"Three drops of nightshade into a tea, preferably a strong black tea to mask the taste and your victim will die in their sleep," He says lightly, plucking the purple bud and holding it up for Bonnie to examine, "Or perhaps if you do not have tea available, you could add some droplets to a glass of bourbon neat, and your victim still wouldn't know."

Bonnie observes the poisonous plant, her brow crinkling as she considers yet another way to commit murder.

They had been like this all morning and well into the late afternoon, even after a short break for lunch on the porch he had pulled her back into the woods to look at every number of leaf and plant and tree, stating whether it would kill or heal, and he wanted her to have it memorized and categorized before they returned to New Orleans.

There was not going to be a test, the test would come when it was needed and any mistakes would be too late.

She gives the flower back to Klaus who holds it up to the sunlight, admiring its violet petals, "It is beautiful, isn't it?"

"It is."

He places the nightshade back into her hand and tells her to keep for they will practice with it later and then perches to the ground to pull at some rare roots surrounding the base of an oak tree for her to use for migraines.

"They will come in handy when you have overexerted yourself on a spell."

She gets down on her knees next to him and sticks her fingers into the cool dirt, tugging at the roots tangled into ground, "How come you know so much about magic?"

"My mother was a witch," He states as a matter of fact, "When I was a child, my siblings were not interested in magic so I was her lone pupil," he says without a hint of nostalgia.

Bonnie sits back on her haunches, the roots gathered in her shirt, suddenly saddened by the details of his beginning, imagining a young Klaus following the skirt of his mother, hoping to become a witch one day only to end up a vampire.

And she has a desire to place her soiled hands on each side of his neck and jerk his face to hers, and say the words, 'I'm sorry I ever helped your mother.'

Dizzy with confusion, she stands abruptly, the roots falling at her feet. "I can't stand the heat anymore." She mutters, walking off back towards the farmhouse.

BKBKBKBKBK

She's been thinking about a bath for two days now.

In a bath tub, deep enough to hold enough hot water to reach her chin, she thinks she will be able to make sense of all the kisses, and the memories of Klaus's mother and all of the death she is to be responsible for, but there isn't any running water or bath tub to speak of.

Besides being well aware of all of this, she twists the kitchen faucet knobs, only to hear a rumble deep in the house and witnessing an explosion of rust-filled air fill the sink.

The thought of washing off with a tee shirt and water bottles again makes her want to crumple to the floor.

She pads into the remnants of the sitting room, ripping cobwebs from a high back chair, plopping down into a cloud of dust, staring at a shirtless Klaus content lying on the floor with her grimoire hovering over his head as he reads.

"How long are we planning to stay out here?"

"Are the accommodations not to your liking?

She closes her eyes and sighs, "I would do anything for a bath."

He laughs and she hears the sudden snap of the grimoire closing.

"You have magic, Bonnie. You can give yourself anything you want."

"What about a cheeseburger?"

'Here," he says pushing the grimoire into her lap, "Look that over and witness the simplicity of what you are asking."

"The Art of Glamouring," She reads aloud and snaps her neck up at Klaus who had moved to be seated in front of her, "Glamouring? Isn't that just an illusion? I want a real bath, Klaus. I don't want to freaking imagine I had one."

"Imagination is the precursor of any desire becoming a reality, "He says walking his fingers lightly over her knee, making her very aware of each finger landing on her skin.

She moves to cross her legs and settles the book on her thigh.

He snorts and pulls her up from the chair with him until she is face to face with his chest, and he bites down on the tender side of his palm, dripping blood over the floor and Bonnie's feet.

"We can even do it together like you like it." He says with a slight smile.

She narrows her eyes at him, even though her mouth is watering to clench her teeth onto his hand and drink his blood. "I thought you wanted me to prove I can do magic by myself. No more handholding is what you said."

"You proved yourself. Now do you want that bath, or not?"

She didn't put up much of a fight.

The heart wants what the heart wants and she wants that bath.

And Klaus's blood.

She moans, forgetting herself as she sucks the blood straight from the puncture wounds, thinking of the fingertips grazing her face that were earlier tip-toeing across her knee and how she wants to start their adventure over, starting at the mound of her knee, traveling up the length of her thigh and over the span of her stomach and in between the valley of her breasts and over the bridge of her throat to settle over the curve of her mouth so she could kiss them and bite into them and enjoy the blood they may contain.

Her eyes are wide open, the dark pupils glassy and dilated to black saucers as Klaus envelops her, his mouth on her ear, "How badly do you wish to take a bath, Bonnie?

There is a guttural sound that escapes from her as she clamps her mouth down, pulling images from the primordial soup of her mind, conjuring up the house's former glory and bits and pieces of imagination that comes up for her when she imagines the word home.

Rag-time jazz lilts in the background of her heart thumping, and she sees the rotten wooden floors disintegrate and then instantaneously refashion themselves, lining up, one by one, gleaming with polish.

Water-stained walls vibrate and fall away, only to fly up again, brand new, fresh with paint and decorated with great oil paintings in gilded gold frames.

The naked warped windows break, each pane shattering onto the floor into jigsaw pieces and then seamlessly fitted back together into each empty square. The tattered cloth that was once hanging over the windows are rewoven into heavy silk curtains, the color of a robin's egg, that drape over each frame and pool onto the hardwood.

And she is faint with his blood, the rush of metallic flowing over her gums, and somewhere inside of her she believes that she really hasn't cast any glamouring spell, but has passed out from an overdose, and is only having a whimsical dream of the decay fleeing the farmhouse.

"Will you be taking all of me, love?"

His question penetrates through the flurry of her imaginings, speeds through any reasoning or rationalizing and goes straight down into the excited swirl in the middle of her.

The gramophone on the delicate antique table skips, the needle bobbing over the end of the song, the soft scratch of the vinyl record hanging in the air.

And she feels tiny bits of ice land and melt in her hair and on her eyelashes and feels the reverberation of Klaus's deep, genuine laughter that makes her smile from ear to ear and remember the hour she was born.

"Snow?"

And as his hand falls from her bloody red mouth, she attempts to speak but the pull of sleep makes her eyelids heavy and she collapses onto the hybrid and whispers that there better be a glorious bath waiting for her.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading. I had meant to get this chapter up a long time ago but summer school ain't no punk. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm already halfway finished with the next chapter so I pray I get it up before the month is done.