She got a good grip on the nape of the fox's neck. Misao keened a strange animal lament and sank her teeth into Elena's hand so hard that it felt as if they were going to meet. Elena bit her lip until she felt blood come, trying not to scream.

Be crushed, and die, and turn to loam,the tree said in Elena's ear.Your kind can feed my kin for once. The voice was ancient, malevolent and very, very frightening.

Elena's legs reacted without pausing to consult her mind. They pushed off hard and then the golden b.u.t.terfly wings unfurled again, not beating but undulating, holding Elena steady above the altar.

She pulled the snarling vixen's muzzle up-not too close-to her own face. "Where are the two pieces of the fox key?" she demanded. "Tell me or I'll take off another tail. Iswear I will. Don't fool yourself-it's not just your pride that you're losing, is it?

Your tails are your Power. What would it feel like to have none at all?" "Like being a human-exceptyou , you freak." Now Misao was laughing again in her panting-dog way, her fox ears flat to her head.

"Just answer the question!"

"As if you would understand the answers I could give. If I told you that one was inside the silver nightingale's instrument, would that give you any kind of idea?"

"It might if you explained it a little more clearly!"

"If I told you that one was buried in Blodwedd's ballroom, would you be able to find it?" Again the panting grin as the fox gave clues that led nowhere-or everywhere.

"Are those your answers?"

"No!"Misao shrieked suddenly and kicked with her feet, as if they were dog's legs scrabbling in the dirt. Except that the dirt was Elena's midriff, and the scrabbling legs felt as if they might well puncture her entrails. She felt her camisole tear.

"I told you; I'm not playing around here!" Elena cried. She lifted the vixen with her left arm, even though it ached with tiredness.

With her right hand, she positioned the shears.

"Where is the first part of the key?" Elena demanded.

"Search for yourself! You only have the whole world to look through, and every thicket besides." The fox went for her throat again, white teeth actually scoring Elena's flesh.

Elena forced that arm to hold Misao higher. "I warned you, so don't say that I didn't or that you have any reason to complain!"

She squeezed the shears.

Misao gave a squeal that was almost lost in the general commotion. Elena, feeling more and more tired, said, "You're a complete liar, aren't you? Look down if you want. I didn't cut anywhere close to you. You just heard the shears click and screamed."

Misao very nearly got a claw into Elena's eye. Oh, well. Now, for Elena, there were no more moral or ethical issues. She wasn't causing pain, she was simply draining Power. The shears wentsnap, snap, snap , and Misao screamed and cursed her, but below them the Tree-Men were shrinking.

"Where is the first part of the key?"

"Let me go and I'll tell." Suddenly Misao's voice was less shrill.

"On your honor-if you can say that without laughing?"

"On my honor and my word as a kitsune. Please! You can't leave a fox without a real tail! That's why the ones you cut didn't hurt.

They're badges of honor. But my real tail is in the middle, it's tipped with white, and if you cut me there; you'll see blood and it will leave a stump." Misao seemed thoroughly cowed, thoroughly ready to cooperate.

Elena knew about judging people and intuition, and both her mind and her heart were telling her not to trust this creature. But she wanted so much to believe, to hope....

Making a slow curving descent so that the vixen was close to the ground-she would not give in to the temptation to drop her from sixty feet up-Elena said, "Well? On you honor, what are the answers?"

Six Tree-Men came to life around her and plunged at her, with greedy, grasping finger branches.But Elena wasn't taken completely off guard. She hadn't let go of her grip on Misao; only slackened it. Now she tightened the grip again.

A wave of strength buoyed her so that she lifted fast and swept by the widow's walk and a furious Shinichi and weeping Caroline.

Then Elena met Damon's eyes. They were filled with hot, fierce pride in her. She was filled with hot, fierce pa.s.sion.

"I am not an angel," she announced to any of the group who hadn't quite managed to grasp this yet. "I am not an angel and I am not a spirit. I'm Elena Gilbert and I've been to the Other Side. And right now I'm ready to do whatever needs to be done, which seems to include kicking some a.s.s!"

There was a clamor below that at first she couldn't identify. Then she realized it was the others-it was her friends. Mrs. Flowers and Dr. Alpert, Matt and even wild Isobel. They were cheering-and they were visible because suddenly the backyard was in daylight.

Am I doing that? Elena wondered, and realized that somehow she was. She was lighting up the clearing in which Mrs. Flowers'

house stood, while leaving the woods around dark.

Maybe I can extend it, she thought. Make the Old Wood into something younger and less evil.

If she had been more experienced, she would never have attempted it. But right here and right now she felt that she could take anything on. She looked at the four directions of the Old Wood around her quickly, and she cried, "Wings of Purification!" and watched the huge, frosty, iridescent b.u.t.terfly wings spread high and wide, and then wider, and then spread some more.

She was aware of a silence, of being so enrapt in something she was doing that even Misao's struggles didn't matter. It was a silence that reminded her of something: of all the most beautiful strains of music coming together into one, single, powerful chord.

And then the Power blasted out from her-not destructive Power like that Damon had sent many times, but a Power of renewal, of springtime, of love, youth, and purification. And she watched as the light spread farther and farther, and the trees grew smaller and more familiar, with more clearings in between thickets. Thorns and hanging creepers disappeared. On the ground, spreading out like a circle expanding, flowers of all colors bloomed, sweet violets in clumps here and banks of Queen Anne's lace there, and wild roses climbing everywhere. It was so beautiful that it made her chest ache.

Misao hissed. Elena's trance was finally broken, and she looked around to see that the shambling, hideous Tree-Men had disappeared in the full sunlight and in their place was a wide patch of sorrel dotted with fossilized trees in odd shapes. Some looked almost human. For a moment Elena regarded the scene, puzzled, and then she realized what else was different. All the real humans were gone.

"I never should have brought you here!" And that, to Elena's surprise, was Misao's voice. She was speaking to her brother. "You spoiled everything because of that girl.Shinichi no baka!"

"Idiot, yourself!" Shinichi shouted at Misao. "Onore!You're reacting just the way they want-"

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"I heard you giving the girl clues," Shinichi snarled. "You'd do anything for the sake of your looks, you selfish-"

"You can say that to me? While you haven't lost even one tail yourself?"

"Just because I'm faster-"

Misao cut him off. "That's a lie and you know it! Take it back!"

"You're too weak to fight! You should have run long ago! Don't come crying to me about it."

"Don't youdare speak to me like that!" And Misao leaped from Elena's grasp and attacked Shinichi. He had been wrong. She was a good fighter. In a second they were a destruction zone, rolling over and over as they fought changing forms all the while. Black and scarlet fur flew. Out of the ball of turning bodies came sc.r.a.ps of speech- "-still won't find the keys-"

"-not both of them, anyway-"

"-even if they did-"

"-what would it matter?"

"-still have to find the boy-"

"-I say it's only sporting to let them try-"

Misao's horrible shrill giggle. "And see what they find-"

"-in theShi no Shi !"

Abruptly the fight ended and they both became human. They were battered, but Elena felt that there was nothing more that she could do if they chose to fight again.

Instead Shinichi said, "I'm breaking the globe.Here ," he turned to Damon and shut his eyes, "is where your precious brother is. I'm putting it into your mind-if you can decode the map. And once you get there, you'll die. Don't say I didn't warn you."

To Elena he bowed and said, "I regret that you'll be dying, too. But I've memorialized you in an ode.

Wild rose and lilac, Bee's balm and daisy, Elena's smile chases The winter away.

Bluebell and violet, Foxglove and iris, Watch where she treads And then watch the gra.s.s sway.

Wherever her feet pa.s.s, White flowers part the gra.s.s-"

"I'd rather hear a straight explanation of where the keys are," Elena said to Shinichi, knowing that after that song she wouldn't get any more from Misao. "Frankly, I'm sick and tired of all yourbulls.h.i.t ."

She noticed that once again everyone was staring at her and she could feel why. She could feel a difference in her voice, in her stance, in her patterns of speech. But mostly,inside , what she felt was freedom.

"We'll give you this much," Shinichi said. "We won't move them. Find them from the clues-or by other means, if you can." He winked at Elena and turned away-to meet a pale and trembling Nemesis. Caroline. Whatever else she'd been doing for the last few minutes, she had been crying, and rubbing her eyes, and wringing her hands-or so Elena guessed from the distribution of her makeup.

"You, too?" she said to Shinichi."You, too?"

Shinichi smiled his lazy smile. "And what two am I?" He held up two fingers in the V symbol to differentiate his two from Caroline's.

"You've fallen for her, too? Making up songs-giving her clues to find Stefan-"

"They're not very good clues," Shinichi said comfortingly and smiled again.

Caroline tried to hit him, but he caught her fist. "And you think you're leaving now?" Her voice was pitched at a scream-not as high as Misao's gla.s.s-splintering shriek, but with its own fearsome vibrato.

"Iknow we're leaving." He glanced at the sullen Misao. "After one more item of business. But not with you."

Elena tensed up, but Caroline was trying to attack Shinichi again. "After what you said to me? After all that yousaid ?"

Shinichi looked her up and down, seeming to actually see her for the first time. He also looked genuinely bewildered. "Saidto you?"

he asked. "Have we spoken before tonight?"

There was a high-pitched giggle. Everyone turned. Misao was standing, giggling, her hands over her mouth.

"I used your image," she said to her brother, her eyes on the floor as if confessing to a minor fault. "And your voice. In the mirror, when I would give her orders. She was on the rebound from some guy who'd dumped her. I told her I'd fallen in love with her and that I wanted to get revenge on her enemies-if she'd just do a few little things for me."

"Like spreading malach through little girls," Damon said grimly.

Misao giggled again. "And a boy or two. I know what it feels like to have those malach inside you. It doesn't hurt at all. They're just-there."

"Have you ever had one force you to do something you didn't want to?" Elena demanded. She could feel her blue eyes blazing.

"Do you thinkthat would hurt, Misao?"

"It wasn't you?" Caroline was still looking at Shinichi; she obviously couldn't keep up with the script. "It wasn'tyou ?"

He sighed, smiling slightly. "Not me. Golden hair is my undoing, I'm afraid. Golden...or fiery red against black," he added hastily, glancing at his sister.

"So it was all a lie," Caroline said, and for a moment, desperation was written on her face larger than anger, with sadness larger than both. "You're just another Elena fan."

"Look," Elena said bluntly, "I don't want him. I hate him. The only guy I care about is Stefan!"

"Oh, he's the only guy, is he?" Damon asked, with a glance toward Matt, who had carried Bonnie up close to them while the fox- fight was going on. Mrs. Flowers and Dr. Alpert had followed.

"You know what I mean," Elena told Damon.

Damon shrugged. "Many a golden-haired la.s.sie ends as the rough yeoman's bride." Then he shook his head. "Why am I spouting drek like this?" His compact body seemed to tower over Shinichi.

"It's just a residual effect...from being possessed...you know." Shinichi fluttered his hands, his eyes still on Elena. "My thought patterns..."

It looked as if another fight was brewing, but then Damon just smiled and said, narrow-eyed, "So you let Misao have her way with the town while you went after Elena and me."

"And-"

"Mutt," Damon said hastily and automatically.

"I was going to say Stefan," Elena said. "No, I would guess that Matt was the victim of one of Misao and Caroline's little schemes before he and I ran into you when you were completely possessed."

"And now you think you can just walk away," Caroline said, in a shaking, menacing voice.

"Weare walking away," Shinichi said stiffly.

"Caroline, wait," Elena said. "I can help you-withWings of Purification. You're being controlled by a malach."

"I don't need your help! I need ahusband !"

There was utter silence on the roof. Not even Matt stepped up to the plate on this one.

"Or at least a fiance," Caroline muttered, one hand on her abdomen. "My family would acceptthat."

"We'll work it out," Elena said softly-then, firmly, "Caroline, believe it."

"I wouldn't believe in you if..." Caroline's answer was obscene. Then she spat in Elena's direction. And then she was silent, by her own choice or because the malach inside her wanted it.

"Back to business," Shinichi said. "Let's see, our price for the service of the clues and the location is a little block of memory. Let's say...from the time I first met Damon until now. Taken from Damon's mind." He smiled nastily.

"You can't do that!" Elena felt panic shoot through her, starting in her heart and flying out to the farthest reaches of every limb.