They decided to follow the compass once school had ended, and they spent the rest of the class doing — or in Katherine's case, attempting — to complete the physics lab they'd been assigned. Mason wound up teaching her how to do the entire thing because she couldn't find a single portion of it that she understood, and she didn't like not understanding things, but found that with his help she was able to get through the majority of it within the block.

When the bell went signaling the end of the day, Katherine slung her bag over her shoulder and hi-tailed it out of the school with Liam and Mason. The other two couldn't come because Hayden had to meet her sister at the station, and Corey had family obligations, though he hadn't been specific as to what they were. So, just like it had been in their freshman year, it was just the three of them following some obscure to a completely-unknown-and-potentially-harmful place that they could end up dead in.

She walked for the first ten minutes, then jumped on Liam's back without any kind of warning because she knew he'd catch her like he always did. Though he had yelled and dropped his backpack in surprise, he'd caught her with ease and hadn't complained about it once, just carried her through the streets of Beacon Hills while following Mason, snickering quietly as she crappily sang I Want it That Way by The Backstreet Boys at the top of her lungs.

She only jumped down when Mason slowed to a stop in front of them at the bottom of a tall driveway. It led up to a massive stone house with an unkempt and overgrown yard, boarded up windows, and a eerie feeling of emptiness. "Yeah," Katherine sighed as she looked up at it, her hands on her hips. "Yeah, that looks about right. We never get to sneak into nice houses. It's always the creepy ones."

"Always," Mason agreed.

Liam went up first, as he insisted to because he was the only supernatural one there, though her and Mason were close behind him. While he looked at the compass on his phone, she dug a flashlight out of her backpack that she always kept there for reasons specifically like this, and held her breath as Liam twisted the door handle open.

The inside looked just as abandoned as the inside, and she found herself taking in shallow breaths so she wouldn't disturb the eerie, frigid silence that enveloped the entire house, only to let out a shriek as a shape came barreling around the corner of the entrance hall at them, though after taking one look at the army green canvas jacket the guy was wearing, her heart rate slowed considerably.

"What are you doing here?" Liam stuttered out, his hands awkwardly set on his hips.

"This is Alex's house," Scott panted as though they'd scared him too. "What are you doing here?"

"This is where the compass led us," Katherine shrugged with a derpy expression on her face to hide the fact that it felt like her heart might've plummeted down to her stomach.

"What compass?"

Mason held it out to him, only to find that the compass was spinning around in a manor that definitely wasn't normal. "Why is it doing that?" Scott frowned slightly.

"I have no idea." Mason was frowning too.

"They're all doing it," Liam murmured, looking down at his phone screen. Katherine pulled out her own and watched as the compass app spun around in circles.

Then, the covering atop the old compass they'd taken from Mr Douglas' classroom shattered and stopped spinning, and a single muffled gunshot rang out upstairs.

After one look at Scott's face she booked it upstairs while smoothly grabbing her bat from her bag that Mason was still carrying, and she lifted it over her shoulder as swiftly as she could. She knew that where Scott went Stiles went to, and it was more than likely that he was being shot at on the upper floor of the abandoned house.

When she skidded up to the top step, Stiles was on the floor at the opposite end of the hall, his entire body curled up and pressed into the faded, peeling door behind him. Before she knew it she was kneeling beside him, hands flitting over him in an assessment for any injuries. Scott was the first one to appear behind her, and he followed her quickly fell into place beside her. "What? What happened?"

"He was here," Stiles choked out, taking Katherine's hand as helped up. "He shot at me. It was one of the guys you saw in Alex's memory."

"The guy who took his parents?" Scott frowned.

"No, no, no. They weren't just taken," he shook his head rapidly, still shaking where he stood. "They were — they were made to disappear. That's why there's no furniture, that's why they weren't in any of the photos. They were erased."

Then he whirled around and pushed the door open, only for them to be met with a completely blank room. The walls were a faded pastel blue, and it was completely void of all furniture.

It was as if no one had ever been there at all.

🐺🌑🥍

When they'd determined there was nothing else they could find, and the sun had set, they'd gone to the school and went their separate ways. The boys had lacrosse practice and Hayden had soccer practice, and Katherine and Stiles called Lydia to meet them in the school library during the timeslot of practice to see if they could figure it out.

They'd spent the entire two hours just flipping through book after book on strange lore and historic articles from surrounding towns, taking notes with the pens Katherine had stolen from the librarian's desk and then stuffed in her pockets when she left, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in their own town.

Again.

When practice had ended, they slowly made their way out of the school, Stiles still flipping through a book he'd checked out. "I keep feeling like it's familiar, you know?" He huffed, flipping so fast Katherine was surprised he didn't have any papercuts. "Like I've heard it before."

"Pensée a civage," Lydia commented from the other side of him, making a face. "That's French. A lingering thought you can't reach."

"Okay, well, is there a French word for feeling an overwhelming sense of urgency and impending doom?" He spazzed, squinting down at the book.

"You want to borrow my glasses there Stiles?" Katherine asked sarcastically, and grinned as Lydia set a hand down on her shoulder.

Lydia just chuckled at the two of them. "Féminine un fille phantom?" She suggested, smiling down at her in the same way Scott and Stiles both always did, though she looked irritated that she was there in the first place. "It's French for Banshee."

Stiles slowed them all to a stop, staring at her in astonishment. "Okay, what, what does your Banshee intuition say this is?"

"That you don't have to figure it all out right this second," Lydia huffed firmly, though she didn't seem actually mad. Just tired.

"But this kid," Stiles uttered out sadly, flipping pages again. "This kid's got no one. You know, and...and there has to be a reason why."

He snapped the book shut, and it took Katherine a moment to notice the far away look that drifted across Lydia's face, as if she were listening something. And she knew it was something only she could hear. "Give this man a ride, sweet family will die. Killer on the road," she recited carefully after a long moment, and Stiles frowned.

"Riders on the Storm?"

"What?"

"That's the song," Katherine explained for him. "Riders on the Storm?"

Realization dawned across her face. "That's it."

"What's it?"

"The Ghost Riders," Lydia burst out. "The Wild Hunt. They come by storm, riding horses. And they take people."

Stiles gaped at her. "Lydia, you're so smart, I could kiss you right now!"

"Do not kiss me," she warned him, though the threat was empty.

"Not gonna, no." Then Katherine watched as he ducked forward and pressed a short but unbelievably sweet kiss to Lydia's cheek before darting back with a simple yell of, "did it anyway!" before he booked it across the parking lot.

"Alright, Stiles!" Katherine yelled sarcastically, her hands cupped around her mouth. "I guess I'll just sit on my ass and wait here for you, then!"

The last thing she heard him yell at her was language! before he was too far away for her to interpret the rest. She turned to Lydia with a wide, knowing grin, and earned herself a blushing huff. "Not one word."

"I wasn't going to say anything," she promised, though she couldn't keep her own grin from spreading across her lips. "Just...make sure I get the first wedding invite, okay?"

"Only if I get the first invite to yours with Liam," she shrugged plainly.

Before Katherine had the chance to retort, an expression flashed across her friends face that made her rethink whatever she was going to say, because something was very clearly going to happen, and it was going to be bad. "Lydia," she asked calmly, though her heartrate picked up significantly. "What do you need from me right now."

Lydia snatched her arm into her grip so she could keep herself steady, and started moving back into the school, her face slack and eyes watery. "Text Malia," was all she managed to choke out before her eyes drifted again.

Katherine helped her get where she needed to go — the history 12 classroom — and sent Malia a one-handed text on the way. When she found a couple of cotton puffs in the teachers desk for taking nail polish off and she'd stuffed them in her ears, just incase Lydia screamed, she sat down on the opposite side of the room in one of the desks, and waited as Lydia typed away frantically on her laptop.

The classroom door opened a few minutes later and Malia wandered in, looking bored. "Got your text. You said you needed my help?" Then she grimaced, noticing the cotton puffs in Katherine's ears and the blank look on Lydia's face. "Oh, God. That kind of help."

"Something terrible is going to happen," Lydia whispered, her eyes unfocused.

"Okay," Malia shrugged, sitting on one of the desks between them. "What is it?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "That's why I need your help."

Malia looked over at her with a thumbs up, so Katherine pulled the cotton puffs from her ears and moved to sit on the desk beside Malia. "When did you first have the premonition?"

"I was with Stiles...and...and Kat. We realized it was the Wild Hunt. The Riders, the horses. Souls getting swept up." She turned the laptop towards the two of them so they could read what she'd found on the internet.

"Those who see the Wild Hunt beware, for you are already lost." Malia read aloud, her brows furrowing.

Something seemed to dawn on Lydia as she looked back at the screen. "Horses," she choked out. "He saw them. He saw the Wild Hunt. Where's Stiles?"

Katherine felt her heart stutter in her chest.

Oh you're kidding me.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Malia looked at her like she was losing her marbles. "Who's Stiles?"

No.

No no no no no.

No.

Katherine shared a look with Lydia, and without waiting another minute, they tore out of the classroom and outside, screaming for Stiles. He came bursting through one of the side exits in the school and grabbed onto both of them when they stopped running. "Kat? Lydia? You know me. Oh, thank God." She threw her arms around him tightly, inhaling the indescribably familiar scent that was her brother. "You know me."

"I know you," Lydia promised shakily. "But I think everybody else is forgetting."

The wind picked up around them, blowing dried leaves up into the cool air. Stiles looked a them both desperately then pause, his attention now out in the parking lot. "Hey, do you see him?"

"See what?" Katherine frowned, looking around her frantically.

"The guy on the horse."

Oh what the fuck.

No.

Please no, not Stiles, oh my fucking god please not Stiles.

Lydia seemed it realize this too, because she was looking at her in mute horror. "Stiles, if you can see them, they're gonna..."

"No, I know, I know, okay, they're coming for me," he whispered, pulling Katherine into his side in a grasp so tight she found it briefly difficult to breathe. But she didn't want to let go of him. "So you have to get away from me right now, okay?"

"No!" Katherine screamed at the same time as Lydia cried out, "no, I'm not leaving you!"

Stiles closed his eyes, exasperated, and then nodded once. "All right, come on, come on!" He hauled them away to the main lawn, only to freeze and be dragged back several times until they came to a standstill on the grass.

"Where are they?" Lydia asked shakily.

"They're everywhere." Stiles shakily pulled Katherine into his arms again and held her tightly, then kissed the top of her head and kept her face hidden in his chest as they stumbled across the ground, though she didn't know where they were going. "Lydia, don't look at them, okay? Don't try to scream. They'll take you, too. Just do not look at them."

"I won't, I won't!" She promised, sounding hysterical.

"You too, KitKat, I'm gonna let you go but you can't look at them, you understand?"

All she could manage to do was nod. When her eyes opened, she was being shoved into the back of the jeep and the door was slamming behind her. She could feel her pens digging into the front of her her hips from her jeans pockets, so she pulled them out as frantically as they could and they scattered all over the floor at her feet, and she buckled her seatbelt.

She heard the keys slide into the ignition, only the jeep never started.

"What are you doing?" Lydia shrieked. " We need to go!"

"There's no time," Stiles whispered. "Kat, Lydia, I'm going to be erased, okay? Just like Alex. You're gonna forget me."

Oh god.

"I won't," Lydia promised through sobs. "No, I won't. I won't."

Oh god.

Katherine stared at him and leaned forward, hooking her hands around his neck in a desperate attempt to keep him there, though she knew deep down it would be futile. "Stiles," she sobbed, burying her face in the side of his neck as tears soaked her cheeks and the neck of his shirt.

Oh god, oh god, oh god—

He clung to her tightly. "You'll be okay without me, Kat, You'll have Scott and Liam and Lydia, you'll be okay...Just try to find some way to remember me, okay?" His attention turned to Lydia, and she still couldn't bring herself to let go of him. How could she? "Remember how you were the first girl I ever danced with? Or how I had a crush on you freshman year. Sophomore year? Junior year? Remember how you saved my life?"

"You saved my life too," Lydia choked out.

She felt one of his hands leave her back and she could only assume he'd moved it to hold Lydia's and felt her heart break even more.

They won't ever get their chance. Oh my god, I was just joking about their wedding fifteen minutes ago oh my god, oh god no oh—

"Just remember...remember I love you."

Then he was being pulled from the car by invisible arms, the door slammed shut, and it was as if he'd never been there in the first place.

Katherine stared at the seat he'd been in blankly, uncomprehending how a person could be there one second then gone the next.

Stiles.

She couldn't breathe.

Stiles.

She couldn't blink.

Stiles.

Her hands went clammy and for a singular moment the world went completely and utterly quiet, as if snow were falling and it wanted to see who was there to watch it hit the ground.

Stiles.

Something in her head shifted, as if it were slipping away, and she cried out. Frantically, before she could lose it, she grabbed one of the pens off the floor — it just happened to be a black sharpie — and she yanked the cap off, frantically scribbling down the words that she was desperately trying to hold onto so she wouldn't for get one of the most important people in her life.

It was as if blinking would mean that every memory that was trying to slip away would be gone forever.

But trying to hold onto those memories was like trying to hold water in your hands.

And she blinked.

"REMEMBER I LOVE YOU" BREAKS MY HEART EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN KNOW OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK

also the fact that they played a song called Anchor when Lydia went back into the school without Stiles at the end of the episode isn't a motherfuckiN COINCIDENCE I STG