Chapter 76: Shadow of a Doubt

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"Darkness building on my mind still I keep it all inside."
- Sacred Mother Tongue

Lansing, Michigan

Two flashlight beams skimmed over shadowed surfaces: a twin bed, a dresser, a locker-style closet, a nightstand stacked with books and journals.

"This place gives me the creeps," Dean muttered as he cautiously entered the makeshift bedroom.

Right behind him, Alex was similarly wary. "Can't imagine why..."

They were at the Campbell compound which was by all appearances completely deserted. Just a couple doors down Sam and Bobby were looking through Samuel's office space. Why? Because Sam said there was some kind of library hidden on the premises. The idea was if they could find this library, they might be able to find something more about this Eve character who was popping up and making trouble.

The last straw was a couple weeks ago when Eve sent that Khan worm and almost killed Bobby. She had the blood of Rufus Turner on her hands as well as a bunch of innocent regular Joes and as such, the Winchesters were hunting her down with intent to kill. But they needed more information... like where she was, how to track her, what could gank her. And so far they had zip, zero, zilch and oh yeah... nada. That's why they were here. They'd exhausted Bobby's resources to no avail trying to find anything about the mother, but Samuel, who'd had his hands in a few underhanded places, might have left some resources behind in his library. That was the hope, anyway.

Dean went over and opened up the locker to look for anything useful. Alex crouched to shine her flashlight under the bed. Sam said he remembered a trap door being 'somewhere' that led to a secret room where the library was. He just couldn't remember where. His memories were still pretty stark from his time being soulless and he didn't remember much. He said he could still barely remember being possessed by Lucifer. Alex saw no trap door under the bed and pushed on a knee to stand back up. She let her flashlight spotlight the books on Samuel's nightstand.

"Why you think the rest of the Campbells just disappeared?" she asked, picking a volume up and frowning at it dubiously. The entire place was a ghost town—a neat, orderly, well-supplied, ghost town. Why would people bug out without taking all these resources with them?

"Maybe there weren't any left after Gwen," Dean supposed. He was making a good bit of racket as he poked through the locker. "We won't know, now."

Alex set the book back, a little skeeved out about where they were—granddad or not, she had come to hate Samuel Campbell with a passion by now.

"Son of a bitch." Dean let out a disgusted breath of air and jiggled something at her that sounded like a tic-tac container. Alex turned to see. He was holding an orange pill bottle between his thumb and pointer and he had a wan expression on his face. "Roofies." He looked sickened and let the bottle crack back down onto the shelf he'd found it on. "You believe this motherfucker?"

Alex shook her head in disbelief as her stomach turned. Samuel had probably been using those to keep Jamie dumbed down, but Alex had a hunch that there was something supernatural involved too. After all, Jamie had been pretty brainwashed when they had found her with Samuel until her memory was jogged. As the subject of Jamie came up without being spoken aloud, Alex wondered. She knew Dean had spent a few days with her helping her find her car and weapons but... she didn't really know how it went. All she knew was Jamie had hit the road afterward and Dean hadn't said much about it either way. And now, being here at the Campbell compound, well, it really made her curious. Did Jamie maybe confide in Dean about whatever twisted shit went on here between herself and Samuel? One way to find out. Alex debated internally a couple beats. Then decided to ask. "Did Jamie say anything about... I dunno, anything?"

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