The Jeep smelled like coffee and old paper and something that might have been lacrosse equipment left too long in an enclosed space, and Evelyn had learned not to comment on it.
She had the window cracked two inches, which was enough to keep her functional, and was watching the houses slide past as Stiles navigated the after-school traffic with the particular aggressive optimism of someone who believed that if he just committed hard enough to a lane change, the universe would accommodate him.
"So Danny's coming in thirty minutes," she said.
"Twenty-eight," Stiles corrected, checking the dashboard clock. "Which is fine. We have time."
"Do we?"
"We have enough time to explain the situation in a way that makes it sound less illegal than it is."
"It is illegal, Stiles."
"Everything's illegal if you think about it too hard." He changed lanes. Someone behind them honked. He ignored it with the serenity of a man at peace with his driving. "The point is Danny can do it, and we need him to do it."
Evelyn shifted in her seat. "And you think he'll actually do it."
"I think," Stiles said carefully, "that Danny does not hate me as much as he claims to."
"He told me last week that you give him a headache."
"See, that's practically affection, coming from Danny." He drummed his fingers on the wheel. "What do you think of this cure thing?"
Evelyn considered it for a moment, watching a stop sign pass. "I've never heard of it," she admitted, "But Derek comes from a family of werewolves, surely he must have informations that we don't have."
"Scarlett thinks that it's a suicide," Stiles said, and the way he said it — flat, like he'd already turned it over too many times to give it new inflection — suggested it wasn't the first time he'd thought about it since she'd said it.
"She told you that directly?"
"Pretty much." He changed lanes again, more carefully this time. "She thinks going after the Alpha is — she thinks the odds are bad."
"She's probably right," Evelyn said.
"Yeah, but as I told her," Stiles glanced at her. "Scott needs it. He's been in too much trouble already. If there's a way to stop it, we'll manage."
Evelyn looked at him for a moment. We'll manage — said like a decision already made, not a hope.
"You're very sure of that," she said.
"I have to be," he said. Simply.
She nodded, and let it sit. The traffic thinned around them as they turned onto quieter streets. A comfortable silence settled — the kind that didn't need filling.
Then, without quite meaning to, Evelyn found herself thinking about Irene again.
There are people who stand on both sides of a line. And pretend the line isn't there.
She'd been trying to let it go since the corridor. She wasn't managing it particularly well.
"I keep thinking about what she said," she said, after a moment. Not quite to him. Almost to herself. "Irene..."
Stiles didn't ask who. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."
"The first time—" She stopped. Frowned. The words from weeks ago were there somewhere, just out of reach, like something she'd read once and hadn't written down. What did she say? She could feel the shape of it without being able to hold it. "I still can't remember exactly what it was. The first time." She looked outside the window. "People who stand on both sides of a line." A beat. "What if it means something?"
"Means something like what?" he asked, genuinely, in the way he did when he was already three steps ahead and wanted to know which direction she was going.
"I don't know," Evelyn admitted. "I can't stop thinking about it."
"Evelyn." His voice had a particular flatness to it. "She doesn't know what she said. She looked at us like she'd just woken up."
"I know."
"That's not — that's not someone delivering a message. That's someone who isn't entirely—" He stopped. His jaw moved slightly. "There are medical explanations for that. For exactly that. People who say things they don't remember, who go somewhere else for a few seconds and come back confused." He shrugged, one shoulder, too casual. "It doesn't have to mean anything."
"No," Evelyn agreed. "It doesn't have to." She paused. "But we live in Beacon Hills. And I've been reading enough lately to know that some of the things that look medical aren't entirely."
Stiles glanced at her. "You think it's supernatural."
"I think it might be worth not immediately ruling it out," she said carefully. "That's all."
He was quiet for a moment. She could see him turning it over — the particular way his jaw moved slightly when he was thinking something he hadn't decided to say yet. "Okay," he said finally. Slowly. "Say I don't rule it out. People who stand on both sides of a line. What does that even mean practically?"
"I don't know," she said. "I just can't shake the feeling that it wasn't random. That it was about something specific." She frowned slightly. "And today — it happened when you were there. She was looking in your direction. Someone who isn't what they seem."
"She wasn't really looking at me," Stiles said.
"No," Evelyn agreed. "But I saw the change when she noticed you. Like she did the other time with me. What if... what if she's talking about someone next to us."
The silence stretched for a second.
"Derek," Stiles said. Flat. Like he was offering it to get it out of the way.
"Or Scarlett," Evelyn said.
"What'" He glanced at her. "Why not just Derek?"
"I'm not saying not Derek," she said carefully. "I'm just saying — don't you find it strange? That she arrived at the beginning of the semester. Right before the first Alpha attacks."
"So did Derek," he said. "And anyway we're looking for an Alpha. Derek isn't one. Scarlett isn't one either. So what exactly would she be hiding?"
"I don't know," Evelyn said. "I'm not saying-- I'm just saying the timing is—"
"The timing is the same as Derek's," he said. "The timing is the same as Scott getting bitten. Everything happened at the same time, that's kind of the whole situation we're in."
"She's a vampire, Stiles," Evelyn said, turning toward him. "I'm not saying that to be cruel. But think about what that actually means. They're different from Scott and even from Derek. Werewolves are still — they're still human underneath." She paused. "Vampires aren't like that. They're predators. They feed on humans. They've had centuries to learn how to be around us without us noticing. How to seem—" She stopped herself. "Among all the creatures that exist, Stiles, vampires are the ones a human can trust the least."
He didn't say anything for a moment. His hands were still on the wheel, loose now, and he was looking at the road ahead with the particular stillness of someone who was listening more carefully than they wanted to let on.
"I know what they are," he said finally. His voice was quiet. "I looked it up. Early on. When I — I did my research, Evelyn. I know what she is."
"Then you know—"
"Yeah." He cut her off. "I know." He didn't look at her when he said it. His jaw was tight and he was staring straight ahead at the road. "But she'd different." His hands shifted on the wheel, tightening slightly, and Evelyn watched his knuckles settle into it. "But I know her. I've seen her. She's been there every single time. Even when you and Scott weren't." He took a deep breath, "And that night at school, the Alpha almost killed her. And she was there for me. She wante to help us." Something moved through his voice, underneath the edge — something quieter and more certain that had nothing to do with the argument. "Every single time something went wrong she was there. Every time."
He turned to look at Evelyn then, and she saw it — the way his eyes had gone very direct, very still, in the way Stiles' eyes almost never were. Like whatever was usually moving behind them had stopped, just for a second, because this particular thing didn't need to be thought about. It just was.
"You want to tell me that's a predator playing a long game?" he said. "Fine. But I've been next to her and I know what I know and I'm not doing this."
He turned back to the road. Said nothing else.
Evelyn didn't push it. She looked out the window and let the silence settle, and thought about the way he'd looked at her just then. Just someone who knew exactly where they stood and wasn't going to move.
He pulled into the driveway. Cut the engine. Was out of the car before she'd reached for her bag, moving with the quick purposeful energy of someone who needed to be doing something other than sitting still inside that conversation.
Evelyn got out and followed.
She hadn't needed him to say it outright. She'd seen it in the way his hands had tightened on the wheel when she'd said Scarlett's name. In the way his eyes had gone still. In the way he was still carrying it up the path ahead of her, right now, unable to put it down.
"Thirteen minutes," she said quietly, as he reached the door.
"I know," he said. And pushed it open and Evelyn followed him inside.
The house was warm and smelled like coffee and something faintly herbal, and she stood for a moment in the entryway while Stiles dropped his keys on the side table with the automatic carelessness of someone who had done it ten thousand times. She watched him head toward the stairs without breaking stride, already thinking about something else, already somewhere ahead of the conversation they'd just had.
I believe him, she decided, climbing the stairs behind him. She had seen it in his eyes, the way he had spoken about Scarlett. And she really didn't want to sound cruel, or anything like that. But it was difficoult to trust a vampire.
Every account she'd ever read — and she'd read more than she'd told him — described vampires the same way at their core. Patient. Adaptive. Capable of extraordinary intimacy with their prey. The older texts didn't say they couldn't feel. They said that feeling and hunting weren't mutually exclusive. That the most dangerous ones were the ones who had learned to do both at the same time.
People who stand on both sides of a line.
The words moved through her again as she stepped into Stiles' room, quiet and persistent. She still couldn't reach the first time Irene had spoken to her that way.
What did she say?
She sat on the edge of the bed. Stiles dropped into his desk chair, already pulling up something on his computer, half-turned toward the screen with the focused distraction of someone whose brain had already moved three steps ahead.
Evelyn looked around the room. Boards covered in red string. Printouts. The particular organized chaos of someone who thought faster than they could write things down.
Something caught her eye near the door.
She turned.
Derek was standing behind it, watching them both with the particular expressionless patience of someone who had been there for a while and saw no reason to announce himself.
Evelyn's eyes went wide. But when she opened her mouth to say something, "Hey, Stiles!"
The Sheriff's voice came from downstairs before she could make a sound. She snapped her mouth shut.
Stiles was already half-turning from the computer, eyes still on the screen. "Yo, D—" His eyes widening when he saw Derek. "Derek?"
"Stiles!" Evelyn was on her feet, hand flying to cover her mouth.
The three of them stared at each other.
Then Stiles was across the room, out the door, pulling it shut behind him. Evelyn moved immediately toward it, pressing close enough to hear. Just few feet away, Derek hadn't moved. She glanced at him. He was already looking at her.
"What did you say?" came the Sheriff's voice from the hallway.
"What? I said 'Yo, D-Dad.'" A pause. Stiles doing his absolute best, which was, Evelyn reflected, not his best performance at all.
"Listen," Stilinski continued. "I've got something I've got to take care of, but I'm gonna be there tonight. I mean, your first game."
"My first game..." Stiles said, almost uncertain and Evelyn bit her lips shaking her head. "Guh, it's great. Awesome. Uh, good!"
Evelyn and Derek shared a look. His expression hadn't changed at all, which somehow made it worse.
She pressed her lips together very hard.
"I'm very happy for you," the Sheriff said. "And I'm really proud of you."
"Thanks, me too. I'm happy and proud... of myself."
Evelyn closed her eyes briefly. Derek had raised one eyebrow, which she was beginning to understand constituted a strong reaction for him.
"So," Stilinski said, "they're really gonna let you play, right?"
"Yeah, Dad — I'm first line. Believe that?"
"I'm very proud."
"Oh, me too. Again, I'm—" A pause. A muffled sound that suggested an embrace. Then Stiles' voice, slightly strained against the door: "Huggie, huggie, huggie..."
Evelyn bit the inside of her cheek. Hard. Hoping that the Sheriff was used at Stiles awkwardness and wouldn't find his behaviour expacially strange.
"See you there."
"Take it easy."
She stepped back from the door, with a deep sigh, while her hands moved to her hips. Maybe the Sheriff didn't notice. Maybe he was really going away. And just maybe, at least for that day, Derek would not end up in jail.
Then the door opened and Stiles stepped back in — and didn't make it two inches before Derek's hand caught his jacket and slammed him against it.
"Oh my God!" Evelyn crossed the room in three steps. "What are you doing?"
Derek's eyes were on Stiles. "If you say one word—"
"Oh, what?" Stiles said, with the particular brand of Stiles sarcasm that only emerged when he was either very comfortable or very annoyed, and in this case appeared to be both. "You mean like, 'Hey, Dad, Derek Hale's in my room, bring your gun?'"
Derek said nothing.
"Yeah, that's right," Stiles continued. "If I'm harboring your fugitive ass, it's my house, my rules, buddy."
Evelyn stood with her arms crossed watching this, and felt something shift — because Derek let him go. Not reluctantly, not with any particular grace, but he let him go, and even reached to straighten Stiles' jacket with the brusque efficiency of someone who hadn't entirely meant to slam him into a door in the first place. Stiles let out a small breathless laugh and did the same to the lapel of Derek's leather jacket, smoothing it down with two fingers.
Then as Stiles was moving away, Derek jerked his head forward like he was going to lunge at him.
Stiles groaned. "Oh my God."
Evelyn uncrossed her arms as she glared at Derek, "That was extremely childish. What are you doing here?"
"Did Scott find the necklace?" Derek asked, as Stiles dropped back into his desk chair.
"No, still working on it," Stiles said. "Scarlett's helping him. But there's something else we can try."
Derek and Evelyn looked at each other. She nodded once.
"Hear him out," she said. "It can work."
"The night we were trapped at the school," Stiles said, leaning forward, "Scott sent a text to Allison asking her to meet him there."
Derek frowned. "So?"
"So it wasn't Scott."
"And if the Alpha really wanted Scott to kill his friends," Evelyn said slowly, the thought arriving as she said it, "it must have been him who sent it."
"Can you find out who sent it?" Derek asked.
Stiles shook his head. "Not us. But I know someone who can, and—" he checked his watch— "he'll be here any minute." The doorbell rang. "Perfect timing."
"What, here?" Derek asked, with wide eyes.
"Yeah, relax, he's not going to notice." Stiles was already up and moving toward the door. "Just sit down and act normal." He pointed at Evelyn. "Eve, help him be normal." And then he was gone, footsteps already on the stairs.
They looked at each other, not sure what to do. Then she took the desk chair and pushed it toward the far side of the room, away from the desk. If Derek sat over there, away from everything, maybe Danny wouldn't look too closely. She turned back to find Derek watching her with the expression of someone who found the entire situation ridiculus but there was nothing else he could do.
"Alright," she said taking a breath. "You need to look comfortable. Alright? Comfortable. Are you feeling comfortable?"
Derek tilted his head. "No."
Evelyn let out a breath, "It's never easy with you, isn't it?" Then she pushed him towards the chair, his eyes growing larger as he was forced to took some steps backwards.
"Take off your jacket and--" she opened her bag, to take one of the print of the pdfs Stiles had given to her. "Read this."
"What's that?" Derek asked with a frown.
"You, acting normal." She pushed the papers into his hands. "Come on."
He looked at the papers. Then at her. Then he sat down, slowly, with the air of someone making a significant concession.
Evelyn sat on the edge of Stiles' bed and opened her own PDF, and the room settled into an approximation of ordinary. Or at least she hoped.
Stiles came in first. Danny followed, stopping in the doorway, and his eyes went immediately to Evelyn.
"Evelyn, what are you doing here?"
She looked up with a smile that she hoped looked natural. "Danny! My computer broke down, but Stiles was kind enough to let me borrow the printer." She gestured vaguely at nothing. "Are you here to study?"
"Lab project," Danny said, with the tone of someone who had accepted their fate.
"Oh, you two got paired," Evelyn said, nodding. "Nice."
"Yeah." Not much enthusiasm. He looked at Stiles. "So, Stilinski, we need to be quick about it. We've got the game tonight."
"Yeah," Stiles said, pulling up another chair. "We'll get started in a minute. But I — Eve has something to ask you."
Evelyn looked at Stiles. Stiles looked at Evelyn. A silent negotiation passed between them in approximately one second, neither of them particularly willing to go first. She glared at him. He glared back. Danny turned toward her and she forced a smile.
"Yeah!" It came out slightly too bright. She dialed it back. "I've been receiving some texts, and they've been... freaking me out a little. And Stiles said that you could—"
Danny's eyes went wide before she'd even finished. "You two want me to do what?"
"Trace a text," Stiles said.
"I came here to do lab work!" Danny said. "That's what lab partners do!"
"And we will!" Stiles exclaimed. "Once you've traced the text! Come on, don't you want to help Eve?" He gestured toward her.
Evelyn produced the most uncertain smile she had. She wasn't sure it was the right expression for the situation. Danny looked at her, then back at Stiles.
"What makes you think I know how?"
Stiles shrugged. "I looked up your arrest report, so—"
Evelyn's eyes widened. She had not known about an arrest report.
"I was thirteen," Danny said immediately. "They dropped the charges."
Stiles shrugged noncommittally. "Whatever."
"No," Danny said, and he actually sounded apologetic when he turned to her. "I'm sorry, Eve, but we're doing lab work." He pulled his chair toward the desk with the finality of someone who had made a decision.
Stiles exhaled through his nose. Evelyn looked at the ceiling briefly, then back down. She moved back to sit on the edge of the bed, thinking, while Danny settled in beside Stiles and they made a show of opening something on the screen.
Then Danny said, without looking up: "Who is he again?"
Evelyn turned. Derek was sitting in the chair she'd given him, reading the PDF she'd handed him with an expression of studied neutrality. He glanced up briefly when he felt them looking, then returned to the page.
"Um," Stiles said. "My cousin. Miguel."
Evelyn pressed her lips together. She genuinely could not decide if she wanted to laugh or put her head in her hands. Both seemed appropriate.
Derek glanced at Stiles with an expression that communicated, very clearly, that this was not over.
"Is that blood on his shirt?"
Evelyn and Stiles both looked. There it was — faint streaks along the hem, dried dark.
"Yeah, yes," Stiles said without missing a beat. "He gets these horrible nosebleeds. Hey, Miguel—" he turned to Derek— "I thought I told you you could borrow one of my shirts?"
Derek set the papers down with the deliberate patience of someone setting down something they would be picking back up, stood, and moved to the wardrobe. He opened it. Looked at the contents. Then, without particular ceremony, reached down and pulled his shirt off.
Evelyn looked at him with the frank appreciation of someone who could recognize an objectively good thing when it was standing directly in front of her. She'd had boyfriends. She knew what she was looking at. And what she was looking at was, by any reasonable measure, extremely well-constructed.
"Stiles…?" Derek turned toward him, holding up a shirt that was clearly not going to work. Evelyn diverted her eyes, pretending that she was reading.
"Yes?" said Stiles.
Derek tugged at it with barely concealed irritation. "This. No. Fit."
She was not looking at him. She was reading. Or that was what she kept repeading herself, but she kept glancing away from the pages. And her lips kept turning up.
She was also, she noticed with mild annoyance, wondering whether her heart was doing anything Derek could actually hear, and the fact that she was wondering about it was probably not helping.
"Hey!" Stiles' voice pulled her back. He was elbowing Danny. "That one looks pretty good, huh? What do you think, Danny?" Derek was now wearing a orange and blue striped tshirt. And it was really tight against him.
Poor thing, she thougth. Then she noticed Danny checking Derek up and he cleared his throat. "It's… not really his color." Evelyn covered her smile, getting what Stiles was doing. And she still couldn't decide if Stiles was a genius or a criminal.
"You swing for a different team, but you still play ball, don't you, Danny-boy?" He was saying to the boy sitting next to him.
"You're a horrible person," Danny said.
Stiles didn't seem to disagree, "I know. It keeps me awake at night. Anyway — about that text—"
"Stiles!" Derek called irritably, once again bare chest and a couple of shirts in his hands. "None of these fit." Both Evelyn and Stiles turned to look at Danny who was still glancing at Derek and then he suddenly turned towards the computer.
"I'll need the ISP, the phone number, and the exact time of the text." He said already working.
Evelyn couldn't hide a smile in seeing that Stiles' plan had worked. And then she set her PDF down and stood up, crossing to the wardrobe and going through it with considerably more method than Derek had managed.
"Here, let me help," she said quietly.
"You're his accomplice," Derek said, equally quiet, irritation still clear in his voice. But Evelyn just chuckled.
"That's true." She found a grey shirt and a blue shirt that seemed big enough. "And it was a little funny."
He tilted his head, "Next time you do it."
"I didn't take you for the shy type," she said, glancing up at him. "Grumpy, maybe. Difficult, definitely. But not shy." She held out the grey shirt. "Maybe this color will work."
He rolled his eyes, but after a momet he took it from her hands and turned away to put it on.
Evelyn leaned her back against the wardrobe as she observed him. Then something caught her eyes. He had a sybol tattooed between his shoulders.
Three interlocking spirals at the center of his back, clean lines, old ink. She knew it what it was; a triskele.
She'd seen it in the texts, it was associated with celts, but it could be even older. But not only; Deaton had told her that the triskele was associated with the Hale family. They ofter used it. Werewolf packs used their own symbols, but they used others as messages... as warning.
Didn't the Alpha used one of those once?
"Stiles." She turned. He looked up from the desk. Danny was absorbed in the screen. "Can I borrow Miguel for a moment?"
Stiles frowned a little but then nodded.
Evelyn reached out and took Derek by the wrist. He went still for just a fraction of a second — she felt it — and then she led him out into the hallway, pulling the door most of the way closed behind them as she led him into the bathroom at the end of the hall and pulled the door mostly closed behind them.
Derek looked around the small space with the expression of someone who had genuinely been in worse situations but was willing to acknowledge this was not ideal. "What? What is it?"
"The symbol," she said, keeping her voice low. "Werewolf packs communicate through symbols, am I right?"
"Yes." A small frown.
"You said the Alpha used one." They were standing close in the narrow space, closer than was strictly necessary. "What did he use?"
"A spiral," Derek answered. "We use it to symbolize revenge."
"So the Alpha is moving for revenge." She said it slowly, like she was laying pieces out. "And if the necklace has something to do with the Argents, and Harris is connected to the Argents, and the Alpha was looking for Harris—"
"It means he's seeking revenge against the Argents."
"Which we can confirm now." She nodded. "The Alpha is targeting the Argents."
Derek thought about that, but he shook his head, "But he's killed no Argent." That was true. None of the people killed were part of the Argent family.
She exhaled. They were going in circles. "There's something we're missing."
Derek was quiet for a moment. She looked up at him. Something moved behind his expression — not quite reluctance, just weight.
"The night I got shot," he said, "he was hunting one."
"Who?" Evelyn asked with wide eyes, "Allison?"
He shook his head, "No, not her," His jaw tightened. "A far more dangerous one." The sadness moved through his eyes briefly, there and gone. "He didn't manage it, though." He shook his head. "But it doesn't make any sense. There's only me left."
"Was a person you would feel vangeance for?" She asked carefully, hoping that he would answer. Derek jaw tensed, taking a deep breath.
"She's the one who burnt our house down." Evelyn's eyes widened. She remembered how she had nightmares for weeks after Deaton told her how the Hale family had been murdered. All of them, but Derek and Laura... but now Derek was alone.
All alone.
No... not all alone.
People who stand on both sides of a line.
"What did you say?" Derek asked.
She hadn't realized she'd said it out loud. "What if there are two?" she said. "What if he's not working alone?"
"There aren't two Alphas, Evelyn."
"I know, I know." She pressed her fingers to her forehead. "I know that." She was probably just looking for patterns. Probably just reading too much into a girl who didn't remember what she said. Probably just unable to trust a vampire because of everything she'd read about them, because every account she'd ever found said the same thing and none of them said anything like what Stiles had described.
Maybe that was all it was. Maybe she simply couldn't make herself believe that a creature like Scarlett could move through a human world and feel real things and not be calculating every second of it.
"What is it?" Derek asked, watching her.
She looked up at him. "Do you trust Scarlett?"
He frowned — just slightly, just for a moment — and opened his mouth.
"He did it!" Stiles' voice came through the wall, urgent and strange. Both of them moved at the same time, back into the hallway and through the bedroom door.
Stiles was standing at the desk. He didn't look triumphant. He looked pale.
Evelyn crossed to the computer, stepping between Derek and Stiles, and looked at the screen. Danny was already pulling his bag together, his part apparently done.
"The text was sent from a computer?" she said, frowning at the registration details.
"Registered to that account name," Danny said, nodding toward the screen.
Evelyn read the name. Then read it again.
Melissa McCall.
"What?" she said.
"No, no, that can't be right." Stiles was shaking his head, the words coming out fast and flat. "That can't be right."
Evelyn straightened up. It didn't make sense — Scott hadn't noticed, hadn't smelled anything, and surely he would have — but the name was sitting there on the screen and she didn't know what to do with it.
The three of them moved at the back of the room.
"What do we do?" Evelyn asked. "Tell Scott?"
"No." Stiles said it immediately. "I want to be sure first."
"And what exactly are you planning to do? Ask her?"
"We have to go to the hospital." He was already moving, looking for his keys. "I refuse to believe it. We have to see for ourselves."
Evelyn looked at Derek, then back at Stiles. "You can't walk into the hospital like this, Stiles. You have a game in—" she checked her phone— "less than two hours. If you disappear now—"
"Wait, wait," Stiles said, taking the phone from his pocket, quickly searching for Scarlett's number. Evelyn put her hands on her hips as she waited. But Stiles tried Scarlett's number twice. And she didn't picked up.
He stared at the phone for a second, then exhaled. "She probably can't pick up. Coach doesn't let her have her phone during games, he hates distractions." He looked at Danny, then at Evelyn. "Eve." His voice had shifted — less uncertain, more decided. "Go back to school. Find Scarlett and stay close to Scott. If he found the necklace, you might be able to make sense of it with everything you know."
"But—"
"You go, don't worry." Derek's voice came from behind her, flat and certain, making her turn to him, "I'll go with him." He assured with a little nod.
Evelyn looked between them. She didn't like this plan. She liked even less the specific version of it where Stiles and Derek walked into a hospital to confront what might be an Alpha while she went to watch a lacrosse game. But she also knew, that if Melissa McCall was really what that screen had suggested and things went wrong, she had no idea what she could actually do to be helpful.
"Fine," she said.
She turned to Danny, who was already standing with his bag. "Danny, can you bring me back to school?"
"Sure," he said, with the tone of someone who had stopped asking questions approximately forty minutes ago. "I was about to go anyway."
She followed him out with a last look back at Derek and Stiles, but she didn't say anything, because she would surely going to say something about being careful and she didn't think they needed that right now.
The drive back was quiet. Danny kept the radio low and didn't ask anything, which she was grateful for.
She watched the town pass outside the window and turned it over and over. Melissa McCall. It didn't fit. It didn't fit in any direction she turned it — Scott would have known, surely, would have smelled something, would have noticed something in the way only a werewolf could, and yet he hadn't, and Melissa had no reason, no possible reason to want to become an Alpha, to go out looking for a bite, to start killing people in Beacon Hills—
But the Alpha had attacked an Argent. Had tried and failed.
And the Alpha was hunting Harris.
And Harris was connected to the Argents.
There was something she was missing. Something that sat just behind everything else, connected to all of it, that she couldn't quite see the shape of yet.
She thanked Danny when he dropped her off and was already moving before she'd finished the sentence, cutting through the side entrance and heading toward the main corridor. The game would be starting soon. She needed to find Scarlett, needed to—
She heard the voices before she saw them.
Low, coming from around the corner near the chemistry room. She slowed without deciding to.
The Sheriff. And Harris.
She pressed herself to the wall and listened.
"I met her at a bar," Harris was saying. "We had a lot of drinks — a lot. She started asking me what I do, and she kept asking questions."
Who? Evelyn's chest tightened. Melissa? Had Harris talked to Melissa? Was that how this connected?
"Do you have any idea what that's like?" Harris continued. "To have someone actually interested in the topic of chemistry after staring at all these vacant faces day after—"
"Details," the Sheriff said. Firm. Patient.
"Like I said. I talked." A pause. "How you could melt away the lock of a bank vault. How you could dissolve a body and get away with murder."
Evelyn's eyes went wide.
She remembered what Deaton had used those words when hevtold her about a fire. That fire. The vault the Hales had hidden themselves in. The lock melted clean off. The bodies burned so completely that identification had taken weeks.
Was he talking about the Hales?
What did he do?
"How you could start a fire," Stilinski said quietly, "and get away with arson?"
"And a week later," Harris said, "the Hale house burns down."
Evelyn pressed her hand over her mouth.
Her eyes stung. She hadn't expected that — the sudden, physical reality of it, of what Harris had done, of sitting in his classroom and timing his drills and listening to his voice for weeks without knowing. Derek's family. All of them, because of a conversation in a bar.
Revenge.
The fire.
The words arrived whole, suddenly, like something that had been waiting just out of reach and had finally found the right key.
That was what Irene had said. The first time. The fire — it all starts from the fire.
She had remembered.
"So you don't know her name?" the Sheriff was saying. "Where she's from?"
"No," Harris said. "Which is exactly what Laura Hale asked me. I'll point you in the same direction I pointed her." He paused for a moment, "
"The necklace the girl was wearing. That's the symbol on it. I asked her about it — she said it was a family thing. You find the girl wearing that necklace, she's your arsonist."
"Murder," Stilinski said quietly.
Evelyn was already moving.
She didn't run until she was far enough down the corridor that they wouldn't hear her, and then she ran. The Alpha had been looking for Harris the same way Laura had — following the same thread back to the same source. Which meant the Alpha wasn't hunting randomly, wasn't building a pack for the sake of it. The Alpha was avenging the Hales. Had already tried to kill the Argent responsible. Was working through a list that Laura had started before she died.
The Alpha was avenging Derek's family.
And the only person besides Derek who might have known all of this from the beginning—
She pushed through the side door onto the field. The players were gathered near the bench, pre-game, and she spotted Scott almost immediately, sitting near Jackson. She crossed the grass at a run and grabbed his wrist.
"Scott."
He turned, and his expression shifted the moment he saw her face. His hands found her arms, "Eve. What is it? What happened?"
"Where's Scarlett?" she said, still catching her breath. "We need to talk to Scarlett."
Scott's eyes went wide at her words, "She's not here."
Evelyn stared at him. "What?"
"She didn't show up." He glanced around the field, like he might have missed her somewhere. "I thought she was with you."
"She wasn't with us." Evelyn straightened. Her heart was doing something fast and unpleasant. "Where is she then?"