History Repeats, Part 8

Watching Damon walk down the street, she smiled.  She was definitely getting to him.  If he was rattled enough to go to Alaric for help, she was doing her job, and doing it well.  Another advantage of his plea for the history teacher's help was that the guy might actually find out what she was.

When Damon was out of sight, she slid down from the tree she'd been hiding in and walked up to Alaric's house.  All of the lights were out except for a lamp in the room with all the bookshelves.  She peered in through the window, watching him shuffle half-heartedly through various books and notebooks with one hand.  "Come on, Alaric, you need to look.  Really look," she whispered.

Then he turned and she could see the phone in his other hand.  She frowned.  Who the heck could he be calling at this hour?  Maybe he had called Vanessa for help looking up the information.  Stupid, she thought.  You've got the information right there.  I put it there.  She touched her hand to the glass and could immediately hear his voice.

"—said she wasn't a vampire."  Okay, that was about her.  There was a pause as Alaric listened to whoever was on the other end of the line.  "I don't know.  I don't think it's him, but I think someone's messing with his head.  Maybe Katherine," Alaric said.

It's not Katherine, you idiot! she wanted to scream.  Everything in Mystic Falls got blamed on that stupid excuse of a vampire.  Well, they would find out that she wasn't the only one they needed to be wary of.  If only they knew…

Her attention was drawn back to Alaric as he continued the conversation.  "Yeah, I'll look into some stuff.  Maybe what he's seeing has some significance," he said, and hung up.  He closed his phone and slid it into his pocket, looking at the box of research in front of him.  After a few more moments, he took one of the large notebooks out of it and settled down in a chair to sift through it.

Outside, she sighed with disappointment.  That was the wrong notebook.  She bit her lip and watched him read for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty.  When the clock started to toll three o'clock in the morning, she got up from her crouch agitatedly, deciding to take things into her own hands—again.  Of everything she was, she definitely was not patient.  After all, her orders had been to gradually set suspicion on Damon Salvatore.  She was supposed to space out her attacks, make people doubt his exclamations of innocence.  But, playing Damon had turned out to be just too entertaining to wait.

Now, Alaric was going to get a little taste of what she could do.  She stepped in front of the window and stared at him, sending slightly paranoid thoughts into his head.  It took him a few minutes to finally get unnerved enough to look up at the window, but as soon as he did, she was gone.  His gaze lingered for a moment, before returning to Isobel's notebook.

A paper suddenly flew up into the air and floated down to the floor at Alaric's feet.  He looked up in calm alarm, and pulled a wooden stake out of a drawer in the table next to his chair.  One of the lights flickered, and a crow sounded just outside his window.

"Is somebody here?" he asked aloud, just before the lights went out.  We quickly walked to the kitchen where he drew a flashlight out of the drawer.  He thought he felt something pass behind him, and he whirled around to see nothing but his kitchen.  She smiled as sweat started to bead across his brow.  Alaric was brave, but it's hard to take a stance when you can't see your opponent.

The lights flickered back on just as he reentered his study.  He looked around for a few moments, but the feeling of uneasiness was passing.  He turned off the flashlight and set it on the table, then looked at the box of research.  Beside it was one of the notebooks with a page sticking out.  She watched from the window again as he slowly pulled it open and began to read.  A wicked grin slid into place.  He was going to figure it out, and she hadn't even broken the rules!

All of a sudden, a sharp pain slashed through her brain like lightning, and then there was a pulling sensation that enveloped her entire body.  Two seconds later, Alaric was truly alone.