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do you remember Vicky?”
She didn’t snap off a superficial answer, pointing out that of course she knew a girl she’d gone to school for years with. He watched her face as her mind roved back over the seasons until she could picture what he wanted her to picture: Vicky, a splash of white as she stumbled down a dark country road, wearing nothing but a thin torn slip; her hair disarrayed; her eyes like two black holes to some other dreadful dimension; her mouth one long silent scream.
“I remember,” Meredith whispered. Stefan could feel her shock. “But Vicky was—she was attacked and forced, and God only knows what horrible things she saw or—or felt. This is totally different—”
“Tell me that again after you’ve taken your turn.” Stefan deliberately spoke in harsh, clipped tones, and hardly glanced at Meredith as he continued. “Vicky was forced.” He stared off into a middle distance. “Matt’s forcing himself. Vicky was attacked. Matt has the selfdiscipline to hold himself down. Vicky saw or experienced things that, to put it crudely, drove her crazy. And whether those things were in the mind of a supernatural creature, or in her mind, or in the world around them, I don’t know and Vicky isn’t saying.” He swung back toward her, letting the harshness drain out of his voice, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “Meredith, if vampire and donor are, well, friends, with no need to overcome mental or physical resistance—either by mind control or by physical force, then everything should be fine. But it isn’t, always. There are monsters lurking in human minds scarier than anything I’ve ever imagined in my own nightmares. And vampires are just the sort of things likely to make them pop up.”
“And you think one could pop up with Matt?”
“I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of a lot of things, if he makes himself do this.” Meredith cocked her silky dark head, highlights running up and down the length of her hair. Then she met his eyes and nodded, once. “I’ll try to talk him out of it. I’ll . . . let’s see . . . I’ll help try to make him believe that by the time his turn comes around that you’re as full as a tick and ready to burst. That will be Plan T.”
“Thank you. I don’t think I’ll be quite as full as a tick, but I may not exactly be myself by that time. It’ll be good to feel that you’re backing me up.”
“Oh, I’m a famous backupper. Elena wasn’t just a Big Picture Person; she loved figuring out all the grungy little details, but I was her number one backer.” Meredith spoke, not with bitterness or sarcasm, nor even with the tolerance usually accorded to the faults of the recently dead, but with love. Just love. The absent love of a true friend, who has had time to learn all, know all, and forgive all. Watching her, thinking about all the years that she had known Elena while he had not—all the simple daytoday fun they had had—Stefan felt a hand clutch at his heart. He had only loved Elena a few short months because he had only known her that long.
“Meredith?” He sat down and tried to keep envy, like a haggard shrieking banshee, out of his voice.
He wasn’t quite sure if he succeeded. Meredith was perceptive and she was watching him. “Yes, Stefan.”
“Meredith, when this starts, I’d appreciate it so much if you could . . . well . . . think about Elena. About things you did together. Stuff like the night you tried to make toffee.
You did that, didn’t you?”
They had. He knew. He’d read Elena’s diaries before they’d been enshrined in the library. And he had an eidetic memory.
June 18: ohmygodinthemorning: Bonnie’s house. Bonnie’s greatgrandmother must have been a witch. I am NOT kidding. If she could make something edible out of the toffee recipe in her Simple Home Cookery Book—I’m not even saying “delicious,” I’m saying simply something that a person could choke down without ruining the kitchen, setting fire to the curtains, and scalding both hands and the inside of her mouth, then she definitely had supernatural powers. We are going to need a jackhammer to get all that $%
^*!! sugar concrete out of the stove burners . . . And yet it never hardened when we tried to pull it, oh, no . . . This is the end of Bonnie’s candy making craze, and if she doesn’t agree, the world is going to see its first Homicide By Toffee case . . . OH, GOD, WE HAD
FUN.
But knowing the words by heart wasn’t the same as being there, as seeing Elena’s face flushed with the heat of the stove, as counting the wisps of damp gold hair curling on her forehead; as watching her laugh and snap out orders and apologize by turn.
He wanted to see that.
“I vaguely remember. Bonnie had to have it cut out of her hair,” Meredith was saying.
Her eyes were mildly curious.
“I’d like to see that. Little things like that, if you can remember them. Just any little thing—”
He was repeating himself—and he was starting to break down. Meredith put a hand on his elbow, guiding him to the threadbare brokenspringed couch in this room that had been his home for the happiest days of his life.
Meredith
Meredith was worried about Stefan. Those haunted green eyes . . . they’d used to be a brighter leaf green. Now they were dark as emerald. The tightly molded planes of his face, the beauty of his features, the soft promise of his mouth were all there . . . but still, somehow, these days Stefan managed to look like a condemned man. It wasn’t just since the monster had started attacking Fell’s Church. It was since losing Elena. Stefan had become the most beautiful walking shadow of his former self.
Fear assailed her suddenly, and she had to know about their champion. “Stefan?
With human blood in your veins, and White Ash in your hands, how do you rate your chances?” she asked him.
“How can I know? All I do know is that I’ll fight him with everything I have; with everything you’re giving me.”
With what they were giving him. A wry, mocking voice started in Meredith’s head.
Making a bargain with the devil? You’re going to let this lesser fiend have his way with you, breech your veins, just so he can go into a hopeless battle with a greater devil?
Yes. Oh, yes, indeed. She’d do much more than give her blood to a halfbroken lost soul like Stefan if it would allow her a chance to save Fell’s Church. Revenge . . . even revenge for her grandfather and Sue Carson . . . was pointless. If everyone insis
