Dark Reunion

FOUR

Meredith tilted an ironic glance at Matt. 'Hmm,' she said. 'Now, who do you think Elena would call in time of trouble?'

Bonnie's grin gave way to a twinge of guilt at Matt's expression. It wasn't fair to tease him about this. 'Elena said that the killer is too strong for us and that's why we need help,' she told Matt. 'And I can think of only one person Elena knows who could fight off a psychic killer.'

Slowly, Matt nodded. Bonnie couldn't tell what he was feeling. He and Stefan had been best friends once, even after Elena had chosen Stefan over Matt. But that had been before Matt found out what Stefan was, and what kind of violence he was capable of. In his rage and grief over Elena's death Stefan had nearly killed Tyler Smallwood and five other guys. Could Matt really forget that? Could he even deal with Stefan coming back to Fell's Church?

Matt's square-jawed face gave no sign now, and Meredith was talking again. 'So all we need to do is let some blood and cut some hair. You won't miss a curl or two, will you, Bonnie?'

Bonnie was so abstracted that she almost missed this. Then she shook her head. 'No, no, no. It isn't our blood and hair we need. We need it from the person we want to summon.'

'What? But that's ridiculous. If we had Stefan's blood and hair we wouldn't need to summon him, would we?'

'I didn't think of that,' Bonnie admitted. 'Usually with a summoning spell you get the stuff beforehand and use it when you want to call a person back. What are we going to do, Meredith? It's impossible.'

Meredith's brows were drawn together. 'Why would Elena ask it if it were impossible?'

'Elena asked lots of impossible things,' Bonnie said darkly. 'Don't look like that, Matt; you know she did. She wasn't a saint.'

'Maybe, but this one isn't impossible,' Matt said. 'I can think of one place where Stefan's blood has got to be, and if we're lucky some of his hair, too. In the crypt.'

Bonnie flinched, but Meredith simply nodded.

'Of course,' she said. 'While Stefan was tied up there, he must have bled all over the place. And in that kind of fight he might have lost some hair. If only everything down there has been left undisturbed…'

'I don't think anybody's been down there since Elena died,' Matt said. 'The police investigated and then left it. But there's only one way to find out.'

I was wrong, Bonnie thought. I was worrying about whether Matt could deal with Stefan coming back, and here he is doing everything he can to help us summon him. 'Matt, I could kiss you!' she said.

For an instant something she couldn't identify flickered in Matt's eyes. Surprise, certainly, but there was more than that. Suddenly Bonnie wondered what he would do if she did kiss him.

'All the girls say that,' he replied calmly at last, with a shrug of mock resignation. It was as close as he'd gotten to lightheartedness all day.

Meredith, however, was serious. 'Let's go. We've got a lot to do, and the last thing we want is to get stuck in the crypt after dark.'

The crypt was beneath the ruined church that stood on a hill in the cemetery. It's only late afternoon, plenty of light left, Bonnie kept telling herself as they walked up the hill, but goose-flesh broke out on her arms anyway. The modern cemetery on one side was bad enough, but the old graveyard on the other side was downright spooky even in daylight. There were so many crumbling headstones tilting crazily in the overgrown grass, representing so many young men killed in the Civil War. You didn't have to be psychic to feel their presence.

'Unquiet spirits,' she muttered.

'Hmm?' said Meredith as she stepped over the pile of rubble that was one wall of the ruined church. 'Look, the lid of the tomb's still off. That's good news; I don't think we would have been able to lift it.'

Bonnie's eyes lingered wistfully on the white marble statues carved on the displaced lid. Hon-oria Fell lay there with her husband, hands folded on her breast, looking as gentle and sad as ever. But Bonnie knew there would be no more help from that quarter. Honoria's duties as protector of the town she'd founded were done.

Leaving Elena holding the bag, Bonnie thought grimly, looking down into the rectangular hole that led to the crypt. Iron rungs disappeared into darkness.

Even with the help of Meredith's flashlight it was hard to climb down into that underground room. Inside, it was dank and silent, the walls faced with polished stone. Bonnie tried not to shiver.

'Look,' said Meredith quietly.

Matt had the flashlight trained on the iron gate that separated the anteroom of the crypt from its main chamber. The stone below was stained black with blood in several places. Looking at the puddles and rivulets of dried gore made Bonnie feel dizzy.

'We know Damon was hurt the worst,' Meredith said, moving forward. She sounded calm, but Bonnie could hear the tight control in her voice. 'So he must have been on this side where there's the most blood. Stefan said Elena was in the center. That means Stefan himself must have been… here.' She bent down.

'I'll do it,' Matt said gruffly. 'You hold the light.' With a plastic picnic knife from Meredith's car he scraped at the encrusted stone. Bonnie swallowed, glad she'd had only tea for lunch. Blood was all right in the abstract, but when you were actually confronted with so much of it—especially when it was the blood of a friend who'd been tortured…

Bonnie turned away, looking at the stone walls and thinking about Katherine. Both Stefan and his older brother, Damon, had been in love with Katherine, back in fifteenth-century Florence. But what they hadn't known was that the girl they loved wasn't human. A vampire in her own German village had changed her to save her life when she was ill. Katherine in her turn had made both the boys vampires.

And then, thought Bonnie, she faked her own death to get Stefan and Damon to stop fighting over her. But it didn't work. They hated each other more than ever, and she hated both of them for that. She'd gone back to the vampire who made her, and over the years she'd turned as evil as he was. Until at last all she wanted to do was destroy the brothers she had once loved. She'd lured them both to Fell's Church to kill them, and this room was where she'd almost succeeded in doing it. Elena had died stopping her.

'There,' Matt said, and Bonnie blinked and came back to herself. Matt was standing with a paper napkin that now held flakes of Stefan's blood in its folds. 'Now the hair,' he said.

They swept the floor with their fingers, finding dust and bits of leaves and fragments of things Bonnie didn't want to identify. Among the detritus were long strands of pale gold hair. Elena's—or Katherine's, Bonnie thought. They had looked much alike. There were also shorter strands of dark hair, crisp with a slight wave. Stefan's.

It was slow, finicky work sorting through it all and putting the right hairs in another napkin.

Matt did most of it. When they were through, they were all tired and the light sifting down through the rectangular opening in the ceiling was dim blue. But Meredith smiled tigerishly.

'We've got it,' she said. 'Tyler wants Stefan back; well, we'll give him Stefan back.'

And Bonnie, who had been only half paying attention to what she was doing, still lost in her own thoughts, froze.

She'd been thinking about other things entirely, nothing to do with Tyler, but at the mention of his name something had winked on in her mind. Something she'd realized in the parking lot and then forgotten afterward in the heat of arguing. Meredith's words had triggered it and now it was suddenly all clear again. How had he known! she wondered, heart racing.

'Bonnie? What's the matter?'

'Meredith,' she said softly, 'did you tell the police specifically that we were in the living room when everything was going on upstairs with Sue?'

'No, I think I just said we were downstairs. Why?'

'Because I didn't either. And Vickie couldn't have told them because she's gone catatonic again, and Sue's dead and Caroline was outside by that time. But Tyler knew. Remember, he said, 'If you hadn't been hiding in the living room, you'd have seen what happened.' How could he know?'

'Bonnie, if you're trying to suggest Tyler was the murderer, it just won't wash. He's not smart enough to organize a killing spree, for one thing,' Meredith said.

'But there's something else. Meredith, last year at the Junior Prom, Tyler touched me on my bare shoulder.