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"What?" Stefan felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. He had expected Damon's defensiveness and sarcasm. But after Damon had saved him from Ethan, the last thing he had expected was indifference.
Damon shrugged, straightening up and adjusting his clothes, brushing an imagined speck of dust from the front of his black shirt. "I've had enough," he said, his tone casual. "Meddling in the affairs of your pet humans has gone stale for me. If Ethan brings back Klaus, then he can deal with him. I doubt it'll go well for him. "
"Klaus will remember that you attacked him," Stefan said. "He'll be after you. "
Cocking one eyebrow, Damon smiled again, a quick, savage baring of his white teeth. "I doubt I'll be his first priority, little brother," he said.
And it was true, Stefan remembered. In that hideous last battle with Klaus, Damon had stabbed the Old One with white ash, keeping him from striking the final blow against Stefan. But he hadn't been responsible for Klaus's death. Stefan had engineered the fight against Klaus, had done his best to kill him. But, in the end, he had failed, too. It was Elena, bringing an army of the dead against the Original vampire, who had killed him.
"Elena," Stefan said desperately. "Elena needs you. "
He was positive that would do it, that Damon's armor would crack. Damon always came through for Elena. But this time Damon's lip curled in a sneer. "I'm sure you can handle things," he said lightly, his voice brittle. "Elena's well-being is your responsibility now, not mine. "
"Damon - "
"No. " Damon held up a warning hand. "I told you. I'm done. " And with one quick motion, he slammed the door in Stefan's face.
Stefan rested his forehead against the door, feeling defeated.
"Damon," he said again. He knew Damon could hear him, but there was only silence from inside the apartment. Slowly, he backed away from the door. It would be best not to push Damon, not when he was in this mood.
In this mood, Damon might do anything.
"I'm so glad you came to see me, Elena," Professor Campbell said. "I was worried about you after" - he glanced around surreptitiously and lowered his voice, although they were alone in his office - "our last talk. " He peered at her cautiously, his usually inquisitive and rather smug face clouded with uncertainty.
"I'm sorry I ran off like that, James," Elena told him, staring down into the cup of sweet, milky coffee he had given her. "It's just . . . when you told me I was a Guardian and the truth about what happened to my parents, I needed some time to think. Last summer, I met a few Guardians. They were powerful, but so inhuman. "
She still couldn't accept that she was supposed to become like them. The whole idea was so big and horrifying that her mind kept scuttling away from it, focusing on solid and immediate concerns like the vampires on campus instead.
Elena's hands shook a little, making the coffee swirl and eddy. She carefully steadied her cup.
James patted her gently on the shoulder. "Well, I have been doing some research, and I think I have good news," he said.
"I could use good news," she said softly, almost pleadingly. "I don't really understand what a human Guardian would be like. Would I be different than a Celestial Guardian?"
James smiled for the first time since she had walked into his office. "After we spoke," he said, "I started to contact all my old colleagues who have studied mythology or magic, anyone who I thought might know something about the Guardians. "
Now that he had information to impart, James lost his tentativeness and seemed to expand, his shoulders relaxing as he hooked his thumbs into his suit vest. "Legend has it," he said, his voice taking on its lecturing tone, "that human Guardians are rare, but there are always two or three in the world. Generally, their parents are recruited in the same way the Guardians recruited your parents, and then the children are handed over to the Guardians for training as they enter adolescence. "
Elena closed her eyes for a moment, wincing. She couldn't imagine being given to the Guardians and losing her human life so young. But if she had been, her mother and father would still be alive.
"When the human Guardians reach young adulthood - about your age, Elena," James continued, "they're stationed where there are high concentrations of ley lines and, therefore, large amounts of supernatural activity. "
"Like here," Elena said. "And Fell's Church. "
James nodded. "The evidence shows pretty strongly that the Guardians recruit prospective parents from ley line - heavy places," he said. "So the human Guardians can stay near their homes. "
"But what are the human Guardians for?" Elena asked. "What am
I supposed to do?" She realized she was gripping her cup so tightly she might break it, so she put it down on James's desk and held on to the arms of her chair instead.
"The role of the human Guardians is to protect the innocent from the supernatural on Earth," James said. "They maintain balance. And it seems that the Guardians develop different powers depending on what is needed where they live. So we won't know what your exact powers are until they begin to form. "
"Protecting the innocent, I can handle," Elena said. She gave James a shaky smile. She wasn't so sure about "maintaining balance. " In her opinion, the Guardians of the Celestial Court had been so obsessed with balance and order that they had forgotten about the innocent. Or perhaps the innocent were only the concern of the Guardians on Earth. But if that was true, wouldn't someone have looked out for her parents?
James smiled back. "That's what I thought. And," he said, with an air of having saved the best for last, "my colleague has located one of the other Guardians on Earth. " He pulled a sheet of paper from a folder on his desk and passed it to her.
It was a printout of a color photograph, a little grainy. In it, a dark-haired man, maybe a year or two older than Elena, smiled at the camera. His brown eyes were narrowed in the sun's glare and his teeth were bright white against his tan skin.
