Stiles's Arc

Chapter 15 of 20

The sky turned bruise-blue by morning. Stiles stood on the library steps with a duffel of mountain ash at his feet. Rain spat sideways. Behind him, the storm clouds piled high over the school, lightning forking down toward the lacrosse field. The flood was coming, and the Acheron with it. Stiles set an old wooden jar down on the front desk and popped the lid. Ash inside, gray and fine. He climbed onto a chair and started giving orders. His dad would handle the evacuees pouring in from town. The rest of them would split. Scott, Derek, and Malik to the clinic for Deaton. Isaac and Lydia with him, to raid the chemistry room. "Why chemistry?" Isaac asked. "More ash," Stiles said. "Salt. Anything that burns clean. We need enough to circle this whole building." Lydia was already moving. "Bring the scales. We measure it right or the line breaks." They ran the halls in the dark. Lydia swept jars off the shelves. Isaac hauled the heavy bins. Stiles kept watch at the door, hands shaking, listening for water under the floor. They made it back as the first sirens started. Evacuees crowded the lobby. His dad waved families toward the stacks, calm as stone. Stiles knelt and poured the line. Ash crossed the threshold, around the windows, sealing every door. Lydia checked the gaps. Isaac closed the last one at the back. When Stiles stood, the wooden jar was empty and the rain was sheeting against the glass. A black shape moved in the flooded parking lot, then stopped at the line. The barrier held. For now. Stiles let out a breath he'd been holding all morning. Then his phone buzzed — Scott. The clinic call was short and bad. Deaton knew how to wound the Acheron. But the ritual needed something inside the shelter walls. Something Stiles had already used up.