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“Actually, that’s not a bad idea—” Meredith said, and Elena interrupted.
“Bonnie, have you seen Damon lately?” she asked abruptly. “The guy who brought me to school that day?” Why had he not bitten Bonnie?
“The one who saw her kissing Stefan,” Meredith said unhelpfully.
Bonnie flushed, right up to her hairline, and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I meant to tell you,” she blurted. “Only it was really weird, and I didn’t want you to feel bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was at the grocery store the other night picking up milk for my mom, and he came up and started talking to me.” Bonnie looked down, pushing her hair shyly behind her ear. “He was looking into my eyes and saying, just, really weird stuff. Like that I wanted to be close to him. I didn’t want to tell you because it felt like he was hitting on me.” She glanced up at Elena, looking guilty. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”
“I believe you,” Elena said soothingly, trying to think. Why would Damon have let Bonnie go? It certainly sounded like he had started to compel her; why would he have changed his mind?
Bonnie and Damon had always had a special bond. He called her his redbird, and was protective, treating her almost like a little sister. But, no, that wasn’t true here. Damon didn’t know Bonnie well enough to care about her, not yet.
Elena looked at Bonnie’s white throat again, at her slender wrists, checking once more for bites and bruises she knew she wasn’t going to find.
Bonnie’s wrists … Elena leaned forward, frowning. The narrow woven bracelet around Bonnie’s left wrist was made of thin strips of leather and bits of colored thread and small silver beads. And strands of some kind of plant. Was it vervain?
“Where’d you get that bracelet?” Elena asked her.
Bonnie stretched her left arm out to look at it. “I know, it’s kind of ugly, isn’t it? My grandmother gave it to me this summer, though, and she told me never to take it off. It’s supposed to protect m
e against all kinds of things.”
“Because she and your cousin and you are all psychic.” Meredith said teasingly.
Bonnie shrugged. “It’s all about the druids. Which is why we should have them in the Haunted House. For one thing, they did human sacrifice, and we could have, like, a standing stone and a big knife … Elena? Where are you going?”
Elena wasn’t listening anymore. Without even thinking about it, she stood up from the table and walked out first the cafeteria doors and then the doors of the school. No one stopped her as she strode between the temporary trailer classrooms and through the parking lot.
She felt hot and angry, fuming as she stomped down the sidewalk away from the school. Damon had attacked Meredith. Matt. Even Caroline. And he’d tried to feed on Bonnie as well.
Bonnie was safe. For now. As long as she didn’t take that bracelet off and Damon didn’t decide that just grabbing her and feeding off her without first compelling her was just as good.
Elena had kissed Stefan once. Once. And her friends had had nothing to do with it.
She was tired of playing games.
When she reached the graveyard, Elena hesitated for a moment, staring through the fence. The day was cloudy, and the cemetery looked gray and gloomy. Beyond the ruined church, she could see the branches of the uprooted tree, pointing skyward.
As she passed through the gate, a cold wind began to blow, whistling in Elena’s ears and whipping her hair against her face. She turned toward the well-kept, modern part of the cemetery with its neat rows of granite and marble tombstones. For this confrontation, Elena instinctively felt that it would be comforting to have her parents nearby.
The cemetery was empty and still. As Elena crossed it, the wind came with her, piles of dry leaves rising up into the air as she passed. She stopped by her parents’ grave and rested a hand on the cool gray granite of their stone, gathering her strength. “Help me, Mom and Dad,” she murmured. Anger was still simmering inside her, black and hot.
Elena spun around, searching between the headstones. She knew he was there, somewhere, watching her. It didn’t matter that the bond between them had been severed, she could feel him.
She gathered her breath and shouted, into the wind. “Damon!”
Nothing. A memory of doing this once before had her turning on the spot, looking over her own shoulder, only to see no one there.
“Damon!” she shouted again. “I know you’re there!”
Icy wind blew straight into Elena’s face, making her flinch. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring across the graveyard at a grove of beech trees, their leaves bright yellow and red against the grayness of the sky. Something dark moved in the shadows between their trunks.
Elena blinked. The blackness was coming closer, its shape resolving into a black-clad figure. Golden leaves blew around him, parting as he stepped forward to the edge of the grove, and his pale features became clearer.
Damon, of course.
