Black Magic ▹ The Vampire Diaries [1]

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN
HEARTLESS

"Sometimes I tell myself I'm okay. I repeat it like a mantra. 'I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.' Because I'm afraid if I stop, even for a moment, I will drown in all the reasons I am not."

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Henrik was kneeling by the line of salt, pressing the palm of his hand against the invisible barrier and murmuring words under his breath, when Damon joined him, Stefan, and Klaus. It was clear that he was already aware of the line of salt around the entire school, since he didn't ask what Henrik was doing or what it even was. Henrik was relieved by that, and he hoped that word was spreading through everyone they knew as he worked on getting the barrier down. The more he studied the barrier itself, however, the more he wasn't so sure that he had a solution. Every spell had a signature; every spell had a summary in the invisible lines that made up the spell itself. It took years to learn how to read them, but when a witch did, they could tell exactly what type of spell it was—but it was hard and draining work, and even Henrik couldn't keep it up for long. A few minutes later, he pulled his hand back and took a moment to catch his breath, feeling slightly dizzy.

He hadn't read the entire spell—since the spell surrounded the entire school, that would take hours, and he'd probably die from the strain—but he had read about five feet of it, and that was more than enough. Barrier spells were the easiest to read. Most of them were typically the same. Barriers spells with a time limit, however, were a little bit more difficult. Henrik could have broken it if he had his grimoire, but that was in his car trunk, tucked safely away in a cash box. Locking them inside of a school, where grimoires were unlikely to be found and supplies were limited, was a stroke of genius on Esther's part. She must have known all of them would have been gathered inside the school. Sighing, he planted his hands on his hips and turned to face the vampires currently waiting for his explanation. On the edge of their group was little Jeremy Gilbert, who had come to inform them that Elena had gone to find Esther.

"It's a simple barrier spell," he revealed, which was both what they all had already concluded and the worst news possible. If Esther was out there with Elena in tow, it couldn't mean anything good. "It's really straightforward work. Usually it's put around a room, or even over a single small spot..."

"But?" Stefan prompted, hearing the silent word as Henrik trailed off. He grimaced, then shot his brother a knowing look. Klaus heaved an exasperated sigh and turned away. He knew what the look on Henrik's face meant.

"But one this large is almost impossible to break," he revealed. Nothing but tense silence followed. Hearing the most powerful witch they had ever known admit that he couldn't do something had certainly raddled them, if Stefan's pale face and Damon's pursed lips were anything to go by. Henrik explained further, just to drive in the point that he couldn't just snap his fingers and lift the barrier. "Doing a spell varies in difficulty. Some are easy, some are hard, but nothing is undoable—"

"Then undo the spell," Damon gritted out

"Undoing a spell isn't as simple as you make it out to be. That's what I'm trying to explain. It's like...like seeing knots made up of chemical reactions. Untie the knots too quickly—or worse, cut through them forcefully—and the entire thing will become unstable, even dangerous. I would need Esther's grimoire to undo this quickly, but that's not an option right now. Our only option, really, is to find a loophole and exploit it, but I'd need my grimoire to do that. The good news is that the barrier isn't permanent, though. My guess is it'll lift at dawn."