"life was a willow and it bent right to your wind. head on the pillow, i could feel you sneakin' in."
gracella has one task. one. befriend stiles stilinski, use him to threaten scott mccall. but she doesn't know how persuasive he can be with those h...
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"more important than kissing you?"
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Grace had woken up in her own bed, no blood in sight, but she was in the worst state she could've physically been in. She could barely move and her vision was blurry. She should've known that it would happen since she was playing with time, especially since it was her first time.
Time was a bad thing for any witch to play with, but it didn't stop her from feeling like she had to. She sped up the clock, making sunrise come faster so whatever those samurai were, they didn't get to Scott. The mark behind her ear that they gave her may not have been a bad thing, but she certainly didn't want to find out, especially not with Scott.
She could hear someone moving around her room, but didn't make any move to make her who it was.
"I know you're awake," the soft voice of her sister told her.
"Barely."
"Well, I'll give you a little time, but I want to know what exactly you did," Colbie said, retreating to the kitchen when the doorbell started to ring. Grace listened in as much as she could in her state.
"What do you want?"
"I just wanted to make sure she was okay, Scott told me," She was surprised to hear the voice of Stiles.
"Well, she's doing just fine, I'll tell her you stopped by," Colbie said, the door creaking, making it seem like she was closing the door.
"Is she awake? Can I see her?" He asked.
"Still very asleep, go to school Stiles," She could hear the soft smile in her sister's voice.
"Thank you," He said, his footsteps leading down the hall.
Colbie walked back to Grace's room and shut the door.
"What's up with him?" The woman obviously wanted to hold off on the hard conversation about their magic.
"What do you mean?" Grace asked.
"You and him," She clarified.
"We kissed yesterday, but he ran off," She shrugged. "There was something he needed to do."
"More important than kissing you?" Colbie asked her, sitting on the side of her bed, making it sink a bit.
"He's been having some problems lately. Sleep paralysis, hallucinations, things he's never seen before appearing on him, lost time," She rattled off. "I'm pretty sure I was just a distraction from it all, but that's okay."
"Okay?" Colbie screwed her face in confusion. "That's not okay, G. No matter how much is going on with him, don't let people use you like that," She let her hand settle on top of her sisters. "But, truthfully, I don't think that was it. I think he really likes you."
"That's what Lydia told me," Grace said to her.
"Lydia's a smart girl, listen to her."
Colbie got up and went to go out of the room, but Grace called for her.
"You know more about magic than I do, right?" She asked hesitantly.
"Yeah, what's this about?" She asked, coming back and sitting on the bed.
"There were these things, for lack of a better word, and they wore all black and had masks and leather trench coat-things. There were shadows coming off of them, and one pulled a sword from their chest," Grace explained, using her hands to explain the creatures.
"The oni," Colbie whispered, mainly to herself. "Did they give people a symbol next to their ear?"
Grace turned and bent her ear to show Colbie the backwards five.
"They're looking for someone who's not themselves," Colbie started. "Have you heard of kitsunes?"
Grace shook her head at the unfamiliar term. "Well, there's 13 different types of kitsunes, but there's one that you really need to watch out for, the dark kitsune, the nogitsune."
"A kitsune is a trickster fox spirit that embeds itself in a person," Colbie explained. "But, usually, when the kitsune isn't dark, the human and fox share the body, or the human learns to tame the fox. But when it's a nogitsune, it's more of a possession than a partnership,"
"The nogitsune feeds off of strife, chaos, and pain. They get that from the outside, but also the host. Tearing apart families, tricking their friends, watching the host die a little inside each time it happens," Colbie explains. "They take an inherently good person, and make them watch as they turn their world upside down,"
"That's what the oni are trying to find. They want the host, so they can kill the nogitsune inside. By killing the host."
Colbie walked out of the room, eyebrows furrowed as she made her way to her own bedroom.
Grace let herself dwell on what her sister had just told her. And, not that Colbie knew, she had just planted another seed pointing to Stiles being the nogitsune.
As of now, there wasn't anything she could do for him. She was weak after passing out the previous night, but she could still try to help him.
She waited a couple of hours to regain some of her strength, Colbie's orders, before going out. She ran all the way to the animal clinic, there she found Alan Deaton.
He was in the main room behind the lobby, but he came to meet her and open the door of mountain ash for her.
"What can I help you with, Grace?" He asked, holding out the door for her then leading her to the main room. "Anything to do with your magic, because I'm afraid I don't know much about Gaelic witches."
"No, actually, I've got that under control," She nodded at him. "I wanted to ask about the nogitsune."
"Yes, that," Deaton nodded at her. "What about it?"
"I know who it is and I want to know how to get it out of him," Grace said, looking hard at the veterinarian.
"And who do you think it could be?" He asked, going to a closet in the back and emerging with a book.
"It's Stiles," Grace told him. "He's losing time, not remembering putting things places, like there was this key on his keyring and he had no idea what it was for. Not to mention the sleep paralysis and hallucinations from the open mind thing."
"It would seem you're right, I had the same inclination," He nodded at her. "There's a certain blend of herbs, lichen, actually. Letharia Vulpina is the main ingredient, but with a mix of others, the fox can be poisoned for up to three days."
"What can I do to help?"
"I thought that maybe you had a way of getting them, given the spells that require them."
