Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Meredith eyed a breakfast that she suddenly didn’t want to eat. “I don’t know.”

“Stefan said we could come over again today,” Bonnie urged.

“Stefan would be polite while he was being staked to death.”

“I know,” Bonnie said suddenly. “Let’s call Matt. We can go see Caroline…if shewill see us, I mean. We can see if she’s any different today. Then we can wait until it’s afternoon, andthen we can call Stefan and ask if we can come over again to see Elena.”

At Caroline’s house, her mother said she was sick today and was going to stay in bed. The three of them — Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie — went back to Meredith’s house without her, but Bonnie kept chewing her lip, looking back occasionally toward Caroline’s street. Caroline’s mother had looked sick herself, with shadows under her eyes. And the thunderstorm feeling, the feeling of pressure, had been squashing Caroline’s house almost flat.

At Meredith’s, Matt tinkered with his car, which perpetually needed work, while Bonnie and Meredith went through Meredith’s wardrobe for clothes that Elena could wear. They would be big, but that was better than Bonnie’s, which would be much too small.

At fourP.M. they called Stefan. Yes, they were welcome. They went downstairs and picked up Matt.

At the boardinghouse, Elena didn’t repeat the kissing ritual of the previous day — to Matt’s obvious disappointment. But she was delighted with the new clothes, although not for any reason that the old Elena would have been. Floating three feet off the floor, she kept holding them to her face and taking deep, happy sniffs, and then beaming at Meredith, although when Bonnie picked up a T-shirt, she couldn’t smell anything but the fabric softener they’d used. Not even Meredith’s Beach cologne.

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said helplessly as Elena went into a sudden sneezing fit, cuddling a sky-blue top in her arms as if it were a kitten. But his face was tender, and Meredith, while looking slightly embarrassed, reassured him that it was nice to be so appreciated.

“She can tell where they come from,” Stefan explained. “She won’t wear anything that’s come from a sweatshop.”

“I only buy from places listed on the Sweatshop-Free Clothing website,” Meredith said simply. “Bonnie and I have something to tell you,” she added. While she recounted Bonnie’s late-night prophecy, Bonnie took Elena into the bathroom and helped her change into the shorts, which fit, and the sky-blue top, which almost fit, being just a little long.

The color set off Elena’s tangled but still glorious hair perfectly, but when Bonnie tried to get her to look in the hand mirror that she had brought — the old mirror’s shards had all been cleared away — Elena seemed as confused as a puppy held up to see its own reflection. Bonnie kept holding the mirror in front of her face, and Elena kept popping out on one side or another from behind it, like a baby playing peek-a-boo. Bonnie had to be satisfied with a good brushing out of the tangles in that golden mass, which Stefan clearly didn’t know how to handle. When Elena’s hair was finally silky and smooth, Bonnie proudly took her out to be shown off.

And was promptly sorry. The other three were in deep, and it looked like grim, conversation. Reluctantly, Bonnie let go of Elena who immediately flew — literally — into Stefan’s lap, and joined them herself.

“Of course we understand,” Meredith was saying. “Even before Caroline went off her rocker, what other choice was there, ultimately? But—”

“What ‘what other choice is there’?” Bonnie said, as she sat down on Stefan’s bed beside him. “What are you guys talking about?”

There was a long pause, and then Meredith got up to put an arm around Bonnie. “We were talking about why Stefan and Elena need to leave Fell’s Church — need to go far away.”

At first Bonnie didn’t react — she knew she should be feeling something, but she was too deep in shock to access what it was. When words came to her, the only thing she could hear herself saying stupidly was, “Go away?Why?”

“You saw why — here, yesterday,” Meredith said, her dark eyes filled with pain, her face for once showing the uncontrollable anguish she must be feeling. But for the moment, no anguish meant anything to Bonnie but her own.

And it was coming now, like an avalanche burying her in red-hot snow. In ice that burned. Somehow she struggled out of it long enough to say, “Caroline won’t do anything. She signed a vow. She knows that to break it — especially when — when you-know-who signed it, too…”

Meredith must have told Stefan about the crow, because he sighed and shook his head, gently fending off Elena, who was trying to look up into his face. Clearly she sensed the unhappiness in the group, but just as clearly she couldn’t really understand what was causing it.

“The last person I want around Caroline is my brother.” Stefan pushed his dark hair out of his eyes irritably, as if he had been reminded of how much they looked alike. “And I don’t think Meredith’s threat about the sorority sisters is going to work, either. She’s too far gone into the darkness.”

Bonnie shivered inside. She didn’t like the thoughts that those words summoned up: into the darkness.

“But…” Matt began, and Bonnie realized that he felt the same way she did — stunned and sick, as if they were getting off some cheap carnival ride.

“Listen,” Stefan said, “there’s another reason why we can’t stay here.”

“What other reason?” Matt said slowly. Bonnie was too upset to speak. She had thought about this, somewhere deep in her unconscious. But she’d pushed the thoughts away every time they came.

“Bonnie understands it already, I think.” Stefan looked at her. She looked back with eyes that were misting over with tears.

“Fell’s Church,” Stefan explained gently and sadly, “was built at a meeting of the ley lines. The lines of raw Power in the ground, remember? I don’t know if it was deliberate. Does anybody know if the Smallwoods had anything to do with the location?”

No one did. There was nothing in Honoria Fell’s old diary about the werewolf family having a choice in the founding of the town.

“Well, if it was an accident, it was a pretty unlucky one. The town — I should say, the town cemetery — was built directly over a place where a lot of ley lines cross. That’s what made it a beacon for supernatural creatures, bad or — or not quite so bad.” He looked embarrassed, and Bonnie realized that he was talking about himself. “I was drawn here. So were other vampires, as you know. And with every person who had the Power who came here, the beacon became stronger. Brighter. More attractive to other people with the Power. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“Eventually, some of them are going to see Elena,” Meredith said. “Remember, these are people like Stefan, Bonnie, but not people with his moral sense. When they see her…”

Bonnie almost burst into tears at the thought. She seemed to see a flurry of white feathers, each tumbling in slow motion to the ground.

“But — she wasn’t this way when she first woke up,” Matt said slowly and stubbornly. “She talked. She was rational. She didn’t float.”

“Talking or not talking, walking or floating, she has the Power,” Stefan said. “Enough to drive ordinary vampires crazy. Crazy enough to hurt her to get it. And she doesn’t kill — or wound. At least, I can’t imagine her doing that. What I’m hoping,” he said, and his face darkened, “is that I can take her somewhere where she’ll be…protected.”

“But you can’t take her,” Bonnie said, and she could hear the wail in her own voice without being able to control it. “Didn’t Meredith tell you what I said? She’s going to wake up. And Meredith and I need to be with her for that.”