Phantom (Page 49)

Elena froze. "Margaret – I wondered if she remembered something. She seemed so upset when she first saw me. Remember how she was afraid I was going to go away again? Do you think she’s remembering me dying along with the memories the Guardians gave her?"

Stefan shook his head. "I don’t know, Elena. Do you have any reason to think Margaret is anything other than a perfectly normal little girl? Little kids can be very dramatic without needing a reason. Margaret’s got a lot of imagination."

"I don’t know," Elena said in frustration. "But if the Guardians just covered over the old memories with new ones, that would explain why my old journal was stil hidden in my bedroom just where I left it, and everything that had happened up until I left home written in it. So you think that Caleb suspects something is going on because he is a werewolf after al ?"

"Look," Stefan said, gesturing around the shed. For the first time, Elena took in the whole scene and its implications. Pictures of her. Pictures of Bonnie and Meredith. Even pictures of poor Caroline, ranging from the haughty green-eyed debutante to a feral half monster, heavily pregnant with Tyler’s… baby? Pup? Elena realized with a shock that she hadn’t thought of Caroline in days. Was Caroline stil pregnant? Was she stil transforming into a werewolf because she was carrying Tyler’s baby? There were, Elena remembered, an awful lot of werewolves in Fel ‘s Church. Powerful, important werewolves, and if that hadn’t changed, and if the pack remembered everything, or enough of everything, then they were probably just biding their time.

There were not only clippings but original photographs around the room. She saw a picture taken through the boardinghouse window of herself leaning forward excitedly to talk to Meredith, who was caressing her deadly hunting stave. Based on her outfit, it had been taken right after they picked up Alaric and Celia. Caleb had been not only researching the two sets of memories over the last few months but also spying on Elena and her friends. Then she noticed something else. In the far corner on the floor was a huge bunch of roses. "What… ?" Elena said, reaching for them. And then she saw. A pentagram was drawn around the roses. And encircling the pentagram was a bunch of photographs: herself, Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, Stefan, Damon.

"Those are the same kinds of roses as the one Caleb gave you, aren’t they?" Stefan asked softly. Elena nodded. They were perfect, delicate blooms in a dark luscious red that made her want to touch them.

"The rose that started it al ," she whispered. "It pricked Bonnie’s finger, and her blood spel ed Celia’s name. It must have come from here."

"Caleb isn’t just a werewolf," Stefan said. "I don’t know exactly what he did here, but it looks like pretty dark magic to me." He looked at her pleadingly. "I discovered it al yesterday," he continued. "I had to fight him, Elena. I know I scared you, but I had to protect you – and everyone else – from him."

Elena nodded, too stunned to speak. Now she understood why Stefan had acted the way he had. He thought she was in danger. But stil… she couldn’t help feeling sick when she remembered the arc of Caleb’s body as he was thrown. Caleb might have attacked them with dangerous magic, but his notes sounded confused and frightened. Elena and her friends had changed his world, and now he couldn’t tel what was reality.

"We’d better pack up al of this and bring it back to the boardinghouse," she said briskly. "Are there more notebooks?" Stefan nodded. "Then we’d better look through them careful y. If he cast a spel on us – some kind of curse – it could stil be active, even though he’s confined to the hospital for now. The spel he used might be in one of the notebooks, or at least we might find some kind of clue as to what it is and exactly what it’s doing. And, hopeful y, how to reverse it."

Stefan was looking a little lost, his green eyes questioning. His arms were held out very slightly, as if he had been expecting her to embrace him and hadn’t remembered to put them down when she hadn’t. But for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, Elena couldn’t bring herself to hug him. Instead, she looked away and said, "Do you have any plastic bags or anything in the car we can use to move it al ?"

Chapter 24

Elena hung up her cel phone as they puled up to the boardinghouse in Stefan’s car. "The nurse at the hospital says Caleb’s stil unconscious," she said.

"Good," said Stefan. She gave him a reproving glance and he stared back at her in exasperation. "If he’s unconscious," he explained, "it’l give us more of a chance to figure out what spel he’s cast on us."

They’d fil ed three fat black trash bags with the papers, clippings, and books they’d found in the Smal woods’

garden shed. Elena had been afraid to disturb the pentagram with the roses and photographs around it on the shed floor, in case that would affect the spel somehow, but she’d taken a couple of pictures of it with her cel phone. Matt came out and picked up one of the bags. "Bringing over some garbage?"

"Something like that," Elena said grimly, and fil ed him in on what they’d discovered at the Smal wood house. Matt grimaced. "Wow. But maybe now we can final y do something about what’s been happening."

"How come you’re here so early?" Elena asked, fol owing him toward the house. "I thought you weren’t coming onto guard duty until ten." Stefan trailed along behind her.

"I spent the night," Matt told her. "After Bonnie’s name appeared, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight."

"Bonnie’s name appeared?" Elena whirled accusingly on Stefan. "Why didn’t you tel me?"

Stefan shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn’t know," he confessed hesitantly.