Dark Reunion

"We’re going to try," Stefan said. He looked at Meredith and Matt, who nodded. "Right. From this moment on, you will never be alone. There will always be one or more of us outside watching you."

Vickie just shook her bent head. Meredith gave her arm a squeeze and stood as Stefan tilted his head toward the window.

When she and Matt joined him there, Stefan spoke to all of them in a low voice. "I don’t want to leave her unguarded, but I can’t stay myself right now. There’s something I have to do, and I need one of the girls with me. On the other hand, I don’t want to leave either Bonnie or Meredith alone here." He turned to Matt. "Matt, will you…"

Everyone looked at him, startled.

"Well, it’s the logical solution, isn’t it?" Damon seemed amused. "After all, what do you expect one of them to do against him anyway?"

"They can call for me. I can monitor their thoughts that far," Stefan said, not giving one inch.

"Well," Damon said whimsically, "I can call for you too, little brother, if I get into trouble. I’m getting bored with this investigation of yours anyway. I might as well stay here as anywhere."

"Vickie needs to be protected, not abused," Stefan said.

Damon’s smile was charming. "Her?" He nodded toward the girl who sat on the bed, rocking over the vervain. From disheveled hair to bare feet, Vickie was not a pretty picture. "Take my word for it, brother, I can do better than that." For just an instant Bonnie thought those dark eyes flicked sideways toward her. "You’re always saying how you’d like to trust me, anyway," Damon added. "Here’s your chance to prove it."

Stefan looked as if he wanted to trust, as if he were tempted. He also looked suspicious. Damon said nothing, merely smiled in that taunting, enigmatic way. Practically asking to be mistrusted, Bonnie thought.

The two brothers stood looking at each other while the silence and the tension stretched out between them. Just then Bonnie could see the family resemblance in their faces, one serious and intense, the other bland and faintly mocking, but both inhumanly beautiful.

Stefan let his breath out slowly. "All right," he said quietly at last. Bonnie and Matt and Meredith were all staring at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He spoke to Damon as if they were the only two people there. "You stay here, outside the house where you won’t be seen. I’ll come back and take over when I’m finished with what I’m doing."

Meredith’s eyebrows were in her hair, but she made no comment. Neither did Matt. Bonnie tried to quell her own feelings of unease. Stefan must know what he’s doing, she told herself. Anyway, he’d better.

"Don’t take too long," Damon said dismissively.

And that was how they left it, with Damon blending in with the darkness in the shadow of the black walnut trees in Vickie’s backyard and Vickie herself in her room, rocking endlessly.

In the car, Meredith said, "Where next?"

"I need to test a theory," said Stefan briefly.

"That the killer is a vampire?" Matt said from the back, where he sat with Bonnie. Stefan glanced at him sharply. "Yes."

"That’s why you told Vickie not to invite anyone in," Meredith added, not to be outdone in the reasoning department. Vampires, Bonnie remembered, couldn’t enter a place where humans lived and slept unless they were invited. "And that’s why you asked if the man was wearing a blue stone."

"An amulet against daylight," Stefan said, spreading his right hand. On the third finger there was a silver ring set with lapis lazuli. "Without one of these, direct exposure to the sun kills us. If the murderer is a vampire, he keeps a stone like this somewhere on him." As if by instinct, Stefan reached up to briefly touch something under his T-shirt. After a moment Bonnie realized what it must be.

Elena’s ring. Stefan had given it to her in the first place, and after she died he’d taken it to wear on a chain around his neck. So that part of her would be with him always, he’d said.

When Bonnie looked at Matt beside her, she saw his eyes were closed.

"So how can we tell if he’s a vampire?" Meredith asked.

"There’s only one way I can think of, and it isn’t very pleasant. But it’s got to be done."

Bonnie’s heart sank. If Stefan thought it wasn’t very pleasant, she was sure she was going to find it even less so. "What is it?" she said unenthusiastically.

"I need to get a look at Sue’s body."

There was dead silence. Even Meredith, normally so unflappable, looked appalled. Matt turned away, leaning his forehead against the window glass. "You’ve got to be kidding," Bonnie said.

"I wish I were."

"But-for God’s sake, Stefan. We can’t. They won’t let us. I mean, what are we going to say? ‘Excuse me while I examine this corpse for holes’?"

"Bonnie, stop it," Meredith said.

"I can’t help it," Bonnie snapped back shakily. "It’s an awful idea. And besides, the police already checked her body. There wasn’t a mark on it except the cuts she got in the fall."

"The police don’t know what to look for," Stefan said. His voice was steely. Hearing it brought something home to Bonnie, something she tended to forget. Stefan was one of them. One of the hunters. He’d seen dead people before. He might even have killed some.

He drinks blood, she thought, and shuddered.

"Well?" said Stefan. "Are you still with me?"

Bonnie tried to make herself small in the backseat. Meredith’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. It was Matt who spoke, turning back from the window.