We barely have time to get our stories straight, barely have time to get Kira to calm down enough to listen. I'm still reeling by the time my dad's deputies show up, bundle Scott, Kira, Lydia, and I into the backs of squad cars, and whisk us back to the Sheriff's station. I give the rehearsed answers to Deputy Gozeman on the drive while Lydia clings to my hand like it's the only thing keeping her from falling apart, all the while thankful that my ADHD-wired brain is more than capable of holding an external conversation completely independent from my actual thoughts.

I watched Kira absorb enough electricity to send the entire town – hell, possibly the entire county – into a blackout. What does that make her? Some sort of superhero? She just stood there, sparks winding up her arms in rivers of flame, until picking up the broken power main and casually kinking it into a knot.

What is she?

My phone buzzes against my leg, and Lydia and I both go for our pockets at the same time. It's a new message in the pack's group text, from Allison.

Allison: Isaac was attacked at my apartment.

Scott: What? Is he okay?!

Allison: Seems fine, my dad had to trigger his healing by forcing him to change.

My fingers fly over the screen. What was it? Who did it?

Allison: No idea. Isaac just remembers figures all in black that came out of the shadows.

Lydia: Can you find anything matching that description in the bestiary?

Allison: Maybe. Still making sure Isaac's okay before doing anything else.

Lydia and I trade looks across the back of the squad car as we pull into the Sheriff's station. Just what we need – mysterious figures, all in black, going after our werewolf friends again.

"So, what time did you get there?" Scott's dad asks me once he's got the four of us settled into chairs in my dad's office. My dad swivels back and forth slowly behind his desk.

"At the same time," I reply.

"At the same time as who?"

I point at Scott as he raises his hand. "Same time as me."

"By coincidence?" continues Agent McCall.

"What you mean, coincidence?" I say.

"I'm asking you," McCall says, clearly getting annoyed. It's been almost half an hour since the deputies gave their briefs and he started questioning us, and he's gotten practically nowhere. If Scott and I's refusal to be helpful is maybe driven just a smidge by our genuine hatred of this guy in addition to our need to protect our secrets and loved ones, well, who's the wiser? "The two of you arrived at the same time. Was that coincidence?"

"Are you asking me?" Scott asks, a perfect mask of honest confusion on his face.

"I think he's asking me," I say to Scott in a sidebar.

"I think he's asking both of you," Lydia contributes, and I can't help giving her a broad grin. Girl doesn't speak up much in front of authority, but when she does, it's a gem.

"Okay," McCall interrupts. "Let me answer the questions." I turn my grin to him, waiting for him to realize what he's just said. "Let me ask the questions. Just so I have this absolutely clear. Barrow was hiding in a chemistry closet at the school. Someone left him a coded message on the blackboard, telling him to kill Kira. Then Barrow took Kira to a power substation and tied her up, with the intent of electrocuting her, which blacked out the entire town."

"Sounds about right," I confirm.

"How'd you know he'd take her to a power substation?"

I'm not entirely prepared for that one. I can't exactly explain Lydia's banshee senses or my dad's involvement without getting one or both of them in serious trouble. "Well, because he was an electrical engineer. So…where else would he take her?"

Agent McCall shoots me a look that I just barely remember from early childhood, and it's a look that quite clearly says he's getting sick of my shit. "That's one hell of a deduction there, Stiles."

My grin expands, if possible. "Yeah, well, what can I say? I take after my Pops. He's in law enforcement." I shoot my dad a wink around McCall's side, and he snorts into his hand to hide the chuckle.

"Stiles," my dad manages after a second. "Just answer the man."

I sigh. "We made a good guess."

McCall consults his notes, then shifts his line of questioning to Scott and Kira. "And what were the two of you doing? Before Barrow took Kira?"

Kira says "Eating sushi" at the exact same moment Scott says "Eating pizza." They then reverse their answers and again speak over one another. They ultimately chorus "Eating sushi and pizza," then breathe sighs of relief.

Aww. Young love.

McCall turns over his shoulder to my dad. "You believe this?"

"To be honest," my dad says, scrubbing a hand down the side of his face, "I haven't believed a word Stiles has said since he learned how to speak. But I think that these kids found themselves in the right place, at the right time. And that girl sitting there is very lucky for it."

I can practically see the frustration and barely-contained rage rolling off Scott's dad in waves. "Kira. Is that how you remember it?"

There's an expectant pause, when Scott, Lydia, my dad, Scott's dad, and myself all stare at Kira. She's the newest to this, the one with the least experience covering up the weirdness of Beacon Hills. One wrong word from her now could send everything tumbling to the ground.

"Yes," she finally says. "Could I get my phone back now?

Agent McCall heaves one last, dramatic sigh, and stands up. "Sorry, but no." He gestures through the windows for deputies to come in. "Deputies will take you all home. Kira, you'll need to fill out some paperwork first."

My dad gives me a quick hug (whispering, "I get the full story tonight at home" into my ear), then sends me out the door. I persuade Gozeman to just take me back to my Jeep, still at the power substation, then take the long way home.

"So, what is she?" My dad asks a few hours later, as we push aside the remnants of a late-night snack of apples and peanut butter (and beer for my dad, caffeine-free tea for me).

"I honestly don't know," I say, twirling a pad of Post-it notes under my finger. We've moved the chessboard into the kitchen, and I updated it to bring Lydia into play. I have Kira tagged as one of the castles, but have no idea where to place her.

He groans and gets up, clearing our plates. "Is she dangerous?"

I follow him to the sink, carrying a half-drained beer bottle and my empty mug. "I don't know that, either."

"She's just a kid," he says. "She can't be dangerous, she's just a kid."

"So's Malia," I say. "And Jackson, and Matt, and the hellspawn twins. Hell, even Allison, Scott, Lydia We're all dangerous, Dad. But I don't think any of us are kids anymore."

He pulls me suddenly into a fierce, tight hug. "You going to be able to sleep tonight?"

I shrug in his arms. "Dunno. It's only a few hours until dawn, I might just stay up."

He pulls back a little and looks at me critically. "That's not healthy, Stiles."

"I've got a week and a half of Trig homework to catch up on and a Physics quiz Friday," I say. "Take it up with my teachers. Besides," I continue, ducking away. "You know what happens when I try to sleep."

I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck as I clean up.

I don't sleep that night.

I wince against the sound of Coach patrolling the halls with a bullhorn. Not sleeping might mean that I don't have to wake up somewhere unexpected, but it also means that I'll spend the day grumpy and with a wicked headache.

"Just because there's no power, don't expect there to be no school!" Coach chants gleefully.

"That's a triple negative," I call after him as I yank my locker open. "Very impressive, Coach."

"Copy that."

As I pull my Physics book free, I jostle my keys from their perch on the edge of my locker and they fall to the ground. When I squat to grab them, my fingers settle over an unfamiliar shape, and I slowly unfold myself back to standing while examining the keyring intruder.

"Hello, how'd you get here?" I say, flipping through the other keys just to make sure I'm not going crazy. House key, McCall house key, Jeep key, gym locker key, key to Derek's loft…and this guy. Mystery key.

I'm distracted by Scott trying to charge past me towards Kira's locker at the end of the hall, and throw an arm around his chest to hold him back. "Nope – no, stop it, stop it."

"What?" Scott demands, gazing after Kira like a lovesick puppy. "I need to talk to her."

"No, you don't," I correct. "You need to remember that someone left a coded message telling Barrow to kill her."

"Which is why I need to talk to her."

"Scott, no way. Until we figure out if she's just another psychotic monster that's going to start murdering everybody, I vote against any and all interaction." I emphasize this last statement with a couple wild gestures.

"But what if she's like me?" Scott says, and for a second I almost let up. I remember what Scott was like when Peter first bit him, how afraid and out of control he was – and that was with me by his side, to share the load as best I could. Kira doesn't seem to have anyone.

But maybe that's what's going to make her dangerous.

"That girl walked through 1.21 gigawatts of electricity," I say firmly. "She's not like you."

"Two days ago you told me that I'm the hot girl," he whines. "The apex predator."

"You're still the hot girl, moron," I say. "But we don't know yet where Kira falls on the whole supernatural food chain. Know thy enemy, Scott."

"How can I know my enemy if you won't let me talk to her?"

"Stiles is right," Lydia agrees, joining us as we stare after Kira's retreating form. "We don't know anything about her. Finding information and getting unnecessarily close to her are two very different things."

"Fine, do your research," Scott concedes. "But if it turns out that she needs help, we're helping. No questions asked."

I wake up at the end of Bio, with my phone buzzing in my pocket and Mrs. Martin's hand on my shoulder.

"I'll let it slide this once," she says kindly, concern pinching her eyes, "because you've got an A in this class and looks like you haven't slept in a week. But don't make a habit of it, Stiles – and please try to get some rest."

"It's not – what?" I gape after her, pulling my phone free and answering it on autopilot. "Hello?"

"Stiles?" My dad's voice jolts me back into reality.

"Dad? Dad, what's going on? Is everything okay, are you hurt? Oh God, did someone die?"

"Stiles, calm down," he cuts across my babbling. "Everything's fine, you texted me something incoherent about keys this morning and I didn't get a chance to write back."

"Oh," I say, willing my heartbeat back to normal. I pin the phone between my ear and shoulder while I shove my things into my backpack, mouth a "thank you" to Mrs. Martin, and head to lunch. "Yeah, that. Did you put a new key on my keyring for something?"

I can hear him rolling his eyes through the phone. "Stiles, I've got a county-wide blackout causing collisions at every intersection. No, I did not sneak a new key onto your keyring this morning."

"Fine, fine," I say, cruising around a corner and nearly taking out a few freshmen girls. "Whoa, sorry – hey, what are you eating for lunch?"

"What?"

"I thought I just heard the crinkle of something that sounded suspiciously like a burger wrapper."

"Stiles…" My dad says, letting his voice trail off.

"And then I thought, no. There's no way my beloved father would scorn the healthy lunch I so lovingly packed for him this morning in favor of a 2-dollar chemical patty guaranteed to clog his arteries and send him to an early grave. No way."

He sighs. "You're impossible."

"I love you too. See you tonight."

Scott catches up with me after school.

"Hey, man. I've got a favor to ask."

I squint up at him from where I'd settled against a tree outside the school to work on my AP English essay. "Why do I get the feeling this is going to get very illegal, very fast?"

He squats down in front of me. "We need to get Kira's phone back from the Sheriff's station."

"Why?" I scoff. "Not being able to text is just taking such a toll on her social life?"

Scott looks vastly uncomfortable. "There are some pictures on Kira's phone that...well, that she doesn't want anyone else to see."

I fix him with a look. "Scott. I was standing next to you last night while we watched Kira channel enough power to take out the eastern seaboard. We talked about you staying away from her this morning, and Lydia – banshee Lydia, with her danger and death-sensing powers – agreed. Unless you give me a really, really good reason to trust her, I can't help."

Scott shifts to be fully sitting. "I saw what she is. Today, during lunch. I still don't actually understand it, but it's like there's this creature made of light surrounding her."

He pulls out his phone and swipes to show me a picture – Kira, with lines of fire circling her. "I can't explain, Stiles, I just know that she isn't dangerous. Or that least that she isn't trying to be. I just think she needs help."

"It's a big risk, Scott," I say, handing the phone back to him.

"There are pictures of her like this on her phone," Scott says. "If my dad sees them – if any of the deputies do?"

I'm just opening my mouth again when Isaac strolls up, wearing a ridiculously heavy sweater despite the gorgeous, 70-degree weather. "What sort of pictures?"

Scott blushes to the tips of his ears. "Uh…naked ones."

Isaac practically dies laughing, but I'm still staring at my best friend. I may not have werewolf hearing, but I don't need to be able to check his heartbeat to tell when he's lying.

"Later," he mouths to me, then kicks Isaac's feet out from under him. "Jackass."

Isaac rolls around, covering himself in leaves and basking in the sunshine. "Sorry, oh Alpha mine. I just came over to see if you're going to the party tonight."

Scott and I trade blank looks. "What party?"

Isaac smirks. "Social calendars of slugs, honestly. Danny's throwing a blacklight party tonight at Derek's."

My jaw practically unhinges. "Derek is throwing a party?"

Isaac's face emotes more sass than even Jackson's, I swear. "Did I say that? No, I said that Danny's throwing a party at Derek's. Derek's out of town for a few days."

"Way to bury the lead! Where'd he go?" I ask.

Isaac sighs. "Stilinski, you're entirely missing the point. Tonight, we're being given the miraculous opportunity to forget that we're teenagers from broken homes with too much responsibility and dead friends and relatives."

"Weren't you attacked, like, less than 24 hours ago?" Scott asks.

"By an enemy we still don't know anything about?" I add.

"All the more reason to get drunk and try to forget just how much our lives truly suck," Isaac says.

Well. Can't argue with that logic.

At 9 o'clock, I meet Scott and Kira around back of the Sheriff's station and hand them proximity access cards. "Okay. This one'll get you into all the perimeter doors. This one is the evidence room, and this one is my father's office."

Scott accepts the cards, with some trepidation. "You didn't steal these, did you?"

"Nah, just cloned 'em using an RFID emulator," I say.

"Is that worse than stealing?"

Not the time to have a crisis of conscience over breaking and entering, Scott. "It's…smarter?"

Kira grabs Scotts' arm and tows him away to talk for a minute. I drum my thumbs against the steering wheel nervously until they return, then re-launch into my instructions. "Okay, so almost everybody's out dealing with the blackout, but there's always somebody at the front desk. Dispatch, usually a night shifter or two. You guys are going to use the service door entrance by the dumpster." I gesture with one hand. "Nobody uses it. I'll text you if anybody comes out, but Scott, if you get caught, I can't help you. My dad's under investigation for impeachment because of your dad, so if anything happens, I will run and leave you both for dead."

Kira's face falls in shock, but Scott just smiles, thanks me, and leads Kira into the building.

I wait. Probably five minutes, maybe ten. I continue drumming on my steering wheel, run through some Trig equations in my head, cross-check my working knowledge of the Argent's bestiary against some of the files Peter's shared, and am just about to text Scott for an update when my eyes settle on my keys again.

Mystery key. What do you do?

The dreams haven't been as bad recently. That may just be because I've been consciously not sleeping as much, but even in the dreams, or the dreams-within-dreams, I've been getting a little better at telling what's real. But this – this little detail of an explanation-less key just appearing out of nowhere – is tickling at the back of my mind, where that little voice telling me to count my fingers dwells.

Headlights.

"Aw, hell," I mutter, as I recognize both the SUV and the profile driving it. Scott's dad.

I already have the warning text cued up, so it's a simple matter to hit Send and pray that Scott's paying attention to his phone for once. Seconds pass as I watch McCall enter the building – through the freaking service door that no one's supposed to use – and then I'm dropping my phone and running after him into the station. I am so going to regret this.

I catch up with him just before he hits the door to my father's office, where he's pretty much set up shop, and thrown myself between him and the door with much arm-flailing and attention-grabbing. "Hey, hey! Thank God you are here, oh boy, thank the Lord."

He pins me with a stare akin to trapping an ant under a microscope on a sunny day.

"Well," I gulp. "I was just, thinking, you know – on the case! I was thinking and I was thinking that I should clue you in on my…thinking. So my thinking is that Barrow received the information on who to kill at the school, right? So I was thinking that maybe the person who gave him that information might actually – check this out – be someone…at…the…school. And that's…my thinking."

I suck in a large breath, relatively pleased with how that went, actually. I'm even more surprised when McCall opens his mouth and says, "You're right."

"I am?"

He nods. "We started looking for links between Barrow and the faculty and students last night."

I swing my arms awkwardly. "So you already know that stuff, then. You've already thought of that."

He cocks his head. "Your dad did."

"Oh! Well, great."

He leans around me to swipe his access card. "That's one useful suggestion, though."

My temper rises incredibly quickly at the tone in his voice and I find myself standing directly in his path again. "Hey, you know, this attitude you have towards my dad? You can dress it up to all the professional disapproval that you want, but I know the real reason."

He looks down at me. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, because he knows something that you don't want him to know," I say, and now I'm pretty much just making things up, but I'm so fricking pissed off at him for being here, for coming back and doing this to Scott and Mrs. McCall and my dad, and I know there's an inkling of truth in here somewhere from the way his mouth is tightening. "And guess what? I know it, too."

I watch it hit home – just a faint flicker of uncertainty, but it's there.

"Go home, Stiles," he says, gently but firmly pushing me out of his way. "There's a curfew."

Minutes later, Scott and Kira come pelting out of the station and skid to a stop in front of me.

"We did it," Scott says victoriously. "All the pics deleted."

"That was awesome!" Kira crows, out of breath but grinning widely. "I mean, terrifying – completely terrifying – but kind of awesome. I've never done anything like that before, have you?"

For what feels like the millionth time that day, Scott and I trade looks. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to agree with Scott – there's no way someone this excitable and happy and pure could possibly be evil. Right?

"Yeah," I say. "Once or twice."

When they've both caught their breath, Scott makes a minute head gesture at me and I climb back into my Jeep while he says, "So, I guess I should take you home."

In the side mirror, I watch Kira's face fall a little, and she nods reluctantly. I bite back a groan – these two are positively tragic.

Seconds before I fire up the Jeep, I hear Scott say, "Hey, you wouldn't want to go to a party, would you?"

I'm explaining the new key to Scott as we push through the door into Derek's loft and are met with a wall of sound and bodies.

"It just showed up on my keyring this morning," I say, shouting to make myself heard. "I asked my dad if he put it there, but he didn't know anything about it."

"It's just a key, right?" Scott asks.

"Yeah, but it's not mine," I say. It's hard to explain why this is bothering me so much. "And I don't know how it got there, or what it's for."

Scott catches my arm and looks at me seriously. "Do you want to leave so we can figure it out?"

I'm about to respond when one of the party-goers, a girl with orange hair and glowing lipstick to match, bounces up to us, plants a kiss on my cheek, calls "Happy Halloween!" and darts away into the crowd.

I clap Scott on the shoulder, astonished but unwilling to let this opportunity slide. "It can wait," I say, and abandon Scott and Kira to their own devices. The girl's difficult to trail through the insane crowd, but I catch her a few minutes later and wave my arms to get her attention.

"Hey, I kissed you!" she says, pointing at my cheek.

"Yeah, yeah, you kinda did!" I shout back. "What's your name?"

"I'm Kaitlyn!" she calls.

"Kaitlyn…." My brain whirs, clicks into place. "Oh my God, you're Kaitlyn." Kaitlyn, the girl who was camping the woods with her girlfriend. Kaitlyn, the girl whose girlfriend…

She looks at me like I've sprouted a second head. "Yeah, I know, I just told you that."

"No, I know, I just…you, and your girlfriend, she's…" I trail off, uncertain about how to proceed.

"She died," Kaitlyn finishes for me.

"Yeah," I say. "Are you okay?""

"Yeah!" she calls back, then throws her hands up overhead. "Really drunk! Wanna dance?"

Before I can actually answer, she grabs my hand and tugs me into the crush of people. We dance for I don't know how long – until I've sweated through my shirt, until I have three missed texts from my dad about the curfew, until, like Isaac said, I'm actually having some success forgetting just how much my real life sucks these days.

Sometime later – twenty minutes? two hours? – we pantomime taking a break to one another and collapse along the sides of the loft. Kaitlyn goes foraging for drinks and comes back successful, and though I'd honestly kill for a water, I'm not going to say no to a beer right now.

"Do you have a bottle opener?" She says, tucking herself against my leg.

"Yes!" I dig my keys out of my pocket and use the bottle opener on my key ring to lever our drinks open. Before I can actually take a swig, Kaitlyn grabs my keys and holds one of them up into the light. "Your key has phosphors on it. Look!"

I squint, and sure enough, she's holding up the mystery key – and, sure enough, it's doing something weird. Glowing in the UV light, it looks like, from a fingerprint. I shift a little to get a better look, and when I look down to Kaitlyn to make sure I don't bump her, she's looking up at me, and then she kisses me and this…this is nice. This, I could get used to.

When we break to breathe, I manage, "I thought you liked girls?"

"I do like girls!" She chirps. "Do you?"

"Absolutely," I affirm. "So you also like boys."

"Absolutely," she grins. "Do you?"

I'm still thinking about that question, because I honestly don't think anyone's ever asked me anything quite that bluntly before, when she leans forward and kisses me again.

It takes every ounce of willpower I have to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head and pull away from this cute, intelligent, remarkably well-adjusted girl who actually seems interested in me. "I'm sorry – what are phosphors?"

"Any substance that luminesces," she says. "It's in your teeth, fingernails, laundry detergent. It's also in this," she grins, swiping a finger across my lips and showing me the bright orange paint that's transferred from her mouth to mine. "Reacts with the UV light. That's why it glows."

I nod and lean down to kiss her again, still processing. It takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up, and then I freeze and extricate myself from her once more. "How would I get phosphors on my keys?"

She thinks. "Have you been handling chemicals?"

"Nah, I don't think…." I don't know if my brain slams to a halt or takes off at two hundred miles per hour, but something big falls into place and the telltale signs of a panic attack are taking root in my chest and I have to get out of here. "I'm sorry," I say to Kaitlyn, clambering down from the bench. "I'm really, totally sorry. I just thought of something, and I have to go. I really don't want to – I want to stay, and I would just stay all night – sorry, I just really have to go." I scramble away, but nearly fall into a cooler of water bottles, so I grab one and race it back to her. "Here, drink that. Whole thing!"

And then I'm running – flat out sprinting –down the stairs, across the street, and down the block to where I parked the Jeep. Burning rubber on the way to school, purposefully blocking myself from thinking about what I'm thinking about because if I think about this while I'm driving, I will absolutely have a panic attack and I really, really don't want to crash.

At school, racing down the hallways and nearly spinning out around the corners, until I hit the science wing and slide to a halt outside the chemicals closet.

First, I count my fingers. I need to know, without a doubt, that this is real.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

I am awake. My name is Stiles Stilinski, and I am awake.

My new key fits perfectly into the lock on the chemicals closet. The chemicals closet where escaped Shrapnel Bomber, William Barrow, hid and masked his scent after escaping the hospital.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. I have ten fingers.

I slowly, slowly, slowly, let myself in to the main classroom and walk toward the chalkboard, which somehow hasn't been washed or written over since yesterday. Since Lydia and I stood in this very spot behind the teacher's desk and she wrote the corresponding symbols for each atomic number, the symbols that spelled out Kira's name.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. My breath is coming in tiny heaves that rack my entire body.

I pick up the piece of chalk and copy all the numbers, but I could stop after the first digit. It's my handwriting. I'm the one who left the message for Barrow.

My name is Stiles Stilinski. I have ten fingers. I am awake.