“The Italians call them strega. The Yoruba of West Africa call them aje, meaning mother. Where my mother was from, they called them häxa, and here we call them witch. Over the centuries, vampires have fought them and fought beside them, bedded them and burned them. Whether adversary or ally, they have been a force to be reckoned with. Their ancestral magic anchors this city. There's never been one all-powerful witch until Davina,” Elijah said to Klaus. They were discussing their predicament while Elijah looked through an old book about witches throughout the ages.
“Who is now tucked in safe and sound down the hall under my protection. Your Celeste was quite beautiful and a portent of evil, according to our volatile artist in residence,” Klaus said.
“Yes. Perhaps Davina's mistaken what she calls evil for power. Celeste was certainly very powerful in her day, but she's been dead for over two hundred years. I don't understand. Why all these sketches now?” Elijah pondered.
“Why does any witch do anything?” Klaus questioned back.
Meanwhile, Marcel had just arrived with food for Davina in Davina’s room, but she stood up and screamed at him, frightened, and magically threw him against a wall.
“Go away!”
“Come on. You got to be starving. You haven’t eaten since—“ Marcel started.
“Since your best friend killed my best friend?” she said.
“Davina, I’m sorry about what happened to this kid Tim,” he tried to apologize to her.
“I’m sorry you don’t hate Klaus for what he did or want to make him pay,” she said.
“He’ll pay for what he did one way or the other, but right now, I just want to make peace with you,” he told her.
“Why? So we can be one big happy Frankenstein family?”
Klaus and Elijah were pouring themselves drinks in the living room, while listening to Davina and Marcel fighting.
“Well, that’s going well,” Klaus stated.
“If you were trying to win the girl’s trust, perhaps poisoning her one true love was not the most splendid idea,” Elijah told him.
“Oh, are there any more inopportune deaths you’d like to wave in my face?” Klaus questioned.
“Give me a month. I’ll get your list,” Elijah said sarcastically.
“Young, old, dead, or alive, witches are a pain in the ass,” Klaus stated.
Back in Davina’s room, Davina was glaring at Marcel, before she suddenly began vomiting up dirt all over the bed.
“Davina, Davina!” Marcel said, afraid for her.
Klaus entered the room to investigate, having heard the commotion.
“What’s with all the racket?” He stopped in his tracks, seeing Davina throwing up soil. “Bloody hell.”
Katherine entered the living room, joining Elijah.
“Elijah, there’s something you need to know,” she told him, before the house suddenly began to violently shake, as if there was an earthquake. Concerned, they walked out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard, where Rebekah was looking around in confusion.
“What the hell is going on?” Rebekah questioned.
Klaus walked out to join them.
“Davina.”
Rebekah was in Davina’s room, looking worried. She sat next to Davina whom was laying in bed, weak.
“Hey. What kind of game do you think you’re playing? I said disrupt the household, not destroy the city,” she accused.
“I didn’t do it. Not on purpose. I---I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Klaus and Marcel were talking about what was going on in the living room.
“This is madness. How can a 16-year-old girl shake the entire French Quarter?” Klaus questioned.
“I’ve seen her rock the church, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Marcel informed him.
“How did you control her when she was in the attic?” he questioned Marcel.
“I didn’t have to. But then, I never killed her boyfriend.”
“Yes, yes. We’ve been over this part already. The point is in her present state she’s useless as a tool against the witches.”
“She’s not a tool,” Marcel disagreed.
“Something’s wrong with her,” Klaus stated.
“She has too much power that she cannot control. That much we already knew. But why is it manifesting itself in such an aggressive manner?” Elijah said.
Elijah suddenly got an idea and went to leave the room.
Klaus gave him a look of confusion, before stopping him.
“Where are you going?”
“This is witch business. Let’s ask a witch,” Elijah replied.
Elijah left the room to find Katherine waiting from him in the hallway.
“You’re going to see Sophie,” she stated.
“You don’t have to eavesdrop. I keep nothing from you,” Elijah told her.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to keep anything from you either, and if you’re going out to see Sophie, then there’s something you should know. She called me and asked me for a favor. She promised me that she would help break the curse that Marcel put on the wolves in exchange for some information. And I didn’t think anything of it, but then Davina started drawing those pictures of Celeste.”
“Whatever this is, you have to tell me,” Elijah told her.
“Sophie wanted to find Celeste’s remains, so I went through your journals and I found out where you buried her, and then I told her. I know it was stupid and it was snoopy. And I---I should have just asked you.”
Elijah didn’t say anything.
“Please say something. Please,” she asked of him.
“She wanted to be left in peace. When a witch’s remains are consecrated, that power fuels the rest of their community. Celeste did not want her remains to be found. She made me promise to bury her where she would not be found. You not only violated my privacy, but you have broken my promise to her.”
“I thought they were just bones, Elijah,” she replied. She knew about consecration of a witch’s bones, but she’d never asked what happened after they were consecrated.
“If you truly believed that, why didn’t you ask me where to find her?” he questioned, before leaving.
Elijah came back, once he’d brought Davina to the compound. Now Sophie and The Original siblings were in the living room.
“So you have stolen the remains of the very person that Davina’s been drawing for months. Would you care to explain this startling coincidence?” Elijah said to Sophie.
“I can’t. I didn’t even know who Celeste Dubois was until I----“ She was cut off when the house started to shake violently like it had before.
Sophie was alarmed, but the siblings were just irritated.
“Was that Davina?” Sophie asked.
“Charming little habit she’s developed,” Klaus replied.
“And the earthquake I felt today?” she asked.
“Also Davina. And, she’s taken to vomiting dirt,” Rebekah replied.
“Oh. We have a huge problem. I thought we had more time, but we need to complete the Harvest now,” she said, panicked.
“Said the desperate witch, conveniently,” Klaus said.
“I’m serious! That earthquake you just felt is a preview of the disaster movie that is about to hit us.”
“Why should we believe you?” Elijah questioned her.
“You’ve met Davina, you know her story. For months now, she’s been holding all the power of the three girls sacrificed in the Harvest ritual. A force that was meant to flow through her and back into the earth. One person was never meant to hold that much power. It’s tearing her apart, and it will take us down with it,” Sophie informed them.
Later, Rebekah informed Davina, while Klaus informed Kieran and Sophie informed Marcel. Davina didn’t like the idea. Nor did Marcel.
Elijah, Sophie, and Marcel were in the living room.
“You’ve convinced my siblings. You have yet to convince us,” Elijah stated.
“We don’t have time to waste. The first sign’s already come and gone,” Sophie informed him.
“So fix her!” Marcel yelled at her.
“She can’t be fixed,” Sophie informed him. “She can’t be saved. This will not stop at the earth sign, and if you wait it out, you immortals will be the only ones left to argue about it.”
Before Rebekah could put the sedative in her to keep her calm, knowing that as long as she was calm she wouldn’t deteriorate very fast, extreme wind started to blow through the Quarter and some of the windows burst open in the compound. Rebekah finally injected Davina with the sedative and the wind stopped.
Later, Elijah and Klaus and Marcel were downstairs. Elijah was anxiously pacing.
“We sedated her too heavily.”
“Well, if this is her sedated, I’d hate to see her otherwise. We all agreed that Davina must be sacrificed. There’s no need to let her blow the roof off our heads in the meantime,” Klaus said.
“No way! You’re not touching her!” Marcel yelled.
Marcel punched Klaus angrily and Klaus rubbed his face, annoyed.
“Okay, I’ll let you have that one.”
“Marcel, no one wishes to see Davina come to harm less than I, but there is no scenario here in which we simply wait this out. She’s going to die,” Elijah told him.
“According to Sophie, the witch who screwed over everybody here,” Marcel reminded him.
“The Harvest was working before it was stopped. If a nonbeliever like Sophie Deveraux can come to have faith that these girls will be resurrected, than I, also, am a believer.”
“I saved Davina from the Harvest, and now you want me to just hand her over?”
“Do you think I’m happy about this? If the witches complete the Harvest, not only do they regain their power, we lose our weapon against them. The earthquake I was willing to chalk up to hideous coincidence, but these winds? If Davina is not sacrificed, then every inch of earth that shook, everything blowing about now will soon be drenched in water and consumed by fire,” Klaus informed him.
“Oh! Now you care about the city,” Marcel said.
“We ought to. We built it,” Elijah interjected.
“And we all saw it burnt to the ground twice. I will not let that happen again. Do I make myself clear?” Klaus said.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Marcel replied, before angrily leaving.
Elijah turned to Klaus and gave him a look.
“Not a people person, are you, Niklaus?”
“Nonsense. I love people. Just on my way to warn a couple of prominent ones in case the weather gets out of hand. If you fancy yourself as plus diplomatique, perhaps you’d like to come along,” Elijah replied.
“No. Soon Sophie Deveraux shall be consecrating Celeste’s remains and though her actions are reprehensible, still I should pay my respects,” Elijah replied.
Katherine entered the room and looked at Elijah.
“Hey. Do you have a minute?”
“Just on my way out,” Elijah said coldly, clearly still angry at her.
Elijah turned to leave.
“Which one of us is the people person again?” Klaus called after him.
Marcel, not liking the idea of Davina being sacrificed, snapped the guard’s neck and took Davina out of there.
Sophie, Sabine, and Elijah were at the Lafeyette cemetery. Sophie was setting up Celeste’s bones in preparation to do the spell to absorb her power. She smudged a small dot on the forehead of Celeste’s skull while Sabine and Elijah watched nearby.
“You don’t have to be here for this. It’s gonna take some time for Sophie to prepare for her consecration,” Sabine told him.
“I have time. I owe her this,” he replied.
“Care to elaborate why?”
“Have you ever experienced something so profound and wonderful that when it was taken from you, your life felt unbearable?” he asked her.
“Yes, I have felt that, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“I believe that when you love someone and that person loves you in return, you’re uniquely vulnerable. They have a power to hurt you that’s like nothing else.”
Elijah took his phone out when Rebekah called him.
“Rebekah.”
“He’s taken the girl,” she informed her elder brother.
“Who has?”
“Bloody, bloody Marcel!” she said angrily.
“And you wanted to run off and start a life with the back-stabber!” Klaus said.
“Says the man who was shacking up with him not two seconds before all this went down,” she replied. She went back to talking to Elijah on the phone. “Okay. We need to divide and conquer if we’re gonna stand a chance. He could have gone anywhere.”
“Well, I’m here with Sabine. Perhaps we could try a locator spell?”
“I’ll take to the priest. They might even be at the church. It’s the last place we’d think to look for them, right?” Klaus said.
“Okay. You check the church. I’ll check everywhere else,” Rebekah said.
Katherine was in the courtyard, packing up canned food into cardboard boxes, when Klaus came down the stairs.
Klaus noticed her and approached.
“What are you doing?”
“I was gonna take these to the---,” she started to say.
“If you say Bayou, I will find a nice comfy dungeon for you. This is not the night to be out there—,” he started.
“For anyone. But some people don’t have a choice,” she reminded him.
“Right. Grab that lot and come with me,” he said, making up his mind and picking up one of the boxes.
Elijah had gotten Sabine to do the locator spell, but it wasn’t working. She couldn’t find her, because Davina’s magic was everywhere at once.
Davina woke up in Thierry’s warehouse confused, and looked around anxiously to find she was in a storage locker. When she saw Marcel sitting next to her, she threw him against the wall.
Marcel groaned in pain.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I don’t believe you! You want to kill me, just like everyone else,” she accused.
“I’m the one who put a protection spell on you, Davina. That’s why Tim’s dead and you’re not. And before you throw me again, if I had known anything was gonna happen to your friend, I would have protected him, too.”
“You’re the one who saved me?” she questioned, surprised.
“Yeah, but now the witch who did the spell is in league with the rest of them, so I had to take you away.”
“So you could use me as a weapon?” she accused.
“I’m trying to keep you safe. Davina, look at me. I messed up. All this power that you have, it gave me an advantage. It helped me punish the witches, and it let me run the city, and I let that mean too much. All right? But that’s over with now. One survivor to another, all I want to do is keep you alive, I swear.”
“I’m scared. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Davina admitted to him.
“You’re not alone. We’ll fix this,” he assured her.
“You won’t let them hurt me?”
“No. Nobody’s gonna touch you,” he assured her.
Katherine and Klaus were at the church. Kieran was handing out food to people, while Klaus and Katherine talked.
“I asked Father Kieran to give them shelter,” Klaus told her.
“These people are werewolves…and the priest, he said that you donated the food. You’re helping them?” she replied, looking at him in disbelief.
“They’re not just any werewolves. They’re my clan from very far back. They’ve fallen upon hard times, and their plight has brought out the philanthropist in me. What can I say? Must be Elijah’s influence,” he informed her.
“What do you mean, your clan?” she asked, wanting to know more.
“The blood that runs in their veins runs in mine. And in our child’s,” he informed her.
“This family gets more complicated by the second,” she replied.
“Listen, Katerina, word of advice when dealing with Elijah? Don’t do as I do. Just apologize. He’s accomplished many things, but he is a master at forgiveness.”
“I’ve already tried, Klaus. He won’t talk to me,” she informed him.
At the Lafeyette cemetery, Sabine finally found the location of Davina and told Elijah where she was.
“She’s somewhere near the river. I can’t be more specific.”
“It’s something. It’s a start.”
Sophie came into the tomb looking panicked.
“It didn’t work. I tried to consecrate her and absorb her magic, but there’s nothing there.”
Elijah was confused about this.
“I don’t understand. A witch’s magic is infused in her bones until consecrated.”
“Well, then someone’s already taken it, because there’s nothing there,” Sophie informed him.
“There has to be another way,” he encouraged her.
“There is no other way,” Sabine informed him.
“Unless you know of some super powerful dead witch whose bones were never consecrated, it’s over,” Sophie told him.
Elijah smiled in realization.
“There is someone else actually…our mother.”
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Elijah was in the living room with Rebekah and Klaus, having called them there to discuss his newest idea to finish the Harvest ritual, while Sophie did the same with Sabine in one of the tombs.
Rebekah rolled her eyes.
“It’s taken one thousand years, but you’ve finally gone mad. Our own mother?”
“Yes, our beloved mother, who Niklaus has affectionately placed in a coffin in his basement----not daggered, but quite dead.”
“Well, she did try to kill us all,” Klaus reminded him.
“Well, I say we put her to use and put her to rest once and for all. Now if we bury our mother on land owned by one of her descendants, she becomes a New Orleans witch, and we, as her family, share in the ancestral magic,” he proposed.
“We’re vampires, Elijah. We can’t practice magic. Or own property, for that matter,” Rebekah reminded him.
“Yes. With regard to practicing magic. And, as for owning property, not all of our mother’s descendants are dead,” Elijah said.
“The baby,” Klaus stated, surprised.
“The baby. The parish Tax Assessor’s office is just steps outside of the Quarter. Katerina now holds the title to the plantation. So, if we bury our mother there, and we consecrate those grounds, we can finish the Harvest ritual,” Elijah informed them.
“You’re a bit of a mad genius, Elijah. Count me in,” Klaus replied.
“Am I the only one thinking? Our mother was the most powerful witch in history. If we bury her, we hand that power to our enemies to use against us.”
“Given our circumstances, I hardly see that we have a choice, Rebekah,” Elijah told her.
Rebekah sighed in frustration.
“I don’t know why I bother. You two will just do what you want anyway.”
“No. Our decision must be unanimous,” Elijah told her.
“This is not a democracy,” Klaus aid.
“You’re quite right. This is family,” Elijah stated. The sound of a powerful rainstorm pouring down on the house was heard. “Water. The next sign’s begun. Rebekah?”
“Kill a demon today, face the devil tomorrow. Count me in,” Rebekah said.
Klaus smiled.
“Well, this is no family reunion without our mother. I’ll fetch her.”
Davina was laying on her cot in the storage unit while Marcel sat at her bedside, comforting her.
“If I can just wait it out a few more weeks…Help me, please?” Davina said.
“I will, and when it’s over, I’ll do what I should have done----get you out of town,” he promised her.
“I had a dream that Tim wasn’t dead. He played a song that he wrote for me, and he kissed me, and we were just normal,” she told him.
Rebekah arrived and stood in the doorway, having had Thierry tell her where Marcel would keep something precious to him at.
“That sounds like a beautiful dream.”
“What are you doing here?” Marcel asked her.
Rebekah ignored him and told Davina, “But it was just a dream.”
Marcel angrily yelled, “Get out!”
“This is killing her. Your stubbornness will mean her death,” Rebekah told him.
“I promised I’d fight for her. I’m not breaking that promise,” Marcel told her.
“No one is asking you not to fight. You’re the only family that this girl has. You owe it to her to fight for her to live,” Rebekah replied.
Klaus, Elijah, Katherine, Sophie, and Father Kieran were waiting in the backyard at the plantation house, where they had dug a grave for Esther, when Rebekah arrived to join them. It was still pouring down rain, and they were all standing under umbrellas.
“Did you find them? Will he bring her?” Klaus asked Rebekah.
“He’ll bring her,” Rebekah solemnly replied.
“Are you ready for this?” Kieran asked.
“Always and forever,” Klaus replied.
Klaus, Rebekah, Elijah, and Katherine used the dagger Klaus had brought with him to slice their hand open and drip blood over Esther’s grave. Then Father Kieran took the knife and threw it into the grave.
“It’s done,” Kieran stated.
The Mikaelsons and Katherine joined Sophie at the cemetery, where they waited for Marcel and Davina to arrive to complete the Harvest.
Suddenly, flames started to erupt near the entrance, startling everyone.
“Fire,” Sophie stated.
After a moment, Marcel appeared with Davina in his arms. As he walked towards them, flames followed them in a trail that licked at Marcel’s heals. Once they got to the altar, Marcel set her down, and Sophie held the ceremonial dagger over the flames before she headed toward Davina.
“Do you believe in the Harvest?”
Davina nodded.
“I believe.”
Sophie slit her throat with the dagger and Davina fell to the ground. Then her skin glowed gold as the magic left her body and flowed into the earth.
“After the Harvest, comes the Reaping. Their sacrifices made and accepted. We call upon our Elders to resurrect the chosen ones,” Sophie said.
Nothing happened and everyone looked around at each other uneasily. Sophie said the same thing again, but nothing happened. That’s when everyone knew that something had gone wrong. Sophie fell to her knees and sobbed.
“No!”
Marcel shot Klaus a look of hatred before vamp-speeding away.
When Klaus returned home, he found Marcel in the courtyard, angrily throwing furniture into walls. Klaus approached Marcel to try to calm him down.
“That won’t bring her back, you know,” he stated.
“This is YOUR fault! I should have never let you anywhere near her!”
“Marcel,” Klaus said.
“This city was fine before you came. We were fine! Davina was safe, she was in control! If you hadn’t gotten her worked up, if you hadn’t killed that boy!”
“My condolences the girl is gone. But don’t lose perspective. We still have our community. The vampires of this town…”
“I don’t CARE about the vampires! She is dead! Do you hear me?”
Klaus was overwhelmed and hugged Marcel.
“I’m sorry. You may think I know nothing of your grief, but you are wrong. In the days after I fled this city, I thought you were dead. It was years before I could speak your name, so keenly did I feel that loss. I’m sorry.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Elijah and Katherine were walking down the streets of the French Quarter on their way back from the cemetery. They were quiet until Katherine finally broke the silence.
“Are you ready to forgive me yet?”
Elijah sighed.
“It’s not that easy, Katerina.”
“Elijah, I was wrong to go through your journals. I was wrong to tell Sophie about Celeste, but after everything that happened today, I don’t know why we can’t see past this,” she replied. She was trying to apologize, but it wasn’t working very well. He used to forgive her so easily over everything she’d done as a vampire, but now, after what she’d done, he just wasn’t forgiving her for some reason, though she didn’t know to what extent that he cared about Celeste. She’d never known Celeste before all of this, nor had she heard of her.
“And you of all people should know why. You know what Celeste means to me,” he replied, assuming that she’d gotten the hint how much he still cares about her.
“Don’t you mean meant to you?” she inquired.
“No. Do you have any idea how rare love is? In a thousand years, I have found it but twice, and when I have, I have honored it,” he replied, speaking of her and Celeste.
“I know what a promise means to you, Elijah, but you made it two hundred years ago. I live in the now. If I feel something, I act. If I want something, I take it. I won’t choose the dead over the living, so why are you? I’m sorry, Elijah,” she replied. She walked away, leaving Elijah alone, not liking the conversation.
Once home, she went to her room and closed the door. She had thought that for 500 years, she and Elijah were meant to be, but now that Elijah was feeling this way towards a witch who had been dead for two hundred years, it made her wonder why he’d even bothered falling for her if he still loved Celeste. It made her wonder also, if he still loved her as well. Maybe she’d misread the signs. Maybe he’d done what he had for her because he just felt guilty for what had happened 500 years ago. Maybe she’d thought he’d loved her unconditionally, when he hadn’t loved her at all. But why save her life and be there for her when he needed her, if he never truly loved her once so ever?
She stood on the balcony with conflicted emotions, but silent in her anger and doubt. How could he do this to her? If he never loved her, why even bother with her? He called himself the noble brother, but sometimes, he wasn’t so noble after all.
“Katerina?” she heard from the other side of the door. She assumed he had sensed that something had upset her.
“Just go away, Klaus. There’s nothing you can do. I’ll be okay,” she replied.
“What’s wrong, luv? Apart from the obvious problem at hand,” he replied.
“Elijah’s feelings for Celeste. Now go away. We can talk later if you wish,” she answered.
She heard him silently walk away and was glad that he had left her alone. She needed to be alone with her feelings. It was better that way so she didn’t hurt anyone.
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