“I think—no, I’m sure—that Bonnie kept a diary for a while after Elena died in the crypt. It was a blank book with little flowers on it. Blue and yellow flowers on a navy background. She kept it until the night of the summer solstice and she wrote all sorts of things in it. But I have no idea where it is now.”
Stefan stared impassively into a middle distance. “I’m
going to have to go into Bonnie’s mind again.”
“No, damn it!”
“Yes, damn it! You know I have to. You knew I would have to when you told me to wait.”
“You’ve already meddled with Bonnie enough. She’s delicate. She’s emotionally fragile.”
“I need to find out where that book is and steal it. The only alternative is for you to do it, and I don’t trust you to finish the job.”
“Oh, yes? First, you blame me for—for caring too much about Bonnie, and now you don’t trust me to make sure she doesn’t find a book that would send her stark raving mad.”
“Neatly put. Also true.”
“And now you’re going to bite her again, to terrify her in her sleep—”
“No,” Stefan said. “I can give you my word on that.”
“But still, you’ll be—you’ll . . .” Damon’s voice trailed off. He stared at Stefan, who held his gaze steadily. “Oh, you bastard,” Damon said at last. He wasn’t sure whether there was more condemnation or admiration in his voice. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you? Just now, while we’ve been arguing the point.”
Stefan reproduced Damon’s fluid shrug. “I told you I could Influence the humans from up here. I didn’t see any reason to wait.”
“You bastard.” Well, now, we are a handsome family, aren’t we? Damon thought, watching Stefan closely. Especially when we’re being deceptive and ruthless.
“She didn’t even notice it. And now I know where that flowered diary should be—and, no, I’m not going to tell you. I’m going away forever now, Damon. You could at least acknowledge that.”
“I’m acknowledging it. I’ll see you around.”
“No,” Stefan said in his strangely uninflected way. “I don’t think you will.”
And that was how Stefan walked out of Damon’s life. He was through the door that led to the stairway down from the roof before Damon could turn around to see him go.
Oh, well, Damon thought. I will see him around again, whatever he thinks. I suppose he gets earned some points for an original interpretation of all the mad scenes in Hamlet put together. Plus a bit of the Hatter’s tea party.
* * *
Stefan hurried down the stairs. Talking with Damon had taken longer than he’d thought. It had given Elena’s Aunt Judith and Robert time to quiz the nurses. Fortunately, there weren’t many doctors around at 5:00 A.M. on a Sunday morning, and any who did interact with Elena seemed to be shooing the family out and concentrating on the patient, who was magically getting better and better, as they did nothing but pump liquids and blood components into her. Stefan gathered all this from a peek into Aunt Judith’s mind.
All right, now for one big abracadabra, he thought. He certainly had enough Power; he could feel it thrilling down his spine and out to his fingertips. He gathered it all together and then let it loose in the ICU.
Motion stopped.
Everyone stood like statues, from the janitor who had been happily banging her trash collector into sleeping patients’ rooms to the nurse filling out information about Elena’s vital signs onto a clipboard, to Aunt Judith and company, temporarily banished to the waiting room, a bleak space with one working coffee pot and a TV eternally stuck on a home buyer’s channel.
Stefan stepped into the crowd of statues. He dropped his neurological virus, which he had been improving all the time he spoke with Damon, into Aunt Judith’s mind. He had added a slightly pleasant, fuzzy effect to the basic software, and in a moment Aunt Judith was wearing a bemused smile despite the streaks of tears on her face. Robert and Dr. Alpert joined her.
Then Stefan turned to the little girl who was sitting on a plastic chair holding a much-loved brown teddy bear in her arms. Her hair was the same sunlight color as Elena’s, and so fine that it stood up a bit from static electricity. She was entranced, but very lightly. Stefan put gentle fingertips on her temple.
Margaret?
Yes? She clutched the bear more tightly to her chest. She shouldn’t be able to do that, to move at all, but she did it anyway.
Do you remember me? Are you scared of me?
Yes, Margaret said flatly, obviously to both questions.