“I underestimated her,” Leon muttered to himself, back in his own room.
In Beacon Hills, he’d had everything under control — or rather, there had never been a real threat to begin with.
The Wendigo and the Ghouls were things he’d noticed and chosen to fight on his own terms.
The Alpha had been a vengeful man, not someone who killed innocents — and that was why Leon had been able to do whatever he wanted without ever being hunted down himself.
The first season of Teen Wolf had never had a real threat.
Just misunderstandings and drama.
That was all.
Here, Leon realized he was up against an intelligent psychopath.
Someone smarter and more cunning than he was prepared for — which was exactly why he’d been caught off guard.
In the show, Thornhill had been underplayed.
Her overreliance on Tyler, the way her own resurrected ancestor told her to shut up mid-rant, made her seem foolish.
Not a real threat.
Leon saw now how badly that had misled him.
Thornhill was a genius.
Someone willing to do anything to bring Crackstone back — and in the show, she’d succeeded.
No one had figured out anything until Wednesday had a vision after kissing Tyler, finally showing her the truth.
Before that, Wednesday had suspected everyone except the actual villains.
That wasn’t luck.
That was skill.
Thornhill had misled Wednesday, the police, the entire town, pinning the blame on Xavier for most of it — and the only reason she’d ever been caught was a psychic vision no one could have planned for.
Even after being exposed, no one had been able to stop her in time.
She’d killed Principal Weems, finished the ritual, and killed Wednesday too, who’d only survived because Goody Addams intervened at the last second.
“I can’t believe I underestimated her that badly.” Leon drove his fist into the desk hard enough to leave a dent in the wood.
“I should’ve killed her the second I had the chance.
Now I don’t even know where she is and Tyler’s still walking around like I’m no threat to him at all.”
Wednesday had suggested they find a way to prove Laurel Gates was still alive, and expose the Gates family for what they really were.
Leon had suggested something more specific: dig up Garrett Gates, the brother her father had supposedly murdered, and prove he’d died from his own poison — the same one he’d planned to use on the outcasts at Nevermore.
Leon let her take point on that.
Of the three of them, she was the safest, given how central she was to the ritual.
Whatever Thornhill was planning, it needed Wednesday alive.
“I think it’s about time I meet the mayor and compel him to do a few things for me” Leon muttered, heading for the door.
He’d barely stepped into the hall when he saw it — a fresh notice pinned to the wall.
Police request.
Mandatory DNA collection, all outcast students.
“You saw it?” Wednesday appeared beside him, seemingly from nowhere.
“Do you always do that?” Leon asked.
“Just materialize?”
“It’s a talent.” She studied the notice beside him.
“Weems allowing this can only mean one thing.
They have the creature’s DNA, and they want to see if it matches anyone here.”
“It can’t be that easy,” Leon muttered.
“No.” Wednesday’s eyes moved to him.
“You were hurt last night.
What if some of your blood was left behind?”
Leon went quiet for a second, his jaw tightening, humiliation and anger crossing his face in quick succession.
“They think they can frame me,” he said, low.
“Like I’m an idiot.”
“We can’t let them get your DNA,” Wednesday said.
“We need a plan.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Leon was already turning to leave.
“I’ll handle it.”
“No.” Wednesday caught his hand before he could go, and for a second they were facing each other, close enough that neither quite knew where to look — and then both glanced away at once.
“You said that last time too,” she said.
“Tell me what you’re actually going to do.”
Leon exhaled.
There wasn’t much point arguing with that.
“Fine.
I was going to get another sample from someone else and compel a cop into thinking it was mine.”
He’d already told Enid and Wednesday about what had gone wrong with Thornhill — including the details of his Compulsion ability, since there wasn’t much point hiding it from them anymore.
“No,” Wednesday said flatly.
“We can’t risk it failing again.
What if they record the process?
What if there’s more than one officer in the room?
You’d be improvising on the spot, and that’s how mistakes happen.”
Leon looked at her for a moment.
She really is a genius, he thought.
The show had shown her as much.
And here she was, three steps ahead of him again.
He didn’t feel any shame admitting it to himself.
He wasn’t an idiot, but he’d never claimed to be a genius either.
“Alright,” he said, a small smile forming.
“I’m listening.”
“Oh.” Wednesday blinked, caught slightly off guard. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
She’d expected more resistance.
Most men she’d known carried more ego than sense — Leon’s confidence, his easy arrogance — she’d expected the same.
A façade, like every other boy.
“Are you — smiling?” Leon leaned in slightly, watching it.
“I’m not.” She was already walking away.
“Follow me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Leon chuckled and went after her.
***********
The plan, once Wednesday laid it out, was simple enough on paper: Weems.
Leon already knew, from the show, exactly what she was — a shapeshifter, one of the very few outcasts capable of taking on someone else’s exact form, memories aside.
If she was willing to stand in for him during the blood draw, there’d be no need for compulsion, no room for improvisation, and no risk of anyone catching the deception on a recording.
The hard part was convincing her.
It took most of the morning — Leon, Wednesday, and Enid sitting across from Weems in her office, laying out enough of the truth to make the request make sense without handing over everything.
Thornhill was Laurel Gates.
She was planning to raise Crackstone.
Leon had been ambushed the night before trying to stop her, and the DNA sweep would put him in the exact position of getting framed for a murder he didn’t commit.
Weems had not looked pleased.
“If any part of this is a lie,” she’d said, “if Laurel Gates’s DNA doesn’t match Marilyn Thornhill’s, I will have all three of you arrested myself, and I will not lose a moment’s sleep over it.”
It wasn’t an idle threat.
Laurel Gates, orphaned young and passed through the system as a child, had DNA on record somewhere in the state’s files.
Thornhill, as a Nevermore faculty member, had her own blood work on file with the school.
If the two didn’t match, Weems would know Leon had lied to her face — and there’d be no talking his way out of that.
“We’re not lying,” Enid said, arms crossed.
“We’ll see,” Weems said.
But she agreed.
***********
That afternoon, Weems shifted into Leon down to the last detail — his walk, his voice, even the small, easy smile he used on people he’d just met — and sat down in the nurse’s chair in his place while the real Leon waited it out with Enid and Wednesday.
“This won’t hurt.
It’ll just be quick.” The nurse smiled, bandaged his arm, thanked him — and “Leon” walked out past a line of students waiting their turn.
He crossed the courtyard, cut through Ophelia Hall, and let himself into Enid and Wednesday’s room, locking the door behind him.
His features rippled and reshaped themselves, her height settling into place, until Principal Weems stood where a moment ago there had been a copy of Leon.
“I cannot believe the trouble you three have caused me,” she said, smoothing down her sleeve.
“If it weren’t for what this could do to the school’s reputation, and to the outcasts’ standing in this town, I would turn all three of you in myself.”
“We didn’t lie to you,” Enid said again, quieter this time.
“We’ll see,” Weems repeated, already at the door.
“None of you are to leave this room until I hear back from the mayor.
Am I understood?”
They nodded, and she left.
***********
The mayor didn’t want to get involved at first.
Small towns like Jericho ran on plausible deniability, and digging into a decades-old murder wasn’t good for reelection.
But once Weems laid out what had actually happened — the poisoned punch bowl, the outcasts he’d planned to kill, the brother who’d died by his own hand — Walker agreed.
“Exhume the body,” he told his people that same day.
“And pull Laurel Gates’s DNA file while you’re at it.”
The toxicology results came back fast enough to make the local news before dinner: traces of a rare plant-based poison, a formula that matched nothing available commercially.
Someone had made it themselves.
Sheriff Galpin, informed that the man he’d always believed Gomez Addams murdered had actually died attempting mass poisoning, did not take the news well.
Neither did the town.
By evening, the story had made its way into two papers outside Jericho — the Gates family, once considered pillars of the community, recast overnight as a family of poisoners and psychopaths.
The mayor didn’t stop there.
With Garrett’s identity confirmed, he authorized a rush DNA comparison between Laurel Gates’s file and Marilyn Thornhill’s records — and by that evening, called Weems personally to confirm what Leon and Wednesday had already known.
They were the same person.
Weems agreed, for the time being, to keep quiet and let the trio continue however they needed to — at least until she had the chance to see how the rest of it played out.
“She must be losing her mind right about now,” Leon said, stretched out on Enid’s bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Who?” Enid asked.
“Thornhill.” He laughed, quiet and satisfied.
“Her whole family legacy just got dragged through the mud on the front page.”
***********
Something shattered against the far wall — a bottle, thrown hard enough to take the television down with it in a shower of glass and sparks.
“Those blind idiots!” Thornhill’s voice cracked with rage.
“My brother was a hero.
He wanted to rid this world of those filthy outcasts, and now they’re calling him a monster in the papers?”
Tyler stood off to the side, silent, watching her pace and rage until it burned itself down to something quieter and colder.
“Tyler, sweetie.” Her voice had gone smooth again, unnervingly so.
“Who did this?”
“I heard my dad on the phone,” Tyler said carefully.
“The mayor had people dig up Garrett Gates and run tests.
Even my dad doesn’t know why they started looking in the first place.”
“The why doesn’t matter.” Thornhill’s eyes had gone flat, dangerous.
“Add the mayor to the list, sweetie.”
Tyler hesitated.
“The mayor?
That’s going to bring a lot of attention we don’t need.”
“Add him.
Mommy wants him dead.”
Tyler looked at her a moment longer, something unreadable behind his eyes, before he nodded.
“Okay.”
***********
Police cars stayed parked around Nevermore’s grounds well into the night, officers walking the halls and the courtyard in twos, flashlights cutting across the dark lawn even after most of the students had gone to bed.
Leon, Enid, and Wednesday left the cafeteria after dinner, watching the cops move past the dormitory windows.
“You think it’s one of us?” Divina asked, arms wrapped around herself against the cold.
“They even pushed back the Poe Cup because of this.”
“A Hyde can only be a Hyde,” Yoko said.
“We’re all confirmed different types.
It’s none of us.”
“Everyone except—” Divina’s eyes landed on Leon.
“You said you’re a hybrid, but you don’t show any of the usual vampire or werewolf tells.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Enid rounded on her.
“Are you accusing him of something?”
“No, no—” Divina put her hands up.
“Just asking.”
Leon smiled easily, holding up a hand and letting his claws slide out with a soft click, wiggling his fingers at her.
“Here.
Good enough?”
Divina and Yoko exchanged a glance — the suspicion drained from their expressions — and nodded, moving on.
Near the back entrance, Sheriff Galpin leaned against the wall, watching the students filter out.
His son had told him, quietly, that Leon was different from the rest.
Something to watch.
And Galpin had been watching, on and off, since morning — the way he walked, the way he talked.
When “Leon” had gone in for the mandatory blood draw and came out again a few minutes later, something about it had nagged at him.
He couldn’t place what, exactly.
Just a feeling, the kind that came from thirty years of watching people lie to his face for a living.
He waited until Leon’s table cleared, crossed to it, lifted the cup Leon had been drinking from, and slid it into an evidence bag without a word.
“You’d better be right about this, Tyler,” he muttered, and walked off.
“Officer Joffrey.” He flagged down a passing officer by name on his way back to the patrol cars.
“Get this to the lab.
I want it prioritized — ahead of everything else on the list.”
“Yes, sir.”
***********
Leon lay in his own bed that night, running through everything that had happened.
Gomez cleared.
Thornhill exposed, at least to the four people who mattered, and the mayor is on their side.
It should have felt like winning.
“All that’s left now is Tyler,” he murmured to himself.
That was when he heard them — footsteps, several sets, moving in formation down the dormitory hall.
His senses picked out details before his mind had caught up: the creak of heavy duty belts, the weight of boots on stone, the metallic click of weapons being checked.
“Leon Lockhart.
This is the Jericho Sheriff’s Department.” A voice boomed from the other side of his door.
“Come out with your hands up.
Nobody has to get hurt.”
“What?” Leon sat bolt upright.
“What the hell is this?”
None of it made sense.
Weems was on their side.
The mayor had confirmed Thornhill’s identity himself.
Everything had been falling into place — so how had it ended up here, with guns pointed at his door?
He looked at the window, then back at the door, and made his decision in half a second.
‘I can leave whenever I want to.’ That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was what running would look like to everyone else.
Click.
Leon opened the door and stepped out with his hands raised.
Doors opened up and down the hall as students spilled out to watch, whispering, phones already up to film — and there at the front of the line, rifle raised, stood Sheriff Galpin.
“Leon Lockhart.” He spoke.
“You’re under arrest for the recent murders around town — including Jason Myers.
Turn around.
Hands behind your back.”
Leon smiled.
He turned, put his hands behind his back, and let the cuffs click shut.
The officers walked him out through the main entrance, down the front steps, past every face in the dormitory windows.
“The blood at the Gates house — DNA came back as yours.”
Enid and Wednesday stood together among the crowd of students, watching him go.
Enid’s face had gone pale, her hands twisted into the hem of her sleeve.
Wednesday’s expression gave away nothing at all — except for the single word turning over and over in her mind.
How?
************************************
[AUTHOR’S NOTE]
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