Phantom (19 page)

A cold breeze fluttered Damon’s clothing. He couldn’t hear the moaning now. And then everything went still.

“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 fully extended. But before he could pounce, cold strong hands seized him by the throat and pulled 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, especially anything round or curved, will 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 manically 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.

Someone opened the door to come in, and a cold breeze whooshed into the shop, setting the magical items and wall hangings flapping.

“Do you feel that?” the shopkeeper asked. “I think a storm’s coming.” Her hair, caught by the wind, fanned out in the air.

Stefan, about to make a pleasant rejoinder, stared in horror. Her long locks, suspended for a moment, twisted their tendrils into one curling strand that spelled out, clearly and chillingly:

matt

But if the phantom had found a new target, that meant Elena—

Stefan whipped around, looking frantically toward the front of the shop. Elena wasn’t there.

“Are you all right?” the shopkeeper asked as Stefan stared wildly around. Ignoring her, he hurried back toward the door of the shop, looking down every aisle, in every nook.

Stefan let his Power spread out, reaching for a trace of Elena’s distinctive presence. Nothing. She wasn’t in the shop. How could he not have noticed her leaving?

He pressed his fists into his eyes until little stars burst beneath his lids. This was his fault. He hadn’t been feeding on human blood, and his powers were sorely diminished. Why had he let himself get so weak? If he had been at full strength, he would have realized immediately that she had gone. It was self-indulgent to give in to his conscience when he had people to protect.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked again. She’d followed him down the aisles of the store, holding out his bag, and was looking at him anxiously.

Stefan took hold of the bag. “The girl I came in with,” he said urgently. “Did you see where she went?”

“Oh,” she replied, frowning. “She went back outside when we were heading off to look through the incense section.”

That long ago
. Even the shopkeeper had noticed Elena leaving.

Stefan gave a jerky nod of thanks before striding out into the dazzling sunlight. He looked frantically up and down Main Street.

He felt a wave of relief when he spotted her sitting on a bench outside the drugstore a few doors down. But then he took note of her slumped posture, her beautiful blond head resting limply on one of her shoulders.

Stefan was at her side in a flash, grateful to find her breathing shallow yet steady, her pulse strong. But she was unconscious.

“Elena,” he said, gently stroking her cheek. “Elena, wake up. Come back to me.” She didn’t move. He shook her arm a bit harder. “Elena!” Her body flopped on the bench, but neither her breathing nor the steady beat of her heart changed at all.

Just like Bonnie. The phantom had gotten Elena, and Stefan felt something inside him tear in two. He had failed to protect her, to protect either of them.

Stefan gently slid a hand under Elena’s body, cupping her head protectively with his other hand, and pulled her into his arms. He cradled her against him and, channeling what little Power he had left into speed, began to run.

Meredith checked her watch for what felt like the hundredth time, wondering why Stefan and Elena weren’t back yet.

“I can’t read this word at all,” Matt complained. “I swear, I thought
my
handwriting was bad. It looks like Caleb wrote this with his eyes closed.” He had been running his hands through his hair in frustration and it stood up in messy little spikes, and there were faint blue shadows under his eyes.

Meredith took a swig of coffee and held out her hand. Matt passed her the notebook he’d been examining. They’d discovered that she was the best at reading Caleb’s tiny, angular handwriting. “That’s an O, I think,” she said. “Is
deosil
a word?”

“Yes,” said Alaric, sitting up a little straighter. “It means clockwise. It represents moving spiritual energy into physical forms. Might be something there. Can I see?”

Meredith handed him the notebook. Her eyes were sore and her muscles stiff from sitting all morning and going through Caleb’s notebooks, clippings, and pictures. She rolled her shoulders forward and back, stretching.

“No,” said Alaric after a few minutes of reading. “No good. This is just about casting a magic circle.”

Meredith was about to speak when Stefan appeared in the doorway, pale and wild-eyed. Elena lay unconscious in his arms. Meredith dropped her coffee cup. “Stefan!” she cried, staring in horror. “What happened?”

“The phantom’s trapped her,” Stefan said, his voice catching. “I don’t know how.”

Meredith felt like she was falling. “Oh no, oh no,” she heard herself say in a tiny, shocked voice. “Not Elena, too.”

Matt stood up, glowering. “Why didn’t you stop it?” he asked accusingly.

“We don’t have time for this,” Stefan said coldly, and strode past them to the stairs, clutching Elena protectively. In silent accord, Matt, Meredith, and Alaric followed him up to the room where Bonnie lay sleeping.

Mrs. Flowers was knitting by her bedside, and her mouth opened into an O of dismay when she saw who Stefan carried. Stefan gently placed Elena on the other side of the double bed by Bonnie’s pale and tiny form.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said slowly. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. But . . . what happened?”

Stefan just shrugged, looking stricken.

Meredith’s heart squeezed in her chest at the sight of her two best friends laid out like rag dolls. They were so still. Even in sleep, Elena had always been more mobile, more expressive than this. Over the course of a thousand sleepovers, ever since they were little, Meredith had seen sleeping Elena smile, roll herself more tightly in the blankets, snuggle her face into the pillows. Now the pink-and-gold-and-cream-colored warmth of Elena seemed faded and cold.

And
Bonnie
, Bonnie who was so vibrant and quick-moving, she’d hardly ever kept still for more than a moment or two in her whole life. Now she was motionless, frozen, almost colorless except for the dark dots of her freckles against her pale cheeks and the bright expanse of red hair on her pillow. If it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of their chests, both girls could have been mannequins.

“I don’t know,” Stefan said again, the words sounding more panicked this time, and looked up to meet Meredith’s eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

Meredith cleared her throat. “We called the hospital to check on Caleb while you were gone,” she said carefully, knowing what effect her words would have. “He’s been released.”

Stefan’s eyes flashed murderously. “I think,” he said, his voice like a knife, “that we should pay Caleb a visit.”

Elena was suspended in darkness. She wasn’t alarmed, though. It was like floating slowly under warm water, gently bobbing in the current, and a part of her wondered distantly and without fear whether it was possible that she had never come up out of the waterfall basin at Hot Springs. Had she been drifting and dreaming all this time?

Then suddenly she was speeding, bursting upward, and she opened her eyes on dazzling daylight and gulped a long, shaky breath.

Soulful, worried dark brown eyes gazed down into hers from a pale face hovering above her.

“Bonnie?” Elena gasped.

“Elena! Thank God,” Bonnie cried, grabbing her by the arms in a viselike grip. “I’ve been here all by myself for days and days, or what feels like days and days anyway, because the light never changes, so I can’t tell by the sun. And there’s nothing to
do
here. I can’t figure out how to get out, and there’s nothing to eat, although I’m weirdly not hungry, so I guess it doesn’t matter. I tried to sleep to pass the time, but I wasn’t getting tired, either. And suddenly you were here, and I was so happy to see you, but you wouldn’t wake up, and I was getting really worried. What’s
going on
?”

“I don’t know,” Elena said groggily. “The last thing I remember is being on a bench. I think I got caught by some kind of mystical fog.”

“Me too!” Bonnie exclaimed. “Not the bench part, but the fog part. I was in my room at the boardinghouse, and this weird fog trapped me.” She shivered theatrically. “I couldn’t move at all. And I was so cold.” Suddenly her eyes widened with guilt. “I was doing a spell when it happened, and something came up behind me and said stuff. Nasty things.”

Elena shuddered. “I heard a voice, too.”

“Do you think I . . . set something loose? When I was doing the spell? I’ve been worrying that maybe I might have done so accidentally.” Bonnie’s face was white.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Elena reassured her. “We think it’s the phantom—the thing that’s been causing the accidents—that it stole your spirit so it could use your power for itself. And now it’s taken me, I guess.”

She quickly told Bonnie about the phantom, then pushed up on her elbows and really looked around for the first time. “I can’t believe we’re here again.”

“Where?” asked Bonnie anxiously. “Where are we?”

It was midday and a sunlit blue sky stretched brightly overhead. Elena was pretty sure it was always midday here: It certainly had been the last time she’d been here. They were in a wide, long field that seemed to go on forever. As far as Elena could see, there were tall bushes growing—rosebushes with perfect velvety black blooms.

Midnight roses. Richly magical roses grown for holding spells only the kitsune could coat onto them. A kitsune had sent Stefan one of these roses once, with a spell to make him human, but Damon had accidentally intercepted it, much to both brothers’ dismay.

“We’re in the kitsunes’ magic rose field, the one that the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures opens into,” she told Bonnie.

“Oh,” Bonnie said. She thought for a moment and then asked helplessly, “What are we doing here? Is the phantom a kitsune?”

“I don’t think so,” Elena answered. “Maybe it’s just a convenient place to stash us.”

Elena took a deep breath. Bonnie was a good person to be with in a crisis. Not good in the way that Meredith was—Meredith’s way was the planning-and-getting-things-done way—but good in that Bonnie looked up at Elena trustingly with big, innocent eyes and asked questions, confident that Elena would know the answers. And Elena would immediately feel competent and protective, as if she could deal with whatever situation they were embroiled in. Like right now. With Bonnie depending on her, Elena’s mind was working more clearly than it had for days. Any moment now, she’d come up with a plan to get them out of here. Any moment now, she was sure.

Bonnie’s cold, small fingers worked their way into Elena’s hand. “Elena, are we dead?” she asked in a tiny, quavering voice.

Were
they dead? Elena wondered. She didn’t think so. Bonnie had been alive after the phantom took her, but unwakeable. It was more likely their spirits had traveled here on the astral plane and their bodies were back in Fell’s Church.

“Elena?” Bonnie repeated anxiously. “Do you think we’re dead?”

Elena opened her mouth to respond when a crackling, stomping noise interrupted her. The rosebushes nearby began to thrash wildly, and there was a great rushing sound that seemed to come from every direction at once. The snapping of branches was deafening, as if something huge was shoving its way through the bracken. All around them, thorny rosebush branches whipped back and forth, although there was no wind. She yelped as one of the waving branches smacked her across the arm, gashing her skin open.

Bonnie let out a wail, and Elena’s heart beat double time in her chest. She whirled around, pushing Bonnie behind her. She balled her hands into fists and crouched, trying to remember what Meredith had taught her about fighting an attacker. But as she looked around, all she could see for miles were roses. Black, perfect roses.

Bonnie gave a small whimper and pressed closer to Elena’s back.

Suddenly Elena felt a sharp, aching tug rip through her, as if something were being pulled slowly but firmly out of her torso. She gasped and stumbled, clutching her hands to her stomach.
This is it,
she thought numbly, feeling as though every bone in her body were being ground to a pulp.
I am going to die.

N
o one answered the door at the Smallwoods’ house. The driveway was empty and the house looked deserted, the shades pulled down.

“Maybe Caleb’s not here,” Matt said nervously. “Could he have gone somewhere else when he got out of the hospital?”

“I can
smell
him. I can hear him breathing,” Stefan growled. “He’s in there, all right. He’s hiding out.”

Matt had never seen Stefan look so angry. His usually calm green eyes were bright with rage, and his fangs seemed to be involuntarily extended, little sharp points showing every time he opened his mouth. Stefan caught Matt looking at them and frowned, running his tongue self-consciously across his canines.

Matt glanced at Alaric, who he’d been thinking of as the only other normal person left in their group, but Alaric was watching Stefan with what was clearly fascination rather than alarm.
Not entirely normal, then, either,
Matt thought.

“We can get in,” Meredith said calmly. She looked to Alaric. “Let me know if someone’s coming.” He nodded and positioned himself to block the view of anyone walking past on the sidewalk. With cool efficiency, Meredith wedged one end of her fighting stave in the crack of the front door and started to pry it open.

The door was made of heavy oak, and clearly had two locks and a chain engaged inside, and it withstood Meredith’s leverage against it. Meredith swore, then muttered, “Come on, come on,” redoubling her efforts. The locks and chains gave suddenly against her strength, and the door flew open, banging into the wall behind it.

“So much for a quiet entrance,” Stefan said. He shifted restlessly on the doorstep as they filed past him.

“You’re invited in,” Meredith said, but Stefan shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said. “It only works if you live here.”

Meredith’s lips tightened, and she turned and ran up the stairs. There was a brief shout of surprise and some muffled thumping. Alaric glanced at Matt nervously, and then up the stairs.

“Should we help her?” he said.

Before Matt could answer—and he was pretty sure Meredith wasn’t the one who needed help—she returned, shoving Caleb down the stairs before her, twisting one of his arms tightly behind his back.

“Invite him in,” she ordered as Caleb stumbled to the bottom of the stairs. Caleb shook his head, and she yanked his arm up higher so that he yelped in pain.

“I won’t,” he said stubbornly. “You can’t come in.” Meredith pushed him toward Stefan, stopping him just at the threshold of the front door.

“Look at me,” Stefan said softly, and Caleb’s eyes flew to his. Stefan’s pupils widened, swallowing his green irises in black, and Caleb shook his head frantically, but seemed unable to break his gaze.

“Let. Me. In,” Stefan ordered.

“Come in, then,” said Caleb sullenly. Meredith released him and his eyes cleared. He turned and dashed up the stairs.

Stefan burst through the door like he’d been shot through a gun and then stalked up the stairs. His smooth, stealthy movements reminded Matt of a predator’s—of a lion or a shark. Matt shivered. Sometimes he forgot how truly dangerous Stefan was.

“I’d better go with him,” Meredith said. “We don’t want Stefan doing anything he’d regret.” She paused. “Not before we find out what we need to know, anyway. Alaric, you’re the one who knows the most about magic, so you come with me. Matt, keep an eye out and warn us if the Smallwoods pull into the drive.” She and Alaric followed Stefan up the stairs.

Matt waited for the screaming to start, but it remained ominously quiet upstairs. Keeping one eye on the driveway through the front windows, Matt prowled through the living room. He and Tyler had been friends once upon a time, or at least had hung out, because they were both first-string on the football team. They’d known each other since middle school.

Tyler drank too much, partied too hard, was gross and sexist toward girls, but there had been something about him that Matt had sometimes enjoyed. It was the way he’d thrown himself into things, whether it was the no-holds-barred tackle of an opposing team’s quarterback or throwing the absolutely craziest party anyone had ever seen. Or the time when they’d been in seventh grade and he’d gotten obsessed with winning at
Street Fighter
on PlayStation 2. Every day he’d had Matt and the rest of the guys over, all of them spending hours sitting on the floor of Tyler’s bedroom, eating chips and talking trash and pounding the buttons of the controller until Tyler had figured out how to win every fight.

Matt heaved a sigh and peered out the front window again.

There was a brief muffled thump from upstairs, and Matt froze. Silence.

As he turned back to pace across the living room again, Matt noticed a particular photo among the neat row of frames on top of the piano. He crossed over and picked it up.

It must have been the football banquet, junior year. In the picture, Matt’s arm was around Elena, who he’d been dating then, and she was smiling up at him. Next to them stood Tyler, hand in hand with a girl whose name Matt couldn’t remember. Alison, maybe, or Alicia. She’d been older than them, a senior, and had graduated that year and left town. They were all dressed up, he and Tyler in jackets and ties, the girls in party dresses. Elena had worn a white, deceptively simple short dress, and looked so lovely that she’d taken Matt’s breath away.

Things had been so easy then. The quarterback and the prettiest girl in school. They’d been the perfect couple.

Then Stefan came to town
, a cold, mechanical voice whispered to him,
and destroyed everything.

Stefan, who had pretended to be Matt’s friend. Stefan, who had pretended to be a human being.

Stefan, who had pursued Matt’s girlfriend, the only girl Matt had ever really been in love with. Probably the only girl he would ever feel that way about. Sure, they’d broken up just before Elena met Stefan, but Matt might have gotten her back, if not for him.

Matt’s mouth twisted, and he threw the photo to the floor. The glass didn’t break, and the photo just lay there, Matt and Elena and Tyler and the girl whose name he didn’t remember smiling innocently up at the ceiling, unaware of what was heading toward them, of the chaos that would erupt less than a year later. Because of Stefan.

Stefan.
Matt’s face was hot with anger. There was a buzzing in his head. Stefan the traitor. Stefan the monster. Stefan who had stolen Matt’s girl.

Matt stepped deliberately onto the picture and ground it beneath his heel. The wooden frame snapped. The feel of the glass shattering under his foot was oddly satisfying.

Without looking back, Matt stomped across the living room toward the stairs. It was time for him to deal with the monster who had ruined his life.

“Confess!” Stefan growled, doing his best to compel Caleb. But he was so weak and Caleb kept throwing up mental blocks. No doubt about it—this boy had access to Power.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caleb said, pressing his back against the wall as if he could tunnel into it. His eyes flicked nervously from Stefan’s angry face to Meredith, who was holding her staff balanced between her hands, ready to strike, and back to Stefan. “If you just leave me alone, I won’t go to the police. I don’t want any trouble.”

Caleb looked pale and shorter than Stefan remembered. There were bruises on his face, and one of his arms was in a cast and supported by a sling. Despite everything, Stefan felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at him.

He’s not human
, he reminded himself.

Although . . . Caleb didn’t seem all that wolfish either, for a werewolf. Shouldn’t there be a little more of the animal in him? Stefan hadn’t known many werewolves, but Tyler had been all big white teeth and barely repressed aggression.

Next to him, Alaric blinked at the injured boy. Cocking his head to one side and examining him, he echoed Stefan’s thoughts, asking skeptically, “Are you sure he’s a werewolf?”

“A
werewolf
?” said Caleb. “Are you all crazy?”

But Stefan was watching Caleb carefully, and he saw a tiny flicker in Caleb’s eyes. “You’re lying,” Stefan said coldly, reaching out with his mind once more, finally finding a crack in Caleb’s defenses. “You don’t think we’re crazy. You’re just surprised that we know about you.”

Caleb sighed. His face was still white and strained, but a certain falseness went out of it as Stefan spoke. His shoulders slumped and he stepped away from the wall a little, head hanging wearily.

Meredith tensed, ready to spring, as he moved forward. He stopped and held up his hands. “I’m not going to try anything. And I’m not a werewolf. But, yeah, I know Tyler is, and I’m guessing that you know that, too.”

“You’ve got the werewolf gene,” Stefan told him. “You could easily be a werewolf, too.”

Caleb shrugged and looked Stefan straight in the eye. “I guess. But it didn’t happen to me; it happened to Tyler.”

“
Happened
to?” Meredith asked, her voice rising with outrage. “Do you know what Tyler did to become a werewolf?”

Caleb glanced at her warily. “What he did? Tyler didn’t do anything. The family curse caught up with him, that’s all.” His face was shadowed and anxious.

Stefan found his tone gentling despite himself. “Caleb, you have to kill someone to become a werewolf, even if you carry the gene. Unless you’re bitten by a werewolf yourself, there are certain rituals that have to be performed.
Blood
rituals. Tyler murdered an innocent girl.”

Caleb’s knees seemed to give out, and he slid to the floor with a muffled thump. He looked sick. “Tyler wouldn’t do that,” he said, but his voice was unsteady. “Tyler was like a brother to me after my parents died. He wouldn’t kill anyone. I don’t believe you.”

“He did,” Meredith confirmed. “Tyler murdered Sue Carson. We negotiated for her to come back to life, but it doesn’t change the fact that he did kill her.”

Her voice held the unmistakable ring of truth, and all the fight seemed to go out of Caleb. He sank lower and rested his forehead against his knees. “What do you want from me?”

He looked so thin and rumpled that, despite the urgency of their mission, Stefan was distracted. “Weren’t you taller than this?” he asked. “Bigger? More . . . put together? The last time I saw you, I mean.”

Caleb mumbled something into his knees, too muffled and distorted for even a vampire to hear properly. “What?” Stefan asked.

Caleb looked up, his face smudged with tears. “It was a glamour, okay?” he said bitterly. “I made myself look better because I wanted Elena to want me.” Stefan thought of Caleb’s glowing, healthy face, his height, his crowning halo of golden curls. No wonder he had seemed suspicious; subconsciously Stefan must have known how unlikely it was that an ordinary human would look that much like an archangel.
No wonder he felt so much lighter than I expected when I threw him across the graveyard,
Stefan thought.

“So you are a magic user, even if you aren’t a werewolf,” Meredith said swiftly.

Caleb shrugged. “You knew that already,” he said. “I saw what you did to my workroom in the shed. What more do you want from me?”

Meredith stepped forward warningly, stave at the ready, her gaze clear and pitiless, and Caleb flinched away from her. “What we want,” she said, enunciating every word distinctly, “is for you to tell us how you summoned the phantom, and how we can get rid of it. We want our friends back.”

Caleb stared at her. “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stefan prowled toward Caleb on his other side, keeping him off balance so that the boy’s eyes flicked nervously back and forth between Stefan and Meredith.

Then Stefan stopped. He could see that Caleb looked genuinely confused. Was it possible that he was telling the truth? Stefan knelt so that he was at eye level with Caleb and tried a softer tone. “Caleb?” he asked, depleting his last remnants of Power to compel the boy to speak. “Can you tell us what kind of magic you did? Something with the roses, right? What was the spell supposed to do?”

Caleb swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I had to find out what happened to Tyler,” he said. “So I came here for the summer. No one seemed worried, but I knew Tyler wouldn’t just drop out of sight. Tyler had talked about you, all of you, and Elena Gilbert. Tyler hated you, Stefan, and at first he liked Elena, and then he really hated her, too. When I came here, though, everyone knew Elena Gilbert was dead. Her family was still mourning her. And you were gone, Stefan; you’d left town. I tried to put the pieces together about what had happened—there were some pretty strange stories—and then lots of other weird things happened in town. Violence, and girls going crazy, and children attacking their parents. And then, suddenly, it was over; it just stopped, and it was like I was the only one who remembered it happening. But I also remembered just a normal summer. Elena Gilbert had been here the whole time, and no one thought anything of it, because they didn’t remember her dying. Only I seemed to have two sets of memories. People who I’d seen get hurt”—he shuddered at the memory—“or even killed were fine again. I felt like I was going crazy.”

Caleb pushed his shaggy dark blond hair back out of his face, rubbed his nose, and took a breath. “Whatever was going on, I knew you and Elena were at the center of it. The differences between the memories told me that. And I figured that you must be connected to Tyler’s disappearance, too. Either you’d done something to him, or you knew something about what had happened to him. I figured if I could pull you and your friends apart, something would come out. Once you were set against one another, I’d be able to work my way in and find out what was going on. Maybe I could get Elena to fall for me with a glamour, or one of the other girls. I just had to know.” He looked from one to another of them. “The rose spell was supposed to make you irrational, turn you against one another.”

Alaric frowned. “You mean you didn’t summon anything?”

Caleb shook his head. “Look,” he said, pulling a thick leather-bound volume from under his bed. “The spell I used is in here. That’s all I did, honest.”