The radio was halfway through "Walk Away" when Sam gave up on the Revelations commentary and dropped it onto the growing pile on the coffee table. He rubbed his face with both hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw spots. Three hours. Three hours on this, and he had nothing.
Behind him, Dean was propped against the headboard of Sam's bed, paper plate balanced on his chest, shoveling chili cheese fries into his mouth.
Sam turned around. "Dude. You mind not eating those on my bed?"
"No, I don't mind." Dean picked up another fry, trailing a string of cheese from the plate to his mouth, and bit down. He chewed twice, then gestured at the pile of books with a fry. "How's research going?"
"You know how it's going? Slow." Sam turned back to the table and flipped open the next book in the stack, a water-damaged copy of something in Latin that smelled like a basement. "You know how it would go a heck of a lot faster? If I had my computer."
"Hmm." Dean nodded, the kind of nod that meant he'd heard every word and planned to do absolutely nothing about any of them.
"Can you turn that music down, please?"
"Yeah, absolutely."
Dean reached over and cranked the volume up.
Sam stared at the page in front of him. Read the same line of Latin three times. Closed the book.
"You know what? Maybe, uh, maybe you should just go somewhere for a while."
The radio cut off. Dean swung his legs off the bed and stood, the paper plate forgotten. "Hey, I'd love to. That's a great idea. Unfortunately, my car's all screwed to hell."
"Dean, I told you, I have nothing to do with—"
Three hard knocks on the door. Sam was already on his feet, hand going to the back of his waistband out of habit, before he caught himself and crossed to the door instead. He leaned into the peephole.
Bobby Singer stood on the other side, trucker cap pulled low, hands stuffed in the pockets of a worn canvas jacket.
Sam glanced back at Dean, then pulled the door open.
"Hey, Bobby."
"Boys." Bobby stepped inside, giving the room the same quick inventory he gave every room. Books on the table. Chili cheese fries on the bed. Two brothers who looked like they'd been locked in a cage together for about a day too long. His expression didn't change.
Dean was already crossing the room. "Hey, Bobby."
"It's good to see you again so soon."
"Yeah, thanks for coming," Sam said, closing the door behind him. "Come on in."
Dean grabbed Bobby's hand and shook it, holding on a beat longer than usual. "Thank god you're here."
Bobby looked between them. Whatever he saw, he kept his read on it to himself. He pulled off his cap, scratched the back of his head, and put it back on.
"So, um. What didn't you want to talk to me on the phone about?"
Sam moved back to the couch and started clearing a space on the coffee table, stacking books to one side. "It's this job we're working. We weren't sure you'd believe us."
"Well, I can believe a lot."
"Yeah, no, no, it's just, we've never seen anything like it."
"Not even close," Dean said.
"And we thought we could use some fresh eyes."
Bobby settled into the chair across from the couch, the one with the stain on the armrest that nobody wanted to think about too hard. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and waited.
"Well, why don't you begin at the beginning?"
Sam sat down. He looked at Dean, who dropped back onto the edge of the bed and gave him a go-ahead gesture.
"Yeah, um, all right."
Dean's phone buzzed against the nightstand. He scooped it up, checked the screen, and answered.
"Tyson. How's Smallville?"
Dean's face shifted. Sam tracked the change. Bobby did too.
"What do you mean, gone to hell?" Dean stood up from the bed. "Like, literally demons?"
Sam straightened on the couch. Bobby's hands went still on his knees.
"Lana is possessed by a witch?" Dean started pacing the narrow strip of carpet between the bed and the wall. "That's... yeah, that's bad." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I'm working a case right now."
He stopped pacing.
"California." A pause. "More specifically?" Dean looked around the room like the address might be written on the wall somewhere, then grabbed the motel notepad off the nightstand and read off the street, town, and room number.
"Alright. We'll see you when you get here."
He hung up and tossed the phone onto the bed.
Sam and Bobby were both looking at him. Neither said anything. They didn't need to. The silence did the asking.
"One of the kids from Smallville," Dean said. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, like he wasn't sure what to do with the explanation he was about to give. "Tyson. He was on the football team. Helped me hunt a demon, and then there was this weird ghost case. The whole thing was..." He waved a hand. "Like I said, things were weird in that Kansas town. He's solid, though. Good in a fight."
"And he's coming here from Kansas," Bobby said. "So it's gonna take him a while. Probably—"
He was interrupted by a knock at the door.
Dean looked at the door, then back at Sam, then at Bobby. Bobby shrugged. Sam shook his head. Dean walked to the door and leaned into the peephole. He stayed there for a second. Then another second. Then he blinked, pulled back, and opened the door.
A young black man stood in the doorway. "Hey, Dean."
Dean stared at him. "Tyson."
Bobby looked from the kid in the doorway to Dean and back again. "That's the guy from the phone?"
"Yeah."
"How in the hell did he get here from Kansas?"
Tyson stepped inside and gave the room a quick look. Books on the table. Two guys he didn't know. Dean, still standing by the open door like he'd forgotten how it worked.
"I'm fast," Tyson said.
Dean shut the door. He gestured between them.
"Bobby, Sam. This is Tyson." He paused. "He's fast." He pointed back. "Tyson, that's Bobby, and my brother Sam."
Tyson shook Bobby's hand first, then Sam's. He looked at the spread of books on the coffee table, the half-eaten plate of chili cheese fries.
"Looks like you guys were in the middle of something here." He pulled out the desk chair and sat in it backwards, arms folded over the back. "I'll be straight with you. I'm on a clock. Back home, there's a friend of mine being worn by a witch like a coat, and that's only an appetizer on my plate." He tried to keep his voice easy. He didn't quite get there. "I need your help with that. But you're clearly buried in something of your own, and I figured that people help faster when you help them first. So. What's going on?"
Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked at Bobby. Bobby looked at both of them like he was waiting for someone to start talking.
"All right," Sam said. He settled back on the couch and rubbed his hands together. "So, it all started when we caught wind of an obituary. A professor at a local college took a nosedive from a fourth-story window. Only there's a campus legend that the building's haunted. So we pretended to be reporters from the local paper, went to a bar near campus, and found a couple of students who'd had the guy for a class."
Sam settled on the couch, playing storyteller. "This kid, Curtis, and his friend Jen. Curtis was one of those guys who thinks he's smarter than everyone in the room because he played varsity something. Jen was... nice. A little out there. But she knew things. I set my recorder on the table and asked them about the professor. They both had him for Ethics and Morality. Curtis didn't have much to say, but Jen?" Sam shook his head. "Jen had a theory. She didn't think it was suicide."
"Based on what?" Bobby asked.
"Based on Crawford Hall. That's the building he jumped from. Thirty years ago, a girl was having an affair with a professor there. He broke it off, and she threw herself out a window. Room six-six-nine." Sam paused. "Turn the nine upside down."
"Cute," Tyson said.
"Yeah, Jen thought so, too. The legend goes that the girl haunts the building, and anyone who sees her doesn't live to tell about it. Curtis pointed out the obvious flaw in that logic, but Jen wasn't interested in logic. She was interested in the story." Sam shifted on the couch. "So I thanked them, went to find Dean, and... Dean was at the bar drinking. These blue-purple shots. Purple nurples."
"Purple nurples," Bobby repeated.
"He'd had at least three. And he was with this girl. She was... look, she was wearing fishnets and a miniskirt, and she was about two drinks past coherent. Dean introduced her as Starla."
"That wasn't her name," Dean said from the wall.
"He introduced me as Major Tom, his shuttle co-pilot."
Tyson laughed. Bobby looked at Dean, who didn't confirm or deny.
"I told him we should go check out the professor's office. He said he couldn't because he was about to, quote, 'reel in a feisty little wildcat.' Then Starla almost threw up on my shoes, and Dean told me the good news was that she had a sister."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Dean pushed off the wall. "Hold on a minute."
"What?"
"Come on, dude, that is not how it happened."
"No?" Sam turned on the couch to face him fully. "So you never drank a purple nurple?"
"Yeah, maybe that, but I don't say things like 'feisty little wildcat.'" Dean looked personally offended. "And her name wasn't Starla."
"Then what was it?"
Dean opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again as if he was about to speak.
"I don't know." He turned to Bobby and Tyson and took over the story. "But she was a classy chick. She was a grad student. Anthropology and folklore. We were talking about local ghost stories, which, by the way, is called working the case."
He started pacing. "She was smart. Gorgeous. Black cocktail dress, heels. We were having a drink together, one purple nurple each, and she was telling me about the history of the building. And yeah, there was a... a connection. A vibe. She said something like..." Dean paused, searching for the exact words. "'My god, you are attractive.' And I said thanks, but we needed to focus, because lives were at stake."
Sam made a cough-like sound.
"She couldn't help herself," Dean continued. "She said talking to me was like staring into the sun. And then she kissed me. And right in the middle of that, Sam comes stomping over with his jacket over his shoulder and this look on his face, and he starts going off. 'Dean, this is a very serious investigation, we don't have time for blah blah blah blah blah.' Just... blah blah blah. On and on. While I'm trying to work."
"Right." Sam's voice was flat enough to land a plane on. "And that's how it really happened."
Dean shrugged, obviously at peace with his version of events.
"I don't sound like that, Dean."
"That's what you sound like to me."
Bobby stared at them. "Okay. What's going on with you two?"
Sam shifted on the couch. "Nothing. Noth..." He waved a hand. "It's nothing."
"No, come on. You're bickering like an old married couple."
Dean pushed off the wall and walked to the kitchenette, pulling open the mini-fridge. "No, see, married couples can get divorced. We're like, uh, Siamese twins."
"It's conjoined twins," Sam said, with the weariness of a man correcting something for the hundredth time.
Dean pulled a beer out of the fridge and pointed it at Bobby and Tyson. "See what I mean?"
Bobby rubbed a hand over his face. Tyson looked between the two of them like he was watching a tennis match he hadn't bought tickets for.
"So anyway," Sam said, pulling the conversation back on track. "We figured it might be a haunting, so we went to check out the scene of the crime. We posed as electricians, got the janitor to let us into the professor's office. Guy named... well, he never gave us his name. He'd been mopping floors in that building for six years. He was the one who found the body."
Sam hunched forward, elbows on his knees. "He told us the professor wasn't alone that night. There was a young woman with him. He saw her go in but never saw her come out. Cops never found her either. And apparently this wasn't unusual. The professor had a reputation. The janitor's exact words were that he 'got more ass than a toilet seat.'"
Dean laughed from the kitchenette. Tyson chuckled along with him.
"The janitor also confirmed there's no room six-six-nine. Building only has four floors. So the legend was bunk, at least that part of it." Sam scratched the back of his neck. "We came back to the motel. There were no EMF traces anywhere in the building. The room number was a dead end. We were about ready to write it off as a plain suicide, except for the girl. The girl the janitor described, that was weird. Someone goes in, nobody comes out, and the professor ends up dead on the pavement."
"So you kept digging," Bobby said.
"We kept digging. Dean suggested we look into the building's history, see if any student had actually killed herself there. Which was the right call." Sam paused. His jaw tightened. "Except when I opened my laptop to start the research, it was frozen."
Dean took a very long drink of his beer.
"Frozen on a website called Bustyasianbeauties.com."
Tyson covered his mouth with his hand, and it did nothing to hide his laughter. He choked out, "A man of culture," and kept laughing.
Bobby closed his eyes.
"I told him not to touch my stuff," Sam said. "He told me to control my OCD. And that was pretty much the tone for the rest of the night."
"But did you dig up anything about the building? Or on the suicidal co-ed?" Bobby asked.
Sam shook his head. "No. History's clean."
"Then it's not a haunting."
"Maybe not," Dean said from the kitchenette, rolling the beer bottle between his palms. "Tell you the truth, we're not really sure what it is."
Bobby looked between them. "What do you mean, you're not sure?"
"Well, it's weird," Sam said.
"What's weird?"
Dean set the beer down on the counter and came back into the room proper, dropping onto the edge of the bed. He braced his hands on his knees and blew out a breath. "This next part, we, uh... we didn't see it happen ourselves exactly. But it's pretty friggin' weird. Even for us."
He looked at Sam. Sam looked back. Some silent negotiation happened, and Dean lost, because he was the one who kept talking. "So, Curtis. The frat kid Sam mentioned, the one from the bar. A couple of nights after the professor went out the window, Curtis was walking across campus. Late. By himself. Right past Crawford Hall." Dean paused, working through how to say the next part. "He hears something. Looks around, doesn't see anything, keeps walking. Laughs it off, you know, the way people do right before something terrible happens to them. Then he hears it again. Stops. Looks up."
Dean pointed at the ceiling.
"Big light. Comes on right above him, bright, like stadium-bright. Kid throws his arms over his head and starts running. Trips. Falls flat on his face." Dean dropped his hand. "And then the light grabs him."
Bobby's expression didn't change. "Grabs him," he repeated.
"Like a beam. Pulls him straight up off the ground. Kid's screaming, flailing, and then he's just... gone."
"Aliens?" Bobby said.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"Aliens."
"Yeah."
Tyson said, "My area of expertise."
Bobby took his cap off, held it in both hands, and stared at it like it might have answers written on the inside.
"Look, even if they are real, they're sure as hell not coming to Earth and swiping people."
"Hey, believe me," Dean said. "We know."
"My whole life, I've never found evidence of an honest-to-God abduction. It's all just cranks and pranks."
"Yeah, that's what we thought," Sam said. "But we figured we'd at least talk to the guy."
Bobby waited. Tyson leaned further over the back of the chair, chin on his folded arms. "Aliens are real."
Sam took over. "We found Curtis at the same bar. He was in rough shape. Three shots of purple nurple lined up in front of him, and he'd already had a few before we got there. Dean sat down next to him. I stood nearby. We told him we were still working the story and asked what happened."
"Kid didn't want to talk at first," Dean said. "Said nobody believed him. Sam gave him the 'give us a chance' speech, I told him it was off the record, and he started opening up. Said he blacked out. Lost time. Woke up somewhere he didn't recognize."
Sam continued, "He described a room. Bright lights, couldn't see much. Medical table. And then he said they did tests on him."
"Tests?" Bobby asked.
"Tests." Sam's voice went very carefully neutral. "And then he said they probed him."
Dean nodded slowly. "They probed him."
"Again and again," Sam said. "His words. Again and again and again. He took a shot between each 'again.' And then he said 'one more time.'"
"Yikes," Tyson said, echoing what must have been the general sentiment.
"That's what I said," Dean agreed. "And then I made the mistake of asking how it could get any worse, because some alien had basically made him its..." He glanced at Bobby. "Well. You get the idea. Curtis did not appreciate that comment."
"But it did get worse," Sam said.
Bobby looked like he was bracing himself. "How?"
"They made him slow dance."
Dead silence.
"Slow dance," Bobby said.
"With one of them," Dean confirmed. "He described a disco ball. A dance floor. Him and this short little alien figure, just... swaying."
Bobby stared at them for a long three seconds.
"You guys are exaggerating again, huh?"
"No, no," Sam said quickly.
"Then this frat boy's just nuts."
"We're not so sure," Dean said.
Sam stood up and grabbed one of the folders from under the pile of books on the coffee table. He flipped it open and pulled out a photograph, handing it to Bobby.
"Next morning, we went back to the campus. Right near Crawford Hall, there was a perfectly round mark on the ground, scorched into the grass, maybe fifteen feet across. Clean edges, no debris, no accelerant residue."
Bobby studied the photo. Tyson craned his neck to see it from his chair.
"It had to be some kind of jet engine," Sam said. "The burn pattern was consistent with extreme directed heat from a single source above."
"And I said, 'You mean some saucer-shaped jet engine?'" Dean spread his hands. "Because what else makes a perfect circle like that?"
"We went back and forth on it. First the haunting, now this. The timing alone, there had to be some kind of connection."
"Between an angry spirit and a sexed-up E.T.," Dean said. "Which, I'll be honest, I had no idea what that connection could possibly be."
"Neither did I," Sam admitted. "But two unexplained events at the same location, same week? That's not a coincidence. That's a pattern."
Bobby set the photo down on the coffee table and leaned back in his chair, arms folded.
Tyson had been quiet through most of this, taking the story in from his backwards chair. He'd been enjoying it, mostly; the bickering, the purple nurples, the slow-dancing, probing, alien. It was easy to forget, for a minute at a time, that he'd run a thousand miles to get here, and the clock was still ticking on the far end of the thousands he had to go. Then he'd remember, and the laugh would come out a little thinner than the one before it. He shifted, unfolding one arm to scratch the side of his jaw.
"I boned an alien once," he said. "There was no probing, though."
Every head in the room turned to him. Sam's mouth opened and stayed open. Dean's beer stopped halfway to his lips. Bobby just looked at him.
Tyson didn't flinch. "She's super hot."
"Anyway… So we kept digging," Dean said. He took another pull from his beer and set it on the nightstand. "Went back to campus the next day. Talked to one of the guys in Curtis's frat house. Sam asks the kid if he and Curtis were in the same house. Kid says yeah. I ask if he heard what happened. Kid says yeah, Curtis is saying it was aliens, but he doesn't really care. And then Sam..." Dean turned to look at his brother. The corner of his mouth was already twitching. "Sam goes full grief counselor on this kid."
Sam's head dropped back against the couch.
"Telling him he knows how hard this must be. Calling him a 'brave little soldier.' Saying he acknowledges his pain. Then he grabs the kid in a bear hug and tells him he's too precious for this world."
"I never said that," Sam said.
"You're always saying pansy stuff like that."
"I have literally never called anyone a brave little soldier."
Dean ignored him. "So the kid's standing there getting hugged by a stranger, and to his credit, he handles it pretty well. Thanks Sam for the hug, says he's fine. And then he tells us something useful. He says whatever happened to Curtis, he had it coming."
Tyson tilted his head. "Why?"
"Curtis was their pledge master. Spent the whole semester putting the pledges through hell and getting off on it. So the kid's take was, now Curtis knows how they feel."
Dean let that sit for a second, then pushed on. "We went back to the motel. I'm thinking it over, and I tell Sam there's at least one connection between the two victims. The professor and the frat kid. They're both dicks."
"That was his big breakthrough," Sam said.
"It was a valid observation. The professor was sleeping with students, and it got him killed. The pledge master was hazing kids, and he got abducted and probed. The punishments fit the crimes. Poetic, almost. More like a limerick, but still."
"And while Dean was workshopping his limerick theory," Sam said, sitting forward, "I was looking for my laptop. Which I had left in my bag. Which was now empty."
Dean's face went carefully blank.
"I asked him where it was. He said he didn't know. I told him nobody else could have taken it. We kept the door locked, we never let the maids in. He said I must have lost it. I don't lose things."
"Everybody loses things."
"I don't lose things, Dean."
"Mr. Perfect over here," Dean said to Bobby and Tyson.
Sam kept going. "I put up with a lot. The dirty socks in the bathroom sink. The food in the fridge that's not food anymore, it's a science experiment. All I ask, the one thing, is that he doesn't mess with my stuff. And you know what he said when I told him that?"
"I said I was a joy to be around," Dean said. "Because I am."
"I asked him how he'd feel if I messed with the Impala."
Dean's expression changed. For a second, the joke dropped out of it entirely. "And I told him it'd be the last thing he ever did."
Tyson nodded sagely, "Even I know not to mess with baby."
Dean pointed at Tyson and said, "See."
Bobby had been listening with the patience of a man who'd raised these two from a distance and regretted it regularly. He pulled his cap off, scratched his head, and put it back on.
"Did you take his computer?"
"No." Dean held up a hand. "Serves him right, but no. I didn't take it."
"Well, I didn't lose it," Sam said. "Because I don't lose things."
"Oh, that's right, because he's Mr. Perfect."
Bobby held up both hands. "Okay. Okay." He looked between them with the expression of a man trying to referee a fight. "Why don't you just tell me what happened next?"
Sam went on. "There was one more victim. Now, we didn't see this one ourselves either. We put it together from the evidence after the fact. This guy was a research scientist at the college. Animal testing."
"Yeah, you know," Dean said. "A dick. Which fits the pattern."
Sam nodded. "He was leaving a campus building late at night. Alone. Walking toward the street. And apparently he spotted something shiny down in a storm drain. A gold watch, just sitting there in the gutter, glinting."
"Like a lure," Bobby said.
"Exactly like a lure. He got down on his hands and knees, reached his arm through the grate, and something grabbed him." Sam let that land. "Whatever it was, it pulled him partway into the drain and tore him apart. Campus security found blood on the street. That was about all that was left up top."
"Jesus," Tyson mumbled.
"We broke into the morgue that night," Sam continued. "Slid in through a window. Dean found the right drawer, pulled it open, and we got our first look at what was left of the guy."
"And by 'what was left,' he means not much," Dean said. He grimaced at the memory. "Nasty doesn't cover it. Whatever got him wasn't just killing. It was eating."
"The body was mangled," Sam said. "Chewed on. Bones cracked open. I used a magnifier to get a closer look at the wounds, and I found something embedded in the tissue. A scale. Belly scale, smooth and pale. Looked like it came from an alligator."
Bobby's eyebrows went up. "An alligator in the sewer."
"Classic urban legend," Sam said. "Kid flushes a baby gator down the toilet, it grows huge in the tunnels underneath the city. Everyone's heard the story. Nobody's ever actually found one."
"Because they're not real," Dean said. "That's what I told him. First, we've got a haunting, then we've got aliens, now we've got a sewer gator. I said it couldn't get any weirder."
"And I said maybe we should call you," Sam said to Bobby. "See if you'd ever run into anything like it."
Dean snorted. "Yeah. Just your typical haunted campus, alien abduction, alligator-in-the-sewer gig. Real simple stuff."
Sam ignored him. "We decided to search the sewer anyway. Split up, each took one end of campus."
Bobby shifted in his chair. "Did you find anything?"
"Yeah, I found something," Dean said. His voice had gone flat. "Just not in the sewer. I come up out of the drain, walk back to the alley where I parked the Impala. And all four tires are flat."
Tyson winced.
"All four," Dean repeated. "Rims sitting on asphalt. And right there on the ground next to the driver's side door, I find a money clip. Silver. Engraved S.W."
Sam rubbed his forehead.
"So I go back to the motel. Sam's sitting there reading a book like nothing happened. I walk in and I say, 'You think this is funny?' He says, 'It depends, what?' I say, 'The car.' He says, 'What about the car?' Playing dumb. I tell him you can't let the air out of the tires, you're gonna bend the rims. He says he didn't go near my car. So I hold up the money clip."
Sam sighed. "It was my money clip. I don't know how it got there, but it was mine. And instead of giving it back, he called it 'reparations for emotional trauma.'"
Tyson fought back a chuckle.
"Which it was," Dean said.
"I told him to give it back. He said no. I told him I'd had it up to here with him." Sam made a flat cutting gesture at his throat. "He said right back at you. And then I tackled him."
Dean pointed at him. "He tackled me onto the bed. Full body tackle. Over a money clip."
"Over the principle," Sam corrected. "We rolled around for a while. It wasn't my finest moment."
Bobby held up a hand, and the room went quiet.
"Okay. I've heard enough."
Dean gestured vaguely at the timeline. "You showed up about an hour after that."
"I'm surprised at you two," Bobby said. "I really am." He looked at Sam. "Sam. First off, Dean did not steal your computer."
Sam opened his mouth. "But I—"
"Shh. Shh shh shh." Bobby cut him off with a wave. Then he turned. "And Dean. Sam did not touch your car."
"Yeah," Sam said.
"And if you two had bothered to pull your heads out of your asses, it all would have been pretty clear."
Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean. Neither of them had anything.
"What?" Dean said.
"What you're dealing with," Bobby said.
Sam stared at him. Dean stared at him. The silence stretched.
"I got nothing," Dean said.
"Me neither," Sam admitted.
Bobby looked at them both like they'd failed a test he'd written at a third-grade level.
"You got a trickster on your hands."
"That's what I thought," Dean said immediately.
Sam turned to him. "What? No, you didn't."
Bobby talked over them both. "I gotta tell you, you guys were the biggest clue."
Sam frowned. "What do you mean?"
"These things create chaos and mischief as easy as breathing. And it's got you so turned around and at each other's throats, you can't even think straight."
The realization hit them at different speeds. Sam got there first.
"The laptop," he said.
Dean was half a second behind. "The tires."
"It knows you're onto him," Bobby said. "And it's been playing you like fiddles."
Tyson had been listening with his chin on his arms, and now he sat up, shaking his head with something between admiration and disbelief. "You two were going at each other over a laptop and some flat tires, and the whole time something else was pitting you against each other as a distraction." He scratched the back of his neck. "I gotta be honest, that's a better prank than anything I could come up with. Framing each of you with the other one's stuff? That's craftsmanship."
Dean planted his elbows on his knees. "So what is it? Spirit? Demon? What?"
"More like demigods, really." Bobby settled back, warming to the subject the way he always did when the lore clicked into place. "There's Loki in Scandinavia. Anansi in West Africa. Dozens of them across every culture. They're immortal, and they can create things out of thin air. Things as real as you and me. Make them vanish just as quick."
Dean's face changed as the pieces fell together. "You mean like an angry spirit. Or an alien. Or an alligator."
"The victims fit the M.O. too," Bobby said. "Tricksters target the high and mighty. Knock them down a peg. Usually with a sense of humor. Deadly pranks, things like that."
Dean straightened up. "Bobby. What do these things look like?"
"Lots of things. But human, mostly."
Dean and Sam exchanged looks. "And what human do we know," Dean said slowly, "who's been at ground zero this whole time?"
Tyson snapped his fingers. "Curtis. The probee."
Bobby turned to look at him. "No, you idjit. The janitor."
Tyson held up both hands. "That was my second guess. Cut me some slack, this is my first demigod."
Bobby just shook his head and turned back to Sam and Dean, but Tyson wasn't done.
"What color do you think its aura is?"
Bobby stopped mid-thought. "What kind of new age bullshit is that?"
"No, wait." Dean held up a hand, pointing at Tyson. "The kid can actually see auras. He spotted a demon back in Smallville. Said the thing had an aura around it that was black." He looked at Bobby. "If this trickster's got a different signature, something we can pick out in a crowd, we might be able to use that."
Bobby's irritation stalled. He looked at Tyson with fresh consideration.
"You saw a demon's aura."
"Pitch black," Tyson confirmed. "Couldn't miss it."
Bobby was quiet for a moment, chewing on that. "Well, I don't know what color a trickster would be. Never met anyone who could see them like that. But if you can spot something off about this janitor, something the rest of us would walk right past, that changes how we play this."
"Then let's do it tonight," Tyson said.
The story had been fun. But east of here, a witch was wearing his girlfriend's face, and a friend of his was a streak of light somewhere in the sky, and he'd spent the last half hour sitting backward on a chair laughing. "Sooner I help you put this guy down, the sooner you help me. And I've been gone too long already."
— Meteor Freak —
The janitor's keys jangled against his hip as he turned the lock on the basement gate. Metal scraped metal, the latch catching with a heavy click. He gave the gate a tug to make sure it held, then turned and started up the staircase, Sam and Dean falling into step behind him.
"Sorry, I'm dragging a little ass today, boys." He took the stairs one at a time, hand on the railing, in no particular hurry. "Had quite the night last night. Lots of sex, if you catch my drift."
"Yeah, hard not to," Dean said. He glanced back at Sam and jerked his head toward the gate, a quick, sharp motion while the janitor's back was turned. "Listen, we won't be long. We just need to check a couple offices up on three."
"No problem."
Sam stopped on the landing. "I, uh, forgot something in the truck." He patted his jacket pocket like he was checking for something. "You know what? I'll catch up with you guys."
"Okay," Dean said, already following the janitor around the next turn.
Sam waited. Their footsteps faded up the stairwell, and he moved. Back down the stairs, two at a time, pulling the leather roll of lockpicks from inside his jacket. He knelt at the gate, selected a tension wrench and a rake, and had the lock open in under ten seconds. The gate swung inward with a low groan.
The basement was all cinder block with rows of metal lockers lining the far wall. Sam worked through them methodically, popping latches, checking contents. Cleaning supplies. A rain jacket. Half a sandwich wrapped in cellophane. In the fourth locker, tucked between a folded newspaper and a bottle of window cleaner, he found it. A copy of the Weekly World News, a trash mag, the cover screaming about bat-children in some Florida cave.
He stared at it for a moment, then tucked it back exactly where he'd found it.
They pushed through the front doors of Crawford Hall into the afternoon sun. Sam squinted against the glare.
"Just because he reads the Weekly World News doesn't mean he's our guy. You read it, too."
"I'm telling you, it's him."
"Look, I just think we need some hard proof. That's all."
"Another thing Bobby mentioned was that these suckers have a metabolism like an insect, a real sweet tooth."
"I didn't find any candy bars or sugar. Not even Equal."
"Probably missed something."
"I don't miss things."
"Oh, right, 'cause you're Mr. Perfect."
"What?" Sam stopped walking. "Are you really still pissed at me because of what the trickster did?"
"You've been a tight ass long before that trickster showed up."
"Ay, Yo!" A young man with a backpack exclaimed as he walked past on the sidewalk. He was muttering something under his breath, and as he passed Dean, the word came through just barely audible. "White." Then louder, to nobody in particular, shaking his head. "Bright as hell too, like I need some sunglasses out here." He kept walking.
Three stories above them, behind a window smudged with grime, the janitor stood. Still, hands in his pockets, tracking them across the courtyard.
"Look, just stay here, keep an eye on the janitor," Sam said. "I'll go to his place to see if I can find any actual evidence before you go barging in and staking the man. Just wait till I get back, okay? Okay?"
"Okay!"
Sam cut across the lawn toward the parking lot. Dean shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and paced along the front of the building, kicking at nothing.
The sun dropped behind Crawford Hall and the streetlights buzzed to life one by one across the courtyard. Dean leaned against a pillar near the front entrance. He checked his watch. Checked it again.
"Eh, screw this."
He pulled the door open and slipped inside.
The hallway was dark. His flashlight cut a narrow beam across linoleum and cinder block, picking out doorframes and bulletin boards as he moved deeper into the building. He swept the light left, then right, clearing corners out of habit.
He took the stairs to the second floor, then the third, the flashlight beam bouncing ahead of him on each landing. At the top of the last staircase he clicked it off and tucked it into his jacket. His hand came back out with the stake, a thick piece of sharpened wood the length of his forearm. He held it low against his leg.
Something scraped behind him. A footstep, maybe. Maybe not. He stopped, listened. Nothing followed. He slid the stake inside his jacket, keeping his hand on it, and pushed through the double doors into the lecture hall.
He stopped two steps in.
The theater seats descended in rows toward a wide stage, and on that stage sat a round bed draped in red satin with a gaudy canopy overhead. A disco ball turned slowly above it, throwing lazy spots of light across the ceiling and walls. Two women, a brunette and a blonde, were sprawled across the bed in ways that didn't leave much to the imagination.
Dean walked down the aisle slowly, his hand still inside his jacket. He reached the edge of the stage.
The brunette rolled onto her stomach and crawled toward him. "We've been waiting for you, Dean."
"Y-Y-You guys aren't real."
"Trust me, sugar." She smiled. "It's gonna feel real."
Dean laughed, a short, strangled sound that came out higher than he intended.
The blonde shifted to the edge of the bed, letting one leg dangle off the side. "Come on. Let us give you a massage."
"You know, I'm a... I'm a sucker for a happy ending. Really, I am, but..." He pulled his hand from his jacket, empty, and held both palms up. "I-I'm gonna have to pass."
A voice came from behind him, up in the seats.
"They're a peace offering."
Dean turned. The Trickster was sitting in the middle of the audience section, one ankle crossed over his knee, arms spread across the backs of the chairs on either side of him. Relaxed. Comfortable. Like he owned the place. Which, Dean supposed, he sort of did.
"I know what you and your brother do," the janitor, the Trickster, said. "I've been around a while. Run into your kind before."
"Well, then you know that I... can't let you just keep hurting people."
"Come on!" The Trickster sat forward, gesturing with both hands. "Those people got what was coming to them. Hoisted on their own petards." He settled back again. "But you and Sam, I like you. I do. So treat yourself. Long as you want. Just long enough for me to move on to the next town."
"Yeah, I don't think I can let you do that."
The Trickster's smile didn't waver. "I don't want to hurt you. And you know that I can."
"Look, man, I..." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "I got to tell you, I dig your style, all right? I mean..." He chuckled in spite of himself. "I do. I mean... and the slow-dancing alien..."
The Trickster pointed at him, genuinely pleased. "One of my personal favorites. Yeah."
"But, uh, I can't let you go."
The Trickster studied him for a long moment. The disco ball turned. Light crawled across the walls.
"Too bad." His voice was quieter now. "Like I said, I like you. Sam was right. You shouldn't have come alone."
"Well, I'll agree with you there."
The door at the top of the theater slammed open. The Trickster's head snapped around.
Sam stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light, a wooden stake gripped in his right hand. To the left, at the top of the next aisle, Bobby stepped into view holding a stake of his own.
The door at the bottom of the lecture hall opened. Tyson walked through it. No weapon. Just a pair of sunglasses sitting on his face in a pitch-dark room.
The Trickster looked at him, then back at Dean, then at Tyson again. "What's up with Ray Charles?"
Tyson pointed at him. "That's racist."
The Trickster looked between them, taking stock. Three men with stakes. One with sunglasses, he couldn't figure out. The disco ball kept turning.
"That fight you guys had outside," he said, pointing between Sam and Dean. "That was a trick?" He paused, then nodded slowly, a grudging respect creeping into his expression. "Hmm. Not bad."
He stood up from his seat.
"But you want to see a real trick?"
He snapped his fingers.
The side door to the lecture theater exploded inward. The figure that came through it was enormous, six and a half feet of bulk wrapped in a stained leather apron, a burlap mask cinched tight over its head with rough twine. It revved a chainsaw once, twice, like a horror movie villain.
Then it charged straight at Sam.
Sam threw himself sideways. The chainsaw bit into the seat where he'd been standing, shredding upholstery and splintering wood in a spray of debris. He rolled, came up with the stake in his hand, and the thing was already swinging again.
Bobby was moving before the first swing landed. He came down the aisle at a dead run, grabbed the back of the masked man's apron, and hauled. It was like trying to redirect a freight train. The thing barely stumbled, but it turned, and that gave Sam the half-second he needed to get clear.
Dean didn't see any of it. The brunette girl hit him from the left. Her fist caught him across the jaw, and he staggered back into the aisle railing. The blonde came from the right. He ducked under her swing and drove his elbow into her ribs, but it was like hitting a wall. She didn't even flinch.
The brunette grabbed him by the front of his jacket and threw him. Dean left his feet entirely, sailed over two rows of seats, and crashed into the third row hard enough to crack the wooden armrest under his back. He lay there for a second, the wind knocked out of him, staring at the disco ball spinning overhead.
The Trickster, who had moved to the aisle during the chaos, clapped his hands together. "Nice toss, ladies!"
He walked down a few steps and stood over Dean, looking down at him with an expression between amusement and pity.
"Dean." He shook his head. "Dean, Dean, Dean."
Across the theater, Sam had the chainsaw man's arm locked against a seat back while Bobby drove his shoulder into the thing's midsection. It wasn't going down. Sam looked up. Dean was on his back, the Trickster standing over him. Sam made the call. He ripped the stake from his belt and threw it.
It turned end over end across the theater. Dean's hand came up and caught it.
The Trickster watched the throw. His smile faded.
"I did not want to have to do this."
Dean drove the stake into his chest.
It went in hard, punching through fabric and flesh and something that didn't feel quite like either. Dean pushed, grinding it deeper, twisting. The Trickster's mouth opened. No sound came out. His hands came up and wrapped around Dean's wrist, but there was no strength in them.
Across the theater, the chainsaw man flickered. One moment, he was solid, Bobby's hands locked around his throat, and the next, he was smoke, then nothing. The chainsaw clattered to the floor and went silent. The brunette and the blonde dissolved the same way, mid-stride, reaching for Dean. Gone.
Dean pulled the stake out. It came free with a wet, sucking sound, and the Trickster collapsed backward into the nearest seat. His head lolled to one side. His eyes were open and empty. The chocolate-colored jacket darkened with blood around the wound.
The disco ball kept spinning.
Sam and Bobby came down the aisle. Bobby was breathing hard, one hand pressed against his ribs. Sam had a cut above his eyebrow that was bleeding freely down the side of his face. Tyson hadn't moved from the bottom doorway, staring at the Trickster the whole fight.
"You guys okay?" Dean asked.
"Yeah." Sam wiped the blood from his eye with the back of his hand. "I guess."
Dean looked down at the body in the seat. The Trickster's face was slack, almost peaceful. The wound in his chest had already stopped bleeding.
"All I got to say..." Dean winced as he straightened up, pressing a hand to his side where the seats had caught him. "He had style."
He took a step toward the aisle, and his knee buckled. He caught himself on a seat back, hissing through his teeth. Something in his ribs shifted in a way that ribs shouldn't.
Tyson walked over. He didn't say anything. He just held out both hands, palms up, and golden light poured from them like liquid, warm and steady. It washed over Dean. The bruising along his jaw faded. The grinding in his ribs smoothed out and went quiet. The deep ache in his lower back from the impact with the seats simply stopped.
Dean straightened up and rolled his shoulders. "Thanks."
Tyson nodded.
He looked at his own hands for a second after the light went out of them. With these same hands, he'd crouched over Walden and decided Clark's secret was worth more than the scientist. The same hands had put someone in the ground and healed someone. He didn't know if all the people he'd healed or would heal in the future would make that math equal. Hopefully, after this was over, Clark would balance the equation.
Bobby was already heading for the exit, stake tucked under his arm. Sam fell in beside him, pulling his jacket sleeve across the cut on his forehead. Dean started after them, then stopped and looked back.
Tyson was still standing in the aisle, looking at the body.
"It's over," Dean said. "You coming?"
Tyson didn't answer right away. He stood there, hands in his pockets, sunglasses still on, staring at the dead Trickster in the theater seat.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Let's go."
He followed Dean out. The door swung shut behind them, and the theater went dark except for the disco ball, still turning, still throwing its slow circles of multi-colored light across the empty seats and the body slumped in the third row.
Minutes passed. The building settled into silence.
A figure stepped out from behind the stage curtain. Unhurried. Hands in the pockets of a chocolate-colored jacket with no hole in it and no blood on it. The Trickster walked up the aisle to where his own body lay and stood over it, looking down with mild curiosity, like a man examining a painting.
The body shimmered. It lost its edges first, then its color, then its shape, and then it was gone. Just an empty seat with a dent in the cushion.
The Trickster unwrapped a chocolate bar, bit off a chunk, and chewed. He smiled to himself, satisfied, and turned toward the exit.
The sound hit the room before anything else. A sharp crack of displaced air, like a thunderclap compressed into a single point. The Trickster stopped chewing.
Tyson stood at the bottom of the aisle, right where he'd been ten minutes ago. Sunglasses still on his face in a dark room.
The Trickster swallowed the chocolate. He didn't move, didn't snap his fingers, didn't do any of the things a cornered demigod ought to do. He just stood there, halfway up the aisle, and looked at Tyson with a curious expression.
"Did you tell them?"
"No."
The Trickster nodded slowly, like that confirmed something he'd already suspected. He took another bite of the chocolate bar, chewed it, then pointed the ragged end at Tyson.
"I knew there was something different about you the second I saw you. You walked into my lecture hall with three guys carrying stakes, and you didn't even bring a weapon. Just stood there in your little sunglasses like you were waiting for a bus." He cocked his head. "You weren't scared. You weren't even tense. That bugged me."
"Your radiance is blinding," Tyson said. "Literally. I put the glasses on because looking at you without them is like staring into the sun."
The Trickster went still. The chocolate bar lowered an inch.
The disco ball turned. Light crawled across the ceiling in its slow, stupid circles.
"Most people can't see that," the Trickster said. His voice had changed. The showman cadence was gone, the fun was gone, replaced by something flatter, more careful. "Humans definitely can't see that."
"I'm human."
"No, you're not. Or you're not just that." He studied Tyson the way he'd studied his own corpse a minute ago. "What are you?"
"Loaded question," Tyson said. "Are you God?" asked instead of answering.
The Trickster laughed. Not the performative cackle from the stage, not the smug chuckle from the theater seats. A real laugh, sudden and startled, like Tyson had told the funniest joke he'd heard in a millennium. He doubled over, one hand on his knee, the chocolate bar waving in the air.
"God." He wheezed. "Oh, that's good. That's really good." He straightened up, wiping his eye with the heel of his hand. "No. No, no, no. Trust me, kid, if I were God, I would not be spending my weekends in California turning frat boys into alien butt-buddies. I'd be on a beach somewhere. Permanent vacation. Unlimited Mai Tais." He paused. "Actually, that's not far off from what I do now, but the point stands."
"Then what are you?"
The Trickster's smile stayed, but it thinned. He wrapped the chocolate bar back in its foil, slow and deliberate, and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
"I'm what I said I am. A trickster."
"No," Tyson said. "You're not. I've never met a trickster or a demigod, but you don't give that impression. What I'm looking at right now is so far beyond anything I've ever seen, and I've seen a bit."
The theater was very quiet. The disco ball kept turning. The Trickster stood in the aisle with his hands in his pockets, and for a moment, he looked old. Old and tired.
"You're a smart kid," he said. "So let me give you some smart advice." He took a step closer. "Stop looking. That's the advice. Free of charge."
"I don't want advice," Tyson said. "I want a favor."
"A favor." The Trickster said the word like he was tasting it, rolling it around. "You crash my death scene, call me out on my own trick, and now you want a favor?"
"I have a friend. She's being possessed by a witch. Not a demon, not a spirit. A witch, riding her like a suit. I'm looking for a way to pull the thing out without killing the host."
The Trickster looked at him and said nothing.
"Favor for a favor," Tyson continued. "Whatever you actually are, I don't really care all that much. Honestly. I'm assuming your aura indicates your strength. Help me help her, and I walk out of here, and the Winchesters never hear a word about tonight. As far as they know, you're dead in that chair. I'll tell them I got rid of the body. Trickster, ganked, case closed."
"And if I say no?"
"I don't want to go there, because, like Dean, I like your style. But I'll have to tell them you're alive. And I'll have to tell them you're not a trickster."
The Trickster's posture didn't change.
"They have this gun," Tyson said. "The Colt. They say it can kill anything. Dean shot me with it once."
That got a reaction. The Trickster's eyebrows went up in genuine surprise.
"He shot you with the Colt, and you're standing here?"
"Shoulder. Nearly bled out. Hurt worse than anything I've ever felt, and I've felt some things. I'm not just fast. I'm pretty tough, too. But it almost killed me, and I'm a lot less bright than you are."
"Your aura," he continued. "It's so bright that I'm thinking you might be one of the things the Colt can't kill. Maybe. But I'm willing to bet it would hurt like hell. Be inconvenient."
The Trickster laughed. Shorter this time, less startled, more resigned. He pulled the chocolate bar back out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and bit off another piece.
"Inconvenient," he repeated, chewing. "Kid, you have no idea. You know what I like about you? You're not threatening me. You're not puffing up, you're not waving a weapon around. You're just standing there, laying it out, like you're negotiating a used car deal. That takes a specific kind of stupid that I genuinely respect."
He chewed. Swallowed. Looked at the ceiling, at the disco ball still turning its slow circles.
"A witch riding a human host," he said. "That's not nothing. You got a name? The witch, I mean, not the girl."
"Countess Isobel Thoreaux," Tyson said.
The Trickster chewed. He didn't react immediately. He chewed some more.
Tyson waited.
The Trickster swallowed, licked chocolate from his thumb, and shrugged.
"Never heard of her. I've been around since before your species figured out that fire was hot. I've met witches, warlocks, hags, hexenbiest, practitioners, dabblers, Sunday wiccans who couldn't curse a parking meter." He ticked them off on his fingers. "I've partied with Baba Yaga. I once spent a very weird weekend with Morgan le Fay. Point is, I know witches. And your Countess Isobel Whatever-aux?" He popped the last piece of chocolate into his mouth. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"Thoreaux."
"Thoreaux. Right. Still nothing." He crumpled the foil wrapper into a ball and flicked it. It vanished before it hit the ground. "Which, honestly? That should worry you more than if I did know her."
"Why?"
"Because I know everybody. Or at least everybody worth knowing. Everybody who's been making noise for more than a couple centuries. If your Countess has been around long enough to figure out how to ride a human host like a rental car, she should be on my radar." He tapped his temple. "Big radar. Very sensitive. Picks up everything. So either she's new, which means she's talented, and that's a problem. Or she's old, and she's been hiding, which means she's smart, and that's a bigger problem. Or..." He held up a third finger, then slowly curled it back down. "Nah, those are really the only two options."
"That's not helpful."
"I didn't say I was going to be helpful." The Trickster produced another chocolate bar from somewhere. Tyson hadn't seen him reach for it. It was just there, in his hand, already half-unwrapped. "You said she's riding the host with old magic. How old are we talking? Hoodoo old? Medieval old? Babylonian old?"
"I don't know."
"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" He bit into the chocolate. "Because the method tells you the era, and the era tells you the tradition, and the tradition tells you the counter. That's how magic works. Everything's got a receipt." He chewed, pointing at Tyson with the bar. "You find out where she learned her trick, I can probably tell you how to undo it."
"I think it came from a spellbook," Tyson said. "She's French. Or was. The incantations were in Latin."
"French witch, Latin incantations, spellbook." The Trickster repeated them back like items on a grocery list. "That narrows it down to about ten thousand possibilities. You're really making this easy for me."
Tyson turned toward the nearest wall. He raised his right hand, and fire bloomed, blackening the paint and the concrete beneath it. He worked from memory, tracing the symbol that had appeared on Lana's back, the one he'd seen before everything went wrong. When the fire snuffed out, the symbol sat on the wall, still smoking, edges glowing faint orange.
"That appeared on her back before she was possessed," Tyson said.
The Trickster had gone quiet. He stood there with the chocolate bar forgotten in his hand, staring at the burned symbol on the wall. The showman was gone. The jokester was gone.
He walked over to the wall. Leaned in close. Tilted his head one way, then the other.
"Huh," he said.
He straightened up, took another bite of chocolate, and chewed slowly.
"Okay. Good news and bad news. Good news is, this isn't Babylonian, it's not Enochian, and it's not any of the really nasty stuff. It's European, probably fifteenth or sixteenth century. Hermetic tradition, but bastardized. Somebody took a binding seal and modified it for transference." He tapped the open space between the two wavy lines. "See this? This gap. It's intentional. That's the door. The soul goes out, the witch comes in. One-way valve."
"Bad news?"
"Bad news is, whoever designed this knew exactly what they were doing. This isn't hedge magic. This is surgical." He took another bite. "Your Countess didn't stumble onto this in some dusty attic. She either wrote it or she studied under someone who did. And the fact that the symbol manifests physically on the host means the spell is anchored to the body, not just the soul. You can't just exorcise it. You'd need to break the seal itself."
"How?"
"Well, that's the fun part." The Trickster turned away from the wall and dropped into the nearest theater seat, throwing one leg over the armrest. "You've got two options. Option one. You find the original spellbook and find the counter-ritual. Every binding's got one. It's like a receipt, like I said."
He held up two fingers.
"Option two. You find someone powerful enough to just rip the seal apart by force. And I mean powerful. We're talking archangel-tier."
The Trickster had his mouth open to continue when Tyson cut him off.
"When you say powerful," Tyson said. "Do you mean magical power specifically? Or can it be something else?"
He held out his right hand, palm up, and let it go.
The light came without effort. It rose from his skin, pure and white and steady, filling his palm and then spilling past it, washing over the nearest row of seats and climbing the walls. It wasn't fire. It was what he'd taken from Dr. Walden. It was just light.
The disco ball stopped mattering. The whole theater stopped mattering. For three seconds, the room was as bright as noon.
The Trickster didn't flinch. He didn't move at all. He sat in his seat with one leg still thrown over the armrest and the chocolate bar held loosely between two fingers. The showman mask was gone again, and what was underneath was paying very close attention.
Tyson closed his hand. The light died. The theater sank back into its dim, disco-ball twilight.
"Will that do it?" Tyson asked.
The Trickster chewed his chocolate for a long time. He swallowed. He looked at the spot where the light had been, then at Tyson, then back at the spot.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
"A friend."
"Some friend." He sat up straighter, pulling his leg off the armrest. "That's not magic. That's not chi, it's not grace, it's not any of the usual flavors. That's something else. And honestly? I don't know what it is. Which, again, should probably worry me more than it does."
He stood up, brushing invisible crumbs off his jacket.
"But to answer your question. Maybe. Raw power can brute-force a seal if you've got enough of it and you know where to push. Problem is, you don't know where to push. You flood that girl with whatever that was without knowing the seal's structure, you're just as likely to fry her as free her." He held up a finger. "Rule number one of breaking curses, kid. Precision beats power. Every single time. A scalpel works better than a sledgehammer when the thing you're cutting is wrapped around someone's soul."
He walked back to the burned symbol on the wall and tapped the lower gap in the squiggly lines, between that space and the dot.
"This is the door. This is where the witch got in. If you're going to use that light of yours, this is where you aim it. Not everywhere. Not all at once. Right here. You blast this gap with enough juice to collapse the valve, the seal breaks, and whatever's inside gets evicted."
"You're sure?"
"No," the Trickster said cheerfully. "I'm guessing. But I'm a really, really good guesser."
"Really, really good guesser," Tyson repeated. "Great. I hope to God you're not exaggerating."
"That's the spirit."
Tyson headed up the aisle. "Thanks for the help, have fun in your next town or whatever," he said as he reached the door.
Everyone was gone. Clark, Kara, Lana, Chloe, Kyla, every one of them scattered or taken or branded or possessed, and here he was in a dark theater, taking witch-removal advice from something that might be a god. Yesterday, he'd had a town full of people. Tonight, he had a guess and a borrowed light.
It would have to be enough. He'd make it enough.
Kara's voice came back to him then, from a road outside the Kent farm, from a hundred years ago that had also been this morning. You're not alone.
"Yeah," he said, to no one, "Kinda feels like I am," and pushed out into the dark.
— Meteor Freak —