Phantom, p.22
Phantom, page 22
“Don’t stop!” Elena shouted. And they plunged into the coldness.
In an instant, everything went black, as if someone had switched off the sun.
Elena felt herself falling and clung desperately to Bonnie’s hand.
Damon! she cried silently. Help me!
Chapter 30
Stefan drove like a maniac all the way back to the boardinghouse. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell him that his name had been called,” he said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I can’t believe we left him alone.”
“Slow down,” Meredith told him, trying to hold Matt’s sleeping body steady in the backseat as Stefan whipped around a corner, tires squealing. “You’re going way too fast.”
“We’re in a hurry,” Stefan growled, yanking on the wheel to make a hard right. Alaric turned around in the passenger seat and gave Meredith a panicky look as Stefan narrowly missed a garbage truck. She sighed. She knew he was trying to make up for his mistake, for not telling them immediately that Matt’s name had appeared in the herb shop, but killing them all in a race to get home wasn’t exactly the solution. Besides, although they probably would have done things differently if they’d known, it might not have changed the outcome for Matt. It wasn’t as if their precautions had saved either Bonnie or Elena.
“At least you’ve got vampire reflexes,” she said, more to reassure Alaric than out of any particular confidence in Stefan’s driving abilities.
She’d insisted on being the one sitting in the back with Matt, and now she turned her attention to him. She put a restraining hand on his chest so he wouldn’t go tumbling to the floor as the car jerked and swerved.
He was so still. None of the twitching and eye movements that usually went with sleep, just the steady shallow rise and fall of his breathing. He wasn’t even snoring. And she knew from camping trips as far back as sixth grade that Matt snored like a buzz saw. Always.
Meredith never cried. Not even when the worst happened. And she wasn’t going to start now, not when her friends needed her calm and focused to try to figure out how to save them. But if she had been the kind of girl who cried, instead of the kind of girl who strategized, she would have been sobbing. And even now, the breath caught in her throat a little painfully, until she schooled herself into impassive calm again.
She was the only one left. Of the four old friends who’d gone through school and summers and adolescence and all the horrors the supernatural world could throw at them, she was the only one the phantom hadn’t captured. Yet.
Meredith clenched her teeth and held Matt steady.
Stefan pulled up and parked in front of the boardinghouse, having somehow avoided causing any damage to other cars or pedestrians along the way. Alaric and Meredith started to inch Matt carefully out of the car, looping his arms around their necks and slowly shifting him forward into a half-standing position. But Stefan simply grabbed Matt away from them and threw him over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said, and stalked off toward the boardinghouse, easily balancing Matt’s unconscious body with one hand, not looking back.
“He’s become kind of a strange guy,” Alaric commented, watching Stefan alertly. The sunshine caught the stubble on Alaric’s unshaven chin and it glinted with a touch of gold. He turned toward Meredith and gave her a rueful, disarming grin. “Once more into the breach . . .” he said.
Meredith took his hand, warm and solid in her own. “Come on,” she said.
Once they were in the boardinghouse, Stefan clomped straight upstairs to deposit Matt with the other bodies—the other sleepers, Meredith reminded herself fiercely.
Meredith and Alaric, hand in hand, turned toward the kitchen. As she pushed the door open, Meredith heard Mrs. Flowers’s voice.
“Very useful indeed, my dear,” she was saying, a warm note of approval in her voice. “You’ve done very well. I’m so grateful.”
Meredith gaped. At the kitchen table with Mrs. Flowers, cool and calm and pretty in a blue linen dress, sat Dr. Celia Conner, sipping tea.
“Hello, Alaric. Hello, Meredith,” said Celia. Her dark eyes bored coolly into Meredith’s. “You’ll never believe what I’ve found.”
“What?” said Alaric eagerly, letting go of Meredith’s hand. Her heart sank.
Celia reached into a tote bag sitting by her chair and pulled out a thick book bound in ragged brown leather. She smiled triumphantly and announced, “It’s a book on phantoms. Dr. Beltram ended up sending me to Dalcrest College, which actually has a very comprehensive collection of texts on the paranormal.”
“I suggest we adjourn to the den,” Mrs. Flowers said, “where we can be more comfortable, and examine its contents together.”
They moved to the den, but Stefan, when he joined them, did not seem any more comfortable.
“Different types of phantoms,” he said, taking the book from Celia and flipping rapidly through the pages. “The history of phantoms in our dimension. Where is the banishment ritual? Why doesn’t this thing have an index?”
Celia shrugged. “It’s very old and rare,” she said. “It was difficult to find, and it’s the only book on the subject we’re likely to be able to get our hands on, maybe the only one that exists, so we’ll have to excuse things like that. These older texts, the authors wanted you to read straight through and really learn about their subject, to understand what they wanted to tell you, not just to find the page you needed right away. You might try looking near the end, though.”
Alaric was watching Stefan whip through the pages with an expression of pain. “It’s a rare book, Stefan,” he said. “Please be more careful with it. Would you like me to look? I’m used to finding what I need in these kinds of books.”
Stefan snarled, literally snarled at him, and Meredith felt the hairs along the back of her neck rise. “I’ll do it myself, teacher. I’m in a hurry.”
He squinted down at the text. “Why does it have to be in such ornate print?” he complained. “Don’t tell me it’s because it’s old. I’m older than it is, and I can barely read it. Huh. ‘Phantoms who are feeding like vampires on one choice sensibility, whether it be guilt, or despair, or grudge; or lust for victuals, the demon rum, or fallen women. The stronger be the sensibility, the worse be the outcome of the phantom created.’ I think we could have figured that out ourselves.”
Mrs. Flowers was standing slightly removed from the rest of the group, eyes fixed on empty air, muttering seemingly to herself as she communed with her mother.
“I know,” she said. “I’ll tell them.” Her eyes focused on the others as they stood around Stefan, peering over his shoulders. “Mama says that time is getting short,” she warned.
Stefan leaped to his feet and exploded. “I know it’s getting short,” he roared, getting right up into Mrs. Flowers’s surprised face. “Can’t your mother tell us something useful for once?”
Mrs. Flowers staggered away from him, reaching out to steady herself on the back of a chair. Her face was white, and suddenly she looked older and more frail than ever before.
Stefan’s eyes widened, their color darkening to a stormy sea green, and he held out his hands, his face horrified. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Mrs. Flowers, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I don’t know what came over me. . . . I’m just so worried about Elena and the others.”
“I know, Stefan,” Mrs. Flowers said gravely. She had regained her balance and she looked stronger, calm and wise again. “We will get them back, you know. You must have faith. Mama does.”
Stefan sat down, turning back to the book, his lips pressed together into a straight line.
Her skin prickling with apprehension, Meredith gripped her stave more tightly as she watched him. When she had revealed to the others that the members of her family were hereditary vampire hunters and that it was now her turn to take on the duty, she had told Elena and Stefan that she would never turn on Stefan, that she understood that he wasn’t like other, evil vampires, that he was good: harmless and benign to humans.
She had made no such promises about Damon, and Elena and Stefan hadn’t asked her to. They all shared an unspoken understanding that Damon couldn’t really be characterized as harmless, not even when he begrudgingly worked with them, and that Meredith would need to keep her options open when it came to him.
But Stefan . . . she had never thought this would happen, but now Meredith was worried that someday she might not be able to keep her promises about Stefan. She had never seen him acting the way he had been lately: irrational, angry, violent, unpredictable. She knew his behavior was probably caused by the phantom, but was Stefan becoming too dangerous? Could she kill him if she had to? He was her friend.
Meredith’s heart was racing. She realized that her knuckles had whitened against her fighting stave, and her hand ached. Yes, she realized, she would fight Stefan and try to kill him, if she had to. It was true that he was her friend, but her duty had to come first.
She took a deep breath and consciously relaxed her hands. Stay calm, she coached herself. Breathe. Stefan was keeping himself more or less under control. It wasn’t a decision she had to make. Not yet, anyway.
A few minutes later, Stefan stopped flipping pages. “Here,” he said. “I think this is it.” He handed the book to Mrs. Flowers. She scanned the page quickly and nodded. “That feels like the right ritual,” she said seriously. “I ought to have everything we need to perform it right here in the house.”
Alaric reached for the book. He read the spell, too, frowning. “Does it have to be a blood spell?” he asked Mrs. Flowers. “If it backfires, the phantom might be able to turn it against us.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a blood spell,” Mrs. Flowers replied. “We’d need more time to experiment to change the spell, and time is the one thing we don’t have. If the phantom is able to use its captives the way we think it can, it’s only going to get more powerful.”
Alaric began to speak again but was interrupted.
“Wait,” said Celia, a slightly shrill note in her usually husky voice. “A blood spell? What does that mean? I don’t want to get involved in anything”—she searched for a word—“unsavory.”
She reached for the book, but Stefan slammed his hand down on it. “Unsavory or not, this is what we’re doing,” he said quietly, but with a voice as hard as steel. “And you’re a part of it. It’s too late for you to back out now. I won’t let you.”
Celia gave a convulsive shudder and cringed back in her chair. “Don’t you dare threaten me,” she said, her voice quavering.
“Everybody calm down,” Meredith said sharply. “Celia, no one is going to make you do anything unless you agree to it. I’ll protect you myself if need be.” Her eyes flew quickly to Alaric, who was glancing back and forth between them, looking worried. “But we need your help. Please. You may have saved us all by finding the spell, and we’re grateful, but Stefan’s right—you’re part of this, too. I don’t know if it’ll work without you.” She hesitated a beat. “Or, if it does, it might leave you as the phantom’s only target,” she added cunningly.
Celia shivered again and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not a coward,” she said miserably. “I’m a scientist, and this . . . irrational mysticism worries me. But I’m in. I’ll help any way I can.”
Meredith, for the first time, felt a flash of sympathy for her. She understood how hard it must be for Celia to continue to think of herself as a logical person while the boundaries of what she’d always accepted as reality collapsed around her.
“Thank you, Celia.” Meredith glanced around the room at the others. “We’ve got the ritual. We’ve got the ingredients. We just need to gather everything together and start casting the spell. Are we ready?”
Everyone sat up straighter, their faces taking on expressions of stern resolve. As scary as this was, it was good to finally have a purpose and a plan.
Stefan breathed deeply and visibly took hold of himself, his shoulders relaxing and his stance settling into something less predatory. “Okay, Meredith,” he said. His stormy green eyes met her cool gray ones, in perfect accord. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 31
Knowing he couldn’t perform the ritual on an empty stomach, Stefan hunted down several squirrels in Mrs. Flowers’s backyard, then returned to the boardinghouse’s garage. Meredith had parked Mrs. Flowers’s antique Ford out in the drive, and there was more than enough room to set up everything they needed for the banishment ritual.
Stefan cocked his head at a skittering noise in the shadows and identified the fast-beating heart of a little mouse. The atmosphere might not be a comfortable one, but the spaciousness of the room and its cement floor meant it would be an excellent place to work the spell.
“Hand me the tape measure, please,” Alaric said from his sprawled position in the middle of the garage floor. “I need to get this line just the right length.” Mrs. Flowers had dug up a box of multicolored chalk from somewhere in the boardinghouse, and Alaric had the book propped open and was carefully copying the circles, arcane symbols, parabolas, and ellipses from its pages onto the smooth cement.
Stefan gave him the tool and watched as he measured carefully from the innermost circle to a row of strange runes near the outermost edge of his drawing. “It’s important that everything be precise,” Alaric said, frowning and double-checking the ends of the measuring tape. “The smallest error could lead to us accidentally setting this thing loose in Fell’s Church.”
“But isn’t it loose already?” asked Stefan.
“No,” Alaric explained. “This ritual will allow the phantom to appear in its corporeal form, which is far more dangerous than the insubstantial thing it is now.”
“Then you’d better get this right,” Stefan agreed grimly.
“If this all goes as planned, the phantom will be trapped in the innermost circle,” Alaric said, pointing. “We’ll be at the outermost edge, over there past the runes. We ought to be safe out there.” He looked up and gave Stefan a rueful grin. “I hope. I’m afraid I’ve never done any kind of summoning in real life before, although I’ve read a lot about it.”
Terrific, Stefan thought, but he returned Alaric’s smile without comment. The man was doing the best he could. All they could do was hope it would be enough to save Elena and the others.
Meredith and Mrs. Flowers entered the garage, each carrying a plastic shopping bag. Celia trailed behind them.
“Holy water,” Meredith said, lifting a plant mister out of her bag to show him.
“It doesn’t work on vampires,” Stefan reminded her.
“We’re not summoning a vampire,” she replied, and went off to mist the outer spaces in the diagram, careful not to disturb the chalk lines.
Alaric stood and started very cautiously hopping out of the huge multicolored diagram, clutching the book in one hand. “I think we’re about ready,” he said.
Mrs. Flowers looked at Stefan. “We need the others,” she said. “Everyone affected by the phantom’s powers has to be here.”
“I’ll help you carry them down,” Alaric offered.
“Not necessary,” Stefan told him, and headed upstairs alone. Standing by the side of the bed in the little rose-and-cream bedroom, he looked down at Elena, Matt, and Bonnie. None of them had moved since he had placed Matt there.
He sighed and gathered Elena in his arms first. After a moment, he also picked up her pillow and a blanket. At least he could try to make her comfortable.
A few minutes later all three of the sleepers were lying in the front of the garage, well outside the diagram, their heads supported by pillows.
“Now what?” Stefan asked.
“Now we each choose a candle,” Mrs. Flowers said, opening her plastic bag. “One that you feel represents you in color. According to the book, they really should be hand-dipped and specially scented, but this will just have to do. I won’t pick one myself,” Mrs. Flowers said, handing the bag to Stefan. “The phantom hasn’t focused its powers on me, and I don’t remember being jealous of anyone since 1943.”
“What happened in 1943?” asked Meredith curiously.
“I lost the Little Miss Fell’s Church crown to Nancy Sue Baker,” Mrs. Flowers answered. When Meredith gaped at her, she threw her hands up in the air. “Even I was a child once, you know. I was strikingly adorable, with Shirley Temple curls, and my mother liked to dress me in frills and show me off.”
Putting the astounding image of Mrs. Flowers in Shirley Temple curls out of his mind, Stefan poked through the assortment of candles and chose a dark blue one. It seemed right to him somehow. “We need candles for the others, too,” he said. Carefully, he chose a golden one for Elena and a pink one for Bonnie.
“Are you just going by their hair colors?” asked Meredith. “You’re such a guy.”
“You know these are the right colors for them, though,” Stefan argued. “Besides, Bonnie’s hair is red, not pink.”
Meredith nodded grudgingly. “I guess you’re right. White for Matt, though.”
“Really?” Stefan asked. He didn’t know what he would have chosen for Matt. American-flag patterned, maybe, if they had had it.
“He’s the purest person I know,” Meredith said softly. Alaric raised an eyebrow at her and she elbowed him. “Pure in spirit, I mean. What you see is what you get with Matt, and he’s good and truehearted all the way through.”
“I suppose so,” said Stefan, and he watched without comment as Meredith chose a dark brown candle for herself.
Alaric shuffled through the bag and picked a dark green candle, and Celia selected one of pale lavender. Mrs. Flowers took the bag with the remaining candles and stashed it on a high shelf near the garage doors, between a bag of potting soil and what looked like an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.
