"Is anything that comes out of your mouth the truth?"
"You wouldn't believe me, even if I answered that honestly."
•
As soon as you learn that the things that go bump in the night are real, the line between truth and fiction begins to blur.
That's t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter 4
Ali frowned down at her laptop screen as she tried to match up the printout Dean had handed her with the satellite image of the Pennsylvanian mining town. Zooming in on the wooded foothills of the mountain, she let a frustrated grumble pass her lips as the image became more pixelated.
"I reckon your mine entrance is here." She frowned, hovering her finger over a point on the green blur where the gridlines matched up with Dean's printout of a map dated 1832. She sat back a little to let him look, curling her bare feet up to tuck them under herself where she sat beside him on Bobby's couch, her laptop precariously balanced on one of the stacks of hardback books that littered the coffee table.
"That lines up with where the disappearances are meant to have happened." The older Winchester brother nodded, "It's not the where we're having trouble with though, it's the what."
"That's why I called her, idjit." Bobby scolded him from where he was seated at his writing desk, keeping a wary eye on the scene before him. He hadn't missed how Sam was hanging on the edges of the discussion, slumped awkwardly in an armchair like he didn't know where to put his excessively long limbs. It wasn't like him to skirt around the lore of a job.
"You're thinking something Fae then?" Ali frowned up at Bobby, reaching one hand into her backpack to pull out a battered, clothbound journal.
"I figured." The older man shrugged, "What with there being no recorded fatalities in the mine while it was open. Plus, miners are superstitious coots as a rule – never mind nineteenth century ones."
"Fair." She laughed, leaving through the dog-eared pages as Dean fumbled through his pile of missing persons reports and newspaper articles. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sam eyeing the journal curiously, but she didn't look up. She'd been careful not to make too much eye contact since their moment in the kitchen – she didn't want to drive the poor guy into a frenzy all over again.
"You're into Fae lore?"
His soft question was enough to pull her head up though, her lips quirking into a small smile; "Folklore, really." She shrugged, "But yeah, Fae ended up becoming a bit of a speciality."
"Fae like... Fairies?" Dean frowned between them sceptically, "Like Tinkerbell?"
"Not quite." Ali laughed, "At least, I've not encountered her yet." She shook her head, "No, they're more like... Like spirits with more rules."
"How'd you end up hunting those?" Sam frowned, sitting up a little more and resting his elbows on his knees.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" She laughed, glancing back to the stacks of news reports. It only slightly stressed her out that Dean didn't have a clear filing system. She didn't miss the heavy exhale from Sam in response to her sidestep of his question, but she wasn't going to entertain it; "Mines... There are a few possibilities but considering the town history..." Scanning through the pages of the journal, she absently bit the knuckle of her index finger as she thought. "Bobby, you said it was pretty heavy with Cornish immigrants?"
