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6<br />
Bonnie couldn’t get to sleep after Damon’s words to her. She wanted to talk to Meredith, but there<br />
was an unseeing, unhearing lump in Meredith’s bed.<br />
<strong>The</strong> only thing she could think of was to go down to the kitchen and huddle up with a cup<br />
of cocoa in the den, alone with her misery. Bonnie wasn’t good at being alone with herself.<br />
But as it turned out, when she got to the bottom floor, she didn’t head for the kitchen after<br />
all. She went straight to the den. Everything was dark and strange-looking in the silent dimness.<br />
Turning on one light would just make everything else even darker. But she managed, with shaking<br />
fingers, to twist the switch of the standing lamp beside the couch. Now if only she could find a book<br />
or something…<br />
She was holding on to her pillow as if it were a teddy bear, when Damon’s voice beside<br />
her said, “Poor little redbird. You shouldn’t be up so late, you know.”<br />
Bonnie started and bit her lip.<br />
“I hope you’re not still hurting,” she said coldly, very much on her dignity, which she<br />
suspected was not very convincing. But what was she supposed to do?<br />
<strong>The</strong> truth was that Bonnie had absolutely no chance of winning a duel of wits with<br />
Damon—and she knew it.<br />
Damon wanted to say, “Hurting? To a vampire, a human fleabite like that was…”<br />
But unfortunately he was a human too. And it did hurt.<br />
Not for long, he promised himself, looking at Bonnie.<br />
“I thought you never wanted to see me again,” she said, chin trembling. It almost seemed<br />
too cruel to make use of a vulnerable little redbird. But what choice did he have?<br />
I’ll make it up to her somehow, someday—I swear it, he thought. And at least I can make<br />
it pleasant now.<br />
“That wasn’t what I said,” he replied, hoping that Bonnie wouldn’t remember exactly<br />
what he had said. If he could just Influence the trembling woman-child before him…but he couldn’t.<br />
He was a human now.<br />
“You told me you would kill me.”<br />
“Look, I’d just been knocked down by a human. I don’t suppose you know what that<br />
means, but it hasn’t happened to me since I was twelve years old, and still an original human boy.”<br />
Bonnie’s chin kept trembling, but the tears had stopped. You are bravest when you’re
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