"Yeah, someone definitely took my stuff," I told Stefan over the phone. I was home, walking to the front door.
"I love you, Stefan." I hung up while unlocking the door.
When I walked in, I didn't hear any noise. "Jeremy?" I called.
I was about to go check on him when I heard something coming from the kitchen. I turned back and walked towards it.
"Jenna? Jer?" I called again. No answer. That was never a good sign.
What I saw when I walked in the kitchen could have been straight out of a horror movie. The problem was that this was real. Uncle John, who I now knew was my biological father, was lying dead on the floor with a knife in his body. His fingers were on the kitchen island, cut off from the rest of him. It told me that the person who killed him knew about the rings, or they wouldn't have taken the time to cut off his hand.
I knew after all the blood and gore I had seen since meeting Stefan, I shouldn't have been that scared. But that didn't stop the scream that left my mouth.
I went running upstairs to Jeremy. He could help, he knew about the vampires, unlike Jenna.
Unfortunately, when I reached his room, he was asleep.
"Jer?" I shook him. "Jeremy, wake up." He didn't stir. "Jer! Jeremy!" Now I was screaming.
Jenna ran in. "What's wrong?"
"It's Jeremy. He won't move!" I was crying now. "Jeremy!" I shook harder.
While I was screaming, Jenna had gone into the bathroom. "Look," she told me. Now I heard fear in her voice.
In her hands was the pain pill container that had held the pills left over from the car accident in May and a vial with a drop of red in it. There wasn't any pills left.
"No!" I screamed. "No, this can't happen!" I tried shaking him again. "Call for help!"
I called Damon. I didn't want to bother Stefan, and Damon was stronger because of the human blood.
"Hello, Elena. You want me to come back for more?"
"What? Never mind. Someone killed Uncle John and Jeremy drank blood and then took all my pills from the car accident and I need you to get over here and see if Jeremy is dead and if he is do CPR!" What had started out as me trying to be calm ended in hysterics.
Damon hung up. This just made me mad. He seriously hung up on me?
I turned and he was standing there. "I already called Stefan," he told me. He was completely calm, the complete opposite of me. "He's going to take care of John's body before-"
Jenna screamed. "Too late," I murmured. Damon was about to go downstairs, but I stopped him. "Help Jeremy!"
I ran to the kitchen, knowing Damon would listen to me.
Jenna was in a frenzy. There was no way to ask if she called the paramedics.
In seconds, Stefan was there. "Get rid of it!" I commanded him. I pointed to John's lifeless corpse.
"And Jeremy?"
"Damon's handling it. Go!"
Stefan took John's body in his arms and left with super speed.
Damon appeared a second later. "It's no use. I can't. Jeremy's dead." He looked at me with sympathy in his eyes.
"What do we do about Jenna?" I asked.
"I'll take her upstairs. Have her think it was a dream. Get rid of the blood."
"So is Jeremy going to be a…" I couldn't finish.
"Yes. The blood in the vial was Anna's. Elena, it's my fault. He asked me earlier if being a vampire was easier, and I said yes. That was the good deed I was doing when you saw me come out of the house."
"Wait, when was this? I just got home about a minute before I called you. Someone had taken my stuff, and I was on the phone with Stefan, and-what is it, Damon?"
"I think I know who killed John. The little bitch!" he cried.
"Who? Damon, tell me!" Jenna was still crying, but neither Damon nor me recognized her presence anymore.
"Katherine," he said with pure hatred and loathing in his voice. "She let me kiss her, and all this time I thought it was you, and-"
"Damon, stop. You need to take care of Jenna right now. We'll talk about what we're going to do later."
Damon shut down. "Yes, you're right," he said in a monotone. He picked up Jenna and fled upstairs.
Meanwhile, it was up to me to clean up the blood on the island and the floor. I got a roll of paper towels and started the long, gross process of cleaning up.
By the time I was done with the island, Damon was back downstairs helping me. "How can you stand the smell?" I asked.
"Of the blood?" I nodded. "It's easy. I just think of other things. Like how beautiful you are."
"Hey, none of that," I ordered. "We are friends. I am in love with Stefan. There is no chance of you and me, Damon, none. Sorry." By now I had calmed down a lot, but I still couldn't help but think of Jeremy when he woke up. I shuddered.
"Hey, did I miss anything?" Stefan was back.
"Nope," I told him. And just to emphasize my point with Damon, I went to Stefan and kissed him. I made it long and passionate. Stefan seemed okay with this, but I could tell he was sneaking glances at his brother.
"Hello? We still have problems here in Realityland." Damon brought us out of our fervor.
"Right," I said. I addressed Damon. "Stefan and I will finish up here. You can stay upstairs with Jeremy and wait for him to wake up. Is there a set period of time until it happens?"
"No, not that I've seen." It was Stefan who answered my question.
"Alright, I'll wait." Damon left us in peace.
All of a sudden, I burst into tears. "Stefan, what's going to happen?"
Stefan held me tight. "I don't know. But we'll work it out. We always do, don't we?"
"Damon," I sobbed. "He thinks it was Katherine who did it."
"But how could she have gotten in?" Stefan asked. "I don't think so, Elena."
"I'm okay now," I said. "We need-we need to clean up. Yes." I got out of his grip and started working on the floor.
We worked like that for a while. When we were done, we went to Jeremy's room to talk with Damon about possible suspects.
"It was Katherine, Stefan, no doubt," Damon protested.
"But she was never invited in," Stefan argued.
"But what if she was? We were kissing, and-"
"Wait, what?" Stefan exclaimed. "You were kissing?"
"I had thought it was Elena. She was dressed the same. But there was something different, something I can't place…anyways, Jenna walked in on us, and she told her 'it's late, you should come inside,' and that was the invitation!"
"He's right," I told Stefan. "Because I definitely did not kiss him. The closest he's ever been is when I first met him, before I knew what you were, and he kissed my hand. That's it."
Damon smiled at the memory. "You have no idea how fun that was," he recalled. He sighed. "Too bad it doesn't work anymore."
"Back to the present, Damon," I commanded. "We need to figure out how to deal with Katherine. And Jeremy."
Just then, Jeremy stirred. We all turned to look at him. He sat up. "What happened?"
"You're transitioning," Stefan informed him.
"Congrats," Damon said mockingly.
"How do I complete it?" Jeremy asked.
"What, Anna never told you?" Damon mocked again. I could tell he enjoyed it because it was what he knew best. "You have to feed. On a human."
"I have to kill? But, I didn't want that!"
"You should have thought of that before you drank the blood and killed yourself," Damon scoffed.
"He doesn't have to kill, Damon," Stefan said.
"He doesn't?" I inquired.
"Well, if he has a willing subject, he doesn't have to kill them, just almost kill them." Stefan was staring at me with that serious look.
"Okay, I'll do it," I finally answered. "Just not from my neck, okay, Jer?"
Damon looked at Stefan and me. "Are you crazy?" he asked us. "Elena could be seriously injured. No, that's not going to work."
"We'll pull off Jeremy when Elena when it's been enough. She'll be fine." Stefan sounded so sure, so calm. I felt complete trust in him.
I gave Jeremy my wrist. He looked at it, sickened by what he was about to do. Then he bit it, and his face changed. He looked like a child who had been starving for months, and had finally received food. He bit harder, and I cried out in pain. He kept going, and it took both Damon and Stefan to pull him off of me.
I was scared of Jeremy for the first time in my life. He was completely changed, a different person. He looked like he was trying to break out of Damon's grip for more.
Stefan came up to me. "Here, drink," he told me. "It'll help you regain some of what you lost."
I looked at his pierced wrist. And then I drank. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted. But I kept drinking because Stefan had told me to. "Okay, that's enough," he calmly told me.
The second I was off, I gagged. I couldn't help it. "I'm sorry," I said to him. "It didn't taste very good." I tried to smile, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. What came onto my face was a very bad grimace.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Well, look at that," Damon called. Jeremy was gone. "Who knew?"
"Jeremy?" I called out the window. "Jer, where are you?"
There was a knock on the door. "I'll get it," Damon said. "You two stay here."
Stefan looked as if he was about to protest, but I listened without complaint. Damon was the strongest of all of us. If Katherine was back, he would be the most capable of handling it.
Then I looked at things from Stefan's perspective. Damon wasn't as over Katherine as Stefan was. Stefan would behave more rationally than Damon if he saw Katherine. But I believed that after kissing Damon an hour ago pretending to be me, she was hated by both brothers now.
"Elena?" Damon called. "It's for you."
I went downstairs, wondering what Damon meant. Jeremy was outside, unable to enter the house.
"Come in, Jeremy," I said to him. I should have figured that as soon as he was a full vampire, he wouldn't be able to get inside.
He walked inside, now able to come and go as he pleased. "What happened?" he asked Damon.
"You weren't invited in, so you had to wait for Elena or Jenna to invite you. Can't go into a household where humans live otherwise."
"Right," Jeremy stated. "So, what do we do now? 'Cause I want more."
"We'll deal with it." Stefan was downstairs now. Apparently he had gotten tired of waiting.
"Now, let's just rest. Elena, you should go to bed. Jeremy, you should pretend to sleep, even if you can't. For Jenna. We can't have her knowing, too, now can we?" Damon finished.
"Okay," I said. "C'mon, Jeremy, let's go."
"Wait," he said. "What about you guys?"
"I'll go with Elena, and Damon will stay with you," Stefan stated.
"It's settled then. Goodnight, Damon. Nite, Jer."
Stefan and I went to my room. "Stefan, what's going to happen? Because I'm pretty sure the last thing Mystic Falls needs is more vampires."
"I don't know," he admitted. "We'll figure it out, though. I promise. You should just sleep."
"Can you help me? I'm too agitated to go to bed." I put a heavy implication on the question.
"You want me to compel you so you can sleep? Sorry, Elena, I can't."
I took off my vervain necklace. "Now you can. Please?"
Stefan sighed. "Fine." Then his tones changed, and he looked deep into my eyes. "You want to sleep. You're going to go to bed and have a deep, dreamless sleep."
Sleep isn't that bad, I thought. If I just closed my eyes a little…. And just like that, I was asleep.
