"Absolutely not."

Damon lowered his hand, a frown spreading on his fine features. "Come on! I only want one little drink!"

"Read my lips." I leaned over the bar. "No." Damon sighed and rolled his eyes. But it wasn't like I could have served him even if I'd wanted to, still on my waitressing shift. And if Bella got it her way, I might never get to work behind the bar again…

Currently, my excuse for being behind the counter was to get a customer a beer. But since going back out into the Grill meant passing Damon again, I lingered to chat with another bartender wiping glasses dry. Eventually, though, since Bella was watching me like a hawk, I had to go.

As I walked past Damon, I noted that he had finally received his long awaited drink. On top of that, before turning my back to him completely I also just managed to catch a glimpse of Alaric punching right Damon in the face, hard enough for the latter's head to slam into the bar counter. Abruptly, I stopped in the middle of my step and stared shamelessly. What the? Damon grunted a little, checked if is jaw was okay, before meeting my gaze, which was stuck right between laughter and bafflement.

"Happens." He swigged down his drink.

"Dick."

"Probably," Damon admitted.

Only shaking my head, I continued out into the restaurant are to hand over the beer to the guy'd who ordered it. He was probably pretty impatient by now, given, I had been gone for a good 10 minutes or so, and the Grill wasn't full enough for it to be excusable. Placing the beer bottle in front of the pale man, I flashed a polite smile.

"There you go."

"Took you long enough," he muttered, grabbing it from the table and chugging it down whilst casting me a glare. Sure, I might have had that coming. Just as I turned to leave, his scratchy voice called me back. "Haven't they taught you about service, sweetheart?" Instantly, I froze. As I slowly turned around, every muscle in my body was suddenly tense.

Oh, he had not just said that!

Forcefully, I told myself to remain calm. That it was unnecessary to cause a scene. No matter how much I might have wanted to tear his eyes from their sockets and cut off his–

Calm. Very calm.

"Or couldn't they get it through your pretty, little head?" That was it.

It might be too much to threaten two people in one night, but this guy undoubtedly deserved it! Before I could make a move to punch in the crooked teeth in the middle of his ugly ass, creased face, an arm dressed in black leather grabbed the man by his denim shirt and pulled him to his feet.

"That's taking it a little far, don't you think?" Damon fumed, his jaw tightly clenched.

"Put him down!" I seethed, doing a quick survey of the room around us. Thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed the unusual spectacle. Odd, in a town that lived on gossip, but I wasn't complaining. "I can fight my own battles," I added, attempting to shove Damon back by his shoulder. He didn't move an inch. Damn that vampire strength!

The man only stared at Damon with wide eyes. He looked pathetic now, blown away was the sourness from before. Now that I thought about it, he kind of looked like a rotten lemon, meaning that the sourness fit perfectly. Damon didn't give my efforts of making him drop the man any attention. And even if I would have no problem whatsoever with ending the cranky, old man right then and there, certain things had to be done cleverly; going around murdering people in the middle of a restaurant was not. But if you were to wait for Rotten Lemon Face to leave the building, a dark alley never fails… But of course Damon couldn't get the picture through his thick head and understand that I had it covered!

"Put the man down," I spoke by Damon's ear, pressing the very tip of a vervain dart – conveniently left after my encounter with Anna – into his back, the leather jacket just preventing it from penetrating his skin. Finally, he released the man and glanced over his shoulder, down at my hand holding the dart. Concentrated vervain definitely came in handy when you lived in a town crawling with vampires.

"I know that," Damon mused as he observed the thin, black, almost needle-like dart, no longer than two inches. His gaze raised to my face. "They were yours?" What the hell was he talking about?

"Excuse me?" I frowned.

"The weapons Elena… Oh!" He blew out a breath and looked back at the man. "Keep drinking your beer, forget that this conversation ever happened." Was he compelling the guy?

"Aherm!"

Damon's head twirled back to me. "What?"

"How about a 'stop being a douche' or something of the like?" I suggested as a modification.

"What she said," Damon added to the man, patting his shoulder to shove him down into his seat.

The man's eyes were blank and empty when he fumbled after the beer bottle. What if the douchiness was all he'd had? Maybe Damon had taken away the only thing Rotten Lemon Face had to live for? If so: good job there, vampire gigolo! Speaking of which, he had now grabbed my arm to lead me away. I ripped it out of his grip.

"Hands off," I warned. Perhaps the overprotectiveness ran in the family? I mean, first Stefan and now this. Uh.

"Fine." Instead of Damon steering me away, he followed me as I set the path. Somehow we reached the exact same corridor I had yelled at him in during the fundraiser. Coincidence? I think not.

"Okay. Tell me why you recognized this little beauty?" I held up the small vervain dart before Damon. He sighed and began explaining, a little reluctantly.

"Your sister brought a bag full of weapons, amongst them those–" He pointed at the wire thin dart. "–nifty little things."

"Why did she bring them?" I pushed, repositioning the dart in my hand so that it could easily be shoved into Damon's neck if needed be. He noticed. If Elena wasn't going to tell me why she suddenly needed my weapons so desperately, then he might as well do the honors.

"Well, we had to have some backup when saving Stefan's ass from the tomb vampires." Damon smirked, as if he was teaching a slow child how to multiply. They used them for the what to save the who from the what now? Damon's face fell when he saw my grim features. "She didn't tell you."

"That little bitch!" How could she! The urge to punch something flooded in over me like a tsunami. But the closest thing was either the concrete wall, a painting with a glass frame or Damon's perfect face. Neither of the options were desirable. "The tomb vampire are out? How? And why haven't someone told me?!" I demanded to know. Damon had the unfortunate luck to be the only one around to take my sudden raging outburst. But, truth be told, he handled it pretty well. In his own unique way.

"If it makes you feel any better, your weapons were much better than Ric's," Damon said with a smirk, closing some of the space between us.

"Oh, yeah, that really warms my heart," I seethed and put a hand over my chest as I allowed the sarcasm to drip off of my words. "Wait! Ric knew too? And helped? Goddamit Elena!" How could she ask the professor but not me! Pacing around, I tried to smother the murderous urges swirling through my body, all connected to my sister.

"I'm sensing your communication hasn't been the best lately," Damon spoke up, leaning against the beige wall a few feet away.

"You could say that." I pinched the bridge of my nose and stopped my gait.

Deep breaths to make my blood stop boiling. Happy thoughts! Like sunny meadows and cute kittens, gorgeous sky-high mountains where I could push my sister off a cliff without anyone noticing! Wow, that escalated quickly. Okay, back to deep breaths. One, two, three… Everybody strangle thee! Oh my… I needed something else to keep my mind off of the horrendous scenarios for my dear, sweet sister.

"You helped too." I pointed at Damon, whose smirk was erased in a split-second.

"Of course I did. Stefan's my brother!"

"Then you can spill the details for me." I moved closer, my finger still raised. Damon stared at it as I poked it into his firm chest. "Tell me everything that happened, since Elena won't." Damon looked skeptical. "Or I could use this to get it out of you." I raised the small dart to dangle in front of his blue stare.

"Oh, you wouldn't." Damon smirked.

"Wanna bet?" I shot back, raising a brow. His gaze continued traveling between me and the dart, before he gave in with a sigh.

"Okay, fine!" he huffed. "But I'll need another drink for it."

"Well, about that… See, I bailed on my job because of my period, and Bella got pissed when the boss sided with me. So now I'm stuck on waitressing duty, indefinitely," I sighed. "But I'm sure you can compel me a free hour or so, as well as a drink." Flashing him a tight smile, I caught him staring at me oddly. As I frowned, he sniffed into the air.

"Oh, so that's what that delicious smell is!" Damon smirked, inching closer. "I thought you were just trying out a new perfume."

"Back off, vampire," I warned, raising a hand. He walked into my palm, still smiling infuriatingly. His gaze flickered downwards, and I raised my dart again without hesitating. That seemed to do the trick.

"Okay. Relax." Stepping back, Damon raised his hands. "I was only joking."

"Sure you were," I scoffed. His smirk remained.

"Did you want to know what happened or not?" Now it was my turn to not answer, only lowering my hand holding the dart. Damon's smirk widened, turning even more smug than I believed to be possible. "Then lead the way." He nodded ahead, and with a scowl I did just that.

"Well that sounded like fun." I placed my fifth emptied glass before me.

Damon frowned. "I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not."

"I wasn't. I actually would've liked to be there. It's fun to kick some vampire ass." I twirled the glass around my index finger. "No offense," I added when Damon's squinting gaze kept eyeing me.

"None taken." Damon shrugged, before finishing his own drink. He had gone for bourbon whilst I had sticked with my all-time favorite: vodka. Affirming a Russian stereotype, which I'd noticed most Americans believed Sweden to basically be a part of, quite nicely in the process.

After having been completely filled in on everything that had happened concerning the rescuing of Stefan – or, at least from Damon's point of view, but considering that Elena hadn't seemed to be planning on telling me about any of it time soon, that was the only version I could get my hands on – my head was spinning around all the new information.

"You'll probably get more chances."

"Hmm?" I was too occupied with carefully watching Bella, who walked right past us without even noticing me, to catch what Damon had just said. That compulsion thing was really useful.

"There will be other opportunities for you to fight some vampires," Damon reassured. "With them acting all crazy…" I smiled at his muttering. Dealing with messing vampires wasn't as fun as doing the deeds oneself. A lesson he'd clearly learnt.

Before I could drop that in the form of a snarky comment, obviously, my phone began to vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out to be faced by my sister's name. Ugh! After all this, I had no energy left for her.

"Ah, that takes me back." Damon smirked, nodding at my brick phone. I wasn't sure whether he was referring to the last time I had wrinkled my nose and stared at my phone, not wanting to answer it, or just the phone in general. After all, Damon had been around for a while, so he had probably owned a mobile just like this one some time. Settling on both, I accepted the call.

"What? Are you calling to tell me the truth about Stefan?" No sugarcoating it here, blunt as always.

Whatever Elena had planned on saying got stuck in her throat. "How do you– Never mind," she interrupted herself. "This is important, Parks."

"Is something more important than telling me, your older sister, the truth?" I gasped in shock, catching Damon smiling, but Elena wasn't having any of it.

"This is serious." She took a deep, shaky breath, her voice trembling a little as she carried on. "Caroline found Vicki's body." A cold hand squeezed my heart. I looked up to meet Damon's gaze, finding it mirroring mine: no protecting walls up, not with that shocking revelation. That vamp-hearing, every damn time.

Our eyes remained locked as Elena told me exactly what had happened: how Caroline's car had gotten stuck on a muddy road where there was no service. She had, of course, tried to find some reception by walking into the woods, and just so happened to stumble over the corpse in question. Elena said something else about how everyone was doing; Kennedy and his mom crushed, Jeremy sobbing, Caroline guilty for finding the body, the list going on and on.

However, the only thing I could think about right now, in this very moment, was that I was sitting across from the only other person who was unwanted in all of this. I might have killed Vicki Donovan, but Damon had disposed of her body. Of course, if I had taken care of it instead of Damon, then no one would ever have found it. But that wasn't the point here. What was relevant was the common ground I shared with the male vampire sitting across from me.

"I'm at Matt's right now, but I just wanted you to know," Elena explained. She sounded distant, but I wasn't sure if that was because of my mind wandering elsewhere or hers. "Parker… It's okay. I know why you did it. I… It's just…"

"Complicated," I finished for her. "Yeah, I know. Tell Matt I said hi and, I don't know, send my condolences or something."

"I will."

Lowering the phone from my ear, my mind swam away.

Obviously, I had encountered death several time before. I'd been at the (attempted) receiving end of it, as well as the dispatching end; the latter plentiful more times, actually. But I'd never had any trouble to shrug it off and move on; not even when my parents died, neither my adoptive or biological ones. Life was for the living, the dead had no place here. The only reason this particular death was bothering me at all, was that it came back to haunt the living.

As an assassin, you never came to face with the family or friends of your target. You never get to experience their loss up close.

But this time, I saw it. I knew the people who was falling apart. Elena would be burdened by this, since she knew the truth. Jeremy would be crushed, he had – weirdly enough – loved Vicki, in his teenage way. The happy glim in Kennedy's eyes, that had recently returned due to a certain blonde cheerleader, would be gone, replaced by that same emptiness which had seemed lurk after Elena dumped him. The effects would be big, and I would be forced to experience them. Truth be told, I was not up for it.

The feeling of Damon's gaze on me pulled me back to the land of the living, and I swallowed a newly formed lump in my throat to ensure that my voice was a little less hoarse when I finally spoke.

"I think I'm gonna need another drink."