Stefan looked as if he were going to smack him one, but Elena took his hand soothingly. “I’m healthy,” she said. “So that’s two votes for me going on to save Fell’s Church.”
“I’ve always believed in you,” Stefan said. “If you think you can go on, you can go on.”
Bonnie sniffled. “Just don’t take any more chances, okay?” she said. “You scared me.”
“I’m really sorry,” Elena said gently, feeling the void of Meredith’s absence.
Meredith would be a great help to both of them now. “So, shall we continue? And where are we heading? I’m all turned around.”
Damon stood. “I think we just keep in a straight line. The path is narrow after this — and who knows what the next trial is?”
The path was narrow — and misty. Just as before, it started in filmy veils and ended up blinding them. Elena let Stefan, with his catlike reflexes, go first, and she held on to his pack. Behind her, Bonnie clung like a burr. Just when Elena thought she was going to scream if she had to keep traveling through the white blanket any farther, it cleared.
They were near the top of some mountain.
Elena took off after Bonnie, who had hurried ahead at the sight of transparent air. She was just fast enough to grab on to Bonnie’s pack and pull her backward as she reached the place where the land stopped.
“No way!” Bonnie cried, setting up a clamoring echo from below. “There is no way I’m going across that!”
That was a chasm with a very thin bridge spanning it.
The chasm was frosty white on either side at the top, but when Elena gripped the bridge’s ice-cold metal poles and leaned a little forward she could see glacial blues and greens at the very bottom. A chill wind hit her face.
The gap between this bit of the world and the next bit directly in front of them was about a hundred yards long.
Elena looked from the shadowy depths to the slender bridge, which was made of wooden slats and just wide enough for one person to walk on. It was supported here and there by ropes which ran to the sides of the chasm and were sunk with metal posts into barren, icy rock.
It also swooped magnificently down and then back up again. Even looking at it gave the eye a sort of mini-thrill ride. The only problem was that it didn’t include a safety belt, a seat, two handrails, and a uniformed guide saying, “Hands and feet must be kept inside the attraction at all times!” It did have a single, thin, creeperwoven rope to hold on to on the left.
“Look,” Stefan was saying, as quietly and intently as Elena had ever heard him speak, “we can hold onto each other. We can go go one by one, very slowly—”
“NOOO!” Bonnie put into that one word a psychic shriek that almost defeaned Elena. “No, no, no, no, NO! You don’t understand! I can’t DO IT!” She flung her backpack down.
Then she began laughing and crying at the same time in a full-blown attack of hysterics. Elena had an impulse to dash water in her face. She had a stronger impulse to throw herself down beside Bonnie and shriek, “And neither can I! It’s insane!” But what good would that do?
A few minutes later Damon was talking quietly to Bonnie, unaffected by the outburst. Stefan was pacing in circles. Elena was trying to think of Plan A, while a little voice chanted inside her head, You can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t do it, either.
This was all just a phobia. They could probably train Bonnie out of it — if, say, they had a year or two.
Stefan, on one of his circular trips near her, said, “And how are you about heights, love?”
Elena decided to put a brave face on it. “I don’t know. I think I can do it.”
Stefan looked pleased. “To save your hometown.”
“Yes…but it’s too bad nothing works here. I could try to use my Wings for flying, but I can’t control them—” And that kind of magic is simply not available here, Stefan’s voice said in her mind.
But telepathy is. You can hear me, too, can’t you?
They thought of the answer simultaneously, and Elena saw the light of the idea breaking on Stefan’s face even as she began to speak.
“Influence Bonnie! Make her think she’s a tightrope walker — a performer since she was a toddler. But don’t make her too playful so she doesn’t bounce the rest of us off!”
With that light in his face, Stefan looked…too good. He seized both Elena’s hands, whirled her around once as if she weighed nothing, picked her up, and kissed her.
And kissed her.
And kissed her until Elena felt her soul dripping off her fingertips.
They shouldn’t have done it in front of Damon. But Elena’s euphoria was clouding her judgment, and she couldn’t control herself.
Neither of them had been trying for a deep mind probe. But telepathy was all they had left, and it was warm and wonderful and it left them for an instant in the circle of each other’s arms, laughing, panting — with electricity flashing between them.
Elena’s whole body felt as if she’d just gotten a sizable jolt.
Then she pulled herself out of his arms, but it was too late. Their shared gaze had gone on much too long, and Elena felt her heart pounding in fear. She could feel Damon’s eyes on her. She barely managed to whisper, “Will you tell them?”
“Yes,” Stefan said softly. “I’ll tell them.” But he didn’t move until she actually turned her back on Bonnie and Damon.
After that she peeked over her shoulder and listened.
Stefan sat down by the sobbing girl and said, “Bonnie, can you look at me?
That’s all I want. I promise you, you don’t have to go across that bridge if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to stop crying, but try to look me in the eye. Can you do that? Good. Now…” His voice and even his face changed subtly, becoming more forceful — mesmerizing. “You’re not afraid of heights at all, are you? You’re an acrobat who could walk a tightrope across the Grand Canyon and never turn a hair. You’re the very best of all your family, the flying McCulloughs, and they’re the best in the world. And right now, you’re going to choose whether to cross over that wooden bridge. If so, you’ll lead us. You’ll be our leader.”
Slowly, while listening to Stefan, Bonnie’s face had changed. With swollen eyes fixed on Stefan’s, she seemed to be listening intently to something in her own head.
And finally, as Stefan said the last sentence, she jumped up and looked at the bridge.
“Okay, let’s go!” she cried, picking up her backpack, while Elena sat staring after her.
“Can you make it?” Stefan asked, looking at Elena. “We’ll let her go first — there’s really no way she can fall off. I’ll go after her. Elena can come after me and hold on to my belt, and I’m counting on you, Damon, to hold on to her. Especially if she starts to faint.”
“I’ll hold her,” Damon said quietly. Elena wanted to ask Stefan to Influence her, too, but everything was happening so fast. Bonnie was already on the bridge, only pausing when called back by Stefan. Stefan was looking behind him at Elena, saying, “Can you get a good grip?” Damon was behind Elena, putting a strong hand on her shoulder, and saying, “Look straight ahead, not down. Don’t worry about fainting; I’ll catch you.”
But it was such a frail wooden bridge, and Elena found that she was always looking down and her stomach floated up outside her body and above her head.
She had a death-grip on Stefan’s belt with one hand, and on the woven creeper with the other.
They came to a place where a slat had detached and the slats on either side looked as if they might go at any moment.
“Careful with these!” Bonnie said, laughing and leaping over all three.
Stefan stepped over the first chancy slat, over the missing one, and put his foot on the next.
Crack!