It was Ollie. She was cooking. And singing—her voice awful, completely off-key. It's what she always did when she cooked. She was, in fact, in a good mood that night.

Liza blinked and stilled for a moment in the foyer, holding her breath and listening. Her bag slid from her limp grip to the floor, and she shut the door behind her, locking it. She heard the sound of paws. Ramsey approached, tail wagging, that damn teddy bear in his mouth.

The sound of the rain was muffled by the music. It was so jarring and so unwanted that Liza cringed and covered her face. As her dog butted her with his head, dancing in place, she didn't take the toy, didn't throw it as he wanted. His upright ears went a little flat.

Instead, the girl barely stifled a sob between her fingers and glanced at the bay windows. The curtains were drawn most of the way, but there was an opening in the middle, about a foot wide. The dark glass was endlessly peppered with glittering raindrops that slid downward. She was rooted to her spot, leaning against the door. She couldn't move. She couldn't see straight. Looking back at Ramsey, in front of her, she stared at him as her eyes welled anew. Her feet, inside her soaked boots, were freezing, yet she didn't move.

Despite making it home, all she saw, all that flashed before her eyes was that heavy rain, those two guys, remembering the way they had grabbed her, pulled her to that car—complete strangers. If they didn't want to rob her, then what were they going to do instead? Rapeher? Inside that car? The morbid thought was the only one she could think of. And the third man—the man that she knew had visited her at work. It had been him. He'd followed her.

She remembered his face, his voice, what he'd worn. He was in a suit tonight too, even as it poured from the heavens. She didn't remember what he'd bought at the store, what kind of tea, but she remembered the way he'd spoken, his tone so polite, so cool-sounding. She'd known he couldn't have been from around there. He had to have been from somewhere else. Who was he? What was he?

She remembered the falling bodies, the screams, the dull, packing sounds against the asphalt. And then remembering what she had done, she lowered her hands and looked down at them. They were trembling. The skin was scraped and bleeding, cuts mixed in with dirt. Not caring, however, she gripped her thighs, leaning forward, and let out a loud weep.

The pain in her palms, as she pressed them against her jeans, brought her back to the moment, back to where she was, inside her apartment, in the warmth.

"Liza?" came Ollie's voice from the kitchen. "Are you home?"

Liza looked up and couldn't answer. She just cried, blubbering. The music still played. Then she heard footsteps. Ramsey moved from one spot to another, shaking his head hard, side to side, making sure the teddy bear was truly dead. Seeing Ollie coming down the hall, he approached her with the toy. Maybe she'd take it. He dropped it and trotted back a few steps.

Ollie did take it—only as she started to throw it, she stopped, seeing Liza there, looking like a complete mess. Ollie's hand dropped to her side, and she let go of the toy.

"Oh my God, what happened?" she immediately went up to her friend, taking her by the shoulders. "What happened? Why are you all wet?"

Liza shook her head with a whimper. She lifted one hand in a fist and brought it to her mouth. Ollie saw the blood. "Oh my God. Did you just come back from work? Liza!" She gave her a shake.

Liza sniveled out a: "Y-yes."

Ollie's green eyes widened. She held her friend firmly even as she trembled. "Tell me what happened," she repeated slowly, her voice very low now.

Covering her face, Liza fell into the shorter girl's arms, and Ollie hugged her to her chest. The apron she wore, which said Kiss the Cook,got wet at once.

"What happened?" she demanded. She was rigid all over.

"Two g-guys," Liza choked out, her face buried in Ollie's thick, dark locks. "Th-they—they," a cry, then, "they followed me and-and—"

Ollie suddenly yanked her away. There was a growl in her tone. She held Liza's brown eyes even as she couldn't look straight at Ollie. She kept glancing away. "Where?" Ollie questioned. "Where?"

The words tumbled out of Liza's mouth. She brought a hand up to her face again, speaking through it, her words muffled, but Ollie could hear. "Up Winthrop. I miss-missed my stop. I walked down the street. I didn't—I didn't s-see them."

Ollie gripped her upper arms now. "What did they do? Attack you?" Urgently, Ollie looked around, spotted Liza's purse, then leaned back to look her over, up and down. "What did they do?" Ollie repeated.

Liza raised her gaze up to hers, shaking her head. Instead, she said, "Then someone else show-showed up. Ollie, someone else was there. It was another guy."

"Who?"

"It was a guy I saw from w-work. He just—he just showed up there. Ollie, he did something to those other guys. I think—I think he-he...killed them, Oll. I saw—I saw their bodies."

Ollie listened, the expression on her round, girlish face growing outright deadly: her jaw clenching, her green eyes becoming brighter, yellower, her dark, arching brows narrowing. She tilted her chin down, almost the way a seething canine would, a wolf.

Liza looked away from her again, to Ramsey, whose tail had stopped wagging as he regarded them, sensing something wrong.

"I don't know how he did it—he just did. And then I—I," now Liza looked back down at her hands, at her scuffed-up palms, "Ollie, I used...I used my...see-lah." Power. "I didn't mean it. He flew through the air. I don't know if I—if I killed him. I don't think I did. I don't think—I don't think he was human."

Ollie began to help her take off her jacket, Liza letting her. She shivered from a chill she felt when the coat was off. After hanging it beside the door, Ollie steadied her again. "Take off your shoes," she said in a tone that was now almost motherly. "Let's take off your shoes. They're soaked."

Complying, Liza bent forward, but Ollie did most of the work, squatting before her, unzipping one boot, helping her take it off, then the other, until Liza was barefoot, socks balled up nearby.

"I didn't mean it," she said, in a daze. Ollie stood and began leading her down the hallway, arm around her friend's torso. The song was nearing its end. Dean Martin was singing his last words, the repeating mambo rhythm almost over.

Hey, mambo, mambo Italiano

Hey, mambo, mambo Italiano

Ho, ho, ho, you mixed up Siciliano

"I didn't mean it. It just happened."

"No one is mad at you for using your powers," Ollie said. She didn't snap, but her voice was firm again. "You're a fucking witch, Liza. Even if you don't use your magic, it's still there. Thank God that you used it this time."

When they got to the kitchen, Ollie led her to a chair around the small round table, but Liza could manage and let go. Any other night, Ollie's mouthwatering cooking would've stirred a groan from her stomach. Not tonight. Liza's stomach clenched instead.

It's a so delish a ev'rybody come copisha

How to mambo Itali—

Ollie turned off the cylindrical, red Bluetooth speaker that was by the window. When she turned around, she asked, "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

Liza looked at her hands, then down at her legs, her jeans disgustingly wet and stained. She probably had bruises elsewhere. Maybe there was more blood underneath her clothes. The aftershock of the incident hadn't quite passed enough for her to care about more bodily injuries. Instead of answering, she carefully gripped the bottom edge of her sweater to peel it off. Ollie obligingly took it to drape it over another chair.

"Schyas," she said. Hold on.

Left in a tank top, Liza sat there, shaking, her hands, palms up, raised. "That-that man wasn't human." Lifting an arm up higher, she saw reddish imprints of hands on her skin. From those guys.

Saying nothing else, Ollie went to a cupboard and was rummaging through it. When she got what she needed, her face stony, she brought back some hydrogen peroxide, gauze, bandages, and sat in the chair with Liza's wet sweater on the back, scooting it forward, sitting on the edge.

Then she took one of Liza's hands and began to silently clean it. Ollie was good at keeping calm in moments like these, even though moments like these rarely happened, if ever, despite her being a wolf and Liza a witch. Neither of them had been in messes involving strange attackers or even stranger heroes.

Liza was wincing, her instinctive response to pull away her hand, but Ollie held her by the wrist. "Poterpi nemnógo," she said, much like a mother would. Toughen up. She looked up at Liza as if to say, You're a big girl.

Liza held her breath, trying to steel herself, and glanced away at Ramsey, who trotted into the kitchen with the teddy bear back in his mouth. His brown eyes looked like they were frowning.

"When he came into the store...he looked normal. He just bought some t-tea. I didn't pay attention. I forgot about him after he-he left." Liza lifted her other hand to wipe her eyes.

"And you didn't sense anything weird about him when you met him?" Ollie asked.

Liza looked back at her. Ollie was gently wiping away the blood and dirt. She hadn't even put the peroxide on yet. Liza answered through another wince, "Like what?"

"Like anything weird. With your powers?"

Liza, grimacing, shut her eyes and turned her head away again. "No," she whispered. "Fuck my powers."

Ollie looked at her for a moment, watching the tears roll down her friend's flushed cheeks, and saying nothing more, she just let Liza cry. Liza couldn't look back at her friend. She stared somewhere across the kitchen, past Ramsey, between wiping her eyes and her snotty nose.

There was another sort of anguish in her voice, a misery that bubbled from within throat, from somewhere deep in her gut, like from an old wound, the kind that didn't need any words of sympathy because all those words had already been said, and there was really nothing that could've been done to ease the grief. So, Ollie just bandaged up her hands so they wouldn't get infected.

When she was done, she got up from her chair. Liza looked back at her, hiccupping, and noticed that she was cooking something Italian indeed, for there was a box of pasta on the counter, and two pots, one for water that was already boiling. The other had a tomato sauce, which Ollie silently had a taste of with a wooden spatula—she didn't put anything extra in, which meant it was exactly how it needed to taste. Next, she put in the pasta, all of it. She usually made more food than either of them could eat in a night.

Ramsey had dropped the teddy bear again and came up right beside her, in cast Ollie decided to be generous. But a moment or two later, he was tearing his attention away from the delicious sustenance that he'd never have. He looked back in direction of the hallway before either of the girls even heard the knock on the door.

They watched the dog sprint out of the kitchen and to the front of the apartment. He was ruff'ing, low and with a warning.

Liza met Ollie's eyes with alarm, and the latter said, "Stay here." However, Liza was already getting up as her friend followed the dog.

When Ollie got to the front door, she didn't open it. Ramsey, sensing the person on the other side, gave a bark, and Ollie didn't reprimand him as she'd normally. "Who is it?" she said cautiously and moved a green eye to the peephole. She heard the voice as the person spoke.

"It's Stan from downstairs."

An old man, with his white hair and friendly demeanor, was standing on the other side. He was over sixty and wore a sweatshirt that didn't have a hood, and some sweatpants. He and his wife were probably getting ready for bed.

Ollie looked back over her shoulder at Liza, who'd come into the living area, anyway. They shared each other's relief. "One second," Ollie called. Despite her state of distress, puffy eyes and cheeks, Liza went up to her and took her dog by the collar to pull him back. Ollie, meanwhile, unlocked the door.

"Just wanted to check on you girls," Stan was saying as the door opened. "It's really coming down out there."

Ollie gave him a smile, letting out a breath. "I know, right?" she said with forced enthusiasm. "We're fine. Annnd the power is still on! How are you and Martha?"

Behind her, Liza tried not to look at the old man so that he wouldn't think anything was wrong, in case he'd judge her by the way she appeared. She had knelt beside Ramsey and held him back as he growled. He normally didn't like strangers, especially men, so the reaction was nothing new.

Stan smiled warmly. "Oh, just getting ready for bed. Just thought I'd check on you..." he repeated.

It would've been a lie to say that Ollie was completely relaxed. She might've sounded like it, but with the way she stood in front of Liza, keeping the door open against her hip—not obviously cautious, yet with a firm grip on the door handle—Liza knew that she was still on edge.

"We're fine," Ollie repeated, again, too, her smile wide. "You two have a good night." And she began to close the door slowly. Stan didn't move.

"Just thought I'd check on you girls," he repeated for the third time, oddly. His tone was still cheerful. He looked from Ollie to Liza, what he could see of her. She had looked up nervously.

"We're...fine," Ollie said. She glanced back at her roommate.

"It's really coming down out there," Stan went on.

Neither girl said anything else. There was a creek behind the old man, on the stairs, just down the little hallway, the sound of a footstep. Someone else was there. Another creek. Someone was coming up.

"Mr. Johnston," Ollie said suspiciously.

The old man looked back as another man, slightly taller and in a suit and trench coat, appeared behind him on the landing, and upon meeting this man's gaze, Stan started backing up.

"All right. You have a good night, girls."

Ramsey barked. In fact, he started barking and didn't stop. As Stan slipped past Elijah, Liza froze, started to panic. "Oh my God. It's him," she whispered sharply.

Ollie had spoken over her: "Liza, get back."

Liza didn't move, couldn't. Elijah slowly moved toward the doorway. As Ollie looked at him, glaring darkly, saying, "What the hell do you want?" he raised a hand to forestall anything else from her.

"I promise, I mean neither of you harm." The man looked like he had been caught in the rain, his hair slicked back at an angle, a light, moist sheen to his skin, his dress shirt clinging to his chest a bit.

Ollie didn't answer him. Raising her chin, she moved her head, smelling the air between them. Face tilted, her eyes flashed yellow. "Ohn' vampír," she said to Liza, without looking back at her. He's a vampire.

Elijah's dark eyes darted to the girl whom he'd saved, crouching there on the floor in the foyer, holding back her dog who was squirming. Ramsey wasn't a small dog, and yet Liza didn't let go of him as he pulled toward the vampire, the dog's long, shedding red hair sticking to her clothes.

She didn't say anything. She just stared at Elijah, pale-faced. He saw the bruises on her arms, the bandaging on her hands. He took in a sharp breath.

"My name is Elijah," he went on calmly and looked back at Ollie. "Elijah Mikaelson. Yes, I am a vampire," he seemed like he'd understood what they'd said in Russian, yet he spoke in English, "but I am not here out of any ill will."

"Stan..." Liza said, still whispering.

Elijah answered her unspoken question.

"I've compelled your downstairs neighbor to let me in, but I mean no harm to him or his wife, either. In fact, I'm sure Stan went back to watching that show with Martha, his wife." His words didn't waver once, sounding dry and flat. As an afterthought, like the man from another time that he was, he added: "I heard that it was..."live." They're casting votes now as we speak..." He glanced over his shoulder down the stairs.

"So, what do you want?" Ollie questioned him. Liza saw that knuckles of her hand on the doorknob were white.

Elijah didn't approach any closer, the space between them roughly four feet. "I know that my coming here, forcing an invite through your landlord, makes the situation look far worse, but I can assure you that I am not here in hostility-"

"Answer the question," Ollie snapped. Her eyes remained yellow.

The vampire glanced once more at Liza, who was hugging Ramsey tightly. "I'm here because of your friend—Elizaveta Belov," he pronounced her name slowly and properly. "I was told that she might be of some importance to myself and my family." He hadn't hesitated once in his explanation, but he knew very well how it sounded. Ridiculous.

Ollie stared at him. Liza looked downright panicked. "What do you mean?" the latter asked. Then, louder out of fear: "What do you mean?"

Elijah raised his hand again, a placating gesture. "When I came here, to Chicago, looking for you, I didn't have the slightest idea as to why you were important, and I still have no idea why. But back there in that alley, when you knocked me back, without touching me, using what I can only presume as magic, I believe that perhaps," he narrowed his gaze, searching Liza's frightened face, "it may have something to do with you being a witch."

At that, she sprung to her feet. Alarm rolled through her, the distress she now felt past the point of making her cry, and in turn, it seemed to rile up Rams more, who tried to wriggle madly. "I don't practice any-anymore. This has nothing to do with me!"

The shorter girl looked as Liza backed away from the doorway and yanked Ramsey with her.

But instead of telling him to leave, Ollie took a step past the threshold, into the hallway. "Listen, she really doesn't practice." She crossed her arms under her ample chest, right over the word Kiss on her apron. "Who told you about her?"

Ollie blocked the doorway now, or she tried to. Elijah could see past the top of her head to where Liza still stood, bent sideways, keeping the dog back. The girl was covering her mouth with a bandaged hand, looking anywhere but at the door. Her eyes threatened to fill again. Ramsey ruff'd but stopped pulling at last. He was looking up at her, at Ollie and then at that bloodsucker in the hallway.

"Bare with me, please. Olympia, is it?" Elijah asked. Taking Ollie's heated silence as a yes, as she raised an eyebrow, he went on: "This will sound farfetched even for people like us." He took in a breath. There was no time to be wasted while they were humoring him and giving him a chance to explain.

"Several weeks ago, I received a call from a boy in Los Angeles. That boy is a psychic. In fact, perhaps either of you might have heard of him—he's on television, apparently—but that detail is irrelevant. This boy, whom I've never met, called my cell phone number, which I seldom give out, if ever, to anyone other than family and those closest to me." Elijah looked from Ollie to Liza, who reluctantly looked back at him.

"This boy,