"Do you know what this is?" Jo held up the circular mechanical device.

"A really weird paperweight?" Kai snarked.

Jo shot him her patent 'you're an idiot' look, "Let me try this again," She looked down at the object in her hands, "This the ascendant that dad was going to use to lock you away if you won the merge."

Kai chuckled bitterly, "Well at least we can't say the old man wasn't prepared." He had known that his father (and most of the coven) had prayed that Jo would be the one to win the merge. He didn't know, however, that this was the back-up plan. "So what? He was going to lock me up until the sub-par twins came of age?"

"Up yours." Liv didn't even look up from her phone as she gave him the finger.

"Sub-par?" Kai could hear the outrage in Luke's voice.

Kai ignored his younger siblings' objections. He focused on his twin, "So how'd you get it?"

Jo smirked, "Coven leader, Mallory. I've got access to all the goods now."

Kai groaned as she brought back the dreaded nickname from his childhood. Malachai was too hard for his younger siblings to pronounce so for a while, he had gone by Mal. Which Jo would turn into Mallory when she wanted to annoy the crap out of him. "What are you gonna do with it?" While he had no fears that Jo would use the ascendant against him, he wondered why she brought it up at all.

"You know this is why dad and Sheila had that fight right?" No, Kai didn't know that.

Sheila Bennett had been a long ally to the Gemini, coming up every summer to stay a few weeks. There was even talk of her moving out to Portland at one time, but it seemed (to Kai at least) that all that changed overnight. Sheila stopped coming and Joshua had been banned from ever stepping foot on Bennett land in Virginia.

"He wanted Sheila's blood to be one of the locks for the ascendant, she said no. Dad didn't take her refusal very well, and tried to get it using other means." Jo explained.

"What other means, was Abby with her?" Kai asked slowly.

"No, not through Abby. She had brought Bonnie with her this time, and I guess he thought that going after a kid was easier than trying to sway Sheila to his side." Jo rolled her eyes.

"What the fuck?" Kai asked incredulously, he knew Sheila would have never gone for that. "I bet they probably had to pull her off him."

'Actually, from what I understand, she didn't have to. Bonnie, or her magic, somehow recognized him as a threat, and he never got within arm's reach of her."

Kai grinned, his dad getting his ass kicked by a kid would have absolutely made his whole damn year! "As awesome as that image is, I still don't understand why we're rehashing the past."

"Because, when Sheila left, she broke the ascendant into pieces. Sure, dad rebuilt it, but it's never worked right again." Jo waved it in Kai's face. "I'm pretty sure Sheila took a piece or two with her when she went back to Mystic Falls. Maybe on your next visit you can look around and see if it's there."

Kai took the ascendant from his twin's hand. It weighed no more than a few pounds, but that little gadget had the power to end his existence in this world.

"I think it'll be safest in the hands of the person it was intended for, don't you think?" Jo stood up to go help Luke with dinner. "And who knows, if you find the missing piece, maybe you can take Bonnie with you and show her how to be a real witch. God knows, the people she's currently surrounded by have no clue."

Kai turned the ascendant over in his hands, imagining spiriting Bonnie away so they could both practice spells in a controlled environment of their own. There would be no worries about collateral damage or potential fatalities, just open space where they can each let go.

He pocketed the ascendant, a genuine smile crossing his face. He couldn't wait to get back to Mystic Falls.