CHAPTER FIVE

Jay sighs as she looks at the blank page of her journal. She used to write all the time. Not as often as Elena, but often enough. Now, she can't; she hasn't been able to bring herself to write an entry since her mom died. A lot of people say that writing can be a form of therapy, a way to cope with the pain of loss... Problem is, she's not sure that she wants the pain to go away.

She taps the capped pen to the page and takes a deep breath. "I don't wanna write." She mumbles to herself. "I don't wanna put to paper the things that I should be saying to you."

"Well, you gotta do something." The voice behind her makes her freeze, and then she slowly turns around to find her best friend standing there.

"Marie?"

The teenage girl with the black leather jacket and tightly curled hair stares at her for a moment with wide brown eyes. "You can hear me? You can see me?" She asks.

"This is real?" Jay asks as she stands up. "You're really here?"

"I-I'm pretty sure." She nods as she steps forward and reaches her hand out. She places it on her friend's arm, and both girls gasp when they can feel it. "Oh my God."

"Oh my—" She quickly wraps her arms around her and engulfs her in a tight hug. "I've missed you so much. I don't know how to do all of this without you."

"I miss you too."

"How are you here? How is this even possible?" Jay asks as she pulls back and looks at her.

"Well, you're left out of the loop a lot." She sighs as she looks at her friend. "A witch over here was helping Vicki so that she could sort of come back, and Matt helped her. Then the witch made it possible for us to interact with your side, but I don't know how you can see me."

"I feel like we should talk to Bonnie." She says, and Marie nods.

"You go, I'll meet you there. I don't think I should be seen in public."

"Yeah, that's probably smart. You always were the brains of this operation." The brunette nods in agreement. "I love you. Come on, Casper."

Marie laughs. "God, I've missed your warped sense of humor."

After calling and talking to Caroline to see where she and Bonnie are — since they were supposed to be setting up for the festival tonight — Jay ends up at the Salvatore Boarding House to meet up with them, and she goes straight up to Damon's room. That's where the two older girls are looking for Elena's necklace, though Jay has absolutely no idea why. But she plans to find out, not wanting to be left out of the loop once again.

"Elena caught Jeremy kissing Anna." Caroline's saying as Jay walks into the room, and the younger girls' footsteps halt.

"What?" Bonnie's stunned and hurt.

"I'm sorry."

She pauses for a moment as tears start to well up in her eyes. "He kissed her?"

"She's got a foothold now, so she probably thinks that she's here to stay. But you and I, Bonnie — we're going to find that necklace. Okay?" The blonde reassures her, and she nods.

"With some help, of course." Jay gets their attention. "Oh, and, I brought backup." She smiles as her best friend walks up right beside her.

"Oh my... Marie?" Bonnie's eyes widen as the tears stream down her cheeks.

"Did you miss me, big sister?" The younger girl asks as she walks over to her. She reaches up and wipes the tears from her cheeks. "You made quite the mess, but it's good to be back for a bit."

Bonnie throws her arms around her younger sister, and Jay smiles as she then looks over at Caroline. "So, we're looking for my sister's necklace? The one that Stefan gave to Elena?" She asks, and the blonde nods.

"Turns out it belonged to this witch who died centuries ago, and now it's like a talisman. She's using it to draw power so that she can give ghosts a foothold over here. She wants to kill Elena so that Klaus can't create any more hybrids." Care explains.

"Then let's find and destroy that hunk of witchy junk." The little brunette says, and they look around the room while the sisters take a minute to themselves. They spend hours looking, and the four of them tear Damon's room apart.

Bonnie's phone starts ringing, and she looks at it before turning to Jay. "I can't..." She holds it out to her, and the younger girl takes it.

"Bad big brother. What do you want?" She questions.

"Jay?" He sounds confused. "Have you guys found that necklace?"

"Not yet." She shakes her head, but then she hears sirens in the background.  "Wait, Jer, what's going on?"

"Ghosts of the tomb vampires killed Tobias Fell." He tells her, and her eyes widen. "You might wanna find that necklace before they start going alphabetically through the founding families."

"Well, we've checked where Damon said it was. It's not where it's supposed to be." She pauses as she looks between Bonnie and Marie. "Unless someone took it."

"Who?"

"Oh, I don't know, Jer. Kissed any ghosts lately?" She questions, and there's a beat before he responds.

"She says she didn't take it." Jeremy tells her.

"Yeah, she also said that she was a lonely homeschooler, but really she wanted to feed you to her mother." Jay reminds him.

"I believe her, Jay." He tells her, and she scoffs.

"You're losing the only good-for-you girlfriend that you have ever had. Wake the hell up before I completely lose respect for you." She tells him and then hangs up the phone.

"What is it?" Marie asks.

"You guys keep working on finding the necklace. I'm gonna see if I can keep the tomb vampires from enacting any more of their ghostly revenge." Jay says.

"I'll come with you." Caroline tells her. "I think we should let the witches handle destroying the witch talisman."

"Works for me."

"So, is this goodbye then?" Marie asks as she looks at her best friend, and Jay turns back to her, realizing what this means. "I want— I need you to know..." She walks over to her. "Saving you that night was the best decision that I ever made. I was struggling with this witch-magic stuff. But I'm okay now. I get to be with my grams on the Other Side, and I can watch over you. So live your life to the fullest...for the both of us. And don't feel guilty about my death. I'm alright."

"I miss you." Jay says as she hugs her.

"I miss you too, but I'm always here." She tells her. "You're never alone. Never."

"Can I be alone when I shower?" She asks, and they both start laughing.

"I even miss your awful jokes." Marie says as she then pulls back and wipes tears from her cheeks. "Now go be the badass that Papa Alaric's teaching you to be. And I'll see you around."

"Bye, Marie." Jay offers her a small smile, and then she and their vampire friend leave the house.

It's after dark as Caroline's driving down an empty street back toward the town square, and she and Jay come across Mayor Lockwood's car wrecked off the side of the road. It's surrounded by the ghosts of the tomb vampires, and one of them turns when he notices the two teenage girls making their way toward them.

"Well, look at this, a founding family member...and one adjacent." He smirks as Jay pulls out the gun that she'd grabbed from the duffle bag she'd brought with her when she left her house this afternoon. "I'll be glad to kill you both as well."

He runs at them, and Caroline tackles him away from Jay. The little brunette raises her gun and shoots one of the ghosts in the chest with two wooden bullets, temporarily killing him. Then she puts a bullet in another's head before one finally takes her down.

The little brunette loses her gun, so she swings her right arm up and two stakes come out of the sleeve that she's wearing under her sweater, embedding itself in his side. He groans as his body starts to turn gray — the small stakes pierced his heart — and he slumps over her.

Caroline's fighting off two others, and Jay's trying to push the last one that she was fighting off of her, but then they all just disappear. The two girls look around, surprised, and Jay lays her head on the asphalt for a second before she pushes herself up and runs over to Carol Lockwood.

They make sure that the mayor's alright, which she seems to be despite the fact that her car collided with a tree. The vampires forced her off the road, but they were never able to get to her.

—

"You're not hanging out with your sister today?" Tyler asks, and Jay shakes her head as she jumps on his bed and lays down.

"Nope. I said goodbye to my best friend for good a week ago, and I wanna avoid all vampire drama." She tells him. "But that doesn't mean I'm avoiding all vampires."

"Not this one?" He smirks as she holds her hand out toward him, and he walks over to lay down beside her.

"Nope." She smiles as he pushes himself up and leans over her. She rolls onto her back and scoots closer to him as he brushes her hair away from her face. "Not my favorite vampire."

"Well, I like the sound of that." He leans down and presses his lips to hers, resting his hand on the side of her face. "And I like this too."

Jay chuckles as she kisses him again, and he deepens the kiss. His hand moves to her waist as her fingers tangle in his hair, and his lips trail down to her neck. His grip on her hips suddenly tightens, and it starts to hurt her. She tries to tell him to stop, but his heightened emotions start to push him too far, and then the hunger kicks in. 

His kisses on her neck turns to him biting her, and she struggles against him as she feels his fangs sink into her flesh. He's too strong for her to get out of his hold, so instead she pulls her leg up so that she can get the weapon that she has there. She was going to go with a knife, but at the last minute as she was leaving she swapped the knife for a vervain dart from Ric's stash.

The brunette quickly pulls it out and then stabs the needle into Tyler's side, injecting him with the concentrated vervain inside. He groans as the liquified version of the herb begins to course through his body, and she shoves him off of her after it weakens him enough. Jay then gets up and runs out of his room before heading down the stairs and out of the Lockwood mansion.

Back at her house, Jay gets the wound cleaned up and then steals a hoodie from her brother's closet, knowing that the top of it will come up high enough to hide the band-aid. Elena gets back later, and she tells her younger sister everything that she learned today.

Mikael — the vampire hunter who's also a vampire — that they found to kill Klaus also happens to be Rebekah and Elijah's father. He's not Klaus' father, however, which is why he wants him dead. It seems he's a rather prideful man, and his wife's infidelity is a problem for him that he wants to rectify by eradicating all evidence of it. And he has a weapon created from an ancient tree that dates back to the beginning of the originals that'll kill Klaus as soon as Stefan lures him back to town.

Elena also found out that Klaus killed his mother because she's the witch who placed the hybrid curse on him to suppress his werewolf side. And Rebekah was devastated when she learned the truth, so it's possible that she'll help in killing Klaus as well.

Once Klaus is dead, Stefan will be free of his compulsion, and Tyler will be free of his sire bond. It seems like everything's going according to plan, but Jay knows better than to have any real hope. She's well aware of their history with plans failing and leaving them devastated in the end.