Rebel Just For Kicks: Kol Mikaelson [1]

62: Calculated Choices

MJ had woken up the next morning, trying to forget about the entire previous day – a task that became impossible due to all the notifications on her phone. She'd been tagged in a number of photos and videos; from her and Pri singing at each other, to Roux Roll-Over 'action shots', to a video Pri had taken of her and Kol dancing without MJ even noticing. They were only in the background, but still. The main photo that could get her in trouble was a selfie of them all at the table.

She groaned into her pillow while turning her phone over.

During her conversation with Elena, MJ had offered to come back to Mystic Falls, but there'd been a group vote to tell her not too. Apparently they 'Have It Under Control'.

The only reason MJ was accepting that instruction was because she was such a long drive away from them, and because she was half convinced her brother had somehow tapped her phone.

About twenty minutes after she'd made the offer, a mark had appeared on her hand. It looked like a hex, but then she'd gotten a text from him telling her she wasn't allowed to dip after one day back in the city. He'd either tapped her phone, or he'd assumed she'd leave the moment she'd peeked in on the Floare.

She spent a good hour trying to break whatever it was, unable too, meaning he must've hired a really powerful witch to spell her from afar, which was incredibly infuriating, to say the least.

She just needed to get through the trip, and then she could get home, fix Ric, and everything would be okay.

Finishing her trip involved waking up early to go on a tour of Parson's, as well as meet with the Freshman advisor, and though she'd enjoyed it, she'd also found it a little hard to focus.

Her first distraction was a girl in the lobby, a large plaster on her neck, covering a bite mark.

That made MJ feel good about herself...

Kol was a vampire. He needed to feed. And she had no justifiable reason for letting it bother her. Yes, they'd kissed, yes, he'd then fed on some stranger, no, that didn't mean he'd done anything else with her, and even if he had...well...she'd...she had other things to think about.

The second distraction was her own stupid decision to make scribble notes on her bloodlines theory before going on the tour. Her mind was trying to connect every dot she could about vampire siring while also holding a conversation about design software and fabric.

Esther Mikaelson had written an altered immortality spell to protect her family, and part of that spell included creating other creatures that were lesser version of her children. It had to be deliberate. Every 'unexpected' consequence of the vampire creation spell had come from the ancestors wanting balance, allowing more vampires to be created just made for a larger 'infestation'.

But why would Esther write 'minion creation' into a spell?

Why have a way to create a potential weapon against the children you so desperately wanted to protect – unless there was some kind of small print none of them knew about.

The ancestors wanted all vampires dead.

They'd helped bring Esther back to life to do that, but she'd just tried to kill her kids with a linking spell.

There was no way that was enough for the ancestors, so what was the glaringly obvious thing that they were missing.

MJ had finished up her outing, stopped by CBTO to grab her jacket, then headed back to the hotel, dumping all the information booklets she'd ended up with on a table before heading out again. She wanted to see the Floare one last time before they left New York for their next rest stop.