“No, I’m fine. And Bonnie and I have a job to do.” She nodded at Bonnie, who nodded weakly back. “Caroline’s our responsibility, and we should have realized why she really had to come back this last time.She doesn’t have a car. I’ll bet she used that downstairs telephone and tried to get somebody to pick her up, but couldn’t, and then she came upstairs again. So now we have to take her home. Stefan, I’m sorry. It hasn’t been much of a visit.”
Stefan looked grim. “It’s probably as much as Elena could take, anyway,” he said. “More than I thought she could take, honestly.”
Matt said, “Well, I’m the one with the car, and Caroline is my responsibility, too,” he said. “I may not be a girl, but I’m a human.”
“Maybe we could come back tomorrow?” Bonnie said.
“Yes, I suppose that would be best,” Stefan said. “I almost hate to let her go at all,” he added, staring at the unconscious Caroline, his face shadowed. “I’m afraid for her. Very much afraid.”
Bonnie pounced on this. “Why?”
“I think — well, it may be too early to say, but she seems to be almost possessed by something — but I have no idea what. I think I have to do some serious research.”
And there it was again, the ice water dripping down Bonnie’s back. The feeling of how close the frigid ocean of fear was, ready to topple down on her and take her on a swift trip to the bottom.
Stefan added, “But what’s certain is that she was behaving strangely — even for Caroline. And I don’t know whatyou heard when she was cursing, but I heard another voice behind it, prompting her.” He turned to Bonnie. “Did you?”
Bonnie was thinking back. Had there been something — just a whisper — and just a beat before Caroline’s voice came? Less than a beat, and just the faintest of sibilant whispers?
“And what happened here may have made it worse. She called on Hell at a moment when this room was saturated with Power. And Fell’s Church itself is at the crossing of so many ley lines, it isn’t funny. With all that going on — well, I just wish we had a good parapsychologist around.”
Bonnie knew they were all thinking of Alaric.
“I’ll try to get him to come,” Meredith said. “But usually he’s off in Tibet or Timbuktu doing research these days. It’ll take a while even to get a message to him.”
“Thank you.” Stefan looked relieved.
“Like I said, she’s our responsibility,” Meredith said quietly.
“We’re sorry to have brought her,” Bonnie said loudly, rather hoping that something inside Caroline could hear her.
They said their good-byes separately to Elena, not sure of what might happen. But she simply smiled at each of them and touched their hands.
By good luck or by the grace of something far beyond their understanding, Caroline woke up. She even seemed mostly rational, if a little fuzzy, when the car reached her driveway. Matt helped her out of the car and walked her to the door on his arm, where Caroline’s mother answered the doorbell. She was a mousy, timid, tired- looking woman who did not seem surprised to be receiving her daughter in this state on a late summer afternoon.
Matt dropped the girls off at Bonnie’s house, where they spent a night in worried speculation. Bonnie fell asleep with the sound of Caroline’s curses echoing in her head.
Something is going to happen tonight.
I can’t talk or write, and I don’t remember how to type on a keyboard very well, but I can send thoughts to Stefan and he can write them down. We don’t have any secrets from each other.
So this is my diary now. And…
This morning I woke up again. I woke up again! It was still summer outside, and everything was green. The daffodils in the garden are all in bloom. And I had visitors. I didn’t know exactly who they were, but three of them are strong, clear colors. I kissed them so I won’t forget them again.
The fourth one was different. I could only see a shattered color, laced with black. I had to use strong words of White Power to keep that one from bringing dark things into Stefan’s room.
I’m getting sleepy. I want to be with Stefan and feel him holding me. I love Stefan. I would give up anything to stay with him. He asks me, Even flying? Even flying, to be with him and keep him safe. Even anything, to keep him safe. Even my life.
Now I want to go to him.
Elena (And Stefan is sorry about writing in Elena’s new diary, but he has to say some things, because someday maybe she will want to read them, to remember. I’ve written down her thoughts in sentences, but they don’t come that way. They come as thought-fragments, I guess. Vampires are used to translating people’s everyday thoughts into coherent sentences, but Elena’s thoughts need more translation than most. Usually she thinks in bright pictures, with a scattered word or two.
The “fourth one” that she talks about is Caroline Forbes. Elena has known Caroline almost since babyhood, I think. What bewilders me is that today Caroline attacked her in almost every way imaginable, and yet when I search Elena’s mind I can’t find any feelings of anger or even any pain. It’s almost frightening to scan a mind like that.
The question I’d really like to answer is: What happened to Caroline during the short time she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler? And did she do what she did today of her own free will? Does some remnant of Klaus’s hatred still linger like miasma, tainting the air? Or do we have another enemy in Fell’s Church?
And most importantly, what do we do about it?
Stefan, who is being pulled from the computer
The clock’s old-fashioned hands showed three A.M. when Meredith was suddenly roused from a fitful sleep.
And then she bit her lip, stifling a scream. A face was bending over hers, upside down. The last thing she remembered was lying on her back in a sleeping bag, talking about Alaric with Bonnie.
Now Bonnie was bending over her, but with her face inverted and her eyes shut. She was kneeling at the head of Meredith’s pillow and her upside-down nose almost touched Meredith’s. Add to that an odd pallor in Bonnie’s cheeks and rapid warm breath that tickled Meredith’s forehead, and anyone — anyone, Meredith insisted to herself — would be entitled to a half-scream.
She waited for Bonnie to speak, staring in the gloom at those eerily closed eyes.
But instead, Bonnie sat up, stood, walked backward flawlessly to Meredith’s desk, where Meredith’s mobile lay charging, and picked it up. She must have turned it on for a video recording for she opened her mouth and began to gesture and speak.
It was terrifying. The sounds that came out of Bonnie’s mouth were all too identifiable: backward speech. The tangled, guttural or high-pitched noises all carried the cadence that horror movies had made so popular. But to be able to speak that way on purpose…it wasn’t possible for a normal human or a normal human mind. Meredith had an eerie sense of something trying to stretch its mind toward them, trying to reach them through unimaginable dimensions.
Maybe it lives backward, Meredith thought, trying to distract herself as the frightening sounds went on. Maybe it thinks we do. Maybe we just don’t — intersect….
Meredith didn’t think she could stand much more. She was beginning to imagine that she heard words, even phrases in the backward sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Please let it stop — now.
A wailing and mumbling…
Bonnie’s mouth shut with a clash of teeth. The sounds stopped instantly. And then, like a video being rolled back in slow motion, she walked backward to her sleeping bag, knelt, and back-crawled into it, lying down with her head on the pillow — all without opening her eyes to look where she was going.
