"Do you want some?"
He looks at the candy apple she extends towards him, a neat bite already shining through the side that faces him. Well, he didn't remember the story going this way.
He looks back up at the girl, and can't resist a hungry smile. She is so fresh, all pink stained cheeks and golden curls. Some of the apple's sugar coating still sticks on her lower lip and he wonders what it would taste like if he just bends down and kisses it off her.
That visual gives birth to a more enticing one in his mind.
What would she taste like?
He could take a bite and call her breakfast. Her neck is pale and swan-like and it would take him less than a microsecond to twist it in an unnatural but aesthetically pleasing angle and suck her blood. If she tasted as sweet as she looked, he wouldn't bother stopping till her heart quit its incessant mocking pumping and her knees gave way.
But eating your student on the first day of teaching is probably not considered appropriate behaviour.
She finally takes his silence to mean rejection of the apple's saccharine temptation and continues past his desk. He is leaning against it having just arrived and still contemplating his next move. His eyes follow her as she makes her way towards the wide window. She lights a candle and sticks it inside a blue glass bottle and then looks around pleased, as if she hasn't just changed the dull morning darkness to a nightmarish stygian gloom.
He doesn't mention anything though because he knows she means well. Somewhere at about three this morning, the island's electricity disappeared.
"Does this happen often?"
"What?" she says now taking a seat right in front of his desk, legs politely crossed at the ankle. She is dressed in the strangest assortment of clothes and looks as if she is on her way to a polar expedition.
"The absence of electricity."
"Oh yeah, it's almost a weekly occurrence. You'll get used to it," she says in what he can tell is supposed to be a comforting tone.
He shuts his eyes and falls into his chair wearily. He is so angry he could kill Kol. Every few decades his siblings and he relocated somewhere, and by some gamble of fate, this time the decision making rested with the stupidest of them. Though he also wouldn't put it past Kol to have known exactly what a menace this would be and precisely select it for that reason. He had always had a very odd sense of humor.
If it were up to him they would be at the Sorbonne right now but instead here they are in a nameless off the map island which reeks of patchouli and sea salt. Elijah is taking care of assimilating with the locals while Rebekah and Kol slept in. So much for their wish to continue attending university.
And here he is, stuck in this empty classroom with its faint smell of mildew. Empty, save for the strange girl who sits in front of him chewing thoughtfully at her candy apple.
"Where are the other students?"
"Oh no one gets here on time," she says sadly, "they'll probably start walking in after an hour or so."
He doesn't ask the obvious question. Maybe there isn't an answer. Maybe she is just a strange girl who likes sitting in empty damp classrooms with her professor.
"Professor Shane was helping me read Derrida," she explains after a while. "Do you know why he quit so suddenly? Did he take a sabbatical?"
Klaus clears his throat uncomfortably. "He is dead."
He expects the girl to get up screaming but she sits there impassively and blinks. "Oh."
"Animal attack," Klaus hurries to explain not wanting her mind to wander. Well, if you considered vampires animals it wasn't even a lie.
But that was apparently the wrong move because suddenly her phlegmatic countenance changes to one of suspicion.
"What?" she snaps.
Klaus scoops up the newspaper in front of him and hands it to her. She stares at the front page headline.
Chair of the English department mauled by the Feral Cats
"The feral cats are innocent," she proclaims before hastening to read the article.
"How so?" Klaus asks in annoyance.
"They are only ever feral towards the other cats. They have been framed."
Klaus rolls his eyes. "Don't you think you are being a little dramatic?"
"No, look at this," she says coming to stand near him and slapping the newspaper down on his table. He tries not to concentrate on the warmth of her blood or her citrusy perfume and instead focuses on the article his family had planted in the local newspaper.
She points a finger to a sentence and reads aloud, "The feral cat, a handsome fellow, engaged the professor in a fist to fist fight before draining his life off." She stops to let that sink in before pointing at other specimens of similar ridiculousness.
They should have never left this up to Kol. Klaus has half a mind to tear out of the stupid university and dagger Kol again so they could pass a peaceful decade or two.
"Ugh, I am totally going over the gazette's office right now. Something fishy is at play here."
"You will do no such thing. These are class hours. I don't care how Professor Shane taught this class but you will maintain discipline under me."
Caroline looks up at him surprised but meekly makes her way away from him.
Then she proceeds to peel off the dozen layers of clothing off her body. He doesn't have to ask her why. Since they have arrived the temperature has risen drastically (did he not mention? another quirk of this island was the almost unearthly speed with which the weather changed) and she doesn't possess his vampire immunity. But his eyes still stare at her hungrily as she slips off her beaver coat and her sweaters till all she is dressed in is what looks like a satin nightdress and riding boots.
Klaus notes something more tempting than her blood as she finishes the transformation from overfriendly student to a sylphlike goddess. He doesn't particularly enjoy sexual encounters with humans but maybe he could make an exception.
She goes back to her seat, picks up that stupid apple she had kept with its stick handle jauntily pressed in a hole on her desk and starts licking it absent-mindedly. And he is still staring at her greedily, earlier altercation long forgotten.
"Can you not do that?" he asks after a while, not able to stand the sight of her without wanting to rip her clothes apart (or her throat). Elijah wouldn't be pleased if he killed off his first student on his first day.
"What?" she asks, looking startled and dazed as if her mind had been elsewhere (as it had).
Klaus narrows his eyes at her. He can tell she is still thinking of Professor Shane and the vile feral cats. He can practically hear the wheels in her brain whirring.
"Not lick the apple so suggestively," he says with a cruel smirk. That should distract her from the unfortunate incident.
"I did offer it to you," she says in confusion. Before he can react, she stands up suddenly, the apple falling on the floor and rolling away. "I feel a migraine coming on. May I be excused from today's tutorial?"
Without waiting for an answer or even trying to mask her blatant lie, she is gone from the classroom in a swish of satin and silk, though not before discreetly stealing the newspaper which was innocently lying under his nose.