Chapter Nine. Making A List
"Elena, can you call me back? I'm… I need to talk to someone. Just call me, OK?"
"I'm going to need a list," Josette Parker told her reflection, as she did her makeup in the on-call bathroom. It had been a slow night, and she actually finished with a lot more energy than she started with. She glanced at her phone, considered calling Alaric, and decided against it. She wanted a good time, and these days Alaric was anything but. Things had been bad before, but ever since she relieved Damon of his daylight ring, Alaric was just too much work.
Instead, she let her magic loose, and searched for flickers of Expression. She'd been picking up on them more and more these days, and it was all she could do not to hunt down the scent every-time it registered.
Someone was unleashing, and it was glorious.
"There's no way it went down without Aunt Beth, which means Judith was there, too." She pouted at her reflection and applied dark lip gloss. "That's two to start. I want everyone."
Pale eyes blinked back at her. Half-way through applying her mascara, Jo's hand stilled… shook… The careful line smeared.
Cursing, she dropped the stick and fixed the mess.
When she finished, she glared at her reflection and dark eyes glared back at her. "Everyone."
The club was supposed to have a lower age limit to weed out the college crowd, but at least two crashers didn't get that memo. It used to be harder to get into places like this. Now fake IDs were a dime a dollar; bartenders didn't care; and if all else fails, a little vampire compulsion was sure to open doors.
From her table, Jo watched with deep disapproval as Bonnie Bennett and Caroline Forbes sashayed their way across the dance floor.
Bonnie's short bob was growing out, making the strands brush against the top of her bare shoulders, her bronze skin glowing under the lights. Jo appreciated how the loose material of her dress consecutively hugged, then teased the curves of her body. She even appreciated the way Expression flickered when someone got a bit too close to all that glowing skin, and was sent away, literally licking their wounds.
Jo did not appreciate the way the vampire always kept one hand firmly on Bonnie's hip, or the fact that Bonnie didn't seem to mind.
It hadn't been hard to track them down. One just had to follow the wake of Expression-majicked destruction that they left in their path.
Or, Jo thought, as she spotted the other soulless vampire that was also watching her quarry. Him.
Salvatore the Younger was going to be a problem. Which was a shame; the little she knew of him, she liked. But there were only so many soulless vampires the Gemini Praetor could leave to run around Whitmore.
He cornered the girls when they took a breather. Their body language screamed 'Go away!' so loudly that he obviously heard it. He just didn't care. Jo was going to wait and watch how it played out, but then he put a necrotic finger on Bonnie's skin and Jo had enough of people touching Bonnie Bennett.
A spiked aneurysm sent him to the ground and kept him there.
The girls took off, just as the crowd clustered around Salvatore's writhing figure, and Jo intercepted them.
"Sorry, I- Dr. Laughlin!"
Bonnie had literally run into her, and Jo held onto her for a breathless second, feeling Bonnie's soft breath against her own cheek, before righting her on her feet.
Bonnie's eyes shone wide and green in her face.
"Fancy bumping into you here," Jo said significantly.
Bonnie flushed. "Yeah…" she muttered, not quite meeting Jo's eyes. She tugged at the vampire who was still trying to pull her through the throng. "Caroline, meet Dr. Laughlin. Doctor, this is my friend, Caroline Forbes."
If Jo didn't already know that Caroline Forbes had taken leave of her humanity, the bright sheen of malice staring through her vacant face would have told her. She restrained a shudder. "We've met."
"Oh. Right." Bonnie sounded embarrassed.
"She's dating Alaric," Caroline sing-sang, her eyes glittering with poison. She made a pointless dig about that relationship, revealing more than she realized she did about her decision not to associate Jo with her mother's last moments. The conundrum of the humanity-free vampire who nonetheless had emotional triggers.
"You'd know all about chasing people, wouldn't you, Caroline Forbes?" Jo asked mildly.
The vampire's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Jo could almost see the fangs peeking through her lips… then she reigned herself in. Jo was almost impressed. "Nice seeing you, Doc. Bonnie, let's go."
Jo noticed, with no small gratification, that while Bonnie's eyes switched from Caroline to Jo, she didn't budge.
"Odd seeing you," Jo said. "Considering you're rather young for this place."
Bonnie blushed again, her cheeks turning a lovely dark rose. "I… um…"
Jo automatically took a step to her, wanting to feel that blush against her palm.
The vampire's cackle froze her.
"Are you kidding me?" Caroline snapped. "You might be old enough to be our moms but, in case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly looking for replacements. Bye."
A motus hovered at the tip of Jo's fingers. The temptation to send the vampire crashing to the ground was almost unbearable. But she made herself stand still and just watch Bonnie leave.
Green eyes turned once to stare at her, then blinked away nervously as Bonnie let her friend take her away.
The magic was still tingling in Jo's veins, spiking through her like adrenaline. She pushed her way through the crowd until she got to Salvatore's prone body. He was curled into a comma of agony. Perhaps, Jo thought grimly, she had used a little more magic than was necessary.
People were talking about calling 911 and the bartender was grousing about fake IDs, but no one was actually doing anything.
"I'm a doctor," she said simply as she crouched beside him.
It was almost like magic. Relieved that someone with authority had taken charge, the rest of the crowd scattered back to dancing and drinking. The bartender was all too glad to help Jo take him out to her car in the lot.
"It's just alcohol poisoning, I've seen it before," she said, using her otoscope incorrectly, but the sight of the medical bag, and the sticker on the car was all the bartender needed to leave the unconscious man completely in her care. "I'm on my way to work at Whitmore General. I can give this guy a ride."
She could have managed the same with magic, of course, but she got a kick out of using the casual authority that Sissy wielded so effortlessly.
One hand on the wheel, she froze, echoing her thoughts to herself.
"Wha-what am I doing here?"
She glanced at Salvatore, who was awake, staring at her groggily. "J…Jo?"
"Hello, Steve. You and I need to talk."
Josette Parker didn't know why she ever had a problem with Luke. Younger brothers, especially younger brothers who wanted to align themselves against their controlling fathers, were so damn useful.
(Younger sisters, on the other hand…)
"…like a transition." Even filtered through the speaker on her office desk, Luke's voice sounded so cautious, it could have walked through a minefield. "Gives you more than enough time to ease into running things."
She turned out her bag and riffled through its contents. "Enough with the PC-speak. We both know I didn't get the proper disciplina."
"I didn't say…"
"Admit it, Luke. Father was so sure I'd lose, and everyone was so sure Kai couldn't become leader, that they never bothered to train either of us. You and Liv, on the other hand, were the golden twins earmarked for greatness."
When Luke spluttered a negative, Jo laughed. "It's fine, Luke. I really do want you to stand in as proxy Praetor while I figure out things here. Think of it as my continuing education in Magic School. Winning the Merge was just me graduating to a higher grade."
Plus Luke as proxy Praetor effectively ousted Joshua from even the pretext of power, and that was enough to make Luke her favourite sibling for eternity.
"Thanks, Jo," he said, sounding stupidly grateful that she was letting him do her job. "I'll run any major decision by you first."
"Just keep the Council off my back, kill Dad, and you've got carte blanche on everything else."
Luke laughed. "Noted."
She picked up the thumb drive from between her keys and hospital pass and slotted it into her laptop. "I do have two things to ask."
"Sure, what?"
Jo paused as the drive downloaded its contents. She had wanted to ask Luke for help with the List, but now she was having second thoughts. Obviously, she didn't need Luke to access Gemini archives but he could point her in the right direction faster.
He could also point Joshua the same way. Or the people on the list. It was all very well to trust little brothers, but little brothers could decide not to trust one back.
"Actually, just one thing. There are currently 2 humanity-free vampires in Mystic Falls-"
Luke groaned. "Don't remind me. The town council used to be good at handling this until, well, they were all killed. But Bonnie Bennett is back now…"
Jo paused from clicking through files. "Bonnie Bennett," said Jo flintily, "isn't a Gemini envoy."
Luke paused. "Yes, of course, I know that but I mean… she's a Bennett-"
"-who's hyped up on Expression magic."
"What?"
"This is going to have to stay between you and me, Luke," Jo warned, staring at her screen. "I don't want the Council involved."
"Of course, but I don't know what you want me to do about a Bennett on Expression. Jo, this is-"
"She's handling it. And we are going to help her. I want a small team monitoring these three targets, priority on the Bennett, of course. Mitigation and damage control. No engagement unless imperative to secure the Expression vessel."
Luke paused. "I don't understand… You don't want us to take them into custody? Just help them keep a low profile? Keep them… safe?"
"You do understand then," Jo said simply.
"But… why?"
There was a long pause.
Luke cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'll handle it, no problem."
"Thanks, Lookie-poo. I knew I could count on you. It's always nice to know you have family on your side."
(Not once did either of them mention the other member of their family, Olivia, or whether she could be counted upon).
Jo was still smiling when she hung up the phone. She turned back to her screen where thumbnail images of Bonnie Bennett stared back at her.
"Elena, did you call me back? Did I call you? If I did, I don't… You should call me before the graveyard shift clocks out. You know the time."
It was a late shift; she was bone-tired, and she drove home on auto-pilot. Working at the hospital had also been on auto-pilot, muscle memory guiding her through procedures both in and out of the OR. After the last one, she had been sorely tempted to just crawl into a cot and crash, but she knew from experience that the brink of exhaustion was when her shields were at their lowest, the best time to make herself remember. To think about the list.
Stewart. Stewart. Martin Linus.
The last was dead. It was a bit of shock to realize that. He was a distant cousin of their mother's. She'd fallen out of touch with his son Jonas, just like with everyone else but discovering that the whole family was virtually dead had been a shock.
O'Sullivan.
The name popped into her head at the intersection and she almost ran a red light. Of course! Gabriel O'Sullivan. Western Chief Envoy. She could have figured that out on her own. And O'Sullivan and…
Stop.
The brakes screeched, rubber burning, as the mental equivalent of a sledgehammer slammed into Jo's mind.
She blinked with shock to realize she was home. She had navigated off the highway, through the neighbourhood streets, and even parked the car on autopilot.
The headache - more of a phantom flash of pain that an outright onslaught - had dissipated. She actually smirked as she walked up the steps. Four out of seven names. She was past the halfway mark. She might even remember more after a good night's sleep, in the early moments when her guards came down.
After all, the events of that fateful day, and the days leading up to it had only been in a repeat loop in her head for almost 2 decades. Nothing but time and hate to plot and plan.
Wait. What?
The moment she passed through her wards, every other thought flew out of her head.
"Fuck," she whispered.
She put her hand on the lintel and forced herself not to panic, pushing out her awareness to sense if there was anyone, or anything malignant still waiting for her inside her home.
All she sensed was her own magic pulsing, the start of a headache and…
"Alaric?"
He sat by the coffee table, a mug and an empty beer bottle beside his phone, his left hand under his chin and his right hand balled into a fist. She ran to his side and held his shoulder. "Are you OK?"
Jo probed lightly with magic, but she couldn't sense anything abnormal. Even his slight intoxication was milder than he sometimes got.
"You care," he said, shrugging off her hand. "That's a change."
"Were you here when this happened? Did they do anything to you?"
"They?"
"Alaric," Jo said slowly, "this space was infiltrated. A witch breached my wards – a powerful witch, I guess because that should be impossible – and ransacked…" The magical vibrations were echoing back at her and she fell silent for a moment, completely in shock at the extent to which her home had been violated. "This is bad."
"That's not what happened."
"You can't sense it because you're a mundane but listen to-"
Alaric barked out a bitter laugh, and got to his feet. "Mundane. Nice one. Very… politically incorrect, but accurately summarizes the concept."
"Are you OK?" She asked again. She picked up the bottle. "Did you get this from my kitchen? I need to check you out. This could be contaminated by whoever broke into-"
He slammed his fist on the table, shocking her into silence. "No one broke in because I let them in, Jo!"
She gaped at him.
"I walked through the wards with the witch and let them go to town on all your precious hiding places. I'm your invader! Me! The mundane!"
They stared at each other for a long moment. Jo's already exhausted mind was spinning. "Why? What were you even looking…" Oh. Her concern and worry melted away into fury. "Let me guess. You were looking for something that starts with A, as a favour for a friend from the Microchiroptera genus."
"Bats," Alaric chuckled. "That's hilarious."
"You got the reference."
"You'll be surprised at the things I've picked up along the way. For example," he tossed a scrap of paper on the table. He'd been holding it in his clenched fist all this while. "I know what these are for."
A passing glance registered the standard prescription form from Whitmore General. "What the heck does this have to do with you bringing a strange witch into my home to rob me?"
"Look at it."
"You'd better start explain-"
"LOOK AT IT, JO!"
She did, just to shut him up. Then paused. She picked up the paper gingerly and stared in shock at the name of the patient, the drugs prescribed, and the date.
The dull throb bloomed into a full headache.
WHAT?
"It wasn't even hidden, you know. Just randomly tucked in the same drawer that you kept cloaked shards of white oak. Damon will probably want to borrow that some day. Just so you know."
"I… I don't understand."
"Not that. Whatever way you want to handle this, do not use the 'I have no idea what you're talking about' ploy. You're not the first doctor I've dated. I know what fricking Mife-mifepri-mifipre…"
"Mifepristone and misoprostol," Jo said dully. "Early-term abortifacients."
He groaned out loud and collapsed against a wall, his head in his hands, as he rocked slowly. "This was weeks ago. Were you ever going to tell me?"
Was I ever going to tell myself?
"I know – your body, your choice. But we're in a frickin relationship! I thought we were more than just… Why didn't you just talk to me? Just tell me what you were worried about, what your fears were. I could have told you that I was… My god, I was planning to ask you… How could you do this?"
"I didn't know I did," she breathed.
"What does that even mean, Jo?" he moaned.
"I don't know."
He lifted his head. His face was flushed and there were tears in his eyes. "What's happening to us, Jo?"
I don't know.
"Everything was perfect until a few months ago, and now everything is wrong. I thought you… I thought we…" His voice broke off as if he was choking.
She stood up slowly, reached a hand to him. "Alaric-"
He yanked away from her like if she was infectious. "Don't touch me."
She balled her hands into fists and sat down. "Alaric, I'm scared," she whispered.
He wasn't listening. He was grabbing his phone and his keys. "I need space, Jo. This is… this is too big for me to handle right now. I have to go. I need space," he repeated. But he just stood there, as if he was waiting for something.
She searched for a feeling of loss, desperation, regret. She couldn't find it. "I understand."
His face fell, like if he had hoped she'd fight him but wasn't surprised that she didn't. He shook his head, picked up his jacket from the floor.
"Alaric!"
He was at the door, and twisted, his face alight with hope-
"About the Ascendant."
-that she immediately stifled.
"Of course," he said bitterly.
"You and Damon have to give it back. Lily Salvatore isn't alone in the Prison World. You have no idea what you're about to unleash."
He looked away, stared into space for a long time. Then he cracked a smile. "I don't give a fuck."
He slammed the door behind him.
Jo stared after him, trying desperately to feel something, anything. Why had this happened? How had this happened?
Lang.
She blinked.
Lang, Patrice.
Why was she thinking of her father's old friend after all these years. Why now?
The list.
What list?
Stewart. Stewart. Linus. Patrice Lang.
That list.
"Elena, are you getting any of my messages?" Beat. "Have you talked to Alaric recently?"
The phone jolted Joshua out of his trance. It took him a moment to re-orient. A few weeks ago, when he was Praetor Magus, he would have slipped out of it easily.
He bit back on the petty regret as he hovered his hand over the candles, extinguishing their bright green flames.
It took him another moment to realize what had taken him out of his trance, and by then the phone had stopped ringing.
He saw the name and cursed.
Jo rarely called him. More to the point, she had never called him since the Merge. He was one finger tap from returning her call when the phone rang.
"Jo. What is it?" No time for pleasantries.
"Dad, I need your help." She was whispering, her voice catching as if she was gasping for breath.
His gut clenched. "Tell me."
"I found… this will sound crazy… I sound crazy."
"Jo-"
"I found notes. That I wrote. That I don't remember writing. Notes to myself. Notes that make no sense, unless…"
"Jo, start from the beginning."
She laughed, and she did sound crazy. "When? The Merge? 22 years ago, when you and Mom bred your replacement twins? 40 years ago when you had the defective pair?"
He felt his stomach turn.
"I won the Merge, right?" she suddenly yelled, as close to a shout as she could make while whispering. "I won. But now I don't… I don't trust me."
The line cut.
Joshua cursed, then started calling back frantically.
She picked it up on the first ring.
"Joshua," she was talking normally, albeit with an audible sneer. "To what do I owe the displeasure?"
"You called me first," was at the tip of Joshua's lips, but they froze there. Joshua scrambled to say something innocuous. "I wanted to know how you're doing with t-the selection of Envoys."
"What do you mean?" her voice was hard, suspicious.
And completely oblivious of the previous conversation.
His mind raced. "The Chiefs are old, way past their expiration date. We need replacements. That's your job."
"I'll let Luke handle that."
"It's the Praetor's job-" he almost started, before he checked himself. "Do as you wish."
"I always do."
"Jo!" he blurted, sensing she had been a second from cutting him off. "I need to ask you if you've noticed any changes?"
"What are you talking about?"
It was a dangerous risk, but perhaps a direct confrontation could trigger a reaction. "The Merge is a ritual that blends the souls of the partaking twins-"
"-not this again. Dad, I'm at work. I don't have the time-"
"-into one. Changes in personalities and even some of your skill set are part of that."
She paused. "Well, now that you ask…"
He held his breath. "Yes?"
"I didn't think it meant anything but-" She sounded uncertain. "I'm probably just overthinking this, but I have noticed something different about me lately."
He breathed out in relief. It had worked. "What is it?"
"I have less tolerance for your bullshit!" Jo snapped.
"Jo!"
"You can quit with the mind games, Joshua. They won't work. Now, I'm in the middle of an actual emergency. Is there anything the Praetor can do for you, Consul?"
"No," Joshua said quietly. "Nothing whatsoever."
He put the phone down and stared into the middle distance, and tried not to fight the panic rising in his chest. All Jo had to do was check her own phone logs to see the call she'd made a few moments ago. All Joshua had succeeded in doing was put her (him?) on her (his?) guard.
"Dad, I need your help."
"I don't trust me."
The open-air tables in front of the most popular coffee shop on campus were full. Bonnie made Caroline choose between compelling them a free table or compelling her way up the line. Thus Bonnie ended up sitting at a table for the past twenty minutes, while she watched as Caroline tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for her turn.
The vampire gave a furtive look over her shoulder.
"No," Bonnie said in a normal voice that she knew would be perfectly audible to vampire ears.
Caroline made a face, but stayed in her place.
"Does she ever let you out of her sight?"
Bonnie jumped.
Jo Laughlin was sitting across from her. There was a cup of coffee next to Bonnie's books that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Jo gestured at Caroline who was staring straight ahead and, thankfully, hadn't noticed the newcomer.
Bonnie remembered a recent conversation with Elena that she had been trying not to dwell on too much and fought against a flush. "She's not…"
"Really don't care," Jo snipped. "I'm here about your other vampire BFF."
Bonnie bit back a flash of hurt. "I already told you I'm not working with Damon to get into the Prison World."
"Yeah, we settled that. I'm asking about something else. Something he's maybe shown you or told you about?"
"Something like what?"
Jo looked down at the table, shifted the cup around in a way that would have seemed like nervousness on anyone else. "Something like a thumb drive full of reasonably explainable data?" She said the words so quickly that it took Bonnie a moment to understand the question.
"What thumb drive?"
Jo looked up, her eyes shining with obvious relief. "That's a No then."
She got up to leave, and without thinking, Bonnie reached out to stop her.
Jo looked down at where their hands held, and then up at Bonnie. Her eyes were wide with shock.
Blushing, Bonnie pulled her hand back. She felt her fingers tingling, like if she had touched a live wire. "Sorry."
"Don't-" Jo cleared her throat. "I take it you have something to tell me?"
Bonnie did. Only now that she had impulsively forced the issue, the words won't come. "I wanted to thank… I wanted to ask…"
Jo tilted her head and smirked, and it actually helped Bonnie get over her tongue-tiredness. "So someone told me that Gemini envoys have been keeping an eye out for me."
The smirk vanished. "Really?"
Bonnie peered at the doctor. Were her cheeks that red a moment ago? "Really."
"That's…" Jo cleared her throat. "…interesting."
Was Jo blushing?
"Know anything about this, oh mighty Gemini leader?" Bonnie sing-sang, hardly knowing what had come over her.
"It's Gemini Praetor," Jo retorted, her eyes shifting and goodness, she was blushing.
Bonnie leaned forward, gaping openly. Jo noticed and blushed harder, shifting her weight from one foot to another. It was so painfully awkward that it was endearing.
"What? You've refused to take a psych eval. Someone obviously needs to watch your back 24/7."
A few days ago, Bonnie would have flinched at Jo's snappish words. Now she grinned. "You're off the clock, doc. You don't have to pretend to care. Unless you do."
Jo met her eyes then, a scowl on her face. Whatever she saw in Bonnie's made her pause… and then her expression melted slowly into a shy smile.
Bonnie blinked. OK. That was…
Wow.
"I'll keep that in mind," Jo said, still smiling that smile. She giggled - giggled! - a little. "Try not to set too many fires."
She turned on her heel and left. Bonnie watched her go, and didn't even mind when Jo looked over her shoulder once and caught her doing it. She smirked, twirled her fingers at Bonnie, then she vanished.
Like literally, one moment Jo was there and the next she was gone.
Bonnie told herself that that was not insanely hot.
"So here it is! I got you-hey, where did that come from?"
Bonnie came out from her private daze about hot dark-haired witches to see Caroline's glare. She followed Caroline's eyes to the cup that Jo left on the table.
"Oh, that's not mine, it's… mine," she finished weakly as Caroline turned the cup so that Bonnie could read her name on the label.
Jo had got her coffee?
Hesitantly, she took a sip, and she almost moaned out loud at the flavour. "Oh my god."
"I can't compel faster service, but you can magic yourself a shortcut?" Caroline snapped. She spent the next fifteen minutes bitching on the same topic, but Bonnie was too euphoric with her absolutely perfect cup of coffee to care.
There was a post-it stuck to her bathroom mirror.
'Call Envoy Stewart. Ask about Uncle Jonathan.'
It was her hand-writing all right, unmistakably so. But why had she written this? When had she written it? Jo had no idea.
When she opened her box of Q-Tips, she found another post-it stuck to it.
'Delete the list.'
Another non-memory. But one that made a little more sense.
She picked up her phone from the counter, and scrolled to her Notes app. There it was. The list. There were the two Envoy Stewarts amongst the others in no particular order. But there was an order, she reminded herself. And that order was a small but significant detail. Switching up places would be… inconvenient.
The post-it was a heads up though. She immediately backed it up in as many Cloud drives as she could remember, then emailed - with some clever encrypting, of course - to her home and work emails.
Delete it? I'd like to see me try.
Feeling lucky, she called Judith Stewart.
"Praetor," the old woman sounded surprised. "This is unexpected."
"No need to be so formal, Jude," Jo said with a smile. "I'm sorry you haven't heard from me all this while."
"Well," Judith said, sounding awkward but not suspiciously so. "You've been away from the coven for a long time. You built a life for yourself in Virginia. It makes sense that you're delegating to Lucas for now. No one is expecting you to jump into the middle of things right away."
No one was expecting me at all. Jo winked at her reflection. "It will take a while for me to adjust, but I will take charge of leadership. And I'll need your help when that time comes."
"You have it. You do not know how grateful we all are to you for defeating Malachai."
The flash of ice icy rage that filled her eyes almost surprised her. As well as the string of profanities that raced through her head. She had to lock her jaw to stop herself from letting them out.
"Praetor, are you still there?"
Jo rearranged her face into something sane. "Not for much longer, Envoy Stewart. Thank you for your time. I'll be in touch." In more ways than one.
She smashed the phone onto the counter. It didn't shatter as she wanted, so she picked up the makeup box sitting beside it and threw it against the far wall. The bottles fell out, smashing on the ground, and red nail polish ran on the white tiles. The sight was almost as comforting as the real thing.
She splashed water on her face, and dried it off. Better, she thought, staring at her dark greys. She crumpled up the post-its and trashed it. She picked up the phone and examined it. The screen hadn't even cracked. 21st century technology was practically magic.
Stewart. Stewart. Linus. Patrice Lang. O'Sullivan-Briggs. Briggs.
Victor Briggs had been easy, once she'd done a little asking around and discovered that Gabriel O'Sullivan was now Gabriel Briggs, that memory had all but fallen into her lap.
She glanced at the mirror, and was struck by the dark circles under her eyes. When was the last time she slept?
Pain like a spear pierced through her head, and she staggered, clutching the counter top for balance.
She had been thinking of the list.
She grabbed her phone and opened Notes. It was still there. She hadn't deleted it.
Not yet.
She hastily reached for the red trash button, a strange feeling of panic telling her to do it right now before-
The ringing of her phone made her jump. The Notes app vanished, replaced by her younger brother's sober face on the Caller screen.
"Luke?" she gasped.
Luke paused. "Jo, is this a bad time?"
"No…" She made herself straighten up, brushed the scattered hair off her forehead.
"You sound upset. Is everything OK?"
"I… I'm fine. I was wool-gathering and the phone just startled me. What is it?" she asked, turning serious. Luke hardly made social calls. "Is father giving you a hard time again?" She knew Joshua had been trying to get at her though Luke, and Luke had been fending him off.
"No, Dad's been … well, not unusually difficult." He cleared his throat. "Ah… I'm actually calling about Liv."
Jo straightened up. "Uh-oh. What's she done now?"
"Jo, before I tell you this… You need to promise you'll hear me out as my sister, as Liv's sister."
"What else would I be-"
"Not as the Praetor Magus of the Gemini Coven."
It clicked.
Jo looked around her bathroom, and thought of the chaos she had come home to a few days ago. Chaos and Alaric Saltzman.
"No way. Tell me that Olivia did not help Damon steal-"
"Promise me first, Jo. Then we'll talk as family, not coven witches."
"Or what?"
"Or you'll be making this 10 times more difficult for all of us."
Jo blinked. "Did you just give the Praetor an ultimatum?"
Luke sighed. "I'm asking my big sister for favour, on behalf of my other technically also big sister." He chuckled weakly. "Please, Jo. Just… don't be Dad about this."
She considered her reflection. Watched her brows go up speculatively.
"I promise. But only because you're the one that's asking. Don't think I haven't noticed that Liv has been avoiding me since the Merge. I just never expected her to actually-"
Luke sighed. "Just lower your wards and let me through. This isn't the kind of thing I tell you over the phone."
"We're talking a major celestial event. She has Parker blood. She's got elite envoy skills. But if she's tugging Damon, the doppelganger and my deadbeat ex's ass to a Prison World-"
"-and her own self. Damon is too paranoid to walk into a Prison World without the key in his pocket to take him out-"
"-then Liv will need something bigger than a full moon."
"Alaric is your ex, hum?" Luke murmured, glancing at her over the astronomical charts they had spread between them on the floor of Jo's living room. "You know, Ian and I had this fight-"
Jo shook her head firmly. "No. You're here to help me stop a Prison Break, and apprehend your traitor twin, and to do so with no Envoy backup since we're covering the ass of said traitor twin. You are not here to eat ice-cream and gossip about boys."
Luke seemed to want to push, then shook his head, visibly changing his mind. He turned back to the charts. "Saturn is in opposition in ten days."
"That might do for 3 people, in a tight spot. But we're thinking 4 carry-alongs."
Luke bent his head, and for a moment, they worked in silence.
"Liv is impulsive, and doesn't always think things through, but she's not a traitor."
Jo looked at him. He was eyeing her earnestly. "She won't have helped Damon for no reason."
"I already promised to let her off lightly, Luke," she said tiredly.
"And I'm grateful," he said hastily. "But I need you to understand that there has to be something more going on here than Liv doing Damon or Elena a favour."
"Didn't you all become best buddies after fighting Travellers together?"
Luke snorted. "That is a vast oversimplification."
"So you're not friends? You only hang out to kidnap and torture family members?"
Luke flushed. "We apologized for that-"
"You did? If you say so. So if it's not that, then is it just a professional drug user/supplier relationship?"
Luke looked outraged. "I only gave some magical herbs" - Jo scoffed - "to the doppelganger. Who was out of control because her vampire sire was dead, or so we thought. I was acting on Council instruction. Liv and I are not friends with these people. They treat us like their magical dancing monkeys on a good day. Liv won't help Damon Salvatore unless he bribed her or he's coercing her."
"OK, you're the expert on your sister. Tell me: what would Damon bribe her with?"
"Vintage t-shirts? Authentic Joan Jetts' leatherwear? A haircut that makes sense?"
Jo glared. "Did someone suggest cutting?"
Luke raised his hands. "I'm sorry! I'm trying to tell you I don't believe Liv is helping them willingly. I think - I know she's in trouble. I'm trying to get you to stop seeing her as the enemy and help her!"
Jo folded her arms. "So why can't I track her? I'm the Praetor. I should be able to locate every witch in the coven if I have enough time. I definitely should be able to find immediate family in minutes."
"Ah … that." Luke looked uncomfortable.
Her eyes narrowed. "Spit it out."
"I might have taught her this little shielding spell to cover her tracks. Not from you!" He added hastily. "From Dad."
"Huh."
Luke chuckled. "It's actually Dad's fault I know the spell in the first place. He sent me to apprentice with Envoy Genova during our gap year and I-"
"Yes!" Jo slammed her fist against the floor, and her face almost burst, she was grinning that widely.
"Jo…?"
She laughed. "Nothing. Just remembered something." Something good, if the glow in her eyes was anything. Still smiling, she reached for her phone and started typing but waved her hand for him to go on.
"Anyway… I learnt a lot of cool stuff that Liv didn't get to since she just had a generic junior envoy year. Of course, I shared what I knew with her, and the time she used the Shielding spell to sneak off to some concert, Dad was furious at me."
Jo had put down her phone. Now she was staring at him with narrowed eyes. He shifted under the scrutiny, and he already knew he'd hate the question before she asked it. "You were supposed to win the Merge, weren't you?"
Luke winced. Not this again. "It was 50-50," he said through gritted teeth.
"50-50 bull. You knew it was going to be you. Maybe not from the beginning," she said, overriding his protest, "but eventually. That's why you tried to Merge with m-my twin. You knew if it was up to you and Liv, she'd die."
He shrugged, looked away from that too-perceptive gaze. "We'll never know."
"Joshua knew. You realize that, don't you? Forget the golden twins, he was grooming you for leadership. You got the special apprenticeships, and the coven secrets. Let me guess, when he came to Mystic Falls on your birthday, he saw Olivia first, didn't he?"
When Luke said nothing, she laughed. "He was saying goodbye. What a dick."
He stayed silent. He had his differences with his father, but in the end - the man had raised him. He had been the coven leader for all of Luke's life. He just couldn't partake in Jo's casual disrespect towards their father.
No matter how much he wanted to.
"So Liv is using some Genova dark magic to cover her tracks. Can she use it to cover the vampires as well?"
Luke shook his head, grateful for the change in topic. "It's a one-person spell, non-transferable. They're probably using some dark magic object they got some other coven witch to make. Or they stole. The envoys are tracking them. They'll find them." He hesitated. "Of course, we'd work faster if we could pull some detail off Bennett and Forbes-"
"No."
Jo's voice was like granite.
"Fine," Luke said at once.
Jo shoved a chart at him. "The Lyrids Meteor Shower is in twelve days and Liv should be able to manage 4 carry-alongs."
Luke frowned at the drawing. "It's forty hours after Saturn and in a different time zone. We can't plan for both at the same time. We have to know for sure which one they'll use."
Something mischievous flashed in Jo's eyes. "I'll handle that. Just get your little envoys to find our missing vamps." She leaned back with a sigh. "So… blackmail." When he frowned, she elaborated. "You said you think the vampires are blackmailing Liv. So what dark secrets is she hiding from the coven, me, the Council…?"
Luke laughed out loud. "You really don't know Liv very well if you think she won't jump at the opportunity to scandalize the coven."
Jo shrugged. "So that's a no. What else? You're here, she doesn't give a damn about me and she's not dating anyone, so it can't be a 'I have your insert-damsel-in-distress' situation…" She trailed off at the look on Luke's face. "Or is it?"
"Have you seen or heard from Tyler Lockwood recently?"
Alaric hadn't gone into hiding. Either it wasn't convenient to get his vampire friends to compel him out of workdays, or he was arrogant enough to believe that he was in no danger from Jo.
Josette found him at his favourite bar, sitting in his favourite corner, drinking alone. He had a five-day shave, and his jacket looked like he'd slept in it. The sight of him made her shudder. What had Jo ever seen in this loser?
"Fancy meeting you here," she said brightly.
He started, looking up at her with bright, unguarded eyes.
"So you not only rob me, you kidnap my sister and her little boyfriend too?"
His eyes dulled, and he looked down at his bottle. "Liv and Tyler are fine. I made sure of that."
"Where is she?"
"I don't know. If you can't find her, it's because she doesn't want to be found."
"Look at me," she snapped.
He raised his head reflexively. He was telling the truth, the veritas told her and she grimaced.
He recoiled. "What the hell, did you just hex me?"
"Outrage from a thief?"
"You'll get your precious Ascendant back after Damon sees his mother," he snapped.
"And the thumb drive? What did you take that for?"
Alaric frowned. "What thumb drive?"
So he didn't know about that. "Your bat helped himself to it while you were robbing my home. He can get his own. I want it back."
"I don't know anything about that."
"You don't know anything about much, do you, Ric?"
He slammed a fist on the table. "What is wrong with you?" He hissed.
She didn't have time for this. "Are you going?"
He blinked slowly, trying to follow the conversation. "Going where?"
"To Disneyland, Ric." He flushed as she rolled her eyes. What had Jo seen in this idiot? "The joyride to 1903. The Elena-bot will tag along as she always does. But what about you? Are you joining Team Prison Break?"
He scowled. "Should I?"
"I would rather you didn't."
A mean look entered his eyes. "Really?"
For a moment they just glared at each other. Then Jo leaned into the booth. "But you'll do so anyway to spite me."
Alaric sneered and took a long swallow.
"Damon blackmailed a Gemini witch, robbed the Praetor, and is planning on breaking out one of our prisoners. And that's just the highlights. He's going down. You do not want to be anywhere near him when that happens."
The bottle was empty when he put it down with a dull clunk and rose gracelessly to his feet. "Then I guess I've chosen a side, and it's not yours, Josette Parker." He said the last name like a curse.
She looked up at him. "We're broken up, by the way." The flash of pain in his eyes startled her. "Frankly, we've been broken up for weeks now. Wow, it's a good thing I didn't assume you already knew."
For a moment he just looked at her, waving slightly from either the alcohol or the shock of being dumped. Then he cursed under his breath and shuffled out of the bar.
She watched him go, and then sent the message to Luke. "Meteor Shower. T-12 days."
"Find the wolf."
"Elena, I promise this isn't about the Ascendant or whatever Damon is planning. I just want to talk. I need to talk. Please, please, please call me back."
Stefan stumbled into the boardinghouse, full on blood and alcohol.
He didn't need to go shouting from room to room to know that it was empty, but he did so anyway because he liked the way his voice echoed through the empty house. He made his way to the den where Damon kept the best bourbon, and helped himself.
The back of his head niggled with something almost like worry. Damon and Elena had been gone for some days. They were planning something; because of course they were. Stefan would need to take his attention from the elaborate plans he had for Caroline and Bonnie, to deal with his brother's nonsense.
He let himself dwell on his plans for Caroline and Bonnie. There'd been some hiccups along the way. Witches showing up and making a nuisance of themselves. The girls had been lucky; but everyone's luck ran out eventually. He smiled into his glass.
"Wow, drinking alone. That's pathetic even for you."
Stefan whirled around, shocked that he hadn't noticed the human's presence.
Jo Laughlin.
The witch's presence.
"What are you doing here?"
"Securing collateral. You can thank your brother and his sticky fingers."
Stefan smiled. "Are you part of whatever Damon is cooking up to turn my humanity back on?"
Jo smiled back. "You could say so."
"And you're here alone?" He listened again, and all he could hear was the singular pulse of the witch before him. He sniffed a little. He liked the smell of her blood. "With no backup?" He tut-tut-tutted. "You made a big mistake."
Without warning, he rushed at her, grabbed her raised hands, and aimed for the jugular, fangs out and dripping.
Agony wracked through him.
He let out a blood-curdling scream as he fell to his knees, shaking with pain. His hands were burning where they held her, and he stared in confusion at the glowing red of his palms, then shouted as he felt magic rushing out of his body like blood from a wound.
He tried to yank his hands away, but she had twisted the grip so that she was the one holding him. He stared again at his hands and saw the veins rising, the pink blood leeching to black, his skin graying.
He was desiccating.
"You can't… you're not…"
"A syphon?" Jo smiled, and he cried out as she pulled at his magic harder.
Stefan's heart was slowing, his lungs petrifying. The corners of his vision had gone black. He could only see her eyes, dark and glowing with glee as she killed him.
He had to get it out: "You're not Jo."
"Oh, Steve," she snickered, "this is so far above your paygrade, you could file a tax exemption. If you weren't, you know, dead."
Then there was darkness.
"Elena, I really need…" Beat. "Never mind."
"It's another message from Jo."
"No, no, one hundred times no. You do not call back the coven leader whose home we robbed that can murder us with either a scalpel and a spell and probably both!"
"Damon, Jo was snubbing me for weeks-"
"-all the more reason to snub her right back-!"
"-and after we went into hiding, she started leaving me messages-"
"-which you won't get if you just blocked her number like I told you to-"
"-sounding really upset."
"It's a ploy, Elena! A ploy to get you to slip up and fall into her trap. Which she set for you because - again! - we just robbed her."
"She's my friend, Damon. I can't just ignore her."
"How many times do I have to tell you? Jo isn't your friend anymore, Elena. She's the leader of the Gemini Coven, the Praetor Maximum or whatever that means which is nothing good for the likes of us."
"Damon…"
"She dumped Alaric. What makes you think you're special?"
"Thanks a lot."
"I get it, Elena. I know how much you liked her. She was like Jenna and your Dad rolled into one person." He pulled her into a hug before she could walk away. She resisted for a half-second, then caved. "But she's not who she used to be. And I have to keep you safe. Even if it's safe from your own bleeding heart."
Elena was silent for a long time. She sighed. "Can I at least just talk to Bonnie again? She's worried too. And I know Jo likes her, maybe she knows why-" she trailed off as Damon burst into laughter. He literally pushed her away to hold his sides, he was laughing that hard. "Seriously?" She snapped.
"Sorry," he said, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He thought of the thumb drive of leverage buried in the sock drawer of the cabin, and laughed harder. "I just thought of something funny. I promise I'm not laughing at you." He reached for the phone. "Let me hear that message again."
Still glaring, she placed the phone in his hand. Grinning, he closed his fingers around it, and crushed it.
"Damon!" she shouted.
He opened his fist, and bits of silicon and wires fell to the ground. "Trust me, Elena. You'll thank me later."
Stewart. Stewart. Linus. Patrice Lang. O'Sullivan-Briggs. Briggs. Genova.
Seven out of seven. Jo literally danced her way through night rounds. Sure, she still hadn't figured out the order, but there were ways to work around that. She all but sang the names out loud as she lay down on the on-call cot, and prepared to slip into dreams of green eyes and bronze skin.
Soon, she would have everything she ever wanted.
She woke up to her phone ringing almost off the table. It was her mobile not the hospital phone for the on-call doctor. What idiot was calling her during a graveyard shift? She picked the call, ready to give whoever it was a piece of her mind.
In the next moment, her personal medical bag flew into her grip a split second before she started a porting spell.
The utilitarian room vanished around her and the faintly lit dorm room materialized in its place.
The sight in front of her was the stuff of nightmares – Caroline Forbes with blood stains painting her from her jaw to the front of her white T-shirt. On the bed was Bonnie Bennett's pale body.
A/N: Thank you to my dear beta madeunmexico! Remember reviews are the grease that keep the writing engines running!