Chapter Text
Eleven-thirty on Sunday night, Lydia finally closed her laptop, eyes aching, stiff from sitting, and oppressively unhappy with the results of her research. Her first approach had been to consult the Argent bestiary, but she'd quickly discovered a weakness to the family's classification system: Banshees were not beasts. They weren't hunted. Persecuted, perhaps, but they weren't seen as creatures of the night, at least according to the Argent code. Their entry was unhelpfully curt, a couple of sentences to clear confusion and let hunters know to pass over them in search of real targets.
So she'd turned to mythologies, which crossed cultures and circled always to the same images: Despairing screams, premonitions which could never be altered, women stooped with grief and madness. The stories passed down were of unlucky encounters. No one wanted to meet a banshee.
The wailing woman. Single, never plural. Always alone.
This evening Lydia had switched to recent reports, but the real world cases were even more grim. It was natural enough: Women of varying ages, who claimed to hear voices, or blacked out and turned up where people had died with no rationale for their presence, or who began screaming uncontrollably, could only end up in psychology papers, mental institutions and crime reports. Or in morgues, dead by their own hand. She followed every link, wanting to find a woman with a better outcome, a feel-good story of rising above obstacles, owning her condition, but everywhere she looked led to the annals of crime and clinical testing, where happy endings involved a cocktail of medications silencing the voices and stripping the faculties. Never, she vowed, with a hasty back button.
The sample list was skewed to the negative, and mixed with even worse results, of murderers claiming the voices in their heads had made them kill.
Run of the mill schizophrenics. They had to be.
Lydia set her alarm and burrowed under the covers protectively. Werewolves ran in packs. Kanimas could be looked up. Deaton could be consulted about druids and darachs. Why were banshees so exempt? Why were they always alone?
"He's waiting you out."
Peter had called them "lessons for another time." He'd withheld that information deliberately, so that when she was desperate enough, she would go to him. It was akin to an insurance policy, and she had no intention of ever letting him collect. She'd figure this out on her own. There would be patterns, rules, logic. Even the supernatural had to contain a system that could be worked out, a method to apply. She would best her condition, and handle it without Peter.
* * *
Ms. Morrell needed a student volunteer to help carry her things out to her car. She didn't seem surprised when it was Lydia who appeared. Call it curiosity. A last interview before the door shut forever. Besides, she was taking Morrell's advice. Drawing had accessed a level in her mind she couldn't explain, which had led her friends to the Nemeton. It was a logical place to begin testing her powers, and so she'd signed up for Art class.
"I'm glad to hear it. I believe you have a gift." Morrell sounded every inch the helpful teacher clocking out for the evening, with only the lightness of her load to show she was still nursing Deucalion's injury. Emissaries really needed to lobby for better retirement packages than maulings and gorings.
"Why hand in your notice? I would have thought you'd keep the day job to fall back on." Morrell arched a brow and Lydia smiled. "Let's not pretend."
"You used to enjoy pretending. You've changed." Morrell's car was right outside the door and she started filling the trunk with her usual turnkey precision. "I heard Natalie's taking my position."
"My mom in high school. Just what I always dreamed of. And if they can't find a replacement for Mr. Harris, she'll also be subbing Biology."
That still left French, English, Music and Chemistry to be filled. The faculty were understandably struggling to fix the staffing shortage, and Lydia wasn't wild about her mother taking the job at all. There was something unnerving about a local profession which had quite literally hemorrhaged employees.
Morrell had placed her boxes in a neat row, efficient yet unhurried as she readied her departure. "Thank you, Lydia."
"Did you know what I was?"
Morrell showed no surprise. "I suspected. I had no proof. And I'm less interested in what you are than in what you will be."
"But not enough to stick around."
"Decisions were made. Scott has reached his potential as a true alpha and has all the allies he needs. There is nothing for me to keep an eye on here. I go where the balance tilts. There are places in this town where every step feels wrong, and this is no longer one of them." She closed the trunk decisively. "I include you as one of his allies, Lydia. Stay close to Scott."
But I don't know anything.
Give it time.
She didn't watch Ms. Morrell drive away. Heels clicking, she went indoors again without a backward glance. She wasn't going to feel abandoned by a guidance counselor with ulterior motives, for whom Lydia has never been the priority. If she needed help, she had her friends to turn to.
* * *
Unfortunately, Lydia's friends were losing their minds. In the weeks since their surrogate sacrifices, she had been discreetly monitoring their behavior, and the outlook was gradually deteriorating. Lydia thought she did an excellent job of not judging or taking overmuch satisfaction from the thought of a shoe most definitely on the other foot, but it still wasn't easy to get any of them to admit the problem. Allison had to burst through the school doors like she was being chased by the hounds of hell before a conversation could finally take place.
Even then, she tried to pass herself off as fine. To Lydia, of all people.
Scott and Stiles were also suffering. Scott couldn't control his shift and both of them were hallucinating. It didn't seem like the end of the world, at least where Stiles was concerned. He was the furthest from a walking weapon it was possible to be. The alpha and the hunter were far more concerning.
Allison had tremors in her hands. Her handwriting was an ugly scrawl and she was unable to turn in her Art assignment, starting over again and again until the bell sounded. Lydia frowned at Isaac, unhelpfully staring at his not-girlfriend from the nearest easel. He dogged Allison everywhere, which had been cute the first week, but was fast leaving the zone of endearment, at least so far as Lydia was concerned. Either they were a couple or they weren't, but the constant hovering push-pull was getting on her nerves.
Allison wasn't ready to end the holding pattern. Had she complained even once, Lydia would have collared Isaac and told him to get his act together.
They shook him off after school, going up in the woods so Allison could work on a more natural skillset. Lydia had a theory that if Allison could just relax and achieve a meditative state, she would find herself able to operate as usual, restoring some needed confidence. Watching her struggle with the bow, Lydia did her best to act breezy and unconcerned. Allison would turn it around. She just needed to ease up on herself.
For a moment it seemed to be working, Allison's tension dissipating, shoulders relaxing under Lydia's hands. Then her expression became confused. "Did you see that?"
Lydia swallowed hard. Allison creapt forward to investigate, and maybe it was a good sign how elegantly she placed her feet, making no noise among the leaves. Hunter's instinct kept her bow at the ready. There was no one Lydia trusted more, and if they were attacked, surely Allison would have aim again.
Or else she was hallucinating.
Soft footfalls approached and Lydia relaxed when she saw who was coming through the trees. "It's only Isaac."
Allison spun so quickly, it was as though Lydia had screamed, but her eyes were empty of any friendly recognition, clearly interpreting Lydia as something terrifying. Raising her bow, cocking an arrow, loosed of an instant, straight at Lydia's head.
Isaac caught the arrow, and Allison snapped out of it, horrified now that the damage was done. She dropped her weapon, made a few steps toward Lydia, and stopped, anguished and afraid. Isaac went to stand at her shoulder, wordlessly comforting, while an incoherent explanation poured forth involving her aunt Kate.
"I'm... gonna go," Lydia said faintly. She squeezed Allison's hand in parting, knowing her own was beginning to shake.
Something was trying to turn her friends into monsters. And it was good at it.
* * *
Scott needs your help.
Lydia had sent other texts to Aiden since he'd left school. She'd asked how he was doing and gotten a terse response. He hadn't offered to meet her anywhere, had never run into her by happenstance or deliberation, and was never the first to check in as days went by. He'd given her the bland brushoff, as though he had never taken a stand against Kali, or it was mere sentimentality to ascribe meaning to it.
It reminded her uncomfortably of how Jackson had dismissed her. One night he'd been carrying her off the lacrosse field, saving her life. The next he'd made her feel small and desperate, like she'd messed up his evening plans by almost dying. She'd vowed not to feel that way again and Aiden wasn't going to be the one to make her break her promise. She was over him. In fact, they'd never been enough of an item for her to need to be over him. Just a fling with a momentary confusion of chivalry at the end, for which Aiden was doubtless kicking himself. The Darach would have come after the twins no matter what, and the outcome would have always been their defeat, but never mind logic. With his ego bruised and his alpha powers lost, Lydia was a handy scapegoat for Aiden to blame. It was diet Jackson, and Allison definitely had better taste in guys.
Then Stiles came to her with a problem that needed the twins. Scott's inability to control his shift and general ignorance of the finer points of werewolfery were hindering his efforts to rescue a girl called Malia. Malia had been missing, presumed dead for eight years, since a car crash when she was nine years old. According to Stiles, she was actually a werecoyote who had fled the scene of her family's deaths and become trapped in a fully shifted form, and if Scott could learn to roar like the alpha he was, maybe Malia would respond by reverting to human.
There seemed to be several logical leaps in all of that, not least the question of whether a coyote would care for a wolf's opinion (not being renowned as a pack animal). Still, Stiles asked if she could produce the twins, and for Scott, Aiden picked up the phone and agreed to meet them at the loft.
"Where else?" she muttered, glaring up at the building as she arrived. Scott and Stiles were waiting for her and at least it was empty of Hales. In a few moments, she wished it was similarly empty of twins, whose teaching plan involved beating the crap out of Scott.
"You're an alpha," Aiden lectured, more at home with his fists and an unwilling opponent than he had ever been in the classroom. "You want to roar like one, you've got to give in full throttle, you've got to be the monster, become the beast!"
"Become everything you're afraid of," said Ethan, taking up the familiar refrain. "That's what gives you power. It gives you strength."
Aiden slammed Scott to the floor, where he spat up blood but still didn't follow instructions, fighting himself, not the twins.
"Giving into it doesn't make you the bad guy!"
"So long as you can control it," Ethan added. For Scott's benefit or his brother's?
"Sometimes control's a little overrated." Aiden leaned over Scott, studying him, then launched a kick into his ribs. Ethan smacked his shoulder as though telling him to ease up on the rookie, then they backed away as one, leaving space for Scott to take the offensive.
"What if I can't control it?" Scott asked, standing awkwardly. "What if I can't turn back?"
"Then it takes over," said Ethan. "You become Malia. You get further and further away from being human. You turn into an animal, or worse."
"You turn into Peter," said Aiden, his voice suddenly cold.
Lydia tried not to flinch, and was still trying when Scott charged ineffectually. Aiden tossed him on the table, holding him down with one hand, raining blows with the other and Lydia couldn't look, using Stiles as a shield, waiting and wishing they hadn't come as Ethan intervened. This wasn't a lesson she wanted to hear.
* * *
There was a rhythm to life in Beacon Hills. The trick was to recognize the smaller signs of weirdness before they inevitably snowballed into violence and catastrophe. It didn't necessarily avert the outcome, but at least Lydia would be prepared for it—and the slow build was definitely happening.
Malia had turned human without incident, evidently a false alarm, but Scott was on tenterhooks and Stiles was looking increasingly ragged. Allison was still avoiding one on one time with Lydia, using Isaac as a durable interface with the world. Deaton could offer little assistance in helping them recover from the ritual. It was an inner matter of focus and clarity, he said, unique to the individual. Each had to close the door in their minds in their own way.
Tomorrow was Halloween and Lydia kept hearing the buzz of an invisible fly. It had begun in Coach's class and grown louder. She kept twitching the fly away, unsuccessfully, and as the sound began to multiply she fought to keep her breathing in check and tune it out. She'd heard something like it before, nagging, insistent and awful. Perhaps a bad dream. She banged her locker shut more loudly than she'd intended, and there slouched Aiden, doing his best to appeal.
"Oh, no. I don't think so. There's no way you come back here after two weeks of nothing, with your cute little smile, the dark eyes, the brooding forehead, the muscles, and suddenly we're ripping each other's clothes off in Coach's office. No way. It's not gonna happen."
If those flies didn't go away, she was going to develop a nervous tic. Or possibly scream. And hadn't she done enough of that on school grounds?
The obvious distraction was right in front of her but Lydia had too much self-respect to go for it. Boyd had been murdered in part by Aiden. He had become the monster long ago, and he didn't have it under control. Lesson learned. She didn't need another close call.
"I'm not trespassing," said Aiden cheerfully. "This is me, attending high school. I wouldn't choose to come back here for just anyone, you know."
Was that the closest he'd come to admitting his age?
Buzzing flies, the telltale sign of decay, sounding like they were trying to nest in her hair. She wanted to brush them away, but she'd already verified they weren't real. More of her craziness, meaning today was probably going to suck.
Stepping closer to Aiden, she could hear his breathing and if she focused very hard on it, the flies moved further away. Lydia made a snap decision she was probably going to regret. The old need for distraction, a quiet place, an unused tabletop. If the day was going to hell, she might as well grab a good time beforehand.
They ended up in the guidance office, gathering dust as students went unaided. Like Lydia, who'd been too smart to need this place, who'd maintained an unbroken shell to the last. You can't help me. Let them all walk, and she'd be the one left standing.
The buzzing of flies, a familiar disgust necessarily masked, like the turning of the worms in the earth... Buried beneath the floorboards, a human body adequate soundproofing. Sense memories that weren't her own, blurring the lines between then and now, breaking her cardinal rule as Aiden responded eagerly, not knowing he'd been upstaged. She wanted to rake her fingernails across his chest, discover the exact set of words which would break him, see his blue eyes widen with hurt, and she wanted to let the images roll over her unimpeded, Aiden in ignorance, while she lay in her shared bed drowning out the flies and the worms and the consuming forest floor...
But she was strong. She'd done the reading. She'd been conditioned to certain responses, and she knew this, and knowing ought to be enough to end it, to uncouple from an illegitimate reaction. She dragged her thoughts up from the leaves and the riverbank, she shoved the werewolf (Aiden, always Aiden) off and beneath her, she was present and accounted for, the past a steel door she wouldn't open, and the drone receded beneath her rapid heartrate as Lydia clawed her way back to reality.
* * *
Lydia lay on Stiles' bed. He wasn't saying much, busy at his crime board. It was how he unwound these days, putting events in order and retaining his own sense of self. The board was covered in red string and Lydia was wrapping extra yarn around her fingers, chasing a phantom pain beneath her nails. Red was unsolved, Stiles said.
She was a banshee, but she didn't feel like a solved case. She was a collection of bizarre symptoms waiting for another body to hit the floor.
The buzzing had returned to prominence around the same time the police arrived at the school. Because of course. They put it on lockdown, searching for an escaped psychopath called Barrow, better known as the Shrapnel Bomber. Stiles brought her up to speed with a passing mention of flies having somehow been living inside Barrow's body, which seemed to perfectly explain what Lydia had been hearing. A warning that the school was going to get blown up.
Except the police couldn't find him. The werewolves couldn't locate a scent. And Stiles had helped her, of course, with misguided faith that left him holding the bag. He'd pulled the fire alarm for a bomb that hadn't existed, and gotten detention for his trouble.
Why had she let him do it? It was her idea, she ought to have taken the risk. Her powers had been where Stiles put his trust, powers she couldn't manage, and this was how she repaid him. All she'd had to go on was the irritating whine of invisible flies, and from that she'd cobbled a rationale.
Except she'd been wrong, apparently. Barrow hadn't been in the school. No evidence, facts or figures. Just wretched banshee intuition, leading her friends in circles.
She was a terrible banshee. All the buzzing in her head had done was drive her into Aiden's arms, as though that would make herself feel better, when all it had done was leave her feeling ashamed. She'd gone to the guy who'd helped murder a high school student, who'd beaten Scott's face to a bloody pulp. The side of herself that only came out in dreams and hallucinations had surfaced on a regular school day, and even though Lydia had shoved it down as quickly as possible, she'd failed to keep herself under complete control.
The red yarn was pretty around her aching fingers. It was either a soothingly monotonous activity for a stressed girl or a meaningful indicator of supernatural dangers. How was she supposed to know the difference?
And the buzzing wouldn't stop.
"Hey, Lydia, you've been right every time something like this has happened, okay? So don't start doubting yourself now."
"No scent. No bomb. And I got you in trouble."
Stiles came over, and began gently untangling the thread from her fingers. "Okay, look. Barrow was there, alright? You knew it. You felt it. Okay? And look, if you wanted to, I'd go back to that school right now and search all night just to prove it."
She wanted to thank him, but she was pretty sure he could see it in her face. Despite being on the front lines of disaster, despite her own lack of faith, Stiles believed in her.
"Get up. Get up now. We're going to the school."
* * *
The evidence had been in front of them the whole time. Chemicals to mask Barrow's scent and atomic numbers on the blackboard, spelling out a target. A new girl in school, Kira Yukimura (nice enough, no friends) getting a proper welcome to Beacon Hills. So then they had to scramble to figure out where she lived and arrived far too late, finding Scott (scratch that; one friend) sprawled unconscious on the sidewalk in front of her house and no leads. All they had was Lydia's useless instinct.
"I knew he was there. How did I know that?"
"Because you heard the flies, right?" said Stiles, and she couldn't even agree with him. The sound had vanished like a bad joke. Every attempt at pattern recognition only changed the pattern.
Scott was looking at her, anxious. "What do you hear now?"
"Nothing. I feel like I can do this, but I don't know what to do. It's like it's on the tip of my tongue, and I don't know how to trigger it. I just, I swear to God, it literally makes me want to scream."
"Okay, then scream," said Stiles intently. "Lydia, scream."
It took strangely little effort, as if the scream had already been drawn into her lungs hours ago. It took over, masking every inconsequential sound on the night time street, and as it died away, the flies went with it, leaving only a steady, mechanical drone as she stared at the streetlight overhead. Electricity.
It didn't take long to piece together from there. Barrow had been an electrical engineer before he went homicidal. Stiles drove her to the power plant, telling her to wait in the car for the cops to arrive.
When he returned, the air was filled with sirens, the electrical grid had collapsed and the streets were as dark as though an air raid was in progress. It was as if someone had hit the panic button for Beacon Hills and Lydia strongly felt the snowball had started rolling.
* * *
Lydia came home by the side gate, grateful to finally be out of the police station and ready for sleep. It was abnormally dark in the garden with the porch light off and it took her a moment to realize there was a stern and familiar silhouette visible by the door. She was in too good a mood to let it bother her. "Derek?"
"Lydia. You're out late."
"I was helping Scott."
"Is that how the grid got knocked out?"
"Collateral damage. You're scoping out the town?"
"Just making sure what happened."
"Then if you hurry, you can probably catch him, hear the whole story."
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you anyway. If you have a minute."
"For you, three," she said, aware that was at least semi-sarcastic. She grabbed a lawn chair and sketched him an outline of the evening's adventure, which wasn't so unpleasant to revisit. They'd saved Kira's life. Lydia's powers had manifested before there was a body to find and it had stayed that way. She'd finally made a difference.
"Scott promised if I came to him fast enough, he'd do something."
"He gives you hope. It's a powerful source of loyalty."
"So does he give you any hope?" Conversations with Hales tended to lean in uncomfortably personal directions. Lydia figured she might as well go on the offense right away.
"Hope of finding a better way, of being a better person. Same as you, and from the same source."
Lydia fixed her posture to appear unconcerned, leaning back in her chair, crossing her legs casually. She was at a disadvantage in the darkness, the one wearing a blindfold. "And what's that?"
"I only started learning from Scott when you brought Peter back."
No retreat, no giving ground. This was her conversation to steer. "Because you didn't want your uncle's advice."
"Because I did." They played the silent game for several minutes before Derek continued. "To see my uncle, who never shut up a day in his life, lying mute in a hospital. To see him bandaged, immobile. Do you know what it's like, to look at that and be told there's no hope? To believe it? And to lose him the very second I got him back?"
Her eyes strained to see him, despite being grateful she couldn't match his face to the horrors in his voice. Derek had had no chance to enjoy the sight of his uncle walking and talking, tied as it was to the death of his sister. It had to hurt every time he looked at Peter.
She'd never held a private conversation with him before. "What are you here for, Derek? Do you want an apology?"
"For what?"
"For what? I brought him back."
"So did I. We were tools, used to a purpose."
His lack of emotion was disturbing to hear, but there was precedent. Derek, broken long ago, had been used as an inert ingredient in Peter's resurrection, in Boyd's murder, in the Darach's revenge. Tools were unworthy of the expense of emotion, including himself.
"But you blamed me. You said so."
"I shouldn't have. You were sixteen, you were a child. I was angry, and I knew you hadn't earned it. I could hardly look at you, trying not to react. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't... Seeing my uncle alive. He's the worst of us but he's still a Hale."
Some shameful relief crept into his voice, the smallest possible indicator of an affection that couldn't quite die.
"And then Cora came back, too. I know you were forced into it, and I know she was already headed north when you brought him back, but you broke the cycle, Lydia."
Sometimes pattern recognition overrode logic. Lydia had reversed the natural order of things, and Derek had gone from the last of the Hales to one of three, and as a born werewolf he probably couldn't help seeing symbolic profundity where there was none.
"When I agreed to let him stay, my back was to the wall. Peter works best in those environments, always has. I needed him. I didn't like him but I needed him, and I knew it would wear me down if I didn't find a counterpoint. Sometimes there's no alternative, and Peter's methods are the only way, but I need that to be a last resort."
"So you turned to Scott McCall."
He could hear the incredulous laugh at the edge of her voice. "That's funny?"
"Ironic. Peter told me he'd be a stabilizing influence, and he was, but it's because you're so worried you'll turn out like your uncle that he accidentally drove you to emulate a boy he can't stand. I don't think that's what he intended."
"Probably not."
It was possible they shared a smile in the dark. It was surprising to find something in common with Derek, but Lydia was under no illusion their situations were identical. Close in many ways, wanting to be a better person, to forswear the inner darkness Peter might appeal to. Turning to Scott with the hope of meaningful choices, perhaps even moral salvation. But Peter breathing down his nephew's neck, offering guidance, refusing to leave him alone, was not the Peter who had allowed Lydia to suffer in silence, blindly navigating an existence without rhyme or reason.
"He's waiting you out. He wants you to miss him."
Lydia's was the right outcome. Unquestionably.
"So is this what you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Actually, Cora sends her regards."
"Really."
"Peter and I safeguarded her back to South America. I wanted to meet the people who'd taken her in, learn what her life had been like. She's happier there. When we left, she told me to say hello."
"Which is funny when she left without a goodbye." Not that Lydia had expected one. They weren't friends and Cora's people skills were (charitably) rusted. It was an odd but not upsetting motivation for a visit. "Well, thanks for the update." She glanced at the clockface on her phone. "It's after midnight," she pointed out.
Derek stood as though to leave.
"Happy Halloween."
He froze, and she wondered when was the last time he'd heard anybody give him a holiday greeting. Maybe he hadn't even noticed the calendar, too far gone to care about kid stuff anymore.
"In case I don't see you later," she added lamely.
"You'll be at a party?"
"Obviously," she said, although in truth it wasn't so simple as it used to be. She didn't even have a date. "What about you? Got any plans?"
"Buying candy for trick or treaters," he said, without the hint of sarcasm. A rustle in the flower beds and he was gone. Lydia slipped indoors and upstairs to bed, pensive.
Weird as it was for him to be talking to her, Derek was communicating, interacting...
Healing?
* * *
The great unveiling was over. Natalie Martin had her lesson plan and was debuting Lydia's Biology class. Aiden decided this was a great personal moment to listen in on. "Why's your mom teaching biology?"
"Because Mr. Harris used to teach biology. Until his new occupation... Human sacrifice."
"What? I didn't kill him."
It had to be an easy way to live. Never killing anyone, and when he did, it was always the fault of a superior officer. A model werewolf.
"Lydia? What?"
She thought it would be easier if she didn't look at him, but it didn't help. She hadn't thought there was enough of a relationship with Aiden for it to be necessary to break up. A few words, an unanswered text, and it would be yesterday's news—but she'd been using Aiden for too long to find quitting effortless.
Good. She didn't deserve it to be. A boundary had to be set if she wanted to be a different person and she would manage.
"The other night, I helped save someone’s life. That felt really good. And I look at you and all I can think is that you helped kill Boyd. You’re not just a bad boy, Aiden. You’re a bad guy. And I don’t want to be with the bad guy."
* * *
Lydia put in an appearance at the Halloween blacklight party purely to support Danny. She'd agreed days ago, although hearing the change in venue had almost made her skip out. The power outage had led him to set up in Derek's loft. Either Derek was really getting into the spirit of things or there were no permits involved here. Lydia would place bets on the latter.
Last year, she'd gone with Jackson, and he'd worn an "I'm too cool for this" smirk the entire time, but he'd had fun anyway and they'd danced until Lydia's feet hurt.
She would have liked to spend some time with Allison. Maybe they could have even gone on the dancefloor together, but Allison was wearing the most unsexy plaid shirt she owned, apparently as some sort of denial that she and Isaac had walked in the door together. Of all the places to pretend they were just friends, a rave was not what Lydia would have recommended, but fine. Let them play at coincidence. Lydia wasn't about to third wheel a not-date in progress.
That left Scott, but to her surprise he hadn't come with Stiles, and had instead brought Kira. A rescue romance in the cards? Maybe if Allison and Isaac saw that going on, they'd finally get to the punchline.
She couldn't see Stiles, but he wasn't an option. Everyone else was pairing off, and it wouldn't be fair now that they were secure as friends to confuse him like that. So she stood against the wall, watching the bedlam unfold in writhing masses of dayglo color across Derek's unrecognizable loft. Danny was shirtless and grinning ear to ear. No sign of Ethan, which was surprising.
Aiden leapt out at her with green paint all over him and jello-red fright mask fangs sticking uncomfortably out of his mouth. What was he, twelve?
He popped them out, acting cute and bashful. "Not as good as the real ones."
"Or as lethal."
"Okay, sure. I deserve that. I deserve basically everything you say about me, but... but, you know, I was pretty instrumental in setting this up."
Discount Peter methods, trying to twist some gratitude out of her. Nice try.
"All this?" she asked in a wondering tone, and he gave that schoolboy grin as she raised his hopes (among other things). "If I wanted to go to a rave? I'd get in a time machine and go back to the nineties."
With that, she patted his naked shoulder in consoling fashion and slipped away unhurried. Aiden was quick on his feet in many ways, but snappy retorts weren't one of them. She thought she heard him snarl and allowed herself a small smirk, but that reminded her of Jackson again and how they'd ruled supreme over the entire student body. And he'd thrown her away. Dead weight.
With everything that had happened since, it was stupid how much that still hurt.
She spotted Isaac's tall head on the dance floor. It took a second to realize his partner was Allison, who had lost her shirt, her bra a radioactive pink in the blacklight. They were both covered in body paint, all those art classes really paying off, and were thoroughly engrossed in slow dancing to intermittently cooperative music. "Oh, finally," Lydia muttered, then looked away from their intensity. Allison was happy. She deserved to be, and Lydia was happy for her.
She just wasn't prepared to dwell on it right now.
Stiles finally emerged from the crowd. He'd caught himself a partner, and was giving the dance his all. It looked like he might require medical intervention if he kept at it for long. "Awkwardly," she pronounced.
Wondering how Scott's date was progressing, she scanned the remaining room, only to be arrested by the sight of Aiden, drowning his limited capacity for sorrows by grinding it out with two girls. Maybe it was an attempt to incite jealousy, but she doubted he was that strategic. "Predictably..."
If she could just locate Danny, she could compliment him on his success and duck out, completing her transformation into wallflower. She'd been to worse parties (her own, for instance) but she'd never been to one that was less fun.
It was a cold thought. Chilling, in fact. How could she be cold surrounded by this many sweaty party animals?
There was a clicking sound that didn't blend with the music, an insectoid drone that put her instantly on alert. Someone stood in blackest shadow, immobile in the crowd before her. Masked, staring directly at her, like a bookish teen had brought the Poe story to life. The shred of plausible assurance was shortlived as the apparition winked out of existence. She saw it again in a different part of the crowd. There was no hard outline to the form, dissolving along the edges, without color, without motion—and there was more than one of them.
Didn't anybody else see them? Where was Scott?
Shoving through the crowd, aiming for the nearest exit, the black forms seemed momentarily to follow, and then subsided. Nobody noticed. How could they in this bacchanal?
As she yanked open the door, finding herself in the open air of a balcony, it occurred to Lydia that what she had seen might not even be real. A banshee flare-up. She leaned on the railing, finally on the opposite side to those giant Hale windows, mercifully alone. It was a cold night but at least she could breathe out here.
The insect clicking began again, although no one had opened the door. These cloaked figures didn't need doors. She watched a hand emerge from a pool of shadow on the floor, rising up until it stood, eyes glowing green-yellow and metallic, between her and the exit. She whirled around, hemmed in by a second one, its hand raised for silence, choking her scream back into her throat, the temperature plunging with proximity. She couldn't move to avoid its touch, which burned like a freeze brand on cattle.
Lydia collapsed to the floor. The black creatures vanished, and the air in her lungs was icy cold, hurting her, unable to be used to summon help. She tried to flip onto her stomach and crawl for aid, but she couldn't make her limbs function. They shook ceaselessly, trapping her by minutes or hours in a void, waiting to be found, unable to make the slightest move to help herself.
Alarmed voices finally descended and she could feel the warmth of Aiden's skin, but being carried indoors did nothing to decrease the chill. It had gone too deep. The crowd thinned, Danny helping to keep her upright. The ominous clicking began again and Lydia realized if she was in the same room with those frozen masks a second time, she might not survive. Danny helped her get away. It seemed to take an hour to reach the ground floor, where he got her into his car, cranked the heater to max and floored it, taking her home.
* * *
She told her mother she had a cold, which was far more true than Natalie knew and proceeded to burrow under every blanket she had, with her bathrobe spread on top of that, teeth chattering as she waited for her slow human regulation to bring her core temperature back to a safe level. The bedsheets felt like ice around her, and she tried not to move, rolling over in place and dreaming of warm bodies to lie beside.
When she was able to hobble around, she ran a hot bath and lay dazed, floating in a pool of heat that didn't quite reach all the way inside. She ran the hair dryer to the very edge of frizz, then returned to bed and tucked her icy fingers against her neck, willing herself to warm up.
A knock at the door turned out to be Danny. School must be out for the day. She'd lost all semblance of time.
"No better, huh?"
Lydia stuck a hand toward him to demonstrate and he folded it carefully between his own, which couldn't be pleasant for him since November had started. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Downer of a party."
She remembered the masquerade and tried to think of a good cover story. "You shouldn't be here, Danny. There must be a virus going round. The twins came down with it, too."
"I'll give you credit. It's always a different story. Last time it was a hallucinogenic drug which also caused paralysis. Law and order never got back to us about what kind of drug that was. Think warnings would have made the news."
"Danny—"
"It's Beacon Hills. I know this isn't an illness, just like that wasn't drugs."
"Then what do you think it was?"
"An attack. First few times, I could buy in, I could let it go, but listen to me. 'First few times.' I sound insane."
He let her hand go, palms open for her to switch. He was so kind.
"I'll finish the semester, but after that, I'm calling it quits. I've got an aunt outside Yuba City. I can transfer, no sweat."
"What about Ethan?"
"He should leave town, too. He probably won't. Not if his brother wants to stay. I'm not responsible for anyone but myself, and I want out. I'm not afraid to work hard, and I can deal with my aunt's rules for a few months, while I get on my feet. My grades are high enough. I'll likely get early acceptance letters."
"Is she... supportive?"
He didn't answer immediately. "She tries. Lydia, if I can't bring a guy home for dinner, it won't be for long. But I want to throw a party and not worry about monsters. I don't want to end up in the hospital because someone decided to poison me. I could have died. And finding you on the balcony last night, it just... Nothing here is worth it, Lydia. Nothing. I'm getting out, like Jackson, and I strongly suggest you do the same."
"It's college for all of us eventually. One more year can't—"
"It can. So would you... Just do me a favor? Don't tell the guys. Don't tell anyone. They'll make a fuss, try and talk me out of it. I'll say goodbye when I'm packed."
"Then why tell me?"
"You miss Jackson, too." Danny developed an unusually brooding expression on his normally sunny face. "He turned, didn't he?"
She nodded.
"And it was... by choice?"
"Yeah."
"Dumbass." There was a rueful smile, familiar to Lydia from years past. She hadn't seen it in too long. Popular as he was, Danny was lonely without his best friend.
"We'll all miss you."
* * *
Allison stopped by that night, bringing grapes and chocolate and a winsome but worried smile.
"Oh, I'm alright. I've had more cups of tea today than in an entire year of California weather. I'm almost warm." Not enough to shed her dove gray cardigan, but she had pushed the heavier blankets to her feet.
"It's not fair, though. The werewolves all recovered in minutes." Allison sat at the foot of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked like she needed to unwind, with as much craving for comfort food as Lydia had.
"So what have I missed out on?"
The story came out, Mr. Argent chasing a lead, Allison and Isaac helping him to put a name to the masked shadows. Creatures called the Oni, Japanese demons in search of someone in Beacon Hills who was possessed. That was why they had touched Lydia, hunting for a being called the Nogitsune, which existed to cause chaos and pain.
"They haven't tested me yet," said Allison. "If they don't find this thing soon, I'm next to be bedridden."
"Does it... Can the Nogitsune make you see things?"
Allison froze with a grape halfway to her mouth. She put it back and sat straighter. "Lydia, I'm only here now because I feel safe to be around. After what happened in the woods, I couldn't take any chances, but... Deaton said the ritual left a door ajar in our minds, and the day we saved Malia, it's like I felt it close. I could aim again, my hands grew steady, and I felt like myself. Or even more like myself than I was. All the confusion, who I am, who I've been? Pulled apart by my family, Scott, you? Everything stopped making sense a long time ago, and I was feeling around in the dark. But I saved Malia. Her father was about to shoot her, and I prevented it. Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes. That's who I am, and as long as I remember that, visions of my aunt have no power over me."
Radiating serenity, Allison had never looked so beautiful. This was seeing the future and Lydia wished Allison was a model in art class, to attempt a portrait. Her best friend as she would be, strong and compassionate, knowing her own heart.
If Allison and Derek were healing, why not Lydia? Her heart beat faster with the hope her turn was coming. If she could hold out a little longer, she wouldn't always be like this.
* * *
"I said hold still."
Poor fidgety Aiden trying to hold a pose as Lydia captured him on her canvas. You couldn't hurry art.
"Are we even allowed to be here this late? What if security catches us?"
"There is no security. The number of homicides in this school has seen to it that no sane person will ever take a night job here again."
Begging the question what she was doing here, but he didn't even pick up on the 'sane' angle. There were moments (just little ones, but true enough) when she genuinely liked Aiden, despite his baggage. He ought to be grateful. Painting him was a commemoration, more tactile and affectionate than a quick tap of a phone would be. A fond farewell.
The late night jazz? Just scene setting.
"So we're all alone?"
"You're losing the pose again."
"You know, when you said you wanted me to model for you, this wasn't what I thought you had in mind."
"Oh, really?"
Aiden shed his shirt in demonstration, as though he'd agreed to her terms as a way to get lucky. As though serious principles weren't at play, and she'd backtrack at the sight of his biceps.
"If you're thinking nude modeling, it's usually done without the pants."
Another second and Aiden had wriggled from his jeans, tossed them at her and was standing in his boxers with a big grin on his face. Why else bring me out here? his eyebrows seemed to be saying. What other game could she be playing?
Only the most important one. I could take you back, I might weaken... but I won't.
Sudden static cut through the music, and a voice both familiar and upsettingly altered, a boy gulping for air through tears. Begging, bawling, submerged in static while the music tried to reassert itself. Lydia felt she could almost identify him, while Aiden with his wolf hearing didn't seem to register anything unusual.
Then the filter of noise subsided, the voice became recognizably that of Stiles, and Lydia lunged for the door with nothing to decode.
"Please... Come find me."