I Know You [On Hiatus Indefinitely]

Chapter 9

I approached Jeremy, unsure of what to do, and saw him following me with his eyes. As I sat next to him, he spoke up.

“What just happened?” Jeremy’s hair fell in his face and he spoke in that sexy lost-and-oh-so-hurt kind of voice, “Did Vicki really….? Was she going to….? Is she dead?”

I could see the tears forming in his eyes as I nodded my head, not meeting his eyes, “I’m sorry.” I looked up to see him staring down at his shoes but I could see the tears trailing down his cheeks. “I could tell you what really happened, if you really want to know.”

I remembered how Elena had compelled Jeremy to forget about Vicki, but I didn’t want to be like that. I wasn’t going to make either Stefan or Damon compel Jeremy unless Jeremy told me that that was what he really wanted.

They were his memories and this was his life, so it was obviously his choice to make and nobody else’s. It didn’t matter how broken he was or how right the decision seemed to be, nobody else could make this choice for him, not even a really worried elder sister. It was one of the things that I hadn’t liked about Elena, amongst a lot of others.

I saw Jeremy’s jaw set as he said, “I want to know.”

“But before that, do you think you could tell me what happened with Vicki before I came here?” I asked Jeremy, hoping he’d say yes.

He nodded his head and started off, “Vicki came to my house about half an hour ago. She’d called me before that, sounding very upset, and asked me where I was. So she came in and I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she needed my help, that there was someone after her. Somebody wanted to kill her.”

I raised my eyebrows at this and thought about it. It couldn’t be Damon she was talking about could it? After all, if he’d been the one to turn her (yes, I was still hoping that it wasn’t him) then why would he want to kill her? It didn’t make any sense to me. He hadn’t seemed like he’d wanted to kill her in the show, he’d been having too much fun to do that. This had to be someone else. Someone more dangerous than Damon, but who?

“What happened next?” I asked when I realised that Jeremy had stopped talking.

“Then she brought me over here in the graveyard and her face…changed. She said that I smelled really good and that she wanted to drink my blood but she knew that if she did then she wouldn’t be able to stop. That was when Stefan came in and…well you know the rest,” Jeremy trailed off, his voice hoarse from crying.

I wanted to just hug him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, his life was going to get better, but that would be lying and I knew that this information had been very important for me to know.

“Vicki was a vampire,” I told him, “and so are Stefan and Damon.”

“What?!” Jeremy looked at me like I was crazy.

“Don’t look at me like that. You saw what happened didn’t you? Vicki changed in front of you, with the fangs and the vampire eyes. I’m pretty sure she compelled you, which is why you didn’t run screaming after that,” I explained.

“Damon was the guy that killed Vicki, wasn’t he?” Jeremy asked quietly. I knew he was trying to let it all sink in slowly.

“Yeah,” I didn’t add that he’d been the one to kill her both the times-when she was human and when she was a vampire. I had forgotten that nobody in this town knew who Damon was. “He’s Stefan’s brother.”

Jeremy stayed silent for a few minutes while I wondered about what Jeremy was going to do, how he was going to react. I was startled when he turned to look at me and asked, “How do you know about all of this and how are you so okay with it? You should be freaking out right now!”

I laughed a little, “It’s a long story.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” Jeremy folded his arms and I was surprised at his stubbornness.

“You won’t believe me,” I warned him.

“I just found out that vampires are real, sue me,” he challenged.

“It’s a long shot,” I argued, but Jeremy had made up his mind and he wasn’t changing it. So I told him.

When I was done, Jeremy sucked in a huge breath, looking paler than before and I suddenly wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have told the truth, But I didn’t want to lie to him or anybody I really liked and since he’d already found out the biggest secret, there was no need to keep another one from him. “A TV show?”

I sat closer towards him since he looked like he’d faint any second now and I couldn’t blame him, I felt a little dizzy myself. Today had been a really long day and I felt so tired that even the thought of standing up made me feel pain. Besides, Jeremy seemed to be dealing with this a lot better than I expected and I guessed that deep down, he’d already had an idea of all of this, since his parent had been one of the original founders of this town.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Does anybody even watch the show?” I was surprised to hear the slight hint of amusement in Jeremy’s voice.

“It’s pretty famous actually. You are, too,” I said nudging him and noticed that he actually blushed.

“So that’s why you were offering me a drink for free back in the Grill,” Jeremy spoke up, “and were trying to get my attention.”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed, “What? No, I wasn’t trying to….,” I started but stopped when I noticed the mischievous glint in his eyes.