TWENTY-THREE

It was 3:05 a.m. when Jacqueline Daniels walked into her office, switched on the light, and saw the man standing next to her desk. He had been waiting there in the dark for her, and for a moment she was so surprised that she couldn’t speak.

“You,” she managed.

The man stood perfectly still, looking back at her with dark-eyed intensity. The trench coat he’d been wearing earlier hung open, and she couldn’t see any kind of weapon in his hands or on his person.

Somehow that made him seem even more dangerous.

“How did you get in here?”

“Please sit down.”

“Who are you?”

“We need to talk.”

Daniels felt a surge of adrenaline in her temples, a sensation like hot coins being pressed on either side of her head. After the collision out on the road, she had spent the rest of the day out looking for the Winchesters. The FBI had joined in the manhunt, and their involvement had only made her job more complicated.

“We need to talk,” he repeated.

“You’re under arrest,” she told him. “That stunt out on the highway today is more than enough reason to lock you up.”

Turning, she started away from him, but the man raised one hand and the door slammed shut in front of her face.

“Now please sit down,” he instructed.

Daniels turned back to face him. She dropped the pretense of ballsy, hard-case female law enforcement. It was replaced by something somehow harder—an air of cold, almost clinical detachment.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” she said flatly.

“My name is Castiel.”

“I don’t care what you call yourself.” Walking back to the desk, she reached around for her handcuffs and felt a sharp sting of pain fork up the back of her neck, the result of the car accident earlier. “You think you can just waltz in here, into my office, and start ordering me around?”

“This is bigger than you.”

“Nothing in this town is bigger than me.” She brought the cuffs forward, but Castiel caught her wrist and held it tightly. With a quick, effortless flick, he turned it over to reveal the tattoo imprinted on her skin. He touched it lightly.

“This sigil won’t protect you.”

A flicker of doubt wavered over Daniels’ face, and then was gone.

“You like that?” she said. “I got it at Mardi Gras, spring break twelve years ago. Dumb kid stuff, I know, but...”

“You’re lying to me.”

“What if I am? Why should I care what you think?”

“Time is short,” Castiel said. “I need the Witness. Judas. Where is he?”

Daniels shook her head.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know about the noose. It disappeared twice while it was under your care.” His eyes flicked down at the sigil again. “I know that mark.”

She said nothing.

“Direct me to my Witness,” he demanded. “I won’t ask again.”

The sheriff didn’t move, allowing Castiel to hold onto her hand for another moment, the Santeria tattoo hovering between them like some small but vital lie that had been found out.

Then, unexpectedly, she smiled, and drew her hand back from him.

“Ask all you want, Castiel... or whatever your name is. Poke around my head. Make yourself comfortable. Stay all night.” The smile disappeared. “I don’t know anything.”

Castiel’s entire face tightened. Although he didn’t actually move forward, he seemed to get both larger and somehow more imposing until his presence filled her entire field of view. His voice trembled with barely suppressed rage.

“I am an Angel of the Lord,” he said. “Simply being here has cost me valuable time. Time that I will never get back. This is important.”

Daniels stepped back, her eyes widening, feeling her autonomic nervous system respond—sweat prickled under her arms and her pulse quickened in her throat, where she could feel it pumping in her neck. Then she forced herself to calm down again.

“If you really were an angel,” she said, like a stern mother facing an errant child, “you wouldn’t need me to point you in the right direction, would you?” She shook her head. “Sorry. This is my town. My people have been here since long before you arrived, and we’ll be here taking care of things long after you leave.” She blew back a wisp of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “Now if you’re done with the questions, I’m going home to take some aspirin. Some douche bag wrecked my car today, and I’ve got one hell of a headache.”

Castiel reached out, his fingers brushing her forehead, almost casually.

“It’s about to get much worse.”

Sheriff Daniels opened her mouth to answer, and then clapped it shut again. Her mind was flooded with images and sensations—blinding light and threatening darkness, righteous anger, walking the battlefields of history, and grace, divine grace.

“I won’t ask again,” Castiel said. “Where is the noose?”

This time Daniels didn’t hesitate. Although she didn’t realize it, she had fallen to her knees, and her voice—not ballsy, not anymore, not at all—was spewing out the words without so much as a qualm.

“The church. It’s in the basement of the church,” she said.

By the time the overwhelming sensations had finally faded, leaving behind the mother of all migraines, Castiel was gone.

Making her way slowly to her feet, Sheriff Jacqueline Daniels staggered the rest of the way to her desk chair and collapsed into it, cradling her face in her hands.

She could scarcely bear to think of what she’d done.