Phantom (Page 56)

It had awed Elena when she realized how different the world had been the last time Stefan had eaten human food. He had mentioned in passing that forks had just been coming into fashion when he was young, and that his father had derided them as a foppish fad. Until Katherine had brought a more fashionable and ladylike influence into their home, they had eaten with only spoons and sharp knives for cutting. "It was elegant, though," he’d said, laughing at the expression on her face. "We al had excel ent table manners. You’d hardly have noticed."

At the time, she’d thought his differences from the boys she’d known – the scope of al the history he’d witnessed –

was romantic.

Now… wel , now she didn’t know what she thought.

"It’s down here, I think," said Stefan, taking her hand and returning her to the present. "Mrs. Flowers said a New Age store has opened up and that they should have most of the things we need."

The shop was cal ed Spirit and Soul, and it was tiny but vibrant, cluttered with crystals and unicorn figurines, tarot cards and dream catchers. Everything was painted in shades of purple and silver, and silky wal hangings blew in the breeze from a little windowsil air conditioner. The air conditioner wasn’t strong enough to put much of a dent in the stickiness of today’s heat, though, and the birdlike little woman with long curling hair and clattering necklaces who emerged from the back of the shop looked tired and sweaty.

"How can I help you?" she said in a low, musical voice that Elena suspected she adopted to fit in with the atmosphere of the store.

Stefan pul ed out the scrap of paper covered in Mrs. Flowers’s tangled handwriting and squinted at it. Vampire vision or not, deciphering Mrs. Flowers’s writing could be a chal enge.

Oh, Stefan. He was earnest, and sweet, and noble. His poet’s soul shone through those gorgeous green eyes. She couldn’t regret loving Stefan. But sometimes she secretly wished that she had found Stefan in a less complicated form, that the soul and the intel igence, the love and the passion, the sophistication and the gentleness had somehow been possible in the form of a real eighteenyear-old boy; that he had been what he had pretended to be when she first met him: mysterious, foreign, but human.

"Do you have anything made of hematite?" he asked now. "Jewelry, or maybe knickknacks? And incense with…" He frowned at the paper. "Althea in it? Does althea sound right?"

"Of course!" said the shopkeeper enthusiastical y.

"Althea’s good for protection and security. And it smel s great. The different kinds of incense are over here."

Stefan fol owed her deeper into the shop, but Elena lingered near the door. She felt exhausted, even though the day had barely begun.

There was a rack of clothing by the front window, and she fiddled distractedly with it, pushing hangers back and forth. There was a wispy pink tunic studded with tiny mirrors, a little hippieish but cute. Bonnie might like this, Elena thought automatical y, and then flinched.

Through the window, she glimpsed a face she knew, and turned, the top hanging forgotten in her hand. She searched her mind for the name. Tom Parker, that was it. She’d gone out on a few dates with him junior year, before she and Matt had gotten together. It felt like a lot more than a year and a half ago. Tom had been pleasant enough and handsome enough, a perfectly satisfactory date, but she hadn’t felt a spark between them and, as Meredith had said, "practiced catch and release" with him,

"freeing him to swim back into the waters of dating."

He had been crazy about her, though. Even after she set him loose, he’d hung around, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes, pleading with her to take him back.

If things had been different, if she had felt anything for Tom, wouldn’t her life be simpler now?

She watched Tom. He was strol ing down the street, smiling, hand in hand with Marissa Peterson, the girl he had started dating near the end of last year. Tom was tal , and he bent his shaggy dark head down to hear what Marissa was saying. They grinned at each other, and he lifted his free hand to gently, teasingly tug on her long hair. They looked happy together.

Wel , good for them. Easy to be happy when they were uncomplicatedly in love, when there was nothing more difficult in their lives than a summer spent with their friends before heading off to col ege. Easy to be happy when they couldn’t even remember the chaos their town had been in before Elena had saved them. They weren’t even grateful. They were too lucky: They knew nothing of the darkness that lurked on the edges of their safe, sunlit lives. Elena’s stomach twisted. Vampires, demons, phantoms, star-crossed love. Why did she have to be the one to deal with it al ?

She listened for a moment. Stefan was stil consulting with the shopkeeper, and she heard him say worriedly, "Wil rowan twigs have the same effect, though?" and the woman’s reassuring murmur. He would be busy for a while longer, then. He was only about a third of the way down the list Mrs. Flowers had given them.

Elena put the shirt back in its place on the rack and walked out of the store.

Careful not to be noticed by the couple across the street, she fol owed them at a distance, taking a good long look at Marissa. She was skinny, with freckles and a little blob of a nose. Pretty enough, Elena supposed, with long, straight dark hair and a wide mouth, but not especial y eyecatching. She’d been nobody much at school, either. Vol eybal team, maybe. Yearbook. Passable, but not stel ar grades. Friends, but not popular. An occasional date, but not a girl who boys noticed. A part-time job in a store, or maybe the library. Ordinary. Nothing special. So why did ordinary, nothing-special Marissa get to have this uncomplicated, sunlit life, while Elena had been through hel  – literal y – to get what Marissa seemed to have with Tom and yet she still didn’t get to have it?