Strange Relations

Chapter 20

Dean spun, gun aimed at nothing, though he was quite certain something had been following him. "Great, now what?" he muttered as he turned back to continue down the corridor. So far he'd had no luck finding Laurel.

He moved slowly, gun held in front of him. Nothing was going to get the drop on him. At least he hoped nothing would.

Very carefully he moved down the hallway, checking inside each room he passed until he came to the room where they were cataloguing the artifacts. Slowly, he looked around the door frame.

"Dammit, Laurel, what are you doing in here?"

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Just checking out your moldy old artifacts. She waved a clay jar at him. "I'm keeping this one. It's a priest in a jar."

"What?" He lowered his gun, frowning at her.

"A priest in a jar, he transcends death! How awesome is that?"

He snatched the jar out of her hand. "No! Please tell me you didn't open anything."

She waved a hand at a small box that sat on the table. "Just that, there was nothing inside but dust." She shrugged.

"Son of a bitch." He pulled out his phone. "Sammy, get to the artifacts room. Now." He hung up.

Laurel turned to him. "Seriously, it was empty, why are you being all weird?"

"Nothing here is empty! It never is! All of this stuff is dangerous!" he yelled.

Sam appeared in the doorway. "What's wrong?"

Dean waved a hand at the box on the table. "She opened that, claims it was full of dust."

Sam picked up the box and studied the lettering on the outside for several minutes. "This is bad."

"It's a box, you idiots, what's bad about a box?" Laurel asked with a snort.

Sam held it out to her. "You see the markings? These are powerful sigils, they keep what's inside the box, in the box."

She leaned in to look closer at the box. "Huh, well, it would have been nice if someone told me this stuff beforehand."

"No, what would be nice is if you had a brain and didn't touch what doesn't belong to you!" Dean shouted as he waved the priest in a jar at her.

"Can I have that back now?" she asked, pointing at the jar.

"No, never." Dean looked at his brother. "So, what was in the box?"

"A poltergeist I think. A powerful one it looks like. These are some heavy duty sigils."

Deans scowled. "How many damn poltergeists did these nerds collect?"

Aramintha stuck her head into the room. "Oh, good you found her, I can go back to my book now." She pointed to the box. "Uh, please tell me you didn't open that?"

Sam held the box out. "We didn't, your charge did."

"She's not mine," Mintha protested.

"You found her," Dean told her.

"Great, I get a nephilim and a needy prophet, lucky me," she muttered.

"What was that?"

She looked at Dean. "Nothing." She pointed at the box. "In that box was an extremely powerful poltergeist, and not just any ghostie, that is the spirit of a fallen Man of Letters. He's a crafty ghost."

"Whoa, wait so how did a Man of Letters become an all powerful poltergeist? Wouldn't he know better than to hang around after he died?" Sam asked as he set the box back on the table.