by L. J. Smith
“Oh,” Meredith said, glancing down. “Just practical thinking. If anything tries to grab my ankle this time, it gets this.” She stamped and there was a satisfying clack from the sidewalk.
Bonnie almost smiled. “Did you bring your brass knuckles, too?”
“I don’t need them; I’ll knock Caroline out again barehanded if she tries anything. But quit changing the subject. I can do this alone.”
Bonnie finally let herself put her own small hand on Meredith’s slim, long-fingered one. She squeezed. “I know you can. But I’m the one who should. It was me she invited over.”
“Yes,” Meredith said, with a slight, elegant curl of her lip. “She’s always known where to stick in the knife. Well, whatever happens, Caroline’s brought it on herself. First we try to help her, for her sake and ours. Then we try to make her get help. After that—”
“After that,” Bonnie said sadly, “there’s no telling.” She looked at Caroline’s house again. It looked…skewed…in some way, as if she were seeing it through a distorting mirror. Besides that, it had a bad aura: black slashed across an ugly shade of gray-green. Bonnie had never seen a house with so much energy before.
And it was cold, this energy, like the breath out of a meat locker. Bonnie felt as if it would suck out her own life-force and turn it into ice, if it got the chance.
She let Meredith ring the doorbell. It had a slight echo to it, and when Mrs. Forbes answered, her voice seemed to echo slightly, as well. The inside of the house still had that funhouse mirror look to it, Bonnie thought, but even stranger was the feel. If she shut her eyes she would imagine herself in a much larger place, where the floor slanted sharply down.
“You came to see Caroline,” Mrs. Forbes said. Her appearance shocked Bonnie. Caroline’s mother looked like an old woman, with gray hair and a pinched white face.
“She’s up in her room. I’ll show you,” Caroline’s mother said.
“But Mrs. Forbes, we know where—” Meredith broke off when Bonnie put a hand on her arm. The faded, shrunken woman was leading the way. She had almost no aura at all, Bonnie realized, and was stricken to the heart. She’d known Caroline and her parents for so long—how could their relationships have come to this?
I won’t call Caroline names, no matter what she does, Bonnie vowed silently. No matter what. Even…yes, even after what she’s done to Matt. I’ll try to remember something good about her.
But it was difficult to think at all in this house, much less to think of anything good. Bonnie knew the staircase was going up; she could see each step above her. But all her other senses told her she was going down. It was a horrifying feeling that made her dizzy: this sharp slant downward as she watched her feet climb.
There was also a smell, strange and pungent, of rotten eggs. It was a reeking, rotten odor that you tasted in the air.
Caroline’s door was shut, and in front of it, lying on the floor, was a plate of food with a fork and carving knife on it. Mrs. Forbes hurried ahead of Bonnie and Meredith and quickly snatched up the plate, opened the door opposite Caroline’s, and placed it in there, shutting the door behind her.
But just before it disappeared, Bonnie thought she saw movement in the heap of food on the fine bone china.
“She’ll barely speak to me,” Mrs. Forbes said in the same empty voice she’d used before. “But she did say that she was expecting you.”
She hurried past them, leaving them alone in the corridor. The smell of rotten eggs—no, of sulfur, Bonnie realized, was very strong.
Sulfur—she recognized the smell from last year’s chemistry class. But how did such a horrible smell get into Mrs. Forbes’s elegant house? Bonnie turned to Meredith to ask, but Meredith was already shaking her head. Bonnie knew that expression.
Don’t say anything.
Bonnie gulped, wiped her watering eyes, and watched Meredith turn the handle of Caroline’s door.
The room was dark. Enough light shone from the hallway to show that Caroline’s curtains had been reinforced by opaque bedspreads nailed over them. No one was in or on the bed.
“Come in! And shut that door fast!”
It was Caroline’s voice, with Caroline’s typical waspishness. A flood of relief swept over Bonnie. The voice wasn’t a male bass that shook the room, or a howl, it was Caroline-in-a-bad-mood.
She stepped into the dimness before her.
5
Elena got into the backseat of the Jaguar and put on a plush aquamarine T-shirt and jeans underneath her nightgown, just in case a police officer—or even someone trying to help the owners of a car apparently stalled by a deserted highway—stopped by. And then she lay down in the Jag’s backseat.
But although she was now warm and comfortable, sleep wouldn’t come.
What do I want? Really want right now? she asked herself. And the answer came to her immediately.
I want to see Stefan. I want to feel his arms around me. I want to just look at his face—at his green eyes with that special look that he only ever shows to me. I want him to forgive me and tell me that he knows I’ll always love him.
And I want…Elena felt herself flush as a warmth went through her body, I want Stefan to kiss me. I want Stefan’s kisses…warm and sweet and comforting….
Elena was thinking this as for the second or third time she shut her eyes and shifted position, tears once again welling up. If only she could cry, really cry, for Stefan. But something stopped her. She found it hard to squeeze out a tear.
God, she was exhausted….
Elena tried. She kept her eyes shut and turned back and forth, trying not to think about Stefan for just a few minutes. She had to sleep. Desperate, she gave a mighty heave to try to find a better position—when everything suddenly changed.
Elena was comfortable. Too comfortable. She couldn’t feel the seat at all. She bolted upright and froze, sitting on air. She was almost hitting her head against the Jag’s top.
I’ve lost gravity again! she thought, horrified. But, no—this was different than what had happened when she had first returned from the afterlife, and had floated around like a balloon. She couldn’t explain why, but she was sure.
She was afraid to move in any direction. She wasn’t sure of the cause of her distress—but she didn’t dare move.
And then she saw it.
She saw herself, with her head back and her eyes closed in the backseat of the car. She could make out every tiny detail, from the wrinkles in her plush aquamarine shirt to the braid she’d made from her pale golden hair, which, for the lack of a hair tie, was coming unbraided already. She looked as if she were serenely sleeping.
So this was how it all ended. This is what they’ll say, that Elena Gilbert, one summer day, died peacefully in her sleep. No cause of death was ever found….
Because they could never see heartbreak as a cause of death, Elena thought, and in a gesture even more melodramatic than her usual melodramatic gestures, she tried to fling herself down on her own body with one arm covering her face.
It didn’t work. As soon as she reached out to begin to fling herself, she found herself outside the Jaguar.
She’d gone right through the ceiling without feeling anything. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re a ghost, she thought. But this is nothing like the last time. Then I saw the tunnel, I went into the Light.
Maybe I’m not a ghost.
Suddenly Elena felt a rush of exhilaration. I know what this is, she thought triumphantly. This is an out of body experience!
She looked down at her sleeping self again, searching carefully. Yes! Yes! There was a cord attaching her sleeping body—her real body—to her spiritual self. She was tethered! Wherever she went, she could find her way home.
There were only two possible destinations. One was back to Fell’s Church. She knew the general direction from the sun, and she was sure that someone having an O.O.B. (as Bonnie, who had once gone through a spiritualist fad and had read lots of books about the subject, familiarly c
alled them) would be able to recognize the crossing of all those ley lines.
The other destination, of course, was to Stefan.
Damon might think she didn’t know where to go, and it was true that she could only vaguely sense from the rising sun that Stefan was in the other direction—to the west of her. But she’d always heard that the souls of true lovers were connected somehow…by a silver string from heart to heart or a red cord from pinky to pinky.
To her delight, she found it almost immediately.
A thin cord the color of moonlight, that seemed to be stretched taut between the sleeping Elena’s heart, and…yes. When she touched the cord, it resonated so clearly to her of Stefan that she knew it would take her to him.
There was never a doubt in her mind as to which direction she would take. She’d been in Fell’s Church. Bonnie was a psychic of some impressive powers, and so was Stefan’s old landlady, Mrs. Theophilia Flowers. They were there, along with Meredith and her brilliant intellect, to protect the town.
And they would all understand, she told herself somewhat desperately. She might not ever have this chance again.
Without another moment’s hesitation, Elena turned toward Stefan and let herself go.
Immediately she found herself rushing through the air, far too quickly to take note of her surroundings. Everything she passed was a blur, differing only in color and texture as Elena realized with a catch in her throat that she was going through objects.
And so, in just a few instants, she found herself looking at a heart-wrenching scene: Stefan on a worn and broken pallet, looking gray-faced and thin. Stefan in a hideous, rush-strewn, lice-infested cell with its damned bars of iron from which no vampire could escape.
Elena turned away for a moment so that when she woke him he wouldn’t see her anguish and her tears. She was just composing herself, when Stefan’s voice jolted through her. He was awake already.
“You try and try, don’t you?” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “I guess you should get points for that. But you always get something wrong. Last time it was the little pointed ears. This time it’s the clothes. Elena wouldn’t wear a wrinkled shirt like that and have dirty, bare feet if her life depended on it. Go away.” Shrugging his shoulders under the threadbare blanket, he turned from her.
Elena stared. She was in too many kinds of distress to choose her words: they burst from her like a geyser. “Oh, Stefan! I was just trying to fall asleep in my clothes in case a police officer stopped by while I was in the backseat of the Jag. The Jag you bought me. But I didn’t think you’d care! My clothes are wrinkled because I’m living out of my duffel bag and my feet got dirty when Damon—well—well—never mind that. I have a real nightgown, but I didn’t have it on when I came out of my body and I guess when you come out you still look like yourself in your body….”
Then she threw up her hands in alarm as Stefan swung around. But—marvel of marvels—there was now a tinge of blood in his cheeks. Moreover, he was no longer looking disdainful.
He was looking deadly, his green eyes flashing with menace.
“Your feet got dirty—when Damon did what?” he demanded, enunciating carefully.
“It doesn’t matter—”
“It damn well does matter—” Stefan stopped short. “Elena?” he whispered, staring at her as if she had only just appeared.
“Stefan!” She couldn’t help holding out her arms to him. She couldn’t control anything. “Stefan, I don’t know how, but I’m here. It’s me! I’m not a dream or a ghost. I was thinking about you and falling asleep—and here I am!” She tried to touch him with ghostlike hands. “Do you believe me?”
“I believe you…because I was thinking about you. Somehow—somehow that brought you here. Because of love. Because we love each other!” And he spoke the words as if they were a revelation.
Elena shut her eyes. If only she could be here in her body, she would show Stefan how much she loved him. As it was, they had to use clumsy words—clichés that just happened to be uniquely true.
“I will always love you, Elena,” Stefan said, whispering again. “But I don’t want you near Damon. He’ll find a way to hurt you—”
“I can’t help it,” Elena interrupted him.
“You have to help it!”
“—because he’s my only hope, Stefan! He’s not going to hurt me. He’s already killed to protect me. Oh, God, so much has happened! We’re on our way to—” Elena hesitated, her eyes flicking around warily.
Stefan’s eyes widened for an instant. But when he spoke his face was deadpan. “Someplace where you’ll be safe.”
“Yes,” she said, just as seriously, knowing that phantom tears were now racing down her bodiless cheeks. “And…oh, Stefan, there’s so much you don’t know. Caroline accused Matt of attacking her while they were on a date because she’s pregnant. But it wasn’t Matt!”
“Of course not!” Stefan said indignantly, and would have said more, but Elena was racing on.
“And I think that the—the litter is really Tyler Smallwood’s because of the timing, and because Caroline’s changing. Damon said that—”
“A werewolf baby will always turn its mother into a werewolf—”
“Yes! But the werewolf part is going to have to fight the malach that’s already inside her. Bonnie and Meredith told me things about Caroline—like how she was scuttling on the floor like a lizard—that just terrified me. But I had to leave them to deal with that so that I could—could get to that safe place.”
“Werewolves and were-foxes,” Stefan said, shaking his head. “Of course, the kitsune, the foxes, are much more powerful magically, but werewolves tend to kill before they think.” He struck his knee with his fist. “I wish I could be there!”
Elena burst out with mixed wonder and despair, “And instead here I am—with you! I never knew I could do this. But I haven’t been able to bring you anything this way, not even myself. My blood.” She made a helpless gesture and saw the smugness in Stefan’s eyes.
He still had the Clarion Loess Black Magic wine she’d smuggled to him! She knew it! It was the only liquid that would—in a pinch—help keep a vampire alive when no blood was available.
Black Magic “wine”—nonalcoholic and never made for humans in the first place, was the only drink that vampires really enjoyed aside from blood. Damon had told Elena that it was magically made from special grapes that were grown in the soil at the edges of glaciers, loess, and that they were always kept in complete darkness. That was what gave it its velvety dark taste, he’d said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Stefan said, undoubtedly for the benefit of anyone who might be spying. “Exactly how did it happen?” he asked then. “This out of body thing? Why don’t you come down here and tell me about it?” He lay back on his pallet, turning aching eyes on her. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a better bed to offer you.” For a moment the humiliation showed clearly in his face. All this time he’d managed to hide it from her: the shame he felt in appearing before her in this way—in a filthy cell, with rags for clothes, and infested with God knew what. He—Stefan Salvatore, who had once been—had once been—
Elena’s heart truly broke then. She knew it was breaking, because she could feel it inside shattering like glass, with each needle-like shard skewering flesh inside her chest. She knew it was breaking, too, because she was weeping, huge spirit tears that dropped on Stefan’s face like blood, translucent in the air as they fell, but turning deep red when they touched Stefan’s face.
Blood? Of course, it wasn’t blood, she thought. She couldn’t even bring anything so useful to him in this form. She was really sobbing now; her shoulders shaking as the tears continued to fall onto Stefan, who now had one hand held up as if to catch one…
“Elena—” There was wonder in his voice.
“Wha—what?” she keened.
“Your tears. Your tears make me feel…” He was staring up at her with something like awe.
Elena still cou
ldn’t stop weeping, although she knew that she had soothed his proud heart—and done something else.
“I d-don’t understand.”
He caught one of her tears and kissed it. Then he looked at her with a sheen in his own eyes. “It’s hard to talk about, lovely little love….”
Then why use words? she thought, still weeping, but coming down to his level so she could snuffle just above his throat.
It’s just…they’re not too free with the refreshments around here, he told her. As you guessed. If you hadn’t—helped me—I’d’ve been dead by now. They can’t figure out why I’m not. So they—well they run out before they get to me, sometimes, you see—
Elena lifted her head, and this time tears of pure rage fell right onto his face. Where are they? I’ll kill them. Don’t tell me I can’t because I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to kill them even though I’m in this state—
He shook his head at her. Angel, angel, don’t you see? You don’t have to kill them. Because your tears, the phantom tears of a pure maiden—
She shook her head back at him. Stefan, if anyone knows I’m not a pure maiden, it’s you—
—of a pure maiden, Stefan continued, not even disturbed by her interruption, can cure all ills. And I was ill tonight, Elena, even though I tried to hide it. But I’m cured now! As good as new! They’ll never be able to understand how it could happen.
Are you sure?
Look at me!
Elena looked at him. Stefan’s face, which had been gray and drawn before, was different now. He was usually pale, but now his fine features looked flushed—as if he had been standing in front of a bonfire and the light was still reflecting off the pure lines and elegant planes of his beloved face.
I…did that? She remembered the first tear droplets falling, and how they had looked like blood on his face. Not like blood, she realized, but like natural color, sinking into him, refreshing him.
She couldn’t help but hide her face again in his throat as she thought, I’m glad. Oh, I’m so glad. But I wish we could touch each other. I want to feel your arms around me.