The hammering on his hotel room door tore his attention away from his game.

“Damn, is it time already?” Nick asked himself as he looked at his watch. He’d been playing for a couple of hours but it felt like minutes.

“Dude, come on” Howie was calling on the other side of the door.

Nick stopped his game and let his band mate in “I’ll just be a minute” he said as he walked towards the bathroom.

A few minutes later the boys and a couple of security were making their way down to the vehicles which would take them to the venue. By now even more fans had gathered in the hotel lobby, their cameras at the ready, hopeful of a picture with a Backstreet Boy or two.

“Nick, Nick” called a pretty blonde “can I get a picture with you please?”

“Brian, how’s Baylee?” called another fan in a homemade Backstreet t-shirt.

“I love you AJ” called another.

“Do we have time for a few photos with the fans?” Brian asked.

“We have a few minutes” Adam, a member of security replied.

And so the boys stopped for a few minutes for pictures before being whisked away to the cars.

“Man, I swear you have the weirdest fans” AJ laughed as he looked at the ‘gift’ one of the fans he given Nick. It was a scrapbook filled with photo-shopped pictures of Nick and the girl in various situations - first date, weekend away, wedding, etc.

“Tell me about it!” Nick laughed, but knew that the weird ones were a small minority.

A short while later they were in their dressing room getting ready for the show, when Brian noticed the bruises covering Nick.

“How did you do that? Fall out of bed again?” he laughed.

“No clue” Nick replied.

“Only Nick could get himself covered in bruises like that and not know how” Howie laughed.

“I’d better keep my shirt on tonight, can’t have the fans thinking you guys are beating me up” Nick laughed.

“I’m sure you’ll make up for it” Brian teased.

“You bet” Nick replied. He could get the girls going no matter what he did. A thrust here, a crooked smile there, that’s all it took to drive them crazy.

And that’s exactly what he did.

~*~

Getting in to the office was easy enough, as was finding out what they’d come for. What they didn’t anticipate was being caught.

“Stop right there” said a voice and Dean and Sam turned to see a man aiming a gun at them “who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

“FBI, I’m Agent Northman…” Dean began.

“If you’re FBI then I’m Santa Claus” the man smirked, his finger resting on the trigger.

“Sam and this is my brother Dean” Sam replied, eying the man with caution.

“That’s better. And what are you here for?” he asked, looking at the file in Dean’s hand.

“You wouldn’t believe us even if we did tell you” Dean muttered.

“Try me” the man said “I think you‘ll find that I‘m quite open minded“.

“How about you put the gun away first” Sam suggested.

“How about you tell me what you’re doing here first?” he said and kept the gun exactly where it was.

“OK, you win” Dean replied.

The brothers briefly filled the man in on what they were doing and were surprised by his response. He lowered his gun.

“Y’know, I had my doubts about that game, but no one would take me seriously. You can‘t exactly go around telling people that you think a game is jinxed and expect to be taken seriously. So I kept my mouth shut and instead tried to hold off the release date by falsifying the marketing reports, making out that the game needed a bit more tweaking before it‘s release date. I don’t know what it is about that game, but I know for sure that Jason wouldn’t have taken his own life” the man replied.

“You worked with Jason?” Dean asked.

“Yeah” he replied “my name’s Zach Manson and I work in the creative and design department here”

After talking with Zach for a while longer, the Winchesters left the office, assured by Zach that any trace of the game held there would be destroyed. He didn’t go into details on how he’d achieve this, but Dean and Sam believed and trusted him.

“Looks like we’ve got some people to track down, including a member of a boy band” Sam said as he looked over the names on the list again.

“Would the world really miss another talent less pretty boy?” Dean teased.

“Let’s just hope we get to him before something else does” Sam replied.

“We’ve got to find out what kind of thing we’re up against first and that means looking through this lot and that witchcraft book” Dean said as he waved the file.

“Back to the motel then?” Sam suggested.

“How about we go over it all over a couple of beers instead” Dean replied.

As they downed their ice cold bottles of beer, the brothers poured over the details they had to hand. They went back to the motel a couple of hours later and performed the spell Sam had discovered to undo the evil magic which had cursed the game.

But that wasn’t enough and one more person died that night.