Magic cast within a living coven felt different: less dormant, and more… just more. At any given moment one witch or another practiced and everyone else felt the effects. It was a tingle in the veins, a shiver down the spine, and a certainty of belonging.

Bonnie experienced the brilliant assurance a handful of times with her Grams, but assumed the feeling boiled down to family. In a way it had, but a much larger part came from joining with others.

She thought she could get by on her own without other witches and her ancestors; she never realized how wrong she was until the Mikaelson's invited her in.

A witch needed a coven.

She moved in a circle, pouring salt along the ground in the clearest spot, catching glimpses of Elena through tree trunks, Kol around the corner of the mausoleum, Finn behind tombstones and Freya at her left. Each of them started in one spot.

As one they stopped where the person on the right began, taking up a post to form a perfect pentagram.

Bonnie extended her arms, raising them high along the salt lines. Wind twisted through her hair, beckoned forth by the power the five of them held.

With each chant of the spell they felt the dark energy rise up from the earth. They molded it to their will, slowly turning the trauma of Esther's death into a spell they could use: a spell to stop magic.

Then, as if to prove their strength, the wind died down, that wonderfully harmonious sense of belonging disappeared, and little Astrid began to wail in her carrier.

"And that," Bonnie shook, bringing up her hands to rub at the gooseflesh on her upper arms, "is how you make a ground zero."

"Are we sure it will work?"

She spotted Jeremy on the bench as he scooped Astrid up and swayed with her in his arms.

"I was part of the spell and we channeled Astrid. First born magic is like a beacon to Dahlia." Freya rubbed her hands together. "She's on her way here."

Kol crossed the barrier to take his screaming child, singing softly in words she couldn't understand. Astrid's cries diminished to sniffles and then stopped altogether by the time Elena joined him and pressed small kisses to her wet cheek.

"I hate to poke holes in this plan," Klaus cleared his throat, gesturing with one hand to the barrier, "but will she not realize the moment she steps over the line what is happening?"

"If not before?" Elijah raised an eyebrow.

"For this to work she needs to step over the barrier." Freya stepped out, breathing a sigh of relief on the other side. "She is unmatched in power, and she will be furious to have lost her connection to me."

"If she doesn't step beyond the barrier we've no hope of killing her?" Rebekah folded Astrid's blanket, laying it in a neat square in the carrier.

"Not necessarily," Freya pushed her hair behind her ears. "We could kill her, but there is no conceivable way we would force her to consume vampire blood first."

"Making it a matter of time before she finds a way back, as a witch," Elena scowled. "She's getting beyond that barrier, even if one of us," her eyes cut from Klaus and Elijah to Rebekah, "has to shove her across it. I want her stripped of her magic and slowly rotting away."

Elena rocked, weight settling on her heels.

Bonnie crossed the barrier with Finn and slid her hands into her back pockets, waiting as patiently as possible while the time ticked loudly.

Kol fought to suppress a smirk in the face of Elena's vindictive nature, but even twelve feet away Bonnie could see the rage in his eyes. Part of her, deep down, wanted to judge, but she had accepted that she would never fully comprehend their range of emotions.

She would never, ever, let any one do as Dahlia had done and tear away a piece of her heart.

"Kol?" Klaus broke the silence, giving a pointed look to Astrid. "She'll be here soon."

"She's not going to be happy once this is on." He nodded, worked the baby's wrist free from her sweater and presented it to his wife.

Elena wrapped a silver chain around Astrid's wrist, fastening the clasp. She started sniffling a moment after.

"It's okay, sweetie," she flattened her palm on Astrid's stomach, gently shushing.

"We can handle a little fussing," Caroline stepped in, holding out her hands.

"And I'll cast the spell again once we get to the lake house; just in case," Bonnie picked up the diaper bag.

"Hopefully it doesn't have to be used," Elena murmured, turning her attention to her brother, eyes flickering toward Elijah, Klaus and Caroline. "Don't forget: you need to invite them inside."

"And Nik," Kol's eyes narrowed, "if anything happens to her I will drop you alongside Dahlia."


Freya paced the length of the mausoleum where it marked her mother's murder. Several miles away Esther desiccated beneath the earth unable to cause further harm to her children, and she felt no desire to reunite with the woman who traded her away like chattel. The hatred for Esther rooted deep inside after a thousand years left to fester.

Her family understood her stance where their mother was concerned, but she doubted any one of them would accept her desire to be reunited with her father.

They knew the brutal man who chased them across time, instilling terror in their lives before they ever became vampires, but she still remembered the wonderful father who loved his children beyond measure. Deep down she thought Finn might remember him too; somewhere under centuries of pain and torment.

Not that their opinions mattered. She couldn't reunite with her father anymore than she could bring back her lost child.

All that mattered now was removing her final 'parental' figure from the world.

Her eyes cut to Elena and Kol where they waited on a stone bench. His rigid spine and her tapping foot proved the only outward signs of their anxiety.

"You're like to wear a hole in the earth, sister." Finn leaned in the open door of the mausoleum. Compared to the other witches in attendance he appeared perfectly calm, but he had also never experienced the profound loss of losing his power, having adjusted as quickly as possible to life without.

"Perhaps she'll stumble into it," she muttered, rubbing her upper arms. She had never before felt as vulnerable as she did in that moment.

"Perhaps," Rebekah agreed.

She shifted onto the balls of her feet, back onto her heels and then moved across the barrier.

"Freya?" Elena rose from the bench.

"I just… I need to breathe a moment," she tipped her head back, drinking in deep breaths of cold air; inside the barrier she had been drowning. Outside, magic tickled her senses, reforging her connection to nature.

She felt vibrations in the earth, sensed the delicate steps behind and shut her eyes. Elena's voice washed over her.

"It's hard," she breathed, inches from the salt line, "not being able to feel it."

"How did you manage it? All those centuries without?" Her fingers stretched towards the earth.

"I guess…" Elena let out a rush of breath. "I was mentally prepared for it. I knew what I was giving up."

"She handled it far better than I," Kol chuckled; the sound dark in the gloom. "I clung to the last remnant of my humanity, and when I lost her I didn't handle it well."

"I figured there was a reason you're known as psychotic, baby brother," Freya smirked, glancing over her shoulder.

Warm wind whistled through her hair, banishing her amusement.

"She's here."

Dark red flowers sprung from the earth, creeping up over trees and stone until the cemetery was bathed in blood. Her heart took off, summoning a cold sweat at the base of her spine.

She longed for the fashions of a century gone; long skirts to hide the tremble in her knees.

And then the hardened women who made her life a living hell stepped through the trees.

Her dark eyes swept the assembly.

"This is quite the family reunion you've managed." A cynical smile turned her lips as her eyes focused beyond Freya's shoulder. "Elena, wasn't it? You appear healthier than when last we met."

"No thanks to you," she bit out. "Elena nearly died after what you did to her."

"The fever would have dissipated in a matter of days," she waved a hand, "any further illness was no fault of mine."

"Like hell it wasn't," Kol growled, voice filled with menace.

"You abducted their daughter. You made us all believe her dead." Rebekah's fingers curled into a fist.

"Of course I did," she nodded, calm and collected. "Death seemed a less cruel fate than knowing your own mother had traded the girl away."

"She had no right to do that!"

Freya steadied with Elena's snarled words.

"Believe what you will, my dear," Dahlia smiled, almost kindly, "but know that my sister and I struck a bargain, and when I make a promise I keep it. I've only come here for what's mine, though I now sense she's not here. You've used a spell to hide her from me."

Freya bristled under the weight of her gaze, accepting the blame her aunt would never think to place elsewhere.

"You're not taking her," she flexed her hand, attempting to knock Dahlia off her feet.

The older witch chuckled, mirth dancing in her eyes.

"You think you can best me?" Her brows rose with her arm. "Your power is nothing next to mine."

Freya gasped, throat constricting painfully slow.

"You always were an ungrateful child. Always wishing for another life; never satisfied. I have waited centuries to repay your betrayal…"

Her knees buckled.

"Let her go!"

Through her darkening vision she caught sight of her brothers on either side.

The grip on her neck loosed. She collapsed onto hands and knees, gasping. Beyond the ringing in her ears she caught distant shouts and several thumps.

Feet came into view.

Somebody shrieked. The sound was distinctly feminine, but she couldn't tell if it was Elena or Rebekah. She suspected Elena because when she managed to blink and look up she saw Kol, grey on the ground, with a length of tree branch protruding from his chest. Finn wasn't better off.

She lurched forward, grunting in pain when her head collided with Dahlia's legs. Her aunt flipped backwards, landing hard within the circle.

She scrambled to her feet and stepped inside, voice a rasp. "You're not in charge here."

Dahlia pushed up onto her hands, eyes widening upon sighting the salt circle.

Freya spared a glance over her shoulder when she heard the sickening sound of wood being pulled from bodies.

Elena and Rebekah stepped into the circle.

Rebekah bit into her wrist, shoving the bleeding appendage between her aunts lips before she could move. After she swallowed the blood, Rebekah stepped back, making room for Elena.

Her hand curled around Dahlia's throat lightly at first, but then tightening as she whispered: "you messed with the wrong witch, bitch."


Water lapped the side of the yacht, sending a fine spray into the air. The mist carried a strong taste of salt that clung to limbs and lips.

Elena's tongue swept her bottom lip as she pointed out the sleek grey bodies chasing the boat's surf. In her arms Astrid watched, fascinated by the rise and fall of their marine friends.

"I see we've found a pod of dolphins," Kol's warm hand settled on the small of her back.

"They're having a race," she smiled.

"One we are destined to lose, I'm afraid."

"Are we there already?" She handed off Astrid, whose blue eyes never left the pod.

"The deepest part of the ocean." The yacht slowed as he pressed a kiss to Astrid's cheek. She huffed and made disgruntled sounds as the dolphins swam on. "Wave good-bye to your new friends, love."

She mimicked her dad's hand motion and then brought her fingers to her mouth as they started towards the back of the yacht where the rest of the family waited with Dahlia's coffin.

Astrid tucked her head into Kol's neck and yawned.

"We may have to take her to sea world when she gets a little bigger." Elena caught the hair whipping in the wind and tied it securely in a knot at the back of her head.

"Sea World?" Kol laughed softly, brows lowered in confusion.

She stretched up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"I'll explain later."