Phantom

She could feel her eyes slipping out of focus. A sour taste, wet and nasty, fil ed her mouth.

Envy twisted, sharp and bitter, inside her. It’s not fair, not fair, something muttered sul enly in her skul . And then blackness took over.

Elena watched apprehensively as Bonnie’s pupils widened, reflecting the candle flame. Bonnie was able to sink into trances much more quickly now than when she had begun having them, which worried Elena.

"Darkness rises." A flat, hol ow voice that didn’t sound anything like Bonnie’s came from her friend’s mouth. "It’s not here yet, but it wants to be. It’s cold. It’s been cold for a long time. It wants to be near us, out of the darkness and as warm as our hearts. It hates."

"Is it a vampire?" asked Meredith quickly.

The not-Bonnie voice gave a harsh, choking laugh. "It’s much stronger than any vampire. It can find a home in any of you. Watch one another. Watch yourselves."

"What is it?" asked Matt.

Whatever it was that spoke through Bonnie hesitated.

"She doesn’t know," said Stefan. "Or she can’t tel us. Bonnie," he said intently, "is someone bringing this thing to us? Who’s causing it?"

No hesitation this time. "Elena," it said. "Elena brought it."

Chapter 9

Bonnie winced at the nasty metalic taste in her mouth and blinked several times, until the room around her came back into focus. "Ugh," she said. "I hate doing that."

Everyone was staring at her, their faces white and shocked.

"What?" she said uneasily. "What’d I say?"

Elena was sitting very stil . "You said it was my fault," she said slowly. "Whatever is coming after us, I brought it here."

Stefan reached out to cover her hand with his own. Unbidden, the meanest, narrowest part of Bonnie’s mind thought wearily, Of course. It’s always about Elena, isn’t it?

Meredith and Matt fil ed Bonnie in on the rest of what she’d said in her trance, but their eyes kept returning to Elena’s stricken face, and as soon as they finished tel ing her what she’d missed, they turned away from Bonnie, back to Elena.

"We need to make a plan," Meredith said to her softly.

"We’l al want some refreshment," Mrs. Flowers said, rising to her feet, and Bonnie fol owed her into the kitchen, eager to escape the tension of the room.

She wasn’t real y a plan girl, anyway, she told herself. She’d made her contribution just by being the vision girl. Elena and Meredith were the ones everyone looked to for making the decisions.

But it wasn’t fair, was it? She wasn’t a fool, despite the fact that her friends al treated her like the baby of the group. Everyone thought Elena and Meredith were so clever and so strong, but Bonnie had saved the day again and again – not that anyone ever remembered that. She ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth, trying to scrape off the nasty sour taste stil in her mouth.

Mrs. Flowers had decided that what the group needed to soothe them was some of her special elder-flower lemonade. While she fil ed the glasses with ice, poured the drinks, and set them out on a tray, Bonnie watched her restlessly. There was a rough, empty feeling inside Bonnie, like something was missing. It wasn’t fair, she thought again. None of them appreciated her or realized al she’d done for them.

"Mrs. Flowers," she said suddenly. "How do you talk to your mother?"

Mrs. Flowers turned to her, surprised. "Why, my dear,"

she said, "it’s very easy to speak to ghosts, if they want to speak to you, or if they are the spirits of someone you loved. Ghosts, you see, have not left our plane but stay close to us."

"But stil ," Bonnie pressed on, "you can do more than that, a lot more." She pictured Mrs. Flowers, young again, eyes flashing, hair flying, fighting the kitsune’s malevolent Power with an equal Power of her own. "You’re a very powerful witch."

Mrs. Flowers’s expression was reserved. "It’s kind of you to say so, dear."

Bonnie twirled a ringlet of her hair around one finger anxiously, weighing her next words. "Wel… if you would, of course – only if you have time – I’d like you to train me. Whatever you’d be wil ing to teach me. I can see things and I’ve gotten better at that, but I’d like to learn everything, anything else you can show me. Divining, and about herbs. Protection spel s. The works, I guess. I feel like there’s so much I don’t know, and I think I might have talent, you know?

I hope so, anyway."

Mrs. Flowers looked at her appraisingly for one long moment and then nodded once more.

"I wil teach you," she said. "With pleasure. You possess great natural talent."

"Real y?" Bonnie said shyly. A warm bubble of happiness rose inside her, fil ing the emptiness that had engulfed her just moments ago.

Then she cleared her throat and added, as casual y as she could manage, "And I was wondering… can you talk to anyone who’s dead? Or just your mother?"

Mrs. Flowers didn’t answer for a few moments. Bonnie felt like the older woman’s sharp blue gaze was looking straight through her and analyzing the mind and heart inside. When Mrs. Flowers did speak, her voice was gentle.

"Who is it you want to contact, dear?"

Bonnie flinched. "No one in particular," she said quickly, erasing an image of Damon’s black-on-black eyes from her mind. "It just seems like something that would be useful. And interesting, too. Like, I could learn al about Fel ‘s Church’s history." She turned away from Mrs. Flowers and busied herself with the lemonade glasses, leaving the subject behind for now.

There would be time to ask again, she thought. Soon.

"The most important thing," Elena was saying earnestly, "is to protect Meredith. We’ve gotten a warning, and we need to take advantage of it, not sit around worrying about where it came from. If something terrible – something I brought somehow – is coming, we’l deal with it when it gets here. Right now, we look out for Meredith."