Stefan woke early. He spent the time from dawn until breakfast just watching Elena, who even in sleep had an inner glow like a golden flame through a faintly rose-colored candle.

At breakfast, everyone was more or less still wrapped up in thoughts of the day before. Meredith showed Matt the picture of her brother, Cristian, the vampire. Matt briefly told Meredith about the inner workings of the Ridgemont court system and painted her a picture of Caroline as werewolf. It was clear that both of them felt safer at the boardinghouse than anywhere else.

       And Elena, who had woken up with Stefan’s mind all around her, embracing her, and her own mind still full of light, was completely at a loss for a Plan A or any other letter. She had to be told gently by the others that only one thing made sense.

       “Stefan,” Matt said, draining a mug of Mrs. Flowers’s pitch-black coffee. “He’s the only one who might be able to use his mind instead of Post-it Notes on the kids.”

       And, “Stefan,” said Meredith. “He’s the only one Shinichi might be afraid of.”

       “I’m no use at all,” Elena said sadly. She had no appetite. She had gotten dressed with a feeling of love and compassion toward all humankind and a desire to help protect her hometown, but as everyone pointed out, she was probably going to have to spend the day in the root cellar. Reporters might come to call.

       They’re right, Stefan sent to Elena. I’m the only logical person to find out what’s really going on in Fell’s Church.

       He actually went while the rest of them were finishing breakfast. Only Elena knew why; only she could feel him at the limits of her telepathic range.

       Stefan was hunting. He drove into the New Wood, got out, and finally startled a rabbit out of the brush. He Influenced it to rest and not be frightened. Surreptitiously, in this thin woodland without cover, he took a little blood from it…andchoked.

       It tasted like some kind of hideous liquid flavored with rodent. Was a rabbit a rodent? He had been lucky enough to find a rat one day in his prison cell and it had tasted vaguely like this.

       But now, for days, he had been drinking human blood. Not just that, but the rich, potent blood of strong, adventurous, and in several cases paranormally talented individuals—the crème de la crème. How could he have gotten used to it so quickly?

       It shamed him now, to think of what he’d taken. Elena’s blood, of course, was enough to drive any vampire wild. And Meredith, whose blood had the deep crimson taste of some primordial ocean, and Bonnie, who tasted like a telepath’s dessert. And finally Matt, the All-American red-blooded boy.

       They’d fed him and fed him by the hour, far past what he needed to survive. They’d fed him until he’d begun to heal, and seeing that he was healing, they’d fed him more. And it had gone on and on, ending with Elena last night—Elena, whose hair was taking on a silvery cast and whose blue eyes seemed almost radiant. Back in the Dark Dimension, Damon hadn’t exercised any restraint at all. Elena hadn’t exercised any on her own behalf.

       That silvery cast…Stefan’s stomach clenched when he thought about it, about the last time he’d seen her hair that way. She’d been dead then. On her feet, but dead just the same.

       Stefan let the rabbit scamper away. He was taking another oath. He mustnot make Elena into a vampire again. That meant no significant blood exchange between the two of them for at least a week—either giving or taking might tip her over the edge.

       He must once again adjust to the taste of animal blood.

       Stefan shut his eyes briefly, remembering the horror of the first time. The cramps. The shakes. The agony that seemed to tell his entire body that it wasn’t getting fed. The feeling that his veins might explode into flame at any moment, and the pain in his jaws.

       He stood up. He was lucky to be alive. Luckier than he ever could have dreamed he would be in having Elena beside him. He would work through the readjustment without bothering her by telling her, he decided.

 

Just two hours later Stefan was back at the boardinghouse, limping slightly. Matt, who met him at the heavy front door, noticed the limp. “You okay? You’d better get in and ice it.”

“Just a cramp,” Stefan said briefly. “I’m not used to exercise. Didn’t get any back there in—you know.” He looked away, flushing. So did Matt, hot and cold and furious at the people who had put Stefan in this condition. Vampires were pretty resilient, but he had the feeling—no, heknew—that Stefan had almost died in his prison cell. One day under lock and key had convinced Matt that he never wanted to be imprisoned again.

       He followed Stefan to the kitchen where Elena, Meredith, and Mrs. Flowers were—what else?—drinking mugs of tea.

       And Matt felt a twinge when Elena instantly noticed the limp and got up and went to Stefan, and Stefan held her tightly, running reassuring fingers through her hair. Matt couldn’t help but wonder, though—was that glorious golden hair turning lighter? More like the silvery gold it had been when Elena had first gone with Stefan and was on her way to turning into a vampire? Stefan certainly seemed to be inspecting it closely, turning each handful as he raked his fingers through it.

       “Any luck?” Elena asked him, tension in her voice.

       Wearily, Stefan shook his head. “I went up streets and down streets and wherever I found a—a young girl who was contorted, or whirling round and round, or doing any other of the things the papers mentioned, I tried to Influence them. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have bothered with the whirling girls. I couldn’t catch their eyes. But the final count is zero for eleven.”

       Elena turned toward Meredith in agitation. “What do we do?”

       Mrs. Flowers busily began rummaging through bundles of herbs that hung above her stove. “You need a nice cup of tea.”

       “And a rest,” Meredith said, patting him lightly on the hand. “Can I get you anything?”

       “Well—I’ve got a new idea—scrying. But I need Misao’s star ball to see if it will work. Don’t worry,” he added, “I won’t use any of the Power in it; I just need to look at the surface.”

       “I’ll bring it,” Elena offered, getting up promptly from where she was sitting on his lap. Matt started slightly and looked at Mrs. Flowers as Elena went to the door of the root cellar and pushed. Nothing moved and Mrs. Flowers simply watched benignly. It was Stefan who rose to help her, still limping. Then Matt and Meredith got up, Meredith asking, “Mrs. Flowers, are yousure we should keep the star ball in that same safe?”

       “Mama says we’re doing the right thing,” Mrs. Flowers answered serenely.

       After that things happened very fast.

       As if they’d rehearsed it, Meredith pressed the exact place to open the root cellar door. Elena fell to her hands and knees. Faster than even he had imagined he could go, Matt went barreling toward Stefan with one shoulder down. Mrs. Flowers was frantically pulling great swaths of dried herbs down from where they hung above the kitchen table.

       And then Matt was hitting Stefan with all the power in his body and Stefan was stumbling over Elena, his head going down and down and meeting no resistance on the way. Meredith was coming at him sideways and helping him do a complete forward flip in the air. As soon as the flip took him out of the doorway and he was cartwheeling down the stairs, Elena got up and shut the door and Meredith leaned against it, as Matt shouted,“How do you keep in a kitsune?”

       “These might help,” gasped Mrs. Flowers, stuffing odiferous herbs into the crack under the door.

       “And—iron!” cried Elena, and she and Meredith and Matt all ran to the den where there was an enormous, tripartite iron fire screen. Somehow they bundled it back to the kitchen and set it upright against the root cellar door. Just then the first crash came from the inside against it, but the iron was heavy and the second crash against the door was weaker.

       “What are you doing? Have you all gone crazy?” Stefan shouted plaintively, but as the entire group began to cover the door in Post-it Note amulets, he cursed instead and became pure Shinichi.“You’ll be sorry, damn you! Misao’s not right. She cries and cries. You’ll make it up to her with your blood, but not before I introduce you to some special friends of mine. The kind who know how to cause real pain!”

       Elena lifted her head, as if hearing something. Matt watched her frown. Then she called to Shinichi, “Don’t even try to probe for Damon. He’s gone. And if you try to track him I’ll fry your brains.”

       Sullen silence greeted her from the root cellar.

       “My goodness gracious, what next?” murmured Mrs. Flowers.

       Elena simply nodded for the others to follow her, and they went all the way to the very top of the house—Stefan’s room—and spoke in whispers.

       “How didyou know?”

       “Did you use telepathy?”

       “I didn’t know at first,” Matt admitted, “but Elena was acting as if the star ball was in the root cellar. Stefan knows it’s not there. I guess,” he added with a guilty start, “that I invited him in.”

       “I knew as soon as he startedgroping my hair,” Elena said with a shudder. “Stefan and D—I mean, Stefan knows I only like it touched lightly, and at the ends. Not mauled like that. Remember all Shinichi’s little songs about golden hair? He’s a nutcase. Anyway, I could tell from the feel of his mind.”

       Matt felt ashamed. All his wondering about Elena maybe changing into a vampire…and this was the answer, he thought.

       “I noticed his lapis ring,” Meredith said. “I saw him with it on his right hand as he went out earlier. When he came back he had it on his left hand.”

       There was a brief pause as they all stared at her. She shrugged. “It was part of my training, noticing little things.”

       “Good point,” Matt said at last. “Good point. He wouldn’t be able to change it in sunlight.”

       “How didyou know, Mrs. Flowers?” Elena asked. “Or was it just the way we were behaving?”

       “Goodness, no, you’re all very good little actors. But as soon as he stepped over the threshold Mama fairly shrieked at me: ‘What are you doing, letting a kitsune into your house?’ So then I knew what we were in for.”

       “We beat him!” Elena said, beaming. “We actually caught Shinichi off guard! I can hardly believe it.”

       “Believe it,” Meredith said with a wry smile. “He was off guard for amoment. He’ll be thinking up revenge right now.”

       Something else was worrying Matt. He turned to Elena. “I thought that you said that both you and Shinichi had keys that could take you anywhere, anytime. So why couldn’t he have just said, ‘Take me inside the boardinghouse where the star ball is’?”

       “Those were different keys from the Twin Fox key,” Elena said, her brows drawn together. “They’re, like, the Master Keys and Shinichi and Misao still have them both. I don’t know why he didn’t use his. Although it would have given him away the moment he was inside.”

       “Not if he went inside the root cellar, and stayed there the whole time,” Meredith said. “And maybe a Master Key can override the ‘not invited inside’ rule.”

       Mrs. Flowers said, “But Mama still would have told me. Also there are no keyholes in the root cellar. At all.”

       “‘No keyholes’ wouldn’t matter, I don’tthink,” Elena answered. “I think he just wanted to show how clever he was, and how he could fool us into giving him Misao’s star ball.”

       Before anyone else could say a word, Meredith held out her palm, with a shining key on it. The key was golden with diamonds inset and had a very familiar outline.

       “That’s one of the Master Keys!” cried Elena. “It’s what we thought the Twin Fox key would look like!”

       “It sort of came out of his jeans pocket when he did that flip,” Meredith said innocently.

       “When you were flipping him over me, you mean,” said Elena. “I suppose you picked his pocket too.”

       “So, rightnow, Shinichi doesn’t have a key to escape with!” Matt said excitedly.

       “No key to make keyholes,” Elena agreed, dimpling.

       “He can have fun changing into a mole and burrowing out of the root cellar,” Meredith said coolly. “That’s if he’s got his transforming gear or whatever with him.” She added, with a troubled change in her voice, “I wonder…if we should have Matt tell one other person where he’s actually hidden the star ball. Just…well, just in case.”

       Matt saw knitted brows all around him. But suddenly the realization hit him that hehad to tell someone that he’d hidden the star ball in his closet. The group—including Stefan—had picked him to hide it because he had so stubbornly resisted when Shinichi was using Damon’s body as a puppet to torture him a month ago. Matt had proved then that he would die in hideous pain rather than endanger his friends. But if Matt were to die now, Misao’s star ball might be lost to the group forever. And only Matt knew how close he had come today to tumbling down the stairs along with Shinichi.

       Far below they all heard a shout. “Hello! Is anybody home? Elena!”

       “That’s my Stefan,” Elena said and then, without a shred of dignity, she ran to launch herself from the foyer into his arms. He looked startled, but managed to break her fall before they both went down on the porch.

       “What’s been going on?” he said, his body vibrating infinitesimally, as with the urge to fight. “The whole house smells like kitsune!”

       “It’s all right,” Elena said. “Come and see.” She led him upstairs to his room. “We’ve got him in the root cellar,” she added.

       Stefan looked confused. “You’ve got who in the root cellar?”

       “With iron against the door,” Matt said triumphantly. “And herbs and amulets all over it. And, anyway, Meredith got hiskey.”

       “Hiskey? You’re talking about—Shinichi?” Stefan turned on Meredith, green eyes wide. “While I’ve been gone?”

       “It was mostly an accident. I sort of stuck my hand in his pocket when he was upside down and off balance. And I lucked out and got the Master Key—unless this is an ordinary house key.”

       Stefan stared at it. “It’s the real thing. Elena knows that. Meredith, you’re incredible!”

       “Yes, it’s the right one,” Elena confirmed. “I remember the shape—pretty elaborate, yes?” She took it from Meredith’s hand.

       “What are you going to—”

       “Might as well test it,” Elena said with a mischievous smile. She walked to the door of the room, shut it, said, “The den downstairs,” inserted the winged key in the lock, and opened the door, stepping through and shutting the door behind her. Before anyone could speak, she was back, with the poker from the den held aloft in triumph.

       “It works!” Stefan cried.

       “That’s amazing,” Matt said.

       Stefan looked almost feverish. “But don’t you realize what it means? It means we canuse this key. We can go anywhere we like without using Power. Even to the Dark Dimension! But first—while he’s still here—we ought to do something about Shinichi.”

       “You’re in no condition to do that now, dear Stefan,” Mrs. Flowers said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but the truth is that we have been very, very lucky. That wicked kitsune was off guard back then. He won’t be now.”

       “I still have to try,” Stefan said quietly. “Every one of you has been tormented or had to fight—whether with your fists or your minds,” he added, bowing slightly to Mrs. Flowers. “I’ve suffered but I’ve never had a chance tofight him. I have to try.”

       Matt said, just as quietly, “I’ll go with you.”

       Elena added, “We can all fight together. Right, Meredith?”

       Meredith nodded slowly, taking Stefan’s poker fromhis fireplace. “Yes. It may be a low blow, but—together.”

       “I say it’s a higher blow than letting him live and go on hurting people. Anyway, we’ll take care of it…together,” Elena said firmly. “Rightnow!”

       Matt started to get up, but his motion was frozen in midair as he stared in horror. Simultaneously, with the grace of hunting lionesses or ballet dancers the two girls closed in on Stefan, and simultaneously they swung their separate pokers; Elena hitting him in the head and Meredith hitting him squarely in the groin. Stefan reeled away from the blow to the head, but simply said, “Ow!” when Meredith hit him. Matt knocked Elena out of the way and then, turning as precisely as if he were on the football field, got Meredith out of “Stefan’s” way too.

       But this imposter had obviously decided not to fight back. Stefan’s form melted. Misao, green leaves woven into her scarlet-tipped black hair, stood before them. To Matt’s shock, her face was pinched and pale. She was obviously very ill, although still defiant. But there was no mockery in her voice tonight.

       “What have you done with my star ball? And mybrother?” she demanded feebly.

       “Your brother’s safely locked up,” Matt said, hardly knowing what he was telling her. Despite all the crimes Misao had committed he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She was clearly desperate and ill.

       “Iknow that. I was going to say my brother will kill you all—not as a game, but in anger.” Now Misao looked wretched and frightened. “You’ve never seen him really angry.”

       “You’ve never seen Stefan angry either,” Elena said. “At least not when he had all his Power.”

       Misao just shook her head. A dried leaf floated from her hair. “You don’t understand!”

       “I doubt we understand anything. Meredith, have we searched this girl?”

       “No, but surely she wouldn’t have brought the other one—”

       Elena said crisply, “Matt, take a book and read it. I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

       Matt was reluctant to turn his back on a kitsune, even a sick one. But when even Mrs. Flowers nodded gently he obeyed. Still, back turned or not, he could hear noises. And the noises suggested that Misao was being held tightly and searched thoroughly. At first the sounds were all negative murmurs.

       “Huh-uh…huh-uh…huh-uh…huh-oops!” There was a rattle of metal on wood.

       Matt only turned when Elena said, “Okay, you can look. It was in her front pocket.” She added to Misao, who was looking as if she might faint, “We didn’twant to have to hold you and search you. But this key—where in heaven’s name did you get keys like this, anyway?”

       A pink spot showed on Misao’s cheeks. “Heaven is right. They’re the only two left of the Master Keys—and they belong to Shinichi and me.I figured out how to steal them from the Celestial Court. That was…a long time ago.”

       At that moment they heard a car on the road—Stefan’s Porsche. In the dead silence that followed, they could also see the car through Stefan’s window as it swung into the driveway.

       “No one goes down,” Elena said tersely. “No one invites him in.”

       Meredith shot her a keen glance. “Shinichi could have tunneled out like a mole by now. And he’salready been invited in.”

       “My fault for not warning you all—but anyway, if it is Shinichi and he’s done anything to hurt Stefan he’s going to see me whenI’m angry. The words Wings of Destruction just popped into my head and something inside me wants to say them.”

       There was a chill in the room.

       No one met Stefan, but in a moment they could all hear running footsteps. Stefan appeared at his door, burst through, and found himself confronted with a row of people all looking at him suspiciously.

       “What thehell is going on?” he demanded, staring at Misao, who was being held up between Meredith and Matt. “Misao—”

       Elena took two steps toward him—and wound herself around him, drawing him into a deep kiss. For a moment he resisted, but then, bit by bit, his opposition collapsed despite the roomful of observers.

       When Elena finally let go, she just leaned against Stefan, breathing hard. The others were all crimson with embarrassment. Stefan, flushed as he was, held her tightly.

       “I’m sorry,” Elena whispered. “But you’ve already ‘come home’ twice. First, it was Shinichi and we locked him in the root cellar. Then it washer.” She pointed, without looking, toward the cowering Misao. “I didn’t know how to make sure that Shinichi hadn’t escaped somehow—”

       “And you’re sure now?”

       “Oh, yes. I recognize you. You’re always ready to let me in.”

       Matt realized that she was shaking and quickly stood up so she could sit, for at least a minute or two, in peace.

       The peace lasted less than a minute.

       “I want my star ball!” Misao cried. “I need to put Power in it or I’ll go on weakening—and then you’ll have murdered me.”

       “Go on weakening? Is the liquid evaporating out of the star ball or something?” Meredith asked. Matt was thinking about what he’d seen on his home block before the Ridgemont sheriffs had got him.

       “You’ve gathered Power to put in it?” he asked mildly. “Power from yesterday, maybe?”

       “Power from ever since you took it. But it isn’t joined with…me. With my star ball. It’s mine, but notyet.”

       “Like maybe some Power from making Cole Reece eat his guinea pig while it was alive? From making kids burn down their own houses?” Matt’s voice was gravelly.

       “What does it matter?” Misao retorted sullenly. “It’s mine. They were my ideas, not yours. You can’t keep me away—”

       “Meredith, keepme away from her. I’ve known that kid Cole since he was born. I’ll always have nightmares…”

       Misao perked up like a wilting plant getting water. “Have nightmares, have nightmares,” she whispered.

       There was a silence. Then Meredith said, carefully and expressionlessly, as if she were thinking of the stave, “You’re a nasty little thing, aren’t you? Is that your food? Bad memories, nightmares, fear of the future?”

       Misao was plainly stumped. She couldn’t see the catch. It was like asking a regular hungry teenager “How about some pizza and a Coke? Is that what you want?” Misao couldn’t even see that her appetites were wrong, so she couldn’t lie.

       “You were right before,” Stefan said forcefully. “We have your star ball. The only way to make us give it back would be to do something for us. We’re supposed to be able to controlyou anyway because we have it—”

       “Old-ways thinking. Obsolete,” Misao growled.

       There was a dead silence. Matt felt his stomach plummet.

       They had been betting on “old-ways thinking” all along. To get Shinichi’s star ball by making Misao tell them where it was. Their ultimate goal had been to control Shinichi usinghis star ball.

       “You don’t understand,” Misao said, pitifully and yet angrily at the same time. “My brother will help me fill my star ball again. But what we did in this town—it was anorder, not just for fun.”

       “Could’a fooled me,” Elena murmured, but Stefan’s head jerked up and he said, “Anorder? From who?”

       “I…don’t…know!” Misao screamed. “Shinichi gets the orders. Then he tells me what to do. But whoever it is should be happy by now. The town is almost destroyed. He ought to give me some help here!” She glared at the group, and they stared back.

       Without knowing that he was going to say it, Matt said, “Let’s put her in the root cellar with Shinichi. I’ve got this feeling that we might all be sleeping in the storage room tonight.”

 

 

           

 

25

      

“Sleeping in the storage room with every wall covered in Post-it Note amulets,” added Meredith grimly. “If we have enough. I got another packet, but it doesn’t go very far when you’re trying to cover a room.”

“Okay,” Elena said. “Who’s got Shinichi’s key?”

       Matt raised his hand. “In my—”

       “Don’t tell me!” exclaimed Elena. “I’ve got hers.We can’t lose them. Stefan and I are one team; you guys are the other.”

       They half-led and half-supported Misao out of Stefan’s room and down the stairs. Misao didn’t try to run away from them, to struggle, or to speak to them. This only made Matt more suspicious of her. He saw Stefan and Elena glance toward each other and knew they were feeling the same way.

       But what else was there to do with her? There was no other way, humanely, or even inhumanely, to restrain her for days. They had her star ball, and according to books that was supposed to allow them to control her, but she was right, it seemed to be an obsolete notion, because it didn’t work. They’d tried with Stefan and Meredith holding her tightly, while Matt got the star ball from where he’d been keeping it in a shoebox on the upper shelf above the clothes in his closet.

       He and Elena had tried to get Misao to do things while holding the almost empty sphere: to make Misao tell where her brother’s star ball was, and so on. But it simply didn’t work.

       “Maybe when there’s so little Power in it, it doesn’t apply,” Elena said finally. But that was small comfort at best.

       As they took Misao to the kitchen, Matt thought that it had been a stupid plan of the kitsune: imitating Stefan twice. Doing it the second time, when the humans were on guard, that wasstupid. Misao didn’t seem as stupid as that.

       Matt had a bad feeling.

 

Elena had a very bad feeling about what they were doing. As she looked around at the faces of the others, she saw that they did too. But nobody had come up with a better plan. They couldn’t kill Misao. They weren’t murderers who could kill a sickly, passive girl in cold blood.

She figured that Shinichi must have very keen hearing, and had already heard them walking on the creaking kitchen floorboards. And she had to assume that he knew—by mindbond, or just logic, or whatever—that Misao was right above him. There was nothing to lose by shouting, through the closed door, “Shinichi, we’ve got your sister here! If you want her back you’ll stay quiet and not make us throw her down the stairs.”

       There was silence from the root cellar. Elena chose to think of it as submissive silence. At least Shinichi wasn’t yelling threats.

       “Okay,” Elena whispered. She’d taken a position directly behind Misao. “When I count to three, we push as hard as we can.”

       “Wait!” Matt said in a miserable whisper-shout. “You said wewouldn’t throw her down the stairs.”

       “Life isn’t fair,” Elena said grimly. “You think he doesn’t have some surprise for us?”

       “But—”

       “Leave it, Matt,” said Meredith quietly. She had the stave ready in her left hand and with her right was ready to push on the panel for opening the door. “Everybody ready?”

       Everyone nodded. Elena felt sorry for Matt and Stefan, who were the most honest and sensitive of all of them.

       “One,” she whispered softly, “two,three.”

       On three Meredith hit the concealed wall switch. And then things began to happen in very slow motion.

       By “two” Elena had already begun to shove Misao toward the door. On “three” the others joined her.

       But the door seemed to take forever to open. And before the ending of forever, everything went wrong.

       The greenery around Misao’s head spread twigs in all directions. One strand shot out and snagged Elena around the wrist. She heard a yell of outrage from Matt and knew that another strand had gotten him.

       “Push!” Meredith shouted and then Elena saw the stave coming at her. Meredith whisked with the stave through the greenery connected to Misao. The vine that had been cutting into Elena’s wrist fell to the floor.

       Any remaining misgivings about throwing Misao down the stairs vanished. Elena joined in the crowd trying to push her through the opening. But there was something wrong in the basement. For one thing, they were shoving Misao into pitch-darkness…and movement.

       The basement was full of—something. Somethings.

       Elena looked down at her ankle and was horrified to see a gigantic maggot that seemed to have crawled out of the root cellar. Or at least a maggot was the first thing she could think of to compare it to—maybe it was a headless slug. It was translucent and black and about a foot long, but far too fat for her to have put a hand around it. It seemed to have two ways of moving, one by the familiar hunch-and-straighten method and the other by simply sticking to other maggots, which were exploding up over Elena’s head like a hideous fountain.

       Elena looked up and wished she hadn’t.

       There was a cobra waving over them, out of the root cellar and into the kitchen. It was a cobra made of black translucent maggots stuck together, and every so often one would fall off and land among the group and there would be a cry.

       If Bonnie had been with them, she would have screamed until the wineglasses in the cupboards shattered, Elena thought wildly. Meredith was trying to attack the cobra with the stave and reach into her jeans pocket for Post-it Notes at the same time.

       “I’ll get the notes,” Elena gasped, and wriggled her hand into Meredith’s pocket. Her fingers closed on a small sheaf of cards and she tugged it out triumphantly.

       Just then the first glistening fat maggot fell on her bare skin. She wanted to scream with pain as its little feet or teeth or suckers—whatever kept it attached to her—burned and stung. She pulled a thin card from the sheaf, which was not a Post-it Note but the same amulet on a small rather flimsy note card, and slapped it on the maggot-like thing.

       Nothing happened.

       Meredith was thrusting the stave into the middle of the cobra now. Elena saw another of the creatures fall almost onto her upturned face and managed to turn away so that it hit her collar instead. She tried another card from the sheaf and when it just floated away—the maggotslooked gooey but weren’t—she gave a primal scream and ripped with both hands at the ugly things attached to her. They gave way, leaving her skin covered with red marks and her T-shirt torn at the shoulder.

       “The amulets aren’t working,” she yelled to Meredith.

       Meredith was actually standing under the swaying, hooded head of the maggot-cobra, stabbing and stabbing as if to reach the center. Her voice was muffled. “Not enough amulets anyway! Too many of these grubs. You’d better run.”

       An instant later Stefan shouted, “Everybody get away from here! There’s something solid in there!”

       “That’s what I’m trying to get!” Meredith shouted back.

       Frantically, Matt yelled, “Where’s Misao?”

       The last time Elena had seen her she had been diving into the writhing mass of segmented darkness. “Gone,” she shouted back. “Where’s Mrs. Flowers?”

       “In the kitchen,” said a voice behind her. Elena glanced back and saw the old woman pulling down herbs with both hands.

       “Okay,” Stefan shouted. “Everybody, take a few steps back. I’m going to hit it with Power. Do it—now!”

       His voice was like a whiplash. Everyone stepped back, even Meredith who had been probing the snake with her stave.

       Stefan curled his hand around nothingness, around air, and it turned to sparkling, swirling bright energy. He threw it point-blank into the cobra made of maggots.

       There was an explosion, and then suddenly it was raining maggots. Elena had her teeth locked so as to keep herself from screaming. The oval translucent bodies of the maggots broke open on the kitchen floor like overripe plums, or else bounced. When Elena dared look up again she saw a black stain on the ceiling.

       Beneath it, smiling, was Shinichi.

       Meredith, lightning quick, tried to put the stave through him. But Shinichi was faster, leaning out of her way, and out of the next thrust, and the next.

       “You humans,” he said. “All the same. All stupid. When Midnight finally comes you’ll see how stupid you were.” He said “Midnight” as if he were saying “the Apocalypse.”

       “We were smart enough to discover that you weren’t Stefan,” Matt said from behind Shinichi.

       Shinichi rolled his eyes. “And to put me into a little room roofed withwood. You can’t even remember that kitsune control all plants and trees? The walls are all full of malach grubs by now, you know. Thoroughly infested.” His eyes flickered—and he glanced backward, Elena saw, looking toward the open door of the root cellar.

       Her terror soared, and at the same time Stefan shouted, “Get out of here! Out of the house! Go to somewhere safe!”

       Elena and Meredith stared at each other, paralyzed. They were on different teams, but they couldn’t seem to let go of each other. Then Meredith snapped out of it and turned to the back of the kitchen to help Mrs. Flowers. Matt was already there, doing the same thing.

       And then Elena found herself swept off her feet and moving fast. Stefan had her and was running toward the front door. Distantly, she heard Shinichi shout, “Bring me back their bones!”

       One of the maggots that Elena batted out of the way burst its skin and Elena saw something crawling out. These really were malach, she realized. Smaller editions of the one that had swallowed Matt’s arm and left those long, deep scratches when he pulled it out again.

       She noticed that one was stuck on Stefan’s back. Reckless with fury, she grabbed it near one end and ripped it off, yanking relentlessly even though Stefan gasped in pain. When it came free she got a glimpse of what looked like dozens of small children’s teeth on the bottom side. She threw it against a wall as they reached the front door.

       There they almost collided with Matt, Meredith, and Mrs. Flowers, coming through the den. Stefan wrenched the door open and when they all were through Meredith slammed it shut. A few malach—grubs and still-wet flying ones—made it out with them.

       “Where’s safe?” snapped Meredith. “I mean, really safe, safe for a couple of days?” Neither she nor Matt had released their grip on Mrs. Flowers and from their speed Elena guessed that she must be almost as light as a straw figure. She kept saying, “My goodness! Oh, gracious!”

       “My house?” Matt suggested. “The block’s bad, but it was okay the last time I saw it, and my mom’s gone with Dr. Alpert.”

       “Okay, Matt’s house—using the Master Keys. But let’s do it from the storage room. I donot want to open this front door again, no matter what,” Elena said.

       When Stefan tried to pick her up she shook her head. “I’m fine. Run as fast as you can and smash any malach you see.”

       They made it to the storage room, but now a sound likevipvipvip—a sort of high-pitched buzzing that could only have been produced by the malach—was following them.

       “What now?” Matt panted, helping Mrs. Flowers to sit on the bed.

       Stefan hesitated. “Is your house really safe, do you think?”

       “Is anywhere safe? But it’s empty, or it should be.”

       Meanwhile, Meredith drew Elena and Mrs. Flowers aside. To Elena’s horror, Meredith was holding one of the smaller grubs, gripping it so that its underside was turned upward.

       “Oh, God—” Elena protested, but Meredith said, “They look a lot like a little kid’s teeth, don’t they?”

       Suddenly Mrs. Flowers became animated. “They do indeed! And you’re saying that the femur we found in the thicket—”

       “Yes. It was certainly human but maybe not chewedby humans. Human children,” Meredith said.

       “And Shinichi yelled to the malach to bring back our bones…” Elena said and swallowed. Then she looked at the grub again. “Meredith, get rid of that thing somehow! It’s going to pop out as a flying malach.”

       Meredith looked around the storage room blankly.

       “Okay—just drop it and I’ll step on it,” Elena said, holding her breath to hold in her nausea.

       Meredith dropped the fat, translucent, black thing, which exploded on impact. Elena stamped on it, but the malach inside didn’t crush. Instead, when she lifted her foot, it tried to skitter under the bed. The stave cut it cleanly in two.

       “Guys,” Elena said sharply to Matt and Stefan, “we have to gonow. Outside are a bunch of flying malach!”

       Matt turned toward her. “Like the one that—”

       “Smaller, but just like the one that attacked you, I think.”

       “Okay, here’s what we figured out,” Stefan said in a way that immediately made Elena uneasy. “Somebody has to go to the Dark Dimension anyway to check on Bonnie. I guess I’m the only one to do that, since I’m a vampire. You couldn’t get in—”

       “Yes, we could,” Meredith said. “With these keys, we could just say ‘Take us to Lady Ulma’s house in the Dark Dimension.’ Or ‘Take me to wherever Bonnie is.’ Why shouldn’t it work?”

       Elena said, “Okay. Meredith, Matt, and Mrs. Flowers can stay here and try to figure out what ‘Midnight’ is. From the way Shinichi said it, it soundedbad. Meanwhile, Stefan and I go to the Dark Dimension and find Bonnie.”

       “No!” Stefan said. “I won’t take you to that horrible place again.”

       Elena looked him straight in the eye. “You promised,” she said, indifferent to the other people in the room. “Youpromised. Never to go again on a quest without me. No matter how short the time, no matter what the cause. You promised.”

       Stefan looked at her desperately. Elena knew he wanted to keep her safe—but which world was truly safe now? Both were filled with horror and danger.

       “Anyway,” she said with a grim smile, “I have the key.”

 

 

           

 

26

      

“Now you know how it’s done?” Elena asked Meredith. “You put the key in the keyhole and say where you want to go. Then open the door and go through. That’s it.”

“You three go first,” Stefan added. “And quick.”

       “I’ll turn the key,” Meredith told Matt. “You take care of Mrs. Flowers.”

       Just then Elena thought of something that she didn’t want to say aloud, only to Stefan. But she and he were physically so close, she knew he would pick it up.Saber! she thought to Stefan. We can’t leave him to these malach!

       We won’t, she heard Stefan’s voice in her head say. I showed him the way to Matt’s house, and told him to go there and take Talon and protect the people who will be coming.

       At the same time Matt was saying, “Oh, my God! Saber! He saved my life—I can’t just leave him.”

       “Already taken care of,” Stefan reassured him and Elena patted him on the back. “He’ll be at your house in a little while, and if you go somewhere else he’ll track you.”

       Elena turned her pats into gentle pushes. “Be good!”

       “Matt Honeycutt’s bedroom in Fell’s Church,” Meredith said, thrusting the key at the door handle, and opening the door. She and Mrs. Flowers and Matt all stepped forward. The door shut.

       Stefan turned to Elena. “I’m going first,” he said flatly. “But I’m holding on to you. I’m not going to let you go.”

       “Never let me go, never let me go,” Elena whispered in an imitation of Misao’s “Have nightmares.” Then she had a thought.

       “Slave bracelets!”

       “What?” Stefan said. Then, “Oh, I remember, you told me. But what are they supposed to look like?”

       “Like any two bracelets, matching if possible.” Elena was scrambling around the back of the room, where furniture was piled up, opening drawers, closing them. “Come on, bracelets! Come on! This house is supposed to have everything!”

       “What about these things you wear in your hair?” Stefan asked. Elena looked back and he tossed her a bag of soft cotton ponytail holders.

       “You’re a genius! They won’t even hurt my wrists. And here are two white ones so they’ll match!” Elena said happily.

       They arranged themselves in front of the door, with Stefan to Elena’s left so he could see what was out there before they stepped in. He also had a firm grip on Elena’s left arm.

       “Wherever our friend Bonnie McCullough is,” Stefan said, and thrust the key into the lockless door handle, turning it. Then, after giving Elena the key, he gingerly opened the door.

       Elena wasn’t sure what she was expecting. A blaze of light maybe, as they traveled through dimensions. Some kind of spiraling tunnel, or shooting stars. At least a feeling of motion.

       What she got was steam. It soaked through her T-shirt and dampened her hair.

       And then she got noise.

       “Elena!Eleeeeeeeeeeeeeeena! You’re here!”

       Elena recognized the voice but couldn’t locate the screamer in the steam.

       Then she saw an immense bathtub made of tiles of malachite, and a frightened-looking girl tending a charcoal fire at the bath’s foot, while two other young attendants holding scrubbing brushes and pumice stones cowered against the other wall.

       And in the bath was Bonnie! It was obvious that the tub was very deep, because Bonnie wasn’t able to touch bottom in the middle but she was half-leaping out of the water like a foam-covered dolphin over and over to attract attention.

       “There you are,” gasped Elena. She dropped to her knees on a thick, soft blue rug. Bonnie made a spectacular leap and just for a moment Elena could feel a small soapy, sudsy body in her arms.

       Then Bonnie went down again and came up laughing.

       “And is that Stefan? It’s Stefan! Stefan,hello! Helloooo!”

       Stefan glanced back, as if trying to assess the suds situation. He seemed satisfied with it, turned slightly, and waved.

       “Hey, Bonnie?” he asked, voice muffled by the sounds of continual splashing. “Where are we?”

       “It’s Lady Ulma’s house! You’re safe—you’re all safe!” She turned a small hopeful face to Elena. “Where’s Meredith?”

       Elena shook her head, thinking of all the things about Meredith that Bonnie didn’t know yet. Well, she decided, this wasn’t the time to mention them. “She had to stay behind, to protect Fell’s Church.”

       “Oh,” Bonnie looked down, troubled. “Still bad, is it?”

       “You wouldn’t believe it. Really; it’s—indescribable. That’s where Matt and Mrs. Flowers and Meredith are. I’m sorry.”

       “No, I’m just so glad to see you! Oh my God, but you’re hurt.” She was looking at the small tooth wounds on Elena’s arm, and the blood on her torn T-shirt. “I’ll get out and—hey, no,you get in! There’s plenty of room; plenty of hot water, and… plenty of clothes! Lady Ulma even designed some for us, for ‘when we came back’!”

       Elena, smiling reassuringly at the bath girls, was already stripping as fast as she could. The tub, which was big enough for six to swim in, looked too luxurious to miss and, she reasoned, it made sense to be clean when you greeted your hostess.

       “Go have fun,” she shouted to Stefan. “Is Damon here?” she added in a whispered aside to Bonnie, who nodded. “Damon’s here, too,” Elena caroled. “If you find Lady Ulma, tell her Elena’s coming, but she’s getting washed up first.” She didn’t actually dive into the pearl pink steaming water, but she got onto the second step down and let herself slide from there.

       Instantly, she was immersed in delicious heat that seeped straight into her body, pulling some magic string that relaxed all her muscles at once. Perfumes suffused the air. She flung her wet hair back and saw Bonnie laughing at her.

       “So you got out of your hole and you’ve been here wallowing in luxury while we’ve been worried sick?” Elena couldn’t help but hear the way her voice went up at the end, making it a question.

       “No, I got picked up by some people, and—” Bonnie broke off. “Well…the first few days were tough, but never mind. Thank God we got to Lady Ulma’s in the end. Want a bath brush? Some soap that smells just like roses?”

       Elena was looking at Bonnie with slightly narrowed eyes. She knew that Bonnie would do just about anything for Damon. That included covering up for him. Delicately, all the while enjoying the brushes and unguents and many kinds of soaps laid out on a shelf for easy reach, she began an inquisition.

 

Stefan got out of the steamy room before he was soaking wet. Bonnie was safe and Elena was happy. He found he had stepped into another room, in which were a number of couches made of some soft spongy material. For drying? Massage? Who knew?

The next room he entered had gas lanterns that were turned high enough to rival electrical light. Here were three more couches—he had no idea what for—a full-length silvered-glass mirror, and smaller mirrors in front of chairs. Obviously a place for makeup and beautifying.

       This last room opened onto a hallway. Stefan stepped out and hesitated, spreading delicate tendrils of Power in different directions, hoping to find Damon before Damon noticed his presence in the estate. The Master Key had proved that it could overcome the fact that he hadn’t been invited here. That meant that maybe he could…

       At that moment he got a hit, and withdrew his probe immediately, startled. He stared down the long corridor. He could actually see Damon, pacing in the room at the end, talking to someone Stefan couldn’t see behind the door.

       Stefan crept very quietly down the hallway, stalking. He made it to the door without his brother even noticing, and there he saw that the person Damon was talking to was a woman wearing what looked like buckskin breeches and shirt, who had weathered skin, and a general aura of being more at home outside civilization than inside it. Damon was saying, “Make sure there are enough warm clothes for the girl. She’s not exactly hardy, you know—”

       “Then where are you taking her—and why?” Stefan asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

       He had the good fortune to once—just this once—take Damon unaware. His brother glanced up, and then jerked like a startled cat. It was priceless to watch Damon scrambling for a mask until he decided on the façade of absent amiability. Stefan guessed that no one had ever put so much effort into walking over to a desk chair, sitting down, andforcing himself to lounge.

       “Well, well! Little brother! You dropped in for a visit! How…nice. What a pity, though, that I’m practically running out the door on a journey, and there’s no room for you.”

       At this point the weather-beaten woman who had been taking notes—and who had risen when Stefan entered the room—spoke up. “Oh, no, my lord. The thurgs won’t mind the extra weight of this gentleman. They probably won’t notice it. If his baggage can be ready by tomorrow you can start out in the early morning just as you planned.”

       Damon gave her his best “shut up or die” glare. She shut up. Through clenched teeth, Damon managed to say, “This is Pelat. She’s the coordinator of our little expedition. Hello, Pelat. Good-bye, Pelat. You may go.”

       “As you wish, my lord.”

       Pelat bowed and left.

       “Aren’t you taking this ‘my lord’ thing a bit too seriously?” Stefan asked. “Andwhat is that costume you’re wearing?”

       “It’s the uniform of the captain of the guard of Madame le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne,” Damon said coldly.

       “You got ajob?”

       “It was aposition.” Damon bared his teeth. “And it’s none of your business.”

       “Got your canines back, too, I see.”

       “And that’s none of your business either. But if youwant me to knock you out and trample over your undead body, I’ll be delighted to oblige.”

       Something was wrong, Stefan thought. Damon should be through the taunting phase and be actually trampling on him by now. It only made sense if…

       “I’ve already spoken to Bonnie,” he said. And so he had, to ask where he was. But to a guilty mind, apparent foreknowledge often worked wonders.

       And Damon hastily said exactly what Stefan hoped he wouldn’t. “I can explain!”

       “Oh, God,” Stefan said.

       “If she’d just done as I told her—”

       “While you were off becoming a princess’s captain of the guard? And she was—where?”

       “She was safe, at least! But, no, she had to go out into the street and then to that shop—”

       “Shocking! She actually walked in the street?”

       Damon ground his teeth. “You don’t know how it is around here—or how the slave trade works. Every day—”

       Stefan slammed both hands on the desk, now truly angry. “She was picked up byslavers? While you were sleazing around with a princess?”

       “Princess Jessalyn does not sleaze,” Damon replied icily. “Nor do I. And anyway it all turned out to be a good thing because now we know where the Seven Kitsune Treasures are.”

       “What treasures? And who cares about treasures when there’s a town being destroyed by kitsune?”

       Damon opened his mouth, shut it, then looked narrowly at Stefan. “You said that you’d talked to Bonnie about all this.”

       “Idid talk to Bonnie,” Stefan said flatly. “I said hello.”

       Damon’s dark eyes flared. For a moment Stefan thought he was going to snarl or start a fight. But then, through clenched teeth, he said, “It’s all for the damned town, don’t you see that? Those treasures include the largest star ball ever to be filled with Power. And that Power may be enough to save Fell’s Church. At least to stop its total annihilation. Maybe to even clear out every malach that exists and destroy Shinichi and Misao with a single blow. Is that noble enough for you, little brother? Is it reason enough?”

       “But taking Bonnie—”

       “You stay with her here if you like! Spend your lives here! I might mention that without her I would never have been able to set up an expedition, and that she’s determined to go. Besides, we’re not coming back this way. There has to be an easier route from the Gatehouse to Earth. We wouldn’t survive coming back, so you’d better hope like hell that thereis one.”

       Stefan was surprised. He had never heard his brother speak with such passion about anything that involved humans. He was about to reply, when behind him there came a scream of pure, unadulterated rage. It was frightening—and worrying, too, because Stefan would recognize that voice anywhere, anytime. It was Elena’s.

 

 

           

 

27

      

Stefan whirled around and saw Bonnie, with only a towel wrapped around her, trying to physically restrain Elena, who was similarly clad. Elena’s hair was wet and uncombed. Something had caused her to leap out of the bathing pool and run directly into the corridor.

Stefan was surprised by Damon’s reaction. Was that a spark of alarm in the endlessly dark eyes that had remained impassive watching a thousand disasters, calamities, cruelties?

       No, it couldn’t be. But it certainly looked like one.

       Elena was getting closer. Her voice rang out clearly through the hallway, which was spacious enough to give it a slight echo. “Damon!I see you! You wait right there— I’m coming to kill you!”

       This time the flicker was unmistakable. Damon glanced at the window, which was partly open.

       Meanwhile Bonnie had lost the fight and Elena was running like a gazelle toward the office. Her eyes, however, were definitely not doe-like. Stefan saw them glitter dangerously as Elena herself eluded him—mainly because he didn’t dare grab her by the towel, and every other part of her was slippery. Elena was now facing Damon, who had risen from his chair.

       “Howcould you?” she cried. “ Using Bonnie like that—Influencing her, drugging her—all to get at what didn’t belong to you! Using almost all the Power that was left in Misao’s star ball—what did you think Shinichi would do when you did that? He came after us, that’s what he did—and who knows if the boardinghouse is still standing?”

       Damon opened his mouth, but Elena wasn’t finished.

       “And then to bring Bonnie to the Dark Dimension with you—I don’t care if you didn’t want to waste opening the Gate or not. Youknew you shouldn’t be taking her here.”

       Damon was angry now. “I—”

       But Elena cut him off without even hesitating. “Then once you drag her here you abandon her. You leave her terrified, alone, in a room where she’s not even allowed to look out of the window, with a collection of star balls that you don’t even bother to examine—but which are completely unsuitable and give her nightmares! You—”

       “If the little dolt had just had the sense to wait quietly—”

       “What?What did you say?”

       “Isaid, if the little dolt had just had the sense—”

       Stefan, who was already on the move, shut his eyes briefly. He opened them again in time to see the slap and to feel Elena putting all her Power into it. It snapped Damon’s head around.

       What astonished him—even though he positioned himself precisely in case of it—was to see Damon’s hand flash up as quick as a cobra’s strike. There was no follow-through, but Stefan had already picked Elena up bodily and pulled her back out of range.

       “Let go!” Elena cried, struggling to get out of Stefan’s arms, or at least get her feet on the ground. “I’m going tokill him!”

       The next astonishing thing—discontinuing the raw fury that Stefan could feel coursing through Elena’s aura—was that Elena was actually winning the struggle, despite the fact that he was orders of magnitude stronger than she was. Part of it had to do with the towel, which was threatening to drop at any moment. The other part was that Elena had acquired a unique style of fighting stronger opponents—at least those with any conscience. She deliberately threw herself against any point at which it would hurt her to restrain her, and she didn’t give up. Eventually he was going to have to choose between injuring her and letting her go.

       At that moment, however, Elena stopped moving. She froze, head turned as she looked behind him.

       Stefan glanced backward too, and felt an electrical shock shoot through him.

       Bonnie was standing directly behind them, looking at Damon, her lips parted in anguish, tears in her wide brown eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

       Instantly, even before he could register Elena’s pleading glance, Stefan released her. He understood: Her mood and the dynamics of this situation had just been turned upside down.

       Elena adjusted her towel and turned to Bonnie, but by then Bonnie was running away down the corridor. Elena’s longer strides allowed her to reach Bonnie in a moment and she caught the smaller girl and held her, not so much by force as by sisterly magnetism. “Don’t worry about thatsnake,” Elena’s voice came back to them clearly, as it was obviously meant to. “He’s a—” And here Elena indulged in some very creative cursing.

       Stefan could hear all of it distinctly and noticed that it broke off into tiny hushing sounds just as Elena turned into the door of the bathing salon.

       Stefan glanced sideways at Damon. He didn’t mind fighting his brother in the least right now; he was full of rage himself on behalf of Bonnie. But Damon ignored him as if he were part of the wallpaper, staring at nothing with an expression of icy fury.

       At that moment Stefan heard a faint sound from the farthest end of the corridor, which was quite a distance away. But his vampire senses informed him that surely the person in front was a woman of consequence, probably their hostess. He stepped forward so that at least she could be greeted by someone who was wearing clothing.

       However, at the last moment, Elena and Bonnie appeared in front of him, clad in dresses—gowns, rather—that were both casual and works of genius. Elena’s was an informal robe of deep lapis blue, with her hair drying into a soft golden mass around her shoulders. Bonnie was wearing something shorter and lighter: pale violet, shot with threads of silver in no particular pattern. Both outfits, Stefan grasped suddenly, would look as good in the interminable sunlight as in a closed room with no windows and gas lamps.

       He remembered the stories Elena had told about Lady Ulma designing gowns for her, and he realized that whatever else his hostess might be, she was truly a genius couturier.

       And then Elena was running, dainty gold sandals flying, and Bonnie’s silver slippers were following and Stefan began to run too, fearing some unknown danger. They all arrived at the far end of the hallway at the same time, and Stefan saw that the woman standing there was dressed even more splendidly than the girls. She was wearing a deep red raw silk gown with a heavy diamond-and-ruby necklace and ring—but no bracelets.

       The next minute the girls were both curtseying, deep, graceful curtseys. Stefan made his best bow.

       Lady Ulma held out both hands to Elena, who seemed to be almost frantic over something that Stefan didn’t understand. Elena took the extended hands, breathing quickly and shallowly. “Lady Ulma—you’re so thin—”

       Just then the babbling of a baby could be heard. Elena’s face lit up and she smiled at Lady Ulma, letting out a quick breath. A young servant—even younger-looking than Bonnie—gently put a tiny bundle made of lace and sheerest lawn into Lady Ulma’s arms. Both Elena and Bonnie blinked away tears, all the while beaming at the child and making little nonsense noises. Stefan could understand that—they’d known the Lady since she was a whip-torn slave, trying not to miscarry.

       “Buthow—?” Elena began spluttering. “We saw you only a few days ago, but this baby is months old—”

       “A few days? Is that how long it seems to you?” asked Lady Ulma. “To us, it has been many months. But the magic still works, Elena! Your magic remained! It was an easy delivery—easy! And then Dr. Meggar says that you saved me before she suffered injury from the abuse I went through. She is trying to speak already! It is you, Elena, it is your magic!”

       At this the Lady made a movement as if to kneel at Elena’s feet. She got no farther than a few inches, though, because Elena caught her hands, crying, “Lady Ulma,no!” while Stefan, at his best speed, slipped beside the girl servant and caught the Lady by her elbows, supporting her weight.

       “And I’m not magic,” Elena added. “Stefan, tell her that I’m not magic.”

       Obediently, Stefan leaned toward the ear of the tall woman. “Elena is the most magic I’ve ever encountered,” he stage-whispered. “She has Powers that I can’t even understand.”

       “Ahh!” Elena made a wordless exclamation of frustration.

       “Do you know what I’m naming her?” the Lady continued. Her face, if not conventionally beautiful, was striking, with an aristocratic combination of Roman nose and high cheekbones.

       “No.” Elena smiled—and then “No!” Elena cried. “Please! Don’t condemn her to a life of expectations and terror.Don’t tempt anyone to hurt her while she’s still a child. Oh, Lady Ulma!”

       “But my dear savior…”

       Then Elena began to manage things. Once she took a situation in hand there was no way not to go with the flow of it. “Lady Ulma,” she said clearly, “forgive me for interfering in your affairs. But Bonnie has told me—” She stopped, hesitated.

       “Of the troubles of strong and hopeful young girls, for the most part poor or enslaved, who have taken on the names of the three bravest young women who ever graced our world,” Lady Ulma finished for her.

       “Something like that,” Elena said, flushing.

       “Nobody’s calling themselves Damon,” put in the young nurse cheerfully and with the utmost goodwill. “Neither boysnor girls.”

       Stefan could have kissed her.

       “Oh, Lakshmi!” Elena hugged the coltish-looking teenager. “I didn’t evensee you properly. Let me look at you.” She held the girl at arm’s length. “Do you know, you’ve grown at least an inch since I last saw you?”

       Lakshmi beamed.

       Elena turned back to Lady Ulma. “Yes, I am afraid for the child. Why not call her Ulma?”

       The patrician lady half shut her eyes. “Because, my dear Elena, Helena, Aliena, Alliana, Laynie, Ella—I would not wish ‘Ulma’ on anyone, much less my lovely daughter.”

       “Why not call her Adara?” Lakshmi put in suddenly. “I always thought that was pretty, since I was a kid.”

       There was a silence—almost a stunned silence. Then Elena said, “Adara—it’s alovely name.”

       “And not at all dangerous,” Bonnie said.

       Stefan said, “It wouldn’t stop her from starting a revolution if she wanted to.”

       There was a pause. Everyone looked at Damon, who was looking out the window expressionlessly. Everyone waited.

       He finally turned. “Oh, excellent,” he said blankly, clearly having no idea—and less interest—in what they were talking about.

       “Oh come on, Damon.” Bonnie’s eyes were still swollen, but she spoke brightly. “Make it unanimous! That way Lady Ulma will be sure.” Good God, Stefan thought, she must be the most forgiving girl in the universe.

       “Certainly, then,” Damon said indifferently.

       “Forgive us,” Elena said tightly to the room in general. “We’veall been going through a bit of a hard time.”

       That gave Lady Ulma her cue. “Of course you have,” she said, smiling the smile of one who has known bitter suffering. “Bonnie has told us of the destruction of your town. I am deeply sorry. What you need now is food and rest. I’ll have someone conduct you to your rooms.”

       “I should have introduced Stefan at the start, but I was so worried I forgot to,” Elena said. “Stefan, this is Lady Ulma, who was so good to us before. Lady Ulma—well, you know who this is.” She went on tiptoe to kiss Stefan lingeringly. Lingeringly enough that Stefan had to gently detach her and put her down. He was almost frightened at this display of bad manners. Elena wasreally angry at Damon. And if she didn’t forgive him, the scenes would only continue to escalate—and if he was right, Elena was truly getting closer to being able to cast Wings of Destruction.

       He didn’t even consider asking Damon to forgive anyone.

       After the girls had whispered raptures over the baby again, they were conducted to opulent bed chambers, each furnished in excellent taste, down to the smallest decoration. As usual, though, they all congregated in one room, which happened to be Stefan’s.

       There was more than enough space on the bed for the three of them to sit or flop. Damon wasn’t present but Stefan would bet his undead life that he was listening in.

       “All right,” Elena said briskly, and went into storytelling mode. She explained to Bonnie everything that had happened through their taking the Master Keys from Shinichi and Misao, to their flight to Lady Ulma’s bathing chamber.

       “To have so much Power suddenly torn away from you in an instant…” Bonnie had her head down, and it wasn’t hard to guess who she was thinking about. She looked up. “Please, Elena. Don’t be so angry at Damon. I know he’s done some bad things—but he’s been so unhappy…”

       “That’s no excuse,” Elena began. “And, frankly, I’m—”

       Don’t, Elena! Don’t tell her that you’re ashamed of her for putting up with it! She’s already ashamed of herself!

       “I’m surprised at him,” Elena said with only the smallest hesitation. “I know for a fact that he cares for you. He even has a pet name for you: his little redbird.”

       Bonnie sniffed. “You always say that pet names are stupid.”

       “Well, but I meant names like—oh—if he called you ‘Bonbon’ or something.”

       Bonnie’s head came up. “Even that would be okay for the baby,” she said, with a sudden smile, like a rainbow after a storm.

       “Oh, yes, isn’t she adorable? I never saw such a happy baby. Margaret used to just look at you with big eyes. Adara—if sheis Adara—should have such a happy life…”

       Stefan settled back against the headboard. Elena had the situation in hand.

       Now he could worry about where Damon was going. After a moment he tuned back in, to find Bonnie talking about treasure.

       “And they kept asking me and asking me and I couldn’t figure out why since the star ball with the story on it was right there. Only the story is gone now—Damon checked. Shinichi was going to throw me out the window, and that was when Damon rescued me, and the Guardians asked me about the story too.”

       “Strange,” Stefan said, sitting up alertly. “Bonnie, tell me how you first felt this story; where you were and all.”

       Bonnie said, “Well, first I saw a story about a little girl named Marit going to buy a sugarplum—that was why I tried to do the same thing the next day. And then I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. So then I picked up the star ball again and it showed me the story about the kitsune treasures. The stories are shown in order, so ithad to be the one right after the sweetshop story. And then suddenly I was out of my body, and I was flying with Elena right over Alaric’s car.”

       “Did you do anything in between experiencing the story and going to bed?” Stefan asked.

       Bonnie thought; her rosebud mouth pursed. “I suppose I turned down the gas lamp. Every night I would turn the lamp way down so that it was only a flicker.”

       “And did you turn it back up again when you couldn’t sleep and reached for the star ball again?”

       “Um…no. But they’re not books! You don’t have to see to experience a story.”

       “That wasn’t what I meant. How did you find the star ball in that dim room? Was it the only star ball on the floor near you?”

       Bonnie’s brows came together. “Well…no. There were twenty-six. Two others were hideous; I’d kicked those into a corner. Twenty-five were soap operas—so boring. It’s not as if I had shelves or anywhere else to put them—”

       “Bonnie, do you want to know whatI think happened?”

       Bonnie blinked and nodded.

       “I think that you read a children’s story and then you went to bed. And you actually fell asleep very quickly, even though you dreamed you were awake. Then you dreamed a premonition—”

       Bonnie groaned. “Another one of those? But there wasn’t even anyone to tell it to then!”

       “Exactly. But you wanted to tell it to someone, and that longing brought you—your spirit—to where Elena was. But Elena was so worried about getting word across to Alaric thatshe was having an out-of-body experience. She’d been asleep too, I’m sure of it.” Stefan looked at Elena. “What do you think of that?”

 

 

           

 

28

      

Elena was nodding slowly. “It would work with what happened to me. At first I was alone out of my body, but then I saw Bonnie beside me.”

Bonnie bit her lip. “Well…the first thingI saw was Elena and we were both flying. I was a little behind her. But Stefan, why do you think I fell asleep and dreamed a whole story? Why can’t my version just be true?”

       “Because I think the first thing you’d have done would be to turn the light on—if you really were lying there awake. Otherwise, you might well have picked up a soap opera—so boring!”

       Bonnie’s forehead smoothed at last. “That would explain why nobody believed me even when I told them exactly where the story was! But why didn’t I tell Elena about the treasure?”

       “I don’t know. But sometimes when you wake up—and I think you did wake up to have the out-of-body experience—you forget the dream if something interesting is going on. But then you might remember it later if something reminds you of it.”

       Bonnie stared into a middle distance, thinking. Stefan was silent, knowing that only she could unravel the riddle for herself.

       At last Bonnie nodded. “It could be that way! I woke up and the first thing I thought of was the sweetshop. And after that I never gave another thought to the treasure dream until somebody asked for stories. And it just popped into my head.”

       Elena pushed the deep blue-green velvet coverlet one way to make it green, then the other way to smooth it into blueness.

       “I was going to forbid Bonnie to go on the expedition,” she said: this slave who didn’t have a gem on her body except Stefan’s pendant which hung from a fine chain around her neck, and was still in the simplest kind of after-bath robe. “But if it’s something wehave to do, I’d better talk to Lady Ulma. It sounds as if time is precious.”

       “Remember—time runs differently here than back on Earth. But we’re supposed to leave in the morning,” Bonnie said.

       “Then I definitely need to talk to her—right now.”

       Bonnie jumped up, excited. “I’ll help!”

       “Wait.” Stefan put a gentle hand on Bonnie’s arm. “I have to say this. I think you’re a miracle, Bonnie!” Stefan knew his eyes must be shining in a way that showed he could hardly rein in his excitement. In spite of the danger—in spite of the Guardians—in spite of everything…the largest star ball—full of Power!

       He gave Bonnie a sudden impetuous hug, sweeping her off the bed and whirling her before putting her down again. “You and your precognitions!”

       “Oooh…” Bonnie said dizzily, gazing up at him. “Damon was excited, too, when I told him about the Gateway of the Seven Treasures.”

       “You know why, Bonnie? It’s becauseeverybody has heard about those seven treasures—but no one had any idea where they are…until you dreamed it. You do know exactly where they are?”

       “Yes, if the precognition was true.” Bonnie was flushed with pleasure. “And you agree that that giant star ball will save Fell’s Church?”

       “I’d bet my life on it!”

       “Woo-hoo!” cried Bonnie, pumping a fist. “Let’s go!”

 

“So you see,” Elena was saying, “it’ll mean twice as much of everything. I don’t see how we can start tomorrow.”

“Now, now, Elena. As we discovered, oh, eleven months ago when you left, any job can be done quickly if we summon enough hands. I am now the regular employer of all those women we used to call in to make your ball gowns.” As Lady Ulma spoke she quickly and gracefully took Elena’s measurements—why do only one thing when you can do two at once? She glanced at her measuring tape. “Still exactly the same as when I last saw you. You must lead a very healthy life, Elena.”

       Elena laughed. “Remember, for us it’s only been a few days.”

       “Oh, yes.” Lady Ulma laughed, too, and Lakshmi, who was seated on a stool amusing the baby, made what Elena knew was one last appeal.

       “I could go with you,” she said earnestly, looking at Elena. “I can do all sorts of helpful things. And I’m tough—”

       “Lakshmi,” Lady Ulma said gently, but in a voice that wore the hat of authority. “We’re already doubling the size of the wardrobe needed to accommodate Elena and Stefan. You wouldn’t want to take Elena’s place, would you?”

       “Oh, no, no,” the young girl said hastily. “Oh, well,” she said, “I’ll take such good care of little Adara that she’s no bother to you while you supervise Elena’s and Stefan’s clothes.”

       “Thank you, Lakshmi,” Elena said from her heart, noting that Adara now seemed to be the baby’s official name.

       “Well, we can’t let out any of Bonnie’s things to fit you, but we can call in reinforcements and have a full set of garments ready for you and Stefan by the morning. It’s just a matter of leather and fur to keep you warm. We use the pelts of the animals up north.”

       “They’re not nice, cuddly baby animals, either,” Bonnie said. “They’re vicious nasty things that are used for training, or they might come up from the dimension below and attack all the people on the northern fringes here. And when they finally get killed, the bounty hunters sell the leather and fur to Lady Ulma.”

       “Oh, well…good,” Elena said, deciding not to make an animal rights speech just now. The truth was that she was still very shaken by her actions—her reactions—toward Damon. Why had she acted that way? Was it just to let off pressure? She still felt as if she could smack him a good one for taking poor Bonnie away, and then leaving her alone. And…and…for taking poor Bonnie—and not taking her!

       Damon must hate her now, she thought, and suddenly the world developed a sickening, out-of-control motion, as if she were trying to balance on a seesaw. And Stefan—what else could he think but that she was a woman scorned, the kind that Hell had no fury like? How could he be so kind, so caring, when anyone in their right mind would know she’d gone mad with jealousy?

       Bonnie didn’t understand either. Bonnie was a child, not a woman. Although, although, she’d grown somehow—in goodness, in understanding. She was willfully blind, like Stefan. But—didn’t that take maturity?

       Could Bonnie be more of a woman than she, Elena, was?

       “I’ll have a private supper sent up to your rooms,” Lady Ulma was saying, as she quickly and deftly used the measuring tape on Stefan. “You get a good night’s sleep; the thurgs—and your wardrobes—will be waiting tomorrow.” She beamed at all of them.

       “Could I have—I mean, is there any Black Magic at all?” Elena stumbled. “The excitement…I’m going to sleep in my room alone. I want to get a good night’s rest. We’re going on a quest, you know?” All the truth. All a lie.

       “Of course, I’ll have a bottle sent to—” Lady Ulma hesitated and then quickly recovered. “To your room, but why don’t we all have a nightcap now? It looks just the same outside,” she added to Stefan, the newcomer, “but it’s really rather late.”

       Elena drank her first glass in one draft. The attendant had to refill it immediately. And again a moment later. After that her nerves seemed to relax a bit. But the seesaw feeling never entirely left, and though she slept alone in her room, Damon didn’t visit to quarrel with her, mock her, or kill her—and certainly not to kiss.

 

Thurgs, Elena discovered, were something like two elephants stitched together. Each had two side-by-side trunks and four wicked-looking tusks. Each also had a high, wide, long ridged tail, like a reptile. Their small yellow eyes were placed all around their domelike heads, so that they could see 360 degrees around, looking for predators. Predators that could take down a thurg!

Elena imagined a sort of saber-toothed cat, enormous, with a milk-white pelt big enough to line several garments of hers and Stefan’s. She was pleased with her new outfits. Each one was essentially a tunic and breeches, soft, pliable, rain-shedding leather on the outside; and warm, luxurious fur on the inside. But they wouldn’t be genuine Lady Ulma creations if that was all there were to them. The inner bodysuit of white fur was reversible and removable so you could change depending on the weather. There were triple-thick wind-around collars, which trailed behind or could be turned into scarves that wrapped a face up to the eyes. The white pelts spilled out of the leather at the wrists to make mittens you couldn’t lose. The guys had straight leather tunics that just met at the breeches, and fastened with buttons. The girls’ tunics were longer and flared out a bit. They were neatly fringed, but not stained or dyed except for Damon’s, which, of course, were black with sable fur.

       One thurg would carry the travelers and their baggage. A second, larger and wilder looking, would carry heating stones to help cook human food and all the food (it looked like red hay) that the two thurgs would eat on the way to the Nether World.

       Pelat showed them how to move the giant creatures, with the lightest of taps of a very long stick, which could scratch a thurg behind its hippo-like ears or give it a ferocious tap at that sensitive spot, signaling it to hasten forward.

       “Is it safe, having Biratz carry all the thurg food? I thought you said she was unpredictable,” Bonnie asked Pelat.

       “Now, miss, I wouldn’t give her to you if she wasn’t safe. She’ll be roped to Dazar so all she has to do is follow,” Pelat replied.

       “We ride these?” Stefan said, craning his neck to get a look at the small, enclosed palanquin on top of the very large animal.

       “We have to,” Damon said flatly. “We can hardly walk all the way. We’re not allowed to use magic like that fancy Master Key you used to get here. No magic but telepathy works up at the very top of the Dark Dimension. These dimensions are flat like plates, and according to Bonnie, there’s a fracture, just at the far north of this one—not too far from here, in other words. The crack is small by dimensional standards, but big enough for us to get through. If we want to reach the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures we start on thurgs.”

       Stefan shrugged. “All right. We’re doing it your way.”

       Pelat was putting a ladder up. Lady Ulma, Bonnie, and Elena were weeping and laughing over the baby together.

       They were still laughing as they left on their way.

 

The first week or so was boring. They sat in the palanquin on the back of the thurg named Dazar, with a compass from Elena’s backpack dangling from the roof. They generally kept all the sides of the palanquin’s curtains rolled up, except the one facing west, where the bloated, bloody red sun—too bright to look at in the higher, cleaner air outside the city—constantly loomed on the horizon. The view all around them was dreadfully monotonous—mind-bendingly so, with few trees and many miles of dried brown grassy hills. Nothing interesting to a non-hunter ever showed up. The only thing that changed was as they traveled farther north, it got colder.

It was difficult for all of them, living in such close quarters. Damon and Elena had reached an equilibrium—or at least a pretense—of ignoring each other, something Elena would never have imagined could be possible. Damon made it easier by working on a different sleep cycle than the others—which helped to guard them as the thurgs trudged onward, day and night. If he was awake when Elena was, he would ride outside the palanquin, on the thurg’s enormous neck. They both had such stiff necks, Elena thought. Neither of them wanted to be the first to bend.

       Meanwhile those inside the palanquin began to play little games, like picking the long dried grasses from the side of the road and trying to weave them into dolls, fly whisks, hats, whips. Stefan proved to be the one who made the tightest weave, and he made fly whisks and broad fans for each of them.

       They also played various card games, using stiff little place cards (had Lady Ulma thought they might give a dinner party on the way?) as playing cards, after carefully marking them with the four suits. And of course, the vampires hunted. Sometimes this took quite a long time, since game was scarce. The Black Magic Lady Ulma had stocked helped them stretch the time between hunts.

       When Damon visited the palanquin, it was as if he were crashing a private party and thumbing his nose at the hosts.

       Finally Elena couldn’t stand it any longer, and had Stefan float her up the side of the thurg (looking down or climbing up were definitely not options) while flying magic still worked. She sat down on the saddle beside Damon and gathered her courage.

       “Damon, I know you have a right to be angry with me. But don’t take it out on the others. Especially Bonnie.”

       “Another lecture?” Damon asked, giving her a look that would freeze a flame.

       “No, just a—a request.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “a plea.”

       When he didn’t answer and the silence became unbearable, she said, “Damon, for us—we’re not going on a quest for treasure out of greed or adventure or any normal reason. We’re going because we need to save our town.”

       “From Midnight,” a voice just behind her said. “From the Last Midnight.”

       Elena whirled to stare. She expected to see Stefan holding Bonnie clasped to him hard. But it was only Bonnie at her head level, hanging on to the thurg ladder.

       Elena forgot she was afraid of heights. She stood up on the swaying thurg, ready to climb down on the sun side if there wasn’t enough room for Bonnie to sit down fast in the driver’s saddle.

       But Bonnie had the slimmest hips in town and there was just room for all three of them.

       “The Last Midnight is coming,” Bonnie repeated. Elena knew that monotonous voice, knew the chalk-white cheeks, the blank eyes. Bonnie was in trance—and moving. It must be urgent.

       “Damon,” Elena whispered. “If I speak to her, she’ll break trance. Can you ask her telepathically what she means?”

       A moment later she heard Damon’s projection.What is the Last Midnight? What’s going to happen then?

       “That’s when it starts. And it’s over in less than an hour. So…no more midnights.”

       I beg your pardon? No more midnights?

       “Not in Fell’s Church. No one left to see them.”

       And when is this going to happen?

       “Tonight. The children are finally ready.”

       The children?

       Bonnie simply nodded, her eyes far away.

       Something’s going to happen to all the children?

       Bonnie’s eyelids drooped to half mast. She didn’t seem to hear the question.

       Elena needed to hold on to something. And suddenly she was. Damon had reached across Bonnie’s lap and taken her hand.

       Bonnie, are the children going to do something at midnight? he asked.

       Bonnie’s eyes filled and she bowed her head.

       “We’ve got to go back. We have to go to Fell’s Church,” Elena said, and scarcely knowing what she was doing, unclasped Damon’s hand and climbed down the ladder. The bloated red sun looked different—smaller. She tugged at the curtain and almost bumped heads with Stefan as he rolled it up to let her in.

       “Stefan, Bonnie’s in trance and she said—”

       “I know. I was eavesdropping. I couldn’t even catch her on the way up. She jumped onto the ladder and climbed like a squirrel. What do you think she means?”

       “You remember in the out-of-body experience she and I had? A little spying on Alaric? That’s what’s going to happen in Fell’s Church. All the children, all at once, just at midnight—that’s why we have to get back—”

       “Easy. Easy, love. Remember what Lady Ulma said? Nearly a year here came out to be only days in our world.”

       Elena hesitated. It was true; she couldn’t deny it. Still, she felt so cold…

       Physically cold, she realized suddenly, as a blast of frigid air swirled around her, cutting through her leather like a machete.

       “We need our inner furs,” Elena gasped. “We must be getting near the fracture.”

       They yanked down the palanquin covers and secured them and then hastily rummaged through the neat cabinet that was set on the rump of the thurg.

       The furs were so sleek that Elena could fit two under her leather easily.

       They were disturbed by Damon coming inside with Bonnie in his arms.

       “She stopped talking,” he said, and added, “Whenever you’re warm enough, I suggest that you come out.”

       Elena laid Bonnie down on one of the two benches inside the palanquin and piled blanket after blanket over her, tucking them in around her. Then Elena made herself climb back up.

       For a moment she felt blinded. Not by the surly red sun—they had left that behind some mountains, which it turned a pink sapphire color—but by a world of white. Seemingly endless, flat, featureless whiteness stretched out before her until a bank of fog obscured whatever was behind it.

       “According to legend, we should be headed toward the Silver Lake of Death,” Damon’s voice said from behind Elena. And, oddly, throughout all this chill, his voice was warm—almost friendly. “Also known as Lake Mirror. But I can’t change into a crow to scout ahead. Something’s hindering me. And that fog in front of us is impenetrable to psychic probing.”

       Elena instinctively glanced around her. Stefan was still inside the palanquin, obviously still tending to Bonnie.

       “You’re looking for the lake? What’s it like? I mean, I can guess why it might be called Silver and Lake Mirror,” she said. “But what’s the Death bit?”

       “Water dragons. At least that’s what people say—but who has been there to bring back the story?” Damon looked at her.

       He took care of Bonnie while she was in trance, Elena thought. And he’s talking to me at last.

       “Water…dragons?” she asked him and she made her voice friendly, too. As if they’d just met. They were starting over.

       “I’ve always suspected kronosaurus, myself,” Damon said. He was right behind her now; she could feel him blocking the icy wind—no, more than that. He was generating an envelope of heat for her to stand in. Elena’s shivering stopped. She felt for the first time that she could unwrap her arms from clutching herself.

       Then she felt a pair of strong arms folding around her, and the heat abruptly got quite intense. Damon was standing behind her, holding her, and all at once she was very warm indeed.

       “Damon,” she began, not very steadily, “we can’t just—”

       “There’s a rock outcropping over there. No one could see us,” the vampire behind her offered—to Elena’s absolute shock. A week of not speaking at all—and nowthis.

       “Damon, the guy in the palanquin just below us is my—”

       “Prince? Don’t you need a knight, then?” Damon breathed this directly into her ear. Elena stood like a statue. But what he said next rocked her entire universe. “You like the story of Camelot, don’t you? Only hereyou’re the queen, princess. You married your not-quite-fairy-tale prince, but along came a knight who knew even more of your secrets, and he called to you…”

       “He forced me,” Elena said, turning to meet Damon’s dark eyes straight on, even as her brain screamed for her to let it go. “He didn’t wait for me to hear his call. He just…took what he wanted. Like the slavers do. I didn’t know how to fight—then.”

       “Oh, no. You fought and fought. I’ve never seen a human fight so hard. But even when you fought, you felt the call of my heart to yours. Try to deny that.”

       “Damon—why now—all of a sudden…?”

       Damon made a move as if to turn away, then turned back. “Because by tomorrow we may be dead,” he said flatly. “I wanted you to know how I felt about you before I died—or you did.”

       “But you haven’t told me a word about howyou feel about me. Only about what you think I feel about you. And I’m sorry that I slapped you the first day I was here, but—”

       “You were magnificent,” Damon said outrageously. “Forget it now. As for how I feel—maybe I’ll get a chance to really show it to you someday.”

       Something sparked inside Elena—they were back to fencing with words, as they had been when they’d first met. “Someday? Sounds convenient. And why not now?”

       “Do you mean that?”

       “Do I habitually say things I don’t mean?”

       She was waiting for some kind of apology, some words spoken as simply and sincerely as she had been speaking to him. Instead, with the utmost gentleness, and without glancing around to see if anyone was watching them, Damon cupped Elena’s scarf-bound cheeks with his bare hands, pulled the scarf just below her lips with his thumbs, and kissed her softly. Softly—but not briefly, and something in Elena kept whispering to her thatof course she had heard his call from the moment she first saw him, first felt his aura call to her. She hadn’t known that it was an aura then; she hadn’t believed in auras. She hadn’t believed in vampires. She’d been an ignorant little idiot…

       Stefan! A voice like crystal sounded off two notes in her brain, and suddenly she was able to step back from Damon’s embrace and look at the palanquin again. No sign of motion there.

       “I have to go back,” she told Damon brusquely. “I have to know what’s going on with Bonnie.”

       “You mean to see what’s going on with Stefan,” he said. “You needn’t worry. He’s fast asleep, and so is our little girl.”

       Elena tensed. “You Influenced them? Without seeing them?” It was a wild guess, but one side of Damon’s mouth crooked up, as if congratulating her. “Howdare you?” she said.

       “To be honest, I don’t know how I dare.” Damon leaned in close again, but Elena turned her cheek, thinking,Stefan!

       He can’t hear you. He’s dreaming about you.

       Elena was surprised at her own reaction to that. Damon had caught and held her eyes again. Something inside her melted in the intensity of his steady black gaze.

       “I’m not Influencing you; I give you my word”—in a whisper. “But you can’t deny what happened between us the last time we were in this dimension.” His breath was on her lips now—and Elena didn’t turn aside. She trembled.

       “Please, Damon. Show some respect. I’m—oh, God! God!”

       “Elena?Elena! Elena! What’s wrong?”

       Hurts—that was all Elena could think. A terrible agony had lanced through her chest on the left side. As if she’d been stabbed through the heart. She stifled a scream.

       Elena, talk to me! If you can’t send your thoughts, speak!

       Through numb lips, Elena said, “Pain—heart attack—”

       “You’re too young and healthy for that. Let me check.” Damon was unfastening her top. Elena let him. She could do nothing for herself, except gasp,“Oh God! It hurts!”

       Damon’s warm hand was inside her leather and furs. His hand came to rest slightly to the left of center, with only her camisole between his probing fingers and her flesh.Elena, I’m going to take the pain away now. Trust me.

       Even as he spoke, the stabbing anguish drained. Damon’s eyes narrowed, and Elena knew he’d taken the pain into himself, to analyze it.

       “It’s not a heart attack,” he said a moment later. “I’m as sure as I can be. It’s more as if—well, as if you’d been staked. But that’s silly. Hmm…it’s gone now.”

       For Elena it had been gone since he’d taken it, protecting her. “Thank you,” she breathed, suddenly realizing that she had been clinging to him, in utter terror that she was dying. Or that he was.

       He gave her a rare, full, genuine smile. “We’re both fine. It must have been a cramp.” His gaze had dropped to her lips. “Do I deserve a kiss?”

       “I…” He had comforted her; he had taken the terrible pain away. How could she sanely say no? “Just one,” she whispered.

       A hand under her chin. Her eyelids wanted to melt closed, but she widened her eyes and wouldn’t let them.

       As his lips touched hers, his arm around her…changed somehow. It was no longer trying to restrain her. It seemed to be wanting to comfort her. And when his other hand stroked her hair softly at the very ends, crushing the waves gently, and just as gently smoothing them out, Elena felt a rush of shivering warmth.

       Damon wasn’t deliberately trying to batter her with the strength of his aura, which at the moment was filled with nothing but his feelings for her. The simple fact, though, was that although he was a new-made vampire, he was exceptionally strong and he knew all the tricks of an experienced one. Elena felt as if she had stepped into clear calm water, only to find herself caught in a fierce undertow that there was no resisting; no bargaining with; and certainly no possibility of reaching by reason. She had no choice but to surrender to it and hope that it was taking her, eventually, to a place she could breathe and live. Otherwise, she would drown…but even that possibility didn’t seem so dire, now that she could see the tide was made of a chain of little moments strung like pearls. In each one of them was a tiny sparkle of admiration that Damon had for her: pearls for her courage, for her intelligence, for her beauty. It seemed that there was no slightest motion she had made, no briefest word that she had said, that he had not noticed and locked in his heart as a treasure.

       But we were fighting then, Elena thought to him, seeing in the undertow a sparkling moment when she had cursed him.

       Yes—I said you were magnificent when you were angry. Like a goddess come to put the world to rights.

       I do want to put the world to rights. No, two worlds: the Dark Dimension and my home. But I’m no goddess.

       Suddenly she felt that keenly. She was a schoolgirl who hadn’t even finished high school—and it was in part because of the person who was kissing her wildly now.

       Oh, think of what you’re learning on this trip! Things that no one else in the universe knows, Damon said in her mind. Now pay attention to what you’re doing!

       Elena paid attention, not because Damon wanted her to, but because she couldn’t help it. Her eyes drifted shut. She realized that the way to calm this maelstrom was to become part of it, neither giving in nor forcing Damon to, but by meeting the passion in the undertow with what was inside her own heart.

       As soon as she did, the undertow became wind, and she was flying and not drowning. No, it was better than flying, better than dancing, it was what her heart always yearned for. A high still place where nothing could ever harm them or disturb them.

       And then, when she was most vulnerable, the pain came again, drilling through her chest, a little to the left. This time Damon was so mindlocked with her that he felt it from the beginning. And she could hear clearly a phrase in Damon’s mind:staking is just as effective on humans as it is on vampires, and his sudden fear that this was a precognition.

 

In the swaying little room, Stefan was asleep holding Bonnie by his side, with the sparkling of Power engulfing them both. Elena, who had a good grip on the palanquin’s ladder, vaulted the rest of the way inside. She put a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and he woke.

“What is this? Is something wrong with her?” she asked, with a third question: “Do you know?” buzzing around in her head.

       But when Stefan lifted his green eyes to her, they were simply worried. Clearly he was not invading her thoughts. He was focused entirely on Bonnie. Thank God, he’s such a gentleman, Elena thought for the thousandth time.

       “I’m trying to get her warm,” Stefan said. “After she came out of trance, she was shivering. Then she stopped shivering, but when I took her hand, it was colder than ever. Now I’ve put an envelope of heat around her. I guess I dozed off for a little while after that.” He added, “Did you find anything?”

       I found Damon’s lips, Elena thought wildly, but she forced herself to blank out the memory. “We’re looking for Lake Silver Death Mirror,” she said. “But all I could see was white. The snow and the fog seem to go on forever.”

       Stefan nodded. Then he carefully went through the motions of plucking apart two layers of air and slid in a hand to touch Bonnie’s cheek. “She’s warming up,” he said, and smiled.

       It took a long while before Stefan was satisfied that Bonnie was warm. When he did, he gently unwrapped her from the heated air that had formed the “envelope” and lay her on one bench, coming to sit with Elena on the other. Eventually Bonnie sighed, blinked, and opened her eyes.

       “I had a nap,” she said, obviously aware that she had lost time.

       “Not exactly,” Elena said, keeping her voice gentle and reassuring. Let’s see, how did Meredith do this? “You went into trance, Bonnie. Do you remember anything about it?”

       Bonnie said, “About the treasure?”

       “About what the treasure is for,” Stefan said quietly.

       “No…No…”

       “You said that this was the Last Midnight,” Elena said. As far as she could remember, Meredith was pretty direct. “But we think you were talking about back at home,” she added hastily, seeing terror leap in Bonnie’s eyes.

       “The Last Midnight—and no morning afterward,” Bonnie said. “I think—I heard someone saying those words. But no more.”

       She was as skittish as a wild colt. Elena reminded her about time running differently between the two worlds but it didn’t seem to comfort her. Finally, Elena just sat by her and held her.

       Her head was spinning with thoughts of Damon. He’d forgiven her. That was good, even though he’d taken his own time about it. But the real message was that he was willing toshare her. Or at least willing to say he would to get in her good graces. If she knew him at all, if she ever agreed—oh, God, he might murder Stefan. Again. After all, that was what he had done when Katherine had had the same sentiment.

       Elena could never think of him without longing. She could never think of him without thinking of Stefan. She had no idea what to do.

       She was in trouble.

 

 

           

 

29

      

“Oi!” Damon shouted from outside the palanquin. “Is anybody else looking at this?”

Elena was. Both Stefan and Bonnie had their eyes shut; Bonnie was wrapped in blankets and cuddled against Elena. They had rolled down all the curtains of the palanquin except one.

       But Elena had watched through the single window, and had seen how tendrils of fog had begun drifting by, first just filmy tatters of mist, but then longer, fuller veils, and finally blankets, engulfing them whole. It seemed to her that they were being deliberately cut off from even the perilous Dark Dimension, that they were passing a border into a place they weren’t meant to know about, much less enter.

       “How do we know we’re going in the right direction?” Elena shouted to Damon after Stefan and Bonnie woke. She was glad to be able to talk again.

       “The thurgs know,” Damon called back. “You set them on a line and they walk that line until somebody stops them, or—”

       “Or what?” Elena yelled out of the opening.

       “Until we get to a place like this.”

       This was obviously bait, and neither Stefan nor Elena could resist taking it—especially when the thurg they were riding stopped.

       “Stay here,” Elena said to Bonnie. She pushed a curtain out of the way and found herself looking too far down at white ground. God, these thurgs were big. The next moment, though, Stefan was on the ground holding up his arms.

       “Jump!”

       “Can’t you come up and float me?”

       “Sorry. Something about this place inhibits Power.”

       Elena didn’t give herself time to think. She launched into the air and Stefan caught her neatly. Spontaneously, she clung to him, and felt the familiar comfort of his embrace.

       Then he said, “Come look at this.”

       They had reached a place where the land ended and the mist divided, like curtains being held to either side. Directly in front of them was a frozen lake. A silvery frozen lake, almost perfectly round in shape.

       “Lake Mirror?” Damon said, cocking his head to one side.

       “I always thought that was a fairy tale,” Stefan said.

       “Welcome to Bonnie’s storybook.”

       Lake Mirror formed a vast body of water in front of them, frozen right into the ice sheet below her feet, or so it seemed. It did look like a mirror—a purse mirror after you’d breathed softly on it.

       “But the thurgs?” Elena said—or rather whispered. She couldn’t help whispering. The silent lake pressed on her, as did the lack of any kind of natural sound: There were no birds singing, no rustling in the bushes—no bushes! No trees! Instead, just the mist surrounding the frozen water.

       “The thurgs,” Elena repeated in a slightly louder voice. “They can’t possibly walk on that!”

       “Depends on how thick the lake ice is,” Damon said, flashing his old 250-kilowatt smile at her. “If it’s thick enough, it’ll be just like walking on land for them.”

       “And if it isn’t?”

       “Hmm…Do thurgs float?”

       Elena gave him an exasperated glance and looked at Stefan. “What do you think?”

       “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “They’re very large animals. Let’s ask Bonnie about the kids in the fairy tale.”

       Bonnie, still wrapped in fur blankets that began collecting chunks of ice as they dragged on the ground, looked at the lake grimly. “The story didn’t go into detail,” she said. “It just said that they went down, down, down, and that they had to pass tests of their courage and—and—wittiness—before they got there.”

       “Fortunately,” Damon said, smiling, “I have large enough amounts of both to make up for my brother’s entire lack of either—”

       “Stop it, Damon!” Elena burst out. The moment she’d seen the smile, she’d turned to Stefan, pulled him down to her height, and begun kissing him. She knew what Damon would see when he turned back toward them—her and Stefan locked in an embrace, Stefan hardly aware of anything being said. At least they could still touch with their minds. And it was intriguing, Elena thought, Stefan’s warm mouth when everything else in the world was cold. She looked quickly at Bonnie, to make sure she hadn’t upset her, but Bonnie was looking quite cheerful.

       The farther I seem to drive Damon away, the happier she is, Elena thought. Oh, God…thisis a problem.

       Stefan spoke up quietly. “Bonnie, what it comes down to is that it has to be your choice. Don’t try to use courage or wit or anything except your inner feelings. Where do we go?”

       Bonnie glanced back at the thurgs, then looked at the lake.

       “That way,” she said, without hesitation, and she pointed straight across the lake.

       “We’d better carry some of the cooking stones and fuel and backpacks with iron rations in them,” Stefan said. “That way, if the worst happens, we’ll still have basic supplies.”

       “Besides,” said Elena, “it’ll lighten that thurg’s load—if only by a little.”

       It seemed a crime to put a backpack on Bonnie, but she insisted. Finally, Elena arranged one filled entirely with the warm, curiously light fur clothes. Everyone else was carrying furs, food, and poop—the dried animal dung that would from now on be their only fuel.

       It was difficult from the first. Elena had only had a couple of experiences with ice that she had reason to be wary of—but one of those had almost been disastrous for Matt. She was ready to jump and whirl at any crack—any sound that the ice was breaking. But there were no cracks; no water flowing up to slosh onto her boots.

       The thurgs were the ones who seemed actually built for walking on frozen water. Their feet were pneumatic, and could spread out to almost half again their original size, avoiding putting too much pressure on any one section of ice.

       Crossing the lake was slow, but Elena didn’t see anything particularly deadly about it. It was simply the smoothest, slickest ice she had ever encountered. Her boots wanted to skate.

       “Hey, everybody!” Bonniewas skating, exactly as if she were in a rink, backward and forward and sideways. “This is fun!”

       “We’re not here to have fun,” Elena shouted back. She longed to try it herself, but was afraid to make cuts—even scuffs—in the ice. And beside that, Bonnie was expending twice as much energy as she needed to.

       She was about to call out to Bonnie and tell her this, when Damon, in a voice of exasperation, made all the points she had thought of, and a few more.

       “This isn’t a pleasure cruise,” he said shortly. “It’s for the fate of your town.”

       “As if you care,” Elena murmured, turning her back on him and touching the unhappy Bonnie’s hand both to give comfort and to get them going at arm’s length again. “Bonnie, do you sense anything magical about the lake?”

       “No.” But then Bonnie’s imagination seemed to fly into high gear. “But maybe it’s where the mystics from both dimensions all gathered to exchange spells. Or maybe it’s where they used the ice like a real magic mirror to see faraway places and things.”

       “Maybe both of them,” Elena said, secretly amused, but Bonnie nodded solemnly.

       And that was when it came. The sound Elena had been waiting for.

       Nor was it a distant booming which could be ignored or discussed. They had been walking at arm’s length from one another to avoid stressing the ice, while the thurgs walked behind them, and to either side—like a flock of geese with no leaders.

       This noise was a dreadfully near crack like the report of a gun. Immediately, it sounded again, like a whiplash, and then a crumbling.

       It was to Elena’s left, on Bonnie’s side.

       “Skate, Bonnie,” she shouted. “Skate as fast as you can. Scream if you see land.”

       Bonnie didn’t ask a single question. She took off like an Olympic speed skater in front of Elena, and Elena swiftly turned.

       It was Biratz, the thurg Bonnie had asked Pelat about. She had one monstrous back leg in the ice, and as she struggled, more ice cracked.

       Stefan! Can you hear me?

       Faintly. I’m coming for you.

       Yes—but only come as close as you need to Influence the thurg.

       Influence the—?

       Make her calm, put her out, whatever. She’s ripping up the ice and it’ll just make it harder to get her out!

       This time there was a pause before Stefan’s answer came. She knew though, by faint echoes, that he was talking telepathically with someone else.All right, love, I’ll do it. I’ll take care of the thurg, too. You follow Bonnie.

       He was lying. Or, not lying, but keeping something from her. The person he’d been sending thoughts to was Damon. They were humoring her. They didn’t mean to help at all.

       Just at that moment she heard a shrill scream—not so far away. It was Bonnie in trouble—no! Bonnie had found land!

       Elena didn’t lose another second. She dumped her backpack on the ice and skated straight back to the thurg.

       There it was, so huge, so pathetic, so helpless. The very thing that had kept it safe from other Godawful Hellacious monsters in the Dark Dimension—its great bulk—was now turned against it. Elena felt her chest tighten as if she were wearing a corset.

       Even as she watched, though, the animal became calmer. She stopped trying to get her left hind leg out of the ice, which meant that she stopped churning up the ice around it.

       Now Biratz was in a sort of crouching position, trying to keep her three dry legs from going under. The problem was that she was trying too hard, and that there was nothing to push against except breakable ice.

       “Elena!” Stefan was within earshot now. “Don’t get any closer!”

       But even as he said it, Elena saw a Sign. Just a few feet away, lying on the ice was the tickle-prod that Pelat had used to get the thurgs going.

       She picked it up as she skated by and then she saw another Sign. Reddish hay and the original covering for the hay—a giant tarpaulin—were lying behind the thurg. Together they formed a broad wide path that was neither wet nor slick.

       “Elena!”

       “This is going to be easy, Stefan!”

       Elena pulled a pair of dry socks out of her pocket and drew them up over her boots. She fastened the tickle stick to her belt. And then she started the run of her life.

       Her boots were fur with something like felt underneath and with the socks to aid them, they caught on the tarpaulin and propelled her forward. She leaned into it, vaguely wishing Meredith were here, so she could do this instead, but all the time getting closer. And then she saw her mark: the end of the tarp and beyond it floating chunks of ice.

       But the thurg looked climbable. Very low in back, like a dinosaur halfway into a tar pit, but then rising up along the curved backbone. If she could just somehow land there…

       Two steps till jump-off. One step till jump-off.

       JUMP!

       Elena pushed off with her right foot, flew through the air for an endless time, and—hit the water.

       Instantly, she was soaked from head to foot and the shock of the icy water was unbelievable. It caught hold of her like some monster with a handful of jagged ice shards. It blinded her with her own hair, it squeezed all the sound out of the universe.

       Somehow, clawing at her face, she freed her mouth and eyes from hair. She realized that she was only slightly below the surface of the water, and that was all she needed topush upward until her mouth broke the surface and she could suck in a lungful of delicious air, after which she had a coughing fit.

       First time up, she thought, remembering the old superstition that a drowning person will rise three times and then sink forever.

       But the strange thing was that she wasn’t sinking. There was a dull pain in her thigh but she wasn’t going under.

       Slowly, slowly, she realized what had happened. She had missed the back of the thurg, but landed on its thick reptilian tail. One of the serrated fins had gashed her, but she was stable.

       So…now…all I have to do is climb the thurg, she puzzled out slowly. Everything seemed slow because there were icebergs bobbing around her shoulders.

       She put up a fur-lined gloved hand and reached for the next fin up. The water, while making her soaking clothes heavier, supported some of her weight. She managed to pull herself up to the next fin. And the next. And then here was the rump, and she had to be careful—no more footholds. Instead she grabbed for handholds and found something with her left hand. A broken strap from the hay carrier.

       Not a good idea—in retrospect.

       For a few minutes that qualified as among the worst in her life she was showered with hay, pounded with rocks, and smothered in the dust of old dung.

       When it was finally over she looked around, sneezing and coughing, to find that she was still on the thurg. The tickle stick had been broken but enough remained for her to use. Stefan was frantically asking, both aloud and by telepathy, if she was all right. Bonnie was skating back and forth like a Tinker Bell guide, and Damon was cursing at Bonnie to get back to land and stay there.

       Meanwhile Elena was inching up the rump of the thurg. She made it through the crushed supply basket. She finally reached the thurg’s summit, and she settled just behind the domed head, in the seat where a driver would sit.

       And then she tickled the thurg behind the ears.

       “Elena!” Stefan shouted, and thenElena, what are you trying to do?

       “I don’t know!” she shouted back. “Trying to save the thurg!”

       “Youcan’t,” Damon interrupted Stefan’s answer in a voice as cold and still as the place they were in.

       “She can make it!” Elena said fiercely—precisely because she herself was having doubts about whether the animal could. “You could help by pulling on her bridle.”

       “There’s no point,” Damon shouted, and turned about-face, walking quickly into the mist.

       “I’ll give it a try. Throw it out in front of her,” Stefan said.

       Elena threw the knotted bridle as hard as she could. Stefan had to run almost to the edge of the ice to grab it before it fell in. Then he held it aloft triumphantly. “Got it!”

       “Okay, pull! Give her a direction to start in.”

       “Will do!”

       Elena tapped Biratz again behind her right ear. There was a faint rumble from the animal and then nothing. Elena could see Stefan straining at the bridle.

       “Come on,” Elena said, and slapped sharply with the stick.

       The thurg lifted up a giant foot, placed it farther on the ice, and struggled. As soon as she did, Elena smacked hard behind the left ear.

       This was the crucial moment. If Elena could keep Biratz from crushing all the ice between her back legs, they might have a chance.

       The thurg tentatively lifted her left hind leg and stretched it until it made contact with the ice.

       “Good, Biratz!Now!” Elena shouted. Now if Biratz would only surge forward…

       There was a great upheaval underneath her. For several minutes Elena thought that perhaps Biratz had broken through the ice with all four legs. Then the thrashing changed to a rocking motion and suddenly, dizzyingly Elena knew that they had won.

       “Easy, now, easy,” she called to the animal, giving her a gentle tickle with the stick. And slowly, ponderously, Biratz moved forward. Her domed head drooped farther and farther as she went, and she foundered at the edge of a bank of mist, breaking the ice again. But there she only sank a few inches before meeting mud.

       A few more steps and they were on solid ground. Elena had to suck in her breath to stifle a scream as the thurg’s domelike head slumped, giving her a short and scary ride to where the tusks re-curved on themselves. Somehow she slid right between them and had to hastily scramble off Biratz’s trunks.

       “It was pointless, you know, doing that,” Damon said from somewhere in the mist beside her. “Risking your own life.”

       “What d-do you mean p-pointless?” Elena demanded. She wasn’t frightened; she was freezing.

       “The animals are going to die anyway. The next trial is one they can’t manage and even if they could, this isn’t a place where anything grows. Instead of a quick clean death in the water, they’re going to starve, slowly.”

       Elena didn’t answer; the only answer she could think of was, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” She had stopped shivering, which was a good thing, because a moment ago her body had felt as if she might shake herself apart.

       Clothes, she thought vaguely. That was the problem. It certainly couldn’t be as cold here in the air as it had been in that water. It was her clothes that were making her so cold.

       She began, with numb fingers, to take them off. First, she unfastened her leather jacket. No zippers here: buttons. That was a real problem. Her fingers felt like frozen hot dogs, and only nominally under her direction. But somehow or other she managed to undo the fastenings and the leather dropped to the ground with a muffled thump—it had taken a layer of her inner fur off with it. Ick. The smell of wet fur. Now, now she had to—

       But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything because someone was holding her arms. Burning her arms. Those hands were annoying, but at least she knew who they belonged to. They were firm and very gentle but very strong. All that added up to Stefan.

       Slowly, she raised her dripping head to ask Stefan to stop burning her arms.

       But she couldn’t. Because on Stefan’s body there was Damon’s head. Now that wasfunny. She’d seen a lot of things that vampires could do, but not this swapping heads business.

       “Stefan-Damon—please stop,” she gasped between hysterical whoops of laughter. “It hurts. It’s too hot!”

       “Hot? You’re frozen, you mean.” The deft, searing hands were rubbing up and down her arms, pushing back her head to rub her cheeks. She let it happen, because it seemed to be only sense that if it was Damon’s head, they were Stefan’s hands. “You’re cold but you’re not shivering?” a grim Damon-voice said from somewhere.

       “Yes, so you see I must be warming up.” Elena didn’t feel very warmed up. She realized that she still had on a longer fur garment, one that reached to her knees under her leather breeches. She fumbled with her belt.

       “You’re not warming up. You’re going into the next stage of hypothermia. And if you don’t get dry and warm rightnow, you’re going to die.” Not roughly, he tilted her chin up to look into her eyes. “You’re delirious now—can you understand me, Elena? We need to really get you warm.”

       Warm was a concept as vague and faraway as life before she had met Stefan. But delirious she understood. That was not a good thing. What to do about it except laugh?

       “All right. Elena, just wait for a moment. Let me find—” In a moment he was back. Not quick enough to stop her from unwrapping the fur down to her waist, but back before she could get her camisole off.

       “Here.” He stripped off the damp fur and wrapped a warm, dry one around her, over her camisole.

       After a moment or two she began to shiver.

       “That’s my girl,” Damon’s voice said. It went on: “Don’t fight me, Elena. I’m trying to save your life. That’s all. I’m not going to try to do anything else. I give you my word.”

       Elena was bewildered. Why should she think that Damon—this must be Damon, she decided—would want to hurt her?

       Although he could be a bastard sometimes…

       And he was taking off her clothes.

       No.That shouldn’t be happening. Definitely not. Especially since Stefan must be somewhere around.

       But by now Elena was shivering too hard to talk.

       And now that she was in her underwear, he was making her lie down on furs, tucking other furs around her. Elena didn’t understand anything that was happening, but it was all starting not to matter. She was floating somewhere outside herself, watching without much interest.

       Then another body was slipping in under the furs. She snapped back from the place she had been floating. Very briefly she got a look at a bare chest. And then a warm, compact body slid into the makeshift sleeping bag with her. Warm, hard arms went around her, keeping her in contact all over her body.

       Through the mist she vaguely heard Stefan’s voice.

       “What the hell are you doing?”

 

 

           

 

30

      

“Strip to your underwear and get in on the other side,” Damon said. His voice was neither angry nor fatuous. He added shortly, “Elena is dying.”

The last three words seemed to affect Stefan particularly, although Elena couldn’t parse them. Stefan wasn’t moving, just breathing hard, his eyes wide. “Bonnie and I have been gathering hay and fuel and we’re all right.”

       “You’ve been exercising—moving about—wearing clothes that kept you warm. She’s been dunked in ice water and sitting still—high up in the wind. I got the other thurg to break off wood from the dead trees around here and try it on the fire. Now get the hell in, Stefan, and give her some body warmth, or I’m going to make her a vampire.”

       “Nnn,” Elena tried to say, but Stefan didn’t seem to understand.

       Damon, however, said, “Don’t worry. He’s going to warm you up from the other side. You won’t have to become a vampire just yet. For God’s sake,” he added suddenly, explosively, “some prince you picked!”

       Stefan’s voice was quiet and tense. “You tried putting her in a thermal envelope?”

       “Of course I tried, you idiot!No magic works beyond the Mirror except telepathy.”

       Elena had no sense of time going by, but suddenly there was a familiar body pressed against hers from the other side.

       And somewhere directly in her mind:Elena? Elena? You’re all right, aren’t you, Elena? I don’t care whether you’re playing a joke on me. But you’re really all right, aren’t you? Just tell me that, love.

       Elena wasn’t able to answer at all.

       Dimly, fragments of sound came to her ears: “Bonnie…on top of her and…pack ourselves back on either side.”

       And dull feelings stirred her sense of touch: a small body, almost weightless, like a thick blanket, pressing down on her. Someone sobbing, tears dripping on her neck from above. And warmth on either side.

       I’m asleep with the other kittens, she thought, dozing. Maybe we’ll have a nice dream.

 

“I wish we could know how they’re doing,” Meredith said, on a pause from one of her pacing bouts.

“I wish they knew how we’re doing,” Matt said wearily as he taped another note card amulet onto a window. And another.

       “Do you know, my dears, I kept hearing a child crying last night in my dreams,” Mrs. Flowers said slowly.

       Meredith turned, startled. “So did I! Right out on the front porch, it sounded like. But I was too tired to get up.”

       “It might mean something—or nothing at all.” Mrs. Flowers frowned. She was boiling tap water for tea. The electricity was sporadic. Matt and Saber had driven back to the boardinghouse earlier that day so that Matt could gather Mrs. Flowers’s most important instruments—her herbs for teas, compresses, and poultices. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her about the state of the boardinghouse, or what those maggot malach had done to it. He’d had to find a loose board from the garage to get from the hall to the kitchen. There was no third floor anymore and very little second.

       At least he hadn’t run into Shinichi.

       “What I’m saying is that maybe there’s some real kid out there,” Meredith said.

       “At night alone? Sounds like a Shinichi zombie,” Matt said.

       “Maybe. But maybe not. Mrs. Flowers, do you have any idea of when you hear the crying? Early in the night or late?”

       “Let me think, dear. It seems to me that I hear itwhenever I wake up—and old people wake up quite frequently.”

       “I usually hear it toward the morning—but I usually sleep without dreaming for the first few hours and wake up early.”

       Mrs. Flowers turned to Matt. “What about you, Matt, dear? Do you ever hear a sound like crying?”

       Matt, who deliberately overworked himself these days to try to get a solid six hours of sleep at night, said, “I’ve heard the wind kind of moaning and sobbing around midnight, I guess.”

       “It sounds as if we have an all-night ghost, my dears,” Mrs. Flowers said calmly and poured them each a mug of tea.

       Matt saw Meredith glance at him uneasily—but Meredith didn’t know Mrs. Flowers as well as he did.

       “You don’t really think it’s a ghost,” he said now.

       “No, I don’t. Mama hasn’t said a word about it, and then it’s your house, Matt, dear. No gruesome murders or hideous secrets in its past, I should think. Let me see…” She shut her eyes and let Matt and Meredith go on with their tea. Then she opened her eyes and gave them a puzzled smile.

       “Mama says ‘search the house for your ghost. Then listen well to what it has to say.’”

       “Okay,” Matt said poker-faced. “Since it’s my house, I guess I’d better search for it. But when? Should I set an alarm?”

       “I think the best way would be to arrange a watch rota,” Mrs. Flowers said.

       “Okay,” Meredith agreed promptly. “I’ll take the middle watch, from midnight to four; Matt can have the first one; and Mrs. Flowers, you can have the early-morning one, and get a nap in the afternoon if you want.”

       Matt felt uneasy. “Why don’t we just break it up into two watches and the two of you can share one? I’ll take the other.”

       “Because, dear Matt,” Meredith said, “we don’t want to be treated like ‘ladies.’ And don’t argue”—she hefted the fighting stave—“because I’m the one with the heavy equipment.”

 

Something was shaking the room. Shaking Matt with it. Still half-asleep, he put his hand under his pillow and pulled out the revolver. A hand grabbed it and he heard a voice.

“Matt! It’s me, Meredith!Wake up, will you?”

       Groggily, Matt reached for the lamp switch. Again, strong, slim cold fingers prevented him from doing what he wanted.

       “No light,” Meredith whispered. “It’s very faint, but if you come with me quietly, you can hear it. The crying.”

       That woke Matt up the rest of the way. “Right now?”

       “Right now.”

       Doing his best to walk quietly through the dark halls, Matt followed Meredith to the downstairs living room.

       “Sh!” Meredith warned. “Listen.”

       Matt listened. He could hear some sobbing all right, and maybe some words, but they didn’t sound all that ghostly to him. He put his ear to the wall and listened. The crying was louder.

       “Do we have a flashlight?” Matt asked.

       “I have two, my dears. But this is a very dangerous time of night.” Mrs. Flowers was a shadow against darkness.

       “Please give the flashlights to us,” said Matt. “I don’t think our ghost is very supernatural. What time is it, anyway?”

       “About twelve forty A.M.,” Meredith answered. “But why do you think it isn’t supernatural?”

       “Because I think it’s living in our basement,” Matt said. “I think it’s Cole Reece. The kid who ate his guinea pig.”

 

Ten minutes later, with the stave, two flashlights, and Saber, they had caught their ghost.

“I didn’t mean anything bad,” Cole sobbed, when they had lured him upstairs with promises of candy and “magic” tea that would let him sleep.

       “I didn’t hurt anything, honest,” he choked, wolfing down Hershey bar after Hershey bar from their emergency rations. “I’m scared that he’s onto me. Because after you hit me with that sticky note, I haven’t been able to hear him in my head anymore. And then you came here”—he gestured around Matt’s house—“and you had amulets and I figured it would be better to stay inside them. Or it could bemy Last Midnight too.”

       He was babbling. But something about the last words made Matt say, “What do you mean…‘your Last Midnight too’?”

       Cole looked at him in terror. The rim of melted Hershey bar around his lips made Matt remember the last time he’d seen the boy.

       “You know, don’t you?” Cole faltered. “About the midnights? The countdown? Twelve days till the Last Midnight? Eleven days till the Last Midnight? And now…tonight is one day till the Last Midnight…” He began to sob again, even while cramming chocolate into his mouth. It was clear that he was starving.

       “But what happens on the Last Midnight?” Meredith asked.

       “You know, don’t you? That that’s the time when…you know.” Maddeningly Cole seemed to think they were testing him.

       Matt put his hands on Cole’s shoulders, and to his horror felt bones under his fingers. The kidreally was starving, he thought, forgiving him all the Hershey bars. His eyes met Mrs. Flowers’s eyes and she immediately went to the kitchen.

       But Cole wasn’t answering; he was mumbling incoherently. Matt forced himself to apply pressure to those bony shoulders.

       “Cole, talk louder! What’s this Last Midnight about?”

       “You know. That’s when…all the kids… you know, they wait up and at midnight…they get knives or guns. You know. And we go into our parents’ room while they’re asleep and…” Cole broke down again, but Matt noticed he had slipped into saying “we” and “our” by the end.

       Meredith spoke in her calm, steady voice. “The children are going to kill their parents, is that right?”

       “He showed us where to slash or stab. Or if there’s a gun—”

       Matt had heard enough. “You can stay—in the basement,” he said. “And here are some amulets. Put them on you if you feel like you’re in danger.” He gave Cole a whole packet of Post-it Notes.

       “Just don’t be afraid,” Meredith added, as Mrs. Flowers came in with a plate of sausages and fried potatoes for Cole. At any other time the smell would have made Matt hungry.

       “It’s just like that island in Japan,” he said. “Shinichi and Misao made it happen there, and they’re going to do it again.”

       “I say time’s running out. Actually it’s already the Last Midnight day—it’s nearly one thirty in the morning,” Meredith said. “We have less than twenty-four hours. We should either get out of Fell’s Church or do something to arrange a confrontation.”

       “A confrontation? Without Elena or Damon or Stefan?” Matt said. “We’ll be murdered. Don’t forget Sheriff Mossberg.”

       “He didn’t have this.” Meredith tossed the fighting stave into the air, caught it neatly, and put it at her side.

       Matt shook his head. “Shinichi will still kill you. Or some little kid will, with the semi-automatic from Daddy’s closet.”

       “We have to dosomething.”

       Matt thought. His head was pounding. Finally he said, head lowered, “When I got the herbs I got Misao’s star ball, too.”

       “You’re kidding. Shinichistill didn’t find it?”

       “No. And maybe we could do something with it.”

       Matt looked at Meredith, who looked at Mrs. Flowers. Mrs. Flowers said, “What about pouring out the liquid in different places in Fell’s Church? Just a drop here and a drop there? We could ask the Power in it to protect the town. Maybe it would listen.”

       Meredith said, “That was the exact reason we wanted to get Shinichi’s and Misao’s star balls in the first place. The star balls control their owners, according to legend.”

       Matt said, “It may be old-ways thinking, but I agree.”

       Meredith said, “Then let’s do itright now.”

       While the other two waited, Matt got Misao’s star ball. It had a very, very little liquid on the bottom.

       “After the Last Midnight she plans to fill it to the top with the energy of the new lives that get taken,” Meredith said.

       “Well, she’s not going to get a chance to do that,” Matt said flatly. “When we’re done we’ll destroy the container.”

       “But we probably should hurry,” Meredith added. “Let’s get some weapons together: something silver, something long and heavy, like a fire iron. Shinichi’s little zombies are not going to be happy—and who knows who’s on his side?”

 

 

           

 

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