A/N: Warning: this chapter contains non-graphic discussions of the sexual abuse of a child and underage prostitution.
Isaac spends the next two weeks in a state of acute paranoia. Every time he opens his door at the end of the day he expects to see the gray-haired woman standing there with a sword, ready to finish the job. He may have gotten on a couple kids' bad sides in LA, especially after he became a werewolf, but no one has ever tried to kill him before. Also, Stiles keeps glaring at him in the hallways, like Isaac stole his girl, and it's extremely irritating. He supposes he should be glad that Scott doesn't seem all that interested in him, but he's still infuriated that they actually saved his life. He doesn't want to be in Scott's debt, well, he doesn't want to be in anyone's debt, but the fact that it's Scott just makes it worse. He'll never be able to pay that shit back.
School only gets worse. As February arrives, so do parent-teacher conferences, resulting in a lot of awkward conversations with his teachers explaining, that no, he doesn't have parents, and no, he can't come to meet with them anyway about his dismal grades because he has to work that night.
Work is the only silver-lining in all of this mess. The Sheriff's Station did apparently call Mr. Park and blatantly made up some bullshit about Isaac assisting on the case of the woman he saved. Mr. Park reluctantly takes him back with the caveat that next time he not be a fucking hero and let someone else intervene in attempted murders. Isaac is surprised that they actually went through with calling his boss, even more so that they left out the part about them arresting him for attempted murder, but he still hasn't entirely forgiven them for locking him up for the night and half the next day and he won't anytime soon.
Still, just when things seem to get back to normal, or whatever passes for normal in his life, something entirely unexpected occurs. And not something supernatural. Something to do with actual real life.
The knock comes on his door less than five minutes after he'd come back from school. Isaac is in the middle of making ramen in the microwave, stomach growling impatiently, and he frowns, looking towards the door cautiously. Had they finally came back to kill him?
He closes his eyes and focuses his other senses. He can hear two heartbeats, one faster than the other, but that smell...
His eyes snap open. That smell-!
Isaac flies out of the kitchen and into the living room, pulling the front door open quickly. "Chantille?" he says incredulously.
Chantille Edwards looks shocked at his ability to identify her before he even opened the door, but then her face softens and she offers him a weary smile. "Damn, boy, I almost forgot about your creepy sixth sense."
On Isaac's stoop with her is a little girl who can only be her sister. She has the same dark skin and wide doe eyes as Chantille, her hair pulled back into two small poofy pigtails. She's wearing a red polo and khaki pants, a school uniform, and is clutching Chantille's hand tightly, looking up at Isaac with unveiled suspicion.
"What...what are you doing here?" Isaac says, completely thrown. This is the last place he'd expect to see Chantille.
Chantille heaves her duffel bag further up onto her shoulder. "Yeah, about that," she says with a winning smile. "I was wondering if I could ask you a favor."
He hasn't seen Chantille in about four months. She'd been his foster sister when he'd temporarily lived in a foster home two years ago, about six months after he became a werewolf. Their personalities couldn't have been any different and as a result, they hadn't actually gotten on that well in the beginning. Chantille was energetic, mischievous, and sexually-forward, even at thirteen, while Isaac had been introverted, sarcastic, and suspicious of everyone and everything. But they had been the two oldest foster children, with three elementary school-aged foster siblings, and increasingly harried foster parents, and for a while they had been a team. Even after Isaac got sent back to the group home, he'd still see her occasionally. Sadly enough, she's probably the closest thing to a friend he's got.
He's always known Chantille had a little sister; she'd certainly talked about her enough. She'd been placed elsewhere, but Chantille had often gone to see her and always swore she would get custody of her when she turned eighteen. He's never met her before though.
Chantille's sister sits on his couch eating his cup ramen, keeping her eyes fixed on her food while Isaac looks dubiously into the fridge.
"I have...uh...applesauce and frozen burritos," Isaac says taking them out and putting them on the counter top. "Some mac and cheese too, but I don't have butter or milk...I was going to go shopping tonight."
Chantille nods distractedly. "Thanks," she says, smiling at him. "It's just a couple days, I promise. We just needed to get out of LA"
Isaac looks at her carefully. The last time he'd seen her Chantille's hair was in braids. Now it's relaxed, nearly touching her shoulders. It and the way she carries herself makes her look older. Isaac is not entirely sure that's a good thing.
"What happened?" he asks quietly, leaning against the counter next to the fridge.
Chantille shrugs. "Just...some crazy shit went down and we had to bail," she says easily.
"Where are you headed?"
"Seattle."
Isaac stares. "Seattle? What the fuck are you going to do in Seattle?" Another thought occurs to him. "Chantille, did you kidnap your sister and-"
"Yeah, what of it," Chantille says giving him an unimpressed look, crossing her arms over her worn jean jacket. "Not like anyone will give a shit. And we'll be gone before anyone here notices, so don't worry about it coming back on you."
"That's not what I meant!"
"Just a couple days," Chantille repeats, ignoring his concerns. "And...I might need to borrow some cash. Some asshole stole most of it on the way here. But don't worry, I'm good for it."
Isaac stares at her. Something is wrong. There's no way Chantille would just up and leave LA, taking her younger sister with her hundreds of miles north to a city she's never been to before, and doesn't know anyone at. She's always been kind of impulsive, but she'd never do anything this crazy without a reason.
"Hey, don't look like that now," Chantille says, giving him an easy smile. "I'll make it worth your while."
And she steps closer, reaching her hand out to tug at the belt loops on his left hip.
Isaac goes very still and then reaches down to grab her hand and pull it away.
"Don't," he snarls, but inside there's a horrible numbness growing as he realizes the implications of her actions. "I told you not to do that shit."
Chantille sighs, stepping back, looking completely unruffled. "Should've known you'd still be Snow White. See what I get for trying to do you a favor."
"You don't need to sleep with me to stay here," Isaac says sharply, still feeling sick. "Don't you ever fucking think that."
Chantille goes very still and for the first time since her arrival she seems to lose her confidence. Her shoulders slump the tiniest amount and she gives a jerky nod, not looking at him.
"Chantille," Isaac says, leaning over a bit, trying to see her face. Chantille barely reaches five feet, making him more than a foot taller than her. "What happened?"
Chantille lets out a bitter laugh. "What's the thing you always used to tell me? Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to? Yeah, that sounds about right."
Isaac does his best to clean up Camden's room for Chantille and Latisha. Latisha, who still looks at Isaac like she's expecting him to pull a knife on her, refuses to let Chantille out of her sight. This doesn't bode well, but Chantille won't give him a straight answer on exactly what happened. In addition to being a skilled liar, it doesn't help that Chantille knows he can tell truth from a blatant falsehood and gives him vague replies that he cannot make heads or tail of. Latisha, who appears to be about eight or nine, barely speaks at all. Dinner is a very strange affair. Isaac hasn't eaten dinner with other people in this house since he was eleven and it's even more surreal eating with people from LA, two halves of his life that he's always had trouble reconciling.
Chantille won't let him do the dishes, which strikes Isaac as odd considering how she'd always hated doing them when they lived together, and insists that he go about his usual routine as if she and her sister weren't even there. Isaac doesn't have the heart to tell her that he'd planned to go to the library to study before work. She won't tell him anything she wants him to pick up either, and she and Latisha have retreated upstairs to bed by the time he leaves for work.
Isaac returns from work with extra strength floor cleaner and spends nearly an hour trying to scrub his blood out of the living room floor. He should've done this weeks ago, but he'd been so busy lately, and it wasn't like he's thought he'd be having guests of the non-murderous variety. But while neither Chantille nor Latisha seemed to notice it this time, it is quite clearly blood, and if they're going to be spending more time here he has to minimize the things he can't explain.
Chantille and Latisha are both still asleep when he looks in on them before he leaves for school in the morning. They must have been exhausted because the windows in Camden's room face east and Isaac had to get rid of the curtains when he'd moved back in because there had been something growing in them, so there's sunlight streaming through them without obstruction.
Leaving the house with the prospect of someone waiting for him when he comes home is a strange sensation. Isaac spends far too much thought on what could have possibly happened that would make Chantille run away with her sister. And why to Seattle of all places? How is she going to survive there? Chantille is fifteen and she looks it. Isaac doubts anyone will believe she is an adult, much less that she'd gotten custody of her younger sister without a job or a place to live. Worse, the phantom touch of her fingers on his jeans keeps coming back to him, and the implications of her offer make his skin crawl.
It's not like it's the first time that Chantille's come on to him, though. Back when they'd lived together Isaac made the mistake of admitting that he had no experience with girls, and Chantille, amused at the idea that he was a virgin, decided that popping his cherry was a brilliant idea. She'd gone about it in the worst way possible though, and one night Isaac had woken up to find her in bed with him, her hands up his shirt. She was thirteen and he was fifteen, he was bigger and taller than her, and also a werewolf, but she'd still scared the shit out of him. He'd freaked out, thinking he was back in the group home and practically fell out of the window trying to get away from her. She'd apologized later, because of how badly he took it, but he could tell that she didn't really understand what she'd done wrong. The idea of a man not wanting sex never seemed to have occurred to her.
Isaac comes back from school to find Latisha lying on his living room floor coloring on a yellow notepad with colored pencils. She looks up at him warily as he opens the door, one hand flat on the floor, elbow bent, as if ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"Uh, hi," Isaac says awkwardly, putting his jacket over the back of the couch. His new jacket, after that old bitch had stabbed him with a sword, ruining the old one, and that black animal doctor had cut his hoodie off. Who the fuck does that? Did he really need the five seconds it would've taken to take it off. Sure, he saved his life, but Isaac's still pissed about having to walk back home without a shirt. He'd gotten some really weird looks.
"Hi," Latisha mutters, barely speaking above a whisper. Her heart rate increases and she looks like she expects Isaac to start yelling at her.
"Where's your sister?" he asks, hoping she'll calm down once Chantille's back in the room.
"Bathroom."
Right. Isaac goes into the kitchen to get a drink, but he stops when he gets to the doorway. Stares. His kitchen is so clean it's practically shining. Isaac has never seen his kitchen so clean, even when his dad used to make him clean it after he threw plates at his head and threatened to lock him in the freezer if it wasn't good enough. Chantille must have been really bored today. He opens the fridge and grabs a drink of Hawaiian Punch. When he puts the bottle back he catches sight of the juice boxes he'd bought last night and grabs one too. Kids like juice boxes, right?
"Hey, you want one?" he asks, showing her the brightly colored package.
Latisha shakes her head slowly, and sits up, carefully moving backward so that she's leaning against the couch, not taking her eyes off him for a second.
Great. Well, that's pretty much the extent of his moves. Isaac's had a lot of experience with dealing with kids, even really annoying kids, like Marcos, who was in possession of the filthiest mouth Isaac has ever encountered, kid or adult, but he's never had to deal with one who was this afraid of him before.
He gets out his homework and sits in his dad's seat at the kitchen table so he can look out into the living room while he attempts to solve the mystery that is his Physics lab. Latisha goes back to coloring, but she looks up at him every few minutes, as if she doesn't want to lose track of him. She catches him watching her after about ten minutes and her hand tightens on her blue pencil, eyes going wide and fearful.
Isaac looks back down at his homework, inexplicably ashamed. What the fuck, he thinks angrily, he was just looking. It isn't like he did anything wrong. Where was Chantille anyway? It has to have been at least ten minutes since he'd come home.
He knows better than to try and use his werewolf hearing when someone's in the bathroom, so he heads back through the living room to climb the stairs. The upstairs bathroom door isn't closed and when Isaac reaches the top of the stairs, he turns to see Chantille on her hands and knees next to the toilet, scrubbing at the black mold at its base furiously.
"What are you doing?" he asks, bewildered.
"This house is full of some gross shit," she says, not even looking up. There's a bucket full of soapy water and a pile of rags next to her. Isaac doesn't recognize either of them or the scrub brush she's using on the toilet.
"Where did you get those?" he demands, heart in his throat. If she went in the basement, if she saw the freezer...
Chantille looks up at him strangely. "They were in the back of the pantry, why?"
"Not in the basement?" Isaac asks, his voice tight. "You didn't go in the basement?"
"No..." Chantille says slowly. "Why? What's in the basement?"
"Nothing," Isaac snaps, feeling pathetic at how relieved he is. "Don't fucking down there, understand?"
"What's in the base-"
"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to," Isaac says automatically, and it's weird how easily it rolls off his tongue even after all these months.
Chantille rolls her eyes and goes back to scrubbing the toilet without comment. A couple seconds pass and Isaac regrets his outburst. How the fuck was Chantille supposed to know about the basement? No one knows about the basement other than his social worker and Isaac intends to keep it that way.
"Chantille, why you cleaning the house?" he asks tightly.
"Boy, your mold has mold. And it's so dusty in here. Latisha be sneezing, for real."
Isaac is not convinced. He knows for a fact Chantille and Latisha spent the earlier part of their lives squatting with their crackhead mother in South Central. She is certainly no stranger to neglected housekeeping, and besides, she was messy enough when they lived together.
"You don't have to do that," he mutters awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Get your white ass out of here," she says shortly, not bothering to look up at him this time. "Don't you have homework or some shit?"
Isaac sighs and makes his retreat. He'd forgotten how bossy Chantille could be.
Latisha is watching him when he comes back down.
"How long Chantille been cleaning?" he asks her.
Latisha shrugs, not looking at him directly. "I dunno. Hours."
"Did she feed you?"
"Yeah," Latisha mumbles, scribbling again. "Mac and cheese."
Isaac clenches his jaw and grabs his jacket. He doesn't have to deal with this shit. He has way too much homework, is failing two classes, and has work in a couple hours. He has no patience to figure out exactly why Chantille's decided to go all Mr. Clean, like she some kept bitch.
"Yo, Chantille, I'm going to the library and then work after," he yells up the stairs, putting on his backpack. "There's frozen meatballs in the freezer and noodles in the pantry if you want 'em."
"Finally," he hears her mutter and alright, that stings a bit.
"Bitch, I can hear you!" he says before he can think better of it.
"Fuck off!" she yells and he can still hear her scrubbing, though he thinks it's the bathtub now.
Isaac lets out an irritated growl and resists slamming the door behind him when he goes.
He spends a couple hours at the library and then goes directly to work when it closes, sitting in his car eating Beacon Hills' sorry excuse for Mexican take-out in the parking lot while he waits for his shift to start. He doesn't want to go home. This is just so fucking typical, he thinks, rubbing at a stain of chipotle sauce on his Geometry homework, of course Chantille shows up and in less than a day runs him out of his own fucking house. If this is what it's going to be like while she's here then it's going to be a long couple days.
His shift is as slow as it usually is, with only a couple people coming in to buy beer or snacks, and Isaac actually finishes his Geometry. Whether any of it is even remotely correct is anyone's guess. But just when he's trying to do the incomprehensible reading for Economics, butch girl walks in. She sees him at about the same time he sees her and for an awkward couple seconds they just stare at each other.
"What are you doing here?" she asks suspiciously, not even bothering to lower her voice and luckily there's no one else in the shop.
"Well, I'm behind the counter wearing a name tag," Isaac says sarcastically, glaring at her. "It's a real fucking whodunit, isn't it?"
"Excuse me?" she says angrily, stepping forward.
The hair rises on the back of Isaac's neck. It's similar to the feeling he gets around Scott. She's definitely a werewolf and that means that Stiles definitely isn't. He still doesn't know about the hot redhead, though.
"Are you going to buy something?" he asks, glad that Mr. Park decided to leave early today.
Butch girl growls and flashes her eyes at him. They're not gold like his or red like Scott's. They're blue. What the fuck is with all these different colors?
"Bitch, I have button under here that is a direct line to the police. I don't care if you are a werewolf, if you start something I will press it."
She gives him a furious look. "You'd better watch your back," she tells him, grabs a bag of beef jerky, and then walks out without paying.
"Hey!" Isaac yells at her furiously, vaulting over the counter, but she gets into a car that's waiting for her right outside of the door, some old white guy that's probably her dad in the front seat, and he drives off without noticing Isaac.
"Bitch!" he says aloud, hoping she can hear him.
He should totally call the police. The beef jerky was under three bucks, but it would serve her right and probably get her in trouble with her dad. And now that he thinks about it, do her parents know that she's a werewolf? Do Scott's? The Sheriff clearly knows, but that might be just because of all of the murd-and oh, fuck, he can't call the police on her. Her friend's dad is the motherfucking Sheriff.
It's only later that he realizes that his conversation with her was the first time he'd ever said the word werewolf out loud.
He doesn't particularly feel like going home after work. The full moon is coming up in a few days and Isaac is already antsy, the desire to just run already thrumming through his veins. It's probably a pretty stupid idea, but he doesn't want to deal with Chantille's issues right now, so he goes to the Beacon Hills Forest Preserve and spends a couple hours wandering around the moonlit forest. It's such a nice forest, he thinks regretfully. Not too dense, with nice tall trees with thick canopies and no ponds to fall in, only a little creek. He really wishes he could spend full moons here.
He starts to get tired around two and reluctantly heads back home. Pulling into the driveway, he focuses his hearing, hoping that Chantille's not still cleaning shit, and hears...crying.
It's Chantille, who Isaac has never heard or seen cry in his life, not counting the time she laughed at him for five minutes straight after he accidentally put dish soap in the dishwasher instead of detergent and it bubbled out all over the floor of their foster home. Isaac shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He doesn't really know what to do. It seems wrong to just pretend he can't hear her, but it feels equally as wrong to try and comfort her. Like he's violating her privacy, akin to walking in on her having sex.
She sounds...pretty fucking miserable, though and after a minute Isaac gets out of the car. He shuts the front door quietly behind him and walks carefully down the hall to the downstairs bathroom, rapping his knuckles on the wooden door.
"Chantille?"
She stops sobbing and gives a panicked hiccup. "Don't come in!" she says, sounding terrified.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, just leave me alone!"
Isaac lets out an annoyed grunt and leans his forehead against the door frame. "C'mon, open the door."
"Fuck off!"
Isaac tries the door. It's locked.
"Isaac, don't," she says, a sob still in her voice even as she tries to sound angry. "Just let me be!"
"Open the door or I'm going to tear the doorknob off," Isaac says firmly, allowing no room for argument in his tone.
A few seconds pass and then she gets up and unlocks the door with a click. Isaac waits until she sits back down before opening the door. Chantille is sitting with her back against the wall, between the toilet and the sink, her head buried in her knees. Isaac closes the door behind him and sits down in front of her, with his back to the sink cabinet.
She's silent for a while and now that he's here Isaac doesn't really know what to do. Should he try and get her to talk about it? Hug her? Isaac has never been good with crying people, even kids.
"I am so stupid," she sobs all of the sudden, after nearly a minute of silence. "Isaac, I am so fucking stupid."
Chantille sits back up, eyes puffy and red from crying. She unfolds her arms from her lap and Isaac sees that she's holding a small orange pill bottle.
"What're those for?" he asks.
Chantille takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes tightly. "Latisha," she whimpers.
Isaac swallows. "She sick?"
Chantille lets out another sob and then nods her head. "About six months ago, when I went to see her, she kept complaining 'bout her stomach hurting. Her foster mother wasn't doing nothing, so I took her to the free clinic and...and..." Chantille squeezes her eyes shut, shaking so badly that Isaac's afraid she might hurt herself. "He was fucking her, Isaac. He was fucking my baby sister and he gave her the clap! And I didn't...and I d-didn't even n-no-notice!" She buries her face in her knees again and sobs, but Isaac isn't focusing on that. Instead he finds himself automatically seeking out Latisha's heartbeat, slow and steady in sleep.
No wonder, he thinks, feeling ill, no wonder she was so afraid of him.
"You," he starts and then has to try again, his throat is so dry. "You tell anyone?"
"I told everyone!" Chantille cries, voice muffled by her jeans. "I told social services, I told Mr. and Mrs. Moore, I told her foster mother, but none of them be-believed me. 'Cause of the thieving and the not going to school. And 'cause when we went into the system I kept trying to get them to let us stay together. They...they thought I was just saying that so Latisha could stay with me."
Isaac reaches out slowly and grips Chantille's shoulder. She just starts shaking harder.
"You should have told me," Isaac says numbly. "I could've-"
"What? Beat him up? They'd have had your ass down in juvie so fast and nothing would've changed," she says, and then her voice goes hard. "I thought about killing him. I really did. Thought about all the ways I could do it. But it was better just to run."
Isaac stares blankly at the bathroom wall, hand still on Chantille's shoulder. Christ, she was eight years old. Isaac was lucky. He'd never been raped. But there were others in the group home who had, who were even easier targets than Isaac was. And they were never quite right afterward.
"But I needed money first."
Isaac goes very still, feeling like he'd been dunked in ice water. His mouth drops open, but no noise comes out of his mouth. His hand slips off her shoulder.
"I tried...I tried to get a job first, but they don't hire no one under seventeen. And so I thought...tricking, just for a couple months. Can't be too bad. I was free-lancing for a while, but then Daryl and his crew found out and they-"
Isaac feels his eyes beginning to water and wipes them away quickly, but Chantille still sees.
"Yeah," she says with a watery smile. "Yeah, they...they fucked me up good. And then I had to give them their cut, fuck who they told me to fuck, and it was just...just really..."
Isaac shuts his eyes and takes a shaky breath. "So...so, when I saw you last, right before Thanksgiving...and the time before that, you were..."
He trails off, unable to continue.
You should've told me, he thinks helplessly. I could've done something. I could've helped. You didn't have to carry this alone.
"I'm not...I don't regret it," she says firmly, wiping her eyes. "I don't, just to get her away from that...that piece of shit. I'd do it all again if I had to."
Isaac lets his head fall back against the wooden cabinet and looks up at the ceiling. For a few minutes neither of them say anything.
"Chantille," he says quietly, something tightening in his chest in realization. "Why Seattle?"
"I wanted to get out of California," she says, truthfully. "If we get picked up maybe they won't figure out who were are and send us back to LA."
"But why Seattle? What are you going to do there? How are you going-"
"Isaac," Chantille whispers, big doe eyes wide and sad, "don't ask questions you don't want the answer to."
Isaac snaps his head forward to look at her head-on. "Well, I'm asking, ain't I? So that must mean I want the answer."
Chantille looks away, at the toilet bowl instead of answering.
"Chantille-"
"It's easier there, I heard," she says softly. "Free-lancing. Less gangs. Girl on the street with me said there's lots of runaways too."
Isaac grits his teeth and shuts his eyes. When he opens them a few seconds later he focuses on the bathroom wall again.
"Stay here," he says hoarsely.
There is a pause.
"What?"
"Don't go to Seattle," Isaac says, turning to look at her, rubbing his eyes again. "Stay here."
Chantille's mouth falls open a little, face twisting up in confusion. "Isaac, I can't-"
"You can," he says, leaning forward determinedly. "You stay here, you hear? I don't...I don't want you going there."
Chantille is tiny. Moving to a new city, tricking in a new city, with her younger sister to take care of? The odds of her being dead before eighteen are too high. Beacon Hills might have crazy supernatural murders, but Isaac will take that any day over the sick motherfuckers that pick up fifteen year old girls. He can protect her here. He has to.
Chantille looks lost, an expression so foreign on her face that it makes her look near unrecognizable.
"I can't-" she whispers.
"You can," he repeats and then she's crying again.
This time he doesn't even have to think about scooting forward on the bathroom floor to pull her into his arms.
"I'm so stupid," she sobs, bringing up her hands to clutch at his shoulders.
"No, you're not," he says, bringing an arm around her waist and shifting so that her face presses into the juncture between his neck and shoulder.
They end up awkwardly hunched together on his bathroom floor, Chantille crying into his shoulder while he strokes her back and tries not to cry himself.
"We're going to be living with Isaac now," Chantille explains to Latisha softly at the kitchen table the next morning over breakfast. Isaac doesn't usually eat breakfast, but Latisha's a kid, so she probably needs it, right?
Latisha glances up at him over her toast and then quickly looks away. "Okay," she mumbles, picking at a stray thread on her red polo. She's been wearing it the last three days and Isaac is pretty sure she doesn't have any other clothes. Did Chantille just pick her up after school and then run?
Isaac gets out his wallet right before he walks out the front door and shells out five twenties, handing them to Chantille. "Here, go out and buy her some new clothes today, okay?"
Chantille shakes her head. "No, Isaac, I can't, that's too much-"
"It's just gas money," Isaac lies, thrusting the money at her again. "I'll just bike around for a few days. This town ain't that big anyhow."
"Isaac, you sure this is alright? I mean, Latisha and me living here too?" Chantille says, uncharacteristically nervous. "I don't wanna be a problem for-"
"Nah, it's cool," Isaac reassures her, grabbing her hand and sticking the money in it. "I got this big house with only me living in it." A thought occurs to him and he takes out another twenty. "Here, get whatever you want to eat for the next couple days, too. Just be careful, they got some weird expensive food at the grocery, so just watch the prices."
Chantille nods seriously. "Yeah, okay, thanks," she says quietly, clutching the money tightly in her small hand.
"You remember the way downtown?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, I'll see you a bit after three," he says, taking his house key off his key ring and handing it to her. "Just be back before then."
He opens the door and is just about to close it before he pauses, considering.
"What?"
"Just a heads up," he says slowly, turning around. "This town. It's kinda weird."
Chantille frowns. "What do you mean? Weird how?"
"Weird weird," Isaac says meaningfully, hoping he won't have to spell it out. They've never had a conversation about this before.
Chantille swallows. "Like weird as in...your kind of weird?"
"Yeah," Isaac says, even though he resents being associated with the shit show that is Beacon Hills. "Just...don't let your guard down because it looks like a small town for rich people. Weird shit happens here, you feel me?"
"Okay..." Chantille replies, still looking bewildered, but that's the great thing about Chantille. She doesn't ask the questions another person would, questions she doesn't want to know the answer to, things Isaac doesn't want to explain.
"See you," he says, and then goes around the house to the garage to get his bike.