I know I usually leave these little notes at the end of the chapter, but I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on something. This chapter and the next are pretty short, so I've decided to post them both today. ENJOY!
Chapter 74: We Are Detective
"March 8, 2011
It's been a couple of weeks since Matt died. I wish I could say Phoebe stayed strong and chose to grieve normally, but she didn't. Her eyes dried up as quickly as the storm outside that night. Now she's someone none of recognize. She isn't Phoebe anymore, she's…something else. She hasn't tried to leave nor has she really acted like a vampire without their humanity, but it's still there – the lack of the Phoebe we once knew.
Everyone's had time to grieve and memorialize Matt - we all tried to get Phoebe to go, in the hopes of getting her to turn her humanity back on, but she refused to go, and we couldn't force her. No one liked us letting Phoebe burn down Matt's house, either; but none of us could really argue against it being a believable cover story. There have been far too many 'animal attacks' in this town for people to keep believing them.
The subject of calling Elijah has come up once or twice, but it's always shot down. What could he actually do? When Phoebe turned off her humanity, she severed her sirebond to Elijah. It also meant that she stopped caring about listening to his advice, the way she used to when she was still human.
To be on the safe side, Damon and I have had her move back in with us. It isn't just to protect her family, but also herself from Klaus indulging her whims as an emotionless vampire. Aside from her not caring to see any of her friends or family, and a few jabs at me and Damon, Phoebe hasn't really been acting like your typical emotionless vampire. Her entire demeanor seems less cruel and emotionless, and more focused and calculating. It's unnerving."
"March 17, 2011
It turns out we were right, Phoebe was calculating something. While we were all distracted with other things, she was planning her escape from Mystic Falls. It wasn't just our grief over losing Matt, or our indecision over what to do about Phoebe, or even finding Katherine and the cure that had us all distracted, it was a problem far greater than that.
Not long after we returned from Silas' island, blood banks from towns all around Mystic Falls were being emptied. It couldn't have been Phoebe, because if she were going to go out as far as Grove Hill, she'd have fed on the locals, not an entire bank of blood bags. There was only one thing we could all agree could drink all that blood: Silas.
Phoebe took advantage of that, and orchestrated a party at the boarding house to escape. The high school was holding an invitational for surrounding high school's to send their cheerleading squads for some competition. I don't really understand it, but with the squads came supporting students from their respective school. Phoebe used that to her advantage, by throwing a huge party at our house. Too many of them were from Mystic Falls, so they were on vervain, which meant we couldn't compel them to leave, and she knew it.
She stayed long enough to lull us, lull me, into a false sense of security, and then took off when no one was looking. Jenna was the only one who saw it coming, and watched her like a hawk. She took off after Phoebe, when she ran, but she couldn't get her back alone. We found Jenna with her neck snapped in the woods, and Phoebe long gone.
The good news is Damon had an old friend in New York that he used to obtain IDs for. Apparently this guy makes a living forging fake IDs for vampires, one of them supposedly being Katherine. Unfortunately, there are multiple locations all over the US that she could be.
Another piece of potentially good news is we think we've found Phoebe. If we're right, she's in Richmond, Virginia. I say 'think' and 'if', because it seems too easy. The clues that it might be her aren't all that hard to find, and it's so close to Mystic Falls. Phoebe should be covering her trail better than that, and be as far from Mystic Falls as possible. So why is she so close and so easy to find?"
"This is definitely the spot." Hayley held up a handful of drawings that were strewn all over the hotel room.
The room was less of a room and more of a miniature apartment. There was a coffee bar, a living room with an 'L' shaped couch, and a separate closed off room for the bedroom. It was all very extravagant and more Damon's taste, than Phoebe's.
"Those could belong to anyone," Damon argued.
"Maybe so, but this can't." Stefan stepped out of the bedroom holding up a necklace. The necklace was of a figure-eight with pig ears, nose, and tail.
Damon shrugged. "So what, it's a pig. Phoebe isn't the only person in the world who likes pigs."
"I sent this to her for her birthday, last summer," said Stefan.
Damon's jaw clenched. He'd seen her wear it a couple of times, and when he'd asked her where she'd gotten it, she claimed she ordered it from Amazon.
"He's right. This is definitely Phoebe's room," said Hayley.
The brothers moved closer to the wolf to see what she'd been doing on the floor, and what she'd found that made her so sure. Hayley had pieced together several drawings and paintings to create a larger image…an image of Matt's face.
"I don't get. Why make this, if she can't feel?" Hayley questioned.
"Why go only two hours away from Mystic Falls?" Damon countered.
"Maybe she isn't trying to run away, just get out of town," Stefan suggested.
"Then why wouldn't she say anything to us?"
"Because we would have insisted on going with her," said Stefan. "Or worse, with Silas lurking around, we may not have even let her go at all."
"Yeah, but she didn't know about Silas, when she left," Hayley argued.
"That doesn't explain why it was so easy to find her, all of the sudden," said Damon. "I mean, she has to know we'd be looking for her, and if that girl didn't wanna be found, we'd sure as hell never find her."
Stefan thought for a moment, before answering. "Maybe she doesn't want us looking for her. Maybe she wants us to know where she is, so we can keep an eye on her, without hovering."
"That's an awful lot of maybes, brother."
"Well, it's the best I've got, Damon," said Stefan in frustration. "I think she chose an average hotel, instead of a 5-star, because it's the kind of place she'd stay in; but she got the most extravagant suite to make it a little bit more challenging to find her. I think she chose to stay under the name Diana Winters for the same reason, but she knew one of us would know how that ties to her. And I think she left obvious clues like this necklace and those drawings to let us know we had the right place."
Damon made a face. "How does the name Diana Winters tie to Phoebe Gilbert?"
Even Hayley was curious about this one.
"Diana is the Roman name for Artemis, granddaughter of the Titaness Phoebe; and Jenna's last name is Summers, so…" he explained.
Damon's face twisted into its usual bitter, jealous expression as he took a seat on the couch. "Okay, Mr. I-know-Phoebe-better-than-anyone, where is she?"
"Damon…"
The hotel room phone began to ring. The trio shared a look, as Hayley rose to her feet to answer it – being the only female among them, it made sense.
"Hello?"
"This is Rachel with the front desk? I found that address you asked for, Miss Winters."
Hayley scrambled to find the pen and pad that they usually kept next to the phones. "Uh, yes, one moment, let me find a pen…Go ahead?"
Stefan and Damon listened and watched as Hayley wrote down the address given to her.
"Got it. Thank you." Hayley hung up the phone, and turned back to the brothers. "Well, good news is we've got an address to look for Phoebe. Bad news is, we have no idea where this leads."
"Doesn't matter, it gives us a head start," said Stefan. "If that call really was for Phoebe, then that means she doesn't have the address yet."
"So we can get there before she does," Hayley finished.
"Exactly."
"But what about her powers?" Hayley questioned. "I heard about what happened when she found out you were trying to kill Kol."
"Phoebe needs her emotions to use her powers, and she's currently shut off her humanity, thus why we're here," said Damon.
"But even emotionless vampires can still get angry," Hayley argued.
"It's more of an annoyance," said Stefan. The kind of anger Phoebe would need to feel in order to use her powers would mean her humanity is back on. The most she's capable of right now is getting annoyed with us."
Hayley nodded thoughtfully.
Damon lifted himself off the couch and headed for the door. "Let's go. We should probably leave before Phoebe comes back."
Hayley began scattering the drawings back to the way they were, when they'd come in. "Don't forget to compel the chick at the front desk. We don't need her telling Phoebe she already gave her the address, when she comes looking for it."
Stefan returned the pig necklace to the bedroom where he'd found it, then followed the other two out. He paused in the doorway to look back into the room one more time. He sincerely hoped they could find her and bring her home, tonight. They all did.
When Stefan, Damon, and Hayley had left the hotel for that address they didn't really know what to expect when they got there. Maybe a library, which would mean it was going to be harder to take her by force, but they could still talk to her; or an art gallery for the same reasons, or anything more Phoebe than what they found.
"A nightclub?"
Stefan, Damon, and Hayley stood just inside the door, taking it all in. When they'd arrived, no one said anything – they all shared speechless looks. Now they were inside, and still couldn't believe it. Why here?
"We'll never find her in here," said Hayley. She gestured to the decorations all around the club. "It's St. Patrick's Day, this place is packed."
"We'll find her," Stefan assured her.
Hayley's face said she thought otherwise.
It wasn't just what day it was; it was the layout of the place. It was a fairly large building, with upper and lower levels. Lining either side of the dance floor was a series of alcoves with a little coffee table and couch-like seats, like little VIP booths. And each alcove was covered with veils of different shades of green, for moderate privacy.
"We should probably split up." Damon gestured to the bar. "I'll go this way."
Stefan watched his brother off, while Hayley continued to scan the place with her eyes. Stefan's ears perked and his brow furrowed with the change of song.
Hayley took notice. "What is it?"
"She knows we're here."
"How do you know that?"
Stefan gestured up. "The song."
Hayley paused to listen. "Just sounds like another weird 80s song. I mean, I know Phoebe likes this kind of music, but-"
"The song is called 'We Are Detective', it's about someone being paranoid that their being watched and followed," Stefan explained.
"So?"
"So this doesn't exactly seem like the type of music this place plays, especially on St. Patrick's Day." Stefan's eyes panned the room again. "She knows we're here, and she wants us to know it."
Phoebe watched the three enter the club, and continued to watch them as they talked. She couldn't hear them, but she didn't need to – she knew them all too well. As she'd predicted, Damon left the other two to get a drink from the bar, while Stefan and Hayley talked more. And when her song started, she saw the look on Stefan's face when he realized that she knew they were there already.
It was time to move onto the next phase of her plan, and get them alone one at a time. First up, was Damon. Damon, who assumed all vampires were the same, would also assume they all behaved the same without their humanity. Therefore, he'd be assuming Phoebe was hiding in a veiled alcove having some fun, whereas Stefan and Hayley would be thinking like Phoebe and looking for her in places normal Phoebe might be.
Damon began with the second level alcoves, peering inside them as he casually passed by them. Some people were drinking with friends, some were already making out, or worse.
As he'd predicted, he found Phoebe in one towards the end of the row. But she wasn't alone.
"If I had known you were this fun when we were dating…" He left the implication hang in the air, as he parted the veil and stepped inside.
Phoebe stopped feeding and, reluctantly, pulled her lips away from the girl's neck. She pricked her thumb on her own fang, and smeared her blood over the bite on the girl's neck, and dismissed her.
"If you're referring to you, me, and another girl together, that would never have happened." Phoebe grabbed her drink from the round coffee table in the middle of the alcove and took a sip, as she reclined. "I wasn't a vampire yet, so we couldn't have fed together, and I was a virgin, so we couldn't have done it that way either."
"How's that gonna work, by the way? You being a vampire and a virgin," Damon asked.
Phoebe shrugged. "I wouldn't know. You'll have to find one and ask them."
Damon looked confused. "When we were together, you said you were."
"And when we were together, I was. But after the Mikaelson Ball, well…" Phoebe grinned wickedly, as she took another sip of her drink.
Damon did his best to control his anger. He wanted to believe she was lying, and he would have…if it hadn't been for the remark Klaus had made before they'd all gone into the high school to rescue Phoebe and Jenna from Original Vampire Alterick.
"Maybe she's just not as into you as you think," Stefan suggested.
Klaus gave a devilish grin that said he knew something they didn't.
"If you say one word..." Hayley warned him.
"Don't worry, love, a gentleman never boasts about such things."
Hayley closed her eyes in irritation. That was as good as saying it.
Phoebe started to laugh, and had to put her drink down. "You're so predictable, Damon. Your never-ending territorial possessiveness over me, your jealousy over any man that falls in love with me, and your desperation to have me be yours again. Well, that's never going to happen, with or without a sirebond."
"Never say never," said Damon.
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "You know, Damon, I used to care about protecting your feelings and memories of our time together, but now I don't. So here's some cold, harsh truth."
"This ought to be good." Damon settled himself in for story time.
"Everyone's always asked me how I could fall in love with a monster like Klaus, especially while you and I were together."
Damon tried to hide his pain at that reminder.
"The truth is, I fell for him the same way I fell for you. I was inexplicably drawn to him, I enjoyed his company, we exchanged witty banter…At first, I did feel guilty for it. Not just because I was with you, but because of everything he had done. So to make it better, I started blaming myself again for my father's death. And when that started to weigh on me, I rotated the blame around to Bonnie for doing the spell, Katherine, Esther, anyone and everyone else. It was driving me mad."
Damon raised his glass and smiled. "Welcome to my world."
"But I woke up one day and realized the truth. It wasn't a random series of events, it wasn't multiple people, and it wasn't me or Klaus who had caused his death." Phoebe looked Damon dead in the eye. "It was you."
Damon looked genuinely taken aback. "What?"
"Our plan was going great, until you called Klaus to gloat. You couldn't just let him find out on his own that someone had freed Caroline and Tyler, and killed his other witch; you had to call him personally and rub it in his face. And that got him talking and thinking, until he realized that I wasn't Elena. Because of that – because of you – he nearly killed Elena, which killed my father; and turned Jenna into a vampire, which lead to Anna dying to save her. All because you had to gloat."
Damon didn't know what to say. He wanted to argue, to defend himself, but he couldn't find the words. Was she even serious about this, or was she making it up to hurt him? He started to think back over their relationship from that night on, trying to remember any signs of this being true.
Phoebe took advantage of this. She grabbed her drink, which seemed docile enough, and threw it in his face. It burned his face and eyes – it was vervain. But how, she'd taken sips from it and been fine?
Phoebe didn't give him long to think it over. Before he could recover and gain the upper hand, Phoebe snapped his neck.
"Sorry, Damon. The truth hurts."
Stefan and Hayley split up to cover more ground. Stefan went to search the back areas, reserved for VIPs and employees, since he could compel his way through. Hayley searched the ladies room and around dance floor. When she'd finished that, she went outside to see if maybe Phoebe had left or was in the process of leaving.
Stefan was just coming out of an employees only area, when a drunk woman began to hit on him. He tried excusing himself politely, but she wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.
"Baby, there you are!"
Phoebe walked up to Stefan and put her arm around him, as she planted a kiss on his lips. She turned back to the woman, whose face now looked a combination of embarrassed and annoyed.
"Who's your friend?" said Phoebe.
"Uhhh…" was all Stefan could get out. He was in utter surprise at what was happening.
The strange woman never answered Phoebe. She simply rolled her eyes and stumbled away.
Phoebe laughed to herself, as she released Stefan. She looked up at his face and laughed harder.
"It could've been worse, Stefan. I could've made her think you were gay and said that your boyfriend was looking for you."
"I just don't understand," said Stefan. "You organize a big party to cover your escape from Mystic Falls, even snap Jenna's neck to do it. You disappear for days, then leave an obvious trail right to you, and now you're saving me from being hit on?"
"Well, in her defense, you are really hot," Phoebe teased.
Stefan was in no joking mood. "Phoebe, I'm serious. If you wanted out of Mystic Falls, and away from all of us, then why lead us right to you?"
"Because I know you, I know all of you; you'd never let me go," Phoebe sighed. "The only way to get you to back off is to let you find me, without it being too easy for you, otherwise it would just scream 'IT'S A TRAP!'; and then show you how you are never going to be able to force me back to that god forsaken town."
"And how are you going to do that?" Stefan asked.
Phoebe' slips spread into an unnerving smile. "By taking you all down one by one."
"How?"
"By being a mile ahead of you all."
Stefan looked at her curiously, asking for further explanation, without words.
"Damon already tried the 'I'm the fun brother' approached, which resulted in a vervain martini to the face and a snapped neck," said Phoebe. "Now you, I'm guessing, are going to try and appeal to my sense of logic to try and convince me to turn it back on. Tell me that I still have friends and family who need me, some of them mortals whose lives I'll forever regret missing out on. Or you might bestow wisdom of your experiences upon me, and tell me about the regret I'll have for the things that I'll do while I'm like this."
Stefan's face lightened up. "It's all true. You still have people who care about you, Phoebe."
"And when that doesn't work, you'll probably have a backup plan to vervain me, and carry me home," she went on, ignoring his response. "Snapping my neck, however, you won't be able to do, so you'll leave that to Hayley, who can; but only as a very last resort."
"Alright, I'll play. How do you plan to stop me from vervaining you?" Stefan asked.
"Because while I was waiting on you three to arrive at the club, and while I've been moving around here, I've compelled quite a number of people to either kill themselves or kill others around them, if they see anything happen to me."
Stefan stared into Phoebe's eyes, desperately searching for a sign that she was lying, but he found none.
"You can try it, if you'd like. But those names will belong on your list, not mine," said Phoebe.
Stefan felt a sharp prick to the neck. While he'd been busy staring Phoebe down, someone had come up behind him and vervained him.
His vision went blurry, and he started to collapse.
Phoebe helped him to the ground, gently.
"Phoebe…don't do this…"
"You're so predictable, Stefan. That heart of yours is so big…I knew if I lied about compelling people to hurt themselves and others that it'd keep you distracted enough not to notice the one person I compelled to vervain you."
Stefan felt so played. He'd been such a fool. But had she lied about Damon, too? Not likely, which meant it was all up to Hayley now. Then again, after this, he hoped she wouldn't find Phoebe or she'd let her go.
"Goodbye, Stefan."
Phoebe rose to her feet and headed for the door. That was the last thing Stefan saw.
Phoebe beamed smugly at herself, as she walked through the parking lot. She had taken the brothers down fairly quickly and smoothly. Her job was done, and she was free to…
In a flash, Phoebe was pinned to the pavement.
"Hello, Hayley," Phoebe smiled.
"You don't seem all that surprised to see me, so I'm guessing you did lead us here on purpose," said Hayley.
Phoebe shoved the wolf off of her, and rose to her feet. "Yeah, but I don't really feel like explaining it again, so you should probably just ask Stefan."
"What did you do to him?"
"He's alive, if that's what you're asking. They both are," said Phoebe.
Hayley searched for the right thing to say. Like Phoebe, she guessed what Stefan likely would have said to her, which clearly didn't work. What else was there?
"We need you back home, Phoebe. With or without humanity, we need you," said Hayley.
Phoebe sighed with boredom. "Yeah, don't you always."
"Silas followed us back from the island. He's orbiting Mystic Falls."
"He's probably just looking for that stupid cure," said Phoebe. "So I suggest you all focus on finding Katherine so you can get the cure and give it to him."
"We'd stand a better chance of finding her with your help," Hayley argued.
"Not interested. But thanks."
Phoebe turned to leave, clearly done talking.
Hayley drew on what reserve power she had to run at Phoebe and snap her neck. Unfortunately, Phoebe was ready for it. She turned back around in time to knock Hayley aside.
Hayley hit a car, and fell to the ground.
"I don't want to hurt you Hayley, and I certainly don't want to kill you," said Phoebe. "But if you don't stop, I'll have to, and you're not nearly as durable as the boys."
Hayley looked up at her friend angrily.
"Stay," Phoebe commanded, as though she were a dog. "Good dog."
Hayley's temper flared. But before she could say or do anything, Phoebe flitted away at top speed.
When the brothers finally woke up, it was too late to chase after Phoebe. Despite knowing she wouldn't be there, they checked her hotel room to find it empty and ready for a new guest. There were no more clues or traces of Phoebe to follow. She was really gone this time.
Defeated and cranky, the three of them piled back into Damon's car and returned to Mystic Falls.
Phoebe stared out of the large windows, taking in the scent of fresh coffee in the air. She was happy to see the tempered glass windows had been replaced. The last time she was here, Elijah had just blown them out with a handful of coins.
"Well, there's a face I didn't think I see in here again," came a man's voice from behind her.
Phoebe wasn't sure if the man was talking to her or someone else, but she still turned around to see. The face she saw was one she hadn't expected to ever see again.
"…Slater?"
