The Return: Shadow Souls

the little boy free.”

“Who? What little boy?”

“Elena, sweetie, all the little boys on this estate are free.”

Meredith: “Why not let her tell him?”

Dr. Meggar: “Elena, Damon is right here on the couch. You’ve both been very sick, but you’re going to be fine. Here, Elena, we can move the examination table so you can talk to him. There, it’s done.”

Elena tried to open her eyes, but everything was ferociously bright. She took a breath and tried again. Still much too bright. And she didn’t know how to dim her vision anymore. She spoke with her eyes shut to the presence she felt in front of her: I can’t leave him alone again. Especially if you’re going to load him with chains and gag him.

Elena, Damon said shakily, I haven’t led a good life. But I haven’t kept slaves before, I swear. Ask anyone. And I wouldn’t do that to a child.

You have, and I know his name. And I know that all he’s made of is gentleness, and kindness, and good nature…and fear.

The low rumble of Sage’s voice, “…agitating her…” the slightly louder murmur of Damon’s: “I know she’s off her head, but I’d still like to know the name of this little boy I’m supposed to have done this to. How does that agitate her?”

More rumbling, then: “But can’t I just ask her? At least I can clear my name of these charges.” Then, out loud: “Elena? Can you tell me what child I’m supposed to have tortured like this?”

She was so tired. But she answered aloud, whispering, “His name is Damon, of course.”

And Meredith’s own exhausted whisper, “Oh, my God. She was willing to die for a metaphor.”

30

Matt watched Mrs. Flowers go over Sheriff Mossberg’s badge, holding it lightly in one hand and running her fingers over it with the other.

The badge came from Rebecca, Sheriff Mossberg’s niece. It had seemed entirely a coincidence when Matt had almost run into her earlier that day. Then he’d noticed that she was wearing a man’s shirt as a dress. The shirt had been familiar — a Ridgemont sheriff’s shirt.

Then he had seen the badge still attached to it. You could say a lot of things about Sheriff Mossberg, but you couldn’t imagine him losing his badge. Matt had forgotten all sense of gallantry and snatched at the little metal shield before Rebecca could stop him. He’d had a sick feeling in his stomach then, and it had only gotten worse since. Mrs. Flowers’s expression was doing nothing to comfort him.

“It wasn’t in direct contact with his skin,” she said softly, “so the images I get are hazy. But oh, my dear Matt”—she lifted shadowed eyes to his—“I am afraid.” She shivered, sitting at her kitchen table chair, where two mugs of hot spiced milk sat untouched.

Matt had to clear his throat and touch the scalding milk to his lips. “You think we need to go out to look.”

“We must,” said Mrs. Flowers. She shook her head, with its soft, wispy white curls, sadly. “Dear Ma ma is most insistent, and I can feel it too; a great disturbance in this artifact.”

Matt felt the faintest shade of pride tingeing his fear for having secured the “artifact”—and then he thought, yeah, robbing badges from the shirts of twelve-year-old girls is really something to be proud of.

Mrs. Flowers’s voice came from the kitchen. “You’d best put on several shirts and sweaters as well as a pair of these.” She emerged sideways through the kitchen door, holding several long coats, apparently from the closet in front of the kitchen door, and several pairs of gardening gloves.

Matt jumped up to help her with the armfuls of coats and then went into a coughing fit as the smell of mothballs and of — something else,

something spicy — surrounded him.

“Why do — I feel — like Christmas?” he said, forced to cough between each few words.

“Oh, now that would be Great-Aunt Morwen’s clove preservation recipe,” Mrs. Flowers replied. “Some of these coats are from Mother’s time.”

Matt believed her. “But it’s still warm out. Why should we wear coats at all?”

“For protection, dear Matt, for protection! These clothes have spells woven into the material to safeguard us from evil.”

“Even the gardening gloves?” Matt asked doubtfully.

“Even the gloves,” Mrs. Flowers said firmly. She paused and then said in a quiet voice, “And we’d better gather some flashlights, Matt dear, because this is something we’re going to have to do in the darkness.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, sadly, I am not. And we should get some rope to tie ourselves together. Under no circumstances must we enter the thicket of the Old Wood tonight.”

An hour later, Matt was still thinking. He hadn’t had any appetite for Mrs. Flowers’s hearty Braised Eggplant au Fromage dinner, and the wheels in his brain just wouldn’t stop turning.

I wonder if this is how Elena feels, he thought, when she’s putting together Plans A, B, and C. I wonder if she ever feels this stupid doing it.

He felt a tightening around his heart, and for the three-hundred-thousandth time since he’d left her and Damon, he wondered if he’d done the right thing.

It had to be right, he told himself. It hurt the worst, and that’s the proof of it. Things that really, really hurt are the right thing to do.

But I just wanted to say good-bye to her….

But if you’d said good-bye, you’d never have left. Face it, moron, as far as Elena goes you’re the world’s biggest loser. Ever since she found a boyfriend she liked better than you, you’ve been working like you were Meredith and Bonnie to help her keep him and keep away The

Bad Guy. Maybe you should get you all little matching T-shirts saying: I am a dog. I serve the Princess Ele—

SMACK!

Matt leaped up, and landed crouching, which was more painful than it looked in movies.

Rattle-Smick!

It was the loose shutter on the other side of the room. That first bang had really been a slam, though. The exterior of the boardinghouse was in pretty bad shape, and the wooden shutters there sometimes suddenly came free of their wintertime nails.

But was it really just a coincidence? Matt thought, as soon as his heart had stopped galloping. In this boardinghouse where Stefan had spent so much time? Maybe somehow there were still remnants of his spirit around, tuned to what people thought within these halls. If so, Matt had just been given a solid whack to the solar plexus, from the way he felt.

Sorry, bud, he thought, almost saying it out loud. I didn’t mean to trash your girl. She’s under a lot of pressure.

Trash his girl?

Trash Elena?

Hell, he’d be the first person to knock out anybody who trashed Elena. Provided Stefan didn’t use vampire tricks to get in front of him!

And what was it Elena always said? You can’t be too prepared. You can’t have too many subplans because, just as sure as God made a pesky shell around a peanut, your major plan was going to have some flaws.

That was why Elena also worked with as many people as possible. So what if C and D workers never needed to get involved. They were there if they were needed.

Thinking this, and with his head feeling a lot clearer than it had since he had sold the Prius and given Stefan’s money to Bonnie and Meredith for plane fare plus, Matt went to work.

“And then we took a walk around the estate, and saw the apple orchard, and the orange orchard, and the cherry orchard,” Bonnie told Elena, who was lying down, looking small and defenseless, in her four-poster bed, which had been hung with dusty-gold sheer panels, right now held back by heavy tassels in various shades of