Summer Hunting Season, Cassie and Kat, PG
Aug. 14th, 2010 09:16 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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femgenficathonTitle: Summer Hunting Season
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
animus_wyrmis
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Warnings: some violence, some language
Prompt: 147: I hate wars and violence, but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas. -- Nancy Wake
Summary: Cassie and Kat embark on their annual summer hunting trip and meet another hunter.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks toill_ame and mercuryblue144 for betaing and hand-holding. All remaining mistakes are entirely mine and probably due to taking so long on this.
According to Google maps, it was 1033 miles from Dartmouth to Rockford. That was seventeen hours and thirty-seven minutes if you went directly, but Kat never went directly. She also never went alone, partly because that was too far to drive without someone to talk to but mostly because she didn’t have a car.
She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and shifted away from creepy stain on her mattress. Kat’s extremely soft sheets with extremely comforting sigils embroidered on them (they kept away the monsters) had been packed up earlier that day, along with everything else she owned. Most of it went into six plastic crates she kept for this purpose (she left them with her aunt over the summers), and the rest she’d crammed into two duffel bags and a backpack. Her bags were currently sitting on her newly-vacuumed floor, with dumb last minute things like toothpaste on the desk and her computer in her lap, Cassie’s latest email on the screen:
Hey Kat!
Figured I’d use the free wifi to let you know I’m near the CT river and I’ll be there to get you in the morning. Figured we could go up to Maine for a couple days? There’s a ghost up by Canada killing people via freak thunderstorms or something. I attached all the relevant info and color-coded it and there’s even a pie chart, and if you laugh so help me God I’ll make you face it all by yourself and that is a promise.
Hope your exams went okay? I know I haven’t been emailing much, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you. There was a lorelei on Cape Cod and, I don’t know, you know I hate dealing with this sort of thing by myself. So I sort of got all maudlin about it and stopped emailing people like I was supposed to.
See you in the morning!
Xoxo
Cassie
She snickered a little—that sounded like Cassie—and shifted the computer onto the bed. Kat knew she ought to email her and make sure Cassie knew not to show up too early, but packing had been really tiring and she was exhausted. Maybe she’d take a five-minute catnap and answer when she was more awake.
The sun had just come up when Kat uncurled herself from her keyboard—God, she was going to be so sore later—and tried to figure out what was making the ungodly racket near her door.
“Kat!” someone yelled, followed by what sounded like a sledgehammer knocking at the door. “Kat! Wake up! I haven’t had breakfast so we need to get moving!”
It took Kat a few moments to recognize Cassie’s voice, and then a few more before she could roll off the bed and make her way to the door. “Ugh,” she managed. “Why are you here? Did you sneak in? What time is it? Is the sun even up?”
“Yes,” Cassie said. “You all set with the packing and the cleaning and the checking out? Hand me a bag.”
Kat sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “Five minutes. Let me get dressed and brush my teeth. Did you bring coffee or something? Oh, my God, it’s six in the morning. I cannot believe this.”
“Six-fifteen,” Cassie corrected. “If you don’t get up early the whole day will pass you by. Let’s go.”
She groaned and stumbled into her jeans and a bra. “Are you going to change your shirt?” Cassie asked, a little pointedly.
“No,” Kat said. “It’s practically dawn and I really like this nightshirt. Also, I think my clean shirts are in the bottom of my bag somewhere. Are you for real? You couldn’t have waited until normal people were up? You’re carrying the heaviest bags, just for this.”
It took some time to get Kat’s bags into the trunk of Cassie’s car, because Cassie travelled with a full arsenal of anti-monster weaponry: guns, bullets, knives, salt, holy water, stakes, lighter fluid, and two lighters. Kat added a collection of knives that she should probably have been taking better care of (she never brought her guns to school; that was an expulsion waiting to happen), more holy water, more lighter fluid, a shovel, two boxes of waterproof matches, and a small box of religious paraphernalia.
There wasn’t much room in the trunk around their extremely well-concealed weapons, which was why Kat had learned to pack light. She didn’t mind much; she had realized the first time they teamed up just how little she actually needed to bring with her. The worst part had been the books, the first summer, and Cassie’s portable file cabinet. Then Cassie had gone digital with their research and cases, and that freed up a lot of space.
“So,” Cassie said as soon as they were ready to go. “Breakfast? We can drive for a bit and then stop somewhere.”
“Are you driving?” Kat asked, stifling a yawn.
“Yeah, sure,” Cassie said. “If you’re going to fall asleep on me.”
+
Cassie drove for two hours while Kat snored in the passenger seat. At first she tried to keep the music down, but after thirty minutes Cassie remembered just how soundly Kat could sleep and cranked “Traveling Riverside Blues” back up.
By nine o’clock she had been up four hours, and the leftover half of a blueberry muffin she’d eaten at the hotel in Vermont was a long, long time ago. She kept one eye on the exit signs and got off the highway at the first Cracker Barrel she saw (Kat didn’t really like Cracker Barrel—she said it was too cutesy—but the food was good and so were the prices, and frankly, people who decided to sleep all day didn’t get to pick where they ate). “Rise and shine, kiddo,” she said when she pulled into the parking lot. “Time for breakfast.”
“Ugh,” Kat said. She always sounded confused when she first woke up. “Where are we?”
“Breakfast,” Cassie repeated. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes,” Kat said. “I’m starving. I didn’t get anything to eat because some loser woke me up at six in the morning.”
Cassie just grinned and unbuckled her seatbelt. She didn’t bother to wait for Kat to untangle herself from her blanket and seatbelt, put her shoes back on (when had she taken those off, exactly?), and adjust her t-shirt; Cassie just got out of the car and shut the door behind her, tilting her face up to the sun. It was another four hours to their lightning-striking ghost, maybe. “You coming, Kat?”
“Yeah!” Kat yelled, before practically falling out of the car. “Come on, Cass, I’m starved.”
Cassie wasn’t sure when they’d started using nicknames. Kat had always, always been Kat—well, with a name like Kathleen Cassie couldn’t really blame her—but Cassie hadn’t started out as Cass. Maybe she’d turned into Cass about the time she’d started calling Kat kiddo, which was around the first time they’d taken on a demon. They’d been in North Carolina, looking into a series of murders they thought were typical ghost work, but when they’d cornered the killer Kat had said, “I think it’s a demon. Black eyes, right?”
“Sure,” Cassie had said, because mostly Cassie dealt with research, back then; she put files together and let someone else do the illegal and/or dangerous parts, and that meant she was able to pick her cases, and she stuck to ghosts and ghost objects. “If you say so.”
“Are you two for real?” the demon had asked with a mocking laugh. Cassie was caught between terror and offense, but then Kat had distracted it with some salt and Cassie had dumped about a gallon of holy water on its face and drawn a couple of symbols out in chalk on the floor.
“I’ve got the rite!” Kat cried. “Do you think it matters if it’s Church Latin or regular Latin?”
“There’s a difference?” Cassie asked; she’d only ever learned living languages.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you are real,” said the demon.
It hadn’t been easy or fast, but they had managed to get the demon out of the man and he had even survived (and, Cassie discovered later, he was surprisingly understanding about his experience, and a pretty good kisser to make up for the fact that his body had almost killed her). Kat and Cassie counted it as a victory and gone out for pizza, and after that Kat was kiddo and they were a team.
“Cass?” Kat asked, shaking Cassie out of her memories. “You still here? Come on, let’s get like a triple order of bacon.”
“Triple bacon?” Cassie repeated. “Seriously, Kat?”
“It’s good for you,” Kat claimed. “It keeps you awake on the days some people wake you up at ungodly hours without coffee.”
In the end, Cassie wound up with eggs and OJ, and Kat wound up with blueberry pancakes (“Uh, wild Maine blueberry pancakes, Cassie, it’s like fate”), extra bacon, and two cups of coffee. “So talk to me about this thunderstorm thing,” Kat said around a mouthful of pancake. “Do you want a bite?”
“No,” Cassie said, “I’m good. Uh, my stuff’s in the car”—she was anxious about leaving her laptop in the car, but she was even more anxious about bringing it into a restaurant, where there would be children and liquids and things with sugar in them—“so the details might not all be right. But essentially, small town, nice people, and half a dozen of them have been killed by lightning strikes near a campsite, only, you know, no thunderstorms. I did some preliminary research and I think we’re dealing with the ghost of Brian O’Connor, who died about a two years ago on a camping trip with his uncle.”
“Let me guess,” Kat broke in. “Did he die of a lightning strike due to his uncle’s negligence? God, I wish ghosts would get more creative.”
“Then they would be harder to spot,” Cassie said. “They buried him, so we should just dig him up and set him on fire, I guess.”
“Digging graves is lot of work,” Kat protested. “I’m going to need another order of bacon.”
“You are going to destroy your arteries,” Cassie warned. “And then have a heart attack and die.”
“No, I am going to kick some ghostly ass,” Kat said. “And if we’re going to be in Maine, can we get lobster?”
+
Kat ordered the town’s cheapest lobster for lunch. That was the worst thing about this job: she always spent too much damn money on motels and food. It wasn’t so bad for Cassie, who had some sort of Haunted America newspaper column and, tentatively, a book deal, and would therefore get reimbursed for some of her expenses. But for Kat, it meant delving into savings or working odd jobs under the table, and she needed money for school, too.
After they ate, the two of them explored the town cemetery and found their grave. With that done, they drove to the beach to kill some time, kicked off their shoes, and waded in the water. “This is going to be awful,” Kat said. “Why can’t people just cremate their dead with salt or something?”
“Same reason they still think it’s a good idea to sell their souls, I guess,” Cassie answered.
“Being stupid is not an excuse,” Kat muttered. It wasn’t that she minded, exactly—you couldn’t blame people for things they didn’t know anything about—but sometimes this hunting thing felt like emptying a well with a teaspoon. Everywhere they went, everyone they saved, everything they killed—there was always another case out there.
“Maybe they do know,” Cassie said. “You ever think about that?”
“That makes no sense.” Kat considered herself to be a good example of an average, normal person, and the last thing she would want for a loved one was to see her again as a vengeful spirit.
“Sure it does. Maybe, deep down, people do know what stops a spirit from coming back. And then, I don’t know, they don’t want to do that. Because where do they go after, right? They’re gone for good. And I think there are a lot of people who wish their dead could come back to life.”
Kat shuddered. “Well if this goes wrong and I get killed, I expect you to salt and burn me. Oh, and then call my parents and explain. Because no way in Hell am I going to come back as a creepy murderer.”
They both dozed off on the beach just after four, sprawling on Kat’s blanket with their feet still in the sand. Kat—who had spent most of the day napping anyway—woke up first, just as the sun was going down. “Come on, Cass, rise and shine, let’s go desecrate a grave.”
“Mmmf,” Cassie mumbled, but then she rallied, apparently unwilling to give Kat the satisfaction of being grouchy. She stretched, dug into her pocket, and tossed Kat the keys. “Go on, you drive.”
“Sweet!” Kat said. “A whole five minutes behind the wheel! I love my life. You’ve got a shovel in there somewhere, right? Because I’m not digging this thing up myself.”
+
By the time they got the coffin open, Cassie’s arms and shoulders ached and her hands had blisters and cuts and blood all over them, even with the gloves. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and said, “Okay, let’s burn this thing.”
It was difficult for them to hoist themselves out of the grave; it was deep, and neither of them was particularly tall. “I hate this,” Kat muttered as Cassie yanked her out. “Why did we pick this job? We could be, like, vacationing in Hawaii right now.”
“Because we enjoy saving people, that’s why,” Cassie explained. “Here, dump the salt, I’m going to deal with the whole fire part.”
“Are you still going on about that?” Kat demanded.
Cassie grinned. Admittedly it had only happened once, but Kat had almost set a whole cemetery on fire in Missouri, so Cassie felt justified in keeping her away from matches. “Obviously.”
“That’s totally unfair,” Kat said, but she dumped the salt in and let Cassie handle setting the bones on fire.
“Sorry, kiddo,” she whispered as she dropped the match. “But it’s better, where you’re going. I promise.” Cassie always hated this part the most; with the older corpses she could pretend she wasn’t dealing with a person, but Brian had only been dead a little while and he looked—like a little boy.
Kat looked at her sideways, and Cassie ducked her head a little. “I just feel bad for them. Can you blame him for not wanting to move on?”
“Uh, yeah,” Kat said. “If the choice is move on or kill people, I’m going to go with there’s no excuse for murder.”
“They don’t know where they’re going, though,” Cassie said. “None of us do. It’s scary, moving onto something new. Of course you want to cling to life.”
“It’s not clinging to life,” Kat said. “They’re dead. You can’t cling to life if you’re already dead.”
+
The sun rose as they made their way onto I-95. Cassie hated hanging around in places where graves had been disturbed, and Kat agreed with her: it was too suspicious. The last thing they wanted to do was get arrested for vandalism or something. Kat was driving, because she’d gotten more sleep in the last thirty-six hours. Actually she didn’t mind; Maine was really pretty this time of year, and Cassie had a year’s worth of stories to tell. “So,” Kat said. “This lorelei and Cape Cod and stuff. Talk.” Cassie sighed and shifted in her seat. Kat glanced at her and turned the music down a little. “Come on, talk.”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “You know I hate the whole—fighting and shooting stuff. I can figure out what’s going on and research the shit out of it and tell people where to go and what to do, but I don’t like actually doing it. It terrifies me, Kat. And usually that’s okay—I mean, I have a reputation now, kind of, there are plenty of people who jump if I tell them there’s a ghost. But the lorelei…there wasn’t anyone there, and I didn’t think it could wait. So I just went in after it. And—Kat, it was, like, the grossest thing I have ever seen. There were bodies everywhere, just rotting in the dirt, and there were flies and worms, and it just kept singing.”
Kat shuddered. “Shit, Cass. What did you do? That’s disgusting. Did you shoot it?”
“Of course I shot it!” Cassie said. “And there were a couple people who were still alive, so I got them out and made sure they were okay. But I felt really shitty about it later. It’s not their fault they sing so well, is it?”
“I guess not,” Kat said. She had never had these crises of conscience like Cassie did; she got that there were helpful ghosts—she had met a whole asylum full—but if something was killing people, then you killed it, and that was that. “But you can’t let someone go on singing people to death.”
“That doesn’t make it feel much better,” Cassie said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Cass,” she said. “It was worth it, though, wasn’t it? Were any of the guys extremely grateful again?”
“Oh, my God, stop,” Cassie said. “That does not happen half as much as you think it does.”
“Cassie, every other case we have, you’ve got a guy convinced you’re a superhero for saving him from some kind of undead monster and practically begging you to sleep with him, and I can’t even get a girl to look at me.”
“That does not happen!” Cassie protested, but she was starting to laugh, which had been Kat’s goal all along.
“Sure it doesn’t. Who was that guy last summer in Oak Ridge? What was his name? Bruce? He insisted on taking us out to some hideously expensive place and ordering some really expensive red wine?”
“Um,” Cassie said. “That guy did kind of happen.”
“And the one you emailed me about in March? With the sailboat?”
“That guy also might have happened,” Cassie said, her head in her hands. “Oh, I cannot wait until you manage to find a damsel in distress, I am going to tease you forever.”
+
Their next job took them to an upscale restaurant in Massachusetts. “Ghost of a woman,” Cassie explained as she sipped her crappy drive-through coffee. “The legend goes that she was caught by her husband—a sailor—in their room with her lover, and he killed them both. She’s been haunting the place since at least the eighteen hundreds, but it only turned violent this year. She kills Navy men in the men’s bathroom.”
“Just the bathroom?” Kat asked. “Not…the rest of the place?”
“Apparently the bathroom was her bedroom originally,” Cassie said. “I don’t know why she’s escalated.”
“Okay,” Kat said. “So we find the bones and burn them.”
“It’s…a little more complicated than that,” Cassie said, frowning and scrolling through her notes. “I’ve been looking in all the records, and no record of this woman exists. In fact, no record of anyone who fits this description exists, and I can’t find anyone else with a connection to this place who died suspiciously or had anything to do with the Navy.” Cassie had never, ever struck a complete zero like this. “I’m sorry, Kat.”
“Cass, it’s totally cool,” Kat said. “You’re allowed a brick wall now and then.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” she muttered. “I want answers. Come on, here’s the restaurant, let’s go take a look around or something. Maybe the waiters will know something.”
They took a seat in the corner by a window and ordered a salad to share (“A salad?” Kat demanded. “Are you for real?” “Yes,” Cassie answered testily. “We are going to be healthy. Greens are good for you!”). “Hey,” Cassie said when the waitress brought their drinks. “I heard this place was, like, haunted, but she doesn’t believe me. Is it true? Have you ever seen a ghost?”
The waitress grinned. “Lydia? I’ve seen her once, really late at night. I was closing up, and I just turned around and there was this ghost there. She pointed her finger at me and then she vanished!”
“Woah,” Cassie said. “What did she look like?”
“Transparent,” the waitress explained. “Sort of grey. And she was dressed in, like, Colonial clothes. With one of those white cap things.”
“You aren’t scared to stay here for closing?” Kat broke in.
“Not really,” the waitress said. “Anyway, can I get you anything else? Your salad will be out in a couple minutes.”
“No,” Cassie said, making a mental note of the information they’d gotten. “We’re great, thanks.” She waited until the waitress was out of earshot before turning back to Kat. “Great,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “She didn’t even look at me even though it should be clear I would be the best person to rescue her. God, how come when I was in high school and didn’t even want to date boys they were all over me, but now that I am out and seeking women no one’s interested? Oh, wait, did you mean about the job?”
Cassie couldn’t help laughing, even though she still felt useless. “There wasn’t really any information there. I mean, what if we’re not dealing with an actual spirit? There’s nothing in the historical record, so even if there is a body, how can we find it? We could be dealing with anything.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Kat promised. “Come on, Cassie, we always do.”
+
But after three hours of wandering the deserted restaurant in the middle of the night, they were still clueless. Kat had checked the EMF reader four times, and there was definitely something there, but they couldn’t convince it to show its face.
“I’m out of ideas,” Cassie said finally. “There’s a something in the bathroom and it’s killing people, but I don’t know how else to find it. And I’ve already called everyone I know, and if we don’t know who this is or what to burn, or….”
“Okay,” Kat said. “Come on, let’s go back to the hotel and take a break, okay? We’ll think better in the morning. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“This is awful,” she said. “I feel so useless. Let me check the bathroom one more time, okay? You don’t have to wait.”
“Cass—”
“No, really,” Cassie said. “Go get the car or something?”
Kat hated to agree—she didn’t like splitting up in haunted places, didn’t Cassie watch horror films? But sometimes Cassie got into these moods, and if you couldn’t joke her out of them then it was best to give her some time alone. “Yeah. Okay. Be careful.”
“I will be,” Cassie said. As Kat watched, the bouncing light of her flashlight disappeared down the hallway and turned a corner. Kat folded her arms.
“Stupid,” she muttered. “I don’t appreciate this, Miss Lydia, and let me tell you, when I find you? I am going to burn your bones to freaking ash.”
As if in answer, the temperature dropped about twelve degrees. Kat drew her gun and turned around carefully. “Well, Lydia? Come out, come out, wherever you are. Cassie! Got something! CASSIE! I—”
The hands that grabbed her around the neck and squeezed were cold and disconcertingly solid. Kat kicked and struggled to pry the fingers loose. Come on, she thought, Cassie, come on. How long could a person stay conscious without air? A minute? Two? She angled the gun over her shoulder and fired; no luck.
“Kat, I’m coming!” Cassie’s voice rang out from down the hall as Kat’s vision started to cloud. “Let her go, Lydia!”
The shot rang out just as Kat was about to pass out, and she felt herself crumple to the floor. “God, Cassie, you cut it awfully close,” Kat joked as she stood.
Cassie shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“I did,” came a new voice from behind Cassie. The speaker was skinny, blonde, and extremely pissed. “I’m Emily. You figure out who this ghost is yet?”
Cassie and Kat exchanged a look, and Kat stepped forward, brushing off her jeans as she walked. “Let’s talk outside,” she said.
“After you,” Emily answered.
They all kept one hand on their guns until they were back at the hotel and spread out in their room (even then, Kat had a knife in easy reach and she’d have bet good money that the other two did as well). Kat had one hand on Cassie’s shoulder, but they kept a good two feet away from Emily, who sat stiffly in the only chair. “So you’re hunting this thing too,” Cassie said.
“Clearly.”
“But you haven’t had any more luck than we have.”
Emily shrugged. “Nothing in the records to indicate who I’m supposed to burn.”
“Right,” Cassie said. “So. If we can’t burn the bones, can we burn something else? I’ve called everyone I know and I got nothing.”
“I might know someone,” Kat said. She didn’t have a list of contacts, like Cassie; she worked alone during the year and had never sent someone else a case file. In fact, the only other hunters she knew by anything other than reputation were the boys who had first introduced her to ghosts. She felt a little stupid calling them for advice now, but they needed help. “Two someones, actually. Should I try them?”
“Please do,” Cassie said. “Any direction would be fantastic.”
Kat flipped through her phone to Sam’s number and hit send. “They’re two brothers,” she explained as it dialed. “But, uh, apparently this one isn’t in service.” Freaking hunters. “Would it kill people to update their phone numbers?”
“You don’t mean the Winchesters, do you?” Emily asked. “Because the number I have for them might work.”
“Go ahead,” Kat said when Cassie didn’t answer. “Maybe you’ll have better luck. I mean, how are we supposed to share information if everyone goes underground? This is dumb.”
“Dumb is one word for it,” Emily said, the phone against her ear. “But apparently no one told them, because this number is disconnected too.”
Cassie shifted away from Kat and said, “Winchester? Dean’s number is in my phone. Call if you want.” Her voice sounded a little strained, and she handed Kat her phone with more force than Kat thought was necessary.
Kat eyed her in concern. “I…okay.” She decided not to ask the obvious questions, like why Cassie hadn’t called him in the first place, and why this number had any chance of being connected. “I’ll just…call him, then.”
The phone rang once, and then someone picked up on the other end. “Cassie? Sammy, turn that down. Cassie?”
“Um,” Kat said. “Sorry, this is Cassie’s phone but not Cassie, and we need some advice.” She kept an eye on Cassie as she scribbled Dean’s suggestions onto the back of a paper napkin. Cassie was looking intently at the carpet behind her, although Emily—Kat made a mental note to have Cassie get some references—was watching Kat and absently polishing a knife. “Yeah, got it,” she said, when Dean had run out of steam. “Thanks.”
“Tell Cassie—” he started, and then checked himself. “Yeah. Well. Be careful.”
“We will,” Kat promised. “We always are.”
“Did he have anything useful?” Emily asked as soon as Kat hung up.
“He had an idea,” Kat said. “He said it wasn’t one hundred percent, but if there’s an object associated with the myth—like the bed where she was caught or something—that might be enough to get rid of the spirit. And he said it might not actually be a spirit? It’s possible that the belief in the ghost led to her popping up and murdering people, in which case we have to hope that the ghost believes it can’t live without the object.”
“Assuming we can find an object,” Emily said. “I didn’t see anything at the restaurant.”
“No,” Cassie said slowly, “but there was something mentioned in a footnote in one of the books I checked out of the public library. A painting—a portrait, I think? It was at the historical society as of about 1987.” Her voice was starting to sound like normal, Kat noted in relief.
“Great,” said Emily. “Let’s sneak in and burn it up.”
“Right,” Kat said. “And who are you exactly? Forgive us if we’re a little skeptical of a stranger asking to help us break the law. How did you get into this?”
“The Winchesters,” Emily said. She didn’t sound particularly happy about it. “My aunt and uncle tried to sacrifice me to a pagan scarecrow god, so now I hunt. Only usually by myself. You guys?”
“Uh,” Kat said. Kat was very close to her family (even if she was keeping a few secrets about exactly what it was she did with her time).“That sucks, I’m sorry.” She hesitated. “Sam and Dean saved my life too. My idiot high school boyfriend took me on a date in a haunted insane asylum.”
“Well, if we’re done with this,” Cassie said. “I think we should go break into the historical society tomorrow. These places are never open on Mondays. You want to meet us at eight, Emily?”
“Sure,” Emily said after a moment. “I’ll be in the lobby.”
“Great,” Cassie said, and then there was something of an awkward silence until Kat said, “Well, good night,” and Emily let herself out.
Kat waited for Cassie to say something else, but after thirty seconds she gave up. “Why’d you ask her to come? We don’t know anything about her!”
“We know she’s a good shot,” Cassie said quietly. “You could have been killed back there, Kat.”
“Is that what this is about? You think I’m going to get killed without her? Cassie, you’ve got my back. You would have gotten that ghost. I don’t need anyone else.”
“I almost didn’t, Kat. And I’m sorry. I should have been there.”
“Cassie! I hunt by myself during the school year. I am the—the muscle to your brains. You figure out who the bad guys are and I shoot them. You don’t have to protect me. And Emily is a creepster.”
“Yeah, I do,” Cassie said. “She’s coming tomorrow, Kat.”
Kat sighed and went to brush her teeth. There wasn’t much use arguing with Cassie—there never was—but she didn’t trust Emily much. And also, Emily was kind of cute and kind of Kat’s type (except for the way she had saved Kat’s life, which was just embarrassing), so this was going to be distracting.
“Hey,” she called. “How’d you get that number, anyway? He answered pretty fast.”
“I knew Dean,” Cassie said briefly, and when Kat got out of the bathroom the light was off and she seemed to be asleep.
+
Cassie drove to the historical society the next morning with more speed than was strictly necessary. “Cass?” Kat asked as they pulled into the parking lot, but Cassie flicked off her blinker with a little too much force and Kat went quiet again. In a bigger town, they might have waited until nightfall to sneak in, but this building was very small and located on a deserted stretch of wooded riverbank; there was no one around to watch, and anyone who happened to see them on the lawn would assume they were picnicking.
“Let’s go,” Cassie snapped. “Emily, how good are you at locks?”
“Decent,” Emily said. When she stepped out of the car, Cassie could see the hilt of a knife under her jacket.
“Go ahead, then,” Cassie told her.
They had a cursory description of the painting, courtesy of an old library book. “Okay,” Cassie said once they were inside. “So this is kind of a long shot, but we’re looking for a painting of two people—a woman and a small child—that looks like it’s been slashed over the girl’s face. It might be in storage but frankly this place doesn’t look big enough to have storage.”
“I’ll take the closet,” Emily said.
“There’s a back room,” Kat said. “I’m on it.”
That left Cassie to examine the main room and keep an eye on the windows. There were paintings on the walls, and some were stacked three deep against old furniture. While the place was clean, it felt like the air hadn’t been disturbed in months. Cassie felt a little awkward as she shifted through the paintings, checking each of them against the description. She found pictures of old white men in wigs, and landscapes, and faded maps with spidery lettering, but no Lydia. “Come on, Lydia,” she whispered. “I know you’re here, we don’t have anywhere else to look.”
“Got something!” Kat called. Cassie made her way to the back room of the building. Emily was already standing in the doorway, hands on her hips.
“Well, let’s see it,” she said.
“Woman, child, slash marks,” Kat said, turning the portrait around. “Voila.”
“Great,” Emily said. “Let’s take this thing outside and get rid of it.”
Kat held the frame steady while Cassie worked the canvas out. Cassie was half expecting to find something else inside the frame—blood or hair or something equally creepy—but there was just the painting, and it rolled up easily once she’d gotten it out.
They burned the painting in the woods, a quarter mile from the building. Emily built the fire and Kat put the canvas on top of the pine cones and dry tinder. “I hope this takes care of it,” Cassie said, and touched the match to a corner of the painting.
+
Kat drove and let Cassie deal with the radio while they talked about other jobs. Emily seemed willing enough to lean forward and contribute when they were talking about things to kill (“Anything that should be dead, or used to be dead, or is dead but isn’t acting like it”) and ways to kill them (“Fire”), but once the conversation turned away from business she sat back and pulled out an iPod. “I don’t know about this girl,” Kat said. “She’s terrifying.”
“She’s angry,” Cassie agreed. “But she was a good shot, wasn’t she?”
“About that,” Kat said, glancing at her and swallowing. “Look, I said it before but I’m going to say it again: you’d have been able to shoot it. I would have been fine without her.”
Cassie shook her head. “But I didn’t, did I? She did. We talked about this. I’m not like you, kiddo, I don’t do the guns thing very well. I think you—we—would be safer with someone else to do the saving-the-world bit.”
“You save the world,” Kat protested. “Isn’t it enough, just the two of us? You to do the puzzles and me to do the shooting?”
“I think it would be good to have someone else,” Cassie said. “Another set of eyes. And knives. She could use a ride, and we could use her.”
“I guess,” Kat said. She didn’t believe it for a second. She and Cassie were the world’s greatest duo; they didn’t need a third. “She’s not going to go along with it.”
“We’ll see,” Cassie said. Kat turned up the radio. “I mean it, Kat. I think we need to stick together. And I don’t like the idea of letting her go off by herself. You know as well as I do that most spirits go after petite blonde women.”
“Oh, all right,” Kat said. “We can talk about it over pizza or something later. God, when did you turn into a responsible grown-up?”
“When I looked around and realized I was the oldest person here,” Cassie said. “Since you’re a naïve coed.”
“Oh, whatever,” Kat said. “Tell me when you want to stop.”
It turned out there wasn’t much on the road until a few hours out of town (Cassie refused point-blank to stop at McDonald’s, even though Kat was craving fries), so Kat was starving by the time she pulled into a pub just off the highway. “Let’s do dinner early,” she said.
“It’s barely four,” Emily said.
“So, really early. Come on,” Kat said, “it’ll be fun. Cassie’ll pay.”
“Hey!”
“I got it,” Emily said, looking uncomfortable. “For the ride and stuff.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Cassie was saying as Kat opened the door and ushered them in. “We appreciated your help.”
“Sit anywhere you like,” the waitress said. Kat looked her up and down. She was small and blonde and really, really pretty, and also she clearly worked out.
The waitress looked back.
“Did you see that?” Kat hissed as they took their seats. “Cassie, I think she winked at me.”
“Um,” Emily said, looking from Kat to the waitress and back again. “You don’t have to keep driving me places. I can manage alone.”
“Doesn’t mean you ought to,” Cassie said evenly. “Hunting’s dangerous.”
“Yeah,” Kat agreed. The waitress kept stealing glances her way, and Kat was in the mood to be generous. “We can divide up the work. You know, Cassie can do the research and find the suspicious ghostly pattern, I can shoot things with my eyes shut, and you—”
“Can save your asses when needed?” Emily finished. “Yeah, okay.”
It wasn’t the kind of acceptance Kat had been hoping for—she was looking for some enthusiasm, maybe, or possibly a no-thank-you—but maybe Cassie was right, and they could use another person. “You have to do your share of driving, though,” Kat added. “And no getting arrested.”
“Take your orders for drinks, ladies?”
“Emily?” Cassie asked. “What do you think?”
“Yeah,” Emily said to both of them, and then—to the waitress—“Could I get an iced tea, please?”
“That sounds good,” Cassie said.
“Why not, I’ll take one too,” Kat said with a smile.
“Be back in a sec,” the waitress said, slapping silverware and napkins onto the table before winking at Kat (that made twice!) and sauntering off. Kat turned her napkin over in her hands and then unfolded it. On it was written Jo, 203 555 9244, call me.
“Hey,” Cassie said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“No,” Kat said quickly, stuffing the napkin into her pocket. “No, it’s not.”
“Ha!” Cassie said. “I knew it. I am never, ever going to let you live this one down.”
“Live…what down?” Emily asked.
Cassie flashed what Kat considered to be her most dangerous grin. “Let me tell you,” she said, “about Kat and girls.”
Author:
animus_wyrmisFandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG
Warnings: some violence, some language
Prompt: 147: I hate wars and violence, but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas. -- Nancy Wake
Summary: Cassie and Kat embark on their annual summer hunting trip and meet another hunter.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to
ill_ame and mercuryblue144 for betaing and hand-holding. All remaining mistakes are entirely mine and probably due to taking so long on this.According to Google maps, it was 1033 miles from Dartmouth to Rockford. That was seventeen hours and thirty-seven minutes if you went directly, but Kat never went directly. She also never went alone, partly because that was too far to drive without someone to talk to but mostly because she didn’t have a car.
She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and shifted away from creepy stain on her mattress. Kat’s extremely soft sheets with extremely comforting sigils embroidered on them (they kept away the monsters) had been packed up earlier that day, along with everything else she owned. Most of it went into six plastic crates she kept for this purpose (she left them with her aunt over the summers), and the rest she’d crammed into two duffel bags and a backpack. Her bags were currently sitting on her newly-vacuumed floor, with dumb last minute things like toothpaste on the desk and her computer in her lap, Cassie’s latest email on the screen:
Hey Kat!
Figured I’d use the free wifi to let you know I’m near the CT river and I’ll be there to get you in the morning. Figured we could go up to Maine for a couple days? There’s a ghost up by Canada killing people via freak thunderstorms or something. I attached all the relevant info and color-coded it and there’s even a pie chart, and if you laugh so help me God I’ll make you face it all by yourself and that is a promise.
Hope your exams went okay? I know I haven’t been emailing much, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you. There was a lorelei on Cape Cod and, I don’t know, you know I hate dealing with this sort of thing by myself. So I sort of got all maudlin about it and stopped emailing people like I was supposed to.
See you in the morning!
Xoxo
Cassie
She snickered a little—that sounded like Cassie—and shifted the computer onto the bed. Kat knew she ought to email her and make sure Cassie knew not to show up too early, but packing had been really tiring and she was exhausted. Maybe she’d take a five-minute catnap and answer when she was more awake.
The sun had just come up when Kat uncurled herself from her keyboard—God, she was going to be so sore later—and tried to figure out what was making the ungodly racket near her door.
“Kat!” someone yelled, followed by what sounded like a sledgehammer knocking at the door. “Kat! Wake up! I haven’t had breakfast so we need to get moving!”
It took Kat a few moments to recognize Cassie’s voice, and then a few more before she could roll off the bed and make her way to the door. “Ugh,” she managed. “Why are you here? Did you sneak in? What time is it? Is the sun even up?”
“Yes,” Cassie said. “You all set with the packing and the cleaning and the checking out? Hand me a bag.”
Kat sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “Five minutes. Let me get dressed and brush my teeth. Did you bring coffee or something? Oh, my God, it’s six in the morning. I cannot believe this.”
“Six-fifteen,” Cassie corrected. “If you don’t get up early the whole day will pass you by. Let’s go.”
She groaned and stumbled into her jeans and a bra. “Are you going to change your shirt?” Cassie asked, a little pointedly.
“No,” Kat said. “It’s practically dawn and I really like this nightshirt. Also, I think my clean shirts are in the bottom of my bag somewhere. Are you for real? You couldn’t have waited until normal people were up? You’re carrying the heaviest bags, just for this.”
It took some time to get Kat’s bags into the trunk of Cassie’s car, because Cassie travelled with a full arsenal of anti-monster weaponry: guns, bullets, knives, salt, holy water, stakes, lighter fluid, and two lighters. Kat added a collection of knives that she should probably have been taking better care of (she never brought her guns to school; that was an expulsion waiting to happen), more holy water, more lighter fluid, a shovel, two boxes of waterproof matches, and a small box of religious paraphernalia.
There wasn’t much room in the trunk around their extremely well-concealed weapons, which was why Kat had learned to pack light. She didn’t mind much; she had realized the first time they teamed up just how little she actually needed to bring with her. The worst part had been the books, the first summer, and Cassie’s portable file cabinet. Then Cassie had gone digital with their research and cases, and that freed up a lot of space.
“So,” Cassie said as soon as they were ready to go. “Breakfast? We can drive for a bit and then stop somewhere.”
“Are you driving?” Kat asked, stifling a yawn.
“Yeah, sure,” Cassie said. “If you’re going to fall asleep on me.”
+
Cassie drove for two hours while Kat snored in the passenger seat. At first she tried to keep the music down, but after thirty minutes Cassie remembered just how soundly Kat could sleep and cranked “Traveling Riverside Blues” back up.
By nine o’clock she had been up four hours, and the leftover half of a blueberry muffin she’d eaten at the hotel in Vermont was a long, long time ago. She kept one eye on the exit signs and got off the highway at the first Cracker Barrel she saw (Kat didn’t really like Cracker Barrel—she said it was too cutesy—but the food was good and so were the prices, and frankly, people who decided to sleep all day didn’t get to pick where they ate). “Rise and shine, kiddo,” she said when she pulled into the parking lot. “Time for breakfast.”
“Ugh,” Kat said. She always sounded confused when she first woke up. “Where are we?”
“Breakfast,” Cassie repeated. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes,” Kat said. “I’m starving. I didn’t get anything to eat because some loser woke me up at six in the morning.”
Cassie just grinned and unbuckled her seatbelt. She didn’t bother to wait for Kat to untangle herself from her blanket and seatbelt, put her shoes back on (when had she taken those off, exactly?), and adjust her t-shirt; Cassie just got out of the car and shut the door behind her, tilting her face up to the sun. It was another four hours to their lightning-striking ghost, maybe. “You coming, Kat?”
“Yeah!” Kat yelled, before practically falling out of the car. “Come on, Cass, I’m starved.”
Cassie wasn’t sure when they’d started using nicknames. Kat had always, always been Kat—well, with a name like Kathleen Cassie couldn’t really blame her—but Cassie hadn’t started out as Cass. Maybe she’d turned into Cass about the time she’d started calling Kat kiddo, which was around the first time they’d taken on a demon. They’d been in North Carolina, looking into a series of murders they thought were typical ghost work, but when they’d cornered the killer Kat had said, “I think it’s a demon. Black eyes, right?”
“Sure,” Cassie had said, because mostly Cassie dealt with research, back then; she put files together and let someone else do the illegal and/or dangerous parts, and that meant she was able to pick her cases, and she stuck to ghosts and ghost objects. “If you say so.”
“Are you two for real?” the demon had asked with a mocking laugh. Cassie was caught between terror and offense, but then Kat had distracted it with some salt and Cassie had dumped about a gallon of holy water on its face and drawn a couple of symbols out in chalk on the floor.
“I’ve got the rite!” Kat cried. “Do you think it matters if it’s Church Latin or regular Latin?”
“There’s a difference?” Cassie asked; she’d only ever learned living languages.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you are real,” said the demon.
It hadn’t been easy or fast, but they had managed to get the demon out of the man and he had even survived (and, Cassie discovered later, he was surprisingly understanding about his experience, and a pretty good kisser to make up for the fact that his body had almost killed her). Kat and Cassie counted it as a victory and gone out for pizza, and after that Kat was kiddo and they were a team.
“Cass?” Kat asked, shaking Cassie out of her memories. “You still here? Come on, let’s get like a triple order of bacon.”
“Triple bacon?” Cassie repeated. “Seriously, Kat?”
“It’s good for you,” Kat claimed. “It keeps you awake on the days some people wake you up at ungodly hours without coffee.”
In the end, Cassie wound up with eggs and OJ, and Kat wound up with blueberry pancakes (“Uh, wild Maine blueberry pancakes, Cassie, it’s like fate”), extra bacon, and two cups of coffee. “So talk to me about this thunderstorm thing,” Kat said around a mouthful of pancake. “Do you want a bite?”
“No,” Cassie said, “I’m good. Uh, my stuff’s in the car”—she was anxious about leaving her laptop in the car, but she was even more anxious about bringing it into a restaurant, where there would be children and liquids and things with sugar in them—“so the details might not all be right. But essentially, small town, nice people, and half a dozen of them have been killed by lightning strikes near a campsite, only, you know, no thunderstorms. I did some preliminary research and I think we’re dealing with the ghost of Brian O’Connor, who died about a two years ago on a camping trip with his uncle.”
“Let me guess,” Kat broke in. “Did he die of a lightning strike due to his uncle’s negligence? God, I wish ghosts would get more creative.”
“Then they would be harder to spot,” Cassie said. “They buried him, so we should just dig him up and set him on fire, I guess.”
“Digging graves is lot of work,” Kat protested. “I’m going to need another order of bacon.”
“You are going to destroy your arteries,” Cassie warned. “And then have a heart attack and die.”
“No, I am going to kick some ghostly ass,” Kat said. “And if we’re going to be in Maine, can we get lobster?”
+
Kat ordered the town’s cheapest lobster for lunch. That was the worst thing about this job: she always spent too much damn money on motels and food. It wasn’t so bad for Cassie, who had some sort of Haunted America newspaper column and, tentatively, a book deal, and would therefore get reimbursed for some of her expenses. But for Kat, it meant delving into savings or working odd jobs under the table, and she needed money for school, too.
After they ate, the two of them explored the town cemetery and found their grave. With that done, they drove to the beach to kill some time, kicked off their shoes, and waded in the water. “This is going to be awful,” Kat said. “Why can’t people just cremate their dead with salt or something?”
“Same reason they still think it’s a good idea to sell their souls, I guess,” Cassie answered.
“Being stupid is not an excuse,” Kat muttered. It wasn’t that she minded, exactly—you couldn’t blame people for things they didn’t know anything about—but sometimes this hunting thing felt like emptying a well with a teaspoon. Everywhere they went, everyone they saved, everything they killed—there was always another case out there.
“Maybe they do know,” Cassie said. “You ever think about that?”
“That makes no sense.” Kat considered herself to be a good example of an average, normal person, and the last thing she would want for a loved one was to see her again as a vengeful spirit.
“Sure it does. Maybe, deep down, people do know what stops a spirit from coming back. And then, I don’t know, they don’t want to do that. Because where do they go after, right? They’re gone for good. And I think there are a lot of people who wish their dead could come back to life.”
Kat shuddered. “Well if this goes wrong and I get killed, I expect you to salt and burn me. Oh, and then call my parents and explain. Because no way in Hell am I going to come back as a creepy murderer.”
They both dozed off on the beach just after four, sprawling on Kat’s blanket with their feet still in the sand. Kat—who had spent most of the day napping anyway—woke up first, just as the sun was going down. “Come on, Cass, rise and shine, let’s go desecrate a grave.”
“Mmmf,” Cassie mumbled, but then she rallied, apparently unwilling to give Kat the satisfaction of being grouchy. She stretched, dug into her pocket, and tossed Kat the keys. “Go on, you drive.”
“Sweet!” Kat said. “A whole five minutes behind the wheel! I love my life. You’ve got a shovel in there somewhere, right? Because I’m not digging this thing up myself.”
+
By the time they got the coffin open, Cassie’s arms and shoulders ached and her hands had blisters and cuts and blood all over them, even with the gloves. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and said, “Okay, let’s burn this thing.”
It was difficult for them to hoist themselves out of the grave; it was deep, and neither of them was particularly tall. “I hate this,” Kat muttered as Cassie yanked her out. “Why did we pick this job? We could be, like, vacationing in Hawaii right now.”
“Because we enjoy saving people, that’s why,” Cassie explained. “Here, dump the salt, I’m going to deal with the whole fire part.”
“Are you still going on about that?” Kat demanded.
Cassie grinned. Admittedly it had only happened once, but Kat had almost set a whole cemetery on fire in Missouri, so Cassie felt justified in keeping her away from matches. “Obviously.”
“That’s totally unfair,” Kat said, but she dumped the salt in and let Cassie handle setting the bones on fire.
“Sorry, kiddo,” she whispered as she dropped the match. “But it’s better, where you’re going. I promise.” Cassie always hated this part the most; with the older corpses she could pretend she wasn’t dealing with a person, but Brian had only been dead a little while and he looked—like a little boy.
Kat looked at her sideways, and Cassie ducked her head a little. “I just feel bad for them. Can you blame him for not wanting to move on?”
“Uh, yeah,” Kat said. “If the choice is move on or kill people, I’m going to go with there’s no excuse for murder.”
“They don’t know where they’re going, though,” Cassie said. “None of us do. It’s scary, moving onto something new. Of course you want to cling to life.”
“It’s not clinging to life,” Kat said. “They’re dead. You can’t cling to life if you’re already dead.”
+
The sun rose as they made their way onto I-95. Cassie hated hanging around in places where graves had been disturbed, and Kat agreed with her: it was too suspicious. The last thing they wanted to do was get arrested for vandalism or something. Kat was driving, because she’d gotten more sleep in the last thirty-six hours. Actually she didn’t mind; Maine was really pretty this time of year, and Cassie had a year’s worth of stories to tell. “So,” Kat said. “This lorelei and Cape Cod and stuff. Talk.” Cassie sighed and shifted in her seat. Kat glanced at her and turned the music down a little. “Come on, talk.”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “You know I hate the whole—fighting and shooting stuff. I can figure out what’s going on and research the shit out of it and tell people where to go and what to do, but I don’t like actually doing it. It terrifies me, Kat. And usually that’s okay—I mean, I have a reputation now, kind of, there are plenty of people who jump if I tell them there’s a ghost. But the lorelei…there wasn’t anyone there, and I didn’t think it could wait. So I just went in after it. And—Kat, it was, like, the grossest thing I have ever seen. There were bodies everywhere, just rotting in the dirt, and there were flies and worms, and it just kept singing.”
Kat shuddered. “Shit, Cass. What did you do? That’s disgusting. Did you shoot it?”
“Of course I shot it!” Cassie said. “And there were a couple people who were still alive, so I got them out and made sure they were okay. But I felt really shitty about it later. It’s not their fault they sing so well, is it?”
“I guess not,” Kat said. She had never had these crises of conscience like Cassie did; she got that there were helpful ghosts—she had met a whole asylum full—but if something was killing people, then you killed it, and that was that. “But you can’t let someone go on singing people to death.”
“That doesn’t make it feel much better,” Cassie said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Cass,” she said. “It was worth it, though, wasn’t it? Were any of the guys extremely grateful again?”
“Oh, my God, stop,” Cassie said. “That does not happen half as much as you think it does.”
“Cassie, every other case we have, you’ve got a guy convinced you’re a superhero for saving him from some kind of undead monster and practically begging you to sleep with him, and I can’t even get a girl to look at me.”
“That does not happen!” Cassie protested, but she was starting to laugh, which had been Kat’s goal all along.
“Sure it doesn’t. Who was that guy last summer in Oak Ridge? What was his name? Bruce? He insisted on taking us out to some hideously expensive place and ordering some really expensive red wine?”
“Um,” Cassie said. “That guy did kind of happen.”
“And the one you emailed me about in March? With the sailboat?”
“That guy also might have happened,” Cassie said, her head in her hands. “Oh, I cannot wait until you manage to find a damsel in distress, I am going to tease you forever.”
+
Their next job took them to an upscale restaurant in Massachusetts. “Ghost of a woman,” Cassie explained as she sipped her crappy drive-through coffee. “The legend goes that she was caught by her husband—a sailor—in their room with her lover, and he killed them both. She’s been haunting the place since at least the eighteen hundreds, but it only turned violent this year. She kills Navy men in the men’s bathroom.”
“Just the bathroom?” Kat asked. “Not…the rest of the place?”
“Apparently the bathroom was her bedroom originally,” Cassie said. “I don’t know why she’s escalated.”
“Okay,” Kat said. “So we find the bones and burn them.”
“It’s…a little more complicated than that,” Cassie said, frowning and scrolling through her notes. “I’ve been looking in all the records, and no record of this woman exists. In fact, no record of anyone who fits this description exists, and I can’t find anyone else with a connection to this place who died suspiciously or had anything to do with the Navy.” Cassie had never, ever struck a complete zero like this. “I’m sorry, Kat.”
“Cass, it’s totally cool,” Kat said. “You’re allowed a brick wall now and then.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” she muttered. “I want answers. Come on, here’s the restaurant, let’s go take a look around or something. Maybe the waiters will know something.”
They took a seat in the corner by a window and ordered a salad to share (“A salad?” Kat demanded. “Are you for real?” “Yes,” Cassie answered testily. “We are going to be healthy. Greens are good for you!”). “Hey,” Cassie said when the waitress brought their drinks. “I heard this place was, like, haunted, but she doesn’t believe me. Is it true? Have you ever seen a ghost?”
The waitress grinned. “Lydia? I’ve seen her once, really late at night. I was closing up, and I just turned around and there was this ghost there. She pointed her finger at me and then she vanished!”
“Woah,” Cassie said. “What did she look like?”
“Transparent,” the waitress explained. “Sort of grey. And she was dressed in, like, Colonial clothes. With one of those white cap things.”
“You aren’t scared to stay here for closing?” Kat broke in.
“Not really,” the waitress said. “Anyway, can I get you anything else? Your salad will be out in a couple minutes.”
“No,” Cassie said, making a mental note of the information they’d gotten. “We’re great, thanks.” She waited until the waitress was out of earshot before turning back to Kat. “Great,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “She didn’t even look at me even though it should be clear I would be the best person to rescue her. God, how come when I was in high school and didn’t even want to date boys they were all over me, but now that I am out and seeking women no one’s interested? Oh, wait, did you mean about the job?”
Cassie couldn’t help laughing, even though she still felt useless. “There wasn’t really any information there. I mean, what if we’re not dealing with an actual spirit? There’s nothing in the historical record, so even if there is a body, how can we find it? We could be dealing with anything.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Kat promised. “Come on, Cassie, we always do.”
+
But after three hours of wandering the deserted restaurant in the middle of the night, they were still clueless. Kat had checked the EMF reader four times, and there was definitely something there, but they couldn’t convince it to show its face.
“I’m out of ideas,” Cassie said finally. “There’s a something in the bathroom and it’s killing people, but I don’t know how else to find it. And I’ve already called everyone I know, and if we don’t know who this is or what to burn, or….”
“Okay,” Kat said. “Come on, let’s go back to the hotel and take a break, okay? We’ll think better in the morning. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“This is awful,” she said. “I feel so useless. Let me check the bathroom one more time, okay? You don’t have to wait.”
“Cass—”
“No, really,” Cassie said. “Go get the car or something?”
Kat hated to agree—she didn’t like splitting up in haunted places, didn’t Cassie watch horror films? But sometimes Cassie got into these moods, and if you couldn’t joke her out of them then it was best to give her some time alone. “Yeah. Okay. Be careful.”
“I will be,” Cassie said. As Kat watched, the bouncing light of her flashlight disappeared down the hallway and turned a corner. Kat folded her arms.
“Stupid,” she muttered. “I don’t appreciate this, Miss Lydia, and let me tell you, when I find you? I am going to burn your bones to freaking ash.”
As if in answer, the temperature dropped about twelve degrees. Kat drew her gun and turned around carefully. “Well, Lydia? Come out, come out, wherever you are. Cassie! Got something! CASSIE! I—”
The hands that grabbed her around the neck and squeezed were cold and disconcertingly solid. Kat kicked and struggled to pry the fingers loose. Come on, she thought, Cassie, come on. How long could a person stay conscious without air? A minute? Two? She angled the gun over her shoulder and fired; no luck.
“Kat, I’m coming!” Cassie’s voice rang out from down the hall as Kat’s vision started to cloud. “Let her go, Lydia!”
The shot rang out just as Kat was about to pass out, and she felt herself crumple to the floor. “God, Cassie, you cut it awfully close,” Kat joked as she stood.
Cassie shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“I did,” came a new voice from behind Cassie. The speaker was skinny, blonde, and extremely pissed. “I’m Emily. You figure out who this ghost is yet?”
Cassie and Kat exchanged a look, and Kat stepped forward, brushing off her jeans as she walked. “Let’s talk outside,” she said.
“After you,” Emily answered.
They all kept one hand on their guns until they were back at the hotel and spread out in their room (even then, Kat had a knife in easy reach and she’d have bet good money that the other two did as well). Kat had one hand on Cassie’s shoulder, but they kept a good two feet away from Emily, who sat stiffly in the only chair. “So you’re hunting this thing too,” Cassie said.
“Clearly.”
“But you haven’t had any more luck than we have.”
Emily shrugged. “Nothing in the records to indicate who I’m supposed to burn.”
“Right,” Cassie said. “So. If we can’t burn the bones, can we burn something else? I’ve called everyone I know and I got nothing.”
“I might know someone,” Kat said. She didn’t have a list of contacts, like Cassie; she worked alone during the year and had never sent someone else a case file. In fact, the only other hunters she knew by anything other than reputation were the boys who had first introduced her to ghosts. She felt a little stupid calling them for advice now, but they needed help. “Two someones, actually. Should I try them?”
“Please do,” Cassie said. “Any direction would be fantastic.”
Kat flipped through her phone to Sam’s number and hit send. “They’re two brothers,” she explained as it dialed. “But, uh, apparently this one isn’t in service.” Freaking hunters. “Would it kill people to update their phone numbers?”
“You don’t mean the Winchesters, do you?” Emily asked. “Because the number I have for them might work.”
“Go ahead,” Kat said when Cassie didn’t answer. “Maybe you’ll have better luck. I mean, how are we supposed to share information if everyone goes underground? This is dumb.”
“Dumb is one word for it,” Emily said, the phone against her ear. “But apparently no one told them, because this number is disconnected too.”
Cassie shifted away from Kat and said, “Winchester? Dean’s number is in my phone. Call if you want.” Her voice sounded a little strained, and she handed Kat her phone with more force than Kat thought was necessary.
Kat eyed her in concern. “I…okay.” She decided not to ask the obvious questions, like why Cassie hadn’t called him in the first place, and why this number had any chance of being connected. “I’ll just…call him, then.”
The phone rang once, and then someone picked up on the other end. “Cassie? Sammy, turn that down. Cassie?”
“Um,” Kat said. “Sorry, this is Cassie’s phone but not Cassie, and we need some advice.” She kept an eye on Cassie as she scribbled Dean’s suggestions onto the back of a paper napkin. Cassie was looking intently at the carpet behind her, although Emily—Kat made a mental note to have Cassie get some references—was watching Kat and absently polishing a knife. “Yeah, got it,” she said, when Dean had run out of steam. “Thanks.”
“Tell Cassie—” he started, and then checked himself. “Yeah. Well. Be careful.”
“We will,” Kat promised. “We always are.”
“Did he have anything useful?” Emily asked as soon as Kat hung up.
“He had an idea,” Kat said. “He said it wasn’t one hundred percent, but if there’s an object associated with the myth—like the bed where she was caught or something—that might be enough to get rid of the spirit. And he said it might not actually be a spirit? It’s possible that the belief in the ghost led to her popping up and murdering people, in which case we have to hope that the ghost believes it can’t live without the object.”
“Assuming we can find an object,” Emily said. “I didn’t see anything at the restaurant.”
“No,” Cassie said slowly, “but there was something mentioned in a footnote in one of the books I checked out of the public library. A painting—a portrait, I think? It was at the historical society as of about 1987.” Her voice was starting to sound like normal, Kat noted in relief.
“Great,” said Emily. “Let’s sneak in and burn it up.”
“Right,” Kat said. “And who are you exactly? Forgive us if we’re a little skeptical of a stranger asking to help us break the law. How did you get into this?”
“The Winchesters,” Emily said. She didn’t sound particularly happy about it. “My aunt and uncle tried to sacrifice me to a pagan scarecrow god, so now I hunt. Only usually by myself. You guys?”
“Uh,” Kat said. Kat was very close to her family (even if she was keeping a few secrets about exactly what it was she did with her time).“That sucks, I’m sorry.” She hesitated. “Sam and Dean saved my life too. My idiot high school boyfriend took me on a date in a haunted insane asylum.”
“Well, if we’re done with this,” Cassie said. “I think we should go break into the historical society tomorrow. These places are never open on Mondays. You want to meet us at eight, Emily?”
“Sure,” Emily said after a moment. “I’ll be in the lobby.”
“Great,” Cassie said, and then there was something of an awkward silence until Kat said, “Well, good night,” and Emily let herself out.
Kat waited for Cassie to say something else, but after thirty seconds she gave up. “Why’d you ask her to come? We don’t know anything about her!”
“We know she’s a good shot,” Cassie said quietly. “You could have been killed back there, Kat.”
“Is that what this is about? You think I’m going to get killed without her? Cassie, you’ve got my back. You would have gotten that ghost. I don’t need anyone else.”
“I almost didn’t, Kat. And I’m sorry. I should have been there.”
“Cassie! I hunt by myself during the school year. I am the—the muscle to your brains. You figure out who the bad guys are and I shoot them. You don’t have to protect me. And Emily is a creepster.”
“Yeah, I do,” Cassie said. “She’s coming tomorrow, Kat.”
Kat sighed and went to brush her teeth. There wasn’t much use arguing with Cassie—there never was—but she didn’t trust Emily much. And also, Emily was kind of cute and kind of Kat’s type (except for the way she had saved Kat’s life, which was just embarrassing), so this was going to be distracting.
“Hey,” she called. “How’d you get that number, anyway? He answered pretty fast.”
“I knew Dean,” Cassie said briefly, and when Kat got out of the bathroom the light was off and she seemed to be asleep.
+
Cassie drove to the historical society the next morning with more speed than was strictly necessary. “Cass?” Kat asked as they pulled into the parking lot, but Cassie flicked off her blinker with a little too much force and Kat went quiet again. In a bigger town, they might have waited until nightfall to sneak in, but this building was very small and located on a deserted stretch of wooded riverbank; there was no one around to watch, and anyone who happened to see them on the lawn would assume they were picnicking.
“Let’s go,” Cassie snapped. “Emily, how good are you at locks?”
“Decent,” Emily said. When she stepped out of the car, Cassie could see the hilt of a knife under her jacket.
“Go ahead, then,” Cassie told her.
They had a cursory description of the painting, courtesy of an old library book. “Okay,” Cassie said once they were inside. “So this is kind of a long shot, but we’re looking for a painting of two people—a woman and a small child—that looks like it’s been slashed over the girl’s face. It might be in storage but frankly this place doesn’t look big enough to have storage.”
“I’ll take the closet,” Emily said.
“There’s a back room,” Kat said. “I’m on it.”
That left Cassie to examine the main room and keep an eye on the windows. There were paintings on the walls, and some were stacked three deep against old furniture. While the place was clean, it felt like the air hadn’t been disturbed in months. Cassie felt a little awkward as she shifted through the paintings, checking each of them against the description. She found pictures of old white men in wigs, and landscapes, and faded maps with spidery lettering, but no Lydia. “Come on, Lydia,” she whispered. “I know you’re here, we don’t have anywhere else to look.”
“Got something!” Kat called. Cassie made her way to the back room of the building. Emily was already standing in the doorway, hands on her hips.
“Well, let’s see it,” she said.
“Woman, child, slash marks,” Kat said, turning the portrait around. “Voila.”
“Great,” Emily said. “Let’s take this thing outside and get rid of it.”
Kat held the frame steady while Cassie worked the canvas out. Cassie was half expecting to find something else inside the frame—blood or hair or something equally creepy—but there was just the painting, and it rolled up easily once she’d gotten it out.
They burned the painting in the woods, a quarter mile from the building. Emily built the fire and Kat put the canvas on top of the pine cones and dry tinder. “I hope this takes care of it,” Cassie said, and touched the match to a corner of the painting.
+
Kat drove and let Cassie deal with the radio while they talked about other jobs. Emily seemed willing enough to lean forward and contribute when they were talking about things to kill (“Anything that should be dead, or used to be dead, or is dead but isn’t acting like it”) and ways to kill them (“Fire”), but once the conversation turned away from business she sat back and pulled out an iPod. “I don’t know about this girl,” Kat said. “She’s terrifying.”
“She’s angry,” Cassie agreed. “But she was a good shot, wasn’t she?”
“About that,” Kat said, glancing at her and swallowing. “Look, I said it before but I’m going to say it again: you’d have been able to shoot it. I would have been fine without her.”
Cassie shook her head. “But I didn’t, did I? She did. We talked about this. I’m not like you, kiddo, I don’t do the guns thing very well. I think you—we—would be safer with someone else to do the saving-the-world bit.”
“You save the world,” Kat protested. “Isn’t it enough, just the two of us? You to do the puzzles and me to do the shooting?”
“I think it would be good to have someone else,” Cassie said. “Another set of eyes. And knives. She could use a ride, and we could use her.”
“I guess,” Kat said. She didn’t believe it for a second. She and Cassie were the world’s greatest duo; they didn’t need a third. “She’s not going to go along with it.”
“We’ll see,” Cassie said. Kat turned up the radio. “I mean it, Kat. I think we need to stick together. And I don’t like the idea of letting her go off by herself. You know as well as I do that most spirits go after petite blonde women.”
“Oh, all right,” Kat said. “We can talk about it over pizza or something later. God, when did you turn into a responsible grown-up?”
“When I looked around and realized I was the oldest person here,” Cassie said. “Since you’re a naïve coed.”
“Oh, whatever,” Kat said. “Tell me when you want to stop.”
It turned out there wasn’t much on the road until a few hours out of town (Cassie refused point-blank to stop at McDonald’s, even though Kat was craving fries), so Kat was starving by the time she pulled into a pub just off the highway. “Let’s do dinner early,” she said.
“It’s barely four,” Emily said.
“So, really early. Come on,” Kat said, “it’ll be fun. Cassie’ll pay.”
“Hey!”
“I got it,” Emily said, looking uncomfortable. “For the ride and stuff.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Cassie was saying as Kat opened the door and ushered them in. “We appreciated your help.”
“Sit anywhere you like,” the waitress said. Kat looked her up and down. She was small and blonde and really, really pretty, and also she clearly worked out.
The waitress looked back.
“Did you see that?” Kat hissed as they took their seats. “Cassie, I think she winked at me.”
“Um,” Emily said, looking from Kat to the waitress and back again. “You don’t have to keep driving me places. I can manage alone.”
“Doesn’t mean you ought to,” Cassie said evenly. “Hunting’s dangerous.”
“Yeah,” Kat agreed. The waitress kept stealing glances her way, and Kat was in the mood to be generous. “We can divide up the work. You know, Cassie can do the research and find the suspicious ghostly pattern, I can shoot things with my eyes shut, and you—”
“Can save your asses when needed?” Emily finished. “Yeah, okay.”
It wasn’t the kind of acceptance Kat had been hoping for—she was looking for some enthusiasm, maybe, or possibly a no-thank-you—but maybe Cassie was right, and they could use another person. “You have to do your share of driving, though,” Kat added. “And no getting arrested.”
“Take your orders for drinks, ladies?”
“Emily?” Cassie asked. “What do you think?”
“Yeah,” Emily said to both of them, and then—to the waitress—“Could I get an iced tea, please?”
“That sounds good,” Cassie said.
“Why not, I’ll take one too,” Kat said with a smile.
“Be back in a sec,” the waitress said, slapping silverware and napkins onto the table before winking at Kat (that made twice!) and sauntering off. Kat turned her napkin over in her hands and then unfolded it. On it was written Jo, 203 555 9244, call me.
“Hey,” Cassie said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“No,” Kat said quickly, stuffing the napkin into her pocket. “No, it’s not.”
“Ha!” Cassie said. “I knew it. I am never, ever going to let you live this one down.”
“Live…what down?” Emily asked.
Cassie flashed what Kat considered to be her most dangerous grin. “Let me tell you,” she said, “about Kat and girls.”
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