Previously: Casey leaves Richmond.
Chapter five: mayhaps
Casey's burner, and the dredges of her life, are dismantled and discarded in Richmond.
So, there's no heads up for what they're walking into in Mystic Falls. No one to get a heads up, to prepare the vervain, or stakes, or metaphorical pitchforks.
Stefan checks all three mirrors, with a familiarity that shows he knows what to look for, if he's being followed. That's interesting, but she doesn't yet ask for the story there. Maybe he ran bootlegging trips in the 20's – well, in the part of the 20's he can remember. They both know that Grayson had to have been waiting for them, last time.
This time they at least know to check their six.
The Boarding House is, pleasantly empty, from the driveway. There doesn't seem to be anyone lying in wait.
Stefan circles the property first, there and gone and back between her removing her seatbelt and stepping under the awning.
It's only Zach, inside.
If only Zach was an assured good thing, in this case.
The Boarding House is a different setting, with the curtains thrown open, bathing the dark wood in golden sunset.
They don't stumble in, with Stefan being dragged, the way they had carried him out. He's still in his clothes from last night, now wrinkled. No shoes, no over-shirt. What someone wears when they're comfortable in their home. What someone wears when they're prevented from dressing further.
Zach comes into the room with a careful step, nervous around the mouth, in the way he holds his shoulders. He relaxes in increments as he sees Stefan, seemingly fine, comparatively.
Magic can heal almost as easily as it can harm, and from the outside, it can make wounds lose their sting.
"Can we talk?" Stefan tilts his head towards the parallel, red couches in the living room.
They both move to take seats, Zach slowly, Stefan almost cavalier.
Zach swallows, glancing at her before tearing his eyes away. "Is she joining us?"
They both look up at her, standing shy of the couches they've both chosen. There are questions she wants to hear Zach answer, but...she's not sure she should be here, for what might come from this.
She meets Stefan's eyes, and glances at the porch beyond the French doors on the other side of the room, a place where she can step out.
Would you prefer...?
He shakes his head just slightly. She's not sure if he's sure, but he's asking her to stay.
Stefan turns back to Zach, his palms pressing into his knees. "Was everything alright, after we left?"
Perhaps that isn't how Zach expected the questioning to go. He's slightly wrong-footed as he shakes his head. "Yes... I, I took Grayson back to the hospital. His daughter will be alright, from what I was told."
"Did anyone ask why you were the one to bring him back to the hospital, why he left his daughter there?"
"No. I- I don't know. He...Grayson, had left when his son and Miranda's sister arrived. I think, people assumed, it was grief. Of being around his family. That he needed to compose himself."
Zach stops. It looks like he wants to say more, as he watches Stefan's demeanor, as Stefan handles the questioning with distance. He doesn't ask what Zach expects. He doesn't cast blame. And if Zach expects incrimination, it appears he misunderstood Stefan's real nature. The only incrimination he'll get, is if he looks hard enough in the mirror.
She's not sure if he will.
She glances at them both, searching for similarity in this taller, sun-kissed, human relation to the Salvatores. His eyes are a clearer, lighter green, but the expression of heavy thought, and turbulent emotion shows there's something to the Salvatore nature.
"Has anyone called from the Sheriff's office, to ask for a statement?" Stefan continues.
Zach frowns to himself. "No. I don't think they will. Grayson said that he was the one who pulled Elena out of the water. That you two had just seen the crash and called the ambulance for him."
Stefan and her eyes meet, finding that action interesting.
Grayson is trying to, and succeeding, in controlling the narrative. Maybe to make sure no one comes across as sympathetic with Liz, if and when Grayson does expose him.
"What really happened?" Zach wonders.
Stefan at first looks like he isn't going to answer, as he leans back against the couch, brow tight. He evaluates Zach with a long look, while Zach squirms, realizing what's different about his great-uncle-pretend-nephew. This is a Stefan that doesn't trust him.
Stefan sighs quietly as Zach looks away. "I heard the crash over the water. When I got there, the car was at the bottom of the lake. He was barely conscious, and he asked me to rescue his daughter in the backseat. There wasn't – we both thought there wasn't time to rescue them both, with her unconscious. When I came to the surface, I saw," he briefly looks to Casey, his voice stopping. "Well, Casey was there. She had dived in too. She took the...daughter, and I went back for him. He was holding his wife's hand with his eyes closed. When I opened the door, his eyes opened and I... pulled him out."
Zach listens without interruption, as Stefan tells him how Grayson immediately made for the bank. How Casey called the ambulance. He leaves Casey's injury out, her revelations, their visit to Sheila Bennett, that Elena was Katherine's doppelgänger. He made it seem like they stayed with the ambulance, and then came to the boarding house to change out of their wet clothes.
Zach frowns, confused about one part of the story. "You two met last night?"
They glance at each other. She shrugs.
"How did you know he was a vampire?" Zach asks her.
Casey leans some of her weight, the front of her thighs, against the arm of the couch. "He's not the first vampire I've met."
He doesn't look like he's buying it, but with a glance between them, and the side glances at each other, he knows that's all he'll get, and about what he deserves.
Stefan's jaw ticks under the back of his hand as he rubs his jaw. "Why did you invite him in Zach?"
He had turned over this question a dozen times, to himself. Had dread Stefan asking it. "He told me he knew. About the Salvatore family secret. That there was a vampire living here."
Stefan looks at his hands, the large Salvatore crest in his ring. "And that's all he had to say?"
"No. He...he also said that Miranda was dead."
Ah.
"I thought you had –" but he stops himself from saying it.
Stefan bows his head, and nods.
Casey's jaw is tight.
Zach looks at her, as if expecting the condemnation that Stefan won't give, but she doesn't look at Zach at all, only Stefan, his sloped shoulders, and his cupped hands.
"Is that how he found out, because you saved him?" Zach asks him in an undertone.
Stefan shakes his head. "No. That was my past, speaking for me."
She could interject about Grayson's activities. Share the history with the Augustine, and the Salvatore who tried to give his two vampire relatives up for a reward. Might actually do a hell of a lot to explain why Damon has treated his relations since with hostility.
She bites her tongue, staring at the adornments in the glass cases against the wall. It wouldn't be helpful.
"Are you going to leave Mystic Falls?"
She closes her eyes, briefly, seeing the moment for Zach to make amends, to parrot Casey's words to Grayson back to Stefan...pass by.
"I don't know," Stefan answers heavily and non-committal.
Zach frowns, and pushes. "Why would you stay, given...?"
She expects Stefan to say: Mystic Falls is my home.
He doesn't.
She hears his voice, his real voice, not the echo of the visions, say, 'so every time I came home to Mystic Falls...' in the weary realization that home hadn't been safe for him, hadn't been real since 1864.
She's hurt him, with her knowledge. He can't even defend coming home.
"It's your decision Stefan," Zach says uneasily, still holding his true thoughts, but not his feelings, in "but do you really think it's safe for you to stay?"
Stefan tilts his head, like he's agreeing, but closes the subject. "Do you know where he got the vervain?"
Zach tenses, the way a squirrel does, when they're trying to stay so still, they hope not to be noticed.
"I didn't think it grew here, after 1865," Stefan leads.
"Not openly," Zach admits, reluctantly. "But...some things have been passed through the generations."
"Right," Stefan nods. "I remember."
In another life, perhaps that's the only way she should look at it, Zach had shown Stefan his stalks of vervain and said: Blood only runs so deep when you're related to vampires.
It's a reminder, that she needs to listen to what people mean, underneath what they say.
"Remember little Cassandra, don't take the visions at face value."
There's one thing in particular that she's drawn to, in the library.
Not that she couldn't spend hours admiring the books. Weeks even, but there's a clue here that Stefan deserves to know. She can't predict how many things she's thrown off track, but she can ensure this one is there, ready to be unearthed, when he's ready to find it.
She has the library all to herself, while Zach keeps far away, and Stefan leaves to hunt.
When she realizes he didn't keep any blood in the house, she couldn't help the look on her face.
"Stefan," she had sighed, guessing the why – to not discomfort Zach, and thinking it both kind and considerate and stupid in equal measure. "You haven't had a moment to yourself – and monitoring my health while I slept does not count – since finding out," she waves her hand, to encompass everything that's managed to cram itself into a day, less than a full day.
He raises his brow, mouth puckering sarcastically. "That Katherine is alive? That Damon thinks she was in a tomb all these years? That he'll come to Mystic Falls to try and get her out and might unleash twenty-six starving vampires instead? Or that the Council is still around, and the Gilberts already know our secret."
"And one of those Gilberts happens to be Katherine's doppelgänger," she sing-songs.
He shakes his head, brows drawn together. "I still...don't understand how that works. Was Katherine from here? Did she have a child before she was turned?"
She purses her mouth, choosing how much to reveal. "To answer your first question. No. She was born in Bulgaria, butttt, the Petrovas, one of her direct, very identical ancestors, had been in Mystic Falls." She pauses. "And yes, she had a daughter before she was turned."
She continues her point, rocking slightly on her heels. "What I mean is, you haven't slept. You've been vervained. Personally, I would take a hot bath and then curl up in bed, and I know you're more likely to write this all down to help you process it" at his look of slight surprise she smiles in apology, again knowing just a little too much "but maybe you should just...go for a hunt?"
He's surprised how open she is, in bringing it up, surprised and uncomfortable.
His brow drops. "You honestly think that's a good idea?" he asks with heavy self-incrimination, realizing of course she knows about...that.
But it's because of the ripper instincts that she recommends it.
"It's not my worst," she smiles, matching the self-deprecation in a lighter manner. "And... I think it's a better choice than bourbon."
He crosses his arms against his chest, takes a step away from her. "I'm not sure that's true."
That's the moment she thinks about his father. Maybe because she's trying to communicate nothing can be found in a bottle, or because his issues with blood, with being a ripper, partly stems from the horror of his first kill. She thinks about Giuseppe's grave and feels an idea spark.
She's not going to suggest it now though.
Instead, she tries to find the right words. She understands why he's a ripper. Knows there are things he needs to come to grips with that can't be solved by telling him one day he'll learn better control, one day he'll be able to take human blood without falling into a pit that takes him years and years of deprivation to get out of. That one day he'll be able to hold onto the parts of himself that are shut away, in the throes of bloodlust.
She doesn't want him to think she's giving him false hope.
"Remember the Spinnetod in the library? The one I said hunted men?"
He looks up, brows wrinkled at the sudden conversation change, wondering where this is going.
"Yes?"
She takes that as encouragement.
"See, the change. Their transition, it starts at puberty, as young as twelve and thirteen if you can image. They start molting, then and then every five years after that, the le retour d'age. It takes three days, a ritual almost, three days for three layers of skin. And three men to..." she alludes what happens to the three men with a gesture. His brows shoot up, but he listens intently. "Pre-puberty, they're normal. No instincts, no awareness that there's anything different at all. Then it starts," she stops ominously. "There's an overwhelming urge to hunt. To seduce, copulate, and... consume. And if they don't, they can't molt, and they age rapidly. Old age and death." She bites her lip. "See, if all you knew about them was the way they hunted, you would think they were...monstrous. To know their victims intimately, then to consume them the way they do, while they're still alive..." She hesitates, "but in truth, most are horrified by it. And, deeply remorseful."
She's not sure if the parallel is comforting, but if anyone could empathize with a Black Widow, to understand what instinct and need can make you do, without changing how you process it, it would be Stefan Salvatore.
"The woman in the library," he questions, hearing the description of her nature at total odds with her demeanor.
How can a man with a pure heart turn into a ripper?
"She kept to herself, while I was there," she twists her mouth. "I think she was...painfully shy."
He drops his crossed arms, the ring moving back and forth under the direction of an absent thumb. She watches his hand flex, follows the muscle up his exposed forearm, as he stretches his shoulders. He looks up at the ceiling, neck outstretched as he thinks. Maybe he feels the energy, and the want, under his skin, needing a more physical release.
He looks at her and nods.
"Will you be here, when I get back?" It's almost a challenge, the lift of his brow.
"I... can be, still not sure if I should," she admits.
He smiles wryly, understanding the point intimately, for all that she's said she had visions that he does stay.
Almost like he knows exactly how to entice, he offers to, first, show her the library.
There's nothing overt about vampires, about the tomb, about the plan the town constructed. Giuseppe Salvatore speaks in metaphor, though not particularly descriptive or engaging ones.
Not vampires, but demons. Demons that push your control, prey on your mind, twist and enslave your spirit.
It reads like a confessional, disappointments, resentment, allusions - not outright admittance - to fears. Fighting a dependence that makes the worse of you. Focusing on the faults of others because of a loathing of self.
Stefan finds her mulling over a particular phrase, two weeks before the fire is set in the church.
And so, I have determined to go to my grave, with as many secrets as a man can hold.
"That's my father's journal," he realizes in befuddlement.
She nearly snaps the journal closed. She's going to have to get used to people being able to sneak up on her now. "I'm sorry," she apologizes quickly, hoping this isn't a liberty too far. "I was hoping I could show you something, but your father was more cryptic than I expected."
He shakes his head, his hair dark and damp from a shower. She realizes he went straight to his loft after the hunt, to shower first before seeing her.
"Show me what?" He wonders, pulling the chair out next to her.
How long was that, where he looked at her without his brows furrowed? 10 seconds?
"Well..." she starts carefully. "Your father carried something to his grave. I thought I could show you the prove of it, so that you would...know."
He leans his bare forearms against the small desk, hands loose as he gestures to the journal. "May I?"
She smiles begrudgingly, that he would ask, letting him turn the journal as she reaches over to point to the specific phrase.
If only she was instead pointing at Johnathan Gilbert's journal, where the secret was laid out much clearer.
He silently reads over the phrase. "It was a... surprise when Damon and I found out that he had another son. He was legitimized in father's will."
She sits back, shifting her braid behind her when it falls forward. "I had wondered, how the Salvatore name continued after 1864."
He raises a brow. "You didn't know?" he asks drolly.
She narrows her eyes, but her mirth gives her away. She shakes her head. "As far as I know your...half-brother led an ordinary life. I never had a vision about him."
There's a wistful tilt to his smile, maybe something bittersweet, at a life he could have led, a brother he didn't know. "I saw him once, but I didn't...we never met."
The grandfather clock chimes behind her, and it draws Stefan out of his remembrance. "My father used to say he would have a grave full of secrets."
"He also meant it...literally."
His green eyes search hers.
"Before the council enacted their plan, for the vampires, they also knew about Emily Bennett. They talked about what to do with her grimoire. Johnathan Gilbert was particularly wary about keeping it."
He frowns. "You said Emily had created a ring for him, that protected him from supernatural death..."
"Yes. She also created the compass they used to find the vampires that night. And a device that produces a high pitch frequency that incapacitates vampires and werewolves. And other creatures too, I suppose."
"She helped...?" He realizes, filtering through his memories. He stops, realizing he can do that later. Okay, Emily helped. He doesn't understand why, but if she did... "So, she helped him, and he still..." betrayed her, let her be burned at the stake, left her child an orphan.
"She helped because it was Katherine's plan. He benefited from it, sort of - the ring actually drove him crazy – but honestly? The town would have been better off with just vervain and branches of wood. Instead, they got party tricks and a convoluted plot."
His brows raise at her huff of agitation. "They wanted the cover of war. It was happening elsewhere; burning churches and firing on civilians."
She squints at that. "Dosing them with heavy vervain, and pretending they had typhus, or something would have been better."
His side-smile grows as he shakes his head. "And how could they blame that on the Union?"
She pauses. Seriously, that was their priority?
"But that's not how it's remembered today..."
"No," he agrees, straight faced. "They say it was that confederate soldiers who fired, thinking there was a cache of weapons in the church, and killing twenty-seven civilians."
She scrutinizes him carefully, feeling that spark of curiosity, in unearthing a secret.
"It was Damon's idea," he admits, with some mixed emotion.
No wonder he made it a point in that history class.
"Still..." she considers "all it would take was one stake-happy council member and Katherine's planning would have blown up in her face, like it should have."
He frowns at the reminder that Katherine had planned it all, deeper than he ever knew. Or Damon, who knew more than him.
"I guess no one knew vampires could be killed that way."
Her mouth drops. "What?"
He tilts his head. "It wasn't common knowledge then. No Bela Lugosi. Dracula wasn't written until 1897."
She's actually dumbfounded. She took current, 20th century pop culture for granted. They didn't know stake to the heart = dead vampire?
"Wait. Did you know, when you turned?"
He shakes his head.
"Huh."
He's smiling now, as strange as it is, given what they're talking about, because she's frowning to herself, annoyed that she didn't know this.
"So Emily's spell book is in my father's grave?" He asks to bring her back. She blinks silver eyes at him. "Even though he died before her?"
"They..." she shakes herself "uh, took her spell book that same night. Your father wouldn't of had it longer than..." a day, he understands. The next day, when Stefan killed him.
"Anyways," she moves on, "I wanted you to know where it was, because you found out, originally, by the Gilbert journal, and... I doubt Grayson is going to let Jeremy lend it out to Alaric this time around, so..." she raises her hands, to shrug. Stefan looks at her covered palm, wonders if it pains her still, the way she's kept it by her side. He can guess who Jeremy is, and that just leaves an unknown Alaric.
"You think I'll need it?" He wonders.
She bites at the corner of her lip in thought. "Well, you dug it up before."
He can only think of one reason why he would do that, to dig up his father's grave. "To prevent someone else getting it? Like Damon?"
She nods.
"Because her spell is in there, to open the tomb," he realizes aloud. "If Sheila had the grimoire, would she be able to keep it sealed?"
"I don't think it would turn out the way," she answers diplomatically. She purses her lips. "Can you see Damon taking it on anyone's word, that Katherine wasn't in the tomb?"
No. He knows Damon. He would do anything to prove Stefan, or anyone else, wrong.
"When does Damon come into Mystic Falls?"
She makes a face.
His eyes widen.
"Well, he already was, last night –"
Stefan sits up. "He's here?"
"No, no," she waves off. "He was, but he left."
"He left," he repeats, frowning. "Why?" But then he falls back in his chair, realizing "Did he kill someone?"
"No. I – no?" Probably not. "He decided to leave and make his grand appearance to you in... September, I think. Whenever the school term starts here."
"The school term," he repeats, wondering why that's important. "Do you know why he left?"
She blows out a breath. "He might have met Elena. Before the crash."
"Elena," he repeats, with a strange unfamiliarity. He shakes his head, leaning closer. "He saw Katherine's doppelgänger and left?" That part doesn't sound like Damon at all.
She lifts her hands again, out of answers. "It was meaningful for him. Maybe it weirded him out, too."
Stefan's frowns to himself. Knowing that Damon was here, and left bothers him. How would he have reacted if he saw Stefan was vervained, if he had been there, if he knew Zach gave Grayson Gilbert, a member of the council, an opportunity?
Is he even capable of caring? Had he truly written Stefan off long ago?
Casey's reluctance to mention Damon and Elena's meeting, is curious. The fact that she had a vision of it at all, is more so.
"1864 Katherine Pierce had the loyal support of a Bennett witch and the love of both Salvatore brothers. Repeat with Elena."
"You had a vison of their meeting?" he asks just to see her reaction.
She makes a face, but nods.
"What was his reaction to her?"
She pauses. "Disbelief, charmed, the usual reaction."
Stefan nods to himself, looking back down to his father's journal. His father's secrets. The grave he was willing to disturb, for a spell-book that Damon wanted. He can guess, based on Casey's insinuations, that he failed to keep it out of Damon's hands.
"What if we did it now?" He wonders, glancing up to see if she's willing to change something, again.
"Beware any witch who's willing to disturb a peaceful grave," she remarks, remembering a lesson long ago, as she looks down at Giuseppe Salvatore's headstone.
Then again, she's no longer a witch.
It feels like commitment – when Stefan takes a deep breath before using the shovel to crack the dirt.
They're really doing this.
Casey mans the flashlight that lays as heavily in her hands as a baton. She switches it to her left hand exclusively, as gripping it even loosely in her right makes her palm ache. She had offered to take two shovels, so she could contribute a little more, but Stefan had tilted his chin to her hand knowingly, and something in his face said, he thought this part was his duty alone.
The old graveyard, more barren wood now, is quiet beyond the beam of light Casey has focused on the ground. Stefan works rhythmically. Thud of the shovel, shift of dirt like falling rain.
"I thought it was my fault," he broaches, eyes still downcast as he works. "Katherine getting captured. Damon and I being killed."
The flashlight wavers, just enough for Stefan to look up at her, see she hadn't meant to physically react, that's she's contemplating what to say.
"Fault is a pretty damning word..." she answers carefully, eyes on the dirt, jaw working. "Everything had worked out, according to plan."
He stops, resting his hands against the top of the shovel.
"Everything?" He asks with foreboding.
She clenches her eyes. Why she said that she doesn't know. This isn't like telling him some of the things he might do, in his future. The past is a different beast entirely.
And this secret, had never come out.
"There's something more about what happened that night..." he leads, and looks at her, waiting, wanting to know even though he knows it's going to hurt.
She slowly slides down to sit now that he's standing four feet in the hole. They're at the same height now, but she can't look at him as she tells him this. The flashlight wavers again, down at where his father's body is still hidden. She keeps her eyes on the beam of light, licking her lip. "Your father was compelled, that night."
His hands tighten, knuckles taut against the wooden handle. "Compelled." He repeats. His father was compelled. Compelled that night. Compelled to...
The graves are silent around them. She wonders if Giuseppe Salvatore would want this said for him, to explain something hidden of himself. Not everyone wants their secrets unearthed.
He shakes his bent head. "He was on vervain," it's almost a rejection, a refutation that she has to be wrong.
"Not always." She stops, but he looks up, needing her to continue. All it takes is a moment, to drain someone of vervain, to compel them, to wipe their memory. "He fought it, but compulsion can be...insidious." He falls back to lean against the side of the grave, the shovel now loose in his hands. His face is too shadowed, backed away from the light for her to read his expression. "I think...from his journal, he could tell his resentments, his anger, were...heightened unnaturally. Made to flourish. He knew what happened to him, even though he was made to forget. And he hated himself, because he thought if...his natural wasn't what it was, he would have been stronger in fighting it."
Stefan looks at the grave like he's looking through it.
"You never found out about it," she can't help but confess. "Maybe you were better not knowing. I – I don't know. This is why seers are more trouble than they're worth." She mutters, berating herself.
"No," he says slowly, sighing with it. "That's...something I wanted to know. And if there's a right place to tell me, I think this is it."
She looks up, wondering if he meant it. She bites the inside of her cheek.
When he gets to the casket, he wipes the dirt off the Salvatore crest, his palm with the daylight ring, laying flat against it. The next time he hesitates is removing the bound book from the grip of his father's bones.
He sets it next to her at the side of the grave. He doesn't break the binding, doesn't confirm what it is. Instead, he takes the shovel again, and buries his father.
Before a new pile of dirt falls onto his casket, she gives a quiet blessing to his bones. "Rest well, Giuseppe Salvatore."
Stefan looks up at her, sees the grimoire untouched where he left it, and her morning dew eyes made silver by the flashlight's reflection, watching him, direct and full.
He licks his bottom lip. He offers a prayer to his father's spirit, in the Italian he learned as a boy.
He knew, what it felt like to be compelled by Katherine, to see yourself doing things you knew was wrong, felt was wrong. And he knows, the true horror his father must have felt, when he saw his son become –
He covers the grave under Casey's light, and before he leaves the old desolate graveyard, he finds the faded inscription of Johnathan Gilbert's declared death.
1904.
She was right.
He lets the Jeep idle, lingering on the outskirts of the graveyard, hands still dusty with grave dirt.
"Are there any more graves to disturb in Mystic Falls?" He jokes, wondering what would get her to stay, if that's what she wants.
She laughs lightly. "I don't know. Not presently."
He looks at the book in her lap, at what they pulled out of this one.
"Do you want to see it?" She wonders, gathering it to hand over.
"Is there a curse on it?" though maybe that isn't a joke. Maybe there is. "To meet death by a disease no doctor can diagnose?"
"Wouldn't that be interesting," she tilts the book, like she can shake a deadly curse loose. She quirks a smile at his look, her braid loose, so stray red locks curl around her face. "I used to dream about being an archeologist, exploring cursed tombs," she confesses wistfully.
"Apparently, there's one close by."
"Maybe Emily Bennett had the same dreams," she muses.
He never got to truly know Emily. The witch who played Katherine's maid, who seemed her friend when he thought Katherine capable of it. He wonders if her magic ever gave her a feeling of freedom or if it was a different nature of servitude.
"Are you planning on giving it to Sheila, or her granddaughter?"
She tilts her head. "I wasn't planning to do anything with it. Other than hand it back to you."
"To me?" That seems...sacrilege, to hand a witch's cookbook to a vampire.
She gives him a questioning look, like she doesn't understand why that would be strange. Maybe to her it isn't. She's different from any witch he's ever met, even if she isn't a witch, anymore.
"Well, I expect you'll give it to them," she shrugs. "But maybe you'll want to copy some of the pages first. About the tomb. So, you could learn more about it? And she has the daylight ring spell in here. Lexi has a witch friend she trusts right? I figured you could..." she trails off, brow drawn together as he stares at her.
A daylight ring. For Lexi.
Of course, Emily had the spell when she made his and Damon's rings. He can imagine Lexi's joy, to finally be able to live in sunlight. "Did you see Lexi with a daylight ring?"
Her eyes slide, for just a moment. She shakes her head, with her lips tight. "No but that doesn't mean anything. She could have it now."
He takes note of her reaction but doesn't comment. Instead, he focuses on her suggesting it, when it's something she hasn't seen at all.
"Thank you," he says sincerely.
She smiles, slightly embarrassed, with a flush on her cheeks.
He can't help thinking she meant this as a goodbye. They've only known each other for a day. One day. Though of course, it's longer, on her end.
"I might need help," he suggests, frowning thoughtfully as he taps his ring against the lower steering wheel. "Going through it."
She frowns down at the book. "Right," she agrees, thinking it over.
"Maybe tomorrow?" He pushes it, flickering his eyes meaningfully to the dark sky.
She narrows her eyes, searching his as he tries to remain guileless, only because he knows she'll see through it.
Her fingers tap the grimoire, mouth twisting in indecision.
"Okay?" she answers slowly. "Yes?"
And Stefan...breathes.
I'm going with a theme for my chapter titles. Not sure if this one will stick.
Next: may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb
A B&E and the Saints of Augustine.