I'm sorry if this chapter is a little stiff, nevertheless read and review.
Two weeks later.
Twelve. That's the amount of people who I've seen with hieroglyphics on their teeth since getting back from Dunsmuir. All women. All young and beautiful. I've told Stiles, I've told the whole pack, but I wish I hadn't. If I'm ever alone they text, call or visit. It gets tedious after some time, all I want is a bit of alone time. They're scared I'm going crazy.
Five. That's how many girls have died in the last two weeks. I've never known a constant ache of pending death so bad that I can feel it in my toes even when I sleep. We've officially branded these suicides as murders. An impending murder investigation. Too many for it to be a coincidence yet not clear enough to identify who the killer could be. But perfectly calculated for their to be a pattern.
Kira and Scott have been doing research, focusing more on witches rather than a shape-shifter. I don't think they've found anything. I've been kept in the dark a lot about everything, Stiles doesn't want me to go crazy, I guess. So Stiles has been trying to distract me with picking a date to go to move into our new house. Which I find is more stressful than the actual murder thing.
"I'm going to the station today, you coming?" Stiles asks as we sit at our kitchen table, eating breakfast as he reads the newspaper and I read the Bestiary, trying to find something of use.
"Yeah," I tell him, folding down a page on an 'Oxter', which looks like some shape-shifting, power sucking creature. "Stiles, we need to start piecing things together."
"We don't have that much information, Lyds." Stiles sighs, dropping the paper, looking at me. I roll my eyes at him. Does he think I'm stupid?
"Stiles, we have patterns. That's all we need." I tell him, taking his hand from across the table. He places his other hand over my own and rubs his thumb over it.
"We'll look today." He says quietly. I'm not sure if he means it, completely, or if he says it to keep me happy. I know he's worried about me, and he's stupid if he doesn't think I've noticed. But still I keep a smile on my face. We arrive at the station earlier than usual, so we have time to go over everything. Not everyone's at work yet, only the Sheriff and a few other cops, so it isn't loud in here, which means we talk quietly.
"We found out that the most recent murder knew a woman called Elsa, and guess who she worked for?" The Sheriff tells us as soon as we enter the office, I'm partially relived that we have a bit more of a pattern, it means we're closer to ending this whole thing.
"Andrews?" Stiles guesses, mocking fake shock. The Sheriff nods and he bites his lip. We uncovered a few days ago too that another girl was negotiating with a woman called Eliza. There has been countless women that have been named, but still no trace as if she doesn't actually exist. And at one point we started to believe she didn't because that would make everything so much easier, although it wouldn't make sense, pieces of this mystery didn't add together without the woman.
"This isn't a coincidence, guys." I speak up, searching through my purse to find my notebook. "There's a pattern going on. An obvious one."
"It can't be too obvious other wise this case would've been closed already." The Sheriff states. I sigh and study the papers. Scanning the names, ages and what they all were doing in their lives. I note down the obvious, they're all girls, cyanide was cause of death and the majority of them had some connection with a woman, who freaked them out.
Then something tugs inside me. My eyes scanning all the names. The names of the women they had some dodgy-deal going on with.
"Stiles," I say, his head snaps up from where he's working with his dad, "Get a dry-erase marker, now."
He scrambles out of his seat and pats down his pockets for one, he bites off the lid and jumps over to the whiteboard, looking at me expectantly.
"Write down: Betty, Libby, Billie, Elsa and Eliza." I order him, reading the names off of the majority of the reports and portfolios, Stiles stands back after writing them, then looks at me. The Sheriff is stood too, looking at them, a crease in his forehead.
"Something about them..." I say trying to figure it out, I look at the formation of the word, what they have in common. Something about them just looks and sounds so odd, or familiar.
"Lyds, what are you doing?" Stiles asks. Lyds. that's it. My head snaps up to him, a smile creeping on my face.
"You genius!" I say, smacking a kiss on his lips, "It's a nickname," I say shaking my head, not being able to help my smile of relief. "They aren't just first names, they've been shortened down."
"From what? I don't know a Libby or a Betty whose name is actually longer than that." Stiles asks me, his hand holding my arm. I look at the board once again, taking every name in. Then it clicks in my mind. One name in which they are all nicknames for. Something about the Eliza and Libby. Something ringing so clear.
"Elizabeth." I whisper. I feel Stiles and the Sheriff both look at me, a grin on their faces. Of course it's Elizabeth.
"You, baby, are the fucking genius." Stiles says to me, as he pulls me in for a hug, so tight it's like he's putting all my broken pieces back together. Then, a thought creeps over me, they all worked for the company 'Andrews' that sale properties, the same company that we bought our house off of. Liz. Elizabeth. Liz!
"Wait, Stiles." I say pulling back from the embrace, "Liz."
"Fuck." Stiles mutters, he runs over to the desk and starts dialing a number, realizing it's Scott I relax a little, thinking he was going to dial Liz or the estate agents. I sit down, running a hand through my hair and trying to make use of all this. Could this mean there was one woman all along going under different names? It doesn't take long for Scott to show up, maybe twenty minutes but the minute he walks in I can tell he's anxious especially since Kira is pregnant.
"What are we going to do?" Scott asks, the Sheriff leaves as some point, going to investigate some gang attack. Scott's hair is ruffled and his eyes bloodshot red, he looks exhausted.
"We don't know for sure if it's actually them who's killing all these girls, it could be coincidental." Stiles reminds him, and I try my best not to get my hopes up, this could be a false lead. Something out of nothing that I've made up.
"What if they were supplying the girls with drugs, spiked the drugs with cyanide and bam! Cyanide poisoning." Scott suggests. I turn the theory around in my mind. It could be a reasonable, logical explanation, but something that gnaws at my mind still is Zack, the ex-boyfriend of Jess Leatherwood, the first victim. And Mrs Lewis, the old lady who's a banshee and told me to 'Find the solution' which even I still can't make sense of.
"Doesn't explain what Lydia keeps seeing." Stiles shrugs, dismissing the point as if he never would've considered it was drug-dealing gone wrong.
"Or what Mrs Lewis said, and did..." I start then something clicks in my head, like a light bulb slowly flickering on, "What if Emily was a banshee? The gene is recessive, right? So it might of skipped her mothers generation and was passed down to her. It's no coincidence that Mrs Jones was a banshee, not to mention the first victim, Jess, could apparently predict death."
"Maybe we need to talk to someone who knows more about this stuff. I think you should revisit Mrs Jones, if she is a banshee, then she'll know something." Scott suggests, his eyebrows knitted together in concentration. I think over what he's suggesting, but could I do that? Could I go and revisit the woman who physically and emotionally hurt me? I shiver at the thought.
"We just need to know for sure if these women that the girls have in common are the guilty suspects. What if this isn't the missing piece to the puzzle?" Stiles marvels, a long hand running through his hair, then dragging down his face to rub his eyes.
"And we need to know what these things are I keep seeing-"
"Lydia, whatever you do, do not ever ask about them." Scott says, a sudden strong concern and fear lacing his words, "If only you can see them, it means something, and that something could get you in danger, okay?"
I nod, not realizing that. What if only supernatural creatures can see it? But surely Scott or any werewolf would've seen it by now...
Scott's phone starts ringing loudly, and he pats down his pockets until he finds it, swiping across the screen as we answers. He talks to Kira, presumably by all the "Sweetheart" or "Darling" he adds at the end of every sentence. And for some reason I don't think he talks to Derek like that. He finally hangs up and slides the phone into his jean pocket.
"Right, I have to go because pregnancy cravings strike once again, but before I go, what was all of this with the same name business?" Scott asks, eyebrows raised.
Stiles tells him the theory of how there might only be one person doing all the killing, however they change their name each time to a nickname version of 'Elizabeth'. He then explains how our estate agent is called 'Liz' and that she may be a suspect, but it doesn't explain the fact I've seen all these hieroglyphic teeth and there is only one killer. That is, in fact, if the hieroglyphic teeth are linked to the killers. But that's a whole other theory.
Stiles talks fast and precise when telling Scott, in which he nods when he listens. I'm amazed Stiles doesn't stutter when he does so.
"That's not a half bad theory, and believable too." Scott observes, we talk some more but then we let him go seeming as his pregnant wife is a higher priority than finding out the killer that seems to be targeting only women.
I drop down into the seat opposite Stiles and watch him work, watch his eyes scan paper and his vein laced hands scribble down words.. My thoughts twine with the all the facts and theories about these cases, and what we still have to find out so we can even achieve closing the case. Then I think of Liz and then Jess who was buying an art studio and- Does Liz know Stiles is a soon-to-be Sheriff?
If she doesn't then she isn't aware that we have information, and neither should she, technically if she isn't the killer, we could ask her about other clients and she wouldn't get suspicious of us knowing something. If she was the killer.
"Wait, Stiles." I say, pulling my thoughts together and forming them into words, "I think we need to find out if Liz is the one we're looking for, this will also tell us if here is only one woman doing this all under nicknames."
"Good thinking, you sure she won't suspect anything?" He asks, looking at me chewing on his bottom lip. I place a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.
"Even if she does, we'll know she's the one we're after." I tell him, getting up from my seat and fetching my purse from the table. Then me and Stiles head back to the apartment to decide what date to move in our new house as a ploy to get to speak to Liz, and perhaps find out if she's our lady.
"A three-week notice to move into the house is fine," Liz tells us, smiling, that stupid gold symbol glinting in the light, "I'm so glad you've got this sorted."
"Yeah, all we need now is to put our apartment on the market." Stiles nods politely, I sense his mannerism has changed, perhaps scared to find out if this is the potential killer.
"Lydia, do you paint?" Liz asks me, ignoring what Stiles said. I wear a black t-shirt underneath a pair of light wash old denim dungarees, that we purposely spotted with paint as well as my hands. We wanted to give her the illusion to her hat I paint so that she would ask this very question, hence leading us to know if she was selling Jess Leatherwood that art studio, or not.
"Can you tell?" I try to joke, looking at my hands and wiping them off in my clothes, Liz smiles and I try to not let my eyes linger on her tooth.
"Do you have a specific room planned out in here to paint?" She asks.
"Uh- no, I've been trying to find a studio for cheap." I explain, pretending to look intrigued by our conversation.
"Well, there's an art studio that I'm trying to sale, the woman I was trying to sale it to, well, she can't buy it anymore." She tells me, her eyes almost darkening as she says so. I slowly draw in a deep breath and try to make sure my face doesn't give anything away. If one of her clients could no longer buy an art studio that she so desperately wanted then it's definitely because she's dead, there's no mistaking it.
"I'll think about it." I say, forcing a smile, and turning to snake an arm around Stiles, almost as though I'm seeking comfort there. We discuss the house for a few more minutes, but everything inside me aches to get out of there, and away from her. She could, possibly, be the killer we've been after for months now. And we've let her believe she's getting away with what she might be doing.
But what made her pick on Jess? A young girl who may of been supernatural. Did they have some unfinished business? But if she was supernatural, a banshee even, how could Liz sense that? The same with Emily James. She was buying a house and suddenly she's dead, and gone forever. Her grandmother was a banshee so she possibly could've been too, so again, how did she sense it?
Then something itches in my mind, what if she couldn't sense it? But made them see, hear or say something that proved they were a banshee. What if all along I could only see her gold hieroglyphic symbol on her tooth because I am supernatural, a banshee...