Damaged Goods

Dead In The Water

By the following week, the John Winchester case had not progressed. There had been no sign of the patriarch.

We'd stopped at a diner. Nothing out of the usual from our route. My back had started to cramp from being stuck in the backseat for so long. Any excuse to be in a place where I could walk was a welcome one.

Dean had just started looking for new hunts. He'd circled some of the more interesting ones. I was reading them over too, just in case. After all my time in law enforcement I knew which ones were supernatural and which were just human being weird. I crossed out some of those ones that Dean circled.

"What?" Dean asked when he noticed what I'd done. "Come on, that's one of our's."

"It's really not." I assured, stirring my milkshake with my straw.

"It's a werewolf." Dean argued. He pointed at the reference of a missing heart in the article. "See? Missing heart, and a full moon."

I shook my head. "They found her body at night, but she was killed in the late afternoon."

"She was in an astronomy club." Dean pointed out. "They do nerd stuff with stars at night. Perfect for a werewolf."

"She was probably planning a viewing for the full moon." I explained. "Setting up, or whatever. Humans get weird around this time of month too. Her heart wasn't missing. Just every other part of her chest."

"How can you know that?" Dean asked, skeptical.

I pointed at some phrases in the article. "It sounds like an animal attack, but really it's just a guy who got to excited with a knife." I took a sip of my big chocolate. "Plus I called the police in that city in the bathroom and they confirmed it."

Dean grunted in annoyance. He'd had this conversation with me a lot in the past few months.

"It was awesome. I felt like Jessica Jones, in that comic where she's on the toilet." I laughed into my hot chocolate.

That made him laugh. That's Dean, such a geek. I won the last argument because I used Batman. Jessica won today because Dean thought she was a badass. I take complete credit for introducing him to Jessica Jones.

Dean and I were still laughing about it when Wendy came up.

"Can I get you anything else?" Wendy asked us.

Dean stuck his pen in his mouth when he looked up at Wendy. I bit my bottom lip, trying so very hard not to objectify Wendy. Especially with her boobs right in my face.

"Just the check, please." Sam interrupted as he sat down.

The waitress smiled, confused but going with it. "Okay." She went back to the kitchen.

Dean groaned silently. I merely wrote it off as a lost cause to start with. "You know, Sam, we are allowed to have fun once in a while." He pointed with the pen towards Wendy. "That's fun."

"He's got a point though." I murmured. Dean gawked at my betrayal. "I mean, just look at all the work we have to do." That got rid of the betrayed face, now it was a snort of humor.

Sam was annoyed at me, probably on principle.

To make peace, Dean handed him the newspaper. "Here, take a look at this, I think I got one." Dean began. "Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Last week Sophie Carlton, eighteen, walks into the lake, doesn't walk out. Authorities dragged the water; nothing. Sophie Carlton is the third Lake Manitoc drowning this year. None of the other bodies were found either. They had a funeral two days ago."

"A funeral?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Weird, right? They buried an empty coffin." I stated. "Most families do it for closure-"