Chapter Text
Ariel’s Centre for Supernatural and Spiritual Matters.
Deaton had insisted it was the perfect name for what Lydia was aiming to achieve – Lydia, after five years, still wasn’t sure. It barely fit across the white business cards sitting in the bowl in her living room, for a start. And, of course, the neighbours all assumed it was code for some drug business; they would always close their doors in her face no matter how nicely she smiled at them. How else could they explain the eclectic mix of people they saw being buzzed in and out of her apartment at all hours of the day? And night, for that matter. The werewolves don't often keep strict daylight hours. It’s an endless struggle for Lydia.
The only thing Lydia is sure about is her stage-name, her shield that kept work from everything else in her life – Ariel. Only a handful of people knew the significance of the name and the rest just assumed she used the alias because of her bright red hair. Lydia, for the most part, just let people believe what they wanted.
During the day, Lydia’s apartment sees an endless stream of people coming and going. The select few, who, by word of mouth (Lydia has never really been one to advertise herself and her skills) come to her for advice and help. A particular type of advice and help – the supernatural variety of advice and help. It isn’t any wonder he neighbours get suspicious.
And Lydia, well... She had taken it upon herself to help the strays that ended up in her house. Usually the people who wandered through her door had tried everything else and found her as a last resort, a throwaway effort; a last ditch attempt. Her living room had seen countless desperate and lost souls, all searching for something no one else could find for them.
Lydia Martin was just a girl. A Banshee girl, sure. But still just a girl. So, from the moment a visitor – a client – buzzed up to apartment 3B, to the moment she let them out again, Lydia wasn’t Lydia. She was Ariel, the Psychic.
Or Ariel the Medium, the Clairvoyant, the Spiritualist, and on one fateful occasion, Ariel the Faith Healer – everyone had their own names for her. Everyone had their own reason for turning up on her doorstep. But as long as she channelled Ariel, none of the people in her living had ever guessed what Lydia really was.
Lydia didn’t do anything half-heartedly. Her living room was dressed for the part – the role of sort-of-crazy-twenty-something-psychic-girl. Lydia had discovered early on that people wanted their money’s worth; they wanted the beaded curtains and the crystal balls and the floaty headscarves and feathery earrings. So Lydia gave her clients what they wanted, and they always left smelling vaguely of incense and feeling extremely accomplished. Because, to put it frankly – Lydia was extremely accomplished. At a lot of things, in fact. And one of those just happened to be talking to dead people.
But she hadn’t always been. Not until her best friend, Allison, had died. Well – three days before Allison had died, when Lydia had somehow realised she’d known all along it was going to happen. Those three days had been torture. Just looking at Allison had made Lydia’s throat ache like something was trying to climb up out of it. When Allison spoke, it was almost drowned out by the sound of an ambulance’s siren filling her ears, and, later, the sound of funeral bells. And when Allison really had been killed, after all of that, Lydia had screamed so loud it had set off car alarms all up and down the street.
Lydia has always believed that death and life are a pendulum, and when one thing ends, something new must start. When one door closes, another opens; that sort of thing. There were hundreds of anecdotes. And it was strange, but with the death of Allison, Lydia’s new life was created. It opened her eyes to what she was – a Banshee.
That was six years ago, and yet to Lydia it still feels like it could have been last week. She had been barely seventeen, and Allison not quite eighteen. And afterwards, Lydia was lost, to say the very least – without a best friend and aimlessly lead by a heartbroken teenage alpha and his pack of misfit toys. Lydia remembers the weeks after Allison’s death, when she would stay up all night with her radio set to a random frequency, just listening and searching for a snippet of Allison’s voice to let her know she hadn’t just dreamt up the whole thing.
It had taken Lydia a long time to understand that she hadn’t been the one to kill Allison. She had honestly thought that the strange feeling of knowing Allison would die was her marking her best friend for death. That she had caused it by feeling it. The pack had helped her, obviously, but they were all hurting as much as she was. Especially Scott. He’d lost his best friend, too. Allison had been there for Scott from the very start, fighting beside him, even against her own father and what he believed in as a hunter. And now Allison was gone.
Packs weren’t just made up of werewolves. They were made up of humans, too; and Banshees. They were just a group of lonely souls that banded together because it was all they could do to cope. Scott; his first betas Isaac and Derek; Cora, Boyd and Erica. Malia – their trademark werecoyote. And, of course, Lydia. With Allison gone, Lydia had become the only human, which was a role she didn’t much enjoy. It just stood as a constant reminder that her best friend was gone.
Anyway, Lydia had only had to endure that title for a few weeks until Deaton had figured out what she was. Then she got to become the only Banshee in the pack, which was just as lonely, but at least explained one or two things.
But simply putting a name to her abilities wasn’t enough. It took her months - years, even – to realise that her powers didn’t make her a monster. They made her blessed. Instead of hurting people as she had once thought, her gift gave her the power to help people. Maybe Lydia was a monster in the eyes of the children’s books, maybe they all were. The rest of the pack definitely looked monstrous on the night of a full moon, when they would descend on the woods in Beacon Hills to push themselves to the limits, to wipe away the cobwebs on their feral instincts.
But just because they looked like monsters to outsiders, that didn’t make them monsters. ‘Not all monsters do monstrous things.’ Lydia has repeated that phrase in her head so many times throughout her life, she’s almost certain it’s engraved into her bones.
Over the years Lydia had worked hard on the abilities being a Banshee had given her. She had chipped away at the darkness around her heart, the pain and the loss that clouded her vision and connection with the spiritual world – the world after death. Lydia told her clients it was all down to her ‘third eye’ or her ‘head chakra’; but the truth was, Lydia’s skills came from somewhere much deeper and more sincere than that. The confusion and frustration she had felt for so long towards her abilities, and the pain and loss that had made her teenage years a living-hell was what fuelled her determination to understand.
So, since Lydia hadn’t much else to do with her time after Allison had died, she had started to do some research into her skills. And after not too long, research turned into practice and practice into exploration. Soon after that, word spread of the red-haired girl in Beacon Hills who could talk to the dead. Of course, to the rest of the supernatural world she was just known as the red-haired Banshee in Beacon Hills, but still – she was known. Lydia Martin had made a name for herself. Just not in the way she had once imagined.
Lydia had gone from being a confused and lonely teenage girl, straight to consulting Banshee psychotherapist with a little help from Deaton and the pack.
And it had all just spiralled out from there. Now she had business cards on her coffee table, apparently.
Lydia’s phone seems to be permanently ringing. Her tone is a wind-chime sound. It tinkles away cheerfully on what seems to be a perpetual loop; the end of one phone call joining in with the start of next one. Some days, it’s a struggle for Lydia to not just throw it out of her third-floor window.
Today is definitely one of those days.
Lydia sighs dramatically into the phone at what feels like the hundredth caller she’s had this morning, ‘Jasmin,’ who wants to know if Lydia can do a ‘séance’ to help her find out where her dead aunt hid her last will and testament. Lydia is pretty sure that’s happened before in a movie she’s watched. It’s a full-time occupation distinguishing the prank callers from the actual serious clients.
“No, I don’t do séances,” Lydia tells the woman unapologetically. “And here’s a tip for you – anyone who claims they do is either a fake or a method-actor for the new Paranormal Activity movie.” Lydia’s door buzzer rings out in her living room, shrill and loud, so she tucks her phone up to her ear with her shoulder and lets the visitor up, unbolting the door to her apartment as she talks. “But I can book you in for a free consultation next Friday to work something out. Does that sound good? Right; three PM? Perfect. See you then.”
Jasmin at least sounds as though she has a purpose for her visit – that is, if she turns up. The worst appointments are the ones where the client just wants to ‘chat’ with their dead relative. That usually just ends in tears. It’s draining, having strangers believe and depend on you so wholeheartedly. If Lydia wasn’t so good at it, she probably wouldn’t even try. But she is good at it, so it would be a waste not to share her knowledge. From fortune readings to divination, Lydia – well, Ariel – does it all. And she does not make mistakes.
Lydia holds a hand up to her forehead and takes a deep breath to centre herself before her eleven o’clock appointment reaches her apartment. The client had booked a last-minute appointment by phone only the night before. From what she can remember, she had spoken to a man with a thick accent that Lydia couldn’t place. The name in her diary is barely legible and she can’t even remember what they agreed to be doing, having just sprawled it into her planner while she was half-asleep on her bed. She really hopes it’s just a generic reading, so she won’t have to think too hard. God, Lydia needs a break.
She checks her reflection in the mirror one last time, untangling the feathers hanging from her ears and fluffing up her strawberry blonde curls from the headscarf tied and hanging down the back of her head. Her purple eyeliner is smudged a little from her stressful morning taking calls but she doesn’t have time to fix it, so she just smudges the other eye to match. The boho-chic hippy look her job asks for is definitely much less high maintenance than the outfits she wears when she actually goes out like a normal person – that is, when her long skirts don’t get caught in doors and her long floaty sleeves don’t dangle into her food as she’s trying to eat.
There’s a knock on the door just as Lydia is relighting her incense sticks, so she straightens up with a sigh and takes a deep breath to get herself into the character of Ariel. The bangles around her wrists and the beads on her anklet tinkle, and it sort of makes Lydia want to take them off and hurl them against the wall; but, as Ariel, she puts on an airy smile and lets her eyelids droop a little, giving the illusion of a calm, serene girl. She feels at once younger and impossibly old as Ariel, a trick she’d spent hours perfecting in front of the mirror. It’s a face that makes people trust her and let her in. As Ariel, she becomes the person she remembers her grandmother being. It’s so much more comforting to feel like a part of her grandmother is with her as she takes it upon herself to help every single person that wanders into her apartment.
Lydia pulls open the door and goes to greet the client with her trademark Ariel-smile – only the person standing on her doorstep obviously isn’t a client. She knows that straight away.
He isn’t a client, because he’s Scott McCall.