Angeles

For seven Fridays after the elimination of Jared Grey, I found myself seated across from Angeles with a beer in my hands. Half of those Fridays happened at the Roadhouse and the rest were at various other bars throughout the states. All but one were at the end of a case.

The seventh Friday put us at the Roadhouse. Sam had retired early, as had become the usual with him, which meant I could actually talk to Angeles about things that weren’t cases. It was always nice to have that little break.

Not this time, though. This time was different.

I had a lot going on in my head and I didn’t want to talk about it. Sam’s the one who talks about feelings, not me. It would have been a relief to have a case to talk about. Then again, any topic good enough to distract me would have been fine.

“You’ve been awfully quiet today, Dean,” Angeles said. “Everything okay?”

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” I busied my mouth with the beer in front of me so I didn’t have to talk about it. Rule number one of Dean Winchester: do not talk about feelings. Teenage girls and Sam talk about feelings.

“Care to expand on that?”

“Not really.”

“Whatever.”

I’d learned that ‘whatever’ was one of Angeles’ favorite words. I’d learned a bunch of other things about her, too. Like how her favorite thing to hunt is a shapeshifter, and how she was once on an all-girls football team in middle school. She had wanted to be a musician, and she always chewed her lip when she was in thought. She’s a Scorpio, her favorite food is Chinese take-out, and her favorite color’s purple. And when she was pissed, she locked herself in the closest room and blasted Black Sabbath until she felt better.

The last one, I’d learned after we couldn’t stop the demon before it killed somebody. Angeles had locked herself in the bathroom of the motel room for four hours. She wouldn’t let Sam or me in to shower and we could hear her Black Sabbath through the walls even though she had headphones, it was that loud. Then she came out and went straight to sleep.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Her hand on mine brought me out of the memory.

I blinked a few times. “I told you, I’m fine.”

Don’t grab her hand, I thought. Don’t do it, Dean. Do not grab her hand.

But I did. I slid my fingers between hers. I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but it did. I drew my hand away promptly.

“Sorry,” I muttered. I busied myself with the beer again.

It was only the seventh date, if you could even call it that. There was no way I should be showing that much interest. Not so soon.

“Dean.” Angeles’ expression was unreadable.

“Look, I said I’m sorry. Okay? I didn’t mean for it to happen.” I finished my beer in one gulp and stood up. “I’m just gonna go now.”

And I booked it out of the Roadhouse.

And Angeles followed me right out. “Dean Winchester, what in God’s name was that all about?”

“Angeles, look. I don’t talk about my feelings, and I sure as hell don’t show them off.” I passed my hand over my face.

“Is that what this is all about? Feelings?” Angeles walked toward me.

I wished she’d go back inside and let me go back to the motel in peace. As I backed away from her, I tripped over my own two feet and landed on somebody’s car. Shit. Nowhere to go from there.

She came toward me still. At that point, I accepted defeat and stopped trying to get away. I straightened myself against the car.

“It is, isn’t it?” Angeles stopped right in front of me.

“Angeles, please. I just want to go back to my room.” I looked away from her.

But damn if she wasn’t persistent. She moved in real close, to the point where we were touching. I could smell the leather of her jacket. Good God, did she know what personal space was? I leaned backwards.

She followed, and closed whatever little bit of space remained between us. Before I could even comprehend that she’d kissed me, she straightened back up and shook something in her right hand.

“If you’ll get off my car, I’ll take you back.”

~

I collapsed on the free bed as soon as Angeles dropped me off at the room. All the air from my lungs whoofed out when I landed, and that was just fine. Damn, I screwed that one up.

“You alright?” Sam asked.

“Does it look like I’m alright?” If I had been looking at him, I would have glared at his stupidity.

“What happened?”

“I screwed up.” I buried my face in the pillow and covered it with my arms. All I wanted was to shrink into an invisible speck so I didn’t have to deal with this.

Sam huffed. “Well, that’s helpful.”

“Get over it. I’m done talking.”

That only made Sam more desperate for an explanation. He asked question after question, all of which I ignored. It went on for a good ten minutes. That was when I pushed myself onto my elbows. He wasn’t going to shut up until I told him.

“Look, Sam. As much as I hate to admit it, I feel things. Mostly toward Angeles, and well, they slipped out. I ran, but she followed me out. She kissed me and brought me back here. The end. That’s what happened.” I collapsed back into the bed, unsure whether the confession made me feel better or worse about the situation.

The only thing I was sure of was that the confession made Sam fire off more questions.

“This is exactly why I don’t talk about things with you,” I grumbled. “All you do is ask a bunch of lame-ass questions.”

“It’s called curiosity.”

“Yeah, well. You can shove your curiosity up your ass.” I laughed.

“But I just want to know what you said!”

This went on for at least half an hour. Sam didn’t believe when I said I didn’t say anything to Angeles. And he didn’t believe me when I said that she didn’t say anything either. Actually, he didn’t believe most of what I said, so I don’t know why I kept going.

“I think I know what your problem is,” he said after all of his questions.

“What are you, my therapist?” I groaned, but I was joking.

“No, but—“

I cut him off with a laugh. “Then stop trying to tell me what my problems are.”

“Okay, fine. If you don’t want me telling you, I’ll ask you. When are you going to ask her to be your girlfriend?”

All I managed to choke out was “What?” There was no way he was serious.

“I’m serious, Dean. It’s obvious.”

“Oh, shut the hell up.”

But part of me knew there was some truth in his words. I did have a thing for Angeles and, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I kinda did want to have her as my girlfriend. Thing with that is, anybody any Winchester got involved with ended up hurt. I hate seeing people get hurt.

“It’s been obvious since day one,” Sam continued.

“I said shut up.” I let myself fall back into the pillows. “This conversation is over.”

~

Angeles didn’t come around again until Monday. When she did, it was like nothing had even happened. Neither of us mentioned the kiss. Sam wanted to, and by the way his hands tensed, it was killing him that I wouldn’t let him. It was like he had to physically restrain himself from saying anything.

“Any new cases over the weekend?” the blonde asked. “Anything at all?”

We were seated in the back corner of a busy diner. The entire place was filled with people laughing and yapping and having a general good time. Every table was occupied.

“Nothing so far.” Sam closed the lid of his laptop.

“Well, you two are in luck.” Angeles showed us some folded up papers she had in her pocket. “I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’ve got something.”

Sam took the papers, which left me with nothing to do. I tapped my fingers on the tabletop for a minute. Then I got bored with that and took the papers Sam had already read.

The first, as always, was a missing persons report. The rest were other reports and unsolved cases from the 70s and 80s. I read through them to pick up the pattern. Every five or so years, like clockwork, five people disappeared into the forest, never to be seen again. That gave us a few options.

It could be a Wendigo, or it could just be any of the other typical woods spirits. My bet was on a Wendigo. It fit a pattern similar to the last one we dealt with, save for the fact that the first only killed every 23 years.

Sam handed me the remaining papers, which were unsolved cases from the 90s onward. I didn’t look through them with the same extent. Angeles waited patiently until I gave her back the papers.

“What do you think it is?” she asked.

“Well, there’s a possibility that there’s some god hidden in the forest,” Sam said before I could say anything. “The pattern fits with a sacrifice schedule.”

“Aren’t sacrifices a yearly thing, though?” Angeles asked.

“It depends,” I interrupted. “For some, it might be every year and others, every five or whatever.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it would work to distract them. “Why don’t you look up gods and their sacrifice periods, Sam? I think it’s a Wendigo.”

“Dean,” Sam protested.

“Just look up the gods. I’d say the pattern fits better with a Wendigo than it does a god.”

“I’ve never dealt with a Wendigo before,” Angeles said.

I explained why that was a good thing. Wendigoes are horrible things to deal with. The last one we’d seen, in Blackwater Ridge, got half our crew before we caught up to it. But that one had been living for hundreds of years. If this was a Wendigo, it was just a baby and hadn’t learned how to store its meals for hibernation.

“I can’t find anything on anything,” Sam said after a few minutes. “I’ve looked on all the usual sites. Everything is either once a year or twice a year.”

“Exactly my point,” I muttered. “Where the hell is our food?” I was getting bored of just sitting there waiting to eat.

“Dean, relax.” Angeles nudged her knee into my leg under the table. “It’ll be here soon.”

As she’d said, it was there soon. I shoved all of the papers toward the unoccupied corner to make room for the plates. Angeles swiped them all into the bench seat. Nothing quite like carrying around a missing persons report in the same area he went missing, or similar reports of almost fifty other people.

The waitress put the plates on the table, along with squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard, and told us to let her know if we need anything. I don’t think we planned to need anything else, but we nodded anyways and smiled until she went away.

“So, Wendigoes,” Angeles said between bites of chicken strips. She took the bottle of ketchup and squeezed it all over her fries, licking up the little bit that got on her finger.

“What about them?” Sam picked at his salad.

“Tell me what I need to know. How to hunt them and how to kill them. Stuff like that.”

Ahh, the ‘how to kill them’ thing. That’s my favorite part of explaining creatures. “The only way to kill a Wendigo is with fire, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to escape it or catch up to it,” I said. “They’re extremely fast and have extremely good hearing and smell. Hunters, in every sense of the word. They can perfectly imitate distress calls and human voices. Not fun things to go after.”

I hurried to eat my burger so it didn’t go cold during explanations. And because eating meat while you’re discussing bloody cannibalistic spirits never ends well. Fries are a little easier on the system during those times.

Angeles wanted to know what Wendigoes were, how they originated, and what part of lore they come from. Sam and I took turns with giving the details. Of course, I ended up with all the gross ones. I was glad I’d wolfed down my burger.

“So, when do we go see if it is a Wendigo?” Angeles grinned.

“We can go after we eat if you want,” Sam said.

Oh, geez. Thanks for asking me, I thought bitterly. Not like I’m the one with the car keys or anything.

“Okay. Just let me stop at my room and get a few things before we go.” The blonde folded up all the papers and put them back in her pocket.

“We’ll follow you,” I said. “Are we finished here then?”

Sam scooted toward me, which meant he wanted out of the seat. I stood up to let him out. He headed straight for the bathrooms, coughing something at me as he passed.

I didn’t hear it, so I ignored him. But I did have a pretty good idea of what it was. I just chose to not listen.

“Dean, can we talk later?” Angeles asked. “There’s something I want to know.”

Does nobody understand the first rule of Dean Winchester?

“Yeah, I guess we can.” I exhaled as I broke my own rule. I guess I could make an exception.

“Great.”

I wished Sam would get back out of the bathroom. His presence could end the awkwardness between Angeles and me because at least somebody would be talking and I wouldn’t have to. Even if he didn’t talk. It still meant I wouldn’t have to.

Sam finally did come out after a few minutes. He gave me a questioning look, to which I responded with a glare and slight shake of my head.

“Alright. Everybody ready?” he asked while he patted down his pockets.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” Angeles said. She gathered up her little bag purse thing and we went to pay for our lunch.

As we exited the diner, I saw a couple people checking out my car. That was fine. The part that wasn’t fine was when they touched my baby. Nobody nowhere gets to touch my car like that.

“Hey, hands off my baby,” I called. “Geez. Look without touching, will you?”

“Dean, calm down.” Sam put his hand on my shoulder.

“That’s my car! I don’t want their grubby hands all over her.”

The group that hovered around my car separated and stopped touching her. I tried not to glare as they walked past me into the diner. Angeles turned away laughing.

“I’ve never seen someone that protective of their car,” she said.

“Yeah, well. I love my car.” I put my hands in my pockets to find the keys. “I’ll follow you to wherever you’re going.”

“Okay. See you there.” Angeles walked to her car and disappeared inside.

Sam and I got into the Impala and we drove out after Angeles and her Charger.

“Alright, dude,” Sam said not even two seconds after we started moving. “When are you going to ask her?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, okay? I’m still working through that one.”

“Well, you should ask her before the case is over.”

“I still have to think about it, Sam. This isn’t one of those things that can just happen.”

“Dean…”

“Sam, she wants to talk later, and you know how I get about that.”

Sam’s eyes went wide. Oh no. “You’re making an exception to Dean Winchester’s Rule Number One?”

I was also dangerously close to breaking Rule Number Two by asking Angeles to be my girlfriend.

“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled. “You’re turning this into more than it actually is.”

Sam was quiet for a minute. I turned left at the light after Angeles did. Around that time, my brother decided to start in with his lame-ass questions again.

“Have you two… y’know… done anything?”

“Sam!” I turned to glare at the pain in the ass seated next to me. “No. We have not ‘y’know done anything,’ thank you very much. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous. Now shut up.”

I parked next to Angeles’ Charger in the motel lot where Angeles was staying. I didn’t know if I was supposed to go in with her or not, so I stayed put in the car. It probably would have seemed desperate if I went in after her.

Angeles came out a few minutes later, but it didn’t look like she’d grabbed anything else. Maybe it was in her pocket or her bag thing. She tapped on my window and told me she’d follow me to the forest.

I drove off in the direction of the forest. Sam turned on the radio after we left the parking lot. Instead of the usual classic rock I usually listen to, it was some weird something or other. I went to change the station, but something told me to wait. And then I heard a line in the song. So glad to meet you, Angeles. I pulled my hand away from the stereo.

“Look that up for me, will you?” I said to Sam. “So glad to meet you, Angeles. I want to know what song that’s from.”

Sam did as soon as we stopped at a gas station. He had the song by the time I came back out with road snacks. “It’s called Angeles by some guy named Elliott Smith,” he said when I revved up the engine again.

“Thanks.” I could definitely use that later on.

~

When we made it to the forest, Angeles pulled me away before we could even start. “Dean, I want to talk.” She walked away from the cars, indicating that I should follow.

“What?” Damn the fact that I’m not good with words…

“Look, Dean. I just want to know if there’s actually something going on between us or if I’m just imagining it, because I can’t really tell anymore.” Angeles stopped on a rock.

I didn’t answer immediately. There was something. That much was for certain. What that something was… now that was another story.

“There is something,” I said slowly, “but I’m not sure what yet. I need a little time to figure that out.” My pulse thundered in my ears. I didn’t know how I managed to admit that.

“That’s all I wanted to know. Wasn’t so hard to say that much now was it?” Angeles came forward again, walking right past me and into the woods. Her arm brushed mine and I nearly stumbled over a root.

Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, I grumbled inwardly. Then I followed her in. Sam flanked me, silently questioning with his look.

“No,” I said. “No more questions out of you. We’re on a case here.”

Sam, surprisingly, remained quiet unless his question dealt with what was going on. Sometimes he’s great, and sometimes I just want to tape his mouth shut. This was one of the times where I was exactly in the middle because even though he was talking to Angeles he wasn’t asking his stupid questions.

I looked around the trees while they talked. There were no outright marks of a Wendigo anywhere. No blood, no claw marks, no bodies. Nothing. Not even the silence that usually comes along with them. It seemed that not even a leaf was out of place, which led me to wonder if we were actually hunting a Wendigo or another woods spirit. Maybe there was something a little farther up the trail.

Then I saw the trace of what appeared to be a print of some kind. A closer glance showed it was a boot print in the dirt. “Guys, I’ve got a print,” I called. “There might be a track we can follow.”

Sam and Angeles hurried over to the print. “It looks like there are more,” Angeles said. “But what confuses me is why there are bare human footprints too.”

Bare human footprints? How did I miss those?

“So maybe this isn’t a Wendigo,” Sam said with a hopeful tone to his voice.

“You’re right. It might just be another spirit.”

Or it might just be a human who’s out here killing these people. God, I hate it when it’s just crazy people. I just don’t understand when people turn evil.

I started to follow the tracks. Both sets went on for nearly a hundred yards before stopping at a fork in the trail. Well, shit. That’s just fantastic. I checked to make sure they didn’t go down either side of the trail.

“Did they just stop?” Sam asked. “Like, seriously just stop?”

“Yeah, they like seriously just stopped.” Why the hell else am I making sure there are no more? Because wandering around in the wilderness is fun?

Angeles looked around, paying special attention to the dirt trail. The area between the forked trails continued on to another small area of trees. She ignored the ‘please keep on the trail’ sign and walked forward into the grass. I looked at Sam, who shrugged, and followed.

We didn’t make it very far before there was the sound of somebody else coming up the trail. Shit. No, no, no, not now. Damn it! “I’ll cover this one,” I said.

I walked back down the trail to find a family with their kids and dogs and a basket probably full of food. They looked like they were enjoying themselves all ready for a picnic. And here I was, about to smash that. Oh well.

“Hey, listen guys,” I said. “I hate to tell you, but we, uh, we gotta close the trail temporarily. You’re gonna have to leave.”

“What? Why?” the mother asked.

“We’re investigating some missing persons around this area and it’s safer if we don’t have any civvies in the immediate area. I apologize for inconveniencing you guys on such short notice, but that’s safety protocol for you.” I shrugged as if I actually were sorry. “We should be opening up the trail again in a few weeks.”

I sure hoped it wouldn’t take a few weeks.

~

Sam took his time stepping carefully around plants and roots. I didn’t care so much about the plants. I just wanted to find something. Anything.

We’d been going for about three hours now in the trees, and the most anybody had found was a small piece of a child’s toy. There wasn’t even anything buried around it. Just a random doll arm.

The fourth hour led us only to a small group of rocks. There wasn’t anything surrounding the rocks except the hill they sat at the base of. Angeles inspected the hill and the rocks and Sam wandered out a little farther. That left me to stand guard and play lookout.

Sam came running back from wherever he’d gone to. “Guys, there’s… something you should look at,” he said between breaths. “It might be a Wendigo after all.”

Angeles and I followed after Sam until he stopped at a tree. There were distinct claw marks scarred into the bark and blood. Lots of blood. It had to be like the case in Blackwater Ridge, where the Wendigo easily led us to an area as a trap.

“This was too easy,” I muttered.

And I was right. There was a sound of an animal in distress coming from where we’d just been at the hill. Everybody tensed and reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. Shit. Son of a bitch. And we were way too far away from the car to go get anything useful. To put it mildly, we were screwed. But I had an idea.

“Sam, you’re the fastest,” I said. “You run back to the car and get every knife of silver and anything that shoots fire that you possibly can. Angeles, you go with him. I’ll stay here.”

“Dean, are you crazy?” Sam practically shouted.

“Yeah, maybe just a little bit. Now go.”

Sam tried to glare me down until I waved him away. Then he took off toward the car. Angeles didn’t go with him.

“Angeles, go with him,” I said. “It’s no use to get both of us hurt.”

“Nobody’s getting hurt,” Angeles said. “I’ll stay and help fight it off.”

“With your bare hands?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Wow. This girl’s just full of surprises.

“If we make it through this alive, I am so asking you to be my girlfriend.” I laughed.

Ten minutes passed in silence after that. Even the woods became silent. No sign of insect life anywhere. And then the call. “Help me!”

There were flashes of movement to either side of me. I moved closer to Angeles for protective purposes. She had her fists balled and at the ready. I copied her and stood with my back against hers.

“Come on, Sam,” I growled.

Something in the trees growled back. And then again from another direction. The second growl was slightly different from the first, more like a mountain lion than a bear. Then the Wendigo howled. It wasn’t exactly like a wolf’s howl. It was a little more… hungry and animalistic. And not a mating call. Either way, the air grew cold.

A huge streak of black rushed right past Angeles and me. It didn’t even stop to pay us any attention. What the hell?

Another black wind passed from the opposite direction, again ignoring us humans. What was the deal with this thing? It was like it didn’t even notice us. At all.

The Wendigo finally stopped about twenty feet away from where I stood. It was pissed, absolutely furious. But it wasn’t looking at Angeles or me. It was looking away into the rest of the forest. Then the thing unleashed a sound so horrible I had to cover my ears. The sound wasn’t quite a wail, wasn’t quite a howl, and wasn’t quite a roar. Yeah, definitely not a mating call.

I almost missed the blur of movement to my left. It wasn’t the Wendigo. That was still where it had stopped.

There was something else in the forest.

Wendigo Number Two appeared directly across from Wendigo Number One. Except this one was covered in blood-stained white fur. Oh, shit. Territory fight, by the looks of it.

Wendigo Number One, the hairless one, charged the first one with a feral growl from the depths of Hell itself. It raised its claws right before the two beasts collided with the force of seven semis. I ducked instinctively before the two monsters became a blur.

“This is probably where we run,” I said to Angeles. “Let them handle their own territory issues.”

“Yeah.” Angeles took off in the direction of the car like a bat out of hell. I followed, staying two steps behind in case anything snuck up.

The forest filled with the bloodthirsty sounds of the two Wendigoes. I checked behind me to make sure they were still after each other and not us. They were still at each other’s throats. One of them screamed from the depths of the trees and there was a crash.

“Shit, go!” I shouted.

While I was looking back, I barreled into Sam and knocked him to the ground. Luckily neither of us was hurt because of all the weapons he had in his hands.

“Dean?” He pushed me off of him and stood up. “What’s going on?”

I struggled to my feet with the help of my brother and Angeles. “There’re two of them,” I gasped between breaths. “They’re fighting. We ran.”

“Two Wendigoes?” Sam looked behind us in disbelief.

I nodded. “Come on. We have to get out of here. They’ll handle it themselves.”

“But what about those people?”

“We’ll find them later. Come on.” I dragged Sam and Angeles toward the car.

One of the Wendigoes screamed again, this time in agony. It sounded like the fight was over. Then there was another crash, another scream, and I knew it wasn’t.

I dragged the two other hunters toward the edge of the forest even faster. Getting caught in the middle of a territorial pissing between two Wendigoes is not something on my want to do list.

Somehow they ended up right on our tails again. I yanked the flamethrower out of Sam’s hands, ready to blast those evil sonsofbitches back to wherever the hell Wendigoes go.

Number One slammed Number Two into the ground. With a feral roar, it raised its claws and dug out the heart of the other. It crushed the ice-heart while the other let out a death screech and shriveled up into nothing. Then Number One let out its victory noise and turned on us.

“Oh, hell no.” I fired up my weapon and let the Wendigo have it. It caught fire, but I didn’t stop until it had burned to a crisp and exploded.

Angeles and Sam were quiet while the creature died. I don’t even know what was coming out of my mouth at the thing, but I’m sure there was a lot of swearing. Then I finished and gave Sam back the flamethrower.

“Let’s not do that again.”

~

It was Sam’s idea to try moving the rock at the base of the hill. I didn’t think it would move at all, but Angeles did so we tried. And it moved. It took all three of us to move it, but it moved.

I was surprised the whole damn hill didn’t come tumbling down when the rock proved to be a doorway into a cave. Then again, upon closer inspection, it was held up with some posts just like a mine would be. No wonder it didn’t collapse.

“Anybody got a flashlight?” I asked.

Neither Sam nor Angeles did. I didn’t think they would, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Give me that flamethrower again.” I took it from Sam and lit it up. If there was another Wendigo in there, it could serve double purpose. “You two wait here. I’ll shout if I need anything.”

I went into the cave, careful not to start anything on fire with the weapon/light. Once I got inside, I heard a noise coming from somewhere in a corner. I tensed on instinct after the whole Wendigo thing.

“Please don’t hurt me,” it said. I aimed the flamethrower light in the direction of the voice, at which there was a scream. “Oh, God please don’t hurt me.”

A human. Thank God. He was suspended from a rafter by his hands and covered in dried blood and dirt.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to save you.” I put the flamethrower on the ground and walked to where Sam could see me. “We’ve got a live one,” I called. “Come help me.”

Angeles and Sam came into the cave. They looked around until they saw the man hanging by his wrists. Then they hurried over to help.

“What’s your name?” Angeles asked the man.

“Jonathan Herring,” he said.

“Are there any others in here?”

“Angeles, I don’t think you should ask so many questions right now,” Sam said softly. “We need to get him out of here first.”

I worked on the knots in the rope. Jonathan Herring dropped like a sheet into Angeles, who held him up. “You two get him out of here. I’ll see if there are any others.”

The two supported Jonathan and helped him walk out of the cave. I explored the remaining area of the cave. To my dismay, I found only remains dangling from the ceiling and piled up in corners. At least we got one live one.

I took one last look around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything before I left. There was nothing else in the cave aside from the corpses. I climbed out of the cave to call in and report the scene.

There was a lot of explaining to do when the police got there. According to Herring, Angeles, Sam and I were his cousins who had heard about his disappearance and came looking ourselves because everybody else had stopped looking. We heard his screaming from inside the hill and moved the rock out of the way. The man who’d kidnapped him had strung him up from the rafters for whatever reason and left him alone, instead choosing to eat the other people he’d already kidnapped.

“I swear, there are a hundred skeletons or more in there,” the man said. “Some of them are fresh and some of them are really old.”

We never bothered to correct him that he hadn’t been kidnapped by a man. Some things are just better left unsaid.

When the detectives were finished with the questioning, we left Herring with them and left. The first place we went was, of course, a bar. Hunting and running from cannibalistic spirits leaves a guy hungry.

Nobody talked much while we ate. I had too much going on inside my head again. Sam was busy on his laptop. Angeles was just eating. Every few minutes, though, Sam cast sideways looks at me from his computer. He typed something then turned it to me.

“Are you going to ask her?” it said.

I tapped the table once for yes. Sam turned his laptop back again, typed something else about the song. I tapped once again.

“Hey, Dean, let me up. Will ya?” Sam scooted toward me again.

Before I let him up, I shoved a stack of quarters in his pocket. “You know what to do,” I hissed.

“I’ll be right back.” Sam walked away toward the bathroom, then turned to go to the jukebox.

I watched as he flipped through the songs, getting more anxious with every second that passed. My pulse sped up exponentially when he finally found the song and disappeared into the bathroom.

“So, nice hunt today,” I said.

“Yeah.” Angeles nodded.

My brain went blank at that moment and erased everything else I was going to say. I blinked a few times to bring it back. Didn’t work.

“Uh… I totally forgot what I was going to say.” I laughed, embarrassed.

Angeles laughed too. “That’s okay. It’ll come back when it’s supposed to.”

The song finally got to the part where the guy was singing. I tapped my foot at the speed of my heartbeat. I probably had about sixty seconds before Sam came back.

“So, um… remember how I said if we made it out of there alive, I’d ask you to be my girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I remember.” The blonde nodded.

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Well, we made it out alive.” Ugh, God, why wasn’t I blessed with the ability to use words? “Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m doing this. But I said I would ask if we survived, and we survived. So I was wondering if, uh… if you’d be my girlfriend.”

Angeles smiled. “You’re cute when you ramble like that. Of course I will.”

I blew out a huge breath of relief. “Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done if you would have said no. See, I told you there was something between us and I just didn’t know what it was. I just found it out what it was, and…”

“Dean, you’re rambling again.” The blonde, now my girlfriend, leaned across the table and kissed me. “I already said yes. You don’t have to explain anything.”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

Elliott Smith sang on about Angeles. I felt like singing along at the part of the song that had grabbed my attention to begin with. The blonde just sat there and grinned while I sang. “So glad to meet you, Angeles.”

Sam came back around the same time the song finished. “Well, is everybody ready to go?” he asked. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“Yeah, we’re ready,” Angeles said. She left a tip on the table and then went to pay for everybody’s dinner.

My brother gave me an expectant look. “Well?”

“Do I have to tell you everything?” I groaned, even though I didn’t mean it.

“Oh, come on. All you have to do is tell me whether she said yes or no.”

“Yes. She said yes.”

Sam grinned like a little kid in a candy shop. “I can’t believe you broke your second rule. You never break your own rules. Like, ever.”

“Oh, shut up.”