The next morning was another hot one. The air was so thick and humid that just walking down the street felt unpleasantly like getting slapped with a warm, damp washcloth. Even inside the car with the air-conditioning on, Elena could feel her usual y sleek hair frizzing from the humidity.
Stefan had turned up at her house just after breakfast, this time with a list of herbs and magical supplies Mrs. Flowers wanted them to find in town for new protection spel s.
As they drove, Elena gazed out the window at the neat white houses and trim green lawns of residential Fel 's Church as they gradual y gave way to the brick buildings and tasteful store windows of the shopping district at the center of town.
Stefan parked on the main street, outside a cute little cafe where they had sipped cappuccinos together last fal , shortly after she'd learned what he was. Sitting at one of the tiny tables, Stefan had told her how to make a traditional Italian cappuccino, and that had led to his reminiscing about the great feasts of his youth during the Renaissance: aromatic soups sprinkled with pomegranate seeds; rich roasts basted with rosewater; pastries with elder flowers and chestnuts. Course after course of sweet, rich, heavily spiced foods that a modern Italian would never recognize as part of his country's cuisine.
It had awed Elena when she realized how different the world had been the last time Stefan had eaten human food. He had mentioned in passing that forks had just been coming into fashion when he was young, and that his father had derided them as a foppish fad. Until Katherine had brought a more fashionable and ladylike influence into their home, they had eaten with only spoons and sharp knives for cutting. "It was elegant, though," he'd said, laughing at the expression on her face. "We al had excel ent table manners. You'd hardly have noticed."
At the time, she'd thought his differences from the boys she'd known - the scope of al the history he'd witnessed -
was romantic.
Now... wel , now she didn't know what she thought.
"It's down here, I think," said Stefan, taking her hand and returning her to the present. "Mrs. Flowers said a New Age store has opened up and that they should have most of the things we need."
The shop was cal ed Spirit and Soul, and it was tiny but vibrant, cluttered with crystals and unicorn figurines, tarot cards and dream catchers. Everything was painted in shades of purple and silver, and silky wal hangings blew in the breeze from a little windowsil air conditioner. The air conditioner wasn't strong enough to put much of a dent in the stickiness of today's heat, though, and the birdlike little woman with long curling hair and clattering necklaces who emerged from the back of the shop looked tired and sweaty.
"How can I help you?" she said in a low, musical voice that Elena suspected she adopted to fit in with the atmosphere of the store.
Stefan pul ed out the scrap of paper covered in Mrs. Flowers's tangled handwriting and squinted at it. Vampire vision or not, deciphering Mrs. Flowers's writing could be a chal enge.
Oh, Stefan. He was earnest, and sweet, and noble. His poet's soul shone through those gorgeous green eyes. She couldn't regret loving Stefan. But sometimes she secretly wished that she had found Stefan in a less complicated form, that the soul and the intel igence, the love and the passion, the sophistication and the gentleness had somehow been possible in the form of a real eighteenyear-old boy; that he had been what he had pretended to be when she first met him: mysterious, foreign, but human.
"Do you have anything made of hematite?" he asked now. "Jewelry, or maybe knickknacks? And incense with..." He frowned at the paper. "Althea in it? Does althea sound right?"
"Of course!" said the shopkeeper enthusiastical y.
"Althea's good for protection and security. And it smel s great. The different kinds of incense are over here."
Stefan fol owed her deeper into the shop, but Elena lingered near the door. She felt exhausted, even though the day had barely begun.
There was a rack of clothing by the front window, and she fiddled distractedly with it, pushing hangers back and forth. There was a wispy pink tunic studded with tiny mirrors, a little hippieish but cute. Bonnie might like this, Elena thought automatical y, and then flinched.
Through the window, she glimpsed a face she knew, and turned, the top hanging forgotten in her hand. She searched her mind for the name. Tom Parker, that was it. She'd gone out on a few dates with him junior year, before she and Matt had gotten together. It felt like a lot more than a year and a half ago. Tom had been pleasant enough and handsome enough, a perfectly satisfactory date, but she hadn't felt a spark between them and, as Meredith had said, "practiced catch and release" with him,
"freeing him to swim back into the waters of dating."
He had been crazy about her, though. Even after she set him loose, he'd hung around, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes, pleading with her to take him back.
If things had been different, if she had felt anything for Tom, wouldn't her life be simpler now?
She watched Tom. He was strol ing down the street, smiling, hand in hand with Marissa Peterson, the girl he had started dating near the end of last year. Tom was tal , and he bent his shaggy dark head down to hear what Marissa was saying. They grinned at each other, and he lifted his free hand to gently, teasingly tug on her long hair. They looked happy together.
Wel , good for them. Easy to be happy when they were uncomplicatedly in love, when there was nothing more difficult in their lives than a summer spent with their friends before heading off to col ege. Easy to be happy when they couldn't even remember the chaos their town had been in before Elena had saved them. They weren't even grateful. They were too lucky: They knew nothing of the darkness that lurked on the edges of their safe, sunlit lives. Elena's stomach twisted. Vampires, demons, phantoms, star-crossed love. Why did she have to be the one to deal with it al ?
She listened for a moment. Stefan was stil consulting with the shopkeeper, and she heard him say worriedly, "Wil rowan twigs have the same effect, though?" and the woman's reassuring murmur. He would be busy for a while longer, then. He was only about a third of the way down the list Mrs. Flowers had given them.
Elena put the shirt back in its place on the rack and walked out of the store.
Careful not to be noticed by the couple across the street, she fol owed them at a distance, taking a good long look at Marissa. She was skinny, with freckles and a little blob of a nose. Pretty enough, Elena supposed, with long, straight dark hair and a wide mouth, but not especial y eyecatching. She'd been nobody much at school, either. Vol eybal team, maybe. Yearbook. Passable, but not stel ar grades. Friends, but not popular. An occasional date, but not a girl who boys noticed. A part-time job in a store, or maybe the library. Ordinary. Nothing special. So why did ordinary, nothing-special Marissa get to have this uncomplicated, sunlit life, while Elena had been through hel - literal y - to get what Marissa seemed to have with Tom and yet she still didn't get to have it?
A cold breeze touched Elena's skin, and she shivered despite the morning's heat. She looked up.
Dark, cool tendrils of fog were drifting around her, yet the rest of the street was just as sunny as it had been a few minutes before. Elena's heart began to pound hard before her brain even caught up and realized what was happening. Run! something inside her howled, but it was too late. Her limbs were suddenly heavy as lead.
A cool, dry voice spoke close behind her, a voice that sounded eerily like the observational one inside her own head, the one that told her the uncomfortable truths she didn't want to acknowledge. "Why is it," the voice said, "that you can only love monsters?"
Elena couldn't bring herself to turn around.
"Or is it that only monsters can truly love you, Elena?" the voice went on, taking on a softly triumphant tone. "Al those boys in high school, they only wanted you as a trophy. They saw your golden hair and your blue eyes and your perfect face and they thought how fine they would look with you on their arm."
Steeling herself, Elena slowly turned around. There was no one there, but the fog was growing thicker. A woman pushing a strol er brushed past her with a placid glance. Couldn't she see Elena was being wrapped in her own private fog? Elena opened her mouth to cry out, but the words stuck in her throat.
The fog was colder now, and it felt almost solid, like it was holding Elena back. With a great effort of wil , she forced herself forward, but could stagger only as far as the bench in front of a nearby store. The voice spoke again, whispering in her ear, gloating. "They never saw you, those boys. Girls like Marissa, like Meredith, can find love and be happy. Only the monsters bother to find the real Elena. Poor, poor Elena, you'l never be normal, wil you? Not like other girls." It laughed softly, viciously.
The fog pressed thicker around her. Now Elena couldn't see the rest of the street, or anything beyond the darkness. She tried to get to her feet, to move forward a few steps, to shake off the fog. But she couldn't move. The fog was like a heavy blanket holding her down, but she couldn't touch it, couldn't fight it.
Elena panicked, tried once more to surge to her feet, opened her mouth to cal , Stefan! But the fog swirled into her, through her, soaking into her every pore. Unable to fight back or cal out, she col apsed.
It was stil freezing cold.
"At least I have clothes on this time," Damon muttered, kicking at a piece of charred wood as he trudged across the barren surface of the Dark Moon.
The place was beginning to get to him, he had to admit. He had been wandering this desolate landscape for what felt like days, although the unchanging darkness here made it impossible for him to know for sure how much time had passed.
When he had awakened, Damon had assumed he would find the little redbird next to him, eager for his company and protection. But he'd awoken alone, lying on the ground. No phantom, no grateful girl.
He frowned and poked one tentative foot into a heap of ash that might conceal a body, but was unsurprised to find nothing but mud beneath the ash, smearing more filth onto his once-polished black boots. After he'd arrived here and started searching for Bonnie, he'd expected that at any moment, he might stumble across her unconscious body. He'd had a powerful image of what she would look like, pale and silent in the darkness, long red curls caked with ash. But now he was becoming convinced that, wherever the phantom had taken Bonnie, she wasn't here. He'd come here to be a hero: defeat the phantom, save the girl, and ultimately save his girl. What an idiot, he thought, curling his lip at his own foolishness. The phantom hadn't brought him to wherever it was keeping Bonnie. Alone on this ash heap of the moon, he felt oddly rejected. Didn't it want him?
A sudden powerful wind pushed against him, and Damon staggered backward a few steps before regaining his balance. The wind brought a sound with it: Was that a moan? He altered his course, hunching his shoulders and heading for where he thought the sound had come from. Then the sound came again, a sad, sobbing moan echoing behind him.
He turned back, but his footsteps were closer together and less confident than usual. What if he was wrong and the little witch was hurt and alone somewhere on this godforsaken moon?
He was terribly hungry. He pushed his tongue against his aching canines, and they grew knife-sharp. His mouth was so dry; he imagined the flow of sweet, rich blood, life itself pulsing against his lips. The moaning came once more, from his left this time, and again he swerved toward it. The wind blew against his face, cold and wet with mist. This was al Elena's fault.
He was a monster. He was supposed to be a monster, to take blood unflinchingly, to kil without a second thought or care. But Elena had changed al that. She had made him want to protect her. Then he had started looking out for her friends, and final y even saving her provincial little town, when any self-respecting vampire would have either been long gone when the kitsune came, or enjoyed the devastation with warm blood on his lips.
He'd done al that - he'd changed for her - and she stil didn't love him.
Not enough, anyway. When he'd kissed her throat and stroked her hair the other night, who had she been thinking of? That weakling Stefan.
"It's always Stefan, isn't it?" a clear, cool voice said behind him. Damon froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.
"Whatever you tried to take from him," the voice continued, "you were just fighting to even the scales, because the fact is that he got everything, and you had nothing at al . You just wanted things to be fair."
Damon shuddered, not turning around. No one had ever understood that. He just wanted things to be fair.
"Your father cared for him much more than he did for you. You've always known that," the voice went on. "You were the oldest, the heir, but Stefan was the one your father loved. And, in romance, you have always been two steps behind Stefan. Katherine already loved him by the time you met her; then the same sad story happened al over again with Elena. They say they love you, these girls of yours, but they have never loved you best, or most, or only, not even when you give them your whole heart."
Damon shuddered again. He felt a tear run down his cheek and, infuriated, wiped it away.
"And you know why that is, don't you, Damon?" the creature went on smoothly. "Stefan. Stefan's always taken everything you've ever wanted. He's gotten the things you wanted before you even saw them, and left nothing for you. Elena doesn't love you. She never has and she never wil ."
Something broke inside Damon at the creature's words, and instantly he snapped back to himself. How dare the phantom make him question Elena's love? It was the only true thing he knew.
A cold breeze fluttered Damon's clothing. He couldn't hear the moaning now. And then everything went stil .
"I know what you're doing," Damon snarled. "You think you can trick me? Do you suppose you can turn me against Elena?"
A soft, wet footstep in the mud sounded behind him. "Oh, little vampire," the voice said mockingly.
"Oh, little phantom," Damon said back, matching the creature's tone. "You have no idea the mistake you just made." Steeling himself to leap, he whirled around, fangs ful y extended. But before he could pounce, cold strong hands seized him by the throat and pul ed him into the air.
"I'd also recommend burying pieces of iron around whatever you're trying to protect," the shopkeeper suggested. "Horseshoes are traditional, but anything made of iron, especial y anything round or curved, wil do." She'd passed through various stages of disbelief as Stefan had tried to buy up what seemed like every single object, herb, or charm related to protection in the shop, and now had become manical y helpful.
"I think I've got everything I need for now," Stefan said politely. "Thank you so much for your help."
Her dimples shone as she rang up his purchases on the shop's old-fashioned metal cash register, and he smiled back. He thought he had managed to decipher every item on Mrs. Flowers's list correctly, and was feeling fairly proud of himself.