by L. J. Smith
Elena tried to hold back the memories that were tumbling through her mind: the night she had pledged to be Stefan’s forever—sleek and elegant in his best suit, his eyes wide and wondering, greener than ever—the first night they had kissed, after Homecoming in that other world—the look of helpless desire as he bent his head to hers—the incredulity and horror in his face when she was reborn as a vampire and at first forgot who they were to each other—the pure defeat on his face as he let her claw at him. The life they’d built together. The warmth and comfort she’d found in his arms as he’d held Elena close.
Even though she kept the memories from him, Elena couldn’t help some of her emotions pouring through the careful wall they’d constructed between them. Love and tenderness and regret. Pain and joy. Guilt. Passion.
It was enough that, as he slowly withdrew his canines from her throat, Stefan cupped her face for a moment, his fingers cool against her skin. She could see nothing through the darkness, but Elena thought he was staring into her eyes. “Who are you?” he whispered, just as he had the night of the fire.
“Someone who cares about you,” Elena whispered. Please, she thought desperately, please let me save him.
Stefan’s hand lingered on Elena’s face for a moment, just a gentle brush of skin on skin, and then he was gone.
Over at the door, Elena heard a great, creaking crash, and then light appeared, flooding through the crack as Stefan forced the door open. There was a rustling, the sound of breaking branches, and finally a huge thud.
“You can come out now,” Stefan said, a dark shape against the light of the doorway.
Elena came through, squinting. It was brisk outside, although not with the heavy bone-chilling cold of the tomb, and the sun was setting. It was almost dark, really; it just seemed bright after the pitch blackness.
A huge oak tree lay across the churchyard, its branches brushing the door of the mausoleum where they had been trapped. It had been ripped out of the ground; Elena could see the great pit in the earth left by its roots.
“It was jammed up against the door,” Stefan told her.
Now that Elena’s eyes had adjusted to the evening light, she noticed the long, already healing scrapes on his arms from the tree’s branches. Stefan gazed past her, and Elena turned, following his eyes to the dent in the mausoleum’s stone façade, where the tree had slammed against it.
There was so much rage in the way the tree had been torn out of the earth and thrown against the stone tomb. Elena’s stomach twisted nervously. She might love Damon, but he had no love left for them.
It was fully dark by the time Elena slipped through her front door. She could feel her whole body relax at being home at last. The tall Victorian house where she’d lived since she was born felt clean and bright and warm, its heavy curtains shutting out the darkness. From the kitchen, she could hear the clatter of pans and smell a chicken roasting.
“Dinner in twenty minutes,” Aunt Judith called cheerfully. Elena called back an acknowledgement, staring at herself in the mirror by the door. She looked tired and disheveled, her hair matted and a streak of dirt across her forehead. There was a purpling bruise on her throat where Stefan had bitten her, twin dots of dried blood in its center, and she pulled her shirt collar up to cover it.
“You’re home!” Margaret thudded down the stairs and leaped toward Elena, catching her around the waist in a bear hug. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” Elena said, laughing. “All day long.” She bent to press her cheek against her little sister’s soft hair and breathed in the Play-Doh and baby shampoo scent of her.
Pulling away, Margaret grinned up at her. “Your friend came over looking for you,” she said. “He gave me this.” She pulled a lollipop out of her pocket and waved it in triumph.
Elena examined the candy. It was a pink rose made out of thin slivers of almost-translucent hard candy. “Pretty,” she said. “Matt gave you this?” Matt had a soft spot for Margaret, and he was always bringing her little treats.
“No, your friend Damon gave it to me,” Margaret said, and tried to take the lollipop back.
A wave of panic washed over Elena, and her fingers tightened automatically on the candy. Elena had invited him into her home. How could she have been so stupid?
“Give it,” Margaret said, pulling on the candy.
“No, wait,” Elena said, but Margaret yanked the lollipop out of her hand, pulled it out of the wrapper, and defiantly stuck it into her mouth before Elena could snatch it back.
It was wrapped, Elena reassured herself as she watched her baby sister eat the candy with evident enjoyment. Poison wasn’t really Damon’s style. If he had wanted to hurt Margaret or Aunt Judith, he would have done it more directly. No, this had just been a warning. Damon was letting Elena know that he could get to her family whenever he wanted.
“Listen to me, Margaret,” she said, squatting so that she was eye to eye with her little sister. “Damon’s not my friend, okay? If he comes here again, stay away from him.”
Margaret frowned. “He was really nice,” she said. “I don’t know why you don’t want to be friends with him.”
Was it Margaret saying this, or was it something Damon had told her to say, Elena wondered. What if Damon had used his Power to Influence her little sister? She looked into Margaret’s sky-blue eyes, trying to see if there was anything off about her, any sign that her words were not her own.
The Damon that Elena loved wouldn’t have used his Power on a child, Elena thought. He would have considered it ungentlemanly and beneath him. With a heavy, sick feeling, she admitted to herself that she didn’t know exactly what the Damon of this time was capable of.
“Meggie, can you come put the napkins on the table for me, please?” Aunt Judith called from the kitchen, and Margaret twisted out of Elena’s hands and was gone without a word.
Elena headed up the stairs, her steps slow and heavy. She had to think. There must be some way to get Aunt Judith and Margaret away from here. She couldn’t let them get hurt, and she couldn’t let Damon use them as pawns to hurt Elena.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs, Elena had made up her mind. She went into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Pulling off one of her shoes, she wrapped the towel around it and then opened the hall window. Outside, the branches of the quince tree almost brushed the window frame. It was close enough that someone could conceivably climb inside, although it would be a dangerous stretch.
Bracing herself, she slammed the heel of the shoe against the window’s catch. The towel muffled the sound of the blow, but not as much as Elena had hoped. She paused and listened. Aunt Judith was running water downstairs, and under the noise of the water, Elena could hear both the television and Margaret singing to herself. Trusting in the noise downstairs to cover the thuds, Elena slammed the heel of her shoe against the window catch again and again until it finally bent and twisted, breaking.
With a sharp crack, the pane of glass below the catch shattered, broken glass falling in shards onto the hall carpet. Elena froze. She hadn’t expected that. Still, maybe it made the whole scene more convincing.
Quickly and quietly, Elena picked up a silver candlestick from the windowsill. She took a carved jade box from a little table in the hall and a small marble figure of an angel that her parents had once brought home from Italy from another. Hurrying into her room, she slipped her shoe back on, wrapped the objects in the towel, and shoved the bundled towel deep into her closet.
After one last glance around to make sure everything was concealed, she went back to stand in front of the broken hall window, took a deep breath, and screamed.
There was a sudden, shocked silence downstairs, followed by a flurry of movement. “Elena?” Aunt Judith called worriedly, running up the stairs. “What happened? Are you all right?”
Elena turned to meet her as she reached the top of the stairs. “I think someone broke in,” she said. She was so full of dread that it was easy to infuse the word
s with fear.
As Elena pointed them out, Aunt Judith examined the broken catch, the smashed windowpane, and the spots where knickknacks were missing from the hall. Looking in her own room and Elena’s, she saw that nothing else seemed to be missing.
“I don’t know,” she said finally, doubtfully. “A branch could have blown against the window and broken it. It seems strange to me that a thief would take just three little objects, and nothing else. All my jewelry’s still here, and I had some money on my dresser that’s completely untouched.”
Elena wanted to scream with frustration. She didn’t have to try hard at all to bring tears to her eyes or a waver to her voice.
“Please, Aunt Judith,” she said. “I really don’t think any of us should sleep here tonight. Can’t you and Margaret go to Robert’s, at least until we can get someone to fix the window? Anyone could come in.”
Aunt Judith hesitated. “What about you, Elena?” she asked. “I’m certainly not going to leave you here all alone.”
“I can go to Meredith’s,” Elena said quickly. “It’s closer to school, and her parents won’t mind.”
Convincing Aunt Judith was agonizing. A hundred times, she wondered if they were just being hysterical and almost changed her mind about leaving the house. Once she had finally agreed to leave the house, she insisted on them all sitting down and eating dinner together.
Elena could barely nibble the juicy roast chicken even though she recognized that it was delicious. Her eyes kept straying to the darkness beyond the dining room windows. Was Damon out there? She could imagine him in his crow form, huddled on a branch and watching her with bright, malicious eyes.
By the time Robert’s gray Volvo turned into the drive, Elena felt like she was almost bursting out of her skin with anxious, restless energy. They had to go. They had to get away, before it was too late.
Grabbing her sister with one hand and both their bags with the other, Elena hustled Margaret out to the car, ignoring her protests, and buckled her securely into her booster seat.
“Do you want me to check the window?” Robert said, politely getting out of the car to take Aunt Judith’s bag and open the passenger’s side door for her.
“No!” said Elena sharply before Aunt Judith could answer. When they both looked at her in surprise, she gave them a small, weak smile. “Sorry. I’m just so nervous. Can’t we get out of here?”
As they pulled out of the driveway, Elena settled watchfully in the backseat next to Margaret, her overnight bag clutched in her lap. She felt sure that nothing would happen to them on the drive over to Meredith’s. And then, after they dropped her off, she could only hope that Damon would lose interest in them. At least he’d never been invited into Robert’s house. Getting Aunt Judith and Margaret as far away from her as she could seemed like the only way to protect them.
“This is the best part,” Bonnie said as she rolled onto her stomach on Meredith’s bed, her eyes fixed on the TV screen a few feet away. “After he kisses her, you know they’re going to get past all the stuff that came between them.”
“I still think she should have ended up with her friend instead,” Meredith said critically from where she leaned against the headboard. “That was the first ending, you know, and the test audiences hated it so much that they reshot it.”
“And rightly so,” Bonnie said. “Bleah.”
Elena laughed and jostled against her. “There’s nothing wrong with him. I think he’s cute.”
“Bleah,” Bonnie said again, wrinkling her nose.
The sick, dread-filled feeling in the pit of Elena’s stomach hadn’t gone away for a moment. But, despite all of that, it was good to be here once more. When Bonnie had heard that Elena was spending the night, she had invited herself over, too. The warm smell of baking cookies rose comfortingly from the kitchen downstairs.
“Hey, would you braid my hair?” Bonnie asked, as the couple on screen finally kissed.
“Sure,” Elena said, and Bonnie wiggled around so that her back was to Elena.
“Do you want a French braid?” Elena asked. Bonnie nodded, and Elena began separating the curling strands of Bonnie’s hair just as the oven timer went off downstairs.
“I’ve got it,” Meredith said, hopping up.
“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Elena told her, letting go of Bonnie’s curls.
“I think I can handle it,” Meredith said wryly.
After a moment of hesitation, Elena took hold of Bonnie’s hair again. This was Meredith’s house, and Damon wasn’t invited in. She would be fine.
“So …” Bonnie said playfully as Meredith left the room. “Who’s the better kisser, Stefan or Damon?”
Elena winced. “It’s not that easy.”
“Easy or not, I bet they’re both pretty good, aren’t they?” Bonnie asked. Elena could hear the cheeky grin in her voice.
Heat flooded Elena’s cheeks. She thought of the nostalgic emotions that had washed through her as Stefan kissed and, darker and more intimate, the way it had felt when Damon had drunk her blood. “Yeah,” she admitted in a tiny voice.
“Uh-huh,” Bonnie said smugly. Then she twisted around to look at Elena, her brown eyes bright with sincerity. “If you say Stefan didn’t set the fire, I believe you, Elena.”
“I know he didn’t,” Elena said.
“Mmm. He’s much too cute to be a psycho.”
Elena laughed despite herself. “I’m not sure that’s the best way to tell.”
She busied herself twining Bonnie’s hair into an elegant braid. “There,” she said, after a few minutes. “Gorgeous.”
Bonnie bounced to her feet. Going to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of Meredith’s closet door, she turned her head from side to side, admiring herself. “Nice. Thank you.”
As she watched Bonnie, Elena became aware of a niggling sense of something not quite right.
“Does it seem to you like Meredith’s taking a really long time?” she asked.
Eyes still on her own reflection, Bonnie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I know, right?” she said. “How long does it take to put some cookies on a plate? I’m starving.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Elena began, and then the door opened and her shoulders sagged with relief. Meredith was back.
“About time,” Bonnie said cheerfully, and grabbed a cookie.
“Careful, they’re hot,” Meredith said, smiling. Then she caught Elena’s eye and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
Elena felt like she was frozen in place. Looped around Meredith’s neck was a deep red scarf that she certainly hadn’t been wearing when she went downstairs.
“Why are you wearing that?” she said, her voice cracking. “Take it off.”
Bonnie and Meredith looked at each other, their eyebrows lifting. “Um … Elena?” Bonnie asked. “What are you talking about?”
“The scarf!” Elena insisted. “Take it off right now!” She should have gone downstairs with Meredith. It had been stupid of her to think they would be safe, just because Damon hadn’t yet been invited into Meredith’s house. Even if he hadn’t had his Power, Damon would have been able to charm and talk his way into almost anywhere. With all the Power at his command, all he would have to do was ask. And Meredith was defenseless: She didn’t even know that Damon was someone to be afraid of.
“I don’t know what your problem is, Elena,” Meredith grumbled, slowly unwrapping the scarf from around her throat. “I was cold, okay? It’s freezing downstairs. And I think this looks nice.”
Elena stared. Unwilling to trust her eyes, she went closer and, ignoring Meredith’s startled objections, brushed the other girl’s hair aside and inspected her neck. It was smooth and unmarked. No vampire had touched her.
“Hey!” Meredith finally said, stepping back and staring at Elena. “Personal space! Please.”
“Sorry, sorry. I thought there was something on your throat.” Elena felt ridiculous.
“Like a mole or something?” Mere
dith said uneasily, rubbing the side of her neck.
“I don’t know. Like a shadow, I guess.”
Elena felt sick. Damon could get to them easily here if he wanted to. Was she putting Bonnie and Meredith in danger by staying here?
The other girls picked up on Elena’s change in mood, and after only a little while, Bonnie stretched and said, with forced brightness, “Well, I’m wiped out.”
“We should get to bed,” Meredith agreed. “I’ve got a French test tomorrow.”
Bonnie shared Meredith’s double bed, and the loveseat in the corner of the bedroom unfolded into a narrow single bed for Elena. After they had all climbed into bed and Meredith had switched out the light, Elena thought of something.
“Hey,” she called softly across the divide between their beds. “Do you still have the vervain I gave you?”
“The what?” Bonnie asked sleepily.
“The vervain. The plants I gave you after Homecoming. Do you still have them?”
“The weeds?” Bonnie’s voice was puzzled. “I don’t know what happened to them. They probably fell out of my hair. There was a fire going on, remember?”
“Meredith?”
“No,” Meredith said, sounding exasperated. She sat up and turned on the light. “I don’t remember what happened to the dried-out weeds you gave me at Homecoming.”
For a moment, Elena thought of telling them everything. They were her friends. And they were smart and brave; they’d been her allies through thick and thin. If they knew what was going on, they could help her. And they would be better able to protect themselves.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and took a quick breath. But it was that knowledge that had ruined their lives. She couldn’t do that to them, not again.
“I … I’m sorry, you guys,” she said. “I know I’m acting weird. Just promise me you’ll be careful.” She would have to get more vervain and give it to them, hide it in their rooms and backpacks.