07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

Elena looked at the pacing Meredith and around at Stefan. “But it’s impossible, isn’t it?”
she said. “I thought that if you were bitten, that was it, right? You never got any older—or bigger.”
“That’s what I thought too. But Klaus was an Old One and who knows what they can
do?” Stefan answered.
Damon will be furious when he finds out, Elena told Stefan privately, reaching for the
picture even though she’d already seen it through Stefan’s eyes. Damon was very bitter about Stefan’s
height advantage—about anyone’s height advantage.
Elena brought the picture to Mrs. Flowers and looked at it with her. It showed an
extremely handsome boy, with hair that was just Meredith’s dark color. He looked like Meredith in
his facial structure and olive skin. He was wearing a motorcycle jacket and gloves, but no helmet, and
he was laughing merrily with a full set of very white teeth. You could easily see that the canines were
long and pointed.
Elena looked back and forth from Meredith to the picture. The only difference she could
see was that this boy’s eyes seemed lighter. Everything else screamed “twins.”
“First I kill him,” Meredith repeated tiredly. “Then I kill myself.” She stumbled back to
the table and sat, almost knocking over her chair.
Elena hovered near her, snatching two mugs from the table, to prevent Meredith’s clumsy
arm from sweeping them to the floor.
Meredith…clumsy! Elena had never seen Meredith ungraceful or clumsy before. It was
frightening. Was it somehow due to being—at least partly—a vampire? The kitten teeth? Elena turned
apprehensive eyes on Stefan, felt Stefan’s own bewilderment.
Then both of them, without consultation, turned to look at Mrs. Flowers. She gave them
an apologetic little-old-lady smile.
“Gotta kill…find him, kill him…first,” Meredith was whispering as her dark head
lowered to the table, to the pillow of her arms. “Find him…where? Grandpa…where? Cristian…my
brother…”
Elena listened silently until there was only soft breathing to be heard.
“You drugged her?” she whispered to Mrs. Flowers.
“It was what Mama thought best. She’s a strong, healthy girl. It won’t harm her to sleep
from now through the night. Because I’m sorry to tell you, but we have another problem right now.”
Elena glanced at Stefan, saw fear dawning on his face, and demanded, “What?”
Absolutely nothing was coming through their link. He’d shut it down.
Elena turned to Mrs. Flowers. “What?”
“I’m very worried about dear Matt.”
“Matt,” agreed Stefan, looking around the table as if to show that Matt wasn’t there. He
was trying to protect Elena from the chills racing through him.
At first Elena wasn’t alarmed. “I know where he might be,” she said brightly. She was
remembering stories that Matt had told of being in Fell’s Church while she and the others had been in
the Dark Dimension. “Dr. Alpert’s place. Or out with her, making the rounds of home visits.”
Mrs. Flowers shook her head, her expression bleak. “I’m afraid not, Elena dear. Sophia
—Dr. Alpert—called me and told me she was taking Matt’s mother, your own family, and several
other people with her and escaping Fell’s Church entirely. And I don’t blame her a bit—but Matt
wasn’t one of those going. She said he meant to stay and fight. That was around twelve thirty.”
Elena’s eyes automatically went to the kitchen clock. Horror shot through her, flipping
her stomach and reverberating out to her fingertips. The clock said 4:35—4:35 P.M.! But that had to