A/N: Garglyswoof! *rolls up like 2 years late with smut* I have only been working on this since the 2022 Autumn Exchange. ️Here it is, the long promised fic! Ilu girl, please come back, fandom dearly needs you.
Cupcakemolotov, thank you again for being the ultimate cheerleader and saying the words "necromancer Caroline" to me in the first place. You're the bees to my knees.
Anagramofanakin, thank you again for doing such a stellar beta job for me! You shined this up beautifully!
Necromancing The Stone
Her coffee was cold. It wasn't the end of the world, but Caroline still managed to feel that keen annoyance that comes with mild inconveniences, and she made a face at herself. Heating it up with a spark of magic was well within her capabilities, but then it would have that slightly burnt reheated taste. There was nothing for it, she needed a new cup.
Setting down her wire crimpers, she slid off her stool, laced her fingers together, and stretched, rising up on her stockinged feet on tiptoes. Her shoulders gave a loud crack and relief was instantaneous. Sitting hunched over the intricate spell she was putting together with delicate wire and tiny crystals for hours was a trial on the spine, and even though the herbs kept her body young, there was a certain awareness of the weight of time that came with it. Her well over two-hundred years sat on her shoulders lightly most days, but this morning she had woken up restless.
With a quick shake of her arms to get stiff muscles moving, she picked up her cold coffee mug and left the extra bedroom she'd converted into her workspace when she'd moved here five years ago. The three-bedroom New England farmhouse was a bit big for just her, and she rattled around the space by herself when Enzo or Bonnie weren't around to fill the rooms with laughter and the effervescent feeling of their individual energies.
The kitchen was one of her favorite spots, taking up the majority of the east side of the house. The window above the sink and the sliding glass doors both looked out over her deck and down the dirt path to the small scrap of rocky beach she could call her own. Bright and cheerful in cream granite counter-tops, yellow walls, and sage green cupboards, it reflected the morning sun—weak though it was through the autumn Maine cloud cover—dangling sun catchers throwing wavery rainbows on the ceiling. A large granite island sat in the middle of the space, half of it wooden butcher block, worn from hundreds of dinners and herbal spell prep. A small breakfast nook was tucked in the corner by another window.
Caroline dumped her mug out in the sink and rinsed it, the sight out the window of the cold surf splashing up on the rocks calming on days like these. Spending several long seconds choosing her flavor pod for the Keurig—pumpkin spice, Enzo could bite her—she leaned against the counter and stared into the middle distance while her coffee brewed, a hand unconsciously reaching for the necklace she no longer wore, contemplating her schedule for the day. The kind of restlessness that itched under her skin couldn't be fixed by a trip to the farmer's market, but maybe she could soothe it a bit, stop by the used book stall for another clutch of delightfully trashy romance novels. The spell she was weaving for a client in Oregon could sit for a few hours while she went into town for a bit.
Enzo and Bonnie were back in town from their trip to Peru, and while she had seen them when she picked them up at the airport and drove them home, they hadn't gotten a chance between jet lag and Bonnie's schedule to catch up. Maybe she could convince Bonnie to take a long lunch if she didn't have a house showing. Enzo would probably love to get out of the house.
She was halfway to her mug of coffee when her house wards shivered, followed quickly by a knock on her door. Reaching for the feeling, she tasted the magic of the person waiting on her stoop. Both dead and alive, it was like nothing she had felt before and also oddly familiar, a strange contradiction. Not unlike Enzo's grave dust presence, but moon-drenched in the earth. The magic called to her like a howl through the deep woods, something wild, something lethal.
They waited politely enough for something so dangerous, just barely pressed on the edge of her door wards to alert her of their presence. The parameter wards that looked for the intent to cause harm hadn't gone off, but Caroline hadn't gotten to her age by being incautious. Inanely, she wished for her slippers—discarded under her work table—as she padded to the front door and peeked through the peephole.
The man on her front porch had his back to her while he looked up at the woods that butted up against the front of her property. Her dirt driveway wound through them from the main road up to the garage, and it was free of vehicles of any kind. He was presumably alone, a medium-sized blue pastry box held in one hand. There was something achingly familiar in the breadth of his shoulders in his black coat, the relaxed stance in dark jeans and well broken in boots. She studied the back of his head, his hair a shade that wasn't sure if it was blond or brown. Slim build, not too much taller than her.
Who the fuck was on her doorstep?
Caroline shoved the sleeves of her chunky cream sweater up her arms and pulled an aneurysm to the fingertips of her right hand, jerking the door open. "Excuse you, but my consultation hours are clearly stated on—" He turned to face her, and she froze at the sight of a face she had never expected to see again. A smile curved the lips that time had not let her forget, and she watched in numb fascination as gold bled into his irises.
"On your website?" He trailed his eyes from the messy bun keeping her blonde hair out of her face, down her cable-knit sweater and fleece-lined leggings to her wool socked feet. The gold faded back to familiar blue as he met her eyes again, his gaze no less warm for the lack. "Yes, well, I did bring a peace offering." He made a small gesture with the box.
"Klaus," she whispered hoarsely. There was an odd ringing in her ears and she blinked a few times. No, he was still there.
"Yes," he said, almost reassuringly.
Her eyes dropped to the box. "That's for me?" Her voice sounded funny. Klaus was starting to look a little concerned, which was weird because Klaus didn't do concerned.
"I understand they're your favorite," he said with a self-deprecating little shrug in acknowledgment of what he had adamantly called 'information gathering' and she had generously called 'stalking.'
Her hands moved forward as emotion started to seep in, and he placed the box in them. Klaus stepped back carefully and pushed his hands into his jean pockets. "Caroline, I wanted to—"
She stepped back and slammed the door in his face so hard the windows rattled. For good measure, she twisted the deadbolt, and it slid home loudly.
"Plan C then," she heard him mutter quietly, with an odd note of relief in his voice.
"Go away, Klaus!" She put her back against the door as if that would add to her defenses. The anger was well and truly riding her, and her hands trembled slightly against the box. Scowling at it, she noted the logo of her favorite bakery. In Paris. Okay, maybe she wouldn't throw the box out.
His footsteps came closer, his voice coming from right next to the door. "Sweetheart, I've come to apologize." Tone soft, he sounded like he was leaning against it.
"You can take your apology, and you can fuck right off," she said heatedly. Prying up the little tab of tape holding the box closed, she lifted the lid to look down on a half dozen chocolate croissants and an assortment of small cakes. The scent of fresh pastries and sugar wafted up to greet her nose, and she frowned, offended. How dare he remember her sweet tooth. He hadn't even remembered her name last time.
"Surely by now you must know I didn't mean a word of it?" he coaxed.
She rolled her eyes, even though he couldn't see it. "It's been a year, you ass. And a hundred before that. Too little, too late!"
Caroline tried to fight the memory of that sticky summer day in New Orleans a little over a year ago. In a crowd of tourists when their eyes had met after a century of looking, and for one moment she'd hoped… well, she'd hoped for a lot of things that hadn't happened.
"Sweetheart, there are many things I hope you remember about me, as I remember you. Particularly what an exception to all my rules you are, and that I do not explain myself, as a rule. But for you, I'd like to have the opportunity."
It galled her that he sounded so sincere. Truth was one of Klaus' favorite weapons, it being much easier to manipulate people with. Was he trying to manipulate her, yes, probably, but out of malice or a genuine desire to reconcile? She spat her words over her shoulder. "Ha! So now you remember me? That's convenient. It didn't seem like it last time we spoke."
"Caroline Elizabeth Forbes, the first time I saw you, you wore red and refused to bend your exactly well-planned schedule for even my edicts. I know your hip bones are ticklish, and you scrunch your nose when you're happy. I know I've spent a century living with the fact that the last time I kissed you, it was a goodbye."
She closed her eyes against his words, head tilting back until it bumped against the door. He was right, every word. Damn him. As much as she didn't want to listen, had spent the past several months cursing his name, her damnable curiosity wanted to know what he had to say for himself.
Spinning around, she threw the deadbolt back and jerked open the door. Klaus searched her face, eyes a little wide, a bit of something like hope cracking open behind them. Pointing at the box, she squinted at him. "This buys you twenty minutes of my time. Make it count." Pointedly, she did not invite him in.
His jaw clenched slightly. "That day in the Witches Quarter, I had the eyes and ears of my enemies on me, too many to let on how I have searched for you since we parted. There was a plot, a thing of magic, flesh, and bone meant to entrap me." Glancing away, the fury was still present in the lines of his body.
Her mouth twisted. "The baby?"
He looked up sharply. "You heard."
She snorted. "I have contacts in New Orleans. Spell supplies, mostly. Once I knew what to hint at, they were happy to share the gossip. The great hybrid—grats on that, by the way—Klaus Mikaelson knocked up some werewolf swamp princess." A laugh tumbled out her mouth, bitter as it tasted. "As if."
A startled look crossed his face. "You didn't believe it?
Her expression was flat. "You're dead, you've been dead for like a billion years. Some things just don't work anymore." She waved a hand at the area in question, unthinkingly.
Heat rolled through his eyes and the corner of his mouth tipped up. "I assure you, love, that some things are working fine, procreation aside."
Caroline coughed and looked away. "So, fake baby. Evil witch plot. And you had to, what, be an asshole and pretend to forget my name in an attempt at chivalry?"
Klaus grimaced. "Something like that, yes."
"You called me Karen." Putting a hand on her hip, she squinted.
He looked disgruntled. "I did not have a plan for that situation."
"You panicked."
"Clearly I didn't. You were safe, no one asked any inconvenient questions that lead to their disappearances, I ensured you reached home. Everything turned out fine." Lifted one shoulder in an offhand shrug.
She scowled at him. "Except I'm mad at you."
"I can live with your anger, sweetheart." His voice was soft. "I won't live with you dead, or worse. The Other Side would have to give you back."
Warmth bloomed in her chest and she tried desperately to squash it. "I could have been dead for years for all you knew. You never showed up, you never found me." As hard as she tried, her voice was still hurt.
He shook his head. "I knew." Sliding a thumb under the collar of his shirt, he pulled out a tangle of necklaces. A few leather cords with beads and what looked like a canine tooth, something that looked suspiciously like a rosary, and one slim chain that led down to a tiny bottle filled with blood that her eyes wanted to slide off of. Her lips parted at the flicker of memory, her slipping into his pocket a stoppered bottle of her blood the night they ran in opposite directions.
"The original bottle broke," he was saying, "And what remained was never enough to find you while you wore your trinket."
Unbidden, she touched the place where the flat disk on a chain she used to wear under her clothes had rested. A masterful payment for saving the son of a noble from several lifetimes ago, it kept her from being found by magical means. She had finally taken it off when she thought Klaus no longer cared, the threat of Mikael finding her and using her against Klaus such a slim impossibility. It had taken so much magic to keep up, being free of the burden seemed a fair trade off.
"But it was enough to tell me you lived."
Caroline felt a tingle of magic now that it no longer rested against his skin, mixed in with his hybrid aura. Putting out a hand carefully, she reached a finger to the tiny bottle, no bigger than an inch. Klaus stood watching her as she tapped a finger against the glass, then pulled her hand back.
"There are a few spells on it. Something passive, and something like a notice-me-not," she said quietly. It was getting harder to not believe him, but she had been so hurt.
He tucked it back under his shirt protectively, and all sense of the bottle faded. "I can feel your heartbeat, while you're alive. I knew someday I would find you, as long as you stayed that way." An odd look flickered across his face. "I understand resurrections are difficult without a body."
"And New York?" she asked tiredly. She hadn't even gotten her second cup of coffee, Caroline mourned silently. Trying to contemplate the massive amount of magics he must have had a witch expend to feel her heartbeat of all things? What kind of favors had he promised or threats had he made? Unbelievable.
Shaking his head a little, Klaus looked grave. "Mikael was too close for months, I couldn't risk leading him to you."
Huffing, she glanced around behind him, as if expecting Klaus' personal boogeyman to step from the trees, eyes aflame. "Should I expect to have to run again for the honor of this visit?" Bonnie would kill her. Enzo would try to kill Mikael and then Klaus.
Triumph washed over his face. "Mikael is dead by my hand. My days of running are over."
Caroline sighed, emotions a tangled ball in her chest too complex for just relief. "That's… that's great. You know there's always going to be another enemy, another situation? You kept me in the dark for like, a year, Klaus. You could have sent a minion. Not only that, but you clearly know where I live, again." He'd sent jewels to her home the morning after they met, had left them waiting on her kitchen table in the most stalkeresque attempt at flattery ever. It had taken her throwing them back in his face to establish some boundaries. "My mailbox still works. I'm sure you already have my number programmed into your phone."
His face didn't even twitch. "Minions are so impersonal, a letter so inadequate, and the last sounded like a good way to get my number blocked." Shifting forward, his eyes searched her face. "You deserved an explanation, and you deserved it in person. I regret that it took time to find the extent of the rot in New Orleans. I will deal with the rest of it soon, and I came as soon as Elijah could hold things."
Blowing out a breath, Caroline looked up at the ceiling, as if the answers would be written on the underside of her porch roof. "Well, that is some story."
A small smile lifted his mouth. "I'd be happy to spend as much time as you require making it up to you, if you'll allow me."
She made a frustrated noise. "Look, I need some time, and a very large bottle of wine to think about things. Text me your stupid number, in case I have questions."
He pressed his lips together and nodded.
"Your twenty minutes are up," she said grumpily.
Hesitating before leaving, he offered, "I'll be staying at the—" His face did something complicated, "Lobster's Rest for the foreseeable future. You're welcome to find me." The little bed and breakfast was the only one in town.
A moment later he was gone, leaving her porch empty. She let out a breath slowly, stepped back and closed the door. Walking back to the kitchen, she set the pastry box on the counter, opened the lid, and fished out a little cake bite. The taste of it was chocolately ambrosia, and she felt a fresh jab of irritation all over again. How dare he show up with dessert and have, if not excusable, but reasonable answers for her accusations.
Caroline thought of holing up in her living room with that bottle of wine, alone and angry, and abruptly decided that what this situation needed was her Board of Directors. Stomping back to her room, she pulled her phone off the charger and texted Bonnie. 'Will pay any price you require if you take the rest of the day off and meet me at your house.'
To Enzo, she just sent, 'Coming over, please have wine.'
Bonnie took several minutes to answer, first sending her a line of question marks, and then a quick 'be there in 10.' Enzo sent back a thumbs up emoji and a wine bottle emoji.
With barely the presence of mind to shove her feet in shoes and grab her keys on the way out the garage door, time got a little fuzzy as she made her way around to the next neighborhood over. Before she knew it, she was pulling into the driveway of Bonnie and Enzo's house. They didn't have a seaside home like Caroline, as Enzo had wanted a basement further away from the water table than that would provide, and the New England home and surrounding gardens were nestled in a clearing in the orange, red, and yellow woods.
Bonnie Bennett had been one of her best friends since disco was the mode. A chance meeting at a war protest and a subsequent dash from the cops was the start of years of pulling each other's bacon out of the fire. They had gotten away with a quick 'look away' charm, and like finding like, they had spent the next few weeks sitting in small San Francisco coffee shops and hole-in-the-wall eateries together after work. Shared magical heritage and a love of indecent snack foods led to friendship, which led to them ping ponging around the globe together, decade after decade. It had taken no thought at all for them to settle in the same coastal Maine town a few years ago.
Enzo's was a different story, one forged in the blood of shared enemies. What had started as a spring camping trip in 1952 had turned into a nightmare of needles and pain when she had woken up in a mad scientist's murder basement, dosed with rue to the eyeballs in a cell next to one holding a vampire weak from a lack of blood. He had proposed an alliance to escape, one that depended on her offering up a wrist. A few days of her captor's loving care, and she was ready to let the vampire chew her arm off if it got them out of there. He didn't, and they escaped after weeks of planning, but it was a near thing. Some things bound you for life, and shared torture and trust did the trick, earning her an eternal best friend.
Watching Bonnie and Enzo's romance had been a show worth the price of admission. Witches as a rule didn't like vampires. Some of them said it was instinctual, the grave magic resting in their bones, an itch under the skin that wouldn't let them relax. Personally, Caroline called it the lure of the forbidden, and having fallen to it before with disastrous results, tried to stay out of it. But watching charming Enzo cajole and coax her witchy friend from sneers into smiles had been the work of years, a mountain of patience, and one international incident that had been hushed up with the bribe of an illegal capybara. And now they lived one neighborhood over in a charming little Cape Cod style house where Enzo ran his self-employed business out of the basement and Bonnie grew some of the most prize winning roses the town had ever seen.
Enzo met her at the door, a glass of white wine ready for her. Handing it to her as he ushered her in, he waited until she was taking her first sip to ask conversationally, "So who do I need to kill?"
Caroline choked as her wine went down wrong, and coughed. "No one. Do not attempt to kill him." The last thing she needed was Klaus pulling her best friend's heart out of his chest.
"Him?" he said leadingly, as his hand making soothing pats on her back guided her to the kitchen table. She sat gratefully, taking another gulp of wine. Getting too far into the bottle was probably a bad idea for this conversation, but the edges of it needed to be blunted, or she was going to angry-cry, and then nothing would stop Enzo from attempting to kill Klaus, probably with Bonnie's help.
"Bonnie will be here soon, let's just wait for her for this conversation." Nervously, she fiddled with her glass. They'd never had this conversation before.
At the other end of the table, Enzo was putting together a sandwich that scoffed at physics. Apparently, she'd interrupted his lunch, which she'd feel bad about if he hadn't been showing up at her homes unannounced for decades. Also, if this wasn't a crisis worthy of home invasion, she'd resign as chairman of the board.
"Mm, she's pulling up the drive now." He spread more mustard on the bread and plopped the hoagie roll top on.
Caroline eyed the sub with an intrigued horror. "How are you going to eat that?" The veggies alone were two inches, the meat and bread another three or four.
Enzo cut down the middle with a butcher's knife and arranged the halves on a plate. "Oh, I've got skills." The sly look he slanted her as he stuffed sandwich components in the fridge left her little doubt about what he meant.
Groaning, she took another sip of wine. "I really do not ever need to know."
Bonnie came in through the garage door and threw her purse and jacket on the mud bench. "Okay, I'm here, what's the emergency?" She paused halfway to kissing Enzo's cheek as she caught sight of Caroline, her morose expression, and her large glass of Chardonnay. "It is only 11:30, what kind of day have you had?"
Rotating the base of her wine glass on the table, Caroline tried not to look guilty. "That's a long story. A very secret long story."
"Oh my god, are we going to talk about the guy?" Bonnie asked, shock dawning on her face.
Enzo leaned forward and pressed a slightly mustardy kiss to Bonnie's cheek. She made a grossed-out noise and wiped her face, while Enzo looked at Caroline with keen interest. "There's a guy? I haven't heard about a guy recently."
"Not a guy, the guy. The reason that all her dates go nowhere after a night, and she hasn't had a relationship since the 90s." Bonnie pulled out a chair and sat down.
Caroline made a noise of protest. "I've had relationships!"
Crossing her arms and leaning on them, Bonnie shot her a look that dared her to attempt a defense.
"Jason!" she said, quite defensively.
"Lasted three dates, canceled the fourth, never called him back." Bonnie listed on her fingers.
"He had a weird Trine Goddess kink," she mumbled into her glass and tried again. "Dana!"
Bonnie raised an eyebrow. "Two dates, one of which was coffee, and you faked an emergency during dinner."
"She talked constantly," Caroline sighed.
Enzo took a bite of the sandwich. "I happen to know," he said around his mouthful, "That that is not your problem. You like it when they talk."
"... About her chihuahua's pageant rankings?" She held the glass of wine to her temple as if it could save her from this conversation.
"Los Angeles was so weird," Enzo muttered.
"The point is," Bonnie said with a jab of her index finger, "your love life is a disaster and your heart isn't in it. So there has to be the guy that ruined things."
Caroline set her glass down and spread her hands placatingly "He didn't ruin things, he just… set a very high standard. Until he didn't."
"Okay, so, tell us about the guy. What's his name?" Enzo asked like he wasn't already planning to look him up on every government database he could get his hands on.
She licked her lips and steeled herself in case they'd heard of him. "Klaus Mikaelson."
Enzo immediately swore, vividly and creatively, while Bonnie looked back and forth between them. "What, who is he?"
"How did you end up dating the goddamn boogeyman?" he demanded. "When?"
Bonnie whacked the table with her palm. "Who the heck is Klaus Mikaelson?"
Caroline opened her mouth, but Enzo beat her to it. "He's one of the original vampires, the ones we all come from. They're basically unkillable, reportedly psychotic, and feral as a clutch of rabid weasels." He looked at Caroline for confirmation, and she just shrugged, face bland. It's not like he was wrong.
An appalled look crossed Bonnie's face. "Why would you date that?"
Annoyed, Caroline gestured at Enzo. "You're dating a serial killer."
"Contract killer," Enzo corrected, at the same time Bonnie objected, "He's not psychotic!"
"Technically, neither is Klaus." Caroline drained the wine glass and got up, poking her nose into the fridge for more. "He's mostly just a terrible person."
Bonnie leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "That sounds so much better, really." Watching Caroline pour herself another full glass with the familiarity of a best friend's kitchen privileges, she sighed. "Okay, I'll bite. How did you end up dating this terrible person?"
Caroline smiled to herself as she put the bottle back in the fridge. "It was 1922, and I was in Chicago to see Gloria."
Bonnie frowned suspiciously. "What did that old spider want?"
With a shrug, Caroline sat back down again. "What she usually wants from me: someone who is dead to not be." Taking a sip of wine, she relaxed back into the chair. "I'm raising some witch in her back room, and in walks this gorgeous man, full tux, shoulders for days." Really, she should have recognized him on her porch for those shoulders alone. He really was the last person she expected to see.
"And he says something pompous, as he does, wants the witch to stay dead, and I remember saying," she held up a finger, "'Please wait your turn.' And he goes, 'I am unaccustomed to waiting, sweetheart.' And I'm trying to get the final energy manipulation correct, and he's talking at me, and I think I told him that my mental schedule didn't have time for deviations no matter how pretty he is, and Gloria starts hissing that that is Klaus Mikaelson. The man dimples at me, dimples, multiple! Plural! I thought, 'The devil smiles like that while he slides his hand up your skirt.'"
Bonnie was staring at her in some mute kind of fascination. Enzo had his face in one hand. Maybe she should slow down on the wine, she thought, setting the glass carefully on the table.
"And look, the energy has to go somewhere, right? So I just, pour it into the body, and he comes back to life. But I've got a reputation to uphold, so I power through that post-ritual exhaustion and turn to Gloria like, 'Payment time,' and she knows better than to stiff me, so she hands me the stack of bills, and as I pass Klaus he's like, 'I've killed prettier things than you for less,' and I'm all, 'He's alive, keeping him that way is not my problem.' And then I left, and I promptly passed out in the taxi."
Caroline doesn't mention the way Klaus' hand on her arm had felt like a brand, the way her stomach had fluttered with that hint of respect in his eyes when he'd released her.
"I spent the night at a friend's house, and when I got home, there's this jewelry box with my name on it sitting on my kitchen table. Infinity link bracelet, diamonds, pretty as can be." She smiled fondly. "I threw it in his face at a ball, with other choice words about boundaries. He thanked me for my honesty, later."
Bonnie's mouth parted. "The pony drawing, in your living room, the one that disappeared." Both her friends had seen and asked about it once, the little framed picture. After New Orleans, she'd stuffed it in a box in the attic, unable to get rid of it but unable to look at it.
Nodding, Caroline wondered if maybe it might make a reappearance.
"So, with that stellar introduction and flirting techniques seen on 'To Catch A Predator,' you dated Klaus Mikaelson?" Enzo rubbed a hand down his face.
"Yeah, I mean," she paused, struggling for a second. "At first it was just fun. Dinner, dancing, drinks. I thought he was just playing around, maybe he did too at first. But it wasn't. He let me see something real behind the curtain. It wasn't easy, it wasn't always beautiful, but it was real." Caroline trailed off, that echo of memory and how it felt knowing she was falling in love rose in her throat and squeezed her heart.
Bonnie had uncrossed her arms, fingers laced in her lap, and now she stirred. "So, what happened?"
A bitter little smile twisted Caroline's lips. "What usually happened to Klaus: his father showed up, and he had to run."
"His father?" Enzo looked interested, and Caroline shook her head.
"He'd kill you as soon as you helped him find Klaus, and anyways, he's apparently dead now." Good riddance.
He tilted his head in a 'Can't blame a man for trying' way, and Caroline continued. "We were at Gloria's that night, with his brother and sister. There was a raid; Mikael was using it as cover. Gloria got us out through the smugglers tunnels. I wanted to come with them, but Klaus was freaked, and he is not a man who freaks. He told me to run towards Oklahoma City, that we'd meet in New York in six months, once he'd had enough time to lay false trails. I had some spell components in my bag, a small bottle of my blood. I gave it to him, so a witch could find me if everything went south, and I kissed him and… they were gone."
Enzo pushed his plate out of the way and leaned on his forearms. "And New York?"
She shook her head. "Never showed. I wore my tracking stone, in case Mikael came to find me, tried to keep an ear out without drawing attention, but… nothing."
"That can't be it," Bonnie said with a frown. Caroline could tell she'd been thrown by 'rabid weasels' and the rest, but she was a romantic at heart.
Now came the terrible part. She heaved a sigh and took a strengthening gulp of Chardonnay. "Last year when you guys were in Belize? I took a trip down to New Orleans for some of Charlotte's inventory. I'm by the witch quarter and I turn a corner and Klaus is just… there. We see each other at the same time, and it's like surprise Pikachu, and I had this moment where I thought, 'This is it, my search is over.'" Caroline huffs and rolls her eyes. "And he goes, 'Karen? Is that you?'"
"He did not!" Bonnie nearly shouts, halfway out of her seat. Enzo's hands are twitching like he wants his shotgun, or a shovel.
"Nope, he very much did. And I think I said, 'It's Caroline,' you know, like an idiot. And he just goes, 'Oh, well, nice to see you, love.' And he walks past me like… it was nothing."
"Oh my god," Bonnie said, lowering herself back into her chair. Her sharp gaze flicked over Caroline. "Okay but, that was a year ago, and while that explains the depression fest you had going on when we got home, it doesn't explain why you're drinking my wine like a fish today."
Caroline slumped in her chair. "So Klaus showed up at my house this morning with a box of treats from that little patisserie on Rue Rambuteau?"
"Your favorite favorite patisserie?" Bonnie said lowly. "Stalker."
"Did you let him in?" Enzo demanded.
She made a sharp noise of disgust. "No, I slammed the door in his face." After a pause, she added, "Kept the box, though."
Her voice heated, Bonnie said, "Good!"
"Do you know what he wanted?" Enzo asked, like this was a hostage negotiation.
"To apologize," Caroline said, offended all over again. She relayed the conversation with Klaus to various exclamations from her friends. At the end, she took a sip of wine and let them sit with it.
Bonnie folded her arms again with a disgusted look. "That was actually a really good apology. I hate it."
Enzo stabbed his finger down on the tabletop. "The bastard is the goddamn 'original hybrid' and he can't put out feelers for his so-called lost love? Does google not exist? I can find all kinds of things on google. I can find your website on google."
Caroline hitched a shoulder uncomfortably. "Well, I'm not exactly 'Caroline Forbes' this decade, am I? I'm Caroline Nikols." It had seemed nostalgic four years ago, picking a new identity. The past year, she had considered changing her name, except she'd have had to come up with a plausible reason to tell her friends. She didn't know what she felt this morning.
A disbelieving look sat on Enzo's face. "Gorgeous, I could find you. I found him easy enough when someone made me an offer to kill him."
Her jaw dropped. "Who asked you to kill Klaus?"
Waving his hand dismissively, Enzo got up and put his plate in the sink. "Some asshole named Marcel Gerard. After some research, figured out it was basically a suicide mission. Turned him down flat. He can find someone dumber to throw against his problems."
Caroline felt tension drain out of her spine. Was it just fear for Enzo, or was she worried about Klaus too? Was that torch still miraculously lit after she'd buried it in the dirt and tried to drown it? Ugh, that was too much to decide today. She wasn't even sure if she was going to forgive him, yet.
One hand gently swirling her glass of wine, she pried her cell phone out of the pocket in her leggings to check the time. 12:38pm.
There was a text message from an unknown number that only said, 'Hello love.' Caroline paused, and then in a fit of pettiness saved it as 'Klaus .' She'd decide what to do with him later, much, much later.
She didn't drive home until nearly seven o'clock, and she was mostly sober, the world dark and hazy from the nighttime gloom. No conclusions had come to her, her friends happy to talk the subject in circles. Enzo had suggested he head to the Lobster's Rest for a polite shovel talk between men, and Bonnie had helped her talk him out of it for now.
The porch light was on when she pulled into the driveway, something sitting on her doormat. She parked the car in the garage, and then got out and circled around to the porch. Frowning, she stared down at the bottle of wine and the small card tied to its neck before picking it up. Squinting at the label, she raised her eyebrows. Someone had left her an over two-hundred dollar bottle of wine, probably the most expensive thing you could get in town. A huff blew out her mouth. Klaus.
Twisting the card over, she read the note aloud, "The variety here is lacking, but I'm not above tippling things in my favor. Do think of me." She groaned. Was that a wine pun? She was going to commit a murder. No jury would convict her.
With a suspicious look at the porch light she was sure she hadn't left on that morning, she unlocked the door and decided a bath and more wine were just what she needed.
By the next morning, what she decided she really needed was an ice pack and a bottle of Excedrin. Having pulled a stool up to the kitchen island, she rested her head against the cool marble surface and groaned. Idly, she wondered if she could raise herself from the grave, because surely being dead would hurt less. The full might of the Forbes ancestors behind her, and she could do nothing about a hangover.
Resentfully, she eyed her phone and thought about sending Klaus her displeasure.
The Excedrin would be easy to solve, if she could just make herself move from the bar stool. It took a great deal of willpower, but eventually she crawled her way to the bathroom cabinet, and then into the shower, and then into some clothes. By the time she made her way back to the kitchen—the wallpaper paste flavor in her mouth ruthlessly scrubbed away—she was starting to feel moderately optimistic that she would survive, eventually.
The temptation to send her ex pithy messages had not abated.
Her mug from yesterday was still sitting in the Keurig, filled with cold coffee, and she dumped it out and got a new mug from the cabinet. "Take two," she muttered, picking another pumpkin spice k-cup and popping it in the machine.
She glanced at her phone again.
A ridiculous amount of creamer was dumped into her coffee, and she sighed at the first sip. The concept of eating breakfast was completely out the window for the foreseeable future, but a caffeine infusion was exactly what she needed, all wisdom to the contrary aside. Leaning on the counter, she picked up her phone and checked her messages, like she did every morning while sipping out of her cup. A text of concern from Bonnie, several social media updates, two emails from potential clients. Complete silence from Klaus.
Setting her phone down resolutely, she wandered back to her workroom with an eye to check on her progress on the protection amulet she was weaving for a mother who was very concerned about her daughter's first year at university. It was delicate work, very fiddly until it was completed. Would take all her concentration.
Caroline was back at the island in three minutes, pulling up her texts and glaring at the 'Hello love' sitting on her screen.
'Not that I'm accusing you of trying to murder me, but a hangover is a particularly cruel way to go.' she typed out, and then sent before she could think about it too much. Savagely, she turned her screen off and left her phone there. Klaus was an antique, who knew how long it would take him to respond.
She got as far as the hallway to the back of the house when her phone buzzed against the counter. It was embarrassing how quickly she managed to have her phone unlocked, in hand. "Stop it," she told herself sternly. "You're mad at him."
'It sounds like you did some thinking. I could bring you coffee? As I recall, that always helped.' Oh, that smooth motherfucker.
"'See really, I remember you, Caroline, also please invite me into your house, so I can stalk you more thoroughly,'" she mocked to herself, taking a picture of her coffee mug. The porch light hadn't been forgotten yet, the puzzle on her mind of what human he'd gotten to unlock her front door, flip the light from the porch, and then re-lock the door. Her house wards hadn't been set off by someone stepping into her living room, her wards showed no signs of tampering, and clearly the parameter wards hadn't gone off in her absence.
Also, there was the bone deep feeling that Klaus would never mean her physical harm. The opposite, in fact, to a sometimes infuriating degree.
Sending him the picture of her mug, she typed out, 'Thanks, but I've got it covered.' Sitting with that a minute made snakes writhe in her belly. Was she being too bitchy? His apology seemed genuine, and while something petty in her wanted him to suffer for the past year, Caroline had spent more time hanging onto that love than not.
Her throat stuck a little as she noted the message had been read. Before she could change her mind, she kept typing. 'I could go for another cup around 1. There's a coffee shop on Beaudecker St.'
His reply was almost immediate. 'I'll meet you there?'
She agreed, and then set her phone down for the final time, resting her still pounding forehead against the counter. It wasn't a weight off her shoulders, and in fact the snakes seemed to have spontaneously turned to birds, but it was something. Not a promise to forgive him, but at least a step in a direction, instead of the circles she'd been running in since he'd left her porch the day before. At least she could ask him how Kol and Rebekah were.
Caroline pushed herself up and turned to head back to her workroom, when a shrill tone cut across her mind. The parameter wards. Quickly changing directions, she jerked open the hall closet and pulled out an open sweater with deep pockets. Shoving her arms in the sleeves, she made her way to the front door, glad she had put on boots this morning. Having to deal with whatever bullshit was about to greet her in slippers would have been undignified.
A quick peek through the peephole showed her four people arranged in front of her porch, their magic tasting of witch lightning and incense. She took one calming breath, and then pulled open the front door and walked out onto the porch, a pleasant smile on her face.
"Siblings, to what do I owe the honor?" Caroline asked, sliding her hands into the pockets of her sweater. Gods, it was bright out here. She squinted.
A tall woman stepped forward in jeans and a light jacket, her braids wound in a bun on her head. "Caroline Nikols?" At Caroline's nod, she continued. "The hybrid came here, we believe, for assistance with the Piatra Inchisorii." There was a soft bayou twang in her voice, and Caroline felt a sinking feeling that Klaus' problems had followed him to her doorstep.
With a shrug, Caroline looked down at her. "Never heard of it."
"We know he was here," a man in the back said, his freckles standing out starkly on the gray undertones in his pale face. At least someone was worried about their choices here today.
"Good for you," she offered. "Now, if that's all, I'd like you off my property. I have a business to run."
"A business making dangerous magical items and raising the dead," The first woman stated, clenching her fist. Don't do it, Caroline willed at her, don't start what you can't finish.
Caroline shrugged again. "I like challenges. Keeps me young." Her smile was more bared teeth than anything now, a gleeful little reminder that age brought knowledge and power.
A girl who looked like a teenager, big eyes in a thin face, practically snarled at her. "Did Klaus offer you a challenge, the powers of your fellow witches a payment too great to pass up in exchange for doing his dirty work?"
Her eyebrows raised coolly at her, flicking a glance of askance at the leader. "Are the witches of New Orleans using children to do their dirty work these days?" The woman's face tightened.
"Turn over the stone to us, and we let you live," the leader said, like she was being magnanimous.
"My ancestors are not bound in the swamp; you are a long way from home," Caroline pointed out, wrapping her hand around a woven ball of wire the size of a cat toy in one pocket, and a chunk of pumice in the other.
The woman's eyes narrowed. "Klaus isn't here, and you are one witch. I think we'll take our chances."
Caroline tilted her head. "It's your funeral. Do tell your ancestors the Forbes clan sent you."
The silent up til now woman to the left of the man raised her hand, energy gathering in her palm. "That blasphemous line died out hundreds of years ago," she scoffed.
"Did we now?" Her smile was sharp as she fed energy into the chunk of crystal at the heart of the wire ball.
The leader's hands crooked into claws, and she shoved a burst of lightning at Caroline. The wards laid into the posts on her porch, their backs carefully carved with sigilwork, flared with purple light. Like lightning rods, they gobbled up the energy and drained it down into the earth.
On the heels of the flash of light, Caroline drew her hands from her pockets and lobbed the wire ball at the leader. Like most witches, she was terrible at avoiding physical attacks, and the little ball hit her square in the chest. Caroline's own brand of witch lighting poured out from the center, crackling in a cage around the other witch's body. She seized, and then the lightning guttered out, the crystal spent. The witch dropped to the ground like her marionette's strings had been cut.
The teenager screamed in rage and rushed for the porch, hands glowing. Whipping her other hand around, Caroline clenched the pumice, magic pouring into her palm, and then she opened her fingers. Wind like a driving force punched the air and slammed into the girl. She sailed back like she had been shot out of a cannon, and her body crashed to the rocks with the wet crack of bone. She did not get up.
Caroline dove her hands back into her pockets, hands finding another wire ball and a trio of glass marbles strung on a chain.
"Fight like a real witch!" the last woman yelled, white-hot magic stretching between her palms like taffy.
The man had his hands raised, elbows bent, and palms up, and the wind around him was whipping the tails of his duster. From the ground in front of him, sand rose in a mini whirlwind, growing larger and larger.
Caroline kept an eye on him as she faced the woman. "A lack of creative thinking is not my problem here." Pulling the short chain from her pocket, she spun it like a little bolero, the marbles clacking sharply as they started to glow. "You can still leave," she offered.
Glowing globules rose from the witch's taffy situation and shaped into little sharp points. "We'll see who's creative." The missiles launched themselves at Caroline, at the same time she let the marbles fly. The chain projectile shot through the witch's outstretched hands and collided with her chest, and the magic in her palms snuffed out as she made a wheezing noise.
Ducking quickly behind one of the posts, Caroline watched the shards impact against the posts and siding of her house with a sizzle of her wards. After a moment, she poked her head back out. The witch was kneeling on the ground, seemingly choking, a mess of pink spongy flesh in a puddle on the ground in front of her. Caroline squinted in the bright daylight, vision a little spotty with the still present throbbing in her head. Were those her lungs? That had never happened before.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the last witch drop his hands and the spell, and sprint for the car left sitting in her driveway. A sharp blur rushed behind him and his head jerked at an angle, snapping. As the body fell to the ground, Caroline looked up with a reflexive smile, expecting to see Klaus. Instead, she saw someone else entirely.
"Josh?" she asked in some confusion, looking over the tall, brunet young adult. He had moved to town sometime in the last year, and it had taken her, Bonnie, and Enzo a little while to notice the new vampire in town. When they had, Caroline had gone over to the guest house he was renting from one of her neighbors to give him a welcome basket and warn him not to murder where he ate.
He had been nervous, but nice, confessing to being a new'ish vampire and trying to continue his college studies online. She would see him at the farmer's market and wave hi, run into him at the grocery store and ask about his classes. There had been no upswings in deaths, accidental or otherwise around town, so she left him alone for the most part. She did not expect him to be coming to her aid in a witch fight.
A worried expression washed across his face as he dug in his pants pocket for his phone. "You okay?" he asked, eyeing her.
"Yeah, I'm fine, what are you doing here?" she asked, stepping down from her porch.
"One sec," he muttered, tapping his phone and then putting it to his ear. "There's been an incident. Yeah, she's fine." There was a pause as the other person on the line asked a question. "Four witches? Okay." He hung up the phone and shoved it back in his pocket.
The dots were connecting in Caroline's pounding head with furious speed. "You're a minion, you're Klaus' minion!" she accused, pointing a finger at him.
Josh leaned away from her finger like it was going to shoot lightning at him. "Not very willingly, but yeah."
She squinted at him. "Did you seriously just report to Klaus?"
He swallowed and eyed what was probably the lungs cooling in her yard. "Yes."
"And he's on his way?"
Josh nodded. "Uh huh."
Throwing up her hands, she stalked back into the house. Grabbing a chair from the kitchen table, Caroline dragged it out the door, ignoring the twinge in her arm and the faint trickle against her skin. It was probably fine.
The chair made a screeching noise on her hardwood floors, and bumped over the door stop as she dragged it out on the porch. Marching back to her workroom, she grabbed a box of chalk and some silk rope and stomped back outside, pausing only to snatch her phone off the counter.
The little snitch was standing on the bottom step, trying to peer through the door. At her reappearance, he hastily took a step back down.
She pointed at the leader's still faintly smoking body. "That one, into the chair."
Looking from the chair to the body and back at her, he looked confused. "The body?"
Klaus' quality of minions had gone down. "Yes, the body, into the chair. Now, please."
Whatever he saw on her face had him prying the body off the ground and carrying it over to the waiting chair. Gingerly, he set the body down, easing her spine against the back of the chair. The head flopped limply, and he grimaced.
Caroline dropped the rope and chalk on the porch swing and opened the camera on her phone. She took a quick snap of the leader's face, and then trotted down the steps. With her foot, she shoved Lungless' body over and snapped her face, then did the same for the teenager and the man.
"What are you doing?" Josh asked, as she quickly attached them to an encrypted email and sent them and a short note to Enzo, then deleted them off her phone.
"Getting ID." She reached for the rope and was intercepted by Josh's hand.
"You said you were fine!" His face was alarmed as he took in the red soaking through the torn forearm of her sweater. Looking through the knitted fabric at her arm, she winced. Okay, that was a little deeper than she thought it was. She hadn't ducked quickly enough. Ugh, if he was anything like he used to be, Klaus was going to have kittens.
Pulling her wrist out of his hand, she jerked a thumb at the house. "You can go in. First aid kit is under the bathroom sink." He disappeared into the house, and she grabbed the rope and knelt behind the body in the chair. Winding the rope around the body tightly a few times, she tied the hands tight. Josh came back out, holding the white metal box. Ignoring him for a minute, she moved around to the feet and wound them tight with the end of the rope and tied them to the chair rung.
He was starting to fidget when she stood up. "Okay I'm sure we can do this in time." She reached for the box.
A sudden warmth and presence bloomed at her back, a sense of looming settled onto her shoulders. "In time for what?" Klaus' voice rumbled at her back.
"Goddammit," she sighed. Josh's face blanched, and he clutched the kit. The best defense was a good offense, and she turned to face Klaus. "Seriously?" She jabbed one finger into his chest and pointed back at Josh with the other hand, resolutely ignoring that this was the first time she'd touched him in a century. "This minion is uncalled for!"
Klaus' nose flared, and he raked eyes hot with temper down her body, stopping on the arm jabbing a finger at him. "You said she was fine," words heavy as he brought a hand up to cup her arm gently. If she shivered, it was definitely how cold it was out here.
"She said she was fine," Josh protested from behind her.
"She does that." Klaus' voice dripped with displeasure, and Caroline rolled her eyes.
Snapping the fingers of her other hand in his face brought his gaze up to hers. "We do not talk around me, I am right here. I'm fine! Look, first aid kit." The flick of Klaus' eyes towards the case was dismissive.
"Sweetheart, just a sip would—" he started, and it was like she had fallen through time.
"Vampire blood is for life or death emergencies, you know my rules," she said mulishly. It had been automatic, an argument born of countless ritual blood-lettings and tiny injuries.
A warm light cracked the fury frosting his eyes, and a hint of a smile touched his lips. "Yes, I do." Gently, he worked the sweater sleeve up over the small gash in her arm. It was already starting to clot and the blood was tacky.
Sliding a hand under her other elbow, he nudged her back until the back of her knees bumped the porch swing. "Sit," he urged, and Caroline gave him a look that said she was humoring him. She sat.
An impatient gesture brought Josh over as he pried the lid off the box. Klaus pulled out a bottle of peroxide and a cotton pad, and Caroline felt a small stab of panic. Klaus putting those warm, strong hands on her spelled disaster for the distance she was still reaching for.
"I can do it," she tried to say evenly. Klaus glanced at her from under golden-tipped lashes as he wet the cotton pad, a knowing little smile curving his lips.
"It's fine, love, I've learned a thing or two since then." The brush of his hand called a humming awareness to her skin as he slid it up the underside of her arm, pulling it toward him as he knelt in front of her. The wound was an afterthought, practically irrelevant compared to the soft tickle of his breath on her fingertips.
A hundred years, and her body was still a livewire, attuned to his touch. Caroline nudged the ball of anger that had sat in her chest for so long, dredging for the reasons to hold onto it. Was Enzo right that if he'd truly been trying, he could have found her? As Klaus carefully dabbed away blood, she uncomfortably thought if she'd really been trying, she would have trusted Enzo with her biggest secret and asked him to find Klaus, the threat of Mikael finding her be-damned.
"What happened?" Klaus asked, leashed violence in his tone, hand deliberate as he cleaned the wound. She winced but didn't move.
"The four of them showed up on my doorstep. They demanded I turn over something called the Piatra Inchisorii." She watched his face carefully, but aside from the slight clench of his jaw, he said nothing. "I told them I'd never heard of it, but they were sure you had given it to me."
"Clearly," he said, picking out a pair of wound closures and gently pulling the skin back together with them, "They did not heed your warnings."
Caroline scoffed. "No. What are they teaching witches in New Orleans these days?"
"To meddle with things they shouldn't." A cotton pad was set over the top of her arm, and he wound a gauze bandage around it firmly, taping it closed. Smoothing a hand over the bandage, he let his fingers drift away in a lingering caress.
His expression was unrepentant when she narrowed her eyes at him. "Thank you," she said, grudgingly.
Klaus's gaze was warm as he looked up at her, eyes still so blue. "You're welcome, love."
An inarticulate noise made both their heads snap up. Josh was still holding the first aid kit, looking at them both with the most dismayed expression on his face. "This is so unfair."
"What's unfair?" Caroline asked waspishly. She still hadn't forgotten he'd tattled directly to Klaus.
Josh ran a hand down his face and then gestured at the two of them. "This. This is the gossip of the decade and I have to sit on it. I can't dish to anybody. I am literally dying."
"You could be," Klaus suggested, a warning in his tone. Josh must have been made of sturdier stuff than she was giving him credit for, because apart from a small shudder, he continued watching them morosely.
Caroline ignored the flush that had crept into her cheeks, stood, and edged around Klaus, flapping her hands at them both. "Josh, put that back. Klaus, get off my porch."
Stubborn temper flashed in his eyes. "I am not leaving while you are the target of witches."
Josh fled back into the house.
She made a noise of frustration. "We'll discuss it later. Just, get off the porch." Picking up the box of chalk, she gestured at the body.
His eyes lit and his smile curved in knowing satisfaction, and he stepped back down the porch steps. "Let's see what she has to say for herself."
With a vicious little smile, Caroline pulled out a piece of chalk and made a large circle around the chair. Getting down on her hands and knees, she started on the runes needed for this particular spell.
Josh came back out, sans box, and Caroline absently ordered him off the porch as well. He edged around her curiously and joined Klaus on the grass.
"Sweetheart," Klaus' voice came after a minute, "Why are there just… lungs in your yard?"
"I really couldn't tell you." Her knees creaked a little as she scooted around the circle, still making marks and squiggles.
His tone a bit freaked out, Josh asked, "Did her lungs… fall out?"
There was a squelching noise, a crack of what was probably ribs. "Yes, they did," Klaus said, voice admiring.
"Was your spell supposed to do that?" Josh's voice had gotten higher.
Caroline scowled. She was trying to concentrate. "It was supposed to suck their magic out." Experimental magic was trial and error, usually without a lot of test subjects.
"These are literally a pair of lungs. Do witches normally pull out your lungs?" Josh asked Klaus.
"Everyone's a critic!" Caroline groused, adding the last few symbols, fingers feeling a little numb from cold. "Unless you are volunteering to help me fine tune the spell, not a word. Your lungs will grow back." She stood and studied her handiwork for flaws. Satisfied, she turned to Klaus. He watched her with covetous eyes, still and waiting. "Two rules: You may enter the circle. You may not step on the chalk."
Klaus dipped his head in acknowledgment. Looking back and forth between them, Josh looked confused. "Wait, what are you doing to the body?"
She gave him her best disappointed teacher stare. "If I'm going to question her, I need her to not be dead."
"You can raise the dead?" He looked baffled and glanced at Klaus. "Well shit, why doesn't she just raise Kol?"
Shock froze Caroline, sure she hadn't heard that correctly. Klaus turned murderous eyes on Josh, the kind that said he was rapidly doing calculations on exactly how useful to him he was, and Josh took a reflexive step back.
"As Caroline pointed out, your lungs will grow back," Klaus growled.
"Klaus!" she demanded his attention. With a glance that said Josh's lungs were still possibly subject to excavation, Klaus slid his gaze back to Caroline. His jaw tightened.
"Kol?" she asked, voice quiet in the ocean breeze that blew up the beach. The crash of the surf even at a distance almost drowned her out.
She and Kol had been friends once, before their time in Chicago shattered. Kol, witch-born and still magic hungry, had delighted in Caroline's magical experimentation. Dinners he'd joined Klaus and Caroline for were often spent bent over napkins inked with arcane diagrams while Klaus watched indulgently. They liked loud music and dancing, and when Klaus had business in the shadowy booths of speakeasies and jazz halls, Kol had delighted in taking a spin with his brother's 'best girl.' The hungry way Klaus had claimed her back from him had been a bonus for her, and a source of teasing for Kol.
He'd kissed her cheek and called her sister before they ran.
Klaus' eyes still held some inner rage, his mouth tight with strain. "Dead," he said finally.
"How?" she choked. "When?" Klaus' relationships with his siblings was complicated to say the least, but he was paranoid about their safety.
"The doppelganger and a hunter. About a year ago. An attempt to raise the Cult of Silas, a monster to kill a monster." His eyelashes flickered. "One of his pet projects was wiping out the line."
She swallowed. A doppelganger? She was going to tease him mercilessly. "Bring me his body, I can—" Klaus had carted his mother and siblings around in coffins to keep them safe. Surely he would have kept Kol's body.
"There is no body," Klaus said, almost gently, a terrible finality in his tone. "Kol is a pile of ash in a box. We burn when we die." His jaw clenched as if remembering the sight vividly.
That complicated things. That complicated things a lot. Usually, vampires died from massive trauma, like beheading or a stake to the heart. You had to trick their bodies into healing before they could be brought back. It required a lot of energy and a skilled witch. She'd been able to fix things, when the damage had been as small as that. Fire was the great purifier; ash was not small.
One problem at a time. "We'll talk about it later," she said finally. Klaus nodded, a sharp little jerk of his head. The list of things they needed to discuss was growing longer.
The buzz of her phone in her jeans back pocket nearly made her jump. Enzo was calling, and she thumbed the accept button. "Hey."
"You okay, gorgeous?" he asked. Caroline ignored the way Klaus zeroed in on the call, shamelessly listening.
"I'm okay. This was playground stuff, plus I had some assistance."
"Is that assistance still there?" His voice was heavy with meaning.
Caroline blew out a breath. "Yes. Did you learn anything?"
There was a pause before he unbent enough to answer. "All four of them list New Orleans as their current address. Two of them have records, minor stuff for the most part. I sent their IDs to your email. They have phones?"
Glancing up at Klaus, she grimaced when he shook his head. He must have checked while she was drawing the circle. "Nope."
"Well, say the word, and I'll keep digging. Their Facebooks were boring, but I bet at least one of them has a ragey witchblr out there."
She cracked a smile. "It's okay, we'll have answers soon enough."
"Alright. Klaus had better fix his witch problem if he knows what's good for him," Enzo said darkly.
"Okay, gotta go, thanks for the help!" She quickly hung up.
"A charming guard dog," Klaus said leadingly, eyebrows raised.
Pointing a finger at him, Caroline said, "Don't start." The email she brought up had four drivers licenses in it, and she studied their names. The teenager had only been seventeen. What a waste.
She turned the phone towards Klaus. "Recognize any names?" He stepped closer and used a finger to scroll through the pictures.
"Shanice Decuir and Theodore Aguillard are from the French Quarter coven," he said, gesturing at the leader and the man. Pulling out his phone, he started typing. "Let us see what their families have to say for their actions. Rebekah was complaining of being bored." Caroline winced.
For the first several months, Rebekah had loathed her, an interloper to her family's affections. It only got worse when Klaus' attentions had not fizzled out quickly, as she'd warned Caroline they would. Klaus was her favorite brother, and as the spoiled youngest child and only sister, another woman in what she considered her territory was something she resented. Caroline had refused to put up with it, going toe to toe with her snide barbs and offhand comments. The irony of her rejecting her brother's choice of partner while trying to integrate her own love interest—a vampire named Stefan Salvatore—had not been lost on Caroline, and she'd pointed it out frequently.
Perversely, her antagonism had gained Caroline a grudging kind of respect from the other woman. They had almost made their way to something that looked like civility when everything fell apart.
"Okay so," she clapped her hands together, pushing aside the alarming idea of a bored Rebekah, "Let's get this show on the road." Stuffing her phone back in her pocket, she mounted the steps and carefully stepped over the chalk into the for-now inert circle. Klaus joined her on the porch, standing to the side of her working. Wisely, Josh stood on the other side of the circle from him, watching curiously, hands in his pockets.
Caroline cupped the dead woman's chin in her hand, tilting her head back and opening her limp mouth. Her other hand she pressed to their forehead. With a deep inhale, she reached for the Forbes family legacy, the taboo magic they had hoarded and nurtured through generations. Exhaling an electric green glow, it flowed into the open mouth of the body, lighting it from within.
With the connection to the body, Caroline started pulling on the remnants of Shanice's soul's tether to her flesh, steadily breathing in and out, more glowing mist condensing in the air between them. Her death was so recent that the tie to her soul was still strong, and it took Caroline only a few moments of pouring energy into the Other Side to reel it back. Using her own body as the gateway to the spirits, she pulled the glowing yellow ball of soul up through her own lungs and blew it gently into the waiting green glow. As if suctioned there, the combined energy poured through the open mouth and settled into the dead woman's chest. Shanice's eyes snapped open on a gasp, and Caroline took a wavering step outside the circle.
"Wicked," Josh said, drawing the word out.
A quick punch of magic flooded the chalk diagrams with power, and they glowed faintly, the spell snapping into place. Only then did Caroline stagger. Klaus pulled her into his grasp in a thought, helping support her while dizziness made her vision swim. She gripped his arms tightly while he murmured in her ear, "I have you, love," lips and nose tickling her hair. In a moment, she would lift her head from the curve of his neck and stand on her own two feet. Any second now.
Gods, he smelled good. Something warm and clean, a hint of something wild that skittered up her senses and had her taking another seeking breath. The pounding in her temples that had plagued her since she woke seemed distant, and she steadied. Her nose nuzzled against the stubble on the curve of his jaw. Klaus rumbled in his chest and his hands tightened on her. "Caroline…" His voice was promise and warning, wound together.
"What the fuck did you do to me?" Shanice's voice cut through the moment and Caroline opened her eyes. Stiffly, she straightened, awkwardly avoiding Klaus' gold edged gaze that saw far too much. Pulling away from his arms, he let her go with reluctant fingers, one hand still stained with the blood of the lungless witch. Making a little face at his poor job of wiping it off—presumably on the witch's shirt—she turned to the woman straining against the knots that bound her to the chair.
Leveling her with an unimpressed look, Caroline asked, "When you saw your ancestors on The Other Side, did you tell them it was because you were stupid?"
Shanice looked outraged. "You're an unnatural witch, you defile the Balance!" Pulling against the ropes, she panted, an almost panicked look on her face. "What did you do to my magic? Give it back!"
Klaus made a curious noise as he stepped around Caroline, correctly sweeping his gaze over the glowing chalk on the porch. It had taken countless tests, but eventually she had fine-tuned the sigilwork so any witch she contained inside the circle would be cut off from the source of their power. If Caroline stepped into the circle, she would be magicless too. It was easily broken by scuffing the lines, a downside she'd been unable to fix, but it was nigh indestructible if she could keep the witch in the circle and off the chalk.
"Fascinating that you hold the impression that you have any power here, witch," Klaus said, prowling closer to the circle, hands behind his back almost casually. His boots stopped an inch from the array of symbols. Shanice Decuir watched him like he was a snake. "Thinking you can make demands, after threatening what is mine?"
Caroline kept her arms crossed and her face stony, despite the slight flip her stomach made. It was presumptuous, and arrogant, but worst of all it took her right back to the nights he'd spent buried inside her, that word growled against her skin. Mine.
"The covens know she's here, what she does," Shanice hissed. "Let me go free, and I'll tell them she doesn't have it."
The amused expression on Klaus' face went flat, and the monster crawled into his eyes. A quick step brought him inside the circle, pulling back a sleeve of his Henley to bare his forearm. A bite down with sharp teeth brought blood welling to the surface, and prying her mouth open, he shoved it to her lips. She struggled, but he held her until she swallowed. He pulled his arm away, and she coughed, wheezing.
"Your understanding of how this will proceed seems to be lacking. I will enlighten you," he said, pleasantly menacing. "Your life is forfeit. There are several deaths I can offer you, each more painful than the last. Humans don't require all of their body parts to speak, I have found. Vampires, even less." He put a hand on the back of the chair and leaned into her face. "I imagine your line has many branches; those who deal in the power of their ancestors often do. You can give them a chance to continue, or you can whet your first taste of blood with their screams."
He stood, sliding his hands into his pockets, a small smile playing around his lips. "I do hope you will be difficult."
"My porch, Klaus," Caroline said dryly. She knew the kind of mess he could make.
"I will, of course, have it refinished if there is any staining." His voice was conciliatory, and she shifted, mollified.
Josh made a nervous motion and then subsided, looking a little freaked. Clearly not a willing participant of this rodeo. Klaus generally prized a less squeamish sort for his minions; Caroline wondered what Josh was doing watching her.
Shanice looked up at Caroline in horror. "You're just going to let him do this to a fellow witch?"
"Excuse you, but I did not show up on your doorstep and try to kill you," Caroline huffed. "Your 'fellow witch' card was voided in the attempt." Their prisoner looked away, sullen.
"Let's start with something easy: who sent you?" Klaus asked, stance relaxed.
She hesitated until Klaus tilted his head. "Sabine Laurent," she answered sulkily.
His eyebrows rose a fraction. "The witch who skulks at the borders of my problems like a spider. How unfortunate for her that she chooses now to raise her head. How did she find Caroline?"
Turning her head, Sabine stared at Josh. He immediately turned defensive. "I haven't told anyone where I am, you're a liar."
She rolled her eyes. "Grindr is location enabled, idiot." Josh went a spotty red color. "The last time anyone saw you, you were talking to Klaus. Marcel wanted you found and started making threats. We saw you keeping an eye on her," Jerked her chin at Caroline, "And then wouldn't you know it, Klaus shows up in town."
"So you put two and two together and came up with five." Caroline was not impressed.
Shanice sneered at her. "Like you're not obviously one of his pets? A witch who willingly works for vampires is a traitor to us all. You'll get what's coming to you."
Klaus casually reached out and, with a swift jerk, peeled her right ear from her face. It happened so fast that it took a second for the pain to hit, and then she screamed in agony. Blood poured down the side of her head as he tossed the ear aside, temper rising in his eyes.
"I would suggest you mind your tongue better," he said over her sobs. "Now, who knows about Caroline? What have you told them?"
"The elders," Shanice said after a moment through her tears, "They know I think you gave her the stone to open. Theo found her website yesterday. She's an arcanist and a necromancer." Spat the word out like it was dirty. "Any force necessary, they said."
"Over a rock?" Caroline's voice was incredulous. "What does it do?"
"It steals the power of witches!" Shanice accused, outraged.
Klaus made a small noise of derision. "It's the key to a prison world where my brother trapped the last of the Cult of Silas."
That was the most delightful news Caroline had received all day. "Is that what happened to those creepy freaks? Them and their whole 'Let's raise the immortal responsible for Qetsiyah's creation of the Perma-Friend Zone'—sorry, I mean The Other Side—cadre just started disappearing one day. Everyone I knew was thrilled."
The corner of Klaus' mouth tipped up and Caroline could have sworn he looked almost nostalgic. "It was one of Kol's favorite projects, averting apocalypses. He was at four, the last I heard him crowing about it." He paused and then mused, "I believe there was some speculation that the trapped power could be utilized, but my brother never trusted a witch to wield it."
Caroline was fascinated at the arcane mystery this provided. "How big is the pocket dimension? Are they still alive in there? Is that where you're going to put her?" Jerked her thumb at Shanice.
Turning warm eyes on Caroline, Klaus tried to answer her rapid fire questions. "I don't know, I don't care, and not her, I have different plans for her. But the rest of the witches of New Orleans…" He shrugged with a mischievous little smile. "Recent events have proven that we've grown lax on providing consequences for the supernaturals under our rule."
Crossing her arms, Caroline shot him an unimpressed look. "Is this another 'I am king of the supernaturals, hear me roar' phase?" Kol had told her about their last stint in New Orleans.
"They're not supposed to hear us roar from the shadows, sweetheart," he advised, helpfully. "Just because they don't see their heads of state does not mean there aren't ramifications for plotting against us. I was content letting New Orleans recover from Mikael's devastation, my eye on the city more relaxed than it should have been. Rest assured, you have some of my attention now." Idly, he eyed Shanice, still sniffling in the chair.
Caroline huffed a small laugh. "Only some?"
Klaus' gaze flicked to Caroline, dragged down the length of her body from riotous curls to the toes of her boots, leaving her with a squirmy feeling making her warm despite the brisk wind. "I'm afraid the majority of my attention is required elsewhere. Completely unavoidable. You understand."
She wrinkled her nose, stupidly pleased. "It looks like we'll have to postpone coffee."
A neutral little hum. "I hear they're making them to-go these days, and conveniently, I find myself with a new minion."
Shanice sent Josh a freaked-out look worthy of iron maidens and the rack. "Is he going to expect me to fetch his coffee?"
"Better you than me," Josh said, grimacing.
"Probably his dry cleaning too, he never remembers his dry cleaning," Caroline chipped in while Klaus loomed menacingly over their prisoner.
"We'll discuss it when you wake up." He placed a hand on either side of Shanice's head, while pleas for mercy started to pour from her lips. Mid-sob, he wrenched her head to the side with a swift snap, and the sound cut off.
The wind off the cove whistled through the porch in the quiet for a moment, before Caroline sighed, an inconvenienced little noise. "Those bodies need to not be on my property when you dispose of them, Klaus," she said, scuffing her foot through the chalk marks, the glow flickering out as the spell was broken. Bending to the back of the chair, she started to undo the knots that held Shanice to the chair. The rope wouldn't hold her in the chair after Klaus poured blood down her throat, and she'd rather not have her dining room chairs broken by a baby vampire.
"Body disposal, sweetheart? I've a bit more seniority than that, one would think."
"Mm, one would think that, but your minions right now are a little ehhh." She paused tugging a knot to make a so-so gesture with one hand.
"Hey," Josh mumbled, not looking very offended.
Klaus made a displeased little face, rolling up the sleeves of his dark gray shirt. "It will be addressed." As he stepped down from the porch, he made an imperious gesture at Josh, who sighed resignedly.
"Try not to get a paper-cut or like, die while we're gone." Josh shifted awkwardly. "I like my spleen where it's at, and I've been treated to graphic descriptions of how Klaus is going to make me eat it if anything happens to you."
Caroline glanced up from winding the rope into a coil around her arm and made a face. "Your spleen? Those are a bit… grainy."
Josh stared at her. "I don't wanna know." He turned to head down the steps and then whipped back around. "No, I gotta know. How do you know that?"
Finished with winding the rope, she stood and glanced speculatively at Klaus' back. The lithe muscles bunched and flexed in a way she happily admired while he lifted a body over his shoulder, turned, and caught her eye, a knowing grin curling up the corners of his lips. Hastily she looked away and cleared her throat.
"That wannabe mafia kingpin vampire with the headquarters under the trattoria, wasn't it?" Her voice sounded steady, didn't it? "We drank his wine, while he dug out his spleen with his fingers, and boiled and fried it for a sandwich, some Italian thing. Klaus had him go all food critic on it. He cried most of the night, but he said it was like a dense blood sausage."
Josh blinked.
"Really great wine, though," Caroline said hastily. Ugh, Klaus was still smiling at her.
"Come along, minion," Klaus called, the smug cheerfulness of his voice making his dimples flash. "It seems you've neglected your education away from my guiding hand."
A disgruntled look wrinkled Josh's nose when he glanced at Klaus. "I have a math test due tonight and a five page essay due on Friday."
Putting her hand on her hip made Caroline wince in remembrance of her injury. "I've got some math for you: bodies plus time equal smell. Not on my front lawn." She pointed a finger on her other hand towards Klaus. "Go."
"Ugh, gross," Josh grumbled, nevertheless heading down her stoop to heave a body onto his shoulder.
"Bodies do not dispose of themselves, and if they do, you have an entirely different problem that I charge double for," Caroline called as both men darted up the coast and into the woods. With her body on auto-pilot to throw the rope into the sink with some bleach, she headed into the house with her mind cycling through the spell components she'd need to have a chat with Kol, and resolutely not on his brother.
The demanding knocking on the door alerted her when Klaus and Josh returned a few hours later, which was honestly perfect for Caroline. Dropping the last tome into the safe hidden under the floor under her bed, she swung the loose floorboards into space and shoved the nails down. A muttered incantation had the magical protections locking back into place.
'Knowledge is power' was a well known adage, and it was doubly true for witches. Caroline collected grimoires of many different branches of magic, finding inspiration for her work in a variety of places. Especially rare were books on necromancy, a taboo niche of witchcraft that most witches frowned on, if not shunned entirely. She kept her family books under a combination lock and thumbprint scanner, along with digital scan backups on thumb drives in a safety deposit box.
There was nothing for it, she was going to have to go digging in the attic. She grimaced. It's not like it was very dirty up there, it got tended to on her spring and fall cleaning sprees, but it was a bit creepy, no matter how many LED bulbs she put in the fixtures. Dead bodies she could do all day long, spiders on the other hand? Blegh. Too many legs.
Another insistent knock and a muffled, "Caroline," gave her the perfect idea, and she crawled out from under the bed. Brushing off her pants, she made her way to the front door and pulled it open. Klaus stood next to Josh, whose hand was raised to knock again. She flicked her gaze over Klaus, noted in the dimming light that he was wearing a new shirt and carrying a leather satchel slung over one shoulder; he had likely cleaned up at his hotel.
"Perfect, exactly who I needed," she said with a smile, and reached out and grabbed Josh's wrist, tugging him off balance and into the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Klaus' face do a complicated little journey that started at delight, slid through disappointment, and then settled on barely concealed annoyance. Josh received a rather dark look that seemed to make him nervous.
"Perhaps I could be of assistance, love?" he said, a peek of his tongue skating across his lower lip. "Apparently my minion has a 'math test?'"
Caroline sent Klaus a flat look. "His courses are online; he can take it when he gets home. You, on the other hand, need to deal with her." Waving a hand at the dead body sitting slumped in the dining room chair off to the side, she tested the energy gathering around the body. "She's about to pop up like a daisy, or a weasel."
Firmly she closed the door in his face. Shanice was about to have a terrible wake up call, she thought. Turning to head through the living room towards the back hallway, she paused by the light switch. Feeling a little annoyed at herself, she smacked the porch light on and then marched past Josh, who followed her like a very tall puppy.
"He's not going to like that," Josh offered uselessly as she stopped under the string hanging from the ceiling. Pointing at it helpfully, she watched him pull the ladder-stairs down to the floor from its hiding place.
"No, he's not," she agreed as she climbed up into the attic, quickly scrambling for the nearest pull chain for the first light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She winced as it flashed to life, her eyes still a little sensitive. Making a mental note to get an electrician out here to rewire the fixtures to turn on with a light switch by the stairs, she walked a few paces over to the other bulb and tugged it on.
Josh's head appeared through the hole in the floor as he climbed up. "Oh this is cool. We had an attic like this when I was a kid." Something about that didn't seem to be as cheerful of a memory as he meant it.
Caroline nudged an empty crate toward him with a foot. "Here, pull up a trunk and hold onto that. I'll hand you the books I want." Carefully checking for spiders, she sat down next to a couple of plastic storage bins labeled 'Grandma's Linens.' Flipping the lid open revealed an illusion of folded bed sheets. With a pinch of her middle finger and thumb, she drew her hand across the opening, and the illusion faded to reveal stacks of books.
"Wow," Josh watched her, slightly awestruck as he plunked down on the top of a steamer trunk. "I know it's magic, it just seems so… magical." He immediately looked mortified.
She snorted. "It is cool," she interpreted, starting to dig through the books, checking spines and occasionally flipping them open to glance at the indexed note cards she had written up for each of them. Most manuscripts and grimoires were lucky if they had a table of contents, so she had devised her own system to quickly find what she was looking for. Perhaps in her next house she'd splurge and have a room entirely for a library and get a card catalog, one of those kinds with the tactile little boxes.
"You're not just some ex-girlfriend, are you?" Josh's voice broke through her concentration and she glanced up at him. She considered his pensive face, before handing him a book for the crate.
"What makes you say that?" She asked instead of answering, peering at the inside flap of another book and not even seeing it.
He made a derisive little sound. "I've seen him bump into an ex before. He didn't give a shit about her. Probably what made her try to kill him."
Caroline realized she was clenching the book a little too tight and deliberately relaxed her hands. "Yeah, he has that effect on people," she said dryly.
Normal, I am going to be totally normal about the fact that Klaus had a life for the past hundred years, she told herself sternly. Asking Kol for a list of his past lovers so that I can murder them would be... unbelievably satisfying, yeah.
"But like, you?" Josh waited until Caroline looked up again. "Any day that passed where he didn't get a picture of you, it was all 'You understand that your life could be merely a formality.'" He mimed Klaus talking with one hand like a Muppet, putting on the worst fake accent ever, and Caroline snorted, despite herself. He chuckled, and then went soft and serious. "The man is obsessed. I just… worried about you. You know, before I realized you were also unhinged." Her delighted look caused him to laugh. "I know we're not really friends, but… I feel like I know you a bit, and I'd like to be? It felt wrong to ask while I was spying on you."
She was quiet for a few moments, looking through a few more books quickly, periodically handing one to him. Josh shifted nervously from time to time, but seemed to understand she needed to think. Finally she looked back up to hand him another book for the crate. "I hope you know I'm not a tool to be wielded against Klaus. I'm mad at him right now, but I'm not going to use this," she made a motion between her and where Klaus was outside, "against him."
Of course, there was still a 'this' she realized as she said it, Josh sputtering a denial distantly in the background. There was never not going to be a 'this.' She'd been acting like an annoyed lover all morning, and Klaus was doing what Klaus usually did: try to coax her out of it. He was even being very restrained in his methods of doing so. It wasn't either of their faults that they had been separated originally, and Klaus was just trying to protect her from someone that had scared even him. The issue with the witches was probably a step too far, and taking a year to tell her about it was inexcusable, but he wasn't trying to hurt her.
Despite his concern for her safety, he hadn't tried to shelve her all day. She was sure someday there would be a greater test of his resolutions, but Klaus had clearly given her words yesterday some thought. There would always be some enemy, and keeping her in the dark was not a way to protect her.
Sternly, Caroline told herself to pay attention, tuning back in to Josh mid-sentence "—And judging by how crazy things got in New Orleans, maybe getting sidelined was the best. It was only supposed to be a vacation, after all."
"So you're not from there?" Yanking her brain back on task, she flipped open the next book and sternly made herself pay attention to the present. The past was already done, and the future was wide open. Let them take care of themselves.
"No," Josh huffed, peering into another crate. "I'm from Michigan. Was going to college in Texas and came here for spring break with my friend Tina. Got invited to the wrong party, ended up a vampire, working for a guy named Marcel. That lasted about a day before Klaus compelled me to work for him, and that lasted about a week before he ran into you. I've spent most of my time as a vampire in this town, watching you and trying not to chow down on Mrs. Cunningham's goldendoodle. Or, y'know, Mrs. Cunningham." His smile was self-deprecating, despite the fact that he'd been doing a very good job for such a young vampire.
She hummed, as if she hadn't put up wards over his landlady to warn her of such an event. "What happened to your friend?"
Quiet for a moment, he eventually sighed. "Didn't turn out to be much of a friend. Tried to save her own life at the expense of mine." He lifted the lid on a large'ish wooden jewelry box sitting on a table with curly legs next to the trunk, stared at an assortment of her 1800s gold collection, and then carefully shut the lid again. Threaded his hands together in a manner that clearly telegraphed his intention to not touch anything.
Setting the last book in the box on his knee for the crate, she started packing the box back up. "That sounds like a shitty thing for a friend to do." Her middle finger and thumb together over the box, she dragged them horizontally in the opposite direction as before. The illusion popped back over the books, and Caroline closed the lid.
Giving him a considering look, she tapped a finger against her knee. "Let's see how it goes. Despite the fact that I am a delight, I am a bit much for some people." She opened another box and repeated dispelling an illusion, this time of sweaters.
"Your taste in men is a little suspect," he said, offering her a teasing little smile when she looked up suspiciously. Hitched a shoulder. "Mine is honestly not much better, at least one of them had to be a serial killer." He frowned. "Weird now how I'm the serial killer."
Caroline huffed and held up a book. "If you've killed anyone in the past year, I will eat this, cover and all. You get blood delivered by a service, and you've 'dined out' maybe twice in the past six months. Hardly earns you the bad boy street cred of 'serial killer.'"
Gaping in fake outrage, Josh put a hand to his chest. "Excuse you, who's the stalker now?"
"You were in our territory," Caroline wrinkled her nose in the dust. "Enzo kept an eye on you."
"O-oh," he stuttered. Glancing up from digging through the box, she watched his cheeks flush.
"Oh?" she grinned.
"Um," he said intelligently.
"Hmm." Turning back to the books took a supreme amount of willpower. "You know Bonnie is more benevolent than I am, and even she has been known to stab the occasional person that wanted the sandwich without her in it."
"N-no, he's just nice to look at!" Josh waved a hand defensively. "Like such a muffin but also, such a malewife, you know?"
Leafing through the pages of the last book, Caroline squinted at the tiny text. "I suppose even hitmen have their hobbies."
There was dead silence from the other occupant in the attic for a moment.
"A what?" he finally squeaked.
"Hobbies, you know, like cooking, knife throwing, wood carving." This book didn't have anything useful in it.
"Those all require knives!"
"He is really fond of knives."
"A hitman? Really? I feel like that's cheating for a vampire."
Caroline shoved the book back in the box and piled the rest on top of it. "I suppose if you're hiring a spree killer it does make it a touch easy, but his sniper rifle collection is very impressive I'm told, and he gets hired for that just as often." A quick pinch of her fingers and the illusion was back in place.
"Oh god," Josh whined, "I think that makes him hotter. Like 'Way of the Househusband' is a true story and he's a vampire living in Maine."
With a shove the box slid back into place. "I have no idea what that means."
Her companion gleefully explained about the anime following an ex-Yakuza member getting out of crime to become a househusband while she went through two more boxes of hidden books. By the time his story had wound down, she had a mostly full crate of books at Josh's feet and dust all over her hands and pants.
Stepping between two storage tubs to a blank space against the wall, Caroline hovered her hand over the empty space. "I'm going to need that crate and a box brought down to the living room."
"Sure, no problem." The sound of Josh easily shouldering the box drifted over to her, along with the creaking sound of his feet going down the stairs. Quickly she sketched a glowing green sigil in the air with her forefinger. It flared and disappeared quickly. A storage box popped into existence just as Josh clambered his way back up the stairs. She scooted out of the way so he could grab the now visible box she pointed at and then followed him to the stairs, tugging the lights off as she went.
As she put a foot down on the ladder, the light from below glinted off glass in a catch all box of stuff next to the stairs. Fingers suddenly a little sweaty, she picked up a small glass framed sketch of her and a horse. Her thumb left a smudge on the glass as she rubbed it over the words—'Thank you for your honesty.'—and she quickly wiped it clean with her shirt. Resolutely, she clutched it in her hand as she climbed down the stairs and let the ladder lift back into its place in the ceiling.
Josh was standing in the living room with his hands shoved in his pants pockets. He watched her set the frame on a bookshelf and fuss with the placement without comment.
"Alright, you are released from duty for the night, go take your test." She hid a smile at his grimace. If she'd had to do complex algebra back when she was learning sums, she would probably have hid from her tutor herself.
Following him to the door, she watched him edge out the door and around something. Leaning against the door jam, she examined the wet surface of her porch. It was now clean and free of blood and stray ears. Shanice stood off to the side, angrily chucking scrub brushes into a bucket that had been in her garage. The garden hose was draped over the banister, still dripping.
Klaus sat on the porch swing, one leg over the other supporting a sketchbook, pencil dangling from two charcoal smudged fingers. A small ice chest sat in the shadows by his feet. His gaze flicked over Caroline, taking in the dust smears on her pants and lingering on her face. "I presume my minion proved useful?"
"Very helpful, I hate the attic stairs. I have this phobia that I'm going to trip on the way down and fall on my face." She jerked her chin at the porch. "Thanks for that, blood stains are hard to explain to the neighbors."
Shanice glared at her. "He made me clean up my own blood, necromancer." Her tone turned the title into an epithet.
Caroline smiled perkily. "Can't have you ruining my porch, vampire," she said, spitefully reminding her of her new place in life.
She bared her teeth at Caroline, the veins crawling beneath her eyes, new instincts probably riding her hard. Klaus made a low rumble of warning in his chest, and with a sullen little snarl she subsided, still glaring resentfully.
Transferring his gaze to Josh, who was shifting back and forth on his feet like a kid ready to bolt for recess, Klaus tapped the pencil against his knee. "Take her with you, someone will be by to fetch her in an hour."
Josh shot her a nervous look. "What if she bolts?"
An amused little smile curled Klaus' lips. "Then Rebekah pays another visit to her father and younger sister." No one needed him to elaborate. Caroline watched Shanice clench her fists and say nothing. She would be swallowing her pride for a while.
With a little gesture, Josh beckoned Shanice to follow him. She practically stomped after him. As she stepped down from the porch, Klaus pointed at the ice chest with the end of his pencil. "Don't forget that your actions have consequences, witch. Ah, excuse me. Slip of the tongue." She froze, cursed quietly, and then turned around and snatched the carry strap of the ice chest, slinging it over her shoulder and marching down the stairs and after Josh into the dark.
She and Klaus were left alone on the porch.
The nighttime sound of autumn surrounded them for a moment, the crash of the surf down the beach, and the wind in the trees. Klaus idly played with his pencil as he watched her, and Caroline crossed her arms, an almost nervous, self-conscious feeling sweeping over her. It was absolutely not anticipation, she told herself sternly.
"Are there any more people from New Orleans in town that we have to watch out for?" she finally asked.
Klaus bent to his sketch pad, hand moving rapidly. "Not according to our new vampire." He glanced between his drawing and her several times, and Caroline had the nostalgic feeling of the past surrounding them. Klaus speaking again almost startled her, she was so wrapped up in it. "Unless they deviate greatly from their typical behavior, they will abandon today's tactic and try something new in a few days."
"Wonderful," Caroline said dryly. "So I guess in that case you'll be going back to the hotel?"
"Hardly. I'm in town less than twenty-four hours, and a target is painted on your back." He grimaced. "It was inevitable, but I had hoped it would take longer."
"I can take care of myself, you know," she said, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice, gesturing at the lawn that had held several dead bodies that morning.
Klaus glanced up and then back down at his sketchpad, finger smudging the charcoal carefully. "Yes, you can," he said mildly, clearly not moving.
"Okay well, glad we cleared that up." Placated, she put a hand on the door jam and went to step back into the house, when Klaus spoke again, teasing in his tone.
"You could invite me inside where it's warmer." His gaze flicked back up to her, a banked heat in his eyes that made the cold wind irrelevant. "It would be much more convenient to keep my eyes on you in close quarters." Tongue a slow glide against his lower lip and molten gold washing across his irises, he made such a tempting picture.
Fire bloomed low in her belly, crawled up her chest in a shiver. Coffee, she tried to remind herself, I was just going out for coffee with this man, not jumping back into bed with him.
Oh, but she wanted to.
"I'm going to make some dinner before I turn into a carb-eating house cryptid and start shoveling bread in by the loaf, a totally graceful and not at all off-putting mental image," she said loftily. The heat banked in Klaus' eyes as a smile that looked like his face was unused to it pulled up the corner of his mouth.
"If," Caroline continued, holding up a finger, "you can keep your hands to yourself, I might be willing to make some allowances for company."
"Are you sure that's what you want?" He raised his eyebrows invitingly.
"What I want are wine and pasta, in that order," she said, dodging the question. "Can you behave?"
With a knowing little tilt of his lips, he gathered his sketchpad and picked up his satchel that was sitting next to him on the porch swing. Standing, he slipped the carry strap over his shoulder. "If I must, carlina," Klaus finally answered.
Her heart stopped for a moment, the old nickname giving her a flash of nostalgia so vivid that she could practically taste the champagne on her tongue. At first Caroline had thought he was messing up her name on purpose, before a laughing Kol had told her that a 'carline' was a witch, and also a particularly stubborn kind of yellow thistle. Klaus had always said it with such warmth, and later would whisper it against her skin. His carlina.
Ignoring the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach, she pushed the door open a little wider. "Come in, Klaus." She moved out of the way as he stepped up on the doorstop, trying not to focus on the hungry way he watched her as he closed the door behind him.
"Kitchen's back here," she said, whirling around to lead the way. "You can set your stuff on the couch." Flapping a hand at it as she walked past the living room, she let out a breath slowly and started rolling up her sleeves. Kitchen. Food. Wine. She could do this.
The nearly tangible presence of Klaus followed her back to the kitchen, warming the back of her neck like the sun's rays as she washed her hands. "You can sit anywhere." She gestured with the towel she was drying her hands with at the breakfast nook or the stools tucked up to the bar on the island.
Something almost nervous filled her as she watched him prowl into the room, his eyes flitting from each tsotchke and wall hanging she had filled the space with, like they would tell him secrets of the years of their separation.
It's just Klaus, she thought, tucking the towel back on the holder. I am being very normal about my million-year-old ex-boyfriend being in my kitchen and breathing my air and picturing me naked. So normal.
He stopped in front of a framed collage of pictures from a trip to Prague she, Bonnie, and Enzo took in the '90s. Jerking open the fridge, she stared at the contents like the solution to her dilemma was hidden behind the milk. She said the first inane thing that popped into her head. "Bonnie thought your apology was pretty good." She wasn't going to pretend like he didn't know everything he could about her best friends by now. He certainly knew more than Josh.
Klaus hummed. "And the guard dog?"
Caroline snorted at his moniker for Enzo. It wasn't like it was incorrect. Reaching into the fridge, she started pulling things out. "He, uh, he's not really sold on you. Thinks you've brought unwanted trouble down on my head."
Veggies and a bottle of wine ended up on the counter, and then a few more things from the pantry rounded out her mental list. She ducked under the counter for a pot and saucepan, and when she came back up, Klaus was seated at the bar, sketchpad open on the counter, briefly fiddling with his pencil.
"Have I then?" he asked, voice curious. He watched her fill the pot with water and light the fire under it on the stove.
A wry smile tugged the corner of her mouth aside. "You were always going to be trouble, Klaus. You always will be."
He licked his lips, leaning forward intently. "But is it unwanted?"
Caroline paused in reaching into a drawer on the island for the corkscrew, her head snapping up to stare at him. He gazed back, eyes burning and steadfast. It was like a hundred years dropped away, the warm glow of the kitchen lights taking her back to the flat she rented in Armour Square on the south side of Chicago.
It had been small, she'd only planned to stay two weeks as a favor to Gloria, but that encounter had brought her Klaus, and soon she was finding trivial reasons to extend her stay. Business funneled in, and she couldn't possibly go yet, Kol wanted to show her a secret spell repository and clearly that was very important, Klaus wanted to take her dancing and she just couldn't find the time to pack.
They'd fall through the door of her three floor walk-up at two in the morning, bubbly on champagne and breathless for each other, leaving a scattered trail of hastily removed clothing back to the bedroom. Hours later, sun finding the cracks in her curtains and the sounds of the city a consistent alarm clock, they'd stumble to the kitchen and cobble together a breakfast out of whatever groceries she still had in the icebox. Klaus would often sketch while Caroline ate, frozen pictures in time of her licking jam off sticky fingers. Laughing half finished tableaux interrupted by Klaus' insistent mouth, his drawings often smudged from being knocked to the floor.
The moving company that delivered her things after she fled Chicago had packed every sketchbook, a treasure trove that hit like a knife to the heart going through the boxes a decade later.
She had ached and wanted, raged and cursed, and on one very embarrassingly drunk evening in '77 went through every sad love song on the karaoke playlist in a dive bar in Cincinnati. Enzo never said a word to Bonnie about the incident, for which Caroline was unfathomably grateful.
And now Klaus was here, and she had to ask herself what she really wanted, because standing around with the door half shut in silent anger wasn't going to help either of them. Open the door, or close it?
Really, there was only one answer.
"You," she replied, plucking the corkscrew out of the drawer and setting it on the island within his reach. "Are asking the wrong question."
"Oh?" he asked, eyebrows lifting in intrigue.
Flicking her finger from the corkscrew to the bottle in a clear order, she turned back to the vegetables, starting to clean and dice the bright red and yellow bell peppers. Snagging the wine from the corner of the island, he looked at the label, made a face like he was reserving judgment, and then set to getting the cork out.
"The question you should be asking is, 'Caroline, why didn't I let you help with my trouble in the first place?'" She shot him a stern look that had him ducking his head to marshal the smile from his face. "And I'll reply, 'Gee Klaus, I think it's because for someone with a normally stellar memory, you forgot how amazing and competent I am.' And then you'll reply—"
"That that would be impossible, Caroline." Klaus interrupted, dark and fond, as he set the bottle down to breathe. "The memory of you has been the altar of torment and benediction I have carried with me these long years, worn with retracing." Warmth crept up her cheeks as he grinned. "Some do feature more often than others, of course."
Her chopping thumped louder on the butcher block, bell pepper squares coming out a little more crooked, which annoyed her further. Scraping them aside into a pile, she then grabbed a head of garlic and started pulling off cloves.
"You act like it's nothing, like we can just go back in time and have it all over again after you shoved me in a corner like I wasn't good enough to help." This was the thing that had gnawed at her last night in the bathtub. She could forgive the century of separation brought on by a monster that gave even Klaus pause. It was awful, but they'd clearly each missed the other.
No, the thing that ate at her was his stupid attempt at deflection and then leaving her in the dark for a year.
"Do you think there is anyone I would rather have at my side than you?" His teeth almost bared in a snarl, his frustration seemed to break, and like a wave it crashed against her. He stood, stalking her around the island. "A century of missing your clever, creative mind, your spite-filled tendency towards vengeance. Your echo is a yearning I cannot erase, Caroline."
Klaus stopped next to her side, the radiant heat of his body warm against her arm, breath feathering the hair that curled around her ear. "If you think that for the past thirteen months, I haven't searched for a way that satisfies both what you deserve and this longing, then I have much to answer for, to repair your memory of me. But I cannot change my desire to see you safe, even at the expense of your regard."
She dropped the knife on the counter, fingers fisting against the butcher block. "I'm so mad at you for being such an insufferable dick, I could… I could…"
He rumbled, a warm velvety noise in his chest. One of his hands lifted to hover over her clenched fingers, the energy between them raising the hairs on her arm as he drifted his hand up, keeping the barest inch of separation. "What would you do, Caroline? What punishment would you mete out?"
Turning her head to glare at him, she said, "Breaking the rules already, Klaus?"
A corner of his mouth kicked up, a sardonic little thing. "Trust me, I have never been more aware that I'm not touching you, and I have had a year of watching you from afar to whet my appetite."
A noise of frustration, and suddenly her hands were fisted instead in the soft front of his Henley, shoving him back against the counter.
"You could have had me, if you hadn't been so uncharacteristically noble," she spat, the itch that burned under her skin all day fanning into flames, and gods, she just wanted to get a rise out of him—
"I have never been afflicted with the notion. What I am is selfish," he hissed. Hands poised over her upper arms, he licked his lower lip. "Slake your anger on me if that's your desire. But if I found and lost you so carelessly after a century of wanting, I would have razed the earth in search of a way to bring you back to me."
Her mouth slammed into his, messy and rough, and he kissed her back, a wild noise of relief in his throat. Pulling back just enough that he chased her lips, she groaned, "Klaus. Touch me."
His hands were a brand she could feel through her sweater, curving around her shoulder blades to press the long line of her body against him as he instantly obeyed. Mouth heated and slick against hers, he kissed her like a man starved. Fingers wound through the hair at the nape of her neck and insistently tugged her head back, baring her skin to the teasing scrape of fangs against her pulse.
"I have had decades of time to fantasize about what I would do with you in my hands again," he murmured low in her ear. A whine clawed its way up her throat, her fingers making seams pop on his shirt from the way she clung to him. "I spent a year planning a seduction so thorough you would be ruined for any former lovers.
Distantly, Caroline thought maybe Enzo had a point about her liking it when her partners talked. Klaus in particular.
Pushing away from the sink, Klaus nudged her back. "But you—the tempting and surprising thing that you are—have rushed past my careful plots, and I find myself with too many options." She bumped into the counter behind her, and Klaus pinned her firmly against it with his hips, his cock a solid line of heat pressed against her behind his jeans.
"No such thing," Caroline protested, hands sliding up to grip the soft, short hair at the back of his head.
"Then tell me, sweetheart, where do we start? The bed? I do hope your predilection toward sturdy headboards has continued. The rug in front of the living room fire? It did look comfortable on the knees." Klaus nipped at the lobe of her ear, his free hand tracing up and down the length of her spine with a patience that promised to torture her. "Here in the kitchen? So many surfaces." He rolled his hips in a short grind that made her gasp and drag his head to her neck.
"Not in the kitchen, I eat in here!" Though that was rapidly becoming less and less important by the minute. After all, what else were Lysol wipes for?
"Mmm, I could eat in here." His tone was all hot mischief, the tip of his nose dragging up the column of her neck as he took in the scents of her body, head tilting back to lick his lips. His eyelashes fluttered, want a living thing in him, and Caroline thought that was positively pornographic.
"Are you hungry, Klaus?" She wasn't opposed to letting him take a nibble, especially when his cock was buried in her. There was no doubt she'd be really starving after the first couple of rounds, but that was definitely a problem for Future Caroline. Currently, Horny Caroline had her foot on the accelerator, and it had been a long time since she'd gotten to drive.
Klaus bent his head to a long, lingering kiss, hands gripping the waist of her sweater as if he could keep her there forever. Tongue sliding against her lower lip in a tease, he parted from her slowly. "There is no part of you I am not hungry for, no place my mouth does not desire to trace. Being sated on you has always been such a temporary experience."
Strong hands curved down over her hips, thumbs brushing the inside of her hip bones before dipping under her ass to lift her onto the granite counter. With all the shoving, they'd ended up on the side of the island to the right of the butcher block, a space mercifully free of dinner ingredients or knives.
Caroline tugged Klaus in for another drugging kiss. Obeying her demands for only a moment, Klaus teased her mouth before parting from her. Slowly dropping to his knees at her dangling feet, he ran his hands down the inside of her thighs to her ankles, hands hot against the fabric. Biting her lip as she watched him pull the zipper down one knee-high boot, she grabbed one sleeve in the opposite hand and motioned like she was going to pull her arm out of the knit fabric.
Klaus paused a moment to see if she'd remove anything, and she smiled cheekily, waiting. A playful little noise curled out of his chest, and he pulled her boot off, setting it aside. His eyes tracked her as she tugged her arm out of the sleeve. Without prompting, he removed her other boot and was rewarded with her slipping her other arm through her sweater. Her socks were pulled off quickly by his nimble fingers, and she yanked the sweater over her head and dropped it on her boots. He narrowed his eyes at the camisole she was wearing underneath the sweater, and she grinned, rolling her shoulders back so that her cleavage was on display.
"Tits for tat, Klaus," she said sing-song, pressing the ball of her foot into his shoulder and pushing until he sprawled back against the cabinets behind him, hands keeping him propped up. His eyes gleamed, and he huffed out a low laugh.
"I remember when you would fall delightfully drunk and warm into my bed," he said while unlacing his boots and yanking them off, the quick, rough motions a testament to how badly he wanted. He kept his eyes on her, throwing his socks on the growing pile of clothes. "You would whine and beg like a wanton thing while I unwrapped you from silk and stockings, and when I was finished, you were wet and flushed for my mouth."
A small whine escaped her lips as she watched him pull his Henley over his head. All that smooth skin and lean muscles on display were enough to make her mouth water. Too long, too long, too long, her mind kept chanting, eyes drifting over his body, wondering if she was as frozen in time as he was, beautiful new tattoos notwithstanding.
He rolled up on his knees, wrapped his hands around her calves, and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her inner thigh. Helpless but to touch him, Caroline slid her fingertips against his cheek, brushed her thumb against his forehead and the slightly longer curl that dipped over his brow, threaded fingers into his hair, and tilted his head back to stare with a skin-prickling fascination at eyes rimmed in hybrid gold. He turned his face into her hand, eyelashes fluttering as he made a rough noise, inhaling the scent of her skin.
"I will see you beg for me again before the night is out, Caroline," he murmured, making warmth rush through her body, leaving her yearning for his promises. Calloused hands slid up the inside of her thighs to the buttons of her pants, popped the top one. "I was promised that I could eat, and you smell delectable." Slipping a forefinger into her pants, he popped the next button, the back of his finger brushing against her underwear in a drag of friction that wasn't at all where she needed it. The third button went with a little jolt that made her clench on nothing while a whine crawled up her throat.
He heard, of course he heard, and a sly smile curved his lips as he undid the last button. Withdrawing his finger with a little flick that had her narrowing her eyes at him, he slipped his hands around her ass and urged her towards the edge of the counter, where she slipped off to stand on slightly wobbly legs. Klaus's face was instantly pressed to her navel, hands tugging at the tight material of her skinny jeans, dragging it down her legs and off her feet.
Uncaringly, he tossed them behind him, and then pressed his hands back to her hips, fingers eager to hold, to claim, to remember. He hummed and tilted his head back to look up at her, as she set her hands on his shoulders for balance.
"Take off your shirt, love," he murmured. "You're wearing three things to my one."
One? He wasn't wearing anything under his—oh. Oh, Caroline liked that. Caroline liked that a lot.
"Just keep in mind this isn't my good underwear. You haven't earned that yet," she said, wrinkling her nose as she reached for the hem of the camisole.
His eyes watched rapt as inch after inch of cute but ultimately comfortable underwear was revealed in front of his face as she pulled her shirt up. "Then it's a good thing I am very hard to kill when you do reveal this 'good' underwear."
"Oh my god." She grinned helplessly and pulled the camisole over her head. Okay, maybe this might not be her good underwear, but having a t-shirt push-up bra always came in handy in a pinch. Like now, when she wanted her ex to make a face like he was going to die if he couldn't touch her.
He licked his lower lip and then looked like he had come to a decision. Abruptly he stood, bringing her with him as his hand cupped under her knees and lifted her, her legs instinctively flinging around his hips and her hands clutching at his shoulder.
"Klaus!" she yelped in surprise.
"Where's your room?" He replied, setting off, towards the hallway that led toward the back of the house.
Twisting in his arms, she pointed at an open door toward the back left of the hallway. "That one."
Everything blurred for a moment as Klaus sped them inside, and then she was falling, a startled little noise leaving her as her back hit the bed.
"Seriously? A little warning!" she pouted, pushing herself up on her arms to look up at him. She blew a short breath out and every candle in the room—and she had many on dressers and side tables and bookshelves around the primary suite—flared to life, casting a soft glow through the dark room that flickered off Klaus' lean muscles.
Klaus looked down at her, feral and hungry. "I'll have patience later, tomorrow morning perhaps when dawn is creeping in and you're under me, warm and sated. But now?" He dropped his hands to the button of his jeans, opened it, and pulled the zip down. Caroline watched practically panting as he worked his jeans down his hips, his cock springing out from the denim eagerly, and a whining noise escaped her lips.
"Now," he said, putting one knee on the bed between her thighs, "I have every intention of seeing if my memory has done you justice these long years. Take them off Caroline, before I rip them." His hand dipped down the brush against the inside of her thigh and she shivered even as she glared at him, albeit without much heat.
"My policy on you ripping my clothes has altered slightly, you know," she said, reaching behind her to unclip her bra.
"Oh?" Klaus watched with rapt attention as the straps slid down her arms and she inched the bra down. "What are your terms now?"
"You rip it, I get whatever fancy Visa Black Card I'm sure you have to go online shopping for replacements." Teasing Klaus was always so much fun, waiting until he snapped.
His hand darted out, and he tugged the bra off of her and out of her hands, tossing it away from them, causing her to fall back to the bed with a laugh. "Agreed," he said, following her down, his mouth pulling dizzying kisses from her until she felt giddy. Pushing himself back up on his hands to look down at her, the tangle of his necklaces dangling between them, he dimpled mischievously. "No time like the present to start." His hands darted down to her waistband.
"Klaus!" She yelped, laughing, reaching for him much too slowly to stop him as there was the sound of tearing cloth and the sudden absence of coverings as her panties were tugged away. His head bent, mouth pressed to her thigh as his hands pushed her legs wide, exposing her to his golden-laced gaze. Being under those eyes again, moon-bright new, and yet the same hungry look from half-remembered dreams made her clench her fists in the comforter on her bed.
"We can go slow round two?" she suggested with a whine, and he smiled, wicked as sin.
"I'm afraid tasting you is not optional." Klaus tilted his head and inhaled through his nose deeply, eyelashes fluttering as he shuddered in reaction. "My wolf wants you in our lungs, on our tongue, on our cock. Scent memory buried so deep we could find you in any realm, so you are not lost to us again."
Caroline stared at him for a moment, trying to wrangle the molten puddle her insides seemed to have become. Unfortunately, this meant her mouth had free rein. "Is this a secret werewolf mating ritual, am I agreeing to become your werewolf bride?"
"What?" Klaus blinked, thrown, staring at her in confusion. "Are you—no."
Throwing up her hands a little defensively, Caroline shrugged. "I'm just checking! Your wolf instincts are online now. You were territorial as a vampire, I have no idea what being a werepire is going to do to you regarding sex."
"Hybrid," he said with a laugh. "That's quite enough of that now." There was a blunt nibble of teeth against her thigh, a nip that made her squeak, as the feeling of hands spread her lips open.
He dipped his head and warm, wet pleasure engulfed her as his tongue slid up her slit. She gasped, her head tossed back as the sudden pleasure, almost rough against senses gone taut with anticipation. This was no tease, this was a siege, her only warning the one she had already been given. Klaus made a rough noise in his chest as his tongue found the slick mess his teasing had made of her, licked in until his stubble tickled teasingly against her lower lips.
Caroline made a noise that would have been embarrassing under other circumstances, something that had been wounded, leaving her body on a gasp as she threaded her fingers through his curls, gone messy from her hands. "Klaus, please."
Moon-gold eyes flicked up, mischievous and full of sin as he slid his lips up to her clit and sucked it between them. It was like time had never passed, like he had whispered secrets between her thighs that morning the way he laved her clit in all the right ways, brought his thumb up to press above it and reveal the tender nub underneath to his mouth.
Klaus was a man fond of directions: where, how hard, do you suppose you could last a little longer, sweetheart, just one more orgasm for me, that's a good girl, come now. When Caroline tugged on his hair, his mouth moved obligingly until his tongue was causing stars to light up behind her eyes. The teasing drag of his fingers against her lower lips made her shiver, and she dug her heels into his back in retaliation.
"Klaus," she moaned, rolling her head back on the bed, "Don't be mean, touch me."
Oh, and she could feel his smirk against her, the sly tug of his mouth. "Did you yearn for the touch of my hand alone, Caroline?" A soft, warm suck. "There were nights I was haunted by the phantom memory of your hands on my body."
She uncurled her hands from his hair, pulled her fingernails up the back of his neck, and watched a shudder run through him. I'm here, she said wordlessly. I'm here.
His fingers slid through her wetness, never entering but making her squirm with wanting. "Did you seek satisfaction from others when you thought me fickle?" he asked darkly.
If she had, she couldn't remember them at the moment. "I'm seeking satisfaction right now," she said meanly.
Two of his fingers slid inside her with a twist of his wrist, and she gasped with the suddenness of it. The curling rub of his fingers against that particular spot deep inside her made her eyes roll back on a low cry.
He lifted his head to look at her, and her hands fell from his hair. "I'm pleased you could find a temporary comfort while we were yet separated to sate your desires; I've never been one to have you deny yourself." His thumb—previously rubbing firm little circles on her clit that was slowly but surely winding her approaching orgasm tighter and tighter—lifted to barely-there strokes.
Caroline made a noise of pure frustration. "Untrue, June 1922, after the ballet, you kept me from orgasm for hours!" She would never forget that night, it was etched on her memory. Mostly from the strength of the orgasm that accompanied Klaus' final directive to come.
Klaus hummed, a pleased smile curling his mouth with remembered delight as his eyes trailed over her body. "Have you deny yourself? I would never. However, love, you must admit there are benefits to allowing me to deny you some pleasures for a time." His smug tone said he knew she remembered that orgasm just as well as he did, the pleasure that hadn't seemed to end.
A whine escaped her, needy and raw, and Klaus' gaze snapped up to her face.
"Fine, but not tonight, tonight I want to come," she said, hips helplessly grinding against him, searching for more sensation from his vexing hands.
Hunger rose, feral and gleaming in his eyes, the curve of his spine framed by muscles taut as a bowstring stretched out before her. "Then let me hear your pleas, my love, your sweet entreaties. Allow me to give you what you crave down to your bones: me; just as I crave the taste of you." He bent his head to press his mouth to her slit, tongue licking broad and wet up the front of her until it was pressed against her clit.
A sobbing whimper burst from her lips, the vicious wind of her orgasm starting once more with almost agonizing pleasure. It was quick, this climb to her body's needy peak. Klaus still knew the way with surety, and wasn't above using his knowledge against her. Soon the edge beckoned, and she was inches from falling, held back only by the smallest of margins.
She knew what he wanted, damn him, and her pride was quickly set aside in favor of the desire that she couldn't escape.
"Please… Klaus, please!" she begged, reaching for his curls once more to tug impatiently.
The feel of his mouth curling against her, the faint scratch of his stubble against her thighs, the curl of his fingers inside her as he gave her just that little bit more: snapshots of sensations that led up to the feeling of orgasm that rolled up like a wave and washed over her body, leaving nothing but pleasure in its path. Her thighs clenched around his head and her fingers tightened on the dirty blond strands between them while she rode the sensation like a wild beast.
Just barely had she begun to relax, when Klaus lifted his head, tearing his mouth from her. He stared down at her with blue eyes, wild with need, and sucked his fingers clean. Caroline panted, blinked dazedly at him as she watched him crawl to his knees.
"How's your headboard?" he asked, voice practically a growl.
Some lurching part of her brain followed his question. "Sturdy. Hasn't been tested, though, and certainly not against hybrid strength."
He smiled, and his mouth sported a double set of fangs. Fascinating. "'Hasn't been tested?'" His mouth was lush and wet, like the cat in the cream he resembled.
Leveling a flat look at him, she said, "I live in Nowhere, Maine, Klaus. Don't know if you've noticed, but the dating scene is rather thin."
"I'd apologize for having young Joshua dispose of the people he noted with an interest in yourself, but…" Klaus made a soft noise of deferral.
"But you're not that evolved." Caroline made a face. "'Temporary comfort' my ass."
Reaching out, he lifted her chin so that he could see her face firmly. "During the century we were parted, what you did and who you did it with are of no consequence to me. After I found you again, however…" He was grave, eyes burning with golden fire. "You are mine, carlina, from the moment you stared me down with these witch-fire eyes, and mine you shall remain. If you have no desire to stay so, tell me now, before I put you over this headboard and fuck you senseless."
Her stomach clenched in lust. As he knelt there in front of her, beautiful as the candlelight played off the golden glints in his curls, Caroline was reminded how rarely genuinely vulnerable Klaus was. Pushing herself up to a sitting position, propped up on one hand, she reached out with the other. Snagging a hand around his necklaces, she carefully reeled him towards her until his forehead bumped into hers. Eyes closed, she breathed with him, feeling the warmth of his hand shifting to her cheek.
Wetting her lips, she swallowed. "I was yours for one hundred years when you were just a memory. Of course I'm still yours."
Making a rough sound in his throat, something like relief, like coming home, Klaus leaned forward to press his mouth to hers in kisses that ached with tenderness and built with a fervor. His kisses were deep, the answer to a question she'd been asking for a century found in the plush press of his lips, in the hot feathering of his breath, the tense way his body sat right on the edge of control. When he pulled back, there was a golden ring around his irises that Caroline blinked at in fascinated arousal.
"Caroline," he growled, lips kiss wet and still tasting of her intimately, "My patience is not without its limits."
Pulling her legs underneath her, she sat up on her knees, gave Klaus a wicked smile. "Good things come to those who wait."
"I shall recall this the next time you wish me to hurry with my tongue on your pretty pink clit." His voice was agonizing in its deliberate sexuality, warmly sensual. Her thighs clenched together as she squirmed.
Still holding his necklaces in one hand, she began to back up on the bed toward the headboard. "Don't be mean," she pouted. Klaus stalked after her, the smooth skin of his naked body rippling over the lean muscles of his broad shoulders and narrow waist.
"Do you think me mean, sweetheart, the way I make you slick and wet for me?" His smile was his sharp hunting smile, the one with no mercy tucked into the corners of his dimples.
Caroline practically moaned to see it, could feel her desire on her thighs as she bumped into the wooden headboard behind her. With her free hand, she shoved at the pillows and sent them toppling out of the way. "My, what big teeth you have."
Rising to his knees, Klaus placed his hands on the headboard edge, boxing her in as he leaned in, pressing his mouth to her neck. "Mm, the better to eat you with," he murmured into her skin, amusement coloring every word. His lips parted, and sharp fangs scraped her gently, a faint prick her only warning as a drop of blood welled up and rolled down her neck, tickling her skin. His tongue laved at the red trail, a soft whimper of pleasure escaping her lips, and he tilted his head back, eyelashes fluttering as he savored her taste. When he opened then again, they were the brightness of liquid gold, luminous like the moon.
"My," she whispered, "What big eyes you have." Reaching out, she caressed his cheek, feeling his stubble prickle her palm.
His eyes dragged from her face with its blue eyes and long nose, lips worried red from her biting her lower one, down the length of her naked body, past rounded breasts and pink nipples, the dip of her waist and the long stretch of her legs, and then back up again to her face. The feverish gold of his eyes had not abated a jot, and as he leaned in almost nose-to-nose with her, Caroline found herself hard-pressed not to give up this whole game and just kiss him until neither of them could breathe.
"The better to see you with, love." The flickering light of the candles played in his hair, bringing out the golden highlights and causing an ill suited halo effect to his curls.
Letting go of his tangle of necklaces, she dragged her fingers down his chest and stomach. Their teasing trek did not pause below his waist and his eyes had just started to drop in curiosity, when she wrapped her hand around his stiff cock. His blond eyelashes fluttered slightly, trying to keep open and not slam shut as they wanted to.
"Carlina…" he growled softly in warning, which she did not heed.
"My," she teased, lips curving in a wicked smile, "What a big cock you have."
Klaus slid an arm around her waist, and with an intent look, flipped her around to face the headboard. Ignoring her squeak of surprise, he pressed into her back, mouth to the back of her ear. "The better to fuck you with, love," tone man and wolf in one as he dragged his mouth down her neck and aching need shot straight to her core.
The whimper that escaped her mouth as she clenched her hands on the edge of the headboard was a wounded thing, built on a hundred years of lonely nights and being haunted by his ghost. "Yes," she gasped. "Klaus, please!"
"The sound of your entreaties in my ears has been greatly missed." Sliding a hand down to where she was waiting wet and hot for him, he slowly explored with slick fingers. "You plead so sweetly. Perhaps you'll allow me to experiment with silk scarves and the ways one could be tied to this bed? That was always something we kept saving for 'later.'"
"Maybe—ah!—maybe I wanted to tie you to the bed," she challenged, as he tweaked and pinched at her clit.
He hummed a low note into her spine and sent shivers up and down it. "You may have your turn, once I have sated a hundred years of need that has ached within my bones." Head bowed til his nose brushed her shoulder, he placed soft, sucking kisses on her skin.
"Time has been an ill companion of mine this past century, Caroline Forbes, when I wore your heartbeat next to mine," he said as he slid his other hand between her breasts, traced delicate words in a language she didn't know over her heart, "Took each breath to its rhythm, and wondered at the cause of each skip of the beat. And when I felt it jump that day in New Orleans the moment we locked eyes, I knew you still remembered me."
Caroline whined and tried to rock on his hand. "Oh my god, why are you still not inside me right now? Please Klaus, I need—"
Sliding his hand through her soaking wetness, Klaus rubbed the heel of his palm against her clit, causing her to moan deeply, eyelashes fluttering. Then he pulled his hand away, wrapping it around his cock and pumping it through his fingers, making it slick with her arousal. He shuddered bodily as the warmth of her teased him, made him yearn for her innermost place.
Leaning in, he pressed the head of his cock to her lower lips, rubbed it teasingly in the wetness practically dripping from her, never pressing in. His other hand he wrapped carefully under her throat and used his thumb to turn her chin so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Tongue tracing his lips with a tremor attesting to the hunger of his need, Klaus watched her squirm against him, and held himself in hand carefully. It was almost infuriating how good he was at denying them what they both wanted.
"How lovely you look, sweetheart, desperate for my cock. I'll give you what you need." His hand shifted and the head of his cock slid in slowly, making her shudder.
"More," she moaned, fingers gripping the headboard at the stretch of him inside her. Klaus slid back and then rocked in a bit further, letting her adjust to him again. The problem was, she didn't want to adjust, she wanted to feel all of him. Pressing back against him, she ground herself down, feeling her wetness soak his hand.
A fierce smile, hot with the passion burning in his eyes, curled his lips. "Trying to rush me, sweetheart? You should be aware of how I feel about taking my time with you." It was almost agony the way he rocked into her, only sliding in another teasing inch.
Caroline made a sound that she had previously thought only vampires could make, low growl rough in her throat and she bared her blunt, human teeth at him. "Klaus Mikaelson, if you don't fuck me right now, I'm going to hex you so badly you won't be able to walk straight."
"Mmm," he hummed into her neck, making her shiver, "Sweetheart, the only one I'm afraid who is going to be unable to walk straight in the morning, is you. Do hold onto the headboard if you feel the need." With that as her only warning, he released his cock from his fist and rolled his hips up into her, sliding his full length into her.
Hands clenching on the edge of the headboard, Caroline let out a low cry as pleasure curled through her body. "Klaus," she moaned. "Yes, more."
Just as she had wished, he hardly gave her time to adjust before he was rocking into her again. His movements stayed slow and even, letting her feel the length of his cock inside her, his hand sliding from her neck to her waist to hold her in place with a firm grip on her hip.
Her body lit up like fireworks at the casual dominance of Klaus. It wasn't something she allowed other people a chance to explore with her because it had never felt correct with others. But Klaus? The exacting way he touched her, knew just which buttons to push? She could trust him to catch her if she fell.
"That's it, Caroline," he murmured low and rumbly in her ear as his pace started to pick up, "You take me so well." Feeling like she was coming apart at the seams from the mounting pleasure, she let out a soft sob.
Time started to lose meaning to her as she floated in the interminable pleasure that Klaus pulled from her body. Dragging his hand down her body from her breast, he began to tease her clit with soft little circles that had her rocking her hips against his mindlessly. The winding feeling in her core grew tighter and tighter until she was a livewire of sensation, hovering on the edge of orgasm… except for his gentle strokes being just a touch too light to send her crashing over.
A sound left her lips, something that sounded a little too much like whining for her comfort, but gods did he know how to play her body. After all these years, he still knew how to drive her mad with just his fingers and his cock.
"Just a little longer, love. Feel me inside you, touching the parts of you no one else can?" His thrusts shifted then, deep and hard, and she cried out with the feeling of his cock being buried so fully inside her.
"Yes," she practically sobbed, fingers white knuckled on the headboard as she tipped her head back to press her cheek against his.
A rumble rolled from his throat, and he pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips that had her nearly blinking back tears from the sweetness of it. "Good girl, sweetheart. Let go now." His fingers pressed down in little half moons over her clit and Caroline came on a cry of pleasure as pure bliss crashed through her body. Again and again he caused the waves of rapture to roll through her body as she clung to the headboard.
Klaus' movements were coming faster and faster, his breath hot on her shoulder as he approached his finish. "Need to bite you," he said, voice full of wolf and want.
"Do it!" she gasped, barely thinking past the sexual need still being ratcheted higher with his unforgiving fingers and the thrust of his cock.
The pumping motion in and out of her slick wetness grew to a fever pitch as he reached for his climax, and then with a final thrust, he came buried deep inside her. At the same time, sharp teeth bit down on her shoulder, the intense pleasure-pain of his bite going straight to her clit, where he pinched and rolled it until she came one final time, body shaking from the euphoria Klaus had played like a maestro.
Taking only a few small sips from the bite at the shoulder, Klaus pulled his mouth from her and licked it clean. "Divine as my memory recalls you to be, nothing tastes as luscious on my tongue as you do tonight." Pulling his hand from her, slick with her juices, he licked it clean. "Truly, a feast for the senses," he said, inhaling deeply.
Caroline laughed shakily, leaning against the headboard. "One day we're going to meld energies during sex. It's gonna be sooooo good." She could still feel him inside her, halfway to hard—hot damn the vampire refractory period—and she squirmed.
Making an intrigued noise, Klaus rubbed a hand up her back. "I look forward to that. Are you proposing round two?" Pulling out slightly, he rolled his hips back against her, making her gasp as the sensitive nerves of her body lit up again, her nipples peaking sharply. It was almost enough to deter her. Almost.
"Oh my god, no, you sex fiend," she said, as her stomach gave a horrible rumble. "I'm starving. I haven't eaten all day; feed me food!" Swatting his thigh earned her a laugh and a kiss on her shoulder bite, before he slid out of her. It was almost embarrassing the amount of cum that dripped down her thighs, and she leaned over to her bedside table drawer for the wet wipes she kept there—listen sometimes getting out of bed to clean up after a really good solo session was too much trouble—and pulled one out to clean herself off.
"Don't," Klaus said, startling her, and she looked up to find him partway to a gesture that looked like he was going to stop her. Almost awkwardly he pulled his hand back and licked his lips. "Could you leave it, for some time?"
Squinting at him, Caroline slowly put the wet wipe down. "Hybrid instincts, huh?"
He shrugged in an attempt at nonchalantness. "My wolf likes the way our scent is on you. The way you belong with us." His gaze was heated gold as it raked down her naked body, lingering on the smears on her thighs. Then he blinked a few times, and the gold faded while he blew out a calming breath. "You requested sustenance. Do you still have a mind to make us dinner, or shall I order in?"
Blinking with how quickly Klaus could make her body go from one to one-hundred, Caroline shook her head. "Order me the ravioli from Osteria della Luna in town. I want cheese. And a slice of their tiramisu." With a nod of his head, Klaus disappeared, ostensibly to grab his phone from his clothes in the kitchen.
"And I'm taking a shower tomorrow!" Caroline called after him. His wolf would just have to deal.