The ID slid right into the crack between the door and the doorjamb, she gave it a careful little wiggle, and, bingo, she was able to easily slide the lock back and pul the door open. Meredith smiled over her shoulder at Elena, arching one eyebrow. “That was strangely satisfying,” she said.
Once they were inside and the door was locked again behind them, Meredith checked to make sure the windows were covered, then flicked on the lights.
The security office was simply furnished: white wal s, two desks, each with a computer, one with a forgotten half cup of coffee on top, and a filing cabinet. There was a dying plant on the windowsil , its leaves dry and browning.
“We’re sure that none of the officers are going to show up and catch us?” Elena asked nervously.
“I told you, I checked their routine,” Meredith answered.
“After eight o’clock, al but one of the security guards on duty is patrol ing the campus. The one who isn’t is sitting in the downstairs lobby of the administration building, keeping in radio contact with the others and helping students who lock themselves out of their dorms and stuff.”
“Wel , let’s get it over with,” Damon said. “I don’t particularly relish the idea of spending the whole evening in this dismal little hole.”
His voice sounded both wel bred and bored, as usual, but there was something different about him. He was standing very close to Elena, so close that his arm was brushing against hers, and, as Meredith watched, his hand came up to touch Elena’s back very lightly, just with his fingertips. There was a slight secretive curve to his mouth, almost as if Damon was even more pleased with himself than usual.
“Wel ?” he asked, gazing back at Meredith. “What now, hunter?”
Elena stepped away from him and knelt in front of the filing cabinet before Meredith could answer, sliding the top drawer open. “What was Samantha’s last name? Her file’s probably under that.”
“Dixon,” Meredith told her, pushing away the little shock she kept getting whenever anyone referred to Samantha in the past tense. It was just … she’d been so ful of life. “And Christopher’s was Nowicki.”
Elena rifled through the files in both drawers, pul ing out first one thick folder and then a second. “Got them.” She opened Samantha’s folder and made a sick little sound in her throat. “They’re … worse than I thought,” she said, her voice shaking as she looked at pictures from the murder scene. She turned over a few pages. “And here’s the coroner’s report. It says she died from blood loss.”
“Let me see,” Meredith said. She took the file and made herself study the crime scene pictures to see if she had missed anything when she was there. Her eyes kept flinching away from Sam’s poor defenseless body, so she swal owed hard and focused on the areas away from the body, the floor, the wal s of Samantha’s room. “Blood loss because she was kil ed by a vampire? Or because there’s so much blood everywhere else?” She was proud of how steady her own voice was, steadier than Elena’s anyway.
She held out the folder toward Damon. “What do you think?” she asked.
Damon took the folder and studied the photos dispassionately, flipping a few pages to read the coroner’s report. Then he held out his hand to Elena for Christopher’s file and looked through that one as wel .
“I can’t tel anything for certain,” he said after a few minutes. “Just like with the bodies I found, they could have been kil ed by werewolves, who are primitive like this. Or it could have been sloppy vampires. Demons, easily. Even humans could do this, if they were sufficiently motivated.” Elena made a soft sound of denial, and Damon flashed his bril iant sudden grin at her. “Oh, don’t forget that humans can come up with far more creative means of violence than some simple hungry monsters do, sweetheart.” Serious again, he looked down at the photographs once more. “I can tel you, though, that more than one creature—or person—was responsible.”
His finger traced a line across one of the pictures, and Meredith forced herself to look. Bloodstains were spattered in wide arcs across the room, beyond Samantha’s outstretched arms. “See the way the blood sprayed here?” Damon asked. “Someone held her hands and someone else held her feet, and at least one other, maybe more, kil ed her.” He flipped open Christopher’s folder again.
“Same thing. This might be evidence that werewolves are the culprits, since they like to travel in packs, but it isn’t firm proof. You can get groups of almost anything. Even vampires: they’re not al as self-sufficient as I am.”
“Matt saw only one person—or whatever—near Chris’s body, though,” Elena pointed out. “And he got there real y soon after Christopher screamed.”
Damon waved a disparaging hand. “So they were fast,” he said. “A vampire could do it before a human had time to even react to the scream. Almost anything supernatural could. Speed comes with the package.”
Meredith shuddered. “A whole pack of something,” she said numbly. “One would have been bad enough.”
“A pack’s much worse,” Damon agreed. “Are you ready to go now?”
“We’d better check and see if there’s anything else and then clean up,” Elena said. “Do you want to stand guard outside? I feel like we’re real y tempting fate by staying here so long. You could give some kind of signal if you see someone coming or use your Power to get rid of them.
Please?”
Damon smiled at her flirtatiously. “I’l be your watchdog, princess, but only because it’s you.”
Meredith waited until he left to say dryly, “Speaking of dogs, remember when Damon kil ed Bonnie’s pet pug?” Elena opened the top file drawer again and started going through it methodical y. “I don’t want to talk about this, Meredith. It was Katherine who kil ed Yangtze, anyway.”
“I just don’t think you realize what you’re getting into here,” Meredith said. “Damon’s not terrific relationship material.”
Elena’s hands faltered in their efficient progress. “I don’t
… it’s not like that,” she said. “It’s not a relationship, I don’t want a relationship with anyone but Stefan.” Meredith frowned, confused. “Wel , then, what—”
“It’s complicated,” Elena said. “I care about Damon, you know that. I’m seeing where things might go with
