- How frustrating is this? I left you in the trunk of the Jaguar and it's two o'clock in the morning. And I'm afraid to go outside- in the dark -and get you. I'm afraid! So here I am, sitting up in the backseat of the car. This has to be my diary entry for today. By the way, we made the rules for the great trip- sleep in the Jag's backseat and it's the Great for Matt and Damon. Right now it's so dark outside that I can't se Matt anywhere... But I've been going crazy- crying and feeling lost- and so lonely for Stefan...
- We have to getrid of the Jaguar- it's too big, too red too flashy, and too memorable when we're trying not to be remembered as we travel to the place where we can find Stefan. After the car is sold, the lapis lazuli and diamond pendant Stefan gave me the day before he disappeared will be the most precious thing I have left. The day before... Stefan got tricked into going away, thinking he could become sn ordinary human being. And now... How can I stop thinking about what They might be doing to him, at this very second- whoever 'They' are? Probably the kitsune, the evil fox spirits at the prison called the Shi no Shi.
- How did I ever get myself at this situation? Maybe if I could figured that out, I could come up with a Plan A. I always have a Plan A. And my friends always have a Plan B and C to help me. But now I frightened I'll never see them again. And I'm scared for the entire town of Fell’s Church.
- In the first place: who am I? I'm Elena Gilbert, age eighteen. I... don't think it's vain to say that I'm beautiful. If I didn't know I was, I'd have to have never looked in a mirror or heard a compliment. It's not something I should be proud of- it's just something that was passed down from Mom and Dad. What do I look like? I have hair that falls in sort of waves past shoulders and blue eyes that some people have said are like lapis lazuli: dark blue with splashes of gold. Maybe that's why vampires like me. A lot of boys have called me the most angelic girl in the world. And I played around with them. I just used them- for popularity, for amusement, for whatever. I'm being honest, all right? I considered them to be toys or trophies. But there was something else. Something that I knew all my life was coming- but I didn’t know what. I felt as if I were searching for something that I could never find with boys. None of my scheming or playing around with ever touched my... deepest heart... until one very special boy came along. One very special boy. His name was Stefan. And he turned out not to be what he looked like, a normal- but gorgeous -high school senior with rumple dark hair and eyes as green as emeralds. Stefan Salvatore turned out to be a vampire. A real vampire. And so did his gorgeous older brother, Damon.
- Would I have loved Stefan if I’d known he was a vampire from the beginning? Yes! Yes! Yes! I’d have fallen in love with him no matter what! But it changed things—and it changed me. You see, vampires show love by exchanging blood. The problem was…that I was sharing blood with Damon, too. Not really by choice, but because he was after me constantly, day and night.
- A girl involved with two vampires…well, there’s bound to be trouble, isn’t there? So maybe I deserved what I got.
- I died.
- Not just ‘died’ like when your heart stops and they resuscitate you and you come back talking about almost going into the Light. I went into the Light.
- I died.
- And when I came back—what a surprise! I was a vampire.
- Damon was…kind to me, I suppose, when I first woke up as a vampire. Maybe that’s the reason I still have…feelings for him. He didn’t take advantage of me when he could have easily.
- But I only had time to do a few things in my vampire life. I had time to remember Stefan and love him more than ever—since I knew, then, how difficult everything was for him. I got to listen to my own memorial service. Ha! Everybody should get a chance to do that. I learned to always, always wear lapis lazuli so I wouldn’t become a vampire Crispy Critter. I got to say good-bye to my little four-year-old sister, Margaret, and visit Bonnie and Meredith….
- And then—I died again.
- I died the way a vampire dies, when they don’t have lapis lazuli in the sunlight. I didn’t crumble into dust; I was only seventeen. But the sun poisoned me anyway. Going was almost…peaceful. That was when I made Stefan promise to take care of Damon, always. And I think Damon swore to take care of Stefan, in his mind. And that was how I died, with Stefan holding me and Damon beside me as I simply drifted away, like going to sleep.
- After that, I had dreams I don’t remember, and then suddenly, one day everyone was surprised because I was talking to them through Bonnie, who is very psychic, poor thing. I guess I had landed the job of being Fell’s Church’s guardian spirit. There was a danger to the town. They had to fight it and somehow, when they were sure that they had lost, I got dumped back to the world of the living to help. And—well, when the war was won I was left with these weird powers I don’t understand. But there was Stefan, too! We were together again!
- About my powers, let’s see. There’s telepathy, which I can do if the other person is telepathic—which all vampires are, but to different degrees unless they’re actually sharing blood with you at the time. And then there are my Wings.
- It’s true—I have Wings! And the Wings have powers you wouldn’t believe—the only problem being that I don’t have the faintest idea how to use them. There’s one that I can feel sometimes, like right now, trying to get out of me, trying to shape my lips to name it, trying to move my body into the right stance. It’s Wings of Protection and that sounds like something we could really use on this trip. But I can’t even remember how I made the old Wings work—much less figure out how to use this new one. I say the words until I feel like an idiot—but nothing happens at all.
- So I’m a human again—as human as Bonnie. And, oh, God, if I could only see her and Meredith right now! But all the time I tell myself that I’m getting closer to Stefan every minute. That is, if you take into account Damon’s running us up and down and everywhere to throw off anybody trying to track us down.
- Why would anyone want to track us down? Well, you see, when I came back from the afterlife there was a very big explosion of Power that everyone in the world who can see Power saw.
- Now, how do I explain Power? It’s something that everybody has, but that humans—except genuine psychics like Bonnie—don’t even recognize. Vampires definitely have Power, and they use it to Influence humans to like them, or to think that things are different from reality—oh, like the way Stefan Influenced the high school staff to think his records were all in order when he ‘transferred’ to Robert E. Lee High School. Or they use Power to blast other vampires or creatures of darkness—or humans.
- But I was talking about the burst of Power when I dropped down from the heavens. It was so big that it attracted two horrible creatures from the other side of the world. And then they decided to come see what had made the burst, and if there was any way they could use it for themselves.
- I’m not joking, either, about them being from the other side of the world. They were kitsune, evil fox spirits from Japan. They’re something like our Western werewolves—but much more powerful. So powerful that they used malach, which are really plants but look like insects that can be no bigger than a pinhead or big enough to swallow your arm. And the malach attach themselves to your nerves and feather out along your entire nervous system and finally they take you over from inside.
- That’s what happened to Damon. A tiny one got into him and it took him over from inside so that he was only a puppet of Shinichi’s. I forgot to say, the kitsune are called Shinichi and Misao. Misao is the girl. They both have black hair with red all around the tips, but Misao’s is long. And they’re supposed to be brother and sister—but they sure don’t act like it.
- And once Damon was fully possessed, that’s when Shinichi made Damon’s body…do terrible things. He made him torture Matt and me, and even now I know that sometimes Matt still wants to kill Damon for it. But if he’d seen what I saw—a whole thin, wet, white second body that I had to pull out with my fingernails from Damon’s spine—with Damon finally passing out from the pain—then Matt would understand better. I can’t blame Damon for what Shinichi made him do. I can’t. Damon was…you can’t imagine how different. He was crushed. He cried. He was…
- Anyway, I don’t expect to ever see him like that again. But if I ever get my Wings’ powers back, Shinichi is in big trouble.
- I think that that was our mistake last time, you see. We finally were able to fight Shinichi and Misao—and we didn’t kill them. We were too moral or too gentle or something.
- It was a bad mistake.
- Because Damon wasn’t the only one who got possessed by Shinichi’s malach. There were girls, young girls, fourteen and fifteen and younger. And some boys. Acting…crazy. Hurting themselves and their families. We didn’t know how badly until after we’d already made a bargain with Shinichi.
- Maybe we were too immoral, making a bargain with the devil. But they had kidnapped Stefan—and Damon, who was already possessed by then, had helped them. Once Damon was unpossessed, all he wanted was for Shinichi and Misao to tell us where Stefan was, and then for them to leave Fell’s Church forever.
- In exchange for that, Damon let Shinichi into his mind.
- If vampires are obsessed with Power, kitsune are obsessed with memories. And Shinichi wanted Damon’s memories for the last few days—the time that Damon was possessed and torturing us…and the time when my Wings made Damon realize that he had done it. I don’t think Damon himself wanted those memories, either of what he’d done or of how he’d changed when he had to face that he’d done it. So he let Shinichi take them, in exchange for Shinichi putting Stefan’s location into his mind.
- The problem is that we were trusting Shinichi’s word that he would leave then—when Shinichi’s word meant nothing at all.
- Plus, ever since then he’s been using the telepathic channel that he opened between his mind and Damon’s to take more and more of Damon’s memories without Damon even knowing.
- It happened just last night, when we were pulled over by a policeman who wanted to know what three teenagers in an expensive car were doing that late at night. Damon Influenced him to go away. But just a few hours later Damon had forgotten the policeman completely.
- It frightens Damon. And anything that frightens Damon—not that he would ever admit it—scares me to death.
- And, you might ask, what were three teenagers doing out in the middle of nowhere, in Union County, Tennessee, according to the last road sign I saw? We’re heading toward some Gate to the Dark Dimension…where Shinichi and Misao left Stefan in the prison called the Shi no Shi. Shinichi only put the knowledge into Damon’s mind, and I can’t get Damon to say much about what kind of place it is. But Stefan is there and I’ll get to him somehow, even if it kills me.
- Even if I have to learn how to kill.
- I’m not the sweet little girl from Virginia I used to be.
- And why is Matt along with us? Well, because of Caroline Forbes, my friend since kindergarten. Last year…when Stefan came to Fell’s Church, she and I both wanted him. But Stefan didn’t want Caroline. And after that she turned into my worst enemy.
- Caroline was also the lucky winner of Shinichi’s first visit to any girl in Fell’s Church. But more to the point: she was Tyler Smallwood’s girlfriend quite a while before she was his victim. I wonder how long they were together and where Tyler is now. All I know is that, in the end, Caroline hung on to Shinichi because she ‘needed a husband.’ That was how she put it herself. So I assume—well, what Damon assumes. That she’s going to…have puppies. A werewolf litter, you know? Since Tyler is a werewolf.
- Damon says that having a werewolf baby turns you into a werewolf even faster than if you’re bitten, and that at some point in the pregnancy you gain the power to be all wolf or all human, but before that point you’re just a mixed-up mess.
- The sad thing is that Shinichi scarcely gave Caroline a second glance when she blurted it all out.
- But before that Caroline had been desperate enough to accuse Matt of—of assaulting her—on a date that went wrong. She had to have known something about what Shinichi was doing because she claimed her ‘date’ with Matt was at a time when one of the arm-swallowing mallach was attacking him, making marks on his arm that looked like a girl’s fingernail scratches.
- That sent the police after Matt, all right. So basically I just made him come with us. Caroline’s father is one of the most important people in Fell’s Church—and he’s friends with the district attorney in Ridgemont and the leader of one of those men’s clubs where they have secret handshakes and other stuff that makes you, you know, ‘prominent in the community.’
- If I hadn’t convinced Matt to run instead of facing Caroline’s charges, the Forbeses would have lynched him. And I feel the anger like a fire inside me—not just anger and hurt for Matt, but anger and the feeling that Caroline has let all girls everywhere down. Because most girls aren’t pathological liars, and wouldn’t say something like that about a boy falsely. She’s shamed all girls by doing what she did.
- Sometimes when I get angry at Caroline, cups shake or pencils roll right off the table. Damon says all this is caused by my aura, my life force, and that ever since I came back from the afterlife it’s been different. First of all, it makes anyone who drinks my blood incredibly strong.
- Stefan was strong enough that the fox demons could never have forced him into their trap if Damon hadn’t tricked him in the beginning. They could only deal with him when he was weakened and surrounded by iron. Iron is bad news for any eldritch creature, plus vampires need to feed at least once a day or they get weak, and I’ll bet—no, I’m sure that they used that against him.
- That’s why I can’t stand to think about what shape Stefan might be in right this minute. But I can’t let myself get too afraid or angry or I’ll lose control of my aura. Damon showed me how to keep my aura mostly inside, like a normal human girl. It’s still pale gold and pretty, but not a beacon for creatures like vampires.
- Because there’s one other thing my blood—maybe even just my aura—can do. It can…oh, well, I can say anything I want to here, right? Nowadays, my aura can make vampires want me…the way human guys do. Not just to bite, get it? But to kiss and all the rest. And so, naturally, they come after me if they sense it. It’s as if the world is full of honeybees and I’m the only flower.
- So I have to practice keeping my aura hidden. If it’s just barely showing, then I can get away with seeming like a normal human, not somebody who’s died and come back. But it’s hard to always remember to hide it—and it hurts a lot pulling it in suddenly if I’ve forgotten!
- And then I feel—this is absolutely private, all right? I’m putting a curse on you, Damon, if you replay this. But it’s then that I feel like I want Stefan to bite me. It eases up the pressure, and that’s good. Being bitten by a vampire only hurts if you fight it, or if the vampire wants it to hurt. Otherwise, it can just feel good—and then you touch the mind of the vampire who’s done it, and…oh, I just miss Stefan so much!
- I can’t let myself think of what they might do to him because then I really start to go crazy. I become this useless shaking insane person who just wants to scream and scream and never stop. I have to fight every second not to think about it. Because only a cool, calm Elena with a Plan A and B and C is going to help him. When I have him safe in my arms, I can let myself shake and cry—and scream, too.
- I’m tired now. But I have a Plan A, at least. I need to get more information from Damon about the place we’re going, the Dark Dimension, and anything he knows about the two clues Misao gave me about the key that will unlock Stefan’s cell.
- I guess…I guess I haven’t mentioned that at all. The key, the fox key, that we need to get Stefan out of his cell, is broken into two pieces that are hidden in two different places. And when Misao was taunting me about how little I knew about those places, she gave me flat-out clues about where they were. She never dreamed I’d actually go into the Dark Dimension; she was just showing off. But I still remember the clues, and they went like this: The first half is ‘in the silver nightingale’s instrument.’ And the second half is ‘buried in Bloddeuwedd’s ballroom.’
- I need to see if Damon has any ideas about these. Because it sounds as if once we get to the Dark Dimension we’re going to have to infiltrate some people’s houses and other places. To search a ballroom, it’s best to somehow get invited to the ball, right? That sounds like ‘easier said than done,’ but whatever it takes, I’ll do. It’s simple as that.
- Would you believe it? I looked up just now and I can see the palest streaks of dawn in the sky: light green and creamy orange and the faintest aqua…. I’ve talked all through the darkness. It’s so peaceful now. Just now the sun peeked up o—
- What the hell was that? Something just went BANG on the top of the Jag. Really, really loud.
- Note: Elena on the recorder on her mobile.
- Oh, God, I need help! Oh, Stefan- I need you. I need you to forgive me. I need you to keep me sane. Too much time around Damon and I'm completely emotional, ready to kill him or to... or to- I don't know. I don't know!!! We're like flint and tinder together- God! We're like gasoline and a flamethrower! Please hear me and help me and save me... from myself. Every time he even says my name...
- Well, I am writing to you still as a slave. Today we freed Lady Ulma, but decided that Meredith and Bonnie and I should remain “personal assistants.” This is because Lady Ulma said Damon would seem odd and unfashionable if he didn’t have several beautiful girls as courtesans.
- There is actually an upside to this, which is that as courtesans we need to have beautiful clothes and jewelry all the time. Since I’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans ever since that b*st*rd Old Drohzne sliced up the pair I wore into this place, you can imagine that I’m excited.
- But, truly, it’s not just because of pretty clothes I’m excited. Everything that happened since we freed Lady Ulma and then went to her old estate has been a wonderful dream. The house was run down, and obviously the home of wild animals who used it as a lavatory as well as a bedroom. We even found the tracks of wolves and other animals upstairs, which led to the question of whether werewolves live in this world. Apparently they do, and some in very high positions under various feudal lords. Maybe Caroline would like to try a vacation here to learn about the real werewolves though—they’re said to hate humans so much that they won’t even have human or vampire (once human) slaves.
- But back to Lady Ulma’s house. Its foundation is of stone and it’s paneled inside with hardwood, so the basic structure is fine. The curtains and tapestries are all hanging in shreds, of course, so it’s sort of spooky to go inside with torches and see them dangling above and around you. Not to mention the giant spiderwebs. I hate spiders more than anything.
- But we went inside, with our torches seeming like smaller versions of that giant crimson sun that always sits on the horizon, staining everything outside the color of blood, and we shut the doors and lit a fire in a giant fireplace in what Lady Ulma calls the Great Hall. (I think it’s where you eat or have parties—it has an enormous table on a dais at one side, and a room for minstrels above what must be the dance floor. Lady Ulma said that this is where the servants all sleep at night, too (the Great Hall, not the minstrel gallery).
- Then we went upstairs, where we saw—I swear—several dozen bedrooms with very large four-poster beds that are going to need new mattresses and sheets and coverlets and hangings, but we didn’t stay to look around. There were bats hanging from the ceiling.
- We headed for Lady Ulma’s mother’s workroom. It was a very large room where at least forty people could sit and sew the clothes that Lady Ulma’s mother designed. But here’s the exciting part!
- Lady Ulma went to one of the wardrobes in the room and moved away all the tattered, moth-eaten clothes that were in it. And she pressed some different places at the back of the cupboard and the whole back of the cupboard slid out! Inside it was a very narrow stairway going straight down!
- I kept thinking about Honoria Fell’s crypt and wondering if some homeless vampire might have taken up residence in the room downstairs, but I knew that was silly because there were spiderwebs just inside the door. Damon still insisted that he go down first because he has the best eyesight in the dark, but I think the truth is that he was just curious to see what was down there.
- We each followed him one at a time, trying to be careful with the torches, and…well, I can’t find the right words for what we discovered. For just a few minutes I was disappointed because everything on the big table down there was dusty rather than sparkly, but then Lady Ulma began to gently brush jewels off with a special cloth and Bonnie found sacks and packages and she poured them out—and it was like pouring out a rainbow! Damon found a cabinet where there were drawers and drawers of necklaces, bracelets, rings, armlets, anklets, earrings, nose rings, and hairpins and ornaments, too!
- I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I poured out a pouch and found that I had a huge handful of glorious white diamonds dripping through my fingers, some of them as big as my thumbnail. I saw white pearls and black pearls, both smaller and perfectly matched, and huge and in marvelous shapes: almost as big as apricots with pink or golden or gray sheens to them. I saw sapphires the size of quarters, with stars you could see almost from across the room. I held handfuls of emeralds and peridots and opals and rubies and tourmalines and amethysts—and a lot of lapis lazuli, for the discriminating vampire, of course.
- And the jewelry that was already made up was so beautiful it made my throat ache. I know Lady Ulma had a quiet little cry, but I think it was partly from happiness as we all kept complimenting her on her jewels. In days she has gone from being a slave who owned nothing to an incredibly rich woman who owns a house and all the means she would ever need to keep it up in style. We decided that even though she is going to marry her lover, it was best at first for Damon to buy him quietly and free him quietly, but to play “Head of the Household” for as long as we are here. During that time we will treat Lady Ulma as family, and will put the jeweler Lucen back to work until we leave, when he and Lady Ulma can quietly take Damon’s place. The feudal lords around here are not demons anymore, but vampires, and they have less objection to humans owning property.
- Have I told you about Lucen? He’s a wonderful artist with jewels! He has a burning need to create—in his early days as a slave he would create with mud and weeds, imagining that he was making jewelry. Then he got lucky and was apprenticed to a jeweler. He’s felt sorry for Lady Ulma for so long, and loved her for so long, that it’s like a little miracle that they are truly able to get together—and most importantly, as free citizens.
- We were afraid that Lucen might not like the idea of us buying him as a slave and not freeing him until we leave, but he never thought he’d be free—because of his talent. He’s a slow, gentle, kind man, with a neat little beard and gray eyes that remind me of Meredith’s. And he’s so amazed at being treated decently and not worked around the clock that he would have accepted anything, just to be allowed to be near Lady Ulma. I guess he was an apprentice when her father was a jeweler, and he fell in love with her all those years ago, but he thought he would never, never ever be able to be with her, because she was a young lady of quality and he was a slave. They’re so happy together!
- Every day Lady Ulma looks more beautiful, and younger. She asked permission from Damon to dye her hair all black, and he told her she could dye it pink if she liked, and now she just looks incredibly beautiful. I can’t believe I ever thought of her as an old hag, but that’s what agony and fear and hopelessness do to you. Every one of those gray hairs was from being a slave, with no property, no say in her future, no safety, no ability even to keep her children, if she had them.
- I forgot to tell you the other upside of Meredith, Bonnie, and I being “personal assistants” for a while. It’s that we can employ a lot of poor women who make their living by sewing, and Lady Ulma actually wants to design and show them how to make our finest clothes. We told her that she could just relax, but she says all her life she’s fantasized about being a designer like her mother and now she’s dying to do it—with three completely different types of girl to dress. I’m dying to see what she’ll come up with: she’s already started sketching and tomorrow the man who sells fabric will come and she’ll pick the materials.
- Meanwhile Damon has hired about two hundred people (really!) to clean out Lady Ulma’s estate, put up new wall hangings and curtains, refurbish the plumbing system, polish up the furniture that has kept nicely, and to get new furniture where things have fallen apart. Oh, and to plant ready-grown flowers and trees in the gardens and put in fountains and all kinds of stuff. With that many people working, we ought to be able to move in in just a matter of days.
- All this has just one purpose, aside from making Lady Ulma happy. It’s so that Damon and his “personal assistants” will be accepted by high society as the season of parties begins this year. Because I’ve kept the best for last. Both Lady Ulma and Sage could immediately identify the people in the riddles that Misao gave to us!
- It just goes to prove what I thought before, that Misao never imagined that we’d actually make it here, or that we could get entrance to the places where they’ve hidden the two halves of the fox key.
- But there’s a very easy way to get invited into the houses we need to get into. If we’re the newest, splashiest nouveau riche (sp?) around, and if we circulate the story that Lady Ulma has been restored to her rightful place, and if everyone wants to know about her—we’ll get invited to parties! And that’s how we get into the two estates we need to visit to look for the halves of the key that we need to free Stefan! And we’re incredibly lucky, because this is the time of year when everyone begins to give parties, and both households we want to visit are having early celebrations: one is a gala, and one is a spring soiree to celebrate the first flowers.
- I know my writing is shaky now. I’m shaky myself at the thought that we are actually going to look for the two halves of the fox key that will let us break Stefan out of his prison.
- Oh, diary, it’s late—and I can’t—I can’t write about Stefan. To be here in the same city with him, to know the direction to his prison…and yet to not be able to get to see him. My eyes are so blurred I can’t see what I’m writing. I wanted to get some sleep to be ready for another day of running around, supervising, and watching Lady Ulma’s estate blossom like a rose—but now I’m afraid I’ll just have nightmares about Stefan’s hand slowly slipping out of mine.
- It’s the night before the night of our first party—or rather gala. But I don’t feel very gala. I miss Stefan too much.
- I’ve been brooding about Matt, too. How he walked away, so angry at me, not even looking back. He didn’t understand how I could…care for…Damon, and yet still love Stefan so much that it felt as if my heart was breaking.
- I don’t know what to say. We’re home.
- Last night we each had a long bath…and I was half-disappointed, because my favorite long-handled back-scrubbing brush wasn’t there, and there was no star ball to make dreamy music for Stefan—and the water was LUKEWARM! And Stefan went to see if the water heater was turned on all the way and met Damon going to do the same thing! Only, they couldn’t because we’re home again.
- But I woke up a couple of hours ago for a few minutes to see the most beautiful sight in the world…a sunrise. Pale pink and eerie green in the east, with nighttime still full dark in the west. Then deeper rose in the sky, and the trees all wreathed in dew clouds. Then a shiny glory from the edge of the horizon and dark rose, cream, and even a green melon color in the sky, Finally, a line of fire and in an instant all the colors change. The line becomes an arc, the western sky is deepest deepest blue, and then up comes the sun bringing warmth and light and color to the green trees and the sky begins to become celestial blue—celestial just means heavenly, although somehow, I have a delicious shivery feeling when I say it. The sky becomes a gemlike, celestial, cerulean blue and the golden sun begins to pour energy, love, light, and every good thing onto the world.
- Who could not be happy to watch this while Stefan held her?
- We who are so lucky as to be born into the light—who see it every day and never think about it, we’re blessed. We could have been born shadow souls who live and die in crimson darkness, never even knowing that somewhere there is something better.
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