that's the one, Beverly. have you read it? (i'm currently obsessed.)

No, I'm currently working through Tanya Huff's series, from which the Blood Ties tv series is adapted. I'm liking those quite a lot. And then I have the whole Dresden Files series to read (we picked those up at the local secondhand shop). And I just ordered Kat Richardson's Poltergeist. H and I both loved her first one, Greywalker.

So many books, so little time... And these are just the genre books!

Question for the SPN hivemind:

I watched Crossroads Blues again last night. Is there a reason why it wouldn't occur to Sam to do what Dean did in that episode, and summon the demon Dean made the deal with and trap it?

The demon told Dean that if Sam tried to pull a fast one, it would be very bad (meaning that she said one or both of them would die, though my memory is faulty on that part).

The demon told Dean that if Sam tried to pull a fast one, it would be very bad (meaning that she said one or both of them would die, though my memory is faulty on that part).

She said if Dean tried to pull a fast one, as I recall.

I think it would occur to Sam, but that the same threat she held over Dean when he had her trapped, crawling out of hell blah blah blah, would hold.

I thought the wording was, if Dean tried, or helped anyone else try, to get out of the deal, then Sam drops dead on the spot. That doesn't mean that Sam can't try to nullify the deal, but Dean's too afraid he'll mess up, and die again. It was unclear in her "then the deal is off" whether if the attempt failed and Sam died, that Dean's soul would still be forfeit.

What was it she said? "You try to weasel your way out of it?" Something like that.

Also, there's the part where villains never fall for the same trick twice. We're reasonably to understand that it's the same crossroads demon in both cases, so, unless the writers get really desperate, I think not.

(Which is not to say that Sam mightn't come up with something else worth bargaining for, but, it probably won't be as simple a trick.)

Yes, but she was speaking directly to Dean, and he could--or Devil-and-Sam-Winchester could--make a good case that her "you" was not collective. So as long as Dean doesn't help, Sam can search and research as much as possible, and so can anybody else.

Or that's my interpretation, anyway. I could be wrong.

Yeah, see, that different-actresses thing confused me. Especially since it was a different crossroads, too. Shouldn't there be one for every corner, like demonic hookers?

My understanding was that Dean could in no way try to weasel out of it, or help anyone else do it. Leaving Sam free to try. But yeah, the threat for Dean is that if Sam does, the deal is off, meaning Sam is dead again.

I get that villains shouldn't fall for the same trick twice, though. Makes sense.