wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Sam knew that his brother had a habit of getting on the wrong side of the law, although it wasn’t always his fault.
Beckett apparently decided to let it slide. “Anyhow, we’re on the case, Mayor.”
“There you go,” Milner said. “This mall opens on schedule, and there won’t be any more discussion of that.” His tone indicated that he meant it, that the matter was settled once and for all.
Maybe he was right.
Then again, if history was any guide, the murders were just beginning . . .
EIGHT
“If Mayor McCheese there has his way,” Dean groused,
“the whole town could end up shish-kabobbed, and as long as the mall opens on time he’ll be happy.”
“It’s kind of his job to be a booster,” Sam said.
“But not a moron. And I’m not sure Barney Fife is much smarter.” Dean was back behind the wheel, tooling toward downtown Cedar Wells again. “So what do you think that was? Spirit?”
“That’d be my guess,” Sam said. “Especially with the phasing in and out of visibility, and the old clothes.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Which means we have to figure out why it keeps coming back at these forty-year intervals, and how to make it stop. Looks like we’ve got some bones to dig up and burn.”
“If we can fi nd out whose bones. There was nothing promising in the library that I saw.” 66 SUPERNATURAL
“There’s got to be someone around here with a long memory. Or a diary that hasn’t been scrubbed.”
“What are we going to do?” Sam asked. “Knock on random doors until we fi nd one?” Dean shot Sam an angry glare. Sometimes the old resentments cropped up—the resentments that Dad had encouraged, it seemed, after Sam decided to go to college—and he suspected Sam of being a quitter, willing to stay in the fight as long as the going got easy but ready to bail when things were tough.
In fact, he knew that wasn’t true. There had been plenty of tough times since their reunion, plenty of chances for Sam to take off if he wanted to. The fact that Sam was still in the passenger seat, thumbing through his cassette tapes, meant that he was in this for the long haul. That certainty softened Dean’s expression and his response. “If that’s what we have to do,” he said. “I’d rather fi nd a more immediate solu-tion, since I don’t think the sheriff has much experience hunting spirits.”
Any death from supernatural assault was too many, but Dean especially hated for victims to fall while he was in the area and on the case.
Two had already happened while they’d been in Cedar Wells. If they didn’t get a handle on the situation soon, who knew how bad it could get?
Brittany Gardner loved the snow. Not all the time, not every day, but a few good snowfalls a year made her feel like she was part of the world. All day, the sky had been thick with clouds, blocking out the sun Witch’s
Can
67
yon
and threatening (promising!) precipitation. The air had a crisp, cold, still quality, suggesting that if the clouds did open up, the snow would fall steadily for a good long while. She had moved to Arizona’s high country from the Phoenix area because she wanted to feel snow on her face more than once every decade or so, and today she kept looking out the living room window of her small cottage hoping to see the fl akes coming down. She worked at home, editing techni-cal manuals on a freelance basis, but today the work paled in comparison to the snow she wished for, and she had barely made it through three pages in the last hour.
Beside her computer—far enough away that if she dumped it, the mess would flow elsewhere—she kept a cup of Lapsang Souchong tea. Every now and then she carried it into the kitchen to refill it or heat it up in the microwave. A jazz station played softly on her satellite radio, and the cottage was warm and cozy. A perfect morning—or it would have been if the white stuff would fall.
Brittany tried to work for
Beckett apparently decided to let it slide. “Anyhow, we’re on the case, Mayor.”
“There you go,” Milner said. “This mall opens on schedule, and there won’t be any more discussion of that.” His tone indicated that he meant it, that the matter was settled once and for all.
Maybe he was right.
Then again, if history was any guide, the murders were just beginning . . .
EIGHT
“If Mayor McCheese there has his way,” Dean groused,
“the whole town could end up shish-kabobbed, and as long as the mall opens on time he’ll be happy.”
“It’s kind of his job to be a booster,” Sam said.
“But not a moron. And I’m not sure Barney Fife is much smarter.” Dean was back behind the wheel, tooling toward downtown Cedar Wells again. “So what do you think that was? Spirit?”
“That’d be my guess,” Sam said. “Especially with the phasing in and out of visibility, and the old clothes.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Which means we have to figure out why it keeps coming back at these forty-year intervals, and how to make it stop. Looks like we’ve got some bones to dig up and burn.”
“If we can fi nd out whose bones. There was nothing promising in the library that I saw.” 66 SUPERNATURAL
“There’s got to be someone around here with a long memory. Or a diary that hasn’t been scrubbed.”
“What are we going to do?” Sam asked. “Knock on random doors until we fi nd one?” Dean shot Sam an angry glare. Sometimes the old resentments cropped up—the resentments that Dad had encouraged, it seemed, after Sam decided to go to college—and he suspected Sam of being a quitter, willing to stay in the fight as long as the going got easy but ready to bail when things were tough.
In fact, he knew that wasn’t true. There had been plenty of tough times since their reunion, plenty of chances for Sam to take off if he wanted to. The fact that Sam was still in the passenger seat, thumbing through his cassette tapes, meant that he was in this for the long haul. That certainty softened Dean’s expression and his response. “If that’s what we have to do,” he said. “I’d rather fi nd a more immediate solu-tion, since I don’t think the sheriff has much experience hunting spirits.”
Any death from supernatural assault was too many, but Dean especially hated for victims to fall while he was in the area and on the case.
Two had already happened while they’d been in Cedar Wells. If they didn’t get a handle on the situation soon, who knew how bad it could get?
Brittany Gardner loved the snow. Not all the time, not every day, but a few good snowfalls a year made her feel like she was part of the world. All day, the sky had been thick with clouds, blocking out the sun Witch’s
Can
67
yon
and threatening (promising!) precipitation. The air had a crisp, cold, still quality, suggesting that if the clouds did open up, the snow would fall steadily for a good long while. She had moved to Arizona’s high country from the Phoenix area because she wanted to feel snow on her face more than once every decade or so, and today she kept looking out the living room window of her small cottage hoping to see the fl akes coming down. She worked at home, editing techni-cal manuals on a freelance basis, but today the work paled in comparison to the snow she wished for, and she had barely made it through three pages in the last hour.
Beside her computer—far enough away that if she dumped it, the mess would flow elsewhere—she kept a cup of Lapsang Souchong tea. Every now and then she carried it into the kitchen to refill it or heat it up in the microwave. A jazz station played softly on her satellite radio, and the cottage was warm and cozy. A perfect morning—or it would have been if the white stuff would fall.
Brittany tried to work for
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