The hangover kept her in bed for most of that morning. As much as she wanted to pace around thinking about the nightmare, thinking about the conversation she'd shared with Caroline the night prior, she curled up a heavy blanket and fell back to sleep instead.

When she woke hours later, the sun high in the sky, it was to the sound of voices in the living room. She could neither sneak out of the room to investigate, nor walk out in her sleeping gown. Despite wishing to spend most of the day in her bedclothes, she slowly changed into her disguise—that was beginning to feel like a cage—brushed and braided her hair, pinned it up, and slipped on a hat.

In the time it took to become Jeremy, the arguing didn't stopped. She tried to close her door as quietly as possible, but the voices both ceased the moment it clicked closed.

In the living room, Caroline and Damon both stood with arms crossed over their chests, brows furrowed, their lips both drawn in a tight, angry line across their faces.

"Sorry, Jeremy," Caroline said, as soon as Elena stepped into view. "I didn't mean to wake you. There's coffee in the kitchen. Might still be warm." The anger didn't disappear from her tone, but she at least offered a small, warm smile before turning her glare back on Damon.

Which led Elena to her next thought, why was Damon in their living room? She didn't have long to mull it over, because as she walked into the kitchen to grab a mug, Damon caught her by the upper arm and it was just like the previous night all over again.

She turned around. Caroline had already disappeared off to her own bedroom, clearly using it as an opportunity to escape whatever scrutiny Damon had aimed in her direction for the last half an hour.

"We need to talk," Damon said, voice firm, jaw tight, looking at her closely like he thought she might run.

She shrugged away his arm and turned back to the kitchen, continuing her mission for a cup of coffee, hot or not. "Do we?" she asked, barely interested in what he had to say.

"Yes," he said, the word gritted out like it was painful to sound nice, not that he'd been successful.

Placing a mug on the counter between them, she picked up the kettle and slowly poured the bitter liquid, not speaking until after she'd stirred in a spoonful of sugar. Lowering the mug from her lips, she glanced at Damon over it. "Then by all means," she said, just as bitter as the coffee.

"This isn't a game anymore, Jeremy," he said, and this use of her first name—albeit not her real one—almost made her want to take him seriously. "If you keep searching, you're going to get hurt. You need to back off from this Harmon stuff."

"I'm not having this argument with you again. It's tired and so am I. Of you." Maybe her words were more bitter than they needed to be, but anything to keep him at arm's length and out of her head.

"I'm serious."

"And I don't care," she fired back. She'd rather stick her hand in boiling hot coffee than stop investigating now.

Damon's eyes closed for a moment, like he was trying to figure out what to say, how to get through to her. When they opened again, they focused on her and she felt drawn to them, like a magnet.

"You're going to leave this alone, Gilbert. The whole thing, Harmon, the society. You're going to drop it."

There was a confidence in his words that should have scared her, should have stunned her into submission, but instead, she just laughed in his face. He reared back like he'd been slapped and she licked her lips. "Let's get one thing straight Salvatore, because you clearly do not understand what we are."

Elena took a step closer to her, tilted her head up to look him in the eye, unafraid even though he towered over her. "We are not friends. Right now, we're not even peers. And you do not get to tell me what to do. Ever."

"You are going to get yourself killed," he said and his gaze did not soften.

She sighed dramatically. "If you'd stop treating me like a child and instead told me what it is you know, then perhaps I wouldn't." He opened his mouth but she cut him off. "You can't. I know. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm certain we've had this conversation before."

"I will not—" he started, but Elena wasn't done interrupting.

She took another step closer and they were breathing the same air. "Don't pretend to care about me, Salvatore. I know that you do not. If you had to choose between telling me what you know and letting me die, we both know what you'd choose."

He grabbed her arm again, holding her there under his gaze. "Don't pretend that you wouldn't run in head first without thinking even if you knew exactly the danger you were getting yourself into."

For once, he'd read her completely correctly. Elena loved nothing more than a puzzle, and as it turned out, she loved the dangerous ones, too. Nothing could stop her from getting into the society at this point, even if her very life hung in the balance. She'd fought her way to get here, she'd fight her way out of whatever came next.

Her speechlessness only left a smile on Damon's face. A condescending, I know I'm right kind of smile that she wished to wipe off.

"Your life is in danger, Jeremy. I'm asking you, as your friend, to bow out."

She only shook her head at him, barely perceptible. "We are not friends, and the answer is no." Why was he so certain something was going to happen to her? This would all be so much easier if he could just explain himself. But she knew that it all boiled down to power. And in knowledge, lay power. He held this over her, controlled her with it. Or at least, he could try. She refused to budge. "Let go of me."

He dropped his hand and she took a wide step around him, walking straight out the front door and letting it slam heavily behind her. For a moment, on the steps, the world fell into a heavy silence.

Everything came crashing down around her all at once. She'd only wanted an education, wanted to feel like she belonged. And now there was magic, immortality, vampires, and Damon Salvatore and his ominous threats of some danger she was in but couldn't explain. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes at the sheer overwhelm of it all. If only the real Jeremy could have been there. He'd have wrapped his arms around her in an instant, and probably had some choice words with Damon in the meantime. But he wasn't, and thus, she was alone on the stoop, having stormed out of the place where the one person who could have at least attempted to comfort her was located. And god, she wanted to cry so desperately. The tears almost came, but the door opened behind her and she frantically wiped them away before turning around.

"What?" she barked, hands curling into fists at her sides.

"I'm," he started, and there was a long pause between the two words spoken. Never could she have predicted the next one. "Sorry."

"What?" she asked again, softer this time.

"I'm sorry," he said it again, even though she hadn't expected him to. "I don't think you're unintelligent, or incapable. In fact, I think you're maybe one of the smartest people I've ever met."

"Yourself included?" Elena asked and he immediately rolled his eyes.

"Well let's not be ridiculous," he said with a smile, nudging her shoulder with his. "Come on. I want to show you something."

She didn't give him a second to change his mind. She only followed.

The feeling of overwhelm didn't stop as she walked with Damon through downtown Harmon. Now, it was all uncertainty and a strange sense of anxiety that made her blood seem to pump faster, her heart beat harder. Her body always reacted strangely when Damon was nice to her, and she couldn't help but linger on Caroline's words from the night before as she looked at Damon out of the corner of her eye. He was attractive. She wasn't blind. Tall, strong arms, cool blue eyes. Melting at his feet would be easy. It was his personality that gave her pause. So when he looked at her with kind eyes and said things like I'm sorry, her brain scattered. The one lock that prevented her from wanting? It started to rust.

They didn't speak much on the way to wherever they were going, only exchanged awkward glances, one always looking away when the other looked toward.

Elena only knew how to fight with him, how to argue and snap back at his comments. She didn't know how to deal with the nice version of her rival. Each time her lips parted to speak, they closed again after only a moment. Finally, she asked, "Where are you taking me?"

And he chuckled, deep and infectious in a way that made her smile. "Not the patient type, are you?"

"Not particularly," she said. Why wait for things if she could work harder and gain access to them immediately? Even before her search for knowledge began, she'd never been the patient type. It had caused much contention between her and her father, as she always tried to reach for books he claimed she didn't have the skills for.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and motioned toward a squat building to their left. "Come on," he said, holding the door open for her. Inside, the walls were lined with small tables and comfortable chairs, burning bright lamps at each one, and a pianist in the corner playing a gentle melody to the smell of fresh coffee. Another place that Elena had never seen before. She did need to take up Caroline's offer and explore the town as a whole sometime soon.

"Would you like a cup?" Damon asked, pulling a few bills out of his pocket in exchange for a mug of black coffee they'd served him without asking. It struck her then that she'd stormed out without finishing Caroline's bitter brew.

She nodded, reaching into her bag for a few dollars. Damon held a hand out to stop her. "On me, part of the apology," he said.

"With sugar, please," she told the man behind the counter. He wore a tan apron with brown coffee stains and bits of ground espresso dotted around the middle. Setting a mug down, he scooped in a spoonful of sugar and poured coffee from a simple kettle. He gave it a quick stir before sliding it across the counter in her direction. Damon handed a few more bills, muttered "Keep the change," and then took a seat at one of the small tables toward the back of the room.

She sat across from him in the dim fire light, even dimmer in the back, like a sconce had been skipped just for shady dealings such as theirs.

He slid a small envelope across the table and Elena recognized it instantly. After all, it had been pinned to the corkboard in their classroom for the entire school year. But her fingers didn't reach out to touch it, even though she'd longed to do so since that first day.

"What is this?" she asked, looking at the creme envelope and then at him, a small (yet still smug) smile on his face.

"A peace offering."

She had half a mind to push it right back across the table, to tell him exactly where he could place his peace offering. Instead, her fingers seemed to act without permission, reaching out and grabbing it, slipping open the envelope and finding a thick piece of parchment. A symbol of some kind was stamped on the back of the card, an hourglass on its side, sand distributed evenly between the two chambers, simple. Delicate hands turned over the card, finding tight, yet even script neat in the center. It read:

Eternity the prestigious seek.
Their path blocked by stone and time,
a monster most unjust
entombed before his prime,
find heart in which you trust
and eternity may you find.

Setting the card down, her eyes continued to scan over the words, her mouth shaping them soundlessly.

"Path blocked by stone and time," she said, "Maybe a clock tower?" She'd remembered passing it on the way to the library, it stood wide and tall in the center of town square and made a, frankly, obnoxious sound on the hour.

Damon nodded at this and placed something else on the table. A scrap of paper, not nearly as official as the first. It looked as if it'd been scribbled on, but upon closer inspection, she could see text in the negative space. "What am I looking at?" she asked, scanning the letters and symbols but not able to put them in any order that made sense.

"The top of the clock tower was engraved. This is what it said. It's a cipher of some kind," he explained.

She couldn't help but laugh. "You scaled the side of the clock tower?"

"I used a ladder, Gilbert," he clarified, and she rolled her eyes. She would have paid good money to see him climb to the top without assistance. Moving on, he said, "Have you found anything unreadable? Anything written in code or with symbols? This might be the key."

"And what?" she asked, looking at him dead in the eyes. "You're giving this to me? In exchange for…?" she couldn't wrap her head around what he wanted, what they were doing.

"Fuck, Gilbert. I'm saying we could work together," he said, fingers curled into a fist on the table. It almost made her smile to know that she got under his skin as much as he did hers.

"And you'll tell me what you know." She looked at him, really looked, tried to determine if he could be trusted if they could be friends. This wasn't just working on a group project together, this was her future. Could he really be trusted not to pull one over on her? Not to keep information from her?

"That's what I'm doing now," he said, leaning back, arms crossed over his chest.

She mirrored his movements, drawing her hands away from the clue and the cipher, pulling back, as if she needed to take her hands physically off the information in order to think straight. "Why could any of this get me killed?" she asked, both eyebrows raised, head tilted to the side, lips in a firm, straight line.

His smug smile dropped and a sigh escaped his lips. "I've given you what I can, I've proposed a partnership. You're just going to have to trust me."

"With my life?" she asked, a hint of sarcasm tinged her words.

But he only looked at her, deadly serious, and said, "Yes."

So she said, "Okay," and "I have something to show you."

A/N: We're at about the halfway point of act 2! I'm so excited about everything to come. Thanks again for reading.