Beacon ⌲ Stiles Stilinski [1] EDITING

twenty nine

With each of his next words, he rounded the tables and stepped closer towards us.

"What we know, the truth, and what we know about the world. That makes us responsible for a young couple, their newborn daughter, or anyone who doesn't have the power to defend themselves. Are you starting to get it?"

"I get that this isn't a lecture, it's an interrogation," Allison quipped. 

"That depends on what you know."

I looked up from the floor. "We only know as much as you've told us."

"Gerard showed me the library. Cameras didn't catch everything, but do you two really think a little high school fight can explain that amount of damage?" Dad's voice grew stronger. "We know you're trying to protect your friends, but people are dying. A child was orphaned. What you know makes you responsible. It makes you responsible for this-"

With a swift motion, our father reached for the edge of one of the tarps and ripped it off of the body it was covering. After one millisecond of seeing pale, gray-tinted skin, I clenched my jaw and turned away.

"What do you expect us to tell you?" Allison muttered.

"Anything you know. Anything that can lead us to answering the one question that might mean everything: Who controls the kanima?"

"We don't know," I snapped. "Wouldn't all of this be over if we did?"

"All we know is who the kanima is," Allison mumbled and I stared at her with wide eyes. I remembered our discussion in the forest when Jackson escaped of how we all needed to tell our parents or any adults who could help. And I understood that we were dealing with a homicidal pairing that couldn't exactly be stopped by a couple of teenagers, but the paranoid part of my mind still wanted to keep everything from Gerard. If we told our father, things would no doubt come around to him. Unfortunately, Allison was already stuttering out a name. "It's Jackson Whittemore."

Letting out a heavy sigh, Dad went to recover the body he had exposed and I noticed his expression had failed to change or react.

"You don't seem surprised." I pointed out, trying to maintain my composure.

He shook his head. "Your mother, Gerard, and I have been on this case for a while. We've already had our suspicions."

"Then can we go?" I asked, pressing further away from the dead victims and heading for the door. The thought of them lying there had become agonizing. "Since we don't have any more information, aren't we done here?"

"We are far from done," Dad stated. "I appreciate this information, but just because you don't know anything else yet does not mean I will not need to know in the future. We are all on the same team here. The moment you find anything, you report back to the family."

"We get it. We're responsible for all of this," my sister motioned at the bodies. "And we're also responsible for passing our last midterm exam tomorrow, which requires more than four hours of sleep. Are we dismissed?"

Dad furrowed his eyebrows at her brazen remark before stomping over to the door and opening the latch. "Go. I'll meet you in the car."

Allison huffed and headed for the elevators, leaving me to rush after her.

No matter how many breaths of the night air I gulped in on our drive home as the evening inched into early morning, I couldn't escape the stench of air from the morgue which served as a reminder for all of the deaths we couldn't prevent and all of the murders bound to blindside us in the near future.

The next day, I was wandering into lunch hour when I caught Stiles sitting at one of the outdoor tables in the courtyard. I had finally finished all of my exams for the term and hardly knew what to do with myself. There was a nagging feeling in my gut that suggested it hadn't gone too well, but at least it was over and as the rest of the student body partied for a week, all I had left to worry about were kanima matters.