The Vampire Diaries #7: Midnight (The Return Trilogy #3) (2011)

Chapter 10

Damon was making his way up the beautiful rose-covered trel is below the window of the bedchamber of M. le Princess Jessalyn D'Aubigne, a very wealthy, beautiful, and much-admired girl who had the bluest blood of any vampire in the Dark Dimension, according to the books he'd bought. In fact, he'd listened to the locals and it was rumored that Sage himself had changed her two years ago, and had given her this bijoux castle to live in. Delicate gem that it appeared, though, the little castle had already presented Damon with several problems. There had been that razor-wire fence, on which he ripped his leather jacket; an unusual y dexterous and stubborn guard whom it had real y been a pity to strangle; an inner moat that had almost taken him unawares; and a few dogs that he had treated with the Saber-tranquilizer routine - using Mrs. Flowers's sleeping powder, which he'd brought with him from Earth. It would have been easier to poison them, but Jessalyn was reputed to have a very soft heart for animals and he needed her for at least three days. That should be long enough to make him a vampire - if they did nothing else during those days.

Now, as he pulled himself silently up the trel is, he mental y added long rose thorns to the list of inconveniences. He also rehearsed his first speech to Jessalyn. She had been - was  - would forever be - eighteen. But it was a young eighteen, since she had only two years'experience at being a vampire.

He comforted himself with this as he climbed silently into a window.

Still silently, moving slowly in case the princess had guardian animals in her bedchamber, Damon parted layer after layer of filmy, translucent black curtains that kept the blood-red light of the sun from shining into the chamber. His boots sank into the thick pile of a black rug. Making it out of the enfolding curtains, Damon saw that the entire chamber was decorated in a simple theme by a master of contrast. Jet-black and off-black. black.

He liked it a lot.

There was an enormous bed with more bill owing filmy black curtains almost encasing it. The only way to approach it was from the foot, where the diaphanous curtains were thinner.

Standing there in the cathedral-like silence of the great chamber, Damon looked at the slight figure under the black silk sheets, among dozens of small throw pillows.

She was a jewel like the castle. Delicate bones. A look of utter innocence as she slept. An ethereal river of fine, scarlet hair spilling about her. He could see individual hairs straying on the black sheets. She looked a little like Bonnie.

Damon was pleased.

He pulled out the same knife he had put to Elena's throat, and just for a moment hesitated - but no, this was no time to be thinking of Elena's golden warmth. Everything depended on this fragile-shouldered child in front of him. He put the point of the knife to his chest, deliberately placing it wide of his heart in case some blood had to be spilled...and coughed.

Nothing happened. The princess, who was wearing a black negligee that showed frail-looking arms as fine and pale as porcelain, went on sleeping. Damon noticed that the nails on her small fingers were lacquered the exact scarlet of her hair.

The two large pillar candles set in tall black stands were giving off an enticing perfume, as well as being clocks - the farther down they burned, the easier to tell time. The lighting was perfect - everything was perfect - except that Jessalyn was still asleep.

Damon coughed again, loudly - and bumped the bed.

The princess woke, starting up and simultaneously bringing two sheathed blades out of her hair.

"Who is it? Is someone there?" She was looking in every direction but the right one.

"It's only me, your highness." Damon pitched his voice low, but fraught with unrequited need. "You don't have to be afraid,"he added, now that she'd at last gotten the right direction and seen him. He knelt by the foot of her bed.

He'd miscalculated a bit. The bed was so large and high that his chest and the knife were far below Jessalyn's line of sight.

"Here I will take my life," he announced, very loudly to make sure that Jessalyn was keeping up with the program.

After a moment or two the princess's head popped up over the foot of the bed. She balanced herself with hands spread wide and narrow shoulders hunched close to her. At this distance he could see that her eyes were green - a complicated green consisting of many different rings and speckles.

At first she just hissed at him and lifted her knives held in hands whose fingers were tipped with nails of scarlet.

Damon bore with her. She would learn in time that all this wasn't real y necessary; that in fact it had gone out of fashion in the real world decades ago and was only kept alive by pulp fiction and old movies.

"Here at your feet I slay myself," he said again, to make sure she didn't miss a syllable, or the entire point, for that matter.

"You - yourself?" She was suspicious. "Who are you? How did you get here? Why would you do such a thing?"

"I got here through the road of my madness. I did it out of what I know is madness I can no longer live with."

"What madness? And are you going to do it now?" the princess asked with interest. "Because if you're not, I'll have to call my guards and - wait a minute,"she interrupted herself.

She grabbed his knife before he could stop her and licked it.

"This is a metal blade," she told him, tossing it back.

"I know." Damon let his head fall so that hair curtained his eyes and said painful y: "I am...a human, your highness."

He was covertly watching through his lashes and he saw that Jessalyn brightened up. "I thought you were just some weak, useless vampire,"she said absently. "But now that I look at you..."A rose petal of a pink tongue came out and licked her lips. "There's no point in wasting the good stuff, is there?"

She was like Bonnie. She said exactly what she thought, when she thought it. Something inside Damon wanted to laugh.

He stood again, looking at the girl on the bed with al the fire and passion of which he was capable - and felt that it wasn't enough. Thinking about the real Bonnie, alone and unhappy, was...well , passion-quenching. But what else could he do?

Suddenly he knew what he could do. Before, when he'd stopped himself from thinking of Elena, he had cut off any genuine passion or desire. But he was doing this for Elena, as much as for himself. Elena couldn't be his Princess of Darkness if he couldn't be her Prince.

This time, when he looked down at M. le Princess, it was differently. He could feel the atmosphere change.

"Highness, I have no right even to speak to you," he said, deliberately putting one booted foot on the metal scroll work that formed the frame of the bed. "You know as well as I that you can kill me with a single blow...say, here" - pointing to a spot on his jaw - "but you have already slain me - "

Jessalyn looked confused, but waited.

" - with love. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. You could break my neck, or - as I would say if I were permitted to touch your perfumed white hand - you could curl those fingers around my throat and strangle me. I beg you to do it."

Jessalyn was beginning to look puzzled but excited.

Blushing, she held out one small hand to Damon, but clearly without any intention of strangling him.

"Please, you must, "Damon said earnestly, never taking his eyes off hers. "That is the only thing I ask of you: that you kill me yourself instead of calling your guards so that the last sight I see will be your beautiful face."

"You're ill ,"Jessalyn decided, still looking flustered. "There have been other unbalanced minds who have made their way past the first wall of my castle - although never to my chambers. I'll give you to the doctors so that they can make you well ."

"Please," said Damon, who had forged his way through the last of the filmy black hangings and was now looming over the sitting princess. "Grant me instant death, rather than leaving me to die a little each day. You don't know what I've done. I can't stop dreaming of you. I've followed you from shop to shop when you went out. I am already dying now as you ravish me with your nobility and radiance, knowing that I am no more than the paving stones you walk on. No doctor can change that."

Jessalyn was clearly considering. Obviously, no one had ever talked to her like this.

Her green eyes fixed on his lips, the lower of which was still bleeding. Damon gave an indifferent little laugh and said,

"One of your guards caught me and very properly tried to kill me before I could reach you and disturb your sleep. I'm afraid I had to kill him to get here," he said, standing between one pillar candle and the girl on the bed so that his shadow was thrown over her.

Jessalyn's eyes widened in approval even as the rest of her seemed more fragile than ever. "It's still bleeding," she whispered. "I could - "

"You can do anything you want," Damon encouraged her with a wry quirk of a smile on his lips. It was true. She could.

"Then come here." She thumped a place by the nearest pillow on the bed. "What are you called?"

"Damon," he said as he stripped off his jacket and lay down, chin propped on one elbow, with the air of one not unused to such things.

"Just that? Damon?"

"You can cut it still shorter. I am nothing but Shame now," he replied, taking another minute to think of Elena and to hold Jessalyn's eyes hypnotical y. "I was a vampire - a powerful and proud one - on Earth - but I was tricked by a kitsune..."He told her a garbled version of Stefan's story, omitting Elena or any nonsense about wanting to be human.

He said that when he managed to escape the prison that had taken his vampire self, he decided to end his own human life.

But at that moment, he had seen Princess Jessalyn and thought that, serving her, he would be happy with his sorry lot.

Alas, he said, it only fed his disgraceful feelings for her highness.

"Now my madness has driven me to actual y accost you in your own chambers. Make an example of me, your highness, that will cause other evildoers to tremble. Burn me, have me flogged and quartered, put my head on a pike to cause those who might do you il to cast themselves into a fire first." He was now in bed with her, leaning back a little to expose his bare throat.

"Don't be silly,"Jessalyn said, with a little catch in her voice.

"Even the meanest of my servants wants to live."

"Perhaps the ones that never see you do. Scullions, stable boys - but I cannot live, knowing that I can never have you."

The princess looked Damon over, blushed, gazed for a moment into his eyes...and then she bit him.

"I'll get Stefan to go down to the root cellar," Elena said to Meredith, who was angrily thumbing tears out of her eyes.

"You know we can't do that. With the police right here in the house - "

"Then I'll do it - "

"You can't! You know you can't, Elena, or you wouldn't have come to me!"

Elena looked at her friend closely. "Meredith, you've been donating blood all along," she whispered. "You never seemed even slightly bothered..."

"He only took a tiny bit - always less from me than anyone.

And always from my arm. I just pretended I was having blood drawn at the doctor's. No problem. It wasn't even bad with Damon back in the Dark Dimension."

"But now..."Elena blinked. "Now - what?"

"Now," Meredith said with a faraway expression, "Stefan knows that I'm a hunter-slayer. That I even have a fighting stave. And now I have to...to submit to..."

Elena had gooseflesh. She felt as if the distance from her to Meredith in the room was getting larger. "A hunter-slayer?" she said, bewildered. "And what's a fighting stave?"

"There's no time to explain now! Oh, Elena..."

If Plan A was Meredith and Plan B was Matt, there was real y no choice. Plan C had to be Elena herself. Her blood was much stronger than anyone else's anyway, so full of Power that Stefan would only need a -

"No!" Meredith whispered right in Elena's ear, somehow managing to hiss a word without a single sibilant. "They're coming down the stairs. We have to find Stefan now! Can you tell him to meet me in the little bedroom behind the parlor?"

"Yes, but - "

"Do it!"

And I still don't know what a fighting stave is, Elena thought, all owing Meredith to take her arms and propel her toward the bedroom. But I know what a "hunter-slayer"sounds like, and I definitely don't like it. And that weapon - it makes a stake look like a plastic picnic knife. Still , she sent to Stefan, who was fool owing the sheriffs downstairs: Meredith is going to donate as much blood as you need to Influence them.

There's no time to argue. Come here fast and for God's sake look cheerful and reassuring.

Stefan didn't sound cooperative. I can't take enough from her for our minds to touch. It might - Elena lost her temper. She was frightened; she was suspicious of one of her two best friends - a horrible feeling - and she was desperate. She needed Stefan to do just as she said. Get here fast! was all she projected, but she had the feeling that she'd hit him with all of the feelings full force, because he suddenly turned concerned and gentle. I will, love, he said simply.

While the female police officer was searching the kitchen and the male the living room, Stefan stepped into the small first-floor guest room, with its single rumpled bed. The lamps were turned off but with his night vision he could see Elena and Meredith perfectly well by the curtains. Meredith was holding herself as stiffly as an acrophobic bungee jumper.

Take all you need without permanently harming her - and try to put her to sleep, too. And don't invade her mind too deeply -

I'll take care of it. You'd better get out in the hallway, let them see at least one of us, love, Stefan replied soundlessly. Elena was obviously simultaneously frightened for and defensive about her friend and had sped right into micromanagement mode. While this was usual y a good thing, if there was one thing Stefan knew about - even if it was the only thing he knew - it was taking blood.

"I want to ask for peace between our families,"he said, reaching one hand toward Meredith. She hesitated and Stefan, even trying his hardest, could not help but hearing her thoughts, like small , scuttling creatures at the base of her mind. What was she committing herself to? In what sense did he mean family?

It's really just a formality, he told her, trying to gain ground on another front: her acceptance of the touch of his thoughts to hers. Never mind it.

"No,"Meredith said. "It's important. I want to trust you, Stefan.

Only you, but...I didn't get the stave until after Klaus was dead."

He thought swiftly. "Then you didn't know what you were - "

"No. I knew. But my parents were never active. It was Grandpa who told me about the stave."

Stefan felt a surge of unexpected pleasure. "So your grandfather's better now?"

"No...sort of."Meredith's thoughts were confusing. His voice changed, she was thinking. Stefan was truly happy that Grandpa's better. Even most humans wouldn't care - not really.

"Of course I care,"Stefan said. "For one thing, he helped save al our lives - and the town. For another, he's a very brave man - he must have been - to survive an attack by an Old One."

Suddenly, Meredith's cold hand was around his wrist and words were tumbling from her lips in a rush that Stefan could barely understand. But her thoughts stood bright and clear under those words, and through them he got the meaning.

"Al I can know about what happened when I was very young is what I've been told. My parents told me things. My parents changed my birthday - they actual y changed the day we celebrate my birthday on - because a vampire attacked my grandpa, and then my grandpa tried to kill me. They've always said that. But how do they know? They weren't there - that's part of what they say. And what's more likely, that my grandpa attacked me or that the vampire did?"She stopped, panting, trembling al over like a white-tailed doe caught in the forest. Caught, and thinking she was doomed, and unable to run.

Stefan put out a hand that he deliberately made warm around Meredith's cold one. "I won't attack you,"he said simply. "And I won't disturb any old memories. Good enough?"

Meredith nodded. After her cathartic story Stefan knew she wanted as few words as possible.

"Don't be afraid," he murmured, just as he had thought the soothing phrase into the mind of many an animal he'd chased through the Old Wood. It's all right. There's no reason to fear me.

She couldn't help being afraid, but Stefan soothed her as he soothed the forest animals, drawing her into the darkest shadow of the room, calming her with soft words even as his canines screamed at him to bite. He had to fold down the side of her blouse to expose her long, olive-skinned column of neck, and as he did the calming words turned into soft endearments and the kind of reassuring noises he would use to comfort a baby.

And at last, when Meredith's breathing had slowed and evened and her eyes had drifted shut, he used the greatest of care to slide his aching fangs into her artery. Meredith barely quivered. Everything was softness as he easily skimmed over the surface of her mind, too, seeing only what he already knew about her: her life with Elena and Bonnie and Caroline. Parties and school, plans and ambitions.

Picnics. A swimming hole. Laughter. Tranquility that spread out like a great pool. The need for calm, for control. Al this stretching back as far as she could remember...

The farthest depths that she could remember were here at the center...where there was a sudden plunging dip. Stefan had promised himself he would not go deeply into her mind, but he was being pulled, helpless, being dragged down by the whirlpool. The waters closed over his head and he was drawn at tremendous speed to the very depths of a second pool, this one not composed of tranquility, but of rage and fear.

And then he saw what had happened, what was happening, what would forever be happening - there at Meredith's still center.

Chapter 11

When M. le Princess Jessalyn D'Aubigne had drunk her fill of Damon's blood - and she was thirsty for such a fragile thing - it was Damon's turn. He forced himself to remain patient when Jessalyn flinched and frowned at the sight of his ironwood knife. But Damon teased her and joked with her and played chasing games up and down the enormous bed, and when he finally caught her, she scarcely felt the knife's sting at her throat.

Damon, though, had his mouth on the dark red blood that welled out immediately. Everything he'd done, from pouring Black Magic for Bonnie to pouring out the star ball 's liquid at the four corners of the Gate to making his way through the defenses of this tiny gem of a castle had been for this. For this moment, when his human palate could savor the nectar that was vampire blood.

And it was...heavenly!

This was only the second time in his life that he'd tasted it as a human. Katerina - Katherine, as he thought of her in English - had been the first, of course. And how she could have crept off after that and gone, wearing just her short muslin shift, to the wide-eyed, inexperienced little boy who was his brother, he would never understand.

His disquiet was spreading to Jessalyn. That mustn't happen. She had to stay calm and tranquil as he took as much as he could of her blood. It wouldn't hurt her at all , and it meant all the difference to him.

Forcing his consciousness away from the sheer elemental pleasure of what he was doing, he began, very careful y, very delicately, to infiltrate her mind.

It wasn't difficult to get to the nub of it. Whoever had wrenched this delicate, fragile-boned girl from the human world and had endowed her with a vampire's nature hadn't done her any favors. It wasn't that she had any moral objections to vampirism. She'd taken to the life easily, enjoying it. She would have made a good huntress in the wild. But in this castle? With these servants? It was like having a hundred snooty waiters and two hundred condescending sommeliers staring her down as soon as she opened her mouth to give an order.

This room, for instance. She had wanted some color in it - just a splash of violet here, a little mauve there - natural y, she realized, a vampire princess's bedchamber had to be mostly black. But when she'd timidly mentioned the subject of colors to one of the parlor maids, the girl had sniffed and looked down her nostrils at Jessalyn as if she'd asked for an elephant to be installed just beside her bed. The princess had not had the courage to bring up the matter with the housekeeper, but within a week three baskets full of black-and-off-black throw pillows had arrived. There was her "color." And in the future would her highness be so good as to consult her housekeeper before querying the staff as to her household whims?

She actually said that about my "whims," Jessalyn thought as she arched her neck back and ran sharp fingernails through Damon's thick soft hair. And - oh, it's no good. I'm no good. I'm a vampire princess, and I can look the part, but I can't play it.

You're every bit a princess, your highness, Damon soothed.

You just need someone to enforce your orders. Someone who has no doubts about your superiority. Are your servants slaves?

No, they're all free.

Well, that makes it a little trickier, but you can always yell louder at them. Damon felt swollen with vampire blood. Two more days of this and he would be, if not his old self, then at least almost his old self: a full vampire, free to walk about the city as he liked. And with the Power and status of a vampire prince. It was almost enough to balance out the horrors he'd gone through in the last couple of days. At least, he could tell himself that and try to believe it.

"Listen,"he said abruptly, letting go of Jessalyn's slight body, the better to look her in the eye. "Your glorious highness, let me do one favor for you before I die of love or you have me killed for impudence. Let me bring you 'color' - and then let me stand beside you if any of your menials grumble about it."

Jessalyn wasn't used to this kind of sudden decision, but couldn't help but be carried along with Damon's fiery excitement. She arched her head back again.

When he finally left the bijoux palace, Damon went out the front door. He had with him a little of the money left over from pawning the gems, but this was more than enough for the purpose he had in mind. He was quite certain that the next time he went out, it would be from the flying portico.

He stopped at a dozen shops and spent until his last coin was gone. He'd meant to sneak in a visit to Bonnie as well while doing his errands, but the market was in the opposite direction from the inn where he'd left her, and in the end there just wasn't time.

He didn't worry much as he walked back to the bijoux castle.

Bonnie, soft and fragile as she seemed, had a wiry core that he was sure would keep her inside the room for three days.

She could take it. Damon knew she could.

He banged on the little castle's gate until a surly guard opened it.

"What do you want?" the guard spat.

Bonnie was bored out of her mind. It had only been a day since Damon had left her - a day she could only count by the number of meals brought to her, since the enormous red sun stood forever on the horizon and the blood-red light never varied unless it was raining.

Bonnie wished it was raining. She wished it was snowing, or that there would be a fire or a hurricane or a small tsunami.

She had given one of the star balls a try, and found it a ridiculous soap opera that she couldn't understand in the least.

She wished, now, that she had never tried to stop Damon from coming here. She wished that he had pried her off before they had both fallen into the hole. She wished that she had grabbed Meredith's hand and just let go of Damon.

And this was only the first day.

Damon smiled at the surly guard. "What do I want? Only what I already have. An open gate." He didn't go inside, however.

He asked what M. le Princess was doing and heard that she was at a luncheon. On a donor.

Perfect. Soon there came a deferential knock at the gate, which Damon demanded be opened wider. The guards clearly didn't like him; they had properly put together the disappearance of what turned out to be their captain of guard and the intrusion of this strange human. But there was something menacing about him even in this menacing world.

They obeyed him.

Soon after that there came another quiet knock and then another, and another and so on until twelve men and women with arms full of damp and fragrant brown paper had quietly followed Damon up the stairs and into M. le Princess's black bedchamber.

Jessalyn, meanwhile, had had a long and stuffy post-luncheon meeting, entertaining some of her financial advisors, who both seemed very old to her, although they had been changed in their twenties. Their muscles were soft with lack of use, she found herself thinking. And, natural y, they were dressed in full -sleeved, wide-legged black except for a frill at their throats, white inside by gaslight, scarlet outside by the eternal blood-red sun.

The princess had just seen them bow out of her presence when she inquired, rather irritably, where the human Damon was. Several servants with malice behind their smiles explained that he had gone with a dozen...humans...up to her bedchamber.

Jessalyn almost flew to the stairs and climbed very quickly with the gliding motion that she knew was expected of proper female vampires. She reached the Gothic doors, and heard the hushed sounds of indignant spite as her ladies-in-waiting al whispered together. But before the princess could even ask what was going on, she was engulfed in a great warm wave of scent. Not the luscious and life-sustaining scent of blood, but something lighter, sweeter, and at the moment, while her bloodlust was sated, even headier and more dizzying. She pushed open the double doors. She took a step into her bedchamber and then stopped in astonishment.

The cathedral-like black room was full of flowers. There were banks of lilies, vases full of roses, tulips in every color and shade, and riots of daffodils and narcissus, while fragrant honeysuckle and freesia lay in bowers.

The flower peddlers had converted the gloomy, conventional black room into this fanciful extravaganza. The wiser and more farsighted of M. le Princess's retainers were actively helping them by bringing in large, ornate urns.

Damon, upon seeing Jessalyn enter the room, immediately went to kneel at her feet.

"You were gone when I woke!" the princess said crossly, and Damon smiled, very faintly.

"Forgive me, your highness. But since I am dying anyway, I thought that I should be up and securing these flowers for you. Are the colors and scents satisfactory?"

"The scents?" Jessalyn's whole body seemed to melt. "It's... like...an orchestra for my nose! And the colors are like nothing I've ever seen!" She burst into laughter, her green eyes lightening, her straight red hair a waterfall around her shoulders. Then she began to stalk Damon back into the gloom in one corner. Damon had to control himself or he would have laughed; it was so much like a kitten stalking an autumn leaf.

But once they got into the corner, tangled in the black hangings and nowhere near a window, Jessalyn assumed a deadly serious expression.

"I'm going to have a dress made, just the color of those deep, dark purple carnations," she whispered. "Not black."

"Your highness will look wonderful in it," Damon whispered in her ear. "So striking, so daring - "

"I may even wear my corsets on the inside of my dress." She looked up at him through heavy lashes. "Or - would that be too much?"

"Nothing is too much for you, my princess," Damon whispered back. He stopped a moment to think seriously. "The corsets - would they match the dress or be black?"

Jessalyn considered. "Same color?" she ventured.

Damon nodded, pleased. He himself wouldn't be caught dead in any color other than black, but he was willing to put up with - even encourage - Jessalyn's oddities. They might get him made a vampire faster.

"I want your blood," the princess whispered, as if to prove him right.

"Here? Now?" Damon whispered back. "In front of al your servants?"

Jessalyn surprised him then. She, who had been so timid before, stepped out of the curtains and clapped her hands for silence. It fell immediately.

"Everyone out!" she said peremptorily. "You have made me a beautiful garden in my room, and I am grateful. The steward" - she nodded toward a young man who was dressed in black, but who had wisely placed a dark red rose in his buttonhole - "will see to it that you're al given food - and drink - before you go!" At this there was a murmur of praise that made the princess blush.

"I'll ring the bel pull when I need you" - to the steward.

In fact, it wasn't until two days later that she reached up and, a little reluctantly, rang the bel pull . And that was merely to give the order that a uniform be made for Damon as quickly as possible. The uniform of captain of her guard.

By the second day, Bonnie had to turn to the star balls as her only source of entertainment. After going through her twenty-eight orbs she found that twenty-five of them were soap operas from beginning to end, and two were full of experiences so frightening and hideous that she labeled them in her own mind as Never Ever. The last one was called Five Hundred Stories for Young Ones, and Bonnie quickly found that these immersion stories could be useful, for they specified the names of things a person would find around the house and the city. The sphere's connecting thread was a series about a family of werewolves named the D��z-Aht-Bhi'iens. Bonnie promptly christened them the Dustbins. The series consisted of episodes showing how the family lived each day: how they bought a new slave at the market to replace one who had died, and where they went to hunt human prey, and how Mers Dustbin played in an important bashik tournament at school.

Today the last story was almost providential. It showed little Marit Dustbin walking to a Sweetmeat Shop and getting a sugarplum. The candy cost exactly five soli. Bonnie got to experience eating part of it with Marit, and it was good.

After reading the story, Bonnie very careful y peeked through the edge of the window blind and saw a sign on a shop below that she'd often watched. Then she held the star ball to her temple.

Yes! Exactly the same kind of sign. And she knew not only what she wanted, but how much it should cost.

She was dying to get out of her tiny room and try what she had just learned. But before her eyes, the lights in the sweetshop went dark. It must be closing time.

Bonnie threw the star ball across the room. She turned the gas lamp down to just the faintest glow, and then flung herself on her rush-filled bed, pulled the covers up...and discovered that she couldn't sleep. Groping in ruby twilight, she found the star ball with her fingers and put it to her temple again.

Interspersed with clusters of stories about the Dustbin family's daily adventures were fairy tales. Most of them were so gruesome that Bonnie couldn't experience them all the way through, and when it was time to sleep, she lay shivering on her pal et. But this time the story seemed different. After the title, The Gatehouse of the Seven Kitsune Treasures, she heard a little rhyme:

Amid a plain of snow and ice

There lies kitsune paradise.

And close beside, forbidden pleasure: Six gates more of kitsune treasure.

The very word kitsune was frightening. But, Bonnie thought, the story might prove relevant somehow.

I can do this, she thought and put the star ball to her temple.

The story didn't start with anything gruesome. It was about a young girl and boy kitsune who went on a quest to find the most sacred and secret of the "seven kitsune treasures," the kitsune paradise. A treasure, Bonnie learned, could be something as small as a single gem or as large as an entire world. This one, going by the story, was in the middle range, because a "paradise" was a kind of garden, with exotic flowers blooming everywhere, and little streams bubbling down small waterfall s into clear, deep pools.

It was all wonderful, Bonnie thought, experiencing the story as if she were watching a movie al around her, but a movie that included the sensations of touch, taste, and smell . The paradise was a bit like Warm Springs, where they sometimes had picnics back at home.

In the story, the boy and girl kitsune had to go to "the top of the world" where there was some kind of fracture in the crust of the highest Dark Dimension - the one Bonnie was in right now. They managed somehow to travel down, and even farther down, and passed through various tests of courage and wit before they got into the next lowest dimension, the Nether World.

The Nether World was completely different from the Dark Dimension. It was a world of ice and slippery snow, of glaciers and rifts, al bathed in a blue twilight from three moons that shone from above.

The kitsune children almost starved in the Nether World because there was so little for a fox to hunt. They made do with the tiny animals of the cold: mice and small white voles, and the occasional insect (Oh, yuck, Bonnie thought). They survived until, through the fog and mist, they saw a towering black wall . They followed the wall until final y they came to a Gatehouse with tall spires hidden in the clouds. Written above the door in an old language they could hardly read were the words: The Seven Gates.

They entered a room in which there were eight doorways or exits. One was the door through which they had just entered.

And as they watched, each door brightened so they could see that the other seven doors led to seven different worlds, one of which was the kitsune paradise. Yet another gate led to a field of magical flowers, and another showed butterflies flittering around a splashing fountain. Another dropped to a dark cavern filled with bottles of the mystical wine Clarion Loess Black Magic. One gate led to a deep mine, with jewels the size of a fist. And then there was a gate which showed the prize of al flowers: the Royal Radhika. It changed its shape from moment to moment, from a rose to a cluster of carnations to an orchid.

Through the last door they could see only a gigantic tree, but the final treasure was rumored to be an immense star ball.

Now the boy and girl forgot all about the kitsune paradise.

Each of them wanted something from another of the gates, but they couldn't agree on what. The rule was that any party or group who reached the gates could enter one and then return. But while the girl wanted a sprig of the Royal Radhika, to show that they'd completed their quest, the boy wanted some Black Magic wine, to sustain them on the way back.

No matter how they argued they couldn't reach an agreement. So final y they decided to cheat. They would simultaneously open a door and jump through, snatch what they wanted, and then jump back out and be out of the Gatehouse before they could be caught.

Just as they were about to do so, a voice warned them against it, saying, "One gate alone may you twain enter, and then return from whence you came."

But the boy and the girl chose to ignore the voice.

Immediately, the boy entered the door that led to the bottles of Black Magic wine and at the same instant the girl stepped into the Royal Radhika door. But when each turned around there was no longer any sign of a door or gate behind them.

The boy had plenty to drink but he was left forever in the dark and cold and his tears froze upon his cheeks. The girl had the beautiful flower to look at but nothing to eat or drink and so under the glowing yellow sun she wasted away.

Bonnie shivered, the delicious shiver of a reader who had gotten what she expected. The fairy tale, with its moral of

"don't be greedy" was like the stories she'd heard from the Red and the Blue Fairy Books when she was a child sitting on her grandmother's lap.

She missed Elena and Meredith, badly. She had a story to tell , but no one to tell it to.

Chapter 12

"Stefan. Stefan!"Elena had been too nervous to stay out of the bedroom for longer than the five minutes it had taken to show herself to the sheriffs. It was Stefan the officers real y wanted and couldn't find, not seeming to consider that someone might backtrack and hide in a room that had already been searched.

And now Elena couldn't get a response out of Stefan, who was locked in an embrace with Meredith, mouth pressed tightly over the two little wounds he'd made. Elena had to shake him by the shoulders, to shake both of them, in order to get any response.

Then Stefan reared back suddenly, but held on to Meredith, who would otherwise have fal en. He hastily licked blood from his lips. For once, though, Elena wasn't focused on him, but on her friend - her friend whom she'd al owed to do this.

Meredith's eyes were shut, but they had dark, almost plum-colored circles under them. Her lips were parted, and her dark cloud of hair was wet where tears had fallen into it.

"Meredith? Merry?"The old nickname just slipped out of Elena's lips. And then, when Meredith gave no sign of having heard her: "Stefan, what's wrong?"

"I Influenced her at the end to sleep."Stefan lifted Meredith and put her on the bed.

"But what happened? Why is she crying - and what's wrong with you?"Elena couldn't help but notice that despite the healthy flush on Stefan's cheeks his eyes were shadowed.

"Something I saw - in her mind,"Stefan said briefly, pulling Elena behind his back. "Here comes one of them. Stay there."

The door opened. It was the male sheriff, who was red-faced and panting, and who had clearly just lapped himself, returning to this room after starting from it to search the entire first floor.

"I have them al in a room - al but the fugitive,"the sheriff said into a large black mobile. The female sheriff made some brief reply. Then the red-faced male turned to speak to the teenagers. "Now what's going to happen is that I'm going to search you" - he nodded at Stefan - "while my partner searches you two."His head jerked, ear-first, at Meredith.

"What's wrong with her, anyway?"

"Nothing that you could understand,"Stefan replied cool y.

The sheriff looked as if he couldn't believe what had just been said. Then, suddenly, he looked as if he could, and did, and he took a step toward Meredith.

Stefan snarled.

The sound made Elena, who was right behind him, jump. It was the low savage snarl of an animal protecting its mate, its pack, its territory.

The ruddy-faced policeman suddenly looked pale and panicked. Elena guessed that he was looking at a mouth full of teeth much sharper than his own, and tinged with blood as well.

Elena didn't want this to turn into a pi - that was, a...snarling match.

As the sheriff gabbled to his partner, "We may need some of them silver bullets after all ,"Elena poked her beloved, who was now making a noise like a very big buzz saw that she could feel in her teeth, and whispered, "Stefan, Influence him!

The other one's coming, and she may already have called for backup."

At her touch, Stefan stopped making the sound, and when he turned she could see his face changing from that of a savage animal baring its teeth back to his own dear, green-eyed self.

He must have taken a lot of blood from Meredith, she thought, with a flutter in her stomach. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

But there was no denying the after-effects. Stefan turned back to the male sheriff and said crisply, "You will go into the front hallway. You will remain there, silent, until I tell you to move or speak."Then, without looking up to see if the officer was obeying or not, he tucked the blankets more tightly around Meredith.

Elena was watching the sheriff, though, and she noticed that he didn't hesitate an instant. He made an about-face and marched off to the front foyer.

Then Elena felt safe enough to look at Meredith again. She couldn't find anything wrong in her friend's face, except her unnatural pal or, and those violet shadows around her eyes.

"Meredith?"she whispered.

No response. Elena followed Stefan out of the room.

She had just made it to the foyer when the female sheriff ambushed them. Coming down the stairs, pushing the fragile Mrs. Flowers before her, she shouted, "On the ground! Al of you!"She gave Mrs. Flowers a hard shove forward. "Get down now!"

When Mrs. Flowers almost fell sprawling on the floor, Stefan leaped and caught her, and then turned back to the other woman. For a moment Elena thought that he would snarl again, but instead, in a voice tight with self-control, he said,

"Join your partner. You can't move or speak without my permission."

He took the shaken-looking Mrs. Flowers to a chair on the left side of the foyer. "Did that - person - hurt you?"

"No, no. Just get them out of my house, Stefan, dear, and I'll be most grateful,"Mrs. Flowers replied.

"Done,"Stefan said softly. "I'm sorry we've caused you so much trouble - in your own home."He looked at each of the sheriffs, his eyes piercing. "Go away and don't come back.

You have searched the house, but none of the people you were looking for were here. You think further surveillance will yield nothing. You believe that you would do more good by helping the - what was it? Oh, yes, the mayhem in the town of Fell's Church. You will never come here again. Now go back to your car and leave."

Elena felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She could feel the Power behind Stefan's words.

And, as always, it was satisfying to see cruel or angry people become docile under the power of a vampire's Influence.

These two stood for another ten seconds quite still , and then they simply walked out the front door.

Elena listened to the sound of the sheriff's car driving away and such a strong feeling of relief washed over her that she almost collapsed. Stefan put his arms around her, and Elena hugged him back tightly, knowing that her heart was pounding. She could feel it in her chest and her fingertips.

It's all over. All done now, Stefan thought to her and Elena suddenly felt something different. She felt pride. Stefan had simply taken charge and chased the officers away.

Thank you, she thought to Stefan.

"I guess we'd better get Matt out of the root cellar,"she added.

Matt was unhappy. "Thanks for hiding me - but do you know how long that was?"he demanded of Elena when they were upstairs again. "And no light except what was in that little star ball . And no sound - I couldn't hear a thing down there. And what is this?"He held out the long, heavy wooden staff, with its strangely shaped, spiked ends.

Elena felt sudden panic. "You didn't cut yourself, did you?"She snatched up Matt's hands, letting the long staff fal to the ground. But Matt didn't seem to have a single scratch.

"I wasn't dumb enough to hold it by the ends,"he said.

"Meredith did, for some reason,"Elena said. "Her palms were covered with wounds. And I don't even know what it is."

"I do,"Stefan said quietly. He picked up the stave. "But it's Meredith's secret real y. I mean it's Meredith's property,"he added hastily as al eyes fixed on him at the word secret.

"Well, I'm not blind,"Matt said in his frank, straightforward way, flipping back some fair hair in order to look more closely at the thing. He raised blue eyes to Elena. "I know what it smells like, which is vervain. And I know what it looks like with all those silver and iron spikes coming out of the sharp ends. It looks like a giant staff for exterminating every kind of Godawful Hellacious monster that walks on this earth."

"And vampires, too,"Elena added hastily. She knew that Stefan was in a funny mood and she definitely didn't want to see Matt, for whom she still cared deeply, lying on the floor with a crushed skull . "And even humans - I think these bigger spikes are for injecting poison."

"Poison?"Matt looked at his own palms hastily.

"You're okay,"Elena said. "I checked you, and besides it would be a very quick-acting poison."

"Yes, they would want to take you out of the fight as fast as possible,"Stefan said. "So if you're alive now, you're likely to stay that way. And now, this Godawful Hellacious monster just wants to get back up to bed."He turned to go to the attic.

He must have heard Elena's swift, involuntarily indrawn breath, because he turned around and she could see that he was sorry. His eyes were dark emerald, sad but blazing with unused Power.

I think we'll have a late morning, Elena thought, feeling pleasurable thrills ripple through her. She squeezed Stefan's hand, and felt him return the pressure. She could see what he had in mind; they were close enough and he was projecting pretty clearly what he wanted - and she was as eager to get upstairs as he was.

But at that moment Matt, eyes on the wickedly spiked staff, said, "Meredith has something to do with that?"

"I should never have said anything at all about it,"Stefan replied. "But if you want to know more, you'd real y better ask Meredith herself. Tomorrow."

"All right,"Matt said, final y seeming to understand. Elena was way ahead of him. A weapon like that was - could only be -

for killing all sorts of monsters walking the earth. And Meredith - Meredith who was as slim and athletic as a ballerina with a black belt, and oh! Those lessons! The lessons that Meredith had always put off if the girls were doing something at that exact moment, but that she always somehow managed to make time for.

But a girl could hardly be expected to carry a harpsichord around with her and nobody else had one. Besides, Meredith had said she hated to play, so her BFFs had let it go at that.

It was al part of the Meredith mystique.

And riding lessons? Elena would bet some of them were genuine. Meredith would want to know how to make a quick escape mounting anything available.

But if Meredith wasn't practicing for a little light music in the drawing room, or for starring in a Hollywood Western - then what would she have been doing?

Training, Elena guessed. There were a lot of dojos out there, and if Meredith had been doing this since that vampire attacked her grandfather she must be pretty darn good. And when we've fought grisly things, whose eyes have ever been on her, a soft gray shadow that kept out of the limelight? A lot of monsters probably got knocked out but good.

The only question that needed to be answered was why Meredith hadn't shown them the Godawful Hellacious monster staker or used it in any fights - say against Klaus -

until now. And Elena didn't know, but she could ask Meredith herself. Tomorrow, when Meredith was up. But she trusted that it had some simple answer.

Elena tried to stifle a yawn in a ladylike way. Stefan? she asked. Can you get us out of here - without picking me up - and to your room?

"I think we've al had enough stress this morning,"Stefan said in his own gentle voice. "Mrs. Flowers, Meredith is in the first-floor bedroom - she'll probably sleep very late. Matt - "

"I know, I know. I don't know where the schedule went but I might as well make it my night."Matt presented an arm to Stefan.

Stefan looked surprised. Darling, you can never have too much blood, Elena thought to him, seriously and straightforwardly.

"Mrs. Flowers and I will be in the kitchen,"she said aloud.

When they were there, Mrs. Flowers said, "Don't forget to thank Stefan for defending the boardinghouse for me."

"He did it because it's our home,"Elena said, and went back into the hall , where Stefan was thanking a flushing Matt.

And then Mrs. Flowers called Matt into the kitchen and Elena found herself swooped up in lithe, hard arms and then they were gaining altitude rapidly, with the wood staircase emitting little creaks and groans of protest. And final y they were in Stefan's room and Elena was in Stefan's arms.

There was no better place to be, or anything else either of them real y wanted now, Elena thought and turned her face up as Stefan turned his down and they began with a long slow kiss. And then the kiss went molten, and Elena had to cling to Stefan, who was already holding her with arms that could have cracked granite, but only squeezed her exactly as tightly as she wanted them to.

Chapter 13

Elena, sleeping serenely with one hand locked onto Stefan's, knew she was having an extraordinary dream. No, not a dream - an out-of-body experience. But it wasn't like her previous out-of-body visits to Stefan in his cell. She was skimming through the air so quickly that she couldn't real y make out what was below her.

She looked around and suddenly, to her astonishment, another figure appeared beside her.

"Bonnie!"she said - or rather tried to say. But of course there was no sound. Bonnie looked like a transparent edition of herself. As if someone had created her out of blown glass, and then put in just the faintest tint of color in her hair and eyes.

Elena tried telepathy. Bonnie?

Elena! Oh, I miss you and Meredith so much! I'm stuck here in a hole -

A hole? Elena could hear the panic in her own telepathy. It made Bonnie wince.

Not a real hole. A dive. An inn, I guess, but I'm locked in and they only feed me twice a day and take me to the toilet once -

My God! How did you get there?

Well... Bonnie hesitated. I guess it was my own fault.

It doesn't matter! How long have you been there, exactly?

Um, this is my second day. I think.

There was a pause. Then Elena said, Well, a couple of days in a bad place can seem like forever.

Bonnie tried to make her case clearer. It's just that I'm so bored and lonely. I miss you and Meredith so much! she repeated.

I was thinking of you and Meredith, too, Elena said.

But Meredith's there with you, isn't she? Oh my God, she didn't fall, too? Bonnie blurted.

No, no! She didn't fall. Elena couldn't decide whether to tell Bonnie about Meredith or not. Maybe not just yet, she thought.

She couldn't see what she was rushing toward, although she could feel that they were slowing down. Can you see anything?

Hey, yeah, below us! There's a car! Should we go down?

Of course. Can we hold hands?

They found that they couldn't, but that just trying to kept them closer together. In another moment they were sinking through the roof of a small car.

Hey! It's Alaric! Bonnie said.

Alaric Saltzman was Meredith's engaged-to-be-engaged boyfriend. He was about twenty-three now, and his sandy-blond hair and hazel eyes hadn't changed since Elena had seen him almost ten months ago. He was a parapsychologist at Duke, going for his doctorate.

We've been trying to get hold of him for ages, Bonnie said.

I know. Maybe this is the way we're supposed to contact him.

W here is he supposed to be again?

Some weird place in Japan. I forget what it's called, but look at the map on the passenger seat.

She and Bonnie intermingled as they did, their ghostly forms passing right through each other.

Unmei no Shima: The Island of Doom, was written at the top of an outline of an island. The map beside him had a large red X on it with the caption: The Field of Punished Virgins.

The what? Bonnie asked indignantly. What's that mean?

I don't know. But look, this fog is real fog. And it's raining.

And this road is terrible.

Bonnie dove outside. Ooh, so weird. The rain's going right through me. And I don't think this is a road.

Elena said, Come back in and look at this. There aren't any other cities on the island, just a name. Dr. Celia Connor, forensic pathologist.

What's a forensic pathologist?

I think, Elena said, that they investigate murders and things.

And they dig up dead people to find out why they died.

Bonnie shuddered. I don't think I like this very much.

Neither do I. But look outside. This was a village once, I think.

There was almost nothing left of the village. Just a few ruins of wooden buildings that were obviously rotting, and some tumbledown, blackened stone structures. There was one large building with an enormous bright yellow tarp over it.

When the car reached this building, Alaric skidded to a stop, grabbed the map and a small suitcase, and dashed through the rain and mud to get under cover. Elena and Bonnie followed.

He was met near the entrance by a very young black woman, whose hair was cut short and sleek around her elfin face.

She was small, not even Elena's height. She had eyes dancing with excitement and white, even teeth that made for a Hollywood smile.

"Dr. Connor?"Alaric said, looking awed.

Meredith isn't going to like this, Bonnie said.

"Just Celia, please,"the woman said, taking his hand. "Alaric Saltzman, I presume."

"Just Alaric, please - Celia."

Meredith real y isn't going to like this, Elena said.

"So you're the spook investigator,"Celia was saying below them. "Well, we need you. This place has spooks - or did once. I don't know if they're still here or not."

"Sounds interesting."

"More like sad and morbid. Sad and weird and morbid. I've excavated all sorts of ruins, especial y those where there's a chance of genocide. And I'll tell you: This island is unlike any place I have ever seen,"Celia said.

Alaric was already pulling things from his case, a thick stack of papers, a small camcorder, a notebook. He turned on the camcorder, and looked through the viewfinder, then propped it up with some of the papers. When he apparently had Celia in focus, he grabbed the notebook too.

Celia looked amused. "How many ways do you need to take down information?"

Alaric tapped the side of his head and shook it sadly. "As many as possible. Neurons are beginning to go."He looked around. "You're not the only one here, are you?"

"Except for the janitor and the guy who ferries me back to Hokkaido, yes. It started out as a normal expedition - there were fourteen of us. But one by one, the others have died or left. I can't even re-bury the specimens - the girls - we've excavated."

"And the people who left or died from your expedition - "

"Well, at first people died. Then that and the other spooky stuff made the rest leave. They were frightened for their lives."

Alaric frowned. "Who died first?"

"Out of our expedition? Ronald Argyl . Pottery specialist. He was examining two jars that were found - Well, I'll skip that story until later. He fell off a ladder and broke his neck."

Alaric's eyebrows went up. "That was spooky?"

"From a guy like him, who's been in the business for almost twenty years - yes."

"Twenty years? Maybe a heart attack? And then off the ladder - boom."Alaric made a downward gesture.

"Maybe that's the way it was. You may be able to explain all our little mysteries for us."The chic woman with the short hair dimpled like a tomboy. She was dressed like one too, Elena realized: Levi's and a blue and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a white camisole.

Alaric gave a little start, as if he'd realized he was guilty of staring. Bonnie and Elena looked at each other over his head.

"But what happened to all the people who lived on the island in the first place? The ones who built the houses?"

"Well, there never were that many of them in the first place.

I'm guessing the place may even have been named the Island of Doom before this disaster my team was investigating. But as far as I could find out it was a sort of war

- a civil war. Between the children and the adults."

This time when Bonnie and Elena looked at each other, their eyes were both wide. Just like home - Bonnie began, but Elena said, Sh. Listen.

"A civil war between kids and their parents?"Alaric repeated slowly. "Now that is spooky."

"Well, it's a process of elimination. You see, I like graves, constructed or just holes in the ground. And here, the inhabitants don't appear to have been invaded. They didn't die of famine or drought - there was still plenty of grain in the granary. There were no signs of illness. I've come to believe that they all killed one another - parents killing children; children killing parents."

"But how can you tell ?"

"You see this square-ish area on the periphery of the village?"Celia pointed to an area on a larger map than Alaric's. "That's what we call The Field of Punished Virgins.

It's the only place that has careful y constructed actual graves, so it was made early in what became a war. Later, there was no time for coffins - or no one who cared. So far we've excavated twenty-two female children - the eldest in her late teens."

"Twenty-two girls? Al girls?"

"Al girls in this area. Boys came later, when coffins were no longer being made. They're not as well preserved, because the houses al burned or fell in, and they were exposed to weathering. The girls were careful y, sometimes elaborately, buried; but the markings on their bodies indicate that they were subjected to harsh physical punishment at some time close to their deaths. And then - they had stakes driven through their hearts."

Bonnie's fingers flew to her eyes, as if to ward off a terrible vision. Elena watched Alaric and Celia grimly.

Alaric gulped. "They were staked?"he asked uneasily.

"Yes. Now I know what you'll be thinking. But Japan doesn't have any tradition of vampires. Kitsune - foxes - are probably the closest analog."

Now Elena and Bonnie were hovering right over the map.

"And do kitsunes drink blood?"

"Just kitsune. The Japanese language has an interesting way of expressing plurals. But to answer your question: no. They are legendary tricksters, and one example of what they do is possess girls and women, and lead men to destruction - into bogs, and so on. But here - Well, you can almost read it like a book."

"You make it sound like one. But not one I'd pick up for pleasure,"Alaric said, and they both smiled bleakly.

"So, to go on with the book, it seems that this disease spread eventual y to al the children in the town. There were deadly fights. The parents somehow couldn't even get to the fishing boats in which they might have escaped the island."

Elena - I know. At least Fell's Church isn't on an island.

"And then there's what we found at the town shrine. I can show you that - it's what Ronald Argyl died for."

They both got up and went farther into the building until Celia stopped beside two large urns on pedestals with a hideous thing in between them. It looked like a dress, weathered until it was almost pure white, but sticking through holes in the clothing were bones. Most horribly, one bleached and fleshless bone hung down from the top of one of the urns.

"This is what Ronald was working on in the field before all this rain came,"Celia explained. "It was probably the last death of the original inhabitants and it was suicide."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Let's see if I can get this right from Ronald's notes. The priestess here doesn't have any other damage than that which caused her death. The shrine was a stone building -

once. When we got here we found only a floor, with all the stone steps tumbled apart every which way. Hence Ronald's use of the ladder. It gets quite technical, but Ronald Argyl was a great forensic pathologist and I trust his reading of the story."

"Which is?"Alaric was taking in the jars and the bones with his camcorder.

"Someone - we don't know who - smashed a hole in each of the jars. This is before the chaos started. The town records make note of it as an act of vandalism, a prank done by a child. But long after that the hole was sealed and the jars made almost airtight again, except where the priestess had her hands plunged in the top up to the wrist."

With infinite care, Celia lifted the top off the jar that did not have a bone hanging from it - to reveal another pair of longish bones, slightly less bleached, and with strips of what must have been clothing on it. Tiny finger bones lay inside the jar.

"What Ronald thought was that this poor woman died as she performed a last desperate act. Clever, too, if you see it from their perspective. She cut her wrists - you can see how the tendon is shriveled in the better-preserved arm - and then she let the entire contents of her bloodstream flow into the urns. We do know that the urns show a heavy precipitation of blood on the bottom. She was trying to lure something in - or perhaps something back in. And she died trying, and the clay that she had probably hoped to use in her last conscious moments held her bones to the jars."

"Whew!"Alaric ran a hand over his forehead, but shivered at the same time.

Take pictures! Elena was mental y commanding him, using al her will power to transmit the order. She could see that Bonnie was doing the same, eyes shut, fists clenched.

As if in obedience to their commands, Alaric was taking pictures as fast as he could.

Finally, he was done. But Elena knew that without some outside impetus there was no way that he was going to get those pictures to Fell's Church until he himself came to town - and even Meredith didn't know when that would be.

So what do we do? Bonnie asked Elena, looking anguished.

Well...my tears were real when Stefan was in prison.

You want us to cry on him?

No, Elena said, not quite patiently. But we look like ghosts -

let's act like them. Try blowing on the back of his neck.

Bonnie did, and they both watched Alaric shiver, look around him, draw his windbreaker closer.

"And what about the other deaths in your own expedition?"he asked, huddling, looking around apparently aimlessly.

Celia began speaking but neither Elena nor Bonnie was listening. Bonnie kept blowing on Alaric from different directions, herding him to the single window in the building that wasn't shattered. There Elena had written with her finger on the darkened cold glass. Once she knew that Alaric was looking that way she blew her breath across the sentence: send all pix of jars 2 meredith now! Every time Alaric approached the window she breathed on it to refresh the words.

And at last he saw it.

He jumped backward nearly two feet. Then he slowly crept back to the window. Elena refreshed the writing for him. This time, instead of jumping, he simply ran a hand over his eyes and then slowly peeked out again.

"Hey, Mr. Spook-chaser,"said Celia. "Are you all right?"

"I don't know,"Alaric admitted. He passed his hand over his eyes again, but Celia was coming and Elena didn't breathe on the window.

"I thought I saw a - a message to send copies of the pictures of these jars to Meredith."

Celia raised an eyebrow. "Who is Meredith?"

"Oh. She - she's one of my former students. I suppose this would interest her."He looked down at the camcorder.

"Bones and urns?"

"Well, you were interested in them quite young, if your reputation is correct."

"Oh, yes. I loved to watch a dead bird decay, or find bones and try to figure out what animal they were from,"Celia said, dimpling again. "From the age of six. But I wasn't like most girls."

"Well  - neither is Meredith,"Alaric said.

Elena and Bonnie were eyeing each other seriously now.

Alaric had implied that Meredith was special, but he hadn't said it, and he hadn't mentioned their engagement to be engaged.

Celia came closer. "Are you going to send her the pictures?"

Alaric laughed. "Well, all this atmosphere and everything - I don't know. It might just have been my imagination."

Celia turned away just as she reached him and Elena blew once more across the message. Alaric threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"I don't suppose the Island of Doom has satellite coverage,"he said helplessly.

"Nope,"Celia said. "But the ferry will be back in a day, and you can send pictures then - if you're real y going to do it."

"I think I'd better do it,"Alaric said. Elena and Bonnie were both glaring at him, one from each side.

But that was when Elena's eyelids started to droop. Oh, Bonnie, I'm sorry. I wanted to talk to you after this, and make sure you're okay. But I'm falling...I can't...

She managed to pry her lids open. Bonnie was in a fetal position, fast asleep.

Be careful, Elena whispered, not even sure who she was whispering it to. And as she floated away, she was aware of Celia and the way Alaric was talking to this beautiful, accomplished woman only a year or so older than he was.

She felt a distinct fear for Meredith, on top of everything else.

Chapter 14

The next morning Elena noticed that Meredith still looked pale and languid, and that her eyes slid away if Stefan happened to glance at her. But this was a time of crisis, and as soon as the breakfast dishes were washed, Elena called a meeting in the parlor. There she and Stefan explained what Meredith had missed during the visit from the sheriffs.

Meredith smiled wanly when Elena told how Stefan had banished them like stray dogs.

Then Elena told the story of her out-of-body experience. It proved one thing, at least, that Bonnie was alive and relatively well. Meredith bit her lip when Mrs. Flowers said this, for it only made her want to go and get Bonnie out of the Dark Dimension personal y.

But on the other hand, Meredith wanted to stay and wait for Alaric's photographs. If that would save Fell's Church...

No one at the boardinghouse could question what had happened on the Island of Doom. It was happening here, on the other side of the world. Already a couple of parents in Fell's Church had had their children taken away by the Virginia Department of Child Protective Services.

Punishments and retaliations had begun. How much longer would it be before Shinichi and Misao turned all the children into lethal weapons - or let loose those already turned? How long before some hysterical parent killed a kid?

The group sitting in the parlor discussed plans and methods.

In the end, they decided to make jars identical to those Elena and Bonnie had seen, and prayed that they could reproduce the writing. These jars, they were sure, were the means by which Shinichi and Misao were original y sealed off from the rest of the Earth.

Therefore Shinichi and Misao had once fit into the rather cramped accommodations of the jars. But what did Elena's group have now that could lure them back inside?

Power, they decided. Only an amount of Power so great that it was irresistible to the kitsune twins. That was why the priestess had tried to lure them back with her own blood.

Now...it meant either the liquid in a full star ball ...or blood from an extraordinarily powerful vampire. Or two vampires.

Or three.

Everyone was sober, thinking of this. They didn't know how much blood would be needed - but Elena feared that it would be more than they can afford to lose. It had certainly been more than the priestess could afford.

And then there was a silence that only Meredith could fill. "I'm sure you've al been wondering about this,"she said, producing the staff thing from thin air, as far as Elena could see. How did she do that? Elena wondered. She didn't have it with her and then she did.

They all stared in the bright sunlight at the sleek beauty of the weapon.

"Whoever made that,"Matt said, "had a twisted imagination."

"It was one of my ancestors,"Meredith said. "And I won't contest that."

"I have a question,"Elena said. "If you'd had that from the beginning of your training; if you'd been raised in that kind of world, would you have tried to kill Stefan? Would you have tried to kill me when I became a vampire?"

"I wish I had a good answer to that,"Meredith said, her dark gray eyes pained. "But I don't. I have nightmares about it. But how can I ever say what I would have done if I'd been a different person?"

"I'm not asking that. I'm asking you, the person you are, if you'd had the training - "

"The training is brainwashing," Meredith said harshly. Her composed fa?ade seemed about to break.

"Okay, forget that. Would you have tried to kill Stefan, if you'd just had that staff?"

"It's called a fighting stave. And we're called - people like my family, except that my parents dropped out - hunter-slayers."

There was a sort of gasp around the table. Mrs. Flowers poured Meredith more herbal tea from the pot sitting on a trivet.

"Hunter-slayers,"repeated Matt with a certain relish. It wasn't hard to tell who he was thinking about.

"You can just call us one or the other,"Meredith was saying.

"I've heard that out west they've got hunter-killers. But we hang on to tradition here."

Elena suddenly felt like a lost little girl. This was Meredith, her big sister Meredith, saying all of this. Elena's voice was almost pleading. "But you didn't even tell on Stefan."

"No, I didn't. And, no, I don't think I'd have had the courage to kill anyone - unless I'd been brainwashed. But I knew Stefan loved you. I knew he would never make you into a vampire.

The problem was - I didn't know enough about Damon. I didn't know that you were fooling around so much. I don't think anybody knew that."Meredith's voice was anguished, too.

"Except me,"Elena said, flushing, with a lopsided smile.

"Don't look so sad, Meredith. It worked out."

"You call having to leave your family and your town because everyone knows you're dead, working out?"

"I do,"Elena replied desperately, "if it means I get to be with Stefan."She did her best not to think about Damon.

Meredith looked at her blankly for a moment, then put her face in her hands. "Do you want to tell them or should I?"she asked, coming up for air and facing Stefan.

Stefan looked startled. "You remember?"

"Probably as much as you got from my mind. Bits and pieces. Stuff I don't want to remember."

"Okay."Now Stefan looked relieved, and Elena felt frightened. Stefan and Meredith had a secret together?

"We all know that Klaus made at least two visits to Fell 's Church. We know that he was - completely evil - and that on the second visit he planned to be a serial murderer. He killed Sue Carson and Vickie Bennett."

Elena interrupted quietly. "Or at least he helped Tyler Small wood to kill Sue, so that Tyler could be initiated as a werewolf. And then Tyler got Caroline pregnant."

Matt cleared his throat as something occurred to him. "Uh -

does Caroline have to kill somebody to be a full werewolf, too?"

"I don't think so,"Elena said. "Stefan says that having a werewolf litter is enough. Either way, blood is spilled.

Caroline will be a full werewolf when she has her twins, but she'll probably begin changing involuntarily before that.

Right?"

Stefan nodded. "Right. But getting back to Klaus: What was it he was supposed to have done on his first visit? He attacked - without killing - an old man who was a full hunter-slayer."

"My grandfather,"Meredith whispered.

"And he supposedly messed with Meredith's grandfather's mind so much that this old man tried to kill his wife and his three-year-old granddaughter. So what is wrong with this picture?"

Elena was truly frightened now. She didn't want to hear whatever was coming. She could taste bile, and she was glad that she'd only had toast for breakfast. If only there had been someone to take care of, like Bonnie, she would have felt better.

"I give up. So what is wrong?"Matt asked bluntly.

Meredith was staring into the distance again.

Final y Stefan said, "At the risk of sounding like a bad soap opera...Meredith had, or has, a twin brother."

Dead silence fell over the group in the parlor. Even Mrs.

Flowers's Ma ma didn't put in a word.

"Had or has?"Matt said final y, breaking the silence.

"How can we know?"Stefan said. "He may have been killed.

Imagine Meredith having to watch that. Or he could have been kidnapped. To be killed at a later time - or to become a vampire."

"And you real y think her parents wouldn't tell her?"Matt demanded. "Or would try to make her forget? When she was - what, three already?"

Mrs. Flowers, who had been quiet a long time, now spoke sadly. "Dear Meredith may have decided to block out the truth herself. With a child of three it's hard to say. If they never got her professional help..."She looked a question at Meredith.

Meredith shook her head. "Against the code,"she said. "I mean, strictly speaking, I shouldn't be telling any of you this, and especial y not Stefan. But I couldn't stand it anymore...having such good friends, and constantly deceiving them."

Elena went over and hugged Meredith hard. "We understand,"she said. "I don't know what will happen in the future if you decide to be an active hunter - "

"I can promise you my friends won't be on my list of victims,"Meredith said. "By the way,"she added, "Shinichi knows. I'm the one who's kept a secret from my friends all my life."

"Not any longer,"Elena said, and hugged her again.

"At least there are no more secrets now,"Mrs. Flowers said gently, and Elena looked at her sharply. Nothing was ever that simple. And Shinichi had made a whole handful of predictions.

Then she saw the look in the mild blue eyes of the old woman, and she knew that what was important right then was not truth or lies, or even reckonings, but simply comforting Meredith. She looked up at Stefan while still hugging Meredith and saw the same look in his eyes.

And that - made her feel better somehow. Because if it was truly "no secrets"then she would have to figure out her feelings about Damon. And she was more afraid of that than of facing Shinichi, which was saying quite a lot, real y.

"At least we've got a potter's wheel - somewhere,"Mrs.

Flowers was saying. "And a kiln in the back, although it's all grown over with Devil's Shoestring. I used to make flowerpots for outside the boardinghouse, but children came and smashed them. I think I could make an urn like the ones you saw if you can draw one for me. But perhaps we'd better wait for Mr. Saltzman's pictures."

Matt was mouthing something to Stefan. Elena couldn't make it out until she heard Stefan's voice in her mind. He says Damon told him once that this house is like a swap meet, and you can find anything here if you look hard enough.

Damon didn't make that up! I think Mrs. Flowers said it first, and then it sort of got around, Elena returned heatedly.

"When we get the pictures,"Mrs. Flowers was saying brightly,

"we can get the Saitou women to translate the writing."

Meredith finally moved back from Elena. "And until then we can pray that Bonnie doesn't get into any trouble,"she said, and her voice and face were composed again. "I'm starting now."

Bonnie was sure she could stay out of trouble.

She'd had that strange dream - the one about shedding her body, and going with Elena to the Island of Doom.

Fortunately, it had seemed to be a real out-of-body experience, and not something she had to ponder over and try to find hidden meanings in. It didn't mean she was doomed or anything like that.

Plus, she'd managed to live through another night in this brown room, and Damon had to come and get her out soon.

But not before she had a sugarplum. Or two.

Yes, she had gotten a taste of one in the story last night, but Marit was such a good girl that she had waited for dinner to have any more. Dinner was obtained in the next story about the Dustbins, which she'd plunged into this morning. But that contained the horror of little Marit tasting her first hand-caught piece of raw liver, fresh from the hunt. Bonnie had hastily pulled the little star ball off her temple, and had determined not to do anything that could possibly get her on a human hunting range.

But then, compulsively, she had counted up her money. She had money. She knew where a shop was. And that meant...shopping!

When her bathroom break came around, she managed to get into a conversation with the boy who usual y led her to the outdoor privy. This time she made him blush so hard and tug at his earlobe so often that when she begged him to give her the key and let her go by herself - it wasn't as if she didn't know the way - he had relented and let her go, asking only that she hurry.

And she did hurry - across the street and into the little store, which smelled so much of melting fudge, toffee being pulled by hand, and other mouth-watering smells that she would have known where she was blindfolded.

She also knew what she wanted. She could picture it from the story and the one taste Marit had had.

A sugarplum was round like a real plum, and she'd tasted dates, almonds, spices, and honey - and there may have been some raisins, too. It should cost five soli, according to the story, but Bonnie had taken fifteen of the small coppery-looking coins with her, in case of a confectionary emergency.

Once inside, Bonnie glanced warily around her. There were a lot of customers in the shop, maybe six or seven. One brown-haired girl was wearing sacking just like Bonnie and looked exhausted. Surreptitiously, Bonnie inched toward her, and pressed five of her copper soli into the girl's chapped hand, thinking, there - now she can get a sugarplum just like me; that ought to cheer her up. It did: the girl gave her the sort of smile that Mother Dustbin often gave to Marit when she had done something adorable.

I wonder if I should talk to her?

"It looks pretty busy,"she whispered, ducking her head.

The girl whispered back, "It has been. Al yesterday I kept hoping, but at least one noble came in as the last one left."

"You mean you have to wait until the shop's empty to - ?"

The brown-haired girl looked at her curiously. "Of course -

unless you're buying for your mistress or master."

"What's your name?"Bonnie whispered.

"Kelta."

"I'm Bonnie."

At this Kelta burst into silent but convulsive giggles.

Bonnie felt offended; she'd just given Kelta a sugarplum - or the price of one, and now the girl was laughing at her.

"I'm sorry,"Kelta said when her mirth had died down. "But don't you think it's funny that in the last year there are so many girls changing their names to Alianas and Mardeths, and Bonnas - some slaves are even being allowed to do it."

"But why?"Bonnie whispered with such obvious genuine bewilderment that Kelta said, "Why, to fit into the story, of course. To be named after the ones who killed old Bloddeuwedd while she was rampaging through the city."

"That was such a big deal?"

"You real y don't know? After she was killed all her money went to the fifth sector where she lived and there was enough left over to have a holiday. That's where I'm from. And I used to be so frightened when I was sent out with a message or anything after dark because she could be right above you and you'd never know, until - "Kelta had put all her money into one pocket and now she mimed claws descending on an innocent hand.

"But you real y are a Bonna,"Kelta said, with a flash of white teeth in rather dingy skin. "Or so you said."

"Yeah,"Bonnie said feeling vaguely sad. "I'm a Bonna, all right!"The next moment she cheered up. "The shop's empty!"

"It is! Oh, you're a good-luck Bonna! I've been waiting two days."

She approached the counter with a lack of fear that was very encouraging to Bonnie. Then she asked for something called a blood jelly that looked to Bonnie like a small mold of strawberry Jell -O, with something darker deep inside. Kelta smiled at Bonnie from under the curtain of her long, unbrushed hair and was gone.

The man who ran the sweetshop kept looking hopeful y at the door, clearly hoping a free person - a noble - would come in.

No one did, however, and at last he turned to Bonnie.

"And what is it you want?"he demanded.

"Just a sugarplum, please?"Bonnie tried hard to make sure her voice didn't quaver.

The man was bored. "Show me your pass,"he said irritably.

It was at that point that Bonnie suddenly knew that everything was going to go horribly wrong.

"Come on, come on, snap it up!"Still looking at his accounting books, the man snapped his fingers.

Meanwhile Bonnie was running a hand over her sack-cloth smock, in which she knew perfectly well there was no pocket, and certainly no pass.

"But I thought I didn't need a pass, except to cross sectors,"she babbled final y.

The man now leaned over the counter. "Then show me your freedom pass,"he said, and Bonnie did the only thing she could think of. She turned and ran, but before she could reach the door she felt a sudden stinging pain in her back and then everything went blurry and she never knew when she hit the ground.

Chapter 15

Bonnie woke slowly, coming up from some dark place.

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

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

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

Al she heard in return was silence.

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

Suddenly she had a hunch, and lowered her psychic barriers.

She was instantly crushed. Even here, at the edge of the city, the air was choked full of long messages and short: cries of impatience, or camaraderie, of greeting, of solicitation.

Longer, less impatient conversations about things, instructions, teasings, stories. She couldn't keep up with it. It turned into a menacing wave of psychic sound that was curled like a wave about to break over her head, to crush her into a mil ion pieces.

And then, all of a sudden, the telepathic melee vanished.

Bonnie was able to focus her eyes on a blond girl, a little older than her and about four inches taller.

"I said, are you okay?"the girl was repeating - obviously she'd been saying it for a while.

"Yes,"Bonnie said automatically. No! Bonnie thought.

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

What am I supposed to say? Thank you seemed safest.

"Thanks,"Bonnie said. Then her mouth said all on its own,

"Where am I?"

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

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

"I don't know about that. I was trying to run away, but they finally caught me."The girl slammed one fist into an open hand. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted that litter carrier.

Carried me right to the authorities and me blind and without a clue."

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

"Bonnie."

Eren snorted and grinned. "All right by me."

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Well, you being a redhead and all - it put me in mind of Aliana's message, you know. To the real Bonny." She pronounced it oddly, sort of swallowing the y, but at least it wasn't Bonna.

"Which of them? Which message, I mean?" Bonnie screamed.

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

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

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

FOOD.

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

Afterward the girls were marched into another building, this one filled with pallets, smaller and not so comfortable-looking as Bonnie's at the inn. She was now horrified at herself for leaving that room. There she had had safety, she had had food that she could actual y eat, she had had entertainment -

even the Dustbins were clothed in a golden glow of remembrance now - and she had had the chance of Damon finding her. Here she had nothing.

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

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

"All right! We're going to be bloody deaf before we're sold,"Eren muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

Bonnie silently screamed, Damon!

Damon was decked out in his new captain of the guard suit.

It was nice, being black on black, with lighter black piping (even Damon recognized the necessity of contrast). It had a cloak.

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

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

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

Wait. That might actual y work. He could tell her that he needed to check up on her territory and that if he were to stay here in the castle he doubted he'd ever get anything done.

He could tell her he'd be back...soon. Soonish. Soonishly.

Damon pressed his tongue against a canine and felt the prompt rewarding sharpness and length. He real y wanted to try out those legendary Black Ops vs. vampires programs.

He wanted to hunt, period. Of course, there was so much Black Magic wine about the place that when he stopped a male servant and asked for some, the servant had brought a magnum. Damon had been having flutes every now and then, but what he real y wanted was to go hunting. And not to hunt a slave and certainly not an animal, and it hardly seemed fair to wander the streets on the chance that there was a noblewoman to get to know better.

It was at that moment that he remembered Bonnie.

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

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

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

In sixteen minutes, the landlady was grimly offering him the life of her young and not very intelligent slave as recompense. He was Still wearing his captain of guard suit.

He could have the boy to kill, to torture, whatever...he could have the money back...

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

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

Why had he left her in this place? Damon couldn't think now.

He'd been panicked, half out of his mind - that was what being human had done to him. He'd been thinking only about himself, while little Bonnie - fragile Bonnie, his little redbird -

had been shut up in this filthy place. He didn't want to keep thinking about it. It made him feel searing hot and icy cold at once.

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

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

Damon! Help me!

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

And then something seemed to go blank in Bonnie's mind.

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

She was being scrubbed mercilessly by two muscular women whose whole life doubtless consisted of scrubbing grimy street girls into pink cleanliness - at least for a night.

But final y her protests led the women to actual y look at her - with her fair, almost translucent skin scrubbed raw - and concentrate instead on washing her hair, which felt as if it were being pulled out at the roots. Finally, though, she was done and was given an adequate towel with which to dry off.

Next, in what she was realizing was a giant assembly line, were kinder plump women who stripped off the towel and proceeded to put her on a couch and massage her with oil.

Just when she was starting to feel better she was hustled up to have the oil removed, except that which had soaked into her skin. Women then appeared who measured her, calling out the numbers as they did, and by the time Bonnie had tramped to the wardrobe station, three dresses were waiting for her on a bar. There was a black one, a green one, and a gray one.

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

Next was a giant sanitary room, where her dress was careful y covered with a white paper robe that kept ripping.

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

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

The next station was a bit like the day after Thanksgiving at a big shoe store. The stronger or more determined girls managed to wrench shoes away from their weaker sisters and jammed them on one foot, only to start the process again the next minute. Bonnie was lucky. She saw a tiny black shoe that had a faintly silvery bow coming down the ramp and kept her eye on it while it passed from girl to girl until someone dropped it and then she swooped in and tried it on. She didn't know what she would have done if it hadn't fit. But it did fit, and she went to the next station to get its mate. As she sat waiting, other girls were trying on perfume.

Bonnie saw two entire bottles go down the bodices of girls and wondered if they meant to sell them or try to poison themselves with them. There were also flowers. Bonnie was already dizzy with perfume and had decided not to wear any, but a tall woman bellowed over her head and a garland of freesia was pinned to frame her curls, without anyone asking her permission.

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

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

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

"She was picked up as a runaway slave and confiscated,"the sweetshop man told Damon impatiently. "And that's al I know."

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

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

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

"We need to have a little chat,"he said, turning the full force of his menacing dark eyes on the bulging ones of his prey.

"About just how she got confiscated. Don't struggle. If you haven't hurt the girl, you've got nothing to fear. If you have..."

He pulled the terrified man completely across the counter and said very softly, "If you have, then, by all means struggle.

It won't make any difference in the end - if you know what I mean?"

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

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

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

The Guardian shrugged. "Our job is real y only to try to keep the peace here - and you can see how well we succeed. It's a matter of too few of us; we're insanely understaffed. But I can give you a list of the venues where girls are being sold.

Still, as I said, I doubt you'll be able to find your runaway before morning. And by the way, we'll have an eye on you, because of your little query. If your runaway wasn't a slave, she's Imperial property - no humans are free here. If she was, and you freed her, as reported by the baker across the street - "

"Sweet-seller."

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

"But if she was a slave -  my slave..."

"Then you can have her. But there's a certain mandatory punishment set before you can have her. We want to discourage this kind of thing."

Damon looked at her with eyes that made her shrink and look away, abruptly losing her authority. "Why?"he demanded. "I thought you claimed to be from the other Court.

You know. The Celestial one?"

"We want to discourage runaways because there've been so many since some girl named Alianna came around,"the Guardian said, her frightened pulse visible in her temple.

"And then they get caught and have even more reason to try it again...and it wears out the girl, eventual y."

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

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

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

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

"Oh, I do,"Bonnie said absently, thinking of the star ball with its Five Hundred Stories for Young Ones.

Instantly there was a clamor. "Tel it!" "Yes, please tell !"

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

Of course. The one about the kitsune treasure.

Chapter 16

"Once upon a time,"began Bonnie, "there were a young girl and boy..."

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

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

"So,"Bonnie concluded nervously, as she opened her eyes and realized that she'd attracted quite a crowd with her story,

"that's the tale of the Seven Treasures, and - and I suppose the moral is - don't be too greedy, or you won't end up with anything."

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

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

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

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

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

"Al such requests must go through me. No one is to take a girl out of the room unless I approve,"announced a woman in a full -length dress, with a sympathetic, almost Madonna-like face. "That will be treated as theft of my mistress's property.

And I'm sure we don't all want to be arrested as if we'd been caught carrying off the silverware,"she said and laughed lightly.

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

"You tell really good stories,"Mouse said in her soft voice.

"It's more fun than using a star ball ."

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

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

"Oh, they trick you,"Eren said, waving a dismissive hand.

"They have somebody go someplace cold for the scenery -

an ogre probably, because of the weather."

Bonnie nodded. She'd met mauve-skinned ogres before.

They only differed from demons in their level of stupidity. At this level, they tended to be stupid in society, and she'd heard Damon say with a curled lip that the ones that were out of society were hired muscle. Thugs.

"And the rest they just fake somehow - I don't know. Never real y thought about it."Eren looked up at Bonnie. "You're an odd one, aren't you, Bonny?"

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

"Um, you guys probably don't want to associate with me anymore,"she said uncomfortably.

"Huh?"said Eren.

"Why?"asked Mouse.

"Because I'm running through that door. I have to get out. I have to."

"Kid, calm down,"Eren said. "Just keep breathing."

"No, you don't understand."Bonnie put her head down, to shade out some of the world. "I can't belong to somebody.

I'm going crazy."

"Sh, Bonny, they're - "

"I can't stay here,"Bonnie burst out.

"Well, that's probably al to the good,"a terrible voice, right in front of her, said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No...oh, please no...

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

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

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

They had reached the final doors at the end of the hall.

Shinichi turned right and walked all the way down a long corridor. There the ogre used the key to open a door.

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

The room was a sort of bedroom-den combination, the kind you'd get at a decent hotel. It had a couch and some chairs on the upper level. There was a window, closed, on the left side of the room. There was also a window on the right side of the room, where al the other rooms should be in a line.

This window had no curtains or blinds that could be drawn and it reflected Bonnie's pale face back at her. She knew at once what it was, a two-way mirror, so that people in the room behind it could see into this room but not be seen. The couch and chairs were positioned to face it.

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

She was going to die saturated with the color of blood.

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

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

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

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

Bonnie felt like screaming. Didn't he remember her? He certainly seemed to have remembered their group, since he'd mentioned revenge. "What do you want?"she gasped.

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

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

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

"You seem to have learned a lot about my people,"Shinichi said. "More than most."

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

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

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

"Oh, we'l leave you alone...in time, I assure you,"Shinichi said with an unnerving smile. He had a smile like Damon's, which wasn't meant to say "Hel o; I won't hurt you."It was more like "Hullo! Here's my lunch!"

"I find it...curious,"Shinichi went on, Stillfiddling with the cord.

"Very curious that just in the middle of our little dispute, you arrive here in the Dark Dimension again, alone, apparently without fear, and manage to bargain for a star ball. An orb that just happens to detail the location of our most priceless treasures that were stolen from us...a long, long time ago."

You don't care about anybody but yourself, Bonnie thought.

You're suddenly acting al patriotic and stuff, but in Fell's Church you didn't pretend to care about anything but hurting people.

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

Shinichi smirked. "Little towns like the one on Unmei no Shima have to be wiped off the face of the earth,"he said.

"Did you see the number of ley lines of Power under it?"Another smirk. "But of course you weren't really there, so you probably didn't."

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

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

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

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

"That's not possible!"Bonnie said. "Where did I get it, then?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

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

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

Finally he said, "Twenty-eight star balls, exactly."

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

"The story is there,"she insisted. "Right before it is the story about little Marit going to a - "

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

Bonnie just shook her head. "I swear I'm telling the truth."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Why does it matter? How could I make something like that up? And why would I tell a story I knew would get me in trouble? It doesn't make any sense."

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

Suddenly Bonnie's heart was pounding in her chest, in her tight throat. "Why?"

"Because,"Shinichi said cool y, pulling the blinds completely open so that Bonnie was abruptly drenched in the color of fresh blood, "I'm afraid that now we have to kill you."

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

She didn't know what else to do.

Chapter 17

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

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

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

" - and since Meredith has received her pictures - along, I'm sure, with an email from Mr. Saltzman - perhaps she could get them enlarged or whatever."

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

She broke off short. Idiot! She was an idiot, she thought.

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

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

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

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

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

Elena let Stefan help her clean up the dishes - they were all letting him do little things now because he looked so much better. They spent the morning trying to contact Bonnie in different ways. But then Mrs. Flowers asked if Elena could board up the last few of the basement windows, and Stefan couldn't stand it. Matt and Meredith had already done a far more dangerous job. They'd hung two tarps from the house's ridgepole, each one hanging down one side of the main roof.

On each tarp were the characters that Isobel's mother put on the Post-it Note amulets she always gave them, painted at an enormous scale in black paint. Stefan had been al owed only to watch and give suggestions from the widow's walk above his attic bedroom. But now...

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

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

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

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

Apparently she'd been projecting.

"I'm sorry,"he said before Elena could get the nails out of her mouth, "but you know better than anyone why you can't go."

"But it's maddening not knowing what's happening,"Elena said, having gotten rid of her nails. "We don't know anything.

What's happening to Bonnie, what state the town's in - "

"Let's finish this board,"Stefan said. "And then let me hold you."

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

"I know your problem,"he said soberly.

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

Stefan nodded, and to her further alarm said, "It's Love-itis.

Means the patient has a whole slew of people she cares about, and she can't be happy unless each and every one of them is safe and happy themselves."

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

Stefan looked down at her and then he took her in his arms.

"I'm not as good as you,"he said while Elena's heart pounded in shame and remorse for ever having touched Damon, ever having danced with him, ever having kissed him. "If you are happy, that's all I want, after that prison. I can live; I can die...peaceful y."

"If we're happy,"Elena corrected.

"I won't tempt the gods. I'll settle for you."

"No, you can't! Don't you see? If you disappeared again, I'd worry and fret and follow you. To Hel if I had to."

"I'll take you with me wherever I go,"Stefan said hastily. "If you'll take me with you."

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

They sat and cuddled, right under the open sky, even with a maple tree and a clump of slender waving beeches nearby.

She extended her aura a little and felt it touch Stefan's.

Peace flooded into her, and all the dark thoughts were left behind. Almost all .

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

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

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

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

"As long as nobody's really hurt."

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

But of course, with regular bodies, they couldn't...

But of course they could. Now. Her blood...

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

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

"Of course we don't,"Stefan said firmly, but he had to gulp a little first.

"No,"Elena said.

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

And of course, Elena couldn't let him do that and not get even. So she demanded, Still breathless, but almost angry, that he say "no"again, and when he did it she caught him and kissed him.

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

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

"Poor Damon?"

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

"Well done,"Elena said.

"We'd better go inside now,"Stefan said. And then hastily,

"Downstairs, I mean. Maybe we can think of something more to do for them."

"Like what? There's not a thing I can think of. I did meditation and Attempt to Contact by Out-of-Body Experience - "

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

"Then we tried with the Ouija board."

"For half an hour - and al we got was nonsense."

"It did tell us the clay was coming."

"I think that was me bumping it toward 'yes.'"

"Then I tried to tap into the ley lines below us for Power - "

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

"We really tried hard,"Elena said grimly.

"And then we nailed the last few boards up,"Stefan added.

"Bringing us to a little after twelve thirty P.M."

"Can you think of a single Plan - we're down to G or H now -

that might al ow us to help them any more?"

"I can't. I just honestly can't,"Stefan said. Then he added, hesitantly, "Maybe Mrs. Flowers has some housework for us.

Or" - even more hesitantly, testing the waters - "we could go into town."

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

"Elena - "

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

"Elena!"Stefan could hear what she was thinking. He was torn, of course, Elena thought. Stefan was always torn. But how dare he be torn about this?

She turned around to face him, blazing. "You don't want to!"

"I don't want to do it and then find out I've Influenced you into it!"

"You were Influencing me?"shouted Elena.

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

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

Elena darted a glance at Stefan. He was trying not to blush.

She doubled over, trying not to laugh. Then she stood on his shoes again.

"Maybe we deserve an hour alone" - dangerously.

"A whole hour?"Stefan's conspiratorial whisper made an hour sound like eternity.

"We do deserve it,"Elena said, enthralled. She began to tow him again.

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

"But it's locked from inside - "

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

Elena was impressed.

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

"I'm a little nervous,"Elena said.

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

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

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

"Don't,"he said. "I don't even have to bite you."

"You do so. It's all that weird stuff about my blood."

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

They're smarter, she thought.

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

"Elena,"Stefan said, "come here."

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

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

Elena kissed him willingly, so glad that he was willing to wait.

The kiss was warm and comforting and she didn't mind the slight taste of rust. And it was wonderful to be with someone who would provide exactly what she needed, whether that was a slight mind probe, just to make her feel safer, or...

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn't perfect. A bead of blood swelled and stood gleaming on Elena's lip. But Elena couldn't have cared less.

A moment later the bead dropped down into Stefan's mouth and she felt the sheer staggering power of how much he loved her.

She herself was concentrating on one single tiny feeling, somewhere in the center of this storm they'd called up. This kind of exchange of blood - she was sure as she could be -

this was the old way, the way that two vampires could share blood and love and their souls. She was being drawn into Stefan's mind. She felt his soul, pure and unconstrained, swirling around her with a thousand different emotions, tears from his past, joy from the present, al open without a trace of a shield from her.

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

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

Stefan, I...

Love...I know...

That was when someone knocked on the door.

Chapter 18

After breakfast Matt went online to find two stores, neither in Fell's Church, that had the amount of clay Mrs. Flowers said she'd need and that said they'd deliver. But after that there was the matter of driving away from the boardinghouse and by the last lonely remains of where the Old Wood had been.

He drove by the little thicket where Shinichi often came like a demonic Pied Piper with the possessed children shuffling behind him - the place where Sheriff Mossberg had gone after them and hadn't come out. Where, later, protected by magical wards on Post-it Notes, he and Tyrone Alpert had pulled out a bare, chewed femur.

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

He whispered "Whoa,"in relief and headed for home. He dreaded that - but simply driving through Fell's Church was so horrible it glued his tongue to the top of his mouth. It looked - this pretty, innocent little town where he had grown up - as if it were one of those neighborhoods you saw on TV or on the Internet that had been bombed, or something. And whether it was bombs or disasterous fires, one house in four was simply rubble. A few were half-rubble, with police tape enclosing them, which meant that whatever had happened had happened early enough for the police to care - or dare.

Around the burned-out bits the vegetation flourished strangely: a decorative bush from one house grown so as to be halfway across a neighbor's grass. Vines dipping from one tree to another, to another, as if this were some ancient jungle.

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

Driving down his block, though, Matt saw nothing hideous.

There were kids playing out on the front lawns, or the sidewalks, crouching over marbles, hanging out in the trees.

There was no single overt thing that he could put his finger on There was no single overt thing that he could put his finger on that was weird.

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

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

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

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

All at once.

Matt felt a twisting in his bel y as he looked up and around.

There were two kids in the oak tree right beside his car. His mind was Still stubbornly trying to hang on to: Children.

Playing. Okay. His body was smarter. His hand was already in his pocket, pulling out a pad of Post-it Notes: the flimsy bits of paper that usual y stopped evil magic cold.

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

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

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

And now the head of the gobbling boy came up, thick bright red al around his mouth. Bright red -  -  blood. And...whatever was in the garbage bag was moving. Kicking. Thrashing weakly. Trying to get away.

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

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

He whirled around and saw why. They were staring at him.

Every single kid on the block was silently watching him. Then, with a chilling precision, as he turned back to look at the boys in the tree, all the others came toward him.

Except they weren't walking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By now Matt's heart was pounding in his ears. He could fight a group of them - but not with a group on his back. Some of them looked only ten or eleven. Some looked almost his age.

Some were girls, for God's sake. Matt remembered what possessed girls had done the last time he'd met them and felt violent revulsion.

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

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

Oh my God. He's eating a baby! A baby! A -

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

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

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

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

He threw up al over Matt's shoes. Blood-red vomit.

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

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

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

Something in Matt snapped.

"You want some of this?"he shouted, holding out the Post-it pad as if it were the revolver he'd left with Mrs. Flowers. He whirled again, shouting, "You want some? How about you?

You, Josh?"He was recognizing faces now. "You, Madison?

How 'bout you, Bryn? Bring it on! You all bring it on! BRING IT - "

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

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

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

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

It couldn't be this easy. Matt knew he had tears in his eyes now. He refused to blink, though, and let them come down. "I don't know what to say - but if you would - you're an adult, you see. She won't listen to me. She will listen to you. This whole block is infected. This kid Cole - "He couldn't go on.

But Dr. Alpert saw it all in a flash - the animal, the boy with blood on his teeth and his mouth, Still retching.

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

"You have to let the infected ones go,"she said to Matt, with a terrible look in her eyes. "Cruel as it seems, they only pass it on to the few who're Still well."Matt started to tell her about the effectiveness of the Post-it Note amulets, but she was already calling, "Tyrone! Come over here and you boys bury this poor animal. Then you be ready to move Mrs.

Honeycutt's things into the van. Jayneela, you do what your brother says. I'm going in for a little talk with Mrs. Honeycutt right now."

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

He's quick, Matt realized. Quicker than me. It's like a game.

As long as you watch them they can't move.

They took turns being the watcher and handling the shovel.

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

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

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

"He'll be one of those to get the town out of this mess,"Dr. Alpert said, overriding her. "He'll clean it up. Now we've got to get out so we don't drag him down. Matt, just so you know, I heard that the McCul oughs are getting out too. Mr. and Mrs.

Sulez don't seem to be going yet, and neither do the Gilbert-Maxwells."She said the last two words with a distinct emphasis.

The Gilbert-Maxwells were Elena's aunt Judith, her husband Robert MaxWell, and Elena's little sister, Margaret. There was no real reason to mention them. But Matt knew why Dr.

Alpert had. She remembered seeing Elena when this whole mess had started. Despite Elena's purification of the woods where Dr. Alpert had been standing, the doctor remembered.

"I'll tell  - Meredith,"Matt said, and looking her in the eyes, he nodded a little, as if to say, I'll tell Elena, too.

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

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

"Thanks later - now, everybody in,"said Dr. Alpert. "We are taking off."

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

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

And then they were gone.

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

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

And the birdsong had come back.

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

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

"You're Matthew Jeffrey Honeycutt?"

Matt had no choice but to nod.

"Say yes or no, please."

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

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

"Didn't you see those kids?"Matt was shouting. "You had to have seen one or two of them! Didn't that mean anything to you?"

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

"It's going to destroy the whole town! You're helping it!"

"Do you understand these rights - ?"

"Do you understand what is going on in Fel 's Church?"

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

Chapter 19

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

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

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

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

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

Shinichi opened the window. "Still thrilled?"

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

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

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

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

You see? Something surged wildly through her. I'm saved! It only took a little of that brave stuff and now...

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

"Wait!"she said to Shinichi. "You never even asked about - "

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

So she was the one inside the two-way mirror room, Bonnie thought. She looks real y bad. Like dying bad.

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

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

"It's all a circle,"she explained. "What you do comes back to you."Then despite herself, she started to giggle.

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

She kept trying to wipe it on her shoulder, but it wouldn't stop.

At last Misao said, "Ugh. Unfasten her hands and give her a towel or something."

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

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

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

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

"How could I know?"she pointed out logical y. "I was just trying to pull Damon away from the Gate when we both fell in.

It didn't come with us. As far as I know, it got kicked in the dust and al the liquid spilled out."

Shinichi got up to hurt her again, but she was only telling the truth. Misao was already speaking. "We know that didn't happen because I am" - she had to pause to breathe - "Stillalive."

She turned her ashen, sunken face toward Shinichi and said,

"You're right. She's useless now, and full of information she shouldn't have. Throw her out."

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

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

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

"Throw her out,"Shinichi shouted, livid with fury.

And the ogre threw her out the window.

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

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

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

"No, but - but may I have a look at the blow-ups?"Isobel had panted. Why was she panting so hard? Meredith wondered.

Even if she'd run from the top floor all the way following Meredith - that wouldn't account for it. Then Meredith remembered: Bonnie had said Isobel had a "jumpy"heart.

"You see,"Isobel said with what looked like shame and a plea for understanding, "Obaasan is real y almost blind now - and it's been so long since Mother was in school...but I take Japanese classes right now."

Meredith was touched. Obviously, Isobel had felt it bad manners to contradict an adult when they were in earshot.

But there, sitting in the car, Isobel had gone through every card with a blown-up character, writing a similar, but definitely different character on the back. It had taken twenty minutes. Meredith had been awed. "But how do you remember them all ? How do you ever write to each other?"she had blurted, after seeing the complicated symbols that differed only by a few lines.

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

"I need those to write anything!"Meredith had laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange.

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