By the next morning, she'd read the small script over and over at least a hundred times. She woke up atop the blankets in her small bedroom, both her journal and Harmon's next to her, the clue tucked between the pages of her own. It wasn't the revelation of a clue she'd hoped for, it didn't lead her directly to the next location, but it wouldn't be such a secret society if anyone could find it, right

She still couldn't help but feel a sense of vindication over her win, proving the entire context and competition between her and Salvatore basically meaningless. She'd figured out what he couldn't in only a month of summer. What had taken an entire school year for him to earn, what she had lost in the same amount of time, she had made up faster. Time was on her side, clearly, and if she played her cards right, she could perhaps even welcome him to the society herself. Recount the past meetings he'd missed while taking his time traipsing around Harmon, Vermont. Oh, wouldn't that just be a delight?

Though, the girl had to remind herself often that she wasn't doing this to best Salvatore. Although it was a fantastic addition. Piecing together the puzzle that Arthur Harmon had laid out before his death was most fascinating, and held her rapt attention more than anything else.

For hours after waking, she stayed wrapped in a dressing gown, looking over everything she had learned so far and trying to identify any connections she'd since missed.

Her room, like the rest of the small downtown apartment, was cozy. There was just enough space for a twin bed, a chest of drawers, and a small writing desk. However, most everything sat covered in stacks of books, rendering the desk unusable and the bed just as good a canvas for mystery solving as anything else.

It was much smaller than the room she'd grown up in and slightly bigger than the dorm, but it was entirely hers. Unlike her childhood home, she was free to do what she pleased. Her father was dead, and even if he were alive, would not be allowed on the premises, so she could rest easy knowing that her bedroom door would never be locked from the outside, she would never be sequestered to the space, and that made it feel all the larger.

Unlike her dorm, there were no ominous notes slid under the door, no men living within five feet of the entrance, no cracked walls and uncomfortable beds. Just a space all her own with Caroline on the opposite side of the hall.

Re-reading the scroll she'd found in Arthur Harmon's mysteriously empty coffin, she drummed her fingers on the bedspread next to it. If Damon hadn't interrupted, she would have spent more time there, would have investigated the other coffins as well, such as Celeste's. But then again, if he hadn't arrived, she may have been trapped inside forever. Certainly, that would have been conducive to good mystery-solving, but perhaps not to her overall well-being.

Her eyes lingered on the words supernatural and magic, and her mind drifted back to the conversation she'd had with the detective just a few months prior. Could it be possible that some sort of other creature existed within the walls of society, reality? There was doubt, a worm that crawled into her brain and wriggled about, refusing to let her forget the way the body of Mr. Lithander had looked, refusing to forget the tale of Dracula and how the detective had laid everything out on the table before her.

But to doubt and to believe were tangentially different. Of course, Elena Gilbert had many a doubt about the world as she knew it. And she wanted to believe in this other, in magic and perhaps even a kind of supernatural. But that did not make those things true and real. Even seeing them written in the handwriting of someone long dead, she could not bring herself to further question the reality of immortality.

People grow old and they die, that's how life worked. Unfortunately, everything she'd learned so far about Arthur Harmon tried to tell her otherwise. So, she was left clutching her head, fingers pressed against her temples trying to figure everything out in a way that made logical sense. Because if she were to disregard logic completely and go down this path of utter, to be honest, nonsense, where would that leave her? And where would it lead her?

Even just staring at the words, shaping them in her mouth like a foreign language, it felt like a type of insanity. Thankfully, Caroline's delicate knock on her bedroom door jolted her from what would likely become the unraveling of her brain.

"Come in," Elena called, as she collected the pieces of information she'd spread out, wanting to seem like less of a lunatic in the eyes of her friend.

The door creaked open, and Caroline leaned against the door frame, surveying the room as if she were hoping to catch Elena doing something just as she had been, neck deep in clues and likely in over her head, though she would never admit it.

What would Caroline think, is she asked her? Was she one to believe in such fantasies? Or would she think Elena insane for even suggesting such a thing? Either way, the brunette couldn't bring herself to ask the question, couldn't even figure out how to form the words in her mind to speak it, and figured that that meant it was best left worming deeper into her brain.

"We're going out tonight," Caroline declared. No hello, no how are you, no do you want to go out tonight? This was typical Caroline, of course, but it still always caught Elena off-guard to be told their plans so directly. It left little room to argue, which Elena was wont to do, and Caroline knew.

"Where?" she asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing up, following the blonde into the living room. Even a few weeks after moving in the place was still cramped with trunks and boxes, stacks of books on the coffee table, on the floor, next to the couch, and paintings leaned against the baseboard instead of hung up. Caroline had promised to get the paintings hung up just as Elena had promised to get the books put away, but both had been busy with other things and thus the apartment still looked quite a mess.

"You're coming with me," Caroline said, in lieu of a response, that same finality.

Elena tilted her head to the side, her brown hair falling over her shoulder as she stared at Caroline with a knowing expression. "Salvatore's or the twins'?"

"God, the twins'. Damon doesn't host at his apartment," Caroline said, disbelieving at even the insinuation.

Elena only shrugged. "I've been there once or twice."

The blonde was taken aback by this. "Really?" she sat down on the couch and steepled her fingers, placing her chin upon them, leaning forward eagerly like a child about to hear a bedtime story. "What was it like?"

Another shrug. "Dark, I guess. It's nothing particularly special." She played with a piece of her hair, flipping it back and forth between finger and thumb. "I saw him yesterday."

"Salvatore?"

She nodded. "I think he might be following me."

"That's absurd," Caroline said, declared.

Elena recounted the entire story, leaving out some perhaps… non-vital information, like the small details changed in the clue she'd given Damon. Caroline only looked at her like it was still, well, absurd.

"It sounds to me like he saved you," she said, after a beat of silence.

Elena scoffed at this, the mere idea of a man saving her from a place in which he was not invited, in which she did not know he would be. She was persistent, she was unwavering in the face of such difficulties, and she would have figured a way out on her own. Salvatore deserved no credit for saving her when she had not asked, not needed it. And maybe she was just being stubborn, but she refused to give him any sliver of credit for following her, which was the only reason he could have known to save her in the first place.

"I would have saved myself if he hadn't been following me."

Caroline looked at the other with a touch of concern, like she thought maybe Elena had lost her mind.

"I'm sure it was just a coincidence, Elena. I don't think Damon has any reason to follow you." But there was something in her voice that said otherwise, a bit of apprehension or a smile just a notch too forced.

Now Elena scanned her, crossing her arms over her chest as she paced back and forth before the couch. "How well do you really know him, anyway?"

"We grew up together."

"And he's not the stalking sort?"

"You can't be serious, Elena."

"I am!" she said, having to restrain herself from stomping a foot like a petulant child. "Why on earth else would he show up at the same time, in the same cemetery, in the same tomb, on the same day? There's coincidence, and then there's whatever that was."

In the moment, standing in the tomb with him, she'd been willing to chalk it up to coincidence, but the more she thought about it, the louder the voices in her head became, and the less she wanted to believe that they had just happened upon one another. That they had just happened to be searching for the same clue at the same time in the same place. It was preposterous. Out of the hours of sunlight in a day, of which there were many, what were the chances of two people being at the same odd location at a specific time? Where were the mathematicians when she needed them? She couldn't possibly be the only one who found this matter at least interesting, at least a possibility.

"I suppose you could ask him at dinner tonight," Caroline said, before standing up and walking toward the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee.

"You're right, Caroline. He loves telling me the truth."

"Would you like to be the pot or the kettle today?" she asked, taking a slow sip of her coffee after, looking at Elena over the rim of the mug.

Elena's teeth were grit so hard together, her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth. "Don't quote Don Quixote at me."

"Oh, are you the only woman allowed to read, now?"

"Is this a fight?" Elena asked, stepping closer to her friend, a wrinkle in the middle of her brows where they drew together with concern. "Are we fighting?"

Caroline placed her mug on the counter and stepped around to drop a hand atop Elena's. "Of course not. If you really think he's following you, then I believe you. Of course, I believe you. I just don't know why."

Elena nodded, although Caroline's words didn't sound fully truthful, but instead as if she were only saying them to avoid the fight that brewed between their snappy words and the building volume behind them.

Tapping her fingers on the counter, Elena sighed. "I don't either. But I'm going to find out." Lest it be another thing the man kept from her. Another thing to add to the list, another reason not to trust him further than she could throw him—which was not far at all.

Apparently, it had been too much to ask for the summer to be not only free of Damon Salvatore but free of the dramatics that seemed to follow in his shadow.

A/N: Short chapter, but don't worry! Uploading another one as we speak, then back to our regularly scheduled every Sunday programming. Hope you're enjoying this so far, and thank you so much for all your kind reviews!