“I miss Sage,” Matt said indistinctly. “We need all the magic help we can get.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Flowers was hurrying around the kitchen making ham and cheese sandwiches and bagging them like school lunches. “Anybody who wakes up tonight hungry must have something to eat,” she said. “Ham and cheese, chicken salad, some nice crisp carrots, and a big hunk of apple pie.” Elena went to help her.
She didn’t know why, but she wanted to cry some more. Mrs. Flowers patted her.
“We are all feeling — er, strung out,” she announced gravely. “Anyone who doesn’t feel like going right to sleep is probably running on too much adrenaline. My sleeping aid will help with that. And I think we can trust our animal friends and the wards on the roof to keep us safe tonight.”
Matt was practically asleep on his feet now. “Mrs. Flowers — someday I’ll repay you…but for now, I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“In other words, bedtime, kiddies,” Stefan said. He closed Matt’s fingers firmly around a packed lunch, then steered him toward the stairs. Elena gathered several more lunches, kissed Mrs. Flowers twice, and went up to Stefan’s room.
She had the attic bed straightened and was opening a plastic bag when Stefan came in from putting Matt to bed.
“Is he okay?” she said anxiously. “I mean, will he be okay tomorrow?”
“He’ll be okay in his body. I got most of the damage healed.”
“And in his mind?”
“It’s a tough thing. He just ran smack into Real Life. Arrested, knowing they might lynch him, not knowing if anybody would be able to figure out what had happened to him. He thought that even if we tracked him it would come down to a fight, which would have been hard to win — with so few of us, and not much magic left.”
“But Saber fixed ’em,” Elena said.
She looked thoughtfully at the sandwiches she’d laid out on the bed. “Stefan, do you want chicken salad or ham?” she asked.
There was a silence. But it was moments before Elena looked up at him in astonishment. “Oh, Stefan — I–I actually forgot. I just — today has been so strange — I forgot—”
“I’m flattered,” Stefan said. “And you’re sleepy. Whatever Mrs. Flowers puts in her tea—”
“I think the government would be interested in it,” Elena offered. “For spies and things. But for now…” She held her arms out, head bent back, neck exposed.
“No, love. I remember this afternoon, if you don’t. And I swore I was going to start hunting, and I am,” Stefan said firmly.
“You’re going to leave me?” Elena said, startled out of her warm satisfaction.
They stared at each other.
“Don’t leave,” Elena said, combing her hair away from her neck. “I had it all planned out, how you’ll drink, and how we’ll sleep holding each other. Please don’t leave, Stefan.”
She knew how hard he found it to leave her. Even if she was grimy and worn out, even if she was wearing grungy jeans and had dirt under her fingernails. She was endlessly beautiful and endlessly powerful and mysterious to him. He longed for her. Elena could feel it through their bond, which was beginning to hum, beginning to warm up, beginning to draw him in close.
“But, Elena,” he said. He was trying to be sensible! Didn’t he know she didn’t want sensible at this particular moment?
“Right here.” Elena tapped the soft spot on her neck.
Their bond was singing like an electric power line now. But Stefan was stubborn.
“You need to eat, yourself. You have to keep your strength up.”
Elena immediately picked up a chicken salad sandwich and bit into it. Mmm… yummy. Really good. She would have to pick Mrs. Flowers a wildflower bouquet.
They were all so well taken care of here. She had to think of more ways to help.
Stefan was watching her eat. It made him hungry, but that was because he was used to being fed round the clock, and not used to exercise. Elena could hear everything through their connection and she heard him thinking that he was glad to see Elena renewing herself. That he had learned discipline now; that it wouldn’t do him any harm to go to bed one night feeling hungry. He would hold his sleepy adorable Elena all night.
No! Elena was horrified. Since he’d been imprisoned in the Dark Dimension, anything that hinted at Stefan going without filled her with appalling terror. Suddenly she had trouble swallowing the bite she’d taken.
“Right here, right here…please?” she begged him. She didn’t want to have to seduce him into it, but she would if he forced her to. She would wash her hands into pristine cleanliness, and change into a long, clinging nightgown, and stroke his stubborn canines in between kisses, and touch them with her tongue tip gently, just at the base where they wouldn’t cut her as they responded and grew. And by then he would be dizzy, he would be out of control, he would be hers completely.
All right, all right! Stefan thought to her. Mercy!
“I don’t want to give you mercy. I don’t want you to let me go,” she said, holding her arms out to him, and heard her own voice soft and tender and yearning. “I want you to hold me and keep me forever, and I want to hold you and keep you forever.”
Stefan’s face had changed. He looked at her with the look he’d worn in prison when she had come to visit him in an outfit — very unlike the grubby one she wore now — and he’d said, bewildered, “All this…it’s for me?”
There had been razor wire between them then. Now there was nothing to separate them and Elena could see how much Stefan wanted to come to her. She reached a little farther and then Stefan came into the circle of her arms and held her tightly but with infinite care not to use enough strength to hurt her. When he relaxed and leaned his forehead against hers, Elena realized that she would never be tired or sad or frightened without being able to think of this feeling and that it would uphold her for the rest of her life.
At last they sank down together on the sheets, comforting each other in equal measure; exchanging sweet, warm kisses. With each kiss, Elena felt the outside world and all its horrors drift farther and farther away. How could anything be wrong when she herself felt that heaven was near? Matt and Meredith, Damon and Bonnie would surely all be safe and happy too. Meanwhile, every kiss brought her closer to paradise, and she knew Stefan felt the same way. They were so happy together that Elena knew that soon the entire universe would echo with their own joy, which overflowed like pure light and transformed everything it touched.
Bonnie woke and realized she had only been unconscious for a few minutes. She began to shiver, and once she started she couldn’t seem to stop. She felt a wave of heat envelop her, and she knew that Damon was trying to warm her, but still the trembling wouldn’t go away.
“What’s wrong?” Damon asked, and his voice was different from usual.
“I don’t know,” Bonnie said. She didn’t. “Maybe it’s because they kept starting to throw me out the window. I wasn’t going to scream about that,” she added hastily, in case he assumed she would. “But then when they talked about torturing me—” She felt a sort of spasm go through Damon. He was holding her too hard.
“Torturing you! They threatened you with that?”
“Yes, because, you know, Misao’s star ball was gone. They knew that it had been poured out; I didn’t tell them that. But I had to tell them that it was my fault that the last half got poured out, and then they got mad at me. Oh! Damon, you’re hurting me!”
“So it was your fault it got poured out, was it?”
“Well, I figure it was. You couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gotten drunk, and — whwhat’s wrong, Damon? Are you mad too?” He really was holding her so that she really couldn’t breathe.
Slowly, she felt his arms loosen a little. “A word of advice, little redbird. When people are threatening to torture and kill you, it might be more — expedient — to tell them that it’s someone else’s fault. Especially if that happens to be the truth.”
“I know that!” Bonnie said indignantly. “But they were going to kill me anyway. If I’d told about you, they’d’ve hurt you, too.”
Damon pulled her roughly back now, so that she had to look him in the face.
Bonnie could also feel the delicate touch of a telepathic mind probe. She didn’t resist; she was too busy wondering why he had plum-colored shadows under his eyes. Then he shook her a little, and she stopped wondering.
“Don’t you understand even the basics of self-preservation?” he said, and she thought he looked angry again. He was certainly different from any other time that she’d seen him — except once, she thought, and that was when Elena had been
“Disciplined” for saving Lady Ulma’s life, back when Ulma had been a slave. He’d had the same expression then, so menacing that even Meredith had been frightened of him, and yet so filled with guilt that Bonnie had longed to comfort him.
But there had to be some other reason, Bonnie’s mind told her. Because you’re not Elena, and he’s never going to treat you the way he treats Elena. A vision of the brown room rose before her, and she felt certain that he would never have put Elena there. Elena wouldn’t have let him, for one thing.