CHAPTER FOURTEEN


May 2013

It was getting harder to fight it – the drag, the thirst. His teeth hurt, canines protruding out of his gums. And the thirst… He was hungry. So hungry.

She shouldn't be here.

I'm not going anywhere.

Did she say it out loud or just in his head? He could hear her voice chanting. The same spell over and over again. He had tried to explain it to her, when she caught him, kept him from smashing his head into the floor. Tried to warn her what it would mean. But he wasn't sure he had got everything out. She seemed to know what to do though, pushing him onto the floor, finding his bag and arranging the candles just so, then sitting across from him, her hands clasped around his elbows.

Their foreheads touched now; try as he might not to put his entire weight on her, he couldn't help it. It was all he could do not to collapse completely into her arms – or worse, give into the increasingly demanding urges that kept flashing through him in waves.

Ravenous. Hunger. They needed – he needed – he needed release.

Bonnie whimpered against him, and he felt his heart slam. They had to stop. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't do this with anyone. Especially her.

Her magic was too near, her blood was too near, and above underneath everything, his own basic wanting was ripping him into half. He couldn't hold on. It was too much. She needed to leave.

I said I'm not going anywhere.

She sounded angry then, even though he still wasn't sure whether he could hear her words or her thoughts. And finally, finally, he felt it – the black magic slipping out of him, not in chaotic splashes, but in a steady, flowing stream – and into her.

His vision cleared enough and he could see her face so near his own, furrowed brow, delicate features, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as her bow-shaped mouth murmured out the words of the spell. A bead of sweat dripped to the edge of her chin and hovered. All he had to do was turn his head a little, flick out his tongue and he'd lick it off.

Enough! he cried, and his hands came to clasp hard at her elbows.

Her eyes flew open, red leaching into the green, and she snarled.

He needed to act quickly; or she would be too far gone. His hands slid from her elbows to her shoulders, pulling and pushing now so that they acted as one continuous conduit of dark and light. Above them, the two rings started spinning rapidly, gathering around each a thick ball of blackness.

The last thing he saw was one start slowing down, all but buried in its black cloud, before he passed out.

When he opened his eyes, he was staring into large green eyes, tinted with red. She was gaping over him, her veins throbbing with thirst.

He didn't even need to think.

He tilted his neck back, offering. It was sheer instinct to yield to her. For a few heartbeats, he thought she would take – she leaned over him, her breath warm and wet against his skin and his whole body clenched in anticipation. If anyone had told him a few weeks ago that he would almost come from desperately wanting someone to rip through his throat…

But, with a cry, she scrambled to her feet and rushed to the other side of the room.

He leaned on his elbow and watched her.

Panic and horror filled her face. "Am I… Am I?"

"No, you're not. It's just their magic. It will pass," he told her as gently as he could, feeling his heart throb in sympathy. He knew how it felt – that first surge of horror, the alien thirst, the unnaturalness of it all. He didn't know how it felt for mundanes, but for a witch it would be horrifying. Not even the rush of power could make this worthwhile. It was almost enough to feel some sympathy for the heretics.

Almost.

His answer didn't seem to relieve her. Her eyes were flying around her, moving rapidly. They hurt, he knew. There was too much light, too much sharpness. He watched and waited until they landed back on him. Saw her teeth start descending. Her fingers flew to her mouth and she whimpered.

"That would pass, too."

"Why do I feel so hungry?" she whispered.

Ah. That might… need a little help.

He held out his wrist without hesitating. "Drink."


For a long time afterwards, Kai would wonder how much had been real and how much of it had been part of the fevered dream that the heretics's souls crashing through his own, had caused. He had been obsessed with her for so long, his feelings metamorphosing with his psyche, that it won't have been so far off the imagination that in the throes of that dark ritual, his mind had conjured up that erotic scenario. As someone who had always self-identified as a witch – regardless of how often he had been reminded growing up that he wasn't technically one – being a vampire had zero appeal to him. Logically, he could understand the advantages of being a heretic, but his encounters with that particular evolution of the supernatural had left him permanently repulsed.

But in those hours where he and Bonnie were wrapped around each other, canines buried into flesh, sharing blood and magic… it was hard not to see the allure.

If it had really happened, that is. When he woke up, she was already pulling away and he had watched her brush off the whole thing like if it had never happened. She had risked her life and her sanity to save his – a man that she repeatedly reminded anyone who cared to know that she loathed. And she had acted like it was nothing. Just like it was nothing to her, to return to 1903 and rescue him from half a dozen blood-and-magic-thirsty heretics. Just like it had been nothing to her to throw away her magic, and potentially her life, to keep him trapped in the 1994 prison world. All for the sake of his sisters and a coven that had done nothing for her.

So she woke up in the arms of her enemy after erotically blood-sharing with him for hours? No big deal. Pop into the shower, wash off the war-paint and she was good to go.

Just another day in the life of Bonnie Bennett.

"Are we done yet? Or do you want a show?"

He wondered what she'd have done, if he had said yes. Probably given him a show then still slammed the door on his panting face. Being surrounded by a dozen blood-thirsty maniacal heretics had not paralysed him half as much as the reality of Bonnie naked under running water, one oblique door away, and completely unattainable. He couldn't decide if it was worse that she had known the effect on him and done it deliberately to hurt him… or that she just hadn't cared.

He pushed the memory away. Thinking about it was dangerous for obvious physical reasons but also… it hurt. Bonnie might have looked vulnerable and comfortable and domesticated around him, but they both knew it wasn't real. That was the point. She'd never truly drop her guard around him, and knowing all the ways he deserved that didn't stop it from…

…hurting.

"So you're saying that the merge cured your sociopathy? Like a humanity-off switch in reverse?"

Kai winced. Of course, she'd go for the hard questions first. No toe-dipping for Bonnie Bennett. Dive straight into the deep end of his fractured psyche.

He studied her where she sat primly on the sofa. She was a strange sort of psychiatrist with her barely touched can in one hand and her Miss Cuddles resting against her side. She was sweet and fresh from the shower…

(Don't go there, Kai.)

… and in clean clothes were clean, thanks to him. His perfunctory dry-cleaning spell had taken out most of the filth; and he had even salvaged a makeshift t-shirt and pants from the sad scrapes of his monkey suit that, considering what went for fashion in this day and age, looked positively trendy.

He smirked a little now, remembering how her eyes had widened when he had whispered a few words and the remnants of their ritual – the candles, the exhausted rings, his sister's knife – Bonnie's eyes had tracked the knife, but to his surprise, she hadn't challenged him for it – and chalk marks had all been swept into their appropriate compartments in the magic tool-bag of sorts he kept in the room's closet.

For someone who had rightfully – if not tactfully – guessed that he would know domestic magic, Bonnie had seemed impressed, even though she had tried to hide it.

She wasn't trying to hide her skepticism as she queried him now. Her eyes were narrowed, her whole body language radiating disbelief. Beside her, Miss Cuddles looked equally judgmental.

But Bonnie and the stupid bear were there.

Kai hadn't really believed her when she said she wanted to hear his story. Had expected her to finish her drink, rescue her bear, laugh in his face, and flounce off. Yet she had remained. She was querying him, and not making her own disparaging conclusions. Her eyes might spark with suspicion but they were focused on him, waiting for him to answer.

Even now, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He was tired. He sat on the floor, back against the sofa, one leg stretched out while the other was bent so he could rest the arm swinging a beer can on it. His belly was full from two pizzas, and the sandwich she had barely touched, and all that glucose was making him sleepy. It was all he could do not to dip forward, rest his head. Or better yet, just roll over to his side and shut his eyes, give his body leave to succumb to utter exhaustion. He was still aching from being battered, broken and somewhat fixed, both magically and physically, in such a condensed period of time. Every now and then, a tremor would rip through him, and he'd lock his jaw against the moan of pain. She had helped him tear out the auras of the heretics from his soul, but he was a syphon. He could feel her essence now, pure and untainted; but the remnants of unnatural magic would go a few more rounds through him, each one feeling like the equivalent of getting his insides yanked out.

He was most definitely too tired for this conversation.

But if Bonnie Bennett was giving him the chance to tell his story, he wasn't going to be the idiot that asked for a rain check.

"I was sixteen when I got my first diagnosis. My parents finally clued in that being a defective abomination of a syphon was just one of the many things wrong with me. They took me to a lot of fancy doctors who said the same thing. I have a paper that says approximately where on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum I lie."

Reflexively, the hand holding his beer can twitched. "I was diagnosed late but with the right lifestyle adjustments, there was nothing stopping me from living a 'fully functional life as a productive member of society'." His voice drawled with mockery – mostly self-directed – as he repeated the words from memory.

Bonnie snorted. "Have you checked up on any of your old therapists since you got back? Someone could write a research topic on you. What Not To Do To Fix A Sociopath."

He turned away from her taunting gaze. He was tempted to tell her that he had almost killed his mother before he was born – almost drained her to death while in the womb. He had been called an abomination for as long as he could remember, isolated from Jo, and the rest of his family until he got his powers under control.

His parents had started early to train him to siphon at will, but they were hopelessly at sea on what do with him. In the end, he had had to figure it out by trial and error. He shouldn't have had to. None of them should have had to. If he and the rest of the syphons weren't treated like dirty, little secrets, the coven would have figured, in its millennia of existence, a safe way of raising syphons. How much of his ASD was tied to his upbringing had never been something that bothered him in the past, but he thought of it more and more of late. It wasn't exactly something he could ask a mundane psychologist, so he was left to his own brooding theories about that.

He didn't say any of this to Bonnie, though. There was nothing he could tell her that would deserve her sympathy; rather, she'd probably think he was making excuses and despise him further.

Anyway, he didn't need her to feel sorry for him. Why should she when he didn't feel sorry for himself? He might not have had the most idyllic upbringing, but he had learnt early on to give as good as he got. His family had hated and feared him, and soon enough, he more than earned both.

So there was only the slightest bitterness in his voice when he said, "The therapy was sound. It's improved a lot over the years, but even back then, they had some good ideas. The problem was with me. I wasn't in the least interested in being a productive member of society."

"Because your parents weren't going to let you merge with Jo?"

"Mostly because I was a dick," he said bluntly. Too bluntly, if her flinch was any indication. He shook his can nervously. "It took me a long time to figure out why they kept having kids, why Jo and I weren't put on the leadership track – early training, foster-ship, Envoy-apprenticeship and all that jazz. I knew it had to do with the fact that I was – am – a syphon. But I stupidly believed that my parents just wanted that hidden until the Merge, where I'd either gain Jo's powers or I'd die. I didn't think they weren't ever going to let us merge at all … until our twenty-second birthday came and went, the excuses stopped adding up, and I finally clued in."

He closed his eyes, as a wave of memory assailed him. Children's screams. Blood on the walls. His own hands swinging that bat anywhere and everywhere it could land on Joey, again and again and again.

A tremor ripped through him; unprepared, his back arched and he groaned low in his throat. The ceiling overhead swam red.

"Kai!"

It was gone as suddenly as it came. He collapsed against the footboard, blinking hard until his vision cleared. When he lifted his head, she was crouched beside him, her eyes large and worried. For him? Or for his coven? Or for herself, stuck here with him and the possibility that he might snap in more ways than one?

Her eyes were so green, he thought helplessly. So large and green. He wondered how it would feel to drown in them. Felt a wave of pain at the thought that he probably would always do just that -

Wonder.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

The words were uttered grudgingly, like if she resented being made to ask.

But she had asked.

His heart clenched with gratitude. He looked down before he made it even more fucking obvious than it already was.

"I'm fine," he said hoarsely.

"Look," Bonnie fidgeted uncertainly; then she rocked backwards, "we're both beat. We can do this some other…"

"No!" He looked up quickly, pulling himself back into position. His beer can had fallen, rolled away from him, droplets of alcohol staining the floor. He reached for it but she got to it first, handing it over to him. Their fingers barely brushed, a whisper of skin touching skin, but it was enough to make him freeze, a charge rocking through him.

The memory of her stepping out of the steam in the fluffy hotel robe rose in his head. Of being acutely, painfully aware that she was completely naked underneath it…

Her eyes widened and she jumped to her feet. "Kai…"

He pushed the memory away.

"Maybe I was wrong about my parents," he said hastily, not meeting her eyes and deliberately making his voice brisk. She regarded him uncertainly but let him go on. "Maybe I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. They probably didn't think I'd live long enough to be a candidate for the Merge. Most syphons die young anyway. Out of the few that make it to adulthood, a good number choose to slip away from the coven, disappear into the mundane world. When I was sixteen, my mom sat me down with one of her Envoy buds. Gave me a talk about options." He chuckled. "Sort of like 'The Talk'. But about syphons, not sex."

He almost bit off his tongue. He could feel the red creeping up his face, flooding it all the way to the tips of his ears. That was not what he should be referring to, no matter obliquely, in the presence of post-shower Bonnie Bennett.

She had sat back in the sofa when he started talking, folding herself back into her formerly prim posture beside her bear, all the while watching him warily. Now she started, her eyes popping and her face flushing a soft, rosy pink.

"I…I mean…" he floundered. He was rarely ever at a loss for words. Usually, his problem was the opposite. But just as usually, when words did fail him – they tended to do so around her.

"That's…" She cleared her throat "... an interesting metaphor."

But when she stopped rolling her eyes, he noticed they were twinkling. Her mouth was twitching, too, as if she wanted to laugh.

Surprised, he grinned back tentatively.

Their eyes caught and held; and their smiles faded. Her eyes darkened and he felt his breath catch. Was she remembering earlier? Being so wrapped up in each other that they couldn't tell where one began and the other ended? Feeling the barrier of their clothes like sandpaper between skin? Wanting to burn away everything that separated him from her? Wanting to bury more than teeth inside her? He would have. If he had been just a little more far gone, he would have.

And in her state, she would have let him. Hated him afterwards, he thought, his heart thumping. But it would have happened.

Her face closed like shutters. "What were your options?" she asked harshly.

Too late, he realised that his face was too open, his longing too obvious.

Ouch.

He ducked his head so she won't see the grimace on his face. It was hard to decide what was more bitter – her clear rebuttal or the answer to her question.

"The usual," he said finally. "Mundane college. Mundane jobs. They could cast a few spells. Pull a few strings. The coven doesn't acknowledge the existence of syphons. We don't even record them in our annals. But we don't mind calling in a few favours now and then. There are always one or two syphons who've established themselves in the mundane world, that are all too eager to take in the fellow rejects."

His mother hadn't started out so directly. She had painted the rosy picture of non-magical existence in broad hints. When Kai had finally cut through all her bull, and made it clear that he wasn't interested in any of those 'options', she had become more… direct. Her envoy buddy and Kai's own Uncle Ben, had even outted out his own son, Jules in their misguided attempt to convince Kai. Apparently, Jules had taken the highway to Mundane Land and was doing well for himself there. Kai had had his suspicions about his distant cousins for a long time; more so, after Jules vanished from coven gatherings after his own sixteenth birthday, but Kai hadn't known until then that the older boy was a syphon.

It hadn't made any difference to him.

"You could have at least gone to college. Tried out the mundane option for size."

"I did go to college." When her eyebrows shot up, he barked a laugh. "Keeping one foot in the mundane world hasn't been optional for any witch since Salem. Seriously, what kind of nonsense did Liv tell you about our coven?"

"And just the one foot for you?"

He glared. "I guess it would sound easy enough to you."

She was Bonnie Bennett. She had more power flowing through her body than most covens had in their entire congregation. How would she understand what it felt to be told all your life that you were nothing without magic, the one thing you weren't born with? The only thing he had lived for was the day he either got his own magic, or he died trying. There were no other 'options' for him.

"Some syphons can't give up on magic. They hunt for a cure, or for some eternal source of power they can draw from." He laughed suddenly. "Looks like the heretics did find that eternal source of power. Hefty price tag, but dem's the breaks. You know, until I met one, I would never have believed heretics were real? There's nothing, not in rumours, in nursery rhymes, nothing that even hints at their existence. Which, I guess, was the whole point. The coven won't want syphons looking to be turned and become indestructible killing monsters who eat magic. So chalk that up as one more reason why syphons are feared and loathed."

"So because you were feared and loathed, and they didn't let you become leader, you chose to be your worst self. Got it."

His insides writhed at Bonnie's brisk, matter-of-fact tone. But he deserved that. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Pretty much."

"And now?" she prompted. "What's changed? Since you merged with Luke and got his emotions…"

"I know I've got his empathy," Kai corrected. "But where he starts and I begin…" He struggled to explain, not just to her, but to himself. "Every Praetor that's written an account of the Merge has tried to explain this, and every one, without fail, has concluded with an 'can't put it into words; you've just gotta be there'. The first few days were insane. I could feel him rattling in my head. You know how you have a Jiminy Cricket in your head? Well, I had two – Luke's and mine for a long time."

"Luke became your conscience?"

He snorted. "Nothing that simple. That voice went after a few days. Or maybe I've become so used to it, I can't tell the difference between his and mine." He struggled again. "I have Luke's magic, but it's no longer his, it's mine. It feels like mine and I should know, because I've lived all my life stealing other people's magic. This one belongs to me. Yet… I'm still a syphon. No one usually gets to be both…"

He almost stopped here, embarrassed. His confusing thoughts were barely intelligible to him. Goodness knows what she'd make of his rantings. But when he snuck a glance at her, she was leaning forward, her eyes keen. So he went on.

"I have his empathy. But am I still a sociopath? Empathy isn't magic. As a syphon, I could always borrow magic. Even for just a little while. As a sociopath, I couldn't 'borrow' empathy. I learned how to read people, figured out how they ticked. Long before I got my diagnosis, I was already teaching myself to imitate normative social behaviour to 'pass'. But it was just that – an imitation. An act. A performance. I despised people for falling for it. I despised people. Full stop."

He sighed heavily. He didn't fail to notice the way her hand clenched around her bear, the way her body tensed.

"Now… imagine being a mundane who suddenly gets magic. Your brain is still wired to be a mundane. When it gets dark, your first instinct is to flick a switch; then your next instinct is to look for matches; you have to actively process and reject those mundane knee-jerk responses, before you think of using magic to turn on the lights."

"And that's what you do now? You struggle against being a sociopath?"

"I struggle against apathy. Sometimes it's just easier not to care, you know? To turn it off. I see someone rushing to the elevator, and I have to think and decide if I should hold it open, or just let it slam on his face."

To his surprise, a tiny smile flickered across her face. "You and everyone else."

He stared at her. "Really?"

"It's called being a person, Kai. Everyone struggles against their selfish, petty instincts."

"I thought that was just post-merge me."

"That's because you've never bothered struggling against your selfish, petty instinct before," she explained icily. "You've just done whatever you wanted without thinking about how it affected other people."

Ouch.

There was a terse moment as she turned her face away, and he watched her mouth working silently, as if she was biting back words.

When she finally spoke, her question was surprising. "If your father knew that this was going to happen, that the merge would change you, why didn't he just let it? I mean, between Jo and Luke… Heaven rest his soul." She floundered, confused.

"He's not dead," Kai offered, unhelpfully. He resisted the urge to laugh at her irritated look.

"What I mean is if Luke did this…" She waved her hand in his general direction "… to you, then Jo almost certainly would have, eighteen years ago. The soul-merging thing works every-time, doesn't it? It worked for your father and his twin. Why didn't he think it would work for you? I mean, you had nowhere to go but up, personality-wise. Why did he try so hard to prevent you from Merging?"

He gave her a side-ways glare for the sneaked in barb. She blinked back innocently.

'Well?' her gamine face dared. 'I'm not wrong, am I?'

Kai conceded defeat with a shrug. "Who knows?"

He certainly didn't. For weeks post-Merge, he had asked himself that question over and over again; but when he had finally got the chance to ask Joshua himself, that first time after he returned from 1903 and sought out his father, Kai had chickened out. He and Joshua had talked about the future of the coven, initiating Kai properly as Praetor, winning over the Elders, recalling the exiles, persuading the Council and the Envoys to swear allegiance to him.

They hadn't spoken about the past.

Kai wasn't sure anymore if he wanted to know the answer. Didn't want to know how much of his parents' decisions about his life were based on the coven's prejudices against syphons and how much were based on Kai's own abhorrent personality.

Even now, Kai wasn't sure if Joshua believed he had changed, that he had good intentions for the Coven … or if his father was just biding his time to undermine him – or worse.

He could almost read the thoughts off Bonnie's face. She was probably asking herself the same thing.

"One day, he's ready to kill Jo to keep you in your prison world, and the next moment, he's handing you the keys to the Kingdom." She pointed out. "What changed? How did you win him over? How are you even sure you did?"

He chuckled involuntarily, startled. Even though he had already guessed where her thoughts were, this was too close by half. "No idea. But my guess is that since my life is tied permanently to the coven for the next twenty-two years at least, he accepted that he and I would need to at least coexist for the coven to survive."

For Joshua Parker, the coven came before everything, after all. Even family. Even family that he hated.

She frowned. "Well, he can't have any complaints. You've been rising to the occasion so far." She set her jaw, didn't quite meet his eyes; it couldn't have been more obvious how unwillingly the words were coming out of her. "It couldn't have been easy, fighting for the same coven that locked you up in the first place."

Oh hell. That was high praise from Bonnie Bennett, delivered as grudgingly and angrily as it was. It must have been like pulling teeth for her to have said it. And the fucking nuisance of the thing was that he couldn't even enjoy it.

Instead when she squinted at him, he looked at the disapproving Miss Cuddles, his throat thick with the lump of guilt that threatened to choke him.

He swallowed hard. "Or maybe," he said harshly, "just maybe, I hated the heretics more than I ever hated my coven. The heretics took what they needed from me to wake, then they took what they needed for me to get strong, then they took my magic because heck, that's what we do. We're syphons. We take. I could understand. A hundred years as a magic-starved, dried-up husk and I'd not have much table manners either. Then when they were back to their normal, creepy selves, they quickly figured out what I was – the Praetor of their beloved, prodigal Gemini coven. And that was when the fun really started."

As if on cue, a tremor hit him then. He rode it through, shutting his eyes so that she won't see the redness. In those few seconds where his world was black, he could almost imagine he was back in Winter 1903. He could almost taste the falling snow. Smell iron from his own blood. Even their faces, all six of them – Iceman, Cherokee, Medusa, Scarface, Gingerdum and Gingerdee – seemed to float above him, distorted little floating heads.

"Kai… Kai!"

He opened his eyes to stare into her stricken face. She was by his side again, her eyes filled with worry. "What is wrong with you? Didn't the ritual…"

"I'm fine," he said hastily.

"Are you… because what we did…" He watched, fascinated, as she swallowed hard, her face turning rosy. It was the first time she was verbally acknowledging what had happened between them. His eyes fell to her lips, watched with something like horror as she bit softly through the plump lower flesh. "… it was almost like dark magic."

Can't I get to kiss her, just once? He thought suddenly, almost violently, staring hungrily at her mouth. Perhaps if he did it very quickly, she might not even notice it had happened?

"Kai!" she said sharply.

And he started, staring guiltily at her. She had shifted back, her whole body wary.

He swallowed hard, his chest rising and falling. "I…"

"What's wrong with you?" She asked again, less concern and more accusation.

"I'm fine," he repeated, schooling his words, his thoughts, his errant feelings. "It wasn't dark magic. It was just… intense. And it worked. You're all right, aren't you?"

She nodded slowly.

"And so am I. I'm just… taking a little trip down recent memory lane, circa 1903." He grinned at her.

She shuddered, no doubt remembering her own ghastly experience of winter wonderland with heretics.

She had no idea.

Giving his torturers nicknames had been his attempt to assert some form of mental defiance to them. A means of exerting control over the living hell his life had become. But he knew that given time, they would have broken him. It had become a game to them, bringing the vaunted Praetor to his knees.

He glanced at Bonnie. She was sitting with her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes wide in her stricken face.

He glanced down. His eyes fell on Miss Cuddles whom had apparently got knocked to the floor when Bonnie moved, and now glared at him angrily. Kai sighed again.

"You'd think that we'd have all bonded as ex-rejects together, but they resented the fact that I got to be leader, got magic without sacrificing my humanity. You know two of them were from my direct lineage? First cousins to some great-grand-Parker. They might even have been Praetor if they had been born different. So they didn't just punish me for being the new leader of the coven that treated them like dirt and imprisoned them. They punished me for basically being them, and getting a better hand at life. Oh, and for shits and giggles. "

When he lifted his gaze, Bonnie's eyes were full.

"Stop it," he said roughly.

Bonnie blinked, swallowed. "Stop what?"

It infuriated him – the mutinous guilt that she was practically radiating. He didn't deserve it. Maybe he had once, but not anymore.

"Stop feeling sorry for me. That's not what this is about. My coven punished me because I was a psychopath who murdered his brothers and sisters. I didn't have to do it. I wanted Liv and Luke dead because they threatened me but the other four… I killed them out of spite, malice, rage, call it what you like. 18 years in solitary confinement was barely adequate punishment. Four victims. Four separate sentences. If they had given me to the mundane authorities, they'd have locked me up and thrown away the key. Heck, compared to 18 years in maximum security prison, my weeks with the heretics was practically a vacation," he spat.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to understand why I fought the heretics. Even with all that perspective, I still wanted to get even. I wanted to take each of their skulls between my palms, crush them until the blood and brains and magic flowed out, then suck out their souls until there was nothing left."

He didn't even realise he was demonstrating just how with his hands until she recoiled. He dropped his hands at once, glared at her defiantly. "Saving my coven was a fringe benefit. Plus I can't be a King without a fucking Kingdom, can I?"

Her gaze was disbelieving. "Are you trying to make me hate you?" She sounded angry; and that pesky guilt that had been written all over her earlier was mostly gone.

Good.

"I don't need your fucking pity."

Bonnie almost choked over her laughter. "You aren't ever going to get it."

"Fine."

"Fine.

She got to her feet, and he felt his heart slamming in his chest. What was wrong with him? He finally had her here, listening to him, giving him a chance, and he was what? Chasing her away?

It frightened him. She frightened him. She had so much power over him, she had no idea. It was one thing to pine over someone who hated him. It was another thing to have her treat him like some kind of pet project – someone to 'understand' and 'forgive' and 'redeem' and all that fucking crap.

He wasn't going to be her new Damon.

She grabbed her bear from the floor. He tried not to look, he really did, but her butt was just there and it was in tight jeans.

He sighed.

When she turned around to face him, he tried to rearrange his face but he must have failed, because her eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Nothing," he said hastily.

"Mmm…" She didn't look convinced, but she apparently decided to let it go. "Thanks for the food… and the rescue… I guess."

"I rescued you. You rescued me right back. We're even," he said dully.

The corner of her lip curled. "And the food?"

"I'll send you your half of the bill."

Surprised laughter burst out of her, and he felt a small grin cross his face. For a moment, they just stared at each, half-amused, half-confused.

Fucking hell, he wasn't ready to watch Bonnie Bennett walk out on him.

"You owe me for the answers though," he blurted out, desperately. It was the first thing that entered his head.

She cocked an eyebrow. "I do?"

"Fair's fair."

She crossed her arms. "What do you want to know that you didn't already find out eavesdropping on me and Damon in 1994?"

He choked back an incredulous laugh. What didn't he want to know about Bonnie Bennett? It was a task to just figure out where to start. He settled on the first thing that came to mind:

"Y-you said that your life was on pause in freshman year because of the whole… Anchor … thing."

Her face fell. He felt a sting of sympathy that he hadn't felt when he had – as she rightfully accused – overheard her say this in 1994 in one of the rare occasions the self-absorbed Salvatore let her get in a word in between his soliloquies.

"Go on," she said quietly.

He bit his lip. "You couldn't decide a college major, or think about the future. Not when you felt being Anchor had an expiration date. Now, you've got a second chance at a fully, realised life. What are you going to do with it? What are your plans?"

She shrugged, leaned against a column. "Not that it's any of your business, but I'm still figuring things out."

"Why does 'figuring things out' sound so much like 'I haven't given this any thought'?"

She crinkled her nose at him. "It could also be a euphemism for 'mind your own business'. Tough, isn't it, not being able to sneak around and spy on people."

He ignored the barb. How could he not when he was dumbstruck by her face? She was so cute, she had no idea.

"Can I go now?"

No. Not just because he loathed to see her leave – or thought it was vaguely unfair of her to dodge the mild question when he'd done more than his share of self-revelation. He wanted to pull at that thread until it unraveled. Her future mattered more to him than he cared to admit. Worse, he had a sneaking suspicion that it mattered more to him than it apparently did to her.

Which got him thinking about…

"How the heck did that even happen in the first place?" When she blinked at him, he elaborated. "You and a vampire in my Prison World. I mean, I know the timeline, the cause and effect. The Other Side collapsing. Your year as Anchor. Dying to bring Jeremy Gilbert back to life."

He did his best, he really did, but his teeth seemed to grind together of their own volition when he grated out the other guy's name; and from Bonnie's narrowed gaze, she noticed.

"I mean, granted, your b-boyfriend was willing to condemn himself to oblivion to save you on your birthday so it's obviously you guys' 'thing'. Although I wonder at that. Isn't that's a bit too much commitment for high-school sweethearts? If y'all dying for each other now, how're you ever going to top that a year into his fancy-smarty arts school? You've got to learn to pace these things-"

Her sigh, loud with irritation, cut him off. "I don't hear a question, Kai."

Probably because asking point-blank 'are you still dating Jeremy Gilbert?' didn't sound as casual and disinterested as he'd like. He avoided her gaze.

The Hunter had left town shortly after his and Kai's shared adventure on Bonnie's birthday. There had been a time when Kai wondered if Bonnie won't even return from 1994 to Mystic Falls, and just make a beeline to wherever Jeremy was. Or leave shortly after her arrival to reunite with him. But she had come back to Mystic Falls, and remained there. Jeremy Gilbert hadn't returned either. Hadn't showed up for his guardian's wedding either.

"Kai…"

He gulped and backtracked to a safer topic. "I know how you ended up in 1994. I just can't figure out why. In my experience, while Bennetts are notorious for defying wicca convention in dealings with bestia nefundus - magical creatures," he explained, noticing her puzzled frown, "your family cultivated a high sense of self-preservation. So I guess my question is: what the heck happened to make you you."

"What kind of question is that?" she asked quietly, sinisterly.

It was his turn to blink. "A valid one. One that you should answer to me, or to a shrink or a priest, now that I think about it." Because seriously, had she seen her life? "Seems like Abby upping and leaving while you were a kid caused some kind of trauma…"

"You're the one with the fucking medical condition, not me," she snarled.

"Woah!" He started at the venom. "I was just ask-"

"Mind your business, Kai." She pushed off the column, every indication that she was ready to barge out of there.

"Hold on a sec," he stretched out his hand, not touching but enough to make her pause. "You get to delve into my childhood trauma but yours is off-bounds?"

"You think?" she snapped.

"Hey, that's not fair!"

"It's not tit for tat," she retorted. "Welcome to the non-sociopathic existence where you don't get your curiosity satisfied by barter system."

Despite his genuine sense of outrage, he almost chuckled. "OK, now that's just being petty."

She glared.

"You're really not going to answer any of my questions?" He pressed, still finding it hard to believe. "After I literally unburdened my entire life to you?"

She rolled her eyes. "Nope." But her mouth twitched a little. Apparently, her earlier affront had given way to smugness.

"Bonnie"

"Kai... Not happening. So are we done here? Because I don't know about you but I'd like to wear something besides two days's old clothes. No shade on your magical laundry skills but I need to get back to my place-"

He started, his thoughts spinning.

"You never told me what you were looking for in my apartment today."

Her face froze. "Oh."

"Oh?" Kai mocked, bellying his own far-from-composed thoughts. Her stray comment had yanked out that memory. He had kept it at the back of his mind all this while. It had been too much of a distraction. The thought of Bonnie in his bedroom had done things to him. It still did things to him. He didn't have a chance, would never have a chance with her. But it hadn't stopped him from… wanting. Against his will, against reason, he had wanted. God help him, he still wanted. Even now, after the morning. He wanted her without magic warping her head and his, without alien blood-lust pounding through their bodies. He wanted to know how it felt like to have her willing in his arms, her own magic mating with his own. He imagined her in that soft, fluffy robe and put it in his house, in his room, near his bed…

He clenched his fists, fought to get his stupid body under control. In the flimsy rags he was wearing, there was no hiding his physical reaction to her.

"I… I… er…"

He didn't register the guilty way she stammered, the way she took a step back, fidgeted.

Instead, he brutally pushed through his miserably stupid, pointless thoughts, and kept asking. "Why were you there? If you were looking for me, you knew where to find me. So you wanted something that you knew you won't get from just asking me. You're not a thief, and even if you were, I'd be the last person you'd want to break into because you've run out of witchy-woo supplies… So what could Kai Parker, full-time Gemini Praetor, part-time persona non grata possibly have, that Bonnie Bennett needed to steal…"

Realisation dawned on him and his heart slammed in his chest, his mind racing hard. No. It couldn't be. But it has to. It's the only thing that makes sense.

His locks had been secure. They shouldn't have been able to get out. Unless

Unless

He looked at her then. Really looked at her, and took in her fidgeting, her eyes that didn't quite meet his own, the flush in her face.

Guilt.

"Bon, what exactly did you do in my apartment?"

"What did I do or what was I looking for?" she hedged.

"Just answer the question," he said testily. She didn't. She won't have

Why would she?

"What difference does it…" She blew out an exasperated breath, and finally stilled, straightening with defiance. "Fine. You want to know the truth? I was looking for the Ascendant."

"Wait… what?" Of all the answers she could have given him, that was the least expected and he was yanked out of the alarming turn of his thoughts. "Why?"

"Why?" She took a step towards him, her eyes flashing with anger.

What the heck did she have to be angry about?

"Because Lily Salvatore had just tried to kill me, that's why."

"What does that have to do with…"

"I'd been having nightmares for weeks. About you and her attacking me. And then the night of Jo's bachelorette party, Lily nearly killed me. I almost died."

That rattled him. Badly. Because he remembered everything about that night. The ripper holding his sister's throat. Bonnie's lifeless body under his hands.

She hadn't almost died that night. She had died that night. He had felt it. Known when her heart had stopped. That the vampire's blood wasn't working. And his sister hadn't brought her back with medicine either.

Kai had ran out of that bar feeling like his heart was literally about to shatter out of his body, his head was heavy and he was going to explode with the sheer desolation that had wrecked through his body. And it was that pain, that hollowed out feeling that had sent him hunting down Lily Salvatore.

But even before Damon had deprived him of that, Kai had known that there was no point. Killing a thousand Lily Salvatores would not bring back one Bonnie Bennett. That was not the answer. She was dead, but she was also a witch. Death was not the end. If he had to spend his whole life, use every resource available to him as Praetor to bring her back, then he would. If he had to descend into the belly of the underground itself to drag her back, then he would.

Then Jo called to tell him that Bonnie was alive, awake. To this day, he didn't fully understand how that happened. He was just grateful that it had.

His hands spasmed at his sides now, helpless with the irrational urge to reach out and hold her, run his hands down her skin, feel her warmth, and stupidly reassure himself that yes, she was alive. But she won't welcome his touch, not now, not ever; and he curled his fingers into fists so tight his nails bit his palms.

"And I figured that if the Lily part of my dream came true, it was only a matter of time before you-" She paused.

"I would what, Bonnie?"

She muttered something under her breath.

"What?" he asked, incredulous. She did not say what he thought he heard her say.

"You'd send me back to the Prison World, Kai."

He reeled.

For a moment, he just glared up at her furious face, then he – he couldn't help it – he let out a half-hysterical bark of laughter. He grabbed a fistful of his hair and yelped with pain – the scar from last night was still fresh. She flinched, but he ignored her, jumping to his feet and walking to the other side of the room. Then he turned around and walked back to the bed, opened his mouth to speak, shut it, then did the same thing all over again. He yanked his hair again.

"Kai!" she cried.

He could barely find the words to speak. "Of course, you'd think that. It makes perfect sense. I'm the boogie-man, the monster under your bed, the biggest bad that has ever badded in your long career dealing with big bads."

Bonnie inhaled sharply. "Not the biggest. Just the meanest."

He rounded on her. "I. am. different. now! What the hell do I need to do to prove that to you?"

She raised her hand in a sharp, angry movement. "Enough with the injured victim act, Kai! You know damn well I had my reasons to be afraid of you. To think that you would come after me after I left you in 1903. The same way you stabbed me and left me to die in Portland to get back at me."

"I know how to kill people, Bonnie," he said through ground teeth. "I didn't leave you to die. I left you to wake up and feel as completely abandoned as I did when I woke up after you killed me, and stole my Ascendant and my idea and planned to ditch me-"

She let out her breath in a low whistle. "Wow, that makes me feel so much better."

He growled, pressing his fists into his forehead in frustration. "That's not even – I said I was sorry. I said we were even. Did you remember that part? After you got me back from 1903? Did you remember me telling you what happened on your birthday?" He took a deep breath. "The guy who killed your mom and commits generational genocide gets a second chance. The fucking Ripper of Montreal gets a second chance. Klaus fucking Mikaelson gets a second chance!"

"I have never-"

"I mean, I helped you – against my better judgment – rescue Damon's mother for the 'greater good'. I saved your life and it doesn't count."

Her green eyes were all but spitting fire now. "I didn't know that… You're deliberately misunderstanding me."

"Or wait a minute… it won't count, would it? I saved your life, not the life of Elena, or Damon, or anyone of your vampire friends. Oh snap," he paused dramatically, venom dripping from his voice. "I get it now. The Fast Track to getting on Bonnie Bennett's good side. Doing you a solid is out of the question. What would really get me into your good graces is fucking one of your best friends, won't it?"

"Shut up!"

Her hand flashed out, hitting him so hard that his neck cracked. He turned back, with an angry smirk that he knew would infuriate her – and barely caught the second slap mid-air. "One's the limit," he hissed.

She snarled and her magic slammed into him, shoving him hard against the bed. She followed, her fists opening and closing at her sides as she glared down at him.

"Shut up, or I-"

He raised himself on his elbows at once. "You'll what?"

She didn't answer. Not with her mouth anyway, that she was all but shredding into pieces as she bit her lip, her jaw working furiously to hold back whatever insults she wanted to hurl at him. Perversely, he wished she would just yell at him, and stop doing… that.

It was as much in retaliation and as much in a desperate bid to distract himself from the almost hypnotic sight of her lip biting that he shot back, "Cat got your tongue? Because we both know that's the magic formula, isn't it? Your life and well-being is worthless to you…"

The Incendia actually singed his forehead before he shoved it off, then shoved off the bed to slam into her, pushing her against the wall. Her palms slammed against his chest, and he felt his bones meld.

He laughed maniacally, and gripped her wrists, pulling out the magic of the spell. "You're going to have to be a hella lot faster to hurt me with magic," he snarled. "Do you have any idea what you did when you barged into my-"

He bit back the words in the nick of time. But she didn't notice, too caught up in her own fury.

"Get off me," she yelled. She struggled to yank her hands away, kicking at him with increasing hysteria when he refused to let go. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes were widening, shining with unshed tears as fear leached into her face, mingling with her anger.

He dropped her hands as if they scalded. Like a switch, all his own anger evaporated, leaving only shame and self-disgust, and he took a step back.

She had been afraid of him siphoning her. So scared of it that she had practically had a panic attack in front of him.

He took another step back, then another, then another. She rubbed across her face in an angry gesture, her breath still choppy and uneven.

He turned away from her, knowing that she won't want him to see her vulnerable. Knowing that the sight of her vulnerability undid him in ways he didn't want her to see either. Just that glimpse already had his stomach twisting into knots, his heart aching behind his chest.

He had done that to her.

It took her a while to catch her breath. "I can't believe I… I can't believe you."

Kai sighed heavily, rubbed his own face wearily. "I wasn't going to siphon you. I will never take your magic from you, Bonnie."

She laughed bitterly. "Sure. I'll just take your word for it, then."

He turned back to her. She was leaning against the wall, her arms folded across her chest, her stance defiant but composed. The panic attack of moments ago had passed. Or was deftly covered up with the artfulness of frequent practice.

"I'm sorry," he said brokenly.

"Don't flatter yourself," she spat. "You were not even the first person that ever took my magic away from me. It's not you… It's just…" She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. "It just reminded me of … everything."

After almost two decades of living in a world with a population of one, figuring out how to navigate the noise and chaos of existing alongside seven billion people had been … challenging for him.

And he had been a sociopath.

Kai could only imagine the kind of trauma Bonnie must have felt – must still be feeling. And that was from the isolation alone, without considering every other crappy thing that had gone on in her life both before, during, and after 1994. Her time as Anchor, half-ghost, half-Ascendant? Or Silas who wore the face of Damon's brother? How far back did 'everything' go?

How had she even brought herself to return to 1903? He wondered suddenly. The first time – her motivations were obvious: Damon fucking Salvatore's diabolical manipulation of her with him, Kai, as bait; and her own Saviour Syndrome to rescue Mystic Falls and her humanity-off vampire friends from their own bad judgment. But the second time? Had she really returned to 1903 alone, risking the heretics, risking him, simply because his sister, whom Bonnie barely knew, guilt-tripped her into saving a Coven that, barely a year ago, had tried to kill her friends?

Paradoxically, irrationally, Kai felt a flash of rage. At Damon, for obvious reasons. But also, perversely, at Jo, for asking Bonnie to go, even though without Bonnie's rescue of him, he might have lost his life – he would certainly have lost his sanity.

But most of all, at Bonnie herself. For constantly throwing herself into the fire for other people. For ignoring her own hurt, her own injuries, her own healing, to save everyone.

He shook his head. He was filled with so much exasperation at the woman in front of her that it was all he could do not to walk up to her, grab her by the shoulders and shake the common sense that she sorely lacked, into her.

She watched him, with narrowed gaze, her suspicious brain misreading him. "Don't you dare talk that way about my friends to me. Don't you dare come near them. Don't you-"

"I don't give a fuck about your friends, Bonnie," he snapped. "I'm calling it as I see it. Side-effects of being a reformed sociopath – I can't be bothered with the politeness of lies."

"Yeah, you got that right. Because getting empathy overnight isn't going to teach you how to think about anyone but yourself."

"Let's make a deal, shall we? I'll take a page from your besties' book – since they've been treating you so well – if you'll take a page from mine and get a modicum of self-preservation?"

"And do what? Murder my friends the same way your murdered your siblings?"

Magic cackled dangerously between them, just waiting for a match to ignite it. "Touché," he said, smiling without humour.

"I learnt from the best. You're not the only one who changed, Kai."

The burst of laughter was completely involuntary. He gaped at her, laughing more as she screwed up her face, with increasing aggravation. "You've changed? Really? Barely 24 hours ago, you were going to take on half a dozen heretics for a bunch of strangers from the West Coast. The same set of strangers that would have gladly left you to rot in 1994 with a not-reformed sociopath if it meant keeping me in. And you're telling me that you've changed? How?"

She gasped, her eyes wounded.

Too late, he stopped himself. There was a long, charged silence.

Then she nodded, as if to herself, her jaw working. "I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"Bonnie…" he started, stopped when she raised a hand.

"Let me guess," she said hoarsely. "Side effects of being a reformed sociopath, right? Let me put your mind at rest, Kai. That's not being a sociopath, ex or not. That's just being a jerk."

He resisted the urge to flinch, worked his mouth into a smirk. "Well, you make friends with jerks all the time. So I guess that's a good start for me."

"And as you just kindly reminded me, I need to start making better friends."

He did flinch then. How the fuck did this happen?

There were a dozen things he wanted to tell her. Yes, she infuriated him. But he didn't despise her. He despised everyone else in her life who found it so easy to take her for granted. It hurt that she had singled him out for unmitigated condemnation – but it would hurt less if she distributed that sense of self-preservation in every other aspect of her life, to the likes of Damon Salvatore, and Elena Gilbert and all the other vultures that used her. He had sat outside doors and windows, listening to her and Damon talk for months, and he knew her better than he probably liked, definitely better than she would ever like. She was stuck in a rut, in a vicious cycle, and she wasn't going to pull herself out of it.

And he obviously wasn't the one to do it. Not when they barely trusted each other. When the last few moments was a reminder of how close they always were to the kindling point. How there was a well of hurt and resentment between them. There was too much bad blood, too much bad faith, too much plain bad between them.

"When are you going back to Portland?" she asked abruptly.

His heart slammed painfully. "Why?" he asked, barely hiding the panic in his voice. "In a hurry to get rid of me?"

"You said something about having a Kingdom to rule, didn't you? Mystic Falls is small potatoes to you. What could possibly keep you here?"

"You're honestly telling me that you don't know!"

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

The moment he spoke, he almost slammed his fists into his mouth to push the words back. But it was too late. He felt the blood rushing out of his face, and he might even have swayed, so close he was to fainting. What the fuck had got into him?

But he knew what. Spurned on by the sight of her glaring at him like something that had died under her shoe, the words had been torn out of him.

At least, they got her to stop looking at him with such disgust. Now her narrowed eyes had widened, as she stared at him with gaping shock. She pushed away from the wall and stared harder. The blood was rushing back to his face now, over-compensating from the previous loss. He could actually feel how hot his cheeks were.

Bonnie made a sound – half exhale, half exasperated expletive, and rolled her eyes.

"Who… whatever it is, you're w-waiting for…" Her voice trailed off on a disbelieving note, and she shook her head, like if she was checking her ears. "You're wasting your time."

Kai reminded himself to breathe.

Pain blossomed behind his ribs, spreading through his nerves and almost paralysing him where he stood. For a split-second, he wondered if he was having another tremor. Then he realised that no, it wasn't physical or magical. It was just the sheer, fucking hurt of Bonnie's clear, unmitigated rejection.

What the fuck had he expected? He knew – he had always known – that he never had a chance in hell with her.

So why the fuck did it hurt?

But it did. Fucking hell, it hurt.

And it must have shown all over his face, because Bonnie looked away, refused to meet his gaze, as her own face reddened. "Have a nice life, Kai."

And with that, she walked out of his life, the door slamming firmly and finally behind her.


June 2013

"Hello? Hello?"

"Kai. It's Joshua."

Silence.

"Kai?"

"Good for you."

"The Council has… where are you?"

Kai lifted his head to stare blearily at the disapproving-looking blond bartender and the rows of bottles behind him. "Somewhere," he said edgily.

'Somewhere' was the only semi-decent bar in this rustic Southern town which just so happened to be owned and ran by Matt Donovan, police cadet by day, bartender by night. The same Matt Donovan who was Bonnie's friend from high school, middle school, elementary school, probably even potty-training school if there was such a thing. And if the beady eye he kept throwing at Kai was any indication, he hadn't quite let go of that little incident where Kai knocked him out and did questionable magic with his memories.

Kai couldn't catch a freaking break.

"It's loud. Can you go somewhere quieter? I have something important to tell you."

Kai tried to figure what the one thing had to do with the other. His brain was a bit foggy, through god knows how many bottles of alcohol that had dulled his synapses a bit. Finally, he settled on staying put.

"Since you're making this call, I'm guessing the Council didn't decide to lock me back up in a Prison World?"

How drunk was he that what sounded like disappointment seeped into his voice?

Joshua made a sound that sounded half-angry and half-impatient. "The Council doesn't…" He sighed loudly. "I informed the Council that the heretics used the blood left behind accidentally by Sheila Bennett's grand-daughter to escape; and you were unable to destroy the Ascendant in time to stop them. There will be a clusus[1] inquiry into the initial release of Lily Salvatore, of course, but nothing beyond that."

Kai was silent, staring in front of him and seeing absolutely nothing.

"Kai?"

"Why?" he asked at last.

He didn't need to elaborate the question.

"Because it was unnecessary. Because it would bring more instability to the coven at a time that we are recovering and rebuilding. Because I vouched for you and I won't be made out as a fool."

"Or because you want to hold it over my head? Do I divine some blackmail in my future, Dad?"

"Think as you wish, Malachai," Joshua said, sounding absolutely disgusted. "But while you're pondering over my motives, make sure you return to Portland immediately. No Praetor has taken this long to complete his Redimio[2]–"

"Whose fault is that?"

"-There are rites and teletourgias that only the Praetor can perform that will soon be long past arga. And unfortunately for us all, you are the Praetor."

Kai's hackles rose. "Yes, I am and I will return whenever I damn well feel…"

"Did you think that the position comes without obligations? That you'd get all that power and not have to actually do anything with it except indulge your whims?"

"How would I know since you didn't bother to fucking train me for the fucking job?"

"Then return to Portland and we will begin your Disciplina."

The phone went dead. The bastard had hung up on him. The old man wanted to die, Kai concluded with perfect clarity. Eighteen years in a prison world and all the abuse he had subjected on his son before that wasn't enough. His big mouth and bad timing that fateful day had cost Kai… had cost Kai a lot and now he was arm-twisting him back to Portland.

He could go to Portland, Kai thought darkly. He could go there and murder his father. Why, if he wanted, he was powerful enough to port over to the family mansion right now, and rip Joshua's spine out from his throat. Would be fucking hard to convince the Council not to lock him up for that.

Instead, Kai dropped his phone into his glass and listened to it sizzling with satisfaction.

He shoved the glass aside and slammed his hand on the table. "Another, please. Bottle. Er… and a glass, too. But that's not really necessary."

Matt Donovan re-appeared with a glare. "I'm cutting you off."

Kai blinked. "Excuse you?"

"You're done here, pal. I'm calling a cab. It was a mistake even letting you in my bar in the first place."

"The aspirin worked, didn't it?" Kai asked with concern.

Donovan's face turned thunderous. "I didn't take it."

Huh. That was unnecessarily paranoid. There were far less clumsy ways of poisoning someone than expecting them to administer the toxin themselves.

Anyway, the mundane's headache from the Memoria spell should have long gone. No way he'd be working the bar with a head-splitter.

So this was just his attitude.

Kai offered some free advice. "You need to loosen up, man. I can score you some weed if you like."

"And you need to get the hell out of my bar."

The attitude was beginning to grate. "You do not want to piss me off right now," Kai said, speaking as slowly as possible so that the meaning of his words were absolutely clear – and also to reduce the slurring.

The bartender slash police cadet slash Bonnie's pet mundane puffed defiantly. Literally puffed. "I'm not afraid of you."

Kai started laughing. What the hell. The guy was practically begging for a beat down. Kai would try not to break him… much. "Oh, this is going to be so good." He raised his hand.

And someone slammed it into the counter abruptly. Someone cold and alien and what the fuck was wrong with him that he let his guard so completely down that a vampire sneaked up on him?

Kai looked up with alarm at the dark-haired blood sucker that was staring – not at him, Kai – but at the bartender. "Be a good bloke, Matt and get my mate a pint."

Kai grabbed his hand back quickly as Donovan glared at the Annoying Accent Vamp. "I'm on vervain, Enzo."

Enzo… Enzo… The name was familiar. But in his alcohol-laden state, Kai couldn't connect it with any knowledge he had of Mystic Falls' residents.

"Sod it," Enzo was saying and hell, his voice was so annoying. "Now I'm going to have to pound it out of you."

Wow, Kai thought, blinking, as Enzo's fangs descended and Donovan's fists went up. All this to get him a drink?

Was the vampire trying to impress him?

Was Kai giving out any Luke-gay vibes?

"Guys, guys, guys! What's going on? We're all buddies here."

Kai's self-amusing and wandering train of thought ended abruptly as a red haze clouded his vision. He was half-way out his chair, his hand raised when Damon Salvatore's fist closed over it, breaking it.

Kai barely even registered the pain, barely registered the sound of shouts near him, before his other hand – palm open, fingers worked with magic to each tip – slammed onto Damon's skull, and the vampire fell to his knees.

"Hey, not here!" The mundane was shouting but Kai barely heard him. His fingers were sinking into flesh , through bone, and the slimy underneath. He couldn't see past the red, past the hate, and the rage and the freedom to fucking hurt someone because violence was always such a dependable antidote to pain.

Then something grabbed him, slamming his arms to his sides and he was lifted off his feet.

"Hey," Accent – Enzo said. "Let's all calm down here."

Kai jerked back his head and butted the vampire's stupid face, loosening the grip on his arms. His arms now free, he reached over his back with his good hand, bent over his knee and flipped the vampire over his shoulder and onto the counter with a slam.

Damon was rushing at him, and Kai's hand came up, magic hurling both vampires away from him.

Patrons were screaming and rushing out of the bar, knocking over bottles and furniture in their haste to get away from the ugly fight, and wrecking the place even more. Matt Donovan was yelling.

For the first time in days, Kai felt almost happy.

The two vampires were struggling to their feet.

"Please come at me," he muttered, and the fact that he was swaying on his feet and had a broken wrist did not even faze him because between the alcohol and the magic trip and the adrenaline rush of kicking someone's ass, this was so awesome…

Then he felt cold metal on his temple.

He turned to stare down the small revolver, up Donovan's arm to his steely gaze. Then he followed the bartender's other arm to where his other hand was holding up what looked like a small bomb.

"Vervain," the mundane said furiously. "I drop this or it gets yanked out of my hand, and you guys turn into vampire shrapnel." He cocked his head at Kai, and shifting the gun an inch. "I don't need to explain how this baby works, do I?"

"Uh no," Kai said at once.

"I don't give a damn about your quarrel. Just don't do it in my fucking bar."

"I didn't come here to quarrel," Enzo gritted out. "I just came here to talk to the warlock bloke and he's the one that got all physical with me."

"Are you coming on to me?" Kai asked, seriously.

Damon guffawed. Enzo glared.

"What are you doing here, Damon?" Donovan snapped.

"Because I might be giving out certain vibes unintentionally," Kai said, earnestly to Enzo.

Damon grinned, all fangs. "Isn't it obvious? I'm here to keep the peace."

"I don't want any of you in my bar," Donovan growled.

"And in that case," Kai concluded, "I apologise for that."

"Will you shut your mug?" Enzo yelled. He turned to Damon. "Does he ever stop talking?"

"Nope."

"Cripes! We'll be real hush-hush, Matt," Enzo muttered, taking a seat. "Damon and I'll even help clean up."

"We will?" Damon mused, sitting down.

Kai eyed the two of them, then he gently sidled past the mundane's gun and took his old seat. If things became more violent, all the better.

Donovan looked distinctly unhappy with their continued presence in his bar. But he put away his weapons – not a smart move, Kai thought – and went to get a broom.

Wooden broom, Kai noted. OK, maybe not as dumb as his hair would make people think.

Whistling a little, Kai mended his wrist with a silent spell. It would still need proper patching up later, but now, it was good for the next hour or so. He conjured a handkerchief to wipe his hands clean off bourbon-soaked Salvatore brain.

The two vampires had been whispering something urgently between themselves and Kai only paid attention in time to catch the trail end of it.

"How's babysitting Miss Mystic Falls going along?" Damon was asking. He had reached over the counter for one of the few unbroken bottles and was drinking straight from the mouth like the barbarian that he was.

"Someone needed to be there for her," Enzo replied, sounding somewhat defensive. "Everyone else seemed to have left her to fend for herself. Just because she came through for the wedding doesn't mean she isn't still hurting."

"Yeah yeah yeah. Cry me a river of vampire Barbie tears. But between you and me? Better you than my brother."

"Right. Talking about your family…" Enzo looked over at Kai. "I'm looking for Lily Salvatore. Word on the street is that you're the guy to ask."

Kai, who had been struggling to call a bottle into his hand – strange how his magic was just fine when he was violent and fighting but something as simple as this was proving impossible – turned to stare at the guy. "You've gotta be kidding me."

Enzo scowled. "Now, look here, mate-"

"No, you look here, mate. Lily Salvatore is-"

"Gone for the moment," Damon said hastily. "Enzo, we talked about this. Prison world timeout. A century, maybe two? It's for her own good. They don't build ripper asylums on this side of the veil. At least, not yet."

"Funny how Stefan seemed to do just fine without ever getting locked up in some alternate dimension," Enzo said, turning furiously to Damon. "She was distraught. And her bloody sons couldn't even-"

"Couldn't what? Reunite her with her family of monsters who nearly gave us a real life Red Wedding? Leave her to desiccate in the dungeon? Where any oedipal maniac could break her out and let her roam ripper-free across the great state of Virginia until some witch or vampire hunter kills her? She's safe in 1903. We'll figure out a way to re-integrate her into society. She's a vampire. Time is on our side." Damon was talking to Enzo, but his eyes were boring into Kai's face.

What the fuck was going on?

"What the fuck is going on?" Kai asked.

Enzo whirled back at him. "Just so you know, the only reason why I haven't ripped your head off is because I hear that if anything happens to you, the prison worlds self-destruct."

"I can't even force myself to take you seriously," Kai said. "Who are you again?"

Enzo gritted his teeth. "Enzo."

"Enzo… who?"

Enzo got to his feet. Damon was between the vampire and the warlock before Matt Donovan could groan. "OK, buddy. Deep breaths. Calm down. I'll talk to him."

Enzo's glare shifted from Kai to Damon and back to Kai. "You'd better."

"Promise. Now, go and comb Caroline's hair or something, OK?"

The vampire shuffled out.

Kai shook his head, staring after him. "Enzo. Like Madonna or something? I guess Kai doesn't have the one-name ring to it? Not enough syllables? Maybe I could go with Malachai? People already think I'm some kind of demon."

Damon eyed him warily. "What is wrong with you? You seem even loonier than usual, and that's saying something."

Kai turned back to the bottle he was trying – and failing – to get. "Damon, I don't like you on a good day. Now I'm seeing like four of you. Get lost. Follow the continental reject and drown in the Atlantic or something."

Damon reached for the bottle and slammed it down in front of him.

Kai glared at it, then shrugged and poured himself a glass. If Damon was expecting thanks, he would wait his eternal lifetime for it. Apparently the alcohol was working because Kai's earlier rage at the vampire had dimmed from red fury to a sort of pink distaste. The feelings from before were still there – but they were numb under an insulation of booze.

Now all Kai had to do was keep drinking until he was just a glass from passing out, port to his apartment, wreck it until the columns barely held up, and promptly sleep out the rest of his life.

That was far better than a Prison World, he decided. At least a life of misery would have an endpoint.

"Hey, can you do that thing where no one around us can hear a word of what we're saying?" Damon muttered.

Kai looked at him. "Oh, great. You're still here."

"Kai," Damon snapped.

Kai shrugged. "If you've got something to tell me that you don't want Donovan here to know, then say it quietly," he whispered the last, then he sighed. "Gosh, I'm hungry," he realised sadly.

"Just how drunk are you?" Damon exclaimed.

"Talk fast, Damon or I might just eat you."

The vampire growled and Kai wondered if he would really have to make good on his threat. Thankfully, Damon seemed to come to a decision.

"That guy? Enzo? He's a friend of mine. And my mother's." He made a face. "Ugh. Whatever. Look, he doesn't need to know that Lily is dead. Point of fact? It would be a really good thing for all of us if no one else but you and me and Stefan knows that she's dead."

Kai drank from his glass, then filled it back up.

Damon fidgeted. "If word got round, you'd make lots of enemies. Enzo'll just be the first. I convinced Stefan to let it go and that was no mean feat. So you owe me a favour."

"Damon, I'm drunk but I'm not that drunk. How exactly do I owe you for your brother not being mad at you for killing your mother?"

"Because you made me do it," Damon growled.

"Yeah, because when I came looking for Lily to kill her myself… I somehow… made… you… do it… by… the sheer force… of…" He pondered for a bit. "My personality?"

"Kai," Damon warned.

"Why don't you just admit that you don't want Elena Gilbert-shaped ears to hear that the love of her life is a mother-killer?" Kai cringed. "That sounded obscene."

"Think what you like. Just keep your trap shut."

"Or what?" Kai sing-sang, and poured himself another drink.

"Or Bonnie will have one more reason to hate you."

All the bottles in the rack exploded.

Damon skidded back at super-speed, missing the shards. A purely reflexive shield had risen up around Kai and that was the only reason why he wasn't torn into ribbons. Instead the glass bounced off him, and all around him, on the bar, on the stools, on the floor around his feet. He hadn't even realised when he had got to his feet. But now he stood facing Damon, his fists clenched against his side, the muscles in his neck so tight that they hurt, and he felt that one wrong move and his veins would pop.

Matt Donovan, sweeping in the far corner, merely looked up, stared blankly at his demolished bar, then went back to work.

Damon started laughing.

"Oh my god, that's the reason for the drinking. You being so off your game. What did you do to her?"

"Shut up, Damon."

"How did you manage to mess up so badly with her? She was all 'he saved my life!' a week ago."

She said — what?

"You've wanted a chance with her for as long as I've known you. You finally got one and you blew it?" He was bent almost double with laughter.

Kai sent a spray of shards in his direction. Damon skipped away, still laughing.

"How long did it last? Two days? A day? Don't tell me the Homecoming Queen pulled a 'wham, bam, thank you Kai'?"

"Keep talking, Damon," Kai muttered, and he turned back to the bar. There were shards in his drink and he pulled them out with shaky magic. "Hope you'll also be laughing when Elena finds out the truth about you."

"Going for the low hanging fruit, are we? Be my guest, Kai. But I'm betting that Elena will see it as me saving Stefan's life, and let it go. You'd be amazed at the things I can get away with her when I say it's for Stefan's sake."

"Wow, you guys don't sound dysfunctional at all."

"But Bonnie will see it as you reverting to type and add that to her growing list of Reasons Why I Won't Do Kai Parker."

This time when he sent the glass flying at Damon, he had better aim. The shards went straight into the vampire's eyes.

Damon screamed, blood pouring down his cheeks. Then he smashed into Kai, hurling him to the table, his hands clamped around Kai's throat.

"That's enough!" Donovan shouted. "Both of you, get out!"

Kai's fingers grabbed at the air and Damon started choking, blue veins popping out of his face as a magical grip closed over his heart. He let go of Kai to clutch at his chest desperately.

"Go ahead," he croaked. "Kill me. Give Bonnie one more reason to hate you."

"Like she can stand you now," Kai growled. "You're the one that lied to her. That used her to free a ripper. That almost turned her into a murderer."

"We're on the outs now," Damon gasped. "But you said it yourself – she always comes back. Like it or not, I'm up there with the people she'd go to bat for – and you are not. You're just a booty call that she already regrets."

Kai flung him across the room, and Damon smashed into the wall, cracking it as he slid down.

"Get out before I kill you," Kai hissed.

Of course, the vampire didn't. "Yes, I killed You Know Who because I wanted to. She was a letdown, a waste of space and an all-around nuisance who attacked my girlfriend and our best friend. You just made me seem less of a jerk at the time," he crowed. "So you could say you did me a favour. Now do yourself a favour and get the hell out of this town."

"The hell I will," Kai growled.

"Why not?" Damon asked, and he sounded genuinely confused. "Your shiny new coven is in Portland. Go be King there. Word is that Alaric and Jo might even go live there. So what are you sticking around Mystic Falls for?" He snorted. "Bonnie? She doesn't want you. No one wants you, Kai." His mouth twisted poisonously. "So why don't you leave before you screw up even more and give Bonnie more reasons to never want to be with you?"

"You mention her name again," Kai whispered, "and I will kill you."

Damon smirked. Then he raised his hand in a mock salute at Kai, then at the bartender. "Sorry about the mess, Donovan," he said before he walked out.

So much for the offer to clean up, Kai couldn't help remembering.

He turned back to the bar. He picked up his glass, staring into the bottom —

(A week ago, Bonnie had been telling her friends he saved her life.)

— then hurled it against the far wall.

"Get. the. hell. out. of. my. bar!" Matt Donovan roared. He had appeared right next to Kai – once again showing how shot Kai's reflexes were – and his voice almost sent Kai through the roof.

Kai stared blearily up at him. The cadet's face was almost twisted with malevolence. "Sorry about the mess. I can clean this up." He sent his magic at the shards, and they hopped a little, then fell back to the ground. "Just give me a moment to get my mojo back," he muttered.

"And do what? Get my patrons back? Help me find another insurance company to cover this place?"

"Hey! There were three people in that fight, you know."

"I don't give a damn which of you is supposed to be the good guy today. Just get out."

And go to where? His lonely apartment? It wasn't so long ago that Bonnie had been there. (A week ago). Now she wasn't. Her presence lingered, poisoning it with memories that Kai feared were only beginning to haunt him.

Kai was halfway through the door when Donovan yelled. "Hey, Parker. Catch." He looked up and saw his phone flying at him like a missile. He plucked it out of the air seconds before it hit his face.


Beep.

Long pause. "I know you said not to call and this is the last one, OK? I don't wanna freak you out…" Slurred laugh. "That's a good one, eh Bon?" Another laugh. "You get one chance with Bonnie Bennett and I screwed mine up." Sniffs. "Do you even listen to my messages or do you just delete them? I guess there's an app for that… there's an app for everything…" Choking laugh. Heavy sigh. "I think about it all the time, you know. The hotel… You…"

"Message skipped."

"Hey, Bon." Sigh.

Beep.

"Message deleted."

"Bon. Hi. So I was thinking…" Beat. "You heard my Dad, didn't you?" Sigh. "Please, you can't just…" Long pause.

Beep.

"Message deleted."

"Hi, Bon. You haven't returned my calls. Of course, you won't have to if you just answered them…" Beat. "So I went to your dorm. It's kinda amazing. I didn't know college dorms had rooms that big. Your RA said no one's seen you or your roommates for days. Broke down and asked your friends. Said you were fine." Beat. "So I guess you're just avoiding me then. Which is cool. I guess I came on too strong. Er… I think. I'm still learning this stuff. So you can call me and let me know. That. That I came on too strong." Beat. "Please."

Beep.

"Message deleted."

"Hey, Bon. So I was thinking… Did you hear anything of what my dad and I were saying? Because, you know, context is key and everything, and you've got a track record of not getting all your facts before you make life-altering decisions. For me." Nervous laughter. "So… call me about that drink, OK?"

Beep.

"Message deleted."

"Hi. Bon. You left… I mean, I… I'm sorry that I took off with my Dad. Coven business. The old man has the worst timing…" Nervous laughter. "I don't know what you heard, but… Maybe dinner was too much pressure. We… we can try drinks at the Grill? It's totally sleazy, and practically a dump but… but it has its charm and I'm sure it's lovely if… if you get used to it. So… call me." Beat. "Bye."

Beep.

"Message deleted. You have no more new messages. To listen to skipped messages, press 9."

Beep.

Long pause. "I know you said not to call and this is the last one, OK? I don't wanna freak you out…" Slurred laugh. "Probably too late for that, right, Bon?" Another laugh. "You get one chance with Bonnie Bennett and I screwed mine up." Sniffs. "So… this is it. Do you even listen to my messages or do you just delete them? I guess there's an app for that… there's an app for everything…" Choking laugh. Heavy sigh."I think about it all the time, you know. The hotel… You… I don't know what's worse. If it never happened or that it happened, and I'll never get it back… Get you back… Oh god, Bonnie…" Long, shuddering sigh. "I need you… to have a great life. Get good grades, and all that shit… And get the fuck out of Mystic Falls… Virginia… The whole East Coast if you can… You're a good person… You deserve the fucking world... " Long pause. "Bon? You know that I… I… lo…" Long silence.

Beep.

She played it again. Twice more.

After the fourth repeat, her finger hovered over the touch-keypad for a long time. Then she tapped 7.

"Message deleted."

Bonnie took fifteen minutes to crush the phone into pieces of silicon powder. No magic. Just the sheer physical satisfaction of smashing something into smithereens with a bat, and the heel of her boot. Then she swept up the remains, threw them into the trash can and – still without magic – set it ablaze.

She threw herself on the bed, lay on her back, and gazed at the ceiling. Memories played over in her head, each one more heart-wrenching than the other. She forced herself to relive them. One last time and that was it. Afterwards, a fresh start. In every aspect of her life.

But she won't cry. She wasn't going to fricking cry over him.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, she fell asleep.

When she woke up, the dorm room was dark, and someone had put a blanket over her, and a bowl of soup at her bedside table. At first, she assumed it was Caroline. She had turned up a few days ago. Bonnie hadn't seen Elena since right after the wedding.

But when Bonnie sat up on her bed, she looked across the room to see Elena, sitting on her own bed, watching Bonnie.

"Hey," Elena said quietly.

"Hey," Bonnie said back.

For a long moment, the two girls just looked each other.

"Thanks for the soup," Bonnie said.

Elena smiled. "It's your favourite."

It was Bonnie's favourite. She could tell by the smell. Still, she couldn't touch it. Instead, she curled her body back into the bed, and pulled the covers over her head.

A few moments later, she heard Elena take the soup away. Then she was sliding in behind Bonnie and wrapped her arms around her over the blanket.

If Elena noticed the way Bonnie's shoulders kept shaking or the way her breath kept hitching, she didn't mention it. What she did do was leave the bed to get a box of tissues and place it on Bonnie's side of the bed, within easy reach.

She never said a single word. For the first time in a long time, Bonnie was grateful to her oldest friend.


June 2014

"You have one unheard message."

"Lang. You heard, right? Fuck knows I won't be leaving this if things weren't all gone to shit. For all I know you might even be…" Heavy, shuddering breath. "We got played. We got played good and… I' m done. No venia can save me. It's between the devil and the deep blue sea now." Cold laughter. "I go out on my terms. Goodbye, friend."


The call connected on the second ring.

"Joshua."

"Who is this?"

"Patrice Lang."

"Patrice! Where are you?"

"Where do you think? On the run from your lunatic son and the heretic that tried to kill me yesterday."

"Kai? You met with my son? Where-"

"I met with the wolves he sent to hunt me down. Then I was kidnapped and nearly killed by a heretic."

Pause.

"What? Did you hear what I just said? A heretic almost killed me!"

"Yes, I heard you, Patrice."

"That's it? Joshua, I need… protection."

"Did you accept the venia?"

"Of course not!"

"That was… unwise."

"I'm not going to throw myself at Malachai's mercy. He's as likely to kill me as the heretics."

Pause.

"Isn't he?"

"You and I haven't spoken in a very long time, Patrice. Things have changed."

"What does that mean?"

"You should have accepted the venia when you had the chance."

"Accepted mercy from a man who's probably dreamed of killing me since he was ten? I thought we were friends, Joshua."

"Then my advice to you is to… follow your instincts. If you don't think you can be safe in Portland, then make yourself safe elsewhere."

"I need help: funds, contacts… If he really is going to go through with a Revocation on any exile left, then I might even be without magic soon."

"No Praetor has performed a Revocation in three centuries, Patrice."

"Easy enough for you to say. You're not the one at risk here."

Pause. "I will see what I can do."

The call ended abruptly.


Portland, Oregon

Later, Alaric Saltzman would think back on that fateful Sunday when his life was turned upside down – yet again – and wonder how he hadn't seen it coming. In retrospect, the signs had been so glaring. The most obvious, of course, being just how good his life had got that past year. Too good.

He really should have known – every moment of happiness he ever had, had always been paid for with interest.

The day had started so innocuously – a warm and lazy morning at home. The big game on Friday was behind him, and he only had a handful of remedial papers on his desk for grading. School was out the next week. The twins were fast asleep, and the grown-ups – Alaric, Jo, and Gab – were all lounging around the kitchen table after the big breakfast that Gab had cooked.

The old lady went to the stove with her bowl. "Seconds?" She asked, raising the pot of oatmeal.

Everyone groaned.

"I'm stuffed!" Jo exclaimed. "I feel like if the twins are back inside me."

Alaric laughed into his coffee mug. He glanced over at the empty seat beside his wife. "Heard from Liv since she left?"

"She's fine. More than fine." Jo snickered.

Alaric peered at his wife. "What am I missing?"

Jo's voice turned conspiratorial. "So, Liv is supposed to be going to Orlando for this business trip, right?"

Alaric nodded. Apparently, someone at the office where Liv did freelance work had called in sick at the last minute and his sister-in-law had been volunteered to step in. She had vacillated over leaving, worried about leaving Jo and Alaric alone but they had all but shoved her through the door. As a matter of fact, they'd already been thinking up ways of pushing Liv out of the nest without her getting the wrong idea. She had been – still was – invaluable to them. But as the twins got older, the Saltzmans grew more settled with Gab, and talks of the Gemini coven taking the children became more and more of a distant memory; Jo's and Alaric's guilt about more or less cutting Liv from her social life was outweighing the necessity of her presence with them.

"Remember how reluctant she was to leave? And what we felt was the real reason behind that? The 'unfinished business' I told you about?"

The Saltzmans had concluded that – aside from her very good intentions to help them out – Liv was also using living with her sister as something of a crutch. On one of the rare times, she had confided in Alaric personally, she had mentioned that helping out with the twins gave her a good reason to end a bad relationship with a colleague at work. Jo's theory was that Liv had unfinished business in Mystic Falls, unfinished business called Tyler Lockwood; and until that was settled, one way or the other, Liv would remain in stasis. Whatever the reason, Liv's personal life wasn't going to get any forward motion if she kept hiding out here.

Alaric nodded now, then he paused at the twinkle in Jo's eyes. "Wait a minute..."

Jo burst out laughing. "Turns out Liv needed to make a pit stop at Mystic Falls. She claims it was to see Bonnie about some Gemini thing or the other… OK, well, she really needed to see Bonnie about something to do with the coven. But when I called Liv at midnight Eastern Time yesterday, guess who picked up the phone?"

Alaric snorted. "I will take a wild guess and say it was one of my star players on the Timberwolves football team?"

Jo clinked her mug against his own. "You, my husband, are a genius."

They beamed at each other over their mugs. Alaric wondered if this was what it felt to be 'settled'. Lolling around early in the morning, making the most of the babies being asleep, while conspiring with his wife to match-make the younger generation.

Whatever Damon said about him being boring and domesticated, Alaric won't trade any of this to return to a life of supernatural crime-fighting.

Which reminded him…

He bit back a groan.

Jo raised an inquiring eyebrow at his direction.

"Oh, it's nothing… serious," he hedged. He couldn't believe he had let it slip his mind all week. "Just something I was supposed to follow up on and only just remembered. Did you ever get a chance to look into that name I mentioned… Judith Stewart?"

Jo was turning to him, a frown between her eyes, when the sound of metal falling made them both jump, their gazes flying to the stove area.

"Sorry," Gab muttered. She was settling the pan of oatmeal back on the stand. "Pan slipped." She shuffled back to the table.

"Easy," Alaric murmured. He turned back to his wife, with a rueful smile. "Sorry to ask. I know you've been busy…"

"Actually, I figured it out," Jo said, surprising him. "There was a Judy Stuart – – on-call nurse at the hospital the night we had the false alarm last year. Remember her? Mid-twenties? Looked East Asian?"

Alaric didn't. But then he had probably blacked out most of the events of that night. Being ignominiously thrown out of his wife's hospital room because he was throwing a tantrum had not been one of Alaric's finest moments.

This person didn't sound at all like the sixty-odd year old white woman that Bonnie had described. "Thanks for looking into it," he said, all the same to his wife.

"You're welcome. What is this about anyway?"

He hesitated. He studied his wife with her quizzical but relaxed smile, and Gab who was staring at him with stern, bright blue eyes. As if on cue, the sound of one of the twins turning in her sleep filtered through the baby monitor. If Liv was here, she'd probably be fiddling with her phone and coffee.

The topic of murdered witches, and magic wielding vampires in Virginia didn't seem like it belonged in this picturesque setting that was his home. Even though or rather especially because, every single person in this house except him was – or had been – a witch.

"Just information for a friend that I offered to help. I'll pass on what you found."

Maybe Bonnie was right, he thought, as Jo poured herself more coffee. Perhaps a little bit of him missed the excitement of his life a few years back. But that was irresponsible and tempting fate. He had far too much to lose.

Gab got up abruptly. "Thought I heard one of the girls."

Alaric was already halfway standing when he did a double-take. "There's nothing from the monitor…"

"Better check," she said curtly. Her face was grim as she hobbled out of the room.

The Saltzmans turned as one to the monitor to listen, but they didn't hear any sounds of a baby, or even Gab herself. They looked at each other.

"What was that about?" Alaric wondered.

"I have no idea-" Jo started saying, when she jumped a little as a loud buzzer filled the room. "That's mine," she said, reaching for her pocket when Alaric instinctively grabbed his own phone. She pulled out her phone and stared at the screen. "Oh my goodness."

"What?" he asked at once.

Jo put the phone to her face. "Kai Parker! Where the hell have you been?"


New Orleans, Louisiana

Jo was insistent: Kai had to call Dad and get him off her back before she would even hear Kai out.

So he called his father, then held the phone six inches away from his ear while Joshua shouted through the line for the first five minutes. When the old man's voice had lowered to a croak, Kai pulled the phone back to his face.

"You done, Dad? Have you let off enough steam for us to end this conversation?"

"No, I have not! You need to get back to Portland immediately."

Kai looked at the busy street in front of him. He was sitting at the sidewalk of a lovely little place downtown that served the most amazing meals. He had discovered it last year when he came down to negotiate pax with the magical powerhouses of the South – the Faerie Court, the Nine Covens, the Werewolves and the Mikaelson clan. Being able to find good food here had been his saving grace during those weeks of nightmarish mediations. So of course, he made a beeline for here the moment he got off his plane.

Now yummy smells filled the air and a warm plate would soon be laid out in front of him. It was the least he deserved considering the crappy couple of days he had been having.

"No can do, Dad. I'm kind of busy at the moment."

"Doing what?" Before Kai could evade the question, Joshua went on. "What could be more important than the mass influx of exiles that you sent back to the coven with absolutus venia[3]? Absolutus venia, Malachi!"

"You mean the exiles that you led away from the coven in the first place?" That you kept away from the coven all this while? But Kai had no proof of that, wasn't even completely convinced of it himself. He had to tread carefully, not show his hand. "Anyway, they weren't all absolutus venia. You are exaggerating, as always. I reserved a whole batch of particularis venia[4]for any old crone in exile that I remembered you watching Monday night football with. Talking about crones, has crusty old Lang turned up?"

"He… I… Well, how am I supposed to know that? You can't expect me to know off-head the status of one witch out of the horde that've been flooding the Council everyday! That's your job. You need to come back to Portland and sort this out. There are ceremonies, oaths of fealty, tributes to be paid…"

"The Council should sort it out. Move your asses a bit. You can't expect me to do everything, you know."

"Watch your language. You are the one who sent werewolves and faeries as emissaries instead of Envoys. You broke protocol…"

"If you're going to berate me about protocol, Dad then I will hang up on you right now," Kai said coldly.

That shut the old man up. Kai could practically see the constipated look on his father's face.

As if by magic, the waiter appeared then and placed his meal in front of him with a flourish. The smell of it went straight into his head, calming him.

"Is there anything else? Anything else important?"

"There's still an empty seat on the Council."

"Oh not this again," Kai said with a groan. The Councillors had been haggling, positively haggling like road-side traders over whose BFF, toady or ally got the coveted last seat. If Kai hadn't more or less pushed Stewart down their throats, there'd be two empty seats leftover since Lovegood and Genova 'vacated' last year. His father wanted him to do that again – push a candidate of his own – but Kai wasn't going to. It defeated the whole purpose of the separation of powers between the Council and the Praetor – and exposed him to double the blame if things got screwed up. Bethany Stewart hadn't been too much of an exception. Traditionally, a Council seat was reserved for one of the former Chief Envoys, the 'old Guard' so to speak. The choices had been between Bethany, her own sister-in-law Judith Stewart, or Gabriel Briggs. The Council — and Bethany herself — had preferred the other two. But Kai drew the line at offering political authority to powerful witches in open rebellion against him.

"I haven't changed my position on this," he said.

"That's good because at the moment, five of us are in agreement that Olivia should take that seat."

Kai tensed. "Olivia who?"

Joshua heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Your sister, Kai."

"Yeah, I thought so. Is this some sort of joke?"

"She was an exceptional Special Envoy during hers and Luke's mission to vanquish the Travellers. She's trained all her life to lead the coven. It would be a shame to let all that investment go to waste."

"Yeah, a real loss," Kai said, bitterly, remembering the distinct lack of investment that had been put into him as a youth. Ceremonies that he had been barred from attending. Responsibilities he had never been trusted with. Lessons he had been plain denied because there was no point wasting knowledge on the syphon without magic.

At least that was the reason he had been given. His parents and the Elders hadn't quite come out to tell him they never intended to give him a shot at being Praetor. They had just played the syphon card: why invest in him when their money was on Jo? In retrospect, it had been so obvious. They were never going to give him a chance. It was why the likes of Patrice Lang – an Envoy that should have been lobbying to take a potential heir under his wing – could treat him like dirt instead.

Envoys…

Envoys

"Kai, are you still there?"

"I am," he said slowly. Something had tugged at his mental stream, but now he pulled it back. "Isn't Liv about five decades short of the minimum age to apply for Councillor?"

"There's no rule against youth on the Council. It's not conventional, yes, but there is precedent for the Praetor to offer seats to family members. Usually older family but since that's not possible in this case…"

The unspoken words made Kai bury the snide comments he was about to make about coven nepotism. Instead, he said sharply, "well that's all very well and good but there's a small matter that you're kind of overlooking here."

"What's that?"

"Liv turned down Chief Envoy, a job she might actually have enjoyed. You offer her a seat on the Council and she will laugh in your face."

"Liv was not suited as Chief. This time, she will do her duty."

"Ha!" Kai barked. "OK, you know what? Get Liv to ask me for the job and I will consider her nomination."

Joshua sniffed. "She will," he declared in a tone that brooked no doubt. "Now where are you and when will you be back?"

"Won't you like to know?" Kai drawled and hung up.

Finally, he tucked into the meal, now slightly cold but still as amazing as he expected. He chuckled softly to himself as he imagined how the conversation between Joshua and Liv would go down. Liv and Luke, the golden twins in more ways than one, had been brought up with their every whim indulged. His sister was a spoiled brat that was used to getting absolutely everything she wanted. When Kai had returned from the prison world, he had quickly realised that there were two things that Liv loved the most – her twin, and her freedom from the coven – and, well, Luke was gone now.

The waiter took away the plate, and left a slice of red velvet cake that he consumed with gusto, his mind moving fast. The conversation with Joshua hadn't been pleasant but they rarely were. Kai had detected no unusual strain on his father's part. If Joshua was aware that Kai had been with Patrice Lang, he gave no indication.

Which meant absolutely nothing because Joshua had also given no indication that he had just spoken to 'Patrice Lang' that morning and he had lied through his teeth when he said he didn't know if Patrice had returned to Portland.

For the millionth time, Kai replayed Patrice's dying words:

"Tell her live We were wrong "

"Don't trust who?"

"You must live "

"I will. I will live. Tell me. Don't trust who?"

"Par "

Par.

Parker?

Joshua Parker?

No, he was probably reaching. Par could have been the start of a million possible names. Parker, yes. But also Parkinson. Parrish. Paris. Maybe the 'r' had been a slur, and it was just 'Pa'. Patrick. Pamela. Pascal. Heck, maybe Patrice was even referring to himself?

Kai snorted. Now he was really reaching.

He had returned to the man's house after his death, and this time he found it magically scoured. The scant clues Kai had obtained the first time he went through Patrice's house was all he would ever get from Patrice Lang, to piece together the mystery he had taken with him to his death.

Now Kai looked at the phone that he had placed beside his own on the table. Patrice's phone and wallet had been on him when he died – sheer luck on Kai's part. As Kai had already discovered in Ranger, Montana Patrice had been a good little undercover Envoy until the end – the phone was scrubbed clean. No contacts, no call logs, no messages, no personal data. But just before Kai had surprised him, the old man had been about to call a number and the record of that was still on his phone.

The number was unlisted so Kai finished the call that Patrice had never started. It went straight to voice mail, not ringing once. There was no name on the mailbox, just the number itself and Kai's first instinct was to hang up when the idea occurred to him.

No one knew that Patrice Lang was dead. Not even the heretic Frederick could confirm it since the old man was still alive when Kai rescued him. For all he knew, Lang survived. So why not keep up the pretence that Patrice Lang was alive and wait and see who would contact him, and what that could reveal?

So Kai had left a message, a simple spell turning his Portland lilt to a drawl as crusted and grey as the late Patrice Lang himself:

'Close call with Malachai and the heretic. Call back.'

When in doubt, stay close to the truth – that was his plan. After that, he boarded up the house, did some spell-work to make it look like the man had flown the coop, booked and boarded a new flight to Mexico City as Patrice with the help of an illusion spell, and traipsed about the city for a while, dropping clues along the way, before doubling back to New Orleans. If anyone was on Patrice Lang's trail, they'd believe him to be somewhere in the middle of Mexico by now, on the run from both the Gemini and the heretics.

It was only a matter of time before several someones tried to reach out to him and interesting conversations ensued.

Kai had initiated the call to Joshua, wanting to concretise his suspicions. But the conversation itself had revealed nothing. Joshua had told 'Patrice' that turning down the pardon was unwise – perfectly innocuous advice. Of course, it could be that his father was too smart to implicate himself in a phone call. Because hadn't he eventually advised Patrice Lang to reject the venia and stay away from Portland?

More importantly, if Joshua Parker's hands were clean, if he had nothing to hide, why had he then lied to Kai about not knowing Patrice's decision?

The bottom line was Kai wasn't any surer about his father's role in all this than he was a few days ago. He needed more. Joshua had told 'Patrice', he would be in touch again. Before he did, Kai needed to be ready. He needed answers to questions that had only just occurred to him.

Kai thought of the next call he had attempted as 'Patrice'; by association, his mind shifted again to the tangent that had hooked it earlier.

Envoys.

Before he died, Patrice Lang's last coherent instructions to Kai were that he should live and that he should…

'Betty. Find Betty. Tell her live We were wrong. Don't trust Pa.'

Apparently, while in exile Patrice Lang had stayed in touch with Bethany Stewart, retired Western Chief Envoy.

Kai had left the same message on her phone that he had left to the unlisted number. If he were honest with himself, Kai was relieved that he didn't have to speak to the woman – in any guise. There were few people in the world who could intimidate him and Bethany Stewart was half of them. A flash of memory hit him – a conversation he had had with her last year – and he flinched.

No, he was not looking forward to confronting Bethany Stewart, the former Chief Envoy, now Councillor, once Matron at his sister's wedding, and survivor of the loss of her son and daughter-in-law in the same night. Nor was he eager to confront Bethany Stewart, another familiar face from his childhood – one of Micah Parker's oldest friends, and sister-in-law of the late Judith Stewart, also an ex-Envoy of the same guard.

Envoys.

Patrice Lang. Judith Stewart.

Bethany.

The Briggs?

A cold hand ran down Kai's spine.

That couldn't be a coincidence.

If anyone would know for certain, it would be Jo. He was just finishing his cake, and reaching for his own phone to call her, when it rang. He raised his brows at the name flashing on his screen.

"Not the sister I was hoping to talk to."

"Hello to you, too, Kai," Liv said in her usual brusque manner.

"How's the weather like in Portland?" he drawled. "Are you finding your job challenging but fulfilling? Are the twins teething yet?"

"Kai…"

"Hey, you're the one that wanted small talk."

"It's called courtesy, Kai. You pick up the phone. You say hello. You pretend to ask after my health and well-being before you start bitching about me calling you. I know it's hard for an ex-sociopath like you to understand these things…"

"Did you have a reason for calling Livvie poo or do you just feel like pissing me off?"

She was silent at that, the anger in his voice coming through loud and clear.

Kai took a deep breath. His sister's characteristic insensitivity didn't normally bother him. He wasn't a sensitive guy himself so Liv's abrasiveness rarely made a dent. But these days, between certain black-haired green-eyed witches reappearing in his life to give him a hard time and a Pandora's box of bad memories cracking open, references to his affliction rubbed him the wrong way.

"Why did you call, Liv?" He asked, rubbing his forehead, and dropping his tone a notch.

She cleared her throat. "Dad. Said. I should call. About the Council seat."

Kai guffawed. "Don't tell me you want it?"

"Heavens, no!" Her voice alone gave him a vivid mental image of blonde curls shuddering. "But Dad's been breathing down Jo's neck and mine for the past week because of you and I wasn't ready to fight him over this as well."

"So you want me to be the bearer of your bad news? Do I look like your errand boy, Liv?"

"Jeez, Kai, it's not like I'm asking for a big favour."

He considered it. "Fine," he said grudgingly. "I'll let him down easy-"

"Maybe not right away," she said hastily. "Give it a few days. Let him think that I considered it for longer than the length of his phone call?"

"You want me to be your errand boy and your solicitor," Kai muttered. When he only heard silence at the end, he shook his head. It was definitely his inner Luke that let Liv get away with being such a brat. "Got it. But it's going to cost you. I need a favour."

"Huh."

Kai rolled his eyes. "Don't sound so excited. I need you to find me a couple of Envoys in Portland that you absolutely trust, and put them on discreet guard and surveillance duty on Bethany Stewart. Discreet being the operative word. She can't know she's being watched or protected."

She made a sharp sound of surprise. "Why? What's going on?"

"No questions, Liv. You won't be able to handle the answers."

"Fine then. But look, what you're asking isn't a piece of cake. This is an ex-Chief we're talking about. I don't know anyone good enough and trustworthy enough to do t…"

"Don't even pull that one on me. You've been an envoy since you turned sixteen. Part of the Regium Disciplina[5] that you and Luke got as potential Praetor that the likes of me were not deemed good enough for." He felt the old bitterness rise inside him, no doubt exacerbated by his father's callousness of before. He pushed it aside. There was no time for that now. "You and Luke worked side by side with other envoys. Bonds formed in the trenches, and all that. Orgies, too, I daresay. Surely there are people you can trust with your life? I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it?"

Liv was silent for a while. Then just as Kai was about to prompt her, she spoke with a stilted voice. "Shouldn't Luke also know a few names, then?"

It was Kai's turn to be silent, the question throwing him for a loop.

"I mean," his sister said and he was aware of how thick her voice was, "you have his memories, don't you?"

"It doesn't quite work that way, Liv," he said, and he tried, he truly did, to make his voice gentle. But even to his own ears, his words sounded harsh.

Kai had long acknowledged that Liv's acceptance of him was intricately linked to the Merge, and to who he, Kai, had become after. To whom Liv expected Kai to have become. She had loved her twin and Kai was all that was left of him.

But until now, they had never discussed it openly, and he simply had no way to react to this. He could only respond with the discomfort that talking or thinking about it – the Merge and what it had done to him and Luke – made him feel.

After a dragged-out silent moment of acute discomfort, Liv exhaled noisily. "I guess not then. I'll text you some names."

Kai sighed. "Thank you."

"Just keep that Council seat away from me. So… discreet bodyguard duty for how long again?"

"Pay attention, Liv. If you're ever going to be a Councillor, you need to keep your ears open and your mouth shut."

"Who said-"

"Pay attention. Discreet protection and surveillance on Bethany Stewart. I need her watched, protected and unaware 24/7. And I need them to do this for as long as I fricking want them to do it, capische?"

She snorted. "Roger Roger. I'll tell my people. But you know I've got zero authority so you'll still have to-"

"You're a Parker. Flex your muscles a bit. Maybe Dad is right about this Councillor thing."

"No, he is not."

"Maybe not, Liv," he murmured. "Maybe yes. What's that saying? Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

"Kai… don't even…"

"Livavvy! Ready for another round?" A vaguely familiar male voice suddenly intoned from Liv's end of the call.

Liv shrieked, her voice fading. "Seriously? First Jo, now Kai? Are you doing this on purpose?"

"Ugh!" Kai groaned, turning green. He had just been scarred for life and he would probably never recover. Why was this happening to him? Hadn't he suffered enough? Couldn't twelve months of quasi-penance earn a guy a break?

Almost afraid to, he asked: "Er… who is that?"

There was rapid whispering in the background, then Liv was back on the phone.

"Kai..."

"On second thoughts, I do not want to know. The mental images… oh my god! Just don't tell me you're entertaining suitors down the hallway from the twins? Because I really don't want to be the one to blab to Jo…"

"I'm not at Jo's! I'm actually at-"

"- and that's already TMI. Just," he paused dramatically, "please do me a favour, Livvie poo?"

"What?"

"Please stay safe…"

"I can take care of myself-"

"… because twins run in our family and I can only be an emergency babysitter for so many babies."

"Kai!"

"Cheerio, Liv. Gotta call Jo now."

"Kai. Hey, Kai-"

He cut the call, chuckling to himself. Pay it forward, right?

(Luke would be proud.)

He glanced around. Some of the other patrons had left but just as many had taken their places. The waiter came over, and Kai ordered another slice of the cake – it really had been amazing. Plus, he was apparently early for his noon appointment with the emissary from the Southern Faerie Court. Even though according to his watch, it was almost one. Faeries were notoriously late but this was getting ridiculous.

But it gave him more time to think.

You and Luke worked side by side with other envoys. Bonds formed in the trenches, and all that. That's like the whole point, isn't it?

Envoys.

Joshua Parker – that self-righteous old bastard of a father – had been affronted that Kai hadn't sent envoys to the exiles, that Kai had preferred to trust outsiders instead of their coven's go-to department for these matters.

The old man's capacity of revising history would never fail to amaze Kai. Joshua was acting like if it wasn't his fault that Kai did not have the trust and camaraderie that he should have with the envoys. That decision had been entirely his parents'. The envoys were an exclusive club and they had chosen to rescind their oldest twins' invitations.

If Kai were to describe what an envoy was to a mundane, he'd probably say 'soldier'. But they were much more than that. Depending on the nature of their assignments or their rank, they acted as spies, as ambassadors, as healers, or as assassins. In certain numbers, they accelerated difficult spells, provided conduits to an immense amount of power to the Praetor. While Councillors were political appointments, and Elders were based on heritage, to be an Envoy was based on sheer merit. They were the crème de la crème of the Gemini coven. The most talented, the most powerful, the most resourceful of wizards.

Most importantly, except for extraordinary circumstances, where they discretionally took orders from the Council or a quorum of Elders, Envoys only answered to the Praetor Magus. For this reason, future leaders always served as Special Envoys – to foster a comradeship between Praetor and the Chief and Senior Envoys that would last their whole lives. Kai's own mother had served as an Envoy alongside Joshua and his brother before Joshua's merge. Kai and his siblings had grown up seeing a lot of familiar faces around his parents – Patrice Lang had been one. So had the Stewart women.

And as for the others…

He picked up his phone and dialled Jo.


Portland, Oregon

The sound of the blow-dryer drowned everything else and Jo didn't hear her phone ring. Alaric had to tap her on the shoulder and hand it to her, before she realised that Kai was calling her. She mouthed her thanks to him as he slipped out of the room, indicating that he was going to check on the twins.

The call had already ended by the time she turned off the dryer so she called her brother back.

"Have you spoken to Dad?" She asked straight off the bat.

"Hello, Jo. So nice to hear from you after so long."

"Have you?"

"Yes, Sissy. I've checked in with the old man. Now can you pretend to care about my well-being?"

"Where've you been Kai?"

"It's too long to get into on the phone," he said and the seriousness in his voice gripped her.

"Kai, what is going on? The exiles came back in droves. Your terms were generous. The Council is complaining that they were too generous."

"I know," he said, sounding irritated. "How monstrous of me for wanting to save as many witches as possible. But that's not why I'm calling."

"Go on."

"I've been thinking about our murdered exiles, and it hit me that every single one of those witches – Briggs, O'Sullivan-Briggs, Stewart… They all served as envoys with Mom and Dad, didn't they?"

Jo gripped her phone so tight, her knuckles spasmed.

Kai knew.

"Jo?"

No, he doesn't. If he did, we won't be having this conversation over the phone. I'd already be…

"Go on," she said as neutrally as possible, a feat considering how fast her heart was now beating.

He made an impatient noise. "You said that already, Jo. Isn't that enough? You don't think that's too much of a coincidence that of all the witches in exile, scattered across the country, the heretics only killed the ones that fit this description?"

"OK, now that you put it that way, it does seem like there's a pattern in there…"

"Wow, you're slow today, Jo. A pattern? I think someone is using the heretics to carry out a personal vendetta."

Jo choked, her body shaking as she tried to cough out the sudden dryness in her throat.

"You OK, Jo?"

"I-I'm good," she gasped. She bent over the sink and slurped some water. Then she slapped some on her face and sat back, heavily in her chair.

"Yoo-hoo! Still with me?"

"Yes." She took a beat, thought through her next words carefully. "You know, it might look suspicious but this could all just be a coincidence," she said. "The Briggs were married so they really count as one hit. They'd been living in Mystic Falls for a year. Judith Stewart died shortly after she arrived in Virginia, too. Perhaps the heretics just targeted them because they were Gemini witches in the neighbourhood. They've never needed a particular reason to want to kill us before, as we know very well."

Kai snorted his agreement. "Tell me about it."

"Perhaps… if they had killed someone outside the state… a fourth murder that fit this pattern..."

Kai was silent for a while.

"Kai? Was there a fourth murder?"

"No," he said finally. "Just these three so far."

She let out a shaky breath, then cleared her throat again, and hoped that her voice sounded neutral. "Test your theory by all means, but don't put too much weight on it."

"I won't."

"So… where are you, anyway?"

"Won't you like to know?" he said, lightly.

"Kai!" she gasped.

"Gotta run, Jo. I think my date's around the corner. Say hi to my girls and your old man."

The line cut.

Jo placed the phone down carefully. She stared at her hands, willed her breathing to calm down. Her heart was still hammering, as her body fought against the old fear crawling up and down her spine.

He doesn't know. He can't know.

I'm safe. I'm safe.

For now.

Then she wrapped her wet hair in a towel, and left her room with her phone in hand.

When she walked past the nursery, she could hear the low murmur of voices that told her the twins were awake, but, more importantly, that both Gab and Alaric were in there playing with them. Still, to be careful, she grabbed the monitor from where it hung next to the phone on the kitchen wall, and hooked it to her belt before she went to the study.

" gonna walk first, I tell you. Too impatient to crawl that one "

Gab's voice came low but distinct through the monitor. It was a little distracting but this way, Jo could know for certain if either of the adults left the nursery and surprised her in the middle of what she was about to do.

" dated a guy called Tommy as a kid. Tall, strong, not much of a wizard but definitely a lot of man, if you know what I mean. Sort of like you "

What? Jo thought, almost laughing out loud. Was Gab hitting on her husband? If the horrified spluttering answer he gave was any indication, Alaric definitely thought so. What a pity that she couldn't tease him about this later.

Doing her best to tune out this slightly alarming conversation, Jo shut the study door softly behind her, and went to the bookshelf that held her collection of medical references. She pulled out the specific book where she hid the spiral journal.

"… all set to make it to the altar, and we would have if not for Judgy Judy …"

Jo didn't even need to flip through; the book opened to the page with the list. By now, she knew it by heart but she was filled with an obsessive need to see the names with her own eyes.

M. Linus

G. Briggs.

V. O'Sullivan.

J. Stewart

P. Lang

She took a pen from Alaric's desk, and put two question marks next to the name.

" wasn't good enough for her precious brother anymore so she broke us up " Gab snorting with laughter.

Jo's fingers slid past P. Lang to the last names on the list.

I. Genova.

B. Stewart.

She pulled out her phone and typed out a message.

'Lang confirmed?'

She was about to slid it back into her robe pocket, when it buzzed.

'Negative.'

Jo shook her head. What did that mean? He was either dead or he wasn't. If he hadn't turned up dead, won't he have contacted one of them at least? And if he wasn't dead, then where was he? Who was hiding him?

This didn't make sense.

"… people call them the Stewart girls forget that they aren't even really sisters…"

All thoughts of Patrice Lang's existence went out of her brain like a whoosh as Jo stared down at the monitor in horror, her heart pounding.

" Is it true that Judith is dead?..."

Her hands fumbling with her phone, the journal and its hiding place, it took her minutes where it should have taken seconds for her to put everything back in place.

" his little girl was even in the wedding, wasn't she ? "

Oh God! Jo thought furiously as she all but ran out of the study and to the kitchen. She slammed the monitor on the counter. I'm going to kill that old witch!

She grabbed one of the spoons hanging from the hook, and clambered on the kitchen counter and started yanking down the pots suspended above the island.

They smashed down on the counter, bouncing off it, and onto the floor in a cacophony of metallic thunder.

She switched off the monitor as shouts came through, putting it back in its place. By the time, Alaric ran into the kitchen, his face tense, gripping the stitches on his sides, Jo was on her knees on the floor, making a show of gathering the pots.

"I'm so sorry," she gasped. "I was reaching for the pan, then I got clumsy, made this whole mess…"

"Gosh, you scared me half to death!" he managed to say, gasping between breaths.

"Sorry," she cried. "I hope I didn't wake the twins."

He joined her on the floor. "Oh, they're fine. They were already awake. Gab is with them. I ran here thinking god knows what was happening. Thank goodness, you're OK. Nothing here seems to be broken…"

She snuck glance at him as they worked together. His face was strained with exhaustion from his run, but otherwise he seemed his usual self-possessed, good-humoured self.

When they got the pots on the counter, he gave her a peck on the cheek. "I'll get these up. You go and finish … your hair and stuff…" He gesticulated at her half-dressed state with his hand.

"…and stuff," she teased.

He half-smiled and then turned to hang up the pots.

She was half-way up the steps when it hit her. Semi-dressed, with her wet hair hanging all over her face and her husband hadn't tried to make fresh with her. A peck didn't count. Of course, she had scared him half to death with the pots. He was still getting his wind back.

Yet still…

Gab was peeking out of the nursery, Rachel peering bright-eyed from her arms, when Jo reached the second floor.

"Is everything OK?"

Jo all but shoved the old woman back into the nursery. "You're here to take care of my kids, Gabbie, not gossip with my husband behind my back, do you understand me?"

Gab's bright eyes blazed at Jo. "You watch how you speak to me, Sissy."

"I haven't been little Miss Sissy in a long time," Jo snarled. "Don't think that because I don't have magic, I won't know how to deal with you if I have to. Don't you ever forget who I am."

The old nanny shrunk immediately. "'meant no harm, Miss Josette, I promise," she whimpered, looking away.

Rachel started sniffling.

Jo slanted a gaze at her daughter, fear-fuelled anger giving way to guilt.

"You… just mind your own business, Gab, and everything will be fine."

With a last baleful glance, she walked out of the nursery.

In a half-hour, she was finally done dressing, and she went looking for her husband. She found him sitting at the counter with his laptop open, and Martha playing on the mat beside him. His face was furrowed with concentration.

She pecked him on the cheek and he smiled up at her. Casually, she glanced at his screen – he was checking students' records. She recognised the high school's homepage.

"Work?" she murmured, trying to sound more concerned than relieved.

"Yeah, sorry. I don't want it to pile up." He shut his laptop. "Feel like pizza? The twins aren't ready to sleep. I don't think Gab will have a chance to cook before she leaves for the night."

"Why don't I cook?" she asked, mischievously.

Alaric swallowed with exaggerated nervousness. "Er…"

She tossed the kitchen towel at him and he laughed.

She bit back a sigh of relief as she turned her back to him and headed for the phone on the wall. He was fine. They were fine. That inkling of disquiet had been all in her head – her own guilty conscience. As she dialled the pizza place, she glanced at the baby monitor hanging beside it. Something about it made her pause, but the pizza guy picked up and she didn't think about it for a long time.


New Orleans, Louisiana

Kai stared at Patrice Lang's phone like if it would grow teeth and bite him. Then he stared at his own phone as if it had bitten him.

It was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. It would have been the easiest thing to pick up Lang's phone, call Jo's number, his voice disguised as the dead man's, and see how she'd react.

Because if his twin sister, the one person Kai trusted above all others to have his back, was plotting against him then the sooner he knew, the better.

He reached for the phone – and picked up his own, instead.

Coward.

He started by dialling Liv's number, changed his mind and typed a message instead.

Check the archives for all the missions where the following Envoys were assigned at the same time: Briggs. Sullivan-Briggs. Stewart. Lang.

After the message went, he brooded for a moment, then tapped out another one.

ASAP.

He went back to brooding, feeling the balmy Louisiana humidity soaking through his shirt. It suited his mood. He felt like if he was sweltering in uncertainties and betrayals. Crazy twin vampire witches were murdering people to get back at him. His father and his sister might be plotting to betray him. The faeries he was supposed to be meeting here had apparently stood him up – and without the connections from the Southern Court, sleuthing for Gemini witches in New Orleans, a city rife with the magical equivalent of warring mafia gangs, had just gone from difficult to near-impossible.

Oh, and Bonnie Bennett still hated him.

Lest he forgot the stale icing on the top of the rotten cake that was his life.

A familiar aura, hovering between neutral and suspicious, seemed to jab him.

Kai sighed. Perfect timing. After all, his life couldn't get any more complicated right now, could it?

"Penny for your thoughts," drawled Vincent Griffith as he took the seat across from Kai, his drink in hand.

Kai regarded the stern face of the Regent of the Nine Covens of New Orleans. "Perfect," he muttered.

"I know, right?" Vincent said mildly. "Bumping into you here. On Nine turf. Without notice. Borderline violating the treaty-"

"The operative word there being 'borderline'," Kai pointed out. "Can't a man go on a private vacation and have some food in peace without announcing his presence? Last I checked, it's still a free country."

Vincent hmmed. "And if I were to turn up unannounced in Portland, you'd feel exactly the same way, right?"

"You won't have your powers in Portland," Kai snarked. The Covens of New Orleans were bound to their Ancestral Plane.

Vincent smirked.

That's when Kai remembered. "Ah yes, you got rid of that millstone of the mystical variety. Ballsy."

Vincent laughed. "They had it coming." A flicker of bitterness passed over his face briefly.

"I daresay," Kai agreed, thinking about crusty old wizards like his father, Patrice Lang and members of the Council. He won't mind putting them in an ancestral plane and blowing it up. "But that unbinds all your witches from NOLA. Aren't you worried about the far-reaching consequences of that?"

"Aren't you worried about the far-reaching consequences of heretics in Virginia?"

Kai whistled. "Low blow."

"Let me worry about my coven, Kai Parker and you worry about yours," Vincent said, pleasantly but firmly.

Kai decided that this was a good time for a truce. "Believe it or not, I would have come to you."

"Really?" Vincent sounded extremely skeptical.

Kai eyed the other man, who sipped his drink coolly. The first time Kai had met Vincent Griffith he had been neck deep in magical and personal crisis. He hadn't been interested in the Gemini's offer for a treaty. It hadn't been easy convincing him – and things had got hairy at various points in time with all the constant warring that took place in this city, so pivotal to so many conflicting supernatural communities. But Kai had persevered, and eventually an understanding had been formed not just between the two leaders, but also between the other factions in the South.

From the way Vincent looked now – a far cry from that harried, burdened wizard of months ago – the treaty had served him well.

So well in fact that rumour had it that he was considering entering into other, more controversial accords.

"So there's talk of you and the Augustine Society forming an alliance." Alarm trickled down Kai's spine at the way Vincent merely blinked. "Griffith, you can't be serious-?"

"Your coven has the anti-mundane policy, not mine."

"First, it's not an anti-mundane policy, it's a 'what mundanes don't know, won't drive them crazy' policy. Secondly, it is one thing for your coven to have an agreement with your 'Human Faction'." Kai hoped that his use of air quotes indicated his opinion of the society of mundanes in New Orleans who regularly interacted with the supernatural society. "It's another thing for you to affiliate with a secret society whose raison d'être is the weaponisation of magic. Mundanes can barely manage their metal guns and you want to give them magic guns?"

"That's not all the Augustine Society does," Vincent said mildly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw the window-dressing, too. Let's not kid ourselves here. Tell me you're not considering this."

"I want to hear what they have to say. Aren't you curious, Parker? The Society was supposed to be defunct. The founding members all murdered-"

Kai cringed, thinking about the one responsible for that. It was incredibly, really, how much havoc Damon Salvatore had not only caused during his relatively short existence as a vampire, but had escaped the consequences of. The Devil indeed took care of its own.

"-and the legacy carved up and sold off. Don't you want to know the story behind their sudden comeback? Don't you want to know who's leading it now and why?"

"Only enough to stop them."

"I thought the Gemini had a non-mundane-interference policy?"

"Not when they're interfering with us first," Kai retorted.

Vincent grimaced, rubbed his chin with his hand. "OK, I'll level with you, Parker. You're preaching to the choir. Some mundane societies have my respect. The Augustine Society is not one of them. They call themselves a society, but if you ask me, they have cult written all over them." His gaze turned brooding. "Talking of which, are you facing the same upsurge in cults that we are? The sooner those shapeshifters are caught, the sooner these idiotic dragon-worshippers would lose their inspiration."

Kai shrugged. "Let them have their fun with their dragon-wannabe, I say. Mundanes love their doomsday stories. It makes them feel relevant."

Vincent scoffed.

"If you don't care for the Augustine," Kai pressed, "then why are you allowing them to court you?"

"Like I said, I'm curious. And… they have something that Freya Mikaelson wants."

Kai almost choked on his outrage. "Fucking hell! Seriously, Griffith?"

"She's throwing a party for them in a few days. You're invited," Vincent added the last as an after-thought.

"Gee, thanks," Kai groused. He shook his head. "I don't believe you. Freya Mikaelson? That's why you're dealing with the Augustine?" Not that he was surprised. He had picked up the vibes last year. He hadn't approved. Probably the only point of agreement he and Klaus Mikaelson had reached.

"You're also invited to dinner at the Abattoir tonight."

Kai stiffened. "Don't tell me that they know I'm here. The last time I was in the same room with the Originals, bad things happened to them."

Vincent snorted. "Bad things happened to all of you."

"Mostly to them," Kai insisted. "Negotiating with the Originals was… painful." In every sense of the word. "Our relationship is like a budding flower, fragile and precious. Why would I want to jeopardise it?"

"Klaus is gone. Kol is away. Elijah and Rebekah remain but as long as Freya is there, everyone will be civil. Admit it, Parker: things only got ugly last year when she wasn't there."

Reluctantly, Kai nodded.

"So… unless you do something to tick her off… like not show up for the dinner she's so graciously invited you to…"

"Nice try, no dice."

Vincent chuckled and drained his cup. "You sure about that?"

Kai was about to give him a sarcastic affirmative when, with a low, melodic sound, a faerie stood before them.

From a distance, it could pass for human. It had the shape of a human, wore the clothes of a human, and he knew when it spoke, it would sound like a human. Most mundanes could never even tell – they might wonder why this person's skin was so clear, and why they always wore the same clothes, or why their hair was so vibrant, it almost looked alive – but in their uncanny way of deliberately blinding themselves to the supernatural, their mundane minds would never make a connection.

Not for other supernaturals though. They could see the pointed ears, the slightly higher-than-natural cheekbones; the strands of living hair, and the clear blood flowing under the skin. They could see that their clothes were as much a part of their bodies as their skin, not fabric but leaves, feathers or seaweed, depending on the faerie's element.

And witches could feel their magic – faerie magic was hard to define and subjective to the witch that came in contact with it. Some described it as soothing, hypnotic. Others found it brash, invasive. However it was felt, once it was, it was impossible to forget.

"Greetings."

It didn't so much as speak with its mouth as its thoughts echoed through Kai's head.

"Greetings," Kai echoed back, as did Vincent.

Kai eyed the other Regent warily, then turned to the Faerie. "Letting him in on my personal request to you guys… not cool, not cool at all."

"The Nine are aware that we hunt our errant brothers."

"I'm not talking about the shapeshifters," Kai said through gritted teeth. "I'm talking about my witches."

"The Nine are aware that the Gemini exiles are currently in custody of the Originals."

Kai turned to glare at the Regent of the Nine Covens.

Vincent laughed out loud as he rose to his feet, threw cash on the table. "Sleep on it. I'll pick you up at 8. Find a tux."

He actually whistled as he left, not a care in the world. Kai spent a long moment considering if he'd be violating the hard-worn treaty by hexing the Regent of the Nine in the back. Considered if it won't be worth it.

He turned to the faerie with a resigned sigh.

"Tell me everything."


Portland, Oregon

Alaric had heard everything, of course.

He had been rising to his feet, his arms full of pots and pans, adrenaline still coursing through him from his fright, when his eyes had fallen on the baby monitor on the wall – and it hit him. She had done this on purpose. Created this catastrophe to get Gab to stop talking.

Somehow he had kept his head; he had pecked her cheek, cracked a joke and waited for her to leave. The moment his wife disappeared up the steps, he turned on the monitor and heard everything.

He had done his best to play it cool; had even brazenly checked up Judi Stewart's school records in his kitchen table as she walked by him. But inside, he was cold. Inside, he was lost.

The next day, he watched old wedding videos in his office and arranged to see the girl herself.

That first meet had been brief. She was reticent about talking about the coven – even her own family – in the confines of the school. She suggested the local tween hangout in half-an-hour and Alaric had no choice but to go along. School had been out early so it was ten minutes to one when he arrived. He sipped his café in his booth and tried not to second-guess the decision that brought him there.

She arrived fifteen minutes late, arm in arm with another girl, whom Alaric recognised easily enough as the second Gemini girl in his wife's train. Toni Genova. From his snooping, he knew that they were soccer teammates and good friends. They weren't the only witches in the school, but they were the only female ones in their grade. Judi had already made it clear that the other girl would be part of the interview. Alaric remembered Jo talking about the Genova family and how they had a dark reputation in the coven. In fact, Kai had ousted a Genova from the Council and several of them were still in exile. In addition, Alaric had discovered that like her friend Judi, Toni was currently living with grandparents, although for completely different reasons. Toni Genova's parents were not dead, but on some protracted sabbatical in Europe. They were not in exile – technically – but they had certainly managed to steer clear of the entire North American continent for the better part of Kai's reign.

Meanwhile, the Stewarts were supposed to be one of the most honourable families in the coven. Yet the two girls were best friends. It was interesting – and nice – to see that the politics of their elders had not coloured the younger generation.

They joined him and ordered lattes. They had changed out of their uniforms to jeans and pastel tops. They looked young and carefree and no one passing would ever guess that they were powerful witches from an ancient coven.

If anything, Alaric thought suddenly and uncomfortably, anyone passing would be wondering what two young girls were doing in this place with a middle-aged man.

After exchanging greetings, there was a moment's awkwardness.

"So," Alaric said finally, breaking the ice. "Thank you again for agreeing to talk to me."

"Thank you," Judi said fervently. "You're the only person who's…" She cleared her throat. "Since my parents, then Aunt Judith, no-one's…" Her eyes were shining. She turned away, blinking rapidly.

"I'm so sorry," Alaric said, feeling like a heel for dragging this poor girl who had already lost so much into this.

According to the official death records, Tommy and Helga Stewart had died in a spontaneous fire in Mystic Falls in May _ 2012. Alaric was part of the group of people that had come up with that story. Of course, the 'spontaneous fire' that had taken so many had been the finale of his wedding-turned-battlefield.

He had met a few of the Gemini witches who had lost their loved ones that night; and no matter how irrational he knew it was, he always felt a bite of guilt in those encounters. Now in these circumstances, that bite was magnified by a thousand.

"Don't be," Toni Genova said, speaking up for her friend. "What she's trying to say is that she's only too glad that anyone is talking to us about this. Talking to us, really. We suspected there was more to this than they told us. But nope, no one's talking. My family's a bunch of crooks afraid of their own shadows and they've probably spent a fortune on sage for all the burning they do when they are literally smoke-screening their secrets. Then her grandma is losing it…"

"Don't say that, Toni," Judi said, rather half-heartedly.

Toni rolled her eyes. "Well, she is. Admit it."

"Is something wrong with your grandmother?" Alaric asked, both to get an opening into Toni Genova's tirade and out of genuine interest. He intended to interview the old woman, who was the late Judith Stewart's sister-in-law and close friend. This news was rather alarming.

"She's totally loo-" Toni started but Judi cut in.

"She's becoming a recluse. It started last year, around the time that we all went into hiding because the Praetor came back…" She threw Alaric an awkward look. "Er… I know he's your brother-in-law and all, but there were some really ghastly stories about him. The old Praetor told us to run and we did. No-one knew what to expect from him."

"We didn't expect him to be so drop-dead gorgeous," Toni Genova sing-sang.

"Toni!" Judi yelled, outraged – but her cheeks had turned pink.

"Well, he is, isn't he?" Toni insisted, turning on Alaric for confirmation.

"Ah," he said, by way of reply.

Fortunately, she turned back to her friend without waiting for his input on his brother-in-law's attributes. "You're lying if you say you don't think he's hotter than Lucas was, and also less gay."

"He killed his siblings."

"They probably deserved it," Toni said blithely.

Alaric wished he could feel appalled. But he had been a foster parent to Elena Gilbert and watched her and her friends date through a series of mass-murdering vampires. He was immune to this.

He tried to get them back on topic. "Your grandmother was acting strange while you were in hiding?"

"She's always been strange," Toni declared.

Judi shot her another angry look, but then she turned to Alaric with a nod. "My grand-mother's always been really into Astromancy. If she hadn't been an Envoy, she might have been a Star-Mage. She's… brilliant, really. But she's also a bit…" She sighed and valiantly ignored the faces Toni was making. "After the Praetor returned and she retired from service, she practically moved into the Observatory. Even with my parents dying…"

She paused then, her eyes shining. Toni had stopped pulling faces. She put a commiserating hand on her friend's arm.

"I'm sorry," Alaric said uselessly.

Judi blinked rapidly and swallowed. "Well… after they died, I started living with her and she was supposed to take care of me but… No but. She did take care of me… As well as she could. I mean, she did her best. But my Dad always said she wasn't a motherly person and it showed. She was so preoccupied with her charts, then with coven stuff when she became Councillor…" She paused. "She was also determined to find out what happened to my parents."

Toni, who had been looking at her friend all this while, suddenly bowed her head, apparently fascinated by the pattern of the table cloth. Judi didn't notice.

"Your parents?" Alaric was confused. "But they died at the…"

"My grandmother had this fixation, you see, that their deaths were not accidental, that they weren't just casualties of the heretics's attack."

"She's still on that?" Toni asked sotto-voce, eyes still downcast.

"She even tried to get her old job as Chief Envoy back, but of course no one was going to give it back to her. She was too old, for one, and everyone knows that the Old Guard changes with the new Praetor. I thought things would change when she got on the Council, but no. Besides their assemblies, she rarely leaves the house. Rarely leaves the Observatory, really." Judi sighed. "The truth is, Mr. Saltzman, my parents' death hit her hard. If Aunt Judith had been with her, she might have been fine. They always held each other up. But she wasn't and my grandmother got… lost. She changed from this vibrant person to this recluse."

Toni perked up. "And when she comes down from her stars, it's to talk about doom and gloom and the end of the world."

"That's not fair," Judi hissed. "It was just one time; and she was drunk."

"Uh-uh. When your Grandma gets drunk, she rants about dragons falling from the sky, and the coming apocalypse; when we get drunk, we go skinny-dipping and do sex magi-"

"Toni!" Judi said through gritted teeth, throwing Alaric a side-eyed glance to remind her friend that yes, they were still in the presence of their high-school teacher.

Toni clamped her mouth shut; but despite her red cheeks, she threw Alaric a cheeky grin.

He sighed heavily. "I really just wanted to talk about your Great-Aunt Judith."

"Is it true that she was killed by a heretic?" Judi asked at once.

Alaric nodded.

A flicker of pain swept over Judi's face. Even Toni looked ill.

"The way they killed… Your wedding… It was so horrible."

Alaric squirmed internally. Again, he wondered how it had looked like to the Gemini, to these girls. Him turning tail and fleeing, and leaving the others to fight. He didn't regret protecting his pregnant wife but still…

"When they attacked, after the Praetor threw down the anti-cloaking barrier, Grandma Betty went into Envoy mode. She led our group – us, our parents, a couple of envoys, other witches, gave us positions. We took the stage, shooting hell-holes from the sky." Toni didn't seem to notice his shocked expression. "We dragged the two heretics that our parents cornered and sealed them in. One of them hexed my casting hand, then almost motused me in, remember?"

It was Judi's turn to roll her eyes. "How can I forget? You tell us all the time." She threw Alaric a pointed look. "She nearly got dragged in and the Praetor grabbed her just in time."

Toni sighed. Her eyes half-closed, clearly lost in the memory.

Judi had to finish the story. "He kept moving, of course. We had barely started casting hell-holes again when we heard a rumble behind us – and the same two heretics we had just killed were heading straight for us. A strange witch vatosed it, and chased it down. But the other got me in a choke-hold-"

"Scariest thing ever!" Toni cried.

"My mom… my mom came from nowhere. She hexed it. Sent them flying. Dragged Toni and me off the stage and told us to run to the East, where the portal for the kids and elderly, anyone who wasn't injured but couldn't fight, was set up."

Toni's brow knitted, clearly still irritated by this, one year later. "We were a month away from the Envoy Trials. We could fight. We weren't kids."

But you were, you still are, Alaric cried in his head, even as he kept his face neutral. He didn't need this story but if they wanted to tell him, he wasn't going to stop them. Logically, he knew that these girls were not much younger than Elena, Bonnie and their friends had been when they had been dragged into the secret battles of the supernatural. And he, Alaric, had been right alongside them – serving as both protector and general.

Emotionally, he looked at these combat veterans, barely old enough to drive, and he saw Martha and Rachel, fifteen years from now.

Judi shrugged. "You were injured, Toni. Anyway, they thought we were going to lose. The Praetor had gone – we didn't know he'd come back – and the old Praetor was trying to minimise the losses. At least that was what my mom tried to explain to us as she chased us out of there." She swallowed. "That was the last time I saw her, running back to the fight to stand by Olivia Parker and Quentin Parrish. Next I knew, she was being cremated with the rest of the dead witches."

Toni threw her friend a furtive glance, and bit hard on her lip.

Once again, Judi didn't notice. "I thought the Praetor killed all the heretics. This heretic that killed Aunt Judith… was it part of the group from the wedding?"

Alaric told them all that he knew – the identity of the heretics and the seemingly random attacks in Virginia.

Mostly all.

"So Aunt Judith's death was just… her being at the wrong place at the wrong time?" Judi asked miserably.

Alaric thought of his wife lying about knowing Judith Stewart – any Stewart at all. Thought about his wife threatening Gab the day before.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I was hoping you could help me figure that out. Is there anything that you can tell me about her? Why she was in Virginia in the first place after staying all this while in Nevada? Had she kept in touch with you, your grandmother while she was away?"

The two girls exchanged glances, looking uncertain. Toni shrugged to Judi's unspoken question.

Judi turned to him. "I… I don't…"

"You're Josette Parker's husband," Toni said bluntly.

"I'm not asking on behalf of the Council – or my wife's family," he said.

"So who're you asking on behalf of?" Toni insisted. When Alaric raised a brow at her bluntness, she shrugged. "I'm a Genova. My family's in trouble with the Council all the time. I know when someone's fishing."

Alaric chuckled. "OK, you got me. I am fishing. But not for anyone in your coven. I'm asking on behalf of my friends from Mystic Falls. The heretics are there, terrorising the place and they're all on their own. I'm trying to help them any way I can and Judith Stewart is the best lead I have. She was from here, Portland, and from this coven."

Toni hmmed, still looking skeptical. But Judi nodded, seeming convinced. "I'll help. If it will stop those monsters then I'll help."

"Thank you," he said, relieved. "So… why was she in Virginia?"

Judi shook her head. "I don't know. She remained in exile after Joshua asked the rest of us to come out, promised us that Malachai Parker was safe. And even when more exiles returned when they heard what he did at the wedding, how he saved us all, she refused to return. I was forbidden from getting in touch with her. I tried once – I sent an email to an old account I had opened for her years back. She replied it, we arranged to talk on the phone and it was great." She smiled wistfully. "She was cool, my Aunt."

"What did you talk about?"

"Mostly me," Judi said with a small laugh. "Boy trouble." Toni snorted and the other girl shoved her playfully. "Aunt Judith was cool, that way. I asked her to come and she…" She sighed. "She said that she didn't dare. That they didn't dare. Yet."

"They?" Alaric asked.

"She and the other exiles, I guess. It's just an impression I had. That they were all together and they were… waiting for something."

"What?"

Judi frowned, thinking. "I don't know. Now that I think about it, there was something so odd about how she sounded when she talked about herself. At the time, I thought she didn't want to tell me too much to keep me out of it all but now… this sounds odd, but I've thought about it and maybe she was under a Secrecy Spell?"

She looked at Toni. The other girl shrugged. "Maybe the exiles made a pact to protect themselves?"

"I don't think so… I think it was something worse… The more I think about it, the more I feel that she was … afraid… to come back."

"Duh, of course, she was," Toni said flatly. "She thought the Praetor was an evil syphon that'd turn on us all someday. That's what we all thought in the beginning. Of course, the longer she stayed in exile, the more reason she had to think that he'd never welcome her back. Witches in our coven aren't supposed to go into self-imposed exile," she explained to Alaric. "The Praetor had every right to have them all executed."

His jaw fell. What?

"Toni!" Judi snapped.

"Well, it's true."

What exactly am I married into? Alaric wondered, then tried to get his thoughts on track. "So she never gave you a specific reason for not coming back?"

"It was just one conversation. Grandma found out almost at once and she put a stop to it. I think… they were fighting? Grandma and Aunt Judith? I mean, technically we were all forbidden from speaking to her – every witch that remained in the coven was committing treason by being in touch with an exiled witch."

"But everyone broke that rule all the time. My family talks to Uncle Isach all the time. I'm sure he's met up with my parents in Europe at least once. It's not all just because we're the 'Evil Genovas'. It's hard, you know, being in exile, away from the coven's protection. And how else are you ever going to convince them to come back if you cut them off completely?"

"He's back now, isn't he?" Judi asked, suddenly. "With the others who returned."

A dark cloud crossed Toni's face. "I don't think so."

"But why-"

"I'm sorry," Alaric said, determined to keep them on topic, "but about your Aunt…? You said she and your grandmother were fighting."

"I think they were. I don't know for sure. Just an impression, I got. Snatches of phone conversations that I heard when the sage wasn't burning. Things Grandma would just suddenly mutter under her breath. I really don't know what or why but I just got the impression that they were in the middle of a fight and it may or may not have had to do with Aunt Judith refusing to rejoin the coven." Judi shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

Alaric sighed. "And you don't know why she was in Virginia?"

"I didn't even know that she was in Virginia until you told me that was where she died," Judi pointed out.

Alaric considered both girls before him. Intelligent and curious, it would be hard to get anything past them. But he had to try.

"I don't suppose you know if Judith had any … contact with anyone in my family?"

They both stared at him. "I don't think so," Judi said slowly. "I mean…"

"Why are you asking us, not the old Praetor?" Toni asked, blunt as always.

Alaric blinked.

"They were thick as thieves – him and Judith. Been friends since way back when. Everyone knows that. If she was in touch with anyone, it'd be him."

Now both girls were staring at him suspiciously.

"I didn't know that," Alaric admitted, embarrassed.

"Really?" asked the brash Toni.

"I'm still figuring how things in the coven work," Alaric said honestly. "And, obviously, I don't know my wife's family very well."

"Well, you'd better, don't you think?"

"Toni!" Judi said, throwing Alaric an apologetic look.

Toni scoffed. "What? It's true. Mundane or not, he's Josette Parker's husband. The father of the next Praetor, at this rate. Unless Kai Parker decides to marry soon, have his own kids…" Her eyes turned dreamy then. It was obvious which candidate she had in mind.

Judi scoffed. "Like he'd marry you."

"Why not?"

"A Genova? As if." Judi rolled her eyes. She turned to Alaric then and missed the dark look her friend threw at her. "Is there anything else, Mr. Saltzman?"

Nothing that she could help him with, he realised. Short of asking her to go digging into her family for information about a connection between his wife and her Aunt, he had got everything he could from her.

"I'd like to speak to your grandmother," he said.

Judi blinked. "Er… I don't think that's a good idea. We told you: she's a little," she threw her friend a glance, as if expecting Toni to throw in a quip but Toni stayed silent, "withdrawn at the moment."

"I could use the school as an excuse. She is your legal guardian and I could force a visit that way."

"You can try. That's about the only way you'd get her to agree to it. Honestly, I'm not sure it's worth your while. She'll probably drag you up to the Observatory and give you a lecture about the Dragon apocalypse."

She threw her friend another glance; the opening was clear. But Toni didn't rise to it, merely smiled weakly. Judi frowned.

Alaric had no interest in this developing teen drama, and he grabbed a napkin. "If you remember anything, if anything at all comes to mind about your Aunt and the heretics," he wrote down his number, "please can you call me?"

She took a snapshot of the napkin; then nudged Toni and made her do the same. The other girl was unusually silent as they got up to leave, clearly still miffed by her friend's casual prejudice.

Judi paused before leaving the booth. "Thanks for… not treating us as kids, Mr. Saltzman."

He smiled at them, and once again the spectre of his grown-up daughters flashed in his mind. "Thank you for your help."

He watched them go. There was still a frosty space between them when earlier, they had walked in arm in arm. He hoped they'd work things out. Despite their contradicting personalities, they seemed like genuine friends.

He drained his cold coffee and chuckled darkly to himself. It was the height of irony that he was worrying about a pair of teen BFFs while sneaking around his wife's back, lying to her because of her own web of deceit. What was happening to his life and was he really going about this the best way? Instead of waylaying teenage girls and probably getting a reputation for being the faculty perv, shouldn't he just confront Jo with his discoveries? What the heck was he afraid of – that she'd lie to him some more?

No. He shuddered suddenly – and it wasn't just from the cold coffee.

He was afraid she'd tell him the truth.

And he won't be able to live with it.

"See you soon!" yelled a familiar voice.

He looked up in surprise to see Toni Genova walking through the doors and making a beeline for him.

"Did you forget something?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Made up some story about a date I forgot to meet," she whispered, ducking into the booth. "But I really wanted to talk to you." She eyed him speculatively.

He tensed. "Oh." Oh dear, he really hoped this wasn't about to get awkward.

"Judi's parents weren't killed by the heretics."

He was still holding his empty cup when she spoke and now it slipped out of nerveless fingers to land on the table loudly.

"What? How do you…"

Toni shook her head, impatient. "Just listen, OK? Judi told you everything up to when she passed through the Eastern Portal with the other kids. I couldn't pass through because of my injury. The anti-cloaking barrier was very strict. I had to go across the barn to the Southern portal. I told Judi months later, when we finally talked about that night, that I was moments behind her." She bit her lip. "That's not true. Mr. Saltzman, what I'm about to tell you, I have never told anyone before."

He blinked. "Go on."

She took a deep, steadying breath and locked her hands. "By the time Judi's mom realised that she had to take me to the South portal, she needed to rejoin the fight. So she shoved me in that direction, made me promise to go straight through and left me. It was easier said than done with everything going on. By the time, I had made it to the South, the Praetor – who had come back – had commandeered it. Someone directed me to the other side where Olivia Parker was setting up another one for the injured; and I was within reach of it, when I saw that there was a battle happening in front of it. Three witches holding the line against the four who were trying to breach. I was freaking out a little then. I had no idea what the hell I was going to do, when I realised it was my parents and an envoy holding the line." She swallowed. "My parents and an Envoy, against two of the heretics…

"and Judi's parents."

Her eyes were all but drilling into his head and it took him a long moment before it finally clicked.

"What?"

She made a sound that was half-scoff, half-laugh, as if she knew just how incredulous that sounded. "Judi's parents were fighting for the heretics. Judi's parents were traitors."


New Orleans, Louisiana

Kai had taken Vincent's advice and slept on it. If sleeping on it involved soaking himself in the night life of New Orleans, drinking and dancing – badly – in an open party in the heart of the French Quarter. He might have made out with a Treme witch or two or three. It was hard to remember the next morning. He didn't even remember what the party was for in the first place. Or if there had been one. Sunday night in New Orleans seemed good enough cause to celebrate. Word had spread that the Praetor of the Gemini coven was in town, and suddenly Kai had found himself the guest of honour and the centre of attention. He hadn't minded, really. He was young and powerful and full of his own magic and if he somehow got into a drinking competition with Marcel Gerard that he couldn't remember who won, he had the right to, didn't he?

He thought differently when he woke up, thankfully alone and in his own hotel room. His head was pounding too much for him to even make a proper hangover potion and he lay in bed wishing for death.

His wrist itched at the thought, reminding him of his vulnerability, which naturally led to thoughts of Bonnie Bennett backed into the space between Jo's kitchen door and Kai's body, her eyes staring at his mouth. Which then led to thoughts of her, impossibly soft and hot beneath him, her wet, breathy voice crying his name into his ear as he surged into her, their magic entwined and cocooning them both. His body thrummed just with the memories and he wished he had brought back one of those witches from the night before. He needed release and his hand was a poor substitute to what he really wanted.

Well, it would have to do.

When he was done, he was fit enough to hobble together a functional potion and after he took a shower, and worked out some more frustration, he was clear-headed enough to be ravenously hungry. He yelped when he checked the time. It was almost three in the afternoon. He supposed that between hard partying and drinking and jet lag, his body had to give eventually but still…

As he dressed, he considered his options.

Room service wasn't half-bad. But what was the point of getting so hungry if he was only going to eat shoddy hotel food? He helped himself to a bag of chips from the mini-bar. That should hold him until he went downtown for a proper meal.

Food sorted, the next question was what to do about his prodigal witches, and consequently, Vincent and Freya's dinner invitation.

The fae had been plain – there was nothing they could do to free the Genovas that the Mikaelsons had in custody. The details were long and convoluted but the bottom line remained that the Mikaelsons were perfectly in their rights to keep this particular trio captive. Kai couldn't say he was surprised. A large and old family, the Genovas were notorious for their flagrant use of dark magic and one of the trio, Danielle Genova was someone Kai remembered from his pre-Prison World days to have shown early proficiency in the family trade from a young age. Getting into nasty deals with vampires was right up their alley. Until recently, that is. Now, thanks to the change in Gemini government, they were subdued, retreating into their various strongholds to lick their wounds and re-brand their house.

Indeed, part of the reason why the Gemini Council was lacking one member was because the unwritten rule that a Genova would always sit on the Council had been rudely broken when Kai ousted Anthony Genova.

Thinking about the outrage on the old man's face when Kai wielded his unequivocal right to retire a serving Councillor cheered him up considerably.

Under normal circumstances, Kai wouldn't have given two figs what happened to the Genovas that were currently wallowing in a dungeon somewhere in the Mikaelsons's compound. Danielle Genova, her husband, Tim and her uncle Isach could work out their issues with the Mikaelsons without Kai interfering. Heck, that was the whole point of their self-imposed exile. They had chosen to give a 'fuck you' to the coven, and now the coven had a karmic opportunity to give a 'fuck you' right back.

But these were not normal circumstances. Heretics were on the loose, murdering witches… not entirely randomly. Heretics, who should have died a year ago, but had somehow survived. Heretics, who were no longer exclusively haunting Virginia but had spread their wings as far as Montana and goodness knew where else, hunting, searching for…

What? Who?

Then there was the question about one of the messages that Kai had received on Patrice Lang's phone. The one where a Gemini exile declared that he was going to do something desperate to stay safe. He was going to choose the deep blue sea rather than the devil.

And now that Kai knew the Genovas' current location, he felt strongly that that message had originated from one of the Genovas, perhaps Isach himself and the Mikaelsons's dungeon was the 'deep blue sea' that they had chosen.

So who was the devil? The heretics…? Or Kai himself?

Kai resolved to find out this night.

Done dressing, he went to the hotel wardrobe to sort out his luggage.

Ordinarily, he did not like dealing with the Mikaelsons. But unlike her hyperactive siblings, Freya Mikaelson was a witch, and a reasonable woman. A simple dinner during which he would discuss the return of his witches shouldn't be too difficult. She would probably – definitely – ask for something in exchange. Kai could appease her if it wasn't unreasonable, or he could re-negotiate, or – better yet – he could make it clear to her that it would be in her own interest not to lead the heretics to her home.

Though, he found the idea of a ringside seat to watch the heretics versus the Originals appealing. Extremely appealing. For a moment, Kai amused himself with that thought. Then he shook it out of his mind. Too risky. It'd be a long, drawn out battle but in the end, un-killable heretics who sucked magic versus magical superhumans only had one outcome. The Gemini hadn't intervened in the Sire War out of altruism. While Kai would personally love to see the Mikaelsons vanish from the face of the earth, and their vampire sirelines with them, that was only going to create a vacuum for another unknown breed of monsters to fill. Nature was a big fan of balance.

Better the monster you knew and all that jazz. It had taken generations of witches years of research, paid for in blood and tears and sweat to understand the ways to co-exist with the vampires. Who knew what new nefandus bestia would arise from the depths of imagination's chasms to fill the space occupied by vampires? How many decades would be spent understanding their vulnerabilities? How many centuries would be spent schooling them in the order of things? How many lives would be damned in the process?

It was all a delicate equilibrium, really, and already there had been so many disturbances. The Other Side collapsing, and then the NOLA Ancestral Plane barely a year later. These dimensions had been conjured by witches, too, not a part of nature from the start but after millennia, hadn't nature adapted to them? And now that they were gone, what was the tip to the scale to even out their loss? What price would be paid – had perchance, already been paid in silence – to fill up the magical craters they had left behind?

For a long moment, Kai stared sightlessly ahead of him, not seeing the balcony in front of him or even hearing the rush of the Mississippi, but going further, deeper, his mind and senses, swirling round and round in the abyss.

Then he snapped out of it, with a burst of laughter.

What the fuck? It was probably the low blood sugar that had got him so philosophical at this time of the day. He needed to get something to eat before he started writing his memoirs.

He pushed his feet into his shoes and grabbed his phone. There was a message from Liv. She hadn't found anything yet on the envoys he had asked about; but she had put the detail he requested on Bethany Stewart so Kai was half-pleased.

There was no message from Jo.

He hadn't been expecting one but still…

He checked Lang's phone. It had one new message. It was from the same unlisted number that he had sent the message to – the last number that Lang had tried calling.

'How did you survive?'

Good question, Kai thought soberly, remembering the old man's death, his blood and life slipping through Kai's hands. He would have survived if Kai had been thinking faster, working faster, just plain been faster.

He typed his story.

'Malachai and the heretics fought. I escaped both.'

He waited a few minutes for the reply and when it didn't come, he put the phone on a loud vibrate and exited the room, his destination fixed on the same place he had eaten the previous day. It was a nice walking distance from where he lodged. As he made his way through the colonial-style, over-priced, allegedly-luxury hotel he was lodging in, he grumbled about the fact that he had to go so far for decent food. He was going to leave a stinker on their Yelp page.

He was halfway down the street when a phone started ringing. A call was coming in to Patrice Lang's phone. Kai had stored all the contacts he had been in communication with as 'Patrice' and the name that flashed on the screen made him stop mid-stride.

He whispered the spell to disguise his voice and picked the call. "Hello?"

"Patrice?" asked a vaguely familiar voice. "It's Betty."

Even though it wasn't a surprise, his stomach still dropped.

"Where are you, Patrice and how are you still alive? Don't give me bullshit about Malachai and the heretics, you wily fox. I want the truth."

Kai started walking again, his brain moving with him. "I had an … Elixir."

Gasp. "Genova? What was the price?"

"You don't want to know." He carefully didn't correct or deny her assumption.

"She said you're next. She's been right so far. Dammit!"

There was a terse silence. If Bethany was happy or disappointed that 'Patrice' had survived, Kai couldn't tell.

'She said you're next.'

Who was She?

A thought formed in his head. It was risky – she was an old, war-hardened Envoy, but if anyone could pull it off…

"I can tell you more. But face to face, not over the phone."

"We can't risk it," she snapped.

"You talk to me about risks?" he matched her tone.

"Who else knows that you're alive?"

"Joshua." He flipped a mental coin, took the gamble. "And Her."

"You fool!" She shouted. "By all the Ancestors, why would you -?" She finished with a series of curses that made Kai's ears hot. Damn, the old lady didn't play.

"Betty-"

"Didn't you know, you idiot, that as long as the heretics were not sure of your fate, the rest of us were safe? But now, you've opened your big mouth…" She bit off her words.

"If I made a mistake…"

She drew a loud breath. When she spoke again, her voice was contrite. "No, you… That was unfair of me. Patrice, you will find this hard to accept, but we might have been misled about Joshua, and Malachai, and…" Her voice seemed to strangle. She swore softly. "I cannot even speak it. We are bound … fated by this ill-advised Secrecy Curse to our doom!"

"A loophole will present itself."

"You know how I loathe platitudes! I want a way out of this, not simpering! I need to live, Patrice. What I'm doing is too important, outweighs everything else. I was blinded by grief and I let myself be duped. If I had known a year ago what I know now, I'd have told Joshua to go to hell the first time he pulled us into his scheme."

Kai choked on an inhale.

"Patrice?"

"My f… Joshua…"

"Don't speak his name!"

"…was persuasive. Don't be too hard on yourself."

A derisive laugh. "I let myself be misled. We all did, but I most of all. Now we're doomed."

"We'll figure it out. I'm buying us time." Beat. "We should meet, Betty."

There was a long pause. "We can try. I will see what arrangements I can make." A sad chuckle. "You're a wily old fox, Patrice. I'm glad you're not dead."

The line cut.

For a long moment, Kai stood in the middle of the busy street, his hunger forgotten, his breath unsteady, replaying the conversation with Bethany Stewart in a loop in his head.


Portland, Oregon

Alaric shook his head slowly, confused. "I thought the Stewarts were-"

"The good guys?" Toni Genova scoffed. "So does everyone."

"Are you sure of what you saw? In the middle of a war-zone… everything happening so quickly… You were injured…"

She wrung her hands impatiently. "Do you know how many times I've relived that? Done memory spells, meditation, vision magic, all to make sure I'm remembering everything correctly? I am sure. The official story is that her parents were killed by heretics. That they fought and died as heroes of the Gemini. But that was never true."

She took a deep bracing breath.

"I was there. I saw everything. I saw Olivia Parker building the Portal, Parrish and my parents fending off the Heretics and the Stewarts… Olivia's wolf joined in…"

Tyler.

"But it was fighting wild, attacking everyone who wasn't Olivia. He blocked a hex that my mom threw at a heretic. It was going to attack my mom, but my dad threw some weird curse at it, and it fell to ground unconscious, changed back into a man.

"After that, it was like a mad double tag team match. Parrish was duelling with the Stewarts while the heretics and my parents were going at it with hammer and tongs. My mom was throwing dark curses I didn't even know existed." She smirked proudly, briefly, before she sobered again. "But between the heretics and the Stewarts, who were trained envoys, it was a foregone conclusion. Parrish went down. The Stewarts joined the heretics against my parents. My mom was bleeding, barely standing on her feet. My dad was choking under the wires of dark magic the heretic man was flinging at him. I had to do something. I knew no one else could help. Olivia couldn't leave the Portal half-completed. Everyone else was either fighting or wounded. I had to do something…"

She looked up at Alaric with shiny, anxious eyes as if she was pleading for something. Confused, he just tried to nod encouragingly.

It seemed to work because she went on. "I rushed in, throwing a slicing hex that Uncle Isach taught me. I was aiming for a heretic but it hit Judi's mom instead."

A horrific silence ensued.

"You killed her?" Alaric whispered, horrified.

"I… I hacked her arm, knocked her down," Toni said, her voice hoarse. "She… she wasn't dead. But it was enough. Parrish had got to his feet. I guess they hadn't completely taken him out. Mrs. Stewart was rising to hers, she had barely been on the floor for longer than a second, but it was enough. Parrish finished her off." She covered her face with her hands.

Oh my god, Alaric thought.

She spoke through her fingers, her voice muffled. "Mr Stewart screamed when it happened, turned his back on his fight, his concentration shot. My mom… she got her chance and took it. I still hear that scream in my dreams."

Alaric didn't know what to say.

Toni dragged her hands down her face, smearing her cheeks with makeup. "The whole fight turned so quickly, I guess it took the heretics unawares. Parrish and my mom together finished the heretic man. The woman was screaming, not magic or curses, just wordless shouting. She must not have realised I had been there – because our gazes caught and she shut up, freezing like if… like if... I don't know like what. She just stared at me, whispering my name." Her eyes turned wondering, as if of all the unnerving things that had happened that night, that was the one thing that stayed with her. "How did she know my name?"

It took Alaric a moment to realise that she was waiting for an answer.

He shrugged, helplessly. "I have no idea."

"She was still looking at me, when my dad cut her down. Parrish sliced off their heads, levitated them and moved them to the other side of the field where the Praetor was doing... something. Olivia had finally finished the Portal. She had gone to her wolf. The Stewarts were just lying there… dead… My parents started coming to me." She grimaced. "I don't know if they were going to hug me or hex me. They looked spitting mad. Like if it was my fault that I had got caught up in a war-zone. Like if I hadn't been at the right place, at the right time.

"And then–" Her face sobered, fear creeping into her eyes. "Then she came."

Gooseflesh broke out over Alaric's neck; her fear was palpable, contagious. "Who?"

"Her. The mundane girl that stood with Jo. Her maid of honour? Not Olivia Parker, the other one. The mundane girl? I think she was her student?" She bobbed her head earnestly, her eyes trying to prompt him.

Alaric blinked, trying desperately to follow this unexpected turn in her narration. It took him almost a minute before he realised who she must be talking about.

"Elena Gilbert? You saw Elena Gilbert?"

"Tall, dark curly hair, totally gorgeous in this naughty-but-nice kind of way?"

Alaric nodded slowly, still mostly confused although he couldn't help thinking that that was a better description for Katherine Pierce than Elena.

But that was even more impossible.

"You saw Elena Gilbert in the middle of the fight?" he repeated.

"Saw her and spoke to her. Or rather, she talked to me – like if I was five. 'You need to go straight home. Don't give your parents any trouble, if you know what's good for you.' She winked at me." Toni gulped. "It was the weirdest thing. I didn't know her from Adam and she winked at me in this… uncanny way. My flesh crawled. I remember taking a step back in fear, and my parents grabbed my arms and shoved me through the Portal and out of the barn."

She took a deep breath, while Alaric tried to process this.

"Your parents didn't follow?"

"They weren't injured. They had to keep fighting. I don't know if you remember this at all, but my parents and I stayed in the Praetor's apartment." On cue, her cheeks pinked. "He was barely around most of the time. And when he was, he was locked in his room and when he wasn't, my parents made me stay in ours. He made them jumpy even then. I never even actually saw him in there, to be honest…"

"Toni," he urged.

"Yeah, well, like I said, I stayed in the Praetor's apartment. The wedding night, we all took shelter in this big mansion that the envoys and I think the old Praetor and his daughter had set up with wards to receive everyone that was sent through the Portal during the battle. It was part trauma centre, part refugee camp. My hand was healed almost at once, and I was put in charge of the younger kids. I tried to find Judi… to tell her… but she was working in another wing in that humongous house and by the next morning, her grandmother had whisked her away, had probably broken the news. I think I fell asleep on my feet working. When I woke up, my parents were already at the Praetor's flat, packing. The party was over. We were leaving for Portland right away." She paused to breathe.

"Then?"

"I tried to talk to my parents about what happened. Why did the Stewarts turn on them? Did the heretics, I dunno… compel them or something? A normal vampire can't compel a witch but who knows with these things? But all my Dad told me was: 'Your friend has sufficient tragedy for one night. Do not add to it. The official report is that her parents died heroes. Do not disillusion her.'"

Unexpectedly, she snorted. "I thought that was bullshit. She was my friend. And, look, my family isn't kosher but if my parents went full-on evil and wanted to self-destruct and take the coven along, I'd wanna know, right? Anyone would." She leaned forward, giving Alaric a hard look as if daring him to contradict her.

"But you didn't tell Judi," he pointed out.

She deflated, falling back into her seat. "Nope. We went back to Portland right away. She had moved into her grand-mother's and I didn't see her for days until the Funeral Rites. Mom and Dad were breathing down my neck, wanting me to hold my tongue. I think the only reason they went to the Funeral, was to keep an eye on me. They had been jittery living with the Praetor and they were acting weirder than usual for weeks after that. Right after the funeral, they came up with the idea of a 'sabbatical' in Europe." She raised her hands in air quotes. "Just in time, as it turns out, before he went after my Uncle Tony the Councillor and the rest of the crooks in my family. I could have told them not to bother." Her mouth twitched bitterly, and her eyes shone with sudden tears. "I wasn't ever going to tell Toni after the way she looked at her parents's cremation. All the witches that died that night were burnt with full honours, fallen heroes. The Praetor himself lit the pyre. The smoke was burning in the Citadel for weeks. There were that many bodies." She blinked, and ducked her face, her hand wiping across her eyes discreetly.

Alaric stared at the table, the familiar sense of mingled grief and guilt swarming through him. It was a while before either of them spoke.

"I wasn't going to take that away from her. I've never told anyone this story," Toni finished hoarsely.

"Until now."

"Until now."

"Even with her grandmother being suspicious about how they died…?"

"Especially with her grandmother being suspicious. Me, a Genova, get in Bethany Stewart's crosshairs? No, thank you. She was the most badass Envoy in her time for a reason. She knew there was something up about Judi's parents's death and she wasn't going to rest until..." Toni's eyes widened. "Oh my god," she whispered. "How did I not see it?"

"See what?"

"Bethany becoming a recluse. I thought she was going cuckoo but it was more than that, wasn't it? She figured it out. She had to. She made up her mind to find out how they died and she did. And even if she wasn't already sitting on the fricking Council, she's a retired Chief. She'll still have influence with the envoys. She got them to cover it up." Toni scoffed. "That's why she crawled into her Observatory and started going batty. She was ashamed. Her son and daughter-in-law had stained the precious, perfect Stewart name and Bethany couldn't deal."

A-ha. So that's what this is about.

Alaric leaned back. Folded his arms. "I see."

Her eyes sharpened at his tone. "What does that mean?"

He shook his head, sternly. "You know, up until just now, I almost believed everything you said. But you made the mistake of mentioning my foster daughter. Of all the people, you could have seen that night – not Elena Gilbert. If you had kept her out of this scenario you painted, you might actually have convinced me."

She flushed. "I'm not lying."

He shook his head. She had to be.

After the first surprise attack by the heretics, the vampires and Elena had left. Kai had made a path for Alaric and Jo to escape. Alaric had had to steal a car to leave – he and Jo had been driven to the wedding. They had followed the vampires to the Salvatore Boarding house and they had forted themselves in, prepared to use the house as their last stand if necessary. He and Jo had tried desperately to reach the coven. Then Matt had called from the hospital in the morning and told them that Bonnie, who had only just survived her traumatic encounter with Lily Salvatore the previous night, had gone ahead to the wedding. Elena and Caroline had been almost out of their minds with worry about their friend.

But as desperate as they all were, no one had left until the all-clear came in the afternoon from Tyler Lockwood.

Toni Genova's story was completely impossible and he told her so.

"I know what I saw!"

"And you've kept it to yourself for almost a year… until now…?" His voice turned compassionate. "That wasn't the first time Judi made a jab about your family name, was it?"

Toni flushed.

"I don't think she was even trying to be mean. The Genovas are kind of a running joke, aren't they," he said, bluntly, "and you play along with it so no one sees how it gets to you. Perhaps you even convince yourself that it doesn't, most of the time. But once in a while, you can't hide how much it does."

"That's not what this is about!"

"Isn't it?" Alaric said, now speaking gently. "It can't be easy for you being best friends with a Stewart. Your friend was being insensitive, not cruel and doing this to get back at her-"

She hissed, and he felt something like an electric shock flash across his hands on the table. He pulled them to himself with a yell. "Ms Genova!"

"If you tell me that you think I'm making this up to hurt Judi, I'll turn you into a frog, Mr. Saltzman!"

People were starting to glance their way. Alaric cringed, thinking about how this must look. "Shh… behave yourself–"

"I know what I saw! The Oh So Noble Stewarts were on the heretics's side. Ask my parents. They'd have to tell you-"

"Aren't they in Europe?" Conveniently, his tone added.

Her eyes flashed. "Ask Quentin Parrish then. Heck, you're Josette Parker's husband. Ask your freaking sister-in-law."

Alaric gave up shushing her, and threw a nervous glance at the curious patrons. "Fix your relationship with your friend," he hissed. "Hurtful rumours… You can't take them back. If you go telling people this story of yours–"

"Who the heck am I going to tell? A Genova's word against an Envoy cover-up and the Oh So Respectable Stewart name?" She laughed bitterly. "I figured an outsider would hear me out but I guess I was wrong. Nice work, Mr. Saltzman, you might be new to the coven but you've got all the old prejudices down pat."

"This has nothing to do-"

Her eyes narrowed into slits. "I know what I saw," she said for the third time. "You want to help your friends in Mystic Falls? Dig for conspiracies? Start from the Stewarts." She paused dramatically. "If you have the guts."

She flounced off, drawing all the eyes in the café with her. When she stormed out of the building, those same eyes swivelled back to spear through Alaric. He plastered a tight, reassuring grin on his face and nursed his cold cup as he tried not to listen to the not-quite whispers.

I am getting too old for this.


September 2013

Portland, Oregon

The former Chief Envoy lived near the Coast in a beautiful Spanish-style home located on the side of a hill. As he drove into the estate, Kai could see a light flashing in the dome at the top of the building. Bethany Stewart was in the observatory.

She had either spotted him with her telescope or felt his presence through her wards because there were stewards ready to receive him appropriately. Though mundanes, they knew who he was.

Kai had chosen to come at a time when he was not likely to meet Judi Stewart. The young orphan was a poignant reminder of Jo's wedding massacre and the lives that were lost; and he hoped to avoid her. But he was still confronted with her, after a fashion. Pictures of her on the walls of the house, her and her parents, her grandparents from both sides. There were several of her standing or sitting between her grandmother and great-aunt, the indomitable Stewart girls – Betty and Judy.

He bowed his head when he passed them, and made his way up the spiral staircase to the observatory with a heavy heart.

The room was almost entirely walled with glass. At this time of the day, the sun was setting and its yellow light flooded the space unhindered. There were two large telescopes mounted in opposite directions – North and South – in the centre of the room. On the only side of the room that was walled with solid wood, a series of charts had been mounted on white boards. A large old-fashioned drafting table, the top of which was almost two feet above Kai's head was mounted in front of the charts and that was where Bethany Stewart sat on an elevated chair, plotting carefully over a chart of constellations.

In the few moments before she acknowledged him, Kai studied her. A mundane would mistake her for a harmless, little old lady, an ageing academic – she looked the part with her petite frame and the glasses that hung on her chest. They won't know that this woman had been a Chief Envoy, with hundreds of kills under her belt: a force to be reckoned with in her time.

She had been, he remembered suddenly, the only one of his parents' friends that he could stand.

It pained him. This would be easier if she was someone he had never liked. But maybe that was the point. This had to be painful. This way, he'd know that his empathy hadn't slipped away from him.

Sometimes he felt like it would. Many times, he wanted it to. The long summer had come and gone, and the futile hopes he had clung to when he left Mystic Falls… well, he could acknowledge now that he had had hope. At the time, he told himself that he was leaving for good and not looking back but apparently, there had been a tiny thread inside him, still hoping.

The thread had frittered away during the months of distance – distance the length of the Atlantic Ocean across which she had travelled to get away from him.

Ridiculous, he knew. She had gone to Europe to have the time of her life and she had more than earned every moment of it. It had nothing to do with him.

But Kai had been stuck in the States, his Praetor duties wrapping around his legs like vines, clinging to him and almost dragging him down with the weight of the responsibility he bore to his coven. He had thought of her every day, ached for her, wanted her. And every day, the memory of that time in the hotel room in Virginia had haunted him, growing dimmer and dimmer with the passage of time and then he'd think he'd forgotten, he'd think he was over her and then – BAM! – everything came back in crystal-clear focus and he realised that he hadn't even begun, hadn't even started to move past Bonnie Bennett.

Meanwhile, she hadn't even needed to move past him.

"Are you alright, Praetor?"

Kai started, realising too late how deep he had sunken into his thoughts. Bethany Stewart stood before him, regarding him skeptically through her glasses.

"I… I'm fine." He cleared his throat. Allowed himself just one fidget, before he forced himself to stand still. "Good day, Dame Bethany."

"Good day to you, too, Praetor. I don't suppose you're here to re-appoint me as Chief Envoy."

He shook his head, ruefully. "No."

She sniffed. "Well, I had to ask. You saw my request?"

"You were an excellent Chief Envoy," Kai said honestly. "The new one will struggle to fill your shoes but…"

"I know, I know. I'm old and grey. I'll be honest with you, Praetor. I should never have stayed as long as I did. None of us should have. But the Chiefs change with the Praetor and your Father…" Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "He didn't have anyone to hand over to for a long time."

Kai felt his face prickle with heat. "I'm aware."

She gave him another skeptical look, as if she doubted him. He was used to it. The side looks, the wary glances, the disbelieving gazes. It rolled off him like water off a duck's back now but in the beginning, it had scalded. He had had so much good intentions towards the same wretched coven that locked him up. Why couldn't they have seen that?

Then Jo's wedding happened with everything else and … Kai had gained perspective.

They were right to watch him; they were right to doubt him. It was up to him to earn their trust, to be worthy of them, not the other way around, and he was already off to a spectacularly bad start.

"I got your message." She said 'message' like a dirty word.

Kai allowed himself a half-smile. "By message, you mean your new appointment as Councillor?"

"Did it occur to anyone that if I wanted a seat on the Council, I won't have been asking for my old job?"

Kai shrugged, letting her know in so many words that he respected the hell out of her, but he wasn't asking.

By the way her lips tightened in the ensuing silence, she got the message alright. "I suppose sitting through those ridiculous meetings is as good a way to spend my retirement as any."

"The Coven is grateful for your service," he murmured.

She made a clucking sound that sounded like a scoff. "Since you're clearly not here to give me anything I actually want, what's the reason for this visit? Joshua could have told me about the Council."

He cleared his throat. He had come here for two reasons. The first was easy.

"I have two candidates for Council Envoy and I wanted your opinion."

The seasoned veteran listened to the two names he offered, and gave her precise, if unexpected, opinion.

"Quentin Parrish? I thought Nora Wicker was the stronger mage?"

"She is."

Kai blinked.

Bethany clucked. "Parrish is talented. He's also an intrinsically honest person. Completely by-the-books. I admire him tremendously. He'd never go far as an Envoy."

What? "But you just said…"

Bethany clucked again, sounding like an exasperated chicken. "Being an envoy involves… let's call it subterfuge? It's not enough to be magically competent, you also have to have a certain … flexibility, shall I say, to morals. A willingness to walk outside the rules. You understand, don't you?"

"No," Kai said quietly. "I was never trained nor did I serve."

She paused mid-cluck. "Oh. Yes, of course. Your… The…" Her voice trailed off and he could tell by the tightness in her face that she was thinking of his peculiar history. "Well, what I mean is that while Quentin will be terrible as a real Envoy in the field, the job of Council Envoy will fit him like a glove. Don't get me wrong. It's not a decorative position. It's a way for the Council feel they have some influence over the Envoys — they don't." She smirked. "Parrish is guileless enough to make them believe they do."

Kai bit back a sigh. She was referring to decades's worth of inside knowledge on coven politics that he would probably never understand. Well, he came for her advice and it would be stupid to second-guess it. "Thank you for your recommendation. I expect you as former Chief to nominate Parrish as Council Envoy at the next sitting, with my full support."

She nodded. "Have you decided on your Chiefs? Because Wicker is…"

"I was thinking that…" Kai cleared his throat. "… not having any kind of relationship with the current envoys, it would be better to let them choose their own leadership."

Bethany's lips tightened again, her expression somehow conveying a mixture of outrage and pity. But all she said was, "what about Olivia?"

Kai tried not to scowl. The old mage probably didn't realise just how sore the subject was.

"She was a Special Envoy. Gifted, too. Not as much as Lucas, but still promising. She already has rapport with the other envoys. Yes, it's unorthodox for family members to take up as Chiefs, but you are already…" She waved her hands in his general unorthodox direction.

Bethany was preaching to the choir. Everything she just said, and more, had already occurred to Kai. The offer had been placed on the table for Liv, no thanks to their father's strenuous objections. Joshua was of the opinion that someone who had once tried to kill the entire coven to get back at their leader was not a suitable candidate as one of the coven's chief enforcers.

Kai's counter-argument had been to point at himself.

Apart from Liv's qualifications, Kai had his own selfish reasons for wanting his baby sister to be Chief. He hoped that the offer would be one concrete block towards building a bridge over the ocean-trench-deep valley that separated him and his sister. While their relationship had vastly improved since said attempt to murder him, it was not without complications. Liv still couldn't stand to be in the same room, heck - the same country with him for long. She'd stayed a few weeks in Portland after Jo's relocation, and then embarked on several trips off-state and off-country. According to Jo, it was perks from a glamorous new internship but Kai thought it was too convenient that her downtime always managed to coincide with his own absences from Portland; and a little prying had confirmed his suspicions. There was no generous internship. Liv couldn't bear to be around him.

It would have been hard to keep avoiding him if she was Chief Envoy and directly reporting to the Praetor. Despite his wishes, he hadn't been surprised when she turned down his offer. What had surprised him was she bothered to tell him why, and in person for that matter: After years of being prepped to lead, Liv wanted some distance between herself and the Coven to explore life beyond the strictures of magic. Even though he knew it wasn't the full story, it was far more explanation than he deserved, and Kai should have been grateful for that much.

So maybe it was the Luke inside him that was left feeling abandoned.

Now Kai gave Bethany Stewart another 'we're not discussing this' shrug.

After a short silence during with the old woman's gaze seemed to pry through him, examining what she found and not liking it very much, she shook her head. "You never got the proper Disciplina, did you?"

"My father is currently fast-tracking me," Kai answered, as neutrally as possible.

"Indeed." She clucked again, clearly not approving of this. She glanced at her charts, then back at him. "How well do you know your Arithmancy, Praetor?"

Kai took a moment to blink at the rather abrupt change of subject, then followed her gaze to the charts on the wall. He smirked a little. "Try me."

He came to stand beside her and she rapped at a constellation in the northern hemisphere, then peered at him over her glasses. Kai stared hard at it, and dug into that year in 1994 when he had memorised the never-changing constellations of that eternal day.

"Draco."

Another cluck. He bit back a smile. "You know what that means, I hope?"

"The Dragon."

"And the significant recurring celestial event associated with them?"

He shook his head. He did know, as a matter of fact, but he figured he'd let her give the lecture that she clearly wanted to.

She clucked, and poked at her chart. "The Draconids, Praetor. Surely you must have heard of them?"

He shrugged and got two clucks for his trouble.

"Once every decade, give or take a few years, the Draconids embark on the journey from Draco to our world. It's a journey that is charted, predicted and observed by Astromancers in covens, circles, and other supernatural societies all over the world. It is even observed by the mundanes, only they know it as a 'meteor shower', completely unaware of the magical significance of celestial events."

This was all practically witch genesis stuff. He supposed that if he had been a good little Glinda like Jo, he'd have even learnt this in Wicca School.

"A futile journey," she went on, "because no Draconid has touched the Earth in thousands of years. No matter how fiercely they throw themselves at the Adger, it never yields." She paused significantly, then her voice turned grave. "That's what the Star Mages say."

"I remember," he admitted brusquely. "The showers occur in October. One's around the corner, matter of fact."

He had suddenly realised he was stalling. Indulging her in this detour was just a way for him to procrastinate the second – and most important – reason that brought him here.

"Yes," she said slowly. "One is just around the corner." She seemed lost in her thoughts, her brows furrowed deeply.

He threw her a worried glance. "Are you OK, Dame Stewart?"

Her eyes flashed up at him, the faraway look fading abruptly. "Of course, I am! What kind of question is that?" Then she seemed to remember who she was talking to, and cleared her throat. "Can I help you with anything else, Praetor?"

The dismissal was clear. For a moment, Kai was tempted to take it. It was too soon. Barely a quarter of a year into his reign. There was still so much he hadn't completed, and even more that he planned that he hadn't started. Perhaps a year later? Or five more? Would it make much difference?

Did he even really need to do this?

He looked at Bethany Stewart's lined face and remembered the pictures on the wall – her dead son, her dead daughter-in-law, her orphaned grandchild.

He rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his pants, and steeled himself.

"I know that you had suspicions about the deaths of your son and daughter-in-law," he said quietly.

It was like if he had shot her. Her spine straightened, her whole body became rigid, then her eyes narrowed into laser-sharp focus on his face.

Kai swallowed against the lump of sudden fear in his throat. She was old, but she was still formidable. It was very likely that he might die in the next few minutes.

Once again, he asked himself if he needed to do this. Once again, he pushed on.

"So I'm here to tell you what happened to them. I'm here to tell you that your suspicions, your questions, your doubts… were right, Dame Stewart. You were right all along."

She sighed, a long, low exhale. Her eyes gazed on him now, with as much triumph as grief.

"I knew it," she whispered. "I knew there was something… something about the way they died that was wrong. I saw the bodies, I watched them burn and still I felt…" She sighed again. "Tell me, Malachai. What happened to my son? What happened to Judi's parents?"

It was the first time she had called him by his first name.

He blinked quickly, braced himself for it, and put his hand on her right shoulder. The rings on his fingers burned as he whispered. "Mechionu."

Secrecy Spells were complicated magic. No ordinary witch could impose its magic on another. It had to be entered completely willingly – duress or blackmail would nullify the bounds of the spell. And it was a dual-binding spell – a ritual, usually with all the parties of the Secret putting equal restriction on themselves. Once successfully done, it was unbreakable. The only way a witch could deliberately violate a secrecy spell is by giving up his or her own life.

That was the way it worked for ordinary witches. For the Praetor, he had the power to place a Secrecy Spell on any witch in his coven without the strictures of the spell binding him. It was an assholish power but Kai was an asshole ruling an assholish coven, so it was appropriate.

She yanked back, shocked, but it was already too late. The veins glowed blue around her mouth, her eyes, the back of her hands… then dissolved into her skin, leaving no visible trace of the Mechionu[6]. But they both knew it had done its work. Neither by speech, script or sight would she reveal the news he was about to share with her.

"Why?" she asked, her body tensing, magic rushing through her.

He stepped back, his hands up. "It was necessary. I needed to know that what I tell you now is never repeated. You can do anything you want with your knowledge. You can do anything you want to me… within reason. But you can't share this knowledge with anyone."

Her eyes were already darkening with realisation, with fury, with undiluted hatred before he said what she had just guessed.

"I killed them."


June 2014

New Orleans

After his meal, Kai had wandered the streets of NOLA, trying – and failing to recapture the reckless euphoria of the night behaviour.

The phone call had more than rattled him. It had thrown him into a mental tailspin. It was with enormous self-control that he had prevented himself from calling his father there and then and accusing him. Or worse – porting to Portland, physio-magical consequences be damned – and confronting the two-faced bastard.

It was one thing for Joshua to come at Kai. It was one thing for him to try to undermine him politically, or even physically attack him. But this... Betraying the Coven?

Coven before family. Coven before self. Duty before love. Weren't those Joshua's mottos? They were practically the first words Kai remembered hearing his father say. He had grown up under that shadow of the Coven, the certainty that his father, the Praetor Magnus of the Gemini, would do anything, sacrifice anyone, even his own blood, for the preservation of the Coven. So why this? Why put the Gemini at risk by rescuing the twin heretics on Jo's wedding night – because that was the obvious explanation for why they had somehow survived when the others had perished – and setting them on Gemini witches, exiled or not? Did Joshua resent Kai's leadership that much? Did he see a syphon Praetor as such a threat to the sanctity of the coven that he was willing to go this far? Demean himself by allying with their sworn enemies?

His father's disapproval of the venia took a more sinister meaning now. Joshua had wanted to keep witches in exile to leave them as easy pickings for the heretics...

But why?! To what endgame? To undermine Kai? How would killing exiles achieve that? Or were the exiles only the first wave of executions, with patriots to follow?

And the mysterious 'she' Bethany had mentioned...

"She said you're next. She hasn't missed any of us so far."

Who was this She? Georgiana Parker? Giving her targets a heads-up out of what? Arrogance? Sadism? An old-fashioned sense of fair play? Boredom?

Or was it someone else? And if so, who was she and what role did she play in this?

Night had fallen by the time his splitting headache and worn shoes made Kai end his aimless trekking. He found his way to the hotel though, an unerring sense of direction guiding him. His heart was heavy in his chest, but his body was strung, wired almost. As if he was expecting something. A fight? He won't mind a fight right now. It would be a welcome outlet to all this mental and emotional tension that had plagued him since this whole heretics business began.

Since this whole Bonnie business began, a sly voice whispered in his head.

He shivered as he entered the hotel, his heart slamming in his chest at the thought of her. Then he resolutely pushed her out of his mind. He had too much going on right now. This new angle with Bethany Stewart and his father. The upcoming dinner with the Mikaelsons. Heck, throw in Vincent's dance with the Augustine Society to really stir the pot.

He was running late but he still took a quick, cold shower, hoping it would clear his head, ease off some of his tension. As he closed his eyes under the running faucet, a favourite fantasy of his slipped in-between his eye lids. Black hair. Green eyes. Red, curvy mouth. Black strands pressed to her cheeks. Light bouncing off the drops of water clinging to her shoulders. A goddess in human form. Beautiful, terrible, unattainable. His hand slipped downwards and he came with a shudder that sounded like a sob. He leaned his head against the glass and groaned.

He needed to get laid. Tonight, after the Mikaelson dinner, without fail. He would go into that bar he'd discovered last time – the Rosseau – and take back the first average-or-more-looking chick that gave him a 'come on'. Long months without sex had finally taken their toll. He needed the release to equilibrate his psyche. If he was going to take on his father, Prior Magus of the Gemini Coven, Head of the Council, and a warlock with over 6 decades of magical and political mastery under his belt, then Kai needed every single weapon in his arsenal. He certainly did not need any distractions whatsoever.

And that was all she was, ever would be – a distraction.

His heart was still racing when he changed into formal wear. He had been tempted to go for jeans and sneakers but even he knew that that was childish and more disrespectful of his coven than it was of the Mikaelsons. Besides, Vincent would just spell him a(n ill-fitting) suit on sight so what was the point?

The Regent himself was waiting for him at the lobby. "You're late."

"Are we on a date?" Kai snarked. "I don't need a ride."

"Wanted to make sure you didn't bail and leave me holding the ball after promising Freya you would show."

Kai was quite certain that Vincent was already holding a ball. A ball and chain by name of Freya Mikaelson. But he spared the Regent that observation and followed him to his car.

"Are you OK?" Vincent asked halfway through the journey. "You seem jumpy."

"I'm having dinner – with vampires – at a place called the Abattoir. 'Jumpy' is justified."

Vincent ignored that. "Did the faerie's news about the shapeshifters bother you any? It's been over a year and they still haven't been caught."

The faerie's message had bothered Kai – but it was the message about the Genovas not the shapeshifters. He shook his head and couldn't bring himself to speak any further. Vincent was right – he was jumpy, his stomach in knots, his nerves taut with anticipation and … eagerness.

The Regent threw him one last worried glance, then shrugged and concentrated on driving.

What is this? Kai wondered. An uneasy thought popped into his head but he quickly dismissed it. That wasn't possible. She was miles away in Virginia, figuring out how to save her town yet again from its latest supernatural catastrophe.

This was either serious wishful thinking manifesting… or he was finally getting that long overdue nervous breakdown that his one-time shrink had foreseen. In the darkness of the car, he clasped his shaking hands on his knees.

They finally arrived at the Abattoir. The Mikaelson's home got default points for not looking anything like its name. It was decent enough if you liked your residences looking like the scene from an Anne Rice horror movie.

Two drop-dead gorgeous platinum blondes escorted him and Vincent to the diner.

Kai lifted out of his brooding thoughts to consider them carefully, and then turned to catch Vincent's eye.

Vincent's eyes widened, reading Kai's unspoken question. "No, they're not compelled because –"

"Let me guess," Kai said, cutting him off. "Freya won't stand for it?"

"No," Vincent snapped. "They're not compelled because the drinking water is vervained. For both vampires and mundanes. Remember that the Originals can control both?"

Kai stood corrected. But it was a good distraction seeing Vincent ticked off. He concentrated on the spiteful pleasure he felt at that and not the increasing sense of … impossibility that was growing inside him.

His blood rushed through his ears; and it was all he could do reign in his magic, prevent it from reacting to the proximity of …

No. She wasn't. She couldn't be here.

"Give me a moment," he gasped suddenly, and stopped.

He was sweating, he realised, and not just because of the NOLA climate. He rubbed his hands on his pants, bowing slightly, and conjured a handkerchief.

Vincent and their escorts paused to stare at him as he dabbed his brow clumsily. Vincent looked wary. "Your Gemini sensitivities can't stand a few hours in vampire company?"

"What the- No, of course not. I just need…" He drew in a shaky breath, swallowed hard. His heart was thumping in earnest.

Vincent's brow furrowed in concern. "Are you OK?"

"I'm dandy," Kai said plastering a firm smile across his face. He waved at Vincent. "After you."

With one last worried look over his shoulder, Vincent went ahead.

Pull yourself together, man.

Easier said than done. His emotions were all over the place. Excited, exhilarated, frightened. Furious.

Furious.

What the fuck was she doing here?

It was that anger that grounded him. He straightened up, and used a whoosh of magic to smoothen away every evidence of his near panic attack.

Vincent was already descending into the courtyard. In the relative dimness of the corridor, Kai was in shadow. From there, he could see the three Originals standing to receive the Regent. They blocked most of the dining table, including the sitting guests.

He stepped forward, pushing his rage in front of him like a shield.

"-so sorry for keeping you waiting," Vincent was telling Freya between saccharine air kisses. "It was entirely due to-"

"Me, apparently. Sorry, I'm late. I didn't want to come," Kai said smoothly, flickering his eyes on each offended-looking Mikaelson in turn, so they won't notice the way he was scanning the area, trying to look past them, trying to find …

Vincent heaved a sigh, shifting slightly.

Kai felt her gaze turning to meet his just as he turned to meet hers. Then there was nothing in the world, nothing in Kai's head or heart but the impossible sight of Bonnie Bennett, bare-shouldered and dressed in blue, her green eyes staring at him across a courtyard in New Orleans.


[1] closed

[2] contextual translation: 'coronation' of the Gemini Praetor; literal translation: 'ransom'.

[3] Full pardon

[4] Partial pardon

[5] Leadership Apprenticeship

[6] Secrecy Spell


A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews and feedback and encouragement and enthusiasm over the last chapter! I was so moved & overwhelmed! I wondered if people would even be interested in an update, after the story had been abandoned all summer, re-written twice, and I know the constant flashbacks and jumping doesn't make it an easy read. So to everyone who's stuck to this story for this long, and who keeps encouraging me to write more ... THANK YOU. This chapter is dedicated to you.

If you're having problems posting a review while signed in, you can post an anonymous review but just put your name in the name field so I'll know who it's from.

And thank you too and great KUDOS to the amazing keenan24 who beta-read this (all 32K+ words) and gave me some great advice on the story going forward. You're a super-hero.

P.S. If you didn't get a chance to read the Alaric outttake, it's back in chapter 13 where it belongs.

P.P.S. Yeah, we didn't get the dinner scene in this chapter but - rest assured - it's definitely happening in the next chapter! I don't know if you noticed this but this chapter and the previous one are practically two halves of the same long chapter. 13 is "What Bonnie Did in Mystic Falls" and 14 is "What Kai Did in NOLA & What's Going On In Portland" at the same time. Now that Bonkai are in the same place, the plot streamlines.