A.N.: Hi everyone! Huge thank-yous to those of you who reviewed. I've got to reply at some point, to those I can. This chapter is for HeartNimbus, because your last review was so long and wonderful! I told you, Tissues! I hope at least you were wearing waterproof mascara!
Drunken Binges, Funerals and Formals
36
The Grimoire's Tale
"So, is this something to do with Stefan?" Ashlyn asked.
"Stefan, Damon, Stefan betraying Damon one too many times, Stefan wanting to protect Elena, me wanting Damon to be happy, Elena being a judgemental goody-two-faced brat," Giulia sighed. As they entered the house, she realised how cool it was – the house was poorly insulated, but living with two cold-blooded vampires meant Damon wouldn't notice if the furnace was whacked. "Sorry the house is so cold…"
"That's okay," Ashlyn said lightly. "I live with vampires too. Although they do love fires for the ambiance." Giulia chuckled, sighing as she pulled her shoes off. She and Ashlyn left their heels at the door, and wandered upstairs to Giulia's bedroom. Rain had started lashing down during the dance, when they had been cloistered safely inside the gym, and now it made the 'creepiest house in Mystic Falls' even spookier, the shadows darker and longer, the echoes louder.
Her bedroom still showed evidence of the girls getting ready for the dance – makeup everywhere with shoes Car and Ashlyn had tried on with their outfits, jewellery scattered on the desk, the scents of different perfumes mingling with hairspray and Body Shop body-butters, lip-glosses, minty toothpaste and the sharp taste of limes from Ashlyn's leftover margarita. Turning the lamps and her ceiling light on, Giulia and Ashlyn unzipped each other's dresses – Giulia groaned, shoulders dropping, waistline expanding to its usual dimensions, she could breathe again, hadn't realised just how tight Doll's waist had been. Unabashed, because they had slept over before, admittedly with much more alcohol, Giulia shimmied out of her dress and pulled on a tissue-thin black racer-back tank, warm leggings and fluffy-lined knitted slipper-socks, tugging her hair up into a messy ballerina-bun, while Ashlyn pulled on a loose Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirt and sunset-pink pyjama bottoms printed with giraffes, keeping her hair up into a ponytail – they both used Giulia's camomile cleanser to remove their makeup, splattering water everywhere in her bathroom as they shared the sink, using her moisturiser.
"Do you have any sage?" Ashlyn asked suddenly, and Giulia blinked, glancing over as she plucked the gold hoops from her ear-lobes.
"Uh…yeah, I have a plant outside," she said. "Why?"
"There's a…a privacy spell I can do," Ashlyn smiled bashfully. "It's one of the really, really old spells I've been learning from Isak's grimoire."
"Your vampire ancestor had a grimoire?"
"He was born a witch," Ashlyn said, smiling sadly. "So were Elijah and all their other siblings, even Kol. I don't know if they practiced magic as much as Esther or Isak did, though. Anyway…sage?" Tugging on boots, Giulia grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen. In the drizzling dark, damp cold air teasing at Giulia's bare skin, refreshing her after her exertion at the dance, looming clouds darkening an already inky sky rumbling with the threat of thunder, Giulia led the way for Ashlyn, stumbling in the dark, to the expansive vegetable-garden Giulia had created using mathematics, pre-existing flowerbeds and raised-beds she and her dad had built, so their 'kitchen garden' was as appealing visually as it was nourishing. She squatted down in front of a few herbs clustered in a particular flowerbed.
"Here it is," she said, squatting down with a little pair of shears. "How much do you need?"
"A few sprigs," Ashlyn said. "And some twine, if you've got it." They found some twine in the potting shed tucked out of sight, and Ashlyn's hands were busy fiddling and knotting as Giulia led the way back inside.
"I think I might go check all the windows are shut," Giulia said, as they meandered back upstairs. "It looks like a storm might be rolling in."
"We've got an hour before the lightning starts to hit," Ashlyn murmured, distracted, and Giulia glanced at her, eyebrows raised. Ashlyn blushed softly. "Witches are servants of nature…we…can sense things." Giulia nodded, pulling a thoughtful face. "Um…is…Stefan, um, coming back here?"
Giulia glanced at Ashlyn as they cloistered themselves in her bedroom. She knew Ashlyn had grown up being told one too many bedtime stories by Cara about the Ripper of Monterrey. And while that had been a century ago, Ashlyn wasn't to know Stefan had been effectively neutered – defanged – by a vegan diet and a self-righteous best-friend for the ensuing decades.
"He'll be around. Something was up with Elena tonight," Giulia said, shrugging a shoulder. Ashlyn climbed onto the bed, cross-legged, her fingers working on the sage, which she had bound together with twine. Pulling a matchbook out of Giulia's desk drawer, she struck the match and lit the sage; leaving it smouldering gently in a small silver dish, she sighed complacently, with a slight smile at Giulia.
"We're free to talk now, if you like," she said, gazing earnestly at Giulia, who raised her eyebrows. "The sage is spelled – for privacy."
"Muffliato doesn't work so well?" she asked, and Ashlyn chuckled. Unfurling numerous heavy blankets from the linen-closet in her bathroom onto her bed, Ashlyn helping straighten them out, Giulia lifted Firenze into her lap as she settled on the bed, and he started purring almost immediately, as Giulia started to talk. "…Remember when I told you about the tomb beneath the church?"
"About the vampires trapped inside? I remember," Ashlyn nodded.
"Another vampire in town turned Logan Fell, our local news presenter, into a vampire," Giulia said, stifling a yawn as she stroked Firenze's ears. "They were after his family journals, to try and track down the location to Emily Bennett's grimoire."
"So they could undo the spell without the crystal?" Ashlyn said, cottoning on immediately, her eyes widening in interest. "Did they find it?"
"They didn't, no," Giulia said carefully. She sighed, glancing at the enormous tome on her desk. "Damon dragged me to Atlanta to see an old friend, a witch-friend of his he wanted to ask advice from. Wanted to know if the spell could be lifted without the crystal. "And Damon texted me earlier tonight saying the vampire who had been stalking Elena admitted, under torture, that the location of the grimoire must be written in Jonathan Gilbert's journal."
Ashlyn frowned softly. "…And?"
"Well, I already knew where the grimoire was," Giulia said in a low voice, eyeing the smouldering sage. "I read the Gilbert journals last year, and I have an eidetic memory, so… Anyway, Damon and I dug up the grimoire the other morning." She looped her arm under Firenze's stomach, carrying him against her chest as she unfurled from the bed to reach for the grimoire on top of her desk. "I…didn't trust Stefan to be true to his word when he says he'll help Damon get Katherine back – so we set up a trap."
"For Stefan?"
"Tonight Stefan offered to help Damon track down the grimoire," Giulia said, as she dumped the antique book on the bed. Ashlyn shifted where she sat, peering interestedly at the aged leather binding, which had been embossed centuries ago.
"But you already have the grimoire…?"
"We're going to catch him in his lie – Elena too, probably," Giulia said quietly. "We've already got the grimoire, so it's not a risk to let Stefan believe he's allied with Damon to find the grimoire, when really we know he'll use any opportunity to sabotage Damon's attempts to get Katherine back."
"I don't get why Stefan would stop his brother having something this precious to him," Ashlyn frowned softly. "Well – actually, seeing as he's the Ripper, I kind of can. But – it just seems unbearably cruel."
"Stefan likes to pretend the Ripper was someone else," Giulia said grimly. "He's not been a Ripper for nearly a century; he assumes a superior, holier-than-thou attitude toward Damon's lifestyle. He's convinced Elena he's the consummate hero, that Damon's just shy of displacing Lucifer in Hell, only because he'd been feeding off Caroline… And killed Coach Tanner…and attacked Vicki…and turned her – anyway, Damon only did those things to make Stefan squirm."
"So…you're trying to catch him out?" Ashlyn said, frowning bemusedly.
"He offered to help Damon; but he'll try and find the grimoire on his own, probably with Elena's help…and when we find them trying to dig up Giuseppe Salvatore's grave, well… I'll be highly amused to see Elena's reaction to being called out as a liar," Giulia smirked indulgently, kissing Firenze's head as he lolloped all over her lap, purring deeply. "Right now, Stefan will want to destroy the grimoire before Damon can even get a peek at it."
"But you already have it," Ashlyn smiled softly, eyeing the book. "So…this isn't yours. It belongs to your friend Bonnie's family."
"Right," Giulia nodded.
"So why do you have it?" Ashlyn asked. "Why didn't you give it to Bonnie? I mean…you need a witch to lift the spell, and this book is her family's legacy."
Giulia licked her lips, letting out a sigh. "Honestly? She's Elena's best-friend. She's small-minded and moody. And I don't trust her."
Ashlyn nodded thoughtfully, eyeing the book again. "So…this was stuck in a coffin with a decomposing body?"
"Technically, the body was decomposed decades ago, now it's just bones," Giulia said lightly. "And really ragged cloth."
"That's disgusting."
"Why does that irk you – we live with the living-dead," Giulia laughed. "Aren't vampires technically just the walking-dead?"
"When you put it like that – but anyway, me being freaked out by dead bodies is normal. You get freaked out by pregnancy," Ashlyn said, giving her an expression like Giulia's phobia was absurd. "Cara's complete terror of dolls, I can understand. Because it's hilarious."
Giulia snickered. "She's afraid of dolls?"
"Yeah, it's like a full-blown phobia. Debilitating, paralyzing terror… She says it's the eyes. You should've seen her face when Elijah bought me a Barbie when I was six. Vera laughed, and laughed, and laughed," Ashlyn chuckled. "I used to have to keep the doll in my room at Elijah's, Cara wouldn't let it inside the house… So, d'you wanna go through this?" She indicated the grimoire.
"I've been deciphering the shorthand, but it's difficult where parts of the pages have decayed with age," Giulia said, shifting on the bed so she sat beside Ashlyn, Firenze in her lap, reaching a paw toward Ashlyn, who started scratching his ears. "It looks like the Bennett witches started out mostly as community healers and midwives – they helped crops, improved fertility in animals to increase herds, helped cows yield more milk… They documented the trials in Salem. The townspeople knew there was evil witchcraft going on, even an incubus raping young women in their dreams, bespelling their family-members to sleep through it even while he did actually visit them physically."
Ashlyn's cheeks paled, her expression turning grim. "That's messed up."
"Yeah. Whoever was writing this, um…it looks like two sisters, Hephzibah and Eden Bartholomew-Bennett, they documented everything they could about what they knew, maybe to keep track of the details, trying to figure out who it was…" Giulia said, turning the dry, decorated pages. "It was a group of men, five of them. Ugh, look at some of the things they did." The images were graphic, the descriptions harrowing – servants of Nature? Seventeenth-century style. Hard-core hoodoo and torture.
"Ew," Ashlyn quickly turned the page, averting her eyes. She blinked, smiling, and Giulia examined the page. "Hey, look at these." There were two sketches, naturalistic, more Renaissance in style than the stiff portraiture of the time, calling to mind Leonardo's painting of Danielle in Ever After, dated April, 1691. "Drawings – who are they of?"
"Hephzibah and Eden, it says," Giulia said quietly, and mimicking Ashlyn's frown as she gazed at the portraits.
"They look pretty," Ashlyn said, her expression slightly perplexed. She had met Bonnie at the dance, after all.
"And fair-skinned," Giulia said quietly, curious too. Where African-Americans were concerned, their histories and family-legacies were nothing if not awkward to investigate. A lot of pain. She read through the page of prose opposite the two portraits, which had been decorated with pressed flowers discoloured from age but beautiful. "They came from the Old World. England. Their father was a blacksmith. Eden…knew the trade. She was the only female blacksmith in the colonies. Hephzibah…married a Native." Giulia chuckled softly. "I guess Sheila wasn't the first activist in her family."
"So where did Bonnie…"
"Get her cocoa complexion from?" Giulia said, and Ashlyn blushed a little, shrugging a shoulder. "Her dad's African-American… On her mother's side, I know Emily was a hereditary Bennett – look, here, it says…she married a freeman whose mother was a Native American…his father was one of the first slaves brought by the Lockwood family into the area."
Ashlyn grimaced painfully. "This is hurting my head."
"This is the South, honey," Giulia said drily, exaggerating the twang. "Our history isn't pretty."
"Not all belles and magnolias…" Ashlyn said, and Giulia grunted softly. "What does it say here?" She tapped at the cracked, dry parchment as Giulia carefully turned the pages. There was an illustration neither of them could fail to decipher. "This is a wolf."
"Are you going to tell me werewolves are real?" Giulia smirked.
"Yeah, and they're not like in Teen Wolf," Ashlyn sighed, without an ounce of sarcasm.
"That's disappointing," Giulia said honestly.
"You and Derek Hale – or Tyler Hoechlin or whatever – if the two of you had kids, I mean…eyes that're pure silver, cheekbones that can cut diamonds, muscle tone to make you salivate, hair black as night…" Ashlyn laughed for a minute, as Giulia froze, licking her lips at the visual of Derek Hale's immaculately chiselled torso. "So what does it say?"
Giulia eyed the pages. The text, handwriting, the ink used, even the language and layout of the pages were different from the ones she had already examined. "Well, it's in code. And Old French."
"Old French?" Ashlyn laughed a little.
"French was the language of all the royal courts in early-modern Europe," Giulia said.
"You know Old French?"
Giulia shrugged. "All languages are essentially codes. I like codes."
"Well, what does it say?" Ashlyn asked her again. Giulia examined the writing, biting her cheek as her brain whirred and she saw letters rearranging, deciphering clues and subtext.
"This part was written in fourteen…sixty?" she frowned at the almost invisible writing at the upper right-hand corner of the page. "No. 1492. And it's in Latin. This annotation, written in 1496, explains that these pages are all that remained of an old grimoire destroyed in a fire. Something about…an Original." She glanced up at Ashlyn, eyebrows raised.
"Really?" Ashlyn's eyes burst wide with interest. "Which one?"
"It looks…like some form of Nicholas," Giulia frowned. "'Niklaus'?"
"Klaus," Ashlyn breathed. "What's this story?" She tapped her painted fingertip to the Latin. For several moments, Giulia remained silent as she read through the text.
"For several decades in the 1400s, a family of wealthy vampires lived in Hampshire, somewhere near…Winchester. The old capital of England? Where Henry VIII's daughter Mary Tudor married the Spanish king…" She glanced at Ashlyn, whose eyes were wide, hooked. "Anyway, their household was very grand, they spent time at court, they held titles and lands befitting the nobility, and despite the fact they looked young and very beautiful, they were old… Beautiful young girls, even men, would go to the house, and either never be seen again, or… They would reappear to their families, years later, unchanged, bedecked in rich fabrics and jewels."
"They were turned," Ashlyn said sadly.
"One of the lords…Helias?" Giulia glanced up suddenly, eyes wide. "That's the ecclesiastical Latin form of Elijah… He was friends with several witches, they would do favours for him." Ashlyn raised an eyebrow suggestively.
"I thought it was Isak and Kol who did favours for witches," she smirked. Giulia grinned. As she turned the page, Ashlyn touched her hand, making her stop at one particular entry.
"This is a spell for daylight jewellery," she said heavily. She reached into her suitcase, drawing out a battered copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, with its protective wrap. Only, when she opened the book, it didn't feature paragraphs on Professor Umbridge, or the D.A., or Draco Malfoy and the Inquisitorial Squad or Sirius drinking away his feelings of ineptitude in the kitchen of Number Twelve.
It was Ashlyn's own grimoire. A smaller book, but leather-bound and made of rich parchment, decorated and embellished and filled with spells hand-written by Ashlyn herself, meticulously copied spells she had learned from other witches during her tutoring, and older ones she had picked up from family grimoires. These were the spells she used most often, or needed help remembering because they were so difficult, or she didn't use them quite as regularly. She opened a page to the same spell, copied as meticulously in Emily Bennett's grimoire as Ashlyn's own, down to the wheel and sun and stars drawing. "I have the same spell in my grimoire. Look."
"You hide your grimoire in a Harry Potter cover?" she asked, and Ashlyn grinned, blushing a little.
"I lost my copy of Malleus Maleficarum," she said, and Giulia laughed. "So, what favours did the witches do for Elijah?"
Turning back to Emily's grimoire, Giulia licked her lips, reading. "Well, he had a large estate, and a lot of humans lived on his land. He would ask the witches for favours…whenever the crops had a poor yield, or an illness swept through the humans, whenever a woman suffered through childbirth. The witches would use magic to counteract the pestilence, or help the crops, or ease a woman's pain with tinctures and medicine, they could heal a broken bone rather than risk amputation, which almost always meant certain death through infection."
Ashlyn frowned. "But why bother to save this? Or put it in your grimoire?"
Giulia kept reading, and went still, ignoring Firenze's mewling to be petted. She read on, through several pages, ignoring Ashlyn's inquisitive expression before she finally breathed, "They wrote about the curse."
"What?" Ashlyn blurted, her features sharpening, as if she already knew what Giulia was talking about. "What curse?"
"The Curse of the Sun and the Moon."
"You're kidding?" Ashlyn said, scooting even closer to Giulia on the bed so she could prop her chin on Giulia's shoulder and read over it.
"The witch who wrote this part, the one writing in Latin, she wrote down the spells she did for Elijah…" Giulia said, running her fingertips over the dry parchment. "Somehow Niklaus found out she was helping Elijah – he took her child away, unless she helped lift the curse. I think this word is 'doppelganger'. 1492, the doppelganger had been found. A community of werewolves had lost one of its sons to the noble lady living in the great house, she took him as her lover…"
"Yikes," Ashlyn grimaced. "Does it say who it was, the lady, I mean?"
Giulia read through the passage, pointing to a small sketch of a woman with very long hair she decorated with a pearl-sewn silken net. "The only detail is that she had golden hair radiant as wheat in the sunshine."
"That would've been Rebekah," Ashlyn said, almost to herself. "Elijah said she always did whore herself out for Klaus' gain… Though most likely she fell in love with him. So then what happened?"
"The witch was set to lift the curse – the Originals had procured a vampire, a werewolf, and a doppelganger for the sacrifice," Giulia said, grimacing. She glanced at Ashlyn, who looked miserable. "Okay, so this is already getting bloody-sounding," she sighed. "Poor Iphigenia."
"You've read The Oresteia by Aeschylus?" Ashlyn said, surprised.
"So have you, apparently," Giulia smirked.
"I take Classical Civilisation – it's assigned reading," Ashlyn said, shrugging delicately. She eyed the grimoire. "Where were you?"
"Right. Niklaus had the werewolf, he had turned a villager to use as the vampire sacrifice, and…the doppelganger, the daughter of a Eastern-European warlord, who was ward to one of Helias' Irish Master of the Household, um…Treabhair," Giulia read, struggling to pronounce the Irish name. "Helias came to the witch, knowing her child was being ransomed so she would help Niklaus, and he asked her to…"
"To what?"
Giulia squinted at the page, where the charred edges of the parchment made it difficult to piece together the full story. "Um… He knew she would go through with the sacrifice because of her child; the vampire chosen for the sacrifice was an elderly soldier who had settled it with Helias that his children would be educated and given apprenticeships if he…if he was turned and used in the ritual. The werewolf clan had turned their backs on their son because he had chosen to be with a vampire, and he had already married and given his dead wife healthy sons… But the doppelganger…was a young girl, barely eighteen, she had never been married, Elijah didn't want her life to be wasted." Because Giulia knew this was their Elijah she was reading about. "He asked her…to preserve the girl's life."
"You can't bring someone back from the dead without consequences," Ashlyn said sadly. "There are loopholes, of course. Protection spells, resuscitation, but you can't dig up a dead body."
"Okay, read this," Giulia said, shifting the book toward Ashlyn so she could read it better. "This looks like the last spell documented by this witch."
For a moment, Ashlyn's lips moved soundlessly as she ran her fingertips over the glyphs and annotations of the spell. "It's…it's a resuscitation draft. It's similar to a protection spell, but this one is specific to the doppelganger it was created for, at Helias' behest, and it was to be consumed, and would restart her heart after…"
"After what?"
"After Klaus had taken her blood," Ashlyn said, glancing up. "So what happened?"
"The doppelganger escaped," Giulia said flatly. "Niklaus went on a murderous rampage…he…tore the werewolf apart limb from limb only after torturing him for the sake of it…he killed the vampire, and several more in their household…the common field in the village where he slaughtered most of the humans was flooded with blood for days. He delivered the witch's child to her doorstep, disembowelled and…missing its eyes, ears and tongue…ew…and this is where the handwriting changes. Isaac, it says. I'm assuming that's your ancestor Isak. He tried to rescue the witch from her home as it burned, Niklaus having set half the village alight in his rage, lest any of the villagers were hiding…Katerina. But all Isak managed to save was the grimoire she had thrown out into the cabbage-patch."
"How did the Bennett family get these pages?" Ashlyn asked wondrously. She frowned. "Why weren't they passed down through my family-line?" She bit her lip. "I never knew Elijah tried to save Katerina."
"Probably Isak didn't want his family-line involved with Klaus and this ritual," Giulia said quietly. From Veronica Salvatore's diaries she had learned a lot, was indebted to the woman for everything she had passed on to Giulia without her even realising any of her descendants would ever decipher her code. "H'ed been teaching an orphan, a blacksmith's apprentice, in Winchester, how to use magic. Henry Bennett. When Helias and Niklaus went in search of Katerina, Isaac took the pages of the grimoire to Henry Bennett and told him what had happened – told him to keep the pages safe, teach his children never to invite anyone into their home. Henry shooed Isaac's horse, and he disappeared." Ashlyn sighed softly.
"He went to Europe," she said quietly. "Elijah's brother. My ancestor. I'm descended from him. By 1498, he was in Rome. He'd was living in a Roman palazzo near the Vatican, with Vera and Cara."
Giulia nodded, a niggling suspicion almost irrevocably verified.
The religious icons; the Lapis jewellery; Cara's unusual height; Vera's timeless beauty; their age; their connection to Elijah's brother…
The revelation that Emily Bennett's grimoire contained evidence of the Originals and their attempt to lift the curse once before – a curse that wasn't what it had been portrayed to history – had Ashlyn nibbling her lip thoughtfully for a quarter of an hour, while Giulia gathered provisions and candles from the rest of the house, in anticipation of the storm Ashlyn foresaw shorting out the electricity.
"Here," Ashlyn said, climbing off the bed – to Firenze's annoyance, his deep purring stopping as Ashlyn stopped stroking him – to reach down, snapping her fingers toward Giulia's fireplace. A fire leapt into life, crackling richly in the grate, sending waves of warmth and light across Giulia's chilled skin. The candles illuminated suddenly, flickering away happily, and Giulia stared.
"Magic isn't all curses and torture," Ashlyn said softly. "It can be dangerous and awful, and it can be mystical and beautiful… It is what we make of it." She smiled softly. "We've only got a few minutes before the storm starts…"
"Okay, hang on," Giulia said, and she darted out of her room.
"Where are you going?"
"To get Stefan's record-player!" Giulia called back, and she took the stairs two at a time, striding through the dark house to Stefan's cloister of a bedroom. Bursting through the door, she leapt up the steps into Stefan's room and, so focused on raiding Stefan's shelves, she completely ignored the indignant squawks and shouting and the lamps bursting on until she had found Stefan's old record-player and her favourite vintage vinyl records, Etta, Dino. She was in the mood, thanks to the dance!
"Giulia!"
"Knock much?!"
"What are you doing in here?"
Giulia turned, glancing at the bed, and jumped. "Ew!" she cried, shuddering and jumping back toward the bedroom-door. "What do you two think you're doing?"
"You could've knocked!" Elena scowled.
"This is my house," Giulia said. "That is disgusting – Stefan, I told you we have a guess, no whoring yourself out."
"That girl you brought to the dance?" Stefan frowned.
"Yeah. And when I said no whoring it up at home, I meant for you not to come home – Ashlyn knows," Giulia said, crinkling her nose as Elena tried to keep her torso covered, though Giulia could clearly see her fuchsia bra-straps. She smirked to herself, She keeps her bra on during sex… She almost snickered, Well, she needs something to create some shape…
Elena blinked, her eyes widening in horror. "She knows, about –?"
"Vampires? It's not a dirty word," Giulia said coolly. She scowled at Stefan. "I'd really rather you weren't around here much while Ashlyn's here. She grew up on bedtime stories about the Ripper of Monterrey to warn her against sadistic vampires." Carrying the records and player, she paused at the door, glancing over her shoulder – Stefan's expression was guarded and tense, Elena looked confused. She eyed the illuminated room. She eyed Elena, unable to resist saying, "I always knew you were a lights-out, under-the-covers girl."
Snickering, she left the room.
Still chortling to herself, Giulia set up the record-player on her desk, and as she sat down on the bed, Ashlyn waved her hand elegantly up at the ceiling, and when Giulia glanced up, she gasped, slipping off the bed onto her feet, staring up. Her ceiling had been transformed – no longer could she see the ceiling, but the cosmos. Stars twinkling brightly, clouds rolling in, they…they laid on her bed, watching the storm unleash all around them, tucked up safely with Firenze, snacking on fresh baked treats and bread, tea and listening to Etta James on a crackly old vinyl. Watching the storm, Firenze burrowing down under Giulia's waist, frightened by the rolling thunder and the hundreds of bolts of lightning striking in dazzling forks…tucked safely and snugly under Giulia's duvet and excess blankets, the fire crackling, candles flickering, they gazed up and watched the storm – it sounded like they were in the middle of a war-zone. It was awe-inspiring and fabulous.
They talked for an hour about magic, everything Ashlyn knew about it, the covens she had dealings with, the stories she had heard, the different types of 'cult' magic – there was ancestral, sacrificial, devout pagan, hoodoo, rituals that had developed with different religions, there were magical faiths that had developed during colonial times in the Far East, in the Caribbean, and the amalgamation of Colonial British and tribal African traditions… Ashlyn wasn't invited into any coven but she was herself a powerful witch; she was powerful, and no coven in Manhattan trusted her to invite her in; Giulia thought this was short-sighted of the witches, who might find a tremendous enemy in Ashlyn in the future if she went awry because of their undisguised distrust and hatred toward her for her association with vampires. They talked about Bonnie being a novice, about Sheila Bennett, and Bree. Over the volleys of thunder and lightning, they talked under the protection of burning sage about the tomb, about Damon cashing in a favour with Bree to lift the spell, about Katherine. She didn't mention the vampire named Romilly – true to her word to Elijah, she kept their deal private.
And they thought about what they wanted to do all week. Giulia had the local paper open to the Entertainments section, highlighting different bits that she thought might be of interest to them – the little cinema Doll had saved from demolition offered dress-up Tarantino Tuesday, an Indiana Jones marathon, Casablanca playing on the big-screen, with The Goonies, Jaws and Rocky Horror – and there was the Fall Fête (which always promised her favourite red candy-apples) and of course, Black Friday at the mall.
Even with the storm, and thanks to the tea Bree had given her, Giulia and Ashlyn both drifted off to the sounds of cannon, bolts of lightning lashing the sky, illuminating her curtains after Ashlyn had extinguished the candles and the fire, Firenze fast asleep between them – Ash didn't want to sleep in a room on her own with the Ripper down the hall…
Her Thanksgiving break was looking up. They were about to catch Stefan in a betrayal; and Damon would get Katherine back. Hopefully.
Giulia wanted to believe better of Katherine. She wanted her to be in that tomb.
A.N.: Tada! Another chapter. The dangers of having a nap at eight p.m. after a stomach-ache from dinner mean you're still awake at 1:30 a.m. despite having to get up for a ten o'clock shift at work the next morning. Oops.