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The stretch of road between Beacon Hills and Willow Pass was almost always quiet, although Stiles wouldn’t quite call it peaceful. He felt fondly toward this part of the journey before the half-wild, twisty uphill drive into the village for a myriad of reasons. It had a certain tension too, a curious rigidity in the air. John said it was the magic rolling down the mountain, but Stiles thought it had less to do with Willow Pass than the stretch of road itself, a path of possibilities waiting around every sinuous curve. Stiles was in a good mood. He was returning from Beacon Hills—a small town itself, but still bigger than his village—after visiting some friends who were from a coven back east. He picked up some things too, just little odds and ends that were hard to come by in Willow Pass, and the rental car was doing fine on the drive, making him glad he had opted to leave the jeep home with the others. No doubt Erica had already been messing with it, but at least it was home rather than leaving him stranded somewhere again.He was over halfway home, there were gifts and recipe books in the backseat, and the gray clouds were finally clearing away. He rolled the windows down, smiling to himself as cool, fresh air whipped through the car, rustling the bags in the back. Music pulsed from the speakers, some upbeat pop song he didn’t recognize but enjoyed nonetheless. He slowed as he approached a tight curve, humming to himself. The car jerked, rocking on its wheels like something hit the back end.He swore, gaze darting to the mirror, but no one else was around. The back jerked again, making the car swerve. “Shit!”The trunk burst open with such force that it slammed closed again. It flew open once more, bouncing off the back window, and a man leaped out. Stiles slammed on the brakes. The man hit the road with a painful-looking smack, skidded several feet, and lunged up snarling. Stiles twisted in his seat, gaping, frozen. He had to force himself to move, reaching out blindly to put the car in park.The man was turning in circles in the middle of the road, breathing hard like he was the one who just got a shock.Stiles got out, leaving the keys in the ignition after a moment of hesitation. He would rather be able to jump in and go, even if he ran the risk of the guy taking off in the car. He approached cautiously, taking in details—claws, fangs, glowing red eyes, very convincing snarl. Werewolf. His blue shirt was torn at the shoulder and neck, and the collar had blood on it. The blood was smeared down his throat and left arm, but the wounds were long gone. Stiles kept his distance. The werewolf whirled on him. “Where are we?” he snarled. Stiles blinked. “Why were you in my trunk?” He wasn’t sure what to make of this display; it would have given the werewolf away if Stiles were human, but maybe he knew he wasn’t. Still, Stiles believed he was the one who should be asking questions, all things considered. The werewolf shook his head. “Who are you?”“No, who are you?” Stiles shot back. His jaw flexed. He should have looked threatening with his claws out and eyes gleaming but he just seemed confused. His gaze shifted from the trunk still hanging open to the trees on either side of the road. He was still breathing hard, blowing air out of his nose like a bull. “Are you trying to get somewhere?” Stiles asked at last. The werewolf glowered at him. He bit back a sigh. “Do you need a ride?” he offered. “Is that why you were in there?”His fangs flashed. “No! I don’t know how I got in there.”Stiles’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. Hmm. That’s not good.” He tapped his jaw as he thought. “Do you want me to drive you back to Beacon Hills? Or—I’m heading up to Willow Pass, up the mountain a ways. I can take you as far as that.” The werewolf looked blank for a moment before turning his scorching glare to the road ahead. Unease pricked at him, made his palms itch. Something aside from the obvious (werewolf in his trunk) was wrong here. He stepped sideways, keeping the werewolf in view, and checked the trunk. It wasn’t damaged on the outside, but magic could unlock it easily enough without a trace. He looked at the werewolf again. “You don’t know how you got in there?”His jaw worked. “No,” he said at last. “I woke up in there.”Stiles nodded carefully. “Why don’t I give you a ride so we can figure out who put you in there?” He cracked a smile. “You can ride up front with me now.” He pressed his thumb into his palm, trying to keep his expression neutral. The werewolf’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded tersely.He needed to find out why and how this werewolf ended up in his trunk, and whether or not he was lying about not remembering how he got in there. If he was lying, why bother jumping out and drawing attention to himself? Stiles certainly hadn’t noticed he was in there. The best way to get answers, he figured, was to bring him along and be calm; if the werewolf was telling the truth and he hadn’t gotten in the trunk on purpose, he might have some idea of who had done it and why.“Okay! Let’s go.” Stiles reached for the trunk, pausing to inspect the interior—just his bat was inside, right where he put it, and claw marks where the werewolf tried to find the emergency latch. Magic vibrated inside, not his and not familiar in any way. He frowned. He didn’t know this werewolf, and he couldn’t think of anyone he knew who would do this. He slammed the trunk shut and climbed in the driver’s seat. “I’m Stiles,” he said while buckling in. The werewolf was already buckled and pressed against the door, muscles rigid, straining to stay as far away as possible in the small space. “Oh-kay,” Stiles breathed. “What is your name?”He said nothing, staring straight ahead. He sighed. “Okay, well, we’re heading to Willow Pass. If you’re in danger, the protections around town will help hide you.” He put the car in drive. “I’m not exactly pleased either,” he added. “I’m going to get charged for the damage in the trunk and I wasn’t expecting a stowaway.” “Stowaway-!” the werewolf blurted, then stopped, glaring ahead again. “I told you I don’t know how I got in there. You—you abducted me.”“I did not!” Stiles jabbed the button for the radio, annoyed. “If you’d like help,” he shot him a look, “I am more than happy to offer it, but I had no idea you were in there.”The werewolf’s jaw ticked once more. Without turning his head, he nodded once.Stiles nodded as well, trying not to roll his eyes. “What happened before you woke up in the trunk? Were you at home or out somewhere?” After a long, long silence, Stiles glanced at him. He was pale and clammy-looking. “Are you going to be sick? Do—do you get car sick?”After a moment, he nodded. “Ah.” Stiles slowed on another curve. “There’s a bag behind my seat. I’ll save the questions until we arrive, then?”“Yes please.” Sweat beaded on his forehead. Stiles grimaced and mouthed, “Wow,” to himself. He didn’t know werewolves could get car sick. The road to Willow Pass only got rougher the closer it got to town, winding upward, surrounded by trees and thin, twisting paths that disappeared into the woods, beckoning travelers away. Stiles glanced at the werewolf; he still looked pretty rough with his fists clenched on his legs, breathing hard through his nose, jaw locked. Stiles focused on driving as carefully as possible. Please don’t puke, he chanted silently. Please. He thought about how he was going to explain this to the others at home but without knowing more himself, he had no way to prepare. He flexed his hands on the wheel, gaze skimming to the side and back. Whatever was going on, he could handle it. He just had to wonder who would put a werewolf in his trunk and why.
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As they neared the border of Willow Pass, the werewolf straightened in his seat, looking around with interest. His hands unclenched slightly. Stiles bit down on a smile as they rounded a curve and the willows came into view.The werewolf gasped. The entire village of Willow Pass was surrounded by seventy-seven weeping willow trees, larger by far than normal willows with lovely, dramatic leaves that clung on until deep winter hit. The two at the entrance of the town curved together over the road like the reaching hands of lovers. Even Stiles wasn’t immune to the sight, and he’d grown up with them.The protective magic around the town brushed over them as Stiles drove through. He put his hand out the window and held it up, just skimming the lowest swaying leaves as they passed under them. They still had about fifteen minutes to go, through the center hub of town, past the town altar—a gigantic slab of silver-gray stone—and down the bumpy side street that led to the Stilinski home. The altar was covered year-round in tokens until they were cleared away during the Guiding Star Festival at the end of November. “It used to be much smaller,” Stiles explained as they trundled up the partial-gravel driveway. “But we’ve had to make room.” He glanced to the side. “When we get in, I’ll get you a glass of water to settle your stomach a bit.” The werewolf nodded but he was staring straight ahead still, watching the Stilinski house come into view. The main part of the house was a fairly average brick home with a cracked, paved walkway and a porch with wooden handrails, but sweeping off to both sides like short wings were the extensions. The one on the right was mostly large panes of glass with dark wood edges, while the left was wood and windows, where the new bedrooms were. In the back, there was another extension, a study-slash-practice room; they had expanded the kitchen too, to make room for the potions they often had brewing along with dinner. Stiles sometimes missed the smaller, cozier home of his childhood, but the expansions and the people who came with them were worth it. He parked next to the jeep, which looked suspiciously unaltered. “Okay. I just have to grab my stuff, then we can head inside.” He had to juggle his bags, nearly tipping over when he picked up the stack of recipe books. He grabbed his bat from the trunk—it groaned when he closed it, which did not bode well—then rounded to the passenger side of the car. He tapped the window lightly with the end of his bat. “Are you coming in?”The werewolf glowered and got out, stepping around the car stiffly. Stiles rolled his eyes. “The door is probably unlocked,” he said, teetering on the bottom step. “We get a little lax about things like that around here, you know how it can be with witches.” He used his elbow to get the door open, leaning in with his eyes narrowed. The fact that they hadn’t been pounced on yet put him on edge. The house was quiet so far, and smelled like cinnamon. “Hmm.” He shouldered the door all the way open, stepping in. “Hey,” he called, “I’m back.” He listened as the werewolf cautiously followed him inside, then shrugged and closed the door. “Kitchen is this way.” He set the bags on the cluttered dining table and leaned his bat against the wall beside the kitchen door. The smell of cinnamon got stronger.He looked around, but nothing was on the stove. He shuffled the recipe books onto a clear counter, then grabbed a cup for the werewolf. He paused with his hand on the faucet and then smiled to himself. “Here you go. Why don’t you have a seat?” He pulled a chair out, shoving a pile of papers to the middle of the table. The werewolf took the cup but remained standing. Stiles bit back a sigh. “Well, if you don’t know why you were-” He spun in place, throwing his hands up.Isaac tripped into sight, cursing. “How did you know?” He scowled, shoving his hair out of his face. There was a red welt across the back of his hand. “You need more practice. I know you’re there too, Scott. And Erica…” He tapped his jaw, then pointed at the short hallway to the living room.She shimmered into view scowling. “You’re all getting better,” he offered. She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and pointed at the werewolf. “Who is that?” “I—well…”Scott laughed from the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe. He had one of the new recipe books in his hands. “Did you find another one?” His jeans were torn on one leg with a reddish stain that explained the cinnamon smell. The ritual he was working on that morning must not have gone well.Erica stepped out of the hallway. “He isn’t a witch.” She peered closely at the werewolf. Her practice clothes were stained with the evidence of old spilled potions, rituals backfiring, and spells gone wrong, giving her the look of a particularly messy painter. She straightened and cackled. “Stiles, I know picking up strays is your thing, but a werewolf? I don’t think that’s how this works.”Stiles flushed. “For your information, I did not pick him up, he was in my trunk.”Isaac made a face. “Huh?”Erica looked fit to burst, eyeing the werewolf with renewed interest. Stiles waved his hands. “He popped out while I was driving, like some kind of fanged jack-in-the-box!” He caught a glimpse of the werewolf’s face and winced. “But—that’s—that’s no big deal. We still have to figure out how he got into my trunk.” He turned to the werewolf. “So these are Erica, Isaac, and Scott,” he said, pointing to each of them. “They—and my dad—are my coven. The three of them are trainees.”Erica’s brows rose at the word. He shrugged. “Are you in training too?” the werewolf grunted. “Excuse me? Oh. No. I mean, I’m still learning some stuff, but that’s true of every witch. They…started later than I did. But they’re learning fast,” he added with a smile at them. They were all within a year of each other—Stiles was twenty-six, as were Scott and Isaac, and Erica had turned twenty-five three weeks ago—but Stiles had been learning magic since he could walk. He looked at the werewolf. “And this is…”He scowled. “…a very secretive werewolf,” he finished. “Look, if you want my help, I’m going to need something, dude. I just-”“I don’t,” he snapped. “What?”He slammed the glass of water on the table, sending a crack up the side. His eyes glowed faintly red, darting between them all. “I don’t want your help,” he growled. Stiles threw his hands up. “Then why did you come with me?” he asked, exasperated. Another blank look crossed the werewolf’s face. Stiles’s palms itched again. He glared. “I don’t—I don’t know.” He turned and stomped back the way they came, slamming out the door. “Wow. He’s rude.” Erica dropped her hand on her cocked hip. “Was he like that the whole drive?”“How long was he in your trunk?” Scott asked. Stiles scratched his palm. “No,” he said to Erica, “just quiet. And I don’t know.” He looked at the cracked cup. “I only stopped in Beacon Hills, so I guess for most of the drive?” He tapped his jaw. “He burst out of the trunk a few miles before the Twists,” the mess of trails and dirt roads leading into the woods before the entrance of Willow Pass, “and he said he woke up in there.”“Woke up?” Scott closed the recipe book, moving closer. “Like he fell asleep in there?”“Like someone put him there,” Erica guessed. “Right?”“Right. The outside of the trunk wasn’t damaged.”Her eyes gleamed, mouth curving. “So someone conjured a hot guy into your trunk? Can we learn that spell?”Stiles snorted. “Not until after you learn how to camouflage yourself better.”Her smirk vanished. “Ha-ha.”“Actually, I can’t even do that kind of magic. Maybe Dad. I’ve never looked into it.” He sighed, staring at the cup again. “Did he say anything on the drive? How did you not get his name?” Isaac crossed his arms. He was the only one in clean clothes, although they smelled heavily of cinnamon as well. “He was pale and clammy—he said he was car sick.” Stiles rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Can werewolves get car sick?” Isaac wondered. “I don’t even know.” He dropped his hands. “I have to go find him.”“Is it safe?”He wasn’t sure; he managed the drive here without getting mauled, though. “I can’t leave him wandering around. I brought him here.”“Why did you bring him here?” Erica asked. “He was in my trunk. I wanted to find out why.” He waved his hand. “Just stay here and keep an eye out in case he comes back.” He grabbed his bat. “You know what to do if you’re worried he’ll get violent.”“Hide in the sunroom?”“Call the sheriff?”“Trigger the wards,” Isaac said scornfully while Scott and Erica fell over each other laughing. Stiles pointed at him. “And you get to sleep in tomorrow.”“That’s not fair!”He shrugged. “Technically, you guys can sleep in whenever. But Isaac’s the only one who I’ll hold late training for.”Scott pressed his hand to his chest as Stiles was leaving. “What, I’m not your favorite anymore?”Stiles rolled his eyes and shut the door on their laughter. He should have left all of them where he found them, and the same could probably be said for the werewolf he was looking for. “Should’ve turned right back around,” he grumbled. The werewolf was probably from Beacon Hills, although why he hadn’t just said so was a mystery.Stiles shook his head and slung his bat across his shoulders as he walked, resting his wrists on the ends. He knew Willow Pass, knew the vibrations of energies here, and the people. It wouldn’t take long to find someone out of place.
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Stiles found the werewolf in the heart of town, staring up at the seven willow trees that were the center of the village’s magic. The one he was closest to had pale blue leaves swaying in the wind, brushing over his head, caressing his cheeks and shoulders like feelers. The seven trees were each a different, improbable color, changed over the years by magic.Stiles stopped next to him. “They’re very powerful,” he said carefully. “They keep us hidden, they protect us, and we take care of them.” He glanced sidelong at him. “So what do you remember?”His shoulders slumped. “Waking up in the trunk. Before that, nothing.” His next breath was loud, forced out. “Nothing. I know—I know I’m a werewolf. You smell like magic and violets. These,” he gestured at the trees, “shouldn’t be this color. I know—simple things. What a car is, a house, the sky. But I don’t know my name or where we are—where we were coming from.”“Beacon Hills,” Stiles said quietly, but still there was no flicker of recognition in the werewolf’s eyes. He turned his gaze back to the trees. “Well, I know that has to be—frightening. Why don’t you let me try to help you? You know I’m a witch, maybe I can help.” He eyed him. “How do I know you aren’t the one who did this? I did wake up in your trunk.”Stiles opened and closed his mouth. “Huh. Good point, I guess." He reached up to trail his fingers through the blue leaves. His favorite was always the red one, with leaves shimmering like flames on breezy days. “Seems like a lot of work,” he said casually.“What does?” the werewolf asked warily. “Well, taking your memories, locking you in my trunk, then pretending I didn’t. Why not just knock you out again? Sure would have been easier than chasing you down,” he said lightly. The werewolf snorted. He stared up at the trees, shoulders tight. Stiles thought he too would have a hard time trusting anyone if he were in a similar situation, but what other options did he really have? He put his hands in his pockets. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’d like to help you. Let’s try to fix this so we can figure out how it happened, okay?” He wasn’t being entirely selfless; whoever did this to the werewolf had chosen to put him in Stiles’s trunk. Why? Did they choose him on purpose? Could something like this have a chance of being an accident? The werewolf took a deep breath. “Okay.” He glanced sideways at Stiles. “Who were those people?”“Huh?”“At the house.” “I told you, they’re…my coven. Sort of like a pack,” he said with a sudden inspiration, “but for witches. They started late, which is why they’re still in training. We call witches who haven’t been initiated tyros. It’s a formal term,” he added.“Oh.”“To be initiated, they have to be able to perform a certain amount of spells in different difficulties and types.” He waved this away. “It’s not important. Let’s go back to the house. We can get you some food, get some supplies, and see if we can’t have this fixed by tonight.”The werewolf squinted at him. “You think it’ll be that quick?”Stiles didn’t want to lie. He said, “I think it could be. It could also be more complicated than that, but we’ll start small first just to be sure. Memory magic is odd, and can sometimes be pretty simple to do, or it can require a really specific ritual performed at a certain time of day or moon phase.” He shrugged. “Whichever it turns out to be, we’ll handle it.” The werewolf did not look convinced, but he fell in step when Stiles started walking.Erica and Scott were hovering by the door when they made it back, while Isaac rifled through the bags Stiles brought home. He held up a bag of garlic roasted rye chips. “Yes, those are for you.”“Yes!”The werewolf hung back by the door, watching them all like they might sprout fangs. Stiles clapped his hands. “You guys can have your stuff later, we have a project to start on. Isaac, can you go get my kit from the practice room? Erica, I need some clippings of eyebright, rosemary, and spearmint, please. Choose carefully,” he added. “Scott, I would appreciate it if you went to the rental and checked out the trunk. Try to identify the magic, okay? There should be some traces.”The three of them stared at the werewolf for a moment before scattering.Stiles sighed, shaking his head. “Over here, there’s some pizza leftover from yesterday. I’ll warm it up for you.” He grabbed two slices from the fridge, glanced at the werewolf over his shoulder, and grabbed a third before putting them in the oven to warm. The werewolf stood just outside of the kitchen, examining the pictures on the wall. Stiles watched him; he wasn’t lying when he said the solution could be simple, but the whole situation whispered of complicated magic, possibly a curse or even a threat to more than just the werewolf. He had no proof but the prickle in his palms, the unease coiling in his gut. He jumped when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He answered with a wince, turning his back on the werewolf. “Hey, Dad.” He blew out a long breath. “Yeah, I’m home. So I, uh, had an incident on the way home.”“Oh boy. Tell me.”He did, quickly, almost tripping over his words. “We’re working on his memories now, so hopefully we’ll know what’s going on shortly.”John sighed. “Well son, I can’t say I’m surprised. You never seem to make it a full three months without bringing home another stray.” “I can and have—and that’s not the point,” Stiles sputtered. “This is completely different.”“Uh-huh.” The line rustled as he moved the phone away to speak to someone else. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Stiles brought home a werewolf.”Someone on his end laughed. “He’s taking in more strays then?”Stiles felt his face turn red. “Dad-”“I guess,” John said lightly. “Oh my gods! I will talk to you when you get home. Goodbye!” He hung up and tossed his phone on the counter, putting his hand over his face. He scrubbed his cheeks, then grabbed a plate from the cabinet, tapping it on the counter irritably. When he noticed the werewolf watching him, he grimaced, turning toward him. “Sorry about that. It—it has nothing to do with you, they’re just teasing me.” The werewolf didn’t respond aside from arching his brows. Stiles mumbled, “It’s just a—a family joke. Because I’ve brought home animals before.” That was not even the half of it, but he didn’t have time to get into it all. Erica and Isaac clattered into the kitchen while Stiles was retrieving the warmed pizza. “Set it on the counter please,” he said, sliding the pizza onto the plate. He held it out to the werewolf. “You can sit while we do this, if you’d like.”He shook his head. Stiles shrugged. “Did you get it all?” He turned to Isaac and Erica. He could smell the spearmint from here. “Yep.” Erica shook the small silver bowl she brought. “Why the eyebright?”He took the bowl and started tearing up the leaves and flowers. “Any guesses?” His tools in the kit Isaac brought him were his favorites, the tools his mother had given to him learn with as a teenager, carved with sigils by her own magic, so he would be using those instead of the household ones they kept in the cabinets.“Eyebright and spearmint,” Isaac mused, peering over Stiles’s shoulder.Erica added, “And rosemary,” as she pinched some of the needle leaves. She looked back at the werewolf. “Is it to help him remember who put him in the trunk?”Isaac gasped. “Does he not remember anything?”The werewolf scowled, red moving up his neck to his face. Stiles said quickly, “I think it was whoever put him in my trunk, but we have to get his memories back to find out. We’ll start with a poultice. Isaac, grind these up for me please.” He pulled his pestle and mortar out of the red plastic box Isaac brought, handing them over, and then got out a shallow bowl. He flipped the faucet on and let it run, testing it with his fingers and staring out the window above the sink. He didn’t think the problem would be this easy to solve, really, but he had hope. The werewolf ate while Erica stared at him from the middle of the kitchen, both of them ignoring Isaac and Stiles as they worked. Isaac gave Stiles a look and shook his head while he ground the plants into a powder. The poultice took almost no time to make, after the ingredients were ground the way Stiles wanted them. He mixed it all with a little warm water in the shallow bowl and nudged Erica lightly, breaking her staring contest. “Do you mind going to help Scott?”“Fine.” She blew a kiss at the werewolf on her way past.Stiles shook his head. “Alright, come on. Living room.” He grabbed the bowl and his bat. The living room was frigid when they walked in. Isaac hurried across the room to close the window. “Here, go ahead and lay down.” He gestured at the worn, deep blue couch taking up a large part of the room, and leaned his bat against the arm. “I’m gonna put this on your forehead and then guide it with my own magic.” The werewolf nodded, stepping around the side of the couch and facing Stiles with his jaw set. He asked, “Will it hurt?” like he was really asking how badly it would hurt. “It might be a little cold,” Stiles said with a reassuring smile. “If the spell or curse or whatever did this is too powerful for this,” he gestured with the bowl, “then it just won’t work. No pain.”The werewolf looked unconvinced but nodded.Stiles moved a gray throw pillow over. “Put your head here please.” Isaac sat on the much-coveted yellow recliner by the window, perched on the edge and watching with interest. The werewolf laid back and tilted his chin up to look at Stiles, expression set. He nodded. “Alright,” Stiles said, “I just have to…” He brushed the werewolf’s hair back off his forehead, murmuring an apology, then used his fingers to smear the poultice across his brow. Some of the tension eased from his face, making Stiles smile a little. He set the bowl aside and crouched by the arm of the couch, leaning in so he could hover one hand over the werewolf’s face. He closed his eyes, following the gentle trickle of memories—the moment at the willows, full of sharp, acidic fear and confusion; the car ride here, cloudy with panic; the suffocating darkness of the trunk, and then…Stiles frowned. There was magic in there, a tangled, unfinished mess. Like whoever did it hadn’t completed the spell. It felt like an open wound. Stiles’s fingers twitched. He pushed and pulled at the frayed threads, trying to untangle the knots, to free even one memory, but it didn’t budge. He reached out for his bat with his free hand, fingers trailing over the sigils carved into it. His magic sharpened, intensifying, concentrating on the unfinished spell. His breath hissed. A soft, feminine voice said, “Now, Derek, just hold still,” before the tattered ends of the unfinished spell tightened like chains. His hand clenched above the werewolf’s head. Pain stabbed at his chest, then faded. He sat back, frustrated. “Well?” Isaac prompted. Stiles shook his head. “I’m sorry, I think I’ll have to try something stronger.”The werewolf sat up. The poultice smeared on his forehead, seeping into his eyebrows, took some of the severity out of his expression. Stiles offered an awkward smile. “I think I know your name though.”“Oh?” He didn’t seem very hopeful.“I heard someone call you Derek?”His eyes flickered, an almost imperceptible movement like he’d seen something shoot across the room, but otherwise, no recognition crossed his face. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It isn’t familiar.”Stiles hummed, tapping his jaw. He hadn’t really expected him to know the name, but that tiny flinch told him enough. The spell or curse or whatever it was hadn’t taken away his memories, it had locked them up. That was going to be more complicated to solve in the end, he thought. “Can we call you that? What?” Isaac muttered when Stiles shot him a sharp look. “We have to call him something.” He rubbed at the welt on his hand, wincing.The werewolf shrugged. “I guess. I don’t really care.” His gaze swept the living room, over the fireplace and the bookshelves lining the walls. “Can I wash this off?”“Yes. We’ll just have to try something else.” He thought about the unfinished feeling of the spell, the brief pain. “I’m going to have to do some research first though, just to make sure I don’t make this worse.”“How could you make it worse?” Isaac wondered. Stiles just shrugged, because he didn’t know what the spell was supposed to be doing in the first place, so guessing how it was meant to end could lead to disaster—a coma, death, seizures, blindness, loss of all senses, any myriad of things he didn’t want to risk—if he guessed wrong. He also didn’t want to say so in front of him yet. He brushed his fingers against his pants. “Isaac can show you where to wash up and the guest room…if you’re staying here.”“Where else would I go?” he muttered as he stood up.Isaac mouthed, ‘wow!’ behind his back, then said, “It’s this way, Derek.”He stared at him, blank-faced, for a second, then followed him out with a grunt. Stiles waited until they were out of sight to cover his face and groan. He knew this was going to be complicated. He squared his shoulders and headed outside to see what Scott and Erica had found.
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Erica and Scott were both leaning into the trunk when Stiles got outside, shoulders pressed together as they both fought to get a look. Erica finally shoulder-checked him hard enough to knock him out of the way. She pointed a long, delicate dagger into the trunk; the sigils carved into the surface glowed faintly blue. There were only a few—three and a half compared to the twenty odd on Stiles’s bat—but he could feel her magic from the porch. “What did you find?” he asked, watching her turn the dagger as he approached. She frowned. “I don’t…know. It isn’t very strong at all, like whoever did it barely left an impression…which we know isn’t true because of the werewolf.” She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she repeated with a huff.Scott reached around her and dragged his fingers over the claw marks, then rubbed them together. His brows furrowed. “I can’t tell. There’s barely anything here, Erica’s right.” Stiles knew that. He had just hoped he’d missed something in the shock of the moment. “What does that mean?”“The spell was performed somewhere else,” Scott replied promptly. “Or ritual.” Erica glanced at Stiles. “It could have been a ritual.” He tapped his jaw thoughtfully. “Could be. It would make sense—his memories, anyway. This,” he gestured at the trunk, “was a spell. I don’t know what kind, or the magnitude of it—whether it was just a simple unlocking spell to dump him in the car or something more intricate—but it had to happen in Beacon Hills.”“Why?” Scott asked. Stiles huffed. “Because if it happened while I was driving, I would have felt it happen. It had to be when I was stopped, and I only stopped in Beacon Hills.” “Why would anyone do this?” Erica wondered. He shook his head, because that was yet another blank. “I can’t even guess. The only real enemies I have are hunters, and this isn’t exactly their style.” Erica’s mouth twitched, hand tightening on her dagger. “No, it isn’t,” she muttered. “So why would someone do this?”“A bad prank?” Scott ventured. Stiles looked at him. “I don’t think so. Maybe, possibly, some idiot would think putting a werewolf in the trunk is funny—with the werewolf’s permission, perhaps—but the ritual to hide his memories? I don’t think so.”Scott nodded, conceding his point. “Plus,” Erica said, “who do you know—besides Scott, apparently-” he kicked at her- “that would find this funny?”“No one.”“Exactly.”He rubbed the back of his head. “Alright, there’s nothing we can do with this, let’s just go get dinner started.” He frowned at the shredded fabric liner, sighing. Erica knocked into his side, her ponytail slapping his cheek. “Can’t we repair it?” She grinned.“Well…”“Oh, what’s the point of having magic if you can’t use it?”Scott leaned into the trunk again. “It’ll be weaker where the scratches are than it used to be, right?”“Just a little bit,” Erica insisted. “It’s only once.”Stiles shook his head. “Alright. Together, okay?” For such a small mending spell, Stiles didn’t need his bat, but the other two needed the boost from their items. Scott held a smooth, slim willow-wood wand at his side, and Erica adjusted her grip on her dagger, brows bunching in concentration. Slowly, the fabric knit back together, faint blue, green, and red lights sliding over the claw marks until they disappeared entirely, leaving only the faint smell of cinnamon.Scott trailed his fingers over where the scratches were. “Hey, we did it!”“You did! Great job.”Erica rolled her eyes, but she looked pleased too, admiring her dagger with a small, proud smile.“Okay, dinner, let’s move.” Stiles closed the trunk and looked around before following them. It wasn’t the witch hunters’ style to use other supernaturals to do their dirty work, but at this point, he couldn’t rule anything out. He flipped the lock on the front door when he went inside. Just in case.They made garlic butter and herb chicken with asparagus and Erica’s special mashed potatoes—the only thing she could cook—for dinner. John arrived right before it was done, cursing about the front door as he let himself in. “Now you all start locking it?” he grumbled. “Twelve years it’s been unlocked and now you lock it.”Stiles winced. “Sorry!”“Yeah, yeah.”Isaac and Scott were in the dining room clearing off the cluttered table; Isaac was telling him under his breath about “the werewolf” and what Stiles had tried.Derek himself was watching as Stiles and Erica finished up dinner, nose lifted ever so slightly. The house had filled with the warm, homey smell of dinner and the faint kick of magic as Isaac and Scott bounced crackling balls of energy at each other across the table. “Boys,” John intoned as he came into the room. “You’ll scorch the wood.”Stiles snorted. It was the first time in probably a full year that they could actually see the surface of the table anyway. Derek turned to watch just as Scott’s hand whipped out, catching the green ball and smothering it in his palm. Isaac gathered the other three and squished them together, banishing them with a puff of smoke. “Sorry, Sheriff.”Derek looked up. “Sheriff?”John looked amused, hands dropping to his hips. “Yeah, well, the uniform is snazzy, but they pay me to wear it. John,” he said, holding his hand out. He hesitated, then shook it. “Derek…we think.”“Ah. Right.” John studied him for a moment. Stiles fumbled a plate as magic rose in the air, intense, soaring through the house, but by the time he turned around, it had settled again.Satisfied that he’d taken his measure of Derek, John smiled affably. “Well, I’m going to get changed, you all…set the table, I guess.” He shot it a bemused look before he left. “We don’t usually eat out here,” Scott said helpfully. Stiles twisted the plate in his hands until Erica snatched it from him.“What?” she hissed. “Nothing. I just need to fill Dad in, see what he thinks. Later,” he added. “After dinner.”“Obviously.” She grabbed the rest of the plates and swept out of the room. Dinner was a noisy affair with Erica and Isaac bickering over why Scott’s ritual had failed that morning and Scott reporting to Stiles that his wand had touched the candle while he was working, causing the explosion that covered them all in cinnamon. They didn’t hear his explanation and continued arguing. Derek was quiet, Stiles noted, but he ate all the food on his plate and seconds while watching everyone else around the table. John talked about his day, the various shenanigans citizens in such a tiny town got up to, while they all collectively, silently agreed not to mention the elephant—or rather, the werewolf—in the room yet. Stiles listened and ate, thinking over the problem. Protected as it was, Willow Pass wasn’t immune to danger. Such a huge concentration of magic tended to attract the supernatural—good and bad, harmless and dangerous—and there were ways witch hunters could get in. Those ways were rare and chancy—Stiles had heard of witch hunters driven mad by the amulets that let them saunter into magical enclaves like Willow Pass—but they did exist, and just the reminder of that sent his skin crawling. He glanced at Erica; he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what would have happened to her if she hadn’t been in that hospital, if Scott’s mother hadn’t walked into that room at that moment.He scooped up some potatoes and forced the thought away. As much of a threat witch hunters were, they would rather just kill Stiles themselves than stuff a werewolf in his trunk on the off chance he’d attack. And that wouldn’t explain his memories. He couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that the situation was harmless—a ritual gone very, very wrong—but his gut said otherwise. He needed to do some reading, figure out what ritual got interrupted and what could have side effects like this.He felt eyes on him and lifted his gaze to find Derek watching him, brows furrowed, mouth pulled in a harsh frown. While Scott and Isaac cleaned up, Stiles gathered books from the living room shelves, making stacks on the coffee table. “-just feel free to help yourself, leftovers, dessert, drinks,” John was saying. “Did they show you where the guest room is?”“Yes sir,” Derek mumbled. Stiles raised his brows. “Good, let us know if you need anything. We’ll get this figured out,” he added before joining Stiles. “So, any theories?”He shrugged, dropping another book on the pile with a thump. “Not yet. I tried to fix it—gently,” he added, “but it felt too risky to push any harder. There was…” He tapped his jaw. “I think someone started a ritual on him but didn’t complete it, and I have no way of knowing what the ritual was or what they were trying to accomplish—how to reverse it or undo it.” He scowled. “But I’m gonna figure it out.” John nodded. He’d changed into flannel pants and a faded AC/DC t–shirt, with bright orange and green socks. He put his hands on his hips, legs braced shoulder-width apart—his “thinking dad” pose, as Stiles jokingly called it. “I’ll get to looking as well, ask around some, check the old archives. Whoever did this, it was serious—moving inanimate objects is hard enough, but a grown werewolf?”Stiles held his hand up. “Moving? Don’t you think someone just…put him in there? They could easily unlock it with a spell.”“Could be, but when? You checked the trunk before you hit the road,” John pointed out. “You always put your bat in the trunk.”“Well, yeah, but.” Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm, wincing. “Well. Okay. They would’ve had to be pretty fast to physically load him in there without me noticing, I guess.”“Right, which means they moved him magically.” He shook his head. “Be on your guard. I don’t like how this is looking.”“What do you mean?” He dug his nail into his palm.“He could have attacked you in a panic.”“I guess,” he said doubtfully, relaxing. “But there are more direct ways to come after me, don’t you think?”“Yes.” John squinted over Stiles’s shoulder as he thought. “I still don’t like it. Just make sure everyone is on the lookout for anything odd. I’m going to be busy with the festival coming up, so I want you all to be careful.”“We will.” He picked up one of the stacks of books. “Well, you know where I’ll be.”“Try to actually sleep some, okay?”“Sure thing. Night.”He clapped him on the shoulder. “Goodnight.”He heard John sigh behind him, but didn't turn around. He had some reading to do.
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Stiles leaned over the edge of the burbling pond, one hand braced on a cool, damp rock while the other grasped a dropper filled with lavender colored potion. He grimaced when the tiny, sick naiad dug her sharp teeth into the end of it, drinking her medicine with a grumble. “Well,” he said, “now you’ll be more careful about what you eat, won’t you?”She bared her teeth and darted under the vegetation on the right hand side of the pond. It was positioned by one of the big, double-paned glass walls that made up most of the sunroom, one of the larger enclosures they had. Since everything here was only staying temporarily, most of the enclosures were small. Stiles drifted to the young, potted corn plant in the corner to check on a pixie with a badly broken leg, then continued his round of the room to give out food and medicine. Scott usually helped with this as part of his training—he was gifted with medicinal potions and he worked at the vet clinic in town that treated both regular animals and supernatural creatures—but this late at night, Stiles preferred to work alone. Before Scott moved in, Stiles’s habit mostly only extended to lost cats and dogs with a few lost magical critters thrown in, but between the two of them, the sunroom was almost always occupied. He felt eyes on his back and turned away from a moss nest; he found Derek hovering in the open doorway and smiled. “You can come in.”He entered cautiously, peering into a tank where a glowing orange salamander was sleeping. “What…is this?” He held his hand out at the tank, no doubt feeling the warmth pouring off it.Amused, Stiles said, “We call him Cheeto. He’s a baby fire salamander. I’m getting him dried out, then releasing him.” He moved closer as he spoke, focusing on the tank. “They can handle rain and stuff by this age usually but he got stuck underwater.” He shot a look over his shoulder. The naiad guiltily sank under the surface again, but the glow of her eyes gave away her position. “Oh.” Derek turned his head, taking in all the plants and tanks, the shelves of books and potion bottles, the various enclosures. His nose twitched. “There’s…a lot in here.”Stiles laughed, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, it’s my hobby. I just end up finding them,” he said more seriously. “And I can’t just leave them there. The ones I can’t help go to the clinic,” he added briskly, suddenly embarrassed. He turned away, going back to the tiny desk crammed against the wall where he had been working, overflowing with books and notepads. Derek followed at a distance, taking care not to touch anything. He pointed at the wall by the desk. “Is there a reason you carry that around?”“What?” Stiles asked blankly. He turned, frowning. “Oh, do you mean my bat?”Derek nodded. “Ah. It’s called a focus item…now. People used to call them wands, way back in the day, even though not many people use actual wooden wands. They help us focus our magic, make doing spells easier. They’re different for every witch.” “What are the symbols?” He frowned fiercely, staring so hard at the bat that it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. “They’re sigils and runes,” Stiles said slowly. “They…charge the focus item, give it power, and imbue it with our magic. We add them ourselves, so the wand grows in power with us.” He stopped, realizing that Derek looked overwhelmed. He tugged at the bottom of his shirt. “Do you want a tour?” he offered. “It’s alright if you don’t,” he added. Derek shook his head. “I’d like that,” he mumbled almost grudgingly. Stiles turned away to hide his laugh. “Right. We’ll start at Cheeto,” he decided. He worked his way around the room clockwise, explaining each creature and how they ended up there.Moonlight filtered in through the glass walls, hitting the stones Stiles had placed around the room and making them glow, casting silver light through the room. “And that’s it, for now.” He stopped the tour at his desk, tapping his fingers on his notepad. “Other than feeding everyone, I’m mostly just reading, trying to find information about—well, this. You.” He tapped his jaw. “Nothing so far, but we will figure it out.”Derek looked unconvinced. Stiles grinned. “I think we can safely guess that you’re a pessimist.” He pointed at the stacks of books. “Something will be in there, and if not in there, then out there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of town.“Hmm.” Derek looked away, staring at a wide pot of violets. “You told me a coven is like a pack.”“Right…”“How’d you and the others…become one?”“Oh.” Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm. “Well, it’s complicated. We all met in weird circumstances. None of them,” he said quietly, “knew they were witches.” Derek looked shocked, making Stiles laugh a little. “It isn’t that uncommon. Witches marry non-witches, whose children maybe also marry non-witches—the knowledge gets lost, or one generation stops practicing for some reason or another and then, whoops, great-grandma forgot to tell everyone and now little Jimmy—or Scotty, in this case,” he snickered, “is making things happen with just the power of his mind.”Derek lifted his brows. Stiles leaned back against his desk. “Scott and I met on accident, when we were both seventeen,” he shared. “A hawk was caught in some wire fencing and we were both trying to free it. I knew I couldn’t use magic in front of him, so I was getting frustrated trying to get him to leave so I could use magic. Then he just stepped back and squeezed his fists, his face got all red, and the fence split apart and pulled away. He freaked,” Stiles recalled with a chuckle. “The hawk flew off and he was having an asthma attack. Thankfully he had his inhaler,” he said quickly. “I was ecstatic, though—my new friend was a witch too! No need to hide my magic now.” He shook his head, smiling. “He stayed in his home town until four and a half years ago, when he moved here to start his training.” Stiles didn’t mention that before then, he had sent Scott letters with instructions, spells he could try and rituals to attempt, disguised as a roleplaying game.In hindsight, Stiles knew Scott should have had supervision for all of the things he’d sent before ever attempting them. John still didn’t know about it and Stiles intended to keep it that way. He sighed. “I have to give Fiona—she’s fey, sort of like a cat with extra attitude—her medicine. This could get messy, if you want to leave. I wouldn’t blame you.” “I could help.”He smiled, surprised. “Sure, if you want. Thanks.” After the arduous task was complete—after much yowling, biting, and clawing—Stiles suggested they get some sleep.“Right. Okay.” Derek rubbed his arm where some scratches were fading, averting his gaze. “Goodnight.” “Night.” Stiles watched him go, wondering if he would still be there in the morning or if he would take off again, more successfully, while they slept.
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Stiles resisted the urge to stick his head into the guest room just after dawn to check what he already knew. He could sense Derek sleeping restlessly inside and that was enough. Instead, he spent the early hours of the morning walking Erica and Scott through a mid-level cleansing ritual. They were using clear glass bowls of murky creek water to practice on; the spell was also good for flushing poison from a person’s system or venom from their blood, even cleaning wounds if they were too far from medical help. Scott’s candle, green with white stars carved into it, flickered as he squeezed his eyes shut. Ashes stained the fingertips of the hand he held over the bowl. Across from him at her own folding table, Erica used her dagger instead, held horizontal over her bowl as her candle—deep blue with black stars and crescent moons—sputtered. Scott’s fingers twitched.Flames and water shot into the air, making them both leap back from their tables. Stiles flicked his wrist, calming the flames, a trick he learned rather quickly after taking on the responsibility of teaching three tyros. Erica laughed first, lowering her dagger. “Very nice, Scott,” she snickered, making him grin sheepishly. “Whoops.”“It happens. Reset,” Stiles instructed them. They were in the backyard today, working outside while they could before it got too cold. The door opened while Scott was cleaning up his supplies to try again and Isaac stepped out still wearing pajamas. “You guys look tired,” he said cheerily. “I made breakfast.” He trotted down the steps holding a plate of microwaved sausage sandwiches. “Don’t strain yourself.” Erica scowled at her bowl and lifted some dried blue sage, then lowered it with a hum. Isaac set the plate on her table, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Derek stood in the doorway, wearing the same jeans and ripped shirt from the day before. “Any updates?”“Well…kind of.” Stiles rubbed his hands on his pants. “We have to get him some clothes. Do you mind?”Isaac shook his head. “What are you going to try?”“We have to be careful, so I think we’re going to do some rituals meant for meditation and remembrance first.” He knew Derek could hear him. “We’ll start small, like I said yesterday.”“Right.” He glanced over his shoulder at Derek. “Should I get a few outfits? I’ll need his sizes…”“Grab him some of my old sweats—from the attic? I’m sure he’d prefer the smell of dust to strangers. Then you can get the sizes from what he’s already wearing.”“Okay.” He looked back again with a grimace on his face to where Derek was still just staring at them. Stiles just waved and turned to Scott and Erica. “Take a break to eat, I’ll be right back.” Erica snorted behind him as he made his way up the porch steps. “That plan okay with you?”Derek’s jaw flexed, but he nodded, glaring at the tree line over Stiles’s shoulder with his arms crossed. Stiles held in a sigh and took a step back. “There’s nothing in my pockets.”He paused. “Okay…?”Derek’s gaze snapped to his face. “No wallet, no phone, no keys.”“Oh.” Stiles’s face flushed. He should have thought to ask about that yesterday. “Duh. Well…”Derek huffed. “I don’t understand why I would have nothing, except…”“Except what?”“Except if someone purposely took my memories,” he growled. He hummed, tapping his fingers against his palm. “It’s possible,” he said at last. “Considering the unfinished ritual, I figured the memory loss was just a bad side effect, but it is possible the ritual was meant to permanently get rid of them.” He held his hands out. “All we can do is keep an eye out and try bringing your memories back so we can find out what really happened. I made a list of stuff for us to try today.” “Alright,” he muttered. Stiles dug his nail into his palm, but there was nothing to do except try. “Isaac is going to grab you some clothes while I finish up out here.”He nodded, still glaring at the porch.“Right. Okay.” Stiles nodded too and went back to the tables where the other three were.Scott held the plate out. “I saved you a couple.”“Thanks.” He took a bite, sighing through his nose as he chewed. “Alright, try one more time while I watch, then I’m gonna get started helping Derek.” He glanced over the table. “You guys work today?”Erica shook her head. “But I’m on tomorrow.”“Same.” Scott exhaled and shook his hands. “Okay, I think I can do it this time.” He lit his candle with an easy, practiced flick of his wand. Stiles stepped back to observe. Scott rolled his fingers in the little dish of ashes next to his candle once more and put his hand over the water bowl. The yard was quiet, just the gentle rustle of the trees in the breeze and Scott’s unsteady breath. After a moment of hesitation, he set his wand down and picked up a sprig of rosemary and dropped it onto the candle flame. The fire flared, turning green and shooting sparks.The water in the bowl cleared.Erica gasped, and then she, Isaac, and Stiles cheered for him. “Great job!” Her face set with determination. “I’m gonna get it next.”“You will,” Stiles told her. “You’re almost there.”She waved her hands. “Go help the new guy, I need to think.”Rituals were basically the same, but for every witch there were slight variations, so Scott’s method probably wouldn’t work for her. He smiled. “Alright. Just tell me if you need help. Good job, both of you.”Scott was still beaming at his success when Stiles left, gleefully holding the bowl up so the sun could shine through the clear water at Erica’s table. “I’ll go get some stuff from the attic,” Isaac said, pushing the backdoor open. “Be right back.” He sidled past Derek and shot Stiles an exaggerated scowl behind his back before heading to the attic. “You can jump in the shower if you want,” Stiles said awkwardly. “You know, to get the blood off. I mean, you got most of it off yesterday, but there’s still some on your neck and-” He stopped and inhaled deeply. “Shower is that way,” he pointed up the hall and closed the backdoor. “Isaac will bring you some clothes to borrow while he gets you new ones.”Derek just said, “Fine.”Stiles nodded. “Right. I’ll—be in the sunroom.” He swung his arms awkwardly and fled up the hall. In the sunroom, he gathered what he needed for a simple meditation ritual—three candles, a bowl of water, a dish of smoldering herbs—then went around watering the plants while he waited for Derek. He came in ten minutes later wearing Stiles’s baggiest, old plaid sweats and a faded Incredible Hulk t-shirt. Stiles cracked a grin at the sight. “Ha. You’re not going to bust out of that, are you?”Derek looked blank for a moment before huffing what sounded almost like a laugh. He bit his lip to hide his grin and pointed at the cushion he set on the floor. “You’ll just sit there and we’ll work our way backward.” Derek lifted his brow, looking skeptical.Stiles smirked. “It’s not aggressive but it’s still witchcraft.”“If you say so,” he mumbled, sitting down. He leaned toward the herb dish, sniffing quietly.Stiles flicked his fingers. Smoke curled out from the bowl, drifting up and around Derek’s head. “Okay, we’re going to start with last night,” he said, walking a slow circle around the space. “Just focus on your memory of falling asleep. Work backward through the day,” he instructed. “Dinner…coming back to the house…the willows…driving here.” He paced as he spoke, straining to keep his voice even. “The road up to town…the trunk…before then…”Derek sighed harshly, eyes still closed. “Nothing,” he growled. “It’s just quiet.” He jerked his head, annoyed. Stiles circled his index finger midair, dissipating the smoke. “It’s alright, we’ll get it.”He huffed. “Oh, yeah?”Stiles moved around and crouched in front of him to rearrange the supplies. “Yep. We’re starting small, remember?”He glared, fists clenched on top of his knees. Stiles didn’t let it bother him, focusing on swapping the supplies from the crate on his left to the red altar cloth he had spread on the floor in front of Derek’s cushion. “Up next, we’re going to try a scrying glass.”Outside, Erica’s voice rose in triumph, loud enough that they heard it through the glass walls. Her “HAH!” was followed quickly by, “Oh, shit,” and a minor explosion. The air in and around the house hissed slightly. Derek’s face went white, eyes wide. “What was that?” He sounded almost spooked.“Oh, sounds like Erica messed up.”“No, after that.”“That was just a safeguard, so they don’t set the house on fire.”He flinched. Stiles lowered the glass he was holding. “What was that? Do you remember something?”“No,” he said. Then, “I don’t know.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “It just hurt here when you said that.”Stiles nodded slowly but didn’t press yet. He just tucked that away for later, in case it would help them. “Alright, this one yet again involves visualizing, but I’ll be helping more.” He brushed dust off the glass and set it on the cloth. “Ready?”“Yes.”They tried all morning and through lunch to no avail; everything before the trunk led to black, quiet blankness. Stiles studied the ashes on his fingertips after their latest attempt. He was worried they would have to try something drastic and painful. He noticed the frustrated crease in Derek’s brow. “Let’s call it for the day. I need to do some more reading,” he said. “Clearly, I’m missing some component here.”Derek glared down at the altar cloth. “What if they’re just gone?”“They aren’t.” Stiles brushed his hands off and stood up. “We’ll get them back. Come on, I think Isaac is back with clothes in your size.” He held his hand out.Derek grimaced and stood on his own. Before he left the room he said, “Thanks,” in a quiet, awkward voice. Then he fled. Stiles was half-surprised he knew the word. He looked over at his work desk and pressed his thumb into his forehead, over his left eyebrow. He’d give it a couple hours, then take a break.
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Scott, Erica, and Isaac had work the next day, leaving the house to just Stiles and their new guest. Without the three of them adding noise and movement to the house, it felt tense, still, and miserable. Stiles opted to power through it and really dive into the problem. He had Derek at the newly-excavated dining table, breathing potion vapors, while he carefully copied a recipe from a very old book for yet another potion. A consumable one this time. He was getting frustrated, but he didn’t want to push too hard yet. When someone knocked on the door, his pen jerked, digging a jagged blue line across the page. “Damn it,” he muttered. Derek looked up, brows lifted. He pointed with his pen. “Just focus on your vapors.” He walked away, but not before noticing Derek’s full head eye roll. Pessimist, alpha werewolf, apparently dramatic. He scoffed and yanked open the front door. “Mr. Clarke, hi.”Mr. Clarke smiled at him from the front porch. He was slightly stooped over, wearing a blue knit sweater with white deer frolicking across it, his white beard trim and neat. He had a weathered face that Stiles had known since childhood and a room-shaking laugh, a love of cherry flavored candy and teaching children how to pull pranks. He was either in his late sixties or mid-hundreds, and Stiles had never figured out which, as he hadn’t seemed to age Stiles’s entire life. “Hi there, Mieczysław. I’m here to pick up a spell book your dad is letting me borrow, he said it would be ready.” John hadn’t said anything, but sure enough, a spell book sat on the table by the door, where Stiles’s keys were. “Yep, here it is.”“Are you all getting ready for the festival?” he asked, tucking the book under his arm. “Pat and I are bringing wine and probably making some pies.” “We are—brownies this year.” Stiles shifted his weight. “Maybe something else too but I don’t want to tip Isaac off yet.” Mr. Clarke chuckled. “I see. We heard about that—well, we weren’t too surprised, that boy takes his studying seriously. Oh.” His eyes sharpened. “I hear you’ve got a new one,” he clucked. “Is he really a werewolf?”“Uh, yes.”“Well, you make sure you feed him plenty, those shape changers always need more food. You know, my sister-in-law’s daughter’s husband is a werewolf, and they’re coming to the festival—their kids are a riot, I feel a bit bad for them because the kids are all mixed, you know. I’m surprised the house is still standing. Werewolf and witch-”“Huh.” Stiles frowned. “Can that happen?”Mr. Clarke paused, then waved his hand. “I mean the five kids, two are witches, two are werewolves, and one is too young to really tell yet but I’ve got my money on witch. Pat says we shouldn’t bet on that sort of thing.” He rolled his twinkling eyes. “Anyhow, are you making your pendants this year?”“I’ll be…helping.” “Oh good. You wouldn’t mind making ours, would you?”Stiles straightened. “Of course not, but why-”He waved his hand again. “Nothing to worry about, we just have far too much to do. You go on now, feed that werewolf, it’s just about lunchtime.” He made his way off the porch and across the yard faster than Stiles would expect him capable of, as usual. He shook his head and closed the door smiling to himself. “Hey,” he said as he went back to the dining room, “want to have some lunch?”Derek looked up. “Can I leave this?” He gestured at the steaming bowl. “Yeah. It’s not working,” he grumbled. “Come on. Sandwiches.”Food had been a fun experiment so far since Derek had no idea what he liked or disliked—so far mayo was a strict, firm no, mustard was tolerable, and balsamic vinegar was his favorite so far. He liked white and yellow cheddar, mozzarella occasionally, olive oil for sure, and black pepper, and he hated pickles, relish, and ketchup which Stiles thought was just wrong. Stiles made them both some roast beef sandwiches with a tiny bit of horseradish on a quarter of Derek’s sandwich for him to try. They ate at the table beside Derek’s abandoned potion bowl (horseradish turned out to be a resounding yes). Derek poked the bowl while he ate his chips and Stiles tried not to stare too obviously.He wasn’t making progress and he hated that. It was like losing. Stiles’s phone rang before he could take his last bite. He sighed and set his sandwich down to answer it.“Stiles,” Cheyenne Bennett sang into the phone. They, like every native of Willow Pass, had gone to school together their entire lives, and Stiles was well-versed in all of her tones. He winced. “Hi,” he said quickly, “I was just having some lunch.”“That’s great! We just finished up ours, I made us a big vat of chili. It’s going to last the rest of the week, I bet,” she chattered. Stiles settled back in his chair, resigned. Cheyenne never called just to talk, but she didn’t like getting right to the point—she had to meander her way to it as if somehow telling him why she called right away might offend him. “Maybe,” he said.“We’re making some sandwiches with my blue sauce for the festival, it’s coming up so fast this year. I swear it didn’t come this quick when we were kids. Oh, speaking of the festival…”Stiles stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth since he couldn’t get a word in edgewise anyway, dropping his chin on his upraised palm while he chewed. Derek stood and took his plate with a little smirk. “-Isaac congrats from us, okay?”“I will.”“I saw Mr. Clarke this morning,” she said with a shift in tone that had Stiles straightening to attention. “I heard about your werewolf with no memories. Have you guys tried looking into his dreams? I have a nifty little potion for that,” she said in a rush like he might cut her off. “Or, oh, Marcella has a great spell for it too. Dreams can be confusing but sometimes they help you see things more clearly.” She took a breath. “It may not show a full memory, but there could be hints in his dreams. Let me just text you the recipe and this spell. Oh! Shoot. Tyler, get down!” Tyler was her cat. Something crashed and she swore. “I gotta go, Stiles, but I’ll send them over. Good luck!”He lowered the phone with a slow headshake. It was buzzing with new texts before it hit the table. Derek stood by the kitchen looking dazed. “Does she call a lot?” he asked, shuffling back to his seat. “No. She heard about our problem through the grapevine and wanted to find out if it was true—and to offer help,” he added, feeling guilty. “She’s really skilled at dream working, we should try her potions.”Derek drummed his fingers on the table, mouth caught somewhere between a frown and a grimace before he said, “My problem.”“What?”“You said she heard about our problem, but this isn’t really your problem—you’re just helping me. You have no stake in this.” Stiles leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “You’re wrong. Someone put you in my trunk, and I have to assume there’s a reason for that. I have people here I care about who might get hurt if this is something more than a mistake. I am just as invested as you are. In order to find out who put you in my trunk,” he went on briskly, “we are going to have to restore your memories.” He stood up. “Now I have to go pass out food and medicine and release the naiad. Would you like to join me?” He was annoyed enough that he hoped the answer was no.Derek looked uncomfortably surprised for a long moment before he finally said, “Yes please.”Stiles pressed his thumb against his index finger, right on the knuckle. “Fine.” He swept out of the room.They both relaxed as they worked together to feed all of the critters in the sunroom, electing to let go of the tension for the moment. Fiona barely even growled when Derek gave her a bowl of food. Stiles was too impressed to keep being annoyed. He kept an eye on him while he coaxed the naiad into a large jar for transportation. “Okay, finally,” he muttered, straightening up. She bared her teeth at him. “There’s a creek back here where we can release her, and she’ll find her way home from there. Right?” He brought the jar to eye level. She flexed her tiny claws at the glass and nodded. Stiles stopped in the living room to grab his backpack and his bat before they left through the backdoor; he kept the bat stuck through the straps resting on his lower back, a reassuring thrum of power. It wasn’t the most convenient size, but he only really needed to be touching it in emergencies or for delicate spellwork these days. The creek was close to the house, moving fast and frothy through the trees, the banks raised from the rain they got all week. Stiles suspected they would get snow before they got more rain this year. “Alright, here we are.” He crouched with the jar, keeping his sneakers back from the water, and looked up in surprise when Derek crouched next to him. He looked more relaxed than Stiles was used to. “Water is cold,” he said, glancing over at the jar. “Are you sure it’s okay?”The naiad responded by leaping out of the jar and diving perfectly into the water. She surfaced long enough to wave at Derek and spray Stiles in the face with icy water, then disappear.“You’re welcome!” He wiped his face on his sleeve, disgusted. Derek laughed. He tipped his head to watch him for a moment while his attention was on the creek. He was most comfortable when helping to take care of the creatures in the sunroom, Stiles noticed. He frowned at the damp toes of his sneakers and thought sadly that Derek must have a pack that was missing him.
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Late afternoon light spilled across the yard like watered down gold, sinking down the gray, wintry sky at a steady pace. Erica slashed her dagger through the air in front of her.Nothing.She sighed heavily, shoulders slumping.Scott and Isaac were on the porch carving on their focus items. They had to use magic to carve the runes and sigils into the surface, so it took time and concentration.Erica had wanted to work on a barrier spell instead, and had been struggling with it for an hour at this point.Stiles was standing technically in the line of fire, but he wasn’t particularly worried as she hadn’t managed more than blowing grass around a bit. “Try again. Hold it a little higher, and make sure you’re cutting, not just swinging.”She narrowed her eyes in concentration and nodded, straightening her shoulders. As she adjusted her stance so her legs were braced, Stiles paced away. Derek was in the sunroom while they worked, having opted to be alone while he tried the latest potion. Cheyenne’s dream potion needed three days to brew, so they had to hold off investigating his dreams.Stiles didn’t like the sticky, precarious nature of dream spells, and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He blinked, making himself focus on Erica as he put his chilled hands in his hoodie pocket. She growled and swiped at the air again, snorting like an angry bull when it failed again. She turned the dagger in her hand, mouthing something to herself. She flicked her head, brushing her ponytail over her shoulder. She had tossed her sweater aside twenty minutes ago in annoyance, leaving her arms bare, but she didn’t look cold in just her blue t-shirt and jeans. She lifted and swiped again, but the ripple of magic barely stirred the lawn. She growled once more. “Can’t you just yank Derek’s memories loose?”Stiles lifted his gaze. “What?”She tugged at the end of her hair. “You said they’re tangled up.” She pulled her fingers through the tangled curls. “Can’t you just pull them out?”“Not without causing him pain and potentially destroying his memories permanently.” He thought of everything else that could also go wrong but didn’t say any of it. “Right.” She frowned. “Okay.”“Do you want to keep trying?”“Yes.” She inhaled through her nose and squared her shoulders. “Remember, you want to cut…”“Not swing.” She nodded and studied her dagger, turning it so the fading light glinted off the blade, the engraved runes and sigils, watching for a long, quiet moment. Stiles let her think, glancing up at Scott and Isaac. They were still working; Isaac was shaking his head and grinning while Scott talked. Erica took another breath, drawing his attention back. She lifted her dagger at an angle, starting with her right arm crossed over her chest and then, in one smooth, swift move, she cut across the air.A shallow line dug into the grass in front of her in a wide arc. “Yes!” She squealed and danced in place, spinning on her toes and grabbing Stiles in a throttling hug. “You did it!”She laughed in his ear. “I almost did it, I will do it in a minute.” She released him and stepped back, bright eyed and flushed. She turned her dagger in her palm and bit her lip. Scott ambled down to them. “That looked cool,” he said. “I want to learn that one.” “Sure. Does Isaac want to join us too?”“Yeah,” he called from the porch. “One sec.” He was bent over the slim, tapered metal rod he used as a focus item, clearly finishing up a line.Erica described the spell to Scott and demonstrated the movement that finally helped her make progress, her fingers sparking faintly in her excitement. Sunset bled orange and hot pink into the gray sky above the trees; the temperature would drop in earnest soon. Stiles rubbed his sleeve against his cheek, hiding a yawn. He had been spending every free moment trying to figure out Derek’s predicament, but he just didn’t have enough information to work with. He wondered if he could pull a little bit more loose—a last name, perhaps, or the full name of someone in his pack. Something. Anything.A chill swept over him. He dug his thumb into the opposite palm, hands tangled together in his pocket, gaze fixed and unseeing on the streaky sunset. He hated to even think it, but could Derek’s pack be dead? Whoever did this to him, if it was on purpose like they now suspected, may have killed his pack first.Or what if his own pack did this? Werewolves could gain power through killing.He shook his head, forcing himself to untangle his hands. Witches could gain power through killing too, that didn’t mean they did. He was right in the first place; there were too many possibilities for him to even try guessing. He blinked hard, lowering his gaze back to the yard when Isaac joined them. “Can we do this fast? It’s getting cold.” He bounced on his heels, rubbing his hands against his cheeks.“Get in a line so you aren’t in each other’s way,” Stiles instructed. “It might take you a few tries, but it’s just a quick cutting motion to create a barrier. It’s a basic spell and pretty useful.” “For what?” Scott asked. “It looks cool,” he added quickly, “but what does the barrier keep out?” He moved to stand by Erica, mimicking her stance. “It’s good for physi-”A strange, hoarse squawk cut him off. Scott lowered his wand, brows furrowed. “What is it?” Isaac asked, nose scrunching. “Dunno.” Stiles strained his ears and jumped when he heard another rasping squawk. “A bird,” Scott said. “Maybe? It doesn’t sound right.”The squawk came again, higher this time like a shriek, clearly coming from the woods. Erica grimaced. “Should we…” She trailed off, looking around at the others for help. “It might be hurt,” Scott said, but even he looked hesitant and unnerved. They had found and helped plenty of sick, injured animals over the years, so this should be no different, but Stiles felt it too. He pressed his thumb into his palm and nodded. “Come on.” He took the lead because otherwise no one was going to move. One step into the trees plunged them into dull blue, the last vestiges of sunlight smothered by the leaves and thick branches. He followed the broken shrieks until they turned into odd thumps and rustling mingled with the screams. He sped up. The bird must have gotten caught on something, maybe by the neck. He sped up almost to a jog, rushing toward the distressed sound and thinking through how he could get it free. A gray and black lump flopped around on the ground ahead of him, wings smacking the dirt. Stiles tripped into a crouch, then reared back, his voice choking off before he could order the others away. Scott froze at his right shoulder. Isaac yelped and backed into a tree, tripping over the roots and going down hard. Erica gasped, jerking back and covering her mouth. “What is it? Oh my god.” She backed away several steps, staring down at her dagger with rising horror. “You didn’t do it,” Stiles snapped.His tone knocked the panic out of her eyes and she focused on him, breathing hard.“You didn’t,” he repeated more gently.Scott leaned forward, watching the partially decomposed bird flap around uselessly, beating broken wings against dirt and leaf litter. Stiles put his hands up. “You literally could not have done this, okay, let alone on accident.” He waited until she nodded, jerky and quick, to show she understood. “Isaac, Erica, go make sure Dad is still home and don’t let him leave—actually, no, just bring him here,” he said, changing his mind. He turned back to the bird, swallowing his disgust, and held his hand out.A faint red dome covered the bird, trapping it in the spot. It kept moving and shrieking, hurling itself at the barrier. Part of its beak was broken off and jagged, and its eyes were like tiny white marbles that did not belong.Scott said, “It’s been dead a while. Those shouldn’t…be there still.” He looked disgusted but not as terrified as the other two. “How does someone do this?”Stiles pressed his fingers to his forehead. “I’m not sure. Definitely not on accident.”The bird gave another prolonged, ear-piercing screech. Stiles could feel the magic on it, but it was corrupted and weak—just a faint flutter powering the body. Something was wrapped around its bony leg like a band, but it was hard to get a look with the bird jumping around. He squeezed his fingers, shrinking the barrier around the bird to try pinning it down, but it started shrieking even louder, its screams echoing around them, flapping harder. Scott threw his hands over his ears. “Oh my god! Make it stop.”Stiles widened the barrier with a wince. “Sorry—I thought we could get a better look.” “There’s not much to look at,” Scott grumbled, dropping his hands. “The leg…”He shook his head. “I can’t see it.” The trees rustled above them, shaking leaves down. Stiles put his hands in his pockets, gaze narrowed and darting around, trying to see through the shadows.John ran up to them a moment later and skidded to a halt when he saw the bird. His face went grim. “Did you find it here?”“Yes. I was going to try bringing it to you…”He waved him off, gaze focused on the bird. “Did you see anyone over here? Hear anything?”“Nope. This thing has been shrieking the whole time so we couldn’t have heard anything if there was.” He yanked his hand out of his pockets and brought them together, pressing his thumb into his palm. “It has something on its leg but I couldn’t get a good look.”“Right.” He crouched in front of it, tipping his head to study the shrieking creature. He held his hands out over the barrier, taking a deep, noisy breath, his magic making the surface shudder. He nodded at Stiles to drop it. He pulled his hands apart and released it.John’s magic whipped through the trees, making the branches sway and groan, heating the air around them. Scott fell back, wincing. The bird halted mid-scream, rising off the ground as John pushed himself up to his full height, hands still held out and hovering above the bird. He lowered them to the either side, fingers twitching. The bird’s wings and legs stretched out, exposing every inch of its decomposing body. Stiles swallowed thickly and leaned in to see the thing on its leg. It was pale but browning with jagged, torn edges and a strange, leathery texture. Stiles couldn’t tell what it was. “What is it?” Scott rasped. John shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He curled his fingers in and the bird burned to ash in an instant. “Dad…” He pressed his thumb into his palm again. “Who—what-” “It isn’t easy, so it wasn’t an accident, but it’s possible someone was trying out some advanced spells.” His expression was tense but otherwise hard to read. He shook his head. “I have to help set up today, so I’ll ask around while we work.” He turned to face them both. “I want you all staying close to the house—if this is something dangerous, the person who did it is powerful.” Stiles frowned. “It’s just a bird. Small. Seems experimental.” “Yes, but what are they working up to?”He nodded, conceding the point.Scott rubbed his nose. “Do people…is this…”“It’s very unusual,” John said calmly. “Not entirely unheard of but it’s considered taboo, difficult, and painful.” “Painful?”Stiles grimaced. “Raising the dead requires…flesh magic.”Scott recoiled. “What is that?”“Not much would be required for a small animal, but…it’s pretty much what it sounds like.” “Gross.”John scanned the area around them with narrowed eyes. “Let’s go. I don’t want you all in these woods right now.”After ushering them back to the house, John had to leave to help with preparations for the festival, and Stiles was left trying to explain things to Scott, Erica, and Isaac—namely flesh magic and the particulars of, which he admitted he didn’t know much about. He distracted them by getting them to help bake cookies. Derek emerged when the second batch was nearly ready, following his nose to the kitchen.Isaac got another cooling rack out of the cabinet. “So they really cut off-”“Yes,” Stiles interrupted. “For something small like that bird, it was probably just a few…just some…” He didn’t know how to say it. “Not much,” he said at last. “Any is too much,” Erica muttered, mixing some more cookie dough. “Agreed.”“Scott, can you move the ones on the first cooling rack to the container? This batch is bigger, we’ll need the space. Derek, we have peanut butter chocolate chip if you want to try some.”He twitched like he was caught off guard, then moved closer when Scott held out the Tupperware. Stiles backed up to let Isaac pull the cookies out of the oven, glancing out the window. He flinched when something moved, but it was just a doe picking her way across the yard. A chill snaked down his back. He grabbed the string and yanked the blinds closed, then turned away for good measure. “Okay, while the cookies finish up, what do we want for dinner?” Stay busy, don’t think of once-dead animals dragging themselves to the house. Easy.
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The kitchen was humid and smelled heavily of herbs, mainly thyme because it had been in the boiling water for the longest so far. The light above the stove was on in addition to the big overhead light, making the pot on the stovetop look greener than it should. The windows above the sink and on the backdoor had fogged up. Stiles dropped rosehips into the potion as it bubbled, sending them bobbing along the surface. He had to check his notes and thermometer several times as he went—dream potions were incredibly finicky and while Cheyenne’s instructions were very clear, there were a lot of steps and they had to be done in exact order. The first dream potion hadn’t worked, but this one was supposed to be stronger. Derek was helping him, standing at the counter next to the stove, chopping and ripping whatever ingredients Stiles told him they needed. He appreciated it, since his usual helpers had gone to return the rental car and the potion was just precise enough that he didn’t think he would manage on his own. Derek ripped up a violet stem, glaring at the cutting board he was working on, and said, “I did dream last night,” apropos of nothing. “I just don’t think it was important.”Stiles nodded to himself and gave the potion three smooth stirs. “Oh? What was it about?” He turned, holding his hands out, palms cupped.“Just the willow trees, the colorful ones.” He tipped the stem pieces into his hands. He hesitated, then carefully dropped the shredded violet into the pot. “Were you standing under them?”Derek made a face. “No. I mean, not all of them. I was kind of…in the leaves of the red one? Behind a curtain of red leaves.” Stiles pressed his lips together and added one eyebright petal to the pot. “Anything else?”He pulled a small gingerroot over to slice. “Not really. I was just waiting.”“Waiting?”He nodded. “I didn’t feel like I was just there, but like I was waiting.” He scowled, looking annoyed and embarrassed as he shoved the ginger to the edge of the cutting board. Stiles pursed his lips and said, “Sounds like just a dream, I guess.” He dropped the ginger into the pot. “Maybe this one will work.” “Right,” he muttered. After all of the ingredients had been added precisely in order and boiled nearly to mush, Stiles allowed it to cool while he got another potion from a pot in the sink. It had finally come down to room temperature while they worked. “This one is for remembrance.” “What did we just make?”“A dream potion that should, in theory, help you dream of some buried memories. This is for helping to remember things while you’re awake.” He transferred the remembrance potion to a measuring cup with a spout. “Okay, I have to put this one in the freezer-”“What, really?”“Yep. Care to help?” He pulled ice cube trays labeled for potion use out of the cabinet above the sink. They poured the dream potion into trays shaped like skeletons and jack-o-lanterns, then slid them into the freezer while Stiles explained more about how the remembrance potion worked. “Unfortunately, it’s messy and we have to use it outside.” He swiped a couple packets from the jar on the counter on his way out the backdoor. He couldn’t help glancing over the yard as he left the porch, eyeing the trees, but there was nothing. They hadn’t seen any other reanimated animals since the day before. John hadn’t heard anything but he figured it wouldn’t be long before the truth came out—too many people in this town talked for something like this to remain a secret. Stiles hoped it was a one-off problem; he hoped someone just wanted to test a taboo spell for the thrill of it and that was all. He wasn’t sure how it could be connected to Derek’s appearance, but if it was, he didn’t like any of it. Missing memories? Dead things? Flesh magic? None of those were good things on their own, but together, they made a grim if confusing picture. “Okay,” he said aloud, stopping next to the practice tables. “Take your shirt off.” The venomous glare he received caught him off guard for a second, before he laughed. “As irresistible as you are, I’m sure, please. The potion has to be poured over your head, I figured I’d save your shirt. There’s a towel on the table so you can dry off when you’re done.” Derek scowled again and yanked his shirt over his head, tossing it on the table with scars and scorch marks—where Erica usually worked. “Where do I stand?” he grunted. “Anywhere.” Stiles tossed the packets he grabbed on the table beside him.Derek stared at them. “They’re potion neutralizers—it basically turns most spilled potions into their harmless, powerless components by sapping the magic out of it.”He looked curious, but he didn’t ask any questions directly, settling instead for a curt nod. Stiles pulled his sleeves back. “We can’t just dump magically charged liquids down the drain or in the lawn—I mean, if they aren’t made for that. It only works on potions though,” he added. “Not spells or people, or people who have taken potions.” Derek nodded again, brows furrowed. “Tip your head back,” Stiles instructed. “It has to run over your eyes, temples, and forehead, but not your mouth or nose. Ready?”He put his head back, jaw clenched. “Ready.” He always braced when they tried something, preparing for the pain that Stiles kept insisting wouldn’t come, which had the perhaps unintended effect of making Stiles more determined to make sure he didn’t hurt him. He stood next to him and poured slowly, steadily, watching the reddish potion run over his closed eyes like tears, trickling back into his dark hair. He caught his breath as the magic in the potion hovered in the air, the sweet smell of sugarcane saturating the yard. It didn’t work.Derek stood shivering and trying to hide it, arms crossed, scowling with sunflower petals caught in his wet hair. Stiles tossed him a towel, frustrated. “Fine,” he muttered mostly to himself. “We’ll try the dream potion tonight. Let’s go inside so you can wash it off.” He rubbed his face, annoyed, and snatched the packets off the table. He tore them open and sprinkled the blue powder over the wet patch in the grass, listening for the tell-tale sizzle as it worked. “Alright. I need to get groceries.” He made his way up the porch steps. “Do you want to come with?”Derek shook his head, still running the towel over his neck and face. Stiles was relieved. He needed to think, and he just felt on edge around Derek, urgent…rushed. “Okay. I should be back in a couple hours.” He closed the door behind them and dropped the measuring cup in the sink. “House is yours, help yourself to food and TV and whatever else.” He turned away. These failures stacking on top of each other burrowed under his skin like barbs. He needed to get out of the house. Derek caught his wrist and let go just as fast, switching his grasp to Stiles’s sleeve. “I just wanted to thank you.” He glared at the sink. “Even though it might be pointless.” Stiles scowled. He refused to accept that. “It isn’t pointless. We’re going to figure it out.”He shrugged. “I’m going to shower. I just wanted to say thanks.” He stepped around him.Stiles pressed both of his hands against his mouth and yelled into them. Then he grabbed his wallet, bat, and keys, and left to do the shopping.The center of town bustled as preparations for the Guiding Star Festival began in earnest. Witches from all over had come to join the celebration, like they did every year, giving the town a busy, lively feeling—the closest they ever came to being crowded. Other witch enclaves had similar festivals throughout the year; some of the witches currently camping in the village park traveled all year long to see as many of them as possible. Stiles was surprised every year by the strangers he saw, like finding something unexpected in his house. Some of the visitors were extended family of locals, some were friends, some had moved away but returned every year in November for the festival, and the rest were travelers. Decorations were going up: posts were wound with ropes of lights, trees were being sprinkled with potion dust, and the main stage was being set up where it always was—the big field outside of the school building. It was equidistant from the Seven Willows and the town altar, which made it the ideal spot for the stage where the rituals would begin. Stiles knew everything visible was just the half of it—the town’s magic was nearly tripled with extra protection, not to mention the magical decorations hidden from sight, waiting to be showcased day-of. Tables were being set up, rearranged by the coordinators as they tried to sort out the structure they wanted for the day. John stood near the stage with some of his deputies, talking to them with a serious expression, hands on his hips. Stiles waved on his way past, smiling to himself when John waved back grimly and two of the deputies threw their hands up.Festival preparation was typically pretty chaotic. Normally, Stiles would be out there helping, but he had deemed Derek more of a priority this year. Guilt pricked at him but he shook it off—while he might not be able to solve it yet, at least he was at the house, watching out for Scott, Erica, and Isaac, and keeping an eye on Derek. John agreed too, and likely would have sent Stiles home himself if he had tried to help anyway. The grocery store was busy when he got there, full of regulars and out-of-towners, all stocking up for the festival. Stiles grabbed a cart and dove into the fray.The grocery list was on his phone, so he balanced it in the cup-holder attached to the cart and started with the produce section right by the entrance. “Hey Stiles.” Marcella Langdon waved as he was picking out bell peppers. “How’s the werewolf?”The man holding a basket behind her whipped around and beamed. Stiles sighed. Normally chatter didn’t bother him but in this case he didn’t have anything to tell them except what they had likely already heard—he brought a werewolf home, and that werewolf had no memories. He let them speculate for a few minutes while he got what he needed, then slipped away to find lunchmeat. “Oh, excuse me.” The man lifted his gaze and stared. He was unfamiliar, wearing a blue windbreaker and a ball cap over short hair, hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders curved. Stiles gave him an awkward nod and went around him to the deli counter. “Hey, Jason,” he said over the noise, keeping the man visible in the corner of his eye. He got bread after the meat was cut, methodically working his way down the list. “Okay, Scott, what is this?” he mumbled, studying the misspelled word near the end of the list, where everyone had added a dessert they wanted. “Mocha Oreos,” he grumbled. “Gods, Scott.” He maneuvered his cart to the cookie aisle, waving and nodding whenever someone said hello in an effort not to get caught again. His only solace was that after this he had four shopping days before it was his turn again. He grabbed two types of cookies and straightened, then glanced over his shoulder. Another unfamiliar witch stood at the end of the aisle holding a packet of crackers, watching him. She smiled sweetly when they made eye contact though, lifting her hand in an awkward wave like she felt bad for getting caught staring. Her brown hair was gently curled and swept back in black combs with the glint of black gems at the tops. Stiles smiled back automatically and waved before he left the aisle. At least some of the out-of-towners weren’t assholes.He finished the shopping later than expected, given the lines and people standing around talking, so when he finally headed home, he felt well-blended and battered. Everyone but John was back home when he arrived, so he gratefully only grabbed what he could carry without straining; the other three could help. He froze as soon as he stepped inside. Tension sizzled in the air. He set the bags on the table to free his hands and inched forward. Erica stood in the dining room, one hand extended oddly as she glared at Derek. Her dagger was on the floor between them. Isaac and Scott were nearby, braced to leap and wide eyed. “What is going on?”Scott inhaled sharply. “He tried to-”“What?”He grimaced. “He, uh, smacked her knife out of her hand.”Derek’s face was downturned, fists clenched. “Erica?”Her nostrils flared. “I was lighting candles and—singing, I guess, under my breath and he just jumped up and swatted me.” His heart hammered, but if Derek had wanted to hurt the three of them while Stiles was gone, he could have. Stiles turned to him, jaw stiff. “Derek?”He took an unsteady breath. “I don’t know why,” he growled. “It—it wasn’t her. I’m s-” He cut himself off, glaring harder at the floor. Erica’s brows lifted, the fury on her face giving way to curiosity. “A memory?” She tipped her head, trying to see his face. He jerked his shoulders. “Maybe. It was just a flash.”“Oh.” Her eyes narrowed. “Stiles, can I speak to you alone?” She rubbed her left wrist as she asked, a move he didn’t miss. “Yes. Can you guys get the groceries and start putting them away?”“Yeah, sure.” Scott looked between the three of them. Erica bent stiffly and grabbed her knife before stalking to the kitchen and out the backdoor. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Just-” He didn’t know what to say to Derek. “Just don’t go anywhere.” He had a feeling he knew what Erica wanted to talk about.
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Erica paced the backyard, her stride stiff as she clutched her left wrist, cradling it like the old wound was made fresh just from the force of her fears. She turned on him as soon as he stepped off the porch, fear bright in her face. “What if this was hunters?” She waved her right hand. “I know, I know magic was used but they’ve used magic before so what if?”“Then we’ll figure it out. They won’t get in,” he said soothingly, “and if they do make it into the village sane enough to still try hunting, they will not get to the house.”She nodded. “I know.” She took a couple of forced, even breaths. “But it could be hunters, right?”He grimaced, pressing his thumb hard into his palm. “Yes,” he admitted. “There are a ton of possibilities of who could have done this and hunters are on that list. However, the motive makes no sense.” He winced when his nail dug in too hard and pulled his hands apart. “And if it was hunters, they aren’t very good ones. No mauling, no maiming. Derek snores a bit,” he added, “but hardly enough to disturb our sleep.” Erica, still frowning, rubbed her eyes and huffed. “I just-” She stamped her foot, grinding the grass under her boot. “After he arrived, I started—I mean, I’ve had a couple nightmares. About hunters. I’m worried that means something.”Stiles nodded. “It could. Witches do sometimes have prophetic dreams before disasters—usually big ones. And of course we can take potions before we sleep if we want to have them.” He cut himself off before he could start talking about those. He didn’t want to dismiss her valid fears while reassuring her, he just wasn’t great at this sort of thing.Scott was usually better for pep talks. “Look,” he said slowly, “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I think this would be a very…roundabout hunting tactic if it is one. I believe something is very wrong with this whole situation and I believe if they wanted to, hunters could have done this. Okay?”She nodded and finally released the stranglehold she had on her wrist. There were no visible scars from what happened to her before she came to Willow Pass four years ago, but she would never forget. Neither would Stiles, or any of their coven.She looked down, kicking at the grass. “I do sometimes still just…dream about it.”He grimaced. Four years ago, Erica had a seizure and hit her head, so her roommate drove her to the hospital. While there, her magic had manifested. She had no experience in hiding it or even stopping it from happening, and a witch hunter working as an orderly had noticed her. She tried to execute Erica the way witch hunters were trained: she cornered her and tried to cut off her hands. Melissa McCall, Scott’s mother and a nurse at the same hospital, had intervened, got the hunter arrested, and stitched Erica up herself. While she did, Erica told her everything, and Melissa had recognized the things she described as magic. She gave her directions to the strange little town her son had moved to, somewhere she couldn’t really describe and could only give vague directions to. Even humans who had visited Willow Pass couldn’t really recall how to get there. Erica had made it just to the edge of town before Scott and Stiles had found her. “Erica,” he said quietly. She shook her head. “I know I’m paranoid about it—who wouldn’t be?” She set her jaw defiantly. “So I want to practice more—more attack spells, more defensive ones. Can we do that?”“Of course.”She relaxed finally, releasing tension from her shoulders and back that Stiles hadn’t even realized she was holding. “And you—I need you to try harder with Derek. Don’t give me that look.” She tossed her hair. “I know you don’t want to break his brain more but we need answers and you’re capable of more than this.” She waved her hand at the house. “Than those gentle potions. It may not be hunters, but we could still be in danger.”He nodded, once again digging his thumb into his palm until it made his fingers curl. “I know. I will. After the festival,” he added. “We still have a lot to do and I’ll need to come up with a strategy.” He inhaled deeply. “But I will try harder—for all of you. I’ll keep us safe.”She nodded solemnly. “Okay.” She relaxed more and grinned. “Thanks.” He smiled back, relief coursing through him. Maybe he had helped a bit. “Of course. You’re like the sister I never wanted,” he drawled. “Gotta have your back.” She punched his shoulder. “Har har, you’re hilarious. You better teach me some badass spells, bro.” Her tone was almost painfully awkward, making them both laugh. The trees rustled. They both stiffened, turning toward the woods. Erica’s dagger was back in her hand, slipped free of its hidden sheath before Stiles even saw her move.A bird flew out of the branches, a dark blur spearing into the sky. She exhaled. “Did John ever find out anything about that one bird?”He shook his head. “We can ask tonight when he gets home, but I doubt it. Come on, we’ve got a freight load of brownies to make.”She nodded with her gaze still on the trees, waiting a beat before she followed him. Scott and Isaac were already in the kitchen mixing brownies batter, leaning around each other to peer into Claudia’s recipe book where it lay open on the counter, turned to the Starlit brownies page. Stiles couldn’t help smiling. “Okay, you guys work on those, I’m going to get started on our pendants.”“What color will they be this year?” Isaac asked. “You’ll see!” He left them to the baking, heading for the practice room they used during extreme weather. He hesitated outside of the sunroom when he saw Derek inside, staring into the pond with Fiona in his lap. They both appeared to be glowering.Stiles hung there for another second before turning away. After the festival, he would come up with a better strategy, a better way to fix this…an answer. For now, he’d leave it be. Derek would need the rest.
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The Guiding Star Festival was a town-wide, all day affair, starting for many people at midnight the night before. It was essentially Willow Pass’s equivalent of a founding day, celebrated for generations at this point, every year on November twenty-third. Stiles and his coven spent the night before doing prep work, cutting brownies and wrapping them, filling the house with the rich, delicious scent of warm chocolate and the bright spark of magic baked in that made the brownies glitter and shine. They gathered little gifts and cleaned up around each other; Isaac took a long soak in flowers and potions as was tradition for someone nominated to be honored during the festival. Scott and Erica had been teasing him about it nonstop since John told him. Stiles boxed up all the pendants he’d made, tuning out their jokes. Derek seemed baffled by the whole thing and finally asked what the holiday was exactly. “It’s a celebration of the founding of the village, and yearly rituals we do as a community. There are two big ones,” he went on, tying another velvet bag around a pendant. “Both are led by the Star Mage, the Moon Mage, and the Midnight Mage. The first two are nominated positions.” He grinned, jostling Isaac lightly. He ducked his head, a pleased flush spreading over his cheeks. Derek still looked confused. “The Star Mage is a high honor,” Stiles said. “A young witch who has shown exceptional promise and progress through the year—Isaac was chosen this year. Erica was chosen for Moon Mage her first year of training.”“And that one is…”“A young witch who has shown great capability and power.” “Oh. Huh.” Stiles smiled, because he knew it must seem strange to an outsider. “It’s fun,” he said. “There’s a lot of food, music, dancing. Magic.” Derek nodded slowly and shuffled aside to let Scott grab one of the full brownie boxes. Stiles added more brownies to the pendant box, tucking them wherever they would fit. “We’ll head out soon. Scott, can you take the pendants?”“Why are there so many?” He leaned forward on his tip toes to peer into the box. “The extras are for Mr. Clarke and his family.”“Oh, really?” Scott hesitated with two boxes in his arms. “Doesn’t Pat usually make theirs?”“Yeah, Mr. Clarke said they were busy this year and asked if I would include them.”“Huh.” He shrugged and took the boxes. They loaded everything into the jeep, since there was too much for them to carry, and drove to the middle school parking lot, as close as they could get as the main road was closed for the festival.“Okay, you know what to do.” Stiles jumped out. Derek followed, carrying a box of brownies and staring around with open wonder as they all marched to the dessert tables. “Hi, dears. There’s space over here,” Mrs. Blackwell and her wife Teresa waved at a table. “We’ll set it all up, just leave the boxes over here.”“Are you sure? You look busy.” Teresa waved her hands. “We enjoy it, that’s why we volunteer every year. We get to hear everything over here.”Stiles shrugged. “If you’re sure.” They left the brownies at the tables that were already full of stargleam cake and midnight pie, constellation cookies and all sorts of themed specialties by the covens of the town.“Oh, there’s Mr. Clarke,” Erica said, shooting her hand up in a wave. “Let’s go give out the pendants—oh man, he’s got the whole brood this year.” Scott grinned and hurried through the gathering crowd. Some people had been here for hours on and off, preparing or just perusing the tables. “Oh, Stiles,” Mr. Clarke said as he lifted his pendant out of its bag. “You outdid yourself with these. Much better than the ones I made at your age, that’s for sure,” he added. His eyes gleamed. “I see you’ve chosen red.” His tone was sly, making Stiles frown.“A nice, bold color,” Pat said quickly, helping one of the grandchildren get the ribbon over her head. He smiled. “Thank you again.”“It’s no problem, I enjoy making them.” He shot Mr. Clarke another curious look, but he just smiled. “We’ll see you later tonight,” he said. “Best take these little witches and wolves to see the decorations before it gets dark.”All of the kids stared at Derek as they were herded by; he stared back for a moment before moving to Isaac’s other side. Stiles inhaled slowly. The air was brisk and chilly, and it smelled like magic, pastries, and sticky sweet candy. He looped his own pendant over his own neck; it was red, deeper in the center and lighter at the edges, shaped like a three dimensional starburst, pulsing with magic below his collarbone. Once it got dark out, it would glow softly, emitting its own starlight. He handed one to Derek, who looked confused. “You don’t have to wear it.”He turned the pouch over in his hand, letting the starburst tumble into his palm. He stared at it, then put it over his head. Erica elbowed Stiles lightly. “Hey, I’m gonna go say hi to people. See you later?”“Sure. For lunch.”“I’m gonna go walk around too.” Isaac flicked Scott’s forehead before taking off down a row of art stalls. “Here, let’s get some coffee.” Stiles veered to the left, where a carafe and some cups were set up.Derek leaned in while he was pouring it. “Why does it smell like magic?”“Because it…is?”Scott rolled his eyes with a laugh. “It’s just flavoring, it doesn’t do anything else. Everything here has magic in it—for taste or looks or very rarely some kind of harmless party effect.” He elbowed Stiles lightly. “Not everyone grew up here.”He flushed and tried to laugh it off. “You don’t have to drink it—there’s soft drinks and water too.”Derek took one of the coffee cups, holding it near his nose for a second. “This is fine.”“Okay…”“Come on, we should walk around so Derek gets to see everything.” Scott took his own cup, blowing on it with lips gone faintly blue.“What…”“Cooling it,” Stiles said, amused. “Also showing off.”“Once again, we didn’t all grow up here,” he said cheerfully. “It’s still really cool to me.”Derek tipped his head just slightly. “What is the Midnight Mage?” He shrugged when Stiles lifted his brows. “I can hear people talking about it,” he mumbled. “Ah. Well, that is a position given to the newest member of the town—the most recently born baby. Scott, quit.” He poked Stiles’s ribs again, snickering. He hooked his chin over his shoulder to grin at Derek. “Stiles was the Midnight Mage when he was a baby.” Derek chuckled quietly, then cleared his throat like he was trying to hide it. Scott beamed. “There are pictures.” Stiles shook his head when Derek glanced at him. “I will not show you.” He shrugged Scott off. He mumbled something under his breath that made Derek snort. He held his hands up innocently when Stiles glared at him. “Oh, look, food.” They cut down the strip of tables laden with food set up like a town-wide potluck, sampling things as they went, pointing out the dishes with magic in them for Derek, then moved on to the market area, where people were selling things they made. “The children can do magic?” Derek blurted, staring over at where a group of eight-and-nine-year-olds were showing off. One redhead put his hands up, creating a beam of harmless light. The others scattered, shrieking with laughter. “Well…yeah.” Stiles pointed to where some even younger children were practicing an easy warming spell under their parents’ watchful eyes. “Don’t werewolves start learning to shift at a young age?”“I guess.”Past the market stalls, there were picnic tables set up in front of a sound stage for local and visiting bands. “Hey, Reggie!” Scott called. “I’ll see you guys for lunch.” He smacked them both between the shoulders and took off toward the stage.“You want to get some candy?”Derek shot him a skeptical look, making him laugh. “Only the black ones are magical. Hi, Lilah,” he chirped, dragging Derek to a booth where Lilah, Mandy, and Dennis Hartford, siblings around his own age, were giving out bags of their star-shaped hard candies. “Hey, Stiles. Who’s your friend?” Her gray eyes were bright, flickering over to Derek and back. She had definitely already heard the rumor that Stiles had brought home a werewolf, she just wanted confirmation and maybe something new. “This is Derek, he’s my guest. I was just telling him about your candy,” he went on before she could ask anything else. “He wants to try all of it, he’s never had anything like it.” Technically not a lie, as Derek couldn’t remember whether he had or not. Dennis grinned behind Lilah’s back while Mandy scooped some star shaped, colorful hard candies into a clear bag. “That’s great. Are you-?”“Going to walk around more? Yeah, we want to see all the tables before we stop for lunch, that’s why we wanted to get some of your candy! Gotta stay fueled. Thanks, Mandy,” he said brightly when she handed over the bag. Like every year, there was a fifteen percent off coupon to their shop stuck to the side. It never made it through the month, between Stiles and Erica’s collective sweet tooth. Lilah’s teal-painted mouth turned down, but she looked at Derek one more time. “Do you remember-”“Bye, Lilah!” He dragged Derek away. “I’d say sorry but that wasn’t that bad, all things considered.”Derek just lifted his brows. He opened the bag of candy while he spoke. “See, the thing I love about this festival is the community. We’re all here, at some point, crossing paths, sharing food, checking in. Having fun. But the fact that we all know each other’s business all the time means that,” he jerked his head toward the booth they’d just left, “is gonna happen a lot. Gossip and “being neighborly” are pretty much the same thing around here. Want one?”Derek snorted and put his hand out. “Which one did you say has…magic…in it?”“The black ones. See? You can smell it.” He held up the little black star so it glinted in the sunlight. “What flavor is it?”“Blackberry. The magic just adds a little sparkle,” he explained. “Oh.” But Derek avoided the black ones when he took some of the candy. Stiles shrugged, eating a few at a time. More for him. “So, what exactly is Isaac supposed to do as Star Mage?”Stiles shifted the strawberry cream flavored star to his cheek. “They lead the town through the two yearly rituals we do, to strengthen the town’s protections and prepare for the new year…but that’s later on.”Music floated through the air, light and quick, sure to morph into something recognizable as soon as a crowd gathered. People rushed around buying gifts and souvenirs before nightfall so they had time to take them home before the rituals.“My dad will be helping,” he went on, since he was already explaining. “They’re called sheriff and deputies officially but really they’re the town guardians.”Derek frowned. “What do they guard against?”Stiles twisted the candy bag. “Hunters, humans. They just make sure we’re safe here, and that the protections don’t go down.” “Oh.” He watched a group of witches showing off, making flowers bloom in their palms or levitating objects in circles around their heads. He seemed fascinated. As they were passing the group, Stiles impulsively opened his hand, throwing sparks over them. They laughed and held their hands up, catching the glints of light like snowflakes. Stiles turned his head, grinning, and got to see Derek smile for maybe the first time. His grin softened. “Don’t be too impressed yet, we’ve still got all night for me to show off.”He shook his head, but the smile, Stiles noted, remained. They gathered lunch for everyone—thick, warm stew from the Sanchez coven, fresh bread Mr. Clarke baked by the hundreds, and some cider from the Morris Apple Farm—and hauled it over to a clear spot in the grass to wait for everyone else. They arrived giddy and laden with purchases, including a blanket Erica spread out for them to sit on. “Penny made it, isn’t it awesome?”“Aren’t you worried about getting it dirty?”“She put a spell on it to repel stuff, should last a year or so.” She grinned at the purple blanket, stroking her fingers over the image of a smoky gray cat taking up most of the surface. Isaac bumped into Stiles trying to look into the bag. “What’s for lunch?” He had a new scarf looped around his neck, a deep greenish color with a tree decorating each end. “Calm down, you’ll get your food. Everyone sit.” He passed out the stew and cider when they were all situated, sitting down between Derek and Erica, who was still watching him narrowly when she thought no one was looking. Scott popped open his bowl and brought it up to his face, breathing deeply. “Food.”Isaac rolled his eyes. “You ate two donuts before we got over here, you act like you’re starving.”“I’m a bottomless pit. I need food.” He leered. “I might take yours too.” He shielded his bowl.“Hey, Sheriff,” Erica called, waving over her head. John approached with a weary smile. “Hey, kids. Having fun?”“Yes. Do you have time to eat with us?” “Ahh…” He glanced over his shoulder at Deputy Parrish, who nodded that he had things covered. “Sure.” He sat by Isaac and gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before reaching for the bowl Stiles held out. “You ready for tonight?”Isaac swallowed a chunk of bread with a wince. “I think so. I mean, I know what I’m supposed to do. I…”“I’ll be up there with you,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, you just walk where we tell you to.”Scott jostled him lightly. “Don’t trip.”“Oh my god, why would you say that?”“I’m kidding!”“You won’t trip,” Erica said. “And you won’t spill the potion.”His face dropped. “What if I do?” He covered his face with a moan. Erica grinned at Scott. “You two, be nice. You can’t spill it, Isaac,” John said calmly. “The bowls are protected so it won’t spill no matter what.”“We’re just teasing,” Scott said, knocking their shoulders together. “Since you’re the big shot Star Mage now, we have to make sure you remember us.” Isaac scoffed, trying to hide the smile creeping over his face. He was thrilled, Stiles could tell. Scott wasn’t particularly worried about things like this, but Stiles had a feeling Isaac wasn’t used to his accomplishments being celebrated, so this, the whole town acknowledging his hard work, meant a lot to him. Just as Erica had needed to prove herself powerful and had been overjoyed when she was chosen for Moon Mage. They went quiet, focusing on their lunch. Stiles watched the groups of townies and strangers milling by, moving from booth to booth like clouds of bumblebees sampling flowers, oohing and ahhing over Barbara Wright’s knitwear display, the delicate jewelry Martin Abbott made. It was nice to watch from the outside, hearing only the indistinct buzz of their voices under the music. His gaze snagged on a blue windbreaker and he stiffened, but the stranger from the grocery store was already swallowed by a twittering crowd, swept out of sight. He shook his head, scooping up the last of his stew. “Alright, I’ll see you all later.” John pushed to his feet and ruffled Scott’s hair, squeezed Erica’s shoulder. “Rest up before Starlight, got it?”“What’s Starlight?” Derek murmured after he walked away. He had been silent through lunch, eating his food and watching them all but making no comments. “It’s the first ritual of the night,” Erica said. “It starts when it’s fully dark.” She yawned and stretched out on her back, propping her head on Scott’s leg. “Excuse me?” He flicked her forehead.She grinned up at him, then dropped her gaze back to Derek. She offered a small, stiff smile that he returned awkwardly. It was chilly out still, but the sun kept the worst of the cold at bay. Derek hesitated, then slowly stretched out at the edge of the enormous blanket, head turned away, hands folded on his stomach. They rose with his gentle breathing as he watched the people around them. Stiles relaxed back on his elbows with a long sigh while Isaac stretched out to rest his head on Erica’s lap. This too was tradition for their fledgling coven; every year they sacked out after lunch, enjoying the sun and cool air, the music and chatter around them. Stiles closed his eyes. They would have to get up in a few hours, help Isaac get ready for his duties, get themselves ready for the Starlight Ritual, but for now it was just this, full of good food and each other’s company, surrounded by the sticky sweet smell of candy and the bright, citrusy scent of magic.
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As night crept up on Willow Pass, the air grew primal; games closed and magic rose, pumping through the land, passing through everyone walking the festival grounds. Children lined up with their siblings and cousins, trying their hardest to look serious between gaping in awe at the magic floating around. People performed spells that made the air sparkle as if they had reached into the sky and dragged the stars down with them. Stiles added his own magic with a twirl of his fingers; a net of silver sparkles draped over Erica and Scott’s shoulders, making them laugh. A step behind them, Derek looked around with an expression like he was holding his breath. He was still wearing the red pendant of the Stilinski coven, which now pulsed softly in the near dark. Almost everyone else around them had their own pendants, a rainbow of colors and shades, sometimes two to a pendant; Stiles made a note to try that next year. They had gone home to change and drop off all the things they bought and now, like most people, they were trooping back to the stage, which was cloaked in black velvet. Once it was fully dark out, it gave the impression that anyone standing on it was floating. A lot of covens wore traditional cloaks or robes for this part of the festival. Stiles wore a deep red hoodie with buttons instead of a zipper and a wide hood, with stars embroidered on the wrist cuffs. Erica had a red cloak so dark it was almost black that Stiles and John got her for her birthday, and John had to wear a cloak as sheriff, but Scott wore a coat similar to Stiles’s in a warm rose shade, and Derek had on a soft black sweater Isaac found for him. Isaac, of course, was being gowned in traditional Star Mage garments backstage while the town gathered. John squared his shoulders as they took their place in the crowd, stepping out and heading for the stage. His cloak was black with moving, glimmering stars falling from the shoulders down his back in all the colors the Seven Willows grew in. Claudia made it for him back when he was first made sheriff. The four deputies fell in behind him wearing similar cloaks, walking up the center of the crowd toward the stage. People on either side murmured their thanks to them, sometimes holding their hands out to flick sparks or snow or wind at them. Stiles saw Derek’s frown out of the corner of his eye and he understood, sort of—when Isaac, Erica, and Scott saw it first, they were weirded out too. Even John found the walk uncomfortable, but he did it every year. He, and the deputies, were responsible for the town and more, they were connected to it in a way, especially John; they were a part of the rituals to be done tonight, whether they were comfortable with the attention or not. The deputies stopped at the front of the stage while John climbed the nearly invisible steps, joining Mayor Pulley in the middle. A broken hush fell over the crowd as the two of them stared out until, at last, everyone went silent. Mayor Pulley smiled. “Welcome,” she said warmly. “I am glad to see so many have joined us this year.”Stiles tuned out while she gave the usual speech about their high expectations for the year to come, the progress they had made, and how proud she was to be a part of it all. He had heard it every year of his entire life. Instead, he listened to the pulse of magic in the crowd, the wild thrum of it under the calm surface, and breathed it in, let it sink into his skin.“Whoo!” Erica shouted, and Scott let out a wild whoop as Isaac’s name was called, cheering with pride. Isaac walked carefully across the stage, each step slow and deliberate as he concentrated on not tripping over the hem of his robe.“Isaac Lahey,” Mayor Pulley said in her deep, rich voice. “You have shown exceptional progress this year, and great promise. The collective coven of Willow Pass and your coven of choice are honored to have you, Star Mage.” Stiles’s cheeks hurt from smiling so wide, but he couldn’t stop, not when Isaac looked so proud. Isaac repeated that he was honored to be there. His voice only wavered a little, right at the end. Mayor Pulley and John applied a special sigil to his wand while he watched, breathless in his night sky robes designed to look like a galaxy. Magic coiled around the three of them while they worked, thin, almost invisible green lines of it looping and twisting through their hands. Wind fluttered over their robes, sent the galaxy on Isaac’s shimmering, the stars falling on John’s glittering.Stiles gulped and knocked lightly into Scott’s shoulder when Isaac stepped aside for the Moon Mage to step up.She wore a glowing cloak like the surface of the moon, and received a similar speech and sigil. Nina Cross was around their age and went to school with Stiles when they were kids. After she received her sigil, the Midnight Mage was brought forward.Derek made a quiet noise of surprise. Eight week old Emma Wright wore a midnight blue gown, wide awake and cradled in her father’s arms and occasionally waving a tiny little fist in the air. Her father wore a dark gray robe, as was tradition—Claudia’s was like smoke when Stiles was an infant. “And now,” Mayor Pulley said, “our newest addition, our most precious, the Midnight Mage.” The crowd cheered, making Emma startle, but she didn’t cry—she watched Mayor Pulley as she opened up a vial of Starlight potion. Her delighted shriek echoed over the crowd as she kicked her legs, making her father smile over her head. “What is that?” Derek asked under his breath. He looked concerned and fascinated, like he wasn’t sure if he was about to witness some horrible ritual sacrifice. Stiles explained while Mayor Pulley and John applied the potion to Emma’s forehead, chin, throat, and hands. “It’s a potion for protection, good health, fortune. A blessing for all the babies in town,” he added. “But only the Midnight Mage is blessed on this night.”“Her hands…”“It’s safe for her to eat,” he said with a quick smile, finally tearing his gaze from the stage to reassure him. “I ate it when it was my turn, apparently.”“You’re not normal, though.”Scott laughed on his other side, while Stiles fought to keep a straight face. He looked back up, watching the silvery blue potion twinkle and glow on the baby’s face and hands. He looked up at the sky. “Almost time.” The sky filled with stars as the hour grew later, points of white-silver light in the velvety deep blue expanse. “It’s time,” Mayor Pulley announced. Her pendant glowed a deep purple at her throat. Isaac’s face was tense, pale and nervous again as he stepped up to accept the wide copper bowl John held out to him. It steamed between his palms. His mouth moved, speaking too quietly to hear from across the field. When John responded, he relaxed. Nina took the sparking, sizzling silver bowl from Mayor Pulley and stopped beside Isaac, jostling him lightly with her elbow and grinning. Stiles caught Derek’s wrist lightly as the whole crowd tensed, watching the procession move across the stage. “We’ll all be moving in a second,” he whispered. “Just keep up.” He nodded seriously.The three Mages, Mayor Pulley, and John led the town on a quiet but cheery parade to the Seven Willows, where Star and Moon Mage stood opposite each other with their bowls while John and Mayor Pulley performed the revitalization spell. It hovered in the air in a cloud of white and black above the trees. The crowd wasn’t still for even a second, constantly shifting forward or back or to the side as they waited. As soon as John’s hands lowered, people filed to the Mages, two lines forming to dip their hand in one bowl or the other and flit into the trees. Erica and Scott squeezed up front, pulling rank as Isaac’s coven, which mostly just made people laugh and shake their heads; both of them dipped their hands into the bowl, then kissed his cheeks at the same time, making him blush. Stiles lined up the right way, behind two excited teens. “You don’t have to come up here for this,” he told Derek. “But you can if you want.”His brows raised. “I can?”“Sure. It’s just revitalizing the town’s protections. The more the merrier.” He and Derek walked up to Isaac together. Stiles couldn’t help the wide grin that spread over his face. “Congratulations. You’re doing great.”Isaac beamed with pride but didn’t speak, eyes gleaming. Stiles dipped his hand in the bowl, tilting it so the whole surface was covered. The potion was warm on his palm and smelled sweet and floral, glittering red-gold in the night. Derek did the same, pausing to sniff it as it gleamed on his hands before he followed Stiles through the curtain of branches and leaves. Stiles wandered to the red tree like he did every year and pressed his hand to the trunk. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the pulse of the town around him, the primal whip of magic in the air. When he dropped his arm, his hand print matched the others and would get covered like them soon enough too. Derek gasped softly after he lifted his hand away, bringing it up to his nose, but all the potion had stuck to the tree. Hands wrapped around each of Stiles’s arms, tugging him side-to-side in an awkward, swaying dance. Erica’s coffee breath brushed across his face. “Come on, the bonfire is lit and Amanda made Starshine.” Stiles grimaced, making Scott laugh on his other side. “Only if you guys behave yourselves, Isaac still has to do the Star Fall ritual.” But he let them drag him through the willow branches.Erica reached out and caught Derek’s sleeve, pulling him with them. The bonfire blazed above their heads while Charlotte Anderson and her mother handed out star shaped slips of paper. “Shooting stars!” one little boy shouted, grabbing several before his parents could stop him. Charlotte waved them off with an indulgent smile, reaching into a box at her feet to lay more out on the card table. Derek slowed to a stop, watching as Scott and Erica bounced over to collect pieces of paper. Erica bent over the table next to Charlotte, talking while she scribbled on her star. Charlotte laughed. Erica straightened, kissed her paper, and flicked it into the fire in a shower of sparks. People cheered around them. Music started up again as more people filed away from the trees as Starlight wrapped up. Glimmering glasses of bubbling Starshine wine started making the rounds. Derek eyed the glasses warily. “It’s just carambola wine with a lot of sugar. And a little bit of magic,” he added when Scott cleared his throat. Scott grinned and pressed some paper into Stiles’s hand before he bolted away. “What does the magic in it do?” Derek asked warily. “Oh.” Stiles chuckled. “Good dreams, health, no hangover. It’s good,” he added. “You should try some, and if you don’t like it, someone else will take it, I promise.”Erica grabbed a man near the fire to swing into a dance; firelight bent around them, glittering on the net of sparkling stars Stiles had draped over her cloak. The magic Erica was doing sent red glinting off the silver, cast them in their own fire. She guided the man through the steps of the dance and laughed loudly, her cloak flaring out behind her when he spun her. Scott was on the other side of the fire, dancing with two people and drinking Starshine, while Isaac accepted congratulations and stood looking pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. John and the deputies stood at the edge of the crowd observing, power rising from them like heat from a fire. Stiles noticed a man across the crowd, one hand curled around something on his neck, so still he was immediately eye-catching.His lips were moving, gaze fixed. Stiles narrowed his eyes. The man turned, taking a glass of wine, and Stiles relaxed, exhaling. Maybe he was just singing to himself. Derek stared as people threw their wishes into the fire, raising his eyes to the plumes of smoke that changed colors and formed improbable shapes with each slip of paper. He inhaled sharply as the fire flashed deep blue, then faded back to orange. The light cast shadows over his face, changing the angles, making him look fearsome and unknowable one moment, then lost and frustrated the next. Stiles held out a piece of paper and a pen. “Write your wish down.”“Will it come true?” He took the paper, turning it over in his hands thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he replied, “but not because of the fire.” He meant that there were no magic wishes here, just fun. Derek nodded, shifting closer as he scribbled on the paper. Stiles did the same and lifted his in front of his face, then blew on it instead of walking it to the fire. It fluttered out of his grip, turning on its point midair and then drifting into the flames which glowed like rubies for a moment after. Derek flicked his in and retreated to Stiles’s side again, closer than he had been before. The fire turned red again.“Why…”Stiles tapped the pendant he was still wearing. “Stilinski coven.” He touched his own pendant, feeling over the rounded points while he scanned the crowd. A gaggle of children around twelve-years-old circled the fire. The music changed, growing louder and faster as the kids stepped into a silly, choreographed little dance, tossing fistfuls of purple borage flowers into the crowd. Phone cameras flashed as parents recorded and cheered, applause erupting from siblings and aunts and uncles. One little girl pretended to trip, making a show of rolling to her feet in a shower of petals. She beamed when people cheered for her. Derek laughed, tucking his face into the side of Stiles’s neck. His heart bumped. He bent quickly so Derek wouldn’t notice and scooped up a few of the tiny flowers, then held one out when he straightened up. “A starflower,” Derek said, brows lifting. “You guys leaned into this a bit much, didn’t you?”It shocked a laugh out of him, smoothing over his momentary panic. “They were important to our founder. She claimed the stars led her here.”“Did they?”Stiles shrugged. “Who are we to doubt her now? We’re here, we’re protected. We’re together. And everyone looks good in stars.”“Oh really?”Stiles waved his hand. A sparkling web draped over Derek’s shoulders, across his chest, in his black hair. It would disappear in the light of dawn, a simple aesthetic spell that people tended to pick up as they learned more robust, complicated spells, but it still made him look both magical and celestial, wearing all black with stars caught in his hair, a red starburst at his throat, holding a starflower between his fingers. While Stiles was stuck, staring, Derek reached out, plucking another flower from his limp hands, and tucked it behind Stiles’s ear.“You’re right,” he said, “everyone looks good in stars.”
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The bonfire blazed through the night. Wine flowed and music and dancers flitted around the fire. Stiles stopped after one cup of Starshine because he didn’t like the spinny feeling it gave him. He danced with Erica and Scott and even Derek, briefly, then some friends he hadn’t seen in a while. Someone kissed his cheek and spun him as the music picked up the pace again. He laughed, stumbling to catch himself before he tipped into the beaten-down grass. A woman with a sweet smile caught his hand, carrying with her the powerful scent of damp turned earth. Black combs glittered in her hair. Before he could tell her he needed a minute, Scott was there, yanking him away. “Sorry,” he chirped. “The Star Mage waits for no one.” He waved at the woman as they tumbled through the crowd. Around the bonfire, more people started dancing, abandoning their cups and snacks in favor of grabbing a partner. The music pulsed in time with the magic hovering in the air now. Children and adults threw their arms up, showering the crowd with snowflakes that glowed brighter than the fire. “Shooting stars!” someone shouted, and children shrieked, throwing handfuls of star paper into the flames. Isaac looked both pleased and overwhelmed as they approached. Scott swept into a low bow, giggling to himself. “Cut it out,” Isaac muttered.Nina laughed and gave a regal nod when Scott turned to bow before her. “May I have this dance?”“Star Fall is soon,” she warned him, but she took his hand anyway, following him into the crowd of dancers. Isaac bit his lip.“Do you want to dance?” Stiles grinned.“No!”He laughed. “Okay.”The robe shimmered as Isaac shifted his weight. “How is Derek? He doesn’t seem like the party type.”“Yeah, I think he probably isn’t, but he seems fine for the moment.” His cheeks stung, heating despite the chilly night air as he remembered the moment Derek tucked the flower behind his ear, while their gazes had been on each other, stars twinkling around them. He turned, searching the crowd; he was stunned to find Derek holding Emma Wright up on his shoulder, patting her back rhythmically while her fathers ate and spoke to him with big smiles.Isaac’s jaw dropped. “What…is he allowed to burp the Midnight Mage?”The absurdity of the question made Stiles laugh. “Of course. It looks like they asked him to so they could get some food. I might go check in though…”Isaac nodded frantically. Stiles approached just as Emma let out an enormous belch. “Well, hello to you too.”Tim, her father in the gray robes, laughed. “I can take her now. Thanks, Derek.” He held his hands out.Emma snatched at the stars in Derek’s hair as he passed her over, squealing as Tim pulled her away. She kicked her legs, sending the blue gown fluttering. “What?” Derek muttered. He scowled when he noticed Stiles smiling, but there was hardly any heat in it. “Nothing, just checking in. How are you doing?”He shrugged, watching as Tim and Robby took Emma over to Tim’s parents.“Tired. Does the whole town seriously stay up all night every year?”“Pretty much. People nap and stuff.” He gestured toward some piles of people snoozing, far enough away from the fire to avoid getting stepped on. “Tomorrow will be pretty quiet, but that’s normal.” “Huh.” Derek watched as a few people flipped blankets out and covered their faces. “When does it end?”“Near dawn. The Star Fall ritual closes out the night, then we all go home. Tomorrow afternoon most of us will be back to clean up and look for stuff we lost.” He crossed his arms. “Oh?”Stiles waved with a flourish at the dancers, who nearly all had a glass of Starshine in hand. Derek shook his head, but he was still almost smiling. They went to find some food—warm, melty cheese sandwiches and soup—and sat down, sipping cups of hot chocolate. Erica joined them, panting and sweaty from dancing, then Scott flopped on his back with his head on Stiles’s leg. They all rested there in the grass dozing until the shimmering music of small bells woke them. Scott yawned hugely and pulled them all unsteadily to their feet, even Derek. The sky was lightening as dawn approached. The music had gone hushed since they drifted off, the fire banked. Everyone was more subdued now than earlier, but just as happy, standing closer together as they prepared to follow the three Mages to the town altar stone.Stiles nudged Derek along with them but didn’t speak. He was tired in the best way, warm from the flow of magic through and around them. Scott grinned and nodded toward the front of the crowd, where Isaac and Nina were accepting old fashioned branch brooms made of hawthorn and alder, with willow and hazel branches tied at the bottom. The Willow Pass altar was large and thrummed with magic deep into the earth, charged with offerings and the meditations people did here throughout the year. Most of the physical stuff—crystals, figurines, food, poppets—had been cleared away, and now the Mages would sweep away the lingering magical energy, making way for the new year. The rest of them formed several circles around the stone, huddled close together for warmth. “Are they going to fly?” Derek muttered. A little boy in front of them giggled. “No,” Stiles chuckled. “It’s just a cleansing ritual.” “What do the rest of you do?”“Take turns sweeping if we want, or just reflect on the year we’re nearly done with, think about the year ahead.”“Ah.”Stiles was surprised he didn’t tease about it a little bit—it was probably a little odd to complete outsiders to watch as Isaac, Nina, and Tim-holding-Emma swept across the stone—but Derek just turned his thoughtful gaze back to the altar. Sparks skimmed under the branches on the ends of the brooms, and their robes glowed and shifted as they moved around each other and the altar. Stiles breathed deeply. The night smelled of food and flowers and wood smoke as it gave way, very slowly, to dawn.Isaac beamed as he passed his broom to a teenager who wanted to go next. He leaped off the altar, duties done, and hurried to John and Mayor Pulley to turn in the Star Mage robes. Scott swayed into Stiles’s side. “He did really great.”“Yes, he did.”“Come on, I want to take a turn.” Erica took Scott’s hand and dragged him up to the altar. While they took the brooms on more of a dance than a sweep, Stiles stood in the crowd with Derek, eyes half-lidded. The whole town felt reenergized and refreshed, like a shot of caffeine was working through the roots beneath the dirt, making them alert and awake for the coming winter. Dawn was breaking as people began moving, leaving in high spirits. Stiles jolted when Isaac touched his hand.“Oh, sorry. You ready to go?” Erica and Scott stood at his shoulders. “Yes.” He blinked, fully opening his eyes and finally noticing that the field around the altar stone was nearly empty. He shook himself. Star Fall always put him in a meditative state, so tuned into the currents of magic that it was like he was being pulled gently away, enveloped in the town’s roots. “Alright, let’s head back, I’m beat. How was it?” “Great. Amazing,” he said, breathless and giddy. “Show us,” Erica commanded, knocking into him.He eagerly pulled out his wand, the metal flashing in the creeping morning light as he turned it so they could see the sigil. Both the Star Mage and Moon Mage received a special sigil on their focus items. It was powerful and a great honor—like a blessing from the town as a whole—and Isaac seemed thrilled as he ran his thumb over the sigil, a five point star merging into a half circle around the top and side points. The Moon Mage received an inverted version.“It’s really cool,” Scott said. “Kind of mesmerizing.” Erica elbowed him lightly. “Your turn next. Gotta bust ass this year.” Scott shrugged, unmoved. “I’m busy with Deaton and the animals.”They trudged home tired but glowing, following the little side road toward the house. The trees around them blocked the slowly rising sun, making it dark enough to feel like night had briefly clawed control away from dawn again. Their yawns hung in shimmering clouds around them. Derek noticed it first, slowing until he was at the back of the group before coming to a complete stop.Stiles looked back at him, but his gaze drifted away. He felt…something. Nausea crept up on him. The trees rustled. Erica stopped walking.Scott frowned, plucking at his sleeve where his wand was tucked. Isaac tensed, slowing to a stop next to Stiles. He licked his lips, gaze darting to the trees and back to them. Other than the rustle in the trees, they hadn’t noticed anything off—just Stiles and Derek. Stiles walked closer to the tree line, catching his breath. A warbling, unnerving groan slithered out of the woods. “Back up,” he ordered, putting one hand out behind him. Erica, Scott, and Isaac took hasty steps back; Derek didn’t. There were still stars in his hair as his mouth twisted into a snarl, claws extending at his fingertips. Stiles didn’t bother being annoyed he hadn’t listened, turning his gaze on the woods, fingers flexing. The leaves swayed, like they were responding to him. He straightened his hands out in case they were. What stumbled out of the shadows between the trees was not…quite what Stiles was expecting. It wasn’t some poor desiccated animal dragged back to life but a man, and he looked…if not alive then fresh, wearing ripped slacks and a stained shirt and tie. His eyes were wide and blue. Stiles’s fingers flexed at his sides. He swallowed. “Erica,” he said calmly, “go get Dad, now.” She flew into motion, her cloak flaring out behind her as she ran back the way they came.The man let out a guttural growl and lunged after her. There was a weeping wound across his face, under both eyes and across the bridge of his nose, surgically straight. Stiles flicked his fingers. The man tripped backward on stiff legs. He only had one shoe; his left foot was bare and filthy, covered in cuts and mud. “Stay back,” Stiles said over his shoulder, picking his way closer for a better look.The man lunged again, and Derek stepped forward, snarling. Stiles knocked him back again, holding his other hand out to keep Derek away. “I just want to see something.” He bent forward, squinting to see in the dim light. The man’s brown hair was wet with blood in the back, seeping from a wound that mirrored the one on his face. Stiles’s stomach churned at the sewage-like stench wafting from the man and the unnatural, painful-sounding groans he was making. He lunged again, teeth clacking together. Stiles thrust his palm out, knocking him into the dirt. Scott gasped. Running footsteps from the right made Stiles exhale, shoulders loosening with relief. John and Deputy Parrish emerged on the path ahead of Erica, still wearing their traditional cloaks. They stopped in front of the man without hesitating and lifted one arm each. In the hazy light of dawn with the wind blowing their black cloaks around them, they looked ethereal and terrifying, like sorcerers from storybooks as power crackled at their fingertips. The barrier they raised around the man, who Stiles was pretty sure was a ghoul, scored the earth as it pinned him in place. “Go home,” John ordered in a rough voice. Erica stepped up beside Isaac, red-faced and panting from her run. The ghoul groaned and snarled inside the barrier, thick spit foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. Deputy Parrish motioned for them to go, cutting his gaze to John pointedly. His face was cold and furious, eyes locked on the ghoul. Stiles nodded. “Come on, guys.”Derek stared at the writhing ghoul until Stiles pulled him away by the arm.
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They didn’t sleep when they got home. Pearly morning light flooded the house through the windows they had left open the day before. None of them felt the usual clean, happy exhaustion from a full day spent doing rituals. Fear and confusion clouded the house, leaving them all jittery and tired but unable to sleep. Scott took a look at all of them and went to the kitchen, clattering around for a few minutes. The smell of cooking food quickly filled up the space, warming the chilled air.Erica thumped into a chair at the table, fumbling with the clasps of her cloak. Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm until the pain forced him to wrench his hands apart. Isaac sank into the chair beside Erica and propped his chin on his hand. Derek stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed, legs braced. Stiles looked at them all and didn’t know what to say, so instead of trying, he went to the kitchen.Scott was making chorizo and eggs, refried beans, toasting bread and warming tortillas, and slicing up fruit between running back to the stove. “Okay, that’s enough of that.” He nudged him away from the orange and banana slices. There was also a small mountain of cantaloupe. Scott grimaced. “Alright.” He wiped his cheek. “I’m almost, uh, done.”“Take your time.” He grabbed a pitcher of juice from the fridge and some glasses, shooting Scott another worried look before he went back to the dining room. Erica spread her hand on the table while he was setting the juice down, staring at her wrist until Isaac set his hand over it. She exhaled and relaxed. Isaac was the one to break the silence. “What was wrong with him?”Stiles poured a glass of juice as he answered. “I’m not entirely certain, but I think he was a ghoul.”“Which is…?” Erica prompted. Her hair was a mess from the festival and running for help. She fought it into a ponytail while watching him. He tapped his thumb against the glass he was holding before passing it to Isaac. “I’m not really clear on that because it’s not common knowledge—or anything people usually leave lying around.” He scowled briefly. “So, it’s illegal?” Isaac asked. Stiles wagged his hand back and forth. “Sort of? It involves hurting someone so you could say that.”“So…your dad is gonna make an arrest when he finds whoever did it?”“Yes, possibly.”They exchanged wide-eyed looks. The entire time they’d been here, John hadn’t had to make a single arrest. Stiles was freaked out too. People weren’t perfect here, but there was usually something to be done aside from long-term detaining. He gave Erica a cup of juice, then Derek, who took it with great reluctance. He stared at the glass in his hands. “The man smelled dead.”Scott fumbled something in the kitchen. “How-” Stiles’s voice cracked, annoying him. “How dead?”Derek shot him an incredulous look, then frowned thoughtfully. “…Recently dead?”Stiles grimaced and pressed his thumb against his forehead. “Right.” He swallowed. “Uh, let’s help Scott with breakfast.” They carried the food and dishes out to the table together, only getting in each other’s way a few times and spilling, miraculously, nothing. Before they could sit down to eat, John walked in. His eyes were dark and magic snapped around him in a way that made them all stand straighter. “What’s going on?” Scott blurted. “What was that thing?”He waved at them to sit down. “That was a ghoul.” He made a sharp gesture when Erica tried to speak, shocking them all into silence. “A ghoul is a person a witch has enslaved using magic. They are in a between state, but mostly dead. This kind of magic is dangerous and takes an enormous toll on the witch and the victim.” “Can the person be rescued?” Scott asked, picking at his napkin.John rubbed his jaw, scratching at the stubble starting there. “No. Once the witch releases them, they succumb to the onslaught of magic and die. It’s blood magic,” he added. “Is that like flesh magic?” Isaac shrugged when Erica made a disgusted face. “In a way,” John replied honestly. “In that neither is truly bad unless it’s used to harm others.”Isaac nodded, looking troubled. “Now.” John pointed at Derek. “I’d like to talk to you. Alone,” he said sharply when Stiles stood.“But-”“Nope.”Stiles pressed his left thumb into his right palm, watching them go to the living room. He leaned forward on his toes, straining to hear something, but of course John had made sure no sound could escape the room. Scott cleared his throat. “Let’s make our plates while they talk.” He scooped for everyone, heaping chorizo and eggs, beans, and fruit on their plates.Stiles gave him the stink eye when he scooped a particularly large helping of chorizo onto John’s plate, but he showed no remorse. He jumped when John and Derek returned, but they both looked relaxed. Derek shrugged when Stiles tried to catch his eye. “There are a lot of strangers in town right now,” John said. “We can’t know who did this yet, but we will find out. This kind of magic leaves tracks.” He looked frustrated for a second before he hid it, turning to his seat. Stiles sat down next to Derek. “What did he ask you?”“Nothing much,” he mumbled, pulling his plate closer. Stiles scowled and grabbed his fork. John ate with them but left immediately after to get back to investigating. The rest of them did the bare minimum of clean up, putting leftovers in the fridge and dishes in the sink, then shambled to bed, exhausted at last. Stiles left his light off while he shucked his hoodie and shoes, then crawled into bed. The sheets were cool and soft as he pressed his face into his pillow, wrapping his fists in the blanket. He planned in outrageous circles until he finally fell asleep.When he woke up, Stiles was determined to make some kind of progress on the Derek situation. He changed into fresh, comfortable clothes and washed his face, then grabbed his bat. He found Erica barely awake in the living room, staring into her coffee more than drinking it. He crept by instead of saying anything. As expected, Derek was in the sunroom, sitting with Fiona and feeding Cheeto the salamander according to an instruction sheet written in Scott’s slanting handwriting. “Hey.” Stiles tapped his bat. “I want to try something.”Derek looked up. “Okay.”They went to the backyard once more, squinting in the midday sun. Beneath his feet, Stiles could still feel the town’s collective magic thrumming through the land.Derek eyed him warily. “You don’t have any potions.” Stiles grimaced, leaning his bat against one of the tables. “Nope. I’m just going to try a spell this time, no potion needed.” He moved around to stand in front of him. “It should not hurt, but there may be pressure.” Derek nodded and braced. Stiles lifted his hands. He was still hesitant to push too hard, so he tried a spell for awakening, something not so aggressive that might awaken Derek’s memories without doing much damage. He swallowed and opened his fingers, pushing with his palm and magic. Derek’s eyes narrowed as the spell wrapped around him. His breath hissed. Stiles pushed harder until he felt the spell complete itself. He waited, breath caught as Derek grimaced, then prompted, “So?”He blinked a couple times, then frowned. He looked down at his hands, fingers curling.“Derek? Anything?”He looked up. After a moment, he growled, then looked surprised.“Yes? No? A little bit?”He stared at Stiles. “I can’t shift.”“What?”“I can’t shift.”Stiles blinked. “Wha-” He inhaled. “Excuse me?”Derek held up his hand, flexing his fingers. No claws. Stiles reared back, sputtering. “Nothing? You can’t shift at all? Not—not even your eyes? Can you—what—it was just an awakening spell!” He looked at his hands, then Derek, fear rising in his throat, threatening to smother him. “Oh my god, okay, I-” He choked off. He didn’t know. He didn’t know how this happened or how to fix it or why it would happen. Panic squeezed his lungs. He put his hands up and stopped, unsure. His breath came in noisy pants, hands hovering uselessly in front of him.Red flickered in Derek’s eyes. Claws flashed and receded at his fingertips, his teeth sharpened—it was all very faint but it was something.Stiles gasped, sagging forward. “What the fuck?” Derek stared at his hands until his claws came out fully, then lifted his gaze. Relief made Stiles lightheaded. He curled his hands together and breathed slowly through his nose. Derek set his jaw and tapped his temple. “Can’t you just go in and force my memories free?”Stiles recoiled, tripping over his own feet and almost crashing down into the grass. “No! Look what just happened. No. I need to do some more reading and ask around-”“It was only temporary,” he said with a scowl.Stiles yanked his hands through his hair. “Yes, but what if next time it isn’t? No way. I need more time.” He needed to think. This wasn’t something he could just fix by going in without a plan. He shook his head when Derek tried to speak. “I need to look into this more. That shouldn’t—that shouldn’t have happened.” He didn’t look at Derek as he swept by, grabbing his bat on his way back to the house.His magic had never done something like this before, potentially harming someone, not doing what he expected. As a child, of course, unexpected magic happened but now? He went to gather more books and his phone; someone in town had to know something.
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The house was silent as everyone napped the day away—not unusual for the day after the festival. They shambled up for a late lunch and passed out again directly after, leaving plates on the table and cups on the counters, which gave the house a strange, paused feeling. Stiles paced the yard, talking to his old homeroom teacher about what happened with Derek. She was baffled, but promised to look into it.“This is unusual but solvable,” she said firmly. “Be careful and keep me updated. I’ll be searching. My cousin in Red-tail Creek might know something…”He paced more after they hung up, thumb tapping the side of his phone. Why would any kind of memory spell take Derek’s shifting abilities? It made no sense. An awakening spell should have just…done nothing if it wasn’t going to work; it wasn’t a powerful or aggressive spell. He tapped his thumb on his jaw, narrowed gaze fixing on the tree line. His eyes burned a little when he blinked, but he was waiting until later that night to sleep more. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. He could still smell the festival in the chilly air, mingling with the damp scent of the woods; the wind tugged at his hair. His feet felt like they were fusing to the earth, sinking in like roots, watching the pulse of life and power move from the center of town and out behind his eyelids. “Stiles?”He jumped, torn out of his reverie. Derek stomped down the steps and across the yard to him, expression dark. Stiles forced himself to stay relaxed. “What is it?”Derek didn’t stop until they were right in front of each other, standing too close, glaring into his eyes. “Go in.”“…What?”He jabbed his temple again. “Go in. I know you can.”“Yes, that went so well last time.”“We have to do something.”“We are!” He refused to step back. “I don’t know how or why that spell took away your shift but I can’t risk that again.”“It was temporary,” he growled. “But what if a stronger spell isn’t?”He scoffed, but Stiles was deadly serious. “So don’t use a spell, just—just go in. I heard you talking to Erica—to the others. You said the memories are in there, just pushed back. Right? So pull them out.”Stiles gritted his teeth. As far as he was concerned, what happened earlier just proved that he was right in the first place—he could do more damage trying to force Derek’s memories loose. Derek got in his face. “It’s my head. I say we should risk it.”Stiles jabbed his chest. “Yeah, but I’m the one who will have to do it, and I shouldn’t have to bear the guilt if something terrible happens.” Derek growled. Sparks ignited on Stiles’s fingers. “Please,” he grunted.Stiles scowled. “Fine. Hold still.” Derek looked shocked, but Stiles didn’t really plan to do much.He just wanted to prove a point. He lifted a hand automatically and stabbed into Derek’s mind, into the knotted mess of memories. He gasped. The world darkened around him, tilting under his feet. There was a flash above him, silver in the dark. A voice chanted almost in a sing song. Candles flickered. Stiles hissed. He could feel both of his feet on the ground and something solid under his back at the same time. The candles reeked of overheated wax all around them. Derek—not the Derek in front of him but the Derek in this memory—was choking on fury; not fear but rage. Stiles couldn’t parse out anything but the rage, the candles, the faint chanting and the gleam of silver over his head. He tried to pull back but found himself stuck—tangled. His throat tightened, panic clutching his lungs. Weakness caught at him. He felt Derek thrashing—memory-Derek; the Derek in front of him was gasping and choking—and weakening. Stiles’s own muscles grew weak too; he felt the flame of his power sputter. The drippy, heavy taste of magic on his tongue was like old blood. Pain clawed through him and memory-Derek, followed swiftly by incandescent fury. Stiles’s hand curled as he struggled to pull free, to separate himself from Derek’s memories but he was stuck…trapped. Snared in the knot of Derek’s mind. Colors flashed by, smudged in front of his eyes like he was looking through a rainy window. Flames blazed and flickered out. Ash drifted around his head, burned up his sinuses. A young woman whose frown was the clearest part of her hovered in front of him, fading into a serious man, then another with mottled scars. A cup of black coffee held low between two hands, cradled like something precious; a broken pen, blue ink all over fingers; crushing devastation, giddy, warm laughter, the gut-deep heat of lust-Stiles tumbled free and landed hard in the grass; pain zinged up his tailbone, sharp, tingling, and his alone. He could see again, but he still felt the burn of Derek’s mind. Derek himself was staring down at him, wild-eyed. “Can you feel it too?”“Yes,” he croaked. Stiles was breathing hard and trembling, hands clenched in the grass beneath him. His magic felt strange, fragile. He’d never gotten stuck like that before. “I still don’t remember anything,” Derek grunted. He was sheet white.Stiles pressed his thumb into his forehead over his left eye, wincing as a headache set in. Nausea seized his stomach.Derek didn’t look much better. “C’mon,” Stiles muttered, pushing shakily to his feet. Derek was looking at his hands, but he followed when Stiles headed inside. He didn’t pay attention to where Derek went after they got inside, stumbling to the bathroom to run cold water over his head for a second. He tilted his head back to gulp some and closed his eyes as icy water spattered his clammy cheeks. He shut the faucet off and grabbed a towel to dry his hair, then went to his bedroom to curl up in bed. Sleep welcomed him graciously for once.
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The dream was murky and smelled like old blood and hot wax. A burn on the side of his neck made him jerk, an unfamiliar snarl twisting his mouth. Weakness spread through him, draining, pulling him down into darkness. Stiles gasped awake blind, clutching his blanket in his fists. He peeled his mind away from Derek’s and swore, pressing his hands into his eyes. The door burst open, making his head snap up. His vision cleared in spots until he could see Derek in the doorway, holding up his hands. His claws flickered out, then disappeared. Stiles exhaled. His bedroom was dark, but the curtains were drawn so he couldn’t tell what time it was. He cleared his throat. “It’s—it’s probably—I don’t know.” He punched his pillow half-heartedly. “I don’t know why, okay? And I hate that, I hate not knowing and I hate not being able to find out more or just—figure this out!”Derek relaxed at this, for once, his shoulders going loose. He nodded at Stiles’s computer chair and raised his brows, then crossed over to it when Stiles nodded. He was wearing baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair in a disarray from restless sleep. He sat in the chair and let out a long breath. Stiles eyed him. “What?”“I don’t know. It’s just…less awful not being the only one who doesn’t know what the hell is going on.” He leaned back in the chair. He glowered at him, but he was too tired to put any heat into it. He said, “Well, me not knowing means we can’t fix this.” He knew he was being petulant, but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t fight this maddening hopelessness while he was so drained. Derek nodded but he still looked relaxed, almost relieved. “I don’t know anything—just you. Your coven. Your home. This town. I know that’s not right.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest and thumped hard. “I know I have a pack, I know that I don’t actually belong here, but it really is…all I have, and it’s like…” He trailed off with a frown. “Being lost?” Stiles guessed quietly. Derek nodded. The room was very dark with just a single shaft of pale light cutting across the floor from the doorway. Stiles could see his piles of books, his laptop, the familiar shape of his bat near his bed, and felt his chest ache, a hollow pang deep inside, at the idea of being surrounded not by home and family but by strange things and strange people. He sighed. “That sucks,” he said at last. Derek snorted a laugh. “Yeah, it really does.” He scratched his leg, swinging one foot back and forth in front of the chair. “What time is it?”Stiles grabbed his phone and groaned. “About four.” He flicked his gaze up and found Derek watching him. He hesitated, brow puckering, wanting to offer him something. He tried to form words, descriptions, but none of it was anything that made sense; even getting stuck in Derek’s dreams didn’t give him information to work with. Just the shape of someone’s frown and the light of flickering candles. “Let’s get some sleep,” he said at last, breaking eye contact. “We’ll try again soon. Maybe Dad can help.”Derek nodded slowly and stood up. “Goodnight.”Stiles flopped backwards and pulled his blanket over his head, but he kept his eyes open until dawn.He dragged himself out of bed four hours later to get dressed again, then trudged to the kitchen. John was there already with toast and two cups of coffee on the counter. Stiles slumped. It was just the two of them awake in the watery, gray-washed kitchen. “I can’t figure it out,” he mumbled. John rubbed his bristly jaw. “Yeah, I’m stumped too.”Stiles’s gaze jerked up.“What did you think, I wasn’t trying to help?”“You’ve been busy.”“Yes, which is why I haven’t been here helping, but I’ve been asking around, looking into it as much as I can with everything going on.” He picked up his mug and leaned a hip against the counter. “That ghoul is still my first priority, but while I’m home today we can work on this.” He sipped his coffee, narrowed eyes focused on the window above the sink. The lines around his eyes looked fainter, shallower than usual, his gaze brighter, face almost flushed with vitality. Power hung around him like glittering dust motes, giving him a charged feeling; all of this was a side effect of the rituals and the festival. The town was refreshed and so was he—so were the deputies, to a lesser extent, and the residents, in a much smaller way. Stiles curled both of his hands tight around his mug and grimaced as he remembered being in Derek’s mind and seeing him do the same. “I’m not sure what to try next,” he admitted, gaze lowered. “Everything I do either has no effect or makes things worse.” He pressed his thumb against his eyebrow, wincing. “More research, I guess.” John nodded slowly. “I’ll head over to the old archives and see if I can find anything—and you may want to check your mother’s books.” “Why?” He winced at the snap of his voice, but John let it roll right off him.“Her family had a knack for mind magic. Even a bit of dream weaving,” he added. “Might be worth checking out.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’ll ask Mr. Clarke too, gods know they have about two centuries’ worth of old spells in that basement of theirs.” He lifted his gaze to the wall, tracking across it to the door. Scott stumbled into the room in his pajamas and stole John’s coffee right out of his hands. A fond, amused smile took over his face. “Morning, Scott.” It took a long moment before Scott returned it with a slow, groggy smile of his own. “Good morning.”Stiles snorted and gulped his own mug before anyone got any ideas. “Breakfast?”“Yeah.”The three of them cooked together, luring the others out of their beds with the heavy scent of sausage. Erica had her hair bundled on top of her head and a determined look in her tired eyes; Stiles wasn’t the least bit surprised when she asked to do some training after they ate. “Of course.” He couldn’t quite meet Derek’s eyes as they sat at the table together.It was funny how often they were using the table now, as usually it was covered in paper, mail, keys, sweaters, and other pocket junk. He expected it to get covered again in a matter of weeks. John managed two bites of his food before his cell let out three sharp blasts. He sighed and lowered his fork. “Maybe it’s just something quick?” Isaac suggested hopefully. He grimaced as he worked his phone out of his pocket. “We’ll see.” It only took a glance at the screen for his expression to go rigid and stern. Stiles’s hand clenched on his fork. “There’s been another ghoul spotted in town.” He cursed quietly. Erica pressed her hand to her heart. “My, my, Sheriff.”He drawled, “You’ve been a bad influence on me,” as he stood up, stuffing his phone back in his pocket. She grinned delightedly. “Stay near the house today,” he ordered, pushing his chair in. “I’d rather you all stay in it, but near it is good enough. Ghouls,” he muttered, shaking his head as he left to get changed. Stiles shuddered. Two ghouls and an undead bird. He glanced at Derek. Doubts and questions drifted through his mind like smoke, but he didn’t know enough about this kind of magic to connect it all. Whoever locked up Derek’s memories and put him in Stiles’s trunk was likely powerful, most likely dangerous or at the very least willing to harm Derek. What if there’s a good reason for that? He glanced at him again, face downturned to hide his scrutiny, then squeezed his eyes shut, banishing that thought. He didn’t believe Derek was a bad person, not after spending time with him especially; whatever was going on, Derek wasn’t at fault, at least not directly, not because he was trying to hurt anyone.He tapped his thumb against the edge of his plate. What would ghouls have to do with Derek’s situation? Spies, for whoever did this? Could they be effective spies? What about the bird? Why spy at all? To make sure Stiles still had him? To see if Derek had attacked him? He shook his head, annoyed, because he was just going in circles, the same circles he’d been going in since this whole thing started. John had suggested searching Claudia’s books, so after training, Stiles left Scott and Isaac to fold up the tables for winter while Erica and Derek cleaned up the morning’s dishes in uncomfortable silence until Erica flicked bubbles at Derek and he let her with a small, half hidden smile. Stiles left them, satisfied that they wouldn’t try to kill each other, and went to the hall where the attic stairs were tucked into the ceiling. He crooked his finger, drawing the folding staircase down. It was dusty up there and smelled of old magic, damp wood, and forgotten things. The left half was neat, piled with plastic tubs of seasonal clothes and clutter too sentimental to give away. The right side was thick with dust and lingering sorrow; two leather trunks sat side by side, surrounded by several suitcases full of Claudia’s things they couldn’t give away. The suitcases were stuffed with her ridiculous amount of trinkets—crystal figurines, bells, ceramic statues, rocks and uncharged crystals—and her magical tools—spelled knitting needles, potion-saturated paintbrushes, an old fashioned cauldron with runes and sigils carved into it, a cloak with magic woven right into the fabric, a pestle and mortar with magic and herbs ground into the bottom, a delicate silver knife and a cutting board meant to be used for potions. Heirlooms of their coven, really, and not meant to be locked away. She would be annoyed, Stiles knew, if she saw this. He would bring them out again eventually, for their new coven to use. Not yet. He needed a little more time. He scrubbed his face and marched to the leather trunks. These definitely shouldn’t be locked up, but after she was gone, he and John both wanted to cling to everything of hers and tuck it all away at the same time. Every time he had caught a glimpse of her books somewhere around the house, it was a painful jolt, like running into her and then losing her all over again. Once John had found a pair of her socks balled up in the sofa cushions (a habit of hers) and had broken down so severely that Stiles got scared and ran to the Clarkes’ for help. Stiles himself had clutched one of her potion recipe books to his chest and sobbed until his eyes hurt one day after school; he’d found it while looking for a book to help with his homework, and with no one around, he just…let go.So it was easier for both of them to avoid those heart-wrenching shocks by putting everything away, out of sight. Eventually little things found their way out again—her cookbook fell through the ceiling when Stiles had a desperate craving for her secret-recipe chili, and John had found that some of her trinkets returned to their homes on bookshelves and in his bedroom again. Stiles blew dust out of his face and opened the trunk, breathing in the ink and vanilla smell of his mother’s magic. He leaned forward, letting the edge of the trunk press into his chest while he inhaled it, until dust tickled his nose. He jerked back to sneeze, then rubbed his watering eyes with his sleeve. “Yeah, I get it,” he muttered with a sniffle. He skimmed his fingers over the books, the spines and edges. He selected them based on feeling rather than the titles or listed contents, concentrating on what he needed. He had a hefty pile of books by the time he closed the trunk up, running his fingertips over the clasps. He knew now that he had opened it at last, he would be back, that soon her books would fill the house again. Claudia was a skilled witch and her family was powerful, and Scott, Erica, and Isaac deserved access to these books, too—the knowledge was theirs now as well and it wasn’t right to keep it from them. Stiles was careful to tuck the books close to his chest as he climbed down the squeaking but sturdy ladder, split in two stacks, biting his tongue to keep from cursing when a step shrieked at him. He was at the bottom rung when a slam echoed through the house, making him jump. An old book with an acid green cover slipped out of his pile, hitting the floor with a smack. He scowled, but before he could snap at someone about it, Scott and Isaac were yelling for him. He ran. “Outside,” Scott wheezed when he made it to the kitchen. He waved at the backdoor that was swinging behind him while his breath whistled. Isaac reached out, touching his chest with the tip of his metal wand. He inhaled deeply, gasping out a shaky, “Thanks.”Erica’s dagger was already in her hand, turning in her palm with nerves.“What’s outside? Move.” He dumped the books on the counter and shouldered past them, out the door. With a sizzle and burst of violet-scented magic, his bat was in his hand. Erica swore softly behind him as the three of them followed him outside, but she and Isaac froze on the porch. Scott stumbled down to the yard a step behind Stiles. “They just came out of the woods,” he panted. Stiles circled away from the porch to get a better look at them: two emaciated, ragged deer flanking a rotting dog. Half of the dog’s face was bone and stringy, papery gray flesh, and both of its eyes were flat white.When Stiles got closer, it let out a gurgling growl, matted, stiff fur rising along its back. The deer on either side of it pawed the ground. Stiles’s bat heated in his hand.Scott choked, “They aren’t rabid.”“No.”Scott knew that; he was just afraid and grasping for answers that made sense. One of the deer had a twisted back end, fur matted with blood, bones sticking through flesh; magic forced it upright but not whole, twisting things back into place by force if necessary. The other’s bottom jaw was displaced and hung at an angle, black-gray tongue dangling; shards of its spine stuck out of its patchy fur. The dog snarled again.From beside Stiles, Derek growled back, making him jump. “Where’d you come from?” he muttered, but Derek didn’t appear to hear him. The dog’s head swung in Derek’s direction, a loose, puppet-like movement. A chill went through him. Was it focusing on Derek?The dog’s sides heaved, but whether it was mimicking breath or growling again, he couldn’t tell. He rolled his bat in his palm, then turned it in a quick circle in front of him.A barrier rose around the three undead animals. The dog growled and threw itself at it over and over again, thick froth slicking down the filthy fur of its throat. Stiles exhaled. “Someone text Dad about this, please.” He couldn’t look away from the trio. Erica jumped off the porch, dagger tight in her fist, and marched to the tree line.Stiles tensed, ready to shield her if anything else came out, but she didn’t go far; she reached up into the lowest branches of the tree and cut something. “He’s on his way,” Scott said from behind him. “He said to stay inside and he’ll deal with, um, those when he gets here.”Erica whirled and tossed something. Stiles caught it before it hit his face, barely, and fumbled it over to get a look. The chill from earlier reached his bones. It was a small, green velvet bag, marked with a single sigil and stinking of magic. It was human magic, bought magic. “Hunters.” He met Erica’s horrified, furious gaze with one of his own. “We need to go inside. Now.”
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Derek was baffled by Stiles’s statement as they all crowded back into the house. The door slammed and locked on its own behind them. A faint sheen of red shimmered over the windows. “Witch hunters can use magic?” he asked faintly as they migrated to the living room.“They consider it a necessary evil,” Erica growled, rubbing her left wrist. She paced in front of the TV, kicking a pillow out of her path while Derek watched her. “They sometimes buy magic from witches that will let them past magical protections.”“Like the ones around Willow Pass.” Stiles’s voice was rough, anger making his whole body shake; the house reacted to his fury, doors and windows locking, barriers stretching over glass, a ring of boiling magic lighting up around the property, ready to burn anyone who might try to enter. Scott and Isaac slowly sat on the couch while Derek stood near the yellow chair.Erica looked at Stiles, her eyes dark and hollow, before she turned back to Derek. “Before I knew I was a witch, a hunter tried to kill me.” Her nails dug into the skin of her wrist. “After that, I made a point of finding out everything I could about them. Most don’t bother with enclaves like this—the witches are too powerful and the protections more so. Even with bought magic it can break them—their minds.” She released her wrist with a grimace. Blood welled up, bright red crescents where her nails cut through the skin. “They can still hurt people though, especially if they bought enough spells, amulets, and potions to keep the…madness at bay.” Derek nodded slowly, eyes fixed on her wrist. Scott touched Stiles’s arm. “I’m gonna go take care of everyone in the sunroom, it’s feeding time.”Stiles nodded jerkily. Erica collapsed on the sofa beside Isaac, her face pale and sickly. Derek looked dazed and unsure, hovering behind the yellow chair. “I’m sorry,” he muttered and left the room. Down the hall, the sunroom door squeaked once more as he joined Scott. Stiles paced to the kitchen to look out the window, but the magic creeping over the house was making the glass muddy. His phone rang. “Stay inside,” John ordered as soon as he answered, his voice terse. “Deputy Parrish is dealing with the animals. I have to stay here, just—keep them all indoors today, okay?”“Fine,” he gritted out. “Be safe.”“You too.” The line went dead. He dropped his phone on the counter so he wouldn’t throw it and paced from the kitchen to the front door, hands tangled, thumb pressing hard into his palm. He thought if he stood still he might scream or break something or maybe just explode into a ball of furious energy. Isaac stood on Stiles’s third lap, quietly going to get a mirror from the supply closet and his yellow ritual candle, taking them both back to the living room.Erica was still on the couch holding the velvet bag, staring down at it; she took it back from Stiles when they realized what it was and he hadn’t fought her. She deserved to look at it, to take it apart and study it or burn it if she wanted—although he’d rather she waited until John returned home. “It isn’t very powerful,” she said with a clinical sort of detachment. “I can barely feel it.”Stiles held his hand out silently. When it dropped in his hand, he found that, now that he was paying attention, she wasn’t wrong. The pouch barely had a spark of magic, just enough to convince the hunter they got what they paid for which…didn’t make sense. Erica’s fists clenched in her lap. The barriers over the windows thickened, blocking out the sunlight as Stiles’s temper flared. None of them should feel this scared, not here. “I’m gonna help Isaac.” She stood, glancing at the coffee table where he had his mirror and candle set up.“Use this.” Stiles held the pouch out again. “If anything, look backwards.”“Why?”He glowered. “Because I want to know who sold it. And,” he added, forcing himself past the bitter anger, “they must have sold the hunter other things too, something to let them in here, something else to keep their wits long enough to plant whatever this is supposed to be.”She nodded, jaw clenching. “Is there anything else I can do right now?”He understood the need to be busy, to keep her mind occupied enough that the fear didn’t have time to paralyze her. “Get your own candle and try scrying as well. You’ve always done better with fire than mirrors.” She nodded seriously and left for her supplies—she always left them in the practice room instead of putting them away.Isaac kept dutifully studying his mirror, his focus item held in his fingers, gaze distant. This left Stiles standing in the walkway between the living room and the dining room, hands tangled as he tried to get ahold of himself. He didn’t know what he was angrier about: that hunters would come here, where they were just trying to live their lives, to kill them, to punish them for existing, or for the fact that another witch made it possible for them to enter at all. He turned on his heel and stormed to the back door. He wanted to fight someone, wanted to do something, so he might as well use the violence surging at his fingertips to help Deputy Parrish with the animals. When he swung the odor open, the yard was empty. Black ash blew across the grass, the stink of burned, rotted flesh carrying up to the porch. Stiles slammed the door and retreated into the house, frustration unspent. He didn’t want to disturb Erica and Isaac as they worked on scrying—an imprecise magic as it was—so he cut down the hall instead. He found Derek outside of the sunroom, glaring at a shimmering window. He stopped.Derek’s voice was rough with guilt. “Is this because of me?”“I don’t know. I can’t know, not without-”“-my memories.” He turned. “We have to try again. You felt or saw something last time, right?” “Maybe.” Stiles scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yes. But it was all so jumbled-”“We have to try.” Derek’s jaw clenched. “People are in danger, right? So we try again.”He studied his face, the harsh set of his mouth, the stubborn drawn lines of his brows, and couldn’t imagine what he could have done to deserve this, which meant Stiles had to believe, and keep believing, that his first instinct was the right one. “Okay.” He took him to the practice room, which smelled heavily like magic and cinnamon. “It’s bigger than it looked outside,” Derek remarked. “Well, we need the space to work when the weather doesn’t cooperate.” Past some tables set up like a school science lab there were tall chairs that had been dragged in a couple years ago and forgotten about, pushed up against the wall and out of the way. He gestured at Derek to sit and turned the other chair around so they were facing each other. “I’m going to try not to do any damage.”Derek held his gaze and nodded, acknowledging what he hadn’t said: he could try to be careful but he didn’t know what might happen. It was surprisingly easy to slide into Derek’s mind, like his magic remembered the way in, remembered the twisty, snared mess of memories, the burn of smoke, the soft darkness lurking at the edges of his recent memories. Stiles tried to stop himself from getting sucked in but he was already tumbling, lost, into the memories. Things grew murky. His shoulders tensed. He was arguing with someone—Derek was arguing with someone. “Why would you go alone? Don’t you ever think of what would happen to us if she got you?” That familiar frown, the impression of disappointment was all Stiles could see. Emotion balled up in his—in Derek’s throat, fury and shame and fear clogging up his words. “I was thinking about you guys,” he growled at last; it wasn’t a tenth of what he wanted to say, but it was all he could force out. The memory leeched away, curling back into the knot where the rest of his life was locked up.Stiles grasped at a more recent one—colors. The Seven Willows, then the car ride here, through Derek’s eyes. Everything was just a blur of panic and the smell of violets—his magic never smelled this strongly to him—with no direction or sense of time. He reached out blindly, exhaling when Derek’s hand closed around his. “H-hang on,” he forced himself to say. His lips felt strange and numb, disconnected from his will. “I have…I think…” He squeezed Derek’s hand and followed the memory backward until—the trunk was a jolt of panic and fear, confusion. He concentrated, squeezing harder, forcing them back farther. Even the gray-black of the trunk faded out then, the roll of tires on pavement going silent. Pain pricked his chest and the memory snapped away like a rubber band. Another welled up inside of him, taking over his own mind. He was on his back again, drained, blood pooling under his head, down into his shirt. A flash of light from above made him jerk, and Derek’s hand tightened on his. His eyes snapped open, blinking hard to force the world into focus. He reached up, wiping at his neck and half expecting his fingers to come away red, but of course there was nothing. He lifted his gaze. Derek curled his lip back, baring his teeth. No fangs.“Fuck.” He let go of his hand and yanked his phone out. His fingers were clumsy as he pulled up the stopwatch function. He set it screen-up on his leg, breathing deeply to settle himself. He felt phantom blood on his neck but refused to reach for it again. It took fifteen minutes for Derek to be able to flash his eyes, and a couple more for his fangs and claws to return. Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm as frustration coiled through him once more. Derek glared at the floor, flexing his claws against his legs. The windows darkened as the barriers over the glass grew thicker. Stiles hissed through his teeth, clenching his fists until the red lightened up; at this rate, by the time John got home the house would just be fully electrified. “Let’s go help Scott,” he said, hoping the distraction would calm him down. “I can’t try again yet.” He could still feel the thick trickle of blood on his neck, that same weakness from the memory making his knees shake as he pushed to his feet. Derek swayed when he stood, blinking hard. “Okay,” he said thickly. He leaned into Stiles as they shuffled their way out of the room, trusting him to hold him up; his warm weight and slightly uneven breathing helped steady Stiles in return, helped ground him in the present, banishing the lingering tendrils of stolen memories.
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John returned home late in the night, while the five of them pretended to watch a movie, drinking the smoothies Isaac made for them. Stiles sensed John’s approach well before he came inside; the windows were still filmed over with barriers and the door resisted when he tried to come inside. They all leaped up when he finally got it open; Scott and Erica talked over each other in their rush to ask for news, and Isaac tripped over Derek, who was sitting on the floor, and knocked Stiles down flat on the couch, winding him. Derek reached around to help as Isaac tried to untangle himself; he kicked out, buckling Derek’s knee and collapsing him onto the both of them. “Off!” Stiles wheezed. He swore he heard his ribs creaking under their combined weight. Derek grunted and rolled, one hand squeezing under Isaac to grasp Stiles’s upper arm. With a quick, firm tug, he heaved Stiles to his feet. They pulled Isaac up together. “Sorry.” He rubbed his chest. The movie played on in the background as John tried to answer Erica and Scott’s questions, long forgotten. “There are some disturbed graves,” he said, holding his hands out to silence them. “More ghouls have also been spotted, near homes mostly. None were locals,” he added, looking disturbed. “Which means that whoever is doing this is bringing them in.”“But-” Erica shrugged off the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders and pulled the spell pouch from her pocket. “We found this tied to a tree outside. There are hunters here. Can’t they-?”He shook his head as she handed him the pouch. “No human created the ghouls or raised those animals.” He jerked his head toward the dining room and snapped the light on while he worked the ties loose from the bag. He tipped the contents onto the table. “Few witches would be capable of that, no bought magic could possibly manage.” He sifted through the herbs and bones from the pouch. “This probably let them get close without us sensing them.”Erica crossed her arms. “Then why was it tied to that tree?”“So they could stand there and watch,” Isaac mumbled. John nodded as Erica cringed with disgust. “Probably doing surveillance. I doubt they’ll be up to it for long,” he added. “This,” he gestured at the disassembled spell pouch, “is weak. I wouldn’t think whatever allowed them into town would be much stronger.” He glared at the table, eyes flicking from piece to piece, turning the pouch over in his hands to examine the sigil. Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm. “So what do you think is going on? It’s just…hunters. Ghouls. At the same time.”John nodded slowly, agreeing but unable to answer. “How are they raising the animals?” Scott asked. “You’ve both said flesh magic, but I still don’t get how that’s harder than any other advanced spells.” John rubbed his face. “Alright, hang on.” He muttered something and held one hand out, palm up like he was waiting for someone to pass him something. Sharp, acrid magic blew over them, heating the air like an errant desert wind. A book fell into his hand. Erica grinned, a tiny thing, the way she did when Isaac or Scott figured out a particularly difficult spell. Stiles leaned around Isaac to get a look at the book; the cover was a pale, leathery brown color with a strange, stretched look to it. The page edges had rusty stains and spatters all over them. Derek reared back, gagging, when John flipped the pages open.He shot him a bland, slightly apologetic look. “It explains a bit more about the whole process.”“Where did it come from?” Erica moved closer for a better look. “The old archives,” Stiles guessed, and John nodded tiredly. The fetid stench of the book almost made him gag when he leaned in for a better look, so he switched to breathing through his mouth which barely made a difference. The page John had turned it to was written in neat block text, clinically describing the ritual required for raising and commanding the dead in such a way that Stiles wasn’t actually more knowledgeable at the end, just creeped out. “‘Requires flesh to raise the subject’, well we knew that,” Erica huffed. Stiles kept reading, holding his breath as he moved closer for a better angle. He didn’t want to touch it; the cover repelled him. “This is for one or maybe two,” Scott said as he read down the second page.Disgust roiled in Stiles’s gut, so bad he leaned back, pressing his knuckles into his lips. He stepped back hastily, letting Isaac move forward. “Animals are easier,” John replied. “They require a smaller, hmm, sacrifice from the caster. What I am interested in finding out is why—why here, why right now. What is the end goal here?”Derek’s jaw clenched, face going utterly blank.Stiles saw John look at him for a second, noting his reaction but choosing not to comment on it.“We need to be on guard,” he said instead, closing the book with a snap. “Others in town have had encounters, but not as many as you all. Lockdown,” he said. “I mean it.”Stiles dropped his hand. “Dad-”“No.”“I can help.”He leveled a hard look at him. “No. You need to be here to watch out for them.”Erica, Scott, and Isaac all exchanged looks, but they didn’t speak up.Stiles kept his glare on his father. He could help. But… He dropped his gaze. “Fine. At least eat something before you go.” “We had chicken for dinner,” Scott chirped like he could banish the tension with cheer. “I’ll just grab you some.” Before he left again, John caught Stiles beside the front door. “I mean it. Full lockdown tonight and tomorrow morning until I call. Please.” “I won’t endanger them,” he muttered. John squeezed him around the neck. “I know. I’ll keep in touch. Call Jordan or Tara if you see any more dead animals, I’ve assigned them to zombie duty.” He cracked a slight smile before he left. Stiles squeezed his hands together, glaring at the door for a long moment. John and the deputies were equipped to handle this, but it wasn’t a normal problem. Stiles wanted to help, wanted—he wanted to be there, out there looking for whoever was doing this. He took a deep, fortifying breath and made himself turn around. “Okay,” he called in a mostly even voice. “We need to brush up the wards—the big ones—and activate them. You heard the sheriff.” Scott stuck his head around the corner, brows raised at his snide tone. Stiles ignored him, grabbing his bat. “Get moving.”The three of them scattered—Scott went west, Isaac east, and Erica to the southern point of the house. Stiles went to the backdoor where the northern facing wards were, bat in hand. He checked over his shoulder as he stepped out on the porch.Derek’s shadow hovered in the kitchen, one hand on the door. “Just a second,” Stiles said, waiting until he saw Derek nod through the window before jumping off the porch. He stopped in the center of the yard, toes a couple inches away from the ashes of the undead animals from earlier, and glared into the woods. It was quiet and cold, the wind shushing through the leaves, making the tree tops sway. Anger boiled in his veins, made his palms burn. He ground his heel into the grass, then cocked his bat over his shoulder and swung. The spell blasted across the yard and into the forest, rocking the trees, making the trunks and branches groan. No danger pinged back, no threats registered, but he waited anyway, watching until the woods settled again, begrudgingly, like a cat disturbed mid-slumber, before returning to the house. He closed the door behind him and touched his fingertips to the ward carved into the wall beside it.Power shuddered through the house, sizzling in the air before the wards settled. Stiles stared out the window blankly. He could feel each ward in his head, the warm glow of protective magic at four points around the house. He wondered if it was enough. He wondered if the wards accounted for the dead.
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Stiles coughed, patting the grass around him while the sky wheeled above him. There were heavy gray clouds creeping over the blue, slowly but surely taking over. Smoke made the air stink, wafting off both him and Derek from the failed spell he had tried—it was one in a book from the attic, and had a lot more power than he was expecting.John was at work, patrolling the town for the witch raising the ghouls and dead animals; Erica and Scott were also permitted to go to work this morning, as John deemed them safe enough to lift their lockdown with heavy reminders to stay in a group. Isaac was inside reading some of Claudia’s books while they tried this spell.He turned his head, opening his mouth to apologize, and jumped, lunging and smacking at Derek’s chest. “Your shirt,” he explained when Derek stared at him. “It was on fire.” He sat back quickly, pulling his hands away. He could have put it out magically, should have, probably. He was just off balance from the spell. Derek’s mouth twisted in a half-hearted grimace as his eyes flickered red. “So that one is a no-go,” Stiles said with a weak chuckle. He rubbed the back of his head where it bumped the ground and noticed the sleeve of his hoodie smoking a little. Thankfully, nothing else was on fire. Derek scowled, still sprawled on his back. “That one didn’t feel like the others; I didn’t lose my shift at all.”“That’s a good thing.”He turned his head, his face sulky. “Is it? I still don’t remember anything.”Stiles pressed his thumb into his brow. “Yeah, well. Hmm.” He was about to give up and flop back into the grass when a child’s piercing shriek cut through the air, making his heart jump. He almost laughed at himself, assuming it was the Clarkes’ grandchildren playing, until he saw Derek’s expression.Another scream echoed from the same direction, broken by a sputtering sob.“They need help.”Both of them bolted to their feet, running west where Pat and Mr. Clarke’s house was. Four children were backed up to the garden, standing in knee-high greens. The tallest girl and the smallest child, the only boy, stood in front of the other two, growling and flashing tiny fangs and gold eyes. They were terrified as a woman in ragged shorts and a blue t-shirt advanced on them making guttural growling noises. The little boy sobbed once before swiping at her with small claws, trying to keep her away. A man with battered, bare feet and a torn shirt lunged at them from the side. Both man and woman bore a wound across the front and back of their heads. Stiles’s heart lurched. They were so far away. Derek growled beside him as they ran, a low rumble like thunder, building, building, until a roar burst from his chest, so loud it rattled Stiles’s bones.The children lifted their heads in his direction, relief sweeping their fear away. The boy held his arms up.The ghouls hesitated, turning toward them instead. “Get them to that shed over there,” Stiles ordered breathlessly. Derek just nodded, bearing down and outstripping him in a second. Stiles swept his hand out, knocking both ghouls off their feet. Derek swooped in while they were down, gathering all but the eldest into his arms. The boy buried his face in his neck and wailed while the oldest girl bared her fangs at the ghouls, running next to Derek and her siblings to the shed. The male ghoul lunged after them, clawing his way across the grass, and the girl yelped, clutching the edge of Derek’s shirt. Stiles drew his hand in toward his chest, dragging the ghoul back. The spell was new to him, one he had practiced but never used on a moving creature, and felt strange on his fingertips, ready to fumble if he lost his concentration. He jerked his arm back.The ghoul tumbled away from the garden. The other slammed into Stiles from the side, taking them both down hard. She locked her hands on his shoulders, short nails grinding in, and leaned close to his face. The stench was unbearable, turning his stomach, and she was unnaturally strong, her grip bruising and unyielding on his arms.He jerked his head back when she snapped her teeth in his face, bathing him in that sewage stink. He wiggled his hand free to cast and faltered as a cold, clammy hand wrapped tight around his ankle, sliding up under his jeans. He kicked instinctively, panicked, shoving and thrashing at the ghoul on top of him, but she did not budge. He gagged when her stiff, filthy hair brushed his cheeks. Her head snapped forward, teeth biting into the spot where his shoulder met his neck. Her jaw locked down.He yelped at the blunt pain, curling his fingers and flinging his hand out.She tumbled off finally.Stiles clapped his hand over the bloody wound, panting. “Stiles?” Derek’s voice was rough, verging on inhuman. “Stay with them,” he ordered, pushing shakily to his feet. He whipped one arm out for the ghoul that had bitten him, the other for the man. He brought his hands together, throwing them into each other with a twist of his fingers. He raised his hand over his head, cupping his wound with the other.The barrier that rose was deep red and crackling with energy. Blood leaked between his fingers, but it didn't feel that deep, despite the sting. He reached for his pocket with a shaking hand. Before he could get his phone loose, a voice called out. He lifted his head. Two women ran across the yard from a camper parked near the Clarke home. Behind them, Deputy Graeme’s cruiser, marked with a gray star and willow on the front left side of the hood, jerked to a crooked halt in the gravel driveway. She was running before the door closed. “Are you alright?” she snapped as the other two women slowed with confusion.“Yeah. It bit me.” He lowered his hand with a wince. She got a look at it and hissed in sympathy. “Make sure you disinfect it thoroughly.”The younger of the two women gasped, bolting to Derek and the children. The older one approached Stiles and Deputy Graeme. “Thank you.” She held her hand out. “Virginia Johnston. That’s my daughter Amanda and my grandchildren.” She shook Stiles’s hand, explaining, “Pat is my brother.” “I see.” He had vague memories of her and Amanda visiting before, when he was a kid, but he hadn’t really paid them any attention. He looked at Tara. “Is there any news?”Her gaze jumped to Virginia and back. “No new ghouls except these two.” She let out an explosive sigh. “And some dug up graves.”Virginia’s brows rose.Bodies didn’t get buried often in witch towns; it was more usual for witches to choose cremation, as caskets and vaults were seen as wasteful. Stiles remembered explaining that to Scott years ago; Scott had found it ironic, considering that people accused of witchcraft in the past would be burned. Stiles had pointed out that real witch hunters didn’t burn witches: they disabled them, then killed them if shock and blood loss didn’t.“Stiles?” Deputy Graeme touched his shoulder. “Can I take a better look at your neck?”Virginia waved her off. “You go deal with those. I’ll have a look.” Amanda, Derek, and the children approached as Deputy Graeme backed away to deal with the ghouls. The little boy held tight to Derek’s hand as he sniffled, blotchy faced but calmer now that his mother was there. As Virginia prodded the bite on his neck, Stiles asked, “Are Pat and Mr. Clarke okay?”“Oh, they’re fine.” She huffed. “They’re inside having a nap.” “They’ve been sleeping a lot lately,” Amanda put in, looking worried. She had one of the smaller girls in her arms while the other was clinging to the oldest girl. “But I guess at their age…”Virginia lifted her head. “I’m only three years younger than Pat, you know, he’s not that old. You’re alright, kiddo,” she added, patting Stiles’s back. The clove scent of her magic coiled around them. “Not very deep and I gave it a little purification for you. Just make sure to clean it out and keep it covered up.”“Thanks.” He picked at his thumbnail, glancing at Deputy Graeme, then the house over Derek’s shoulder. “Should someone maybe go check on them? Did the kids see if there were more than just those two?”Amanda’s expression morphed into horror, but Virginia hardly looked bothered. “I’m not sure ghouls can open doors, but even if they can, Freddy’s niece is in there with them, remember?”Amanda looked frazzled still. “Right, right. I just worry about them sleeping and one of those things getting in.” She shuddered. “We’re alright.” Virginia reached out to give her arm a little squeeze. Stiles looked past Derek again, toward the house. In one of the second floor windows, a young woman with glittering black combs in her hair smiled widely when their eyes met. He couldn’t force one back and dropped his gaze instead. At least she was awake, in case anything did get in. He vaguely remembered seeing her at the festival, which was likely why she was visiting family. “I better get these ones inside,” Amanda said. “This has been a lot for them. Come on—oh.” The two werewolf children clung to Derek when she tried to lead them away, fists caught in his shirt hem. “Sorry, it’s—this was frightening and the rest of our pack is back home. You—well, you’re a werewolf too.” She said it helplessly, like this was a full explanation.Derek accepted it as one. “Why don’t I walk you guys to the camper?” he asked softly.“Thank you.” While they walked away, Stiles turned to Deputy Graeme just as the ghouls were finished. Her magic was neater than Deputy Parrish’s, left only a faint smell of river water lingering in the air and left no ashes behind. She grimaced when she saw him looking. “I’ll let your dad know about this.”“How’d you know to come here?”She made a face. “John told me. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he wanted me to check the area, and then I sensed your magic when you were containing them—good job, by the way.” “Thanks,” he mumbled. The throbbing on his shoulder reminded him that he’d been slow, but in the end, he supposed that was acceptable—the kids were okay, and bloodshed was relatively minor. “You two head home, alright?” She nodded at Derek as he returned. “I need to report back to Sheriff Stilinski and he won’t want you out here after all this.”Thunder rumbled as she walked away, making Stiles jump. The clouds overhead had gotten darker and heavier, turning bluish, like fresh bruises. “Graves?” Derek asked, drawing his gaze from the sky. Stiles swallowed and started walking. “Ghouls are still alive when they’re taken.” "Then what were the graves dug up for? He didn't answer, but they both knew. The air smelled like rain and lightning flashed through the clouds overhead. Stiles tipped his chin up, eyes narrowed to slits as the wind picked up, restless and chilled. He wondered if it would rain or sleet. As the Stilinski house came into view, Derek said, “Maybe this is my fault.”“What?” His head whipped around so fast it tugged on his wound, making fresh pain grind through it.“Maybe I’m being hunted.”Stiles scowled. “No. Didn’t you hear Dad? Witch hunters aren’t capable of this.”Derek nodded slowly, but he still looked unconvinced. “Even if you were being hunted,” he said finally as they climbed the porch steps, “hunters are wrong.”“Always?”He opened his mouth to snap yes and stopped. “Always” was so definite.Could witches be dangerous? Could werewolves? Of course. But so could humans. “Yes,” he said after a long moment. “Always.”
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The house was quiet when they got inside, and though he expected it, Stiles hated it. Erica and Scott would be at work for a few hours yet, and Isaac was still where they left him over an hour ago—reading in the practice room with all of his tools spread over the table in front of the book he was poring over. Stiles left him to it and tiptoed to the bathroom. He used a washcloth to wipe down the bite mark, then grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink. The bite looked pretty gross in the harsh bathroom lights, with jagged edges and bruises already blooming around it. He snapped the first aid kit open while Derek stood in the doorway, watching with his arms crossed. The thick antiseptic cream was cold and stung when he smeared it over the entire surface of the bite. He met Derek’s eyes in the mirror and looked away again, focusing on his task. “I will just be a minute.”He nodded but didn’t leave. Stiles tugged a large sized adhesive bandage out of the box, fighting with the wrapper while staring at the counter; Erica’s makeup was scattered across it, and the toothbrush cup had been knocked over, tipped awkwardly against the wall. He looked at the mirror while he stuck the bandage on, smoothing it down carefully. He gestured at the hallway, walking forward until Derek moved out of his way. He followed Stiles quietly to the sunroom.“I didn’t want to upset Isaac,” he explained, stripping his hoodie off and tossing it onto a chair. It reeked. Fiona wandered over to sniff it, then bolted away, her fur fluffed up and showing the glinting, iridescent purple of her skin underneath. Stiles followed her to one of the plants by the glass walls, but she bunched herself into a ball and hissed when he got too close. “Okay, okay.” He took a step back. Outside, thunder crashed over Willow Pass. Rain spattered the glass, slow but picking up speed. It was so dark that it looked like night had abruptly fallen. When lightning flashed, the spell stones around the room lit up one at a time and then faded in the same order. Derek joined him by the wall, staring outside for a while before he spoke. “Will anything happen? With the bite.”He pressed his palm against the bandage. It sort of burned still. “No, not really. I cleaned it pretty well.” He caught his expression and smiled. “It’s not like a zombie movie, she can’t infect me with a bite.”Derek nodded slowly. “Biting is how we turn people.” “Oh, right.” He thought about that. “Maybe that’s where people got the idea about zombies,” he mused, grinning when Derek shot him a disgusted look. “Jeeze, sorry.” His grin faded slowly. “Thanks for your help with that.” Thunder crashed hard enough to rattle the glass. He pressed his hand to it, feeling the plink of rain and continuous, low rumble of thunder. Derek finally said, “You’re welcome. I would have helped no matter what. They were in danger.” He said it awkwardly, like admitting to simple decency was difficult. Stiles tipped his head against the glass, watching the lightning strike through the clouds, illuminating the deep blue color. He didn’t know how to help Derek or John or Willow Pass. If the ghouls and the graves and the undead animals were connected to Derek, then he needed to focus all of his energy on helping Derek, to keep everyone safe; all he’d managed so far was causing them both pain and frustration. Derek touched his hand, a light brush of fingers across his knuckles.He lifted his head. “Yes?”“Do you want to try again?”It took him a second to understand, and then he almost laughed. “Okay, sure. We were both almost ghoul food, why not?”Derek tilted his chin back, looking out at the storm. “I just…need to know. Maybe if we—is there a way for us to start in the memories I have and go backwards?”“I’ve tried-” He stopped. “Well, I’ve tried from around the time you woke up in the trunk.”“So maybe more recent moments?”He shrugged. “We can try. Let’s sit,” he suggested, because he was kind of sore from grappling with the ghouls. They sat on the floor beside the glass wall, knees touching as they faced each other. As lightning flashed and the spell stones followed it around the room, shadows and light played over Derek’s face. Stiles watched it flicker over his eyes, watched the almost animal gleam shine back at him. “Stiles?”He cleared his throat, rubbing at the bandage on his neck. “Yeah, let’s do this. You try to lead, okay?”“How?”“Instead of going in and trying to sort through things myself, I’m basically going to just observe and lend a little bit of magic,” he held his fingers a half inch apart, “to keep things on track, trying to untangle it all.” Derek nodded. Instead of closing his eyes, he held Stiles’s gaze, breathing slow and meditative. Stiles didn’t look away. He knew the gentle darkness of Derek’s mind now, the quiet peace, the sharp fear, the glaring blankness of the missing pieces, the prickly, wound-like magic keeping those missing pieces locked away. Rain continued to tap against the glass next to them, casting shadowy freckles across their faces. The world shivered, fading as they sank together into Derek’s mind; Stiles could feel him directing the flow, navigating his memories better than Stiles ever managed. First they slid back to the ghouls, the moment Stiles stood and trapped them both—through Derek’s eyes he didn’t look scared and hurt; he looked angry and powerful, blood smeared on his neck, mouth curled, magic gleaming at his fingertips like a blade.Back, back, the memories glided around them both like a river, too fast for Stiles to see or comprehend much. Everything slowed at the festival, the warm orange glow of the bonfire, the moment that Derek tucked a flower behind Stiles’s ear. They were staring at each other here too, except Stiles saw Derek in front of him and himself through Derek's memory, the glow of his pendant, the flicker of the bonfire in his eyes; Derek's heart thrummed in the memory, his fingertips tingling where they brushed the top curve of Stiles's ear. He inhaled sharply.Stiles didn't register the movement until Derek's lips touched his, then pressed; he flinched, but he moved into the kiss. A flush of heat worked through him as he caught Derek's shoulder, leaning in, learning the hesitant feel of his kiss, the softness of his lips, the scratch of his stubble against his face. He was still tangled in Derek's mind and Derek in his, feeding their desire into each other. Stiles felt Derek's as his own and Derek felt his, back and forth, an unending feedback loop of heat and longing. The kiss itself was sweet and just shy of searing, careful but with just enough bite, just enough-A sharp, almost painful tug in his chest made Stiles moan quietly, going lightheaded. Something soft brushed down his cheek, then another, then more tumbled down his arms, his back and neck. He jerked back gasping, dizzy. His mind snapped away too, leaving him briefly cold. He blinked hard until the spots cleared from his vision and gasped again.Derek picked up one of the borage flowers blanketing the sunroom and turned it delicately by the stem. He lifted his brows at Stiles. “I-I—it's-” He flushed now from embarrassment. “I didn't mean to do that.” He looked around, dazed. The storm raged outside, and the darkened sunroom was almost buried in the little, star-shaped flowers. “Jeeze,” he muttered. Then he stiffened, glancing at Derek. “I-”Derek tucked the flower he was holding behind Stiles’s ear, just like in the memory, then picked up another for himself.Guilt pricked in Stiles’s chest. “Derek,” he said slowly, “you…we…”“I’ve wanted to do that since the festival,” he said, guarded. His gaze dipped away. “I don’t remember my past but I can still make my own choices.”Stiles wanted to pull his hair out, but Derek was right—he could make his own choices. “But what if…” There were so many possible ends to that sentence that Stiles didn’t even bother trying to finish it. He sifted his hands restlessly through the flowers, embarrassed all over again. A long, low growl came from one of the potted trees. Fiona glared down at them with glittering black eyes from the branches. “Stiles?”He looked over and found Derek looking almost nervous, holding himself tense. “Was that…did you…”He clenched his hands, crushing probably twenty flowers with his nerves. “I wanted that too,” he said slowly. “But there’s a—a lot. To worry about. Your pack. Your home. Who…who you might have waiting for you.”The next flash of lightning illuminated Derek’s stricken expression before his face cleared, a strangely calm expression taking its place. “There’s no one. Not like that.” He shook his head. “I’d know.” Stiles wasn’t so sure.Derek leaned in again, warm breath brushing his lips. He said, “I would know. This would feel wrong.” He pressed the lightest of kisses to the corner of Stiles’s mouth. “Does it feel wrong?” He kissed his bottom lip, then the top, the softest touch like moth wings. Stiles caught his chin and angled his face for another kiss, sighing. No, it didn’t feel wrong. Not even close. The jarring mechanical buzz of his phone against the floor broke them apart. Stiles licked his lips and straightened, casting a glance over the room; thankfully, no more flowers had appeared. His phone kept ringing. He worked it out of his pocket without standing up. His voice was hoarse when he answered. John’s tense voice banished the lingering heat of the kiss. “Is Derek there with you?”His gaze snapped up guiltily. “Yes.”John sighed with relief. “Good. I need you to make sure he’s calm, okay?”“What? Why? What’s going on?”His voice went grim. “A lot. No,” he said sharply to someone away from the phone. “They’re with me. You know I would check first.”Stiles’s hand clenched on his phone. It wasn’t exactly the first time someone had questioned John, but it was certainly rare, especially in a tense situation. “Dad?” His nails dug into his leg. Derek looked carefully blank but he was paying close attention, tension winding his shoulders up toward his neck. “We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Who else is home?”Thunder boomed, making the line crackle. “Just us and Isaac. Dad…”“I’ll be right there. I can’t…over the phone.” He swore softly. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up.Stiles stared down at his phone. He had a text from Erica, a picture of a flashy green sports car she was working on today. Guess who just went into debt? He swallowed and tucked his phone away. When he stood, flowers rained off of him. He was sure John hadn’t said what was going on because he knew Derek could hear, but what was that distressing to someone who had no memories? Derek stood too, brushing petals off of his clothes. “Why does he want you to keep me calm?”“I don’t know.” He flicked another flower off his pants. “Can you keep calm?” He held his hand out, intending to tell him to wait, but Derek grabbed his hand instead. His mouth fell open in surprise for a beat, and Derek let go like he’d been burned. Stiles hastily said, “No matter what’s going on, try to remember we’re helping you—I’m going to help you. Just stay calm and don’t maim anyone.”He shot Stiles a disgusted look.“I’m just saying, not judging. No one has perfect control.”Derek’s gaze drifted to the flowers.Stiles flushed. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s go.”Isaac was in the hallway when they waded out of the sunroom, trailing flowers. His brows went up. “Spell gone wrong?”Stiles rubbed the end of his nose. “Something like that. Dad’s on his way,” he added. “Why so early?” He glanced at his phone for the time. “It’s barely three.”Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm. “I’m not sure, he didn’t tell me much.” He flicked his gaze to Derek. Isaac nodded slowly. “Okay, I-” Lightning flashed through the house, close enough to turn everything bright white, making him jump. Stiles held his hand up. “Don’t worry, the power won’t go out. Dad will be here in a few minutes, why don’t we wait together in the living room?” He rubbed at the bandage as they shuffled across the house. Isaac knocked into his shoulder as he pelted across the room, claiming the yellow chair before Stiles could. He shrugged, smiling angelically when Stiles scowled at him. He and Derek sat together on the couch, shuffling awkwardly as he tried to figure out how not to sit too close. He grabbed Derek’s hand impulsively, squeezing it quick and firm where Isaac couldn’t see before he let go. Derek relaxed into the cushions, not looking over but smiling slightly at the TV. Stiles pretended to watch the movie Isaac put on while checking his phone and keeping an eye on the window behind Isaac’s chair, jittery and nervous.
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Barely ten minutes had passed before boots stamped up the porch steps, but it felt like an eternity. Derek sat up rigidly next to Stiles and said, “He brought…people?” like he was confused. Stiles was too.Isaac looked nervous, sliding his fingers along his metal wand, gaze flicking between the window and the hallway. Stiles resisted the urge to jump to his feet when the door opened, letting in the roar of pouring rain, the awkward shuffle of wet shoes. He put his fingers on Derek’s knee, murmuring, “Wait,” as they listened. John’s magic swept through the house like a cool breeze, making the hair on Stiles’s arms stand up.His palms prickled. He swallowed. “Dad?”There was a lengthy pause; someone released a put-upon sigh and someone else growled.Stiles’s hand flexed on Derek’s knee. “We’re going to the dining room,” John said at last. “Will the three of you please come in after us?” His voice was stilted and strange. Stiles jumped up. A flower fell to the couch, dislodged from behind his ear. He flushed, glancing sideways at Isaac, who smirked knowingly. He made himself look at Derek.He stayed seated for a moment longer, claws dug into his jeans, shoulders pressed back so hard it made the couch creak. He expelled a noisy breath and stood; he was clearly nervous, a red sheen taking over his eyes. Stiles held his gaze until he took a deep breath and nodded. They walked side-by-side while Isaac leered at them until Stiles muttered at him to knock it off. He snickered. “Seriously, stop-” His mind blanked as they crossed the hall. John stood with his hands on his hips above his utility belt, uniform soaked as he watched over a group of sodden werewolves. Stiles glimpsed a young woman with a serious frown combing dark, wet hair out of her face, a broad shouldered man about her age with a grave expression and tired eyes, an older man with a sneering smirk, and a light haired man shrugging out of a soaked jacket looking pissed. His breath shuddered as they moved into view. The woman gasped, “Derek!”He flinched, eyes going fully red, fangs peeking between his lips. He shook his head, shuffling back a step until he bumped into Isaac. “Told you,” the older man said in a drawling, smug voice. “He ran.”“He did not,” the broad shouldered man growled. “Derek, tell him you didn’t just run.”Derek’s gaze darted around, never quite landing on any of them. Stiles took a deep breath and made himself step forward. All of their eyes snapped to him; none of them were shifted at all but Stiles was undeniably cornered by a wolf pack. He forced himself to keep his hands still, to keep his gaze level. “I’m Stiles,” he said. “I’ve been trying to help Derek. He has amnesia.” The man frowned harder while the blond behind them all rolled his eyes, and the older man laughed so hard it was almost an insult. The broad shouldered man shot him a sharp look that shut him up. “Explain, please.”Stiles glanced at Derek, then told them, cautiously, of finding him in his trunk, and of realizing he had no personal memories. “We’ve been trying to…free his memories, so to speak, since then. I know they’re still there,” he added. “He has to remember me,” the woman snapped. “I’m his sister.”“But not me?” the older man asked, pressing a hand to his chest. His smirk belied his wounded tone. “I’m his uncle.” “Yeah,” she said, “but we’d all like to forget that.” He shut his mouth, miffed. The man up front rubbed his temples. “I’m Boyd,” he said after a minute. “The loud mouth is Peter, that’s Cora, and that,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “is Jackson. We’re Derek’s pack, we’ve been looking for him for weeks.” Stiles looked at John, who nodded slightly. “He’s been here. I’ve been trying to restore his memories.” “Why hasn’t it worked?” Peter asked, but Derek made a quiet growling sound that stopped them all.He was tense, eyes wide, and Stiles winced. He didn’t remember them. Of course he didn’t want them to know that any attempts to restore his memories kept taking his powers, leaving him weak and almost human. Just like when he refused to tell Stiles right away about his amnesia—he was trying to hide a vulnerability from strangers. Protecting himself. “Look,” John said into the silence, “we’re clearly all…shaken up. Why don’t we get some towels so everyone can dry off? We’ll get some food, calm down, talk.”Boyd glanced at John. “All due respect, sir, but we only came here to bring our alpha home. We have pack business to take care of.” Derek’s eyes flashed red again, another growl sliding out.“Well, you’re welcome to ask,” he said calmly. “But it seems to me that he’s not willing to go anywhere with you yet. So why doesn’t everyone have a seat?” The chairs around the dining table slid out, making the werewolves jump. “Now, I’m going to order some pizza, see if someone can’t get a boat out to us.”“Ha-ha,” Isaac said dryly, making John smile briefly. “One of you go get everyone some towels.”Stiles went with Derek on his heels, leaving Isaac to awkwardly introduce himself. Derek watched, stone-faced, as Stiles gathered towels from the hall closet. “They can’t stay.”“Oh?”“What if they’re the ones who did this to me?”Stiles thought of the memories he saw in Derek’s head. “I don’t think so.”He scowled. “I don’t trust them.”“Noted.” He turned and Derek backed him into the wall, smushing the stack of towels between their chests. “They could be dangerous,” he growled. “You can’t just-”“Just what? They might be your pack. They might know what happened to you.”He snorted. “Didn’t you hear them? He said they have pack business. They won’t tell us anything.”Stiles shrugged. “They’re being cautious.” He grinned a little. “Just like you.”Derek slumped, his weight pressing into Stiles just a bit more. “Didn’t you hear the other thing?” His voice was low, nearly inaudible. “What the hell kind of alpha am I, if they thought I would run away?”Stiles didn’t even realize that he had reached up, resting his hand on the back of Derek’s neck until his lashes fluttered. He resisted the urge to snatch his hand away and instead squeezed gently, rubbing at the tense line of muscle. “Not all of them think that,” he said. “Remember, Boyd asked you right after, and—well, from what I saw, they don’t really seem to like Peter very much, or at least they don’t take what he says seriously.”Derek snorted and leaned closer. “I’m not going with them. I can’t.”“I know. We still have to fix your problem.” He tapped the base of his head with one finger. He smiled as he straightened up with the pile of towels and did not say what he was thinking.After Derek’s memory was restored, he would go with them.Stiles passed out the towels when they returned, while John informed them of the toppings available for the pizza. Isaac got out a mop to clean up the mess by the door while the pack dried off. Stiles elbowed Derek, but he wouldn’t venture farther into the room than the doorway. When the pizza arrived, everyone sat on towels on the chairs to keep from dripping more and Stiles grabbed some plates. He had to put four slices on a plate for Derek and take it to him, since he still refused to come into the room. “Alright,” John said, “talk and eat.” He leaned against the wall by the hallway opposite of Derek, surreptitiously blocking the front door. Boyd straightened his shoulders. The pack—“The Hale pack,” Cora corrected meticulously—lived in Beacon Hills, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t too happy about that, but Stiles couldn’t figure out why. Jackson stayed on his phone the whole time they spoke except when he lodged a complaint or an insult at Cora and Boyd; Cora threw it right back at him while Boyd staunchly ignored him to talk and eat his spicy sausage pizza. Apparently while they had been searching for Derek, Boyd had taken on leading the pack-“Yes,” Peter drawled, “gotta get the kids up and off to school.” He grinned wickedly when Stiles’s heart lurched. Boyd shot him another look, and sarcasm or not, temporary alphas must have some sway, because Peter shut his mouth once again. “Without Derek there, but with a pack presence, other…things have been a problem,” he said delicately. “Beacon Hills sort of has a draw to it, for supernatural creatures, and with us there, it sort of…” He made a face. “We amplify it, Mom always said,” Cora jumped in. “And I think she was right, because we haven’t had to deal with this many attacks since—well, for a while.” “Between that, looking out for each other, and dodging hunters questioning a pack with no alpha, it took forever to find him,” Boyd went on.Cora made a disgusted face, nodding. “We had to buy a spell from a sketchy witch with-”John’s head jerked up, making her voice die. “What?” Boyd asked. “What is it?”Isaac’s eyes were the size of dinner plates, knuckles going white where he was gripping his pizza. “Who was this witch?”“Some guy Peter knew who could help us track Derek. Why?” he growled, turning to Peter. “What did you do?”Peter shook his head. “All I know is that he sells spells, and that’s what he did—sold us a spell.” He ran his finger thoughtfully over his bottom lip. “Witches who sell magic, as far as I know, usually don’t care who they sell it to,” he said, “which is good, because we needed the spell to track Derek.”“Who?” John’s voice was ice cold, and Peter had the brains to look faintly alarmed. “Here.” He pulled out a slim leather wallet and slid a card from the center. “Why?” Cora looked around, her gaze stopping at Derek for a beat longer than anyone else. “What’s going on?”Stiles swallowed. “There’s a witch hunter in town.”Only Peter looked properly disturbed by that; the others looked confused. John snatched the card and left the room, pizza abandoned, phone in hand. Stiles moved closer, leaning against an empty chair. “Humans cannot enter this town alone. They have to be escorted by a witch or, well.” He inhaled through his nose. “Or they can buy spells from—from traitor witches to get in.”“It doesn’t usually end well for them,” Peter pointed out. “They go mad, do they not?”“Yes,” Stiles said plainly, “but not always before they hurt people.” Isaac crossed his arms, jaw tense. Like Stiles, he was probably thinking about Erica and the dark line of stitches in her wrist, the strangled screams in the middle of the night her first year here. Cora shook her head. “I didn’t know witch hunters still existed,” she huffed. “Why do they always want to kill us?”Jackson lifted his head, opening his mouth to no doubt say something vile, and lowered it again when Boyd bared his sharpened teeth. “So,” Isaac said cautiously, “what now?”All eyes turned to Derek, who was holding his untouched plate of pizza in front of him like a shield. “I’m not going anywhere.”Boyd scowled and Cora blurted, “Are you kidding me? After we spent so much time looking for you?”“I don’t know you,” he snapped. She sat back, looking hurt before she scowled and turned her head aside. “I don’t,” he said more calmly. “I just…don’t know you.”Stiles leaned forward, bracing his hands against the table. “I am trying to restore his memories. It may take a while, but it can be done. We just…have to be patient.” Cora squirmed in her chair. Her hair was tangled and damp still, trailing over her shoulders. “Can’t we just hit him over the head and take him home?”A hair-raising growl broke across the room, nothing at all like the little warnings from earlier. Cora shrank in her seat. “She was joking, cut it out,” Boyd said, although he too looked spooked. Even Jackson had curved his shoulders in, staring at his phone now with a fixed expression rather than interest. Boyd leveled Stiles with a serious look. “You’re working on it?”“Yes.”“Then we wait.” He scratched his ear, looking around with a sigh. “Any chance this town has a hotel?”Jackson scoffed. “Doubtful.”Peter rolled his eyes. Stiles smiled. He took a vindictive pleasure in telling them, “Well, we don’t have a hotel, but there’s a bed and breakfast right in the middle of town.” Isaac snorted, choking on his pizza and retreating to the kitchen. “Let me just give you their number. They’ll certainly have rooms.”“I bet,” Peter grumbled. “This place is smaller than Beacon Hell.”“Does he need the Heimlich?” Cora asked as Isaac coughed in the kitchen.He wheezed harshly. “I’m fine.”In the end, the Hale pack was shuttled to Miss Whimsy’s Cozy Rosy Bed and Breakfast by John in the single three row SUV the department had, which was how he drove them to the house. Stiles watched them from the porch, knowing Derek was hovering behind the door, also watching but trying to stay out of sight.Boyd lifted his hand in a wave before getting into the passenger seat, shoulder-checking Peter out of the way. From the hall, Isaac asked, “Now what?”Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm. “I guess we just…take it slow and figure out what happened. I think they know some of it. They’ll tell us.”“They won’t,” Derek said firmly. He turned his head away. “They won’t just tell you. They don’t trust you.”“Well, you trust me,” he said. “And they’re your pack.”Derek scowled. “I don’t know them.” He stalked away. Stiles closed the door with a sigh. The house suddenly felt empty and quiet again. Isaac rubbed his neck. “Do you think Derek really doesn’t sense that they’re his pack? That’s more than just memory, isn’t it?”Stiles, still staring at the door, said slowly, “If he didn’t feel anything, he probably wouldn’t be so upset.” He lifted his head. Isaac frowned. He rubbed his eyes. “Let’s go clean up, Erica and Scott should be coming home soon.” He decided to leave Derek alone for the moment, give him space to process things for now. They’d have to deal with his pack eventually.
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Unsurprisingly, Erica was disturbed by the sudden appearance of Derek’s pack now, when so many strange things were happening, while Scott was curious about them. Stiles and Derek spent the morning after they arrived in the sunroom, slowly trying to pick through his memories. They were once again in the car on the road to Willow Pass, starting later this time—near the Twists now. Derek’s hands curled around his as they backed up to the trunk. Panic ricocheted through them both. “Calm…down…” Stiles said, forcing the words out. It was still surprisingly difficult to speak like this.Derek’s breath shuddered. The trunk was humid and close. They slid back farther. Groggy. In pain. Stiles felt the same draining weakness as always spreading through them both. He hissed, drawing back. He could feel the thorny tendrils of the spell holding Derek’s memory captive clinging to him, trying to hold him as well, draw him in and trap him. He tipped backwards, falling with a thump. His hands were still caught in Derek’s.Fiona growled and shot up one of the potted trees. Stiles sighed. The borage flowers were in vases, bowls, and jars all around the sunroom; he got most of them up, but he could see some under the chair across the room. Derek grumbled and tugged him upright. He slumped forward. “Okay, that still didn’t work.” He pressed his thumb into his forehead. “You know what I think we should do.”Stiles scowled. “I’m not just yanking things around in your head until I know that isn’t going to take away your powers for good.”The door opened and Scott poked his head inside. “Hey, guys. Sheriff texted.” He looked awkward. “Um, he said your—I mean, the pack is coming here. They want to talk to Derek some more.”Derek’s face shut down.Stiles sighed, drawing up and bracing his hands on his knees. “Okay, look, we need information from them. Amnesia or not, they clearly trust you.” He leaned forward. “Why don’t you try to figure out what they know?” “Like a spy,” Scott supplied with a grin. Derek glowered for a few more seconds before relenting. “Alright.” Stiles pushed to his feet. “Good, because I have something to do. I just want to head over to the Clarkes’ house to check on them and borrow some books.”He scowled. “They have a ton of books, Pat collects copies of everyone’s family collections—with permission of course. They might have something we can use.”Scott shuffled his feet. “Are you sure? After yesterday?”Stiles frowned. “Yeah. I want to check on them anyway.”“I’ll go with you,” Derek said. “Uh, no. You’re on spy duty. Don’t worry, you’ll be great.” He slapped his shoulder companionably.Derek shot him an annoyed look. Stiles grinned. He left through the backdoor while Erica and Isaac bickered over what to make for breakfast and Derek sulked in the dining room with Scott. The air was cold and damp from the storm yesterday, the ground squishy underfoot. Stiles stuck to the beaten down path between their houses rather than the shorter route through the woods. Birds twittered in the trees to his left. He clenched his hands together and exhaled, thinking about the books he would ask to borrow; mind magic was such a broad topic. Would Pat even know where to start?He saw the camper where Amanda, her husband, and her children were staying; the door was closed but the windows were open. Amanda waved when he walked by, holding her youngest on her hip. “Hey,” she called out cheerfully. “You here to see Pat and Freddy?” She smiled when he nodded. “You can go right on in, they’re having tea with-” the baby squawked, distracting her, so Stiles just said thanks and headed up to the house. He had made this walk thousands of times, especially as a kid when his parents were busy and didn’t want him home alone, and often after Claudia died. He had spent the night a lot too, back when John was working and Stiles was suddenly by himself a lot. He ran up the familiar steps, trailing his fingers over the divot in the handrail where he smacked his head when he was thirteen, imagining the too-sweet taste of cherry candy on his tongue. The door was open, the screen unlocked, so he let himself in. “Hey, Mr. Clarke, Pat, I-” He cut off as he realized how dark the house was, how quiet and still. Stuffy. He hesitated just inside the door. Maybe they finished tea and settled down for a nap?The air didn’t feel right.“Mr. Clarke?” he called again softly. Magic tinged the air, hovering like a heavy curtain; it smelled like cherries and peppermint and turned earth, but that wasn’t unusual—this house was filled with magic in wards, aesthetics, protections, and objects. It felt different now, thick. Stiles’s breath shuddered. Did something happen to them? He had to check. He flexed his fingers and made his way through the mudroom by memory, squinting in the dark. He couldn’t hear anything at all, not even noise from outside, like his ears were stuffed with cotton. He slid his hand over the wall, avoiding the spindly-legged tea table to his right as he searched for the switch he knew was there. The wall felt almost clammy under his hand, making him grimace. He jumped when he found the switch and rolled his eyes at himself, flicking it up.The light didn’t come on.He hissed through his teeth. “Pat?” he called. “Mr. Clarke?” He didn’t raise his voice much, but it didn’t matter: the thick silence swallowed his words, muffled him. He shuddered and lifted his hand, shining light toward the living room. The shadows curved around the shaft of light, leaving everything but that one spot dark. Sweat sprang up at his hairline as he imagined he saw shapes forming in the shadows, melting together and bubbling up at the edge of his light. He blinked rapidly, trying hard to clear his vision. His breath was sharp and quick but even that he couldn’t hear clearly, muffled by the smothering darkness. The light bounced around the room, glancing off the familiar couch, the two chairs by the window, the over-stuffed bookcase, while shadows fizzed around the beam.A warm, damp hand closed around his wrist. He yelped, jumping. “Gods! You scared me, what happened to the-”An animalistic moan made the hair along his arms raise. He twisted his hand, light flooding between his fingers. Blank, unfamiliar blue eyes glared back at him above a blood-crusted, surgically straight wound. The hand tightened on his wrist as the ghoul snarled, lunging at him. He yelled and threw himself back, toppling into the delicate tea table. Its thin legs snapped under his weight, keys and change crashing to the floor with him. He put both hands up and shoved, magic cracking the air, hurling the ghoul away. He scrambled forward, shoes skidding on the spilled coins, and threw himself at the door, clawing at the latch. He gulped fresh, light winter air as he tumbled down the stairs into the yard. It felt ultra-bright after the darkness of the house. He bolted for the camper, stumbling, but the windows were closed now and no one reacted when he called out and banged on the door. Swearing, he dragged his phone out and plunged into the woods. “Dad,” he gasped when he answered. “There’s a ghoul in the Clarkes’ house—I don’t know where they are.” He turned his hand over, looking at the scratches where the ghoul grabbed him. The blind panic was draining the farther he got from the house. “Where are you, Stiles?” “I’m—in the woods by their house—I ran out and called you. Dad-” he puffed for breath- “tell me the spell and I can get rid of the ghoul.”“Stiles.” He sounded tense. “Just get home. We’re on our way.”“But it’s in there with them.”“They’ll be okay, they’re powerful witches and they can take care of themselves until we arrive. Just get home.” Stiles swore again when John hung up, storming through the trees. He should have put the ghoul in containment at least so no one would get hurt, what was he thinking?He wasn’t, really. The suffocating darkness of the house had just shut his brain off. “Stupid,” he muttered, pressing his palm to the bandage on his neck. He held it together better when there were two of them, how did that make sense? He sped up as the trees spread out, so close to home he could feel the familiar caress of their wards just ahead. His feet crunched down on twigs and dried leaves; he could see the yard— “Ow!” He ran into something damp and alive. He bounced backward and stumbled, grabbing at a tree to steady himself. “Sorry-” He stopped. There was wet blood on his shirt. He looked up and let out a strangled gasp. A man stared back at him, dazed, wearing a ball cap pulled low over his eyes and an unzipped windbreaker shining with blood. One sleeve was ripped and beneath the tattered pieces of it, strips of skin had been peeled from his arm. Stiles’s heart jerked. “You-” He backed up. The ground heaved beneath him and the forest swayed, leaning in.The man finally blinked and saw him.Stiles’s hand whipped out before he could move, red ropes sliding around the man’s wrists. His lip curled and he jerked his arms, but the ropes held steady. A small pouch swung from around his neck. “I’m going to gut you,” he hissed. “Cut your hands off and bleed you out.”Stiles’s jaw ticked as fury pulsed through him. “Are you?” he asked quietly. “Going to cut up your unholy coven and wear the bones from their hands around my neck.”“Are you really?” His voice was soft as down feathers. The glittering red ropes on the hunter’s wrists tightened, the glow brightening. The hunter groaned in pain, teeth gritted. Stiles remembered the livid red of Erica’s scar, the unbroken line of stitches Melissa put in for her. The choking, sobbing screams of her nightmares. Flesh sizzled and smoked as the ropes tightened. The hunter staggered toward him. The blood on his windbreaker gleamed in the light of the rope. “You think you can hurt me?” he spat. “I hurt—I—I-” He couldn’t seem to get more out, eyes going glazed and strange. “Still working. So much to do…have to find…” A chill pricked over Stiles like fingers dancing along his nape. He wasn’t expecting it when the hunter lunged. He jumped back.Two trees bent like their trunks were rubber, trapping the hunter behind the branches. He howled with rage. Stiles pressed his thumb into his palm until his heart calmed. “Stiles!” John and Deputy Parrish pelted toward him, crashing through brush and branches like a pair of elephants. “Over here!” he called.The hunter fought through the branches like an animal, biting and tearing at them with his teeth and bound hands. Blood welled up from thin scratches all over his face, hat knocked askew. Stiles pulled his hands apart slowly, and the trees straightened with him. He gulped. John slowed to a stop near him. “The blood?”“Not mine. He’s covered in it though.”John nodded at Deputy Parrish, who circled behind the hunter while he was distracted staring at John and Stiles and slowly lifted the back of his windbreaker. His face blanched. “John…”“Call the rest of the department,” he instructed. “Then go finish helping Tara at the Clarkes’.” The air grew tense, the wind a quick whip, the whole town reacting to John’s will. The trees shivered around them. “Stiles, go home and make sure everyone is safe. Where did he come from?”Stiles pointed. “I wasn’t really looking though.”Deputy Parrish, looking troubled, hesitated to leave, but when the ground rumbled like a warning, he nodded and took off. The hunter stared into space, pulling mindlessly at his wrists, fighting the rope.John scanned the area, eyes narrowed. “Dad?”“Stiles, go. Please. You need to watch out for them.”He wanted to argue, but that was just fear; John was right. He was strong, and their coven was young. It was his responsibility to keep them safe. “Be careful,” he said after a moment. John nodded. “You keep everyone inside, I-”The hunter threw himself at John, a flash of silver in his clasped hands. Stiles jerked his fist to his chest, rage roaring through him.The hunter flew toward him. Roots ripped out of the dirt, lashing around him, pinning him to the ground.Stiles gasped, bowing forward. John clutched his wrist while the hunter screamed, thrashing under the roots. “Dad-” he squeaked, seeing the blood run down his hand. John jerked his head, eyes fixed on the hunter. Beside his leg was a curved, scythe-like knife spattered with blood. “It’s not deep—could have been.” He moved his hand so Stiles could see the cut, thin but vicious, right where his wrist met his hand. His stomach turned. “You need to go home. This one isn’t working alone.”“I know.”“I mean,” John said slowly, “that there are more hunters in town.”“More? But-” He wrenched his hands apart when the trees trembled. “Okay. I will…keep everyone inside. Please get someone to wrap that, Dad.”He nodded grimly. Stiles backed away from the hunter and his wickedly sharp knife, then ran for the house. He was going to figure out what Derek’s pack knew whether they trusted him or not.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Erica paced the kitchen holding her wrist, watching the windows like a caged animal. It had been twenty-eight minutes. Stiles had changed when he got home, washing the blood off while telling everyone what had happened as they crowded around the bathroom door. The windows darkened again as the wards on the house reacted to the fear inside of it. The Hale pack sat on the far end of the dining room looking almost comically uncomfortable while Derek stared at them from the kitchen doorway, positioned so he was blocking Erica from view, a clear declaration of his loyalties at the moment. Stiles stood near the hallway, between the two groups. After a long silence, Peter looked at him. “That hotel you sent us to…”He shot an unpleasant smirk his way. “What, you didn’t enjoy the decorative cat plates and the lacy pink everything?”“I had a problem with her sewing projects following me around,” he said flatly. “And Boyd’s room had six vases full of roses in it.”Boyd winced, rubbing his nose like he could still smell them. Cora stretched her arm out on the table, her hand open toward Derek. There was a black hair elastic around her wrist. “Please.” Scott glowered at her; the expression was odd and unpracticed on his face. Erica squeezed past Derek and marched to the table, slapping both hands down on the surface hard enough to rock the legs. “You’re going to tell us what’s going on. All of this started after Derek got here.”Derek twitched, guilt crossing his face before he schooled it back into a scowl.Boyd looked at the others; Jackson put his phone down for once and glared into the room while Peter leaned against the wall behind him and Cora withdrew her hand, plucking anxiously at the elastic. She crossed her arms as if realizing it. “It’s pack business.” Erica glowered, tossing her hair back. “You listen here-”Cora bared her fangs, half-rising.Derek stepped forward and leaned around Erica. “If you don’t tell them,” he said in an even voice, “I’m not going anywhere, because I need my memories back and they can help me.”Cora’s glare shifted to him. Boyd put his hand on her shoulder, making her ease back. “Okay,” he said simply.Jackson snorted, falling back in his seat; behind him, Peter smirked. Stiles looked over his shoulder, scratching at the bandage on his neck. “Alright, let’s go.” Erica clapped her hands. “Tell us what the hell is going on.” Stiles rubbed his forehead. “Okay, everybody sit down.” Isaac looked between them all, then reached into the kitchen, grabbing a bag of cookies before going to sit in the empty chair beside Cora. Scott sat on his other side, leaving one chair open, but Peter, Derek, Stiles, and Erica remained standing, which he figured was as good as it was going to get. “Okay,” he said when it looked like no one else was going to start, “all we know is that Derek appeared in my trunk a few weeks ago, while I was visiting Beacon Hills.”Boyd nodded slowly. “Okay. That must have been…” He and Cora shared a grim look.Jackson sighed loudly. “That would have been the day we tracked him and that witch down in the preserve.” Stiles straightened. “What witch?”“Her name is Jennifer Blake, we think,” Boyd said slowly. “That’s what she told Derek when they met, anyway.”He shook his head slowly. “When they met?”Cora sat back in her chair, smirking a little. “Yeah, she kept approaching us, offering to do magic for the pack, like protections and wards and stuff, but Derek kept sending her away. He wouldn’t let her inside at all even though she kept pushing and coming by. Then, well…”Jackson rolled his eyes. “Then she tried getting in his pants.”“And then she tried to kill him,” Peter drawled. “Derek, your track record is consistent at least.” Derek just stared at him until he looked away. Boyd put his hands on the table. “He didn’t go out with her or give in, so she got impatient and started attacking us.” He rubbed his eyes. “Eventually,” he said with the air of someone skipping over unpleasant details, “she did get ahold of him, then whisked him off somewhere in the Hills preserve-”Scott’s head whipped up. “You’re from Beacon Hills?”“Yeah…”“Me too.” His brows furrowed. “Wait, what’s your pack name again?”Cora folded her lips and Boyd went tense beside her. Stiles looked between all of them, noting that even Peter had clammed up. Which was dumb, seeing as they’d already told Stiles they were the Hale pack. He would ask Scott about this later. For now… “What have you found out about Blake? What did she want from Derek?”“Well, it’s—we had to get our information quickly,” Boyd said with a touch of defense, like he didn’t like saying anything he wasn’t sure of. “And we don’t even know if it’s actually possible, but she was trying to do a ritual to…take Derek’s powers.” He grimaced.Cora made a face of disbelief and annoyance, shaking her head, but Peter looked stern until he noticed Stiles watching, and then he cleared his face. Stiles rubbed his forehead. “Is that possible?” Scott asked, frowning. “Yes,” he said slowly. “But it’s meant…” He grimaced. “It’s meant to help packs. Meant for peaceful power transfers or holding alpha powers until the rightful alpha is ready; it’s usually only possible when a pack or their territory is…unstable.” He waggled his hand side to side. Cora and Boyd exchanged looks and Jackson let out a derisive laugh. “It isn’t meant to be violent, but…” He shrugged helplessly. “Any spell can be used to do harm.” He blinked hard, feeling dizzy. Realization floated to the forefront of his mind. If she was stealing powers, and in town, that meant Scott, Erica, and Isaac were in danger too. Every other tyro in town—the school aged ones—was too, but the three of them were in the thick of it here; the focus of her attention was standing behind Isaac’s chair. “Stiles?” Scott looked nervous. Stiles blew out a hard breath. He wasn’t going to hide it from them. “Tyros are susceptible to that kind of ritual too. You’re not fully initiated, so your powers are easier to…”“Steal?” Erica snapped. Her dagger was in her hand, pointed down but trembling in her grip. “Yes,” he said slowly.Scott and Isaac looked at each other, then back at him; Erica’s eyes looked glassy and her knuckles were white around her knife. “Does that mean…what does that mean? She can just…take our powers? Our magic?” Isaac’s voice shook.“It does, if she can get to you and do the ritual.” He squeezed his hands together. “I’m not going to let that happen. We’re going to find her, and you three are going to stay together and not come running after me when I tell you to stay here.”Erica didn’t react like he thought she would; her gaze hovered somewhere near the table, turning her knife around and around in her palm. Scott sat back slowly and nodded, not like he was done asking questions but like he had decided to let it go for the moment. Isaac asked, “If she takes it, can we…get it back?”“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. It hurt something in his chest to see the three of them looking so scared of losing a part of themselves they’d only just discovered a few years ago; they had missed the fun child witches got to enjoy, like growing daisies spontaneously or creating a patch of personal sunshine during a rainstorm, but they all so clearly loved their magic and he couldn’t stand to see them lose it. Scott cleared his throat. “This doesn’t explain Derek’s memories,” he said quietly, looking at the pack.Jackson looked insultingly bored, tipping the chair back.Stiles wanted to kick the legs out from under him. “We don’t understand that either,” Boyd said. “Memories were never part of this.”“Yeah,” Cora said. “Why take his memories when she could just kill him?” She plucked at the elastic on her wrist again. Stiles tapped his jaw with his thumb. “So you guys knew she had taken him?”“Yeah, and we almost got him back, too,” she grumbled. “We burst in on her mid-ritual.”Boyd nodded, looking tired. “She did something to him while we were fighting, and by the time the smoke cleared, Derek was gone. She threw Jackson into a wall and escaped after that.”Stiles tapped his jaw again. “That’ll be when he appeared in my trunk, I bet. But why mine? Why not her own?”Isaac sat up straight. “Oh!” He waved his hands. “Wait.” He left the room.Erica’s gaze tracked him until he was out of sight, then turned to Stiles. “We have to find her. I can’t—she can’t-”“I won’t let her,” he said quietly. “Dad won’t let her, and you won’t let her. Okay?”She nodded, still troubled. She set her jaw and eased her grip on her knife.Derek stared at his pack, brows furrowed deeply like he was trying hard to recognize them. Isaac returned at a run, carrying a worn book with an acid green cover—one of Claudia’s. He flipped through the pages until it fell open around a bookmark, then set it on the table triumphantly. Stiles leaned in to read the page.It was a spell for transportation, a confusing, high-powered spell that took more work than it was worth for most situations, as far as he could tell. “‘Transports the item to the most potent magical source near the ritual site’,” Cora read aloud. She snorted. “Wait.” She pushed her fingers against her twitching lips. Her voice shook, eyes alight with mirth. “So she had this ritual prepared just in case we found her?”“Looks like it,” Stiles said slowly. He didn’t see what was so funny about that. “So does that mean…” She pushed harder at her mouth, fighting laughter. Over her shoulder, Peter said, “It sounds like she assumed the ritual would send Derek to wherever she was staying in Beacon Hills, because she thought she was the most powerful witch in town.” He lifted his gaze to Stiles, suddenly appraising. “Except you happened to be in Beacon Hills at the right time, which diverted it to you. Correct?”Stiles shuddered. If that was right, that meant the ritual moved Derek in the time between checking on his bat in the trunk and getting in the driver’s seat. He dropped the keys, he remembered suddenly, and turned to wave at Sam and Tori one last time. A matter of seconds, just enough not to notice the wave of power from the ritual. “I guess,” he said. Cora laughed at last. “Guess she isn’t the badass she thinks she is.” Then she sobered. “But could that be what messed up his memories?”Stiles used his fingertip to turn the book for easier reading. “This, combined with the ritual she was already doing and being in a rush because you guys showed up? Yeah, I can see something going wrong in that chaotic environment and causing the amnesia.” He frowned at the page, then stiffened, lifting his gaze.Derek was already watching him, wide-eyed, as the same thought occurred to him—this had to be why trying to free his memories caused him to lose his powers. The two rituals had clashed and caused this mess. Stiles straightened and rubbed his face. “Okay. Let’s have lunch. I have to call my dad so he and the deputies can be on the lookout for—you said her name is Jennifer Blake?” Boyd nodded.“Right. We’ll find her,” he said, because he needed to believe it. “I’ll go call.”Isaac glanced around the table. “I’ll get lunch started,” he offered. For a second, the pack looked at Derek, blank, expectant, and then Boyd pushed to his feet. “I’ll help.”Erica’s eyes narrowed. “So will I.”Cora smacked Jackson’s shoulder. “Stop leaning on the chair, dumbass, you’re gonna fall.”They were still bickering when Stiles left the room. He knew Derek had followed him, but he didn’t acknowledge him as he pulled his phone out. His finger hovered over his recent call log; he tapped the name below “Dad”. “Hey, Deputy Parrish, I have some info you guys will need…”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The rest of the day and into the next morning was tense. Deputies were in and out for hours, reinforcing the wards and asking the pack questions about Blake. Deputy Parrish told Stiles that volunteers were helping them look for her and the hunters. John was so busy he slept at the department—if he slept at all. Stiles spent the time disturbed but trying to keep his coven calm while running interference between Derek and the pack. They stayed at Miss Whimsy’s again, reluctantly, and returned come morning, all of them draped in pretty pink, white, and red scarves. “I think she likes you,” Stiles said to Jackson when he noticed the extra fussy detailing along the edge of his scarf. Jackson flipped him off and walked away, hunkering down in the living room and being absolutely no help.Stiles clenched his hands together when he noticed Peter looking through their books, resisting the urge to snatch one out of his hands. Instead he went to the practice room where Isaac and Scott were showing off a little to Cora and Boyd. He sat at one of the tables, watching them from the corner of his eye. It was so strange to recognize them from Derek’s memories, to see Cora’s frown and feel a jolt of familiarity or to hear Boyd laugh quietly at something Scott said and smile because he knew—but shouldn’t have—that sound meant he was trying not to snort while laughing.The day was gloomy again, the damp chill seeping into the room and fogging up the windows. “Would it hurt if our magic was taken away?” Isaac’s question made him twitch, startled. He thought about it, but he honestly didn’t know. He remembered Derek’s foggy memory of the ritual, being trapped, blood on his neck, and said, “I think so.”Isaac nodded slowly, plucking a blue thread loose from his sweater. “Where’s Derek?” Cora leaned over the table, braced on her forearms and trying to look casual. Scott used his wand to scratch his arm and said, “Probably his room, I don’t think he slept last night.” Her eyes narrowed slightly when he said his room but she didn’t comment on it. “This morning on our way here, I saw a blue tree—and a purple one, and red. Are they decorations for something?”“No,” Isaac answered. “They’re real.”Boyd turned, looking skeptical, and Scott grinned. “They’re called the Seven Willows,” he began. “See, when Brigid Auliffe and her coven decided to stay here…” Stiles left Scott and Isaac to their history lesson—they were all tense and needed a distraction, and he imagined it was fun for them not to be the ones with questions for once. He watched Erica for a moment, across the room practicing a ritual, but he didn’t want to mess her up, so he just slipped out of the room.Up the hall, he could see Peter in the yellow armchair with a book in his hands. Jackson was asleep on the couch, head tipped back over the arm, phone abandoned on his chest. Sleeping and unable to be abrasive, Stiles noticed that he looked just as tired as Boyd and Cora, just as worn. Derek being gone had affected him too, even if he acted like it was all just an inconvenience. Stiles crossed to the sunroom; as expected, Derek was there, staring into the pond.He looked up when the door opened, brows lifted. “Sorry, no news.”His shoulders drooped. “Right.”Stiles joined him next to the pond. “There’s almost no one left here,” he commented. “Just Fiona and the pixie by the window.”“Scott releases them when they’re healed. I think he’s also been taking some of them to the vet clinic too, as a precaution with everything going on.”“Ah.” He didn’t look up. “When will Fiona…?”Stiles shrugged. “She’s capable of leaving when she feels like it. We’ve released her twice,” he explained. “She just comes back. Usually kind of sick again, but never serious enough to stay this long.”From her perch on a tree, Fiona hunkered down, eyes fixed on him like she couldn’t believe he’d outed her.“Oh.” He glared at the wall. “I hate this.”Stiles looked down at his lap. “I know.”He clenched his fists. “I hate this. I don’t know or trust my own pack. I can see it, how they look at me when someone asks a question or when they need something, but I don’t—I don’t know them. I don’t have answers for them.” He turned his head. “Can we try again? Please?”Stiles nodded. He couldn’t refuse and didn’t particularly want to in any case. They stayed seated next to the pond to avoid falling, turning to face each other like usual. Fiona crawled into Derek’s lap, head on his thigh so she could glare out the window. Flowers budded along her spine and down her tail, moon-bright petals that gave off a heady, sweet scent. Stiles started off as small as he could this time: he dove for the knotted memories, but he focused on Cora, finding a memory with her serious frown and carefully, delicately unwinding it like tangled thread. He heard Derek’s breath pick up, sharp and pained, and caught his hand. Claws scraped the back of his hand but he barely felt it, concentrating on this one memory as it came loose, gaining depth and clarity. Cora frowned, facing them—him—and standing in dense woods. She threw her arms out, her frown morphing into a confident smirk. “I’ll give you a five second head start.” She danced from foot-to-foot. “Scared the big bad alpha is gonna lose to his kid sister?”Derek growled playfully in the memory and tore off, a bubble of joy rising in his chest as they—he ran as fast as he could, trees whipping by, Cora’s snarling laughter right behind and then passing him in a rush. Something snicked like a lock turning, soft under the sounds of Derek and Cora crashing through the woods.Stiles eased back, his lips twitching with residual joy from the memory and then-Derek tackled him. He was laughing breathlessly when their lips crashed together, hands squeezing at Stiles’s waist. Fiona yowled indignantly and squirmed out from between them, leaping over the pond and darting up a tree. Derek sat up just enough to look at Stiles’s face, wide-eyed. “I remember. Just that–just the one we saw but it stayed. It’s still—it’s still here.” Then his arms trembled and gave out, collapsing on top of him. “Ow.” He didn’t struggle—his own energy had waned, leaving him just enough strength to wheeze and drop his arms. “Well. Okay.” He didn't mind the weight so much, he supposed. “Dizzy.” Derek rolled off of him, breathing hard. Stiles levered himself up on his elbows to get a look at him. “You okay?”He nodded, but it was a jerky motion and his eyes were glazed. “Can’t shift. Can’t move. But…” A smile curved his mouth, a sweet, giddy thing that pressed into Stiles’s heart like a flower between the pages of a book. “But I still have the memory.” Stiles exhaled and dropped beside him again. “Okay,” he said to the ceiling. He couldn’t fathom moving yet, but still, there was a jittery, electrified feeling working through him. “Okay. Let’s refuel in a minute and then-”“Try again?” Derek grinned over at him and he couldn’t help grinning back. Progress at last.
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They barely finished scarfing down two and a half ham and cheese melts each before they settled in the sunroom to try again. They hadn’t told anyone what they were doing yet, but the others were distracted enough showing off to each other and hadn’t even noticed when Stiles made off with lunch. He had started the stopwatch after they managed to peel themselves off the floor, and it clocked in at a half hour before Derek could flash his eyes and fangs again, and forty-five minutes before he was fully back.Fiona lurked nearby, licking hopefully at their abandoned plates. “What next?” Stiles asked, wiping his fingers on his pants. He had explained his process while they ate, the way he’d chosen Cora to pull a memory about. Derek seemed torn, jaw working as he glared down at his lap. He inhaled deeply. “Look for her. The witch.” “Are you sure? I can pull another one of Cora first, or Boyd—even Peter or Jackson.” He shook his head. “No. This is more important.” He flexed his hands on his legs. “Look for Jennifer Blake.”Stiles nodded and shook his hands out. There were three red lines across the back of his right hand from Derek’s claws; they barely stung anymore, and he had always considered three a lucky number, so he chose to take them as a good sign. He exhaled and slid back into the memory-knot thinking of Jennifer Blake. He focused on the shadow from the flashes of memory, the glimpses of the ritual, the chanting voice, the silver knife. Guttered candles and the coppery taste of magic. The memory unwound reluctantly from the knot, a single strand just like with Cora. It resisted, squirming away from him like a wet fish. He didn’t struggle, diligently plucking and pulling until it flowed to him.The memory itself was cloudy with annoyance though it was a sunny day, the light almost blinding at the angle they were facing. Derek’s annoyance seeped into Stiles like it was his own. His arms were crossed as he faced a woman with brown hair and a sweet smile. Black combs glittering with onyx pulled her hair back from her face. She was speaking as the memory unfurled. “-really help you and your…little pack.” Her smile widened. “You could really use some wards around here, and some glamours to…” Her gaze swept over him. “To project the image you’d like your pack to have.”Derek’s voice was gruff. “I already said no thank you.”Her expression didn’t falter. “So you did, but I wanted to give you just one more chance. Goodbye then, Derek.”Derek watched as she walked away, bombarded with the powerful scent of turned earth, refusing to go inside until she was gone.Stiles felt the snick of the memory settling and pulled free, groping at the floor for balance. He was dizzy again, panicked, too disoriented to stand. Derek groaned, swaying in place, eyes almost crossing. Stiles braced his hands on the floor, breathing heavily as he tried to get his bearings. He fumbled for his phone as soon as he stopped feeling like he was going to tip over. “Who is she?” Derek asked. “You recognized her. Who is she?”“How is your shift?” Stiles snapped as he dialed. “Not back yet. Stiles, who is-”The phone went to voicemail and he swore. “She’s been here awhile.” He rubbed his eyes. “I saw her.” His tongue felt thick and clumsy. He blinked hard, staring at his phone. “At the festival for sure, at Mr. Clarke’s house too.” He remembered her smile, the black combs in her hair, the damp, earthy scent of her magic in his nose. He used the wall to claw his way to his feet, wobbling, then leaned his shoulder against it to text John, Parrish, and Graeme all at the same time: The witch who attacked Derek is in the Clarkes house posing as their niece. Jennifer Blake. Going now send help He grabbed his bat, shaking his head hard to clear it.Derek got up. “Where are you going?”“To their house! She’s been there for weeks, I have to help them.” He pressed his thumb into his forehead, trying to massage the headache away. “Just wait here.” “No.” He matched Stiles step for wobbly step as they ran from the sunroom.“You can’t even shi-” He cut off when Derek growled as they crossed through to the kitchen. His bat warmed in his grip, sigils lighting up one by one. Isaac and Erica jumped up from the table when they ran by. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”“Stay here,” Stiles snapped. “We’ll be right back. Just—just stay in the house.” He crashed outside with Derek at his heels. Behind them, Cora asked, “What’s going on?”“Stiles said to stay here,” Isaac mumbled. He glanced over his shoulder. “Stay there!”Erica, Boyd, Cora, and Peter were already in the yard, but he couldn’t spare another breath to tell Erica to go back home. He didn’t even know what he was going to do when he got there—he just knew he left them there with her, after the ghoul, after knowing something was wrong. How did he not realize?Cora caught his arm, nearly pulling him off his feet. “What is going on?”“Let go,” he snapped, tugging himself free. “Jennifer Blake is here,” he huffed. Boyd and Cora snarled at the name. He nodded jerkily. “So let go.”“She’s strong,” Peter said. “You sure you want to do this?”“Shut up,” Derek said, making Cora snicker.“I’m not stupid. I just need to get them away from her. Erica, please-”“No.” She shook her head. “Save your breath.” She waved at him to keep going.“So what’s the plan?” Boyd asked as they started running. “Are we going to just burst in or what?”Stiles didn’t look at them. “You all should wait outside, I just need to get the Clarkes out of there.”“We can help,” Cora pointed out. “We’ve fought her before.”“Didn’t go that well,” Erica puffed.She growled. They could see the Clarkes’ house through a break in the trees now, the tall greens in their garden and the back porch. Stiles slowed. He was worried, but he needed to be sure he didn’t endanger Erica or the others. He wanted to confront Blake for everything, but she was better left to John and the other guardians now that they knew who she was and where she was staying. He nodded to himself and started forward again. His bat was hot in his hand, heating up as his heart pounded. He would just calmly ask to speak to Pat and Mr. Clarke—if she suspected him, she would have already confronted him. So he would just knock and be casual about it, as if he knew nothing. The wind shifted, rustling the leaves above them, and blew a rotting, gagging stench over them. Derek frowned, turning his head. A gray blur tackled him from the left.Stiles turned and found himself eye to eye socket with a person whose flesh was gray and pulled tight over its bones, patches eaten away by time.Its jaw hung open as it shuffled closer to him, arms dangling loose at its sides. One was sliding free of its shoulder, giving it a lopsided, stretched look. It reached out with a hand curled into a claw by decomposing skin.Erica’s scream was breathless, barely more than a high pitched whistle.Stiles’s head jerked toward her.A flattish raccoon dragged itself forward on bony front paws. A buck with a half-broken rack and one back leg twisted all the way around charged at Peter; it had a fist sized hole in its side that was wet with fresh blood.Peter held his ground, leaning forward and baring his fangs. The person in front of Stiles lunged. He skipped backwards, staying just out of reach but close enough to keep it focused on him and not the others. He leaned down, avoiding its reaching hands, to squint; as suspected, there was something pale brown tied around its shrunken wrist. He glanced toward the Clarke house; he was closer than he realized, like the zombie was herding him out of the woods.Derek grunted and twisted, throwing the dog off of him. He scrambled up to his knees, baring blunt human teeth. Blood smeared down his arm from the bite, but it didn't heal; his shift hadn't returned yet.Cora kicked the raccoon away from Erica with a snarl. It smacked a tree hard, bones cracking, and fell to the ground in a shower of broken bark. “Ha.” She tossed her ponytail and smirked over her shoulder.A crunch and grind of bone made them all turn back. The raccoon's spine twisted back into place as it clawed across the ground, matted fur undulating as bone shifted.“What the fuck,” Cora breathed.Erica’s dagger flashed in her hand.Fire swallowed the raccoon, but it felt no pain and the flames weren’t hot enough to burn it to ash so it kept coming, screeching as its fur burned. A dry, cold hand curled around Stiles’s wrist in his distraction. He gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to pull away, and swung his bat lightly next to him, skimming above the grass. The fingers on his wrist bent backwards, bones snapping one at a time like twigs.He jammed his bat against the zombie’s chest and flung it away, then stormed out of the trees. Jennifer Blake stood on the porch, smiling sweetly when she noticed him. She lifted her hand and waggled her fingers in a sarcastic wave.Stiles’s face twisted into a snarl, rage pumping through him. He lowered his head to charge, only to stumble when he heard Erica yelp. His head swiveled. A bony hand closed on his ankle, tugging with surprising strength, making him stumble as jagged bone shards pressed into his leg.A giggle fluttered down from the porch. He growled, touching the desiccated arm with his bat. It released, curling away with an unpleasant wail.Breathing hard, shaky with fury, he lifted his head, shooting Blake a dark look. He weighed his bat in his hands, felt the power running under him like currents. Could he reach her from here?Erica’s gasp, part-sob, echoed to him and Blake’s smile grew.Stiles growled in frustration and slashed his bat over the zombie by his leg. Orange-red lines pulsed through its dry, gray flesh and it went still, crumbling like the end of a cigarette. He met Jennifer’s amused gaze with a hard stare of his own, then stomped back into the trees. He brought his bat up to his shoulder and swung hard. The gurgling, broken animals flew back, slamming into trees or tumbling between them. “Let’s go. Now,” he barked. “Back to the house.” He looked over his shoulder. Jennifer was leaning forward on the porch rail, her gaze hungry, so sickeningly casual in a place she did not belong. He flipped her off.She jerked, then her brow puckered like she was annoyed. She shook her finger at him.The crack of power missed him, striking a tree to his right in a rush of heat. He didn’t break eye contact. She looked more annoyed. “Let’s go,” he said again. Derek snarled, but the whole group made a furious retreat together. Stiles walked half turned to keep an eye behind them, bat at the ready. Magic sang through the air when they made it halfway home, a threat and a warning, in tune with the magic of the forest, and Stiles couldn’t help smirking. John and what felt like the whole department had arrived. He walked faster, catching up to the others in a few long strides. “What the hell,” Cora hissed. “She can raise the dead now? What the fuck! Why?”Erica had a long scratch on her arm that Boyd was looking at for her. “What do you know about first aid?” she grumbled.He shot her a wry smile. “I used to be human.”She blinked at him, falling silent and allowing him to keep prodding her arm. “Those spells to raise the dead are complicated, aren’t they?” Peter asked. “Yes.” Stiles remembered her forearms on the porch rail and shook his head. “I don’t know how she raised so many.” But only one human, still mostly animals. Possibly she was pulling the flesh from her legs, or somewhere else he couldn’t see. He shuddered to imagine how much she had already sliced away.Peter hummed thoughtfully. Isaac and Scott were on the back porch when they stumbled out of the trees; Scott was pacing while Isaac bounced on his toes and craned his neck to see past the yard. Scott launched down the stairs when he saw them. “What happened? What’s going on?”“We should go inside,” Stiles said loudly, before anyone else could say anything. “Dad and the others are there,” he added. “They’re handling it. Inside now.” He stood at the door, waving them past. He shut and locked the door when everyone was in, then touched the northern facing ward. Anxiety thrummed through him, pitching his stomach, but he tried to ignore it.John and the others would handle her.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Stiles paced the cross hallway, the one between the two additional wings of the house, thumb grinding into his palm. A sour taste coated his tongue as nerves sent his stomach churning. Something was wrong. John wasn’t back yet, he hadn’t sent word or any kind of message at all, hadn’t checked in—neither had any of the deputies. It was still cold outside, but everything felt heated, charged. Wrong. Scott hovered near the sunroom. “You need to calm down,” he said quietly. “Everyone is already freaking out.” He looked freaked out too. Stiles knew that; he just couldn’t. Fear and a dizzy sense of uneasiness washed over him, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what he was picking up on. He turned to make another lap and caught a glimpse of Erica on the arm of the sofa, tugging at the end of her hair, one foot tapping. He grimaced. “Stiles…”He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with me.” It was like he was standing near a livewire, an uncomfortable, low-level current of energy running through him. Scott nodded slowly. “Okay.” He took a breath and straightened his shoulders, nodding again before he stepped out of the hall, into the main section of the house. “Hey, Derek, you wanna help me start making dinner? The chicken has been marinating.” There was a beat, then, “Sure.”After another few minutes of silence, Cora and Jackson started arguing over the correct definition of the word “myopic”. It sounded like they were both right but hadn’t realized it. Isaac slid by while Stiles was making another lap through the hall, heading for the closet. “I just want to look,” he explained while he took out his mirror. Stiles nodded, distracted, then stopped. “Grab some bay leaves and althea,” he said. “Toss it in your candle flame before you start, see if that helps things clear up.”“Thanks,” he murmured, detouring to the sunroom.Stiles watched him go, digging his thumb into his palm, and thought now would be a good time to bring Claudia’s stuff down. It would be a good way to keep themselves busy; he could distract himself by letting Isaac use her old fashioned hand mirror to scry with, could show Scott the crystal goblet she used for water scrying. Anxiety pulsed through him, sending his heart fluttering. Sweat dampened his palms and the back of his neck. He started pacing again. Now was not a good time to be climbing a ladder. Fog gathered along the bottoms of the windows as the temperature outside dropped. Thick gray clouds blanketed the sky, growing darker as the sun went down.Stiles’s breath was a whistle in his throat. He turned away from the window and collided with Derek, wobbling backward before catching himself on Derek’s arm. “Yeah?” He tried not to snap. It wasn’t Derek’s fault he was so keyed up.“Something feels wrong.”He nodded. “I felt it too.”Derek scowled. “What is it?”“I don’t know.” He pulled his hands apart. “I just…” He took a breath and made himself meet his eyes. “I’m just worried, but it’s probably fine.” “You don’t believe that.”He shook his head. “She’s been next door,” he breathed. “For weeks. What if she overpowered them?” He refused to believe that. Blake would put up a good fight, but he had to believe John would stop her. His breath clogged up in his throat. What if they didn’t? He wasn’t helpless. He knew powerful spells, his focus item was charged with active runes and sigils that a lot of witches his age couldn’t produce yet, he could feel the town’s power at his fingertips, ready to leap to do his bidding, but he had never really had to protect himself before—not like this, not from hunters or other witches. Not at this level or volume, and that realization made him feel very young suddenly. It made him doubt his own capabilities, his power and ability to wield it. He could protect himself and the others from injured fey when they lashed out and charging stags, terrified satyrs, and even hunters, but hunters and a witch who raised the dead? Not just one musty corpse dragged upright but many? A witch who had created more than one ghoul?What kind of person did that? What wouldn’t she do, then, in pursuit of her prey?“Stiles?”He shook himself and straightened. It didn’t matter what Blake was willing to do; he would protect them. John probably had her at the station already anyway. “I’m fine. Where did Scott go?”“He and Erica are cutting vegetables, and Boyd is helping. It was getting crowded.”“Are you okay?” Stiles asked quietly. He nodded at where the dog bit him when he looked confused. Derek stiffened and nodded. “It came back, just…slowly.”“I see.” He rubbed his face. “Let’s go check on everyone.” He couldn’t keep pacing and thinking himself in circles. Cora and Jackson sat on opposite sides of the dining table, glaring away from each other. Cora perked up when she saw them coming, but Jackson kept his gaze firmly on his phone. In the living room, Isaac sat on the floor in front of the coffee table scrying while Peter watched just out of his line of sight, gaze unwavering. Stiles frowned.The mirror in front of Isaac flickered, the edges clouding oily white for a second. “Isaac,” he barked, lunging halfway over the back of the couch. The flames of Isaac’s candle shot into the air and all of the Hales, even Derek, flinched. The mirror bulged and then shattered, glass exploding outward. Isaac yelped, shielding his face. Stiles toppled face first onto the couch.“What was that?” Cora shouted, catching Stiles by the ankle before he could slide off the couch and into the mirror shards. The air hissed as the protections calmed the candle flame. Isaac’s chest heaved. There was a cut under his eye when he looked over his shoulder at Stiles. “I just heard screams and felt panic—I couldn’t see anything.”“What were you looking for?”“Her,” he mumbled. “Blake. But I didn’t—well, I saw town hall for a second, then just screaming and white fog.”Stiles’s heart jumped. The panic thrumming in his veins sharpened; the sour taste in his mouth grew bitter. The panic he felt, the anxiety, it wasn’t his at all, it hadn’t been for a while. He squirmed free of Cora’s grasp and rolled off the couch. “Oh, gods.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and found the screen lit with a new message arriving. Swallowing his heart, he thumbed it open.John had sent only two words: TOWN WARDSHe pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Guys, activate the wards. Erica, you’re on north and south.”“Why? Where are you going?”He yanked a maroon hoodie off the hooks by the door and pulled it over his head. “I’ll be back. Just activate the wards and stay inside.” He grabbed his bat and sidestepped around Cora. “Tell us.” Isaac leaped over the couch and blocked his path, shaking glass out of his hair. “We’re a coven, we work together. Where are you going?”He glanced over at Derek, at Scott and Erica by the kitchen door, the others watching with interest. “I just have to activate some wards in town, as a precaution,” he said calmly. “Dad texted.” He didn’t say that John asking him to do this was terrifying, that this was a job for one of the guardians, that if he was being told to do it, they were all incapacitated in some way.“If it’s fine and just a precaution, then we can all go together,” Erica said. He shook his head. “You guys need to activate the wards on the house.” He tried to keep his voice steady. His knees were shaking. “In that case, we can tag along,” Peter said smoothly. “We certainly aren’t needed to ward this house, and that way you won’t have to go alone.”The fear running from the town and through him was thick, pressing on his skull from the inside and making his vision sway. “No, I’d really—really rather you stayed here.”“Stiles,” Scott said quietly, “we stay together right now.”“Just please stay here.”“No.” Isaac spoke simply, brushing past Stiles to grab a jacket from the hooks. He tossed Erica’s teal coat to her. Stiles bit back his next argument. He didn’t want them out there, exposed to whatever Jennifer Blake was doing, but he couldn’t just leave the town undefended, not when John and the others were—might be—busy. They were just busy. “Fine,” he snapped. Jackson put his phone away with a sigh and stood with a long, lazy stretch.Cora rolled her eyes, but Stiles didn't have the patience to deal with the pack, too. “Just stay together and don’t…” Don’t what? He had no idea what was going on.Derek met his gaze over Erica’s shoulder and for just a second, it was just them, frustrated and a little lost. “Just stay together,” he repeated, and swept out the door.
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The chill from earlier had turned to bitter cold. They walked because there were too many of them to drive, and Stiles barely held back from running. The group was silent except for the crunch of their shoes on dry grass and gravel. Stiles could already smell magic long before they reached town, a mixture of florals and sugary sweetness, the burn of panicked rituals and desperate summonings. Derek coughed into his elbow.“What is that?” Jackson gagged. “Magic,” Peter said slowly, “and decay.”Stiles’s bat warmed in his hand, orange and red lighting along the length of it like flickering fire. “Please,” he said to Scott on his right. “Please go back.”He shook his head. His willow wood wand was in his hand, expression grim and set. Icy wind slid beneath Stiles’s collar. The air felt heavy despite the cold, weighted. The smell got stronger as they walked, until he could taste it, coating his tongue and hovering at the roof of his mouth, the insides of his cheeks like a film. He bit his cheek to distract himself from the sensation.“I hear screaming,” Boyd gasped, leaning forward like he was going to run. Stiles thrust his bat out to the side, blocking him. “Don’t run. We need to get to the school and the town hall to activate the wards no matter what. They’re emergency wards,” he explained with a calm he couldn’t feel. “There’s some at the doctor’s office and sheriff’s department too, but those two places are the biggest buildings and easier to get to.”Night had fully fallen by the time they reached town. Chaos ran unchecked, people were pinned between cars or buildings by undead deer, dogs, raccoons, coyotes, and…humans, so many human corpses, moldering, unseeing people grappling at witches, unfeeling and strong enough to pull them off their feet. Panic scorched the air. “How?” Scott croaked. “These people—they weren’t buried here,” he sputtered. Stiles nodded, staring at the main street of his town, crowded with the undead and his terrified neighbors. There was a yawning chasm inside his chest where his horror should have been. “She must have brought them.”A flash of yellow light lit up Main Street, and undead woodland creatures bowled over, screeching in horrible, dry voices. “This way,” Cheyenne Bennett called, her voice ringing over the sounds of the horde. She had a jasper stone clutched in her fist, leaking yellow light between her fingers—her focus item. Her magic was wild and cedar-scented, her eyes glowing with a spell for night vision. Behind her, Teresa Blackwell and Lilah Hartford, the principal and candy store owner respectively, ushered people across the field toward the school.Lilah’s emerald velvet jacket was torn, and her deep green lipstick smudged as her mouth twisted into a grimace. She kicked at a raccoon that lunged at a young boy. Blasts rocked the ground as people panicked; fires ignited and wind tore up and down the road. There were so many of them. “How did Blake manage this?” Erica choked. “She-she can’t have sacrificed this much flesh—she would be dead!”Stiles turned his bat and swung. Four human zombies flew away from Tim and Robby Wright; Tim was holding Emma while Robby fought. They nodded gratefully and ran for the crowd heading to the school.Derek snarled. The creatures had finally taken notice of them. They all had a slice of flesh tied to them somewhere, animating them to do her bidding. Erica was right, it was impossible that she had done this alone. Who was she working with? “Gods,” he blurted as a raccoon clawed up his leg. “The hunters…”“What?” Erica yelped, darting in to kick it away. “What about them?”The raccoon’s screech was a horrible, cracked hiss. It righted itself and swung its head toward them; there was no flesh left on its face, no fur, no eyes; its tattered fur hung in mats that hid the hole in its belly. “Come on. I have to activate the wards, and you need to stay with me.” People were in a blind panic; even Mayor Pulley was in the street holding them back, but her eyes had a blank look in them that did not bode well, glazed and afraid. Derek kicked a human zombie away with a grunt as they joined the masses struggling in the street. Isaac gasped. Stiles turned, hand out, but before he could cast, the zombie flew off him with a bang; it crashed into a fire hydrant, landing in a twisted heap.Cora snarled and lunged. She grabbed a zombie from behind and threw it.Cheyenne looked over her shoulder, panting. “Thanks.”Cora nodded and moved her feet shoulder-width apart. “You guys go,” she called. “I’ll catch up.”Without a word, Jackson sauntered over to her side, looking down his nose at the bedraggled mountain lion dragging itself toward them. Together the three of them kept a hefty chunk of the undead from chasing people, clearing a path to the school.Stiles shook a bony, squeaking bat off his shoe and ran, shoving through people to get to the front doors of the school.“Stiles!”“That was Stiles—do you know where Sheriff is?”“Where are they?”“Why haven’t they stopped this?”“Who did this?”The questions were tinged with hysteria, but he couldn’t stop to answer them; they needed somewhere safe to go. He squeezed through the bottlenecked entrance and smashed the glass door of the locked front office with the top of his bat. The office was warm and almost too quiet and still compared to outside, making his skin crawl. He stepped over the glass and behind the admin desk. The ward was carved deep into the painted cinderblock wall by the desk. The magic of it was so powerful that activating it burned his fingertips, but he didn’t pull away until it lit all the way up, until the protective magic settled over the whole building and even then, he found himself standing there, hand to the wall, staring. Erica pulled his hand away. “We’re okay.”He nodded, blinking hard. People filed through the school, following Teresa and Mayor Pulley’s guidance to the gymnasium. Peter, Derek, Scott, Boyd, and Isaac stood just inside the office, waiting for him. He swallowed. “Town hall next,” he managed, forcing himself to stride back out of the office. It was just as hard to leave as it had been to get in, with people realizing who it was and asking for answers he really didn’t have. “Just get in and stay in,” he said over and over until they squirmed back outside. The screams of panicked witches mingled with the warbling wails and dry, broken growls of the dead. The streetlights did nothing but cast frightening shadows over the darkened street. Willow Pass residents were fighting hard but the dead felt no pain. Their bodies broke and they got back up. If they were so broken that magic couldn’t force them up again, they crawled. Worse than the musty, dried out corpses were rank, newer ones whose features were sickly but still closer to a person than a skeleton. A young woman with flattened eyes and bone shards sticking out of the flesh of her arms lunged at Stiles. He swept his hand out as his heart clenched, fear leaping up his throat, and knocked her away. Erica swore and started stomping; brittle bones snapped like branches. “Dis-gus-ting.” She stamped her foot with each drawn out syllable. A hot wave of magic burst from her, apple-scented, as she remembered her spells. Isaac shouted. By one of the cars parked outside of the grocery store, a fresh corpse with a broken face grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides and dragging him toward a group of others. They didn’t eat people like in the movies; they only did their master’s bidding, but it was still heart-stopping to see. Stiles knocked a charging deer out of the way and ran, dodging a wild blast from Scott. “Can’t reach,” Isaac wheezed as Stiles caught up. He closed his hand around the zombie’s twisted wrist. Red-orange lines flooded through it, up the arm and across the face; it dropped Isaac and fell back before it began crumbling. Stiles shuddered. Isaac shook himself. “Fuck, that was fucking disgusting.”Derek barked out a shocked laugh from the road, like he’d never heard Isaac swearing before, and got taken down by three of the undead—two dogs and a human. “What was that spell?” Isaac gasped. “Burning.” Stiles lifted his bat to help Derek.A desiccated hand grasped the top, oblivious to the heat of the sigils, and pulled hard. Another caught his wrist when he stumbled; two more dragged themselves toward him, bisected by a lightning or fire spell, if the stench and smoke were any indication. Stiles growled and stomped his foot.The asphalt under them heaved. Fire lashed off his bat, burning the hands gripping it down to ash. He knocked the bodies aside and swiveled his head. Bitter fury boiled through him when he realized that the zombies were converging mainly on his group; the rest of the people on the street were just an afterthought. He should have forced them to stay home. Bony hands grasped at his legs, pulling at the denim. He inhaled deeply and nearly choked on the stench of decay and rotting bodies. He turned his bat in a sharp circle, gathering all of the creatures grabbing at him into a pile like kindling. Fire lit up the street. Between two cars, near the start of the woods, Erica was struggling to pull her arm free as a zombie dragged her away from the road. Boyd jerked Isaac back by the arm, kicking at three human zombies that were trying to grab him. Stiles wavered. A skeletal hand wrapped in the front of his hoodie, yanking him down. “Erica!” he shouted, panicked. They were surrounding him, surrounding Boyd and Isaac—he couldn’t get to her fast enough before it dragged her out of sight. “Do a barrier!” Her eyes widened with panic. She stabbed her dagger down, creating a blast that rippled over the entire street. She broke free, breathing hard, hair wild, and stabbed down again. The zombie closest to her crumbled. She shook her hair back and marched to the car Boyd and Isaac were penned in next to, jumped on the hood, and then with a sharp, confident motion, slashed her knife in front of her. A crack reverberated over the commotion like thunder. The barrier was translucent, midnight blue and held solid against the undead when they pushed against it.“Yes!” Isaac threw his hand up.Laughing, she smacked it.Relieved, Stiles wrenched free of the creature dragging him—they hadn’t made it far. He swung his bat, clearing an arc in front of him.Cora fought free of a skeletal mountain lion that had dragged her away from the school and stood, shaking her arms off. Her shoulder was bleeding from a ragged bite that took its time healing. Her eyes widened when she looked to the horde beside her. She waded in, clawing and kicking until she could bend down, punching her arm through the middle and pulling Jackson free. He came up bloody and rumpled, swearing a blue streak. Stiles swept more into the fire as he neared them. If he could just get the pack and his coven into one place, he could get a handle on the situation. Erica’s gasp cut through the growling. She stared into the crowd of zombies shuffling toward her barrier, face slowly going white. Stiles leaned up on his toes to see what she could from her vantage point. He caught a gleam of silver at the edge of the horde and recognized the curved blade of a hunter. A fresh wave of fury coursed through him, mingled with fear at the sight. He swung his bat in front of him, blowing the zombies back. Gurgling wails and cracking bones filled the air. The hunter shot to her feet and ran. Stiles growled, reaching out to drag her back. Someone jerked his hoodie from the back. He snarled, twisting to free himself. “What?!”Peter met his gaze, still holding his hood in a fist. “Derek is gone.” “Stiles!” Isaac shouted, sounding choked. “Do you see Scott?”Stiles looked around. Terror made him sway. Witches were still rushing around, fending off or dodging around zombies that weren’t paying them any attention anymore. Cora and Jackson stood surrounded by rotted animal parts, wiping blood off their faces, Peter stood next to Stiles, and Boyd, Erica, and Isaac were still by the car. Derek and Scott were nowhere to be seen.
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Panic broke through his daze. He looked around wildly. Magic cracked out from his hands like lashes of electricity, mowing down a horde of zombies, but he couldn’t find them. Peter jerked his arm. “Hey! They’re gone.” There were bone fragments and blood in his hair. “There’s no way to track their scent with all of these things around.” Silence fell for the span of a heartbeat, a second of stillness. A guttural scream broke it, and the zombies were in motion again, fighting with renewed viciousness. They knocked over Jason from the deli and piled onto him. Stiles yanked free of Peter’s grasp, lifting his bat. Bright scarlet magic erupted from Jason’s hands. The zombies wailed, thrown back, and Jason jumped to his feet, lifting his fists like a boxer. Stiles exhaled and looked around again, but still, there was no sign of Scott or Derek. He swallowed and turned his attention out to the woods, reaching for Scott—and found blind panic instantly. His hand flew out before he could fall, catching himself on a shoulder. “Oh gods.” With a sick twist to his stomach, he realized what happened. He opened his eyes to Jackson lunging at him.He clawed through a large animal so decomposed and warped that it was unidentifiable that had been charging for Peter and Stiles. “Would you two pay attention?”“Blake has Derek and Scott,” Stiles blurted. “That’s what they’ve been trying to do: take Derek and my—and them,” he gestured at Erica and Isaac, “to her.”“Then why all of these dramatics?” Peter demanded. “She knew who you were, where you lived.”Stiles swallowed dryly. “She couldn’t, though. Couldn’t get near our house or even see where we were, because of all the protections. She needed to draw us out when she figured out I was the one Derek was staying with.” “You think she didn’t know?”He hesitated, swiping his sleeve across his eyes. “I think she started to suspect me after the ghouls at the Clarke house, but every encounter I had with her before then, Derek wasn’t with me. Even with the ghouls,” he said slowly, “his back was to the house the whole time.”“So…”“So today she saw him in the woods with us.” He cursed. “Then she needed to distract the guardians. Dad and the department,” he explained as he looked at the street with fresh eyes. There were ghouls mixed in with the undead, and more animals than people by now, but there were still a lot. He couldn’t leave. Derek and Scott needed help.Erica raised her voice. “Stiles, go! Scott is—he needs help.”Isaac nodded frantically. Boyd wiped blood from his claws and said, “Please go. We’ll protect them. If you know where they are or how to find them-”And he was the only one, if the pack couldn’t track him. He nodded. “Fine. Just, please.”Peter shoved him. “Go before she kills them.”He shot him a dark look and ran. He threw zombies out of his way and dove into the woods. There were more in the trees, stumbling and lurching toward town, but they didn't pay him any attention. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to keep moving even though he now knew they were going after his coven—possibly all of the tyros in town, who were mostly children. What disturbed him more were the glimpses of people—not ghouls or walking corpses but living people, hunters, bound somehow to Blake. They were shadows with silver gleaming at their sides but no focus. They got close as he ran through the woods but backed away just as quickly; they were keeping pace, heading in the same direction as he was.Stiles kept his bat ready and his hands close to his body, paranoid. He remembered the scythe-like curve of the blades, the wickedly sharp edge, the blood on John’s hand, and sped up. He was following Derek’s fury more than Scott’s fear, he realized, because he could get into Derek’s mind so easily now; he could almost see through his eyes, see silver light glinting off the onyx in Blake’s hair as she smiled nastily at them. It wasn’t difficult to find them; the woods didn’t go very deep near town and she wouldn’t want to get too close to the protected perimeter. She had candles set around and flickering, and two copper bowls laid out, gleaming in the candlelight that cast the whole scene in an unnatural silver. The tapered dagger in her hand was already bloodied along the edge.Scott and Derek were both cut and held to the ground by the strange, weighty spell she had once used to pin Derek to a rough wood slab. Behind her like an audience were thirteen glaze-eyed hunters. Their weapons were tucked away, but Stiles knew what they were. They were all wearing windbreakers and hats, beaten boots and stained jeans. Stiles’s skin crawled when her voice reached him, a sing-songy chant. The silver light filtering through the trees sharpened and shuddered, making the scene splinter in front of his eyes. She lifted her dagger over her head. Despite the cold, she wore a sleeveless shirt, the pale skin of her arms exposed. Her voice deepened. The air heated. Stiles threw himself forward and swept his hand out. Jennifer stumbled, knife wobbling in her grasp. Scott, freed slightly in her distraction, pressed his hand tight to the cut on his neck.She looked at Stiles, annoyed. “What kind of witch works with hunters?” he spat, trying to keep her attention on himself. He ticked his fingers at his sides, breaking her hold on them little by little. She blinked, lowering her arms. “Oh, them?” She tilted her head back to see the hunters over her shoulder, men and women with eyes feverishly bright but unfocused, posture tense. Stiles counted eleven now and frowned. “You’re right,” Jennifer said thoughtfully. “Shameful company to keep.” She lifted her hand and twisted sharply. The crack of bone made him gasp and jump back, but it didn’t get near him.Eleven bodies toppled to the ground, necks twisted. She turned back to him, bright eyed.Snow began to fall in slow, lazy flakes. Derek lunged up with a roar. Stiles dove for Scott, driving his magic through his invisible bonds and freeing him. “Go,” he ordered. “Go now. To Erica,” he hissed. “Home is too far. Run.” Scott’s eyes darted around, wheeling with panic, but he shot to his feet when Stiles repeated himself. He wobbled, then set off. Derek cried out and Stiles surged to his feet, then stopped. Jennifer had Derek from behind, her hand curled in a claw above his heart. She smiled again. “Let me take him,” she said over his shoulder, cheek pressed to his like she was embracing him. “You have no stake in this. I’ll leave with him.”Stiles glared. Derek mouthed something, but Stiles didn’t look away from her. “You tried to take my coven. You hurt my friends.” She looked confused. “Oh, do you mean those old guys? They’ll wake up eventually…probably.” The red glow of Derek’s eyes beamed through the night, through the drifting snowfall. He was still mouthing something over and over, but Stiles couldn’t acknowledge him or Jennifer would see. She flapped the hand not gripping Derek. “Water under the bridge. I’ll leave your coven alone, but I’m taking him.”Stiles pressed his lips together. A headache pounded above his left brow. “Well?” she snapped.“How do I know you’ll leave?” he forced out, enunciating carefully so he wouldn’t stutter. Derek’s eyes widened as the red dimmed from his irises. He nodded ever so slightly, mouthing encouragement. Stiles’s eye twitched. Weakness seeped into his limbs, his spine, his soul, threatening to collapse him, but it wasn’t his. He tugged hard, mouth twisting with exertion. Jennifer smiled sweetly. “Why, I’ll give you my word.”Stiles snorted with effort. “Not good enough.”Derek sagged slightly in her grip, eyes narrowing. “Oh, you don’t want to fight me,” she said. “This is an offer to you.”Red and black hovered at the edges of his vision and sweat broke out across his face as he forced himself to keep looking at her while Derek’s mind spilled into his. A memory slipped through, a flash of black combs clattering to the ground, brown hair falling loose, a shriek of rage—mottled scars, runes carved into flesh-Stiles pulled his attention away, huffing. His teeth ground together. With a mighty, painful tug, the memories unfurled. He yanked himself free before it could trap him, but he felt it work. Derek’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed, nearly taking Jennifer down with him.“What did you do to him?” Stiles blurted.Her mouth opened, face going puzzled. Before she said anything, a blast rocked the trees, throwing her back hard. She caught herself, barely, with magic and gaped as Scott stepped out from behind some thick trees, willow wand steady. Stiles dragged Derek toward him with magic while she was distracted, kneeling and tapping his cheek.His eyes opened slowly, unfocused and hugely dilated. “Derek, your powers?” He kept one eye on Jennifer while he spoke. “No,” he groaned. “Can’t shift, can’t—fucking—hear. My head…”Panic made his hands shake. Was it permanent this time? How could they know yet? Just one memory took his powers away for almost an hour. Jennifer stalked toward them. “You are just a tyro. How do you know how to do that?” She looked appalled, like an adult witnessing a child commit fraud or something equally outrageous.Scott smirked. “Stiles is a good teacher. Or maybe a bad one?” He shrugged and twisted his wand. Dirt exploded and Jennifer screamed in pain. “Nice, Scott!” Stiles cheered. “He hit her,” he said breathlessly. “Damn, that’s gr-”Derek sat up, knocking his hands away, then wobbled to his feet. “You guys should go,” he growled…passably. “She wants my power-”“Yes, but you don’t have it right now. Look.” He jerked Derek in by the shirt. “I am going to need help fighting her but you’re not exactly up to a fight right now.” Another blast rocked the ground, making Jennifer scream with rage. “You need to go and wait somewhere safe until your powers return.” He licked his lips nervously and smiled. “Any minute, right? I’ll hold her off.”“But-”Jennifer attacked with white lashes of light; one burned Stiles’s arm with a sizzle and another wrapped around Derek’s leg.Scott yelped.“Now,” she snarled, “I am taking all of them.” The white light whipped out again. Stiles threw his hands up and deflected it. “Derek,” he said through his teeth, “run. You and Scott need to run.”Their eyes met.Stiles tugged a memory forward in Derek’s mind as easy as plucking a flower, his own voice saying, “Sounds like just a dream, I guess.”Derek’s face hardened as he nodded. “When I can, I’ll be back—just hold her off.” “Go!”“Stiles, the combs-”Jennifer’s next attack sliced at them like an icy wind.Derek finally ran, and Scott plunged into the trees after him. Stiles turned his bat at his side, a deliberately casual, almost jaunty swing.When Jennifer’s face twisted, when she tried to follow them, he ticked his fingers. Red light erupted, flinging her through the trees. Blood spurted from her nose as she smacked into the ground. She glared at him with blood and dirt on her face, reaching up to touch one of the black combs before she pushed to her feet. She spread her hands out.He grinned, bat swinging lightly.
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Jennifer’s magic was quick and brutal. It was white glowing whips of pure magic and subtle slashing wind and smothering darkness. Stiles held his own and hit her nearly as much as she managed to hit him, but she was pushing him back toward town in her pursuit of Derek and Scott, and she wouldn’t be caught off guard again. He swung his bat, nearly bending the trees with the force of his spell and twisted his fingers, subtle and fluid at his side at the same time. Jennifer blocked the large blast but the second hit her in the ribs like a punch, doubling her over with a wheeze. He pulled his hand in, magic striking out like a snake at the combs. She reached up, palm out, and deflected. The spell sliced into tree bark instead. She straightened up, panting, to glare at him. “I am going to kill your little coven. I’m going to destroy this,” her mouth twisted like she had something bitter to spit out, “pitiful little village.”A branch whipped out, smacking her across the face and knocking her down again.Stiles jumped. Jennifer let out a short scream of rage, slamming her hands down. “I am going to rip their magic from them and cut their throats.”A red haze hovered over his eyes. “Are you?” he asked quietly, magic sparking at his fingertips. “I will.” His blood boiled. He stepped forward and the ground opened for him, splitting at his boot and racing for her.She leaped out of the way.Another tree reached out, smacking her between the shoulders. She yelped, slamming into the dirt. She rolled away from the fissure and to her feet, eyeing him. “I see you can tap into the town’s magic. Interesting.”Blood dripped down his arm where one of her white whips had cut him, winding through his fingers. A pulse of fierce protective magic ran beneath them. He smiled. “The guardians are dealing with your monsters now. It’s just about over for you.”A pained expression flashed over her face, gone in an instant. He walked sideways and took a stab in the dark. “You remember guardians, don’t you? How their power works, what they do to threats to their town?”Another grimace, then she smiled and held her hands out. “Oh yes. I’m sure they’ll enjoy my playthings.”Stiles crooked his finger, dashing a line to their left while walking right, keeping her attention by moving his bat. “How’d you do it?”She cocked her head. “I assume you’re from a town like this.”She blinked but admitted nothing.“You knew of the protections. I’m just curious.” He kept walking clockwise and she followed automatically, so they stayed across from each other. “I’m my coven’s teacher, you see. How did you get so many hunters in town?”“The usual way,” she replied slowly, eyes narrowed. “Amulets? Spell pouches? You made that many of them?”A cat-like smile stretched over her face. “They bought them from all over. I only needed to locate the spelled amulets.” “Ahh, so you-” he threw his bat up in front of him, vertical, to deflect her attack; both of them cast so casually that the spells, attack, deflect, attack, were like a conversation of their own- “just abducted them after they bought the amulets. Smart. Less work for you.”“Right.” She appraised him, fingers curled at her sides, and attacked again. He nearly missed, felt the blistering heat on his face before the sigils on his bat lit up and the spell bounced away, scoring yet another tree.Stiles felt the echo of the hit in his chest and winced. “So how did you divert the flesh sacrifice to the hunters?”“They deserved it.” She considered him for a moment, then tsked. “The teaching in this town is lacking. The ritual only calls for flesh,” she said briskly. “It never says whose.”Stiles cringed. “Besides-”His magic struck true while she was talking, yanking the combs out of her hair. They sailed toward him and dropped into the flattened grass between them, next to the fissure. She held her arms out at her sides with another wide smile. “Besides,” she repeated, “I’ve sacrificed plenty myself.”Bile burned his throat, shock leaving him speechless. The flesh of her hands was raw, with sigils burned and carved into her fingers like rings, runes curling up her wrists and forearms. Patches of skin were missing from the backs of her hands, her upper arms, strips peeled from the sides of her jaw. Scars of old, healed wounds twisted her grinning face into a mask. He stumbled back when she walked toward him, but she just picked up the combs and scooped her hair back. The illusion settled into place once more. He twisted his index finger, dashing another line next to the first. One more and the containment spell would activate. They were so close to town that he could smell old blood and decay again. Over Blake’s shoulder, he could see the vibrant colors of the Seven Willows, swaying in the wind and dusted with snow. He flicked his finger again and stepped out of the way as the containment spell shuddered into place, drawing on Jennifer’s power to feed the walls. She tipped her head up to watch it close above her. “Not bad,” she said casually. His stomach dropped. He made himself breathe and pressed the top of his bat into the ground. Magic flowed into the dirt, then up into the red-sheened walls of the containment spell.Jennifer walked a slow circle around her magical cage, then came to a stop right in front of him. Her hand bubbled and burned when she touched the wall but she kept pushing, brows pinched in concentration. Stiles felt the ripple of her fighting the spell and drew his magic back in, gathering himself for an attack.As soon as the walls shattered under her assault, he blasted her.A white whip cracked across his ribs, throwing him onto his back. Hot pain cut through his middle, snatching his breath away. The burn went through his hoodie and shirt, leaving his skin red and blistered. Breathing hard, he forced himself to sit up, using his bat to push to his feet despite the searing pain. Jennifer was sprawled in the street, struggling upright with blood in her hair and her ankle twisted and swelling. Stiles limped forward, teeth gritted, and clenched his fist. The street rolled beneath her, knocking her off her feet again. She snarled and slammed her hands down. Stiles tried to deflect, but he was a second too slow and found himself belly-down on the edge of the sidewalk, barely out of the trees, his burn screaming agony. He pressed his forehead to the cold concrete and then pushed himself up. By the time he was on his feet, Jennifer had reached the Willows. Fear made him quick, but she stopped at the violet one.She stroked the rippling leaves, smearing blood on them. Stiles’s lungs spasmed as he lurched closer to her. The violet willow’s drooping branches swayed toward her, the leaves stroking her hand right back, tangling around her fingers and wrist.She didn’t notice, her eyes locked on Stiles instead. “You are very annoying.”He laughed breathlessly. “So I’ve been told.”Her eyes narrowed. The branches whipped out, snapping around her wrist and pulling her hand down and away. She snarled, jerking hard, but the tree held fast. Snow was still falling, turning the moment fuzzy like an old, broken television. Stiles could feel Derek waiting beneath the red willow, braced for the moment his powers returned, for his chance to tear Jennifer’s throat out while her back was turned; he could feel the fury and violence in Derek’s mind, the itching desire to pay her back for everything. Jennifer stopped fighting abruptly. “I can tell he came this way, you know,” she said, turning her wrist to look at the branch curled around her arm. “But these interesting trees seem to be hiding him.” Her gaze lifted to Stiles with another smile. “Last chance.”He bared his teeth. He didn’t have the breath to tell her to fuck off, so he settled for tightening his hand around his bat and glaring at her. She sighed. It was a click at first, so soft Stiles wondered for a moment if this was somehow just another memory dragged from Derek’s mind. A click, and then a sizzle-hiss.He felt the burn across his ribs intensely, like it was burrowing in deeper. He grunted, then gasped, bowing over.Fire blazed up the leaves of the violet willow, the branches, eating toward the trunk too fast to save it. Pain ripped through him, forcing a cry from his throat. He thought he could hear the willow screaming too, a high pitched shriek of agony.Jennifer’s laughter snapped him out of his head. He straightened with effort to look her in the eye. Ash drifted through the slow gathering snow between them; the place where the violet willow had stood smoldered. It looked like a wound in the dirt. Power surged through him, from the willows, fortifying him, driving away his pain.“Come on out, Derek, or I’ll burn them all down until I find you.” Her voice went sing-songy again, taunting. She looked over her shoulder to eye the other six trees. Stiles drank in the magic from the fallen willow, from the others that gave power to him willingly. His bat heated again, sigils glowing. He focused on Blake again. He could stop her. Here, now, forever. His magic was a burning star in his chest, his injuries throbbing as he tensed. He had never killed with his magic. He wanted to now. The blue willow rustled. Jennifer glanced at it, a triumphant smile twisting her face. Someone knocked into Stiles’s shoulder from behind, lunging for Jennifer. She rolled her eyes and lifted her hand casually, killing the hunter with a twist of her fingers.The hunter’s head jerked all the way around, neck snapping, flesh ripping, and she crumpled to the ground. That made twelve. Blue leaves exploded outward as the thirteenth hunter burst out; his curved blade sliced smoothly through Jennifer’s upraised arm, severing her hand at the wrist. There was a beat of held-breath silence, stillness, and then Jennifer screamed. Blood gushed from the wound, pouring out of her arm like a fountain.The hunter didn’t hesitate; when Jennifer reached instinctively for her arm, he sliced her other hand off, and then—there was just blood. On the sidewalk. On the hunter. On Jennifer, on Stiles. Then Stiles was stumbling forward, maybe to stop the hunter, maybe to help him. His shoes slid in the puddles of blood on the cement. Jennifer keened like an animal. The hunter jerked his curved blade across her throat. Stiles’s gasp was gurgled, hysterical. He raised his hand and brought it down flat; the hunter slammed into the ground next to Blake’s body. Stiles kicked the knife away, but the hunter’s mind was gone, his last purpose served.He was smeared with blood, a mad smile on his face as Stiles’s magic kept him pinned down. He started giggling to himself. Stiles’s breath came in labored gasps, a whine starting up the longer he stared at the gore in front of him. He stumbled to the ashes of the violet willow, dropping to his knees. He dug his fingers into the scalding soil.The magic of the town moved through him and into the wound, giving back what was lent to him in his time of need. A red and lavender sprout pushed up through the dirt, growing to waist height in the span of seconds. “Stiles!” John flew past him after he shouted, yanking the hunter’s wrists behind his back to cuff them.Stiles turned his head and flinched when he saw how bruised and battered he was.“The blood?” John asked sharply. “Some is mine,” he admitted in a mumble. Leaves rustled, making them both flinch. Derek fought free of the red willow—the branches clung to him, to his arms and waist like grasping hands. “It was holding me,” he growled. Stiles nodded weakly. He felt dazed and sick to his stomach, kneeling beside the young, dual-colored tree with blood seeping into his jeans. He felt…“Stiles?” Derek reached out, trying to pry the bat from his hand, and jerked back with a hiss of pain. Stiles flexed his hand around it, trying to will the magic down. He lifted his gaze. “Do you remember everything?”He frowned. “Yes.”“Okay.”Snow drifted down gently, melting in the spreading pool of Jennifer’s blood.Stiles twisted and puked in the grass.
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Both Hale pack and Stilinski coven were gathered up by grim-faced deputies and ushered to triage tents already set up near the Seven—six and a half—Willows to treat injuries while some more plant-gifted witches tended to the Wounded Willow, as they were calling it. Witches donned protective gear and face masks to begin clearing away the corpses that fell lifeless when Jennifer died. Stiles watched the activity blankly from a folding chair dragged from the school while Teresa Blackwell tended to his wounds, which were superficial but numerous. The cream she rubbed over most of them smelled like rosemary and lemon, but the one she caked on the burn over his ribs was stronger, stinging and bitter-scented. He stared over her shoulder as she worked, watching John coordinate the cleanup. He had a burn up his left arm that looked almost like a tree trunk; it was bright red and shiny, fresh. He winced whenever he moved it.“All done,” Teresa said after she taped down the gauze. “Jake finished up with Isaac and Scott a few minutes ago, they’re okay.”“Thanks,” he mumbled. “Erica?”She shook her head with a smile. “Barely a scratch. I can’t believe they didn’t come inside…” She sighed. “But I’m glad they’re all okay.” She squeezed his hand, then looked over her shoulder. “Okay, Deputy, you can take them now.”Stiles looked up when Deputy Parrish stopped near his shoulder, but it took him another second to stand up.They were shuttled home by Deputies Graeme and Parrish, John’s most trusted, in two separate cars, crammed together so they would all fit. Stiles didn’t remember the ride home, or even getting out of the car. He stood in the doorway of the house for a long moment, staring at the long console table beside the door and the coat hooks. The house was warm and smelled a little like cinnamon still; it was just as they’d left it, and Stiles couldn’t quite make it all fit together in his head. “Come on,” Scott said quietly, tugging him by the elbow. He was shuffled gently into the yellow chair, away from the mirror shards still all over the floor and coffee table, and wrapped in a soft blanket with a regal gray cat on it. He realized after Scott tucked it around him that he was shivering and couldn’t stop. He curled his fists in the soft folds of the blanket and shut his eyes. “Hey.” Boyd’s voice was low.Stiles pried his eyes open.His clothes were torn and bloody, but all of his wounds were long healed; he was holding a steaming blue mug with yellow stars all over it. “Here, this should warm you up.”“What is it?” His voice was scratchy and caught on the way out.“My special hot chocolate.” He cracked a smile when Stiles’s brows lifted. “It will warm you up,” he said again. “Okay.” The first sip was both hot and spicy. “Oh!” He took another, longer drink. The hot chocolate was rich and creamy with a little kick of something peppery that helped slow his shivering. “Thanks.”Boyd nodded and took a step away, then hesitated. “Is Jennifer…I mean, she’s gone, right?”His hands clenched around the mug. He lifted his gaze past Boyd for the first time and found Isaac, Erica, and Scott piled on the couch watching him, all three of them pale and dirty and nervous. The sight roused him from his numb stupor; he couldn’t stand to see them so worried. “She’s dead,” he told them. “Very, very dead.” He swallowed to keep from being sick again. “The hunters…” He rubbed his face and took another drink. “She was using the hunters to raise the corpses, by diverting the required sacrifice to them.”“Where did she get all the bodies?” Scott asked.“I don’t know.”Erica leaned her head on Isaac’s shoulder. “What about the hunters? Scott said there were a lot.” He knew he asked Jennifer that, and she had answered, but he struggled to recall it. “She…tracked them. After they bought amulets to get through protective spells, then she brought them…” His voice died as Derek came into the room.His eyes lit up red, making Stiles exhale with relief. “It’s not all the way back yet, but getting there.” He didn’t seem worried about keeping the loss of his powers a secret now.Isaac leaned in. “What about the violet willow? How did you…do that?”He shrugged helplessly. “They were lending me power, so I just gave it back to fix what she destroyed.” He slumped into the chair, drinking the hot chocolate between words. “How did they lend you power?” Erica asked, pulling at the end of her hair. “I’m not sure. I just felt it, when she was threatening us—them—the whole town.” He looked down at the mug, flustered. Across the room, Jackson and Cora were sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall and for once not arguing; Cora was recounting a cool move Jackson had pulled while fighting the zombies, and he looked pleased enough to listen. Peter watched them with an uncharacteristically tight, serious expression.Stiles answered the questions he could, and then they told him what happened after he went to find Derek and Scott. “It was like you said,” Boyd added. “They were after—what’d you call them, Erica?”“Tyros,” she said quietly. “They were trying to grab uninitiated witches, it’s like they knew, or she was directing them somehow.”Stiles’s brows furrowed. His gaze snapped to Derek the moment he realized. Derek’s eyes widened. “What?” Cora asked, putting her hands on her knees and leaning forward like she was going to jump up.“The whole time,” Stiles sighed. “She…ah.” He rubbed his eyes and sat up straight, struggling to grasp his thoughts. “She couldn’t send the ghouls or undead after Derek the whole time she was here—maybe that was too specific or maybe it was just because he didn’t remember himself. The zombies and ghouls were popping up all over town, Dad said, but mostly here,” he mused, trying to figure it out as he talked. “We even found them going after the Clarkes’ grandkids.” He remembered the ghoul lunging after the little girl while Derek moved the kids to safety. “With the festival,” he said slowly as he worked it out himself, “there were a lot of people here, people with extended family. Likely some of them were also werewolves, gods. That’s what she was doing at first—seeking out werewolves instead of just looking for Derek, same as she did today except with tyros.” They all sat in silence for a minute, either absorbing this realization or trying to work out Stiles’s rambling, before Isaac picked up the tale. It ended the way Stiles thought it would: the tree burned and people felt it- “Like a punch to the jaw or a bone breaking but without the pain,” Scott said. “Like a jolt, and then the zombies just collapsed.”Stiles nodded. He was too tired to say anything, but really nothing else needed to be said. “Okay, come on.” Scott and Isaac heaved him to his feet. “Everyone stinks, we’re gonna find some clothes, but you first.”He let them pull him to his bedroom and help him change into pajamas while Erica gleefully passed out whatever would fit to the werewolves.Stiles could hear Derek answering questions from Cora, then Boyd, and even one from Jackson, but he couldn’t make out what they were asking, exactly. Fear gripped him suddenly, sharply, and he twisted, wobbling for the door. He was so sure they would be gone when he woke up that he fought Scott and Isaac when they tried to stop him.Scott smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Chill out. They aren’t going anywhere, okay? Now put some pants on.”He looked down. “Oh.”Isaac snickered. It was a weak echo of his usual laugh, but it was genuine.“But-”“No one is going anywhere,” Scott said calmly. “Pants.”He pulled them on mechanically, leaning against Isaac for balance. Once they were hitched over his hips, Cora stuck her head into the room. “We’re staying the night.” She was wearing one of Erica’s night gowns and still had blood on her chin and cheek. She sniffed. “Your room smells like flowers.” Then she met Stiles’s gaze and pulled up a strange, tense smile. “Thank you.”He just stared at her, blank, then nodded when Scott nudged him. She nodded back seriously and left the room. Stiles didn’t resist when they shuffled him to the bed. Isaac set his bat in the narrow space between his bed and the nightstand, and Scott set a cup of water next to the reading lamp.“Just sleep, okay?” Scott said. “No one is going anywhere.”Stiles didn’t think that was a good idea with all of these things so fresh in his mind—the muted flop-thump of Jennifer’s hand hitting the ground, the runes carved into her flesh, the arc of blood with each swipe of the ultra-sharp curved blade—but he was exhausted; his eyes closed the second his cheek touched the cool pillow, and he couldn’t pry them open again. He let the calm voices in the living room lull him to sleep.He woke briefly when the bed dipped and shook, but it was just Erica, Isaac, and Scott squeezing into bed with him. He drifted off again half-smothered by his coven.
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Deputy Parrish brought John home early the next morning while Derek, Boyd, and Erica were making waffles. It turned out that Derek usually cooked at least one meal a day for the pack, and he was good at it. Stiles hugged John tight as soon as he walked in, heedless of the partially healed wound on his ribs. John squeezed him back, curling in so his face was pressed into Stiles’s shoulder.Stiles took a breath to say something and burst into tears instead. Not just tears—big, ugly, gross sobs like a toddler, and he could not stop them. He heard a frantic shuffle and clatter as the others bolted from the dining room to huddle in the kitchen. John’s hands fisted in the back of his sweater, just holding on until he calmed down enough for them to move to the couch. Stiles sat back so he could breathe and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Are you okay?” he croaked. “Your arm…” His eyes watered again at the reminder. The willow, the burn on John’s arm, the blood, so much blood all over the ground in front of their willows. “Yes, I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and straightened up. “It took us so long to get there because she had us trapped in the Clarkes’ house and they were-”“What?” Stiles sat up. “Are they-?”“They’re at the doctor’s office. They’re okay, just drained. She was using potions to keep them docile and confused, and to sap their energy. You went to the house,” he added. “I think you probably felt it.”Stiles nodded, his throat going tight at the memory of the suffocating darkness. John turned his arm to look at the burn. “Healing already, but I don’t think it will go away completely.”Stiles winced. “I didn’t mean to let her-”“You didn’t let her do anything.” He swallowed thickly. “I was going to kill her.” Admitting it hurt. “She was going to burn them all and kill Derek and drain-” he waved over his shoulder- “them, and I was going to stop her no matter what. But-” His voice broke.John gathered him close again. “She brought those hunters here and tortured them, as far as I can tell, and she was going to kill you to get to Derek, if she had to. I’m sorry you had to see that, and honestly I’m glad you didn’t have to kill her.” As he sat back, Stiles noticed his red-rimmed eyes and the exhaustion in his bruised face. “Gods, Dad, you need sleep. Come on, we’ll save you some food.”“I need to talk to-”“No way, whoever it is can just wait until you’ve slept at least four hours, or they’ll have to deal with me.” He gently bullied John to his bedroom, which was dark and a little stale from him being gone so often lately. He saw his own bed and sighed, a bone deep exhaustion making him slump over. “We’ll talk later about you manipulating the willows,” he mumbled, making Stiles flinch guiltily. “You know I’ve always felt it.”John nodded. “I’ve just never seen you use it like you have recently.” He kicked his shoes off with a grunt. “Well…I never needed to.”He nodded, a weak smile fluttering over his face as he ruffled Stiles’s hair. “You rest too, kid. We’ll talk-” a giant jaw-popping yawn interrupted him- “later.” He flopped into bed face first. Stiles left the room on tiptoe and closed the door as softly as he could, then hesitated outside. He touched his fingertips to the door. The muffling spell wouldn’t keep out every sound, but it would heavily dampen everything. Dangerous after the past few weeks, but John needed sleep and Stiles had to believe that everything was okay now, or at least safe enough for his dad to have a nap. He didn’t return to the dining room, instead slipping into the sunroom. It was quiet, just the wind outside and the burbling of the pond, the buzz of the heat lamps for some of the plants. Fiona stood at the edge of the pond staring into the water and tapping the surface occasionally. Her flowers had grown into vines that curled close to her fur and stretched out like fingers. Stiles sat in front of the glass wall and leaned back on his palms, watching the snow. It wasn’t sticking yet, just powdering little patches of grass and dirt, but it still made everything seem quiet, peaceful. He scratched at the bandage on his neck and winced as his gaze caught on a jar of borage flowers. He turned his head away firmly. It was quiet enough that when an argument started up in the hall, he could hear their voices, pitched low enough that he couldn’t understand most of their words, but he recognized Derek’s voice. Cora’s voice rose with emotion. “Why not? It’s safe-”Derek cut in, low and intense, and Cora scoffed. Stiles’s hands curled into fists. “She’s dead. They’re all-” Her voice choked off, then went low and unintelligible again. Derek’s voice rose this time, but it was gentle. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”“Fine.” The jars on the shelves rattled as she stormed away. Stiles clenched his hands together in his lap, lips pulled between his teeth, gaze fixed so he wouldn’t tear up again. He was just tired and overwhelmed; he knew this was coming. He didn’t look over when the door opened or when Derek sat beside him.Fiona immediately joined them, rubbing her face against Derek’s leg and then climbing into his lap. Derek stroked under her chin and between her ears. “Animals are usually more wary of us than this.”Stiles said, “Well, she’s a fey cat. I don’t think she’s afraid of anything as mortal as a werewolf.”She settled into Derek’s lap with a long, languid stretch, like she was proving his point. Stiles managed to smile as he turned his head. “So, memories intact? Powers good?”He nodded, then grimaced. “Powers are where they’re supposed to be, and my memories are back, they’re just a little scrambled. Nothing terrible,” he added hastily. “It’s just that some things are out of order, or I remember people where they couldn’t have been. But it’s slowly clearing up.”“Ah. I’m glad. I was worried it didn’t work, or that it would only work part way.” He made himself smile again. “So that’s great.”Derek took a deep breath and angled himself so they were almost facing each other. “I’m Derek Hale, of the Beacon Hills Hales, and I’m thirty years old. A hunter burned down my family home when I was sixteen and killed almost my entire pack. Now the territory is kept by myself and my current pack.” He held his hand out.Stiles pried his own hands apart to shake it, taking a deep breath of his own. “Stiles Stilinski, of the Willow Pass Stilinskis,” he offered a weak smirk, “twenty-six. I formed my coven out of what was left of my family and lost witches who needed a place to belong. I watched a hunter cut off another witch’s hands and I don’t think I would have helped her if I could.” His throat went tight at the end and he had to swallow hard to breathe properly. Derek held his arms out, so Stiles leaned in, pressing his face against his neck to hide the tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. The embrace was warm and tight, both of them curling as close together as they could, until Fiona got annoyed and fled for higher ground. “Thank you,” Derek said into his throat, “for everything.”It felt like a goodbye.Stiles straightened and wiped his eyes surreptitiously, forcing another smile. “I can visit, you know, and you guys can come back and visit too. It’s not that far.” Derek met his gaze. He saw the question there before he even opened his mouth. “I can’t.” His voice broke again. He couldn’t leave Willow Pass. He loved it too much, his family and coven were here, and it was still the place that they felt the safest. Felt the most at home.Derek just nodded. “Come on,” Stiles said, clearing his throat. He pushed to his feet and held his hands out. “Let’s go. I want to get to know your pack now that we aren’t in mortal peril.”Derek smiled.They spent the day together, playing card games and video games; Stiles wanted to know Derek with his pack, with his memories. He was not disappointed. They looked to him—even Jackson, sometimes even Peter, though he tried to hide it—for approval, for behavior cues, for reassurance, and now that he remembered them, he provided. Halfway through a spirited game of Uno, Cora and Derek left the room to have another whispered argument, leaving the rest of the pack with the coven.At some point, clearly eavesdropping, Peter rolled his eyes and Jackson sneered at the same time, and Stiles stared, cards half-lowered. For a moment, they looked so alike that it was almost comical that he hadn’t realized it before, but then Peter went back to the book he was reading and Jackson slipped a card into Cora’s pile, and the moment was gone. They really didn’t look that much alike, Stiles decided, shaking his head and going back to telling Boyd about Erica’s last attempt at making a soothing potion. Boyd was amused. “How did that happen?”“It wasn’t that bad,” Erica insisted. “It was just a bit of foam!”“It was the entire forest.” Scott snorted. “That kind of thing happens to her the most because she’s really powerful,” Stiles said, hoping to appease her. She looked smug and stuck her tongue out at Isaac.“How do you think I feel?” Derek blurted suddenly, still low enough that he probably didn’t mean to be overheard. “This place is all I knew for weeks.”Cora growled. “That’s why…” and her voice went too low to hear again. Stiles stared at his cards, trying not to go crazy straining his ears without moving.“Derek,” Cora said sharply, and he responded, “I don’t know, okay?”He sighed heavily. “We’ll all have to talk about this.”Boyd stood instantly, then grimaced. “It’s…”Stiles nodded. All of the werewolves trailed out together, through the kitchen and to the backyard. Stiles gathered the dishes from lunch and subtly watched from the window while piling plates into the sink. Erica came in with the glasses and leaned against his side with a deep sigh. “Is it weird that I like seeing them all together? I think it’s sweet.”Stiles shook his head. “I do too.”She was quiet a second before asking, “Did you hear about Derek, Cora, and Peter’s…I guess, birth pack?”“The fire?”“Yeah.”He blinked as his eyes burned. “Yeah, he told me.”Out in the yard, Cora punched Jackson’s arm with force, making him stumble. Peter shook his head and Derek said something, hands held out toward them. He looked pained. Stiles turned away and switched the tap on.Erica helped him wash and dry the dishes without a word, her arm brushing his companionably.
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The Hale pack left the third morning after Jennifer was killed. Stiles watched them load into the rental SUV John acquired for them, and said his goodbyes with a smile. He endured Cora’s tackle-hug and Boyd’s firm handshake-hug, and when Derek hugged him, he let go when he pulled away. Fiona sat beside his foot while everyone piled into the SUV, beetle black eyes focused on the vehicle as it left down the gravel drive. Then she turned and went back inside, tail held out stiff behind her. Two hours later, she was nowhere to be found in the house.Stiles thought, That figures, and went to clean the guest room top to bottom to keep busy until his chest stopped aching.Things settled back into a routine, similar to the old one but with a few notable changes. Stiles brought all of Claudia’s tools and books out of the attic and found places for them, so the coven could use them; Isaac had already had a lot of success using her scrying mirror, and Erica loved using her cauldron for potions and found that the sigils in it helped stabilize her sometimes-wild magic. Scott found her grandfather’s book of medicinal potions very useful and often carried it to work with him.The town was also getting back to normal; everyone had, by unspoken agreement, started taking turns going to the Wounded Willow, leaving offerings and lending magic to help it grow. It had a red trunk and branches now, with pale lavender leaves. It was nice, in a way, a reminder that when the time came, they had protected each other and made it through. The bodies had been unidentifiable, so they were given a respectful pyre. Wherever they came from, they wouldn’t be disturbed again. John was put on paid leave from the department until the start of the year so he would have time to recharge and heal. Getting him to stay home had been a task in and of itself. A week after the Hales left, Stiles found an injured owl creature in the woods with no proper name, but surely born of magic, given her third eye and the way her feathers gave visions when held. Her wing was twisted, and one of her claws had wire tangled around it. He took her home for treatment and called her Mirabelle, and five days later Scott brought home a trio of nixies who were sick and needed to stay in the pond. “Dude,” he huffed while giving out deep blue medicine from a dropper. “Just text Derek. You have his number. There’s no reason you can’t communicate.” Stiles shrugged as he mixed a medicinal potion for Mirabelle. Her feathers were oil-slick black down her chest and back, and glittering silver on her head and sides; all three of her enormous eyes were cat-green. “I’m busy,” he said, giving the potion a hearty shake. “Maybe later.” Mirabelle nipped gently at his fingertips before accepting the potion, staring into his eyes with the third on her head.Scott sighed. “I’m sure he misses you too.”“And I’m sure the Hales are very busy dealing with their territory. You gave her a dose and a half,” he added, nodding at the nixie with flaming red hair.She dove back into the pond while her brothers laughed. Scott scowled. The week after that, Erica’s water summoning spell went wrong; instead of filling a cup, the entire practice room wound up buried in fluffy white snow. She stood, gaping, as her candle sputtered out. Stiles couldn’t help laughing. “Well, I guess that’s back to normal too,” he chuckled, sending Scott and Isaac into a fresh spate of laughter. “Okay, okay, get the shovels.”“Guess what I heard at the café today?” Isaac asked while shoveling snow into the bucket Scott was holding. “Someone bought the old Hurley place, that house all the way out by itself on our other side? Not where the Clarkes are—the other way.” He waved this away as irrelevant. “And they bought the land around it, you know, that place that’s been up for sale for years?” He wobbled as he scooped up a heavy shovelful of snow. “Mrs. O’Doole said the place will need a lot of work, but the Gutierrezes said the Hurleys probably put spells down for anti-decay and preservation to keep it in okay shape until someone moves in.”“Hmm.” Stiles wasn’t really listening; he had his own shovel to work.“Everyone is speculating about who bought it. Do you think-”Scott threw a snowball, nailing Isaac right in the chest. “Hey!” He narrowed his eyes, glancing at his shovel. Stiles straightened. “Oh, don’t-”Scott ducked the throw; snow flew, smacking Stiles in the face, and Erica squawked with laughter across the room. The battle was messy and epic, and only ended when John came in and vanished all of the slushy snow. He shook his head at them. “Can’t leave you kids alone for a minute, I swear. I’m going to order pizza for lunch, speak now or forever hold your peace about the toppings,” he called over his shoulder. Erica ran after him. Back to normal, for sure. The following week, Stiles left the tyros home to make lunch on their own while John headed out to do a “little errand” for the department—which Stiles figured meant he was trying to just sneak back in while no one was paying attention—and he went to check on the Clarkes. He took the long way, the open path instead of through the woods. There hadn’t been any more sightings of hunters since Blake was killed, but he couldn’t help hesitating to go alone into the forest. The yard was white with an undisturbed blanket of glittering snow, though the garden was still clear and green, thriving despite the weather. Magic shimmered over it. Stiles ran his fingers up the handrail, over the familiar divot, as he climbed the steps. The house was filled with light again, and lively piano music pumped from speakers in the kitchen. Something was cooking from the smell of it, and Virginia, Pat’s sister, waved him up the stairs when he poked his head inside. Her daughter and grandkids had gone back home, but she chose to extend her trip to take care of the two of them; she didn’t say so, but Stiles knew she felt guilty over not noticing what was going on. That was just the nature of the potions and rituals Jennifer had been doing. Pat and Mr. Clarke were both bed-bound for the moment— “But fast on the mend,” Mr. Clarke insisted—after Blake’s magic drained the life from them almost entirely. Stiles was only there for the time it took to have a cup of tea before they were trying to shoo him back out.“You get on,” Pat said. “You have better things to do today, I’d wager, than sitting here bored.”Mr. Clarke winked. Stiles narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”They both just smiled in that kindly grandfather way which meant they knew something but weren’t talking.He sighed. “The tyros are almost done with their training, so I really don’t have much to do. I could help Virginia with some chores-” “No, no, you go on. We’re all fine here.” Mr. Clarke waved him over and pressed a red, star-shaped piece of candy into his hand. “Now, that’s for the road. You get going. We’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure.”He shook his head. “Alright, alright, I’m leaving.” Virginia wouldn’t let him help with anything either; she pressed a kiss to his cheek before firmly shoving him out the door. Amused and not sure if he should be insulted, he just shook his head as the screen door slapped shut behind him. He unwrapped his candy and popped it in his mouth, closing his eyes as the familiar cherry flavor hit his tongue. He took the forest route back defiantly, refusing to be afraid of his home, any part of it, because of her. He remembered, instead of the blood and fear, releasing the naiad by the creek with Derek, time spent here with Scott, with Erica and with Isaac as they learned to use their magic, and walked with his hands relaxed at his sides, sucking on his cherry candy. He saw a still-healing tree as he neared the house and remembered the trees bowing to his command when he needed help; nerves skittered along his spine, but he shook that off. Things would be back to normal soon; it was already halfway there at this point. He was in the backyard when John called him.“Hey,” he said calmly. “I need you to meet me at the Twists.”Panic surged through him so hard and fast he almost puked. “Is it—is-”“Everything is fine, I just need your help with something.” His voice was so unperturbed, almost happy, that Stiles had no choice but to relax. “Okay. Be there in a few.” He jogged inside to get his keys. “Hey, I’ll be right back,” he called out. “I’m meeting Dad at the Twists, so it will be a bit before we get home.”“Okay.” Scott waved with a spoon. Isaac nodded without looking up from his sandwich, and Erica barely glanced over. Stiles found their disinterest calculated and therefore suspicious, but he couldn’t think of a way to ask about it, so he just grabbed his keys and bat for good measure. He got worried again as he drove, wondering what John could need his help with, imagining a wreck or maybe more zombie animals… He drove faster. John’s cruiser was parked on the shoulder by the Twists while he leaned against the hood eating a pear, staring at a moving truck idling in the middle of the road with a smaller black car behind it; neither of them seemed in a hurry to get going. Stiles parked behind the cruiser and jumped out of the jeep. “Dad, what is this?”John waved his pear at the truck. “They had some trouble finding the place.” The scar on his arm from the burned willow extended past his wrist, like roots in the back of his hand. “Who?” But his heart jerked in his chest, even before the passenger door of the moving truck opened and Cora Hale flew out.She ran straight to them, giving Stiles a gentle punch to the shoulder before hugging him. “You’re gonna help us unpack, right? You’ve got magic.” Stiles shook his head. “What are you talking about? What is going on?”She leaned back looking unimpressed. “Is it that hard to guess?” She had on a light blue hoodie with the word MOVE written across the chest in white, with a blue beanie pulled low over her ears. The tip of her nose was turning pink already from the cold.He shook his head again, too confused for words.The driver’s door of the truck opened and Derek jumped out, wearing a leather jacket and boots, his expression wary. Through the windshield, Boyd waved and moved over to the driver’s seat. Cora shrugged. “See you later.” She backed away and returned to the truck. “Just follow me in, Boyd,” John called. He clapped Stiles on the shoulder before getting into the cruiser. Derek crossed the street, heading toward the jeep while the moving truck lurched into motion, following the cruiser. The black car went too, and as it rolled by, Stiles caught sight of Peter driving it and a pair of beetle black eyes peering out of the backseat. “No Jackson?” He was surprised by how normal his voice came out. He pressed his thumb into his palm. “You do that a lot,” Derek commented, nodding at his hands. “Nervous habit.” He pulled them apart deliberately and looked over his shoulder, but John had led them past the Twists to the town boundary already. Derek inhaled. “Jackson will visit,” he said, “but he didn’t want to move here—yet, anyway. We’ll see.”Stiles glanced at him, brows furrowed, and looked away again quickly. “So…you’re moving here? To Willow Pass?”“Yes.”A surge of longing, painful and blunt like the cut of a dull knife, moved through him, making him grimace. “You-” He cleared his throat. “You didn’t text or…anything.”“No. I needed time away from all of this, and time alone with my pack. Before I came back.”He nodded quickly. He could feel the heat of Derek’s gaze and couldn’t look or he’d lose the will to say what he needed to say. “You can’t just…leave your territory for someone you just met.” A chuckle startled him into looking up. “As irresistible as you are, I’m sure,” Stiles flushed painfully, “my pack and I talked about this a lot for the past few weeks, very seriously.” He took another deep breath, chest expanding, shoulders tightening and then relaxing. “Beacon Hills is our territory, and has been in the Hale pack for generations, but there are so many terrible memories there-”“Because of the fire?”Derek’s face darkened. “That and a lot of other stuff. Too much other stuff,” he added softly. His gaze lifted to the road where the other vehicles had gone. “Willow Pass felt safer, despite everything, if that tells you anything about our lives in Beacon Hills. We can be ourselves here, and hunters can’t just walk right up to our door. I could barely get Cora to leave last time.”That wasn’t how Stiles remembered it, but he didn’t say that. “Honestly,” he sighed, “if it wasn’t here, it would have been somewhere else, after everything they went through while I was gone. That brought back all kinds of terrible memories for them.” His gaze went hollow suddenly, haunted, before he shook it off. “Your dad helped us,” he said with a small, curling smile. “Oh, did he?”The smile grew. “We needed a big house we could renovate for our own use.”“I see.” Stiles didn’t quite know how to process all of this, but a swooping, dizzy feeling was crashing over him, a bubbling sort of joy he was afraid to feel. Derek shot him a slow, wide grin. “How do you feel about dinner at my place?”Stiles arched a brow. “Oh, you mean after I help you unload your truck?”“Well, that would be the neighborly thing to do.”Stiles grabbed him by the jacket, yanking him in to press a kiss to his laughing mouth. “I missed you,” he mumbled. Derek wrapped his arms around him, tipping them back against the jeep. He pressed his face into Stiles’s neck and inhaled deeply. “Did Erica burn something again?”Stiles laughed. “Better get used to that smell, neighbor.” He jumped when Derek’s teeth grazed his throat, then shuddered. “I think we can handle it.” He leaned back, eyes gleaming with mirth. “So, you mind giving me another ride into town?”“That depends. Are you going to be car sick this time?”“I wasn’t car sick last time,” he protested. “Uh-huh, sure.” He patted his chest. “Hop in, big guy. We’ve got a truck to unload.”As they reached the two willows at the entrance of town, Derek put his hand out the window, gently touching the trailing green leaves on their way in. Stiles felt it like a light touch to his cheek and smiled for the rest of the drive.
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Epilogue
Derek leaned forward, sniffing at the steam curling out of the pot on the burner. He was sitting on the counter next to the stove, wearing loose sweats that hung almost past his bare feet, which he swung lightly in time with the music Cora had playing in the living room. Fiona’s eyes were fixed on the dangling cuff of his pants, the blue, triangular pupils dilating as her tail ticked. These days, she usually followed Peter around unless he went to the old archives, so Stiles figured Peter must be John’s problem for the day. He added ice cubes to the sweet pink potion bubbling on the stove and switched the heat off. Then he scooped wide yellow marigolds out onto a drying rack he’d prepared. “So what is this exactly?”“Closely guarded secret family recipe,” he replied primly, and smiled. “It’s an initiation potion. It helps bind witches’ powers to them.”“Oh?” Derek straightened to get a better look at the flower heads. “Yep. Before this, they can still choose to give their magic up or let it go dormant. After this, both are still possible,” he explained, “but way more complicated.”“So it’s a choice?”“Yes.” He gave the potion another stir, watching the flowers from the corner of his eye. It was spring and outside, Willow Pass was doing its best to impress, the air sweet with young grass and the trees bursting into bloom. The old Hurley house—now the new Hale house—had a large garden, and it was already exploding with life. Boyd and Derek both had been thrilled with it and took a couple hours a day each to tend it.“So they’re done training?” Derek asked.“Yeah. They have a lot to learn still, but they’re ready—no longer tyros.” He pretended to wipe a tear away and Derek grinned. Cora stuck her head into the kitchen. “What does that mean, though?”Stiles transferred the marigolds to a baking sheet and added more ice to the potion—it was good to water it down. “It means they’ve learned the basics well enough that they don’t need formal training anymore.” From the garden, Boyd’s voice floated in through the open kitchen window, “Erica says it means they’re allowed to experiment more now.”Stiles laughed. “Yeah, I guess that too.”“What are the flowers for?” Cora sidled closer to watch while he put them in the oven.“Eating.” He turned on her. “But not for you; for Erica, Scott, and Isaac. Also,” he grinned at Derek, “I’ve recruited you guys to help set up the house.”“For the party?” Cora set her hand on her hip. “Can’t you use magic for that?”“We can and will, but for the more practical stuff like furniture, I’m going to need help.” Fiona lunged, catching the hem of Derek’s sweatpants and dangling from his ankle while he held his leg up. “That’s what you get for teasing her.”She dropped to the floor after a moment, bored, and trotted out of the room.Boyd said, “Incoming,” a second before Mirabelle landed on the open window sill, closing all but her third eye, which fixed on Stiles. “Thank you. That means the house is empty,” he reported. “I just need to put this in a pitcher, and once the flowers are done, we can go.”Cora stroked Mirabelle’s head with a fingertip, careful of her eye. “See you soon.”She clacked her beak and ruffled her wings before taking off again.They spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the Stilinski house for the party, moving furniture out of the way and preparing refreshments, decorations, and shatter-proofing the glass. “Sort of like a graduation party,” Boyd commented while setting a plate of snacks on the table in the living room. “Except for all of the magic.” He nudged a blue bubble out of his face, sending it floating through the room with the others. “I guess it is.” Stiles flicked his fingers and all of the sun and moon decorations glowed; pink mist hovered in the hallway and deep green vines hung from the ceiling in the dining room, sprouting different colored flowers whenever someone stood under them. Erica, Scott, and Isaac spent the first two hours of the party only drinking the potion and eating the marigolds, radiant with excitement. Cora chose the music and Jackson, visiting for the party although he claimed otherwise, changed it as soon as she walked away. There were only a few attendees aside from the Hale pack: the Clarkes came, wearing gray and white sweaters that glowed with magic, woven by Pat; Cheyenne and Marcella, who came bearing beautifully hand-bound grimoires for the new witches of the Stilinski coven; Lilah, wearing deep purple with gold accents, had brought her siblings and personalized candies for the whole coven; and Nina Cross brought scarves from her aunt, the Miss Whimsy, along with roses in blue, green, and gilded yellow, bestowed upon Erica, Scott, and Isaac respectively. Boyd and Erica danced together, prompting Cora to take pictures…and a twenty from Jackson, who was scowling. Across the room, John and Scott were talking to Mr. Clarke and Isaac was trying to change the song, glancing conspicuously over his shoulder as he did so. Stiles caught Derek’s hand and tugged. “Don’t you need to supervise?” he asked, amused, as they slipped out the backdoor. “Nope. They are officially witches, my supervising days are over.”Derek arched his brows. “Also, Dad is in there.” He laughed, leaning back against the porch railing to look at the house. Stiles moved to stand next to him. The music was muted out here, the smell of magic faint, the lights dimmed. Pride swelled in his chest again and he couldn’t help grinning. Derek was smiling at him when he turned his head. He didn’t do that often, Stiles knew now, more prone to serious frowns like Cora, but he liked to think they were becoming more frequent. When he held his hand out, Stiles took it and stepped in close, catching his mouth in a kiss that tasted sweet and tart like blackberries. “You’ve been into the candy,” he murmured against his lips, smiling. “Yes.” He pulled Stiles closer, dragging his fingers lightly through his hair.Stiles buried his hands in his jacket, pressing him back into the railing. He had worried about how things would change between them, now that Derek remembered himself, but his kiss was the same, hot and sweet and just right; it made everything in Stiles ache. The beat of his heart matched the wild staccato of Stiles’s, the scrape of his fangs on his lips matched the burn of Stiles’s fingers on his nape, his satisfied sigh matched the pleasure building in Stiles’s gut, warm and liquid. Yellow light cut across the porch, and a shadow fell across them. John rolled his eyes fondly. “If you two would care to re-join the party, Peter is passing out drinks to the betas, Derek, and he looks just a little too pleased with himself.”Derek groaned. “Not again. Coming.” He kept one hand wrapped around Stiles’s as they hustled back to the house, and only let go when Peter tried to evade him.Erica was holding court in the living room, showing off by creating a swirling galaxy around her, licks of fire streaking through the swirls of green and blue. Stiles clapped with everyone else, smiling when she spotted him. He ticked his finger at her. Silver shot through her galaxy, glinting and glittering like shooting stars. She grinned and took a bow when renewed applause broke out. Derek sidled up beside him. “Is this a part of the initiation?”“Nope. She just likes showing off.” He smiled.“That tracks.” He nuzzled the side of Stiles’s neck before straightening up again. “Peter laced some drinks with wolfsbane,” he complained. “He was trying to get the pack drunk.” “Why?”“I think he thinks it’s funny.” He shook his head. Stiles snorted. “Why does that not surprise me?” Across from them, he spotted Cora and Isaac playing rock-paper-scissors; he couldn’t help being worried when Isaac won. What were they playing for? But nothing flooded or broke, so he assumed it was something innocuous. Scott threw his arms up and showered the party with green sparkles like pixie rain that disappeared when it landed. “Thank you all for coming!” He laughed delightedly when Erica and Isaac pounced on him for a noogie. Stiles shook his head, grinning. “Show offs.”“And you aren’t?”“Of course not.” He put his hand out; the lights dimmed and a cheer went up. Only silver stars hovering near the ceiling and the glowing pink mist were left to light the party. Derek laughed. Stiles flipped his hand over, palm up, and grew a star flower in his palm. He tucked it behind Derek’s ear with a smile. “Everyone looks good in stars,” he said solemnly. Derek kissed him then, a slow, sweet kiss that said everything they both needed to say and more, while their coven and their pack danced together under gleaming silver stars.