I'll Tell You My Sins so You Can Sharpen Your Knife

The next morning at nine-thirty am, Dean was on Sarah’s case about her shoes.

“I’m not trying to fight.” He said as they both got out of the car.

Sarah sipped her coffee and slammed the car door shut. “That’s a shock.”

“But the point of being an FBI agent is that you’re non-descript. No one notices. You can’t wear yellow heels as an FBI agent!”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you have a badge with my face on it?”

“Well, no – “

She held up a university ID card. “Sarah Manning, Professor of Medical Research at Rutgers. Are we good?”

“Does that even exist?”

“The position? No.”

He opened the door of city hall for her. “After you.”

Dean quickly located the coroner’s office and requested to see the three bodies.

“Don’t know why you want these ones.” The coroner said, pulling out the bodies from the cold storage. “They were all just accidents.”

“Find anything odd?”

He shrugged as Sarah began to look over the bodies, and handed Dean a couple of files. “All straightforward, I guess. Drowning, heard attack, and an aneurism.” He hesitated and looked at Sarah. “I’m sorry, what school are you with again?”

“Rutgers.” She said dryly. She pushed glasses that Dean didn’t even know she needed up her nose. “Excuse me, did you determine what left this marking on her wrists?”

The coroner looked at the drowning victim. “No, we concluded they were left over from a sexual escapade – Miss Browning was known for her promiscuity. When they found the body, she had seaweed around her wrists and arms, but that couldn’t have left marks. Just not strong enough.”

Dean was looking at the heart attack victim’s neck. “Are those…thorns in her throat?”

“She fell into her own rose bushes.”

The cuts and thorns were in a straight line around her neck.

Sarah quickly looked over the aneurism victim, couldn’t find anything strange, and decided it might not be connected.

“What do you think?” Dean asked as they got back into the car.

Sarah shook her head. “The drowning. The seaweed so tight it left marks, maybe even holding her down. My first instinct is kelpie.”

“That wouldn’t explain the other death.”

“Or the fact that this area has a tithe agreement.”

Dean gave her a confused look.

Sarah sighed. “You gotta get out east more. It’s the only area with fair folk. Elves. Sprites. The courts of Day and Night.”

“And what? The Day court is all flowers and rainbows and the night is blood and fire?”

Sarah snorted. “I wish. The Day court is almost nastier than the Night. Anyway, it can’t be that. Each year on Halloween, the night court performs a tithe. One human sacrifice in return for no human blood spilt for a year. Kidnappings, tricks, that’s all fair game. Murder, only once a year.”

“And because of that, it’s not a kelpie? Because of a promise?”

“You’ve been doing this for your entire life, and you continue to underestimate magic?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine. So it was but it wasn’t a kelpie. Any ideas on how someone could get strangled by roses, and then have a heart attack?”

Sarah was staring out the window. “Flower faries.”

“Alright, stop fucking with me. You’re making all this up to make me look like an idiot.”

“No. Look.”

Dean looked up and slammed on the brakes out of shock. A woman wearing some sort of bikini out of oak leafs was throwing acorns at another woman at the foot of an oak tree. The other woman had on a long white dress and peonies in her hair. Sarah rolled down her window.

“Stay away from this tree! Go back to your shrubs!”

“Oh, like you can talk, you overgrown tuber! Your roots are strangling me!”

Dean and Sarah couldn’t do anything but stare. Finally, he said, “Are those really…”

“They don’t exist.”

“I’m looking at some pretty compelling evidence that they do.”

“But they don’t. They shouldn’t. They’re from a children’s book.”

Someone honked their horn and Dean jumped, then drove forward a bit to park at the curb. Sarah jumped out of the car. “Ladies! Ladies! Why are you fighting!”

Dean slowly got out of the car and started to look around the base of the tree while Sarah distracted the apparent fairies with a Dr Phil act.

“Sarah!” Dean called.

Sarah left the fairies and joined him, squatting down to look at what he had found.

“Sure as shit the strangest hex bag I’ve ever seen.” He said.

~*~

“There’s nothing.” Sarah groaned, dropping her head onto her book. “There’s no record of a hex bag like that, especially not one that will create impossible fairies and kelpies unbound by tithes.”

“There’s got to be something.” Dean replied, not looking up from his laptop.

Sarah covered her head with her blankets and closed her eyes. When she was a child, her mother, may her bones burn green, taught her about hex bags. But if she hadn’t had instruction, what would she have done?

After a moment, she pushed herself back up. “Hey, Dean? Can I pitch an idea?”

He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Sure.”

“What if we’re dealing with a young witch?”

He frowned. “How do you mean?”

“You know. Someone born with power. But let’s say he or she knows they have power, has a general idea, but doesn’t know how to go about it. So they just start making stuff up and seeing what works.”

Dean thought about it, and shrugged. “Worth looking into. For now, keep looking.”

Sarah groaned and grabbed the next library book in the pile.

Twenty minutes later, Dean looked over to find Sarah asleep on top of her book. He stood, cracked his back, and carefully slid the book out from under her head. He placed a pillow within her reach incase she woke up, then turned out the lights and got into his own bed. Soon, Sarah began to lightly snore.

Dean pulled his phone out of his pocket and simply stared at Liza’s number. He had lied to Sarah the other day. Lisa didn’t want him around anymore. Not now that he was back to hunting. He could not call her.

The worst part of this life. It was either hunting or normality. It was never both. And usually, once you started hunting you couldn’t go back.

Dean rolled onto his side and looked at the dark lump that was Sarah. Was it possible to balance the two? Combined them?

Maybe Sarah knew. Sarah seemed to know just about everything.

~*~

The next morning, Dean went off to talk to the local middle school about any kids who had been having problems lately. Sarah stood in front of the bathroom mirror and studied the reflection of Castiel’s pendant.

“What’s wrong, Sarah?”

Sarah looked up and saw Castiel in the mirror. She turned around and leant against the sink, studying her protector.

“Nothing’s wrong. Just worried about you.”

“Don’t lie to me. I always know.”

“You’re the one running around and making insane deals with demons.”

They studied each other. Castiel intently, and Sarah with a fierce defiance. Then she gave up and wrapped her arms tightly around Castiel, not expecting him to hug back.

“Why did you introduce me to Dean, Cas?” she muttered into his shirt. “You threw me into the lion’s den.”

He said nothing.

“You said there was a reason for this. It’s probably not just to work some stupid case together. He’s going to find out what I am and then, I don’t know, try to slit my throat or something. Or maybe Sam will, seeing as he’s been a robot lately.”

Finally, Castiel hugged her back, loosely, like he didn’t know how it was done. “I’ll explain everything soon.” He promised. “I have to go.”

“Wait - !”

But Castiel was gone, as if he was never there. The door to the room opened and Dean came in. “Hey, I have all kinds of disciplinary records that I stole from the middle school councilor. Come help.”

Sarah blinked and shook herself. “Yeah. Sure.”