JEZEBEL † The Originals †

17. The Untouchables

KLAUS

The car doesn't stop until daybreak the next day. We park in the Abattoir alley, some of us taking more time than others.
Jezebel is three steps behind me, looking down at a paper she mostly likely took from the documents we found in Kingmaker. Something had stuck.

"Are you coming?" I ponder when she stops just in under the first bricks of the hall-like gateway back inside.

She unfolds the paper a little more, holding it in front of her so I can see what she's coveting. It's in small writing, or print, laddered to one side. It's a list of names, it seems.

She says, "I think I should go and give this to the bayou pack. They should have ample time to plan a funerals, figure out how to tell their kids... I'll tell them where to find their friends."

If there's anything left to find, it's most likely ash. A burnt building is better press than a massacre found inside a blossoming corporate giant. "Don't tell me it's too late, I don't want to hear it right now," she stops my agape mouth.

"I was going to suggest changing into something with a little less traceable DNA abstract across it," I gesture to her bloodstained apparel.

She follows my hand movement with her head, pulling down on the bloody cotton fabric as if it never even occurred to her she'd made a mess of herself. "It's the backwoods, not the Hilton. But fine." Jezebel picks up my arm and bends it gently to set my coat across it. It falls warm and ejects her striking scent of cloves and mandarins. "Llaves." She holds out her hand for the car keys, which I surrender once I see the adamant slant in her eye which means she will steal them when I'm not looking.

Under the circumstances of our road trip, Lucien's treacherous behavior became worse and worse of a concept for me. When I saw Jezebel's name on the empty gurney, I had a difficult time realizing the same girl who had made me laugh for one hundred and twenty-six miles was still a part of this prophecy. Somehow, I was coming out of this with more to lose than my siblings. Jezebel didn't deserve to suffer next. Though I'd reverted completely to a time when wanting her ended in betrayal, I was glad my appetite for Jezebel had come back. She talked about the future, and she never let me believe I had anything but.

"Thank you," I say.

Slightly confused, Jezebel asks, "For what?"

"For staying. For coming back to New Orleans."

"I'm glad I gave it a second chance." It appeared she wanted to say more, but she wouldn't.

We split off on the inside courtyard, the overlap of shadows down the farthest hallway swallowing her whole until I can't see the lacquer of her thick hair in the daylight any longer. Elijah is quick on my heel as soon as I step on the center mark of the threshold. "Is Freya with you?" He steps in front of me. His question shakes me, hits me in a way different from the light conversation with Jezebel.

"She was to stay here and watch over Finn, she knows that," I count the rivets in my throat from each syllable.

He takes my answer as a denial, a texture of being overwhelmed sweeping across his face.

"Well, as it seems they're both missing. And I only know of one sibling's agenda because I watched him volunteer himself to be Celeste's humble menial," he sighs dramatically.

For once, something that doesn't surprise me. If anything, it was a shock he was so obedient to Freya's whim of staying inside.

"Of course, the moment we turn our backs and avert our eyes, he's at the feet of the next best witch in town. I told you we hadn't the craft to keep him around without a dagger in his heart!" I complain at his news.