Free Bone Key by Keith R.A. DeCandido Page B

go there right now, then, before somebody else gets hurt.”
    “Yeah.” Dean looked back at Yaphet. “What about the girl whose throat was cut?”
    “I saw her, actually. She didn’t buy no poems or nothin’, but least she was polite about it. Went into the Hog’s Breath. Didn’t see her leave, though—
    prolly went out the back, since they found her on Front. Sulfur in the wound, too, so you know what that’s all about. Ain’t heard nothin’ beyond that, except the spooks went into overdrive after she kicked the bucket.”
    Sam blew out a breath through his teeth. “That fits. Like you said, Dean, major mojo, and if a human sacrifice was involved, that’d make the spell powerful enough to do what this one’s done.”
    “Waitasec,” Dean said, remembering something,
    “I thought you said the spooks kicked it up a notch six months ago.”
    “They did, man—it was just normal hauntin’, though, like usual, just lots and lots more of it. Bone
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    After that girl got dead, it went up another notch. Totally uncool, man.”
    “So they’re escalating,” Sam said. “Hate to think what stage three is.”
    Dean nodded. “C’mon, let’s lock and load, then pay a visit to a dead writer.” Reaching into his pocket, Dean pulled out a ten-dollar bill and dropped it into the bowl.
    “Hey, thanks, man! That means you get yourself ten poems!”
    “I’ll pass, thanks,” Dean said.
    Sam, though, peered down at the corkboard.
    “I’ll take one, if that’s okay.”
    Dean rolled his eyes. “You are such a geek.”
    Yaphet, though, said, “Absitively, man. Pick any one you want.”
    After glancing up and down the board, Sam looked down at Yaphet. “Which one do you recommend?”
    Leaning to his left, Yaphet pulled out a red pushpin and removed the poem that was on the top left.
    “This one’s called ‘Ode to Bong Water.’ I think it truly speaks to the hearts and minds of everyone, you know what I’m sayin’?”
    Dean had to hold in a guffaw at the look of distaste on Sam’s face. “Uh, no, that doesn’t sound like it’s for me.” He looked at the corkboard again and pointed at the one in the center. “How about this one?”
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    “That’s my latest—‘Sonnet for a Sunset.’ Play on words, man, you dig?”
    Smiling, Sam took that one off the corkboard and gave Yaphet a dollar.
    “Hey, man, you don’t gotta do that. Your brother covered you.”
    “It’s okay—an artist deserves to be paid for his work.”
    Rubbing his forehead with a combination of amusement and pity, Dean said, “Catch you later, Yaphet. We’re at the Naylor House, so if you hear anything, let Nicki or Bodge know.”
    “Groovy, man. Keep on truckin’, you hear?”
    Grinning, Sam said, “Absitively.”

    SEVEN
    Jorge smiled at the look of glee on his brother Reynaldo’s face as they approached the Little White House.
    Reynaldo had always hated the tropics. He joked that he had to have his tolerance for humidity removed when he moved from Puerto Rico to New York. As a result, it was damn near impossible for Jorge to get Reynaldo to visit him and his boyfriend Silas on Key West. They’d gone up to New York several times for Christmas—Silas, a native Floridian, had never seen snow in his life until their first visit—but Jorge kept making excuses for not coming down.
    That changed when Reynaldo’s son, Pablo—
    who, everyone agreed, was the only good thing to come out of his marriage—started learning about the presidents of the United States in school. With the obsessiveness that only an eight-year-old could 90 SUPERNATURAL
    have, Pablo became the world’s biggest president geek, wanting to know everything about all of them—how they were elected, what they did while in office, and so on. Reynaldo had had to read a ton of material in order to keep up with Pablo’s questions.
    But while Pablo’s obsession burned out fairly quickly as he moved on to other things, Reynaldo kept up with the