"So now what?" Mason asked.

Two days. Two full days and nothing they'd come up with had gotten them any further than they were, which was basically a stand-still. Two days of asking the same questions, talking to the same people, throwing out the same ideas.

They'd exhausted every avenue they'd collectively come up with only to be no closer to a solution than they had when they'd started. They simply had no information. Stiles couldn't help but feel that it was time wasted when they should have been more mobile, more active. It was rare that they didn't have some nugget to go on within a short time. Research to get to, some relevant questions to answer and an avenue or two to find those answers.

Nothing.

Stiles would give anything right now to have someone or something to chase down. It would mean that they were a step closer to their goal.

Their goal being, this time, to find his missing best friend- who had better still be alive if he knew what was good for him- and his best friend's pain-in-the-ass beta. He half-grudgingly decided that Liam had better be alive, too. But especially Scott.

God, he was tired. So tired he could barely think coherently. He'd read somewhere that for each night that you got less than seven hours of sleep it took so much time off of your life-span. He didn't remember the exact numbers but Stiles thought that at this rate, he'd be dead before he got to college.

Beacon Hills was going to kill him one way or another.

He rubbed both hands over his face vigorously. There was no time for sleep yet.

"I think I'll head over to Oak Creek," Derek announced from his corner after reading a new text. He stood and grabbed up his trademark leather jacket. "Deaton says Satomi is back in town. She might know something we don't. She usually has her ear to the ground."

"I'll talk to my dad again," Stiles decided wearily. He doubted it would do much good but at this point their options were limited. Limited to zero. "I don't know how he managed to explain to Liam's dad that he knew Liam was gone before his own parents did but they're not happy and they're asking questions. Maybe I can help him come up with something to appease them for now so he can focus more on actually helping us find them."

His most recent conversation with his dad had revealed precious little that would help but one just never knew what would pop up unannounced.

"I'll go with you," Malia offered.

Stiles nodded. There was no real point to it but there wasn't anything else for her to do until they got a clue or a God-given sign or something to fight. Maybe they could even catch a quick nap at his house.

"I think..." Kira hesitated then began again just a little more certain. "I think I'll head to Scott's house. There's something I want to check out. Lydia, would you come with me?"

Lydia's eyebrows rose but she asked no questions. "Sure. I don't have any better ideas of my own."

"What kind of idea?" Derek asked, still waiting impatiently for them to exit his loft, jacket still hanging from one hand.

Kira gnawed on her lip and shook her head a moment later. "Nothing yet. Just something I want to look into. It's probably nothing."

Derek frowned but said nothing.

Stiles almost pressed her for more but she didn't look very sure of what she was saying even as she said it. Probably it was one of those vague hunches that he'd followed dozens of times himself. Either it turned out to be something or it turned out to be nothing, no in-between. If it turned out to be something Kira would make sure everyone knew. If it was nothing, no sense in wasting time and precious nap-seconds waiting for her to figure out how to explain what was probably a muddled, sleep-deprived idea that wouldn't make any sense at all later when they had a chance to look at it with fresh minds.

They filed out of the loft and headed their separate ways with promises to keep each other updated and to get at least a couple hours of sleep while they could. Experience had taught most of them that not only might they need to be at their best at some point -what little their best usually presented – but that anything could happen at any moment to give them the information they needed to send them careening down a path fraught with violence and fear and death-defying.

One usually needed at least a nap to deal with that kind of thing.

Stiles and Malia were halfway to the Sheriff's station when Stiles realized that Mason had barely said a word the entire time they'd been in the loft. While the rest of them had split up for their vague and self-appointed tasks, Mason had quietly left on his own. Stiles wondered if anyone else had noticed the younger teen slip away.


"You're sure you don't feel anything?" Kira asked.

Lydia gave her a sideways look. "Like what?"

"I don't know. Anything."

"You do know that whenever I feel something it usually ends in finding a dead body, right? I'm pretty sure that's not what we want right now."

"I know. But I mean, we don't really know exactly how you work, right? Maybe you have some kind of...something."

"Like a barometer for anything other than dead bodies?" Lydia tried to keep her tone neutral. Find a few bodies lying around town and suddenly people thought that anytime she needed to find something or know something all they had to do was drag her around and she'd eventually ping, like a metal detector finding a lost earring. She was a mystery even to herself but she was pretty sure that if she had the ability to do that she'd have done it by now.

Kira's face was a clear apology. "I'm sorry. It's just..." she shook her head as her words trailed off and she bit at her bottom lip, something that Lydia noticed was beginning to leave it's mark.

"What do you feel?" Lydia asked curiously. She tilted her head to the side as she regarded the other girl.

Kira held her arms around herself as if she were cold but there was a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and stippling her upper lip.

Kira hesitated before admitting "I'm not really sure."

"But you feel something."

"This is the third time I've been here since last night," Kira said to Lydia's surprise.

Kira had initially expressed reluctance to see Scott's room any time the others had found reason to stop by to follow up on a random idea or to look, once again, for something they might have missed the first several times.

"When I was at Liam's house that first time with Mason I had this really weird feeling," Kira went on to explain. "I went back a few hours later just to see if...I don't know...if it was something? It was this creepy feeling, like I was being watched but also like spider webs brushed my skin every time I moved. It was strongest in Liam's bedroom. It didn't feel normal so I went back later to see if it still felt the same. It did."

"Have you told this to anyone else?" Lydia asked.

Kira shook her head.

"Why not? It might mean something!"

"At first I wasn't sure. I didn't want to waste time on some mysterious feeling that I figured would turn out to be just the heebie jeebies. But I couldn't get it out of my mind. So last night I decided I should try it here, too."

"And it's the same here?" Lydia asked. She moved over and sat on the edge of Scott's bare mattress. Melissa was not staying at the house for the sake of safety but she'd clearly attempted clean-up before she left. Lydia didn't want to imagine what that might have been like for her, to strip her son's blood-spattered bedding from his bed.

Kira nodded. "That's why I kept coming back here last night,, trying to make sense of it. It's the same."

"So you decided to ask me to come along to see if I sense anything, as well," Lydia summarized concisely.

Kira nodded.

"I don't," Lydia sighed and shook her head. "I don't know if it would matter if I did. I usually don't know what it means until it's too late." That wasn't self-pity. It was simply fact. "Maybe it's a Kitsune thing."

"I thought of that," Kira admitted, "but I was kind of hoping it wasn't."

Lydia could relate to that frame of mind, though she couldn't imagine that Kira's reasons would be the same as her own. Kira wasn't cursed with predicting death and finding bodies. Lydia could think of a few other things she'd rather be able to do if she was destined to be given any sort of power.

"So if it is," Lydia asked, "how do we find out what it is?"

Kira sighed with resignation. "I think I have to talk to my mom."


Scott stared at the other man. No, he corrected himself, the other werewolf. The older werewolf stared back and let his eyes flash for just a moment. Red. Alpha red. Had Scott had to place his age it would be hard to be accurate. There wasn't much to see under the greasy hair hanging almost to his shoulders and half obscuring his eyes. A full beard covered the lower half of his face.

But his eyes, what Scott could see of them, had creases in the corners. Fine lines traced his upper cheeks before they disappeared under the unkempt and graying facial hair. Scott couldn't guess how old the man was, but he was certainly well older than him.

As the stranger stared back, Scott wondered for a moment if that was sympathy he saw in the gaze.

"We don't have to do this," Scott tried to persuade. "We can find another way."

Scott's voice was almost drowned out by the screaming spectators but his opponent heard him just fine. The crowd on the outside of the enclosed arena were greedy, rabid and impatient.

"There is no other way." The voice was rough, gravelly. Underused, Scott guessed, sounding like a sore throat working it's way back to usefulness.

"We'll find one. I always do."

A small shake of the head. Greasy hair swayed; unwashed odor assaulted Scott's nose. Wary eyes flicked to a scowling man just outside of the arena who was staring at him with hard eyes.

"Sorry, kid," was all the warning Scott got before the other alpha sprang at him with a roar.

Scott roared back and met claws with claws.