on his head for protection, takes a deep breath and risks it, picking his way through as rapidly and carefully as he can, reeling with every aggressive heave of the subterranean tremors, seeing small cracks start to open up all around him.

He emerges into chaos, what seems to be the epicenter of the earthquake, a world of sheer violence that rolls and ripples as energetically as a storm-tossed ocean. There, over to the side, a dark-suited man Bobby recognizes with a heart-sinking sensation is scrabbling for something, and a yard away from him Castiel is pushing up onto his knees, sword in one hand and a shorter blade in the other, shaking his head like he's dazed. And there, snaking through the clearing, is a fissure that splits the rocky surface, forming a mouth in the earth, a mouth that grins invitingly.

Bobby swivels his head as he takes it all in, sees the girl balancing precariously at the edge of the rift, her face a ghastly white and her eyes stark with terror as she stares down. He sees her arms windmill frantically, sees her inevitable fall happen in slow-motion, hears himself yell out a horrified, don't you do it, boy, as Castiel erupts from the ground where he's kneeling.

The angel turns his gaze on Bobby as he runs, and his face is set and calm. There is regret in his eyes, apology too. He throws out his arm, lets loose his sword, and it flies through the air, lands a foot from where Bobby stands, his boots rooted to the ground with shock.

Castiel dives and plunges headfirst into the chasm with a fluid, animal grace, and as he vanishes, the earth stops dancing.



Continued in Ghosts Part II, here