Coalesce (Book Six of The Vampire Diaries)

Ch. 16: The Downward Spiral

Bonnie had gone to Whitmore to tell Elena that she was back.

Caroline had turned off her humanity last night.

Damon, Kai and I were in the Salvatore Mausoleum at the cemetery, digging up our mother's coffin. 

Well, Damon and I were getting her coffin.

Kai was standing in the doorway behind us. "I can't believe Bonnie made it out. Actually, I can. She's plucky. Hey, do you guys need help? Oh. Before you answer that, I'd rather not. I just keep experiencing these pangs of guilt watching you. Feelings are hard." 

"So's the end of this crowbar," I told him, showing it to him. 

"I'm just saying," Kai told us, stepping closer. "Digging up mommy's grave? That's dark, even for me. And totally unnecessary. Bonnie saw her alive in a 1903 prison world. It's--It's on camera. You want to watch it again?" 

Kai tried to hand the camera to us. 

I took it, tossing it to the side.

"Our mother died of consumption in 1858," Damon told him. "We did not go through the trouble of moving this thing to the family crypt only to find out that she's not even in here." 

"Oh, so you just--you just called me here because you needed a friend?" Kai asked. "No. You wanted to know if it was possible for her to exist in another prison world. To which I responded, 'Yes'. To which both of you responded with denial." 

"Whatever or whoever's on that tape, it's not her," Damon told him. 

"Then who is it?" Kai asked. 

"I don't know," I told them. "A ghost? Maybe she has an evil Gemini twin." 

Kai smiled, looking away. "Nice." 

"If our mother was imprisoned in 1903, she'd be in her 70s," Damon told him. 

"Not if she were like you," Kai told us. 

I looked at him. "I know our mother. She's not a vampire. She is not in a prison world. She died of consumption in 1858." 

I tossed the crow bar aside. 

"Uh, if you're both so sure of that, why haven't you opened the coffin yet?" Kai asked. 

Damon and I exchanged a look, nodding slightly,opening the coffin, letting the lid fall to the ground and clatter against the stone.

Nothing, no one, was in the coffin. 

"Congratulations," Kai told us. "Everything you know about your mom is wrong." 

Kai patted us on the shoulders, turning around, walking away. 

Damon and I looked at the coffin, still slightly in denial, but slowly accepting the truth. 

******

Back at home, I was talking to Stefan on the phone about how Caroline promised she wouldn't kill anyone as long as we did nothing to make her turn it back on, and if we didn't lock her up and dry her out. "So, Saint Caroline keeps her halo even with no humanity." 

"Yeah, until she snaps and strangles somebody with it." 

"Well, even if she does..." I heard a crash from behind me, in the direction Kai was standing in, looking toward him. Kai smiled, holding up an antique. "Could be good for her, you know, to blow off some steam, thin the herd. Getting awfully crowded around here."