The classroom was warm in that particular suffocating way that happened when thirty teenagers had been sitting in the same room for too long, and Evelyn was fairly certain she had read the same paragraph four times without retaining a single word of it.
She blinked at her notebook. The notes from the last twenty minutes were sparse and slightly crooked, which was what happened when she was running on four hours of sleep and approximately three cups of coffee that had done absolutely nothing.
Clara leaned over from the desk beside her. "You look terrible," she whispered helpfully.
"Thank you," Evelyn murmured without looking up.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"Briefly."
On her other side, Jenette was drawing small stars in the margins of her history textbook with a dedication that suggested she had also long since abandoned any pretense of paying attention. She glanced at Evelyn with mild sympathy. "You've had that same page open for like twenty minutes."
"I'm a slow reader," Evelyn said.
She wasn't a slow reader. She was, in fact, an extremely fast reader, which was part of the problem — she had been reading at two in the morning for the past several nights, working through PDFs that Stiles had located through methods she had decided not to ask too many questions about. Old texts. Translated manuscripts. Fragments of druidic practice preserved in academic journals that nobody had apparently opened since the nineteen seventies.
The problem wasn't finding the material. The problem was that most of it was either wrong, or vague, or written by people who had clearly never actually done anything and were simply theorizing from a very comfortable academic distance.
She knew what she was. Or at least she was beginning to understand the shape of it. Druids weren't witches — that was one of the first things Deaton had clarified years ago, in that careful way he had of explaining things without quite explaining them. Witches worked with forces external to themselves, drawing power from outside and bending it to a will. What Evelyn came from was different. It was relational. Her family's line had always existed in conversation with the natural world rather than in command of it — a lineage of people who listened to the earth and asked things of it, who understood that everything borrowed had to be returned, and that the asking itself was as important as the answer.
She had known this theoretically for years.
She understood it differently now. Since Derek. Since the warmth that had moved through her palm and up her arm and settled in her chest like something recognizing itself.
The earth had answered her. Willingly. And that mattered in ways she was still trying to map.
The bell rang.
Evelyn surfaced from her thoughts, blinking as the classroom erupted into the usual chaos of bags and chairs and voices. She began gathering her things slowly, fingers clumsy from tiredness, and was still shoving her notebook into her bag when movement outside the classroom door caught her eye.
Stiles was standing in the corridor.
He was doing that thing where he pretended to be casually leaning against the wall while very obviously looking through the window panel in the door, and when he caught her eye he jerked his head in a short, urgent gesture.
Evelyn sighed, slung her bag over her shoulder, and said a quick goodbye to Clara and Jenette that she was fairly certain they didn't hear over the noise.
She pushed through the door into the corridor.
"What is it?" she asked immediately, falling into step beside him as he moved away from the classroom. "What's going on?"
"Jackson knows about Scott." He said it quietly, glancing over his shoulder out of habit.
Evelyn stopped walking for half a second. "Whittemore?" She caught back up. "How on earth is that even possible?"
"We have no idea," Stiles said,
"But we need to find the Alpha soon. Before Jackson does something that puts Scott in actual danger."
They turned into the less crowded stretch of corridor near the library wing, where the foot traffic thinned enough to talk without being overheard. Evelyn adjusted the strap of her bag, thinking.
"I've been working on something," she said. "Old formulas. There are locating methods in some of the older texts — ways of asking the earth to point toward a specific kind of presence."
Stiles turned to look at her with that expression he got when something was either fascinating or deeply alarming, and it was sometimes hard to tell which. "Are you talking about actual spells?"
"No, not exactly," she said, and tried to think of how to explain it in a way that wouldn't make his eyes glaze over. "You see — we take from the earth, and we give it back. Everything is borrowed. These kinds of requests aren't commands, they're exactly what they sound like — requests. Real ones. You ask, and the earth decides whether to answer."
Stiles was quiet for a moment, processing. "And it answers you."
"It has," she said, carefully.
"Okay." He nodded slowly. "So can you use it to find the Alpha?"
"I hope so," she admitted. "But I haven't found anything specific yet. Most of what I'm reading is either too general or written by people who clearly never tested any of it."
"That is genuinely fascinating and also deeply esoteric," he said, with the tone of someone filing information away at speed. "I'll keep helping you find books. In the meantime I'm also thinking about trying something on a more human level."
Evelyn glanced at him. "I am human, Stiles."
He tilted his head in a way that very carefully did not constitute a response to that statement. "Does Danny like you?"
She blinked. "I — what?"
"I didn't mean it like that!" he said immediately, hands coming up. "I just mean — you're part of the, you know. The social ecosystem. The functional tier. I've seen you talk to him plenty of times."
"Well, yeah," she said, as they walked. "Everybody likes Danny."
"Great, because I need to ask him something and there is essentially zero chance he says yes if it comes from me directly."
Evelyn looked at him sideways. "Is it something illegal?"
"Most definitely," Stiles said, without a trace of hesitation.
"Figures," she replied flatly.
They walked in companionable silence for a moment, turning the corner toward the main corridor. The lunch crowd was thickening around them, voices and footsteps blurring together, and Evelyn was just starting to think about whether she had the energy to eat anything when she saw her.
Irene.
She was standing at her locker about twenty feet ahead, one hand braced against the open door, the other pressing her fingers lightly to her temple as if she had a headache. Her bag had slipped off her shoulder and she hadn't seemed to notice, the strap trailing against the floor. She was staring at nothing in particular — or maybe at something that wasn't there — with that slightly unfocused quality that Evelyn had noticed before and never quite been able to shake.
Evelyn slowed without meaning to.
She remembered the last time. The way Irene's voice had changed, dropped into something flat and distant, the words coming out of her like they belonged to someone else entirely.
"Hey," Stiles said, noticing she'd fallen half a step behind. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Evelyn said, but her eyes stayed on Irene. "One second."
Evelyn crossed the distance before she'd fully decided to, Stiles falling into step beside her with only a brief moment of confusion.
"Hey, Irene," Evelyn said, keeping her voice easy.
Irene turned. For a second she looked startled — not frightened, just the particular surprise of someone pulled back from wherever their thoughts had taken them. Then she focused, and something settled in her expression into something more recognizable.
"Oh, hey." Her voice was normal. A little tired maybe, but normal. "Sorry, I was just—" She gestured vaguely at her locker. "Trying to remember if I have gym today. I can remember if I have gym today."
"It's Tuesday," Evelyn said. "Does it help that is Tuesday?"
"Right, Tuesday." Irene let out a small breath of relief, reaching to pick up her bag strap from the floor. "Thanks. My brain is completely—" She stopped.
Then her gaze drifted past Evelyn's shoulder.
Stiles had caught up, stopping a few feet behind Evelyn with his hands in his pockets, watching the exchange with polite curiosity. He gave a small, slightly awkward wave when Irene's eyes landed on him.
Irene looked at him.
The change was subtle. Not the dramatic blankness Evelyn had witnessed before — nothing as obvious as a trance. Just a quieting. Like someone had turned down the volume on whatever was happening behind her eyes, and something else had taken the frequency.
"There are people who stand on both sides of a line," she said softly, her gaze resting somewhere in Stiles' general direction without quite focusing on him. "And pretend the line isn't there."
The corridor noise continued around them. Someone laughed too loudly nearby. A locker slammed somewhere down the hall.
Neither Evelyn nor Stiles said anything.
Then Irene blinked. The quieting lifted as quickly as it had settled, leaving behind only a faint crease between her brows, like the echo of something she couldn't quite locate. She glanced between them with that familiar uncomfortable expression.
"Sorry, I — I should go," she said, reaching for her bag strap unnecessarily since she was already holding it.
"What did you mean?" Stiles asked. His voice was careful, measured in a way that didn't match his usual rhythm. "What you just said."
Irene looked at him. The discomfort deepened into something more genuine, more uncertain. "I don't —" She stopped. Shook her head once, small and involuntary. "I'm not sure," she said quietly. "I don't really know."
She moved past them before either could respond, footsteps quick and uneven, disappearing into the lunch crowd without looking back.
Evelyn watched her go.
Behind her, Stiles exhaled — slow, slightly unsteady. She turned to look at him. He was still watching the direction Irene had gone, jaw slightly tight, something working behind his eyes that he wasn't quite letting show.
"What do you think she meant?" he said.
"I don't know," Evelyn answered. "It's just — it's happened before. She said something strange, a while back." She paused. "Something I didn't entirely understand either."
"What did she say?" Stiles asked.
"I didn't catch the exact words," Evelyn said, "I was too busy noticing her eyes."
"You mean the completely blank look?" he asked, eyebrows rising slightly.
"Exactly that."
His gaze shifted then, going somewhere internal in the way it did when something was pulling at a thread he hadn't expected to find. "My dad has a report on her," he said after a moment, like he was remembering it only now. "Her parents called the police one night. She'd had some kind of breakdown. Ran off." He paused. "She was taken to Eichen House for a while."
Evelyn hadn't known that. But she remembered, vaguely, the way people talked about Irene in that particular careless shorthand, calling her knutjob, or psycho.
Eichen House wasn't just a psychiatric clinic. Everyone in Beacon Hills knew what it really was, even if they didn't say it out loud.
"Does she even have any friends?" Evelyn asked, and she meant it genuinely, the question sitting heavier than she'd expected once it was out.
Stiles was quiet for a second. "I don't think so," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen her with anyone." He glanced down the now-empty stretch of corridor where Irene had been standing. "I don't even know what year she is."
"Me neither," Evelyn admitted.
They stood there for a moment, which felt strange given that neither of them had ever really thought about Irene Woods before today.
Neither of them said anything else about it. Stiles rolled his shoulders once, something deliberate in the motion, and nodded ahead down the corridor. "Come on. Let's go at lunch."
They had barely taken three steps when Stiles' hand caught Evelyn's arm briefly, drawing her attention forward.
She followed his line of sight.
At the far end of the corridor, outside the doors that led to the east courtyard, Scarlett was standing with Lydia and Allison. The three of them were close together; Allison was laughing at something, her head tilted back slightly, and even Lydia's expression had softened into something that almost looked genuine. Scarlett stood between them with her arms loosely crossed, a small smile on her lips.
Evelyn watched her for a moment.
Then Scarlett's eyes moved down the corridor and found them. She said something brief to the two girls — a quick word, a light gesture — and Lydia waved her off.
"Hey," Stiles said as she reached them. "You looked relaxed back there."
"Shouldn't I be?" Scarlett asked, tilting her head slightly.
"Aren't you supposed to be afraid of hunters?" Evelyn said.
"I'm not scared of hunters," Scarlett replied, without particular drama. "And anyway, Allison knows nothing about creatures like me. I don't think the Argents would tell her not to spend time with me." The corner of her mouth lifted faintly. "With what excuse?"
"That's —" Stiles considered it. "Actually that makes complete sense." He looked almost impressed. "You thought about everything."
"I try," Scarlett said simply. Then her expression shifted, becoming more focused. "Anyway. She's not wearing it today."
"The necklace?" Evelyn asked.
"I was going to ask her to lend it to me," Scarlett said. "But it wasn't there. Maybe Scott already has it."
"Let's hope," Stiles muttered.
They turned toward the cafeteria, the lunch crowd thickening around them as they pushed through the double doors. The noise hit immediately — trays and voices and the particular organized chaos of four hundred teenagers all deciding simultaneously that they were hungry. Evelyn squinted against the brightness of it.
Scott was already at a table near the far wall, sitting alone with his tray in front of him and the expression of someone who was physically present but mentally somewhere else entirely.
Stiles and Evelyn moved toward the food line. Scarlett peeled off without a word, crossing the cafeteria toward Scott with that easy, unhurried stride that somehow always made her look like she knew exactly where she was going.
Evelyn picked up a tray and joined the queue, eyes drifting back toward the table where Scarlett was now sliding into the seat across from Scott. He looked up at her approach, and whatever was on his face shifted slightly — not relief exactly, but something adjacent to it. Like her presence made the room slightly less loud.
She said something. He answered. She reached across and took one of his fries without asking, which made him blink and then almost laugh despite himself.
Evelyn looked away, feeling oddly like she'd seen something private.
"She's good at acting unbothered. Scarlett, I mean," she said, keeping her voice low enough that it stayed between her and Stiles.
Stiles was quiet for a second, reaching for a plate without really looking at it.
"I mean — yeah," he said, like it was obvious. "That's just how she is."
Evelyn glanced at him.
"She doesn't really do anxious, she do angry sometimes, and sassy," he added, with a small shrug that was trying harder than it needed to. "It's kind of her thing."
Evelyn nodded and didn't push it further.
They paid and crossed the cafeteria, trays in hand, weaving through the noise until they reached Scott's table. Evelyn slid into the seat beside Scott, Stiles dropping into the one next to Scarlett with the ease of someone who had already decided that was his place.
Scarlett glanced at him sideways as he settled in.
He glanced back.
It lasted less than two seconds and neither of them said anything, but Evelyn caught it anyway — that small, quiet thing that passed between them. The kind of look that didn't need words because it was already communicating something completly clear. She wondered if they even realized it.
Stiles picked up a piece of chicken. "Did you get her to give you the necklace?"
"Not exactly," Scott said.
Stiles and Evelyn both frowned. Scarlett shook her head slowly beside him.
"What happened?" Stiles asked.
"The pup has zero charming skills, apparently," Scarlett said.
Evelyn looked at Scott. "What did you do?"
"He sent her pictures of them together," Scarlett answered.
Evelyn closed her eyes briefly. "Oh, Scott, no."
"Yeah." Scott stared at his tray. "She told me not to talk to her. At all."
Stiles blinked. "So she's not giving you the necklace?"
"She's not giving me the necklace!" Scott said, with a flash of genuine irritation.
Evelyn noticed Scarlett glance at Stiles with something almost fond in her expression at his timing. It was quick, barely there, but it was there.
"Well did you find anything else?" Stiles asked.
"Just that I know nothing about girls," Scott said, still irritated, "and that they're totally psychotic."
Evelyn set down her fork. "You come at her with pictures of you after a breakup and we are psychotic?"
Scarlett rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she had already had this exact thought and had simply chosen not to dignify it.
"Okay," Stiles said, nodding with the energy of someone pivoting deliberately. "Good thing I came up with a Plan B just in case anything like this happened."
"What's Plan B?" Scott asked.
"Just steal the stupid thing."
Scarlett smiled. "I like Plan B."
"Couldn't we at least try getting to Harris?" Scott said.
"Where is he, by the way?" Evelyn asked.
"My dad put him on a twenty-four hour protective detail," Stiles said, with the exasperated tone of someone who found this personally inconvenient. "The necklace is all we've got. You or Scar need to manage to get it."
"Alright," Scarlett said, glancing at Stiles.
Then Scott went still.
It was subtle — a shift in his posture, a tightening around his eyes — but Evelyn had been watching him enough lately to recognize when something was coming through that the rest of them couldn't hear.
"Guys," he said quietly, not moving his head. "He's watching us."
"What's wrong?" Stiles asked, frowning.
"Jackson is talking to me," Scott said. "Through the — he knows I can hear him."
Everyone looked. Across the cafeteria, Jackson was watching their table with a slow, satisfied smirk that made Evelyn's stomach turn slightly.
"What's he saying?" Stiles asked Scott, then immediately turned to Scarlett. "What's he saying?"
"I'm not a pup, Stiles," Scarlett said, glaring toward Jackson. "I can't hear him from here."
"He knows I can hear him though," Scott said, the agitation creeping into his voice. "Just — look at me. Talk to me. Act normal. Pretend nothing is happening."
"You're not making it easy," Scarlett told him flatly.
Silence fell over the table, which was exactly the wrong thing to happen.
"Say something!" Scott said, quietly but urgently. "Talk to me."
"Stiles," Evelyn said.
He looked at her with wide eyes. "Me?"
"You always have something to say," Scarlett said.
"I can't think of anything — my mind is completely blank—"
"Your mind's blank?!" Scott said, barely keeping his voice down. "You can't think of something to say?!"
"Not under this kind of pressure!" Stiles said defensively, then twisted in his seat and scanned the cafeteria. "FYI — he's not even sitting with them anymore."
All four of them looked around. Jackson was gone.
"I could look for him," Scarlett said, already straightening slightly.
"And do what?" Stiles asked. "Kick his ass?"
"I would gladly do it," she said, without any particular heat, which somehow made it more convincing.
Scott's jaw was tight, his shoulders drawing inward in a way that Evelyn had learned to recognize as the precursor to something worse. She watched him without making it obvious, tracking the small changes — the set of his mouth, the way his breathing had shifted from normal to deliberate.
She wondered what Jackson was saying. Whatever it was, it was working with a precision that suggested he knew exactly where to aim.
Don't lose it, she thought, as if Scott could hear her. Not here. Not in front of everyone.
"Scott, come on," Stiles said, leaning forward slightly, voice low and urgent. "You can't let him do this. You can't let him have this kind of power over you, okay?"
Scott didn't seem to hear him.
"What on earth is he telling him?" Evelyn murmured, scanning the cafeteria again for Jackson without finding him.
"Whatever it is, it's working," Scarlett said, her eyes dropping briefly to Scott's hands on his tray.
Evelyn followed her gaze. Scott's knuckles had gone white, his fingers pressing into the plastic with a force that made the tray bow slightly at the edges. His hands were trembling — barely, but there.
Then his hand moved.
The tray split with a sharp crack that cut through the cafeteria noise. Evelyn flinched. A few students at the nearest table looked over. Scarlett drew a slow, controlled breath. Stiles blinked, startled out of whatever he'd been about to say.
Everyone in the cafeteria had gone quiet, turning to look at their table. Their eyes wide and surprised as they noticed the tray now split in two on the table.
"Calm down, buddy," Stiles said quickly, shifting to block the view from the nearest tables with his body.
"What the hell does he want?" Scarlett asked Scott directly, her voice quiet and even.
Scott looked up. His eyes were too bright, the tension in his face barely contained. "He wants the bite."
Evelyn stared at him. "What?"
"He wants to be stronger at lacrosse." Scott's voice came out flat and disbelieving, like he still hadn't fully processed the absurdity of it.
"Is he serious right now?" Scarlett said.
"This is so in character, honestly," Stiles muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Have you told him you can't?" Evelyn asked.
"He doesn't want to listen," Scott said. "He just keeps pushing. He only cares about the bite."
"Again," Stiles said, "so in character."
"Alright." Evelyn looked around the table. "What do we do?"
"Can we not just ignore him?" Scarlett said. "Give him the attention he deserves, which is none."
"Scar." Stiles gave her a look. "Hunters. Remember?"
Scarlett exhaled through her nose. "Then we keep him away from them. I don't even think he's ever actually been in a room with Allison's father."
"What are you suggesting?" Scott asked, some of the tension shifting into something more focused as he looked at her.
"Keep him under control," Scarlett said simply. "Keep an eye on him."
Evelyn considered that for a moment. There was something very particular about the way Scarlett said it — calm, matter-of-fact, like it was the most natural solution in the world. And maybe, for her, it was. From what Evelyn had been reading about vampires — the older accounts, the ones that weren't entirely wrong — they were extraordinary observers. Patient in a way that humans rarely managed. They watched, they studied, they learned patterns before they acted. It was, in the older texts, described as a kind of hunting behavior so refined it had become instinct.
Scarlett was clearly very familiar with it.
"You can do that?" Stiles asked, something quietly impressed in his expression.
"Of course," Scarlett said, her lips turn up in a smirk as she looked at him, without particular modesty. "And anyway, he won't go anywhere today."
"Why?" Evelyn asked.
"It's game night." Scarlett turned toward her and Scott as she said it, before going back to glance at Stiles, something settling in her expression. "He'll be around the field and I'll be able to keep an eye on him, while Scott looks for the necklace."
Stiles held her gaze for a second. Something passed between them that Evelyn couldn't entirely read.
"Alright," he said finally, with a nod. "We can do that, while me and Evelyn will proceed with my plan."
Evelyn nodded, picking up her fork again.
Around her the table settled back into something resembling normal — Stiles stealing one of Scott's fries unprompted, Scott too distracted to notice, Scarlett watching the cafeteria with that particular stillness of hers that Evelyn had stopped finding unsettling only recently.
She ate without tasting much.
At some point, without quite meaning to, Irene's words drifted back through her mind the way things did when she wasn't paying attention to keep them out.
There are people who stand on both sides of a line. And pretend the line isn't there.
She didn't know what it meant. She wasn't sure it meant anything at all.
She let it go, and finished her lunch.