Noah poked at a limp stalk of steamed broccoli, attempting to keep his contempt for it at bay when he smiled up at Scott. "Thanks for ordering for me, son. You really, really didn't have to."

And if Scott's shit-eating grin didn't remind him way too much of his Stiles as he took a big bite from his burger… "No problem. I figured you'd be in a hurry to get back to the office."

"Actually, I told the guys I was taking a long lunch break."

Scott's face fell slightly, and Noah considered that a win.

Gotcha, kid.

The young man glanced around the small diner, as if hoping to conveniently find someone he recognized. Anything that could offer a distraction. Noah almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He knew that lunch with the kid shouldn't be awkward at all. God only knew how many times Scott had made himself at home around Noah, from digging around the kitchen cabinets for snacks to asking for help learning to shave. And Noah loved having Scott in his life, especially since Scott seemed to be good at keeping Stiles out of trouble. Or he had until this past year.

Noah narrowed his gaze on the teen. Scott had filled out recently, transitioning from a kid into a young man, and maybe he had changed in other ways too. Noah had always considered Scott the more level-headed of the dynamic duo, but lately, after what happened with the "prank" on the Whittemore kid… Well, Noah knew that if Stiles was keeping secrets from him, that meant Scott was too.

"Got somewhere to be?" Noah asked, when Scott fidgeted in his seat.

"Uh, yeah actually," Scott answered. He backtracked with a crooked grin. "But, I mean, not until after lunch. Just. Just seeing some friends."

Noah raised a brow. "Allison?" he asked.

Scott's brow wrinkled, as if he'd been kicked under the table. "No. Allison and her dad moved. I mean, they're gone for the summer I think. Not that… Not that I'm with Allison. We broke up."

Noah knew as much. His first step in his investigation was to locate Gerard Argent and have a little chat with him about his relationship with his son. Unfortunately, he'd been unable to locate the Argent patriarch. Or any of the Argents. He'd managed to contact Chris by phone, but the man had evaded his questions.

"So you haven't heard from her since school let out?" Noah popped a mushy carrot into his mouth, already guessing the answer. But he was curious about one thing: "Who are you hanging out with these days?"

"You mean since you sent my best friend away?"

"Fair enough." Noah sighed, eating in silence a moment longer. "If I knew what was going on with Stiles, I…" He trailed off when he realized Scott was glaring at him.

"Why don't you trust Stiles?"

Noah winced. "So, I guess he told you about our fight?"

"I haven't been a great friend to Stiles lately, okay?" Scott shook his head. "But I'm going to figure things out this summer. I'm going to be a better son, a better student, and a better person. But Stiles doesn't need to work on those things. He's already good enough, and if you really sent him away to try and teach him something, maybe you haven't figured that out."

"Scott, I know you're mad, but you have to understand, whatever Stiles has gotten into, it's dangerous." Noah ran a hand over his mouth, trying to keep himself in check. "What do you know about the night Stiles was beaten up?"

Scott blinked. "As much as you know, I guess," he said, a bit too slowly for Noah's liking.

"I always thought you were the honest one, Scott. You're telling me that your best friend didn't tell you what really happened that night?" Noah leaned forward, his voice lower and his gaze focused on the teen. "I already know about Gerard. Don't let my imagination fill in the holes, kid."

It was there and gone in a flash: shock. Scott swallowed hard before a mask of confusion fell over his face. "Principal Argent? What's he have to do with that?"

Noah had to bite his lip. He already regretted playing the Argent card too soon. Scott would be on the phone with Stiles before he was out of the parking lot. Noah forced down the accusation at his throat. "Why didn't Gerard do anything to find the kids who beat up Stiles?" he asked.

Scott hesitated before shrugging and shoving his burger into his mouth. He seemed to be doing his best to finish his plate in under five minutes, and Noah had a feeling that as soon as the last French fry disappeared, the kid would come up with an excuse to fly out the door.

If he'd asked, Mel might have helped keep him here, but Noah hadn't been in a hurry to talk to her. After the situation at the station, Melissa had barely spoken to him, and he understood why. It was a traumatizing night for all of them, and he was the sheriff (or close enough). He should have done a better job at protecting them. Maybe she blamed him. Maybe she just needed time to process. Either way, he hoped his own friend would be back in his corner soon. It seemed getting Scott to fold without her was going to prove more difficult than expected.

Scott pretended to check his text messages and muttered something about his friends. These unnamed friends. Noah knew if he dared ask who Scott was off to see, he'd just turn this discussion into a full interrogation.

"Scott, I'm just trying to protect Stiles," Noah said, before the boy could flee. "I can't do that if I don't know what's going on."

Scott opened his mouth, as if to answer, and Noah hoped whatever he said would help. Instead Scott scowled, as if mentally arguing with himself.

"Stiles is a lot like you," he finally said. He disappeared out the front door before Noah could reply.

Noah stared after him, his stomach sour. That answer hadn't made him feel better, not even a little, but he'd figure this out soon enough. Perhaps, he reasoned, his aim here had been off. Maybe asking about the "fight" Stiles had supposedly been in wasn't the right direction.

"When did it start?" Noah muttered to himself, not for the first time.

He needed to look further back. Gerard Argent wasn't even in town when Stiles first started acting different. Granted, his psychopathic daughter had been…Noah pinched his brow, frustrated at himself for not considering what tied those things together. Derek Hale. Whose family was killed by said-Argent. And who had been wrongly accused of murder by Stiles Stilinski and Scott McCall.

Noah realized he was working this case all wrong. There was someone he should have spoken to before Scott.

"Hale."

By the fourth day, Stiles could barely smell the cats. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or if it was due to Freckles, an ancient orange and white tabby, finding his lap a more comfortable rest area than the newly assembled carpet trees his siblings, Fluffernutter and Jingle-Bella, had taken over. Stiles scooped up the large cat, gently moving him to a different spot on the sofa. Freckles didn't so much as twitch, which Stiles, frowning down at the guy, hoped wasn't an indicator that he was headed toward the big litter box in the sky.

"Oh, don't worry. Freckles still has a few years left in him, sweet boy," Ms. Rose crooned with a slow Southern lilt as she hobbled back into the room with a tray holding a glass of lemonade and a platter of snicker doodle cookies, "even if he is almost as old as his mamma."

Stiles stood up to stop the shaky tray from toppling forward and eased it down onto the coffee table. "You know, you really didn't have to. I could just come back another time." He trailed off as he noticed she hadn't moved from her spot, her hands folded over the too-high waist of her flower-y frock. He tilted his head in apology. "Thank you, Ms. Rose," he relented.

"That's a good boy." The woman gave him a sugary grin that made her eyes all but disappear under the thick plastic frames of her tinted glasses. "You've been such a good helper today, hanging those bird-feeders, cleaning my oven. And I hate that the girls are running you off before you've started on the floor boards-"

"Hate that," he chirped.

"-but you know how we blue hairs are with our gossip," she continued. "We simply must have our little meetings or the whole group gets cranky, but I think you've earned your cookies today, yes you have. Rue huffed and puffed, but I told Rue, I told her, and loudly, because her hearing is going, you know, 'Rue, the boy is paper thin. Heaven knows that nice sheriff doesn't have time to make him a snack every day.'"

Or to oversee my nap time, Stiles bit down. "I'd starve without you, Ms. Rose," he assured her.

"If I let you waste away on my watch, I'm sure I'd hear about it," she noted. She chuckled at her joke, but held her place, watching him over the rim of her glasses, her back hunched behind her. "Eat up now, before Dorothy decides she needs to go to the bathroom again. You know how her bowels are."

Stiles didn't.

"I heard that!" someone called from the kitchen.

"Well, I know you did, Dorothy," she muttered. "Rue's the one the deaf one." She shook her head. "They treat me like I'm senile sometimes, just because they're still knocking on ninety's door. I'm barely a decade older than them."

"And you can't tell it," Stiles said.

He made a show of taking a snicker doodle and biting into it. It was delicious, as was most of Rose's baking, which he knew already because she'd required him to take regular snack breaks after he maybe-sorta-painfully struggled with moving her sofa on day one. It was a bit of a kick in the nads when he'd realized she'd gone from calling him a "young buck" the first morning to "a sweet boy" before lunch. Despite his physique being a let-down, she'd still supplied him with a to-do list.

So kind of her to find a place for the weakling, he thought, but it was hard to maintain his bitterness. Despite the chores and the lack of proper air conditioning, he kind of enjoyed entertaining the old woman. Not that he was admitting as much.

Rose settled down in the chair across from him, humming contently, and Fluffernutter's yellow butt landed on the armrest beside her.

Stiles tried to quite the tiny part of him that thought maybe she was trying to fatten him up to eat; he chalked that up to Beacon Hills paranoia. He swallowed down the bite of cookie and started a second one. C'est la vie or whatever was French for "I hope Dad is eating healthier than I am."

"Hey, Rosie," because he'd realized there was no quicker way to her affections than nicknames, "have you lived in Sioux Falls for long?"

"Oh, no. Just the last thirty years or so," she assured. "We're from Georgia, my girls, moved up together we did. My lovely Beatrice was still with us back then." Her gaze was somewhat distance, a small, sad smile on her face. "We'd just had enough of the whole South by that point, moving around the state, trying to find a place to belong our whole lives. Soon as they saw us for what we were, the locals said they didn't want 'our kind' around. Called us all sorts of things. As if they didn't already know…Easy for people to turn a blind eye, I suppose, but my Bea, she was bold, even at our age, and she made it hard to keep our nature a secret."

Stiles raised a brow, hesitating mid-bite. A bit unexpected, he acknowledged, but now he was certain Rose wasn't inviting him over to look at his butt as he moved furniture. "Must have been tough. Back then, I mean. Being together… Yeah?"

"Hasn't gotten much better," Rose admitted, sounding disappointed. "But people here, as long as you don't call attention, they seem to leave well enough alone. We're happy here," she assured. "There are good people here. Like your aunt."

Stiles grinned. "She gets good ratings on Yelp," he agreed. At Rose's confusion, he leaned forward. "So, you were here when my uncle passed a few months ago?"

Rose frowned. "Such a tragedy. A bit out of the norm too, but it was good of them to keep it out of most the papers. We usually don't have problems like that around here."

"Like what? Like animal attacks?" Stiles asked

Rose opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, looking somewhat dazed. "Madness, wasn't it? Then again, I've seen stranger things in my life," she finally replied. She slowly pushed herself back up from her chair, grinning pleasantly again once she was standing. "Do take the rest home to the sheriff, sweet boy."

"And I really wish I could slam this phone down," Jody snapped at the cell phone. Not that anyone was on the other end of the conversation. She'd long since pressed the END button after a grumpy goodbye to her brother.

She looked up, somewhat abashed, but glad she was still sitting in her cruiser, where no one could hear her talking to herself. She realized she hadn't so much as left the parking lot and hoped that no one had noticed her rather animated one-sided conversation.

"Four days, Jody. You made it four days before living with a teenager drove you crazy." She snorted at her own words, because they weren't exactly fair. No, it was more likely Noah driving her nutty than Stiles.

But Stiles was doing his part. She groaned, leaning forward to let her forehead rest on her steering wheel. It wasn't that her nephew was actively trying to make her paranoid, but she was starting to understand why her brother was so adamant that the kid was hiding something important. Because he was. Hiding something. She'd been in law enforcement long enough to know when someone was being shifty. She just wasn't sure what that secret something might be.

Which had led her to calling Noah, which had led to the usual stilted arguments, but it was the part between that had her on edge. When Noah had first told her about the issues he'd been having with Stiles, he'd been decidedly vague, and she'd let it go. After all, even though they'd literally gone years without talking in the past, there was a time when they trusted each other completely. Plus, Jody didn't think she'd earned the right to details.

That, of course, had only satisfied her curiosity for so long, especially when Noah let slip that Stiles had been in the sheriff's department the night Beacon Hills had lost several fine deputies to a violent teenager with a weapon. The bones of the story were ones she'd heard on national news.

She'd decided not to mention it to Stiles outright. Instead she'd done a bit of research, and, okay, maybe she'd snooped a bit at Beacon County's crime rate and done a double take when she'd noted the murders committed over the past year, some of which had been attributed to a "mountain lion" who turned out to be a deranged woman in a few cases.

And, maybe, just maybe, her brother had just had a stroke of bad luck in his town, but her gut had twisted as soon as she'd read about incident after incident that didn't quite add up. Not too long ago, she would have just called it "bizarre" and not even considered it to be more than that, but those crimes…She didn't want to consider it, but there might have been something weird at work. Something supernatural even.

Jody took a shaky breath and sat back up straight, deciding she needed to do a bit of research before even considering such a thing. For the past few days, she'd worked extra hard to keep Stiles busy and out of trouble. Hopefully, he could entertain himself for a night alone while she looked over her brother's reports. If she was really lucky, she'd find nothing and her brother would never even know.

"Sorry, working late. If you order pizza, leave me a slice," she typed.

Sending the text to her nephew, she grabbed her bag from the passenger's seat and headed back toward her office.

"This is a terrible decision. Like a Derek Hale level of bad decision making," Stiles announced to the world. Yet, not a soul down the quiet neighborhood decided to stop him. He ran one hand over his head before continuing down the sidewalk to his Jeep. "But it's a decision I am making, apparently," he finished, hopping into the driver's seat.

He tossed his phone and a manila file in the passenger's seat and wished Scott was there to catch it. It just wasn't the same, doing something like this without him. Not that this choice, to visit a cemetery that reportedly lost some of its guests not too long back, was really in the same spectrum as waking up his best friend to search for half of a dead body. Well, maybe. Probably worse, he reasoned. This was probably worse, which was why it was good no one was there to stop him.

He'd stepped out of the shower, still certain he smelled like Ms. Rose's cat (a cat Jody had said Stiles wouldn't mind taking to the vet today), and noticed the message from his aunt. He'd blinked, surprised by the sudden opportunity to escape. The past few days had been non-stop chores for the elderly and one deputy's very pregnant wife, and his evenings had been taken up by Jody's insistence that they actually eat together and bonded by watching television together, like most red-blooded Americans. He'd reached the limits of what he could find out about Sean Mills from inside the house.

And this, the idea that somehow the cemetery that was vandalized the same week Sean was killed (murdered) was tied to the strange happenings that took place the night of his death, continued to haunt Stiles. His curiosity was an itch he couldn't quite scratch, and as his friends could attest, when he became obsessed with an idea, he had a hard time letting it go.

As he backed out the driveway, he noticed the purple horizon and groaned. He'd really hoped that when the opportunity to "escape" came knocking, it would be during daylight hours. Was that too much to ask?

The directions were easy enough to follow but getting turned around a few times bought him what little daylight had been left. By the time he found it, a waning moon hung in the sky and the rolling stretch of graves was invisible if not for the cut of his bright headlights. He killed the engine as soon as he realized he was parked at the right place, and then glanced around, looking for any sign that there was a caretaker at work.

Thankfully, there wasn't so much as a headlight in the distance. Not that he'd expect there to be since the county cemetery was off the beaten path, bordering a winding, lonely road. Stiles swallowed hard and slid out of the Jeep, not feeling particularly glad for his good fortune.

"Survival instinct. Need that," he muttered to himself.

A howl answered him and he flung himself back against his door, nearly jarring the life out of him. Resting a hand at his chest he twisted around, snatching his phone through the open window as "Bad Moon Rising" continued to play.

"Scotty, you're right. That was a terrible ringtone. I apologize for my poor taste," he answered, breathlessly.

Scott chuckled from the other end. "Dude, that's what you get. You said you'd call tonight. Am I interrupting something?"

"What?" Stiles sputtered "Why? Why would you think that?"

"Uh, because you're whispering right now, and I'm pretty sure I can hear your heart racing from here in California."

"I'm outside, and I don't want to wake the neighbors," Stiles answered. He definitely didn't want to wake any neighbors here. "Can I call you back?"

"Why are you outside?"

"Why wouldn't I be outside? I'm a grown man. I can go outside after daylight hours."

"Stiles."

"Scott."

"Stiles, are you doing something dangerous?"

"No," Stiles snapped, indignantly. "Technically, no. This is actually perfectly safe." Nevertheless, he gave the cemetery a wary glance and then slipped back into the Jeep, rolling up his window and locking the door. "So, Dad still bugging you?"

Scott sighed. "No. Not after that extremely awkward lunch. I swear, I really thought he knew when he brought up Gerard…But Mom said something about seeing your dad on her shift yesterday, and Derek said he had a missed call from the sheriff's department. I mean, it might not be your dad, but-"

Stiles' brow furrowed. "Wait. When did you talk to Derek?"

"I didn't. I ran into Isaac."

Stiles might not have been a werewolf with the ability to listen for racing heartbeats, but he'd known Scott long enough to hear the omission. "Ran into Isaac?"

"Isaac might have run into me. On purpose. He says Derek didn't send him though."

Stiles opened his mouth to remind Scott of how many lying liars were werewolf-shaped in Beacon Hills, realized where he was standing, and thought better of it since he was currently playing the role of lying liar. He let go of his slight grudge for the moment. "So, no word from Boyd and Erica?"

"Not as far as I could tell. I tried to ask Isaac about them, but he seemed…I don't know. Hesitant. I think he was hiding something."

Stiles filed that away for later. Despite the somewhat mixed feelings he had for the betas, he hoped Erica and Boyd had made it somewhere safer than Beacon Hills after Allison's dad had freed them from the other hunters.

"So if he wasn't there to talk about his pack, why did Isaac orchestrate a cute-meet with you?"

"A what?" Scott asked. "I don't know. He just said he could tell I was… I mean, I guess it's because I'm a lone wolf."

Stiles frowned. Because Scott was alone. Because Scott was lonely. So much so that Isaac could tell. Stiles felt a twist in his gut.

"If I left now, I could be back there in twenty-four hours. I mean, I might need to pull some gas money from my bank account, but I can-"

"Stiles, stop, no." Scott sighed. "As much as I want you back in town, I think that would make this thing between you and your dad worse."

Stiles jerked his head back against the seat angrily, peeved when there wasn't much of a headrest to aid in his dramatics.

"The lone wolf dies," he said, quietly.

"I'm not alone," Scott assured. "And just because you're a few states away doesn't make you any less, you know, pack or whatever."

"Look at you, using the jargon." Stiles forced a small grin onto his face. "Fine. Listen I need to go. Back inside. Promise. Talk later?"

He could hear the smile Scott was wearing. "Yes. Good. Inside is good. 'Night, man."

Stiles tossed the phone down beside him and gave the manila folder under it a long look before rolling his eyes. He could still go out there, look up the names, and if it had been pre-wolf-friend Stiles, he might have.

"I guess the graves aren't going anywhere," he reasoned, and turned the key to the Jeep.

Nothing happened. He twisted it again, listening. There was a slight click from somewhere under the hood.

"Come on, Roscoe, don't fail me now." He winced when the engine didn't so much as sputter. "Don't panic. Nothing a wrench can't fix," he assured himself.

After popping the hood and going through his usual ritual of hitting things with said-wrench, he kicked at the closest tire. "Of course! Of course now is when you refuse to start for me! I try to make a good decision to not search the creepy graveyard and what happens? I get stuck in the creepy graveyard."

He picked up his phone but only frowned at his reflection in its slick black surface. He couldn't call Jody. She'd want to know why he was in a cemetery in the first place. Then she'd tell his dad. Best case scenario, she'd think he was buying weed from shady graveyard dealers. Worse case, she'd realize he was investing his uncle's death. Yeah, no.

That only left him with the option of calling for a tow or a taxi, and considering he hadn't seen one of the latter in days…Tow truck. That reminded him of something. He'd thrown on a dirty pair of jeans in his haste to get out of the house. He patted down the right pocket, finding the business card there, and scrambled to dial the number.

"Who the hell is it?" a voice barked.

Stiles raised a brow. He could hear another phone line ringing in the background. "Uh, I was calling about a tow?"

"A tow? How'd you even get this number?"

Stiles flicked the card with his middle finger, suddenly regretting his second poor decision of the evening. "It was on your business card. I mean, I know it says you're a salvage yard, but I thought maybe you could give my Jeep a tow somewhere. Like, anywhere, really?"

"Bullshit. I haven't used business cards or been listed in the phone book in years. Now answer the first question."

"If you're not in business, you could have just said so," Stiles said. "My aunt had your card, ok? Sorry for wasting your time."

"Your aunt?" The voice cut him off. "I gave an old card to Jody Mills not long back. Heard she had a boy staying with her now. That you?"

Stiles grimaced. He had a feeling that keeping knowledge of his field trip from Jody was not going to be easy. "Yeah, this is Stiles. Stiles Stilinski."

"Stiles, huh? Bobby Singer." The man cleared his throat. "Where you at, kid?"

"There's this old cemetery off of Snakesmith…"

"You're shitting me?"

"I shit you not, sir," Stiles chirped back. "I was, uh, pulled over, looking at something, and my Jeep wouldn't start."

"Sure."

Singer ended the call before Stiles could reply. "So that means you're coming, right?"

He stared at his phone a long minute before forcing himself to look at the dark wilderness outside. The moon's frail light was just bright enough to show a black treeline a few hundred yards into the distance. He imagined what could be in those trees, waiting for him to step back outside, and a chill ran over him.

Surely Singer wouldn't leave him out there. Not if he knew Aunt Jody, right? Stiles frowned at the thought. What if Singer knew her but didn't care for her? Stiles had assumed she had the man's card because he knew LEO were always using tow truck drivers to scrap salvage after accidents, but what if the guy had been a suspect or someone Jody had questioned about a suspect?

But what were the chances that she'd leave his card laying around, if he were someone dangerous? Stiles considered his luck of late and swallowed hard.

"Everything happens for a reason," he assured himself, "and sometimes that reason is because you're stupid and make bad choices…Scott is going to kill me if I die tonight."