Damon dropped his hand. He simply couldn’t make himself do it. Bonnie was weak, light-headed, a liability in combat, easy to confuse—

That’s it, he thought. I’ll use that! She’s so naive—

       “Let go for asecond,” he coaxed. “So I can get the stave—”

       “No! You’ll jump if I do! What’s a stave?” Bonnie said, all in one breath.

       —and stubborn, and impractical—

       Was the brilliant light beginning to flicker?

       “Bonnie,” he said in a low voice, “I am deadly serious here. If you don’t let go, I’llmake you—and you won’t like that, I promise.”

       “Do what he says,” Meredith pleaded from somewhere quite close. “Bonnie, he’s going into the Dark Dimension! But you’re going to end up going with him—and you’llboth be human slaves this time! Take my hand!”

       “Take her hand!” Damon roared, as the light definitely flickered, for an instant becoming less blinding. He could feel Bonnie shifting and trying to see where Meredith was, and then he heard her say, “I can’t—”

       And then they were falling.

       The last time they had traveled through a Gate they had been totally enclosed in an elevator-like box. This time they were simply flying. There was the light, and there were the two of them, and they were so blinded that somehow speaking didn’t seem possible. There was only the brilliant, fluctuating, beautiful light—

       And then they were standing in an alley, so narrow that it just barely allowed the two of them to face each other, and between buildings so high that there was almost no light down where they were.

       No—that wasn’t the reason, Damon thought. He remembered that blood-red perpetual light. It wasn’t coming directly from either side of the narrow slit of alley, which meant that they were basically in deep burgundy twilight.

       “Do you realize where we are?” Damon demanded in a furious whisper.

       Bonnie nodded, seeming happy about having figured that out already. “We’re basically in deep burgundy—”

       “Crap!”

       Bonnie looked around. “I don’t smell anything,” she offered cautiously, and examined the soles of her feet.

       “We are,” Damon said slowly and quietly, as if he needed to calm himself between every word, “in a world where we can be flogged, flayed, and decapitated just for stepping on the ground.”

       Bonnie tried a little hop and then a jump in place, as if diminishing her ground-interaction time might help them in some manner. She looked at him for further instructions.

       Quite suddenly, Damon picked her up and stared at her hard, as revelation dawned. “You’re drunk!” he finally whispered. “You’re not even awake! All this while I’ve been trying to get you to see sense, and you’re a drunken sleepwalker!”

       “I am not!” Bonnie said. “And…just in case I am, you ought to be nicer to me. You made me this way.”

       Some distant part of Damon agreed that this was true. He was the one who’d gotten the girl drunk and then drugged her with truth serum and sleeping medicine. But that was simply a fact, and had nothing to do with how he felt about it. How he felt was that there was no possible way for him to proceed with this all-too-gentle creature along.

       Of course, the sensible thing would be to get away from her very quickly, and let the city, this huge metropolis of evil, swallow her in its great, black-fanged maw, as it would most certainly do if she walked a dozen steps on its streets without him. But, as before, something inside him simply wouldn’t let him do it. And, he realized, the sooner he admitted that, the sooner he could find a place to put her and begin taking care of his own affairs.

       “What’s that?” he said, taking one of her hands.

       “My opal ring,” Bonnie said proudly. “See, it goes with everything, because it’s all colors. I always wear it; it’s casual or dress-up.” She happily let Damon take it off and examine it.

       “These are real diamonds on the sides?”

       “Flawless, pure white,” Bonnie said, still proudly. “Lady Ulma’s fiancé Lucen made it so that if we ever needed to take the stones out and sell them—” She came up short. “You’re going to take the stones out and sell them! No! No no no no no!”

       “Yes! I have to, if you’re going to have any chance of surviving,” Damon said. “And if you say one more word or fail to do exactly as I tell you, Iam going to leave you alone here. And then you will die.” He turned narrowed, menacing eyes on her.

       Bonnie abruptly turned into a frightened bird. “All right,” she whispered, tears gathering on her eyelashes. “What’s it for?”

       Thirty minutes later, she was in prison; or as good as. Damon had installed her in a second-story apartment with one window covered by roller blinds, and strict instructions about keeping them down. He had pawned the opal and a diamond successfully, and paid a sour, humorless-looking landlady to bring Bonnie two meals a day, escort her to the toilet when necessary, and otherwise forget about her existence.

       “Listen,” he said to Bonnie, who was still crying silently after the landlady had left them, “I’ll try to get back to see you within three days. If I don’t come within a week it’ll mean I’m dead. Then you—don’t cry! Listen!—then you need to use these jewels and this money to try to get all the way from here to here; where Lady Ulma will still be—we hope.”

       He gave her a map and a little moneybag full of coins and gems left over from the cost of her bread and board. “If that happens—and I can pretty well promise it won’t, your best chance is to try walking in the daytime when things are busy; keep your eyes down, your aura small, and don’t talk to anyone. Wear this sacking smock, and carry this bag of food. Pray that nobody asks you anything, but try to look as if you’re on an errand for your master. Oh, yes.” Damon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two small iron slave bracelets, bought when he had gotten the map. “ Never take them off, not when you’re sleeping, not when you’re eating— never.”

       He looked at her darkly, but Bonnie was already on the threshold of a panic attack. She was trembling and crying, but too frightened to say a word. Ever since entering the Dark Dimension she’d been keeping her aura as small as possible, her psychic defenses high; she didn’t need to be told to do that. She was in danger. She knew it.

       Damon finished somewhat more leniently. “I know it sounds difficult, but I can tell you that I personally have no intention whatsoever of dying. I’ll try to visit you, but getting across the borders of the various sectors is dangerous, and that’s what I may have to do to come here. Just be patient, and you’ll be all right. Remember, time passes differently here than back on Earth. We can be here for weeks and we’ll get back practically the instant we set out. And, look”—Damon gestured around the room—“dozens of star balls! You can watch all of them.”

       These were the more common kind of star ball, the kind that had, not Power in them, but memories, stories, or lessons. When you held one to your temple, you were immersed in whatever material had been imprinted on the ball.

       “Better than TV,” Damon said. “Much.”

       Bonnie nodded slightly. She was still crushed, and she was so small, so slight, her skin so pale and fine, her hair such a flame of brilliance in the dim crimson light that seeped through the blinds, that as always Damon found himself melting slightly. “Do you have any questions?” he asked her finally.

       Bonnie said slowly, “And—you’re going to be…?”

       “Out getting the vampire versions ofWho’s Who and the Book of Peers,” Damon said. “I’m looking for a lady of quality.”

 

After Damon had left, Bonnie looked around the room.

It was horrible. Dark brown and just horrible! She had been trying to save Damon from going back into the Dark Dimension because she remembered the terrible way that slaves—who were mostly humans—were treated.

       But did he appreciate that? Did he? Not in the slightest! And then when she’d been falling through the light with him, she’d thought that at least they would be going to Lady Ulma’s, the Cinderella-story woman whom Elena had rescued and who had then regained her wealth and status and had designed beautiful dresses so that the girls could go to fancy parties. There would have been big beds with satin sheets and maids who brought strawberries and clotted cream for breakfast. There would have been sweet Lakshmi to talk to, and gruff Dr. Meggar, and…

       Bonnie looked around the brown room and the plain rush-filled pallet with its single blanket. She picked up a star ball listlessly, and then let it drop from her fingers.

       Suddenly, a great sleepiness filled her, making her head swim. It was like a fog rolling in. There was absolutely no question of fighting it. Bonnie stumbled toward the bed, fell onto it, and was asleep almost before she had settled under the blanket.

 

“It’s my fault far more than yours,” Stefan was saying to Meredith. “Elena and I were—deeply asleep—or he’d never have managed any part of it. I’d have noticed him talking with Bonnie. I’d have realized he was takingyou hostage. Please don’t blame yourself, Meredith.”

“I should have tried to warn you. I just never expected Bonnie to come running out and grab him,” Meredith said. Her dark gray eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Elena squeezed her hand, sick in the pit of her stomach herself.

       “You certainly couldn’t be expected to fight off Damon,” Stefan said flatly. “Human or vampire—he’s trained; he knows moves that you could never counter. Youcan’t blame yourself.”

       Elena was thinking the same thing. She was worried about Damon’s disappearance—and terrified for Bonnie. Yet at another level of her mind she was wondering at the lacerations on Meredith’s palm that she was trying to warm. The strangest thing was that the wounds appeared to have been treated—rubbed slick with lotion. But she wasn’t going to bother Meredith about it at a time like this. Especially when it was really Elena’s own fault. She was the one who had enticed Stefan the night before. Oh, they had been deep, all right—deep in each other’s minds.

       “Anyway, it’s Bonnie’s fault if it’s anyone’s,” Stefan said regretfully. “But now I’m worried about her. Damon’s not going to be inclined to watch out for her if he didn’t want her to come.”

       Meredith bowed her head. “It’smy fault if she gets hurt.”

       Elena chewed her lower lip. There was something wrong. Something about Meredith, that Meredith wasn’t telling her. Her hands were really damaged, and Elena couldn’t figure out how they could have gotten that way.

       Almost as if she knew what Elena was thinking, Meredith slipped her hand out of Elena’s and looked at it. Looked at both her palms, side by side. They were equally scratched and torn.

       Meredith bent her dark head farther, almost doubling over where she sat. Then she straightened, throwing back her head like someone who had made a decision. She said, “There’s something I have to tell you—”

       “Wait,” Stefan whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Listen. There’s a car coming.”

       Elena listened. In a moment she heard it too. “They’re coming to the boardinghouse,” she said, puzzled.

       “It’s so early,” Meredith said. “Which means—”

       “It has to be the police after Matt,” Stefan finished. “I’d better go in and wake him up. I’ll put him in the root cellar.”

       Elena quickly corked the star ball with its meager ounces of fluid. “He can take this with him,” she was beginning, when Meredith suddenly ran to the opposite side of the Gate. She picked up a long, slender object that Elena couldn’t recognize, even with Power channeled to her eyes. She saw Stefan blink and stare at it.

       “This needs to go in the root cellar too,” Meredith said. “And there are probably earth tracks comingout of the cellar, and blood in the kitchen. Two places.”

       “Blood?” Elena began, furious with Damon, but then she shook her head and refocused. In the light of dawn, she could see a police car, cruising like some great white shark toward the house.

       “Let’s go,” Elena said. “Go, go, go!”

       They all dashed back to the boardinghouse, crouching to stay low to the ground as they did it. As they went, Elena hissed, “Stefan, you’ve got to Influence them if you can. Meredith, you try to clean up the soil and blood. I’ll get Matt; he’s less likely to punch me when I tell him he has to hide.”

       They hastened to their appointed duties. In the middle of it all, Mrs. Flowers appeared, dressed in a flannel nightgown with a fuzzy pink robe over it, and slippers with bunny heads on them. As the first hammering knock on the door sounded, she had her hand on the door handle, and the police officer, who was beginning to shout, “POLICE! OPEN THE—” found himself bawling this directly over the head of a little old lady who could not have looked more frail or harmless. He ended almost in a whisper, “—door?”

       “It is open,” Mrs. Flowers said sweetly. She opened it to its widest, so that Elena could see two officers, and the officers could see Elena, Stefan, and Meredith, all of whom had just arrived from the kitchen area.

       “We want to speak to Matt Honeycutt,” the female officer said. Elena noted that the squad car was from the Ridgemont Sheriff’s Department. “His mother informed us that he was here—after serious questioning.”

       They were coming inside, shouldering their way past Mrs. Flowers. Elena glanced at Stefan, who was pale, with tiny beads of sweat visible on his forehead. He was looking intently at the female officer, but she just kept talking.

       “His mother says he’s been virtually living at this boardinghouse recently,” she said, while the male officer held up some kind of paperwork.

       “We have a warrant to search the premises,” he said flatly.

       Mrs. Flowers seemed uncertain. She glanced back toward Stefan, but then let her gaze move on to the other teenagers. “Perhaps it would be best if I made everyone a nice cup of tea?”

       Stefan was still looking at the woman, his face looking paler and more drawn than ever. Elena felt a sudden panic clutch at her stomach. Oh, God, even with the gift of her blood tonight, Stefan was weak—far too weak to even use Influence.

       “May I ask a question?” Meredith said in her low, calm voice. “Not about the warrant,” she added, waving the paper away. “How is it out there in Fell’s Church? Do you know what’s going on?”

       She was buying time, Elena thought, and yet everyone stopped to hear the answer.

       “Mayhem,” the female sheriff replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s like a war zone out there. Worse than that because it’s the kids who are—” She broke off and shook her head. “That’s not our business. Our business is finding a fugitive from justice. But first, as we were driving toward your hotel we saw a very bright column of light. It wasn’t from a helicopter. I don’t suppose you know anything about what itwas?”

       Just a door through space and time, Elena was thinking, as Meredith answered, still calmly, “Maybe a power transmitter blowing up? Or a freak shaft of lightning? Or are you talking about…a UFO?” She lowered her already soft voice.

       “We don’t have time for this,” the male sheriff said, looking disgusted. “We’re here to find this Honeycutt man.”

       “You’re welcome to look,” Mrs. Flowers said. They were already doing so.

       Elena felt shocked and nauseated on two fronts.“This Honeycutt man.” Man, not boy. Matt was over eighteen. Was he still a juvenile? If not, what would they do to him when they eventually caught up to him?

       And then there was Stefan. Stefan had been so certain, so…convincing…in his announcements about being well again. All that talk about going back to hunting animals—but the truth was that he needed much more blood to recover.

       Now her mind spun into planning mode, faster and faster. Stefan obviously wasn’t going to be able to Influence both of those officers without a very large donation of human blood.

       And if Elena gave it…the sick feeling in her stomach increased and she felt the small hairs on her body stand up…if she gave it, what were the chances that she would become a vampire herself?

       High, a cool, rational voice in her mind answered. Very high, considering that less than a week ago, she had been exchanging blood with Damon. Frequently. Uninhibitedly.

       Which left her with the only plan she could think of. These sheriffs wouldn’t find Matt, but Meredith and Bonnie had told her the whole story of how another Ridgemont sheriff had come, asking about Matt—and about Stefan’s girlfriend. The problem was that she, Elena Gilbert, had “died” nine months ago. She shouldn’tbe here—and she had a feeling that these officers would be inquisitive.

       They needed Stefan’s Power. Right now. There was no other way, no other choice. Stefan. Power. Human blood.

       She moved to Meredith, who had her dark head down and cocked to one side as if listening to the two sheriffs clomping above on the stairs.

       “Meredith—”

       Meredith turned toward her and Elena almost took a step back in shock. Meredith’s normally olive complexion was gray, and her breath was coming fast and shallowly.

       Meredith, calm and composed Meredith, already knew what Elena was going to ask of her. Enough blood to leave her out of control as it was being taken. And fast. That terrified her. More than terrified.

       She can’t do it, Elena thought. We’re lost.

 

 

           

 

10

      

Damon was making his way up the beautiful rose-covered trellis below the window of the bedchamber of M. le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne, a very wealthy, beautiful, and much-admired girl who had the bluest blood of any vampire in the Dark Dimension, according to the books he’d bought. In fact, he’d listened to the locals and it was rumored that Sage himself had changed her two years ago, and had given her this bijoux castle to live in. Delicate gem that it appeared, though, the little castle had already presented Damon with several problems. There had been that razor-wire fence, on which he ripped his leather jacket; an unusually dexterous and stubborn guard whom it had really been a pity to strangle; an inner moat that had almost taken him unawares; and a few dogs that he had treated with the Saber-tranquilizer routine—using Mrs. Flowers’s sleeping powder, which he’d brought with him from Earth. It would have been easier to poison them, but Jessalyn was reputed to have a very soft heart for animals and he needed her for at least three days. That should be long enough to make him a vampire—if they did nothing else during those days.

Now, as he pulled himself silently up the trellis, he mentally added long rose thorns to the list of inconveniences. He also rehearsed his first speech to Jessalyn. She had been—was—would forever be—eighteen. But it was ayoung eighteen, since she had only two years’ experience at being a vampire. He comforted himself with this as he climbed silently into a window.

       Still silently, moving slowly in case the princess had guardian animals in her bedchamber, Damon parted layer after layer of filmy, translucent black curtains that kept the blood-red light of the sun from shining into the chamber. His boots sank into the thick pile of a black rug. Making it out of the enfolding curtains, Damon saw that the entire chamber was decorated in a simple theme by a master of contrast. Jet-black and off-black.

       He liked it a lot.

       There was an enormous bed with more billowing filmy black curtains almost encasing it. The only way to approach it was from the foot, where the diaphanous curtains were thinner.

       Standing there in the cathedral-like silence of the great chamber, Damon looked at the slight figure under the black silk sheets, among dozens of small throw pillows.

       She was a jewel like the castle. Delicate bones. A look of utter innocence as she slept. An ethereal river of fine, scarlet hair spilling about her. He could see individual hairs straying on the black sheets. She looked a little like Bonnie.

       Damon was pleased.

       He pulled out the same knife he had put to Elena’s throat, and just for a moment hesitated—but no, this was no time to be thinking of Elena’s golden warmth. Everything depended on this fragile-shouldered child in front of him. He put the point of the knife to his chest, deliberately placing it wide of his heart in case some blood had to be spilled…and coughed.

       Nothing happened. The princess, who was wearing a black negligee that showed frail-looking arms as fine and pale as porcelain, went on sleeping. Damon noticed that the nails on her small fingers were lacquered the exact scarlet of her hair.

       The two large pillar candles set in tall black stands were giving off an enticing perfume, as well as being clocks—the farther down they burned, the easier to tell time. The lighting was perfect—everything was perfect—except that Jessalyn was still asleep.

       Damon coughed again, loudly—and bumped the bed.

       The princess woke, starting up and simultaneously bringing two sheathed blades out of her hair.

       “Who is it? Is someone there?” She was looking in every direction but the right one.

       “It’s only me, your highness.” Damon pitched his voice low, but fraught with unrequited need. “You don’t have to be afraid,” he added, now that she’d at last gotten the right direction and seen him. He knelt by the foot of her bed.

       He’d miscalculated a bit. The bed was so large and high that his chest and the knife were far below Jessalyn’s line of sight.

       “Here I will take my life,” he announced, very loudly to make sure that Jessalyn was keeping up with the program.

       After a moment or two the princess’s head popped up over the foot of the bed. She balanced herself with hands spread wide and narrow shoulders hunched close to her. At this distance he could see that her eyes were green—a complicated green consisting of many different rings and speckles.

       At first she just hissed at him and lifted her knives held in hands whose fingers were tipped with nails of scarlet. Damon bore with her. She would learn in time that all this wasn’t really necessary; that in fact it had gone out of fashion in the real world decades ago and was only kept alive by pulp fiction and old movies.

       “Here at your feet I slaymyself,” he said again, to make sure she didn’t miss a syllable, or the entire point, for that matter.

       “You—yourself?” She was suspicious. “Who are you? How did you get here? Why would you do such a thing?”

       “I got here through the road of my madness. I did it out of what I know is madness I can no longer live with.”

       “What madness? And are you going to do it now?” the princess asked with interest. “Because if you’re not, I’ll have to call my guards and—wait a minute,” she interrupted herself.

       She grabbed his knife before he could stop her and licked it. “This is a metal blade,” she told him, tossing it back.

       “I know.” Damon let his head fall so that hair curtained his eyes and said painfully: “I am…a human, your highness.”

       He was covertly watching through his lashes and he saw that Jessalyn brightened up. “I thought you were just some weak, useless vampire,” she said absently. “But now that I look at you…” A rose petal of a pink tongue came out and licked her lips. “There’s no point in wasting the good stuff, is there?”

       Shewas like Bonnie. She said exactly what she thought, when she thought it. Something inside Damon wanted to laugh.

       He stood again, looking at the girl on the bed with all the fire and passion of which he was capable—and felt that it wasn’t enough. Thinking about the real Bonnie, alone and unhappy, was…well, passion-quenching. But what else could he do?

       Suddenly he knew what he could do. Before, when he’d stopped himself from thinking of Elena, he had cut off any genuine passion or desire. But he was doing thisfor Elena, as much as for himself. Elena couldn’t be his Princess of Darkness if he couldn’t be her Prince.

       This time, when he looked down at M. le Princess, it was differently. He could feel the atmosphere change.

       “Highness, I have no right even to speak to you,” he said, deliberately putting one booted foot on the metal scrollwork that formed the frame of the bed. “You know as well as I that you can kill me with a single blow…say, here”—pointing to a spot on his jaw—“but you have already slain me—”

       Jessalyn looked confused, but waited.

       “—with love. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. You could break my neck, or—as I would say if I were permitted to touch your perfumed white hand—you could curl those fingers around my throat and strangle me. I beg you to do it.”

       Jessalyn was beginning to look puzzled but excited. Blushing, she held out one small hand to Damon, but clearly without any intention of strangling him.

       “Please, you must,” Damon said earnestly, never taking his eyes off hers. “That is the only thing I ask of you: that you kill me yourself instead of calling your guards so that the last sight I see will be your beautiful face.”

       “You’re ill,” Jessalyn decided, still looking flustered. “There have been other unbalanced minds who have made their way past the first wall of my castle—although never to my chambers. I’ll give you to the doctors so that they can make you well.”

       “Please,” said Damon, who had forged his way through the last of the filmy black hangings and was now looming over the sitting princess. “Grant me instant death, rather than leaving me to die a little each day. You don’t know what I’ve done. I can’t stop dreaming of you. I’ve followed you from shop to shop when you went out. I am already dying now as you ravish me with your nobility and radiance, knowing that I am no more than the paving stones you walk on. No doctor can change that.”

       Jessalyn was clearly considering. Obviously, no one had ever talked to her likethis.

       Her green eyes fixed on his lips, the lower of which was still bleeding. Damon gave an indifferent little laugh and said, “One of your guards caught me and very properly tried to kill me before I could reach you and disturb your sleep. I’m afraid I had to kill him to get here,” he said, standing between one pillar candle and the girl on the bed so that his shadow was thrown over her.

       Jessalyn’s eyes widened in approval even as the rest of her seemed more fragile than ever. “It’s still bleeding,” she whispered. “I could—”

       “You can do anything you want,” Damon encouraged her with a wry quirk of a smile on his lips. It was true. She could.

       “Then come here.” She thumped a place by the nearest pillow on the bed. “What are you called?”

       “Damon,” he said as he stripped off his jacket and lay down, chin propped on one elbow, with the air of one not unused to such things.

       “Just that? Damon?”

       “You can cut it still shorter. I am nothing but Shame now,” he replied, taking another minute to think of Elena and to hold Jessalyn’s eyes hypnotically. “I was a vampire—a powerful and proud one—on Earth—but I was tricked by a kitsune…” He told her a garbled version of Stefan’s story, omitting Elena or any nonsense about wanting to be human. He said that when he managed to escape the prison that had taken his vampire self, he decided to end his own human life.

       But at that moment, he had seen Princess Jessalyn and thought that, serving her, he would be happy with his sorry lot. Alas, he said, it only fed his disgraceful feelings for her highness.

       “Now my madness has driven me to actually accost you in your own chambers. Make an example of me, your highness, that will cause other evildoers to tremble. Burn me, have me flogged and quartered, put my head on a pike to cause those who might do you ill to cast themselves into a fire first.” He was now in bed with her, leaning back a little to expose his bare throat.

       “Don’t be silly,” Jessalyn said, with a little catch in her voice. “Even the meanest of my servants wants to live.”

       “Perhaps the ones that never see you do. Scullions, stable boys—butI cannot live, knowing that I can never have you.”

       The princess looked Damon over, blushed, gazed for a moment into his eyes…and then she bit him.

 

“I’ll get Stefan to go down to the root cellar,” Elena said to Meredith, who was angrily thumbing tears out of her eyes.

“You know we can’t do that. With the police right here in the house—”

       “ThenI’ll do it—”

       “Youcan’t! You know you can’t, Elena, or you wouldn’t have come to me!”

       Elena looked at her friend closely. “Meredith, you’ve been donating blood all along,” she whispered. “You never seemed even slightly bothered…”

       “He only took a tiny bit—always less from me than anyone. And always from my arm. I just pretended I was having blood drawn at the doctor’s. No problem. It wasn’t even bad with Damon back in the Dark Dimension.”

       “But now…” Elena blinked. “Now—what?”

       “Now,” Meredith said with a faraway expression, “Stefanknows that I’m a hunter-slayer. That I even have a fighting stave. And now I have to…to submit to…”

       Elena had gooseflesh. She felt as if the distance from her to Meredith in the room was getting larger. “A hunter-slayer?” she said, bewildered. “And what’s a fighting stave?”

       “There’s no time to explain now! Oh, Elena…”

       If Plan A was Meredith and Plan B was Matt, there was really no choice. Plan Chad to be Elena herself. Her blood was much stronger than anyone else’s anyway, so full of Power that Stefan would only need a—

       “No!” Meredith whispered right in Elena’s ear, somehow managing to hiss a word without a single sibilant. “They’re coming down the stairs. We have to find Stefannow! Can you tell him to meet me in the little bedroom behind the parlor?”

       “Yes, but—”

       “Do it!”

       And I still don’t know what a fighting stave is, Elena thought, allowing Meredith to take her arms and propel her toward the bedroom. But I know what a “hunter-slayer” sounds like, and I definitely don’t like it. And that weapon—it makes a stake look like a plastic picnic knife. Still, she sent to Stefan, who was following the sheriffs downstairs:Meredith is going to donate as much blood as you need to Influence them. There’s no time to argue. Come here fast and for God’s sake look cheerful and reassuring.

       Stefan didn’t sound cooperative.I can’t take enough from her for our minds to touch. It might—

       Elena lost her temper. She was frightened; she was suspicious of one of her two best friends—a horrible feeling—and she was desperate. She needed Stefan to do just as she said.Get here fast! was all she projected, but she had the feeling that she’d hit him with all of the feelings full force, because he suddenly turned concerned and gentle. I will, love, he said simply.

 

While the female police officer was searching the kitchen and the male the living room, Stefan stepped into the small first-floor guest room, with its single rumpled bed. The lamps were turned off but with his night vision he could see Elena and Meredith perfectly well by the curtains. Meredith was holding herself as stiffly as an acrophobic bungee jumper.

Take all you need without permanently harming her—and try to put her to sleep, too. And don’t invade her mind too deeply—

       I’ll take care of it. You’d better get out in the hallway, let themsee at least one of us, love, Stefan replied soundlessly. Elena was obviously simultaneously frightened for and defensive about her friend and had sped right into micromanagement mode. While this was usually a good thing, if there was one thing Stefan knew about—even if it was the only thing he knew—it was taking blood.

       “I want to ask for peace between our families,” he said, reaching one hand toward Meredith. She hesitated and Stefan, even trying his hardest, could not help but hearing her thoughts, like small, scuttling creatures at the base of her mind. What was she committing herself to? In what sense did he mean family?

       It’s really just a formality, he told her, trying to gain ground on another front: her acceptance of the touch of his thoughts to hers. Never mind it.

       “No,” Meredith said. “It’s important. I want to trust you, Stefan. Only you, but…I didn’t get the stave until after Klaus was dead.”

       He thought swiftly. “Then you didn’t know what you were—”

       “No. I knew. But my parents were never active. It was Grandpa who told me about the stave.”

       Stefan felt a surge of unexpected pleasure. “So your grandfather’s better now?”

       “No…sort of.” Meredith’s thoughts were confusing.His voice changed, she was thinking. Stefan was truly happythat Grandpa’s better. Even most humans wouldn’t care—not really.

       “Of course I care,” Stefan said. “For one thing, he helped save all our lives—and the town. For another, he’s a very brave man—he must have been—to survive an attack by an Old One.”

       Suddenly, Meredith’s cold hand was around his wrist and words were tumbling from her lips in a rush that Stefan could barely understand. But her thoughts stood bright and clear under those words, and through them he got the meaning.

       “All I can know about what happened when I was very young is what I’ve been told. My parents told me things. My parents changed my birthday—they actuallychanged the day we celebrate my birthday on—because a vampire attacked my grandpa, and then my grandpa tried to kill me. They’ve always said that. But how do they know? They weren’t there—that’s part of what they say. And what’s more likely, that my grandpa attacked me or that the vampire did?” She stopped, panting, trembling all over like a white-tailed doe caught in the forest. Caught, and thinking she was doomed, and unable to run.

       Stefan put out a hand that he deliberately made warm around Meredith’s cold one. “I won’t attack you,” he said simply. “And I won’t disturb any old memories. Good enough?”

       Meredith nodded. After her cathartic story Stefan knew she wanted as few words as possible.

       “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, just as he had thought the soothing phrase into the mind of many an animal he’d chased through the Old Wood.It’s all right. There’s no reason to fear me.

       She couldn’t help being afraid, but Stefan soothed her as he soothed the forest animals, drawing her into the darkest shadow of the room, calming her with soft words even as his canines screamed at him to bite. He had to fold down the side of her blouse to expose her long, olive-skinned column of neck, and as he did the calming words turned into soft endearments and the kind of reassuring noises he would use to comfort a baby.

       And at last, when Meredith’s breathing had slowed and evened and her eyes had drifted shut, he used the greatest of care to slide his aching fangs into her artery. Meredith barely quivered. Everything was softness as he easily skimmed over the surface of her mind, too, seeing only what he already knew about her: her life with Elena and Bonnie and Caroline. Parties and school, plans and ambitions. Picnics. A swimming hole. Laughter. Tranquility that spread out like a great pool. The need for calm, for control. All this stretching back as far as she could remember…

       The farthest depths that she could remember were here at the center…where there was a sudden plunging dip. Stefan had promised himself he would not go deeply into her mind, but he was being pulled, helpless, being dragged down by the whirlpool. The waters closed over his head and he was drawn at tremendous speed to the very depths of a second pool, this one not composed of tranquility, but of rage and fear.

       And then he saw what had happened, what was happening, what would forever be happening—there at Meredith’s still center.

 

 

           

 

11

      

When M. le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne had drunk her fill of Damon’s blood—and she was thirsty for such a fragile thing—it was Damon’s turn. He forced himself to remain patient when Jessalyn flinched and frowned at the sight of his ironwood knife. But Damon teased her and joked with her and played chasing games up and down the enormous bed, and when he finally caught her, she scarcely felt the knife’s sting at her throat.

Damon, though, had his mouth on the dark red blood that welled out immediately. Everything he’d done, from pouring Black Magic for Bonnie to pouring out the star ball’s liquid at the four corners of the Gate to making his way through the defenses of this tiny gem of a castle had been forthis. For this moment, when his human palate could savor the nectar that was vampire blood.

       And it was…heavenly!

       This was only the second time in his life that he’d tasted it as a human. Katerina—Katherine, as he thought of her in English—had been the first, of course. And how she could have crept off afterthat and gone, wearing just her short muslin shift, to the wide-eyed, inexperienced little boy who was his brother, he would never understand.

       His disquiet was spreading to Jessalyn. That mustn’t happen. She had to stay calm and tranquil as he took as much as he could of her blood. It wouldn’t hurt her at all, and it meant all the difference to him.

       Forcing his consciousness away from the sheer elemental pleasure of what he was doing, he began, very carefully, very delicately, to infiltrate her mind.

       It wasn’t difficult to get to the nub of it. Whoever had wrenched this delicate, fragile-boned girl from the human world and had endowed her with a vampire’s nature hadn’t done her any favors. It wasn’t that she had any moral objections to vampirism. She’d taken to the life easily, enjoying it. She would have made a good huntress in the wild. But in this castle? With these servants? It was like having a hundred snooty waiters and two hundred condescending sommeliers staring her down as soon as she opened her mouth to give an order.

       This room, for instance. She had wanted some color in it—just a splash of violet here, a little mauve there—naturally, she realized, a vampire princess’s bedchamber had to bemostly black. But when she’d timidly mentioned the subject of colors to one of the parlor maids, the girl had sniffed and looked down her nostrils at Jessalyn as if she’d asked for an elephant to be installed just beside her bed. The princess had not had the courage to bring up the matter with the housekeeper, but within a week three baskets full of black-and-off-black throw pillows had arrived. There was her “color.” And in the future would her highness be so good as to consult her housekeeper before querying the staff as to her household whims?

       She actually said that about my “whims,” Jessalyn thought as she arched her neck back and ran sharp fingernails through Damon’s thick soft hair. And—oh, it’s no good. I’m no good. I’m a vampire princess, and I can look the part, but I can’t play it.

       You’re every bit a princess, your highness, Damon soothed. You just need someone to enforce your orders. Someone who has no doubts about your superiority. Are your servants slaves?

       No, they’re all free.

       Well, that makes it a little trickier, but you can always yell louder at them. Damon felt swollen with vampire blood. Two more days of this and he would be, if not his old self, then at least almost his old self: a full vampire, free to walk about the city as he liked. And with the Power and status of a vampire prince. It was almost enough to balance out the horrors he’d gone through in the last couple of days. At least, he could tell himself that and try to believe it.

       “Listen,” he said abruptly, letting go of Jessalyn’s slight body, the better to look her in the eye. “Your glorious highness, let me do one favor for you before I die of love or you have me killed for impudence. Let me bring you ‘color’—and then let me stand beside you if any of your menials grumble about it.”

       Jessalyn wasn’t used to this kind of sudden decision, but couldn’t help but be carried along with Damon’s fiery excitement. She arched her head back again.

       When he finally left the bijoux palace, Damon went out the front door. He had with him a little of the money left over from pawning the gems, but this was more than enough for the purpose he had in mind. He was quite certain that thenext time he went out, it would be from the flying portico.

       He stopped at a dozen shops and spent until his last coin was gone. He’d meant to sneak in a visit to Bonnie as well while doing his errands, but the market was in the opposite direction from the inn where he’d left her, and in the end there just wasn’t time.

       He didn’t worry much as he walked back to the bijoux castle. Bonnie, soft and fragile as she seemed, had a wiry core that he was sure would keep her inside the room for three days. She could take it. Damon knew she could.

       He banged on the little castle’s gate until a surly guard opened it.

       “What do you want?” the guard spat.

 

Bonnie was bored out of her mind. It had only been a day since Damon had left her—a day she could only count by the number of meals brought to her, since the enormous red sun stood forever on the horizon and the blood-red light never varied unless it was raining.

Bonnie wished it was raining. She wished it was snowing, or that there would be a fire or a hurricane or a small tsunami. She had given one of the star balls a try, and found it a ridiculous soap opera that she couldn’t understand in the least.

       She wished, now, that she had never tried to stop Damon from coming here. She wished that he had pried her off before they had both fallen into the hole. She wished that she had grabbed Meredith’s hand and just let go of Damon.

       And this was only the first day.

 

Damon smiled at the surly guard. “What do I want? Only what I already have. An open gate.” He didn’t go inside, however. He asked what M. le Princess was doing and heard that she was at a luncheon. On a donor.

Perfect. Soon there came a deferential knock at the gate, which Damon demanded be opened wider. The guards clearly didn’t like him; they had properly put together the disappearance of what turned out to be their captain of guard and the intrusion of this strange human. But there was something menacing about him even in this menacing world. They obeyed him.

       Soon after that there came another quiet knock and then another, and another and so on until twelve men and women with arms full of damp and fragrant brown paper had quietly followed Damon up the stairs and into M. le Princess’s black bedchamber.

       Jessalyn, meanwhile, had had a long and stuffy post-luncheon meeting, entertaining some of her financial advisors, who both seemed very old to her, although they had been changed in their twenties. Their muscles were soft with lack of use, she found herself thinking. And, naturally, they were dressed in full-sleeved, wide-legged black except for a frill at their throats, white inside by gaslight, scarlet outside by the eternal blood-red sun.

       The princess had just seen them bow out of her presence when she inquired, rather irritably, where the human Damon was. Several servants with malice behind their smiles explained that he had gone with a dozen…humans…up to her bedchamber.

       Jessalyn almost flew to the stairs and climbed very quickly with the gliding motion that she knew was expected of proper female vampires. She reached the Gothic doors, and heard the hushed sounds of indignant spite as her ladies-in-waiting all whispered together. But before the princess could even ask what was going on, she was engulfed in a great warm wave of scent. Not the luscious and life-sustaining scent of blood, but something lighter, sweeter, and at the moment, while her bloodlust was sated, even headier and more dizzying. She pushed open the double doors. She took a step into her bedchamber and then stopped in astonishment.

       The cathedral-like black room was full of flowers. There were banks of lilies, vases full of roses, tulips in every color and shade, and riots of daffodils and narcissus, while fragrant honeysuckle and freesia lay in bowers.

       The flower peddlers had converted the gloomy, conventional black room into this fanciful extravaganza. The wiser and more farsighted of M. le Princess’s retainers were actively helping them by bringing in large, ornate urns.

       Damon, upon seeing Jessalyn enter the room, immediately went to kneel at her feet.

       “You were gone when I woke!” the princess said crossly, and Damon smiled, very faintly.

       “Forgive me, your highness. But since I am dying anyway, I thought that I should be up and securing these flowers for you. Are the colors and scents satisfactory?”

       “The scents?” Jessalyn’s whole body seemed to melt. “It’s…like…an orchestra for my nose! And the colors are like nothing I’ve ever seen!” She burst into laughter, her green eyes lightening, her straight red hair a waterfall around her shoulders. Then she began to stalk Damon back into the gloom in one corner. Damon had to control himself or he would have laughed; it was so much like a kitten stalking an autumn leaf.

       But once they got into the corner, tangled in the black hangings and nowhere near a window, Jessalyn assumed a deadly serious expression.

       “I’m going to have a dress made, just the color of those deep, dark purple carnations,” she whispered.“Not black.”

       “Your highness will look wonderful in it,” Damon whispered in her ear. “So striking, so daring—”

       “I may even wear my corsets on theinside of my dress.” She looked up at him through heavy lashes. “Or—would that be too much?”

       “Nothing is too much for you, my princess,” Damon whispered back. He stopped a moment to think seriously. “The corsets—would they match the dress or be black?”

       Jessalyn considered. “Same color?” she ventured.

       Damon nodded, pleased. He himself wouldn’t be caught dead in any color other than black, but he was willing to put up with—even encourage—Jessalyn’s oddities. They might get him made a vampire faster.

       “I want your blood,” the princess whispered, as if to prove him right.

       “Here? Now?” Damon whispered back. “In front of all your servants?”

       Jessalyn surprised him then. She, who had been so timid before, stepped out of the curtains and clapped her hands for silence. It fell immediately.

       “Everyone out!” she said peremptorily. “You have made me a beautiful garden in my room, and I am grateful. The steward”—she nodded toward a young man who was dressed in black, but who had wisely placed a dark red rose in his buttonhole—“will see to it that you’re all given food—and drink—before you go!” At this there was a murmur of praise that made the princess blush.

       “I’ll ring the bell pull when I need you”—to the steward.

       In fact, it wasn’t until two days later that she reached up and, a little reluctantly, rang the bellpull. And that was merely to give the order that a uniform be made for Damon as quickly as possible. The uniform of captain of her guard.

 

By the second day, Bonnie had to turn to the star balls as her only source of entertainment. After going through her twenty-eight orbs she found that twenty-five of them were soap operas from beginning to end, and two were full of experiences so frightening and hideous that she labeled them in her own mind asNever Ever. The last one was called Five Hundred Stories for Young Ones, and Bonnie quickly found that these immersion stories could be useful, for they specified the names of things a person would find around the house and the city. The sphere’s connecting thread was a series about a family of werewolves named the Düz-Aht-Bhi’iens. Bonnie promptly christened them the Dustbins. The series consisted of episodes showing how the family lived each day: how they bought a new slave at the market to replace one who had died, and where they went to hunt human prey, and how Mers Dustbin played in an important bashik tournament at school.

Today the last story was almost providential. It showed little Marit Dustbin walking to a Sweetmeat Shop and getting a sugarplum. The candy cost exactly five soli. Bonnie got to experience eating part of it with Marit, and it was good.

       After reading the story, Bonnie very carefully peeked through the edge of the window blind and saw a sign on a shop below that she’d often watched. Then she held the star ball to her temple.

       Yes! Exactly the same kind of sign. And she knew not only what she wanted, but how much it should cost.

       She was dying to get out of her tiny room and try what she had just learned. But before her eyes, the lights in the sweetshop went dark. It must be closing time.

       Bonnie threw the star ball across the room. She turned the gas lamp down to just the faintest glow, and then flung herself on her rush-filled bed, pulled the covers up…and discovered that she couldn’t sleep. Groping in ruby twilight, she found the star ball with her fingers and put it to her temple again.

       Interspersed with clusters of stories about the Dustbin family’s daily adventures were fairy tales. Most of them were so gruesome that Bonnie couldn’t experience them all the way through, and when it was time to sleep, she lay shivering on her pallet. But this time the story seemed different. After the title,The Gatehouse of the Seven Kitsune Treasures, she heard a little rhyme:

Amid a plain of snow and ice

       There lies kitsune paradise.

       And close beside, forbidden pleasure:

       Six gates more of kitsune treasure.

The very wordkitsune was frightening. But, Bonnie thought, the story might prove relevant somehow.

       I can do this, she thought and put the star ball to her temple.

       The story didn’t start with anything gruesome. It was about a young girl and boy kitsune who went on a quest to find the most sacred and secret of the “seven kitsune treasures,” the kitsune paradise. A treasure, Bonnie learned, could be something as small as a single gem or as large as an entire world. This one, going by the story, was in the middle range, because a “paradise” was a kind of garden, with exotic flowers blooming everywhere, and little streams bubbling down small waterfalls into clear, deep pools.

       It was all wonderful, Bonnie thought, experiencing the story as if she were watching a movie all around her, but a movie that included the sensations of touch, taste, and smell. The paradise was a bit like Warm Springs, where they sometimes had picnics back at home.

       In the story, the boy and girl kitsune had to go to “the top of the world” where there was some kind of fracture in the crust of the highest Dark Dimension—the one Bonnie was in right now. They managed somehow to travel down, and even farther down, and passed through various tests of courage and wit before they got into the next lowest dimension, the Nether World.

       The Nether World was completely different from the Dark Dimension. It was a world of ice and slippery snow, of glaciers and rifts, all bathed in a blue twilight from three moons that shone from above.

       The kitsune children almost starved in the Nether World because there was so little for a fox to hunt. They made do with the tiny animals of the cold: mice and small white voles, and the occasional insect (Oh, yuck, Bonnie thought). They survived until, through the fog and mist, they saw a towering black wall. They followed the wall until finally they came to a Gatehouse with tall spires hidden in the clouds. Written above the door in an old language they could hardly read were the words:The Seven Gates.

       They entered a room in which there were eight doorways or exits. One was the door through which they had just entered. And as they watched, each door brightened so they could see that the other seven doors led to seven different worlds, one of which was the kitsune paradise. Yet another gate led to a field of magical flowers, and another showed butterflies flittering around a splashing fountain. Another dropped to a dark cavern filled with bottles of the mystical wine Clarion Loess Black Magic. One gate led to a deep mine, with jewels the size of a fist. And then there was a gate which showed the prize of all flowers: the Royal Radhika. It changed its shape from moment to moment, from a rose to a cluster of carnations to an orchid.

       Through the last door they could see only a gigantic tree, but the final treasure was rumored to be an immense star ball.

       Now the boy and girl forgot all about the kitsune paradise. Each of them wanted something from another of the gates, but they couldn’t agree on what. The rule was that any party or group who reached the gates could enter one and then return. But while the girl wanted a sprig of the Royal Radhika, to show that they’d completed their quest, the boy wanted some Black Magic wine, to sustain them on the way back. No matter how they argued they couldn’t reach an agreement. So finally they decided to cheat. They would simultaneously open a door and jump through, snatch what they wanted, and then jump back out and be out of the Gatehouse before they could be caught.

       Just as they were about to do so, a voice warned them against it, saying, “One gate alone may you twain enter, and then return from whence you came.”

       But the boy and the girl chose to ignore the voice. Immediately, the boy entered the door that led to the bottles of Black Magic wine and at the same instant the girl stepped into the Royal Radhika door. But when each turned around there was no longer any sign of a door or gate behind them. The boy had plenty to drink but he was left forever in the dark and cold and his tears froze upon his cheeks. The girl had the beautiful flower to look at but nothing to eat or drink and so under the glowing yellow sun she wasted away.

       Bonnie shivered, the delicious shiver of a reader who had gotten what she expected. The fairy tale, with its moral of “don’t be greedy” was like the stories she’d heard from the Red and the Blue Fairy Books when she was a child sitting on her grandmother’s lap.

       She missed Elena and Meredith, badly. She had a story to tell, but no one to tell it to.

 

 

           

 

12

      

“Stefan. Stefan!” Elena had been too nervous to stay out of the bedroom for longer than the five minutes it had taken to show herself to the sheriffs. It was Stefan the officers really wanted and couldn’t find, not seeming to consider that someone might backtrack and hide in a room that had already been searched.

And now Elena couldn’t get a response out of Stefan, who was locked in an embrace with Meredith, mouth pressed tightly over the two little wounds he’d made. Elena had to shake him by the shoulders, to shake both of them, in order to get any response.

       Then Stefan reared back suddenly, but held on to Meredith, who would otherwise have fallen. He hastily licked blood from his lips. For once, though, Elena wasn’t focused on him, but on her friend—her friend whom she’d allowed to do this.

       Meredith’s eyes were shut, but they had dark, almost plum-colored circles under them. Her lips were parted, and her dark cloud of hair was wet where tears had fallen into it.

       “Meredith? Merry?” The old nickname just slipped out of Elena’s lips. And then, when Meredith gave no sign of having heard her: “Stefan, what’s wrong?”

       “I Influenced her at the end to sleep.” Stefan lifted Meredith and put her on the bed.

       “But what happened? Why is she crying—and what’s wrong withyou?” Elena couldn’t help but notice that despite the healthy flush on Stefan’s cheeks his eyes were shadowed.

       “Something I saw—in her mind,” Stefan said briefly, pulling Elena behind his back. “Here comes one of them. Stay there.”

       The door opened. It was the male sheriff, who was red-faced and panting, and who had clearly just lapped himself, returning to this room after starting from it to search the entire first floor.

       “I have them all in a room—all but the fugitive,” the sheriff said into a large black mobile. The female sheriff made some brief reply. Then the red-faced male turned to speak to the teenagers. “Now what’s going to happen is that I’m going to searchyou”—he nodded at Stefan—“while my partner searches you two.” His head jerked, ear-first, at Meredith. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

       “Nothing that you could understand,” Stefan replied coolly.

       The sheriff looked as if he couldn’t believe what had just been said. Then, suddenly, he looked as if he could, and did, and he took a step toward Meredith.

       Stefan snarled.

       The sound made Elena, who was right behind him, jump. It was the low savage snarl of an animal protecting its mate, its pack, its territory.

       The ruddy-faced policeman suddenly looked pale and panicked. Elena guessed that he was looking at a mouth full of teeth much sharper than his own, and tinged with blood as well.

       Elena didn’t want this to turn into a pi—that was, a…snarling match.

       As the sheriff gabbled to his partner, “We may need some of them silver bullets after all,” Elena poked her beloved, who was now making a noise like a very big buzz saw that she could feel in her teeth, and whispered, “Stefan, Influence him! The other one’s coming, and she may already have called for backup.”

       At her touch, Stefan stopped making the sound, and when he turned she could see his face changing from that of a savage animal baring its teeth back to his own dear, green-eyed self. He must have taken alot of blood from Meredith, she thought, with a flutter in her stomach. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

       But there was no denying the after-effects. Stefan turned back to the male sheriff and said crisply, “You will go into the front hallway. You will remain there, silent, until I tell you to move or speak.” Then, without looking up to see if the officer was obeying or not, he tucked the blankets more tightly around Meredith.

       Elena was watching the sheriff, though, and she noticed that he didn’t hesitate an instant. He made an about-face and marched off to the front foyer.

       Then Elena felt safe enough to look at Meredith again. She couldn’t find anything wrong in her friend’s face, except her unnatural pallor, and those violet shadows around her eyes.

       “Meredith?” she whispered.

       No response. Elena followed Stefan out of the room.

       She had just made it to the foyer when the female sheriff ambushed them. Coming down the stairs, pushing the fragile Mrs. Flowers before her, she shouted, “On the ground! All of you!” She gave Mrs. Flowers a hard shove forward. “Get down now!”

       When Mrs. Flowers almost fell sprawling on the floor, Stefan leaped and caught her, and then turned back to the other woman. For a moment Elena thought that he would snarl again, but instead, in a voice tight with self-control, he said, “Join your partner. You can’t move or speak without my permission.”

       He took the shaken-looking Mrs. Flowers to a chair on the left side of the foyer. “Did that—person—hurt you?”

       “No, no. Just get them out of my house, Stefan, dear, and I’ll be most grateful,” Mrs. Flowers replied.

       “Done,” Stefan said softly. “I’m sorry we’ve caused you so much trouble—in your own home.” He looked at each of the sheriffs, his eyes piercing. “Go away and don’t come back. You have searched the house, but none of the people you were looking for were here. You think further surveillance will yield nothing. You believe that you would do more good by helping the—what was it? Oh, yes, themayhem in the town of Fell’s Church. You will never come here again. Now go back to your car and leave.”

       Elena felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She could feel the Power behind Stefan’s words.

       And, as always, it was satisfying to see cruel or angry people become docile under the power of a vampire’s Influence. These two stood for another ten seconds quite still, and then they simply walked out the front door.

       Elena listened to the sound of the sheriff’s car driving away and such a strong feeling of relief washed over her that she almost collapsed. Stefan put his arms around her, and Elena hugged him back tightly, knowing that her heart was pounding. She could feel it in her chest and her fingertips.

       It’s all over. All done now, Stefan thought to her and Elena suddenly felt something different. She felt pride. Stefan had simply taken charge and chased the officers away.

       Thank you, she thought to Stefan.

       “I guess we’d better get Matt out of the root cellar,” she added.

 

Matt was unhappy. “Thanks for hiding me—but do you know how long that was?” he demanded of Elena when they were upstairs again. “And no light except what was in that little star ball. And no sound—I couldn’t hear a thing down there. And what isthis?” He held out the long, heavy wooden staff, with its strangely shaped, spiked ends.

Elena felt sudden panic. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?” She snatched up Matt’s hands, letting the long staff fall to the ground. But Matt didn’t seem to have a single scratch.

       “I wasn’t dumb enough to hold it by the ends,” he said.

       “Meredith did, for some reason,” Elena said. “Her palms were covered with wounds. And I don’t even know what it is.”

       “I do,” Stefan said quietly. He picked up the stave. “But it’s Meredith’s secret really. I mean it’s Meredith’s property,” he added hastily as all eyes fixed on him at the wordsecret.

       “Well, I’m not blind,” Matt said in his frank, straightforward way, flipping back some fair hair in order to look more closely at the thing. He raised blue eyes to Elena. “I know what itsmells like, which is vervain. And I know what it looks like with all those silver and iron spikes coming out of the sharp ends. It looks like a giant staff for exterminating every kind of Godawful Hellacious monster that walks on this earth.”

       “And vampires, too,” Elena added hastily. She knew that Stefan was in a funny mood and she definitely didn’t want to see Matt, for whom she still cared deeply, lying on the floor with a crushed skull. “And even humans—I think these bigger spikes are for injecting poison.”

       “Poison?” Matt looked at his own palms hastily.

       “You’re okay,” Elena said. “I checked you, and besides it would be a very quick-acting poison.”

       “Yes, they would want to take you out of the fight as fast as possible,” Stefan said. “So if you’re alive now, you’re likely to stay that way. And now, this Godawful Hellacious monster just wants to get back up to bed.” He turned to go to the attic. He must have heard Elena’s swift, involuntarily indrawn breath, because he turned around and she could see that he was sorry. His eyes were dark emerald, sad but blazing with unused Power.

       I think we’ll have a late morning, Elena thought, feeling pleasurable thrills ripple through her. She squeezed Stefan’s hand, and felt him return the pressure. She could see what he had in mind; they were close enough and he was projecting pretty clearly what he wanted—and she was as eager to get upstairs as he was.

       But at that moment Matt, eyes on the wickedly spiked staff, said, “Meredith has something to do withthat?”

       “I should never have said anything at all about it,” Stefan replied. “But if you want to know more, you’d really better ask Meredith herself. Tomorrow.”

       “All right,” Matt said, finally seeming to understand. Elena was way ahead of him. A weapon like thatwas—could only be—for killing all sorts of monsters walking the earth. And Meredith—Meredith who was as slim and athletic as a ballerina with a black belt, and oh! Those lessons! The lessons that Meredith had always put off if the girls were doing something at that exact moment, but that she always somehow managed to make time for.

       But a girl could hardly be expected to carry a harpsichord around with her and nobody else had one. Besides, Meredith had said she hated to play, so her BFFs had let it go at that. It was all part of the Meredith mystique.

       And riding lessons? Elena would bet some of them were genuine. Meredith would want to know how to make a quick escape mounting anything available.

       But if Meredith wasn’t practicing for a little light music in the drawing room, or for starring in a Hollywood Western—then what would she have been doing?

       Training, Elena guessed. There were a lot of dojos out there, and if Meredith had been doing this since that vampire attacked her grandfather she must be pretty darn good. And when we’ve fought grisly things, whose eyes have ever been on her, a soft gray shadow that kept out of the limelight? A lot of monsters probably got knocked out but good.

       The only question that needed to be answered was why Meredith hadn’t shown them the Godawful Hellacious monster staker or used it in any fights—say against Klaus—until now. And Elena didn’t know, but she could ask Meredith herself. Tomorrow, when Meredith was up. But she trusted that it had some simple answer.

       Elena tried to stifle a yawn in a ladylike way.Stefan? she asked. Can you get us out of here—without picking me up—and to your room?

       “I think we’ve all had enough stress this morning,” Stefan said in his own gentle voice. “Mrs. Flowers, Meredith is in the first-floor bedroom—she’ll probably sleep very late. Matt—”

       “I know, I know. I don’t know where the schedule went but I might as well make it my night.” Matt presented an arm to Stefan.

       Stefan looked surprised.Darling, you can never have too much blood, Elena thought to him, seriously and straightforwardly.

       “Mrs. Flowers and I will be in the kitchen,” she said aloud.

       When they were there, Mrs. Flowers said, “Don’t forget to thank Stefan for defending the boardinghouse for me.”

       “He did it because it’s our home,” Elena said, and went back into the hall, where Stefan was thanking a flushing Matt.

       And then Mrs. Flowers called Matt into the kitchen and Elena found herself swooped up in lithe, hard arms and then they were gaining altitude rapidly, with the wood staircase emitting little creaks and groans of protest. And finally they were in Stefan’s room and Elena was in Stefan’s arms.

       There was no better place to be, or anything else either of them really wanted now, Elena thought and turned her face up as Stefan turned his down and they began with a long slow kiss. And then the kiss went molten, and Elena had to cling to Stefan, who was already holding her with arms that could have cracked granite, but only squeezed her exactly as tightly as she wanted them to.

 

 

           

 

13

      

Elena, sleeping serenely with one hand locked onto Stefan’s, knew she was having an extraordinary dream. No, not a dream—an out-of-body experience. But it wasn’t like her previous out-of-body visits to Stefan in his cell. She was skimming through the air so quickly that she couldn’t really make out what was below her.

She looked around and suddenly, to her astonishment, another figure appeared beside her.

       “Bonnie!” she said—or rather tried to say. But of course there was no sound. Bonnie looked like a transparent edition of herself. As if someone had created her out of blown glass, and then put in just the faintest tint of color in her hair and eyes.

       Elena tried telepathy.Bonnie?

       Elena! Oh, I miss you and Meredith so much! I’m stuck here in a hole—

       A hole? Elena could hear the panic in her own telepathy. It made Bonnie wince.

       Not a real hole. A dive. An inn, I guess, but I’m locked in and they only feed me twice a day and take me to the toilet once—

       My God! How did you get there?

       Well… Bonnie hesitated. I guess it was my own fault.

       It doesn’t matter! How long have you been there, exactly?

       Um, this is my second day. I think.

       There was a pause. Then Elena said,Well, a couple of days in a bad place can seem like forever.

       Bonnie tried to make her case clearer.It’s just that I’m so bored and lonely. I miss you and Meredith so much! she repeated.

       I was thinking of you and Meredith, too, Elena said.

       But Meredith’s there with you, isn’t she? Oh my God, she didn’t fall, too? Bonnie blurted.

       No, no! She didn’t fall. Elena couldn’t decide whether to tell Bonnie about Meredith or not. Maybe not just yet, she thought.

       She couldn’t see what she was rushing toward, although she could feel that they were slowing down.Can you see anything?

       Hey, yeah, below us! There’s a car! Should we go down?

       Of course. Can we hold hands?

       They found that they couldn’t, but that just trying to kept them closer together. In another moment they were sinking through the roof of a small car.

       Hey! It’s Alaric! Bonnie said.

       Alaric Saltzman was Meredith’s engaged-to-be-engaged boyfriend. He was about twenty-three now, and his sandy-blond hair and hazel eyes hadn’t changed since Elena had seen him almost ten months ago. He was a parapsychologist at Duke, going for his doctorate.

       We’ve been trying to get hold of him for ages, Bonnie said.

       I know. Maybe this is the way we’re supposed to contact him.

       Where is he supposed to be again?

       Some weird place in Japan. I forget what it’s called, but look at the map on the passenger seat.

       She and Bonnie intermingled as they did, their ghostly forms passing right through each other.

       Unmei no Shima: The Island of Doom, was written at the top of an outline of an island. The map beside him had a large red X on it with the caption: The Field of Punished Virgins.

       The what? Bonnie asked indignantly. What’s that mean?

       I don’t know. But look, this fog is real fog. And it’s raining. And this road is terrible.

       Bonnie dove outside.Ooh, so weird. The rain’s going right through me. And I don’t think this is a road.

       Elena said,Come back in and look at this. There aren’tany other cities on the island, just a name. Dr. Celia Connor, forensic pathologist.

       What’s a forensic pathologist?

       I think, Elena said, that they investigate murders and things. And they dig up dead people to find out why they died.

       Bonnie shuddered.I don’t think I like this very much.

       Neither do I. But look outside. This was a village once, I think.

       There was almost nothing left of the village. Just a few ruins of wooden buildings that were obviously rotting, and some tumbledown, blackened stone structures. There was one large building with an enormous bright yellow tarp over it.

       When the car reached this building, Alaric skidded to a stop, grabbed the map and a small suitcase, and dashed through the rain and mud to get under cover. Elena and Bonnie followed.

       He was met near the entrance by a very young black woman, whose hair was cut short and sleek around her elfin face. She was small, not even Elena’s height. She had eyes dancing with excitement and white, even teeth that made for a Hollywood smile.

       “Dr. Connor?” Alaric said, looking awed.

       Meredith isn’t going to like this, Bonnie said.

       “Just Celia, please,” the woman said, taking his hand. “Alaric Saltzman, I presume.”

       “Just Alaric, please—Celia.”

       Meredith really isn’t going to like this, Elena said.

       “So you’re the spook investigator,” Celia was saying below them. “Well, we need you. This place has spooks—or did once. I don’t know if they’re still here or not.”

       “Sounds interesting.”

       “More like sad and morbid. Sad andweird and morbid. I’ve excavated all sorts of ruins, especially those where there’s a chance of genocide. And I’ll tell you: This island is unlike any place I have ever seen,” Celia said.

       Alaric was already pulling things from his case, a thick stack of papers, a small camcorder, a notebook. He turned on the camcorder, and looked through the viewfinder, then propped it up with some of the papers. When he apparently had Celia in focus, he grabbed the notebook too.

       Celia looked amused. “How many ways do you need to take down information?”

       Alaric tapped the side of his head and shook it sadly. “As many as possible. Neurons are beginning to go.” He looked around. “You’re not the only one here, are you?”

       “Except for the janitor and the guy who ferries me back to Hokkaido, yes. It started out as a normal expedition—there were fourteen of us. But one by one, the others have died or left. I can’t even re-bury the specimens—the girls—we’ve excavated.”

       “And the people who left or died from your expedition—”

       “Well, at first people died. Then that and the other spooky stuff made the rest leave. They were frightened for their lives.”

       Alaric frowned. “Who died first?”

       “Out of our expedition? Ronald Argyll. Pottery specialist. He was examining two jars that were found—well, I’ll skip that story until later. He fell off a ladder and broke his neck.”

       Alaric’s eyebrows went up. “That was spooky?”

       “From a guy like him, who’s been in the business for almost twenty years—yes.”

       “Twenty years? Maybe a heart attack? And then off the ladder—boom.” Alaric made a downward gesture.

       “Maybe that’s the way it was. You may be able to explain all our little mysteries for us.” The chic woman with the short hair dimpled like a tomboy. She was dressed like one too, Elena realized: Levi’s and a blue and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a white camisole.

       Alaric gave a little start, as if he’d realized he was guilty of staring. Bonnie and Elena looked at each other over his head.

       “But what happened to all the people who lived on the island in the first place? The ones who built the houses?”

       “Well, there never were that many of them in the first place. I’m guessing the place may even have been named the Island of Doom before this disaster my team was investigating. But as far as I could find out it was a sort of war—a civil war. Between the children and the adults.”

       This time when Bonnie and Elena looked at each other, their eyes were both wide.Just like home—Bonnie began, but Elena said, Sh. Listen.

       “A civil war between kids and their parents?” Alaric repeated slowly. “Now that is spooky.”

       “Well, it’s a process of elimination. You see, I like graves, constructed or just holes in the ground. And here, the inhabitants don’t appear to have been invaded. They didn’t die of famine or drought—there was still plenty of grain in the granary. There were no signs of illness. I’ve come to believe thatthey all killed one another—parents killing children; children killing parents.”

       “But how can you tell?”

       “You see this square-ish area on the periphery of the village?” Celia pointed to an area on a larger map than Alaric’s. “That’s what we callThe Field of Punished Virgins. It’s the only place that has carefully constructed actual graves, so it was made early in what became a war. Later, there was no time for coffins—or no one who cared. So far we’ve excavated twenty-two female children—the eldest in her late teens.”

       “Twenty-two girls? All girls?”

       “All girls in this area. Boys came later, when coffins were no longer being made. They’re not as well preserved, because the houses all burned or fell in, and they were exposed to weathering. The girls were carefully, sometimes elaborately, buried; but the markings on their bodies indicate that they were subjected to harsh physical punishment at some time close to their deaths. And then—they had stakes driven through their hearts.”

       Bonnie’s fingers flew to her eyes, as if to ward off a terrible vision. Elena watched Alaric and Celia grimly.

       Alaric gulped. “They were staked?” he asked uneasily.

       “Yes. Now I know what you’ll be thinking. But Japan doesn’t have any tradition of vampires. Kitsune—foxes—are probably the closest analog.”

       Now Elena and Bonnie were hovering right over the map.

       “And do kitsunes drink blood?”

       “Just kitsune. The Japanese language has an interesting way of expressing plurals. But to answer your question: no. They are legendary tricksters, and one example of what they do is possess girls and women, and lead men to destruction—into bogs, and so on. But here—well, you can almost read it like a book.”

       “You make it sound like one. But not one I’d pick up for pleasure,” Alaric said, and they both smiled bleakly.

       “So, to go on with the book, it seems that this disease spread eventually to all the children in the town. There were deadly fights. The parents somehow couldn’t even get to the fishing boats in which they might have escaped the island.”

       Elena—

       I know. At least Fell’s Church isn’t on an island.

       “And then there’s what we found at the town shrine. I can show you that—it’s what Ronald Argyll died for.”

       They both got up and went farther into the building until Celia stopped beside two large urns on pedestals with a hideous thing in between them. It looked like a dress, weathered until it was almost pure white, but sticking through holes in the clothing were bones. Most horribly, one bleached and fleshless bone hung down from the top of one of the urns.

       “This is what Ronald was working on in the field before all this rain came,” Celia explained. “It was probably the last death of the original inhabitants and it was suicide.”

       “How can you possibly know that?”

       “Let’s see if I can get this right from Ronald’s notes. The priestess here doesn’t have any other damage than that which caused her death. The shrine was a stone building—once. When we got here we found only a floor, with all the stone steps tumbled apart every which way. Hence Ronald’s use of the ladder. It gets quite technical, but Ronald Argyll was a great forensic pathologist and I trusthis reading of the story.”

       “Which is?” Alaric was taking in the jars and the bones with his camcorder.

       “Someone—we don’t know who—smashed a hole in each of the jars. This is before the chaos started. The town records make note of it as an act of vandalism, a prank done by a child. But long after that the hole was sealed and the jars made almost airtight again, except where the priestess had her hands plunged in the top up to the wrist.”

       With infinite care, Celia lifted the top off the jar that did not have a bone hanging from it—to reveal another pair of longish bones, slightly less bleached, and with strips of what must have been clothing on it. Tiny finger bones lay inside the jar.

       “What Ronald thought was that this poor woman died as she performed a last desperate act. Clever, too, if you see it from their perspective. She cut her wrists—you can see how the tendon is shriveled in the better-preserved arm—and then she let the entire contents of her bloodstream flow into the urns. We do know that the urns show a heavy precipitation of blood on the bottom. She was trying to lure something in—or perhaps somethingback in. And she died trying, and the clay that she had probably hoped to use in her last conscious moments held her bones to the jars.”

       “Whew!” Alaric ran a hand over his forehead, but shivered at the same time.

       Take pictures! Elena was mentally commanding him, using all her willpower to transmit the order. She could see that Bonnie was doing the same, eyes shut, fists clenched.

       As if in obedience to their commands, Alaric was taking pictures as fast as he could.

       Finally, he was done. But Elena knew that without some outside impetus there was no way that he was going to get those pictures to Fell’s Church until he himself came to town—and even Meredith didn’t know when that would be.

       So what do we do? Bonnie asked Elena, looking anguished.

       Well…my tears were real when Stefan was in prison.

       You want us to cry on him?

       No, Elena said, not quite patiently. But we look like ghosts—let’s act like them. Try blowing on the back of his neck.

       Bonnie did, and they both watched Alaric shiver, look around him, draw his windbreaker closer.

       “And what about the other deaths in your own expedition?” he asked, huddling, looking around apparently aimlessly.

       Celia began speaking but neither Elena nor Bonnie was listening. Bonnie kept blowing on Alaric from different directions, herding him to the single window in the building that wasn’t shattered. There Elena had written with her finger on the darkened cold glass. Once she knew that Alaric was looking that way she blew her breath across the sentence:send all pix of jars 2 meredith now! Every time Alaric approached the window she breathed on it to refresh the words.

       And at last he saw it.

       He jumped backward nearly two feet. Then he slowly crept back to the window. Elena refreshed the writing for him. This time, instead of jumping, he simply ran a hand over his eyes and then slowly peeked out again.

       “Hey, Mr. Spook-chaser,” said Celia. “Are you all right?”

       “I don’t know,” Alaric admitted. He passed his hand over his eyes again, but Celia was coming and Elena didn’t breathe on the window.

       “I thought I saw a—a message to send copies of the pictures of these jars to Meredith.”

       Celia raised an eyebrow. “Who is Meredith?”

       “Oh. She—she’s one of my former students. I suppose this would interest her.” He looked down at the camcorder.

       “Bones and urns?”

       “Well, you were interested in them quite young, if your reputation is correct.”

       “Oh, yes. I loved to watch a dead bird decay, or find bones and try to figure out what animal they were from,” Celia said, dimpling again. “From the age of six. But I wasn’t like most girls.”

       “Well—neither is Meredith,” Alaric said.

       Elena and Bonnie were eyeing each other seriously now. Alaric had implied that Meredith was special, but he hadn’tsaid it, and he hadn’t mentioned their engagement to be engaged.

       Celia came closer. “Are you going to send her the pictures?”

       Alaric laughed. “Well, all this atmosphere and everything—I don’t know. It might just have been my imagination.”

       Celia turned away just as she reached him and Elena blew once more across the message. Alaric threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

       “I don’t suppose the Island of Doom has satellite coverage,” he said helplessly.

       “Nope,” Celia said. “But the ferry will be back in a day, and you can send pictures then—if you’re really going to do it.”

       “I think I’dbetter do it,” Alaric said. Elena and Bonnie were both glaring at him, one from each side.

       But that was when Elena’s eyelids started to droop.Oh, Bonnie, I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you after this, and make sure you’re okay. But I’m falling…I can’t…

       She managed to pry her lids open. Bonnie was in a fetal position, fast asleep.

       Be careful, Elena whispered, not even sure who she was whispering it to. And as she floated away, she was aware of Celia and the way Alaric was talking to this beautiful, accomplished woman only a year or so older than he was. She felt a distinct fear for Meredith, on top of everything else.

 

 

           

 

14

      

The next morning Elena noticed that Meredith still looked pale and languid, and that her eyes slid away if Stefan happened to glance at her. But this was a time of crisis, and as soon as the breakfast dishes were washed, Elena called a meeting in the parlor. There she and Stefan explained what Meredith had missed during the visit from the sheriffs. Meredith smiled wanly when Elena told how Stefan had banished them like stray dogs.

Then Elena told the story of her out-of-body experience. It proved one thing, at least, that Bonnie was alive and relatively well. Meredith bit her lip when Mrs. Flowers said this, for it only made her want to go and get Bonnie out of the Dark Dimension personally.

       But on the other hand, Meredith wanted to stay and wait for Alaric’s photographs. If that would save Fell’s Church…

       No one at the boardinghouse could question what had happened on the Island of Doom. It was happening here, on the other side of the world. Already a couple of parents in Fell’s Church had had their children taken away by the Virginia Department of Child Protective Services. Punishments and retaliations had begun. How much longer would it be before Shinichi and Misao turned all the children into lethal weapons—or let loose those already turned? How long before some hysterical parent killed a kid?

       The group sitting in the parlor discussed plans and methods. In the end, they decided to make jars identical to those Elena and Bonnie had seen, and prayed that they could reproduce the writing. These jars, they were sure, were the means by which Shinichi and Misao were originally sealed off from the rest of the Earth.

       Therefore Shinichi and Misao had once fit into the rather cramped accommodations of the jars. But what did Elena’s group have now that could lure them back inside?

       Power, they decided. Only an amount of Power so great that it was irresistible to the kitsune twins. That was why the priestess had tried to lure them back with her own blood. Now…it meant either the liquid in a full star ball…or blood from an extraordinarily powerful vampire. Or two vampires. Or three.

       Everyone was sober, thinking of this. They didn’t know how much blood would be needed—but Elena feared that it would be more than they can afford to lose. It had certainly been more than the priestess could afford.

       And then there was a silence that only Meredith could fill. “I’m sure you’ve all been wondering about this,” she said, producing the staff thing from thin air, as far as Elena could see. How did shedo that? Elena wondered. She didn’t have it with her and then she did.

       They all stared in the bright sunlight at the sleek beauty of the weapon.

       “Whoever made that,” Matt said, “had a twisted imagination.”

       “It was one of my ancestors,” Meredith said. “And I won’t contest that.”

       “I have a question,” Elena said. “If you’d had that from the beginning of your training; if you’d been raised in that kind of world, would you have tried to kill Stefan? Would you have tried to killme when I became a vampire?”

       “I wish I had a good answer to that,” Meredith said, her dark gray eyes pained. “But I don’t. I have nightmares about it. But how can I ever say what Iwould have done if I’d been a different person?”

       “I’m not asking that. I’m asking you, the person you are, if you’d had the training—”

       “The training is brainwashing,” Meredith said harshly. Her composed façade seemed about to break.

       “Okay, forget that. Would you have tried to kill Stefan, if you’d just had that staff?”

       “It’s called a fighting stave. Andwe’re called—people like my family, except that my parents dropped out—hunter-slayers.”

       There was a sort of gasp around the table. Mrs. Flowers poured Meredith more herbal tea from the pot sitting on a trivet.

       “Hunter-slayers,” repeated Matt with a certain relish. It wasn’t hard to tell who he was thinking about.

       “You can just call us one or the other,” Meredith was saying. “I’ve heard that out west they’ve got hunter-killers. But we hang on to tradition here.”

       Elena suddenly felt like a lost little girl. This was Meredith, her big sister Meredith, saying all of this. Elena’s voice was almost pleading. “But you didn’t even tell on Stefan.”

       “No, I didn’t. And, no, I don’t think I’d have had the courage to kill anyone—unless I’d been brainwashed. But Iknew Stefan loved you. I knew he would never make you into a vampire. The problem was—I didn’t know enough about Damon. I didn’t know that you were fooling around so much. I don’t think anybody knew that.” Meredith’s voice was anguished, too.

       “Except me,” Elena said, flushing, with a lopsided smile. “Don’t look so sad, Meredith. It worked out.”

       “You call having to leave your family and your town because everyone knows you’re dead, working out?”

       “I do,” Elena replied desperately, “if it means I get to be with Stefan.” She did her best not to think about Damon.

       Meredith looked at her blankly for a moment, then put her face in her hands. “Do you want to tell them or should I?” she asked, coming up for air and facing Stefan.

       Stefan looked startled. “You remember?”

       “Probably as much as you got from my mind. Bits and pieces. Stuff I don’twant to remember.”

       “Okay.” Now Stefan looked relieved, and Elena felt frightened. Stefan and Meredith had a secret together?

       “We all know that Klaus made at least two visits to Fell’s Church. We know that he was—completely evil—and that on the second visit he planned to be a serial murderer. He killed Sue Carson and Vickie Bennett.”

       Elena interrupted quietly. “Or at least he helped Tyler Smallwood to kill Sue, so that Tyler could be initiated as a werewolf. And then Tyler got Caroline pregnant.”

       Matt cleared his throat as something occurred to him. “Uh—does Caroline have to kill somebody to be a full werewolf, too?”

       “I don’t think so,” Elena said. “Stefan says that having a werewolf litter is enough. Either way, blood is spilled. Caroline will be a full werewolf when she has her twins, but she’ll probably begin changing involuntarily before that. Right?”

       Stefan nodded. “Right. But getting back to Klaus: What was it he was supposed to have done on his first visit? He attacked—without killing—an old man who was a full hunter-slayer.”

       “My grandfather,” Meredith whispered.

       “And he supposedly messed with Meredith’s grandfather’s mind so much that this old man tried to kill his wife and his three-year-old granddaughter. So what is wrong with this picture?”

       Elena was truly frightened now. She didn’t want to hear whatever was coming. She could taste bile, and she was glad that she’d only had toast for breakfast. If only there had been someone to take care of, like Bonnie, she would have felt better.

       “I give up. So whatis wrong?” Matt asked bluntly.

       Meredith was staring into the distance again.

       Finally Stefan said, “At the risk of sounding like a bad soap opera…Meredith had, or has, a twin brother.”

       Dead silence fell over the group in the parlor. Even Mrs. Flowers’s Mama didn’t put in a word.

       “Had or has?” Matt said finally, breaking the silence.

       “How can we know?” Stefan said. “He may have been killed. Imagine Meredith having to watch that. Or he could have been kidnapped. To be killed at a later time—or to become a vampire.”

       “And you really think her parents wouldn’t tell her?” Matt demanded. “Or would try to make her forget? When she was—what, three already?”

       Mrs. Flowers, who had been quiet a long time, now spoke sadly. “Dear Meredith may have decided to block out the truth herself. With a child of three it’s hard to say. If they never got her professional help…” She looked a question at Meredith.

       Meredith shook her head. “Against the code,” she said. “I mean, strictly speaking, I shouldn’t be telling any of you this, and especially not Stefan. But I couldn’t stand it anymore…having such good friends, and constantly deceiving them.”

       Elena went over and hugged Meredith hard. “We understand,” she said. “I don’t know what will happen in the future if you decide to be an active hunter—”

       “I can promise you my friends won’t be on my list of victims,” Meredith said. “By the way,” she added, “Shinichi knows. I’m the one who’s kept a secret from my friends all my life.”

       “Not any longer,” Elena said, and hugged her again.

       “At least there are no more secrets now,” Mrs. Flowers said gently, and Elena looked at her sharply. Nothing was ever that simple. And Shinichi had made a whole handful of predictions.

       Then she saw the look in the mild blue eyes of the old woman, and she knew that what was important right then was not truth or lies, or even reckonings, but simply comforting Meredith. She looked up at Stefan while still hugging Meredith and saw the same look in his eyes.

       And that—made her feel better somehow. Because if it wastruly “no secrets” then she would have to figure out her feelings about Damon. And she was more afraid of that than of facing Shinichi, which was saying quite a lot, really.

       “At least we’ve got a potter’s wheel—somewhere,” Mrs. Flowers was saying. “And a kiln in the back, although it’s all grown over with Devil’s Shoestring. I used to make flowerpots for outside the boardinghouse, but children came and smashed them. I think I could make an urn like the ones you saw if you can draw one for me. But perhaps we’d better wait for Mr. Saltzman’s pictures.”

       Matt was mouthing something to Stefan. Elena couldn’t make it out until she heard Stefan’s voice in her mind.He says Damon told him once that this house is like a swap meet, and you can find anything here if you look hard enough.

       Damon didn’t make that up! I think Mrs. Flowers said it first, and then it sort of got around, Elena returned heatedly.

       “When we get the pictures,” Mrs. Flowers was saying brightly, “we can get the Saitou women to translate the writing.”

       Meredith finally moved back from Elena. “And until then we can pray that Bonnie doesn’t get into any trouble,” she said, and her voice and face were composed again. “I’m starting now.”

 

Bonnie was sure she could stay out of trouble.

She’d had that strange dream—the one about shedding her body, and going with Elena to the Island of Doom. Fortunately, it had seemed to be a real out-of-body experience, and not something she had to ponder over and try to find hidden meanings in. It didn’t meanshe was doomed or anything like that.

       Plus, she’d managed to live through another night in this brown room, and Damonhad to come and get her out soon. But not before she had a sugarplum. Or two.

       Yes, she had gotten a taste of one in the story last night, but Marit was such a good girl that she had waited for dinner to have any more. Dinner was obtained in the next story about the Dustbins, which she’d plunged into this morning. But that contained the horror of little Marit tasting her first hand-caught piece of raw liver, fresh from the hunt. Bonnie had hastily pulled the little star ball off her temple, and had determined not to do anything that could possibly get her on a human hunting range.

       But then, compulsively, she had counted up her money. She had money. She knew where a shop was. And that meant…shopping!

       When her bathroom break came around, she managed to get into a conversation with the boy who usually led her to the outdoor privy. This time she made him blush so hard and tug at his earlobe so often that when she begged him to give her the key and let her go by herself—it wasn’t as if she didn’t know the way—he had relented and let her go, asking only that she hurry.

       And she did hurry—across the street and into the little store, which smelled so much of melting fudge, toffee being pulled by hand, and other mouth-watering smells that she would have known where she was blindfolded.

       She also knew what she wanted. She could picture it from the story and the one taste Marit had had.

       A sugarplum was round like a real plum, and she’d tasted dates, almonds, spices, and honey—and there may have been some raisins, too. It should cost five soli, according to the story, but Bonnie had taken fifteen of the small coppery-looking coins with her, in case of a confectionary emergency.

       Once inside, Bonnie glanced warily around her. There were a lot of customers in the shop, maybe six or seven. One brown-haired girl was wearing sacking just like Bonnie and looked exhausted. Surreptitiously, Bonnie inched toward her, and pressed five of her copper soli into the girl’s chapped hand, thinking, there—now she can get a sugarplum just like me; that ought to cheer her up. It did: the girl gave her the sort of smile that Mother Dustbin often gave to Marit when she had done something adorable.

       I wonder if I should talk to her?

       “It looks pretty busy,” she whispered, ducking her head.

       The girl whispered back, “It has been. All yesterday I kept hoping, but at least one noble came in as the last one left.”

       “You mean you have to wait until the shop’s empty to—?”

       The brown-haired girl looked at her curiously. “Of course—unless you’re buying for your mistress or master.”

       “What’s your name?” Bonnie whispered.

       “Kelta.”

       “I’m Bonnie.”

       At this Kelta burst into silent but convulsive giggles.

       Bonnie felt offended; she’d just given Kelta a sugarplum—or the price of one, and now the girl was laughing at her.

       “I’m sorry,” Kelta said when her mirth had died down. “But don’t you think it’s funny that in the last year there are so many girls changing their names to Alianas and Mardeths, and Bonnas—some slaves are even beingallowed to do it.”

       “But why?” Bonnie whispered with such obvious genuine bewilderment that Kelta said, “Why, to fit into the story, of course. To be named after the ones who killed old Bloddeuwedd while she was rampaging through the city.”

       “That was such a big deal?”

       “You really don’t know? After she was killed all her money went to the fifth sector where she lived and there was enough left over to have a holiday. That’s where I’m from. And I used to be so frightened when I was sent out with a message or anything after dark because she could be right above you and you’d never know, until—” Kelta had put all her money into one pocket and now she mimed claws descending on an innocent hand.

       “But you really are a Bonna,” Kelta said, with a flash of white teeth in rather dingy skin. “Or so you said.”

       “Yeah,” Bonnie said feeling vaguely sad. “I’m a Bonna, all right!” The next moment she cheered up. “The shop’s empty!”

       “It is! Oh, you’re a good-luck Bonna! I’ve been waiting two days.”

       She approached the counter with a lack of fear that was very encouraging to Bonnie. Then she asked for something called a blood jelly that looked to Bonnie like a small mold of strawberry Jell-O, with something darker deep inside. Kelta smiled at Bonnie from under the curtain of her long, unbrushed hair and was gone.

       The man who ran the sweetshop kept looking hopefully at the door, clearly hoping a free person—a noble—would come in. No one did, however, and at last he turned to Bonnie.

       “And what is it you want?” he demanded.

       “Just a sugarplum, please?” Bonnie tried hard to make sure her voice didn’t quaver.

       The man was bored. “Show me your pass,” he said irritably.

       It was at that point that Bonnie suddenly knew that everything was going to go horribly wrong.

       “Come on, come on, snap it up!” Still looking at his accounting books, the man snapped his fingers.

       Meanwhile Bonnie was running a hand over her sack-cloth smock, in which she knew perfectly well there was no pocket, and certainly no pass.

       “But I thought I didn’t need a pass, except to cross sectors,” she babbled finally.

       The man now leaned over the counter. “Then show me your freedom pass,” he said, and Bonnie did the only thing she could think of. She turned and ran, but before she could reach the door she felt a sudden stinging pain in her back and then everything went blurry and she never knew when she hit the ground.

 

 

           

 

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