The Return: Shadow Souls

time to think it. She and Damon were both trying desperately to get their hands back to themselves, but didn’t seem to be able to. Little shockwaves were running from Elena’s palm all through her body.

Finally, the disentanglement worked and then they both turned, in guilty unison, to look at Bonnie and Meredith, who were staring at them with enormous eyes. Suspicious eyes. Eyes that belonged in faces saying “Aha! What have we here?”

There was a long moment when no one moved or spoke.

Then Damon said seriously, “This isn’t some kind of pleasure trip. We’re going because there’s no other choice.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Meredith said in a neutral tone. “If Elena goes, we all go.”

“We know it’s a bad place,” Bonnie said, “but we are definitely going with you.”

“Besides, we have our own agenda,” Meredith added. “A way to cleanse Fell’s Church of the harm Shinichi has done — and is still doing.”

Damon shook his head. “You don’t understand. You won’t like it,” he said tightly. He nodded at her mobile. “No electric power in there. Even owning one of those is a crime. And the punishment for just about any crime is torture and death.” He took a step toward her.

Meredith refused to back away, her dark gaze fixed on his.

“Look, you don’t even realize what you have to do just to get in,” Damon said bleakly. “First, you need a vampire — and you’re lucky to have one. Then you’ll have to do all sorts of things you won’t like—”

“If Elena can do it, we can do it,” Meredith interrupted quietly.

“I don’t want either of you to get hurt. I’m going in because it’s for Stefan,” Elena said hastily, speaking partly to her friends and partly to the innermost core of her being, which the shockwaves and pulses of electricity had reached at last. Such a strange, melting, throbbing sweetness for something that had started out as a shock. Such a fierce shock for simply touching another person’s hand….

Elena manged to tear her eyes away from Damon’s face and tune back into the argument that was going on.

“You’re going in for Stefan, yes,” Meredith was saying to her, “and we’re going in with you.”

“I’m telling you, you won’t like it. You’ll live to regret it — if you live, that is,” Damon was saying flatly, his expression dark.

Bonnie simply gazed up at Damon with her brown eyes wide and pleading in her small heart-shaped face. Her hands were clasped together at the base of her throat. She looked like a picture on a Hallmark card, Elena thought. And those eyes were worth a thousand logical arguments.

Finally, Damon looked back at Elena. “You’re probably taking them to their deaths, you know. You, I could probably protect. But you and Stefan, and your two little teenage girlfriends… I can’t.”

Hearing it put that way was a shock. Elena hadn’t quite thought of it like that. But she could see the determined set of Meredith’s jaw and the way Bonnie had gone up a little on her toes to try to look bigger.

“I think it’s already been decided,” she said quietly, aware that her voice shook.

There was a long moment as she stared into Damon’s dark eyes, and then suddenly he flashed his 250- kilowatt smile at all of them, shut it off almost before it had begun, and said, “I see. Well, in that case, I have another errand. I may not be back for quite a while, so feel free to use the room—”

“Elena should come to our room,” Meredith said. “I have a lot of material to show her. And if we can’t take much with us, we’ll have to go over it all tonight—”

“Then let’s say we meet back here at dawn,” Damon said. “We’ll set off for the Demon Gate from here. And remember — don’t bring money; it isn’t any good there. And this is not a vacation — but you’ll get that idea soon enough.”

With a graceful, ironic gesture, he handed Elena her bag.

“The Demon Gate?” Bonnie said as they went to the elevator. Her voice shook.

“Hush,” said Meredith. “It’s only a name.”

Elena wished she didn’t know so well when Meredith was lying.

12

Elena checked the edges of the hotel room’s draperies for signs of dawn. Bonnie was curled up, drowsing in a chair by the window. Elena and Meredith had been up all night, and now they were surrounded by scattered printouts, newspapers, and pictures from the Internet.

“It’s already spread beyond Fell’s Church,” Meredith explained, pointing to an article in one of the papers. “I don’t know if it’s following ley lines, or being controlled by Shinichi — or is just moving on its own, like any parasite.”

“Did you try to contact Alaric?”

Meredith glanced at Bonnie’s sleeping figure. She spoke softly, “That’s the good news. I’d been trying to get him forever, and I finally managed. He’ll be arriving in Fell’s Church soon — he just has one more stop first.”

Elena drew her breath in. “One more stop that’s more important than what’s going on in that town?”

“That’s why I didn’t tell Bonnie about him coming. Or Matt either. I knew they wouldn’t understand. But — I’ll give you one guess as to what kind of legends he’s following up in the Far East.” Meredith fixed dark eyes on Elena’s.

“Not…it is, isn’t it? Kitsune?”

“Yes, and he’s going to a very ancient place where they were supposed to have destroyed the town — just as Fell’s Church is being destroyed. Nobody lives there now. That name — Unmei no Shima — means the Island of Doom. Maybe he’ll find something important about fox spirits there. He’s doing some kind of multicultural independent study with Sabrina Dell. She’s Alaric’s age, but she’s already a famous forensic anthropologist.”

“And you’re not jealous?” Elena said awkwardly. Personal issues were difficult to talk about with Meredith. Asking her questions always felt like prying.

“Well.” Meredith tipped back her head. “It isn’t as if we have any formal engagement.”

“But you never told anybody about all this.”

Meredith lowered her head and gave Elena a quick look. “I have now,” she said.

For a moment the girls sat together in silence. Then Elena said quietly, “The Shi no Shi, the kitsune, Isobel Saitou, Alaric and his Island of Doom — they may not have anything to do with each other. But if they do, I’m going to find out what it is.”

“And I’m going to help,” Meredith said simply. “But I had thought that after I graduated…”

Elena couldn’t stand it anymore. “Meredith, I promise, as soon as we get Stefan back and the town calmed down, we’ll pin Alaric down with Plans A through Z,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed Meredith’s cheek. “That’s a velociraptor sisterhood oath, okay?”

Meredith blinked twice, swallowed once, and whispered, “Okay.” Then, abruptly, she was her old efficient self again. “Thank you,” she said. “But cleaning up the town might not be such an easy job. It’s already heading toward mass chaos there.”

“And Matt wanted to be in the middle of it all? Alone?” Elena asked.

“Like we said, he and Mrs. Flowers are a solid team,” Meredith said quietly. “And it’s what he’s chosen.”

“Well,” Elena said drily, “he may turn out to have the better deal in the end, after all.”

They went back to the scattered papers. Meredith picked up several pictures of kitsune guarding shrines in Japan.

“It says they’re usually depicted with a ‘jewel’ or key.” She held up a picture of a kitsune holding a key in its mouth at the main gate of the Fushimi Shrine.

“Aha,” Elena said. “Looks like the key’s got two wings, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly what Bonnie and I thought. And the ‘jewels’…well, take a close look.” Elena did and her stomach lurched. Yes, they were like the “snow globe” orbs that Shinichi had used to create unbreakable traps in the Old Wood.

“We found they’re called hoshi no tama,” Meredith said. “And that translates to ‘star balls.’ Each kitsune puts a measure of their power into one, along with other things, and destroying the ball is