Bonnie turned back to Stefan. All the while, her hand remained hovering over the X, while the quartz crystal described circles around it, smaller and smaller circles, as if a signal was dying away.
“That means,” Bonnie choked, seeming to understand that she was going to have to speak her thought aloud by herself, “that we left him there—we left him . . . alive.”
Stefan said, “Yes.”
“We just—we abandoned him—and he was still alive!”
“Yes.”
“But how could we do that?”
“Bonnie, dear . . .”
“It’s my fault,” Stefan said. “I closed his eyes. I said he was gone.”
“What difference does it make whose fault it is?” Elena blurted, startling herself, because she hadn’t realized she was going to speak until she heard her own voice. It was almost as if someone had said it through her.
Just get the hell back out here, Damon thought in conclusion, allowing his aura to shrink back to normal dimensions.
In the boardinghouse kitchen, Bonnie had whirled on Elena. Before, she had been sobbing or wailing her concerns. Now, she seemed to Elena like a small animal at bay.
“You can’t say anything about it,” she shrilled. “You weren’t even conscious! It was Stefan and I who—we should have waited longer!”
“Bonnie, we were suffocating in falling ash,” Stefan said—gallantly, Elena thought.
“You weren’t suffocating! You don’t need to breathe. I was suffocating!” Bonnie turned her trapped-animal look on him.
“And so was Elena,” Stefan said. “She needed to breathe even though she was unconscious.”
“But we left him when he was alive!”
Stefan laughed. For a moment the sound was uncertain, but then it became more positive, more natural.
“Yes. Yes, Bonnie! And because he was alive then, he’s alive now and we can find him!”
Bonnie stopped in mid-wail with her mouth open. “Oh. Oh! Oh, my God!”
“Yes,” said Stefan.
“Yes, my dears,” said Mrs. Flowers.
“Oh, my God!” Bonnie jumped up in excitement. “We need to tell Meredith and Matt!” She grimaced after a moment. “Maybe Matt won’t be as excited as we are, but still . . .”
“Yes, let’s tell them,” Stefan said. His eyes were sparkling spring green again.
Far away, on the tiny moon of the Nether World, Damon thought, I’m saved. I’m really saved this time. Hooray.
He should have known better.
Elena, who hadn’t spoken in a long while, but who was now being examined by three pairs of eyes: one of brown, one of green, and one of blue, said bluntly, “But how do we find him? How do we get there?”
Damon thought: I’m doomed. Alas. Woe is me.
Damn.
He slumped, exhausted from advertising his aura so flagrantly. Ash continued to pile up over him, burying him with layer out of layer of darkness.
Doomed, he thought again, with a gloomy sort of satisfaction.