Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

He looked away. “I will never leave you.”

“Not for a day? Not for an hour?”

He hesitated and then looked up at her.If that’s what you really want. I won’t leave you, even for an hour. Now he was projecting, she knew, for she could hear him.

“I release you from all your promises.”

“But, Elena, I mean them.”

“I know. But when you do go, I don’t want you to have the guilt of breaking them looming over you as well.”

Even without telepathy, she could tell what he was thinking to the tiniest shade of a nuance: Humor her. After all, she’d just woken up. She was probably a little confused. And she wasn’t interested in becoming less confused, or in making him less confused. That must be why she was nipping his chin gently. And kissing him. Certainly, Elena thought, one of the two of them was confused….

Time seemed to stretch and then stop around them. And then nothing was confusing at all. Elena knew that Stefan knew what she wanted, and he wanted whatever she wanted him to do.

Bonnie stared at the numbers on her phone, concerned. Stefan was calling. Then she ran a hasty hand through her hair, fluffing the curls out, and took the video call.

But instead of Stefan it was Elena. Bonnie started to giggle, started to tell her not to play with Stefan’s grown-up toys — and then she stared.

“Elena?”

“Am I going to get this every time? Or only from my sister-witch?”

“Elena?”

“Awake and good as new,” Stefan said, getting in the picture. “We called as soon as we woke up—”

“Ele — but it’s noon!” Bonnie blurted out.

“We’ve been occupied with this and that,” Elena cut in smoothly, and oh, wasn’t it good to hear Elena talk that way! Half innocent and wholly smug about it, making you want to shake her and beg her for every wicked detail.

“Elena,”Bonnie gasped, using the nearest wall for support, and then sliding down it, and allowing an armload of socks, shirts, pajamas, and underwear to shower down onto the carpet, while tears began to leak out of her eyes. “Elena, they said you’d have to leave Fell’s Church — will you?”

Elena bridled. “They said what?”

“That you and Stefan would have to leave for your own good.”

“Never in this world!”

“Little lovely lo—” began Stefan, and then abruptly he stopped, opening and shutting his mouth.

Bonnie stared. It had happened at the bottom of the screen, out of sight, but she could almost swear that Stefan’s little lovely love had just elbowed him in the stomach. “Ground zero, two o’clock?” Elena was asking.

Bonnie snapped back to reality. Elena never gave you time for reflection. “I’ll be there!” she cried.

“Elena,” Meredith breathed. And then “Elena!” like a half-chocked sob. “Elena!”

“Meredith. Oh, don’t make me cry, this blouse is pure silk!”

“It’s pure silk because it’s my pure silk sari blouse, that’s why!”

Elena suddenly looked as innocent as an angel. “You know, Meredith, I seem to have grown much taller lately—”

“If the end of that sentence is ‘so it really fits me better’”—Meredith’s voice was threatening—“then I’m warning you, Elena Gilbert…” She broke off, and both girls began to laugh and then to cry. “You can have it! Oh, you can have it!”

“Stefan?” Matt waved his phone — first cautiously, then banging it into the wall of the garage. “I can’t see—” He stopped, swallowed. “E-le-na?” The word came out slowly, with a pause between each syllable.

“Yes, Matt. I’m back. Even up here.” She pointed to her forehead. “Will you meet with us?”

Matt, leaning on his newly purchased, almost-running car, was muttering, “Thank God, thank God,” over and over.

“Matt? I can’t see you. Are you okay?” Shuffling sounds. “I think he fainted.”

Stefan’s voice: “Matt? She really wants to see you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Matt lifted his head up, blinking at the phone. “Elena, Elena…”

“I’m so sorry, Matt. You don’t have to come—” Matt laughed shortly. “Are you sure you’re Elena?”

Elena smiled the smile that had broken a thousand hearts. “In that case — Matt Honeycutt, I insist that you come and meet with us at Ground Zero at two o’clock. Is that more like it?”

“I think you’ve almost got it down. The old Elena Imperial Manner.” He coughed theatrically, sniffed, and said, “Sorry — I’ve got a little cold; or allergies, maybe.”

“Don’t be silly, Matt. You’re bawling like a baby and so am I,” Elena said. “And so were Bonnie and Meredith, when I called them. SoI’ve been crying nearly all day — and at this rate I’ll have to scramble to get a picnic ready and be on time. Meredith’s planning to pick you up. Bring something to drink or eat. Love ya!”

Elena put down the phone, breathing hard.

“Now that was tough.”

“He still loves you.”

“He’d rather that I stayed a baby all my life?”

“Maybe he liked the way you used to say ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye.’”

“Now you’re teasing me.” Elena quivered her chin.

“Never in this world,” Stefan said softly. Then, suddenly, he grabbed her hand. “Come on — we’re going shopping for a picnic and a car, too,” he said, pulling her up.

Elena startled both of them by flying up so quickly that Stefan had to grab her by the waist to keep her from shooting toward the ceiling.

“I thought you had gravity!”

“So did I! What do I do?”

“Think heavy thoughts!”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“We’ll buy you an anchor!”

At two o’clock Stefan and Elena arrived at the Fell’s Church graveyard in a brand-new red Jaguar; Elena was wearing dark glasses under a scarf with all her hair pinned up under it, a muffler around her lower face, and black lace mitts borrowed from Mrs. Flowers’ younger days, which she admitted she didn’t know why she was wearing. She made quite a picture, Meredith said, with the violet sari top and jeans. Bonnie and Meredith had already spread a cloth for a picnic, and the ants were sampling sandwiches and grapes and low-fat pasta salad.

Elena told the story of how she had woken up this morning, and then there was more hugging and kissing and crying than the males could stand.

“You want to see the woods around here? Check if those malach things are around?” Matt said to Stefan.

“They’d better not be,” Stefan said. “If the trees this far from where you had your accident are infested—”

“Not good?”

“Serious trouble.”

They were about to go when Elena called them back.

“You can stop looking all male and superior,” she added. “Suppressing your emotions is bad for you.Expressing them keeps you well balanced.”

“Listen, you’re tougher than I thought,” Stefan said. “Having picnics at a cemetery?”

“We used to find Elena here all the time,” Bonnie said, pointing to a nearby headstone with a celery stick.

“It’s my parents’ grave site,” Elena explained simply. “After the accident — I always felt closer to them here than anywhere. I would come here when things got bad, or when I needed to have a question answered.”

“Did you ever get any answers?” Matt asked, taking a home-preserved cucumber pickle from a glass jar and passing the jar on.

“I’m not sure, even now,” Elena said. She had taken off the dark glasses, muffler, headscarf, and mitts. “But it always made me feel better. Why? Do you have a question?”

“Well — yeah,” Matt said unexpectedly. Then he flushed as he suddenly found himself the center of attention. Bonnie rolled over to stare at him, the stalk of celery at her lips, Meredith scooted in, Elena sat up. Stefan, who had been leaning against an elaborate headstone with unconscious vampire grace, sat down.