Klaus moved his easel with the sun, watching his paintings change over the course of each day. He’d sometimes climb up here at night and light a few candles, stepping back from the easel to take in the effect of all of his canvases at once. He had been working feverishly and couldn’t remember ever being so productive.

It was a waste, though, because every last painting was of her. Vivianne’s left eye, black in a pale sea of skin. The outline of Vivianne running through a cobble­stoned street in the middle of the night. The sound of Vivianne’s laughter, captured so perfectly that someone who had never met her would still know what it was. Vivianne in his bed the first night, the last night, every night.

It wasn’t work; it was torture. He could never paint anything else. Whatever he tried his hand at simply became another aspect of Vivianne.

His current painting was of her hair: black and sleek as a raven’s wings, but with a life and movement that Klaus struggled to capture exactly. In the light of his candle it looked flat and wrong, an entire story he was somehow failing to tell. He picked up a brush and began to work, adding texture and light in some places, while leaving others as dark as gravity.

The wailing sound of the house’s protection spell went off again, as it had been all night long. Everyone else was too busy partying to pay attention to it, but Klaus stopped, brush halfway to canvas, at the sight of a witch at the east window. She sat on the outer lintel, poised as if she were resting on a park bench.

Klaus knew her at once. No matter what Ysabelle Dalliencourt’s old spell assumed, this was not exactly an unexpected intruder on their land. He could see traces of her mother’s face in hers, in the strong, straight nose and the long planes of her cheeks. Her hair was darker, more of a ruddy brown than an auburn, but her eyes were the same fathomless brown.

He crossed the room quickly, wishing that he could cover all of his canvases as he went. Vivianne and Lily might have been cousins, but Lily had no right to see her image the way Klaus portrayed it. No matter her relation, Lily was one of them, a descendant of the cowards and weaklings who had let Viv slip away.

He opened the window and invited her inside nonetheless. Lily was also the first witch in over forty years to respond to Klaus’s overtures, and he couldn’t afford to slight her.

To raise the dead was difficult, but it was more than just that. It required dark and frightening magic that few would dare to even attempt. For decades Klaus had let it be known—quietly, without involving his siblings in something that was really none of their concern—that the price of readmission to New Orleans was Vivianne. The witches wanted their home back badly, but none had broken ranks to try their hand. Ysabelle had much to do with that, he knew, but now she was dead, and her daughter had come to bargain.

“I can grant you what you desire,” Lily Leroux told him with no preamble. “But it will cost you. One item for the spell, and another for my daughter.”

“As I have said—” Klaus began, but she waved the words off impatiently.

“I know what you are willing to offer,” she reminded him. “Now listen to what I want.”

Klaus was never eager to be on the wrong side of a bargain, but if it meant that Vivianne would be returned to him, he would listen to anything the witch had to say.

CHAPTER TWO

REBEKAH HAD TO admit that Klaus knew how to throw a party. She and her two siblings had lived in relative solitude for so long that now it was as if she could never get enough of their own kind, and Klaus always seemed ready to provide her with plenty of company. Lithe young vampires filled the mansion, ­dancing, singing, drinking, and casting alluring glances at one another...and at her. Always at her. She was more than a celebrity among them; she was practically a goddess.

After a few glasses of champagne, Rebekah found that being worshipped suited her just fine. There were a few—well, more than a few—young male vampires who made a sport of competing for her attention, and she encouraged them shamelessly. There was a Robert and a Roger she constantly mixed up, and Efrain, who had extraordinary blue eyes but got tongue-tied at the mere sight of her. Tonight was about celebrating, and tomorrow night probably would be, too.

Robert (she was almost sure) refilled her glass before it was empty, and she smiled languidly at him. They were like sweet, admiring puppies, sitting at her feet and lapping up every scrap of her attention. It was impossible to take any of them seriously, but perhaps something not-so-serious was exactly what she needed.

She had been in love, and she knew how that ended. But she would live for a very long time, and it was not realistic to spend the rest of eternity running away from every sort of connection. A good fling might be exactly what she needed...and then perhaps another one after that.

A cheerful-looking vampire with reddish-gold hair strolled into the parlor where Rebekah held court, and she noticed Klaus leaving the drawing room in the opposite direction. Sulking again, she guessed. He was as magnetic as ever, drawing in humans and vampires alike. They flocked to the house at his suggestion, and then he hid from them like a hermit. He was going up to that drafty attic again; she just knew it.

“I’m sorry for my brother’s rudeness,” she told the female vampire impulsively.

The girl’s gray eyes widened in momentary surprise, as if it’d never occurred to her to be offended by Klaus’s abrupt moods. Rebekah felt foolish for having even mentioned it, but then the vampire smiled easily. Her teeth were white and even, like a good string of pearls. “No need,” she assured Rebekah, as casually as if they were equals. “He is who he is.”

“Wise words,” Rebekah agreed, draining her champagne and then staring pointedly at Roger. He hurried away to find a new bottle. “Klaus doesn’t have it in him to think of others.”

The only thing to which Klaus had really applied himself over the past forty-odd years was driving Rebekah and Elijah crazy. He had won ownership of that tawdry brothel he so enjoyed in a card game and promptly lost it again. The Southern Spot had spent all of a week under the new sign reading the slap and the tickle before its old one had been restored. Still, Klaus spent inordinate amounts of time there, drinking and whoring as if he still were needed on hand to run the place. He had only stumbled out in the mornings to interrupt the French army’s battles and feed at his pleasure, forcing Rebekah to use her powers of compulsion indiscriminately again and again. He delighted in tormenting the new French governors until they were driven out of town, almost ruining The Originals’ claim to their land when the Spanish had used that opening to their own advantage.

The redheaded girl sat down companionably without waiting for an invitation. Rebekah raised an eyebrow, but she was amused, and the bold young thing didn’t seem the slightest bit intimidated by her expression. “I wouldn’t expect him to think of anyone but himself,” she agreed easily. “I was just trying to help him out of his mood.”

“And why would he be any less moody for you than for the rest of us? I don’t even know you,” Rebekah reminded her. She was sure she had seen the girl around before, but had probably been paying too much attention to Robert/Roger to notice. In any case, attending a few parties hardly made her a part of the Mikaelsons’ inner circle.

“Oh! I’m Lisette,” the vampire chirped, extending her hand as an afterthought. She offered no other explanation or defense for her presumption, and it seemed like she was totally unaware of it. The Original mystique seemed to slide right off of Lisette. After the fawning attention of Rebekah’s admirers, it was like the shock of diving into a cool pool of water.