Hell (Part Four of the Purgatory Series)

Chapter Two: Clean up on aisle 8675309 or 'Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to'

Chapter Two: Clean up on aisle 8675309 or ‘Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to’
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The pet store was empty - completely ransacked and a mess. There were no clues, no hidden messages. Nothing. And despite having visted England for a short while, he had nothing else in common with Sherlock Holmes. Detective work wasn't in his wheelhouse, and this wild goose chase for people who might not even be alive was getting really old.

Still, the journal code had said they would leave clues to their next location, so he stayed the night and slept in a storage closet, planning to look at the store with fresh eyes in the morning.

The dark, cramped closet smelled of dog food and mold, and while the smell might have been unpleasant, it was also overpowering in a way that would disguise his scent from roaming vampires. When he had been a vampire, Thea had tried something like this to try and hide from him; only she didn't know he hadn't been tracking her by scent, but by sight. And even if she had been masking her scent, there was no way she could have masked the scent of her ridiculous pet pig.

With a blink and a shout of realization, he launched himself out of the door of the closet and toward the aisle set aside for farm animals and pets. Sorting through the mess carefully, he looked for anything pertaining to pigs for clues. He went over every item a dozen times. But there was nothing. Or at least nothing that he would recognize as a clue.

The messages had been meant for Thea and he didn't have any of her memories and experiences. There could have been a clue in something simple, like how the items had been arranged, but only she would have been able to recognize it. Cursing under his breath, he kicked a hamster ball across the room and decided to give up for the night. He could figure out a new plan in the morning once he wasn't so exhausted.

Being resurrected as a human was strange. He had been immortal for so long that he had almost forgotten how to live any other way. Sleeping put him at a big disadvantage. He wasn't fond of how much weaker and slower he had gotten either. He found himself wondering why he was putting himself through all this at least five times a day. But the answer was obvious: he was a coward.

He had been a coward when he had been under Mara’s control in purgatory, he had been a coward when he forced Thea to kill him, and he had been a coward when Lucifer offered him a deal. He had always taken the easy way out to try and save his own skin. He hadn't wanted to be burdened with the task of saving other people. But now…

Well now there wasn't anyone left to save him. He was on his own and was now a weak human. If he was being honest with himself he would have to admit he was being a coward even now - still trying to find someone else to save the day. But what else could he do? There was no way he could get Thea out of hell without help. And all the nephilim were locked away in Purgatory, thanks to Thea’s idiot bird boy. So who better to ask than her parents, the two people who would willingly go to hell and back for their daughter?

Morning came too soon and when golden rays of light began creeping around the door cracks he realized he had wasted an entire night caught up in his thoughts. It was a mistake. If he was going to survive this then he needed to be alert and focused at all times, which he didn't feel right now at all. With a frustrated sigh, he climbed out of the cramped closet and stretched. A muscle in his lower back twinged and his joints popped loudly - another thing he hadn't had to worry about before now: aging. As he packed up his supplies and blinked the sleep from his eyes, he happened to catch sight of something odd streaked across the condensation on the window. Numbers?

In sloppy, rushed handwriting someone had scrawled 8675309 and the words “Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to.” The reference meant nothing to him, but there had to be something in Thea’s journal. This had to be the clue her parents had left. It was a good thing the cool, humid air had fogged the window up, otherwise he would have never known it was there.