Don't Tell Sammy

Chapter 11: Planning and Productivity

The fourth floor was dead and identical on each side. The fifth floor's doors were slightly different than the fourths. The sixth had a different carpet. The eighth had different walls. The tenth had larger apartments, with only two doors per hallway. On their trip down, they began to notice subtle differences in other things, too. Some had hung things on their doors. There was an occasional painting here and there on the eighth floor, hanging between doors.

The third floor was slightly different to the fourth, the walls a shade darker. The second had the same walls as the third. And the ground floor was just as they remembered it, the laundry room just as Dean had seen it earlier, the indoor pool smelling of chlorine and looking peaceful, the gym full of heavy equipment.

The hallway of doors on this side was almost ... quieter, than upstairs. Darker. More mature seeming, than the bright areas upstairs. Maybe it was the lack of a glass wall.

And every door, every window, every wall and every floor kept the EMF as dead as the victims from the murders, the EVP as silent as their screams.

'There's nothing,' Dean muttered as he ran the EMF detector over the mail slots. The needle on it remained at a firm zero. 'It's like the place isn't even haunted.'

'But it is,' Castiel stated the obvious. 'The murders. And the black goo. And the knocking.'

'There's something here, alright,' Dean nodded, trying again, just to be sure. 'But ... it might not be a ghost.'

'What else can kill its victims without leaving a mark and get into apartments that are locked?'

'I have no idea. And that's what bugs me – shit, someone's – I don't know, Cas. That's a lot of salt to buy at once.'

Dean made a smooth transition as the door opened and the sound of heels met their ears as they looked at each other, attempting to appear as though they were having a normal conversation by the mail slots, discreetly shifting their equipment so what everything was couldn't be seen. The only thing that was obvious, due to Dean's mentioning, was the salt.

'But salt goes with everything, Dean,' Castiel scoffed, embodying the roll of someone insisting they were right. 'It goes on ... fries. And ... uh ...'

'It's good for seasoning soup,' a helpful voice chimed in.

'Yes, soup,' Castiel agreed. 'Thank ... you.'

Castiel hesitated when he noticed Dean's face, and turned to see what Dean was looking at with such an excited expression on his face.

It was the drag queen.

'Always happy to jump to the defense of an impulse buy,' she grinned down at them from a tremendous height in heels which tonight definitely didn't seem to be broken. Her hair of choice was purple up front, pulled back into a ponytail that fell black, purple creeping in at the end. Her outfit was black too, a cat suit, with silver boots right up to her knees. 'I must say I've bought many a pair of shoes on impulse myself.'

'Shoes are shoes,' Dean replied steadily. Cas could sense he was trying hard to keep that steadiness in his voice. He looked as though he were about to drop to his knees and bow down before this stranger whom he'd never met but seemed to be admire. 'But an oversized bag of salt ... is ridiculous.'

'That depends,' the tall, glorious creature before them said slyly, a drawn-on black eyebrow raised. 'Did you get a good deal?'

'Five dollars for a bag,' Castiel lied, hoping that sounded right, because he had no idea how much salt usually cost.