Phantom, p.11
Phantom, page 11
“Elena, don’t be stupid!” Stefan snapped. “You’re in danger.”
Elena bristled. Stupid? Stefan, no matter how stressed or anxious, had never treated her with less than total respect. “Excuse me?”
Stefan reached for her. “Elena,” he said. “Let me come with you. I’ll stay with you until nightfall and then keep watch outside your house tonight.”
“It’s really not necessary,” Elena said. “Protect Meredith and Celia instead. They’re the ones who need you.” Stefan’s face fell, and he looked so devastated that she relented a little, adding, “Please don’t worry, Stefan. I’ll be careful, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
His jaw clenched, but he said nothing more, and she turned to make her way down the trail, not looking back.
Once they were back at the boardinghouse, Stefan couldn’t relax.
He couldn’t remember ever, in all his long life, feeling so edgy and uncomfortable in his own body. He itched and ached with anxiety. It was as if his skin were fitted too tightly over his bones, and he moved irritably, tapping his fingers against the table, cracking his neck, shrugging his shoulders, shifting back and forth in his chair.
He wants you, Elena. What the hell did that mean? He wants you.
And the sight of that dark, hulking figure up on the cliff, a shadow blotting out the sun, those golden curls shining like a halo above the figure’s head . . .
Stefan knew he should be with Elena. All he wanted to do was to protect her.
But she had dismissed him, had—metaphorically, at least—patted him on the head and told him to stay, faithful guard dog that he was, and watch over someone else. To keep someone else safe. No matter that she was clearly in danger, that someone—some he—wanted her. Still she didn’t want Stefan to be with her right now.
What did Elena want? Now that Stefan stopped to think about it, it seemed that Elena wanted a host of incompatible things. To have Stefan as her loyal knight. Which he would always, always be, he asserted to himself, clenching his fist tightly.
But she also wanted to hold on to the memories of Damon, and to keep that part of her she had shared with him private and pristine, separate from everyone else, even from Stefan.
And she wanted so much more, too: to be the savior of her friends, of her town, of her world. To be loved and admired. To be in control.
And to be a normal girl again. Well, that normal life she had lived had been destroyed forever when she met Stefan, when he made the choice to let her into his world. He knew it was his fault, all of it, everything that followed after that, but he couldn’t be sorry that she was with him now. He loved her too much to have any room for regret. She was the center of his world, but at the same time, he knew it wasn’t the same for her.
A hole inside him gaped with longing, and he moved restlessly in his chair. His canine teeth lengthened in his mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so . . . wrong. He couldn’t get the image of Caleb out of his head, looking down at them from the top of the cliff, as if checking to see whether whatever violence he’d hoped to cause had come to pass.
“More tea, Stefan?” Mrs. Flowers asked him softly, breaking into his furious thoughts. She was leaning forward over a little table with the teapot, her wide blue eyes watching him from behind her glasses. Her face was so compassionate that he wondered what she could see in him. This elderly, wise woman always seemed to perceive so much more than anyone else; perhaps she could tell how he was feeling now.
He realized she was still waiting politely for his answer, the teapot suspended in one hand, and he nodded automatically. “Thank you, Mrs. Flowers,” he said, offering forth his cup, which was still half-full of cold tea.
He didn’t really like the taste of normal human drinks; he hadn’t for a long time now, but sometimes drinking them made him fit in, made the others relax a bit more around him. When he didn’t eat or drink at all, he could sense Elena’s friends prickling, the hairs on the back of their necks rising, as some subconscious voice in them noted that he was not like them, adding it to all the other little differences he couldn’t control, and thereby concluding he was wrong.
Mrs. Flowers filled his cup and sat back, satisfied. Picking up her knitting—something pink and fluffy—she smiled. “It’s so nice to have all you young people gathered together here,” she commented. “Such a lovely group of children.”
Glancing at the others, Stefan had to wonder whether Mrs. Flowers was being gently sarcastic.
Alaric and Meredith had returned from the hospital, where her injury had been diagnosed as a mild sprain and taped up by the emergency room nurse. Meredith’s usually serene face was tight, probably at least partially because of the pain and her irritation at knowing she’d have to stay off her foot for a couple of days.
And partially, Stefan suspected, because of where she was sitting. For some reason, when Alaric had helped her hobble into the living room and over to the couch, he had parked her directly next to Celia.
Stefan didn’t consider himself an expert on romance—after all, he’d lived for hundreds of years and fallen in love only twice, and his romance with Katherine had been a disaster—but even he couldn’t miss the tension between Meredith and Celia. He wasn’t sure whether Alaric was as oblivious to it as he seemed or whether he was pretending obliviousness in the hope that the situation would blow over.
Celia had changed into an elegant white sundress and sat flipping through a journal titled Forensic Anthropology, looking cool and composed. Meredith was, in contrast, unusually grimy and smudged, her beautiful features and smooth olive skin marred by tiredness and pain. Alaric had taken a chair next to the couch.
Celia, ignoring Meredith, leaned across her toward Alaric.
“I think you might find this interesting,” she said to him. “It’s an article on the dental patterns in mummified bodies found on an island quite near Unmei no Shima.”
Meredith shot Celia a nasty look. “Oh, yes,” she said quietly. “Teeth, how fascinating.” Celia’s mouth flattened into a line, but she didn’t reply.
Alaric took the magazine with a polite murmur of interest, and Meredith frowned.
Stefan frowned, too. All the tension humming between Meredith, Celia, and Alaric—and now that he was watching, he could tell that Alaric knew exactly what was going on between the two young women and was flattered, irritated, and anxious in equal parts—was interfering with Stefan’s Powers.
While he’d sat and sipped his first cup of tea, reluctantly following Elena’s command to “stay,” Stefan had been sending out tendrils of Power, trying to sense whether Elena had made it home, whether anything had stopped her on her way. Whether Caleb had stopped her.
But he hadn’t been able to find her, even with his senses extended to their utmost. Once or twice, he’d caught what felt like a fleeting impression of what might be the very specific sound, scent, and aura that unmistakably meant Elena, but then it slipped away from him.
He’d blamed the fact that he couldn’t locate her on his weakening Powers, but now it was clear to him what was keeping him from finding her. All the emotion in this room: the pounding hearts, the flushes of anger, the acrid scent of jealousy.
Stefan pulled himself back, tried to quell the rage rising within him. These people—his friends, he reminded himself—were not purposely interfering. They couldn’t help their emotions. He took a swig of his rapidly cooling tea, trying to relax before he lost control, and winced at the taste. Tea wasn’t what he was craving, he realized. He needed to get out to the forest soon and hunt. He needed blood.
No, he needed to find out exactly what Caleb Smallwood was up to. He stood up so abruptly, so violently, the chair rocked unsteadily beneath him.
“Stefan?” Matt asked in an alarmed voice.
“What is it?” Bonnie’s eyes were enormous.
Stefan glanced around the circle of distracted faces, now all watching him. “I have to go.” Then he turned on his heels and ran.
Chapter 16
He walked for a long, long time, though it seemed his surroundings never changed. The same dim light filtered through a constant cloud of ash. He plodded on through grime, through mud, through ankle-deep pools of dark water.
Occasionally, he unclenched his fist and gazed again at the locks of hair. Each time, the magic liquid cleaned them a little more, changing a scrap of fibrous blackness to two locks of shining hair, red and gold.
He walked on.
Everything hurt, but he couldn’t stop. If he stopped he would sink back below the ash and mud, back to the grave—back to death.
Something whispered around the edges of his mind. He didn’t know quite what had happened to him, but words and phrases spun in his head.
Words like abandoned, words like alone.
He was very cold. He kept walking. After a while, he realized he was mumbling. “Left me all alone. They’d never have left him here.” He couldn’t remember who this him was, but he felt a sick sort of satisfaction from the glow of resentment. He held on to it as he continued his march.
After what felt like an unchanging eternity, something happened. Ahead of him he could see the gatehouse he had imagined: spired like a fairy-tale castle, black as night.
He walked faster, his footsteps shuffling through the ash. And then the earth opened suddenly beneath his feet. In the space of a heartbeat, he was falling into nothingness. Something inside him howled, Not now, not now. He grabbed and clawed at the earth, his arms holding him afloat, his feet swinging into the emptiness below him.
“No,” he moaned. “No, they can’t . . . Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me again.” His fingers slipped, mud and ash sliding beneath his hands.
“Damon?” an incredulous voice roared. A great muscular figure stood above him, silhouetted against the moons and planets in the sky, his chest bared, long, spiraling tangles of hair spilling over his shoulders. This statue of a man reached down and grasped him by the arms, lifting him up.
He yelped in pain. Something beneath the earth had latched onto his legs and was pulling him back down.
“Hold on!” The other man grunted, muscles rippling. He strained and heaved against whatever was clinging onto Damon—Damon, the man had called him, and that felt right, somehow. The other man gave a great tug, and finally the force below released him, and he shot out of the earth, knocking his rescuer backward.
Damon lay panting on the ground, spent.
“You are supposed to be dead,” the other man told him, climbing to his feet and holding out a hand to steady Damon. He pushed a long lock of hair away from his face and gazed at Damon with serious, troubled eyes. “The fact that you are not . . . well, I am not as surprised as I should be.”
Damon blinked at his savior, who was watching him attentively. He wet his lips and tried to speak, but his voice wouldn’t come.
“Everything has been disturbed here since your friends left,” the man said. “Something essential has shifted in this universe. Things are not right.” He shook his head, his eyes troubled. “But tell me, mon cher, how does it come to be that you are here?”
Finally Damon found his voice. It came out rough and quavering. “I . . . don’t know.”
The man immediately was all courtesy. “I think the situation calls for some Black Magic, oui? And some blood, perhaps, and a chance to clean up. And then, Damon, we must talk.”
He gestured toward the dark castle ahead of them. Damon hesitated for a moment, glancing at the emptiness and ash around them, then trudged after him toward the open doors.
After Stefan swept out of the room so suddenly, everyone could only stare after him as the front door banged, signaling that he had left the house just as quickly. Bonnie hugged her arms around herself, shivering. A little voice in the back of her head told her that something was very, very wrong.
Celia finally broke the silence. “Interesting,” she said. “Is he always so . . . intense? Or is it a vampire thing?”
Alaric chuckled dryly. “Believe it or not, he’s always seemed very low-key and practical to me. I don’t remember him being so volatile.” He ran a hand through his sandy hair and added thoughtfully, “Maybe it was the contrast with his brother that made him seem so reasonable. Damon was pretty unpredictable.”
Meredith frowned thoughtfully. “No, you’re right. This isn’t the way Stefan usually acts. Maybe he’s emotional because Elena’s threatened? But that doesn’t make sense . . . she’s been in danger before. Even when she died—he was heartbroken, but, if anything, it made him more responsible, not wilder.”
“But when Elena was dead,” Alaric reminded her, “the worst thing he could imagine had already happened. It’s possible that what’s making him so jumpy is that he doesn’t know where the threat’s coming from this time.”
Bonnie took a sip of tea, zoning out as Meredith hmmmed thoughtfully, and Celia raised one skeptical eyebrow. “I still don’t understand what you mean when you say Elena died. Are you suggesting she actually rose from the dead?”
“Yes,” said Meredith. “She was turned into a vampire, then she was exposed to sunlight and physically died. They buried her and everything. Later—months later—she returned. She’s human again, though.”
“I find all that very hard to believe,” said Celia flatly.
“Honestly, Celia,” said Alaric, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “With everything you’ve seen since we got here—your scarf nearly choking you, then spelling out a name, Bonnie having a vision, Stefan practically flying to save you—I don’t know why you’re drawing the line now and saying you don’t believe a girl could come back from the dead.” He paused and took a breath. “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but really.”
Meredith smirked. “Believe it or not, it’s true. Elena came back from the dead.”
Bonnie wrapped one long red curl around her finger. She watched as her finger turned white and red against the strand of hair. Elena. Of course they were talking about Elena. Everyone was always talking about Elena. Whether she was with them or not, everything they did or thought centered on Elena.
Alaric turned to address the whole group. “Stefan seems convinced that ‘he wants you’ means Caleb, but I’m not sure that it does. From what I’ve seen of Bonnie’s visions, and what you guys have told me, they’re hardly ever about what’s right in front of her. Caleb’s appearance—if it even was Caleb—could have been a coincidence. Don’t you think so, Meredith?”
Oh, don’t bother to ask me about the visions, Bonnie thought bitterly. I’m only the one who has them. Wasn’t that the way it always was, though? She was the one everyone overlooked.
“It could be a coincidence,” Meredith said doubtfully. “But if it’s not Caleb she was talking about, who is it? Who wants Elena?”
Bonnie glanced under her eyelashes at Matt, but he was staring out the window, apparently completely detached from the conversation. She could tell that Matt still loved Elena, even if no one else knew. It was too bad: Matt was awfully cute. He could date anyone, but it was taking him a long time to get over her.
But then, no one ever seemed to get over Elena. Half the boys at Robert E. Lee High School had gone around gazing wistfully after her, as if she might suddenly turn around and fall into their arms. Certainly most of the boys Elena had dated had stayed a little bit in love with her, even after Elena had more or less forgotten their names.
It isn’t fair, Bonnie thought, twirling her hair more tightly around her finger. Everyone always wanted Elena, and Bonnie had never even had a boyfriend for more than a few weeks at a time. What was wrong with her? People always told her how cute she was, how adorable, how fun . . . and then they looked past her to Elena, and it was like they couldn’t see Bonnie anymore.
And while Damon, amazing, sexy Damon, had been fond of her, sometimes, when she wasn’t trying to kid herself, she knew he hadn’t really seen her, either.
I’m just the sidekick, that’s my problem, Bonnie thought glumly. Elena was the star; Meredith was a hero; Bonnie was a sidekick.
Celia cleared her throat. “I have to confess I’m intrigued by the appearance of the names,” she said stiffly. “It does seem like they point to some kind of threat. Whether or not Bonnie’s purported vision comes to anything”—Bonnie shot her best nasty look at Celia, but Celia ignored it—“we should definitely investigate any background or context we can find for the unexplained appearance of the names. We should find out if there’s a recorded history of this kind of thing happening before. The writing on the wall, if you will.” She gave a thin-lipped smile at her own joke.
“But what would we investigate?” Bonnie said, finding herself unwillingly responding to Celia’s teacherlike manner. “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for something like this. A book on curses, maybe? Or omens? Do you have anything like that in your library, Mrs. Flowers?”
Mrs. Flowers shook her head. “I’m afraid not, dear. My library, as you know, is mostly herbals. I have a few more specialized books, but I can’t recall anything that might be helpful with this problem.”
When she mentioned “more specialized books,” Bonnie’s cheeks got hot. She thought of the grimoire on communication with the dead, still tucked under the floorboards in her bedroom, and hoped Mrs. Flowers hadn’t noticed it was missing.
After a few seconds, her cheeks had cooled enough that she dared to glance around, but only Meredith was looking at her, one elegant eyebrow raised. If Meredith thought something was up, she wouldn’t rest until she got the whole story from Bonnie, so Bonnie gave her a bland smile and crossed her fingers behind her back for luck. Meredith raised her other eyebrow and looked at her with deep suspicion.
“Actually,” Celia said, “I have a contact at the University of Virginia who studies folklore and mythology. She specializes in witchcraft, folk magic, curses, all that kind of thing.”
“Do you think we could call her?” said Alaric hopefully.
