Still, all Stefan’s posturing had been to get Damon to come to one conclusion, and that was: Hot diggety, I’ll get to make Elena my princess of darkness and there will be no Stefan to interfere.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
Because Stefan had planted this in Elena’s mind—in everyone’s minds—Damon realized, slowed down only slightly by the feeling that if Elena kept stroking his palm with her thumb the way she was doing, he might grab her and demonstrate to the doctors exactly how she had lost so much blood in the first place.
Yes, it explained everyone’s solicitous behavior in the waiting room, Damon realized. It also explained why Elena was looking up at him with serene and irresistible joy, the gold streaks in her lapis lazuli eyes catching the light. And why she seemed willing to show him that she had a Ph.D. in palm-caressing,
Everybody thought . . . well, basically . . . that he was Stefan, just with a different name.
No. It was even worse than that. Everybody thought that he was Stefan-with-a-different-name and . . . oh, no—oh, yes . . . that he was human.
It was a bold conclusion to come to, but one that he felt was warranted. No one in the waiting room had acte
d as if he might be responsible for Elena’s illness—which Stefan had been responsible for. Matt and Meredith at least would have at least queried him directly, if they’d suspected such a thing. Instead it had been all “You’re holding up so well, Damon,” and “It’s a miracle, Damon!” No hint even that they even knew he had powers of healing that he could use to help Elena.
Even Bonnie . . . Bonnie had given no indication that she remembered calling for Damon, although his presence had comforted her greatly. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t offered to help heal Elena or said she was conferring with old Mrs. Flowers about supplementary treatments.
Good grief, she doesn’t remember she’s a witch.
Stefan had brainwashed them all.
Damon needed to sit down. He Influenced the ponytailed doctor to get him a chair from another room. He sat and let Elena play with his hand. She was serenely confident that it wasn’t possible for her to do anything less than exactly what he wanted. What Stefan would have wanted. What, if she didn’t stop doing right now, was going to force him to grab her and jump with her out of a window, carrying her off to some dark and secret lair, there to educate her about supernatural entities called vampires—that she happened to have temporarily forgotten about.
Get a grip, Damon told himself in stern voice. You’re supposed to be able to resist torture, aren’t you? Besides, you’re actually in the catbird seat now, aren’t you? Sitting pretty.
My dear little brother is going to make me act like a human, though, something primæval inside him thought, gnashing its fangs.
You’ll get used to it. At least you don’t actually have to be one of the wretched creatures of the day this time. No eating except for show, no mandatory breathing. No humiliation in the eyes of your real peers—well, maybe a little bewilderment, but nothing you can’t beat out of them. And, best of all, you just have to play the part for a few nights or however long it takes to seduce Elena and then clear everything up . . . with a simple, genuine smile.
There was something he had to know, though. He squeezed Elena’s hand to keep himself from spontaneously combusting, stood, and bent to kiss her forehead chastely. Her skin was warm against his lips; she was certainly back to her proper temperature. Damon looked into her great luminous lapis eyes, and said, “Excuse me for just a moment, princess, and I’ll bring you a nice hot cup of tea.”
When he stepped back he took in all the doctors with a glance, and encased them in a coil of Influence. With each hour that passes you will become more convinced that Elena’s mystery will never be deciphered, he told them silently. And meanwhile, you need to go back to your own departments. Now . . . leave!
He didn’t stay to hear his own words repeated in different tones and tenors. He walked with a measured stride back to the waiting room.
Where, of course, everyone was actually waiting. Eight pairs of eyes lifted to his as he returned; their expressions ranging from inscrutable (Mrs. Flowers) to quivering with tears on lashes (Bonnie). He had to say something.
“If you’re expecting me to make a speech, I’m not,” he said, adding a winsome expression to fool them into thinking he was being modest instead of indifferent. “You’d do a lot better to just go in and see Elena. She’s doing very well. I just came out to get her a cup of hot tea.”
Muted chaos broke out. Matt ran over to shadow box Damon, who was seriously not into the play. Bonnie let her tears overflow, clasping her hands together like a child at prayer, until Meredith grabbed her up in a hug. Aunt Judith and Robert sagged together in a shower of used tissues. Dr. Alpert hefted Margaret high into the air. Only Mrs. Flowers sat quite still at the coffee table in the back of the room.
Damon approached the old woman and spoke lightly. “May I collect on that nice cuppa, then, ma’am?”
“Of course—if Elena really wants it. It will do her a world of good.”
Damon immediately determined that under no circumstances would he actually give the tea to Elena. But he kept an open, friendly look on his face as Mrs. Flowers fluttered a thermos out of her bag, and then fluttered it open and fluttered a stream of steaming red liquid into a Styrofoam cup.
Meanwhile Damon was chatting casually with Bonnie and Meredith, only resisting their attempts to draw him into a group hug. “The doctors were close to admitting that they simply couldn’t explain what happened to Elena. Neither how she got sick, nor how she got better so fast after the transfusion.”
“I just hope it never happens again,” Meredith said, giving him one of those steady, trusting, gray-eyed looks she had always turned on Stefan. Fancy that: Meredith, talking to him like an equal!
“I hope it never happens again, too,” Damon said with truthful emphasis. He turned to Bonnie, struck by a sudden whim. “You were the one so interested in druids and palm-reading last year, weren’t you? Well, do you think anything . . . supernatural . . . could have done this to Elena? I mean”—he lowered his voice—“like some kind of . . . witchcraft or something?”
Bonnie stared at him a moment, wide-eyed. And for just an instant Damon began to panic: maybe Stefan had set them up with code words that would release them from all their conditioning. Maybe “witch” was one of those words. Maybe this entire scenario was Stefan’s way of getting revenge.
Bonnie burst into laughter. She tapped Damon’s forearm with her fan—no, it was her fingertips, but it really ought to have been a fan, held by a genuine old-fashioned Virginia belle—and her brown eyes danced in the light.
“Oh, you!” she said to Damon. “You know perfectly well there are no such things as witches! You’ll be talking about werewolves and vampires next!”