Stranger

Chapter 26

The past month has been pretty easy. Ghost house here, hunted painting there, you know, the normal. After their brief union with their parents, Nevaeh and the Winchesters hadn't brought it up again. They'd went about hunting like normal, as if nothing had happened. As if the air around them isn't suffocating.

Dean's been pretending like the new information that John and Michael gave him isn't making him see Nevaeh in a whole new light. He doesn't mean to. Nor does he believe them. But safety always comes first.

And Nevaeh's been pretending like she hasn't sensed a change in the atmosphere. As if she isn't noticing the way he now watches her back when he thinks she isn't looking, or sleeps with a knife under his pillow. She's still been trying to decipher the conversation the Winchesters and her father had when she was still out of it. She'd heard a few words that'd made her feel leery.

Nevaeh watches as Dean flips through a newspaper. "Anything?"

He shakes his head. "Not a decent lead in all of Nebraska. Whatcha got?"

"Well, I've been scanning Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota... Here, a woman in Iowa fell 1,000 feet from an airplane and survived," she shrugs a suggestive shoulder.

"Sounds more like 'that's incredible' than Twilight Zone."

She nods.

Dean turns to Sam. "Hey, uh, we could just keep heading east. Need York? Upstate? You could stop by and see Sarah again, huh? She's a cool chick, man. Smoking," he whistles. "You two seemed pretty friendly. What do you say?"

Sam chuckles. "Yeah, I don't know, man. Maybe someday. But in the meantime... we got a lot of work to do, Dean, and you know that."

"Yeah, you're right," Dean sighs. He nods at Nevaeh. "What else you got?"

"Uh, Manning, Colorado. A local man by the name of Daniel Elkins... was found mauled in his home."

Dean frowns. "Elkins? I know that name."

"Doesn't ring a bell," Sam says, but Dean keeps repeating it as he reaches into his bag.

"...sounds like the police doesn't know what to think," Nevaeh continues. "At first they said it was some bear attack, and now they found signs of robbery."

"Mhm," Dean nods, letting her know he's listening as he flips through John's journal. "There, check it out."

Nevaeh raises an eyebrow as if asking for permission to touch the journal and Dean starts to give her a look that says, "seriously?" before nodding.

Nevaeh takes the book. "And you think it's the same Elkins?"

"It's the same Colorado area code."

Nevaeh nods, "could be. Let's check it out."

Nevaeh slowly opens the door, sliding her Bobby pin back in her hair. "Looks like the maid didn't come today," she says.

Sam kneels down, touching the carpet. "Hey, there's salt over here, right outside the door," he says.

"You mean like protection-against-demons salt, or uh, oops-I-spilled-the-popcorn salt?" Dean asks.

"It's clearly a ring," Sam says. "You think this guy Elkins was a player?"

"Definitely. He was in your father's journal," Nevaeh says, flipping through the man's journal. "That, and I found his."

Dean and Sam come up behind her. "That looks a hell of a lot like Dad's," Sam says.

"Yeah, except this dates back to the '60s," Dean says.

Nevaeh continues walking around the house. "Well, whatever the hell attacked him, it was definitely more than one," she says, looking up at two big holes in the ceiling. "Looks like he put up a helluva fight too."