“Well, that was why I was asking you now,” the businesslike blond woman said. “It was a flawed mission, but you understand that we were only trying to recruit you, yes? It’s the traditional method. Our genes have honed us to be the best at managing powerful, irrational demons, who don’t respond to traditional strength but require on-the-spot recalculation—” Elena choked back a scream. A scream of wrath — agony — disbelief — guilt — she didn’t know what. Her Plans. Her schemes. The way she had handled boisterous boys in the bad old days — it was all genetic. And…her parents…what had they died for?
Stefan stood up. His jaw was hard, his green eyes were burning brilliantly. There was no gentleness in his face. He clasped Elena’s hand and she heard, If you want to fight, I’m in.
Mais, non. Elena turned around and saw Sage. His telepathic voice was unmistakable. She was compelled to listen. We cannot fight them on their own territory and win. Even I cannot. What you can do is make them pay! Elena, my brave one, your parents’ spirits have undoubtedly found new homes. It would be cruel to drag them back. But let us demand of the Guardians anything you desire. For a year and a day in the past, demand whatever you wish! I think that we all will back you.
Elena paused. She looked at the Guardians and she looked at the treasures.
She looked at Bonnie and Stefan, who were waiting. There was permission in their eyes.
Then she said slowly to the Guardians, “This is really going to cost you. And I don’t want to hear that any of it is impossible. For all your treasures back and the Master Key too…I want my old life. No, I want a new life, with my real old life behind me. I want to be Elena Gilbert, exactly as if I’d graduated with my high school class, and I want to go to Dalcrest College. I want to wake up in my aunt Judith’s house in the morning and find that no one realizes I’ve been gone for almost ten months.
And I want a 4.5 grade point average for my last year in high school — just in case of emergencies. And I want Stefan to have lived in the boardinghouse peacefully all that time, and to have everyone accept him as my boyfriend. And I want every single thing that Shinichi and Misao and whoever they were working for did undone and forgotten. I want the person they were working for dead. And I want everything that Klaus did in Fell’s Church undone as well. I want Sue Carson back! I want Vickie Bennett back! I want everyone back!”
Bonnie said faintly, “Even Mr. Tanner?”
Elena understood. If Mr. Tanner had not died — mysteriously drained of blood then Alaric Saltzman would never have been called to Fell’s Church. Elena remembered Alaric from the out-of-body experience: sandy hair, laughing hazel eyes. She thought of Meredith and his almost-engagement to her.
But who was she to play God? To say, yes, this person can die because he was unlovely and unloved, but this one has to live because she was my friend.
“It’s not a problem,” the fair ruler, Ryannen, said unexpectedly. “We can make it so that your Mr. Tanner repelled an apparent vampire attack and the school called in Alaric Saltzman to take his place and investigate. All right, Idola?”—to the redhead, and to the dark one—“All right, Susurre?”
Elena wasn’t all right. Despite the example she’d just had of turn-on-a-dime plotting and scheming, she was scarcely listening. All she knew was that her voice had gone husky and that tears blurred her eyes. “And…for the Master Key — I want
—” Stefan squeezed her hand. Elena suddenly realized that they were all standing, all three of them, beside her. And the look on every face was the same. Dead resolve.
“I want Damon back.” Elena hadn’t heard quite this note in her voice since the day she’d been told both her parents had died. If there had been a table, she would have put her clenched fists on it and did her best to loom over the women. As it was, she simply leaned toward them, speaking in a low and grating voice. “If you do that — bring him back, exactly as he was before he walked into the Gatehouse then you get the Master Key and the treasures. You say no — and you lose everything. Everything. This is non-negotiable, get it?”
She kept staring into Idola’s green eyes. She refused to see dark Susurre drop her forehead onto three fingertips and begin to rub it in small circles. She wouldn’t give a glance to blond Ryannen, who was looking at her steadily, having gone into people-management mode. She stared directly into those green eyes under their willful eyebrows. Idola gave a little huff and shook her gorgeous head.
“Look, someone clearly has screwed up in preparing you for this interview.” A glance at Susurre. “The other things you’ve asked for — all together, it forms a very heavy ransom. Do you understand that? Do you understand that it involves changing the memories of all the people for miles around your town, and changing them for every day of ten months? That it means changing everything in print about Fell’s Church — and that there is a lot in print — not to mention other media outlets? It means begging for three human spirits and weaving flesh around them again. I’m not sure we even have the personnel for this—” Blond Ryannen put a hand on the redhead’s arm. “We have it. Susurre’s women have little to do in the Nether World. I can lend you perhaps thirty percent of mineafter all, we’re going to have to send up a petition to a higher Court for those spirits
—” Idola the redhead interrupted. “All right. What I was saying is that we might just be able to manage — if you throw in the Key. However, your vampire companion — we can’t give life back to the lifeless. We can’t work with vampires. Once they’re gone — they’re gone.”
“That’s what you tell us!” Stefan cried, trying to get in front of Elena. “But why are we so particularly damned, of all creatures? How do you know it’s impossible?
Have you ever even tried?”
Red-haired Idola was making a disgusted gesture, when Bonnie interrupted, her voice shaking. “It’s ridiculous! You can rebuild a town, you can kill the person who’s really behind all Shinichi and Misao did, but you can’t bring one little vampire back?
You brought Elena back!”
“Elena’s death as a vampire allowed her to become the Guardian she was originally meant to be. As for the person who gave orders to Shinichi and Misao: It was Inari Saitou — Obaasan Saitou, as you knew her — and she is already dead, thanks to your friends in Fell’s Church, who weakened her — and to you, who destroyed her star ball.”
“Inari? You mean Isobel’s grandma? You’re saying it was her star ball in the Great Tree’s trunk? That’s impossible!” Bonnie cried.
“No, it’s not. It’s the truth,” blond Ryannen said simply.
“And she’s dead now?”
“After a long battle which nearly killed your friends. Yes — but what actually killed her was having her star ball destroyed.”
“So,” dark Susurre said quietly, “if you follow the curve…in a way your Damon did die to save Fell’s Church from another massacre like the one on that Japanese island. He kept saying that was what he’d come to the Nether World to do. Do you not think he would be…satisfied? At peace?”
“At peace?” Stefan spat bitterly, and Sage growled.
“Woman,” he said, “you obviously have never met Damon Salvatore before.”
The tone in his voice — more resonant, more threatening somehow — made Elena finally break off her staredown with the red-haired Idola. She turned and looked — and saw the enormous room filled with Sage’s out- spread wings.
They weren’t like any of her ephemeral Wings Powers. They were clearly part of Sage. They were velvety and reptilian, and, unfurled like this, they stretched from distant wall to wall, and touched the grand, golden ceiling. They also demonstrated why Sage didn’t usually wear shirts.
He was beautiful this way, bronze skin and hair against those giant, leathery softlooking arches. But Elena, after one look at him, knew that the time had come to play the ace up her sleeve. She turned around to meet Idola’s green gaze squarely.
“All this time we’ve been bargaining for a Gatehouse full of treasures,” she said, “and — one Master Key.”
“A Master Key, stolen by the kitsune ages upon ages ago,” Susurre explained quietly, lifting her dark eyes.
“And you’ve said that it’s not enough for you to bring Damon back.” Elena forced her voice not to waver.
“Not even if it were your only request.” Ryannen tossed a golden lock of hair over her shoulder.
