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“Does it—” Bonnie echoed incredulously.
“Elena, is there something wrong with you?” Meredith interrupted. “You’re really not acting like yourself.”
Feeling defensive, Elena shrugged. “I guess I just don’t think Homecoming is all that important.”
“That’s what she means when she says you’re not acting like yourself,” Bonnie said tartly, opening the front door.
Yangtze, Bonnie’s family’s fat, elderly Pekingese, greeted them with shrill, yapping barks, trying to wiggle his chubby body out through the open door. Bonnie pushed him back, and he growled and snapped at Elena’s ankle as she went by.
Katherine had killed Yangtze, Elena remembered. Bonnie’s mother had cried off and on for days. The dog was so spoiled, she was the only one who could stand him. But there
had been no sign of Katherine in the cemetery the other evening, no wild surge of Power to send the girls running screaming across Wickery Bridge. Maybe if Elena and Stefan didn’t fall in love, none of the terrible things from Elena’s first time around—not even Yangtze’s death—would happen.
Gingerly, Elena reached down and patted the dog’s back, earning another snarl. But wait, she thought, pulling back her hand. If Yangtze didn’t die, wouldn’t the world be different, in ways Elena couldn’t even predict? The dog was the smallest part of all this, but every piece of the world made a difference.
Something terrible might happen, Elena thought, suddenly cold with panic. What if Bonnie tripped over the dog’s small, round body on the stairs and fell, cracked her spine, and wound up in a wheelchair? What if the dog finally managed to push its way out, ran into the road, and caused a fatal car accident? Anything could happen. At the realization, all the breath went out of Elena’s body in a sudden gasp, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“What is it?” Meredith asked warily, but Elena just shook her head, her mind spinning. Anything could happen. The Guardian had told her that, but she hadn’t really thought about it. Elena was changing everyone’s lives, and what if she accidentally changed them for the worse? At least in Elena’s own reality, Bonnie, Meredith, and Matt were more or less safe.
Not Stefan, though. Stefan had died.
Not Elena, who was dying.
And not Damon. She was the last one he had left. For a long time, Stefan had been the only person in the world Damon gave a damn about. And then Elena had come, and their bond had tethered Damon to her, to humanity. And now, in her reality, Elena was dying and Damon was losing the last bit of that humanity he had left.
In the McCullough’s living room, Bonnie’s sister Mary was unpinning a nurse’s cap from her wavy red hair. “Hey girls,” she said, dropping her cap on the table. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes.
“Long shift?” Bonnie asked. Mary worked at the Fell’s Church clinic, which was always busy.
Mary sighed and closed her eyes for a second. “We got a pretty bad case in today,” she said. “You girls go down to the cemetery sometimes, don’t you? Down by the Wickery Bridge?”
“Well, sure,” Bonnie said slowly. This wasn’t something they talked about. “Elena’s parents …”
“That’s what I thought.” Mary took a deep breath. “Listen to me, Bonnie. Don’t ever, ever go out there again. Especially not alone or at night.”
“Why?” Bonnie asked, bewildered.
Elena’s stomach clenched. It shouldn’t have happened. Things had been different this time, down near Wickery Bridge.
“Last night somebody was attacked out there,” Mary said. “They found him right under Wickery Bridge.”
Meredith and Bonnie stared at her in disbelief, and Elena with a dull, wondering dread. Bonnie clutched Elena’s arm, her fingers pinching painfully tight. “Somebody was attacked under the bridge? Who? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, shaking her head. “This morning one of the cemetery workers spotted him lying there. He was some homeless person, I guess. He was probably sleeping under the bridge when he was attacked. But he was half-dead when they found him, and he’s still unconscious. He might die.”
Stefan. Elena felt weighed down by guilt. She had thought things had changed. Was Stefan following Elena in this reality, too? Had he been overcome with the need for blood and attacked the homeless man anyway?
Or was it Damon who had attacked the man under the bridge? Damon had been at the cemetery.
Maybe fate wasn’t changeable after all, Elena thought, chilled. Maybe the man had been destined to be terribly hurt that night at the bridge, no matter what.
If so, perhaps her mission was doomed to failure. Maybe she and Stefan and Damon would continue on the same path, no matter how she tried to alter things. It was possible, wasn’t it, that all roads would end with Stefan falling, a false friend’s stave in his heart, with Elena drifting to death in her big white bed? With Damon’s heart breaking, all his steps toward redemption lost?
“His throat was nearly ripped out,” Mary said grimly. “He lost an incredible amount of blood. They thought it might have been an animal at first, but now Dr. Lowen says it was a person. And the police think whoever did it may be hiding in the cemetery.” She looked at each of them, her mouth tight.
“You don’t have to scare us,” Bonnie said, her voice strained. “We get the point, Mary.”
“All right. Good.” Mary rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. “I’ve got to lie down for a while. I didn’t mean to be crabby.” She left the living room, heading for the stairs.
