𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧- 𝐄.𝐌

10. Help

"You do realise that was the moment you should have kissed him, right?"

"I know. Dumb me." Maeve said agreeing with her. She slapped her forehead and dragged her hand down her face.

"I mean, are you serious? He literally told you he loves you and you leave it like that? Just like that. Seriously?" Caroline's voice shrieked over the speaker.

The two friends had been catching up on everything that was happening for the other. New Orleans had witnessed it's fair share of Drama in the last twenty-four hours with the suspicious resurrection and then death of a witch named Papa Tunde.

Ever since the Harvest Ritual, Maeve had not spoken with Elijah again. Maybe it was because she didn't know what to say.

"What were you thinking about anyway that you just...froze like a sculpture."

Maeve sighed and hung her head low. "You know what I just realised? The gap I felt, the emptiness I felt even after achieving so much is Elijah. It was him...always──why I never truly enjoyed what I had done. Why even after everything I still felt incomplete."

"Mae...that is so sweet. So, what now?"

Maeve kicked a stone off the curb of the street. "I think, I should talk to him. Tell him how I feel."

"And that is..."

Maeve sighed. She gulped down a lump that was forming in her throat "I'm going to tell him that I want to give us another chance. That I never stopped having feelings for him." Maeve stopped in her step, glancjng up into the space ahead, suddenly a blushed look crept up her cheeks.

"I'm going to find him and tell him that I lo──" her words trailed off when suddenly Maeve noticed a dark figure emerge from the night's mist. The figure strutted closer toward her.

"Excuse me?" asked Maeve tilting her head sideways as if attempting to recognise or make out who was in the shadows. "Is someone there?" she asked hoping it was just a shadow.

"Maeve? Who's there?" asked Caroline.

Maeve noticed an unknown woman slowly reveal herself under the streetlight. "Can I help you?" she asked the lady.

"Yes. I'm actually looking for you." asked the woman. "The Serene witch who lost all her powers."

Maeve's heart began to race and her palms became sweaty at the woman's words. "You don't know me...but, Celeste sends her regards." The woman smiled malignly.

"Maeve what's happening?" Caroline yelled again.

Maeve turned around and began to rush away. She still held the phone to her ear, listening to Caroline yell her name repeatedly to understand what was happening.

Her run was cut short by a woman almost twice her age who appeared in her path with a devilish smile, "Not so fast."

"You always lorded over the rest of us with your petty kindness. And here is the last one who foolishly sacrificed it all. The power, the magic, the pathetic so-called reign over us. All for those scoundrels──the original vampires."

Inside the dorm room at the Whitmore college, Caroline was pacing, her feet thudding on the floorboard. Elena and Bonnie watched her suspiciously. Caroline couldn't hear anything more than muffled voices sounding feminine.

"Maeve?" she attempted again. There was a momentary pause, and Caroline could hear indistinct voices. She strained to catch any snippets of the conversation, her anxiety growing.

Suddenly she stopped pacing as a loud painful and familiar voice screamed at the top of her lungs over the speaker. Desperation took over as Caroline repeatedly called out Maeve's name, but there was no response. The line seemed to be filled with chaos—indistinctive voices, the echo of hurried footsteps, and, most unsettling, the eerie silence that followed.