"Jess, what do you think?"

Jess sighed, falling backwards on to the motel bed and immediately regretting it when the mattress barely moved beneath her.

Those five words were fast becoming her least favourite words because they were rarely uttered as a curiosity.

No, nine times out of ten, they meant that Sam and Dean were having an argument and they had decided to drag her into it.

In this particular case, they were dealing with a crossroads demon. Several people had died in the last few weeks, and Sam and Dean were trying to figure out how to save the next one and if they even could.

Or should for that matter.

"I don't know," she said to the ceiling.

"That's not helpful," Dean informed her.

Jess sighed again, pushing herself back up again, wincing as her back muscles protested. They really needed to find a motel with a bathtub. Or, at the very least, a motel with decent water pressure.

"Seriously, I don't know. We need to find someone first."

Sam frowned. "What do you mean? These are human beings, Jess."

"I know that," Jess said calmly. "And I know that they're probably terrified, but it all depends on the circumstances of the deal."

"How can you say that?" Sam asked. "They're going to get dragged to Hell!"

"Okay," Jess said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Sam, you studied law. You must have looked at contract law."

"Yes, but …" Sam began.

"If you sign a contract," Jess continued, before he could argue, "and you understand the contract, and you're not under any coercion to enter the contract, then you are tied to that contract. If they knowingly summoned a demon to make the deal, and they knew they were selling their soul, then surely it's cut and dry."

"No," Sam said. "It can't be."

Jess heaved another heavy sigh, reaching for her purse and some aspirin. "Okay. Forget demons. Pretend you're a lawyer and I'm a new client."

"Should I leave the room?" Dean asked with a smirk.

"Role play jokes aside," Jess said, rolling her eyes. "My house is being repossessed and I need you to help me."

Sam hesitated, glancing from her to Dean.

"Go on, hot shot," Dean said, grinning. "Help her."

Sam shrugged. "Okay, why is your house being repossessed?"

"Because I bought a car ten years ago," Jess answered.

Sam frowned. "I don't follow."

"Ten years ago, I bought a car," Jess repeated. "When I bought the car, it was explained to me that if I bought that car for the advertised price, which was far lower than market value, in ten years time the salesman would repossess my house. I was given a contract, I read it carefully and it said just that, and I signed the contract because I wanted the car. Now ten years have passed and they're going to repossess my house. Help me."

"I can't," Sam admitted.

Jess smiled. "Why not?"

"Because you entered into the agreement and you knew what you were getting yourself into," Sam answered. "But this isn't cars and houses, Jess; this is people's lives. There are times that you might be able to take that to court and claim emotional vulnerability but in this case surely you need to keep trying."

"Which is why we need to find a victim," Jess said. "One that hasn't already died, I mean. There's only box at the crossroads and the contents were really old, which suggests that only one person summoned the demon a long time ago, but that demon is hanging around and picking up victims, so do they actually know they're gambling their lives away? If not, then you're right; we should try and help them. However, given that we're dealing with Hell, I'm willing to bet that they're not that bothered about rules like that."

"So we're still back to the original question," Dean said. "How the hell to we save these people from something we can't even see?"

In the end, it turned out not to be as cut and dry as Jess had thought either. Evan Hudson hadn't summoned the demon, but he had certainly known what he was doing when he made the deal.

That he had made the deal to save his wife from dying of cancer further complicated matters.

They had managed to save him in the end - while Jess and Sam stayed with Evan, to keep him inside the protective circle, Dean had headed out to deal with the crossroads demon.

However keeping him safe from something that they couldn't see was not exactly the easiest thing.

Finally Evan practically collapsed to the floor, sobbing in relief: the hell-hounds had disappeared.

Even then, Jess didn't relax herself until Dean returned, telling them that he'd made a deal with the demon - he would release her from the devil's trap, if she broke the contract.

Jess's concern, however, lay more with the look on Dean's face - he looked like he was about to throw up.

As soon as they got back to the motel, Jess decided to take her moment. "What else?"

"She confirmed it," Dean muttered, face almost buried in his hands. "Dad made a crossroads deal."

Across the room, Sam froze. Whether it was the confirmation, or the fact that Dean hadn't even tried any kind of posturing or misdirection, Jess didn't know, but she gave him a smile, and squeezed Dean's arm. "She could have been lying."

"She wasn't," Dean said tiredly. "She offered to bring Dad back. Before the demon left the host, she told me I should have taken the offer."

"Trying to mess with your head," Jess said calmly. "She's a demon, Dean - what do you expect?"

Dean lifted his head and managed to crack a smile. "He made a deal, Jess."

"He didn't make a crossroads deal," Jess said, almost certainly. "First of all, we know what ingredients he already had to summon a demon, and it wasn't the crossroads box ingredients. Second of all, if it was a crossroads deal, why didn't he get ten years like everyone else?"

"Because they knew he'd be difficult and try to get out of it," Dean guessed. "Either way, he's dead because of me."

Personally, Jess could almost see Dean's point - certainly it wasn't Dean's fault that John made the deal, and certainly she was very (selfishly) glad that he had.

However she did have trouble understanding the logic of making sure someone didn't go to Heaven early and that in return you would go to Hell, possibly when you wouldn't have before.

Then again, it was likely that John didn't believe in Heaven, so maybe he thought wherever Dean was going would be just as bad as Hell.

Or maybe he felt guilty for dragging Dean and Sam into the situation in the first place.

Or maybe he was just being a parent.

Whatever the reason, none of this would make Dean feel any better.

"As you have told us time and time again," Jess said, "your Dad was a genius. Maybe not academically, but he was a smart man. He was perfectly capable of making his own decisions. All you can do now is try to make sure that his sacrifice meant something."

"Dad taught us a lot," Sam added, apparently now back on safer ground when it came to comforting his brother. "That's his legacy. We're his legacy. So we save as many people as we can, because that's what he would have wanted."