A.N.: Hi everyone, want to say a huge thank-you for all the recent reviews. In my head, Joshua Salvatore is a combo in looks of Damon Salvatore and Daryl Dixon.

Also, I am updating this from the Jailhouse Hostel in Christchurch, New Zealand! I had to pay for the wifi (weeps!) but I've had many requests and prompts and threats for updates, so here we are! I've also been thinking (again) of a GoT story I've wanted to write for ages – please no spoilers, I haven't watched any of the new season…

Dangerous Beauty

21

Slater

An afternoon watching eight-year-olds swarm around a soccer-ball like bumblebees had drifted into a sunset during which she sat on a bench at the sports park answering texts and emails, catching up with people via phone-call and reflecting on the fact Sarah's little sister had been conspicuous in her absence from practice. She ate a snack-shack dinner alone, pondering when to show Tyler the journal and memory-card Mason had entrusted to her before he had skipped town. She had watched enough of the video to know she wasn't sure showing Tyler before his first transformation was a good idea.

It had terrified the shit out of her and she wasn't even the one who had to go through it. But showing that to Tyler? It would give him an idea, but how could anyone be prepared for what she had seen? There was no understanding what she would never have to experience – but Tyler would. She shouldn't have watched the video, shouldn't have read Mason's journal, Mason shouldn't have given them to her. Ignorance was bliss. But she knew Tyler too well. Already saw a shift in him. Triggering his curse had scared the hell out of him like nothing in his life ever had. The shadow of Sarah's death still lingered, too fresh. People hadn't been told yet about Sarah. But they knew, and it was a secret that had bonded them all together – Tyler, her, Caroline, Jeremy. Matt had been knocked out cold by Caroline, didn't remember a thing except for getting uncharacteristically drunk and picking a fight with Tyler who, for the first time, had resisted the urge to throw a punch.

She sighed, glancing at her phone, mildly curious by the interruption to her conflicted mental process, and raised her eyebrows interestedly as she accepted a phone-call.

"Hello, Slater," she smiled, excited.

"You free for coffee tomorrow morning?" he asked by way of greeting.

"For semla I could be," Giulia said, smiling to herself. He had something. Slater chuckled.

"Yeah, I found something," he confirmed. "It may be nothing, I don't know, but it might be worth you taking a look."

"Alright. I'll come by," Giulia said. "What time?"

"Is ten too early for you?"

"Ten's good." She'd have the rest of the day to get things sorted out. She finished her tray of nachos, dumped it in the trash-can and made her way back to her car. It was still warm inside, the heat continuing to rise every day after a brief respite the week after Spring Break. Virginia summers were always sticky, but Giulia lived for the stifling heat. Everyone was happier in the sun. She sucked on her straw, still working through the bucket of fresh lemonade she had bought with her nachos and slung herself into the driver's seat of her car. After a full valet and a new paint-job, the Beetle was almost unrecognisable – several times she had walked past it in a parking-lot, still looking for faded red.

There were things she had to do, things she needed to get sorted and out of the way. Like hiding the moonstone. The boys were out, doing God knew what – it was a Saturday-night; Stefan and Elena were still on the outs; Damon was most likely catching Liz up on the Sarah situation. But it gave her a window, and she had the evening to herself, Elijah away 'on business'. That was code for she should mind her own, and make contingencies. Something was about to happen.

The Boarding House was quiet when she arrived. Early-evening sunlight still filtered through the stained-glass windows, and the house was warmer than usual. The Boarding House always had a coolness to it that had nothing to do with its vampire inhabitants not needing central-heating. But the boys were out, and she took the empty bourbon bottles as indication of where Damon would be; replenishing the stocks. She dawdled into Stefan's room, finding his most recent diary on the desk; she peered over it, reading the latest entries. Dark stuff. But he was at least honest about their human-blood experiment. He drank more bourbon, and doubled his consumption of carbs. He reflected on Tyler triggering his curse, how Damon thought the best course of action was to kill him rather than risk a nip on full-moon nights. Stefan thought differently, and surprised Giulia; he expressed admiration at Caroline and Giulia putting in so much effort to embrace Tyler into their group and help him through his transition.

She poured herself a drink and meandered upstairs to the attic doorway. It was always ominous heading up there, and it needed more mental preparation than to just wander up there and deal with a hundred and fifty-years of pack-rat relatives hoarding everything they thought they might need in the future – and had never used again. Slowly but surely Giulia had started working through the junk, she had donated a lot of it to the now-permanent Founders' display at the museum. But the amount of crap up here made Stefan's room look sparsely-decorated and well-organised. Old furniture, boxes upon boxes, cardboard ones scribbled over, old-school steamer trunks, battered metal footlockers, clothing-racks from which garment-bags hung heavily, full of vintage furs and the extensive 1950s wardrobe of Giulia's grandmother Doll, Mystic Falls' very own fashion icon. Old carpets were rolled up, car-battery chargers, old furniture considered even too bulky and antique to fit with the rest of the house! They could open up a museum charting the evolution of the wireless, radios and televisions, she doubted her family had ever thrown out an old vacuum, there were vintage kitchen appliances – having undying relatives had given previous generations a greater sense of the value of history. All of this crap was history, but it was ridiculous keeping it all in here. As she picked through random boxes and things, she made notes of places she needed to look up – surely there were museums that would appreciate a legitimate early-1920s wireless?

Her family had been in the habit of putting anything broken up in the attic rather than throw it away or immediately repair it. Pack-rats. It was a wonder none of her relatives had died, crushed under hoarded newspapers, which she found several cardboard boxes full of.

Clothes, film-reels, photographs and jewellery, unique pieces of furniture like a glorious Art Deco dressing-table, she made a note to keep and move to her own place. But she wasn't here to go through her relatives' crap. She was here to hide the moonstone, and wanted to find the most obscure nook or cranny to stuff it where no-one would ever find it. Up here was perfect.

But what she dreaded finding was a body.

Hey, it wouldn't surprise her. But she didn't have time to dig a grave or get Damon to compel a crematorium-worker, or deal with Stefan playing the blame-game with Damon. They were at a good place, Stefan's disappointment in Damon if she found a sixty-year-old corpse was just something she didn't care to indulge him in.

She squawked in pain as she stubbed her toe on the sharp corner of a steamer trunk. She glanced down, grimacing at the blood flourishing from her big toe. Sighing, she turned and sat down on the flat top of the trunk, lifting her heel to rest on it as she pulled a Kleenex from her bag, wrapping it over her toe. It throbbed more from impact than the bleeding, but she sighed, yawning in the miserable Amber gloom – it was hot up here! There was no ventilation – she needed to fix that. She may have to recruit Stefan and Damon to help her go through all of this crap – hell, she'd get Caroline in on it, she'd love it – before she could get a contractor to take a look and see what improvements could be made to climate-control the attic. Holding her toe, she glowered down at the offending trunk, sympathising with Harry Potter when he'd kicked his Hogwarts trunk and got nothing for it but a throbbing toe. At least he'd been wearing shoes. Her pretty sandals were not the think to be wearing while going through the attic. She'd dig out her steel-toed boots next time. And make sure with Meredith she was all up-to-date with her immunisation shots.

The trunk, she frowned at… She should have known, really. It was a legitimate, antique Louis Vuitton. Battered and much-loved, but recognisable as the label-making flat-topped steamer trunks Vuitton had become known for.

"Hello?!" Giulia jumped, glancing up, following the noise. Caroline? Oh. She'd forgotten – she had invited Caroline and Tyler via text to meet her at the Boarding House to hang out. They had the best bourbon in town, and she got the sense from Tyler's texts that he really needed a drink.

"Up in the attic," Giulia called, not bothering to raise her voice much. "Fair warning, I stubbed my toe and it's bleeding."

Caroline appeared moments later, hair gleaming in the dull golden lamplight, raising her eyebrows at the expansive attic stuffed almost to the rafters. Tyler followed behind her, gym-bag slung over his shoulder. At least he'd showered before leaving the gym; he dumped the bag outside the attic so it didn't get misplaced, raising his eyebrows around as well.

"You know, you really shouldn't be wearing sandals if you're trying to work through all of this stuff," Caroline chided, a bottle of bourbon and several glasses in her hands.

"And you really shouldn't be stealing Damon's favourite vintage," Giulia commented, shrewdly eyeing the label on the bottle. "But that is the best. Crack her open."

"So…we're spending our Saturday night drinking bourbon in your attic," Tyler rolled his eyes, chuckling.

"And spring-cleaning," Giulia added, lifting up a battered shoebox full of cassette-tapes pointedly. She sighed, glancing around the huge attic. "Y'know, I used to think if I could clear this stuff out, it'd be like Little Women where the sisters all meet in the attic for their secret newspaper meetings."

"It would be a pretty cool place to hang out," Caroline mused. "So is that your next project after we finish building the teardrop-trailer?"

"I think it could be," Giulia mused.

"What're you gonna do with this place?" Tyler asked, glancing around the attic. "You know, my mom's thinking of selling the house?"

"What?" Caroline blurted.

"Yeah. I mean, it's mine and Mason's and my dad's family-home and Mom loves it, loves the status it gives her, but I think she's been meeting with the accountants," Tyler sighed.

"Well, the Mayor only makes so much and your dad threw more lavish parties than anyone in town," Giulia said fairly. "I guess your family has more branches than mine, though, with your dad's sister and everything… Guess it all has to be shared out."

"And that explains why you have all this crap," Caroline said, poking idly through a box.

"Yeah. No surviving uncles or aunts, no other relatives whatsoever… Still, at least I don't have to share the vintage clothing and jewellery with anyone but you," Giulia smiled at Caroline, who chuckled.

"I think I'm too tall for most of those clothes," she said, eyeing the clothing-racks. "Although I would love a look for ideas for the Sixties dance."

"I thought you were going as Jackie O."

"Oh, I am. I meant, ideas for you," Caroline said, and Giulia rolled her eyes. Caroline glanced at Tyler. "Are you going?"

"To the dance? I mean, I guess, if it's not on a full-moon," Tyler shrugged, and he reached for the bottle of bourbon Caroline had set down. "Kinda wouldn't mind just chilling out, you know? Maybe I could stay here and go through all this crap for you."

"Uh, no. The only way we're all going to get through all this supernatural drama is if we take the opportunity to enjoy ourselves whenever we can," Caroline declared. "That means you're going to the dance." Giulia caught Tyler's eye, and they both stifled smirks as they bent over boxes, rooting through random junk.

Caroline went to go and get trash-bags while Giulia sourced Stefan's record-player, and they got into the mood for the upcoming Sixties dance by listening to Stefan's favourite 1960s records.

"So, this is like a legitimate Louis Vuitton steamer trunk?" Caroline said, glancing at the trunk they were now using as a coffee-table, fingers of bourbon poured out into Baccarat-crystal tumblers.

"Yep. Could be worth a couple grand if I find the right buyer," Giulia said, eyeing it.

"I wouldn't sell it – looks good as a coffee-table," Caroline said.

"I'll gift it to you for your first house," Giulia promised. "Come on, let's take a look inside. Box at a time." They had already gone through three cardboard-boxes full of her dad's random crap, extension cables and phone-chargers and ancient camcorders. They'd watched a video of one of Giulia and Tyler's earliest soccer games, chubby-cheeked little kids in t-shirts that swamped them, Band-Aids on bloody knees, lopsided ponytail buns and missing teeth. They'd laughed when, instead of pelting after the ball, Giulia had fallen back to help Tyler off the grass, where he had sprawled after colliding with another boy. Four years old, Tyler bawling, little Giulia, looking full of cold and sucking a pacifier, had straightened his t-shirt and dusted the grass and blood off his knees, taken his hand and jogged after the ball with a determined scowl.

"Oh my god, you are so cute!" Caroline cooed, laughing, as Tyler chuckled, leaning over her shoulder to watch. "And you haven't changed at all, look at that scowl, that's like, 'Get out of my way, don't mess with me, stay away from me, I-will-cut-a-bitch, you haters!'"

"Yeah, that's kind of how I describe my eyeliner look at the moment," Giulia nodded thoughtfully, smiling at the camcorder screen. "Okay, we'll put all these in the To Be Reviewed pile."

"Come on, what's in the Louis Vuitton?" Caroline prompted, and they removed the box of cassette-tapes, labelled in handwriting Giulia didn't recognise with obscure references. Placed in the 'To Be Reviewed' pile, definitely. Giulia took a swig of bourbon before the others took hold of the other glasses and the bottle of bourbon, shoving a hamster-ball, some old Tupperware and an empty gas canister away, to unlock and lift open the lid of the trunk.

"Whoa," Tyler said under his breath, as they all stared at the jumbled contents.

"So…who the hell did this belong to?" Caroline asked, staring. Inside it looked like…the contents of the Winchesters' Impala. Only, with more wooden stakes and vervain flowers scattered about, and odd symbols and things all over the inside of the lid. There were the glossy folders you used to get when picking up developed photos from Rite-Aid, lots of beaten-up journals, and weapons. Folded maps, weathered and old, Manila folders full of newspaper cuttings and police reports.

"I think…I think this belonged to my uncle," Giulia said quietly. A road-map of Pennsylvania was on the top of a pile of leather-bound journals and books, a copy of White Fang and Call of the Wild, The Lord of the Flies, a copy of Moliere's work and another by Voltaire, nature books and magazines…on wolves. She picked up a large metal tin, opened it to reveal old photographs, protected from time and light, the elements, coils of negatives protected in little sleeves.

"Is that your dad?" Tyler asked quietly, as Giulia slowly went through a handful of photographs.

"Yeah," Giulia said softly.

"He's handsome," Caroline said sadly. Giulia nodded. Not up to Damon's standards, perhaps, but her dad had definitely been good-looking in his younger days. Time and grief had taken a lot from him.

"Who's the other guy?" Tyler asked curiously.

"I think that must be my dad's brother, Joshua," Giulia said thoughtfully. She'd never even seen pictures of him, her dad was so private about all the kinds of stuff that had happened before she was born. The people in his life before then were nearly all gone by the time her dad had been killed. Only Liz, Tyler's dad. "God, he's hot."

"He's your uncle!"

"And you accused me of being kissing-cousins with Stefan," Giulia reminded her, and Caroline chuckled, blushing slightly.

"Your uncle looks more like Damon," Tyler remarked. "Not like obviously, but I mean, you look more like your uncle than your dad."

"My mom had the same colouring," Giulia said. Joshua Salvatore had been dark-haired and olive-skinned where her dad had been a light-brunette, blue-eyed. She flipped through more pictures, and stared. "Oh my god." It looked like Caroline, beaming back at her. "Caroline, it's your mom!"

"What?"

"Yeah, and…Tyler's dad. That's Miranda – and that is definitely Grayson Gilbert. Wow. Jeremy really looks like him. That's my dad," Giulia smiled sadly. Set against the backdrop of the Impala long-forgotten in the rundown stables, a group of people in their early-twenties grinned back at the camera. The hairstyles and clothing indicated late-Eighties, maybe even early Nineties. But that was definitely Liz, though Caroline looked so like her it was startling. In Giulia's entire life she'd never seen Liz with long hair. She looked so like Caroline they might've been twins. Liz was as stunning then as she was beautiful now. There was Giulia's dad, grinning in a way she had never seen him do, easy, full of life, relaxed. Beside him, his arms slung around younger Liz, was Joshua. Smirking over Liz's shoulder in a very Damon-esque way at the camera, hugging Liz to his front, blue-eyed and olive-skinned, dark-hair falling into his hooded eyes, wearing a rad leather jacket he might've inherited from Damon's Seventies punk phase. Probably was, actually, she thought, squinting at it.

For three supernatural teenagers, they spent a really punk-rock night in the attic, sitting thighs pressed against each other as they went through that tin of photographs. Looking into their parents' lives in a way none of them could ever have predicted, these were the photos kids never realised their own children might ever see. The future mayor getting stoned with the future sheriff! Young Miranda and Grayson making out at a bonfire party; Giulia's long-missing uncle kissing Liz's cheek.

Just looking through the pictures it was so interesting to see who their parents had once been. Liz was now the Sheriff, but she had once been a blushing young twenty-something clearly in love with Giulia's relaxed, edgy uncle. There was a photograph of Joshua and Zach together, they had their arms slung around each other's shoulders, grinning from ear to ear, holding beer-bottles and (in her uncle's case) a joint, mid-laugh, eyes sparkling with the kind of mirth Giulia had never seen in her dad… She had never known her dad truly happy. How could he be – his brother was missing after twenty-odd years and the woman he had loved more than anything in the world was dead. All he'd had was Giulia.

It was strange, seeing their parents as only a few years older than they were now.

"What the hell?" Giulia murmured, setting her crystal tumbler down as Tyler and Caroline giggled over a few photographs of Carol's hair when she appeared in a photograph. She had spotted another photograph, buried under piles of others in the tin, but frowned and plucked it out.

Three men, arms slung around each other's shoulders, grinning from ear to ear, drinking and smoking. Damon, Joshua…and another man. With glorious blonde hair and cheekbones that could cut glass. Blazing blue eyes, and a charming white grin that was at once entrancing and lethal. He reminded her of a lion…or a wolf, Giulia thought to herself, staring at the picture. She had seen that face before, in Damon's single trunk full of memories he cared to keep. And on the wall of Billy's Bar.

The original Billy. The Original Willem.

So Joshua had known an Original. And from the outfit, the hairstyle, Giulia wagered Damon had seen Joshua shortly before his disappearance… Had Willem had something to do with that? She remembered her dad once telling her that the Sheriff's Department only managed to track down her uncle Joshua by his car. His beloved Impala had been abandoned in Pennsylvania, on a backroad heading out of Philadelphia. Covered in parking tickets. No Joshua.

"Who's that?"

"Someone whose face shouldn't be in my uncle's photo-album," Giulia said quietly. Philadelphia, she thought. Billy had told her that when the Original Willem had left New York City, he'd told Billy he'd planned to go to Thailand. Billy had doubted he ever did, but most likely wouldn't be able to guess where his friend had ended up… But Giulia…

Willem had fled New York City when he had bumped into Elijah on the street by chance. If she'd been Willem, dead set against mixing it up with his family-members, she'd have stayed close enough that she could keep an eye on things, but far enough away they'd never suspect she'd be that close… Pennsylvania…

Where had the Impala gotten all those parking-tickets? Where had her uncle truly disappeared? And why had he been in Pennsylvania – why was Joshua in a photograph with his immortal great-great-great-grandfather and an Original? Elijah's second-youngest surviving brother, someone he hadn't seen in a thousand years. The one who had struggled most with what they had become, complained least, and had taken the first opportunity to flee his siblings… Possibly the son of Rollo, the werewolf. Rollo's first son by Esther…

"Who is it?" Caroline asked softly. "I've seen him before, he was in a photo at Billy's in New York."

"I think…I think this is one of the Originals," Giulia said quietly.

"The what?" This, from Tyler.

"One of the Originals, the first family of vampires," Giulia said quietly. She glanced at Caroline, frowning. "Have I not told you the story?"

"I don't think so," Caroline said. So Giulia topped off their glasses, and gave a brief version of the story of the genesis of the vampire species, the war with the werewolves prompting a mother to protect her children with a spell that accidentally created the vampires, ending with, "…every vampire is descended from one of the Originals."

"So vampires are like an experiment gone wrong?" Caroline frowned, then shrugged as if this conclusion was fair.

"Well, I'm certain there could be some improvements," Giulia said fairly. "They were created to protect a mother's children from werewolves."

"So you think this guy is one of the Original vampires… Doesn't look much like a vampire to me," Tyler remarked, eyeing the blonde in the photograph.

"He looks really hot," Caroline murmured. The bourbon had started getting to her. But Giulia agreed. That man was fine. His photograph was very interesting. He hadn't aged, just like Elijah hadn't. So he had that going for him. If what she thought was true, that was very interesting… Mason had told her werewolf lifetimes were extended, but not indefinite, and due to the nature of the supernatural conflict between werewolves and vampires, few werewolves reached 'old age'. She was curious…how did a spell to create vampires work when it overlaid the latent potential of a werewolf? Surely there had to be repercussions of that. Nature demanded balance, after all – how did nature balance a werewolf with vampire traits forced over the top?

Klaus had had the latent potential of a werewolf when his mother had created the first vampires. According to Elijah, when he made his first kill as a vampire Klaus had triggered the werewolf gene latent in him. So the werewolf curse was strong enough to override Esther's spell. But only in her children; Giulia doubted a kid who hadn't triggered his curse could be given vampire blood, be killed and transition, would then trigger his werewolf trait… Could he?

The Originals were the very first of their species. Esther's magic had diluted when her children had created more of their kind, siring more vampires. But an Original was stronger, would linger in pain for days but not die from a werewolf-bite, and could compel other vampires…

Could someone with the latent werewolf gene be turned into a vampire and awaken those werewolf traits? Would they want to?

To combine Tyler's natural instincts with the unnatural urges forced on Caroline by magic…combined, how did they work together? The pack-mentality of the werewolf versus the vampire, the antithesis of unity through the Originals' teachings… If werewolves were pack-animals, in touch with their nature, vampires were stuck in time. Most were too old not to remember the world an entirely different place, more brutal, less civilised, the Originals themselves had been feudal, vicious soldiers when they needed to be, untiring farmers otherwise, carving out lives and raising families in a harsh land in a very harsh time. Vampires, in their very essence, were stuck.

Watching her two friends go through photographs, Giulia wondered. She poured them another drink, and they sat listening to music, going through old photographs of people who were mostly dead, making up stories about what had been happening in those pictures, and she asked them questions, comparing the alcohol-honest answers. Tyler's instinct versus Caroline's. Werewolf versus vampire. But she had to gauge personality against instinct, too, and that was the more difficult thing. She knew who Caroline was, but Caroline was learning who Tyler could be, the boy Giulia had sometimes seen glimpses of when he didn't think people were looking. When he knew she wouldn't hold it against him.

Whatever she learned from Tyler and Caroline about their basic natural instincts as a werewolf and vampire, she had never met Klaus or Willem to know how they would react to those same instincts. She knew enough of how Elijah had been raised to know the rest of his siblings had been brought up on the same values; honesty, a deep sense of family loyalty, to protect the vulnerable and care for the communities they built. To fight and die in the protection of the things he loved – his family. But Willem had fled his family. That sense of family loyalty Elijah had clung to for a thousand years despite every atrocity, always and forever, had not stuck with Willem in the same way. And from what she had heard of Klaus, he had always had a measure of narcissism and irresponsibility, and whether he had been given the same values as his siblings, they had warped over the centuries. An impossible narcissist, paranoid and self-pitying.

How…how would he acclimate to the werewolf traits rushing to the fore after them having been smothered for a millennium by his vampire instincts? Elijah had told her it had been only seven nights after Klaus had triggered the werewolf curse that Esther had placed Klaus under the spell he had been hellbent on breaking ever since. Seven days and nights as a hybrid, a millennium as a vampire. What did Klaus expect would happen when he broke the 'curse'? What had he built it up in his mind to be? And what was a hybrid's true nature?

Food for thought. And further incentive to continue her research. She took the photograph and tucked it into her bag, and while the others listened to music and had fun going through her family's ancestral junk, Giulia went through Joshua's belongings.

Maybe her dad had never thought she'd ever be going through this stuff. Maybe he had anticipated one day she might, but either way she believed her dad had left his brother's things just as he had found them in the Impala when the Sheriff's Department had finally tracked the car down outside Philadelphia. She found the last journal her uncle had written in, with a section of a roadmap annotated and stuffed inside, and when she shuffled out of the house following Tyler and Caroline to their own cars, she drove back to her house and tucked herself in bed with Firenze and a shoebox of journals.

At ten a.m. the next morning she knocked on the door of Slater's studio-apartment. Unlike Stefan, Slater was not a pack-rat. Clean, simple lines, textures, and a conglomeration of rapid-speed computers all whirring away, churning out information.

"Hey," Slater smiled. "You made it. Come on in. Oh, this is my girlfriend, Alice. Alice, this is-"

"Giulia Salvatore – No way!" the toothy brunette gaped, eyes popping.

"Hi," Giulia smiled awkwardly.

"Hey, don't you have to get to work?" Slater said, leaning in to give Alice a kiss on the cheek. Alice gave him an excited look before picking up her bag and departing. Giulia raised an eyebrow at Slater as the door shut behind her.

"She's obsessed with vampires. Almost as much as I am," Slater said, with an easy smile, chuckling to himself as he showed her into the living-area, where he had set up a tea-tray laden with fresh coffee and cardamom semla buns.

"I'm not a vampire," Giulia reminded him.

"No, but after what you did at the Fell tomb and the farmhouse, you're as close to Buffy as she'll ever get," Slater chuckled, and Giulia raised a hand to her heart.

"Slater…that is so sweet," she sighed. He chuckled. "How's your weekend been?"

"Good, thanks," Slater smiled. "Took the morning off to meet with you, so that's nice."

"You didn't have to do that for me," Giulia said, suddenly anxious. This whole mess was taking up her time and effort, she didn't want it bleeding into other people's lives. Especially when they had businesses to run.

"It's okay, they've got it handled down there," Slater said, shrugging. "It's good for me to take a step back every once in a while. I can never remember, do you have creamer?"

"Just black, thank you," Giulia smiled, as Slater poured two cups of coffee. "I have to say, I think your coffee's some of the best in Richmond."

"It's all about the roast," Slater smiled. "But I won't give you a lecture on single-source coffee beans and the roasting process." He offered her the coffee and a bun on a little plate. Everything was clean, white and plain but crisp. "You're here for the Originals."

"One, specifically," Giulia said, smiling as she accepted the coffee. Being invited into a new person's home always made her a little nervous, it was perfectly natural, but Slater was so…nice, so shy and intellectual she sometimes forgot he was a vampire. Only the fact he could only sit in on Miss Sheila's evening lectures reminded her.

"And you had to pick the most elusive one," Slater chuckled, shaking his head. "The one most people believe is a true myth."

"Did you find anything?"

"Not on Willem, no…" Slater said, glancing at Giulia with a small smile. He seemed nervous, more than his usual shyness. "I did – I don't know if this will interest you or not… Bring your coffee over to my computers."

"I was going to ask about those, are you observing Gotham City from there?" Giulia asked, as Slater produced a chair for her while he sat at the wheeled leather desk-chair, his computers thrumming into life.

"Wouldn't that be awesome," Slater smiled. "Sadly, no. However, I do have access to the deep web."

"Is that a new Batman villain?" Slater chuckled, and started showing her through his computer system. Giulia sipped her coffee, enjoying the warm flavour of the cardamom cream-bun Slater's baker made fresh every morning for the Scandi café downstairs, becoming enthralled as she watched Slater.

"I didn't find anything on Willem, yet," Slater said. "But I did find this…"

"It looks like a bad Nineties chat-room."

"That's exactly what it is," Slater smiled unapologetically. "Now this was hidden, password protected and all that, I had to take care to really cover my tracks in case they've set up snares. Don't want them knocking on my door…"

"Is that…Klaus?"

"Yeah. An entire online community dedicated to tracking Klaus Mikaelson," Slater sighed.

"Tracking? You mean they've lost him?"

"From what I've read, Klaus Mikaelson disappeared close to twenty years ago, poof," Slater said, snapping his fingers.

"Poof," Giulia frowned at the screen. "So why are they trying to find him?"

"Klaus is the biggest baddie in the vampire community, as I am sure you will have learned by now," Slater said quietly. "Over a thousand years old, you're bound to make some enemies. These, they're the remnants of his victims' families, from what I've gathered. From all different backgrounds, all factions, all continents, united in one cause: to find and destroy Klaus."

"That is a lot of hate," Giulia said quietly.

"Not underserved, I'm sure," Slater said softly. "I've heard stories, from one of my friends, to say his permanent annihilation would be a blessed relief is an understatement."

"She had a run-in with him?"

"Centuries ago. You either run or you die, with the Originals I've heard there's no third option," Slater mused. Giulia raised an eyebrow. Third Option: Sleep with one, she thought, clearing her throat.

"So these – I'm assuming the majority are vampires? Witches are vindictive but there's only so many generations a blood-feud can survive before people just realise the path they're on is doomed if they continued that way," Giulia murmured, "they've all got their eyes peeled waiting for some minuscule indication Klaus is around?"

"Didn't you hear? Vampires have great eyesight," Slater smiled. "We don't need billboards."

"Interesting," Giulia frowned. "So who's posted?"

"Bunch of randoms, and they're using a lot of really advanced, complicated tech to obscure their location and all that," Slater sighed. "Usernames don't exactly give a life-history but there's an interesting poster. Their username is simply 'Order'." Giulia blinked.

"As in the Order," she asked. Slater glanced at her, his expression slipping somewhat.

"You've heard of them?" he asked hesitantly.

"Just. I think my uncle, Joshua, was involved with them," she said. What she didn't say was that from what she had read of Joshua's journals, she believed the Order had been responsible for his disappearance. One of his notes had made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise; 'Abbie's gone. I'm in this alone'. And there could be only one Abbie he was referencing, she hoped. Abbie Bennett.

Who better to have in one's not-so-secret vampire-eradicating secret organisation than a witch? A Bennett witch? The mother of a little girl she had abandoned when Bonnie was three years old. The woman who had appeared in several of Joshua's photographs, pretty, with enormous natural hair. The woman who, according to Joshua's journals, had desiccated Mikael. It had been Joshua who hid the body from everyone, including those in the Order, to ensure Mikael remained out of their way while the Order tried to track down the means to eradicate the other Original vampires from the earth, combining witch magic, werewolf resilience and human resources.

That was an interesting development, that Mikael was desiccated. Elijah couldn't know. What remained of his family lived in fear of Mikael. Lived under the radar to ensure Mikael did not track them down and burn the city in which they lived.

But the Order had become corrupted over the years, Joshua had written, notes on what Willem had told him of the true origins of the Order founded in the 12th Century, the seed had been planted, nurtured, cultivated, but had somehow taken on a life of its own, spreading, corrupting as it went, until it was unrecognisable.

Giulia was still putting a lot of the pieces together, she had barely had a couple of hours to glance through the last entries of Joshua's journal this morning, but she had read enough; much of the last pages Joshua had written had made her stomach tie itself in knots, full of fear and paranoia, an urgency she recognised in the spiky lettering of Joshua's hastily-scrawled words, a sense of time catching up to him. Joshua had written that he was desperate to get to "the farm". If he could get there, he'd be safer than he was out in the road.

Giulia got the sense Joshua's friends in the Order had turned on him. That he had been loyal to "Will" and his vision, that the others – the alluded-to Abbie included – had become "taken in", obsessional, brainwashed... Who was in charge, she didn't know, that was the beauty of the Order; Joshua hadn't known who was calling the shots. But what she did know was that Joshua had left enough unwitting breadcrumbs for his code-breaker niece, years later, to pick things up and join up the dots. She hadn't had time to go through everything, but in his last days Joshua had received two speeding-tickets on the freeway up to Pennsylvania on top of the parking-tickets; she had calculated the distance between each speeding-ticket, the timings of him receiving them, calculated how fast he had been travelling, and the direction – using the clipped bit of road-map she had narrowed down the area, but Joshua had been smart – he never referenced any particular area, no addresses, only "Will" and "the farm" as if he had feared someone else might be able to put together the trail Giulia was building from hints and her own calculations and her guesses that Willem had set up in Pennsylvania forty years ago after bumping into his eldest brother Elijah in Manhattan.

Further enough from danger but close enough to keep abreast of any developments that could lead to harm.

"…it's all just code," Slater explained, as Giulia almost went flying, perched on the edge of the wheeled chair, which wobbled threateningly beneath her as she peered at the screen, reading the lines of seemingly unintelligible symbols.

"Oh, it's a code? You could've just said that," Giulia smiled, pushing her reading-glasses further up her nose as she leaned forward.

"I forgot, you like codes," Slater smiled fondly, as Giulia nodded. She had never before been interested in computers, her phone was the most complicated thing she could use – but seeing the back-end of the Internet, the way it was written, put things in a brand-new perspective. Giulia was a code-breaker by nature. A morning with Slater and she was reverse-engineering code by sight. The wonder of the 21st Century was the Internet – oh, it had started in the Nineties but it was the dawn of the new millennium which had really caused the Web to take on a life of its own. Anything she wanted to learn could be found on the Internet. So said Slater, and he gave her a taster of what the Internet could do for her – hacking was another talent Giulia could add to her ever-growing list. Again, it was just codes. And Giulia was excellent at those.

Slater chuckled, putting his feet up, watching when she took over the keyboard, glasses on the end of her nose, too distracted typing away to push them back up, as she wrote things. Once she had realised that the Internet was only lines upon lines of code, she lost her apprehension of it. Consumed Slater's hour-long lesson of basic code and ran with it. After the second hour, Slater was on the edge of his seat, watching her, asking questions. He, the tech guru, was learning from her. Her phone kept buzzing with the occasional text, email or phone-call – she ignored Stefan's call when Slater picked up her phone to show her the screen – she had hacked into the Philadelphia Police Department and was searching for any case-files with her uncle's name, had discovered the street address his Impala had received twelve parking tickets decades ago, and on a scrap of paper had hand-drafted a calculation to figure out the most likely place Willem would have settled down after fleeing Elijah, based on the cutting from a Pennsylvania road-map folded and annotated in Joshua's last diary.

"Are you hacking the traffic-control cameras?" Slater asked, and Giulia nodded. "I'm beginning to think introducing you to code was a bad idea."

"That ship has sailed, my friend," Giulia assured him, checking on the facial-recognition programme she had downloaded and upgraded with a few tweaks to the code… She was getting the hang of this thing at an alarming rate. "Hey, Slater…d'you wanna tell me what's wrong?"

"I…" Slater sighed, glancing at Giulia, grimacing guiltily. He cleared his throat and pulled up Facebook. "I, um…didn't realise you were friends…"

Giulia quirked an eyebrow, Friends with…? She sighed, glancing at the screen. Caroline had already posted pictures from the Masquerade on Facebook. She didn't have the same privacy settings Giulia did; friends-of-friends could see her photo albums and Giulia sighed. There was a photograph of the girls smiling, before they had donned their masks; Giulia's diamanté crystals glittered, and Elena for once looked stunning with her makeup done, wearing that flattering emerald dress, hair curled softly and pinned away from her face. It gave her a prettier, softer look than those lifeless curtains of hair she always wore. But without the glistening gold mask she wore in the other photographs, this one showed clearly every feature identical to those of Katerina Petrova.

"Oh."

"So… I may have done something…"

"Oh, crap, what?" Giulia asked, not angry, more filled with dread. Elijah or Klaus? What had Slater done?

When her phone rang again, Stefan's name flashing across the screen, she sighed, pushing her reading-glasses on top of her head to answer the call.

"Hi, Stefan."

"Hey, I've been trying to get hold of you… You haven't seen Elena, have you?"

"Me? No. I haven't seen her since the party," Giulia said, eyeing Slater. "I spent most of yesterday with Tyler and Caroline. Why?"

"Jeremy says her bed hasn't been slept in, he didn't see her all day yesterday," Stefan said, his tone more anxious even than usual.

"Okay, so then she had a slumber-party with Bonnie," Giulia shrugged, although she sighed internally. Elijah's errand, Slater being weird, Elena AWOL.

"Bonnie hasn't seen her, I asked," Stefan said.

"Did you ask Bonnie to perhaps do a locator-spell?" Giulia asked rather tartly, eyeing the numerous screens as Slater tapped away at the keyboard, while she scribbled on a scrap of notebook paper, amending her calculations as she searched through the DMV records of numerous rural towns in Pennsylvania, linked with facial-recognition software she had scanned the photograph into.

"Locator-spell, that's a good idea," Stefan said thoughtfully, and Giulia had to stifle the urge to roll her eyes.

"I'll let you know if I hear from Elena," Giulia said, and Stefan hung up. Giulia sighed, frowning at Slater, who gave her a nervous look. She dialled Elijah's number.

"I'm driving, my dear," was his greeting.

"You're in trouble, is what you are," Giulia said coolly. "Unless you'd care to share with the class."

"I have a feeling you already know," Elijah said easily. "Don't worry."

"Don't worry!" Giulia blurted. "I do worry. Stefan's going to have Bonnie do a locator-spell and he'll come for her."

"One would hope so," Elijah said. "After all his professions of eternal love, I should hope Stefan is willing to risk life and limb to rescue the girl he loves."

"Sad thing is she needs rescuing at all," Giulia sighed.

"My darling, we can't all be Giulia Salvatore," Elijah chuckled drily. "I'd think the world would implode if there was even one more of you." Giulia raised her eyebrows, reflecting on the idea.

"Lucky I'm sleeping with a vampire, there's no possibility of that," Giulia smirked. "Would you perhaps like to earn a gold star or treats and tell me where you are?"

"And ruin the mystery in our relationship?"

"You can sleep in the greenhouse with the vervain for the foreseeable future if you'd like," Giulia said in a fair voice. "Please, enlighten me. Or I'll have more and more phone-calls and texts getting more and more frantic, completely ruining my afternoon. BTW, that means by the way, my new tech guru seems to think I should apply to MIT. Apparently I have a natural talent for code and computer-hacking. Don't make me use my new powers for evil and track your plates."

There was a deep chuckle on the other end of the line. "You don't want me to make it too easy for you, do you? Where would the fun be in that?"

"Fine. Just don't rip off anything that won't grow back." She hung up, turning to Slater with a raised eyebrow, a stern look.

"I…can give you an address," Slater winced. "I'm…not sure you want your friends headed there… Your friend, she's…the means to an end, my contact – they…want to barter with an Original."

"And they're using the doppelgänger," Giulia said fairly. "Well. She's rare currency."

"I've…I've heard Elijah is a man of honour," Slater said quietly. She hadn't said Elijah's name, and he wasn't saved on her phone under his name either, so Slater wouldn't know Elijah the man of honour was the very vampire she had just been talking to, flirting with, did filthy things with her every night.

Slater had given information on Elena to a friend of his, someone who owed a considerable debt to the Original family. As she understood it, they had been on the run from Klaus for five centuries after something had gone terribly wrong. Just about the same length of time Katerina had been running, too. Given they had snatched Elena, Giulia knew this had everything to do with Katerina and the sacrifice. People had learned Katherine had never been in that tomb; that she was in fact still alive, and that she had last been seen in Mystic Falls.

Giulia had been dreading when this would happen. But it had.

Maybe Klaus would hear about it. That was what Elijah wanted. And Giulia had spent all her time since their conversation at the winter solstice to making contingencies for the inevitable. For when someone realised there was a living doppelgänger. That Klaus could lift the spell he had turned into a curse in his own mind.

It had begun.

A.N.: The worst thing about hostels is the pervasive scent of damp socks… I hope everything where you are is more fragrant, and that you enjoyed the update. Usually I would try to reply to each review but as my wifi is precious and I need it to track changes in my flights, well…priorities and all that grown-up stuff! Now I'm off for my dinner of chocolate-covered raisins. Don't judge! I just slipped over in the communal shower room – elbow, arse and dignity bruised. Luckily I was fully-dressed or that might've been a *bit* awkward!