hostage.
“I’m sorry,” Meredith said in a quiet voice that did sound sorry. “So you want to thank Elena.”
“Yes. I want to thank her.” Caroline was breathing hard. “And I want to make sure that she’s okay.”
“Okay. But this oath covers quite a bit of time,” Meredith continued calmly. “You may change your mind tomorrow, next week, a month from now…we haven’t even thought about consequences.”
“Look, we can’t threaten Caroline,” Matt said. “Not physically.”
“Or get other people to threaten her,” Bonnie said wistfully.
“No, we can’t,” Meredith said. “But for the short term — you’re a sorority pledge this coming fall, aren’t you, Caroline? I can always tell your prospective sorority sisters that you broke your solemn vow about somebody who is helpless to hurt you — who I’m sure doesn’t want to hurt you. Somehow I don’t think they’d care for you much after that.”
Caroline’s face flushed deeply again. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t go interfering with my college—” Meredith cut her off with two words. “Try me.”
Caroline seemed to wilt. “I never said I wouldn’t take the vow, and I never said I wouldn’t keep it. Just try me, why don’t you? I–I’ve learned a few things this summer.”
I should hope so.The words, although nobody said them aloud, seemed to hover over all of them. Caroline’s hobby for the entire last year had been trying to find ways to hurt Stefan and Elena.
Bonnie shifted position. There was something — shadowed — behind what Caroline was saying. She didn’t know how she knew; it was the sixth sense that she’d been born with. But maybe it just had to do with how much Caroline had changed, with what she had learned, Bonnie told herself.
Look how many times she’d asked Bonnie in the last week about Elena. Was she really all right? Could Caroline send flowers? Could Elena have visitors yet? When would she be all right? Caroline really had been a nuisance, although Bonnie didn’t have the heart to tell her that. Everyone else was waiting just as anxiously to see how Elena was…after returning from the afterlife.
Meredith, who always had a pen and paper, was scribbling some words. Now she said, “How about this?” and they all leaned forward to look at the pad.
I swear not to tellanyone about any supernatural events relating to Stefan or Elena, unless given specific permission to do so by Stefan or Elena. I will also help in the punishment of anyone who breaks this vow, in a way to be determined by the rest of the group. This vow is made in perpetuity, with my blood as my witness.
Matt was nodding his head. “‘In perpetuity’—perfect,” he said. “It sounds just like what an attorney would write.”
What followed was not particularly attorney-like. Each of the individuals around the table took the piece of paper, read it aloud, and then solemnly signed it. Then they each pricked a finger with a safety pin that Meredith had in her purse and added a drop of blood beside their signatures, with Bonnie shutting her eyes as she pricked herself.
“Now it’s really binding,” she said grimly, as one who knows. “I wouldn’t try to break this.”
“I’ve had enough of blood for a long time,” Matt said, squeezing his finger and looking at it gloomily.
That was when it happened. Meredith’s contract was sitting in the center of the table so all could admire it when, from a tall oak where the backyard met the forest, a crow came swooping down. It landed on the table with a raw-throated scream, causing Bonnie to scream, too. The crow cocked an eye at the four humans, who were hastily pulling back their chairs to get out of its way. Then it cocked its head the other way. It was the biggest crow any of them had ever seen, and the sun stroked iridescent rainbows from its plumage.
The crow seemed, for all the world, to be examining the contract. And then it did something so quickly that it made Bonnie dart behind Meredith, stumbling over her chair. It opened its wings, leaned forward, and pecked violently at the paper, seeming to aim at two specific spots.
And then it was gone, first fluttering, and then soaring off until it was a tiny black speck in the sun.
“It’s ruined all our work,” Bonnie cried, still safely behind Meredith.
“I don’t think so,” said Matt, who was closer to the table.
When they dared to move forward and look at the paper, Bonnie felt as if someone had thrown a blanket of ice around her back. Her heart began to pound.
Impossible as it seemed, the violent pecking was all red, as if the crow had retched up blood to color it. And the red marks, surprisingly delicate, looked exactly like an ornate letter:
With the signed contract safely tucked in Bonnie’s purse, they pulled up to the boardinghouse in which Stefan had taken up residence again. They looked for Mrs. Flowers but couldn’t find her, as usual. So they walked up the narrowing steps with the worn carpet and splintering balustrade, hallooing as they came.
“Stefan! Elena! It’s us!”
The door at the very top opened and Stefan’s head came out. He looked — different somehow.
“Happier,” Bonnie whispered wisely to Meredith.
“Is he?”
“Of course.”Bonnie was shocked. “He’s got Elena back.”
“Yes, he does. Just the way she was when they met, I bet. You saw her in the woods.” Meredith’s voice was heavy with significance.
“But…that’s…oh, no! She’s human again!”
Matt looked down the stairs and hissed, “Will you two quit it? They’re gonna hear us.”
Bonnie was confused. Of course Stefan could hear them, but if you were going to worry about what Stefan heard you’d have to worry about what you thought, too — Stefan could always catch the shape of what you were thinking, if not the actual words.
“Boys!” hissed Bonnie. “I mean I know they’re totally necessary and all, but sometimes they Just Don’t Get It.”
“Just wait till you try men,” whispered Meredith, and Bonnie thought of Alaric Saltzman, the college student that Meredith was more or less engaged to.
“I could tell you a thing or two,” Caroline added, examining her long, manicured nails with a world-weary look.
“But Bonnie doesn’t need to know even one yet. She has plenty of time to learn,” Meredith said, firmly in mothering mode. “Let’s go inside.”
“Sit down, sit down,” Stefan was encouraging them as they entered, the perfect host. But nobody could sit down. All eyes were fixed on Elena.
She was sitting in lotus position in front of the room’s only open window, with the fresh wind making her white nightgown billow. Her hair was true gold again, not the perilous white-gold it had become when Stefan had unintentionally turned into a vampire. She looked exactly the way Bonnie remembered her.
Except that she was floating three feet off the floor.
Stefan saw them all gawking.
“It’s just something she does,” he said almost apologetically. “She woke up the day after our fight with Klaus and started floating. I think gravity hasn’t quite got a hold on her yet.”
He turned back to Elena. “Look who’s come to see you,” he said enticingly.
Elena was looking. Her gold-flecked blue eyes were curious, and she was smiling, but there was no recognition as she looked from one visitor to another.
Bonnie had been holding her arms out.
“Elena?” she said. “It’s me, Bonnie, remember? I was there when you came back.I’m sure glad to see you.”
Stefan tried again. “Elena, remember? These are your friends, your good friends. This tall, dark-haired beauty is Meredith, and this fiery little pixie is Bonnie, and this guy with the all-American looks is Matt.”
Something flickered in Elena’s face, and Stefan repeated, “Matt.”
“And what about me? Or am I invisible?” Caroline said from the doorway. She sounded good-humored
