The Vampire Diaries #8: Phantom (The Hunters #1) (2011)

Chapter 20

"Cookies," Alaric said gravely. "Bonnie thinks she could manage to choke down a few cookies. Just to keep her strength up."

"Cookies, got it," said Meredith, rummaging in Mrs. Flowers's kitchen cabinet to find a mixing bowl. She clunked a big china bowl that was probably older than she was onto the counter and checked the refrigerator. Eggs, milk, butter. Flour in the freezer. Vanilla and sugar in the cupboard.

"Look at you," Alaric said admiringly as Meredith unwrapped a stick of butter. "You don't even need a recipe. Is there anything you can't do?"

"Lots of things," Meredith replied, basking in the warmth of Alaric's gaze.

"What can I do to help?" he asked cheerfully.

"You can get another mixing bowl and measure two cups of flour and a teaspoon of baking powder into it," Meredith told him. "I'll beat the butter with the other ingredients in this bowl, and then we can put them together."

"Got it." Alaric found a bowl and measuring cups and started to measure out the items. Meredith watched his strong, tanned hands confidently leveling off the flour. Alaric had gorgeous hands, she thought. His shoulders were nice, too, and his face. All of him, really.

She realized she was ogling her boyfriend instead of stirring, and felt her cheeks color, even though no one was watching her. "Pass me the measuring cups when you're done with them?"

He handed them to her. "I know something scary's going on, and I want to protect Bonnie, too," he said, smiling a little, "but I think she might be milking the situation a little. She loves that everyone's pampering her."

"Bonnie's being very brave," said Meredith primly, then flashed him a grin, "and, yes, she might be milking it."

Matt came down the stairs and into the kitchen. "I think maybe Bonnie should have some tea when she gets out of her bubble bath," he said. "Mrs. Flowers is busy putting protective spells on the bedroom Bonnie chose, but she said she has a mix of chamomile and rosemary that would be good, and to put honey in it."

Meredith focused on mixing the cookie ingredients together as Matt boiled water and carefully measured dried herbs and honey to make the tea to Mrs. Flowers's exact specifications. When he finally finished fussing over it, Matt picked up the fragile teacup and saucer carefully.

"Wait, maybe I'd better take the whole pot up," he said. As he searched for a tray to carry it on, he asked,

"Meredith, are you sure you and Bonnie got everything she might need from her house?"

"She was up there for nearly a half hour. She got everything she wanted," said Meredith, "and if we missed anything, I'm sure Mrs. Flowers has some extras."

"Good," said Matt, his handsome face intent as he picked up the tea tray without spilling anything. "I just want to make sure Bonnie's okay."

He left the kitchen, and Meredith listened to his footsteps heading back upstairs. Once he was out of earshot, she and Alaric both burst out laughing.

"Yes, she's definitely milking it," said Meredith, when she'd stopped giggling.

Alaric pulled her toward him. His face was serious and intent now, and Meredith caught her breath. When they were this close, she could see the hidden flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, and they felt like a secret only Meredith knew.

"I love how you take care of your friend," Alaric told her, his voice low. "What I love most is that you know she's pushing it as far as she can, seeing what you'll do for her, and you laugh, but you're still going to give her whatever she needs." He frowned a little. "No, that's not right. I do love how you see the funny side of it, but what I love most is how well you take care of everyone you can." He pulled her closer still . "I guess mostly I love you, Meredith."

Meredith kissed him. How could she have worried that Celia would come between them? It was like there had been a mist filling her eyes, making it so that she was unable to see the simple truth: Alaric was crazy about her. After a minute, she broke the kiss and turned back to the cookie dough. "Get a cookie sheet, would you?" she asked. Alaric stood still for a moment. "Okay..." he said. Closing her eyes, Meredith summoned al her strength. She had to tell him. She had promised herself she would. He handed her a cookie sheet and she busied herself by scooping spoonfuls of dough onto it. "There's something I need to tell you, Alaric," she said.

Alaric froze next to her. "What is it?" he asked, his voice wary.

"It's going to sound unbelievable."

He gave a snort of laughter. "More unbelievable than everything else that's happened since I met you?"

"Sort of," Meredith said. "Or, at least, it's specifically about me this time. I've been..." It was hard to say. "I come from a family of vampire hunters. Al my life, I've been training to fight. I guess taking care of people is a family trait." She smiled weakly.

Alaric stared at her.

"Say something," Meredith prompted after a moment. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked wildly around. "I don't know what to say. I'm surprised you never told me this. I thought" - he paused - "that we knew each other really well ."

"My family..." said Meredith miserably. "They made me swear that I would keep our secret. I never told anybody until a few days ago."

Alaric closed his eyes for a minute and pressed his palms against them hard. When he opened them, he looked calmer. "I understand. I do."

"Wait," said Meredith. "There's more." The cookie sheet was full, and she cast about for something else to occupy her hands and eyes while she talked. She settled on a dish towel and twisted it nervously. "Do you remember that Klaus attacked my grandfather?"

Alaric nodded.

"Well , I found out a few days ago that he also attacked me, and stole my brother - the brother I'd never known I had - and took him away and made him a vampire. And he left me - I was only three - some kind of half vampire. A living girl, but one who needed to eat blood sausage and sometimes had... sharp teeth like a kitten's."

"Oh, Meredith..." Alaric's face was full of compassion, and he moved toward her, hands out. Toward me, Meredith noted. Not away, not afraid.

"Wait," she said again. "Elena asked the Guardians to change things to the way they would have been if Klaus never came here." She put down the dish towel. "So it never happened."

"What?" Alaric said, staring at her.

Meredith nodded, a helpless, confused smile spreading over her face. "My grandfather died in a retirement home in Florida two years ago. I have a brother - one I don't remember, unfortunately - he got sent away to boarding school when we were twelve and joined the military as soon as he turned eighteen. Apparently he's the problem child of the family." She took a deep breath. "I'm not a vampire. Not even a half vampire. Not now."

Alaric was still staring at her. "Wow," he said. "Wait a minute. Does that mean that Klaus is still alive? Could he come here, come after your family now?"

"I thought of that," Meredith said, glad to address the practicalities. "I don't think so. Elena asked the Guardians to change Fell's Church so it was as if Klaus never came here. She didn't ask them to change Klaus and his experience. For him, I think, logically, he did come here, long ago, and now he's dead." She smiled shakily. "I hope so, anyway."

"So you're safe," Alaric said, "as safe as a vampire hunter might be. Is that all you needed to tell me?" When Meredith nodded, he reached for her and pulled her back into his arms. Holding her tightly, he said. "I would have loved you with sharp teeth, too. But I'm so glad for you."

Meredith closed her eyes. She had needed to tell him, to know how he would have reacted if the Guardians hadn't changed everything. A great warming gladness spread al through her.

Alaric pressed his lips against her hair.

"Wait," she said once more, and he released her, looking inquisitive.

"The cookies." Meredith laughed and put them in the oven, setting the timer for ten minutes.

They kissed until the buzzer rang.

"Are you sure you'll be okay alone?" Matt asked anxiously, standing by Bonnie's bed. "I'll be right downstairs if you need anything. Or maybe I should stay here. I could sleep on your floor. I know I snore, but I'd try not to, I swear."

Bonnie gave him a brave little smile. "I'll be fine, Matt. Thank you so much."

With one last worried glance, Matt patted her hand awkwardly, then left the room. Bonnie knew he would toss and turn on his own bed, thinking of ways to keep her safe. Probably he would end up sleeping on the floor outside her door, she thought, giving a delighted little wriggle.

"Sleep well, my dear," said Mrs. Flowers, taking his place by Bonnie's bedside. "I have cast all the protective charms I know around you. I hope you like the tea. It's my own special brew."

"Thank you, Mrs. Flowers," Bonnie said. "Good night."

"You are enjoying this way too much," said Meredith, who came in next carrying a plate of cookies. She was limping, but had insisted that she didn't need a cane or crutch as long as her ankle was bandaged.

In fact... Bonnie took a closer look at Meredith. Her cheeks were flushed, and her usually smooth hair was a little mussed. I think she's very glad that Celia's gone to UVA, Bonnie thought with a smirk.

"I'm just trying to keep my spirits up," Bonnie said with a mischievous smile. "And you know what they say: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. My lemonade is having Matt trying to fulfil my every need. It's too bad we don't have more boys around here."

"Don't forget about Alaric," said Meredith. "He helped make the cookies. And he's downstairs researching everything he can that might be related to this."

"Ah, everyone catering to me, that's what I like," Bonnie joked. "Did I tell you how much I enjoyed the dinner you made? All my favorites... it was like my birthday. Or my last meal," she added more soberly.

Meredith frowned. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay in here? I know we've protected the house as well as we can, but we don't real y know what we're fighting. And just because the last couple of attacks took place in daylight with the whole group around, it doesn't necessarily mean that's the way they have to be. What if whatever this is can get past our defenses?"

"I will be fine," said Bonnie. Intellectually she knew she was in danger, but oddly, she didn't feel scared. She was in a house with people she trusted, all of whom were focused wholeheartedly on her safety. Besides, she had a plan for the night - something she couldn't do if Meredith slept in the room.

"Are you sure?" Meredith fretted.

"Yes," Bonnie said emphatically. "If something bad was going to happen to me tonight, I'd know in advance, right?

Because I'm psychic, and I get warnings about things."

"Hmmm," said Meredith, quirking one eyebrow. For a moment she looked like she was going to argue. Bonnie kept her gaze firm. Finally, Meredith put the tray of cookies on the table by the bed next to the teapot and cup Matt had brought up earlier, pulled the curtains across the window, and looked anxiously around to see what else could be done.

"Okay, then," she said. "I'll be right next door if you need me."

"Thanks, Mer. Good night." As soon as the knob clicked into place, Bonnie lay back in bed and bit into a cookie. Delicious.

A slow smile bloomed on her lips. She was the center of attention now, as if she were a Victorian heroine bravely suffering from some kind of wasting illness. She had been encouraged to pick out her favorite of the boardinghouse's many bedrooms and had chosen this one. It was a charming room with creamy rose-patterned wall paper and a maple sleigh bed.

Matt hadn't left her side al night. Mrs. Flowers had fussed around her, fluffing pillows and offering her herbal tonics, and Alaric had been conscientiously researching protection spells in all the grimoires he could find. Even Celia, who had never been anything but snippy to her about her "visions," promised before she left to let her know as soon as she found something helpful.

Bonnie turned on her side, inhaling the sweet scent of Mrs. Flowers's tea. Here in this cozy room, it was impossible to feel like she needed protection, that she could be in danger this very second.

But was she? What was the time frame after one's name was called? After Celia's name had appeared, she had been attacked within the hour. After Meredith's had appeared, she hadn't been attacked until the next day. Maybe things were getting more spaced out. Maybe Bonnie wasn't going to be in danger until tomorrow or the next day. Or next week. And Damon's name had appeared before Bonnie's did.

Bonnie's skin tingled at the thought of Damon's name in lake weeds. Damon was dead. She had seen him die - and in fact he'd died for her (although everyone else, in their compassion for Elena, seemed to have forgotten that). But the appearance of his name must mean something. And she was determined to figure out just what. She listened. She could hear the sounds of Meredith moving around in the room next door with a steady thumping that suggested she was practicing with her stave, and from down below came the faint voices of Matt, Alaric, and Mrs. Flowers talking in the study.

Bonnie could wait. She poured herself a cup of tea, crunched on another cookie, and wiggled her toes pleasurably under the soft pink sheets. She sort of liked being a supernatural invalid.

An hour later, she had finished her cup of tea and al the cookies, and the house was quieter. It was time. She climbed out of bed, her too-long polka-dotted pajama pants flapping around her ankles, and opened her overnight bag. While Meredith had waited downstairs at her house, she had pried up the loose board by her bed and taken out Traversing the Boundaries Between the Quick and the Dead, a book of matches, a silver knife, and the four candles she needed for the ritual. Now she took them out of her bag and rolled back the rug by the bed so she could crouch on the floor.

Tonight, nothing was going to stop her. She was going to reach Damon. Maybe he could tell her what was going on. Or maybe he was in some sort of danger, in whatever plane dead vampires ended up on, and needed to be warned. In any case, she missed him. Bonnie hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around herself for a moment. Damon's death had hurt her, not that anyone had noticed. Everyone's attention, everyone's sympathies, had been directed toward Elena. As usual.

Bonnie got back to work. Quickly, she lit the first candle and, dripping wax on the floor to anchor it upright, placed it to her north. "Fire in the North, protect me," she whispered. She lit them in widdershins order: black to the north, white to the west, black to the south, white to the east. When the circle of protection was complete around her, she closed her eyes and sat quietly for a few moments, focusing herself, reaching to find the power at her center. When she opened her eyes, she took a deep breath, picked up the silver knife, and quickly, without giving herself time to wimp out, cut a gash across her left palm.

"Ouch," she muttered, and turned her hand over, dripping blood on the floor in front of her. Then she dabbed the fingers of her right hand in the blood and smeared a bit on each candle.

Bonnie's skin tingled painfully as magic rose around her. Her senses honed, and she could see tiny movements in the air, as if flashes of light were appearing and disappearing just out of sight.

"'Through the darkness I call to you,'" she intoned. She didn't need to look at the book; she had memorized this part. "'With my blood I call to you; with fire and silver I call to you. Hear me through the cold beyond the grave. Hear me through the shadows beyond the night. I summon you. I have need of you. Hear me and come!'"

The room went still. It was the still ness of expectation, as if some great creature were holding its breath. Bonnie felt like an entire audience stood around her, suspended in eagerness. The veil between the worlds was about to lift. She had no doubts.

"Damon Salvatore," she said clearly. "Come to me."

Nothing happened.

"Damon Salvatore," Bonnie said again, less confidently, "come to me."

The tension, the feeling of magic in the room was beginning to dissipate, as if her invisible audience were quietly creeping away.

Yet Bonnie knew the spell had worked. She had a funny, blank, cutoff feeling, like when she was talking on the phone and her carrier suddenly dropped the call . Her call had gone through, she was sure of it, but there was no one on the other end. Only what did it mean? Was Damon's soul just... gone?

Suddenly Bonnie heard something. A light breathing, just a smidge out of time with her own.

There was someone right behind her.

The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She hadn't broken the circle of protection. Nothing should be able to cross into that circle, certainly no spirit, but whoever was behind her was inside the circle, so close to Bonnie that they were almost touching her.

Bonnie froze. Then slowly, carefully, she put down her hand and felt for the knife. "Damon?" she whispered uncertainly.

A tinkling laugh sounded behind her, followed by a low voice. "Damon doesn't want to talk to you." The voice was honey-sweet, but somehow also poisonous-sounding, insidious and oddly familiar.

"Why not?" Bonnie asked shakily.

"He doesn't love you," the voice said in a soft, persuasive tone. "He never even noticed you were there, unless there was something he wanted from you. Or perhaps if he wanted to make Elena jealous. You know that."

Bonnie swallowed, too afraid to turn around, too afraid to see who the voice belonged to.

"Damon saw only Elena. Damon loved only Elena. Even now that he's dead and lost to her, he won't hear you calling," the voice lilted. "Nobody loves you, Bonnie. Everyone loves Elena, and that's how she likes it. Elena keeps everyone for herself."

A burning sensation began behind Bonnie's eyes, and a single hot tear ran down her cheek.

"No one will ever love you," the voice whispered. "Not when you're standing next to Elena. Why do you think no one ever saw you as anything but Elena's friend? Al the way through school, she was standing in the sunshine and you were hidden in her shadow. Elena made sure of that. She couldn't bear to share the spotlight."

The words rattled inside Bonnie's mind, and suddenly something inside her shifted. The icy terror she'd felt just moments ago had thawed, making way for roiling anger. The voice was right. Why had she never seen it before?

Elena was Bonnie's friend only because Bonnie was a foil for her own beauty, her own sparkle. She had been using her for years without caring how Bonnie felt at all.

"She cares only about herself," Bonnie said, half sobbing.

"Why can't anyone see that?" She shoved the book away from her and it knocked over the black candle to her north, breaking the circle. The wick smoked and guttered, and all four candles went out.

"Ahhhh," said the voice in satisfaction, and tendrils of dark fog began to creep from the corners of the room. Just as quickly as her fear had left her, it snapped back. Bonnie spun around, holding the knife, ready to face the voice, but there was no one there - just dark, amorphous fog. Hysteria welling within her, she got to her feet and stumbled toward the door. But the fog moved quickly, and soon Bonnie was enveloped in it. Something fell with a clatter. She couldn't see more than a few inches. Bonnie opened her mouth and tried to scream, but the fog flowed over her lips, and her scream turned into a muffled moan. She felt her grip on the knife loosen and it dropped to the floor with a dull clank. Her vision grew blurry. Bonnie tried to lift her foot but could barely move.

Then, blinded by the fog, she lost her balance and pitched forward into darkness.

Chapter 21

When she opened her eyes, Elena found herself in someone's attic. Its wide wooden floorboards and low rafters were thick with dust, and the long room was crowded with objects: a hammock, sleds, skis, boxes with words like Xmas or toddler toys or B's winter clothes scribbled on them in black marker. Oilcloths were draped over larger objects that might be furniture, chairs and tables, by their shapes.

At the far end of the room an old mattress lay on the floor, with an oilcloth crumpled at one end, as if someone sleeping there had been using it as a makeshift blanket and had shoved it off when they rose.

Faint traces of pale light showed around the edges of a small shuttered window at the nearer end of the attic. There was a soft rustling, as if mice were going about their private business behind the shelter of the stored furniture. It was all weirdly familiar.

She looked back toward the far end of the attic and saw, without the faintest sense of surprise, that Damon was now sitting on the old mattress, his long black-clad legs drawn up, his elbows resting on his knees. He was managing to give the appearance of lounging gracefully despite his awkward position.

"The places where we meet are getting less and less elegant," she told him dryly.

Damon laughed and held up his hands in denial. "You pick the locations, princess," he said. "This is your show. I'm just along for the ride." He paused thoughtfully. "Okay, that's not entirely true," he confessed. "But you do pick the locations. Where are we, anyway?"

"You don't know?" Elena said with mock indignation.

"This is a very special place for us, Damon! Full of memories! You brought me here right after I became a vampire, remember?"

He looked around. "Oh, yes. The attic of the house where the teacher was staying. Convenient at the time, but you're right - an elegant setting suits us both much better. May I suggest a nice palace next time?" He patted the mattress next to him.

Elena, crossing the floor toward him, took a moment to marvel at how realistic and detailed her dream was. Each step she took sent tiny puffs of dust up from the floor. There was a slight scent of mildew: She couldn't remember ever having smelled anything in a dream before these visions of Damon.

When she sat down, the mildew smell got stronger. She nestled close to Damon anyway, resting her head on his shoulder, and his leather jacket creaked as he put his arm around her. Elena closed her eyes and sighed. She felt safe and secure within his embrace, feelings she had never associated with Damon, but they were good ones. "I miss you, Damon," she said. "Please come back to me."

Damon leaned his cheek against her head, and she breathed in the smell of him. Leather and soap and the strange but pleasant woodsy scent that was Damon's own.

"I'm right here," he said.

"Not real y," Elena said, and her eyes filled with tears again. She wiped them roughly away with the backs of her hands. "It feels like I've been doing nothing but crying lately," she said. "When I'm here with you I feel safer, though. But it's just a dream. It won't last, this feeling."

Damon stiffened. "Safer?" he said, and there was a strained note in his voice. "You aren't safe when you're not with me? Isn't my little brother looking after you properly?"

"Oh, Damon, you can't imagine," Elena said. "Stefan..."

She took a deep breath, put her head in her hands, and began to sob.

"What is it? What's happened?" asked Damon sharply. When Elena didn't answer, just continued to cry, he took her hands and tugged them gently but firmly away from her face. "Elena," he said. "Look at me. Has something happened to Stefan?"

"No," said Elena through her tears. "Well , yes, sort of... I don't real y know what's happened to him, but he's changed." Damon was looking at her intently, his nightblack eyes fixed on hers, and Elena made an effort to pull herself together. She hated acting like this, so weak and pathetic, sobbing on someone's shoulder instead of cool y formulating a solution to the problem at hand. She didn't want Damon, even a dream Damon who was just part of her subconscious, seeing her like this. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Damon delved into an inner pocket of his leather jacket and handed her a neatly folded white handkerchief. Elena stared at it, then at him, and he shrugged. "I'm an oldfashioned gentleman, sometimes," he said, straight-faced.

"Hundreds of years of linen handkerchiefs. Some habits are hard to break."

Elena blew her nose and wiped her cheeks. She didn't quite know what to do with the soggy handkerchief - it seemed gross to hand it back to Damon - so she just held on to it, twisting it between her hands as she thought.

"Now tell me about what's going on. What's wrong with Stefan? What happened to him?" Damon commanded.

"Well..." Elena said slowly, "I don't know what's wrong with Stefan, and I don't know if anything happened to change him that you don't already know about. Maybe he's just reacting to your... you know." It suddenly seemed weird to refer to Damon's death when he was sitting next to her - impolite somehow - but Damon nodded at her to go on. "It's been hard on him. And he's been even more tense and weird for the last couple of days. Then, earlier this evening, I was visiting my parents in the cemetery..." She told Damon about Stefan's attack on Caleb. "The worst part is that I never suspected this side of Stefan existed," she finished. "I can't think of any real reason he had to attack Caleb - he just claimed that Caleb wanted me, and that he was dangerous, but Caleb hadn't done anything - and Stefan seemed so irrational, and so violent. He was like another person."

Elena's eyes were filling with tears again, and Damon pulled her closer, stroking her hair and gently peppering her face with soft kisses. Elena closed her eyes and gradually relaxed into his arms. Damon held her more firmly, and his kisses got slower and deeper. Then he was cradling her head with his strong, gentle hands and kissing her mouth.

"Oh, Damon," she murmured. This was more vivid than any dream she'd ever had. His lips were soft and warm, with just a little roughness to them, and it felt like she was falling into him. "Wait." He kissed her more insistently but, when she pulled away, let her go.

"Wait," Elena repeated, sitting up straight. Somehow she had lain back until she was half reclining across the musty old mattress with Damon, her legs entangled with his. She moved away from him, toward the edge of the mattress.

"Damon, whatever's going on with Stefan scares me. But that doesn't mean... Damon, I'm still in love with Stefan."

"You love me, too, you know," Damon said lightly. His dark eyes narrowed. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, princess."

"I do love you," Elena said. Her eyes were dry now. She thought she might be al cried out, at least for the moment. Her voice was quite steady as she added, "I'll always love you, I guess. But you're dead." And Stefan is my true love, if I had to choose between you, she thought, but did not say. What was the point? "I'm sorry, Damon," she went on,

"but you're gone. And I'll always love Stefan, but suddenly I'm afraid of him, of what he might do. I don't know what's going to happen to us. I thought things would be easy now that we're home again, but awful things are still happening."

Damon sighed and lay back on the mattress. He stared up at the ceiling in silence for a moment. "Listen," he said final y, lacing his fingers across his chest. "You've always underestimated Stefan's potential for violence."

"He's not violent," Elena said hotly. "He doesn't even drink human blood."

"He doesn't drink human blood because he doesn't want to be violent. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. But Elena" -

Damon reached out and took her hand - "my little brother's got a temper. I know that if anyone does."

Elena shivered. She knew that, back when they were humans, Stefan and Damon had killed each other in a fit of rage over what they thought was Katherine's death. Katherine's blood had been in both their systems, and they had risen again as vampires that night. Their anger and jealousy over a lost love had destroyed them both.

"However," Damon continued, "much as it pains me to admit it, Stefan would never hurt you, and wouldn't hurt anyone else without a real reason. Not without the kind of reason you would approve of. Not these days. He might have a temper, but he's also got a conscience." He smirked a little and added, "An annoying, self-righteous kind of conscience, of course, but it's there. And he loves you, Elena. You're the whole world to him."

"Maybe you're right," Elena said. "I'm scared, though. And I wish you were there with me." She looked at him, as sleepy and confiding as a tired child now. "Damon, I wish you weren't dead. I miss you. Please come back to me."

Damon smiled and kissed her softly. But then he pulled away and Elena could feel the dream changing. She tried to cling to the moment, but it faded and Damon was lost to her again.

"Please be careful, Damon," said Sage, worry lines marring his bronzed forehead.

It wasn't often that the muscular Keeper of the Gates looked worried - or spoke only one language at a time -

but ever since Damon had staggered back from death and out of the ashes, Sage had spoken softly and clearly to him in English, treating the vampire as if he were likely to shatter at any minute.

"I usually am careful," said Damon, leaning against the wall of what they called, for want of a better term, the mystical elevator. "Unless I'm being heart-stoppingly brave, of course." The words were right, but to Damon's own ears, his voice sounded off: hoarse and hesitant.

Sage seemed to hear the wrongness there, too, and his handsome face furrowed in a frown. "You can stay longer if you want."

Damon leaned back against the plain white wall. "I have to go," he said wearily, for what felt like the millionth time.

"She's in danger. But thank you for everything, Sage."

He wouldn't be here now without Sage. The powerful vampire had cleaned Damon up, given him clothes - stylish black clothes in the right size - and fed him blood and rich Black Magic wine until Damon had been hauled back from the edge of death and realized who he was again. But... Damon didn't feel like himself. There was a strange empty ache inside him, as if he'd left something behind, buried deep under the ash.

Sage was still frowning, staring at him with grave concern. Damon pulled himself together and gave Sage a sudden brilliant smile. "Wish me luck," he said. The smile helped: The other vampire's face relaxed.

"Bonne chance, mon ami," he said. "I wish you the very best of luck."

Bilingual again, Damon thought. I must be looking better.

"Fell's Church," he said into the empty air. "The United States, the mortal realm. Somewhere I can hide."

He raised a hand in solemn salute to Sage and pushed the elevator's single button.

Elena woke up in darkness. She ran a quick and automatic mental check: smooth, fabric-softener-scented cotton sheets, dim light from the window past the foot of her bed on the right, the faint sound of Robert snoring in his and Aunt Judith's bedroom at the other end of the hall . Her own old familiar room. Home again.

She heaved a deep sigh. She didn't feel quite as mired in despair as she had when she climbed into bed; things were dark, but she could admit there was a possibility they might someday get better again. But her eyes and throat felt raw from crying. She missed Damon so much. A floorboard creaked. Elena stiffened. She knew that creak. It was the high, complaining whine the floorboard over near her window gave if you stepped right in the middle of it. Someone was in her room.

Elena lay very still , running through the possibilities. Stefan would have announced himself as soon as he heard her sigh. Was it Margaret, quietly wandering in to crawl into bed with Elena?

"Margaret?" she asked softly.

There was no answer. Her ears straining, Elena thought she could make out the sound of slow, heavy breathing. Suddenly the lamp on her desk was switched on, and Elena was temporarily dazzled by the bright light. She could see only the silhouette of a dark figure.

Then her vision cleared. And at the foot of her bed, a half smile on his chiseled face, dark eyes wary, as if he was unsure of his welcome, stood a figure dressed all in black. Damon.

Chapter 22

Elena couldn't breathe. She could vaguely feel her mouth opening and closing, but she found she wasn't able to say anything. Her hands and feet had gone numb. Damon gave her an almost shy smile - which was funny, because Damon didn't do shy - and shrugged. "Well, princess? You wanted me to be here with you, didn't you?"

As if a rubber band holding her back had snapped, Elena leaped out of bed and hurtled into Damon's arms.

"Are you real?" she said, half sobbing. "Is this real?" She kissed him fiercely, and he met her kiss with equal fervor. He felt real, cool skin and leather, the surprising softness of his lips familiar under hers.

"Here I am," he murmured into her hair as he pulled her close to him. "It's real, I promise you."

Elena stepped back and smacked him hard across the face. Damon glared at her and reached up to rub his cheek. "Ouch," he said, and then cracked a narrow, irritating smile. "I can't say that was completely unexpected

- I get slapped by women more often than you'd think possible - but not a nice welcome for the long-lost love, sweetheart."

"How could you?" Elena said, dry-eyed now and furious.

"How could you, Damon? We've all been mourning you. Stefan's falling apart. Bonnie blames herself. I... I... A piece of my heart died. How long have you been watching us? Didn't you care? Was this al some kind of joke to you?

Did you laugh when we cried?"

Damon winced. "Darling," he said. "My princess. Aren't you glad to see me at all ?"

"Of course I am!" said Elena indignantly. She took a breath and cooled down a little. "But, Damon, what were you thinking? We all thought you were dead! Permanently dead, not show-up-in-my-bedroom-a-few-days-laterlooking-perfectly-healthy dead! What's going on? Did the Guardians do this? They told me they couldn't when I begged them to, that death is permanent for a vampire once it happens."

Damon graced her with a genuine, laughing smile. "Well , you of all people ought to know that death isn't always permanent."

Elena shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself.

"They told me that when I came back, it was different," she said in a small voice, her emotions zigzagging all over the place. Because you're in shock, a tiny voice at the back of her head said wisely. "Mystical stuff, you know. My time wasn't up. Hey!" She poked him with one finger, perking up.

"Are you human now? I was human when I returned."

Damon gave a long, theatrical shudder. "God forbid. I had enough of that when that meddling kitsune made me a mortal. Thank heaven - or whoever - I don't have to go looking for an obliging vampire princess to turn me back this time." He grinned slyly at Elena. "I'm as bloodsucking as ever, darling." He eyed her neck. "Speaking of which, I'm rather hungry..."

Elena smacked him again, though more gently this time.

"Knock it off, Damon."

"Can I sit down now?" Damon asked and, when she nodded, settled himself on the foot of her bed and drew her down to sit beside him. Elena looked searchingly into his eyes, then gently traced her hand over his sharp cheekbones, his sculpted mouth, his soft raven hair.

"You were dead, Damon," she said quietly. "I know it. I saw you die."

"Yes," he said, and sighed. "I felt myself die. It was horribly painful and it seemed to both go on forever and be over in a few moments." He shuddered. "There was a little bit left of me even then though" - Elena nodded - "and Stefan told me, told him, to fly away. And you held him -

held me - and told me to close my eyes. And then that last little bit of me was gone, too, and even the pain was gone. And then... I came back." Damon's dark eyes were wide with remembered wonder.

"But how?" asked Elena.

"Remember the star ball?"

"How could I forget? It was the root of all our problems with the kitsune. It was vaporized when I... Oh, Damon, I used my Wings of Destruction on the tree on the Nether World's moon. But they destroyed the kitsune's star ball , too, and I had to go to the Guardians to save Fell's Church. The Wings of Destruction were... like nothing I've ever seen or felt before." She shivered.

"I've seen what you did to that moon," Damon said, smiling slightly. "Would it make you feel better, my lovely angel, if you knew that using your Powers like that and destroying the star ball is what saved me?"

"Don't call me that," said Elena, scowling. The Guardians were the closest thing she had ever seen to real angels, and she did not have fond memories of them. "How did it save you?"

"Do they explain how condensation works in modern schools?" Damon asked with the supercilious expression he always wore when he teasingly criticized her world in comparison to the one he had grown up in. "Is it all sex education, empathy, and second-rate novels now, or do they still tell the children a little about science? I know they've dropped Latin and Greek in favor of theater and consciousness-raising." His voice dripped with contempt. Elena told herself not to rise to his bait. Instead she folded her hands neatly in front of her in her lap. "I think you may be a few decades out-of-date. But please, O wise one," she said, "assume that my education didn't include the connection between condensation and rising from the dead, and enlighten me."

"Nice." Damon smirked. "I like to see a young woman who is respectful of her elders and betters." Elena cocked an eyebrow at him warningly. "Anyway," he continued, "the liquid in the star ball , the pure magic, didn't vanish. It's not that easy to get rid of real y strong magic. As the atmosphere cooled, the magic turned from vapor back into liquid and fell down on me, with the rain of ash. I was soaking in pure Power for hours, gradual y being reborn."

Elena's mouth dropped open. "Those sneaks," she said indignantly. "The Guardians told me you were gone for good, and they took all the treasures we bribed them with, too." She thought briefly of the one last treasure she still had, a water bottle full of the Water of Eternal Youth, hidden high up on the shelf in her closet, and pushed the thought away. She couldn't even acknowledge that hidden treasure to herself for more than a moment, for fear the Guardians would realize she had it, and she couldn't use it... not yet, maybe not ever.

Damon shrugged one shoulder. "They do cheat, sometimes, I hear. But it's more likely this time that they thought they were telling the truth. They don't know everything, even though they like to pretend they do. And kitsune and vampires are both a little outside their area of expertise."

He told her how he had woken, buried deep in ash and mud, clawed his way to the surface, and set off across the desolate moon, not knowing who he was or what had happened to him, and how he had almost died again, and that Sage had saved him.

"And then what?" Elena asked eagerly. "How did you remember everything? How did you get back to Earth?"

"Well," said Damon, turning a slight, fond smile on her,

"that's a funny story." He reached into an inner pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a neatly folded white linen handkerchief. Elena blinked. It looked like the same handkerchief he had given her in her dream. Damon noticed her expression and smiled more widely, as though he knew where she was recognizing it from. He unfolded it and held it out for Elena's inspection.

Cradled inside the handkerchief were two strands of hair. Very familiar hair, Elena realized. She and Bonnie had each cut off a lock of hair and placed them on Damon's body, wanting to leave a part of themselves with him, since they couldn't take his body off the desolate moon with them. Before her now lay a curling red lock and a waving gold one, as bright and shiny as if they had just been cut from freshly washed heads, rather than left on a world with ash falling all around.

Damon gazed at the locks with an expression made up of tenderness and a little awe. Elena thought that she had never seen such an open, almost hopeful look from him.

"The Power from the star ball saved these, too," he said.

"First they were burned almost to ash, but then they regenerated. I held them and studied them and cherished them, and you started to come back to me. Sage had given me my name, and it sounded right to me, but I couldn't recall anything else about myself. But as I held these locks of hair, I gradually remembered who you were, and what we had been through together, and all the things I..." He paused. "What I knew and felt about you, and then I remembered the little redbird, too, and then everything else came flooding back and I was myself again."

He glanced away and lost the sentimental look, smoothing his face into its usual cool expression, as if embarrassed, then folded the locks of hair back inside the handkerchief and tucked it carefully away into his jacket.

"Well ," he said briskly, "then it was just a matter of having Sage lend me some clothes, fill me in on what I had missed, and give me a lift back to Fell's Church. And now here I am."

"I bet he was amazed," said Elena, "and ecstatic." The vampire Keeper of the Gates Between Worlds was a dear friend of Damon's, the only friend of Damon's she knew of, other than herself. Damon's acquaintances tended to be enemies or admirers more often than friends.

"He was quite pleased," Damon admitted.

"So you just now made it back to Earth?"

Damon nodded.

"Well , you've missed a lot here," Elena said, launching into an explanation of the past few days, starting with Celia's name written in blood and ending on Caleb's hospitalization.

"Wow." Damon let out a low whistle. "But I have to assume the problem is more than my little brother acting like a madman with Caleb? Because, you know, that may be simple jealousy. Jealousy has always been Stefan's biggest sin." He said the last with a smug twist to his lips, and Elena elbowed him gently in the ribs.

"Don't put Stefan down," she said reprovingly, and smiled to herself. It felt so good to be scolding Damon again. He really was his own maddening, changeable, wonderful self again. Damon was back.

Wait. Oh, no. "You're in danger, too!" Elena gasped, remembering suddenly that he could still be taken from her.

"Your name appeared earlier, written in the weeds that were holding Meredith underwater. We didn't know what it could mean, because we thought you were dead. But, since you're alive, it seems you're the next target." She paused.

"Unless falling through the surface of the moon was the attack on you."

"Don't worry about me, Elena. You are probably right about the attack on the moon being my 'accident.' But they haven't been very successful attempts, have they?" Damon said thoughtfully. "Almost as if whatever this is isn't trying very hard to kill us. I have a faint inkling about what might be causing this."

"You do?" asked Elena. "Tell me."

Damon shook his head. "It's just a glimmer right now," he said. "Let me get some sort of confirmation."

"But Damon," Elena pleaded, "even a glimmer is much more than the rest of us have been able to come up with. Come with me tomorrow morning and tell everyone about it, and we can all work together."

"Oh, yes," said Damon, with a mock shudder. "You and me and Mutt and the vampire hunter, a cozy group. Plus my pious brother and the little red witch. And the old lady witch and the teacher. No, I'm going to do some more digging on my own. And what's more, Elena," he said, fixing her with a dark stare, "you're not to tell anyone that I'm alive. Especially not Stefan."

"Damon!" Elena protested. "You don't know how absolutely devastated Stefan is, thinking you're dead. We have to let him know you're all right."

Damon smiled wryly. "I think there's probably a part of Stefan that's glad enough to have me out of the picture. He doesn't have any reason to want me here." Elena shook her head in furious denial, but he went on. "It's true. But maybe it's time for things to be different between us. To that end, I have to show him that I can change. In any case, I can't investigate this properly if everyone knows I'm around. Keep quiet for now, Elena." She opened her mouth to object further, but he silenced her with a quick, fierce kiss. When they broke apart, he said, "Promise me for now, and I'll promise you that as soon as I figure this out, you can announce my resurrection to the world."

Elena nodded doubtfully. "If that's what you really want, Damon, and you really think it's necessary," she said. "But I'm not happy about it."

Damon got to his feet and patted her shoulder. "Things are going to be different now," he said. He looked down at her, his face serious. "I'm not the same as I was, Elena."

Elena nodded again, more firmly this time. "I'll keep your secret, Damon," she promised.

Damon gave her a small , tight smile, then took three steps toward her open window. In a moment he was gone, and a large black crow flew out into the night.

Chapter 23

The next morning, Elena felt light and joyful, as if she was hugging an enormous, wonderful secret to herself. Damon was still alive. He had been in her room last night. Right?

She'd been through so much, she could hardly trust it. She climbed out of bed, noting that the clouds outside were still pink and gold from the sunrise, so it must be very early. She careful y moved toward the window. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she went down on her hands and knees and scanned the floor carefully.

There. A tiny piece of dirt on the squeaky board, fallen from someone's shoe. And there, on the windowsill , the long scratches of a bird's claws. That was proof enough for Elena.

She stood up and gave a funny little hop of joy, clapping her hands together sharply once, an unstoppable grin spreading across her face. Damon was alive!

Then she took a deep breath and stood still , willing her face into blankness. If she was really going to keep this secret - and she supposed she would have to; she'd promised, after all  - she was going to have to act like nothing had changed. And really, things were pretty bad still , she told herself. If she thought about the facts, she shouldn't be celebrating just yet.

Damon's return hadn't altered the fact that something dark was after Elena and her friends, or that Stefan was acting irrationally and violently. Her heart sank a little as she thought of Stefan, but still a bubble of happiness went through her. Damon was alive!

And, what was more, he had an idea of what might be going on. It was exactly like Damon at his most infuriating to play this idea close to his chest and not let her know what he was thinking, but still , his glimmer was more hope than anyone else had been able to offer yet. Perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel after all .

A pebble pinged against Elena's window.

When she looked out, she saw Stefan, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, watching her from the lawn. Elena waved to him to stay where he was, threw on jeans, a lacy white tank top, and shoes, and went downstairs to meet him. There was dew on the grass, and Elena's steps left footprints. The cool of dawn was already being replaced by dazzling hot sunshine: It was going to be another sticky Virginia summer day.

As she approached Stefan, Elena slowed down. She didn't quite know what to say to him. Since last night, every time she had thought of Stefan, she had involuntarily pictured Caleb's body flying through the air, the sickening crunch as he hit the marble monument. And she couldn't stop seeing Stefan's savage anger as he had attacked him, although Damon had been sure there must have been a reason. Damon. How would she ever keep Stefan from guessing the truth about his brother?

From the pained look on Stefan's face, it was clear he sensed her apprehension. He held out his hand. "I know you don't understand why I did what I did yesterday," he said,

"but there's something you have to see."

Elena stopped, but she didn't take his outstretched hand. His face fell a little further. "Tel me where we're going," she said.

"I need to show you something that I found," Stefan said patiently. "You'll understand when we get there. Please, Elena. I would never hurt you."

Elena stared at him. She knew without a doubt that it was true that Stefan would never hurt her.

"Okay," she said, making up her mind. "Wait here for a minute. I'll be right back."

She left Stefan on the lawn in the early morning sunshine as she retreated into the quiet dimness of the house. Everyone else was still asleep: A quick glance at the clock in the kitchen told her it was barely six o'clock. She scribbled a note to Aunt Judith, saying she was going to grab breakfast with Stefan and would be back later. Reaching for her purse, she paused and made sure that a dried sprig of vervain was still tucked inside it. Not that she thought Stefan would ever do anything to her... but it never hurt to be prepared.

When she came out of the house, Stefan ushered her into his car parked at the curb, opening the passenger-side door for her and hovering over her as she fastened her seat belt.

"How far away is it?" Elena asked.

"Not far," Stefan said simply. Watching him drive, Elena noticed the worry lines at the corners of his eyes, the unhappy droop of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders, and wished she could put her arms around him and comfort him, raise her hand and wipe those lines by his eyes away. But her memories of the rage on his face the day before held her back. She just couldn't make herself reach out to him.

They hadn't driven for long when Stefan turned onto a culde-sac of expensive houses. Elena leaned forward. They were pulling up to a large white house fronted by a spacious pillared porch. She knew that porch. After junior prom, she and Matt had sat on its steps and watched the sun rise, still wearing their clothes from the dance. She had kicked off her satin sandals and laid her head against Matt's tuxedoed shoulder, listening dreamily to the music and voices coming from the afterprom party in the house behind them. It had been a good night from a different lifetime.

She stared at Stefan accusingly. "This was Tyler Small wood's house, Stefan. I don't know what you're planning, but Caleb's not here. He's in the hospital."

Stefan sighed. "I know he's not here, Elena. His aunt and uncle haven't been here either, not for several days, at least."

"They're out of town," Elena said automatically. "Aunt Judith talked to them yesterday."

"That's good," Stefan said grimly. "Then they're safe." He cast a worried glance up and down the street. "You're sure Caleb won't be out of the hospital today?"

"Yes," said Elena acidly. "He was too injured. They're keeping him for observation."

Elena got out of the car, slammed the door, and marched toward the Small woods' house, not looking back to see whether Stefan was following.

He caught up to her instantly. She cursed his vampiric speed in her head and walked faster.

"Elena," he said, circling in front of her and forcing her to a stop. "Are you angry that I want to keep you safe?"

"No," she said scathingly. "I'm angry that you almost killed Caleb Small wood."

Stefan's face sagged with exhaustion and sorrow, and Elena instantly felt guilty. Whatever was going on with Stefan, he still needed her. But she didn't know how to deal with his violence. She'd fallen in love with Stefan for his poetic soul, for his gentleness. Damon was the dangerous one. Dangerous looks much better on Damon than it does on Stefan, a dry observing voice at the back of her mind said, and Elena couldn't deny the truth of it.

"Just show me what you wanted me to see," she finally said.

Stefan sighed, then turned and led her up the drive of the Small woods' house. She had expected him to go to the Small woods' front door, but he cut around the side of the house and toward a small shed in the backyard.

"The toolshed?" asked Elena quizzical y. "Do we have a lawn mowing emergency we need to address before breakfast?"

Stefan ignored her joke and went to the shed door. Elena noticed that a padlock that had held the double door shut had been wrenched apart, pulled to pieces. A half loop of metal hung uselessly from the shackle. Stefan had clearly broken in earlier.

Elena followed him in. At first, after the dew-bright morning outside, she couldn't see anything in the dimness of the shed. Gradual y, she realized that the walls of the shed were lined with loose papers. Stefan reached out and shoved the doors wider, letting the sunshine stream into the space.

Elena peered at the papers on the walls and then stepped back with a sharp gasp: The first thing she had been able to make out was a picture of her own face. She yanked the paper off the wall and looked at it more closely. It was a clipping from the local paper, showing her dressed in a silver gown, dancing in Stefan's arms. The caption under the picture read: "Robert E. Lee High School prom queen Elena Gilbert and prom king Stefan Salvatore."

Prom queen? Despite the seriousness of the situation, her lips curled up in a smile. She really had finished high school in a blaze of glory, hadn't she?

She pulled another clipping from the wall and her face fell . This one showed a coffin carried through the rain by pall bearers, grim-faced mourners standing by. In the crowd, Elena recognized Aunt Judith, Robert, Margaret, Meredith, and Bonnie, lips set, cheeks streaked with tears. The caption here read: "Town mourns local high school student Elena Gilbert."

Elena's fingers tightened unconsciously, crumpling the clipping. She turned to look at Stefan. "This shouldn't be here," she said, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice.

"The Guardians changed the past. There shouldn't be any newspaper articles or anything left."

Stefan stared back at her. "I know," he said. "I've been thinking, and the best guess I can make is that maybe the Guardians just changed people's minds. They wouldn't see any evidence of what we asked the Guardians to erase. They'd just see what supported their new memories, the memories of a normal small town and of a bunch of ordinary teenagers. Just another school year."

Elena brandished the paper. "But then why is this here?"

Stefan dropped his voice. "Maybe it doesn't work on everybody. Caleb's got some notes scribbled in a notebook I found, and it seems from them as though he's remembering two different sets of events. Listen to this."

Stefan scrabbled through the papers littering the floor and pulled out a notebook. "He writes: 'There are girls in town now that I know were dead. There were monsters here. The town was destroyed, and we left before they could get us too. But now I'm back and we never left, even though no one but me remembers. Everything's normal: no monsters, no death.'"

"Hmm." Elena took the notebook from him and scanned through the pages. Caleb had lists there. Vickie Bennett, Caroline, her. All of them. Everyone who was different in this world than in the other one. There were notes about how he remembered them - how he thought Elena was dead and what was going on now. She turned a few pages, and her eyes widened. "Stefan, listen. Tyler told him about us: 'Tyler was afraid of Stefan Salvatore. He thought he killed Mr. Tanner and that there was something else strange about him, something unnatural. And he thought Elena Gilbert and her friends were tangled up in whatever was going on.' And there's an asterisk referring back to Mr. Tanner being dead in one set of memories and alive in the other." Elena quickly scanned a few pages. "It looks like he focused in on us as the cause of the changes. He figured out we were at the center of everything. Because we're the people the most changed - other than the vampire and kitsune victims - and because he knew Tyler was suspicious of us, he's blaming us for Tyler's disappearance."

"Two sets of memories," Stefan repeated, frowning.

"What if Caleb's not the only one remembering both realities? What if supernatural beings, or people aware of the supernatural, weren't affected by the spell?"

Elena froze. "Margaret - I wondered if she remembered something. She seemed so upset when she first saw me. Remember how she was afraid I was going to go away again? Do you think she's remembering me dying along with the memories the Guardians gave her?"

Stefan shook his head. "I don't know, Elena. Do you have any reason to think Margaret is anything other than a perfectly normal little girl? Little kids can be very dramatic without needing a reason. Margaret's got a lot of imagination."

"I don't know," Elena said in frustration. "But if the Guardians just covered over the old memories with new ones, that would explain why my old journal was still hidden in my bedroom just where I left it, and everything that had happened up until I left home written in it. So you think that Caleb suspects something is going on because he is a werewolf after all ?"

"Look," Stefan said, gesturing around the shed. For the first time, Elena took in the whole scene and its implications. Pictures of her. Pictures of Bonnie and Meredith. Even pictures of poor Caroline, ranging from the haughty green-eyed debutante to a feral half monster, heavily pregnant with Tyler's... baby? Pup? Elena realized with a shock that she hadn't thought of Caroline in days. Was Caroline still pregnant? Was she still transforming into a werewolf because she was carrying Tyler's baby? There were, Elena remembered, an awful lot of werewolves in Fell's Church. Powerful, important werewolves, and if that hadn't changed, and if the pack remembered everything, or enough of everything, then they were probably just biding their time.

There were not only clippings but original photographs around the room. She saw a picture taken through the boardinghouse window of herself leaning forward excitedly to talk to Meredith, who was caressing her deadly hunting stave. Based on her outfit, it had been taken right after they picked up Alaric and Celia. Caleb had been not only researching the two sets of memories over the last few months but also spying on Elena and her friends. Then she noticed something else. In the far corner on the floor was a huge bunch of roses. "What... ?" Elena said, reaching for them. And then she saw. A pentagram was drawn around the roses. And encircling the pentagram was a bunch of photographs: herself, Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, Stefan, Damon.

"Those are the same kinds of roses as the one Caleb gave you, aren't they?" Stefan asked softly. Elena nodded. They were perfect, delicate blooms in a dark luscious red that made her want to touch them.

"The rose that started it all ," she whispered. "It pricked Bonnie's finger, and her blood spelled Celia's name. It must have come from here."

"Caleb isn't just a werewolf," Stefan said. "I don't know exactly what he did here, but it looks like pretty dark magic to me." He looked at her pleadingly. "I discovered it all yesterday," he continued. "I had to fight him, Elena. I know I scared you, but I had to protect you - and everyone else - from him."

Elena nodded, too stunned to speak. Now she understood why Stefan had acted the way he had. He thought she was in danger. But still... she couldn't help feeling sick when she remembered the arc of Caleb's body as he was thrown. Caleb might have attacked them with dangerous magic, but his notes sounded confused and frightened. Elena and her friends had changed his world, and now he couldn't tell what was reality.

"We'd better pack up all of this and bring it back to the boardinghouse," she said briskly. "Are there more notebooks?" Stefan nodded. "Then we'd better look through them careful y. If he cast a spell on us - some kind of curse - it could still be active, even though he's confined to the hospital for now. The spell he used might be in one of the notebooks, or at least we might find some kind of clue as to what it is and exactly what it's doing. And, hopefully, how to reverse it."

Stefan was looking a little lost, his green eyes questioning. His arms were held out very slightly, as if he had been expecting her to embrace him and hadn't remembered to put them down when she hadn't. But for some reason she couldn't quite put her finger on, Elena couldn't bring herself to hug him. Instead, she looked away and said, "Do you have any plastic bags or anything in the car we can use to move it all ?"

Chapter 24

Elena hung up her cell phone as they pulled up to the boardinghouse in Stefan's car. "The nurse at the hospital says Caleb's still unconscious," she said.

"Good," said Stefan. She gave him a reproving glance and he stared back at her in exasperation. "If he's unconscious," he explained, "it'll give us more of a chance to figure out what spell he's cast on us."

They'd filled three fat black trash bags with the papers, clippings, and books they'd found in the Small woods' garden shed. Elena had been afraid to disturb the pentagram with the roses and photographs around it on the shed floor, in case that would affect the spell somehow, but she'd taken a couple of pictures of it with her cell phone. Matt came out and picked up one of the bags. "Bringing over some garbage?"

"Something like that," Elena said grimly, and filled him in on what they'd discovered at the Small wood house. Matt grimaced. "Wow. But maybe now we can final y do something about what's been happening."

"How come you're here so early?" Elena asked, following him toward the house. "I thought you weren't coming onto guard duty until ten." Stefan trailed along behind her.

"I spent the night," Matt told her. "After Bonnie's name appeared, I didn't want to let her out of my sight."

"Bonnie's name appeared?" Elena whirled accusingly on Stefan. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Stefan shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't know," he confessed hesitantly.

"Stefan, I told you to protect Meredith and Celia," she snapped. "You were supposed to be here. Even before Bonnie's name showed up, it was Meredith and Celia who were in danger. I was relying on you to watch over them."

Stefan glared back at her. "I'm not your lapdog, Elena," he said quietly. "I saw a mysterious threat that I thought bore investigation. I acted to protect you. And I was right. The danger was more immediate to you than the others. And now we have a chance to piece together the spell ."

Elena blinked at his tone but couldn't deny the truth in his words. "I'm sorry," she said contritely. "You're right. I'm glad we discovered Caleb's shed."

Matt opened the front door. They dumped the bags in the hall and went through to the kitchen, where Mrs. Flowers, Alaric, and Meredith were enjoying a breakfast of croissants, jam, fruit, and sausages.

"Celia's gone," Meredith said to Elena as soon as they entered the room. Her tone was casually informative, but her usually cool gray eyes were twinkling, and Elena shared a secret smile with her friend.

"Where'd she go?" Elena asked, equally casually, reaching for a croissant. It had been a long morning, and she was starving.

"University of Virginia," Alaric answered. "She's hoping to get some leads by doing research on curses and folk magic."

"We might have some more information now," Elena announced around a mouthful of deliciously buttery croissant. She explained what they had found in the shed.

"We brought al the papers and Caleb's notebooks with us. And here's what he'd laid out on the floor." She pulled out her phone, loaded the picture, and handed it to Mrs. Flowers.

"My goodness," said the old woman. "This certainly looks like dark magic. I wonder what that child thought he was doing."

Stefan snorted. "He's no child, Mrs. Flowers. I strongly suspect he's a werewolf as well as a dark magician."

Mrs. Flowers looked at him sternly. "He's found the wrong way of going about looking for his cousin, that's for certain. But this magic looks rather amateurish to me. If it has worked, it will have been more by accident than design."

"If it's worked?" Meredith asked. "I think the evidence suggests that whatever he's done worked."

"Surely it would be too much of a coincidence for Caleb to be trying to cast spells on us and for an unexplained curse to be affecting us as well ," Alaric noted.

"Where's Caleb now?" Matt asked, frowning. "Does he know you found all this? Do we need to track him down and keep an eye on him?"

Stefan crossed his arms. "He's in the hospital."

There was a little pause as the others looked at one another and decided, based on Stefan's stony demeanor, not to delve deeper. Meredith glanced questioningly at Elena, and Elena nodded slightly to say, I'll explain later. She turned to Mrs. Flowers. "Can you tell what spell Caleb was using? What was he trying to do?"

Mrs. Flowers stared thoughtful y at the picture. "It's an interesting question," she said. "Roses are typical y used in love spells, but the pentagram and multiple pictures around it suggest a darker intent here. The roses' unusual crimson color would probably make them more effective. They might be used to evoke other passions as well . My best guess would be that Caleb was trying to control your emotions in some way."

Elena cast a sudden glance at Stefan, taking in his guarded expression and tense shoulders.

"But that's as much as I can tell you for now," Mrs. Flowers continued. "If the rest of you want to look through Caleb's notebooks for clues, Bonnie and I can research the magical properties of roses and what spells they could be used in."

"Where is Bonnie?" Elena asked. Although she'd had the sense that something was missing, she'd only just consciously realized that the petite redhead wasn't among the group in the kitchen.

"Still sleeping," Meredith said. "You know how she loves to sleep in." She grinned. "Bonnie was definitely enjoying being the damsel in peril and having everybody fussing over her last night."

"I thought she was being really brave," Matt said unexpectedly. Elena eyed him. Was he beginning to feel something romantic for Bonnie? They'd be good together, she thought, and was surprised to feel a tiny twinge of possessive anger mixed in with her speculative matchmaking. Matt has always been yours, after all, a hard voice whispered to her.

"I'll go up and wake her," Meredith said cheerful y. "No rest for the witches." She swung to her feet and headed for the stairs, limping only slightly.

"How's your ankle?" Elena asked. "You look a lot better."

"I heal fast," Meredith said. "I guess it's part of the vampire-hunter thing. I didn't need the cane by the time I went to bed last night, and this morning it feels almost back to normal."

"Lucky you," said Elena.

"Lucky me," Meredith agreed, grinning at Alaric, who smiled back admiringly. Showing off, she ran lightly up the stairs, leaning only a little on the banister for support. Elena took another croissant and spread jam on it. "The rest of us should start going through all the papers and things we took from Caleb's shed. Alaric, as you're the only one other than Mrs. Flowers and Bonnie who knows much about magic, you can take his notebooks and I'll  - "

She broke off as a scream came from overhead.

"Meredith!" shouted Alaric.

Later, Elena didn't real y remember getting upstairs. There was just a flash of shoving limbs and pandemonium as everyone tried to get up the narrow staircase as quickly as possible. At the door of the little cream-and-rose bedroom at the end of the hall , Meredith stood, white-faced and stricken. She turned large panicked gray eyes toward them and whispered, "Bonnie."

Inside, Bonnie's small figure lay motionless facedown on the floor, one pajamaed arm flung out toward the door. Unlit black and white candles were in a ring behind her, one black candle knocked over. There was a smudge of what looked like mostly dried blood inside the candle ring, and a weathered book lay open beside it.

Elena pushed past Meredith and knelt beside the still figure, feeling at her neck for a pulse. She let out the breath she'd been holding as she felt Bonnie's heartbeat, steady and strong, beneath her fingers.

"Bonnie," she said, shaking her by the shoulder, then gently rolling her over. Bonnie flopped without resistance onto her back. She was breathing regularly, but her eyes stayed closed, her long lashes dark against her freckled cheeks.

"Somebody call an ambulance," Elena said quickly.

"I'll do it," Meredith said, breaking out of her frozen stance.

"We don't need an ambulance," Mrs. Flowers said quietly, gazing down at Bonnie with an expression of sorrow on her face.

"What are you talking about?" Meredith snapped. "She's unconscious! We have to get her help."

Mrs. Flowers's eyes were grave. "The doctors and nurses at the hospital won't be able to help Bonnie," she said. "They might even hurt her by interfering with ineffective medical solutions to a nonmedical problem. Bonnie's not sick; she's under a spell . I can feel the magic thick in the air. The best thing we can do is to make her as comfortable as we can here while we look for a cure."

Matt stepped forward into the room. His face was aghast, but he wasn't looking at Bonnie's motionless form on the floor. He raised one hand and pointed. "Look," he said.

Near the bed, a tray containing a small teapot, a cup, and a plate had been knocked over onto the floor. The cup had smashed and the teapot lay on its side, tea leaves spilling out in a long, dark curve across the floor.

A curve that spelled out a name.

Chapter 25

elena

Matt swung his gaze in horror between Bonnie's prone figure, the name on the floor, and Elena's pale face. After a few shocked minutes, Elena spun and left the room. Stefan and Matt followed her as Meredith and the others moved to Bonnie's side. Out in the hall way, Elena pounced on Stefan. "You were supposed to look after them. If you had been here, Bonnie would have had some protection."

Matt, trailing Stefan out of Bonnie's bedroom, balked. Elena's teeth were bared, her dark blue eyes flashed, and she and Stefan both looked furious.

"It wasn't Stefan's fault, Elena," Matt protested gently.

"Alaric and Mrs. Flowers had set magical protections. Nothing ought to have been able to get in. Even if Stefan had been here, he wouldn't have been in Bonnie's room with her al night."

"He should have been, if that's what it took to protect her," Elena said bitterly. Her face was tight with anger as she looked at Stefan.

Even as Matt stood up for Stefan, he couldn't suppress a glow of satisfaction at seeing trouble between Elena and Stefan at last. It's about time Elena realized Stefan isn't perfect, the worst part of him said gleeful y. Mrs. Flowers and Alaric hurried out of the room, breaking the tension between Elena and Stefan. Mrs. Flowers shook her head. "It seems that Bonnie was very foolishly trying to contact the dead, but I don't see how she could have done this to herself. This must be the result of whatever has been endangering you. Meredith is going to stay by Bonnie's bedside for the time being while we investigate."

Matt glanced at Elena and Stefan. "I thought you said that Caleb was out of the picture."

"I thought he was!" Stefan said as they all headed downstairs. "Maybe this is something he started before we fought."

Alaric frowned. "If that's true and it's still going, Caleb himself might not be able to stop it. Even if he died, that wouldn't interrupt a self-perpetuating curse."

Elena strode out to the hall and ripped into the first of the trash bags, her jaw set. "We need to figure out what he did."

She dug out a stack of notebooks and shoved them into the others' hands. "Look for the actual steps of a spell . If we know how he did it, maybe Alaric or Mrs. Flowers can figure out how to reverse it."

"The spell book Bonnie was using is one of mine," Mrs. Flowers said. "Nothing in it should have had this effect on her, but I'll examine it just in case."

They each took a notebook and a pile of papers and spread out around the kitchen table.

"There are diagrams in mine," Stefan said after a minute.

"There's a pentagram, but I don't think it's the same as the one we saw on the floor."

Alaric took the notebook and peered at it, then shook his head. "I'm not an expert, but that looks like part of a standard protection spell ."

The notebook in front of Matt was mostly scribbled notes. Tanner first death? it asked. Halloween? Elena, Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, Tyler, Stefan all present. He could hear Meredith's feet upstairs, restlessly pacing by Bonnie's bedside, and the words blurred before him. He scrubbed the back of his fist against his eyes before he could embarrass himself by crying. This was useless. And even if there was something helpful in here, he would never recognize it.

"Does it strike you guys as weird," Elena asked, "that Celia was the first one affected by whatever this evil is?

There wasn't anything about her in the shed. And she never met Tyler, let alone Caleb. If Caleb was trying to get revenge on us for Tyler's disappearance, why would he attack Celia first? Or at all , real y."

That was a real y good point, Matt thought, and he was about to say so when he spotted Mrs. Flowers. She was standing stick-straight, staring off past his left ear and nodding slightly. "Do you real y think so?" she said softly.

"Oh, that does make a difference. Yes, I see. Thank you."

By the time she had finished and her eyes snapped back to focus on them, the others had also noticed her one-sided conversation and grown silent, watching her.

"Does your mother know what happened to Bonnie?"

Matt asked her eagerly. He had stayed in Fell's Church fighting the kitsune with Mrs. Flowers when his friends had traveled to the Dark Dimension, and their time as comrades in arms had made him familiar with Mrs. Flowers's casual exchanges with the spirit realm. If Mrs. Flowers's mother had interrupted their conversation, she probably had something useful and important to say.

"Yes," said Mrs. Flowers, smiling at him. "Yes, indeed, Mama was very helpful." Her face grew serious as she glanced around. "Mama was able to sense the thing that took Bonnie's spirit. Once it had entered the house, she could observe it, although she was powerless to fight it herself. She's upset that she wasn't able to save Bonnie. She's quite fond of her."

"Is Bonnie going to be okay?" Matt asked, over the others' questions of, "So what is it?" and "It's a demon or something, then, not a curse?"

Mrs. Flowers looked at Matt first. "We may be able to save Bonnie. We will certainly try. But we will have to defeat the thing that took her. And the rest of you are still very much in danger."

She looked around at them all . "It's a phantom."

There was a little pause.

"What's a phantom?" Elena asked. "Do you mean a ghost?"

"A phantom, of course," Stefan said quietly, shaking his head like he couldn't believe the idea hadn't occurred to him earlier. "There was a town I heard of once back in Italy many years ago, where they said a phantom stalked the streets of Umbria. It wasn't a ghost, but a being created by strong emotions. The story was that a man became so enraged at his unfaithful lover that he killed her and her paramour, and then himself. And these actions released something, a being made out of their emotions. One by one people living nearby went mad. They did terrible things."

Stefan looked shaken to his core.

"Is that what we're facing? Some kind of demon created out of anger that will drive people mad?" Elena turned to Mrs. Flowers imploringly. "Because frankly I think this town has had enough of that."

"It can't happen again," Matt said. He was also looking at Mrs. Flowers. She was the only one who had seen the neardestruction of Fell's Church with him. The others had been there for the beginning, sure, but when things got real y awful, when they were at their worst, the girls and the vampires had been off in the Dark Dimension, fighting their own battles to fix it.

Mrs. Flowers met his eyes and nodded firmly, like she was making a pledge. "It won't," she said. "Stefan, what you're describing probably was a rage phantom, but it sounds like the popular explanation of what was going on wasn't quite accurate. According to Mama, phantoms feed on emotions like vampires do on blood. The stronger an emotion is, the better fed and more active they are. They're attracted to people or communities that already have these strong emotions, and they create almost a feedback loop, encouraging and nurturing thoughts that will make the emotion stronger so that they can continue to feed. They're quite psychically powerful, but they can survive only as long as their victims keep feeding them."

Elena was listening careful y. "But what about Bonnie?"

She looked at Stefan. "In this town in Umbria, did people fall into comas because of the phantom?"

Stefan shook his head. "Not that I ever heard of," he said.

"Maybe that's where Caleb comes in."

"I'll call Celia," said Alaric. "This will help focus her research. If anyone has any material at all on this, it'll be Dr. Beltram."

"Could your mother tell what kind of phantom it was?"

Stefan asked Mrs. Flowers. "If we know what emotion it feeds on, we could cut off its supply."

"She didn't know," she said. "And she doesn't know how to defeat a phantom either. And there's one more thing we should take into consideration: Bonnie's got a lot of innate psychic power of her own. If the phantom has taken her, it's probably tapped into that."

Matt nodded, following her train of thought. "And if that's so," he finished grimly, "then this thing is only going to get stronger and more dangerous."

Chapter 26

The day passed with much research, but with very little in the way of results, which left Elena feeling increasingly concerned for her comatose friend. By the time night fell and Aunt Judith called to wearily inquire whether Elena's family would see her at all that day, they had sorted through the first bag of papers and Alaric had gone over a third or so of what seemed to be the notebook in which Caleb kept the record of his magical experiments, grumbling about Caleb's terrible handwriting.

Elena frowned, flipping through another stack of papers. Looking through the pictures and clippings confirmed that Celia hadn't been among Caleb's planned victims. If the phantom had targeted her first, it must have been because she was rich in whatever emotion this phantom fed off.

"Snippiness," Meredith suggested, but she was careful to say it out of Alaric's hearing.

The clippings and printouts also showed that Caleb was indeed obsessed with Tyler's disappearance, and that he had evidence and memories of two different time lines for the same period - one where Fell 's Church had been falling apart and Elena Gilbert had been dead, and one where everything had been just fine, thanks in the small Virginia town of Fell 's Church, including the continuing reign of the senior class's golden girl, Elena. In addition to Caleb's own double memories, which covered only the summer, Tyler had apparently talked to him over the phone the previous fall and winter about the mysterious events surrounding Mr. Tanner's death and everything that followed. Although it didn't sound from Caleb's notes like Tyler had mentioned his own transformation to werewolf and conspiracy with Klaus, just his growing suspicions of Stefan.

"Tyler." Elena groaned. "Even though he's long gone, he manages to make trouble."

Alaric's examination of the notebook so far had proved that they were right that Caleb was a magic user, and that he was planning to use his magic both to take vengeance against them and to try to locate Tyler. But it hadn't shown how he had summoned the phantom.

And despite Alaric's bringing any likely looking note, incantation, or drawing to Mrs. Flowers for inspection, they had not yet discovered what kind of spell Caleb had been doing, or what purpose the roses served.

Stefan escorted Elena home for dinner, then returned to continue helping the others. He'd wanted to stay with Elena, but she had a feeling her aunt would not appreciate a last minute dinner guest. The second Elena stepped through the door, she could feel Damon's lingering presence and remembered how, just hours ago, they had stood upstairs, holding each other. Al through the meal, while she told Margaret a bedtime story, and then during her last call to Meredith to check on the rest of the group's progress, she'd thought longingly of him, wondering whether she would see him tonight. That in turn set off pangs of guilt related to Stefan and Bonnie. She was being so selfish, keeping Stefan's brother's return from him, and thinking of herself while Bonnie was in danger. The whole cycle was exhausting, but still she couldn't contain her exuberance that Damon was alive. Alone in her room at last, Elena ran a brush through her silky golden hair and pulled on the simple cool nightgown she'd worn the night before. It was hot and humid outside, and through her window she could hear the crickets chirping busily. The stars were shining, and a half-moon floated high over the trees outside. She called good night to Aunt Judith and Robert and climbed into bed, fluffing the pillows around her.

She half expected a long wait. Damon liked to tease, and he liked to make an entrance, so he was quite likely to wait until he thought she would be asleep, and then sweep into her room. But she had barely turned off the light when a piece of darkness seemed to separate itself from the night outside her window. There was the faintest scuff of a footstep on the floor, and then her mattress groaned as Damon settled himself at the foot of her bed.

"Hel o, love," he said softly.

"Hi," she said, smiling at him. His black eyes glittered at her from the shadows, and Elena suddenly felt warm and happy, despite everything.

"What's the latest?" he asked. "I saw a lot of fuss going on at the boardinghouse. Something got your sidekicks in a tizzy?" His tone was casually sarcastic, but his gaze was intense, and Elena knew he had been worried.

"If you let me tell everyone you're alive, you could be with us and then you'd know everything that's going on firsthand," she teased. Then she grew somber. "Damon, we need your help. Something terrible has happened."

She told him about Bonnie, and about what they had discovered in the Small woods' garden shed.

Damon's eyes flamed. "A phantom's got the little redbird?"

"That's what Mrs. Flowers's mother said," Elena answered. "Stefan told us that he'd known of a rage phantom somewhere back in Italy."

Damon made a little pfft! noise. "I remember that. It was amusing at the time, but nothing like what you've been describing. How does this theory of Stefan's explain Bonnie's being taken? Or the appearance of the names when someone is threatened?"

"It's Mrs. Flowers's theory, too," Elena said indignantly.

"Or her mother's, I guess. And it's the only one that makes sense." She could feel Damon stroking her arm with the most featherlight touch, and it felt good. The hairs prickled on the back of her arms, and she shivered with pleasure in spite of herself. Stop it, she thought sternly. This is serious business. She moved her arm out of Damon's reach. He sounded amused and lazy when he next spoke. "Well , I can't blame the old witch and her ghost mother," he said.

"Humans mostly stay in their own dimension; they learn only the tiniest piece of what's happening, even the most gifted of them. But if Stefan behaved like any self-respecting vampire and didn't go around trying to be human all the time, he'd have a little more of a clue. He's barely even traveled to the Dark Dimension except when he was dragged there to sit in a cage or save Bonnie. Maybe if he had, he would understand what was going on and be able to protect his pet humans a little better."

Elena bristled. "Pet humans? I'm one of those pet humans, too."

Damon chuckled, and Elena realized he had said that purposely, to rile her up. "A pet? You, princess? Never. A tiger, maybe. Something wild and dangerous."

Elena rolled her eyes. Then the implication of Damon's words hit her. "Wait, are you saying this isn't a phantom?

And that you know what it actual y is? Is it something that comes from the Dark Dimension?"

Damon shifted closer to her again. "Would you like to know what I know?" he said, his voice like a caress. "There are a lot of things I could tell you."

"Damon," Elena said firmly. "Stop flirting and pay attention. This is important. If you know anything, please tell me. If you don't, please don't play games with me. Bonnie's life is at stake. And we're al in danger. You're in danger, too, Damon: Don't forget, your name's been written, and we don't know for sure that whatever happened on the Dark Moon was the attack on you."

"I'm not too concerned." Damon waved his hand disparagingly. "It would take more than a phantom to hurt me, princess. But, yes, I know a little more about this than Stefan does." He turned her hand over and traced her palm with cool fingers. "It is a phantom," he said. "But it's not the same kind we saw in Italy long ago. Do you remember that Klaus was an Original? He wasn't sired like Katherine or Stefan or I was; he was never human. Vampires like Klaus consider vampires like us who started out as humans to be weak half-breeds. He was much stronger than us and much more difficult to kill . There are different types of phantoms, too. The phantoms who are born of human emotions on Earth are able to intensify and spur on these emotions. They don't have much consciousness of their own, though, and they never get very strong. They're just parasites. If they are cut off from the emotions they need to survive, they fade away pretty quickly."

Elena frowned. "But you think this is another, more powerful kind of phantom? Why? What did Sage tell you?"

Damon tapped her hand with one finger as he counted.

"One: the names. That's beyond the powers of an ordinary phantom. Two: It took Bonnie. A regular phantom wouldn't be able to do that, and wouldn't get anything out of it if it could. An Original phantom, though, can steal her spirit and take it back to the Dark Dimension. It can drain her life force and emotions to make itself stronger."

"Wait," Elena said, alarmed. "Bonnie's back in the Dark Dimension? Anything could be happening to her! She could be enslaved again!" Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she thought of how humans were treated in the Dark Dimension.

Damon squeezed her hand. "No, don't worry about that. She's there only in spirit - the phantom will have her in some kind of holding cell ; it'll want her safe. I think the worst thing that could happen to her is she'll be bored." He frowned. "It'll sap her life force, though, and that'll weaken her eventual y."

"You think that being bored's the worst thing that could happen to her... oh, at least until it drains al her life force?

That's not good enough, Damon. We have to help her."

Elena thought for a moment. "So phantoms live in the Dark Dimension?"

Damon hesitated. "Not in the beginning. The Original phantoms were relegated to the Dark Moon by the Guardians."

"Where you died."

"Yes," Damon said caustically. Then he rubbed the back of her hand in a silent apology for his tone. "Original phantoms are kept inside some kind of prison on the Dark Moon, just itching for a chance to get out. Like genies in a bottle. If something broke the prison wall , their ultimate goal would be to make it to Earth and feed on human emotions. After the World Tree was destroyed, Sage said things changed, which would make sense if an Original phantom managed to escape as things shifted after the destruction."

"Why come all the way to Earth, though?" Elena asked.

"There're al those demons and vampires in the Dark Dimension."

She could see Damon's smile in the shadows. "I guess human emotion is extra-delicious. Like human blood is. And there aren't enough humans in the Dark Dimension to make a real y good meal. There are so many humans on Earth that an Original here can just keep on gorging on emotion and growing ever more powerful."

"So it followed us from the Dark Moon?" Elena asked.

"It must have hitched a ride with you when you came back to Earth. It would have wanted to get as far from its prison as possible, so an opening between dimensions would have been irresistible."

"And it was freed from its prison when I used my Wings of Destruction and blasted the moon?"

Damon shrugged. "That seems to be the most likely explanation."

Elena's heart sank. "So Bonnie's vision was right. I brought this. It's my fault."

He brushed back her hair and kissed her neck. "Don't think of it that way," he said. "How could you have stopped it? You didn't know. And I'm grateful you used the Wings of Destruction: That's what saved me, after all . The important thing now is to fight the phantom. We need to send it back before it gets too powerful. If it gets a real foothold here, it can start influencing more and more people. The whole world could be in danger."

Elena half consciously arched her neck to one side so that Damon could get a better angle, and he gently traced the vein on the side of her neck with his lips for a moment before she realized what they were doing and nudged him away again. "I don't understand, though. Why would it tell us who it's going after next?" she said. "Why does it give us the names?"

"Oh, that's not its own doing," Damon said, and kissed her shoulder. "Even the most powerful phantom has to follow the rules. It's part of the spell the Guardians put on the Original phantoms, when they relegated them to the Dark Moon. A safeguard in case the Originals ever escaped. This way, their prey knows they're coming, and it gives them a fair shot at resisting."

"The Guardians imprisoned it," Elena said. "Would they help us send it back?"

"I don't know," Damon said shortly. "I wouldn't ask them if I could help it, though. I don't trust them, do you?"

Elena thought of the cool efficiency of the Guardians, of the way they had dismissed Damon's death as irrelevant. Of the way they had caused her own parents' death. "No,"

she said, shivering. "Let's leave them out of it if we can."

"We'll defeat it ourselves, Elena," Damon said, and caressed her cheek with his hand.

"Stop it," Elena said. "We have to concentrate."

Damon stopped trying to touch her for a moment and thought. "Tel me about your little friends. Have people been tense? Fighting? Acting out of character?"

"Yes," Elena said immediately. "No one's been acting like themselves. I can't put my finger on it, but something's been wrong since we got back."

Damon nodded. "Since it probably came with you, it makes sense that it would have targeted you and those connected to you as its first victims."

"But how do we stop it?" Elena asked. "What do these stories you've heard about the Original phantoms say about recapturing them once they've escaped from their prison?"

Damon sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little.

"Nothing," he said. "I don't know anything more. I'll have to go back to the Dark Dimension and see what I can find out, or if I can fight the phantom from there."

Elena stiffened. "It's too dangerous, Damon."

Damon chuckled, a dry sound in the darkness, and Elena felt his fingers run through her hair, smoothing the silky strands, then twisting them, tugging them gently. "Not for me," he said. "The Dark Dimension is a great place to be a vampire."

"Except that you died there," Elena reminded him.

"Damon, please. I can't stand to lose you again."

Damon's hand stilled, and then he was kissing her gently, and his other hand came up to touch her cheek. "Elena," he said as he reluctantly broke the kiss. "You won't lose me."

"There has to be another way," she insisted.

"Well , then we'd better find it, and soon," Damon answered grimly. "Otherwise the entire world will be at risk."

Damon was saturated with Elena. Her sweet, rich scent in his nostrils, the throbbing beat of her heart in his ears, the silk of her hair and the satin of her skin against his fingers. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her, to sink his fangs into her and taste the heady nectar of her blood, that vibrant blood that tasted like no one else's.

But she made him go, although he knew she didn't really want to.

She didn't say it was because of his little brother that she pushed him away, but he knew anyway. It was always Stefan.

When he left her, he transformed graceful y into a large black crow again and flew from her bedroom window to the quince tree nearby. There, he folded his wings and shifted from one foot to another, settling in to watch over her. He could sense her through the window, anxious at first, her thoughts churning, but soon her pulse slowed, her breathing deepened, and he knew she was asleep. He would stay and guard her.

There was no question: He had to save her. If Elena wanted a chivalrous knight, someone who would protect her nobly, Damon could do that. Why should that weakling Stefan have al the glory?

But he wasn't sure what came next. Despite Elena's begging him not to go, heading into the Dark Dimension seemed like the logical next step in fighting this phantom. But how to get there? There were no easy paths. He didn't have the time to journey to one of the gates again, nor did he want to leave Elena's side long enough to travel there. And he couldn't expect to find something as useful as a star ball again by chance.

Plus, if he did get there, being in the Dark Dimension would have special dangers for him now. He didn't think the Guardians knew he had come back from the dead, and he didn't know how they would react when they did. He'd rather not find out. The Guardians didn't care for vampires much, and they tended to like things to stay the way they ought to be. Look at how they had stripped Elena's Powers when she came to their attention.

Damon hunched his shoulders and fluffed out his iridescent feathers irritably. There had to be another way. There was the slightest rustle underfoot. No one without the sensitive ears of a vampire would have heard it, it was so cautious, but Damon caught it. He snapped to attention and peered sharply around. No one would get to his princess.

Oh. Damon relaxed again and clicked his beak in vexation. Stefan. The shadowy figure of his little brother stood beneath the tree, head tilted back, gazing in devotion at Elena's darkened window. Of course he was there, standing by to defend her against al the horrors of the night.

And just like that, Damon knew what he had to do: If he wanted to learn more about the phantom, he'd have to give himself over to it.

He closed his eyes, al owing every negative feeling he'd ever had about Stefan to wash over him. How Stefan had always taken everything Damon wanted, had stolen it, if he needed to.

Damn Stefan, Damon thought bitterly. If his brother hadn't come to town earlier than him, Damon would have had a chance to make Elena fall in love with him first, to be the one to reap the utter devotion he saw in her eyes when she looked at Stefan.

Instead, here he was, second-best. He hadn't been enough for Katherine either; she had wanted his brother, too. Elena, tiger to the kitten Katherine had been, would have been the perfect mate for Damon. Beautiful, strong, wily, capable of great love, they could have ruled the night together.

But she had fallen for his lily-livered weakling of a little brother. Damon's claws clenched the branch he sat on.

"Isn't it sad," a quiet voice beside him suggested, "how you try and try, but you're never enough for the women you love?"

A cool tendril of fog touched his wing. Damon straightened and looked around. Dark fog was winding around the quince tree, just at Damon's level. Below, Stefan stood unaware. The fog had come for Damon alone. With a private smile, Damon felt the fog envelop him, and then al was darkness.

Chapter 27

The next morning was another hot one. The air was so thick and humid that just walking down the street felt unpleasantly like getting slapped with a warm, damp washcloth. Even inside the car with the air-conditioning on, Elena could feel her usual y sleek hair frizzing from the humidity.

Stefan had turned up at her house just after breakfast, this time with a list of herbs and magical supplies Mrs. Flowers wanted them to find in town for new protection spells.

As they drove, Elena gazed out the window at the neat white houses and trim green lawns of residential Fell's Church as they gradual y gave way to the brick buildings and tasteful store windows of the shopping district at the center of town.

Stefan parked on the main street, outside a cute little cafe where they had sipped cappuccinos together last fall , shortly after she'd learned what he was. Sitting at one of the tiny tables, Stefan had told her how to make a traditional Italian cappuccino, and that had led to his reminiscing about the great feasts of his youth during the Renaissance: aromatic soups sprinkled with pomegranate seeds; rich roasts basted with rosewater; pastries with elder flowers and chestnuts. Course after course of sweet, rich, heavily spiced foods that a modern Italian would never recognize as part of his country's cuisine.

It had awed Elena when she realized how different the world had been the last time Stefan had eaten human food. He had mentioned in passing that forks had just been coming into fashion when he was young, and that his father had derided them as a foppish fad. Until Katherine had brought a more fashionable and ladylike influence into their home, they had eaten with only spoons and sharp knives for cutting. "It was elegant, though," he'd said, laughing at the expression on her face. "We all had excellent table manners. You'd hardly have noticed."

At the time, she'd thought his differences from the boys she'd known - the scope of all the history he'd witnessed -

was romantic.

Now... well , now she didn't know what she thought.

"It's down here, I think," said Stefan, taking her hand and returning her to the present. "Mrs. Flowers said a New Age store has opened up and that they should have most of the things we need."

The shop was called Spirit and Soul, and it was tiny but vibrant, cluttered with crystals and unicorn figurines, tarot cards and dream catchers. Everything was painted in shades of purple and silver, and silky wall hangings blew in the breeze from a little windowsill air conditioner. The air conditioner wasn't strong enough to put much of a dent in the stickiness of today's heat, though, and the birdlike little woman with long curling hair and clattering necklaces who emerged from the back of the shop looked tired and sweaty.

"How can I help you?" she said in a low, musical voice that Elena suspected she adopted to fit in with the atmosphere of the store.

Stefan pulled out the scrap of paper covered in Mrs. Flowers's tangled handwriting and squinted at it. Vampire vision or not, deciphering Mrs. Flowers's writing could be a challenge.

Oh, Stefan. He was earnest, and sweet, and noble. His poet's soul shone through those gorgeous green eyes. She couldn't regret loving Stefan. But sometimes she secretly wished that she had found Stefan in a less complicated form, that the soul and the intelligence, the love and the passion, the sophistication and the gentleness had somehow been possible in the form of a real eighteen year-old boy; that he had been what he had pretended to be when she first met him: mysterious, foreign, but human.

"Do you have anything made of hematite?" he asked now. "Jewelry, or maybe knickknacks? And incense with..." He frowned at the paper. "Althea in it? Does althea sound right?"

"Of course!" said the shopkeeper enthusiastically.

"Althea's good for protection and security. And it smells great. The different kinds of incense are over here."

Stefan followed her deeper into the shop, but Elena lingered near the door. She felt exhausted, even though the day had barely begun.

There was a rack of clothing by the front window, and she fiddled distractedly with it, pushing hangers back and forth. There was a wispy pink tunic studded with tiny mirrors, a little hippieish but cute. Bonnie might like this, Elena thought automatically, and then flinched.

Through the window, she glimpsed a face she knew, and turned, the top hanging forgotten in her hand. She searched her mind for the name. Tom Parker, that was it. She'd gone out on a few dates with him junior year, before she and Matt had gotten together. It felt like a lot more than a year and a half ago. Tom had been pleasant enough and handsome enough, a perfectly satisfactory date, but she hadn't felt a spark between them and, as Meredith had said, "practiced catch and release" with him,

"freeing him to swim back into the waters of dating."

He had been crazy about her, though. Even after she set him loose, he'd hung around, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes, pleading with her to take him back.

If things had been different, if she had felt anything for Tom, wouldn't her life be simpler now?

She watched Tom. He was strolling down the street, smiling, hand in hand with Marissa Peterson, the girl he had started dating near the end of last year. Tom was tall , and he bent his shaggy dark head down to hear what Marissa was saying. They grinned at each other, and he lifted his free hand to gently, teasingly tug on her long hair. They looked happy together.

Well , good for them. Easy to be happy when they were uncomplicatedly in love, when there was nothing more difficult in their lives than a summer spent with their friends before heading off to college. Easy to be happy when they couldn't even remember the chaos their town had been in before Elena had saved them. They weren't even grateful. They were too lucky: They knew nothing of the darkness that lurked on the edges of their safe, sunlit lives. Elena's stomach twisted. Vampires, demons, phantoms, star-crossed love. Why did she have to be the one to deal with it all ?

She listened for a moment. Stefan was still consulting with the shopkeeper, and she heard him say worriedly, "Wil rowan twigs have the same effect, though?" and the woman's reassuring murmur. He would be busy for a while longer, then. He was only about a third of the way down the list Mrs. Flowers had given them.

Elena put the shirt back in its place on the rack and walked out of the store.

Careful not to be noticed by the couple across the street, she followed them at a distance, taking a good long look at Marissa. She was skinny, with freckles and a little blob of a nose. Pretty enough, Elena supposed, with long, straight dark hair and a wide mouth, but not especially eyecatching. She'd been nobody much at school, either. Volleyball team, maybe. Yearbook. Passable, but not stellar grades. Friends, but not popular. An occasional date, but not a girl who boys noticed. A part-time job in a store, or maybe the library. Ordinary. Nothing special. So why did ordinary, nothing-special Marissa get to have this uncomplicated, sunlit life, while Elena had been through hell  - literally - to get what Marissa seemed to have with Tom and yet she still didn't get to have it?

A cold breeze touched Elena's skin, and she shivered despite the morning's heat. She looked up.

Dark, cool tendrils of fog were drifting around her, yet the rest of the street was just as sunny as it had been a few minutes before. Elena's heart began to pound hard before her brain even caught up and realized what was happening. Run! something inside her howled, but it was too late. Her limbs were suddenly heavy as lead.

A cool, dry voice spoke close behind her, a voice that sounded eerily like the observational one inside her own head, the one that told her the uncomfortable truths she didn't want to acknowledge. "Why is it," the voice said, "that you can only love monsters?"

Elena couldn't bring herself to turn around.

"Or is it that only monsters can truly love you, Elena?" the voice went on, taking on a softly triumphant tone. "Al those boys in high school, they only wanted you as a trophy. They saw your golden hair and your blue eyes and your perfect face and they thought how fine they would look with you on their arm."

Steeling herself, Elena slowly turned around. There was no one there, but the fog was growing thicker. A woman pushing a stroller brushed past her with a placid glance. Couldn't she see Elena was being wrapped in her own private fog? Elena opened her mouth to cry out, but the words stuck in her throat.

The fog was colder now, and it felt almost solid, like it was holding Elena back. With a great effort of will , she forced herself forward, but could stagger only as far as the bench in front of a nearby store. The voice spoke again, whispering in her ear, gloating. "They never saw you, those boys. Girls like Marissa, like Meredith, can find love and be happy. Only the monsters bother to find the real Elena. Poor, poor Elena, you'll never be normal, will you? Not like other girls." It laughed softly, viciously.

The fog pressed thicker around her. Now Elena couldn't see the rest of the street, or anything beyond the darkness. She tried to get to her feet, to move forward a few steps, to shake off the fog. But she couldn't move. The fog was like a heavy blanket holding her down, but she couldn't touch it, couldn't fight it.

Elena panicked, tried once more to surge to her feet, opened her mouth to call , Stefan! But the fog swirled into her, through her, soaking into her every pore. Unable to fight back or call out, she collapsed.

It was still freezing cold.

"At least I have clothes on this time," Damon muttered, kicking at a piece of charred wood as he trudged across the barren surface of the Dark Moon.

The place was beginning to get to him, he had to admit. He had been wandering this desolate landscape for what felt like days, although the unchanging darkness here made it impossible for him to know for sure how much time had passed.

When he had awakened, Damon had assumed he would find the little redbird next to him, eager for his company and protection. But he'd awoken alone, lying on the ground. No phantom, no grateful girl.

He frowned and poked one tentative foot into a heap of ash that might conceal a body, but was unsurprised to find nothing but mud beneath the ash, smearing more filth onto his once-polished black boots. After he'd arrived here and started searching for Bonnie, he'd expected that at any moment, he might stumble across her unconscious body. He'd had a powerful image of what she would look like, pale and silent in the darkness, long red curls caked with ash. But now he was becoming convinced that, wherever the phantom had taken Bonnie, she wasn't here. He'd come here to be a hero: defeat the phantom, save the girl, and ultimately save his girl. What an idiot, he thought, curling his lip at his own foolishness. The phantom hadn't brought him to wherever it was keeping Bonnie. Alone on this ash heap of the moon, he felt oddly rejected. Didn't it want him?

A sudden powerful wind pushed against him, and Damon staggered backward a few steps before regaining his balance. The wind brought a sound with it: Was that a moan? He altered his course, hunching his shoulders and heading for where he thought the sound had come from. Then the sound came again, a sad, sobbing moan echoing behind him.

He turned back, but his footsteps were closer together and less confident than usual. What if he was wrong and the little witch was hurt and alone somewhere on this godforsaken moon?

He was terribly hungry. He pushed his tongue against his aching canines, and they grew knife-sharp. His mouth was so dry; he imagined the flow of sweet, rich blood, life itself pulsing against his lips. The moaning came once more, from his left this time, and again he swerved toward it. The wind blew against his face, cold and wet with mist. This was all Elena's fault.

He was a monster. He was supposed to be a monster, to take blood unflinchingly, to kill without a second thought or care. But Elena had changed all that. She had made him want to protect her. Then he had started looking out for her friends, and final y even saving her provincial little town, when any self-respecting vampire would have either been long gone when the kitsune came, or enjoyed the devastation with warm blood on his lips.

He'd done al that - he'd changed for her - and she still didn't love him.

Not enough, anyway. When he'd kissed her throat and stroked her hair the other night, who had she been thinking of? That weakling Stefan.

"It's always Stefan, isn't it?" a clear, cool voice said behind him. Damon froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

"Whatever you tried to take from him," the voice continued, "you were just fighting to even the scales, because the fact is that he got everything, and you had nothing at all . You just wanted things to be fair."

Damon shuddered, not turning around. No one had ever understood that. He just wanted things to be fair.

"Your father cared for him much more than he did for you. You've always known that," the voice went on. "You were the oldest, the heir, but Stefan was the one your father loved. And, in romance, you have always been two steps behind Stefan. Katherine already loved him by the time you met her; then the same sad story happened al over again with Elena. They say they love you, these girls of yours, but they have never loved you best, or most, or only, not even when you give them your whole heart."

Damon shuddered again. He felt a tear run down his cheek and, infuriated, wiped it away.

"And you know why that is, don't you, Damon?" the creature went on smoothly. "Stefan. Stefan's always taken everything you've ever wanted. He's gotten the things you wanted before you even saw them, and left nothing for you. Elena doesn't love you. She never has and she never will ."

Something broke inside Damon at the creature's words, and instantly he snapped back to himself. How dare the phantom make him question Elena's love? It was the only true thing he knew.

A cold breeze fluttered Damon's clothing. He couldn't hear the moaning now. And then everything went still .

"I know what you're doing," Damon snarled. "You think you can trick me? Do you suppose you can turn me against Elena?"

A soft, wet footstep in the mud sounded behind him. "Oh, little vampire," the voice said mockingly.

"Oh, little phantom," Damon said back, matching the creature's tone. "You have no idea the mistake you just made." Steeling himself to leap, he whirled around, fangs fully extended. But before he could pounce, cold strong hands seized him by the throat and pulled him into the air.

"I'd also recommend burying pieces of iron around whatever you're trying to protect," the shopkeeper suggested. "Horseshoes are traditional, but anything made of iron, especial y anything round or curved, will do." She'd passed through various stages of disbelief as Stefan had tried to buy up what seemed like every single object, herb, or charm related to protection in the shop, and now had become manically helpful.

"I think I've got everything I need for now," Stefan said politely. "Thank you so much for your help."

Her dimples shone as she rang up his purchases on the shop's old-fashioned metal cash register, and he smiled back. He thought he had managed to decipher every item on Mrs. Flowers's list correctly, and was feeling fairly proud of himself.

Someone opened the door to come in, and a cold breeze whooshed into the shop, setting the magical items and wall hangings flapping.

"Do you feel that?" the shopkeeper asked. "I think a storm's coming." Her hair, caught by the wind, fanned out in the air.

Stefan, about to make a pleasant rejoinder, stared in horror. Her long locks, suspended for a moment, twisted their tendrils into one curling strand that spelled out, clearly and chillingly:

matt

But if the phantom had found a new target, that meant Elena -

Stefan whipped around, looking frantically toward the front of the shop. Elena wasn't there.

"Are you al right?" the shopkeeper asked as Stefan stared wildly around. Ignoring her, he hurried back toward the door of the shop, looking down every aisle, in every nook.

Stefan let his Power spread out, reaching for a trace of Elena's distinctive presence. Nothing. She wasn't in the shop. How could he not have noticed her leaving?

He pressed his fists into his eyes until little stars burst beneath his lids. This was his fault. He hadn't been feeding on human blood, and his powers were sorely diminished. Why had he let himself get so weak? If he had been at full strength, he would have realized immediately that she had gone. It was self-indulgent to give in to his conscience when he had people to protect.

"Are you al right?" the woman asked again. She'd followed him down the aisles of the store, holding out his bag, and was looking at him anxiously.

Stefan took hold of the bag. "The girl I came in with," he said urgently. "Did you see where she went?"

"Oh," she replied, frowning. "She went back outside when we were heading off to look through the incense section."

That long ago. Even the shopkeeper had noticed Elena leaving.

Stefan gave a jerky nod of thanks before striding out into the dazzling sunlight. He looked frantically up and down Main Street.

He felt a wave of relief when he spotted her sitting on a bench outside the drugstore a few doors down. But then he took note of her slumped posture, her beautiful blond head resting limply on one of her shoulders.

Stefan was at her side in a flash, grateful to find her breathing shallow yet steady, her pulse strong. But she was unconscious.

"Elena," he said, gently stroking her cheek. "Elena, wake up. Come back to me." She didn't move. He shook her arm a bit harder. "Elena!" Her body flopped on the bench, but neither her breathing nor the steady beat of her heart changed at all.

Just like Bonnie. The phantom had gotten Elena, and Stefan felt something inside him tear in two. He had failed to protect her, to protect either of them.

Stefan gently slid a hand under Elena's body, cupping her head protectively with his other hand, and pulled her into his arms. He cradled her against him and, channeling what little Power he had left into speed, began to run. Meredith checked her watch for what felt like the hundredth time, wondering why Stefan and Elena weren't back yet.

"I can't read this word at all ," Matt complained. "I swear, I thought my handwriting was bad. It looks like Caleb wrote this with his eyes closed." He had been running his hands through his hair in frustration and it stood up in messy little spikes, and there were faint blue shadows under his eyes. Meredith took a swig of coffee and held out her hand. Matt passed her the notebook he'd been examining. They'd discovered that she was the best at reading Caleb's tiny, angular handwriting. "That's an O, I think," she said. "Is deosil a word?"

"Yes," said Alaric, sitting up a little straighter. "It means clockwise. It represents moving spiritual energy into physical forms. Might be something there. Can I see?"

Meredith handed him the notebook. Her eyes were sore and her muscles stiff from sitting al morning and going through Caleb's notebooks, clippings, and pictures. She rolled her shoulders forward and back, stretching.

"No," said Alaric after a few minutes of reading. "No good. This is just about casting a magic circle."

Meredith was about to speak when Stefan appeared in the doorway, pale and wild-eyed. Elena lay unconscious in his arms. Meredith dropped her coffee cup. "Stefan!" she cried, staring in horror. "What happened?"

"The phantom's trapped her," Stefan said, his voice catching. "I don't know how."

Meredith felt like she was falling. "Oh no, oh no," she heard herself say in a tiny, shocked voice. "Not Elena, too."

Matt stood up, glowering. "Why didn't you stop it?" he asked accusingly.

"We don't have time for this," Stefan said coldly, and strode past them to the stairs, clutching Elena protectively. In silent accord, Matt, Meredith, and Alaric followed him up to the room where Bonnie lay sleeping.

Mrs. Flowers was knitting by her bedside, and her mouth opened into an O of dismay when she saw who Stefan carried. Stefan gently placed Elena on the other side of the double bed by Bonnie's pale and tiny form.

"I'm sorry," Matt said slowly. "I shouldn't have blamed you. But... what happened?"

Stefan just shrugged, looking stricken.

Meredith's heart squeezed in her chest at the sight of her two best friends laid out like rag dolls. They were so still . Even in sleep, Elena had always been more mobile, more expressive than this. Over the course of a thousand sleepovers, ever since they were little, Meredith had seen sleeping Elena smile, roll herself more tightly in the blankets, snuggle her face into the pillows. Now the pinkand-gold-and-cream-colored warmth of Elena seemed faded and cold.

And Bonnie, Bonnie who was so vibrant and quickmoving, she'd hardly ever kept still for more than a moment or two in her whole life. Now she was motionless, frozen, almost colorless except for the dark dots of her freckles against her pale cheeks and the bright expanse of red hair on her pillow. If it weren't for the slight rise and fall of their chests, both girls could have been mannequins.

"I don't know," Stefan said again, the words sounding more panicked this time, and looked up to meet Meredith's eyes. "I don't know what to do."

Meredith cleared her throat. "We called the hospital to check on Caleb while you were gone," she said careful y, knowing what effect her words would have. "He's been released."

Stefan's eyes flashed murderously. "I think," he said, his voice like a knife, "that we should pay Caleb a visit."

Elena was suspended in darkness. She wasn't alarmed, though. It was like floating slowly under warm water, gently bobbing in the current, and a part of her wondered distantly and without fear whether it was possible that she had never come up out of the waterfall basin at Hot Springs. Had she been drifting and dreaming al this time?

Then suddenly she was speeding, bursting upward, and she opened her eyes on dazzling daylight and gulped a long, shaky breath.

Soulful, worried dark brown eyes gazed down into hers from a pale face hovering above her.

"Bonnie?" Elena gasped.

"Elena! Thank God," Bonnie cried, grabbing her by the arms in a viselike grip. "I've been here all by myself for days and days, or what feels like days and days anyway, because the light never changes, so I can't tell by the sun. And there's nothing to do here. I can't figure out how to get out, and there's nothing to eat, although I'm weirdly not hungry, so I guess it doesn't matter. I tried to sleep to pass the time, but I wasn't getting tired, either. And suddenly you were here, and I was so happy to see you, but you wouldn't wake up, and I was getting real y worried. What's going on?"

"I don't know," Elena said groggily. "The last thing I remember is being on a bench. I think I got caught by some kind of mystical fog."

"Me too!" Bonnie exclaimed. "Not the bench part, but the fog part. I was in my room at the boardinghouse, and this weird fog trapped me." She shivered theatrical y. "I couldn't move at all . And I was so cold." Suddenly her eyes widened with guilt. "I was doing a spell when it happened, and something came up behind me and said stuff. Nasty things."

Elena shuddered. "I heard a voice, too."

"Do you think I... set something loose? When I was doing the spell ? I've been worrying that maybe I might have done so accidentally." Bonnie's face was white.

"It wasn't your fault," Elena reassured her. "We think it's the phantom - the thing that's been causing the accidents

- that it stole your spirit so it could use your power for itself. And now it's taken me, I guess."

She quickly told Bonnie about the phantom, then pushed up on her elbows and really looked around for the first time.

"I can't believe we're here again."

"Where?" asked Bonnie anxiously. "Where are we?"

It was midday and a sunlit blue sky stretched brightly overhead. Elena was pretty sure it was always midday here: It certainly had been the last time she'd been here. They were in a wide, long field that seemed to go on forever. As far as Elena could see, there were tall bushes growing - rosebushes with perfect velvety black blooms. Midnight roses. Richly magical roses grown for holding spells only the kitsune could coat onto them. A kitsune had sent Stefan one of these roses once, with a spell to make him human, but Damon had accidental y intercepted it, much to both brothers' dismay.

"We're in the kitsunes' magic rose field, the one that the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures opens into," she told Bonnie.

"Oh," Bonnie said. She thought for a moment and then asked helplessly, "What are we doing here? Is the phantom a kitsune?"

"I don't think so," Elena answered. "Maybe it's just a convenient place to stash us."

Elena took a deep breath. Bonnie was a good person to be with in a crisis. Not good in the way that Meredith was -

Meredith's way was the planning-and-getting-things-done way - but good in that Bonnie looked up at Elena trustingly with big, innocent eyes and asked questions, confident that Elena would know the answers. And Elena would immediately feel competent and protective, as if she could deal with whatever situation they were embroiled in. Like right now. With Bonnie depending on her, Elena's mind was working more clearly than it had for days. Any moment now, she'd come up with a plan to get them out of here. Any moment now, she was sure.

Bonnie's cold, small fingers worked their way into Elena's hand. "Elena, are we dead?" she asked in a tiny, quavering voice.

Were they dead? Elena wondered. She didn't think so. Bonnie had been alive after the phantom took her, but unwakeable. It was more likely their spirits had traveled here on the astral plane and their bodies were back in Fell 's Church.

"Elena?" Bonnie repeated anxiously. "Do you think we're dead?"

Elena opened her mouth to respond when a crackling, stomping noise interrupted her. The rosebushes nearby began to thrash wildly, and there was a great rushing sound that seemed to come from every direction at once. The snapping of branches was deafening, as if something huge was shoving its way through the bracken. Al around them, thorny rosebush branches whipped back and forth, although there was no wind. She yelped as one of the waving branches smacked her across the arm, gashing her skin open.

Bonnie let out a wail, and Elena's heart beat double time in her chest. She whirled around, pushing Bonnie behind her. She balled her hands into fists and crouched, trying to remember what Meredith had taught her about fighting an attacker. But as she looked around, all she could see for miles were roses. Black, perfect roses.

Bonnie gave a small whimper and pressed closer to Elena's back.

Suddenly Elena felt a sharp, aching tug rip through her, as if something were being pulled slowly but firmly out of her torso. She gasped and stumbled, clutching her hands to her stomach. This is it, she thought numbly, feeling as though every bone in her body were being ground to a pulp. I am going to die.

Chapter 28

No one answered the door at the Smallwoods' house. The driveway was empty and the house looked deserted, the shades pulled down.

"Maybe Caleb's not here," Matt said nervously. "Could he have gone somewhere else when he got out of the hospital?"

"I can smell him. I can hear him breathing," Stefan growled. "He's in there, all right. He's hiding out."

Matt had never seen Stefan look so angry. His usual y calm green eyes were bright with rage, and his fangs seemed to be involuntarily extended, little sharp points showing every time he opened his mouth. Stefan caught Matt looking at them and frowned, running his tongue selfconsciously across his canines. Matt glanced at Alaric, who he'd been thinking of as the only other normal person left in their group, but Alaric was watching Stefan with what was clearly fascination rather than alarm. Not entirely normal, then, either, Matt thought.

"We can get in," Meredith said calmly. She looked to Alaric. "Let me know if someone's coming." He nodded and positioned himself to block the view of anyone walking past on the sidewalk. With cool efficiency, Meredith wedged one end of her fighting stave in the crack of the front door and started to pry it open.

The door was made of heavy oak, and clearly had two locks and a chain engaged inside, and it withstood Meredith's leverage against it. Meredith swore, then muttered, "Come on, come on," redoubling her efforts. The locks and chains gave suddenly against her strength, and the door flew open, banging into the wall behind it.

"So much for a quiet entrance," Stefan said. He shifted restlessly on the doorstep as they filed past him.

"You're invited in," Meredith said, but Stefan shook his head.

"I can't," he said. "It only works if you live here."

Meredith's lips tightened, and she turned and ran up the stairs. There was a brief shout of surprise and some muffled thumping. Alaric glanced at Matt nervously, and then up the stairs.

"Should we help her?" he said.

Before Matt could answer - and he was pretty sure Meredith wasn't the one who needed help - she returned, shoving Caleb down the stairs before her, twisting one of his arms tightly behind his back.

"Invite him in," she ordered as Caleb stumbled to the bottom of the stairs. Caleb shook his head, and she yanked his arm up higher so that he yelped in pain.

"I won't," he said stubbornly. "You can't come in."

Meredith pushed him toward Stefan, stopping him just at the threshold of the front door.

"Look at me," Stefan said softly, and Caleb's eyes flew to his. Stefan's pupils widened, swallowing his green irises in black, and Caleb shook his head frantically, but seemed unable to break his gaze.

"Let. Me. In," Stefan ordered.

"Come in, then," said Caleb sullenly. Meredith released him and his eyes cleared. He turned and dashed up the stairs.

Stefan burst through the door like he'd been shot through a gun and then stalked up the stairs. His smooth, stealthy movements reminded Matt of a predator's - of a lion or a shark. Matt shivered. Sometimes he forgot how truly dangerous Stefan was.

"I'd better go with him," Meredith said. "We don't want Stefan doing anything he'd regret." She paused. "Not before we find out what we need to know, anyway. Alaric, you're the one who knows the most about magic, so you come with me. Matt, keep an eye out and warn us if the Small woods pull into the drive." She and Alaric followed Stefan up the stairs.

Matt waited for the screaming to start, but it remained ominously quiet upstairs. Keeping one eye on the driveway through the front windows, Matt prowled through the living room. He and Tyler had been friends once upon a time, or at least had hung out, because they were both first-string on the football team. They'd known each other since middle school.

Tyler drank too much, partied too hard, was gross and sexist toward girls, but there had been something about him that Matt had sometimes enjoyed. It was the way he'd thrown himself into things, whether it was the no-holdsbarred tackle of an opposing team's quarterback or throwing the absolutely craziest party anyone had ever seen. Or the time when they'd been in seventh grade and he'd gotten obsessed with winning at Street Fighter on PlayStation 2. Every day he'd had Matt and the rest of the guys over, al of them spending hours sitting on the floor of Tyler's bedroom, eating chips and talking trash and pounding the buttons of the controller until Tyler had figured out how to win every fight.

Matt heaved a sigh and peered out the front window again.

There was a brief muffled thump from upstairs, and Matt froze. Silence.

As he turned back to pace across the living room again, Matt noticed a particular photo among the neat row of frames on top of the piano. He crossed over and picked it up.

It must have been the football banquet, junior year. In the picture, Matt's arm was around Elena, who he'd been dating then, and she was smiling up at him. Next to them stood Tyler, hand in hand with a girl whose name Matt couldn't remember. Alison, maybe, or Alicia. She'd been older than them, a senior, and had graduated that year and left town. They were all dressed up, he and Tyler in jackets and ties, the girls in party dresses. Elena had worn a white, deceptively simple short dress, and looked so lovely that she'd taken Matt's breath away.

Things had been so easy then. The quarterback and the prettiest girl in school. They'd been the perfect couple. Then Stefan came to town, a cold, mechanical voice whispered to him, and destroyed everything.

Stefan, who had pretended to be Matt's friend. Stefan, who had pretended to be a human being.

Stefan, who had pursued Matt's girlfriend, the only girl Matt had ever really been in love with. Probably the only girl he would ever feel that way about. Sure, they'd broken up just before Elena met Stefan, but Matt might have gotten her back, if not for him.

Matt's mouth twisted, and he threw the photo to the floor. The glass didn't break, and the photo just lay there, Matt and Elena and Tyler and the girl whose name he didn't remember smiling innocently up at the ceiling, unaware of what was heading toward them, of the chaos that would erupt less than a year later. Because of Stefan. Stefan. Matt's face was hot with anger. There was a buzzing in his head. Stefan the traitor. Stefan the monster. Stefan who had stolen Matt's girl.

Matt stepped deliberately onto the picture and ground it beneath his heel. The wooden frame snapped. The feel of the glass shattering under his foot was oddly satisfying. Without looking back, Matt stomped across the living room toward the stairs. It was time for him to deal with the monster who had ruined his life.

"Confess!" Stefan growled, doing his best to compel Caleb. But he was so weak and Caleb kept throwing up mental blocks. No doubt about it - this boy had access to Power.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Caleb said, pressing his back against the wall as if he could tunnel into it. His eyes flicked nervously from Stefan's angry face to Meredith, who was holding her staff balanced between her hands, ready to strike, and back to Stefan. "If you just leave me alone, I won't go to the police. I don't want any trouble."

Caleb looked pale and shorter than Stefan remembered. There were bruises on his face, and one of his arms was in a cast and supported by a sling. Despite everything, Stefan felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at him.

He's not human, he reminded himself.

Although... Caleb didn't seem all that wolfish either, for a werewolf. Shouldn't there be a little more of the animal in him? Stefan hadn't known many werewolves, but Tyler had been all big white teeth and barely repressed aggression. Next to him, Alaric blinked at the injured boy. Cocking his head to one side and examining him, he echoed Stefan's thoughts, asking skeptical y, "Are you sure he's a werewolf?"

"A werewolf?" said Caleb. "Are you al crazy?"

But Stefan was watching Caleb careful y, and he saw a tiny flicker in Caleb's eyes. "You're lying," Stefan said coldly, reaching out with his mind once more, final y finding a crack in Caleb's defenses. "You don't think we're crazy. You're just surprised that we know about you."

Caleb sighed. His face was still white and strained, but a certain falseness went out of it as Stefan spoke. His shoulders slumped and he stepped away from the wall a little, head hanging wearily.

Meredith tensed, ready to spring, as he moved forward. He stopped and held up his hands. "I'm not going to try anything. And I'm not a werewolf. But, yeah, I know Tyler is, and I'm guessing that you know that, too."

"You've got the werewolf gene," Stefan told him. "You could easily be a werewolf, too."

Caleb shrugged and looked Stefan straight in the eye. "I guess. But it didn't happen to me; it happened to Tyler."

"Happened to?" Meredith asked, her voice rising with outrage. "Do you know what Tyler did to become a werewolf?"

Caleb glanced at her warily. "What he did? Tyler didn't do anything. The family curse caught up with him, that's all ."

His face was shadowed and anxious.

Stefan found his tone gentling despite himself. "Caleb, you have to kill someone to become a werewolf, even if you carry the gene. Unless you're bitten by a werewolf yourself, there are certain rituals that have to be performed. Blood rituals. Tyler murdered an innocent girl."

Caleb's knees seemed to give out, and he slid to the floor with a muffled thump. He looked sick. "Tyler wouldn't do that," he said, but his voice was unsteady. "Tyler was like a brother to me after my parents died. He wouldn't kill anyone. I don't believe you."

"He did," Meredith confirmed. "Tyler murdered Sue Carson. We negotiated for her to come back to life, but it doesn't change the fact that he did kill her."

Her voice held the unmistakable ring of truth, and all the fight seemed to go out of Caleb. He sank lower and rested his forehead against his knees. "What do you want from me?"

He looked so thin and rumpled that, despite the urgency of their mission, Stefan was distracted. "Weren't you taller than this?" he asked. "Bigger? More... put together? The last time I saw you, I mean."

Caleb mumbled something into his knees, too muffled and distorted for even a vampire to hear properly. "What?"

Stefan asked.

Caleb looked up, his face smudged with tears. "It was a glamour, okay?" he said bitterly. "I made myself look better because I wanted Elena to want me." Stefan thought of Caleb's glowing, healthy face, his height, his crowning halo of golden curls. No wonder he had seemed suspicious; subconsciously Stefan must have known how unlikely it was that an ordinary human would look that much like an archangel. No wonder he felt so much lighter than I expected when I threw him across the graveyard, Stefan thought.

"So you are a magic user, even if you aren't a werewolf,"

Meredith said swiftly.

Caleb shrugged. "You knew that already," he said. "I saw what you did to my workroom in the shed. What more do you want from me?"

Meredith stepped forward warningly, stave at the ready, her gaze clear and pitiless, and Caleb flinched away from her. "What we want," she said, enunciating every word distinctly, "is for you to tell us how you summoned the phantom, and how we can get rid of it. We want our friends back."

Caleb stared at her. "I swear I don't know what you're talking about."

Stefan prowled toward Caleb on his other side, keeping him off balance so that the boy's eyes flicked nervously back and forth between Stefan and Meredith.

Then Stefan stopped. He could see that Caleb looked genuinely confused. Was it possible that he was telling the truth? Stefan knelt so that he was at eye level with Caleb and tried a softer tone. "Caleb?" he asked, depleting his last remnants of Power to compel the boy to speak. "Can you tell us what kind of magic you did? Something with the roses, right? What was the spell supposed to do?"

Caleb swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I had to find out what happened to Tyler," he said. "So I came here for the summer. No one seemed worried, but I knew Tyler wouldn't just drop out of sight. Tyler had talked about you, all of you, and Elena Gilbert. Tyler hated you, Stefan, and at first he liked Elena, and then he really hated her, too. When I came here, though, everyone knew Elena Gilbert was dead. Her family was still mourning her. And you were gone, Stefan; you'd left town. I tried to put the pieces together about what had happened - there were some pretty strange stories - and then lots of other weird things happened in town. Violence, and girls going crazy, and children attacking their parents. And then, suddenly, it was over; it just stopped, and it was like I was the only one who remembered it happening. But I also remembered just a normal summer. Elena Gilbert had been here the whole time, and no one thought anything of it, because they didn't remember her dying. Only I seemed to have two sets of memories. People who I'd seen get hurt" - he shuddered at the memory - "or even killed were fine again. I felt like I was going crazy."

Caleb pushed his shaggy dark blond hair back out of his face, rubbed his nose, and took a breath. "Whatever was going on, I knew you and Elena were at the center of it. The differences between the memories told me that. And I figured that you must be connected to Tyler's disappearance, too. Either you'd done something to him, or you knew something about what had happened to him. I figured if I could pull you and your friends apart, something would come out. Once you were set against one another, I'd be able to work my way in and find out what was going on. Maybe I could get Elena to fall for me with a glamour, or one of the other girls. I just had to know." He looked from one to another of them. "The rose spell was supposed to make you irrational, turn you against one another."

Alaric frowned. "You mean you didn't summon anything?"

Caleb shook his head. "Look," he said, pulling a thick leather-bound volume from under his bed. "The spell I used is in here. That's all I did, honest."

Alaric took the book and flipped through the pages until he found the right spell . He studied it, his forehead crinkling, and said, "He's telling the truth. There isn't anything about summoning a phantom in this book. And the spell here fits what we saw in Caleb's workshop and what I've been reading in his notebooks. This rose spell is a fairly low-level discord spell ; it would make whatever negative emotions we were feeling - hate, anger, jealousy, fear, sorrow - just a little bit stronger, make us a little more likely to blame one another for anything that went wrong."

"But when combined with the powers of whatever phantom might be hanging around here, the spell would become a feedback loop, just as Mrs. Flowers said could happen, strengthening our emotions and making the phantom more powerful," Stefan said slowly.

"Jealousy," said Meredith thoughtful y. "You know, I hate to admit it, but I was horribly jealous of Celia when she was here." She glanced apologetically at Alaric, who reached out and gently touched her hand.

"She was jealous of you, too," Stefan said matter-offactly. "I could sense it." He sighed. "And I've been feeling jealous as well ."

"So perhaps a jealousy phantom?" Alaric said. "Good, that'll give us more of a basis for researching banishing spells. Although I haven't been feeling jealous at all ."

"Of course not," Meredith said pointedly. "You're the one who's had two girls fighting over you."

Suddenly Stefan felt so exhausted that his legs shook. He needed to feed, immediately. He nodded awkwardly to Caleb. "I'm sorry... for what happened."

Caleb looked up at him. "Please tell me what happened to Tyler," he implored. "I have to know. I'll leave you alone if you just tell me the truth, I promise."

Meredith and Stefan glanced at each other, and Stefan raised his eyebrows slightly. "Tyler was alive when he left town this past winter," Meredith said slowly. "That's all we know about him, I swear."

Caleb stared up at her for a long moment, then nodded.

"Thank you," he said simply.

She nodded back at him crisply, like a general acknowledging the troops, and led the way out of his room. Just then a muffled, cutoff shout came from downstairs, followed by a thud. Stefan and Alaric raced after Meredith down the stairs, almost bumping into her as she pulled to a sudden halt.

"What is it?" Stefan asked. Meredith drew aside. Matt was lying facedown at the foot of the stairs, his arms flung out as though to catch himself. Meredith stepped quickly the rest of the way down the stairs to him and turned him over gently.

His eyes were closed, his face pale. He was breathing, slowly but steadily. Meredith felt his pulse, then shook him gently by the shoulder. "Matt," she called. "Matt!" She looked up at Stefan and Alaric. "Just like the others," she said grimly. "The phantom's got him."

Chapter 29

I will not die - not again, Elena thought furiously as she writhed in pain, the invisible vise clamping down even harder on her.

Bonnie fell to the grass, even paler than before, clutching her stomach in a mirror image of Elena.

It cannot take me!

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the deafening roar ceased and the crushing pain lifted. Elena collapsed to the ground, air whooshing back into her lungs. It's finished grinding bones to make its bread, Elena thought semi-hysterically, and almost giggled. Bonnie gasped loudly, letting out a small sob.

"What was that?" Elena asked her.

Bonnie shook her head. "It felt like something was getting pulled out of us," she said, panting. "I felt it before, too, right before you showed up."

"That pulling feeling." Elena grimaced, her mind whirling.

"I think it's the phantom. Damon says that it wants to drain our power. That must be how it does it."

Bonnie was staring at her, her mouth just a tiny bit open. Her pink tongue darted out and licked her lips. "Damon says?" she said. She frowned anxiously. "Damon's dead, Elena."

"No, he's alive. The star ball brought him back after we'd already left the Dark Moon. I found out after the phantom took you."

Bonnie made a little noise, a sort of eep! that reminded Elena of a bunny, of something soft and small and surprised. Al the blood drained out of her face, leaving her usual y faint freckles vivid spots against the white of her cheeks. She pressed shaking hands to her mouth, staring at Elena with huge dark eyes.

"Listen, Bonnie," Elena said fiercely. "Nobody else knows this yet. Nobody but you and me, Bonnie. Damon wanted to keep it a secret until he could figure out the right way to come back. So we need to keep quiet about it."

Bonnie nodded, still gaping. The color was rushing back into her cheeks, and she looked like she was caught between joy and total confusion.

Glancing over her shoulder, Elena noticed that there was something in the grass at the foot of a rosebush beyond Bonnie, something motionless and white. A chill went through her as she was reminded of Caleb's body at the foot of the monument in the graveyard.

"What's that?" she asked sharply. Bonnie's expression tipped over into confusion. Elena brushed past her and walked toward it, squinting in the sunlight. When she got close enough, Elena saw with amazement that it was Matt, lying still and silent beneath the rosebush. A sprinkle of black petals was scattered across his chest. As she came close to him, Matt's eyes twitched - she could see them moving rapidly back and forth under the lids, as if he was having an intense dream - and then flew open as he took in a long, rattling gulp of air. His pale blue eyes met hers.

"Elena!" He gasped. He hitched himself up onto his elbows and looked past her. "Bonnie! Thank God! Are you okay? Where are we?"

"The phantom caught us, brought us to the Nether World, and is using us to make itself more powerful," Elena said succinctly. "How do you feel?"

"A little startled," Matt joked in a weak voice. He looked around, then licked his lips nervously. "Huh, so this is the Nether World? It's nicer than I'd pictured from your descriptions. Shouldn't the sky be red? And where are all the vampires and demons?" He looked at Elena and Bonnie sternly. "Were you guys telling the truth about everything that happened to you here? Because this place seems pretty nice for a Hel dimension, what with all the roses and everything."

Elena stared at him. It's possible too many weird things have happened to us.

Then she noticed the hint of panic on Matt's face. He wasn't unnaturally blase about what was going on; he was just being brave, whistling to keep up their spirits in this newest danger.

"Wel , we wanted to impress you," she joked back with a tremulous smile, then quickly got down to business. "What was going on when you were back home?" she asked him.

"Um," Matt said, "Stefan and Meredith were questioning Caleb about how he summoned the phantom."

"Caleb's not responsible for the phantom," Elena said firmly. "It followed us home when we were here before. We have to get home right away so we can tell them they're dealing with one of the Original ones. It'll be much more difficult for us to get rid of than an ordinary one."

Matt looked at Bonnie questioningly. "How does she know this?"

"Well ," Bonnie said, with a hint of the glee she always got from gossip, "apparently Damon told her. He's alive and she saw him!"

So much for keeping Damon's secret, Bonnie, Elena thought, rolling her eyes. Still , it didn't real y matter if Matt knew. He wasn't the one Damon was keeping the secret from, and he wasn't likely to be able to tell Stefan anytime soon.

Elena tuned out Matt's exclamations of wonder and Bonnie's explanations as she scanned the area around them. Sunshine. Rosebushes. Rosebushes. Sunshine. Grass. Clear blue sky. Al the same, in every direction. Wherever she looked, velvety black perfect blooms nodded serenely in a clear midday sun. The bushes were al the same, down to the number and positions of the roses on each one and the distances between them. Even the stems of grass were uniform - al stopping at the same height. The sun hadn't moved since she'd arrived.

It all seemed like it should be lovely and relaxing, but after a few minutes the sameness became unnerving.

"There was a gate," she told Bonnie and Matt. "When we were looking into this field from the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures. There was a way in from there, so there must be a way to get out to there. We just have to find it."

They had begun to clamber to their feet when, without warning, the sharp tugging pain struck again. Elena clutched her stomach. Bonnie lost her balance and fell back to a sitting position on the ground, her eyes clenched shut. Matt gave a choked-off exclamation and gasped. "What is that?"

Elena waited for the pain to fade again before she answered him. Her knees were wobbling. She felt dizzy and sick. "Another reason we need to get out of here," she said.

"The phantom's using us to increase its power. I think it needs us here to do that. And if we don't find the gate soon, we might be too weak to make it home."

She looked around again, the uniformity almost dizzying. Each rosebush was centered in a small circular bed of richlooking dark loam. Between these circles, the grass of the field was velvety smooth, like the lawn of an English manor house or a real y good golf course.

"Okay," Elena said, and took a deep, calming breath.

"Let's spread out and look careful y. We'll stay about ten feet apart from one another and go from one end of this rose garden to the other, searching. Look around careful y

- anything that's at al different from the rest of the field could be the clue we need to find the way out."

"We're going to search the whole field?" Bonnie asked, sounding dismayed. "It's huge."

"We'll just do one little bit at a time," Elena said encouragingly.

They started in a spread-out line, gazing intently back and forth, up and down. At first there was only the silence of focused concentration as they searched. There was no sign of a gate. Step by step through the field, nothing changed. Endless rows of identical rosebushes stretched in al directions, spaced about three feet from one another, enough room between them for one person to easily pass. The eternal midday sun beat down uncomfortably on the tops of their heads, and Elena wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. The scent of roses hung heavily in the warm air; at first Elena had found it pleasant, but now it was nauseating, like a too-sweet perfume. The perfect stalks of grass bent under her feet, then sprang up again, uncrushed, as if she had never passed.

"I wish there were a breeze," Bonnie complained. "But I don't think the wind ever blows here."

"This field must come to an end sometime," Elena said desperately. "It can't just go on forever." There was a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, though, that suggested to her that maybe it could go on forever. This wasn't her world, after all . The rules were different here.

"So where's Damon now?" Bonnie asked suddenly. She wasn't looking at Elena. She was keeping up the same steady pace, the same careful, systematic gaze. But there was a note of strain in her voice, and Elena broke her own search to glance at her quickly.

Then one possible answer to Bonnie's question hit Elena and she stopped dead. "That's it!" she said. "Bonnie, Matt, I think Damon might be here. Or not here, not in the rose garden, but somewhere in the Nether World, in the Dark Dimension." They looked at her blankly.

"Damon was going to try to come here to look for the phantom," Elena explained. "He thought it followed us home from here when we came back to our own world, so this is probably where he'd start searching for its physical body. The last time I saw him, he told me that he thought he would be able to fight it better from here, where it came from. If he is here, maybe he can help us get back to Fell 's Church."

Damon, please be here somewhere. Please help us, she begged silently.

Just then, something caught her eye. Ahead of them, between two rosebushes that looked just the same as any other two rosebushes in the garden, there was the slightest shift, the tiniest distortion. It looked like the heat shimmer that would sometimes appear over the highway on the hottest, most still days of summer as the sun's rays bounced off the asphalt.

No asphalt here to radiate back the sun's heat. But something had to be causing that shimmer.

Unless she was imagining it. Were her eyes playing tricks on her, showing her a mirage among the rosebushes?

"Do you see that?" she asked the others. "Over there, just a little to the right?"

They stopped and peered careful y.

"Maybe?" Bonnie said hesitantly.

"I think so," Matt said. "Like hot air rising, right?"

"Right," Elena said. She frowned, estimating the distance. Maybe fifteen feet. "We should take it at a run,"

she said. "In case we have any trouble getting through. There might be some kind of barrier we have to break to get out. I don't think hesitating will help us."

"Let's hold hands," Bonnie suggested nervously. "I don't want to lose you guys."

Elena didn't take her eyes off the shimmer in the air. If she lost it, she'd never find it again, not with the sameness of everything in here. Once they got turned around, they'd never be able to tell this spot from any other. They al three took one another's hands, staring at the small distortion that they hoped was a gate. Bonnie was in the middle and she clutched Elena's left hand with her thin, warm fingers.

"One, two, three, go," Bonnie said, and then they were running. They stumbled over the grass, wove between rosebushes. The space between the bushes was barely wide enough for three to run abreast, and a thorny branch caught in Elena's hair. She couldn't let go of Bonnie and she couldn't stop, so she just yanked her head forward despite the eye-wateringly painful tug on her hair and kept running, leaving a tangle of hair hanging from a bush behind her.

Then they were at the shimmer between the bushes. Close up, it was even harder to see, and Elena would have doubted that they were at the right spot except for the change in the temperature. It might have looked like a heat shimmer from a distance, but it was as cold and bracing as a mountain lake, despite the warm sun right above them.

"Don't stop!" Elena shouted. And they plunged into the coldness.

In an instant, everything went black, as if someone had switched off the sun.

Elena felt herself falling and clung desperately to Bonnie's hand.

Damon! she cried silently. Help me!