Chapter Text
“Answering service,” the voice at the other end of the phone says.
Stiles clears his throat and says, “This is Stiles Stilinski. I need to leave a message for Lorelei White.”
“Yes, sir, I can take that message,” the voice says.
When it comes to dealing with Jonas Aronsson, Oblivion is the only answer that Stiles could come up with that wouldn’t upset a lot of people. He’s not sure he likes it as an answer. He’s not sure that Oblivion will even agree to it. But it’s all he’s got.
The week after Wednesday Arnelle’s aborted wedding to Marty Drake, Stiles sat down with his father and Chris Argent and explained the situation. Jonas Aronsson had hired an assassin from the Nazario territory, with Ariah’s help, to try to kill his father. He was angry at his father for a variety of reasons, none of them anywhere near enough to justify murder.
The problem with Jonas, Stiles thinks, is that as much as he refers to Jonas as a psycho, he’s not actually crazy. He’s a macho jerk with self-entitlement issues and an inadequacy complex. Jonas Aronsson is the kind of guy who will eventually shoot up a mall or a movie theater, and Stiles wants him dealt with. But the problem is, Jonas Aronsson is also Mikael Aronsson’s son. And Stiles just doesn’t know how to go about handling it.
“I’m asking the two of you, not as hunters or as cops, but as fathers,” Stiles said to the two men in front of him, “what you think we should do.”
Chris grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face. Tom said, “We have no way of proving any of this, am I right?”
Stiles shrugged. “Give me five minutes with Jonas and a tape recorder and I can get a confession for you. All I’d have to do is tell Jonas I know it wasn’t him because he isn’t smart enough.”
“Fair point,” Tom said. “Then I think it should be tried in a court of law. There was nothing supernatural about it. There’s no reason why Jonas shouldn’t be arrested and have due process.”
“I agree to a point,” Chris said, “but we don’t know how Sally would react. With her talent at sorcery, she could influence a juror, erase evidence, burn down the courthouse, for crying out loud. There are all manners of ways she could delay or stop a trial. And that’s if she didn’t decide to just break Jonas out of jail and go on the run with him.”
Tom looked skeptical. “Do we actually think Sally cares about Jonas enough to do anything like that?”
“To a point, yes,” Stiles said. “She’s sure as hell not in love with him. But if it wasn’t a lot of effort, if she didn’t have to take any risks, then yeah. She might do it just to fuck with me, or because it amuses her to game the system. Or because Jonas is a good lay. Who knows?”
“Thanks for that mental image,” Tom said, rolling his eyes. “Okay. Sally is a problem, agreed. But there are ways of guarding against sorcery, right?”
Stiles nodded. “I was thinking about Oblivion.”
“I don’t know that they would take him,” Chris said, shaking his head.
Tom looked between the two of them. “I know we’ve used Oblivion before, but refresh my memory.”
“Oblivion is an organization of sorcerers that run – they’re not exactly prisons,” Chris said. “They’re more like rehabilitative services. They take in people who have been victimized by the supernatural world in some way, and help them recover. I, uh, I might be a good example myself. If I hadn’t been able to recover from what Sally had done to me, Oblivion would have taken me in.”
“We used them for Cassidy, down in Neptune, and Jennifer Blake,” Stiles said. “Now, they were both perpetrators as well as being victims, but in both their cases, their original trauma was the source of their less-than-acceptable actions. It wasn’t even supernatural in Cassidy’s case, but Oblivion agreed to take them in to prevent them from causing more damage, and to help them deal with what had been done to them.”
Tom was nodding slowly. “But Jonas isn’t like that.”
“No. Jonas is just a garden variety bad dude,” Stiles said. “If it weren’t for his sorcerer girlfriend, I’d let him be arrested. And to be honest, if it weren’t for his father, I’d probably just let someone else quietly take care of him.”
“Look, you can’t keep Mikael in the dark about this,” Tom said. “He needs to know what happened.”
Chris gave a little grimace. “I’m not sure I agree,” he said. “If they had no other answers, if he needed closure, that would be one thing. But currently, Mikael believes that Ariah arranged it, and now Ariah’s dead. He’s satisfied with that answer. I can’t imagine how to tell him that his son tried to have him assassinated over petty arguments.”
“I think he’ll notice when his son up and disappears,” Tom remarked.
“Well, one of the nice things about Oblivion is that they provide cover,” Stiles said.
“Cover that an experienced hunter wouldn’t see right through?” Tom asked, and Stiles just gave a shrug.
“It’s a moot point,” Chris said, “if they won’t take him. So why don’t we start there? And if they say no, we’ll have to think about something else.”
They all agree on that, so Stiles leaves the message with the answering service and goes about his business. He gets absorbed in his school work and it doesn’t occur to him until several hours later that it’s a little odd that Lorelei hasn’t called him. Both times he had used Oblivion before, they had called him back within about five minutes.
But he supposes that Lorelei has her own business to attend to, and he has no idea what her schedule is like. He certainly doesn’t want to pester her, because she’s terrifying, so he continues to write about the California drought until it’s dinner time.
When he still hasn’t heard by the next day, he calls the answering service again. The phone rings and rings and rings, but nobody ever answers.
~ ~ ~ ~
“Who do you call when the, the fucking Ghostbusters stop answering their phone?” Stiles asks, flailing at Derek, who’s listening with a brooding expression as he sketches. “I mean, seriously? I don’t even know enough about Oblivion to know where to start with this. All I know is that Lorelei, the only person there who I’ve met, could hand me my ass on a silver platter. And she’s not even the boss. If someone took these guys out, the entire world is in serious trouble.”
“Let’s not leap to conclusions,” Derek says. “It’s been one day. They could just be busy with something. Just because they’ve always answered the phone promptly before doesn’t make one missed call a national emergency.”
“I guess that’s true,” Stiles says, “but when exactly does it become an emergency? Let’s not forget that while I wait for them, I still have Jonas Aronssonn with his finger on the trigger.”
Derek grimaces, but says, “I don’t think that’s as urgent as you think it is. Mikael’s attempted assassination was almost six months ago now. If Jonas was going to try again, he probably would have done it already.” He watches Stiles for a minute, and then says, “If you’re that worried, you really should tell Mikael.”
“Nrrrg,” is Stiles’ opinion on that. “Okay. How about this. I will attempt not to leap to any conclusions about Oblivion. But I am going to leap to preliminary research mode. See what I can find out about them, about how they operate. I mean, I took Chris’ word that they were on the level, so I never really looked into them in depth.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Derek says. “Just don’t let it get in the way of your midterms.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles grumbles, and Derek just gives a classic Hale eye roll.
The problem with researching Oblivion is that nobody seems to know much about them. They operate based almost entirely on word of mouth, so the first few people he asks can only tell him what he already knows, and where they heard about it. Chris heard about it from Julien’s mother. Wednesday has used them twice, and she heard about them from Angela Peretti. Angela heard about them from the hunter she had taken over Florida for when she retired.
Since asking hunters isn’t getting him anywhere, and Lorelei is definitely some sort of sorceress, Stiles asks Deaton. It’s a slow day at the clinic, so he’s doing worksheets for his political science class while Deaton administers eyedrops to a litter of feral kittens he found. When Stiles asks about Oblivion, he responds in classic Deaton ambivalence: “Why do you need to know?”
“Because they aren’t answering their phones,” Stiles says.
Deaton looks up at this, and a faint frown crosses his face. “That would be unusual.”
“No kidding,” Stiles says.
Deaton scratches the ears of a mewling kitten. “Do you know what a nephilim is?”
“Uh, I think they’re a type of angel?” Stiles ventures. Religious theory isn’t his strong point.
“Not quite,” Deaton says, “although I have seen it used that way. Well, we could talk about Biblical interpretation all day, but to make a long story short, they’re the descendants of angels. Specifically, of Fallen Angels. They married humans and had children, and those children had children. Most of the nephilim who still exist today are very diluted.”
“Wait, wait.” Stiles pushes his hair back from his face. “I’ve already gotten confirmation of an afterlife. Are you telling me that God, the Bible, Adam and Eve, all that’s real?”
Deaton grimaces. “Not precisely. It’s all interpretation. There are bits and pieces of every religion that are true, and vast quantities that are not true. The Earth was not created in seven days, God does not care if you wear polyester, and Jesus was most likely an actual prophet, but not the son of God.”
“I’m just thinking, wow, if the Bible is real, I’m breaking lots of rules,” Stiles says.
“Really, Stiles?” Deaton looks amused. “As you said, you have confirmation of the afterlife. If Peter Hale didn’t go to Hell, I think you’re probably safe.”
“Oh, yeah. Good point.” Stiles shakes that off. “Okay, so. Angelic descendants. Where does Oblivion fit in?”
“As far as I know, nephilim founded Oblivion and continue to run it to this day,” Deaton says.
Stiles lets out a low whistle. “So that’s why Lorelei is so powerful. She’s part angel. Wow. Okay, that, uh, that’s unnerving. But they’re still good guys, right? I mean, you think ‘fallen angel’ you think ‘bad’, but Lorelei is good.”
“Children don’t inherit the sins of their fathers, do they?” Deaton asks, depositing a squirming kitten back into an enclosure. “I imagine many of them like to help humanity specifically to distance themselves from the very thing you just said.”
“Okay then,” Stiles says, because he’s one hundred percent not interested in getting in trouble with God. “So if they suddenly stopped answering their phones, that’s got to be something big going on, right?”
“I can’t fathom what it would be, but yes,” Deaton says. “I’ll ask some questions, see if anyone knows anything about dark magic being used.”
“Cool,” Stiles says, hopping off the counter. “Thanks.”
~ ~ ~ ~
“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Tom asks, looking up as Stiles bounces into the Stilinski house, carrying a bag of groceries. “You just missed a week for Wednesday’s wedding, for crying out loud.”
“I am at school,” Stiles says. “I’m in two places at once. The powers of technology!” He sees his father giving him an unimpressed look. “Yeah, uh. Mac and Erica are going to my classes for me and recording them with Mac’s laptop, then e-mailing me the file so I can watch. It’s not as good as being there, but at least I can still see the lectures. And I’m doing my homework and sending it to them to turn in to my teachers. I might, uh, might have faked some paperwork for the disability office saying that I have a chronic illness and am confined to my bed at the moment.”
“Ah,” Tom says. Stiles braces himself, but then Tom says, “That’s actually pretty clever. As long as the teachers aren’t allowed to penalize you for your lack of attendance, you can still do all the work. Okay. Why are you still in town?”
“Because I’m making you dinner, obviously,” Stiles says, and holds up a bag. “Turkey burgers.”
“You keep feeding me ground turkey and I’m going to find an alpha to bite me so I won’t have to worry about my cholesterol anymore,” Tom jokes, and Stiles makes a face at him. “Seriously. Why are you still in town?”
“I wanted to talk to Deaton about Oblivion,” Stiles says. “It’s almost impossible to get any solid information on them.”
Tom goes over to the refrigerator and pulls out a beer for himself and a soda for Stiles. “I assume you’ve done your usual computer witchery?”
“Yeah. The phone number that I normally call them at has no records whatsoever. Lorelei has called me a couple times – from different numbers – but none of those numbers go anywhere either. I don’t have any pictures of her or any fingerprints to run. Now, there are only eleven people in the US named Lorelei White, presuming that’s even her real name, but none of their records have any standout details to them.”
Tom considers this while he takes a pull on his beer and Stiles starts to unpack the groceries. “So these places that Oblivion runs. They’re less prison and more like mental hospitals, am I right?”
“Yeah, as far as I can tell,” Stiles says.
“Then I wonder if there’s someone else who might be able to give you some information,” Tom says. “They have to have staff, right? If Oblivion is serious about helping these people. They’ll have a professional who works with them to provide counseling and therapy. Now, who do we know that provides therapy for people who have been traumatized by the supernatural world?”
Stiles’ eyes widen. “You don’t think . . .”
“I think that Gwen Mulroney is one of the best,” Tom says. “That’s why I chose her for you. I researched her very thoroughly when I was looking for a counselor I thought would actually be able to help you. It would not surprise me in the least if she worked for Oblivion.”
“Dad, you’re a genius,” Stiles says. He takes out his phone and thumbs through to get to Gwen’s cell phone. It rings twice, and he realizes he’s holding his breath. What if Gwen doesn’t answer? What if she’s in trouble, too? He can’t fathom a world in which he can survive without Gwen.
But she picks up on the third ring. “This is Gwen Mulroney.”
“Hey, Gwen, it’s Stiles,” he says. “Listen, I’m sorry to bother you after hours but this isn’t technically patient-therapist business.”
“Oh?” Gwen says, sounding partly amused, but just a little bit cautious.
“I’m trying to get some information and I think you might be able to help me,” Stiles says. This isn’t one hundred percent unusual. He often includes Gwen when he sends out broad requests for information, partly because her husband is a cryptozoologist and so he knows more about creature lore than anyone else Stiles knows. But those usually come as e-mails. “Have you ever done any work for a group named Oblivion?”
There’s a marked pause, before Gwen says, “I’m not allowed to talk about my other clients with you, Stiles. You know that.”
“I’m not asking about your clients, I’m just – Gwen, they’re not answering their phone. I can’t get in touch with anyone there, and I think something might be really wrong.”
Another pause. Then Gwen says, “We can’t talk about this over the phone. Can you come to Fresno tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Stiles says.
“I’ll meet you at that Starbucks down the street from my office. One o’clock?”
“Sounds good to me,” Stiles says. “Be, uh, be careful, Gwen.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and hangs up.
“Well, that was interesting,” Stiles says to his phone. He sticks it back into his pocket and goes back to the groceries. “She obviously knows something. And she wasn’t happy to hear that I wasn’t able to contact them.”
“She probably wanted some time to make her own inquiries,” Tom says. “That’s why she wanted to meet you tomorrow instead of today.”
“I hope she’s careful,” Stiles says with a grimace.
“Son, I am one hundred percent sure that Gwen Mulroney can take care of herself,” Tom says. “Now, you’re going to at least put some cheese on those turkey burgers, right?”
“I think a little bit of cheese is okay,” Stiles says.
He’s barely gotten the burgers started when his phone rings. It’s the normal ring, which means it’s coming from an unknown number. He swipes to answer and then tucks it underneath his ear. “Stilinski Scrapyard; you break it, we’ll take it.”
“Mr. Stilinski.” It’s a woman’s voice, with a hint of a British accent. “This is Sarah White, from Oblivion.”
Stiles nearly drops his phone. “Oh! I – oh. I usually deal with Lorelei.”
“Lorelei is unavailable right now,” Sarah says. “I’m prepared to take your case.”
“Unavailable?” Stiles asks. “Is she okay? Where is she?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking to someone other than Lorelei,” Stiles says, hoping he can get more information out of her.
“That’s your prerogative.”
“Well, can you tell me when she might be ‘available’ again?” Stiles asks.
“I’m not at liberty to say. Do you have a case for me, Mr. Stilinski?”
“Uh, yeah, okay,” Stiles says, flagging down his father and pointing to his laptop. Tom gets his meaning almost immediately, sitting down and starting to trace the call. “It’s not the typical sort of case, that’s why I was hoping to talk to Lorelei. The thing is that it’s a hunter, pretty well-established, but he’s going off the rails. Not just going after supernatural creatures, I know you guys wouldn’t get involved in that, but he tried to kill his father and he robbed an electronics store.”
“Mm hm,” Sarah says. “Is there a reason that the mundane law can’t solve this problem?”
“His girlfriend is a sorcerer,” Stiles says. “We’re afraid that if we go through mundane channels, that she’ll just find a way to weasel him out of it.”
“I see. I’ll discuss the case with my superiors and get back to you.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Stiles says, and hangs up. He looks over at his father.
“She was calling you from clear across the country,” Tom says. “Though I don’t know how much that matters. New York, to be precise. And the number was a prepaid cell phone. These people don’t leave much trail.”
Stiles purses his lips. Then he dials Oblivion’s main number again. No one answers. “Something is really weird here,” he says. “If Oblivion’s main line is down, how did Sarah even get my number? Where’s Lorelei? What the hell is going on?”
“Hopefully Gwen will be able to shed some light on things,” Tom says, and shakes his head. “Come on, let’s eat. Where’s Derek, by the way? Is he joining us?”
“He had to go back to San Mateo this morning. He has a show this week.”
“So you’re on your own tonight?” Tom asks, arching his eyebrows.
“Well, originally I planned to drive back to San Mateo after dinner, but now apparently I’m going to stay the night so I can go to Fresno tomorrow, so yeah, I’m on my own tonight.” Stiles shakes his head. “I’ll be okay, Dad.”
Tom gives him the side-eye, but then nods. “Okay,” he says. “If you’re sure.”
~ ~ ~ ~
It’s rare that Stiles has to sleep alone, and he’s not looking forward to it. He sets his laptop up next to his bed and sets up a skype call with Scott’s laptop, so he can hear the faint noise of the pack breathing and moving around. It’s nowhere near as good as having them with him, but better than nothing.
He sleeps restlessly and has bad dreams, and he’s woken up by the phone the next morning. He fumbles at it and blinks at the screen, seeing that it’s Dr. Deaton calling. He’s too tired for one of his greetings, so he picks up what, “What’s up, Doc?”
Deaton doesn’t respond to his joke. “Stiles, we might have a problem,” he says.
“What else is new.” Stiles sits up, rubbing his hand over his face. “Okay, lay it on me.”
“As I told you, I called around to several of the other members of the Druidic Council, to see if anyone had done any large scale magic lately. A friend of mine in New York said that there had been a disturbance there a few days ago. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she described it to me, and it sounds like the effect when a demon is summoned.”
“Oh, great,” Stiles says. “A demon. Could that have anything to do with Oblivion?”
“I’m not sure,” Deaton says, “but there are only a few types of creatures who would be a match for a nephilim. We’re talking about either a demon, a highly ranked Faerie, or a very powerful witch or warlock.”
“Hm,” Stiles says. “And I assume that we don’t think it was the latter, since you’ve got most of them on a lock. So someone summoned up a demon and went after Oblivion.”
“That would be my best guess. Harriet said she was going to check out the scene and get back to me.”
“Okay,” Stiles says. “Keep me posted.”
He says goodbye and hangs up the phone, suddenly feeling like this is way above his pay grade. Isn’t there anyone responsible for handling this sort of thing? Demons and angelic descendants duking it out with him caught in the middle sounds like a recipe for disaster that he has no desire to put in his oven. He sighs and shakes his head, climbing out of bed to get dressed. He’s got a meeting to get to.
~ ~ ~ ~