What if Elena’s plan didn’t work? What if, no matter how she tried, Damon was fated to kill Mr. Tanner Halloween night? Or worse, what if she gave up Stefan, undid their love, for nothing?
Elena pulled him closer. Stefan’s lips parted in surprise, and then, with an anguished look of surrender, he bent his head to hers. “What are you?” he murmured against her lips. “What is it about you?”
As their lips met, heat rushed through Elena’s body. It felt so familiar, so right. Her Stefan. The rest of the world fell away.
Until a door burst open behind them.
“Elena?”
16
Elena pulled out of Stefan’s arms in a panic, stumbling backward as she put distance between them. What had she been thinking?
“Damon,” she said as she turned to face him. Her heart was hammering hard, and she knew her voice sounded strained. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
Against the deadly pale of his skin, Damon’s eyes blazed like black stars. In an instant, his face smoothly fell back into its customary detached irony. If Elena hadn’t seen that momentary look of pain, she might have thought that there was a chance he’d listen to what she had to say.
Damon’s lips tightened. “Funnily enough, I think it’s exactly what it looks like, Elena,” he said cooly. “My little brother makes a habit of trespassing on my territory.” His eyes shifted, and then he was looking past Elena, as if she didn’t matter, straight at Stefan. Stefan glared back, his jaw set stubbornly.
“As for you? I’ll make you suffer,” Damon told him, his voice cold and clear, ringing through the deserted hallway. “I told you I would kill you one day, and I will, but first I’m going to destroy everything you care about. You’ll beg for death in the end.” He flashed a brilliant, scornful smile with no humor in it at all. Faster than Elena’s eye could follow, he was gone.
“Damon!” Elena tried to scream after him, but her voice was thin with shock, and it came out more a squeak than anything else.
She’d been such a fool, giving in to her emotions, and now she had ruined everything.
Elena forced herself still and took a deep gulp of air. Maybe there was time to salvage this. If she could find Damon, if she could explain … Elena peered down the hall toward the shadowy corridors leading to the rest of the school. Where would Damon have gone? With a pang, she realized that she didn’t know where he was living, had never known that sort of detail about this time in his life.
“Elena.” In her moment of panic, she’d almost forgotten about Stefan. He gripped her by the arm, his voice low and urgent. “You need to get out of here. Find your friends and go somewhere safe, a house where Damon’s never been. Take the flowers I gave you. If Damon comes to you, whatever you do, whatever he says, don’t let him in.”
Elena grabbed hold of Stefan’s hand. “I just need to talk to Damon.”
“It won’t help,” he said grimly. “Do what I told you, Elena, please.”
And, in the moments between one blink and another, he was gone, too.
Elena swore, slamming her hand against a locker. Stefan was the last person who should be going after Damon now, and he ought to know that. But maybe he didn’t care.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then another, trying to calm her pounding heart.
Maybe Damon would go to Stefan’s boardinghouse, looking for revenge. Or maybe she could figure out where he was staying. Damon liked luxury—she could check the nice hotel downtown and search for upscale, uninhabited houses. Inhabited ones, too. He had hidden her in an attic once, Elena remembered. She let out a long, frustrated sigh.
Damon could be anywhere. But maybe, just maybe … Elena looked up and down the halls at the banners cheering on the football team, the dented lockers. Damon had never been one to run away from conflict. He could still be in the school.
And if so, Elena needed to find him, fast.
Elena headed back into the auditorium, music and chatter swelling around her as she passed through the door. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness as she scanned the crowd, trying to spot her friends.
She saw Meredith first, on the dance floor with a boy whose name Elena didn’t know. Elena cut straight through the crowd toward them, putting her hand on Meredith’s shoulder.
“I need your help. Please,” she said.
Meredith took one glance at her and nodded. “I’ll be back,” she said to her partner with a smile, and tugged Elena to the side of the dance floor, whispering, “What? What’s happened?”
“Let me get Bonnie and Matt first, and then I’ll explain.” Elena had spotted Bonnie, deeper in the crowd on the dance floor. She was dancing with Raymond and getting into the music, her eyes closed and her hands up in the air above her head. Elena shouldered her way toward her, ignoring the grumbles as she shoved past people.
“Bonnie. Come with us.”
Bonnie opened her eyes and scowled. “I’m dancing,” she said, without stopping.
“This is important.” Elena tried to put all the anxiety she was feeling into her face.
Bonnie sighed and rolled her eyes at Raymond. “Girl stuff,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Seriously, what’s going on? It couldn’t wait?” she hissed at Elena as they reached the edge of the dance floor and the crowd thinned out a little.
Over at the refreshment table, Matt was pouring two cups of punch. Elena headed for him, Bonnie and Meredith trailing behind her. “I need help finding Damon,” Elena said. “He’s here, and he saw me kissing Stefan.”