Chapter 1

"Here's one," Dean says, pausing as he scrolls through the last in a long list of online news websites. "Some dude died trying to bang his horse. Could be our kinda thing."

"In what way is bestiality our kind of thing, Dean?" Sam replies. He's doing the same thing as Dean, on the other side of the table, and so far he hasn't found anything.

"In the way there's a lot of other weird shit going on in this town. A Mom and her kid totally pulled a Romeo and Juliet, a teacher turned himself in for hooking up with his student, an altar boy serenaded his priest, and a 21 year old nurse married her 101 year old patient."

Sam blinks at Dean over the screen of his laptop. "I'm still not getting how any of this is—"

"The old dude," Dean says. "He's not rich. Poor as dirt. Oh, and this all happened over the last week."

Sam slams his laptop closed. "Sold," he says. "So, what are you thinking?"

Dean shrugs. "My money is on a witch casting inappropriate love spells." He closes the lid of his own laptop after scribbling a few notes on a scrap of paper, and he rises to his feet. "Get your shit, Sam. We leave in 10."

---

"Could be wishes," Sam says, when they're in the car and a couple hours into the journey. "We should check for a well."

"Could be a goddamn trickster with kinks," Dean counters. "It's a witch, Sammy."

"We don't know what we're gonna be walking into till we get there." Sam slides down in his seat and stuffs his jacket between his head and the window. "I'm gonna get some sleep," he says, and he closes his eyes.

Dean looks out into the distance, at the dark road ahead, and then he glances at his brother, taking the opportunity to watch Sam while he sleeps.

---

"The cops are run off their feet," Sam says, scrolling through the police reports on his laptop. "One guy shot and killed his best friend for sleeping with his daughter. And oh, eww. A woman killed her husband for sleeping with his own daughter. All three families are Catholic. The church could be a hotspot."

"So we hit the church," Dean says. "Time to get dressed. FBI or clergy? I vote collars."

He always feels just a little twisted when they suit up as priests. He'll never tell Sam, but he likes it more than he should.

Sam shakes his head. "The cells are full, Dean. We need to talk to those people. The ones who got hit, and the people who watched their loved ones get hit."

Dean sighs. "Suit and tie then."

---

They walk into the Police station in their FBI suits, flash their badges and get shown through to the holding cells.

They're packed. A woman is crying, there are a couple of teenagers speaking in hushed whispers through the bars, and people of varying ages, mostly men, wear hopeless expressions.

They're looking for the teacher, the guy who fell in love with one of his students and then turned himself in, but there's another prisoner in the cell with him.

"Padre," Dean says, nodding at the collared priest sitting on the cot attached to the wall.

The priest looks up, gives the Winchesters a once over, then drops his head again.

Sam and Dean turn their attention to the other guy. The teacher.

"Mark Wright?" Dean asks.

The guy nods.

"You turned yourself in," Dean says. "Can you tell us why?"

The man is young. Can't have been teaching for more than a couple of years, and he's just tossed his entire career in the toilet over a girl. A student, sure, but she's a senior. She's 18, only months away from graduating. They could have waited it out. He could have gotten away with it.

"I can't stay away from her," the guy says. "She can't stay away from me. They said they can't hold me, but I begged them to lock me up. This was the only way."

There's a young woman sitting outside in the waiting room. There was a kid out there, too. A teenage boy, maybe 15 or 16.

Dean looks over at the priest. "Same for you, huh? The kid won't leave you alone?"

The priest nods, then turns his head away, hooks his fingers into his collar and pulls it free. He drops it onto the floor at his feet.

"We need to know where you've been," Sam says. "Where you were when you first noticed these feelings. Both of you."

"We were at a bar," the teacher says. "The Lucky Brew."

"You took your student to a bar?" Dean asks.

"No," the man says. "I was there. She was there. With some guy. Older, probably some frat boy. But she shouldn't have been there. I told her she should leave, and then... I don't know what happened. But that's when it started."

"And you, Padre?" Dean says. "Meet your boy at the bar, did you?"

"Of course not," the priest says, speaking for the first time. "It happened after Sunday service. Everyone was leaving, and I suddenly felt—" He looks as though he might swallow his tongue, horrified, sick. "Later, he came to my home. I wouldn't let him in." He looks up at them, pleading with his eyes. "I never touched him, I swear."

They don't get much out of the rest of them. The teenagers—the captain of the cheerleading squad and a squirrely, bespectacled chess club-looking kid—were arrested for stealing a car, there are a few cases of public indecency, and the woman who shot her husband does nothing but sob.

The man who shot his best friend for sleeping with his daughter won't speak to them at all.

But they come out of the station with a couple of hot spots. All but a few of the witnesses first noticed a difference at the Lucky Brew, or at church.

Dean yanks at his tie, pulls it off and stuffs it through the open window of the Impala, still parked outside the station. "I'll take the bar," he says. "You can have the church."

"We'll both go," Sam says. "I doubt the church will have anything to offer us at 6pm on a Tuesday."

---

The bar is busy, and the boys have to fight their way through the crowd. Dean motions at the bartender, and Sam scans the place for something they can work with.

"You're those FBI guys," the bartender says as he serves them. "Aren't you?"

Dean shrugs. "Off duty."

"It's on the house," the guy says.

"Sweet." Dean grins and puts his wallet back in his pocket. "Thanks." He turns to Sam and hands him his beer. "We got anything?"

Sam nods toward the dance floor. "Check it out."

Two men slowdance to the saccharine love song that filters out from the jukebox against the wall. It shouldn't be remarkable, but in a small, conservative town, it is—and it's obviously not normal here, because everyone is staring, and a hush has fallen over the entire place.

Yet the two men only have eyes for each other.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I think maybe we got something."

Sam nods, and he takes his drink and wanders off—splitting up is probably wise.

There's a couple of girls on the dance floor, too, and they've got their tongues in each others mouths. They're getting a lot of attention from a group of men, for an entirely different reason.

Maybe it was the witch. Or maybe the girls are just taking advantage of the disruption to be themselves for a change.

The song that's playing finishes, and Dean hopes for something a bit more upbeat.

The same song starts over. Dean pulls a face and makes a beeline for the jukebox.

"You really like this song, huh?" he says, to the middle aged guy in dress pants and untucked business shirt who appears to be monopolizing the machine.

"It's our song," the guy says.

"Nice," Dean replies. "Gonna introduce me to your lady?"

"She's right here," the guy says, stroking the curved top of the jukebox, letting his hand slide longingly down her side. "I love her," he says. "She's so beautiful."

"Well," Dean says. "Congratulations to you both." He backs away.

He bumps into someone, and he turns. It's Sam.

"So. Did you find anything? 'Cos there's a guy over there in love with the jukebox."

"A lot," Sam says. "The girl over there in the booth? Was supposed to get married his weekend. The guy she's with? The stripper at her bachelorette party. They had the party here."

"Shit," Dean says.

"The couple at the bar who can't keep their hands off each other? She's his sister-in-law. And the woman there, on the barstool."

Dean waits for the punchline. It doesn't come. "So who's she hooking up with?"

"The barstool."

"Huh," Dean says. "She does look like she's enjoying herself."

"Yeah. It's everywhere, Dean. This is ground zero."