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Stefan realized he wasn’t alone in the house any longer and went downstairs, finding it wise to occasionally sight his brother and assess his mood and latest exploits. Instead of Damon, however, he found someone rather unexpected in their library.
“Daisy?” he asked in surprise. As far as he knew the girl had never been in their house before. He glanced around the large room. “Are you here with Elena--?”
“You have a wonderful collection of books,” Daisy answered instead, her hand straying reluctantly from the shelves before her. He had already noted the small pile of volumes stacked on a table, which hadn’t been there that morning. “The number of shamanistic histories is especially impressive.”
“It’s a hobby,” Stefan replied vaguely, quickly adding, “of the family.”
Daisy nodded understandingly. “My grandma collects Precious Moments figurines,” she deadpanned.
“Equally creepy,” said a voice behind Stefan, before he could figure out how to react to her remark. He turned to see his brother stride confidently in, carrying a plate and a glass. “Here’s that so-called ‘food’ you require,” he announced to Daisy, setting them down on a table for her. “I don’t eat anything but violet nectar and morning dew myself. Allergies.” Daisy grinned, unperturbed by this odd statement, and approached the snack appreciatively.
“Were you cooking?” Stefan asked in some confusion, trying not to be obvious as he sniffed the air. “In the kitchen?”
This immediately triggered Damon’s obnoxious ‘put-upon’ mode. “Yes, Stefan, I was cooking in the kitchen,” he replied, deeply sarcastic. Stefan wished he wouldn’t do that in front of other people. “And yes, I remembered to turn the stove off. When are you gonna let me forget that? It was, like, seventy-five years ago.”
The incident he referred to was, in fact, roughly seventy-five years ago, and Stefan glanced at Daisy to see if she found the remark unusual. She didn’t appear to. “Can I talk to you for a second?” Stefan requested, indicating the talking should take place elsewhere. Damon opened his mouth, ready to say something pointed about Daisy’s presence. “I need you to sign a permission slip for school,” Stefan amended quickly.
This delighted Damon, as Stefan knew it would, and he followed his brother readily into the kitchen. His face fell when Stefan merely stood there, an expectant and disapproving expression on his face. “G-d, you’re so cruel,” Damon accused. “You know how much I love signing your permission slips. It really lets me show my deep commitment to your education.”
“What’s she doing here?” Stefan asked flatly. He rolled his eyes as Damon, predictably, went the fake-innocent route.
“Perusing the library,” Damon insisted. “We had a very enlightening conversation today about the subclasses of nymphs in Greek mythology and I thought she’d like to see the rest of our occult obsession.”
He sounded so, so sincere, which was a dead giveaway that he wasn’t. “Daisy is Elena’s friend,” Stefan pointed out seriously. Damon scoffed. “I’m not going to let you treat her like you did Caroline.”
Damon knew what he meant by that and would’ve scoffed again, but the memory of slowly starving in an underground cell was still too fresh. He turned away, ostensibly to clean up his mess at the stove. “Caroline is old news,” he claimed, as though that had been Stefan’s concern. “She was boring. And not very smart.”
“So, what, now you’re gonna try to use Daisy somehow?” Stefan predicted with irritation. “You can’t just hurt people and cast them aside.”
Well, clearly he could. “Don’t you think Daisy’s kind of weird?” Damon mused instead, giving up his pathetic attempt to clean. Stefan would take care of it later. “Caroline was very predictable. There’s something… spicier about Daisy.”
These comments were not making Stefan feel better about the situation. “Leave her alone,” he warned his brother firmly.
“Ooh, that little ‘I mean business’ glint in your eye is so cute,” Damon mocked. “I bet all the forest creatures are terrified of you. Relax,” he added. “We’re just friends.”
“You don’t have friends.” Harsh, but true.
“You’re bad for my self-esteem, you know that?” Damon claimed, starting to leave the kitchen. “There’s no vast conspiracy, Stefan. She’s just a weird girl who likes—“ He stopped abruptly as he nearly ran over Daisy, standing there with her empty plate. She raised an eyebrow at him. “I meant ‘weird’ in a good way,” he claimed.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Daisy replied dryly, though she didn’t appear upset as she brushed past him and put her empty plate in the sink. “Did you want me to help you clean up?” she added pointedly, glancing at the mess-covered stove.
“No,” Damon replied, as if that were a ridiculous notion. Which it was—the him cleaning up part.
“So, you’re interested in Greek mythology?” Stefan cut in, trying to be a more gracious host than his brother, which wasn’t a very high bar.
“Mythology and folklore in general,” Daisy told him pleasantly. “I’ve actually been doing some research on Viking runes lately and their role in the ancient Norse religion.”
“Oh, we have a book from the 1830’s with lithographs of runestone rubbings—“
“I already got it out for her,” Damon interrupted his brother peevishly. “She wants to go read it. Stop sucking up her time.”
A slow smile rolled across Daisy’s face, directed at Damon. “I appreciate you enabling my little obsession,” she told him, and there was a certain look in her eyes as though she knew something the others didn’t.
And considering their situation, Stefan wasn’t entirely comfortable with that.
Damon was giving her a hard look as though trying to figure her out as well. “Well, I’m definitely an enabler,” he finally answered.
Daisy smiled again and walked past him on her way back to the library. “Remember, I have to be home by ten, or I turn into a pumpkin,” she added over her shoulder.
“Okay.” Damon and Stefan watched her go.
“You’re right, she is weird,” Stefan conceded. “But that’s no excuse for mistreating her,” he added sternly.
“What mistreatment?” Damon complained indignantly. “I gave her food! And Viking runes.”
Stefan trusted his point had been made, however, and headed back up to his room. “I’m going over to Elena’s later,” he added, though whether this was a warning or a simple notification was ambiguous.
“Give her a kiss for me,” Damon called after him obnoxiously. He always liked to have the last word.
Damon sauntered back into the library and sat down at the table across from Daisy, staring at her intently as she flipped through the antique volume. With vampire speed he zipped over to her side, making her jump, which satisfied him somewhat. “So you came here to learn about Viking runes?” he checked, disbelief evident in his tone.
“I did,” she agreed, her attention on the yellowed pages covered in strange symbols.
“Sounds pretty dull,” he opined. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to learn about something more interesting, like… vampires?”
“I already know a lot about vampires,” she dismissed, which made him frown. “But I feel embarrassingly inadequate on the subject of Viking runes.” Before he could respond she tapped one of the figures on the page before her. “This represents a crow. Crows were thought to be messengers and spies of the gods,” she noted thoughtfully. “Sorcerers felt that if they used this rune, they could harness the powers of the crows for themselves, and use them to keep an eye on people.”
“I can do that,” Damon blurted suddenly, and was rewarded with a sideways glance from Daisy.
“So you did send that bird to spy on me,” she surmised, sounding only mildly exasperated.
“The idea was way cooler in theory than in execution,” he admitted.
“Hmm, did you form a psychic connection with the crow, such that you received real-time sensory information,” Daisy speculated, “or did you have to wait until it returned, and extract the sum total of its information from it then, perhaps by drinking its blood?”
Damon blinked at her. Then his gaze narrowed. “I thought you already knew a lot about vampires,” he shot back suspiciously.
“There weren’t any crows in Twilight,” Daisy deadpanned. “You’re the one who brought it up, I thought you were comfortable discussing it,” she added with a shrug. Then she switched her concentration back to the Viking runes.
This was not what Damon desired. He watched her closely for a few more minutes, trying to think of something else to say. “You know my brother’s a vampire, too, right?” he checked.
She smiled a little to herself. “Yes, I know.”
“But Zach—isn’t.” He’d almost used the past tense; but he didn’t want to give away everything.
“Yes, I know,” she repeated.
“You don’t know,” he countered, irritated. “You’ve never even met Zach.”
“I’ve met him,” Daisy replied, finally looking up again. “Where is he, anyway? I thought he’d be here.”
Damon ignored the second question. “When did you meet him?”
“I’ve been in this house before.”
For some irrational reason this made Damon profoundly uncomfortable, even though intellectually he knew many people had come through the house during the times he was away. And somehow, he also knew she wasn’t talking about her recent visit to return his spy-bird. “When?” he repeated urgently.
“Last year, I did a report for my history class on the flu pandemic,” Daisy told him straightforwardly. “This house was used as an extension of the hospital at the time—“
“I know, I remember,” Damon interrupted rudely. “It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Except with more mucus.”
“—and Zach showed me some of the architecture from that period,” Daisy went on, unperturbed, “and gave me some photographs to put in my report.”
Something about the way she said that last part piqued Damon’s interest considerably. “What photographs?”
“I thought you might like to see—“ He snatched away the report she’d pulled from her notebook, flipping through the sheets quickly. He froze on one scanned photo, showing the large living room outfitted with rows of cots filled with flu victims. A group of white-coated doctors stood to one side, and there, in the corner, nobly assisting one patient, was—
“That little s—t,” Damon swore, though whether he was referring to Stefan for being in the picture or Zach for giving it to her was unclear.
He did know that people being in possession of unnaturally old photographs of his family members was usually bad news, however, and he quickly dropped the report to grab Daisy’s arm and haul her close. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he growled at her.
“For you to stop cutting off the circulation in my arm,” Daisy replied in irritation, as though he were being entirely unreasonable. He loosened his grip slightly and she continued to give him a cold look. “All I wanted was to read about Viking runes, and enjoy your hospitality,” she insisted, shaking off his hand and rubbing her arm. “But if you’d rather take me home now—“
“No,” he decided. He leaned back and studied her, trying to put the pieces together for himself. “I want to keep a close eye on you.”
“Well… alright.” Daisy gave him a small smile, as though his words had been a compliment or at least an apology, instead of a threat. “In that case, can you show me any other books about runes?”
“You’re done with that one already?” he questioned.
“I’ve learned what I wanted to know.”
Damon looked at her for a long moment. “I think there’s another one up here,” he decided.