The Bourbon Diaries ✢ The Vampire Diaries FanFiction ✢ TVD FanFic ✢ TVDU FanFic

Chapter Seventeen - Stefanie Salvatore

Present day

Outskirts of Albemarle, NC

Stef flopped herself into a prone position on the couch, exhausted. It was almost two o'clock in the morning and, while she had observed some pretty impressive magical demonstrations from Raid, she was no closer to achieving the same results herself. She felt like a failure. She needed to declare that to the world.

"I'm a failure!" she wailed as loudly as she could, which wasn't particularly loud considering her mouth was squished against the leather.

"That's not true." Raid sat down on the floor beside her, reaching up and stroking back the hair that was falling onto her face. "Have you ever successfully drawn powers from any other witch before?"

"No," she admitted forlornly.

"Oh," he mused, a devilish grin forming across his face. "Then maybe you are a failure."

Stef retaliated with a growl, swiftly rolling off the sofa and pinning him to the floor. Her face transformed into a vampire, her threat more playful than ominous. "Feel like getting bitten, Witch Boy?" she taunted.

"I don't know," he smirked, unfazed by her transformation and enjoying the position he was in. "It was kind of fun last time."

Stef narrowed her eyes, her features returning human, as she climbed off him and stood, crossing her arms in frustration. "I'm not a Siphon, Raid, I can't just take magic. It's an exchange. When I'm pulling, you need to push. I don't feel you pushing."

Raid got to his feet, looking down at her mischievously. "How hard would you like me to... push?"

Suddenly realizing his playfulness was the drink talking, Stef shot him a scolding look. Not that she wasn't beyond teasing him back. "You're drunk. Perhaps you just can't perform when you're drunk."

"I've had the same amount of drinks as you," he defended, stumbling over his own foot as he turned to sit down on the couch. It was at this point he admitted to himself that maybe he did have one too many drinks tonight.

"Yes, but I'm a vampire, I can handle it," she explained, taking her phone out of her pocket when it started ringing. She looked down at the screen and saw it was her father. Why was he calling this late? She had to take the call, something could be wrong. She put the phone to her ear. "Dad, it's two in the morning, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Damon repeated, clearly irritated. "My daughter leaves Georgia and travels three hundred miles to nowhere for no reason, and you think I'm not going to worry you've been kidnapped? Who said you could go out of state without telling me?"

"Erm, the U.S. Constitution?" Stef replied dryly.

"Very funny," Damon grumbled. "Listen, I'm locking up the bar now and I need you to know that I've got every single possible notification set up on your whereabouts, young lady, so if you don't want to set off a Red Alert then drop me a warning message first, yeah?"

"Are you going to track my location for the rest of my life, Dad?" Should she dare warn him how long that was going to be?

"You remember when Phoenix broke your phone? I went out and bought you another one the following morning, didn't I? I wrote up a contract for it. What did that contract say?"

Stef groaned. "It wasn't a contract, so much as a post-it, Dad---"

"What did the contract say?" he repeated urgingly.

"If I accept the replacement phone, you get to track me for the rest of my life," she sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Bingo!" Damon said smugly.