THE WITCH AND THE WEREWOLF~ tyler lockwood

04) not a laughing matter

Mason Lockwood pulled up in car and I watched curiously as Tyler jogged over to his uncle. Mason kept looking nervously at the cellar beside the swimming hole. I easily recognized it as old slave quarters, but I knew there had to be more to that. I needed to get in that cellar.

Mason peeled out of the clearing leaving dirt tracks and almost hit Caroline and Stefan with his car. Now I knew something was up. His weird acrobatic moves in the school parking lot. The way his eyes drifted to the cellar. His strange behavior around vampires.

Caroline smiled at me and I smiled tentatively back. I knew she wanted me to come over and talk, but I couldn't find the courage. My mind kept chanting "vampire!" and I couldn't ignore it try as I might.

I instead focused on my mission: keep the humans relatively safe from their own drunken antics and the supernatural.

And get in that cellar.

I decided my best bet of getting in the cellar was convincing Tyler to take me there.

I was about to approach him, and I was feeling confident in my plan since he couldn't take his eyes off me, when Aimee raced past me and looped her arms around his waist. She was a drunken mess and couldn't stop giggling, but she easily stole Tyler's attention away.

Dammit.

I decided the next best thing was to kill time and wait until nightfall.

Dusk set on the swimming hole and people cleared out. All that was left mingling around was me, Stefan, Caroline, Matt, Tyler, and Aimee. Tyler led Aimee towards the cellar and I was silently cursing myself for not getting to him sooner.

Stefan was on the phone and Caroline disappeared to talk to Matt. I quickly threw my clothes on and haphazardly tied my boots, afraid for Matt's safety.

By the time I was dressed, Matt and Caroline had vanished and Stefan had hung up his phone. "Where are they?" he asked, his eyes wide.

I shook my head and scanned the area again. This is not good.

"I'm going to go left, you go right," Stefan directed and took off after shoving his phone in his back pocket.

I laced my boots up tighter and headed right towards the cellar. I scooted along the outside of the stone wall when I heard Aimee's voice.

"What? Wait. I'm sorry," she mumbled.

I peaked around the corner of the cement fixture that led to the cellar to see Tyler and Aimee. Tyler had his hands hooked in her bikini top strap and was ready to unclasp it. Aimee softly pushed him away.

"What's wrong?" Tyler asked, sitting back on his knees.

"I'm not even sure why I was flirting with you," Aimee admitted. "I like Matt."

"Ouch," Tyler grumbled. I could literally feel the secondhand embarrassment from where I stood.

Aimee apologized again and raced out of the cellar past me. I quickly feared that a vampire, or whatever Mason Lockwood was, would get her and focused on casting a protection spell Bonnie taught me. It was one of the only spells I picked up that wasn't elemental based. When I was content Aimee would be safe, I entered the cellar and sat down across from Tyler.

Tyler looked up at me startled, but then scooted away and hid his face. "Come to laugh at me, Demarco?"

I was suddenly hit with a wave of empathy similar to the one I felt when Tyler lost his dad and Jeremy and I attended the wake. I crawled closer to Tyler, so our knees were touching, but nothing more.

"I didn't come to laugh. I would never laugh about that," I said seriously.

Finding out someone has feelings for your friend hurts like hell. It's one of the lowest blows to your self esteem. I've had crushes upon crushes, but all of them only talked to me to get intel on Caroline. And boys only talked to Caroline to get intel on Elena. The universe was cruel and I wasn't about to tease Tyler when he was so vulnerable like this.