Beauty of Darkness (Elijah Mikaelson)

Chapter 10

"Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?"

God, why did I have still have that stupid song as my ringtone. While forgetting where I was and wincing at the sight of the light pouring into my cluttered bedroom, I reached for my phone and answered in a half-asleep mumble.

"h..ello?"

"Yes, Ms. Simmons?" A woman replied cheerily. "This is Maria from NOLA Occult, and I was just calling to ask if you were still interested in picking up the novel you put on hold last night."

I felt my brows furrow at the words, and wondered what the hell this woman was talking about. 

"Um..I'm sorry..I don't remember calling. What was the book again?" I replied while rubbing my tired eyes.

"No worries! Ms. Simmons, you called last night right before closing. It was around 11:15 I believe. Sorry if this comes off as rude, but you might not remember. You sounded a bit..intoxicated."

Oh. Oh no. No wonder my head was pounding: classic Wynter, getting drunk instead of actually doing what she was told to do. I made a complete fool of myself; life is trying to screw me over lately. While I pushed aside empty beer cans, scrambling to find any evidence of what this call was or anything that happened last night, I found a slip of paper.

"Ms. Simmons?" The woman asked again in a nice but increasingly impatient tone, waiting for a response. 

"Yes..yes one second; I am so sorry!" I replied as I scrambled to read the stained note I left for myself.

Dear Wynter, 

You are drinking enough beer right now to fill an empty lake, so here's a reminder of what happened before our melancholy and need for alcohol came in. You researched Cami's family from the name on your phone: you found out why she gets looked at so weird on the streets after work. Her family was in some scandal (most of the morbid details are left out from the news articles), but she still has a living relative. He's Father Kieran O'Connell, and he's in charge of the church in the Quarter: St. Anne or Elizabeth or something. Look into him. But, first, I am calling some bookstore later to see if they have a book in stock about the true crime history of New Orleans. Maybe the group Elijah is in has a history or something. At this point, anything can be something; nothing makes sense. Cami is counting on you: for once, Wynter, don't f*ck something this important up.

- You

"Ms. Simmons, are you okay?" 

The interruption startled me, (and made my head pound), but at least I knew what I was looking for now. 

"Uhm...yes, yes - I will be coming in for the book shortly." I said as quick as possible to salvage the horrible impression I had made on this woman. 

I heard the phone line click in reply - obviously, Maria had dropped her easy-going bookstore employee politeness. I threw my phone down, and, for once, I got ready. I can't go lurking around the Quarter if I look I dress in my usual aesthetic: rat-core. I brushed through the knots upon knots of my unruly hair, which wasn't forced into a messy-bun today. I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans from the bottom-box of my closet, and the one nice shirt I had held onto from the move. After finishing with a dash of makeup, I grabbed my things and began to rush through the piles of clothes to my door. Just as I reached for the rusty handle, I got a glimpse of myself in a dusty mirror peaking out from the inside of one of my boxes. Seeing myself dressed up, looking like I had moved on, almost made me sick to my stomach. I could feel myself slowly delving deeper into my usual horrible thoughts, but I did something that surprised me. I pushed it down.

Of course those memories still hurt. I could never not think of Olivia. But, I have never been able to stiffen them: even for a few, fleeting moments. I was able to look at myself and have a motivation to accomplish something. Is this what normal moments used to feel like?

Shaking off my inner monologue, I rushed through the door of my room and, eventually, the apartment. A cloudy day greeted me as I stepped onto the beaten cobblestone. This fits my usual morbid personality, but I loved cloudy days. There was an odd comfort in the mood they brought. And, of course, they brought less needless social interaction with tourists and partiers on the streets. 

After a very awkward in person conversation with Maria, I got my book. Not feeling motivated enough to walk back to the apartment, I stopped near the corner of Bourbon St. on a vacant bench to investigate my drunk-order.

"Of course I got a picture book" I sighed as I looked at the slim margins and lack of pages in the book. Reading had never been a passion of mine, but, hey, what is.

"New Orleans: History of Crime In Pictures"

I anxiously opened the book; I had no idea what I would find, or what I was even looking for, but this was all I had. Well, besides a priest that would most likely never speak to a random girl asking about his morbid personal life. If I could find anything: a similar kidnapping, gang activity, or anything similar to Cami's situation, I would be happy. I flipped through most pages without hesitation; glimpsing at the captions briefly if nothing seemed to be of use to me. The Axe Man, robberies; nothing seemed like anything that was similar to gang activity. That rules out Elijah as being an old-timey mafia kingpin. Nothing I saw talked about women being kidnapped, either. 

In almost poetic fashion, Wynter had failed once again. Page upon page of useless information only showed me that I could not do anything meaningful. I really thought some random book would show me how to find my friend in the twenty-first century. 

I went to close the book in defeat when I caught a glimpse of a page stuck to another. Even thought I did not want to bother with what I missed, because it was most likely yield nothing, I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. I pulled them apart, and felt my heart once frustrated with lack-of-progress tighten with fear and disbelief. I felt my jaw drop like one of those old cartoon characters, feeling it almost drop to my knees. I had to look at the page and its attached caption twenty times before mentally accepting what I was witnessing.

"New Orleans Theater Fire, 1919. Photographer: Unknown."

The picture depicted a beautiful theater engulfed with flames that seemed to touch the sky. I remembered from one of Cami's monologues that the building Rosseau's is in is one of the few surviving buildings of original French architecture in New Orleans because of a massive fire. From the looked of the photo, this seemed to be it. While grainy, the photo's graphic detail almost perfectly depicted screaming citizens dashing from the remains of the once great building: covered in soot and attempting to dodge the on-site firemen. Even though the photo was so tragic, and contained enough history to examine for hours, I could not take my eyes of an unmistakable detail. In the corner of the burning building, examining the blaze and briefly getting in the foreground of the photo, was Elijah.