Little artificial moonbeams of light flew from broken fluorescent bulbs dangling from the ceiling at Mystic Falls High. Papers and other school paraphernalia littered the floor. A water fountain was crushed within itself leaking H2O by the liter turning the pale cream linoleum into a slippery electrical hazard. A majority of the metal locker doors were open, their contents turned into confetti.

Her boots crushed broken glass. Absently she could hear a fire alarm blaring in the distance, but it competed with four years of memories patrolling these halls. Standing on the outskirts of the trio, laughing, and popping gum while swaying her hips in her cheerleading skirt.

Young, beautiful, incorruptible.

Lifting a hand, Bonnie Bennett trailed her sensitive fingertips along the painted cinderblock walls, little bolts of electricity sprouting from her nail beds.

Her footsteps faltered outside of Alaric's old classroom. She looked in, nostalgically remembering the way he breezed inside and introduced himself using his "from up north" humor to break the ice. She remembered casting her first locator spell in that room, and the subsequent nosebleed that followed shortly after.

It was in ruins now. The teacher's desk tipped over, windows shattered, blackboard barely hanging on to the…

A loud, bloodcurdling scream made Bonnie's head snap to the left. Gritting her teeth, she advanced down the hall making sure to remain light on her feet, yet her pounding heart gave her away, nonetheless. She rounded a corner and came to a stop.

She was no longer in the school, but in a corridor of the hospital.

Grunts, pleas, cries for assistance from the injured could be heard from every corner of the hall. It was unnervingly quiet from those who were already dead.

Countless bodies riddled the floor, arms and legs twisted like dolls; smoke saturated the air, fires burned here and there. It was a warzone.

Blood. There was so much of it spilled it coated the floor like a layer of ice. Looking down at her hands and arms they were drenched, gore caked underneath her nails that they appeared black. The scent of it corroded all other smells until the metallic saltiness of blood was the only thing to see, taste, breathe.

Bullets whizzed by Bonnie's head, some tearing pea sized holes in the walls. Other bullets hit the ground causing shrapnel to fly into the air. Something struck her in the shin and she went down, hard. Groaning, Bonnie clasped her leg and looked to the triage area where the shots had come from. Two men were there. One standing, the other kneeled on the ground.

The round end of a shotgun pointed right between lapis eyes was meant to be intimidating. But really, he found it amusing.

His arm shot out lightning fast seizing the end of the shotgun, ripping it from the hands of his tracker. He bent the metal, muscles barely twitching or straining against the effort of bending steel. He hissed slightly as he caught, in his peripheral, more idiots like the one before him flooding into the room.

"You're not getting out of here alive," a random deputy shouted. "So STAND down!"

Damon Salvatore grinned maliciously. His head turned to the side, unnaturally, like his neck was broken. He declared, "What do you know? Neither are you."

The deputies readied their weapons, fingers curving around the trigger.

"WAIT!" Bonnie shouted but to her ears it sounded like she merely whispered.

"Can logic and rationalism really win over antipathy?"

Her eyes widened at the sound of his voice.

"While you're consumed with saving the lives of innocents, the one who really doesn't give a damn has already fled the scene with the spoils. I know in every story the lesson people are supposed to walk away from is that good triumphs over evil. But this is real life and in real life sometimes…well sometimes the bad guy wins."

Kai Parker strolled closer as if he had not a care in the world.

He stood poised over Bonnie and kneeled. He pushed strands of hair behind her ear, relishing the look of hatred in her eyes. "I did wish things could have been different between us."

Damon, help me, Bonnie urged in the far recesses of her mind.

Kai's cold fingers gripped her chin and forcefully made her stare at him. "Stop looking to him to save you. He can't. He won't. I've made sure of that," he snapped his fingers and magicked Damon's heart to his hand.

That wasn't what made her scream. No. She screamed when Kai took a bite out of cardiac muscle.

"Delicious."

Bonnie startled awake.

Three.

That was the third dream about Kai though it was vastly different from the first two. In those dreams the setting and order of events had been clear—Jo and Alaric's wedding, the massacre of the Gemini coven, Kai blaming her for shit that wasn't her fault. In this dream, he had been mentally stable and even philosophical. Most insane people were highly intelligent, Bonnie thought gloomily. Kai had also been controlled when before he relished in the chaos.

A change in the vision often meant someone made a decision that's created, in short, an alternate reality, or an alternate set of possibilities.

Who changed it? The setting not being the only thing that changed, Damon being murdered was a new element that made her skin pebble into goose bumps.

She called him.

"Yello?"

"Dream number three happened," she panted shakily.

"Tell me."

Bonnie hesitated but told him everything, finishing with, "…he had your heart in your hand and he ate it."

Damon sighed-laughed. "He could have cooked it first. Sautéed it, maybe. My heart deserves some kind of presentation."

"This isn't a joke."

"I know that," he sobered, "Think the change in venue means anything?"

It could mean a lot of things, yet she wasn't a dream interpreter and there was no way to know what significance any of it held. The fact of the matter was this: she dreamt about Kai for the third time. He was coming. Bonnie said as much.

"I'll be there in about an hour," Damon promised.

"You don't have to come over."

"We need to get our ducks in a row, Bon. This time we're not going to be scrambling around looking for last minute loopholes and Hail Mary passes. All right?"

"Fine. I'll see you when you get here."

They hung up but Bonnie didn't climb out of bed right away. She gnawed the corner of her lip as she combed through that dream once again. Twenty minutes passed before she became cognizant that Damon was on his way, and she needed to shower and dress.

He was early when he knocked on her front door. Donned in her robe, skin still damp and warm, Bonnie padded downstairs to let him in. "Hey."

"Hey," Damon tried not to let his eyes wander to the gap in her robe that revealed her rounded breasts and pert nipples that tented the silky fabric, or to her bare legs and feet. Unfortunately, his mind being a terribly dirty place, he was cruelly reminded he hadn't had sex in weeks. Has it really been weeks? Damon frowned as he swept inside and closed the door after him. His accidental celibacy wasn't helped by the sweet fragrance of honey and passion fruit Bonnie bathed herself in. Top it off with the gushy thump of her heart, her warm blood, and another distinct scent—Damon sniffed—sunlight, Bonnie was provoking the vampire in him to come out to play. Eat.

Like she sensed it Bonnie tightened her robe, "Give me two minutes to throw some clothes on."

It took fourteen.

By the time she emerged, Damon had convinced the blood in his body not to head to one central location. A location that shouldn't even factor into his thoughts being around his best friend. But his best friend had other ideas as she planted herself between his legs giving him her back.

"Can you zip me up?" Bonnie asked.

Being eye-level with her ass, Damon found it safer to get to his feet, better to tower over her. She had pulled her long hair to one side so it wouldn't catch in the teeth of the zipper; her focus was locked on the book in her hand, and with him standing, Damon could now recognize what it was. A grimoire. He had never seen it before. The script was tiny, the language unfamiliar, but Bonnie apparently had no issue reading or translating the contents.

When he gripped her blouse's zipper, he asked, "Where'd you get that?"

"Klaus."

Damon almost broke the damn zipper after hearing that name. "Klaus?"

"Yes, the dude with the insanely full and red lips we unsuccessfully tried to murder," Bonnie glanced up at him over her shoulder. "He's loaned me seven grimoires. All of them way older than Emily's."

The correct way to view Klaus' "generosity" was to see it as an advantage but Damon didn't like it. Unconsciously, his hand fell to Bonnie's hip, a finger somehow sneaking its way under the hem of her blouse to touch bare skin.

"What is he getting in return?" his gaze narrowed. "The man isn't known for doing things out of the goodness of his heart. You're not on his witchy payroll or…something, are you?"

Bonnie heard the inflection in Damon's voice and smirked. "No, I told him from jump because of the times I saved him when I could have let him die, he owed me. So no need to worry that I pimped myself out to get my hands on invaluable knowledge."

Damon observed as Bonnie gently tossed the grimoire on the coffee table. He said nothing when she faced him. They were wedged nearly chest-to-chest in the tight space between the couch and table.

Yesterday they barely made it out the door before Bonnie complained of a raging migraine that made her nauseous. He had fed her some soup, closed all the curtains because she said the light hurt her eyes, and tucked her into bed. She looked better today, almost too pretty, too bright.

"The sun…every time I close my eyes, I see the sun," she had murmured in her sleep.

"How are you feeling?" Damon breathed out.

"I'm better than yesterday."

"Good."

"If we're going to hammer out a plan we need to bring Jo and Alaric in on this. We agreed that if I dreamt about that bastard again, we'd tell them."

Damon squinted, "On second thought, I don't want to talk about this."

Bonnie gaped, "You were the one who said we needed to have our ducks in a row."

"Yes, but I've realized since you've been back it's been one conversation about Kai after another. If you're not talking about Kai, you're talking about magic."

"So…"

"You need a day to detox."

"Damon, I'll detox the second I'm standing next to Kai's smoldering corpse. Until then, we have work to do."

Taking her by the shoulders, Damon bent his knees to stare Bonnie directly in the eyes, "I'm not going to let you repeat old habits where you become so fixated on something you think the only way through is by dying."

"That's not what I think." Bonnie attempted to wiggle free.

Damon gripped her harder. "It is. Besides, I promised you a day of fun and that's what we're gonna do, dammit. Have fun. Now move your ass to the car."

"Da—"

He silenced her by putting a finger to her lips. "This isn't an argument and we're not taking a vote. Dahlia has been working you to the bone, and you can't even escape for a few hours of peace while sleeping. We're getting out of here and that's final."

Thirty minutes later they were on the move.

Damon took her to the lone movie theater in town and bought tickets to World War Z.

"I hate zombies," Bonnie whined and complained as they left the concession stand and headed toward their designated theater.

"That's surprising. You dated one for five hundred years."

She frowned in confusion about who he meant. Then the answer came to her, "You're a dick."

"Then again," Damon continued, ignoring Bonnie's retort, "zombies have more personality and spunk than Jeremy. Have I told you lately what terrible taste you have in men?"

"Does this terrible taste in men extend to best friends, too?" Bonnie smiled sweetly.

"Blow me."

They settled dead center in the middle of the theater in reclining seats and put their feet up. Bonnie sighed pleasurably at the tray balanced on her lap ready to gorge on the popcorn, hotdog, Sour Patch Kids, and gallon-sized mystery flavor Icee Damon was nice enough to buy for her. For himself, the vampire purchased nachos, popcorn, and a Bunch-A-Crunch. Naturally, he smuggled in a flask of bourbon and attempted to pour some in Bonnie's drink. She slapped his hand away.

The young witch hadn't been to the movies in forever and tried to contain how giddy she was to do something normal. She whipped out her phone, took selfies and pictures of their snacks. Damon watched her from the corner of his eye, smirking, feeling pleased with himself.

The theater filled to about half of its capacity, if that. Only one other couple sat on their row. The lights dimmed and the previews started.

Cold. Wet. Dark. Endless. Suffocating. Never enough time to prepare. Never enough time for anything. Memories. Painful. Haunting. Companions. That's all there was left. No, that wasn't true. There was desperation. A need to move, a need to fight, a need for blood. A need to stretch. Gotdamn I can't move. Those things, those necessities would never go away, never melt into the shadows.

Why him?

Water engulfing and taking him under like quicksand. He was floating. Skin pale. Desiccated beyond recognition. Turning into paste. Burning with hunger.

His eyes were open. There was nothing to look at but a sea of darkness. No swirls of light. No morning sun. No twilight sky. No moonlight. No fresh air.

Oh, yes he remembered those things well, but the lack of those things burned acidic and caused his fangs to thrust deep into his bottom lip drawing only a drop of blood. Hungrily he lapped it up and then…the water drowned him again. Eyes closed.

He had to get out. The panic was coming back. Fist knocking, denting metal but he couldn't break out. It was stronger than him. Nothing should be stronger than him, but it was.

Stefan gasped as he sprung up startled in the chair. "STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Elena merely stared blankly at him in response. She had been at it for the last three hours, twisting her ex's dreams to those three months he spent drowning. She hadn't made a dent of progress since Damon abandoned her to run off to who knew where. Tightly she wove her arms across her chest as if to restrain herself from tearing out of the cabin to go look for him.

"Why are you doing this?" he coughed. "Why do you even care, Elena? Hun?"

"You're my friend, Stefan," she answered quietly.

"Really?" he chuckled sardonically.

"Yes. I know it sounds absurd and shouldn't be possible because of everything that's happened, but you're still important to me," pause. "I didn't realize how much until…until I had dinner with your mom."

To that Stefan rolled his eyes, "How sweet. Lemme guess, she questioned you on your dating background and you had to come clean on boning not one but both of her sons? How'd she take that?"

Elena shifted on the arm of her chair. "Not well."

"I imagine no mother would, not even the piss poor ones. Your head still being firmly attached to your shoulders, guess Lily doesn't care," he shrugged. "She wouldn't be the first one."

"Stef…I care about you because I love you. I mean…"

"Oh, I get what you mean," he shot her a look. "You can only love me when you're in pain. Damon is the one who makes you feel alive, right? Gag me. You and Katherine, true pieces of work you are. You two may have loved me first, but your actions said I wasn't enough. And it's cool," Stefan rushed on when Elena opened her mouth to object. "We weren't meant to be and we're better off without each other. Wouldn't you agree?"

Elena was surprised her automatic response that she had to swallow down was: No she didn't agree. Instead, she went with, "Stefan I never meant to hurt you."

"Yeah and I'm sure Jeffrey Dahmer never meant to eat his victims' brains. Hurt me or love me, I don't give a damn. You once said to Bonnie that she's a reminder of every bad thing that's ever happened to you."

"My humanity was off," Elena spat defensively.

"Well, girlie things are full circle," the ripper in Stefan smiled broadly. "I used to look at you and see everything I hated about myself. The sight of you made me sick." Stefan leaned forward. "You should want my humanity to stay off because it's the only way I'm tolerating you," he saw her eyes turn misty. "What? Are you gonna cry?" he snickered.

By the blind force of her will Elena remained seated versus flying over to Stefan to smash his jaw to pieces. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she slammed her eyes closed and dunked Stefan back into his worst nightmare.

Ten minutes into the movie Bonnie was gripping his arm and snapping her eyes closed. Damon smothered his chuckles the best he could. It was amusing this chick who faced off with Originals and psychopaths with no problem could barely sit through a thriller.

He leaned across the arm rest, "You're making the Bennett name proud by silently shrieking every five seconds."

Bonnie glowered, "I've been learning from a thousand year old witch who's meaner than her entire family combined. You really wanna make fun of me?"

Damon recognized, no, he did not want to make fun of Bonnie, and be on the receiving end of whatever deadly spells Dahlia taught her. However, he saw Bonnie fighting off a smile.

"It's okay to admit that you like being scared, BonBon. That you like the way your muscles clench, like how your breath hitches while you wait for what's scaring you to catch you."

Her lower lip dropped open just enough for Damon to catch a hint of her bottom teeth. That normally happened on two occasions. When Bonnie was about to launch into a lecture, or when she was turned on. Live with someone, you pick up their tell. She was showing hers though it was difficult for Damon to decipher which he'd actually be met with.

Bonnie did the interpreting for him. "Fear doesn't turn me on."

"No?"

"It doesn't. Why would I find fear sexy?"

"Because of the way it makes your body feel. Like you've suddenly become boneless as control slips through your little fingers. And while you feel you're being drained you're also filling up adrenaline and dopamine. Do you know what those two things does to the body? Adrenaline supplies oxygen to your muscles so you can move, while dopamine makes you feel pleasure."

"I don't need fear for that."

Damon shrugged lazily, "You're right. You don't," he didn't say anything after that. Merely settled in his seat and gave his devout attention to the screen.

Bonnie tried to do the same. Tried not to think about anything Damon just said. Tried to forget his spiel. Tried to brave the quiet lull happening in the movie though her stomach tightened with anticipation of another zombie ambush. Out of her peripheral, the couple who sat two seats down was tongue-wrestling. Bonnie watched them, heads bobbing and weaving in the shadows. If she listened carefully she'd probably hear them moaning. She was positive Damon could. Old her would have sucked her teeth in disgust at their ribald display. New her was envious as the knots in her belly failed to ebb away. They grew bigger the longer she looked. She turned away and found her gaze deadlocked with Damon's.

Converge.

That piercing eye contact. The wave of awareness. Ragged like nails pushing through the walls of a settled house. Raw as electricity.

Bonnie felt like she was drowning in magma. Heat flushed her and was the heaviest in her breasts and femoral artery. At the same time she was weightless, and any moment she expected to float out of the reclining chair. The hook keeping her in place was the intensity arrowing from Damon straight to her core. He was everywhere. Touching without touching. What was he thinking? Was he thinking the same thing she was?

Bonnie thought she got her answer when Damon parted his lips and she saw the tip of his tongue wet the seam. Her heartbeat tripled, quadrupled. It climbed to her throat when Damon glanced to her chest apparently listening to it pound like a hammer.

The conversation they had the bed & breakfast where she asked him point blank if he ever thought about kissing her flashed like warning lights in her mind. Bonnie's stomach flipped with an amalgam of emotion, the strongest being desire the weakest being caution. Girl code, cardinal rules, Bonnie was beginning to view them as inapplicable. She was above them. Ascended.

Damon could see that as plain as day. His breathing spurt a little faster, chest rose higher and higher with each passing second. When he wasn't locked down he lived according to his own drummer, and when the drummer told him to kiss a pretty girl, take her home and fuck her, he did just that. The drummer had been quiet the last two years with good reason, but he could vaguely hear the rumble of drums. They were very faint, growing louder and louder as he held Bonnie's gaze. The leather under his butt squeaked when he leaned to his left, closer. Bonnie copied him, inching closer. Eyes half-lidded.

They widened until they bulged when his phone rang loudly stirring up a chorus of hisses and shouts to turn his damn phone off.

Bonnie, cheeks hot, scooted away as far as the chair would allow from Damon who fumbled for his phone.

Without a word he palmed the device after silencing it and took the stairs two at time, exiting the theater.

"Where are you, Damon?" whined Elena.

He couldn't tell her the truth. That he had shirked his big brother duties in order to take Bonnie to the movies and came too damn close to kissing her. Damn, was I really going to kiss her? Damon stabbed his fingers through his hair. And what was he more annoyed at? For being weak or for being interrupted? Damon didn't want the answer.

"I'll be back in a few hours," he finally replied.

"You've already been gone for…you know what. If you're not going to do your part in helping your brother why are we even bothering?"

"Elena, I'm sorry, but you know how full and tied my hands are. I'll be back as soon as I ca…"

She hung up.

Cursing, Damon turned off his phone and thrust it into his pocket. If he kept this up he wouldn't have a girlfriend. He glared at the door of the theater. Dahlia's warning boomed loud and clear, and Damon would be the first to admit he wasn't good at listening to sound advice. But if he ended this outing with Bonnie, she could withdraw. Maybe take it the wrong way that he was rejecting her. Or not prioritizing her. Thus, the domino effect would take place leading things back to square one where Bonnie inevitably bit off more than she could chew. Or maybe he was giving himself far too much credit. Either way, Damon couldn't risk it. Stefan wouldn't be going anywhere unless Elena freed him. Plus, it wouldn't hurt the doppelganger to stew since her problems—well they had always been plucked from her grasp and solved for her.

He dashed back inside the theater and retook his seat. Bonnie glanced at him, mouth in a tight line, entire body rigid.

"Do you need to go?" she whispered.

"No. I'm staying right here."

Damon pretended not to see the triumphant smile that lit her face.

It came as no surprise that a single masquerade party could liven up the town. That it would beckon the citizens out of hibernation, see the world in brighter colors, believe the gloom had passed. A spark of rejuvenation and pride had lit fires that had long since been doused. Winter signs were swapped out with spring banners. Two days of consistently sunny and warm weather enticed families to congregate on the grassy knoll in the center of town, throw picnics, fly kites, toss footballs and baseballs to their children. It brought out the home bodies and introverts who found benches or nooks where they could read, study, or drink coffee in peace while enjoying the atmosphere. Rambunctious dogs barked and horse played with fellow companions or their owners. Mystic Falls in springtime was an idyllic scene.

Too bad Bonnie couldn't enjoy it.

"STOP!"

Bonnie dropped her arms, thankful for the reprieve. She managed not to collapse to her hands and knees. Since her arrival, after her outing with Damon whom she tried to displace from her mind, the elder witch worked her over. Attacking Bonnie without warning to gauge how quickly she could think, move, and improvise on her feet. Barely having time to come up with countermeasures, the two of them left their marks all over the forest in the form of large craters in the ground, bent or warped trees, and the dense smell of smoke.

Bonnie angled her head toward Dahlia who frowned severely.

"You're off," Dahlia criticized. "Is this how you come to me? Sloppy and uncoordinated?"

"Look, lady I'm working my ass off…I was gone—missing by all accounts for seven days trying to anchor my magic, and I still have no idea if it even worked! So excuse me for not being the perfect super soldier at the snap of your fingers!"

Dahlia, unmoved by Bonnie's outburst, tilted her chin, "Are you quite finished? Should I put a name to the reason your thoughts are occupied?"

"Please don't."

"I've warned him to step aside, to keep away because he is a costly distraction you can ill-afford."

"Damon is a lot of things but he's not a distraction." Bonnie wanted to add that he was the key component to getting her magic back, to saving her life, but sentimentality bored Dahlia and she wouldn't care. She found and labeled Damon a nuisance and hindrance and that opinion wasn't going to change.

Closing the gap, Dahlia stood in front of Bonnie, looked deep in her soul. "You want him."

"No, I don't," Bonnie immediately squeaked.

"You're afraid that he means more to you than you mean to him."

"Can we get back to training?"

"You'll never be what I need you to be if you don't confront this, Bonnie."

"There's nothing to confront. Damon is my friend. We're friends. That is it."

Closer Dahlia moved, her lips right at Bonnie's ear. "Shall I prove that as true or false?"

"No."

Dahlia leaned back, studying her. "I want to believe you. I want to believe you're fully commitment to this, and that you'll let nothing stand in your way yet youth is fickle. I need certain assurances."

"My word isn't good enough?" Bonnie's forehead dimpled.

"You want to know if you were able to anchor your magic. Let's see if you did," Dahlia reached inside her pocket and pulled out a damask handkerchief. She unfolded it showing Bonnie the contents. Two stands of hair.

"What are you doing?"

Dahlia pricked her finger, dripped her blood on the hairs, balled the handkerchief in her fist and sent it up in flames. She hummed and as she did so, the wind blew cold and sharp across Bonnie's face nearly robbing her of breath.

"This spell is now binding unless one of three things happens. My death, you succumb, or you break it, proving your magic being stronger and superior to mine."

Bonnie gulped, "What. Did. You. Do?"

For the first time since meeting her, Dahlia graced Bonnie with a smile that vanished the instant it appeared. "You and Damon are going to feel quite…amorous toward one another within the next hour or so."

A vise was around Bonnie's neck making it impossible to swallow, "What?"

"You two will want nothing save each other. Each hour you go without the other will only make the yearning stronger, more potent, more vicious in your need to couple."

Bonnie stared aghast. This woman had to be fucking with her. "You…whyyyyy? Why are you doing this? Do you hate the idea of witches actually giving a damn about something other than magic?" Bonnie gripped her hair, distraught. "You're doing this because on my third day of training I'm having an off day?"

"I explained to you my reasons," Dahlia said patiently. "You did not see what I saw when you emerged from the ground. And because you did not see, you don't believe it worked. Unleash what's in you and forget the rest."

Taking in a lungful of air and shaking her head, tears pricked Bonnie's eyes. "If I can't break it and he and I…that would be a form of rape, forcing us through a spell to have sex."

"Then I suggest you do everything in your power to make sure it doesn't end that way."

"You're a cold, heartless bitch."

Dahlia's head cocked to the side. "Yes. I know. And so are your enemies. They'll always think of some way to make your life hell if they don't outright kill you. Not today but one day, you'll thank me for this."

Bonnie scoffed in disgust. She would thank Dahlia all right by stepping over her dead body.

Green eyes darkened with determination. "I brought myself back from the prison world. I'll break your spell."

Dahlia inclined her head. "That was easy. Stopping yourself from doing what you know deep down you want…Good luck, witchling."

Bonnie ripped through the door of Rebekah's house, beads of sweat peppered along her hairline. She collided with the coffee table after dashing in a sprint to reach it, clamoring for the grimoire she had dropped there when Damon…

Her heart sped at the thought of his name. Frantically she checked the time. She had left Dahlia twenty minutes ago, that meant she had forty left before madness kicked in. Bonnie's fidgeting fingers flipped through the pages trying to be delicate and careful since the book was so old, but damn that.

"Tell me what I need," she whispered then barked when nothing jumped out at her.

Shooting to her feet, Bonnie raced upstairs, careening into the bedroom where she stomped to the bay window seat where she stored the other grimoires. She opened the compartment.

Her phone rang. Huffing, Bonnie glared at the screen. Matt.

"I can't talk right now, Matt," she answered as she collapsed to her knees, digging through the collection of spell books.

"Miss Bennett."

Bonnie froze. That wasn't the handsome, former quarterback calling her, but the mother of the man she was going to want to fuck like no one's business in less than an hour.

"Mrs. Salvatore…what have you done to Matt?"

"He'll wake up in a few minutes or so. I need to see you. If you want your friend Matt to remain, well less unharmed than he is right now, you'll agree to meet with me."

Kill him for all I care because I'm going through my own crisis, Bonnie had to bite down on her tongue to keep from saying. "I know what you want. I can't help you."

"I'm saddened to hear that, Bonnie. My son is very fond of you."

Yeah, and if I can't break this spell, he'll be even fonder. "That's terrific and I'm sure I know where this is going. You'll threaten to tie him into a pretzel if I don't help you release your family. Here's the thing about your boy, he's hard to kill. Everyone he's encountered, myself included, has failed to deep six him. That means murder in case you were wondering. So do what the hell you need to do, Lily because I'm going to do what I need to do," Bonnie mashed the end button and called Damon. She let out a cry of frustration when it routed to voicemail. "Hey, it's me. I don't have a lot of time to say this so I'll make it quick.

"My lovely mentor has us under a spell which is probably gonna kick in in the next half-hour. You're gonna be overwhelmed with the urge to have sex…with…me," Bonnie paused, staunching the urge to let out a stream of profanity. "Whatever you do, you need to stay away from me, Damon. Lock yourself up if you have to. I'm working on breaking it and until I do we can't see each other. I'm not joking about this. Stay. Away. Oh, and Lily called me. She's done something to Matt. If you could check to make sure he's still alive, that would be peachy. Gotta go, got a pus—spell to break."

Bonnie tossed her phone, shifted from foot to foot. "Okay, think, Bonnie, think."

She heard her name being called. The blood drained from her head. Damon was there.

A/N: Thank you for reading. XOXO. Please, review!