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The California sun is different from the Nevada heat Ava remembers. It's softer somehow, filtered through smog and marine layer, but still relentless as it beats down on the Impala's black hood. She watches palm trees slide past the window, so different from the scraggly desert Palo Verde trees of her childhood, and touches the purple scarf wrapped around her neck.
It's too hot for a scarf. Dean's already told her that twice. But she wears it anyway, the way some people wear lucky socks or carry rabbit's feet. The scarf is hers—bought with money Dad gave her after her first solo salt-and-burn two years ago, chosen because its her favourite colour and to keep her warm with all the spirits they hunt.
"Campus is up ahead," John says from the driver's seat, his voice rough from too much coffee and not enough sleep. "Dean, Sam, you're with me at the records office. Ava, you take the main campus, talk to people, see what they know."
"Why do I get the talky job?" Ava asks, though she already knows the answer.
"Because you're good at it," John says simply. "And because seventeen-year-old girls blend in better on college campuses than your brothers."
"Hey," Dean protests from the passenger seat. "I blend."
"You blend like a leather jacket at a poetry reading," Ava mutters, and Dean flips her off without looking back.
Sam snickers from beside her, earning himself a glare from Dean in the rearview mirror.
They've been in Pasadena for three hours, and already Ava feels the familiar weight of a hunt settling over them. Six deaths in six weeks, all Caltech students, all top of their respective classes. The police are calling it a string of terrible accidents—electrical fires, gas leaks, one case of alleged suicide that makes Ava's skin crawl because the victim's friends swear he was happy, excited about his research, looking forward to graduation.
John thinks it's a spirit. Vengeful, angry, tied to the campus somehow. Something that targets achievement, brilliance, success—which in a place like Caltech means everyone's potentially at risk.
The Impala pulls into a parking lot near the student centre, and Ava climbs out, adjusting her scarf and pulling her notebook from her bag. It's not the same notebook—that one she gave away seven years ago in a park in Las Vegas—but its one of sevral she's had since. Holding all the information she's ever learned over the years now that John lets her hunt with him.
all the interviews, cases and the monsters theve encounted plus how to kill them. This ones pages are worn, edges soft from constant handling, filled with her handwriting and sketches and salt-stained corners, it's almost full just a few blank pages at the back left.
"Meet back at the motel at six, i'll send Dean if i need you back sooner," John says, already looking toward the administration building. "And Ava? Be careful. If this thing is targeting smart kids, it might not care that you're just visiting."
"I'm always careful," Ava says, which is a lie, but John lets it slide.
She watches the Impala pull away, then turns to face the campus. Caltech is smaller than she expected, more intimate. Trees line the walkways, and the buildings are a mix of old Spanish Colonial Revival and modern concrete. Students hurry past with backpacks and coffee cups, talking about problem sets and lab results, and Ava feels the familiar ache of being an outsider looking in.
She's never been to college. She's never stayed anywhere long enough to finish high school properly—just GED tests taken in libraries between hunts, transcripts that are more fiction than fact. These students have futures, trajectories, plans that extend beyond next week or next month. They're going to be engineers and scientists and professors. They're going to change the world, probably.
Ava pulls out her fake student IDs and heads toward the library. If you want to know what's happening on campus, the library is always a good place to start. Plus, libraries feel safe to her in a way that other places don't. Something about the quiet, the smell of books, the sense of accumulated knowledge just puts her at ease.
The Millikan Library is brutally modern—nine stories of concrete that looms over campus like a sentinel. Ava climbs the steps, pushes through the heavy doors, and is immediately hit with the familiar smell of books, air conditioning and that particular silence that only libraries have. It's the same in every library, from small-town branches to university collections. That hush that feels almost sacred.
She's supposed to be interviewing students, gathering information, and building a profile of the victims. But after talking to a few students something pulls her toward the upper floors, toward the reading rooms where she can see the whole campus spread out below. Maybe it's instinct, maybe it's just procrastination, but her feet carry her to the elevator before she can think better of it.
On the fifth floor, she finds what she's looking for—a quiet corner with scattered study carrels, a few occupied tables, and the kind of intense focus that means finals or midterms are approaching. Ava settles at an empty table near the window and pulls out her notebook, trying to look like she belongs. She's gotten good at that over the years—blending in, looking normal, playing whatever role the situation requires.
She's pretending to read when movement catches her eye.
At first, it's just a figure hunched over a table in the far corner, surrounded by books in a way that seems excessive even for a library. There have to be at least a dozen volumes stacked around him, plus papers and notebooks and what looks like a now cold coffey cup. But there's something familiar about the posture, the way the person's fingers tap against the table in an unconscious rhythm, the way his head tilts when he's reading something particularly interesting—
He looks up, reaching for another book, and Ava's breath catches in her throat.
Spencer Reid.
She'd know him anywhere, even seven years later, even though he's grown in ways that make her heart do something complicated in her chest. He's taller—not tall, but no longer the small eight-year-old from the park. His hair is longer, messier, falling into his eyes the same way it always did. He's wearing a cardigan that's too big for his frame and glasses that are slightly crooked on his nose, and he's surrounded by what appears to be every book on electromagnetic phenomena the library owns.
Ava's first instinct is to leave. To walk away before he sees her, before she has to explain why she's here, why she disappeared seven years ago without a word beyond a ribbon and a note scribbled on toilet paper.
But then Spencer shifts, reaching for a pen, and she sees it—tucked between two textbooks, worn and faded but unmistakable.
Her notebook. The one she gave him in Las Vegas. The one with her handwriting and her monster facts and her purple ink doodles in the margins.
He kept it.
After seven years, through who knows how many moves and life changes, through high school and college and growing up, he kept it.
The realisation makes something warm and terrifying bloom in Ava's chest, and before she can talk herself out of it, she's standing, walking across the reading room, her footsteps silent on the industrial carpet. Her heart is pounding so hard she's sure he'll hear it, but she keeps walking until she's standing right beside his table.
"Spencer?"
His head snaps up, eyes wide and startled behind his glasses, and for a moment, he just stares at her like she's a ghost. Which, given their current circumstances, is almost funny. His mouth opens, closes, opens again, and Ava watches the recognition dawn across his face—confusion first, then disbelief, then something that looks almost like wonder.
"Ava?"
His voice cracks slightly—deeper than she remembers, but still him. Spencer.
"Ava Winchester?"
She laughs under her breath, a sound half disbelieving, half relieved. "Hi."
It's ridiculous, inadequate. Seven years of imagining this moment, and all she can manage is a single word. "You're really here. At Caltech."
"I—yeah." He's staring at her like he's afraid she might flicker out. "I'm a student here." A pause, then, almost automatically, "I'm fifteen now. I started when I was thirteen. Math, chemistry, physics, and—" He cuts himself off, shaking his head as if trying to reset his brain. "Forget that. You're here. How are you here?"
Ava slides into the chair across from him before her knees can give out, her scarf shifting against her neck. "I'm visiting. My family's in town for... work." The lie tastes bitter on her tongue, but she's not ready to explain the truth yet. Not here, not surrounded by normal students living normal lives. "I was in the library and I saw you and I thought—" She stops, because what did she think? those seven years would just evaporate? That they could pick up where they left off, like no time had passed? "I thought it was you."
Spencer is still staring at her like he can't quite believe she's real, and Ava realises he's cataloguing changes the same way she is. She's taller now, not by much but enough to notice. Her hair is longer, darker somehow, pulled back in a ponytail that's already coming loose. She's wearing a leather jacket Dean handed down to her after he got a new one, boots that have seen too many hunts and have salt stains on the leather if you look close enough. The purple scarf is new, but the way she fidgets with it is old, the same nervous energy she had at ten.
"You kept the notebook," Ava says, nodding toward the familiar, worn cover. The edges are more tattered now, the purple ink on the cover faded, but it's definitely hers.
Spencer's hand moves to it automatically, protective, like he's worried she might take it back. "Of course, I kept it. You gave it to me."
"I thought maybe you'd think it was silly. Kid stuff. Fairy tales and made-up monsters."
"I thought—" Spencer pauses, choosing his words carefully in that way he has, like each one is important and has to be exactly right. "I thought it was interesting. The patterns in mythology the way different cultures develop similar protective rituals. The consistency of certain elements across completely disparate belief systems." He trails off, looking almost embarrassed. "I've been... researching some of the things you wrote about."
Ava's stomach drops like she's missed a step on the stairs. "Researching what things?"
"The electromagnetic phenomena associated with alleged hauntings. The historical use of sodium chloride in purification rituals. The thermal signatures of supposed supernatural events. The correlation between reported paranormal activity and geological fault lines." Spencer's speaking faster now, the way he does when he's excited about something. "There's actually a fascinating body of work on the subject, though most of it's dismissed by mainstream science. But the data points are intriguing, and the eyewitness accounts across cultures share remarkable similarities that can't be explained by—" He stops, really looking at her for the first time, and his expression shifts. "Why are you really here, Ava?"
Before she can answer—before she can figure out how to answer—a voice cuts through the library's quiet.
"Ava? You find anything?"
Ava closes her eyes briefly. Thank God. Of course. Of course, Dean would show up now, right as Spencer started to clue in that something wasn't right, right as her carefully constructed cover story was about to collapse.
Her twin brother materializes beside their table, coffee in hand, wearing his standard uniform of jeans, leather jacket, and mild disdain for quiet spaces. He scans the library like it personally offended him—like he's never willingly set foot in one and doesn't plan to start now.
His gaze lands on Spencer, then on the open books and the way Ava's leaning forward, intent, her hands clenched lightly on her knees. Dean's brows lift.
"Who's the guy?"
"Dean—"
He sets his coffee down and rests a hand on her shoulder, not rough, just firm enough to pull her attention. "C'mon, Sis. Dad and Sammy are waiting at the motel. Think we've got a lead on our... situation."
"Dean, I'm busy—" she starts, but he's already giving her that look — the one that means we need to move now.
"You can finish your research later," he says, his tone softer than his smirk suggests. "Promise you, the library's not going anywhere."
"Dean," she hisses, embarrassed, trying to stand without making a scene. "Not now—"
Spencer's chair scrapes quietly against the floor as he half-stands, uncertain, torn between speaking and staying invisible. His hand rests on her old notebook, the one she'd given him years ago. "Ava?"
She glances back over her shoulder, breath catching. Her eyes meet his—seven years of questions in one look. "I'll explain later, I promise!"
Dean nudges her toward the door, gentle but insistent. "Let's move, Winchester. Dad gets twitchy when you're late."
They're halfway down the stairwell before he finally cracks a grin.
"So," he drawls, voice echoing off the concrete, "when were you gonna tell me about your library boyfriend?"
Ava groans, tugging her jacket tighter. "He's not my boyfriend."
Dean smirks, sipping his coffee. "Sure. You only make that face for research purposes."
She shoves him lightly on the shoulder, unable to hide her smile.
"He's not—ugh, Dean, seriously?" Ava hufs. "That's Spencer. From Las Vegas. The kid I told you about."
Dean stops mid-stride, turning to look at her with new interest. "Wait. Park buddy Spencer? Chess kid Spencer? The one you were all moony about for like a year after we left Vegas?"
"I wasn't moony—"
"You totally were. You kept wondering if he still played chess, if he remembered you, if—" Dean's grin is sharp and knowing. "Holy shit, Ava. What are the odds?"
"Astronomical, probably," Ava mutters, following him down the stairs. "What did Dad find?"
"Possible ID on our ghost. Sam pulled up some old campus records." Dean pushes through the exit door into blazing California sunshine, and they both squint against the sudden brightness. "Kid who died in a chem lab accident last year. Suspicious circumstances, possible prank gone wrong. Sam's got all the details."
By the time they reach the motel (Dean hot-wired a car from the campus parking lot rather than walk four blocks in the heat—"I'm not walking when grand theft auto is right there, Ava"), John's leaning against the far wall from the door, arms folded. Sam's perched on the bed, laptop open, that expression on his face that means he's found something good.
The motel room is standard Winchester fare—two beds with questionable bedspreads, a TV that probably only gets three channels, and industrial carpet that's seen better decades. Their duffel bags are lined up by the door, ready for a quick exit if necessary. Weapons are hidden but accessible. Salt lines at every entrance. It's home, or as close as they get to one.
"Took you long enough," John grunts as they approach. His eyes flick to Ava, cataloguing her for injuries or problems the way he always does. "You find anything useful from your interviews?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing of use. Kids are scared, but nobody's making connections. They think it's just bad luck, a string of accidents." She perches on the edge of the other bed, still thinking about Spencer and his electromagnetic research. "What have you got?"
Sam swivels the laptop toward them, the screen glowing in the artificial light. "I was digging through the local news archives and university records. There've been several deaths on campus over the years, mostly suicides, but this one stood out."
He clicks to enlarge a photo: a young man with safety goggles, a friendly grin, and a chemistry beaker in his hand. He looks happy, confident, like someone with a bright future ahead of him.
"Marcus Hall. Twenty years old, chemistry major. Died in a lab accident fourteen months ago. Officially ruled as 'mishandled equipment,' case closed." Sam's fingers fly over the keyboard, pulling up more documents. "But I found some old forum posts, Reddit threads, that kind of thing. People who knew him said it wasn't an accident. His lab partners set up a prank—tampered with his equipment, thought it would be funny to see him panic when something went wrong. They didn't realise the compounds he was working with were so volatile. The whole thing went up, dispite the bad burns his family dicided to bury over cremate but it dosent say where."
"Jesus," Dean mutters, leaning over to read the screen. "That's some prank."
"Gets better," Sam continues, his voice taking on that grim tone that means the story only gets worse. "The investigation found evidence of tampering, but the students involved came from wealthy families. Charges were dropped, and everyone involved quietly transferred to other schools. The whole thing was swept under the rug within a month."
John leans forward, his hunter instincts engaged. "And you think he's our vengeful spirit?"
"Fits the pattern," Sam says, pulling up another document—the list of victims. "All the deaths have been students with perfect grades, top of their class. All of them died right after test results or project grades were posted. It's like he's targeting the kind of student he was, the achievers, the ones who worked hard and played by the rules."
"While his killers got away with murder because daddy had money," Ava says quietly, feeling sick. "He's angry at the wrong people."
"Vengeful spirits usually are," John observes. "They get stuck in their rage, lose track of logic. All they know is pain and anger, and they lash out at whoever's nearby."
Dean whistles low. "So, what, some dead honours kid's got it out for smart people now?"
"Looks like it." Sam pulls up more information. "And based on the pattern, he strikes about every five to seven days right as scores on major exam or assignments come out. The last victim was six days ago. If he's staying consistent—"
"Then someone's about to die tonight," Ava finishes, her stomach twisting. The words "top of their class" echo like a warning bell. She runs a hand through her hair, pacing the small space between the beds. Her boots leave faint prints on the carpet. "Wait—Sam, you said all the victims were top students? Every single one?"
Sam frowns, scrolling through his notes. "Yeah. Why?"
"Because if that's the pattern..." Ava's already moving toward the laptop, her hands shaking slightly as she navigates to the university's public records page. "If he's targeting whoever scored highest on the most recent exam, then we need to know who that is. We need to warn them before—"
Her fingers fly over the keys, pulling up department pages, searching for recent grade postings. Chemistry department, she thinks. That's where Marcus died. That's where he'd be drawn to.
"Chemistry Department. Midterm results posted this morning." Her eyes scan the list of names, looking for the top score, and her breath catches when she sees it.
Spencer Reid – 100%.
Of course. Of course, it's Spencer.
"Well, at least we know who the ghost's going after next," Dean says, reading over her shoulder, and then he pauses. "Wait. Reid? Thats your park buddy."
"Yeah," Ava says, her voice sounding distant to her own ears. "That's him."
John straightens, all business now. "You know where to find this kid?"
Sam's already typing, pulling up student housing records. "If he lives in a dorm, it'll be in the system, and... here we go. Spencer Reid, Avery House, room 237. East side of campus."
Ava's already moving, grabbing her jacket and checking her pockets for salt and iron and all the tools she's carried since she was twelve. Dean's right behind her, and Sam's closing the laptop, but John's voice stops them.
"Ava, Dean—go see if you can get to him before the spirit does. Keep him safe. Sam, you're with me. We need to find Marcus Hall's remains and burn them before this thing kills again."
"Where would they be?" Dean asks. "Cemetery?"
"Most likely Pasadena Memorial, near the university. That's where most students end up." John's already grabbing his own gear, moving with the efficiency of someone who's done this a thousand times. "We'll get the body. You two make sure the spirit is distracted long enough for us to do it."
They split up in the parking lot—John and Sam in the Impala heading for the cemetery, Ava and Dean climbing into the stolen car. Dean drives like he always does, just over the speed limit but not enough to attract attention, and Ava sits in the passenger seat with her fingers drumming against her knee.
"He's smart," she says suddenly. "Spencer. He figured out something was wrong. He was researching hauntings when I found him. He had my notebook out, all those books on electromagnetic phenomena..."
"So he knew something was hunting him?" Dean navigates around a slow-moving sedan, his jaw tight.
"Maybe not hunting him specifically. But he knew something wasn't right." Ava touches her scarf, a nervous habit.
They burst onto campus with minutes to spare, the sun already setting and shadows growing long across the walkways.
Spencer's dorm is in Avery House on the east side of campus, a typical student housing complex with peeling paint and bikes chained to railings. They take the stairs two at a time, Ava's scarf streaming behind her, and she can feel the cold intensifying with every floor they climb.
Second floor. Room 237. The hallway smells like microwave popcorn and old carpet and something else—something wrong. The EMF meter in Ava's pocket is going absolutely crazy now, the needle buried so far in the red it's basically useless.
"Dean," she says quietly, and he nods, already pulling out his own meter to confirm. The temperature here is at least thirty degrees colder than it should be. Their breath comes out in visible puffs.
"It's already here," Dean confirms grimly, reaching for the iron crowbar he keeps hidden in his jacket. "Awesome timing."
Ava's hand is on the salt in her bag when the door to room 237 suddenly flies open with a crash that echoes down the hallway.
Inside Spencer's room, everything is chaos.
Books fly off shelves like they're being thrown by invisible hands, papers scatter through the air like a blizzard, and the air is so cold that frost is literally forming on the windows. In the center of the room, standing in a carefully drawn circle of salt that's already starting to break apart from the supernatural wind, is Spencer.
He looks terrified but determined, one hand holding Ava's old notebook like a shield, the other clutching a container of salt. His glasses are slightly askew, his hair wild, and he's shaking from cold or fear or both. Behind him, barely visible but definitely there, is a figure—young, male, his face twisted with rage and pain, his skin showing the terrible burns from the lab fire that killed him.
Marcus Hall. Their vengeful spirit, seems they were right.
Spencer sees them, and his expression shifts from terror to relief. "Ava!"
"Stay there!" she orders, already moving. "Don't break the salt line!"
A chair flies through the doorway and smashes against the opposite wall with enough force to splinter it. Spencer flinches but doesn't move, his feet planted firmly inside his protective circle. The ghost is screaming now, a sound like metal tearing, like rage given voice, and it makes Ava's teeth ache.
"Shit, that salt's not going to hold forever," Dean grunts, eyeing the circle that's already partially disrupted by the supernatural wind whipping through the room. "Dad and Sammy would have only just made it to the cemetery. We've probably still got another twenty minutes before they'll have dug up the bones enough to burn them."
"Twenty minutes?" Ava looks at the chaos in the room, at the way Marcus Hall's spirit is growing more solid and more angry by the second. "That thing's not going to wait twenty minutes."
"Then we buy time." Dean grins, his grip tightening on his crowbar, and Ava recognises that look. It's the one he gets right before he does something stupid and brave. "Hey, nerd!" he yells, directing his voice at the spirit. "Over here!"
The ghost turns toward Dean's voice, and for a moment, Ava sees Marcus Hall as he must have been before he died—young, brilliant, full of potential. Then the rage twists his features again, and he lunges.
Dean's crowbar slices through the spirit's form, dispersing it temporarily but not destroying it. without burning the bones, it's just a temporary fix. The spirit reforms almost immediately, angrier now, and Dean dives to the side as a lamp crashes into the wall where his head was a second ago.
Ava uses the distraction to sprint into the room, dodging flying books and electronics that are sparking dangerously. She makes it to Spencer's salt circle just as another gust of supernatural wind nearly breaks it completely.
"Are you okay?" she asks, slightly breathless, scanning him for injuries.
He nods, still clutching her notebook like it's the most important thing in the world. "I'm fine. As soon as I felt the temperature start to drop, I made the salt circle. Just like you wrote. But I didn't have enough salt to make it bigger, and the wind keeps—watch out!"
The spirit forms directly behind Ava, close enough that she can feel the unnatural cold radiating from it like a physical presence. Before she can move, spectral hands grab her and throw her across the room. She slams into the wall hard enough to see stars, her scarf coming loose and fluttering to the floor as she slides down.
"Hey! Over here! Come on, you want someone, come get me!" Dean's yelling, drawing the ghost's attention away from Ava, swinging his crowbar in patterns that would look like a weird dance if the situation wasn't so deadly.
Ava groans, pushing herself up from where she landed. Everything hurts—her back, her ribs, her head where it connected with the wall. She's going to have bruises for days. Spencer's staring at her with wide, worried eyes, his face pale, and she forces herself to smile even though it probably looks more like a grimace.
"I'm okay," she lies, staggering to her feet. "Dean, how long?"
"Dad didn't give an ETA!" Dean ducks under another flying object—this time it's a desk lamp—and swings his crowbar through the ghost again. "Just said they'd be as fast as they could!"
The screaming intensifies, and the wind whipping through the room gets stronger. Papers are flying everywhere now, sticking to the walls with static electricity. The lights flicker and die, plunging them into darkness broken only by the fading sunset through the windows and the emergency lights in the hallway.
In the darkness, Marcus Hall's form becomes more solid, more real. Ava can see every detail now—the burns covering his skin, the lab coat he died in, the safety goggles pushed up on his forehead. She can see the rage in his eyes, but underneath it, she can see the pain and fear and betrayal.
And then afterwards—the investigation that went nowhere. The charges that were dropped. The families with money and lawyers who made it all disappear. The grave that no one visits because his own family couldn't afford a proper funeral with all the debit of trying to put him through collage.
The spirit lunges toward her, and she barely has time to dodge. Cold hands brush her arm, and it feels like frostbite, like all the warmth is being sucked out of her body. She stumbles, and suddenly Spencer is there no longer in his salt circle, one hand reaching out to steady her.
she looks back to Spencers circle "the winds blown away most of the salt," Spencer says, his voice remarkably steady considering the circumstances.
"I know." Ava looks around frantically for her salt container, but it's on the other side of the room, knocked there by the supernatural wind. "Damn it."
Marcus Hall's spirit is gathering itself now, preparing for another attack, and Ava knows with sudden certainty that this is it. They're out of time, out of salt, out of options. Dean's still fighting, but even he's slowing down, tired from swinging the crowbar through spectral energy that just keeps reforming.
The ghost rushes toward them, faster and angrier than before, hands outstretched—
And then it stops.
Just stops, frozen mid-motion, its face caught in an expression of eternal rage.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then Marcus Hall's spirit bursts into flames.
Not the cold, supernatural flames of ectoplasm, but real fire, hot and bright and consuming. The ghost screams one final time, its form disintegrating like paper in a furnace, and then it's gone. Just gone. The wind dies instantly, the cold retreats, and papers flutter to the ground like snow.
The lights flicker back on. The temperature returns to normal. The scattered books and papers settle into new positions, and the only sound is Spencer's harsh breathing and the distant wail of a fire alarm somewhere on campus, probably triggered by all the electromagnetic interference.
"Everyone okay?" Dean asks, leaning against the wall and breathing hard. There's a cut above his eyebrow that's bleeding slightly, and his knuckles are white where he's gripping the crowbar.
"Yeah," Ava manages, her voice rough. Her throat hurts from breathing in the cold air, and her back is definitely going to bruise where she hit the wall. "We're good."
Spencer staring at the space where the spirit was the notebook clutched in the other. He's shaking—from adrenaline or the cold maybe delayed shock, probably all three—and Ava touch his shoulder gently.
"Hey. You okay?"
Spencer turns to look at her, and his expression is complicated—shock and wonder and terror and about a dozen other emotions Ava can't quite name. His glasses are crooked on his face, and there's a smudge of something on his cheek. "That was real," he says, like he's testing the words.
"Yeah."
"That was actually real. Ghosts are real. The things in your notebook—all of it—"
"Yeah."
"I need to sit down."
"That's probably a good idea."
Spencer sits heavily on his bed, which is miraculously still intact despite the chaos. His legs seem to give out rather than him consciously sitting, and he still hasn't let go of the notebook. Ava sits beside him, close enough that their shoulders touch, and Dean leans in the doorway, looking satisfied with himself in that way he gets after a successful hunt.
"So," Dean says conversationally, catching his breath. "How'd you know to use salt?"
"The notebook," Spencer says slowly, his eyes still fixed on the empty space where the ghost was. He opens the worn pages like they're precious, and Ava sees her ten-year-old handwriting, the careful notes she copied from John's journal. "You wrote about how ghosts make places cold, and about salt circles for protection. I thought—I didn't know if it was real, but the temperature in my room kept dropping and my electronics were going haywire and I remembered your notes about electromagnetic phenomena and vengeful spirits." He takes a shaky breath. "I looked up the recent deaths on campus, and the only link I could find between the victims was test scores. And I just... I scored perfectly on my chemistry midterm this morning, and I thought if there was even a chance that your notebook was right..."
Dean starts laughing, a genuine sound of surprise and respect. "I like this kid. He made a salt circle based on a notebook from when he was eight. That's either genius or crazy."
"Both, probably," Spencer mutters, and Ava finds herself smiling despite everything.
"You saved your own life," she tells him. "The salt circle bought us enough time to get here. If you hadn't done that..."
She doesn't finish the sentence, but Spencer understands. His hand finds hers where it's resting on the bed between them, and he squeezes once, quick and grateful.
"So, um," Spencer says after a moment, his scientific curiosity already reasserting itself. "How did the ghost just burn up? I couldn't find anything like that when I was researching supernatural phenomena. The combustion was instantaneous and complete, which shouldn't be possible without an accelerant or—"
"Dad and Sam got to the remains," Dean interrupts. "Salt and burn—it's how you permanently get rid of a vengeful spirit. You find the body, salt it, burn it, and the spirit's tie to our world gets severed. No body, no anchor, no ghost."
"Burns the remains, breaks the spirit's tie to our world," Ava adds, watching Spencer process this information with that intense focus he has. "Basic hunting 101."
"There's levels?" Spencer asks, and there's a hint of his old curiosity breaking through the shock.
"Spencer, there are so many levels," Ava says with a tired smile.
They sit in silence for a moment, the three of them in the wreckage of Spencer's dorm room. Books are scattered everywhere, papers plastered to walls with static, furniture overturned. It looks like a tornado hit it, which isn't far from the truth.
Dean clears his throat. "Much as I'm enjoying this supernatural education moment, we should probably get out of here before campus security shows up to investigate the noise complaints. I'm guessing the entire floor heard that."
He's right. Ava can already hear voices in the hallway, doors opening, other students emerging to see what all the commotion was about. Someone's asking if everyone's okay, if there was an earthquake, if anyone smells smoke.
"Yeah. Good idea. Let's move before we have to start explaining this mess." Ava stands, brushing dust and plaster off her jacket. Her back twinges where she hit the wall, and she knows she's going to feel this hunt for days.
Dean gives the room one last glance, smirking when he spots Spencer's carefully organized bookshelf now lying in a chaotic heap. "Kid, hate to break it to you, but you're gonna have a hell of a time explaining that mess to your RA."
Spencer looks around at the destruction—his months of careful organization reduced to chaos—and lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. "I'll... figure something out." Then, quieter, "You're really leaving? Just like that?"
There's something in his voice that makes Ava's chest tight. He looks so young sitting there amid the wreckage, still clutching her notebook, his glasses crooked and his hair a mess. He just survived a supernatural attack, had his entire worldview restructured, and now they're about to disappear again.
"Yeah," Ava says softly, the word tasting like regret. "That's kind of how this life works. We show up, fix the problem, and disappear before anyone asks too many questions."
Spencer nods slowly, but his eyes drop to the notebook again. "And this life—hunting monsters—it's dangerous."
"Yeah." She forces a small smile that probably doesn't reach her eyes. "But someone has to do it. Someone has to keep people safe from things they don't even know exist."
Dean's already halfway out the door, checking the hallway. "Come on, sis. Dad and Sammy are probably wondering if we got fried, and I don't feel like another lecture about 'reckless decisions in the field.'"
Ava rolls her eyes but moves toward the door. She can hear more students in the hallway now, the volume increasing as people get braver. Someone's talking about calling maintenance. Someone else is laughing about a random black out that killed all the lights.
Just before stepping out, she turns back to Spencer. He's stood up now, still holding the notebook like a lifeline, and there's something in his expression—a mix of gratitude and loss and a dozen questions he doesn't have time to ask.
"Hey," Ava says, and her voice comes out softer than she means it to. "Keep that notebook. Maybe... maybe it'll make more sense now."
Spencer looks up, and despite everything—the chaos, the fear, the world-altering revelation that monsters are real—there's a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "It already does."
She stands there for a moment longer, memorizing this—Spencer in his destroyed dorm room, surrounded by evidence of the supernatural, still curious and brilliant nothing like most people they save who scream and cry calling them insain. She wants to say more, wants to explain, wants to promise she'll come back, but Dean's making impatient noises in the hallway and she can hear footsteps approaching.
"Ava, seriously, we gotta go," Dean hisses from the doorway.
She takes a step toward the door, then stops. Screw it.
She quickly walks back inside, grabbing a pen from the floor and a relatively clean piece of paper from the scattered debris. Her handwriting is messier than usual, rushed, but legible.
"Here," she says, pressing it into Spencer's free hand. "We don't keep the same phone number, and we're always moving, but I do have an email." She points to the hastily scribbled address. "It's not much, but it's something."
Spencer blinks down at the paper, staring at her neat, looping handwriting like it's the most precious thing he's ever been given. "You're giving me your email?"
"Yeah, well," she says, trying to sound casual but failing just a little, "if anything weird starts happening again, or if you have questions about the supernatural, or if you just—" She hesitates, then shrugs with forced lightness. "If you want to talk. About anything. I check it when I can."
"I'll—" Spencer's voice cracks slightly. "I'll write. I promise."
"Good." She gives him one last look—half proud, half protective—and starts backing toward the door again. Voices are getting louder in the hall now, and someone's definitely going to stick their head in to see what happened any second. "Stay safe, Spencer."
"You too," he says quietly, his fingers closing around the paper like he's afraid it might disappear. "And Ava?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For coming back. For saving my life. For everything."
Ava's throat is suddenly too tight to respond, so she just nods and forces herself to turn away. Dean's already in the hallway, playing the role of confused student asking what all the noise was about, and Ava slips past him toward the stairs.
They take the steps two at a time, moving fast but not running—running attracts attention. Behind them, Ava can hear someone entering Spencer's room, the exclamations of surprise at the destruction. She doesn't look back. Looking back makes it harder to leave.
They make it out of the building just as campus security is pulling up, their flashlights cutting through the darkening evening. Dean steers them casually toward the stolen car, hands in his pockets, the very picture of innocent college students just walking past.
"That was close," Dean mutters once they're in the car and pulling away. "Kid's got guts, though. Making a salt circle based on your old notebook? That's either really smart or really crazy."
"Both," Ava says, watching the dorm building disappear in the side mirror. "Definitely both."
The drive to the cemetery where John and Sam are finishing up is quiet. Dean doesn't tease, doesn't make jokes about Spencer being her boyfriend or about her giving him her email. He just drives, occasionally glancing at her like he's checking to make sure she's okay.
They find the Impala parked on a side road near Pasadena Memorial Cemetery, and John and Sam are standing by the trunk, looking tired but satisfied. There's dirt on their clothes and ash on their hands, and the smell of smoke lingers in the air.
"Spirit's gone," John says as they approach. "Burned the bones. It won't be coming back."
"Yeah, we figured," Dean says. "Thing went up in flames right in front of us."
John nods, then looks at Ava. His eyes, trained to notice everything—catalog the way she's moving carefully, favoring her left side. "You get hurt?"
"Just bruised. Ghost threw me into a wall." Ava tries to sound casual about it, but John's jaw tightens anyway.
"You need a hospital?"
"No. I'm fine. Nothing broken, just sore."
"Did the kid make it?" Sam asks, closing the trunk. He's got grave dirt under his fingernails and his hair is a mess, but he looks pleased with himself. At thirteen, he's already almost as tall as Dean, and he's getting that same hunter's instinct that runs in the family.
"Yeah, he's fine," Ava says. "He's a lot smarter than his professors probably realize, actually. He figured out something supernatural was happening and protected himself with a salt circle before we even got there."
Sam's eyebrows raise. "Seriously? How'd he know about salt?"
"I gave him a notebook about monsters when we were kids. Seven years ago in Las Vegas. Apparently, he kept it."
"And used it to save his own life," Dean adds. "Kid's pretty impressive, actually."
John considers this, his brows thurowed. "you gave a random kid a book about monsters, Ava what if hed used to to go hunt and got himself or others killed."
"He's not dangerous, Dad. He's just curious." Ava crosses her arms, defensive. "And he's not going to tell anyone. He's too smart for that. He knows people would think he was crazy."
"Still," John says, but he doesn't push it. "We should get out of California. Job's done, and the longer we stay, the more questions might come up about those deaths."
"Where to next?" Dean asks, already moving toward the driver's seat of the stolen car. They'll ditch it a few towns over, make sure there's no way to trace it back to them.
"Arizona, maybe. I heard about something that might be our kind of thing." John climbs into the Impala, Sam sliding in beside him. "We'll figure it out on the road."
The drive back to the motel to collect their things is routine—pack up, check for anything left behind, wipe down surfaces. leave no trace they were ever there. Within an hour, the impala is loaded and they're on the highway heading east, Pasadena shrinking in the rearview mirror.
Ava sits in the back with Dean this time, Sams taking a nap in the front. She stares out the window at the lights of the city giving way to desert darkness, and she thinks about Spencer standing in his destroyed dorm room with her notebook and her email address.
"You okay?" Dean asks quietly, and she realizes she's been touching her neck, looking for the scarf that isn't there anymore.
"Yeah," she says. "Just... lost my scarf in the fight. I liked that scarf."
"You can get a new one."
"Yeah." But it won't be the same, she doesn't say. That scarf was hers, worn until it was soft and familiar. It was one of the few things in her life that was constant.
Now it's lying on the floor of Spencer Reid's dorm room, another piece of her left behind.
Dean catches her eye. "You gave him your email."
"Yeah."
"Think he'll actually write?"
"Yeah," Ava says, and realizes she believes it. "He will."
Three weeks later, Spencer sits in the Caltech library, the purple scarf wrapped around his neck despite the California heat that's returned with a vengeance, and stares at the email on the computer screen.
he'd sent it once everyone had calmed down and his dorm was all sorted.
From: [email protected]
subject: Hi
Hi Ava,
I'm not entirely sure how to start this email. I haven't written to anyone outside my professors or academic peers in months, and certainly not someone who's—well—salted a ghost out of existence in front of me.
I wanted to say thank you. For saving my life, obviously, but also for confirming that my childhood theories (or, I guess, your childhood facts) weren't as far-fetched as everyone told me. You made my rational world a little stranger, and somehow that makes more sense than it should.
anyways i found your sarf as i was cleaning up my dorm, i hope you dont mind but ive started to wear it around campus, at least till you come and collect it.
– Spencer
p.s. did you ever get to meet a fae like you wanted to?
He's been checking every day—sometimes twice a day—hoping for a return message from the email address Ava scribbled on that piece of paper. The paper itself is now carefully preserved in his desk drawer, but he's long since memorized the address.
And today, finally, there's a message.
From: [email protected]
Subject: re-Hi
Spencer,
It's Ava. Sorry it took so long to write—we've been on the road and libraries aren't always easy to find, especially in small towns. Plus, Dad kept us busy with back-to-back hunts and there wasn't much downtime. But I wanted to make sure you're okay. No more ghost attacks? No more cold spots or electromagnetic weirdness?
We're in Arizona now. There's a possible werewolf situation, which sounds ridiculous (I know, I know, werewolves sound fake even after you've seen a ghost), but they're actually pretty dangerous. Dean says hi. Sam (my little brother—you didn't meet him during the Pasadena hunt) says hello and wants to know if you're really as smart as I said you were and if you could teach him how to play chess.
I hope you're doing okay. I hope you're staying safe and not attracting any more supernatural attention. im happy the scarf is getting some use, its better then letting it waste away in a cubord.
and no, I haven't been lucky enough to encounter a fae yet but maybe one day.
Stay safe, Ava
P.S. - How's your dorm room? Did you manage to explain the destruction to your RA, or did you have to come up with a creative cover story?
Spencer reads the email three times, memorizing every word even though he doesn't need to—he'll remember it anyway, filed away in perfect detail like everything else. But he wants to memorize it anyway, wants to hold onto the casual tone, the concern in her words, the way she signed it "stay safe" like she's still worried about him even though they're hundreds of miles apart.
His fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment, and then he starts typing. The words come easily, faster than usual, like he's been composing this message in his head for weeks.
From: [email protected]
subject: response
Ava,
No more ghost attacks. I've started carrying salt in my bag (in a sealed container—I learned that lesson after the first time it spilled all over my textbooks), which has earned me some strange looks from my lab partners. When asked, I told them it's for a cultural anthropology project. No one has questioned this yet.
I've also purchased several books on folklore and parapsychology. They're frustratingly non-scientific in their methodology, but occasionally useful for pattern recognition. I've been cross-referencing historical accounts of supernatural phenomena with your notebook entries, and the consistency is remarkable.
Arizona werewolves sound statistically improbable, but then again, so did vengeful spirits until I met one face-to-face. Please be careful. And tell Sam that yes, I'm "smart" by conventional measures (IQ of 187, though that's really just a number), an did be happy to teach him how to play.
Spencer pauses, his fingers resting on the keys. The scarf is warm around his neck, slightly scratchy but comforting. He touches it absently, the way he's done dozens of times over the past three weeks.
The scarf is currently wrapped around my neck as I write this, even though it's 85 degrees outside and several people have asked if I'm ill. I'm not. But wearing it makes me feel... safer, I suppose. Connected. Like even though you're in Arizona hunting werewolves (which is a sentence I never thought I'd write), you're still somehow close.
Also, I wanted you to know—I'm making my own notebook. Notes about what we saw, how it matched your childhood observations, theories about electromagnetic manifestation and consciousness after death.
As for my dorm room—the RA accepted my explanation of "freak electrical surge during the campus-wide power fluctuation." I may have implied that my experiments with electromagnetic fields got out of hand. He seemed relieved to have a rational explanation and didn't ask too many questions. The university is installing new circuit breakers in the building, so I suppose some good came of it.
I hope you're safe in Arizona. I hope the werewolf situation resolves quickly and without injury. I hope you write again soon.
Spencer
P.S. - Do werewolves really transform during the full moon, or is that Hollywood fiction? Also, silver bullets—necessary, or would any bullet work? Asking for purely academic reasons, obviously.
He reads over the email once more, checking for typos or awkward phrasing, then hits send before he can second-guess himself. The message disappears into the internet, traveling from California to Arizona or wherever Ava is now, and Spencer feels something in his chest loosen slightly.
She wrote. She remembered. She cared enough to check that he was okay.
The library is quiet around him, full of students studying for exams and working on problem sets, completely unaware that one of their classmates is corresponding with a monster hunter about werewolf mythology. Spencer closes the email window and pulls out his quantum mechanics textbook, but his hand keeps going to the scarf around his neck.
Purple fabric, soft from wear, carrying the faint scent of motel soap and something else he can't quite identify but that makes him think of desert highways and old cars.
Two weeks after that first email exchange, Ava checks her messages from a library in Tucson and finds Spencer's response. She reads it three times, smiling at his questions about werewolf mythology
From: [email protected]
Subject: re-responce
Spencer
(full moon; no, they get canine teeth and grow claws with better senses, but they don't go wolf, and it doesn't need to be a full moon, but the pull is stronger, silver bullets; yes, needs to be silver from what I know).
She writes back about hunts, about Dean's terrible jokes, about Sam's growing interest in research and lore. She asks Spencer about his classes, about his research, about whether he's made any friends.
He writes back within a day, and they fall into a rhythm. Not daily—their lives are too chaotic for that—but regular enough that Ava starts checking her email hopefully every time they stop in a town with a library or when she can steal Sam's laptop. Spencer's messages are long, detailed, full of observations and questions and theories about the supernatural that are surprisingly insightful for someone who's only encountered it once.
He sends her research he's found—historical accounts of hauntings, scientific papers on electromagnetic phenomena, folklore from cultures around the world. She sends him additions to her monster encyclopedia—things her father has taught her, creatures they've encountered, new ways to kill things that shouldn't exist.
Their correspondence becomes its own kind of hunt—gathering information, sharing knowledge, building a database of the supernatural that exists in email messages between a hunter and a genius who believes because he saw it with his own eyes.
THE END