Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

There was silence. The dust devils had stopped whirling. The smell of sun-warmed pine needles and pine resin in this dim place was making her languid, dizzy. The ground was warm, too, and the pine needles were all aligned, as if the slumbering animal had pine needles for fur. Elena watched dust motes turn and sparkle like opals in the golden sunlight. She knew she wasn’t at her best right now; not her sharpest. Finally, when she was sure her voice would be steady, she asked, “What do you want?”

“A kiss.”

Bonnie was disturbed and confused. It was dark.

“All right,” a voice that was brusque and calming at once was saying. “That’s two possible concussions, one puncture wound in need of a tetanus shot — and — well, I’m afraid I’ve got to sedate your girl, Jim. And I’m going to need help, but you’re not allowed to move at all. You just lie back and keep your eyes shut.”

Bonnie opened her own eyes. She had a vague memory of falling forward onto her bed. But she wasn’t at home; she was still at the Saitou house, lying on a couch.

As always, when in confusion or fear, she looked for Meredith. Meredith was just returning from the kitchen with a makeshift ice pack. She put it on Bonnie’s already wet forehead.

“I just fainted,” Bonnie explained, as she herself figured it out. “That’s all.”

“I know you fainted. You cracked your head pretty hard on the floor,” Meredith replied, and for once her face was perfectly readable: worry and sympathy and relief were all visible. She actually had tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh, Bonnie, I couldn’t get to you in time. Isobel was in the way, and those tatami mats don’t cushion the floor much — and you’ve been out for almost half an hour! You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.” Bonnie fumbled a hand out a blanket she seemed to be wrapped in and gave Meredith’s hand a squeeze. It meant velociraptor sisterhood is still in action. It also meant thank you for caring.

Jim was sprawled on another couch holding an ice pack to the back of his head. His face was greenish-white. He tried to stand up but Dr. Alpert — it was her voice that was both crusty and kind — pushed him back onto the couch.

“You don’t need any more exertion,” she said. “But I do need an assistant. Meredith, can you help me with Isobel? It sounds as if she’s going to be quite a handful.”

“She hit me in the back of the head with a lamp,” Jim warned them. “Don’t ever turn your back on her.”

“We’ll be careful,” Dr. Alpert said.

“You two stay here,” Meredith added firmly.

Bonnie was watching Meredith’s eyes. She wanted to get up to help them with Isobel. But Meredith had that special look of determination that meant it was better not to argue.

As soon as they left, Bonnie tried to stand up. But immediately she began to see the pulsating gray nothingness that meant she was going to pass out again.

She lay back down, teeth gritted.

For a long time there were crashes and shouts from Isobel’s room. Bonnie would hear Dr. Alpert’s voice raised, and then Isobel’s, and then a third voice — not Meredith, who never shouted if she could help it, but what sounded like Isobel’s voice, only slowed down and distorted.

Then, finally, there was silence, and Meredith and Dr. Alpert came back carrying a limp Isobel between them. Meredith had a bloody nose and Dr. Alpert’s short pepper-and-salt hair was standing on end, but they had somehow gotten a T-shirt onto Isobel’s abused body and Dr. Alpert had managed to hang on to her black bag as well.

“Walking wounded, stay where you are. We’ll be back to lend you a hand,” the doctor said in her terse way.

Next Dr. Albert and Meredith made another trip to take Isobel’s grandmother with them.

“I don’t like her color,” Dr. Albert said briefly. “Or the tick of her tocker. We might as well all go get checked up.”

A minute later they returned to help Jim and Bonnie to Dr. Albert’s SUV. The sky had clouded over, and the sun was a red ball not far from the horizon.

“Do you want me to give you something for the pain?” the doctor asked, seeing Bonnie eyeing the black bag. Isobel was in the very back of the SUV, where the seats had been folded down.

Meredith and Jim were in the two seats in front of her, with Grandma Saitou between them, and Bonnie — at Meredith’s insistence — was in the front with the doctor.

“Um, no, it’s okay,” Bonnie said. Actually, she had been wondering whether the hospital actually could cure Isobel of infection any better than Mrs. Flowers’ herbal compresses could.

But although her head throbbed and ached and she was developing a lump the size of a hard-boiled egg on her forehead, she didn’t want to cloud her thinking. There was something nagging at her, some dream or something she’d had while Meredith said she’d been unconscious.

What was it?

“All right then. Seat belts on? Here we go.” The SUV pulled away from the Saitou house. “Jim, you said Isobel has a three-year-old sister asleep upstairs, so I called my granddaughter Jayneela to come over here. At least it will be somebody in the house.”

Bonnie twisted around to look at Meredith. They both spoke at once.

“Oh, no! She can’t go in!Especially not into Isobel’s room! Look, please, you have to—” Bonnie babbled.

“I’m really not sure if that’s a good idea, Dr. Alpert,” Meredith said, no less urgently but much more coherently. “Unless she does stay away from that room and maybe has someone with her — a boy would be good.”

“A boy?” Dr. Alpert seemed bewildered, but the combination of Bonnie’s distress and Meredith’s sincerity seemed to convince her. “Well, Tyrone, my grandson, was watching TV when I left. I’ll try to get him.”

“Wow!” Bonnie said involuntarily. “That’s the Tyrone who’s offensive tackle on the football team next year, huh? I heard that they call him the Tyre-minator.”

“Well, let’s say I think he’ll be able to protect Jayneela,” Dr. Alpert said after making the call. “But we’re the ones with the, ah,overexcited girl in the vehicle with us. From the way she fought the sedative, I’d say she’s quite a ‘terminator’ herself.”

Meredith’s mobile phone beeped out the tune it used for numbers not in its memory, and then announced, “Mrs. T. Flowers is calling you. Will you take the—” In a moment Meredith had hit the talk button.

“Mrs. Flowers?” she said. The hum of the SUV kept anything Mrs. Flowers might be saying from Bonnie and the others, so Bonnie went back to concentrating on two things: what she knew about the “victims” of the Salem “witches,” and what that elusive thought while she was unconscious had been.

All of which promptly flew away when Meredith put down her mobile phone.

“What was it? What?What? ” Bonnie couldn’t get a clear view of Meredith’s face in the dusk, but it looked pale, and when she spoke she sounded pale, too.

“Mrs. Flowers was doing some gardening and she was about to go inside when she noticed that there was something in her begonia bushes. She said it looked as if someone had tried to stuff something down between the bush and a wall, but a bit of fabric stuck up.”

Bonnie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.“What was it?”

“It was a duffel bag, full of shoes and clothes. Boots. Shirts. Pants. All Stefan’s.”

Bonnie gave a shriek that caused Dr. Alpert to swerve and then recover, the SUV fishtailing.

“Oh, my God; oh, my God — he didn’t go!”

“Oh, I think he went all right. Just not of his own free will,” Meredith said grimly.

“Damon,” Bonnie gasped, and slumped back into her own seat, tears welling up in her eyes and overflowing. “I couldn’t help wanting to believe…”