Author's note: set in 1x05.

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf. No financial gain is made from this. This is for entertainment purposes only.


I was aware of the glances directed my way. The library wasn't really crowded, but I surely caught everyone's attention with a whole table full of books and notes, my laptop in the middle of that orchestrated chaos and my head buried in the leather book.

Currently, I took notes from Bauer's 'Decrypted Secrets'.

With an exasperated sight, I closed the heavy volume.

I had been right about the language of the book being foreign to me. I had been wrong about it being a language.

The book was encrypted and days of lack of sleep and plenty of coffee hadn't brought me any nearer to deciphering it. I had already tried frequency analysis, the index of coincidence technique and the Kasiski examination. With null results.

So I had drawn little conclusions about the book. It lacked photos or drawings; just a worn hawk stamp in the second page. It had around five hundred pages, all of them hand-written, so it could well date back to before the invention of the printing press; that was before 1440. And it wasn't written in any known alphabet. It contained small geometrical-like figures, and it reminded me of the Phoenician alphabet. Its author's name was the only thing written in English: Erhard Falke.

"Erhard Falke," I muttered in a sudden moment of clarity of mind. It wasn't coded in English! I realized with enthusiasm. It was encoded in German!

Despite having to start my investigation from the beginning, I took the news with excitement. I opened the translator in my laptop and thanked my mother once again for making me take classes of German; something about a Humanistic education and spending too much time between books.

I started by making an analysis of frequency. This method was one of the classic methods of cryptology and it was based in the repetition of certain characters or group of characters in a text.

It had been used by authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so I relinquished in the fact that I had gone back to my old habits of playing the passive detective. After the past weeks, I had had enough of adventure for a lifetime.

After a quick search on internet, I downloaded several tables of letters and words frequencies in the German language.

I stretched, the corner of my lips twitching up into a wide grin. "Time to decipher."

A loud ring alerted the whole library of my slip of mind: I hadn't set my phone to silent mode. I rummaged through the mess over the table, moving away papers, books, and notebooks.

"Damn," I hissed, feeling the blush reach my cheeks. Someone cleared his throat and I finally found the mobile under 'Elementary Cryptanalysis: A Mathematical Approach'. "Hello?" I whispered.

Stiles' vivacious voice answered, "Imogene? Imogene, you need to come to my house. I think I've found something about the Alpha."

I glanced back at my papers and the leather book. "Can't it wait?" He sighed, defeated. "Okay, give me half an hour."

"Hurry up." He hung up.

It took me about fifteen minutes to gather sloppily all my investigation inside my bag and the girl chewing gum must thought I didn't hear her mutter "About time" when I left the library, but it didn't dampen my mood.

It had been me, and not her, the one who had been called. Somehow, being invited on Stiles and Scott's findings made me happy. I guessed it was the feeling of not being alone anymore in all this craziness.

As I secured my bicycle against the wall of Stiles' house, I realized it had been six years since the last time someone had invited me over to their house. Well, not exactly, it had been six years since someone had invited me over and I had agreed to go.

Stiles opened the door even before I could ring the bell. "Come on, come inside."

He led me to his room and I noticed that we were alone in his house. "Where is Scott?"

Bad thing to ask, it seemed. He grew somber and ran a hand through his buzz cut. "He's… busy."

I sensed his discomfort, so I didn't pushed the matter. It also fed my own disappointment at the realization that I had been invited only as a substitute for Scott. "What did you find out?"

He thrust a mobile phone in my direction. "This."

He touched the play button in the tactile screen and a video of a huge black creature jumping out of a video store window reproduced before my astonished eyes. "This is…"

"The Alpha," he said.

"How did you get this?"

"A friend of mine recorded it… actually, that's her phone."

"Why do I get the feeling that you stole this phone?"

"Could we just focus on the fact that we got an image of the Alpha?" he exclaimed.

I frowned, replaying the video and sitting in the bed. "What about your friend? Now we are not the only ones aware of… this."

"Don't worry about her. She's stuffed herself with so much meds and tranquilizers that she's starting to believe it was a mountain lion as the police said."

I shook my head. "This is bad."

"It has always been bad," he said bitterly.

"Stiles, are you okay? You're… well, Stiles-unlike."

"I'm fine, don't worry."

"It's because of Scott?" He didn't answer. "It's that why I'm here? Are you worried about Scott or something?"

"No, I called you because you're the freak who spends her time meddling into other people's business."

I raised my eyebrows. "Alright, hurtful. I'll let it pass because I see you're a little tense."

"Sorry. I just wonder about your point of view on the whole Hale fire incident six years ago."

I smiled warily. "Nicer, but why ask me? Why don't you ask Derek?"

He chuckled as he spun on his chair. "Well, first, Derek would probably threaten to dismember me if I went to ask him and secondly, because I know you've been investigating the Hale fire. Come on, I find you in my father's office and the next I know is that the report about the fire is part of my bathroom's literature collection?"

I grinned sheepishly. "Good point."

"So, what do you know?"

I smirked.


After a trip back to my house to get my investigation documents about the fire, the night found us bent over those same papers.

I sighed and closed the folder in front of me. "Okay, nothing new here. Why are you suddenly so interested in the Hale fire, by the way?"

"Well, it's the other only thing mysterious that happened in Beacon Hills. I thought it was worth to take a good look at. And, my friend, I'm starting to believe you may not be as paranoid as I first thought."

I laughed. "Thanks."

"So the verdict of an electric failure is inconclusive. But if it wasn't an accident, what is your whacked up theory?"

So I opened my notebook and went once again over my findings. From the real background of the Argent family as hunters to the relationship between the Argents and the Hales.

"Wait," Stiles interrupted me. "What is the relation of this Kate chick with the Argent family?"

"She's Chris Argent's sister."

Stile's eyebrows went up, his eyes wide and his frame still. Why Kate Argent's position in the family tree caused such surprise in the teenager evaded me. "She's Allison's aunt."

I nodded, still not following his line of thought. "Yes, she is. But why is this suddenly so important?"

He seized me by the shoulders in a bout of revelations' frenzy. "Allison's aunt was the one who shot Derek, so if now she's back, the same who started all this…"

"That means the Pandora box is about to be opened," I whispered, realizing the implications of Kate's presence in Beacon Hills.

Stiles let go of me and moved back to his desk. "Well, I was about to say that shit's about to hit the fan, but yeah, you get the concept."

"But why now? If she just wanted to finish what she started, why wait?" I asked to no one in particular, as I was used to do in my tribulations.

It surprised me when I got an answer. "Maybe because Derek Hale is back in Beacon Hills. He's the only Hale left."

I was about to contradict that fact and bring up Peter Hale, when a phone rang by my side in the bed. I was startled and Stiles scrambled out of the chair and picked it up.

His face turned somber as the voice at the other end communicated what only could be bad news and I felt out of place. And curious, I couldn't deny it, despite the concern etched in my friend's features.

The call ended as it started, with not a single word from Stiles. But his countenance spoke of a thousand words stuck in his throat.

"I have to go," he murmured.

"Stiles, what's wrong?" I asked as I followed him through his room while he picked up a jacket, a bag, his phone and his keys.

"My dad, he's been hurt. A mountain lion's attack, apparently."

I gasped. "Is he okay?"

"I don't know. They won't tell me anything more."

I tried to grab his arm in what I hoped was a reassuring way, but he didn't even stop at the contact, too busy grabbing random things and sticking them in the bag. Finally, he reached the door and I stood there, frozen, clueless as how to act. "Do you want me to go with you?" I asked.

"No," he answered, "Go home and rest. And be careful." He threw the bag at me. I frowned. "Your investigation."

I nodded. "Be careful."

I saw him drive off and a shiver ran up my spine. In the darkness of the night I felt small and insignificant, vulnerable and weak. Past victims had been just casualties. Without victims there was no crime, no investigation, no way to find out who was to blame. But now, I realized, that they weren't just names and clues. No, they were people. And now we were all in danger.

As Stiles had put it: shit had hit the fan.


A nagging feeling at the back of my mind.

I was close to finding out something important, I could sense it. It was something obvious, but yet, something I had completely ignored in favor of useless researches about family histories and old books. Goes without saying that I had ignored the leather book when I got home, as I ignored my mother's questions about my absence in the bookshop.

That night, cycling back home, the fear gripping tight my muscles, something suddenly clicked.

And I had to thank it all to Sheriff Stilinsky.

Stiles had texted me that his father was well; that for once, it had really been a mountain lion's attack. I didn't text him back, but felt relieved at the good news.

Although the Sheriff's incident had nothing to do with my investigation, or so it seemed, I realized I had overlooked something essential.

The victims.

Of course, no one notices the victims when you have a serial murderer to chase, and that had been my mistake. The victims, silent witnesses. Who better than them to bring some light to the mystery?

I rummaged through the never-ending papers scattered over my bed and floor. With a grin of triumph I found what I was looking for.

"Garrison Myers, insurance investigator," I whispered to myself. Easy to find his link to the Hale's House fire. And Stiles had provided me refutation. In the bag he had given me, I found several papers that didn't belong to me, but to his father. The papers about the investigation of the fire. And Garrison Myers named appeared on them.

"Michael Campbell, charged with arson three times." According to the Sheriff's documents, he had been interrogated as suspect because of his criminal record.

And if the Sheriff's attack would be related, it was because he was the one in charge of the investigation.

I sat on the floor, surrounded by my investigation.

Connecting the dots was an improvement, but it didn't make any difference if I was unable to see the bigger picture.

I sighed, frustrated, and ran my fingers through my hair. The blackboard at the corner of my eye caught my attention. At one side, 'werewolves'. At the other 'hunters'.

My brow furrowed.

I had been wrong about this the whole time.

This was not a serial killer. At least, not only that.

This was…

"A war," I whispered.

In a bolt, I was up again.

It was a war. I laughed as I grabbed the chalk.

And now, I only needed to find the soldiers.

Under 'hunters', I wrote 'Argent family'. I hesitated about to write my father's name in there too, but declined.

Under 'werewolves' I wrote 'the Alpha'. Once again I hesitated to put another name too, 'Derek Hale', but I had no proof about his implication, so I left him out.

I draw a line horizontally and wrote 'victims'. Under the Argent's square, I wrote 'the Hale family'. Under the Alpha's square I wrote 'bus driver and video guy'.

I took some steps back.

And shuddered.