Stranger in Love, part 3/5
MASTER || PROLOGUE || PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || EPILOGUE
PART 3
They found Candy sitting on a long, smoky bench by a table in between two massive bookshelves. An old lining beneath held indented tracks in places where the furniture had been moved. The library was fairly small and besides the three of them there were only a few nerdy kids and a librarian present in the room but those people were closer to the entrance and as the space was separated by wall of racks it provided just as much seclusion as they needed.
Pieces of newspapers and a pile of books were placed neatly, one on Candy’s right and one on the left on the table. Sam and Dean found themselves two stools and sat down in front of the girl. Candy's face lit up when she saw them, but then again, lit up seemed to be her default expression. From behind the table, where it was placed folded on a bench, Candy pulled out Dean's jacket.
“Thanks again,” she said, smiling.
Dean couldn't see any place to put down the thing so, after some awkward glancing around, in the end the bundle returned where it had been on the bench. He found the whole situation ridiculous and a bit unnerving. Candy sounded genuinely grateful when she'd been the one to save them, not the other way around. This was odd on so many levels and Dean tended to feel a certain discomfort whenever things were falling out of pattern.
Sam quickly picked up on it and made a conversation about books, which Candy gladly caught up.
Dean cleared his throat. “So Sam tells me you know something that we don't about the house,” he said eventually.
The girl looked at him with a knowing smile, like maybe she could tell that he was tense.
“There's a huge amount of that something,” Candy nodded. Then she picked up bits and pieces of the newspaper articles arranged in the heap on the table and handed them to Dean. “All these are the articles about accidents that happened in there. Sixteen deaths that I know of. Some creepier than other; my grandmother's best friend drowned in a soup she was cooking in that house.”
“When was it?” Sam asked soberly while Dean pulled a face. He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he'd liked this house.
“In the forties.”
Before Fiona's death then. How many ghosts could fit in a single house? Or was there something else entirely?
“Broken limbs and ribs, concussions,” Candy carried on. “Things nobody even keeps track of.”
“Candy,” Sam looked the girl in the eye. “Do you have any idea what might cause all these?”
“I know what does,” she said. “It's the house itself.”
Sam and Dean regarded her sceptically.
“Guys,” Candy said like she was saying please, like she was about to state something that's already a given. She thumped both her hands against the table top and pursed her lips. “The house is a hotspot.”
Silence fell.
“Don't let us interrupt,” Dean said eventually.
“You're kidding, right?” Candy leaned in, her hands still propped on the edge of the table. After scrutinizing them both briefly, she focused on Sam.
“See, Dean, your brother talks big,” she said, crossing her arms. She wasn't looking at Dean at all, her attention fully devoted to Sam at the moment. “I thought you guys were a real deal. You told me you'd been hunting for years. How did you put it? A family business!”
Dean was looking at Sam's profile now, watching his brother's growing perplexity with an expression of pure, undiluted delight. The fact had never been lost on Dean that, contrary to what he used to say, Sam had actually developed an equal dismay as he did admiration for his own family. Still, he wouldn't be caught dead admitting it, especially not with another Winchester present in the room. Except, what had just happened was as good as that.
From a corner of his eye, Sam caught his brother watching him with a smile giving away that Dean was enjoying this to pieces.
“Oh, don't even- ” Sam snapped at him. Dean raised his hands slightly in a mocking surrender and shook his head, his smile still on.
“Candy,” Sam turned his attention back to the girl. “I promise you, we are hunters and I'm sure we could help- ”
“How exactly could you do that?” she cut in. “You don't even see what you're against.”
Somebody shushed them from the other side of the bookshelf wall, the one behind Candy's back.
“Ok, lady,” Dean said, impatient. “The way I see it, you have knowledge that is utterly useless on your hands. If you'd been able to do something with it, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Me and my brother, we're willing to help, but one way or another, you know we'll be gone in a couple days. And you're staying. Your family is staying here, Candy, your friends.” He was speaking in a steady voice, with persistence that he still wasn't quite used to. “Do they all know about the house? They take this seriously or would they rather make a dare to spend a night in a haunted place like that? So you tell me, either you let us in on everything you know or you stay alone in this and watch the body count rise.”
By the time he'd finished, both Candy and Sam were looking at him, stunned.
“Is this the part where I break and shake and beg my heroes for help?” Candy retorted, but it came out weak.
“No,” Sam said. “Hopefully, it's the part where we start working together on this.”
Apparently, this had been just the right completion to Dean's tirade because Candy sighed and nodded slightly.
“Fine,” she agreed, not without reluctance. “But you,” instantly she came back to Dean, “if you think I was just being obnoxious, think again. Obviously, you guys are getting over your heads here. This is not your usual salt'n'burn gig. That's why I'd rather see someone who knows about the stuff deal with it,” she sighed. “I don't like the idea of the two of you getting hurt.”
“Well, we'd rather have a say in what we're prepared to come up against,” Dean said.
Candy nodded once again.
“Fair enough,” she said, briefly regarding both Sam and Dean one more time. “As I was saying, house is a hotspot. Hotspot as in major, extra-dimensional portal.”
There is a number of different dimensions out there. Some of them concur with individual verses, some intermingle, others remain almost completely separate. Ever heard the expression the Earth is just another planet's hell? Yeah, no. That would be a fine display of blissful self pity - odd but common among our kind - while the truth is, this universe is widely considered the single most valuable living area there is. Were it not for a separation from the rest of the worlds, the situation would look very different. Life so fragile could have never originated. Suffice to say, when hell surrounds you from all sides, having an equivalent of the Great Wall comes in useful.
Still, there are several extra-dimensional portals in our universe, five of them located on Earth specifically. They come as a package, there's no way around it. No universe without some sort of a brink overlooking the other side exists. Or at least, none that we know of - essentially, the same thing. On a plus side, it is nearly impossible to cross a portal leading to our universe. For one, this whole place unfurls on three dimensions only, plus oriented along time. Most things are built in multiple different dimensions. Placing them among us would be nothing short of incrusting an actual human on a table top. This is why whatever tries to jump our train roughly, usually ends up smashed. Otherwise, it exists wrongly and is easily breakable in its feebleness.
There's more to it. Even the consequences aside, nothing can freely pass one way or another. That's because the portals around here are in fact more like mountains of chains and padlocks. They don't give in lightly.
But this doesn't add up with what you know already. Something always pops up in the house. If the claps were leakproof, this shouldn't be happening.
Good news is, none of the things that appear there actually come across to our world. Their manifestations are all a mere by-product, inseparably connected to portals. To work, a portal needs to maintain a specific form in 748 dimensions. It doesn't allow access to all of them but they are essential for carrying out certain building blocks.
Bad luck is, the form in question makes also for a great supernatural aerial. It collects something akin to radio waves, only made of field emitted by particles that normally don't exist here. Ghost, psychic, or any creature using telepathic connection around, their thoughts, dreams and visions may carry. Same goes for demons. The more powerful the demon, the more will show, even something random they see can display. As for ghosts, they're nothing but field. That's why we get all the spirits from quite a few neighboring counties.
The signal is one thing, but even collected by aerial, it still needs some sort of substance in order to manifest itself in this realm. Like with any waves, affected objects are usually the ones that easily resonate, like glass. But given enough intensity, things can imprint themselves pretty much on anything, from brains to thin air. Which leads us back to our floating spirits problem.
As I said before, altering the house's shape, even within so few dimensions, should disable the portal. I can't guarantee it would be enough to distort it's aerial activity as well but that seems to be our best shot. So we might wanna be thorough.
I was planning on burning the house to the ground. Easier said than done, I googled. I don't believe I'd succeed in building fire in a fireplace. Dozen people would have called a fire brigade before I'd even get that far. Also I don't find the possibility of burning myself or getting caught very appealing. I spent half a year locked up. Didn't like it.
So this is where you come in.
But if I ask you to jump the pyromaniac vandalism train, I owe you some explanation about my sources.
It's a safe bet that you won't live long enough to meet as direct a link to the matters of multiple dimensions as I am. An eye witness.
I was once a Guide.
For as long as there have been portals, there have been Guides. Rare beings that can navigate through most of the worlds. Orienting in this multiplicity, distinguishing and maintaining directions is an ability far beyond most creatures' reach. There is no map and a compass wouldn't help at all. Many pitiful attempts at creating some sort of GPS put the greatest wits to shame. At some point, maths always gets too knotty. Eventually, we all had to resort to nature. The Guide's nature, which comes with a unique sense of direction amongst directions.
If Guides are rare, then Lockpickers are rara avis. Think of them more as highly advanced safe-crackers or hackers disentangling all kinds of possible knots extended by a number of dimensions. They are the one and only kind capable of opening a portal to the Earth and their existence is worse documented than yetis'. So you can guess their service don't come cheap. Being a Guide, I was beyond well-off but still I didn't even have a per mill of what it would take to buy me a ticket. And I wanted to get through that door badly. Like I said before, this universe is nothing short of paradise from most worlds' perspective.
Then came the idea. If most beings can't allow traveling the places I walk freely, they may be willing to at least read a good guide book. I decided to go for collaboration. Searched all the worlds for a writer with true potential. Obviously, I couldn't get to Earth but there are ways to sneak a peek which I duly did. That's how I found him. In the 13th century. Florence.
I used a standard projection, something like a modified hologram, to make contact. I appeared in front of him in a form of that girl he was sweet on. Predictably enough, he was eager to cooperate before I'd even got a chance to say I'd come in peace. Deal was this: I take him by the hand and show round all hell - a major tourist attraction - he delivers a book. Of course I couldn't physically transport him anywhere outside this universe, no more than he could see most of said outside with his human eyes anyway. As I said, it was just a projection. Mutilated one at that, so it fit human perception. But it felt real enough to him.
The book turned out a bestseller in dozens of dimensions. Upon a long time (which I skipped gladly) it was translated to millions of languages and sold in quadrillions of copies. And the data wasn't even accurate. In all fairness, the Heaven part was entirely made up. So was my character. I don't think I'd met his expectations as a woman or anything really. He decided to use his imagination instead and he did it well. Well enough to make me one of the richest beings in the entire existence. This was it. I could leave for Earth.
We considered it thoroughly with a team of Lockpickers and set on pushing me through entirely human. This was necessary for making my staying on Earth run smoothly. I was born on the 17th of July, 1987 in the very house, the portal. A perfectly normal baby girl. I don't remember any of that. But with time, as my awareness was taking shape, a different pieces came into place as well. For as far as I can go back in my mind, there are two sets of memories intermingled. Still, I can only remember who I used to be in a way that human mind can describe. Also, there's no time to span along those memories, just some turning points. Perhaps that's the way my brains don't deal with translating time travel. That's why I say how far I go back in my mind referring only to my life as a human being.
On the downside of things, I spent half year in a ward as a child. But that's nothing in comparison. I consider myself very lucky.
“Dude!” From behind the bookshelf closer to Candy came a dazed voice of a nerdy kid. “What stuff have you been reading?”
Dean wouldn't say he was pleased about this turn of events. As a rule, he didn't like it when nice girls transpired as rampant funny farm dropouts, not one little bit. Still, there was a certain value to the clarity of situation. And it's always good being able to tell ill sources.
“There will be no firing the house, Candy,” Sam declared and Dean nodded solemnly.
“Why?”
Sam glanced at Dean before he spoke awkwardly.
“Because it's ours,” he said under one breath. “I bought us that house.”
“What?!”
“Wait, what?!”
The elder librarian stuck his neck out from behind the shelves to hiss at the noisy company.
Dean very much wanted to believe that this was just some dubious way Sam chose to dismiss Candy without insulting her grasp on reality. Looking at him now, however, Dean knew better than to indulge in this interpretation.
“Sam,” Dean prodded.
Sam shrugged.
“It was a bargain price like you wouldn't believe?”
“Not unless it was lower than you would pay for a dose of arsenic, it wasn't,” Candy's eyes were wide in astonishment.
“What do you mean you've bought us a house?!”
“Sir,” the annoying librarian suddenly appeared between them. “If you can't keep this deliberation quiet, I'll be bound to ask you to leave. This is a library, not The Price Is Right.”
From beneath furrowed eyebrows, Dean glared at his brother. He took a deep breath and crossed his arms.
“We'll behave,” he said non-committally and waited without a word until the man walked away.
“You chose a library of all places to come out to me with this,” he said and Sam looked away from him at once. Candy was curiously glancing between the two of them. “So that I can't properly yell at you!” Dean finished with an angry hiss. Sam was staring at the ceiling, not even bothering to come up with a cover and Candy could barely stifle her laugh now.
“Look,” Sam said. “The house was long abandoned and steadily going into ruin. With history like that, probably wouldn't wait its buyer. And we could just... I guess, I had this idea that we stood a good chance of dealing with whatever had been eating up on it, y'know? But even when we did, it would still take time before anyone so much as approaches the house again. And it looks days away from a hovel already.”
“So now it's your charity case,” Candy said. “You are way out of your tree.”
“You tell him, Beatrice!” Dean retorted, defending his brother on instinct and against the better judgment. He spared Sam a look that might or might not have conveyed something along the lines of I've been to high schools.
“It's not,” Sam said. “Not charity. I wanted us to have this house. It seemed desolate. It was unwanted and I wanted it. More than that, I could make it better. Why not get something out of it for myself in the process?”
“Sure,” Candy nodded. “Why not?”
Her unwitting fingertips were skimming the table-top lazily, marking broad, tangled curves all over.
“Can you still undo this transaction?” Dean asked. Sam shook his head.
“Is there a pattern?” Candy mused.
“What now?” Dean snapped, somehow growing more tired with this conversation by the second.
Candy's hands stopped abruptly in the midst of her imaginary artistic process. She looked up at Sam.
“I mean, is this your typical approach? Cause, come to think of it, it's mighty creepifying. Find something you want, find out people have turned their backs on it and then... just step right in and take it. All under the pretense of making it better-”
“Not just,” Sam interrupted.
“What was that?”
“It's not just,” Sam said firmly. “In so many ways, it's not. And there are things impossible to just step into like they're some kind of trolley in an amusement park. Then again, they're even harder to walk out of.”
He looked at Candy with a pang of reproach.
“You should know.”
“I'm gonna take a long guess and say no one is talking about the house here, not anymore,” Dean said. “Which is a shame because, last I checked, it's still haunted and deadly. But now it's also Sam's. ”
“I have already told you what I believe would work,” Candy said. She looked over at Sam again. “Understandably, you might want to come up with alternate ideas.”
“All right. I'll think it over,” Sam said, sounding utterly defeated. “I just need a couple of days to wrap my mind around 748 dimensions and then inquire about those supernatural aerials.”
“Sammy, don't tell me you caught up this bad trip.”
“I don't do bad trips. I used to be Guide,” Candy smiled as she stood up and scooped the scattered articles up deftly. She carried them somewhere behind the bookshelves.
“I don't know Dean, in case you didn't notice, all that she said so far fit to a tee.”
“So it may be Santa in a sleigh led by nine unicorns, as long as it fits,” Dean sighed. “Whatever, man. You bought a house! How did you even wangle that kind of money? I mean, it's a pile all right but the ground alone must have cost an arm and a leg.”
Sam gave Dean a speculative frown, like he was deciding on the best way to present unwelcome revelations to his brother, which was ridiculous because as far as Dean was concerned, they'd been very recently past that.
“Remember when I told you about those interesting particulars in the house deeds?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, what about them?”
“I may have pointed them out to a guy from a Building Division in Billings as well. Turned out, he knew about the accidents on those grounds and as we spoke he more or less outright admitted that he believed the house to be cursed. Minor clerk he was, there hadn't been much he could do about it, but at least he'd made sure the property wouldn't be available for buyers any longer. Forging documents, however, wasn't his strong suit.”
“Tell me you didn't blackmail a man who only ever had been trying to keep heads from dropping,” Dean said, careful not to show his indifference to the matter.
Sam's gaze skittered away.
“You know, what really bugs me,” Dean went on “is why. I mean, I had come to terms with the fact that you were having wet dreams about Martha Stewart a while back. You walked out on your family in pursuit of that dream.”
“Dean-”
Dean cut in. “Hey, whatever floats your boat. It's all fine by me as long as I don't end up somehow tacked to this little fantasy of yours. Which, admittedly, never was the case. Now you keep bringing up how you bought us, our house. You did no such thing, Sammy, I hope you realize that much.”
Sam stared down with unseeing eyes, silence falling. Dean shook his head incredulously, huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. Most times, Sam so obviously on the brink of meltdown would rouse feelings decidedly not akin to satisfaction, but now....
“What was it you wanted, really? You knew neither Dad or I would suddenly wanna settle, you must have.”
“I know,” Sam said absently. “I knew that. Frankly, I don't think I would want you to either, not at this point.”
“Good,” Dean spoke, a notch louder than he intended. “Good. Why the house, Sam?”
“Because I wanted there to be a place for us to come back to.”
Here endeth the sad story of Dean's wrath. For the time being, arguably, but the fact was undisputed that at this point the momentum of righteous indignation in Dean had been stunned. It took one sentence from Sam to momentarily prevail over what had been building up inside Dean for years. Dean was fairly certain that this kind of power does not exactly constitute a component of any relationship, however close it might be.
Coming to the rescue from this gloomy recognitions was Candy who appeared like light at the end of the tunnel between bookshelves. She was mincing along one of the bookcases, studying it with an alien-like curiosity, which wouldn't even be misplaced seeing as she was once a Guide.
Dean strode toward her.
“What's the matter?”
“I lost the bookcase with the press,” she regarded the articles in both her hands miserably like they were overdue bills for private jets, utterly impossible to deal with. “It's a maze.”
However Dean summoned chivalrous strength of will to be the perfect gentleman in this situation, he wouldn't know. There was only an absolute minimum of gloating. He took the papers from Candy's hands and carried them to the far corner of the library.
By the time Dean returned, Sam and Candy were preoccupied debating over a tiny article lain on the table-top right between them. Dean was only mildly surprised when the said article turned out to be the slide featuring Dad. After all, this just proved the rule that Sam made a habit of putting faith in the most dubious sources.
“-so this must have been taken by the house itself,” Candy concluded.
“Probably, yeah,” Sam admitted.
“More like certainly,” Candy was on a roll of her own crazy, already quite a familiar sight that Dean found rather endearing.
“Check out this sky, what color would you call that?” she asked.
“Grey?” Sam hazarded. “Ish?”
Candy snickered inelegantly.
“Hardly. It's not even deep laurel green, more like olivine. Either way, nothing from the usual firmament's palette. So unless your Dad took up hunting polar bears...”
So much for hoping Sam didn't give away too much information, such as of whom the picture in question was. Anyway, there was something off about that color, Dean had to admit when he leaned over Sam's shoulder to steal a glance.
“Could have been lighting,” he joined in the conversation.
“A powerful, artificial lighting to mess up coloring like that,” Candy countered. “Which apparently there's no source of.”
“Ok, so the picture is a botch up fake-” Dean's voice trailed off as realization dawned. “Only it's not.” He looked up at Candy who nodded her agreement. Dean took in the picture once again only to confirm his conjecture; the odd coloring covered solely what was supposed to be a plain, bright area. “You think this is an overlay.”
“Which begs the question, who takes pictures on the same tape twice?” Sam took up.
“Pretty much pointless whatsoever,” Candy agreed. “Then again, side effects can do without a point, they just are. Like, oh, an aerial activity side effect!” she intoned the last words as she turned to look Dean in the eye.
As if to hide from her pointed gaze, Dean rubbed his fingers over the thin shutter of his eyelids.
“Ok, let's pretend for one crazy second that this is not a madhouse talk and the extra-dimensional portals actually decided that our family album is now their very favorite coloring book. Where does it leave us?”
Candy bit her lip, most likely suppressing a remark.
“The picture pretty well covers whatever had been there in the first place.” she explained calmly. “Interference only shows in the area that would otherwise be verging on blank.”
“So you're saying the signal must have been strong,” Sam said.
“How strong we talking?”
“Enough to tick off two marks at the same time: whatever the lurker was, must have been both powerful and nearby. Bigger than ghosts. My bet goes on a demon.” Candy frowned taking another careful look at the picture. “I don't recognize the street. Obviously it's outside of Pryor but couldn't be far. Fromberg or Bridger, in any case somewhere near down 310.”
“Thanks Candy, that actually helps a lot,” Sam said and Dean merely smirked at that.
“Don't mention it, I figured somewhere along this conversation that we're still in need of a hunter here,” she said, crossing her stern look with Dean's once again. “I'm all for tracking one down.”
Sam looked up at Dean. “You think Dad might still be around?”
“Doubt that. Still, worth checking what brought him here,” Dean said. “If any of this can be trusted.”
Candy chose to ignore the latter remark. “Guys, I hate to bring that up but how do you know this frame wasn't fixed a long time ago?”
“We're pretty sure the picture's very recent,” Sam said.
Candy looked back to the picture. “Does he know you took on a job here?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “he does.”
“Then I don't get it,” she frowned. “Why didn't he get in touch with you?”
“With a demon on his tail? His smarter than that,” Dean answered easily. “'Sides, I doubt that he was still in the state when I came to Pryor.”
Sam connected the dots at once. “He sent you on this job, didn't he.”
Dean nodded. “Not directly, but I'm thinking he did set it up.”
Candy was watching them talk, her expression confused, until Sam explained briefly: “If Dad was on the demon's trail, which we think is likely the case, he moved along as soon as he'd gathered whatever he'd come here for.”
“But in the meantime he clearly got a clue to the job in Pryor, which he passed on to us,” Dean supplied.
Candy sighed miserably. “Best of luck looking for him then. Tracking demons is not unlike chasing the wind, pretty much literally.”
“Well, least we can do is stick around for awhile,” Dean said off hand, then pointedly ignored Sam's disbelieving gaze. “Check on this towns down 310. I mean we still have a job awaiting.”
“I guess,” Candy mused. “You do that and I hope sooner or later something will come up, but in case it doesn't,” she hesitated. “I expect there may be another way to find your dad.”
After that preface, Candy proceeded with a story unlike any other stories. Or so it would appear if she hadn't already filled a quota of surreal tenfold that day. Dean listened with the kind of attention a person who was being told their entire life was a lie might display; attentive yet mostly detached. He accepted the news along with phone numbers Candy handed to him, determined never to look back at it other than as the very last resort. He liked his brains sane and unfried.
“Auntie Candy!” chirped a little girl bursting through the door and made her way to Candy at once. The dark head shoved Candy's arms about as the child scrambled onto her lap.
“Why, if it isn't my favorite niece!” Candy exclaimed, delighted. “And who's gonna show up trailing behind?”
“Dad,” the little one grinned, and was that smile something the girls of this family could take pride in. With a certain exception.
“Of course it would be Dad,” Candy said.
Leisurely, in came a young man, auburn-haired with sharp yet regular features matching an intense gaze of green eyes distinctive on his face.
“Try playing Wile E. Coyote to her Road Runner for a day, hotshot.”
“You made a cartoon reference, you really are turning into a dad,” Candy teased, locking her gaze with her niece's, who looked positively shocked at the remark. “Where are my manners! Charlotte, let me introduce you, these are Sam and Dean Winchester, hunters.”
“You mean like Ghostfacers?” Charlotte beamed.
“Exactly like them.” Candy nodded knowingly, while the man regarded both Sam and Dean with a quick, assessing look. “Ms Charlotte Lane with her lovely companion, my brother Robert.”
“Hold on,” Sam cut in the pleasantries. “You know all about this?”
“Dad knows everything,” Charlotte supplied none too helpfully. Arching his eyebrow, Robert turned to look at Sam.
“You heard her,” he said.
“This is my brother, Sam,” Candy explained unnecessarily. “Of course he knows.”
Dean strolled alongside the table, casting sidelong glances at the man who inconspicuously proceeded to tie the little girl’s shoe. “All this time you knew the house in Pryor was haunted, you didn't bother to tear it down?”
“I tried,” Robert said off hand. “Back in time, me and a boy scout army. The house is reluctant to fold.”
This could be possible. The house more than filled it's quota for strange even without taking Candy's story into account.
Instead of dwelling upon it, Dean came to realize how ill at ease he felt since Charlotte and her dad made their appearance. He blamed Robert for that at first, locals with credible knowledge of supernatural were not common and for some reason Dean always found them more difficult to approach. It went down differently with Candy, who showed up just in time to slay a ghost in front of him. The entire family, however, chatting casually about haunted houses was just too weird. And at the same time, maybe a bit too close to home.
If Dean was honest with himself, perhaps the family factor was a key issue here, regardless of the supernatural. When he had first met Candy, she had been just some pretty waitress, like a hundred other girls he used to flirt with. Then the strangest chain of events had ensued which had thrown Dean completely for a loop; he just didn't know what to make of the girl - were she properly human to begin with - or, more precisely, all the things attached. But he sure knew meeting her family wasn't helping clear things up. Dean didn't do meeting families.
“Hey, how did you guys find me here?” Candy asked, her voice pulling Dean from his reverie. Charlotte seemed equally baffled.
“You didn't even hide under the desk,” she pointed out.
“There's that,” Robert agreed. “Also, what kind of brother would I be if I couldn't tell where to look for you,” he bit his lip as he cast a sidelong glance at his sister. “Last but not least, your car's parked outside.”
Candy's face was thereby granted with a prominent frown, which resided in place for quite some time. Then her eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“My- my car? My car?”
Robert stared at the ceiling, all too innocently.
“You bought me a car?”
Putting her niece aside, Candy made a beeline for the nearest window, bending, leaning on and pushing back at random against everything, including Sam's shoulders, on her way.
“Where is it?” She demanded.
Dean didn't even need to think to know that the window looked out on the park.
Candy frowned, looking back to her brother.
“Come on! My car, where is it?”
In dignified silence, Robert only stretched out his arm, pointing to the opposite direction, where the street was. Grabbing the hand on display, Candy pulled her brother with herself as she strode. Soon enough, she was an incoherent puddle of awe.
“Hey, does this mean you're not coming to my party?” she asked cooling down a little.
“Sorry, we have an appointment with laryngologist in Helena,” Robert said. “He's a good specialist, said he could soften the ill resounding in the cochlea so that Charlie would have no problem hearing on higher frequencies without the hearing aid.” He smiled a soft smile, looking at his daughter. “She hates going there, you know, but there's that shop with wand-shaped casters of colored brocade in Helena, so that's how we coax her. Swear I could make better of our kitchen saltshaker - never tell her that.”
Saltshaker, Dean had a revelation, but he'd have time to think that one over later.
He looked back at Charlie, who was now crouching on the bench beside Sam. With the mass of dark brown curls it was impossible to make out a shape of her ears, let alone a hearing aid. Head tilted in concentration, she was studying a comic strip Sam picked for her in the meantime. From the look of it, his choice went entirely amiss.
“This is boring,” she sighed a deeply unimpressed sigh. “I like Candy's stories better.”
“I bet,” Dean smirked.
When they returned to the table, Candy was still babbling at her brother about the car and the party and she was getting so incoherent that it didn't make much sense. Ceaselessly tagging at Robert's sleeve, eventually she turned to the three of them.
“My brother bought me a car!” she exclaimed.
“Miss!” The librarian all but shouted himself.
“We kinda got that,” Sam said, soft smile playing on his lips.
Then she leaned to babble some more into Robert's ear, which was concluded with her beaming at the rest of them as she proclaimed: “You can tell them!”
“Uh-huh,” Robert eyed her dubiously. “'Cause I'm just dying to herald all the guys around that my beautiful little sister is turning legal next Friday.”
“My 18-th birthday's on Friday!” Candy beamed brighter still.
“We got that,” Dean said.
“You guys are invited.”
“Thanks, Candy,” Sam said politely.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Come on outside!” Candy whirled, holding out a hand to Charlotte who immediately leaped to her. As they were passing the counter, Candy hit it on the top lightly.
“Librarian!” she called, ecstatic. “Free books for everybody, on my account!”
“Woah!” Charlotte's twinkling eyes and a perfect O of her mouth were delightful.
“I would ask you to leave now, Miss Lane,” said the librarian.
“Sorry for my sister, she gets carried away like that,” Robert stepped in. “Make it free books for everyone, but nothing top-shelf.”
Dean stole a glance at his brother who looked enchanted with the whole scene.
“All right, enough with the drooling already. 'S disturbing,” Dean patted him on the shoulder. “I mean it, Sammy, you look like, like...”
“A nerd in a library?” Sam supplied.
“Yes! No! That's not what I- Hey!” Dean shook his head, resigned. “You can take a boy out of law school...”
Just a few steps away, Candy was looking positively dazed, saying “I love my brother,” and kissing him on the cheek.
“Hmh.”
“What now?” Dean asked against his better judgment.
“You... didn't do that when I bought you a house.”
If looks could kill.
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MASTER