[4x17; Because of the Night + 4x18; American Gothic]
"You took Elena to New York?" Joel's voice was flat as he addressed Damon through his phone, tapping his feet anxiously on the floor.
Lucy opened her eyes from where she sat, cross-legged on the floor only a foot away from him and glared at her brother. He was severely harshing her mellow and that was her entire purpose for meditating in the first place.
They spent all night looking for ways to help control her magic. Klaus brought over some books about witches he collected over the years (even though his collection was nowhere near Kol's). They didn't know whether she was the first person on Earth to be a vampire-witch hybrid, so any information they came across was helpful. When they hadn't found anything that helped Lucy's situation, they turned to anger management guides online.
It was in one of those guides that Joel came across meditation. Lucy knew what it was but she had always been skeptical of it. The only thing that had her willing to try it at all was the fact that Jenna always said how much meditation helped her through the years.
And like every time before, Jenna was right. This was only her second time doing it, but the first time she felt so at ease with herself that she fell asleep on the area rug at the end of Stefan's bed. When she closed her eyes, she tuned everything out except for her heartbeat and the magic that now flowed through her veins. She familiarized herself with it and when she woke up the next day, her magic was calm enough to be able to spell the lapis lazuli ring that Klaus and Stefan had given her.
It was the afternoon now and she was trying to meditate again. Unfortunately, Damon had taken off with Elena and Joel was stressing out about it. Somehow he ended up in the library with Lucy while Stefan and Caroline cleaned the huge mess in the living room and foyer.
"You know what, JoJo? That tone is the exact reason I didn't answer when you called before," Damon commented sarcastically.
It was strange but also cool that Lucy could overhear other peoples' conversations on the phone without speakerphone on.
"You know what, Day?" Joel started to copy him. "That—"
"Ugh, don't call me that," Damon groaned.
"Don't call me JoJo, then."
"That's my thing, I give people horrible nicknames. Get over it."
"You're so annoying."
"Joel!" Lucy exclaimed, giving her brother the stink eye. "If you're going to bicker with your boyfriend can you leave me alone?"
"Ew…"
"Gross, Lou," Joel grimaced at her and lowered his voice as he spoke to Damon again. "So, where is Elena now?"
"Out exploring," Damon informed him. "Maybe she's eating a hotdog vendor."
"So you're not looking for Katherine, then?"
"Yes, I'm looking for Katherine," Damon sighed, annoyed. "This little joy ride is actually a cure hunt. That vampire that Katherine sent after Hayley was a friend of mine. He lived in the city. Will gets vampires fake identities and I'm sure that Katherine's one of his clients."
Joel raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Elena volunteered to look for the cure? Just yesterday she didn't even want it."
"That's why I didn't tell her."
"If she finds out—"
"Don't be so negative, Joel. What I'm hoping is she's gonna be so wasted on booze and blood from our bar crawl that she won't even think about it."
"Don't underestimate her."
"If I can handle Stefan with his switch off, I can handle Elena. I gotta go."
"Wait, Damon, don't—" Joel sighed as the call ended. "Damn it."
"That went well," Lucy got to her feet, unable to resist giving him a dry comment.
"Shut up," he grumbled, shoving his phone in his jeans. He paused as they both heard the front door open and Caroline's objection as Klaus walked into the Boarding House. "Klaus is here."
They made their way to the living room where Caroline and Klaus were having a standoff and Stefan was standing awkwardly to the side. Lucy grinned in amusement and sped over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist; he pressed a kiss to her forehead in response.
"I still don't know why he's here," Caroline grumbled under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest.
"We need his help," Stefan reminded her. "I think Silas is in Mystic Falls."
Silas was another thing to add to their long list of problems. According to Stefan, who heard it from Liz, the hospital in Mystic Falls wasn't the only one who had their blood banks wiped out. All the counties in their region were missing blood.
That led Stefan to believe that Silas had followed them back from the island since he had gone two thousand years without blood. He had to be thirsty—so thirsty that one full blood bank wasn't enough.
Klaus didn't think that was enough evidence to be sure Silas was in town. "So, some blood went missing from a few hospitals," he helped himself to some of the Salvatores' bourbon. "What about Elena? Don't vampires with their humanity off tend to overindulge in human blood," he looked to Stefan with a small smirk. "or were you the exception."
Lucy rolled her eyes. "It's not Elena, Nik."
Klaus half-shrugged. "Well, let's say for a moment that it was Silas. I'm struggling to see how this affects me."
"Look, Silas wants to die and be reunited with his one true love but he's supernatural so if he takes the cure and dies, he gets stuck on the Other Side."
"How Shakespearian."
Stefan gave him the stink eye and continued, "But if he destroys the Other Side altogether, he can take the cure, die, and pass on. But, in destroying it, every dead supernatural being will return to our side."
"That means every werewolf, every witch, every vampire," Joel piped in.
Caroline looked at Klaus pointedly. "I wonder how many of those you personally killed. Care yet?"
Klaus pressed his lips together. "My interest is piqued. How do we stop him?"
"Bonnie said that Silas needs to complete three massacres to do this spell," Lucy told him. "Before Professor Shane died, he convinced Pastor Young to blow up the town council."
"Then he had you kill your hybrids," Stefan finished, pointing at Klaus. "Now he only needs one more massacre so if he's here, that's what he's doing. We need to find him."
"Fine," Klaus conceded with a bit of a pout. God forbid he was wrong about something.
"I think we should go to Professor Shane's office," Lucy spoke up, turning her eyes to Stefan. "Remember when we were looking for the tombstone? His office was filled with stuff about different afterlives."
Stefan cocked his head in acknowledgement. "Good point."
"Well, then, let's go," Klaus set down his half-finished glass of bourbon before pointing at Lucy. "You drink a blood bag. If we're going to a college campus, you're going to be around people."
Lucy frowned; she hated when he was right. Okay, yeah, maybe she and Klaus were more alike than either of them thought.
When they arrived at Professor Shane's office, the five of them split into each of the corners. Lucy and Caroline were in charge of looking through the shelves full of books while Joel was tasked with the shelves with historical artifacts and Stefan and Klaus split the difference.
"What are we even looking for?" Caroline sighed as she began looking through the top shelves of books.
"Well, if Shane really was working with Silas, chances are he was helping him plan his next move," Stefan stated.
"So, what, Silas has an evil to-do list?" Joel wrinkled his nose.
Caroline snorted in amusement. "It's right under stealing blood, performing three massacres, and picking up dry cleaning."
"Actually, not to nit-pick or anything, but we evil villains usually use minions to pick up our dry cleaning and that sort of thing," Klaus commented.
Caroline didn't find his comment at all funny compared to Joel's. She looked over at Lucy with an annoyed pout. "Why is he necessary again?"
"He drove."
Stefan chuckled under his breath at Lucy's flat comment and added, "We don't know what Silas can do, so if we have to go head-to-head with him, an Original hybrid who can't die might come in handy."
"Yeah, that's why," Lucy pointed at Stefan with her thumb.
"I feel the love, little sister," Klaus rolled his eyes before addressing Caroline. "Besides, Stefan and I work well together—or at least we did in the twenties."
"Granted, my emotions were off."
"And that's why you were more fun—"
Lucy nudged Caroline and spoke so quietly, no one but the blonde heard her. "Unrequited bromance."
Caroline covered her mouth to contain her giggles. "One-sided Klefan."
Lucy bit her lip. "No-bros."
"He's just not that into you."
Lucy snorted loudly, unable to stop her laughter from spilling from her mouth. Caroline quickly joined her and so did Joel, who had been listening to them the whole while Stefan and Klaus argued about their time together in the twenties.
Klaus and Stefan both looked over at them with confused looks.
"Sorry, it's nothing," Lucy waved them off, trying to catch her breath from laughing so hard; Caroline giggled, almost setting her off again. "Uh, Nik, what were you saying?"
"Not much," Klaus spoke dramatically. "Just that Damon is probably relishing in Elena's emotionless company in New York."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure that Damon knows what he's doing with my sister," Joel pressed his lips together.
"Does he?" the Original quirked an eyebrow. "Don't underestimate the allure of darkness. Even the purest of hearts are drawn to it."
Lucy noticed two things at once. The first thing was that Caroline bowed her head at Klaus' words, turning back to the bookshelf like she was ashamed of something. The second thing were the sad eyes Joel was giving her blonde best friend before he, too, started to look for anything that would tell them about bringing down the Other Side.
Huh. So, not only was Klaus interested in Caroline but so was Joel? Meanwhile Caroline was in love with Tyler and obviously had some feelings for Klaus. It was the weirdest love-square that she had ever seen and she had been in one not that long ago.
"Still," Klaus continued, unaware of the affect his expression had. "I'm sure it will all be fine."
Lucy rolled her eyes and went back to pursuing the bottom shelves filled with books. Just around her eyeline, she spotted an old binger labeled with 'Symbolic Figures in the Dark Arts' and 'The Art of Expression'.
"All right, I think this is it," Lucy grabbed the book and walked over to the desk where Klaus had taken a seat; Caroline, Stefan, and Joel joined them. "Bonnie was talking about expression triangles, remember?"
Caroline hummed in confirmation as Lucy flipped through the contents, looking for the section on expression and studies that went along with it. "Here," she pointed at the chapter on expression triangles and started to read, "In some schools of magic such as expression, human sacrifice can be used as a focus for power. It's rumored that the addition of two supernatural sacrifices compounds the mystical energy, creating an expression triangle."
"Humans…that was the council fire," Caroline pointed at the top of the triangle inked into the page. "Demons…Klaus' hybrid failures."
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a failure," Klaus scoffed. "What's the third?"
Lucy's eyes bored down on the final massacre. "It's witches."
Within minutes of discovering that witches were the third massacre, they had more bad news. Silas was with Bonnie, appearing to her as Professor Shane, and Bonnie's dad had told Stefan that she had gone out for a walk. The five of them concluded that Bonnie was headed to complete the expression triangle that night, which wasn't good.
Since there were two possible places where the third massacre could take place, they all split up. Lucy and Stefan went to one side of Mystic Falls while Caroline, Klaus, and Joel went to the other.
On the way there, Stefan got a call from Damon. He quickly informed his brother what was going on in Mystic Falls, including the fact that they had a location on Silas.
"So, Silas is appearing as Professor Shane," Damon sighed. "Wouldn't be my first choice."
"Well, it would be if you needed to brainwash Bonnie into committing a massacre," Stefan grumbled into the phone.
"You need me to come home?"
"No, we got it," Stefan exchanged a smile with Lucy. "How's the cure search going?"
"Well, not great. I mean, it's no massacre in the making but Rebekah trailed us here," there was a fumbling of some sort of lock on the other line. "Then in addition to my buddy being a brilliant identity thief, he's also a hoarder."
Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Gross."
"Yeah, no kidding," Damon agreed with her.
"What are you trying to find?" Stefan wondered.
"Will had a repeat customer; five-seven brunette. Said she was a runner."
"Katherine."
Damon hummed. "Turns out I was helping her run from me. Ironic. The problem is I'm pretty sure that his filing system goes by birthdate but I can't, for the life of me, remember Katherine's."
"June 5, 1473," Lucy supplied casually.
"I knew there was a brain in that head of yours, Twitch," Damon clicked his tongue; Lucy and Stefan exchanged eyerolls. There was more clinking of cheap metal on Damon's line, which they assumed was a filing cabinet. "Well, will you look at that? It's all her former addresses, including a couple from the last two months. I mean, they're mostly P.O. boxes but, hey, it narrows the search."
"Good thing I have a brain," Lucy commented sarcastically. "Bye, Damon."
As soon as Stefan shoved his phone in his jacket, Lucy sighed dramatically. "Why is your brother so annoying?"
Stefan's eyebrows raised playfully. "You wanna talk about annoying brothers? Have you actually met Klaus, or…?"
"Yeah, you're right," Lucy conceded after trying to find some sort of comeback. "Nik is pretty annoying."
Stefan hummed but then stopped walking all of a sudden. "Do you hear that?"
Lucy stopped too, focusing on her hearing. She could hear screams—familiar screams.
They both took off toward the direction of the screaming. Once they were close enough to the location they were meant to already be at, they could see light glowing from twelves torches placed around a pentagram. Bonnie was in the middle, laying on the ground and screaming as one of the witches held her down forcefully.
"Yield to the spirits, Bonnie!" the witch exclaimed. "You can't fight us!"
"Stop!" Stefan yelled as they came to a stop only feet away from the circle of witches. "It's not what you think."
The witch glowered at them. "This is no place for vampires."
"She's working for Silas," Lucy blurted out, hoping that the witches would stop doing whatever they were doing to Bonnie and get the hell out of town so they weren't sacrificed.
The witch paused. "Silas?"
"He brainwashed her to kill you."
The witch looked back down at Bonnie with hard eyes before yanking a sharp dagger out of her jean pocket.
"What are you doing?" Stefan demanded.
"If Silas has her, she's lost," the witch snarled. "We can't save her."
"Uh, yes, you can—" Lucy started to lunge for Bonnie but the witch held up her hand toward her and Stefan.
Lucy groaned loudly in pain; her brain felt like it was being carved into and electrocuted at the same time. It was one of the most painful things she had ever felt and there was no relief because her brain kept healing over and over again. She kind of felt bad for all the people she used this spell on.
"I have the power of twelve witches," the witch said firmly. "You two don't stand a chance!"
Lucy was faring better than Stefan, though she supposed it was because she could siphon some of the pain away. She was still on her feet but Stefan was on the ground, clenching his head in his hands as his ears started to bleed.
Lucy clenched her jaw and held out her own hand, right in the witch's direction. She was only able to stop the pain-inflicting spell for a few seconds but it was long enough to see the shocked look on the witch's face and rush Stefan out of her line of fire.
"Shit," Lucy breathed worriedly, holding Stefan's bloody face in her hands. "I'm so sorry, babe."
Stefan leaned against her. "It's not your fault."
He was exhausted and he would need blood to feel better. Lucy shook her head, feeling guilty, and pressed her lips against his forehead before wrapping her arms around his waist to keep him upright.
Hearing three sets of footsteps approaching, Lucy turned toward Caroline, Joel, and Klaus. "They're linked," she told them. "Bonnie's gonna kill them all."
Klaus' eyes studied the twelve witches and Bonnie. "Not if the witches kill her first."
"We need to save her," Joel insisted.
"How?" he turned to him. "The only way to stop the witches is to kill them and then Silas gets what he wants."
"Spirits, take her soul!" the witch with Bonnie called out to the night sky, holding her dagger out from her chest with two hands. "Free her from darkness."
Lucy's eyes darted from Bonnie to Caroline. She wasn't surprised when her best friend sped toward the witches. Caroline grabbed a hold of the witch's hands and plunged the knife into her chest. The witch fell to the ground and one by one, the rest of the eleven followed her in death.
Joel, Stefan, and Klaus looked at Caroline in shock, while Caroline, herself, turned her head to see all the witches she had killed. She breathed heavily and Lucy was thinking that Caroline was probably still in shock and hadn't exactly realized what she did and how many people she killed.
There was nothing they could do to take it back. Silas had exactly what he needed to pull down the veil to the Other Side. The triangle was complete.
Lucy glared at Damon over the hood of her vehicle, irritated by the way he slammed her trunk shut without a thought. "Uh, do you mind?"
"Mind what?"
She was very tempted to grab that can of gas in his hand and pour it all over him; she didn't have a match but she had her magic. The perks of being a freak witch-vampire hybrid; no need for any fire starters.
Familiar fingers caught hers, winding them together. Stefan smiled down at her as she gave him a look full of all the frustration that she was feeling with the situation at hand. Not only had Rebekah followed Damon and Elena to New York City, but she and Elena stole Damon's car, left him locking on a roof—which was a whole other story that Lucy didn't want to know—and took off to look for Katherine. Katherine, who had killed her and Jeremy.
To say that Lucy was feeling a lot of betrayal for all of her sisters was an understatement.
And, to add it all up, she was the one who had to miss the start of rom week in order to find her sister. She didn't want to go at all—she and Caroline had planned the prom in detail for over two months—but Joel and Stefan ganged up on her and told her she should stay with Stefan. To be babysit. She was not appreciative of the way her older brother and her boyfriend decided her plans for her but she'd get her revenge. She just didn't know when…
Alone time with Stefan would have been great if it weren't for the fact that Damon had to be with them. She hadn't forgiven Damon for what he did the night of Kol's murder and she probably never would but for now, she'd have to tolerate him for Stefan's sake. She didn't have to be polite but she couldn't physically harm him.
She couldn't wait until she and Stefan went away to Duke.
Lucy sighed, aggravated. "Just be careful with my car."
"Why? It's not worth any—"
"Damon," Stefan interrupted him with a firm voice, as though he was scolding a toddler.
Damon rolled his eyes. "Fine," he grunted as they walked the twenty feet of road to where his car had run out of gas. "If they so much as even scratched the paint on my car…"
"Why don't you just be grateful that Sheriff Forbes was able to track down the car after you let them…" Stefan clicked his tongue. "uh, you know, steal it from you."
"Remind me to send her some mini-muffins," Damon replied, not too happy with Stefan's amusement.
"Liz Forbes deserves extra-large muffins and they had better be blueberry or they're worthless to her," Lucy said matter-of-factly. She knew from experience. "So, do you really need ten gallons of gas or are you just being dramatic because I'm pretty sure there's a gas station a few miles ahead."
Damon gave her an annoyed look and set one of the gas containers down on the pavement in order to unlatch his gas tank. He then shoved the nozzle into the tank and gave her a sarcastic smile. "That answer your question?"
Dick.
"It's better to be safe than sorry," Stefan told her. "Once we get to the gas station, we'll fill up. We got a hundred miles before we get to Willoughby."
"Well, I don't remember that name from the list of places that I got in New York."
"Oh, the list!" Stefan shared an amused grin with Lucy, his green eyes lighting up. "You mean the list they stole from right under your nose after you let your guard down?"
Damon sent him a bitter smile.
"They'll be there," Lucy stated, letting go of Stefan's hand to fold her arms over her chest. "I did a location spell."
"And they're in Willoughby?" he raised his eyebrows at her. "Cream corn capital of Pennsylvania?"
"The very one," she confirmed.
"Let's just hope that we get to them before they get to the cure," Stefan sighed.
Lucy side-eyed him; she didn't want Elena to take the cure. Hell, Elena could flee to the other side of the world and she would not care one bit. She was only concerned about the cure because Stefan had wanted it in the first place. She had been human then but things change. Stefan's suffering as a vampire didn't just go away because she became one too.
So, if Stefan wanted it still, she would fight for him. She wouldn't let Elena or anyone else get in the way.
"Ooh, silver lining," Damon perked up as he screwed the cap back into the gas tank. "If Rebekah takes the cure then she's mortal. We can just kill her right then and there."
"Ooh, dark cloud," Stefan countered. "Elena stays a vampire forever. Look, why don't you just table the revenge fantasies for now—"
Lucy cleared her throat. "Forever."
"Forever," Stefan corrected himself with a nod in her direction. "and just keep your focus on the plain; find Katherine, get the cure, get out before you get your neck snapped…again."
Damon pursed his lips as he looked at Stefan and Lucy. "Believe me, I learned my lesson. Elena without humanity is a stone-cold bitch and I won't trust her until we get the old Elena back."
"She was a bitch with her humanity," Lucy whined, leaning her head back. "Can't we just leave her alone so we don't have to deal with her?"
Damon chuckled flatly. "I didn't know you were a comedian, Twitch."
She glared at him as he walked to the driver side of his car but was distracted when Stefan cupped her face in his hands. "Once this is over and we graduate, we're leaving," he promised her, letting his lips settle over her forehead. "No crazy siblings to deal with."
Lucy pressed a kiss to his palm and laughed lightly. "If you think we won't be bother by Nik or Bekah, you're the crazy one, babe."
"Ugh, I hate that you're right."
Willoughby was night the town that they expected. It was small—smaller than Mystic Falls—and it was home-y, where every person knew the other. There were even charming mom-and-pop shops that lined one of the only main roads in town. It was not a place where Katherine Pierce would live, even if it was just to hide from her enemies.
Lucy frowned; while she was undoing her seatbelt, she looked to Stefan in the driver's seat, "Maybe I did the spell wrong. This isn't the kind of place that Kit—that Katerina would hide out in."
Stefan smiled softly and reached toward, using his fingers to brush away a stray curl from her neck; she shivered from his touch. "You didn't do the spell wrong, Lucy," he turned her head to the car they were parked behind. "That's the car that Rebekah and Elena stole."
He was right; the car was the same car that Liz had gotten a plate for. She did the location spell right.
Lucy looked back at Stefan with a smile, appreciating the fact that he had faith in her even when she didn't. "I love you."
Stefan's hand left her neck in order to cup her right cheek. "I love you," he barely got the rest of his promise out before he was pulling her into a kiss.
It wasn't the right time and place for a passionate kiss but that's how most of their kisses turned out lately. What would be a simple kiss would turn lip biting, neck nibbling, and body caressing, and then, if they weren't careful, it would lead to sex wherever they were. It never got that far, though, because most of the time, Stefan was a buzz kill.
Lucy was still adjusting to her newfound vampire senses and with that, came her vampire hormones. She wanted Stefan all the time and the more they held out from having sex—Stefan wanted to make sure her hormones weren't taking control of what she really wanted, which was admirable, but it drove her crazy—the more intense everything got. She found herself daydreaming of him and what he could do to her now that he didn't have to hold back anymore.
Just as Lucy clenched her fingers around the neck of Stefan's navy t-shirt to pull it off, there was a knock on her window.
"You're gonna get arrested for public indecency if you keep going," Damon warned them, though he sounded highly amused and a little disgusted. "Keep it in your pants, would you?"
Lucy sighed and rested her forehead on Stefan's shoulder; the want—the need—she had for him was still racing through her veins but it would have to wait. Stefan pressed his lips against her temple for a long second before pulling away and unbuckling his seatbelt.
"Something's not right," Damon observed as Lucy and Stefan got out of her car, his narrowed eyes taking in the small town they found themselves in. "Katherine Pierce does not hole up in Hickstown, P.A."
"Well, this is the car they stole," Stefan tapped the trunk of the silver car that Rebekah and Elena had dumped upon arrival. "We're in the right place."
Lucy walked the length of the car, recognizing the Mercedes insignia. "Nice car."
Damon scoffed. "Yeah, points to them."
She rolled her eyes at him and made her way to the sidewalk, crossing her arms over her chest. "Okay, so, what are we gonna do when we find Elena? How are we gonna get her back to Mystic Falls? She's not going quietly and for whatever reason, Bekah's on her side."
"We do whatever we have to do," Damon shrugged, his eyes searching the town once again. "I don't care if we have to throw Rebekah under a school bus and wrap Elena in a burlap sack—"
"How on earth would a burlap sack do anything?"
Damon ignored Lucy to continue, "We do whatever we have to do."
Stefan pressed his lips together and shoved his hands into the pocket of the black jacket he put on after leaving the car. "We're serious, Damon."
"I am too," his brother insisted. "I don't care what Elena wants right now. She's this close," he put his index finger and thumb only a centimeter apart. "to going off the rails for good. And that ain't happening. She's a pain enough as it is."
"No kidding," Lucy scoffed. She didn't bother trying to hide her current—if not forever—dislike for Elena, everyone already knew and most didn't seem to blame her.
"Let's just find her," Stefan stated, intertwining their hands together. "How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?"
Right, the bloodlust. It was there but not at the forefront of her mind. There were two things she was currently focused on; one was Stefan's hands in hers, skin against skin, and the other was the diner only a couple of shops down, where she could smell chocolate and ice cream.
"I'm okay," she told him casually. "Hey, can we get a milkshake?"
Stefan gaped at her as she started walking down the street toward the diner, pulling him along with her. "Wait, are you serious?"
"What the fuck do you need a milkshake for, Twitch?" Damon complained as he followed them; he didn't want to be by himself. He paused when he saw some familiar faces through the restaurant's windows. "I take that back. I'm gonna get you a million milkshakes."
Lucy, who hadn't spotted Rebekah and Katherine in the diner, looked at him in confusion. "What?"
Stefan laughed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "I think your sweet tooth is our good luck charm today, baby," he pointed out Katherine and Rebekah. "Look who's here."
"We're still gonna get milkshakes, right?"
If Lucy had to focus on milkshakes, she would. Otherwise, she would have to think about the fact that Rebekah was with Elena, rather than her, or about Katherine and how she killed Jeremy and turned Lucy into a vampire.
"Of course we are," Stefan confirmed as he placed a hand on her lower back and led her into the diner after Damon.
Lucy heard Katherine's snide voice the moment she stepped into the restaurant. "You know you can't split the cure with Elena, right?"
As Stefan ordered a chocolate cherry milkshake for Lucy, Damon nudged her and gestured over to the table where Rebekah and Katherine were sitting. She crossed her arms over her chest; so that was why Rebekah was with Elena? Hmm.
"She doesn't want to," Rebekah told Katherine.
"Oh, no? But you do. You want to take it," Katherine scoffed. "Are you really that dumb or just naturally blonde?"
"I want a normal life again."
"You mean you want a do-over," Katherine corrected the blonde Original. "Well, guess what? You can't have it. The cure will only take away your immortality. Everything else you hate about yourself, you'll still wake up with that in the morning," she chuckled mockingly. "and you won' even be able to compel yourself a friend."
By the time Rebekah had broken Katherine's wrist, Lucy had received her delicious milkshake and had headed over to their table in between Damon and Stefan.
"Ladies," Stefan greeted them with a fake smile. "playing nice?"
His question was emphasized by the sound Lucy's straw made when she took a slurp of her milkshake.
Rebekah and Katherine looked up at them in shock. Damon slid into the booth, followed by Lucy and then Stefan. Katherine sighed, "There goes the neighborhood."
"I see you got Katherine already," Damon acknowledged Rebekah before looking at Katherine. "You're losing your touch, evil one."
Katherine smiled fakely at Damon before turning her eyes to Lucy. "Lucia," she hummed. "I heard that you were a vampire but I must say that you—"
"Katerina, do me a favor and shut up," Lucy snapped at her sister, clenching her milkshake so tightly in her hand that Damon had to pry it out of her grip. "After what you did, you don't deserve to speak to me."
Katherine raised her eyebrows. "What did I do?"
Lucy scoffed in disbelief. "You killed my brother."
"No, I gave him to Silas, I didn't kill him myself."
Lucy clenched her jaw and pressed her lips together, trying to keep her magic in control. All it wanted to do right now was maybe set her sister on fire.
"How about the fact that you turned her," Stefan pointed at Katherine defensively.
"I didn't even touch you," Katherine spoke directly to Lucy. "You were knocked out when I got there but you were still alive when I left."
Lucy's heart raced as she studied her sister. With Lucia's memories came knowledge of Katherine that no one other than her would have. Like, how to tell if Katherine was lying. And she wasn't lying about turning Lucy.
Which meant that Silas was the one to kill Lucy. While less heartbreaking, it was more terrifying.
"You're lying," Stefan stated flatly.
"I'm not."
"Can we save this for later?" Damon asked impatiently, causing everyone at the table to roll their eyes. "Where's Elena?"
Rebekah seemed to know that he was speaking to her. "Let me get this straight, I tell you where Elena is, you shove the cure down her throat, and then I end up in a box, right" she sneered. "I don't think so."
Lucy sighed. "No one is ending up in a box."
Damon nodded at Katherine. "What about you over there, smiley? Do you know where she is?"
Katherine shrugged lightly. "I can give you a hint," she learned forward in her seat. "Start by looking at the town morgue. She's probably dead…" she smirked when Lucy and the others looked at her questioningly. "She went to meet up with a friend of mine. You may know him…An original brother, impeccable taste?"
"Elijah?" Lucy and Rebekah chorused in shock.
Katherine smiled cheekily.
"Elijah's here?" Damon asked in disgust.
"Well, I guess you have to question Elijah's impeccable taste if he's friends with you," Stefan commented dryly.
If it had been sometime or someone else, Lucy would have laughed like she always did when Stefan made his comments full of dry humor. He always said them so proudly, like he had just said the funniest thing on earth. Most of the time they weren't, but it was amusing to see his satisfied face whenever he spit one out. It was like when a dad said a joke that was only amusing to them.
Katherine perked up and grinned. "Oh, when I say friend, I mean friend."
It didn't take long for anything to understand.
"Oh, Katerina," Lucy groaned in disgust while Rebekah, Stefan, and Damon made similar noises.
Knowing that Elijah had sex—with one of her sisters, which was very confusing—was like knowing that your parents still had sex. It made Lucy so uncomfortable that she couldn't bear to finish her milkshake.
"It probably took him about ten seconds to realize that she wasn't me," Katherine continued. "at which point, he probably yanked her heart right out of her chest."
Damon pressed his lips together. "All right, where are they?"
Katherine didn't answer and neither did Rebekah.
"Rebekah, you do realize that if something happens to Elena, you have no chance of finding the cure, right?" Stefan appealed to the blonde.
Lucy raised her eyebrows at Rebekah, silently telling her to fess up.
Rebekah looked at Lucy for a moment before giving in. "Fine," she sighed. "They were supposed to meet at the gazebo by the park."
Stefan and Lucy exchanged a knowing look. "We'll talk to Elijah," Lucy said as they stood up from the booth. "and Katerina can take you two," she gestured to Rebekah and Damon. "to the cure."
Katherine scoffed. "No, she won't. The cure's my one chance to win my freedom back from Klaus."
Lucy bit her lip in realization. That was the whole reason why Katherine took the cure from the island in the first place. To trade her freedom from Klaus for the cure so that he could destroy it. And that was why she was with Elijah; Elijah and Klaus had the deepest bond when it came to brotherhood in the Mikaelson family. Katherine was going to use Elijah to get to Klaus just like she did all those years ago.
Why were all the Petrova doppelgangers such selfish bitches?
"You're gonna broker a deal with Klaus?" Damon asked, confused.
"No, she's gonna get Elijah to do it for her," Lucy spoke up with a shake of her head. "That's why he's here with you, isn't it? You're using his feelings for you just like you did in 1492."
Katherine looked taken aback. "I am not."
Lucy didn't believe her. "Somethings never change, Katerina."
"I can do it," Stefan offered, holding his hand out for the phone in Lucy's grip, watching as her hand clenched tighter around it. He took it and pried the phone from her grip before she could break it, replacing it with his empty hand. "It's gonna be okay."
"I'm sure it is but it isn't right now," Lucy let got of his hand to pace around the empty gazebo.
There was no sign of Elijah or Elena anywhere but that wasn't why she was upset. It was Katherine and Elena and all of her siblings. She didn't understand why they had to do everything possible to make her life more difficult than it already was. She was sure they didn't mean it but she was too annoyed, too angry, to think about that. At the moment, she would rather be upset than rational.
Stefan gave her space, for which she was thankful. She didn't want to lash out at him when she was stewing in her anger and trying to control her magic at the same time—which, by the way, was difficult and took most of her concentration.
After five minutes or so, with Stefan waiting in silence as Lucy calmed down, they called Elijah with Katherine's phone. Elijah answered almost immediately. "Katerina?"
"Hello, Elijah," Stefan greeted him, smiling down at Lucy, who rolled her eyes at him.
There were a few seconds of silence. "Where is Katherine?"
"Where's Elena?" Stefan countered.
"Safe. How long she remains so depends upon you."
Lucy rolled her eyes at her eldest brother. Even if he didn't know that she was there with Stefan, he should know that Stefan wouldn't hurt Katherine simply because of Lucy.
"Well, I guess the same goes for Katherine."
"Katherine can take care of herself against the two of you."
"Oh, you mean the four of us," Stefan surprised Elijah. "Both of your little sisters are with us."
"Put Rebekah on the phone," Elijah demanded.
"Oh, she's not here right now. We left her with Damon and Katherine."
"Tell me where they are."
"Relax, no one's gonna get hurt as long as Katherine hands over the cure."
Lucy sighed and ripped the phone from Stefan's grip. Nothing was getting done and she was over it.
"Elijah, it's me," she spoke into the phone, turning away from Stefan's annoyed look.
"Luciana, it's good to hear your voice," Elijah said pleasantly; they probably should have let Lucy talk to him from the start. "You are aware of how much Rebekah despises Katerina, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I know," Lucy told him. "but Rebekah won't do anything. She promised not to kill any more of my siblings."
"Hmm," Elijah hummed. "a promise that I share, however, if Katerina is—"
"Nothing will happen to her," Lucy said honestly. "If anything, I'm worried for Damon—" she turned back to Stefan and gave him a small smile; he rolled his eyes in amusement. "but we need this cure for Elena—" Stefan. "—so if you could tell us where she's hiding it, that would be great."
"I wish I could tell you where the cure is, Luciana, but the truth is that I don't know," Elijah told her. "Katerina and I were to meet today to exchange it."
Lucy sighed heavily and shook her head at Stefan. He pressed his lips together and threw his hands in the air, annoyed.
"Okay, thanks anyway," Lucy went back to Elijah. "And if you want to keep Elena, that's fine, but I think she'll annoy you."
Elijah chuckled. "I'll send her on her way. I will talk to you later, Luciana."
"Bye, Elijah."
Lucy shoved Katherine's phone in her jacket pocket and looked at Stefan expectantly. "What do we do now?"
"Hopefully, Damon will have it."
He didn't; the cure was on its way back to Mystic Falls.