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“I need to talk to you.” Damon grabbed my hand and dragged me away from the table I was studying at.
“Did you think I was going to refuse?” I asked dryly. He didn’t respond but rather pulled me towards the door to the cellar—a dark, musty void of creaking steps and dust webs. Why would he be taking me down here? He might have found something in the expansive, maze-like cellar that he hoped would further his quest to free Katherine and he wanted my help interpreting it. Or perhaps more likely, he just wanted to talk—without Stefan overhearing. Prosaic, but this seemed to be the case when he stopped beside a door with an eerie, cold light emanating from its window.
“Our little vervain growth chamber,” he sneered, opening the door to reveal several tables of the plant thriving under special lights. “Stefan won’t think to look for me down here.”
Stefan must have come down to tend the plants fairly recently, as the room was cleaner than the hallways we’d passed through to get here. Damon dragged out a stool for me to sit on and seated himself across from me on a container of fertilizer.
“I usually consult with clients over drinks at the Ritz,” I deadpanned.
Damon had his ‘serious face’ on, though, and didn’t even acknowledge my joke. “I need to find Emily’s spell book,” he stated. “Bonnie and her grandmother don’t have it—it was taken from Emily along with the rest of her possessions by the Founding Families.”
“Before they burned her,” I supplied, and he nodded.
“Anna’s looking for it, too,” he reminded me. “Where do you think it could be?”
“Why are you asking me?” I said curiously. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Because you’re smart,” he ground out, in a tone of barely-leashed fury. “I want to know what you think.”
Somewhere in there was a compliment, made all the more sincere by the fact that he thought it went without saying. I pulled my stool closer to him and took his hand.
“Does this help somehow?” he asked suspiciously.
I smiled. “I just like holding your hand.” I took a moment to organize all the information I knew about this subject. “The Founding Families knew enough to realize they couldn’t destroy the grimoire without terrible consequences. So they had to put it somewhere where it would be safe and undisturbed. Hidden or forgotten about would be good as well, so they wouldn’t have to explain anything to future generations.”
“Like a vault,” Damon guessed. “No—something that was never meant to be opened again once it was closed.” His eyes blazed as he realized a viable possibility. “A grave.”
“That seems reasonable,” I agreed. “It would have been unthinkable to them that a grave would ever be disturbed. Additionally, in the cemetery it would have been on consecrated ground, which in their minds would have offered further protection.”
Of course, the next logical question was—“Whose grave?”
I shook my head. “There’s a lot of variables. When you have to wait for someone to die and you only have that one chance to put the book in with them—that’s when things can go wrong. And we don’t know how long they had the book before they even thought of hiding it that way.”
“There’s nothing in Father’s journal about it,” Damon muttered in frustration.
“I wouldn’t have written it down, either,” I admitted. “Writing down where you’ve hidden something you never want found is not very smart. That would be one of those secrets I took to the grave.” Damon looked up at me suddenly and I shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry, I tried to resist, but—“ Actually, I was unsure why I’d said that—puns weren’t really my style.
“Father used to say that,” he remembered slowly. “I always wanted to know what he was writing in his journal. And he would tell me that he was taking all his real secrets to the grave.”
For a long moment we both froze, thinking furiously. “A Founding Father who died soon after the burning would be an ideal symbolic choice,” I finally said, then cautioned, “If they thought of it in time. Honoria Fell’s diary had the spell book going to Johnathan Gilbert last.” Hence the frenzy to find and read the journal of Elena and Jeremy’s ancestor.
“It feels right, though,” Damon realized, and I nodded. He didn’t leap up and run out to dig up his father’s grave, though. “I have another question for you,” he said, staring at our intertwined fingers.
“Maybe I should’ve brought my Magic 8 ball.”
He ignored that. “Do you think I can trust Stefan?” His gaze bored into mine.
“To help you get Katherine out?”
He nodded. “If he and Elena find the Gilbert journal—maybe it’ll point to Father’s grave, maybe not,” he hedged. “But if somehow he learns where the spell book is, will he tell me, like he promised? Will he help me?” I hesitated. “Do you need some chicken entrails to read?” he asked impatiently.
“What makes you think I read chicken entrails?” I shot back.
“Right now? The fact that you didn’t make a joke about it.”
I gave him a look. “My jokes have been falling flat today,” I pointed out. I couldn’t help but be a little impressed, though. Damon was much more intelligent than most people gave him credit for.
He shook his head. “Whatever. Don’t ask, don’t tell. But can you get me tickets to the Barbra Streisand concert?”
I, at least, acknowledged his joke. “Stefan promised he would help you open the tomb and get only Katherine out, as long as you and Katherine left town and never came back,” I checked. He nodded. “Has Stefan ever lied to you before?”
“No.” Damon hesitated. “He’s made promises he found he couldn’t keep, though.”
I felt pretty confident about the answer to his question. But I really didn’t want to say it. “I don’t know what the tomb is going to be like,” I stated carefully, “or what Emily’s spell requires. And neither does Stefan.”
“Yet he’s counting on the fact that it’s possible to open the tomb and only get Katherine out,” Damon nodded. “If the spell book says it’s all or nothing—he could use that as an out.”
“But you’d already have the book,” I pointed out. “You’d only need a witch or two to work the spell, and if Bonnie and Sheila refused, I’m sure there’s more witches in the world.” Minus Bree, the witch he’d killed in Georgia, of course.
“He can’t want me to find that spell book,” Damon decided grimly. “With that plan, he’s either lying or stupid. And he’s not stupid.” He stood abruptly, trying to pace in the small room. “G-------t! I shouldn’t have…”
“You wanted to believe him because he’s your brother,” I articulated. “And he’s putting the safety of the town above your trust. Because what you want to do is going to hurt a lot of people.”
He sat back down and took my hands. “I just want Katherine,” he told me earnestly.
I put my hand to his cheek. “I know you do. But that’s like—breaking a dam because you’re thirsty.” He dropped his gaze, seeing my point without changing his mind. “But maybe you shouldn’t take my advice,” I said in a lighter tone. “In your ideal scenario, you and Katherine ride off into the sunset. Maybe I don’t like that too much.”
Damon snorted. “Please. Like you’d have trouble finding another boyfriend.”
“I like you, though,” I smirked, trying to be sincere without putting him on the defensive. “I’m just getting you broken in.”
“Oh really?” he replied, rising to the challenge. He would not be dissuaded from the topic, though. “You could come with me and Katherine.”
“You are so blinded by your love for her,” I chided affectionately. “I can’t even say it’s sweet because it’s just an effect of vampire psychology. You were in love with her when you turned and now it’s magnified, with no further fuel.”
“Well don’t forget the one hundred forty-five years of pining,” he shot back.
“You old-fashioned boys do know how to pine,” I remarked dryly.
“I don’t understand what your objection to this is,” he told me.
And that was, sadly, true. “Oh, of course you don’t,” I sighed.
“You don’t seem like the jealous type,” he went on, completely serious. “I think you might like Katherine.”
“I don’t think Katherine will be very pleasant,” I laid out for him. “I don’t think she’ll be pleasant to me and I don’t think she’ll be pleasant to you.” I made him look at me. “I am trying to protect you here. And that goes so much against my nature.”
He put his hand over the one I rested on his cheek. “Don’t try,” he asked me softly. “I need to see her again.”
I leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “Be careful what you wish for,” I warned him, clichéd but apt. “And I would be jealous.”
He smirked against my cheek. “Then maybe I shouldn’t listen to your advice,” he said, echoing my words. But he would anyway.
The grimoire had lain in a human’s grave for nearly one hundred fifty years—it was thirsty for energy, for use, and its pages fairly crackled with magic as I carefully turned them, holding each with wooden forceps despite my latex gloves. Damon smirked when he saw me. “Are the pages poisoned?” he asked dryly.
I gave him a look. “Many sorcerers did poison the pages of their books, so that anyone who tried to steal their secrets would die, or go mad.” He frowned at me. “This book isn’t poisoned, though. I’m just being careful.”
“Did you find the reversal spell yet?” That was all he really cared about.
“Yes, it’s the last one, no surprise,” I commented, turning to it as he walked around to lean over my shoulder. “Look how bad her handwriting is compared to the other spells. She was in a hurry.”
“What’s this language?” he asked, reaching toward the page.
I grabbed his hand before he could touch it. “It’s archaic Egyptian. It dates from the third millennium, BC.”
He smirked at me. “I suppose I shouldn’t try to read it out loud?”
I let his hand go. “I suggest you avoid doing that, yes. What you should do, though,” I added, “is look at each page.”
“Why?”
“You have perfect recall. Should you lose possession of the book at some point, it would be useful if you could reproduce its contents,” I pointed out.
His expression said he wasn’t impressed with this argument, but he sat down next to me anyway and stared at the pages as I turned them. “Couldn’t we just Xerox it?”
“Old magic resists new technology,” I informed him. “Hence the natural rubber gloves and wooden forceps.” I clicked them at him menacingly. “Anything petroleum-based would be ineffective protection. And the book would probably kill a Xerox machine.” A slight exaggeration, but he saw my point.
“Why would Emily write down the tomb spell?” Damon wanted to know, memorizing the pages of complex symbols with a glance. “There wasn’t much time, after Katherine was taken…”
His eyes got a faraway look in them and I pinched him with the forceps. “You need to actually see the pages,” I reminded him. He shot me a glare but refocused. “A witch’s spell is a combination of chemical formulas, mathematical equations, astronomical observations, and poetry, usually in a foreign language,” I went on. He quirked an eyebrow. “Even the most powerful witch needs to compose her spell first. There’s one school of thought that says a spell won’t work unless it’s been written down first,” I added thoughtfully, “but as far as I know this has never been rigorously tested.”
Damon gave me a bemused look. “You’re so strange and geeky, but in a cool way,” he marveled.
“Thanks, I think,” I responded.
“I just thought the point of using the crystal was to avoid needing the spell book at all,” he went on as I turned another page for him.
“Well, it was,” I agreed, “but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary for her to write it down first. The crystal was the functional copy—innocent-looking, easy to hide and transport—but the book was the original. And with just the crystal, you would’ve been able to get into the tomb without anyone’s assistance,” I added. “With the book you need a witch.”
His jaw tightened as I turned the next page. “I can’t believe Emily double-crossed me. I mean, I kept my end of the bargain. She has dozens of descendents all over the country. I notice the Witch Doctor has conveniently forgotten that part,” he sneered, referring to Bonnie’s grandmother.
“It is kind of odd,” I agreed. “From what you’ve told me Emily was happy helping out Katherine and the other vampires. She experimented with a number of different ways of allowing them to pass as normal humans, including walking in daylight.”
“I guess it’s not weird she accepted my offer to rescue her children,” Damon admitted grudgingly. “Things were pretty crazy then—I don’t think the Founding Families would’ve spared them. But why would she save all the captured vampires, then change her mind about it a century and a half later? And, hmm, where was she for a century and a half that she was thinking about this? Purgatory? Limbo? Cleveland?”
I smirked at him. “I think you’re getting a little too metaphysical even for me,” I told him. “Although,” I added thoughtfully, “maybe she just wanted revenge. I mean, she knew the vampires were going to be saved, but no one was going to be able to bring her back.”
“Well, she could’ve said that,” Damon protested. “Or, I dunno, thought of that back then. Who can understand witch psychology?” he decided in frustration. “Look how snooty Sheila acts, like she’d never dirty her hands by helping vampires, when it was her own ancestor who started this.”
“Maybe she knows more about Emily than we do,” I suggested thoughtfully. “I would love to go through her book collection sometime.”
Damon snorted. “I’d love to go through her throat sometime.”
“Oh, poor baby,” I mocked. “One little retina-burning and you don’t like her anymore.”
“Well, at least she didn’t go for anything important,” he quipped cheekily.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” I said after a moment of quiet. We were almost through the spell book. “It seems that at least two known vampires were also known by the Founding Families to walk in daylight—Katherine and Pearl. Even if they didn’t understand why.” He nodded. “But Mrs. Lockwood told you that the Council was only just beginning to suspect this ability after several weeks of investigating people who’d only been seen at night. And, the Founders’ Ball would have been an excellent opportunity to use the entrance test to screen people, and they completely failed at that.” By the time I finished speaking he was smirking and shaking his head at me. “What?”
“Baby, if you were in charge of things, you would have an inch-thick protocol manual on how to identify, capture, and destroy supernatural threats,” he pointed out, “but mere mortals are often sloppier than that. They probably spent most of their recent Council meetings trying to remember why they even had Council meetings.”
“You do have a point,” I conceded primly. “If they had called me in as a consultant right away, you’d be toast by now.”
“Maybe Homeland Security could use you,” he teased.
“They couldn’t afford me,” I shot back dryly. I closed the spell book and set the forceps aside, then immediately found myself pulled onto Damon’s lap.
“Good thing I’m here to provide all the fantastic vampire sex you require as payment,” he smirked.
“I don’t even know where to begin on that one.”
“I’ve got a couple ideas.” He glanced down at my hands. “Leave the gloves on,” he added suggestively, scooping up me and the grimoire.
From the other room I heard Stefan leave, Damon’s words still stinging him. Part of me wanted to run after him and help him figure out where Elena was; she was my friend, too, and I didn’t want to see her hurt, or even turned into a vampire if that wasn’t her desire. I took a deep breath and let that part go. I’d had a lot of practice doing that, after all. I couldn’t solve everyone’s problems.
Damon was noticeably distracted when he walked into the room and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. I just had to wait for him to ask. “Should I be worried about Elena?” he finally said to me.
“Do you mean that practically, or morally?” I questioned unhelpfully, and he glared at me.
“Is she in danger?” he clarified through gritted teeth.
“She’s been kidnapped by vampires who want to trade her for Emily’s spell book and witch coercion to open the tomb,” I reminded him coolly. “I think you can figure this one out.”
“Why are you mad at me?” Damon wanted to know. “You think I should’ve told him where Anna was hiding out? He’d just bust the door down, rescue Elena and Bonnie, and then I’d have to find my own witch to open the tomb,” he pointed out, correctly.
“Stefan’s very resourceful,” I reminded him. “He could just ask Sheila to use a spell to find Bonnie, and likely Elena would be with her.”
Damon blinked at me for a moment, then turned sharply to the window—which was open, unusual for this chilly time of year. There was nothing to be seen outside, but he shut it angrily and pulled the curtain over it. “Were you talking loud enough for him to hear you?” he asked in an acid tone.
Perhaps I wasn’t completely successful in letting that part go. “When that tomb opens,” I predicted, studying the history book in front of me rather than meeting his gaze, “people are going to start dying. And I don’t want Elena and Bonnie’s names to be at the top of the list. And neither do you,” I added firmly.
He yanked the book off the desk and flung it hard across the room, not looking back to see what it shattered. But he didn’t disagree with me.
I’d been doing a lot of thinking about this situation and something just didn’t add up. I couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that there was some crucial piece of information missing. Naturally Damon didn’t want to wait while I tried to figure this out, instead leaping at Stefan and Elena’s second, more sincere offer to help him open the tomb. And Anna was not exactly friendly towards questions. So now I stood in a dark pit in the woods, lit only by flaming torches, in front of an opened tomb filled with old and starving vampires, knowing something was going to go wrong but unable to stop it.
I should have been used to that feeling by now.
Stefan went topside to get his homemade flamethrower. Most likely he would encounter Anna and the henchman he’d foolishly left alive—they knew what we were doing and where, yet no one seemed to care that they would likely show up uninvited. Anna had already proven her deviousness and determination to free her mother, Pearl—there was no reason to think she wouldn’t try again while she had her chance.
Damon, meanwhile, stared at the opened tomb door with a wild hunger in his eyes and snatched Elena to him to drag inside as a hostage. Elena at least did not seem surprised by this. She was also smarter than people gave her credit for.
As soon as Damon and Elena disappeared down the dark, subterranean hallway, Sheila turned to me from the center of the pentagram, a hard look in her eyes. “The door is open,” she stated stiffly, “but the seal is intact. No vampire who enters that tomb will come out. What are you going to do about that?” Bonnie’s eyes widened slightly as she looked back and forth between us.
I was not surprised that Sheila had realized there was something not quite normal about me, although I doubted she knew exactly what. It might’ve been nice to get to know her better, especially before I’d become tainted in her eyes by my association with Damon. But then again, such interactions hadn’t worked out for me so well in the past.
“Nothing,” I assured her. Circumstances would force her to break the seal; there were too many complicating factors at work for her simplistic plan to succeed, not the least of which was Elena on the other side of the tomb threshold with Damon. If he realized he was trapped, all he’d have to do was threaten her life—Bonnie would do anything to save her best friend.
Sheila looked like she was about to question me further when a sudden realization struck me. Katherine would never have allowed herself to be trapped like this—she was far too invested in her own survival, at the expense of everyone around her if necessary.
She was not in the tomb.
“Damon!” I ran after him, past the two witches who did nothing to stop me. “Damon! She’s not here!” My voice echoed in the twisty tunnel, which was littered with the mummified bodies of the vampires in their decaying clothes. Though they looked harmless—if decidedly creepy—even one drop of blood would begin to revive them, like a spore blossoming in a splash of water. It was difficult to make out their facial features now, after a century and a half of disfiguring desiccation, but I saw none with any resemblance to Elena and thus Katherine.
I flattened against the wall as I sensed someone coming up behind me—Anna, so intent upon finding her mother that she utterly ignored me. Both she and Damon were wreaking havoc on the world in the name of love, really. If Stefan’s love had been entombed down here, I felt he would have chosen compassion over passion and suffered for all eternity rather than risk letting one evil force out. Who was right depended on who you were—the trapped beloved or the rest of the world. Or the rest of the world who had to listen to Stefan suffer.
Ahead of me there was a scream—Elena—and I stepped aside again as Stefan rushed by to rescue her. It would be an act of compassion, then, that unleashed terror—to let Stefan out the witches would have to break the seal. No doubt they would try to replace it, to remove it only temporarily, but they were ill-prepared for the challenge of modifying Emily’s spell. Bonnie was only newly come into her powers, and Sheila was past her peak. Things wouldn’t go according to plan.
I slipped past Anna and her mother, Stefan and Elena, headed for the faint light at the very end of the tunnel. Damon’s torch was forgotten on the floor; he stood staring at the last bodies, realizing none of them were Katherine.
“Damon?”
“She’s not here,” he said faintly, his back towards me. “She’s not here!” he repeated in a roar. He kicked viciously at a shambling pile of rags that had once been a fellow vampire, then yanked out the bag of blood he’d brought for Katherine and flung it in fury against the wall.
My heart stopped when I saw the blood splatter. An act of compassion had broken the seal. An act of rage would revive the creatures behind it. Compassion and rage—the two sides of the coin whose spin determined the world’s fate.
Or at least Mystic Falls’s.
“Damon, we have to go,” I told him, stepping into his line of sight and taking his arm. “Damon!”
He looked down at me without really seeing me. “She’s not here,” he whispered, his voice raw.
I knew we had to hurry—Stefan and Elena were shouting to us from closer to the door, and Bonnie and Sheila couldn’t keep their spell going for long. But when I looked into his eyes I saw a depth of despair I hadn’t seen in a long time, and rage flared in my heart towards Katherine. She had never been trapped. She had been free, waiting for the comet like everyone else, knowing how to find Damon… and just not caring.
I threw my arms around him. “You’ll see her again,” I whispered in his ear. He took it as a promise. I knew it was a curse.