Bonnie woke slowly, coming up from some dark place.

Then she wished she hadn’t. She was in some out-of-doors place—only buildings blocked the horizon where the sun hung forever. Around her were a lot of other girls, all approximately her own age. That was puzzling, first of all. If you took a random sampling of females off the street there would be little girls crying for their mothers, and there would be mother-aged women taking care of them. There might be a few older women. This place looked more like—

       —oh, God, it looked like one of those slave warehouse places that they had had to pass the last time they had come to the Dark Dimension. The ones that Elena had ordered them not to look at or listen to. But now Bonnie felt sure she was inside one herself, and there was no way not to look at the still faces, at the terrified eyes, at the quivering mouths around her.

       She wanted to speak, to find the way—there wouldhave to be a way, Elena would insist—to get out. But first she gathered all the Power at her command, wrapped it into a cry, and soundlessly screamed Damon! Damon! Help! I really need you!

       All she heard in return was silence.

       Damon! It’s Bonnie! I’m at a slave warehouse! Help!

       Suddenly she had a hunch, and lowered her psychic barriers. She was instantly crushed. Even here, at the edge of the city, the air was choked full of long messages and short: cries of impatience, or camaraderie, of greeting, of solicitation. Longer, less impatient conversations about things, instructions, teasings, stories. She couldn’t keep up with it. It turned into a menacing wave of psychic sound that was curled like a wave about to break over her head, to crush her into a million pieces.

       And then, all of a sudden, the telepathic melee vanished. Bonnie was able to focus her eyes on a blond girl, a little older than her and about four inches taller.

       “I said, are you okay?” the girl was repeating—obviously she’d been saying it for a while.

       “Yes,” Bonnie said automatically. No! Bonnie thought.

       “You might want to get ready to move. They’ve sounded the first dinnertime whistle, but you looked so out of it, I waited for the second one.”

       What am I supposed to say?Thank you seemed safest. “Thanks,” Bonnie said. Then her mouth said all on its own, “Where am I?”

       The blond girl looked surprised. “The depot for runaway slaves, of course.”

       Well, that was that. “But I didn’t run away,” she protested. “I was going right back after I got a sugarplum.”

       “I don’t know about that. Iwas trying to run away, but they finally caught me.” The girl slammed one fist into an open hand. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that litter carrier. Carried me right to the authorities and me blind and without a clue.”

       “You mean you had the litter curtains down—?” Bonnie was asking, when a shrill whistle interrupted her. The blond girl took hold of her arm and began dragging her away from the fence. “That’s the second service dinnertime whistle—we don’t want to miss that, because after that they shut us up for the night. I’m Eren. Who’re you?”

       “Bonnie.”

       Eren snorted and grinned. “All right by me.”

       Bonnie allowed herself to be led up a dirty stairway and into a dirty cafeteria. The blond girl, who seemed to regard herself as Bonnie’s keeper, handed her a tray, and pushed her along. Bonnie didn’t get any choice in what she was to have, not even to veto the noodles that were squirming slightly, but she did manage to snatch an extra bread roll in the end.

       Damon! Nobody was telling her not to send a message, so she kept on doing it. If she was going to be punished, she thought defiantly, she was going to be punished for trying to get out of here. Damon, I’m in a slave warehouse! Help me!

       Blond Eren grabbed a spork, so Bonnie did too. There were no knives. There were thin napkins, which relieved Bonnie, because that was where the Squirmy Noodles were going to end up.

       Without Eren, Bonnie would never have found a place at the tables, which were crammed with young girls eating. “Shove over, shove over,” Eren kept saying, until there was room for Bonnie and her.

       Dinner was a test of Bonnie’s courage—and also of how loud she could scream. “Why are you doing all this for me?” she shouted into Eren’s ear, when a lull in the deafening conversation gave her a chance.

       “Oh, well, you being a redhead and all—it put me in mind of Aliana’s message, you know. To the real Bonny.” She pronounced it oddly, sort of swallowing the y, but at least it wasn’t Bonna.

       “Which of them? Which message, I mean?” Bonnie screamed.

       Eren gave her anare you kidding look. “Help when you can, shelter when you have room, guide when you know where to go,” she said in a sort of impatient chant, then looked chagrined and added, “And be patient with the slow.” She attacked her food with an air of having said everything there was to say.

       Oh, boy, Bonnie thought. Somebody had really taken the ball and run with it. Elena had never said any of those things.

       Yeah, but—but maybe she’dlived them, Bonnie thought, a tingling breaking out all over her body. And maybe somebody had seen her and made up the words. For instance, that crazy-looking guy she’d given her ring or bracelet or something to. She’d given her earrings away to people with signs, too. Signs that said: POETRY FOR FOOD.

       The rest of dinner was a matter of picking up food with the spork and not looking at it, crunching it once, and then deciding whether to spit into her still-writhing napkin, or to try to swallow without tasting.

       Afterward the girls were marched into another building, this one filled with pallets, smaller and not so comfortable-looking as Bonnie’s at the inn. She was now horrified at herself for leaving that room. There she had had safety, she had had food that she could actually eat, she had had entertainment—even the Dustbins were clothed in a golden glow of remembrance now—and she had had the chance of Damon finding her. Here she had nothing.

       But Eren seemed to have some mesmeric influence on the girls around, or else they all were Aliana-ites too, because when she shouted “Where’s a pallet? I’ve got a new girl in my bedroom. Think she’s gonna sleep on the bare floor?” And eventually, a dusty pallet was passed hand over hand into Eren’s “bedroom”—a group of pallets all spread with the heads together in the middle. In exchange, Eren handed over the wriggling napkin Bonnie had given her. “Share and share alike,” she said firmly, and Bonnie wondered if she thought Aliana had said that, too.

       A whistle shrilled. “Ten minutes until lights-out,” a hoarse voice shouted. “Every girl not on her pallet in ten minutes will be punished. Tomorrow section C goes up.”

       “All right! We’re going to be bloody deaf before we’re sold,” Eren muttered.

       “Before we’re sold?” Bonnie repeated stupidly, even though she had known what would happen from the first moment she had recognized this as a warehouse for slaves.

       Eren turned and spat. “Yeah,” she said. “So you can have one more breakdown and then that’s it. Only two per customer, and by tomorrow you may wish you’d saved one up.”

       “I wasn’t going to have a breakdown,” Bonnie said, with all the courage at her command. “I was going to ask how we’re going to be sold. Is it at one of those horrible public places, where you have to stand in front of a crowd in just a shift?”

       “Yeah, that’s what most of us will be doing,” a young girl, who had been crying quietly through dinner and the pallet-arranging time, spoke up in a soft voice. “But the ones they pick out as special items will have to wait. They’ll give us a bath and special clothes, but it’s all just so we look more presentable for the clients. So the clients caninspect us more closely.” She shuddered.

       “You’re frightening the new girl, Mouse,” Eren scolded. “We call her Mouse, because she’s always so scared,” she told Bonnie.

       Bonnie silently screamed,Damon!

 

Damon was decked out in his new captain of the guard suit. It was nice, being black on black, with lighter black piping (even Damon recognized the necessity of contrast). It had a cloak.

And he was a full vampire again, as powerful and prestigious as even he could have imagined. For a moment he simply luxuriated in the feeling of a job well done. Then he flexed his vampire muscles more strongly, urging Jessalyn, who was upstairs, into deeper sleep, while he sent tendrils of Power all over the Dark Dimension, sampling what was going on in different districts.

       Jessalyn…now there was a dilemma. Damon had the feeling that he should leave her a note or something, but he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

       What could he tell her? That he was gone? She would see that for herself. That he was sorry? Well, obviously he wasn’t so sorry that he’d chosen not to go. That he had duties elsewhere?

       Wait. That might actually work. He could tell her that he needed to check up on her territory and that if he were to stay here in the castle he doubted he’d ever get anything done. He could tell her he’d be back…soon. Soonish. Soonishly.

       Damon pressed his tongue against a canine and felt the prompt rewarding sharpness and length. He really wanted to try out those legendary Black Ops vs. vampires programs. He wanted to hunt, period. Of course, there was so much Black Magic wine about the place that when he stopped a male servant and asked for some, the servant had brought a magnum. Damon had been having flutes every now and then, but what he reallywanted was to go hunting. And not to hunt a slave and certainly not an animal, and it hardly seemed fair to wander the streets on the chance that there was a noblewoman to get to know better.

       It was at that moment that he remembered Bonnie.

       In a matter of three more minutes he had everything he needed to do wrapped up, including the annual delivery of dozens of roses to the princess in his name. Jessalyn had given him avery liberal allowance, and already advanced for the first month.

       In a matter of five minutes he was flying, though that was very bad manners on the street, and doubly so in a market district.

       In a matter of fifteen minutes he had his hands around the landlady’s neck, the one whom he had paid very well to make sure that exactly what had happened never happened.

       In sixteen minutes, the landlady was grimly offering him the life of her young and not very intelligent slave as recompense. He was still wearing his captain of guard suit. He could have the boy to kill, to torture, whatever…he could have the money back…

       “I don’t want your filthy slave,” he snarled. “I want my own back! She’s worth…” Here he came to a stop, trying to calculate how many ordinary girls Bonnie was worth. A hundred? A thousand? “She is worthinfinitely more—” he began, when the landlady surprised him by interrupting.

       “Why’d you leave her in a dump like this, then?” she said. “Oh, yes, I know what my own lodgings are like. If she was so damn precious, why’d you leave herhere?”

       Whyhad he left her in this place? Damon couldn’t think now. He’d been panicked, half out of his mind—that was what being human had done to him. He’d been thinking only about himself, while little Bonnie—fragile Bonnie, his little redbird—had been shut up in this filthy place. He didn’t want to keep thinking about it. It made him feel searing hot and icy cold at once.

       He demanded that a search be made of all the neighborhood buildings. Someone had to have seen something.

 

Bonnie had been awakened too early and parted from Eren and Mouse. She immediately had an urge to lose control, to have a breakdown at once. She was shivering all over.Damon! Help me!

Then she saw a girl who couldn’t seem to get up off her pallet and saw a woman with arms like a man’s go over with a white ash rod to administer punishment.

       And then something seemed to go blank in Bonnie’s mind. Elena or Meredith might have tried to stop the woman, or even this huge machine they were caught in, but Bonnie couldn’t. The only thing she could do was try not to have a breakdown. She had a song stuck in her head, not even a song she liked, but it repeated endlessly over and over as the slaves around her were dehumanized, broken into mechanical, but clean, mindless bodies.

       She was being scrubbed mercilessly by two muscular women whose whole life doubtless consisted of scrubbing grimy street girls into pink cleanliness—at least for a night. But finally her protests led the women to actually look at her—with her fair, almost translucent skin scrubbed raw—and concentrate instead on washing her hair, which felt as if it were being pulled out at the roots. Finally, though, she was done and was given an adequate towel with which to dry off. Next, in what she was realizing was a giant assembly line, were kinder plump women who stripped off the towel and proceeded to put her on a couch and massage her with oil. Just when she was starting to feel better she was hustled up to have the oil removed, except that which had soaked into her skin. Women then appeared who measured her, calling out the numbers as they did, and by the time Bonnie had tramped to the wardrobe station, three dresses were waiting for her on a bar. There was a black one, a green one, and a gray one.

       I’ll get the green for sure because of my hair, Bonnie thought blankly, but after she had tried all three on, a woman took the green and gray away, leaving Bonnie in a little black bubble dress, strapless, with a glittery touch of white material at the neck.

       Next was a giant sanitary room, where her dress was carefully covered with a white paper robe that kept ripping. She was led to a chair with a hair dryer and the rudiments of makeup, which a white-shirted woman used to put too much on Bonnie’s face. Then the hair dryer was swung over her head, and Bonnie, with a stolen tissue, took off as much makeup as she dared. She didn’t want to look good, didn’t want to be sold. When she finished she had silvery eyelids, a touch of blush, and velvety rose-red lipstick that wouldn’t wipe off.

       After that she just sat and finger-combed her hair until it was dry, which the ancient machine announced with aping.

       The next station was a bit like the day after Thanksgiving at a big shoe store. The stronger or more determined girls managed to wrench shoes away from their weaker sisters and jammed them on one foot, only to start the process again the next minute. Bonnie was lucky. She saw a tiny black shoe that had a faintly silvery bow coming down the ramp and kept her eye on it while it passed from girl to girl until someone dropped it and then she swooped in and tried it on. She didn’t know what she would have done if it hadn’t fit. But it did fit, and she went to the next station to get its mate. As she sat waiting, other girls were trying on perfume. Bonnie saw two entire bottles go down the bodices of girls and wondered if they meant to sell them or try to poison themselves with them. There were also flowers. Bonnie was already dizzy with perfume and had decided not to wear any, but a tall woman bellowed over her head and a garland of freesia was pinned to frame her curls, without anyone asking her permission.

       The last station was the hardest to bear. She had on no jewelry and would have worn only one bracelet with the dress. But she was given two: slim unbreakable plastic bracelets, each with a number on it—her identity from now on, she was told.

       Slave bracelets. She had now been washed, packaged, and stamped, so that she could be conveniently sold.

       Damon! she cried voicelessly, but something had died inside her, and she knew now that her calls would not be answered.

 

“She was picked up as a runaway slave and confiscated,” the sweetshop man told Damon impatiently. “And that’s all I know.”

Damon was left with a feeling he didn’t often have. Sickening terror. He was really beginning to believe that this time he had cut it too fine; that he would be too late to save his redbird. That any of several dreadful scenarios might have played out before he got to her.

       He couldn’t stand to visualize them in detail. What he would do if he didn’t find her in time…

       He reached out and without the slightest effort gripped the sweetshop man around the throat, lifting him off the floor.

       “We need to have a little chat,” he said, turning the full force of his menacing dark eyes on the bulging ones of his prey. “About justhow she got confiscated. Don’t struggle. If you haven’t hurt the girl, you’ve got nothing to fear. If you have…”

       He pulled the terrified man completely across the counter and said very softly, “If you have, then, by all means struggle. It won’t make any difference in the end—if you know what I mean?”

 

The girls were put into the largest carriages Bonnie had yet seen in the Dark Dimension, three slim girls to a seat and two sets of seats in a carriage. She got a nasty jolt, though, when instead of going forward like a carriage, the whole thing was lifted straight up by sweaty male slaves straining at poles. It was a giant litter and Bonnie immediately snatched off her freesia garland and buried her nose in it. It had the added function of hiding her tears.

 

“Do you have any idea of how many homes and dancing rooms and halls and theaters there are where girls are being sold tonight?” The golden-haired Guardian looked at him sardonically.

“If I knew that,” Damon said with a cold and ominous smile, “I wouldn’t be here asking you.”

       The Guardian shrugged. “Our job is really only to try to keep the peace here—and you can see how well we succeed. It’s a matter of too few of us; we’re insanely understaffed. But I can give you a list of the venues where girls are being sold. Still, as I said, I doubt you’ll be able to find your runaway before morning. And by the way, we’ll have an eye on you, because of your little query. If your runaway wasn’t a slave, she’s Imperial property—no humans are free here. If she was, and you freed her, as reported by the baker across the street—”

       “Sweet-seller.”

       “Whatever. Then he had a right to use a stun gun when she ran. Better for her, really, than being Imperial property; they tend to char, if you get my drift. That level’s a long way down.”

       “But if she was a slave—my slave…”

       “Then you can have her. But there’s a certain mandatory punishment setbefore you can have her. We want to discourage this kind of thing.”

       Damon looked at her with eyes that made her shrink and look away, abruptly losing her authority. “Why?” he demanded. “I thought you claimed to be from the other Court. You know. The Celestial one?”

       “We want to discourage runaways because there’ve been so many since some girl named Alianna came around,” the Guardian said, her frightened pulse visible in her temple. “And then they get caught and have even more reason to try it again…and it wears out the girl, eventually.”

 

There was no one in the Great Hall when Bonnie and the others were hustled off the giant litter and into the building.

“It’s a new one, so it’s not on the lists,” Mouse said, unexpectedly at her shoulder. “Not that many people will know about it, so it doesn’t fill up till late, when the music gets loud.”

       Mouse seemed to be clinging to her for comfort. That was fine, but Bonnie needed some comfort of her own. The next minute she saw Eren and, dragging Mouse behind her, headed for the blond girl.

       Eren was standing with her back against the wall. “Well, we can stand around like wallflowers,” she said, as a few men came in, “or we can look like we’re having the best time of any of them right here by ourselves. Who knows a story?”

       “Oh, I do,” Bonnie said absently, thinking of the star ball with itsFive Hundred Stories for Young Ones.

       Instantly there was a clamor. “Tell it!” “Yes, please tell!”

       Bonnie tried to think of the fairy tales that she had experienced.

       Of course. The one about the kitsune treasure.

 

 

           

 

16

      

“Once upon a time,” began Bonnie, “there were a young girl and boy…”

She was immediately interrupted. “What were their names?” “Were they slaves?” “Where did they live?” “Were they vampires?”

       Bonnie almost forgot her misery and laughed. “Their names were…Jack and…Jill. They were kitsune, and they lived way up north in the kitsune sector around the Great Crossings…” And she proceeded, albeit with many excited interruptions, to tell the story she had gotten from the star ball.

       “So,” Bonnie concluded nervously, as she opened her eyes and realized that she’d attracted quite a crowd with her story, “that’s the tale of the Seven Treasures, and—and I suppose the moral is—don’t be too greedy, or you won’t end up with anything.”

       There was a lot of laughter, the nervous giggling of the girls and the “Haw! Haw haw!” kind of laughter from the crowd behind them. Which Bonnie now noticed was entirely male.

       One part of her mind started unconsciously to go into flirt mode. Another part immediately squashed it. These weren’t boys looking for a dance; these were ogres and vampires and kitsune and even men with mustaches—and they wanted tobuy her in her little black bubble dress, and as nice as the dress might be for some things, it wasn’t like the long, jeweled gowns that Lady Ulma had made for them. Then they had been princesses, wearing a fortune’s worth of jewels at their throats and wrists and hair—and besides, they had had fierce protection with them at all times.

       But now, she was wearing something that felt a lot like a baby-doll nightgown and delicate little shoes with silvery bows. And she wasn’t protected because this society said you had to have men to be protected, and, worst of all…she was a slave.

       “I wonder,” said a golden-haired man, moving through the girls around her, all of whom hurried out of his way except Mouse and Eren, “I wonder if you would go upstairs with me and perhaps tellme a story—in private.”

       Bonnie tried to swallow her gasp. Now she was the one hanging on to Mouse and Eren.

       “All such requests must go through me. No one is to take a girl out of the room unless I approve,” announced a woman in a full-length dress, with a sympathetic, almost Madonna-like face. “That will be treated as theft of my mistress’s property. And I’m sure we don’t all want to be arrested as if we’d been caught carrying off the silverware,” she said and laughed lightly.

       There was equally light laughter among the guests as well, and movement toward the woman—at a sort of mannerly run.

       “You tell really good stories,” Mouse said in her soft voice. “It’s more fun than using a star ball.”

       “Mouse, here, is right,” Eren said, grinning. “You do tell good stories. I wonder if that place really exists.”

       “Well, Igot it out of a star ball,” Bonnie said. “One that the girl—um, Jill, put her memories in, I think—but then how did it get out of that tower? How did she know what happened to Jack? And I read a story about a giant dragon and that felt real too. How do they do it?”

       “Oh, they trick you,” Eren said, waving a dismissive hand. “They have somebody go someplace cold for the scenery—an ogre probably, because of the weather.”

       Bonnie nodded. She’d met mauve-skinned ogres before. They only differed from demons in their level of stupidity. At this level, they tended to be stupid in society, and she’d heard Damon say with a curled lip that the ones that were out of society were hired muscle. Thugs.

       “And the rest they just fake somehow—I don’t know. Never really thought about it.” Eren looked up at Bonnie. “You’re an odd one, aren’t you, Bonny?”

       “Am I?” Bonnie asked. She and the two other girls had revolved, without letting go of hands. This meant that there was some space behind Bonnie. She didn’t like that. But, then, she didn’t like anything about being a slave. She was starting to hyperventilate. She wanted Meredith. She wanted Elena. She wantedout of here.

       “Um, you guys probably don’t want to associate with me anymore,” she said uncomfortably.

       “Huh?” said Eren.

       “Why?” asked Mouse.

       “Because I’m running through that door. I have to get out. I have to.”

       “Kid, calm down,” Eren said. “Just keep breathing.”

       “No, you don’t understand.” Bonnie put her head down, to shade out some of the world. “I can’tbelong to somebody. I’m going crazy.”

       “Sh, Bonny, they’re—”

       “I can’tstay here,” Bonnie burst out.

       “Well, that’s probably all to the good,” a terrible voice, right in front of her, said.

       No! Oh, God. No, no, no, no, no!

       “When we’re in a new business we work hard,” the Madonna-like woman’s voice said. “We look up at prospective customers. We don’t misbehave or we are punished.” And even though her voice was sweet as pecan pie, Bonnie somehow knew that the harsh voice in the night shouting at them to find a pallet and stay on it, had been this same woman.

       And now there was a strong hand under her chin and Bonnie couldn’t keep it from forcing her head up, or from covering her mouth when she screamed.

       In front of her, with the delicate pointed ears of a fox, and the long sweeping black tail of a fox but otherwise looking human, looking like a regular guy wearing jeans and a sweater, was Shinichi. And in his golden eyes she could see, twisting and turning, a little scarlet flame that just matched the red on the tip of his tail and the hair that fell across his forehead.

       Shinichi. He was here. Of course he could travel through the dimensions; he still had a full star ball that none of Elena’s group had ever found as well as those magical keys Elena had told Bonnie about. Bonnie remembered the horrible night when trees, actual trees, had turned into something that could understand and obey him. About how four of them each grabbed one of her arms and legs and pulled, as if they were planning to pull her apart. She could feel tears leaking out behind her shut eyelids.

       And the Old Wood. He’d controlled every aspect of it, every creeper to trip you, every tree to fall in front of your car. Until Elena had blasted all but that one thicket of the Old Wood, it had been full of terrifying insect-like creatures Stefan called malach.

       But now Bonnie’s hands were behind her back and she heard something fasten with a very final-sounding click.

       No…oh, please no…

       But her hands were definitely fixed in place. And then someone—an ogre or a vampire—picked her up as the lovely woman gave Shinichi a small key off a key ring full of identical keys. Shinichi handed this to a big ogre whose fingers were so large that they eclipsed it. And then Bonnie, who was screaming, was quickly whisked up four flights of stairs and a heavy door thunked shut behind her. The ogre carrying her followed Shinichi, whose sleek scarlet-tipped tail swung jauntily from a hole in his jeans, back and forth, back and forth. Bonnie thought: That’s satisfaction. He thinks he’s won this already.

       But unless Damon really had forgotten her completely, he would hurt Shinichi for this. Maybe he would kill him. It was an oddly comforting thought. It was even ro—

       No, it’s not romantic, you nitwit! You have to find a way to get out of this mess! Death is not romantic, it’s horrible!

       They had reached the final doors at the end of the hall. Shinichi turned right and walked all the way down a long corridor. There the ogre used the key to open a door.

       The room had an adjustable overhead gaslight. It was dim but Shinichi said, “Can we have a little illumination, please?” in a false polite voice, and the other ogre hurried and turned the light up to interrogation-lamp-in-your-face level.

       The room was a sort of bedroom-den combination, the kind you’d get at a decent hotel. It had a couch and some chairs on the upper level. There was a window, closed, on the left side of the room. There was also a window on the right side of the room, where all the other rooms should be in a line. This window had no curtains or blinds that could be drawn and it reflected Bonnie’s pale face back at her. She knew at once what it was, a two-way mirror, so that people in the room behind it could see into this room but notbe seen. The couch and chairs were positioned to face it.

       Beyond the sitting room, off to her left, was the bed. It wasn’t a very fancy bed, just white covers that looked pink, because there was a real window on that side that was almost in a line with the sun, sitting as it always was, on the horizon. Right now, Bonnie hated it more than ever before because it turned every light-colored object in the room pink, rose, or outright red. The bow at her own bodice was deep pink now. She was going to die saturated with the color of blood.

       Something on some deeper level told her that her mind was thinking of such things as distractions, that even thinking about hating to die in such a juvenile color was running away from the bit in the middle, the dying bit. But the ogre holding her moved her around as if she weighed nothing, and Bonnie kept having little thoughts—were they premonitions? Oh, God, let them not be premonitions!—about going out of that red window in a sitting position, the glass no impediment to her body being thrown at a tremendous force. And how many stories up were they? High enough, anyway, that there was no hope of landing without…well, dying.

       Shinichi smiled, lounging by the red window, playing with the cord to the blinds.

       “I don’t even know what you want from me!” Bonnie found herself saying to Shinichi. “I’ve never been able to hurt you. It was you hurting other people—like me!—all the time.”

       “Well, there were your friends,” murmured Shinichi. “Although I seldom wreak my dread revenge against lovely young women with red-gold hair.” He lounged beside the window and examined her, murmuring, “Hair of red-gold; heart true and bold. Perhaps a scold…”

       Bonnie felt like screaming. Didn’t he remember her? He certainly seemed to have remembered their group, since he’d mentioned revenge. “What do youwant?” she gasped.

       “You are a hindrance, I’m afraid. And I find you very suspicious—and delicious. Young women with red-gold hair are always so elusive.”

       Bonnie couldn’t find anything to say. From everything she’d seen, Shinichi was a nutcase. But a very dangerous psychopathic nutcase. And all he enjoyed was destroying things.

       In just one moment there could be a crash through the window—and then she’d be sitting on air. And then the fall would begin. What would that feel like? Or would she already be falling? She only hoped that at the bottom it was quick.

       “You seem to have learned a lot aboutmy people,” Shinichi said. “More than most.”

       “Please,” Bonnie said desperately. “If it’s about the story—all I know about kitsune is that you’re destroying my town. And—” She stopped short, realizing that she could never let him know what had happened in her out-of-body experience. So she could never mention the jars or he’d know that they knew how to catch him. “And you won’t stop,” she finished lamely.

       “And yet you found an ancient star ball with stories about our legendary treasures.”

       “About what? You mean from that kiddy star ball? Look, if you’ll just leave me alone I’llgive it to you.” She knew exactly where she’d left it, too, right beside her sorry excuse for a pillow.

       “Oh, we’ll leave you alone…in time, I assure you,” Shinichi said with an unnerving smile. He had a smile like Damon’s, which wasn’t meant to say “Hello; I won’t hurt you.” It was more like “Hullo! Here’s my lunch!”

       “I find it…curious,” Shinichi went on, still fiddling with the cord. “Very curious that just in the middle of our little dispute, you arrive here in the Dark Dimension again, alone, apparently without fear, and manage to bargain for a star ball. An orb that just happens to detail the location of our most priceless treasures that were stolen from us…a long, long time ago.”

       You don’t care about anybody but yourself, Bonnie thought. You’re suddenly acting all patriotic and stuff, but in Fell’s Church you didn’t pretend to care about anything but hurting people.

       “In your little town, as in other towns throughout history, I had orders to do what I did,” Shinichi said, and Bonnie’s heart plunged right down to her shoes. He was telepathic. He knew what she was thinking. He’d heard her thinking about the jars.

       Shinichi smirked. “Little towns like the one on Unmei no Shima have to be wiped off the face of the earth,” he said. “Did you see the number of ley lines of Power underit?” Another smirk. “But of course you weren’t really there, so you probably didn’t.”

       “If you can tell what I’m thinking, you know that story about treasures was just a story,” Bonnie said. “It was in the star ball calledFive Hundred Stories for Young Ones. It’s not real.”

       “How strange then that it coincides so exactly with what the Seven Kitsune Gates are supposed to have behind them.”

       “It was in the middle of a bunch of stories about the—the Düz-Aht-Bhi’iens. I mean the story right before it was about a kid buying candy,” Bonnie said. “So why don’t you just go get the star ball instead of trying to scare me?” Her voice was beginning to tremble. “It’s at the inn right across the street from the shop where I was—arrested. Just go andget it!”

       “Of course we’ve tried that,” Shinichi said impatiently. “The landlady was quite cooperative after we gave her some…compensation. There is no such story in that star ball.”

       “That’s not possible!” Bonnie said. “Where did I get it, then?”

       “That’s whatI’m asking you.”

       Stomach fluttering, Bonnie said, “How many star balls did you look at in that brown room?”

       Shinichi’s eyes went blurry briefly. Bonnie tried to listen, but he was obviously speaking telepathically to someone close, on a tight frequency.

       Finally he said, “Twenty-eight star balls, exactly.”

       Bonnie felt as if she’d been clubbed. Shewasn’t going crazy—she wasn’t. She’d experienced that story. She knew every fissure in every rock, every shadow in the snow. The only answers were that the real star ball had been stolen, or—or maybe that they hadn’t looked hard enough at the ones they had.

       “The story is there,” she insisted. “Right before it is the story about little Marit going to a—”

       “We probed the table of contents. There is the story about a child and”—he looked scornful—“a sweetshop. But not the other.”

       Bonnie just shook her head. “Iswear I’m telling the truth.”

       “Why should I believe you?”

       “Why does itmatter? How could I make something like that up? And why would I tell a story I knew would get me in trouble? It doesn’t make any sense.”

       Shinichi stared at her hard. Then he shrugged, his ears flat against his head. “What a pity you keep saying that.”

       Suddenly Bonnie’s heart was pounding in her chest, in her tight throat. “Why?”

       “Because,” Shinichi said coolly, pulling the blinds completely open so that Bonnie was abruptly drenched in the color of fresh blood, “I’m afraid that now we have to kill you.”

       The ogre holding her strode toward the window. Bonnie screamed. In places like this, she knew screams went unheard.

       She didn’t know what else to do.

 

 

           

 

17

      

Meredith and Matt were sitting at the breakfast table, which seemed sadly empty without Bonnie. It was amazing how much space that slight body had seemed to fill, and how much more serious everyone was without her. Meredith knew that if Elena had done her best, she could have offset it. But she also knew that Elena had one thing on her mind above all others, and that was Stefan, who was stricken with guilt for allowing his brother to abduct Bonnie. And meanwhile Meredith knew that both she and Matt were feeling guilty too, because today they would be leaving the other three, even if only for the evening. They each had been summoned home by parents who demanded to see them for dinner.

Mrs. Flowers clearly didn’t want them to feel too badly. “With the help you’ve given, I can make our urns,” she said. “Since Matt has found my wheel—”

       “I didn’t exactly find it,” Matt said under his breath. “It was there in the storage room all the time and it fell on me.”

       “—and since Meredith has received her pictures—along, I’m sure, with an email from Mr. Saltzman—perhaps she could get them enlarged or whatever.”

       “Of course, and show them to the Saitous, too, to make sure that the symbols say the things we want them to,” Meredith promised. “And Bonnie can—”

       She broke off short. Idiot! She was an idiot, she thought. And, as a hunter-slayer, she was supposed to be clear-minded and at all times maintain control. She felt terrible when she looked at Matt and saw the naked pain in his face.

       “Dear Bonnie will surely be home soon,” Mrs. Flowers finished for her.

       And we all know that’s a lie, and I don’t have to be psychic to detect it, Meredith thought. She noticed that Mrs. Flowers hadn’t weighed in with anything from Mama.

       “We’ll all be just fine here,” Elena said, finally picking up the ball as she realized that Mrs. Flowers was looking at her with ladylike distress. “You two think we’re some kind of babies who need to be taken care of,” she said, smiling at Matt and Meredith, “but you’re just babies too! Off you go! But be careful.”

       They went, Meredith giving Elena one last glance. Elena nodded very slightly, then turned stiffly, mimicking holding a bayonet. It was the changing of the guard.

 

Elena let Stefan help her clean up the dishes—they were all letting him do little things now because he looked so much better. They spent the morning trying to contact Bonnie in different ways. But then Mrs. Flowers asked if Elena could board up the last few of the basement windows, and Stefan couldn’t stand it. Matt and Meredith had already done a far more dangerous job. They’d hung two tarps from the house’s ridgepole, each one hanging down one side of the main roof. On each tarp were the characters that Isobel’s mother put on the Post-it Note amulets she always gave them, painted at an enormous scale in black paint. Stefan had been allowed only to watch and give suggestions from the widow’s walk above his attic bedroom. But now…

“We’ll nail up the boards together,” he said firmly, and went off to get a hammer and nails.

       It wasn’t really such a hard job anyway. Elena held the boards and Stefan wielded the hammer and she trusted him not to hit her fingers, which meant that they got on very quickly.

       It was a perfect day—clear, sunny, with a slight breeze. Elena wondered what was happening to Bonnie,right now, and if Damon was taking care of her properly—or at all. She seemed unable to shake off her worries these last days: over Stefan, over Bonnie, and over a curious feeling that she had to know what was going on in town. Maybe she could disguise herself…

       God, no! Stefan said voicelessly. When she turned he was spitting out nails and looking both horrified and ashamed. Apparently she’d been projecting.

       “I’m sorry,” he said before Elena could get the nails out ofher mouth, “but you know better than anyone why you can’t go.”

       “But it’smaddening not knowing what’s happening,” Elena said, having gotten rid of her nails. “We don’t know anything. What’s happening to Bonnie, what state the town’s in—”

       “Let’s finish this board,” Stefan said. “And then let me hold you.”

       When the last board was secure, Stefan raised her from the lower embankment where she was sitting, not bride-style, but kid-style, putting her toes on top of his feet. He danced her a little, whirled her a couple of times in the air, and then nabbed her coming down again.

       “I know your problem,” he said soberly.

       Elena looked up quickly. “You do?” she said, alarmed.

       Stefan nodded, and to her further alarm said, “It’s Love-itis. Means the patient has a whole slew of people she cares about, and she can’t be happy unless each and every one of them is safe and happy themselves.”

       Elena deliberately slipped off his shoes and looked up at him. “Some more than others,” she said hesitantly.

       Stefan looked down at her and then he took her in his arms. “I’m not as good as you,” he said while Elena’s heart pounded in shame and remorse for ever having touched Damon, ever having danced with him, ever having kissed him. “Ifyou are happy, that’s all I want, after that prison. I can live; I can die…peacefully.”

       “Ifwe’re happy,” Elena corrected.

       “I won’t tempt the gods. I’ll settle foryou.”

       “No, you can’t! Don’t you see? If you disappeared again, I’d worry and fret and follow you. To Hell if I had to.”

       “I’ll take you with me wherever I go,” Stefan said hastily. “If you’ll take me withyou.”

       Elena relaxed slightly. That would do, for now. As long as Stefan was with her she could stand anything.

       They sat and cuddled, right under the open sky, even with a maple tree and a clump of slender waving beeches nearby. She extended her aura a little and felt it touch Stefan’s. Peace flooded into her, and all the dark thoughts were left behind.Almost all.

       “Since I first saw you, I loved you—but it was the wrong kind of love. See how long it took me to figure that out?” Elena whispered into the hollow of his throat.

       “Since I first saw you, I lovedyou—but I didn’t know who you really were. You were like a ghost in a dream. But you put me straight pretty quickly,” Stefan said, obviously glad that he could brag about her. “And we’ve survived—everything. They say long-distance relationships can be pretty difficult,” he added, laughing, and then he stopped, and she could feel all his faculties fixed on her suddenly, breath stopping so he could hear her better.

       “But then, there’s Bonnie and Damon,” he said before she could say or think a word. “We have to find them soon—and they’d damn well better be together—or it had better have been Bonnie’s decision to part.”

       “There’s Bonnie and Damon,” agreed Elena, glad that she could share even her darkest thoughts with someone. “I can’t think about them. I can’tnot think about them. We do have to find them, and very fast—but I pray that they’re with Lady Ulma now. Maybe Bonnie is going to a ball or gala. Maybe Damon is hunting with that Black Ops program.”

       “As long as nobody’s really hurt.”

       “Yes.” Elena tried hard to tuck herself closer to Stefan. She wanted to—be closer to him, somehow. The way they had when she had been out of her body and she had just sunk into him.

       But of course, with regular bodies, they couldn’t…

       But of course theycould. Now. Her blood…

       Elena really didn’t know which of them thought of it first. She looked away, embarrassed at even having considered it—and caught the tail end of Stefan looking away too.

       “I don’t think we have the right,” she whispered. “Not to—be that happy—when everyone else is miserable. Or doing things for the town or for Bonnie.”

       “Of course we don’t,” Stefan said firmly, but he had to gulp a little first.

       “No,” Elena said.

       “No,” Stefan said firmly, and then right in the middle of her echoing “no,” he went and pulled her up and kissed her breathless.

       And of course, Elena couldn’t let him do that and not get even. So she demanded, still breathless, but almost angry, that he say “no” again, and when he did it she caughthim and kissed him.

       “You were happy,” she accused a moment later. “I felt it.”

       Stefan was too much of a gentleman to accuse her of being happy because of anything she might do. He said, “I couldn’t help it. It just happened by itself. I felt our minds together, and that made me happy. But then I remembered about poor Bonnie. And—”

       “Poor Damon?”

       “Well, somehow I don’t think we need to go so far as to call him ‘poor Damon.’ But I did remember him,” he said.

       “Well done,” Elena said.

       “We’d better go inside now,” Stefan said. And then hastily, “Downstairs, I mean. Maybe we can think of something more to do for them.”

       “Likewhat? There’s not a thing I can think of. I did meditation and Attempt to Contact by Out-of-Body Experience—”

       “From nine thirty to ten thirty A.M.,” Stefan said. “And meanwhile I was trying all frequency telepathic calls. No response.”

       “Then we tried with the Ouija board.”

       “For half an hour—and all we got was nonsense.”

       “It did tell us the clay was coming.”

       “I think that was me bumping it toward ‘yes.’”

       “Then I tried to tap into the ley lines below us for Power—”

       “From eleven to around eleven thirty,” Stefan recited. “While I tried to go into hibernation to have a prophetic dream….”

       “Wereally tried hard,” Elena said grimly.

       “And then we nailed the last few boards up,” Stefan added. “Bringing us to a little after twelve thirty P.M.”

       “Can you think of a single Plan—we’re down to G or H now—that might allow us to help them any more?”

       “I can’t. I just honestly can’t,” Stefan said. Then he added, hesitantly, “Maybe Mrs. Flowers has some housework for us. Or”—even more hesitantly, testing the waters—“we could go into town.”

       “No! You’re definitely not strong enough for that!” Elena said sharply. “And there’s no more housework,” she added. Then she threw everything to the wind. Every responsibility. Every rationality. Just like that. She began to tow Stefan to the house so they could get there quicker.

       “Elena—”

       I’m burning my bridges! Elena thought stubbornly, and suddenly she didn’t care. And if Stefan cared she wouldbite him. But it was as if some spell had suddenly come over her so that she felt she would die without his touch. She wanted to touch him. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to be her mate.

       “Elena!” Stefan could hear what she was thinking. He was torn, of course, Elena thought. Stefan was always torn. But how dare he be torn aboutthis?

       She turned around to face him, blazing. “You don’t want to!”

       “I don’t want to do it and then find out I’ve Influenced you into it!”

       “You wereInfluencing me?” shouted Elena.

       Stefan threw out his hands and yelled, “How can I know when I want you so much?”

       Oh. Well, that was better. There was a little glitter in Elena’s side-eye and she looked at it and realized that Mrs. Flowers had quietly shut a window.

       Elena darted a glance at Stefan. He was trying not to blush. She doubled over, trying not to laugh. Then she stood on his shoes again.

       “Maybe wedeserve an hour alone”—dangerously.

       “A whole hour?” Stefan’s conspiratorial whisper made an hour sound like eternity.

       “Wedo deserve it,” Elena said, enthralled. She began to tow him again.

       “No.” Stefan pulled her back, lifted her—bridal-style—and suddenly they were going straight up, fast. They shot up three stories and a little more and landed on the platform of the widow’s walk above his room.

       “But it’s locked from inside—”

       Stefan stomped on the trapdoor—hard. The door disappeared.

       Elena was impressed.

       They floated down into Stefan’s room amid a shaft of light and motes of dust that looked like fireflies or stars.

       “I’m a little nervous,” Elena said.

       She heeled her sandals off and slid out of her jeans and top and into bed…only to find Stefan already there.

       They’re faster, she thought. As fast as you think you are, they’re always faster.

       She turned toward Stefan in the bed. She was wearing a camisole and underwear. She was scared.

       “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t even have to bite you.”

       “You do so. It’s all that weird stuff about my blood.”

       “Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d forgotten. Elena would bet that he hadn’t forgotten a word about her blood…allowing vampires to do things they couldn’t otherwise. Her life energy gave them back all their human abilities, and he wouldn’t forget that.

       They’re smarter, she thought.

       “Stefan, it’s not supposed to be like this! I’m supposed to parade in front of you in a golden negligee designed by Lady Ulma, with jewels by Lucen and golden stilts—which I don’t own. And there are supposed to be scattered flower petals on the bed and roses in little round bubble bowls and white vanilla candles.”

       “Elena,” Stefan said, “come here.”

       She went into his arms, and let herself breathe in the fresh smell of him, warm and spicy, with a trace of rusty nails.

       You’re my life, Stefan told her silently. We’re not going to do anything today. There’s not much time, and you deserve your golden negligee and your roses and candles. If not from Lady Ulma, from the finest Earth designers that money can provide. But…kiss me?

       Elena kissed him willingly, so glad that he was willing to wait. The kiss was warm and comforting and she didn’t mind the slight taste of rust. And it was wonderful to be with someone who would provide exactly what she needed, whether that was a slight mind probe, just to make her feel safer, or…

       And then sheet lightning hit them. It seemed to come from both of them at once, and then Elena involuntarily clamped her teeth on Stefan’s lip, drawing blood.

       Stefan locked his arms around her, and barely waited for her to back off a little, before deliberately taking her lower lip in his own teeth and…after a moment of tension that seemed to last forever…biting down hard.

       Elena almost cried out. She almost then and there unleashed the still-undefinedWings of Destruction on him. But two things stopped her. One, Stefan had never, ever hurt her before. And, two, she was being drawn into something so ancient and mystical that she couldn’t stop now.

       A minute of finessing and Stefan had the two little wounds aligned. Blood surged from Elena’s bleeding lip and, in direct connection with Stefan’s less serious wound, caused a backflow. Her blood into his lip.

       And the same thing happened with Stefan’s blood; some of it, rich with Power, rushed into Elena.

       It wasn’t perfect. A bead of blood swelled and stood gleaming on Elena’s lip. But Elena couldn’t have cared less. A moment later the bead dropped down into Stefan’s mouth and she felt the sheer staggering power of how much he loved her.

       She herself was concentrating on one single tiny feeling, somewhere in the center of this storm they’d called up. This kind of exchange of blood—she was sure as she could be—this was the old way, the way that two vampires could share blood and love and their souls. She was being drawn into Stefan’s mind. She felt his soul, pure and unconstrained, swirling around her with a thousand different emotions, tears from his past, joy from the present, all open without a trace of a shield from her.

       She felt her own soul lift to meet his, herself unshielded and unafraid. Stefan had long ago seen any selfishness, vanity, over-ambition in her—and forgiven it. He’d seen all of her and loved all of her, even the bad parts.

       And so she saw him, as darkness as tender as rest, as gentle as evensong, wrapping black protective wings around her…

       Stefan, I…

       Love…I know…

       That was when someone knocked on the door.

 

 

           

 

18

      

After breakfast Matt went online to find two stores, neither in Fell’s Church, that had the amount of clay Mrs. Flowers said she’d need and that said they’d deliver. But after that there was the matter of driving away from the boardinghouse and by the last lonely remains of where the Old Wood had been. He drove by the little thicket where Shinichi often came like a demonic Pied Piper with the possessed children shuffling behind him—the place where Sheriff Mossberg had gone after them and hadn’t come out. Where, later, protected by magical wards on Post-it Notes, he and Tyrone Alpert had pulled out a bare, chewed femur.

Today, he figured the only way to get past the thicket was to work his wheezing junk car up by stages, and it was actually going over sixty when he flew by the thicket, even managing to hit the turn perfectly. No trees fell on him, no swarms of foot-long bugs.

       He whispered “Whoa,” in relief and headed for home. He dreaded that—but simply driving through Fell’s Church was so horrible it glued his tongue to the top of his mouth. It looked—this pretty, innocent little town where he had grown up—as if it were one of those neighborhoods you saw on TV or on the Internet that had been bombed, or something. And whether it was bombs or disasterous fires, one house in four was simply rubble. A few were half-rubble, with police tape enclosing them, which meant that whatever had happened had happened early enough for the police to care—or dare. Around the burned-out bits the vegetation flourished strangely: a decorative bush from one house grown so as to be halfway across a neighbor’s grass. Vines dipping from one tree to another, to another, as if this were some ancient jungle.

       His home was right in the middle of a long block of houses full of kids—and in summer, when grandchildren inevitably came to visit, there were evenmore kids. Matt just hoped that that part of summer vacation was done…but would Shinichi and Misao let the youngsters go home? Matt had no idea. And, if they went home, would they keep spreading the disease in their own hometowns? Where did it stop?

       Driving down his block, though, Matt saw nothing hideous. There were kids playing out on the front lawns, or the sidewalks, crouching over marbles, hanging out in the trees. There was no single overt thing that he could put his finger on that was weird.

       He was still uneasy. But he’d reached his house now, the one with a grand old oak tree shading the porch, so he had to get out. He coasted to a stop just under the tree and parked by the sidewalk. He grabbed a large laundry bag from the backseat. He’d been accumulating dirty clothes for a couple of weeks at the boardinghouse and it hadn’t seemed fair to ask Mrs. Flowers to wash them.

       As he got out of the car, pulling the bag out with him, he was just in time to hear the birdsong stop.

       For a moment after it did, he wondered what was wrong. He knew that something was missing, cut short. It made the air heavier. It even seemed to change the smell of the grass.

       Then he realized. Every bird, including the raucous crows that lived in the oak trees, had gone silent.

       All at once.

       Matt felt a twisting in his belly as he looked up and around. There were two kids in the oak tree right beside his car. His mind was still stubbornly trying to hang on to: Children. Playing. Okay. His body was smarter. His hand was already in his pocket, pulling out a pad of Post-it Notes: the flimsy bits of paper that usually stopped evil magic cold.

       Matt hoped Meredith would remember to ask Isobel’s mother for more amulets. He was running low, and…

       …and there were two kids playing in the old oak tree. Except they weren’t. They were staring at him. One boy was hanging upside down by his knees and the other was gobbling something…out of a garbage bag.

       The hanging kid was staring at him with strangely acute eyes. “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be dead?” he asked.

       And now the head of the gobbling boy came up, thick bright red all around his mouth. Bright red—

       —blood. And…whatever was in the garbage bag was moving. Kicking. Thrashing weakly. Trying to get away.

       A wave of nausea washed over Matt. Acid hit his throat. He was going to puke. The gobbling kid was staring at him with stony black-as-a-pit eyes. The hanging kid was smiling.

       Then, as if stirred by a hot breath of wind, Matt felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It wasn’t just the birds that had gone quiet. Everything had. No child’s voice was raised in argument or song or speech.

       He whirled around and saw why. They were staring athim. Every single kid on the block was silently watching him. Then, with a chilling precision, as he turned back to look at the boys in the tree, all the others came toward him.

       Except they weren’t walking.

       They were creeping. Lizard-fashion. That’s why some of them had seemed to be playing with marbles on the sidewalk. They were all moving in the same way, bellies close to the ground, elbows up, hands like forepaws, knees splaying to the side.

       Now he could taste bile. He looked the other way down the street and found another group creeping. Grinning unnatural grins. It was as if someone was pulling their cheeks from behind them, pulling themhard, so that their grins almost broke their faces in half.

       Matt noticed something else. Suddenly they’d stopped, and while he stared at them, they stayed still. Perfectly still, staring back at him. But when he looked away, he saw the creeping figures out of the corner of his eye.

       He didn’t have enough Post-it Notes for all of them.

       You can’t run away from this. It sounded like an outside voice in his head. Telepathy. But maybe that was because Matt’s head had turned into a roiling red cloud, floating upward.

       Fortunately, his body heard it and suddenly he was up on the back of his car, and had grabbed the hanging kid. For a moment he had a helpless impulse to let go of the boy. The kid still stared at him but with eerie, uncanny eyes that were half rolled back in his head. Instead of dropping him, Matt slapped a Post-It Note on the boy’s forehead, swinging him at the same time to sit on the back of the car.

       A pause and then wailing. The kid must be fourteen at least, but about thirty seconds after the Ban Against Evil (pocket-size) was smacked on him he was sobbing real kid sobs.

       As one, the crawling kids let out a hiss. It was like a giant steam engine.Hsssssssssssssssssssssss.

       They began to breathe in and out very fast, as if working up to some new state. Their creeping slowed to a crawl. But they were breathing so hard Matt could see their sides hollow and fill.

       As Matt turned to look at one group of them, they froze, except for the unnatural breathing. But he could feel the ones behind him getting closer.

       By now Matt’s heart was pounding in his ears. He could fight a group of them—but not with a group on his back. Some of them looked only ten or eleven. Some looked almost his age. Some were girls, for God’s sake. Matt remembered what possessed girls had done the last time he’d met them and felt violent revulsion.

       But he knew that looking up at the gobbling kid was going to make him sicker. He could hear smacking, chewing sounds—and he could hear a thin little whistle of helpless pain and weak struggling against the bag.

       He whirled quickly again, to keep off the other side of crawlers, and then made himself look up. With a quiet crackle, the garbage bag fell away when he grabbed it but the kid held on to what was in—

       Oh my God. He’s eating a baby! A baby! A—

       He yanked the kid out of the tree and his hand automatically slapped a Post-It onto the boy’s back. And then—then, thank God, he saw the fur. It wasn’t a baby. It was too small to be a baby, even a newborn. But it was eaten.

       The kid raised his bloody face to Matt’s, and Matt saw that it was Cole Reece, Cole who was only thirteen and lived right next door. Matt hadn’t even recognized him before.

       Cole’s mouth was wide open in horror now, and his eyes were bulging out of his head with terror and sorrow, and tears and snot were streaming down his face.

       “He made me eat Toby,” he started in a whisper that became a scream. “He made me eat my guinea pig! He made me—why why why did he do that? I ATE TOBY!”

       He threw up all over Matt’s shoes. Blood-red vomit.

       Merciful death for the animal.Quick, Matt thought. But this was the hardest thing he’d ever tried to do. How to do it—a hard stomp on the creature’s head? He couldn’t. He had to try something else first.

       Matt peeled off a Post-It Note and put it, trying not to look, on the fur. And just like that it was over. The guinea pig went slack. The spell had undone whatever had been keeping it alive up to this point.

       There was blood and puke on Matt’s hands, but he made himself turn to Cole. Cole had his eyes shut tight and little choking sounds came from him.

       Something in Matt snapped.

       “You want some ofthis?” he shouted, holding out the Post-it pad as if it were the revolver he’d left with Mrs. Flowers. He whirled again, shouting, “ You want some? How about you? You, Josh?” He was recognizing faces now. “You, Madison? How ’bout you, Bryn? Bring it on! You all bring it on! BRING IT—”

       Something touched his shoulder. He spun, Post-it Note ready. Then he stopped short and relief bubbled up in him like Evian water at some fancy restaurant. He was staring right into the face of Dr. Alpert, Fell’s Church’s own country doctor. She had her SUV parked beside his car, in the middle of the street. Behind her, protecting her back, was Tyrone, who was going to be next year’s quarterback at Robert E. Lee High. His sister, a sophomore-to-be, was trying to get out of the SUV too, but she stopped when Tyrone saw her.

       “Jayneela!” he roared in a voice only the Tyre-minator could produce. “You get back in and buckle up! You know what Mom said! You do it now!”

       Matt found himself clutching at Dr. Alpert’s chocolate brown hands. Heknew she was a good woman, and a good caretaker, who had adopted her daughter’s young children when their divorced mother had died of cancer. Maybe she would help him, too. He began babbling. “Oh, God, I’ve gotta get my mom out. My mom lives here alone. And I have to get her away from here.” He knew he was sweating. He hoped he wasn’t crying.

       “Okay, Matt,” the doctor said in her husky voice. “I’m getting my own family out this afternoon. We’re going to stay with relatives in West Virginia. She’s welcome to come.”

       It couldn’t be this easy. Matt knew he had tears in his eyes now. He refused to blink, though, and let them come down. “I don’t know what to say—but if you would—you’re an adult, you see. She won’t listen to me. Shewill listen to you. This whole block is infected. This kid Cole—” He couldn’t go on. But Dr. Alpert saw it all in a flash—the animal, the boy with blood on his teeth and his mouth, still retching.

       Dr. Alpert didn’t react. She just had Jayneela throw her a packet of Wet Wipes from the SUV and held the heaving kid with one hand, while vigorously scrubbing his face clean. “Go home,” she told him sternly.

       “You have to let the infected ones go,” she said to Matt, with a terrible look in her eyes. “Cruel as it seems, they only pass it on to the few who’re still well.” Matt started to tell her about the effectiveness of the Post-it Note amulets, but she was already calling, “Tyrone! Come over here and you boys bury this poor animal. Then you be ready to move Mrs. Honeycutt’s things into the van. Jayneela, you do what your brother says. I’m going in for a little talk with Mrs. Honeycutt right now.”

       She didn’t raise her voice much. She didn’t need to. The Tyre-minator was obeying, backing up to Matt, watching the last of the creeping children that Matt’s explosion hadn’t scattered.

       He’s quick, Matt realized. Quicker than me. It’s like a game. As long as you watch them they can’t move.

       They took turns being the watcher and handling the shovel. The earth here was hard as rock, heavy with weeds. But somehow they got a hole dug and the work helped them mentally. They buried Toby, and Matt walked around like some foot-dragging monster, trying to get the vomit off his shoes in the grass.

       Suddenly beside them there was the noise of a door banging open and Matt ran, ran to his mother, who was trying to heft a huge suitcase, much too heavy for her, through the door.

       Matt took it from her and felt himself encompassed in her hug even though she had to stand on tip-toes to do it. “Matt, I can’t just leave you—”

       “He’ll be one of those to get the town out of this mess,” Dr. Alpert said, overriding her. “He’ll clean it up. Nowwe’ve got to get out so we don’t drag him down. Matt, just so you know, I heard that the McCulloughs are getting out too. Mr. and Mrs. Sulez don’t seem to be going yet, and neither do the Gilbert-Maxwells.” She said the last two words with a distinct emphasis.

       The Gilbert-Maxwells were Elena’s aunt Judith, her husband Robert Maxwell, and Elena’s little sister, Margaret. There was no real reason to mention them. But Matt knew why Dr. Alpert had. Sheremembered seeing Elena when this whole mess had started. Despite Elena’s purification of the woods where Dr. Alpert had been standing, the doctor remembered.

       “I’ll tell—Meredith,” Matt said, and looking her in the eyes, he nodded a little, as if to say, I’ll tell Elena, too.

       “Anything else to carry?” Tyrone asked. He was encumbered by a canary birdcage, with the little bird frantically beating its wings inside, and a smaller suitcase.

       “No, but how can I thank you?” Mrs. Honeycutt said.

       “Thanks later—now, everybody in,” said Dr. Alpert. “We are takingoff.”

       Matt hugged his mother and gave her a little push toward the SUV, which had already swallowed the birdcage and small suitcase.

       “Good-bye!” everyone was yelling. Tyrone stuck his head out of the window to say, “Call me whenever! I want to help!”

       And then they were gone.

       Matt could hardly believe it was over; it had happened so fast. He ran inside the open door of his house and got his other pair of running shoes, just in case Mrs. Flowers couldn’t fix the smell of the ones he was wearing.

       When he burst out of the house again he had to blink. Instead of the white SUV there was a different white car parked beside his. He looked around the block. No children. None at all.

       And the birdsong had come back.

       There were two men in the car. One was white and one was black and they both were around the age to be concerned fathers. Anyway they had him cut off, the way their car was parked. He had no choice but to go up to them. As soon as he did they both got out of the car, watching him as if he was as dangerous as a kitsune.

       The instant they did that, Matt knew he’d made a mistake.

       “You’re Matthew Jeffrey Honeycutt?”

       Matt had no choice but to nod.

       “Say yes or no, please.”

       “Yes.” Matt could see inside the white car now. It was a stealth police car, one of those with lights inside, all ready to be fixed outside if the officers wanted to let you in on the secret.

       “Matthew Jeffrey Honeycutt, you are under arrest for assault and battery upon Caroline Beula Forbes. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—”

       “Didn’t you see those kids?” Matt was shouting. “You had to have seen one or two of them! Didn’t that meananything to you?”

       “Lean over and put your hands on the front of the car.”

       “It’s going to destroy the whole town! You’rehelping it!”

       “Do you understand these rights—?”

       “Doyou understand what is going on in Fell’s Church?”

       There was a pause this time. And then, in perfectly even tones, one of the two said, “We’re from Ridgemont.”

 

 

           

 

19

      

Bonnie decided, with seconds precious and seeming to stretch for hours, that what was going to happen was going to happen no matter what she did. And there was a matter of pride here. She knew that there were people who would laugh at that, but it was true. Despite Elena’s new Powers, Bonnie was the one most used to confronting stark darkness. She was somehow alive after all that. And very soon she would not be. And the way she went was the only thing left up to her.

She heard a glissando of screams and then she heard them come to a halt. Well, that was all she could do for the moment. Stop screaming. The choice was made. Bonnie would go out, unbroken, defiant—and silent.

       The moment she stopped shrieking Shinichi made a gesture and the ogre who had hold of her stopped carrying her to the window.

       She’d known it. He was a bully. Bullies wanted tohear that things hurt or that people were miserable. The ogre lifted her so her face was level with Shinichi’s. “Excited about your one-way trip?”

       “Thrilled,” she said expressionlessly. Hey, she thought, I’m not so bad at this brave thing. But everything inside her was shaking at double time in order to make up for her stony face.

       Shinichi opened the window. “Still thrilled?”

       Nowthat had done something, opening the window had. She was not going to be smashed against glass until she broke it with her face and went sailing through the jagged bits. There wasn’t going to be pain until she hit the ground and nobody would know about that, not even her.

       Justdo it and get it over with, Bonnie thought. The warm breeze from the window told her that this—place—this slave-selling place—where customers were allowed to sift through the slaves until they found just the right one—was too highly air-conditioned.

       I’ll be warm, even if it’s just for a second or so, she thought.

       When a door near them banged, Bonnie nearly jumped out of the ogre’s arms, and when the door to their own room banged open, she nearly jumped through her own skin.

       You see? Something surged wildly through her.I’msaved! It only took a little of that brave stuff and now…

       But it was Shinichi’s sister, Misao. Misao, looking gravely ill, her skin ashen, holding on to the door to hold herself up. The only thing about her that wasn’t grayed-out was her brilliant black hair, tipped with scarlet at the ends, just like Shinichi’s.

       “Wait!” she said to Shinichi. “You never even asked about—”

       “You think a little airhead like her would know? But have it your own way.” Shinichi seated Misao on the couch, rubbing her shoulders comfortingly. “I’ll ask.”

       Soshe was the one inside the two-way mirror room, Bonnie thought. She looks really bad. Like dying bad.

       “What happened to my sister’s star ball?” Shinichi demanded and then Bonnie saw how this thing formed a circle, with a beginning and an ending, and how, understanding this, she could die with true dignity.

       “It was my fault,” she said, with a faint smile as she remembered. “Or half of it was. Sage opened it up the first time to open the Gate back on Earth. And then…” She told them the story, as if it were one she’d never heard before, putting an emphasis on how it wasshe who had given Damon the clues to find Misao’s star ball, and it was Damon who then had used it to enter the top level of the Dark Dimensions.

       “It’s all a circle,” she explained. “What you do comes back toyou.” Then despite herself, she started to giggle.

       In two strides, Shinichi was across the room and slapping her. She didn’t know how many times he did it. The first was enough to make her gasp and stop her giggling. Afterward her cheeks felt as swollen as if she had a very painful case of the mumps, and her nose was bleeding.

       She kept trying to wipe it on her shoulder, but it wouldn’t stop. At last Misao said, “Ugh. Unfasten her hands and give her a towel or something.”

       The ogres moved just as if Shinichi had given the order.

       Shinichi himself was now sitting beside Misao, talking to her softly, as if he were speaking to a baby or a beloved pet. But Misao’s eyes, with their tiny flicker of fire in them, were clear and adult as she looked at Bonnie.

       “Where is my star ball now?” she asked with dreadful gray intensity.

       Bonnie, who was wiping her nose, feeling the bliss of not being handcuffed behind her back, wondered why she wasn’t even trying to think of a lie. Like, let me free and I’ll lead you to it. Then she remembered Shinichi and his damn kitsune telepathy.

       “How could I know?” she pointed out logically. “I was just trying to pull Damon away from the Gate when we both fell in. It didn’t come with us. As far as I know, it got kicked in the dust and all the liquid spilled out.”

       Shinichi got up to hurt her again, but she was only telling the truth. Misao was already speaking. “We know that didn’t happen because I am”—she had to pause to breathe—“still alive.”

       She turned her ashen, sunken face toward Shinichi and said, “You’re right. She’s useless now, and full of information she shouldn’t have. Throw her out.”

       An ogre picked Bonnie up, towel and all. Shinichi came around the other side. “Do yousee what you’ve done to my sister? Do you see?”

       No more time now. Just a second to wonder if she really was going to be brave or not. But what should she say to show she was brave? She opened her mouth, honestly not sure whether what was coming out was a scream or words.

       “She’s going to look even worse when my friends are done with her,” she said, and saw in Misao’s eyes that she’d hit her target.

       “Throw herout,” Shinichi shouted, livid with fury.

       And the ogre threw her out the window.

 

Meredith was sitting with her parents, trying to figure out what was wrong. She had finished her errands in record time: getting enlarged versions of the writing on the front of the jars made; calling the Saitou family to find that they would all be home at noon. Then she had examined and numbered the individual blow-ups of each character in the pictures that Alaric had sent.

The Saitous had been…tense. Meredith hadn’t been surprised since Isobel had been a prime, if entirely innocent, carrier of the kitsune’s deadly possessing malach. One of the worst casualties was Isobel’s own steady boyfriend, Jim Bryce, who had gotten the malach from Caroline and spread it to Isobel without knowing what he was doing. He himself had been possessed by Shinichi’s malach and had demonstrated all the hideous symptoms of Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome, eating away at his own lips and fingers, while poor Isobel had used dirty needles—sometimes the size of a child’s knitting needles—to pierce herself in more than thirty places, besides forking her tongue with scissors.

       Isobel was out of the hospital and on the mend now. Still, Meredith was bewildered. She had gotten approval of the cards with enlarged, individual characters off the jars from the older Saitous—Obaasan (Isobel’s grandmother) and Mrs. Saitou (Isobel’s mother)—not without a good deal of argument in Japanese over each character. She was just getting into her car when Isobel had come running out of the house with a bag of Post-it Notes in her hand. “Mother did them—in case you needed,” she gasped in her new, soft, slurring voice. And Meredith had taken the notes from her gratefully, murmuring something awkward about repayment.

       “No, but—but may I have a look at the blow-ups?” Isobel had panted. Why was she panting so hard? Meredith wondered. Even if she’d run from the top floor all the way following Meredith—that wouldn’t account for it. Then Meredith remembered: Bonnie had said Isobel had a “jumpy” heart.

       “You see,” Isobel said with what looked like shame and a plea for understanding, “Obaasan is really almost blind now—and it’s been so long since Mother was in school…butI take Japanese classes right now.”

       Meredith was touched. Obviously, Isobel had felt it bad manners to contradict an adult when they were in earshot. But there, sitting in the car, Isobel had gone through every card with a blown-up character, writing a similar, but definitely different character on the back. It had taken twenty minutes. Meredith had been awed. “But how do you remember them all? How do you ever write to each other?” she had blurted, after seeing the complicated symbols that differed only by a few lines.

       “With dictionaries,” Isobel had said, and had for the first time given a little laugh. “No, I’m serious—to write a very proper letter, say, don’t you use Thesaurus and Spell Check and—”

       “I need those to writeanything!” Meredith had laughed.

       It had been a nice moment, both of them smiling together, relaxed. No problems. Isobel’s heart had seemed just fine.

       Then Isobel had hurried away and when she was gone Meredith was left staring at a round circle of moisture on the passenger seat. A tear. But why should Isobel be crying?

       Because it reminded her of the malach, or of Jim?

       Because it would take several plastic surgeries before her ears would have flesh on them again?

       No answer that Meredith could think of made sense. And she had to hurry to get to her own home—late.

       It was only then that Meredith was stricken by a fact. The Saitou family knew that Meredith, Matt, and Bonnie were friends. But none of them had asked about either Bonnie or Matt.

       Strange.

       If she had only known how much stranger her visit with her own family would be…

 

 

           

 

20

      

Meredith usually found her parents funny and silly and dear. They were solemn about all the wrong things like, “Make sure, honey, that you really get to know Alaric—before—before—” Meredith had no doubts about Alaric at all, but he was another of those silly, dear, gallant people, who talked all around things without getting to the point.

Today, she was surprised to see that there was no cluster of cars around the ancestral home. Maybe people had to stay home to fight it out with their own children. She locked the Acura, conscious of the precious contents given by Isobel, and rang the doorbell. Her parents believed in chain locks.

       Janet, the housekeeper, looked happy to see her but nervous. Aha, Meredith thought, they have discovered that their dutiful only child has ransacked the attic. Maybe they want the stave back. Maybe I should have left it back at the boardinghouse.

       But she only realized that things were truly serious when she came into the family room and saw the big La-Z-Boy deluxe lounging chair, her father’s throne: empty. Her father was sitting on the couch, holding her mother, who was sobbing.

       She had brought the stave with her, and when her mother saw it, she broke into a fresh burst of tears.

       “Look,” Meredith said, “this doesn’t have to be so tragic. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened. If you want to tell me about how Grandma and I really got hurt, that’s your business. But if I was…contaminated in some way…”

       She stopped. She could hardly believe it. Her father was holding out an arm to her, as if the somewhat rank condition of her clothes didn’t matter. She went to him slowly, uncomfortably, and let him hug her regardless of his Armani suit. Her mother had a glass with a few sips left of what looked like Coke in front of her, but Meredith would bet it wasn’t all Coke.

       “We’d hoped that this was a place of peace,” her father orated. Every sentence her father spoke was an oration. You got used to it. “We never dreamed…” And then he stopped. Meredith was stunned. Her father didn’t stop in the middle of an oration. He didn’t pause. And he certainly didn’tcry.

       “Dad! Daddy! What is it? Have kids been around here, crazy kids? Did they hurt somebody?”

       “We have to tell you the whole story from that time long ago,” her father…said. He spoke with such despair that it wasn’t anything like an oration. “When you were…all attacked.”

       “By the vampire. Or Grandfather. Or do you know?”

       Long pause. Then her mother drained the contents of her glass and called, “Janet, another one, please.”

       “Now, Gabriella—” her father said, chiding.

       “’Nando—I can’t bear this. The thought thatmi hija inocente…”

       Meredith said, “Look, I think I can make this easier for you. I already know…well, first, that I had a twin brother.”

       Her parents looked horrified. They clung together, gasping. “Who told you?” her father demanded. “At that boardinghouse, who could know—?”

       Calming down time. “No, no. Dad, I found out—well, Grandpa talked to me.” That was true enough. He had. Just not about her brother. “Anyway, that was how I got the stave. But the vampire that hurt us is dead. He was the serial killer, the one who killed Vickie and Sue. His name was Klaus.”

       “You thought that there was only onevampire?” her mother got out. She pronounced the word the Hispanic way, which Meredith always found more scary. Vahm-peer.

       The universe seemed to start moving slowly around Meredith.

       “That’s just a guess,” her father said. “We don’t really know that there was more than the very strong one.”

       “But you know about Klaus—how?”

       “We saw him. He was the strong one. He killed the security guards at the gate with one blow each. We moved to a new town. We hoped you would never have to know you had a brother.” Her father brushed his eyes. “Your grandfather spoke to us, right after the attack. But the next day…nothing. He couldn’t talk at all.”

       Her mother put her face in her hands. She only lifted it to call, “Janet! Another,por favor!”

       “Right away, ma’am.” Meredith looked to the housekeeper’s blue eyes for the solution to this mystery and found nothing—sympathy, but no help. Janet walked away with the empty glass, blond French braid receding.

       Meredith turned back to her parents, so dark of eye and hair, so olive of skin color. They were huddling together again, eyes on her.

       “Mom, Dad, I know that this is really hard. But I’m going after the kind of people who hurt Grandpa, and Grandma, and my brother. It’s dangerous, but I have to do it.” She dropped into a Taekwondo stance. “I mean youdid have me trained.”

       “But against your own family? You could do that?” her mother cried.

       Meredith sat down. She had reached the end of the memories that she and Stefan had found. “So Klaus didn’t kill him like Grandmother. He took my brother with him.”

       “Cristian,” wailed her mother. “He was justun bebé. Three years old! That was when we found the two of you…and the blood…oh, the blood…”

       Her father got up, not to orate, but to put his hand on Meredith’s shoulder. “We thought it would be easier not to tell you—that you wouldn’t have any memories of what was happening when we came in. And you don’t, do you?”

       Meredith’s eyes were filling with tears. She looked to her mother, trying to silently tell her she couldn’t understand this.

       “He was drinking my blood?” she guessed. “Klaus?”

       “No!” cried her father as her mother whispered prayers.

       “He was drinking Cristian’s, then.” Meredith was kneeling on the floor now, trying to look up into the face of her mother.

       “No!” cried her father again. He choked.

       “La sangre!” gasped her mother, covering her eyes. “The blood!”

       “Querida—” her father sobbed, and went to her.

       “Dad!” Meredith went after him and shook his arm. “You’ve ruled out all the possibilities! I don’t understand! Who was drinking blood?”

       “You! You!” her mother almost screamed. “From your own brother! Oh, el aterrorizar!”

       “Gabriella!” moaned her father.

       Meredith’s mother subsided into weeping.

       Meredith’s head was whirling. “I’m not a vampire! I hunt vampires and kill them!”

       “He said,” her father whispered hoarsely: “‘Just see she gets a tablespoon a week. If you want her to live, that is. Try a blood pudding.’ He was laughing.”

       Meredith didn’t need to ask if they had obeyed. At her house, they had blood sausage or pudding at least once a week. She had grown up with it. It was nothing special.

       “Why?” she whispered hoarsely now. “Why didn’t he kill me?”

       “I don’t know! We still don’t know! That man with his front all dripping with blood—your blood, your brother’s blood, we didn’t know! And then at the last minute he grabbed for the two of you but you bit his hand to the bone,” her father said.

       “He laughed—laughed!—with your teeth clamped in him and your little hands pushing him away, and said, ‘I’ll just leave you this one, then, and you can worry about what she will turn out to be. The boy I’m taking with me.’ And then suddenly I seemed to come out of a spell, for I was reaching for you again, ready to fight him for both of you. But I couldn’t! Once I had you, I couldn’t move another inch. And he left the house still laughing—and took your brother, Cristian, with him.”

       Meredith thought. No wonder they didn’t want to hold any kind of celebration on the anniversaries of that day. Her grandmother dead, her grandfather going crazy, her brother lost, and herself—what? No wonder they celebrated her birthday a week early.

       Meredith tried to stay calm. The world was falling to pieces around her but she had to stay calm. Staying calm had kept her alive all her life. Without even having to count, she was breathing out deep, and in through her nostrils, and out through her mouth. Deep, deep, cleansing breaths. Soothing peace throughout her body. Only part of her was hearing her mother:

       “We came home early that night because I had a headache—”

       “Sh,querida—” her father was beginning.

       “We got home early,” her mother keened. “O Virgen Bendecida, what would we have found if we had been late? We would have lost you, too! My baby! My baby with blood on her mouth—”

       “But we got home early enough to save her,” Meredith’s father said huskily, as if trying to wake her mother from a spell.

       “Ah, gracias, Princesa Divina, Vigen pura y impoluto…” Her mother couldn’t seem to stop crying.

       “Daddy,” Meredith said urgently, aching for her mother but desperately needing information. “Have you ever seen him again? Or heard about him? My brother, Cristian?”

       “Yes,” her father said. “Oh, yes, we have seen something.”

       Her mother gasped. “’Nando, no!”

       “She has to learn the truth sometime,” her father said. He rummaged among some cardboard file folders on the desk. “Look!” he said to Meredith. “Look at this.”

       Meredith stared in utter disbelief.

 

In the Dark Dimension Bonnie shut her eyes. There was a lot of wind at the top of a tall building’s window. That was all her mind had a thought for when she was out of the window and then back into it and the ogre was laughing and Shinichi’s terrible voice saying, “You don’t really think we’d let you go without questioning youthoroughly?”

Bonnie heard the words without them making sense, and then suddenly they did. Her captors were going to hurt her. They were going to torture her. They were going to take her bravery away.

       She thought she screamed something at him. All she knew, though, was that there was a soft explosion of heat behind her, and then—unbelievably—all dressed up in a cloak with badges that made him look like some kind of military prince, there was Damon.

       Damon.

       He was so late she’d long ago given up on him. But now he was flashing a there-and-gone brilliant smile at Shinichi, who was staring as if he’d been stricken dumb.

       And now Damon was saying, “I’m afraid Ms. McCullough has another engagement at that moment. ButI will be back to kick your ass— immediately. Move from this room and I’ll kill you all, slowly. Thank you for your time and consideration.”

       And before anyone could even recover from their first shock at his arrival, he and Bonnie were blasting off through the windows. He went, not out of the building backward as if retreating, but straight ahead forward, one hand in front of him, wrapping them both in a black but ethereal bundle of Power. They shattered the two-way mirror in Bonnie’s room and were almost all the way through to the next room before Bonnie’s mind tagged the first “empty.” Then they were crashing through an elaborate videoset-window—made to let people think they had a view of the outdoors, and flying over someone lying on a bed. Then…it was just a series of crashes, as far as Bonnie was concerned. She barely got a glimpse of what was going on in each room. Finally…

       The crashing stopped. This left Bonnie holding on to Damon koala-style—she wasn’t stupid—and they were very, very high in the air. And mobilizing in front of them, and off to the sides, and as far as Bonnie could see, were women who were also flying, but in little machines that looked like a combination of a motorcycle and a Jet Ski. No wheels, of course. The machines were all gold, which was also the color of each driver’s hair.

       So the first word Bonnie gasped to her rescuer, after he had blasted a tunnel through the large slave-owner’s building to save her, was,“Guardians?”

       “Indispensable, considering the fact that I didn’t have the first idea where the bad guys might have taken you and I suspected that there might be a time limit. This was actually the very last of the slave-sellers we were due to check. We finally…lucked out.” For someone who had lucked out, he sounded a little strange. Almost…choked up.

       Water was on Bonnie’s cheeks but it was being flicked away too fast for her to wipe it. Damon was holding her so that she couldn’t see his face, and he was holding her very, very tightly.

       It really was Damon. He had called out the cavalry and, despite the city-wide mind-gridlock, he had found her.

       “They hurt you, didn’t they, little redbird? I saw…I saw your face,” Damon said in his new choked-up voice. Bonnie didn’t know what to say. But suddenly she didn’t mind how hard he squeezed her. She even found herself squeezing back.

       Suddenly, to her shock, Damon broke her koala-grip and pulled her up and kissed her on the lips very gently. “Little redbird! I’m going to go now, and make them pay for what they did to you.”

       Bonnie heard herself say, “No, don’t.”

       “No?” Damon repeated, bewildered.

       “No,” Bonnie said. She needed Damon with her. She didn’t care what happened to Shinichi. There was a sweetness unfolding inside her, but there was also a rushing in her head. It really was a pity, but in a few moments she would be unconscious.

       Meanwhile, she had three thoughts in mind and all of them were clear. What she was afraid of was that they would be less clear later, after she had fainted. “Do you have a star ball?”

       “I have twenty-eight star balls,” Damon said, and looked at her quizzically.

       That wasn’t what Bonnie meant at all; she meant one to record onto. “Can you remember three things?” she said to Damon.

       “I’d gamble on it.” This time Damon kissed her softly on the forehead.

       “First, you ruined my very brave death.”

       “We can always go back and you can have another try.” Damon’s voice was less choked now; more his own.

       “Second, you left me at that horrible inn for a week—”

       As if she could see inside his mind, she saw this slice into him like some kind of wooden sword. He was holding her so tightly that she really couldn’t breathe. “I…I didn’t mean to. It was really only four days, but I never should have done it,” he said.

       “Third.” Bonnie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t think any star ball was ever stolen at all. What never existed can’t be stolen, can it?”

       She looked at him. Damon was looking back in a way that normally would have thrilled her. He was obviously, blatantly distressed. But Bonnie was just barely hanging on to consciousness at this point.

       “And…fourth…” She puzzled out slowly.

       “Fourth? You said three things.” Damon smiled, just a little.

       “I have to say this—” She dropped her head down on Damon’s shoulder, gathered all of her energy, and concentrated.

       Damon loosened his grip a little. He said, “I can hear a faint murmuring sound in my head. Just tell me normally. We’re well away from anyone.”

       Bonnie was insistent. She scrunched her whole tiny body together and then explosively sent out a thought. She could tell that Damon caught it.

       Fourth, I know the way to the seven legendary kitsune treasures, Bonnie sent to him. That includes the biggest star ball ever made. But if we want it, we have to get to it—fast.

       Then, feeling that she had contributed enough to the conversation, she fainted.

 

 

           

 

21

      

Someone wasstill knocking on Stefan’s door.

“It’s a woodpecker,” Elena said when she could speak. “They knock, don’t they?”

       “On doors inside houses?” Stefan said dazedly.

       “Ignore it and it will go away.”

       A moment later the knocking resumed.

       Elena moaned, “I don’tbelieve this.”

       Stefan whispered, “Do you want me to bring you its head? Unattached from its neck, I mean?”

       Elena considered. As the knocking continued, she was getting more worried and less confused. “Better see if itis a bird, I guess,” she said.

       Stefan rolled away from her, somehow got on his jeans, and went reeling to the door. In spite of herself, Elena pitied whoever was on the other side.

       The knocking started again.

       Stefan reached the door and nearly wrenched it off its hinges.

       “What the—” He stopped, suddenly moderating his voice.“Mrs. Flowers?”

       “Yes,” Mrs. Flowers said, deliberately not seeing Elena, who was wearing a sheet and directly in her line of vision.

       “It’s poor dear Meredith,” Mrs. Flowers said. “She’s in such a state, and she says she has to see younow, Stefan.”

       Elena’s mind switched tracks as suddenly and smoothly as a train. Meredith? In astate? Demanding to see Stefan, even if, as Elena was sure she must have, Mrs. Flowers had delicately indicated just how…busy Stefan was at the moment?

       Her mind was still solidly linked with Stefan’s. He said, “Thank you, Mrs. Flowers. I’ll be down in just a moment.”

       Elena, who was slipping into her clothes as fast as she could, while crouching on the far side of the bed, added a telepathic suggestion.

       “Maybe you could make her a nice cup of tea—I mean, a cup of tea,” Stefan added.

       “Yes, dear, what a good idea,” Mrs. Flowers said gently. “And if you should see Elena, perhaps you could say that dear Meredith is asking for her, too?”

       “We will,” Stefan said automatically. Then he turned around and hastily shut the door.

       Elena gave him time to put his shirt and shoes on, and then they both hurried down to the kitchen, where Meredith was not having a nice cup of tea, but pacing around like a caged leopard.

       Stefan began, “What’s—”

       “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Stefan Salvatore! No—you tell me! You were in my mind before, so you must know. Youmust have been able to see—to tell—about me.”

       Elena was still mindlocked with Stefan. She felt his dismay. “To tell what about you?” he asked gently, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table so Meredith could sit.

       The very simple act of sitting down, of pausing to respond to civility, seemed to calm Meredith slightly. But still Elena could feel her fear and pain like the taste of a steel sword on her tongue.

       Meredith accepted a hug and became a little calmer yet. A little more herself and less like a caged animal. But the struggle was so visceral and so clear within her that Elena couldn’t bear to leave her, even when Mrs. Flowers deposited four mugs of tea around the table and took another chair Stefan offered.

       Then Stefan sat down. He knew Elena would stand or sit or share a chair with Meredith, but whatever it was, she would be the one to decide.

       Mrs. Flowers was gently stirring honey into her mug of tea and then passing the honey along to Stefan who gave it to Elena who put just the little bit that Meredith liked into Meredith’s mug and stirred it gently, too.

       The ordinary, civilized sounds of two spoons quietly clinking seemed to relax Meredith still further. She took the mug Elena gave her and sipped, then drank thirstily.

       Elena could feel Stefan’s mental sigh of relief as Meredith floated down another few levels. He politely sipped his own tea, which was hot but not burning hot and made from naturally sweet berries and herbs.

       “It’s good,” Meredith said. She was almost a human now. “Thank you, Mrs. Flowers.”

       Elena felt lighter. She relaxed enough to pull over her own cup of tea and squeeze lots of honey in and stir it and take a gulp. Good! Calming down tea!

       That’s chamomile and cucumber, Stefan told her.

       “Chamomile and cucumber,” Elena said, nodding wisely, “for calming down.” And then she blushed, for Mrs. Flowers’s bright smile had knowledge in it.

       Elena hastily drank more tea and watched Meredith have more tea and everything began to feelalmost all right. Meredith was completely Meredith now, not some fierce animal. Elena squeezed her friend’s hand tightly.

       There was just one problem. Humans were less frightening than beasts but they could cry. Now Meredith, who never wept, was shaking and tears were dripping into the tea.

       “You know whatmorcillo is, right?” she asked Elena at last.

       Elena nodded hesitantly. “We had it sometimes in stew at your house?” she said. “And fortapas?” Elena had grown up with the blood sausage as a meal or a snack at her friend’s house, and she was used to the bite-sized pieces as a delicious food only Mrs. Sulez made.

       Elena felt Stefan’s heart sinking. She looked back and forth from him to Meredith.

       “It turns out my mother didn’t always make it,” Meredith said, looking at Stefan now. “And my parents had a very good reason for changing my birthday.”

       “Just tell it all,” Stefan suggested softly. And then Elena felt something she hadn’t before. A surge, like a wave—a long gentle swell that spoke right into the center of Meredith’s brain. It said:Just tell it and be calm. No anger. No fear.

       But it wasn’t telepathy. Meredith felt the thought in her blood and bones, but didn’t hear it with her ears.

       It was Influence. Before Elena could brain her beloved Stefan with her mug for using Influence on one of her friends, Stefan said, just to her,Meredith’s hurting, feeling scared and angry. She has reason to, but she needs peace. I probably won’t be able to hold her anyway, but I’ll try.

       Meredith wiped her eyes. “It turns out that nothing was like what I thought happened—that night when I was three.” She described what her parents had told her, about everything that Klaus had done. Telling the story, even quietly, was undoing all the calming influences that had helped Meredith maintain herself. She was beginning to shake again. Before Elena could grab her, she was up and striding around the room. “He laughed and said that I’d need blood every week—animal blood—or I’d die. I didn’t need much. Just a tablespoon or two. And my poor mother didn’t want to lose another child. She did what he told her to. But what happens if I have more blood, Stefan? What happens if I drinkyours?”

       Stefan was thinking, desperately trying to see if in all his years of experience he’d come across anything like this. Meanwhile he answered the easy part.

       “If you drank enough of my blood you’d become a vampire. But so would anyone. With you—well, it might take less. So don’t let any vampire trick you into blood exchange. Once might be enough.”

       “So I’mnot a vampire? Now? Not any kind? Are there different kinds?”

       Stefan answered seriously. “I’ve never heard of ‘different kinds’ of vampires in my life, except for Old Ones. I can tell you that you don’t have a vampire’s aura. What about your teeth? Can you make your canines sharp? Usually it’s best to test over human flesh. Not your own.”

       Elena promptly stuck out her arm, wrist vein-side up. Meredith, eyes closed in concentration, made a great effort, which Elena felt through Stefan. Then Meredith opened her eyes, mouth also open for a dental inspection. Elena stared at her canines. They looked a little bit sharp, but so did anybody’s, didn’t they?

       Carefully Elena reached a fingertip in. She touched one of Meredith’s canines.

       Tiny pinch.

       Startled, Elena pulled back. She stared at her finger where a very small drop of blood was welling up.

       Everyone watched it, mesmerized. Then Elena’s mouth said without pausing to consult her brain, “You have kitten teeth.”

       The next moment Meredith had brushed Elena aside and was pacing wildly all around the kitchen. “I won’t be one! I won’t be! I’m a hunter-slayer, not a vampire! I’llkill myself if I’m a vampire!” She was deadly serious. Elena felt Stefan feeling it, the quick thrust of the stave between her ribs and into the heart. She would go on the Internet to find the right area. Ironwood and white ash piercing her heart, stilling it forever…sealing off the evil that was Meredith Sulez.

       Be calm! Be calm! Stefan’s Influence flooded into her.

       Meredith was not calm.

       “But before that I have to kill my brother.” She flung down a photograph on Mrs. Flowers’s kitchen table. “It turns out that Klaus or someone has been sending these since Cristian was four—on my real birthday.For years! And in every picture you could see his vampire teeth. Not ‘kitten teeth.’ And then they stopped coming when I was about ten. But they had shown him growing up! With pointed teeth! And last year this one came.”

       Elena leaped for the photo, but it was closer to Stefan and he was faster. He stared in astonishment. “Growing up?” he said. She could feel how shaken he was—and how envious. No one had given him that option.

       Elena looked at the pacing Meredith and around at Stefan. “But it’s impossible, isn’t it?” she said. “I thought that if you were bitten, that was it, right? You never got any older—or bigger.”

       “That’s what I thought too. But Klaus was an Old One and who knows what they can do?” Stefan answered.

       Damon will be furious when he finds out, Elena told Stefan privately, reaching for the picture even though she’d already seen it through Stefan’s eyes. Damon was very bitter about Stefan’s height advantage—about anyone’s height advantage.

       Elena brought the picture to Mrs. Flowers and looked at it with her. It showed an extremely handsome boy, with hair that was just Meredith’s dark color. He looked like Meredith in his facial structure and olive skin. He was wearing a motorcycle jacket and gloves, but no helmet, and he was laughing merrily with a full set of very white teeth. You could easily see that the canines were long and pointed.

       Elena looked back and forth from Meredith to the picture. The only difference she could see was that this boy’s eyes seemed lighter. Everything else screamed “twins.”

       “First I kill him,” Meredith repeated tiredly. “Then I kill myself.” She stumbled back to the table and sat, almost knocking over her chair.

       Elena hovered near her, snatching two mugs from the table, to prevent Meredith’s clumsy arm from sweeping them to the floor.

       Meredith…clumsy! Elena had never seen Meredith ungraceful or clumsy before. It was frightening. Was it somehow due to being—at least partly—a vampire? The kitten teeth? Elena turned apprehensive eyes on Stefan, felt Stefan’s own bewilderment.

       Then both of them, without consultation, turned to look at Mrs. Flowers. She gave them an apologetic little-old-lady smile.

       “Gotta kill…find him, kill him…first,” Meredith was whispering as her dark head lowered to the table, to the pillow of her arms. “Find him…where? Grandpa…where? Cristian…my brother…”

       Elena listened silently until there was only soft breathing to be heard.

       “You drugged her?” she whispered to Mrs. Flowers.

       “It was what Mama thought best. She’s a strong, healthy girl. It won’t harm her to sleep from now through the night. Because I’m sorry to tell you, but we have another problem right now.”

       Elena glanced at Stefan, saw fear dawning on his face, and demanded, “What?” Absolutely nothing was coming through their link. He’d shut it down.

       Elena turned to Mrs. Flowers.“What?”

       “I’m very worried about dear Matt.”

       “Matt,” agreed Stefan, looking around the table as if to show that Matt wasn’t there. He was trying to protect Elena from the chills racing through him.

       At first Elena wasn’t alarmed. “I know where he might be,” she said brightly. She was remembering stories that Matt had told of being in Fell’s Church while she and the others had been in the Dark Dimension. “Dr. Alpert’s place. Or out with her, making the rounds of home visits.”

       Mrs. Flowers shook her head, her expression bleak. “I’m afraid not, Elena dear. Sophia—Dr. Alpert—called me and told me she was taking Matt’s mother, your own family, and several other people with her and escaping Fell’s Church entirely. And I don’t blame her a bit—but Matt wasn’t one of those going. She said he meant to stay and fight. That was around twelve thirty.”

       Elena’s eyes automatically went to the kitchen clock. Horror shot through her, flipping her stomach and reverberating out to her fingertips. The clock said 4:35—4:35 P.M.! But thathad to be wrong. She and Stefan had only joined minds a few minutes ago. Meredith’s rage hadn’t lasted that long. This was impossible!

       “That clock—it’s not right!” She appealed to Mrs. Flowers, but heard at the same time Stefan’s telepathic voice,It’s the mind-blending. I didn’t want to rush. But I was lost in it too—it’s not your fault, Elena!

       “Itis my fault,” Elena snapped back aloud. “I never meant to forget about my friends for the entire afternoon! And Matt—Matt would never scare us by keeping us waiting for his call! I should have called him! I shouldn’t have been—” She looked at Stefan with unhappy eyes. The only thing burning inside her right now was the shame of failing Matt.

       “I did call his mobile number,” Mrs. Flowers said very gently. “Mama advised me to do so, all the way back at half past twelve. But he didn’t answer. I’ve called every hour since. Ma ma won’t say more than that it’s time we looked into things directly.”

       Elena ran to Mrs. Flowers and wept on the soft cambric lacework at the old woman’s neck. “You did our job for us,” she said. “Thank you. But now we have to go and find him.”

       She whirled on Stefan. “Can you put Meredith in the first-floor bedroom? Just take off her shoes and put her on top of the covers. Mrs. Flowers, if you’re going to be alone here, we’ll leave Saber and Talon to take care of you. Then we’ll keep in touch by mobile. And we’ll search every house in Fell’s Church—but I guess we should go to the thicket first…”

       “Wait, Elena my dear.” Mrs. Flowers had her eyes shut. Elena waited, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. Stefan was just returning from putting Meredith in the front room.

       Suddenly, Mrs. Flowers smiled, eyes still shut. “Mama says she will do her utmost for you two, since you are so devoted to your friend. She says that Matt is not anywhere in Fell’s Church. And she says, take the dog, Saber. The falcon will watch over Meredith while we are away.” Mrs. Flowers’s eyes opened. “Although we might plaster her window and door with Post-it Notes,” she said, “just to make sure.”

       “No,” Elena said flatly. “I’m sorry, but I won’t leave Meredith and you on your own with only a bird for protection. We’ll take you both with us, covered in amulets if you like, and then we can take both animals, too. Back in the Dark Dimension, they worked together when Bloddeuwedd was trying to kill us.”

       “All right,” Stefan said at once, knowing Elena well enough to realize that a half-hour-long argument could ensue and Elena would never be moved an inch from her position. Mrs. Flowers must have known it too, for she rose, also immediately, and went to get ready.

       Stefan carried Meredith out to her car. Elena gave a tiny whistle for Saber, who was instantly underfoot, seeming bigger than ever, and she raced him up the stairs to Matt’s room. It was disappointingly clean—but Elena fished a pair of briefs from between bed and wall. She gave these to Saber to delight in, but found she couldn’t stand still. Finally, she ran up to Stefan’s room, snatched her diary from under the mattress, and began scribbling.

Dear Diary,

I don’t know what to do. Matt has disappeared. Damon has taken Bonnie to the Dark Dimension—but is he taking care of her?

       There’s no way to know. We don’t have any way to open a Gate ourselves and go after them. I’m afraid Stefan will kill Damon, and if something—anything—has happened to Bonnie, I’ll want to kill him too. Oh, God, what a mess!

       And Meredith…of all people, Meredith turns out to have more secrets than all of us combined.

       All Stefan and I can do is hold each other and pray. We’ve been fighting Shinichi so long! I feel as if the end is coming soon…and I’m afraid.

“Elena!” Stefan’s shout came from below. “We’re all ready!”

Elena quickly stuffed the diary back under the mattress. She found Saber waiting on the stairs, and followed him down, running. Mrs. Flowers had two overcoats covered in amulets.

       Outside, a long whistle from Stefan was met by an answeringkeeeeeeee from above and Elena saw a small dark body circling against the white-streaked August sky. “She understands,” Stefan said briefly, and took the driver’s seat of the car. Elena got into the backseat behind him, and Mrs. Flowers into the front passenger seat. Since Stefan had buckled up Meredith into the middle of the backseat, this left Saber a window to put his panting head through.

       “Now,” Stefan said, over the purring of the engine, “where are we going, exactly?”

 

 

           

 

22

      

“Mama said not in Fell’s Church,” Mrs. Flowers repeated to Stefan. “And that means not the thicket.”

“All right,” Stefan said. “If he’s not there, then where else?”

       “Well,” Elena said slowly, “it’s the police, isn’t it? They’ve caught him.” Her heart felt as if it were in her stomach.

       Mrs. Flowers sighed. “I suppose so. Mama should have told me that, but the atmosphere is full of strange influences.”

       “But the sheriff’s department is in Fell’s Church. What there is of it,” Elena objected.

       “Then,” Mrs. Flowers said, “what about the police in another city close by? The ones who came looking for him before—”

       “Ridgemont,” Elena said heavily. “That’s where those police that searched the boardinghouse were from. That’s where that Mossberg guy came from, Meredith said.” She looked at Meredith, who didn’t even murmur. “That’s where Caroline’s dad has all his big-shot friends—and Tyler Smallwood’s dad does too. They belong to all those no-women clubs with secret handshakes and stuff.”

       “And do we have anything like a plan for when we get there?” Stefan asked.

       “I have a sort of Plan A,” Elena admitted. “But I don’tknow that it will work—you may know better than I do.”

       “Tell me.”

       Elena told him. Stefan listened and had to stifle a laugh. “I think,” he said soberly afterward, “that it just might work.”

       Elena immediately began to think about Plans B and C so that they wouldn’t be stuck if Plan A should fail.

       They had to drive through Fell’s Church to get to Ridgemont. Elena saw the burnt-out houses and the blackened trees through tears. This was her town, the town which, as a spirit, she had watched over and protected. How could it have come to this?

       And, worse, how could it ever possibly be put back together again?

       Elena began to shiver uncontrollably.

 

Matt sat grimly in the jury conference room. He had explored it long ago, and had found that the windows were boarded over from the outside. He wasn’t surprised, as all the windows he knew back in Fell’s Church were boarded up, and besides, he had tried these boards and knew that he could break out if he cared to.

He didn’t care to.

       It was time to face his personal crisis. He would have faced it back before Damon had taken the three girls to the Dark Dimension, but Meredith had talked him out of it.

       Matt knew that Mr. Forbes, Caroline’s father, had all his cronies in the police and legal system here. And so did Mr. Smallwood, the father of the real culprit. They were unlikely to give him a fair trial. But in any kind of trial, at some point they would at least have tolisten to him.

       And what they would hear was the plain truth. They might not believe it now. But later, when Caroline’s twins had as little control as werewolf babies were reputed to have over their shapes—well, then they’d think of Matt, and what he’d said.

       He was doing the right thing, he assured himself. Even if, right now, his insides felt as if they were made of lead.

       What’s the worst they can do to me? he wondered, and was unhappy to hear the echo of Meredith’s voice come back.“They can put you in jail, Matt. Real jail; you’re over eighteen. And while that may be good news for some genuine, vicious, tough old felons with homemade tattoos and biceps liketree branches, it is not going to be good news for you.” And then after a session on the Internet, “Matt, in Virginia, it can be for life. And the minimum is five years. Matt, please; I beg you, don’t let them do this to you! Sometimes it’s true that discretion is the better part of valor. They hold all the cards and we’re walking blindfolded in the dark…”

       She had gotten surprisingly worked up about it, mixing her metaphors and all, Matt thought dejectedly. But it’s not exactly as if I volunteered for this. And I bet they know those boards are pretty flimsy and if I break out, I’ll be chased from here to who-knows-where. And if I stay put at least I’ll get to tell the truth.

       For a very long time nothing happened. Matt could tell from the sun through the cracks in the boards that it was afternoon. A man came in and offered a visit to the bathroom and a Coke. Matt accepted both, but also demanded an attorney and his phone call.

       “You’ll have an attorney,” the man grumbled at him as Matt came out of the bathroom. “One’ll be appointed for you.”

       “I don’t want that. I want a real attorney. One that Ipick.”

       The man looked disgusted. “Kid like you can’t have any money. You’ll take the attorney appointed to you.”

       “My mom has money. She’d want me to have the attorney we hire, not some kid out of law school.”

       “Aw,” the man said, “how sweet. You want Mommy to take care of you. And her all the way out in Clydesdale by now, I bet, with the black lady doctor.”

       Matt froze.

       Shut back in the jury room he tried frantically to think. How did they know where his mom and Dr. Alpert had gone? He tried the sound of“black lady doctor” on his tongue and found it tasted bad, sort of old-time-ish and just plain bad. If the doctor had been Caucasian and male, it would’ve sounded silly to say “…gone with the white man doctor.” Sort of like an old Tarzan film.

       A great anger was rising in Matt. And along with it a great fear. Words slithered around his mind:surveillance and spying and conspiracy and cover-up. And outwitted.

       He guessed it was after five o’clock, after everybody who normally worked at court had left, that they took him to the interrogation room.

       They were just playing, he figured, the two officers who tried to talk to him in a cramped little room with a video camera in one corner of the wall, perfectly obvious even though it was small.

       They took turns, one yelling at him that he might as well confess everything, the other acting sympathetic and saying things like, “Things just got out of hand, right? We have a picture of the hickey she gave you. She was hot stuff, right?” Wink, wink. “I understand. But then she started to give you mixed signals…”

       Matt reached his snapping point. “No, we were not on a date, no, she did not give me a hickey, and when I tell Mr. Forbes you called Caroline hot stuff, winkey winkey, he’s gonna get you fired, mister. And I’ve heard of mixed signals, but I’ve never seen them. I can hear ‘no’ as well as you can, and I figure one ‘no’ means ‘no’!”

       After that they beat him up a little bit. Matt was surprised, but considering the way he had just threatened and sassed them, not too surprised.

       And then they seemed to give up on him, leaving him alone in the interrogation room, which, unlike the jury room, had no windows. Matt said over and over, for the benefit of the video camera, “I’m innocent and I’m being denied my phone call and my attorney. I’m innocent…”

       At last they came and got him. He was hustled between the good and bad cops into a completely empty courtroom. No, not empty, he realized. In the first row were a few reporters, one or two with sketchbooks ready.

       When Matt saw that, just like a real trial, and imagined the pictures they’d sketch—just like he’d seen on TV, the lead in his stomach turned into a fluttering feeling of panic.

       But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it, to get the story out?

       He was led to an empty table. There was another table, with several well-dressed men, all with piles of papers in front of them.

       But the thing that held Matt’s attention at that table was Caroline. He didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a dove gray cotton dress. Gray! With no jewelry on at all, and subtle makeup. The only color was in her hair—a brazen auburn. It looked like her old hair, not the brindled color it had been when she was starting to become a werewolf. Had she learned to control her form at last? That was bad news. Very bad.

       And finally, with an air of walking on eggshells, in came the jury. They had to know how irregular this was, but they kept coming in, just twelve of them, just enough to fill the jury seats.

       Matt suddenly realized that there was a judge sitting at the desk high above him. Had he been there all along? No…

       “All rise for Justice Thomas Holloway,” boomed a bailiff. Matt stood and wondered if the trial was really going to start without his lawyer. But before everyone could sit, there was a crash of opening doors, and a tall bundle of papers on legs hurried into the courtroom, became a woman in her early twenties, and dumped the papers on the table beside him. “Gwen Sawicki here—present,” the young woman gasped.

       Judge Holloway’s neck shot out like a tortoise’s, to bring her into his realm of sight. “You have been appointed on behalf of the defense?”

       “If it pleases Your Honor, yes, Your Honor—all of thirty minutes ago. I had no idea we had gone to night sessions, Your Honor.”

       “Don’t you be pert with me!” Judge Holloway snapped. As he went on to allow the prosecution attorneys to introduce themselves, Matt pondered on the word “pert.” It was another of those words, he thought, that was never used toward males. A pert man was a joke. While a pert girl or woman sounded just fine. But why?

       “Call me Gwen,” a voice whispered beside him, and Matt looked to see a girl with brown eyes and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she looked honest and straightforward, which made her the prettiest thing in the room.

       “I’m Matt—well, obviously,” Matt said.

       “Is this your girl, Carolyn?” Gwen was whispering, showing a picture of the old Caroline at some dance, wearing stilts, and with tanned legs that went up and up to almost meet before a miniskirt took over, black and lacy. She had on a white blouse so tight at the bust that it hardly seemed able to contain her natural assets. Her makeup was exactly the opposite of subtle.

       “Her name’s Caroline and she’s never been my girl, but that’s her—the real her,” Matt whispered. “Before Klaus came and did something to her boyfriend, Tyler Smallwood. But I have to tell you what happened when she found out she was pregnant—”

       She’d gone nuts, was what had happened. No one knew where Tyler was—dead after the final fight against Klaus, turned into a full wolf in hiding; whatever. So Caroline had tried to pin it on Matt—until Shinichi appeared and became her boyfriend.

       But Shinichi and Misao were playing a cruel joke on her, pretending that Shinichi would marry her. It was after she realized that Shinichi didn’t care at all that Caroline had gone totally ballistic, and had really tried to make Matt fit the gaping hole in her life. Matt did his best to explain this to Gwen so she could explain it to the jury, until the judge’s voice interrupted him.

       “We will dispense with opening arguments,” said Judge Holloway, “since the hour is so late. Will the prosecution call its first witness?”

       “Wait! Objection!” Matt shouted, ignoring Gwen’s tugging at his arm and her hissing:“You can’t object to the judge’s rulings!”

       “And the judge can’t do this to me,” Matt said, twitching his T-shirt back from between her fingers. “I haven’t even had a chance to meet with my public defender yet!”

       “Maybe you should have accepted a public defender earlier,” replied the judge, sipping from a glass of water. He suddenly thrust his head at Matt and snapped, “Eh?”

       “That’s ridiculous,” cried Matt. “You wouldn’t give me my phone call to get a lawyer!”

       “Did he ever ask for a phone call?” Judge Holloway snapped, his eyes traveling around the room.

       The two officers who had beat Matt up solemnly shook their heads. At this, the bailiff, whom Matt suddenly recognized as the guy who’d kept him in the jury room for around four hours, began wagging his head back and forth in the negative. They all three wagged, almost in unison.

       “Then you forfeited that right by not asking for it,” the judge snapped. It seemed to be his only way of speaking. “You can’t demand it in the middle of a trial. Now, as I was saying—”

       “I object!” Matt shouted even louder. “They’re all lying! Look at your own tapes of them interrogating me. All I kept saying—”

       “Counselor,” the judge snarled at Gwen, “control your client or you will be held in contempt of court!”

       “You have toshut up,” Gwen hissed at Matt.

       “You can’t make me shut up! You can’t have this trial while you’re breaking all the rules!”

       “Shut your trap!” The judge belted out the words at a surprising volume. He then added, “The next person to make a remark without my express permission shall be held in contempt of court to the tune of a night in jail and five hundred dollars.”

       He paused to look around to see if this had sunk in. “Now,” he said. “Prosecution, call your first witness.”

       “We call Caroline Beulah Forbes to the stand.”

       Caroline’s figure had changed. Her stomach was sort of upside-down-avocado-shaped now. Matt heard murmurs.

       “Caroline Beula Forbes, do you swear that the testimony you shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

       Somewhere deep inside, Matt was shaking. He didn’t know if it was mostly anger or mostly fear or an equal combination of both. But he felt like a geyser ready to blow—not necessarily because he wanted to, but because forces beyond his control were taking hold of him. Gentle Matt, Quiet Matt, Obedient Matt—he had left all those behind somewhere. Raging Matt, Rampaging Matt, that was about all he could be.

       From a dim outside world, voices came filtering into his reverie. And one voice pricked and stung like a nettle.

       “Do you recognize the boy you have named as your former boyfriend Matthew Jeffrey Honeycutt here in this room?”

       “Yes,” the prickly nettle voice said softly. “He’s sitting at the defense table, in the gray T-shirt.”

       Matt’s head flew up. He looked Caroline straight in the eye.

       “Youknow that’s a lie,” he said. “We never went on one date together. Ever.”

       The judge, who had seemed to be asleep, now woke up. “Bailiff!” he snapped. “Restrain the defendant immediately.”

       Matt tensed. As Gwen Sawicki moaned, Matt suddenly found himself being held while duct tape was wrapped round and round his mouth.

       He fought. He tried to get up. So they duct-taped him around his waist to the chair. As they finally left him alone, the judge said, “If he runs off with that chair, you will pay it out of your own salary,Miz Sawicki.”

       Matt could feel Gwen Sawicki trembling beside him. Not with fear. He could recognize the about-to-explode expression and realized that she was going to be next. And then the judge would hold her in contempt and who would speak up for him?

       He met her eyes and shook his head firmly at her. But he also shook his head at every lie Caroline came up with.

       “We had to keep it a secret, our relationship,” Caroline was saying demurely, straightening the gray dress. “Because Tyler Smallwood, my previous boyfriend, might have found out. Then he would have—I mean, I didn’t want any trouble between them.”

       Yeah, Matt thought bitterly: you’d better walk carefully—because Tyler’s dad probably has as many good friends in here as yours does. More. Matt tuned out until he heard the prosecutor say, “And did anything unusual happen on the night in question?”

       “Well, we went out together in his car. We went over near the boardinghouse…no one would see us there…Yes, I—I’m afraid I did give him a…a love-bite. But after that I wanted to leave, but he didn’t stop. I had to try to fight him off. I scratched him with my nails—”

       “The prosecution offers Peoples’ Exhibit 2—a picture of the deep fingernail scores on the defendant’s arm—”

       Gwen’s eyes, meeting Matt’s, looked dull. Beaten. She showed Matt a picture of what he remembered: the deep marks made by the huge malach’s teeth when he had pulled his arm out of its mouth. “The defense will stipulate…”

       “So admitted.”

       “But no matter how I screamed and fought…well, he was too strong, and I—I couldn’t—” Caroline tossed her head in agony of remembered shame. Tears flooded from her eyes.

       “Your Honor, perhaps the defendant needs a break to freshen her makeup,” Gwen suggested bitterly.

       “Young lady, you are getting on mynerves. The prosecution can care for its own clients—I mean witnesses—”

       “Your witness…”—from the prosecution.

       Matt had scribbled as much of the real story as he could onto a blank sheet of paper while Caroline’s theatrics had gone on. Gwen was now reading this.

       “So,” she said, “your ex, Tyler Smallwood, is not and has never been a”—she swallowed—“a werewolf.”

       Through her tears of shame Caroline laughed lightly. “Of course not. Werewolves aren’t real.”

       “Like vampires.”

       “Vampires aren’t real either, if that’s what you mean. Howcould they be?” Caroline was looking into every shadow of the room as she said this.

       Gwen was doing a good job, Matt realized. Caroline’s demure patina was beginning to chip.

       “And people never come back from the dead—in these modern times, I mean,” Gwen said.

       “Well, as to that”—malice had crept into Caroline’s voice—“if you just go to the boardinghouse in Fell’s Church, you can see that there’s a girl called Elena Gilbert, who wassupposed to have drowned last year. On Founder’s Day, after the parade. She was Miss Fell’s Church, of course.”

       There was a murmur among the reporters. Supernatural stuff sold better than anything else, especially if a pretty girl was involved. Matt could see a smirk making the rounds.

       “Order! Miz Sawicki, you will keep to the facts in this case!”

       “Yes, Your Honor.” Gwen looked thwarted. “Okay, Caroline, let’s go back to the day of the alleged assault. After the events you have narrated, did you call the police at once?”

       “I was…too ashamed. But then I realized I might be pregnant or have some horrid disease, and I knew I had to tell.”

       “But that horrid disease wasn’t lycanthropy—being a werewolf, right? Because that couldn’t be true.”

       Gwen looked anxiously down at Matt and Matt looked bleakly up at her. He’d hoped that if Caroline were forced to keep talking about werewolves she would eventually start to twitch. But she seemed to have complete control over herself now.

       The judge seemed furious. “Young lady, I won’t have my court made a joke with any more supernatural nonsense!”

       Matt stared at the ceiling. He was going to jail. For a long time. For something he hadn’t done. For something he would never do. And besides, now, there might be reporters going over to the boardinghouse to bother Elena and Stefan. Damn! Caroline had managed to get that in despite the blood oath she’d made never to give their secret away. Damon had signed that oath as well. For a moment Matt wished that Damon were back and right here, to take revenge on her. Matt didn’t care how many times he got called “Mutt” if Damon would just appear. But Damon didn’t.

       Matt realized that the duct tape around his middle was low enough that he could slam his head against the defense table. He did this, making a small boom.

       “If your client wishes to be completely immobilized, Miz Sawicki, it can be—”

       But then they all heard it. Like an echo, but delayed. And much louder than the sound of a head striking a table.

       BOOM!

       And again.

       BOOM!

       And then the distant, disturbing sound of doors slamming open as if they had been hit by a battering ram.

       At this point the people in the courtroom still could have scattered. But where was there to go?

       BOOM! Another, closer door slamming open.

       “Order! Order in the courtroom!”

       Footsteps sounded down the wooden floor of the corridor.

       “Order! Order!”

       But no one, not even a judge, could stop this many people from muttering. And late in the evening, in a locked courthouse, after all that talk of vampires and werewolves…

       Footsteps coming closer. A door, quite near, crashing and creaking.

       A ripple of…something…went through the courtroom. Caroline gasped, clutching at her bulging stomach.

       “Bar those doors! Bailiff! Lock them!”

       “Bar them how, Your Honor? And they only lock from the outside!”

       Whatever it was, it was very close—

       The doors to the courtroom opened, creaking. Matt put a calming hand on Gwen’s wrist, twisting his neck to see behind him.

       Standing in the doorway was Saber, looking, as always, as big as a small pony. Mrs. Flowers walked beside him; Stefan and Elena drew up the rear.

       Heavy clicking footsteps as Saber, alone, went up to Caroline, who was gasping and quivering.

       Utter silence as everyone took in the sight of the giant beast, his coat ebony black, his eyes dark and moist as he took a leisurely look around the courtroom.

       Then, deep in his chest, Saber wenthmmf.

       Around Matt people were gasping and writhing, as if they itched all over. He stared and saw Gwen staring along with him as the gasping became a panting.

       Finally Saber tilted his nose to the ceiling andhowled.

       What happened after that wasn’t pretty from Matt’s point of view. Not seeing Caroline’s nose and mouth jut out to make a muzzle. Not seeing her eyes recede into small, deep, fur-lined holes.

       And her hands, fingers shrinking into helplessly waving paws, widespread, with black claws. That wasn’t pretty.

       But the animal at the end was beautiful. Matt didn’t know if she’d absorbed her gray dress or shucked it off or what. He did know that a handsome gray wolf leaped from the defendant’s chair to lick up at Saber’s chops, rolling all the way on the floor to frolic around the huge animal, who was so obviously the alpha wolf.

       Saber made another deephmmf sound. The wolf that had been Caroline rubbed her snout lovingly against his neck.

       And it was happening in other places in the room. Both of the prosecutors, three of the jurors…the judge himself…

       They were all changing, not to attack, but to forge their social bonds with this huge wolf, an alpha if ever there was one.

       “We talked to him all the way,” Elena explained in between cursing the duct tape in Matt’s hair. “About not being aggressive and snapping off heads—Damon told me he did that once.”

       “We didn’t want a bunch of murders,” Stefan agreed. “And we knew no animal would be as big as he was. So we concentrated on bringing out all the wolf in him we could—wait, Elena—I’ve got the tape on this side. Sorry about this, Matt.”

       A sting as tape ripped free—and Matt put a hand to his mouth. Mrs. Flowers was snipping the duct tape that held him to the chair. Suddenly he was entirely free and he felt like shouting. He hugged Stefan, Elena, and Mrs. Flowers, saying,“Thank you!”

       Gwen, unfortunately, was being sick in a trash can. Actually, Matt thought, she was lucky in having secured one. A juror was being sick over the railing.

       “This is Ms. Sawicki,” Matt said proudly. “She came in after the trial had begun, and did a really good job for me.”

       “He said ‘Elena,’” Gwen whispered when she could speak. She was staring at a small wolf, with patches of thinning hair, that came limping down from the judge’s chair to cavort around Saber, who was accepting all such gestures with dignity.

       “I’m Elena,” said Elena, in between giving Matt mighty hugs.

       “The one who’s…supposed to be dead?”

       Elena took a moment out to hug Gwen. “Do I feel dead?”

       “I—I don’t know. No. But—”

       “But I have a pretty little headstone in the Fell’s Church cemetery,” Elena assured her—then suddenly, with a change in countenance, “Did Caroline tell you that?”

       “She told the whole room that. Especially the reporters.”

       Stefan looked at Matt and smiled wryly. “You may just live to have your revenge on Caroline.”

       “I don’t want revenge anymore. I just want to go home. I mean—” He looked at Mrs. Flowers in consternation.

       “If you can think of my house as ‘home’ while your dear mother is away, I am very happy,” said Mrs. Flowers.

       “Thank you,” Matt said quietly. “I really mean that. But Stefan…what are the reporters going to write?”

       “If they’re smart, they won’t write anything at all.”

 

 

           

 

23

      

In the car, Matt sat by the sleeping Meredith with Saber crammed in at their feet, listening in shock and horror as they recounted Meredith’s story. When they were done, he was able to speak about his own experiences.

“I’m going to have nightmares all my life about Cole Reece,” he admitted. “And even though I slapped an amulet on him, and he cried, Dr. Alpert said he was still infected. How can we fight something this far out of control?”

       Elena knew he was looking at her. She dug her nails into her palms. “It isn’t that I haven’t tried to useWings of Purification over the town. I’ve tried so hard that I feel as if I’ll burst. But it’s no good. I can’t control any Wings Powers at all! I think—after what I’ve learned about Meredith—that I may need training. But how do I get it? Where? From who?”

       There was a long silence in the car. At last Matt said, “We’re all in the dark. Look at that courtroom! How can they have so many werewolves in one town?”

       “Wolves are sociable,” Stefan said quietly. “It looks as if there is a whole community of werewolves in Ridgemont. Seeded among the various Bear and Moose and Lions Clubs of course. For spying on the only creatures they’re scared of: humans.”

       At the boardinghouse Stefan carried Meredith to the first-floor bedroom and Elena pulled the covers over her. Then she went to the kitchen, where the conversation was continuing.

       “What about those werewolves’ families? Their wives?” she demanded as she rubbed Matt’s shoulders where she knew the muscles must hurt fiercely from being handcuffed behind his back. Her soft fingers soothed bruises, but her hands were strong, and she kept kneading and kneading until her own shoulder muscles began to swear at her…and beyond.

       Stefan stopped her. “Move over, love, I’ve got evil vampire magic. This is necessary medical treatment,” he added sternly to Matt. “So you have to take it no matter how much it hurts.” Elena could still feel him, if faintly, through their connection and she saw how he anesthetized Matt’s mind and then dug into the knotted shoulders as if he was kneading stiff dough, meanwhile reaching out with his Powers of healing.

       Mrs. Flowers came by just then with mugs of hot, sweet cinnamon tea. Matt drained his mug and his head fell back slightly. His eyes were shut, his lips parted. Elenafelt a huge wave of pain and tension flood away from him. And then she hugged both of her boys and cried.

       “They picked me up on my own driveway,” Matt admitted as Elena sniffled. “And they did it by the book, but they wouldn’t even look at the—thechaos all around them.”

       Mrs. Flowers approached again, looking serious. “Dear Matt, you’ve had a terrible day. What you need is a long rest.” She glanced at Stefan, as if to see how this would impact him, with so few blood donors. Stefan smiled reassuringly at her. Matt, still being kneaded pliant, had just nodded. After that his color started coming back and a little smile curved his lips.

       “There’s m’main man,” he said, when Saber butted his way through traffic to pant directly in Matt’s face. “Buddy, I love your dog breath,” he declared. “You saved me. Can he have a treat, Mrs. Flowers?” he asked, turning slightly unfocused blue eyes on her.

       “I know just what he’d like. I have half a roast left in the refrigerator that just needs to be heated a bit.” She punched buttons and in a short while, said, “Matt, would you like to do the honors? Remember to take the bone out—he might choke on it.”

       Matt took the large pot roast, which, heated, smelled so good it made him aware that he was starving. He felt his morals collapse. “Mrs. Flowers, do you think I could make a sandwich before I give it to him?”

       “Oh, you poor dear boy!” she cried. “And I never even thought—of course they wouldn’t give you lunch or dinner.”

       Mrs. Flowers got bread and Matt was happy enough with that, bread and meat, the simplest sandwich imaginable—and so good it curled his toes.

       Elena wept just a little more. So easy to make two creatures happy with one simple thing. More than two—they were all happy to see Matt safe and to watch Saber get his proper reward.

       The enormous dog had followed every movement of that roast with his eyes, tail swishing back and forth on the floor. But when Matt, still chomping, offered him the large piece of meat that was left, Saber just cocked his head to one side, staring at it as if to say, “You have to be joking.”

       “Yes, it’s for you. Go on and take it now,” Mrs. Flowers said firmly. Finally, Saber opened his enormous mouth to take hold of the end of the roast, tail twirling like a helicopter blade. His body language was so clear that Matt laughed out loud.

       “This once on the floor with us,” Mrs. Flowers added magnificently, spreading a large rug over the kitchen floorboards.

       Saber’s joy was only surpassed by his good manners. He put the roast on the rug and then trotted up to each of the humans to push a wet nose into hand or waist or under a chin, and then he trotted back and attacked his prize.

       “I wonder if he misses Sage?” Elena murmured.

       “I miss Sage,” Matt said indistinctly. “We need all the magic help we can get.”

       Meanwhile Mrs. Flowers was hurrying around the kitchen making ham and cheese sandwiches and bagging them like school lunches. “Anybody who wakes up tonight hungry must havesomething to eat,” she said. “Ham and cheese, chicken salad, some nice crisp carrots, and a big hunk of apple pie.” Elena went to help her. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to cry some more. Mrs. Flowers patted her. “We are all feeling—er, strung out,” she announced gravely. “Anyone who doesn’t feel like going right to sleep is probably running on too much adrenaline. My sleeping aid will help with that. And I think we can trust our animal friends and the wards on the roof to keep us safe tonight.”

       Matt was practically asleep on his feet now. “Mrs. Flowers—someday I’ll repay you…but for now, I can’t keep my eyes open.”

       “In other words, bedtime, kiddies,” Stefan said. He closed Matt’s fingers firmly around a packed lunch, then steered him toward the stairs. Elena gathered several more lunches, kissed Mrs. Flowers twice, and went up to Stefan’s room.

       She had the attic bed straightened and was opening a plastic bag when Stefan came in from putting Matt to bed.

       “Is he okay?” she said anxiously. “I mean, will he be okay tomorrow?”

       “He’ll be okay in his body. I got most of the damage healed.”

       “And in hismind?”

       “It’s a tough thing. He just ran smack into Real Life. Arrested, knowing they might lynch him, not knowing if anybody would be able to figure out what had happened to him. He thought that even if we tracked him it would come down to a fight, which would have been hard to win—with so few of us, and not much magic left.”

       “But Saber fixed ’em,” Elena said.

       She looked thoughtfully at the sandwiches she’d laid out on the bed. “Stefan, do you want chicken salad or ham?” she asked.

       There was a silence. But it was moments before Elena looked up at him in astonishment. “Oh, Stefan—I—I actuallyforgot. I just—today has been so strange— I forgot—”

       “I’m flattered,” Stefan said. “And you’re sleepy. Whatever Mrs. Flowers puts in her tea—”

       “I think the government would be interested in it,” Elena offered. “For spies and things. But for now…” She held her arms out, head bent back, neck exposed.

       “No, love. I remember this afternoon, if you don’t. And I swore I was going to start hunting, and I am,” Stefan said firmly.

       “You’re going to leave me?” Elena said, startled out of her warm satisfaction. They stared at each other.

       “Don’t leave,” Elena said, combing her hair away from her neck. “I had it all planned out, how you’ll drink, and how we’ll sleep holding each other. Please don’t leave, Stefan.”

       She knew how hard he found it to leave her. Even if shewas grimy and worn out, even if she was wearing grungy jeans and had dirt under her fingernails. She was endlessly beautiful and endlessly powerful and mysterious to him. He longed for her. Elena could feel it through their bond, which was beginning to hum, beginning to warm up, beginning to draw him in close.

       “But, Elena,” he said. He was trying to be sensible! Didn’t he know she didn’t want sensible at this particular moment?

       “Right here.” Elena tapped the soft spot on her neck.

       Their bond was singing like an electric power line now. But Stefan was stubborn. “You need to eat, yourself. You have to keep your strength up.”

       Elena immediately picked up a chicken salad sandwich and bit into it. Mmm…yummy. Really good. She would have to pick Mrs. Flowers a wildflower bouquet. They were all so well taken care of here. She had to think of more ways to help.

       Stefan was watching her eat. It made him hungry, but that was because he was used to being fed round the clock, and not used to exercise. Elena could hear everything through their connection and she heard him thinking that he was glad to see Elena renewing herself. That he had learned discipline now; that it wouldn’t do him any harm to go to bed one nightfeeling hungry. He would hold his sleepy adorable Elena all night.

       No! Elena was horrified. Since he’d been imprisoned in the Dark Dimension, anything that hinted at Stefan going without filled her with appalling terror. Suddenly she had trouble swallowing the bite she’d taken.

       “Right here, right here…please?” she begged him. She didn’t want to have to seduce him into it, but she would if he forced her to. She would wash her hands into pristine cleanliness, and change into a long, clinging nightgown, and stroke his stubborn canines in between kisses, and touch them with her tongue tip gently, just at the base where they wouldn’t cut her as they responded and grew. And by then he would be dizzy, he would be out of control, he would be hers completely.

       All right, all right! Stefan thought to her. Mercy!

       “I don’t want to give you mercy. I don’t want you to let me go,” she said, holding her arms out to him, and heard her own voice soft and tender and yearning. “I want you to hold me and keep me forever, and I want to hold you and keep you forever.”

       Stefan’s face had changed. He looked at her with the look he’d worn in prison when she had come to visit him in an outfit—very unlike the grubby one she wore now—and he’d said, bewildered, “All this…it’s for me?”

       There had been razor wire between them then. Now there was nothing to separate them and Elena could see how much Stefan wanted to come to her. She reached a little farther and then Stefan came into the circle of her arms and held her tightly but with infinite care not to use enough strength to hurt her. When he relaxed and leaned his forehead against hers, Elena realized that she would never be tired or sad or frightened without being able to think of this feeling and that it would uphold her for the rest of her life.

       At last they sank down together on the sheets, comforting each other in equal measure; exchanging sweet, warm kisses. With each kiss, Elena felt the outside world and all its horrors drift farther and farther away. How could anything be wrong when she herself felt that heaven was near? Matt and Meredith, Damon and Bonnie would surely all be safe and happy too. Meanwhile, every kiss brought her closer to paradise, and she knew Stefan felt the same way. They were so happy together that Elena knew that soon the entire universe would echo with their own joy, which overflowed like pure light and transformed everything it touched.

 

Bonnie woke and realized she had only been unconscious for a few minutes. She began to shiver, and once she started she couldn’t seem to stop. She felt a wave of heat envelop her, and she knew that Damon was trying to warm her, but still the trembling wouldn’t go away.

“What’s wrong?” Damon asked, and his voice was different from usual.

       “I don’t know,” Bonnie said. She didn’t. “Maybe it’s because they kept starting to throw me out the window. I wasn’t going to scream about that,” she added hastily, in case he assumed she would. “But then when they talked about torturing me—”

       She felt a sort of spasm go through Damon. He was holding her too hard. “Torturing you! They threatened you with that?”

       “Yes, because, you know, Misao’s star ball was gone. They knew that it had been poured out; I didn’t tell them that. But I had to tell them that it was my fault that the last half got poured out, and then they got mad at me. Oh! Damon, you’re hurting me!”

       “So it wasyour fault it got poured out, was it?”

       “Well, I figure it was. You couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gotten drunk, and—wh-what’s wrong, Damon? Are you mad too?” He really was holding her so that she really couldn’t breathe.

       Slowly, she felt his arms loosen a little. “A word of advice, little redbird. When people are threatening to torture and kill you, it might be more—expedient—to tell them that it’s someone else’s fault. Especially if that happens to be the truth.”

       “I know that!” Bonnie said indignantly. “But they were going to kill me anyway. If I’d told aboutyou, they’d’ve hurt you, too.”

       Damon pulled her roughly back now, so that she had to look him in the face. Bonnie could also feel the delicate touch of a telepathic mind probe. She didn’t resist; she was too busy wondering why he had plum-colored shadows under his eyes. Then he shook her a little, and she stopped wondering.

       “Don’t you understand even the basics of self-preservation?” he said, and she thought he looked angry again. He was certainly different from any other time that she’d seen him—except once, she thought, and that was when Elena had been “Disciplined” for saving Lady Ulma’s life, back when Ulma had been a slave. He’d had the same expression then, so menacing that even Meredith had been frightened of him, and yet so filled with guilt that Bonnie had longed to comfort him.

       But there had to be some other reason, Bonnie’s mind told her. Because you’re not Elena, and he’s never going to treat you the way he treats Elena. A vision of the brown room rose before her, and she felt certain that he would never have put Elena there. Elena wouldn’t have let him, for one thing.

       “Do I have to go back?” she asked, realizing that she was being petty and silly and that the brown room had seemed like a haven just a little while ago.

       “Go back?” Damon said, a little too quickly. She had the feeling that he’d seen the brown room too, now, through her eyes. “Why? The landlady gave me everything in the room. So I have your real clothes and a bunch of star balls down there, in case you weren’t through with one. But why would you think you might have to go back?”

       “Well, I know you were looking for a lady of quality, and I’m not one,” Bonnie said simply.

       “That was just so I could change back into a vampire,” Damon said. “And what do you think is holding you up in the air right now?” But this time Bonnie knew somehow that the sensations from the “Never Ever” star balls were still in her mind and that Damon was seeing them too. He was a vampire again. And the contents of these star balls were so abominable that Damon’s stony exterior finally cracked. Bonnie could almost guess what he thought of them, and of her, left to shiver under her one blanket every night.

       And then, to her total astonishment, Damon, the ever-composed, brand-new vampire blurted, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how that place would be for you. Is there anything that will make you feel better?”

       Bonnie blinked. She wondered, seriously, if she were dreaming. Damon didn’t apologize. Damonfamously didn’t apologize, or explain, or speak so nicely to people, unless he wanted something from them. But one thing seemed real. She didn’t have to sleep in the brown room anymore.

       This was so exciting that she flushed a little, and dared say, “Could we go down to the ground? Slowly? Because the truth is that I’m just terrified of heights.”

       Damon blinked, but said, “Yes, I think I can manage that. Is there anything else you’d like?”

       “Well—there are a couple of girls who’d be donors—happily—if—well—if there’s any money left—if you could save them…”

       Damon said a little sharply, “Of course there’s some money left. I even wrung your share back out of that hag of a landlady.”

       “Well, then, there’s that secret that I told you, but I don’t know if you remember.”

       “How soon do you think you’ll feel well enough to start?” asked Damon.

 

 

           

 

24

      

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