Author's note: This was originally a one-shot in my Klaroline series, A Beautiful Symmetry. I decided to expand it into a few more chapters; I hope you enjoy it! The new material starts in Chapter 2.

Caroline is a New Orleans witch who runs a magic shop that caters to a very select clientele. It's a case of the "customer is always an asshat" when a smug hybrid stops by to purchase spell ingredients.

All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised to you heaven?
Will you ever win?

— Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon"

It turns out that dried troll livers, no matter how shriveled, will still leak acid when you drop them. Caroline groaned as she watched a handful of the rust-colored, wrinkled organs tumble off the quartz counter and fall to the floor with a series of stomach-churning splats and an audible hiss. With a muttered charm, she summoned the wet-dry vacuum from the back of the shop. While she ordered the mess to be cleaned, she stretched, hearing several angry clicks along her lower back. She really should have asked Enzo for help unloading those massive tubs of melanoma remover, but he had been really excited to leave the shop early and go on his first official date with Bonnie, so Caroline hadn't wanted to detain him.

As a witch in New Orleans, Caroline had gotten fed up with inferior occult shops who catered to tourists and constantly had the more exotic spell ingredients on back order, so she finally opened her own shop several decades ago. By design, she operated in the shadows, upon hushed whispers and knowing winks her business flourished. The entrance to her magic shop was cleverly hidden inside what appeared to be a broken down old crypt near the back of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. She cheekily called her shop Grave Matters and despite the unconventional location, her reputation for discretion and possessing the most comprehensive selection of spell ingredients in the world ensured her success.

The chorus to Donovan's "Season of the Witch" alerted her to a client in the store's lobby. She headed down the corridor, enjoying the pleasant hum of magic in the air from the spacious design she had created with the help of her talented coven. As she stepped inside the lobby to find Klaus Mikaelson, she mentally congratulated herself for having the forethought to put up a protection barrier that activated the moment a client stepped across the threshold. While she'd never met the Original before, the volatile hybrid's reputation preceded him. She could feel power emanating from his aura, and if he didn't agree to her shop's rules, she suspected her refusal to do business with him would be somewhat problematic.

"Welcome, Klaus Mikaelson. I'm Caroline," she said, inwardly wincing at the breathlessness of her voice as she took in his unexpectedly appealing package. Good grief, nothing that dangerous should ever look that good. She was so distracted, she nearly crossed the magical barrier and had to quickly jerk her foot back.

Klaus took in her rigid posture and hasty movements and a playful smirk slid across his handsome face. "You've heard of me, excellent. Am I to assume that this protection barrier is meant for me and my somewhat prickly reputation then?"

She rolled her eyes and scoffed, "Please. I cater to a rather exclusive clientele. You're hardly the most dangerous creature to wander in here. Allof my clients are expected to agree to my rules before we can do business. Once you agree, the barrier is lifted — but not the security enchantments."

"I'm afraid I'm not much for rules, love. But I can assure you, if you make an exception, I'm definitely worth your while," he smoothly said, momentarily forgetting the barrier as he attempted to reach out to play with one of her wayward blonde curls. The zap of her protection spell singed his fingertips, causing him to emit a growl that seemed to be more embarrassment than pain.

Barely managing to contain her giggles, Caroline said wryly, "Yeah, no. My shop, my rules. Rule number one: You have to relinquish your supernatural powers while you are inside the store. Rule number two: You have to sign your name so that I can divine your true intentions with the spell ingredients you wish to purchase from me." She watched with a bored expression as Klaus' face contorted in the standard series of emotions many of her clients went through upon hearing her rules: disbelief, outrage, stubborn refusal, pompous asshat, etc.

"Are you out of your bloody mind," he seethed, black veins appearing underneath his eyes that now glowed with a hint of furious gold.

Caroline crossed her arms in front of her, glaring at her rude client. "Your choice, Klaus. But make up your mind soon, please. I have a cauldron full of mustard brambles and fairy wings that requires counter-clockwise stirring precisely every 52 minutes. So, tick tock."

Seeming to weigh his clearly deep-rooted paranoia against his obvious desire for rare spell ingredients, Klaus finally grumbled petulantly, "Bloody hell, fine."

Rubbing her hands together, she whispered the incantation that stripped the hybrid's powers, leaving him immortal, but without his superior strength, speed or fangs. A pearlescent ball of light floated in front of Caroline before vanishing in a wisp of white smoke. "Once our business is concluded, I'll fetch your powers from my vault and restore them," Caroline promised.

Klaus eyed her warily, seeming to feel vulnerable and uncomfortable in his own skin. A scrap of parchment and a silver fountain pen appeared before his startled gray eyes, and he regarded the objects suspiciously before he hurriedly signed his name with a growl.

With a flick of her wrist, the parchment shot into her palm, and as she traced the strong, commanding curvatures of his signature, the letters burned red. Satisfied, she nodded to herself, removing the invisible protection barrier with an impatient wave. "Follow me," she told him, turning on her heel and leading him down the corridor to one of the main workrooms. Good grief, did he always smell this good? She detected hints of spice and orange along with the gritty-but-seductive earthy fragrance that all wolves seemed to carry. The normal iron smell that flavored a vampire's aura was barely perceptible on him. Interesting. She briefly wondered if all hybrids smelled this way, but put quickly that thought away as she knew better than to go looking for trouble. And delicious-smelling Klaus and his hybrids were definitely trouble.

She gestured to one of the tall swivel chairs along one side of a long concrete countertop. As Klaus settled into the chair, she headed around the other side of the counter near a wall of seemingly endless wooden shelves.

"So, you're here to buy ingredients for a locator spell for one of the doppelgangers, Katerina Petrova, as she has stolen the cure from Silas," Caroline said briskly, trying to recall if Enzo had finished cataloguing the latest shipment of arnica.

Making an impressed noise, Klaus cocked an eyebrow, asking, "You learned all those details from merely touching my signature?"

Her blue eyes twinkling merrily, she answered, "Well, that and your brother, Kol, plays mahjong with my friends at the retirement community over on Magazine Street every Tuesday." She giggled as she confessed to the surprised hybrid, "Ida Mae, Myrtle and Lisette are a rowdy bunch, so Kol fits in quite nicely."

Klaus studied her carefully. "You have friends in a retirement community, yet you appear to be quite young. How long have you been practicing your craft, sweetheart?"

She let out a surprised laugh, lightly smacking his hand. "Shame on you! You know better than to ask a lady her age!"

Amused, he seemed to drink in her soft ivory skin and gleaming curls, his gray eyes darkening slightly as he said, "My apologies. I do prefer a woman with a few secrets."

She refused to shiver at the sexy drawl of his words. Trying to steer the conversation away from what she considered a dangerous flirtation, she said, "Speaking of secrets, did you know about your brother's slightly alarming Golden Girls' fetish? He can turn almost any conversation into something he saw on an episode. He also keeps insisting he's the Blanche of my group even though he's clearly Rose." She smiled brightly, only barely resisting the urge to hum a few bars of the Golden Girls theme song. She added, "Not that I blame him — everyone wants to be Blanche. But I've made my peace with forever being the Dorothy of any group."

Klaus chuckled, his shoulders relaxing as he clearly started to feel more comfortable with Caroline despite the temporary loss of his powers. "I always found Dorothy's brashness quite attractive," he flirted, tipping her a saucy wink.

Caroline snorted. "Kol was right — you are so a Sophia."

Sitting up a bit straighter, Klaus asked curiously, "What else has Kol told you about me?"

Tucking a curl behind her ear, she grinned. "Well, he did tell us about the first time you milked a goat and how milk flew everywhere and soaked your trousers. And then the whole village called you brusi míg, which means urinating he-goat."

Flushing slightly, Klaus said defensively, "That wasn't me! It was Finn!"

At her skeptical expression, he muttered, "Perhaps it was Elijah then." Flustered, he tugged on the leather cords around his neck, the various charms jingling slightly.

"Of course it was," she said, smoothly changing the subject as she gestured toward the rows of shelves behind her. "Now, about this locator spell. I have some experience with several variations, so let me pull ingredients that have the highest success rate and we'll go from there."

She saw the way his eyes widened in surprise as he took in the labels of some of the more unusual glass jars on the shelves behind her — angst of 90s grunge music, optimism of millennials, Mick Jagger's ego, Meryl Streep's talent, and a tiny jar with a biohazard label marked sweetbreads of D. Salvatore. She chewed on her nail as she examined a couple of potential ingredients, mentally weighing their potency in locator spells. She carefully brushed past a jar smeared with orange powder with the lid slightly askew, labeled Curse of 2016 and pulled down a long, fossilized canine tooth. She carefully wrapped the item in soft linen, placing it in a dark purple satchel.

"It's such a shame saber-toothed tigers are extinct; they must have been magnificent beasts," Klaus commented, the apparent awe in his voice making him seem younger somehow.

His boy-like wonder touched something within Caroline, but she stubbornly ignored the butterflies that she felt. She smiled secretively and replied, "Yes...extinct. That's what happened. They definitely did not wander into an interdimensional wormhole a newbie warlock accidentally left open."

She tucked away a grin at his bewildered face and climbed up a wooden ladder next to the shelves to grab the rest of the locator spell ingredients. She came back down with an armload full of wiry sasquatch hair, two jars of consecrated earth from Stonehenge, and mulled wine found in a clay jar in a cave beside the Dead Sea. She carefully wrapped the objects, muttering a spell to ensure they would all fit securely within the purple satchel.

She had just opened a container of arnica to dice when Klaus interrupted her. "Wouldn't red clover be a better match than arnica in a locator spell, sweetheart? It has inherent properties of luck and is known to pierce protection spells."

Caroline rolled her eyes. Why did everyone assume they could do her job better than her just because they had a passing familiarity with Harry Potter books? In a light tone with just a hint of bite, she explained, "Red clover is the favorite plant of the fae. It's used to gain their sight and give you visions of the fae realm. So, unless you're chasing Tinkerbell, leave the ingredient gathering to the professionals, hmmm?"

Klaus' gray eyes flashed at her words, but they were far from threatening. If anything, he seemed more intrigued than ever by Caroline and leaned closer to her as she began dicing the arnica. The bright yellow petals gave the appearance that she was chopping bits of sunshine. He asked, "Then tell me why arnica is the superior ingredient for my locator spell?"

The corners of her pink lips lifted as she heard the earnestness in his voice. He seemed the type to enjoy a good chase, but she liked how he appeared to be willing to put in a bit of effort first. She hadn't decided yet if she'd play along fully — after all, she had other obligations and reasons for wanting to avoid him after this encounter, but she couldn't help but wonder about the possibilities... Shaking her head slightly, she favored him with a smile as she explained, "Arnica was strewn along the midsummer wheat fields to prevent the grain's restorative properties from escaping. It is said the goddess Freya infused the herb with her power. It's basically magical LoJack."

Seemingly impressed by her knowledge, he allowed her to continue working in peace, occasionally catching her eye and giving her a flirtatious smile full of promise. After he paid for his ingredients, she walked him back to the lobby. She also restored his supernatural powers as promised, leaning in to give him a brief hug and a gentle kiss on his dimpled cheek. She allowed herself a few blissful moments to breathe in his intoxicating aroma, enjoying the way he rumbled lowly in his chest as she pressed against his muscular body. As she pulled away, he looked at her questioningly. She grinned and said, "It's for luck with your locator spell. I hope you find what you seek."

"I may have unexpectedly found something I didn't know I was missing, love," he said with a saucy wink, making her feel hot and cold all at once as she tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.

Caroline smiled and said cheekily, "Well, it's not going anywhere."

He leaned closer, their noses almost touching as he whispered hoarsely, "Good." Before she could speak, he flashed out of the shop, leaving her to ponder the often unexpectedly messy ways of the world.

Taking a breath, she pulled out her phone, pressing the familiar icon of an old contact. When her call was answered, she advised, "Everything went smoothly. I convinced him to substitute arnica instead of red clover in the locator spell — he'll never find you." She dug in her pocket, pulling out one of the leather necklaces she swiped from Klaus when she was giving him a hug. "I also obtained something that should give your protection spell a boost. No need to thank me, Katerina. After all, what are friends for?"