by Lori Drake
“You’re moving pretty well, how’s your stomach?” Dean said, over the running water.
“I’ve had worse. Mind over matter, right?” There was no immediate response, so she changed the subject. “How’d the game go?”
“Alright. Ended the night down a bit, but I made them work for it.”
Joey smirked and dumped the chunks of broken porcelain in the trash bin. “Well, that’s something. The last time I brought a guy home, they cleaned him out in an hour. I mean, not to say that I ‘brought you home’ in that way.” She cleared her throat and turned to fetch the broom and dustpan. “You know what I mean.”
Dean chuckled. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He patted his hand dry, retrieved a couple more mugs and approached the complicated machine again. “You know how to work this thing, right?”
“Nope. Ben and Sara do. Everyone else waits on Rosita. She gets in at seven-thirty.”
Dean groaned like a man who didn’t want to wait that long for a cup of coffee. Joey could identify with that.
“Buuuut,” she said, sweeping up the smaller remnants of the broken mug. “I could be persuaded to let you in on the Grant family secret to early morning coffee.”
“Please tell me it’s not instant.”
Joey wrinkled her nose. “Uh, no. Gross. Third cupboard from the left.” She pointed for good measure.
Dean approached the indicated door. “This one?” He opened it. Inside, right in front, was a good old-fashioned drip coffee maker. “Ah ha!” he crowed, hauling it out.
Joey finished the cleanup and retrieved the coffee and filters from the pantry. The aroma of freshly ground coffee soon filled the air. Between the two of them, they got the pot loaded and activated, then hovered in front of it like the junkies they were, waiting while the magic happened.
Silence settled between them, broken only by the growl of the coffee maker until Dean spoke again.
“This doesn’t count, by the way.”
“Count? For what?”
“Our coffee date. I mean, I was thinking of treating you to some sort of fancy cafe. There could be pastries involved, even.”
Joey chuckled and shook her head. “I usually avoid pastries. Have to maintain this figure somehow.” At least she knew Chris wasn’t inside of Dean at that moment. He never would have suggested pastries, but knowing Dean was truly himself gave her an idea. She turned toward him.
“Usually. So not always?” He turned to face her, leaning against the island counter, one dark brow lifted.
Joey flashed him a coy smile, looking up at him through her lashes. “No, not always. What’s life without a little sugar now and then?”
The corners of Dean’s mouth twitched upward, a small grin appearing. “Sugar and spice make everything nice?”
Trilling a quiet laugh, Joey lay a hand on his arm. “Well, I’ve got some sugar and spice right here…”
She was laying it on a little thick, but he took the bait. “Oh?” he said, leaning closer.
Joey bit her lip, nodding as she walked her fingers up his arm. He leaned down, and she rose up on her tiptoes to meet him, pressing her lips to his.
Her heart fluttered in her chest at that first brush of lips, and when he lifted his head after barely a few seconds of chaste lip contact she curled her fingers behind his head and drew him back down. Encouraged, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again, his mouth moving more confidently against hers. She ran her tongue along his lips and pressed herself against him, drawing a groan from him and a tightening of his hands at her back.
Joey waited for it to catch fire. She wanted it to, wanted to feel that passion, that hunger that he’d roused in her on the beach. Instead, all it roused in her was anger because the longer it went on, the surer she was that it hadn’t been Dean she’d kissed that night. Dean’s body, yes, but not his essence.
Dean jerked back abruptly when she bit his lip. “Ow! What the hell?”
Joey pushed him away, fixing him with a fierce glare. “So, when were you going to tell me that you were loaning your body to Chris so he could play Casanova?” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
“What the… no! It wasn’t like that.” He backed away a step, eyes wide.
Joey eyed him, frowning. “You have thirty seconds to explain why I shouldn’t throw you out of this house.”
“I—I…”
“Tick tock.”
Scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Dean made a frustrated noise. “I didn’t know he was doing it! When he takes over, I just—I dunno—fall asleep, I guess. I’m not aware of anything until he leaves. The first time, I lost like five hours. That was the day you two had that big fight and I walked out.”
Joey folded her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know what happened, not really. I thought I had a fucking brain tumor or something. It was scary as hell. I didn’t know for sure it was Chris until it happened again.”
“On the beach,” Joey surmised, still frowning.
“Yeah. Harper figured out what was going on and expelled him for me. I told Chris to stop doing it. I didn’t know what he’d done, that he—we—had kissed you until he confessed it later.”
“And yet you still didn’t tell me.” Joey tapped her fingers against her arms, not any less upset with him for his explanations.
“I’d like to say I didn’t have much of a chance and forgot, what with the busy day of nearly dying and all, but the truth is I probably never would’ve told you as long as he’d done as he promised and stopped using me without my permission.” Sighing, Dean stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I like you, Joey. You’re a little intense, a little crazy but it’s my kind of crazy. I wanted to see if we had a shot, and telling you that our first kiss was a fraud didn’t seem like it would help. Plus, you were going through so much shit, I didn’t want to add to the pile.”
Joey worried the inside of her lip between her teeth, fighting the urge to growl. He was making sense, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“I deserved to know,” she said, keeping her eyes on him. He nodded. She went on. “I’m not saying that I forgive you, but if you want to even begin making it up to me…”
“Just tell me, please. If it’s in my power, I’ll do it.”
“Let Chris take over again.”
Dean flinched. “Anything but that.”
“I need to talk to him, and I don’t want it to be a relay call. Just let me talk to him, once he gets home. Ten minutes. That’s all I ask.”
Frowning, Dean looked away, then back again. “Ten minutes, and we keep our coffee date,” he counter-offered.
Joey narrowed her eyes. “Ten minutes, and you don’t leave here with a broken nose,” she counter-counter-offered.
Dean grimaced, but nodded however reluctantly. “Ten minutes.”
“Bail is set at twenty-five thousand dollars,” the judge said, banging her gavel. “My condolences for your loss, Ms. Nichols. Go bury your wife.”
Chris swayed with relief. Jon reached for his arm to steady him. The arraignment had been surprisingly quick. He hadn’t been required to answer many questions, which he was grateful for. He’d gotten Emma in enough trouble already. Despite that, Jon had performed brilliantly, playing on the judge’s sympathies for a grieving widow who presented no danger to the public.
As for Chris, he could barely remain upright. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since Emma slept, but he knew she hadn’t gotten any the previous night. Though his consciousness was perfectly alert—he didn’t need sleep—Emma’s body was bone weary, sluggish and aching from her injuries. For some reason, she felt more sore today than she did yesterday; he didn’t understand why but worried she was more injured than the paramedics had thought.
An hour and a half later, freshly bailed out of jail, he sank into the passenger seat of Jon’s Jaguar with a quiet groan. The leather seat was unimaginably soft after the jailhouse furniture he’d been subjected to overnight
and that morning. Without hesitation, he tore into the envelope of Emma’s personal effects and spilled them across his lap in his haste to get to her amulet. While Jon pulled away from the curb, Chris fastened the necklace around his neck and lay his head back with a sigh of relief.
“One witch, hidden from magical tracking. Check. Make sure we’re not followed,” he told Jon. Just because they were shielded from magic didn’t mean they couldn’t be tailed the old fashioned way.
Closing his eyes, Chris did what he could to let Emma rest on the ride home. Jon asked him a few questions along the way, mostly about the astral plane and what it was like. Otherwise, the trip was light on conversation.
He didn’t open his eyes again until Jon parked the car. When he did, the sight of the big house through the window brought a mist of tears to his eyes as an overwhelming sense of homecoming swept over him. He almost needed help getting out of the car, but his watery eyes weren’t the problem. The problem was that sitting in the car for nearly an hour had made Emma’s battered body rather stiff.
Inside, all was quiet.
“Where is everyone?” he asked Jon, frowning. It wasn’t like he’d expected there to be a big “welcome home” banner and cake waiting for him, but the empty foyer was a bit of a let-down.
“Dunno. I did call ahead, for what it’s worth,” Jon said, shrugging. “I guess we can settle Emma in your room, if you think you can make it up the stairs.”
Chris eyed the staircase dubiously, but before his host body’s remaining stamina could be truly tested, Dean stepped out of the east hall. He still had a bandage on his forehead, but he’d traded Chris’s clothes for… more of Chris’s clothes.
“Hey,” Dean said, lifting his chin in an understated greeting. “Joey sent me to, uh…”
“Fetch?” Jon replied, with a wolfish smile.
Chris aimed an elbow at his brother’s midsection. Jon caught it deftly and steered him toward Dean, still smiling.
“I’m gonna get changed,” Jon said. “Whenever she’s ready to talk about her legal situation, you know how to find me.”
“Okay, thanks again, Jon. For everything,” Chris said, losing his balance when Jon released his elbow. He caught himself on the wall, then pushed off to propel himself after Dean, who was halfway down the hall already.
Dean stopped outside an open door and waited for Chris to catch up, then stepped closer and leaned down.
“She knows,” Dean said, on the down-low. “About everything. Just so you know.”
Chris winced, but nodded. “Thanks,” he murmured and glanced toward the open door. “You can wait out here if you want, this could get ugly.”
Dean snorted softly and nodded, but shadowed Chris anyway as he stepped through the open door with all the joyful anticipation of a prisoner facing execution. He’d reconciled himself to Joey finding out about what he’d done for Emma, perhaps even that he’d done it to Dean first. But part of him had hoped that Dean would keep his moment of weakness on the beach to himself. Bro code, and all. It was a lot to hope for. More than he deserved, for what he’d done.
Joey hovered by the bed, leaning over to smooth a wrinkle from the turned-down sheet. His breath caught in his throat as he beheld her once more in full vivid color. The sunlight angling through the window lit the crimson fall of her hair up like a silky, fiery waterfall.
He cleared his throat, both to announce his arrival and collect himself.
“Don’t have to fuss on my account,” he said, though he suspected it was more her fastidious nature demanding perfection than anything more personal.
Joey snorted, straightened and turned toward him. Her eyes were stormy, but her expression took a sympathetic turn when she got a good look at Emma. “Shit, you look like hell.”
Chris shuffled toward the bed. “I feel like hell. Or, at least Em does. I think we may need a doctor to look her over. Everything hurts.” He moved right past Joey and face-planted on the bed, burying his face in a feather down pillow with a blissful groan.
“Don’t—” Joey began, but didn’t get a chance to finish before Chris collapsed. Sighing, she walked to the foot of the bed to untie and tug off Emma’s shoes. “You’re gonna get dirt all over the coverlet,” she groused quietly.
“I’ll buy you another one,” Chris mumbled into the pillow. He realized how absurd the statement was after it had left his mouth, but it was his standard response when she was nettling him about ruining something or other with his careless man ways.
“How are you going to do that? Zip down to Walmart and possess the first shopper you see?”
Oh yeah, she’s pissed.
Chris sighed and turned his head so he wasn’t speaking into the pillow anymore. “If that’s what it takes. Joey, I—”
“Don’t start,” Joey said, walking around the bed and into his line of sight once more. Even her crisp, minced steps conveyed irritation. “We are going to talk, but not now.”
Chris rolled onto his back and stretched, wincing as Emma’s sore muscles protested mightily. “Remember, she’s going to be disoriented as hell but the amulet should keep her from lashing out with magic.”
Joey nodded and settled on the edge of the bed. He reached for her hand, but she moved hers away. The simple act showed just how broken they really were. The fist squeezing his heart tightened its grip, but she was right. They had to take care of Emma first.
He took one last lingering look at Joey, drinking in the sight of her in full color, then closed his eyes and willed himself to float upward, leaving Emma’s body. The moment he did, he was treated to the phantom sensation of tiny hooks latching onto him, tugging at his spectral skin. Burning. Pulling. It was a sensation he knew all too well.
It was Tasha.
Her summoning assaulted him with a vengeance, sudden and nigh irresistible. Normally, he could ignore her for a little while at least but this, this was so strong it was as if he’d already been resisting her for a time and she was so over his disobedience.
Without thinking, he retreated back down to Emma’s body, shrinking back into her like a budding flower starting to open and then abruptly changing its mind. As he settled into her again, reeling, the summoning sensations misted away. He was left with nothing but Emma’s aches and pains, her bone-deep weariness. The summoning had stopped. Or had it?
He tried it again, letting himself drift up out of Emma’s body. Again, those little hooks sank into him, grasping at the edges of his ephemeral existence. He shrank back down into Emma again and opened her eyes.
“Emma? It’s okay, you’re safe,” Joey said, reaching for Emma’s hand to give it a gentle squeeze.
Chris squeezed back, his eyes finding Joey’s. “It’s still me. There’s a problem.”
Frowning, Joey released Emma’s hand and sat back. “What now?”
“Tasha’s summoning me. Hardcore. But apparently she can’t touch me when I’m in Em.”
“Is it the amulet?” Joey said, her eyes darting to the pendant resting on Emma’s chest.
“I dunno,” Chris said. “Maybe. I have no way of knowing when she started the summoning, but I think she’s been at it for a while. I put the necklace on when we got in the car…”
“You haven’t heard from her since you’ve been in Emma’s body, have you?”
“Radio silence.”
“Hmm. I guess you’d better stay put then,” Joey said, but from her wrinkled brow he could tell that she didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it either. “I can’t. She needs to sleep, and process what’s happened. But if I leave and Tasha gets her hands on me… I may not be able to keep Em’s location a secret. It’d put everyone helping her at risk.” The idea of Tasha getting her filthy magical hands on Joey filled him with anxiety. His hand crept toward Joey’s again, his wolf instincts crying out for contact to soothe his inner turmoil. This time she let him hold it while she thought. Willing or distracted, it made little difference to him in the moment.
Joey was quiet
for a time. He watched her think, wondering what was going on behind those beautiful brown eyes. When she glanced over her shoulder at Dean, the medium held up his hands. Chris had forgotten all about him, standing quietly in the background as he was.
“No. Absolutely not,” Dean said.
“Come on, Dean… it’s only for a little while,” Joey said. “That high muckity-muck witch is coming to meet with Mom in less than an hour. Maybe she can help.”
“No,” Dean repeated, firmly.
Joey shot the medium a pleading look. “Please, Dean. You told me I could have ten minutes. I’m not asking for much more than that.”
A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. He folded his arms, presenting every appearance of obstinance, but sighed after a few seconds. “Fine.” Pushing off the wall he’d been leaning against, he stalked to the bed and stood at the foot of it, looking down at Joey and Chris. “But no funny business,” he added, giving them both a significant look. “No means no, got it?”
Joey actually flushed; Chris was pretty sure it was anger rather than embarrassment.
“Got it,” Chris said, then vacated Emma’s body once more. Tasha’s summoning washed over him again, but this time he zipped over to Dean in a flash and dove into his body before it could fully take hold. It worked, and he once again found himself looking out through Dean’s eyes. The transition was disorienting, being on the bed looking up one moment and standing at the foot of it looking down the next.
He wasn’t the only disoriented one in the room for long. A quiet groan sounded from the woman on the bed. Her eyes fluttered open a moment later.
“Hey, welcome back,” Joey said. Emma made an alarmed sound and tried to sit up, but pain flared on her face. She gave up and slumped against the pillow again.
“Where am I?” Emma asked, looking around. “What happened? Oh god, Cheryl!” Her eyes snapped to Joey. “Was it a dream? A horrible, horrible nightmare?”
Joey shook her head, laying a hand on Emma’s shoulder. “It wasn’t a dream. You’re at my parents’ house.”
