Tether ⌲ Stiles Stilinski [2]

twenty-one

The wood of the Stilinski's front door frame rattled with each impact of my fist. I had dropped all hesitation behind potentially waking the Sheriff inside because his car was not parked in its usual spot on the driveway. Alarmingly, neither was Stiles' Jeep. But I had to hope there was still a chance Stiles was inside.

"It doesn't seem like he's home," Allison observed.

"I know," I said, continuing to bang against the door. "But where else could he be?"

The sound of a revving engine peeled down the street. I stopped knocking to turn and watch Scott pull up to the Stilinski household on his dirtbike with Isaac straddling the seat behind him.

My heart thumped in alarm. Neither Allison nor I had called and told them where we were or what we were doing. I was saving that until I had confirmed there was something to be concerned about. At the moment, I was merely acting off of a voice snippet I thought I heard call out to me from the darkness of my bedroom.

Instead, I had in fact called Lydia, reaching out to the only other Banshee I knew just in case this had something to do with that part of myself. But according to what she said on the phone, she hadn't heard his voice like I did. So it wasn't necessarily like the voices in our heads. I tried my best to turn that idea into comfort, twisting it into an optimistic outlook that meant Stiles was not in any imminent danger. Either way, though, Lydia was on her way to help us.

But I hadn't expected the boys to show up on their own. They came jogging up to the front stoop, pulling off their helmets.

"Did he call you too?" Scott asked.

I bit my lip. "Uh..."

At my look of presumed confusion, Scott pressed on. "Stiles, did he call you about where he was?" It was at that moment he finally read the expression written all over my face. "Oh. He didn't call you at all did he."

"Not exactly." I shifted my weight. "But I heard his voice. He told me to find him."

The boys glanced at each other for a moment, considering my response. They already seemed wary and my words definitely did not appear to help.

Isaac sighed, scratching the back of his neck. "If I ask you to explain will that just leave us more confused than we already are?"

"Well, I don't really have an explanation at all. So yes."

"Fair enough," he shrugged.

Scott stepped forward and pressed his ear to the front door. I assumed he was trying to sense another presence inside or listen for a pair of heartbeats. "And his voice, it brought you here?"

"No, this is just the first place I thought I'd check," I explained. I stepped beside him even though I had no hope of hearing whatever a supernatural wolf could. "Just to see if he actually needed finding."

"Wait," my sister held up a hand. She seemed to be taking in the fact that the boys had shown up unprompted, presumably on their own search for Stiles themselves. Their presence was already confirmation enough but she made to clarify it out loud. "Does he? Need finding, I mean."

"That's what I'm here to check," Scott sighed, standing back from the door. "I got a call from him in distress. He says he's lost and scared, like he doesn't know where he is or how he got there. But he seems to be sure he isn't at home. After checking here I thought Isaac and I could at least pick up a strong scent from something in his room and go out looking."

"You think you'll have to track him down? That this isn't one of his dreams?" Allison asked.

My sister had entertained that idea on our way over to the house already. I hadn't wanted to break Stiles' trust and share details about just how much he had been struggling since going underwater to stop the Darach, but the lingering effects of that night were no mystery to the entire pack. Allison described it like three dark clouds had been following each of us around. Comparing it to our experiences with waking nightmares and hallucinations, she had suggested that there was always a chance that Stiles may think he was in trouble when he was actually just imagining it all.