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Lizzie Saltzman dreams of a girl with eyes like the ocean.
She does not exist.
They have defeated Triad and all should be well, but nothing feels like it is.
She screams into the woods with rage and doesn't feel alone. But lonely.
She doesn't remember.
But she also can not forget. It's the mirror of a memory in her brain, the knowledge that there was once a girl named Hope Mikaelson.
Who Lizzie hated.
Who Lizzie loved.
In a world filled with magic, many truths exist.
“Do you ever feel like something is missing?” she asks Pedro and he looks up at her with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Ice cream?”
She makes him a peanut-butter-chocolate flurry and feels bile rise in her throat.
“Do you ever feel like something is missing?” she asks Jo and her sister looks out the window, traces her hand over the red ribbon lodged at her throat.
“All the time.”
They are not missing the same thing.
“Do you ever feel like something is missing?” she asks he father, a last ditch-effort, and he smiles at her lovingly.
“Your mother will be home soon, Lizzie. You’ll be fine.”
The world she once wished for is not what she wants.
She reads about Malivore.
The memories get clearer.
At the top of her closet, she finds a dress that used to belong to her mother.
She sobs for what feels like hours.
The library becomes her sanctuary.
She hides behind heavy tomes.
Josie would notice that she’s not okay, but Josie is on a mission.
Her sister is working frantically to prevent the Merge and save Lizzie’s life.
All Lizzie can think about is the girl named Hope.
There are hints of her, outside of Lizzie’s memories.
She clings to them like a girl possessed.
They are the only proof she has that she is not loosing her mind.
What a way to go, she thinks sometimes.
Broken Lizzie shattering to pieces over a girl who does not exist.
But this exists:
A painting, in the top corridor of the school.
A necklace Josie treasures that has no origin.
A recipe for banana cream pie, hand-written, in the top drawer of Lizzie’s nightstand.
She reads more.
Thinks.
Plans.
There is a book, in the library.
Instructions on how to open the portal to hell.
They reach for it simultaneously.
“I need this,” she says.
“So do I.”
Josie stares her down. “I need it to save you.”
“I need it to save Hope.”
Oops.
Josie listens patiently as she attempts to explain.
Lizzie won’t wait for judgement. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No. And I think I know how to prove you’re not.”
Penelope Park is one devious bitch.
Lizzie never thought she would appreciate that.
The book is filled with her, with Hope.
“What was your plan?” She asks her sister.
The Gemini Coven was part in creating the seal to Malivore.
And paid the price.
“I thought it was a weird curse,” Josie explains. “Specific. Random. Why would you need someone to absorb someone else, to be so incredibly powerful?”
The leader of the Gemini Coven uses their strength to guard the portal.
Unknowingly. Knowingly.
They don’t know. There is no one left to ask.
And since their coven has no leader, Malivore could gain power.
Then she understands. The price to pay for lifting their curse.
“You were going to unleash hell on Earth to save me?”
“You were going to do it to save a girl no one remembers?”
So.
Maybe they’re better together.
Josie obsesses over the fact that Lizzie remembers.
Lizzie does not want to discuss it.
“It’s important,” her sister insists. “It’s the thing not accounted for. The unexpected.”
“Who was she to us?” Josie asks her, looking up from her book. “Hope?”
An enemy. An ally. Nothing. Everything.
“She was our friend.”
An anchor.
A heavy metal object, usually shaped like a cross with curved arms, on a strong rope or chain, that is dropped from a boat into the water to prevent the boat from moving away.
Someone or something that gives support when needed.
An anchor.
An object or person a witch can tie herself to when preforming dangerous magic. This may ground her and help her return.
She reads the text her sister again and again.
Josie watches her, bites her lip. “How good of friends were you? This is- really rare- but it could help. A lot.”
The beginnings of a plan form.
It’s horrible. Dangerous. Crazy.
Lizzie works and reworks the spells.
There is only one conclusion.
They’re not enough. The spell isn’t stable. Not with just the two of them.
Jo is about to get really mad at her.
“You want me to call my ex-girlfriend and ask her to help us in a spell to bring someone back she doesn’t know existed?”
Lizzie shrugs. “And to save my life.” Tilts her head, contemplates. “Actually, maybe don’t mention that part.”
Penelope says yes.
The plan takes shape.
M.G. catches them packing books and candles.
It escalates from there.
“I know the way,” Landon says.
“If my boy is coming, so am I.” Kaleb.
“I’m useful.” Nia.
Penelope shakes her head. “I agreed to kidnap two people. Not seven. And definitely not a werewolf.”
“He won’t do anything,” Landon says. “Will you, buddy? He knows that this is important.”
Raf whines in what appears to be agreement.
Lizzie wants to do something.
Steps forward.
Her sister stops her. “Penny, please.”
They’re too many people.
They take the van.
Lizzie wishes she had motion-sickness.
They go over the plan.
“We open the seal. Remove the Gemini Curse.
You anchor Josie. She anchors me. I pull Hope out.
We use her blood for a new seal.
All well.”
Penelope stares at her. “That’s not an all-well kind of plan. That’s an all-dead kind of plan.”
She’s not getting screamed at for a fourteen-hour drive.
Time for a diversion move.
“Just make sure you ground Josie. Don’t let her take another bullet for me.”
“You did what?” Penelope screeches.
“I hate you,” Josie mouths at her.
“Hero time,” Josie says.
Lizzie laughs, dry and broken-hearted.
They hold hands, break open the seal.
And as Josie reaches out for Penelope, Lizzie reaches into the darkness.
Lets herself be immersed.
She runs through blackness and emptiness.
Josie is tugging, pulling her back.
The bond is dangerously thin.
Just another step.
Hope.
Lizzie can feel her, too close and too far.
Can almost hear her, urging Lizzie to leave.
“You need to trust me,” she says into the void, “please.”
Maybe she’s not alone anymore.
Lizzie tugs and pulls and screams.
Reaches for Josie, holds onto Hope.
And stumbles onto the ground.
The first thing she sees is a girl with eyes like the ocean.