Russell didn't know how he was going to be able to break this to his older brother.

He was accepting of monsters, after Heather and Anna...he even went along with Russell to hunt some of the creatures they read about. 

But knowing something exists and seeing it are two very, very different things. And Russell is very much a part of the world they thought was so fucked up.

Weighing the situation in his mind, it's only made Russell think there has to be a good and a bad to everything. A spectrum. Like politics. Some politicians genuinely want to do good, to make the world better. Some of them...Well.

"Don't forget to vote in November," Katherine chirps at him, passing behind him in the kitchen.

Russell snorts, then looks back to the eggs in the pan before him. 

It's been just over a week since Mitch left, almost three since they've been here, and Russell can't remember a time his life had changed so drastically, even after Heather and Anna. 

Someone can slip into his mind...hear his thoughts, speak back to him...all without saying a word, without exuding any kind of force. It was challenging to try to push words and thoughts to Katherine, but now...now it was easy as breathing. In the mornings, if he was up before Katherine, he just liked to follow her stream of consciousness. Or unconsciousness, rather. Where her dreams would take her, what it felt like as she rose to awareness. It wasn't all good. 

Most nights, still, she had horrible dreams. Those take their toll on her in very physical ways. She's stopped pulling away from him, but her eyes have that dull, tried look, and light purple shadows live underneath them. Not having the pills as a sleeping aid proves to be troublesome...

Last night, she was sleepwalking. She made it all the way down the stairs before Russell woke up to the distinct feeling of panic. When he made it downstairs, she was holding a butcher knife and waiting around the corner for him. 

The whole house woke up at the sound of her shriek of bloody murder. 

What she was dreaming, Russell didn't even know. But it was bad enough that she completely shut him out this morning. The warm, gentle hum he'd grown so used to feeling in his mind was totally quiet this morning.

And he didn't know how to tell her how much it hurt.

She sips at her coffee at the island, eyes glued to the newspaper there, giving away no indication that she's eavesdropping on his inner thoughts.

"Are you gonna be voting?" Russell asks by way of distraction.

"That would kind of go against my evading the government," Katherine blandly hums into her mug. "I've been very careful to avoid them, you know."

"How come?"

She offers a lame shrug of her shoulder. "Because it's easier to do my job well under the radar. Make them forget I exist, especially after all this bullshit of the past year."

Russell surveys her quietly, verbally and mentally. He sees scenes of a fiery helicopter crash, of her bloody living room. Things he has questions about, and he doesn't know if he'll ever get to ask.

"You don't have to ask me permission to tell your brother," Katherine quietly says. She turns the page she was looking at. "It's your life, too."

Russell turns to the stove, cuts the heat, and moves the pan to another burner. "There's this feeling I have...makes me tense up. Louise said it's an instinct to protect you. Protect us." He turns to look at Katherine, crossing his arms as he leans against the counter. "Part of me knows Pat isn't a threat...but the other part..."

"It's raging against the idea," Katherine hums. Russell nods, and so does she. "Every time I go to pick my phone up to call Bobby and give him a life update, part of me decides it's better to keep you hidden. What we are, I mean." He nods in understanding.

"Yeah. That's it." Russell carefully looks her face over. "Do you think Bobby would ever hurt you?"

"God, no." Katherine shakes her head. "He...he was more of a father to me than Clay was, in the ways that mattered. He loved me when it was impossible to, kept me in line, taught me the hard lessons of life, and gave me a lot of tough love. But I would worry about what he might say around some people who would hurt me." She presses her lips together. "But I trust Bobby implicitly."

"Patrick isn't social enough to have to worry about that," Russell lightly says.

"So tell him." Katherine offers him a smile. "He's your brother."

"Would you tell your brother?"

Not Mitch. Another brother, one whose absence was a different kind of void, of betrayal, all together. 

Katherine shakes her head. "No, I wouldn't."

"He still hasn't called, has he?" Russell quietly asks. 

A resounding, mental no in the pit of silence as she looks down at her newspaper. 

Russell chews on the inside of his cheek, mind furiously turning to find a way to end the awkward dance around each other. "So I guess if you're avoiding background checks and what not, my name is gonna be on the paperwork of whatever place we get, huh?"

It was a very uncalculated risk, posing a question of their future, of how serious whatever this was is. Most times, she clammed up at the idea of permanence, of him sticking by her. For whatever reason, she believed she didn't deserve it.

But she looks up at him with a very uncharacteristic playfulness in her eyes. "I guess you're right," she purrs. "What, you don't wanna live with your brother forever?"

"Not anymore."

A grin splits across her face, and she looks down at the paper again. "He'll be home soon, huh?" Russell nods, though she isn't looking at him. "You should call him, before he gets home and spirals out of control." So easily, she's routed the end of the conversation back to the beginning, when she was snooping on his thoughts and not letting him into hers. 

It was unfair, in the simplest of terms. 

There's a dull roar in the background as Patrick answers his phone. It's after breakfast, and Louise is already working in the kitchen on dinner.  

"You actually have service," Russell chirps, sitting at the table.

"It was nice, not having any," his older brother says into the speaker. "The house still there?"

"It was a couple weeks ago," Russell says. "Kat and I had to go somewhere."

A moment of silence, except the roar of his old truck's engine. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah, we're fine." Russell scratches his head and sighs. "My dog still alive?"

Pat scoffs. "Your dog," he grumbles. 

In the study, Katherine is holding her phone to her ear, listening to the ring, waiting for Bobby to pick up. Her heart is thundering in her chest, and she doesn't know why. 

"You'd better have a good reason for not calling me this past month," Bobby Singer growls into the phone.

Katherine looks up at the ceiling. "Hey, Bobby," she sighs. 

It's silent for a moment. Katherine knows he's gauging the sound of her voice, determining how drunk she is. It's all she was this summer, any time he'd call or she'd call, sobbing and asking about Sam. 

"I'm okay," Katherine continues. "I've been, uh..." She just wryly scoffs, shaking her head. There really aren't many words for what she's been up to. Not words she'd like to speak, anyway. "On the mend."

"You sound good," Bobby carefully states.

Katherine hums a little. "I'm tryin' to quit the hard stuff, but between you and me, sometimes I'll sneak into my grandma's bar and pour myself a nightcap."

Bobby is silent again for another few moments. "You found her?"

"Mhm." She traces her finger along the edge of the table, the carved Latin and woodsy design. "Well...Louise found Rufus, somehow. She still hasn't fessed up to the how, but I'll bet it's something magic-y." Katherine purses her lips. 

Bobby knew about the witch thing. He has since she first met him, one of the few hunters who did know about the Donovan line. 

"Anyway...I've been with them for a couple weeks."

"And before then?"

Katherine sighs heavily. "Doesn't matter."

"And now?"

She swallows, pondering that for so long Bobby had to check to see if the call dropped. "I need a favor, Bobby." Out of her periphery, she sees someone slide into a chair in front of her. "You hear anything about the Book recently?"

Bobby looses a heavy sigh. "I didn't realize you were on this track again."

"I have to find it," she says, voice hard as steel. "Especially now."

She looks up, expecting to see Russell, and almost jumps in surprise as she stares at the face of boredom before her. 

Glen.

"I figured you'd be asking soon," Bobby admits. "But no, I haven't heard anything."

"How much bitching do you think Rufus would do if I asked him to help me find it?"

"Rufus doesn't do shit without bitchin', you know that," Bobby mutters. "But he likes you, so...you might be able to get away with asking a favor and leaving the liquor out of it."

"My empty wallet is hopeful." Katherine pauses, looking away from Glen. "Have you heard...from him?"

Not Rufus.

"No, kid," Bobby sighs. "I haven't."

"Do you think..." She can't force herself to say the words. They get stuck in her throat. 

"I don't know," he admits. 

Katherine nods. "I gotta call Rufus."

"You call me soon, kid," Bobby says, his voice turning with the impending threat. "Or else I'm gonna hunt your ass down, drag you back here, and chain you in the basement. I shoulda done that anyway."

Katherine smiles a little. "You know I know how to bust out of your stupid little wrist cuffs." Bobby does some grumbling before he hangs up. Then she looks at Glen, his face still in that bland expression.

"What are you sniffin' around the Book for?" He asks, the slightly furrowed brows the only sign of interest. 

"We need it back."

"There are probably a dozen copies in their secret stashes anyway." His icy blue gaze pins her to her seat.

Katherine holds his piercing gaze. "You mean the Stynes."

Glen doesn't so much as nod. "For how many centuries we've played Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, they'd be stupid not to. And they're not stupid." He levels her a look of warning. "Be careful, Katherine. They're nasty."

"I can be nasty."

He shakes his head. "Not like them. They're the embodiment of evil. Everything about them is wrong."

"You sound like you know them personally," Katherine muses. 

Glen holds her still with those frosty blue eyes. "You wouldn't promise me to leave them alone, would you?"

Pictures flash in her mind. The night Charlie was murdered. Whoever they were, those poor bastards, they were obviously tied up with the Stynes. Who else would come sniffing around for the Book? Would have such intimate knowledge of who last had it?

"I can't do that," Katherine says, shaking her head. "If my suspicions are true, then they're behind Charlie's murder. They won't get away with it."

Glen looks her over. Katherine wonders what he's seeing. How she's having an intelligent interaction with someone who's been dead most of her life. 

"How did you die?" Katherine asks, leaning back into her chair with crossed arms. Glen tenses, sitting up straighter, mouth a tight line under his thick mustache. Disembodied hisses swirl around them. Voices of their ancestors. 

"I'm not quite ready to tell you that one." Glen's eyes are roving the ceiling, like he can see the face of each voice. 

"I'm a big girl. I can handle it."

"I am not ready," Glen says again, blue eyes hard and cold. Her eyebrows furrow, eyes so similar to his scanning his face. 

"It was that bad, huh?" She wonders what any demon could've done to him to make him not want to talk about it. 

Then again...the death she's seen this year...she'd be glad to never think of it again. 

"Rufus is a good man," Glen says, nodding. "If you asked, he'd find them for you."

"The Stynes, or the Book?"

"You're going after them?" Both turn at the sound of Russell's voice in the doorway of the study. "Actually?"

"He's right to be afraid," Glen murmurs. "Maybe you should be, too."

Katherine levels a look at him. "If they kill me, so be it. But I'm dragging them with me."

Rufus practically squawked on the phone when Katherine asked him to tug on a couple more threads for her. She rifled through her phones' contacts lists and her journal, sending messages to a few who owed her favors, or were otherwise technologically savvy. 

"It's fine and all just finding them," Russell says, eyes uneasily shifting over her frame. She's sitting at the kitchen table, sunlight pouring in through the window behind her. "But what about when you actually do find them?" 

"What do you mean?" Her voice is clipped. She doesn't look up from her journal, keying numbers into her phone. 

Russell scoffs a little. "Katherine, you barely held your own against that wendigo," he croaks. "It's not just you to think about anymore. If you die, I die."

"Yeah, I need to figure out what to do about that," she mumbles, reaching up to push her hair from her face. "That's hardly fair."

He scoffs again. "What do you mean, 'figure out what to do'? That's the way it is. Our souls are tied." She lifts her eyes to his, face like stone. Still, he hears nothing from her mind. "So if you're planning on storming in half-cocked again...I need to know."

Her face gives nothing away. What can she say to that? Of course he has a right to be concerned, because as it stands, if she dies, he does, in fact, die.

"I'm not trying to get myself killed," she promises. 

"But it would be fine if you did?" Russell presses.

Slowly, Katherine shakes her head. "I'm not trying to kill you, too," she murmurs. 

Neither makes to move. They just stare at each other for several long moments. "So what do you say we go home and get ready for these fuckers?" Russell asks. 

They couldn't stay here forever, nor was there a reason to linger. Lois and Louise would be more than happy to make copies of things if Katherine or Russell wanted one. They came with a purpose, to meet the family, to ask questions about witchcraft, familiars...mission accomplished. They know where to find them, should Katherine have any more questions...or a desire for family.

It was surprisingly difficult, telling the two women that they should head home within the next day or so. Lois accepted it with ease, but Louise was outwardly saddened. But she needed to go back to work, Lois...had to do whatever it is she does in retirement. Pat would be home, Russell needs to get back to the ranch...

And Katherine had to find a way to contribute. 

Sleep doesn't find her easily. She tosses and turns for what feels like minutes, but every time she looks at the clock, it's been another hour passed. 

It's dark in her dream, and the air is so hot and dry, it feels as though her skin is leathering in real time. Rank smells thicken the air. Sweat, waste, metal...blood. Sulfur, so much more offensive than she's ever experienced. Rotten meat...

This is what she smelled in Naugatuck. Demons.

Moaning, wailing, shrieking...

Something is going to happen. Something bad is going to happen...

It's this nagging feeling, this tap tap tap on her brain, on her soul...what? what's going to happen?

Words are swirling around again. Stop it, must be stopped, seals, slain, but standing. 

There's a pristine white lamb down the corridor, vaguely lit with glowing sconces of smothered fire. It turns in circles, looking up at her every so often. Even in a place as hot as this, it chills her to the bone.

It lifts its head, stopping to look at her. Then it looks away, and moves into the wall to her left. Silent feet carry her towards it.

Words are still swirling. Shouting. Overlapping voices. Risk, the risk...we cannot risk it...the word of God...how do we know what the word of God is?

Dean Winchester must be saved.

It clangs through her, that foreign voice, as she clings to the hot stone wall and peers around the corner of the doorway.

The lamb is walking in circles again, lifting its head to see if she's followed. It bleats at her, circling still. 

There's a man inside the room with his back turned to her. Sharp noises bounce off of the walls...like knifes. A massive fire roars on the right side. Pokers and various other metal objects are stuck into it, glowing molten with heat. 

That smell...it's worse in here. So acrid, burning her nostrils, the back of her throat. That metallic smell...iron. Blood. Sweat. Waste.

As she silently moves further into the room, the man tending to whatever he's looking down at, she sees on the left wall...a wooden crucifix...chains hanging from a ceiling swallowed by darkness, dully glinting from the firelight on her right. 

Blood is dark, coagulated, pooled on the ground and swept past her...like whoever was in here, up on those hooks, was dragged and still bleeding. 

"I told you we're not cleaning it," the man growls. "So send the next one in."

Her eyes snap to the man's back. His chin is angled to look over his shoulder, but she can't see beyond his devastatingly familiar profile. Her throat goes impossibly dry, and her body feels dangerously light. Like she might just faint at the sound of his voice. She presses a palm flat to the hot stone wall just in case. 

What a cruel, cruel dream.

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. It's so hot, so dry in here, that there aren't even tears in her eyes. And suddenly, she knows why.

Somehow...she's in Hell. This is Hell. Fire, brimstone, biblical. 

The voices are clamoring again. Can't be stopped...it's already started...armies...on the move...must save him...lost cause...

Savior.

Her eyes demand to close, her fingers tingle, her legs feel impossibly weak, and she's too, too hot.

"Are you fuckin' deaf?" He snaps, and turns to look at her.

Somehow, tears have filled her eyes, and she can't see anything beyond blurs of dark color and the orange glow of fire. Her ears are ringing, and with a pounding heart, her legs threaten to give out. 

"No," Dean whispers. She blinks hard, banishing the tears to the dry air around her. They dry almost instantly on her skin, leaving a tight trail of salt behind. 

He's covered in blood. His hands, his arms, his gray t-shirt and jeans. It's on his face and sticks in his shortly-cropped hair. His eyes are wide...alarm and horror.

Is this real? Is he...Is she...

"No," he says again, almost stumbling backwards. He shakes his head. "No...no..." He shakes his head once more. Nothing is computing. "What did you do?" He whispers.

Katherine can't find any words. Any words she might've known at some point have simply evaporated, leaving her mind empty. 

"Why are you here?" Dean demands. Neither has moved.

"I'm dreaming," she whispers, shaking her head. This horror...there's no other explanation. Any moment, Russell's hand will brush against her shoulder, and his gentle voice will lull her back to her body, and she'll be breathing in his smell of sage and ginger and citrus and—

Dean is touching her in a second, calloused hands clamping on her arms, digging into her skin, holding her up. It feels so real...but he doesn't smell like him. He smells like sulfur, and blood...fear and death. 

"Hey," he snarls, giving her a gentle shake. But that's his voice, those are his eyes, and that's his nose...and she can see the freckles underneath that dried blood. She squirms, pulling from him desperately, a sob on her tongue. 

Afraid...of him.

"What have you done?" Katherine whispers, holding a hand to her chest. A sharp, jagged breath cuts down her throat. "What did you do?" She wails. She doesn't know at who. Whoever is making her see this...those voices in her head...at herself...because she couldn't save him from this.

"How...why are you here?" Dean asks again. Gruff, soft, menacing, terrified. Such a careful question. 

She blinks the tears from her eyes, shaking her head. "I'm so sorry—"

"Did you make a deal?" He snaps, dark eyes flickering with a single flame. 

"No," Katherine sobs. "I can't—I can't—I have to—"

Dean doesn't move to soothe her. That's how she knows it isn't—can't be real. But she can't wake up.

You have a message to deliver, a voice within her says. In her mind, just as Russell would. But this voice is different from his voice, or even Glen's voice she's heard a few times before this summer. This voice...stirs something in her chest. It's old and powerful, something she has the vague feeling of having known before. 

Katherine looks up at Dean. Eyes dark like obsidian, fire dancing off of them. The dried blood on his face seems to swallow the firelight. 

"They need to tell you something," she whispers. 

Dean shakes his head. "Who?"

"I don't know..." her eyes close, and she fights a sob. The terror pulling her gut back into the hallway, the wrongness of it all in her blood. "You have to stop," she whispers. "They're saying you have to stop..." Katherine opens her eyes again, and finds his own are trained at the fist gripping her necklace. The crucifix has dug into her palm from clutching it so tight. 

Another voice, somehow more powerful than the others, rings in her mind.

It's too late.

The floor is shaking, splitting underneath her feet. The walls are cracking, stone tumbling from the ceiling and splitting. Russell's voice—Russell?—is echoing down the hallways, near and far all at once.

Dean's hand floats to her side, eyes locked on her face in concern. His lips are moving, but no sound comes from them. He's blurring...

"Katherine."

Katherine starts, eyes flying open. She's immediately too hot, but the comforter isn't on her. Yet, she's covered in sweat. 

Russell wipes at her cheek, and something dark on the pad of his thumb glints in the moonlight. "Louise!" He shouts. 

There was a circus around her within a minute. Voices floating past her ringing ears, never registering but a few words...a hex?

Not a hex, she'd be dead...

Katherine relaxes the fist at her neck, unable to uncurl her stiff fingers more than an aching inch, and her palm bears the indents of her crucifix. With a heaving chest, she tries to remember what she dreamed...grasp at the tethers that float further and further away, like the strings of an errant balloon...

But she can't.

No one can go back to sleep. It's three in the morning, and they're all in the living room, holding mugs filled with various beverages. Lois is nursing a few ounces of bourbon. Russell has whiskey. 

Louise sits beside Katherine and passes her a floraly-fragrant hot mug. "It'll help...with the dreams," she murmurs. 

Katherine peers down at the dark liquid, almost without fully seeing it. "What is it?" Her voice doesn't sound like her own.

"Valerian root, chamomile, a little bit of lavender and lemon." Louise takes a sip of her own. "Steep it for five minutes in boiling water. I'll send you home with some, and to plant so you can make it when you run out."

"What do you remember?" Lois asks.

"Mom," Louise quietly admonishes. 

"She starts poking around the Stynes, then she wakes up with bloody eyes? Can't be a coincidence."

"This has happened before," Katherine croaks, shaking her head. "It isn't the Stynes."

"Then what?" Lois demands. Hard blue eyes meet hers across the room. "If I need to call the coven, tell me now."

"I don't know what it is," Katherine admits. "But it isn't witchcraft."

Russell's voice is soft in her mind, and she hadn't realized she let him in again. If this isn't witchcraft, then what the hell is it?