Phantom (6 page)

“I
t was seriously creepy,” said Bonnie. They had all bundled into Matt’s car, Elena hopping onto Stefan’s lap and Meredith onto Alaric’s (which, Bonnie had noted, Dr. Celia had seemed less than thrilled by). Then they’d hurried back to the boardinghouse, looking for counsel.

Once there, they’d all crowded into the parlor and spilled out the story to Mrs. Flowers, talking over one another in their excitement. “First Celia’s name—in my
blood
—appearing out of nowhere,” Bonnie went on, “and then there’s this weird accident that could have
killed
her, and then Meredith’s name appears, too. It was all just really, really creepy.”

“I’d put it a bit more strongly than that,” Meredith said. Then she arched an elegant eyebrow. “Bonnie, this is no doubt the first time I’ve ever complained you weren’t being dramatic enough.”

“Hey!” Bonnie objected.

“There you go,” Elena joked. “Keep looking on the bright side. The latest insanity is making Bonnie low-key.”

Matt shook his head. “Mrs. Flowers, do you know what’s happening?”

Mrs. Flowers, seated in a cozy corner chair of the parlor, smiled and patted him on the shoulder. She’d been knitting when they came in, but had laid the pink bundle of yarn aside and had fixed her calm blue eyes on them with her full attention as they told their story. “Dear Matt,” she said. “Always straight to the point.”

Poor Celia had been sitting on the couch by Alaric and Meredith, looking stunned since they’d arrived. It was one thing to study the supernatural, but the reality of a vampire, mysteriously appearing names, and a brush with death must have been a shock to her system. Alaric had a reassuring arm around her shoulders. Bonnie thought maybe the arm should have been around Meredith’s shoulders. After all,
Meredith’s
name had just shown up in the scarf’s folds. But Meredith was just sitting there, watching Alaric and Celia, her face composed, her eyes unreadable.

Now Celia leaned forward and spoke for the first time.

“Pardon me,” she said politely, her voice shaking a bit, “but I don’t understand why we’ve brought this . . . this issue to . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes flickered to Mrs. Flowers.

Bonnie knew what she meant. Mrs. Flowers looked like the epitome of a sweet, dotty elderly lady: soft flyaway gray hair drawn back in a bun, a politely vague expression, a wardrobe that leaned toward pastels or shabby blacks, and a habit of muttering quietly, apparently to herself. A year ago, Bonnie herself had thought Mrs. Flowers was just the crazy old woman who ran the boardinghouse where Stefan lived.

But appearances could be deceptive. Mrs. Flowers had earned the respect and admiration of every one of them by the way she had protected the town with her magic, Power, and good sense. There was a lot more to this little old lady than met the eye.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Flowers firmly, “you’ve had a very traumatic experience. Drink your tea. It’s a special calming blend that’s been passed down in my family for generations. We will do everything we can for you.”

Which, Bonnie observed, was a very sweet and ladylike way of putting Dr. Celia Connor in her place.
She
was to drink her tea and recuperate, and
they
would figure out how to solve the problem. Celia’s eyes flashed, but she sipped her tea obediently.

“Now,” Mrs. Flowers said, looking around at the others, “it seems to me that the first thing to do is to figure out what the
intention
is behind the appearance of the names. Once we do that, perhaps we will have a better idea of
who
might be behind their appearance.”

“Maybe to warn us?” Bonnie said hesitantly. “I mean, Celia’s name appeared, and then she almost died, and now Meredith . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Meredith apologetically. “I’m worried you might be in danger.”

Meredith squared her shoulders. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time,” she said.

Mrs. Flowers nodded briskly. “Yes, it’s possible that the appearance of the names has a benevolent intention. Let’s explore that theory. Someone may be trying to get a warning to you. If so, who? And why do they have to do it in this way?”

Bonnie’s voice was even softer and more hesitant now. But if no one else was going to say it, she would. “Could it be Damon?”

“Damon’s dead,” Stefan said flatly.

“But when Elena was dead, she warned me about Klaus,” Bonnie argued.

Stefan massaged his temples. He looked tired. “Bonnie, when Elena died, Klaus trapped her spirit between dimensions. She hadn’t fully passed away. And even then, she could only visit you in your dreams—not anyone else, just you, because you can sense things other people can’t. She couldn’t make anything happen in the physical world.”

Elena’s voice trembled. “Bonnie, the Guardians told us that vampires don’t live on after death. In any sense of the word. Damon’s gone.” Stefan reached out and took her hand, his eyes troubled.

Bonnie felt a sharp stab of sympathy for them both. She was sorry she’d brought Damon up, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. The thought that he might be watching over them, irascible and mocking but ultimately kind, had briefly lifted the weight from her heart. Now that weight came crashing back down. “Well,” she said dully, “then I don’t have any idea who might be warning us. Does anybody else?”

They all shook their heads, baffled. “Who even knows about us now that has this kind of power?” Matt asked.

“The Guardians?” said Bonnie doubtfully.

But Elena shook her head with a quick decisive motion, blond hair swinging. “It’s not them,” she said. “The last thing they’d do is send a message in blood. Visions would be more their style. And I’m pretty sure the Guardians washed their hands of us when they sent us back here.”

Mrs. Flowers interlocked her fingers in her lap. “So perhaps there is some as yet unknown person or being looking after you, warning you of danger ahead.”

Matt had been sitting ramrod straight in one of Mrs. Flowers’s daintier chairs, and it creaked alarmingly as he leaned forward. “Um,” he said. “I think the better question is, what’s causing that danger?”

Mrs. Flowers spread her small, wrinkled hands. “You’re perfectly right. Let’s consider the options. On the one hand, it could be a warning for something that was naturally going to happen. Celia’s—you don’t mind if I call you Celia, do you, dear?”

Celia, still looking shell-shocked, shook her head.

“Good. Celia’s scarf getting caught in the train doors could have been a natural accident. Forgive me for saying so, but those long, dramatic scarves can be very dangerous. The dancer Isadora Duncan was killed in just that way when her scarf caught in the wheel of a car many years ago. Perhaps whoever sent the message was simply raising a flag for Celia to be careful, or for the rest of you to take care of her. Perhaps Meredith merely needs to be cautious over the next few days.”

“You don’t think so, though, do you?” asked Meredith sharply.

Mrs. Flowers sighed. “This all feels rather malevolent to me. I think if someone wanted to warn you about the possibility of accidents, they could find a better way than names written in blood. Both of these names appeared as the results of rather violent incidents, correct? Bonnie cutting herself and Stefan ripping the scarf from Celia’s neck?”

Meredith nodded.

Looking troubled, Mrs. Flowers continued. “And, of course, the other possibility is that the appearance of the names is itself malicious. Perhaps the names’ appearance is an essential ingredient in or targeting method for some spell that is
causing
the danger.”

Stefan frowned. “You’re talking about dark magic, aren’t you?”

Mrs. Flowers met his eyes squarely. “I’m afraid so. Stefan, you’re the oldest and most experienced of us by far. I’ve never heard of anything like this, have you?”

Bonnie felt a bit surprised. Of course, she knew that Stefan was much older than even Mrs. Flowers—after all, he’d been alive before electricity, or running water, or cars, or anything they took for granted in the modern world, while Mrs. Flowers was probably only in her seventies.

But still, it was easy to forget how long Stefan had lived. He looked just like any other eighteen-year-old, except that he was exceptionally handsome. A traitorous thought flickered at the back of her mind, one she’d had before: How was it that Elena always got all the best-looking guys?

Stefan was shaking his head. “Nothing like this, no. But I think you’re right that it may be dark magic. Perhaps, if you spoke to your mother about it . . .”

Celia, who was starting to take more of an interest in what was going on, looked at Alaric quizzically. Then she cast a glance toward the door, as if expecting a hundred-year-old woman to wander in. Bonnie grinned to herself, despite the seriousness of the situation.

They had all gotten so matter-of-fact about Mrs. Flowers’s frequent conversations with the ghost of her mother that none of them blinked when Mrs. Flowers gazed off into space and started muttering rapidly, eyebrows lifting, eyes scanning unoccupied space as if someone unseen were speaking to her. But to Celia it must have seemed pretty strange.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Flowers, returning her attention to them. “Ma
ma
says there is indeed something dark stirring in Fell’s Church. But”—her hands lifted, palms empty—“she cannot tell what form it takes. She simply warns us to be careful. Whatever it is, she can sense that it’s deadly.”

Stefan and Meredith frowned, taking this in. Alaric was murmuring to Celia, probably explaining what was going on. Matt bowed his head.

Elena pushed on, already working on the next angle. “Bonnie, what about you?” she asked.

“Huh?” Bonnie asked. Then she realized what Elena meant. “No. Nuh-uh. I’m not going to know anything Mrs. Flowers’s mother doesn’t.”

Elena just looked at her, and Bonnie sighed. This was important, after all. Meredith’s name was next, and if there was one thing that was true, it was that she and Meredith and Elena had one another’s backs. Always. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll see if I can find out anything else. Can you light me a candle?”

“What now?” Celia asked in confusion.

“Bonnie’s psychic,” Elena explained simply.

“Fascinating,” Celia said brightly, but her eyes slid, cool and disbelieving, across Bonnie.

Well, whatever. Bonnie didn’t care what she thought. She could assume that Bonnie was pretending or crazy if she wanted to, but she’d see what happened eventually. Elena brought a candle over from its spot on the mantel, lit it, and placed it on the coffee table.

Bonnie swallowed, licked her lips, which were suddenly dry, and tried to focus on the candle flame. Although she’d had plenty of practice, she didn’t like doing this, didn’t like the sensation of losing herself, as if she were sliding underwater.

The flame flickered and grew brighter. It seemed to swell and fill Bonnie’s field of vision. All she could see was flame.

I know who you are,
a cold, rough voice suddenly growled in her ear, and Bonnie twitched. She hated the voices, sometimes as soft as if they were coming from a distant television, sometimes right beside her, like this one. She somehow always managed to forget them until the next time she began to fall into a trance. A faraway child’s voice began a wordless off-key humming, and Bonnie focused on making her breathing slow and steady.

She could feel her eyes slipping out of focus. A sour taste, wet and nasty, filled her mouth.

Envy twisted, sharp and bitter, inside her.
It’s not fair, not fair,
something muttered sullenly in her skull. And then blackness took over.

Elena watched apprehensively as Bonnie’s pupils widened, reflecting the candle flame. Bonnie was able to sink into trances much more quickly now than when she had begun having them, which worried Elena.

“Darkness rises.” A flat, hollow voice that didn’t sound anything like Bonnie’s came from her friend’s mouth. “It’s not here yet, but it wants to be. It’s cold. It’s been cold for a long time. It wants to be near us, out of the darkness and as warm as our hearts. It hates.”

“Is it a vampire?” asked Meredith quickly.

The not-Bonnie voice gave a harsh, choking laugh. “It’s much stronger than any vampire. It can find a home in any of you. Watch one another. Watch yourselves.”

“What is it?” asked Matt.

Whatever it was that spoke through Bonnie hesitated.

“She doesn’t know,” said Stefan. “Or she can’t tell us. Bonnie,” he said intently, “is someone bringing this thing to us? Who’s causing it?”

No hesitation this time. “Elena,” it said. “Elena brought it.”

B
onnie winced at the nasty metallic taste in her mouth and blinked several times, until the room around her came back into focus. “Ugh,” she said. “I
hate
doing that.”

Everyone was staring at her, their faces white and shocked.

“What?” she said uneasily. “What’d I say?”

Elena was sitting very still. “You said it was my fault,” she said slowly. “Whatever is coming after us, I brought it here.” Stefan reached out to cover her hand with his own.

Unbidden, the meanest, narrowest part of Bonnie’s mind thought wearily,
Of course. It’s always about Elena, isn’t it?

Meredith and Matt filled Bonnie in on the rest of what she’d said in her trance, but their eyes kept returning to Elena’s stricken face, and as soon as they finished telling her what she’d missed, they turned away from Bonnie, back to Elena.

“We need to make a plan,” Meredith said to her softly.

“We’ll all want some refreshment,” Mrs. Flowers said, rising to her feet, and Bonnie followed her into the kitchen, eager to escape the tension of the room.

She wasn’t really a plan girl, anyway, she told herself. She’d made her contribution just by being the vision girl. Elena and Meredith were the ones everyone looked to for making the decisions.

But it wasn’t
fair
, was it? She wasn’t a fool, despite the fact that her friends all treated her like the baby of the group. Everyone thought Elena and Meredith were
so
clever
and
so strong
, but Bonnie had saved the day again and again—not that anyone ever remembered that. She ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth, trying to scrape off the nasty sour taste still in her mouth.

Mrs. Flowers had decided that what the group needed to soothe them was some of her special elder-flower lemonade. While she filled the glasses with ice, poured the drinks, and set them out on a tray, Bonnie watched her restlessly. There was a rough, empty feeling inside Bonnie, like something was missing. It wasn’t
fair
, she thought again. None of them appreciated her or realized all she’d done for them.

“Mrs. Flowers,” she said suddenly. “How do you talk to your mother?”

Mrs. Flowers turned to her, surprised. “Why, my dear,” she said, “it’s very easy to speak to ghosts, if they want to speak to you, or if they are the spirits of someone you loved. Ghosts, you see, have not left our plane but stay close to us.”

“But still,” Bonnie pressed on, “you can do more than that, a lot more.” She pictured Mrs. Flowers, young again, eyes flashing, hair flying, fighting the kitsune’s malevolent Power with an equal Power of her own. “You’re a very powerful witch.”

Mrs. Flowers’s expression was reserved. “It’s kind of you to say so, dear.”

Bonnie twirled a ringlet of her hair around one finger anxiously, weighing her next words. “Well . . . if you would, of course—only if you have time—I’d like you to train me. Whatever you’d be willing to teach me. I can see things and I’ve gotten better at that, but I’d like to learn everything, anything else you can show me. Divining, and about herbs. Protection spells. The works, I guess. I feel like there’s so much I don’t know, and I think I might have talent, you know? I hope so, anyway.”

Mrs. Flowers looked at her appraisingly for one long moment and then nodded once more.

“I will teach you,” she said. “With pleasure. You possess great natural talent.”

“Really?” Bonnie said shyly. A warm bubble of happiness rose inside her, filling the emptiness that had engulfed her just moments ago.

Then she cleared her throat and added, as casually as she could manage, “And I was wondering . . . can you talk to anyone who’s dead? Or just your mother?”

Mrs. Flowers didn’t answer for a few moments. Bonnie felt like the older woman’s sharp blue gaze was looking straight through her and analyzing the mind and heart inside. When Mrs. Flowers did speak, her voice was gentle.

“Who is it you want to contact, dear?”

Bonnie flinched. “No one in particular,” she said quickly, erasing an image of Damon’s black-on-black eyes from her mind. “It just seems like something that would be useful. And interesting, too. Like, I could learn all about Fell’s Church’s history.” She turned away from Mrs. Flowers and busied herself with the lemonade glasses, leaving the subject behind for now.

There would be time to ask again, she thought.
Soon.

“The most important thing,” Elena was saying earnestly, “is to protect Meredith. We’ve gotten a warning, and we need to take advantage of it, not sit around worrying about where it came from. If something terrible—something
I
brought somehow—is coming, we’ll deal with it when it gets here. Right now, we look out for Meredith.”

She was so beautiful, she made Stefan dizzy. Quite literally: Sometimes he would look at her, catch her at a certain angle, and would see, as if for the first time, the delicate curve of her cheek, the lightest rose-petal blush in her creamy skin, the soft seriousness of her mouth. In those moments, every time, his head and stomach would swoop as if he’d just gotten off a roller coaster.
Elena.

He belonged to her; it was as simple as that. As if for hundreds of years he had been journeying toward this one mortal girl, and now that he had found her, his long, long life finally had found its purpose.

You don’t have her, though,
something inside him said.
Not all of her. Not really.

Stefan shook off the traitorous thought. Elena loved him. She loved him bravely and desperately and passionately and far more than he deserved. And he loved her. That was what mattered.

And right now, this sweet mortal girl he loved was efficiently organizing a schedule for guarding Meredith, assigning duties with the calm expectation that she would be obeyed. “Matt,” she said, “if you’re working tomorrow night, you and Alaric can take the daytime shift. Stefan will take over at night, and Bonnie and I will pick up in the morning.”

“You should have been a general,” Stefan murmured to her, earning himself a quick smile.

“I don’t need guards,” Meredith said irritably. “I’ve been trained in martial arts and I’ve faced the supernatural before.” It seemed to Stefan that her eye rested speculatively on him for a second, and he forced himself not to bristle under her scrutiny. “My stave is all the protection I need.”

“A stave like yours couldn’t have protected Celia,” Elena argued. “Without Stefan there to intervene, she would have been killed.” On the couch, Celia closed her eyes and rested her head against Alaric’s arm.

“Fine, then.” Meredith spoke in a clipped tone, her eyes on Celia. “It’s true, out of all of us, only Stefan could have saved her. And that’s the other reason this whole team effort to protect me is ridiculous. Do you have the strength and speed these days to save me from a moving train, Elena? Does
Bonnie
?” Stefan saw Bonnie, coming in with a tray of lemonade glasses, pause and frown as she heard Meredith’s words.

He had known, of course, that with Damon dead and Elena’s Powers gone, he was the only one left to protect the group. Well, Mrs. Flowers and Bonnie had some limited magical ability. Then Stefan amended the thought further. Mrs. Flowers was actually quite powerful, but her powers were still depleted from fighting the kitsune.

It came to the same thing, then: Stefan was the only one who could protect them now. Meredith might talk about her responsibilities as a vampire hunter, but in the end, despite her training and heritage, she was just another mortal.

His eyes scanned the group, all the mortals,
his
mortals. Meredith, serious gray eyes and a steely resolve. Matt, eager and boyish and decent down to the bone. Bonnie, sunny and sweet, and with a core of strength perhaps even she didn’t know she had. Mrs. Flowers, a wise matriarch. Alaric and Celia . . . well, they weren’t
his
mortals the way the others were, but they fell under his protection while they were here. He had sworn to protect humans, when he could. If he could.

He remembered Damon saying to him once, laughing in one of his fits of dangerous good humor, his face gleeful, “They’re just so fragile, Stefan! You can break them without even meaning to!”

And Elena, his Elena. She was as vulnerable as the rest of them now. He flinched. If anything ever happened to her, Stefan knew beyond a doubt that he would take off the ring that let him walk in the day, lie down in the grass above her grave, and wait for the sun.

But the same hollow voice inside that questioned Elena’s love for him whispered darkly in his ear:
She would not do the same for you. You are not
her
everything.

As Elena and Meredith, with occasional interjections from Matt and Bonnie, continued to argue about whether Meredith needed the efforts of the group to guard her, Stefan closed his eyes and slipped into his memories of Damon’s death.

Stefan watched, foolish and uncomprehending and just not fast enough, as Damon, quicker than him till the last, dashed toward the huge tree and flung Bonnie, light as dandelion fluff, out of the reach of the barbed branches already plummeting toward her.

As he threw her, a branch caught Damon through his chest, pinning him to the ground. Stefan saw the moment of shock in his brother’s eyes before they rolled backward. A single drop of blood ran from his mouth down his chin.

“Damon, open your eyes!” Elena was screaming. There was a rough tone in her voice, an agony Stefan had never heard from her before. Her hands jerked at Damon’s shoulders, as if she wanted to shake him hard, and Stefan pulled her away. “He can’t, Elena, he can’t,” he said, half sobbing.

Couldn’t she see that Damon was dying? The branch had stopped his heart and the tree’s poison was spreading through his veins and arteries. He was gone. Stefan had gently lowered Damon’s head to the ground. He would let his brother go.

But Elena wouldn’t.

Turning to take her in his arms and comfort her, Stefan saw that she had forgotten him. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving soundlessly. All her muscles were taut, straining toward Damon, and Stefan realized with a dull shock that she and Damon were connected still, that a last conversation was being carried on along some private frequency that excluded him.

Her face was wet with tears, and she suddenly fumbled for her knife and with one swift, sure movement, nicked her own jugular vein, starting blood flowing across her neck. “Drink, Damon,” she said in a desperate, prayerlike voice, prying his mouth open with her hands and angling her neck above it.

The smell of Elena’s blood was rich and tangy, making Stefan’s canines itch with desire even in his horror at her carelessness in cutting her own throat. Damon did not drink. The blood ran out of his mouth and down his neck, soaking his shirt and pooling on his black leather jacket.

Elena sobbed and threw herself on top of Damon, kissing his cold lips, her eyes clenched shut. Stefan could tell she was still in communion with Damon’s spirit, a telepathic exchange of love and secrets private between them, the two people he loved most. The only people he loved.

A cold tendril of envy, the feeling of being the outsider looking in, the one who was left all alone, curled along Stefan’s spine even as tears of grief ran down his face.

A phone rang, and Stefan snapped back to the present.

Elena glanced at her cell and then answered, “Hi, Aunt Judith.” She paused. “At the boardinghouse with everybody. We picked up Alaric and his friend from the train.” Another pause and she grimaced. “I’m sorry, I forgot. Yes, I will. In just a few minutes, all right? Okay. Bye.”

She hung up and got to her feet. “Apparently at some point I promised Aunt Judith I would be home for dinner tonight. Robert’s getting out the fondue set and Margaret wants me to show her how to dip bread in cheese.” She rolled her eyes, but Stefan wasn’t fooled. He could see how delighted Elena was to have her baby sister idolizing her again.

Elena went on, frowning, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get out again tonight, but someone needs to be with Meredith at all times. Can you stay here tonight, Meredith, instead of at home?”

Meredith nodded slowly, her long legs drawn up under her on the couch. She looked tired and apprehensive, despite her earlier bravado. Elena touched her hand in farewell, and Meredith smiled at her. “I’m sure your minions will take good care of me, Queen Elena,” she said lightly.

“I’d expect nothing less,” Elena answered in the same tone, turning her smile on the rest of the room.

Stefan got to his feet. “I’ll walk you home,” he said.

Matt rose, too. “I can drive you,” he offered, and Stefan was surprised to find that he had to suppress the urge to shove Matt back into his seat.
Stefan
would take care of Elena. She was
his
responsibility.

“No, stay here, both of you,” Elena said firmly. “It’s only a few blocks, and it’s still broad daylight out. You look after Meredith.”

Stefan settled back in his chair, eyeing Matt. With a wave, Elena was gone, and Stefan stretched out his senses to follow her as far as he could, pushing his Power to sense whether anything dangerous, anything at all, lurked nearby. His Powers weren’t strong enough, though, to reach all the way to Elena’s house. He curled his hands into tight, frustrated fists. He had been so much more powerful when he allowed himself to drink human blood.

Meredith was watching him, gray eyes sympathetic. “She’ll be okay,” she said. “You can’t watch her all the time.”

But I can try,
thought Stefan.

When Elena strolled up her walk, Caleb was clipping the glossy green leaves of the flowering camellia bushes in front of the house.

“Hi,” she said, surprised. “Have you been here all day?”

He stopped trimming and wiped the sweat off his forehead. With his blond hair and healthy tan, he looked like a California surfer transplanted to a Virginia lawn. Elena thought Caleb seemed just right on a perfect summer day like this one, a lawn mower humming in the distance somewhere, the sky blue and high above them.