Chapter Ten

It would be easy for Stiles to say he has the worst headache of his life, given what feels like a stampede of horses trampling his cerebellum. But as someone who has spent two days in the trunk of a car and endured fairly severe wolfsbane poisoning, it actually isn't. It's close, though. When he opens his eyes, everything swirls and swoops around him. He feels kind of nauseous.

"Hey." It's Derek's low rumble. Stiles blinks at him, trying to make his vision focus. "Don't try to move. You hit your head pretty hard."

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and manages to say, "Tell me that for once I'm not in the fucking hospital."

"No," Derek says, "although if you'd taken five more minutes to wake up, you would've been on your way."

"Oh." Stiles thinks about this. It's difficult. "Bully for me, then." He tries to sit up, and another wave of nausea sweeps over him. "Oh, God. What happened?" He's trying to take in his surroundings now. He's lying on his back on a thin carpet. "Fuck, are we still at Stone's?"

"Yeah," Derek says. "We've been trying to wake you for about five minutes now."

"Hey." Stiles reaches up with one fumbling hand and tries to give Derek a reassuring pat on the cheek. He ends up kind of groping at his nose and then letting his hand thud back to the floor. The move makes him nauseous again, but he tries to reassure Derek that he's okay. His lupa is panicking, and that's never good – but then he realizes that he can feel Derek's panic, that the pack bond has been restored. He sits up, shooting upwards, and says, "It worked?"

"Uh . . . sort of?" Scott says, from his side of the room. "I mean, you didn't so much purify that thing as perform a nuclear strike on it, but it seems to have done the trick."

"Shit." Stiles looks over at the web – or the remnants of it. It's blackened and charred. Most of the strings are broken, and the photographs unrecognizable. The nails holding it together are bent and twisted, and the board is split in half. "That's not really what I was trying to do . . . but at least it worked. Where's Stone?"

"He took off," Allison says. "He was just toying with us – batting my arrows out of the air, using his magic to create illusions – once he got Scott and Derek to collide with each other, which would have been hilarious under other circumstances. But then you did that, and he went flying just as hard as you did. He looked winded, hurt, and all three of us went after him at once – "

"But that asshole jumped out the window and then he was just fucking gone," Scott concludes grimly.

"Shit." Stiles rubs both hands over his face. "Well, it didn't exactly go as planned, but at least we managed to get rid of this piece of shit."

"He can just make another," Derek growls.

"He won't," Stiles says. "It's a game, remember? Where's the fun in playing the same trick twice? Now we just have to worry about the purity of a soul on the edge, whatever the fuck that means."

Derek sighs. Then he gets an arm underneath Stiles and gets him back on his feet. Stiles is steadying out now; the pain has receded to manageable levels and the nausea is gone. He's exhausted, though. Flat-out exhausted like he just ran a marathon, and suddenly starving. He wonders if this is how the wolves feel after healing a severe injury. All he wants to do is eat and sleep.

His wolves clearly know as much, as they are now inclined to fuss. They haul the remains of the web down to the Jeep and then head back to Derek's apartment, where Stiles is absolutely not allowed in the kitchen. He's put on the sofa and told by several snarling wolves to stay there. He sighs and obeys. Despite the fact that it's barely even nine o'clock in the morning, they start making sandwiches. Stiles eats two ham and cheese and then turkey with tomato and avocado before falling asleep.

He wakes up to a long series of text messages from Justin. 'Ok, so, I talked to the guys and nobody here knows much about Stone specifically. But I compiled a list of shit you should know when fighting a sorcerer. Here it comes.

Don't look one in the eyes

Don't let them have anything that belongs to you

Or blood or hair or whatever

Don't even let them have a picture of you if you can help it

Magic works best line-of-sight, so if he wants to do anything too harsh he'd have to be close to you

(unless he has your hair or some shit)

try to get protective charms if you can

then he can affect things around you but he can't directly affect you

Rindi's gonna send you an e-mail with some places you can get some

There's some herb gunk he knows about that'll help you see through illusions

Mei says sorcerers in China have been known to summon demons (not like religious Satan-style demons, but like monster type demons, I dunno much about Chinese mythology)

They'll act like they can read your mind, but don't let that fool you, they can't do that

But some of them can deal in dreams, there's magic that lets you see someone else's dreams or even send them a dream or appear in their dreams'

The last line of the text is, 'That's all I've got for now. Keep me posted. I'd say give me a shout if shit really hits the fan but we're doing a trial in Africa right now so I couldn't make it there. Peace.'

Stiles relates all of this to the others, who find it interesting, and then gets Ravinder's e-mail. The closest place he knows of where they could get legitimate protection charms (presuming that they don't want to just ask Dr. Deaton for them) is in Los Angeles. Stiles looks at the clock. It's after three; he slept over six hours. Not enough time for them to get to LA and back if they want to get any sleep before school tomorrow. Unfortunately, Ravinder is clear that in order to get powerful ones, each person should be present when they are made so they can be personalized. So it isn't as simple as sending Derek to pick up a batch of them.

After a few minutes to consider, he calls Dr. Deaton. "Let me know if I'm bothering you," he says.

He can practically hear Dr. Deaton's smile. "Like I said, I'll do anything I can to help. What's on your mind?"

"A friend has suggested getting protection charms. Would it be worth it?"

Deaton hms for a minute. "It certainly couldn't hurt," he says. "It would at least put some limits on what a warlock could do to you, particularly from a distance."

"Yeah, my friend said that he would basically be limited to affecting the world around us, instead of affecting us specifically. And since our surroundings change rapidly, he'd have to actually be near us to pull off anything effective. Does that sound accurate?"

"Yes, that's fairly accurate."

"Cool. Do you have time tomorrow that I could come see you about something?"

"It would have to be after my office hours in the evening."

"That's cool," Stiles says. "I have school. Six o'clock okay?" he asks. Deaton says that's fine, so they say good bye and hang up. "Okay, kids," Stiles says, "we're going to the City of Angels."

Half the people in the room immediately look at their watches. "We won't make it back 'til really late," Erica says. "I've been to LA a bunch of times for testing and stuff. It's not exactly around the corner. We're talking one, two AM late."

"Sorry," Stiles says. "But Ravinder recommends protection charms and Deaton confirms it. If we miss out on a few hours of sleep, that's a price I will gladly pay to make sure none of us come down with the black plague again."

The trip to Los Angeles is a somewhat enlightening experience. Stiles has never been in Amber Moon, the tiny occult shop in Beacon Hills, so he's not sure what to expect. He follows Ravinder's directions to a place downtown which is simply called Harvest. It looks almost like an arts and crafts store, with all the thread, beads, and paint. Derek looks around in particular interest.

But there's also an entire section that just has bins of different herbs and little bottles filled with liquids of different colors, rows of feathers and stones, and then bizarrely mundane things like measuring spoons and sewing machines. Stiles shakes his head a little and goes up to the counter with the pack in tow. It's late, but the store has a little sign on the front that says they're open until midnight, and there's still plenty of business.

Stiles checks the email that Ravinder sent him, and says, "I'm looking for Rebekah."

The woman at the counter gives him a cheery smile and says, "All the way in the back, there'll be a little counter with a sign above it that says 'workings'."

"Thanks," Stiles says. They go to the back and find the counter as advertised. Rebekah is an elderly woman on the short side, with a sharp gaze and nimble hands. Stiles tells her that they each need a protection spell. She asks each one of them a series of questions, things he never would have thought of and in some cases takes a little while to figure out: what their astrological sign is, how many siblings they have and their birth order (including any that have died, she cautions, so Derek says 'one older, two younger, all deceased' and now Stiles knows exactly what Derek lost in the Hale house fire, which makes him want to cry a little), and whether or not they're virgins (a question which nearly ends in disaster as Erica starts trying to figure out who Derek has possibly had sex with, and Stiles has to shut her down fast).

Then she asks for a drop of each their blood. Stiles agrees, but only if she'll do the spell at the counter so they can watch, in order to make sure their blood doesn't go anywhere else. Rebekah gives him a keen smile. "Know a little something about magic, do you, boy," she says.

"More like 'know a little something about rampant paranoia'," Stiles tells her. She laughs and agrees. Stiles watches the process in interest as she takes out little glass bottles barely the size of a thimble, eight of them all in a row. She adds in metal shavings, tiny bits of herbs, and little shreds of feather. "Each one is different?" he says, watching her work.

"Mm hm," she says. "To represent that which it protects. The feathers come from different birds – falcon," she says, giving a nod towards Derek, "swan," with a nod to Lydia, "or magpie," she adds, her eyes twinkling, with a nod to Stiles himself. "And the metal is different as well: silver, bronze, gold, et cetera."

Once she has all of those complete, she gives each of them a pin. They prick their fingers and each add a drop of blood to their own tiny vial. She takes each one between clasped hands and chants quietly for a minute before stringing it on a black cord and handing it to its respective owner. The entire thing, start to finish, has taken about ten minutes per vial, so they've been standing at the counter nearly an hour and a half.

"How much?" Derek asks. Several people choke as she quotes them the price – two hundred dollars each, for a grand total of $1600 – but Derek forks over the credit card without flinching. There's a spot for gratuity, and Stiles sees him add another five hundred dollars in. Derek takes protection seriously. Rebekah thanks them and tells them to come back any time.

One downside to having eight members in the pack – beside the extra expense – is that they now need two cars to get anywhere. Stiles has wondered sometimes about how uncool a van would be. He supposes that an SUV would work, if a few of the wolves were willing to ride in their shifted forms. For now, they've taken both his and Allison's cars. He's too wired to be sleepy, but the others have to stop twice and change drivers. They get back to Beacon Hills in time to have a few hours of sleep before school. Stiles doesn't bother. It's easier for him to just stay up than it would be to try to get up after a brief nap. Once he's asleep, he'll stay that way.

Jackson is back in school, and Stiles half-expects there to be an incident. But the teenager ignores him. He looks a little under the weather, pale and tired, with circles smudged under his eyes. Stiles can't feel sorry for him at all. Harris is being his usual charming self. Stiles keeps seeing him when he turns corners, and he somehow manages to be in the cafeteria during Stiles' lunch period. "C'mon, now, this is fucking harassment," Stiles growls underneath his breath. He thinks about making an issue of it, but decides it just isn't worth it.

After lacrosse practice, Stiles grabs a quick shower and examines the wounds. The stitches are out, leaving two fat, healing scars across his abdomen. They neatly criss-cross the faded ones he got from Kali's claws during the summer. He lets out a slight sigh. "I look like I have a fucking tic-tac-toe board on my stomach," he says to Derek, who chuffs at him and shakes his head.

Scott is bitching because he can't find his Claddagh ring, the one Allison gave him, and Stiles has to drop everything to help him look for it. "She's gonna kill me," he whines.

"It'll turn up, it's probably in the depths of your bag," Stiles says. "Hey, I've got to swing by Deaton's this evening. You wanna come with?"

"Nah, Allison wanted help studying for her French test," Scott says.

Stiles bites back a grin. Allison is already fluent in French, to the point where she could go to France and have discussions in French with French people. Stiles doesn't know why they persist on using the 'study' euphemism when absolutely everybody knows they're having sex. "Godspeed," he says solemnly. "I'll see you later."

With the web destroyed and the pack bond restored, Stiles has called off the 'everyone sticks together all the time' rule and reduced it to the buddy rule. Staying in pairs is easier than trying to have everyone over at once. So Allison and Scott go over to his place, Isaac is staying at Boyd's, and Lydia is going to sleep at Erica's.

"Are you sure you want to go see Deaton tonight?" Derek asks, as they head out to the Jeep that evening. "You look tired."

"I am tired," Stiles says, "but I don't see that changing any time soon." When Derek scowls at him, he lifts his hands in surrender and says, "I've already done all my homework. I will come home afterwards and go straight to sleep. Deal?"

Derek scowls at him and says, "Fine." They drive to the clinic in silence. Derek helps him get the remnants of the web out of the back of the Jeep and carry it inside.

Deaton is waiting for them, and looks at the pieces in surprise. "What on earth is that?" he asks.

"This," Stiles says with a grunt, as they heave it onto the table, "is what's left of Sebastian Stone's latest masterpiece." He flicks his gaze up to Deaton's to register his expression, but there isn't much of one. The veterinarian doesn't seem at all surprised that Stiles knows his adversary's identity. "Here's what it used to be," he says, and takes out his phone, showing Deaton the picture he took.

Deaton studies it for a moment. "He's gained in skill, then," he says quietly. "This is a large working."

"Yeah, it played merry hell with the pack bond," Stiles says. "This is what happened to it when I tried that purification spell you showed me the other day."

The look on Deaton's face is just blank. "Using . . . what?"

Stiles rubs his hand over the back of his hand. "A circle drawn with a Sharpie."

Later, he will reflect that he should have gotten Deaton's reaction on tape. It's the first time he has ever seen Deaton lose his cool, and he suspects it will be the last. Deaton looks at the charred mess, startled, and blurts out, "What in the hell did you think you were doing? You could have killed yourself! Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

"Uh, really lucky?" Stiles asks, hoping that the man stops shouting.

"I told you that I would teach you if you wanted to learn magic," Deaton says. "Sorcery is dangerous. You could have killed yourself, you could have killed your entire pack. Your circle wasn't properly grounded, you wouldn't have – " He stops and takes a breath. "Right, sorry," he says. "This is a subject I feel somewhat passionate about."

Thinking back to what he knows, Stiles hazards a guess. "Because you had to learn on your own?"

Deaton gives him a sharp look, but then nods. "Sorcery is dangerous for more reasons than you know. That kind of power, it can change you. It's not a lie when they say that power corrupts. You start thinking that magic can solve all your problems. You start abusing it. In its way, it is like a drug – and it can be very, very difficult to give up the kind of magic that gives you that power."

"You did," Stiles says, starting to understand. "Stone didn't."

Somewhat wearily, Deaton says, "It was a long time ago."

Stiles understands that he's pushed enough for one day. He changes the subject and begins to tell Deaton the details of how the spell had affected them and what had happened when he had tried to purify it. Deaton shakes his head at him a little but then says, "Let's see if we can do it in a more controlled environment." He goes into his office and opens the trap door that leads to the basement.

Immediately, Stiles feels his pulse quicken. "Hey, can we stay up here?" he says. "I know that's your workshop and everything but, uh, I really don't do well with enclosed spaces. Especially when I'm already feeling edgy. Which I am. Rather, uh, permanently."

Deaton just looks at him for a moment, then nods and says, "I'll bring some things up."

A few minutes later, Stiles is sitting down outside a circle made from salt. Deaton's put one of his own magical talismans inside, saying it isn't very powerful and he can remake it later. He talks to Stiles about how to safely ground oneself and draw on their own power, on their will to bend the world around them.

Stiles kneels with his fingers on the edges of the circle and tries over and over again, reciting the words, but nothing happens. After half an hour, Deaton calls a halt to things. "What the hell," Stiles says. "Why doesn't it work?"

Deaton shakes his head a little and says, "You don't have enough belief that it will."

"But it worked earlier," Stiles says. "Seems like a no-brainer to me."

"I think that . . ." Deaton searches for the words to explain the situation. "When you made the mountain ash circle, and when you purified the web, both of those things were done under immense pressure. It was a literal life-or-death, time-is-running-out sort of situation. To protect your pack, you were able to summon up the necessary belief, the necessary will, to do a magical working. There's no pressure here, no need."

Stiles thinks back to both of those situations and says, "At the time, I thought . . . that it would work because it had to work. There were no other options."

Deaton nods. "It may be that the only time you'll be able to use magic is when there's no other option. To a certain extent, that would make sense. It's not as if you've been brought up to it."

With a sigh, Stiles rubs both his hands over the back of his head. "No, but it's going to make this a real pain in the ass. How am I supposed to learn how not to blow myself up if I can only do magic when I'm freaked out enough to blow myself up?"

"It's a conundrum," Deaton agrees. "Let me think on it a bit. You should go home. You'll be very hungry and very tired tonight. That's normal. Don't let it worry you."

"I don't need the help of sorcery to be those things," Stiles says, but once he's back in the Jeep, he thinks that Deaton was probably right. His weariness is bone-deep and his vision is even a little blurry. He stares at the steering wheel for a minute before he reluctantly says, "I think you'd better drive."

Derek takes the wheel without commentary, so Stiles makes a mental note to make some gingersnap cookies or something to reward him for his self-control. He's half-asleep by the time they get to the house, and Derek decides to carry him inside without being asked. Stiles decides to let Derek do this, because it makes Derek feel important and manly and maybe, if he feels like he's protecting his alpha, he won't complain as much. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that Stiles can barely keep his eyes open.

He does stay awake long enough to text each of the others and confirm that everyone got where they needed to be without being accosted or attacked. He does that one-handed while devouring a grilled cheese sandwich, and then falls asleep on the sofa without further prompting.

"You know, maybe we were thinking about this all wrong," he says the next morning as he flips French toast in a pan. "Maybe the whole 'purity of a soul' thing has nothing to do with me and my debatable moral compass."

"What, then?" Derek asks, drinking orange juice straight from the bottle.

"Maybe it's about magic," Stiles says. "There seems to be two kinds of magic, right? Dark magic, which is what warlocks use, and, well, light magic. Kind of a Jedi-Sith vibe."

"Okay. So?"

"So, Deaton says that black magic is like a drug. That it's addictive and, and, corrosive. That it changes you. So maybe that haiku is referring to a magic user who's . . ."

"Turning to the dark side of the Force?" Derek asks dryly.

"Finally, a movie reference you understand," Stiles says, and laughs. "Yeah, basically."

"It's a good theory," Derek says, "but the only magic user in town is Deaton, who seems to have made his choice pretty firmly already. I don't really think you count – if only because Stone wrote that haiku before he saw you do any magic."

"And also I'm apparently incompetent," Stiles says. He wants to feel gloomy about this, but it's actually an unexpected relief. His life does not need to be made more complicated by magic lessons. Screw it. "Well, he and Deaton used to know each other. They both chose separate paths in life. Maybe he wants to get Deaton to, you know, come be a warlock with him."

Derek puts the orange juice back in the fridge and says, "If that's his real goal, he sure has chosen an ass-backwards way of going about it."

Stiles has to agree that this is true. He puts it to the back of his mind as he digs into his breakfast. Despite the fact that he was the one who let everyone separate, it's a relief to see everyone at school. They pick up Boyd and Isaac on their way, and meet the others once they're there. Everything seems to be shaping up like a normal day. Harris is still lurking, the bastard, and Stiles makes a mental note that if he tries to provoke the 'service dog' to get an aggressive reaction, he will have the man's head on a pike. Every time he turns around, the chemistry teacher manages to be in the hallway at the same time. "Seriously, why does he even care that much?" he mutters. Derek's ears prick forward, but he doesn't otherwise respond.

Just after lunch, they're in literature class and he's actually managing to pay attention and make a decent showing while Miss Gutierrez is talking about Christopher Marlowe and his untimely demise. "Of course, he and Shakespeare lived at about the same time," she says. "In fact, he's one of the people that some scholars theorize was Shakespeare. I have a copy of . . ." She looks at the extremely tall bookshelf, one of those pre-installed models that goes all the way up to the ceiling. Miss Gutierrez is five feet right on the nose. "Let's see, who feels tall today?" she asks in a joking tone of voice. "Isaac, do you mind? There's a copy of a play called Venus and Adonis up on the top shelf there."

"Sure," Isaac says. The top shelf is so high that even Isaac winds up having to pull his chair over so he can reach it. He's just grabbed the book when suddenly, without any warning at all, one leg of his chair snaps in two. The chair overbalances and Isaac goes tumbling to the floor. Stiles' head snaps up, as does Derek's. He feels something – some uncontrolled flare of energy that does not feel at all wolflike and therefore can't have come from any of the pack.

Most of the other wolves would have caught themselves with some sort of acrobatic show that would have left everyone gaping. Isaac, however, has actually trained for this specific circumstance. Stiles had put both Isaac and Scott through a rigorous 'hey, let's not make it clear to absolutely everyone that werewolves exist' training session, because of lacrosse. They both know how to take a fall without instinctively catching themselves. So Isaac lands on the hard floor on his side with a pronounced 'oof'.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" Gutierrez asks, hurrying over.

"I'm good," Isaac says, sitting up and rubbing one hand over the side of the face to cover the nasty mark as it fades.

Gutierrez looks at the chair, bewildered. "How on earth did that happen?" she wonders aloud, as several people cluster around Isaac and help him to his feet. Stiles is wondering the same thing. He finds that he's unconsciously clutching the little protection pendant on its black cord. Derek presses his face into Stiles' calf and whines quietly.

"I know," Stiles murmurs. Then, while the rest of the class hovers around Isaac to make sure that he's okay, Stiles finds his gaze drawn to the one person in the room who isn't moving or chattering: Jackson. The teenager is just sitting at his desk with a faraway expression on his face. After a moment, he looks up and meets Stiles' gaze. Then he smirks and lifts his hands so Stiles can see what he's holding. It's a pencil, broken in half as neatly as the leg of Isaac's chair.