There was a sort of universal gasp. Stefan went white, his compressed lips showing in a tight line. Bonnie felt as if she were choking on words, on explanations, on recriminations about Caroline's own behavior. Elena may have had as many boyfriends as the stars in the sky, but in the end she had given all that up-because she fell in love-not that Caroline would know anything aboutthat .

"Don't have anything to say now?" Caroline was taunting. "Can't find any cute answer? Bat got your tongue?" She began to laugh, but it was forced, gla.s.sy laughter, and then words were spilling out of her almost as if uncontrollably, all words that weren't supposed to be spoken in public. Bonnie had said most of them at one time or another, buthere , andnow , they formed a stream of venomous power. Caroline's words were building up to some kind of crescendo-something was going to happen-this kind of force couldn't be contained- Reverberations, Bonnie thought as the sound waves began building up....

Gla.s.s,her intuition told her.Get away from gla.s.s.

Stefan just had time to whirl to Meredith and shout,"Get rid of the lamp."

And Meredith, who was not only quick on the uptake but also a baseball pitcher with a 1.75 ERA, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and threw it at- no, through- -an explosion as the porcelain lamp shattered- -the open window.

There was a similar shattering in the bathroom. The mirror had exploded behind the closed door.

Then Caroline slapped Elena across the face.

It left a b.l.o.o.d.y smear, which Elena patted tentatively. It also left a white handprint, turning to red. Elena's expression was one to wring tears from a stone.

And then Stefan did what Bonnie considered the most astonishing thing of all. He very gently put Elena down on the floor, kissed her upturned face, and turned to Caroline.

He put his hands on her shoulders, not shaking, only holding her still, forcing her to look at him.

"Caroline," he said, "stop it.Come back. For the sake of your old friends who care for you, come back. For the sake of the family that loves you, come back. For the sake of your own immortal soul,come back. Come back to us!"

Caroline just eyed him belligerently.

Stefan half turned aside, toward Meredith, grimacing. "I'm not really cut out to do this," he said wryly. "It's not any vampire's forte." Then he turned toward Elena, his voice tender. "Love, can you help? Can you help your old friend again?"

Already Elena was trying to help, trying to get to Stefan. She had pulled herself up very shakily, first by the rocking chair and then by Bonnie, who tried to help her under the burden of gravity. Elena was as wobbly as a newborn giraffe in roller skates, and Bonnie-almost half a head shorter-was finding her hard to handle.

Stefan made a motion as if to help, but Matt was already there, steadying Elena on the other side.

Then Stefan had Caroline turned around, and he was holding her, not letting her dart away, forcing her to face Elena fully.

Elena, while being held at the waist so that her hands were free, made some curious motions, seeming to draw designs more and more quickly in the air in front of Caroline's face, at the same time clasping and unclasping her hands with the fingers in different positions. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Caroline's eyes followed the movements of Elena's hands as if compelled, but it was clear from her snarling that she hated it.

Magic, Bonnie thought, fascinated. White Magic. She's calling on angels, just as surely as Caroline was calling demons. But is she strong enough to pull Caroline out of the darkness?

And at last, as if to complete the ceremony, Elena leaned forward and kissed Caroline chastely on the lips.

All h.e.l.l broke loose. Caroline somehow squirmed out of Stefan's grip and tried to claw Elena's face with her nails. Objects in the room went sailing through the air, propelled by no human force. Matt tried to grab Caroline's arm and got a punch in the stomach that doubled him over, followed by a chop to the back of the neck.

Stefan let go of Caroline to scoop up Elena and get her and Bonnie out of harm's way. He seemed to a.s.sume that Meredith could take care of herself-and he was right. Caroline swung at Meredith, but Meredith was ready. She grabbed Caroline's fist and helped her in the direction of the swing. Caroline landed on the bed, twisted, and then rushed Meredith again, this time getting a grip on her hair. Meredith pulled free, leaving a tuft of hair in Caroline's fingers. Then Meredith got under Caroline's guard and hit her squarely on the jaw. Caroline collapsed.

Bonnie cheered and refused to feel guilty about it. Then, for the first time, as Caroline lay still, Bonnie noticed that Caroline's fingernails were all there again-long, strong, curved, and perfect, not one of them chipped or broken.

Elena's Power? It must be. What else could have done it? With just a few motions and a kiss, Elena had healed Caroline's hand.

Meredith was ma.s.saging her own hand. "I never realized ithurt so much to knock people out," she said. "They never show it in movies. Is it the same for guys?"

Matt flushed. "I...uh, I've never actually..."

"It's the same for everyone, even vampires," Stefan said briefly. "Are you all right, Meredith? I mean, Elena could..."

"No, I'm fine. And Bonnie and I have a job to do." She nodded at Bonnie, who nodded weakly back. "Caroline's our responsibility, and we should have realized why shereally had to come back this last time.She doesn't have a car. I'll bet she used that downstairs telephone and tried to get somebody to pick her up, but couldn't, and then she came upstairs again. So now we have to take her home. Stefan, I'm sorry. It hasn't been much of a visit."

Stefan looked grim. "It's probably as much as Elena could take, anyway," he said. "More than I thought she could take, honestly."

Matt said, "Well, I'm the one with the car, and Caroline is my responsibility, too," he said. "I may not be a girl, but I'm a human."

"Maybe we could come back tomorrow?" Bonnie said.

"Yes, I suppose that would be best," Stefan said. "I almost hate to let her go at all," he added, staring at the unconscious Caroline, his face shadowed. "I'm afraid for her. Very much afraid."

Bonnie pounced on this. "Why?"

"I think-well, it may be too early to say, but she seems to be almost possessed by something-but I have no idea what. I think I have to do some serious research."

And there it was again, the ice water dripping down Bonnie's back. The feeling of how close the frigid ocean of fear was, ready to topple down on her and take her on a swift trip to the bottom.

Stefan added, "But what's certain is that she was behaving strangely-even for Caroline. And I don't know whatyou heard when she was cursing, but I heard another voice behind it, prompting her." He turned to Bonnie. "Did you?"

Bonnie was thinking back. Had there been something-just a whisper-and just a beat before Caroline's voice came? Less than a beat, and just the faintest of sibilant whispers?

"And what happened here may have made it worse. She called on h.e.l.l at a moment when this room was saturated with Power.

And Fell's Church itself is at the crossing of so many ley lines, it isn't funny. With all that going on-well, I just wish we had a good parapsychologist around."

Bonnie knew they were all thinking of Alaric.

"I'll try to get him to come," Meredith said. "But usually he's off in Tibet or Timbuktu doing research these days. It'll take a while even to get a message to him."

"Thank you." Stefan looked relieved.

"Like I said, she's our responsibility," Meredith said quietly.

"We're sorry to have brought her," Bonnie said loudly, rather hoping that something inside Caroline could hear her.

They said their good-byes separately to Elena, not sure of what might happen. But she simply smiled at each of them and touched their hands.

By good luck or by the grace of something far beyond their understanding, Caroline woke up. She even seemed mostly rational, if a little fuzzy, when the car reached her driveway. Matt helped her out of the car and walked her to the door on his arm, where Caroline's mother answered the doorbell. She was a mousy, timid, tired-looking woman who did not seem surprised to be receiving her daughter in this state on a late summer afternoon.

Matt dropped the girls off at Bonnie's house, where they spent a night in worried speculation. Bonnie fell asleep with the sound of Caroline's curses echoing in her head.

Dear Diary, Something is going to happen tonight.

I can't talk or write, and I don't remember how to type on a keyboard very well, but I can send thoughts to Stefan and he can write them down. We don't have any secrets from each other.

So this is my diary now. And...

This morning I woke up again. I woke up again! It was still summer outside, and everything was green. The daffodils in the garden are all in bloom. And I had visitors. I didn't know exactly who they were, but three of them are strong, clear colors. I kissed them so I won't forget them again. The fourth one was different. I could only see a shattered color, laced with black. I had to use strong words of White Power to keep that one from bringing dark things into Stefan's room.

I'm getting sleepy. I want to be with Stefan and feel him holding me. I love Stefan. I would give up anything to stay with him. He asks me, Even flying? Even flying, to be with him and keep him safe. Even anything, to keep him safe. Even my life.

Now I want to go to him.

Elena (And Stefan is sorry about writing in Elena's new diary, but he has to say some things, because someday maybe she will want to read them, to remember. I've written down her thoughts in sentences, but they don't come that way. They come as thought- fragments, I guess. Vampires are used to translating people's everyday thoughts into coherent sentences, but Elena's thoughts need more translation than most. Usually she thinks in bright pictures, with a scattered word or two.

The "fourth one" that she talks about is Caroline Forbes. Elena has known Caroline almost since babyhood, I think. What bewilders me is that today Caroline attacked her in almost every way imaginable, and yet when I search Elena's mind I can't find any feelings of anger or even any pain. It's almost frightening to scan a mind like that.

The question I'd really like to answer is: What happened to Caroline during the short time she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler?

And did she do what she did today of her own free will? Does some remnant of Klaus's hatred still linger like miasma, tainting the air? Or do we have another enemy in Fell's Church?

And most importantly, what do we do about it?

Stefan, who is being pulled from the compu

8.

The clock's old-fashioned hands showed threeA.M . when Meredith was suddenly roused from a fitful sleep.

And then she bit her lip, stifling a scream. A face was bending over hers, upside down. The last thing she remembered was lying on her back in a sleeping bag, talking about Alaric with Bonnie.

Now Bonnie was bending over her, but with her face inverted and her eyes shut. She was kneeling at the head of Meredith's pillow and her upside-down nose almost touched Meredith's. Add to that an odd pallor in Bonnie's cheeks and rapid warm breath that tickled Meredith's forehead, and anyone-anyone, Meredith insisted to herself-would be ent.i.tled to a half-scream.

She waited for Bonnie to speak, staring in the gloom at those eerily closed eyes.

But instead, Bonnie sat up, stood, walked backward flawlessly to Meredith's desk, where Meredith's mobile lay charging, and picked it up. She must have turned it on for a video recording for she opened her mouth and began to gesture and speak.

It was terrifying. The sounds that came out of Bonnie's mouth were all too identifiable: backward speech. The tangled, guttural or high-pitched noises all carried the cadence that horror movies had made so popular. But to be able to speak that way on purpose...it wasn't possible for a normal human or a normal human mind. Meredith had an eerie sense of something trying to stretch its mind toward them, trying to reach them through unimaginable dimensions.

Maybe it lives backward, Meredith thought, trying to distract herself as the frightening sounds went on. Maybe it thinks we do.

Maybe we just don't-intersect....

Meredith didn't think she could stand much more. She was beginning to imagine that she heard words, even phrases in the backward sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Please let it stop-now.

A wailing and mumbling... Bonnie's mouth shut with a clash of teeth. The sounds stopped instantly. And then, like a video being rolled back in slow motion, she walked backward to her sleeping bag, knelt, and back-crawled into it, lying down with her head on the pillow-all without opening her eyes to look where she was going.

It was one of the scariest things Meredith had ever seen or heard, and Meredith had seen and heard a fair amount of scary things.

And Meredith could no more have left that recording until morning than she could have flown-without a.s.sistance.

She got up, tiptoed to the desk, and took the mobile phone to the other room. There she attached it to her computer, where she could run the backward message forward.

When she'd listened to the message in reverse once or twice she decided that Bonnie must never hear it. It would frighten her out of her senses, and there would be no more contact with the paranormal for Elena's friends.

Therewere animal sounds in there, mixed up with the twisted, backward voice...that wasn't Bonnie's voice in any way. It wasn't any normal person's voice. It almost sounded worse going forward than backward-which maybe meant that whatever being had spoken the words normally spoke the other way.

Meredith could make out human voices over the groaning and distorted laughter and the animal noises straight from the veldt.

Though they made the hairs on her body stand up and tingle, she tried to put together the words in between the nonsense. Putting them together she got: "Aaahhh...waggge...n...ing wuh illllilll...be...sud-ud-ud...den...ANDshhhh...ohhh...ging.YOOOOU ...hand-and-nd...Iiii...

mmmust...BEtherefore...herrr...aaahhh waggge...ning...Wewone...BEtherefor-or-or-or-r"-(was there a "herrr" next, or was it just part of the growling?)-"LADE...errrrrrrrrrrr...ahhn.Thaaa.s.s ...FORRRRR...oththth...ERRR...handandnd...ssssssssss...t- t-todo...."

Meredith, working with pad and pen, eventually got these words on paper: Awakening will be sudden and shocking.

You and I must be there for her Awakening. We won't be there for (her?) later on. That's for other hands to do.

Meredith put the pen very precisely beside the deciphered message on the pad.

And after that Meredith went and lay hunched in her sleeping bag watching the unmoving Bonnie like a cat at a mouse hole, until, finally, blessed tiredness took her into the dark.

"I saidwhat ?" Bonnie was honestly bewildered the next morning, squeezing grapefruit juice and pouring cereal, like a model host, even if it was Meredith who was scrambling eggs at the stove.

"I've told you three times now. The words are not going to change, I promise."

"Well," Bonnie said, suddenly switching sides, "it's clear that the Awakening is going to happen to Elena. Because, for one thing, you and I have to be there for it, and for another thing, she's the one who needs towake up ."

"Exactly," said Meredith.

"She needs to remember who she really was."

"Precisely," said Meredith. "And we've got to help her remember!"

"No!"said Meredith, taking out her anger on the eggs with a plastic spatula. "No, Bonnie, that's not what you said, and I don't think wecould do it anyway. We can teach her little things, maybe, the way Stefan has. How to tie her shoes. How to brush her hair. But from what you said, the Awakening is going to be shocking and sudden-and you didn't say anything about us doing it. You only said that we have to be there for her, because after that, somehow wewon't be there."

Bonnie contemplated that in gloomy silence. "Won't be there?" she said finally. "Like, won't be with Elena? Or won't be there, like...won't be anywhere?"

Meredith eyed a breakfast that she suddenly didn't want to eat. "I don't know."

"Stefan said we could come over again today," Bonnie urged.

"Stefan would be polite while he was being staked to death."

"I know," Bonnie said suddenly. "Let's call Matt. We can go see Caroline...if shewill see us, I mean. We can see if she's any different today. Then we can wait until it's afternoon, andthen we can call Stefan and ask if we can come over again to see Elena."

At Caroline's house, her mother said she was sick today and was going to stay in bed. The three of them-Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie-went back to Meredith's house without her, but Bonnie kept chewing her lip, looking back occasionally toward Caroline's street. Caroline's mother had looked sick herself, with shadows under her eyes. And the thunderstorm feeling, the feeling of pressure, had been squashing Caroline's house almost flat.

At Meredith's, Matt tinkered with his car, which perpetually needed work, while Bonnie and Meredith went through Meredith's wardrobe for clothes that Elena could wear. They would be big, but that was better than Bonnie's, which would be much too small.