On the debit side, I can never live with Aunt Judith or Margaret again. They think I’m “resting in peace” with the angels. On the credit side, I can live with Stefan.
This is the compensation for all I’ve been through — I don’t know how to compensate those who went to the very gates of Hell for me. Oh, I’m tired and — might as well say it — eager for a night with my darling.
I’m very happy. We had a fine day, laughing and loving, and watching each of my friends’ faces as they saw me alive! (And not insane, which I gather is how I have been acting the past few days. Honestly, you’d think Great Spirits Inna Sky could have dropped me off with my marbles all in order. Oh, well.)
Love ya, Elena
Damon’s eyes skimmed over these lines impatiently. He was looking for something quite different. Ah. Yes. This was more like it: My dearest Elena, I knew you would look here sooner or later. I hope you never have to see it at all. If you’re reading this, then Damon is a traitor, or something else has gone terribly wrong.
A traitor? That seemed a little strong, Damon thought, hurt, but also burning with an intense desire to get on with his task.
I’m going out to the woods to talk to him tonight — if I don’t come back, you’ll know where to start asking questions.
The truth is that I don’t exactly understand the situation. Earlier today, Damon sent me a card with a Web address on it. I’ve put the card under your pillow, love.
Oh damn, thought Damon. It was going to be hard to get that card without waking her. But he had to do it.
Elena, follow this Web link. You’ll have to dither with the brightness controls because it’s been created for vampire eyes only. What the link seems to be saying is that there is a place called Shi no Shi — literally translated, it says, as the Death of Death, where they can remove this curse which has haunted me for almost half a millennium. They use magic and science in combination to restore former vampires to simple men and women, boys and girls.
If they truly can do this, Elena, we can be together for as long as ordinary people live. That’s all I ask of life.
I want it. I want to have the chance to stand before you as an ordinary breathing, eating human.
But don’t worry.I’m just going to talk with Damon about this. You don’t need to command me to stay. I would never leave you with all the goings-on in Fell’s Church right now. It’s too dangerous for you, especially with your new blood and your new aura.
I realize that I’m trusting Damon more than I probably should. But of one thing I am certain: he would never harm you.He loves you. How can he help it?
Still, I have to meet with him at least, on his terms, alone at a particular location in the wood. Then we’ll see what we see.
As I said before, if you’re reading this letter, it means that something has gone drastically wrong. Defend yourself, love. Don’t be afraid. Trust yourself. And trust your friends. They can all help you.
I trust Matt’s instinctive protectiveness for you, Meredith’s judgment, and Bonnie’s intuition. Tell them to remember that.
I’m hoping that you never have to read this, with all my love, my heart, my soul, Stefan P.S. Just in case, there is $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills under the second floorboard from the wall, across from the bed. Right now the rocking chair is over it. You’ll see the crack easily if you move the chair.
Carefully, Damon deleted the words in this file. Then, with one corner of his mouth quirked up, he carefully, silently typed in new words with a rather different meaning. He read them over. He smiled brilliantly. He’d always fancied himself a writer; no formal training of course, but he felt he had an instinctive flair for it.
And that was Step One accomplished, Damon thought, saving the file with his words instead of Stefan’s.
Then, noiselessly, he walked to where Elena was sleeping, spooned behind Stefan on the narrow bed.
Now for Step Two.
Slowly, very slowly, Damon slipped his fingers under the pillow on which Elena’s head rested. He could feel Elena’s hair where it spilled on her pillow in the moonlight, and the ache that it awoke was more in his chest than in his canines. Inching his fingers under the pillow, he searched for something smooth.
Elena murmured in her sleep and suddenly turned over. Damon almost jumped back into the shadows, but Elena’s eyes were shut, her lashes a thick inky crescent on her cheeks.
She was facing him now, but strangely Damon didn’t find himself tracing the blue veins in her fair, smooth skin. He found himself staring hungrily at her slightly parted lips. They were…almost impossible to resist. Even in sleep they were the color of rose petals, slightly moist, and parted that way….
I could do it very lightly. She would never know. I could, I know I could. I feel invincible tonight.
As he bent toward her his fingers touched cardboard.
It seemed to jerk him out of a dream world. What had he been thinking? Risking everything, all his plans, for akiss? There would be plenty of time for kisses — and other, much more important things — later.
He slipped the little card out from under the pillow and put it in his pocket.
Then he became a crow and vanished from the windowsill.
Stefan had long ago perfected the art of sleeping only until a certain moment, then awakening. He did this now, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece to confirm that it was four A.M. exactly.
He didn’t want to awaken Elena.
He dressed soundlessly and exited the window by the same route his brother had — only as a hawk. Somewhere, he was sure Damon was being made a fool by someone using malachs to make him their puppet. And Stefan, still pumped up with Elena’s blood, felt that he had a duty to stop them.
The note Damon had delivered had directed him to the tree where the humans had crashed. Damon would also want to continually revisit that tree until he’d traced the malach puppets to their puppeteer.
He swooped, drifted, and once almost gave a mouse a heart attack by stooping down on it suddenly before rocketing skyward again.
And then, in midair, as he saw evidence of a car hitting a tree, he changed from a glorious hawk to a young man with dark hair, a pale face, and intensely green eyes.
He drifted, light as a snowflake, down to the ground and gazed in each direction, using all his vampire senses to test the area. He could feel nothing of a trap; no animosity, just the unmistakable signs of the trees’ violent fight. He stayed human to climb the tree that bore the psychic imprint of his brother.
He wasn’t chilly as he climbed the oak his brother had been lounging in when the accident had taken place at his feet. He had too much of Elena’s blood running through him to feel the cold. But he was aware that this area of the forest was particularly cold; that something was keeping it that way. Why? He’d already claimed the rivers and forests that ran through Fell’s Church, so why take up lodging here without telling him? Whatever it was, it would have to present itself before him eventually, if it wanted to stay in Fell’s Church. Why wait? he wondered, as he squatted on the branch.
He felt Damon’s presence coming at him long before his senses would have noticed it in the days before Elena’s transformation, and he kept himself from flinching. Instead he turned with his back to the trunk of the tree and looked outward. He could feel Damon speeding toward him, faster and faster, stronger and stronger — and then Damon should have been there, standing before him, but he wasn’t.
Stefan frowned.
“It always pays to look up, little brother,” advised a charming voice above him, and then Damon, who had been clinging to the tree like a lizard, did a forward flip and landed on Stefan’s branch.
Stefan said nothing, merely examining his older brother. At last he said, “You’re in good spirits.”
“I’ve had a sumptuous day,” Damon said. “Shall I name them off to you? There was the greeting-card shop girl…Elizabeth, and my dear friend Damaris, whose husband works in Bronston, and little young Teresa wh
o volunteers at the library, and…”
Stefan sighed. “Sometimes I think you could remember the name of every girl you’ve bled in your life, but you forget my name on a regular basis,” he said.
“Nonsense…little brother. Now, since Elena has undoubtedly explained to you just what happened when I tried to rescue your miniature witch — Bonnie — I feel I’m due an apology.”
“And since you sent me a note that I can only construe as provocative, I really feel I’m due an explanation.”
“Apology first,” Damon rapped out. And then, in long-suffering tones, “I’m sure you think it’s bad enough, having promised Elena when she was dying that you would look after me — forever. But you never seem to realize that I had to promise the same thing, and I’m not exactly the care taking type. Now that she’s not dead anymore, maybe we should just forget it.”
Stefan sighed again. “All right, all right. I apologize. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have thrown you out. Is that enough?”
“I’m not sure you really mean it. Try it once more, with feel—”
“Damon, what in God’s name was the website about?”
“Oh. I thought it was rather clever: they got the colors so close that only vampires or witches or such could read it, whereas humans would just see a blank screen.”
“But how did you find out about it?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. But just think of it, little brother. You and Elena, on the perfect little honeymoon, just two more humans in a world of humans. The sooner you go, the sooner you can sing ‘Ding Dong, the Corpse Is Dead’!”
“I still want to know how you just happened to come across this website.”
“All right. I admit it: I’ve been suckered into the age of technology at last. I have my own website. And a very helpful young man contacted me just to see whether I really meant the things I said on it or if I was just a frustrated idealist. I figured that description fit you.”
“You — a website? I don’t believe—” Damon ignored him. “I passed the message along because I’d already heard of the place, the Shi no Shi.”
“The Death of Death, it said.”
“That’s how it was translated to me.” Damon turned a thousand-kilowatt smile on Stefan, boring into him, until finally Stefan turned away, feeling as if he’d been exposed to the sun without his lapis ring.
“As a matter of fact,” Damon went on chattily, “I’ve invited the fellow himself to come and to explain it to you.”
“You did which?”
“He should be here at 4:44 exactly. Don’t blame me for the timing; it’s something special to him.”
And then with very little fuss, and certainly no Power at all that Stefan could discern, something landed in the tree above them and dropped down to their branch, changing as it did.
It was, indeed, a young man, with fire-tipped black hair and serene golden eyes. As Stefan swung toward him, he held up both hands in a gesture of helplessness and surrender.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the hell Shinichi,” the young man said easily. “But, as I told your brother, most people call me just Shinichi. Of course, it’s up to you.”
“And you know all about the Shi no Shi.”
“Nobody knows all about it. It’s a place — and an organization. I’m a little partial to it because”—Shinichi looked shy—“well, I guess I just like to help people.”
“And now you want to help me.”
“If you truly want to become human…I know a way.”
“I’ll just leave the two of you to talk about it, shall I?” said Damon. “Three’s a crowd, especially on this branch.”
Stefan looked at him sharply. “If you have any slightest thought of stopping by the boardinghouse…”
“With Damaris already waiting for me? Honestly, little brother.” And Damon changed to crow form before Stefan could ask him to give his sworn word.
Elena turned over in bed, reaching automatically for a warm body next to her. What her fingers found, however, was a cool, Stefan-shaped hollow. Her eyes opened. “Stefan?”
The darling. They were so in tune that it was like being one person — he always knew when she was about to wake up. He’d probably gone down to get her breakfast — Mrs. Flowers always had it steaming hot for him when he went down (further proof that she was a witch of the white variety) — and Stefan brought up the tray.
“Elena,” she said, testing her old-new voice just to hear herself talk. “Elena Gilbert, girl, you have had too many breakfasts in bed.” She patted her stomach. Yes, definitely in need of exercise.
“All right, then,” she said, still aloud. “Start with limbering up and breathing. Then some mild stretching.” All of which, she thought, could be put aside when Stefan showed up.
But Stefan didn’t show up, even when she lay exhausted from a full hour’s routine.
And he wasn’t coming up the stairs, bringing up a cup of tea, either.
Where was he?
Elena looked out their one-view window and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Flowers below.
Elena’s heart had begun beating hard during her aerobic exercise and had never really slowed down properly. Though it was likely impossible to start a conversation with Mrs. Flowers this way she shouted down, “Mrs. Flowers?”
And, wonder of wonders, the lady stopped pinning a sheet on the clothesline and looked up. “Yes, Elena dear?”
“Where’s Stefan?”
The sheet billowed around Mrs. Flowers and made her disappear. When the billow straightened out, she was gone.
But Elena had her eyes on the laundry basket. It was still there. She shouted, “Don’t go away!” and hastened to put on jeans and her new blue top. Then, hopping down the stairs as she buttoned, she burst out into the back garden.
“Mrs. Flowers!”
“Yes, Elena dear?”
Elena could just see her between billowing yards of white fabric. “Have you seen Stefan?”
“Not this morning, dear.”
“Not at all?”
“I get up with the dawn, regular. His car was gone then, and it hasn’t come back.”
Now Elena’s heart was pounding in good earnest. She’d always been afraid of something like this. She took one deep breath and ran back up the staircase without pausing.
Note, note…
He’d never leave her without a note. And there was no note on his pillow. Then she thought of her pillow.
Her hands scrabbled frantically under it, and then under his pillow. At first she didn’t turn the pillows over, because she wanted so badly for the note to be there — and because she was so afraid of what it might say.
At last, when it was clear that there was nothing under those pillows but the bed sheet, she flipped them and stared at the empty white blankness for a long time. Then she pulled the bed away from the wall, in case the note had fallen down behind it.
Somehow she felt that if she just kept looking, she must find it. In the end she’d shaken out all the bedding and ended up staring at the white sheets again, accusingly, ever so often running her hands over them.
And that ought to be good, because it meant Stefan hadn’t gone somewhere — except that she’d left the closet door open and she could see, without even meaning to, a bunch of empty hangers.
He’d taken all his clothes.
And emptiness on the bottom of the closet.
He’d taken every pair of shoes.
Not that he had ever owned much. But everything that he needed to make a trip away was gone — and he was gone.
Why? Where? How could he?
Even if it turned out that he’d left in order to scout them out a new place to live, how could he? He’d get the fight of his life when he came back— if he came back.
Chilled to the bone, aware that tears were running unmeant and almost unnoticed down her cheeks, she was about to call up Meredith and Bonnie when she thought of something.
Her diary.
> 17
In the first days after she’d come back from the afterlife, Stefan had always put her to bed early, made sure she was warm, and then allowed her to work on his computer with her, writing a diary of sorts, with her thoughts on what had happened that day, always adding his impressions.
Now she called up the file desperately, and desperately scrolled to the end.
And there it was.
My dearest Elena,
I knew you would look here sooner or later. I hope it was sooner.
Darling, I believe that you’re able to take care of yourself now, and I’ve never seen a stronger or more independent girl.
And that means it’s time. Time for me to go. I can’t stay any longer without turning you into a vampire again — something we both know can’t happen.
Please forgive me. Please forget me. Oh, love, I don’t want to go, but I have to.
If you need help, I’ve gotten Damon to give his word to protect you. He would never hurt you, and whatever mischief is going on in Fell’s Church won’t dare touch you with him around.
My darling, my angel, I’ll always love you….
Stefan
P.S. To help you go on with your real life, I’ve left money to pay Mrs. Flowers for the room for the next year. Also, I’ve left you $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills under the second floorboard from the wall, across from the bed. Use it to build a new future, with whomever you choose.
Again, if you need anything, Damon will help you. Trust his judgement if you’re in need of advice. Oh, lovely little love, how can I go? Even for your own sake?
Elena finished the letter.
And then she just sat there.
After all her hunting, she’d found the answer.
And she didn’t know what to do now but scream.
If you need help go to Damon…. Trust Damon’s judgment….It couldn’t be a more blatant ad for Damon if Damon had written it himself.
And Stefan was gone. And his clothes were gone. And his boots were gone.
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