Chapter Seventeen: Stefanie Salvatore

Present day

Outskirts of Albemarle, NC

Stef flopped herself into a prone position on the couch, exhausted. It was almost two o'clock in the morning and, while she had observed some pretty impressive magical demonstrations from Raid, she was no closer to achieving the same results herself. She felt like a failure. She needed to declare that to the world. "I'm a failure!" she wailed as loudly as she could, which wasn't particularly loud considering her mouth was squished against the leather.

"That's not true." Raid sat down on the floor beside her, reaching up and stroking back the hair that was falling onto her face. "Have you ever successfully drawn powers from any other witch before?"

"No," she admitted forlornly.

"Oh," he mused, a devilish grin forming across his face. "Then maybe you are a failure."

Stef growled in retaliation and immediately rolled off the sofa and onto him, pinning him to the floor, her face transitioning into a vampire, her threat more taunting than serious. "You feel like getting bitten, Witch Boy?"

"I don't know," he smirked, unfazed by her transformation and enjoying the position he was in. "It was kind of fun last time."

Stef narrowed her eyes, her features returning human as she climbed off him and stood, crossing her arms in frustration. "I'm not a Siphon, Raid, I can't just take magic. It's an exchange. When I'm pulling, you need to push. I don't feel you pushing."

Raid got to his feet, looking down at her mischievously. "How hard would you like me to... push?"

Suddenly realizing his playfulness was the drink talking, Stef shot him a scolding look. Not that she wasn't beyond teasing him back regardless. "You're drunk. Perhaps you just can't perform when you're drunk."

"I've had the same amount of drinks as you," he defended, stumbling over his own foot as he turned to sit down on the couch. It was at this point he admitted to himself that maybe he did have one drink too many tonight.

"Yes, but I'm a vampire, I can handle it," she explained, taking her phone out of her pocket when it started ringing. She looked down at the screen and saw it was her father. Why was he calling this late? She had to take the call, something could be wrong. She put the phone to her ear. "Dad, it's two in the morning, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Damon repeated, clearly irritated. "My daughter leaves Georgia and travels three hundred miles to nowhere for no reason, and you think I'm not going to worry you've been kidnapped? Who said you could go out of state without telling me?"

"Erm, the U.S. Constitution?" Stef replied dryly.

"Very funny," Damon grumbled. "Listen, I'm locking up the bar now and I need you to know that I've got every single possible notification set up on your whereabouts, young lady, so if you don't want to set off a Red Alert then drop me a warning message first, yeah?"

"Are you going to track my location for the rest of my life, Dad?" Should she dare warn him how long that was going to be?

"You remember when Phoenix broke your phone? I went out and bought you another one the following morning, didn't I? I wrote up a contract for it. What did that contract say?"

Stef groaned. "It wasn't a contract, so much as a post-it, Dad –"

"What did the contract say?" he repeated urgingly.

"If I accept the replacement phone, you get to track me for the rest of my life," she sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Bingo!" Damon said smugly.

"But this isn't fair, you don't track Mom's phone," Stef pointed out.

Damon was prepared for this. "One, your mother actually communicates with me. Two, she always tells me where she is. Three, Bonnie can always do a locator spell if I really need it. Four... who says I don't?" He said the fourth point with a tone of incredulity.

Stef was never going to win an argument against her father, she might as well give up. "Okay, well you know I'm safe, so I'm going to bed now, Dad."

Raid thought that sounded like a great idea; he was shattered. "Finally! Let's get to bed, Stef," he said a bit too loudly.

Oh, no! Stef winced, putting a finger to her lips, making a silent but dramatic shushing gesture at Raid.

"What? Excuse me? Who was that?" Damon sputtered.

"That was... Raid?" Stef grimaced as she said the words. She already predicted her father's reaction.

"Raid?!" Damon spat in disbelief. He let out a sound, something halfway between a groan and a laugh. It was exactly as Stef had predicted. Though a moment later, Damon had composed himself, ready to offer some words of wisdom as a more supportive father. "Look, sweetheart, Raid's not exactly the most responsible man for you, but if you're looking to date someone who is, I'm sure your mom can set you up with some far more worthy, highly educated, and well-behaved pre-med students."

Stef was unconvinced, but came into this conversation fully prepared with arsenal. "I'm sorry, but didn't Mom once date a pre-med student?"

Damon had no idea Stef knew that. "Your mom talks too much."

"Didn't you just say that Mom was a great communicator?"

Damon groaned, wanting to change the subject. He didn't like losing. "Fine, just put me on speakerphone."

Stef did as her father asked and held the phone out towards Raid, who was lying on the sofa with one arm draped across his face.

"Raid, if you sleep with my daughter, I'll kill you," Damon said through the loudspeaker in as light a tone as possible.

"Duly noted, Mr Salvatore!" With his eyes still closed, Raid's draped arm turned into a thumbs up, despite Damon not being able to see it.

Stef took her father off speakerphone and lifted it back to her ear. "You done?"

"Make sure you tell him about the weapons I have in my basement," Damon added.

"Love you, Dad, goodnight," she said dismissively, rolling her eyes as she hung up.

Stef sagged down onto the couch beside Raid just as he was shifting himself into a sitting position. "Sorry, my dad's pretty protective of me."

"How come he wasn't this protective over you when you were dating that loser, Cristian?" Raid griped.

"That's because I didn't really talk to him about Cristian."

Raid read between the lines, his lips twitching into a smile. "But you do talk to your dad about me?"

Stef was totally busted. "I might have said one or two unflattering things," she teased.

Raid laughed, knowing better than to ask what those things were. Her father's reaction was more than a sufficient clue. Then a question suddenly niggled at him. Dimitri had said that Cristian had been lying to him. Cristian thought that both he and Adam had been part of the ritual, when, in fact, it had only been Adam. Why would he think that? "Did you tell Cristian that I was the witch who performed in the ritual?" he asked.

"I told Cristian that one of you was a witch, I never told him which one," Stef said, "but, yes, I told him that you both took part in the ritual."

"Why?"

"Because then he would have wanted you both kept safe," Stef explained. "He didn't want Adam to die, only for me to lose my humanity, and he didn't want you to die, only for me to become a vampire permanently. It was the vampire he always wanted. Though I never told him who that was."

"Gabe," Raid sighed.

"Yes," Stef admitted. "Gabe."

Raid paused for a moment, fidgeting with his hands. He locked them. He unlocked them. He locked them again. Okay, he had to ask, else it was going to eat him up inside. "Do you have feelings for Gabe?" he spat out as quickly as he could, not allowing himself time to regret the words.

Stef's face whipped around to face him, her eyes wide. Her lips twitched. She was amused. More than amused, she was now flattening her lips to hold back a smile. A supressed sound followed, was it chuckling? Suddenly she couldn't contain herself any longer and threw her hands over her face, bursting into laughter.

"That's funny to you?" Raid asked, perplexed.

With her hands still covering her face, her laughter still stopping her from catching her breath, Stef just nodded vigorously. Finally she took a deep gasp of air and removed her hands, her eyes wet from laughter. "Raid, no, absolutely no! Do you realize how old Gabe is?"

"Late thirties? Early forties?" he queried.

"More like six-hundred years old," Stef laughed.

"Well, at least he isn't younger than you," Raid mumbled.

Stef ruffled Raid's hair. "Aw, are you feeling insecure about your age?" she laughed. "You're only a week younger than me."

"Well, since you stopped aging at eighteen, I'm going to consider myself older than you now," he decided.

Stef looked at Raid endearingly. She had never seen him so intimidated by another man before. It was rather cute. Perhaps there was something about vampires that made witches feel apprehensive. If they chose not to use their magic, witches could actually appear quite normal. But what was normal about vampires? Their inability to age? Their ability to heal? Their superhuman strength? Their extreme speed and agility? Their heightened senses? Their mind control? Even their appearance wasn't normal when they felt enraged or hungry. It was probably quite easy to see them as a threat. To see Gabe as a threat. To see her as a threat. Something about this saddened Stef. Nothing about her interactions with Raid had so far been normal, and she didn't have much time left with him.

She had an idea.

"Do you think you could stay up just a little bit longer?" she asked him.

Raid looked at her with interest. "What did you have in mind?"

"I think we have some balloons somewhere," she smiled, raising her eyebrows at him in eager anticipation. "Have you ever played a game called American Politics?"