CHAPTER TWELVE

"So, Jo's pretty obvious crush on Dean really doesn't bother you?" Sam asks as he and Nyx are walking out to go get coffee.

"No. Why would it?" She asks as she looks up at him.

"Most girls — or anyone in a relationship, really — would have a problem with someone being that open about having a thing for their significant other." He says, and she nods.

"Yeah, well, I'm secure with myself and our relationship." She tells him. "Besides, I'm the mother of his children, and no one can ever change that."

"I guess you have a point." He nods.

"And, as I've said before, I wouldn't be with your brother if I didn't trust him."

"He's a lucky guy. Most girls would not be as cool as you are about this." He says, and she smiles.

"Aw, Sammy. You're gonna make me blush over here." She teases.

"Shut up." He says, and she chuckles.

"Sam." Nyx stops walking, and he looks at her.

"What's wrong?" He asks, and she motions outside, beyond the glass of the main door.

"Cops."

"Come on." He says, and the two go to get some information.

After talking​ to a few of the officers, the hunters go back up to the apartment that they're staying in. They immediately gain the attention of both Dean and Jo.

"Where's the coffee?" Dean asks​ as he looks at them.

"There's cops outside." Sam tells him.

"Another girl disappeared." Nyx says as she looks between the two of them. The pair are sitting at the table in the small kitchen area.

"Alright, I'll go see how much more I can figure out." Dean says as he stands up. "See if you can find anything else in the research." He kisses her cheek as he walks by her and his brother.

Dean gets back a little while later, and he has a bit more information that they didn't get before.

"Theresa Ellis — apartment 2-F." He says as he walks back into the apartment. "Her boyfriend reported her missing around dawn."

"And her apartment?" Jo asks.

"Cracks all over the plaster — walls, ceiling."

"Ectoplasm?" Nyx asks, and he nods.

"Between that and the tuft of hair, I'd say this sucker's coming from the walls." Sam says.

Dean and Jo found hair in the vents while walking the halls yesterday, looking for any sign of their ghost. It's blonde and only makes sense that it came from one of the other victims.

"But who is it?" Nycole asks. "The building's history is totally clean."

Jo then picks up a picture from the table. "Maybe we're looking in the wrong place." She says, and they all look at her.

"What do you mean?"

"Check this out." She hands the picture to Sam, and they all look at it.

"An empty field?" Dean questions.

"It's where this building was built. Take a look at the one next door​." She tells them. "The windows."

"Bars." Sam says.

"We're next door to a prison?" Nyx asks, and Jo gets on the phone with Ash so he can do some digging.

Ash sends over a list of names of the prisoners who were executed in the lot that this building was built on. And now the hunters are looking at it.

"A hundred and fifty-seven names?" Sam questions as he scrolls through.

"We gotta narrow that down." Dean says.

"Yeah."

"Or else we're gonna be digging up a hell of a lot of stiffs."

"Oh, God." Nyx sighs, and Dean looks at her.

Sam stops scrolling, and she looks at a name that caught her attention. She motions to the screen, and Dean looks back at it.

"Herman Webster Mudgett?" Sam questions.

"I've heard that before." Nyx says, and he looks up at her. "Wasn't that H.H. Holmes' real name?" She asks, and Dean looks between the two of them.

"You got to be kidding me." He says, and they then start doing some research.

"Holmes was executed at Moyamensing—" the prison. "—May 7, 1896." Dean tells them.

"H.H. Holmes himself." Sam says. "Come on. I mean, what are the odds?"

"Who is this guy?" Jo asks.

"The term Multi-Murderer — they coined it to describe Holmes." Nyx tells her. "He was America's first serial killer before anybody knew what a serial killer was."

"He confessed to twenty-seven murders, but some put the death toll at over a hundred." Sam says.

"And his victim flavor of choice — pretty, petite blondes." Dean says. "He, uh, used chloroform to kill them, which is what I smelled in the hallway last night."

"Okay, I don't​ like this." Nyx says as she looks at Jo.

"At his place, cops found human remains, bone fragments, and long locks of bloody blonde​ hair." He reads. "Boy, he sure knew how to pick them."

"We just find the bones, salt them, and burn them, right?" Jo asks.

"It's not that easy." Sam says. "The body was buried somewhere in town, but it's encased in a couple tons of concrete."

"What? Why?"

"The story goes that he didn't want anybody mutilating his corpse 'cause, you know, that's what he used to do." Dean says.

"And the part where there's any reason to honor a serial killer's last wishes?" Nyx questions, and he shakes his head as he shrugs.

"You know something?" Sam asks. "We might have an even bigger problem than that."

"How does this get bigger?" Jo asks him.

"Holmes built an apartment building in Chicago." He points at a picture. "They called it The Murder Castle. The whole place was a death factory. They had trap doors, acid vats, quicklime pits. He built these secret chambers...inside the walls. He'd lock his victims in, keep them alive for days. Some, he'd suffocate. Others, he'd let starve to death."

"So, Theresa could still be alive." Nyx says. "She could be inside these walls."

"We need sledgehammers and crowbars. We got to smash these walls anywhere thick enough to hide a girl." Dean says as he stands up from where he's been sitting in front of Sam's laptop.

They split up to look through the building, and Jo goes with Dean while Nyx and Sam are looking together. Dean doesn't want to let Jo out of his sight because he knows that Ellen will kill them all if anything happens to her. So, he seems to have made himself responsible for her during this case.

Sam and Nyx don't find anything, so they're now headed back, and she runs into Dean's chest as he crashes into her while rounding a corner. Sam quickly grabs her when she's knocked backward, and Dean's obviously worked up about something.

"He's got Jo." The oldest tells them.

"What? What happened?" Sam questions.

"I wasn't with her. I left her alone." He says as he starts walking again, and they immediately follow after him. "Damn it!"

"Look, we'll find her."

"Where?"

"Inside the walls."

"We were inside the walls all night. None of the other girls are there. She won't be either." Dean argues as they walk back into the apartment.

"We need to take a beat and think about this." Nyx says. "Maybe we got Holmes' M.O. wrong."

"Well, we better friggin' think fast." He says, and his phone starts ringing​.

Nyx tunes him out as she starts going through all of the research that they have on Holmes, as well as some stuff on the area that they're in.

"Tell me you got something." Dean says after getting off the phone with Ellen.

"Maybe." She glances up at him. "If you look at the layout of the Holmes Murder Castle, there's other torture chambers inside the walls, right? But there's one we haven't considered yet — the one in his basement."

"This building doesn't have a basement."

"No, but look at this." She points out an area on the building's blueprint. "Beneath the foundation, it looks like part of an old sewer system. It hasn't been used for—"

"Let's go." He starts for the door.

"Hey, good job." Sam says as they follow after his brother.

"Thanks, but, uh... Why don't we save that until we've got Jo back?" Nyx says, and he nods.

—

Nyx couldn't get through the crawl spaces in the sewer because of her baby bump, so the boys had to go without her. She hugged​ Jo as soon as they brought her out, and they were also able to save Theresa.

"So, this job as glamorous as you thought it would be?" Sam asks Jo as they're waiting for his brother to get back.

"Well, except for all the pee-your-pants terror — yeah." The blonde smiles. "But that Theresa girl's gonna live a life 'cause of us. It's worth it, isn't it?"

"Yeah." He nods. "Yeah, it is."

"Hey, what if someone finds that sewer down there or a storm washes the salt away?" She asks as she looks between the other two hunters.

"Both very fine points," Nyx says as she looks over at her. "Which is why we're waiting here."

"For what?"

The three of them suddenly hear beeping and turn to see Dean backing up a cement truck. "For that." She tells her, and Jo smiles. Sam directs his brother so that they can fill the sewer entrance with cement.

"You ripped off a cement truck?" Jo asks as Dean walks over to them.

"I'll give it back." He tells her, and she chuckles.

Ellen showed up not long after they got back to the apartment, and now they're all sitting in silence in the Impala, on their way back to Nebraska. The quiet ride is tense and awkward for the five of them. Ellen's seething with rage.

Dean tries talking to her and that doesn't go over well. She stares out the front windshield, and never acknowledges that he said anything. He then turns on the music, which she immediately shuts off.

Jo looks​ over at Nyx. "Can I ask you a question?" The blonde asks.

Nyx glances at her where she's sitting between her and Sam in the backseat​. "I kinda wish you wouldn't." She says as she looks at Ellen in the passenger seat in front of Sam.

"Why do you hunt?" She asks her anyway. "You have family in Mystic Falls, right? So, why are you out here?"

She sighs. "I have more family​ dead than alive, that's why. My adoptive parents, my biological parents, my aunt Jenna — all of them are dead. Three were because of monsters, a monster. An original vampire named Klaus." She tells her. "I brought my brother on the road with us because I believe that being out here is safer than being in Mystic Falls... Jo, I gotta be honest, and you're not gonna like it, but I get why your mom wants you home. It's the same reason my sister wants me home."

"But you're​ here."

"That's different​."

"How?" She questions, and Nyx then looks at Dean; his eyes meet hers in the rearview mirror for a second.

"My sister's boyfriend is a vampire. So is his older brother. My ex is a hybrid. His girlfriend, one of my friends that I've known my whole life, was turned into a vampire. Another friend of mine is a witch. I've lost a lot to the things that I kill." She looks back at her. "I won't raise my kids there. I won't. It's not safe for me or for them. But your home — it is. You and I... It's not the same thing."

"If your parents were alive, would you be home right now?"

"Yes, but not for the reason that you think."

"Then why?"

"If my parents hadn't died, I wouldn't​ have met Dean. I wouldn't know him. My sister probably wouldn't be dating a vampire." She says. "But I'd possibly be dead. My life was never going to be normal, Jo. You have that chance, you can have a normal life."

She looks away from Nycole, out the front windshield.

"I told you you weren't going to like what I had to say." She looks back out her own window and watches the trees passing in the darkness.

It's already after sunup when they get back to the Roadhouse, and they all climb out of the car once it's parked in the dirt out front.

"Ellen." Dean gets her attention as they walk into the bar. "This is my fault. I lied to you, and I'm sorry. But Jo did great out there. I think her dad would be proud."

"Don't you dare say that. Not you." Ellen snaps, and Nyx's eyebrows furrow as she looks between the two of them. "I need a moment with my daughter — alone."

Sam, Dean, and Nyx all turn around and go back outside. They stay by the car and wait for something — anything. Jo comes storming out of the bar, and Dean walks away from Nycole to go and talk to her.

Nyx and Sam can't hear what they're saying, and the brunette looks down at her phone as it starts ringing. She quickly puts it on silent and sticks it back in her pocket. She'll talk to Elena after they know what the hell's going on here.

Jo turns away from Dean, and then he walks back over to them. "What's going on?" Nyx asks, and he looks at her and his brother.

"Her dad's last hunt was a job that he was working with our dad." The oldest explains. "He died, and Dad never came back. That's why Sam and I had never heard of them."

"That's why Ellen didn't​ want her with us." She says, and he nods.