Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries

68. Ghost Whisperer

When someone else rang a bell for the hundredth time, she decided that the best place to hide was in the back room.

However, busying herself with pretend tasks got boring really quickly. When she decided to finally leave her hiding place and get back to the job that she was being paid for, she felt a pain in her head. A pain practically identical to the one that she'd felt at Qetsiyah's place.

"Ah!" Riley groaned, clutching her head and grabbing onto a shelf to keep herself upright, accidentally pushing a glass off the shelf as she did so. The glass smashed, prompting her to look up.

"Bonnie?"

She could see her friend, clear as day, standing in front of her in the back room of the Grill, which was weird because she was apparently still on vacation with her mom. Clearly Bonnie thought this was weird too. Her face was frozen in what appeared to be surprise.

"You can see me?" the witch asked, her voice barely a whisper. Riley was still clutching her head in pain as she answered.

"Of course I can see you," she groaned, closing her eyes. "Should I not be able to?"

Whatever answer she was expecting, what she wasn't expecting was silence. She looked up and saw that Bonnie had seemingly vanished.

"Bonnie?" she called loudly, her voice drowned out by the loud shouts and cheers of the people outside. "Bonnie?"

It didn't make any sense, she was sure that Bonnie wasn't in town. If she was coming back, Jeremy would have told them – he was the only person that she was in constant contact with.

Jeremy was the only one who would know...

***

"What's up?" Jeremy asked when Riley walked into the Salvatore house. She'd been coming up with theories all the way there, but nothing explained the surprise on Bonnie's face.

"Have you spoken to Bonnie lately?" she asked him, hopping from one foot to the other and back again, too wired to stay still.

Jeremy frowned, before trying to rearrange his features into a somewhat normal expression. "Not today, if that's what you mean. Why?"

She breathed heavily. "This is gonna sound completely crazy but... I just saw her. I was working, and she just appeared out of nowhere, and then she disappeared. Can you call her, just to make sure that everything's OK? I tried but she's not picking up."

Jeremy shook his head. "That's impossible."

Riley nodded. Of course it was impossible. Clearly being around the crazy witch Qetsiyah had done something to her head. Maybe she was going crazy too.

"I know," she admitted. "But I don't know what else to do."

Jeremy shook his head again, more firmly. "No Riley, you don't understand. It's impossible that you saw Bonnie."

His tone of voice stopped her in her tracks, her next words falling out of her head. He looked stressed, worried, anxious.

"What's going on?" she asked slowly, stressing each word. It was like her body knew that something huge was about to happen.

"She didn't want me to say anything," Jeremy said softly, looking her in the eyes. "I've been lying to everyone for months."

"Lying about what?"

Jeremy took a deep breath. Even from where she stood, she could tell that he was trembling. "I was dead, and she brought me back," he reminded her. "Magic finds a balance."

Magic finds a balance. She repeated the sentence in her head over and over and over again, trying to make sense of Jeremy's words. Bonnie brought Jeremy back from the dead. Magic finds a balance. What would balance that out?