[SEQUEL TO DEVIL IN THE DETAILS]

He was looking up at the Marsten House, not really listening. The shutters were closed; they would open up later on. After Dark. The shutters would open after dark. He felt a morbid chill at the thought and its nearly incantatory quality. —Salem's Lot

October 15, 1940

Corrine Blake-Hale stares up at the ruined mess that used to be her life, yellow streamers of police tape snapping in the breeze. Her daughter's body is still in there somewhere, probably hidden by one of those animals that Peter treated. Her fingers curl into fists at her sides, nails cutting into the flesh. The police dragged her husband's broken corpse from those ruins but not her baby.

"Mama?" She tears her gaze away from the institute, finding the little boy standing nearby. Estevan has a bit of colored glass in one of his hands and he's smiling as he holds it up for her to take. Sunshine sets the glass alight with reds and blues, part of the mural Peter had installed on the second floor. "Can I have this?"

"No." She snatches it out of his hand and tosses it aside, ignoring the fat tears welling her son's eyes. They're the same blue as his father's, but they're full of softness that will never let him get ahead in this world. His best bet is to marry a woman with enough of a brain to keep the family above water. "Do you know what happened here, Es?"

"Fire." He's still a child, she should be patient with him like she'd been with Malia, but this little boy makes her angry. She'd had complete control of the Hale fortune before he was born, now she'll have to hand it over to him on his eighteenth birthday. Ten short years to invest and expand and then this little shit will run it all into the ground. How wonderful.

"Not just a fire. Your father was a stupid man, Es. He let the people in his care overthrow his control and he got all except for five people killed because of that. He let one of those maniacs steal your big sister." Malia would be twelve now if she had lived, and that thought makes her stomach curdle. "Do not end up like your father."

"Yes, Mama." There's honesty in his expression, a real desire to finally gain her approval, but Corrine isn't going to make the same mistakes she did with Malia. She isn't going to love this child only to have him break her heart again. She'll kill him before she lets that happen.

"Always remember to put yourself first, Estevan. That's the only way to get ahead in this cold world." The sound of tires crunching over gravel has her turning her hard stare away from her son, locking on the Rolls-Royce coming to a stop a few feet away. The man who steps out is wiry and tall, blond hair carefully parted and combed back on one side with a light sheen of pomade barely visible in the dying sunlight.

"Mrs. Hale," he asks, a little uncertain.

"You must be Mister Lahey." She strides forward with her son trailing behind her, shaking the man's hand with easy confidence. "Marie-Jeanne spoke very highly of you." Lahey smiles and she can see dimples, the effect of them and his shaved face making him look younger than his thirty years. He could be a fresh-faced college student if she didn't already know otherwise.

"Mrs. Argent is very kind." She's not, actually. Corrine has seen her do enough lobotomies to know otherwise. Marie-Jeanne Argent is just as ruthless as the rest of the survivors. "So, how much do you want for this old place?" Corrine glances back at the burned-out husk that used to be the Hale Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane with only a faint twinge of bitterness.

"Whatever sounds reasonable." She just wants to be done with this and wipe this awful place from her memory. "I have the keys and deed in the car." Lahey nods, taking a step closer to the wreckage. His green eyes are bright with ideas, like he can see a way to make this place better. Return it to glory and actually put it to good use. He could level it and put in a community herb garden for all Corrine cares.

"Seven thousand sound reasonable?" Truth be told, seven thousand dollars is more than Corrine thought anyone would pay for this place.

"Perfectly reasonable," she agrees, curt and clipped. The smile she gives when he turns to her has too many teeth.

"Well then, I guess we have a deal."

The deal is completed within twenty-four hours and Corrine feels a weight lift off her shoulders when she lays down for bed that night. She never has to think of that place again if she doesn't want to. Her son will never truly know what happened there with his father and sister. She can put it behind them. It's all Lahey's problem now.

Corrine doesn't sleep much the first night after the sale is finalized. She hasn't slept well since the fire, her dreams usually filled with black smoke and screams, but that night is the worst. She tosses and turns before finally giving up around two in the morning, fumbling her way to the kitchen where Peter's scotch is waiting for her.

She drinks heavily and tries not to think about what the future holds.

October 29, 2019

Erica still has nightmares sometimes, even a year after that night. In her dreams, she's back in the basement and there's a man hovering over her, his eyes a bright blue and his scalpel sharp as it drifts over her midsection. The man doesn't talk, doesn't even cut her, but the threat of violence is there all the same.

"You can run," a voice drawls, the sound of glass shattering under a boot. "But you can't hide. I'll find you, Eri, and then I'll burn you just like the others."

She wakes up with her shirt twisted around her and a scream caught in her throat. Boyd's side of the bed is empty and there's an instant of razor sharp panic that slices through her, but then she can hear quiet voices beyond the shut door of her bedroom, can smell bacon and coffee. Her breaths come out easier after that, realizing that she's safe in her home and her three boys are waiting for her in the kitchen. Well, four if you want to count Scott.

Erica gets up and pulls on a pair of sweats before shuffling out of her room, making her way down the hall to the bright kitchen. Autumn sunshine comes in through the window over the sink, reflecting off the light sheen of grease on the bacon. She can't bring herself to eat anything right now, not when her nightmare is still so close.

"Morning," Boyd says, and his grin chips away at the ice forming in her veins. "Want some coffee?"

"French Vanilla creamer," Aiden says, sliding a mug over before she even has time to open her mouth. He's smiling as well, and one look over at Ethan confirms that he's also smiling. She briefly wonders if Caesar's buddies were smiling at him before they turned him into a pin cushion. "Sleep well?"

"As well as can be expected," she murmurs, suspicious. She glances down at the chihuahua and, yep, Scott's smiling too. What the actual fuck is going on in this house? Did they all do crack while she was sleeping? If so, she kind of wants some. "What the hell is going on?"

"Nothing." Aiden widens his eyes and purposefully makes his smile dim. The last time he did that it was because he'd swapped out Deaton's copy of X-Men with the porn version. The time before that, when all of her boys had these matching grins, she ended up in Finstock's office listening to him rant about why her kids will end up in prison before they're twenty.

'And I don't mean the fun one that's on Netflix,' he'd declared,' I mean the one where you get shanked because you gave your roommate the side-eye!' She didn't like listening to those oddly specific lectures when she'd been a student and they've only gotten more bizarre now that he's teaching her kids. The tirade had ended with an anecdote about the time Coach threw a chicken filled with drugs over the razor wire-topped fence. The dude should write a book.

"Please tell me you didn't pour three buckets of paint inside Mister Harris' car."

"What? No." The look of baffled offense is genuine, Aiden looking over at his brother and then Boyd. "We didn't do that, right?"

"Of course we didn't," Ethan states, more confident than his twin. "We still owe him fifty bucks from the last time."

"We just wanted to surprise you." Erica arches her brows at that, not believing it for a second. "Today's the day you adopted us." The news is like a punch to the gut, the coffee cup shaking in her hand until she sets it aside. One whole year since she adopted the twins, one whole year since she got her dream family. "You're off today, right?"

"Yeah," she nods. How could she have forgotten about today? She's been amped about this anniversary this whole time, but suddenly she just forgets? Well, fuck that. She's taking her kids out for sundaes as big as their heads. "How about, after we eat lunch, we go to the ice cream place?"

"Extra toppings?"

"Well, duh." Aiden gives her a genuine smile, one of those rare ones that lights up his entire face. Erica lives for those smiles. "For now, let's eat breakfast and see where the day takes us." The twins take the bacon and eggs to the little table, Scott yapping as he runs after them. Erica can't bring herself to move yet, she can still hear that voice at the back of her mind that promises to burn her.

"Babe," Boyd says, moving around the island to face her. He goes slow, letting her see that he only means to put his hand on her arm. He always seems to know when she's on edge, like he can just sniff out her particular brand of turmoil. But of course he can, she realizes. Her turmoil is his turmoil, shared trauma and all that jazz. "Nightmares again?"

"Same one." He nods and lets out a breath, pressing his forehead against hers. "I was on that damn table and he had a scalpel." She can feel panic edging in, her lungs going tight like she's just run a marathon. Or up several flights of stairs to reach an attic.

"What time is it?"

"Eight in the morning."

"Where are you?" She draws in a deep breath and looks up at him, wanting to drown in his gaze. It's so soft, like freshly tilled soil just waiting to grow something. "Where are you, Eri?"

"I'm home." It comes out as a strangled whisper and his hold on her arm tightens. She squeezes her eyes closed as she forces the nightmare away. The unknown man with the burning blue gaze and the scalpel that flashes in poor lighting, she forces the images and that voice like breaking glass away from her. She needs to focus on what's happening now, on who's standing right in front of her. "I am home," she states.

"I am home, she thought, and stopped in wonder at the thought. I am home, I am home; now to climb." Erica can't help her laugh, leaning against her boyfriend and so very grateful for his warmth.

"You're such a dork."

"You love me anyway."

"Yeah, you're a pretty special dork."

"If you two are through with all the rom-com declarations of love over there, the food's getting cold," Ethan calls.

Chris is dozing in his chair, his daughter already sound asleep against his chest and the TV playing quietly in the background. He's almost asleep himself when his phone chimes, briefly drowning out the sound of Dragon Tales. He shifts in his chair in order to pull the phone out of his pocket, squinting at the screen.

He opens up his email and what he finds there has his breath stilling in his chest. The sender's address is a jumble of numbers and letters, the subject line reading MISSING in all caps. Chris glances down at Allison, making sure she really is asleep before bringing the email up. There's only one line, but it's enough to get him breathing again, to get his heart beating harshly against his ribs.

I know where Kate is. Meet me at the Hale Institute on Halloween if you want her back.

His hand is shaking so badly that he has to set the phone aside for fear of dropping it. His sister has been missing for a year, no texts or phone calls to let him know she's alright or hurt. The police had combed the Hale Institute for weeks before giving it up as a lost cause. No bodies, no blood, no Kate. The two survivors—Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd—remained adamant that the others were dead, but there's no evidence to support that.

I know where Kate is.

What can he do except show up? Aside from Allison, Kate is the only family that Chris has left now that Vicki is dead. Allison still cries at night and what kind of father would he be if he let that happen when there's a chance to get her aunt back to her? He lets out a slow breath and types out a quick reply, promising to be there at five.

The basement of the Hale Institute is overtaken by rot, thick coats of black mold crawling up the walls as old machinery rusts to nothingness. A shape moves through the darkness, an out of sync shadow trailing after it across the cracked floor. The figure smiles down at the phone in its hand, the illuminated screen casting strange shadows over a face made pale by death.

Email Sent, the screen reads.

Stiles' grin is cold and bloodless.