Chapter 74: Wait — Some of These People Are Actually Real
The backflip incident had done one useful thing: cleared out the grifters.
Half the remaining line had apparently decided that a job listing where someone died in the interview was below their risk threshold, and quietly left. When Ted looked out the loading dock door, the crowd had thinned to a handful of people with the specific quality of stillness that suggested they'd actually thought about being here.
"Okay," Rango said, sitting up straighter. "Let's see what we've got."
The first one through the door was enormous.
Not tall-and-muscular enormous. Enormous in the way that suggested the laws of human proportion had filed a complaint and been ignored. Six-four, maybe six-five, with the general geometry of a man who had been inflated from the inside. His voice, when he spoke, was a surprise — soft, almost delicate, the kind of voice that belonged to someone much smaller.
"People call me Big Eater," he said. "Been so long I don't really remember my actual name."
Rango looked at him. "What's the ability?"
The man didn't answer immediately. His eyes moved around the room and settled on the metal worktable against the wall — the industrial one the curator had special-ordered after the last one got damaged, solid iron, nearly a half-inch thick.
He walked over to it.
Opened his mouth.
And bit into it.
Not performatively. Not tentatively. He bit into a half-inch iron worktable the way a normal person bites into a sandwich, and chewed, and swallowed, and bit again. The sound it made was somehow worse than the sight. In about forty-five seconds, he had consumed roughly two-thirds of a several-foot iron table.
"Stop," Rango said. "Stop, that's — you're hired, stop eating the table."
Big Eater closed his mouth, straightened up, and nodded pleasantly.
After he left, the four of them looked at the remaining jagged metal stump where the table had been.
"How does that work offensively?" Ted asked.
"He's the size of a refrigerator and he just ate a table," Rango said. "I'll figure out the tactical applications later. Check mark. Next."
The next one came in with the slightly uncomfortable energy of someone who wasn't sure they were in the right place.
"Nick Marshall," he said. "I want to be upfront — I didn't see your listing. I've been having some unusual experiences lately and saw people in line and figured, maybe someone here would know what's going on."
He was good-looking in a way that had probably caused him problems his whole life — the kind of face that made people either trust him immediately or not at all.
"What kind of unusual experiences?" Sam asked.
"I can hear women's thoughts," Nick said. "Clearly. Complete sentences. It started about three weeks ago." He looked around the table — Rango, Sam, Dean, Ted. "Which is a problem right now, because I can't demonstrate it."
Dean opened his mouth.
Rango put a hand on his arm. "We believe you."
He stood, walked around the table, and shook Nick's hand with genuine warmth.
"You're in," Rango said.
Nick blinked. "You're dealing with a female demon?"
"Male, actually. But your ability has applications I can already think of three of." He smiled. "Don't worry about it. We'll be in touch."
After Nick left, Dean looked at Rango.
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking Azazel has people seeded everywhere, and a lot of those people are going to be women who don't know they're seeded, and when things get complicated I want someone on the team who can tell me what's actually happening inside someone's head." He sat back down. "Check mark."
The next one swaggered in like the hallway had been a runway — tattoos from wrist to collar, hair pushed up in a pompadour that had survived the rain somehow, the energy of someone who had been told he was a lot and had decided to lean into it.
"Pierce," Rango said, reading the application. "Daily rate is confirmed. Show us something."
"Watch close," Pierce said.
He raised one finger with the specific ritual gravity of someone who'd practiced this. The room went quiet. Sam leaned forward slightly. Dean tilted his head.
Pierce put his finger in his mouth.
And gagged himself.
"Oh, come on—" Dean started.
The vomit hit the floor and the floor dissolved.
Not metaphorically. The marble tile — actual marble, the curator's pride — began corroding on contact, white smoke rising, a crater opening up nearly a meter wide and going down several inches into solid stone.
Everyone behind the table had already moved. Rango was on his feet, back against the wall. Ted was on top of a display case. Sam had his chair between himself and the splash zone.
Pierce coughed twice, composed himself, and looked at the crater with mild satisfaction.
"Round two?"
"Please don't," Ted said.
"Hired," Rango said, from against the wall. "Absolutely hired. Please keep your mouth closed until further notice."
After Pierce left, Ted looked at his clipboard, looked at the next name, and his face did something complicated.
"Invisible Man," he said.
The room went quiet.
"Again?" Dean said.
"Different one. Presumably."
They all looked at each other with the collective trauma of people who had watched a man die via failed backflip not two hours ago.
"Fine," Rango said. "Send him in."
A minute passed. Nobody came through the door.
Then Dean felt something near his ear. A presence. A warmth. Something that was very specifically not a finger poking his ear, and yet his ear was being poked.
He looked around. Nothing.
"...Is someone there?" Dean asked carefully.
His lips were then pressed together from the outside by something invisible, smooshing them gently sideways.
"The Invisible Man," Sam said, with the dawning expression of someone who had correctly identified the situation, "is already in the room."
"Has been in the room," Rango said, looking at the corner where the air seemed slightly wrong. "Probably for a while."
Dean carefully reached up and grabbed whatever was touching his face. His hand closed around something. He held it at arm's length.
"Buddy," he said, with tremendous control, "that better be a finger."
"It's not~" said a voice that was, unmistakably, not a man's voice.
The silence that followed lasted about two seconds.
Then Dean was gone — through the door, down the hall, the sound of the bathroom door hitting the wall, followed by the sound of a faucet turned on at full pressure and Dean's creative profanity echoing off tile.
The woman who shimmered back into visibility was blonde, mid-twenties, with the sparkling eyes of someone who had just done exactly what she'd intended to do and found it entirely worth it.
"That was mean," Ted said.
"It was a little mean," she agreed, not sounding remotely sorry.
From down the hall: "WHAT THE— WHAT WAS THAT—"
Rango looked at the woman across the table. "You can turn invisible without a backflip."
"And visible again," she said, helpfully. "Both directions. Full control."
"Hired," Rango said immediately.
"I also wasn't in your line," she said. "I came in through the loading dock because the door was open. Your actual last applicant is still outside."
From the bathroom, the sounds of Dean vigorously brushing his teeth.
"Name?" Rango asked.
"Amanda," she said. "Amanda Seyfried."
After Amanda left, Rango leaned back and looked at the ceiling and did the mental inventory.
Four turtles, trained fighters, full weapons capability. Clary Fairchild, Shadowhunter, magic-binding arrays that could suppress any demon within range. Big Eater, who was a one-man structural hazard. Pierce, whose ability was devastating and required a fifteen-second warning. Nick Marshall, women's telepathy, situational but genuinely valuable. Amanda, full invisibility with directional control.
Plus whatever was still outside.
Plus the Winchesters.
Plus himself.
We might actually be able to do this, he thought.
Dean emerged from the bathroom looking like a man who had survived something and was not yet ready to discuss it.
"After Yellow Eyes is dealt with," Dean said, in the flat tone of someone making a genuine promise to themselves, "I am finding that woman and I am—"
"Dean."
"—going to have a very serious conversation about boundaries."
"Sure," Sam said, with the expression of someone who had watched his brother's face get touched by an invisible stranger and was going to be living off this for years.
Rango put his arm around Dean's shoulders. "Go home. Sleep. Tomorrow we plan."
He was reaching for the light switch when the loading dock door opened again.
A kid walked in — couldn't have been older than seventeen, backpack over one shoulder, wearing the specific look of someone who'd recently been in a fight and hadn't entirely lost it. Dried blood at the corner of his lip. Alert eyes that moved around the room and catalogued everything in about two seconds.
He looked at the banner. Looked at the four of them. Looked at the crater in the floor where the marble used to be.
"Is this the superhuman recruitment thing?" he asked.
Rango looked at him for a long moment.
"Yeah," he said. "It is."
"Cool," the kid said. "I have a thing."
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