The four of us stood in front of the stolen prison transport van, forming a forlorn semi-circle as we stared inside. Jackson was gone, and we had no idea how long he'd been gone. Allison and Scott had been cuddled up asleep when Stiles and I pulled up. I couldn't blame them though. Even if they'd been awake, there wasn't much they could've done to stop Jackson once he transformed. The van had been enough to contain him when he was human, but it was starting to look like there was no beating him after he got his scales.

"I have to tell my father," Allison said into the silence.

The sentence hung there, heavy with all it implied. No more time to protect Jackson. No more time to find a humane way to stop him. No more time to pretend that Allison and Scott hadn't been seeing each other. My heart seized at just the thought.

Scott was reeling too. He wandered away from the van in a daze, looking out over the edge of the cliff.

"Scott," Allison continued sharply. "He's going to kill someone."

"Okay," he said shakily. He swallowed thickly and nodded. "Tell him. Tell him everything."

"I'm sorry, what?" I blinked at him in disbelief. "No, that's—Scott, we're not just throwing you to the hunters."

"Sadie, what do you think we can do about this?" Allison demanded. "Jackson is out there, and we have no way to find him, and no way to stop him! Maybe—maybe my family can, but only if they know what they're looking for. We have to tell them what we know."

"I know that, but—but that doesn't mean we have to say anything about Scott, right? I mean, if they find out the two of you were together—"

"It doesn't matter," said Scott, sounding resigned. "If it saves people, we have to take that chance."

"No," I said stubbornly. "Look, I—I'll go with Allison. They already know I'm working with you guys. I'll just…tell them that things got out of hand, and I told Allison today. They don't need to know that she was in on it."

"Sadie," Allison said with trepidation, "my parents already hate you. If they find out you were keeping this quiet, after everything that happened with Kate—"

"Then they'll hate me just as much. I'm not thrilled about sitting down with your family either, but…if it saves Scott, I don't care."

The silence stretched on as we all looked at each other. I knew why Allison was nervous—hell, I was nervous too. The Argents would know I was keeping the kanima's identity a secret either way, but it was one thing for them to hear it from Allison. Going to tell them in person meant that I would be a lot closer to the knives, guns, and crossbows that were itching to make me a target.

Scott had turned to face us again, and gave me a half-hearted smile. "Thanks, Sadie."

I nodded, hoping I looked more confident than I felt.

"Scott, I gotta tell my dad too," Stiles sighed.

Scott nodded, his eyes falling down to the dirt. "This is all my fault…"

"It's not," said Allison, "but we have to tell them. We're just a bunch of teenagers. We can't handle this."

He bobbed his head again, hands clenched at his sides. "You're right."

"How are you gonna convince your dad?" I asked Stiles.

He gaped for a moment, trying to think of a reasonable answer, but the only thing he managed to say was, "I don't know."

"He'll believe me."

Scott lifted his head again, his eyes glowing a brilliant gold in the darkness.

Part of me wanted to voice my concern. I knew that Stiles was right—we had to tell the adults if we wanted to save lives—but telling Sheriff Stilinski the truth felt a lot more dangerous than telling Lydia. If Lydia didn't like what we had to say, the worst she could do was run or have us committed. It the sheriff didn't like it, if he saw Scott transform and decided he was a threat…well, at least Lydia didn't have a gun.

I knew we didn't have any choice. Jackson was on the loose, and if the sheriff's department kept pursuing him without knowing how lethal he was, someone was going to get hurt. It was like Allison said: the adults could help, but only if they knew what they were looking for.

Allison and Scott stepped to the side of the clearing to say their goodbyes, and Stiles tugged me in the opposite direction.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, holding my hand.

"Not any more than you are," I answered lowly.

"That's…that's not very sure."

"No. No, it's not."

We both sighed and I looked down to watch as Stiles traced patterns over the back of my hand. I could feel the anxiety seeping out from his skin, coating my own even as I tried to convince myself that I was impervious to it.

"But they have to know," I insisted. "Your dad is still gonna love you, because he's gonna know that you've spent the last few months working your ass off to save people. He's going to be fine."

"And what about the Argents? If you tell them that you dragged Allison into all of this, or—or if they blame you for that hunter that died, then—"

"Stiles, I'm gonna be fine." I grabbed his hands firmly, forcing him to look at me. "Seriously. Chris and Victoria can threaten me all they want, but they're gonna listen to Gerard. And I have a feeling that he wants to keep us in the game in case we're useful."

"For now."

"For now," I agreed grimly.

Stiles pulled me into a hug, anchoring me to his chest and resting his chin on my shoulder. "We should probably get going. I'll talk to you later. Promise."

I nodded into his sweatshirt, reluctant to let go, but I knew he was right. We were up against the clock, and Jackson was on the loose. There'd be plenty of time to hug after we stopped him…if we all managed to survive.

I hugged Scott goodbye as well, and then Allison and I were climbing into her car. We were too nervous to talk as we drove through the trees. I was picking anxiously at my lower lip, and Allison's hands were tight on the steering wheel. I let her focus on navigating us back to the main road, and when we pulled onto the pavement, she finally spoke.

"Thank you for doing this. For me and Scott."

"Of course. I'm not going to risk you guys getting hurt, let alone dying. It's really not something to thank me for."

"Maybe. But I'm going to."

She looked over at me with a soft smile, and I rolled my eyes. I barely managed to smirk before the expression was weighed off my face again.

"Do…do you think they'd actually kill him? If they found out you were seeing each other?"

Allison's face went stony white, answering my question before she could think of the words.

"Probably. Mom was talking to me today about how…how strong I have to be, or else…"

She trailed off, and I watched her hands tighten on the steering wheel again.

"Yeah," I said weakly. "Or else."

"It's just—sometimes I wish we could have a normal life, you know? I don't want to be worrying about people dying and my—my dad murdering my boyfriend. I want you, Lydia and I to be talking about prom dresses and boys and how much we hate our teachers. Getting you a car and joining clubs and…I don't know…normal problems."

"Okay," I said softly, more than a little thrown by the haunted look in her eyes. "So…are you saying that you don't want to be with Scott…?"

"No." The response was immediate. "No, I—I only want to be with Scott. That's the problem. No, it's—it's not a problem, it's just—"

"Complicated."

"Yeah," she groaned, smacking her head into her headrest. "It's complicated. I mean, I can't change my family, but…I can't imagine my life without Scott. I don't want to. And I'll do whatever it takes to keep him in my life. I just wish it were simpler."

I nodded, watching the white lines flash on the road and disappear under the car. "If it helps, I don't want to imagine a world where you and Scott aren't together either."

Allison laughed, breaking through some of the tension so there was room for me to smile.

"I'm serious," I insisted. "You're disgustingly cute and I love it. Everyone does."

"Yeah, not my parents."

"Hey, it's going to take more than a few crossbows to keep Scott away from you. And there's not a field of wolfsbane he wouldn't cross to make sure he gets to take you to prom."

Allison looked over at me, her bright smile burning through the exasperation on her face. I winked.

"We're just gonna have to find a different 'first' for you to break after prom, since I'm pretty sure you've already christened your car. Thoroughly, I might add."

"Oh my God, shut up!" she laughed, swatting at me as she turned back to the road.

"You were at least in the back seat, right? I'm not sitting in—"

"Sadie!"

The joke was enough to make the car ride bearable. There was still tension, but it'd sunk to the floor like cold air, allowing us to chat in blissful denial above it. It was nice to escape our problems for a while, even while we were driving toward another one. Of course, by the time we pulled onto Allison's street, I'd remembered why I was so nervous in the first place.

"So we went out for food before the study session," Allison clarified as she parked the car. "You got a text from Scott that Jackson was missing, and you told me that he was the kanima. Right?"

"Right," I agreed. I tried to ignore the tremor in my voice. "I decided that we didn't have the resources to stop him. I tell them it's a kanima, which I know from Derek, and they translate what's in the bestiary. Then we just pray there's a way to stop him without killing him."

"Good. Are you ready?"

"Not in the slightest. Let's go."

Allison gave me a supportive smile as I climbed out. I stared up at her house in worry, startled by how intimidating it suddenly looked. I didn't want to face Allison's family. All my faux confidence fell away as I looked up at the imposing columns and remembered the cages of guns in the garage. I'd already shot Kate. If the Argents decided to blame me for the other hunter's death too—for the mechanic and Mr. Lahey and the attack at the club—then I would have a lot of guilt on my shoulders. Would they really let me walk free this time? Would they tell Gerard what I'd done to his daughter?

Allison wrapped an arm around my shoulder and tugged me into the house. She peered around in the darkness and left me on the doormat.

"Stay here for a second, okay? Mom?! Dad?!"

She ducked into the living room to look for them, leaving me alone in the foyer. I was trying, desperately, not to think about the quiet. I hadn't heard Kate in a while, but standing here with a death sentence on my head, I could almost feel her laugh bubbling up from the base of my skull. I examined the pattern of the carpet below my feet, counting the number of squares in an attempt to keep myself present.

"They're not home," Allison sighed as she wandered back into the room. "They're probably out looking for Jackson."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I guess I'll call my dad, tell him that we need to talk. And then try not to puke while we wait for him to come home."

"One thing at a time," I advised. "Come on."

I linked my arm with hers as we headed upstairs. I knew I should have been worried that Chris, Victoria, and Gerard were all missing—Where were they? What if they found Jackson first? What would they do to him?—but I couldn't help feeling relieved at the same time. At least I had twenty more minutes before my body was sliced in half.

I followed Allison into her room, flicking on the lights for her as I stepped through the door. Allison gasped and jumped back, almost knocking into me, and I gasped in turn.

"Ally? What's—oh my God!" My hand flew to my chest, clutching at my heart as it attempted to beat its way out of my ribs. "Lydia?"

She was sitting on the edge of Allison's bed, hands clasped neatly in her lap and her face almost expressionless. She hadn't moved when we came in, or turned on the lights, or jumped in surprise. She just sat there in silence, staring at us with wide eyes caught between innocence and hurt.

"You scared the hell out of me," Allison accused her.

"I've been sitting here for an hour waiting for you."

"Lyd, why are you sitting in the dark?" I walked over to the bed and sat by herself, debating whether or not to grab her hand. I didn't like the way she was sitting so motionless, almost lifeless. "Are you okay?"

"It got dark around me," she answered weakly. "I was just thinking and…I didn't want to move."

"We can't hang out right now, Lydia," said Allison, dropping her things on her desk and moving to take off her scarf.

"Well, you've certainly got time to hang out with each other," she snapped. "Or is this study session another one of your exclusive hang outs that I'm not allowed to be a part of?"

"Lydia, nothing is exclusive," I assured her. This time, I didn't hesitate to reach out and put a hand on her knee. "If you want to hang out, then—"

"I don't need anyone to hang out with! I…I need someone to talk to…"

My eyebrows immediately pulled together in concern. I'd already been worried that Lydia had shown up to a study session she knew full well was not a real study session, but then she had said the words "I need." Lydia was usually very careful to keep herself from looking vulnerable. Her usual policy was that she didn't need anything from anyone. She wasn't even here to demand answers from us; she wanted us to listen to her. That was almost more frightening than the shooting gallery waiting in the garage.

Allison shook her head. "I understand that it's important, but if it can just wait—"

"Why is everyone always telling me to wait?!" Lydia cried, jumping to her feet. "Why can't anyone have 'right now' available?!"

"Lydia," I tried, reaching for her arm, but Allison cut me off.

"You can't have everything right now. Okay, you know what I need? I need someone to translate five pages of archaic Latin. Obviously that's not gonna happen any time soon."

"I know archaic Latin."

Allison froze. "…You know archaic Latin?"

"I got bored with classical Latin," Lydia said with a shrug.

Allison looked at her with wide eyes, then glanced down at me. I could already feel the self-satisfied smirk sticking to my face. I shrugged as well and raised a pointed eyebrow. I'd spent days telling them that Lydia would be able to translate the pages if we asked, but everyone thought I was just looking for an excuse to bring her into the loop. An "I told you so" would have to wait for later, but for now, I was satisfied with her shock.

"Just how smart are you?" Allison asked, with even a hint of fear.

Lydia scoffed, holding out a hand. "Just show me the pages."

With one more cautious look my way, Allison opened her laptop and began pulling up the scans we'd copied from Gerard's flash drive. I quickly got up from my seat and pulled the desk chair out, gesturing for Lydia to sit. She rolled her eyes at me, but sat as directed, and let me roll her in to the desk. Allison double clicked on the first file and tilted the screen for Lydia to see.

Lydia leaned in, letting her eyes scan the illuminated document. "You guys are seriously weird."

"But can you do it?" asked Allison.

"Of course I can do it. Get me a pen and paper."

Allison actually seemed too stunned to move. She just stared at Lydia with an expression so awed that I had to chuckle. I pulled a notebook and pen from my bag, placed them in Lydia's waiting hands, and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

"You are incredible, you are an angel, and we love you."

"Stop buttering me up and let me work, Sadie."

She swatted at my face to shoo me out of her work zone. Then she pulled her hair over one shoulder, zoomed in on the first line of calligraphy, and set to work.

Allison's hand found my arm and she dragged me out into the hallway. I had to suppress a sigh at the stern look on her face. "Sadie, we can't tell her about the bestiary."

"Why not, Allison? We're telling your dad, we're telling Sheriff Stilinski. I think this should be a day where we tell people things!"

"Everything? Like telling my dad that I've been spending time with Scott and…" She paused to glance at Lydia again before lowering her voice. "…and getting him killed?"

"No, Allison. Obviously I don't mean telling your dad about Scott. I wouldn't be here if I wanted that. But Lydia doesn't have a crossbow or a gun to use if she doesn't like what we have to tell her. Say what you want, but Lydia's not stupid. She's never been more involved and she deserves to know. We're her friends, and her boyfriend—"

"Ex-boyfriend."

"Whatever! Look, we—we both know that something changed after the bite. If she's not turning, it's something else, and the answer to that could be in the bestiary. She's got the whole thing sitting in front of her and you still don't want to tell her?"

"I do want to tell her," she insisted, throwing the strawberry blonde a longing look. "I hate lying to her just as much as you do, but we're risking enough as it is. You and I have to talk to my parents without you or Scott getting killed, he and Stiles are trying to talk to the sheriff without getting arrested. Do you really think we can add Lydia to that list without something going wrong?"

I screwed up my face in frustration. I hated, hated when people made valid points. I knew that we were already spread thin. We'd be chasing half a dozen people who didn't want to listen to what we had to say, who were all focusing on only the parts they wanted to hear and jumping to their own conclusions. And the more time we spent convincing people to see our side of things, the more time Jackson had to find another victim.

"Fine," I hissed, "but the second this all blows over, I'm telling her. And there is nothing that's going to stop me."

Allison pursed her lips, barely holding in her argument. She nodded stiffly and let her eyes fall to the floor.

"Are you two done whispering about me?" Lydia called from her chair, not bothering to look up. "I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me concentrate. Turn on some music or something and let me work."

Allison and I shared a look, but followed her instructions. For now, our lives were in Lydia's hands.

We did end up having a study session, since talking about anything else was out of the question with Lydia in the room. It was nice to actually use our excuse for once instead of lying about it. I hadn't realized how much I hadn't been thinking about school until I actually sat down to work for a change. I'd done the chemistry lab just fine in class, but now that I looked at the homework I realized I'd been working completely on autopilot. I had no clue what any of the numbers meant. It took me and Allison a lot of textbook-flipping to figure out what we were supposed to have learned.

"Okay," Lydia sighed, after what must've been hours. "You weirdos have a lot of explaining to do."

Allison and I snapped to attention and dropped what we were doing. She jumped off her bed while I scrambled up from the floor, both of us rushing behind Lydia's chair so we could peer over her shoulders. The scans were still pulled up on the laptop, and Lydia had spread my notebook out over the keyboard.

"Are you done?" Allison asked.

"Yeah. I translated what I could—which is more than seventy-five percent, by the way—not that any of this makes sense. Why do you need to know anything about a kaneema?"

"Kanima," I corrected absently, already squinting at Lydia's neat, uniform handwriting.

"The Kanima, a reptilian creature described to have thick osteoderm scales, slit, yellow eyes, and a long, agile tail. It uses its sharp vertebral spikes to slash its victims, releasing a poisonous venom that works as a paralytic to impede its victim's escape. Kanima, like the Wolf, its power is greatest at the moon's peak. Like the Wolf, the Kanima is a social creature. But where the Wolf seeks a pack, the Kanime seeks a master. The Kanima, a weapon of vengeance, is used to carry out the bidding of its master. The Kanima was once used by a South American priest, who took it upon himself to rid his village of all murderers. The bond between master and servant grew stronger until the will of the master became that of the Kanima's and whomever the priest deemed unworthy, the Kanima served his vengeance. The Kanima is a mutation of the Werewolf gene that cannot fully transform until it resolves that in its past that manifested it."

I read the entry carefully, fighting to keep my face passive. All of this was really not good. Every sentence just seemed to get worse and worse, until by the end of the passage, I'd pretty much lost all hope of defeating the damn thing.

Allison, however, was stuck on something in the middle. She dragged her finger along the Latin words, trying to follow along until she found the place that matched the translation. Then she jabbed a finger at one of the blurry scans.

"Are you sure? Ms. Morrell said that word means 'friend.' 'The Kanima seeks a friend.'"

"She was wrong," Lydia said plainly. "It means 'master.'"

"The Kanima seeks a master…" Allison muttered, then gave me a worried look out of the corner of her eye.

"Why? Is that important?"

Lydia hopped out of her chair, plopping down onto Allison's bed and letting Allison and I surge forward to squint at the screen. It was like we were waiting for the words to change, waiting for something that would give us more information or better news. But, as usual, things only seemed to be getting worse.

"Yeah," said Allison, just loudly enough for me to hear. "Someone's not protecting him. Someone's controlling him."

"We can't tell your parents it's him," I said immediately.

"What? But Sadie—"

"This changes everything, Ally! It's not his fault! We can't just offer him up when he's not the real killer!"

"The real…? Sadie, he killed those people. That blood is on his hands."

"Only because he's being forced," I argued. "How is this any different than when Scott attacked us at school? It's not his choice."

Allison frowned at me, conflicted. It was true that we'd forgiven our friends for more, but that wasn't going to stop people getting killed. If we stayed silent, more people were going to die. If we spoke up, Jackson was going to be executed for something he had no chance of controlling, and the real killer, the person controlling him, would walk free.

Lydia cleared her throat behind us and Allison quickly shut the laptop.

"So which one of you is going to tell me what this is all about?" Lydia asked us, leaning back on her elbows and narrowing her eyes. "Because I am very weirded out right now and seriously considering staying very far away from you."

"Lydia, it's complicated," Allison sighed, but all it got her was an eye roll.

"Don't you dare. I helped you with your freaky medieval text, and I deserve some answers. You couldn't be bothered to think of one semi-decent excuse while you were pretending to study?"

"We were actually studying this time," I said sheepishly.

Lydia glared at me. "It's not like I want to get pulled into all of your bullshit, you know. I just want someone to tell me what's going on."

"I know you do. The thing is, the pages came from—"

Allison took a step forward and I closed my mouth. She hadn't told me out loud to stop, but that didn't stop Lydia from noticing what was happening. She narrowed her eyes further, turning to Allison and looking her up and down, like she was sizing up a target she was about to take out. Between her annoyance and Allison's pleading, doe eyes, all I could do was sigh.

"Stiles."

Lydia turned back to me, even while Allison held her breath. "Stiles? What's your boyfriend pulling you into now?"

"It's…called League of the Mytheval. He and Scott are both part of this online gaming thing, one of those roleplaying games where you slay dragons and fight monsters. Allison and I were doing some research so we could one-up them next time we play."

Allison did a terrible job of covering her relieved sigh, and Lydia looked back and forth between us for a few more seconds. I was almost hoping she'd call me out on the lie. What kind of RPG page made its users translate actual archaic Latin? But instead of screaming, Lydia rolled her eyes again.

"Honestly. I don't talk to you for one day and your boyfriends drag you down to this desperate level of nerddom? That's disgusting."

"It's—it's not just nerdy," Allison defended. "It's just—the thing runs like a chat room, multiplayer and whatever. So I can talk to Scott online without my parents finding out that I'm talking to Scott."

"And they're not gonna be concerned when their child never resurfaces from World of Warcraft?"

Allison gave a weak laugh and shrugged. "I know it sounds silly, I just…I want to be able to talk to him."

"I know, Allison." Lydia pursed her lips and rounded on me. "And what's your excuse?"

"Uh…I'm a geek who wants to spend time with my geek boyfriend doing geek things?"

Lydia snorted. "Now that I believe."

"Lydia, thank you so much for translating this," Allison said. "Seriously, you're a life safer. But it's getting late and my parents are gonna be home soon. Are you okay to drive—"

"I walked."

There was an awkward silence as Allison and I stared at Lydia in confusion.

"You…walked?" I repeated.

"Yeah. I didn't really have anything else to do and…I just sort of ended up here…"

Allison sent me a look of scarcely concealed concern, but cleared her throat. "Uh, okay. I guess I can drive you guys then. Come on."

The ride back to our house was almost dangerously normal. Allison put on the radio, and Lydia ragged on Scott and Stiles for being dweebs who were going to corrupt the friends she'd worked so hard to make. There was no mention of what she'd been so anxious to share with us a few hours earlier. I was glad to avoid an interrogation, but I was too on edge to appreciate her teasing. The happier she was, the more worried I felt. Why hadn't we gotten our asses handed to her for lying again?

When we pulled up to the house, Lydia quickly scampered inside, graciously giving me a moment alone with Allison.

"You're right," she said, without being prompted. "I don't want Jackson to die if this isn't his fault, but…I don't know how much this changes things. We could've made the same argument if he was just losing control and blacking out. At the end of the day…if we don't stop him, more people are gonna die."

"I know," I said solemnly. "And I get that we still might need to tell your family. But first, let's…let's just see if we can find out who's controlling him. If we can stop them, maybe we don't have to worry about stopping Jackson."

Allison nodded reluctantly. "Okay. So for now…we stay quiet."

"For now," I agreed. "I'll tell Scott and Stiles what we found as soon as they give me the all clear. I don't want to interrupt them when they're with the sheriff."

"God," Allison sighed. "How do you think that's going?"

"Well, I haven't gotten an emergency text so…assumedly Sheriff Stilinski didn't start trying to shoot Scott or anything. Which means it's going better than last time someone found out what he was."

It was another supremely dark joke, but Allison just shook her head at me.

"I'll talk to you later," I assured her, and patted her arm.

"Okay. Be careful."

I nodded, and waited on the porch until she drove away. I walked through the house, ensuring things were quiet and that I would be able to have a minute to myself. Then I walked up to my room, dropped my things, and began rummaging through my bag. I knew that no one wanted to tell Lydia the truth. I knew that they would know if I lied about it too, but maybe there was another way to handle things: the Derek Hale way.

I knocked gently on Lydia's door and let myself into her room. Lydia didn't move as I entered. She was sitting on her bed, legs folded underneath her while she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

"Hey," I said softly, easing the door shut behind me.

"Hi."

It was a lifeless word. She didn't sound angry. She didn't sound like she was sad or about to cry. She just sounded tired, barely able to speak from the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. It wasn't a physical exhaustion. It was mental, emotional, the kind of tired that sleeping can't drive away. It only gives you a brief escape.

I invited myself to sit down on the bed next to her. I only caught her attention when I lifted my hand, holding a silver flash drive up to the light.

Lydia frowned and pulled it from my hand. "What is this?"

"It's the rest. Of what you were translating. Allison's not the only one who makes copies."

"Of your medieval mythology book?" she asked skeptically. "Why the hell would I want that?"

"To read," I answered with a shrug. "Who knows? Maybe you'll find something interesting."

Lydia considered me for a moment. She still looked annoyed, but she wasn't immediately refusing me either. She twirled the flash drive between her fingers and weighed her options. Finally, she closed it in her fist and folded her hands in her lap again; she'd keep it. As far as I was concerned, that was a step in the right direction.

"You know the RPG was a lie, right?" I asked.

"Of course I do. I'm not stupid, Sadie."

"You're not crazy either."

Lydia tried to hide it, but I heard her whimper before she could swallow the sound. I knew that feeling. The relief, the frustration, the desperation, the complete disbelief in everything around. She sagged on the bed and shook her head at her reflection.

"Then…why does everyone keep lying to me?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I guess we've…there's a lot we haven't told you. It used to be because we thought you were safer not knowing, but after last night…I don't know. I guess at this point we're just afraid you're going to hate us. I know I am."

"So you've decided to just keep lying so when you actually have to tell me I can hate you even more?"

"No. No, I…Lydia, I want to tell you. I do. It's just…hard to know where to start."

But that was a lie too. It wasn't hard to know where to start. I'd spent so much time thinking about telling Lydia the truth that I knew exactly where I wanted to start.

"You know how Allison and Scott aren't supposed to be seeing each other? Well, it's not just because Allison's parents hate him. It's because Scott is a werewolf, and her family's made up of werewolf hunters. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true. It all started with that body they found in the woods…"

It would take time to explain. When Stiles first told me, it'd taken all afternoon, and there was three times as much to tell her now. But I had to start somewhere. We weren't telling the Argents about Jackson anymore, which meant there was nothing to stop me from telling Lydia. She was holding the bestiary in her hands, and I knew that if I told her we were trying to save Jackson, she would give her all to help. I was sure she was already thinking it, between what she'd seen on the lacrosse field and what she'd heard at Scott's, the nightmares she'd been having since we first got attacked at the video store. All I needed to do was tell her she was right.

"Don't."

My head snapped toward Lydia. She'd broken out of her trance, her eyes no longer looking at her reflection. Instead, she stared down at her hands, fiddling with the flash drive as her hair created a curtain in front of her face. I had to check her expression in the mirror to make sure she was being serious.

"But, Lyd—"

"I'm not going to make you choose between me and the rest of your friends."

"Our friends," I corrected fiercely. "They're our friends, and they'll get over it. It's not like they don't want you to know, they just—"

"Don't want me to know now, I know. I heard you and Allison talking." She must've seen the look of terror that flashed over my face, because she let out a pitiful breath of bitter laughter. "Don't worry. You're not as bad at whispering as Scott and Stiles. I didn't hear all of it. I know that you want to tell me. And I know that if you haven't, there must be some really good reason."

"I'm really not sure there is…"

"Maybe not," Lydia sighed miserably, "but…I think…they may be right. About me not being able to handle it."

"Lydia…"

"No," she said firmly. "I don't need any of your strong-woman crap right now, Sadie. I'm not saying I'm weak, I just…I don't know what's going on with me. I know something's not right, and…I think that you know it too. I feel like my whole brain is unravelling or—or leaking. I don't trust myself like I used to and…if this whole thing with you and Allison and Stiles and Scott is gonna make it worse, then…I'm not sure I'm ready to know."

There was a long silence after that. Neither of us knew what to say. It seemed Lydia had finally reached her breaking point, if I could even call the girl sitting next to me "Lydia." She was barely a shadow of the Lydia that I knew. There was no confidence, no defiance, no snark, no fire. The girl sitting next to me was just a sad shell with a mask of my best friend's face; this is what I'd reduced her to.

"Okay," I agreed brokenly. "But when you're ready…"

I reached over and grabbed her hand, closing it around the flash drive once more. I wouldn't push her if she felt fragile enough to break, but I wasn't going to leave her high and dry. She had the key, the roadmap when she decided she wanted to catch up.

Lydia nodded and used her free hand to wipe away her tears.

"This is just—ugh. It's so stupid. I know that it's probably better to know than to not know, but all I want right now is for things to be normal. I want to feel like I've got control of my life and I'm not some crazy lunatic wandering around lost in this—this town that I grew up in. I hate it."

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder, rubbing soothing circles into her cardigan while she took a few deep breaths. I watched us in the mirror, two teenage girls in the midst of an existential crisis. From the outside, there was no telling what we were upset about. I could have been comforting Lydia about her breakup. I could be trying to soothe her hangover. I could be commiserating after a heartbreaking episode of some television show we both watched. We just looked like two normal girls; that's all we really wanted to be. It was what Allison wanted, it was what Lydia wanted, and looking in that mirror, it was what I wanted too.

I shifted on the bed, turning to face Lydia and grabbing her face with both of my hands. I forced her to look at me and rested my forehead against hers.

"How about I make you a deal? I'll talk to everyone tonight, and if you're feeling better tomorrow, all four of us will sit down and I will literally torture them until they agree to tell you. This way, you don't have to go through it alone."

Lydia scoffed, half amused and half exasperated. "What makes you think I'm gonna feel any better tomorrow than I have all month?"

"Because tonight we are having a girls' night. Just you and me, like it's still the end of summer. We can pick a movie that we're gonna pretend to watch, but it's really just background noise while we talk about celebrities and grill each other about stupid gossip. We can eat the ice cream I know my mom has in the fridge, and paint our nails, and it will be totally stupid. But it will be fun."

I watched Lydia's face twitch as she tried to keep herself from smiling, but the rest of her muscles won out.

"You seriously want to have a girly sleepover when…whatever the hell is happening in the stupid town is still happening?"

"Lydia, that is exactly why I would love to have a girly sleepover with you."

I smirked, wrapping both arms around her and tackling her onto the bed. She squealed and I laughed, both of us collapsing back on the mattress and giggling in the unique, unhinged way of someone who doesn't have any right to be laughing.

"God, you're so stupid," she chuckled, batting my arms off of her and shaking her head at the ceiling.

"I know," I sighed dramatically. "I have to balance out all your brains."

Lydia rolled her eyes and swatted me in the stomach this time. "Fine. We can have your stupid sleepover, but I'm not letting you make the popcorn. You always burn it."

"I do not!"

"Oh, shut up. You so do."

It wasn't a foolproof plan, but it was certainly a start. Lydia and I brought blankets and piles of pillows into the living room, put on a movie, and ate popcorn and ice cream. Lydia painted my nails and grilled me about how my relationship with Stiles was going. She nearly screamed when I told her about our earlier make out session, but I didn't mind. I would take this hyperactive Lydia over the quiet, helpless one any day. I knew that we were both burying our heads in the sand, but for tonight, I was too happy to care.

Lydia was in the middle of telling me about the new developments with the basketball cutie—he'd given her a flower the other day, not that she cared, of course—when my phone went off. I gestured for her to keep talking, swiping my finger across the screen to glance at the text from Stiles.

"So there's good news, bad news, and worse news. The bad news is that we didn't get to tell my dad about the kanima. The good news is that we found Jackson and no one's dead. The worse news is that Jackson's lawyer dad was at the precinct waiting for us and now Scott and I aren't allowed within fifty feet of Jackson. So we're in deep shit."

I actually felt my heart freeze. So much for getting through to the Lizard King.

I understood that he'd probably freaked out and escaped from the van in some transformed rage, but it had been human Jackson's decision to tell his father what the four of us had done. Or rather, what Scott and Stiles had done. It didn't escape my notice that Allison and I didn't have restraining orders filed against us, though he'd known we were there. I could only assume I was supposed to be grateful. It only made me want to punch his chiseled jaw right into his skull.

"Are you okay?" Lydia asked, catching my eye as I glared down at my phone.

I looked up at her and down at the message again. Then I tossed my phone on the couch and sent her a grin.

"Yeah, it's fine. Just Stiles saying goodnight."

"Ugh, the two of you actually disgust me. This is a girls' night. Say goodbye to your boyfriend and help me pick a color for my nails."

I promptly scooted closer to her and followed her directions.

Things were getting complicated again, so complicated that it was hard to keep them straight in my head, but for the moment, I shoved it all to the back of my mind. I could deal with Jackson and the kanima and the restraining orders and the Argents tomorrow. I needed to recharge with one night of naïve optimism. I needed it for Lydia. I needed it for me. However slim it was, I needed to hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, something would go right for a change. Maybe if I believe it, it would actually turn out okay.

Maybe.