AFTER CHARLIE WENT ALL CRAZY ON HER UNCLE, the man was not very happy with her. She had no problem with that because she was pissed at him as well. How dare he just come into town and decide that he's going to stay and cause problems while he was there? He had told Tyler about how to trigger the curse, so she was at least happy that he was not still keeping her brother in the dark about everything. She was still mad though because he almost murdered a freaking teenager for God's sakes. Not just a teenager, one of her defenseless friends. She was also really curious as to why he wanted this moonstone thing so bad.

That was how she ended up at the Salvatore Boarding House after Jeremy Gilbert called her because apparently, Tyler told him about the stone as well.

She knocked on the door, and she heard muffled voices inside before it swung open to reveal Damon Salvatore standing there. She furrowed her eyebrows suspiciously when she did not see the Gilbert boy right away. "Where's Jeremy?"

"Calm down," the man told her before stepping aside so that she could come in. "Your boyfriend's in here."

"You know, I haven't seen her around lately. Are you sure that you're still together?" he asked while they walked into the room where Jeremy and Alaric were standing, and the two turned around when they heard them walk in.

Charlie rolled her eyes. "Go to hell."

"Gladly," he responded with a smile, and she just glared at him playfully as she approached the table that had a bunch of paper's spread out all over it.

Ric raised his eyebrows at her when he saw her, confused and wondering why she was there. He was also wondering why Damon had involved two freshmen in whatever he was planning. "What are you doing here?"

"She's here to give us more information on werewolves," Jeremy answered for her when she hesitated because she had not been given much information on the phone except for the fact that whatever they were doing might make Mason mad and that it involved her talking about her werewolf knowledge. The first part was a pro, and she did not really care about the second part. So, she figured, why not?

"Yeah," she confirmed before gesturing to all of the pictures and papers in front of her on the table. "What's all this?"

Damon began digging through one of the boxes on the table and pulled out a book. The Saltzman man cleared his throat before explaining to her, "This is Isobel's research from Duke. Her assistant sent it to me. You remember the old Aztec curse she told us about?"

"Sun and the moon, blah blah blah blah," the Salvatore man muttered, examining the book in his hands before Alaric reached over and took it from him, dropping it back on the table.

"Aztec curse? Cool," Jeremy muttered like he was a five-year-old that just figured out what dinosaurs were. He looked over to the werewolf girl that was looking at some of the ancient drawings. "You ever heard of it?"

She shook her head in response. "Never."

"Well, ​​supposedly vampires and werewolves used to roam freely until a shaman put a curse on them to limit their power. Since then, werewolves can only turn on a full moon and vampires are weakened by the sun," Ric informed them.

Damon held up his hand and wiggled his fingers, showing off his daylight ring. "Well, most of them, anyway."

"At least you can fix your problem with a magic ring," Charlie muttered bitterly, looking down at the ground. "I am forced to transform every month no matter what happens, even if we can't see the moon."

"According to the legend, the werewolf part of the curse is sealed with the moonstone," Alaric continued. He grabbed the map that the Lockwood girl was looking at and handed it to Damon for him to look at it. Jeremy grabbed it next and looked at it, and the girl peered over his shoulder so that she could see too.

It was then that she realized that the pictures were telling the story of the Sun and Moon curse. Jeremy quizzed, "What do you mean, sealed?"

"It's a witch thing, whatever seals the curse is usually the key to unsealing the curse," Damon responded after a second.

Mr. Saltzman nodded slowly as if he were thinking about something, and then his eyes widened in realization. "Maybe Mason believes that he can use the moonstone to reverse the curse."

"If we start believing in some supernatural witchy-woo legend from a picture book, we're idiots," Damon informed all of them before turning to the two teenagers in question, raising his eyebrows. "Who has the stone now?"

"My brother," she answered.

He then asked them, "Can you guys get it."

"Probably."

"See?" he questioned with a small smile when he realized that they could actually help in some way, and he acted like this was the only thing that they contributed to anything. "Your lives do have purpose."

"So, you do believe it?" Jeremy questioned with raised eyebrows and a smug expression, like he had just been proven right.

"It's the same book that says a werewolf bite kills a vampire. Ignoring it would make me an even bigger idiot," the Salvatore man answered, and surprisingly, no one turned to ask her if that part was true. "Let's go."

Before they left, the werewolf turned around and looked them straight in the eye to make sure that they knew that she was being serious. "Listen, I have one condition. We cannot kill my Uncle." It was a random request, but she was fairly certain that it might come up. So, she needed to make sure that she was covering all her bases.

They headed to Charlie's house to help set up for the masquerade ball, and the girl tried to stay hidden for most of it so that she did not run into her uncle. She just listened carefully from a corner as Jeremy talked to her brother.

"Hey, so I did a little research that you showed me the other day," the younger boy told him. "So, basically, it turns out that it's part of this Aztec legend but I want to make sure it's the same kind of stone. You think I could check it out again?

"Nope. I gave it to my uncle," he responded, and his sister clenched her fist tightly. Jeremy looked up and looked at the girl who was peering out from behind a pillar. When they made eye contact, he knew that she had just heard what the older boy said.

He questioned, "Why did you do that?"

"Because I'm done with legends and curses. I don't want anything to do with it, okay?" Tyler explained, and it kind of made sense when you thought about it. He was trying his hardest not to kill anyone, which normally would not be hard, but its surprisingly hard when you're trying not to do it.

"Yeah, yeah sure. It's probably...Just, uh, stupid folklore anyways," the Gilbert boy replied with a nod, waving her off. "Forget it."

Sometime during the setting up, Damon informed her that he had kidnapped her uncle and was now interrogating him in his house. She told him that anything goes as long as there was no death, and she went back to hiding and creeping.

After everyone had left, Carol was still going around and fixing everything for the millionth time. She was straightening out the table cloths when both of her kids walked over to her. The female assured her, "It looks great, Mom."

"Thanks," she responded gratefully. Then, she looked to her son. "It was nice to see Matt today. He hasn't been around for a while."

"We've both been busy, I guess. Have you seen Mason? The guy's been AWOL all day," the male questioned, and Charlie forced herself to look away so that she did not let anything slip about what happened at the Boarding House.

The woman took a deep breath like she had bad news and did not want to tell them about before announcing, "Actually, guys, Mason headed back to Florida."

"What?" Tyler exclaimed, but Charlie froze. There was no way that he would go back to Florida without letting them know. He was not that much of a dick to his niece and especially not his nephew. Her mind was moving a mile a minute, and she was trying to process what was happening.

"I'm sorry, guys," she muttered, looking sympathetically at her children. One looked sad while one was practically fuming, but not because he left. Because something fishy was happening, and she was pretty sure that she knew what it was. "I know you guys really hit it off."

The boy looked like he was trying to process it. "So, he just left?"

"I was hoping he'd stick around...I thought that with your dad gone..." she trailed off, looking down at her shoes in slight embarrassment. After a moment she smiled slightly and patted them each on the back. "Anyway, he's gone. So, I guess it's just you and me now."

☾❄☽

WHEN DAMON OPENED THE DOOR, he was met with a punch to the face.

"Where is he?" the Lockwood girl asked bitterly as he held his nose for a couple seconds. He was a vampire, so even though she had enhanced strength, she did not do much damage. She did not wait for him to answer, she just barged inside while he was distracted and ran into the room that she knew he had been keeping Mason in.

She froze when she was met with a covered up body.

Once she snapped out of the trance that she was in, she slowly made her way toward the lump on the ground, scared for what she would find under it. It might not be a body, she thought, trying to convince herself, but it was not working. It could be anything. She crouched down next to it, and she heard Damon enter the room behind her. She hesitantly lifted the top of the tarp that was covering whatever it was, and even though she knew deep down what it was, she was not prepared to actually see it.

Mason was lying there, eyes wide open and his body bloody.

She took a deep breath, fighting back the tears. Of course, he was a complete and utter asshole, but he was still family. He still taught her how to control her anger and what to do when she transitioned. He still helped talk her through it whenever she needed it. She stood up and whipped around to face the man behind her. She spat out of him, "You son of a bitch."

"Oh, yeah," he mumbled to himself as if he just remembered that he had killed her uncle. "I meant to ask you what you wanted me to do with the body."

She ran toward him and used all of her strength to shove him against the wall behind him. He did not fight her because he knew that she would not do much damage and that he could get out of it at any time. She sneered, "I told you not to kill him."

"I had no choice. He was being annoying," he told her with a shrug, a smirk on his face that just made her angrier. How the hell could he be so smug about this when someone that she loved just died.

"So you just decided to murder him?" she exclaimed with raised eyebrows, still angry but also a little bit confused about what his thought process was. Sometimes, she was convinced that he just liked killing people, which was definitely a possibility. "How the hell am I gonna tell my brother who thinks he went back to Florida that our uncle is dead?"

He responded as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "It's easy. Just don't tell him."

"You are such an asshole," she informed him, but she knew that he already knew that because she had heard plenty of people call him that.

"You better watch who you're calling an asshole," he told her. For some reason, he took offense to that and used his vampire speed to slam her against the wall right next to the fire, and she could feel the heat radiating off it against her leg. He was pinning her down so that she could not move. Then he glanced at the body on the ground next to him and threatened, "Or else you might end up like your uncle."

Suddenly getting an idea, the Lockwood girl shot her arm out and grabbed a poker that was sticking out of the fire. She whipped it around and plunged it into the man's side. He cried out in pain from both being impaled and the hot metal burning his flesh. His legs gave out from under him, and he fell to the ground. She leaned down as he groaned and whispered in his ear, "By the way, I can kill you with just a bite, so you better watch your back."