We were gathered around in a circle in the bathroom. A candle was in our midst. Caroline had managed to convince Bonnie and Elena to do the seance. I still thought we were going to end up like those dumb teenagers everyone rolled their eyes at in the movie theater.
"Go on," Caroline said to Bonnie. "Call on her."
"Emily," she began. "…You there?"
I grinned. Caroline made a face. "Seriously? 'Emily, you there'?" she mocked. "Try again, Bonnie."
Bonnie closed her eyes. Elena and Caroline followed suit. Warily, I closed my eyes, too.
"Emily, I know you have a message for me. I'm here to listen," Bonnie said. "If you're here… give me a sign."
The candle's flame flared stronger. My eyes widened while I let out a high-pitched yelp. "No, nope—"
Elena grabbed my wrist before I could bolt. I shook her off, annoyed. "That just happened," she said flatly, like she couldn't believe it. Caroline was impressed, too.
"Quick," Caroline urged. "Ask her to give another sign!"
"Haven't we seen enough?" I despaired.
Bonnie seemed reluctant, but she gave it another shot. "Emily, if you're here, give us a sign." Nothing happened. She turned to Caroline. "See? It's not working."
I jumped at the loud noise when the windows suddenly opened. We were going to die horribly or get cursed with something worse than death for disturbing Emily, just watch.
"I can't, I'm done!" Bonnie ripped the necklace off her neck and threw it on the ground. The candles blew out and everything went dark. I should have run away when I had the chance! "Get the light! Please get the light!"
"I've got it!" Elena ran for the switch.
The light came back on. Bonnie gasped. "The necklace. It's gone."
The four of us looked all around for the necklace. It was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared, the same freakish way it had appeared back in Bonnie's bag earlier despite the fact that she'd thrown it in a field.
Elena didn't seem to think so. She thought Caroline took it. "Okay, fun's over, Caroline," she said. "You made a point and I get it. Now give it back."
"What?" She crossed her arms. "Well, I didn't take it."
In the corner of my eye, a dark figure passed us. I yelped again as fear pulsed through me. I didn't want to be a virginal sacrifice for Bonnie's creepy ancestor!
"What? What happened?"
I ignored Caroline and locked eyes with Elena. I focused on her mind. 'You saw that too, right?' she thought, and lifted an eyebrow. I nodded.
"Wait, is Jeremy home?" Elena asked out loud before walking into the hallway and calling out for our brother.
"Uh…guys." Bonnie went back to the bathroom. I followed her. And there it was, sitting innocently on the floor.
The crystal. This thing was definitely cursed.
Bonnie bent down and picked it up, but as soon as she did, the door slammed shut, separating us from Elena and Caroline.
"Oh, hell no!" I ran to the door and tried to open it, but it didn't budge. We were trapped.
Behind me, Bonnie began to scream. I turned around. "Bonnie!"
Elena and Caroline called out from the other side, trying to get in, while I tried to talk to Bonnie from our side of the door. She didn't seem to hear me. She just kept screaming. It was the worst sound I had ever heard.
I put my arm on her shoulder. She reeled back, still screaming.
"Bonnie!" I yelled again. I didn't know what to do.
Then, suddenly, she stopped. She buried her face in her hands, panting.
"…Bonnie?" I asked hesitantly.
She looked up slowly. There was something detached in her eyes that caused a shiver to go through me.
She tilted her head, as if curious. "You…"
"Me?" I asked nervously.
"You're not human, are you?" she said. My breath caught. Her voice…it wasn't right. It wasn't like Bonnie. "No. That's not all."
I swallowed. "What?"
"A powerful spell was cast on you." She observed me, and hummed at whatever she saw. "Poor girl. It was only recently broken."
I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but I did know something. This wasn't Bonnie. "Emily?"
The door unlocked with a click.
Elena and Caroline entered the room with wide eyes. "What happened? Are you okay?" Elena demanded.
"I'm fine," she said in a monotone voice. I glanced at the bathroom mirror and jumped back. It wasn't Bonnie's reflection, it was someone who looked like her. It was Emily.
Caroline scoffed. "Unbelievable. You were totally faking it. You scared the hell out of me!" She gave me an angry look. "And you were in on it!" She stalked away from the bathroom.
"I'm fine," Emily said, soft and stoic. "Everything is fine." She walked past us.
I turned to Elena. "It's not Bonnie," I said, making an effort to lower my voice. "Emily is posessing her."
Elena did not lower her voice. "What?! Are you sure?"
Was she serious? "Yes, I'm sure!"
We went in the direction where Emily had gone. I watched her head down the stairs.
"Wait!" I called out when it was clear Emily had no intention of sticking around. I felt a mixture of concern for Bonnie and curiosity for Emily's knowledge.
"I must go," she said.
"She's leaving, I'm leaving," Caroline said. Did she really not notice how different Bonnie was acting? I read her mind. She did notice, but she thought Bonnie was faking. "I've had enough freaky fake witch stuff for one night."
"You're the one who wanted to have a seance," I snapped at her.
"Oh, so it's my fault now?"
"Guys, stop!" Elena interjected.
"Thank you for having me," Emily said politely. "I'll take it from here."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Back to where it all began," she replied cryptically. "I won't let him have it."
"Him?" I recalled the conversation between Bonnie and Damon from earlier today. "You mean Damon, right? You have some kind of deal with him."
Finally, I had managed to get through to her stony exterior. Emily's eyes widened, just a little bit. It didn't last long. She shook her head before looking me in the eye. "It must be destroyed."
She went out the door. I went after her. But I couldn't open the door—it was locked. I tried to open it again, to no avail. Elena and Caroline tried as well. We couldn't open it.
"What's happening?" Caroline asked, scared.
The door opened. We all screamed.
Jeremy gave us a weird look.
"God, chill. It's just me. You guys gotta stop watching so many scary movies." He entered the house and walked past us. I was never going to watch a scary movie again, but I couldn't change that my life currently very much resembled one.
"I'm out of here!" Caroline left the house in a hurry. I couldn't blame her.
Me and Elena looked at each other, at a loss for how to proceed. What was one supposed to do when their best friend got posessed by her freakin' ancestor? We needed an exorcist!
"What do we do?" Elena ran a hand through her hair. "Mel, what do we do?"
I took a deep breath to try and calm myself down. "Emily said she was going back to where it all began. What do you think that means?"
"Where it all began…" Elena mused. Suddenly, she gasped. "Fell's church! That's where Bonnie kept waking up in her dreams."
"That's it!"
"I have to call Stefan."
She pulled out her phone and dialed his number; he picked up immediately. She quickly explained the situation.
After she hung up, she told me, "He says he's going to find her."
"Perfect, let's go." I headed towards the door. Elena grabbed my arm.
"Stefan said to stay here."
"Bonnie needs us," I said firmly.
The uncertainty left Elena's eyes. She nodded. "You're right. Let's go."
We left the house. Elena drove us to Fell's church. We split up when we entered the woods, able to cover more ground that way.
I heard a loud groaning sound. I followed it and found Damon impaled on a tree.
My face reflexively scrunched up at the sight of it. "What happened to you?"
"Mel," he grunted in a complete non-answer. "So nice of you to stop by."
"Melanie!" Stefan ran towards me. "Where's Elena?"
"We split up."
Stefan helped his brother. Damon fell to the ground and groaned, "Oh, that hurt." He looked at me. "This is why I feed on people."
My eyebrows raised as he tried and failed to pull himself up. So that was why he wasn't healing as quickly as he usually would. "You've been trying the bunny diet?"
"Trying to appease my baby bro," Damon said. It looked like he meant to say more, but then his eyes widened. I turned around and followed his gaze. I recognized Bonnie—but no, it wasn't her. Emily had created a circle around her.
"Hello, Emily," Stefan greeted her calmly.
Damon grabbed my wrist and tried to stand up. I shook him off. I wouldn't have been able to do it if he was at full strength, but when he was like this, it was easy. He glared at me and asked, "Really?" I shrugged in response.
"These people don't deserve this," Emily said. "They should never have to know such evil."
"Evil?" I repeated. Oh no, what now?
"Emily, I swear to god I'll make you regret this," Damon threatened, clutching his wounds.
"I won't let you unleash them into this world."
"Them?" Stefan asked sharply.
"What's going on?!" I demanded, but everyone ignored me. What were they talking about? More ghosts? Zombies? Ninja turtles?
"What part of the story did you leave out?" Stefan asked while Damon began to get to his feet.
"What does it matter?"
Stefan whirled around so he faced my possessed friend again. "Emily, tell me what you did!"
"To save her…I had to save them," she said.
"You saved everyone in the church?" Stefan asked with horror.
Emily replied simply, "With one comes all."
"I don't care about them," Damon said desperately. "I just want Katherine."
For a moment, all I could do was stare, processing all the information that had been revealed.
"Katherine's alive?" I asked quietly.
I got no reply. I didn't need one. I knew it was the truth.
"I knew I shouldn't have believed a single word that comes out of your mouth," Stefan grumbled. "This isn't about love, is it? It's about revenge."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive," Damon replied.
"You can't," I said, desperation starting to creep in. Emily had called what would happen evil.
"Why not?" he snarled. I was taken aback. I had never seen him so worked up about anything. "They killed twenty-seven people, and they called it a war battle. They deserve whatever they get."
"That was—more than a hundred years ago!" My voice rose. The people I knew, the people who lived here…they didn't deserve this. "These are innocent people you're talking about. You are blaming innocent people!"
"There is nothing innocent about you people!" he yelled. He then looked at Emily. "And don't think for a second that it won't happen again. They already know too much, and they'll burn your little grand witch right next to us when they find out!"
I let out a shriek of frustration. "God, you're so selfish! It's not 1864 anymore!"
"I don't care about anyone in this town," he sneered at me. "You're no exception."
In the midst of my anger and desperation, I felt a twinge of disappointment. I didn't know why.
"I can't release them," Emily said. "I won't."
"Don't do this," Damon pleaded.
Emily ignited a ring of fire around her, and threw the crystal in the air. It exploded into tiny sparks.
"No!" Damon yelled with agony but he was too late. The crystal was destroyed. The flames around Emily died down.
"Bonnie!" I heard Elena's voice. She'd finally arrived.
I could see the moment Emily went away and Bonnie returned. Before I could say anything to her, Damon rushed forward.
He was prompty thrown back. Bonnie was holding out her hand. The display of magic seemed to have been more of a reflex than a concious decision, but I was glad for it. Damon would have torn into her neck.
It didn't look like he was planning on making another move. The angry set of his jaw had faded. Now he just seemed…sad. I never thought I'd know what that looked like on his face, but then I never thought I'd see my friend get possessed by a spirit, either. Life was full of freakin' novelties.
Elena led Bonnie away from the two brothers. Bonnie seemed disoriented after everything. I couldn't picture what it was like to wake up from possession.
Damon walked away. I followed him. He sat down on a log, his eyes suspiciously red rimmed. This was the most human I had ever seen him. Irony, or something.
"I take it back. You're not a monster." I sat down next to him. He scoffed. "I'm serious. It's about the reason you do things. I used to think you just liked seeing people suffer, but that's not it, is it? Katherine is."
His breath caught at the mention of her name. "I can't get her back."
"So what are you gonna do now that you can't?" I prompted. "Tear out Bonnie's neck for real? Finish the job with me? Kill my new history teacher?" He didn't reply. "None of those things were necessary to get Katherine back. You turned Vicki because you were bored."
"What's your point?" he finally snapped, finally looking me in the eye. His were filled with heartbreak and loss. I knew this wasn't the right time to be antagonizing him, but I also knew that if I didn't get these words out now, I would never say them.
"You're a shithead," I told him bluntly. He laughed, once, startled. "You can be better. You just don't want to."
He sneered. "You're gonna give me the 'be a good person' speech? Save your breath."
"That's not what this is," I said, shaking my head. "Honestly, I don't care wether you're living up to what you can be." I didn't think he was capable of it before, but after what I'd seen tonight, I knew he could, if he really wanted to. He just didn't; that was the problem. But it was not my problem. "What I care about is you almost sacrificing an entire town."
"It doesn't matter now." He laughed harshly.
"What I care about," I continued, ignoring him, "is you almost attacking my friend. I know I might seem like some dumb human to you, but if you continue to do these things, I won't let you get away with it. I can easily out you to this mysterious council you seem so worried about."
He grabbed me and used vampire speed to slam me against a tree, causing me to let out a grunt of pain. My heart thundered. His face was inches from mine and I could feel his breath on my face.
"You think you can stop me?" He let out a humorless laugh. "I'll tear your damn throat out."
I lifted an eyebrow, daring him. "You just try."
He scoffed with disbelief. "You think I won't?"
"I think a couple weeks ago, you already would have."
We stood in silence, neither of us moving. My heart pounded rapidly in my chest, as I wondered if I was wrong and this was when I died. His eyes bore into me.
"Damon!" Stefan yelled. In the corner of my eye, I could see him heading towards us. "Leave her alone!"
We stared at each other for three more breaths before he slowly backed away.
I walked away as fast as I could without making it seem like I was running away. I couldn't believe I had just done that. He had wanted to get Katherine back for more than a century and he just learned that he couldn't—and what did I do? I literally dared him to tear out my throat. ...He hadn't, though. I wouldn't have gambled like that if I didn't think there was a chance he'd spare me, but it still went against everything I knew about Damon.
I made it to the car and got in. I shared the backseat with Bonnie. She was shaking. I found her hand and squeezed it. Elena drove us home.
After we arrived, the three of us went to Elena's room. Wrapped up in blankets, we comforted each other, and afterwards, I felt better than I had in a long while.