Fic: The Quick and the Dead Will Find You (Teen Wolf/Vampire Diaries/Lost Girl)
Here's the second fic I wrote for femslash12, a Teen Wolf/Vampire Diaries/Lost Girl crossover for turnonmyheels.
Title: The Quick and the Dead Will Find You
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries/Teen Wolf/Lost Girl
Pairing: Caroline Forbes/Lydia Martin, kind of Bo Jones/Caroline and Bo/Lydia
Rating: PG-13 for violent and sexual imagery
Word Count: about 3400
Warnings: None standard.
Summary: A succubus, a vampire, and a girl genius walk into a bar restaurant. Together, they fight evil. That's not the punchline.
Author's Notes: Thanks to thistle90, gone_shaughraun, and sapience14 for helping me put this together. The title is from a Ladyhawke song. I wanted to set this in Raleigh-Durham but didn't have time for research, so I hope my own backyard is an acceptable substitute.
1.
There is no way Caroline is getting into Yale. She's taking the tour because it's a stop on the road between the schools she might get into and might fit into: Rutgers, UConn, Boston University. When Damon saw her itinerary - which Caroline showed him because he is much less annoying when she just lets him know her business - he said, "Maybe you'll do Yale the third time around. When you're tired of all your knowledge being a century out of date and you know how to fake documents like a champ."
"Which you already know how to do," she said. "You could help, you know."
"You'd just flunk out," Damon assured her. "Wait a hundred years. Earn the Ivy League degree when you're good and ready."
2.
Someone is sliding newspaper clippings under Bo's door while she's asleep. She suspects they've resorted to this because she deleted their emails, as she does when they're about Fae problems in other cities. She has her hands full enough with just Vancouver. It's not her fault she's the one great Fae champion of the modern age.
Kenzi has intercepted the clippings and apparently rescued them from the garbage. "Three dead college kids in the past month," Kenzi says, somehow balancing as she paces around the living room eating a bowl of Lucky Charms with one hand and holding up a fan of articles with the other. "They're saying it's a meningitis outbreak."
"And?"
"And they were drained of life." Kenzi pauses, either for dramatic effect or to crunch marshmallows. "And they were smiling."
"Crap."
Kenzi crunches dramatically.
"Where did you say this was?"
"Connecticut," Kenzi says. She wrinkles her nose. "That sounds like a disease."
3.
Lydia is making unfair judgments about everyone else on the tour. Why shouldn't she? She knows they're all judging her, the girl with the perfect hair and designer outfit and no visible parents. They'll assume she's a poor little rich girl whose daddy will buy her a plane ticket to New England and an Ivy League acceptance letter but won't take the weekend off to escort her to Yale. And they'll be right, except she's earned that acceptance letter with her grades and extracurriculars. In fact, she's earned better. She's leaning more toward Princeton or MIT.
There's a tall, red-haired boy with bad acne whose loud dad keeps asking questions about things like food and laundry. A tired-looking Asian girl in heavy eyeliner who seems to be continually trying to ditch the tour group and sneak a cigarette. A short, freckled girl in a sweater vest who raises her hand in the middle of the guide's speeches and grows red-faced with anger until the guide calls on her, a standoff that sometimes lasts several minutes.
And a pale, stunning blonde who sticks close to her mother, staring off into the trees, as if there are a million things in the world more important than a Yale tour. Lydia daydreams about kissing her in the shade of old stone buildings, of fingering her on a bench in the quad.
She'll settle for not eating lunch alone. She makes a friend.
4.
Caroline, her mom, and her new best friend Lydia wander the streets of New Haven, vetoing every lunch option they pass. Caroline doesn't care where they go: she has a water bottle full of blood in her purse, so she's been grabbing snacks all morning. She's relieved when Mom and Lydia agree on an Indian buffet. Her ring protects her from bursting into flame, but the bright sunlight still stings her eyes.
She piles a plate with enough food to imitate the appetite of a human being and is about to dig in when a man runs out of the restroom shouting, "Somebody help! There's a guy in there - he's -"
Mom rises from her chair and assumes her small-town-sheriff stance. "I'm a police officer. Everyone stay calm. You can help by calling 911 and requesting an ambulance." Mom beckons Caroline to follow her to the bathroom. Lydia follows, too, either because she thinks she's included by default or because she's too self-absorbed to care.
"Quick, help me check for bite marks before the paramedics get here," Mom whispers as she kneels over the body.
"You really think it's werewolves?" Lydia says skeptically, shocking both Caroline and her mom into a double take.
"More likely vampires," Mom replies.
"Nope," says a woman's voice behind them. "Succubi."
5.
Bo pushes past the three women in the bathroom. She's arrived just in time to revive the victim. She blows the blue light of succubus energy into the victim's mouth, and he coughs, eyes fluttering. He won't remember much.
Bo thinks she's all right at first, but the long flight has taken a lot out of her, and the emergency act of heroism has taken the rest. When she tries to stand, her knees don't work. The women around her seem to know something about the Fae, if they're not Fae themselves, so she goes for the truth. "I need to feed."
The blonde girl hands her a water bottle full of what smells like blood. Bo hands it back. "I'm not a vampire. I'm a succubus. I feed directly off human energy. But unlike our serial killer, I know how to do it without murdering people."
"Well," the redhead says, "there's three of us here."
The blonde looks over her shoulder, startled. "I hear sirens. The paramedics are close. If you need to do something magical, we should get you somewhere less public. If you think you can make it."
"I'll be okay," Bo says.
The oldest of the three women, who seems to be the blonde girl's mother, agrees to stay with the victim and concoct a cover story. The blonde has a rental car, and the redhead has a hotel room. Bo scrapes together enough energy to walk out of the restaurant like everything is fine.
6.
The nicest hotel in New Haven isn't anything to write home about, but Caroline and Bo seem impressed. Lydia is selfishly wondering if she'll have a chance to dig into the leftover Indian food - the waiter gave it to them, wrapped up for takeout and free of charge, as they left - before she lets a leather-clad Canadian succubus superhero suck the life force out of her. But she is trying to be mature about this. These women are treating Lydia like a valuable member of the team. She wants to live up to that.
"I'm ready," Lydia tells Bo. "For whatever you need to do."
Bo walks over to Lydia, unsteady in her stiletto-heeled boots. She cups Lydia's face in her hands and says, "How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"How old are you really?"
"What do you want," Lydia says, "a driver's license? I've had a fake since I was fourteen anyway."
"Don't press charges," Bo says before plunging her tongue into Lydia's mouth. Lydia kisses back hungrily: it's hard to say no to a hot older woman in skintight leather. But she seems more into it than Bo does.
Bo puts her hands on Lydia's shoulders and tilts her head back. "Are you immune to magic or something?"
"I don't know," Lydia says. "I did once survive a werewolf bite without turning."
Bo fingers a lock of Lydia's hair sadly. "That's too bad. I mean - it'll be good for you in the long run, being immune, just not all that useful right now."
Bo swoons. Lydia catches her but stumbles under her weight. "Quick," Lydia shouts to Caroline, who is sitting in the armchair with her phone, clearly pretending not to watch.
Lydia holds Bo's head up while Caroline slaps her awake. Bo regains woozy consciousness, and Caroline plants a hard kiss on her lips. The energy Bo draws from her glows red-gold and smells faintly metallic. Lydia watches enviously. She would kiss either of them; she would kiss both.
7.
Caroline gulps blood, trying to regain the strength Bo sapped from her. She hasn't felt this hungry since she woke up in the hospital with her first bloodlust. She's relieved she grabbed a spare blood bag when she got out of the car. Otherwise, she might not have been able to restrain herself from pouncing on Lydia and draining her.
She still wants to pounce on Lydia, in a different way. She hasn't been this horny in... ever. It must be a succubus side effect. She tells herself it'll pass if she holds it in. Repression is a strategy that's worked well for her since she became a vampire. If she doesn't let herself feel anything, she can trust herself not to do anything stupid.
Lydia and Bo are standing around the desk, eating Indian food. They look oddly domestic, and Caroline laughs.
They both stare at her in horror.
"You're covered in blood, honey," Bo says.
Caroline goes into the bathroom to wash her face and possibly cry. She stains the disk of lavender-scented hotel soap bright red. She scrubs the blood out of her skin and hair, but her cute and responsible new pink top is ruined.
She is just going to sit on the floor of this bathroom until she stops hating her life. If that's forever, well, she's immortal.
Someone knocks. Caroline ignores it. The knocking continues. "Fine," Caroline says.
It's Lydia, holding a ruffled black top that probably cost more than all of Caroline's tops combined. "You can borrow this," Lydia says, "if you promise not to get anything on it."
"I probably shouldn't promise that."
"Okay." Lydia shrugs. "We'll just tell everyone you had a massive, embarrassing nosebleed in the middle of the Yale tour."
The sexual rush of the succubus kiss rises in Caroline's chest. She is tired of holding things in. She stands up and kisses Lydia before she can think twice about it, before the moment can pass.
8.
The bathroom door is open. Bo peeks in and sees what she expects to see: two girls making out. It's her own fault, so she doesn't try to split them up.
Those girls don't need to be involved in her rogue succubus hunt. Just because they know about the Fae doesn't mean they need to be sucked into every piece of Fae business. And from what Bo can tell, they don't really know about the Fae: they've seen a few lineages, but they don't know the larger structure, the danger of getting tied up in the politics. They came here for a university tour, and that's what they should do: go to university. Be young and free, the way Bo doesn't get to be.
She leaves a note thanking them for their help, and she slinks off into the mean streets of Connecticut to track a killer.
9.
A chill runs down Lydia's spine, and it isn't Caroline's ice-cold hands. She stops kissing and peers around the doorframe. "She's gone," Lydia says.
"Bo?" Now the chill is Caroline's hands. Vampires are cold.
"I don't think she stole anything, at least."
"Really? That's where your mind goes?" Caroline is putting on the top that Lydia lent her. The blue-black fabric turns her pale skin alabaster.
"Oh. She left a note." Thanks for the food and helping out. It's a bad parallelism. Lydia sits down on the bed, not sure whether she wants to trust a woman with atrocious grammar to combat evil.
Caroline sits down next to her. "Yup, this is how it usually goes for me. If anything really important happens, I'm stuck at home. You know how I found out I was a vampire? When I turned, the months of mind control designed to prevent me from knowing what was going on wore off. And when I asked my friends why they hadn't told me about the existence of vampires, which they all knew about, they told me they hadn't wanted me to worry. Because apparently I'm too neurotic to take care of myself."
"That sounds painfully familiar," Lydia says. "My friends - well, not - okay, my friends. They lied to me for months. My boyfriend was turning into a lizard monster and a psychopathic dead werewolf was trying to take over my mind and they... told me they were doing research for an RPG."
"Like - a video game? Seriously?"
"Like I was a fragile little girl who needed to be rescued," Lydia says.
"You're not fragile," Caroline says. "You're immune to magic. In the supernatural world, that means you're made of steel."
Lydia almost has a sarcastic answer, but she decides to let the compliment sink in instead. She's never thought of herself as tough. Smart, independent, and in control, but woman of steel - she'll embrace that. "So do you want to waste all our fabulousness on this hotel room, or do you want to go hunt down a succubus?"
10.
Caroline and Lydia have one advantage over Bo: Caroline has the car keys. She's technically not insured to drive the rental car, but under the circumstances, her mom agrees that it's okay. When she explains the situation on the phone, Mom tells her to be careful but doesn't command her to stay uninvolved. By now, Mom knows better than to try to protect Caroline. She, at least, has faith in Caroline's capacity for badassery.
"We should go to the library," Lydia says.
"You want to do research?"
"No, I want to find the killer," Lydia says with queen-bee disdain.
Caroline knows she sounds that way herself, sometimes, so she doesn't take it personally. "Oh. In the library?"
"They're probably a Yale student, right? Especially since the tour guide said midterms are next week. They're studying really hard, not sleeping enough, and they can't control themselves."
Caroline feels a surge of compassion. "Maybe she doesn't know what she is. Maybe she's scared."
"Yeah. And maybe she almost killed a guy."
"Sometimes things happen," Caroline says. "Sometimes things happen, and you can't - All I'm saying is, let's find out if it was an accident. Let's not jump to conclusions."
Lydia doesn't say anything, for or against. She's silent until she spots a parking space. Caroline knows she deserves that.
11.
Bo has canvassed every drinking establishment in New Haven, from dives to swank martini bars, and she's coming up empty. When she asks the bartenders if they've seen any unusually desperate patrons trying to pick up young men, the universal response is, "Yeah, it's midterms." She might have better luck when the night-shift staff comes in, but that's a lot of time to waste for what will probably be the same irritated response.
In an Irish pub at the edge of downtown, she buys herself a beer. The bartender grunts the same useless answer when she first asks him, but when he sees she's there to drink, he returns. "Vancouver," he says, building his small talk from the passport she showed him when he asked for ID. "I went there once. Beautiful mountains."
She forces a smile. "People always say that when they visit."
He assesses her through narrowed eyes. "You some kind of private investigator?"
"Something like that," Bo says.
"If you're looking into those meningitis cases, there are some people around here who think it's drugs. Rich parents covering it up. These kids work so hard, they'll do anything to stay up a few extra hours. But the deals don't happen in the bars: too many cops, and the underage kids can't get in since they cracked down. You're better off visiting the library."
Bo looks toward the front of the bar at the sunshine streaming through the windows. "But it's such a nice day."
The bartender shrugs. "Midterms."
12.
The library is huge, a stone and glass monument to books. Lydia and Caroline split up with a plan in place: sit down next to anyone who looks especially twitchy; flirt. Lydia remembers the eerie blue glow of Bo's eyes when she drained Caroline; she'll recognize it when she sees it again.
Lydia engages in illuminating conversations about organic chemistry, multivariable calculus, and classical Roman philosophy that make her more enthusiastic about applying to Yale but give her no leads on the succubus. On her way down the stairs, she runs into Bo. "What are you doing here?" Bo hisses.
Lydia puts on a million-watt smile. "Helping."
She goes out to the library courtyard, which is full of students on benches and in the grass, hunched over their laptops. Most of them seem quietly intent, but there's one girl, with long black bangs falling into her eyes, who stands out. She keeps looking around furtively: either she's had way too much caffeine or she's terrified she'll kill again. The girl's combination of paranoia and sadness makes Lydia think of Jackson. Lydia loses composure for a moment: if she'd known the truth in time, there's so much she could have prevented.
She joins the girl, who has spread out an orange windbreaker to sit on. "Hi, I'm Lydia, and I'm a prospective student," Lydia says in her best student council welcoming committee voice.
"I really don't have time," the girl says.
"You look like you could use a break," Lydia says. If someone did this to her, she would mace them. "What are you studying?"
"Archaeologies of Empire. It's an interesting class, but there's a lot to memorize."
Lydia leans over the girl's textbook to look at pictures of ancient Mesopotamian legal tablets, brushing a suggestive hand down the girl's arm in the process. The girl whips her face toward Lydia at superhuman speed, looking ready to devour her whole. Her eyes, brown a moment ago, have turned blue. The girl opens her mouth in a wide, pained "O" that becomes more pained as nothing happens.
"I'm immune," Lydia says. "But it's all right. I know someone who can help you control this."
The girl shakes out her mane of hair, recovering. "I know how to control this. I've been controlling it since seventh grade. But there's so much pressure here, I just - When I feed, I can stay up all night."
"It's not your fault," Lydia says hollowly. She can't relate at all: she's never had to work hard at school or at anything else. Maybe that will change for her in college. She longs for the challenge.
13.
The succubus's name is Anahid. She's beautiful in the way of a girl who would rather rely on her other strengths, who hides behind her hair so people will see a smart girl, not a pretty one. If Bo had understood her own powers from childhood, she might have turned out the same way. Bo holds Anahid in her arms for a long time, letting her cry it out. "The boy from this afternoon survived," she says. "I got there in time to revive him."
Anahid's sniffles slow down.
"You know what to do," Bo says. "Take breaks. Feed often, a little at a time. It's easier to stop when you're not so hungry."
"Are you going to report me to the Morrigan?" Anahid asks.
She's Dark Fae. That hadn't occurred to Bo, although it should have been obvious. She hasn't yet broken the habit of assuming everyone is Light, and of assuming that Light is more virtuous, more principled.
"I have to report it," Bo says. "But if you rein yourself in, I don't think you'll get in much trouble. She'll be less upset about the deaths than about how badly you covered your tracks."
Anahid grins through her tears.
"Enjoy this," Bo says. "For the next four years, you get to hang out in the human world. Not everyone's so lucky."
14.
Caroline wants to spend the evening running around New Haven with Lydia, but she has an admissions interview at the University of Connecticut at 8 A.M. She goes back to Lydia's hotel to return the top she borrowed, but Lydia insists she keep it. "I have a confession to make," Caroline says.
"You're a vampire," Lydia says. "I know."
"Well, that. And also there's no way I have the grades to get into Yale."
"Actually, my first choice is MIT," Lydia says, as if all these schools were a breeze.
"You know what? I think BU just went to the top of my list," Caroline says. She laces her fingers in Lydia's. "Let's keep in touch. See what happens."
Lydia kisses her, and it's different this time, a rush of warmth to her lips, of calm and control. Of liking someone and not fearing that her feelings will ruin her life. She can do what Damon says she needs to do, what she knows she needs to do: see the world and escape the old rivalries and mythologies of Mystic Falls.
Her mom is waiting in the car. Caroline gives Lydia a last kiss goodbye and dances to the elevator. She has a long future, and for the first time in a while, she's looking forward to it.
Title: The Quick and the Dead Will Find You
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries/Teen Wolf/Lost Girl
Pairing: Caroline Forbes/Lydia Martin, kind of Bo Jones/Caroline and Bo/Lydia
Rating: PG-13 for violent and sexual imagery
Word Count: about 3400
Warnings: None standard.
Summary: A succubus, a vampire, and a girl genius walk into a bar restaurant. Together, they fight evil. That's not the punchline.
Author's Notes: Thanks to thistle90, gone_shaughraun, and sapience14 for helping me put this together. The title is from a Ladyhawke song. I wanted to set this in Raleigh-Durham but didn't have time for research, so I hope my own backyard is an acceptable substitute.
1.
There is no way Caroline is getting into Yale. She's taking the tour because it's a stop on the road between the schools she might get into and might fit into: Rutgers, UConn, Boston University. When Damon saw her itinerary - which Caroline showed him because he is much less annoying when she just lets him know her business - he said, "Maybe you'll do Yale the third time around. When you're tired of all your knowledge being a century out of date and you know how to fake documents like a champ."
"Which you already know how to do," she said. "You could help, you know."
"You'd just flunk out," Damon assured her. "Wait a hundred years. Earn the Ivy League degree when you're good and ready."
2.
Someone is sliding newspaper clippings under Bo's door while she's asleep. She suspects they've resorted to this because she deleted their emails, as she does when they're about Fae problems in other cities. She has her hands full enough with just Vancouver. It's not her fault she's the one great Fae champion of the modern age.
Kenzi has intercepted the clippings and apparently rescued them from the garbage. "Three dead college kids in the past month," Kenzi says, somehow balancing as she paces around the living room eating a bowl of Lucky Charms with one hand and holding up a fan of articles with the other. "They're saying it's a meningitis outbreak."
"And?"
"And they were drained of life." Kenzi pauses, either for dramatic effect or to crunch marshmallows. "And they were smiling."
"Crap."
Kenzi crunches dramatically.
"Where did you say this was?"
"Connecticut," Kenzi says. She wrinkles her nose. "That sounds like a disease."
3.
Lydia is making unfair judgments about everyone else on the tour. Why shouldn't she? She knows they're all judging her, the girl with the perfect hair and designer outfit and no visible parents. They'll assume she's a poor little rich girl whose daddy will buy her a plane ticket to New England and an Ivy League acceptance letter but won't take the weekend off to escort her to Yale. And they'll be right, except she's earned that acceptance letter with her grades and extracurriculars. In fact, she's earned better. She's leaning more toward Princeton or MIT.
There's a tall, red-haired boy with bad acne whose loud dad keeps asking questions about things like food and laundry. A tired-looking Asian girl in heavy eyeliner who seems to be continually trying to ditch the tour group and sneak a cigarette. A short, freckled girl in a sweater vest who raises her hand in the middle of the guide's speeches and grows red-faced with anger until the guide calls on her, a standoff that sometimes lasts several minutes.
And a pale, stunning blonde who sticks close to her mother, staring off into the trees, as if there are a million things in the world more important than a Yale tour. Lydia daydreams about kissing her in the shade of old stone buildings, of fingering her on a bench in the quad.
She'll settle for not eating lunch alone. She makes a friend.
4.
Caroline, her mom, and her new best friend Lydia wander the streets of New Haven, vetoing every lunch option they pass. Caroline doesn't care where they go: she has a water bottle full of blood in her purse, so she's been grabbing snacks all morning. She's relieved when Mom and Lydia agree on an Indian buffet. Her ring protects her from bursting into flame, but the bright sunlight still stings her eyes.
She piles a plate with enough food to imitate the appetite of a human being and is about to dig in when a man runs out of the restroom shouting, "Somebody help! There's a guy in there - he's -"
Mom rises from her chair and assumes her small-town-sheriff stance. "I'm a police officer. Everyone stay calm. You can help by calling 911 and requesting an ambulance." Mom beckons Caroline to follow her to the bathroom. Lydia follows, too, either because she thinks she's included by default or because she's too self-absorbed to care.
"Quick, help me check for bite marks before the paramedics get here," Mom whispers as she kneels over the body.
"You really think it's werewolves?" Lydia says skeptically, shocking both Caroline and her mom into a double take.
"More likely vampires," Mom replies.
"Nope," says a woman's voice behind them. "Succubi."
5.
Bo pushes past the three women in the bathroom. She's arrived just in time to revive the victim. She blows the blue light of succubus energy into the victim's mouth, and he coughs, eyes fluttering. He won't remember much.
Bo thinks she's all right at first, but the long flight has taken a lot out of her, and the emergency act of heroism has taken the rest. When she tries to stand, her knees don't work. The women around her seem to know something about the Fae, if they're not Fae themselves, so she goes for the truth. "I need to feed."
The blonde girl hands her a water bottle full of what smells like blood. Bo hands it back. "I'm not a vampire. I'm a succubus. I feed directly off human energy. But unlike our serial killer, I know how to do it without murdering people."
"Well," the redhead says, "there's three of us here."
The blonde looks over her shoulder, startled. "I hear sirens. The paramedics are close. If you need to do something magical, we should get you somewhere less public. If you think you can make it."
"I'll be okay," Bo says.
The oldest of the three women, who seems to be the blonde girl's mother, agrees to stay with the victim and concoct a cover story. The blonde has a rental car, and the redhead has a hotel room. Bo scrapes together enough energy to walk out of the restaurant like everything is fine.
6.
The nicest hotel in New Haven isn't anything to write home about, but Caroline and Bo seem impressed. Lydia is selfishly wondering if she'll have a chance to dig into the leftover Indian food - the waiter gave it to them, wrapped up for takeout and free of charge, as they left - before she lets a leather-clad Canadian succubus superhero suck the life force out of her. But she is trying to be mature about this. These women are treating Lydia like a valuable member of the team. She wants to live up to that.
"I'm ready," Lydia tells Bo. "For whatever you need to do."
Bo walks over to Lydia, unsteady in her stiletto-heeled boots. She cups Lydia's face in her hands and says, "How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"How old are you really?"
"What do you want," Lydia says, "a driver's license? I've had a fake since I was fourteen anyway."
"Don't press charges," Bo says before plunging her tongue into Lydia's mouth. Lydia kisses back hungrily: it's hard to say no to a hot older woman in skintight leather. But she seems more into it than Bo does.
Bo puts her hands on Lydia's shoulders and tilts her head back. "Are you immune to magic or something?"
"I don't know," Lydia says. "I did once survive a werewolf bite without turning."
Bo fingers a lock of Lydia's hair sadly. "That's too bad. I mean - it'll be good for you in the long run, being immune, just not all that useful right now."
Bo swoons. Lydia catches her but stumbles under her weight. "Quick," Lydia shouts to Caroline, who is sitting in the armchair with her phone, clearly pretending not to watch.
Lydia holds Bo's head up while Caroline slaps her awake. Bo regains woozy consciousness, and Caroline plants a hard kiss on her lips. The energy Bo draws from her glows red-gold and smells faintly metallic. Lydia watches enviously. She would kiss either of them; she would kiss both.
7.
Caroline gulps blood, trying to regain the strength Bo sapped from her. She hasn't felt this hungry since she woke up in the hospital with her first bloodlust. She's relieved she grabbed a spare blood bag when she got out of the car. Otherwise, she might not have been able to restrain herself from pouncing on Lydia and draining her.
She still wants to pounce on Lydia, in a different way. She hasn't been this horny in... ever. It must be a succubus side effect. She tells herself it'll pass if she holds it in. Repression is a strategy that's worked well for her since she became a vampire. If she doesn't let herself feel anything, she can trust herself not to do anything stupid.
Lydia and Bo are standing around the desk, eating Indian food. They look oddly domestic, and Caroline laughs.
They both stare at her in horror.
"You're covered in blood, honey," Bo says.
Caroline goes into the bathroom to wash her face and possibly cry. She stains the disk of lavender-scented hotel soap bright red. She scrubs the blood out of her skin and hair, but her cute and responsible new pink top is ruined.
She is just going to sit on the floor of this bathroom until she stops hating her life. If that's forever, well, she's immortal.
Someone knocks. Caroline ignores it. The knocking continues. "Fine," Caroline says.
It's Lydia, holding a ruffled black top that probably cost more than all of Caroline's tops combined. "You can borrow this," Lydia says, "if you promise not to get anything on it."
"I probably shouldn't promise that."
"Okay." Lydia shrugs. "We'll just tell everyone you had a massive, embarrassing nosebleed in the middle of the Yale tour."
The sexual rush of the succubus kiss rises in Caroline's chest. She is tired of holding things in. She stands up and kisses Lydia before she can think twice about it, before the moment can pass.
8.
The bathroom door is open. Bo peeks in and sees what she expects to see: two girls making out. It's her own fault, so she doesn't try to split them up.
Those girls don't need to be involved in her rogue succubus hunt. Just because they know about the Fae doesn't mean they need to be sucked into every piece of Fae business. And from what Bo can tell, they don't really know about the Fae: they've seen a few lineages, but they don't know the larger structure, the danger of getting tied up in the politics. They came here for a university tour, and that's what they should do: go to university. Be young and free, the way Bo doesn't get to be.
She leaves a note thanking them for their help, and she slinks off into the mean streets of Connecticut to track a killer.
9.
A chill runs down Lydia's spine, and it isn't Caroline's ice-cold hands. She stops kissing and peers around the doorframe. "She's gone," Lydia says.
"Bo?" Now the chill is Caroline's hands. Vampires are cold.
"I don't think she stole anything, at least."
"Really? That's where your mind goes?" Caroline is putting on the top that Lydia lent her. The blue-black fabric turns her pale skin alabaster.
"Oh. She left a note." Thanks for the food and helping out. It's a bad parallelism. Lydia sits down on the bed, not sure whether she wants to trust a woman with atrocious grammar to combat evil.
Caroline sits down next to her. "Yup, this is how it usually goes for me. If anything really important happens, I'm stuck at home. You know how I found out I was a vampire? When I turned, the months of mind control designed to prevent me from knowing what was going on wore off. And when I asked my friends why they hadn't told me about the existence of vampires, which they all knew about, they told me they hadn't wanted me to worry. Because apparently I'm too neurotic to take care of myself."
"That sounds painfully familiar," Lydia says. "My friends - well, not - okay, my friends. They lied to me for months. My boyfriend was turning into a lizard monster and a psychopathic dead werewolf was trying to take over my mind and they... told me they were doing research for an RPG."
"Like - a video game? Seriously?"
"Like I was a fragile little girl who needed to be rescued," Lydia says.
"You're not fragile," Caroline says. "You're immune to magic. In the supernatural world, that means you're made of steel."
Lydia almost has a sarcastic answer, but she decides to let the compliment sink in instead. She's never thought of herself as tough. Smart, independent, and in control, but woman of steel - she'll embrace that. "So do you want to waste all our fabulousness on this hotel room, or do you want to go hunt down a succubus?"
10.
Caroline and Lydia have one advantage over Bo: Caroline has the car keys. She's technically not insured to drive the rental car, but under the circumstances, her mom agrees that it's okay. When she explains the situation on the phone, Mom tells her to be careful but doesn't command her to stay uninvolved. By now, Mom knows better than to try to protect Caroline. She, at least, has faith in Caroline's capacity for badassery.
"We should go to the library," Lydia says.
"You want to do research?"
"No, I want to find the killer," Lydia says with queen-bee disdain.
Caroline knows she sounds that way herself, sometimes, so she doesn't take it personally. "Oh. In the library?"
"They're probably a Yale student, right? Especially since the tour guide said midterms are next week. They're studying really hard, not sleeping enough, and they can't control themselves."
Caroline feels a surge of compassion. "Maybe she doesn't know what she is. Maybe she's scared."
"Yeah. And maybe she almost killed a guy."
"Sometimes things happen," Caroline says. "Sometimes things happen, and you can't - All I'm saying is, let's find out if it was an accident. Let's not jump to conclusions."
Lydia doesn't say anything, for or against. She's silent until she spots a parking space. Caroline knows she deserves that.
11.
Bo has canvassed every drinking establishment in New Haven, from dives to swank martini bars, and she's coming up empty. When she asks the bartenders if they've seen any unusually desperate patrons trying to pick up young men, the universal response is, "Yeah, it's midterms." She might have better luck when the night-shift staff comes in, but that's a lot of time to waste for what will probably be the same irritated response.
In an Irish pub at the edge of downtown, she buys herself a beer. The bartender grunts the same useless answer when she first asks him, but when he sees she's there to drink, he returns. "Vancouver," he says, building his small talk from the passport she showed him when he asked for ID. "I went there once. Beautiful mountains."
She forces a smile. "People always say that when they visit."
He assesses her through narrowed eyes. "You some kind of private investigator?"
"Something like that," Bo says.
"If you're looking into those meningitis cases, there are some people around here who think it's drugs. Rich parents covering it up. These kids work so hard, they'll do anything to stay up a few extra hours. But the deals don't happen in the bars: too many cops, and the underage kids can't get in since they cracked down. You're better off visiting the library."
Bo looks toward the front of the bar at the sunshine streaming through the windows. "But it's such a nice day."
The bartender shrugs. "Midterms."
12.
The library is huge, a stone and glass monument to books. Lydia and Caroline split up with a plan in place: sit down next to anyone who looks especially twitchy; flirt. Lydia remembers the eerie blue glow of Bo's eyes when she drained Caroline; she'll recognize it when she sees it again.
Lydia engages in illuminating conversations about organic chemistry, multivariable calculus, and classical Roman philosophy that make her more enthusiastic about applying to Yale but give her no leads on the succubus. On her way down the stairs, she runs into Bo. "What are you doing here?" Bo hisses.
Lydia puts on a million-watt smile. "Helping."
She goes out to the library courtyard, which is full of students on benches and in the grass, hunched over their laptops. Most of them seem quietly intent, but there's one girl, with long black bangs falling into her eyes, who stands out. She keeps looking around furtively: either she's had way too much caffeine or she's terrified she'll kill again. The girl's combination of paranoia and sadness makes Lydia think of Jackson. Lydia loses composure for a moment: if she'd known the truth in time, there's so much she could have prevented.
She joins the girl, who has spread out an orange windbreaker to sit on. "Hi, I'm Lydia, and I'm a prospective student," Lydia says in her best student council welcoming committee voice.
"I really don't have time," the girl says.
"You look like you could use a break," Lydia says. If someone did this to her, she would mace them. "What are you studying?"
"Archaeologies of Empire. It's an interesting class, but there's a lot to memorize."
Lydia leans over the girl's textbook to look at pictures of ancient Mesopotamian legal tablets, brushing a suggestive hand down the girl's arm in the process. The girl whips her face toward Lydia at superhuman speed, looking ready to devour her whole. Her eyes, brown a moment ago, have turned blue. The girl opens her mouth in a wide, pained "O" that becomes more pained as nothing happens.
"I'm immune," Lydia says. "But it's all right. I know someone who can help you control this."
The girl shakes out her mane of hair, recovering. "I know how to control this. I've been controlling it since seventh grade. But there's so much pressure here, I just - When I feed, I can stay up all night."
"It's not your fault," Lydia says hollowly. She can't relate at all: she's never had to work hard at school or at anything else. Maybe that will change for her in college. She longs for the challenge.
13.
The succubus's name is Anahid. She's beautiful in the way of a girl who would rather rely on her other strengths, who hides behind her hair so people will see a smart girl, not a pretty one. If Bo had understood her own powers from childhood, she might have turned out the same way. Bo holds Anahid in her arms for a long time, letting her cry it out. "The boy from this afternoon survived," she says. "I got there in time to revive him."
Anahid's sniffles slow down.
"You know what to do," Bo says. "Take breaks. Feed often, a little at a time. It's easier to stop when you're not so hungry."
"Are you going to report me to the Morrigan?" Anahid asks.
She's Dark Fae. That hadn't occurred to Bo, although it should have been obvious. She hasn't yet broken the habit of assuming everyone is Light, and of assuming that Light is more virtuous, more principled.
"I have to report it," Bo says. "But if you rein yourself in, I don't think you'll get in much trouble. She'll be less upset about the deaths than about how badly you covered your tracks."
Anahid grins through her tears.
"Enjoy this," Bo says. "For the next four years, you get to hang out in the human world. Not everyone's so lucky."
14.
Caroline wants to spend the evening running around New Haven with Lydia, but she has an admissions interview at the University of Connecticut at 8 A.M. She goes back to Lydia's hotel to return the top she borrowed, but Lydia insists she keep it. "I have a confession to make," Caroline says.
"You're a vampire," Lydia says. "I know."
"Well, that. And also there's no way I have the grades to get into Yale."
"Actually, my first choice is MIT," Lydia says, as if all these schools were a breeze.
"You know what? I think BU just went to the top of my list," Caroline says. She laces her fingers in Lydia's. "Let's keep in touch. See what happens."
Lydia kisses her, and it's different this time, a rush of warmth to her lips, of calm and control. Of liking someone and not fearing that her feelings will ruin her life. She can do what Damon says she needs to do, what she knows she needs to do: see the world and escape the old rivalries and mythologies of Mystic Falls.
Her mom is waiting in the car. Caroline gives Lydia a last kiss goodbye and dances to the elevator. She has a long future, and for the first time in a while, she's looking forward to it.