The drive to Buffalo wasn't a bad one. We actually ended up in Black Rock, New York. Sam passed Dean's cassette collection back to me to become the DJ for the trip. Though Sam was rather annoyed, Dean and I had a great time trying to get him to sing along with us. It didn't matter how hard we tried, he was too focused on a book.

Getting into the storage facility wasn't difficult. Dean parked the car and we walked into the service elevator to get to the storage unit.

"Man..." Dean sighed.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Just Dad." Dean bent to walk under the elevator's guard door. "You know him and his secrets. Spend all this time with the guy and it's like we barely even know the man."

"Well, we're about to learn something." Sam followed him.

I dawdled behind them. This was something that the two of them needed to do together. It wasn't my dad. I'm sure he had his secrets, but I knew a lot of stuff about him. I guess that was the perk of growing up with a mom still around.

It was a short walk from the elevator to the storage container. Dean quickly unlocked the padlock. After a glance at his brother, Dean opened the sliding door. We all turned our flashlights on, prepared to strike something if it came out. 

As we scanned down the storage unit, we didn't notice anything unusual, until we got to the floor. John had laid a devil's trap at the entrance of the container to sufficiently trap anything of demonic nature that tried to trespass. The only issue was the dark red footprints leading deeper into the unit.

"No demons allowed," Sam said.

"Blood." Dean stepped forward. "Check this out."

His hand held a silver wire. I scanned along it to see a shotgun hidden in an animal skull.

"Whoever broke in got tagged," I said.

"Dear old Dad." Dean smiled fondly. "I got two sets of boot tread here. Looks like it was a two-man job. And our friend with the buckshot in him looks like he kept walking."

"So, what's the deal?" Sam stepped over the tripwire. Dean and I followed. "Dad would do work here or something?"

I looked around at the clutter. It'd be hard to get anything done in this mess.

"Living the high life, as usual." Dean poked around.

After seeing the tripwire at the front, I wasn't too keen on wandering off on my own. I didn't know this man. There was no way to know if there were more traps set, and I wasn't going to be the fool to discover them. I decided to help Sam search the desk for anything useful.

"1995," Dean said. When I turned, he was holding a trophy.

"No way!" Sam walked over and examined it. "That's my Division Championship soccer trophy. I can't believe he kept this."

"Yeah, about the closest you ever came to being a boy." Dean stepped around Sam and picked up a gun. "It's my first sawed-off. I made it myself. Sixth grade." He grinned proudly at me as he pumped the gun that I hoped wasn't loaded.

We quietly made our way toward the back of the container without making any other treasured discoveries. Near the back, there was a door. Sam cautiously opened it. The chain holding it closed had been cut. We all squeezed in and passed our flashlights over the room. 

"Holy crap. Look at this. He had land mines..." Dean looked over one of the tables. "Which they didn't take. Or the guns. I guess they knew what they were after, huh?"

"Hey Dean, Melanie, check this out." We walked over to Sam who pointed out some boxes with inscriptions on them. "See these symbols? That's binding magic. These are curse boxes."

Dean's brow creased. "Curse boxes? They're supposed to keep the evil mojo in, right? Kinda like the Pandora deal?"

"Yeah, yeah, they're built to contain the power of the cursed object." Sam continued scouring.

"Well, Dad's journal didn't mention a whole bunch of stuff, you know? Dangerous hexed items, fetishes, he never did say where they ended up." Dean shrugged.

"No, then this must be his toxic waste dump." Sam sighed. "One box is missing...great."

I rushed over to him and saw the empty spot on the shelf. "Maybe they didn't open it."

"There's only one way to find them," Dean said.

"Security cameras," Sam and I said in unison.

Sure enough, we got two guys walking—well, one guy walking and the other limping—out of the storage container. Jumping from camera to camera, we were able to track them to their car.

"Got it. Let's go." Dean left.

We ended up at an apartment block after Sam traced the plate to its owner.

"Connecticut. Last three digits 8-8-0," Dean said.

Sam checked his notes. "Yep, that's it."

Dean clucked his tongue. "Should've blacked out their plates before they parked in front of the security camera."

"Ready?" Sam asked.

"Let's go see what hell they've unleashed." I checked to make sure my gun was fully loaded.

We quickly but quietly made our way up to the apartment that Sam figured out the guys lived in. Dean led the charge with me in the middle and Sam bringing up the rear. I had offered to go last, but Sam wouldn't let me.

Once we got to the room, Dean picked the lock and popped it open. We leaned around the frame listening to what they were saying inside.

"Let's go, huh? Let's get out of here, let's go have some fun," a masculine voice said.

The three of us barged in.

"FREEZE, FREEZE! NOBODY MOVE!" Dean shouted.

"Don't move." I locked my gun on one of them.

"Don't move!" Sam echoed.

"What is this?" The guy in white asked as he walked toward Dean.

"Stop!" Sam refocused his gun on that guy.

Dean kept his gun trained on the guy in white. "All right, give us the box. And please tell me that you didn't—"

"Oh, they did." Sam peaked down into the open box by the couch.

"You opened it?" Dean shoved the guy in white against the wall with his gun pointed at the guy's heart.

"Are you guys cops?" The man didn't seem nervous.

"Huh?" Dean asked.

"Are you guys cops?" The guy shouted as if we didn't hear him.

"What was in the box?" Dean asked. The man looked at a small lump on the coffee table. Dean looked at it. "Oh, was that it, huh? It was, wasn't it? What is that thing?"

I could see it happening in slow motion but didn't have enough time to stop it. The guy in white knocked the gun out of Dean's hand. It fired. I dodged and fell to the floor. My gun also clattered away. By the time I regained possession of my gun, Dean had fallen through a table and the other guy had tackled Sam.

With everyone's hysteria, I spotted the object on the floor. It was a tawny-colored rabbit's foot on a chain. Without a second thought, I picked it up and jammed it into my pocket. Trusting my gut instincts, I went for Sam first. I shoulder-checked the guy off him and, surprisingly, he fell to the floor even though he probably weighed double my size. I helped Sam up.

"Dean, I got it!" I shouted.

Before I could move toward him, I was staring down the muzzle of a gun.

"No, you don't," the guy in white said.

The man pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Terror fell across his face as he realized the gun jammed. He tried to clear the chamber, giving Dean time to knock the man backward. When he landed, he went limp, unconscious.

"Sam!" Dean shouted, looking past us.

I spotted the other guy training Sam's gun on Sam. I stepped in front of him without a second thought. Somehow, the man moved and caused a hanging bookshelf to collapse on him. He stopped moving, too. The gun went flying as he fell and flew past me. Sam caught it. 

"That was a lucky break." Dean assessed the scene. "Is that a rabbit's foot?"

I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. "I think it is."

"Huh." Dean shrugged.

"We gotta figure out what this thing is and fast." Sam walked out of the apartment.

Dean shrugged as we slowly followed. "I don't know. It could be fun to have some luck on our side."

"Any casinos nearby?" I asked.

"We're not gambling," Sam said.

"Buzzkill," I said under my breath.

*****

"Nothing." I sighed. "I've read through my parents' journals twice, Bee's parents' journals three times, and your dad's five. There is no information about this stupid rabbit's foot."

Dean walked back to the Impala with a paper bag. I furrowed my brows as he got in with Sam and me. He pulled something out of the bag.

"Dean, come on," Sam said.

"Come on, Sam!" Dean passed a handful of scratch cards back to me. "That was my gun he was aiming at her head, and my gun don't jam, so that was a lucky break. Not to mention them taking themselves out, also a lucky break." Dean pulled a coin out of the center console. "Scratch one and win!"

"Dean, it's gotta be cursed somehow, otherwise Dad wouldn't have locked it up," Sam said as I went to town on the scratchers.

I stared at my scratch card in disbelief. "Guys...I just won twelve hundred dollars."

Dean ripped it out of my hand, looked it over, and laughed. "I don't know man, doesn't seem that cursed to me."

"I'm calling Bobby. Maybe he knows what's up with this thing." Sam stepped out of the car.

I continued scratching off the cards and continued to win the jackpot each time. Dean and I giggled like schoolchildren.

"Now, look Bobby, we didn't know." Sam clambered back into the car. "No, I didn't touch it but Melanie did." I could tell Bobby was shouting something on the other end. "Well, Dad never told us about this thing. I mean you knew about his storage place at Black Rock?"

"Put him on speaker," I whispered.

"I knew. Hell, I built those curse boxes for him," Bobby said. "Listen, you have got a serious problem. That rabbit's foot ain't no dime store notion." Outside the car, I caught the glimmer of something hanging on the drain grate. "It's real Hoodoo, Old World stuff. Made by a Baton Rouge conjurorwoman about a hundred years ago."

I got out of the car and picked up the item, it was a gold watch. Dean mouthed, "awesome."

"It's a hell of a luck charm," Sam said.

"It's not a luck charm, she made it to kill people, Sam!" Bobby shouted as I clambered back into the backseat. "See, you touch it, you own it. You own it, sure, you get a run of good luck to beat the Devil. But, you lose it, that luck turns. It turns so bad that you're dead inside a week."

"Well, so I won't lose it, Bobby," I said. Sam rolled his eyes.

"Everybody loses it!" Rage was slowly filling Bobby's voice.

"Then how do we break the curse?" Sam asked.

Bobby sighed. "I don't know if you can." I tucked the rabbit foot into my jacket pocket and zipped it up. "Lemme look through my library and make some calls. Just sit tight."

"Dude!" Dean held up the scratch cards. "We're up fifteen grand."

"Good, we can buy some grub. I'm starving," I said.

Dean started the Impala. "Ask and you shall receive."