The Return: Shadow Souls

“I’m serious,” she said, once he had gotten up and started to pace toward the window with a distinct look of wanting to be a crow flying out of it. “Don’t you dare go anywhere, Damon, because there’s more.”

“More stuff I did that I don’t remember?” Damon lounged against the wall in one of his old, arrogant poses. “Maybe I smashed a few guitars, kept the radio on until four A.M.?”

“No. Not necessarily things from — last night,” Elena said, looking away. She couldn’t look at him. “Other things, from other days—”

“Like maybe I’ve been trying to sabotage this trip all along,” he said, his voice laconic. He eyed the ceiling and sighed heavily. “Maybe I’ve done it just to be alone with you—”

“Shut up, Damon!”

Where had that come from? Well, she knew that, of course. From her feelings about last night. The problem was that she also had to get some other things settled — seriously, if he would take them. Come to think of it, that might be a better way to go about this.

“Do you think that your feelings about Stefan — well, have changed at all recently?” Elena asked.

“What?”

“Do you think”—oh, this was so difficult looking into black eyes the color of endless space. Especially when last night they had been full of myriads of stars—“do you think that you’ve come to think of him differently? To honor his wishes more than you used to do?”

Now Damon was openly examining her, just as she was examining him.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“Completely,” she said, and, with a supreme effort, she sent her tears back where they were supposed to go.

“Something did happen last night,” he said. He was looking intently at her face. “Didn’t it?”

“Something happened, yes,” Elena said. “It was — it was more of a—” She had to let out her breath, and with that almost everything went.

“Shinichi! Shinichi, che bastardo! Imbroglione! That thief! I’m going to kill him slowly!” Suddenly Damon was everywhere. He was beside her, his hands on her shoulders; the next minute he was shouting imprecations out the window, then he was back, holding both her hands.

But only one word mattered to Elena. Shinichi. The kitsune with his black, scarlet-tipped hair, who had made them give up so much just for the location of Stefan’s cell.

“Mascalzone! Maleducato—” Elena lost track of Damon’s cursing again. So it was true. Last night had been completely stolen from Damon, taken from his mind as simply and completely as the interval when she had used Wings of Redemption and Wings of Purification on him. The latter he had agreed to. But last night — and what other things had the fox been taking?

To cut out an entire evening and night — and this evening and night in particular, implied that…

“He never shut down the connection between my mind and his. He still can reach inside me any time he chooses.” Damon had finally stopped swearing, and stopped moving. He was sitting on the couch opposite the bed with his hands drooping between his knees. He looked singularly forlorn.

“Elena, you have to tell me. What did he take from me last night? Please!” Damon looked as if he might fall on his knees in front of her, without melodrama. “If — if — it was what I think—”

Elena smiled, although tears were still running down her face. “It wasn’t — what anyone would think, exactly, I suppose,” she said.

“But—!”

“Let’s just say that this time — was mine,” Elena said. “If he’s stolen anything else from you, or if he tries to do it in the future, then he’s fair game. But this…will be my secret.” Until maybe someday you break into your huge boulder of secrets, she thought.

“Until I tear it out of him, along with his tongue and his tail!” snarled Damon, and it was truly the snarl of an animal. Elena was glad it wasn’t directed at her. “Don’t worry,” Damon added in a voice so chilling that it was almost more frightening than the animal fury. “I will find him, no matter where he tries to hide. And I will take it from him. I might just take his entire little furry hide off with it. I’ll make you a pair of mittens out of it, how’s that?”

Elena tried to smile and did a pretty good job. She was just coming to terms with what had happened herself, although she didn’t believe for a minute that Damon would really leave her alone on the subject until he forced the memory back out of Shinichi. She realized that on some level she was punishing Damon for what Shinichi had done, and that was wrong. I promise no one will know about last night, she told herself. Not until Damon does. I won’t even tell Bonnie and Meredith.

This made things a lot harder on her, and therefore probably more equitable.

As they were cleaning up the debris from Damon’s most recent fit of fury, he suddenly reached up to brush a stray tear from Elena’s cheek.

“Thank you—” Elena began. Then she stopped. Damon was touching his fingers to his lips.

He looked at her, startled and a little disappointed. Then he shrugged. “Still unicorn bait,” he said. “Did I say that last night?”

Elena hesitated, then decided that his words didn’t fall within the crucial time limits of secrecy.

“Yes, you did. But — you won’t give me away, will you?” she added, suddenly anxious. “I’ve promised my friends not to say anything.”

Damon was staring at her. “Why should I say anything about anybody? Unless you’re talking about the little redheaded one?”

“I told you; I’m not saying anything. Except that obviously Caroline isn’t a virgin. Well, with all the ruckus about her being pregnant—”

“But you remember,” Damon interjected, “I came to Fell’s Church before Stefan did; I just lurked in the shadows longer. The way you talked—”

“Oh, I know. We liked boys and boys liked us, and we already had reputations. So we just talked any way we felt like talking. Some of it may have been true, but a lot of it you could take two ways — and then of course you know how boys talk—”

Damon knew. He nodded.

“Well and so pretty soon everyone was talking about us as if we’d done everything with everyone. They even wrote stuff about it in the paper and the yearbook and on the bathroom walls. But we had a little poem, too, and sometimes we even wrote it with our signatures on it. How did it go?” Elena cast her mind back a year, two years, more. Then she recited:

“Just because you heard it, doesn’t make it true. Just because you read it, doesn’t make it so. The next time that you hear it, it may be about you. Don’t think that you can change their minds, just ’cause you know — you know!”

As Elena finished, she looked at Damon, suddenly feeling the urgent need to get to Stefan. “We’re almost there,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”

11

Arizona was as hot and barren a state as Elena had imagined. She and Damon drove directly to the Juniper Resort, and Elena was depressed, if not surprised, to see that Matt was not checked in.

“It can’t have taken him longer than us to get here,” she said, as soon as they’d been shown up to their rooms. “Unless — oh, God, Damon! Unless Shinichi caught him somehow.”

Damon sat down on a bed and regarded Elena grimly. “I guess I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this — that the jerk would at least have the courtesy to tell you himself. But I’ve been tracking his aura ever since he left us. It’s been getting steadily farther away — in the direction of Fell’s Church.”

Sometimes, really bad news takes a while to sink in.

“You mean,” Elena said, “that he’s not going to show up here at all?”

“I mean that, as the crow flies, it wasn’t all that far from where we got the cars to Fell’s Church. He went in that direction. And he didn’t come back.”

“But why?” Elena demanded, as if logic could somehow conquer fact. “Why would he go off and leave me? Especially, why would he go to Fell’s Church, where they’re looking for him?”