Elena turned to Bonnie. “Do you think that if I show you what something looks like, you could recognize it again? Not with your eyes, but with your psychic senses?”
“I guess it depends on what the ‘something’ is,” Bonnie answered cautiously.
Elena glanced over at Stefan, who gave her briefest of nods.
“Then shut your eyes,” she said.
Bonnie did so, and Elena put her fingertips on Bonnie’s temples, with her thumbs gently brushing Bonnie’s eyelashes. Trying to activate her White Powers — something that had been so easy before today — was like striking two rocks together to make a fire and hoping one was flint. Finally she felt a small spark, and Bonnie jerked backward.
Bonnie’s eyes snapped open.“What was that?” she gasped. She was breathing hard.
“That’s what I saw — yesterday.”
“Where?”
Elena said slowly, “Inside Damon.”
“But what does it mean? Was he controlling it? Or…or…” Bonnie stopped and her eyes widened.
Elena finished the sentence for her. “Was it controlling him? I don’t know. But here’s one thing I do know, almost for certain. When he ignored your Calling, Bonnie, he was being influenced by the malach.”
“The question is,if not Damon, who was controlling it?” Stefan said, standing up again restlessly. “I picked that up, and the kind of creature Elena showed you — it’s not something with a mind of its own. It needs an outside brain to control it.”
“Like another vampire?” Meredith asked quietly.
Stefan shrugged. “Vampires usually just ignore them, because vampires can get what they want without them. It would have to be a very strong mind to get a malach like that to possess a vampire. Strong — and evil.”
“Those,” Damon said with biting grammatical precision, from where he was sitting on a high limb of an oak, “are they. My younger brother and his…associates.”
“Marvelous,” murmured Shinichi. He had draped himself even more gracefully and languidly against the oak than Damon had. It had become an unspoken contest. Shinichi’s golden eyes had flared once or twice — Damon had seen it — upon seeing Elena and at the mention of Tami.
“Don’t even try to tell me you’re not involved with those rowdy girls,” Damon added dryly. “From Caroline to Tamra and onward, that’s the idea, isn’t it?”
Shinichi shook his head. His eyes were on Elena and he began to sing a folksong softly.
“With cheeks like blooming roses And hair like golden wheat…”
“I wouldn’t try it on those girls.” Damon smiled without humor. His eyes were narrow. “Granted, they look about as strong as wet tissue paper — but they’re tougher than you’d think, and they’re toughest of all when one of them is in danger.”
“I told you, it’s not me doing it,” Shinichi said. He looked uneasy for the first time since Damon had seen him. Then he said, “Although I might know the originator.”
“Do tell,” Damon suggested, still narrow-eyed.
“Well — did I mention my younger twin? Her name is Misao.” He smiled winningly. “It means maiden.”
Damon felt an automatic stirring of appetite. He ignored it. He was too relaxed to think of hunting, and he wasn’t at all sure that kitsune — fox-spirits, which Shinichi claimed to be — could be hunted. “No, you didn’t mention her,” Damon said, absently scratching at the back of his neck. That mosquito bite was gone, but it had left behind a furious itching. “It must have somehow slipped your mind.”
“Well, she’s here somewhere. She came when I did, when we saw the flare of Power that brought back… Elena.”
Damon felt sure that the hesitation before the mention of Elena’s name was a fake. He tilted his head at the don’t think you’re fooling me angle and waited.
“Misao likes to play games,” Shinichi said simply.
“Oh, yes? Like backgammon, chess, Go Fish, that sort of thing?”
Shinichi coughed theatrically, but Damon caught the glint of red in his eye. My, he really was overprotective of her, wasn’t he? Damon gave Shinichi one of his most incandescent smiles.
“I love her,” the young man with the black hair licked by fire said, and this time there was an open warning in his voice.
“Of course you do,” Damon said in soothing tones. “I can see that.”
“But, well, her games usually have the effect of destroying a town. Eventually. Not all at once.”
Damon shrugged. “This flyspeck of a village isn’t going to be missed. Of course, I get my girls out alive first.” Now it was his voice that held an open warning.
“Just as you like.” Shinichi was back to his normal, submissive self. “We’re allies, and we’ll keep to our deal. Anyway, it would be a shame to waste…all that.” His gaze drifted to Elena again.
“By the way, we won’t even discuss the little fiasco with your malach and me — or hers, if you insist. I’m pretty sure I’ve vaporized at least three of them, but if I see another one, our business relationship is over. I make a bad enemy, Shinichi. You don’t want to find out how bad.”
Shinichi looked suitably impressed as he nodded. But the next moment he was gazing at Elena again, and singing.
“…hair like golden wheat all a-down her milk-white shoulders; My pretty pink, my sweet…”
“And I’ll want to meet this Misao of yours. For her protection.”
“And I know she wants to meet you. She’s caught up in her game at the moment, but I’ll try to tear her away from it.” Shinichi stretched luxuriously.
Damon looked at him for a moment. Then, absent-mindedly, he too stretched.
Shinichi was watching him. He smiled.
Damon wondered about that smile. He had noticed that when Shinichi smiled, two little flames of crimson could be seen in his eyes.
But he was really too tired to think about it right now. Simply too relaxed. In fact he suddenly felt very sleepy….
“So we’re going to be looking for these malach things in girls like Tami?” Bonnie asked.
“Exactly like Tami,” said Elena.
“And you think,” Meredith said, watching Elena closely, “that Tami got it somehow from Caroline.”
“Yes. I know, I know — the question is: where did Caroline get it from? And that I don’t know. But, again, we don’t know what happened to her when she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler Smallwood. We don’t know anything about what she’s been doing for the last week — except that it’s clear she never really stopped hating us.”
Matt held his head in his hands. “And then what are we going to do? I feel as if I’m responsible somehow.”
“No — Jimmy’s responsible, if anyone is. If he — you know, let Caroline spend the night — and then let her talk about it with his fifteen-year-old sister…. Well, it doesn’t make him guilty, but he sure could have been a little more subtle,” Stefan said.
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Meredith told him. “Matt and Bonnie and Elena and I have known Caroline forages and we know what she’s capable of. If anyone qualifies as their sister’s keeper — it’s us. And I think we’re in serious delinquency of duty. I vote we stop by her house.”
“So do I,” Bonnie said sadly, “but I’m not looking forward to it. Besides, what if she doesn’t have one of those malach things in her?”
“That’s where the research comes in,” Elena said. “We need to find out who’s behind it all. Someone strong enough to influence Damon.”
“Wonderful,” Meredith said, looking grim. “And given the power of the ley lines, we only have every single person in Fell’s Church to choose from.”
Fifty yards west and thirty feet straight up, Damon was struggling to keep awake.
Shinichi reached up to brush fine hair the color of night and flames licking upward off his forehead. Under his lowered lids he was watching Damon intently.
Damon meant to be watching him as intently, but he was simply too drowsy. Slowly, he imitated Shinichi’s motion, brushing a very few strands of silky black hair off his own forehead. His lids drooped inadvertently, just a
