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30<br />
“Strip to your underwear and get in on the other side,” Damon said. His voice was neither angry nor<br />
fatuous. He added shortly, “Elena is dying.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> last three words seemed to affect Stefan particularly, although Elena couldn’t parse<br />
them. Stefan wasn’t moving, just breathing hard, his eyes wide. “Bonnie and I have been gathering hay<br />
and fuel and we’re all right.”<br />
“You’ve been exercising—moving about—wearing clothes that kept you warm. She’s<br />
been dunked in ice water and sitting still—high up in the wind. I got the other thurg to break off wood<br />
from the dead trees around here and try it on the fire. Now get the hell in, Stefan, and give her some<br />
body warmth, or I’m going to make her a vampire.”<br />
“Nnn,” Elena tried to say, but Stefan didn’t seem to understand.<br />
Damon, however, said, “Don’t worry. He’s going to warm you up from the other side.<br />
You won’t have to become a vampire just yet. For God’s sake,” he added suddenly, explosively,<br />
“some prince you picked!”<br />
Stefan’s voice was quiet and tense. “You tried putting her in a thermal envelope?”<br />
“Of course I tried, you idiot! No magic works beyond the Mirror except telepathy.”<br />
Elena had no sense of time going by, but suddenly there was a familiar body pressed<br />
against hers from the other side.<br />
And somewhere directly in her mind: Elena? Elena? You’re all right, aren’t you,<br />
Elena? I don’t care whether you’re playing a joke on me. But you’re really all right, aren’t you?<br />
Just tell me that, love.<br />
Elena wasn’t able to answer at all.<br />
Dimly, fragments of sound came to her ears: “Bonnie…on top of her and…pack<br />
ourselves back on either side.”<br />
And dull feelings stirred her sense of touch: a small body, almost weightless, like a thick<br />
blanket, pressing down on her. Someone sobbing, tears dripping on her neck from above. And warmth<br />
on either side.<br />
I’m asleep with the other kittens, she thought, dozing. Maybe we’ll have a nice dream.<br />
“I wish we could know how they’re doing,” Meredith said, on a pause from one of her pacing bouts.<br />
“I wish they knew how we’re doing,” Matt said wearily as he taped another note card<br />
amulet onto a window. And another.
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