Tenth.

The door closed behind me as I met Lexi out front. "Okay, well my car is over here," I pointed to my left, but Lexi started walking to the right.

"Yeah, we're not taking a car, they're too close. Can you still outrun me?" She took off into the woods.

"Always a cheater," I said to myself as I took off towards her. I saw Stefan's car out of the corner of my eye just as I hit the woods. I looked straight ahead, catching up with Lexi and hoping that he didn't see me. "Okay, stop" I said as we both put on the brakes. "Where are we going?"

"Who cares," she said to me, "I'm back Norrah, at least in some form, and I have no idea how long it's going to last. I just want to run," and off she went again.

I took off after her again. It isn't as easy to track a ghost then a real person. Good thing she hadn't switched perfumes. As I thought about how ridiculous that sounded I switched directions and cut her off by the falls. I was out of breath and had to stop for a minute. "Okay," I said as I fought to control my breathing, "please tell me why you are running me around these woods."

"I can't let her find you," she said to me, "not yet."

"Who, Katherine?" I asked her. "If we stay in these woods she's going to find me Lex. She knows this area too well, we need to get out of here."

"I'm not talking about Katherine. You can take that bitch down with your eyes closed."

"Then who are you talking about. Who else is looking for me?"

"She isn't looking for you, but if you aren't careful she's going to find you. Listen, we don't have time to talk about it now, we have to go. Stefan already found Damon and he's coming after you. If you go back to that house she'll find you," Lexi tried to explain. "Are you ready to go?" I still didn't know what or who she was talking about, but there was an urgency in her voice that told me that this wasn't a safe place to talk about it. I nodded and we were off again.

We ran past the part of the woods where the cabin had been so I knew that we had left Mystic Falls, but I'd never been out this far so I held onto Lexi's hand instead of following her so that we wouldn't get separated. We ran for miles before she slowed down, and I was sure that my lungs were going to explode. It was starting to get dark but Lexi kept moving. We had slowed to a walk by now. I was going to have to hunt soon, I had expended so much energy that I was feeling drained and light headed. I reached out for her arm, "How much further are we going? I have to eat something."

"Oh yeah," she realized, "do you want to stop here? It's only a little further, at the base of that hill." She pointed towards an area about a half-mile away.

"No, let's just get there and put this stuff down." We walked together like we did centuries ago, trying to find shelter and the nights we were too far from home. I looked over at her. "I've missed you Lex. It's not the same without you."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"So where are you when you're not here?" I asked. "Is there somewhere else that we go?"

"There's somewhere else if you want to go there," she tells me. "I've been there a few times, not really sure what the big deal is. I mean it's everything they say it is, beautiful, bright, peaceful, but that's not really my scene. I'd rather be here, that way I can keep an eye on you," she teased.

"Well, that's not a creepy thought." I replied.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said, "You have been a bore since I've been gone. Now Stefan going off the rails again, that was a journey. Then when Elena's witch friend brought us back I tried to help him, I had no idea how long I'd be here. Elena needed me so I tried to show her what to do, but once again Damon swooped in and ruined everything. I remember her telling me to be at peace and the next thing I knew I was back on the other side, watching you both but unable to do anything to help you."

"So what changed? If you've been around all this time why did you only just appear today?"

"Norrah, I don't have any good answers for you, I don't know what the difference was. I saw you and Stefan talking on the sidewalk this morning, next thing I knew you were running back to the boarding house. By the time I caught up you were tearing the bathroom apart so I sat down on the bed and your journal slid down and hit my hand," she said. "I picked it up off the bed and I was shocked, I haven't been able to interact with anything before now. I flipped a few pages, amazed that I could feel it, pick it up. When you came out of the bathroom and saw me I was just as surprised as you. The only difference is that I see you all the time so it wasn't quite as Epic for me."

I stopped her and turned her back towards me. "So there is another place you can go?" I asked again, "And you've been there?" She knew where I was going and warned me to stop, but I couldn't. "Have you seen her Lex? Is Maddie there?" I felt my eyes burn and then tears flowing down my face, I was losing control. "Have you seen her? Is she okay? Lexi please, "I begged her. I saw the sadness in her eyes, she didn't want to disappoint me. I knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth. I had to look away, I couldn't bear to see her mouth form the words.

I'm so sorry Nor. I've asked around, I've looked myself, but I haven't found her." I physically felt my heart break in two. If she wasn't there then where was she? My mind flashed back to the day of her burial. I felt her skin, her hair. My precious baby, gone from this world. I closed my eyes and I saw her face when we watched the sunrise, then she was smiling on the hillside as I hung out the laundry. She was two years old again, sitting on her daddy's lap in the firelight, then a toddler learning to walk in the afternoon sun. Pictures kept flooding back in reverse order. She lay with my mother in her last hours, then my mother singing to her on the bench in front of the house and finally her little perfect pink body resting on my chest just moments after her birth.

Lexi just took my hand and stood with me silently as I cried. She didn't try to embrace me, she knew that I didn't need that, I just needed her hand. After a few minutes the tears stopped and we stood hand in hand looking up into the night sky. I took a deep calming breath and she looked over at me. "I'll keep looking Norrah, I'll find her."

"I know you will," I told her. "Do you think we'll ever be together again, My mom, Maddie and me?"

"I think when your time comes they'll be the first ones to greet you." I smiled at her, she always knew just what to say.

"And where will you be?" I asked.

"Well by then I'll have had enough of you to have lasted me at least a century. Find Brad Pitt, chances are I'll be wherever he is." We both laughed, I took one last look up at the sky and then we walked the rest of the way to the hillside hand-in-hand.