Damon smiled. “I want you to come do some detective work with me, little brother. Real y, anything’s better than seeing this sulking, forehead-wrinkling brooding expression on your face.”
Stefan shrugged. “Why not?” Stefan leaped down from the balcony with perfect grace, and Damon fol owed swiftly behind.
As Damon led the way to their destination, he fil ed Stefan in on the details. Or rather, the vague scenario Stefan could gather from Damon’s explanation. Damon never was one for ful disclosure. Al Stefan knew was that some research at the library had prompted a sketchy warning from an old librarian. Stefan inwardly chuckled at the thought of a frail old woman squaring against Damon over library fines.
“What were you looking at?” Stefan asked, trying to get any more substantial information. “What did she want you to stay away from?” He shifted on the rough branch of the oak tree they were both sitting on, trying to get comfortable.
Damon had a habit of sitting in trees, Stefan realized. It must be a side effect of spending so much time as a bird.
They were on a stakeout outside the librarian’s home, but what exactly they were looking for, Stefan wasn’t sure.
“Just some old photographs from the school’s history,” Damon said. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to make sure she’s human.” He peered through the window nearest their tree, where an elderly woman was sipping tea and watching television.
Stefan noted with irritation that Damon seemed a lot more at ease in the tree than Stefan did. He was leaning forward, resting graceful y on one knee, and Stefan could sense his sending questing strands of Power at the woman, trying to find out whether there was anything unusual about her.
His balance seemed awful y precarious, and he was completely focused on the old woman. Stefan inched toward Damon on the branch, stretched out a hand, and suddenly shoved him.
It was extremely satisfying. Damon, his composure shaken for once, let out a muffled yelp and fel out of the tree. In midair, he turned into a crow and flew back up, perching on a branch above Stefan and eyeing him with a baleful glare. Damon cawed his annoyance at Stefan loudly.
Stefan glanced through the window again. The woman didn’t seem to have heard Damon’s shout or the crow’s caw—she was just flipping channels. When he looked back at Damon, his brother had regained his usual form.
“I would think playing a trick like that would go against your precious moral code,” Damon said, fastidiously smoothing his hair.
“Not real y,” Stefan said, grinning. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Damon shrugged, seeming to accept Stefan’s playfulness as good-natured, and looked through the librarian’s window again. She had gotten up to make herself another cup of tea.
“Did you sense anything from her?” Stefan asked.
Damon shook his head. “Either she’s bril iantly hiding her true nature from us or she’s just a peculiar librarian.” He pushed himself off the branch and leaped, landing lightly on the grass far below. Either way, I’ve had enough, he added silently.
Stefan fol owed him, landing beside Damon at the bottom of the tree. “You didn’t need me for any of that, Damon,” he said. “Why did you ask me to come with you?” Damon’s smile was bril iant in the darkness. “I just thought you could use some cheering up,” he said simply.
Clearly, it wasn’t the librarian Stefan should be worried about acting peculiarly.
20
This is way worse than the obstacle course, thought Matt.
And building a house out of newspaper. And the firewalk.
This is definitely the worst pledge event yet.
He twisted the toothbrush in his hand to real y get into the little niche running along the bottom of the paneling on the Vitale Society’s pledge room wal s. The toothbrush came out black with ancient dirt and dangling cobwebs, and Matt grimaced in disgust. His back was already sore from hunching over.
“How’s it going, soldier?” Chloe asked, squatting down next to him, a dripping sponge in one hand.
“Honestly, I’m not sure how scrubbing out this room is going to help us develop honor and leadership and al the stuff Ethan keeps talking about,” Matt said. “I think this might just be a way to save a couple of bucks on a cleaning service.”
“Wel , they say cleanliness is next to godliness,” she reminded him. Chloe laughed. He real y liked her laugh. It was sort of bubbly and silvery.
Internal y, he gave himself a little eye rol . Bubbly and silvery. She had a nice laugh, was al he meant.
They’d been spending a lot of time together since Christopher’s death. Matt had felt like nothing could be as bad as living with al of Christopher’s stuff when Christopher himself was gone, but then Chris’s parents came and packed it up, gently patting Matt on the back as if he deserved some kind of sympathy when they had lost their only son. And with just empty space where Christopher’s things had been, everything was a mil ion times worse.
Meredith, Bonnie, and Elena had tried to comfort him.
They wanted so badly for him to be okay again that he’d felt guilty he wasn’t, making it harder for him to be around them.
Chloe had taken to coming by the room, hanging out with him or getting him to come to the cafeteria or wherever with her, keeping him in touch with the world when he felt like locking himself away. There was something so easy about her. Elena, the only girl he’d ever loved—before now, part of him whispered—was much more work to be around.
Inside, he flinched at his own disloyalty to Elena, but it was true.
