The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (36 page)

Lia’s holding up a new photograph. “Damon, how do you feel?” she prompts.

My stomach twists and I try to focus on what she’s showing me. I can’t feel what I actually feel, I have to figure out what they
want
me to feel and why, then tell them what they want to hear while inside I control my emotions so they lock the response into my brain that
I
want.

It’s so complicated and I’m so damned tired.

But there is no one here who can save me, so I can’t give up, not even for a second, or I may never recognize myself again.

“Are you okay?” Lia asks again, her eyes kind. “Can I help you, Damon?”

“I—” My focus wavers and I don’t have time to puzzle out what my response should be. “I don’t know,” I confess, confusion sliding into my mind like a fog. “I can’t remember.”

She smiles and immediately I feel better. “Don’t worry,” she says, and I don’t.

*
              *              *

JEREMY

Ric is gone.

My sister sinks down onto the foot of his empty bed and I glance away, but there’s no safe place in this room to look. Was he sleeping, when they pulled him back to the Other Side? Did it hurt? Did he understand what was happening to him?

I don’t know how Esther persuaded Qetsiyah to let Ric stay after Silas was neutralized, but even Crazy Esther must have finally realized he had no intention of going after the Originals, of cleansing the world of vampires the way she’d hoped.

But
why now?

“Look, this doesn’t necessarily mean Ric’s gone…” I attempt. “Maybe he just went for a walk around the neighborhood or something so he didn’t need his wallet and phone.”

“Now when we get Damon back, I’ll have to tell him,” Elena says, her voice wavering, “that he’s never going to see his best friend again.”

My stomach squirms with dread. She’s going to start crying again, and if she does that, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold it together.

I touch her shoulder uncertainly, not sure if I should say that Ric’s probably not dead, or try to start getting used to the idea that he might be.

“Ric came to see me,” Elena says, staring blankly at the carpet as her hands in her lap begin to shake. “After Bonnie died. And I told him I didn’t think I could live like I have been, never knowing who was about to leave my life next. I just—”

There are footsteps coming down the hall and I look up, because I didn’t hear the front door open. But then I guess I wouldn’t: the house is huge.

My mind races, hoping it’s Ric but almost hoping it’s not because that will just mean we have to do this again some other day, when he really does go back to the Other Side, but maybe that would be better than now, with Damon gone and everything so messed up and—

Ric bustles into the room, a messy fistful of papers and files in one hand and a clear plastic Starbuck cup in the other.

“Elena!” he says, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “I might have found something.”

She bursts into tears and throws herself at him, the cup crunching between them as the lid pops off from the pressure and Ric fumbles to move it away before he spills Frappuccino down Elena’s shirt. With his other arm, he holds her tight.

“Shit,” he says, his voice low and suddenly hollow. “Did they— Did you find Damon? Is it—” He clears his throat.

I jump in before he assumes the worst. “No, Damon’s fine. I mean, well, we don’t really know but we haven’t had any new leads. Elena just…we thought you might have—

”

“Oh,” Ric says guiltily, and papers crumple as he
squeezes her a little tighter. “Right.”

I shift awkwardly, wondering if I should go, while Ric rests his chin on top of Elena’s head and she clamps her mouth shut, trying to stifle the sobs we can all still clearly hear.

“Hey, I’m okay,” he murmurs. “I forgot my phone and jacket, that’s all. I was just at the public library, using the computers. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

I go to the bathroom across the hall and grab a wad of toilet paper, bringing it back to Elena because my throat hurts and my eyes are starting to feel itchy and I’m going to go nuts if I don’t do
something.
When I return, she’s still crying so I reach out and pat her on the back, her body so narrow that my palm covers her whole shoulder blade. I don’t know how many more days she can go on like this.

“We need some new leads,” I say to Ric. “What have you got?”

Elena pulls away from Ric, swallowing thickly, and I hand her the tissue, glancing away so I don’t have to see her swollen eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Ric says, chagrined. He just stands there with his ruined Starbucks cup in one hand like he wishes there was something else to say.

“It’s fine,” I say, stuffing my hands into my pockets. “I was just being paranoid, jumping to conclusions. No biggie.”

Elena flashes him a subdued smile that looks supremely unconvincing with her puffy eyes, and then thankfully changes the subject. “What were you looking for on the computer?”

His eyes light up again and he sets his cup on the dresser, crossing the room to spread out his papers on the small table in the corner.

“Okay, so you remember those pictures your spies have been sending you, of people that Maxfield has been seen with?”

“Uh-huh,” Elena says, furtively blowing her nose one more time.

“Jeremy showed me how to do Google Images searches and use some open source facial recognition software, and we managed to get names for all those people, through Facebook mostly. I’ve been doing searches on all of them, and cross-referencing them with property records to see if any of them own a place where the Augustines might be hiding. Plus checking for trusts or shell corporations registered to their names that also own property.”

“Wow,” I say, raising my eyebrows. I had no idea all the things he’d managed to do with the couple of tricks I taught him. “Nice work.”

Ric’s neck flushes a ruddy dark red. “I read a lot of detective novels, okay? The point is, there are too many of these records for me to go through by myself, so I thought I’d bring them home and get some help.”

Elena’s neck stiffens just as Ric glances toward the door.

“What?” I ask, confused.

“Sound from the garage,” Ric explains.

I catch my breath. The garage is where we keep Silas. “We just redid the concrete again yesterday,” I say, my stomach twisting. The magic of his immortality spell keeps trying to put him back together, but is it getting stronger?

“It was a car,” Elena says. “It’s probably just Stefan coming home, or Caroline. I’ll go get them so they can help look through those papers.” She takes a step toward the door and pauses, looking back. “Hey, Jeremy?”

“Um, yeah?” I ask, wondering what’s wrong now.

“Thank you,” she says. “For everything.”

I shrug, embarrassed, and I’m almost relieved when she finally turns the corner and disappears down the hall.

Ric looks at me but I just shake my head, blowing out a breath and dropping down on the corner of his unmade bed. Elena leaving a room these days feels like opening a window to allow all the pressure of stress to escape. Not that I blame her: I just don’t let my mind go there. I can’t.

Ric busies himself sorting the papers into four different stacks, so I take a moment and sneak a look at my phone.

Still nothing.

Tilting the screen so Ric can’t see, I open my text log again, staring at last night’s text to Cali.

C: Tell me a story?

J: ??
?

C: Long night. Ugh.

J: how about I tell you a playlist? you still have music on your computer?

C: You taking good care of my iPod? She’s my Precious…

J: treating her like a queen.

C: I bet. ;) No tongue, though, right?

J: saving that for you.

C: Don’t tease, baby
.

J: playlist for cheering you up, or for getting you jealous about how much time your ipod spends tucked close to my prime real estate?

C: First. Second. Shit! First.

J: lol

J: you ready?

Vanilla Ice “Ice Ice Baby”

Macklemore “Thrift Shopping”

White Stripes “You’re Pretty Good Lookin’…For a Girl”

Cake “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”

Led Zepp
elin “In The Light”

White Stripes “A Martyr to My Love For You”

C: You are a dangerous, dangerous man.

I wish she would have told me why she was having a bad day, and I’m really hoping that whatever it was, that’s the reason she hasn’t texted back yet, even though we usually don’t go more than a few hours without saying
something
, even if it’s just a YouTube link to a song.

I’m hoping I didn’t push too hard with the playlist.

I thought it was perfect. Music is our language, and I picked the balance so carefully: funny, playful, flirty, flirty, and then the punchline. Led Zeppelin was a promise, and the White Stripes was a challenge. To show her that I know what she’s doing.

Jack White’s voice has been singing the lyrics into my ears ever since I woke up this morning, for all the hours that I’ve been waiting for my phone to buzz in my pocket.

I'm beginning to like you
So you probably won't get what I'm going to do
I'm walkin' away from you
It probably don't make much sense to you
But I'm trying to save you
From all of the things that I'll probably say or do

There was a long pause after I sent the playlist and before I got her last text, and when I read it, I thought she understood. I even thought that after I called her bluff, she might be ready to admit that we really had something. But instead, I get radio silence, which probably means I misread her trying to let me down easy as something vastly different.

I mean,
how
was I cocky enough to send her “A Martyr to My Love For You”?

Maybe I should stop being such a little girl and overanalyzing her every word. It could be that she’s just busy with work, or taking her grandma to appointments or something. I select her name from my contacts and let my thumb hover over the “Send New Message” icon.

I swallow and the lyrics in my head switch to the Cake song.

With a voice that is dark like tinted glass

And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I click my screen off and put my phone away. There is no universe where a girl like Cali Jameson is my girlfriend. Her number wouldn’t even be in my phone if she wouldn’t have had the bad luck to get stuck in a near-death situation with me, and I’m a dick for even trying to take advantage of a loophole like that.

Besides, I’m wasting all my brainpower counting the hours since her last text and what I should be doing is helping Ric go through those property records, search
ing for a place big enough it might hold a secret vampire compound, because everything else we’ve tried has gotten us absolutely nowhere.

Ric taps the edges of one stack of papers straight and separates them from the others, absently taking a flask from his back pocket and unscrewing it for a drink before he continues sorting.

Jeez, he’s not even done with his morning Frappuccino and he’s already into the whiskey?

“If you keep drinking like that, she’s going to think we haven’t found anything because you’re not sober enough to decode a municipal document,” I tell him.