Chapter Text
There’s a man with eyes like molten gold and a smile like a used car salesman and sometimes he watches the nightmares with Sam. They sit there, like two bystanders on a park bench and watch helpless (in Sam’s case at least; he gets the feeling that the man with the yellow eyes isn’t inclined to help at all) as the nightmares just happen . Happen to other people.
To a boy named Scott, stabbed to death in a parking lot.
To a girl named Ava, burning on the ceiling.
Sometimes, the man with the yellow eyes will talk to Sam. Once, he sighs as they watch Ava burn, and says, “It’s a pity, really. She would have made a great asset to our team.”
“Why’d you do it?” Sam asks, his voice hoarse from the screams he hasn’t screamed tonight. “Why’d you kill her?”
“Because she would have killed me,” he says simply.
But that dream was weeks ago, and tonight Sam watches as terrible things happen to the family of a boy called Max. Terrible, impossible accidents.
“Why do they keep dying?” Sam asks the man with the yellow eyes.
“Because they aren’t his family,” the man responds coldly. (Some nights, like tonight, there is something terribly wrong with the shape of his face. It folds into unnatural ridges and sharp edges and hunger .) “Not really. Family takes care of family.”
“Who is his real family, then?” Sam asks, because it makes sense to ask, in the dream.
“I am,” the yellow-eyed man says. And then he turns to Sam, his face softening until it looks human, until the used-car-salesman smile is firmly in place. “You are.”
“I am?”
“A mutual friend of ours is coming to town, Sam. I think you’ll be pleased to see him.”
Sam wakes up in a cold sweat, terrified and not sure why. It isn't real , he reminds himself sternly. It's just a dream . Part of him wants nothing more than to creep across the hall and crawl into Dean’s bed like when they were little, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to worry Dean, to see the look in his brother’s eyes when he realizes that Sam had another nightmare. So instead, Sam lays on his back in his own bed, staring at the ceiling and focusing on his breathing and counting the minutes until his alarm goes off for school.
“Good Lord, Joanna. Who the hell taught you to use makeup?” Mom asks from where she’s leaning in the bathroom doorway. Jo can see in the mirror that Mom’s trying to hide a smile, and that just pisses her off more.
“Not you, that’s for sure,” Jo snaps, and tries to fix the concealer over her black eye for the third frigging time.
“Where did you even get that stuff? I didn’t think we owned any facepaint between us.”
“It’s Dean’s,” is all Jo’s curt response. It's actually Sam's from his middle-school musical theatre phase. He'd left his stage makeup in Jo's room because he couldn't deal with Dean's inevitable teasing when he found makeup in their bathroom. Of course, once Dean found out about the theatre thing in general, nothing could stop the teasing. Mom sighs and shakes her head, coming into the bathroom and swiping a washcloth off the rack on her way to Jo. Jo throws the makeup onto the floor in frustration. “I look like a clown. God , how do other girls do this every day?”
“Practice,” Mom says patiently, and soaks the washcloth in hot water. She starts to wipe at the mess that is currently Jo’s face, being especially tender around the bruises and the nasty cut over her eyebrow. That one would’ve needed stitches on anyone without enhanced healing, and even with enhanced healing it looks awful. She’s a little worried it’ll leave a scar, but Mom insists that she’s pretty sure Slayers don’t scar. Like at all. Which, yeah, not thinking about that one too hard, because it's frankly a pretty freaky concept. (Later, she’ll find out the hard way that this isn’t true, and it is possible for a Slayer to scar; it just takes a very nasty injury to do it.) “Honey, I think you’re better off just leaving well enough alone and just letting your shiner, well, shine.”
“Right, because I really need that kind of attention,” Jo grouses, even though Mom is probably right. The makeup thing is pretty much totally hopeless. She’s pretty sure that if you made a graph of amount of flannel worn and ability to do makeup , there’d be a — what’s it called? she learned this in algebra the other day, she’s sure — inverse relationship? Correlation? Something. Point is, Jo wears a lot of flannel and apparently can’t apply makeup, and she’s pretty sure she’s not the only one on earth who fits that description.
“Sweetie, it’ll just look worse if it looks like you’re trying to hide it.”
“Well, what am I supposed to tell people? ‘Oh yeah, hand-to-hand combat with vampires is a lot harder than I expected, even with the super strength?’ Or how about, ‘There’s a reason I chose throwing knives as my weapon of choice when I was six, and it’s because I hate it when they get close enough to punch me in the face?’”
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady,” Mom says, but she doesn’t have her Warning Voice on, so Jo can safely keep playing the pity card. And seriously, are you really that worried about how people will react? After the knife debacle?”
“Okay, hey, we live on a Hellmouth ,” Jo says defensively. “I am perfectly justified in my efforts to be ready to be attacked at any minute. Like, how many kids have died and-or been mauled while still at school, I ask you?”
Mom is, irritatingly enough, only amused. “Honey, I never said I disapproved. I just didn’t exactly appreciate the phone call from Principal Raphael after you were caught .” Jo mumbles a yeah, yeah as Mom bowls onward. “Besides, who’s going to ask, other than those Winchester dumbasses?”
“I guess you have a point, though I’m pretty sure it’s foul play to point out I only have two friends and am otherwise practically invisible.” Jo sighs, and takes one last look in the mirror. Oh, well. On the bright side, the black eye does make her look kinda badass.
“That’s the spirit,” Mom says, and claps her on the back before going back to doing whatever she was doing before she decided to harass her daughter.
Jo smiles at herself in the mirror until it looks natural. That’s the spirit .
It would seem Dean Winchester disagrees. Vehemently.
“Jo, what the hell ?” Dean hisses into her ear literally two seconds after Jo’s made it to her locker. She grits her teeth and tries not to roll her eyes (mostly because that actually hurts a bit at the moment rather than out of any respect for Dean's delicate sensibilities), but she does stuff her bio textbook into her locker with unnecessary force. Aaaand shit , she thinks with a wince as she hears the spine crunch . She really needs to modify her definition of ‘unnecessary force’ to account for her new superpowers. Three weeks has so far proved to be an inadequate adjustment period.
“You know, in polite conversation, we usually begin with good morning ,” she snipes back, refusing to look at him.
Dean snorts. “Yeah, and since when are you polite conversation?”
“Fuck off, Winchester.”
“Aaaand you just proved my point.” Dean reaches out and grips Jo’s chin gently but firmly, turning her face up towards his own. She can feel her skin burn a bit where his calloused fingertips touch her face, and she really hopes he can’t hear how her heart rate just picked up. She looks him defiantly in the eye, and immediately regrets it when she realizes just how close he is. Dean whoosh es out a soft breath when he gets a good look at her face. “Seriously, Jo, who did this to you?” There’s a low hint of warning in his voice, and Jo would be totally gaga over Dean being protective of her, except she frigging hates it when people are protective of her . She gets enough of it from Mom, and she can take care of herself, especially now.
Yeah. Especially now.
“I took care of it,” she says, which is exactly as much of an answer as Dean's well-intentioned chauvinism deserves in her opinion, and wrenches out of his grasp. And it’s true, she thinks, slamming her locker shut, she dusted that vamp. Just, ya know, after he’d rearranged her face a bit.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean demands, following her down the hall.
“It means exactly what I said, Dean. I. Took. Care. Of. It. Hey, Sam,” she adds, as the younger, shorter Winchester joins them.
“Heyyyyy, Jo,” Sam says slowly, eyeing her face and raising an eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything, though, and Jo’s grateful for that. Sam is a much better person than his big brother, Jo thinks, not for the first time. Right now, especially.
“Does your mother know about this?” he asks in what Jo’s pretty sure is supposed to be a threatening tone.
“Yes,” she responds coldly. As if she could've made it out of the house without Mom seeing her face. “Now leave me alone. I can handle myself.”
Luckily, Dean’s response is cut off by the bell signaling the start of the school day. Jo doesn't think she's actually ever been grateful for that sound before, but she'll take it, and uses the opportunity to speed up and half-run into the English classroom. She makes her way to the back of the class and flings herself into a corner seat. Judging by the stares and the whispers that follow her there, Mom was totally wrong about people’s ability to pay attention to Jo, and she definitely should’ve tried harder with the makeup.
Oh, well. What's another rumor about the violent tendencies of crazy knife girl in the grand scheme of Jo's life?
Sam isn’t far behind her, though he manages to slip unnoticed into his seat in a far more graceful fashion than Jo could ever hope to imitate. After a few moments of quiet shuffling-paper sounds, Sam slips Jo a note, just as the teacher begins to talk.
Dare I ask?
Jo has to suppress a snort, because of course Sam would phrase it that way. Careful not to look over, because their English teacher is a fascist about talking in class, Jo shakes her head curtly. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Sam purse his lips and — is that the beginning of the puppy dog face? he wouldn’t — but he doesn’t say anything else. And it's fine, because after a decade or so, she’s totally immune to the puppy dog face.
Totally.
The puppy dog face has nothing to do with how guilty she feels that she can’t just tell Sam and Dean the truth. Jo wasn’t kidding when she told Mom they’re her only friends, and it's isolating to have to keep something this big from them. It’s always been the three of them, since Jo was maybe three years old.
One of Jo’s earliest memories is of playing in the front yard outside the Roadhouse when she was very small, while Mom and Dad painted the shutters and windowsills. Across the street, Bobby Singer was waiting at the bus stop, tugging nervously on his nicest ball cap and looking grouchy. As Jo enacted an elaborate battle between plastic dinosaurs, a long black car pulled up and a man got out. She paused her game and watched as he took two boys from the back seat, one a couple of years older than her, and one maybe a bit younger. The boys looked happy to see Bobby, and the older one wouldn’t let go of the little one’s hand. Their dad — because that's clearly who the man in the black car was — seemed to argue with Bobby for a bit, and even Mom and Dad stopped working on the windows to pay attention. The argument ended, and the boys’ father gave his sons a curt goodbye, got back into his car, and drove away.
John Winchester left his boys in the care of his friend Bobby that day, and then left to go do whatever the hell it was deadbeat dads did between episodes of drinking themselves into a stupor. Over the years, Jo has gleaned very little information on the matter of Pop Winchester. From the few things Dean has let slip, she figures ‘whatever the hell it was’ mostly involves driving around looking for work and losing that work over booze. Sometimes John visits his sons; he almost never misses Christmas, and he usually makes it to birthdays. And when he isn’t there, the boys have Bobby. And they have the Harvelles.
Jo officially met Dean Winchester a whole month after he moved in with Bobby, when she punched him in the face for stealing her favorite toy soldier on the playground. Dad had told her off for that and sent her to her room, but Mom had been quietly proud, and later told Jo that it was good to learn to stand up for yourself. Dean had just touched his broken lip in awe, burst into a grin, and introduced himself. He said they could be friends as long as Jo didn’t try to punch Sammy. Jo said they could be friends if the boys didn’t try to take her stuff.
It’s been something to the tune of twelve years now, and they’re inseparable. Dean’s three years older than Jo, and a senior. Sam is a year younger, but like stupid good at school, and so he’s in half of Jo’s tenth-grade classes even as a freshman. The Winchesters are weird and gross and overprotective, as boys so often are in her experience, but they’re Jo’s boys. And sometimes she has to punch one or other of them in the face, and sometimes they steal her stuff, but really it all works out in the end. They’re pretty much her favorite people who aren’t Mom. (And sometimes, when the fighting with Mom gets really bad and she ends up over at Bobby’s house, curled on the couch in one of Dean’s flannels with Sam’s blanket over her, they even beat Mom out for a couple of hours.)
Which is why it’s always been so difficult to lie to them about the monsters, about what’s really out there. It's why it sucks so much to lie to them about the Slayer thing. Why it's so lonely to have to keep a huge and new and scary part of her life a complete secret. And really, if her face keeps looking like this, how the hell is she going to hide it?
Jo ends up being so busy brooding that she doesn’t even notice the period has ended until Sam nudges her with his elbow, cuing her to get her shit together.
“Seriously, though, Jo, are you okay?” Sam asks softly once they’re in the hall. Before she can get pissed at him, Sam hurries on, “And I’m not talking about your eye — although I'm not gonna pretend I'm not worried about you getting beat up. I just mean…” He frowns, pursing his lips the way he does when he’s writing an essay and can’t find the right word. “Lately, you’ve been distracted and not…talking to us about it. You’d tell us, right? If something was really wrong?”
I would if I could , Jo thinks. But she says, “Yeah, Sam, of course. I’m fine. ”
“If you’re trying to impress Dean, it’s not going to work,” he says flatly, and Jo almost chokes on air.
“I wouldn’t beat a dude up just to impress your stupid oaf of a brother.” Sam looks sideways at her with a raised eyebrow, because he is somehow the only one to have cottoned on to the fact that Jo’s been in love with his brother for like, years, so Jo concedes with a sigh. “Even if he is pretty.”
Sam snorts a laugh at that. “Okay, a lot of girls have talked to me about Dean, and I mean a lot ,” and Jo knows Sam doesn’t mean that to sting, but it does, a little. “And you are the first one to ever call him pretty.”
“But he is,” Jo says innocently.
“Don’t let him hear you say that. He prefers to think of himself as, ah, ruggedly handsome , I think is the phrase he used.”
“Oh my god . Of course he did. So not only is he the prettiest asshole in the garrison, he’s the most conceited.”
“Who’s conceited?” comes Dean’s voice from behind, and Sam and Jo collapse into giggles. “Wait, is it me? Dammit, it’s me, isn’t it? You both suck ,” Dean complains and grabs them both. After a brief struggle, he knocks Sam’s and Jo’s heads together and shoves them away. Jo’s black eye is forgotten, and everything is okay again.
At least it is until fifth period, because Jo seriously cannot catch a break today. She’s in the library, hoping to find Bobby buried somewhere in the stacks because she needs some book about Shakespeare and feminism for her English essay about Twelfth Night . The high school library is weird — big and crowded, stuffed with books that are crammed into the shelves and stacked in corners in some obscure sort of system that only Bobby can interpret. It’s certainly not Dewey’s, and it’s not alphabetical, and Jo is half-convinced he's deliberately made it impossible to find stuff without help to keep teenagers from touching his shit. He refuses to allow the school to make any sort of online record or catalogue for his books, so the only way to find things is to ask Bobby directly. Once, Sam tried using the card catalogue to find something, and found that half of it was locked, one drawer was just stuffed full of salt, and three drawers had cards written in obscure rune-based languages (at least one of which Jo is certain was demonic in origin). Needless to say, the library is almost guaranteed to be empty except for Bobby, and it's the closest thing to a safe place in Lawrence High School.
“Bobby!” she shouts into the dimly lit room. She’s pretty sure the dust in the air stirs just at her voice.
“Quiet down, wouldja? You’re in a damned library,” comes the irritated answer from somewhere to her left.
“I know. Get out here, I need a book for English class.”
“You’re bossier than your mama,” Bobby grumbles as he strides out from behind a bookshelf. He’s already holding a thick, dusty, leather-bound book.
“Not possible,” Jo scoffs, but she’s smiling. She loves having Bobby as the librarian. He’s basically like a surrogate dad to her, has been since even before Dad died; and it makes coming to high school every day a lot easier, that’s for certain. Like a little bit of home. (It also can mean extra trouble, because Mom often finds stuff out through Bobby that Jo’d otherwise be able to hide, but hey. Same goes for her dumbass best friends and whatever trouble the Winchesters drag her into, so. It’s a trade-off she’s willing to make.) “You got anything on Shakespeare and feminism?”
“Probably. But you sure you ain’t looking for this?” Bobby asks, and tosses the volume in his hands at her. He’s lucky Jo has supernatural reflexes now, because she’s able to snatch the heavy tome right out of the air. Dust poofs out as she grabs the book, and her mind flashes to the way the vamp disintegrated beneath her hand last night and it sends a chill down her spine.
She shakes it off and looks at the book. It’s ancient and a little crumbly at the edges, but the elaborate metal clasps hold it together pretty well and the embossed title is still clear. When she reads said title, though, Jo’s blood runs cold. Nope , she thinks, nope oh no this is not happening .
But it is.
The book is one she’s heard of, seen pictures of, seen referenced in a dozen of Mom’s books. It’s apparently been missing from the Watcher’s Council library for several decades. It’s called, simply, Vampyr .
It slides from her hand and to the floor with a solid thud .
“Watch it, kid, that book’s worth more than your house,” Bobby says indignantly.
Eyes wide, she takes a step back from the man who, up until a moment ago, she trusted with her life. She barely even registers when she falls into a fighting stance in her shock. “What the fuck , Bobby?”
Bobby raises one eyebrow nonchalantly. “Don’t like it? I’da thought you’d want it, given you’re the Slayer now and all. I know your Watcher’d want you to have access to this book.”
That is really not even close to an explanation. “Seriously? How the hell do you know about this?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, ya idjit," Bobby says defensively. "I pay attention. And when my best friend’s kid — incidentally, my kids’ best friend — starts staking vamps outta nowhere, you best believe I notice.” He looks long and hard at her, and something in his gruff face softens as he seems to realize how freaked out he's got Jo. “And here I thought Ellen knew. Nosy woman, apparently not as all-knowing as she got me believing. Well, go on, sit down. We got things to discuss.”
“No,” she says, and her fighting stance crumbles. This is just too much. “Listen, Bobby, I’m on edge all the time now, okay? Last month, everything was fine, and now I’ve got a destiny to balance with my homework, a world to save along with my chores at the Roadhouse, and a goddamn black eye for my troubles. You can’t just spring this crap on me!” She sighs and runs a frustrated hand through her hair as her brain tries to adjust her entire worldview to account for Bobby knowing about the supernatural and the whole Slayer gig. (A small voice in the back of her mind reasonably argues that it explains a lot — the card catalogue, for instance.) Bobby just watches her miniature breakdown in silence with uncharacteristic patience. Finally, she bends down and picks up the stupid book. Mom’ll want to see it, if nothing else. "Thanks for this, though," she adds begrudgingly. "You're right, my Watcher'll definitely want me to have it."
Bobby seems to take this as acceptance of some kind. “Who is your Watcher, anyway? Your mom, or'd that dumbass Council send someone across the pond for ya?”
Of course he knows Mom’s a Watcher. “Mom, I guess,” she answers with a shrug. “We haven’t heard anything from the Council yet, but they’ve gotta know. They know everything.” This last is dark and bitter; Jo still hasn't forgiven them for the loss of Ava.
Bobby nods, and ducks back behind one of the shelves. For a moment, Jo considers just high-tailing it out of there and calling Mom, but she dismisses the idea as stupid. It's not like she can run away from Bobby's apparent involvement. Somewhere in the stacks, she can hear the shuffling of books as Bobby rifles through whatever esoteric system of his keeps this place together. When Bobby comes back, he has a stack of three newer books, all paperback, and he shoves them into her arms.
“For your English paper,” he says, and sure enough, the books are about Shakespeare. “Can’t have ya fallin’ behind on your schoolwork just because we live on a damned Hellmouth.”
“Nice word choice there, Bobby,” she says wryly, and he snorts. They both know it's as much of a thank you as he's likely to get at the moment. As Jo turns to leave, she pauses in the doorway. “If you knew…Do the boys — do Sam and Dean know? About any of it?” Please say yes , a part of her pleads. Please say I can let my friends into my life for real .
“Nope,” Bobby says, and it sounds oddly sad, like he knows what she's thinking. Asshole was always too smart for Jo's own good. “They’re completely oblivious. Dunno how they manage it, since people die here every two seconds, but then, John probably dropped ‘em on their heads when they were babies.”
Jo just nods, even though she isn’t sure if Bobby can see with her back to him, and leaves. She’s so preoccupied by how weird her life is, even with all things considered, that she doesn’t notice Dean frowning at her as she goes by.
That night at dinner, when Bobby leaves the room to answer the phone, Dean turns to Sam and says in an undertone, “What do you think a Hellmouth is?”
Sam blinks at Dean over his forkful of salad. “A what now?”
“Hellmouth.”
“Sounds like something out of that show you and Jo are obsessed with. You know, the one with the two sisters.”
“What, Supernatural ?” Dean says, taken aback slightly. Huh. Yeah, it kinda does. “Yeah, it kinda does.”
“Why?” Sam prods when Dean doesn’t say anything else, lost in his own head. He feels like he's this close to making some sort of connection, but it's just out of his reach.
Dean shakes himself out of it and looks furtively toward the den, making sure Bobby's not about to walk back in on them, before he leans forward to answer. “I, uh, overheard Jo and Bobby talking in the library today.”
“Jesus, Dean, were you spying on her?” Sam says in exasperation. “She can actually take care of herself, you know. You’ve seen her knife collection.”
“Yeah, well, fat lotta good that did her face yesterday," Dean mutters darkly. “And anyway, I was just going to talk to Bobby about —" he cuts himself off. “College stuff,” he finishes lamely. Sam raises an eyebrow at that, and Dean pretends not to notice. He really doesn’t want to have this argument right now. It’s only February, after all; plenty of time for Sam to realize that there is no college stuff . Dean clears his throat. “But they were talking about...I'm not sure, you and I not knowing something, about living on a Hellmouth . And Bobby made some crack about how people are always dying in Lawrence.”
Sam looks thoughtful for a moment, and then says nervously, “You don’t think this has anything to do with my dreams, do you?”
“’Course not,” Dean says hurriedly. Though, not that Sam mentions it, Dean's not so sure. It feels like another one of those connections just out of his reach. “They’re just dreams, Sammy. Bobby’s probably just being weird.”
And, speak of the devil , Dean thinks as Bobby walks back into the room. Well, stalks back in really. That phone call has clearly pissed him off. Probably Ellen, then. “Goin’ out to get some work done,” he says. It’s his I’m-avoiding-confrontation-by-working-on-cars voice. “Don’t burn the house down. Do your homework. You know the drill.” And sure enough, “And if either of them Harvelle harpies calls, I’m not home .”
“Yes, sir,” Dean says with a smirk.
Bobby rolls his eyes and shouts, “And don’t forget to get groceries, we're outta milk,” as he slams the door behind him.
Dean takes another bite of his burger and, with his mouth full, tells Sam, “I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“So Bobby knows,” Jo shouts without preamble, kicking off her shoes and dropping her bag in the doorway of the kitchen. “Like, everything.” She looks around, but doesn’t see Mom anywhere, which is weird, since she’s usually in the kitchen from noon onward on weekdays.
The Roadhouse opens at four o’clock most every afternoon, and stays open until midnight on weeknights and two on Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays, they stay closed and get some sleep. It’s hard, running a bar with just Mom, Ash, and Jo. There's a rotating cast of servers, mostly local college kids, but for the most part it's just the three of them. Keeps them all plenty busy. For Mom, it means preparing food all afternoon, using moments in between to throw something together for the three of them to eat; it means staying up every night to clean up after the crowd and even later once a month to worry about finances. For Ash, well…it mostly seems to mean sleeping wherever’s most convenient, waking up when Ellen shouts for him and rocking his mullet through the house. While Jo’s not entirely clear on what exactly Ash was hired on for, he seems to be most useful as barback and handyman, and for the occasional unwanted fire alarm or covert hacker job. She's 90% sure he's technically homeless. For herself, living at the Roadhouse means Jo does chores before she does her homework, and helps serve food from four to ten most nights. Trying to balance that with schoolwork was hard enough; now that she has to go out patrolling almost every night when she gets off work? Say goodbye to what little social life she had; say a bitter farewell to healthy sleeping habits.
In any case, the Roadhouse keeps all their schedules fairly predictable, so when Mom’s not in the giant kitchen when Jo expects her to be — when there’s not, in fact, any indication at all that an effort toward food preparation has been made — it is most definitely cause for concern.
“Mom?” Jo tries. Maybe she’s out by the bar or something , she thinks, but before she can check, Mom stalks through the door that leads to the bar with a scowl on her face. Oh boy. That’s not good. That’s the scowl Mom reserves special for, the Council fucked up bigtime and I am going to feed their asses to slimy, antlered chaos demons , and right now? It’s cranked up to, like, eleven. The last time Jo saw that particular look at this strength, Ash had shown up on their doorstep two days later with a laptop, a single duffle bag, and some real nasty burn marks on his face.
“For the last time ,” Mom is saying — well, snarling , honestly — to someone who clearly isn’t Jo, “ You are not needed here . I know you all like to pretend I don’t exist, but I do , and I am perfectly capable of doing my damn job. So go home , you useless ponce, and tell the other idiots that the Slayer already has a Watcher, thanks for asking.”
“Now, now Ellen,” comes a smooth, poshly-accented voice from behind her. As the stranger enters the room, Jo almost whistles; she didn’t know they made Watchers like this. Mom made it out like — Andy notwithstanding — they’re all a bunch of stuffy old British men who don’t take too kindly to the occasional study abroad student at their precious Academy. And while Mom had graduated with honors to spite them all, Ash had been kicked out in his second year, supposedly for fighting. Which is when he'd come to live at the Roadhouse, part-time home to wayward Watchers.
This guy doesn’t look like that. Taking him in — he’s maybe Mom’s age, with smile lines, a scruff of a beard, designer jeans and a v-neck tee that would frankly scandalize half of Lawrence — Jo can’t really see what Mom’s objecting to. But then, of course, he keeps talking.
“It’s not quite that anyone’s questioning your competence, darling.” Jo and Mom both scowl deeper when he calls her darling , voice dripping with benevolent condescension. “We do all remember your final performance at the Academy, ah… vividly . It’s just that we feel you may be a bit, well, out of touch with regards to current Slaying news and techniques and so forth. You have, after all, been inactive on the Council for several years. And as for your little…hunting operation you have here,” he gestures to the Roadhouse at large, his nose wrinkling a little, “Which, if I may remind you, is unapproved — it is certainly no substitute for real Council activity.
“Hello, Joanna,” he adds as an afterthought, turning a grin on Jo that she’s sure would be charming if he weren’t such a smarmy asshole, holy shit .
Jo responds by smiling back, all innocent teenage girl. “Sorry, don't think we've met," she says, bright and peppy. Mom quirks a half-amused eyebrow at her tone. "Who are you, and where the hell do you get off being rude to my mother in our house?”
“Ah, yes, pardon me for not introducing myself,” he says smoothly, seemingly unoffended as he steps forward and holds out his hand. “My name is Balthazar, and the Council has sent me to be your Watcher.”
“Well, hate to break it to you, but the position’s taken,” Jo informs him coldly. She doesn’t shake his hand. “Mom’s my Watcher. Sorry you wasted a trip, but y'all took long enough hemming and hawing after Ava's murder that you lost your right to have any say in what I do. You can go home now.”
Balthazar's smile gets a little strained at the corners, but he presses on in genial, sympathetic tones. “Unfortunately, Joanna, your mother has not been assigned to your case by a vote of the Council. I have. Therefore, I am your Watcher.”
“Mmm, yeah, not a convincing argument, buddy,” Jo insists, really starting to get irritated now. “Listen, I’m pretty sure that since this is, ya know, my destiny, not yours, I get to call the shots. Given that you guys can’t seem to keep Slayers alive, forgive me if I don’t trust you. Remember when my predecessor burned on the ceiling in front of her Watcher? Because I do.
“I trust my mom to have my back. I don’t trust you. And I know I’d rather have a Watcher I trust to help me stay safe, regardless of what some ivory tower pricks an ocean away think is best. So do us all a favor and go home .”
“Hear, hear,” Mom mutters darkly from where she’s still standing slightly behind Balthazar. Jo can tell that Mom is royally pissed because she hasn't snapped at Jo to watch her tone or her language once in this conversation. Makes Jo think Ellen probably already gave Balthazar an earful.
“I’m afraid I can’t take no for an answer, darling,” Balthazar says with a put-upon sigh.
Before Jo can snap at him not to call her darling , Ash comes stumbling in from wherever he’s been napping today (ten bucks says it’s the pool table again) and says in tones of delighted surprise, “Balthazar? What the hell you doing on this side of the pond, man?”
“Ash!” Balthazar says, and his voice is weirdly warm in comparison to the way he’s been talking to Jo and Mom. But then, Ash kinda has that sort of disarming effect on people generally. “What an unpleasant surprise!”
Ash, the traitor, walks right up to Balthazar and wraps his arms around him, clapping him manfully on the back. “I didn’t know you were visiting, woulda stocked up on beer!”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time for that; I’ll be here for quite a while." Balthazar awkwardly returns Ash's back slap before extricating himself from the hug and clearing his throat self-importantly. "I’m to be young Joanna’s Watcher.”
“Bullshit, Balto, Ellen’s her Watcher,” Ash says without blinking, and Jo’s grateful for it — and not a little smug. Balthazar seems a bit taken aback, since he and Ash are all buddy-buddy.
“I take it you two know each other?” Jo asks wryly in the brief, uncomfortable pause.
Ash, the only one who doesn't seem to feel the tension thick in the room, claps Balto on the back again and grins at Jo. “Hell yeah. This dude taught my favorite class at the Academy. He’s got some crazy stories from his own days there, troublemaker like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Now, now,” Balthazar begins with false humility, but Mom cuts him off.
“Oh, I believe,” Ellen says darkly. Jo looks at her questioningly, so she continues with a sigh, “Balthazar and I were in school together. He was a smarmy asshole then, too," This bit is pretty obviously pointed at Balthazar rather than Jo. "And the most irresponsible idiot to ever graduate from the Academy. I am not entrusting the safety of my daughter to the same dumbass who ‘accidentally’ torched one of the frat buildings, got half the brothers turned into frogs, and set a plague of locusts on the maths department when he failed pre-calculus.”
Jo whistles, impressed in spite of herself. Mom's glare says she'll pay for that tiny hint of admiration later, but whatever. That's a lot of damage for someone who can't even wear a shirt that fits properly.
“To be fair,” Balthazar says innocently, “I didn’t technically do any of those things. My best friend just happened to be a vengeance demon with a tendency toward Biblical punishments.”
"Oh, don't you pull that," Mom snarls. "You're forty-five goddamn years old, Balthazar, you can't just blame everything on poor Castiel —"
"Oh really , Ellen, as if Cassie has ever been as innocent as all that —"
“Balto,” Jo interrupts, because she is suddenly, completely, one hundred percent done with this conversation. She doesn't bother to hide her satisfaction when Balthazar flinches at the nickname. “I regret to inform you that you have terrible taste in people. Ash, same goes to you, apparently. Mom, should I get started on homework or chores?”
“Chores,” Mom says, cutting off whatever is about to come out of Balthazar’s gaping mouth. “I haven’t been able to get much done, too busy fending off this idiot, so if you can start by cleaning the bar and tables and all? I gotta get a move on in the kitchen.” Jo gives her a salute, and Mom turns on Ash. “Ash, I need you to help me with food today. It’s a Tuesday, so make sure you make plenty of mozzarella sticks for those trivia night idiots at table four.” Ash snaps out a yes ma’am and saunters back toward the kitchen with a casual wave. “As for you , Balthazar, you’re welcome to stay for dinner.”
This last is stated so coldly (full of what Mom likes to call her grandma’s Southern hospitality ) that Jo’s actually almost impressed when Balthazar smiles graciously and says, “Yes, thank you, I think I will.”
Half an hour later, Mom comes into the bar area where Jo is sweeping while dancing to REO Speedwagon (don’t judge) with a dishtowel and a frown.
“What’d you say when you first came home? Something about Bobby knowing something?”
“Oh yeah.” Jo had completely forgotten about that particular bit of unpleasantness with the whole Balthazar bullshit. Awesome. She sighs a little, preparing herself for yet another unpleasant conversation — fuck Tuesdays, honestly — and clears her throat. “Not something, everything. He knows everything, apparently.”
“ Everything? ” Mom asks, voice sharp and commanding. It’s funny, the way she can snap from Mom to Watcher in like .2 seconds flat. “What’s everything , Jo?”
“Um, things that go bump in the night, that I’m the Slayer, and apparently that you’re a Watcher? You know, everything . My best guess is he’s one of those informal hunter types Dad was, but I kinda forgot to ask.”
“You forgot,” Mom repeats, raising an eyebrow.
“I kinda fled the premises,” Jo admits. And yeah, in retrospect, not the best or most logical choice. In Jo's defense, though, she is having a terrible day.
“That bastard ,” Ellen swears, but there’s no heart in it. If Jo didn’t know any better, she’d almost think Mom were relieved at this little tidbit. “Alright, you keep doing your thing, I gotta phone call to make.” And a friend to ream out, verbally rake over the coals, and possibly murder , goes unsaid, but Jo hears it anyway.
“On the bright side,” Jo calls as Mom turns to go, “He gave me a pretty cool book. Think you’ll want to see it.”
“Oh?” Mom turns back around, eyebrow raised in that inquisitive way that Jo has spent hours trying to master in the mirror, on more than one occasion, to absolutely no avail.
“Yep." She smacks her lips a bit on the p , just because it's an obnoxious teenager thing that drives Mom nuts, and Jo could use a little normalcy. "It’s called Vampyr .” She smiles as Mom’s face goes from skeptical to shocked to just plain awed. “Oh yeah, it's that one. Genuine article. It’s in my backpack, if you wanna look at it. Oh, and Mom?”
“Yeah, hun?”
Jo's smile broadens into one of her sharper grins, the one Dean says makes it look like she has too many teeth, the one he calls her shark grin . “Don’t tell Balto.”
As disastrous dinners go, Jo reflects when she’s out patrolling, it probably could’ve been worse. Like the time two years ago when Ash lit the curtains on fire, that had probably been worse. There'd definitely been a lot of shouting. Mom had threatened to ship him back to the Watchers.
On second thought, Jo thinks she’d rather have had the shouting back. She really doesn’t like Balthazar.
It’s just so stupid , Jo thinks, kicking a pebble (wincing and, again, rethinking her definition of unnecessary force as said pebble slams into a headstone and leaves a dent twice its size). She and Mom have enough going on right now, trying to fall into new routines, trying not to fight over what it’s safe for Jo to do anymore. All those years of Mom refusing to let Jo hunt, especially after what happened to Dad, and now neither of them has a choice about it. Now it’s fate , now it’s destiny , now it’s her sacred goddamn duty . And now, of course, only now the Council steps up to help.
Where were they when a twelve-year-old Jo sat up all night with worry, biting her nails and staring at the phone because Mom was smoking out a nest of vampires who had taken to picking on senior citizens? Where were they when that demon pretended to be a guidance counselor and started eating kids’ souls, and Mom had to explain the aftermath of the exorcism to Principal Raphael? Where were they when Dad was ripped apart by Hellhounds?
For that matter, where the hell was Bobby?
“What’s a little girl like you doing in a place like this at this time of night?” The cool, teasing voice is much closer than Jo expects, and she practically jumps out of her reverie, almost tripping over a grave. Whipping around, her eyes fall on a tall, broad-shouldered woman with perfect hair and a bright red smile. Shit, she really needs to pay more attention when patrolling. For god's sake, that's the whole point of patrolling.
When Jo doesn’t respond right away, the woman's smile gets wider. “Oh, cat got your tongue?” she teases, advancing on Jo. And then her face shifts — eyes yellowing, forehead creasing, fangs descending — and Jo trips backwards again, fumbling in her coat for her stake. Shit shit shit shit . “How's this, I'll make it nice and easy for you: in five words or less, what brings you to my part of town?”
Jo’s hands find the stake and she relaxes, settling back into her fighting stance, easy as breathing. She pretends to think for a second, and then, counting the words on her hands: “Out. For. A. Walk.” Pause. Smile. “Bitch.”
And she punctuates the last syllable with a lunge, appropriately dramatic as is her duty. But the vamp is too quick for Jo, dodging the blow with a snarl.
“Now, now, that’s not very nice,” drawls another voice from behind, and Jo whirls. Two more vampires are walking toward her, game faces already on.
“Yeah, well, neither’s trying to eat a girl just taking a stroll,” she retorts while her mind does somersaults trying to calculate how she’s going to get out of here. Shit .
“Oh, is that what you call it now?” the first vampire asks, voice still saccharine. “Because see, to me, this looks an awful lot like a Slayer on patrol.”
“And Slayers are bad for business, you know,” the second one adds, taking a final step into Jo’s personal space. God, she's screwed. She can’t move, she can’t pick one and go for them, because the others will be on her in less than a second. All she can do is sit and listen to them villain-talk her .
“And we’ve got Plans , you see,” the third one says, speaking for the first time, and now Jo is surrounded completely. “With a capital-P. Master’s coming to the Hellmouth, and it wouldn’t do to have a Slayer meddling about.”
Jo has to shake off the part of her brain that still is trapped in the hell of Sam's musical theatre phase, which has immediately started in on, with a capital-T that rhymes with P that stands for Pool ! If she gets out of this alive, she's going to strangle Sam, and she's not going to bother to explain why.
“Oh, I get it,” Jo says, leaping desperately on the opportunity to speak before the vamps start finishing each other's thoughts again (seriously, do these guys function with a hivemind or something?). “So you guys are just lackeys for the real Big Bad, out to badmouth me into submission?” She makes a futile swipe with her stake, faking them out, watching how they react, trying to get an opening.
“Oh no , sweetheart,” Vamp #2 says in sickly sweet tones. And seriously? What is it with dudes giving her condescending pet names today? “We’re here to take you out.”
“We would wait to feed you to the Master,” Vamp #1 murmurs in Jo’s ear and Jesus when did she get that close . “But he thinks Slayer blood’s beneath him. Not worth his time.”
Jo takes a deep, shaky breath. Well, so I didn’t even last a month . She hopes Mom can forgive Jo for leaving her alone. “And this conversation isn’t worth mine,” Jo says with much more confidence than she feels, and slams her elbow back into the throat of Vamp #1. Simultaneously, she thrusts her stake into the heart of Vamp #3 to her right. This time, her blow is true, and the vamp screams as it crumbles to dust, and Vamp #1 stumbles backwards.
And then — they’re on her.
There’s a lot of kicking and punching and once Jo feels the scrape of fangs against her shoulder before she throws herself forward in a truly awesome flip ( look Ma, no hands , she thinks semi-hysterically) — and Jo is pretty sure she’s losing. She’s got the power, and her form’s pretty good, but she’s been Slayer less than a month and isn’t ready to take on two vamps at once after already dusting their friend. She finally sees an opening to get Vamp #2, really get him, and she takes it, even though she knows it means Vamp #1 will probably snap her neck from behind. With a strangled battle cry (which she really hopes isn’t her last one, because it is not nearly as epic as she wants it to be) Jo throws all her strength behind her stake and drives it into the vamp’s chest. She determinedly holds his eyes with her own as he bursts into a cloud of dust.
She whirls around, though, when instead of the killing blow, there’s a shrieking death cry from behind her. Where Vampire #1 had been standing, there’s now a dissipating cloud of dust and a blonde girl with a ( really cool ) knife.
Jo tries to say thank you , but what comes out is, “Who the hell are you?” Yeah, less than graceful, that. Blame the adrenaline.
The girl snorts and tosses her hair back over her shoulder, shampoo-commercial graceful despite the fact that she just killed a vampire , and tucks the knife back into her belt. She straightens her leather jacket and smirks. “I’m the girl who just saved your ass.”
“Right." Jo coughs awkwardly and tries again. "I meant to say, um, thanks?" She can feel the sheepish grin creeping onto her face that she usually reserves for Dean. Stupid . It’s probably a leather jacket thing. She ignores the feeling and holds out her hand. “I’m Jo. Didn’t mean to — I definitely appreciate the save, just pretty on edge from, ya know. Vampires.”
“Ruby,” the girl says, smiling wide and taking Jo’s offered hand. Ruby's hand is cold, but so is the night, and it’s no one’s fault if Ruby’s hand lingers a bit longer in Jo’s than necessary.
Jo’s brain apparently takes this as an invitation to keep talking . “But seriously — what kind of knife can kill vampires? That's so cool, I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
Ruby smirks. “Isn’t it nifty? I...inherited it, I guess you could say. And sorry babe, but I’m not going to go around handing out its secrets to just anyone.” Ruby looks Jo up and down. “Even if she is cute. And the Slayer.”
And Jo forgets entirely to blush in her exasperation, and settles for rolling her eyes. “Oh my God , is there — seriously, was there like, a memo or something?”
Ruby laughs, a high, musical sound entirely out of sync with her leather-jacket tough-girl persona. “Well, see, you fighting off a group of vampires was really my first clue.”
Oh . Aaaand there’s the blush. “Yeah, okay. Fair enough,” Jo concedes.
“Actually, on the subject of said dead vampires — twice dead vampires? Hmm.” Ruby cocks her head to the side, seemingly lost in thought for a moment before dismissing the question as ultimately unimportant. “Anyway, those assholes just now. What did they tell you about the Master?”
The sudden switch from playful to a let’s-get-to-business tone of voice catches Jo off guard. “What? I dunno, just some crap about how there’s some Big Bad coming to the Hellmouth. He thinks I’m beneath him , apparently.” Jo pauses and narrows her eyes at Ruby. “Why? What do you know about it?”
Ruby shrugs. “That basically covers it. The Master of all vampires, coming back to Earth. I’m here to warn you about him and his army of psychic kids.”
“His what now ?” Jo chokes out, but Ruby continues as if she hadn't heard.
“Because if the Master rises, we’re in bigger shit than those lackeys of his we just ganked would have you believe. I’m talking like end-of-the-world shit.”
“We live on a Hellmouth ,” Jo points out, wrong-footed slightly by Ruby’s direct yet irritatingly vague warning. “It’s always end-of-the-world shit.”
“Not like this, it isn’t,” Ruby says darkly, and a thrill of fear runs down Jo's spine. But the moment passes, and Ruby grins mischievously. “Anyway, that’s my duty done. Nice meeting you, Jojo, I’ll see you around.” And with that, Ruby blows Jo a kiss, turns gracefully on her heel, and begins to wind her way through the headstones.
“Wait —" Jo calls, before she can think, before she can get past the part of her that pleads, don't leave yet . Ruby pauses, turning half back around. “Who are you?”
“I’m…” Ruby pauses, frowns like she’s searching for the word. She smiles when she finds it, and it's brilliant enough to do something funny to Jo's stomach. “Let’s just say, I’m a friend.” And she's gone, disappearing into the night so quickly Jo could almost think she was a ghost.
“Yeah, sure,” she mutters skeptically, " Friend. " Because mysterious chicks showing up in cemetaries, throwing around ominous warnings about the end of the world are always so friendly . But then, Ruby did just save her life. And really, anyone who goes around killing vampires can’t be all bad — enemy of my enemy and all that.
By the time Jo gets home, the Roadhouse is closed and the last of the customers are gone for the night. Ash is nowhere to be seen, which generally means that he’s locked in his room with a case of beer, a significant amount of pot, and a few conspiracy theories, with plans to sleep until three tomorrow afternoon. Seriously, Ash keeps a similar sleep schedule to the kind of shit Jo hunts. It's impressive. She would add Balthazar to her mental list of whereabouts, but she really can’t be bothered to care, as long wherever he is also happens to be Not Here .
Mom’s sat at her own bar, staring into half a glass of whiskey. There's a bar rag abandoned on the countertop before her, and the frown settled comfortably between her eyebrows looks vaguely furious. When she doesn’t even look up at the slam of the door, Jo realizes it’s up to her to start any conversation.
“How was trivia night?” she tries, strolling past the bar and flinging her readybag into Secret Storage Unit One (aka, that hidden panel behind the bar, under the draft beer).
“Ah, you know how it is,” Mom says, trying, and failing, to smile. “Table four got their ass kicked again. I keep thinkin’ one of these days, they’ll stop putting down Lord of the Rings characters for the sports questions.”
“But today was not that day?”
“Not so much. At least they seem to enjoy eating their own body weights in mozzarella sticks. How was patrolling?”
“Well, I made a new friend. I think,” Jo tries, because that’s what Ruby said she was, right? “Also, we’ve got a Big Bad on the rise, if you choose to believe the lackeys I slayed tonight. According to their villainous monologue-ing — which was, alas, cut tragically short by yours truly —" Here, she gives a little bow, and Mom snorts. “He’s a vampire, calls himself the Master and may or may not be building an army of psychic children. Whether that means literally children or like his hellspawn or something remains to be seen.”
“Wonderful," Mom sighs, more than says. "Well, it can remain unseen until tomorrow morning, I think. You gotta be up for school in a few hours, kiddo.”
“Five hours. That’s enough to get by on.” It's not, but it can't be helped. No point in adding her sleep schedule — or lack thereof — to Mom’s stack of worries, especially with the Council wedging their way in.
Mom looks at her oddly, tired and sad and like she’s sizing Jo up for something. The exhausted look that comes over Mom’s face makes Jo feel like she’s been weighed and measured and found wanting. “You’re still just a girl,” Mom says at last, and it’s thick and sad and Jo can’t really handle it.
She thinks of Ava again, sixteen when she was Called and dead three years later. Thinks of all the girls who came before her, who were Called and fought and died too young.
“Yeah, Ma," is all she says. "We all are.”
“I dunno, man. I’m just sayin it’s weird, is all,” Dean is saying to Sam when Jo finds the Winchester boys waiting at her locker the next morning. It seems to be part of an ongoing argument, because Sam responds by throwing his hands in the air in exasperation — almost taking Jo’s head off as she tries to put in her combination. Jo ignores it, because it's par for the course, these days. Sam's journeys through puberty are hazardous to everyone within reach of his gangling limbs. These boys are a danger to her health.
“God, Dean, I don’t know why you can’t just be happy about it and stop being so paranoid about everything!” Sam snaps at his brother, voice cracking in the middle of the sentence.
“What’s going on, boys?” Jo interrupts. She knows the brothers. They'll bitch at each other over her head all day if left to their own devices and never get anywhere.
Sam jumps on the opportunity to get Jo on his side. “Remember Brady?” he asks, turning to Jo with wide, excited eyes. Dean just glowers. “My best friend when we were kids?”
“Um, excuse me, I’ve always been your best friend,” Jo jokes, but then frowns in recognition of the name. “Wait, Tyson Brady? Wasn’t he the one you made a secret clubhouse with, out in that boarded-up shed on the playground?”
“Yeah!” Sam’s face lights up at the memory. “We —"
Jo narrows her eyes in remembered rage. “He’s the one who convinced you that girls had cooties and shouldn’t be allowed in the clubhouse. You didn’t talk to me for like two weeks.”
“Well —"
“I don’t like Brady,” Jo says decisively, not bothering to let Sam finish. Dean grins and gives her a thatta girl , which just makes Jo roll her eyes. “Anyway, why’re you fighting about him? There’s got to be better people to fight over.”
“Oh my god , yes that was Brady, what is it with you and Dean today? It’s like you guys only remember the bad stuff.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if he hadn’t been such a little douche,” Dean mutters.
Sam glares. “We were six , Dean. Anyway,” he says, turning back to Jo. “We ran into him at the grocery store last night. I don’t know how he recognized us, but he came over and said hi and we started talking. I guess he’s in town on some kind of cross-country trip — he’s looking at colleges already, and wanted to check KU, can you believe it? — and he decided to stay a few days and visit. We’re gonna hang out after school today, when I get done with debate team.”
“Well, good for you, Sam-o,” Jo says, clapping him on the back. Dean looks betrayed. “It’s good for you to have friends that aren’t me.”
“Or me,” Dean adds, and it’s kinda pathetic.
“You don’t count, Dean, you’re just his brother.”
“Hey!” Dean protests, but Sam’s laughing, and the boys seem like they’re good again. Honestly, what would they do without her?
The warning bell rings and the three of them move automatically into the flow of students down the hall, which is really some Pavlovian crap.
“Wait a second,” Dean blurts, stopping abruptly. He puts a hand on Jo’s shoulder, hauling her back against the flow of the crowd. “Jo, what happened to your eye?”
It’s everything Jo can do to not punch Dean in annoyance because, really, again? “Dean, we went through this yesterday,” she says tersely, voice strained because she’s talking through gritted teeth. “I took care of it.”
“That’s not what I mean, Jo,” Dean insists, ignoring the complaints of the people trying to walk around this ridiculous three-person roadblock he's built. He stares intently at Jo’s face, searching it with such intensity that Jo yanks from his grasp, uncomfortable in a very different way than she usually is in close proximity to Dean.
“What the hell , Dean?” she demands, but now Sam is staring, too.
“Jo,” Sam says slowly, his voice a little off. “Your eye’s almost completely healed.”
“What?” She pokes at it. It doesn’t hurt, barely even tender anymore. She'd actually entirely forgotten that it’s supposed to be black and blue. It’s been a wild freakin ride, the past 24 hours, and her injuries from earlier in the week were the least of her problems. She can still feel a scab over her eyebrow, but that’s all. Oops. “Yeah, well, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
“It was almost swollen shut yesterday morning,” Sam protests, concerned but also clearly weirded out.
“I’m a fast healer,” she tries, but Dean shakes his head. These boys know her too well.
“No, Jo, you’re not," Dean says flatly. "Last year, when you got a black eye playing dodgeball in gym, it took like two weeks to clear up.”
“Puberty did wonders for me?” She tries, but it's weak.
Dean just snorts. “Please. Like you’ve gone through puberty yet.”
Okay, now that’s just rude, Jo decides, and punches Dean's shoulder in retribution. For the first time since he was about ten, Dean actually reacts to her blow with more than just a roll of his eyes. He winces and rubs his shoulder tenderly before trying to laugh it off.
“Damn, Jo, you pack a punch.”
And again, with remembering to account for the Slayer strength when calculating unnecessary force. Jo almost feels bad for Dean. Almost. “I told you, I can take care of myself. Now get going before all three of us are either trampled or late to class, mmkay?”
The rest of the day passes in a bit of a blur. She definitely needs to be getting more than the five hours of sleep she’s been maxing out at recently. She just can’t see how to do that while balancing trig homework and patrolling and English papers and her Roadhouse chores.
She passes Bobby in the hallway during eighth period and he squeezes her shoulder gently as he goes. He’s still got a lot of explaining to do, of course, years’ worth. Might be a while yet before Jo can forgive him the secrets. But for now…
Jo thinks of the way Mom’s face, Mom’s voice softened at the news that Bobby was in the know. Maybe, for right now, it’s okay to just be relieved to have someone else on her side.
She stays after school to work on her stupid English essay (although okay, Viola is totally a BAMF and whoever writes this off as a comedic love story is gonna get their ass handed to them at full Slayer strength), but ends up falling asleep on her desk. She doesn’t realize it until there’s a hand gently shaking her shoulder.
Jo is up and in a fighting stance, knife out of her boot and brandished before her before she realizes it’s not a threat, it’s another student. Jesus Christ.
“Oh my God ,” the kid says, voice cracking in his panic, as he stumbles back from Jo. In response, Jo just rolls her eyes and restores the knife to its proper place. Good to know her reflexes are still top notch even when napping on a desk, she thinks as she cracks her neck.
The kid in front of her is short, scrawny, with the scraggly beginnings of a beard that he forgot to shave. Jo’s pretty sure he’s a fellow sophomore, one of those kids always hanging at the edges of the clique Anna Milton runs. He looks terrified. Jo almost wishes she could feel bad about it.
When it becomes clear the idiot has been scared into silence, Jo snaps. “What do you want?”
“Oh. I — I’m Chuck?” He sounds unsure, one of those people who talks as if everything is a question. “I dunno if you remember me? We had detention together once. Um…” He trails off when Jo just raises her eyebrows at him, but manages to shake himself out of it and start over. “Guess not. Okay, well, anyway, there’s something I need to talk to you about? Like now. It’s important.”
“Okaayyyy,” Jo prompts when Chuck stops talking. What is he waiting for, permission?
“It’s about the Slayer thing —”
“Oh my god ,” Jo interrupts in exasperation. “Was there some kind of, of public service announcement ?”
“Okay, to be fair, I totally didn’t want to know, okay? About any of this crap,” Chuck snaps back.
“Then why do you know?”
“Aahhh, yeah this is the part. Um, promise not to freak out?” Chuck winces when Jo just narrows her eyes at him for that. “It’s just, I…overhear things. Sometimes. In my head.” And then, like he can hear Jo internally freaking out over Ruby’s remembered warning, Chuck hurriedly adds, hands up defensively, “I’m not one of the Master’s psychics, promise! I think they’re just starting to be psychic, now that he’s I dunno, on the rise or whatever? I’ve been putting up with this shit my whole life.”
“You still haven’t explained what, exactly, this is,” Jo reminds him, none too kindly. “And why you’re ‘overhearing’ about the Slayer.”
To Chuck’s credit, he barely flinches at the air quotes. “Um, I think I might be some kind of prophet? I don’t know , I haven’t exactly done a lot of research on it, the whole thing freaks me out. But I — I hear about things before they happen, like conversations between…I don’t even know what they are. Gods, or something, probably? I just call them the Powers That Be.
“And they’re big on the psychic kids right now. It’s like a freaking scrolling news update like CNN. I guess the Master rising would kinda be like a chain reaction sorta thing? You know, end of the world? And. And all?” He giggles nervously.
“Awesome.” Can Jo catch a break? Can anyone give her actual information about this Master character? And what the actual hell does this freak mean by gods ? She doesn’t actually ask Chuck any of this, of course. Instead, she says, “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Because trust me, I have had it up to here with random people telling me about how dangerous the Master is, okay?”
“Oh, no I’m here to talk to you about your friend Sam,” Chuck says, like that’s all the explanation in the world. Like he shouldn’t have led with that .
“Should have started there, Chuckles,” Jo hisses, voice gone low and menacing. Inside, though, her blood runs cold, because no. Not Sam, too. It’s bad enough the Hellmouth has eaten away at her life and her mom’s and apparently Bobby’s, but the Winchesters are supposed to be safe .
“His friend — Brady? — he’s bad news.” The part of Jo’s brain that sounds a lot like Dean grumbles, I coulda told you that . “I don’t know exactly what that means, though? All I heard was that he’s been sent to ‘take care of Sam.’ I don’t think they’re gonna kill him,” he adds, because Jo’s sure her enraged panic is showing. “Just, I think, get him on their side, or something? He’s one of the psychic kids, I know, and the Master wants him bad .”
“Sam’s psychic ?” Jo wracks her brain. He’s been complaining about nightmares recently, looking tired and haunted and brushing it off whenever Jo asks, but other than that…Sam? Psychic? With the Master after him in the guise of Brady. “Awesome. Just, awesome.”
Chuck looks as overwhelmed and helpless as Jo feels. Biting his lip, he tells her, “I just…I didn’t know who else to tell. And — and it’s your job to save people now, right?”
“Something like that,” Jo agrees grimly, and takes out her phone. She’s already dialing as she remembers to say, “Thanks, Chuck.”
“Anytime? I guess?” He laughs nervously again. “I’m gonna…go, I think.”
“This conversation isn’t over!” she calls after him, but it’s mostly absent-minded: the phone is already ringing in her ear.
“Hey, Jo,” Sam picks up after the third ring, but his voice sounds odd. Strained.
“Heya, Sammy,” Jo says carefully. “What’re you up to?”
“Hanging out with Brady, remember? I met up with him after school.”
“Right, that old brat.” Jo forces a laugh, high and false. She’s scrambling for something, anything. “Where are you guys? I wanted to come drop off that book you lent me before I head home, get swallowed alive by the Roadhouse crowd.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I can grab it from you tomorrow.” Sam’s going along with her lie about the book, and that’s all the confirmation Jo needs. She’s impressed by how well he seems to be holding it together, how quickly he’s picking up her code. “Besides,” Sam adds with strange deliberation. “You remember how it is with Brady — no girls allowed.”
And oh. Oh . “Right, of course. Tell him his misogyny is as endearing as it ever was.” She’s grasping for anything else to say, any way to let Sam know she’s coming to rescue him, but Sam speaks first.
“Will do. Hey, I gotta go, but will you do me a favor? Tell Dean I don’t need him to pick me up. Tell him, there’s plenty for us to do — it’s a funky town.”
“Okay, I’ll pass it on, word for word,” Jo says, trying to keep her tone light. “Later, Sam.”
“Later.”
As soon as Sam hangs up, Jo’s dialing Dean with one hand and shoving her school shit into her bag with the other. It takes everything she has not to run from the library like she’s got hellhounds on her tail.
“Dean, I need your help,” she says as soon as Dean picks up the phone. God, she hates this, hates bringing Dean into this bullshit . But there’s no choice, not really. (And, well, being realistic — Sam’s already involved, which means that Dean inevitably will be as well.)
“Hello to you, too, Jo. So nice to hear from —”
“Sam’s in trouble,” Jo interrupts, cutting straight through Dean’s mocking tones.
“What?” he demands sharply. “What’s happening? How do you know? Is he hurt?”
“I’m not sure exactly what’s going on yet, though I know it’s got to do with Brady. You were right, he’s trouble.” She hopes that throwing Dean this small bone will make him more willing to follow her lead here. “I don’t think he’s hurt, but Brady’s dangerous, Dean. I don’t know how long that’ll last.”
“What the hell is going on, Jo?” Dean’s voice now is the kind of angry he gets only when he’s really very scared.
“I just got off the phone with him, he wanted me to tell you something: he doesn’t need you to pick him up, because he’s sure they’ll have plenty to do — after all, Lawrence is a funky town .”
“Shit , ” Dean says with a sharp intake of breath. Jo can hear other noise in the background now: the jingle of keys, the slam of a door. She’s sure that any moment she’ll hear the rumble of the car engine turning over.
“Yeah, exactly,” she agrees.
When they were younger, Dean worried obsessively over Sam. He still does, really, but he’s gotten better at hiding it; better at being at least a little bit reasonable about it. One night, there was some special on the news about child abduction or something, and Dean decided that he and Sam needed to have a code word. It had to be something simple, he said, something they could use without making it suspicious, but not something they would normally say either. And they could only use it in the worst of emergencies. Jo, being practically their sister, had been brought in on the secret word, as had Ellen and Bobby, though the adults found it more amusing than anything else.
They’d never had to use it, of course. Jo had honestly forgotten the whole thing until Sam had oh-so-casually dropped their decade-old code into their phone call.
“I need you to give me a ride,” she tells Dean, mostly because she knows he’s already leaving his house — and yep, there’s the engine. Taking a deep breath, she adds, “I know where they are.”
“Tell me . ”
“No.” She can imagine the anger on Dean’s face when she says it, the way his mouth snaps into a thin line. “Dean, trust me, I can’t have you go running after Brady on your own. You need me on this.”
“Like hell I do. You’ve already got beaten up once this week, I don’t need you throwing yourself into whatever Brady’s up to.” The engine revs, louder almost than the end of Dean’s sentence. “Tell me where they are.”
“Dean, you’ve got no idea what’s going on here, so no. You’re not doing this without me. I’m still at school, I’ll meet you in the lower lot in five minutes.”
“Dammit, Jo —“ Dean growls, but Jo hangs up on him, cutting him off before he can spout anymore of his vaguely chauvinistic overprotective bullshit. She’s only got five minutes; she doesn’t have time for that.
She’s got five minutes to stock up on weapons. Weapons which she doesn’t have here at school because you don’t need to keep an armory in your locker, Miss Harvelle, this institution is perfectly safe . She’s got her dad’s little pigsticker in her boot, pure iron, but that won’t do much if Brady’s what she thinks he is: another vampire. Her hair ribbon hardly counts, that’s purely defensive, not really a weapon at all. The holy water in her gym bottle will slow him down, and she’s got her silver cross around her neck like always, but she needs a stake at the very least. A machete would be nice, or maybe a battleaxe. Something she could use to take Brady’s head off in a pinch. But where the hell is she going to find something like that in a friggin high school? If she were looking for salt, she could at least go to the lunch room or to that creepy-ass card catalogue in the library, but —
The library .
“Bobby, you better have something good for me,” Jo murmurs,, and rushes back the way she came.
By the time Dean comes screeching into the parking lot, she’s got two stakes, a small battleaxe, and a machete. It’s like a dream come true, honestly. She’s going to kiss Bobby’s gorgeous, hairy face the next time she sees him.
“What the actual hell —” Dean starts when he sees what Jo’s holding.
Jo tosses her gear into the backseat of the junk bucket Dean’s driving this week before sliding into the passenger seat. “Consider it on loan from Bobby. They were in a hidden panel in the library. He has some really impressive weaponry in there, actually,” she adds thoughtfully as she reaches for the seat belt. “Remind me to ask him about the crossbow later.” It looked like it had all sorts of fun attachments and customized bolts, and Jo’s fingers had itched looking at it.
Dean repeats, nonplussed, “Crossbow? Bobby has a crossbow in the library?”
“Yep, sure does. Now drive, head to the elementary school playground.”
“Is that where Sam is?” Dean puts the car in drive even as he asks, concerns about library weapons apparently overridden.
“I’m pretty sure, yeah. Sam’s really good at this coded communication shit, you should be proud.”
“Great,” Dean growls. “Jo, seriously, what the hell is going on? I know you don’t like Brady, but if Sam’s begging funky town that pretty much means it’s time to call the cops. And you know how I feel about cops.”
She does indeed know how Dean feels about cops. Dean and the sheriff have a disturbingly merry rivalry going on, wherein she can’t prove anything and Dean has the least convincing shit-eating grin Jo’s ever seen. All the same, there are some members of the local police force — Gordon Walker, to pick a non-random example — that, well, let’s just say that everyone’s happier when Dean avoids them.
“Trust me, Dean, cops aren’t gonna be much help.” While she talks, Jo pulls a thin ribbon from her bag, deceptively pink but lined with homemade barbed wire, terrifically sharp spikes of alternating silver and iron. She learned in elementary school that people — especially boys — like to grab her hair in a fight. Working off the assumption that the creepy-crawlies would have a similar tendency, Jo and Mom brainstormed up this little beauty. If the iron and silver don’t get them, well, no one likes a handful of spikes. She braids it into her hair with the aid of long practice and tries to think of a way to explain without coming off as batshit insane . “We’ve got to handle this carefully. There’s something bigger at play here than just Sam —”
“There’s nothing more important than Sam,” Dean snaps, and Jo shoots him a glare he doesn’t see because his eyes are actually on the road for once.
“You think I don’t know that, Dean? But if we don’t do this right, Brady won’t be the end of it. Something’s going on with Sam,” Dean’s face twitches slightly, and Jo narrows her eyes at him. “And I think you know it, don’t you?”
Dean hesitates. “Does this have something to do with his nightmares?”
“What kind of nightmares?” she demands. “He won’t tell me.”
“He — he has these dreams, these nightmares. A couple weeks ago, there was one about this girl who got killed in a fire. Same way our mom died.” There’s something awful in the choked way the last bit comes out, but Jo elects to leave it. Dean never talks about their mom. “And Sam looked up her name, like obsessively googled this chick. And then, boom, last week, she turns up in the papers in California, dead in a fire.”
“Ava,” Jo realizes, the grief still fresh in her mind. “Sam dreamed about Ava.”
“You know her?” Dean asks, flashing her a surprised look over the console.
“Yes. No. Not really, it doesn’t matter.” Deep breath. “Okay, so Sam really is psychic. That helps narrow it down.”
“There’s no such thing as psychics, Jo,” Dean says, but it’s half-hearted at best. Something tells Jo he’s been questioning that a lot recently. Hopefully, that’ll make this next bit go over a bit smoother.
“Yes, there is. There are a lot of things out there that shouldn’t exist, and Sam’s psychic death visions are the least of them.” She takes another deep breath and just goes for it. They’re getting close and she’s running out of time. “And I’m gonna tell you right now, the likelihood that Brady is human is basically slim to none.”
“ What? ”
They’ve got maybe two minutes until they get to the playground, and the sun is already getting low in the sky. Just enough time for the ground rules, then, not the whole spiel. Still, Jo makes sure to look directly at Dean for this. “Brady probably isn’t trying to kill Sam. He needs him — or, rather, Brady’s boss needs him. Don’t ask me for what, I’m not sure yet. I’ve had a crazy last 48 hours and I have a lot less information than I’d like to have at this point. But just because they need Sam doesn’t mean Brady won’t try to kill us , especially if he is what I think he is.”
“And what’s that?” Dean demands, in a voice as tight as the white-knuckled grip he’s got on the steering wheel.
“A messenger,” Jo says immediately and then, thinking of the vampires from last night the worshipful way they spoke of the Master, “Probably a zealot. And almost definitely a vampire.”
“A vampire,” Dean repeats flatly, pulling into the empty lot behind the elementary school. It’s getting on sunset, and the playground ahead is as empty as the pavement. Off to the side, tucked in some overgrown weeds underneath an overhanging oak, is a small, worn-down shed. That’s it , Jo thinks, shrugging off her coat and getting herself into battle mode, but Dean’s not done. “Jo, please tell me that’s code for something.”
“Yes, Dean,” she says snidely, even though Dean doesn’t deserve it, not really. It’s not his fault his wildly unprepared for this conversation. “It’s code for ‘bloodsucking fiend that bursts into flame when it hits the sunlight.’”
“Fuck,” he mutters.
“Yeah, basically,” Jo agrees. “Get out of the car, we need to do this before full dark, or we’ll be in real trouble.”
Dean does as she says without protest for once, clambering out of the car and coming to stand next to her. After a moment’s consideration, Jo hands him the machete, and he takes it with hands that only shake slightly.
“Okay, so this is for you to use only as a last resort of self-defense. Do not , under any circumstances, go after Brady yourself. Let me handle him. If you have to fight him, take his head off. No hesitation, just do it.”
“Jo, we can’t just walk in there and kill some kid —”
There are a lot of real convincing arguments Jo could make in response to that protest, but she goes with the quickest. “He’s got Sam.” Dean’s face does something strange, and she nods. “That’s what I thought. And one last thing, Dean: you do what I tell you, whatever I tell you, or you’ll get yourself — and your brother — killed. Capiche?”
Dean takes a deep breath. “Capiche.”
Jo nods in approval. “Let’s go. Don’t bother being quiet. Likelihood is Brady’s expecting me.”
Up close, the shed is even more worn down: the paint peeling, the window boarded up with rotting wood. Caution tape hangs in ribbons from where it once clearly crisscrossed the door, the tears new enough that Jo thinks Brady must have ripped it off whenever he arrived on scene. There’s moss on the crooked shingles, and the sign that Brady pinned to the door as a child hangs at an odd angle, the paint barely legible ( no girls allowd) . The lock, like the tape, is broken, snapped in two, and the door doesn’t quite close.
With one last look at Dean, Jo kicks it open, Sparta-style, because really there’s nothing like a good entrance to get her Slayer game into gear.
There’s a hissing sound and sudden movement as someone moves back from the weak sunlight streaming in the doorway. Directly before her sits Sam, in the remains of a wooden chair, stiff and uncomfortable but not obviously restrained. Still, his eyes widen with relief when he sees Jo and Dean.
“Heya, Sammy,” Jo says cheerfully. “Where’s your buddy?”
“I’m right here, Slayer,” a cool voice sneers from her right, and the door slams shut behind them. The light’s dim, but Jo can still see, something she attributes to a small grouping of candles on the floor in the middle. Looks like Brady’s a traditionalist. Useful , she thinks, and catalogues the information for later before turning to face Brady.
He looks young, very young, in a way that’s so wrong she’s amazed Sam and Dean didn’t notice it last night. Blame it on shitty grocery store fluorescents, maybe, but all the same. He likely got turned a couple of years ago, which makes her shiver. Most vamps know better than to turn someone that young. It never goes well. Still, blonde, smiling, and just as bratty-looking as she can remember, this is definitely Brady.
“Brady, so nice to see you again,” Jo says to him, oozing insincerity. “I’m gonna need Sam back now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Slayer .” He practically spits the word, it’s said with such disdain. Jo can’t help but think about what the vampires in the cemetery had said — the Master thinks Slayers are beneath him. Apparently, he teaches his minions to think the same. “He belongs with us and he knows it. And you know it, too.”
“You really think I’m going to let Sam hang out with you, Brady? You were a bad influence on him long before you grew fangs.” They’re not quite circling each other, but they’re facing off. Jo’s moving slowly, adjusting so that maybe she can keep Brady’s eyes off Sam and Dean long enough for them to get out and away.
“You don’t really get a say in this, do you? The Master is coming, and he’s coming for his children. And when he gets here, Sam will be ready for him. We’ll be ready for him.”
“You sound like a cult,” Dean growls, but his voice isn’t coming from behind Jo anymore. No, of course not. Because Dean is an idiot. And instead of using the brief conversation to get Sam out of there , he’s snuck around behind Brady, and is raising his machete.
Before the idiot can even prepare to swing, though, Brady is whirling around, face twisting into ridges and fangs and yellowed eyes. Distantly, Jo hears Sam scream, NO , but she’s already in motion.
Her kick takes out Brady’s knees and he trips, dropping to one knee. Dean stumbles backwards, thrown off by the falling vampire, and Jo is ready, steps forward, axe whirling in her hands. Brady’s fast, though, faster than she’s used to — younger vampires tend to be that way, all annoyingly spry and youthful and — and he’s back on his feet before she can deal the killing blow. And then he’s on her, fast but swinging wildly enough that Jo dodges and blocks easily. Brady is reckless, unskilled. But still, she realizes (as he manages to grab and twist her right arm so hard she lets go the stake pulled from her belt loop), his speed alone is enough to make him dangerous. (Long-nailed fingers rake her arm, leaving bloody tracks and a torn sleeve.) She has to get the Winchesters out of here.
In one smooth motion, she (dodges a blow, whipping herself around so fast that her silver-spiked braid smacks Brady in the face and he hisses in pain before she) sweeps her foot behind her, knocking over the small collection of candles providing the dim light.
The wooden shed is old, rotted, and — most importantly — dry as a bone. Hot wax spills over the floorboards, scorching a rainbow pattern into the knotted wood, and the flames flicker and catch on every splinter, flaring to greater life. Brady doesn’t notice right away, too preoccupied with trying to swipe at Jo with one hand, the other clutched to his right eye where her ribbon has done some damage. Dean, however, does notice.
It’s the cruelest thing she could do, Jo knows, setting fire to the place in order to chase Dean out. His mom died in a fire when he was little, and he’s been terrified of it since. Well, not of fire itself, so much. He’s terrified of what the next fire will take from him. He hides it well; Jo’s pretty sure she’s the only one who knows. That she’s the only one he’s told about that night, the only one he’s told about how vividly he remembers every moment, how he still dreams about it. Which makes what she does next probably the worst thing one friend has ever done to another.
“Dean!” Jo shouts over Brady’s hissing and the crackle of the flames. She takes her eyes off her enemy, just for a second, to look Dean in the face. “Take your brother outside as fast as you can.”
She can see the way the words hit him like a physical blow, but it’s worth it. Dean springs into immediate action, rushing over to Sam as Jo turns back to the vampire. She doesn’t have to look far — he’s two inches from her face, and then there’s a hand on her neck, holding her still, cutting off her air. He’s too close for Jo to be able to swing the axe with any force, nevermind without risking chopping her own self in the face.
“You’re done for, Slayer,” Brady snarls, spitting in her face. This close, she can see that his eye looks burnt, raw and red and sealed shut. He backs her up to the wall of the shed, pushing her by the throat. She fumbles at her belt. “The Master is rising, and the time for petty inconveniences like you is over. Your power is nothing compared to Sam or the other children. They are chosen , and they will rise in your place. You and Dean and their father — all of you trying to protect Sam — you’re just in the way.”
“Haven’t you heard, Brady?” she gasps out, her fingers finally closing on exactly what she needs. “I’m chosen, too.” And Jo thrusts her final stake straight through his heart. She makes sure to hold his gaze, though, until nothing remains of him but an echoing scream and the taste of ash on her tongue.
Ash, she remembers as she desperately gasps for air. Fire. The shed is burning down around her, and the world is ash and smoke and heat and flame. Jo stumbles back toward the door and out, out into the blessedly cool February air.
Outside, Dean is standing, halfway between the shed and the parking lot. His face is hard, his nose smudged with ash, and he is looking at Jo like she’s a stranger. He’s supporting Sam, who looks pale even in the gathering gloom and who won’t meet Jo’s eyes. It hurts more than the smoke in her lungs.
“Jo,” Dean says, his voice a feeble attempt at levity. “You got some ‘splainin’ to do.”