Elena held the page open and stable for her. Mrs. Flowers and Stefan murmured encouragement now and then and eventually Bonnie calmed enough to move the quartz pendulum steadily across each of the nine rows.
When she finished, Elena was finally able to take a deep breath and she saw that everyone around the table was doing the same.
“Now for the atlas,” Elena said with brittle cheer.
“Good,” Bonnie managed to say, although she was obviously having trouble sitting up straight.
“I think only one or two pages for the moment,” Mrs. Flowers put in quickly. “Spiritual powers are like any other ability. At some point you simply do too much too quickly and they run out.”
“Well . . . I suppose I could use a little nap,” Bonnie admitted. “Especially since we know that he’s not being tortured in hell somewhere and we need to get him out right away.”
“Exactly,” Stefan said.
“I mean, there’s not much rush . . . if he’s just been . . . reincarnated as some . . . somebody’s unborn baby . . .”
Elena glanced at Stefan. He smiled at her with his eyes only, and she smiled back the same way.
Bonnie had melted like a candle. She was slumped with her cheek pillowed on her crooked arm, which was on the table. In a moment she was breathing slowly and regularly, asleep as soundly as a baby in its cradle.
Stefan looked at Mrs. Flowers and Elena, his eyebrows up to ask if he should carry Bonnie to a bedroom. Elena found herself shaking her head and watching Mrs. Flowers do the same. Bonnie looked consummately comfortable—like an exhausted little kitten, Elena thought with a rush of tenderness.
Amid the tenderness, there was a tiny thread of concern. Elena didn’t want to examine it, but she couldn’t help it. It was a worry that Bonnie cared too much about Damon; that somehow she was inevitably going to get hurt.
Or . . . maybe that I’m going to get hurt, Elena admitted truthfully. It astonished her sometimes, that Bonnie could be so much of a woman, so much more forgiving and—well, mature—than Elena was. Wasn’t it Bonnie who truly deserved, who truly had proven herself worthy of . . .
Elena turned away sharply, startled and annoyed to feel a prickling in her eyes. She reached blindly for Stefan, who, as always, was quick to console her with strong arms and soft kisses on her hair, and without asking what she was unhappy about.
Mrs. Flowers was tiptoeing out of the kitchen. Elena and Stefan followed, holding hands.
“She’ll sleep for a few hours,” the old woman said when they were in the foyer of the boardinghouse. “She’ll wake up stiff, but much refreshed, and then we can begin with the atlas.”
Stefan nodded. “Thank you for all your help,” he said. Then, more slowly, with a glance at Elena: “Do you have any more of that vellum? Because I think I could make a map of the entryway to the Nether World—not that there would be much to put on it. A lot of snow. Some rocks; some cliffs. That Silver Lake where Elena got hypothermia and nearly died. That ridiculous suspension bridge—”
“Where Elena got terrified and nearly died,” Elena contributed wryly because Stefan would never say it. “A trail and then that cavern and the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures, where all those doors were,” she finished.
In a distant place Damon stirred. He had been too enthralled by this moving-picture-with-an-open-window-on-Elena’s-soul to react in any way, with pity or with pleasure. But now, suddenly, emotion returned to him.
I’m saved, he thought. Now they just have to list where they went after the Gatehouse. It’s only logical. I’m rescued. Hooray.
He should have known better. His little brother wasn’t known for his logical thinking, and Elena was exhausted, physically and mentally.
“And that’s it,” Stefan said. “If you happen to have the vellum.”
I’m not saved after all, Damon thought. I’m doomed. Alas. Woe is me.
“Of course, my dear boy,” Mrs. Flowers said to Stefan, leading the way into a second-floor bedroom. “The vellum is here, in the closet with the rest of the art supplies. I used it because it was the biggest thing I had to draw on.”
In the closet of what Elena had always thought of as “the dull blue room” was a collection to intrigue any amateur artist. Pastels, charcoals for quick sketching, tins of water-colors, boxes of oil paints, a palate, a container of clean brushes, blank canvases, half-finished pictures, and various sizes of poster-board were all neatly arranged and dust-free. Tucked in a corner was a thick roll of vellum.
Stefan took three pieces, while Elena quickly chose a calligraphy kit with ink that looked as if it were still liquid and also a set of colored pencils.
“Maybe we could use the dining room table as a flat surface to draw on—if we’re careful,” Stefan suggested, and Mrs. Flowers smiled.
“What a good idea, my dear. Please do use it. Meanwhile, I think I might go to my own room for quick catnap.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Flowers. You certainly deserve it,” Elena said. “Stefan, could you grab some books to use to pin down the corners of the vellum so they don’t roll up?”
Stefan hastened to the bookcase (every room in Mrs. Flowers’s house had at least one) and returned with four chunky volumes.