WARNINGS: Mention of drug use and death by overdose, as well as general physical abuse and other unpleasant things.

A/N: Well, um, here's the second chapter then! Uh, I hadn't expected the response to be so positive to this story so I sort of freaked and have re-written and edited stuff in and out, on and off for like...ages. I'm still not confident about how I finally chose to go with this, but well, it's done lol. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long, but no promises.

Also, I warn you in advance; this might be a bit confusing. I promise I'll spell out how the events unfolded at a later date in the story. At the moment, few of the characters have all the facts, so it's bound to be a bit messy. Stiles is on the case however, never fear!

Oh and I hope to write more side-kick!Scott for the next part. He's unsuspecting of my plot to drag him into this mess. Heh.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

Excuse any typos/ grammar errors! ^^'

.

Chapter 2

.

Clutching the sheets to his chest like a virgin sacrifice who's just woken up from the drugged haze of questionable herb mixtures spiking the wine that deceivingly charming man had offered the night before, Stiles tried very hard to get his brain on the right track because nothing in this situation had anything to do with wine or herbs or virgins. Well, maybe the latter, because usually hot older chicks can't be found looming over him in bed when he's wearing nothing but his Star Wars boxers and a sheet.

"We have got to stop meeting like this," he says, because he's Stiles and he talks. "People will start to get ideas and, no offence, but you're aghost and not Patrick Swayze so, you know…"

Laura Hale looks amused, rolling her eyes at him. "You got that right. You're no Demi Moore, though you're cute in a hyperactive puppy way. Derek's going to have an aneurysm." She smiles evilly. "I'm going to enjoy this so much."

Stiles is pretty sure wishing death and pain on your own brother is a bit on the crazy side and not really proper etiquette, but then he's sort of offended by the implication he is the death and pain being implied. But he's made a point of being proud of annoying people until they're literally tearing their hair out, or foaming at the mouth, if only on principle.

He blinks, suddenly aware that yeah, she's still looming. Like she has legs, which she does. Nice ones too. "Congratulations! " He momentarily forgets to play the cornered virgin trying to protect his virtue (as if he hadn't been accosted by countless spirits in many a compromising situations before, but those were things he didn't like to think about, because he might or might not have had Coach's mother follow him from practice into the showers for some seriously inappropriate haunting). "You've upgraded from creepy ghost hobble to creepy potentially more dangerous ghost with all functioning body parts, in all the right places!" Laura's snorting but grinning, stepping back to give a twirl and come to a neat stop, throwing her arms out to finish off the display.

"I know right?" She laughs as he claps, moving to settle down at the foot of the bed. Sobering up, her smile turns a bit sad. "Derek talked to me all night. He couldn't hear me, but I think he could sense me, this time. I think it…what was it you said? Grounded me? I felt complete again, after a while. He finally went to sleep after I messed up that nasty mattress he's got stuffed in a corner and he got the hint." Her nose wrinkles but Stiles is distracted by the thought of Derek sleeping. He didn't think he did things like, oh, say eat and breathe and just generally behave like a normal human being.

"So," he startles out of the train of thought that was dangerously close to offering up other domestic activities such as showers (did the Hale House of Haunting have any functioning plumbing, or was there any streams nearby…?). "You remember anything else? About that night?"

She'd only been able to recall flashes, seeing her own eyes reflected in the crazed ones of her supposedly comatose uncle. According to her, this somehow meant Peter was now Alpha, due to twisted werewolf hierarchy that transfers the position and powers to the one dealing the killing blow. Stiles really didn't want to know, but there'd been a lecture, and he'd compartmentalized for his own sanity (or whatever was left of it, at this point. He wasn't sure, he'd done a map chart and diagram once on his laptop, he was sure it was somewhere in his labyrinth of folders).

But aside from flashes of Creepy Red Eyes, blood and pain, there was little she could tell him. It was a bit inconvenient, but hey, this wasn't his first rodeo. Like regaining her humanity (or, well, werewolf-anity), as seen by the stellar pair of hips and legs, it would come to her. With time. That they didn't have. Right.

"No," she replies, unhelpfully, after a moment of silent thought. She looks troubled, but he shrugs; they'd had that conversation too. He can't count the amount of time he's had that conversation over the years, but well. It's like Ground Hog Day, only with less suicide attempts. There was this once, with the Adderall, but he didn't think about that time anymore. Much.

Besides, he figures he's keeping one less aggravating spirit off from haunting the Earthly plane and doing the world a favor, so there's not much chance of a repeat performance. Water under the bridge, and all that. Lurking with the trolls. Whatever.

"Oooo-kay," is all he can think to say to that when she doesn't elaborate. There's an uncomfortable stretch of silence, and it's too early for any of this, really, Stiles is working on a good tangent to fall into. There's something he's always wondered about clownfish and the factual fails in Finding Nemo, which could easily develop into the Mental Department of Mysteries in Stiles mind, where he's got whole shelves onMovie Analyses cross-referencing other shelves on random as his mind sees fit.

It's hard to keep it sorted and use the system at the same time. It's why when he tries to focus on one subject, knowing the information isthere, it backfires and he ends up somewhere else entirely. Thus, Mental Department of Mysteries.

It's like a goodie-bag, his brain. For factual zombies, zombies of facts. Or something.

"Thanks, for doing this," Laura breaks into his inner monologue of doom. Shaking his head, Stiles shrugged.

"Hey man, can't be the hero if I don't help the pretty girl, right?" he grins but finds himself shoved out of bed and land painfully on the floor with a yelp. The fact that his dad's not calling out to ask if everything's okay says a lot about Stiles' mornings. Or the things going on in his room in general. If he had any social life to speak of, it would come in handy for illicit affairs of the romantic (or completely physical, he's not picky) kind. Instead of, you know, illicit affairs of the spiritual kind. And those two were not the same. Ever. Spectra-sexual, he was not. "Hey!"

Laura's hovering over by his desk at this point, arms crossed. "Go on, get dressed already! Long day ahead!" She's grinning again, looking smug while Stiles is trying to detangle himself from the sheets. At least she hadn't told him to rise and shine, but he thinks he might have preferred it to having her blow cold air in his ear. Or maybe that had been her finger, but he likes his sanity like he likes his Wolverine claws. Intact and unbreakable (if currently in a hypothetical future and/or universe).

"All right, all right! Geez!" He's gathering himself up in a bundle of fabric and pauses to stare at her when Laura doesn't move, just plays idly with a strand of her hair. He stares some more. She still doesn't move.

"Um. Kind of half-naked teenager here? Do you mind?" Rolling her eyes, she pops out of visible existence, to chill in the ether or haunt the postman or whatever. He can't sense her presence in the house so assumes she's back with her brother. Dumping the sheets on his bed he goes to gather a pair of clean boxers and some clothes that don't have werewolf induced holes in them, before heading to the bathroom.

.

His dad catches him on his way to school and it's sort of terrifying how he always seems to appear when Stiles is the least prepared. Stiles is a horrible liar in the best of situations, and he's useless against his dad. His dad knows it too.

"Stiles, you haven't…seen anything, have you?" he asks over a cup of coffee. Stiles freezes where he's reaching for his bowl of cereal and stares wide-eyed at his dad. Well, shit. He just answered dad's question for him. Sighing, the sheriff put his cup down and leveled Stiles with a don't-spazz-out-on-me-now-son-or-else glare. "What have you seen and what do you know."

Squirming in place, Stiles desperately tries to think of something to say. The werewolves are out of the question but—

"—is it the brother? Did the brother do it, Stiles?"

–he could always do something about that, yeah.

"I might have possibly talked to Laura Hale once. Or twice. She's not bothering me!" he quickly reassures him, flailing. "She just wants her killer to get…caught." It was sort of the truth. No need to mention the whole kill-him-with-guns-and-claws-and-teeth-and-explosions thing. What he doesn't know hopefully won't hurt him. Stiles is kind of counting on this here, because werewolves? Yeah. He'd done his research this week. Not good.

His dad eyes him suspiciously. "Mhmm," he hums, raising a brow. "That's good. I assume the bump from upstairs earlier have something to do with this. Is she still here? Can she tell me something about it? Does this have anything to do with your limp that's suddenly gone?"

Stiles thinks he's lucky he's managed to avoid this for as long as he has, but that doesn't mean he's equipped to deal with it. Spluttering, he scrambles for something to cover this up with that doesn't scream LIES! ALL LIES! "Um," he begins, fidgeting. "She's not here now, no! She's sort of...off somewhere, doing…spirit-y things. Hanging out. Haunting, you know, that stuff. She's totally harmless! I mean no, obviously nottotally, I mean she's a ghost, but you know…she's not bothering anyone! She's totally chill. Um, literally. Anyway, she's, errr. She doesn't quite know who killed her? It's not Derek though! Um, her brother? Yeah. No, nope, not him. He's a total sad victim in all this, really dad, shame! She would not approve."

His dad listens to his babble with an unimpressed expression, waiting for him to run out of steam. His even Daddy Sheriff Stare does a good job of that, better than most. It's like a plug being hammered in the leaky hole of a dam. Or something less disturbing, something that doesn't involve the words hammered, leaky, plug or hole; dear God make it stop, abandon ship!

"So it's not the brother, and she's got nothing to give us? Nothing to go on?"

Stiles shakes his head. "Nope. She says it's all pain and blood and stuff, I think her brain blanked out or something, you know, as an automatic response to the traumatic experience of being ripped apart? Maybe it, you know, really was…an animal attack?"

His dad looks skeptic, but grimaces at Stiles' mention of how Laura died. He'd never really gotten used to realizing what exactly it meant for Stiles to see these things, he hadn't understood it completely with Stiles' mom either, and he didn't like to be reminded of the reality. This wasn't Casper, after all. Stiles tries not to sigh.

"It's possible, but it's not making any sense," his dad says at last, sounding weary. "In any case, I'll need to speak to her. I'll need you to bring her here for when I get home tonight, I'll have a double. Can you do that for me, son?" Stiles starts to protest, but is cut off. "Don't, I know you know more than you're letting on. You know where she is, don't you? Is she with her brother? Don't look so surprised, I know you. You're a fixer. Just like your mother."

"Uuuh," Stiles begins, shifting in discomfort and choosing to ignore the comment about mom for both their sakes. "Right, yeah, sure. I'll see if I can hook you up. School now though, or I'll be late! Bye!"

He fairly runs out, and it doesn't really register until he's halfway there that he didn't get a chance to eat his breakfast. Damn. Laura, or Derek, or hell, even Scott owed him for this. Totally.

.

By lunchtime, Stiles is pumped on Adderall and fairly vibrating. He'd foreseen the necessity, because apparently Laura Hale was a ghost version of Veronica Mars with added fangs and claws. She kept disappearing and reappearing with different bits and pieces of information at the most inappropriate moments, like some sort of Sadistic Sleuth. Not that haunting her place of death and stalking her brother gave much useful information, but that didn't stop her from trying. Like now, when Lydia joined him and Scott at their lunch table because of Allison, again, and brought with her the rest of the Entourage of Ethereal Beings.

Stiles had been worryingly close to spurting a mouthful of milk in Jackson's face when Laura had appeared in front of him, settling down Indian style on the table and freezing Jackson's own glass of water solid. That…was going to be hard to explain.

"This would all be so much easier if I wasn't on some sort of spiritual leash. Can't you just skip today and do something useful? Like take me places?," she pouts. "Derek just sniffs around the woods like a determined puppy. It's so boring."

"Holy shit!" he yelps after a moment of undignified spluttering and coughing, Laura's whining turning into a satisfied smirk. "Laur-eeeence Fishburne!" He'd almost called out her name, but didn't know if the impromptu save made things worse or not. He had a feeling brushing off screeching LAURA in the high school cafeteria might be easier than coming up with a reason why he knows Morpheus' actor's name and why he's screaming it.

Then again, Stiles being weird with pop culture was as usual as normal teenagers being weird about the opposite sex. Or in Danny's case, the same sex. But Danny was never weird about it, because Danny was perfect, like Lydia, only less terrifying. Or, well, terrifying in a different way.

He was surrounded by people of varying levels and shades of terror-inducing characters.

"You're cute," Laura says, wrinkling her nose as she smiles in an embarrassingly adorable way that makes Stiles blush more than having an impromptu outburst ever had. Those were his normal. Girls being cute at him, not so much.

"You're a fucking freak, Stilinski," Jackson snaps, throwing his mostly eaten apple at Stiles' head which was profoundly disturbing because Laura isn't see-through but she isn't solid either, so it just sort of looks like it's launched out of her chest. The weird just leveled up. "And if you think that distracted me from the fact that you've fucked with my water you're even more stupid than I thought. I'm going to kill you."

It helps that he can't see Jackson's face, even if he's not sure where he's looking when he leans back a bit for a helpless shrug. He's hoping it's Jackson's head, but he's sort of guessing and trying not to feel like a creep for eying a dead girl's boobs even after the apple incident, but Laura mostly just seems profoundly amused if her hysterical laughter is anything to go by. It sort of makes her boobs jiggle. Bad Stiles, bad.He looks away to send Scott a despairing look but his friend just looks extremely confused and perhaps a bit constipated, as if he's torn between being ashamed for knowing him or send him silent support. Stiles thinks the former is because of Allison, because Scott hasn't cared about Stiles' weird for years.

Making a quick decision, he stands to leave in a dash worthy of the Flash, because Lydia had remained unfazed and completely happy in her usual state of Ignoring Stiles, and Danny is busy keeping Jackson from launching himself over the table to get at Stiles. "Gotta go! Outside! Later!"

"Is he all right?" he hears Allison ask, bless her un-hate-able self, to which there are various version of "It's Stiles, he does that" and "It's the voices in his head, he's a freak" in reply. He wishes it were that easy. But he's got both the voices and the ghosts. Well, more like the voice, as in singular, like an Inner Stiles. He was rocking it, but had discarded 'Shannaro!' as a catch phrase because he was trying to keep his weeaboo phrases to a minimum after the thing in middle school that had went on for way too long. He might or might not have engaged Scott in a verbal war that involved a lot of chan and baka.

He still denies there was ever any crushing going on with Tuxedo Mask or Itachi.

But he digresses! He does that a lot. But, yeah, he and Laura were going to have words. Because she'd already landed him in detention, after she'd ambushed him in Mr. Harris' class by appearing with her arms slung around his neck and breathing in his ear. He'll have to remember to ask Derek if this was a Big Sister thing (he'd heard they were a vicious species), or just a Laura thing (who was viscous in her own right, he was sure). This was sort of the last straw, because Lydia and Co. He'll never climb the social ladder like this, and he'd thought Allison was the ticket to at least get off the floor where he was the figurative rug covered in dirt and footprints and the occasional gob of spit. No joke. Stiles wishes.

"I don't remember high school being like this," Laura comments once Stiles have checked to see they're alone in the boy's bathroom. Seriously channeling Veronica Mars, here, though he's confused who's who. He's the sheriff's kid, but he hasn't done much sleuthing lately.

He had a creeping feeling this would change in his immediate future, but he tries not to think too much on that, because, murderous, psychotic werewolves.

"It's a vicious place that God forgot about and the Devil didn't want," he says, coming to a stop in the middle of the room, crossing his arms. "You need to stop bothering me here. Unless it's, you know, really urgent, you should just make a mental list of all that you uncover from your haunts and provide it to me when I'm free and alone. Or with, like, Scott or something. Besides, why aren't you bothering your brother?"

She rolls her eyes. "Okay, fine. And I told you, Derek's boring. He doesn't talk back." She looks pained for a moment, making Stiles wince in guilt, but she shrugs it off. "Now, I was wondering. I can obviously affect some stuff if I try really hard or feel something intense. But I want to break stuff, on purpose. Specific things, of my choosing. I don't like not having control over what my temperament does to my surroundings."

Stiles flails, because yeah, this could go badly. "With great powers comes great responsibility!" He blurts out, which wasn't the haha yeah no way he'd been going for. Laura nods, looking serious, as if she's settling down to get schooled and emerge as a powerful master of all things ghost-y. Stiles doesn't quite know what to do with that. "This was your plan all along wasn't it? Invade my lunch break," he sighs before shaking his head. "Why should I, by the way?"

Her face darkens, and the lights flickers ominously. "Peter somehow did this. If he had no problem killing me just for power, he won't have anything against turning unwilling humans to gain even more of it, or even force Derek to submit to the new Alpha. When and if any of this happens, I want to be prepared. He's not getting away with this, for whatever reason he had."

A mirror cracks, and Stiles winces, wondering what would happen if she actually lost her temper. Maybe she'd singe the walls or something (he hopes she wouldn't knock them down, he's got enough weird shit to cover up without trying to explain why the boys' bathroom exploded with him in it). She clenches her fists and continues. "I won't allow any of that to happen, do you understand? You have to help me, Stiles."

Well, what could he say to that? Also, the mirror looks awfully close to shattering. That could hurt.

"Teach you, I will!"

He does a killer Yoda expression, really, he does. It startles a laugh out of Laura and the vibrating mirror settles down. Looks like he's going to Mr. Miyagi this shit, Spirit Style.

.

The thing about being a giant squishy push-over for the suffering specters of the dearly, and sometimes not so dearly, deceased (because the departed part was where Stiles' stepped in, apparently) was that you ended up knowing a lot. A lot of people and a lot about people. Almostalways too much about said people and their dead ones. In fact, you'd end up knowing so much you'd kind of wished for one of those mind wiping pens out of MIB. It's creepy, and uncomfortable, and fucking hard to balance out. It's both the weird empathic shit he's got going for him, the part of him he thinks comes from some Empath who decided to join the gene pool of his ancestors, and the overwhelming amount of information from both ghost and whatever else he digs up on his own.

Sometimes it's hard to remember he isn't supposed to know some things, isn't supposed to act understanding and connected to a stranger who doesn't know his real name. Well, Scott hadn't known his real name up until, like, two years ago, so there's that. But he digresses. The point is that he's sort of a weird mix of a means to an end, a seriously under-qualified therapist of the dead, researcher of the weird and reluctant, sometimes slightly criminal, fighter of the greater good. This means people tells him things, or punches him in the face.

He thinks one of the main reasons Jackson hates him so outright is because of that one time Stiles needed (was guilt-tripped by a confused and sickly looking eight year old) to help his parents' biological son cross over. That had been a mess of epic proportions, and Stiles wasn't touching those daddy issues with a ten foot pole. But in the end Jackson thought he was the worst human being on the planet, his father couldn't even remember Stiles' last name (a.k.a he could not give less of a shit about the ADHD kid spazzing around like a housefly on steriods), and Jackson's mother had graduated from her own version of Supernatural 101 slightly less broken but stubborn with sending the maid over with cookies every now and then. His dad thought he'd taken up baking and was giving him treats for following his son's enforced diet.

Yeah, his life.

All of this, though, it was why he was currently imitating a piñata in an alley that could use some party decorations, seriously, the gloom and doom was written all over it. Possibly in some actual graffiti, or possibly blood and/or other suspicious bodily fluids, but he couldn't be sure. Because right now, his vision was sort of seriously wonky and quite filled with boots and oh my god, fucking ow, that was a knee.

He probably shouldn't have stalked the massive bulk of muscles reeking of alcohol, and when cornered, allowing his mouth free reign as it mentioned the fire in detail, because that was INTEL he seriously should not have. He blames Roxie for this.

"Oh my god!" Speaking of which, yep, that shrill scream is definitely Roxie. Who was, not so shockingly, a stripper at one point in life. The clichés never end, and he's totally going to die in the alley isn't he?

"What do I do what do I do oh my god, Reddick, stop it!"

That is surprisingly unhelpful, but a bottle explodes somewhere and works as enough distraction for Roxie to yank him away from the firsts and the boots and the knees. Reddick is a fitting name for that beast, being a sort of huge dick. Though the Hulk works too, but no, because the Hulk had a decent guy named recently named Bruce somewhere under all that anger and violence. Also, it's generally unleashed on people who deserve it. Stiles does not deserve black-eyes and broken ribs, seriously.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Roxie's whining, dragging him into a run and Stiles is dazed and hurting but he's not stupid and takes the chance for what it is, numbly noting that the exploding bottle sort of imploded in Red the Dick's face. Ghost-y vibes and their erratic ups and downs were sometimes extremely helpful, though some of Laura's Luke Skywalker would've been handier around here. Roxie is sort of CP3O-ing this shit, or maybe leaning more towards Jar Jar Binks. He hasn't decided yet.

However, there are bellows of agony and sheer madness ringing in his ears and he really needs to get to his Jeep and get the hell out of dodge.

He can't remember why he'd though this would be a good idea.

"Oh my god, like, I thought he was going to kill you too!" Roxie's breathless beside him as he throws himself behind the wheel – damn he's quick – and he sort of wants to kill her. Seeing as she's already dead, that's a bit of a problem, but Stiles is nothing if not resourceful.

"Too?!" he yelps. "Kill me too?! That might've been useful information to have, I thought you O.D.! But no. Remember the whole, 'Go to Reddick, Stiles, Reddick set that fire!', 'This is totally what I need to do to cross over, Stiles, I promise!', 'Reddick's dumb enough to give shit away! You'll be fine!' Guess you forgot to mention the extremely violate anger management issues he's got going on, huh?"

The drug addict of questionable intelligence winced beside him, fidgeting as if she's gone without a hit for one day too many. Stiles knows that kind of fidgeting, has seen it at the station and on streets and homes he's visited over the years. Sometimes had it himself, back when Adderall and panic-attacks where the norm. He's getting better.

"I think it's time for you to meet with Laura now," Stiles says to the silence, still vibrating with frustration and pain. "We're going to have a nice long chat about the fire, Kate Argent and your boyfriend's role in all this. You're telling us all you know, and I promise I'll make sure he goes down and someone finds your body."

Roxie's silent, but she hasn't left. She could, he reminds himself. She could leave and hide and refuse to help, he'd be stuck and he'd have to brush up on his mumbo-jumbo and do some summoning of epic shaman-y stuff as the mostly self-taught spiritual guy he is. Girls should appreciate his spiritual-ness more. Seriously.

Point being, he probably shouldn't scare Roxie off, even if she's a jittery murder victim with ulterior motives. He'll have to have that talk with Laura and Derek now, which sucks, because had anything gone as he'd planned he'd have had this shit resolved without having to drag Kate Argent and her rag-tag band of merchandise arsonists into the fray. Bad enough he knew who Kate had gotten her inside information from, and how. No need to bring it up where it would just cause more trouble, despite Kate being dead.

Maybe he should have different discussions, at different times. Damage control, it's important.

"Okay, change of plans," he decides. "You slither back into the ether and wait until I call for you. I'll talk to the Hales. We'll see how involved you'll have to be. I'd rather not make this worse than it already is for them, or you, and it's fucking bad, all right?" He swallows. This is the hard part, because he knows. He knows and he feels the pain and the history oozing off of the girl beside him. She can't be more than twenty-something. He knows about the drugs, knows she ran away and ended up with the bag of dicks she had called boyfriend up until whatever drove her to be extra careless with her dosage (if that was indeed what had happened). It's every fucked up cliché out there, but it's how it is. She might've gotten killed because her boyfriend had told her of his history of arson and mass murder, and he got pissed when she wanted to go to the police. Instead, she came to Stiles. He says, "I get it," because he does. Like he feels Laura's loss, Derek's desperation. Somehow, he gets it. Every time.

It's like being torn is all the directions and he's never allowed himself to pick a side, just like his mom always told him. He's not supposed to wish death upon anyone, but sometimes, humans makes it so hard. But his mom used to say, remember who you are, remember you're a healer. Remember you're not a judge, you're not a jury and you're not an executioner. You're a second chance, you're a guide. You have great powers, power to get the story started, get it finished. It's a blessing.

It's never felt like a blessing, more like the twitch in his leg and the skittering of his mind. Something that just is, like the five fingers on his hand. If they were all broken, he adds now as Roxie leaves. He'll talk to Derek first. He doesn't think he's got a lot of time before Laura finds out, because she's still scooping out her crime scene. Stiles had asked her to try and see if the cops snooping around would give any more useful information, then Stiles had run into Roxie, and it was a moot point but he'd chosen not to alert Laura and had followed Roxie instead, after hearing her request and connecting her boyfriend's secret of committing arson six years ago with the Hale fire.

He'd been led straight into that alley and the fists.

Stiles really should know better by now. You just don't trust a ghost's judgment! There'd been that one time when Erica had told him he looked good in pink which…yeah. Not so much. But it had made her stop stalking him and putting up wards in his bathroom and around his bed, and even in the school's locker room, which Coach had firmly stated he did not want to know about. Stiles thinks Coach might have been left with the impression that Stiles and Scott are part of some sort of satanic sex cult for gays.

He just wants it on the record that things like these just keeps happening to him and they are not his fault.

.

"Well, this is interesting," Stiles remarks, earning himself a narrowed glare and a feminine giggle. He'd dropped by his house, to clean up and lick his wounds or whatever, just try and regroup. He hadn't expected to walk into his room, flip on the lights, and see Derek Hale brooding in the corner, his sister crouching on the sill of the window Stiles knew for a fact he had left firmly shut.

Stiles may have riled back in a jerky, flail-y motion that involved a lot of arms and strangled yelps. He'd been working on keeping the volume down, because he got startled a lot, but it was a work in progress at this point. In any case, he'd calmed down to his usual witty, charming self by now.

"You're not a ghost, Derek, you should use doors. Like decent people. Not that you're not decent, Laura!" He quickly backtracks, flinging his hands up in a don't-kill-me, oh-god-psycho-werewolves, it's-a-thing way. Derek continues to growl but Laura's still giggling.

"What happened to your face?" she asks, titling her head in question. Stiles shrugs, winces at the pull on his muscles. He'd been too worked up to notice before; going from one adrenaline kicked battle straight into another tends to do that. And oh God Roxie. The fire.

Shit.

Derek's nose twitches in time to Laura's. "You smell like blood, alcohol and panic," Derek frowns. Laura's already up in Stiles' space, poking and probing and oh god—

"BAD TOUCH!" he yelps, squirming and flailing to push his hoodie down and hide his stomach because yeah no. Fuck but werewolf spirits were strong.

Derek looks like he's caught between morbid fascination and freaking out. He seems to have settled for exploring his inner voyeurism tendencies which, again, no!

"LAURA!" Stiles snaps, feeling that electric spark of something inside that he doesn't explore very often because he isn't sure what it is, it had developed after his mom's death, and Stiles might be suffering from acute curiosity but his research told him too little to mess with this too often.

Things are, admittedly, a bit stressful at the moment. And Stiles doesn't always know what to do. Talking to ghosts didn't power him up like an all knowing super-computer. So yeah, this spark? He has no fucking clue what it is.

He does, to some extent, know what it does.

This time around, it sends Laura sprawling to the floor and causes Derek to tense up in startled surprise.

"Right! No more manhandling the human!" Stiles breathes, trying to straighten his clothes as Laura stares up at him in shock and Derek hackles continues to rise. "I already stood in as a punching bag for Brute McBruteson, no need to double team me with the Big Bad, okay? Right! Good!"

Derek's nose twitches while Laura continues to watch him warily while she straightens herself. Stiles clears his throat. "Okay, so, this wasn't really how I'd hope to do this but since you're both here…" he trails off, taking a deep breath before exhaling it in a rush. "I've got some, uh, news. You might want to sit down and, I don't know, find your Zen. This might possibly, uh, upset you. Or piss you off. Or, you know, both." Shifting from foot to foot, Stiles regarded the siblings before him. They both nodded, suspicious. Stiles clapped his hands. "Okay then! So…Kate Argent…wasn't working alone."

.