Maddy wasn't sure how to stop Klaus from going on a rampage.

She almost wanted to sit back and wipe her hands clean. Let him do whatever he needed to get Damon to give the coffins back. But that would have ended badly. Someone she cared about would have gotten hurt, which meant that she would have been an accessory to murder or torture or both. No matter what she felt when it came to Damon, allowing her other friends and family members to be hurt wasn't the way to go about it.

Thus, when Klaus shoved the broken phone back into her hands and snarled, "I will beat him until his organs spill out of his mouth," she quickly jumped up, practically having to tackle him to keep him from storming out.

"Wait!" she cried. "As creative as that is, don't. Please, Nik, please. Let me talk to him first. Stefan and I might be able to get through to him."

Klaus scoffed. "No offense, love, but considering how much your brother despises you solely for wishing to be with me, I highly doubt that he will do what you wish him to simply because you ask nicely."

"And what will you do instead?" she demanded. "You'll beat him until he tells you?"

"What do you suggest I do?" Klaus asked sharply. "Sit about, allow him to parade around with my family? I will not be sending the hybrids away!"

"I'm not asking you to send them away, I'm asking you to give me a chance to speak to Damon and potentially get your family back without the need for excessive violence. If anyone's going to hurt him physically, it's going to be me."

Klaus heaved a harsh sigh. "If he were to undagger them..."

"He would be an idiot to undagger them. He only knows Elijah and Rebekah and I highly doubt they'd side with him, no matter how bitter they are about what you did. Finn and Kol, he's never met, it's too much of a risk. Besides, what's with the coffin that won't open, huh?"

He looked away. "Nothing you need to be concerned about."

"I can't advocate for you if you aren't honest with me."

Klaus scoffed, though it was shaky, as if he was nervous. "The last time I was honest with you, it resulted in you being tortured by my younger sister! I'd rather not reveal that which will only place you in a more vulnerable position."

"What's in the coffin, Nik? Please tell me."

"It doesn't matter. I cannot open it. I've never been able to."

"So you don't know either."

"I know very well what's in it. It's why I still have it in my possession."

"Please tell me, Nik."

Klaus turned away from her. "Quit casting me those bloody puppy eyes, Madeleine."

She moved to stand in front of him, continuing with her pleading glance. "Please?"

"As polite as you're being, I won't grant you the knowledge you seek."

"I'll just have to find out the hard way. But I will find out. You know that."

He caught her arm before she could leave. "You'll only get hurt. I would never forgive myself if I allowed you to be hurt. This is a danger to you and all your little friends. Do not try to open that coffin."

"I have to go either way," she said, moving his hand off of hers. "I need to talk to Damon."

"Perhaps you'd be interested in a different task instead? You could even invite some of your friends to help you with it."

"Everyone's busy. They all have jobs and school. What's this task?"

"The new house I acquired. I'm having some renovations done on the lower levels, however, the upper levels have been inspected and are ready to be prepared. All the rooms have beds and furniture, but no decorations. No bedsheets. No touch of a home. I was wondering if you might like to pick a room for me, one for yourself, decorate them to your liking, then do the same to the rest of the rooms so that they are all uniform?"

Maddy crossed her arms. "You want me to decorate your new house while you go and politely ask my brother for your family back?"

Klaus held up a finger. "Our new house. Not just mine. You can select one of the empty rooms on the lower level later on and fill it with whatever you'd like. I'm going to have an art room. Perhaps you'd like a library of your own. Or a room full of records and CDs to listen to music. If you wish, I could paint one of the walls to be a gigantic world map where you could paste photographs of yourself there, to show all the places you've been."

"You really want me in the house today, huh?" she said. "You don't want me to be anywhere near you when you go and confront Damon."

"I'd rather you be safe. My sister has already hurt you. What's to say your brother won't threaten your life to get me to do his bidding?"

"He wouldn't do that."

"I wouldn't be so sure, love. I'd feel more comfortable if you were elsewhere. Busy, distracted."

She walked closer to him, putting her hand on his chest. "I'd rather decorate our house when you're there. So be a good boy and go and sit tight there while my little brother and I see if we can talk Damon out of a bad decision, hmm? And while you're at it, please get me a new phone, since you broke my other one. The SIM card should still be intact." She winked and placed the phone in his hand before blowing him a kiss and leaving the apartment.

Klaus rolled his eyes, but decided he ought to let her handle it.

Damon wasn't at the Boarding House (obviously). But Stefan was, having remained blissfully unaware of his elder brother's plot to ruin Klaus's life.

"He did what?" said Stefan in disbelief when Maddy relayed the phone call to him. "You're kidding me."

"I wish I was," she said. "Any idea where he could be?"

"No. I haven't seen him in a couple of hours. Damn it. Why would he do this? The hybrids weren't even bothering us anymore. Somehow you managed to convince Klaus to do everything we asked of him. As long as the hybrids aren't tearing through the townspeople, we're fine with it."

"Damon remains as impulsive as ever," said Maddy. "We need to get those coffins back ASAP. There's only so much I can do to keep Klaus from tearing through this entire friend group until Damon gives him what he wants. He doesn't want to send the hybrids away. They're the only ones that can really relate to him. I don't want to take that from him, especially when they're so harmless right now. They do whatever I ask of them. It's kind of cute."

"Well, of course they do what you ask of them. You're basically Klaus's wife at this point. In their eyes, at least. Denying you would be denying him."

"Do you think Bonnie would be willing to help with a Locator Spell? Or is that pushing our luck?"

"I don't know. I guess we need to ask to find out."

Bonnie didn't want to get in the middle of this conflict.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But Damon and I already have an awful relationship. If I help to reveal where he is, he'll kill me. And if I don't help, Klaus might just force me into helping anyway, so..."

Maddy winced. "Alright, then. It's okay... just please tell me you know another witch that can help?"

"The only other one I knew was Lucy Bennett, the one that was with Katherine at the Masquerade Ball."

"Ah, shit, I feel bad asking her, she literally just got out of helping vampires, and if we go to plead for her to get involved again..."

Bonnie sighed. "Sorry. I haven't exactly gotten too involved in the witch community to know many of them. Klaus would know some witches, wouldn't he?"

"Yes, but I want to leave that as a last resort. If Klaus gains access to Damon's location before we do, he might not be able to stop himself from snapping. You know Damon with his cheeky comments."

Bonnie blew air out of her mouth. "Yeah, I heard Klaus was plenty mad when he learned about what Damon said to you. Really messed up, by the way, I'm sorry to hear that he said that..."

Maddy shrugged. "It hurt a lot, being slut-shamed by my own brother, but I'll get him back for it. I know it's not true. He just wanted to hurt my feelings, and he did."

The Bennett witch bit her lip. "I could try one spell. One. And if it yields something, then we go with that. If not... then at least I tried."

"Thank you, Bonnie," said Stefan, relieved.

The two siblings had contributed their blood and their daylight rings for the spell, to try and make the strongest connection possible to Damon. Over a map of the United States, Bonnie had chanted, but the pool of blood moved nowhere.

"That's really strange," she murmured. "I can feel... a wall? Like he's being shielded somehow. He might have had another witch, a stronger one, help him be cloaked."

"Shit," mumbled Maddy. Stefan brought out his phone, dialing Damon's number for what had to be the twentieth time. Once again, it went straight to voicemail. "Well, it doesn't look like he's gonna disclose his location to us."

"He's trying to get under Klaus's skin," said Stefan. "This is him acting out because he's mad that Klaus is with you and mad that the hybrids are here even if they're not a problem for anyone. If he's going to disclose his location to anyone, it's going to be to Klaus. He's being reckless again, putting himself in a position where he could be killed."

Maddy rubbed her chin. "He's just gonna keep pushing until Klaus snaps. He knows that I could never forgive Klaus for killing him. What if that's his goal? We know Damon doesn't really fear death. He's impulsive enough to jump into a dangerous situation. He'll poke at Klaus and at one point, he'll inevitably swipe his hand out and murder him." She reached for her phone, before realizing she didn't have it. "Damn. I'll go and see Klaus. I hope he didn't go and talk to Damon while we were here."

Klaus had left her new phone in her apartment with a note listing the address of his new house. She drove there, finding that he had the hybrids redoing an entire wall to put a window where there wasn't one.

"Hi," she said, coming up to lean on his shoulder. "Please tell me my brother hasn't contacted you."

"He has not," said Klaus. "You forget he does not have my contact information. He did, after all, call me through your phone. And he has not shown his face. Were you able to speak to him?"

"We couldn't find him at all. Bonnie thinks there may be a witch helping him cloak the coffins."

"I will have one of my witches come here to perform a spell."

"Come on, is one of your witches seriously better than Bonnie? Don't Bennett witches have roots here? This is where she's strongest."

"Perhaps my witch is not stronger, but she could be more experienced. I wonder if Bonnie tried her hardest on the spell."

"I'm pretty sure she did. She wouldn't have teamed up with Damon, she'd be crazy to. I guess I have to leave it up to Stefan to find him. If anyone can convince Damon to give the coffins back, it's Stefan."

"Very well," said Klaus, who was trying his best to push down the irritation that threatened to bubble to the surface and cause an outburst. The last thing he wanted was to be mean to Maddy for something that wasn't his fault. "I had an idea you may like. What if I offer Tyler Lockwood the choice to become a hybrid?"

"Why would you do that?"

"It seems the poor boy suffers every full moon. His little girlfriend is immortal. Perhaps being a hybrid would benefit him. You don't seem to like the idea."

Maddy winced. "He's just a kid. He'll take the opportunity, and then, he won't be able to get out of it. Plus, he'll end up sired to you. All these hybrids lose a part of their free will when you turn them."

"I'm not forcing them to be here," said Klaus, bewildered. "They could leave if they wished to."

"And you would be totally fine with that? You wouldn't get even slightly mad if they left? You wouldn't threaten to kill them?"

Klaus blinked, suddenly looking sheepish. He opened his mouth several times, finding he couldn't pretend that he wasn't going to fly into a rage if one of them asked to be dismissed.

"Truth be told, love," he said, trying to lighten the mood, "I'm beginning to suspect that my hybrids aren't sired to me. Our entire species is sired to you."

Maddy let out a dry laugh. "Very funny. Ultimately, I can't stop you from offering him a chance to be freed of his pain, but you have to be prepared for him to say no. And if he says yes, you can't just turn him into your servant. These hybrids aren't here to do your bidding. You need to give them more freedom. Maybe some of them want to leave. Give them that choice. It might look like you're sending them away when you're not and Damon might concede and give back the coffins."

Klaus just pursed his lips. "I will consider it. Would you like to decorate the upstairs rooms, now that I am here?"

"Sure."

Maddy supposed that maybe, if she had gone to school in this modern age, she might have liked to study interior (and maybe exterior) design. She and Klaus had gone upstairs, where Maddy had sketched out ideas for new room layouts, while taking note of what colors would look best for matching bed sets throughout the whole house.

The hybrids offered to do the rearrangements once they heard her discussing what she wanted for the rooms. They really did seem to think of her as Klaus's wife already, which made her mildly flustered. Klaus couldn't help but puff his chest proudly, believing that proved his earlier point that the hybrids were sired to her.

Maddy told them not to do the rearrangements, since she felt bad asking them to do so much (even if the beds wouldn't be heavy to them at all). She dragged Klaus to the store with her to get the linens and other decorations she had in mind. All the rooms had white and blue flowered wallpaper already, so she decided on velvet royal blue bed sets as well as curtains for each room. Everything else in her shopping cart was random— gold knick knacks such as vases and figurines, and small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and liquid soap for the bathrooms. A few cute rugs and towels made their way into the cart as well.

In her mind, the finished product looked nice, but she would have liked to see what she could have done if she had more of a design education.

Klaus was satisfied with it. He'd started to move the paintings into his room immediately, claiming that they fit well with the blue theme. Maddy simply sat on his bed, legs crossed as she watched him nail each canvas up, filling the walls. It seemed only his best paintings were allowed to have a home in his room. The rest, she imagined, would be in his art room downstairs.

While she waited for him to finish, she texted her most important contacts to let them know she had a new phone. Everyone but Damon answered, which elicited a frustrated growl from Maddy, who envisioned smacking him across the face again just for good measure.

"How does it look?" asked Klaus, turning to face her once he'd hung the last painting.

She leaned back, getting a good view of the whole room. "I like it. They all have a nature theme to fit with the wallpaper. Then, of course, there's that portrait you made of me who knows when." She tilted her head. "Did you draw angel wings on me?"

Klaus blushed. "It was a dream I had, decades ago. You arrived as an angel. A bit strange, really, you couldn't quite fly, but the next morning, I painted you."

"I can't paint for shit. I mean, I could probably dip my naked body in paint and sit on a few canvases but that's not quite art."

Klaus smirked devilishly, coming to stand in front of her. "I expect those paintings to be done by the end of the week. I wish to hang them in here, where only I will see them."

She wiggled her eyebrows, tilting her head up to look at him. "Aw, you don't want anyone else to see my naked silhouette?"

"I'd gouge out the eyes of anyone who saw you that way."

"Good thing my parents are dead, they were the first to behold me in my birthday suit."

The hybrid rolled his eyes. "That was not what I meant and you know it, cheeky girl."

"You're in a better mood now."

"I am still quite cross that your brother stole my coffins. However, I relish in knowing how furious it makes him that I live with you."

"He's an ass. But he worries, I suppose. He must think you're going to hurt me."

"I would never hurt you. I would despise myself if I did."

She brought her hand to the back of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. "Let's not talk about Damon. I want to help distract you from every problem you currently have."

Klaus would never say no to that. Thus, the two ended up trying out the new bedsheets and pillows. Afterward, Maddy's vision was blurred and slightly tinged blue from being facedown on the blankets for a good several minutes. She didn't mind it, though.

"When did you get these tattoos?" she asked, tracing her finger over his chest, where he had a feather on his shoulder that burst into a total of nine birds. On his back, she recalled seeing a perfect equilateral triangle.

"After I activated my hybrid side," he said, tracing his fingers over her skin, which had no tattoos anywhere on it. "The triangle is supposed to represent how I transitioned into a greater state of being when I completed the ritual. The birds... one for each member of my family. As there are nine of them, one could believe that it represents my parents, as well as my six siblings and I. However, Mikael and Esther do not form a part of it. Instead, the final two are for you and Marcel. The only ones whom I do not share blood with, and yet, have become family to me." He cupped her face. "You are my family, love. I will always protect you."

She smiled. "You're my family, too. And, by default, all my loved ones are your in-laws."

Klaus rolled his eyes. "Oh, bother, that would mean my brother-in-law ran off with your five in-laws."

Maddy giggled. "Yeah, I guess so." She became serious. "Why do you feel the need for the hybrids to stay? Mikael's dead, and unless some major enemy that I don't know about is on the way... then why the excess of hybrids? You don't need this gigantic army surrounding you. Surely there is some business elsewhere that you'd like your hybrids to conduct for you."

"My entire life," he whispered, "I've been reminded constantly of how different I was. How unnatural and weak I appeared in Mikael's eyes. I was denied access to my wolf heritage solely due to my mother's shame. For the first time in my life I feel as though I am accepted. For once, I am not alone. I enjoy having the hybrids here. It's why I've done everything your friends have asked of me. They wished the hybrids to hover less, and I made it so. But I will not have them leave my side altogether. Sending them away would leave me with no one to connect with."

"I just have to ask, Nik... do you really connect with them? Do you try to know them? Teach them? Or do you just order them around?"

He was at a loss for words, and she continued, "Give them a choice to leave or stay. Offer them an opportunity to learn to control their powers with you. Teach them about wolf and vampire history, because they have parts of both, and need to understand what each side has lost in the past centuries of war. These creatures are powerful beyond belief. They shouldn't be here remodeling your house. They should be doing something meaningful with their abilities. I know it's foolish to ask them to go and volunteer at a children's hospital but at least that's better than having them sit around. Give them the tools to make something of themselves. Whatever they want, they now have the power to accomplish."

"I'll consider it."

He ended up doing it, two weeks later, once Tyler had accepted his offer at last, having weighed the pros and cons alongside his mother and Caroline.

All the hybrids were allowed to choose. A few preferred to leave. Klaus provided them with missions to carry out, but aside from that, they were allowed to go where they pleased. Most wanted to stay and learn more.

Maddy would watch them train. Damon still hadn't returned the coffins, and she knew Klaus's frustration was at an all time high, which left him beating into the hybrids rather mercilessly while he taught them to defend themselves. It was a good learning experience, but it looked like it hurt pretty bad. She tried to focus on how good Klaus looked shirtless.

Sometimes, when there weren't many hybrids there, she'd jump into the ring with them. She imagined beating into Damon's face. The asshole still hadn't reached out to her. It was like his sister no longer existed to him.

She tried to think about other things. New Orleans, for instance. Klaus said that once they got the family back, they'd get to planning their move. Maddy was eager to leave, and would think about returning to the city after so many years while she made herself new clothes and blasted Bon Jovi and pretended that she couldn't sense Klaus listening from the other side of the door while he smirked and shook his head.

"This is getting ridiculous," said Klaus at dinner one evening. "I demand to have those coffins back by this weekend at the latest. I spoke to the Sheriff, and it appears Damon was with her, discussing the murder of a human with the use of a stake. He's been dragging this out and I am quite sick of it."

"Stefan managed to talk to him the other day," said Maddy. "Damon won't fess up. But I imagine it's only a matter of time before the coffins are back here."

The doorbell rang, and the two raised their eyebrows at each other before getting up and going to see who it was.

It was Stefan.

"We were just talking about you, mate," said Klaus. "Come in."

"I'm not here to chat," said Stefan. "I just want to tell you that I got four of the coffins. Damon took off with the one that's sealed, but..."

He stepped aside, allowing the hybrids to wheel in the four coffins he retrieved.

"Mads," he said, looking at his sister. "Damon wants to talk to you. Alone."

"Absolutely not," said Klaus immediately. "I don't trust him."

"Neither do I," said Maddy, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But it's been long enough. If he wants to talk... then we'll talk."