The Vampire Diaries #13: Unmasked (The Salvation #3)

Chapter 20

Unlike the neatly maintained, modern part of the graveyard where Elena’s parents lay, the section dating back to the Civil War was overgrown and crumbling. Long creepers draped themselves across worn gray tombstones, and the ground was uneven beneath Elena’s feet. Half-broken weeping saints and angels loomed overhead, and the dark, iron-barred fronts of the mausoleums gave Elena the sense that anyone could be watching them.

“I don’t understand why you think Damon would be here,” she said, stumbling over a broken tombstone hidden in the grass. She grabbed Stefan’s arm to keep from falling.

“This is exactly the place Damon would be,” Stefan said, his gaze moving watchfully from the ruined church to a mausoleum half concealed by overgrown yew trees. “He thinks acting like a creature of the night is funny. He wants death all around him.”

Elena frowned. It didn’t really sound like Damon to her. The Damon she knew liked clean, modern lines. And he loved luxury. He didn’t stay anywhere long, but the houses and apartments she’d seen Damon live in were rich and elegant. He filled them with every possible comfort but almost nothing personal, nothing he wouldn’t be willing to leave behind. He didn’t court the trimmings of death.

Stefan glanced down at her with a slight, bitter smile. “How well do you know my brother really, Elena? You see what he wants you to see.”

Elena shook her head, but didn’t answer. Stefan had a point. If she really had met Damon just a few weeks ago, how well could she have known him?

Elena’s eyes lingered on the ruined church. It was half-collapsed, most of the roof fallen in. Only three of its walls were standing.

Katherine was underneath there, in the old church’s crypt. She might be watching them at this very moment. There was no trace of fog, no cold wind, no blue-eyed white kitten prowling in the dead grass around the church. If Katherine was there, she was lying low, content to watch for now.

When Stefan turned toward the church, Elena nudged him away. “Let’s look in the mausoleums,” she said.

The grim mausoleums made of granite and iron scattered around the old churchyard. Each housed the bones of a family of original settlers of Fell’s Church. They were dark and forbidding now, overgrown with ivy, their flagstone paths pitted by time. One had the Gilbert name, Elena’s father’s family, but she didn’t know much about the people whose bones laid there, except that one had been a young soldier killed in the Civil War.

Elena and Stefan slipped into an easy routine, working their way clockwise from one mausoleum to the next around the churchyard. Elena would stand lookout while Stefan forced each narrow door.

There was no sign of Damon in the Gilbert mausoleum, only three gray stone coffins and a dusty vase, which must have once been used for flowers. The space inside was claustrophobically narrow, its air stale, and Elena was glad to back out again after one quick look.

Surely if Damon were living here, he would have chosen her family’s mausoleum, as some sort of elaborate tease. Elena stumbled as they moved on to the next small tomb, and Stefan steadied her. “Careful,” he said. “The ground’s uneven.”

Elena cast a glance across to the newer part of the graveyard. “I’m more worried about someone catching us vandalizing graves than I am about tripping,” she said.

Stefan cocked his head, sending Power out around the graveyard. “There’s no one here,” he said. He looked drawn and tired. He probably hadn’t fed recently enough to be able to Influence anyone into forgetting about them if they were caught breaking into the tombs.

Elena stood by the next mausoleum and looked up at the ruins of the church as she listened to the grating noise of Stefan forcing the tomb’s door. At least she had the rest of the vervain in her pocket. If Katherine came out of the catacombs, she wouldn’t be able to Influence Elena.

“There,” Stefan said with satisfaction. Elena stopped staring at the church and jostled her way in beside him.

It was as gray and dusty as the others had been, but the tops of the two tombs inside had been swept clean. On one sat a pile of neatly folded dark clothing. Elena rifled through it: all black, all designer, all clearly expensive. Some of them she had seen Damon wearing. The other tomb held a folded blanket and a thin leather bound book.

Elena picked up the book. It was in Italian, and seemed to be a book of verse. “Stefan, what—” she began. A loud groan of rusted metal interrupted her, and, before she could move, the door to the tomb slammed shut. A huge thud followed, something terribly heavy slamming into the outside of the mausoleum. The small building shook, and Elena screamed, a high, thin noise.

Then there was silence. With the door closed, it was pitch-black inside the tomb. For a moment, Elena could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart. From the other side of the tomb, Stefan swore.

“Stefan?” Elena asked, her voice rising.

Starting toward Stefan and the tomb’s door, she banged her elbow hard against something in the dark. “Ouch,” she said, and rubbed at it, tears prickling at the back of her eyes.

“Keep still,” Stefan said. She didn’t even hear him coming toward her, but suddenly he was touching her gently, running his hands over her arm.

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” he told her. “You’ll have a bruise, though.”

“Are we stuck in here?” Elena’s voice wavered, despite herself. She was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of the dead all around her. The tomb she stood beside was full of moldering bones.

There was a short pause, and then Stefan spoke, sounding grimmer than before. “Damon’s shut us in. I tried the door, but I can’t force it. There must be something jammed up against it, holding it closed.”

“Oh.” For the first time, Elena noticed how cold it was inside the mausoleum, the cold of a stone place that never felt the sun. She shivered.

“We’ll find a way out of here,” Stefan said, his voice lightening. “Or someone will come.” Suddenly, his hands were around her waist and he lifted her gently. In a second, she was sitting on the cold top of the tomb, and Stefan was beside her, wrapping his jacket around her shoulders.

For a while, they sat in silence. Stefan was reassuringly solid beside her and, after a while, Elena let herself lean slightly against him.

Who would come for them? It was rare that someone came into this part of the cemetery, even rarer after dark, and night was coming. Elena felt a clutch of panic in her chest, and her breath got shorter. She didn’t want to stay here.

“Stefan,” she said. She turned her head toward his.

“What is it, Elena?”

“There is a way for you to get us out of here.” She brushed her hair away from her neck, dipping her head in a clear invitation.

Stefan’s breath caught and he shifted away, his slight warmth disappearing from her side. When he spoke again, he sounded choked. “I can’t.”

“You can. If you’re going to save us, you need the strength my blood will give you.”

“Elena.” Stefan sounded panicked, and she automatically reached for his hand in the dark to reassure him. “I haven’t fed from a human being for a long time. I tried once, not long ago”—The man under the bridge, Elena’s mind supplied—“and I couldn’t control myself. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Elena told him, hanging onto his cold hand. “I trust you.” He still hesitated, and she added, “It’s the only way out of here, Stefan.”

With a small, soft sigh of surrender, Stefan bent his head to her throat.

It had been so long since she had been with Stefan like this. Elena’s eyes filled with tears of joy and sorrow at the familiar twin pricks of pain as his canines slid beneath her skin. His lips were gentle against her throat, and his pulse was speeding to pound in time with hers.

Elena tried to hold back the memories that were tumbling through her mind: the night she had pledged to be Stefan’s forever—sleek and elegant in his best suit, his eyes wide and wondering, greener than ever—the first night they had kissed, after Homecoming in that other world—the look of helpless desire as he bent his head to hers—the incredulity and horror in his face when she was reborn as a vampire and at first forgot who they were to each other—the pure defeat on his face as he let her claw at him. The life they’d built together. The warmth and comfort she’d found in his arms as he’d held Elena close.

Even though she kept the memories from him, Elena couldn’t help some of her emotions pouring through the careful wall they’d constructed between them. Love and tenderness and regret. Pain and joy. Guilt. Passion.

It was enough that, as he slowly withdrew his canines from her throat, Stefan cupped her face for a moment, his fingers cool against her skin. She could see nothing through the darkness, but Elena thought he was staring into her eyes. “Who are you?” he whispered, just as he had the night of the fire.

“Someone who cares about you,” Elena whispered. Please, she thought desperately, please let me save him.

Stefan’s hand lingered on Elena’s face for a moment, just a gentle brush of skin on skin, and then he was gone.

Over at the door, Elena heard a great, creaking crash, and then light appeared, flooding through the crack as Stefan forced the door open. There was a rustling, the sound of breaking branches, and finally a huge thud.

“You can come out now,” Stefan said, a dark shape against the light of the doorway.

Elena came through, squinting. It was brisk outside, although not with the heavy bone-chilling cold of the tomb, and the sun was setting. It was almost dark, really; it just seemed bright after the pitch blackness.

A huge oak tree lay across the churchyard, its branches brushing the door of the mausoleum where they had been trapped. It had been ripped out of the ground; Elena could see the great pit in the earth left by its roots.

“It was jammed up against the door,” Stefan told her.

Now that Elena’s eyes had adjusted to the evening light, she noticed the long, already healing scrapes on his arms from the tree’s branches. Stefan gazed past her, and Elena turned, following his eyes to the dent in the mausoleum’s stone façade, where the tree had slammed against it.

There was so much rage in the way the tree had been torn out of the earth and thrown against the stone tomb. Elena’s stomach twisted nervously. She might love Damon, but he had no love left for them.

Chapter 21

It was fully dark by the time Elena slipped through her front door. She could feel her whole body relax at being home at last. The tall Victorian house where she’d lived since she was born felt clean and bright and warm, its heavy curtains shutting out the darkness. From the kitchen, she could hear the clatter of pans and smell a chicken roasting.

“Dinner in twenty minutes,” Aunt Judith called cheerfully. Elena called back an acknowledgement, staring at herself in the mirror by the door. She looked tired and disheveled, her hair matted and a streak of dirt across her forehead. There was a purpling bruise on her throat where Stefan had bitten her, twin dots of dried blood in its center, and she pulled her shirt collar up to cover it.

“You’re home!” Margaret thudded down the stairs and leaped toward Elena, catching her around the waist in a bear hug. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Elena said, laughing. “All day long.” She bent to press her cheek against her little sister’s soft hair and breathed in the Play-Doh and baby shampoo scent of her.

Pulling away, Margaret grinned up at her. “Your friend came over looking for you,” she said. “He gave me this.” She pulled a lollipop out of her pocket and waved it in triumph.

Elena examined the candy. It was a pink rose made out of thin slivers of almost-translucent hard candy. “Pretty,” she said. “Matt gave you this?” Matt had a soft spot for Margaret, and he was always bringing her little treats.

“No, your friend Damon gave it to me,” Margaret said, and tried to take the lollipop back.

A wave of panic washed over Elena, and her fingers tightened automatically on the candy. Elena had invited him into her home. How could she have been so stupid?

“Give it,” Margaret said, pulling on the candy.

“No, wait,” Elena said, but Margaret yanked the lollipop out of her hand, pulled it out of the wrapper, and defiantly stuck it into her mouth before Elena could snatch it back.

It was wrapped, Elena reassured herself as she watched her baby sister eat the candy with evident enjoyment. Poison wasn’t really Damon’s style. If he had wanted to hurt Margaret or Aunt Judith, he would have done it more directly. No, this had just been a warning. Damon was letting Elena know that he could get to her family whenever he wanted.

“Listen to me, Margaret,” she said, squatting so that she was eye to eye with her little sister. “Damon’s not my friend, okay? If he comes here again, stay away from him.”

Margaret frowned. “He was really nice,” she said. “I don’t know why you don’t want to be friends with him.”

Was it Margaret saying this, or was it something Damon had told her to say, Elena wondered. What if Damon had used his Power to Influence her little sister? She looked into Margaret’s sky-blue eyes, trying to see if there was anything off about her, any sign that her words were not her own.

The Damon that Elena loved wouldn’t have used his Power on a child, Elena thought. He would have considered it ungentlemanly and beneath him. With a heavy, sick feeling, she admitted to herself that she didn’t know exactly what the Damon of this time was capable of.

“Meggie, can you come put the napkins on the table for me, please?” Aunt Judith called from the kitchen, and Margaret twisted out of Elena’s hands and was gone without a word.

Elena headed up the stairs, her steps slow and heavy. She had to think. There must be some way to get Aunt Judith and Margaret away from here. She couldn’t let them get hurt, and she couldn’t let Damon use them as pawns to hurt Elena.

By the time she reached the top of the stairs, Elena had made up her mind. She went into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Pulling off one of her shoes, she wrapped the towel around it and then opened the hall window. Outside, the branches of the quince tree almost brushed the window frame. It was close enough that someone could conceivably climb inside, although it would be a dangerous stretch.

Bracing herself, she slammed the heel of the shoe against the window’s catch. The towel muffled the sound of the blow, but not as much as Elena had hoped. She paused and listened. Aunt Judith was running water downstairs, and under the noise of the water, Elena could hear both the television and Margaret singing to herself. Trusting in the noise downstairs to cover the thuds, Elena slammed the heel of her shoe against the window catch again and again until it finally bent and twisted, breaking.

With a sharp crack, the pane of glass below the catch shattered, broken glass falling in shards onto the hall carpet. Elena froze. She hadn’t expected that. Still, maybe it made the whole scene more convincing.

Quickly and quietly, Elena picked up a silver candlestick from the windowsill. She took a carved jade box from a little table in the hall and a small marble figure of an angel that her parents had once brought home from Italy from another. Hurrying into her room, she slipped her shoe back on, wrapped the objects in the towel, and shoved the bundled towel deep into her closet.

After one last glance around to make sure everything was concealed, she went back to stand in front of the broken hall window, took a deep breath, and screamed.

There was a sudden, shocked silence downstairs, followed by a flurry of movement. “Elena?” Aunt Judith called worriedly, running up the stairs. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Elena turned to meet her as she reached the top of the stairs. “I think someone broke in,” she said. She was so full of dread that it was easy to infuse the words with fear.

As Elena pointed them out, Aunt Judith examined the broken catch, the smashed windowpane, and the spots where knickknacks were missing from the hall. Looking in her own room and Elena’s, she saw that nothing else seemed to be missing.

“I don’t know,” she said finally, doubtfully. “A branch could have blown against the window and broken it. It seems strange to me that a thief would take just three little objects, and nothing else. All my jewelry’s still here, and I had some money on my dresser that’s completely untouched.”

Elena wanted to scream with frustration. She didn’t have to try hard at all to bring tears to her eyes or a waver to her voice.

“Please, Aunt Judith,” she said. “I really don’t think any of us should sleep here tonight. Can’t you and Margaret go to Robert’s, at least until we can get someone to fix the window? Anyone could come in.”

Aunt Judith hesitated. “What about you, Elena?” she asked. “I’m certainly not going to leave you here all alone.”

“I can go to Meredith’s,” Elena said quickly. “It’s closer to school, and her parents won’t mind.”

Convincing Aunt Judith was agonizing. A hundred times, she wondered if they were just being hysterical and almost changed her mind about leaving the house. Once she had finally agreed to leave the house, she insisted on them all sitting down and eating dinner together.

Elena could barely nibble the juicy roast chicken even though she recognized that it was delicious. Her eyes kept straying to the darkness beyond the dining room windows. Was Damon out there? She could imagine him in his crow form, huddled on a branch and watching her with bright, malicious eyes.

By the time Robert’s gray Volvo turned into the drive, Elena felt like she was almost bursting out of her skin with anxious, restless energy. They had to go. They had to get away, before it was too late.

Grabbing her sister with one hand and both their bags with the other, Elena hustled Margaret out to the car, ignoring her protests, and buckled her securely into her booster seat.

“Do you want me to check the window?” Robert said, politely getting out of the car to take Aunt Judith’s bag and open the passenger’s side door for her.

“No!” said Elena sharply before Aunt Judith could answer. When they both looked at her in surprise, she gave them a small, weak smile. “Sorry. I’m just so nervous. Can’t we get out of here?”

As they pulled out of the driveway, Elena settled watchfully in the backseat next to Margaret, her overnight bag clutched in her lap. She felt sure that nothing would happen to them on the drive over to Meredith’s. And then, after they dropped her off, she could only hope that Damon would lose interest in them. At least he’d never been invited into Robert’s house. Getting Aunt Judith and Margaret as far away from her as she could seemed like the only way to protect them.

“This is the best part,” Bonnie said as she rolled onto her stomach on Meredith’s bed, her eyes fixed on the TV screen a few feet away. “After he kisses her, you know they’re going to get past all the stuff that came between them.”

“I still think she should have ended up with her friend instead,” Meredith said critically from where she leaned against the headboard. “That was the first ending, you know, and the test audiences hated it so much that they reshot it.”

“And rightly so,” Bonnie said. “Bleah.”

Elena laughed and jostled against her. “There’s nothing wrong with him. I think he’s cute.”

“Bleah,” Bonnie said again, wrinkling her nose.

The sick, dread-filled feeling in the pit of Elena’s stomach hadn’t gone away for a moment. But, despite all of that, it was good to be here once more. When Bonnie had heard that Elena was spending the night, she had invited herself over, too. The warm smell of baking cookies rose comfortingly from the kitchen downstairs.

“Hey, would you braid my hair?” Bonnie asked, as the couple on screen finally kissed.

“Sure,” Elena said, and Bonnie wiggled around so that her back was to Elena.

“Do you want a French braid?” Elena asked. Bonnie nodded, and Elena began separating the curling strands of Bonnie’s hair just as the oven timer went off downstairs.

“I’ve got it,” Meredith said, hopping up.

“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Elena told her, letting go of Bonnie’s curls.

“I think I can handle it,” Meredith said wryly.

After a moment of hesitation, Elena took hold of Bonnie’s hair again. This was Meredith’s house, and Damon wasn’t invited in. She would be fine.

“So …” Bonnie said playfully as Meredith left the room. “Who’s the better kisser, Stefan or Damon?”

Elena winced. “It’s not that easy.”

“Easy or not, I bet they’re both pretty good, aren’t they?” Bonnie asked. Elena could hear the cheeky grin in her voice.

Heat flooded Elena’s cheeks. She thought of the nostalgic emotions that had washed through her as Stefan kissed and, darker and more intimate, the way it had felt when Damon had drunk her blood. “Yeah,” she admitted in a tiny voice.

“Uh-huh,” Bonnie said smugly. Then she twisted around to look at Elena, her brown eyes bright with sincerity. “If you say Stefan didn’t set the fire, I believe you, Elena.”

“I know he didn’t,” Elena said.

“Mmm. He’s much too cute to be a psycho.”

Elena laughed despite herself. “I’m not sure that’s the best way to tell.”

She busied herself twining Bonnie’s hair into an elegant braid. “There,” she said, after a few minutes. “Gorgeous.”

Bonnie bounced to her feet. Going to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of Meredith’s closet door, she turned her head from side to side, admiring herself. “Nice. Thank you.”

As she watched Bonnie, Elena became aware of a niggling sense of something not quite right.

“Does it seem to you like Meredith’s taking a really long time?” she asked.

Eyes still on her own reflection, Bonnie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I know, right?” she said. “How long does it take to put some cookies on a plate? I’m starving.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Elena began, and then the door opened and her shoulders sagged with relief. Meredith was back.

“About time,” Bonnie said cheerfully, and grabbed a cookie.

“Careful, they’re hot,” Meredith said, smiling. Then she caught Elena’s eye and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

Elena felt like she was frozen in place. Looped around Meredith’s neck was a deep red scarf that she certainly hadn’t been wearing when she went downstairs.

“Why are you wearing that?” she said, her voice cracking. “Take it off.”

Bonnie and Meredith looked at each other, their eyebrows lifting. “Um … Elena?” Bonnie asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The scarf!” Elena insisted. “Take it off right now!” She should have gone downstairs with Meredith. It had been stupid of her to think they would be safe, just because Damon hadn’t yet been invited into Meredith’s house. Even if he hadn’t had his Power, Damon would have been able to charm and talk his way into almost anywhere. With all the Power at his command, all he would have to do was ask. And Meredith was defenseless: She didn’t even know that Damon was someone to be afraid of.

“I don’t know what your problem is, Elena,” Meredith grumbled, slowly unwrapping the scarf from around her throat. “I was cold, okay? It’s freezing downstairs. And I think this looks nice.”

Elena stared. Unwilling to trust her eyes, she went closer and, ignoring Meredith’s startled objections, brushed the other girl’s hair aside and inspected her neck. It was smooth and unmarked. No vampire had touched her.

“Hey!” Meredith finally said, stepping back and staring at Elena. “Personal space! Please.”

“Sorry, sorry. I thought there was something on your throat.” Elena felt ridiculous.

“Like a mole or something?” Meredith said uneasily, rubbing the side of her neck.

“I don’t know. Like a shadow, I guess.”

Elena felt sick. Damon could get to them easily here if he wanted to. Was she putting Bonnie and Meredith in danger by staying here?

The other girls picked up on Elena’s change in mood, and after only a little while, Bonnie stretched and said, with forced brightness, “Well, I’m wiped out.”

“We should get to bed,” Meredith agreed. “I’ve got a French test tomorrow.”

Bonnie shared Meredith’s double bed, and the loveseat in the corner of the bedroom unfolded into a narrow single bed for Elena. After they had all climbed into bed and Meredith had switched out the light, Elena thought of something.

“Hey,” she called softly across the divide between their beds. “Do you still have the vervain I gave you?”

“The what?” Bonnie asked sleepily.

“The vervain. The plants I gave you after Homecoming. Do you still have them?”

“The weeds?” Bonnie’s voice was puzzled. “I don’t know what happened to them. They probably fell out of my hair. There was a fire going on, remember?”

“Meredith?”

“No,” Meredith said, sounding exasperated. She sat up and turned on the light. “I don’t remember what happened to the dried-out weeds you gave me at Homecoming.”

For a moment, Elena thought of telling them everything. They were her friends. And they were smart and brave; they’d been her allies through thick and thin. If they knew what was going on, they could help her. And they would be better able to protect themselves.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and took a quick breath. But it was that knowledge that had ruined their lives. She couldn’t do that to them, not again.

“I … I’m sorry, you guys,” she said. “I know I’m acting weird. Just promise me you’ll be careful.” She would have to get more vervain and give it to them, hide it in their rooms and backpacks.

There was usually almost no physical resemblance between tiny, pale, redheaded Bonnie and tall, olive-skinned, raven-haired Meredith, but at that moment, the suspicious, exasperated, yet affectionate expressions on their faces were almost identical.

“We promise we’ll be careful,” Meredith said gently, and Bonnie nodded. “But we’re worried about you.”

“I know,” Elena said in a small voice. Silence stretched out between them and finally Meredith turned the light out again.

“We’re here for you,” Bonnie said in the darkness. “When you’re ready.”

“I know,” Elena whispered again.

As she lay in the dark and listened to her friends’ breathing gradually even out into the sounds of sleep, Elena turned and twisted from one side to the other, unable to get comfortable.

In Elena’s own time, Meredith was miserable. She tried to cope, and she had Alaric helping her, and she almost never complained. But that didn’t change the fact that Meredith had become a vampire, the one thing she never wanted to be.

Elena had to keep her out of this. Meredith deserved a chance at a normal life.

Knowing she had made the right decision, Elena finally dozed off into an uneasy sleep. When she woke, sunlight was shining brightly in the windows, and Meredith was standing at the foot of Elena’s bed.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” Meredith said lightly, jingling her car keys. “We’ve got to get to school.”

“Okay, okay,” Elena grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes. “I hardly slept, I couldn’t—” She broke off in dismay, her words drying up.

Around her neck, Meredith was wearing the same deep red scarf she had worn last night. But something had changed while Elena slept. Below the scarf, she could see the edge of a deep purple-blue bruise. Elena knew exactly what it was, she had seen enough of them: a vampire bite.

Damon Influenced her, once we were all asleep, she thought, feeling dazed and nauseous. Nowhere is safe.

Chapter 22

“We have to stop him,” Elena insisted. “He’s hurting the people I care about.” She could hear her own voice rising hysterically, and she took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm down. The seemingly endless school day was finally over, but there were plenty of students still milling around. Enough people at their school already thought Stefan was an arsonist, no need to feed the rumors by making it sound like he was fighting with the queen of the school.

The former queen of the school, Elena amended mentally, noting another pair of eyes sliding over her suspiciously as two girls from her chemistry class walked by, heading between the trailers toward the parking lot. Everyone had noticed how different Elena was this year, and being seen arguing intensely in corners with Stefan was only pounding the nails in the coffin of her popularity.

Elena couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Damon is coming after my friends,” she said to Stefan, gripping his sleeve even more tightly. “It’s all because of me. We have to protect them.”

“I know,” Stefan said. His leaf-green gaze was steady and reassuring. “Come back to the boardinghouse with me. We’ll figure something out.”

On the drive to the boardinghouse, Elena noticed how vividly red and yellow the leaves of the trees at the side of the road were getting. The long winding drive up to Mrs. Flowers’ boardinghouse was lined with graceful birch trees whose golden leaves glowed like candles. Elena shivered. Halloween was coming soon. They were running out of time.

The old redbrick boardinghouse was dark and silent. Stefan unlocked one of the oak double doors and led Elena up the flight of stairs ahead of them. On the second-story landing, Elena turned automatically to the right, putting a hand on the knob of the door to the bedroom there.

Stefan went still as he stared at Elena. “How did you know which way to go?” he asked.

Oops. When Stefan had brought her here after Homecoming, they had gone in to his room via the balcony. Elena had never been up these stairs before. Not in this version of her life, anyway. “Just guessing,” she said tentatively, and stood back to let him pass.

Stefan’s lips thinned suspiciously, but he didn’t say anything else. Elena meekly followed him through the bedroom and stood by as he opened what looked like a closet, revealing the flight of stairs that led up to his room.

Elena and Stefan stepped out of the stairway and into his dimly lit room. Stefan stopped dead, horror on his face. His room was destroyed. The heavy trunks that had stood between the windows were overturned, their lids smashed. Books cascaded from a broken bookcase, their covers dirty and torn as if they’d been stamped on. The blankets that had lain on Stefan’s narrow bed were shredded. A cold breeze blew through the room from a smashed window at the far end.

“My God,” Elena whispered. Damon must have done this.

The heavy mahogany dresser by the window was the only piece of furniture still standing, seemingly undamaged. Centered on its top stood a simple black iron box with a curving lid.

Stefan brushed past Elena and flung open the box. And then he froze, staring down into it.

“Stefan?” asked Elena softly after a moment. He didn’t move or answer, and she wasn’t sure if he had heard her. Stepping up beside him, she looked first at his face. It was even paler than usual, set in grim lines as if carved out of stone. His eyes, dark and stormy, stared unblinkingly down into the iron coffer, and Elena followed his gaze.

The box was empty.

Elena instantly understood. The iron box was where Stefan had kept his most precious things, the objects that recorded all his long, lonely history. His father’s watch, carried by Stefan since the fifteenth century. The ivory dagger he had been given for his thirteenth birthday. Golden coins from his homeland. An agate-and-silver cup his mother, dead at Stefan’s birth, had once treasured. Katherine’s lapis lazuli ring. In a different time, a silk ribbon from Elena’s hair.

All his treasures, gone. Elena looked back up at Stefan, but the words of sympathy she was about to say died on her lips. Stefan’s face was no longer blank and cold. Instead, it was twisted in silent fury, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

He didn’t look human, not anymore.

“I’ll kill him,” Stefan growled, his canines lengthening. “Damon destroys everything. For the fun of it.”

Elena turned on her heel and raced down the stairs. “Mrs. Flowers!” she called as she hit the second floor. “Mrs. Flowers, where are you?” She stopped and listened, frustrated. Despite the many times she’d been in this house, she had never quite gotten a mental map of Mrs. Flowers’ quarters, and the old witch woman wasn’t especially likely to come when she was called.

“What is it, girl?” The voice was cold and clear, and Elena whipped around, her heart pounding. Stefan’s landlady stood at the far end of the hall, a small, stooped figure, all in black.

“Mrs. Flowers,” Elena said desperately, going toward her. “Someone was in Stefan’s room. Did you see anyone?”

Mrs. Flowers was wise, and her magic was incredibly strong. But now the frail old lady looked at her warily, with no sign of recognition, and Elena remembered with dismay that, in this time, they had never met before.

“The message is for Stefan,” Mrs. Flowers said clearly, in a slightly singsong voice, as if she was reciting from memory. Elena’s heart sank further. Damon must have compelled her to let him in and deliver his message.

“I’m here,” Stefan said from behind Elena. “Give me the message.” He looked furious, still, but intensely weary. It was as if all the years, all the centuries, were catching up with him all at once.

“Damon says that you’ve taken something of his, and so he will take everything you have,” Mrs. Flowers said, her face impassive. “Your precious things are his now.”

“I never belonged to him,” Elena said indignantly. “And I don’t belong to Stefan. I’m not a thing.”

But Mrs. Flowers, her message delivered, was already drifting back into her private part of the house, her long black shawl fluttering behind her.

Stefan’s jaw was clenched tight, his fists balled and his green eyes dark. Elena didn’t think she had ever seen him so angry, not in all the years she had known and loved him.

If, as Elena thought, Stefan and Damon carried each other’s humanity … if it was the love between the brothers that was the key to Elena being able to change Damon and save them all …

If all these things were true, Elena couldn’t help feeling like she might have already lost.

Chapter 23

The next day, Elena hurried out of class and was the first one at her lunch table. The fire department had just declared that this wing of the school safe, and this was the first day they could eat in the cafeteria instead of outside. A smell of smoke still lingered here, though, and there were streaky gray stains of smoke on the walls and ceiling.

The morning had passed in a haze as she obediently went through the motions of being a high school student without hearing a word that was said. She thought that she might have taken a test in one of her classes, but she wasn’t sure which class or what the test had asked. She couldn’t think of anything that mattered less at this point in her life.

Maybe, she thought, staring down at her own nervously tapping fingers, her friends would be able to help after all. Elena was still determined not to tell them the truth about what Stefan and Damon were. They had all, Matt and Meredith especially, given up so much in Elena’s real world. But, even without knowing all the facts, perhaps her friends could be her eyes and ears in Fell’s Church. They could help her find Damon.

If she could just speak to Damon face-to-face, maybe Elena could talk some sense into him. She couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t come around. Deep down, Damon loved his brother. Elena was sure of it.

Caroline paused by the table. “All alone, Elena?” she asked, poisonously sweet.

Elena glanced up, and a sarcastic reply died on her lips. Around Caroline’s pretty bronzed throat was wrapped a gauzy green scarf. Below it peeked out the edge of a telltale purpling bruise.

“What happened to your neck, Caroline?” she asked, her mouth dry.

Caroline sneered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s wonderful.” Turning on her heel, she walked away from Elena’s table, her head held high.

Elena pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm her pounding heart. First Meredith, then Caroline. Damon wanted Elena to know that he knew who the people around her were, that he could get to anyone that mattered to her.

“You okay, Elena?” Matt had stopped at her table. He grinned at her, solid and reassuring in his letterman’s jacket.

Elena flinched. Beneath the collar of Matt’s jacket, she could see a bite, angry purple with two darker marks in the center.

“What’s that?” she asked, dazedly.

Matt raised his hand, brushing his fingers lightly across his neck just where the top of his shirt ended. For a moment, his face clouded, faintly puzzled, and then it cleared. “Everything’s wonderful,” he said slowly, then turned his back on Elena and walked away.

The same thing Caroline had said: Everything’s wonderful. Damon had compelled them to say exactly those words and walk away. A hot flush of anger spread through Elena.

“It’s only October, and I’m already so sick of school I could scream,” Bonnie said, clattering her tray down on the table. “When am I really going to use Spanish anyway?”

“When you go to Mexico? Or talk to someone who speaks Spanish?” Meredith suggested dryly. “It might actually be one of the more useful subjects you take.”

Bonnie clicked her tongue irritably as they sat down, but didn’t argue. “Hey, Elena.”

Elena greeted them distractedly. Meredith had another scarf looped around her neck, this one white with threads of sparkling silver woven through it. It covered the bite mark Elena had seen earlier, but she knew it was there.

Bonnie … Bonnie was fine. She was wearing a V-necked sweater, her slender white throat fully visible and completely unmarked. Elena looked carefully at Bonnie’s wrists to see if Damon had fed from her veins there instead, but there was nothing to see but a braided bracelet and a thin gold watch.

“Elena, are you hearing a thing I say?” Meredith asked sharply. As Elena looked up, Meredith’s expression of irritation softened to concern. “What’s wrong?”

Elena straightened up and gave her a reassuring smile. “Nothing. I’m just distracted. What are we talking about?”

“We need to go to the warehouse at the lumberyard and finish planning out the Haunted House this afternoon,” Meredith said patiently. “I know we still have the plans from last year, but this is our senior year. We should make it really special.”

“Doing it there like we’ve always done will make things much easier. It would have been a huge hassle if we had to do it in the gym instead like the school board was talking about,” Bonnie said. “It’s, like, five hundred feet shorter. Yay for the fire, I guess.”

The first time around—when Elena had been chairman of the decorating committee, instead of Meredith—the school board had made them set up the Haunted House in the gym. They’d been worried by the attack on the homeless man under Wickery Bridge and thought everyone would be safer at school instead of at the lumberyard.

It was good that would be changing this time, she thought. If it were in a different place, were things less likely to happen the same way? Maybe.

Meredith pulled out her planning notebook, and she and Bonnie were quickly absorbed in the pictures and sketches from the previous year’s Haunted House. Elena’s eyes wandered back to Bonnie’s unmarked throat.

It just didn’t make sense, she thought. If Damon was being thorough enough to go after everyone important to Elena—and Caroline was important to her, Elena admitted to herself, even if they didn’t like each other—then why hadn’t he fed from Bonnie?

Maybe he just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

“I think we should have druids,” Bonnie was saying.

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea—” Meredith said, and Elena interrupted.

“Bonnie, have you seen Damon lately?” she asked abruptly. “The guy who brought me to school that day?” Why had he not bitten Bonnie?

“The one who saw her kissing Stefan,” Meredith said unhelpfully.

Bonnie flushed, right up to her hairline, and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I meant to tell you,” she blurted. “Only it was really weird, and I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was at the grocery store the other night picking up milk for my mom, and he came up and started talking to me.” Bonnie looked down, pushing her hair shyly behind her ear. “He was looking into my eyes and saying, just, really weird stuff. Like that I wanted to be close to him. I didn’t want to tell you because it felt like he was hitting on me.” She glanced up at Elena, looking guilty. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

“I believe you,” Elena said soothingly, trying to think. Why would Damon have let Bonnie go? It certainly sounded like he had started to compel her; why would he have changed his mind?

Bonnie and Damon had always had a special bond. He called her his redbird, and was protective, treating her almost like a little sister. But, no, that wasn’t true here. Damon didn’t know Bonnie well enough to care about her, not yet.

Elena looked at Bonnie’s white throat again, at her slender wrists, checking once more for bites and bruises she knew she wasn’t going to find.

Bonnie’s wrists … Elena leaned forward, frowning. The narrow woven bracelet around Bonnie’s left wrist was made of thin strips of leather and bits of colored thread and small silver beads. And strands of some kind of plant. Was it vervain?

“Where’d you get that bracelet?” Elena asked her.

Bonnie stretched her left arm out to look at it. “I know, it’s kind of ugly, isn’t it? My grandmother gave it to me this summer, though, and she told me never to take it off. It’s supposed to protect me against all kinds of things.”

“Because she and your cousin and you are all psychic.” Meredith said teasingly.

Bonnie shrugged. “It’s all about the druids. Which is why we should have them in the Haunted House. For one thing, they did human sacrifice, and we could have, like, a standing stone and a big knife … Elena? Where are you going?”

Elena wasn’t listening anymore. Without even thinking about it, she stood up from the table and walked out first the cafeteria doors and then the doors of the school. No one stopped her as she strode between the temporary trailer classrooms and through the parking lot.

She felt hot and angry, fuming as she stomped down the sidewalk away from the school. Damon had attacked Meredith. Matt. Even Caroline. And he’d tried to feed on Bonnie as well.

Bonnie was safe. For now. As long as she didn’t take that bracelet off and Damon didn’t decide that just grabbing her and feeding off her without first compelling her was just as good.

Elena had kissed Stefan once. Once. And her friends had had nothing to do with it.

She was tired of playing games.

When she reached the graveyard, Elena hesitated for a moment, staring through the fence. The day was cloudy, and the cemetery looked gray and gloomy. Beyond the ruined church, she could see the branches of the uprooted tree, pointing skyward.

As she passed through the gate, a cold wind began to blow, whistling in Elena’s ears and whipping her hair against her face. She turned toward the well-kept, modern part of the cemetery with its neat rows of granite and marble tombstones. For this confrontation, Elena instinctively felt that it would be comforting to have her parents nearby.

The cemetery was empty and still. As Elena crossed it, the wind came with her, piles of dry leaves rising up into the air as she passed. She stopped by her parents’ grave and rested a hand on the cool gray granite of their stone, gathering her strength. “Help me, Mom and Dad,” she murmured. Anger was still simmering inside her, black and hot.

Elena spun around, searching between the headstones. She knew he was there, somewhere, watching her. It didn’t matter that the bond between them had been severed, she could feel him.

She gathered her breath and shouted, into the wind. “Damon!”

Nothing. A memory of doing this once before had her turning on the spot, looking over her own shoulder, only to see no one there.

“Damon!” she shouted again. “I know you’re there!”

Icy wind blew straight into Elena’s face, making her flinch. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring across the graveyard at a grove of beech trees, their leaves bright yellow and red against the grayness of the sky. Something dark moved in the shadows between their trunks.

Elena blinked. The blackness was coming closer, its shape resolving into a black-clad figure. Golden leaves blew around him, parting as he stepped forward to the edge of the grove, and his pale features became clearer.

Damon, of course.

He stayed where he was, watching Elena calmly as she hurried toward him. She almost slipped in the grass, catching herself against a tombstone, and heat rose in her cheeks. She didn’t want to seem vulnerable in front of Damon. Whatever game he was playing, she would need all the advantages she could get.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped when she reached him, slightly out of breath.

Damon flashed her a bright, insincere smile. “I came when you called, Princess,” he said. “I could ask you the same thing. Everything’s wonderful.” He hissed the words, his lips curling into a cruel smile, the same words he’d primed Matt and Caroline and probably Meredith with, and her anger flared up, hot inside her. Elena’s hand flew out and she slapped Damon hard across the face.

Her hand stung with the force of the blow, and Damon’s cheek reddened, but he was still smiling. “Don’t push me too hard, Elena,” he said softly. “I’ve been kinder than you deserve.”

“You’ve been feeding on my friends,” she said, her voice shaking.

Damon’s eyes glittered, so black she couldn’t tell the iris from the pupil. “Not just feeding on them, Elena. I’ve got big plans.”

Elena went cold inside. “What do you mean?”

Damon’s smile disappeared. “The way I fell for you so quickly … It made me realize how lonely I must be.”

Elena’s heart thumped hard. Damon didn’t do vulnerable, didn’t admit to having emotions. Could this be a good thing?

But Damon went on, lightly. “And so, I decided what I needed were some protégés.”

“You can’t do that,” Elena said. Damon had never turned anyone into a vampire, never, to her knowledge, even offered to turn anyone except Elena herself. He wasn’t looking for companionship; this was pure spite.

“Oh, I can,” Damon said. “I think Halloween will be an appropriate day to do it, don’t you? It’s a very American holiday, of course, but I’ve always liked costumes. Ghosts and ghasts and all sorts of ghoulies.”

“Damon,” Elena said. “Don’t.”

She could hear the pleading tone in her own voice, and so could Damon. His smile reappeared, flashing sharp and bright and quickly disappearing again.

“They’ll thank me,” he said softly, “when they realize they’ll be young and beautiful forever.” His eyes ran over her, pausing on the bite mark Stefan had left low on her throat. When he spoke again, his voice was laced with bitterness. “I’d invite you to join us, Elena, but you’ll have Stefan for that.”

Elena stepped closer. “I’m not with Stefan,” she said, her words tumbling over one another. “I was never with Stefan, Damon. We kissed once, that’s it, and that was a mistake. The only reason he fed on me was so that we could get out of the tomb you locked us into.”

Damon’s mouth tightened. He looked as disturbingly handsome as ever, but there was something bitter and distrustful in his face. “I’ll see you on Halloween, Elena,” he said, and then he was gone.

Elena stood alone in the cemetery, surrounded by strangers’ graves.

She swallowed once, hard, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes for a moment.

Damon wanted to change Matt, Meredith, and Caroline—and who knew who else—into vampires on Halloween. Elena had to stop him. And she needed to stop him from killing Mr. Tanner that same night. She didn’t know how she was going to do it alone.

Stefan was clever and strong. If he drank her blood, he’d have more Power, maybe enough to stop Damon.

But no. Elena discarded the idea as swiftly as it had come to her. Stefan had been so angry at Damon when he realized Damon had stolen his treasures. All the conflict, all the resentment that had lain between the brothers since the days of Katherine, 500 years before, had simmered behind Stefan’s green eyes, ready to boil over. If she brought him up against Damon now, Stefan might lose his head and attack. And then there was a good chance that Damon might kill him.

But thinking of the brothers’ shared past had given Elena an idea. Straightening her sweater and squaring her shoulders, she turned and began walking back toward school, leaves crunching beneath her feet.

She needed magic.

Despite all that had happened since she left the cafeteria, Elena was only a few minutes late for history class. Murmuring an apology to the teacher, she ignored the curious gazes of her classmates. Pulling a sheet of loose-leaf paper out of her backpack, she bent her head over her desk and wrote a note.

SOS. I need your help. Meet me at your house after school. TELL NO ONE!!!

Folding the note and passing it to a girl to her right, Elena jerked her head toward Bonnie’s front-row seat, and the girl obediently passed it forward. Elena watched as Bonnie glanced up to make sure Mr. Tanner’s eyes were elsewhere, unfolded the note, read it, and then scribbled a reply.

When it came back to Elena, Bonnie’s rounded handwriting read,

Can’t! We have to go to the warehouse to plan the Haunted House, remember? Meredith would kill us!!!

Mr. Tanner’s attention was fixed on a boy answering a question on the other side of the room, and Elena took the chance to grimace appealingly at Bonnie, trying to express urgency in her face. Bonnie, twisted around in her seat, shook her head.

Elena quickly wrote another note and passed it back up to Bonnie.

You have to meet me. I have so much to tell you.

Bonnie, you’re a witch.

Chapter 24

“Are you serious about all this?” Bonnie asked. “I’m not going to be mad if you were kidding, Elena.” She hefted one of the bags Mrs. Flowers had given them over her shoulder and stepped carefully over a broken gravestone.

Elena had told Bonnie everything. About Stefan and Damon, about coming here from a possible future. About how Bonnie would grow into one of the most powerful witches Elena had ever met. How much Elena needed her help.

Telling Bonnie was the only thing she could think of to do. Matt and Meredith had been hurt too much by their association with the supernatural to bring them into this. Stefan would have been the worst person imaginable to pit against Damon right now.

But Bonnie? In the future, Bonnie was happy. And she was amazingly full of Power. If only they could tap into that Power now, use Bonnie’s magic even though she was completely untrained, Bonnie could be a true asset.

It hadn’t been easy. At first, Bonnie had shaken her head, her large brown eyes wide, and backed away from Elena nervously. The step from saying she was psychic and could read palms to being told she was a budding witch had almost been too much for her. Even now, she was sneaking dubious, worried glances out of the corner of her eye at Elena. But she was here. She wasn’t running away.

Mrs. Flowers had been a surprisingly huge help. She had stood in the doorway of her big old house, listening silently as Elena stumbled through an explanation that really explained nothing. It boiled down to the fact that they knew Mrs. Flowers was a witch, and that they needed help opening something.

“And protecting ourselves,” Elena had tossed in, almost as an afterthought.

Mrs. Flowers sharp eyes examined first Elena, then Bonnie. After a while, she had simply turned and walked away.

“Uh,” Bonnie had said, peering down the dark hall after the old woman. “Are we supposed to follow her?”

Despite everything, Elena could feel a smile curling at the edges of her lips. “It’s just the way she is. She’ll come back.”

They’d waited what felt like forever at Mrs. Flowers’s door, long enough that Bonnie began casting dubious looks at Elena again and Elena began to worry about what she would do if Stefan came home and saw them there.

But Mrs. Flowers had returned eventually, carrying two duffle bags, and spoke for the first time since Elena had asked her for help. “You’ll find things labeled in there, dear. And good luck getting back where you belong.”

“Thank you—” Elena began to say, but the heavy doors were already swinging shut, leaving Elena and Bonnie on the doorstep. She frowned, confused. How had Mrs. Flowers known this wasn’t where Elena belonged?

“Pretty weird,” Bonnie had said, shaking her head. But she had actually seemed slightly less freaked out after that, as if she found it comforting that Elena wasn’t the only possibly crazy person around.

Now they crossed the older part of the graveyard, staggering a little under the weight of the duffle bags Mrs. Flowers had given them. Bonnie hesitated in the empty hole that had once been the doorway of the ruined church.

“Are we allowed in here?” she asked. “Is it safe?”

“Probably not,” Elena told her, “but we have to go in. Please, Bonnie.”

Most of the roof had fallen in and late afternoon sunlight streamed through the holes above them, illuminating piles of rubble. Three walls still stood, but the fourth was knee-high, and Elena could see the far end of the graveyard through it. The uprooted tree, its branches brushing the walls of the small mausoleum Damon had trapped her and Stefan in, still lay there in ruins.

At the side of the church was the tomb of Thomas and Honoria Fell, a large stone box, heavy marble figures carved on its lid. Elena walked over to gaze down on the founders of Fell’s Church, lying with hands folded across their chests, their eyes closed. Elena brushed her fingers across Honoria’s cold marble cheek, taking comfort from the face of the lady who had guarded Fell’s Church for so long. Her ghost hadn’t appeared this time. Did that mean she trusted Elena to handle the situation? Or was something preventing her from coming?

“Okay,” Elena said, all business, as she swung around to face Bonnie. “We have to get the tomb open.”

Bonnie’s eyes rounded. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “That’s what you want to open? Elena, it’s got to weigh about a thousand pounds. We can’t open that with herbs and candles. You need a bulldozer or something.”

“We can,” Elena said steadily. “You have the Power, Bonnie.”

“Even if we could”—Bonnie’s voice wobbled—“what would be the point? Elena, there are dead people in that thing.”

“No,” Elena said, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the gray stone box. “It’s not really a grave. It’s a passageway.”

They rummaged through the duffle bags. “Here,” Elena said, pulling out two little red silk bags, each on a long loop of cord. “Mrs. Flowers gave us sachets for protection. Put it around your neck.” The tiny bag was round and fat with herbs, fitting comfortably in the palm of Elena’s hand.

“What’s in them?” At Elena’s shrug, Bonnie sniffed the sachet before stringing it around her neck. “Smells good, anyway.”

There were small jars of herbs, labeled in Mrs. Flowers’ crabbed, almost illegible handwriting. “It says these are cowslips,” Elena said, making out the label on a jar of small dried yellow flowers, several blossoms on each stem. “According to the label, they’re good for unlocking.”

Bonnie leaned against her and looked down at the jar in Elena’s hand. “Okay. So what do we do with them?”

Elena stared at her. What would Bonnie, my Bonnie, do? She tried to think.

“Well, when you’re doing a spell that uses herbs, you usually scatter them around what you’re working on,” she said. “Or you burn them.”

“Right. Well, I’d rather not set the church on fire, so let’s try scattering them,” Bonnie said dryly.

As well as the cowslips, there were jars of prickly dried evergreen needles and dried berries labeled JUNIPER—FOR SPELLCASTING and an herb Elena recognized as rosemary, the label of which claimed it was used for luck and power. Mrs. Flowers had given them several small jars of each, so there was more than enough to strew thoroughly over the lid of the tomb and in a circle around it.

Help us, Elena thought fervently as she sprinkled rosemary over Honoria Fell’s grave. If this works, we’ll be protecting Fell’s Church. Just like you wanted.

“Now what?” Bonnie asked, when they’d scattered all the herbs. “There are candles in the other bag, and matches. And a flashlight. And, yikes, a knife.”

There were twelve candles, four each of black, white, and red. Mrs. Flowers hadn’t included any kind of note to tell them what the colors meant or what exactly to do with them, so Elena, hoping she was doing the right thing, decided to put them in a circle, colors alternating, around the tomb, outside the circle of herbs.

“And what do we do next?” Bonnie asked, watching as Elena lit the last candle.

“I’m not sure,” Elena told her, dripping a pool of candle wax on the floor and carefully sticking the candle upright in it. “Usually, you say something, maybe just saying what you want to happen, and it looks like you’re concentrating.”

Bonnie’s eyebrows shot up. “So the next step is that I say ‘open’ and think really hard? Elena, I’m not sure this is going to work.”

“Try it,” Elena said hopefully.

Bonnie frowned at the tomb. The flames of the candles danced, reflected in her eyes. “Open,” she said firmly.

Nothing happened.

“Open. I command you to open.” Bonnie said, more doubtfully, and closed her eyes, scrunching her forehead in concentration. Still, nothing changed.

Bonnie’s eyes opened and she huffed in frustration. “This is ridiculous.”

“Wait.” Elena thought of the knife, still in the bag. “Sometimes, you use blood. You say it’s important, that it’s one of the strongest ingredients you can use in a spell. Because it’s vitality, it’s life in its most basic form.” She hurried toward the bag and felt inside. The knife was more like a small dagger, its blade pure silver and its handle some kind of bone.

Bonnie hesitated, biting her lip, and then nodded. She came to stand beside Elena, her eyes fixed on the knife.

“I’ll go first, okay?” Elena said. She made a short, shallow cut on the inside of her own arm, hissing a little at the stinging pain. Turning her arm, she let the blood drip across Honoria and Thomas Fell’s effigies. Splotches of her blood stained their lips, the lids of their closed eyes. Blood dripped on Honoria’s neck and trickled down, making it look as if she’d been a vampire’s feast.

Please, Elena thought, breathing hard. Please let us in. She wasn’t sure who she was begging: Honoria Fell; the mysterious Powers that filled the universe; the Celestial Guardians; or Katherine, down below the church. Whoever was listening, she supposed. Whoever would help her.

Bonnie, white-faced but resolute, held out her own arm, and Elena ran the blade quickly across it, watching the blood spill out and over Bonnie’s porcelain-white skin. More blood spattered over Honoria and Thomas’s stone torsos and their folded hands.

“Draw on your Power, Bonnie,” Elena said softly. “It’s there. I’ve seen it. Pull it out of the earth under your feet and the plants growing all around us. Take it from the dead; they’re right here with us.”

Bonnie’s face tightened with concentration, her fine bones becoming more defined beneath her skin. The candle flames flickered, all at once, as if a wind had passed through the ruined church.

Elena wasn’t a Guardian here, and she didn’t have those Powers anymore. But she could remember what it had felt like when she and Bonnie worked together, their auras combining, feeding her Power into Bonnie’s. She tried to find that feeling, pushing out, trying to let Bonnie take whatever might help her. Her hand found Bonnie’s smaller one, and Bonnie twined their fingers together and squeezed hard.

All at once, the candles all went out. With a huge, grating cracking noise, the top of the stone tomb split in half, one side falling heavily to the flagstones of the floor.

Elena peered down. As she had expected, there was no grave beneath the stone. Instead of bones, she was looking down into the dark opening of a vault. In the stone wall below her were driven iron rungs, like a ladder.

“Wow.” Bonnie said next to her. She was pale, but her eyes were shining with excitement. “I can’t believe that worked. I can’t …” She closed her mouth, then cleared her throat and lifted her chin bravely. “What now?”

“Now you go home,” Elena said. She looked nervously out the broken wall of the church. It was still daylight, but the sun was sinking low. She pulled the flashlight out of the bag and tucked it into her back pocket. “I’m sorry, Bonnie, and thank you, thank you so much. But the next part I have to do by myself. And I’m not sure if it’s safe for you up here. Please go home before it gets dark.”

“If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you,” Bonnie said stubbornly. “At least I can watch your back.”

Elena squeezed her friend’s hand. “Please, Bonnie,” she begged again. “I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worrying about you. I promise I’ll be okay.”

She knew she had no way of guaranteeing that, but Bonnie’s shoulders slumped in acceptance. “Be careful, Elena,” she said. “Call me as soon as you get home.”

“Okay.” Elena watched as Bonnie picked up the duffle bags with their depleted jars of herbs and left the church, casting worried glances back at Elena over her shoulder.

Once Bonnie’s small, upright figure was out of sight, Elena took a deep breath. There was an icy breeze coming from the opening in the tomb, and it smelled like earth and cold stone that never saw the light.

Steeling herself, she swung her legs over the edge of the tomb, took hold of an iron rung, and began to climb down into the vault beneath the church.

Chapter 25

Elena climbed down into darkness, the iron rungs cold in her hands. By the time her feet hit the stone floor at the bottom of the ladder, she was in total blackness. Pulling the flashlight from her back pocket, she flicked it on and ran the beam of light over her surroundings.

The opening of the crypt was just as Elena remembered it. Smooth stone walls held heavy carved candelabras, some with the remains of candles still in them. Near Elena was an ornate wrought-iron gate. Pushing the gate open, Elena walked forward with a slow, steady tread, trying to calm her hammering heart.

The last time she had been here, she’d been a vampire, and she’d had Damon and Stefan both with her, as well as her human friends. More important, that time she hadn’t known what she was getting into. Only that she had been led down here, and that something terrible lurked, just out of sight.

Now Elena knew exactly what was down here.

Her steady footsteps echoed against the stone floor, their sounds only emphasizing how silent it was. Elena could easily believe that no one else had been down here for more than a hundred years. No one else alive, anyway.

Beyond the gate, the beam of the flashlight caught on pale, familiar marble features. A tomb, the twin of the one up in the church. The stone lid here had been broken in two also, and the pieces flung across the crypt. Fragile human bones were splintered and strewn sticklike across the floor. One crunched beneath Elena’s feet as she approached, making her wince guiltily.

She had hoped that, since Katherine hadn’t appeared in Fell’s Church, hadn’t sent disturbing dreams to torment Elena, it meant she wasn’t so filled with rage in this time. But the violence with which the tomb had been desecrated seemed to prove that Katherine was as furious and destructive as she had ever been.

Elena turned the thin wavering beam of the flashlight to the wall beyond the Fells’ tomb. There, as she’d known there would be, lay a gaping hole in the stone wall, as if the stones had been ripped away. From it, a long black tunnel led deep into the earth beyond.

Elena licked her lips nervously. Resting her hands on the cold moist dirt at the edge of the tunnel, she peered into it. “Katherine?” she said questioningly. Her voice came out softer and shakier than she had meant it to, and she cleared her throat and called again. “Katherine!”

Straining her eyes to see into the darkness, Elena waited.

Nothing. No sound of footfalls, nothing white coming swiftly toward her. No sense of something huge and dangerous rushing at her.

“Katherine!” she called again. “I have secrets to tell you!” That might bring her if anything would; Katherine von Swartzchild, first love of Damon and Stefan, the one who had made them vampires and turned them against each other was nothing if not curious and eager for information. That was why she had followed Stefan and Damon here, why she had spied on Elena.

Elena waited, watching and listening. Still nothing. She felt her shoulders sag. Without Katherine, she didn’t have a plan at all.

How long should she wait? Elena pictured herself sitting against the wall, surrounded by the Fell’s broken bones, waiting for Katherine, growing colder and colder as the light of the flashlight dimmed. Elena shuddered. No, she wouldn’t stay here.

She turned to go, and the beam of the flashlight landed on Katherine, standing only a few feet behind her. Elena jumped backward with a strained yelp, her light skittering wildly across the crypt.

Katherine looked so much like Elena that it knocked Elena breathless, even now. Her golden hair was perhaps a shade lighter and a few inches longer, her eyes a slightly different blue. Her figure was thinner and more fragile than Elena’s: Girls of her time and class had been expected to sit and embroider, not run and play.

But the delicate curve of Katherine’s brow, her long golden lashes, her pale skin, the shape of her features—they were all as familiar to Elena as looking in a mirror. Unlike Elena, who was dressed in jeans and a sweater, Katherine wore a long, gauzy white dress. It would have made her look innocent, if it weren’t for the brownish-red streaks across the front, as if Katherine had absent-mindedly wiped bloody hands on it.

“Hello, pretty little girl, my sweet reflection,” Katherine said, almost crooning.

Elena swallowed nervously. “I need your help.”

Katherine came closer, touching Elena’s hair, running cold fingers across her face. “You’re a nasty, greedy girl,” she said sharply. “You want both my boys.”

“You wanted them, too,” Elena snapped, not bothering to deny it. Katherine smiled, her teeth disturbingly sharp.

“Of course I did,” she said. “But they’re mine. They’ve always been mine. You should have left them alone.”

“I am going to leave them alone from now on,” Elena said. “I promise. I just want them to be brothers. I want them to be happy. You did too once.”

Katherine had, Elena knew, let both brothers drink her blood, promised them each eternal life with the secret idea that they would love each other, that the three of them could be a happy family, together forever. When they had rejected the idea of sharing her, she faked her own death, sure their mutual grief would bring them together.

She’d been a fool. Damon and Stefan had loathed each other already, distanced by their competition for their father’s love, by their roles as the good and bad sons. Jealousy over Katherine had only heightened their dislike, and their anger and grief at her death had ripened it into hatred.

Katherine had expected Stefan and Damon to turn to each other, but instead they had turned on each other, swords in hand. Each murdered at his brother’s hand, they’d died with Katherine’s blood in their systems, and risen again, vampires, cursed forever.

“They don’t want to be happy.” Katherine’s eyes widened with remembered hurt, and for a moment, Elena saw the fragile, naïve girl who had destroyed Damon and Stefan with a mistaken idea of romance. “I gave them a gift. I gave them life forever, and they didn’t care. I told them to take care of each other, in my memory, but they wouldn’t listen. They threw everything I’d given them away.”

“But maybe it’s not too late,” Elena said. “Maybe if they knew you were alive, they could forgive each other.”

Katherine’s eyes narrowed angrily, her lips curling into a sulky pout. “I don’t want them to forgive each other,” she said in a childish voice. Then she began to smile, an unpleasant, hungry smile. “You, on the other hand …” She stroked Elena’s cheeks. Her hands were terribly cold, and they smelled of the earth around them. Elena shivered. “We look so much alike,” Katherine said musingly. “I should make you like me. We could travel together. It would be such fun. Everyone would think we were sisters.”

There was something wistful in Katherine’s eyes as her hand shifted to run through Elena’s hair, pulling a little at the long strands. Maybe family was what Katherine needed. She’d lost her father when she’d lost the Salvatores and fled Italy. Would knowing she had other family make a difference to Katherine?

“We are sisters,” she said, and Katherine’s hand pulled away.

“I don’t know what you mean, little one,” Katherine said. “You’re no sister of mine.”

Elena swallowed, feeling the dry click of her throat. “We really are. My mother—your mother—was an immortal. A Celestial Guardian. She left you to keep you safe. And when, hundreds of years later, she tried to keep me safe, the other Guardians killed her.”

Katherine’s mouth tightened into an angry line. “That doesn’t make any sense. My mother died when I was a baby.”

“No, it’s true,” Elena said simply. There was nothing but hostility in Katherine’s face, but Elena pushed on. “I ask you, as your own flesh and blood, to help me. You wanted to be the one to bring Stefan and Damon together, and you still can be. They need you, Katherine. Five hundred years, and they’ve never stopped loving you. It’s torn them apart.”

Katherine’s face was blank and cold. “They deserve to suffer.” She squeezed her fists tightly, slamming her arms down at her sides. “They’ll suffer if I kill you. Or if I take you with me.”

“No.” Elena took Katherine’s cold, muddy arm, her heart pounding. “They’ve suffered all along. You can save them this time. You’re the only one who can.”

Hissing, Katherine pulled away. With a rattling noise, the crypt began to shake around them. Despite herself, Elena shrieked as the lid to the tomb fell to the floor with a crash, Honoria Fell’s face cracking. Another tremor had Elena stumbling and grabbing onto the stone wall to keep from falling.

“Stop it!” she demanded, glaring at Katherine. The other girl stood stock-still, her pale face tilted up as if she could see through the dirt and stone to the ruined church above. From high above, Elena heard a heavy thud, and Katherine’s lips curled in a joyless smile.

Elena ran. Her heart pounding, she shoved through the half-open gate and down the long dark corridor, her flashlight swinging wildly. She didn’t look back, but her nerves were on edge, listening for a footstep, waiting for Katherine’s inhumanly strong hands to clamp down upon her shoulders and drag Elena back.

Katherine could kill her, could turn Elena into a vampire if she wanted to, and there was nothing Elena would be able to do about it. Why had Elena tried to reason with her?

Grabbing hold of the iron rungs set in the wall, Elena began to pull herself up as fast as she could, her breath coming fast and anxious. The crypt had stopped shaking, for now, but her hands, sweaty with nerves, still slipped as she climbed. Partway up, she lost her grip on the flashlight and it fell, crashing into the stones below and going out, leaving Elena in darkness. Far above was the faintly lit rectangle of the tomb in the church, and Elena kept climbing toward it as fast as she could, holding tightly onto the rungs.

At last Elena reached the top and scrambled out through the Fells’ tomb, gulping deep breaths of the cold fresh air. Once she was standing on the floor of the old church, she dared to glance down into the crypt below.

There was nothing there, no white-clad figure following her. But that proved nothing. Katherine could take many forms, and she was much, much faster than Elena. Elena’s best chance, she thought, would be to cross Wickery Bridge and head home as quickly as she could. Katherine was powerful enough that she had trouble crossing running water.

The sun had set and night had fallen while Elena was down in the crypt. Terrific, she thought, a cemetery after dark without a flashlight and a vampire on my heels. This was a truly genius idea, Elena Gilbert.

She stumbled over what seemed to be every tombstone in the long grass of the older part of the graveyard, once falling hard enough to skin the palms of her hands. Elena scrambled up and hurried on, finding her way by the light of the half-moon above her.

Once she reached the road outside the cemetery, the tight ball of anxiety in Elena’s chest relaxed a little. Not much farther until she could cross the bridge and then head back home. She’d have to go back to her own house. Aunt Judith had called someone to fix the window and insisted on moving back home. At least it was closer than Meredith’s, but Elena didn’t know how to keep them safe from Damon. Perhaps now that he was focusing on her friends, he would leave Elena’s family alone.

Just before the bridge, a white-clad figure barred Elena’s path. Katherine’s pale gold hair whipped around her in the wind.

Elena glanced back over her shoulder. There was no point in running. Katherine was a thousand times faster than Elena, and the only thing that would hinder her—running water—was on the other side of her.

For a moment, Elena thought of begging for mercy. But she knew Katherine well enough to know that wouldn’t do any good. Whatever Katherine decided to do, she would do.

Might as well go out fighting. Elena tossed her head back and marched straight up to Katherine. “What do you want?” she asked.

Katherine’s cold blue eyes regarded Elena for a long moment. Finally, she spoke. “You think that I can save them? I’ll do as you ask, little mirror. I will let Damon and Stefan know that I still live.”

“Oh.” Maybe Elena’s pleading had done some good after all. “Thank you.”

Katherine frowned at her crossly. For a moment, her voice sounded young, a hurt child’s, but her eyes seemed terribly old. “There’s no happy ending in this for either of us. I hope you know that,” she said. “I’ve lived this once already. I know what it’s like to love them both, and to lose them.”

Chapter 26

Heavy clouds loomed overhead, and the air seemed ominously electric, on the verge of a storm. Outside the Haunted House appeared a devilishly masked mannequin, its black clothing flapping in the wind and giving an appropriately nightmarish ambiance to this Halloween night.

Stefan and Elena stopped outside the Haunted House. Stefan’s face was drawn tight, and Elena felt sick and anxious. Pulling up the hood of her Red Riding Hood costume, she carefully covered her distinctive golden hair.

“This is the night Damon said he was going to turn Meredith and Matt and Caroline into vampires,” she whispered to Stefan. “He has to be here. They’re all here, and there’s so much confusion, it will be easy for him.”

Stefan nodded grimly. Looking up at him, Elena couldn’t help the little clench her heart gave. He looked so good in his tuxedo and cape, elegant and completely natural. A debonair vampire costume, what else? And people thought Stefan didn’t have a sense of humor.

She hadn’t been completely honest with him. For her plan to work, for the brothers to forgive each other, Katherine’s revelation that they hadn’t caused her death had to come as a surprise. So she had told him only that they needed to protect her friends from Damon.

“We’ll mingle with the crowd and keep an eye out for him,” she said as they approached the Haunted House entrance. “If you hang out in the Torture Room, that might be a good place. It shouldn’t be too crowded; it’s off the main path and it’s mostly dummies, not people in costume. It’s the kind of place Damon would be likely to take someone if he wanted to be alone.”

Despite Elena’s defection from the Haunted House committee—which Meredith had only reluctantly forgiven her for—and Bonnie’s missing most of the all-important planning stage, Meredith and the rest of her decorating committee had done an amazing job on the Haunted House. It looked nightmarishly creepy, the entrance enthusiastically draped in spider webs and handprints made with fake blood.

Now everything was in chaos as the seniors rushed to get the last pieces in place before the paying public was allowed in. Elena and Stefan ducked through the crowd and made their way along the twisting route of the tour.

Outside the Torture Chamber, Elena squeezed Stefan’s hand. “This is it,” she said. “Good luck.”

“I will protect them if I can, Elena,” Stefan told her, and slipped through the doorway to hide inside among the torture implements.

Elena went on, glancing in at the different sets as she passed. The Alien Encounter Room was already dark, lit only with phosphorescent paint, and zombies milled around the Living Dead Room, adjusting one another’s makeup.

The Druid Room was near the back of the warehouse, and Elena frowned. If she’d had time to really participate in the committee, maybe she could have made it more central, so that it would be more difficult for Damon to feed from—and kill—Mr. Tanner.

Love is powerful, Mylea had said, but should Elena have paid more attention to logistics and less to changing Damon’s heart? She should have made it impossible for Damon to kill Mr. Tanner instead of hoping she could make him not want to.

She swallowed hard. This was the right way to go. If she couldn’t change the relationship between the brothers, surely it was only a matter of time before Damon killed again. She could only hope that Katherine would pull through, for all their sakes. If it didn’t work, maybe there was never any hope for Elena’s mission.

And there Mr. Tanner was, upright and indignant, arguing with white-robed Bonnie in front of a cardboard Stonehenge. “But you’ve got to wear the blood,” she was saying pleadingly. “It’s part of the scene; you’re a sacrifice.”

“Wearing these ridiculous robes is bad enough,” Mr. Tanner told her. “No one informed me I was going to have to smear syrup all over myself.”

“It doesn’t really get on you,” Bonnie argued, but Elena had heard enough for now. She remembered this argument. She’d joined in the first time, trying to convince Mr. Tanner to cooperate, and then Stefan had finally compelled him. But Meredith, a witch in a tight black dress, was already approaching, and Elena realized she had faith that Meredith’s logic and persistence would be just as effective as Stefan’s Power had been.

Both Bonnie and Meredith were focused on Mr. Tanner, not even noticing Elena, and she hesitated, watching them. Meredith was talking softly and reasonably to Mr. Tanner while Bonnie looked harried but amused, a smile lurking at the edges of her mouth.

Elena’s heart ached with how much she loved them. Memories came rushing back to her: Meredith telling ghost stories at their junior high sleepovers, Bonnie’s face bright over her ninth birthday cake, the focused frown Meredith wore as she studied, the shine of Bonnie’s eyes on her wedding day. Damon wanted to change them, destroy their lives, make them unaging killers. She had to stop him.

It was almost time for the Haunted House to open. Time to look for Damon.

The Haunted House was like a maze this time, Elena realized. The warehouse was bigger than the school gym had been, and Meredith had filled the space with many more horrors than they’d been able to fit in the school gym the first time this Halloween had happened, when Elena had been in charge. Elena cut through the Séance Room and the Deaths from History Room, where she spotted Caroline, a nubile Egyptian priestess in a linen shift that left very little to the imagination, talking to Tyler in his werewolf costume. One potential victim, she thought, and looked for the others. She would have to keep them all safe.

Slipping between the temporary partitions, Elena cut through the Spider Room, where she had to push her way through dangling rubber spiders. She found Meredith and Bonnie again, and followed as they hurried back toward the entrance, ready to lead customers through the house. Outside the entrance to the fun house, she finally identified Matt, who had taken the head of his own werewolf costume off. Everyone in place, she thought, and glanced automatically toward the Torture Chamber.

The last of the seniors were getting in position. The doors were about to open. “Bonnie,” Elena said softly, coming up next to her.

Bonnie jumped a little. “Elena,” she said. She looked curiously at Elena’s costume. “I thought you were going to wear that Renaissance dress your aunt had made for you.”

“No, I lent that to someone else,” Elena told her. “Bonnie, can you do me a favor? Damon’s going to come here, dressed as the Grim Reaper. Be nice to him, okay? Don’t let on that you recognize him if you can help it, and steer him toward the Torture Chamber. I’ll take it from there.”

Bonnie paled, but she nodded. “I’ll try,” she said, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What if he tries to bite me, Elena?”

Elena slipped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I don’t think he will, at least not here,” she said comfortingly. “You’ve got your bracelet and Mrs. Flowers’s sachet, so he can’t Influence you, and I don’t think he’ll try anything with this many people around. If he does, just scream as loudly as you can.”

Bonnie didn’t seem terribly comforted, but she nodded again and squared her shoulders. For a moment, she looked to Elena like a young soldier heading into battle. Frightened, but firmly determined to face down death if necessary. Suddenly filled with affection, Elena hugged her friend tightly. “It’ll be all right,” she breathed in Bonnie’s ear. “I promise.” Something twisted inside her, and she hoped, fervently, that she would be able to keep the promise.

A voice sounded through the warehouse. “Okay, they’re about to let in the line. Cut the lights, Ed!” Gloom fell, and, with an audible click, somebody started the recorded sounds of groans and maniacal laughter, so that they resounded through the Haunted House. Letting go of Bonnie, Elena headed for her own chosen spot as the doors opened to let in the crowd.

It took a long time for Damon to appear. From her hiding place behind a particularly gruesome-looking plastic apparatus and agonized dummy in the Torture Room, Elena listened to the shrieks of kids going through the Haunted House and itched with impatience and anxiety.

Stefan paced from one side of the room to the other and hesitated in the doorway, listening carefully. The red light that illuminated the room turned his skin a ghastly shade. Things were coming to a crisis, Elena could see that. Stefan’s jaw was set, and he was kneading the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb. He was worried that Damon might be feeding on humans while he and Elena waited in the wrong place. Finally, he straightened, making up his mind, and stepped toward the entrance once more.

Just then, a hooded figure came through the door, black robes sweeping around him. The Grim Reaper regarded Stefan silently for a moment, scythe clutched in front of him, and then he swept back his hood.

“Hello, little brother,” Damon said, showing his teeth in what looked more like a snarl than a smile.

Stefan looked at him gravely. “I’ve been waiting for you, Damon,” he said.

Damon cocked a cynical eyebrow. “Saint Stefan,” he said mockingly. “Does the lovely Elena want you to make peace? Stop me from making a new family?” He moved closer, resting a hand lightly on Stefan’s shoulder, and Elena saw Stefan flinch. Stefan was, she realized, afraid.

When he spoke, though, his voice was steady. “It’s been a long time since I thought talking to you would do any good, Damon. If you want family, I’m here. All I can do is try to stop you from doing your worst, from doing something you’ll regret.”

Damon’s smile widened. “You stop me, baby brother? All you do is ruin everything, without even trying to.” He pulled Stefan closer, his hand clamping down on Stefan’s shoulder like a vise.

Moving so fast that Elena had no time to react, not even to gasp, he spun Stefan around and slammed him into the wall, sinking his teeth deep into Stefan’s throat. Stefan gave a small choked moan of pain, and Elena flinched. Damon hadn’t taken care, hadn’t bothered to soothe Stefan the way he would have a human. He wanted to this to hurt.

A terrible ripping noise came from the grappling brothers—Damon’s teeth tearing something in Stefan’s throat—and Elena clenched her fists. This was a stupid plan, she realized. Damon’s angry enough to kill Stefan.

Just as she began to step forward out of her hiding place, a new voice, cool and arrogant, rang out.

“Stop it.” Katherine, her head held high and her mouth thin and angry, was suddenly beside them. Damon lifted his head, his mouth dripping with blood from his brother’s throat, and they both stared at her.

She was wearing the Renaissance dress Aunt Judith had made for Elena’s Halloween costume, and she looked lovely, as delicate and ornate as an expensive doll, just the way she must have looked five hundred years before. The red lighting changed the ice blue of the dress to a pale violet and threw pink shadows on Katherine’s pale face and golden hair.

Elena had thought that Stefan and Damon might mistake Katherine for Elena, just for a second, but it was clear that neither of them had the least doubt about who she was.

“Katherine,” Stefan said. His face was full of mixed emotions. Shock, disbelief, dawning joy, and relief. Fear. “But that’s impossible. It can’t be. You’re dead. …”

Katherine laughed, a brittle, desperately unhappy laugh. “I wanted you to believe that. Your little human toy, the one who looks so much like me, she figured it out, but you never did.”

“Elena?” Damon asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Katherine circled them, head held high. Her long skirts swept the floor with a quiet susurration, and Damon turned slowly, so that he was always facing her, tense and wary. “Your Elena convinced me to tell you the truth.”

“Tell us then,” Stefan said steadily.

“I wanted us all to be happy,” Katherine said, looking back and forth between Stefan and Damon. Under the red lights, tears glistened on her cheeks. “I loved you. But it wasn’t good enough for you. I wanted you to love each other, but you wouldn’t. I thought if I died, you would love each other.”

Elena had heard Katherine’s story before. She let the words wash over her and concentrated on Stefan and Damon’s faces as Katherine unfolded her tale: how she had another talisman against the sun made and given her maid her ring. How the maid had burned fat in the fireplace and filled Katherine’s best dress with it, left it in the sun along with Katherine’s note telling Stefan and Damon she couldn’t bear to be the cause of strife between them. That she hoped that, once she was gone, they would come together.

Katherine’s face was paler than ever, her eyes huge, tears running down her cheeks. The story had taken her back, and it was in the hurt, puzzled voice of the young girl she had been that she exclaimed, “You didn’t listen, and you ran and got swords. You killed each other. Why? You made your deaths my fault.”

Stefan’s face was wet with tears, too, and he was as caught up in the memory as she was. “It was my fault, Katherine, not yours. I attacked first,” he said in a choked voice. “You don’t know how sorry I’ve been, how many times I’ve prayed to take it all back. I murdered my own brother. …”

Damon was watching him intently, his eyes dark and opaque. Elena couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Surely this was what he needed? To know their centuries of enmity had been pointless, that his brother regretted striking that blow and dooming them both?

Stefan turned to him. “Please, Damon,” Stefan said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry. What we’ve fought about for so long, hated each other over”—he gestured to Katherine—“none of it was real.”

Trembling, Stefan reached a hand toward his brother, and something snapped shut in Damon’s expression. He stepped away as quickly as a cat.

“Well, it’s lovely to know that you’ve survived,” he said, turning to Katherine. His voice sharpened. “But don’t flatter yourself that I’ve spent the last five hundred years pining over you. It’s not about you anymore, Katherine. It hasn’t been, not for a long time.”

As he spoke, his eyes fixed on the spot where Elena was hiding. He’s known I’m here all along, she realized. She stepped out from behind the dummy. “Please, Damon,” she began.

But Damon’s face was a mask of fury. “You think this changes anything, Elena? I’m not going to forgive you so you can live happily ever after with my whining weakling of a baby brother. The world is nothing but suffering, and the fact that one girl lived when we thought she was dead doesn’t make any difference. This doesn’t change my plans.”

Moving too quickly for their eyes to follow, Damon was gone.

Chapter 27

“He’s beautiful,” Katherine said, “but he’s always had that rage inside him. When he was human, I thought it was romantic.”

“We have to stop him,” Elena said to Stefan. “In this mood, he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.”

“You promised me I would save them,” Katherine said. Her face began to crumble with disappointment. “You said I’d be a hero.”

There was a glimmer of violence in Katherine’s eyes. Elena remembered the white tiger Katherine could become, the cruelty of the Katherine she’d met the first time she’d gone through this. Elena’s lips parted. She had to say something to defuse the situation.

“I want what you wanted for us, Katherine,” Stefan cut in. His face was more open than Elena had seen it in this time. “You sacrificed everything for us, and I won’t forget that. But we have to find Damon before it’s too late. Before your sacrifice was for nothing.”

In a moment of sympathy and understanding, Katherine approached Stefan. Elena saw in Katherine what she’d been feeling for the past few weeks—loss of true love. Katherine pressed her lips to Stefan’s cheek, as gently as a human would. And then in the blink of an eye, Katherine was gone.

“Come on,” Elena said, gripping Stefan by the hand and pulling him out the door of the Torture Chamber. “We have to find him.”

A giggling group of girls pushed past them into the Torture Chamber, and Elena hesitated in the passageway, looking both ways. The Haunted House was teeming with people. Which way would Damon have gone?

Stefan pushed her gently toward her left. “You go that way,” he said grimly. “I’ll work my way back toward the entrance. There are only so many places he could be.”

“Check on the Druid Room first,” Elena said. They needed to make sure he wasn’t anywhere near Mr. Tanner. “We’ll find him, Stefan.”

Of course, we don’t know what we’ll be able to do if we find him, a nagging voice remarked in the back of Elena’s mind. Still, she headed through the maze of rooms, her eyes raking the shadows, looking for the Grim Reaper. There were a lot of people in black-robed costumes, but none of them were Damon.

An engine revved behind her, and Elena was shoved sideways by a shrieking group as a chainsaw-wielding masked man chased them down the hall. She took a turn between two partitions and found herself suddenly alone.

“On your way to Grandma’s, Little Red?” someone whispered throatily behind her.

Elena turned to see a werewolf, its mask’s muzzle dripping with gruesomely realistic blood. “Matt?” she asked uncertainly.

“Didn’t they tell you to stay on the path?” The werewolf’s voice got a little louder as he leered at her.

Tyler, Elena realized with disappointment. “Have you seen Matt?” she asked, her voice flat.

“There’s more than one wolf in these woods, Little Red,” Tyler told her, laying a large, hairy paw on her shoulder.

Elena shrugged it off. “Look, Tyler, I really need to find Matt. Or Meredith,” she added. If she knew where they were, maybe she could hide them from Damon.

Tyler scowled. “No, I don’t know where they are.” He leaned against her, his breath hot on her neck. “Come play with me instead, pretty girl. I’ll show you the way to Grandma’s house.”

“If you see them—or Caroline or Bonnie—tell them I’m looking for them, okay?”

He huffed a sigh. “Whatever.” Two girls Elena didn’t know turned the corner into the other end of the hall, and Tyler lost interest in Elena. “Full moon, ladies,” he shouted, walking toward them, and tipped his head back in a throaty howl as they giggled.

Elena passed through the Spider Room next, but there was no one there but a bunch of rowdy junior-high boys, batting the rubber spiders at each other. The Living Dead Room was teeming with people, one of whom, moaning, “Braaaaains,” pretended to take a bite out of Elena’s face. But there was no black-clad Meredith in a witch costume, no werewolf Matt, no Egyptian Caroline.

Dread settled in the pit of Elena’s stomach. Could Damon have trapped them all in the fated Druid Room? Could Stefan be outnumbered? Bonnie ought to be there too, playing a priestess sacrificing Mr. Tanner. At least she knew where Bonnie was supposed to be.

I told her it was going to be all right, Elena remembered. Half running, she headed for the Druid Room.

Bonnie wasn’t there. There was no one poised above the altar, although Elena could hear shrieks and laughter coming from not far away. Strobe lights flashed, giving the whole room a dizzying, dreamlike quality. Beneath the cardboard Stonehenge, Mr. Tanner was stretched out across the sacrificial stone altar, his robes heavily stained with blood, his eyes blankly staring up at the ceiling. Beside him lay the ritual knife in a pool of blood.

The chill in Elena’s center hardened into a frightened little ball. She rushed toward him, trying to see if Mr. Tanner was breathing. His eyes were rolled back in his head, showing little more than the whites.

She bent over the still figure, working up the nerve to touch him. “Mr. Tanner?” she said softly. Too late, too late, the little voice in the back of her head mourned. If Damon had managed to kill Mr. Tanner, then Elena was dead, Damon was dead, Stefan was dead.

Elena extended a shaking hand, her heart hammering, to touch Mr. Tanner’s neck, to feel for a pulse.

Just before her hand made contact, Mr. Tanner sat up. “AAAAARRRGGGGGHHHH!” he shrieked into her face.

Elena screamed, a thin, high sound of shock and backpedaled away from him, banging her hip hard against the wall. Stiffly, Mr. Tanner lay back down in the same position, his eyes rolling back into his head again. A small, pleased smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Pressing a hand against her chest, Elena tried to calm her wildly pounding heart. She took a deep breath as it started to sink in: Mr. Tanner was still alive. She hadn’t failed. She could still save herself, save them all.

Chapter 28

Elena rushed from room to room, looking for the others. She was panting, but she couldn’t stop to catch her breath. She had to stop Damon before it was too late.

“Elena.” Outside the Mad Slasher Room, Stefan came toward her, his dark clothes and hair blending into the shadows of the hall, only his pale face and white shirtfront standing out clearly. Elena stopped, eager for news. “I found Meredith,” he said. “She’s up at the front with a lot of other people, taking money.”

“She should be safe there,” Elena said. “As long as she doesn’t head out alone.” Meredith was in charge of the whole Haunted House; she could be called into the more isolated recesses of the warehouse at any moment.

Stefan glanced away, a touch of color rising in his cheeks. “I, er, Influenced her to stick with the group instead of wandering off by herself.”

“Good thinking,” Elena said. “Now we just need to find everyone else.”

The Mad Slasher Room was packed and full of noise. A boy with a chainsaw was enthusiastically revving it, chasing screaming victims around the room. Fake blood was grotesquely sprayed across the walls, and less noisy maniacs strangled and hacked at anyone who came close. Elena jumped and shuddered as the laughing, shrieking victims shoved past her.

They were playing at blood and death, and Damon could be anywhere, watching, ready to tear them apart. She felt sick as she tried to make out individual faces and costumes in the crowd.

There was no Grim Reaper, no Egyptian priestess, no werewolf, no Druid.

In contrast, the Alien Encounter Room was quiet when they passed through. Bright beams of light flashed on and off overhead, while a girl stretched out on a table below was poked and prodded by gray alien-looking figures. The girl glanced up and winked at Elena, and Elena realized it was Sue Carson.

No one Elena and Stefan were looking for.

Caroline should have been in the Deaths from History Room, playing with a rubber snake, but she wasn’t.

Turning to leave, Elena caught sight of red curls peeking out from under the black hood of a rather short executioner wielding a plastic axe over Anne Boleyn’s head. Grabbing hold of the executioner’s axe arm, she asked, “Bonnie? What are you doing here?”

“Ray had to go to the bathroom,” Bonnie explained, pulling off the hood. Underneath, she looked a little sweaty and disheveled, strands of hair sticking to her forehead. “I said I’d take over for a few minutes.”

“Bonnie, Damon’s here somewhere,” Elena said. “Have you seen Matt or Caroline?”

Bonnie sobered. “Caroline ought to be here,” she said. “Everyone’s been wondering where she is. The last time I saw Matt was in the Fun House. I’ll come with you.” She propped the plastic axe against the wall and led the way, Stefan and Elena hurrying after her.

The entrance to the Fun House was concealed behind a long black curtain. As Elena reached to twitch it aside, a hooded figure stepped out, black clothes swirling all around it. Elena jerked backward, her breath catching in her throat.

But the dark figure was too short to be Damon.

“Vickie?” Elena said, peering beneath the hood. “Have you seen Matt or Caroline?”

Vickie frowned, thinking hard. “I can’t say,” she said.

Beside her, Elena felt Stefan stiffen, turning his full focus onto Vickie. “You can’t say?” he asked slowly. “Vickie, can we come into the Fun House?”

“The Fun House is closed,” Vickie told them.

“What? No, it’s not,” Bonnie said, and tried to dodge past her, but Vickie shoved her backward.

“You can’t go in there,” she said. There was something flat behind Vickie’s usually timid brown eyes, and Elena finally figured out what was going on: Damon had compelled Vickie to keep them out.

Stefan wouldn’t be able to compel Vickie to let them in—his Power wasn’t as strong as Damon’s—but he was stronger than any human. Her eyes met Stefan’s green ones, and she knew they were in perfect agreement. He would have to overpower Vickie.

“Hang on,” Bonnie said. Her small hand gripped Elena’s, and she pulled on Stefan’s arm with her other hand. She tugged them down the hall with her, looking back to smile over her shoulder at Vickie.

“Damon’s compelled her,” Stefan said, pulling out of Bonnie’s grasp as soon as they turned the corner away from Vickie’s gaze. “Caroline or Matt—maybe both of them—must be in the Fun House. There isn’t much time.”

“I know,” Bonnie said. “But there’s another way into the Fun House.”

Crooking a finger for Elena and Stefan to follow, Bonnie led them to a narrow opening between two partitions and pulled aside a swathe of black cloth. “Duck under here,” she said softly, “and we’ll come out on the other end of the Fun House.”

“You’re the best, Bonnie,” Elena whispered and ducked under the cloth.

When Elena straightened up, she had to blink and shield her eyes for a moment. Strobe lights were flashing here, too, but far faster and brighter than in the Druid Room, as if they had been turned up to their maximum settings.

In one bright flash of light, Elena saw a twisted face, pale and staring. A corpse. They were too late, she realized, with numb horror. Everything was lost.

“Elena?” Stefan asked. He must have been able to hear the panicked change in her breathing. The lights flashed again and she realized there was no corpse, just her own reflection, distorted by a fun-house mirror.

The mirrors were everywhere. An image of Elena and Bonnie stretched out like rubber bands stood by a reflection of Stefan with an enormous head. Loud carnival music blared all around them.

The whole effect was dizzying, and Elena wanted to shut her eyes, but there was no time. They had to find Damon.

The hall of mirrors curved in front of them, and they couldn’t see the other end. Cocking her head to indicate the direction, Elena led Bonnie and Stefan up the hall, stumbling as the lights dimmed, then flashed again.

As they rounded the bend, she saw Damon and Caroline, reflected over and over. There were a hundred Damon and Carolines in the flashes of light, all around her, squashed and bulbous, long and thin, bulging oddly.

In the center, two perfectly beautiful people, one human and one vampire, were locked in what was almost an embrace.

Damon had thrown off his cloak and wore jeans and a black button-down. His head was bent back, exposing his long white throat to Caroline. In one hand, he clasped a dagger loosely—Stefan’s dagger, Elena realized, one of his stolen treasures—and Elena could see that he had made a cut along his breastbone for Caroline to feed from. Her face was pressed against Damon’s chest, and, with a shudder of disgust, Elena realized Caroline was swallowing his blood eagerly.

When Caroline raised her head for a moment, her mouth was red and slick with blood. It dripped down her chin and marked her pure white shift. Elena recoiled. The girl’s cat-green eyes seemed dazed, and, as she gazed up at Damon adoringly, Elena was quite sure he’d put Caroline heavily under his Power.

“Stay back, Elena,” Stefan said softly.

At the sound of Stefan’s voice, Damon looked up and threw him a dazzling, brief smile. Turning Caroline gently around so that she faced them, he raised his dagger and laid it against her throat. Caroline hung in his grasp, blinking slowly, not seeming to even see them.

“No,” Stefan said. Elena could feel him tensing himself for one desperate run at Damon. And she knew, as surely as if she had seen it, that if Stefan made a move toward him, Damon would cut Caroline’s throat.

“Stop,” she said, her voice breaking. “Everybody, just stop.” She pushed back her own red hood so that she and Damon could see each other more clearly. His eyes held hers, wide and dark, and his lips tipped up in a mocking smile.

“You need each other, you and Stefan,” she said. “Why are you trying to make another family when your family is here?”

Damon sneered. “Family. Stefan hasn’t been my family since he stuck a sword through my heart.”

Beside her, Elena felt Stefan stiffen. Then he stepped forward. “There is nothing I regret more than that. I killed you. My only brother.” His green eyes were full of tears. “Even if I lived forever, I could never make it up to you.”

Damon stared at him, his handsome face blank.

“Remember how Stefan followed you when you were a child?” Elena asked. “He’d take a beating from your father rather than ever betray your secrets. He worshipped you.” She felt Stefan glance at her curiously, wondering how Elena could know that, but it didn’t matter now. She kept her attention firmly fixed on Damon.

Was his grip on the dagger pressed to Caroline’s throat loosening? Elena wasn’t sure.

“Remember Incognita, the beautiful black mare you won playing cards, when you were just sixteen?” Stefan said hoarsely. “That morning when you brought her home, you let me ride behind you, and we went so fast, her hooves hardly touched the ground. We were invincible then. Happy.”

Surely the taut line of Damon’s mouth was softening, Elena thought. The dagger had slipped a little, resting gently against Caroline’s throat as she sagged, half-conscious in Damon’s arms. But then Damon tensed again.

“Sentimental tales from the nursery,” he scoffed. “Those children have been dead for centuries.” He took a fresh grip on the knife.

“It still matters,” Elena said desperately. “You’re both still here. There are only two people left in the world who remember you when you were alive, Damon. Once Stefan is gone, only Katherine will remember, and she’s the one who changed you. No one else knows anything but the monster. It’s not too late to change that.”

Damon hesitated for a split second. “Again with these promises you can’t keep. If you want the good brother, you already have him.”

Elena shook her head. “No,” she said. “This isn’t about that. I never had either of you, not in this world.”

Damon’s forehead creased in a puzzled frown, but Stefan held out his hands to his brother beseechingly, walking slowly toward him. “I never meant to kill you,” he said, as softly and soothingly as he would have spoken to a wild animal. “I would spend the rest of my days trying to right that wrong, if you would be my brother again.”

There was a long, tense moment. The cheerful, hectic carnival music was at odds with the mood of the room.

In a quick motion, Damon pushed Caroline forward so that she fell onto the floor, landing hard and lying motionless. Bonnie gasped and rushed to her.

Looking past Stefan, Damon’s black eyes met Elena’s. “I won’t turn your friends,” he said shortly. His gaze shifted back to Stefan’s. “I won’t kill you, either, I suppose. Not now at least.”

There was no embrace between Stefan and Damon, no show of catharsis. But Elena caught a hint of a smile on Damon’s face—a small, private smile Elena had seen before, in the future she left behind. It was a smile Damon only ever gave to his brother.

Joy flooded through her, as if she was filling with sunlight. Mr. Tanner had survived. Bonnie and Meredith and Matt and Caroline—who Bonnie was fussing over now—were still human. Halloween night was almost over.

She was going to have a future. They were all going to live.

Chapter 29

“It went really well, don’t you think?” Meredith said, tucking a long lock of dark hair behind her ear and looking up at the closed entrance to the Haunted House.

It was late, but they’d only managed to clear out all the customers about half an hour before. Across the parking lot, the last of the costumed workers were climbing into their cars, laughing and calling good-byes to one another. The heavy clouds that had hung overhead at the beginning of the evening had cleared and now stars shone brightly in the sky.

Elena linked her arms through Bonnie and Meredith’s, pulling her best friends close, and smiled at Matt beside them. “I thought it was amazing.”

Stefan and Damon had disappeared somewhere together shortly after their reconciliation, but that was all right with Elena. She was happy, for now, to have this last time with her oldest, dearest friends.

And it was the last time, she was suddenly sure of it. The Guardians hadn’t sent Elena to start over; they had only sent her to change things. There would probably be an Elena here tomorrow, she thought, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be her, it wouldn’t be the Elena who had lived this more than once.

She was going to wake up in that Elena’s future, whatever future she had made. And she hoped that Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie would be part of that future somehow, but they wouldn’t be the ones she knew now.

This was good-bye.

“You did such a good job planning the whole thing, Meredith,” Elena said. “It seems like you can do anything you put your mind to. You’re wonderful.”

Meredith’s olive cheeks flushed pink. “Thanks,” she said, dipping her head shyly.

They’d reached Matt’s car, and Meredith opened the passenger door and climbed in. As Matt crossed to the driver’s side, Elena hugged him. “You’re one of the best people I know, you know that?” she said. She was choking up a little. “I promise everything will be okay. Remember that.”

Kissing her on the cheek, Matt drew back with a little rueful half smile. “You still have to help us clean up the Haunted House tomorrow,” he told her. Elena just laughed.

As Matt closed the car door behind him, Elena turned to see Bonnie watching her with an affectionate, knowing gaze. “This is it, huh?” she said. She was smiling, but her lips were quivering a little.

“I guess so,” Elena told her.

With a sniff, Bonnie threw herself into Elena’s arms and held her tightly.

“Oh, Scarecrow,” Elena murmured into her friend’s bright curls. “I think I’ll miss you most of all.”

After one tight hug, Bonnie pulled back, swiping a hand quickly under her eyes. “Seven years in the future isn’t that long. You’ll see me then.”

“I hope so,” Elena said. She reached out and took Bonnie’s hand for a moment, squeezing it tightly. She tried to memorize the feeling of Bonnie’s small, strong hand gripping hers.

She would remember this, just in case. She would remember Matt’s open, honest face, and Meredith’s wry smile. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t forget them.

For now, there was one more thing she had to tell Bonnie. “You should go talk to Mrs. Flowers. You saw how much Power you have, and she’ll be able to teach you how to use it. I expect you to be crazy-powerful seven years from now.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Bonnie said, saluting ridiculously. Then her gaze slipped past Elena and Elena turned to follow it.

Stefan was crossing the parking lot toward them. Elena and Bonnie exchanged a glance.

“I’ll tell the others to wait. Take your time,” Bonnie said, and slipped into the car.

Elena walked slowly toward Stefan. As she reached him, he looked down into Elena’s eyes. There were no words worthy of expressing what either of them felt.

Elena wanted to take him in her arms and hold on tight, but she didn’t. He wasn’t hers now.

She might never see him again. The thought filled her with an almost painful sorrow, but not with the angry bewilderment she’d felt at his death. Now she had the chance to say good-bye.

Stefan’s green eyes searched hers, as if he was looking for answers. “I wanted to say thank you,” he said finally. “Damon and I are leaving. We’ve decided to go back to Italy for now. I wanted—we wanted—to see what’s left of the Florence we remember.” His lips quirked up in a half smile. “We’ll see if we can find more of our humanity there, I suppose.”

Elena nodded. “I’m glad,” she said.

He reached out and took her hands, so gently and carefully that Elena’s heart ached with longing. “What can I do to thank you?” he said slowly.

Elena squeezed his hand once, fiercely, and then pulled away. “You don’t need to thank me,” she said, hearing the roughness of almost-tears in her own voice. “Just take care of Damon. And of yourself.”

She turned toward the car where her friends were waiting, and Stefan touched her on the shoulder. “Will I see you again?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t think so. But just … keep going, okay? For yourself, and for Damon. Remember that there’s someone out there who cares about you, the real you.”

“You are a mysterious one, Elena Gilbert,” Stefan said. With one last nod of appreciation, Stefan turned to go.

Hot tears were running down her cheeks as Elena watched Stefan walk out of her life forever. But Elena wasn’t sad, or not only sad. This Stefan might live. And that made it all worthwhile.