“I’ll tell you a secret, princess,” he said into her ear. “You and I are the only real things here. It’s everything else that’s the dream.”
“Just you and me?” Elena echoed, an uneasy thought nagging at her, as though she were forgetting something— or someone. A fleck of ash landed on her dress, and she absently brushed it away.
“It’s just the two of us, Elena,” Damon said sharply. “You’re mine. I’m yours. We’ve loved each other since the beginning of time.”
Of course. That must be why she was trembling—it was joy. He was hers. She was his. They belonged together.
She whispered one word: “Yes.”
Then he kissed her.
His lips were soft as silk, and when the kiss deepened, she tilted her head back, exposing her throat, anticipating the double wasp sting he’d delivered so many times.
When it didn’t come, she opened her eyes questioningly. The moon was as bright as ever, and the scent of roses hung heavy in the air. But Damon’s chiseled features were pale under his dark hair, and more ash had landed on the shoulders of his jacket. All at once, the little doubts that had been niggling at her came together.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
“Damon.” She gasped, looking into his eyes despairingly as tears filled her own. “You can’t be here, Damon. You’re … dead.”
“For more than five hundred years, princess.” Damon flashed his blinding smile at her. More ash was falling around them, like a fine gray rain, the same gray ash Damon’s body was buried beneath, worlds and dimensions away.
“Damon, you’re … dead now. Not undead, but … gone.”
“No, Elena…” He began to flicker and fade, like a dying lightbulb.
“Yes. Yes! I held you as you died…” Elena was sobbing helplessly. She couldn’t feel Damon’s arms at all now. He was disappearing into shimmering light.
“Listen to me, Elena…”
She was holding moonlight. Anguish caught at her heart.
“All you need to do is call for me,” Damon’s voice said. “All you need…”
His voice faded into the sound of wind rustling through the trees.
Elena’s eyes snapped open. Through a fog she registered that she was in a room filled with sunlight, and a huge crow was perched on the sill of an open window. The bird til
ted its head to one side and gave a croak, watching her with bright eyes.
A cold chill ran down her spine. “Damon?” she whispered.
But the crow just spread its wings and flew away.
2
Dear Diary,
I AM HOME! I can hardly dare to believe it, but here I am.
I woke with the strangest feeling. I didn’t know where I was and just lay here smelling the clean cotton-and-fabric-softener scent of the sheets, trying to figure out why everything looked so familiar.
I wasn’t in Lady Ulma’s mansion. There, I had slept nestled in the smoothest satin and softest velvet, and the air had smelled of incense. And I wasn’t at the boardinghouse: Mrs. Flowers washes the bedding there in some weird-smelling herbal mixture that Bonnie says is for protection and good dreams.
And suddenly, I knew. I was home. The Guardians did it! They brought me home.
Everything and nothing has changed. It’s the same room I slept in from when I was a tiny baby: my polished cherry-wood dresser and rocking chair; the little stuffed black-and-white dog Matt won at the winter carnival our junior year perched on a shelf; my rolltop desk with its cubbyholes; the ornate antique mirror above my dresser; and the Monet and Klimt posters from the museum exhibits Aunt Judith took me to in Washington, DC. Even my comb and brush are lined up neatly side by side on my dresser. It’s all as it should be.
I got out of bed and used a silver letter opener from the desk to pry up the secret board in my closet floor, my old hiding place, and I found this diary, just where I hid it so many months ago. The last entry is the one I wrote before Founder’s Day back in November, before I … died. Before I left home and never came back. Until now.