Title: Nothing and Everything

Part Two: Retribution

Chapter 36

~~~~~~~~~~

Morning was pure agony.

Dean had taken to sleeping on his back since the pressure of sleeping on his side or stomach made getting out of bed in the morning nearly impossible. He woke to the sound of Jack crying, and as he began the process of psyching himself up to move, he heard Sam in with Jack.

He was good with him, talking in a soft voice, calming him down. Sam’s enthusiasm for taking care of Jack while Dean couldn’t really bend, twist, or move without pain was not unsurprising. He seemed eager to really find out how well he could do in that role of caretaker, using this like a trial run for when Gwen conceived.

Smiling a little, Dean listened several minutes. Sam was going to be a good father if that was in his cards.

He took several deep breaths in a row and pushed himself to sit up, letting out a groan of pain as he did so. The outward bruises were fading to weird shades of yellow, but inside was still a mess of hurt. He was going to be hurting for at least six weeks, according to Gwen’s almost cheerful prediction. Forcing himself up and out of bed, Dean gritted his teeth until he was mobile and heading down the hall. Staggering was a much better word to describe his mobility at present, he decided. He didn’t walk, he staggered.

“Morning.” Sam glanced his way. “Coffee’s ready.” He lifted Jack, who had started reaching for Dean upon noticing him in the doorway. “I’ll get him fed and dressed.”

“And bathed. He needs a bath this morning.”

“He gets two or three a day.”

Accurate observation. “Only when he really needs them.”

“Which is every day, several times a day.”

“Pretty much.” His son had a knack for getting absolutely filthy.

Sam stepped close enough he could half hold Jack without his son’s weight on his ribs. Jack responded with babble and a few words that made sense. His vocabulary was improving, though largely consisted of ball, mama, dada, nana, and a few other words.

Dean cupped the back of Jack’s head and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Morning, buddy. You ready for some breakfast?” He let Sam go past him and concentrated on getting himself moving.

He showered and dressed, then made his way down the stairs as Sam was taking Jack back up. It was the same sort of routine they’d established the past couple weeks. Also routine was Jack’s crying for Jo at bedtime. He’d cry ‘won mama’ until he passed out he was so tired from fussing. The first time he’d done that it had about broken Dean’s heart and he’d immediately called Jo only to learn that when he wasn’t there, Jack cried ‘won dada’.

Her absence was keenly felt and Dean found his thoughts turning towards John Winchester. The determination with which John had gone after Azazel proved in Dean’s mind just how much John had loved Mary because, no matter what Sam said, he knew he had the potential inside him to be much like their father. If Jo died, he knew he’d go off the deep end the same way John had and those around him would have a hard time keeping him focused on the family he had left instead of only on revenge. Yet he also knew that family would fight for him and were far more than what John had had. Sam -- and everyone else- was right. The circumstances would always be different. Dean would never be John Winchester, only very like him in some ways.

God willing the opportunity to test that never arose.

He turned his attention to work as the day passed. Paperwork, that was. Being stuck back in Sioux Falls doing paperwork for their front business had a high suckage factor.

Dean carefully packed pillows around himself to stay sitting up straight and minimize movement and started in on the invoices Jo and Gwen had left. The two had already worked a few basic investigation jobs and Dean was surprised at the aggressive billing Gwen and Jo had insisted on. Their reasoning was that they had the skill to be competitive and had researched prices for other investigative services in the area. Not a bad income so far, though he supposed they’d have to pay taxes and all of that crap.

“Dean?”

He looked up.

Sam came to the table and set his bag on the floor. “I’m heading out to meet Jo and Gwen. Be back in a couple days.”

“Leaving me to do all the paperwork.” Dean slid one folded paper into an envelope printed with their logo and sealed it. Sam was the one who’d gotten envelopes printed and picked up a few other office supplies, including a bookkeeping program.

He snorted. “It’s about all you can do until your ribs heal.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” While he’d gotten behind this idea because the others were enthusiastic about it and he could see the need for it, he didn’t want to be the one doing the actual paperwork. Jo or Sam were much more efficient at it than he was.

“Ellen will be here to help with Jack in about half an hour.”

“He still asleep?” He knew Jack was. He had the monitor right beside him.

“Yeah. Dead to the world.”

“What is it they’re working on that they need you there?” The only thing Jo had told him about their latest case was that it had something to do with bizarre deaths that were all caught on video and resembled Three Stooges routines.

“It’s a precaution.”

A thoroughly unconvincing claim. Dean thought Sam going to Washington probably had more to do with Gwen and their personal side project than the case. “Whatever. Get going.”

He’d finished the invoices by the time Ellen arrived, which coincided with Jack waking from his nap. Dean let her take charge and settled in for some pampering Ellen style.

~~~~~~~~~~

She was just so tired.

Gwen rolled over in bed and stretched, unable to shake the sleepiness away. She knew she needed to get up. Dean and Sam both wanted to go over the information they had on the soul stealer, a thing they did weekly now, trying to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Yawning, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

She’d started feeling under the weather a couple days earlier, a little sniffly, achy, and exhausted. It was mostly the exhaustion that had hit her hard and she hated that she’d managed to catch something. Usually she only got the occasional summer cold or allergy, but this was hitting her hard. Maybe it had been the constant traveling for six weeks that made it seem worse than usual.

Jo had cheerfully driven back, letting Gwen rest, playing whatever music she’d wanted. Gwen had zoned out until they were close to home, then gone inside, showered, put on pajamas, and collapsed into bed. She vaguely remembered Sam taking her temperature at one point and adding another blanket to her side of the bed.

The bedroom door opened, Sam peering in. “You feeling up to this?”

“Give me ten to wake up a bit.” Her voice was raspy and she cleared her throat, reaching for the water glass by the bed and taking a long drink.

“Yeah, sure. Jo’s making dip of some kind to take up.” He glanced behind him before stepping inside ad closing the door. “Cold or flu do you think?”

“Cold, I think. It doesn’t feel like flu.” Of course, it didn’t feel like a cold either, like something somewhere between the two.

“You want a hot toddy? Dean makes one that’s really good. It’ll knock you on your ass for a few hours, let you rest.”

While it was probably a good idea, the thought of alcohol right now made her stomach feel like it was sloshing a little inside her. “No, I’m good without it.”

He stepped closer, fingers smoothing across her brow. “Still no fever. You don’t feel any warmer than usual.”

“I’ll be fine in a couple days. We ran around without coats and all that stupid crap I normally don’t do. This is my penance for stupidity.”

While she started to feel a little better, she still spent the better part of the next week sleeping far more than usual.

~~~~~~~~~~

With Dean still recovering from his rib injury, it had been Jo and Gwen going out. Sam went when Jo and Gwen needed muscle, but for the most part, it was over a month of Jo and Gwen working. Dean complained about being sidelined, but Jo could tell he was enjoying his time with their son and the couple of surveillance jobs he’d undertaken for their front business. He’d even ended up working with Jody at one point, handing over information he’d uncovered during his own investigation.

What he wasn’t enjoying was the paperwork for that business and Jo could understand that. He’d never had to really contend with paperwork of that sort, while Jo had spent years helping Ellen place orders, fill envelopes, and make calls. She’d had an idea what was going to be required.

Jo was glad to be home though. Their lives had certainly changed from what they’d been. Gone were the days of roaming like nomads across the U.S.. Now, they went out with something of a battle plan and returned home as often as they could.

Home. When had the house gone from being just their base to being home? Jo wasn’t sure she could begin to pinpoint the exact moment.

She finished warming up the dip she’d made, grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and headed upstairs. Sam and Gwen were across the table and Jack was down for a nap, though it didn’t sound like he was actually napping, rather talking to himself. She set the bag and dish down and opened the bag. “Here.” Jo scooped up some dip with a chip and put it right at Dean’s mouth. “Try this.”

He ate it without taking his eyes off the map he was studying, his expression shifting from concentration to suspicion before he looked at her. “What the hell was that?” He pointed at the dish, then his mouth, and back at the dish.

She sat down, sliding the dish to one side so he couldn’t see that the dip was mostly green in color. “Dip.”

“What was in it?”

“Cheese.”

“And?”

“More cheese?”

Reaching around her, he dragged the dish over. “Green cheese? Did you feed me spinach just now?”

Sam snickered and scooped some dip with a chip. “I told you you’d never get a vegetable down him, Jo.”

“But it’s good stuff! The nutritional content of the spinach is completely negated by the two types of full fat cheese and the deep fried tortilla chips.” She’d thought she might be able to pass it off as being unhealthy and thus get Dean to eat it.

“It’s spinach.” Raising his cup, Dean drank some coffee, rinsing the brew about his mouth before swallowing. “It’s disgusting.”

“It won’t kill you, Dean.” She rolled her eyes and dished up some dip and chips onto a plate for herself. She could have sworn he’d eaten the TGI Fridays version of that dip at one point, but his reaction here indicated that memory was in error. Getting him to eat vegetables was turning into a challenge and she couldn’t say no one had warned her because Sam had. Repeatedly. There was a slim list of vegetables that Dean would willingly eat (mostly sandwich fixings), but Jo got tired of eating the same vegetables all the time. She was trying to vary their diet with little success in the matter of Dean’s participation. He could find a microscopic sliver of chopped green pepper in anything.

“You sure about that? I could go into shock from it and die.” A slight smile hovered at the corners of his mouth and disappeared, a sign he was teasing her.

Gwen took a few chips from the bag. She looked like she should still be in bed and kept trying to cover her yawns. “Don’t feel bad, Dean. I don’t eat spinach either. I think it’s the one vegetable I can’t stand. I’ll eat Brussels sprouts and asparagus, but not spinach.”

“But you actually eat vegetables,” Jo pointed out. “I have to puree them and slip them into spaghetti or lasagna or meatloaf or something to get him to eat them.”

Dean’s expression indicated she’d betrayed him on a deep level. “You put vegetables in that meatloaf?”

Gwen laughed. “You’ve scarred him for life now.”

“You ate it, didn’t you? And had fourths.”

He snorted. “I’m betrayed.” He tossed the map Sam’s way. “Here. Check off any more Mick sightings you’ve found.”

Sam looked down at the map, then circled five more locations. Most of the sightings were in the central region of the U.S. and west towards them. There had been a few on the west and east coast and the southern states, yet for the most part, he’d stayed in the central area, taking out chunks of the population. “Done.” He handed the map back.

Dean studied it. “What do we have? What do we know?”

“Well…. It’s got the monsters running scared, that’s for sure.” Gwen settled back into her chair with a few more chips in a bowl and opened a notebook. She was in her pajamas and had been the entire day, napping off and on. “I talked to six hunters the past couple weeks, two here, one in Germany, Australia, Greece, and China. They’re seeing the same migratory patterns everywhere. Creatures thought to have fled their native countries to here are apparently fleeing here now and returning home.”

“Less for us to worry about here,” Sam pointed out, reaching out to scoop a little dip onto a plate.

“But still worrying. When monsters flee it usually means something bigger and badder right behind them.” Dean glanced at Jo. “What’d you find out through Sophie?”

“One of the shamans she consulted recently started talking catastrophe in a global sense within one to two years, that once he gets started, he’ll eat his way through the entire world population.” She flipped a page on the notebook in front of her. Sophie was no longer fun to work with or talk to, her focus on Mick and the soul stealer only. Dean had likened it to how Sam had been only not nearly as bad. “There’s lore, but there’s not much. The Choctaw have what they call ‘Nalusa Chito’ or ‘Impa Shilup’ that could fit the profile of the soul stealer. It’s a soul eater, shadow being. He did tell Sophie that he was shadow and darkness. A lot of cultures do have a creature like it in their mythology, though unfortunately, I haven’t been able to turn up much fact.”

Add all that to what Lacey had told them and maybe Sam was right. Maybe they were making progress. The fact that other cultures had a creature like him supported Lacey’s claim that it had been all over the world.

“Other hunters don’t seem to know anything much either,” Gwen interjected, shifting position in her chair.

Dean’s phone rang. He reached for it. “Hello?…Yes, this is Agent May.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to the pen and paper in front of Jo. She slid it to him. “Yeah…Mmm-hmm….Thank you….We’ll be there.” He hung up.

Sam finished with his chips and dip. “What’s up?”

“That was a cop a couple hours from here, one of the ones I gave a card to. Mick surfaced this morning, about half an hour ago. Dazed, confused, blood all over him, some still fresh. He’s in custody and we need to get there quick before the real Feds get to him.”

“You think it jumped bodies?” Gwen tucked her hair behind her ears. “Left Mick to take the fall?”

“Possible.”

“We’ll call Sophie.” She reached for the house phone.

“No.” Jo shook her head. “We need to see if it’s really Mick first.”

“I agree.” Sam got up from his chair.

“No way we should give that creature a second shot at whatever is left of her soul.” Dean stood as well. He was still moving carefully, but his ribs were better than they’d been.

Jo packed him while he checked the trunk and within fifteen minutes of the call, Dean and Sam were on the road.

~~~~~~~~~~

The person in the cell certainly looked like Mick. He was sitting on the side of the bunk when they were shown in, his head down and arms resting on his knees, hands dangling loosely. His hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it over and over.

Dean stepped warily towards the cell, eyeing the bars and cell itself. Too bad all the bars were made of steel and not iron. If this was the creature they were after and not Mick, he planned on seeing if the iron knife in his pocket would hurt him -- provided the guard left them alone long enough. “Mick.”

He looked up, hope in his eyes that flickered and disappeared. “Agents,” he said, glance turning to the retreating officer, keeping their cover.

“You’ve given us a merry chase, let me tell you,” Dean began and when the door closed behind the officer, he stepped closer to the bars. “What happened?”

Mick sighed, slid a hand through his hair and stood, pacing the cell, steps shuffling. He looked older than his years and very tired. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much, just bits and pieces really.”

“What do you remember?”

“It’s like when a demon possesses you. Some things you see so clearly and others….” He sucked in a breath, like a dying man gasping for air. “Sophie. I remember hurting her and I….” He looked at Sam, then quickly down at the floor. “I remember Gwen. I’m sorry, Sam.”

Dean exchanged a glance with Sam, but they refrained from informing him that Gwen was alive and well. Mick still seemed off, his manner not quite right and Dean supposed Mick might be in shock.

“Yeah, well.” Sam’s jaw clenched and he shrugged. “Our lives aren’t conducive to long relationships.”

Mick turned to the bed, half looking over his shoulder at them. “Can you get me out?” His expression was eager, again hopeful.

“No. Real Feds will be here probably within the hour. In fact, as wanted as you are, I’m surprised they’re not already here.” It was a truth and something that happened to hunters on occasion. There wasn’t a way to get Mick out, if this was Mick. “You’re locked down, wanted on multiple counts of murder along with a slew of other charges. No way we got pull, even fake pull, to get you released. No favors big enough. You’ll be headed to the big house to wait for trial. Once we know where you are, we might be able to set something up, but until then, no.”

He smiled, turning back to face them. It was a nasty, evil grin, like the one Gwen had told them she remembered, and made the hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stand up. “Good. I think I’ll stay here awhile, guys. Take a load off. Dine in.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry, I’ll get back to you both real soon.”

“You’re not Mick.” Sam crossed his arms. He didn’t look surprised.

“No, but I’m getting better at being him, aren’t I?” He tapped a finger to his temple. “I’ve almost got full access up here, his memories opening up like a flower to the sun. He was tough to crack. Took longer than most people. Have to admire him for that.”

The door behind them opened, spilling several people into the area, all dressed in suits like Sam and Dean. The real Feds had arrived and Dean and Sam slipped out before any could take notice of them. They spent hours sitting in the Impala watching the door, waiting to see if Mick was brought out.

“We ever find out if he’s vulnerable to iron,” Dean asked. One of the suits stepped out and lit a cigarette, smoking in quick drags and puffs.

“God knows,” Sam replied. “Most of these things are, but --”

“With our luck we can cross that off the list of possibilities. Too bad we weren’t in there a little longer alone.”

By the next morning, the soul stealer had been transported to the prison two hours away and there was nothing Dean and Sam could do to get to him. He had locked himself away with a building full of helpless people. Hardened criminals, yes, but helpless all the same against him.

~~~~~~~~~~

As soon as they’d stepped into the jail, Sam had suspected something was wrong and knew Dean had as well. While they hadn’t known Mick long, he’d felt wrong to Sam, like one note in a symphony that was a half step below or above where it should be, throwing the whole thing off.

He’d turned himself in for the sole reason of taunting them. That much was obvious from what he’d said and what happened almost immediately.

The soul stealer didn’t stay for long in the prison, merely long enough to completely eat half the population and guards and set the rest free. Sam assumed he’d taken their souls first. As for his feat of taking so many people, for a creature that had dined on an entire town, it seemed like a small thing for him.

Just what the world needed. Already evil men with their souls gone running loose in the world.

Yet over the week that followed the breakout, each one of the worst of the evil men turned themselves in, babbling about shadow men that devoured men’s souls. They’d talked about a shadowy mist that seeped through the prison bars and killed without mercy. The worst of the inmates were turned remorseful and weak by the loss of their souls and from reports, it sounded like the meekest had turned vicious.

The very same pattern they’d seen in the monster population Talk about changing the balance of the world upside down. Sam thought if Death was involved somehow, he had a good reason to be upset with the world at present. The creature had to be upsetting that balance Death liked so much.

Hands touched his shoulders, fingers kneading, and he ‘x’-ed out of the screen he had up. Gwen paused in rubbing his shoulders, the fingers of one hand caressing his cheek. “You coming in to bed anytime soon? It’s after two.”

He grasped her hand in his. “Another report came in about an hour ago. The drug lord Martinez turned himself in, pleading to be sent to another prison. He had --”

“Nothing we can do about it right now.” She loosed her hand from his, ran it through his hair. “Come on, Sam. You need rest.”

“It’s spiraling out of control, Gwen. He’s rampaging across the country and we only have two-thirds of what we need to stop him.” He’d hoped that the missing journals would help, but as they turned up and he’d looked through them, they didn’t contain anything he and Dean could use. All but one had been found and he was racking his brain trying to figure out what he’d done with that one. He had no memory of putting the books in the locations they’d finally found them, like in the freezer behind a few tv dinners and a bag of frozen peaches Jo used to make smoothies. “I have no idea what those last words mean, or if that smudge on the wood was significant. Hell, I’m not even sure if I’ve got the symbols translated right.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she assured him.

“And if we don’t? What then? He’s not stopping and he’s not going to stop.”

“We’ll do what we always do, what you and Dean always do. We’ll change the rules to suit ourselves and make it work somehow.”

“Maybe this time we can’t.” They may have to, though. Lacey had said the ritual had been changed each time, added too. Maybe they’d have to do that themselves, somehow eliminate whatever it was Aaron had added.

“And maybe we just haven’t seen the way to do it yet.” Reaching over, she shut down the computer. “Come to bed. Now. I won’t have you brooding on this all night. There’s nothing you can do about any of it right at this moment.”

She meant it, iron in her words. She’d drag him to bed if he didn’t get up of his own free will. Sam nodded and let her lead him into their bedroom.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two weeks after the soul stealer decimated the prison population and broke himself and others out, Dean entered the house to find Gwen holding back laughter as she played with Jack and Jack saying a few words he hadn’t known when Dean and Sam had left that morning. Unable to get a satisfactory explanation from Gwen, he headed up the stairs and opened the bedroom door.

Jo was pacing.

That in itself wasn’t unusual. She paced when she was worried, when she was angry, and when she was bored. The unusual part was the way she was pacing. Her circles were distracted, she was muttering under her breath, and she wasn’t really paying attention to where she was going. Something had her extremely upset.

Curious.

Dean stepped into their room and closed the door behind him. “Why is our son repeating swear words over and over?”

“I may have said a few,” she admitted, chewing on a thumbnail, a thing he’d never seen Jo do ever.

What was going on? It had to be something terrible, yet if it was, surely Gwen wouldn’t be downstairs trying hard not to laugh?

“Just so you know, he’s getting quite a negative balance with the swear jar.” When that didn’t wring even a smile from her, he sighed and crossed his arms. “Okay. You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Stopping her pacing, she thrust an envelope towards him. “This. This is what’s going on.” Her cheeks were flushed a bright red and she looked semi-feverish.

Curious to know what could have Jo in such a tizzy, he took it. The envelope was neatly addressed to Joanna Harvelle Winchester. Dean opened the envelope, drew out the papers inside, and read with growing amusement he suspected she’d find irritating. It wasn’t something world ending after all.

Jo returned to pacing. “How did they find me? I’ve been as off the grid as possible, not to mention I was actually dead for awhile. How did they find me?”

Suppressing a grin at great effort, Dean cleared his throat. “Well…. Ellen did still own property there until a couple years ago. I’m sure she still has friends there --”

“You don’t understand.” She whirled to face him. “I avoided the five year, was blissfully unaware of the ten year, and then I get,” she snatched the envelope back, “this. How did they find me? I Google myself, Dean, and do regular searches to make sure I’m as unfindable as possible. How….” Her eyes widened. “It’s a trap. That’s what this is. It’s a demon trap. A plan to kill me.”

“Jo.”

“What.”

“It’s a high school reunion.”

“A reunion to hell!”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”

She shot him ‘the look’, that expression women used when they weren’t amused by the men in their lives, all cool stare and flick upward of one brow. The temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees.

He put a hand against his chest. “I’ve been to hell. High school?” He held out that hand, fingers spread, waving it. “Doesn’t compare.”

“Were you at my high school?”

“No, but --”

“Then you don’t know. Those people,” she waved a finger in the general direction of her hometown in Nebraska, “are the spawn of Lucifer. It’s the mouth of hell.”

“You’re being melodramatic now.”

“Okay, so it’s the armpit of hell, all stinky and gross. Still hell.”

There was a knock on the bedroom door. Dean stretched out an arm and opened it.

Sam was standing there, amusement dancing in his eyes. Jack was in the crook of his arm, joyfully repeating ‘crap’ over and over again and putting an extra emphasis on the ‘p’. “Why is he swearing? Gwen can’t stop laughing to tell me.”

“Jo got an inv --”

Jo pushed in front of Dean to look up at Sam. “Did you like high school, Sam?”

“Not particularly, why?”

“My high school years were a delightful blend of teasing, taunts, and fights. Those people are evil of such a heinous nature that Lucifer himself wouldn’t mess with them. Heather Holt was the worst, the ringleader, my nemesis. She and they made sure I was miserable for four years.”

Dean saw a flicker of thoughtfulness slide into Sam’s gaze and then he was nodding. “Has it been fifteen years?”

“Fourteen. The morons can’t count and they tracked me down. The hellhounds.” She waved the envelope, pacing once more. “And who has a reunion in May anyway? Reunions are like summer things. July or August. Morons.”

“Are you going?”

Dean thought he could answer that question easily enough from her rant.

She whirled to face Sam. “And step back into that cesspool of pain and suffering? Are you drunk?”

Jack tried to yell ‘drunk’ only it came out ‘duck’. He wiggled in Sam’s arms and went back to saying ‘crap’ and laughing.

“You could go to see which girls got fat and old and which guys have a potbelly and comb over,” Dean suggested.

“Ooh, I do sort of like that idea.” Jo bit her lower lip. “We had a lot of idiot jocks, too. Plenty of potential for potbellies when their anticipated professional jock careers didn’t materialize.”

“Crap!” Jack yelled.

“You do know he’s going to yell that at dinner with Ellen tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I get the mother of the year award for teaching my kid the word crap.”

She continued to mutter the rest of the day until they were at dinner, where she found out it was Ellen who’d betrayed her location to her former classmates.

“Well of course I told them your address, Jo.” Ellen sipped at her margarita and made a noise of approval at the taste. “You missed the last reunions --”

“Mom! Why?”

“Joanna Beth, simmer down. It’s a high school reunion, not a plot to boil you in oil.”

“How do you know? It might be.”

Ellen rolled her eyes and looked at him. “She been like this all day?”

“You know it.” Dean ate a bite of his enchilada and washed it down with a swig of beer. “Keeps going on about pain and suffering and how she needs hazard pay just to think about going back there.”

“They know where I live now. I know.” Jo snapped her fingers. “I’ll call Castiel down, explain the situation, and have him wipe it from their memories.”

She’d barely touched her quesadilla and Dean reached over, pilfering her sour cream and guacamole, then a little of the pico de gallo. Why let it go to waste? “Good luck getting him to show. He’s been out of touch for awhile. Even the traditional sort of summons didn’t get him here.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Ellen told Jo and reached over, wiping Jack’s face. Thus far, he hadn’t shared any of his new words with his grandmother. Dean figured they were on borrowed time for that by now.

“That’s what I told her.” Dean strategically placed pico de gallo on sections of his enchilada.

Jo snorted and rolled her eyes. “Stupid reunion. Stupid coordinators. Did I mention Heather Holt is still the ringleader? She’s listed as the main coordinator. My nemesis. She’s up to something, I know she is. She was always up to something.”

“I think you should go,” Dean told her, smearing the sour cream on his enchilada. Jo had been going on all day about various people whose names had been at the bottom of the letter. He’d started to hear more about her high school days than he ever had. They weren’t a thing Jo liked to talk about anymore than Sam liked to talk about his high school days.

“Traitor.” She scowled and pushed a bite of quesadilla about her plate.

He laughed. “Jo, you’ve faced demons, assorted other creatures, actual hellhounds, and death, but you’re scared of a high school reunion? Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

Sitting back, she flipped her hair back off her shoulders and crossed her arms. “I’m not scared.”

“You are too.” Ellen sighed. “Geez, Jo. If you really don’t want to go, no one’s going to make you. Lord knows, we all know that none of us can make you do anything. I did give Tanya Adamson your address and you can be pissed with me all you like over it, but I still think you’ll have fun if you go. Especially if you take Dean with you. Boy can have fun anywhere.”

He saluted her with his coffee cup and a grin. “Damn straight.”

“Damn!” Jack grinned. He was gaining quite a vocabulary.

Ellen quirked a brow. “You two need to start watching your mouths. Little pitchers have big ears.”

“I know,” Jo grumbled and slid down in her chair. “He repeats everything, usually the things I don’t want him to hear.”

“Get used to it, sweetie. He’ll be doing plenty of things you don’t want him to in no time.”

“We’re already there.” Dean sprinkled a little hot sauce on his food. “Did Jo tell you he figured out how to take his own diapers off? Caught him running around his bedroom with a naked butt last week.”

“Time to train the boy,” Ellen suggested.

Dean focused all his attention on his plate while Jo ignored the suggestion and went back to complaining about the reunion. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to toilet train Jack, it was just that it was coming at a really inconvenient time. They were getting busy in both businesses right now. If they weren’t busy with their real job, they were busy on jobs for the front. Who could have guessed that Sioux Falls had needed another investigation business? Word of mouth was gaining them more legitimate business than they could handle. If this kept up, they’d have trouble focusing on their real job.

He paused a moment to reflect on the backwards sense of that thought. Most people would consider the paying job the real one, yet they considered the largely unpaid one the real job.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t go,” Ellen warned, a twinkle in her eyes.

“I’ll probably regret it if I do,” Jo muttered back, then with a sigh, began to actually eat her meal.

Having never been to a high school reunion, Dean found that he, at least, was a little excited about going and getting some insight into Jo’s teenage years.