Phantom, p.12
Phantom, page 12
Celia frowned. “I think it would be better if I went up there for a few days. Her library isn’t as well organized as it could be—I suppose it’s symptomatic of the kind of mind that studies stories rather than facts—and it might take a while to discover if there’s anything useful there. I think it would be just as well for me to get out of town for a while, anyway. After two brushes with death in two days”—she sent a pointed glance toward Meredith, who blushed—“I’m beginning to feel that Fell’s Church isn’t the healthiest place for me.” She looked at Alaric. “You might find her library of interest, if you’d like to come with me. Dr. Beltram is one of the best-known experts in her field.”
“Uh . . .” Alaric looked startled. “Thanks, but I’d better stay here and help Meredith. With her sprained ankle and everything.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Celia glanced at Meredith again. Meredith, who had been looking steadily more delighted every second since Celia had announced she was leaving, ignored her and smiled at Alaric. “Well, I suppose I should give her a call and get my things together. No time like the present.”
Celia stood up, smoothed her sundress, and walked out the door, head high. As she passed, she brushed against the table near Mrs. Flowers’s chair, sending her knitting to the floor.
Bonnie let out a breath as Celia left the room. “Well, really!” she said indignantly.
“Bonnie,” said Matt warningly.
“I know,” said Bonnie angrily. “She could have at least said ‘excuse me,’ right? And what was that with asking Alaric to come with her to UVA? He just got here, practically. He hasn’t seen you for months. Of course he’s not going to leave again with her right now.”
“Bonnie,” said Meredith, in a strangely choked voice.
“What?” said Bonnie, catching the oddness in her tone and looking around. “Oh. Oh. Oh, no.”
Mrs. Flowers’s knitting had fallen from its table, and the skein of yarn had rolled across the floor, unwinding as it went. Now, in the curls of soft pale pink, they could all clearly read one word written across the carpet:
bonnie
Chapter 17
Once he got outside, Stefan remembered that Elena had taken his car. Turning into the woods, he began to run, using his Power to speed his pace. The pounding of his feet seemed to thud, Guard her, Guard her.
He knew where Tyler Smallwood had lived. After Tyler had attacked Elena at a dance, it had made sense to keep an eye on him. Stefan burst from the woods at the edge of the Smallwoods’ property.
They owned an ugly house, in Stefan’s opinion. An inaccurate portrayal of an old Southern manor estate, it was too big for the lawn it sat on and bulged with unnecessary columns and twisting rococo decorations. Just looking at it, Stefan had been able to tell that the Smallwoods had more money than taste, and that the architects who’d designed it weren’t educated in true classical forms.
He rang the bell at the front door, then froze. What if Mr. or Mrs. Smallwood answered the bell? He would have to Influence them to give him as much information as they could about Caleb, and then to forget Stefan had been there. He hoped he had the Power to do it: He hadn’t been eating enough, not even of animal blood.
But no one came. After a few seconds, Stefan sent questing tendrils of Power through the house. It was empty. He couldn’t go in, couldn’t search Caleb’s room like he wanted to. Without an invitation, he was stuck out here.
He wandered around the house, peering through the windows, but finding nothing out of the ordinary other than entirely too many gilded frames and mirrors.
Behind the house he found a small white shed. Sending Power toward it, he felt something slightly . . . off. Just the slightest tinge of darkness, a feeling of frustration and ill intent.
The shed was padlocked, but the lock was easy enough to snap. And as no one lived here, he didn’t need an invitation to enter.
The first thing he saw was Elena’s face. Newspaper clippings and photos were tacked all over the walls: Elena, Bonnie, Meredith, himself. On the floor was a pentagram with more pictures and roses.
Stefan’s certainty that something was wrong solidified. Elena was in danger. Sending Power before him, searching desperately for any trace of her, he took off running again.
As she drove away from the florist’s, Elena turned the conversation with Stefan over and over in her mind.
What was going on with him since they’d come back to Fell’s Church? It felt like there was part of him that he was holding back, hiding from her. She remembered the loneliness, the sinking, dizzy feeling of isolation that she had sensed when she kissed him. Was it Damon’s loss that was changing Stefan?
Damon. Just the thought of him was enough to cause an almost physical pain in her. Mercurial, difficult, beautiful Damon. Dangerous. Loving, in his own way. The thought of his name, written in water plants across Meredith’s legs, floated through her mind.
She didn’t know what it meant. But there was no hope. She needed to stop lying to herself about that. She had seen Damon die. Yet it seemed impossible that someone as complex and strong and seemingly undefeatable as Damon could be gone so quickly and so simply. But that was the way it happened, wasn’t it? She should know that death didn’t often come with a grand show, that it usually came when you were least expecting it. She had known that before all this . . . all this stuff with vampires and werewolves and evil mysterious opponents. She had known all about the suddenness and simplicity of death for years, back when she was just normal Elena Gilbert, who didn’t believe in anything supernatural, not even horoscopes or fortune-telling, much less monsters.
She glanced at the passenger seat next to her, where there lay the bouquet of pink roses she had picked up to give to Margaret. And, next to them, a simple bunch of forget-me-nots. Like I’d ever forget, she thought.
Elena remembered riding in the car toward home with her parents and baby Margaret on an ordinary Sunday afternoon. It had been a beautiful sunny fall day, the leaves of the trees by the roadside just beginning to be painted with red and gold.
They’d gone to lunch at a little inn out in the country. Margaret, who was teething, had been cranky at the restaurant, and they’d taken turns walking her up and down on the porch of the inn for a few minutes at a time while the others ate. But in the car she was quiet, half drowsing, her light golden lashes fluttering down to rest for longer and longer periods against her cheeks.
Elena’s father had been driving, she remembered, and the radio had been tuned to the local station so he could catch the news. Her mother had twisted to look at Elena in the backseat, her sapphire blue eyes so like Elena’s own. Her golden hair, touched with a little gray, was pulled back in a French braid, elegant and practical. Smiling, she had said, “Do you know what I think would be nice?”
“What?” asked Elena, smiling back at her. Then she saw a strange glitter, high in the sky, and leaned forward without waiting for a reply. “Daddy, what’s that?” She’d pointed upward.
Elena never found out what her mother had thought would be nice. Her father never answered what that was.
The last things Elena remembered were sounds: her father’s gasp and the screech of the car’s tires. Everything after that was blank, until Elena had woken up in the hospital, Aunt Judith by her bedside, and learned that her parents were dead. They had died before the paramedics had even pried them out of the car.
Before they restored Fell’s Church, the Guardians had told Elena that she should have died in that accident, and that her parents should have lived. The glitter had been their air car, and Elena had distracted her father at the worst possible moment, causing all the wrong people to die.
She could feel the weight of it now, the guilt at surviving, her anger at the Guardians. She glanced at the dashboard clock. There was still plenty of time before she had to be at Margaret’s recital. Turning off the highway, she pulled into the cemetery’s parking lot.
Elena parked the car and walked briskly through the newer part of the cemetery, carrying the forget-me-nots. Birds were chirping gaily overhead. So much had happened in this cemetery in the last year. Bonnie had seen one of her first visions among these tombstones. Stefan had followed her here, watching her secretly when she thought he was just the gorgeous new guy at school. Damon had nearly drained an old tramp under the bridge. Katherine had chased Elena out of the cemetery with fog and ice and a far-reaching, far-seeing evil. And, of course, Elena had driven off a bridge to her death here by the cemetery, at the end of that first life, the one that seemed so long ago now.
Elena picked her way past an ornate marble memorial to Fell’s Church’s Civil War veterans and down to the shady glen where her parents were buried. The tiny wildflower bouquet she and Stefan had left two days before had withered, and Elena threw it away and put the forget-me-nots in its place. She picked a bit of moss off her father’s name.
The lightest crunch of gravel sounded from the path behind her, and Elena whirled around. There was no one there.
“I’m just jumpy,” she muttered to herself. Her voice sounded oddly loud in the quiet of the cemetery. “Nothing to worry about,” she said more firmly.
She settled in the grass by her parents’ graves and traced the letters on her mother’s headstone with one hand.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve actually sat here and talked to you, I know. I’m sorry. An awful lot has happened. . . .” She swallowed. “I’m sorry, too, because I found out that you weren’t supposed to die when you did. I asked the Guardians to . . . to bring you back, but they said you had moved on to a better place and they couldn’t reverse that. I wish . . . I’m glad you’re happy wherever you are, but I still miss you.”
Elena sighed, lowered her hand from the gravestone, and trailed it through the grass by her knees. “Something’s after me again,” she continued unhappily. “After all of us, I guess, but Bonnie said I brought it here when she was in a trance. And later she said he wants me. I don’t know if it’s two different people—or whatever—after us, or just one. But it’s always me the bad things focus on.” She twisted a blade of grass between her fingers. “I wish things could be simpler for me, the way they are for other girls.
“Sometimes . . . I’m so glad to have Stefan, and glad I could help protect Fell’s Church, but . . . it’s hard. It’s really hard.” A sob was building in her throat and she swallowed it back. “And . . . Stefan’s always been there for me, but I feel like I don’t know all of him anymore, especially because I can’t read his thoughts. He’s so tense, and it’s like he needs to be in control all the time. . . .”
Something shifted behind her, just the slightest hint of movement. She felt a warm, damp breeze like a breath on the back of her neck.
Elena whipped her head around. Caleb was crouching behind her, so close they were almost nose-to-nose. She screamed, but Caleb slapped his hand over her mouth, muffling her cry.
Chapter 18
Caleb’s hand was hot and heavy against her lips, and Elena scrabbled against it with her nails. He gripped her tightly with his other hand, holding her still, his fingers digging into her shoulder.
Elena struggled fiercely, flailing her arms and landing a firm blow in Caleb’s stomach. She bit down hard on the hand he had over her mouth. Caleb jerked backward, quickly letting go of her and pulling his bitten hand to his chest. As soon as her mouth was uncovered, Elena screamed.
Caleb stepped away from her, holding his hands up in surrender. “Elena!” he said. “Elena, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t want you to scream.”
Elena eyed him warily, breathing hard. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Why were you sneaking up behind me if you didn’t want to scare me?”
Caleb shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. “I was worried about you,” he confessed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and hanging his head. “I was hiking up by Hot Springs earlier and I saw you and your friends. They were pulling you out of the water, and it looked like you weren’t breathing.” He peeked up at her through his long golden lashes.
“You were so worried about me you decided to grab me and cover my mouth to keep me from screaming?” Elena asked. Caleb ducked his head further and scrubbed at the back of his neck in an embarrassed way.
“I wasn’t thinking.” Caleb nodded solemnly. “You looked so pale,” he said. “But you opened your eyes and sat up. I was going to come down and see if you were okay, but your friend saw me and started running up the path toward me like he was going to jump me, and I guess I just freaked out.” He grinned suddenly. “I’m not usually such a wuss,” he said. “But he looked mad.”
Elena found herself feeling unexpectedly disarmed. Her shoulder still ached where Caleb had grabbed her. But he seemed so sincere, and so apologetic.
“Anyway,” Caleb continued, gazing at her out of candid light blue eyes, “I was driving back to my aunt and uncle’s place, and I recognized your car in the cemetery parking lot. I just came in because I wanted to talk to you and make sure you were okay. And then, when I got close to you, you were sitting down and talking, and I guess I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to interrupt you, and I didn’t want to barge in on something personal, so I just waited.” He ducked his head sheepishly again. “And instead I ended up assaulting you and scaring you to death, which sure wasn’t the better way to go. I’m really sorry, Elena.”
Elena’s heartbeat was returning to normal. Whatever Caleb’s intentions, he obviously wasn’t going to attack her again now. “It’s all right,” she said. “I hit my head on an underwater rock. I’m fine now, though. It must have looked pretty weird to see me just sitting here and muttering. Sometimes I come here to talk to my parents, that’s all. This is where they’re buried.”
“It’s not weird,” he said quietly. “I find myself talking to my parents sometimes, too. When something happens and I wish they were with me, I start telling them about it and it makes me feel like they’re there.” He swallowed hard. “It’s been a few years, but you never stop missing them, do you?”
The last bits of anger and fear drained out of Elena when she saw the sadness in Caleb’s face. “Oh, Caleb,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm.
She caught a sudden motion out of the corner of her eye and then, seemingly out of nowhere, Stefan appeared, running incredibly fast, straight toward them.
“Caleb,” he growled, grabbing him by the shirt and throwing him to the ground. Caleb let out a grunt of surprise and pain.
“Stefan, no!” shouted Elena.
Stefan spun to look at her. His eyes were hard and his fangs were fully extended. “He’s not what he says he is, Elena,” he said in an eerily calm voice. “He’s dangerous.”
Caleb slowly pulled himself to his feet, using a gravestone as a support. He was staring at Stefan’s fangs. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you?”
Stefan turned toward him and, almost casually, slapped him back down.
“Stefan, stop it!” Elena yelled, unable to contain the note of hysteria in her voice. She reached out for his arm, but missed. “You’re going to hurt him!”
“He wants you, Elena,” Stefan growled. “Do you understand that? You can’t trust him.”
“Stefan,” Elena pleaded. “Listen to me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. You know that. He’s a human.” She could feel hot tears gathering in her eyes and she blinked them away. Now was not the time to weep and wail. Now was the time to be cool and rational and to keep Stefan from losing control.
Caleb staggered to his feet, grimacing with pain, and this time charged clumsily at Stefan, his face flushed. He got one arm around Stefan’s neck and yanked him to the side, but then Stefan, with an easy strength, tossed Caleb to the ground once more.
Stefan loomed over him threateningly as he stared up at him from the grass. “You can’t fight me,” Stefan growled. “I’m stronger than you. I can drive you out of this town, or kill you just as easily. And I will do either if you make me think it’s necessary. I won’t hesitate.”
Elena grabbed Stefan’s arm. “Stop it! Stop it!” she shouted. She pulled him toward her, trying to turn him so she could look into his eyes, so she could get through to him.
Breathe, she thought desperately. She had to calm things down here, and she tried to steady her voice, to sound logical. “Stefan, I don’t know what you think is going on with Caleb, but just stop for a minute and think.”
“Elena, look at me,” Stefan said. His eyes were dark with emotion. “I know, I’m absolutely sure, that Caleb is evil. He’s dangerous to us. We have to get rid of him before he gets a chance to destroy us. We can’t give him the opportunity to get the better of us by waiting for him to make his move.”
“Stefan . . .” Elena said. Her voice was shaking, and an oddly rational, detached part of her noted that this must be what it felt like when the person you loved most lost his mind.
She didn’t know what she was going to say next, but before she could even open her mouth, Caleb had risen again. There was a long scratch down the side of his face, and his blond hair was tangled and full of dirt.
“Back off,” Caleb said grimly, coming toward Stefan. He was limping a little bit, and clutched a fist-size rock in his right hand. “You can’t just . . .” He raised the rock threateningly.
“Stop it, both of you,” Elena yelled, trying for a fierce general’s voice that would command their attention.
But Caleb just hoisted the rock and threw it straight at Stefan’s face.
Stefan dodged the rock, moving almost too quickly for Elena to see, grabbed Caleb by the waist, and, in one graceful motion, flung him into the air. For a moment, Caleb was suspended, seemingly as light and boneless as a scarecrow tossed from the back of a pickup truck, and then he hit the side of the marble Civil War monument with a sickening crunch. With a thud, he fell to the ground at the foot of the statue and was still.
“Caleb!” Elena screamed in horror. She ran toward him, shoving her way between the bushes and clumps of grass that encircled the monument.
