When Kurt walked through the front door he was immediately questioned about where he had been all day.  Thinking better than to tell his dad he had spent the day at Blaine’s apartment, where he lived alone, learning about devil’s traps and other paraphernalia, he decided to tell his dad that after they visited Quinn at the hospital he and Blaine went to lunch and spent the rest of their day at the mall.

“And you didn’t buy anything?” his father questioned.

“We were just window shopping.” Kurt invented.

Burt still looked skeptical, but decided to let it go.  Finn had invited Rachel over for dinner and she had offered to cook, so tonight they were eating some kind of vegan tofu dish that Finn pushed around on his plate and Burt washed down with large gulps of diet soda. 

“You could have asked Blaine to stay for dinner, sweetheart,” Carole told Kurt, “We always love having him over.”

“He couldn’t stay tonight,” Kurt explained, “His brother is in town.”

“Brother?” Burt asked, “You never mentioned that Blaine had any siblings.”

“Oh no,” Rachel gasped, “He doesn’t go to any of the schools we’re competing against does he?  We can’t afford to have any competition that can rival Blaine’s charm and talent –“

“No, Rachel,” Kurt mumbled, “Cooper is a lot older than Blaine and they don’t see each other often.  I only just met him the other day.”

“Isn’t that weird though?” Finn interjected, “I mean you guys have been dating for like –ever.  That would be like you just introducing Blaine to me yesterday.”

Kurt glared at his stepbrother.

“Things are just….. different with his family,” Kurt insisted.

Finn shrugged and went on trying to pick out the edible parts of Rachel’s meal.

“Everything okay between you two?” Burt asked, looking concerned, “After the other night and all?”

“Of course,” Kurt asserted, toying with his promise ring, “That was just a misunderstanding.  We’re fine.”

After that the topic was sufficiently dropped and they finished their dinner while listening to Rachel’s ideas about costume designs and choreography for Nationals, which consisted of a horrifying combination of knitted knee socks and tap routines.

*

Kurt lay on his bed flipping through the latest Vogue, but was unable to concentrate on the words of the articles or the pictures.  Eventually he gave up and flopped back onto his pillows to stare blankly at the ceiling.

He glanced at the clock on his nightstand.  7:30pm.  Kurt felt like it should be three in the morning with everything that had happened that day.  He kept waiting for the craziness of the entire situation to hit him and to have a nervous breakdown about it, but somehow the moment hadn’t come yet and he didn’t think it would.  Even he was surprised by how well he was taking it all in. 

When your boyfriend tells you he believe in ghosts and that he’s a ghost hunter, you’re supposed to demand that he never contact you again, Kurt told himself.  But despite the absurdity of the situation, Kurt believed everything Blaine had told him.  He had to.  How else could he explain what had happened on Route 81?

Seeing a ghost wasn’t anything like the types of things Kurt had seen in the movies.  He had always thought that a ghost would be some wispy creature floating aimlessly while making ominous noises.  Kurt wasn’t religious at all and he didn’t really believe in an afterlife, but he often wondered about the existence of spirits and that sort of thing.  Although he always doubted they existed, he never expected spirits to be physical, violent beings that could actually impose bodily damage to him.

But its not just ghosts, he reminded himself.  Blaine had mentioned werewolves, vampires, and alluded to a dozen other kinds of monsters lurking out there.  How was it that all of this was real?  If this stuff really did exist, how could he be so unaware of it before?  Probably because of hunters like Cooper, he thought.  Kurt imagined how many other hunters were out there.  Even just in Ohio there had to be more than just the Andersons.  Kurt understood Blaine’s opposition to a life on the road, always having to watch your back, and getting involved in identity forgery and things of that sort.  But Kurt had to admit, he did find the work that hunters did quite admirable.  Sure, they could easily sit in their own homes and only use their knowledge when they or their families were threatened, but instead they used it to protect everyone else who was ignorant of supernatural dangers; Just like real life superheroes.

Somehow, despite everything, Kurt was relieved that he knew about all of this now.  He completely understood Blaine’s reasons for keeping him in the dark –he probably would have done the same thing.  He was mostly just happy to know the reason why Blaine had kept so much from him in the past.  Kurt knew that Blaine loved him –but it was obvious that he was holding back. 

When Kurt first met Blaine he appeared to be the epitome of confidence and suave.  But Kurt soon learned that everybody has their insecurities and their secrets.  Despite the fact that he got almost every lead in the Warbler, Blaine often downplayed his talent and seemed to have little confidence in his own abilities.  He found that Blaine was always strangely vague when describing his family, supplying just enough information so that he wasn’t suspicious.  Before today, Blaine had told Kurt that his mother had died in a house fire (which was technically true), that his father worked for the family business (which was technically true), and that he and his family weren’t very close, so he didn’t mind staying in the dorms at Dalton over breaks and holidays (definitely true).  However, the one thing that Kurt still couldn’t figure out was why Blaine never told him about Cooper.  He never even mentioned him before and Kurt didn’t understand it.  They seemed to get along well enough with each other, but Kurt knew there had to be more to the story.

But that was for another day.  Right now, Kurt was faced with the dilemma of being thrown into a world full of supernatural concepts and creatures that he didn’t yet fully understand.  He got up and went over to his desk where his laptop was open.  He went onto Google and searched hunters, ghosts, spirits, werewolves, vampires, demons, supernatural monsters, exorcism….

Most of the stuff that came up was either about Twilight, various horror movies’ IMDb pages, or links to the homepages of various ‘ghost hunting’ reality shows. 

Kurt sighed.

He was going to have to ask Blaine more about this to get any definite answers.

Kurt made his way upstairs to grab a soda when he saw that Carole was on her way out of the house. 

“Where are you headed?” Kurt asked her.

“I have to go back to the hospital,” she sighed, “One of my psych patients is having an episode.  It’s that girl, Melissa Thompson.  She used to be in the grade below you and Finn.  You probably remember, she was in that awful car accident about a year ago on Route 81 –“

“Wait,” Kurt interrupted, “Route 81?  What happened in the accident?”

“Well, Melissa was texting and driving at the same time.  She had her eyes away from the road for too long and ended up hitting another car.  Both passengers were killed, but Melissa walked away uninjured,” she explained, “Afterward, Melissa became seriously depressed and felt tremendous guilt about the incident.  She was supposed to be sent to a juvenile detention center for her crime, but eventually she started telling her therapist that the ghost of the woman she hit was appearing to her.  So, as you can guess, she’s been at the hospital ever since.”

Kurt was stunned into silence.  Now that he thought about it, he did remember hearing about the accident.  It was quite a long time ago, so he barely remembered the details, but he remembered that a McKinley High student in one of the younger grades had been in an accident involving texting and driving.  The school had all of the students attend a mandatory assembly explaining the dangers associated with distracted driving after that.

“Kurt, sweetie, is everything okay?” Carole asked, noticing her step-son’s silence.

“Yeah,” Kurt said quickly, “Just tired.  Good luck at the hospital.”

Kurt raced back into his bedroom and opened the Lima newspaper’s website and search for the story about Melissa Thompson’s accident.

Teen Texter Kills Woman and Her Five-Year-Old In Crash

The article went on to describe the details of the accident explaining that the impact of the crash caused Tiffany Hawthorne and her five-year-old daughter Emma to die instantly.  The cause of the crash was determined to be the fact that Melissa was sending a text message to her friend instead of watching the road.

Kurt scrolled down to find a photograph of the aftermath of the crash.  The car identified as belonging to the Hawthornes was a sky blue minivan.  The front end of the car was completely crushed in.

Kurt’s stomach flipped when he realized that this car was exactly the same as the one that had been chasing them earlier that day.

He quickly texted Blaine to tell him what he found out.

To: Blaine

From: Kurt

I think I found something

about the R81 case!

Text me back asap!!

In his rush to find out more about the Melissa Thompson crash Kurt had completely forgotten to get his soda when he was upstairs.  He headed into the kitchen to get one when he noticed Finn sitting alone on the couch watching television.

“Where’s Rachel?” Kurt asked him.

“She left a little while ago,” Finn answered.

“Already?”

“Yeah,” Finn said sheepishly, “I made a comment about her tofu stuff and she kind of freaked out.  It’s her loss though.  She texted me and said that there’s tons of traffic, so she has to take a detour on Route 81, which is totally out of the way.”

The blood drained completely from Kurt’s face.  Before he knew what he was doing he was pulling on his jacket and grabbing his keys.  When he was in his car, he put his phone on speaker and dialed Blaine.

“Hey, Kurt!  I was just –“

“Blaine we need to get rid of that ghost now!”