Three steps onto the pavement, chasing after the waitress who must have absconded with the cursed foot, Sam slips and falls. He narrowly avoids busting his chin, but his palms are all scraped up. Dean and Katherine both stop and turn to look at him with the sourest, most unimpressed expressions known to man.

"You suck," Katherine pronounces, shaking her head as she turns on the balls of her shoes, and continues to the Impala. Dean lets out a heavy sigh and moves to pull his brother up.

"So what, now your luck turns bad?" Dean asks, giving his brother the once-over. Scraped palms, bloody knees, but that's all. Surprisingly.

"Ye-ap," Katherine calls, opening up the passenger door. "And if we don't get that damn foot back, Sam's gonna die. Tattoo's on the back burner, we're going to Brayden's."

The property manager is practically quaking in his boots when he sees the three hunters come through the door again. This time, they're a little less pissed off, and Dean is trying hard to keep Sam on both feet. Katherine wordlessly tips her chin at the manager before heading for the stairs. She stops and turns to look at Dean.

"Do we risk the stairs or the elevator?" She asks. Sam whimpers a little. Dean grits his teeth and glances between the two. "Stairs," they chorus.

It's like helping the elderly up the stairs. Katherine tests the step before walking backwards onto it. She holds Sam's hands, Dean has his hands on Sam's hips to keep him up in the event of a slip. Luckily, they make it to Brayden Wayne's apartment without so much as a scratch.

Dean stands in front of Sam, almost like a human shield, to keep Katherine's gun as far away from Sam as possible. The last time they were in this apartment, everyone's luck flipped on a dime. Now that the foot's gone, anything could happen. Sam could split his forehead open and bleed out, or maybe hit his head so hard he gets a hematoma and dies.

"Oh, man," Brayden's partner whines, his expression wrinkling upon seeing the three imposing hunters once more. He's sitting in one of the few unharmed chairs near the window with the radio playing some Spanish music. He's holding a photograph in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. "What do you want?"

Katherine glances to the photograph in the friend's hand. "He dead?"

"Piss off."

Katherine nods and takes a breath. "I'll cut to the chase. We want the name of the person who hired you to steal that rabbit's foot. A woman."

"Why would I give it to you?"

"It wasn't a freak accident that killed your partner," Katherine says through her teeth. "Whatever happened to him was because that foot is cursed. Whoever gets it and loses it earns an expedited cell on death row."

"What?"

"It was the rabbit's foot."

The man scoffs. "You're one crazy chick."

Katherine clicks her tongue. "You know I'm not. You saw it earlier today—all the flukes, the spins, the luck. You remember." Katherine shrugs. "When you have the foot, you could probably win all the cash in every Vegas casino and get away with it. You lose the foot, that luck turns south. That's what killed your friend. And that Sasquatch over there is next. And after him, who knows how many more innocent people will be next?" Katherine moves to crouch before the man. His blue eyes are glassy with tears and the buzz of alcohol. "And if you don't help us put the brakes on this, those deaths with be on your head." Dean glances to the back of Katherine's head, waiting for her to continue. He watches with alarm as she sticks her gun in the holster at the back of her pants. "I have a talent," she hums, crouching down before Brayden's partner. "I'm very good at reading people. You may be a thief, but I know you're not a killer." The man shakes his head, looking down to the floor. "What's your name?" She murmurs.

"Grossman."

"Grossman," she repeats. "I'm KD. This is Dean, that's Sam." Katherine pauses. "You wanna give us that name?"

"Lugosi," Grossman says, looking down at the photograph. It's him and Brayden, wearing ponchos and sombreros. The Spanish music makes sense now. "Just—just leave me alone."

Katherine nods once, bowing her head a bit, and turns on the leather soles of her boots to start out of the door with Sam and Dean in tow.

"We can call Bobby," she says. "See if he can get a trail on that alias."

"How are you so sure it's an alias?" Sam asks, carefully following her down the stairs.

Katherine snorts. "No person in their right mind is gonna go by their real name and get mixed up in that business," she states. Sam's shoe shifts forward on a small puddle on the stairs, a puddle made by a leaky ceiling, and he falls right into Katherine, sending the both of them down the stairs. Katherine can barely breathe. She didn't feel any crunching...maybe her ribs are all intact.

She lies still for a moment, groaning soundlessly as Sam spazzes to his feet. Dean hurries to the bottom of the staircase and yanks his brother up.

"I am so sorry—"

Dean hauls katherine up by the arms. "Easy, easy!" She cries. Her phone begins to ring in her jacket pocket. Grimacing, taking short breaths, Katherine digs into her jacket and waddles out of the apartment complex. Sam follows a healthy distance behind her. She doesn't look at the caller ID before answering. "What?" She asks in a held breath.

"Kat, I've got great news—" Bobby begins, then he stops. "What's the matter with you? You sound like you're dying." She can hear the frown in his voice.

"Sam's legs are too long for his own freaking good. He's like Bambi on ice, man. What's the great news?"

"It, uh...wasn't easy, but I found a heavyweight cleansing ritual—" In the background, someone clears their throat. It sounds like a man. Not Bobby, though, because he talks over it. "—that could do the trick."

"You got Rufus over there or somethin'?" Katherine puffs out.

"What? No. Anyway--"

"Actually, Bobby, that's really awesome, but—dear shit—" She turns to Sam, holding her ribs, and frowns when she sees him staring down at his shoe. Dean's gaze is there, too. Then she lets out a heavy breath. "Sam lost the foot."

"He what?!" Bobby asks in exasperation.

"Yeah, some chick stole it from him," she sighs, gently pressing her hand into her rib cage. Tender, not sharp. "She looked like she was in her mid-twenties." Katherine turns away from Sam as he starts dragging his shoe against the concrete. Must have gum stuck to it or somethin'. "—but one of the guys who stole the foot from us gave a name."

"Luigi!" Dean hollers.

"Lugosi," Katherine corrects, turning to the brothers. Sam is scraping his shoe against a drainage grate. She shakes her head and looks at the sky.

"Lugosi," Bobby hums. Then he's quiet for a moment. "Aw, shit."

Katherine's stomach drops, and she immediately asks, "What?"

Bobby hesitates. "It's probably Bela."

Katherine's shoulders hitch. Her blood pressure spikes, her blood boils, and she needs to hit something. "Bela," she pronounces. "That bitch Bela Talbot?" Dean nudges her shoulder and Katherine puts the call on speaker. "Talbot," Katherine says to him. "Bela. Dad and I crossed paths with her once, then I saw her again with Bobby a few years ago."

"She a hunter?" Dean inquires.

"Pretty friggin' far from it," Bobby scoffs, and Katherine forces air between her lips in a pfft. She shoves the phone into Dean's hands and starts angry-pacing.

"I knew something was off in there," Katherine mutters. "I mean, wasn't she out of the country?!" Dean watches her face turn red.

"Breathe," is the only thing he can think to say.

"After you chased her ass to JFK, she went in the Middle East some place," Bobby replies.

Katherine's brows briefly pop up. "Serves her right. You think you can get someone to track her down?"

"Yeah, I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, Bobby," the young hunters chorus.

"Just look out for your brother, ya idjit." Dean smiles and shuts Katherine's phone.

"In the car, Twinkle Toes," he calls to Sam, turning to Katherine to hand her phone back. Katherine palms it and looks up at Sam. Then she frowns, the wrinkle in her brow now one of confusion instead of anger.

Sam's reached the sulkiest of sulky staring down at the drain and up at his brother and Katherine with the most helpless of expressions. "What?" She asks.

"I lost my shoe."

Dean and Katherine look down to Sam's feet—only one of which has a shoe.

Katherine closes her eyes and lets out a long, quiet breath through her nose. After ten seconds of wordlessness, she opens the car door and lowers herself inside before reaching underneath the seat and pulling up the bottle of bourbon. Dean frowns at her, leaning over to look at her as she tilts the lip of the handle towards her mouth.

"While I'm all for drinking," Dean says. "You and alcohol aren't usually the best of buds, and I cannot babysit two adults right now." Katherine waves him off, making a face as she continues to swallow bourbon.

"I'm inoculating myself," she says with a groan, pulling the handle away. Her face twists up and she rubs her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

Dean chuckles. "Hon, it don't work like that."

"Bullshit. I'm Irish. It'll work any way I want it to." She glances to the window as she stuffs the bourbon away. "Get your brother in the car—I'm tired."

By the time they're pulling into their motel, Bobby's sources have put Bela in Queens, about two hours by Dean.

"Dean," Katherine protests, pushing Sam down into the motel room chair by his shoulders. "Queens is four hours away."

"I'm driving, though," Dean says. Katherine sighs, shaking her head.

"So what are we doing here, then?" Sam asks.

"You and your bad luck are staying here," Dean states. "And not getting me and Katherine killed."

Sam frowns, glancing to Katherine. Her cheeks are flushed, and her blue eyes are a little hooded, a little glassy, a little spacey. Sam gingerly points to her. "She's drunk."

Katherine frowns. "Am not!" She protests.

Dean glances to her, then to Sam. "Drunk Katherine is better than Bad Luck Sam."

Katherine giggles. Still on two feet, still steady.

Dena shoves Sam down into the desk chair. "Stay in this chair. Don't. Move. Don't get up to turn on the light, don't get up to turn off the light. Don't lift your feet off the ground—"

"Don't even scratch your nose," Katherine interrupts, weakly lifting her finger to point at Sam. He rolls his eyes.

"Come on, Lightweight," Dean says, hooking his arm around her elbow, and drags her outside. He twists the lock of the door and shuts it behind him, stuffing the key card into his jeans pocket. "You're not that drunk, are you?" He quietly asks. His heart skips a few beats when her pretty blue eyes meet his, all warm and smiley.

"I'm still a perfect shot," Katherine hums with a soft smile. She turns on the balls of her feet and pads towards the Impala. She settles into the passenger seat and crosses her arms as she leans into the door, stretching her legs out on the seat before her. Dean opens the door and she lifts her boots up. He sighs and slides in underneth her legs. "Ya know, it's gonna be more like three hours, even if you drive like a demon outta  Hell," she says, very matter-of-fact.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean sighs, twisting the key in the ignition. He pats her boots and they head out.

Katherine is fine by the time they reach Queens. The sun has just set. Once they pull up to the snazzy, upscale apartment complex, Katherine pops a few pieces of gum into her mouth and follows Dean up the stairs. He does a silent sobriety assessment. She looks tired, but that seems to be normal these days.

Katherine slips in through the front door and immediately disarms the security system—a bobby pin to a little rubber button in the corner and you've got magic. Katherine leans against the glass wall on the other side of the alarm, waiting for the thief to come around the corner with that silly little gun of hers.

Katherine pulls back on the hammer of her pistol and Bela whirls around, facing two hunters with calm expressions.

She looks the same as she did years ago, only her sandy brown hair is shoulder-length instead of reaching to the middle of her back. Bright blue eyes, thin brows, a wide mouth, a delicately-sloped nose.

"You forgot your tip," Dean chirps.

Bela smirks, glancing between the two. "Give the foot back, you bitch," Katherine snarls.

"Ooh," Bela tuts. "Testy. He wasn't your boyfriend, was he? Well, he must still be alive."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Oh!"

Katherine grits her teeth. Then she chuckles, looking over Bela's face. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"We've met, have we?" Bela hums.

"Katherine Donovan."

Even Dean saw a little color drain from the woman's face. He practically felt the smugness roll off of Katherine.

"Lovely to see you, KD," Bela drawls.

"Can't say the same."

"I see you're still upset."

"We can hash this out later," Dean snaps. "But right now you're gonna give us the foot back."

Bela giggles. "No, I'm not."

Katherine backs Bela up into the main room of the pad. "You know the damn thing's cursed, right?"

"You'd be surprised the price some people would pay for something like that."

"Not really," Katherine seethes.

"You can have the foot," Bela says after a moment. "For 1.5 million."

"Oh, yeah," the huntress scoffs. "Let me just call my banker."

"How'd you even find the thing?" Dean asks, carefully sliding away from Katherine. He caught sight of the rabbit's foot sitting on the counter above the wine cooler. "Tucked away in the back of some storage place?"

Bela smiles a bit. "I just asked a few of the ghosts of the people it had killed. They were very in tune to its location." She gestures over her shoulder to the ouija board sat atop the fireplace mantle.

"So you're only after yourself, huh?" Dean hums. In perfect time, Katherine shifts to the left enough to hide his hand snag the rabbit's foot.

"Does it really surprise you?" Katherine retorts.

"Being a hunter is so much more noble?" Bela questions. "A bunch of revenge-driven sociopaths trying to save a world that can't be saved."

"Optimistic as ever, I see," Katherine drawls.

"We're all going to Hell," Bela tuts. "Might as well enjoy the ride."

"I actually agree with you there," Dean chirps. "Anywho, this has been charming, but look at the time. KD, we'd better get going. Oh, and we'll be taking this." Dean holds up the rabbit's foot with a smile, and Bela's ever-smug expression drops. "Looks like you're not the only one with sticky fingers. If it's any consolation, I think you're a truly awful person." Bela raises her gun and fires off a shot. It ricochets somehow, and puts a hole through the ouija board.

Katherine immediately lunges for the girl's knees, knocking her legs out from underneath her, and pins Bela to the floor. Restraining her is easy enough. She's a thief, built small for quick paces. Cuffing Bela to a table nailed to the floor is like taking candy from a baby for Katherine. She smiles, kicking Bella's little pistol off to the side, and follows Dean out of the door. "Was handcuffing her necessary?"

"Yes," Katherine retorts. "As beating the shit out of someone is generally frowned upon." She looks over her shoulder and wiggles her fingers at Bela before shutting the door.

"What's your beef with her?" Dean asks, following Katherine down the stairs.

The huntress sighs, glancing briefly over her shoulder at him. "She stole something from me."

"I gathered. Kind of. What, exactly?"

She looks to Dean once more, hesitation clouding her features. "You know the Donovans are historically witches?" She asks, squinting in the sun as she heads for the Impala. "We had this book...the Book of the Damned." She slips into the Impala and waits for Dean to join her. He quickly twists the key into the ignition, keeping the rabbit's foot in his front jeans pocket. "We kept it safe for...dunno. Hundreds of years." She rubs her palm against the leg of her jeans. "Then, a couple hundred years ago, a family called the Stynes stole it from us. They were our neighbors—neighbors of some Donovan ancestor, anyway, from Europe. So the next few hundred years are spent with the Stynes wreaking havoc on the world and the Donovans stealing it back from the family. Back and forth, back and forth. Really long story." She waves it off so nonchalantly, like she's talking about a baseball game.

"They had it for a long while. They built an empire for themselves, protected that book like it was one of their own." Katherine shrugs. "Twenty of our men went in search for that book about sixty-five years or so ago, and only three came back. The Stynes were decimated. It's the job of every firstborn man in the Donovan clan to protect that book, keep its hiding place a secret." Katherine shifts in her seat, focusing on the blacktop passing beneath the car. "Then it came to me. Dad told me about the book's existence when I was ten. He figured since I was hunting anyways, what's the harm in letting me know my responsibilities when I grow up?" Katherine shrugs once more. "Mitch was gone, so...so it fell to me." She breathes out a heavy sigh.

"In early 2005, I...took Bobby to where I kept it hidden. Only the two of us knew where it was. When the Donovans left Ireland in the wake of the potato famine, they went to Georgia, of all places. We have an estate there still, like a hideaway of sorts. There's a family crypt off to the left of the lot, in the back part of the fields. I kept it hidden there.

"I didn't know what to do with the damn thing. I couldn't read it, it's all just...scribbles. So I took him there to help me figure out what to do with it. Burn it or somethin'." Katherine lets out a shaky breath. "Then these four guys show up with automatics and shoot the place up. Bobby and I run out into the field and try to get to the mansion, which is really like an arsenal...but then it all goes quiet. We get some night vision on and go back to the crypt, only to find that book was gone. Tracked the guys down, and they led us to Bela. She even had the nerve to drop by a few months later, smiles and all." Katherine crosses her arms. "Her front four teeth are false."

Dean raises a brow. "And you would know that because..."

"Because I displaced the real ones."

After a moment, he nods. And then it's quiet for a few minutes, Dean chewing on everything Katherine had thrown at him in the past half hour. She watches emotion after emotion roll into the pot simmering underneath the set brow and the cut jaw. Confusion, primarily. Then something like annoyance. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

Katherine lightly shrugs, her shoulders slowly hitching as she carefully gauged his profile. "I didn't think it was important," she quietly explains. "I never...cast any spells or did blood rites or anything." She chuckles. "I'm not a witch."

Another minute or two of simmering.

"If the book was trusted to the firstborn of the family, how did your dad end up with it? Don't you have an older aunt?"

"My aunt left," Katherine tells him. "She didn't want to have anything to do with it."

"Do you know where the book is now?"

"No," she lowly replies. "No. Bobby and I have been looking for that thing ever since."

Dean glances away from the road to her face for the briefest of seconds. Staring out at the blacktop, Dean can see the shadows of her face, the ridges and smooth planes. The wrinkles of worry. The cogs in her brain are turning. "Does your Dad know?"

Katherine glances down to her hands, twisting her mother's diamond ring. It's a form of silent communication. The discomfort would be a red flag to anyone, but to Dean, it's as if she spoke aloud. Dean reaches over to rest his hand on her knee. The span of his palm and the length of his fingers give him enough reach so his fingers can curl under the bend of her knee in the slightest of ways.

"If you had lost something that could bring the world to its knees...something that was your responsibility...would you have told your father?"