CHAPTER THREE / Allegedly!

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     When Nova pulls up to Beacon Hills High School in Derek's car, she almost runs over a freshman. It isn't his fault, Nova knows this, but she still shoots him a glare as she parks. The past week she has been all over the place—emotionally as well as physically, since she literally just came back from Mexico—and she doesn't mean to take it out on him, but it's fine.

Now that Derek is back and safe, Nova has hardly let him out of her sight. It took her half an hour to get out of the loft and on her way to school this morning because she was so paranoid something would happen to Derek—ignoring Kate Argent, the Hale family has countless other enemies, so can you blame her?—and it is for this reason that Nova finds herself being late to her first class of the day. She chucks the keys to Derek's car in her bag and starts to make her way from the parking lot and over to the school.

There are few people lingering around, most having gone to class by now, but Nova does see two people she recognises: Emilia Dawson and Ruby Thatcher. Nova has been friends with them for a few years now. They are sitting next to one another on a bench seat right outside of the school, and when Nova walks into their view, Emilia spots her and sends her a wave. Nova waves back, but doesn't make any movement to go over and talk to them, for she is already late to class.

It is lunch time when Nova gets the chance to see Emilia and Ruby again. Part of her is grateful—now, at least, she gets the time to think of an excuse as to why she wasn't at school last week. And, as suspected, it is the first thing they ask of her when she sits down at their table in the cafeteria.

Nova tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and she lies, "I had gastro."

Emilia appears grossed out, and Ruby noticeably shuffles herself over in her seat and away from Nova. Ruby exclaims, "Ew!"

"I'm fine, now!" Nova rolls her eyes. After a few moments, the two of them are back to normal, and Emilia starts up a conversation about what school work Nova has missed. Nova relaxes. She is grateful they don't think anything more of her lie.

The three of them have this great system where Nova doesn't ask them much about their personal life and they don't ask about hers. It works perfectly.

She knows that Emilia and Ruby are dating, and that they've dated for almost a year now, and she briefly wonders if they will do something to celebrate the occasion. But she doesn't ask them, for if they start telling her things about their personal life, then she feels obliged to tell them about hers, and that isn't something she wants to do. Her life is too messy. There are memories too painful to revisit. She doesn't want to get into it. It's easier if she doesn't.

Plus, Nova likes having friends who don't know anything about the things that go bump in the night. It's a breath of fresh air.

Based on the observations she has made of them at school, Nova knows that Ruby is smart and she's got the grades to prove it. She wants to get into an Ivy League school, preferably Princeton, but she'll need a scholarship if she wants to move across the country. Ruby says that she needs to be successful so that she can buy expensive things and look cool. Nova gets it.

Nova knows that Emilia is a ballet dancer, and although Nova has never gone to any of her recitals, she knows she must be good because it's all Ruby can talk about for days after. Emilia loves cherries but hates the taste of cherry-flavoured candy. She sits next to Ruby in every class they share together.

Before Nova knows it, the school bell rings, signalling the end of lunch. Emilia and Ruby stand up, as does Nova, and they bid her goodbye before going to their next class. Since Nova has a free period next, she decides to take the rest of the day off, and so she heads over to the parking lot and gets in the car.

As she is speeding down the road, her window down and the cool breeze blowing through her hair, she notices a red pickup truck behind her. She suddenly frowns, remembering the same truck behind her when she came out of the parking lot ten minutes ago. Is it following her? Nova decides to test her theory. When she slows down, so does the truck. When she turns right, the truck does too.

Abruptly, an alert appears on the dash, indicating the car is low on gas. Distracted, Nova lets out a groan of annoyance and temporarily forgets about the pickup truck that had been following her.

"Fucking hell!" Nova scowls. Taking a sharp right-hand turn, the pickup truck is left to dust behind her. She pulls into the gas station and fills up her car, then enters the convenience store to pay.

This is when shit starts to hit the fan.

The woman standing behind the counter is in her thirties, maybe forties; she is wearing so much blue eyeshadow and her hair is in the most ridiculous half-up perm that Nova has ever seen. Nova wants to ask her if she is a time traveller from the 80s. Her name-badge reads Linda.

"Hi," Nova says shortly upon nearing the counter. The woman, Linda, doesn't answer her; she is too busy typing away at the computer screen in front of her. Nova is starting to get irritated, which is always a bad sign. "Um, hello?"

Linda glances up at her, her agitated expression mirroring Nova's. Her eyes flicker from Nova to outside, where Derek's car is the only one there, and with a curled lip she asks, "Is that one yours?" When Nova says it is, Linda stifles a laugh.

At this point, Nova is fuming. Derek's car is cool. This woman obviously has no sense of style.

It isn't one of Nova's finest ideas, but in an attempt to irritate Linda as much as the woman is irritating her, right when Linda is about to tell her the price, Nova says, "And I'll have a bottle of water."

Linda blinks at her, sets her jaw, and turns around to grab a bottle of water before slamming it on the bench. Taking a few moments to reset the price on the machine, she tells Nova how much it is, and Nova pays it. They exchange a fake smile, and then Nova is out of there. However, when she checks the receipt she swears under her breath, anger flushing through her. Linda has charged her for two bottles of water and a Snickers bar. This is preposterous—Nova is allergic to peanuts, so there is no way she would even buy a Snickers bar anyway!

Turning around, Nova is about to go back inside and give this woman a piece of her mind when something else catches her eye. The red pickup truck that had been following her has been parked around the side of the gas station, hidden from view from inside the convenience store. There isn't anyone sitting in the car. Nova frowns. Then it dawns on her, and her stomach drops, and she turns and ducks out of the way right as—SWOOSH!

Nova narrowly misses the machete that had been swung at her head.

Huh. A machete? This is a new one.

She scrambles out of the way, but she isn't fast enough, because the machete swings again and nicks her shoulder. Nova hisses, but it is more out of shock than out of pain. Dodging yet another swing, she blinks through the sunlight, trying to get a good look at who she is fighting, and although she is half-expecting to see Linda standing there with a machete—it's always the ones you least suspect!—Nova is surprised to see that it is a middle aged man in slacks and suspenders.

"What is your problem?" Nova asks him, but she doesn't care much for the answer, assuming that either Derek or Peter pissed off the wrong person and she gets to take the brunt of it. Now, she is just trying to buy time to figure out her next move. Nova has seen enough movies to know that the bad guy always loves a monologue.

"I don't have a problem," the man says, stopping and frowning for a second, just like Nova hoped he would. "You don't understand. I have to do this."

"Listen, I get it," she says, "You gotta do what you gotta do. But did you have to pick today?"

Having enough of her antics, the man goes to swing the machete again, but this time Nova is ready. As his arm raises, there is a delicate moment where he is exposing his stomach, and Nova is quick to lurch forward with her arms extended and tackle him to the ground. The machete slips out of his hand and clatters to the ground, and Nova scrambles to kick it away before he is able to pick it up again.

Standing up, Nova raises her fists and gets into a fighting position, because there is no way she is going down without a fight. Much to her annoyance—she'd been hoping he would abandon the fight—the man stands up, too, and mimics Nova's fighting stance. Without his weapon, the man seems on edge, like he hadn't expected it would go this south.

His punches are powerful but sloppy, and Nova finds that she is able to dodge or block most of them, until she gets clocked in the face and is sent staggering back. She runs her tongue over her bottom lip. Blood.

The fight continues. He is taller and stronger than she is, and although she is able to hold her own for a while, he eventually starts to overpower her, so much so that he manages to punch her in the stomach and send her doubling over in pain.

She is kneeling there on the ground, winded, and before she knows it the man is standing above her and he has his machete and is raising it above his head. Nova's eyes are wide. Her heart starts to beat faster. It's all happening too fast for her to move out of the way. And then... well... Nova doesn't know quite how it happened. He starts to swing the machete down, about to deliver the final and fatal blow, when—

BOOM!

On instinct, Nova throws her arms over her head protectively and slams her eyes shut. An overwhelming gust of heat rushes through her, and Nova flinches. The horrible sound of shattering glass and collapsing walls fill her ears as the convenience store crumbles from the explosion.

After a dreadful minute, Nova slowly opens her eyes and takes a second to examine herself for any potential injuries. Apart from several scorch marks on her clothes and the cut on her arm caused prior by the machete, she is unscathed.

The man isn't so lucky.

When the explosion went off, he had been standing much closer to the store than Nova had been. Now, as Nova stands up, she sees that the force of the explosion has caused him to be flung several metres through the air, which is where he lies now, unmoving. The machete is lying several feet away from him.

Nova walks over and picks up the machete, right as the man starts to regain his consciousness. When he opens his eyes to see the tip of the machete pointed right at his face, he makes a start to scramble away, but Nova shoves the weapon closer to him and he stills. She says, "Don't even think about it."

He nods, but doesn't say anything.

She shoves the machete further towards him, and it's so close now that the man is almost cross eyed. Nova narrows her eyes at him. "What the fuck, man?"

A threatening glare in his direction is the final tipping point for him to reveal his motives. "Fuck! I'm–I'm sorry, okay, I don't know what I was thinking! I'm just a struggling parent trying to pay the bills and make sure there's enough food on the table. I didn't mean for it to go this far!"

His logic makes absolutely no sense to her. How does that relate to her, exactly?

However, she is familiar with parental issues—specifically, daddy issues—and this makes her falter. She isn't going to kill him and be the reason another child has abandonment issues. Nova says, "Oh, you wanna support your kid? How about you go back to them, right now, and you don't go to prison and fuck up their lives."

He eyes her warily, like he isn't sure if she is being serious, but he stands up and limps towards his pickup truck anyway. As he drives past her, she throws the machete into the back of his truck where it lands with a clatter—she isn't about to be caught with a machete at an already confusing crime scene, not if she can help it. When he is out of her sight, Nova turns back toward the convenience store.

The store is currently ablaze and in ruin, and Nova's only thought is: Fuck. Not again.

✶

There have been three main instances where Nova has accidentally blown something up: a year ago, at Lydia Martin's 16th birthday party, where Nova got so mad at her that she blew up the punch stand; about a month ago, when her ex-boyfriend broke up with her and then his car somehow blew up next to them; and now... this.

Fuck her.

"Nova?"

"That's me," Nova says as she drags her gaze away from the paramedics, who are putting a barely alive Linda into the back of the ambulance.

After her assassination attempt resulting in the exploding store, she had called every emergency service that she could think of. The fire department had put out the fire, the paramedics had taken care of Linda, and now the police are investigating. Nova is starting to wish she never called the police, because fuck, these questions might just be the death of her.

Standing opposite to her, Sheriff Stilinski gives her a look. Nova huffs. "Look, Sheriff, I don't know what happened. I was filling up my car, and it just exploded." (It isn't like she is lying... not completely...)

Stilinski writes something down on his notepad. "Uh-huh. Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of." Nova tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear. "I didn't even go into the station—I was out here the whole time." (OK... now she is lying...)

Stilinski nods, believing her. "You're sure you didn't see anyone else around?" When Nova shakes her head, he continues with a frown, "And you're not hurt? You were pretty close to the explosion."

Nova shrugs. After she had called the police, she had put a jacket on to cover the cut on her shoulder. It is easier if they don't ask too many questions. "I guess I'm just lucky."

He nods as if he understands, and with a quick motion of his hand for the two detectives behind him to give them some privacy and do something else, he leans slightly closer to her. "And... you're not... a werewolf, or something, right?"

And, as though this is a perfectly normal conversation, Nova says, "No, I'm not a werewolf."

"Right," Stilinski says. He doesn't write this one down on his notepad, but she doesn't expect him to.

A deputy walks over to them, a serious expression on her face. She signals for Stilinski that she has found something, and he nods, telling Nova she is free to go, and that they'd contact her if they need anything else. Nova nods back, but she doesn't make any moves to leave. She watches as Stilinski walks over to the deputy and starts to talk to her. Nova pulls out her phone and raises it to her ear in an attempt to look like she is calling someone and not listening in on their conversation, which is exactly what she is planning to do. She thinks it is too suspicious if she is staring right at them, so she turns away and faces the other direction. Now, all she can hear are their voices.

Stilinski: "What's up, Clark?"

Clark: "All the security cameras are fried. We weren't able to recover any of the footage."

Stilinski: "And the woman?"

Clark: "Linda Abbott. Thirty-eight. We found her drivers licence—it was pretty fried, but we were able to get at least that much. The paramedics can't be certain, but they think that once she gets to the hospital, she should be alright... Well, as alright as she can be, after being in an explosion like that." There is a pause. Then: "What do you think happened here?"

Stilinski: "I don't know. It could be sabotage, but Nova says she didn't see anyone around."

Clark: "And you believe her?"

When she hears this, Nova is moderately offended, but then remembers she actually did lie to them about it, and she calms down.

Stilinski: "Yeah, I do. It could easily just be a gas leak—I'll look into it."

Their conversation ends, and it is only then that Nova breathes out a sigh of relief. There is no security footage from the incident and nothing to dispute her story that she had simply been filling up her car with gas when the station exploded. There is nothing to suggest she went in, and nothing to suggest she spoke to Linda... except the fact that Linda is still alive. Shit.

Nova tells herself not to worry about it right now—Linda is barely alive, it seems, so hopefully she is too out of it to remember what happened!—and turns around to leave, only to walk right into someone that had been standing there. Although she is unable to identify the figure as she is practically staring into the sun, she glares at them for getting in her way.

"You're hiding something," the figure says, "and I'm gonna find out what it is."

Recognising the voice, Nova almost rolls her eyes. Stiles fucking Stilinski. She really cannot deal with his suspicions right now—this day has been draining enough as is. Stepping around him, she says sarcastically, "You do that."

He lets her walk for a few seconds, then he says something that stops her dead in her tracks. He says, "A month ago, you blew up Hugo Dameron's car."

Nova sets her jaw, turns around, and corrects, "Allegedly blew up Hugo Dameron's car." (They have no proof!)

Stiles stares pointedly at her. "It can't be a coincidence."

"Well, it is," Nova says.

But as she turns away from Stiles and walks back to the car, she knows she is lying because something is definitely wrong. It keeps on happening, and it is starting to scare her. Nova likes to have control over what she does, but these powers are making it difficult, and she is beginning to fear that she might lose control altogether.

How does that saying go? Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern...

Yeah, Nova is fucked.

✶

Authors Note!

     it physically pained me to write "gas station" instead of "petrol station" but anyway. moving on.

hope u are enjoying the book so far! :)

word count: 3318
20.09.2022