The mother had waited up for my return, equal parts furious and worried. Remembering Yael and Raziel's situations, I felt obliged to remain calm as she lectured me. This only seemed to infuriate her more.

In the end, I—a celestial being older than time itself—was grounded by a human who'd barely seen four decades of life.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ The Long Way Down ⋅.} ───── ⊰

Elijah did not return the rest of the week.

Stefan Salvatore did.

"Thank you for saving my brother," he said quietly during our next Chemistry class. I did not have to read his mind to sense his sincerity. Stefan's eyes were guileless, his expression set in a serious cast.

Chin in hand, my vessel's eyes blinked as I pulled myself out of my wandering thoughts to focus on Stefan. "I did nothing."

Stefan glanced over at the teacher before returning his sights to mine. "You convinced Elijah to spare him. I'd call that something." Stefan paused to add another compound to the mixture before asking, "Could you really have revived him?"

I returned my gaze to the window. The birds were back. This time, two males competed in trilling songs to impress a nearby female. I'm such a good worm gatherer, the one sang. I caught six worms this morning!

Liar! The other whistled. You only gathered three!

Better than one, jerk!

"John Gilbert has been insinuating that he knows something," Stefan went on after a moment, stealing my attention away from the drama outside.

"At his age, I should hope he knows many things."

The look Stefan shot me was not impressed. "Whatever it is, he's not above using it against you. Especially if it will further his own agenda."

The two blue jays were not hopping up and down on their branches, puffing out their chests as they traded increasingly vulgar insults.

I let my sights fall to the blank notebook on the table before me and wondered what John Gilbert would do.

And when Elijah would return.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ The Long Way Down ⋅.} ───── ⊰

Since I was denied television privileges, I'd begun going through Sophia's books. Many featured half-naked men on their covers, or couples in various clothes that were centuries out of date. I picked one of the bare-chested men books where the man posed on some sort of sea faring vessel and held a fainting woman in heavily muscled arms. The woman wore a dress out of the eighteenth century, the bodice loose at the top.

I was halfway through the book's very confusing pages when someone knocked on the front door. A moment later, the mother called for Sophia.

I walked down the stairs and found the magic man, Jonas Martin, on the porch. His eyes were wild, his thoughts frantic.

The mother looked up at me. "Why didn't you tell me you had a project with Mister Martin's son, Sophia?"

Having reached the ground floor, I paused after the last step and studied Jonas Martin. The warlock was beyond upset. He was frantic and willing to do anything it took to bring his son back.

I tilted my head as his recent, haunting memories bombarded me. His son on fire. The heat that seeped through the blanket. The smell of burnt flesh. Luka's stillness.

Jonas stared into my vessel's eyes and begged, "Please help him."

I nodded. Turning to the mother, I said, "I'll return later."

"No later than eight, Sophia." Her voice was stern. "You have school tomorrow."

As soon as the door was shut and we were sprinting away to the silver car parked behind Sophia's, I asked, "What happened?"

"We casted a spell to find Elijah's body," Jonas said in a rush before hurrying into his car. I picked up the pace as the engine immediately turned over. I was barely in the passenger seat when he started backing out of the driveway. "The Salvatore's somehow knew Luka's astral form was there, attempting to pull the dagger from Elijah." His jaw clenched as his eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "They set him on fire."

Elijah was daggered once again, explaining his absence. And Luka had paid the price trying to free him.

Jonas sped through the streets of Mystic Falls, back to the house Elijah had taken me. "Can you save him?" he demanded.

"I don't know."

Jonas' hands tightened on the wheel. "I could have told him about you. I didn't." He raced through a red light, ignoring the angry honk of a car that nearly collided into the passenger side of the car. "You owe me."

My eyes narrowed. "You are bargaining." I turned my head to consider the tension throughout Jonas' body. "I am no demon to make deals with, warlock."

A strained silence fell.

"I'm sorry," he said after a minute. "I didn't mean to offend you."

I set my sights wander past the windshield again, to the buildings and trees that rushed past. I had to remind myself that bargaining was a part of human grief. I nodded. "Apology accepted."

There were no more words between us. Not even after the car's tires squealed as he sped into the driveway of the house Elijah had once occupied and came to a hard stop.

We both hurried out of the car and inside. This time, I was led down the hallway to a room near the back of the house. I could have found the body of Luka Martin by smell alone. It was a pungent aroma, making the vessel's eyes water as soon as I passed the door.

Jonas guided me to the badly burned remains of his son lying on the floor, half wrapped in a blanket.

He crouched down beside him, hands hovering as if too afraid touch. He looked up, eyes wide and shining with desperation. "Can you bring him back?"

But I did not need to move any closer to know I could not. "His soul is gone."

"What?" Jonas asked, thoughts scrambled. His mind was becoming fractured as shock forced his consciousness to seclude itself from the torrent of grief welling within.

"His soul. It is no longer here." I tried to sense it, but Luka must have traveled elsewhere within the Veil. Either way, "I cannot revive him without his soul."

Well. That was not strictly true. I could revive the body, but it would be a hollow thing of primitive instincts and nothing more.

Jonas looked about, as if he would spot it somewhere in the room with us. He then pinned me beneath a frantic, wild-eyed stare. "How do we get it back?"

"Your son was a warlock." At Jonas' stare, I elaborated, "He will be trapped within the Veil that lies between this realm and the ephemeral."

Jonas rose to his feet. "You can travel between both."

"So long as I possess a vessel, I would need my wings," I admitted reluctantly. "And they are damaged."

"Then leave this girl's body!" Jonas grabbed my shoulders, squeezing. "Please! I… I need my son!"

"Even were I to do as you ask, he is not here. And without wings I can move no quicker on that side of the veil than I can on this." I frowned. "I am sorry, but your son has moved on."

Eyes fixed on mine, I could feel the despair, the disbelief, the anger. "Sorry?" he asked, hands gripping my vessel's shoulders even tighter. "You're an angel! What do you know of sorrow?!"

I certainly knew nothing of the desolation and grief that had opened within Jonas Martin like a great, unending abyss. It had carved out his insides, and the human struggled as it sucked every thought and feeling within it like a great black hole of agony and misery.

I wondered if even the tortures of Hell could compete with the grief that overtook Jonas Martin.

He cradled his child, turning his back to me. "Leave us," he asked, voice raw with pain and tears.

As there was nothing else I could do for either, I did as he asked.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ The Long Way Down ⋅.} ───── ⊰

Luka Martin may have been beyond my ability to save, but Elijah was not.

The Salvatore Boarding House was empty by the time I arrived on foot. I regretted having to break the locks on their door and its frame but broke them regardless. Not quite a sin, but not good. The longer I stayed on this planet, the longer my tally of lies and questionable decisions continued to grow.

Pushing the thought aside, I paused inside the doorway. My gaze took in the myriad of antiques, from the Victorian furnishings with floral patterned silks to the turn of the century paintings hanging on the paneled wall, but no Elijah. Ignoring the eclectic decor, I closed my eyes to focus instead on the resonance of Elijah's soul. It was so weak, it barely qualified as existing. Had I not heard him play, I doubt I'd have been able to find it. But find it I had, which led me to a stairway that descended beneath the house and into the earth.

The basement was stocked with more antiquities. Lamps sitting on tables, pieces of bedframes, couches covered by white sheets. Box after box piled atop one another. I stepped around it all, to a door in the back that led to a hallway of exposed brickwork. Here the air was cool and humid, and the light fixtures exposed overhead.

Doors lined the hallways. He was behind one of them. These doors were of an unexpectedly sounder make then the entrance and had a sliding lock on the outside. That was unusual. From what I'd encountered so far, humans kept the locks on the inside of doors that lead out of their homes or rooms, not outside of them. Fortunately, I didn't have to break this one. I just had to unlatch it.

The room within was bare but for more exposed brickwork, a dirt floor, and Elijah's body lying prone at the center.

He was in the same suit he'd worn the night of Damon's dinner party. A suit that was badly burned. The scent of blood and spent fuel lay heavy in the air.

I crossed into the room and knelt at Elijah's side. I took in his greyed, desiccated flesh. His sunken cheekbones. The prominent black veins that lay beneath his thin, dry skin.

I pressed my fingers to his cold forehead, but as I tried to revive his heart, my grace was blocked by dark magics. My vessel's sights found the dagger's ornate handle sticking out of his chest. Leaning to the side, I gripped it and pulled it free.

Elijah's body eagerly accepted my grace's energy once the magic keeping his heart from beating was removed. The cells sparked back to life. His heart was keen to pump once more, but the blood remaining in his system had coagulated. I had to reverse the decay until it flowed smoothly through his veins once more. Soon, his face began to lose its grey pallor as a healthier flush spread throughout the whole of his body.

I sensed the moment he returned to consciousness. It was another minute before he opened his eyes.

He looked up at me, confused, before taking in his surroundings. "Where—"

"The Salvatore's basement," I replied.

Elijah nodded, inhaled a breath, and looked to me with eyes that were all pupils.

Hunger. It was all I sensed from him for a moment. Then, he shut his eyes and grit his teeth before speeding backwards across the room, knocking into the brick wall. His suit lay around him in tatters as he stretched his neck and turned his head away from me.

But still, the hunger was there, fighting a terrible battle with his will. His face began to transform. The whites of his eyes darkened with blood. The veins beneath the delicate skin of his eyelids bulged. Behind his tightly closed lips, his incisors grew.

"Here," I offered, plucking a rock from the ground and using its edge to saw apart the soft skin at the inside of my wrist, deep enough to sever the artery. The rock made for an imprecise edge, admittedly. The rough points bit further than my blade would have, and I suspected hurt considerably more. But pain was an easy thing to block, and the blood loss would not kill me.

Still, despite the blood streaming down my wrist and hand onto the dirt floor, he moved no closer. I was impressed. Even though the curse had him firmly in its grip—eyes darkened with bloodlust, veins beneath pulsing from want—he still maintained control. I would have to go to him, it seemed.

"Stay back." The command was so soft it was more of a whispered plea. He managed a step back against the wall, but no more. I could see the war manifested in the feet he kept rooted to the ground, while his upper body turned and leaned towards me the closer I grew.

"It's alright," I soothed. "You won't hurt me."

"I'll kill you," he warned, though the step that had once taken him back now moved forward, instead. "I'm… I can't..." His nostrils flared. "You smell—"

"Please don't say divine." Once I was just outside of arm's reach, I extended my open wrist. Blood continued to well up and pour over the side like an overfilled cup of wine. "You won't kill me. You couldn't. Not even if you drained every drop." The vessel had already lost half a pint. "Hurry, before it's all gone."

He stared. I watched, fascinated, as the war within his mind manifested in the tightening of muscles throughout his face and then, the rest of his body.

I felt the moment his will lost and the red door within his mind flew open.

Here was the beast. The monster I'd sometimes glimpsed in the dark recesses of his eyes, when his pupils grew large enough to find hints of it's shadow lurking within, tangled inside with his want and his lust. It was a greedy thing, probably driven so by the iron-clad control by which he kept it leashed… and starved. It glutted itself on what remained in my veins. Pulled me close enough to feel the hard edges of his ribs beneath lean muscle. Crushed me in a grip tight enough to break bone. The bones I healed but left the wound he tore in the vessel's neck open for him to feed.

He was not quiet. He grunted like a primate, growled like a dog. Given how composed and careful he always was, it surprised me to hear such primal sounds. Mouth too full of blood to voice them, instead the sounds rumbled up his chest and caught in his throat, garbling up with the blood that poured into his mouth.

If it weren't for the fact he'd drained me, I was sure the blood would have been filling my vessel's face. A confusing jumble of impulses flitted from nerve to nerve like dancing fireflies. There was the instinctive fear, of course. The body knew it should be dying—though I was able to ignore it as background noise. More interesting were the awakening of the skin. The tightening of the stomach. I wasn't sure if it was the fear or the desire that quickened the vessel's breath. Both?

It was the biggest mess of sensations yet. And, sadly, there was little within Sophia's memories to help guide me. Brief flashes of heat and desire that had been met with equal parts shame and curiosity. Secret experiments late at night when she was sure she wouldn't be heard. Her head filled with thoughts of famous actors or one of the cuter boys on the football team.

But these feelings were mere whisps of the sensations that now coursed through her body like a tsunami.

I had no idea what to do about any of them, so fell back into the familiar role I'd had for eons. Wait. Listen.

Elijah tried to drink long after the vessel was drained. He had backed me against a wall, and my wig had fallen askew. His body had curled over me, mouth stuck to the wound at my neck, arms wrapped like a boa constrictor around my ribs. Finally, several minutes after the blood stopped flowing, I sensed the madness of his hunger begin to recede.

And then it was swept aside by horror.

Elijah jerked back, blood draining from his wide eyes until they were the brown I had grown to know so well, my consciousness could conjure their image at a thought. The intense fear took several heartbeats to slowly transform into confusion.

He gazed at me, took in my alert eyes and calm demeaner, and was mystified. But that bewilderment soon turned to wariness. "What are you?"

I no longer wanted to hide. What was the point when witches were talking and fellow angels were broadcasting our presence through the television?

I stared straight into his eyes and into his soul. "I am Charmeine, an Angel of the Lord."

At his blank expression, and the disbelief behind his thoughts, I allowed a fraction of my grace's light to brighten the room and expose the shadows of my wings. The effort it took to allow only enough for him to see, without burning out his eyes and causing the blood vessels in his brain to burst as the barest hint of my true voice hummed throughout the room, took all my concentration.

As the weather patterns outside began to shift due to the excess energy being let out into the atmosphere, I had to reign my grace back. The room dimmed to its normal levels of light, and the sound of my grace went away.

And in its wake was silence.