On Fire (14 page)

“What if you have a cold?” Stiles asked him, and Derek realized he wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. He was genuinely curious. Derek didn’t care. Stiles could stay curious.

Derek got out of the Jeep; then he raised his head and inhaled. So much smoke. He hated the smell. Clenching his
fists inside the pockets of his black leather jacket, he started to walk. Behind him, Stiles clambered out and caught up with him.

“Why are you so worried about Scott?” Stiles demanded as he put on a hoodie. “Oh, I know, the Alpha and all, but—”

Derek had had it. He grabbed Stiles by the front of his sweatshirt and slammed him against a tree trunk. Stiles grunted hard, and Derek got into his face.

“Yes, ‘the Alpha
and all
,’” he said through clenched teeth. “Are you really this stupid? You’ve seen what the Alpha is capable of. You
know
that mountain lion had nothing to do with what’s going on.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” Stiles said. His face was ashen. He held up his hands. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, well, it’s like you’re PMSing, dude. I mean, you’re even crankier than usual. Which, even you have to admit, is off the charts on a good day.”

“I don’t know why I don’t just kill you,” Derek said, letting his enhanced vision take over, so that Stiles would see his eyes.

“And I sincerely hope you’ll keep asking yourself the big questions,” Stiles said. “Seriously, man, I’m not the enemy, okay?”

You’re too weak to be my enemy,
Derek thought. But Stiles could easily become an enemy. One word spoken to the wrong person, and the sheriff’s son could destroy him. Derek knew exactly how that could go down.

Derek let go of him and kept walking. The smoke was
blanketing the other forest smells, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was deliberate. Then the moonlight shone down on a car, and his heart nearly stopped. He recognized that car. It belonged to Allison Argent.

But the scent that was covering it belonged to the Alpha.

O
nce the sun had gone down, the temperature had plummeted, too. Allison had retrieved a heavier jacket from her car. But she was still shivering as the two of them retraced their steps through the forest. Their breaths were like huge ghosts floating around them. Scott hoped they would run into one of the campfires so she could warm up. Or they could just make their own, if it looked as if they were going to be stuck looking for a while.

He walked in front of her, alert, cautious. Even though she was working hard to keep up, he could tell she was getting tired. He didn’t know what to do.

“Scott.” She tugged on his wrist, and he turned quickly. She waggled his hand and caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I need to take a break,” she said. “I’m so cold.”

He put his arms around her and molded her against his chest. Shutting his eyes against the tide of pleasure that washed over him, he nestled her head beneath his chin. Her knitted cap was scratchy as she settled trustingly against him, and he ran his fingers through the strands of her hair. What
was the worst that could happen if they just gave up? Maybe Lydia would lie for them, say that she and Allison had driven to the preserve to study, or pick up Jackson, or something. Sure, the Argents would be angry with her, but not half as angry if they knew that she’d lied to them so she could be with Scott.

Sighing, he was about to broach the subject when she leaned her head back and kissed his jawline. She cupped her hand around the side of his face, bringing his mouth toward hers. She kissed him long and slow, and he had the presence of mind to check his fingernails. So far.

So very, very good.

•  •  •

Stiles was gasping for breath by the time Derek finally stopped charging through the underbrush. He remembered when Scott had suffered from his terrible asthma attacks—that was all gone now, thanks to the Bite—and his own hideous panic attacks when his mom had died. Not being able to catch your breath really sucked.

But at least he could pant to death in the presence of warmth. Derek had halted at the base of a banked campfire. There was no fire, but the embers were still glowing, and as Stiles sprawled beside it, heaving, Derek sniffed at it for a while, grunted, and added some twigs to make the flames jump to life.

“So?” Stiles finally managed to gasp out. “Was the Alpha here?”

“I can’t tell.” Derek sounded as if he was embarrassed
and angry in equal measures, which Stiles would have found ironic if he hadn’t been too busy wheezing. “But he was definitely at Allison’s car.”

Stiles closed his eyes against a bombardment of panic. He tried to remind himself that the Alpha had bitten Scott because he needed him. An Alpha derived strength from his pack members. So he wouldn’t kill Scott. Allison was another subject. Her father was a werewolf hunter. What if the Alpha attacked her out of revenge?

“I’m going to look for Scott,” Derek said.

“Hang on. I’ll go with—” Stiles couldn’t finish his sentence. He lay gasping. Then he raised a hand. “—you,” he said at last.

But Derek was already gone.

“Or I’ll just lie here and pass out,” Stiles muttered.

•  •  •

“Lydia, there’s someone to see you,” Lydia’s mother told her with a soft rap on her door.

Finally
, Lydia thought. She had had enough of plucking her eyebrows and redoing her manicure and reading about the history of Fermat’s theorem while awaiting Jackson’s return from his rendezvous with Hunter Gramm. She was lying on her bed in China blue tap pants and a camisole and had just enough time to check her lip gloss—and for it to occur to her that that “someone” might be Allison’s supersnoopy Aunt Kate—before the door opened, revealing Danny, Jackson’s best friend, and a guy Danny’d been hanging out with—Damon somebody.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. She sat up. “Hi.”

Dark-haired, with that cool Hawaiian vibe he had, Danny raised his hand in greeting. Damon did the same.

“Is Jackson here?” he asked.

“You could have called to find out that no, he isn’t,” she scolded him, closing her book and setting it on her nightstand.

“We were driving by anyway. And I don’t have your number. And he’s not answering his phone.”

Don’t I know it,
she thought.

“Jackson was supposed to meet up for scrimmage this morning,” Danny said, “and he promised Damon that he’d burn him a playlist to give the DJ for his birthday party. Which is tomorrow, and we’re getting a bit concerned.”

Her first impulse was to lie to them both and make up some reason for why Jackson wasn’t there, but then it dawned on her that Jackson might have assumed that when he said “home soon” he meant
his
home.
How
could she have lain all alone in her room without that occurring to her? Surely he would have contacted her, though, when he got to his house and she hadn’t shown.

But why would he even bother?
a little voice whispered in her suspicious ear.
He didn’t bother to call you last night, did he?

“Here’s the thing,” she blurted, to shut the evil voice up. “I was just about to go over to his house. He got held up on his . . . appointment and so it’s . . . time for me to check to make sure everything’s fine. Since his parents are gone.”

“Like, water the plants?” Damon deadpanned.

“Yes,” Lydia huffed. “Jackson loves me to water his plants.”

Danny raised a brow. “But where’s he been? Why all the mystery?”

“If Jackson wants to share, he’ll share,” she said, hinting without actually saying it that she knew and he didn’t. Lydia knew the power of secrets. That was how she maintained control of her clique at school. You doled out information, letting some people have a little more than others. Teasing outsiders with the possibility of being in the inner sanctum. Excluding them when they misbehaved.

The way you maintained boyfriends, now that she thought of it.

He is so going to regret this stunt,
she promised herself.

She slid off the bed and Danny looked even more taken aback.

“What?” she asked.

He gave her a completely nonsexual once-over. “Are you going in that?”

She tossed her hair disdainfully and walked to her closet. Her hand came down on a pair of designer jeans and she passed. She was not a blue jeans kind of girl, especially not tonight, when she was out to remind Jackson what he had been missing and could possibly continue to miss unless he begged for her forgiveness. Going in for the kill, she selected a short gray and berry plaid skirt with a matching cashmere sweater and flounced into her bathroom.

She took her time getting ready—she always made boys wait, even gay ones—and came out looking (she hoped) cool, collected, and not like some desperate girlfriend going in search of her AWOL boyfriend, on what could have been their second night of hookup bliss.

“You look nice,” Damon said, and she beamed at him.

“So do you,” she said, sliding her coat off its hanger. “You can follow me over,” she added. She’d need her car if she was going to stay, which she hadn’t decided yet. And if there was any reason to stay.

“Be right back,” she said to the guys.

There was the matter of protecting Allison from any more phone calls, of course. She quietly glided into her mother’s bedroom and lifted the landline off the hook, placing the handset behind her mother’s nightstand, and turning down the ringer so that the incessant buzz wouldn’t tip off her mom when she went to bed. Her mother would assume she’d knocked it off herself. She wasn’t a suspicious parent, and the fact that she and Lydia’s father had gotten divorced made her more lenient than other moms. A lot more lenient that Allison’s aunt.

God.

Next Lydia went into the little workout room her mom had put together in the spare room where her dad used to have his home office. That was where she’d put the treadmill. Dressed in tasteful sweats, her mom was striding off the pounds, watching something on the plasma with her earbuds in, and Lydia waved at her.

Ms. Martin pulled out a bud as she kept striding. “Yes, honey?”

“Allison,” was all Lydia said.

Her mom frowned slightly, looking a little unclear, but nodded anyway and put her earbud back in.

“Have fun,” she said, too loudly, and Lydia hid a little smile. Sometimes, when dealing with parents, less was more.
Now, if Allison’s mom, dad, aunt, or some random long-distance friend in San Francisco called, her mom would accidentally fill in whatever blank they offered her.
Why, yes, they did go to the library. Lydia mentioned something about that to me.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, and Lydia very much hoped Allison wouldn’t wind up in trouble, but sometimes you had to take risks in this life.

•  •  •

The Whittemores lived in one of the biggest and most expensive houses, if not the most, in Beacon Hills; an estate, really, well away from the street, in an almost countrylike setting. Lydia clicked in the security code and drove on in. Danny and Damon followed in Danny’s car.

When they reached the driveway and there was no familiar Porsche there, Lydia’s stomach did a little flip.
He texted that he was on his way back.
Sure, the woods were a ways away, but he’d had more than enough time to make the trip twice and still have time to go shopping for a nice piece of jewelry to accessorize his apology.

Still, a girl had her pride, and although she wasn’t sure if she should continue to honor Jackson’s privacy by not involving Danny, or even, at this point, Sheriff Stilinski, she keyed in the front door code, as well, and opened the door with a flourish.

As Jackson’s best friend, Danny had been to his extravagant home before, but the splendor was all new to Damon. Standing beneath the skylight in the living room, he looked at Danny with newfound respect, and Lydia concealed a
grin. She was happy to help Danny with his romance, in her own small way.

They went upstairs to Jackson’s room and she flicked on the light switch. There, alas, was his empty bed, still rumpled from when she laid waiting for him the night before. She took off her coat and laid it on the bed, then went straight to the drawer where she’d found the note and casually moved some things around—athletic cup, eww—checking to see if she’d missed a vital piece of information about his whereabouts.

“Are you looking through his stuff?” Danny queried, and she gave him her best patronizing look.

“Please,” she said. “You must know that I have a drawer here.”

Damon looked even more impressed. Very few teenagers could claim the very adult perk of having a drawer containing their belongings at their boy- or girlfriend’s house. Not that many teenagers had the need. It spoke of changing clothes, spending the night. Adult stuff.

Sex.

In reality, there was nothing of hers in the drawer, except, oh,
yes.

She showed them the packet of glow-in-the-dark condoms she had purchased Jackson for last Valentine’s Day. He had refused to use them. Tonight he would. She’d make sure of that.