"He had it coming."
Tw: panic attack
"Hi Jade- and you're gone," Melissa furrowed her eyebrows when her niece stormed right past her, not even bothering to acknowledge her existence. There was already loud arguing coming from inside the house. Something was about to go down, and she had a feeling it wasn't going to be something good. In fact, it would probably be the complete opposite.
"That doesn't make any sense, Dad! Who are you helping? Just get out! I can't believe you'd do that to my best friend!" Scott yelled while Max ate a bag of chips, observing it like a movie scene.
"I'm not doing anything to your friend. I'm doing my job-"
The house was momentarily stunned into silence. The right side of Rafael's face had a deep red print across it while Jade shook her hand about. Christ, that had hurt! She didn't know why she'd done it. She'd just been so consumed with rage, it had taken over her. It wasn't even Rafael's fault; he was just the person she had decided to take her anger out on. Well, it was partially his fault.
He turned to look at her, mouth hanging open in shock. The nerve this girl had!
"You're a fucking bastard! How could you do this to Noah? You've been here two minutes and you're already stealing his job?" she shrugged Max's arm off her shoulder, feeling the anger bubble in her stomach and move it's way up to her chest.
"Who the hell do you think you are! I can sue you for assault!" he exclaimed, pointing his finger in her face.
"Oh, yeah? What are you gonna sue me for, huh? I'm an unemployed sixteen year old with no money. You can't sue me for shit that I don't have!"
"Jade," Melissa yanked the girl back after seeing her eyes flicker purple. "Calm. Down," she warned in a firm voice. The twins and the woman glanced to Scott, who was breathing deeply and his claws were starting to appear. "Scott. Calm down. Come with me, right now."
The mother and son left the room, giving the twins the task of keeping Rafael busy so he wouldn't go out to see what was happening.
"Anger problems. Get's stressed easily," Max made up. He wasn't angry that Jade had hit him. In fact, he was quite proud. If he'd had a bit more liquid courage, he would have done it himself. The man had it coming.
Jade groaned in frustration, opening and closing cupboards. She grabbed the first thing she saw, which happened to be a jar of nutella. She jumped up on the counter, eating it by the spoonful while simultaneously glaring daggers at the man in front of her. God, she would end up slapping him again one day. "You can go home now. You don't live here. You know where the door is, please let it hit you on the way out."
~
"You know, if my dad's right, that means there's another werewolf in town that we haven't met yet," Stiles commented, holding his flashlight in front of him so they could see where they were going. They'd been walking for ages, their legs beginning to feel weak. "And if it turns out to be triplets that form into, like, a three-headed hound of hell, I'm seriously not up for that."
"God, I'm getting déjà vu," Max grimaced, almost tripping over his own feet. Scott had another wonderful bonding experience for them to go on. Looking for a dead body in the middle of the night! But wait, here was the good part... the body of Malia Tate, who they had no clue if she was even dead or not! They knew exactly how well looking for a body had turned out last time and they didn't exactly feel like repeating it.
A coyote howled, scaring the living daylights out of them. Jade slipped in some mud but grabbed onto Max which resulted in him being dragged down with her. Stiles lost his balance, but remained standing. Instead, he grabbed onto Scott, making him drop his phone in a puddle of water.
"I'm going to murder you, these were my favourite jeans," Max hissed, standing up.
"Jesus, calm down, will you? Are you forgetting the part where I'm literally a witch?" she rolled her eyes. Waving her hand, both of their clothes became mud free. She silently thanked herself for being a witch because this was also her favourite skirt.
They carefully jumped down a little slope, Jade and Scott gracefully landing on their feet. Stiles and Max both slipped, nearly falling again. The alpha wiped his phone, the tracker still working. Thank God for that. He didn't have enough money to pay for another new phone!
"I think we're close to it," Max noted, swallowing the lump in his throat. "It feels like death." One thing he had learnt in the last two weeks, was that empaths could sense death, because of the intense emotions surrounding it. It actually came in handy sometimes.
"Found it," Jade slowly walked forward, a bright light sitting in her palm so she could see what she was looking at.
An overturned car wreck was lying on the ground, covered in leaves and dried blood. This was definitely the car that the Tate's had been driving when they died.
She ignored their conversation as she began to look for clues. What kind of clues, she had no idea. Just something that would tell them where Malia Tate was and if she was alive.
She furrowed her eyebrows, picking up a baby doll from inside the car. Letting out a yelp, she threw it into the air when it started speaking. Grabbing it off the floor, she stuffed it into Max's arms. "That thing's fucking possessed, you can keep it."
The twins bickering stopped the second they heard growling a few feet away from them. They glanced in the direction that the sound was coming from, to see a pair of glowing eyes staring right back at them.
Their words became a jumble of questions when they started shouting after Scott, who had just ran off behind the coyote. Wasting no time, they sprinted in different directions after the werewolf.
Jade was grateful that she'd joined the cross country team. It had paid off in the long run because there was no way in hell she'd be able to do this if she didn't practice. Four screams echoed around the forest when the teenagers all collided. God, was she ever going to get her heart rate down?
"I think I found something," Stiles panted, shining the flashlight in Scott's eyes.
"So did I," he replied, covering his face.
Stiles led the way back to what he had found. "It's a coyote den."
Max peeked his head inside of the small cave. The ceiling was low down, the ground covered in dirt and leaves.
"Werecoyote," Scott whispered as the four teenagers crawled through the den.
"See this? This is Malia's," Stiles picked up a blue jacket off the floor. "Remember, it's the same one she was wearing in the photo."
Something clicked with Max as he dragged them out of the den. "We have to leave. She's not going to come back here now, we've just invaded her home!"
"We need to try and get Derek to help find her scent," Scott sighed. He was still afraid that if he turned, that he wouldn't be able to turn back to human. He would have suggested Jade doing a locator spell, but would it even work if it was a coyote and not a human? "If we can't do that, we're gonna have to find someone else to help."
"Wait, this is basically a crime scene, right?" Jade questioned as an idea came to her. "What if we get someone to help us. Someone who works in law enforcement."
~
Jade pulled her leather jacket closer to her body as she held her head in her hands. The flashing lights from the police sirens were starting to give her a migraine. She was listening in to the three boys trying to explain to Noah that Malia was a werecoyote. If they could explain faster, it would be helpful. It was cold enough for snow.
"Think about it, Dad, all right. They're driving, Malia starts to change, she goes out of control, the mom crashes and everybody dies- expect Malia. She blames herself, right, goes off running into the woods and eventually becomes trapped inside the body of a coyote!" Stiles exclaimed.
"That makes sense," Noah nodded. The teenagers sighed in relief. "In a Chinese folktale! This is... this is insane! I need this kept quiet. The four of you, not a word. I don't want anyone hearing about this, especially not Mr Tate," Noah whispered urgently.
Jade waved a hand in front of her cousin's face, hoping to snap him out of whatever daze he was in. All of their heads turned when they could hear a siren approaching. "You have got to be kidding me," she hissed.
Why did everyone always show up when they weren't wanted? Mr Tate and Rafael McCall both slammed their doors to the car, heading towards the group.
Mr Tate's eyes softened when he saw what Noah had. He took the pink blanket into his hands, holding it as if it was the most delicate thing in the world. As if it was made out of glass, and would shatter if anyone made one wrong move. "It's hers," his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.
"All right, wait here," Rafael said softly. He ignored the objections from his son, his blood already boiling. "I'll talk to you in a minute. All three of you. I wouldn't mind hearing how Melissa's okay with you's running around in the middle of the night."
He stalked off, the sheriff storming after him. Mr Tate sat on the ground a few feet away from them as he held the blanket close to his chest. Clinging to it as if it was the last living member of his family.
It broke the teenagers hearts to see him like this, even if he was a stranger. Noah was right; they'd just ripped open a wound for this man.
~
"I've got to go, but send me the pinned location," Allison pulled Jade into a side hug before rushing out of the classroom door. The brunette had just explained that Max was right; Malia wouldn't go back to her den after they'd been in there.
Jade and Stiles both made their way to their seats, whispering about what Allison had just told them.
Max threw himself into his chair, firing his bag on the floor. He set the things he needed for class neatly on the table. He was set on skipping over his history notes before they started class, but that plan didn't work well when he decided to eavesdrop on Scott and Kira's conversation. In his defence, they were standing right next to him! What did they want him to do? Not listen in? No! He was a natural nosey person!
"I did some research on the Bardo and printed it out for you, cause my explanation was kinda all over the place," Kira laughed nervously, searching around in her bag for the papers.
"You didn't have to do that!" Scott exclaimed, rubbing the back of his neck, something he did when he was anxious.
"It's okay, it only took a couple of hours," she shrugged.
"Wow, then you really didn't have to do that."
She genuinely didn't mind. It gave her something to do other than school work. She'd just moved to the town, and she didn't necessarily have any friends she could hang out with. Furrowing her eyebrows, she realised it wasn't there. "I swear I printed it out."
"Kira!" Mr Yukimura called as his daughter turned to him. "You forgot all the research you did for that boy you like."
Max covered his mouth with his hand as the girl's face flushed and she took the papers. His eyes flickered quickly between Scott and Kira. It was like a tennis match he was watching and didn't want to miss anything.
She clenched her jaw, slowly turning around. She sighed, holding it out in front of her. Their hands briefly grazed during the exchange. He smiled softly at her before sitting in front of Max.
Kira rested her head on the table, groaning in exasperation. She wanted the ground to swallow her up into a deep, dark hole that she couldn't crawl out of. Max was about to say something to her, but their teacher began the lesson.
Even after promising himself that he would pay attention, he found himself zoning out after two seconds. There was too many things running through his head; what they were going to do about Malia, alcohol, other lessons, alcohol. Anything you could name, the chances were he was thinking about it. He always thought of it as a hamster on a wheel, and he just couldn't keep up with how quick it was spinning.
"Mr Stilinski, would you mind coming up and reading aloud for us?" Mr Yukimura questioned.
For the first time, Max looked up from his desk. He glanced at Stiles, wondering what the boy was going to do. A side effect of the sacrifice was that Stiles could no longer read. But the thing was, he couldn't exactly come out and tell their teacher that because how would that make sense?
"Oh, maybe someone else could," he suggested, shrugging his shoulders.
"Everyone participates in my class, Mr Stilinski."
Stiles sighed, dragging himself to the front of the class. He stood behind the desk that had the book laying open on it. He exhaled thankfully when the words were normal. Although, he should have known not to speak too soon. In practically a second, the letters started to spread down the page. There was no way to decipher what they were; they just looked like a hot mess. It felt as if his lungs were enclosing him, while his vision became distorted.
Jade was quick to notice, on her feet next to him in an instant. Scott and Max followed suit right after the girl. "We should take him to the nurses's office."
Mr Yukimura nodded, deciding not to interfere with the fact that four of them were leaving. It seemed that teenagers in this school travelled in packs. He'd hate to get involved with that because he'd probably get jumped when he was going to his car.
Stiles launched himself into the bathroom, the door banging loudly behind him. He made his way to the mirror, ignoring the questions from his concerned friends. "This isn't real. It's a dream, just a dream."
"This is real, you're here with us. It's real," Scott tried to reassure him.
"Do you need to do the five things you can see, four things you can hear thing?" Jade asked, trying to keep her voice steady as to not panic him more.
"How do you know you're in a dream. Stiles, how do you know you're in a dream?" Max stood next to the boy, a hand resting on the small of his back.
"Count your fingers. You have extra fingers in dreams," he panted, gripping the cool surface of the sink tighter.
"How many fingers do I have? Hey!" Scott exclaimed as their eyes finally met. "Look at my hands and count with me." He held his hands out, guiding his best friend through counting.
Stiles' breathing finally slowed as he slumped to the floor, finally after reaching ten. The coldness of the wall behind him made a shiver travel down his spine. "What the hell is happening to me?"
"We'll figure it out. We always do. You'll be okay," Jade said as she kneeled in front of him.
"Will I? Will you?" he gestured to Scott. "You can't transform. Allison's being haunted by her dead aunt. And I'm straight up losing my mind. We can't do this! We can't help Malia. We can't help anyone."
Scott joined the others on the floor, sitting cross legged. Apparently everyone was at a loss for words. "We can try. We can always try."