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Elena headed up the stairs, her steps slow and heavy. She had to think. There must be some way to get Aunt Judith and Margaret away from here. She couldn’t let them get hurt, and she couldn’t let Damon use them as pawns to hurt Elena.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs, Elena had made up her mind. She went into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Pulling off one of her shoes, she wrapped the towel around it and then opened the hall window. Outside, the branches of the quince tree almost brushed the window frame. It was close enough that someone could conceivably climb inside, although it would be a dangerous stretch.
Bracing herself, she slammed the heel of the shoe against the window’s catch. The towel muffled the sound of the blow, but not as much as Elena had hoped. She paused and listened. Aunt Judith was running water downstairs, and under the noise of the water, Elena could hear both the television and Margaret singing to herself. Trusting in the noise downstairs to cover the thuds, Elena slammed the heel of her shoe against the window catch again and again until it finally bent and twisted, breaking.
With a sharp crack, the pane of glass below the catch shattered, broken glass falling in shards onto the hall carpet. Elena froze. She hadn’t expected that. Still, maybe it made the whole scene more convincing.
Quickly and quietly, Elena picked up a silver candlestick from the windowsill. She took a carved jade box from a little table in the hall and a small marble figure of an angel that her parents had once brought home from Italy from another. Hurrying into her room, she slipped her shoe back on, wrapped the objects in the towel, and shoved the bundled towel deep into her closet.
After one last glance around to make sure everything was concealed, she went back to stand in front of the broken hall window, took a deep breath, and screamed.
There was a sudden, shocked silence downstairs, followed by a flurry of movement. “Elena?” Aunt Judith called worriedly, running up the stairs. “What happened? Are you all right?”
Elena turned to meet her as she reached the top of the stairs. “I think someone broke in,” she said. She was so full of dread that it was easy to infuse the word
s with fear.
As Elena pointed them out, Aunt Judith examined the broken catch, the smashed windowpane, and the spots where knickknacks were missing from the hall. Looking in her own room and Elena’s, she saw that nothing else seemed to be missing.
“I don’t know,” she said finally, doubtfully. “A branch could have blown against the window and broken it. It seems strange to me that a thief would take just three little objects, and nothing else. All my jewelry’s still here, and I had some money on my dresser that’s completely untouched.”
Elena wanted to scream with frustration. She didn’t have to try hard at all to bring tears to her eyes or a waver to her voice.
“Please, Aunt Judith,” she said. “I really don’t think any of us should sleep here tonight. Can’t you and Margaret go to Robert’s, at least until we can get someone to fix the window? Anyone could come in.”
Aunt Judith hesitated. “What about you, Elena?” she asked. “I’m certainly not going to leave you here all alone.”
“I can go to Meredith’s,” Elena said quickly. “It’s closer to school, and her parents won’t mind.”
Convincing Aunt Judith was agonizing. A hundred times, she wondered if they were just being hysterical and almost changed her mind about leaving the house. Once she had finally agreed to leave the house, she insisted on them all sitting down and eating dinner together.
Elena could barely nibble the juicy roast chicken even though she recognized that it was delicious. Her eyes kept straying to the darkness beyond the dining room windows. Was Damon out there? She could imagine him in his crow form, huddled on a branch and watching her with bright, malicious eyes.
By the time Robert’s gray Volvo turned into the drive, Elena felt like she was almost bursting out of her skin with anxious, restless energy. They had to go. They had to get away, before it was too late.
Grabbing her sister with one hand and both their bags with the other, Elena hustled Margaret out to the car, ignoring her protests, and buckled her securely into her booster seat.
“Do you want me to check the window?” Robert said, politely getting out of the car to take Aunt Judith’s bag and open the passenger’s side door for her.
“No!” said Elena sharply before Aunt Judith could answer. When they both looked at her in surprise, she gave them a small, weak smile. “Sorry. I’m just so nervous. Can’t we get out of here?”
As they pulled out of the driveway, Elena settled watchfully in the backseat next to Margaret, her overnight bag clutched in her lap. She felt sure that nothing would happen to them on the drive over to Meredith’s. And then, after they dropped her off, she could only hope that Damon would lose interest in them. At least he’d never been invited into Robert’s house. Getting Aunt Judith and Margaret as far away from her as she could seemed like the only way to protect them.
“This is the best part,” Bonnie said as she rolled onto her stomach on Meredith’s bed, her eyes fixed on the TV screen a few feet away. “After he kisses her, you know they’re going to get past all the stuff that came between them.”
“I still think she should have ended up with her friend instead,” Meredith said critically from where she leaned against the headboard. “That was the first ending, you know, and the test audiences hated it so much that they reshot it.”
“And rightly so,” Bonnie said. “Bleah.”
Elena laughed and jostled against her. “There’s nothing wrong with him. I think he’s cute.”
“Bleah,” Bonnie said again, wrinkling her nose.
The sick, dread-filled feeling in the pit of Elena’s stomach hadn’t gone away for a moment. But, despite all of that, it was good to be here once more. When Bonnie had heard that Elena was spending the night, she had invited herself over, too. The warm smell of baking cookies rose comfortingly from the kitchen downstairs.
“Hey, would you braid my hair?” Bonnie asked, as the couple on screen finally kissed.
“Sure,” Elena said, and Bonnie wiggled around so that her back was to Elena.
