[EP] What a nice surprise

[st_andingtall]

"Eugene Thompson," repeated the Innkeeper, when Sam finally broke down and stopped searching for the wheelchair guy to ask. "One moment, please. Do you need any--"

"No. I have plenty of towels." What the heck was it with the towels, anyway? Sam shifted his weight to his other foot and tried not to screw up his face too much. The guy was just doing his job. Even if that was literally all he could do. "Um, but thanks."

"You're welcome." The Innkeeper did something that was probably smile, but Sam couldn't have described it, or his face for the life of him. "Ah, yes." He tapped a finger against the rounded black monitor screen that was as almost as old as Sam. "Mr. Thompson has checked out."

"Huh?" Sam's felt the surprise overtake his face and he had to work hard to plant his hands at the edge of the counter instead of reaching across to grab the guy by the collar. "I thought you said we couldn't leave."

"That is correct."

"But Flash--"

"Flash Thompson has checked out."

"How does that even make--" Never mind. The lyrics of Hotel California came to him. "So, you're saying he's dead and I should look for his ghost?"

"I have no record of His Ghost."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Okay, yeah. Thanks."

After he'd stalked away from the front desk, Sam dropped into one of the round red leather booths in the Copper Cafe and pulled out his cell...which was absolutely fucking useless and he still forgot half the time. "Great. The Innkeeper's useless. Flash has 'checked out'. And I can't text anyone to tell them about it."

Oh yeah. Life in the days before instantaneous communication sucked. And blew.

Comments

[st_eampunk]

There was only a slight hesitation and it wasn't because of anything Sam did or said, it was more wondering how he'd take it, especially if she talked about walking through people's minds.

"Magic. Like the horror movie characters coming to life that I talked about on my arrival. Only that was through White Court vampires that feed on fear rather than blood." She watched his expression, knowing that he could handle what she'd said, but still curious as to how he'd take reality versus theoretical.

[st_andingtall]

"..." Sam started to answer, then shut his mouth before he sounded like an idiot. Instead, he blinked and looked a little like one. He pressed his lips together to hide the way his tongue rolled behind his teeth in irritation with himself.

Finally, he couldn't help it and had to blurt, "Enchanting notebooks? You can do that?"

[st_andingtall]

"Yeah," Sam replied because what else was he going to say? Although he had picked up the reference to her mother, and it took a minute to penetrate his irritation, but once it did, he frowned and his expression softened. "I'm really sorry about your mom...is she...did something happen to her?"

[st_udious]

Henry blinked several times. "Of course you can do that. How on earth do you think we communicated at distance before texting and the constant access to phones? Josie and I didn't attend the same school, but we couldn't tell any of our peers what all we were learning outside school so...so we'd talk about things. We never set up a system for alerts, but I can't imagine that would be all that hard. We were a little more concerned with other people being able to read it."

He waved all that off. "Nevermind all that. I could teach you. I'd be more than happy to." He'd even try not to be too smug about his analog ways finally becoming useful. "It'd be no problem at all to set something up that worked for you and Dean. Better if I show you how to do it than just do it myself. The enchantment relies on a central pivot, intent more than anything. No blood magic or curses or anything like that. Nothing weird or dangerous." He frowned. "i"m not doing a very good job at explaining it am I?"

He cleared his throat, trying to martial his enthusiasm just a bit. "Let's try that again. Yes you can enchant notebooks. You can enchant basically anything. Would you like to learn how?"

[st_andingtall]

Getting by looked true, but something about the guy said there was more to him than that. Sam looked at him just long enough to let his skepticism be known and then nodded. "And you read. What kind of music?"

[st_raighttovampire]

Caroline shrugged. "She's fine." Well, mostly fine. She looked tired when she came to Caroline's door. Tired and tense. But that was because Travelers had taken over the whole town and were terrorizing the locals and killing anyone they pleased and pretending they were the good guys. "The mayor died last year, there's not really anyone leading the city, so it's all on mom. She's tired and I..." Can't go home. "I'm at school most of the time, so I don't get to see her as often as I want."

[st_ableandbar]

Lindsey met the look evenly. "I did say 'this and that,'" he pointed out, lifting his book slightly, his place marked with a finger between the pages.

"I mostly play country," probably wouldn't come as much of a surprise. "But I listen to lots of music as long as it's good." For reasons he didn't plan to discuss, he had a knee-jerk dislike for hymns and most gospel music, but Lindsey enjoyed and could talk as knowledgeably about opera or nineteenth century piano composers, for example, as he could Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard.

[st_arkcrowblack]

"Cilantro," Snow answered shyly. It hadn't escaped her attention that Sam was not exactly a man for smiling, and as she was not much used to being smiled at by people who barely knew her, it made her blush and duck her head.

[st_andingtall]

"Okay." Sam got up from the table. "Be right back." He wasn't sure she'd still be there when he got back, if he left her there alone, but they didn't actually have a waiter and he had asked.

Fortunately, the cook wasn't busy and it took only a few minutes to throw one of each dish onto a plate with sides and shove Sam back out the door again.

[st_andingtall]

"Right. I figured magic. But is it a spell or is there a portal or what?" Just because Sam didn't know how to do that kind of magic, Henry had come through a portal in time and they all had arrived here somehow. "Because if it's a spell, maybe we can study its effects and try to, I don't know, make it stronger or something."

[st_arkcrowblack]

Starved for kindness more than food, really, Snow couldn't find it in herself to leave. So she did wait, tried not to shrink herself into a little ball of anxiety.

She even looked up when he came back.

[st_eampunk]

"It's a spell, sort of. The Sidhe can just open it, like opening a door into our world. I have to use a wand. You travel through it to get somewhere else. Kind of like a wormhole. I mean we don't leave Earth and step onto the Klingon homeworld, but it only takes a few hours walk through the Nevernever to go from Chicago to Scotland. That's why I think this place is connected to it somehow. I was in Chicago and now we're in California, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it." Molly explained as best she could what it was like.

[st_andingtall]

Sam had about a thousand questions, starting with who Josie was, but the pivot was the more important. He thought he understood that. It made sense that any kind of enchantment would need something to work off.

"It's okay. I pick things up pretty quick. The idea of a pivot... you'd need one for any kind of magic to keep it grounded. It would be the thing that makes the messages go to the right notebook, right?" And his eyes had lit up, bright with curiosity. "And, yeah, please. I'd love to learn. Anything you want to teach me."

[st_udious]

Henry's smile was brilliant. He knew he liked Sam for a reason. What a lovely young man.

"Well, most magic you'd want to keep grounded. There are some benefits to strategic chaos," which of course Sam already had to know by this point. Hunter or not, some principles were the same. "But yes, essentially that. The notebooks seem like a good and worthwhile first project, I think, and we can work from there. Is there anything in particular you're interested in? I'm happy to teach you anything I know."

[st_andingtall]

"That's rough. I'm sorry." Better than dead, or dying, but still rough. They didn't know each other well enough for him to say much more about it. "I figure we've all got people at home worrying about us. I think about that a lot, what they must think. Or if they even know, when people come from the same place but different times."

[st_andingtall]

"Yeah, you did." But someone who considered reading 'this and that' probably didn't get so deep in his book he didn't look up for anything. Or maybe he was projecting. Sam shrugged. "I don't know much about country music. What do you consider good music?"

[st_andingtall]

When Sam came out with food, he was almost surprised that Snow was still there. But she was, which made him smile as he slid the plate across the table for her. "You want a Coke or something? Root beer?" He thought he remembered she liked that, but he hadn't heard her say it, so it wasn't cemented as a memory.

[st_andingtall]

"Okay. Is the Nevernever an actual place? Or is it just a fold in space?" Like a tesseract. Actual shortest distance between two points. "And can you lose or gain time through the Nevernever? Because I don't know what year you're from, but Jack Robinson is from 1929, and my brother's from more than a year before me, and we arrived here within seconds of each other."

[st_arkcrowblack]

"Root beer," was an answer she didn't even have to think about. That was a taste she knew and understood. But that Sam had noticed on some level was something that hadn't crossed her mind at all.

Not that... well. It had just been the four of them in the beginning, but with one of the others being his brother and the other being Steph who was certainly more talkative and probably more interesting, Snow had considered herself beneath notice even in so small a group.

[st_andingtall]

"Everything?" Sam smiled sheepishly and reached back to scratch the back of his neck. He realized Henry didn't know very much about him. He'd probably never heard Dean call him 'college boy', or any of the other nerd-names Dean had for him. He shrugged finally and said, "I'm serious about that. I'm interested in everything, but maybe we should start with stuff that's relevant to getting out of here. But warding and healing would probably be good, too."

[st_ableandbar]

"I know it when I hear it?" Lindsey shrugged. "Hey, I don't know, man. It's one of those things. There's objectively bad music, but after that, it depends on the person, their mood and shit. Can't say I've been a big fan of The Eagles lately, you know?"

[st_eampunk]

"It's an actual place. The Winter and Summer Court of Sidhe live there as well as Wyldfae, those that aren't aligned with either Court. There are others, too but they're the ones closer to the Mortal World in the Nevernever." Molly thought about her time in Actis Tor, not something that she liked to do, but in answer to his question, she had to.

"I'm not sure about losing or gaining time. I know with magic you can travel through time though that's forbidden. I was in the Winter Court for a little bit and it seemed like a long time, but I think that was more the circumstances than reality. Is it possible to pull me from 2012 and your friend from 1929, yeah I wouldn't put it passed the ability of those in the Nevernever at all."

Molly thought back to everything she'd learned about it from her father, Harry and Lea. "The Nevernever also is the 'home' of Heaven, Hell, Elysium, Olympus, Tartarus, and Gehenna. It exists next to our world and the Courts are just the closest to us."

[st_andingtall]

Sam had spent enough time behind the bar that it didn't take long to grab her a large glass of root beer with just enough ice to keep it cold. He grabbed a soda water with a lime for himself and then went back to join her at the table. Since he wasn't really very good at small talk and Snow didn't like to talk, Sam didn't. At least not right away. Maybe if he gave her a chance, she'd say something.

[st_udious]

"Warding and healing is easy. They're one of the first things you learn." Both were absolutely essential. "Anything that might get us out of here..." Henry sighed heavily. "Magic that strong, first you're going to have to learn how to tap into the power of your soul. That takes...it's a delicate process, very delicate, to learn how to do. You'll need a great deal of practice to get to that point. I'm not saying no, just that it's not immediate. Once you know how to do it it's like...riding a bike, I suppose."

He cleared his throat and pressed on, thinking about that level of magic. "You're going to need to learn Enochian," he said, certain that John hadn't taught them because John probably hadn't learned in the first place. "Are you decent with languages?"

[st_andingtall]

Sam chuckled at the Eagles reference, and because he had nothing better to do at the moment than play word games, tossed back, "Yeah, not feeling Talking Heads or Matchbox 20 much, either."