The Secret Holder

XIX: Prior Knowledge

SATURDAY NIGHT, SIX THIRTY-TWO P.M.

When I get back to the Stilinskis', I'm in a good mood. I pass by Stiles's room expecting to see the emptiness that it has been the last couple of days. Instead, Stiles is there, marking up his board, and pinning up strings. He found something.

Although his back is to me, I guess he notices me standing in the doorway. "Got all your stuff alright?"

"Yeah," I answer, not quite knowing what to do next.

"Good. Because I need your help." He moves to the wall where the cork board is and he starts arranging newspaper clippings and pictures next to each other. "Can you hand me a thumbtack please?"

I pull a red pushpin out of the plastic box and drop it in the palm of Stiles's outstretched hand. "Thank you."

Once he pins up the last picture in his hand, he steps back. "So...here we are. We've got your mom-" He looks at me apologetically. "-in Orange County, claw marks on the windshield and slashed tires. Second, there's Kira's mom, a kitsune, behind the animal clinic with no external injuries. A couple feet away from her, a bare human footprint was found, along with claw marks on the back wall of the clinic. Kira's mom can't have been electrocuted, so the only explanation is that she was suffocated, poisoned, or succumbed to internal bleeding? You know, never mind, they said no sign of internal bleeding." Stiles continues to speculate. "Then," he gulps, "I am attacked in or by your house, with LSD. They wanted me alive." "Now, in the late nineties, there were a series of eleven attacks, well, killings, called the Crusades. They were all over the time span of two years. Each incident was different in its own way apart from some kind of claw marks left behind on the scene. Also, each person that was killed knew one another at one point, all interconnected."

There's a moment of silence as we both consider how the same person from the Crusades could be back.

I come up with an idea. "We are saying the Desert Wolf is responsible for all of this?" he nods and I continue. "I think the aim is to make us panic,"

"This person killed two people Lydia,"

"But not you." I stare at him seriously.

Stiles keeps eye contact as he states, "I mean, it makes sense, it's a threat. But it's not a clear connection. There's just...something missing."

My heart leaps into my throat. The Desert Wolf is assumed to have killed three people.

His head tilts to the side, his eyes bulging a little. I've given myself away.

"Lydia...do you know something?" Stiles's voice softens at the end of his inquiry. His eyes plead for answers. Does he already know that the missing piece relates directly to him?

When I am deciding what to say, Stilinski appears in the doorway. "Dinner's on the table, kids...if you'll eat it," he said, addressing both of us, and then going back downstairs.

When his father is out of earshot, Stiles tries to get something out of me. "Well?"

"Lost my train of thought," I lie. I don't speak to him as I leave the room. I need to pull myself together. Did I almost tell him the truth?

...

After dinner which was a horrific macaroni casserole, I call Scott. He picks up on the first ring.

I immediately start telling him about how I almost cracked under Stiles's intuitive eye.

"You have to keep your cool," Scott advises, sounding as if he thinks that I'm overreacting.