If all these things were true, Elena couldn’t help feeling like she might have already lost.
23
The next day, Elena hurried out of class and was the first one at her lunch table. The fire department had just declared that this wing of the school safe, and this was the first day they could eat in the cafeteria instead of outside. A smell of smoke still lingered here, though, and there were streaky gray stains of smoke on the walls and ceiling.
The morning had passed in a haze as she obediently went through the motions of being a high school student without hearing a word that was said. She thought that she might have taken a test in one of her classes, but she wasn’t sure which class or what the test had asked. She couldn’t think of anything that mattered less at this point in her life.
Maybe, she thought, staring down at her own nervously tapping fingers, her friends would be able to help after all. Elena was still determined not to tell them the truth about what Stefan and Damon were. They had all, Matt and Meredith especially, given up so much in Elena’s real world. But, even without knowing all the facts, perhaps her friends could be her eyes and ears in Fell’s Church. They could help her find Damon.
If she could just speak to Damon face-to-face, maybe Elena could talk some sense into him. She couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t come around. Deep down, Damon loved his brother. Elena was sure of it.
Caroline paused by the table. “All alone, Elena?” she asked, poisonously sweet.
Elena glanced up, and a sarcastic reply died on her lips. Around Caroline’s pretty bronzed throat was wrapped a gauzy green scarf. Below it peeked out the edge of a telltale purpling bruise.
“What happened to your neck, Caroline?” she asked, her mouth dry.
Caroline sneered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s wonderful.” Turning on her heel, she walked away from Elena’s table, her head held high.
Elena pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm her pounding heart. First Meredith, then Caroline. Damon wanted Elena to know that he knew who the people around her were, that he could get to anyone that mattered to her.
“You okay, Elena?” Matt had stopped at her table. He grinned at her, solid and reassuring in his letterman’s jacket.
Elena flinched. Beneath the collar of Matt’s jacket, she could see a bite, angry purple with two darker marks in the center.
“What’s that?” she asked, dazedly.
Matt raised his hand, brushing his fingers lightly across his neck just where the top of his shirt ended. For a moment, his face clouded, faintly puzzled, and then it cleared. “Everything’s wonderful,” he said slowly, then turned his back on Elena and walked away.
The same thing Caroline had said: Everything’s wonderful. Damon had compelled them to say exactly those words and walk away. A hot flush of anger spread through Elena.
“It’s only October, and I’m already so sick of school I could scream,” Bonnie said, clattering her tray down on the table. “When am I really going to use Spanish anyway?”
“When you go to Mexico? Or talk to someone who speaks Spanish?” Meredith suggested dryly. “It might actually be one of the more useful subjects you take.”
Bonnie clicked her tongue irritably as they sat down, but didn’t argue. “Hey, Elena.”
Elena greeted them distractedly. Meredith had another scarf looped around her neck, this one white with threads of sparkling silver woven through it. It covered the bite mark Elena had seen earlier, but she knew it was there.
Bonnie … Bonnie was fine. She was wearing a V-necked sweater, her slender white throat fully visible and completely unmarked. Elena looked carefully at Bonnie’s wrists to see if Damon had fed from her veins there instead, but there was nothing to see but a braided bracelet and a thin gold watch.
“Elena, are you hearing a thing I say?” Meredith asked sharply. As Elena looked up, Meredith’s expression of irritation softened to concern. “What’s wrong?”
Elena straightened up and gave her a reassuring smile. “Nothing. I’m just distracted. What are we talking about?”
“We need to go to the warehouse at the lumberyard and finish planning out the Haunted House this afternoon,” Meredith said patiently. “I know we still have the plans from last year, but this is our senior year. We should make it really special.”
“Doing it there like we’ve always done will make things much easier. It would have been a huge hassle if we had to do it in the gym instead like the school board was talking about,” Bonnie said. “It’s, like, five hundred feet shorter. Yay for the fire, I guess.”
The first time around—when Elena had been chairman of the decorating committee, instead of Meredith—the school board had made them set up the Haunted House in the gym. They’d been worried by the attack on the homeless man under Wickery Bridge and thought everyone would be safer at school instead of at the lumberyard.
It was good that would be changing this time, she thought. If it were in a different place, were things less likely to happen the same way? Maybe.
Meredith pulled out her planning notebook, and she and Bonnie were quickly absorbed in the pictures and sketches from the previous year’s Haunted House. Elena’s eyes wandered back to Bonnie’s unmarked throat.
It just didn’t make sense, she thought. If Damon was being thorough enough to go after everyone important to Elena—and Caroline was important to her, Elena admitted to herself, even if they didn’t like each other—then why hadn’t he fed from Bonnie?