Damon was staring at her. “Why should I say anything about anybody? Unless you’re talking about the little redheaded one?”
“I told you; I’m not saying anything. Except that obviously Caroline isn’t a virgin. Well, with all the ruckus about her being pregnant—”
“But you remember,” Damon interjected, “I came to Fell’s Church before Stefan did; I just lurked in the shadows longer. The way you talked—”
“Oh, I know. We liked boys and boys liked us, and we already had reputations. So we just talked any way we felt like talking. Some of it may have been true, but a lot of it you could take two ways — and then of course you know how boys talk—”
Damon knew. He nodded.
“Well and so pretty soon everyone was talking about us as if we’d done everything with everyone. They even wrote stuff about it in the paper and the yearbook and on the bathroom walls. But we had a little poem, too, and sometimes we even wrote it with our signatures on it. How did it go?” Elena cast her mind back a year, two years, more. Then she recited:
“Just because you heard it, doesn’t make it true. Just because you read it, doesn’t make it so. The next time that you hear it, it may be about you. Don’t think that you can change their minds, just ’cause you know — you know!”
As Elena finished, she looked at Damon, suddenly feeling the urgent need to get to Stefan. “We’re almost there,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”
Arizona was as hot and barren a state as Elena had imagined. She and Damon drove directly to the Juniper Resort, and Elena was depressed, if not surprised, to see that Matt was not checked in.
“It can’t have taken him longer than us to get here,” she said, as soon as they’d been shown up to their rooms. “Unless — oh, God, Damon! Unless Shinichi caught him somehow.”
Damon sat down on a bed and regarded Elena grimly. “I guess I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this — that the jerk would at least have the courtesy to tell you himself. But I’ve been tracking his aura ever since he left us. It’s been getting steadily farther away — in the direction of Fell’s Church.”
Sometimes, really bad news takes a while to sink in.
“You mean,” Elena said, “that he’s not going to show up here at all?”
“I mean that, as the crow flies, it wasn’t all that far from where we got the cars to Fell’s Church. He went in that direction. And he didn’t come back.”
“But why?” Elena demanded, as if logic could somehow conquer fact. “Why would he go off and leave me? Especially, why would he go to Fell’s Church, where they’re looking for him?”
“As for why he’d leave: I think he got the wrong idea about you and me — or maybe the right idea a little early”—Damon raised his eyebrows at Elena and she threw a pillow at him—“and decided to let us have some privacy. As for why Fell’s Church…” Damon shrugged. “Look, you’ve known the guy longer than I have. But even I can tell he’s the Galahad type. The parfait gentil knight, sans peur et sans reproche. If I had to say I’d say he went to meet Caroline’s charges.”
“Oh, no,” Elena said, going to the door as a knock sounded. “Not after I told him and told him—”
“Oh, yes,” Damon said, assuming a slight crouching position. “Even with your sage advice ringing in his ears—”
The door opened. It was Bonnie. Bonnie, with her petite frame, her curly strawberry hair, her wide, soulful brown eyes. Elena, in a state to disbelieve the evidence of her own eyes, and still not through with the argument with Damon, shut the door on her.
“Matt’s going to get lynched,” Elena almost screamed, vaguely annoyed that some knocking was going on somewhere.
Damon uncrouched. He passed Elena on the way to the door, said, “I think you’d better sit down,” and then sat her down by putting her in a chair and holding her there until she stopped trying to get up again.
Then he opened the door.
This time it was Meredith knocking. Tall and willowy, with her hair falling in dark clouds around her shoulders, Meredith radiated the intention to go on knocking until the door stayed open. Something happened inside Elena, and she found that she could get her mind around more than one subject at once.
It was Meredith. And Bonnie. In Sedona, Arizona!
Elena leaped up from the chair where Damon had put her and flung her arms around Meredith, saying incoherently, “You came! You came! You knew I couldn’t call you, so you came!”
Bonnie edged around the embrace and said to Damon in an undertone, “Is she back to kissing everyone she meets?”
“Unfortunately,” Damon said, “no. But be prepared to be squeezed to death.”
Elena turned on him. “I heard that! Oh, Bonnie! I just can’t believe you two are really here. I wanted to talk to you so much!”
Meanwhile, she was hugging Bonnie, and Bonnie was hugging her, and Meredith was hugging both of them. Subtle velociraptor sisterhood signals were being passed from one to another at the same time — an arched eyebrow here, a slight nod there, a frown and shrug ending with a sigh. Damon didn’t know it, but he had just been accused, tried, acquitted, and restored to duty — with the conclusion that extra surveillance was necessary in the future.
Elena snapped out of it first. “You must have met with Matt — he had to tell you about this place.”
“He did, and then he sold the Prius and we sort of packed on the run and got plane tickets here and we’ve been waiting — we didn’t want to miss you!” Bonnie said breathlessly.
“I don’t suppose that would have been just about two days ago that you bought your tickets here,” Damon asked the ceiling wearily as he lounged with an elbow on Elena’s chair.
“Let me see—” Bonnie began, but Meredith said flatly, “Yes it was. What? It made something happen to you?”
“We were trying to keep things slightly ambiguous for the enemy,” Damon said. “But as it turns out, it probably didn’t matter.”
No, Elena thought, because Shinichi can reach inside your brain whenever he wants and try to take away your memories and all you can do is try to fight him off.
“But it does mean that Elena and I should start off right away.” Damon continued. “I have to do an errand first. Elena should pack. Take as little as you can, just the absolute essentials — but include food for two or three days.”
“You said…starting now?” Bonnie breathed, and then she sat down abruptly on the floor.
“It makes sense, if we’ve already lost the element of surprise,” Damon replied.
“I can’t believe you two came to say good-bye to me while Matt watches over the town,” Elena said. “That is so sweet!” She smiled radiantly before adding, in her own mind, And so dumb!
“Well—”
“Well, I still have an errand,” Damon said, waving without turning around. “Let’s say we’ll leave here in half an hour.”
“Stingy,” Bonnie complained, when the door was safely shut behind him. “That might have only given us a few minutes to talk before we start.”
“I can pack in less than five minutes,” Elena said sadly, and then got tangled up in Bonnie’s previous sentence. “‘Before we start’?”
“I can’t pack just essentials at all,” Meredith was fretting quietly. “I couldn’t store everything on my mobile, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to recharge the batteries. I’ve got a suitcase of stuff on paper!”
Elena was looking back and forth at them nervously. “Um, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s supposed to be packing,” she said. “Because I’m the only one going…right?” Another look back and forth.
“As if we would let you set off into some other universe without us!” Bonnie said. “You need us!”
“Not another universe; only another dimension,” Meredith said. “But the same principle applies.”
“But — I can’t let you come with me!”
“Of course you can’t. I’m older than you,” Meredith said. “You don’t ‘let’ me do anything. But the truth is that we have a mission. We want to find Shinichi’s or Misao’s star ball if we can. If we could do that we think we could stop most of the stuff going on in Fell’s Church immediately.”