~ 4 ~
It was the shrill whistle of the tea kettle that pulled Elena out of her thoughts and back to the reality of the kitchen. Caroline was still talking, her voice bubbling with excitement and confusion. She hadn't even noticed that Elena had zoned out at all, and she continued to give voice to her issues with Tyler Lockwood and their new relationship.
Elena smiled as she shifted from her perch on a kitchen stool and moved to the stove. Preparing tea was so instinctive that her mind began to wander once more, back to her own confusing relationships. Caroline was a good friend, but Elena missed Bonnie awfully. When all of the supernatural drama with the vampires got to be too much, Bonnie, despite her witchiness, was one of the few people Elena could always go to for some "human" time. She was lonely without Bonnie.
She was surprised to realize she was also angry. She had argued with everyone about how to handle Klaus. Risking anyone else's life to save her own was not acceptable to her, but they had all conspired behind her back, Bonnie included. She had never wanted Bonnie involved in the first place! Why was Elena the one now being punished by this withdrawal of friendship?
"Am I boring you, Elena?"
Elena's head jerked up, startled. "No, Caroline, I'm sorry. I'm not being a good friend at all today."
"It's just stupid boy talk," Caroline mumbled as she toyed with a strand of her perfectly styled blonde hair. "What's wrong?"
"It's Bonnie. I'm worried about her and upset that she's avoiding me. And angry because… Why is this my fault? Oh, God. I can't believe I just said that out loud." Elena groaned out of disgust with herself and dropped her head into her hands. "I'm a horrible person."
Caroline reached over and placed a comforting hand on Elena's shoulder. "No, sweetie, you're not. There's no way you can be horrible with how much you obsess over everyone's safety." That made Elena slump even further down in shame. "You're not the only one she's avoiding, you know. She hasn't returned any of my calls or texts. I haven't gotten up the courage to actually go over there and have her slam the door in my face."
"She sees Jeremy. He doesn't say much about their time together. Just that she's withdrawn and we just need to give her time. But it's been weeks. It feels like….she's not ever coming back to us."
"We can't think like that, Elena. And we won't let that happen."
Elena sat up straight and looked at Caroline. They had been best friends since grade school but it seemed as if this were the first time she was really seeing the other young woman. Did Caroline even realize how much she had changed when she had transitioned? Yes, she was still dramatic but more and more there were moments of profound caring and insight. Becoming a vampire seemed to have endowed Caroline with a confidence that made everyone take notice.
"Thank you, Caroline."
The blonde vampire cocked her head and glanced down at the hand Elena had placed over her own. "For what?" she asked curiously.
Before Elena could give an explanation, there came a loud crash came from the front hall. Both women jump in surprise. Elena and Caroline exchanged a quick glance between them before rushing through the living room to see what had happened.
"Jeremy!" Elena cried as she and Caroline cleared the corner and saw her brother sprawled on the floor, half in, half out the front door.
Instantly, Caroline's predator senses flipped on and she cautiously moved passed Jeremy to the front porch, searching for signs of a perpetrator. Nothing looked out of the ordinary outside the house. The only sounds to reach her ears were those of the neighborhood going about their evening business.
"Jeremy?" Elena called softly, gently patting her brother's cheek, trying her best not to disturb him but trying to get him to regain consciousness. He was breathing and his eyes twitched beneath his closed lids, but they did not open.
"There isn't anyone out there," Caroline reported from the doorway, "and his car's out front."
"How could he drive in this condition? Caroline, help me get him over to the couch!"
Jeremy's t-shirt hitched up across his ribs as Caroline transferred him to the couch. Now they both could see deep bruising on his side that stretched out across his lowest ribs.
"He took a bad beating," Caroline reported clinically, almost dispassionately. "Where was he?"
Elena's head snapped up immediately. "Bonnie!"
Caroline was out the door and gone before Elena could even get her cell phone out from the pocket of her jeans.
It wasn't more than fifteen minutes after Jeremy's crash landing on the entry hall floor that the Gilbert house's living room had taken on the ominous feel of a war council. Elena worried at her lower lip while she contemplated which was worse: that any of them were there at all, or the fact that this type of gathering had become a near common occurrence in their lives. Sure, this time they were enjoying a change in scenery by being here and not at the boarding house, but being surrounded by mementos of her family and childhood brought no comfort to Elena. Silently she worried that those cherished memories would now carry the same taint that had seeped into all of the other dark corners of their lives.
Across the coffee table from her Alaric sat on the couch next to Jeremy, trying to coax the boy into re-telling the story one more time in an attempt to flesh out any more details that might have been missed.
"What's the point, Ric?" Damon growled as he paced behind them. "He was on the wrong side of a magic attack. Bonnie's missing. It's pretty simple what our next move is. How many other witches in town do we know of?"
"Other witches?" Stefan spoke up from beside Elena. "You've known about other witches being in Mystic Falls?"
"No," Alaric answered, his voice filled with annoyance at Damon's obstinacy.
Damon's pacing came to an immediate halt. "No? Remind me again, Ric, who exactly was the curvy brunette I had lunch with today?"
"All right, you two, enough! What is going on?" Elena demanded, no longer able to listen to the bickering. And even though both men had been equally aggravating, she focused her stern gaze firmly on Alaric.
"Okay, yes," Alaric corrected himself, exasperated, "there's a witch in town. One witch. Not witches."
"One, three, ten, what does it matter?" Damon jumped right back into his rant. "Seren Lancaster is a witch, she's a stranger, and she was getting pretty damn chummy with our witch who has now been…witchnapped! Please don't tell me I'm the only person in this room who can do that kind of math."
"Bonnie isn't your anything!" Jeremy snapped at Damon and then clutched his head between his hands as pain stabbed at his temples.
"Hey, Jer, just try to calm down." Alaric glared daggers at his drinking buddy. Damon, in return, threw up his hands in dramatic exasperation and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
"Sniping at each other isn't helping us to find Bonnie," Caroline stated calmly from her perch by the front picture window. "Damon's right though." The combination of those words tasted funny in her mouth.
"Well, hallelujah! Thank you, Blondie!"
"If there's a new witch in Mystic Falls," Stefan cut in, blatantly ignoring his brother's outburst, "she's the closest thing we have to a lead."
"Yes! Good! Let's go!"
Alaric shook his head, defeated. For some reason he just didn't harbor the same paranoia over the woman that Damon did, but he knew there was no logical way he could explain it to the rest of them when he couldn't even really explain it to himself. He gave Jeremy's back one last reassuring pat before he rose to his feet. "Let's go then."
The only sounds inside the apartment were the soft hum from the refrigerator and the gentle inhalation and exhalation of breath. The curtains were drawn, blocking out a good amount of street light. None of the inside lights were on, Seren had turned them all off after pouring out a circle of salt on the bare wood floor. She had left a small gap in the outline, just a large enough space for her to step into the circle without disturbing the drawing. Now she was sitting dead center in the circle, a handful of salt and a small touch of power sealing her safely within the sacred space.
A pleasant calm spread out from Seren's core to her limbs as she breathed, focusing her mind and opening herself up to the power within her. It was a simple meditation and it only took her a handful of breathes to become completely centered. Her eyelids fluttered as she drew in a big breath and as she exhaled she pushed out a stream of magic. Fire light brightened the room with a soft yellow glow as dozens of white pillar candles flickered to life. They outlined the salt circle and covered just about every flat surface in the living area of the apartment. It was beautiful and made Seren smile.
"Blessed be," she whispered to the room, sending her thanks out to Nature and the Universe for gifting her with magic.
Seren closed her eyes once more and settled down in her spot. She opened herself up to the power again and just like with the lighting of the candles she pushed the power out away from her in an expanding circle, like ripples on still water.
The waves started slowly, rolling out into the apartment, passing through the open space and then washing over furniture before finally pushing through the walls and passing out into the night, moving over everyone and everything in Mystic Falls. Emotions and sensations came back to Seren, her brain processing the feedback as nothing more than average town life and activity which dissipated and shifted more and more to nature responses as the power pushed towards and past the incorporated town areas.
Soil, water, leaves; she could smell and taste all parts of a forest. The heartbeats of squirrels, deer and other creatures joined with her own and pulsed through her body. There was a cool breeze blowing that night, it raised goose bumps on her bare arms back in the apartment and the exhilaration made her push faster.
The invisible boundary her power collided with made her breath catch in her lungs and physically rocked her backwards. Seren's eyes flew wide open as she pushed her palms to the floor to regain her balance. The candle light flared brilliantly as the power she had sent out snapped back towards her and then guttered low as the witch gasped for air and released her hold on the bulk of the magic.
It took a couple of minutes for Seren to regain her sense of stability and recoup enough energy to push herself up to her feet. She released the power from her circle with no amount of ceremony and broke the salt boundary with her foot as she dashed towards the bathroom. Her body shivered as she splashed cold water on her heated cheeks. Her mind raced as she stared, unfocused, at her reflection in the bathroom vanity.
There had been no feeling in the barrier she had collided with. No imprint of good or evil. Just a massive wall of power in the middle of a wooded area near a town with only one resident witch who had no access to her powers. She had to find that spot and figure out what was happening.
Seren ran from the bathroom to the kitchen ad snatched her jacket off the back of a kitchen chair. She flung the door open as fast as her hand could work the doorknob and collided with two solid chests.
"Woah, Witchy, going somewhere fast?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." Seren stared up into cold blue eyes, but she did not flinch or show any signs of surprise at the presence of the two men on her doorstep. "Perhaps we can have this conversation some other time?"
"Some other time isn't really going to work for us. We've got a bit of a problem. Now."
This time Alaric answered, "Bonnie Bennett is missing."
"But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
Seren's temper flared and her spine went ridged at Damon's accusation. "Missing?"
"Jeremy Gilbert went by her house earlier this evening," Alaric explained, doing his best not to let his irritation with Damon bleed into his tone of voice. "He said they were attacked in Bonnie's house. Someone incapacitated him with magic and roughed him up pretty badly. They were gone when he came to and so was Bonnie."
Seren knew then without a doubt that if she could find that strange magic she would find Bonnie. The why was still a mystery that tugged on every fiber of her being. Her eyes shifted between Alaric and Damon before sternly nodding her head and crossing the safety of the apartment's threshold, closing the door behind her. "One of you has to drive."
Damon's eyes bore a hole into Seren's back as she pushed between him and Alaric and rushed down the hall. "I sooo love it when witches come to town."