"Where's Deaton?"

"He's at our house. Did you need something from him?"

"Knowledge, maybe. My mom's in a coma and I don't know why. Also, we left some of our objects with him." He does not add any inflection to the word 'our.'

"Sure. Did you get anything to eat? We can have lunch." 

"...lunch is a good idea, probably."

"Any complaints about Chinese?"

"None."

He orders for himself and Stiles, letting Kaede choose for himself, and they go to pick it up. 

Key?

Sure, key.

Key. Takeout, meet home. 

"He's around here somewhere...you boys get started."

"Okay." Food, then.

Lo mein, orange chicken, and fried rice all go into a bowl.

Apparently, Stiles doesn't mind if his food touches. 

"So here's what I'm thinking. If there are all these objects, someone has to have something for comas. I'm guessing you were worried about getting caught, before? Does Argent have some?"

"Yeah that's what I'm thinking, too. Kreutzfeld is a collector, apparently, has several. We bought the nail file off her, I saw the flask—which is horrible, it makes people suffocate—and she didn't want to sell, so I wanted to steal it so she wouldn't have it to use on anyone." Pause. "Not that the stupid notebook isn't worse but, you know, extenuating circumstances, I don't trust other people with objects nearly as far as I trust myself."

"You seem pretty trustworthy," he allows.

"Dr. Deaton is kind of acting the same way about you and me, though. My dad is trying to talk him out of like. Adversarial mentoring?"

"He can be an adversarial mentor, sure, as long as we fix my mom." Pause. "And also he gives back our objects because they were a loan and I do not trust him with them, we're collecting them for a reason."

"Yeah. I think I should handle the talking, maybe. I can get them back. Which ones were yours?"

"Nail file and notebook, that he had."

"Okay. Notebook and nail file. Speaking of objects-"

"I found him upstairs, which is where I should have checked first. Alan, do you want to eat with us?"

"No, I think you have things well in hand. It was nice meeting you, Kaede." 

And Stiles' father, holding the notebook, sits down, placing the nail file and the shoe polish on the table.

"We, uh. Alan explained how the objects work. How much do you need the notebook back?"

"What? Dad, it's theirs."

"Don't touch any of them, Stiles. It doesn't go well." 

"I don't need the notebook back, but to put it as bluntly as I've been putting it to your son, I don't exactly trust anyone else with it—it's why we bought the nail file off Victoria Kreutzfeld, and why I wanted to steal her flask. We'd try to destroy it, but the last time we destroyed an object—that's possible, by the way, but I won't tell you how—we just got a new object. And yes, my mom told me about the addiction effect, and yes, I am probably addicted to the objects. But as such things go, the one who pushed for the plan with the least probability of killing anyone was me." He looks at the place Deaton went pointedly as he says that. "So yes I do still trust my judgment and my ability to correct for this bias even knowing it's there much more than I'd trust anyone else's."

"I'm still not sure the fact that you're intelligent and self-aware is enough to cover magical addiction. If you could pick one object to lock up and take the test, that gives us a way to test how long you can be away from one. That's why we're giving you the shoe polish."