A/N: I hope I don't regret this ...

In Spiritu

As soon as the Ouija board came out, Scott got up and left the room. He did so quietly, without a fuss. He could have just been going to the kitchen to grab another can of soda. But no one was fooled.

Stiles and Allison traded looks, silently debating with of them would be the one to follow. Both could not go or Scott would feel like he was being ganged up on, and that would only end with all three of them angry. "I'll do it," Stiles said, shoving himself up from the couch on which he'd been sprawled most of the evening.

"What's McCall's problem?" Jackson demanded. He was sitting with his back to the sofa, the TV remote in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Though he was the only one drinking, everyone had noticed that he had yet to take a drink. He appeared to be wielding the bottle in some kind of protest at the fact that he was even at this gathering, rather than out with his much cooler friends.

"You don't have to be here," Allison had pointed out, the first—and last—time he complained about his social calendar.

"Yes, he does," Lydia answered in her usual chipper way. She stretched up on her toes to loop one arm around his shoulder and the other around Allison's. "I was not about to miss spending an evening with my best girl friend." Allison smiled grimly because, for the second time in less than a year, an evening she had meant to spend alone with Scott had turned into a group thing, and all because she had made the mistake of not prepping Lydia in advance that the "night out with Lydia" was meant to be a cover story.

Now they were all camped at Stiles's house, having an impromptu Halloween party. Trust Stiles to have a house stocked with candy, chips, and sodas sufficient to make an impromptu party doable. No one deigned to answer Jackson's question; Allison and Stiles both knew that he was only asking to be an ass.

"It's just a game," Stiles insisted, once he tracked Scott to the kitchen where the werewolf was standing with hands planted on the edge of the sink, staring out the window into the backyard. He knew his statement was the wrong thing to say as soon as he saw Scott's shoulders tense up, his hands tighten on the white enamel. "Look—" he rubbed a hand over his nose and chin, "—I didn't even know we had a Ouija board…. OK, dude, I get it. The idea of contacting the spirit world scares you, even if it isn't real."

"You mean like werewolves," they both said at exactly the same time, Stiles anticipating and mimicking Scott's half-panicked inflection perfectly.

"Exactly," Stiles continued. "In the past ten months, the only supernatural thing we've encountered is werewolves. We haven't met or found or even heard about ghosts, or vampires, or zombies, o-o-or Batman!" He threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Batman?" Scott echoed. In his reflection in the window, Stiles saw his eyebrows go up. A flash of light outside erased the reflection.

Stiles shrugged. "It's all I could think of. Come on, man. There's nothing to worry about it."

"What if there is?" Scott replied, still staring out the window. A silent lightning storm had started high in the sky. Random bursts of blinding light illuminated the surroundings like a miscalibrated strobe. On the back deck, the safety light had been broken in a bout of pre-Halloween vandalism that also left the trees covered in streamers of toilet paper that Sheriff saw no reason to clean up until after the holiday ended. If the lightning storm turned to rain, he was going to regret that decision.

"Dude, I'll tell you what. If we succeed in contacting the great beyond, I'll make sure we ask about a cure. That's gotta be good, right?"

Before Scott could answer, Lydia interrupted with a sing-song, "Oh, boys! The séance awaits."

Scott and Stiles turned to see her standing in the kitchen doorway, a hand planted on one hip. The posture, combined with her strawberry hair styled up in a fountain-do, made her look like her intentions were far less than innocent. Reading an unguarded reaction from the best friends, she suggested thoughtfully, "We could always just skip straight to the orgy."

Stiles visibly gulped, sagged against the refrigerator.

Lydia tapped one long, polished nail against her lips in false contemplation, then: "Or, no. Séance it is." She swung around, using a lot more hip than necessary. Over her shoulder, she added, "More hands will still make it more fun."

"Why does she do that to me?" Stiles whined, as soon as she disappeared down the hall.

Scott smirked. "What goes around, comes around?" With as much as Stiles pushed people, namely those who were his best friend, around, Scott couldn't help but feel a mean thrill at seeing Stiles get teased by the one person who had always been able to push him around.

Stiles scowled at the general unfairness of the universe. Ever since the winter formal, Jackson and Lydia had resumed their position as the Beacon Hills High power couple. Lydia, however, had taken to flirting openly with Stiles, often to Jackson's face. Sadly, Stiles didn't mind. "Come on," he said, brightening up. "Let's go contact some spirits." He started heading back to the living room as if he assumed that Scott would follow him without further reticence.

The power went out.

A growl escaped Scott's throat before he could stop it. "I told you this was a bad idea," he snarled.

"Are you kidding? This is perfect!" Using the meager light from his iPod, Stiles started scrabbling through kitchen drawers and cabinets.

Scott, whose eyes had slipped reflexively into infrared, did not offer to help. He balled his hands, tried to convince himself that Stiles's judgement could be trusted, that in no way was he seeing omens that he wouldn't kick himself later for disregarding.

In the back of a cabinet, behind a bag of crushed, stale Doritos, Stiles finally located a box of seasonal candles and another of matches. With a crow of triumph, he held them over his head like he'd just used them to make the winning goal in a game.

They headed back to the living room with Scott in the lead while Stiles tried to walk and fumble with the matches at the same time.

Scott turned the corner into the room, stopped. Stiles ran into him, the match he had just succeeded in lighting falling to the floor and extinguishing. Scott pushed him back down the hall, up against the wall. "Lydia's glowing," he hissed into Stiles's ear.

Stiles rolled his eyes with his whole head, not able to make the gesture broad enough. "Dude," he hissed back, "the only thing glowing is your eyes. Cut it out!"

"I'm not making this up," Scott insisted, offended that he even had to defend himself, but he did force the wolf down, with the side effect that now neither of them could see.

Together, they peered around the corner. Unlike the hallway, the living room had windows. A flash of lightning revealed a silhouette of Jackson, still lounging against the couch, and Lydia and Allison flanking an open spot on the carpet where, presumably, the Ouija board was set up. It faded, leaving them as so many darkened forms against a dark background.

"…nothing to worry about. It's just a power outage," Allison was saying. She stood up and crossed to the window, pulled the curtain aside. "The streetlights are still working, so it's probably just a burnt out circuit in the house."

"What are you doing?" Lydia shrieked, all but tackling Allison, pulling her away from the curtain, which only fell part of the way back. "Are you trying to invite the serial killer in?"

Jackson waggled his fingers in front of him. "Oooohhhh," he wailed, imitating a ghost.

Lydia rounded on him, glared, one finger upraised like she was scolding him. "Not funny, Jackson," she snapped. "You're the one who made me watch all those horror movies. You'll thank me when we're all still alive in the morning."

"They were just movies, Lyd," Jackson responded, sounding tired, like they'd had this conversation more than once already. "If you want to talk real monsters—"

"Hey, guys," Stiles interrupted, falling into the room from the push Scott had given him. "I've got candles." Again, he held them aloft, realizing belatedly that probably no one could see what he was holding.

Lydia was still standing in front of the window when a staccato burst of lightning lit the sky behind her, one bolt seeming to feed off another. It finally ended, only for a low rumble of thunder to shake the house. Everyone was left blinking and shaking their heads.

"Wow," Allison said. She rubbed her eyes, worked her way over to the coach and collapsed back onto it.

At the same time Stiles added an awed, "That was so cool," the candles and matches forgotten in his hands.

No one except Scott heard Jackson's under-his-breath comment: "Why is Lydia glowing?"