A/N: Found this sitting in my dropbox and decided to publish just for completion. Not proofread, sorry!

Chapter 20 – Sucker punch

"Happy birthday!" Allison sounded falsely cheerful and gave me an awkward hug before turning and repeating the process with Lydia. She produced two delicately wrapped presents and gave us one each.

"Aw, you shouldn't have," Lydia said and I don't think any of us believed a word of that. I shared a look with Allison, who seemed as anxious as myself at the lack of party guests.

"Thank you, Allison," I said, turning the oblong package over.

"Aren't you going to open it?" she asked as Lydia thrust a punch glass in her hands and disappeared back outside.

"I don't get a lot of birthday presents," I said honestly, wanting to savor the moment a bit more.

"Your family doesn't celebrate birthdays?"

"Oh, we do," I said emphatically, still keeping my gaze fixed on the present. "We're just not too fond of the whole concept of birthday presents. Material goods and all that. We give gifts at weddings and graduation and times like that; I guess birthdays are too common as they happen every year."

"Sounds a bit sad," she said and took a quick glance in the direction Lydia went. "Come on, open it before she gets back."

It felt weird tearing open the paper she previously spent time and care to wrap, but I was glad I did. In my hand rested a heavy, beautifully crafted pocketknife. I weighed it in my hand and gaped at her, she could barely conceal her grin. "Are you serious?"

"Do you like it?" she asked and eagerly showed me how to open it. The blade was perhaps 3.5" and it fit perfectly in my hand.

"What on Earth did you give Lydia?" I asked, wondering when Allison meant for me to use this. "A one-hand crossbow?"

She shook her head while rolling her eyes simultaneously. "Some limited edition, high-end nail polish she's been talking about forever and just couldn't get ahold of. So, do you like it?"

"It's beautiful," I said and my choice of words had me pondering for a few seconds. How could a knife be beautiful? It was just a tool, potentially a weapon. What would I use this for?

"A knife like that always comes in handy," Allison indulged, but quickly snapped it shut as the doorbell rang and Lydia raced back in.

"I'll get it!" she called, balancing her punch tray precariously.

"Thank you," I mouthed to Allison and we went out to the pool while Lydia tended to her guests.

Stiles needed two trips and probably fifteen minutes on getting himself and the two enormous presents inside the door. Lydia watched for a second with the punch tray ready, but his shenanigans overpowered even her dedication to being a good hostess. She rolled her eyes, handed me another cup of punch, even though I barely took a sip of my last one, and left me with Stiles begging me to grab ahold of that corner to pull him inside.

"What the hell did you get her?" I asked just as he gave a hard push and fell through the door. He landed on top of the box and I winced. "Nothing breakable I hope."

"Hair products!" said Stiles and bounced back up.

I took a tentative sip of the punch and nodded to the deflated present. "About ten year's supply or…?"

He pretended not to hear me and I watched him manhandle the package further inside, before he burst back out the door with a "Be right back!" thrown my way. Stiles was fashionably late, probably concerned with picking the 'right gift for Lydia' and changing his mind twenty times before he left home, but at least he showed. So far, no one else had. I waited a few seconds to see if Stiles returned, but went back outside when he didn't.

Allison leaned against the stone pillar, a punch cup in hand, and appeared to be watching the stars. I followed her gaze and felt a twinge in my heart. She was watching the moon.

I cleared my throat before breaking the silence, "Scott's coming tonight, right?"

Her face twisted and she cleared her throat, looking down into her punch cup as if she would find answers there. "I-I don't know. Haven't talked to him since…y'know, since the rave."

I nodded, at least partly sympathetically. I had mixed emotions about the Argents as whole, but Allison was most of the time quite relatable. She returned her eyes to the moon.

I decided to change the subject somewhat. "Do you know what we – what they call the full moon in March?"

Allison and I both jumped as Lydia's tray smashed to the ground. I don't think any of us realized she was within hearing distance. Lydia made no motion to pick the tray up again though and stared wide-eyed at us. At me.

"No," she said, almost nervously. "No, I don't know. Why would I know that? Why would anyone know that? Why would you even talk about-"

"I wasn't even talking to you," I said, a bit sourer than intended. I bent carefully in the short dress and picked up her tray for her. "The Northern tribes, as well as the ancient Celtics, called it the Full Crow Moon. It's the end of winter and the crows caw their good byes to the season. It's also known as the Magpie Moon, for the same reason. Signs of spring, you know? In Europe some call it the Lenten Moon, because it's the last before Easter."

"Wow, I didn't know that," Allison said, with a small smile on her lips. "Crow Moon? I like that."

I gave Lydia her tray and saw her shoulders sink somewhat.

"Crow Moon?" she asked in a tiny voice. The doorbell rang and that seemed to snap her out of it. Whatever it was. "I'll get it."

She picked up a few more cups on her way inside.

"Does she seem…off to you?" I asked Allison and she shrugged.

"No more than usual. Why?"

"I don't know, it's just, I don't know. She's been acting a bit weird," I said, not able to put it into words. "I just have this bad feeling."

"Everyone's been acting a bit weird lately," Allison said and shifted uneasily. Scott and Stiles just walked through the doors. "There's Scott, I should probably go – you know, fill him in."

I remembered now how I saw her at the rave with that photographer dude and wondered if something was up between her and Scott. I wandered over to Lydia, who looked forlorn and determined at the same time. It was almost eleven now, and there were less than a dozen of us here. A part of me felt sorry for her, she never asked for this. Another darker part of me felt joyous she would finally get a taste of solitude. In the end, you only had yourself.

And family.

"Open my present yet?" I asked her, struggling to keep my voice neutral. Lydia had a present table inside, though probably just a moderate amount compared to previous years.

"No," she said, pouring the last cup of punch to fill her tray. "I usually don't open them at the party. Tried once, took forever." She took a last look around the empty pool and twisted her mouth into a false smile. "Guess I have time now."

Suppressing all instincts about how weird this felt, I went inside with her and rummaged around to find my present for her. Eventually it turned up beneath one of Stiles' monster gifts.

"It's not as good as your gift of course," I said and ran my fingers through my glossy locks.

"You really needed that hair cut." Lydia folded her arms.

"But I hope you'll like it anyway. Happy birthday, cus," I said and gave her the slightly heavy, thin, square packet. I didn't have any wrapping paper, so I used brown paper and drew flowers on instead. Lydia still didn't look happy, not even when she tore the paper open in a flurry.

"Oh, it's a – it's a book!" she said, disappointment laced through her voice. "It's a used book about…" She stayed silent for half a second. "Oh, it's the book. Oh my god, it's the book! I haven't thought about this in like, forever. It's our book, Cassie, the one we used to – you remember when we –it's first edition!" She clutched the old hardcover to her chest and stared at me, looking at me properly for the first time this evening. "Thank you."

"It's not signed," I said with a grin. "But I put a bookmark in our favorite chapter."

Lydia opened the book gingerly, running her fingers down the passages of text we used to act out when we were kids. I made the bookmark myself and she read the writing out loud when she noticed it.

"Pray to the Moon, when She is round," she started. "Luck with you, shall then be abound. Whatever you…seek? Whatever you seek for shall be found, by sea or sky, or solid ground. Did you write this?"

"No, well, I did the actual writing, but it's an old Irish blessing or something," I said off-handedly and she murmured the passage under her breath again.

"Pray to the Moon when She is round…"

The doorbell rang.

It took her several seconds to react and she seemed hesitant in putting the book down to get the punch tray again.

"So," I began. "Do you like it?"

"I love it. Thank you, Cassie, I don't know what-"

The doorbell rang again, more insistent.

"I'll get it," she called out to no one and darted over to the front door just as Stiles came slinking from the other doorway with his hands in his pockets. He leaned forward as far as he could to see who was at the door and grinned hugely when he straightened up again.

"I made a few calls," was the only explanation I got and he accentuated it with a casual shrug. "So, open my present yet?"

"You got me a - What present?"

"This one!" he exclaimed and gestured to the large, flat, rectangular-

"Stiles! I thought I said no to the flat-screen TV!"

"No, you said no to the flat-screen TV for Lydia. This one's for you! You don't have to say anything." He grinned and gave me a one-armed hug. "Happy birthday, Cass."

I looked over his shoulder at the impossibly huge box with bright colored wrapping and sighed. "They wouldn't let you return it, huh?"

"Nope."

"More punch?"

Lydia was in her element – swishing around in the second dress of the evening and keeping a steady supply of punch (and alcohol). I'd taken to pouring it into the bushes as she turned her back. Allison held onto her cup as a lifeline and the both of us had sort of drifted to the edges of the party, watching rather than participating.

Whatever trick Stiles and Scott had up their sleeves seemed to work. It started with the lacrosse team, sans my favorite player of course, and then a quite large bunch of people I recognized from the Jungle. Some of them recognized me as well and tried to get me dancing with them, but I declined. First of all, no one else danced like that and second, I still had a bad feeling about…something. Usually I trusted my intuition without question, but now? I had no idea what was going on.

Allison sent long gazes to Scott, on the other side of the pool, and I wished I hadn't noticed it. She was probably concerned with the whole secrecy of their relationship, although I doubt any of the party guests would remember much after tonight, let alone Scott and Allison's small affair. I smiled politely as a couple drunkenly stumbled by on their way to the bathroom, or so I hoped.

"Cassie?" Allison's tone had a hint of warning and she touched my arm gently, nudging me to turn around. Well, look like that bad feeling finally found its culprit. Jackson just walked through the doors.

"Oh no," I mumbled. Of course, if Scott 'ordered' the whole lacrosse team to get here, Jackson was a natural part of it.

Lydia, in the middle of pouring even more punch, noticed him and soon he was outfitted with his very own cup that he downed in an instant. Just what we need: a drunken, homicidal Jackson at a birthday party. He didn't even bring a present.

"He's affected by the Crow too, right?" I murmured softly to Allison, speaking in code in case he had super-hearing similar to the werewolves.

"Supposedly, but maybe the command of his…friend could trump that instinct." She turned her back on Jackson as she spoke, keeping her voice down.

"Which is the better case scenario?" I lifted my eyes slightly to see Jackson with a fresh cup of punch.

"Depends on his 'friend', I guess."

"Who we still have no idea how to find," I said, mostly to myself. "Um, Allison? That photographer dude is kind of staring at you."

Allison averted her attention from Lydia and Scott's conversation at the other side of the pool and looked in the direction I indicated. Matt – was that his name? – didn't look away. Allison sighed.

"I suppose I should talk to him," she said and pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that actually," I said, turning my head to look at her instead. "I saw you with him at the rave, are you…?" I trailed off, but she got my drift.

"No! No, no we're nothing like that, it's just…it's a bit complicated." She fidgeted with the punch cup in her hands. "I'll just go and – I won't be long."

And that left me standing alone at what was technically my own birthday party, looking at couples making out and doing their interpretation of a slow dance to imaginary music. It felt too weird on my own, so I skipped up the steps to Lydia's bedroom, stumbling a bit when I misjudged the distance.

I didn't have much hope, but maybe – just maybe – someone sent me a 'Happy birthday!'-text, preferably from Europe. Or maybe Isaac sent me an update of how the full moon was going. I mean, Scott seemed to handle it okay, right?

Of course, the last full moon Isaac tore open a prison cell and tried to kill everyone within sight until Big Bad Alpha Derek stopped him. And now Derek had three werewolf-puppies to worry about, each one with a bigger blood-thirst than the next. I probably wouldn't hear from him until tomorrow.

"Whoa." I clutched the doorframe for support – the whole room just tilted a bit. I tried to be careful with the punch because I know Lydia spiked it pretty heavy, but I must have had more than I planned because I felt woozy. I slumped down on her pink bed sheets and sank forward so I rested my elbows on my knees. Was this what being drunk felt like? Because I did not see the attraction of the room spinning so violently as it did now. For a few minutes I breathed deeply through my nose, putting all my will into not throwing up all over Lydia's carpet. Would serve her right though, she's the one who got everyone drunk. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen her drink any herself the whole night. Well, she must have, right?

Someone knocked on the door.

"Give me a second," I half-yelled. I tried to summon enough energy to get up and open it, but it was probably just Lydia and she would enter on her own volition if I kept her waiting long enough.

She said something, but the door muffled it. It was definitely Lydia, but she was almost whispering.

"What?" I called, still not looking up.

"Hrrmrn ausf hm hmmn."

That's probably not what she said, but that's what it sounded like.

Why didn't she just come in? "What?"

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine."

No. My blood ran cold. No, no, no! I nearly forgot about the strange words Lydia kept using earlier, words about fire and burning, but now that bad feeling came back tenfold, along with panic. Who was this burning man? Why did she keep talking about a burning man, and why in Latin?

Sweat ran down my face, gathered mostly on my upper lip, and I got up unsteadily from the bed. "Lydia?" I called, watching the door like it would attack. My body wasn't working properly, I could barely walk. Every time I tried to take a step, something shifted underneath.

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine." She said it louder now; she was right outside the door.

"Why do you keep saying that?" Clumsy fingers fumbled for my pendant, the same one I had to persuade Lydia to let me keep wearing because it didn't go with my dress. It was my mother's; I never took it off unless forced. It gave no comfort tonight. "Who is the burnt man, Lyd?"

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine."

"I heard you the first hundred times!" I barked and reached for the door-handle so I could look her in the-

"Don't open that door, girl."

Time seemed to stop. I knew that voice. Female, British, used to giving orders and have them followed. She was in the corner to my right and it took all my willpower to look at her. Nothing had changed about her appearance – she was naked and burnt, but with a veil covering her face. Thank gods. Why was she here? I didn't want her here.

"Why not?" I asked instead, fingers just inches from the handle. The woman stood with her head bent, not looking up as she spoke, her scalp bald and raw. Her open wounds dripped on the carpet. The nauseating smell of her drifted my way and again I fought the urge to throw up.

"Wake up, girl. This isn't real."

I wanted to believe that, so desperately it burned, but this was not the first time I've met her. I couldn't convince myself this was all in my head. She lapsed into a violent cough – her lungs must be filled with ashes – and I realized she was laughing, or at least trying to. The way her body produced the sounds without moving at all sent a chill down my spine.

"First by enemies," she said between coughs.

"They burned a witch in Bingham Square

Last Friday afternoon

The faggot-smoke was blacker than

The shadows on the moon," said another woman in a singsong voice. Trying to stand still, I just twisted my head to look at her standing in the opposite corner.

Of course she was here too. I say woman, but she was just a girl herself, barely old enough to have children. She spoke British with a heavy Scandinavian accent. She giggled and put the stump she had for a hand up to her mouth in a ladylike fashion, her long dark-red tresses covered in soot and oil hung like a curtain so I just barely could discern her features.

"The licking flames were strangely green

Like foxfire on the fen…

And she who cursed the godly folk

Will never curse again," I finished for her. "I've heard the poem before."

"You need to open your eyes," said the younger woman, rolling her head as she spoke. "But not the door."

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine." Lydia's voice increased in volume.

"She's right." The first woman didn't move a muscle, still with her head bent. "Don't open the door."

"Why not? It's just Lyd-"

The second woman giggled again, this time displaying the blatant gaps were her teeth used to be. "Don't do it."

"Why? Tell me why and I won't!"

"Don't open the door," she said, swaying back and forth to music only she could hear, the ragged dress pulling along the floor. Of course I've met her before too. Both of them. I knew them as intimately as I knew myself, no matter how much I tried to forget.

"Why not? What's on the other side?" I begged, finding myself unable to stop looking at the evidence of her mistreatment. "Please, just tell-"

"Stop begging!" The first woman, the older one, had a hard voice. "Maybe if you'd taken a bit more responsibility, this wouldn't have happened."

My hand fell down, no longer reaching for the handle. "What wouldn't have happened?"

"She's right, you need to start paying attention."

"What wouldn't have happened?" I repeated louder, and immediately the "Holocaustum autem hoc homine," came from the other side of the door. "Shut up," I cried and turned my full focus to the two grotesque women looking very out of place in the brightly colored bedroom.

"Foolish girls," said the first woman, the bald one, still standing completely still. "Thinking they could change anything."

"Playing with fire." The second one did a girlish cackle. Her voice grew darker: "Then by friends."

"Could you please stop talking in riddles and just tell me what the hell's going on?" I yelled, feeling like tearing my hair out.

"Please?" The older one said it like it left a foul taste on her tongue, I'm sure her ruined features were twisted in scorn.

"The magic word," the younger one quipped. "You already know what's going on."

"They're already on their way."

"What are y – no! No, I don't know what's going on! Who? Who's on their way? I don't know what you're talking about!"

"You would if you paid attention, girl."

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine."

"Don't open the door."

"Don't do it."

"Take some responsibility, pay attention to what's going on!"

"Don't open the door."

"Holocaustum autem hoc homine."

"First by enemies."

"Don't open the door."

"Then by friends."

"They burned a witch in Bingham Square

Before the village gate."

"Don't open the door."

"SHUT UUUUUP!" I screamed, grabbing the sides of my head in fear it would literally split open and every dark secret, ever hidden fear, would tumble out of the crack and manifest into thin air. In a surge of spite, I yanked the door open and was forced back. The heat hit me like a punch in the face, singed of my eyebrows and eyelashes, grabbing hold of my hair and devouring it, roasting my skin.

It wasn't Lydia on the other side of the door. It was a girl – the same height as me, with the same nose and the same- I knew this girl too. It was me.

And I was burning.

"LYDIAAAAAA!"