˗ˏˋ⋆ H E A V E N L Y ⋆ˎˊ˗
↳ 𝒙𝒙𝒙𝒗. 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒎 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒎
𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘭𝘧, 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦
(𝔄𝔩𝔭𝔥𝔞 𝔓𝔞𝔠𝔱)
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GRACIE AND STILES WATCHED AS THE ARGENTS PULLED OUT THEIR weapons. Mr. Argent went down to the basement of their apartment building where they had a storage locker full of weapons, while Allison went around the apartment and pulled out the ones they kept with them all the time.
Guns –– big and small –– bows and arrows, Chinese ring daggers –– those were harder than they looked to use, Gracie knew because Allison had been attempting to teach her the ropes –– more knives, smoke grenades, and anything else that would help defeat Jennifer, and/or the alpha pack, were laid on the desk. Stiles looked at the collection of weapons with wide eyes.
"Woah," Mr. Argent cocked his gun into place. "I thought you guys were retired."
"Retired, yes. Defenseless, no," Mr. Argent set the gun back on the desk and then turned to face Gracie and Stiles. "Make sure both of your phones are on. If either of you hear from Scott, let us know immediately."
Stiles checked his phone, where there were no messages or missed calls from Scott, and frowned. "Yeah, I'm thinking that's gonna be kind of unlikely."
Mr. Argent glanced at Allison, seeing the frown on her face.
"All three you, try to remember he's just doing what he thinks is right," he advised them all. Allison's gaze was already on the door. Gracie, Stiles, and Mr. Argent turned to see Isaac standing within the door frame.
"I can't shoot a gun or use a crossbow, but..." His claws slipped out of his nail beds and he held them up. "Well, I'm getting pretty good with these."
After Lydia's mother let her go upstairs, Gracie knocked gently and waited until she heard Lydia's permission to enter, before going into the room.
Lydia was sitting at the end of her bed, dressed in pajamas, flipping through pages of an old photobook.
She looked up and smiled at Gracie as she padded over to her bed. "Hey."
"Hey, how are you feeling?" she sat next to the strawberry blonde.
"My head hurts a little bit, but other than that, I'm fine," Lydia looked at her neck, seeing that the bruise had already disappeared. "How about you?"
"I'm fine now."
Lydia pressed her lips together sadly. "What happened last night?"
Gracie described everything that went on last night. She told her about confronting Jennifer with Stiles, Scott, and Derek, about how Jennifer had poisoned Cora with mistletoe and that was why she wasn't healing. She explained how they went to the hospital and the alpha pack showed up, the many ways they tried to thwart them, and the plan that they eventually came up with.
Finally, she told Lydia about Jennifer taking Melissa and Scott joining Deucalion and the rest of the alphas.
"I don't believe it," Lydia shook her head with a sigh. "Scott can't really be with them. He can't be."
"He's doing it for his mom and the sheriff," Gracie frowned. "And the look on his face..."
"Okay, so what can I do?" Lydia immediately volunteered to help them, making Gracie smile thankfully at her. "I know I'm supposed to be some human Geiger counter for death or something, but you told me that I could maybe save some people. I don't know how to turn it on and off yet, but..."
When she hesitated, Gracie bit the inside of her cheek. "What?"
"Remember what Jennifer said when she was going to kill me after you?" Lydia reminded her. "She said I knew too much."
"You're right. She didn't know you were a banshee." Gracie's mind raced. Jennifer tried to kill Lydia because she knew something about what was going on, but what was it?
She thought back on how Lydia had been acting since the school year started, and other than finding the dead bodies and that stint at the Motel Glen Capri, she couldn't think of much else...
Except, wait.
There was something. The day before, when they were in English class learning about idioms, Jennifer had commented on Lydia's drawing.
"Your drawing," she said aloud to see if it sparked something in Lydia. "The one you always draw, the tree."
Lydia looked at her confused, "What are you talking about?"
"The tree you always draw," Gracie got up from the bed and rushed over to Lydia's desk, picking up one of the notebooks there. She opened it up and on the very first page, was the tree. She showed it to Lydia. "This tree. You've been drawing it everywhere."
"What?" Lydia asked, horrified. She ripped the notebook out of Gracie's grasp and flipped through the rest of the pages. Over and over, on each page, a drawing of the same tree was there in various sizes. "What the hell?"
"She knew that you knew something about the tree, but she didn't know what," Gracie pointed out. "Do you know what the drawing means?"
Lydia shook her head. "No, I don't. I mean, I talked about it with Miss Morrell once in one of our sessions, but––"
"––Miss Morrell knows?" Gracie cut her off urgently. "About the drawings and stuff?"
"Yeah, why?" Gracie didn't answer her as she pulled out her phone and started messaging Stiles. "Grace?"
"Sorry, sorry," Gracie turned back to Lydia. "Okay, Stiles and I are gonna head to the school and talk to Miss Morrell. Do you think you can try to get ahold of Aiden and see if he or the other alphas know anything about Jennifer that we don't?"
"I can try," Lydia seemed bewildered at how flustered Gracie was. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, I just need to go," Gracie rushed to the door before stopping and turning back to her.
As Stiles and Gracie started heading over to Miss Morrell's office when they got to school, Gracie got a text message from Lydia.
📶 T-Mobile LTE 10:32 AM 96%🔋
Lydia
Aiden's not texting me back
Gracie
All right. Just keep trying, okay?
Lydia
I will. Be careful.
Gracie
You too.
While she was texting her Lydia back, she saw a message come in from Isaac. She ignored it for just a second as she looked up at Stiles and informed him of what was going on with Lydia.
"Aiden's not texting Lydia back," she paused and saw that he had stopped walking in the middle of the hallway, his phone in his hand. "Are you okay, Stiles?"
Stiles continued to look at the phone, his face crumbling.
"Stiles, what's going on?" She asked cautiously. She walked over to be by his side and saw that Stiles had gotten a text message from Isaac as well. "What does it say?"
"Jennifer, she t––" he inhaled shakily, his hands shaking. "She has Allison's father. She took him. "She's got all three now."
Gracie's heart started racing in her chest but she somehow found words.
"There's still time," she focused on that. Jennifer couldn't do anything until the lunar eclipse started. "We still have time, Stiles."
Stiles didn't respond. His hands shook terribly as he put his phone back into his jeans pocket, he was pale and sweaty, and she didn't need to have enhanced hearing to hear how shaky his breath was.
"Stiles?" Gracie called out. "Are you okay? What is it? What's wrong?"
"I think...I think I'm having...a panic attack," he managed to tell her. Stiles struggled to breathe as he turned in a circle, his eyes wide with panic. The world around him was moving too quickly for him to process.
"Okay, it's okay, um..." she looked around the hallway and thanked God that Miss Morrell's office was close to the boys' locker room. "Okay, come on, Stiles."
The frantic gasping that came from Stiles was scary, she wasn't going to lie. However, she needed to be there for him.
Gracie helped Stiles take a seat on the floor, his back leaned up against one row of lockers, and then kneeled down in front of him.
Stiles was really beginning to worry now, his face had lost all color and his breathing had turned into hyperventilating.
"Okay. Come on. Come on. Just try and think about something else, anything else," Gracie tried to distract him, panicking a little herself.
"Like what?" Stiles asked, between gasps.
"Uh, happy things. Good things," Gracie suggested. "Uh, friends, family." He looked up her and she winced, knowing that would make it even worse. "Oh, I mean...not family." She bit her lip, thinking until an idea hit her. "Stiles, I need you to try and hold your breath." He shook his head, trying to calm down, but it wasn't working. "Stiles...you have to hold your breath."
"I can't. I can't," Stiles gasped as he continued hyperventilating. She tried telling him to do the same thing over and over again, but he kept telling her he couldn't.
"Shh, shh. Stiles? Stiles, look at me," she gently grabbed his face and tilted it upward so he could look her in the eyes.
And as soon as his eyes met hers, she kissed him.
Pressing her lips to his, Gracie placed her hand on the back of his neck to pull him closer. She closed her eyes, praying this would work, otherwise things would become very awkward.
Stiles, on the other hand, blinked in shock that Gracie was kissing him. It didn't take that long for him to kiss her back as his breathing finally slowed down while he placed a hand on her cheek.
Their lips parted slowly and Stiles let out a breathless sigh as his body relaxed. His eyes scanned her face as they moved in slow-motion as they sat back in peace.
It was the calmest Stiles felt since his dad had been taken.
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𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄:
So there's chapter thirty-five. I really loved this chapter. I know this has been a long wait. But there is still more to go. If you enjoyed this chapter, vote, comment, and share.
4 more chapters to go!