Chapter 7
The kitchen was under his bedroom and both Rebekah and Freya were there, putting together food for their midday meal. They heard the thump against the wall outside and suddenly saw a few wet streaks of yellow on the east window. They also heard Kol swearing.
"He dumped that pot!" Rebekah stammered, glaring at the window.
"If he was not so much bigger than me, I would take him over my knee and spank him," Freya growled.
"I'd love to see you try." Rebekah had to laugh at the idea. "Don't make him really mad at you, sister. He can be really sneaky and mean."
"He wouldn't dare!"
"Yes, he would. There goes Elijah up the stairs. Let's go see what he does."
"Only for a minute. We have stuff cooking here," Freya reminded her. The two of them headed for the stairs.
Elijah had not heard the pot hit the wall, but he heard the comments of his sisters and the swearing of his brother. He entered Kol's room and found the young man glaring around his bedroom.
"What happened, Kol?" He noticed the unmade bed and that both the southern and eastern windows were open.
"That damned ghost! I was… It touched my butt!"
"Is it here now?"
"I don't know! I told you I can't see it."
Freya and Rebekah entered the room also.
"Freya, tell me you sense that spirit in here," Kol demanded.
She tried, but there was nothing but the slight breeze coming in both the windows and blowing the curtains.
"No. Sorry. Kol, why did you dump the pot out the window when we expressly asked you not to do that?"
"What difference does it make? People used to do that all the time. If we had a dog, he'd probably pee against those bushes anyway. And at least it was only pee!"
"It's a good thing because now you have to wash it off the wall and the kitchen window," Freya said. She was technically old enough to be his mother and she could speak in an imperious tone when she wanted to do so. "You are planning to do that, aren't you?"
"Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't my fault it hit the wall."
"You did it, you clean it up," Elijah added.
"I said I would. Okay? But how am I supposed to get rid of the ghost? I can't abide the damned thing."
"As for the spirit, we will think of something." Elijah wasn't happy there was a ghost in the house. He wasn't afraid of it, but its presence annoyed him, even though it seemed to be only Kol it was bothering. And why Kol? Was it because Kol was using this room? No, because it had been near him before they even chose rooms. It's presence was not making Kol any easier to live with.
Rebekah took a different approach to Kol's discontent. She went to him and put her arms around him. "We'll make it right somehow. I know this isn't what you would have chosen, but it's not so bad. We have food and a good roof over our heads and we have each other. Is that so bad?"
Kol, quite a bit taller than she was, put his arms around her and planted a brotherly kiss on the top of her blonde head. He was pleased that not everyone was angry with him. "I guess not. It's an okay place," he admitted with a smile, which vanished when he added, "But I hate ghosts."
"Hey, at least it's not a zombie." As far as she knew, she had never seen a real zombie.
"At least we would be able to see it. When's lunch?"
"I better get back down to the kitchen before something burns," Freya said and she hurried from the room.
By the time lunch was ready, Kol had splashed a couple of buckets of well water onto the wall and window and they were as clean as he intended to make them. He even rinsed out his chamber pot and returned it to its place under his bed. It was obvious that it would be less trouble to use the outhouse. Or perhaps he could water the scruffy bushes behind the smelly little shack.
"I wish we knew how long we would be here," Elijah said as the four sat around the kitchen table. "We might run out of food."
Freya nodded with a concerned frown. "You three can go without food for long periods, even if you don't want to. On the other hand, I need enough food to keep me alive."
"We could always turn you into one of us," Kol suggested. "Then you wouldn't have to worry about that. I'll have you know that, even though we would not starve to death, I personally would be grumpy as hell if I didn't get something to eat now and then."
"You're grumpy anyway," Rebekah told him.
"And there is no other human for Freya to feed on if we turned her," Elijah pointed out.
"I don't want to be a vampire, thank you."
"Then let us hope our food lasts us as long as we are here. Assuming this is late summer or early fall, we must do what we can to put aside those fruits and vegetables that will keep, either in the root cellar or dried."
"There are animals to eat," Kol pointed out. "If cold weather comes, meat would keep."
"That's true," Rebekah said, nodding. "If we are still here by spring, we can replant the garden. We'll have to save seeds."
They continued to talk about their situation. They had no idea how long their stay would be and how conservative they had to be. Not only was there the question of food, but also of wood, necessary for cooking and for heat.
They also talked about what was going on back in New Orleans. They had no way of knowing where Klaus was or what Marcel was going to do with him. The only thing they had been vaguely aware of for some hours was the fact that Hayley had gotten help from someone and had put each of their bodies into a coffin, the very coffins Klaus had always kept handy. Once in the coffins, none of them was even vaguely aware of anything else happening back there. By the time they had arisen that morning, the four at the farm house were completely cut off from the real world. But they still imagined what might be going on. They certainly wanted to believe that, as planned, Hayley had taken Hope and the coffins safely away from New Orleans.
As the afternoon wore on and evening came, the group was beginning to fall into a routine of taking care of the animals, bringing in water and fire wood and gathering what fruit and vegetables were ready to eat. Freya had found a small batch of yeast from which bread could be made and planned to make some the next day. Cream from the cow's milk was going to be made into butter. What was lacking was meat.
"I say we eat that rooster," Kol suggested again. He had been chased for the third time by the aggressive bird. It had also chased Rebekah and she agreed.
"We can't," Freya said with a sigh. "If we end up here for quite some time, we need baby chicks for more laying hens. In fact, I think I've found six eggs with developing chicks already."
"We can keep the females, but there is no reason to keep several roosters," Elijah said. "In addition to the poultry, that calf is a male. We can eat him, but some of the meat will spoil in this hot weather." They had discussed this before, but the idea of having enough to eat kept coming up.
Eventually, Elijah said, "Not only do I miss the electricity, but I miss a hot shower in the evening."
"There's a metal bathtub," Freya said, "but we'd have to heat several pots of water in order to take a real bath. I suggest we limit ourselves to what Aunt Dahlia always called a 'sponge bath.'"
"A rag, soap and hot water," Rebekah said. "Better than nothing."
"Another thing we are missing is two or three extra humans," Kol said. "Without them, we get no blood."
"There's always the animals," Rebekah said. "We can take some of theirs without harming them."
"That is true. Especially from the horse and cow," Elijah agreed.
Kol made a face of distaste. "I'll tell you what else we need the humans for."
"What? No one said anything about any humans, except me, coming here," Freya said with a frown.
"I don't know if you all have noticed, but there's no one here but us siblings," Kol pointed out in a snarky tone. "Just what are we supposed to do for intimate companionship?"
A/N Leave it to Kol to think of something like that. What would the family members do or not do with each other? I'll think about it. Thanks for reading!
