Chapter Seventeen
...
Stiles saw Scott and his pack gathered outside of the station and grinned broadly. Marcie saw the group as well, grinned over at Stiles and with a wink, she turned invisible. He laughed and drove that little bit faster, pulling up in front of the station with a short squeal of tyres on asphalt.
"You didn't really think you were doing this without me, did you?" Stiles called, grinning when he saw Scott's eyes widen.
"Without us?" Derek amended, stopping beside the Jeep.
Stiles rolled his eyes. "I brought some friends to help; I hope you don't mind?"
Beside him, Marcie reappeared and waved. Scott's jaw dropped in shock, Liam and Mason looked just as stunned, and Malia snarled at Marcie's sudden appearance, her eyes turning blue.
"I told you they were coming," Lydia said from the doorway, arms folded over her chest.
"You didn't say they had an invisible person with them!" Scott replied, still gaping. "She was not there a second ago!"
"Dude, you're a werewolf; we've seen weirder shit than someone turning invisible," Stiles pointed out.
"Uh, he's right," Liam said, Mason nodding beside him.
"I'm Marcie, and despite Stilinski's horror stories, I am dying for a coffee," Marcie said with a grin.
"Come inside, I'll show you to the recon room; it's already set up. Oh, and don't worry, we had coffee brought in from Rosa's diner," Lydia added.
Stiles climbed out of his Jeep and hugged Scott firmly, clinging for a moment. "Good to see you, dude."
"You too, Stilinski," he said, grinning.
"It's not my fault that no one can pronounce a simple Polish name," Stiles said with a shrug, heading inside with everyone.
"This is an FBI meeting; no children allowed," Sean said, seeing Liam and Mason with the group.
"We're not children," Liam snarled.
"Ah, there's the IED. Nice work with that, kid," Stiles said, patting him on the back before turning to Sean. "They need to be here, sir. They're part of Scott's pack and it'll be difficult to plan anything involving them without them."
"I'll vouch for them," the Sheriff added with a nod.
At his words, both Liam and Mason stood up a little straighter, determined to do the Sheriff proud.
Sean still didn't look overly convinced, but relented when he realised no one was going to send the two kids home.
"Excuse me, sir? Mr. Forrester's here," Tara said, knocking on the doorframe.
"Again?" the Sheriff asked, sighing heavily.
"I thought you said foxes got his chickens?" Stiles asked his father, frowning.
"They did, but he refuses to believe it."
"Why?"
"Because he's a lonely old man," the Sheriff muttered.
"Seriously, Pops? Can we just pretend that nothing is a coincidence in this town, because it never is? What does Mr. Forrester think took his chickens?"
The Sheriff sighed again and looked to his son. "He thinks that wolves somehow managed to climb over his fence and get back over it with all twelve of his chickens all at once."
"Geez, dude, how hungry have you been lately?" Stiles asked, looking to Scott.
Scott's eyes widened. "It wasn't me!"
Stiles grinned. "I know. Who's got the Beacon Hills map?" he asked, looking to the others.
Okami grabbed the map from the pile and handed it over to him. Stiles took a moment to tack it up to the wall, then stepped back. The others stood around him curiously, and Stiles was vaguely aware of his father leaving to deal with Mr. Forrester.
"Okay, so... Mr. Forrester's farm is here," Stiles said, putting a pin in the map. "The Nemeton's here; school is here; Argent's creepy torture dungeon is here; and the Hale house is here."
"And what do they have to do with anything?" Grant asked, frowning as he looked at the odd places strewn across the map.
"Seriously? You're not more concerned about the 'creepy torture dungeon' part?" Tomika asked incredulously.
Stiles ignored them both. "Lyds, do you still have the ley line map?"
She handed her phone to him wordlessly, Derek passing him a roll of string and some thumb tacks a second later. Stiles strung up several lines along the map: one parallel to the river, one crossing the school, five more lines meeting at the Nemeton, others that were small but still enough to warrant Stiles' attention.
"That's where I fell down the well," Liam said, surprised.
"That's where the rats keep dying," Malia murmured, frowning at the next length of string.
"Any sort of explanation would be useful here, Stilinski," Li said, rolling their eyes, one green and one blue.
"The ley lines are places of power throughout town, and the Nemeton is the most powerful of all. The pins are where things have happened throughout town; all of them are either on, next to, or too close to ley lines to be a coincidence," Stiles said. "The Nemeton has been fully charged for almost three years now and it should be growing, but it's not. Well, it is, but someone is stealing the Nemeton's power and releasing the prisoners held within it instead."
"Wait, what?" Scott asked, surprised at the latest news.
"We went to the Nemeton before we came here; shoots have been growing out of the stump, but someone keeps pulling them out and they're releasing the prisoners that the shoots are meant to hold."
"You think someone's doing it on purpose?" Mason asked, frowning. "It doesn't make sense to unleash creatures and death on people unless there's a reason for it, right?"
"The Benefactor gained money," Lydia said with a nod. "So who else would benefit from releasing the prisoners?"
"Who put the prisoners in the Nemeton in the first place?" Rafe asked. "They might know who stands to gain something from their release," he added when a few confused expressions were directed towards him.
"Well, Noshiko put the Nogitsune in there, but that was over a hundred years ago; I doubt she put the others in as well," Stiles said, frowning.
"There was something mentioned in the bestiary about it, wasn't there?" Scott asked, looking between Stiles and Lydia.
"There's a copy on my phone," Lydia said, nodding to the phone that Stiles still held.
"Awesome, thanks," Stiles said, scrolling through Lydia's phone to get to the bestiary photos held in its own album. He opened the album, flicking through the photos until he came to the pages for the Nemeton. Reading them for a moment, Stiles frowned. "Huh."
"Huh what?" Jorge asked, still on edge after the flight. The amount of people around him, with their varying heartbeats and blood types certainly wasn't helping his nerves.
"Lydia has a different version of the bestiary than I do. Where'd you get this, Lyds?" Stiles asked, glancing over to her.
She frowned. "It's the same one you have: the one Allison copied from Gerard."
Stiles shook his head. "Mine's from Deaton. He updated the Argents' bestiary."
"Updated or amended?" Derek asked.
"Amended, looks like," Stiles muttered, looking between a few photos and recalling the pages he'd read earlier. "There's even a section on werecoyotes here," he said in surprise.
Deaton had specifically said that he didn't know anything about werecoyotes and had no way of helping Scott and Stiles with Malia.
"What?!" Malia snarled, her eyes filtering to blue.
"Hey, calm down," Scott said, his voice firm and calm, resting his hand on her shoulder. "There's gotta be an explanation for this."
"Well, why don't we go ask the man and find out?" Tomika asked, grinning.
...
End of the seventeenth chapter.
Author's note: Marcie's backstory
Ever since she was a kid, Marcie's been the kind of person to go invisible just to screw with people - mostly teachers and people she didn't like. She might have followed Grant around the Holocaust Memorial Museum for fifteen minutes while he panicked and searched for her. The only reason she turned visible again is because she almost started laughing when Grant started to pace in front of the bathroom door.