“Drink,” Katherine commanded, and I saw a thin gash in her delicate white skin. Blood was trickling from the cut as though through a brook after a rainstorm. I was repulsed and tried to turn my head away, but Katherine held on to the back of my neck. “Trust me. It will help.”
Slowly, fearfully, I allowed my lips to touch the liquid. Immediately I felt warmth run down my throat. I continued to drink until Katherine pulled her arm away.
“That’s enough,” she murmured, holding her palm over the wound. “Now, how do you feel?”
She sat back on her heels and surveyed me.
How did I feel? I touched my leg, my temple.
Everything felt smooth. Healed.
“You did that,” I said incredulously.
“I did.” Katherine stood up and brushed her hands together. I noticed her wound, too, was now completely healed. “Now tell me why I had to heal you. What are you doing in the forest? You know it’s not safe,” she said, concern belying her chiding tone.
“You …. Anna,” I murmured, feeling sluggish and sleepy, as one might feel after a long, wineinfused dinner. I blinked at my surroundings.
Mezzanotte was hitched to a tree, and Anna was sitting on a branch, hugging her knees to her chest and watching us. Instead of terror, Anna’s face was full of confusion as she looked from me, to Katherine, then back to me.
“Stefan, Anna is one of my friends,” Katherine said simply.
“Does Stefan … know?” Anna asked curiously, whispering as if I wasn’t standing three feet from her.
“We can trust him,” Katherine said, nodding definitively.
I cleared my throat, and both girls looked at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked finally.
“Meeting,” Katherine said, gesturing to the clearing.
“Stefan Salvatore,” a throaty voice said. I whirled around and saw a third figure emerge from the shadows. Almost without thinking, I held up the vervain from my breast pocket, which looked as useless as a daisy clutched in my hand.
“Stefan Salvatore,” I heard again. I glanced wildly between Anna and Katherine, but their facial expressions were impossible to read. An owl hooted, and I pressed my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming.
“It’s okay, Mama. He knows,” Anna called to the shadows.
Mama. So that meant Pearl was also a vampire. But how could she be? She was the apothecary, the one who was supposed to heal the sick, not tear out human throats with her teeth.
Then again, Katherine had healed me, and she hadn’t torn out my throat.
Pearl emerged from between the trees, her gaze tightening on me. “How do we know he’s safe?” she asked suspiciously, in a voice that was much more ominous than the polite tone she used at her apothecary.
“He is,” Katherine said, smiling sweetly as she gently touched my arm. I shivered and clutched the vervain, Cordelia’s words echoing in my head.
This herb could stop the devil. But what if we’d all gotten it wrong, and vampires like Katherine weren’t devils but angels? What then?
“Drop the vervain,” Katherine said. I looked into her large, cat-like eyes and dropped the plant to the forest floor. Immediately, Katherine used the tip of her boot to cover it with pine needles and leaves.
“Stefan, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Katherine laughed, turning toward me. But her laughter wasn’t mean. Instead, it sounded melodic and musical and slightly sad. I collapsed onto a gnarled tree root. I noticed my leg was shaking and held my hands firmly against my knee, which was now completely smooth, as if the fall had never happened. Katherine took the motion as an invitation for her to perch on my knee. She sat and looked down on me, running her hands through my hair.
“Now, Katherine, he doesn’t look like he’s seen a ghost. He’s seen vampires. Three of them.” I glanced up at Pearl as if I were an obedient schoolboy and she were my schoolmarm. She sat down on a nearby rock slab, and Anna perched next to her, suddenly looking much younger than her fourteen years. But, of course, if Anna was a vampire, then that meant she wasn’t fourteen at all. My brain spun, and I felt a momentary wave of dizziness. Katherine patted the back of my neck, and I began to breathe easier.
“Okay, Stefan,” Pearl said as she rested her chin on her steepled fingers and gazed at me.
“First of all, I need you to remember that Anna and I are your neighbors, and your friends. Can you remember that?”
I was transfixed by her gaze. Pearl then smiled a curious half smile. “Good,” she exhaled.
I nodded dumbly, too overwhelmed to think, let alone speak.
“We were living in South Carolina right after the war,” Pearl began.
“After the war?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
Anna giggled, and Pearl cracked a tiny sliver of a smile. “The War of Independence,” Pearl explained briefly. “We were lucky during the war.
All safe, all sound, all a family.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. “My husband ran a small apothecary when a wave of consumption hit town.
Everyone was affected—my husband, my two sons, my baby daughter. Within a week, they were dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. Could I say I was sorry for something that had happened so long ago?
“And then Anna began coughing. And I knew I couldn’t lose her, too. My heart would break, but it was more than that,” Pearl said, shaking her head as if caught in her own world. “I knew my soul and my spirit would break. And then I met Katherine.”
I glanced toward Katherine. She looked so young, so innocent. I glanced away before she could look at me.
“Katherine was different,” Pearl said. “She arrived in town mysteriously, without relatives, but she immediately became part of society.”
I nodded, wondering who, then, was killed in the Atlanta fire that brought Katherine to Mystic Falls. But I didn’t ask, waiting for Pearl to continue her story.
She cleared her throat. “Still, there was something about her that was unusual. All the ladies and I talked about it. She was beautiful, of course, but there was something else. Something otherworldly. Some called her an angel. But then she never got sick, not during the cold seasons, and not when the consumption began in town.
There were certain herbs she wouldn’t touch in the apothecary. Charleston was a small town then.
People talked.”
Pearl reached for her daughter’s hand. “Anna would have died,” Pearl continued. “That’s what the doctor said. I was desperate for a cure, wracked with grief and feeling so helpless. Here I was, a woman surrounded by medicine, unable to help my daughter live.” Pearl shook her head in disgust.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“I asked Katherine one day if she knew of anything that could be done. And as soon as I asked, I knew she did. There was something in her eyes that changed. But she still took a few minutes of silence before she responded and then—”
“Pearl brought Anna to my chambers one night,” Katherine interjected.
“She saved me,” Anna said in a soft voice.
“Mother too.”
“And that’s how we ended up here. We couldn’t stay in Charleston forever, never growing old,” Pearl explained. “Of course, soon we’ll have to move again. That’s the way it goes. We’re gypsies, navigating between Richmond and Atlanta and all the towns in between. And now we have another war to deal with. Seeing so much history really proves to us that some things never do change,” Pearl said, smiling ruefully. “But there are worse ways to pass the time.”
“I like it here,” Anna admitted. “That’s why I’m scared we’ll be sent away.” She said that last part as a whisper, and something about her tone made me achingly sad.
I thought of the meeting I’d attended that afternoon. If Father had his way, they wouldn’t be sent away, they’d be killed.
