willow | d. hale [on hold]

15 | glow stick

"Has it shown any weaknesses?" Deaton asked him.

"Well, one. It can't swim."

"Does that go for Jackson as well?"

"No," Willow told them. "He's the captain of the swim team."

"Essentially, you're trying to catch two people," Deaton told them. He grabbed a silver coin to show them which had a Celtic symbol on it. "A puppet and a puppeteer. One killed the husband, but the other had to take care of the wife. Do we know why?"

"I don't think Jackson could do it. His mother died pregnant too, and she was maybe murdered. I think he couldn't let the same thing happen to someone else," Scott said, and Willow nodded in agreement. "Same way he couldn't bring himself to hurt Willow that night at the pool."

"How do you know it's not part of the rules?" Isaac asked. "The kanima kills murderers. If Jackson kills the wife, then the baby dies too."

"Does that mean your father was a murderer?" Scott asked him.

"Wouldn't surprise me if he was," he muttered.

Willow leaned her head on his shoulder and kissed his clothed arm comfortingly. Yes, Isaac's father being killed was horrific, but at the same time, at least Isaac didn't have to put up with that abuse anymore.

"Hold on," Deaton said, getting an idea. "The book says they're bonded, right? What if the fear of water isn't coming from Jackson, but from the person controlling him? What if something that affects the kanima also affects its master?"

As he spoke, he spread some kind of black ashy substance in a circle around the coin, trapping it.

"Meaning what?" Isaac asked.

"Meaning we can catch them," Scott said, getting excited. "Both of them."

☽︎

When Stiles' jeep parked next to Willow's car the next morning, she got out to join them. They would be going to the animal clinic after school to finalize the plan with Deaton and Derek. Though Willow wouldn't be there because of cheerleading practice and then she'd be picking up Matt for the rave, she still wanted to be kept in the loop.

"There's got to be some other way to get tickets, right?" Scott asked. He had failed to get tickets for the underground show that night, and the whole plan relied on Jackson and the one controlling him to be there.

"It's a secret show. There's only one way, and it's a secret," Stiles said, rolling his eyes at Scott's optimism.

"Hey," Matt called, having just secured his bike on the rack. All three of them stopped and waited for him to walk up to them. "Any of you guys know why no one's getting suspended after what happened the other day at school?"

"Just forget about it," Stiles said, shrugging. "Nobody got hurt."

"Matt got hurt," Willow said, frowning.

"I - I had a concussion," he said in confirmation.

"Well, nobody got seriously hurt," Stiles said.

Matt narrowed his eyes at Stiles. "I was in the E.R. for six hours — thank you, Willow, the only one who came to check on me."

"Of course," she said, smiling sweetly.

"Hey, do you want to know the truth, Matt? Your little bump on the head is about this high on our list of problems right now," Stiles said, bending over to hold his hand an inch above the ground.

Willow pulled him up to stand straight. "Stop being mean, Stiles."

"Are you okay?" Scott asked Matt, ignoring Stiles.