2-06

"You know I've been taking it easy on you right?" said Enzo. "That's not even five on the pain scale."

I was breathing hard with brow lined with sweat and my throat having gone hoarse from the screaming. An hour under the knives and I could still feel the phantom pains coursing through me. Even through the haze of pain I had time to find the interesting peculiarity of the memory sharing: It was easy to think that the memories would have less of a hold the more he played them, but instead it was the opposite.

Each time Enzo flashed a particular memory through me it help more weight in my mind, as though the experiences were slowly becoming my own. Was it possible that at its extreme the method might be its own sort of immortality, overwriting the memories of another person and high jacking their bodies?

It was perhaps something to look into in the future, but morality wise I had to wonder if it was a good idea. My beliefs on the matter were that we were our memories, by that same logic if the hypothesis was indeed true and a vampire could overwrite a person's memories, then it would be killing them.

"I dread to find out what a five is," I muttered. "Could I have some water."

Jeremy appeared a second later with a glass of water in hand. "Are you sure this is safe?" he said. "I can't help but think this might be bad for you."

"Voluntary torture often is," said Enzo. "But then it's a good idea. We really should be taking it slower though. The mind can break with too much pain."

"How come you didn't break?" asked Jeremy, a bit of trepidation in his voice.

Enzo was quiet for some time before he said, "Multiple anchors through it all. First it was trying to come up with an escape plan, hoping that their measures would fail and I might get my chance. Time passed and then Damon arrived, I changed track. I knew there was a route for escape and we could finally achieve it. He betrayed me and then I turned towards revenge, biding my time until something else turned up."

He gave me a look at that. Had he said thank you? So much had happened over the past few months and the conversation, if it had happened, wasn't really worth remembering.

"You guys aren't going to kiss, right?" said Jeremy. Enzo and I gave me a look. "Sorry, but the both of you had that look. Good thing too, I don't want to be the third wheel."

"You want us all to be lonely?" I said.

"Of course," said Jeremy. "If I'm ever a spinster I expect you to be a spinster too."

"More likely than anything in my case," I said. "I don't think a guy will ever be able to handle my intensity." I stood and stretched, my body shook but I worked to staying on my feet.

"Speaking of your love life," said Enzo. He and Jeremy were already back in the living room sitting. It was annoying the amount they were both showing off. "I take it your date with Luka is no longer on the table."

I shook my head. "Elijah made his move," I said. "I don't really have a reason to be there. Not to mention that I've been locked up. Makes dating kind of hard."

"Makes it harder when all the interesting people are taken," said Enzo.

"You're still upset over Caroline, aren't you?" I said with a grin. He scowled.

"Wait, what?" said Jeremy. "I didn't know about that. You didn't tell me about that," he said to me.

"In your late night gab session?" said Enzo. He shook his head. "This decade can be bemusing sometimes."

"Poor, Enzo," I said but I couldn't hold back the grin. "There are still beautiful woman in town." Enzo gave me a look and a raised brown. "Objectively speaking. I can tell if a woman the same way I can tell that other things are beautiful. More considerations on aesthetics than sexual attraction."

"I feel like you'd make a very good boyfriend," said Jeremy. "To a girl, that is."

"I doubt it. I'm a very hard person to like. But when you do I'm like a fungus. I grow and grow and grow until there's no hope of detaching me."

"It says a lot about you that you see yourself as a fungus," said Enzo. "Whether it's good or bad is something else entirely." He grabbed the remote and flicked through the TV, the channels passed by too quickly for me to see much of anything before he stopped on the History Channel.

It was some show about some war.

"How is the world?" asked Jeremy. "Now versus your century?"

"The much I've seen…better in places but still much the same. The major changes are how technology has advanced. The internet is a godsend though it's a little underutilised with all the cats. The race division is down which is strange."

"Tread lightly Enzo," I said.

"You know what I mean," he said. "There's still the same general edge, but…" He shrugged. "Things are a little better. But the one thing that's the best is the medicine. Consumption was the worst."

"Who turned you?" I asked. "Do you know?"

He nodded. "Only her first name. Lily," he said. "I was on my last breath, scrounging for any sliver of hope to beat the disease. Lily helped me see a doctor who was headed here. Turned out he was a charlatan. Lily took pity on me and gave me her blood. The doctor was my first victim."

"Where is she now? Lily?" Jeremy asked. Enzo's answer was a shrug.

"I could find her," I said. "If you want." Enzo said nothing. "Come on. I'm bored and I want to have something to do. The tracking spell is the only Linking magic that I know off by heart."

"She could be anywhere in the world," said Enzo.

"And we have maps," I said. "I'll pull power from the others for a sense of catharsis. There's also something I want to test out, putting a new twist on the Tracking spell."

Enzo shrugged and I grinned. We got to work, first with me getting the necessary materials. Jeremy drew the circles in chalks and put mounds of salt at four points. Enzo cut himself and I drank his blood. If I was right that would give me a link to him if I had his blood in my system. I told this to Jeremy, all of which he jotted down.

Enzo sat on a stool in the middle of the circle and I was there with him. I opened myself up, reaching for the mounds of salt and even more so on the power of the ancestors. I took another breath and reached deeper, waded past the connections of my coven mates and reached for the thread that would no doubt belong to Enzo.

Reaching for the linking didn't do much until I pushed power into hit. Enzo grunted, tensing and I pulled back.

"You mind telling me when you feel something?" I said. "I'll scale back when you feel pain."

He nodded. I pushed power into it, pushing more and less at his request. I got the sweet point but when I felt the link it wasn't as though it could sustain having a spell run through it.

"Do you think you'll be able to bear the pain?" I said. "I want the connect to sustain the spell."

"Sure," he said. I pushed more power, putting my hands at his temple. The connection became stronger and I pushed more power into it. "Fuck," Enzo said. "This, whatever it is, it better at least work," he said through grit teeth.

I started the Tracking spell and his connections opened up to me. The strongest would be the ties of blood, tied in with emotion. I felt the strongest and pushed power through it before pushing to its length. The thread was rather short before I hit a wall, though there was a little give.

I pushed more power into the thread, through Enzo and towards the block. There was more give but it still wasn't enough. I reached for power and it broke as I heard the barest edges of a scream. I pulled back.

Enzo, who was breathing hard, let himself fall back.

"That…Fuck," he said. "She's cloaked isn't she?" he said. "That's what that was?"

I nodded. "With enough power I could push through it, power that I have," I said. "But I think the process might be easier if I could get my hands on Luka's thread empowering spell. We'll have to talk to Tyler. He might be able to remember it. I could figure it out from there."

From the looks of it Enzo wasn't even listening.

"It must be a prison," he muttered under his breath.

"Why would that be your first thought?" said Jeremy.

He looked between me and Jeremy before he said, "She was a Ripper. Her and her family. It makes sense that she would have gotten attention. Why she would have been imprisoned instead of being killed though…this means she didn't just leave me. We have to find her."

"A Ripper?" said Jeremy.

"We can imprison her, too," I said. "Stefan was a Ripper and he was able to ween off of blood."

Jeremy shrugged. "At least it's your mind on something else," he said. "I'll call Tyler, see if he remembers."

I would have done that, but they'd taken my phone away too. Smart of them too all things considered.