Hiraeth //S.S.// ➸ Book 2

Meredith?

Scott laughed dryly. "Lydia, Meredith is dead." Lydia sat down on the bed, resting her arms on her knees. "But what if she's not."

She glanced at her fingers as she spoke. "Meredith was only at my grandmother's lakehouse once. But I think once was enough."

"How did you grandmother know her?" Lydia shook her head. "She didn't. She found her. Because of another woman named Maddy. The woman she loved."

She paused, sighing. "I never met her, but I saw her name everywhere. She used to be part of a yacht racing team. There were plaques and trophies in the lake house from all the regattas she's won."

"How did she die?" Parrish spoke up from behind the pillar.

"How's not the story. It's what happened right before. My grandmother, Lorraine, used to work in San Francisco for IBM. She was there on a weekend, catching up on work. She started hearing this sound. Like rain."

Lydia glanced out the window. "But when she looked out the windows, all she say was blue sky."

"But she kept hearing the rain." Lydia nodded. "And it just keeps getting louder. Rain and thunder cracking like gunshots in her head. So loud. She finally just screamed."

"Like a Banshee." I muttered.

"She called Maddy who was planning on taking one of the boats out on the lake. But Maddy said that the sun was shining there too. So Lorraine didn't say anything."

"There was an accident?" Parrish questioned.

Lydia shook her head. "It took them four days to find Maddy's body. And then it took decades to figure out how Lorraine knew. She started with parapsychologists, like the PhD in their name made it more scientific." Lydia rolled her eyes.

"They built the study in the lake house according to every pseudoscientific theory they could find. None of it worked. So then she started going to more extreme occult. Things like meduims and psychics all of them were failures. Until she found Meredith."

She trailed off. "This fragile girl who didn't understand the things she heard. They brought her to the study. And they almost killed her. She was hospitalized for over a year. She never really recovered. My grandmother drove her insane. I drove her to suicide. And all she ever wanted to do was help. My grandmother created the code for the Deadpool. They think she's the Banshee who put the names out in the first place. She left me this message in the same code."

"But she didn't leave the cipher key, did she?" Lydia pursed her lips, shaking her head.

"Okay, Parrish, I want you to go home, go get some rest." Scott put a hand on his shoulder. "You've had a long day." He turned to Lydia. "Go bring that to Stiles. He can add it to his board of whatever." Lydia nodded, walking off with Parrish.

"This is crazy." I muttered, walking over to the bed. "To think all this started with her grandmother." I placed my hand down, touching something cold. Glancing down, I noticed a gun placed on Derek's jacket.

"Hey Scott." I muttered, standing up. Scott walked over to me, holding the same expression. He carefully picked up the gun, examining it in his hand.

"Careful with that." Derek stalked over to us. I furrowed my eyebrows, turning to him. "I thought you didn't like guns." Derek glanced down.

"Does this have something to do with your eyes?" I crossed my arms. "What's wrong with your eyes."

Derek sighed. "They won't change. Everything is disappearing. My eyes, my strength, the healing. All of it."

"Just gone out of the blue?" I questioned as he nodded. "Whatever Kate did to me, it's still happening."

Scott sighed, sitting down on the bed. "If the Deadpool really was made by a Banshee then there's something else that you should know about." He paused, glancing up at Derek. "Your name broke the third list. It was a cipher key."