IT WAS NO DIFFICULT TO TRACK DOWN WHERE ANNA WAS STAYING. There was only one motel in Mystic Falls, and when you can compel information out of people, it was really no challenge to find the room. They sat on the bed while she finished hanging out with Jeremy, and once she came back, they stood up and got into their places. Damon stood behind the door, and Eleanor stood on the other side, hidden in the corner of a wall.

Annabelle unlocked the room and entered. As soon as she shut the door, Damon appeared behind it, grabbing her by the throat and vamp speeding her into the wall behind him. She was quick to grab his throat as well, flipping them over, and they were both making choking noises when Eleanor broke off a chair leg.

Anna spun around just in time to see Eleanor plunge the makeshift wooden stake into her stomach. The younger girl groaned and fell to the ground. She screamed when she yanked the leg out of her, and once it was out, she panted and looked up at them with a slight smirk. "I was wondering how long it would take you to find me."

"How long have you been here?" Damon asked her as she stood up.

"I arrived around half-past comet, watching you screw up every chance you had to open that tomb," she responded bitterly, heading into the bathroom to check out her ruined top as her wound healed. She turned back to them, her eyes landing on the Chetwood girl. "By the way, Eleanor, I thought you'd be more focused on getting Katherine back, but you seem to have other priorities."

Eleanor just glared at her, and Damon seemed to just realize that she had not put that much effort into opening the tomb. He shook it off and continued his interrogation of Anna. "How did you know about the spell?"

"I didn't say much back then, which means I heard everything," she reminded them. It was true. She only ever really spoke to her mother and occasionally Eleanor, but she mostly just lurked in the shadows, eavesdropping.

The Chetwood girl furrowed her eyebrows, wondering why this was the first time they were hearing of her when they both had the same goals. "So if you've been here the whole time, then why are we just crossing paths right now?"

"I like to use others to do my dirty work," she answered with a shrug.

"Like Logan Fell?" Damon asked, and Eleanor looked at him in confusion. It seemed that she had missed a chapter in the adventures of Mystic Falls. "Oh, yeah, thanks for that, by the way. Little bastard shot me."

Anna scoffed, rolling her eyes, clearly not very fond of the guy that she had been using. "Logan was an idiot. We slipped him some blood when he started getting all poser slayer with that compass. I needed his family's journal. I couldn't let him die."

"What'd you want with the Fell journal?" Eleanor asked. The Gilbert one was the one that held the location of the grimoire. Was she just collecting founders' journals?

"I thought it contained the location of the witch's spell book. I was wrong. According to her journal, Honoria gave the grimoire to Johnathan Gilbert. And, according to this..." Anna walked over to her purse and pulled out the journal, looking pointedly at Damon. "He gave it to your father. So now you guys are going to help me find it."

He shot her a look like she was crazy, which she kind of was if she thought that she could just decide to work with them after watching them that whole time and not helping. "Why would I help you?"

"'Cause we all want that tomb open," Anna answered, and she offered the book to him, holding a page with her finger that they assumed said the location of the grimoire.

Eleanor snatched it before the Salvatore man could grab it, and he rolled his eyes and just looked over her shoulder so that they could read. Once they got all of the information that they needed, the girl snapped the book shut and tossed it back to Anna while Damon sighed, "Sorry. We work alone."

《❂》

1864

THE FOUNDERS HAD FIGURED IT OUT, AND THEY WERE ROUNDING UP VAMPIRES. They had some sort of device that pointed them out, meaning that Eleanor and the others had to get out of town immediately before they were caught and killed. The Chetwood girl had left Katherine with the Salvatore brothers, knowing that she would be able to protect herself.

She ran back to the house to get Adelaide, who had been gathering their things. She moved up the stairs quickly and into her bedroom. "Addy, we have to go. They're getting clos—" She froze in the doorway of the room, a small gasp leaving her lips in shock.

Adelaide was lying across the bed, covered in blood. Her eyes were open and lifeless, and the usual rise and fall of her chest was gone. She had an open wound on her neck, and it was surprising that her head was still on her body. Blood flowed down her arms and dripped onto the floor, forming a puddle on the wood.

Eleanor slowly took a few hesitant steps toward the bed, and her breath was shaky. Once she got the full view of the woman that she loved, the tears began to fall. She fell to her knees at the foot of the bed, and she let out a sob as she buried her face in her hands. She glanced down when she felt something below her, and she picked up a syringe that she had given Adelaide in the case that she needed to defend herself against a vampire. She must have been unable to get to it in time.

"Eleanor, come on! We need to go!" Katherine's voice called, and the Chetwood girl heard her enter the room and stop. Her voice changed from urgent to annoyed once she saw the scene in front of her. "Oh, please don't tell me you're crying over this human."

The crying girl could barely muster out any words, and she was finally able to breathe out, "I loved her."

"Aw, I know. But she had to die. We can't leave any loose ends here," Katherine replied, walking over to her friends and placing a hand on her shoulder, trying to get her to stand up and hurry along because they needed to leave soon if they were going to make it out of there alive.

Eleanor slowly looked up at her best friend in realization and betrayal. "You killed her?" Adelaide was innocent. She had just been someone that the vampire had fallen in love with and someone willing to tag along on their adventures.

"Well, of course," the Pierce girl responded, like it was the most obvious and casual thing in the world, like she did not just kill the woman that her best friend loved. "It was the only way to keep us from getting caught. She's too much of a gossip. She would have told someone sooner or later."

"No, she wouldn't. She loved me!" Eleanor insisted, climbing to her feet and stepping away from her friend.

"She did not love you! She loved your power, and your protection," Katherine snapped back, and she moved toward the girl, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear like she was a child. Her face held pity. "Nora, you will never learn, will you? People will always use you for your power, and you can't let them."

Eleanor scoffed, shaking Katherine's hand off of her. Her expression changed from hurt to angry as she sneered, "Like you do not use me? I used to kill evil creatures like you, and now, I am forced to be the thing I hated most."

"You were weak. I made you strong. I made you able to fight for yourself," the Pierce girl groaned, rolling her eyes. Eleanor's hand tightened around the syringe that she had never put down, and she hesitated for only a moment before reaching up and plunging it into her former friend's neck

"Thank you for that," she muttered, and she stepped to the side as Katherine stared at her in shock before collapsing. Eleanor then began shrieking, "Someone! Help! In here!" After a moment, the room filled with men and women with torches. They immediately ran over to the body to collect Katherine, and Eleanor cried, "She attacked my maid! She bit her neck! She must have gone mad or something! I don't know what happened."

"It's okay, my lady. You are safe now," a woman assured her, coming over to try and comfort her as she cried. She thanked them, and once they left the room, she was gone.

《❂》

THEY GOT THE GRIMOIRE AND THE BENNETTS. They were at the ruins of the church where the tomb was, and they were moments away from getting inside. Bonnie and her grandmother were holding hands inside and reciting a spell. Everyone else was too scared to say anything, worried that they might mess them up. All of a sudden, the torches flared up around them.

"What's happening?" Elena quizzed, but her question was answered a moment later when the door of the tomb cracked open.

All of their heads whipped over to it with wide eyes, and the witches stopped chanting. Bonnie breathed out, "It worked!" They did it. The tomb was open, and Katherine was moments away from being back unless Eleanor got to her first.

"I'm gonna go get the gasoline, I'll be right back," Stefan informed Elena, and he headed up the stairs with Damon following him. They needed to be prepared for the other vampires waking up. He shouted back down at Eleanor, "Wait until we get back to go inside."

The brunette girl nodded in response, but the moment that the brothers were out of sight, she grasped Elena's wrist and tugged her into the tomb. Bonnie shouted at her, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just making sure you don't decide to close the door on me while I'm in here," the Chetwood woman replied with a shrug, and she did not even give her a moment to protest before pulling Elena further inside. They entered a room, and it was covered wall-to-wall in desiccated vampires. Eleanor scanned their bodies carefully as whispers echoed throughout the tomb. Elena looked terrified, and Eleanor explained, "They can sense you. Now, where is she?"

She then reached into her boot and pulled out a small wooden stake that she had hidden there. Elena looked over at her in confusion and slight horror. "What are you doing?"

"Katherine and I didn't exactly end on the best terms. I'm the reason she's trapped here, and I'm gonna be the reason she stays down here," the vampire explained, and then, she sped off through the tomb, leaving Elena alone behind her.

However, she hit the end, and there was no sign of Katherine. She had checked every single face, every single body, but none of them even remotely resembled the woman. She looked around her in shock, sure that she must have missed something, and she whipped around when she heard Damon's voice behind her. "Put the stake down, Nora."

"She's not here," was all she said, not dropping the weapon.

His expression changed from anger to confusion as he scanned the room as well. He must have been looking around as well because he had been ever so desperate to be reunited with the woman. "What? What do you mean, she's not here?"

"She's not here!" she shouted, turning around and slamming the stake into the wall. How was she not down there?

He shook his head frantically in disbelief. She had to be down there. If she wasn't that meant that she had been out of the tomb the entire time. "No, no, no, no, no, no. How can she not be here?"

"I don't know. I watched them drag her away to the tomb," she insisted, equally as confused as he was. Sure, she did not watch her get locked away, but how did those idiot men manage to lose an unconscious woman? She had been injected with a solid amount of vervain. She should've been out for a while.

Damon stopped, looking up at Eleanor in realization. He had been confused as to why she was trying to kill Katherine, but now, he knew. "That's why you wanted to kill her. You betrayed her."

"It would be in all of our best interests if she didn't come back, but she's always been back," the girl told him blandly. He would hopefully be finally able to move on after being in love with her for a century and a half, and they would not have to worry about her anymore. But she had escaped somehow and decided not to contact them on purpose. "She was never in the tomb."

"Damon. Eleanor," Stefan called, running into the room.

Damon glanced over at his brother before pulling out the blood bag that he had brought for Katherine to wake her up. He then chucked it into the wall so that it broke and splattered across it. "She's not here!"

"Stefan, they can't hold it much longer!" Elena shouted into the tomb, and Eleanor realized that they needed to get the hell out of there before they were trapped in there forever. Before Stefan could tell them to hurry the hell up, she vamp sped through the tomb and out. She was not about to be stuck in a tomb with the Salvatore brothers and a bunch of desiccated vampires.

Eleanor had to go home that night with the unsettling feeling that Katherine was out in the world somewhere, not searching for her, not trying to reach her, and not even trying to kill her for what she did. She was alive and free, and she could appear any moment.