Episode 20: Outed Truths and Old Friends

Aubrey Lance, S.S. (Supernatural Sleuth) -- Season 1, Episode 20: Outed Truths & Old Friends

I stared at him. “Dad? What are you doing here?” 

He leveled his gaze at me. “I could ask you the same thing. This doesn’t look like a study group to me.” 

I felt myself blush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” I stopped as his presence registered anew. “Wait, how did you even get here?” And more importantly—”Is this guy here really saying you have some kind of magical powers?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Dad said. He looked at me with an unreadable expression. “I’m disappointed that you lied to your mom about the study group, Aubrey.” He glanced at the cheer hawks. “And omitted quite a few other things about what you’ve been up to.” 

Oof. That hit me right in the chest. “I’m sorry,” I said—and I was. I thought of myself as an honest person, but I had to admit that lately, I hadn’t been. I’d told myself I had good reasons for hiding things from my parents and even deceiving them… but that didn’t make it less dishonest. “I really am sorry.”

Dad’s mouth drooped, and he studied my face for a long moment. “You should’ve told your mom and me what you were doing. We could’ve helped.”

Could they have? I didn’t even know how he’d known where to find me. My brain was swirling with a million questions. 

He stepped toward me, looking more hurt than angry. “If you thought you had information on Emery or Chloe, why didn’t you share it with us?” 

I glanced away, unsure how to answer. Why hadn’t I told my parents sooner? “I didn’t think you’d believe me,” I said, but as soon as the words left my lips, I knew in my gut they weren’t entirely true. I’d had a dozen justifications for not telling my parents, but they all boiled down to the fact that I’d assumed my parents wouldn’t react well to the truth, even if they did believe me. I met Dad’s gaze. “Actually, part of me did think you’d believe me, but I didn’t want to worry you.” 

Dad stared at me. “And riding off with some girls you barely knew, to go who-knows-where, was less likely to worry us?” 

He made a good point. Chasing after a potential kidnapper without my parents knowing was insane and reckless—as my present, very shady circumstances demonstrated. 

I felt myself blush. “I don’t know. It made sense at the time.”

Dad looked at Collin and Lockley. “And I’m assuming your parents don’t know what you’re up to, either?” 

Lockley blanched and went mute.

Collin shook his head. “No, sir. Sorry.” 

I was pretty sure Collin’s and Lockley’s parents didn’t know half the stuff they did… but how would they have possibly explained this one, anyway? No parent would’ve believed what we’d been through the past twelve hours. 

Except, apparently, mine.

Speaking of which…

I eyed my dad. “How did you even know I was here?” 

Dad ran a hand across his stubbly cheek. “Your mom called me when you left with a bunch of cheerleaders she’d never met, for an obviously fake study group. She was concerned. I would’ve been, too, except I’d just gotten off a phone call with him.” He gestured to the man in the trench coat. “He called me when the girls were on the way to pick you up. He wanted to make sure I knew you were coming to meet with him, so I could be here when you arrived.”

Trenchcoat Man nodded at Dad. “Always happy to help a friend.”  

Dad nodded back. “For which I’m grateful.” 

I glanced between them. “How do you two know each other again?” 

Dad turned back to me and shrugged. “Your mother and I have known Arch for years. He helped us lie low when we were being hunted.” 

I stared at my father. “What?” 

Beside me, Collin muttered, “This guy’s name is Arch?” 

“Archibald Granger,” the man in the trench coat answered with a smile. “Though I prefer to go by code names, these days.” He glanced at Dad. “I don’t generally share my real name.” 

Dad winced. “Sorry. Old habits.” 

Trenchcoat Man shrugged. “No worries. We are among friends… I trust?” He looked back at Collin, Lockley, and me with a questioning gaze.

We all quickly nodded. 

He smiled. “Then file that name away in the confidential folder, if you will, and feel free to call me whatever else you like from now on—within reason.” He chuckled. “If it helps, my junior investigators here call me a different, random name each time we’re in public. It’s a bit of a game of theirs.” 

“We got the idea from Psych,” Meredith said, smiling at me. 

I huffed a small laugh. “Right.” I’d made the connection right away—Psych was one of my favorite old television shows—but I hadn’t been sure they’d known the connection. It immediately made me like the cheer hawks a bit more. 

Jillian grinned. “Today he’s Marshall Mellow.” 

The other two girls fought back grins of their own—and to my surprise, so did the Trenchcoat Man. 

“Not the most creative they’ve been,” he said, “but amusing nonetheless.” 

Lockley tilted her head, scrutinizing Trenchcoat Man. “How do we know what your name is any given day, then?” 

The man shrugged. “Make one up, if you don’t know. We’re flexible.” 

That answer didn’t help much, but he was already Trenchcoat Man in my mind, so I resigned myself to calling him Mr. Mellow out loud—at least for today—and moved back to more important things. 

“O-kay, now that we’ve settled that…” I looked at my dad. “What exactly did you mean by ‘when we were being hunted’?” 

My dad grimaced. “Right, that. I expected you would stop on that detail.” 

“Of course I would.” I stared at him. “Wouldn’t you?” 

“Well, yes, but—” He drew a breath. “This isn’t exactly how we meant for you to find out, Aubrey, but your mom knew when I headed here that this might come up.” He met my gaze. “I never had the gift you and Emery inherited, but apparently my grandmother did. She used to have visions. My PopPop thought she was crazy.” He let out a rough laugh. “Anyway, before you and Emery were born, some people came after us, hunting those with gifts. Eventually, they realized I didn’t have one and lost interest, but had it not been for Ar—Marshall—your mother and I may not have lived to even have you and Em.” He looked at Trenchcoat Man. “We truly owe him our lives.” 

Trenchcoat Man simply tilted his head in polite acknowledgment, not saying a word. 

My dad turned back to look at me. “When Emery disappeared, Marshall was the first one we called after the police. But he already knew. He follows the police bands.” 

My brain glitched on one key word. “Wait. Disappeared? Not drowned?” I’d never heard my parents question the police’s narrative on Emery’s drowning—never. My parents were the ones who’d insisted I had to let go of my theories that Emery was still out there, and accept that she was gone. 

He met my shock with a solemn gaze. “Of course not. She was a good swimmer, but too smart to try to swim out into the ocean alone in the dark—and besides, she had no reason to be out there that night, other than maybe if her gift led her there. Why wasn’t her body found? Why would she have been in the water in the first place? An accidental drowning never really made sense as an explanation.” 

I gaped at him. “Dad, you insisted she had drowned. You made me go to therapy because I thought she might not have!” 

His face turned sad. “We made you go to therapy because we thought it might help you, Aubs. The rest… I’m so sorry for keeping things from you, and I realize how hypocritical this admission sounds, especially right now—but you were still a kid, and this was already hard enough on everyone. I was trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?” I asked. 

He shared a glance with Trenchcoat Man, then looked at me. “From the same people who were after me the first time. They may have given up on me, but my children are a different story.” 

I stepped toward him. “Dad, are you serious?” Was he really saying our family carried a line of magical gifts that Emery and I had inherited, and for which Emery and I were targeted, and that he’d known about this the whole time? Was that the actual statement coming out of my dad’s mouth right now?

He took a shaky breath and glanced away. “I just wish I knew what drew Emery out there that night, whether it was a vision or something else, and what she might have seen…” He trailed off, then looked at me. “This is why I’ve been traveling so much these past two years, Aubrey. I’ve been chasing leads on Emery, anything I could find.”

That was why he’d been “working” so much? The reason he and mom seemed so stressed?

I stared at him. “Does Mom know all of this, too?” 

“Yes,” he said. “She found out about my family’s gift whenever those people came after us, and we always knew it was possible our kids might get the gift which had skipped me. We hadn’t told you or Em about it because we thought it may have died off with me, but when Emery started experiencing strange things, she came to us. Your mom and I immediately knew she had a gift, so we told her what we could about the family history, but advised her to do her best not to draw outside attention to her abilities. We were terrified she’d be in danger.” He sighed. “Emery didn’t share much with us about what she was doing to develop her gift, after that.”

Oh, Emery. I could only imagine, from my own limited experience, how scary and lonely it must have been to discover her gift on her own. I was impressed she’d had the courage to even tell Mom and Dad about it. Broaching that conversation must have been terrifying. 

But why hadn’t Emery told me? 

I turned to Lockley. “Did you know, too?” If so, she’d done a great job playing dumb when Collin and I brought her into our loop.

But Lockley looked at me with an expression halfway between shock and sorrow. “Not at all.” 

So Emery hadn’t even told her best friend—just Mom and Dad, who had no real idea how to help her. 

She had been facing this on her own.

“We offered to find her a mentor, since we were inexperienced ourselves,” Dad continued, “but she seemed to feel she had it under control.” 

From everything I’d learned recently, and the way Emery had apparently reached out to me in my dreams, it did seem she’d learned to wield it pretty well… but then again, her disappearance meant at least something must not have gone as she planned. 

Maybe she’d kept me in the dark about her gift as an attempt to protect me, like Mom and Dad had. I couldn’t exactly fault her for that, when I hadn’t even told Mom and Dad about my dreams. 

I drew a breath. “Dad, I need to tell you something, too.” 

***

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