Through the Dark // S.S. [Book One]

Chapter 26 (Part Two)

We head to Stiles' house to do research. Stiles and I sit on his bed and Scott sits on the floor. We crash after a couple hours of finding nothing.

The next morning, I'm awake kind of early, thanks to demigod dreams waking me up. Dreaming about Mother Earth waking is terrifying. I don't dare say her name for fear that something will happen. Those familiar with Greek mythology will know why I'm terrified.

I see Scott curled up on the ground and Stiles has his head on the ground on papers while he's semi-sitting on his bed.

Sheriff Stilinski walks in and smiles when he sees me. "Megara. Boys. Hey, time to wake up. Boys. Boys!" They wake up and Stiles blows a paper off his face. "I got to get to work. You three get to school."

"Dad!" Stiles calls. "Heather?"

The sheriff shakes his head. "No, nothing yet."

"Ten hours and nothing." Stiles grips.

I run my hair through his hair softly. "We'll find something. Don't worry."

He sighs in defeat. "Finding something doesn't make Erica any less dead or Boyd any less about-to-be-dead."

Scott, who has become an optimist as of late, says, "Well, we still have time."

Stiles turns to his friend. "Is this whole, like, "remain optimistic in the face of complete and utter disaster" thing a part of the "be a better Scott McCall" program?"

Scott shakes his head. "Uh, not if it doesn't work."

I chuckle softly. "Believe me; it works."

Stiles' eyes widen. "Oh, dad! Dad? Dad!" He runs out of the room after handing Scott a newspaper article. I look at it to see at article about the bank being robbed, complete with a picture of the sheriff.

We arrive at school and Stiles asks, "'Kay. What do we do till then?"

Scott frowns. "What, right now? We've got English."

I cross my arms. "If Ms. Blake makes me read aloud again, we're gonna have some words. She seems to think I just need practice reading. I've tried. But it's not easy when the words are spelled wrong and they're floating around."

Scott looks down at me. "The words are spelled correctly and they only look like they're floating around."

I narrow my eyes, staring up at him. "You don't understand the struggle."

"Miss Parker." Ms. Blake says. "I'd like to begin, if you're all finished."

I gesture to her. "It's all you."

At five, we head to Derek's loft, which is simplistic, but nice. Stiles begins drawing plans. "Okay. You see this? This is how they got in. It's a rooftop air conditioning vent. Leads down inside into the wall of the vault, which is here. Okay? One of the robbers was lowered into this shaft. Now, that space is so small, it took him about 12 hours to drill into that wall, which is stone, by the way. Then throughout the rest of the night, they siphoned the cash up to the guys back on the roof through that one little shaft in the wall. Boom."

"Can we fit in there?" Scott asks.

Stiles squints at the image. "Yes, we can, but very, very barely. Meg definitely can, but I don't want her to. And they patched the wall, obviously, so we're gonna need a drill of some kind. I'm thinking maybe a diamond bit..."

"Look, forget the drill." Derek states.

Stiles frowns. "Sorry?"

Derek turns to my boyfriend. That word. "If I go in first, how much space do I have?"