Valor | Marcel Gerard

Chapter 6

Andra found a lead first.

She was sure that Marcel, Elijah, and Hayley would have come to the same conclusion if they kept looking at each name individually, examining death records. They'd been an hour or so away from discovering that one of the names, Clara Summerlin, a witch who died during the Influenza Epidemic of 1919, didn't fit the pattern of Céleste ending her life to jump into new bodies.

She just happened to be a little more efficient, not because she was any more clever, but because she'd tried to think like her enemy.

"I didn't imagine I'd be able to track them all the way to the location," said Andra, showing a map with several marked locations. "I found traces of blood at the edge of the Bayou where Rebekah was kidnapped, but they definitely didn't follow a path leading into it. That's to be expected; they would have been entering wolf territory. I highlighted the places where the witches have their communities and I figured they wouldn't hold two Original hostages there; they'd risk Elijah decimating their homes and sacred places. Plus this doesn't seem to be supported by the whole witch population; while walking through the Cauldron I heard fearful whispers. I assumed it would be somewhere remote, not too close to the city. The docks were ruled out because the vampires control that. But these abandoned buildings... old gumbo shack by the edge of the Bayou, the Fleur-de-Lis Sanatorium, and the empty storage facility all seemed like good places to hide them. So, I pulled up Google and lo and behold..."

She showed a picture from the 'images' section, where the group of nurses from 1919 had been photographed. "That's Genevieve Cotillard. I confirmed it through the library records I got. She worked at the Fleur-de-Lis. Coincidence? Don't think so."

Marcel turned away, looking distressed. And suddenly, Andra realized she knew why.

She'd never known the name of the witch who helped him and Rebekah contact Mikael in 1919. She recalled the way Rebekah had gone white as a sheet when she'd said the names of the resurrected witches, how she'd rushed off immediately to search the city. And now Marcel was reacting in too suspicious of a way at her mention of the sanatorium, Genevieve, and the year 1919.

"Marcel?" prompted Elijah. When he didn't turn around, back turned like a scolded child, he repeated, "Marcel. Do I need to remind you that Niklaus and Rebekah are somewhere suffering horribly? If you know something, talk."

"The Sanatorium," he muttered. "That's where you'll find them."

"Are you sure?" asked Hayley with raised brows. "How do you know?"

"I just know."

Elijah wasn't satisfied with that. "How do you know?" he demanded.

He looked at Andra and gulped before speaking, "If I'm right, you need to know exactly what we're walking into. We did something, Rebekah and I... I think the witches are trying to use it against her. It was, uh... something that you're not gonna like. That witch, Genevieve, she helped Rebekah and I find Mikael so we could bring him to New Orleans in 1919."

The Original was furious. "For the better part of a century, I have wondered how Father found us, what foolish mistake that we had made to destroy our time in the one place that we could finally call home. Did you know, I even blamed myself for a time, Marcellus?" In the blink of an eye, he'd grabbed Marcel by the throat and pinned him to the wall.

Andra swiped her hand out to stop Hayley from advancing. "Elijah, cute as this is, it does nothing to find your siblings."

He ignored her. "Niklaus treated you like a son. And Rebekah–"

"I loved her," gasped Marcel, struggling to breathe. "All we ever wanted was to be together, but as long as Klaus was around, that was never gonna happen. But hey, I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, huh?"