Beauty and Blood

Lost Girls

September 27th, 2009

When Andy woke up, she started the day off with immense confusion, slowly blinking at what she knew wasn't her ceiling due to the lack of a particular stain from a sticky wall crawler man that had been stuck for a solid month before rudely awakening her in the middle of the night by falling on her face. Middle school truly had been a magical time. Then she was hit with the memories of the big reveal, how she had calmed Elena down and convinced her to wait until morning before confronting Stefan about what she had discovered.

Vampires.

Cursing her family's luck she sprung from the bed as quietly as she could without disturbing her slumbering sister next to her, grabbing her trainers as she searched her cardigan pockets for her phone and left for her room. After a few seconds of ringing that felt like hours Stefan picked up the call. "Andy, hey are you alright? Has Damon done anything?"

"What?" The issue of the homicidal vampire that had been invited into her home coming in and ripping her throat out in the dead of night had escaped her mind. "No, no Damon, but uhh, you may be getting a panicked call from my other half once she wakes up, just as a warning." She opened her curtains to let the sunlight in and paced around her room, wincing at something digging into her leg from her jean pocket. "Why what's wrong with Elena?"

Andy pulled out the offending object, Damon's mysterious crystal. "Oh she just had a major freakout from figuring out the existence of vampires on her own and I had to stop her from running out into the night to confront you." There was a despairing silence on his end at the spilling of his greatest secret at the most inopportune time.

"Speaking of being out at night, how is the Damon situation going?" She examined the pendant by holding it up to the light, waiting for his response. "He wants his ring back, and he's willing to hurt anyone to get it." he stressfully sighed, she could imagine him running his hands through his well groomed hair, it was probably only due to his vampirism that it hadn't fallen out from stress. And, yknow, old age.

"You mean Elena. He's willing to hurt Elena just to get his stupid bling back." She scoffed at Damon's predictability. "How did she handle the news? What did you tell her?" Stefan tentatively asked, both desperate for and fearing the answer. "Just how long I'd known the truth, why I hadn't told her, the fact that you weren't planning our imminent demise."

There was a sigh of minor relief through the speaker.

"You know you would've had to tell her eventually, right? And now you're gonna have to open the can of worms that is 1864."

"Yeah I know, I just wish it was on my own terms, that she'd gotten to know the guy beneath the fangs first."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Besides, you don't have to tell her anything too personal yet, like the whole ripper thing or any other unpleasantries from the past hundred and something years. Just the basics: how vampires work, how you and your brother turned and all that jazz."

"Yeah, yeah, okay." he seemed marginally reassured. "You Gilberts are too smart for your own good sometimes, you know that right?" He tiredly laughed through the phone, but Andy had become distracted, squinting as she caught something in the light of the amber, a pattern of somesorts. Turning, she held the jewel up so whatever she saw casted its shadow on the wall. "Yeah I'm starting to get that." she mumbled into the receiver, staring in shock at the silhouette plastered on her wall in the early morning light. A large pentagram sat there, staring at her ominously as she froze.

"Andy?"

"Yeah, call later to tell me how the talk goes, mkay? Good luck."

Stefan hesitantly bid her thanks and goodbye before hanging up, Andy's eyes still glued to the dark shape. Pentagrams meant witches, and what witch was around Damon Salvatore in the 19th century? Emily Bennett. And what major event involved Fell's Church in 1864? The Battle of Willow Creek. The real question was how did the pendant link the two? Bonnie certainly had no clue about the significance of it, but there was one Bennett that she could ask. Not bothering with a shower and just drowning herself in deodorant, she frantically buried the cryptic jewel back into her jeans as she threw her trainers on, grabbing her journal and shoving it into her rucksack before hauling the strap over her shoulder and dashing down the stairs.