Chapter Text
“Do you know the secret of magic, zabka?”
Babcia struck a match, the flame flicking to life curiously loud in the silence of the kitchen. A single white candle and a handful of rocks were scattered on the table between them. Babcia lit the candle and shook the match to kill it.
“What is it?” Stiles asked quietly.
“Belief.”
His aunt had given Babcia a hard time when she’d insisted on taking Stiles. She was already in her late seventies and Stiles was generally assumed to be too much of a handful for anyone to want him, really. Not to mention she’d moved across the country to avoid uprooting him from Beacon Hills. But Babcia had insisted—“I raised six children including you, Ania, I can raise one more”—and two weeks after his parents’… after everything settled a bit, she’d claimed his father’s old office as her bedroom. Neither of them dared venture into the master bedroom. Not then. It was still too fresh.
Babcia smelled like garlic and over-steeped mint tea. He’d hated it when he’d been younger. Spent days complaining about the smell to his mother whenever she visited. But he’d almost cried at the familiarity when she’d walked into the Sheriff’s office to pick him up, fresh from the airport.
They’d forgotten him at first. His parents had been on a date when the car accident happened, and the Sheriff’s office had been so struck by the sight of one of their own in the crumpled remnants of his Mom’s Jeep that they hadn’t remembered him. Stiles figured his parents were running late and had abused the opportunity to stay up late with his Xbox and the stash of peanut M&Ms his mother hid in the pantry until he’d finally crashed and fallen asleep on the sofa.
The knock on the door woke him up the following morning, followed by the first stirrings of fear. His Dad should’ve moved him back to bed. He always did. And the house didn’t smell like coffee. His Mom always set the maker.
When he’d seen Sheriff Richards at the door, he’d answered it. But when the first words out of his mouth started with ‘I’m sorry’ he’d slammed it shut and refused to open it again. It hadn’t mattered. His Dad had given Sheriff Richards a key to the house years ago anyway and nothing Stiles could do had stopped him from eventually hearing the rest of it.
He’d done okay for a while. All through the funeral and afterwards, he had managed to keep himself from crying. The guidance councilor at school had told him it was all right to cry. That no one would think less of him. And even when Mrs. McCall had hugged him tighter than she’d ever hugged him before—even after the time he’d called an ambulance to come and help Scott when he’d had an asthma attack and no one else had been home. He’d wanted to be strong.
It hadn’t mattered how good he’d been. All it took was a couple of words from Jackson in school during lunch about a month later—“you should’ve been in the car, Stilinski”—and he’d lost it. Hadn’t even realized what he was doing when he’d jumped on Jackson and whaled on him, tears and gasping sobs drowning out all the other sound around him. When Mrs. Bryant had finally hauled him off, he’d almost blacked out, unable to breathe and fighting for the scantest breath of air. Babcia had come to pick him up and he’d spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on the couch with her, crying.
“You needed a good cry,” she whispered.
Stiles didn’t argue, but he didn’t really believe her either. Stupid, stupid Jackson.
After dinner, Babcia waved him back into his seat at the kitchen table.
“I tried to teach your father the secrets of magic, but he had no talent for it.” She placed a folded piece of black cloth beside her. “But you, I think, have the spark.”
“The spark?” Stiles repeated dully.
“Yes. The spark.” She unfolded the cloth and picked out a piece of white chalk. “I can teach you these things. My father knew them. And his father. All of us, back many, many generations.” Babcia’s accent had all but disappeared since she’d moved to the States, but sometimes the way she spoke struck him as different. Foreign. “I had thought to teach you as well, but then your parents moved you here and I did not have the chance.”
She drew a circle around the candle. Stiles watched silently, resting his head on crossed arms. Squiggling marks followed, though he couldn’t tell if the placement was random or what. Stiles blinked when goosebumps spread across his arms. The atmosphere in the room shifted. Warm air drifted across his left arm and cold across his right. He straightened, surprised out of his complacency.
“What can magic do?” he asked. His voice was still hoarse, barely a whisper.
Babcia smiled in encouragement. “A great many things.” She finished the last of the chalk drawings and picked up a clear piece of what looked like quartz and handed it to him. Stiles took it gingerly and almost dropped it when it suddenly grew hot in his hands. She nodded to herself, and her lips twitched downwards. “But you have to remember, what you put into magic comes out of it. If you put in your malice and anger, you will receive nothing but those in return.”
Stiles frowned. “So I can’t turn Jackson into a newt or anything.”
Babcia shook her head fondly. “No.” She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands forward into the circle. “Rub the crystal back and forth in your hands.”
Stiles did, rolling the smooth-cut crystal between his palms. “What’s this going to do?”
“It will give us some insight into your future. When I did this as a girl, it showed me a crane.”
“What did it mean?”
A real smile crept up Babcia’s face, lighting her eyes and pulling her wrinkles tight enough to give her the momentary impression of youth. “Never you mind.” She glanced at his hands. “Faster.”
Stiles sped up, rolling the crystal back and forth as quickly as he could. It began to heat up even more and after a few minutes his biceps strained with the effort to keep the pace. The candle flickered, the small lick of flame spreading out beyond what the wick should have allowed. The light seemed to dance across the chalk outlines, making them glow and cast shadows on the table beneath.
He grit his teeth as the crystal began to burn his palms until it got too hot to handle and he dropped it with a hiss. He yanked his hands back and tucked them under his armpits. The candle sputtered out and the chalk returned to its original flat outline.
Babcia gave him a moment and then gestured him forward. “Let me see your left hand. It is your past.”
“I’m twelve,” he said, “I don’t have much of a past, Babcia.”
“Newborns have a past. Let me see.”
He held it out, surprised that the skin wasn’t the slightest bit red. It’d felt for a second like his hand was going to burn away. It was already slightly faded, but the white outline of a bow with an arrow pulled taut was startlingly clear nevertheless.
“And your right.”
He held it out, frowning when he saw the white design within. “I don’t know what that is.”
Babcia studied the symbol for a moment. “It is a glimpse of your future. A triskele.” Both of the markings were already fading away. “These things will come to have meaning for you. When they do, you must not look away. People meet their destiny on the paths taken to avoid it.”
“Master Oogway said that on Kung Fu Panda,” Stiles said. He watched his hands until the symbols faded away all together. “We should watch that. You’d like it.” He quieted. “Mom did.”
“Then I’m sure I will too.”
Babcia cupped his cheek in her hand. Her skin was papery thin and cool, brown liver spots standing out amidst the wrinkles and distended veins. “Why don’t you go and set it up for us. I will clean this up.”
Stiles nodded, but paused before he went. “Will we do more magic soon?”
“Tomorrow, zabka. And every day you want.”
He smiled and headed into the den to set up the DVD player. Behind him, he heard the clatter of rocks as Babcia collected her small trove of treasures and tucked them away.
“You must always be wary of Hunters, zabka.”
Stiles frowned as he lifted the wax-soaked wicks from the wax. “Hunters?”
“Yes. Hunters are especially dangerous for us. The others they hunt—the wolves, the cats, the bright ones, the beasts—they see as monsters possessed of a nature that does not allow them to act as humans might. But those of us who use magic are human, and therefore what the monsters cannot help, we embrace.”
Stiles gasped and whipped his hand back as a dribble of hot wax hit the skin of his index finger.
“Is that what happened at the Salem Witch Trials?” They were reading The Crucible in school. In history class no less. It’d probably make more sense once he finished it. Maybe.
“No, zabka. Salem, the Spaniards, the witch-hunts of Europe, all of these are human folly aimed to attack the unknown and the vulnerable. Real Hunters are quiet and keep their business to the very darkness they claim to protect.” Babcia stood and wandered over to the counter to watch Stiles dip the half-formed candle back into the stand. “Your great-grandfather was killed by a Hunter when I was a girl.”
“What happened?”
“My mother’s village in Poland was very small. Everyone knew everyone’s business. They knew our family, and came to us for many things. Protection. Blessings. Charms. Small trinkets to encourage fertility and luck. Things I will teach you.
“One day a stranger came to the village. A man peddling false wares and promises. My father sent him away. In anger, the stranger called upon a group of Hunters he knew. They stalked my father for weeks, watching. Waiting. And one night, when he was alone paying his respect to the forest, they caught him and—” She paused. “Perhaps you are too young for this story.”
“Not fair, Babcia. You’ve already started telling it.”
“I have. And it serves its purpose, I suppose.” She waited for Stiles to finish with another candle. “There is a belief that magic is in the blood instead of the soul. Hunters fear our blood and what it can do.”
“Is magic in the blood?”
“Not our magic, zabka. Never our magic.
“When they caught my father, they made many little cuts all over his body to drain the blood from him and dispel his power. When my mother found his body, there was none left within.”
“Brutal,” Stiles muttered.
“Yes. We moved to America soon after. But we found there were Hunters here as well.”
“Are there any in Beacon Hills?” Stiles asked.
Babcia’s gaze grew troubled. “I don’t know. You must always be careful when you share your secret. Hunters rely on our carelessness to track us down, instead of the signs left by the others they hunt. Trust your instincts to tell you who is dangerous and who is an ally.”
“What about the charm you showed me? The one that lets you figure out who’s lying?”
“If you can find a way to carry it with you, it would serve you well.”
Stiles nodded to himself, mind already racing a thousand miles a second trying to figure out how he could make it work.
“Are you sure about this, Stiles?” Scott asked. He shifted nervously from foot-to-foot, looking up and down the intersection.
They’d parked themselves behind a hedge near one of the four stop signs so Stiles could finish working in relative quiet. He didn’t think Babcia would particularly approve if she knew what they were getting up to, but it was important to Scott and therefore it was important to Stiles.
“Totally.” Stiles barely glanced up from the net of knots he’d spent the last three hours tying. He’d bought the plain white string with his own money and soaked it in fennel tea for two days before bringing it out to finish off. Babcia always said he tied excellent knots, but he’d never done something this involved before. “You want him to stop bothering your Mom, don’t you?”
Scott sighed and slumped down on the grass next to Stiles. “Yeah.” He nudged a clump of dandelion stems with the toe of his sneakers. “He called four times this week. I think he was drunk. And his friends have been letting him use their phones, so it’s not like Mom can block his calls, either.”
Stiles’ nose wrinkled. “If Dad were still around, he’d tell him off for you.”
Scott stiffened uncomfortably. He never seemed to know what to do when Stiles talked about his parents. “I know he would, dude.”
Stiles nodded to himself and set in to finish what remained of the netting. It wasn’t very big. Maybe the size of an unfolded napkin. But it would work. It had to work. This was the first important bit of magic Stiles had ever done.
“Okay. Give me the picture.”
Scott reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded wedding photograph. White lines had dug into the finish where it’d been folded and unfolded nervously several times. The picture itself smelled like stale cigarette smoke and liquor-sweat. Scott had stolen it from his father’s dresser their last weekend together.
Stiles laid it facedown on the net and pulled out a black marker.
“Write down what you want to happen.”
Scott immediately put the butt of the pen in his mouth and bit down a couple of times, his brow furrowing in thought. When he finally uncapped it, he leaned over and scribbled down ‘dont call, don’t come over, stop bugging mom.’ Then, after a moment’s thought, continued with, ‘pay ALL the suport $$.’
He dropped the pen when he was finished like it was burning his hand. Stiles bent the picture in half along one of the previously-made creases and folded the net over it.
Scott grabbed his wrist before he could tug the last corner down. “This isn’t gonna hurt him, right? I don’t want to hurt him.”
“No.” Stiles frowned. “But you might never get to talk to him again.”
Scott recoiled. “Wait, what?”
“I don’t know, Scott. It’s the first time I’ve done this. But if he only calls you because he think it’ll bother your Mom, then he’s not going to call again after we do this. No evil intent. That’s the whole point.”
Scott stared down at the bundle, his jaw clenching and unclenching. He’d seen Mr. McCall a few times since the divorce had been finalized, and each time he came home afterwards he’d been so down that Stiles hadn’t been able to coax a smile out of him for days. After this last time, when he’d come home with an empty inhaler and no refill, Stiles had finally offered to help. He trusted Scott to keep the secret. As long as no one asked him directly, anyway.
“If…” Scott angrily rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “If he only wants to see me because he knows it’ll piss Mom off, I don’t want to talk to him anyway.”
Stiles nodded and clapped Scott’s shoulder—the way he’d seen his Dad do a hundred times with his buddies—and finished with the net.
The intersection was the closest equivalent he could find to crossroads without venturing out of town. And while they couldn’t dig up the middle, Stiles dug a small hole on the very corner near the hedge and dropped the net inside. He raked the disturbed dirt back over and patted it down.
“What now?” Scott asked, staring at the small mound of loose soil.
“Mario Kart?” Stiles offered.
Scott nodded and followed Stiles back to where they’d leaned their bikes up against the stop sign.
Mr. McCall didn’t call again.
Stiles placed the bouquet of pink and orange blossoms down on the gravestone Mom shared with his father, wincing when he sat down beside it. Gerbera daisies were his Mom’s favorite, but he never had anything for Dad.
“Sorry, Dad. As soon as I’m old enough, I’ll bring you a bottle of whiskey. Or something.” He tucked his legs up to his chest and studied the marker. They hadn’t been able to afford anything fancy. It was just a simple plaque on the ground. There wasn’t even one of the small vases some of the others had built in. Stiles rested his head on his knees and let his eyes drift over his parents’ names.
“I start high school next month. How crazy is that?” Stiles launched into a recitation of his finals—though he’d probably already told them everything already. He’d graduated middle school with the second-highest GPA in his class, though he still wasn’t sure who’d beaten him. Not that middle school mattered much, really. High School was where the important stuff happened. Everyone knew that.
As he talked, he pulled his pocket knife from his pants and began scraping the closet corner of the marker. He’d found the knife among his father’s things when they’d finally cleared out the master bedroom and he’d claimed it as his. The idle scratching quickly became something coherent. A symbol of peace. As he worked, an easy sort of quiet settled on his shoulders and he focused on the small details.
He finished an hour later and pulled back his hand to look it over. The finger he’d held down the dull side of the blade with was blistered and red, but the small engraving looked perfect. Totally worth it. Maybe it would save the headstone from the vandalism that occasionally befell the other graves in the yard. Stiles tucked the knife back in his pocket.
He shifted his position and suddenly became aware of someone watching him. Turning in place, he caught sight of an older boy standing a few feet away. He wasn’t quite an adult yet, though obviously he was getting there, and he was looking at Stiles with equal amounts annoyance and concern.
“Hey,” Stiles finally ventured.
“Hi.” Heavy eyebrows pulled together and the other guy tilted his chin towards his parents’ gravestone. “I came to…” He paused. “It’s stupid.”
Stiles blinked. “Did you know them?”
“Sort of.” He slid closer. He was taller than Stiles, and way less gangly. Muscles were just beginning to fill out his frame, and he carried himself awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to it. “Your Dad saved me from doing something really stupid, once.”
Stiles’ lips twitched. “That sounds like him.” He rubbed his left eye with the heel of his hand. “I did so many stupid things he couldn’t save me from all of them.”
The boy took the admission as tacit permission and sat down beside Stiles. “I’m Derek.”
“Stiles.” He peered at Derek out of the corner of his eye. Derek had the sort of face that seemed to settle naturally into a half-frown, but Stiles willing to bet he’d be gorgeous if he smiled. Not that he noticed stuff like that. No sir. Not unless it pertained to Lydia Martin, anyway. “You were saying?”
Derek huffed out a breath. “Sometimes I come here to think. It’s pretty loud back at home.” He frowned. “And I thought being here could give me some idea about what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
Stiles thought about that for a second. “Mom would have a thousand and one ideas for you. Even if she didn’t know you at all.” He voice wobbled a little and he coughed to clear it. “But Dad would probably just listen to you talk until you figured it out on your own. And then he’d say something that made everything make sense.” His lips twitched in a half-smile. “I remember him telling me that if I wanted to be an astronaut, I’d have to get over my fear of the dark.”
Derek glanced his way. “Did you?”
“For a while.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes until Stiles glanced at his watch. The bus back home would be pulling up soon. “I have to go. Good luck figuring stuff out.”
“…thanks.”
Stiles stood and shuffled towards the front gates of the cemetery. It didn’t feel like a bad thing, leaving Derek alone with his parents. He didn’t know what the guy’s deal was, but he believed in his father enough to know that if Derek said he’d helped, then he had.
He felt Derek watching him the entire way out.
“Lydia, light of my li—” He stopped himself.
It would be really, really easy.
Stiles didn’t have to do anything too drastic. It wouldn’t be “love magic” strictly speaking. Noting to control her mind or her emotions. Something small. A knot of willow slipped into her locker or her backpack or her purse. Just something to encourage her to look his way. To appreciate the fact that he existed, even if he wasn’t Jackson Fucking Whittemore. If she’d just stop ignoring him and get that he was so much better for her. His hand twitched, already imagining how he would tie the knot.
And what then?
What if she noticed him and then decided he wasn’t the one for her? Would he go a step further? Slip her a brew to cloud her mind and make her overlook his faults? Bury a few pictures of her with crowfoot, bergamot and roses so she’d feel passion for him and want to stay by his side? Coerce her into loving him and then spend every day wondering if her love was sincere?
Stiles swallowed back a rush of nausea.
He looked at her. Really looked. All dive feet and three inches of sonnet-worthy feminine perfection.
But over her shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Jackson watching her when she wasn’t looking with a look in his eyes Stiles had seen a hundred times over the breakfast table between his mother and father.
She blinked when he didn’t finish and turned to look at him. “What?”
He smiled a bit. “Nothing. See you in math.”
The fire was dying, leaving only whitened and charred logs glowing dimly against the darkness. Stiles idly flicked a marshmallow over the firepit. It was too cold to make anymore s’mores—and he’d probably get sick if he tried to stuff another one in—but it was seemed a shame to waste the last of the fire’s warmth.
Stiles finally gave up and pulled his stick back to slide the marshmallow off the end. He stuffed it in his mouth and looked at the mostly-empty bag next to Babcia’s camp chair. She smiled at him and adjusted her shawl to fend off the night air. The last remnants of summer were fading away, and autumn was ushering itself in with early frost and cooler evenings. In the oversized knitted shawl, Babcia looked tiny and frail—words he never would’ve associated with her when she’d first moved to Beacon Hills to take care of him. Five years didn’t seem long enough to have such a profound effect.
“Do you have the bag?” she asked.
Stiles nodded and pulled the small paper sachet out of his pocket. She gestured to the fire and he threw it onto the remaining embers. It caught immediately, and the scent of the burning herbs inside spread outwards around him. They’d waited until the fire died to make sure the divination was clear.
It was a bit like cloud-watching; trying to get small glimpses of shapes as the smoke curled upwards. He narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lower lip, gaze flicking back and forth.
“Well?”
“Give me a second, Babcia. Geez. This isn’t like reading tea leaves.” Which he couldn’t do and frankly found it miraculous that Babcia could. “Okay… there’s a bird. Some sort of flower. And a knife?” He grabbed a battered coil notebook from beside him and began flipping through the countless pages of notes he’d written on divination. The pages were getting a little yellow from constant handling, and even he could tell the difference between the amateurish handwriting in the front and his own use of shorthand the further it went. It wasn’t exactly a leather-bound book of sorcery, but it was his.
“Give yourself time to consider these things, zabka,” Babcia said. “Rushing into a reading never gives you real truth.”
“I know,” Stiles said. He flipped towards the back of the book and scribbled down what he’d seen. He could go over it later.
In the distance, a wolf’s howl broke the stillness of the night air. Moments later, others responded. He’d stayed up one night counting them through until morning, endlessly researching wolf sounds on the internet. There were about fifteen, if he’d counted right which, come on, it wasn’t like he was some sort of werewolf savant. They were amazing to hear, though.
“The pack’s having a good time tonight,” he muttered, curling up against Babcia’s legs.
Her hand drifted downwards and tucked into his hair. “It’s the harvest moon. It is a reason to celebrate.”
Another single howl followed on the trail of the pack’s harmony. The loner. He might run with the pack—Stiles hoped so, anyway, ‘cause it seemed pretty lonely otherwise—but he never howled with them. He worried about that wolf.
“Put out the fire and then help me up, zabka. It is time for this old woman to go to bed.”
Stiles threw dirt in the firepit and then stood to offer Babcia his arm, half-listening to the chorus of the pack in the distance. Once he got inside, he’d open his window so he could listen to them while he tried to piece together what the symbols meant.
He generally didn’t sleep during full moons anymore.