Saving Grace

10

Stiles frowned. "This didn't happen at Eichen House."

"But then where did she go?" Malia asked.

"That's what we need to figure out."

"Get back to Eichen, Lorraine."

"No. No. I don't think you're gonna be taking me anywhere."

Emma pointed to the boombox. "That's it. That's where it is. Play it again and turn it up."

Stiles rewound the tape. "No. No. I don't think you're gonna be taking me anywhere. I can hear the recorder in your pocket. It's on now, isn't it? You're making a tape. Just like you taped the others. How many others have you taped, Brunski? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?"

Emma heard a faint needle scratching and scrunched her face as she tried to think of where she'd heard it before and came to a realization.

"It's the record player," Emma and Malia said.

The tape turned off and Stiles frowned. "What record player?"

Emma met his eyes. "The record player in the lake house, in the study."

Stiles nodded, then frowned. "So they escaped from Eichen House to go back and listen to a record player?"

Malia shrugged. "Well, she was like Lydia, right? She was a Banshee?"

"Yeah, but only once. They predicted Maddy's death and then just spent decades trying to predict something else."

"Think about it though, Stiles. What if they really did predict not one, but a lot of deaths?"

"Like the deadpool," Stiles realized.

Emma nodded. "What if all those years ago, Lorraine predicted it? And they knew there was something in the study that could stop it."

"Then we're going to the lake house," Stiles decided.

The trio got to the lake house and entered the soundproof room. They listened to the record player and were getting nothing. Stiles sighed in annoyance. "What are we doing? This room wasn't even made for us. No, we need someone like Lydia or Meredith, and we're just sitting here listening to a stupid record player that doesn't play anything. Come on. There's plenty of other things we can be totally useless doing."

Emma frowned. "Hey! Malia and I are right here! We aren't useless. And so you know, the record player is off, but Malia and I still hear spinning noises."

Stiles frowned. "But it's not on."

"Then something else is spinning."

Stiles found a cable and said, "Uh..."

The drywall split as soon as he pulled the cord towards the ceiling and we tore away the remaining board to find large, old-fashioned, reel-drive tape drives from behind the wall.

"What is this?" he asked.

"I think we may have just found the deadpool," Malia said.

Emma and Malia both grabbed something hard and got ready to smash the deadpool and Stiles stopped them. "You two can't just smash it to pieces. Okay? If this thing's being used to disseminate the list, then it's probably gonna keep going until everyone's dead."

"Then what do we do?" Malia asked.

Stiles thought for a moment. "It needs some kind of prompt or command or something, right? No, no, no."

"What about a key?" Emma suggested.

"No, a key won't work. I'm going to video chat with Lydia. She might be able to help."

Stiles called their mutual Banshee friend. "Lydia, you're seeing this, right? There's got to be a way to turn it off."

Lydia shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know anything about computers from the 1970s."

"Neither do we," Malia said.

"Okay, where's the monitor?"

Emma entered the frame. "Lydia, there is no monitor. There are buttons, knobs, spindles, no monitor."

"Wait, Stiles, turn the phone back. Point it at the carpet."

"What? Why?" Stiles wondered.

"Just show me the floor." He did so and Emma and Malia saw what she was getting at. "Where's the stain? There should be red blotches, a wine stain."

Emma and Malia shook their heads. "Nothing here."

"That doesn't make sense. I gave the $500 I was supposed to use to hire cleaners to Brunski."

Malia frowned. "I don't get it. What does wine have to do with anything?"

"Red wine doesn't just disappear," Lydia stated obviously.

"Unless it wasn't wine," Emma realized.

Stiles glanced at his girlfriend and back to his phone. "What? What do you mean?"

"The ashes weren't ashes. The study isn't a study. The record player isn't a record player. So... So maybe the wine wasn't wine. Stiles, you have to find the wine. Find the bottle. There's something we're missing."

"What kind? What's it called?"

"It's a 1982 Cotes du Rhone," Lydia informed.

Stiles returned with the wine as quickly as he left. He shook it and something rattled inside and he asked, "I think there's something inside. Do you have, like, a wine opener or..."

Malia took the bottle from him and smashed it open. They found a key and Emma picked it up. She put it into the key slot and turned it, stopping the deadpool.

Emma let out a small sigh and the trio exchanged a small smile.