Phantom (Page 68)

"Not necessary," Stefan told him, and headed upstairs alone. Standing by the side of the bed in the little rose-andcream bedroom, he looked down at Elena, Matt, and Bonnie. None of them had moved since he had placed Matt there.

He sighed and gathered Elena in his arms first. After a moment, he also picked up her pil ow and a blanket. At least he could try to make her comfortable.

A few minutes later al three of the sleepers were lying in the front of the garage, wel outside the diagram, their heads supported by pil ows.

"Now what?" Stefan asked.

"Now we each choose a candle," Mrs. Flowers said, opening her plastic bag. "One that you feel represents you in color. According to the book, they real y should be handdipped and special y scented, but this wil just have to do. I won’t pick one myself," Mrs. Flowers said, handing the bag to Stefan. "The phantom hasn’t focused its powers on me, and I don’t remember being jealous of anyone since 1943."

"What happened in 1943?" asked Meredith curiously.

"I lost the Little Miss Fel ‘s Church crown to Nancy Sue Baker," Mrs. Flowers answered. When Meredith gaped at her, she threw her hands up in the air. "Even I was a child once, you know. I was strikingly adorable, with Shirley Temple curls, and my mother liked to dress me in fril s and show me off."

Putting the astounding image of Mrs. Flowers in Shirley Temple curls out of his mind, Stefan poked through the assortment of candles and chose a dark blue one. It seemed right to him somehow. "We need candles for the others, too," he said. Careful y, he chose a golden one for Elena and a pink one for Bonnie.

"Are you just going by their hair colors?" asked Meredith.

"You’re such a guy."

"You know these are the right colors for them, though,"

Stefan argued. "Besides, Bonnie’s hair is red, not pink."

Meredith nodded grudgingly. "I guess you’re right. White for Matt, though."

"Real y?" Stefan asked. He didn’t know what he would have chosen for Matt. American-flag patterned, maybe, if they had had it.

"He’s the purest person I know," Meredith said softly. Alaric raised an eyebrow at her and she elbowed him.

"Pure in spirit, I mean. What you see is what you get with Matt, and he’s good and truehearted al the way through."

"I suppose so," said Stefan, and he watched without comment as Meredith chose a dark brown candle for herself.

Alaric shuffled through the bag and picked a dark green candle, and Celia selected one of pale lavender. Mrs. Flowers took the bag with the remaining candles and stashed it on a high shelf near the garage doors, between a bag of potting soil and what looked like an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.

They al sat down on the garage floor in a semicircle, outside the diagram, facing toward the empty inner circle, holding their unlit candles. The sleepers lay behind them, and Meredith held Bonnie’s candle in her lap as wel as her own; Stefan took Elena’s, and Alaric Matt’s.

"Now we anoint them with our blood," Alaric said. They al looked at him, and he shrugged defensively. "It’s what the book says."

Meredith removed a smal pocketknife from her bag, cut her finger, and quickly, matter-of-factly, smeared a stripe of blood from the top to the bottom of her brown candle, then passed the knife to Alaric along with a little bottle of disinfectant. One by one, the others fol owed her lead.

"This is real y unsanitary," Celia said, wincing, but she fol owed through.

Stefan was very aware of the smel of human blood in such an enclosed space. Even though he’d just fed, his canines prickled in an automatic response.

Meredith picked up the candles and walked to their sleeping friends, crossing from one to the next and raising their hands to make a swift cut and wipe their blood against their candles. Not one of them even flinched. When she had finished, Meredith redistributed the sleepers’ candles and returned to her spot.

Alaric began to read, in Latin, the first words of the spel . After a few sentences, he hesitated at a word and Stefan silently took the grimoire. Smoothly he picked up where Alaric had left off. The words flowed off his tongue, the feel of the Latin on his lips reminding him of hours spent with his childhood tutor hundreds of years ago, and of a period when he lived in a monastery in England during the early days of his struggle with vampirism.

When the time came, he snapped his fingers and, with a touch of Power, his candle lit itself. He handed it to Meredith, who dripped a little of the melted wax onto the garage floor at the edge of the diagram and stuck the candle there. One by one, at the appropriate points in the ritual, he lit a candle and she placed it, until there was a little row of multicolored candles bravely burning between them and the chalk outlines of the diagram.

Stefan read on. Suddenly the pages of the book began to flutter. A cold, unnatural wind rose inside the closed garage, and the flames of the candles flickered wildly and then blew out. Two candles fel over. Meredith’s long hair whipped around her face.

"This isn’t supposed to happen," Alaric shouted. But Stefan just squinted his eyes against the gale and read on.

The pitch-blackness and the unpleasant sensation of fal ing lasted for only a moment, and then Elena landed jarringly on both feet and staggered forward, clutching Matt’s and Bonnie’s hands.

They were in a dim octagonal room lined with doors. A single piece of furniture sat in the center. Behind the lone desk lounged a tanned, beautiful, amazingly muscular, bare-chested vampire with a long, spiraling mane of bronze hair fal ing past his shoulders.

Instantly Elena knew where she was.

"We’re here." She gasped. "The Gatehouse!"