To Bonnie’s surprise, Dr. Alpert did not take exception to the statement that she herself was “not part of it.” Nor did she ask what Mrs. Flowers was doing with the two teenagers out in the Old Wood at this hour. What she said was even more astonishing: “We saw the lights as you started shouting. It’s right back there.”
Bonnie felt Matt’s muscles tighten up against her. “Thank God,” he said. And then, slowly, “But that’s not possible. I left the Dunstans’ about ten minutes before we met, and that’s right on the other side of the Old Wood from the boardinghouse. It would take at least forty-five minutes to walk it.”
“Well, possible or not, we saw the boardinghouse, Theophilia. All the lights were on, from top to bottom. It was impossible to mistake. Are you sure you’re not underestimating time?” she added, to Matt.
Mrs. Flowers’ name is Theophilia, Bonnie thought, and had to curb an urge not to giggle. The tension was getting to her.
But just as she was thinking it, Meredith gave her another nudge.
Sometimes she thought that she, and Elena, and Meredith had a sort of telepathy with each other. Maybe it wasn’t true telepathy, but sometimes just a look, just a glance, could say more than pages and pages of argument. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — Matt or Stefan would seem to be part of it. Not that it was like real telepathy, with voices as clear in your head as they would be in your ears, but sometimes the boys seemed to be… on the girls’ channel.
Because Bonnie knew exactly what that nudge meant. It meant that Meredith had turned the lamp off in Stefan’s room on the top of the house, and that Mrs. Flowers had turned the downstairs lights off as they left. So while Bonnie had a very vivid image of the boardinghouse with lights blazing, that image couldn’t be reality, not now.
Someone is trying to mess with us was what Meredith’s nudge meant. And Matt was on the same wavelength, even if it was for a different reason. He leaned very slightly back at Meredith, with Bonnie in between.
“But maybe we should head back toward the Dunstans’,” Bonnie said in her most babyish, heartrending voice. “They’re just normal people. They could protect us.”
“The boardinghouse is just over that rise,” Dr. Alpert said firmly. “And I really would appreciate your advice on how to slow down Isobel’s infections,” she added to Mrs. Flowers.
Mrs. Flowers fluttered. There was no other word for it. “Oh, goodness, what a compliment. One thing would be to wash the dirt out of the wounds immediately.”
This was so obvious and so unlike Mrs. Flowers that Matt squeezed Bonnie hard just as Meredith leaned in on her.Yeehaw! Bonnie thought. Do we have this telepathy thing going or not! So it’s Dr. Alpert who’s the dangerous one, the liar.
“That’s it, then. We head for the boardinghouse,” Meredith said calmly. “And Bonnie, don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”
“We sure will,” Matt said, giving her one last hard squeeze. It meant I get it. I know who’s not on our side. Aloud, he added, in a fake stern voice, “It’s no good going to the Dunstans’ anyway. I already told Mrs. Flowers and the girls about this, but they’ve got a daughter who’s like Isobel.”
“Piercing herself?” Dr. Alpert said, sounding startled and horrified at the thought.
“No. She’s just acting pretty strangely. But it’s not a good place.” Squeeze.
I got it a long time ago, Bonnie thought in annoyance. I’m supposed to shut up now.
“Lead the way, please,” murmured Mrs. Flowers, seeming more fluttery than ever. “Back to the boardinghouse.”
And they let the doctor and Jim lead the way. Bonnie kept up a mumbling complaint in case anyone was listening. And she, and Matt, and Meredith all kept an eye on the doctor and Jim.
“Okay,” Elena said to Damon, “I’m dolled up like somebody on the deck of an ocean liner, I’m keyed up like an overstrung guitar, and I’m fed up with all this delay. Soooo…what is the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” She shook her head. Time had skipped and stretched for her.
Damon said, “In a way, we’re in a tiny snow globe I made for myself. It just means they won’t see or hear us for a few minutes. Now is the time to get the real talking done.”
“So we’d better talk fast.” She smiled at him, encouragingly.
She was trying to help him. She knew he needed help. He wanted to tell her the truth, but it was so far against his nature that it was like asking one hell of a wild horse to let you ride it, master it.
“There are more problems,” Damon got out huskily, and she knew he’d read her thoughts. “They — they tried to make it impossible for me to speak to you about this. They did it in grand old fairy tale style: by making up lots of conditions. I couldn’t tell you inside a house, nor could I tell you outside. Well, a widow’s walk isn’t inside, but you can’t say it’s outside, either. I couldn’t tell you by sunlight or by moonlight. Well, the sun’s gone down, and it’s another thirty minutes before the moon rises, and I say that that condition is met. And I couldn’t tell you while you were clothed or naked.” Elena automatically glanced down at herself in alarm, but nothing had changed as far as she could tell.
“And I figure that that condition is met, too, because even though he swore to me he was letting me out of one of his little snow globes, he didn’t do it. We’re in a house that’s not a house — it’s a thought in somebody’s mind. You’re wearing clothes that aren’t real clothes — they’re figments of imagination.”
Elena opened her mouth again, but he put two fingers to her lips and said, “Wait. Just let me go on while I still can. I seriously thought that he might never stop with the conditions, which he had picked up out of fairy tale literature. He’s obsessed with that, and with old English poetry. I don’t know why, because he’s from the other side of the world, from Japan. That’s who Shinichi is. And he has a twin sister…Misao.”
Damon stopped breathing hard after that, and Elena figured that there must have been some internal conditions against him telling her.
“He likes it if you translate his name asdeath-first, or number one in the matters of death. They’re both like teenagers, really, with their codes and their games, and yet they’re thousands of years old.”
“Thousands?” Elena prodded gently as Damon coasted to a stop, looking exhausted but determined.
“I hate to think of how many thousands of years the two of them have been doing mischief. Misao’s the one who’s been doing all the things to the girls in town. She possesses them with her malach and then she makes the malach make them do things. You remember your American history? The Salem witches? That was Misao, or someone like her. And it’s happened hundreds of times before that. You might look up the Ursuline nuns when you’re out of this. They were a quiet convent who became exhibitionists and worse — some went mad, and some who tried to help them became possessed.”
“Exhibitionists? Like Tamra? But she’s only a child—”
“Misao’s only a child, in her head.”
“And where does Caroline come in?”
“In any case like this, there’s got to be an instigator — someone who’s willing to bargain with the devil — or a demon, really — for their own ends. That’s where Caroline comes in. But for an entire town, they must be giving her something really big.”
“An entire town? They’re going to take over Fell’s Church…?”
Damon looked away. The truth was that they were going to destroy Fell’s Church, but there was no point in saying that. His hands were loosely fastened around his knees as he sat on a rickety old wooden chair on the widow’s walk.
“Before we can do anything to help anyone, we have to get out of here. Out of Shinichi’s world. This is important. I can — block him for short periods of time from watching us — but then I get tired and need blood. I need more than you can regenerate, Elena.” He looked up at her. “He’s put Beauty in with the Beast here and he’ll leave us to see which one will triumph.”
“If you mean kill the other, he’s in for a long wait on my end.”
“That’s what you think now. But this is a specially made trap. There’s nothing in here except the Old Wood as it was when we started driving around it. It’s also minus any other human habitations. The only house is this house, the only real living creatures are the two of us. You’ll want me dead soon enough.”
“Damon, I don’t understand. What do they want here? Even with what Stefan said about all the ley lines crossing under Fell’s Church and making a beacon…”
“It was your beacon that drew them, Elena. They’re curious, like kids, and I have a feeling that they may already have been in trouble wherever it is they really live. It’s possible they were here watching the end of the
