chapter thirteen || it's over

"What did she say?" Lydia asks, standing up from the bench she and Ariel were sitting on.

Sheriff Stilinski shakes his head. "Hard to tell, there were words. I'm not sure there were actual sentences. Nothing.

Lydia sighs. "I think we need a psychologist..."

"Or a medium," Ariel pipes in.

"Is she even competent enough to be charged with something?"

"If Meredith is The Benefactor, then that means she was competent enough to trick Kate into opening the Hale Vault, competent enough to blackmail Brunski into helping her, and competent enough to create a hit list and pay out money for its completion. This girl's practically a criminal mastermind."

Lydia shakes her head. "There's gotta be a reason why she would do this."

"I'm only interested in the "why," if it tells me the "how."

"You mean how to stop it?" Ariel says, her eyebrows furrowed.

Mr. Stilinski nods his head. "After what happened to Scott tonight, this thing's still going. The payments could be automatic. And as long as the killers are getting paid, and paid very well, that list is gonna keep getting smaller.

Lydia and Ariel share a look. "We don't just need to stop the dead pool."

"We need to stop the money," Sheriff says finishing her sentence off.

❁

"What is she doing here? She shouldn't be here. Why is she here? It's not safe."

"Stiles said he could protect me, he said he has his bat."

Stiles grins widely. "Yeah," throwing an arm over Ariel's shoulder. "I could protect her," he says proudly, ecstatic that he was getting noticed.

Malia rolls her eyes. "Come on," she says, grabbing Ariel's wrist and pulling her into the house. Ariel gives an apoligetic smile to the now pouting Stiles.

The three teens walk into Stiles bedroom and put the cassette in the cassette player.

"Let's go, Lorraine," Brunski's voice comes through. Ariel flinches and cuddles closer to Stiles.

Lorraine's voice then comes in. "Listen to me, please listen. There's something I have to do, something I have to stop."

"I have to take you back to Eichen, Lorraine."

"No, no. I don't think you're gonna be taking me anywhere. I can hear the recorder in your pocket. It's on now, isn't it? You're making a tape. Just like you taped the others.

"This didn't happen at Eichen House," Stiles tells the two girls.

"But then where did she go?" Malia asks him.

"That's what we need to find out."

"Get back to Eichen, Lorraine," Brinski tells Lydia's grandmother, on the tape.

"No, no. I don't think you're gonna be taking me anywhere."

"That's it," Malia tells them. "That's where it is, play it again and turn it up."

Stiles rewinds the tape. "No, no, I don't think you're gonna be taking me anywhere. I can hear the recorder in your pocket. It's on now, isn't it? You're making a tape. Just like you taped the others."

"It's the record player," Malia tells them.

Stiles stops the tape. "What record player?"

"The one in the lake house, in the study," Ariel tells them. "When I was with Lydia, I saw it."

"So she escaped from Eichen House to go back to listen to a record player?" Stiles asks in confusion.

"Well, she was like Lydia, right? She was a Banshee?"

"Yeah, but only once. She predicted Maddy's death and then just spent decades trying to predict something else," Stiles ingorms her.

"What if she did?" Ariel says, catching on to where Malia is going.

Malia nods. "Maybe she finally did. And what if this time, it wasn't just one death, it was a lot of deaths?"

"Like the dead pool," Ariel adds on.

"What if all those years ago, Lorraine predicted it? And she knew there was something in the study that could stop it?"

"Then we're going to the lake house," Stiles tells them.

❁

Stiles sighs as they all stand around the record player. "What are we doing? This room wasn't even made for us. No, we need someone like Lydia or Meredith, and we're just sitting here listening to a stupid record player play a record that doesn't play anything," he rants before grabbing Ariel's hand. "Come on, There's plenty of other things we can be totally useless doing," he shots off the record player.

"Stiles," Malia calls out his name.

"Yes?"

"I can still hear it," she tells him.

"But it's not on."

"Then it's something else. Something spinning."

"What is that?" Ariel asks pointing to the cord.

Stiles looks to where she's pointing. "That's a floor," he tells her slowly.

Ariel glares at him. "No, this," she tells him picking up the chord.

Stiles takes it from her hand and follows it before pulling it, cracking the wall.

"Uh..."

Ariel nods her head slightly. "Wow, that's really cool. Really nice. What is it?"

"A dead pool," he tells her.

Malia pulls her fist back about to punch it. "You can't just smash it to pieces. Okay? If this thing's being used to disseminate the list, then it's probably gonna keep going until everyone's dead."

"Then what do we do?" Malia asks him.

"It needs some kind of prompt or command or something, right?"

"What about a key?" Malia asks.

Ariel speaks up. "When in doubt, call Lydia."

❁

"You see it?" Stiles asks Lydia through facetime showing her the deadpool.

"Hi Lydia!" Ariel says jumping front of the camera.

Lydia smiles. "Hi Ariel."

"There's got to be a way to turn it off, right?" Stiles asks ignoring the two girls exchange.

"I don't know. I don't know anything about computers from the 1970s," Lydia tells him honestly.

"Neither do we," Malia tells her.

"Okay, where's the monitor?"

"Lydia, there is no monitor. There are buttons, knobs, spindles, no monitor."

"Wait, turn the phone back. Point it at the carpet."

"The what?" Stiles asks.

"The floor! Just show me the floor. Where's the stain? There should be red blotches, a wine stain."

"There's nothing."

Lydia shakes her head. "That doesn't make sense. I gave the $500 I was supposed to use to hire cleaners to Brunski."

"Lydia, what the hell does wine have to do with anything?"

Lydia sighs. "Red wine doesn't just disappear. Unless it wasn't wine."

"What? What do you mean?"

"The ashes weren't ashes. The study isn't a study. The record player isn't a record player. So... So maybe the wine wasn't wine. Stiles, you have to find the wine. Find the bottle. There could be something about it," Lydia says piecing the puzzle together.

"What kind? What's it called?"

"It's a 1982 Cotes du Rhone."

Stiles leaves and gets the bottle. He rattles it as he comes back. "I think there's something inside. Do you have, like, a wine opener or..."

Malia snatches the bottle from his hand and throws it on the ground.

"Or we could do that," he says.

Ariel spots the key and beds down to pick it up.

"No, don't touch it!" Stiles yells, making Ariel jump.

"You'll hurt yourself," he tells her before picking the key up and putting it into the hole.

"What did we just do?" Ariel asks him.

"We stopped it, we stopped the deadpool."

i just wanted to tell you guys that i'm going to rewrite this whole book, but i'll still work on this version until it's finished. i'm just not satisfied with how i wrote this book at all, it needs so much work. Ariel just wasn't her own character, she barely had any of her own lines or a her own storyline. i wrote absolutely nothing about her bonding with the pack. plus, it needs more Stariel scenes bc, let's be honest, they are fooking adorable together.

aaaand now i'm going to self promote with absolutely no regrats. go check out my OUAT Peter Pan book. It's called Cheshire Cat.

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