Nevermore (17 page)

ELEVEN

The Afi ri house

The Bronx, New York

Saturday 18 November 2006

Dean wasn’t used to being the first one up—he was even less used to it when he got up at noon. But Manfred’s door was shut, his snoring clearly audible even through the closed door, and a peek into the other guest room showed that Sam was not only out like a light, but drooling on the pillow.

Pausing to get a picture of that with his cell phone, he then took a shower, went downstairs, and—

after throwing a load of their dirty clothes into the washer—plunked himself down on the couch, opened up Sam’s laptop, and found that crazy guy’s Poe website.

Among other things, “Arthur Gordon Pym” had 170 SUPERNATURAL

archived a whole bunch of Poe’s stories on his site, so Dean started reading them while drinking some of Manfred’s killer coffee out of a mug that said, ibm: italian by marriage, with the three letters in the red, white, and green of the Italian fl ag.

That coffee also went a very long way toward reminding Dean as to what he liked about Manfred.

So did the soundtrack for his reading, which was the dulcet tones of Rush’s self- titled album. Both factors did a great deal to wash the taste of Scottso out of his brain.

By the time Sam stumbled downstairs wearing only a pair of pants, Dean put on his best mad-scientist voice. “It’s
alive,
I tell you, alive!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam muttered, heading straight into the kitchen.

Grinning, Dean looked back at the laptop, taking his third shot at reading this partic u lar para-graph, and finally giving up.

When Sam came into the living room, clutching a mug that had a
Dilbert
cartoon on it, Dean said,

“Dude, you told me that this Rue Morgue thing was the first detective story, right?”

“Yeah, why?” Sam said as he sat on the easy chair.

“ ’Cause I gotta tell ya, this is the worst piece of crap I ever read in my life. I mean, the other stories weren’t bad. Soon’s I started reading ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ I remembered it from that stupid class I Never

171

more

took back at that crappy Catholic school in Illinois.

But this Rue Morgue story . . .” He trailed off.

Sam shrugged as he sipped his coffee. “What can I tell you, Dean, it was revolutionary at the time. And hey, if it wasn’t for that story, we probably wouldn’t have
CSI
today.”

“No loss,” Dean said. “There’s better things on Thursday nights anyhow.”

“It gets better once you get past the opening,” Sam said.

Dean agreed with his brother only insofar as the story couldn’t possibly have gotten any worse. The opening was just
stultifying,
going on for pages and pages about nothing. Where

were the mur-

ders? The detecting? The
orangutan,
for crying out loud?

Just as “Working Man” came to an end, Sam gulped down some more coffee and then asked,

“So whadja think of Detective McBain?” Setting the laptop aside, Dean blew out a breath.

“I can’t believe Dad didn’t tell us about her.”

“Really? ’Cause I have no trouble believing that Dad didn’t tell us about her. He didn’t tell us about the roadhouse, he didn’t tell us about Ellen or Jo or Ellen’s husband, he didn’t tell us about Elkins, he didn’t—”

Throwing up his hands in surrender, Dean said,

“All right, all right.” He shook his head and gulped down the remainder of his own coffee, which had 172 SUPERNATURAL

gone fairly cold. “I been thinkin’ a lot about her, actually,” he said, “and I think we can trust her.” Sam’s eyelids had been half closed since he came down the stairs, but they opened all the way now.

“Really? Not that I don’t agree, but I’m surprised to hear you say it.”

Dean shrugged. “Toldja before, I know cops.

Dude, you and me—but especially me—we’re the collar of the century. Any cop would give his left nut to bust either one of us right now. Last night, she had us
cold
. She coulda taken us in, gotten her face on the news, got promoted—hell, she’d have her choice of assignments, she brought us in. And she didn’t. No way a cop does that.”

“Unless there are extenuating circumstances.”

“Exactly.” Dean got up and said, “I’m gonna refill the java cup.”

Sam unfolded himself from the easy chair and followed. “You know, I’ve been thinking about Dad—that’s why I slept so late, to be honest, I was tossin’ and turnin’ with this half the night after we got back.”

Crap crap crap,
Dean thought as he entered the kitchen. The absolute last thing he wanted right now was to get into a talk with Sam about Dad. He wasn’t ready to go there with Sammy, not yet.

Approaching the coffeemaker, Dean saw that Sam had only left the dregs in the bottom of the glass pot.

Nevermore

173

Grabbing it, holding it up, and sloshing the sludgy remains around the bottom, he said, “Dude! Coffeemaker etiquette. You finish, you make another pot.”

Sam recoiled as if Dean had slapped him. “I didn’t fi nish it—there’s some left.” Dean glared at Sam. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“Anyhow,” Sam said as Dean dumped the remains into the sink. “I was thinkin’ back to when we were at Bobby’s and had Meg trapped in the circle.”

Unsure where Sam was going with this, Dean just grunted noncommittally as he rinsed out the pot.

“Remember when Bobby told us that Meg was a possessed human?”

Dean nodded as he filled the pot with cold water. He had only thought of Meg as a demon, presuming that she had simply taken on the form of a cute blonde.

Sam, still clutching his mug of coffee, said, “I’ll never forget the look on Bobby’s face when he told us that—and he said, ‘Can’t you
tell
?’ He couldn’t believe that we couldn’t recognize the signs.”

“What’s that got to do with Dad, Sam?” Dean asked, pouring the water into the coffeemaker, though he had a guess.

“That was something Dad could’ve taught us, but he didn’t. He didn’t tell us about other hunters, he didn’t tell us about the roadhouse, he didn’t tell 174 SUPERNATURAL

us about vampires until we actually met some, he didn’t tell us about goofer dust. Sure, he taught us the basics, and he taught us how to fight and defend ourselves, but that was it. Hell, most of the lore I know, I learned on my own. And for all that we fought about it—I think Dad was glad I was at Stanford.”

Dean had moved to the freezer, and those words stopped him dead in his tracks. “What?”

“You don’t just
get
a free ride at Stanford, Dean—

or anywhere else. You gotta fill out a ton of forms, and a parent or legal guardian has to sign most of

’em, especially the financial aid ones.” This shocked Dean. “You mean Dad actually signed all that stuff?”

“At first, yeah. He bitched and moaned about it, but he signed
everything.
” Dean shuddered as he dumped the coffee grounds into the filter, remembering the nasty arguments during that time. Dad accusing Sam of abandoning the family, Sam accusing Dad of either running his life or ruining his life, while he tried desperately (and failed miserably) to get them to calm down and talk
to
each other instead of
at
each other. To find out now that Dad had
facilitated
the process . . .

“Maybe,” Dean said slowly, “Dad didn’t think it was real. I mean, sure, fill out the forms, humor Nevermore

175

you, but then when you actually said you were

leaving . . .”

Sam tilted his head. “I guess that’s possible.

But still, that’s a lot of paperwork just to humor me. And honestly, he could’ve killed my whole college career at any point just by not fi lling the stuff out.”

None of this rang right to Dean. “You mean to tell me that Dad filled out that crap
every
year?”

“Uh—” Sam hesitated.

Dean knew that look on his brother’s face. He was hiding something. “What’d you do, Sammy?” There was a long pause. The coffeemaker started gurgling as the boiling water poured through the filter and into the glass pot.

“I—” Sam gulped down some more coffee to stall, then said: “I got them to declare me inde pendent.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“Dad

wouldn’t speak to me after I left, so I couldn’t very well get him to fill out the paperwork for sophomore year, and I’m not a good enough forger to fake his signature. But I would’ve lost the scholarship, so I provided documentation that my father was missing and couldn’t be found—which, by the way, was a pretty easy sell, since Dad
was
missing from a legal perspective.

176 SUPERNATURAL

So they declared me inde pendent. I could fi ll out all the forms myself.”

“So you’re saying you disowned Dad?” Sam opened his mouth, closed it, then lamely said, “He disowned me fi rst.”

Anger flared within Dean, but it burned to ashes almost instantly.
After the crap Dad pulled on his
freakin’ deathbed, I’m not about to defend the
sonofabitch.

Besides, it was over and done with. Getting into an argument with Sam about Dad right now would just about kill him, Dean thought.

“Fine,” he said tersely, “so what’s all this got to do with him not telling us about McBain?”

“Remember that air-traffi c guy, Jerry?” Dean nodded. He and Dad had saved Jerry Pan-owski from a poltergeist, and Jerry later called in him and Sam when a spirit was crashing planes.

He wasn’t sure what Jerry had to do with anything, though. “What about him?”

“He said that Dad went on about how proud he was that I was at Stanford. I couldn’t believe it, but now I’m starting to understand.”

Having pretty much lost all track of Sam’s point—

if he even had one—Dean threw up his hands.

“Understand
what
?”

“Even while he was training us, he was protect-ing us. He yelled at me for going to Stanford, but he was proud of me—and
helped
me go in the fi rst Nevermore

177

place. For everything he taught us, there’s about fifty things we’ve had to figure out on our own or got caught off-guard by. Hell, Dean, the whole

reason he up and disappeared a year ago was because he was trying to protect us from the demon, and he only let us come with him after we dropped a brick wall on his head.”

Dean found himself staring intently at Manfred’s sink, listening to the gurgling of the coffeemaker.

After several quiet seconds, Sam tentatively said,

“Dean?”

Finally, Dean turned around and stared up at his brother, the man he’d come to find when Dad had disappeared, the man he’d been told to protect at all costs, and kill if he couldn’t protect him.

In a very soft voice, Dean said, “You know what I think? I think Dad’s need to fi ght evil was
constantly
fighting with his need to keep you and me safe. And I think he couldn’t win that fi ght, and I think that fi ght killed him.”

Sam and Dean just stared at each other for a few seconds.

Manfred’s voice sounded from the staircase.

“You fellas awake?”

Both brothers said “In here” simultaneously. Unable to help himself, Dean broke into what turned out to be a cathartic grin. Sam returned it.

Manfred, wearing a pair of hole-fi lled sweatpants 178 SUPERNATURAL

and a faded

tie-dyed T-shirt, shuffled into the kitchen on bare feet. “You fellas all right?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, “just had our daily allotment of emo-angst. We’re over it. Oh, and I put in a load of wash. That okay?”

“No problemo, fellas. My
casa
is your
casa
.”

“Thanks.”

“Now, normally I wouldn’t be up this early on a Saturday, but I jus’ ’membered somethin’ you fellas might wanna know about.” He walked over to the cabinet, pulled out a pottery mug that had an ugly scrunched-up face carved into the side of it and the word grumble etched over it, and poured himself some coffee. “A while back Aldo had himself a girlfriend who was a real ’rÿcher.” Sam squinted. Dean rolled his eyes. “He means a Queensrÿche fan, not the fi rst officer of the
En-terprise
.”

Before Sam could say anything, Manfred went on: “Her name was Roxy—er, somethin’. I think.”

“Was she a blonde?” Dean asked.

Manfred gulped down some coffee and then gave a gap-toothed grin. “Aldo only dates blondes. Anyhow, I’m gonna head upstairs and find me some porn on the Internet. Talk atcha later, fellas.” Wincing, Dean said, “Oh, no” after Manfred left.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Nevermore

179

“We gotta talk to Aldo about Roxy. Which means we gotta go back to the Park in Rear.” Sam grinned. “It’s hell bein’ a hero, ain’t it, Dean?”

“Screw you.”